My two-year old (three in February) is very computer-savy at this point. Well, Windows-savy I should say... he can close, minimze and maximize windows, resize them, he knows how to use the start menu, he can drag-and-drop (many of his games require it) and he knows how to use context menus. He even figured out how to run IE after I removed all icons to it (I did however leave it in the history on the Run command... he figured it out by accident once and now he knows exactly how to do it when he wants to visit NickJr.com).
He is going to wind up being way ahead of the curve when he hits school I think... He enjoys the hell out of himself to boot, so it's all good.
Since most of the questions thus far posted here seem to have roughly taken the form:
"Gee Mr. Shatner sir, you really kinda suck as an actor and you make a fool out of yourself every chance you get for a buck. So, my question is: why do you do it? Are you a total moron or does your booze habit just really cost THAT much??"
I thought instead that I'd ask you something much more relevant and pleasent for you to answer:
In what horribly painful way (or ways) would you like to torture until dead the legions of nerds who infest this site, for much like Vyger they are but children, instinctively wanting, needing to find purpose in their dismal existences?
Perhaps if they merged with a hot babe like your former navigator, they too could evolve into a higher form (Yeah, I know, it was merging with Decker that did this, but the facts are inconvenient right now, so I'm changing them, much like a true Linux Zealot does!)
Then again, they are by and large geeks with technical fetishes, so joining with ANY babe is otherwise out of the question. But I digress...
Rather than simply telling them to get a life, which none of them would do unless the source for that life was freely available to them, how would you, the great Captin Kirk, deal with them?
Photon torpedo up the ass? Sick the PriceLine Super-Computer on them?
(I actually LOVED 'The Return' by the way, that's one!)
Is it real or is it Memorex?
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Halloween VII
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Look, I'm not saying whether this is legit or not because I certainly don't know.
What I WILL tell you with certainty is that Microsoft is not a stupid bunch of fools. They play the games they play VERY well, and their success is ample evidence of that.
With that in mind, exactly how many Halloween memos do we really think would escape Redmond before they decide writing ANY strategy memo around Halloween is a bad idea?
I mean come on... The first one, fine, someone did a stupid thing and it leaked. The second? Ok, they didn't clamp down quite tight enough. But a third and fourth memo? I have serious doubts about the validity of them.
Again, I'm not saying they're bunk, but I'd be leaning that way until BillG himself comes on CNN and does damage control.
Fortunately, I'm a big ST fan as well... I had my wife make TNG uniforms for my son and I when he was two for Halloween. I had to settle for ST uniforms because she was able to come up with the pattern off the web from images she found, but the B5 Army Of Light uniforms, my first choice, were just too involved for her to make in time.
Geez, I never realized exactly how sad that actually is until I typed it! 'scue me while I go stick my finger in a socket for an extended period...
Stargate has a lot going for it (excellent chatacter development, self-consistent stories and technologies, some actual creativity on the writing staff!)
As does Firefly (some of the best dialogue on TV this side of The West Wing, a captain with some balls, BABES!).
Enterprise manages a good show every now and again (T'Pol's grandmother episode, Shuttlepod I, the season one cliffhanger, the one where they had to wake Phlox up to work on Mayweather).
Farscape was just odd beyond words most of the time, which I loved (but it had some real dudes mixed in, let's be honest).
But Babylon 5 was just magnificent storytelling.
All you people that think the conclusion of the Shadow War was a let-down, YOU DIDN'T GET IT. I felt the exact same way when I first saw it, then after a few days of thinking about it I realized just how brilliant it actually was. And how daring it was: No technobabble-of-the-week way to defeat the Shadows and the Vorlons, no temporal reset to make it all go away, no religious hero coming down from Heaven to save everyone's ass. It might not have been as glorious as some would have wanted, but it couldn't really have ended any other way, and that in and of itself makes it perfect.
I'll say this about Babylon 5: no other show or movie has ever made me care about certain characters the way it did. I mean, I was quite literally fighting back the tears when you see what happend to Londo in The Fall Of Centauri Prime. To have seen the evolution of that character (my God, the character development!) and how he finally wound up, you can't help but feel a profound sense of sadness at what he allowed to happen (not that he had a choice except death I suppose, but still...)
Stargate can't do it. Firefly won't. Farscape doesn't have the chance to any more, Enterprise... don't make me laugh!
The happiest day of my life will be three years from now when I have the entire B5 series on DVD sitting on my shelf. And the week I make my kids watch it with me, non-stop from start to finish, nothing will match it.
You have seen greatness, and you have not recognized it. Go watch Survivor: Iraq or The Batchelor 163... you don't deserve to watch Babylon 5!
Yeah, couldn't be that some people actually BELIEVE WHAT THEY WROTE, right??
Why is it that every OSS zealot has to insist that any point of view contrary to their own is the result of a derranged mind?
You want to try and convince me that Microsoft is evil and that I should shun absolutely anything coming out of Redmond and that I should embrace the OSS world? Fine, try and convince me. Do it logically and without insulting me. You'll find it's not that hard because I hate Microsoft anyway, but I don't hate every product they produce, in fact I very much like some of them (Win2K, Office in general as two examples).
BUT DON'T FUCKING DO IT BY TELLING ME I'M A NUTCASE OR A PAID LACKEY OF SOME CORPORORATE ENTITY BECUASE I DON'T CURRENTLY AGREE WITH YOUR WORLD-VIEW!!
Another group of people acted the way some of you people act... we fought a world war against them...
Yeah, I got some others (and remember, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, assuming I spelled gander right!)...
Formula51:
Based on the movie of the same title about some extraordinarily strong weed... you see, you HAVE to be smoking some good stuff to think that ANY Linux GUI looks even half-way decent. In this game, you will be shown various Gnome and KDE themes and you simply look at it and stare at it and the last person in your living room to puke because it's so damned ugly is the winner. A sure-winner party game with the simplest control scheme ever.
Complexitosity:
In this game, you will have to enter a long series of arcane commands to perform simple actions. For instance, to pick up a new weapon:
cat >> wpn.dir chmod a+r wpn.dir grep -n '[wP]eapon' wpn.dir ncftp ftp.wpnsrv.com get newWpn.sword.tar.gz cd/usr/me/weaps tar tar -tvzf newWpn.sword.tar.gz
Then of course you'll have to compile the downloaded source for the weapon you just picked up, but I don't want to ruin the whole game for you!
The Rightous Few:
In this game, your job is to go around to a bunch of virtual forums, both message boards, chat rooms and other constructs, and extol the virtues of Linucks (any resemblance to real operating systems, overhyped or not, is strictly coincidental) to anyone that will listen, and to many who won't. All the while you will explain how Linucks is the savior of the known world, the greatest thing since the advent of breathable atmosphere on the planet Earth and all the while telling the virtual evildoers who support MicroZoftt that all they do is spread FUD, even if they actually LIKE Windoes. It is your job, as an Open-Sores avengers, to spread 100 times as much FUD as the MicroZofttees ever could. Remember, it's just a game, nothing like real life folks! (Ahem... cough... SARCASM).
Battle For Knowledge:
In this exciting game, it is your job to brutally force owners of intellectual property to give up their means of making a living by giving open, free, unfettered access to their intellectual property. You can use a number of tactics to achieve your goals from threatening them with lawsuits, pirating copies and making it a moot point or holding guns to their heads until they do as they are told. All for the greater good of humanity of course. (I can't tell, is my sarcasm coming through clear enough?!?)
Fading Reality:
In this game, which is a truly revolutionary concept, you must fight the constant decent you feel into obscurity, insanity and irrelevance as you continue to push a subculture agenda aimed at the destruction of modern society and free market values. As you get deeper and deeper into this game you begin to feel that no one but you could ever possibly have the right answers about anything whatsoever, and so you begin to fight, almost religiously, for your single-minded purpose and goal: to rid the world of all proprietary systems and to destroy the very fabric of the modern American capitalist system. This game was originally called "Communism Redux", but is now being called "Fading Reality", subtitled "The Open-Source Movement".
I thought it was pretty good... I liked the humor elements, it seems most of the characters are interesting, the FX were excellent... the story is fairly standard fare, but it's only a single episode, let's see how it goes.
One thing I REALLY like was... SPOILERS, IF YOU MISSED IT...
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Near the end when the captain kicks the bad dude engine intake (I'm guessing that's what it was anyway)... this was actually a little shocking because the whole episode was basically showing us how this guy is really a good person down deep, and then he commits cold-blooded murder (whether the victim deserved it or not)?? I didn't see it coming to be honest, and I like that. Hopefully Whedon continues to pull tricks like that, I'll keep watching.
Certainly worth checking out the next episode in my opinion. No major, unforgivable flaws that I could see like, oh, I don't know...
HOW DO THE ALIENS IN SIGNS HAVE SUCH A PROBLEM WITH FUCKING WATER?!?
They're smart enough to get here, they're smart enough to more or less herd us for whatever nefarious purposes they have in mind, but they can't invent a damned WET SUIT?!? I mean, have they never encountered water before or something?? It takes what I otherwise thought was a fantastic movie and almost completely ruins it for me. I can suspend disbelief. I can even excuse some stupid plot holes.
BUT WATER FOR CHRIST'S SAKE?!?!?!?!?!?!?
If my sig was encoded as a crop circle, it would look like a bunghole.
All the people that say that MS has different rules that apply to them because they are a monopoly are right. Many of those same people say that MS killed Java and many other technologies by not including them in Windows. This is wrong.
If Cadillac invents the most kick-ass car stereo system ever made, it is their responsibility to market it and make it a commercial success. Even if Ford was the dominant auto maker in the world, it should not be a legal requirement that they include Cadillac's stereo as part of their own products. This is wrong.
What Ford CANNOT do however is make deals with other auto makers to also not use Cadillac's stereo. This is anti-competitive and clearly against the law. Not to mention being collusion.
This is the same with Microsoft. Just because they are the dominant market force doesn't mean they are forced to include other's products in their own. And if they screwed up the implementation, whether by accident or on purpose, prove it in court. If you do, then you are entitled to some remedy as determined by a court of law. If not, shut the hell up and stop bitching.
Did MS make an incompatible JVM? Hell, I don't know for sure. What I *DO* know is that for a very long time they had the BEST JVM available. Even Sun said so! Now, was that a ploy on MS's part to simply look like the good citizen? Maybe. Maybe not. Let's admit that none of us know all the details of what went on or does go on and start from there.
Sun (and those that are on that side of the highway) like to tell the world that MS didn't play fair and that's the reason Java didn't and likely never will succeed on the client (and won't totally dominate the world elsewhere I should point out). In fact, they are just complaining because they got their asses handed to them, as does most people that go up against MS. Did MS do thing that weren't fair? Certainly. Tough shit, welcome to the world of business. Did they do anything illegal? Well, show me the court decision that says outright that they did (and don't bring up any antitrust ruling unless it specifically talks about Java because that's what we're discussing here, not what they may or may not have done to Netscape, which I happen to think got beat same as Sun but that's certainly a discussion for another day, and a day gone past judging by the latest browser usage statistics).
Microsoft does plenty that they need to be slapped down by the legal system for, make no mistake about it. But keeping Java off the client was simply good business. Nobody likes a sore loser, so shut the hell up you Java apologists!
(By the way, lest you think I'm some MS shill that hates Java, let me point out that 95% of my work these days is 100% J2EE development, and I happen to actually like it!)
Partly true. I have experienced many a situatino where some app that the desktop support team installed trounced on some DLL that my VB app required (ADO comes to mind at least twice). It's certainly true that you don't completely avoid those potential problems by going the web-based way, but it does cut down on those situations a great deal.
The benefit you gain though is in distribution and upgrades. It's still far easier to update a web-based application than something written in VB or C++, even if you have your users running it remotely. Less risky as illustrated above, and usually faster and easier from an administration standpoint.
And as long as you've done like I did, which is try to stick to the published standards, it should be possible to support other browsers without rewriting the whole thing, if that is needed down the road. Fortunately that wasn't a requirement for my work, so I could save myself some effort, even if potentially not that much.
Of course, that comes down to the environment you find yourself in... if your writing for the web, it's in your best interested to support as many browsers fully as possible. In an intranet corporate environment that has standardized on IE though, it makes sense to use that platform to it's full potential (although, as I said, it's best not to shoot yourself in the foot down the road because you just KNOW that management is going to switch on you later).
I've recently completed the second application for my company, for internal use only admittedly, that is written in nothing but DHTML+JScript+CSS... Yes, it only runs in IE (although the only IE-specific things I'm using that are necassery are IFrames and event bubbling). The compliment I CONSTANTLY get is that my systems look, feel and work just like any other Windows-based application.
I'm not saying this brag (ok, maybe a little)... I'm saying it because it in fact IS possible to create robust, powerful, modern-looking GUI's with nothing but HTML+scripting+css. I agree, it's not as easy as say VB, but, and I'm loathe to admit this....Net with WebForms using Visual Studio.Net comes pretty close.
Well, it's perhaps a step in the right direction at the least.
You mean tp say you interpret "Yeah, you would moderate me as a troll. God forbid anyone say anything bad about Linux. God forbid anyone point out hypocricy in the open-source community" as meaning "Oh, I'm an intelligent, insightful martyr"?
Dude, what are you smoking? Not everybody has a hidden agenda. Not everybody is trying to change the world. I said EXACTLY what I meant.
But I digress. Arguing with anonymous posters is pretty silly, I do admit I look foolish for doing so.
Yeah, you would moderate me as a troll. God forbid anyone say anything bad about Linux. God forbid anyone point out hypocricy in the open-source community.
Linux recovery? What would I ever need that for? I thought Linux never experienced even the sightest hiccup, never crashed, never failed in any way shape or form, just runs until the end of time completely unattended and without any degradation in performance or stabiity EVER?
Speaking of the interpretation of patents, fair enough. I'll go so far as to say I stand corrected and agree, it's not "aginst the law" to do something that is patented.
However, if you knowingly go forward with something that you know MAY be infringing a patent, you are inviting the patent holder to press his/her rights and prevent you from doing it, perhaps at great cost to you. Whether you agree with the underlying laws that allow this to potentially occur or not, you are foolish to simply ignore them.
In New York it is actually legal to appear topless in public. In other states it is not. If a woman goes to Alabama, which we'll assume for the sake of argument has a law forbiding this activity, and walks down the street topless even though she knows it's against the law, that's a stupid thing to do. She might get swau with it because maybe no one will press charges (very likely if only men see here!), but it's still inviting trouble.
The argument that you did not know about a patent and you therefore did not infringe it, is a weak legal position to take. You may in fact be able to win a case based on that, there may even be precedence for such a ruling, but it's a weak position and banking on winning on it isn't a bright idea.
And in this case, Linus and the other involved folks DO know about the patents. They may not have read them, but let me put it this way... I'd LOVE to be the lawyer representing the plaintiff in a case against Linus here. I'd claim that he knew there was a patent he may be infringing and did not go through due dilligence to prevent the infringment and is therefore as guilty as someone who had read the patent and ignored it. Don't know if I'd win, but I'd feel very good about my case going in.
Finally, your assertion that I made a complete fool of myself is ridiculous. My point was that Linus is a fucking asshole in this instance, and I stand by that completely. You are correct, it seems that he is not breaking any laws at present based on the definition you cited of patents, but he is most certainly inviting potential legal action by a legitimate (presumably legitimate anyway) patent holder. He in in fact flaunting the fact that he actively ignores patent holders and their IP rights because he does not believe in the concepts underlying the laws. This is, in my view, an extremely stupid position to take and potentially very unhealthy from a legal standpoint. Nothing may ever come of it, and he will look right and I will look wrong. That doesn't change the fact that he is putting himself at risk for his principals. Fine, he has that right. And others have the right to sue him and ruin him financially if they so wish. He knows this, and chooses to put his head in the sand. This, to me, is the definition of a fucking asshole.
You know, I really don't like the laws that say I have to pay taxes. I think I'm not going to.
And you know, those silly rules about not stealing someone's car... I don't agree with them either, think I'll go get myself a Jag.
Come to think of it, my idiot neighbor has been getting on my nerves, and that dumb, anti-social law forbidding murder... I disagree with that too. Think I'll ignore it until someone bitches and get rid of my neighbor.
This is the fucking moron so many of you admire, look up to and emulate the world over?
Anyone think this is just civil disobedience? No, it's not. Well, I take that back... it is until someone sues him.
Just because you don't agree with a law doesn't mean you get to ignore it (even if you intend to comply when someone calls you on it). You get to try and get the law revoked, in fact, it's your civil duty to do so if the laws are unfair and unjust. But saying in a public forum that you are going to ignore laws just because you think they are stupid. Buddy, it's not the law that's stupid, it's you!
(I don't know this, but is Linus a US citizen at this point? This makes some difference of course, ignoring another country's laws is somewhat less dumb than ignoring your own country's laws, but still).
(Also, I'm assuming Linus really did post that message. Part of me believes he didn't, and if not than obviously you can ignore everything I've said! But if he DID write it, let me close by saying LINUS IS A MAJOR FUCKING ASSHOLE AND I'LL LAUGH MY ASS OFF IF HE WINDS UP ROTING IN A JAIL CELL SOMEWHERE, OR IF ANYONE STUPID ENOUGH TO FOLLOW HIS LEAD ENDS UP ROTING IN A JAIL CELL. See, that's the problem with raising a human being to the level of minor deity, which is what so many of you seem to do with him... he's still human, which translated to flawed in any language).
Everybody else is getting into the fray, why not me?!?
10. Delete all deprecated methods, fields, classes, and interfaces
Funny that everyone bitches at Microsoft for bloated software, but the same is not said of Sun and Java. This proposal reduces bloat. Sounds like a good idea. If you have an application written that uses deprecated methods (which you BETTER NOT have written while ignoring a deprecation warning! If you did, bug off, it's your problem!), you can either rewrite it or don't upgrade the JRE. Deal with it. I agree with him.
9. Fix incorrect naming conventions
Probably the least important proposal, I don't particularly care either way. I am quite anal in my own code about naming conventions and formatting, I have a very definite style that other programmer can recognize immediately if you have experience looking at my code (and they tend to appreciate it). So, why not do the same for the language and class libraries itself? I like this idea personally, but if it didn't happen I wouldn't be disappointed either. I'm ambivolent on this point.
8. Eliminate primitive data types
The idea is consistency: if everything in the language is an abstract data type, so much the better, you never have to even think about whether your dealing with a primitive or an object. I mean, there's been a couple of instances, as everyone has experienced I'm sure, where I had to deal with wrapper classes. Hey, that's not exactly a big deal. But then again, why not avoid it completely? I like this idea, but it's another I could live without, but I do lean to agreeing.
7. Extend chars to four bytes
Yes, excellent idea. Frankly I've never been bitten by it not being four bytes, but his argument is perfectly reasonable and makes total sense. I agree.
6. Fix threads
FIX them? How about make them not a total pain in the ass to work with! I've written multithreaded applications like most people have, and I'd rather do it in Java than many other languages, but I still have to think too much to do it (partially familiarity, true, but also partially because it's illogical the way it works). So, ANYTHING to fix threads is OK by me, I agree!
5. Convert file formats to XML
I agree. Especially in the case of serialization. I mean, if I serialize an object, nothing says I have to use it in Java again, I can pull it into anything down the road and deal with it. Yes, XML everywhere, I agree. (Now, if the hard drive manufacturers want to make a ton of money, wait until everybody IS using XML everywhere, then bump the prices of storage up. What choice will we have? And of course we'll need 10 times as much space storing everything in XML, so they'll be rich. Where's my Seagate stock anyway?!?) I completly agree.
4. Ditch the AWT
Don't ditch it, just combine AWT and Swing and make one good, coherent set of GUI classes. I like Swing, that's all I use for GUI work, but AWT still has things about it that are useful. Combine them and GET IT RIGHT THIS TIME!! I agree with him.
3. Rationalize the collections
Forget rationalizing them... cut down the number. Just give me one or two collection types that encapsulates all the functionality of the others. No reason this can't be done. That would fulfill his wish of rationalization as well, assuming they were designed properly. So, I agree, in a manner of speaking!
2. Redesign I/O
I hate to agree since it's been what, two revisions already? But he's right, there is basic functionality missing or poorly implemented and that shouldn't be the case after seven years. I agree, grudgingly.
1. Redesign class loading from scratch, this time with human interface factors in mind
Yes, the class loader needs to be fixed. Not so much because of the newbies with class path issues, but for efficiency's sake mostly. I agree. Oh, by the way, don't be too hard on the newbies... honestly, how many of you got Hello World to run the very first time? Don't lie, I doubt more than 50%!
How to fix Java is an argument that could go on for ages, but at least this guy had the balls to come up with some ideas, and even proposed solutions in many cases. At least give him credit for that, even if you completely disagree with everything.
By the way, I view Java as the lesser of all evils... it doesn't thrill me, I don't love it and I grudginly use it now, but there isn't anything better that I've seen (.Net has potential, but it's not sufficiently different enough to warrant a wholesale switchover). So, until something comes along that blows me away (like direct nueral programming where I picture a GUI and the functionality thereof and the code for it is written for me), I'll just bitch about Java like everyone else, and continue to use it daily.
Agreed about Microsoft innovation. But I don't see it as a bad thing in any case... if they look at the Enterprise's computers and decide to copy them, I have no problem with the fact that they did nothing new. One thing people (not saying you necasserily, just a general statement) tend to forget that Microsoft does have a tremendous amount of technical engineering capability. They are capable. Add to that the obvious advantage in marketing (and illegal tactics, but I won't go there!) and they win more times than not even if the idea wasn't their own. They bring many things to fruition that perhaps no one else could, certainly not in as widespread a fashion, and I don't see a problem with that.
About the PR deparment sugar-coating, no, I was in no way shape or form implying that. If they really did do such an underhanded thing, believe me on this, I'd be the first guy to jump up yelling and screaming and never touch a piece of Microsoft software again. I'd fight the good fight with the rest of you guys, it's just that I don't think it's right to start fighting that fight now without giving them a chance. It's not fair, even in the case of a convicted monopolist, to not give them SOME benefit of doubt. Not as much as other companies I grant you, but I can't damn them before I see what's being done for sure.
I don't think it's OK for the tech community to have to discover security flaws and information gathering efforts, not at all. What I'm saying is that I'm not going to ASSUME they are going to pull something like that just because it sounds like they COULD. What I'm saying is that if they do, they will be called on it in short order. They know that, they know it would be a nightmare, and so I think they will be dissuaded from such actions without any further pressure from us.
Lastly, I don't have much more confidence in MS when it comes to security than you, that's one area I do have a big problem with them in. But they've made strides in stability, why not give them a chance to prove they can do the same with security? Too many people are burying them before the votes are tallied. Let's run the race before declaring a winner, shall we?
I never said someone is wrong if they experience crashes. What I did say is that I cannot understand why there seems to be so much trouble with Windows boxes (servers specifically). I was jokingly suggesting I much be that much better of an admin as well.
Believe me, I know people experience problems. What I'm saying is that when I have a large number of heavy-traffic boxes, some with some crazy applications on them, why I don't see nearly the same level of problems is beyond me.
Naturally everyone has their own experiences and opinions, no problem there. I just wonder why I have a large number of Windows (Win2K and NT only) servers and desktops that seem to never have the problems that so many people attribute to "crappy MS software".
I know my applications are just as demanding as anyone else'. How is it I simply don't see all these problems?
And in fact, the network admins here would likely tell you the *nix boxes they administer go down more often. In addition, I see CICS regions going down far more often than my NT boxes (ok, not really a fair comparison I'll admit). IIS is rock-solid (unless I forget to advance the record pointer while iterating through an ADO recordset in an ASP page, which kills the server, of course that shouldn't happen because (a) I shouldn't make such a stupid mistake, even though we all do similar things on occassion, and (b) IIS and/or the OS should be able to recover from it).
I don't know, I just don't see all the problems everyone else claims to, and I'm being just as hard on my boxes as anyone else is. Go figure.
Well, I certainly don't argue with your interpretation of their motives, but what good company DOESN'T have those same motives?
If MS gets their way with DRM hardware, they will be doing the Linux community a big favor because they will be the only alternative. Yes, I understand your talking about hardware and I'm talking about software, but it has been shown plenty of times that the community can work with hardware just as well as software, so I have confidence they would rise to the occassion again.
That of course leads to a sci-fi future where the majority of the population is controlled by the big corporation and a few "freedom fighters" form and underground to revolt.
If they encrypt it, someone will crack it. Try to hide it, someone will dig it out. Of this I have no doubt.
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Fantastic points!
My two-year old (three in February) is very computer-savy at this point. Well, Windows-savy I should say... he can close, minimze and maximize windows, resize them, he knows how to use the start menu, he can drag-and-drop (many of his games require it) and he knows how to use context menus. He even figured out how to run IE after I removed all icons to it (I did however leave it in the history on the Run command... he figured it out by accident once and now he knows exactly how to do it when he wants to visit NickJr.com).
He is going to wind up being way ahead of the curve when he hits school I think... He enjoys the hell out of himself to boot, so it's all good.
Since most of the questions thus far posted here seem to have roughly taken the form:
"Gee Mr. Shatner sir, you really kinda suck as an actor and you make a fool out of yourself every chance you get for a buck. So, my question is: why do you do it? Are you a total moron or does your booze habit just really cost THAT much??"
I thought instead that I'd ask you something much more relevant and pleasent for you to answer:
In what horribly painful way (or ways) would you like to torture until dead the legions of nerds who infest this site, for much like Vyger they are but children, instinctively wanting, needing to find purpose in their dismal existences?
Perhaps if they merged with a hot babe like your former navigator, they too could evolve into a higher form (Yeah, I know, it was merging with Decker that did this, but the facts are inconvenient right now, so I'm changing them, much like a true Linux Zealot does!)
Then again, they are by and large geeks with technical fetishes, so joining with ANY babe is otherwise out of the question. But I digress...
Rather than simply telling them to get a life, which none of them would do unless the source for that life was freely available to them, how would you, the great Captin Kirk, deal with them?
Photon torpedo up the ass? Sick the PriceLine Super-Computer on them?
(I actually LOVED 'The Return' by the way, that's one!)
Look, I'm not saying whether this is legit or not because I certainly don't know.
What I WILL tell you with certainty is that Microsoft is not a stupid bunch of fools. They play the games they play VERY well, and their success is ample evidence of that.
With that in mind, exactly how many Halloween memos do we really think would escape Redmond before they decide writing ANY strategy memo around Halloween is a bad idea?
I mean come on... The first one, fine, someone did a stupid thing and it leaked. The second? Ok, they didn't clamp down quite tight enough. But a third and fourth memo? I have serious doubts about the validity of them.
Again, I'm not saying they're bunk, but I'd be leaning that way until BillG himself comes on CNN and does damage control.
I love it! Your probably 100% dead-on!
Fortunately, I'm a big ST fan as well... I had my wife make TNG uniforms for my son and I when he was two for Halloween. I had to settle for ST uniforms because she was able to come up with the pattern off the web from images she found, but the B5 Army Of Light uniforms, my first choice, were just too involved for her to make in time.
Geez, I never realized exactly how sad that actually is until I typed it! 'scue me while I go stick my finger in a socket for an extended period...
Just kidding.
Stargate has a lot going for it (excellent chatacter development, self-consistent stories and technologies, some actual creativity on the writing staff!)
As does Firefly (some of the best dialogue on TV this side of The West Wing, a captain with some balls, BABES!).
Enterprise manages a good show every now and again (T'Pol's grandmother episode, Shuttlepod I, the season one cliffhanger, the one where they had to wake Phlox up to work on Mayweather).
Farscape was just odd beyond words most of the time, which I loved (but it had some real dudes mixed in, let's be honest).
But Babylon 5 was just magnificent storytelling.
All you people that think the conclusion of the Shadow War was a let-down, YOU DIDN'T GET IT. I felt the exact same way when I first saw it, then after a few days of thinking about it I realized just how brilliant it actually was. And how daring it was: No technobabble-of-the-week way to defeat the Shadows and the Vorlons, no temporal reset to make it all go away, no religious hero coming down from Heaven to save everyone's ass. It might not have been as glorious as some would have wanted, but it couldn't really have ended any other way, and that in and of itself makes it perfect.
I'll say this about Babylon 5: no other show or movie has ever made me care about certain characters the way it did. I mean, I was quite literally fighting back the tears when you see what happend to Londo in The Fall Of Centauri Prime. To have seen the evolution of that character (my God, the character development!) and how he finally wound up, you can't help but feel a profound sense of sadness at what he allowed to happen (not that he had a choice except death I suppose, but still...)
Stargate can't do it. Firefly won't. Farscape doesn't have the chance to any more, Enterprise... don't make me laugh!
The happiest day of my life will be three years from now when I have the entire B5 series on DVD sitting on my shelf. And the week I make my kids watch it with me, non-stop from start to finish, nothing will match it.
You have seen greatness, and you have not recognized it. Go watch Survivor: Iraq or The Batchelor 163... you don't deserve to watch Babylon 5!
Ah, rational debate on Slashdot? Surely you jest.
And I'm sure your not trying to imply that all Hitler was jealous of was independent thought, are you?!?
Yeah, couldn't be that some people actually BELIEVE WHAT THEY WROTE, right??
Why is it that every OSS zealot has to insist that any point of view contrary to their own is the result of a derranged mind?
You want to try and convince me that Microsoft is evil and that I should shun absolutely anything coming out of Redmond and that I should embrace the OSS world? Fine, try and convince me. Do it logically and without insulting me. You'll find it's not that hard because I hate Microsoft anyway, but I don't hate every product they produce, in fact I very much like some of them (Win2K, Office in general as two examples).
BUT DON'T FUCKING DO IT BY TELLING ME I'M A NUTCASE OR A PAID LACKEY OF SOME CORPORORATE ENTITY BECUASE I DON'T CURRENTLY AGREE WITH YOUR WORLD-VIEW!!
Another group of people acted the way some of you people act... we fought a world war against them...
Yeah, I got some others (and remember, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, assuming I spelled gander right!)...
/usr/me/weaps
Formula51:
Based on the movie of the same title about some extraordinarily strong weed... you see, you HAVE to be smoking some good stuff to think that ANY Linux GUI looks even half-way decent. In this game, you will be shown various Gnome and KDE themes and you simply look at it and stare at it and the last person in your living room to puke because it's so damned ugly is the winner. A sure-winner party game with the simplest control scheme ever.
Complexitosity:
In this game, you will have to enter a long series of arcane commands to perform simple actions. For instance, to pick up a new weapon:
cat >> wpn.dir
chmod a+r wpn.dir
grep -n '[wP]eapon' wpn.dir
ncftp ftp.wpnsrv.com
get newWpn.sword.tar.gz
cd
tar tar -tvzf newWpn.sword.tar.gz
Then of course you'll have to compile the downloaded source for the weapon you just picked up, but I don't want to ruin the whole game for you!
The Rightous Few:
In this game, your job is to go around to a bunch of virtual forums, both message boards, chat rooms and other constructs, and extol the virtues of Linucks (any resemblance to real operating systems, overhyped or not, is strictly coincidental) to anyone that will listen, and to many who won't. All the while you will explain how Linucks is the savior of the known world, the greatest thing since the advent of breathable atmosphere on the planet Earth and all the while telling the virtual evildoers who support MicroZoftt that all they do is spread FUD, even if they actually LIKE Windoes. It is your job, as an Open-Sores avengers, to spread 100 times as much FUD as the MicroZofttees ever could. Remember, it's just a game, nothing like real life folks! (Ahem... cough... SARCASM).
Battle For Knowledge:
In this exciting game, it is your job to brutally force owners of intellectual property to give up their means of making a living by giving open, free, unfettered access to their intellectual property. You can use a number of tactics to achieve your goals from threatening them with lawsuits, pirating copies and making it a moot point or holding guns to their heads until they do as they are told. All for the greater good of humanity of course. (I can't tell, is my sarcasm coming through clear enough?!?)
Fading Reality:
In this game, which is a truly revolutionary concept, you must fight the constant decent you feel into obscurity, insanity and irrelevance as you continue to push a subculture agenda aimed at the destruction of modern society and free market values. As you get deeper and deeper into this game you begin to feel that no one but you could ever possibly have the right answers about anything whatsoever, and so you begin to fight, almost religiously, for your single-minded purpose and goal: to rid the world of all proprietary systems and to destroy the very fabric of the modern American capitalist system. This game was originally called "Communism Redux", but is now being called "Fading Reality", subtitled "The Open-Source Movement".
Harde-har-har.
I thought it was pretty good... I liked the humor elements, it seems most of the characters are interesting, the FX were excellent... the story is fairly standard fare, but it's only a single episode, let's see how it goes.
One thing I REALLY like was... SPOILERS, IF YOU MISSED IT...
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Near the end when the captain kicks the bad dude engine intake (I'm guessing that's what it was anyway)... this was actually a little shocking because the whole episode was basically showing us how this guy is really a good person down deep, and then he commits cold-blooded murder (whether the victim deserved it or not)?? I didn't see it coming to be honest, and I like that. Hopefully Whedon continues to pull tricks like that, I'll keep watching.
Certainly worth checking out the next episode in my opinion. No major, unforgivable flaws that I could see like, oh, I don't know...
HOW DO THE ALIENS IN SIGNS HAVE SUCH A PROBLEM WITH FUCKING WATER?!?
They're smart enough to get here, they're smart enough to more or less herd us for whatever nefarious purposes they have in mind, but they can't invent a damned WET SUIT?!? I mean, have they never encountered water before or something?? It takes what I otherwise thought was a fantastic movie and almost completely ruins it for me. I can suspend disbelief. I can even excuse some stupid plot holes.
BUT WATER FOR CHRIST'S SAKE?!?!?!?!?!?!?
If my sig was encoded as a crop circle, it would look like a bunghole.
BEST... SIG... EVER!
All the people that say that MS has different rules that apply to them because they are a monopoly are right. Many of those same people say that MS killed Java and many other technologies by not including them in Windows. This is wrong.
If Cadillac invents the most kick-ass car stereo system ever made, it is their responsibility to market it and make it a commercial success. Even if Ford was the dominant auto maker in the world, it should not be a legal requirement that they include Cadillac's stereo as part of their own products. This is wrong.
What Ford CANNOT do however is make deals with other auto makers to also not use Cadillac's stereo. This is anti-competitive and clearly against the law. Not to mention being collusion.
This is the same with Microsoft. Just because they are the dominant market force doesn't mean they are forced to include other's products in their own. And if they screwed up the implementation, whether by accident or on purpose, prove it in court. If you do, then you are entitled to some remedy as determined by a court of law. If not, shut the hell up and stop bitching.
Did MS make an incompatible JVM? Hell, I don't know for sure. What I *DO* know is that for a very long time they had the BEST JVM available. Even Sun said so! Now, was that a ploy on MS's part to simply look like the good citizen? Maybe. Maybe not. Let's admit that none of us know all the details of what went on or does go on and start from there.
Sun (and those that are on that side of the highway) like to tell the world that MS didn't play fair and that's the reason Java didn't and likely never will succeed on the client (and won't totally dominate the world elsewhere I should point out). In fact, they are just complaining because they got their asses handed to them, as does most people that go up against MS. Did MS do thing that weren't fair? Certainly. Tough shit, welcome to the world of business. Did they do anything illegal? Well, show me the court decision that says outright that they did (and don't bring up any antitrust ruling unless it specifically talks about Java because that's what we're discussing here, not what they may or may not have done to Netscape, which I happen to think got beat same as Sun but that's certainly a discussion for another day, and a day gone past judging by the latest browser usage statistics).
Microsoft does plenty that they need to be slapped down by the legal system for, make no mistake about it. But keeping Java off the client was simply good business. Nobody likes a sore loser, so shut the hell up you Java apologists!
(By the way, lest you think I'm some MS shill that hates Java, let me point out that 95% of my work these days is 100% J2EE development, and I happen to actually like it!)
Partly true. I have experienced many a situatino where some app that the desktop support team installed trounced on some DLL that my VB app required (ADO comes to mind at least twice). It's certainly true that you don't completely avoid those potential problems by going the web-based way, but it does cut down on those situations a great deal.
The benefit you gain though is in distribution and upgrades. It's still far easier to update a web-based application than something written in VB or C++, even if you have your users running it remotely. Less risky as illustrated above, and usually faster and easier from an administration standpoint.
And as long as you've done like I did, which is try to stick to the published standards, it should be possible to support other browsers without rewriting the whole thing, if that is needed down the road. Fortunately that wasn't a requirement for my work, so I could save myself some effort, even if potentially not that much.
Of course, that comes down to the environment you find yourself in... if your writing for the web, it's in your best interested to support as many browsers fully as possible. In an intranet corporate environment that has standardized on IE though, it makes sense to use that platform to it's full potential (although, as I said, it's best not to shoot yourself in the foot down the road because you just KNOW that management is going to switch on you later).
I've recently completed the second application for my company, for internal use only admittedly, that is written in nothing but DHTML+JScript+CSS... Yes, it only runs in IE (although the only IE-specific things I'm using that are necassery are IFrames and event bubbling). The compliment I CONSTANTLY get is that my systems look, feel and work just like any other Windows-based application.
.Net with WebForms using Visual Studio.Net comes pretty close.
I'm not saying this brag (ok, maybe a little)... I'm saying it because it in fact IS possible to create robust, powerful, modern-looking GUI's with nothing but HTML+scripting+css. I agree, it's not as easy as say VB, but, and I'm loathe to admit this...
Well, it's perhaps a step in the right direction at the least.
You mean tp say you interpret "Yeah, you would moderate me as a troll. God forbid anyone say anything bad about Linux. God forbid anyone point out hypocricy in the open-source community" as meaning "Oh, I'm an intelligent, insightful martyr"?
Dude, what are you smoking? Not everybody has a hidden agenda. Not everybody is trying to change the world. I said EXACTLY what I meant.
But I digress. Arguing with anonymous posters is pretty silly, I do admit I look foolish for doing so.
Yes, I want my damned parade! NOW!!
My very simple retort is this: had I been simply trolling I would have posted anonymously.
Hey, didn't *YOU* post anonymously??
(Now, if you want to say I have no life since I was obviously monitoring responses... well... I'm forced to admint I have no good response for that.)
Yeah, you would moderate me as a troll. God forbid anyone say anything bad about Linux. God forbid anyone point out hypocricy in the open-source community.
Linux recovery? What would I ever need that for? I thought Linux never experienced even the sightest hiccup, never crashed, never failed in any way shape or form, just runs until the end of time completely unattended and without any degradation in performance or stabiity EVER?
Or did I misunderstand the FUD all these years?
Speaking of the interpretation of patents, fair enough. I'll go so far as to say I stand corrected and agree, it's not "aginst the law" to do something that is patented.
However, if you knowingly go forward with something that you know MAY be infringing a patent, you are inviting the patent holder to press his/her rights and prevent you from doing it, perhaps at great cost to you. Whether you agree with the underlying laws that allow this to potentially occur or not, you are foolish to simply ignore them.
In New York it is actually legal to appear topless in public. In other states it is not. If a woman goes to Alabama, which we'll assume for the sake of argument has a law forbiding this activity, and walks down the street topless even though she knows it's against the law, that's a stupid thing to do. She might get swau with it because maybe no one will press charges (very likely if only men see here!), but it's still inviting trouble.
The argument that you did not know about a patent and you therefore did not infringe it, is a weak legal position to take. You may in fact be able to win a case based on that, there may even be precedence for such a ruling, but it's a weak position and banking on winning on it isn't a bright idea.
And in this case, Linus and the other involved folks DO know about the patents. They may not have read them, but let me put it this way... I'd LOVE to be the lawyer representing the plaintiff in a case against Linus here. I'd claim that he knew there was a patent he may be infringing and did not go through due dilligence to prevent the infringment and is therefore as guilty as someone who had read the patent and ignored it. Don't know if I'd win, but I'd feel very good about my case going in.
Finally, your assertion that I made a complete fool of myself is ridiculous. My point was that Linus is a fucking asshole in this instance, and I stand by that completely. You are correct, it seems that he is not breaking any laws at present based on the definition you cited of patents, but he is most certainly inviting potential legal action by a legitimate (presumably legitimate anyway) patent holder. He in in fact flaunting the fact that he actively ignores patent holders and their IP rights because he does not believe in the concepts underlying the laws. This is, in my view, an extremely stupid position to take and potentially very unhealthy from a legal standpoint. Nothing may ever come of it, and he will look right and I will look wrong. That doesn't change the fact that he is putting himself at risk for his principals. Fine, he has that right. And others have the right to sue him and ruin him financially if they so wish. He knows this, and chooses to put his head in the sand. This, to me, is the definition of a fucking asshole.
You know, I really don't like the laws that say I have to pay taxes. I think I'm not going to.
And you know, those silly rules about not stealing someone's car... I don't agree with them either, think I'll go get myself a Jag.
Come to think of it, my idiot neighbor has been getting on my nerves, and that dumb, anti-social law forbidding murder... I disagree with that too. Think I'll ignore it until someone bitches and get rid of my neighbor.
This is the fucking moron so many of you admire, look up to and emulate the world over?
Anyone think this is just civil disobedience? No, it's not. Well, I take that back... it is until someone sues him.
Just because you don't agree with a law doesn't mean you get to ignore it (even if you intend to comply when someone calls you on it). You get to try and get the law revoked, in fact, it's your civil duty to do so if the laws are unfair and unjust. But saying in a public forum that you are going to ignore laws just because you think they are stupid. Buddy, it's not the law that's stupid, it's you!
(I don't know this, but is Linus a US citizen at this point? This makes some difference of course, ignoring another country's laws is somewhat less dumb than ignoring your own country's laws, but still).
(Also, I'm assuming Linus really did post that message. Part of me believes he didn't, and if not than obviously you can ignore everything I've said! But if he DID write it, let me close by saying LINUS IS A MAJOR FUCKING ASSHOLE AND I'LL LAUGH MY ASS OFF IF HE WINDS UP ROTING IN A JAIL CELL SOMEWHERE, OR IF ANYONE STUPID ENOUGH TO FOLLOW HIS LEAD ENDS UP ROTING IN A JAIL CELL. See, that's the problem with raising a human being to the level of minor deity, which is what so many of you seem to do with him... he's still human, which translated to flawed in any language).
Everybody else is getting into the fray, why not me?!?
10. Delete all deprecated methods, fields, classes, and interfaces
Funny that everyone bitches at Microsoft for bloated software, but the same is not said of Sun and Java. This proposal reduces bloat. Sounds like a good idea. If you have an application written that uses deprecated methods (which you BETTER NOT have written while ignoring a deprecation warning! If you did, bug off, it's your problem!), you can either rewrite it or don't upgrade the JRE. Deal with it. I agree with him.
9. Fix incorrect naming conventions
Probably the least important proposal, I don't particularly care either way. I am quite anal in my own code about naming conventions and formatting, I have a very definite style that other programmer can recognize immediately if you have experience looking at my code (and they tend to appreciate it). So, why not do the same for the language and class libraries itself? I like this idea personally, but if it didn't happen I wouldn't be disappointed either. I'm ambivolent on this point.
8. Eliminate primitive data types
The idea is consistency: if everything in the language is an abstract data type, so much the better, you never have to even think about whether your dealing with a primitive or an object. I mean, there's been a couple of instances, as everyone has experienced I'm sure, where I had to deal with wrapper classes. Hey, that's not exactly a big deal. But then again, why not avoid it completely? I like this idea, but it's another I could live without, but I do lean to agreeing.
7. Extend chars to four bytes
Yes, excellent idea. Frankly I've never been bitten by it not being four bytes, but his argument is perfectly reasonable and makes total sense. I agree.
6. Fix threads
FIX them? How about make them not a total pain in the ass to work with! I've written multithreaded applications like most people have, and I'd rather do it in Java than many other languages, but I still have to think too much to do it (partially familiarity, true, but also partially because it's illogical the way it works). So, ANYTHING to fix threads is OK by me, I agree!
5. Convert file formats to XML
I agree. Especially in the case of serialization. I mean, if I serialize an object, nothing says I have to use it in Java again, I can pull it into anything down the road and deal with it. Yes, XML everywhere, I agree. (Now, if the hard drive manufacturers want to make a ton of money, wait until everybody IS using XML everywhere, then bump the prices of storage up. What choice will we have? And of course we'll need 10 times as much space storing everything in XML, so they'll be rich. Where's my Seagate stock anyway?!?) I completly agree.
4. Ditch the AWT
Don't ditch it, just combine AWT and Swing and make one good, coherent set of GUI classes. I like Swing, that's all I use for GUI work, but AWT still has things about it that are useful. Combine them and GET IT RIGHT THIS TIME!! I agree with him.
3. Rationalize the collections
Forget rationalizing them... cut down the number. Just give me one or two collection types that encapsulates all the functionality of the others. No reason this can't be done. That would fulfill his wish of rationalization as well, assuming they were designed properly. So, I agree, in a manner of speaking!
2. Redesign I/O
I hate to agree since it's been what, two revisions already? But he's right, there is basic functionality missing or poorly implemented and that shouldn't be the case after seven years. I agree, grudgingly.
1. Redesign class loading from scratch, this time with human interface factors in mind
Yes, the class loader needs to be fixed. Not so much because of the newbies with class path issues, but for efficiency's sake mostly. I agree. Oh, by the way, don't be too hard on the newbies... honestly, how many of you got Hello World to run the very first time? Don't lie, I doubt more than 50%!
How to fix Java is an argument that could go on for ages, but at least this guy had the balls to come up with some ideas, and even proposed solutions in many cases. At least give him credit for that, even if you completely disagree with everything.
By the way, I view Java as the lesser of all evils... it doesn't thrill me, I don't love it and I grudginly use it now, but there isn't anything better that I've seen (.Net has potential, but it's not sufficiently different enough to warrant a wholesale switchover). So, until something comes along that blows me away (like direct nueral programming where I picture a GUI and the functionality thereof and the code for it is written for me), I'll just bitch about Java like everyone else, and continue to use it daily.
Absolutely agreed!
I wouldn't even touch a replicator until SP3.
Ah, whoever said it it's a damned good quote! :)
Agreed about Microsoft innovation. But I don't see it as a bad thing in any case... if they look at the Enterprise's computers and decide to copy them, I have no problem with the fact that they did nothing new. One thing people (not saying you necasserily, just a general statement) tend to forget that Microsoft does have a tremendous amount of technical engineering capability. They are capable. Add to that the obvious advantage in marketing (and illegal tactics, but I won't go there!) and they win more times than not even if the idea wasn't their own. They bring many things to fruition that perhaps no one else could, certainly not in as widespread a fashion, and I don't see a problem with that.
About the PR deparment sugar-coating, no, I was in no way shape or form implying that. If they really did do such an underhanded thing, believe me on this, I'd be the first guy to jump up yelling and screaming and never touch a piece of Microsoft software again. I'd fight the good fight with the rest of you guys, it's just that I don't think it's right to start fighting that fight now without giving them a chance. It's not fair, even in the case of a convicted monopolist, to not give them SOME benefit of doubt. Not as much as other companies I grant you, but I can't damn them before I see what's being done for sure.
I don't think it's OK for the tech community to have to discover security flaws and information gathering efforts, not at all. What I'm saying is that I'm not going to ASSUME they are going to pull something like that just because it sounds like they COULD. What I'm saying is that if they do, they will be called on it in short order. They know that, they know it would be a nightmare, and so I think they will be dissuaded from such actions without any further pressure from us.
Lastly, I don't have much more confidence in MS when it comes to security than you, that's one area I do have a big problem with them in. But they've made strides in stability, why not give them a chance to prove they can do the same with security? Too many people are burying them before the votes are tallied. Let's run the race before declaring a winner, shall we?
I never said someone is wrong if they experience crashes. What I did say is that I cannot understand why there seems to be so much trouble with Windows boxes (servers specifically). I was jokingly suggesting I much be that much better of an admin as well.
Believe me, I know people experience problems. What I'm saying is that when I have a large number of heavy-traffic boxes, some with some crazy applications on them, why I don't see nearly the same level of problems is beyond me.
Naturally everyone has their own experiences and opinions, no problem there. I just wonder why I have a large number of Windows (Win2K and NT only) servers and desktops that seem to never have the problems that so many people attribute to "crappy MS software".
I know my applications are just as demanding as anyone else'. How is it I simply don't see all these problems?
And in fact, the network admins here would likely tell you the *nix boxes they administer go down more often. In addition, I see CICS regions going down far more often than my NT boxes (ok, not really a fair comparison I'll admit). IIS is rock-solid (unless I forget to advance the record pointer while iterating through an ADO recordset in an ASP page, which kills the server, of course that shouldn't happen because (a) I shouldn't make such a stupid mistake, even though we all do similar things on occassion, and (b) IIS and/or the OS should be able to recover from it).
I don't know, I just don't see all the problems everyone else claims to, and I'm being just as hard on my boxes as anyone else is. Go figure.
Well, I certainly don't argue with your interpretation of their motives, but what good company DOESN'T have those same motives?
If MS gets their way with DRM hardware, they will be doing the Linux community a big favor because they will be the only alternative. Yes, I understand your talking about hardware and I'm talking about software, but it has been shown plenty of times that the community can work with hardware just as well as software, so I have confidence they would rise to the occassion again.
That of course leads to a sci-fi future where the majority of the population is controlled by the big corporation and a few "freedom fighters" form and underground to revolt.
If they encrypt it, someone will crack it. Try to hide it, someone will dig it out. Of this I have no doubt.