There is no good reason why a 750mhz computer cannot run any Java app
Sure, but what about TWO Java apps? Or THREE? Do you notice how much memory a JVM chews up even when your app doesn't do anything memory intensive? (Try an app that just prints out "Hello world" repeatedly. I see about 10Mb per invocation using Sun's Java 1.4.1_01.) Obviously, if you want to actually DO anything with Java, your memory needs will grow.
Assembly programmers made the same arguments against C in the 70's that you make about java today.
No, the argument against C (and other languages) was that compilers could never generate code as small and efficient as hand-coded assembly. These days, in most situations, a good modern compiler can do as good a job of optimizing code as most assembly programmers can do.
Now, don't get me wrong--I find Java to be a much nicer language to develop in than C (and miles away better than C++), and it is generally fast enough for my purposes, but it's far from perfect. (If it were perfect, it would be called "Scheme", but that's another story...)
Forget XL for a moment. My objection is based on the idea of "concept programming". Based on the information on your site, concept programming could be anything at all.
If concept programming really means anything, then you need to sit down and write up a detailed and exact description of what this is. If your description takes less than 5000 words, go back and see what you left out. Most importantly, don't refer to XL or any examples written in XL, as these will just confuse the issue at this point.
After you have defined concept programming clearly and exactly, then you should write a paper on XL as an example of a language designed for concept programming. Be sure to explain exactly what you mean when you say that XL is "more extensible than Lisp". You should also compare and contrast XL with languages such as Scheme, Haskell, Dylan, and Smalltalk. Do NOT mention performance or optimization in this paper AT ALL. XL is a language, and languages do not have performance characteristics. Performance is a property of an implementation.
Finally, when you've defined all this stuff, you can talk the performance of code generated by the current implementation of your compiler. This document is the least interesting, because, if you are working diligently at it, performance of the next version of your compiler should be better, and so on. So this document will change rapidly, while the first two should change either very slowly or not at all.
Sorry to be pedantic. I'm trying (now) to help you explain (to me and everybody else) why concept programming is something we should be interested in.
Notice that there is nothing in this description that says anything about what concept programming is. It just vaguely asserts that abstraction is good, which is hardly news.
So, how will introducing the concept of "concepts" make it any easier to write code? I have no concept of how the concept of concepts will help me to conceptualize programming concepts. A class might be a concept, a function might be a concept, windshield degradation on your racing simulation might be a concept... It appears that that "concept programming" is just a fancy way of talking about waving your hands in the air.
From the REALLY LIMITED amount of information about "concept programming" on the linked site, it appears that the author REALLY REALLY wants to use higher-order functions (a la Scheme or Haskell), but he just doesn't know it.
The idea that a company's employees should eat their own dog food doesn't make the dog food any better. It just ensures that the people who find the idea of eating dog food disgusting will work somewhere else.
By the way, if MS engineers really have to "eat their own dog food", does that mean the the developers for the Paperclip were required to be running the Paperclip while they wrote their code in MS Word? "It looks like you're trying to declare a variable. Would you like to use a handy 12-step wizard to assist you in writing this declaration?" Hopefully, they remembered to turn off auto-correct and "smart" quotes.
However, as far as Linux and open-source are concerned... it's not there year. They are no where near as easy to use as they need to be to serve an educational function.
Excuse me? When I was in high school, we had Apple IIs to program on, and nobody complained about them being "too hard". Hell, they didn't even have man pages, and we still figured out what to do with them.
By the way, learning to program C on a Unix box is WAY easier than learning to program on a Windows or Mac (pre-X) box, because the concepts of "editor", "compiler", and "executable" are kept separate. If you're going to write a groupware suite, then a GUI IDE might be helpful, but it's just a confusing distraction for a newbie.
I would say that someone should mod the parent up, but it's already at a 5. I haven't laughed so hard since... uh... yesterday, I guess. Go figure
By the way, I'm somewhat confused by the AppAssure ads that have been appearing lately on Slashdot. Are they trying to market their products to all of the sultry female network admins who read Slashdot, or are the ads implying that a geek who goes blinking into the sunlight in the Big Blue Room will suddenly gain sex appeal?
Yup, this chip sure lives up to the hype. It runs at 3.06 GHz, all right. And it's made by Intel. Oh yeah, and it has some mention of "Pentium 4" printed on it. It's great that the hype is so informative.
Yeah, if the Wine team has the cash to fork over a few hundred dollars for each downloaded copy of Wine. This ruling just says that MS has to license their APIs in a "reasonable and non-discriminatory" manner. Wine, Samba, and any other MS-related free software project gets butkus from this deal.
No, the whole point is that if you're not a competent cryptographer (i.e. someone with a deep understanding of number theory, abstract algebra, and existing cryptographic techniques) it is very likely that ANY money that you spend on your encryption scheme is wasted.
If you want to spend money on educating yourself, that's fine. Just don't waste your money betting that your "breakthrough" is something better than anything that real cryptographers have invented.
Note, however, that the claims made by the submittor is basically a laundry list of the kinds of claims that makes seasoned cryptographers go "oh no, not again."
No kidding. Read sci.crypt for a while, and you'll see any number of "revolutionary" encryption schemes, most of which are obviously junk invented by naive crypographer-wannabes. (Note: I'm not a cryptographer, nor do I play one on TV.)
At least the submitter understands that OTP only works if you have a big chunk of shared secret data to use as a pad. However, his mention that OTP is vulnerable to chosen-plaintext attacks makes me think that he's just another crackpot. Think about it--you use the random bits in the OTP only once, and they contain no information about future bits in the pad. Thus, OTP is 100% resistant to chosen plaintext.
My advice: DON'T BOTHER SPENDING ANY MONEY ON PATENTING THIS!!! If you decide that I'm full of it, at least do some serious study into cryptography before giving a dime to a patent lawyer.
BZZT!!! No, you're forgetting that the planet has its own velocity, which a spacecraft can steal. When a spacecraft slinshots around a planet, its velocity on the way out is the same as its velocity on the way in, but this the the velocity RELATIVE TO THE PLANET. If the spacecraft approaches the planet head-on, and does a 180 degree slingshot around the planet, then (ideally) its final velocity RELATIVE TO THE SUN is equivalent to its initial velocity plus two times the planet's orbital velocity. Energy is conserved, because the energy gained by the spacecraft is stolen from the planet.
I find this expression really disturbing. When did child abuse become funny or clever? Have you ever seen an abusive parent or step-parent? It's not funny. It's not clever. It's just horrible.
Now mod me down for being OT. I really don't care.
A previous attempt to penetrate the mysterious shaft ended in disappointment when it was discover that Lara Croft's cross-section was too large to permit her entry into the shaft.
I would consider God being good to me if I wake up in the morning or if I don't die on the way to work because of some jackass who doesn't understand the concept of a loop exit.
What, does the software for the self-destruct mechanism in your car have improper use of break or goto?
Slashdot Mirror
There is no good reason why a 750mhz computer cannot run any Java app
Sure, but what about TWO Java apps? Or THREE? Do you notice how much memory a JVM chews up even when your app doesn't do anything memory intensive? (Try an app that just prints out "Hello world" repeatedly. I see about 10Mb per invocation using Sun's Java 1.4.1_01.) Obviously, if you want to actually DO anything with Java, your memory needs will grow.
Assembly programmers made the same arguments against C in the 70's that you make about java today.
No, the argument against C (and other languages) was that compilers could never generate code as small and efficient as hand-coded assembly. These days, in most situations, a good modern compiler can do as good a job of optimizing code as most assembly programmers can do.
Now, don't get me wrong--I find Java to be a much nicer language to develop in than C (and miles away better than C++), and it is generally fast enough for my purposes, but it's far from perfect. (If it were perfect, it would be called "Scheme", but that's another story...)
Forget XL for a moment. My objection is based on the idea of "concept programming". Based on the information on your site, concept programming could be anything at all.
If concept programming really means anything, then you need to sit down and write up a detailed and exact description of what this is. If your description takes less than 5000 words, go back and see what you left out. Most importantly, don't refer to XL or any examples written in XL, as these will just confuse the issue at this point.
After you have defined concept programming clearly and exactly, then you should write a paper on XL as an example of a language designed for concept programming. Be sure to explain exactly what you mean when you say that XL is "more extensible than Lisp". You should also compare and contrast XL with languages such as Scheme, Haskell, Dylan, and Smalltalk. Do NOT mention performance or optimization in this paper AT ALL. XL is a language, and languages do not have performance characteristics. Performance is a property of an implementation.
Finally, when you've defined all this stuff, you can talk the performance of code generated by the current implementation of your compiler. This document is the least interesting, because, if you are working diligently at it, performance of the next version of your compiler should be better, and so on. So this document will change rapidly, while the first two should change either very slowly or not at all.
Sorry to be pedantic. I'm trying (now) to help you explain (to me and everybody else) why concept programming is something we should be interested in.
Uh, yeah. That's what I'm referring to.
Notice that there is nothing in this description that says anything about what concept programming is. It just vaguely asserts that abstraction is good, which is hardly news.
Dude, stop it. Now there's coffee sprayed all over my monitor.
So, how will introducing the concept of "concepts" make it any easier to write code? I have no concept of how the concept of concepts will help me to conceptualize programming concepts. A class might be a concept, a function might be a concept, windshield degradation on your racing simulation might be a concept... It appears that that "concept programming" is just a fancy way of talking about waving your hands in the air.
From the REALLY LIMITED amount of information about "concept programming" on the linked site, it appears that the author REALLY REALLY wants to use higher-order functions (a la Scheme or Haskell), but he just doesn't know it.
10 kids by 9 different women
I initially read this as 9 kids by 10 different women. That's a weird thought.
The idea that a company's employees should eat their own dog food doesn't make the dog food any better. It just ensures that the people who find the idea of eating dog food disgusting will work somewhere else.
By the way, if MS engineers really have to "eat their own dog food", does that mean the the developers for the Paperclip were required to be running the Paperclip while they wrote their code in MS Word? "It looks like you're trying to declare a variable. Would you like to use a handy 12-step wizard to assist you in writing this declaration?" Hopefully, they remembered to turn off auto-correct and "smart" quotes.
However, as far as Linux and open-source are concerned... it's not there year. They are no where near as easy to use as they need to be to serve an educational function.
Excuse me? When I was in high school, we had Apple IIs to program on, and nobody complained about them being "too hard". Hell, they didn't even have man pages, and we still figured out what to do with them.
By the way, learning to program C on a Unix box is WAY easier than learning to program on a Windows or Mac (pre-X) box, because the concepts of "editor", "compiler", and "executable" are kept separate. If you're going to write a groupware suite, then a GUI IDE might be helpful, but it's just a confusing distraction for a newbie.
I would say that someone should mod the parent up, but it's already at a 5. I haven't laughed so hard since... uh... yesterday, I guess. Go figure
By the way, I'm somewhat confused by the AppAssure ads that have been appearing lately on Slashdot. Are they trying to market their products to all of the sultry female network admins who read Slashdot, or are the ads implying that a geek who goes blinking into the sunlight in the Big Blue Room will suddenly gain sex appeal?
Yup, this chip sure lives up to the hype. It runs at 3.06 GHz, all right. And it's made by Intel. Oh yeah, and it has some mention of "Pentium 4" printed on it. It's great that the hype is so informative.
ESPECIALLY if you put none of it into practice!
That's not really fair, though. Some of the suggestions are very worthwhile. It's just that the touchstone of XP (pair programming) is a stupid idea.
Sorry, I forgot. Next thing you know, I'll be mentioning "apples, oranges, and fruit".
They'll be carefully scrutinized, and then they will be emulated by every business, government, and criminal organization on the planet.
I've always wanted my XML application to be given the stamp-of-approval by a sexy redheaded gymnast-assassin robot!
(For the Sluggy-challenged, check the link in my sig.)
That's right. A Republican star, of course, would not suck change out of your pocket because Republicans don't believe in change. :-)
This could make Wine and such MUCH more robust.
Yeah, if the Wine team has the cash to fork over a few hundred dollars for each downloaded copy of Wine. This ruling just says that MS has to license their APIs in a "reasonable and non-discriminatory" manner. Wine, Samba, and any other MS-related free software project gets butkus from this deal.
The kitchen sink is part of the vital anti-virus activity known as "washing the dishes", and can therefore be kept secret.
No, the whole point is that if you're not a competent cryptographer (i.e. someone with a deep understanding of number theory, abstract algebra, and existing cryptographic techniques) it is very likely that ANY money that you spend on your encryption scheme is wasted.
If you want to spend money on educating yourself, that's fine. Just don't waste your money betting that your "breakthrough" is something better than anything that real cryptographers have invented.
The weakness lies in, if you use the same pad two times...
Well, then it isn't a ONE-TIME pad, is it?
Note, however, that the claims made by the submittor is basically a laundry list of the kinds of claims that makes seasoned cryptographers go "oh no, not again."
No kidding. Read sci.crypt for a while, and you'll see any number of "revolutionary" encryption schemes, most of which are obviously junk invented by naive crypographer-wannabes. (Note: I'm not a cryptographer, nor do I play one on TV.)
At least the submitter understands that OTP only works if you have a big chunk of shared secret data to use as a pad. However, his mention that OTP is vulnerable to chosen-plaintext attacks makes me think that he's just another crackpot. Think about it--you use the random bits in the OTP only once, and they contain no information about future bits in the pad. Thus, OTP is 100% resistant to chosen plaintext.
My advice: DON'T BOTHER SPENDING ANY MONEY ON PATENTING THIS!!! If you decide that I'm full of it, at least do some serious study into cryptography before giving a dime to a patent lawyer.
BZZT!!! No, you're forgetting that the planet has its own velocity, which a spacecraft can steal. When a spacecraft slinshots around a planet, its velocity on the way out is the same as its velocity on the way in, but this the the velocity RELATIVE TO THE PLANET. If the spacecraft approaches the planet head-on, and does a 180 degree slingshot around the planet, then (ideally) its final velocity RELATIVE TO THE SUN is equivalent to its initial velocity plus two times the planet's orbital velocity. Energy is conserved, because the energy gained by the spacecraft is stolen from the planet.
sun wants to beat MS like a red headed step child
I find this expression really disturbing. When did child abuse become funny or clever? Have you ever seen an abusive parent or step-parent? It's not funny. It's not clever. It's just horrible.
Now mod me down for being OT. I really don't care.
A previous attempt to penetrate the mysterious
shaft ended in disappointment when it was discover
that Lara Croft's cross-section was too large to
permit her entry into the shaft.
Not yet.
I would consider God being good to me if I wake up in the morning or if I don't die on the way to work because of some jackass who doesn't understand the concept of a loop exit.
What, does the software for the self-destruct mechanism in your car have improper use of break or goto?