disappointing how short the trailer is... I'd like to get some background. The cities look like they were only just recently destroyed... does this immediately follow the nuclear attack?
I used to think that he was always joking around when he called people idiots whenever they disagreed with him... I used to think it was all a bunch of tongue in cheek bravado (partially because that's the sort of sense of humor I have). However, I was talking to one guy who got chewed out by him before, and it turns out he's usually pretty serious.
I suspect that this is the sort of thing you see mostly in open source projects, where some people, like Linus, are their own bosses and egos get big. I haven't been in the industry that long, but most of the developers I've met are pretty polite and measured.
That said, Linus is pretty bright, and when he's bitching someone out he usually manages to put together a pretty compelling argument of why they're wrong. I usually agree with him more often than not, even if I would explain it without calling anyone an idiot.
is an xbox (original) with mythtv or some equivalent on it. I don't have one personally (I don't actually have a tv right now), but I've seen friends with one and it's pretty nifty.
Basically, all anyone wants is a handy way to play the divx files they have on their big tv... Instead of making a set top box with a hard drive that plays divx, companies like microsoft and apple keep making over complicated devices that stream off of another computer, and don't run divx. Both of them are so afraid of stepping on the toes of copyright holders, and both of them have too much vested interest in promoting their own file formats to actually put together a good movie player...
This is one area where a smaller manufacturer who doesn't have a vested interest in protecting intellectual property or promoting their own proprietary media format, that no one uses, would stand a better chance in the market. As it is, clumsy custom solutions like hacked xboxes, or laptops with s-video out end up working better for solving practical problems than the solutions from microsoft and apple...
I don't know how they can generate so much hype over the crappy encumbering solutions they have out right.
they focus on multiplay mainly these days... but yeah, I'd like to see a campaign as good as starcraft's if possible, as that's a big part of what drew people in... Warcraft by comparison has an incredibly corny plot. I couldn't stand to play through the frozen throne campaign. I felt like I was torturing myself.
Starcraft by comparison was much more about the single player campaign. They ended up making the multiplay pretty good, but you will notice that there are tons of units that are totally useless in multiplayer mode (infected command center? light and dark archons? zerg queen?). Multi play in pretty much every serious game became mostly about being really good at producing lots of low level units really quickly really early. Later in the game someone *might* mass battlecruisers or carriers if it's BGH.
Personally, I'm hoping they're trim the units (it looks like they've already done that actually) and make nukes more useful. Nukes were one of the most fun things in SC, but also one of the most impractical (you could make it work... but there was almost always a better strat.). Nukes should be a little less powerful, but much easier to obtain. At the very least I don't want to have to built extra command centers...
enough people play warcraft 3... even though for most of us it is just a substitute for starcraft. I think that as long as it has as good multiplayer as wc3 had, updated graphics, and an ok story line people will be happy.
Oh! and it would be *really nice* if they reintroduced NAT piercing. starcraft did nat piercing (or at least let you host somehow), but wc3 needs port redirection! sc2 definitely needs to learn to do some NAT piercing.
>If it works then writing to Linux == writing to LINA -> running on Windows, Mac + *nix. true... but again there's already a number of methods for doing that in place that are faster >Then why write to anything but Linux. Because windows has much better and easier to use development tools, and almost all users run it... >If everyone then does the sensible thing and starts writing to Linux, then all the applications run on Linux, >and why would anyone buy commercial software? Well... since most software is commercial software, if people starting writing all their software for linux... most linux software would become commercial software. There's already a lot of commercial software available for linux in fact...
Again, it just seems like there are better tools for developing cross platform... like java, wxwindows, QT, GTK for windows, etc. Also, as someone who has developed quite a bit on both linux and windows, I can assure you that the development tools available for windows are about a billion times better, unless you are doing java development, in which care they are about equal. OSX and solaris(dtrace!) also has some good development tools... linux has fallen behind the pack in terms of dev tools (IDE's, debuggers, profilers, all suck on linux. the only good thing is eclipse).
they'd run into a ton of hardware support issues... the range of computers that osx will run on right now is pretty minimal. If they ever sold generic x86 they'd probably be selling it in partnership with dell or some "apple clone" manufacturer.
Besides, with apple's brand they really wouldn't need that kind of marketing.
the point is that drivers *exist* and *work* for windows, but they don't *exist* or don't *work* for linux. If it's *impossible* to get hardware to work properly for linux, that's a real problem. Hardware problems are the #1 thing keeping the linux desktop/laptop in eternal limbo... Even my ubuntu install on fairly common hardware has issues...
As for OSX... that's a whole different ballgame. You rarely hear "this hardware didn't work perfectly" complaints from mac users, but that's because most of the core system is designed or handpicked by apple. Aside from that the main video card venders always have decent (if not 100% as good as windows) drivers for mac.
from their article this sounds like another cygwin... only they've added virtualization (so like cygwin but slower).
The main feature seems to be that GTK and QT will be mapped at runtime to win32 APIS... which is... ah... an interesting choice since GTK and QT already run on windows.
This doesn't sound like something that will have mass market appeal... although some companies that want an easy way to port existing unix tools to windows (if they are converting to windows) may take advantage of this.
I have no conception of how the authors imagine this will spur linux adoption. If this works right, the user wouldn't be aware they were running a linux environment. If it doesn't work right (like cygwin) users will be annoyed that they are using some big clunky vm that doesn't integrate with their os.
>Which flavor of Islam is practiced in Indonesia, Jordan or Egypt
A brief recap of the sectarian violence in iraq and answer to your question: 1. iraq is diverse, but has a shi'ite majority 2. saddam helped prop up the sunni majority while he was in power, and helped oppress the shi'ite minority. Despite this Saddam is viewed as a relatively secular leader. Relative to the region. Which is to say that he was secular *at all*. 3. The shi'ite were pretty pissed off about their prior marginalization under saddam, which caused them to persecute the shi'ites after saddam was taken out, which caused the shi'ites to blow up the Golden Mosque in Samarra, which caused all hell to break loose and left us in the situation we are in now. 4. Of the surrounding states Iran is run by shi'ites. Most of the rest are run by sunni's (in the whole arab world, shi'ites are a tiny minority localized around iraq and iran).
I think our reasoning for not handing over control to neighboring arab states in 2003 was something like: 1. iraq has a quarter of the worlds oil, it would be nice to control that 2. no neighboring states are really neutral in iraqi internal religious conflicts, and none are secular. As a third party we might be able to set up a secular state that would diffuse internal conflict.
What really ended up happening: 1. Since the end of the war, iraqs oil pipelines have spent a significant amount of time *on fire* because angry people *exploded them*. 2. Instead of becoming a neutral intermediary between the sunni and shi'ites, the US forces started as a common enemy, and became a third combatant in the sectarian free for all.
an undergraduate degree in one of the "pure" sciences is close to worthless. You learn few practical skills, not even how to do research, unless you do undergrad research, which I recommend. All you've proved is that you're smart, and there are plenty of smart people with practical skills to boot...
If you love math or physics, I'd say either plan on getting graduate degree, or double major in some kind of engineering field. Computer science is popular right now, but that's not exactly an endorsement (popular = more competition = less pay). I went the CS route, but out of love for CS, not out of love for money (although the money's still pretty decent if your skills are good). Electrical engineering, aeronautical engineering, X engineering are the way to go if you want a high paying job that benefits from an undergrad degree in maths or physics.
There are a number of math jobs mentioned on other slashdot posts that don't require a PhD, but they all sound suspiciously like accounting to me, which brings up the question of why they'd hire someone with a math degree and not an accounting degree...
If all you have is a math or physics BS, you can *maybe* get a decent job, but you'd be better off teaching yourself some practical skills first, or going back to school for an engineering degree or a Phd.
is a move away from fancy graphics in some types of games that don't really benefit from them...
RPG's especially don't need spectacular graphics, and rarely use them well. Typically, square's games in particular have become fairly boring and cumbersome as the games have stopped being about gameplay and plot, and turned more and more into an engine for showing off a bunch of artwork and cinematics. Very few games in the genre (except maybe the zelda games, and to a lesser degree FFXII) used the transition to 3D to the advantage of gameplay. Most games in the genre are still the same as they used to be, but with a big clunky 3D interface that doesn't really fit.
The only games that really make since as 3D are first person shooters, which always existed as only 3D, and 3rd person platformers, which made a pretty nice transition in mario 64.
who doesn't see what the big deal is with RSS feeds? Or doesn't see why they need to be included in every little application (like safari, firefox, thunderbird, etc).
Usually when I am *online* and want to look at the news from a site... I don't grab their RSS feed, I just go to their site...
It seems like an okay way of exchanging information between different sites in a very limited fashion, but that doesn't make it important or worth spending a lot of money on. It's just one more xml schema for doing something really simple... I don't understand the hype.
>Apple could probably offer a very attractive XServe indeed based on that chip Not really... Power is different than PPC. This would essentially require that a *third* platform be supported.
Also power is for mainframe... Server's these days generally use cheap X86 boxes. Switching to the power platform would increase costs for your average xserve significantly, which would be bad since they're already pretty costly (their *min config* is 3k).
Aside from that, there would be extra R&D costs associated with putting together apple branded hardware with an IBM power architecture, and there might be problems making the servers fit in a standard rack. The power architecture has traditionally run pretty hot (how do you think they got up to 4.7ghz?) and would need extra cooling.
This is if anything a good thing. This means that the goal of getting low priced computing into the hands of children in the developing world is much closer...
The posts seem filled with criticism, but they generally seem to boil down to: 1. OMG how could Intel sell to that market segment, when like, Negroponte *totally* called it. Hay, Intel, didn't you hear him call it? He totally called it. Indeed, he has *dibs*.
2. OMG it has windows on it! Haxxors unite! With our powers of making angry posts on slashdot we can destroy the dreaded WINDOZE computron FTW!
Comments by Negroponte that Intel should be "ashamed of itself" for competing with him are *hilarious*. Anyone who thought that a small nonprofit would last long in this market with potentially enormous profits attached to it was an idiot... This is the reason why the "free market economy" isn't called the "free love funfest."
He also seems to be bitching about Intel selling at prices below what they can make a profit on, which is again pretty hilarious. This is the definition of irony.
As for windows, believe it or not, many people would like the option of running windows... The only time I've purchased a computer that couldn't boot windows was back when I used macs, and even then I sometimes wished I could run win32 games. Since then I've switch to an Ubuntu/XP combo, but I honestly don't think I could totally abandon XP. There are still too many things linux doesn't do that I need.
This is no different than any other PC. Linux will be ported to it, and if you want to run it, it will be there. For 97% of computer uses who have no desire to run linux (and who probably don't even know what linux is), it's pretty convenient that it comes with a copy of windows.
That said, the Intel laptop is higher end and higher priced than Negroponte's laptop. I suspect that this will differentiate them in the market somewhat, and be instructional in what third world countries are actually looking for in terms of computing.
The problems you point out may be real, but most of your suggestions aren't particularly practical.
In general, throwing out an existing code base is rarely a good idea. Practically speaking there's rarely a code base so bad that no part of it can be salvaged. Even when things are rewritten, it's almost always the overall structure that's just refactored by a lot of copy pasting.
Also, I'm an SML fan, but there are reasons that no one outside of academia uses SML. 1. Very few people are familiar with it. There is *no one* who has used it for a large project in the real world. I'm not saying it's untested, I'm just saying that the expertise isn't available for a given project like it is with c++ or java. 2. It doesn't support object orientation and the associated runtime polymorphism (i.e. no virtual functions). Runtime polymorphism is pretty darn handy, and it just doesn't exist in SML. 3. There are not the large extant code bases that exist in C++ and java.
Ocaml solves a few of these problems with ML, but not all of them.
As far as garbage collection goes, that would make the existing runtime *more* memory hungry, not *less*. That said, it's handy to have one, and many people *do* use garbage collectors *in c++* http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/gc/
I'd be curious to see someone write a good java browser... but I'm not sure I'd use it unless the UI was at least as snappy as firefox.
I'd hate to be accused of not FTFA'ing, but I'd hate to read an article that starts off with a picture of german chicks in bikini's and speculates that germany could experience a tourist boom because of global warming.
People are sure taking their time wising up to global warming. The responses, like this article, tend to sidestep the issue by either suggesting that "it might not be that bad in some places," or suggesting that scientists might have gotten this whole "global warming" thing wrong, after all "climate change happens."
The problem is that there's a ton of evidence for global warming, and the natural progression of climate change *is* taken into account. Furthermore the effects are going to be more significant than the temperature increasing in a few places... There is a significant risk of a *massive* rise in sea level if the west antartic ice sheet melts http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6962
at least the option of the new license board system in the original release, but I'd definitely not shell out $60 more dollars for another game.
They did the same thing with a number of other final fantasy's (7 and 10 at least) and I'm surprised that it sold... I'm hoping that now that final fantasy games are running on systems with built in harddrives, that they'll start releasing these things as downloadable content for the PS3 and xbox.
this will force them to wrap up the current story arcs coherently in a reasonable amount of time, something that almost never happens in TV. This show may actually end up making sense in the end.
Look at it this way, it's going to be way better than firefly's ending. They have a whole season to wrap up the story, and do some awesome finale.
if anyone involved cared, they could have had a police officer on campus (my high school always had an on campus officer) and that probably would have cleared up the problem. As near as I could tell, the problem with our school, and most schools that have drug or violence problems on campus (every school has an off campus problem...) is that the administrators don't know or don't care about it. Generally not knowing is an indication of not caring, or just being incompetent, or some mixture thereof.
A lot of problems in our school's exist right now because jobs like principle are really cushy, high paying, and don't have a lot of accountability (the rest of the problems I would lay on the difficulty of hiring competent teachers and firing incompetent ones with current union rules). The sort of job that attracts just the wrong sort of person. Administrators often delegate all of their responsibilities to other staff members and spend most of their time hiding out in their office doing god knows what.
>So, how long before Sun convinces Apple to include JavaFX in their version of the JRE? Last I looked you couldn't just download a JRE for MacOS X.
OSX Java SDK is downloadable in a number of places from apple's website. Prerelease versions are in their developer site ADC (requires free registration). I think the final JRE's get pushed to users automatically over the automatic update system.
What is the relationship between Apple and Sun's java? I always assumed that apple just licensed and customized Sun's sources. After all, apple really doesn't have the resources to rewrite java from scratch, and if they did it would still be a waste.
Anyway, I'd assume that OSX won't be far behind in implementing whatever class libraries and runtime stuff that SUN has. They've put a lot of effort into making OSX a nice java development environment, including adding java support to xcode (king of redundant now that eclipse is around) and writing a java wrapper around cocoa.
Slashdot Mirror
disappointing how short the trailer is... I'd like to get some background. The cities look like they were only just recently destroyed... does this immediately follow the nuclear attack?
I used to think that he was always joking around when he called people idiots whenever they disagreed with him... I used to think it was all a bunch of tongue in cheek bravado (partially because that's the sort of sense of humor I have). However, I was talking to one guy who got chewed out by him before, and it turns out he's usually pretty serious.
I suspect that this is the sort of thing you see mostly in open source projects, where some people, like Linus, are their own bosses and egos get big. I haven't been in the industry that long, but most of the developers I've met are pretty polite and measured.
That said, Linus is pretty bright, and when he's bitching someone out he usually manages to put together a pretty compelling argument of why they're wrong. I usually agree with him more often than not, even if I would explain it without calling anyone an idiot.
is an xbox (original) with mythtv or some equivalent on it. I don't have one personally (I don't actually have a tv right now), but I've seen friends with one and it's pretty nifty.
Basically, all anyone wants is a handy way to play the divx files they have on their big tv... Instead of making a set top box with a hard drive that plays divx, companies like microsoft and apple keep making over complicated devices that stream off of another computer, and don't run divx. Both of them are so afraid of stepping on the toes of copyright holders, and both of them have too much vested interest in promoting their own file formats to actually put together a good movie player...
This is one area where a smaller manufacturer who doesn't have a vested interest in protecting intellectual property or promoting their own proprietary media format, that no one uses, would stand a better chance in the market. As it is, clumsy custom solutions like hacked xboxes, or laptops with s-video out end up working better for solving practical problems than the solutions from microsoft and apple...
I don't know how they can generate so much hype over the crappy encumbering solutions they have out right.
they focus on multiplay mainly these days... but yeah, I'd like to see a campaign as good as starcraft's if possible, as that's a big part of what drew people in... Warcraft by comparison has an incredibly corny plot. I couldn't stand to play through the frozen throne campaign. I felt like I was torturing myself.
Starcraft by comparison was much more about the single player campaign. They ended up making the multiplay pretty good, but you will notice that there are tons of units that are totally useless in multiplayer mode (infected command center? light and dark archons? zerg queen?). Multi play in pretty much every serious game became mostly about being really good at producing lots of low level units really quickly really early. Later in the game someone *might* mass battlecruisers or carriers if it's BGH.
Personally, I'm hoping they're trim the units (it looks like they've already done that actually) and make nukes more useful. Nukes were one of the most fun things in SC, but also one of the most impractical (you could make it work... but there was almost always a better strat.). Nukes should be a little less powerful, but much easier to obtain. At the very least I don't want to have to built extra command centers...
enough people play warcraft 3... even though for most of us it is just a substitute for starcraft. I think that as long as it has as good multiplayer as wc3 had, updated graphics, and an ok story line people will be happy.
Oh! and it would be *really nice* if they reintroduced NAT piercing. starcraft did nat piercing (or at least let you host somehow), but wc3 needs port redirection! sc2 definitely needs to learn to do some NAT piercing.
>If it works then writing to Linux == writing to LINA -> running on Windows, Mac + *nix.
true... but again there's already a number of methods for doing that in place that are faster
>Then why write to anything but Linux.
Because windows has much better and easier to use development tools, and almost all users run it...
>If everyone then does the sensible thing and starts writing to Linux, then all the applications run on Linux,
>and why would anyone buy commercial software?
Well... since most software is commercial software, if people starting writing all their software for linux... most linux software would become commercial software. There's already a lot of commercial software available for linux in fact...
Again, it just seems like there are better tools for developing cross platform... like java, wxwindows, QT, GTK for windows, etc. Also, as someone who has developed quite a bit on both linux and windows, I can assure you that the development tools available for windows are about a billion times better, unless you are doing java development, in which care they are about equal. OSX and solaris(dtrace!) also has some good development tools... linux has fallen behind the pack in terms of dev tools (IDE's, debuggers, profilers, all suck on linux. the only good thing is eclipse).
jni is how you can make non cross platform code using java.
they'd run into a ton of hardware support issues... the range of computers that osx will run on right now is pretty minimal. If they ever sold generic x86 they'd probably be selling it in partnership with dell or some "apple clone" manufacturer.
Besides, with apple's brand they really wouldn't need that kind of marketing.
the point is that drivers *exist* and *work* for windows, but they don't *exist* or don't *work* for linux. If it's *impossible* to get hardware to work properly for linux, that's a real problem. Hardware problems are the #1 thing keeping the linux desktop/laptop in eternal limbo... Even my ubuntu install on fairly common hardware has issues...
As for OSX... that's a whole different ballgame. You rarely hear "this hardware didn't work perfectly" complaints from mac users, but that's because most of the core system is designed or handpicked by apple. Aside from that the main video card venders always have decent (if not 100% as good as windows) drivers for mac.
from their article this sounds like another cygwin... only they've added virtualization (so like cygwin but slower).
The main feature seems to be that GTK and QT will be mapped at runtime to win32 APIS... which is... ah... an interesting choice since GTK and QT already run on windows.
This doesn't sound like something that will have mass market appeal... although some companies that want an easy way to port existing unix tools to windows (if they are converting to windows) may take advantage of this.
I have no conception of how the authors imagine this will spur linux adoption. If this works right, the user wouldn't be aware they were running a linux environment. If it doesn't work right (like cygwin) users will be annoyed that they are using some big clunky vm that doesn't integrate with their os.
>Besides, its not hard to write cross-platform C++ code.
Yes... yes it is... Please don't suggest such things without actually doing them.
just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't make them a "paid troll." Really, no one has to pay me to tell you how wrong you are.
>Which flavor of Islam is practiced in Indonesia, Jordan or Egypt
A brief recap of the sectarian violence in iraq and answer to your question:
1. iraq is diverse, but has a shi'ite majority
2. saddam helped prop up the sunni majority while he was in power, and helped oppress the shi'ite minority. Despite this Saddam is viewed as a relatively secular leader. Relative to the region. Which is to say that he was secular *at all*.
3. The shi'ite were pretty pissed off about their prior marginalization under saddam, which caused them to persecute the shi'ites after saddam was taken out, which caused the shi'ites to blow up the Golden Mosque in Samarra, which caused all hell to break loose and left us in the situation we are in now.
4. Of the surrounding states Iran is run by shi'ites. Most of the rest are run by sunni's (in the whole arab world, shi'ites are a tiny minority localized around iraq and iran).
I think our reasoning for not handing over control to neighboring arab states in 2003 was something like:
1. iraq has a quarter of the worlds oil, it would be nice to control that
2. no neighboring states are really neutral in iraqi internal religious conflicts, and none are secular. As a third party we might be able to set up a secular state that would diffuse internal conflict.
What really ended up happening:
1. Since the end of the war, iraqs oil pipelines have spent a significant amount of time *on fire* because angry people *exploded them*.
2. Instead of becoming a neutral intermediary between the sunni and shi'ites, the US forces started as a common enemy, and became a third combatant in the sectarian free for all.
an undergraduate degree in one of the "pure" sciences is close to worthless. You learn few practical skills, not even how to do research, unless you do undergrad research, which I recommend. All you've proved is that you're smart, and there are plenty of smart people with practical skills to boot...
If you love math or physics, I'd say either plan on getting graduate degree, or double major in some kind of engineering field. Computer science is popular right now, but that's not exactly an endorsement (popular = more competition = less pay). I went the CS route, but out of love for CS, not out of love for money (although the money's still pretty decent if your skills are good). Electrical engineering, aeronautical engineering, X engineering are the way to go if you want a high paying job that benefits from an undergrad degree in maths or physics.
There are a number of math jobs mentioned on other slashdot posts that don't require a PhD, but they all sound suspiciously like accounting to me, which brings up the question of why they'd hire someone with a math degree and not an accounting degree...
If all you have is a math or physics BS, you can *maybe* get a decent job, but you'd be better off teaching yourself some practical skills first, or going back to school for an engineering degree or a Phd.
is a move away from fancy graphics in some types of games that don't really benefit from them...
RPG's especially don't need spectacular graphics, and rarely use them well. Typically, square's games in particular have become fairly boring and cumbersome as the games have stopped being about gameplay and plot, and turned more and more into an engine for showing off a bunch of artwork and cinematics. Very few games in the genre (except maybe the zelda games, and to a lesser degree FFXII) used the transition to 3D to the advantage of gameplay. Most games in the genre are still the same as they used to be, but with a big clunky 3D interface that doesn't really fit.
The only games that really make since as 3D are first person shooters, which always existed as only 3D, and 3rd person platformers, which made a pretty nice transition in mario 64.
that most body and vehicle armor was moving over to ceramics. How do they compare to this technology?
who doesn't see what the big deal is with RSS feeds? Or doesn't see why they need to be included in every little application (like safari, firefox, thunderbird, etc).
Usually when I am *online* and want to look at the news from a site... I don't grab their RSS feed, I just go to their site...
It seems like an okay way of exchanging information between different sites in a very limited fashion, but that doesn't make it important or worth spending a lot of money on. It's just one more xml schema for doing something really simple... I don't understand the hype.
>Apple could probably offer a very attractive XServe indeed based on that chip
Not really... Power is different than PPC. This would essentially require that a *third* platform be supported.
Also power is for mainframe... Server's these days generally use cheap X86 boxes. Switching to the power platform would increase costs for your average xserve significantly, which would be bad since they're already pretty costly (their *min config* is 3k).
Aside from that, there would be extra R&D costs associated with putting together apple branded hardware with an IBM power architecture, and there might be problems making the servers fit in a standard rack. The power architecture has traditionally run pretty hot (how do you think they got up to 4.7ghz?) and would need extra cooling.
This is if anything a good thing. This means that the goal of getting low priced computing into the hands of children in the developing world is much closer...
The posts seem filled with criticism, but they generally seem to boil down to:
1. OMG how could Intel sell to that market segment, when like, Negroponte *totally* called it. Hay, Intel, didn't you hear him call it? He totally called it. Indeed, he has *dibs*.
2. OMG it has windows on it! Haxxors unite! With our powers of making angry posts on slashdot we can destroy the dreaded WINDOZE computron FTW!
Comments by Negroponte that Intel should be "ashamed of itself" for competing with him are *hilarious*. Anyone who thought that a small nonprofit would last long in this market with potentially enormous profits attached to it was an idiot... This is the reason why the "free market economy" isn't called the "free love funfest."
He also seems to be bitching about Intel selling at prices below what they can make a profit on, which is again pretty hilarious. This is the definition of irony.
As for windows, believe it or not, many people would like the option of running windows... The only time I've purchased a computer that couldn't boot windows was back when I used macs, and even then I sometimes wished I could run win32 games. Since then I've switch to an Ubuntu/XP combo, but I honestly don't think I could totally abandon XP. There are still too many things linux doesn't do that I need.
This is no different than any other PC. Linux will be ported to it, and if you want to run it, it will be there. For 97% of computer uses who have no desire to run linux (and who probably don't even know what linux is), it's pretty convenient that it comes with a copy of windows.
That said, the Intel laptop is higher end and higher priced than Negroponte's laptop. I suspect that this will differentiate them in the market somewhat, and be instructional in what third world countries are actually looking for in terms of computing.
The problems you point out may be real, but most of your suggestions aren't particularly practical.
In general, throwing out an existing code base is rarely a good idea. Practically speaking there's rarely a code base so bad that no part of it can be salvaged. Even when things are rewritten, it's almost always the overall structure that's just refactored by a lot of copy pasting.
Also, I'm an SML fan, but there are reasons that no one outside of academia uses SML.
1. Very few people are familiar with it. There is *no one* who has used it for a large project in the real world. I'm not saying it's untested, I'm just saying that the expertise isn't available for a given project like it is with c++ or java.
2. It doesn't support object orientation and the associated runtime polymorphism (i.e. no virtual functions). Runtime polymorphism is pretty darn handy, and it just doesn't exist in SML.
3. There are not the large extant code bases that exist in C++ and java.
Ocaml solves a few of these problems with ML, but not all of them.
As far as garbage collection goes, that would make the existing runtime *more* memory hungry, not *less*. That said, it's handy to have one, and many people *do* use garbage collectors *in c++* http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/gc/
I'd be curious to see someone write a good java browser... but I'm not sure I'd use it unless the UI was at least as snappy as firefox.
I'd hate to be accused of not FTFA'ing, but I'd hate to read an article that starts off with a picture of german chicks in bikini's and speculates that germany could experience a tourist boom because of global warming.
People are sure taking their time wising up to global warming. The responses, like this article, tend to sidestep the issue by either suggesting that "it might not be that bad in some places," or suggesting that scientists might have gotten this whole "global warming" thing wrong, after all "climate change happens."
The problem is that there's a ton of evidence for global warming, and the natural progression of climate change *is* taken into account. Furthermore the effects are going to be more significant than the temperature increasing in a few places... There is a significant risk of a *massive* rise in sea level if the west antartic ice sheet melts http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6962
at least the option of the new license board system in the original release, but I'd definitely not shell out $60 more dollars for another game.
They did the same thing with a number of other final fantasy's (7 and 10 at least) and I'm surprised that it sold... I'm hoping that now that final fantasy games are running on systems with built in harddrives, that they'll start releasing these things as downloadable content for the PS3 and xbox.
this will force them to wrap up the current story arcs coherently in a reasonable amount of time, something that almost never happens in TV. This show may actually end up making sense in the end.
Look at it this way, it's going to be way better than firefly's ending. They have a whole season to wrap up the story, and do some awesome finale.
if anyone involved cared, they could have had a police officer on campus (my high school always had an on campus officer) and that probably would have cleared up the problem. As near as I could tell, the problem with our school, and most schools that have drug or violence problems on campus (every school has an off campus problem...) is that the administrators don't know or don't care about it. Generally not knowing is an indication of not caring, or just being incompetent, or some mixture thereof.
A lot of problems in our school's exist right now because jobs like principle are really cushy, high paying, and don't have a lot of accountability (the rest of the problems I would lay on the difficulty of hiring competent teachers and firing incompetent ones with current union rules). The sort of job that attracts just the wrong sort of person. Administrators often delegate all of their responsibilities to other staff members and spend most of their time hiding out in their office doing god knows what.
>So, how long before Sun convinces Apple to include JavaFX in their version of the JRE? Last I looked you couldn't just download a JRE for MacOS X.
OSX Java SDK is downloadable in a number of places from apple's website. Prerelease versions are in their developer site ADC (requires free registration). I think the final JRE's get pushed to users automatically over the automatic update system.
What is the relationship between Apple and Sun's java? I always assumed that apple just licensed and customized Sun's sources. After all, apple really doesn't have the resources to rewrite java from scratch, and if they did it would still be a waste.
Anyway, I'd assume that OSX won't be far behind in implementing whatever class libraries and runtime stuff that SUN has. They've put a lot of effort into making OSX a nice java development environment, including adding java support to xcode (king of redundant now that eclipse is around) and writing a java wrapper around cocoa.