Parent might be OT but modding it down to oblivion will not change the fact that Lunix still cannot compete with Windows or OSX.
This depends on the market. As a desktop games machine, Linux will take years to have an impact. But in the server market, it's competing exceeding well.
Every year we see MAJOR advances in Windows and Macs, while Lunix just seems to plod along.
So what has been the major advance in Windows in the last year? Or the year before? A service pack that gives a decent firewall? Something Linux has had for years?
Case in point: I needed to install Linux on a machine and decided on Debian, being one of the most popular distros for servers. It took me AGES to find a pre-compiled install package! And installing it was pretty painful.
Bizarre. Go to debian site. Download network install CD (or order install set). Put in first CD. Answer a few questions. Specify hardware. Wait. Select services required from task selection tool. Wait.
How could looking up the debian site take ages? Where are the non-compiled install packages??
A modern OS is more than just performance and security.
Not much more. Everything else should be tools or libraries. I don't expect a server OS to play fast graphic games, for example.
Lunix was and probably always will be 3 years away from taking over the desktop market.
Who cares? Why does Linux need to 'take over' anything? It's competing very heathily in most markets.
Except in cases of hardware or driver issues, reliability is no longer an issue in the comparison between Linux and Windows.
Apart from the requirement to have hardware and drivers to run a system.... Windows without these would be pretty boring. This also neglects the phenomental virus/worm/security issues for Windows over the past couple of years.
Linux will remain a niche. It's over ten years later, and Linux is still just a marginal server OS beneath BSD.
50% of all new blade servers are shipped with Linux, and it is the pre-installed system on around 20% of ALL other new servers. Strange use of the word 'niche'.
In the desktop market, it has barely made a dent. Before Google Zeitgeist removed its OS numbers, Linux was at a mere 1%.
No, Linux has around 2.5-3% of desktop market share. Due to the nature of Linux, this is not a measure of installed base. I'm sure most organisations that use Linux on the desktop do what we did: Buy PCs with pre-installed Windows (as that is where the bios update and hardware analysis tools are installed), then re-partition and dual-boot Linux. Installed base of a free OS is very hard to measure, but its certainly going to be larger than the purchased volume.
In precisely the same manner, we can't determine if an intelligence created this Universe, or if it simply was forced to evolve the way it did on its own. We have no "other Universe" to compare to.
There are several totally separate points confused here. The question of whether or not an intelligence created the universe has no relevance to whether or not the subsequent universe was forced to follow a certain path. We do have other universes to compare to - we hypothesize about them and make mathematical models of them. We can show that some of them can't exist.
It looks like the universe at the point of origin was simple. Intelligences are complex. To go from a simple origin to a more complex origin (who created the intelligence?) is bad logic.
"Who" and "How" are two independent questions. Scientists don't look for a "who". They look for a "how". The answer to one does not answer the other.
This is all irrelevant to the matter being discussed. This was about the presence of clues in evolution about a creator. This implies that when you look at the 'how', you will see signs of a 'who'. If you look at the 'how', and you see NO signs of a 'who' (the whole thing can have happened without intervention), the answer to one definitely does answer the other.
Eventually, if you look at enough of the 'how', you find there is virtually no need left for a 'who'. What do you conclude?
Rather than just point at anyone with the opinion that god created the world in the creationists sense and shout "RELGION BLOWS!", it's more productive to argue against what is really wrong here
I had hoped that was what I was doing. I was not arguing against religion at all.
When there is a large change (such as switching a gene on or off, leading to a presence or lack of teeth), it can often be accomplished in a single generation.
Yes, but almost all such changes are harmful. Evolution is a process of fine-tuning. A sudden change is extremely unlikely to result in a more optimal organism.
As a result, there are few intermediate species showing the progress of quantitative changes (macroevolution).
That is simply because new species probably arise in small isolated populations under stress (which is where there is selection pressure). This makes discovery of intermediate fossils very unlikely.
That is completely incorrect. Evolution says nothing about how life began, only what has happened to it since then.
The problem with this statement is that it is very hard to define life.
You can get evolution of replicating RNAs in the test tube - they can mutate because of reproduction errors into new forms that can be selected for. However, these are not really 'life' because we expect living things to be more self-contained, like cells.
However, given enough time (millions of years), and the right environment, something like this could very likely end up as something we would recognise as living.
So, evolution can certainly describe how pre-living mutating and replicating molecules can adapt and change until life appears.
Name a positive mutation in, for example, drosophila (fruit flies). These beasties have been bombarded with gamma radiation and any other mutagenic source for a lot of years.
Mutation of a single gene has resulted in a doubling of life span. This is the 'I am not dead yet' gene!
I'm not talking about the evolutionists, I'm talking about those who don't even want to look at the world God created for clues about how He did it before declaring that they know how the world works because of literalist interpetations of the bible.
This is because scientists look at the world with an open mind. We don't go out looking for clues about how He did it, because we don't assume anyone did it - if we did assume that, it would not be a useful scientific approach.
The problem with assuming that there are these clues is that almost all the discoveries that were thought to be clues of God's work have turned out to be false, and could be explained far more simply. There comes a point where there is no more room for these clues, as almost everything can be explained - we are very close to that stage with evolution and biology.
Have you heard of the 'God of the Gaps' argument, and why it is flawed?
There is absolutely no reason under evolution why some creatures would have 6 or 8 limbs while others have four. But when we consider that each creature was designed for its niche, then the differences make sense.
Evolution has to make do with what it has got. A long time ago a certain group of animals with a certain number of limbs happened to do better than others, and that group survived. From then on, evolution was stuck with that number of limbs from then on. The number of limbs is the result of a chance event a long time ago. If that chance had led to six-limbed fishes, then reptiles and mammals, I'm sure that some religious folk would say that 6 was the best design!
but people are going for what look like the easy pickings first
A reasonable point, but I don't think they are going for easy pickings. Small, Earth-like planets are very hard to find. Possible signature of life is physical or chemical situations that are not at thermodynamic equilibrium (a good example is the recent discovery of methane on Mars). I feel we should be looking for much broader (and easier to find) signatures of life than small Earth-like planets in a mythical 'habitable zone'.
Habitable zone is quite similar to the androcentric cosmic view which can be summarized as we exist because the situations are right. Therefore only where the situation is similar to where we exist, other intelligent beings can be. In my opinion it's a pile of brown smelly stuff.
Heh. I agree. I support Jack Cohen's view that most scientists looking for life in space are really only looking for where they would find something almost exactly like themselves, not looking for where life REALLY might be.
Sort of. A star has a zone where liquid water could be available in large enough quantities to make a large fraction of the planet habitable for long periods, which is what's necessary for a remote detection (at least with forseeable technology)
Yes, but... the liquid water on Earth is mainly a result of CO2 in the atmosphere. Without that it would be ice! It's controversial as to whether or not Earth is actually in a so-called 'habitable zone' if that is based simply on distance from the Sun.
It's still useful to talk about the habitable zone of a star when looking for extra-solar planets. But other things in the stellar system (tidal locking around a gas giant, or a hot radioactive core) could create additional habitable areas.
Well, if you look at tidally locked moons, it could well be that the main potentially habitable water is around Jupiter, and it's the Earth that is 'additional' (especially if you average things over the lifetime of the Sun).
I see what you are saying in terms of looking for planets, but in terms of looking for life and the majority of liquid water, the whole idea of 'habitable zone' looks very misleading.
in or near the "habitable zone," defined by scientists as the distance from a star where liquid water can exist on a planet's surface."
The habitable zone is a rather out-of-date idea. Just look at our solar system: There is probably more liquid water all over the place - possibly in Jupiter's atmosphere as a result of internal heat, almost certainly under an ice layer on Europa and perhaps in a similar state on Callisto. Mercury has such a range of temperatures that liquid water is at least possible (although unlikely) somewhere on the planet.
Even extrasolar planets could have liquid water as a result of internal heat from radioactive decay if their atmospheres are thick enough to keep the heat in.
I certainly would not trust in appeals to ad hominem attacks and argument from authority.
Why not? Crichton HAS published scientifically incorrect ideas - this is not an attack, it's established fact (for example, almost none of the science in Jurassic Park is correct). Also a good way to find out what is likely to be correct is to get the opinions of those believed to be authorities on a subject.
If this stuff is so uncontroversial, what's the problem with just referencing convincing data and evidence?
Because it IS controversial. I did not say it was otherwise. What I did say was that a consensus (vast majority) of scientists believe that human activity is affecting global warming.
One person's convincing data is another person's controversial result!...seem to boil down to demonisation of opponents...
There are many scientists who don't believe that human activity is affecting the climate. I have respect for them. But, I don't have respect for an author (with a bad scientific record) who is out to make money with a controversial book, or politicians who just want to avoid making hard choices.
I have yet to be associated with a project written in Java where we didn't have to rewrite in another language (C or C++, usually) to fulfill the system requirements (those projects range from embedded systems to large enterprise systems).
I used to code a huge amount in C/C++, and was a serious Java sceptic years ago, because of the hugeness of the run-time and the terrible speed (I once saw a demonstration of Swing, and could not believe how anyone could use something so slow). However, that was years ago. Things have changed. Java is no longer slow, and there is phenomenal support for Java in all scales of application. If I were having problems with Java for large applications I would absolutely not translate to (for example) C/C++ under any circumstances - you lose so much, especially portability between servers, which is critical these days. As Java is THE key enterprise development language, I would be sensible enough to realise that any problems were mine, and not the language.
Regarding embedded systems, the situation is different. Real time Java is 'cutting edge', and I would be cautious, and would certainly consider C++ for some applications. The J2ME system has lots of limitations that can restrict its applicability (although there are alternative Java versions that are more powerful, such as Waba).
I'm not out to argue; I just feel that when someone objects to Java for years-out-of-date reasons like 'Java is interpreted', I should correct this, as I believe that a modern high-performance garbage-collected OOP language like Java is a important step forward for the software industry, that has been (and still is) suffering severely from the misplaced use of lower-level languages like C++.
You've missed my point completely. BTW, I am not in the habit of hiding my real thoughts behind subtle innuendos. If I had MEANT to say that the licensing issue was Java-specific, I would have said so. Please refrain from putting words in my mouth. My point was to comment that JBoss is not suitable for most large enterprise application needs and those needs require a commercial, licensable Java App server such as WebLogic.
In your original comment you said that 'Java brings nothing to my table except additional overhead in terms of resources and licensing fees.' This implies that Java has a specific issue regarding licencing over and above other languages - that is, it is specifically more expensive or tricky to license.
Every new commercialization has its own challenges, has to be met with new social inventions,
To say this makes the term 'innovation' to broad as to be meaningless. Every now and then there may be a particularly imaginitive marketing strategy, but to talk so broadly of 'innovation' and 'invention' is to debase the terms, I feel.
By your reasoning, there's no innovation in Linux, because 40 years ago someone wrote Space Wars.
Another exaggeration! But to a large extent, I agree. There is a lot of expertise, inventiveness and a huge amount of skill in Linux, but and certainly some innovation, but not that much - it may have been new code, but most of the ideas have been around for a long time.
Customization and expertise in the infrastructure is a strength of open systems in general, which is concentrated and distilled in open source.
This is one of the few points I disagree with in an otherwise excellent post. I just don't believe that the strength of open systems is necessarily reflected in open source in any way.
I know of several open source projects that totally reject standards, and have gone their own way.
Of course the commercialization of a product is an innovation.
No. Innovation means doing something for the first time. Commercialization as a process was not done 'for the first time' for GPS. You would probably have to look back thousands of years for commercialization to be an 'innovation'!
Michael Crichton's latest book, State of Fear, has an extensive bibliography
So does a recent issue of National Geographic. Who would you trust? A respected journal or a single author with a well-known reputation for publishing half-baked ideas?
But you might want to read some actual scientific experiments on the matter. The science does not conclusively support global warming.
As someone who works in environmental science, I disagree. There is absolutely no doubt at all about the fact that global warming is occurring. The only controversy is whether or not human activity contributes.
For example, how could they include 'Commercialised GPS'(6)? The innovation is GPS alone, or is making something 'commercial' innovative these days?
Also, portable computers (3) have not been 'innovative' in the usual sense of the word - its been a long slow evolution over decades, from small-screened 'luggables' in the early 1980s.
Not that important to be honest. I certainly like the cost aspects of 'free software', but what really concerns me is choice. I try to avoid relying on a product which has a single supplier or is not standards-compliant, even if it does meet the FSF's standards.
No, they don't. A majority of scientists? Not one of the scientists I know - who doesn't work for a lobbying group or left-leaning "think tank" aka lobbying group - claims to believe that Global Warming is caused by humans
So, you select a group of scientists by their politics and then assume they are part of a consensus.
So, where do you get the idea that "a majority" have formed a "consensus"?
By reading the scientific press.
And more importantly, how do you know that they came to that conclusion based on solid reasoning and not just from accepting what "everyone knows"? Scientists aren't immune to that, you know.
Well, largely, they are - science is based on something called 'reviewing' of research in which published work has to be subject to quality checks even by those who disagree with it.
Not for a long time. Almost all Java implementations translate to optimised machine code at run time.
Oh, so then I don't need to invoke the JVM with:
java.........
Why is this relevant? You do understand the phrase 'at RUN time'?
Still looks like semi-interpreted code to me, just cuts out part of the parsing/translation work. Try again.
You try again. You did not say 'semi-interpreted' (whatever that means), you said 'interpreted'.
Java translation to (very optimised) machine code on almost all VMs is a simple fact:
From the documentation of Sun's Java:
"The server VM contains an advanced adaptive compiler that supports many of the same types of optimizations performed by optimizing C++ compilers, as well as some optimizations that can't be done by traditional compilers, such as aggressive inlining across virtual method invocations."
And IBM's Java:
" the Java Just-In-Time Compiler, which allows much faster execution by compiling bytecodes into native machine code on the fly. Our JIT compiler is used on almost all Java platforms of IBM, ranging from network computers (NC) to mainframes."
Hewlett-Packard's Java:
"The HP-UX Just-In-Time compiler for Java (JIT) included with the HP-UX Developer's Kit for Java automatically and efficiently converts bytecode to native machine instructions at runtime."
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Parent might be OT but modding it down to oblivion will not change the fact that Lunix still cannot compete with Windows or OSX.
This depends on the market. As a desktop games machine, Linux will take years to have an impact. But in the server market, it's competing exceeding well.
Every year we see MAJOR advances in Windows and Macs, while Lunix just seems to plod along.
So what has been the major advance in Windows in the last year? Or the year before? A service pack that gives a decent firewall? Something Linux has had for years?
Case in point: I needed to install Linux on a machine and decided on Debian, being one of the most popular distros for servers. It took me AGES to find a pre-compiled install package! And installing it was pretty painful.
Bizarre. Go to debian site. Download network install CD (or order install set). Put in first CD. Answer a few questions. Specify hardware. Wait. Select services required from task selection tool. Wait.
How could looking up the debian site take ages? Where are the non-compiled install packages??
A modern OS is more than just performance and security.
Not much more. Everything else should be tools or libraries. I don't expect a server OS to play fast graphic games, for example.
Lunix was and probably always will be 3 years away from taking over the desktop market.
Who cares? Why does Linux need to 'take over' anything? It's competing very heathily in most markets.
Except in cases of hardware or driver issues, reliability is no longer an issue in the comparison between Linux and Windows.
Apart from the requirement to have hardware and drivers to run a system.... Windows without these would be pretty boring. This also neglects the phenomental virus/worm/security issues for Windows over the past couple of years.
Linux will remain a niche. It's over ten years later, and Linux is still just a marginal server OS beneath BSD.
50% of all new blade servers are shipped with Linux, and it is the pre-installed system on around 20% of ALL other new servers. Strange use of the word 'niche'.
In the desktop market, it has barely made a dent. Before Google Zeitgeist removed its OS numbers, Linux was at a mere 1%.
No, Linux has around 2.5-3% of desktop market share. Due to the nature of Linux, this is not a measure of installed base. I'm sure most organisations that use Linux on the desktop do what we did: Buy PCs with pre-installed Windows (as that is where the bios update and hardware analysis tools are installed), then re-partition and dual-boot Linux. Installed base of a free OS is very hard to measure, but its certainly going to be larger than the purchased volume.
In precisely the same manner, we can't determine if an intelligence created this Universe, or if it simply was forced to evolve the way it did on its own. We have no "other Universe" to compare to.
There are several totally separate points confused here. The question of whether or not an intelligence created the universe has no relevance to whether or not the subsequent universe was forced to follow a certain path. We do have other universes to compare to - we hypothesize about them and make mathematical models of them. We can show that some of them can't exist.
It looks like the universe at the point of origin was simple. Intelligences are complex. To go from a simple origin to a more complex origin (who created the intelligence?) is bad logic.
"Who" and "How" are two independent questions. Scientists don't look for a "who". They look for a "how". The answer to one does not answer the other.
This is all irrelevant to the matter being discussed. This was about the presence of clues in evolution about a creator. This implies that when you look at the 'how', you will see signs of a 'who'. If you look at the 'how', and you see NO signs of a 'who' (the whole thing can have happened without intervention), the answer to one definitely does answer the other.
Eventually, if you look at enough of the 'how', you find there is virtually no need left for a 'who'. What do you conclude?
Rather than just point at anyone with the opinion that god created the world in the creationists sense and shout "RELGION BLOWS!", it's more productive to argue against what is really wrong here
I had hoped that was what I was doing. I was not arguing against religion at all.
Not all evolutionary changes are small ones.
Virtually all of them are.
When there is a large change (such as switching a gene on or off, leading to a presence or lack of teeth), it can often be accomplished in a single generation.
Yes, but almost all such changes are harmful. Evolution is a process of fine-tuning. A sudden change is extremely unlikely to result in a more optimal organism.
As a result, there are few intermediate species showing the progress of quantitative changes (macroevolution).
That is simply because new species probably arise in small isolated populations under stress (which is where there is selection pressure). This makes discovery of intermediate fossils very unlikely.
God created this world. It's arrogance and ignorance of the highest degree for men to say they understand how He did it.
But isn't that exactly what 'creationists' are doing? They are saying that God could not have used evolution.
That is completely incorrect. Evolution says nothing about how life began, only what has happened to it since then.
The problem with this statement is that it is very hard to define life.
You can get evolution of replicating RNAs in the test tube - they can mutate because of reproduction errors into new forms that can be selected for. However, these are not really 'life' because we expect living things to be more self-contained, like cells.
However, given enough time (millions of years), and the right environment, something like this could very likely end up as something we would recognise as living.
So, evolution can certainly describe how pre-living mutating and replicating molecules can adapt and change until life appears.
Name a positive mutation in, for example, drosophila (fruit flies). These beasties have been bombarded with gamma radiation and any other mutagenic source for a lot of years.
Mutation of a single gene has resulted in a doubling of life span. This is the 'I am not dead yet' gene!
I'm not talking about the evolutionists, I'm talking about those who don't even want to look at the world God created for clues about how He did it before declaring that they know how the world works because of literalist interpetations of the bible.
This is because scientists look at the world with an open mind. We don't go out looking for clues about how He did it, because we don't assume anyone did it - if we did assume that, it would not be a useful scientific approach.
The problem with assuming that there are these clues is that almost all the discoveries that were thought to be clues of God's work have turned out to be false, and could be explained far more simply. There comes a point where there is no more room for these clues, as almost everything can be explained - we are very close to that stage with evolution and biology.
Have you heard of the 'God of the Gaps' argument, and why it is flawed?
There is absolutely no reason under evolution why some creatures would have 6 or 8 limbs while others have four. But when we consider that each creature was designed for its niche, then the differences make sense.
Evolution has to make do with what it has got. A long time ago a certain group of animals with a certain number of limbs happened to do better than others, and that group survived. From then on, evolution was stuck with that number of limbs from then on. The number of limbs is the result of a chance event a long time ago. If that chance had led to six-limbed fishes, then reptiles and mammals, I'm sure that some religious folk would say that 6 was the best design!
but people are going for what look like the easy pickings first
A reasonable point, but I don't think they are going for easy pickings. Small, Earth-like planets are very hard to find. Possible signature of life is physical or chemical situations that are not at thermodynamic equilibrium (a good example is the recent discovery of methane on Mars). I feel we should be looking for much broader (and easier to find) signatures of life than small Earth-like planets in a mythical 'habitable zone'.
Habitable zone is quite similar to the androcentric cosmic view which can be summarized as we exist because the situations are right. Therefore only where the situation is similar to where we exist, other intelligent beings can be. In my opinion it's a pile of brown smelly stuff.
Heh. I agree. I support Jack Cohen's view that most scientists looking for life in space are really only looking for where they would find something almost exactly like themselves, not looking for where life REALLY might be.
Sort of. A star has a zone where liquid water could be available in large enough quantities to make a large fraction of the planet habitable for long periods, which is what's necessary for a remote detection (at least with forseeable technology)
Yes, but... the liquid water on Earth is mainly a result of CO2 in the atmosphere. Without that it would be ice! It's controversial as to whether or not Earth is actually in a so-called 'habitable zone' if that is based simply on distance from the Sun.
It's still useful to talk about the habitable zone of a star when looking for extra-solar planets. But other things in the stellar system (tidal locking around a gas giant, or a hot radioactive core) could create additional habitable areas.
Well, if you look at tidally locked moons, it could well be that the main potentially habitable water is around Jupiter, and it's the Earth that is 'additional' (especially if you average things over the lifetime of the Sun).
I see what you are saying in terms of looking for planets, but in terms of looking for life and the majority of liquid water, the whole idea of 'habitable zone' looks very misleading.
in or near the "habitable zone," defined by scientists as the distance from a star where liquid water can exist on a planet's surface."
The habitable zone is a rather out-of-date idea. Just look at our solar system: There is probably more liquid water all over the place - possibly in Jupiter's atmosphere as a result of internal heat, almost certainly under an ice layer on Europa and perhaps in a similar state on Callisto. Mercury has such a range of temperatures that liquid water is at least possible (although unlikely) somewhere on the planet.
Even extrasolar planets could have liquid water as a result of internal heat from radioactive decay if their atmospheres are thick enough to keep the heat in.
I certainly would not trust in appeals to ad hominem attacks and argument from authority.
...seem to boil down to demonisation of opponents...
Why not? Crichton HAS published scientifically incorrect ideas - this is not an attack, it's established fact (for example, almost none of the science in Jurassic Park is correct). Also a good way to find out what is likely to be correct is to get the opinions of those believed to be authorities on a subject.
If this stuff is so uncontroversial, what's the problem with just referencing convincing data and evidence?
Because it IS controversial. I did not say it was otherwise. What I did say was that a consensus (vast majority) of scientists believe that human activity is affecting global warming.
One person's convincing data is another person's controversial result!
There are many scientists who don't believe that human activity is affecting the climate. I have respect for them. But, I don't have respect for an author (with a bad scientific record) who is out to make money with a controversial book, or politicians who just want to avoid making hard choices.
I have yet to be associated with a project written in Java where we didn't have to rewrite in another language (C or C++, usually) to fulfill the system requirements (those projects range from embedded systems to large enterprise systems).
I used to code a huge amount in C/C++, and was a serious Java sceptic years ago, because of the hugeness of the run-time and the terrible speed (I once saw a demonstration of Swing, and could not believe how anyone could use something so slow). However, that was years ago. Things have changed. Java is no longer slow, and there is phenomenal support for Java in all scales of application. If I were having problems with Java for large applications I would absolutely not translate to (for example) C/C++ under any circumstances - you lose so much, especially portability between servers, which is critical these days. As Java is THE key enterprise development language, I would be sensible enough to realise that any problems were mine, and not the language.
Regarding embedded systems, the situation is different. Real time Java is 'cutting edge', and I would be cautious, and would certainly consider C++ for some applications. The J2ME system has lots of limitations that can restrict its applicability (although there are alternative Java versions that are more powerful, such as Waba).
I'm not out to argue; I just feel that when someone objects to Java for years-out-of-date reasons like 'Java is interpreted', I should correct this, as I believe that a modern high-performance garbage-collected OOP language like Java is a important step forward for the software industry, that has been (and still is) suffering severely from the misplaced use of lower-level languages like C++.
You've missed my point completely. BTW, I am not in the habit of hiding my real thoughts behind subtle innuendos. If I had MEANT to say that the licensing issue was Java-specific, I would have said so. Please refrain from putting words in my mouth. My point was to comment that JBoss is not suitable for most large enterprise application needs and those needs require a commercial, licensable Java App server such as WebLogic.
In your original comment you said that 'Java brings nothing to my table except additional overhead in terms of resources and licensing fees.' This implies that Java has a specific issue regarding licencing over and above other languages - that is, it is specifically more expensive or tricky to license.
Every new commercialization has its own challenges, has to be met with new social inventions,
To say this makes the term 'innovation' to broad as to be meaningless. Every now and then there may be a particularly imaginitive marketing strategy, but to talk so broadly of 'innovation' and 'invention' is to debase the terms, I feel.
By your reasoning, there's no innovation in Linux, because 40 years ago someone wrote Space Wars.
Another exaggeration! But to a large extent, I agree. There is a lot of expertise, inventiveness and a huge amount of skill in Linux, but and certainly some innovation, but not that much - it may have been new code, but most of the ideas have been around for a long time.
Customization and expertise in the infrastructure is a strength of open systems in general, which is concentrated and distilled in open source.
This is one of the few points I disagree with in an otherwise excellent post. I just don't believe that the strength of open systems is necessarily reflected in open source in any way.
I know of several open source projects that totally reject standards, and have gone their own way.
Of course the commercialization of a product is an innovation.
No. Innovation means doing something for the first time. Commercialization as a process was not done 'for the first time' for GPS. You would probably have to look back thousands of years for commercialization to be an 'innovation'!
Michael Crichton's latest book, State of Fear, has an extensive bibliography
So does a recent issue of National Geographic. Who would you trust? A respected journal or a single author with a well-known reputation for publishing half-baked ideas?
But you might want to read some actual scientific experiments on the matter. The science does not conclusively support global warming.
As someone who works in environmental science, I disagree. There is absolutely no doubt at all about the fact that global warming is occurring. The only controversy is whether or not human activity contributes.
For example, how could they include 'Commercialised GPS'(6)? The innovation is GPS alone, or is making something 'commercial' innovative these days?
Also, portable computers (3) have not been 'innovative' in the usual sense of the word - its been a long slow evolution over decades, from small-screened 'luggables' in the early 1980s.
How important are the FSF's four freedoms to you?
Not that important to be honest. I certainly like the cost aspects of 'free software', but what really concerns me is choice. I try to avoid relying on a product which has a single supplier or is not standards-compliant, even if it does meet the FSF's standards.
No, they don't. A majority of scientists? Not one of the scientists I know - who doesn't work for a lobbying group or left-leaning "think tank" aka lobbying group - claims to believe that Global Warming is caused by humans
So, you select a group of scientists by their politics and then assume they are part of a consensus.
So, where do you get the idea that "a majority" have formed a "consensus"?
By reading the scientific press.
And more importantly, how do you know that they came to that conclusion based on solid reasoning and not just from accepting what "everyone knows"? Scientists aren't immune to that, you know.
Well, largely, they are - science is based on something called 'reviewing' of research in which published work has to be subject to quality checks even by those who disagree with it.
Scientists don't publish just opinions you know.
Not for a long time. Almost all Java implementations translate to optimised machine code at run time.
.........
Oh, so then I don't need to invoke the JVM with:
java
Why is this relevant? You do understand the phrase 'at RUN time'?
Still looks like semi-interpreted code to me, just cuts out part of the parsing/translation work. Try again.
You try again. You did not say 'semi-interpreted' (whatever that means), you said 'interpreted'.
Java translation to (very optimised) machine code on almost all VMs is a simple fact:
From the documentation of Sun's Java:
"The server VM contains an advanced adaptive compiler that supports many of the same types of optimizations performed by optimizing C++ compilers, as well as some optimizations that can't be done by traditional compilers, such as aggressive inlining across virtual method invocations."
And IBM's Java:
" the Java Just-In-Time Compiler, which allows much faster execution by compiling bytecodes into native machine code on the fly. Our JIT compiler is used on almost all Java platforms of IBM, ranging from network computers (NC) to mainframes."
Hewlett-Packard's Java:
"The HP-UX Just-In-Time compiler for Java (JIT) included with the HP-UX Developer's Kit for Java automatically and efficiently converts bytecode to native machine instructions at runtime."
I hope this clears things up.