What can we learn from history?
on
More On Tragedy
·
· Score: 2
Terror and terror attacks is nothing new. There are conflicts all over the world, people have been fighting and killing each other for generations in similar suicide attacks. We see there what happens when every answer to an attack is raging retaliation. We just have to look at Israel the past months to see people killing themselves over and over again in order to get revenge.
People that were not involved before become involved. Innocent people are suddenly victims, and soon enough they are fighting back to the best of their ability. I think we all can agree that this is a vicious circle.
Many wise people have said this before, but I will say it again: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE: Let the retaliation that will come only involve people that were directly responsible for this attack. Not only the US, but the world at large must agree that the retaliation hit only the people that deserved it. Otherwise this is just the first turn of a wheel that will turn over and over and over again.....
Last year I contacted the producers of "Sommar", a swedish radio program that airs every summer. The concept is that the host gets one hour with their own script and the music of their own choice, to talk about whatever they want. My suggestion was that they should invite Linus to do this show once. Unfortunately, when they presented this years hosts, he was not among them.
Microsoft probably do not want Bluetooth to sync devices. That does not fit their.net strategy. Instead, they want you to sync your data through some service, so that all information passes through their portals. For example, if you want to sync your Palm with you PC, they rather want you to connect to palm.net (or something like it) and then download your information to your pc from there, rather than letting the palm sync with the pc directly.
It seems everyone thinks peer to peer is great for downloading copyrighted information without consent - just by sharing files. But I think peer to peer has its greatest value in applications where it refines information, and lets people cooperate in new ways. Groove is an excellent example of this. I think Groove will be the next killer app. If you want to use it to share MP3:s among friends, great, you can do that. But you can also use it to keep track of some project your working on with colleagues that are on different places. Or you can use it to play a nice game of chess with a distant friend . Or... you just have to use your imagination. I am sure there are great ideas not yet found on how you can use peer to peer.
My company is developing a product that optimizes the supply chain flow between customers and suppliers by exchanging information about stock levels etc. Then it uses this information to calculate when the best time to refill the stock is. This product is peer to peer, and I think it has great future. It also takes advantage of the network effect in that the more people that uses it, the greater the advantages is. For suppliers, it gives a much better picture on how the market demand changes. For customers, it relievs them of the hazzle to order products all the time. That is now the supplier responsibility.
P2P has great future. But do not only think Napster when you think P2P. Think new!
Should it not be Freshmeat III?
on
Freshmeat II
·
· Score: 1
Shortly after new years eve two years (?) ago, the former Freshmeat redesign was presented. It was so critized that Patrick took Freshmeat down and threathened not letting it back up. Fortunately, he changed his mind, and we have been enjoying Freshmeat since then.
But there was a Freshmeat before that, and to me, it was the best looking. I don't want to be hard, but the new Freshmeat design is worse than average. The former designs were both original and inventive. I always admired Freshmeat for making good looking pages with mostly inventive use of characters, making them both original and faster to load.
I think it would be great to see the old, black Freshmeat again. I can hardly be the only one that liked it? I just took a look at Patricks private page . It is quite similar to the first Freshmeat. I would love Freshmeat to go in that direction again!
What I wonder is, is there any filesystem that makes it easier for filemanagers to track changes in the filesystem? For example, to show when a new file is created, without polling all directories all teh time. Or that can save metadata such what icon to use, or where the user last dropped the icon/file (locationwise on the screen). I think Nautilius needs to have such information, but as no filesystem supports it, they store it in an XML file somewhere.
I never said they were stupid americans. I said that they were americans and that they obviously could not understand that this is an important issue in other countries. Most people here have complained about (in my opinion) very trivial problems. Like how they should be able to type the characters in an URL on their keyboard that lacks key for these. These problems are much smaller than the problems non-americans have to deal with, and that this suggestion tries to solve. (Why are these problems smaller? Think about it: If you do not live in a country were you encounter these URLs in advertising on television or in newspapers etc, you will only encounter them as text on your screen, in an email for example, or as a result from a search engine. And then you can just click on them or copy and paste them. And in the rare cases were even this does not work, you will have to use software that can make you type them. Probably integrated in future browsers. And also: if you use these charactes when turning to global audience, you are somewhat stupid. Most people will realize this. I think this will not be a problem after all.)
If my last name is Jönsson, I want to be able to use that in a domain, and not have to use Jonsson which is a completely different name. The same applies to lots of words, I estimate about 1/3 or 1/4 of all words in the swedish language have å ä or ö in them. These words are like second class citizens on the internet today, even when only used in a Swedish context.
My point is that even though the greatest feature with the internet is that it spans the globe, it is not always used that way. There are content on it directed only to a local audience. That kind of content should be able to exist on its own terms.
If you sell a product internationally, and use a lots of strange letters in the url, you are just stupid. Of course you should use a "classic" url for this. But if you have a company that delivers shrimp sandwiches within a swedish town, you should be able to use the domain räksmörgåsar.se instead of raksmorgasar.se.
I guess most of the posters here are americans, because you just can't grasp that there is a need for this in most other countries. If you can't type ö on your keyboard - too bad. You know what? There will be software that helps you with this, or web services. I promise: the majority of times you want to visit a webpage on a URL with a >7 bit character in it, you will have a link for it. Just point and click! What is so difficult with that? The big problem will occur when you try to read the page. It will consist of letters in combinations that you can not understand. They will not make up english words. You will have to take a course in another language to get it. That will be the hard part. But just relax, because the english/american web will still be the dominant one, and you will not feel you have missed anything.
What rubbish!!! Is it so hard to understand that other languages should be able to use the internet on their own terms? The whole world does not revolve around the US alone...
No of course not. This is a much needed feature in non-english speaking countries. For example in Sweden where I live, there are three letters that can't be used in URLs: å ä and ö. There are lots of local companies, government organizations etc that only directs themselves to a local/national audience. They should be able to do this in a localized way. There are so many words that has these letters in them, and not being able to use them in domains and URLs is a very big disadvantage. The web is not only for english-speaking people. If you on the other hand direct yourself to an international audience, you of course avoid characters outside of a-z. Pretty simple isn't it?
I doubt that this will be a big problem for you. First of all, most URLs you will encounter as links, so you don't have to type anything at all. Second, if you can't type the url because you don't understand it, how do you expect to understand the information on the page that it points to? And third: there will probably be software that helps you with this.
Hmm, but don't you agree that the more openly you can talk about a job the easier it is to decide if this is something you want to do? I mean, you will spend quite some time on your job. I don't think that I would get anything out of talking with them if I did not know what product I would help develop. At least in my case it was easy to sign the NDA, I did not see it could be used against me as there were no competing companies around that I also wanted to apply for. I don't know if this is a cultural or legal difference, I live in Sweden and I have never heard about a case here when a NDA were used against you during these circumstances. They probably exist, but are very rare. I think it is more an issue about showing how serious they are when they ask the applicant to keep quiet.
<p>
But to be honest I should also say that I am more into software engineering and did not think that this was really my field, so the risk was even smaller. I did not take the job btw.
It was not a pen-base interface that was unique. They had several competitors developing similar products. The implementation was unique though. They were the first (they said) to use a digital camera and digital signal processing to parse text. Or perhaps not the first, but the first to miniaturize it and make it commercially available. Other products used other techniques, which I guess are more similar to photocopying or something. I think they had valid reasons to be secret about this. And at least for me it worked. I told friends I went to this interview, but I did not tell anyone about what they did. 6 months to a year later, when the product was official I could of course tell them.
I make my living that way. Of course I am professional then.
Java strong at the server, weak at the client
on
Java Rocks On Linux
·
· Score: 5
As a professional Java developer for a little more than 2 years, I have to say that Java has still a some way to go for client applications. Swing is still too slow, and garbage collection makes the GUI to freeze every now and then. Also, the Windows Look and Feel is not very windowish. For example, wheel mice are not yet supported by Swing, and this has been very problematic for us as our customers where used to use the wheel, and had a very hard time to accept it stopped working when we switched from AWT to Swing.
On the server side it is different. Java is a very nice language to develop in. The class library is HUGE and having the flexibility to support several platforms at the server is very good and something we surely will take advantage of in the future. It seems to be easier to optimize server side JVMs also.
Java is here to stay, especially at the server. Those who flame Java for its weak points (small client applications) should look closer on the areas where it rocks, before discarding the language as a whole.
About 2 and a half years agon I interviewed for a company that still were very secret about their product. They searced for people to work on an "integerated computer system with high-tech electronics" or something like that. It was really fuzzy. When I came there they told me that everything I was going to hear was secret, including the kind of product they developed. They said I would have to sign an NDA, but before I did that they went on and told me what they were developing. I signed the NDA at the end.
As they thought everything they did was secret, I think it would have been very hard to discuss with them if I did not know what they were developing. And the reason for keeping it secret was valid I think. They were the only one doing this, with this technology. In a way similar to the "Transmeta situation". By the way, the product is official since long, and the company is publically traded. They were developing the C-pen, a "pen" with a digital camera inside that can parse text. Very cool!
Your final comment is interesting. You acknowledge that there are more cellphone users than there are PDA users, still your suggested device takes on more characteristics of a PDA than a cell phone. Why?
I would suggest, and believe in, the opposite. That the "only neccessary device" that most people will carry around in the future is a PDA-like cellphone, something like Ericsson R380 (http://www.ericsson.com/WAP/products/r380.shtml). The form factor of a modern cellphone is smaller than that of a PDA. That is one of the strongest reasons. But people on the go are also much more likely to consume information than to produce it. They don't need a big keyboard for this, a pen and a decent screen is just enough.
Of course, dedicated PDA-like devices will also to continue to exist, and they will be more powerful, and also include cell phone functionality. But less common.
Have not you heard of "Wireless Valley"? That is Kista in Stockholm, Sweden. 2nd (after Silicon Valley) on Wired's list of where stuff happens when it comes to IT research etc, especially when it come to the mobile area. Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle. Everyone wants to be there.
1: They are both software, and sometimes that can be confusing enough. For example, my boss has confused ASP (Active Server Pages) with ASP (Application Service Provider). And you don't have to be stupid for that, you need some context to make sure which ASP you are talking about.
2: You bet? Well it is not an argument unless you know.
3: Even though Samba-SMB is not commercial, it is marketed by commercial companies, and german Samba has much to lose by not defending their trademark.
4: Someone claims a copyright for SMB-Samba, right? The license does not matter, the copyright matters.
Slashdot Mirror
Terror and terror attacks is nothing new. There are conflicts all over the world, people have been fighting and killing each other for generations in similar suicide attacks. We see there what happens when every answer to an attack is raging retaliation. We just have to look at Israel the past months to see people killing themselves over and over again in order to get revenge.
People that were not involved before become involved. Innocent people are suddenly victims, and soon enough they are fighting back to the best of their ability. I think we all can agree that this is a vicious circle.
Many wise people have said this before, but I will say it again: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE: Let the retaliation that will come only involve people that were directly responsible for this attack. Not only the US, but the world at large must agree that the retaliation hit only the people that deserved it. Otherwise this is just the first turn of a wheel that will turn over and over and over again.....
Last year I contacted the producers of "Sommar", a swedish radio program that airs every summer. The concept is that the host gets one hour with their own script and the music of their own choice, to talk about whatever they want. My suggestion was that they should invite Linus to do this show once. Unfortunately, when they presented this years hosts, he was not among them.
Microsoft probably do not want Bluetooth to sync devices. That does not fit their .net strategy. Instead, they want you to sync your data through some service, so that all information passes through their portals. For example, if you want to sync your Palm with you PC, they rather want you to connect to palm.net (or something like it) and then download your information to your pc from there, rather than letting the palm sync with the pc directly.
Well, can you tell me what part of an airplane could be more important?
My company is developing a product that optimizes the supply chain flow between customers and suppliers by exchanging information about stock levels etc. Then it uses this information to calculate when the best time to refill the stock is. This product is peer to peer, and I think it has great future. It also takes advantage of the network effect in that the more people that uses it, the greater the advantages is. For suppliers, it gives a much better picture on how the market demand changes. For customers, it relievs them of the hazzle to order products all the time. That is now the supplier responsibility.
P2P has great future. But do not only think Napster when you think P2P. Think new!
But there was a Freshmeat before that, and to me, it was the best looking. I don't want to be hard, but the new Freshmeat design is worse than average. The former designs were both original and inventive. I always admired Freshmeat for making good looking pages with mostly inventive use of characters, making them both original and faster to load.
I think it would be great to see the old, black Freshmeat again. I can hardly be the only one that liked it? I just took a look at Patricks private page . It is quite similar to the first Freshmeat. I would love Freshmeat to go in that direction again!
What I wonder is, is there any filesystem that makes it easier for filemanagers to track changes in the filesystem? For example, to show when a new file is created, without polling all directories all teh time. Or that can save metadata such what icon to use, or where the user last dropped the icon/file (locationwise on the screen). I think Nautilius needs to have such information, but as no filesystem supports it, they store it in an XML file somewhere.
If my last name is Jönsson, I want to be able to use that in a domain, and not have to use Jonsson which is a completely different name. The same applies to lots of words, I estimate about 1/3 or 1/4 of all words in the swedish language have å ä or ö in them. These words are like second class citizens on the internet today, even when only used in a Swedish context.
Good point
If you sell a product internationally, and use a lots of strange letters in the url, you are just stupid. Of course you should use a "classic" url for this. But if you have a company that delivers shrimp sandwiches within a swedish town, you should be able to use the domain räksmörgåsar.se instead of raksmorgasar.se.
I guess most of the posters here are americans, because you just can't grasp that there is a need for this in most other countries. If you can't type ö on your keyboard - too bad. You know what? There will be software that helps you with this, or web services. I promise: the majority of times you want to visit a webpage on a URL with a >7 bit character in it, you will have a link for it. Just point and click! What is so difficult with that? The big problem will occur when you try to read the page. It will consist of letters in combinations that you can not understand. They will not make up english words. You will have to take a course in another language to get it. That will be the hard part. But just relax, because the english/american web will still be the dominant one, and you will not feel you have missed anything.
Most people don't use latin. They use their native language for flowers and species. They should be able to do that on the internet as well.
What rubbish!!! Is it so hard to understand that other languages should be able to use the internet on their own terms? The whole world does not revolve around the US alone...
No of course not. This is a much needed feature in non-english speaking countries. For example in Sweden where I live, there are three letters that can't be used in URLs: å ä and ö. There are lots of local companies, government organizations etc that only directs themselves to a local/national audience. They should be able to do this in a localized way. There are so many words that has these letters in them, and not being able to use them in domains and URLs is a very big disadvantage. The web is not only for english-speaking people. If you on the other hand direct yourself to an international audience, you of course avoid characters outside of a-z. Pretty simple isn't it?
I doubt that this will be a big problem for you. First of all, most URLs you will encounter as links, so you don't have to type anything at all. Second, if you can't type the url because you don't understand it, how do you expect to understand the information on the page that it points to? And third: there will probably be software that helps you with this.
Hmm, but don't you agree that the more openly you can talk about a job the easier it is to decide if this is something you want to do? I mean, you will spend quite some time on your job. I don't think that I would get anything out of talking with them if I did not know what product I would help develop. At least in my case it was easy to sign the NDA, I did not see it could be used against me as there were no competing companies around that I also wanted to apply for. I don't know if this is a cultural or legal difference, I live in Sweden and I have never heard about a case here when a NDA were used against you during these circumstances. They probably exist, but are very rare. I think it is more an issue about showing how serious they are when they ask the applicant to keep quiet.
<p>
But to be honest I should also say that I am more into software engineering and did not think that this was really my field, so the risk was even smaller. I did not take the job btw.
It was not a pen-base interface that was unique. They had several competitors developing similar products. The implementation was unique though. They were the first (they said) to use a digital camera and digital signal processing to parse text. Or perhaps not the first, but the first to miniaturize it and make it commercially available. Other products used other techniques, which I guess are more similar to photocopying or something. I think they had valid reasons to be secret about this. And at least for me it worked. I told friends I went to this interview, but I did not tell anyone about what they did. 6 months to a year later, when the product was official I could of course tell them.
I make my living that way. Of course I am professional then.
On the server side it is different. Java is a very nice language to develop in. The class library is HUGE and having the flexibility to support several platforms at the server is very good and something we surely will take advantage of in the future. It seems to be easier to optimize server side JVMs also.
Java is here to stay, especially at the server. Those who flame Java for its weak points (small client applications) should look closer on the areas where it rocks, before discarding the language as a whole.
As they thought everything they did was secret, I think it would have been very hard to discuss with them if I did not know what they were developing. And the reason for keeping it secret was valid I think. They were the only one doing this, with this technology. In a way similar to the "Transmeta situation". By the way, the product is official since long, and the company is publically traded. They were developing the C-pen, a "pen" with a digital camera inside that can parse text. Very cool!
A dial or two to turn around and a few buttons. I think that can take you pretty far!
Your final comment is interesting. You acknowledge that there are more cellphone users than there are PDA users, still your suggested device takes on more characteristics of a PDA than a cell phone. Why?
. The form factor of a modern cellphone is smaller than that of a PDA. That is one of the strongest reasons. But people on the go are also much more likely to consume information than to produce it. They don't need a big keyboard for this, a pen and a decent screen is just enough.
I would suggest, and believe in, the opposite. That the "only neccessary device" that most people will carry around in the future is a PDA-like cellphone, something like Ericsson R380 (http://www.ericsson.com/WAP/products/r380.shtml)
Of course, dedicated PDA-like devices will also to continue to exist, and they will be more powerful, and also include cell phone functionality. But less common.
Have not you heard of "Wireless Valley"? That is Kista in Stockholm, Sweden. 2nd (after Silicon Valley) on Wired's list of where stuff happens when it comes to IT research etc, especially when it come to the mobile area. Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle. Everyone wants to be there.
Britain? Nokia? I seriously doubt this. Please back it up!
Come on!
1: They are both software, and sometimes that can be confusing enough. For example, my boss has confused ASP (Active Server Pages) with ASP (Application Service Provider). And you don't have to be stupid for that, you need some context to make sure which ASP you are talking about.
2: You bet? Well it is not an argument unless you know.
3: Even though Samba-SMB is not commercial, it is marketed by commercial companies, and german Samba has much to lose by not defending their trademark.
4: Someone claims a copyright for SMB-Samba, right? The license does not matter, the copyright matters.