C# has some nice features (which like Java all appeared elsewhere first)...
Agreed, totally. Not sure about your comment on better destruction semantics - isn't it the same as Java: the destructor is not guaranteed to be called (at all) because of the vagueries of automatic garbage collection? I was under the impression that the destructor was nothing more than a Finalise call in disguise.
The other gripe I have is that there is no equivalent to a throws clause. You can't specify that a method throws an exception. This seems to me to be a bad thing - it screws up design by contract and I wonder if they did it to make optimisation easier?
Those APIs that keep getting 'depracated' you mean?
This used to be the case - Java had three goes at getting a Platform Independent GUI right, I agree. But what you're talking about is stuff that happened years ago. Java has settled down now...
BTW, 'deprecated' is not the same as invalidated. You can still use them, it's just that you get a warning at compile time saying there's a better way, have a look at the docs...Which strikes me as a fairly civilised way of doing things.
You mean, all those programmers who already know VB and VC++, which they can continue to use under.NET?
Not my argument: I don't want to stop VB or VC++ programmers doing their thang - I just don't want to be stooped from doing mine, that's all.
Opposing a new technology because you don't want to learn it seems a bit short-sighted to me.
I agree totally. I was advocating something different: chosing not to learn something, because I could better spend my time doing something else. That strikes me as forsighted...
At the moment the only time I can forsee taking the time out to learn.NET APIs and (possibly) C#, is if I can't get an interesting job writing Java.
Two possiblities that might make this possible are:
.NET is so damn good, that Java pales by comparison, and loads of people start using it instead.
Microsoft uses its commercial might, combined with the ubiquity if Internet Explorer, to force Java out of the way. If this happens, I just keep my fingers crossed that.NET is not worse than Java...
As a Java programmer I find this very important.
The hard thing about learning a new language is not its syntax, its the libraries and their philosophy that takes the time.
I don't want to spend time learning how to use Microsoft APIs and.NET, given that I have already put a load of effort into learning the Java APIs.
If MS succeeds with its.NET vision, then thousands of programmers will have to spend a lot of time learning how to do the same things differently, rather than getting better at doing what they're already good at.
What worries me is this kind of corporate FUD is exactly what execs like to hear, and they're often the ones that make decisions about what platforms to use, and which shares to buy.
Yup. The problem is with people not implementing active-content enabled browsers properly. I'm simply saying that in this case we should shoot the messenger, not the message.
"This could be the robot of the future," says Ed Heller, one of the project's researchers. "It may eventually be capable of performing difficult tasks that are done with much larger robots today - such as locating and disabling land mines or detecting chemical and biological weapons."
No way - the airborne sow I'm working on is much more likely to do these jobs better than this thing.
Surely the problem is with your "neighbour" who can forward anything he likes to whosoever he likes, not with the "technology" at all? Yeees, except that the Internet's a dangerous place and you have to accept that horrible people will try to do horrible things. So, trying to enforce accountability and honesty is a good thing, but you also have to protect yourself with appropriate software.
Surely the problem is not with HTML or Javascript in emails at all - its more to do with the fact that email browsers have a poor (if any) security model.
One of the good things about client-side Java (rather than Javascript) is that it runs in a sandbox with a well defined security model that doesn't allow, for instance, content to be uploaded from the client machine unless you specifically say that that's OK by jumping through various hoops.
The post refers to two problems: firstly, Javascript making a connection from a client machine when the client user doesn't want that to happen, and secondly, mailreaders allow modifications (such as adding content) to an HTML document, but do not distinguishing between the original copy and the modified one. (By warning of embedded Javascript, or content stripping, or whatever).
The problem is more to do with client browsers having a crap security model rather than the idea of having HTML or Javascript in an email in itself.
I guess that most people who read or post to slashdot are happy with being able to use markups in their posts so they can italicise or embolden things or add links. HTML in text is a Good Thing here, are emails that different?
Active content is another step along the way, but I can't see that it is a Bad Thing, if the security model is good. I don't know enough about Javascript to comment about whether this is possible. Any comments?
It's interesting - the developers say that's what they want, management say that they have no deisire/intention, but I remember MS spending a lot of time slagging off platform independence, garbage collectors, bytecode verification, security models etc...
I just wonder whether one of the platforms that.NET will end up on is the X box. Then,....
OK, something that that has been at the back of my mind for a few months now.
1) MS talk about releasing Office on a pay-per-use basis over the net.
2) MS release a fairly powerful computer with a network port on it. They call it a games console, make sure it has a nice graphics card, and then try to get it into as many living rooms as possible.
3) MS come up with something that looks like a JVM.
4) MS make sure it has a security model, bytecode verification etc...
etc..
Is the X box going to be a Network Computer ala Sun's Network Computer that Microsoft said was a bad idea a few years back?
The post said Nationalised. That is not the same as 'not for profit'.
Channel 4 was established as a not-for-profit business, paid for by skimming the budgets of the commercial ITV broadcasters in the UK.
The whole Channel 4 set-up is a complex arrangement - it is paid for by advertising revenues, has no shareholders, and a license that obliges (obligates?) it to carry out a public service remit.
This link explains it all in more detail. It's quite interesting, especially to open-sourcerers..
So, your uninformed commie is probably slightly more informed than you are.
You could argue thant 'nationalised' was probably the wrong word, but since channel 4 doesn't have shareholders, 'commercial' is equally inaccurate. It's a strange beast: there probably isn't one adjective to describe it...
The phrase
The phrase broadcasters who are not obliged to continually chase the bottom line are more likely to come up with something creative and interesting is an assertion, not
an argument. is also an assertion, not an argument.
The phrase
The phrase broadcasters who are not obliged to continually chase the bottom line are more likely to come up with something creative and interesting is an assertion, not an argument.
This point is illogical I'm afraid I don't agree, but it was nice of you to warn us in advance... Rather than being illogical, IMHO, your executive summary wasn't representative of the original post. Illogical, no, unrepresentative, possibly...
As I understood it, the original argument was that broadcasters who are not obliged to continually chase the bottom line are more likely to come up with something creative and interesting. Occasionally these also turn out to very popular. Channel 4, like other PSB's, is legally obliged to spend a certain amount of its output on education, multi-cultural broadcasting and the like. Scrapheap challenge (or Junkyard Wars, if you prefer) is probably a direct consequence of them being forced to produce something educational and show it in peak time.
Yes, but its license states that it must act as a public service broadcaster:
This is taken from the ITC website:
The main points in the new licence are:
redefinition of the remit in relation to all channels, not just ITV, and further commitment to innovation and experiment;
a revised and strengthened statement on education;
a commitment to provide at least three hours on average per week of multicultural programmes, and also to schedule at least some of these in peak time;
a major commitment to the UK film industry, giving some preference to innovative and risky subjects and treatments;
a new commitment to programmes for and about people with disabilities;
increased requirement of 60 per cent of programmes specially commissioned for the Channel by 1999;
a new commitment for production outside the London region, including a minimum requirement of 30 per cent by 2002;
new maxima for repeats;
a new commitment and new minimum requirement for spending on training;
a new requirement for diversity in the peak-time schedule, including news, current affairs, educational, religious and multicultural programmes;
revised commitments to subtitling and other provisions for those with hearing and sight impairments.
I think it's not fully privatised either - doesn't the government still own a proportion of it and fund it a bit too?
Clouds tend to be the same shape, streets have a similar, static background. That said, later posts in the thread refer to people who use a lava lamp as a seed for a random number generator. That sounds plausible. Even so, I don't see what the asciiness of the data has to do with anything, it's just a set of wibbly bits - with, apparently, enough randomness to make it hard to reconstruct the random sequence. I'm sure a unicode camera would be just as useful:-)
Y'know, this kinda ascii could be good random noise input for a cipher."
IMHO, it would be an extremly bad source of random noise. Large chunks of the image would be the static bits of the image, and the rest of it would be fairly repetitive - the face of whoever sat infront of the computer, or whatever.
Yup, I agree. As far as I know, it doesn't run on embedded QT, does it? This is my problem - I would like Java and a browser; as far as I know the only one around at the moment is Konqueror, so I can have one or the other, but not both.
Slashdot Mirror
C# has some nice features (which like Java all appeared elsewhere first)...
Agreed, totally. Not sure about your comment on better destruction semantics - isn't it the same as Java: the destructor is not guaranteed to be called (at all) because of the vagueries of automatic garbage collection? I was under the impression that the destructor was nothing more than a Finalise call in disguise.
The other gripe I have is that there is no equivalent to a throws clause. You can't specify that a method throws an exception. This seems to me to be a bad thing - it screws up design by contract and I wonder if they did it to make optimisation easier?
I'm not quite sure I understood your point...
As far as 'so actually you are pointless', is this a metaphysical argument? If so, perhaps we are wondering off-topic...
This used to be the case - Java had three goes at getting a Platform Independent GUI right, I agree. But what you're talking about is stuff that happened years ago. Java has settled down now...
BTW, 'deprecated' is not the same as invalidated. You can still use them, it's just that you get a warning at compile time saying there's a better way, have a look at the docs...Which strikes me as a fairly civilised way of doing things.
You mean, all those programmers who already know VB and VC++, which they can continue to use under
Not my argument: I don't want to stop VB or VC++ programmers doing their thang - I just don't want to be stooped from doing mine, that's all.
Opposing a new technology because you don't want to learn it seems a bit short-sighted to me.
I agree totally. I was advocating something different: chosing not to learn something, because I could better spend my time doing something else. That strikes me as forsighted...
At the moment the only time I can forsee taking the time out to learn
Two possiblities that might make this possible are:
As a Java programmer I find this very important.
.NET, given that I have already put a load of effort into learning the Java APIs.
.NET vision, then thousands of programmers will have to spend a lot of time learning how to do the same things differently, rather than getting better at doing what they're already good at.
The hard thing about learning a new language is not its syntax, its the libraries and their philosophy that takes the time.
I don't want to spend time learning how to use Microsoft APIs and
If MS succeeds with its
What worries me is this kind of corporate FUD is exactly what execs like to hear, and they're often the ones that make decisions about what platforms to use, and which shares to buy.
Yup. The problem is with people not implementing active-content enabled browsers properly. I'm simply saying that in this case we should shoot the messenger, not the message.
"This could be the robot of the future," says Ed Heller, one of the project's researchers. "It may eventually be capable of performing difficult tasks that are done with much larger robots today - such as locating and disabling land mines or detecting chemical and biological weapons."
No way - the airborne sow I'm working on is much more likely to do these jobs better than this thing.
Surely the problem is with your "neighbour" who can forward anything he likes to whosoever he likes, not with the "technology" at all?
Yeees, except that the Internet's a dangerous place and you have to accept that horrible people will try to do horrible things. So, trying to enforce accountability and honesty is a good thing, but you also have to protect yourself with appropriate software.
Surely the problem is not with HTML or Javascript in emails at all - its more to do with the fact that email browsers have a poor (if any) security model.
One of the good things about client-side Java (rather than Javascript) is that it runs in a sandbox with a well defined security model that doesn't allow, for instance, content to be uploaded from the client machine unless you specifically say that that's OK by jumping through various hoops.
The post refers to two problems: firstly, Javascript making a connection from a client machine when the client user doesn't want that to happen, and secondly, mailreaders allow modifications (such as adding content) to an HTML document, but do not distinguishing between the original copy and the modified one. (By warning of embedded Javascript, or content stripping, or whatever).
The problem is more to do with client browsers having a crap security model rather than the idea of having HTML or Javascript in an email in itself.
I guess that most people who read or post to slashdot are happy with being able to use markups in their posts so they can italicise or embolden things or add links. HTML in text is a Good Thing here, are emails that different?
Active content is another step along the way, but I can't see that it is a Bad Thing, if the security model is good. I don't know enough about Javascript to comment about whether this is possible. Any comments?
It's interesting - the developers say that's what they want, management say that they have no deisire/intention, but I remember MS spending a lot of time slagging off platform independence, garbage collectors, bytecode verification, security models etc...
.NET will end up on is the X box. Then,....
I just wonder whether one of the platforms that
OK, something that that has been at the back of my mind for a few months now.
1) MS talk about releasing Office on a pay-per-use basis over the net.
2) MS release a fairly powerful computer with a network port on it. They call it a games console, make sure it has a nice graphics card, and then try to get it into as many living rooms as possible.
3) MS come up with something that looks like a JVM.
4) MS make sure it has a security model, bytecode verification etc...
etc..
Is the X box going to be a Network Computer ala Sun's Network Computer that Microsoft said was a bad idea a few years back?
The post said Nationalised. That is not the same as 'not for profit'.
Channel 4 was established as a not-for-profit business, paid for by skimming the budgets of the commercial ITV broadcasters in the UK.
The whole Channel 4 set-up is a complex arrangement - it is paid for by advertising revenues, has no shareholders, and a license that obliges (obligates?) it to carry out a public service remit.
This link explains it all in more detail. It's quite interesting, especially to open-sourcerers..
So, your uninformed commie is probably slightly more informed than you are.
You could argue thant 'nationalised' was probably the wrong word, but since channel 4 doesn't have shareholders, 'commercial' is equally inaccurate. It's a strange beast: there probably isn't one adjective to describe it...
Sorry, I couldn't resist. I think I just thought you jumped down the guy's neck a bit...
:-)
I think we're also somewhat offtopic by now
OOps, that should have read:
The phrase
The phrase broadcasters who are not obliged to continually chase the bottom line are more likely to come up with something creative and interesting is an assertion, not
an argument. is also an assertion, not an argument.
The phrase
The phrase broadcasters who are not obliged to continually chase the bottom line are more likely to come up with something creative and interesting is an assertion, not an argument.
This point is illogical
I'm afraid I don't agree, but it was nice of you to warn us in advance... Rather than being illogical, IMHO, your executive summary wasn't representative of the original post. Illogical, no, unrepresentative, possibly...
As I understood it, the original argument was that broadcasters who are not obliged to continually chase the bottom line are more likely to come up with something creative and interesting. Occasionally these also turn out to very popular. Channel 4, like other PSB's, is legally obliged to spend a certain amount of its output on education, multi-cultural broadcasting and the like. Scrapheap challenge (or Junkyard Wars, if you prefer) is probably a direct consequence of them being forced to produce something educational and show it in peak time.
Seems fairly logical to me...
This is taken from the ITC website:
The main points in the new licence are:
I think it's not fully privatised either - doesn't the government still own a proportion of it and fund it a bit too?
It's all about interactions with fellow human beings. The hardest bit about business.
Given the day I've had, two bits would be sufficient - enough to represent ':', '-', and '('
would you have to battle the grammar nazi's of /.?
Only if they commited a Capital crime.
to identify victims of vowel play.
You'd have to keep it running consonantly, of course.
Clouds tend to be the same shape, streets have a similar, static background. That said, later posts in the thread refer to people who use a lava lamp as a seed for a random number generator. That sounds plausible. Even so, I don't see what the asciiness of the data has to do with anything, it's just a set of wibbly bits - with, apparently, enough randomness to make it hard to reconstruct the random sequence. I'm sure a unicode camera would be just as useful :-)
for identifying people with dodgy characters?
Y'know, this kinda ascii could be good random noise input for a cipher."
IMHO, it would be an extremly bad source of random noise. Large chunks of the image would be the static bits of the image, and the rest of it would be fairly repetitive - the face of whoever sat infront of the computer, or whatever.
Yup, I agree. As far as I know, it doesn't run on embedded QT, does it? This is my problem - I would like Java and a browser; as far as I know the only one around at the moment is Konqueror, so I can have one or the other, but not both.
It's also cheaper, I believe.