Part two indicates coordinates that would be in the symmetrically opposite place in the courtyard- interesting to say the least. But what does "layer two" refer to? We're missing something in the decryption here...:-)
It's probably in the publishing deal that Nokia had sole rights to the title- and they might be eying publishing it for a slightly better thought out smartphone model (It appears they're toying with this thinking with newer phone models...) and won't let them out of the contract to republish it elsewhere on other consoles. Even IF they did repackage it for a new phone model, it's not going to happen QUITE in a timeframe that Palladium could immediately benefit from it- and it sounds like they need help NOW, not in 6-12+ months from now.
Considering that they're liable to shut their doors permanent-like if they don't get a cash injection from somewhere in short term, ostensibly due to a recently ongoing embezzelment of funds from out of the company.
He laid it all on the table as best as he could, because of litigation demands preventing the whole story from being told (Which I believe is higly possible...).
It doesn't matter WHERE the money comes from, they just need a serious cash influx to keep them afloat for the longer-term cashflow items to start generating revenue. I am intimately familiar with this concept, having lived with a similar painful business situation for the last FIVE years (Fortunately, it looks like we're going to make it through that rough period and come out on top after all...).
Ah, but they're not tracking everything...
on
Tiny Biodiesel Reactors
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Explosives are merely combustables with their own in-built oxidizer so that they effectively have an unlimited source of oxidization (which could be any reactants, really, so long as it's a combustion type reaction...).
1) You can make your own liquid oxygen- all you need is to machine the right gear and it doesn't red-flag as the resources to make the liquification machine are needed to make tools, cars, etc.
2) Anything combustable that is LOX saturated will explode if ignited- it effectively has an unlimited amount of oxidizer at it's disposal to combust with.
3) A carcoal briquette, such as out of a Kingsford bag will explode with about the force of a stick of dynamite if thoroughly soaked with LOX and ignited or hit with a primary detonator like a blasting squib. This is the basis of a lot of commercial mining explosives these days. Don't want to do a blast? Let the LOX out and it's no longer explosive.
This is just ONE piece of chemistry that, you too, can play with without much notice. There's raftloads others. And before you get on to me about "revealing" this to the terrorists- it's common knowlege and they also know how to make comparable substances that don't need cryo containment to go with it. Contrary to popular belief to the otherwise, the leaders, while quite nuts themselves, aren't stupid. Many of them are very well educated- by the US educational system, even.
(By the way, black powder rocketry's fun, but Zinc/Sulphur mix rocketry's even moreso and easier to get the stuff...:->
PSA as a fuel will also increase the odds of coking up your injectors.
The main part as to why PSA is rougher on an engine is that it's got glycerin bound to the oils (part and parcel of vegetable oils...) and unless your injectors are designed around this, the soot from the glycerin (Since it doesn't burn anywhere near as well as the other part of the oil...) may gum up your injectors.
If you can convert it at the pump or similar, you'd be better off stripping that glycerin off- that way you can use it with less problems (All you'd need for B100 to rid yourself of most of the remaining problems is to use something like Power Service's DieselKleen which lowers the tendency of the fuel to gel at low temps- something that they do in lower quantities in the first place to the petro diesel anyhow for the same reasons...)
As for the truckers having 1kW rigups, it's not uncommon to see 500w rigs on tractor-trailers, and I suspect that there's always some idiot putting a 1kW+ lashup on their rig on a periodic basis. The 100w linear's just as bogus as the 1-2kW one for the band- and Uncle Charlie (as the Childrens' Band crowd call the FCC field agents) are so overtaxed that they can't be bothered with interference from local TV stations bleeding over into adjacent UHF stations (The offending tower was all of 3 miles from the FCC's listening post in Dallas...) so what makes you think they're going to be enforcing power violations in CB's bands? They might be doing it at Hamfests, etc. because most of the people aren't idiots like they are with CB- there's a whole lot less people inclined to violate and the people that get caught doing it have loads more to lose.
I have. I'm no "noob". Over 18 years in the industry. 12 of it doing FOSS development professionally.
When I have issues, it's not because I failed to RTFM- and, in some cases, there's NO "FM" to be read, per se. There's a project (for which I've mostly buried the hatchet- and not in their collective skulls) that I was keenly interested in using. The problem was, what you get by direct check-out from the version control system they use for things doesn't build, there's no stated clean check-points/labels for the repository, no way to easily extract which labels are present, and the only way to get the project's stuff was through the version control system. Normally, the above is utterly unacceptable- but in this case, if the project would give known clean branches or tags in the repository, it'd not be a problem with the codebase. However, the project does NOT build to completion. It never has. It's not due to my inexperience. In reality, I could just simply use the tools they're using and build up a useful result myself (Which is what I've resolved to do at this point, which is a shame, as it's more duplication of effort on the FOSS community's part...)- but they have so much USEFUL metadata in the repository, that it actually would be nice to just be able to grab everything and use it to build the packages.
I've been careful up to this point to not name names. I don't plan on naming them here either (Go digging if you like- I've talked about this elsewhere and in even more detail...). However, when they were asked in IRC what was broken, I got a severe case of cold shoulder and got kicked from the channel (Mostly for what they percieved to be inappropriate for IRC- not that it was, mind...). I've since reconciled what went on then with them, but they still have the problems that I've mentioned (Which is that a person that is not 100% involved with the project currently has NO way of producing the desired result- you have to know which metadata to excise from the entire repository or which tags are valid result producing ones...)- and apparently no desire to rectify the real problem with instances of hostility (i.e. "We know what we're doing and it's the only way to DO it- and there's no further discussion..." To be sure, not that specific statement, but in the end, that's the way it comes across all the same.)
I'm not going to say that this is the case- but to day that while every platform has "noob-haters" out there, it DOES seem that the ones in the FOSS community just seem to be more vitriolic about things than many of the other groups of noob-haters.
"Hey, no fair! How come you get a higher score than I do..."
I was teasing and joking with you when I made the quip (Hey Mods, look at the smilie next time!:-) - and look what it got me... Moderated negative as flamebait- ah, well... Happens some days...
I've got raftloads of karma from prosaic and interesting commentaries on posts and other comments- so my posts typically come out of the gate at 2...
Anyhow, it seems you actually DO see what I was getting at for the most part, but you lack something else that I happen to have- if things go right with my company's funding, I've got inside info that's relevent to all of this- let's just say that things are about to experience a sea change, much like the one from DOS to Windows or from all the CP/M machines over to DOS.
Linux is either going to be going ballistic or going slowly into those areas. I'm thinking more the latter than the former- but it's going to hinge on a few key things happening. If my company gets funded, that'd be one of those key things.
Not everyone in Oklahoma is a retard... Unfortunately the majority rules.:-\
Heh... Truer words are rarely said- and it's why I wasn't too hurt leaving Yukon when my father got work down in Texas with E-Systems, Greenville Division.:-)
I mean, I missed "home", but it was better (If only slightly...) where I went and then ended up.
The City Manager has no business making libelous comments (When making comments like he made, you prefix that it's SOLELY your opinion and not anything else- otherwise it'll get you in deep trouble) that opens himself and the City to lawsuits o this nature. Jerry just did that for them- it doesn't matter WHERE the Libel occured, just that it did.
"This is just a bunch of freaks out there that don't have anything better to do," he said. "When I came in to work Monday morning, I had about 500 e-mails, plus anonymous phone calls from all the geeks out there. [CentOS is] a free operating system that this guy gives away, which tells you how much time he's got on his hands."
You should NOT be saying things like this in print- EVER.
At this point, I'd be firing a damn City Manager if I were Mayor- that flipping idiot just opened up the the floodgates for potential lawsuits.
The examples you gave have their own sets of problems, depending on what you're trying to accomplish.
In the real-time (soft or hard) context, the Memory Management may/may not cause a problem depending on how it's implemented and how it's used. The GC will cause you no end to issues in timing, etc. and is abjectly useless in that context. Again, use the right tools for the job- so many people keep trying to use a hammer to drive screws into things.
To be sure, if you're making an end-user application that doesn't have real-time issues, all of the memory management and GC features are a boon- and honestly so. I do Java and Mono after all- and will choose it as a first choice in many contexts. But, there is no way to say that GC will ever be suitable to task for all contexts- and you have to be careful with your memory management tricks. AND all of the above doesn't take into account that all this late bounded automation of memory handling that Java does is resource intensive- for all the claims of Java being faster than C++ and C in the benchmarks doesn't deal with when the rubber meets the pavement. I've seen the 3D Java game engines in action. The ONLY game to this point in time that doesn't need an Uber-box to play real framerates with the 3D is Tribal Trouble- and they don't have very high polygon counts at all. The others crawl at 15fps peak on a machine that weighs in at 40fps at 800x600 on DooM3 and Quake4- that's NOT very impressive, really. Proof positive that Java isn't suitable for all tasks- sorry.
This old saw has been the bane of the IT industry since it's beginning.
The reality is, that every time they make something for "dummies" (Namely BASIC, COBOL, etc...) they end up creating a tool that invariably ends up being used properly by few but actual programmers or causes no end to pain in security problems (VBA, anyone?). If you don't understand how to ask a computer what you want it to do, you honestly shouldn't be trying to program one- period. Learn how to, or ask someone who does to do the work for you. All of this trying to make things for "dummies" is an attempt to relegate the work to someone they can just hire off the street for far less than a professional would do the work for- and it still doesn't work after 50 years worth of trying.
This sounds elitist, I know. And, it probably is. But, I do happen to have loads of proof to back it up that all one has to do is look at the history of things to see what I'm getting at. Trying to dumb down programming tools of any kind is like trying to dumb down an arc welder or a metal lathe- you can only go so far before you cause serious problems with safety anyway or make it worthless for the application in question.
Even if it's stock funny-money, it's still valuation- and it still is largely spendable, just not in the ways most people think of it. Sure you can't sell it all off right away, but you can sell it off in installments as it's typically common shares and it can be used as collateral for loans on other things like houses or new business ventures. It's not like the RHAT shares are worthless, you know.
"More to the point, Java isn't slow! In many cases, it even beats C++."
For some contexts, yes it does "beat" C++. But, if you pile on many of the language's features, which includes relying on the GC to handle all your heap, you end up taking any "beats C++" speed advantage and throw it out the window. (Please note, this doesn't get into programmer productivity, which as best as I can tell, for some things Java is better in this regard- but then, not everything is about programmer productivity...)
In reality, I can make C++ code that beats C code for speed- it's not easy and it's oftentimes a stilted situation. I can do the same thing for Java compared to C++- and, again, it's not always so cut and dry and it's often a stilted situation.
What it all boils down to is that people keep thinking they're doing good stuff, when in reality it's not so hot after all. For example, for each and every time you do a string copy in Java, you're doing a memory allocation, a NEW. In high performant, high availability code (Such as trying to track/process 8+ securities markets simultaneously (Something that produces something on the order of 30+ GBytes of uncompressed data per market day...)- something one of my former employers did...) doing this causes very odd and very problematic latencies in the code as the GC would cause pauses in execution that would cause the code in question to drop trading traffic (Recieved from the markets in question via UDP packets...) on the floor. If you don't do any allocations except the up-front ones at the start of the app, the GC doesn't do that. The C++ code doesn't ever have this issue. Neither does any of the C code.
In the end, it's all about using the right tools for the job and invariably, people end up trying to shove through tools that really are unsuited to the task. Java's one of those situations in many cases. So's C++, in reality, for many cases. I wouldn't be relying on Java for anything fault tolerant (You can't get deterministic behavior unless you use a very specialized way of coding for Java- the GC will foul you up every time...) just like I probably wouldn't want to try to code an entire operating system in SNOBOL or Icon. It just wouldn't work out well for the task in question.
Is the codebase out there bloated for what it could be doing- Hell, yes! There is a tendency towards laziness within our profession (even with myself- and I openly admit it regularly...) and many don't put enough thought into what they're doing when they do it. Part of the problem is that many don't QUITE grasp what OO is really about and they go hog-wild with the whole concept- and end up with more templated crap than needed, twisted classes, and far too many objects than should be needed. This produces bloat. In the case of Mozilla; they've openly admitted that XPCOM caused part of the memory and code overhead- they overused that OO and caused it to be much more memory hungry than it needed to be. This was back ages ago. Firefox is amazingly better- but it's still far, far from where it probably ought to be. There's Java apps out there that are in the same boat.
Graphics support will have to rely on framebuffer support (No accelerated 2D for you! And 3D? Forget it.). The comment about CD support is off- you can issue ejects from the command line or from KDE/Gnome/etc.
In reality, anything with an ATI GPU chipset's a bad idea for Linux users. While I honestly appreciate Matthew Tippett's efforts in this regard at ATI (I'd have NO 3d otherwise on my laptop...), it just doesn't compare to NVidia's results. ATI's drivers simply do not perform as well as the Windows counterparts and suffer from odd quirks if you're a laptop user (I've got 128Mb of "SidePort" integrated RAM- the Linux drivers don't seem to be able to use it; I've got to turn on UMA support in the BIOS and use the 128Mb it provides... WHY? I don't have to do that under Windows.) And it's not because he's not killing himself to get it great for us- he's woefully understaffed and it's my understanding that ATI's not seeing more of a potential market than they do so they're not hiring more right at the moment.
I, as a professional games developer, can't reccomend people buy ATI right now for Linux machines- it's just not supported well enough right now. Now, that might change in a couple of months' time- I just don't see it happening yet from them with past experience.
Typically, when they hand down draconian policies as to what is/isn't allowed, they also slavishly apply them to everything. When something new is needed for software, it's nigh impossible to get someone to sign off on it because of overall inertia. I've had to jump through flaming hoops to get things approved at prior employers- even though the tool was something we needed to improve productivity. Since it wasn't something that the IT people had to deal with, they just couldn't see why it was needed and couldn't be bothered with legitimate proof thereof.
In reality, they're actually vulnerable to both types of attack- and the cyber variety happens to have the highest payoff for effort involved.
If you must know, the grid's far, far more fragile than you'd think and it takes all of about 6 minutes or less if you've got your typical intel for hacking to overtake the "security" by remote on most of the substations out there and with it do rather evil things to it and the surrounding grid. This is actually a known by everyone out there in the Utility industry- they demonstrated it out of a test setup at Batelle Labs at a recent Utility Industry conference.
If you target the right substations, you can make the blackout on the East Coast in 2003 look like a sunday picnic in comparison- all without making a single physical attack.
Don't for one second think that any segment of securing things needs to be overlooked- in reality, the overall security of the grid is at risk, from the physical aspects to the SCADA they use to control things with.
Since they have an effective monopoly on the desktop OS segment, they can't move into the other segments using the same.
They, because of their relative size in the market, can't just be putting anything and everything into their products as a bundled deal. It's the same story with the media player and browser software they're already in trouble (though with the browser, they got a slap on the wrist over it- it remains to be seen on the media player software, but it's not looking as good for Microsoft on that front...).
Once you become an effective or complete monopoly, the rules for business change for you.
And they still don't "get" why this is a big issue- or why they should be abjectly ashamed of Jerry and possibly pressure the man to publicly apologize for his highly idiotic actions. Small town thinking, really- I should know, I lived in a similar small town.
To be sure, there's a raftload of idiots in the state that seem dead bent on perpetuating the stereotype of being bassackwards folks- but the people pointing them out keep forgetting that the only difference between Oklahoma and the rest of the neighboring states is the state lines...
Slashdot Mirror
Part two indicates coordinates that would be in the symmetrically opposite place in the courtyard- interesting to say the least. But what does "layer two" refer to? We're missing something in the decryption here... :-)
It's probably in the publishing deal that Nokia had sole rights to the title- and they might be eying publishing it for a slightly better thought out smartphone model (It appears they're toying with this thinking with newer phone models...) and won't let them out of the contract to republish it elsewhere on other consoles. Even IF they did repackage it for a new phone model, it's not going to happen QUITE in a timeframe that Palladium could immediately benefit from it- and it sounds like they need help NOW, not in 6-12+ months from now.
Considering that they're liable to shut their doors permanent-like if they don't get a cash injection from somewhere in short term, ostensibly due to a recently ongoing embezzelment of funds from out of the company.
He laid it all on the table as best as he could, because of litigation demands preventing the whole story from being told (Which I believe is higly possible...).
It doesn't matter WHERE the money comes from, they just need a serious cash influx to keep them afloat for the longer-term cashflow items to start generating revenue. I am intimately familiar with this concept, having lived with a similar painful business situation for the last FIVE years (Fortunately, it looks like we're going to make it through that rough period and come out on top after all...).
Explosives are merely combustables with their own in-built oxidizer so that they effectively have an unlimited
:->
source of oxidization (which could be any reactants, really, so long as it's a combustion type reaction...).
1) You can make your own liquid oxygen- all you need is to machine the right gear and it doesn't red-flag as the resources to make the liquification machine are needed to make tools, cars, etc.
2) Anything combustable that is LOX saturated will explode if ignited- it effectively has an unlimited amount of oxidizer at it's disposal to combust with.
3) A carcoal briquette, such as out of a Kingsford bag will explode with about the force of a stick of dynamite if thoroughly soaked with LOX and ignited or hit with a primary detonator like a blasting squib. This is the basis of a lot of commercial mining explosives these days. Don't want to do a blast? Let the LOX out and it's no longer explosive.
This is just ONE piece of chemistry that, you too, can play with without much notice. There's raftloads others.
And before you get on to me about "revealing" this to the terrorists- it's common knowlege and they also know how
to make comparable substances that don't need cryo containment to go with it. Contrary to popular belief to the
otherwise, the leaders , while quite nuts themselves, aren't stupid. Many of them are very well
educated- by the US educational system, even.
(By the way, black powder rocketry's fun, but Zinc/Sulphur mix rocketry's even moreso and easier to get
the stuff...
PSA as a fuel will also increase the odds of coking up your injectors.
The main part as to why PSA is rougher on an engine is that it's got glycerin bound to the oils (part and parcel
of vegetable oils...) and unless your injectors are designed around this, the soot from the glycerin (Since it
doesn't burn anywhere near as well as the other part of the oil...) may gum up your injectors.
If you can convert it at the pump or similar, you'd be better off stripping that glycerin off- that way
you can use it with less problems (All you'd need for B100 to rid yourself of most of the remaining problems
is to use something like Power Service's DieselKleen which lowers the tendency of the fuel to gel at low
temps- something that they do in lower quantities in the first place to the petro diesel anyhow for the
same reasons...)
Not the size of a mini-fridge (though probably hotter than the hubs of Hell at peak output...) and 2kW peak output AT 10m. To be sure, there's more and I suspect there's solid state units in the same size class or smaller. Perhaps it's just that the surplus gear you've seen is larger?
As for the truckers having 1kW rigups, it's not uncommon to see 500w rigs on tractor-trailers, and I suspect that
there's always some idiot putting a 1kW+ lashup on their rig on a periodic basis. The 100w linear's just as bogus
as the 1-2kW one for the band- and Uncle Charlie (as the Childrens' Band crowd call the FCC field agents) are so
overtaxed that they can't be bothered with interference from local TV stations bleeding over into adjacent UHF
stations (The offending tower was all of 3 miles from the FCC's listening post in Dallas...) so what makes you think
they're going to be enforcing power violations in CB's bands? They might be doing it at Hamfests, etc. because
most of the people aren't idiots like they are with CB- there's a whole lot less people inclined to violate and
the people that get caught doing it have loads more to lose.
I have. I'm no "noob". Over 18 years in the industry. 12 of it doing FOSS development professionally.
When I have issues, it's not because I failed to RTFM- and, in some cases, there's NO "FM" to be read,
per se. There's a project (for which I've mostly buried the hatchet- and not in their collective skulls)
that I was keenly interested in using. The problem was, what you get by direct check-out from the
version control system they use for things doesn't build, there's no stated clean check-points/labels
for the repository, no way to easily extract which labels are present, and the only way to get the
project's stuff was through the version control system. Normally, the above is utterly unacceptable-
but in this case, if the project would give known clean branches or tags in the repository, it'd not
be a problem with the codebase. However, the project does NOT build to completion. It never has.
It's not due to my inexperience. In reality, I could just simply use the tools they're using and
build up a useful result myself (Which is what I've resolved to do at this point, which is a shame,
as it's more duplication of effort on the FOSS community's part...)- but they have so much USEFUL
metadata in the repository, that it actually would be nice to just be able to grab everything and use it
to build the packages.
I've been careful up to this point to not name names. I don't plan on naming them here either (Go digging
if you like- I've talked about this elsewhere and in even more detail...). However, when
they were asked in IRC what was broken, I got a severe case of cold shoulder and got kicked from the
channel (Mostly for what they percieved to be inappropriate for IRC- not that it was, mind...). I've since
reconciled what went on then with them, but they still have the problems that I've mentioned (Which is that
a person that is not 100% involved with the project currently has NO way of producing the desired result- you
have to know which metadata to excise from the entire repository or which tags are valid result producing
ones...)- and apparently no desire to rectify the real problem with instances of hostility (i.e. "We know what
we're doing and it's the only way to DO it- and there's no further discussion..." To be sure, not that specific statement, but in the end, that's the way it comes across all the same.)
I'm not going to say that this is the case- but to day that while every platform has "noob-haters" out there,
it DOES seem that the ones in the FOSS community just seem to be more vitriolic about things than many of the
other groups of noob-haters.
...that cartoon's just simply...WRONG...on so many levels.
And funny as all get out, considering Jack's past and recent conduct...
I was teasing and joking with you when I made the quip (Hey Mods, look at the smilie next time!
I've got raftloads of karma from prosaic and interesting commentaries on posts and other comments- so my posts typically come out of the gate at 2...
Anyhow, it seems you actually DO see what I was getting at for the most part, but you lack something else that I happen to have- if things go right with my company's funding, I've got inside info that's relevent to all of this- let's just say that things are about to experience a sea change, much like the one from DOS to Windows or from all the CP/M machines over to DOS.
Linux is either going to be going ballistic or going slowly into those areas. I'm thinking more the latter than the former- but it's going to hinge on a few key things happening. If my company gets funded, that'd be one of those key things.
Heh... Truer words are rarely said- and it's why I wasn't too hurt leaving Yukon when my father got
work down in Texas with E-Systems, Greenville Division.
I mean, I missed "home", but it was better (If only slightly...) where I went and then ended up.
The City Manager has no business making libelous comments (When making comments like he made, you prefix that it's SOLELY your opinion and not anything else- otherwise it'll get you in deep trouble) that opens himself and the City to lawsuits o this nature. Jerry just did that for them- it doesn't matter WHERE the Libel occured, just that it did.
You should NOT be saying things like this in print- EVER.
At this point, I'd be firing a damn City Manager if I were Mayor- that flipping idiot just opened up the the floodgates for potential lawsuits.
The examples you gave have their own sets of problems, depending on what you're trying to accomplish.
In the real-time (soft or hard) context, the Memory Management may/may not cause a problem depending on how it's implemented and how it's used. The GC will cause you no end to issues in timing, etc. and is abjectly useless
in that context. Again, use the right tools for the job- so many people keep trying to use a hammer to drive
screws into things.
To be sure, if you're making an end-user application that doesn't have real-time issues, all of the memory
management and GC features are a boon- and honestly so. I do Java and Mono after all- and will choose it
as a first choice in many contexts. But, there is no way to say that GC will ever be suitable to task
for all contexts- and you have to be careful with your memory management tricks. AND all of the above doesn't
take into account that all this late bounded automation of memory handling that Java does is resource intensive-
for all the claims of Java being faster than C++ and C in the benchmarks doesn't deal with when the rubber meets
the pavement. I've seen the 3D Java game engines in action. The ONLY game to this point in time that doesn't
need an Uber-box to play real framerates with the 3D is Tribal Trouble- and they don't have very high polygon
counts at all. The others crawl at 15fps peak on a machine that weighs in at 40fps at 800x600 on DooM3 and
Quake4- that's NOT very impressive, really. Proof positive that Java isn't suitable for all tasks- sorry.
You don't see very far into the future, do you? ;-)
This old saw has been the bane of the IT industry since it's beginning.
The reality is, that every time they make something for "dummies" (Namely BASIC, COBOL, etc...) they end
up creating a tool that invariably ends up being used properly by few but actual programmers or causes no
end to pain in security problems (VBA, anyone?). If you don't understand how to ask a computer what you
want it to do, you honestly shouldn't be trying to program one- period. Learn how to, or ask someone who
does to do the work for you. All of this trying to make things for "dummies" is an attempt to relegate
the work to someone they can just hire off the street for far less than a professional would do the work
for- and it still doesn't work after 50 years worth of trying.
This sounds elitist, I know. And, it probably is. But, I do happen to have loads of proof to back it up
that all one has to do is look at the history of things to see what I'm getting at. Trying to dumb down
programming tools of any kind is like trying to dumb down an arc welder or a metal lathe- you can only go
so far before you cause serious problems with safety anyway or make it worthless for the application in
question.
Even if it's stock funny-money, it's still valuation- and it still is largely spendable, just not in the ways most people think of it. Sure you can't sell it all off right away, but you can sell it off in installments as it's typically common shares and it can be used as collateral for loans on other things like houses or new business ventures. It's not like the RHAT shares are worthless, you know.
For some contexts, yes it does "beat" C++. But, if you pile on many of the language's features, which includes relying on the GC to handle all your heap, you end up taking any "beats C++" speed advantage and throw it out the window. (Please note, this doesn't get into programmer productivity, which as best as I can tell, for some things Java is better in this regard- but then, not everything is about programmer productivity...)
In reality, I can make C++ code that beats C code for speed- it's not easy and it's oftentimes a stilted situation.
I can do the same thing for Java compared to C++- and, again, it's not always so cut and dry and it's often a stilted situation.
What it all boils down to is that people keep thinking they're doing good stuff, when in reality it's not so hot after all. For example, for each and every time you do a string copy in Java, you're doing a memory allocation, a NEW. In high performant, high availability code (Such as trying to track/process 8+ securities markets simultaneously (Something that produces something on the order of 30+ GBytes of uncompressed data per market day...)- something one of my former employers did...) doing this causes very odd and very problematic latencies in the code as the GC would cause pauses in execution that would cause the code in question to drop trading traffic (Recieved from the markets in question via UDP packets...) on the floor. If you don't do any allocations except the up-front ones at the start of the app, the GC doesn't do that. The C++ code doesn't ever have this issue. Neither does any of the C code.
In the end, it's all about using the right tools for the job and invariably, people end up trying to shove through tools that really are unsuited to the task. Java's one of those situations in many cases. So's C++, in reality, for many cases. I wouldn't be relying on Java for anything fault tolerant (You can't get deterministic behavior unless you use a very specialized way of coding for Java- the GC will foul you up every time...) just like I probably wouldn't want to try to code an entire operating system in SNOBOL or Icon. It just wouldn't work out well for the task in question.
Is the codebase out there bloated for what it could be doing- Hell, yes! There is a tendency towards laziness within our profession (even with myself- and I openly admit it regularly...) and many don't put enough thought into what they're doing when they do it. Part of the problem is that many don't QUITE grasp what OO is really about and they go hog-wild with the whole concept- and end up with more templated crap than needed, twisted classes, and far too many objects than should be needed. This produces bloat. In the case of Mozilla; they've openly admitted that XPCOM caused part of the memory and code overhead- they overused that OO and caused it to be much more memory hungry than it needed to be. This was back ages ago. Firefox is amazingly better- but it's still far, far from where it probably ought to be. There's Java apps out there that are in the same boat.
Graphics support will have to rely on framebuffer support (No accelerated 2D for you! And 3D? Forget it.).
The comment about CD support is off- you can issue ejects from the command line or from KDE/Gnome/etc.
In reality, anything with an ATI GPU chipset's a bad idea for Linux users. While I honestly appreciate Matthew Tippett's efforts in this regard at ATI (I'd have NO 3d otherwise on my laptop...), it just doesn't compare to NVidia's results . ATI's drivers simply do not perform as well as the Windows counterparts and suffer from odd quirks if you're a laptop user (I've got 128Mb of "SidePort" integrated RAM- the Linux drivers don't seem to be able to use it; I've got to turn on UMA support in the BIOS and use the 128Mb it provides... WHY? I don't have to do that under Windows.) And it's not because he's not killing himself to get it great for us- he's woefully understaffed and it's my understanding that ATI's not seeing more of a potential market than they do so they're not hiring more right at the moment.
I, as a professional games developer, can't reccomend people buy ATI right now for Linux machines- it's just not supported well enough right now. Now, that might change in a couple of months' time- I just don't see it happening yet from them with past experience.
Hillarious and frightenly accurate at the same time- thanks for the day brightening humor there!
Typically, when they hand down draconian policies as to what is/isn't allowed, they also slavishly apply them to everything. When something new is needed for software, it's nigh impossible to get someone to sign off on it because of overall inertia. I've had to jump through flaming hoops to get things approved at prior employers- even though the tool was something we needed to improve productivity. Since it wasn't something that the IT people had to deal with, they just couldn't see why it was needed and couldn't be bothered with legitimate proof thereof.
In reality, they're actually vulnerable to both types of attack- and the cyber variety happens to have the highest payoff for effort involved.
If you must know, the grid's far, far more fragile than you'd think and it takes all of about 6 minutes or less if you've got your typical intel for hacking to overtake the "security" by remote on most of the substations out there and with it do rather evil things to it and the surrounding grid. This is actually a known by everyone out there in the Utility industry- they demonstrated it out of a test setup at Batelle Labs at a recent Utility Industry conference.
If you target the right substations, you can make the blackout on the East Coast in 2003 look like a sunday picnic in comparison- all without making a single physical attack.
Don't for one second think that any segment of securing things needs to be overlooked- in reality, the overall security of the grid is at risk, from the physical aspects to the SCADA they use to control things with.
Since they have an effective monopoly on the desktop OS segment, they can't move into the other segments using the same.
They, because of their relative size in the market, can't just be putting anything and everything into their products as a bundled deal. It's the same story with the media player and browser software they're already in trouble (though with the browser, they got a slap on the wrist over it- it remains to be seen on the media player software, but it's not looking as good for Microsoft on that front...).
Once you become an effective or complete monopoly, the rules for business change for you.
And they still don't "get" why this is a big issue- or why they should be abjectly ashamed of Jerry and possibly pressure the man to publicly apologize for his highly idiotic actions. Small town thinking, really- I should know, I lived in a similar small town.
THANK YOU!
:-)
To be sure, there's a raftload of idiots in the state that seem dead bent on perpetuating the stereotype of being bassackwards folks- but the people pointing them out keep forgetting that the only difference between Oklahoma and the rest of the neighboring states is the state lines...
Oh, and you forgot about Will Rogers...
...and all of only about 12 or so miles from the offending town, I will have you know that very few people think in those terms. Most of them don't.
Nahh... This guy's just flipping clueless and doesn't understand that he just shoved a stick into the hornets' nest.