.Not, crappy MS Appserver kits, etc. and all that aside... we know the drill and we know that huge chunks of the MS runtime stack is a big heap of stinking do-do. No news here. And we also know that MS got their advertised-all-over-the-place LSE figurehead.Net enviroment (which as of now has turned into a major type A PR-screwup) by bribing the shit out of some LSE execs and decision makers.
But all that aside,... seriously, WTF?
I mean, if I'd build a system like this, which, as far as I can tell is way up in or very close to the top ten of "mission-criticalness", just a few steps below 'Nuclear Power Plant' 'Air Traffic Control' 'Software in Space' and Medical Devices, I'd be super-über-f*cking-sure I can run a Steamroller over the entire live datacenter while the hot spare kicks in without missing a beat. No matter what software-tapestry some crack-smoking exec told me to build it on. I'd think they'd have MS pay the extra 250% of hardware it needs to keep this sort of thing running on.Net *and* have them help in laying out the cluster-topology and planning/paying/consulting/lobbying for the extra room, time and resources it takes to run it. To be honest, LSE on.Net dead for an entire workday would be unplausible for a piece of fiction written by a MS hater. And yet it happend. Absolutely unbelievable. Not even did I expect.Net to be this bad. Apparently I was wrong.
Some high-up heads are gonna roll over this. At MS and at LSE. That's for sure.
I use Django on my own site, and CakePHP (a poor RoR clone) at work. While using PHP has advantages, CakePHP is really not anywhere near Django in terms of the ORM stuff and actually using your data in any complex way.
I did a project earlyer this year with Cake 1.2 Beta. It wasn't nice. Allthough I do like PHP for webstuff. Right now I'd say Symfony for PHP webwork and Django for Python webwork. And if you don't know either of those languages, take Python, it's more consistent and used everywhere, not just server-side web (as with PHP) - so you're learning a more universal PL.
PS. And on the whole Python indentation=block thing... It's not perfect, but only use spaces and it won't be a problem.
That sentence is wrong is so many ways, it's metaphysical. Saying something like this is the fastest way to get yourself killed - especially if I would be standing next to you.
I use Python. And I use tabs. It's the only way to go. All else is evil.:-)
Every since I wear black t-shirts I've been finding Dark Matter right here in my bellybutton. And quite often actually. *Ta-DUM* *CRASH* *ThUD* Thank you, thank you, I'm here all week. Try the fish.
That comic is really great. It deals with every question someone interested in the field would have at Google once he hears of this. "Why a new Brower project?" "Why Webkit?" "Why yet another JavaScript VM?" (OMG, not *again* is what I thought first), etc. Very informative indeed.
Since you're, like, familiar with 10 bazillion technologies, I'll just save you an afternoon of reading on Java. The other stuff should be blatantly obvious to someone like you:
1) Don't waste your time with lightweight web stuff in Java. There's a reason PHP has eaten up that market and taken it away from Java. No Java Webframeworks.
2) Don't attempt any intense multimedia stuff in Java, unless you want to learn the plafform independant specifics of Java in that area. C++ still rules that game.
3) Go to Netbeans.org, download Netbeans, turn on all the code hinting and start coding away. And just so you know: I use Eclipse for most of my non-Java work, but I still find Netbeans the supperior IDE for doing Java stuff. And Swing has greatly improved in the last 2-3 years.
You may haven't noticed yet, but crime procecution and punishment allways kicks in when there is a loss that can't be recovered. Nobody can bring Nina Reiser back to life. And, no, justice *can't* be served, especially in such aggravated things as murder (allthough fans of death penalty might argue otherwise). That's the big downside. That's why we punish. When damage is done beyond repair, then punishment jumps in to offer at least some sort of reckoning and - in this case - remove the wrongdoer from society. True justice would be if one could successfully force Reiser to undo his wrongdoing.
AFAICT Iridium isn't the stuff you'd want juwelery of. It's to brittle and not very pretty. I suggest Titanium or monocrystallic Titanium - the stuff they make jet fighter turbine shovels out of. It's titanium with the entire piece being on crystaline structure. It costs quite a bit extra to get it that way, but it's even tougher than a normal piece of titanium.
However, you should check if it can be cut with regular rescue tools in an emergency, as somebody here allready pointed out.
All those material things aside - it's the love. If you get yourself and her a stainless steel ring with a synthetic diamond for 200 bucks, but are there for her when times are rough - that's worth quite a bit more imho. And a stainless steel ring can be cool aswell.
Aside from it looking cool when new and polished, this will be an overpriced piece of junk in 3 years. Given the rate, my Wristwatch will have a stronger and faster CPU by then.
Focusing on one standard to an ever present tech problem isn't bad. However, hemming, hawing, messing about and eventually chickening out of a process well underway *is*. I was struck with bedazzlement when I read some hissy-fit sissy problem in getting the next technology upgrade for JS underway. WTF? Imagine this with the Linux kernel. It would be less popular than Hurd, if they'd constantly pull such amature shit.
We've got Linus Torwalds, who, as far as I can tell, does a really good job at gouverning the kernel. And unless he suddenly does something completely insane, like demanding that all FSes get removed in favour of a FAT16 clone or something other equally bizar, what ever he decides for the kernel trumps everyone else. And since he - and everyone he listens to - is involved in kernel developement on a daily basis, all infighting takes place by praticed & educated professionals, well before they go public with a new stable.
You *ONLY* get such PR disasters as the recent JS standardisation botch with to many PhD-cert waving wisecracks involved in the decicision who actually don't do any real day-to-day work on the project. Such as a relevant reference implementation of JS or something. Add in a few companies with diverging commercial interests and some academic pissing contests and shit like this happens.
Another example: PHP is a lovable quirky piece of domain specific language. Each time they do an upgrade it breaks the last one. Yet how many do actually complain? Nearly zilch, compared to the size of the userbase. People are aware that all involved in the upgrade did carefull considerations of all cons and pros of each aspect, so the can easyly accept the specs of the new release. You don't see PHP fraying about into different dialects, *because* it's a fairly tight professional crew who's responsible for it.
Bottom line: Nothing to see here, move on. Let's hope they don't do such PR disasters again.
I'd say the outsource hysteria is almost over from my vantage point. And if it is not, and still considered the next best thing to sliced bread by competitors - all the better. Meanwhile I'm recommending to my customers to 'outsource' to sourceforge.net. "This indian crew ABC can do X for Y Euros less." - "Well, you can get Z, which has all X needs plus some extra features for free. Or at least a 5 minute download. It's called 'Open Source'". "Oh, really? That's cool."
Ever wondered why there's hardly any outsourcing complaints in the web developement field? That's the reason. At the quality and price I delivered in my last PHP project I was competing with eastern europe. And I won both ways. 85% of the work is finished by a download of the correct package and 3 hours of setup by an experienced developer on site. Nothing more to outsource there. Once the diversification in desktops and servers has merged into OSS/*nix, I presume it will be that way for most scenarios. All else will be high profile specialist work anyway.
Ok. Adobe support for Linux, despite their claims otherwise, is flaky and always late. No news here. They failed to completly convince opinion leaders (read: Linux users) in the field of web developement that they are serious, and my comitment to open source flash projects has rather dimished than grown since MX 2004 Pro / Flash 7. Right now I'm earning 60k/year as a Flash9/ActionScript 3 developer and still I don't trust them farther than I can throw them. Adobemedia has been doing to much bullshitting about their commitment to the Linux camp, and consitently delivered late ever since I went all-out Flash with a larger RIA project when Flash 7 for Linux finally came out.
However, what you are describing most certainly is a Linux problem. Aside from playing video, Flash on youtube doesn't do much, and I've watched a lot of youtube videos with Linux and have had no problems at all doing it. And if you run into a site that uses lots of Flash and doesn't render correctly, chances are you've met with a bunch of idiots who are to freakin' dumb to build a truly x-plattform RIA in Flash. Despite them possibly claiming to the the RIA Kings of the Interweb. Like these people for instance. (Linux users with working Flash, please let me know in a reply if any of you can reach the Flashsite... I'd like to know if they've caught on yet...)
Developing in Flash requires lots of skill and often some old-school hacks for high performance applications such as this and a solid knowledge of the target client plattforms. For example, a particle system I'm working on/with buckles by 25% on WinXP when run under Firefox+Flash then if run under IE+Flash. And while it's nearly a no-brainer to watch out for those two or three showstoppers that can prevent a Flash App from running correctly on x86 Linux (correct Font embedding for instance), I have to admit that good Flash/AS developers are rare. You have to be firm in graphics, typography *and* programming and then you have to be open-minded enough (read: not have your head up your arse) to try out a semi-proprietary plattform like Flash. Rare ingredients indeed.
Bottom Lines: 1) You have a Linux problem, not a Flash problem. 2) Most Flashers are mediocre at best. Guess where all the Flash crap comes from? The one or other RIA not rendering in FF/Linux is for the same reason. 3) Yes, Adobe's commitment to Linux *still* hasn't reached the level it needs to convince opinion leaders. 4) Where the *f*ck* is an open source RIA plattform allready? Webrunner/Prism will take another decade or so, guessing from the speed in general, and animated SVG doesn't even exist. JavaFX has come further than any other attempt from Sun - which has me very suprised - but I wouldn't be suprised if they'd stop dead in their tracks once again. Until the sky falls and the rivers run red with blood and Sun finally gets it's RIA going, Flash will be exactly what opinion leaders in the field still reluctantly have to account to it: The most prevailent RIA-enabled zero-fuss deployment plattform on the planet. Apparently Adobe can still dick around for another 10 years, since nobody is really challenging them yet.
There is but one thing that I consider a potential contributer to Linux gaining mass again after stalling a while on the desktop:
Apple could become so powerfull that it no longer is the darling child of the *nix crowd.
I've basically moved from Linux to OS X allmost entirely in the last 4 years, but I swear as soon as Apple gets pissy with me Microsoft-style or Linux has gained a significant advantage for me, I'm moving back. Advantage also meaning zero-fuss Notebooks and mini-desktop computers a la Mac Mini with a Mint Ubuntu preinstalled and built to fit keyboard, mouse and all built-in HW extras.
It only takes some far east Laptop vendor with some balls to build an entire lineup of portable computers all around Ubuntu, a pimped out Gimp, Blender, Inkscape, etc. and a slowly but shurely growing amount of built-for-eternity open source online games and the market could turn. Right now it looks as if Asus could be the one. Look at their success - and they are only doing a half-assed job.
Any way you look at it, there is *nothing* OSS can lose, and that's been it's biggest advantage for the last 20 years. I consider it not unlikely at all, that I'm moving back to Linux as my main OS in the next few years.
"Informatik" is the German term for "Computer Science". I presume, as it has a more academic sound to it, that Informatics is becoming the generic english term for CompSci in Europe, but I'm not sure. He's doing CompSci with an emphasis on business. Dunno watcha call that in the US nowadays, but just so you get the picture.
I don't remember when the last time was that I bought a consumer electronics device from Sony. It could be never before. Aside from my nearly 10-year old CD480 Headphones which are starting to fall apart and are still the best headphones I've ever listend to music or computer sounds with.
Anyway: Two weeks ago I - after long thoughts, consideration, doubt and evaluation - finally bought a PSP. I had considered getting a DS, since I've got two GBA SPs allreay, but in the end the bizar price-point of the DS (it's barely 20 Euros less that the PSP, despite being a far less powerfull device), the nearly identical pricepoint of technically inferior games and the PSPs compareatively huge screen and a steadyly improving games lineup I settled for Sonys baby.
I must say, it's the best electronics device purchase since I bought a feature-laden high-end mini MD recorder from Sharp 12 years ago. The featureset that comes with a PSP out of the box is astounding (WLAN, Skype, Browser, MP3 Player, MPEG4 Videoplayer, etc.). I didn't even know about half of these before I got it.
The first game I got is "God of War - Chains of Olympus". An absolutely unbelievable game for a portable device. The last time I was so flabergasted by a game was seeing "Incoming" on the first PC with a 3DFX card built in. Sometime in 1996 or so. The game ends with an appropriate orchestral finale, with takes from the game and something like 3,5 minutes of 150+ people who worked on it scrolling by, just like in some large-budget hollywood flick. Just thinking about how back in the days of the Amiga 500 we would have chopped out right arms of to get one of these devices makes me notice how far technology has advanced since then. I'm simply blown away.
Currently I'm playing "Patapon", which is a PSP exclusive 2D vector gfx game which is so well designed, witty and funny, I catch myself giggling when playing it on the train. (and silently singing "Pon, Pon, Patta Pon" for hours after)
All - mostly baseless - bickering about proprietary UMDs aside, I consider the PSP the best portable entertainment device ever. The DS to me more than ever comes across as a total money ripp-off and I've come to see Nintendo with quite a bit more scepsis than before. Same goes for the current iPod Nano, which was on my radars aswell. Note that I'm a Mac (and Linux) user.
The PSP - wether with or without the homebrew stuff considered - deserves far more credit than it gets. If you're thinking about getting one, I can only warmly recommend it as a universal portable multimedia device. With a sizable memory card added, you'll have a long time of lots of fun with it.
... the guy you see in the end is Bart Veldhuizen of Blender and Blendernation.com fame. So *that* was the company he was founding a few months ago. I wish him Good Luck!
Whatever this is, you've got it the wrong way around. It may be just some hype from some obscure MS department or the next big thing. But it won't be the future. Fat Clients and even fatter clients are what's coming. The Netbooks are possible because they can run hideous performance hogs of operating systems on top of now-cheap compareatively super-fast hardware. The Psion Netbook, just about 10 years old and the Grandpa of all Netbooks, had an uptime of 40 hrs per battery load (with an ancient DSTN display!) and ran Java 1.1 on top of Epoc. It was and still is the superiour concept IMHO.
But now we have 1,6-f*cking Gigahertz Atom CPUs pimped out with a sysClock of somewhere around.5 Gigahertz and upwards of 1 Giga-f*cking-byte of RAM (I remember calling my friend insane for buying a 1 GB HDD!) and upward of 4 Giga-f*ckin'-Bytes of drivespace on chip (!!) with an access time of somewhere around 60 nanoseconds. At the cost something around 400$ a piece. And *only* *now* are the people using it because it runs KDE three-point-whatnot or a current flavor of Windows with system requirements that would've seemed beyond bizar at the time the original Psion Netbook was released.
And you're trying to tell me the future is some thin client internet computer? Forget it. In five years from now we'll have cellpones running Linux with KDE 5 and Cedegar on top of that to play "World of Starcraft" when we're on the go. It's comodity all around coming in on us and if MS thinks it can dick around with that by imposing synthetic barries with online subscription OSes and crappy runtime enviroment concepts, it's not all to unlikely that a horde of asian cost-aware cellphone and netbook manufacturers may teach them a lesson or two with help from the OSS community. I for one would welcome that.
I'm sorry, pal, but you've just reached the downside of complex open systems. If you've reached the point where you're meta-ultra OSS document description language comes to a grinding halt, you have two options: Dive in further and learn to hack it or leave it for a systems that does the work for you. Systems that do the work for you are widespread. They're called 'Commercial Closed Source Software'. Here's are two pieces of software that delivers what you want:
Adobe InDesign Quark Xpress
There is a third which I like to call my secret special tip - because it's professional performance and featureset are often underrated:
Corel Draw
The downside with Corel Draw is that they as of a few years ago only offer versions for Windows. You could try out Scribus, an OSS DTP Tool, but I doubt it offers all the features you need. The upside with Corel Draw is that it has a hallmark price-performance ratio. If I where required to go into professional print I'd even consider installing a Windows box for it. (And I haven't used Windows in 7 years)
If you don't like the options listed and consider them 'to commercial' or 'to closed' then you're outa luck and have to wait another few years before we see viable OSS DTP kits. Until then: Good luck diving into Latex to become an expert.
This isn't crackpottery. It's most probably an ongoing NASA hoax. Especially the smart techie and science people like to do that kind of stuff. And they *do* do that kind of stuff. It's also aparently a good way of venting some of the pressure when working on complex problems. My parents both worked for NASA, so did my grandpa. My dad worked on the Space Shuttle Radar systems as an electronics engineer and my grandpa as an electronics engineer with Grumman on the Lunar Lander. My mother protocolled some of the Apollo missions recorded radio transmission and she can remember NASA astronauts describing artificial structures on the back side of the moon during a mission. And no, she is not senile or a crackpot. She actually still one of the smartest, brightest and educated people I know. And she's closing in on 70. Now other than this artificial structure thing actually being true, it is more probable that the astronauts and engineers have this little meme going on for a few decades now. Appling Rackhams Razor this is most probably the case. It would be interesting to know if it was Apollo 14 she protocolled. The timeframe (early 70ies) would fit.
I've got two options: "Truth" and "Traditional NASA Family Meme/Hoax". Most of my money and all my pocket cash is on option two.... Allthough, you never know.
The NASA and contracter teams involved are probably pissing their pants laughing every time this kind of stuff makes it into the broad media.
I mean, I consider Steve Jobs my role model just as much as the next guy (even more probably) - but his success isn't that much of a secret. a) For one, he still is personally involved in all new key product developements. b) He won't stop short until he *personally* is 100% convinced that the product in developement has stopped sucking. c) He builds products *he* wants. d) If someone gets pissy with him or starts dragging his heels, he'll come down on him like a pile of bricks. And for good reasons too. e) He surrounds himself with people who think and act the same. Aka "Smart people".
For example: I just took 45 minutes today to check out the current range of music players. Sony, Archos, TrekStore, you name it. People, the utter pieces of pure shit folks put out to sale for MP3 players nowadays is un-f*cking-believable. Believe it or not, the iPod line of music players is actually *really* among the top of the line. No replaceable battery and no OGG support be damned. There is not *one* f*cking player where you can see that some CEO with balls and brains actually took a look at the iPod and then simply built a player that was better. Where is the player that supports all formats, has a replaceable battery, better sound processing, is water-resistant and has firmware that just works?
Jobs is a lucky man in a lucky position, and he happens to have enough life and business experience not to screw it up. But aside from combining discipline, business-sense and geekdom, I don't see any secret about him that requires a book to uncover. It's only that most competitors are so über-stoopid that Apple is reaping the benefits right now.
The question why Stradivarys sound better than most other strings has been sufficiently answered throughout the last few decades allready:
1) He was into mass production/manufacuring and destroyed all violins and chellos that sounded bad (he burned them)
2) He used ship-builders wood that was submerged in salt water for a few years before put to use.The salt crystals in the wood grain are the prime reason for it's even density. Japanese scientist discovered this more that 10 years ago. It's a nearly trivial task to emulate the same effect nowadays. It's for the stupidity of instrument builders that it isn't done (see below)
3) His string instruments all have astonishingly flat body covers, despite the tradition of glueing them together out of slanted wedges of raw wood. There weren't the possibilities to build plywood back then, which Stradivary most certainly would have used. As that was what he aimed for by making the bodies as flat as possible with the methods of his day.
String instrument builders are so afixed to tradition, it's bizar. I know of a eleventh-grade girl who had to fight her teacher in woodworks to be allowed to ditch the wedge method and use simple thin modern boards and zargs with the grain pointing from cover to cover rather than going around, as it's usually done (and Stradivary did himself). The instrument builder/woodwork teacher has since only built copies of the resultung chello. A boxy looking thing with corners rather than roundings which in most cases sounds at least as good as a top-notch regular chello. And can be built by an amature instrument builder without much of a hassle.
The simple fact that string builders won't even drop the habbit of having the grain of zargs run along the strain instead of vertical, thus resulting in less giving-room for the instrument and a generally screechier (worse) sound shows how uptight and short-sighted they are. Most of them follow traditions that are hundreds of years old and don't give squat about advanced production methods and modern insights into wookworking.
There are quite a few people who can build strings that come close to what Stradivary did and - believe it or not - sound even better. Allthough that admittedly, is also a matter of taste. You will, however, never see such an instrument in a regular orchestra, as it would be percieved as a major heresy.
Bottom line: A team of engineers with a good workshop and modern materials, tools and woodwork/crafting methods could come up with a string that beats a Stradivary at any time within a few months the latest. Or emulates it's sound exactly. And it would be considerably cheaper. It's only that no one really cares. Especially not those owning a Stradivary.
As many allready have pointed out, this isn't news at all.
It goes even further. I recently upgraded my Mac Mini from 1 GB to 3 GB. Which works, despite rumors and official statements to the contrary. It's only that the on-board OpenGL acceleration and gfx that uses system memory is a tad slower with asymetric memory. Whatever, on it goes: The memory inside was a brand I've never heard of. Some cheap custom line I presume. However, I gave both 512 MB SO-DIMMs to my friend, he replaced the memory on his laptop with it, and all his troubles with a crashing Firefox on Ubuntu Linux stopped. The point is: Apple tests the hardware they put into their systems, which is part of what you pay for.
I upgraded my Mac Mini with Kingston Memory - a high quality brand - and I had to pay for that quality and look up on the web how to open the Mac Mini without damaging it. A truely non-trivial process, even for a tech-savy geek as I am, with a few chances to break the Mac Mini if not done carefully. It also required me having a proper geek tool set at hand. I had no problem doing that, as it saved me quite a bit of money. However, for all those not tech-savy, don't have the tools, are not willing to void their waranty and not willing to fuck up their neat Apple gear by DIYing around with it, the Apple upgrades are just fine. That Apple takes luxury prices for them isn't really suprising either. Real news would be if Apple support persistantly would be at the levels of cheap PC vendors - which I haven't heard of.
Does anyone know the system requirements? More specifically: Will it run fine with my current generation Mac Mini? I know this is Blizzard, a really good game publisher, so the answer is likely to be "Yes.", however, I'd like some details. Anyone?
It's basically a marketing ploy. Who acually looks at the Java VMs source?... Right.... To a certain extent, no body cares about licences, unless the experience lock-in or Win XP / Windows Fister getting pissy over some hardware changes. In a sense, MS has been actually drawing attention to its own EULAs since Win2K. With mostly negative effects.
It takes open sourcing to reach opinion leaders. Java was taken for granted even before it went GPL, but now everybody know it will never go away. If Sun goes south, then IBM or some other company will pick it up without missing a step. It has fully moved from a product to being a technology.
But I don't think open sourcing Java or not makes that much of a difference for Sun business wise. That's why I think it was best for them to GPL it. They have little to lose and quite some attention to gain. And attention they did gain. Sun is on the radar of a whole new generation of admins once again. They'd be my first pick if industry strength servers where needed.
The industries opinion leaders all almost all Linux and OSS advocates. I actually don't know a single MS-oriented guy who has the last word in technology decisions. I *do* know MS people who admit that they don't know as much about computing as *nix people. The bottom line is: If nowadays you want to be taken for granted by developers that matter, you have to play ball with Open Source. Especially in technologies people are expected to develop against. Adobe, Sun, IBM, they all know this. MS is about to learn it. The hard way.
Slashdot Mirror
.Not, crappy MS Appserver kits, etc. and all that aside ... we know the drill and we know that huge chunks of the MS runtime stack is a big heap of stinking do-do. No news here. And we also know that MS got their advertised-all-over-the-place LSE figurehead .Net enviroment (which as of now has turned into a major type A PR-screwup) by bribing the shit out of some LSE execs and decision makers.
But all that aside, ... seriously, WTF?
I mean, if I'd build a system like this, which, as far as I can tell is way up in or very close to the top ten of "mission-criticalness", just a few steps below 'Nuclear Power Plant' 'Air Traffic Control' 'Software in Space' and Medical Devices, I'd be super-über-f*cking-sure I can run a Steamroller over the entire live datacenter while the hot spare kicks in without missing a beat. No matter what software-tapestry some crack-smoking exec told me to build it on. I'd think they'd have MS pay the extra 250% of hardware it needs to keep this sort of thing running on .Net *and* have them help in laying out the cluster-topology and planning/paying/consulting/lobbying for the extra room, time and resources it takes to run it. To be honest, LSE on .Net dead for an entire workday would be unplausible for a piece of fiction written by a MS hater. And yet it happend. Absolutely unbelievable. Not even did I expect .Net to be this bad. Apparently I was wrong.
Some high-up heads are gonna roll over this. At MS and at LSE. That's for sure.
I use Django on my own site, and CakePHP (a poor RoR clone) at work. While using PHP has advantages, CakePHP is really not anywhere near Django in terms of the ORM stuff and actually using your data in any complex way.
I did a project earlyer this year with Cake 1.2 Beta. It wasn't nice. Allthough I do like PHP for webstuff. Right now I'd say Symfony for PHP webwork and Django for Python webwork. And if you don't know either of those languages, take Python, it's more consistent and used everywhere, not just server-side web (as with PHP) - so you're learning a more universal PL.
PS. And on the whole Python indentation=block thing... It's not perfect, but only use spaces and it won't be a problem.
That sentence is wrong is so many ways, it's metaphysical. Saying something like this is the fastest way to get yourself killed - especially if I would be standing next to you.
I use Python. And I use tabs. It's the only way to go. All else is evil. :-)
Every since I wear black t-shirts I've been finding Dark Matter right here in my bellybutton. And quite often actually.
*Ta-DUM* *CRASH* *ThUD*
Thank you, thank you, I'm here all week. Try the fish.
That comic is really great. It deals with every question someone interested in the field would have at Google once he hears of this.
"Why a new Brower project?" "Why Webkit?" "Why yet another JavaScript VM?" (OMG, not *again* is what I thought first), etc.
Very informative indeed.
Since you're, like, familiar with 10 bazillion technologies, I'll just save you an afternoon of reading on Java. The other stuff should be blatantly obvious to someone like you:
1) Don't waste your time with lightweight web stuff in Java. There's a reason PHP has eaten up that market and taken it away from Java. No Java Webframeworks.
2) Don't attempt any intense multimedia stuff in Java, unless you want to learn the plafform independant specifics of Java in that area. C++ still rules that game.
3) Go to Netbeans.org, download Netbeans, turn on all the code hinting and start coding away. And just so you know: I use Eclipse for most of my non-Java work, but I still find Netbeans the supperior IDE for doing Java stuff. And Swing has greatly improved in the last 2-3 years.
Chill.
You may haven't noticed yet, but crime procecution and punishment allways kicks in when there is a loss that can't be recovered. Nobody can bring Nina Reiser back to life. And, no, justice *can't* be served, especially in such aggravated things as murder (allthough fans of death penalty might argue otherwise). That's the big downside. That's why we punish. When damage is done beyond repair, then punishment jumps in to offer at least some sort of reckoning and - in this case - remove the wrongdoer from society.
True justice would be if one could successfully force Reiser to undo his wrongdoing.
AFAICT Iridium isn't the stuff you'd want juwelery of. It's to brittle and not very pretty. I suggest Titanium or monocrystallic Titanium - the stuff they make jet fighter turbine shovels out of. It's titanium with the entire piece being on crystaline structure. It costs quite a bit extra to get it that way, but it's even tougher than a normal piece of titanium.
However, you should check if it can be cut with regular rescue tools in an emergency, as somebody here allready pointed out.
All those material things aside - it's the love. If you get yourself and her a stainless steel ring with a synthetic diamond for 200 bucks, but are there for her when times are rough - that's worth quite a bit more imho. And a stainless steel ring can be cool aswell.
Aside from it looking cool when new and polished, this will be an overpriced piece of junk in 3 years. Given the rate, my Wristwatch will have a stronger and faster CPU by then.
Focusing on one standard to an ever present tech problem isn't bad. However, hemming, hawing, messing about and eventually chickening out of a process well underway *is*.
I was struck with bedazzlement when I read some hissy-fit sissy problem in getting the next technology upgrade for JS underway. WTF?
Imagine this with the Linux kernel. It would be less popular than Hurd, if they'd constantly pull such amature shit.
We've got Linus Torwalds, who, as far as I can tell, does a really good job at gouverning the kernel. And unless he suddenly does something completely insane, like demanding that all FSes get removed in favour of a FAT16 clone or something other equally bizar, what ever he decides for the kernel trumps everyone else. And since he - and everyone he listens to - is involved in kernel developement on a daily basis, all infighting takes place by praticed & educated professionals, well before they go public with a new stable.
You *ONLY* get such PR disasters as the recent JS standardisation botch with to many PhD-cert waving wisecracks involved in the decicision who actually don't do any real day-to-day work on the project. Such as a relevant reference implementation of JS or something. Add in a few companies with diverging commercial interests and some academic pissing contests and shit like this happens.
Another example:
PHP is a lovable quirky piece of domain specific language. Each time they do an upgrade it breaks the last one. Yet how many do actually complain? Nearly zilch, compared to the size of the userbase. People are aware that all involved in the upgrade did carefull considerations of all cons and pros of each aspect, so the can easyly accept the specs of the new release. You don't see PHP fraying about into different dialects, *because* it's a fairly tight professional crew who's responsible for it.
Bottom line:
Nothing to see here, move on. Let's hope they don't do such PR disasters again.
I'd say the outsource hysteria is almost over from my vantage point. And if it is not, and still considered the next best thing to sliced bread by competitors - all the better. Meanwhile I'm recommending to my customers to 'outsource' to sourceforge.net.
"This indian crew ABC can do X for Y Euros less." - "Well, you can get Z, which has all X needs plus some extra features for free. Or at least a 5 minute download. It's called 'Open Source'". "Oh, really? That's cool."
Ever wondered why there's hardly any outsourcing complaints in the web developement field? That's the reason. At the quality and price I delivered in my last PHP project I was competing with eastern europe. And I won both ways. 85% of the work is finished by a download of the correct package and 3 hours of setup by an experienced developer on site. Nothing more to outsource there. Once the diversification in desktops and servers has merged into OSS/*nix, I presume it will be that way for most scenarios. All else will be high profile specialist work anyway.
My 2 eurocents.
Ok. Adobe support for Linux, despite their claims otherwise, is flaky and always late. No news here. They failed to completly convince opinion leaders (read: Linux users) in the field of web developement that they are serious, and my comitment to open source flash projects has rather dimished than grown since MX 2004 Pro / Flash 7. Right now I'm earning 60k/year as a Flash9/ActionScript 3 developer and still I don't trust them farther than I can throw them. Adobemedia has been doing to much bullshitting about their commitment to the Linux camp, and consitently delivered late ever since I went all-out Flash with a larger RIA project when Flash 7 for Linux finally came out.
However, what you are describing most certainly is a Linux problem. Aside from playing video, Flash on youtube doesn't do much, and I've watched a lot of youtube videos with Linux and have had no problems at all doing it. And if you run into a site that uses lots of Flash and doesn't render correctly, chances are you've met with a bunch of idiots who are to freakin' dumb to build a truly x-plattform RIA in Flash. Despite them possibly claiming to the the RIA Kings of the Interweb. Like these people for instance. (Linux users with working Flash, please let me know in a reply if any of you can reach the Flashsite ... I'd like to know if they've caught on yet ...)
Developing in Flash requires lots of skill and often some old-school hacks for high performance applications such as this and a solid knowledge of the target client plattforms. For example, a particle system I'm working on/with buckles by 25% on WinXP when run under Firefox+Flash then if run under IE+Flash. And while it's nearly a no-brainer to watch out for those two or three showstoppers that can prevent a Flash App from running correctly on x86 Linux (correct Font embedding for instance), I have to admit that good Flash/AS developers are rare. You have to be firm in graphics, typography *and* programming and then you have to be open-minded enough (read: not have your head up your arse) to try out a semi-proprietary plattform like Flash. Rare ingredients indeed.
Bottom Lines:
1) You have a Linux problem, not a Flash problem.
2) Most Flashers are mediocre at best. Guess where all the Flash crap comes from? The one or other RIA not rendering in FF/Linux is for the same reason.
3) Yes, Adobe's commitment to Linux *still* hasn't reached the level it needs to convince opinion leaders.
4) Where the *f*ck* is an open source RIA plattform allready? Webrunner/Prism will take another decade or so, guessing from the speed in general, and animated SVG doesn't even exist. JavaFX has come further than any other attempt from Sun - which has me very suprised - but I wouldn't be suprised if they'd stop dead in their tracks once again. Until the sky falls and the rivers run red with blood and Sun finally gets it's RIA going, Flash will be exactly what opinion leaders in the field still reluctantly have to account to it: The most prevailent RIA-enabled zero-fuss deployment plattform on the planet. Apparently Adobe can still dick around for another 10 years, since nobody is really challenging them yet.
There is but one thing that I consider a potential contributer to Linux gaining mass again after stalling a while on the desktop:
Apple could become so powerfull that it no longer is the darling child of the *nix crowd.
I've basically moved from Linux to OS X allmost entirely in the last 4 years, but I swear as soon as Apple gets pissy with me Microsoft-style or Linux has gained a significant advantage for me, I'm moving back. Advantage also meaning zero-fuss Notebooks and mini-desktop computers a la Mac Mini with a Mint Ubuntu preinstalled and built to fit keyboard, mouse and all built-in HW extras.
It only takes some far east Laptop vendor with some balls to build an entire lineup of portable computers all around Ubuntu, a pimped out Gimp, Blender, Inkscape, etc. and a slowly but shurely growing amount of built-for-eternity open source online games and the market could turn. Right now it looks as if Asus could be the one. Look at their success - and they are only doing a half-assed job.
Any way you look at it, there is *nothing* OSS can lose, and that's been it's biggest advantage for the last 20 years. I consider it not unlikely at all, that I'm moving back to Linux as my main OS in the next few years.
"Informatik" is the German term for "Computer Science". I presume, as it has a more academic sound to it, that Informatics is becoming the generic english term for CompSci in Europe, but I'm not sure.
He's doing CompSci with an emphasis on business. Dunno watcha call that in the US nowadays, but just so you get the picture.
I don't remember when the last time was that I bought a consumer electronics device from Sony. It could be never before. Aside from my nearly 10-year old CD480 Headphones which are starting to fall apart and are still the best headphones I've ever listend to music or computer sounds with.
Anyway: Two weeks ago I - after long thoughts, consideration, doubt and evaluation - finally bought a PSP. I had considered getting a DS, since I've got two GBA SPs allreay, but in the end the bizar price-point of the DS (it's barely 20 Euros less that the PSP, despite being a far less powerfull device), the nearly identical pricepoint of technically inferior games and the PSPs compareatively huge screen and a steadyly improving games lineup I settled for Sonys baby.
I must say, it's the best electronics device purchase since I bought a feature-laden high-end mini MD recorder from Sharp 12 years ago. The featureset that comes with a PSP out of the box is astounding (WLAN, Skype, Browser, MP3 Player, MPEG4 Videoplayer, etc.). I didn't even know about half of these before I got it.
The first game I got is "God of War - Chains of Olympus". An absolutely unbelievable game for a portable device. The last time I was so flabergasted by a game was seeing "Incoming" on the first PC with a 3DFX card built in. Sometime in 1996 or so. The game ends with an appropriate orchestral finale, with takes from the game and something like 3,5 minutes of 150+ people who worked on it scrolling by, just like in some large-budget hollywood flick. Just thinking about how back in the days of the Amiga 500 we would have chopped out right arms of to get one of these devices makes me notice how far technology has advanced since then. I'm simply blown away.
Currently I'm playing "Patapon", which is a PSP exclusive 2D vector gfx game which is so well designed, witty and funny, I catch myself giggling when playing it on the train. (and silently singing "Pon, Pon, Patta Pon" for hours after)
All - mostly baseless - bickering about proprietary UMDs aside, I consider the PSP the best portable entertainment device ever. The DS to me more than ever comes across as a total money ripp-off and I've come to see Nintendo with quite a bit more scepsis than before. Same goes for the current iPod Nano, which was on my radars aswell. Note that I'm a Mac (and Linux) user.
The PSP - wether with or without the homebrew stuff considered - deserves far more credit than it gets. If you're thinking about getting one, I can only warmly recommend it as a universal portable multimedia device. With a sizable memory card added, you'll have a long time of lots of fun with it.
My 2 eurocents.
... the guy you see in the end is Bart Veldhuizen of Blender and Blendernation.com fame. So *that* was the company he was founding a few months ago. I wish him Good Luck!
Whatever this is, you've got it the wrong way around. It may be just some hype from some obscure MS department or the next big thing. But it won't be the future. Fat Clients and even fatter clients are what's coming. The Netbooks are possible because they can run hideous performance hogs of operating systems on top of now-cheap compareatively super-fast hardware.
The Psion Netbook, just about 10 years old and the Grandpa of all Netbooks, had an uptime of 40 hrs per battery load (with an ancient DSTN display!) and ran Java 1.1 on top of Epoc. It was and still is the superiour concept IMHO.
But now we have 1,6-f*cking Gigahertz Atom CPUs pimped out with a sysClock of somewhere around .5 Gigahertz and upwards of 1 Giga-f*cking-byte of RAM (I remember calling my friend insane for buying a 1 GB HDD!) and upward of 4 Giga-f*ckin'-Bytes of drivespace on chip (!!) with an access time of somewhere around 60 nanoseconds. At the cost something around 400$ a piece. And *only* *now* are the people using it because it runs KDE three-point-whatnot or a current flavor of Windows with system requirements that would've seemed beyond bizar at the time the original Psion Netbook was released.
And you're trying to tell me the future is some thin client internet computer? Forget it. In five years from now we'll have cellpones running Linux with KDE 5 and Cedegar on top of that to play "World of Starcraft" when we're on the go. It's comodity all around coming in on us and if MS thinks it can dick around with that by imposing synthetic barries with online subscription OSes and crappy runtime enviroment concepts, it's not all to unlikely that a horde of asian cost-aware cellphone and netbook manufacturers may teach them a lesson or two with help from the OSS community. I for one would welcome that.
I'm sorry, pal, but you've just reached the downside of complex open systems. If you've reached the point where you're meta-ultra OSS document description language comes to a grinding halt, you have two options: Dive in further and learn to hack it or leave it for a systems that does the work for you. Systems that do the work for you are widespread. They're called 'Commercial Closed Source Software'. Here's are two pieces of software that delivers what you want:
Adobe InDesign
Quark Xpress
There is a third which I like to call my secret special tip - because it's professional performance and featureset are often underrated:
Corel Draw
The downside with Corel Draw is that they as of a few years ago only offer versions for Windows. You could try out Scribus, an OSS DTP Tool, but I doubt it offers all the features you need. The upside with Corel Draw is that it has a hallmark price-performance ratio. If I where required to go into professional print I'd even consider installing a Windows box for it. (And I haven't used Windows in 7 years)
If you don't like the options listed and consider them 'to commercial' or 'to closed' then you're outa luck and have to wait another few years before we see viable OSS DTP kits. Until then: Good luck diving into Latex to become an expert.
My 2 cents.
This isn't crackpottery. It's most probably an ongoing NASA hoax. Especially the smart techie and science people like to do that kind of stuff. And they *do* do that kind of stuff. It's also aparently a good way of venting some of the pressure when working on complex problems. My parents both worked for NASA, so did my grandpa. My dad worked on the Space Shuttle Radar systems as an electronics engineer and my grandpa as an electronics engineer with Grumman on the Lunar Lander. My mother protocolled some of the Apollo missions recorded radio transmission and she can remember NASA astronauts describing artificial structures on the back side of the moon during a mission. And no, she is not senile or a crackpot. She actually still one of the smartest, brightest and educated people I know. And she's closing in on 70.
Now other than this artificial structure thing actually being true, it is more probable that the astronauts and engineers have this little meme going on for a few decades now. Appling Rackhams Razor this is most probably the case. It would be interesting to know if it was Apollo 14 she protocolled. The timeframe (early 70ies) would fit.
I've got two options: "Truth" and "Traditional NASA Family Meme/Hoax". Most of my money and all my pocket cash is on option two. ... Allthough, you never know.
The NASA and contracter teams involved are probably pissing their pants laughing every time this kind of stuff makes it into the broad media.
Honestly, what's all the hype?
I mean, I consider Steve Jobs my role model just as much as the next guy (even more probably) - but his success isn't that much of a secret.
a) For one, he still is personally involved in all new key product developements.
b) He won't stop short until he *personally* is 100% convinced that the product in developement has stopped sucking.
c) He builds products *he* wants.
d) If someone gets pissy with him or starts dragging his heels, he'll come down on him like a pile of bricks. And for good reasons too.
e) He surrounds himself with people who think and act the same. Aka "Smart people".
For example: I just took 45 minutes today to check out the current range of music players. Sony, Archos, TrekStore, you name it. People, the utter pieces of pure shit folks put out to sale for MP3 players nowadays is un-f*cking-believable. Believe it or not, the iPod line of music players is actually *really* among the top of the line. No replaceable battery and no OGG support be damned. There is not *one* f*cking player where you can see that some CEO with balls and brains actually took a look at the iPod and then simply built a player that was better. Where is the player that supports all formats, has a replaceable battery, better sound processing, is water-resistant and has firmware that just works?
Jobs is a lucky man in a lucky position, and he happens to have enough life and business experience not to screw it up. But aside from combining discipline, business-sense and geekdom, I don't see any secret about him that requires a book to uncover. It's only that most competitors are so über-stoopid that Apple is reaping the benefits right now.
The question why Stradivarys sound better than most other strings has been sufficiently answered throughout the last few decades allready:
1) He was into mass production/manufacuring and destroyed all violins and chellos that sounded bad (he burned them)
2) He used ship-builders wood that was submerged in salt water for a few years before put to use.The salt crystals in the wood grain are the prime reason for it's even density. Japanese scientist discovered this more that 10 years ago. It's a nearly trivial task to emulate the same effect nowadays. It's for the stupidity of instrument builders that it isn't done (see below)
3) His string instruments all have astonishingly flat body covers, despite the tradition of glueing them together out of slanted wedges of raw wood. There weren't the possibilities to build plywood back then, which Stradivary most certainly would have used. As that was what he aimed for by making the bodies as flat as possible with the methods of his day.
String instrument builders are so afixed to tradition, it's bizar. I know of a eleventh-grade girl who had to fight her teacher in woodworks to be allowed to ditch the wedge method and use simple thin modern boards and zargs with the grain pointing from cover to cover rather than going around, as it's usually done (and Stradivary did himself). The instrument builder/woodwork teacher has since only built copies of the resultung chello. A boxy looking thing with corners rather than roundings which in most cases sounds at least as good as a top-notch regular chello. And can be built by an amature instrument builder without much of a hassle.
The simple fact that string builders won't even drop the habbit of having the grain of zargs run along the strain instead of vertical, thus resulting in less giving-room for the instrument and a generally screechier (worse) sound shows how uptight and short-sighted they are. Most of them follow traditions that are hundreds of years old and don't give squat about advanced production methods and modern insights into wookworking.
There are quite a few people who can build strings that come close to what Stradivary did and - believe it or not - sound even better. Allthough that admittedly, is also a matter of taste. You will, however, never see such an instrument in a regular orchestra, as it would be percieved as a major heresy.
Bottom line:
A team of engineers with a good workshop and modern materials, tools and woodwork/crafting methods could come up with a string that beats a Stradivary at any time within a few months the latest. Or emulates it's sound exactly. And it would be considerably cheaper. It's only that no one really cares. Especially not those owning a Stradivary.
As many allready have pointed out, this isn't news at all.
It goes even further. I recently upgraded my Mac Mini from 1 GB to 3 GB. Which works, despite rumors and official statements to the contrary. It's only that the on-board OpenGL acceleration and gfx that uses system memory is a tad slower with asymetric memory. Whatever, on it goes: The memory inside was a brand I've never heard of. Some cheap custom line I presume. However, I gave both 512 MB SO-DIMMs to my friend, he replaced the memory on his laptop with it, and all his troubles with a crashing Firefox on Ubuntu Linux stopped. The point is: Apple tests the hardware they put into their systems, which is part of what you pay for.
I upgraded my Mac Mini with Kingston Memory - a high quality brand - and I had to pay for that quality and look up on the web how to open the Mac Mini without damaging it. A truely non-trivial process, even for a tech-savy geek as I am, with a few chances to break the Mac Mini if not done carefully. It also required me having a proper geek tool set at hand. I had no problem doing that, as it saved me quite a bit of money. However, for all those not tech-savy, don't have the tools, are not willing to void their waranty and not willing to fuck up their neat Apple gear by DIYing around with it, the Apple upgrades are just fine. That Apple takes luxury prices for them isn't really suprising either. Real news would be if Apple support persistantly would be at the levels of cheap PC vendors - which I haven't heard of.
Does anyone know the system requirements? More specifically: Will it run fine with my current generation Mac Mini? I know this is Blizzard, a really good game publisher, so the answer is likely to be "Yes.", however, I'd like some details. Anyone?
It does play Youtube.
It's basically a marketing ploy. Who acually looks at the Java VMs source? ... Right. ... To a certain extent, no body cares about licences, unless the experience lock-in or Win XP / Windows Fister getting pissy over some hardware changes. In a sense, MS has been actually drawing attention to its own EULAs since Win2K. With mostly negative effects.
It takes open sourcing to reach opinion leaders. Java was taken for granted even before it went GPL, but now everybody know it will never go away. If Sun goes south, then IBM or some other company will pick it up without missing a step. It has fully moved from a product to being a technology.
But I don't think open sourcing Java or not makes that much of a difference for Sun business wise. That's why I think it was best for them to GPL it. They have little to lose and quite some attention to gain. And attention they did gain. Sun is on the radar of a whole new generation of admins once again. They'd be my first pick if industry strength servers where needed.
The industries opinion leaders all almost all Linux and OSS advocates. I actually don't know a single MS-oriented guy who has the last word in technology decisions. I *do* know MS people who admit that they don't know as much about computing as *nix people. The bottom line is: If nowadays you want to be taken for granted by developers that matter, you have to play ball with Open Source. Especially in technologies people are expected to develop against. Adobe, Sun, IBM, they all know this. MS is about to learn it. The hard way.