"What I think is that whilst the language itself isn't really going anywhere fast, the idea behind it will live on."
What do you mean that it is not going anywhere fast? It is rapidly gaining market share in the enterprise markets (Servlets, JSP's, EJB's, and Application Servers). In some markets, Java programming skills are in more demand than C++ and Visual Basic. In mobile devices, most of the major vendors are providing Java support.
"Personally, writing things like foo.insertanobjectattheendofthislist(object) doesn't really appeal to my sense of elegence, but some people obviously need reminding exactly what each method does. "
How does the language force you to choose method names like this? If you want to name methods with short, non-descriptive names that thwart the efforts of subsequent maintainers, the language places no restrictions on you.
"I expect C# to go places Java never will. It's a better language design IMHO, and it'll be a genuine standard, not a stick for Sun to beat their competitors with."
An important question to ask is, what parts will be standardized, and will enough be standardized such that you can easily write applications that can be moved from Windows to Linux to Solaris with out significant (or even any) porting. Given MS's past behavior, I am very skeptical. I think that C# is a thinly veiled version of Java that MS can control, and that it is likely that *they* will use it as a stick to beat their competitors with.
The job of the Federal Government is to make sure that companies play by the rules. When companies play by the rules, we have a fair marketplace. If the federal government does not enforce the rules, they are worthless, and we have the *possibility* of an unfair marketplace, and companies' innovations do not have a chance.
If a thug came up to you and started beating on you (breaking the rules), would you object to the police coming up and stopping them?
"Putting you child into one of these places where they are abandoned in a crib surrounded by the cries of all thier peers is just cruel."
While the type of daycare you describe certainly exists, it is far from the norm. Usually the state government has rules for the teacher to child ratio, dependant on age, as well as the state of the facility. Also, it is not hard to pick out these types of facilities when you visit them. If you encounter one like this, don't send your kids there.
The child care centers that we have used for our children are VERY good. The teachers are dedicated and well trained, the children have safe places to play (i.e. be a kid), but they also learn a lot. These facilities are a far cry from the ones you describe. Either all or most facilities in your area are as you describe (don't you have state regulations governing this?), or you are using scare tactics to reinforce your own decisions on how to raise your children.
"Very few women I know really like the 'liberation' and 'empowerment' of work."
Then the women that you know are much different than the ones I know. This is a matter of the individual. Some women do well at being a stay-at-home mom; there are also good stay-at-home dads. However, not everyone is suited for this, and many do find fulfillment in work outside the home. Don't try to make all women and families fit into one mold.
It will be interesting to see the effect that this has on customer trust, both on MS's stance on using Outlook securely, and on customers trust that MS's code base has not been hacked.
Regarding Outlook, MS's stance has been that Outlook itself is not a security risk, its just that users must be careful about what they execute. Now that they themselves have fallen victim to Outlook's vulnerabilties, customers must take this threat more seriously. The same type of exploit could result in your company's intellectual property being stolen, or in your law firm's strategy for a trial being known ahead of time, or in your government's secrets being stolen. A rogue nation could use such an exploit to infect millions of computers, and then to disable them all at once; this would be a huge economic blow!
If there is a possiblity that MS's code base has been hacked, can it be trusted? Will it be used at the US CIA, FBI or Department of Defense if there is any doubt? Might there be a danger that hacked MS code will send sensitive information to people that should not see it, or send passwords so that such information can be more easily obtained?
I believe that this incident will be a real eye-opener about the damage that is possible with such an exploit. Any one who denies it is either ignorant, has their head in the sand, or will stand to lose profit if people realize the risk.
The web page doesn't say if the robot car must run in race conditions, i.e. in traffic and changing track conditions (oil and rain on track, changing temperatures, changing wind). For unexpected situations, it would be hard to match any human.
I believe it was Juan Manuel Fangio (3-time World Champion in the 50's) that came upon an accident on the far side of a blind corner. However, even though he could not possibly see that the accident had happened, he slowed down before entering the corner and avoided the accident. How did he do it? He noticed the fans in the stands (who could see the accident) were all turned toward the accident, rather than watching his approaching car, thus signalling that something was amiss! Let's see a computer do that!
"But what about violent crime in gun-free London going out of control because you can be sure to be able to do a housebreak or a mugging without encountering a gun?"
Question: What is the per-capita rate of death by gun in the UK. As I recall, it is an order of magnitude lower than in the US. I bet that they would rather have the problem of house break-ins going up than having the murder rate that we have here in the US.
Why should it matter how many applications are written for/depend on Windows. Is Microsoft trying to say that if they are broken up these applications will be at risk? Are the Microsoft OS's suddenly going to go away?
This issue is irrelevant to the central issue of Microsoft being an abusive monopoly, and whether they should be broken up to prevent future abuses.
"Javalobby stats should not be trusted - my experience is that Javalobby has the lowest collective IQ of any community tech site on the web, and their articles are typically mindless advocacy with no useful data."
Funny, that's just what they say on JavaLobby about Slashdot;)
"I hope you can do better than that. Is this the same army that still uses Ada?"
Excuse me, the original poster asked him to name one product that uses Jini. He did so and now you say thats not good enough? For your information, the army has some pretty stringent requirements in the area they are applying Jini. They are targeting TOC's (Tactical Operations Centers) that are the brains of any size army unit. TOC's have to be very maneuverable; they must be ready to move within 20 minutes of being told to do so, and must be able to set up within 30 minutes of arriving at a new locations. With dozens of networked computers, the ability to plug them in and have them just work (provided by Jini) is a big plus, and not available via any other connection system.
Its easy to say something is dead. Giving a detailed analysis backing up this claim is more difficult. I doubt the poster could do it. Saying 'name one commercial application that uses it' is not enough (By the way, Mimio uses it on one of their new internet whiteboard products). How many applications can you name that use [fill in low level middleware product, such as CORBA]?
Re:A Better Written article on Why X-Windows is Ba
on
X Windows Must Die!
·
· Score: 1
"Don Box is a migrant user interface designer and graphics programmer. Don received a BSCS degree from the University of Maryland while working as a researcher at the Human Computer Interaction Lab. Don has worked at UniPress Software, Sun Microsystems, the Turing Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Kaleida Labs, and Interval Research. He ported SimCity to NeWS and X11 for DUX Software."
I think you meant to type 'Don Hopkins' here. The Don Box that I know of has a completely different resume, and was one of the founders of DevelopMentor. They mostly teach classes in MS programming, but have recently branched off into Java as well.
"Oh, and it's kinda silly to say that J++ isn't in widespread use."
I think that the most you can say about J++ is that it has been widely distributed, since it is distributed with Visual Studio with VB, VC++, etc. However, I have seen very little evidence that there is much usage of J++. Part of this is aversion to anything Microsoft, part of this is due to standards non-compliance, some of this is due to non-support of Java 1.2.
"Perhaps one day the entire world will be as safe as Washington, D.C. and other officially disarmed zones."
Local gun laws are destined to be ineffective. What good is it to outlaw guns in Washington DC or any other local area when there is nothing to prevent you from buying tons of guns where it is allowed and transporting them. Just across the Potomac River from DC in Virginia, you can buy a large number of guns and then drive into DC and sell them. Hard to prevent that.
A better measure of the effectiveness of these laws might be where the above scenario (buying them where it is legal and transporting them) is more difficult. Compare gun crime in the UK with the US. Deaths by gun in the UK are an order of magnitude less than in the US. I have a friend who was going to school in Oxford, and he witnessed a drug bust at the house next door. The police did the whole thing without guns, since the chance that the druggies had guns was remote. My friend certainly felt more safe, knowing that this was the case.
There are other countries where this is the case. Perhaps/. readers from those countries could chime in with the types of laws that they have, and the rate of deaths due to the gun?
I think the key point here is that the consumer should determine whether a product is successful or not. At times, Microsoft has worked to take this choice out of the consumers hands to avoid competing. One example is Netscape: when IE first came out, it was inferior to Netscape. However, by using its monopoly power, Microsoft forced vendors to stop offering Netscape with their products by threatening to raise the license costs for Windows. This cut off a key distribution channel for the product, and fewer people were able to try Netscape without the pain of a download and install. In addition, Intel, Apple, and IBM were threatened with similar action unless they curbed their development or sales of products that Microsoft felt were a threat.
Not only did these actions put dampers on products competing in the marketplace, they also discouraged others from trying to build innovative products, because they knew Microsoft was acting as a gatekeeper. This does not benefit the consumer.
A presentation on this subject was made at JavaOne. The PDF file with the slides can be found at http://industry.java.sun.com/javaone/99/event/0,17 68,742,00.html
Slashdot Mirror
"What I think is that whilst the language itself isn't really going anywhere fast, the idea behind it will live on."
What do you mean that it is not going anywhere fast? It is rapidly gaining market share in the enterprise markets (Servlets, JSP's, EJB's, and Application Servers). In some markets, Java programming skills are in more demand than C++ and Visual Basic. In mobile devices, most of the major vendors are providing Java support.
"Personally, writing things like foo.insertanobjectattheendofthislist(object) doesn't really appeal to my sense of elegence, but some people obviously need reminding exactly what each method does. "
How does the language force you to choose method names like this? If you want to name methods with short, non-descriptive names that thwart the efforts of subsequent maintainers, the language places no restrictions on you.
"I expect C# to go places Java never will. It's a better language design IMHO, and it'll be a genuine standard, not a stick for Sun to beat their competitors with."
An important question to ask is, what parts will be standardized, and will enough be standardized such that you can easily write applications that can be moved from Windows to Linux to Solaris with out significant (or even any) porting. Given MS's past behavior, I am very skeptical. I think that C# is a thinly veiled version of Java that MS can control, and that it is likely that *they* will use it as a stick to beat their competitors with.
The job of the Federal Government is to make sure that companies play by the rules. When companies play by the rules, we have a fair marketplace. If the federal government does not enforce the rules, they are worthless, and we have the *possibility* of an unfair marketplace, and companies' innovations do not have a chance.
If a thug came up to you and started beating on you (breaking the rules), would you object to the police coming up and stopping them?
"Putting you child into one of these places where they are abandoned in a crib surrounded by the cries of all thier peers is just cruel."
While the type of daycare you describe certainly exists, it is far from the norm. Usually the state government has rules for the teacher to child ratio, dependant on age, as well as the state of the facility. Also, it is not hard to pick out these types of facilities when you visit them. If you encounter one like this, don't send your kids there.
The child care centers that we have used for our children are VERY good. The teachers are dedicated and well trained, the children have safe places to play (i.e. be a kid), but they also learn a lot. These facilities are a far cry from the ones you describe. Either all or most facilities in your area are as you describe (don't you have state regulations governing this?), or you are using scare tactics to reinforce your own decisions on how to raise your children.
"Very few women I know really like the 'liberation' and 'empowerment' of work."
Then the women that you know are much different than the ones I know. This is a matter of the individual. Some women do well at being a stay-at-home mom; there are also good stay-at-home dads. However, not everyone is suited for this, and many do find fulfillment in work outside the home. Don't try to make all women and families fit into one mold.
It will be interesting to see the effect that this has on customer trust, both on MS's stance on using Outlook securely, and on customers trust that MS's code base has not been hacked.
Regarding Outlook, MS's stance has been that Outlook itself is not a security risk, its just that users must be careful about what they execute. Now that they themselves have fallen victim to Outlook's vulnerabilties, customers must take this threat more seriously. The same type of exploit could result in your company's intellectual property being stolen, or in your law firm's strategy for a trial being known ahead of time, or in your government's secrets being stolen. A rogue nation could use such an exploit to infect millions of computers, and then to disable them all at once; this would be a huge economic blow!
If there is a possiblity that MS's code base has been hacked, can it be trusted? Will it be used at the US CIA, FBI or Department of Defense if there is any doubt? Might there be a danger that hacked MS code will send sensitive information to people that should not see it, or send passwords so that such information can be more easily obtained?
I believe that this incident will be a real eye-opener about the damage that is possible with such an exploit. Any one who denies it is either ignorant, has their head in the sand, or will stand to lose profit if people realize the risk.
The web page doesn't say if the robot car must run in race conditions, i.e. in traffic and changing track conditions (oil and rain on track, changing temperatures, changing wind). For unexpected situations, it would be hard to match any human.
I believe it was Juan Manuel Fangio (3-time World Champion in the 50's) that came upon an accident on the far side of a blind corner. However, even though he could not possibly see that the accident had happened, he slowed down before entering the corner and avoided the accident. How did he do it? He noticed the fans in the stands (who could see the accident) were all turned toward the accident, rather than watching his approaching car, thus signalling that something was amiss! Let's see a computer do that!
"But what about violent crime in gun-free London going out of control because you can be sure to be able to do a housebreak or a mugging without encountering a gun?"
Question: What is the per-capita rate of death by gun in the UK. As I recall, it is an order of magnitude lower than in the US. I bet that they would rather have the problem of house break-ins going up than having the murder rate that we have here in the US.
I've already got Sun's 1.3.0 release JDK installed on my system. How can I make mozilla use the JRE that the JDK contains?
Why should it matter how many applications are written for/depend on Windows. Is Microsoft trying to say that if they are broken up these applications will be at risk? Are the Microsoft OS's suddenly going to go away?
This issue is irrelevant to the central issue of Microsoft being an abusive monopoly, and whether they should be broken up to prevent future abuses.
"Javalobby stats should not be trusted - my experience is that Javalobby has the lowest collective IQ of any community tech site on the web, and their articles are typically mindless advocacy with no useful data."
;)
Funny, that's just what they say on JavaLobby about Slashdot
"I hope you can do better than that. Is this the same army that still uses Ada?"
Excuse me, the original poster asked him to name one product that uses Jini. He did so and now you say thats not good enough? For your information, the army has some pretty stringent requirements in the area they are applying Jini. They are targeting TOC's (Tactical Operations Centers) that are the brains of any size army unit. TOC's have to be very maneuverable; they must be ready to move within 20 minutes of being told to do so, and must be able to set up within 30 minutes of arriving at a new locations. With dozens of networked computers, the ability to plug them in and have them just work (provided by Jini) is a big plus, and not available via any other connection system.
Its easy to say something is dead. Giving a detailed analysis backing up this claim is more difficult. I doubt the poster could do it. Saying 'name one commercial application that uses it' is not enough (By the way, Mimio uses it on one of their new internet whiteboard products). How many applications can you name that use [fill in low level middleware product, such as CORBA]?
"Don Box is a migrant user interface designer and graphics programmer. Don received a BSCS degree from the University of Maryland while working as a researcher at the Human Computer Interaction Lab. Don has worked at UniPress Software, Sun Microsystems, the Turing Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Kaleida Labs, and Interval Research. He ported SimCity to NeWS and X11 for DUX Software."
I think you meant to type 'Don Hopkins' here. The Don Box that I know of has a completely different resume, and was one of the founders of DevelopMentor. They mostly teach classes in MS programming, but have recently branched off into Java as well.
"Oh, and it's kinda silly to say that J++ isn't in widespread use."
I think that the most you can say about J++ is that it has been widely distributed, since it is distributed with Visual Studio with VB, VC++, etc. However, I have seen very little evidence that there is much usage of J++. Part of this is aversion to anything Microsoft, part of this is due to standards non-compliance, some of this is due to non-support of Java 1.2.
"Perhaps one day the entire world will be as safe as Washington, D.C. and other officially disarmed zones."
/. readers from those countries could chime in with the types of laws that they have, and the rate of deaths due to the gun?
Local gun laws are destined to be ineffective. What good is it to outlaw guns in Washington DC or any other local area when there is nothing to prevent you from buying tons of guns where it is allowed and transporting them. Just across the Potomac River from DC in Virginia, you can buy a large number of guns and then drive into DC and sell them. Hard to prevent that.
A better measure of the effectiveness of these laws might be where the above scenario (buying them where it is legal and transporting them) is more difficult. Compare gun crime in the UK with the US. Deaths by gun in the UK are an order of magnitude less than in the US. I have a friend who was going to school in Oxford, and he witnessed a drug bust at the house next door. The police did the whole thing without guns, since the chance that the druggies had guns was remote. My friend certainly felt more safe, knowing that this was the case.
There are other countries where this is the case. Perhaps
65000? Hmm, might there be more and they just used a short integer? ;-)
Could you please submit this to the LA Times?
I think the key point here is that the consumer should determine whether a product is successful or not. At times, Microsoft has worked to take this choice out of the consumers hands to avoid competing. One example is Netscape: when IE first came out, it was inferior to Netscape. However, by using its monopoly power, Microsoft forced vendors to stop offering Netscape with their products by threatening to raise the license costs for Windows. This cut off a key distribution channel for the product, and fewer people were able to try Netscape without the pain of a download and install. In addition, Intel, Apple, and IBM were threatened with similar action unless they curbed their development or sales of products that Microsoft felt were a threat.
Not only did these actions put dampers on products competing in the marketplace, they also discouraged others from trying to build innovative products, because they knew Microsoft was acting as a gatekeeper. This does not benefit the consumer.
This is the real crime of Microsoft.
A presentation on this subject was made at JavaOne. The PDF file with the slides can be found at http://industry.java.sun.com/javaone/99/event/0,17 68,742,00.html
I like "How do you want to get taken today?"