Their main public relations problem seems to be the use of an adult language, C++
Actually, I might argue with you that C++ might more apppropriately be called a geriatric language in a general programming context, but that would start a holy war, now wouldn't it:)
However, for those of us who like to use slightly quicker to code languages for some of our projects, WxPython provides a Python wrapper around WxWindows. And there is a Perl wrapper out there as well, tho I have never used it.
Combine this with Pippy a PalmOS Python implementation, and you have lots of Py goodness for Palm devices.
A sporting event isn't a government office, straight up. You think we should start selling that little logo behind Fleischer in those Whitehouse press breifings? Maybe make it a green screen like at ball parks so they can change the logo as he talks about different things?
I personally feel that when you are dealing with government offices, a slightly different set of basic rules apply than when dealing with straight commercial entities.
That said and back on the main topic, I am all about the JPL working with commercial entities, but appearing to endorse them just feels a little creepy to me, even if the USPO definitely needs the money and I understand why they are doing it.
Plus, I just don't like anyone handing out AOL in general. I would rather hand out a CD full of virii. Oh, wait, basically the same thing...
I am not disagreeing with you, but at the same time there is something deeply wrong and bogus about going into the US Post Office and having them handing out AOL software as they do here in Berkeley.
It makes it seem like the US Post Office and AOL are somehow in cahoots.
Actually now that I think about it, considering the efficency of both organizations...hmmmm...
The public benefit is two-fold since licensing fees will help ease NASA and taxpayer burden and life-enchancing technologies will be put into public use.
I hadn't realized that the JPL was doing weapons research.
Actually, I normally don't cop on spelling errors, since I am not the world's best speller, but I really like this new term and think I shall use it frequently:
Don't disturb Phil while he is in deep hack mode, it is life-enchancing.
Re:Steve Jobs's anality--some good, some bad resul
on
No More Mac Tweaking?
·
· Score: 1
But Jobs's attitude seems to be, "Well, you should just buy a faster computer if it's slow, and a bigger monitor if it takes up too much room. Get with the program." (Ironic, considering that Apple is notorious for providing packaged systems with not enough built-in memory and small monitors.)
Not ironic, logical. Apple is a hardware company. Some of those new memory chips and monitors are going to come from the company store and not 3rd party suppliers.
"Keep in mind, also, that Apple may be keeping its private-APIs private, not only to prevent instability from encroaching on the system, but also to prevent competitors (read: Microsoft) from easily stealing enhancements made to OS X. Obviously Microsoft can also steal an idea and reimplement it, but Apple doesn't have to make that easy on them."
Having or not having the API's is going to do nothing at all to stop MS from stealing or not stealing Apple's code. The architectures are totally different, and UI stuff isn't that hard to code in this day and age, it is just that hard to design properly.
The following is from a FAQ about Palladium:
"TCPA / Palladium will also make it much harder for you to run unlicensed software. Pirate software can be detected and deleted remotely."
Now think about this in terms of national security for a second. If you have processor embeded tech that allows corporations to see things in your systems, how secure do you think your systems are going to be?
Moving to an OS and chip combination that allows you to keep your information secure is going to be a big priority.
Re:Should stuff *ever* enter the public domain?
on
Eldred vs. Ashcroft
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· Score: 1
Actually, The Wind Done Gone was a book, not a play, and the while an injunction was handed down preventing publication by a circuit court judge breifly, the appeals court overruled it and the book went to press. There was much talk of appealing the ruling to the Supreme Court, but as best I can recall, that didn't happen.
I rather like the reasoning of your post, aside from this error of fact.
Okay the lynchpin of the GNU argument here seems to be that the kernel shouldn't be the operating system, but the kernel + tools should be considered the operating system, and that this is The Way It Has Always Been If You Are Right Thinking.
Someone with a better memory than I can correct me if I am wrong here (and I am sure they will, as well as moderate me out of existence) but I don't remember CP/M being an operating system + tools. And I am trying to remember what the actual OS was under my Heathkit (Zenith) S100 system I built as a kid, but I seem to remember that the OS was just that, an OS (meaning kernel).
And I haven't worked on them, but wasn't Amiga's OS the same way?
And I am thinking about early Tandy's and Commodores, which both, perforce, included a basic interpreter (which basically WAS the OS). Those weren't a collection of tools past the basic interpreter.
My memory is going, but I pretty clearly remember these OS'es, and we never thought of them as anything but OS'es, albeit tiny, toy ones in the case of Tandy and Commie, and they didn't include a plug for extra utility or compiler programs that ran on them and were used in their development.
Yeah, I should have read closer. I was mainly just taking my frustrations out. Having to deal with badly written, obsfucated patents has become a part of my life lately and it isn't something I ever aspired to.
Haven't read many patents have ya? I am sitting with three on my desk, and I can assure you that clarity of writing and explaination is NOT a criterion for getting a patent approved. It might say that somewhere, but it just isn't the case. As a matter of a fact, I am willing to bet big money that some of the stuff I am working with is intentionally obsfucated in order to either a) keep people without a load of time from figuring out what they are actually doing, or b) intentionally adding ambiguity so that they might be able to claim a broader interpretation under fire.
I am not saying I haven't seen clear patents, I have. But the ones I deal with sure don't claim clarity as one of their major selling points.
Is Preda Mihailescu under 40? The only picture I can find of him I can't really guess for sure. The medal only goes to people under the age of 40 at the time of the congress awarding it.
Actually, your code monkeys, in many cases, are. For instance, look at the amount of desktop software that is written only for Wintel and never ported to Mac or Linux.
You are going to pull out your favorite examples of cross platform stuff, but for every one cross-platform desktop app there are going to be three more that aren't.
And then we can talk about games...
I don't _agree_ with any of this, mind you. When I am doing code, I do everything I can in Python (which is most things), which makes it deadbrain simple to go cross platform. And when I tag HTML I use a text editor and make sure it works everywhere. But I am saying that a huge chunk of the world plays to the market, and that market, on the desktops and in the browsing public, is 95% MS.
Couple of days back US warplanes dropped a bomb on a marriage party in Afghanistan killing over 50. And there hasnt been more than a couple of columns in the western media about the whole story.
This has been the lead story on CNN, both online and off, for the last three days. What are you talking about? Every paper in the country is covering this.
The last time I thought about Phoenix BIOS and networking was when I had to deal with the bios installing network marketing icons to the desktop of Win machines I was configuring for work.
After the incident with PhoenixNet, I decided never to buy a phoenix bios again.
I can see this one reporting marketing data back to the mothership bigtime. No thanks.
Okay, let me see if I get this. It somehow makes sense that a lower quality version of something should be able to be copied as much as you want, while the high quality version of something is strongly protected?
How, exactly, does this help anyone? IP is property or it is not. This is like saying it is illegal for someone to punch you, but only if they do it where it really hurts.
Or, conversely, like saying we are selling you something, but you only own the broken version.
This strikes me as a solution that is sure to just piss everyone off, as opposed to some of the people.
This is probably off topic, but I feel the need to share it.
It is easy for those of us hip to the open source movement to laugh at this crap from MS, even though we know that some end users and such might be taken in by it. But the depths to which MS FUD penetrates the general IT community is bloody incredible to me.
Yesterday I was talking with a mid-level QA engineer from Apple. This guy is working on a very complex product. He knows how to code.
We start talking about software development, and I mention some things I am working on, mostly centered on Linux. At which point he says:
"That's cool, but anything you do on Linux you would have to give away for free, right?"
Contrary to what everyone is thinking, this guy isn't stupid. He isn't even technically inept. He works on a complex project and knows what he is doing in his problem domain.
Anything that MS might say about Linux and open source that isn't totally negative should be lauded, because a LOT more people than some of us realize, people we think should know better, apparently are buying pretty much everything MS is trying to spread about open source and Linux.
This isn't HTML we're talking about here. Flash files use coordinated timelines, compressed files, and loads of user interaction to do what it does, and it's not cheap. You can't just open the source code and peek inside. It's probably going to be some time before any open source project can produce the complexity Macromedia's put into six versions of their product.
Like open source hasn't been able to produce image processing programs (GIMP), word processing programs (AbiWord among others), and bloody entire operating systems for christ's sake.
_Obviously_ these things are so much simplier than producing flash. But, interestingly, coffeecup sofware has been able to produce tools for the format. I guess they are rocket scientists compared to us open source folk.
You know, you would be right, except for the Java Installed part, AC, which opens it up to pretty much all computers. If you are pumping your solution through Java, that's gonna be running across the platforms.
Slashdot Mirror
Doh, I missed that they don't appear to be porting this to PalmOS, but only shooting for WinCE after Linux devices.
Their main public relations problem seems to be the use of an adult language, C++
:)
Actually, I might argue with you that C++ might more apppropriately be called a geriatric language in a general programming context, but that would start a holy war, now wouldn't it
However, for those of us who like to use slightly quicker to code languages for some of our projects, WxPython provides a Python wrapper around WxWindows. And there is a Perl wrapper out there as well, tho I have never used it.
Combine this with Pippy a PalmOS Python implementation, and you have lots of Py goodness for Palm devices.
A sporting event isn't a government office, straight up. You think we should start selling that little logo behind Fleischer in those Whitehouse press breifings? Maybe make it a green screen like at ball parks so they can change the logo as he talks about different things?
I personally feel that when you are dealing with government offices, a slightly different set of basic rules apply than when dealing with straight commercial entities.
That said and back on the main topic, I am all about the JPL working with commercial entities, but appearing to endorse them just feels a little creepy to me, even if the USPO definitely needs the money and I understand why they are doing it.
Plus, I just don't like anyone handing out AOL in general. I would rather hand out a CD full of virii. Oh, wait, basically the same thing...
I am not disagreeing with you, but at the same time there is something deeply wrong and bogus about going into the US Post Office and having them handing out AOL software as they do here in Berkeley.
It makes it seem like the US Post Office and AOL are somehow in cahoots.
Actually now that I think about it, considering the efficency of both organizations...hmmmm...
I hadn't realized that the JPL was doing weapons research.
Actually, I normally don't cop on spelling errors, since I am not the world's best speller, but I really like this new term and think I shall use it frequently:
Don't disturb Phil while he is in deep hack mode, it is life-enchancing.
Not ironic, logical. Apple is a hardware company. Some of those new memory chips and monitors are going to come from the company store and not 3rd party suppliers.
This is on crack:
"Keep in mind, also, that Apple may be keeping its private-APIs private, not only to prevent instability from encroaching on the system, but also to prevent competitors (read: Microsoft) from easily stealing enhancements made to OS X. Obviously Microsoft can also steal an idea and reimplement it, but Apple doesn't have to make that easy on them."
Having or not having the API's is going to do nothing at all to stop MS from stealing or not stealing Apple's code. The architectures are totally different, and UI stuff isn't that hard to code in this day and age, it is just that hard to design properly.
Can someone explain how Linux is doing something good for the community by creating an operating system incompatible with MS Windows?
Choice is your friend.
"TCPA / Palladium will also make it much harder for you to run unlicensed software. Pirate software can be detected and deleted remotely."
Now think about this in terms of national security for a second. If you have processor embeded tech that allows corporations to see things in your systems, how secure do you think your systems are going to be?
Moving to an OS and chip combination that allows you to keep your information secure is going to be a big priority.
Actually, The Wind Done Gone was a book, not a play, and the while an injunction was handed down preventing publication by a circuit court judge breifly, the appeals court overruled it and the book went to press. There was much talk of appealing the ruling to the Supreme Court, but as best I can recall, that didn't happen.
I rather like the reasoning of your post, aside from this error of fact.
Okay the lynchpin of the GNU argument here seems to be that the kernel shouldn't be the operating system, but the kernel + tools should be considered the operating system, and that this is The Way It Has Always Been If You Are Right Thinking.
Someone with a better memory than I can correct me if I am wrong here (and I am sure they will, as well as moderate me out of existence) but I don't remember CP/M being an operating system + tools. And I am trying to remember what the actual OS was under my Heathkit (Zenith) S100 system I built as a kid, but I seem to remember that the OS was just that, an OS (meaning kernel).
And I haven't worked on them, but wasn't Amiga's OS the same way?
And I am thinking about early Tandy's and Commodores, which both, perforce, included a basic interpreter (which basically WAS the OS). Those weren't a collection of tools past the basic interpreter.
My memory is going, but I pretty clearly remember these OS'es, and we never thought of them as anything but OS'es, albeit tiny, toy ones in the case of Tandy and Commie, and they didn't include a plug for extra utility or compiler programs that ran on them and were used in their development.
Mini-ITX is strong.
Yeah, I should have read closer. I was mainly just taking my frustrations out. Having to deal with badly written, obsfucated patents has become a part of my life lately and it isn't something I ever aspired to.
Haven't read many patents have ya? I am sitting with three on my desk, and I can assure you that clarity of writing and explaination is NOT a criterion for getting a patent approved. It might say that somewhere, but it just isn't the case. As a matter of a fact, I am willing to bet big money that some of the stuff I am working with is intentionally obsfucated in order to either a) keep people without a load of time from figuring out what they are actually doing, or b) intentionally adding ambiguity so that they might be able to claim a broader interpretation under fire.
I am not saying I haven't seen clear patents, I have. But the ones I deal with sure don't claim clarity as one of their major selling points.
Is Preda Mihailescu under 40? The only picture I can find of him I can't really guess for sure. The medal only goes to people under the age of 40 at the time of the congress awarding it.
Actually, your code monkeys, in many cases, are. For instance, look at the amount of desktop software that is written only for Wintel and never ported to Mac or Linux.
You are going to pull out your favorite examples of cross platform stuff, but for every one cross-platform desktop app there are going to be three more that aren't.
And then we can talk about games...
I don't _agree_ with any of this, mind you. When I am doing code, I do everything I can in Python (which is most things), which makes it deadbrain simple to go cross platform. And when I tag HTML I use a text editor and make sure it works everywhere. But I am saying that a huge chunk of the world plays to the market, and that market, on the desktops and in the browsing public, is 95% MS.
This has been the lead story on CNN, both online and off, for the last three days. What are you talking about? Every paper in the country is covering this.
The last time I thought about Phoenix BIOS and networking was when I had to deal with the bios installing network marketing icons to the desktop of Win machines I was configuring for work.
After the incident with PhoenixNet, I decided never to buy a phoenix bios again.
I can see this one reporting marketing data back to the mothership bigtime. No thanks.
Okay, let me see if I get this. It somehow makes sense that a lower quality version of something should be able to be copied as much as you want, while the high quality version of something is strongly protected?
How, exactly, does this help anyone? IP is property or it is not. This is like saying it is illegal for someone to punch you, but only if they do it where it really hurts.
Or, conversely, like saying we are selling you something, but you only own the broken version.
This strikes me as a solution that is sure to just piss everyone off, as opposed to some of the people.
"..., then, why it is MORE popular than Python in Japan,..."
Dude, seriously, our band is HUGE in Sweden!
This is probably off topic, but I feel the need to share it.
It is easy for those of us hip to the open source movement to laugh at this crap from MS, even though we know that some end users and such might be taken in by it. But the depths to which MS FUD penetrates the general IT community is bloody incredible to me.
Yesterday I was talking with a mid-level QA engineer from Apple. This guy is working on a very complex product. He knows how to code.
We start talking about software development, and I mention some things I am working on, mostly centered on Linux. At which point he says:
"That's cool, but anything you do on Linux you would have to give away for free, right?"
Contrary to what everyone is thinking, this guy isn't stupid. He isn't even technically inept. He works on a complex project and knows what he is doing in his problem domain.
Anything that MS might say about Linux and open source that isn't totally negative should be lauded, because a LOT more people than some of us realize, people we think should know better, apparently are buying pretty much everything MS is trying to spread about open source and Linux.
Like open source hasn't been able to produce image processing programs (GIMP), word processing programs (AbiWord among others), and bloody entire operating systems for christ's sake.
_Obviously_ these things are so much simplier than producing flash. But, interestingly, coffeecup sofware has been able to produce tools for the format. I guess they are rocket scientists compared to us open source folk.
Who modded this post up and why?
You know, you would be right, except for the Java Installed part, AC, which opens it up to pretty much all computers. If you are pumping your solution through Java, that's gonna be running across the platforms.
Exactly why would you be limiting it to "Windows machine with Java installed?" If you have Java installed, there is no reason to limit it to a Winbox.
Man, I don't know about the people you see driving, but the LAST thing I want is a heads up display to be giving them more blinky things to focus on.
Hell, and out of state license plate can draw enough attention with some of the people I ride with to create a road hazard.
"Look, what state is that license plate from. On that that big Explorer over there..." {{Sound of loud explosion and screaming}}