I do care to look. I just don't know what Lisp has to offer from the software engineering point of view that you need in large projects - interfaces and modules, hiding implementation details, strong typing etc. The stuff you find in languages like Ada... It seems that Lisp is great for smaller applications, but I can't really judge it, that's why I mentioned that I've never seen anything bigger than 50 lines. Not to prove anything!;-) Maybe you have a link...
I hope Cleese will be able to stay on as long as Llewelyn did, and I also hope the other actors (like the one that plays M) stick around for a long time.
But not the Bond character - I like Brosnan as Bond, but I don't want another case of 'A View To A Kill', in which Roger Moore played Bond at a time when he was 58 (!).
It's been a while that I learned the basics of Scheme - what impressed me was lazy evaluation, which enables working on lists whose arguments are created when they're needed. I can't explain it any better, but it seemed a very nice feature.
However, I don't think that Lisp is superior to other languages. I've never seen or written anything with more than 50 lines of code. You can do nifty things, but I'm not sure for which kinds of applications Lisp is best - it can't be good for _anything_;-) I'm not sure it will work in a large-scale project.
But then, why is there the Classpath project that rewrites the complete runtime library? Or, as they put it on www.classpath.org:
GNU Classpath is a set of essential libraries for supporting the Java language. Our goal is to provide a free replacement for Sun's proprietary class libraries so that the GNU system can run programs written in the Java language.
Classpath is licensed under the terms of the GNU Library General Public License. As such, it can be used to run free as well as proprietary applications and applets.
I haven't got enough insight in the GPL to say if they must have a replacement or if it is for political reasons only.
I never missed MI, but that's just me. Some API classes emulate MI by using several interfaces that a class must implement.
You're absolutely right about the simplicity and elegance - it really hurts to look at a medium-sized project in C with tons of ifdefs and other crap like that once you've worked with Java.
That's for Managing Gigabytes, and there also is a great book (note that there's a second edition out now) with the same name on the topic from Witten, Moffat and Bell. Very well written. Go to http://www.mds.rmit.edu.au/mg/intro/about_mg.html to learn about the software, including links. It also has a Freshmeat appindex: http://freshmeat.net/appindex/1999/09/09/936885957 .html
BTW, I'm not associated with the university, the book or whatever. I just enjoyed reading it.
I very much hope the Blackdown team will keep developing. Remember that we won't see anything but Linux x86 from Sun for the free OS's... The request for enhancements at java.sun.com that asks for FreeBSD should now be the top request (#1 was a Linux JDK), but I very much doubt it will be implemented. The Sun guys probably know that the OSS community is able to make a lot of noise and make lots of people create a JDC login and vote for that RFE, and they may have seen the Slashdot call to do exactly this some time ago (November?).
Does anyone know how much effort it takes to port the JDK 2 to yet another free Unix flavor on yet another system?
1) They say you shouldn't use anything before 1.2.2, what about 1.3beta? Has anyone experienced problems with it?
2) All sites and mirrors appear to be very slow, not only for download, but also for the login. I once was able to see the login screen and click on 'new user', but it timed out again. Does one need different keys for Windows and Linux? What kind of information do they want from you?
While I agree that there should be more reviews for experienced users, the introductory text never made a secret out of the author's intention:
It's time to make the leap to Linux.
Later:
Many Linux newbies now want to use Linux at home and at work, so we kept a special eye out for distributions that are easy to install and use.
So, it is all about how easy it is to install and how nice it looks. Good to see large sites like cnet are telling people about Linux. But I'm still not sure if it's the right thing for your average Windows user. I don't want to sound elitist, but on a home computer you'll always have to be the administrator of your system as well as the user, so with Linux and its (wonderful) modularity and support for a gazillion different configurations you won't get away without sitting down, reading manuals, getting into the details. I stopped giving recommendations about OS's and software in general to people a long time ago. Never would I tell a clueless person to use Linux - you always end up getting tons of questions, frustration etc. But I also won't tell them to get that other OS... Or an iMac... Someone should make clear to the public that computers aren't toasters, whatever Apple, Microsoft and the like might promise.
If you have a bit of time left, read Open Sources. It contains (among others) an interesting article by Richard Stallman and lists up the controversy around monolithic/micro kernels back in the days when Linux was still a very small project. A well-known computer science professor tried to convince everybody else that 'Linux is obsolete' (appendix A).
How about making a contribution to the Linux NTFS driver community in return?;-)
MS is implementing file system encryption in the next version of NTFS, see http://www.microsoft.com/msj/1198/ntfs/ntfstop.htm . I'm not sure if this prevents you from reading a file name, though.
I tried HotJava 3.0, a web browser written completely in Java. According to Sun, it runs on any machine with a 1.1.6 or better Java virtual machine Now that I have a fast (P-II 350) box and a quick JIT JVM (Sun's JDK 1.3beta), there are no more problems from a speed point of view.
However, as I read relatively complex pages like Slashdot most of the time, there is a problem with scrolling down a page - it flickers, twice for each PageDown I press. It's even worse if you use the mouse with a scroll bar. I don't know if this is an AWT or Swing problem, or related to my graphics card driver, but I find it very annoying. Apart from this, there are few rendering problems (ugly radio buttons, white on gray, but that's it). It supports HTML 3.2, JavaScript (full ECMA 1.4 support, but I don't know that standard) and, of course, Java. I'm probably going to try it with IBM's fast 1.1.8 JRE under Linux soon...
From playing with a simple DTD and XML example I came to the conclusion that IE 5 doesn't really care about verifying an XML document against its DTD - as long as the syntax of both DTD and XML are OK, the XML document will be displayed. Try adding an element like <argh> somewhere (don't forget the closing tag!), it displayed just fine for me although it sure wasn't part of the DTD.
Are there any options that you can switch on I didn't find?
Sorry to reply to my own post, but re-reading this: Translating this shows me how much a good translator is worth! is a bit contradictory - I meant that a professional translator (which I am not) could have done a much better job... I've simply copied and explained many German words for which I didn't find a translation.
Everything in [] are my comments to explain things. Translating this shows me how much a good translator is worth!;-) -- Windows 2000 threatened by ban
One component of the Windows 2000 software is coming from a Scientology enterprise. The defragmentation program "Diskeeper" is going to be released in February as integral part of the NT successor. It was developed by Executive Software, an enterprise belonging to the confessing scientologist Craig Jensen, as C't magazine reports in issue 25/99. The connection between Scientology and the software giant is not liked by the Sektenbeauftragter (person responsible to review the activities of sects) of the large churches.
"This is going to interest not only the Catholic church but also the Bundesländer (states ), the Verfassungsschutz (government institution that supervises activities that are against the German constitution) and the German industry", comments Harald Baer, Catholic representative for sects and philosophy of life [that's a straight translation] in response to DPA [a news agency].
According to Ursula Caberta, who leads the study group Scientology of Hamburg's Innenbehoerde [an institution of the City of Hamburg], Executive Software belongs to the leading enterprises of the Scientology organization WISE (World Institute of Scientology Enterprises). WISE, according to Caberta, "is the crucial arm of Scientology to infiltrate and spy on trade and industry". In Bayern and Hamburg [German states, Hamburg is a city state] there are laws that forbid public institutions, especially on the information technology sector, to buy services from Scientology enterprises.
There is more and more software (esp. in the Windows world) which sends 'background information' of whatever type to I-don't-know-whom. What scares me a bit is how automated this has gotten - MS media player 'phoning home' to get new codecs etc. I think that most of the time the user _does_ benefit at least in a way, but I (as an advanced user -- read: I can look at the Options menu and understand what the checkboxes and radio buttons mean) want a switch that says [ ] Don't send user-related information. Better, make it the default that no user-related information is sent (then again, you as a software creator probably won't get much back). The only alternative is to use open-source software only, but you won't have much fun with gaming in that case... I think it's sad that esp. id which has gained so much confidence from the open/free source community in the past does this. A simple note in the README would have been enough. On the other hand, they know how many people look closely at their game (to create third-party tools, maybe even to manipulate gameplay) so that they should have known that somebody would find out sooner or later.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I guess Corel wants to distribute its Linux version outside of the US as well. If so, what is a minor, what an adult? Do you have to be 16, 18, 21? There is no international definition... Besides, there are different stages of becoming an adult, the point when you may drive a car, when you can choose your religion, when you can vote, when you are fully responsible for your wrong-doings. I guess the stages differ as well among countries. Where's the point in life when your mature enough to get your copy of Corel Linux?;-)
I understand that different countries have diverse opinions on nudity, violence etc., so there probably won't ever be a global agreement, but where is the point in restricting the download of a Linux distribution?! The comments couldn't really come up with an explanation so far...
I'm from Germany, and they are doing these ads here. I cannot come up with an exact quote, though. It's been a while since I last saw the TV commercial.
I doubt that. Your average Joe Consumer has no clue what this discussion is about. He is the one Intel is targetting with 'ISSE' for faster web surfing, and they're successful with this cheesy marketing crap.
Again, I know about this. But it can't play Sorenson, the codec that most QT material comes in. From the website itself:
Be aware of one thing: Quicktime for Linux won't read any of the movies you download from the internet. Quicktime is a wrapper for many different kinds of compression formats. What you know as "Quicktime 4" is really a distribution of libraries which contain certain compression formats not found in previous versions Quicktime. Regardless of the version number, each Quicktime distribution is able to read and write a basic set of compression formats that you can manipulate on Linux or any system not officially supported by Apple.
Formats like AVI and QuickTime (and ASF if I'm right) are only a container for different compression methods. Usually, the latest (= best) ones are not supported by non-proprietary software because there is no documentation available. One example is the Sorenson codec I mentioned. Xanim does support QuickTime, but not this interesting codec.
I see video file playback software as an important application for a modern desktop system because there is more and more video content offered on the net, from low bitrate news clips to huge MPEG-2 movie trailers.
Unfortunately, there is no playback software for two of the three important formats ASF (specs), QuickTime (site), only Real is available (with some flaws in the player, correct me if I'm wrong).
Remember that Star Wars trailer using the Sorenson codec and how nobody could see it without a Windows box or a Mac? I'd like to know if there are any efforts underway to create a replacement format (very hard) or convince the creators (one of them Microsoft, but hey, they're trying to establish a standard with ASF, so they at least have to pretend they're cooperating) to offer a player which can be integrated into X / KDE. The xanim author does his best, but the enterprises won't give him specs on their newest codecs.
BTW, anyone here know about an MPEG-2 player (for unencrypted movie trailers)?
Slashdot Mirror
I do care to look. I just don't know what Lisp has to offer from the software engineering point of view that you need in large projects - interfaces and modules, hiding implementation details, strong typing etc. The stuff you find in languages like Ada... It seems that Lisp is great for smaller applications, but I can't really judge it, that's why I mentioned that I've never seen anything bigger than 50 lines. Not to prove anything! ;-) Maybe you have a link...
Mr Showbiz has some more interesting background information, including Llewelyn's opinion on the actors playing Bond:
2 19/QDies121999.html
http://mrshowbiz.go.com/news/Todays_Stories/991
I hope Cleese will be able to stay on as long as Llewelyn did, and I also hope the other actors (like the one that plays M) stick around for a long time.
But not the Bond character - I like Brosnan as Bond, but I don't want another case of 'A View To A Kill', in which Roger Moore played Bond at a time when he was 58 (!).
It's been a while that I learned the basics of Scheme - what impressed me was lazy evaluation, which enables working on lists whose arguments are created when they're needed. I can't explain it any better, but it seemed a very nice feature.
;-) I'm not sure it will work in a large-scale project.
However, I don't think that Lisp is superior to other languages. I've never seen or written anything with more than 50 lines of code. You can do nifty things, but I'm not sure for which kinds of applications Lisp is best - it can't be good for _anything_
But then, why is there the Classpath project that rewrites the complete runtime library? Or, as they put it on www.classpath.org:
GNU Classpath is a set of essential libraries for supporting the Java language. Our goal is to provide a free replacement for Sun's proprietary class libraries so that the GNU system can run programs written in the Java language.
Classpath is licensed under the terms of the GNU Library General Public License. As such, it can be used to run free as well as proprietary applications and applets.
I haven't got enough insight in the GPL to say if they must have a replacement or if it is for political reasons only.
I never missed MI, but that's just me. Some API classes emulate MI by using several interfaces that a class must implement.
You're absolutely right about the simplicity and elegance - it really hurts to look at a medium-sized project in C with tons of ifdefs and other crap like that once you've worked with Java.
That's for Managing Gigabytes, and there also is a great book (note that there's a second edition out now) with the same name on the topic from Witten, Moffat and Bell. Very well written. Go to http://www.mds.rmit.edu.au/mg/intro/about_mg.html to learn about the software, including links. It also has a Freshmeat appindex: http://freshmeat.net/appindex/1999/09/09/936885957 .html
BTW, I'm not associated with the university, the book or whatever. I just enjoyed reading it.
I very much hope the Blackdown team will keep developing. Remember that we won't see anything but Linux x86 from Sun for the free OS's... The request for enhancements at java.sun.com that asks for FreeBSD should now be the top request (#1 was a Linux JDK), but I very much doubt it will be implemented. The Sun guys probably know that the OSS community is able to make a lot of noise and make lots of people create a JDC login and vote for that RFE, and they may have seen the Slashdot call to do exactly this some time ago (November?).
Does anyone know how much effort it takes to port the JDK 2 to yet another free Unix flavor on yet another system?
1) They say you shouldn't use anything before 1.2.2, what about 1.3beta? Has anyone experienced problems with it?
2) All sites and mirrors appear to be very slow, not only for download, but also for the login. I once was able to see the login screen and click on 'new user', but it timed out again. Does one need different keys for Windows and Linux? What kind of information do they want from you?
I might decide not to download after all...
While I agree that there should be more reviews for experienced users, the introductory text never made a secret out of the author's intention:
It's time to make the leap to Linux.
Later:
Many Linux newbies now want to use Linux at home and at work, so we kept a special eye out for distributions that are easy to install and use.
So, it is all about how easy it is to install and how nice it looks. Good to see large sites like cnet are telling people about Linux. But I'm still not sure if it's the right thing for your average Windows user. I don't want to sound elitist, but on a home computer you'll always have to be the administrator of your system as well as the user, so with Linux and its (wonderful) modularity and support for a gazillion different configurations you won't get away without sitting down, reading manuals, getting into the details. I stopped giving recommendations about OS's and software in general to people a long time ago. Never would I tell a clueless person to use Linux - you always end up getting tons of questions, frustration etc. But I also won't tell them to get that other OS... Or an iMac... Someone should make clear to the public that computers aren't toasters, whatever Apple, Microsoft and the like might promise.
http://java.sun.com/products/hotjava/3.0/ (~ 5 MB)
If you have a bit of time left, read Open Sources. It contains (among others) an interesting article by Richard Stallman and lists up the controversy around monolithic/micro kernels back in the days when Linux was still a very small project. A well-known computer science professor tried to convince everybody else that 'Linux is obsolete' (appendix A).
How about making a contribution to the Linux NTFS driver community in return? ;-)
m . I'm not sure if this prevents you from reading a file name, though.
MS is implementing file system encryption in the next version of NTFS, see http://www.microsoft.com/msj/1198/ntfs/ntfstop.ht
I tried HotJava 3.0, a web browser written completely in Java. According to Sun, it runs on any machine with a 1.1.6 or better Java virtual machine Now that I have a fast (P-II 350) box and a quick JIT JVM (Sun's JDK 1.3beta), there are no more problems from a speed point of view.
However, as I read relatively complex pages like Slashdot most of the time, there is a problem with scrolling down a page - it flickers, twice for each PageDown I press. It's even worse if you use the mouse with a scroll bar. I don't know if this is an AWT or Swing problem, or related to my graphics card driver, but I find it very annoying. Apart from this, there are few rendering problems (ugly radio buttons, white on gray, but that's it). It supports HTML 3.2, JavaScript (full ECMA 1.4 support, but I don't know that standard) and, of course, Java. I'm probably going to try it with IBM's fast 1.1.8 JRE under Linux soon...
From playing with a simple DTD and XML example I came to the conclusion that IE 5 doesn't really care about verifying an XML document against its DTD - as long as the syntax of both DTD and XML are OK, the XML document will be displayed. Try adding an element like <argh> somewhere (don't forget the closing tag!), it displayed just fine for me although it sure wasn't part of the DTD.
Are there any options that you can switch on I didn't find?
Sorry to reply to my own post, but re-reading this: Translating this shows me how much a good translator is worth! is a bit contradictory - I meant that a professional translator (which I am not) could have done a much better job... I've simply copied and explained many German words for which I didn't find a translation.
Everything in [] are my comments to explain things. Translating this shows me how much a good translator is worth! ;-)
--
Windows 2000 threatened by ban
One component of the Windows 2000 software is coming from a Scientology enterprise. The defragmentation program "Diskeeper" is going to be released in February as integral part of the
NT successor. It was developed by Executive Software, an enterprise belonging to the confessing scientologist Craig Jensen, as C't magazine reports in issue 25/99. The connection
between Scientology and the software giant is not liked by the Sektenbeauftragter (person responsible to review the activities of sects) of the large churches.
"This is going to interest not only the Catholic church but also the Bundesländer (states ), the Verfassungsschutz (government institution that supervises activities that are against the German constitution) and the German industry", comments
Harald Baer, Catholic representative for sects and philosophy of life [that's a straight translation] in response to DPA [a news agency].
According to Ursula Caberta, who leads the study group Scientology of Hamburg's Innenbehoerde [an institution of the City of Hamburg], Executive Software belongs to the leading enterprises of the Scientology organization WISE (World Institute of Scientology Enterprises). WISE, according to Caberta, "is the crucial arm of Scientology to infiltrate and spy on trade and industry". In Bayern and Hamburg [German states, Hamburg is a city state] there are laws that forbid public institutions, especially on the information technology sector, to buy services from Scientology enterprises.
There is more and more software (esp. in the Windows world) which sends 'background information' of whatever type to I-don't-know-whom. What scares me a bit is how automated this has gotten - MS media player 'phoning home' to get new codecs etc. I think that most of the time the user _does_ benefit at least in a way, but I (as an advanced user -- read: I can look at the Options menu and understand what the checkboxes and radio buttons mean) want a switch that says [ ] Don't send user-related information. Better, make it the default that no user-related information is sent (then again, you as a software creator probably won't get much back). The only alternative is to use open-source software only, but you won't have much fun with gaming in that case...
I think it's sad that esp. id which has gained so much confidence from the open/free source community in the past does this. A simple note in the README would have been enough. On the other hand, they know how many people look closely at their game (to create third-party tools, maybe even to manipulate gameplay) so that they should have known that somebody would find out sooner or later.
OK, sorry, replace US with Canada then. Question remains the same. BTW, I'm not American!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I guess Corel wants to distribute its Linux version outside of the US as well. If so, what is a minor, what an adult? Do you have to be 16, 18, 21? There is no international definition... Besides, there are different stages of becoming an adult, the point when you may drive a car, when you can choose your religion, when you can vote, when you are fully responsible for your wrong-doings. I guess the stages differ as well among countries. Where's the point in life when your mature enough to get your copy of Corel Linux? ;-)
I understand that different countries have diverse opinions on nudity, violence etc., so there probably won't ever be a global agreement, but where is the point in restricting the download of a Linux distribution?! The comments couldn't really come up with an explanation so far...
I'm from Germany, and they are doing these ads here. I cannot come up with an exact quote, though. It's been a while since I last saw the TV commercial.
I doubt that. Your average Joe Consumer has no clue what this discussion is about. He is the one Intel is targetting with 'ISSE' for faster web surfing, and they're successful with this cheesy marketing crap.
Again, I know about this. But it can't play Sorenson, the codec that most QT material comes in. From the website itself:
Be aware of one thing: Quicktime for Linux won't read any of the movies you download from the internet. Quicktime is a wrapper for many different kinds of compression formats. What you know as "Quicktime 4" is really a distribution of libraries which contain certain compression formats not found in previous versions Quicktime. Regardless of the version number, each Quicktime distribution is able to read and write a basic set of compression formats that you can manipulate on Linux or any system not officially supported by Apple.
Formats like AVI and QuickTime (and ASF if I'm right) are only a container for different compression methods. Usually, the latest (= best) ones are not supported by non-proprietary software because there is no documentation available. One example is the Sorenson codec I mentioned. Xanim does support QuickTime, but not this interesting codec.
I see video file playback software as an important application for a modern desktop system because there is more and more video content offered on the net, from low bitrate news clips to huge MPEG-2 movie trailers.
Unfortunately, there is no playback software for two of the three important formats ASF (specs),
QuickTime (site), only Real is available (with some flaws in the player, correct me if I'm wrong).
Remember that Star Wars trailer using the Sorenson codec and how nobody could see it without a Windows box or a Mac? I'd like to know if there are any efforts underway to create a replacement format (very hard) or convince the creators (one of them Microsoft, but hey, they're trying to establish a standard with ASF, so they at least have to pretend they're cooperating) to offer a player which can be integrated into X / KDE. The xanim author does his best, but the enterprises won't give him specs on their newest codecs.
BTW, anyone here know about an MPEG-2 player (for unencrypted movie trailers)?