Does anyone know of a study about how much fuel / passenger various types of transportation methods use? I mean, for a given distance, how much energy is used to get one passenger from A to B for planes vs. trains. vs. cars vs. ships? I know this varies by type of plane etc. but some kind of ballpark figures would be interesting. One would think a train at 350km/h is much more fuel-efficient than a plane at 900km/h but who knows.. For short trips when a proportionally large amount of time is spent on crowded airports and during takeoff and landings, the time difference should also not be so significant vs a train that gets you from A to B without delays and without holding patterns.
In slightly unrelated news, be sure to checkout Microsoft's upcoming train sim at http://www.microsoft.com/games/trainsim ! It looks like something every train fan out there would dream of!
I'm from Finland and I welcome some warming. 5-6 extra degrees would be lovely! What I'm worried about is how the heating affects the earth in a larger perspective. Extra heat means polar ice caps and other large perpetual ice-areas will melt. That would mean the seas rise, except that increased heat also means that more water is evaporated (probably not the correct techical term) and form clouds, which then means more rain... somewhere.. The end result could be that strong sea currents stop or reverse and that we actually get colder weather in parts of the world because of this. Dramatically colder in some cases. I'm pretty sure just about any part of the world (except maybe Singapore;) could handle an extra 5 degrees of heat but can Scandinavia handle the end of the Golf current? What happens when it starts raining daily in the Sahara? What happens to Miami when hurricanes are a daily occurance? That's what *I* am worried about.
I agree. Really, who, except Linux users really care? This may seem like a flamebait but seriously, I'd say 99% of Windows users don't even KNOW what open source is, much less would they care if the source was open or not. I'm a software engineer and I sure as hell have better things to do with my time than look at 50 megs of browser and OS source code after work.
It runs exclusively on Windows and Mac, and the Mac version (and the rare non-x86 Windows versions)
Windows, Mac, HP-UX and Solaris, if memory serves. And even if we forget the UNIX versions, which might have dubious quality, that still covers some 95+% of all computers in the world.. "exclusively" is a little misleading when only a marginal amount of hardcore, impossible to please open source fans are "left out" (that would choose NOT to run the browser anyway, even if it was available for their platform).
are not often compatable with IE specific content because IE specific content usually relies on x86 ActiveX
What?! That's complete rubbish. Hardly any sites use ActiveX. I use IE (except when I'm trying out Mozilla builds) and I have it set to warn me about ActiveX and I don't remember that I would EVER have come across a site that uses ActiveX! If you're going to diss a browser and you are using 3 points to do this, you could at least come up with something remotely based on reality. That was just a plain lie.
It extends the HTML standard encouraging authors to use this to the detriment of compatability with other content.
HTML? Not really, except MARQUEE (sp?) maybe, but then Netscape has BLINK and Lynx lacks support for 90% of HTML so that's not really the big problem you're making it out to be. What is a little more worrying is the document object model and CSS support, which just plain sucks on *EVERY* single browser including Mozilla and even the latest Opera version. Even in CSS, the support IE has is the best, IMHO, but you are right in that a little too much "innovation" has been made in this area. However, given the current state of CSS support and scripting standardization in general, I think it's a little unfair to single Microsoft out. At least they have the best CSS support out there right now. If you're so desperate to boycot a browser, go after Netscape Communicator 4.x and start hacking on Mozilla.
I saw this movie a couple of months ago and I definitely recommend it. It's very funny and entertaining. The style is relatively unique; maybe something of a cross between Pulp Fiction and Trainspotting or something like that. If you like this movie, also be sure to check out Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, which is also by Guy Ritchie.
Re:time as a fourth dimension
on
Stop, Light.
·
· Score: 2
I forgot to mention one thing.. If photons move in both the direction of time AND in some 3D spatial direction (with the speed C), then their total speed is HIGHER than C, isn't it?
time as a fourth dimension
on
Stop, Light.
·
· Score: 3
Think about a football field that is 100 meters from end to end. Now think of a guy that runs in a straight line from one end to the other, along the sidelines. If he runs 10 meters per second, it takes him 10 seconds to run the entire length of the field. Now make the guy run from one corner to the other. He still runs at 10 meters per second, but it will take him more than 10 seconds to reach the other end. By spending some of his motion in the width-direction of the field, his motion in the direction of the length of the field becomes slower.
Think for a moment that time works just like a spatial dimension. You have a specific absolute speed in a specific direction.. time. When you start moving to some spatial dimension (one of the three traditional ones), your motion in the direction of time becomes slower because you are no longer fully "commited" in that direction.
Now think about photons. They move with ALL of their speed in some spatial dimension. Does this mean that photons stand still in time? If you slow down light, does this mean that time actually starts ticking for them? Could it be that the fading of the light has something to do with the fact that time runs for them? If they are in an absolute vacuum, light doesn't fade because time stands still, no matter how far you shine the light. Introduce "dust" and it slows down and fades.
I'm sure my theory is very flawed but I'm not exactly sure at what point. I mean time DOES slow down when you move, but am I looking at this the wrong way?
As I understand it, this would make it possible to create light transistors that switch by shining light into the transistor. AFAIK, this isn't possible at the moment. Obviously, you could flip mirrors or something, but that means you have something mechanical, which defeats the purpose. Does anyone know enough about light driven transistors to verify this?
I know that ASP gets much more complicated, but the same principle applies that it isn't too difficult to do standard stuff that can work in most browsers.
*sigh* ASP, like JSP, PHP and Perl CGI works by generating HTML on the server, which is then sent to the browser. It's not like some weird ASP code is sent to Netscape, and Netscape gets confused and doesn't know what to do. From a browser point of view, there is absolutely no difference between ASP and plain static HTML files - the browser still gets plain HTML.
Sure, Java has it's drawbacks (hint: where is UDP?), but it has a lot more positives than negatives, in my opinion.
UDP? As in UDP/IP? It's right there with the rest of the networking classes: java.net in such classes as DatagramSocket, DatagramPacket and DatagramSocketImpl.
That's such crap! The only people interested in dynamic content are those pushing the tools to create it.
Are you on drugs? Dynamic content and JSP is not about flashy applets dancing on the screen. It's about HTML that is created on the fly. Like... umm.. well, slashdot.org comes to mind. e-Bay comes to mind. Amazon.com comes to mind. About a gazillion other database driven sites come to mind.
Even if you don't have dynamic content, it makes a lot of sense to use something like JSP, PHP or ASP (or why not Perl), because it allows you to separate the actual content from the template. If you do a re-design of the site and you have 50000 pages, it's easier to just change one template than to do some silly Perl script that does a search-and-replace on all of your 50000 html files, complete with re-building navigation etc.
Yes, you can misuse "dynamic content" but that's hardly a reason to say that "the only people interested in dynamic content are those pushing tools to create it". THAT is garbage.
Asking "Is the United States still the best choice of a place to live for safety, freedom, and quality of life?" is definitely flamebait and this sort of question can not result in a serious discussion without all kinds of bigotry. I'm sure many people will see this post as very anti US and anti gun. This is not the case however. As a matter of fact I enjoy sport shooting a lot and I just got back from a vacation in the USA (San Francisco & Las Vegas). I like the USA a lot but it certainly isn't paradise.
Having said this, I want to say that the question I just quoted is pretty bizarre. Was the USA *ever* the choice for safety, freedom and quality of life? I mean safety!?!? Where else in the world do kids shoot other kids in school? There's a mass killing every week or so when some madman starts playing real-life Quake at work!
Freedom? I never understood why people in the USA think their country is so free. Just about every European country is at least as free and many are much more so (the Netherlands and Denmark quickly come to mind). It seems to me that the only thing that is really more free in the USA than elsewhere is easy access to guns. You can own guns in most other countries too though, so go figure.
Quality of life? Canada comes up on top in the UN quality of life evaluations all the time and are closely followed by many European countries such as Finland, Norway and Sweden.
Myself, I'm from Finland and I consider it a very nice country. One noticeable thing I see a lot in the USA that we don't have here is a type of fear for "big brother" and "the government". I think it has to do with the size of the country. Here, most people have friends or relatives that work or have worked in some government function at some point. We see the government as "us" - not as "them". It's not "they pass laws" - it's "we pass laws".
If you think things are getting out of hand in the USA and want to move, I cound recommend just about any European country. For those fearing the cold, there's much more cold and snow on the east coast of USA right now than there is here in Finland.:)
What I find interesting is how Mozilla (the guys working on the browser) doesn't consider the code to be release worthy until in about six months. Netscape on the other hand considers it ok enough to ship. With an attitude like that with complete disregard of the lack of quality right now, no wonder IE is stomping all over them and no wonder 4.0 sucked as bad as it did.
I was one of those who was all-out for XPFE and Raptor (also known as NG layout, also known as Gecko) becoming the base for the new browser back when that was an issue. Now I'm starting to think that maybe the optimized table-rendering + some other tweaks (like not re-loading from the cache when a window is resized) would have been a better strategy for a 5.0 release. A slightly improved rendering engine from 4.x and what was then known as Aurora (now re-appearing as the sidebar) would have been enough to push Netscape to the point where many people could have used it as the #1 browser until 6.0 came with the new technology.
The way it is now, IE 5.5 is *so* far ahead of 4.x that there's no way anyone except those with a serious anti MS handicap and those without a choice would use the Netscape browser for surfing. Netscape 6.0 is a step *back* from 4.x. Opera and a couple of other products are showing promise but the "best viewed with xxxxx" attitude the web has (which is not quite as bad anymore, compared to two years ago) kind of rules them out because so many sites are broken for them due to JavaScript and similar breakage.
Here's hoping that Mozilla 1.0 will not be released until it's ready, stable, performs well and looks good!
No. XHTML is not aimed at PDA's. XHTML is an XML-ified version of HTML 4. It does a lot of cleanup and makes the whole thing much saner. It also divides up HTML into various profiles, of which one is very "correct" in the sense that it doesn't have FONT, CENTER etc. tags. Instead, all styling is done with CSS, which is *very* good.
What XHTML has to do with WAP is that the WAP Forum has announced that WAP 2.0 will essentially be XHTML. So it's WAP that is adapting itself (thank God!!) to XHTML. It's not XHTML which is for PDA's.
WAP is one of the worst cases of re-inventing the wheel ever, so this is a good thing - that I agree on!
Uh no. The standard libs are VERY platform dependent as they wrap around things such as sockets, the windows gui with buttons, windows, scrollbars etc., graphics, sound, threads.. All of that is completely different on each platform. It will NOT fall into place in fact it's the exact opposite.
I recently saw a presentation by Microsoft about.NET and they said something along the lines of:
"Interestingly, because we [Microsoft] are standardizing the common language runtime with a standards body [ECMA], they will *require* us to do two reference implementations. One of them will obviously be Windows (NT + 9x) but the other will be some 'open source' operating system, such as BSD."
Then he stopped, paused for 10 seconds and said "or Linux..". Paused for another 10 seconds and said "or possibly even both".
I asked if standardizing and thus implementing the common language runtime on BSD/Linux would mean just the runtime or also the standard libraries and to that, he replied that it just meant the common language runtime (the equivalent of having the JVM standardized and ported but not the Java core API). He continued that he was very sure the open source community would quickly write their own version of the.NET standard libraries.. However, until they do, any app you wrtite on.NET will not work on another platform since the libraries you depend on are not available for that other platform.
Seems to me Java still has an edge but.NET is definitely showing a lot of promise and I think it warrants some attention on all fronts; even by the most die-hard GNU & open source & Linux fans.
So, what are you suggesting? You want the kernel rewritten in Java? You want Apache rewritten in Java, or perhaps MySQL?
So what are YOU suggesting? You want major e-commerce sites on a death-march schedule to be coded in assembly and C?
When will people learn to use the right tool for the right job. When will people learn that there is no ONE right tool?
Personally, I think it's a good idea to emphasize in Java in teaching because not only is it a very effective language but it is also relatively easy to learn, it allows you to focus on coding methodology and algorithms instead of language weirdness. Once people get good at Java, which will happen much faster than for them to get good at C, they will have a very easy time picking up C/C++ and other languages. You can teach a wide area of things with Java, including threads, network coding, database coding, graphics etc., without the need of extra packages.
Learning to code is NOT about where the semi colons go so using assembly and / or C, which I think you suggested, is not a very good idea. Since Java is also the fastest growing language right now, and one of the most widely used ones (if not THE most widely used), in *CURRENT ONGOING* projects, it will be good for the students that can put "good Java skills" on their CV. Of course, it will also be good for the industry, which has a severe shortage of Java coders.
.. and then feed it through a method that makes it correct for each system; like so:
path = clPath(path);
You need to actually THINK. I know it can be hard, but try. You don't need to write "pathSeparator" 100 times and bang your head into the wall crying about how hard it is and how you have to worry about various platforms being a little different. You can also extend various java.io classes so that they will do the path separator conversion automatically. It would probably take about an hour to create a package like that if you really had a big problem with this.. Of course, it's idiotic to do something like: path = "/usr/me/myfile"; in the first place. A much better way is to define a base path (or several), which is read from a config file and then you just add file names to that base path. You don't even need to THINK about path's in your app.
Under Java you have to worry about crud such as what the path separator (/ or \) is on the platform you're running over
You don't need to *worry* about it. You just need to keep your head in the game and understand that you need to take such things into account or you'll run into trouble (by hard coding such stuff). For this, there are the following fields in java.io.File:
static String pathSeparator
The system-dependent path-separator character, represented as a string for convenience.
static char pathSeparatorChar
The system-dependent path-separator character.
static String separator
The system-dependent default name-separator character, represented as a string for convenience.
static char separatorChar
The system-dependent default name-separator character.
Maybe that's all it sounds like because you didn't READ THE ARTICLE
My oh my aren't we in a bad mood today.. I did read the article but I was commenting on how a "os environment hosted in a browser" sounds exactly like the idea that Java has, with a sandbox etc.. You know how Sun wants you to think of it as a PLATFORM and not a language. The basic idea is the same.
Maybe you should lighten up a little. This is just Slashdot; a web site. It's not worth getting a heart attack over.
Slashdot Mirror
Does anyone know of a study about how much fuel / passenger various types of transportation methods use? I mean, for a given distance, how much energy is used to get one passenger from A to B for planes vs. trains. vs. cars vs. ships? I know this varies by type of plane etc. but some kind of ballpark figures would be interesting. One would think a train at 350km/h is much more fuel-efficient than a plane at 900km/h but who knows.. For short trips when a proportionally large amount of time is spent on crowded airports and during takeoff and landings, the time difference should also not be so significant vs a train that gets you from A to B without delays and without holding patterns.
In slightly unrelated news, be sure to checkout Microsoft's upcoming train sim at http://www.microsoft.com/games/trainsim ! It looks like something every train fan out there would dream of!
I'm from Finland and I welcome some warming. 5-6 extra degrees would be lovely! What I'm worried about is how the heating affects the earth in a larger perspective. Extra heat means polar ice caps and other large perpetual ice-areas will melt. That would mean the seas rise, except that increased heat also means that more water is evaporated (probably not the correct techical term) and form clouds, which then means more rain... somewhere.. The end result could be that strong sea currents stop or reverse and that we actually get colder weather in parts of the world because of this. Dramatically colder in some cases. I'm pretty sure just about any part of the world (except maybe Singapore ;) could handle an extra 5 degrees of heat but can Scandinavia handle the end of the Golf current? What happens when it starts raining daily in the Sahara? What happens to Miami when hurricanes are a daily occurance? That's what *I* am worried about.
I agree. Really, who, except Linux users really care? This may seem like a flamebait but seriously, I'd say 99% of Windows users don't even KNOW what open source is, much less would they care if the source was open or not. I'm a software engineer and I sure as hell have better things to do with my time than look at 50 megs of browser and OS source code after work.
It runs exclusively on Windows and Mac, and the Mac version (and the rare non-x86 Windows versions)
Windows, Mac, HP-UX and Solaris, if memory serves. And even if we forget the UNIX versions, which might have dubious quality, that still covers some 95+% of all computers in the world.. "exclusively" is a little misleading when only a marginal amount of hardcore, impossible to please open source fans are "left out" (that would choose NOT to run the browser anyway, even if it was available for their platform).
are not often compatable with IE specific content because IE specific content usually relies on x86 ActiveX
What?! That's complete rubbish. Hardly any sites use ActiveX. I use IE (except when I'm trying out Mozilla builds) and I have it set to warn me about ActiveX and I don't remember that I would EVER have come across a site that uses ActiveX! If you're going to diss a browser and you are using 3 points to do this, you could at least come up with something remotely based on reality. That was just a plain lie.
It extends the HTML standard encouraging authors to use this to the detriment of compatability with other content.
HTML? Not really, except MARQUEE (sp?) maybe, but then Netscape has BLINK and Lynx lacks support for 90% of HTML so that's not really the big problem you're making it out to be. What is a little more worrying is the document object model and CSS support, which just plain sucks on *EVERY* single browser including Mozilla and even the latest Opera version. Even in CSS, the support IE has is the best, IMHO, but you are right in that a little too much "innovation" has been made in this area. However, given the current state of CSS support and scripting standardization in general, I think it's a little unfair to single Microsoft out. At least they have the best CSS support out there right now. If you're so desperate to boycot a browser, go after Netscape Communicator 4.x and start hacking on Mozilla.
I saw this movie a couple of months ago and I definitely recommend it. It's very funny and entertaining. The style is relatively unique; maybe something of a cross between Pulp Fiction and Trainspotting or something like that. If you like this movie, also be sure to check out Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, which is also by Guy Ritchie.
I forgot to mention one thing.. If photons move in both the direction of time AND in some 3D spatial direction (with the speed C), then their total speed is HIGHER than C, isn't it?
Think about a football field that is 100 meters from end to end. Now think of a guy that runs in a straight line from one end to the other, along the sidelines. If he runs 10 meters per second, it takes him 10 seconds to run the entire length of the field. Now make the guy run from one corner to the other. He still runs at 10 meters per second, but it will take him more than 10 seconds to reach the other end. By spending some of his motion in the width-direction of the field, his motion in the direction of the length of the field becomes slower.
Think for a moment that time works just like a spatial dimension. You have a specific absolute speed in a specific direction.. time. When you start moving to some spatial dimension (one of the three traditional ones), your motion in the direction of time becomes slower because you are no longer fully "commited" in that direction.
Now think about photons. They move with ALL of their speed in some spatial dimension. Does this mean that photons stand still in time? If you slow down light, does this mean that time actually starts ticking for them? Could it be that the fading of the light has something to do with the fact that time runs for them? If they are in an absolute vacuum, light doesn't fade because time stands still, no matter how far you shine the light. Introduce "dust" and it slows down and fades.
I'm sure my theory is very flawed but I'm not exactly sure at what point. I mean time DOES slow down when you move, but am I looking at this the wrong way?
As I understand it, this would make it possible to create light transistors that switch by shining light into the transistor. AFAIK, this isn't possible at the moment. Obviously, you could flip mirrors or something, but that means you have something mechanical, which defeats the purpose. Does anyone know enough about light driven transistors to verify this?
*sigh* ASP, like JSP, PHP and Perl CGI works by generating HTML on the server, which is then sent to the browser. It's not like some weird ASP code is sent to Netscape, and Netscape gets confused and doesn't know what to do. From a browser point of view, there is absolutely no difference between ASP and plain static HTML files - the browser still gets plain HTML.
UDP broadcasting.. Hmm.. is that the same as multicasting? If not, what's the difference? I'm asking cause I know Java does UDP multicasting.
UDP? As in UDP/IP? It's right there with the rest of the networking classes: java.net in such classes as DatagramSocket, DatagramPacket and DatagramSocketImpl.
Are you on drugs? Dynamic content and JSP is not about flashy applets dancing on the screen. It's about HTML that is created on the fly. Like... umm.. well, slashdot.org comes to mind. e-Bay comes to mind. Amazon.com comes to mind. About a gazillion other database driven sites come to mind.
Even if you don't have dynamic content, it makes a lot of sense to use something like JSP, PHP or ASP (or why not Perl), because it allows you to separate the actual content from the template. If you do a re-design of the site and you have 50000 pages, it's easier to just change one template than to do some silly Perl script that does a search-and-replace on all of your 50000 html files, complete with re-building navigation etc.
Yes, you can misuse "dynamic content" but that's hardly a reason to say that "the only people interested in dynamic content are those pushing tools to create it". THAT is garbage.
A bunch of anti-MS biased nerds on Slashdot discussing how the anti-MS biased DOJ doesn't think the anti-MS ruling judge was biased.
Uh, you can do that ALREADY with at least Nokia phones because both Palm and Nokia uses vCal and vCard.
Asking "Is the United States still the best choice of a place to live for safety, freedom, and quality of life?" is definitely flamebait and this sort of question can not result in a serious discussion without all kinds of bigotry. I'm sure many people will see this post as very anti US and anti gun. This is not the case however. As a matter of fact I enjoy sport shooting a lot and I just got back from a vacation in the USA (San Francisco & Las Vegas). I like the USA a lot but it certainly isn't paradise.
:)
Having said this, I want to say that the question I just quoted is pretty bizarre. Was the USA *ever* the choice for safety, freedom and quality of life? I mean safety!?!? Where else in the world do kids shoot other kids in school? There's a mass killing every week or so when some madman starts playing real-life Quake at work!
Freedom? I never understood why people in the USA think their country is so free. Just about every European country is at least as free and many are much more so (the Netherlands and Denmark quickly come to mind). It seems to me that the only thing that is really more free in the USA than elsewhere is easy access to guns. You can own guns in most other countries too though, so go figure.
Quality of life? Canada comes up on top in the UN quality of life evaluations all the time and are closely followed by many European countries such as Finland, Norway and Sweden.
Myself, I'm from Finland and I consider it a very nice country. One noticeable thing I see a lot in the USA that we don't have here is a type of fear for "big brother" and "the government". I think it has to do with the size of the country. Here, most people have friends or relatives that work or have worked in some government function at some point. We see the government as "us" - not as "them". It's not "they pass laws" - it's "we pass laws".
If you think things are getting out of hand in the USA and want to move, I cound recommend just about any European country. For those fearing the cold, there's much more cold and snow on the east coast of USA right now than there is here in Finland.
As of M18, there are no more Mx milestones. Instead, we have what you see now: Mozilla x.y.z.
What I find interesting is how Mozilla (the guys working on the browser) doesn't consider the code to be release worthy until in about six months. Netscape on the other hand considers it ok enough to ship. With an attitude like that with complete disregard of the lack of quality right now, no wonder IE is stomping all over them and no wonder 4.0 sucked as bad as it did.
I was one of those who was all-out for XPFE and Raptor (also known as NG layout, also known as Gecko) becoming the base for the new browser back when that was an issue. Now I'm starting to think that maybe the optimized table-rendering + some other tweaks (like not re-loading from the cache when a window is resized) would have been a better strategy for a 5.0 release. A slightly improved rendering engine from 4.x and what was then known as Aurora (now re-appearing as the sidebar) would have been enough to push Netscape to the point where many people could have used it as the #1 browser until 6.0 came with the new technology.
The way it is now, IE 5.5 is *so* far ahead of 4.x that there's no way anyone except those with a serious anti MS handicap and those without a choice would use the Netscape browser for surfing. Netscape 6.0 is a step *back* from 4.x. Opera and a couple of other products are showing promise but the "best viewed with xxxxx" attitude the web has (which is not quite as bad anymore, compared to two years ago) kind of rules them out because so many sites are broken for them due to JavaScript and similar breakage.
Here's hoping that Mozilla 1.0 will not be released until it's ready, stable, performs well and looks good!
No. XHTML is not aimed at PDA's. XHTML is an XML-ified version of HTML 4. It does a lot of cleanup and makes the whole thing much saner. It also divides up HTML into various profiles, of which one is very "correct" in the sense that it doesn't have FONT, CENTER etc. tags. Instead, all styling is done with CSS, which is *very* good.
What XHTML has to do with WAP is that the WAP Forum has announced that WAP 2.0 will essentially be XHTML. So it's WAP that is adapting itself (thank God!!) to XHTML. It's not XHTML which is for PDA's.
WAP is one of the worst cases of re-inventing the wheel ever, so this is a good thing - that I agree on!
Uh no. The standard libs are VERY platform dependent as they wrap around things such as sockets, the windows gui with buttons, windows, scrollbars etc., graphics, sound, threads.. All of that is completely different on each platform. It will NOT fall into place in fact it's the exact opposite.
I recently saw a presentation by Microsoft about .NET and they said something along the lines of:
.NET standard libraries.. However, until they do, any app you wrtite on .NET will not work on another platform since the libraries you depend on are not available for that other platform.
.NET is definitely showing a lot of promise and I think it warrants some attention on all fronts; even by the most die-hard GNU & open source & Linux fans.
"Interestingly, because we [Microsoft] are standardizing the common language runtime with a standards body [ECMA], they will *require* us to do two reference implementations. One of them will obviously be Windows (NT + 9x) but the other will be some 'open source' operating system, such as BSD."
Then he stopped, paused for 10 seconds and said "or Linux..". Paused for another 10 seconds and said "or possibly even both".
I asked if standardizing and thus implementing the common language runtime on BSD/Linux would mean just the runtime or also the standard libraries and to that, he replied that it just meant the common language runtime (the equivalent of having the JVM standardized and ported but not the Java core API). He continued that he was very sure the open source community would quickly write their own version of the
Seems to me Java still has an edge but
GSM is the standard pretty much everywhere in the whole world except the USA.
So what are YOU suggesting? You want major e-commerce sites on a death-march schedule to be coded in assembly and C?
When will people learn to use the right tool for the right job. When will people learn that there is no ONE right tool?
Personally, I think it's a good idea to emphasize in Java in teaching because not only is it a very effective language but it is also relatively easy to learn, it allows you to focus on coding methodology and algorithms instead of language weirdness. Once people get good at Java, which will happen much faster than for them to get good at C, they will have a very easy time picking up C/C++ and other languages. You can teach a wide area of things with Java, including threads, network coding, database coding, graphics etc., without the need of extra packages.
Learning to code is NOT about where the semi colons go so using assembly and / or C, which I think you suggested, is not a very good idea. Since Java is also the fastest growing language right now, and one of the most widely used ones (if not THE most widely used), in *CURRENT ONGOING* projects, it will be good for the students that can put "good Java skills" on their CV. Of course, it will also be good for the industry, which has a severe shortage of Java coders.
No, I said that you need to take your head out of your ass and actually think for a minute. And you don't need to go:
path = pathSeparator + "usr" + pathSeparator + "me" + pathSeparator + "myfile";
path = "/usr/me/myfile";
path = clPath(path);
You need to actually THINK. I know it can be hard, but try. You don't need to write "pathSeparator" 100 times and bang your head into the wall crying about how hard it is and how you have to worry about various platforms being a little different. You can also extend various java.io classes so that they will do the path separator conversion automatically. It would probably take about an hour to create a package like that if you really had a big problem with this.. Of course, it's idiotic to do something like: path = "/usr/me/myfile"; in the first place. A much better way is to define a base path (or several), which is read from a config file and then you just add file names to that base path. You don't even need to THINK about path's in your app.
You don't need to *worry* about it. You just need to keep your head in the game and understand that you need to take such things into account or you'll run into trouble (by hard coding such stuff). For this, there are the following fields in java.io.File:
static String pathSeparator
The system-dependent path-separator character, represented as a string for convenience.
static char pathSeparatorChar
The system-dependent path-separator character.
static String separator
The system-dependent default name-separator character, represented as a string for convenience.
static char separatorChar
The system-dependent default name-separator character.
My oh my aren't we in a bad mood today.. I did read the article but I was commenting on how a "os environment hosted in a browser" sounds exactly like the idea that Java has, with a sandbox etc.. You know how Sun wants you to think of it as a PLATFORM and not a language. The basic idea is the same.
Maybe you should lighten up a little. This is just Slashdot; a web site. It's not worth getting a heart attack over.
Maybe it's just me but that sounds like a Java virtual machine, with the exception of the small size and the "everything is a file" of course. :)