Could you clarify? I don't see how this is any different than the old standby FSF-endorsed mechanism of neutering the GPL -- Running your code in a separate process and using some form of IPC.
In that case, you're working through your own proprietary interface to break the viral aspect of GPL. In this case, there's a standard which, if it became popular, would make canned GPL become the default mode. There's also an efficiency difference between a service and what amounts to a runtime-bound shared library.
I would guess one reason is the old "We're ok with BSD, its the evil GPL software like Linux that we have problems with."
Well, more importantly, this creates a convenient runtime binding mechanism for neutering GPL. If you're indirecting calls through the a mechanism such as this one, you can use all the GPL code you want and not have to share any source but the GPL-side adapters.
It's a short step from here to creating staged runtime hierarchy bindings so you can even extend the GPL code directly without sharing the source for your changes.
I make games for Midway Games. Here's my perspective as a console developer...
In my mind, there's really no question about whether Java itself is useful, or whether it could clean up the development process. It is, and it could. I don't doubt that in the near future, we'll see a game system for which most games are written in Java.
The current limitations are these...
First, using a language like Java, despite all that you hear and believe, demands additional processor time and additional space. Only one or two current game systems are up to the task at present. You won't see a change until all current-production systems are up to the task, because virtually every game development house is leaving the option of a universal port open, if they're not already targeting all three major systems. Nobody likes closing their options.
Second, because game systems have typically been very restrictive in terms of RAM size and CPU power, most game developers are accustomed to working at a very low level. They're used to cycle-tuning. They want complete control over the system. Getting most to even consider C++, let alone something as far removed as Java, is an uphill battle. There's a lot of cultural baggage ("this is the way we've always done things") to shed, as well as a lot of relearning to be done. Eventually, it will probably be imperative that Java or some universal event-driven scripting toolkit is adopted. But for as long as possible, the majority of the individual established game developers - the ones who are usually in charge of complete production teams - will avoid making any fundamental changes to their tools.
Next - we work with the tools we're given. Not a one of Microsoft, Sony nor Nintendo have been pushing Java. Accordingly - most of us haven't even evaluated the possibility. The concept is far enough removed that we still joke about whether being a Java programmer is an oxymoron.
Lastly - who wants to be first? Somebody's going to have to take the plunge. Until someone who's - due to personal preference or financial incentive - just gonzo java-crazy jumps in and makes a well-performing Java-based hit, where's the guarantee that going Java is even safe? It's good in theory... but so was WinCE-based Saturn development, and you saw how many hits came from that approach. (Hint: They all have WinCE startup screens, so you'd know if you ever even saw one.)
What the reason to create *scripting* language which is as hard as C/C++ to program in? As scripting language it cannot be as fast as C/C++ language. And as C/C++ like language it cannot be as high level as other lanugages like Perl, Python, Ruby, etc.
C/C++ are only hard to program in if you do everything from scratch. You wouldn't use any of the above languages without anyone else's toolkits and libraries. Why would you do differently with C/C++?
There are string, memory, file, html, etc libraries which make C/C++ every bit as easy (some would say easier) to work with as any language you care to name. And there are more libraries available for free use than there are for all of the languages you can name combined.
On top of that, you get a huge suite of debugging tools and superior performance. Do a little research. A C/C++ environment is about the most flexible thing out there. You can turn it into anything you like.
Heh, user puts on speedpass watch and forgets he/she's wearing it and at a visit to a speedpass supported gas station, walks a wee bit too close to the pumps...
FREE GASOLINE! just not for YOU!
Amusing.:)
Although, for what it's worth - the speedpass needs to be held within a couple inches of the sensor. It's not all as fun as that.
Also, so far as I know, the only places using Speedpass are gas stations and McDonald's, where you're not likely to rack up a huge bill in a short period with a stolen pass, and Speedpass covers the loss if a unit is stolen, so long as you report it with a reasonable timeframe. And it doesn't transmit your credit card number, but rather an index which is used by a secure system to match the pass to a card. So a stolen/lost pass doesn't even compromise your credit card.
That funny. I to sometimes think that if I stare at those blinking lights long enough I would be able to discern a message. I just chalked it up to my familys history of mental illness.
But it turns out I was right all along.
Don't be so sure. We're all commenting on a kernel update story. What are you seeing!?
Re:Why are people still using a 30 year old langua
on
C
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Why are people still using a 30 year old language?
Why are people ignoring 30 years of code maturity?
Re:Why are people still using a 30 year old langua
on
C
·
· Score: 2
If you're "man enough" to write a program with no memory leaks, you've probably also written a program that can't function as part of a long-lived dynamic system.
Or you had enough common sense to implement a good debugging mode.
Storing the __LINE__ and __FILE__ compiler variables along with each allocation in your debug build, and being able to print the current state of all allocations is a no brainer. And it points to exactly the point of leakage. For a more complex project, add tags so you can check for memory of a given type left between points in your code.
You should get the idea, and adapting this to suit your memory usage mode should be pretty straightforward.
A decent programmer should be able to add this to his project and find all leaks between reading this and going home tonight. RAM leaks are a sign of a bad programmer, or a programmer too lazy to create good tools for himself.
Quit blaming your tools. Get off your ass and make the ones you're missing.
It's not that hard to hit the delete button. I get about 10 spam mails a day. It takes about 1/2 a second to read the subject, realize it's spam, and hit the delete button.
That's all well and good, until you start getting your email on your cellphone or wireless PDA, and you're paying for every byte you receive. Then, we're talking real costs beyond just the time wasted.
Even more importantly, you shouldn't have to sit and tap delete. If I'm spending half a second evaluating whether each message is legitimate or not, it's entirely probable that I'm going to accidentally delete the wrong message.
Not receiving or answering the wrong email could do serious harm to my livelihood. It could result in an unmet project requirement. In an extreme case, it could cost me my job.
1. It's simple. Menus are uncluttered and arranged intelligently. Advanced options aren't missing, they're just not mixed in with everything else. Apple pays more attention to the user interface than anyone else, and it guides its developers in doing the same. Compare Internet Explorer or Office for both Mac and Windows. By following Apple's guidelines (to a degree), Microsoft has created superior products for the Mac despite its best Windows efforts.
2. The OS and the machines are aestheticaly pleasing. PCs tend to look dull. Macs change. They remain exciting, or at least different.
3. More focus on programming "correctness." Apple periodically reinvents the OS interface to match current needs. Old functions are dropped when using the newer APIs. Choices are limited, or directed, depending on how you want to look at it. Programs end up being simpler and have fewer bugs as a result.
4. Apple has always marketed and spoken to the individual, not the company. (This is huge.)
5. Steve Jobs, brain-controlling presentation zombie.
And Mac OS X's UNIX base is just fucking cool. This is what's finally pulling me over. I picked up an old iBook for cheap to try it out, and I'm just floored. This OS is schweet!
Why is it that the software industry can have suffered from piracy for longer than most of you have been alive, but just a few years of Napster warrant stepping all over our freedom and forcing us to lose control of the hardware we purchase?
AmigaOS 4.0 is coming. While I doubt the Amiga could ever even begin to approach mainstream use, the pure PPC/G3/G4 target, OpenGL, and other mature OS features which 4.0 will bring to the table make it quite viable again. It's even fair to say it's a step up on BeOS.
I wonder if we could make enough noise to get an amiga.slashdot.org, with boing ball, nifty color scheme, and all Amiga articles front-paged, much as the apple.slashdot.org have.
Apple may provide a "perfectically good (yes i know not free) distro to the PPC" (I guess you mean Mac OS X) - but only for (not that old) Apple computers It won't run on anything else. And it probably will never.
And honestly, Mac OS X is neither targeted nor suited for the kind of application this Motorola MVME PowerPC single board computer is designed for..
Whether Darwin can or should be ported to this hardware, I don't know. Perhaps someone who knows more about the advantages and disadvantages of the Darwin/Mach microkernel architecture, compared to the monolithic NetBSD kernel for this hardware's intended use can say more.
Re:I hope CUPS has gotten better...
on
Apple Licenses CUPS
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· Score: 4, Informative
The last time I looked at CUPS (Admittedly, 2-3 years ago), it was some Pretty Awful Software.
Is it better now than it was then?
I only tried it for the first time about 6 months ago. My system was printing to my Epson Stylus 860 within about five minutes of installing the.deb.
Setup is easy and the quality is on par with Windows' output.
The author stated that attempting to install Konqueror required that he install all of the KDE environment, and that it damaged his machine.
Does Redhat not package the KDE environment in pieces? If not - why not?
With other distributions, it's been possible to install Konqueror and just the base KDE libraries for quite a long time. You should be able to fit all that you need on a handful of floppies - not a tens-of-megs RPM as the author claims.
This isn't PPC emulation, but it is PPC Mac emulation:
For Amiga users with a PPC accelerator card, there's a product called iFusion, which lets an Amiga emulate an iMac. It's reputed to work with most software, and to work more quickly than a Mac with the equivalent processor, just as AMax did with an Amiga emulating a 680x0 Mac in the late 80s.
If you ever doubted the creative insanity of the Amiga community, let this put an end end your nonbelief.
Think different? Think melting watches in half a man's derby hat on a fish.
I've completed about 400 transactions on eBay. (My feedback is 222 because people only leave feedback about half the time if you don't actively chase them down for it.)
In my experience, the 0.01% fraud rating claimed by the eBay rep is probably about right. I've only had one or two people who seemed out and out determined to screw me. That tiny number doesn't take into account the much higher clueless/careless seller factor, however.
More than 1 transaction in 10 has had a problem for me. The most common problem is bad packaging. I've received computers in boxes with no padding whatsoever. I've gotten CDs in half-opened cases with a scratch raked across the surface. I've even received cards in nothing but bubble wrap and a flexible mailer.
eBay, PayPal and the likes are absolutely worthless about helping in cases where something arrives, but doesn't work. Sellers who promise to ship with insurance usually don't, or aren't helpful about your filing a claim. They have their money, and so they want to be done with you.
You just have to figure out what the failure rate is, and be sure you're bidding low enough to compensate. Me, I won't bid more than 90% of what I think something is worth, and I won't bid on something I absolutely need soon.
The feedback system also isn't nearly as valuable as it seems. People are afraid to give bad feedback unless the other person has already left their feedback, otherwise, they're guaranteed to get negative feedback in turn. It's actually in a person's personal best interest to leave no feedback at all when a transaction has gone bad, and I suspect the scammers know this, and don't leave the initial feedback accordingly.
In the old days of ebay, you didn't need to enter an auction number to leave positive feedback; only for negative feedback.
I used to leave positive feedback for strangers as a joke - "Cuba makes the best! thanks!!!" for a cigar seller, "you're right! your bowling pin trophy looks great on my headboard - thanks!" for a stylish furniture seller, "hang in there! FUNNY poster! poor kitten!" for a guy selling skulls and such, etc., etc.
Around that time, other people were too busy for such fun and nonsense, creating networks of accounts, all of which were leaving each other positive feedback. It was possible to have an account with a lengthy history of perfect feedback, even though a transaction had never been completed.
Many of these accounts were weeded out, some because they were used for fraud, others because people spotted ones with all the feedback happening in a couple days' time and asked questions.
But the requirement for an auction existing to match positive feedback left was only added about two years ago. I'm betting hundreds more bogus positive accounts exist and are sitting idle, waiting to be used...
Slashdot Mirror
It's a short step from here to creating staged runtime hierarchy bindings so you can even extend the GPL code directly without sharing the source for your changes.
ps - for Midway, you have to click here instead. No idea what the hell's going on with www.midwaygames.com dns resolution. It used to work.
In my mind, there's really no question about whether Java itself is useful, or whether it could clean up the development process. It is, and it could. I don't doubt that in the near future, we'll see a game system for which most games are written in Java.
The current limitations are these...
First, using a language like Java, despite all that you hear and believe, demands additional processor time and additional space. Only one or two current game systems are up to the task at present. You won't see a change until all current-production systems are up to the task, because virtually every game development house is leaving the option of a universal port open, if they're not already targeting all three major systems. Nobody likes closing their options.
Second, because game systems have typically been very restrictive in terms of RAM size and CPU power, most game developers are accustomed to working at a very low level. They're used to cycle-tuning. They want complete control over the system. Getting most to even consider C++, let alone something as far removed as Java, is an uphill battle. There's a lot of cultural baggage ("this is the way we've always done things") to shed, as well as a lot of relearning to be done. Eventually, it will probably be imperative that Java or some universal event-driven scripting toolkit is adopted. But for as long as possible, the majority of the individual established game developers - the ones who are usually in charge of complete production teams - will avoid making any fundamental changes to their tools.
Next - we work with the tools we're given. Not a one of Microsoft, Sony nor Nintendo have been pushing Java. Accordingly - most of us haven't even evaluated the possibility. The concept is far enough removed that we still joke about whether being a Java programmer is an oxymoron.
Lastly - who wants to be first? Somebody's going to have to take the plunge. Until someone who's - due to personal preference or financial incentive - just gonzo java-crazy jumps in and makes a well-performing Java-based hit, where's the guarantee that going Java is even safe? It's good in theory... but so was WinCE-based Saturn development, and you saw how many hits came from that approach. (Hint: They all have WinCE startup screens, so you'd know if you ever even saw one.)
C/C++ are only hard to program in if you do everything from scratch. You wouldn't use any of the above languages without anyone else's toolkits and libraries. Why would you do differently with C/C++?
There are string, memory, file, html, etc libraries which make C/C++ every bit as easy (some would say easier) to work with as any language you care to name. And there are more libraries available for free use than there are for all of the languages you can name combined.
On top of that, you get a huge suite of debugging tools and superior performance. Do a little research. A C/C++ environment is about the most flexible thing out there. You can turn it into anything you like.
Although, for what it's worth - the speedpass needs to be held within a couple inches of the sensor. It's not all as fun as that.
Also, so far as I know, the only places using Speedpass are gas stations and McDonald's, where you're not likely to rack up a huge bill in a short period with a stolen pass, and Speedpass covers the loss if a unit is stolen, so long as you report it with a reasonable timeframe. And it doesn't transmit your credit card number, but rather an index which is used by a secure system to match the pass to a card. So a stolen/lost pass doesn't even compromise your credit card.
Storing the __LINE__ and __FILE__ compiler variables along with each allocation in your debug build, and being able to print the current state of all allocations is a no brainer. And it points to exactly the point of leakage. For a more complex project, add tags so you can check for memory of a given type left between points in your code.
You should get the idea, and adapting this to suit your memory usage mode should be pretty straightforward.
A decent programmer should be able to add this to his project and find all leaks between reading this and going home tonight. RAM leaks are a sign of a bad programmer, or a programmer too lazy to create good tools for himself.
Quit blaming your tools. Get off your ass and make the ones you're missing.
Microwave pain devices, crowd stunners, directed painful noise producers, movement inhibitors, etc.
What's happening to our right to protest? Didn't we used to have a voice?
Not receiving or answering the wrong email could do serious harm to my livelihood. It could result in an unmet project requirement. In an extreme case, it could cost me my job.
2. The OS and the machines are aestheticaly pleasing. PCs tend to look dull. Macs change. They remain exciting, or at least different.
3. More focus on programming "correctness." Apple periodically reinvents the OS interface to match current needs. Old functions are dropped when using the newer APIs. Choices are limited, or directed, depending on how you want to look at it. Programs end up being simpler and have fewer bugs as a result.
4. Apple has always marketed and spoken to the individual, not the company. (This is huge.)
5. Steve Jobs, brain-controlling presentation zombie.
And Mac OS X's UNIX base is just fucking cool. This is what's finally pulling me over. I picked up an old iBook for cheap to try it out, and I'm just floored. This OS is schweet!
Why is it that the software industry can have suffered from piracy for longer than most of you have been alive, but just a few years of Napster warrant stepping all over our freedom and forcing us to lose control of the hardware we purchase?
I wonder if we could make enough noise to get an amiga.slashdot.org, with boing ball, nifty color scheme, and all Amiga articles front-paged, much as the apple.slashdot.org have.
Whether Darwin can or should be ported to this hardware, I don't know. Perhaps someone who knows more about the advantages and disadvantages of the Darwin/Mach microkernel architecture, compared to the monolithic NetBSD kernel for this hardware's intended use can say more.
Setup is easy and the quality is on par with Windows' output.
Does Redhat not package the KDE environment in pieces? If not - why not?
With other distributions, it's been possible to install Konqueror and just the base KDE libraries for quite a long time. You should be able to fit all that you need on a handful of floppies - not a tens-of-megs RPM as the author claims.
This made much more sense when most people had analog dialups and few people had CD-ROM burners.
For Amiga users with a PPC accelerator card, there's a product called iFusion, which lets an Amiga emulate an iMac. It's reputed to work with most software, and to work more quickly than a Mac with the equivalent processor, just as AMax did with an Amiga emulating a 680x0 Mac in the late 80s.
If you ever doubted the creative insanity of the Amiga community, let this put an end end your nonbelief.
Think different? Think melting watches in half a man's derby hat on a fish.
Where are Suns being used as something other than a server? Are there business sectors where Sun workstations are common?
I thought SGI pretty much owned the UNIX workstation market.
No, feedback from accounts which were closed revertedt o neutral. Feedback from accounts which are still open still counts as positive.
I feel abject shame. :(
In my experience, the 0.01% fraud rating claimed by the eBay rep is probably about right. I've only had one or two people who seemed out and out determined to screw me. That tiny number doesn't take into account the much higher clueless/careless seller factor, however.
More than 1 transaction in 10 has had a problem for me. The most common problem is bad packaging. I've received computers in boxes with no padding whatsoever. I've gotten CDs in half-opened cases with a scratch raked across the surface. I've even received cards in nothing but bubble wrap and a flexible mailer.
eBay, PayPal and the likes are absolutely worthless about helping in cases where something arrives, but doesn't work. Sellers who promise to ship with insurance usually don't, or aren't helpful about your filing a claim. They have their money, and so they want to be done with you.
You just have to figure out what the failure rate is, and be sure you're bidding low enough to compensate. Me, I won't bid more than 90% of what I think something is worth, and I won't bid on something I absolutely need soon.
The feedback system also isn't nearly as valuable as it seems. People are afraid to give bad feedback unless the other person has already left their feedback, otherwise, they're guaranteed to get negative feedback in turn. It's actually in a person's personal best interest to leave no feedback at all when a transaction has gone bad, and I suspect the scammers know this, and don't leave the initial feedback accordingly.
I used to leave positive feedback for strangers as a joke - "Cuba makes the best! thanks!!!" for a cigar seller, "you're right! your bowling pin trophy looks great on my headboard - thanks!" for a stylish furniture seller, "hang in there! FUNNY poster! poor kitten!" for a guy selling skulls and such, etc., etc.
Around that time, other people were too busy for such fun and nonsense, creating networks of accounts, all of which were leaving each other positive feedback. It was possible to have an account with a lengthy history of perfect feedback, even though a transaction had never been completed.
Many of these accounts were weeded out, some because they were used for fraud, others because people spotted ones with all the feedback happening in a couple days' time and asked questions.
But the requirement for an auction existing to match positive feedback left was only added about two years ago. I'm betting hundreds more bogus positive accounts exist and are sitting idle, waiting to be used...