...why not drop a few hundred bucks on a single PPC box that you can start a GCC make on, and let it run for a week if need be?
Because it doesn't work that way in a business. Perhaps if you're coding something with friends at home, you might be able to compile for a different platform (although I have reservations about any code "just compiling" on another platform), but in a business, the story is different. Businesses operate according to business plans and those plans include goals such as "produce software that exceeds market expectations for quality, speed, and documentation" and so on and so forth. If a business decides to release for a platform, they normally have to get tech support staff trained to support it, write documentation, update marketing materials, etc. These things all cost money and they must look at the ROI to see if the benefits exceed the cost. Maybe in your opinion they do in this case, but it is normally more complex than "simply compiling" for a different platform.
In addition, most development organizations of any significant size have standards and if GCC isn't the standard (and I doubt it is for Macromedia) then they must see if their current tools support the required action in order to extract the highest ROI from the original tool purchase. If those tools do not meet those needs, then they must get some staff members to evaluate new options which normally includes examining open source software in addition to visiting with sales people from proprietary vendors. If they decide they like the OSS tool, then the legal department normally needs to approve the license for that particular software to make sure that it doesn't negatively impact the business goals associated with that product. And the list goes on...
Actually, it doesn't work like this in many cases. When someone hears a phone number in an ad on the radio or sees it on TV and it is something like "1-800-CALLNOW," they think, "Oh, that's easy to remember," or "Oh, that's clever." This is quickly followed by them forgetting the number. On the other hand, if the number is just a random collection of numbers, they often make an *effort* to commit it to memory or even write it down.
I am not a lawyer. If anyone has a link for what I am describing, please reply. It is my understanding that media law allows free speech protection for the hosting site as long as all posts are left uncensored. However, once you censor or edit posts, you, as the hosting entity, assume liability for the content. If this is indeed the case, it looks like the "I'll sue" trick worked and that future "I'll sue" tricks will have a better case.
With hardware accelerating at an exponential rate and the JDK's improving with each release, a virtual machine hosted application begins to make more and more sense. Complaints about Swing interfaces being slow are becoming a thing of the past with the improvements in JDK 1.4, not to mention SWT.
It'll be like Moore's Law for technology - things will just progress, rather than achieve sudden overnight success.
Moore's Law is exponential growth and thus is overnight success at some point. Ray Kurzweil writes some interesting books and papers around this very topic. The pace of technological progress is not a constant. He argues that the pace is increasing exponentially. If you give this some serious thought, you will see that it has mind-blowing possibilities for humanity, assumming that he is correct.
Thanks for the suggestion. I am aware of this feature but hiding these stories from my own eyes won't improve the character and credibility of this site and others like it.
Slashdot and other blogs were exciting when they popped up because it seemed as though they were an honest answer to the usual filtered media on our television sets and on the large corporate news sites.
What disappoints me is that this highly visible site is getting an increasing number of tabloid-groupthink-shut-up-if-you-don't-agree-with -us-we're-dogmatic-but-you-can't-be kinds of people posting stories and comments.
I would like to see things succeed for the OSS community based on merit and quality rather than zealotry, polarization, and community censorship.
An interesting use of spare programming time would be an analysis of keywords, moderation, number of posts for this-sucks-this-rules sorts of stories, etc. over time on this site, including a comparison of before and after being sold.
I don't want to see Slashdot dismissed as a bunch of Anti-(fill in the weekly blank with Microsoft, SCO, RIAA...) folks and then used as a negative example of community-based media where people stop learning and just stroke each other's egos with tons of +5 Funny posts at the very top bashing the latest pinata and dissenting opinions moderated as -1 Flamebait or -1 Troll.
Since cases that do actually make it to trial take about two years, are we doomed to seeing everything out of McBride's mouth, everything on Groklaw, and every other passing thought about SCO for the next two years on slashdot?
I've been a member for a long time, and the content seems to be degenerating into a groupthink zealot factory with its own set of dogmas and censors.
This is a real question to this community so please don't join the groupthink mass and moderate this as flamebait just because it goes against the hive mind around here.
That would be a great way to crack the username and password. Hook one up to a network and start giving out distributed clients. After we cracked it, we could see if all of them matched.
I think this proves I don't have a life:)
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
You can also hack GB's to run cool robotics experiments, interface them with IDE hard drives, floppy drives, other chips...the list goes on. I know that's not what Nintendo wants, but it's fun for us hardware hackers.
The current protocol for the GB Link port is not well documented and it would take an enourmous amount of work to use it for anything close to TCP/IP. Now that Nintendo plans to fix that problem, I can get my robot to send data back to my PC at home!
And lastly, we don't have to use assembly tricks anymore to get around the 8-bit "problem" of the current GB processors.
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer" - Adolf Hitler
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
The AK Centerfire was great! But, like all other electronic toys and appliances in my house (sorry Mom) I had to take it apart and eventually used the electrical pump for another project. I wanted to connect it to a water filled backpack so I could soak my friends all day. I think a lot of tech oriented people probably destroyed appliances in a similar manner when they were young(er). Almost all of my colleagues have admitted to such a thing. (Heck, I'm still tearing things up to figure them out)
The description under the post on the main page says you MAY want to write your representative. I'm begging you all -- PLEASE write your rep! Posting on/. only won't solve the problem. Please take action. Once momentum for this sort of thing builds up, it's almost impossible to stop. Let's use our community size to have some positive influence.
Exactly. I've made some paranoid assumptions in the past, but killing the *nix version of Perl is not an issue. Use your port of Perl on your platform. This only amounts to more freedom. Nothing on the client side will be broken (as in the case of Java), so my Perl script running on a *nix server will still work correctly on a Win-user's browser.
Consider this : If you wanted to make waves in the Linux community (target the process rather than the product) you might want to post something such as this letter while you were sure that the sender would not be around a network connection. Hmm....
This could leave the Linux community up in the air for a while to start arguments, etc.
Perhaps all of this is true, but it could also be a product a well know anti-Linux company.
Re:Journalism (or "How I Learned to Love to Flame"
on
IBM & Microsoft Rift
·
· Score: 1
From YAKC (Yet Another K-ville Citizen):
The media will never look at the unpopular. The only reason that article appeared on ZDNet is because of the anti-micros~1 buzz that's going around now. Even if the journalists have good intentions and seek truth, their bosses and editors just want money. I'm sure that doesn't hold true for all media, but it does seem to apply to large groups such as ZD.
Slashdot Mirror
Because it doesn't work that way in a business. Perhaps if you're coding something with friends at home, you might be able to compile for a different platform (although I have reservations about any code "just compiling" on another platform), but in a business, the story is different. Businesses operate according to business plans and those plans include goals such as "produce software that exceeds market expectations for quality, speed, and documentation" and so on and so forth. If a business decides to release for a platform, they normally have to get tech support staff trained to support it, write documentation, update marketing materials, etc. These things all cost money and they must look at the ROI to see if the benefits exceed the cost. Maybe in your opinion they do in this case, but it is normally more complex than "simply compiling" for a different platform.
In addition, most development organizations of any significant size have standards and if GCC isn't the standard (and I doubt it is for Macromedia) then they must see if their current tools support the required action in order to extract the highest ROI from the original tool purchase. If those tools do not meet those needs, then they must get some staff members to evaluate new options which normally includes examining open source software in addition to visiting with sales people from proprietary vendors. If they decide they like the OSS tool, then the legal department normally needs to approve the license for that particular software to make sure that it doesn't negatively impact the business goals associated with that product. And the list goes on...
Actually, it doesn't work like this in many cases. When someone hears a phone number in an ad on the radio or sees it on TV and it is something like "1-800-CALLNOW," they think, "Oh, that's easy to remember," or "Oh, that's clever." This is quickly followed by them forgetting the number. On the other hand, if the number is just a random collection of numbers, they often make an *effort* to commit it to memory or even write it down.
I am not a lawyer. If anyone has a link for what I am describing, please reply. It is my understanding that media law allows free speech protection for the hosting site as long as all posts are left uncensored. However, once you censor or edit posts, you, as the hosting entity, assume liability for the content. If this is indeed the case, it looks like the "I'll sue" trick worked and that future "I'll sue" tricks will have a better case.
Java is one solution to the portability problem.
With hardware accelerating at an exponential rate and the JDK's improving with each release, a virtual machine hosted application begins to make more and more sense. Complaints about Swing interfaces being slow are becoming a thing of the past with the improvements in JDK 1.4, not to mention SWT.
In that case, it's your lucky day. Check out these sites:
The Dream Project
Global Grid Forum
This is a great idea and that's why it already exists :-) IBM, among others, is doing this under the name of grid computing.
It'll be like Moore's Law for technology - things will just progress, rather than achieve sudden overnight success.
Moore's Law is exponential growth and thus is overnight success at some point. Ray Kurzweil writes some interesting books and papers around this very topic. The pace of technological progress is not a constant. He argues that the pace is increasing exponentially. If you give this some serious thought, you will see that it has mind-blowing possibilities for humanity, assumming that he is correct.
Thanks for the suggestion. I am aware of this feature but hiding these stories from my own eyes won't improve the character and credibility of this site and others like it.
h -us-we're-dogmatic-but-you-can't-be kinds of people posting stories and comments.
Slashdot and other blogs were exciting when they popped up because it seemed as though they were an honest answer to the usual filtered media on our television sets and on the large corporate news sites.
What disappoints me is that this highly visible site is getting an increasing number of tabloid-groupthink-shut-up-if-you-don't-agree-wit
I would like to see things succeed for the OSS community based on merit and quality rather than zealotry, polarization, and community censorship.
An interesting use of spare programming time would be an analysis of keywords, moderation, number of posts for this-sucks-this-rules sorts of stories, etc. over time on this site, including a comparison of before and after being sold.
I don't want to see Slashdot dismissed as a bunch of Anti-(fill in the weekly blank with Microsoft, SCO, RIAA...) folks and then used as a negative example of community-based media where people stop learning and just stroke each other's egos with tons of +5 Funny posts at the very top bashing the latest pinata and dissenting opinions moderated as -1 Flamebait or -1 Troll.
I have a question for all of you...
Since cases that do actually make it to trial take about two years, are we doomed to seeing everything out of McBride's mouth, everything on Groklaw, and every other passing thought about SCO for the next two years on slashdot?
I've been a member for a long time, and the content seems to be degenerating into a groupthink zealot factory with its own set of dogmas and censors.
This is a real question to this community so please don't join the groupthink mass and moderate this as flamebait just because it goes against the hive mind around here.
Thanks.
Fight evil with science.
;-)
Just kidding
...is here.
;-)
Just kidding
Processing a web form is scripting.
Not when the web form is part of an enterprise application including database connectivity, session management, etc.
Ah yes. I love the speed of the web. This is already "old news" for the linked site.
The actual article can now be found here.
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
I think this proves I don't have a life :)
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
You can also hack GB's to run cool robotics experiments, interface them with IDE hard drives, floppy drives, other chips...the list goes on. I know that's not what Nintendo wants, but it's fun for us hardware hackers.
The current protocol for the GB Link port is not well documented and it would take an enourmous amount of work to use it for anything close to TCP/IP. Now that Nintendo plans to fix that problem, I can get my robot to send data back to my PC at home!
And lastly, we don't have to use assembly tricks anymore to get around the 8-bit "problem" of the current GB processors.
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer" - Adolf Hitler
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
The AK Centerfire was great! But, like all other electronic toys and appliances in my house (sorry Mom) I had to take it apart and eventually used the electrical pump for another project. I wanted to connect it to a water filled backpack so I could soak my friends all day. I think a lot of tech oriented people probably destroyed appliances in a similar manner when they were young(er). Almost all of my colleagues have admitted to such a thing. (Heck, I'm still tearing things up to figure them out)
The description under the post on the main page says you MAY want to write your representative. I'm begging you all -- PLEASE write your rep! Posting on /. only won't solve the problem. Please take action. Once momentum for this sort of thing builds up, it's almost impossible to stop. Let's use our community size to have some positive influence.
Slashdot is part of our culture!
Exactly. I've made some paranoid assumptions in the past, but killing the *nix version of Perl is not an issue. Use your port of Perl on your platform. This only amounts to more freedom. Nothing on the client side will be broken (as in the case of Java), so my Perl script running on a *nix server will still work correctly on a Win-user's browser.
This could leave the Linux community up in the air for a while to start arguments, etc.
Perhaps all of this is true, but it could also be a product a well know anti-Linux company.
The media will never look at the unpopular. The only reason that article appeared on ZDNet is because of the anti-micros~1 buzz that's going around now. Even if the journalists have good intentions and seek truth, their bosses and editors just want money. I'm sure that doesn't hold true for all media, but it does seem to apply to large groups such as ZD.