I think Java could only be helped by removing it from Sun's control.
The difficulty with any language or standard which is controlled solely by a corporation which stands to profit from its control is that the company will naturally move to protect its control.
Other companies (Microsoft!) will move to undermine control or use of that standard, regardless of technical merit.
This only undermines the advance in computing technology as major corporations fight over market share rather than promoting the best tools available.
Considering that system worked wonders for the RAF during WWII.
Even with the increased speed of planes today, a decently well trained, well dispersed program of ground observation could be quite useful against stealthy aircraft.
The problem with that line of thinking is that it leads to real invasions of privacy anyway.
If we roll over time and again to seemingly benign invasions of privacy, they will become commonplace. What will then stop so called "real" invasions of our privacy? If you then try to stand up and challenge them, companies will point to the fact that you didn't complain when all they asked for was your video card and OS. Besides... its "for our own good."
Rights are like copyrights, if you don't try to enforce them, you lose them.
Not really. Consider the case where there are an infinite number of parallel universes.
Then there are an infinite number "above" and "below" and no one universe is at the "center."
Besides, you are using the word universe in two different ways, one to describe the set of "parallel universes" and another describing an object which is in parallel with other similar objects.
The biggest problem is a lack of support for decoder cards.
After Creative's recent support for several of their soundcards (which isn't too big of a deal anyway, as their soundcards were among the best supported anyway) makes me hope they will release drivers for their dxr2 card.
Anyway, DVD support and mpeg decoder support goes hand in hand. If linux can read encrypted dvd's, then there is an incentive to have drivers for decoder cards. Alternately, the best use for supported decoder cards is to play DVD movies.
Either way, as linux moves towards the mainstream, this type of hardware will by necessity be better supported.
I agree that we're in a difficult transition period. During the early part of this century it was easy to see that technology was going to take off, but not to see exactly where it would lead.
Modern authors have the difficult task of incorporating the latest advances in science and technology, while retaining the mysticism and fantacy which authors like Bradbury brought to their works.
Reality is almost a hinderance to modern authors. No longer can we imagine vast civilizations on Mars.
On the other hand, technology has brought about great change in our society. This allows SF authors to do what they do best: explore new facets of human experience. Where Bradbury explored Mars, authors like David Brin explore the stars, and Neal Stephenson explores the infinite virtual worlds of human imagination.
Hopefully the next few generations of SF writers will be frontier poets and authors writing of new-found opportunity, not academics writing of that which could have been.
Can't think of any reason? Howabout the billions of dollars they've invested in this format.
You don't throw away billions in R&D, marketing and production, simply because you're afraid that a small minority of that product will be lost to piracy.
Say they cut off production. They would be open to class-action lawsuits from the people who bought players in good faith.
There's also nothing they can do to fix the situation. There are millions of players out there which use specific keys, some of which have been cracked. They can't release DVD's without those cracks, otherwise those players will become useless.
Essentially the industry will make a lot of noise, and possibly line the pockets of their favorite legislators, but other than that, there's not much they can do about the situation.
The problem with this tax is that it only harms the small isp's who can't simply absorb such a tax, and thus need to increase their rates significantly.
AOL and other large isp's can absorb the tax much more easily, and, depending on the details of the tax, could probably leave their rates steady, or at least be able to undercut the smaller isp's.
It would also be interesting to see the tax's influence on the recent trend of free internet access bundled with computers/free computers bundled with internet access.
The problem with "spurious" patents is you'll need precedent in order to define what "spurious" really means.
The other problem with this is I can still grab up stupid patents, as long as it's cheaper for companies to pay me a pitance rather than try to challenge it in court.
Essentially what you're asking is for companies to take gambles that their huge court bills will be reimbursed when they win. This is a risky business at the very least. Who knows what a judge will think is logical and what isn't. Remember, most judges are not technologically savvy (my father is a Judge in Maricopa County, AZ (USA), and has little to no clue about computers/other technology).
The problem with opening the patent process up to the public is that you are exposing your idea. It behooves everyone else out there to shout down your patent idea, then try to beat you to market.
As to limiting the life of a patent, that's an interesting idea. It gives a company a chance to grab the market, while still allowing for competition down the road.
Apple's hardware is pretty decent, particularly in their recent models, and would make for good low end servers.
I've never liked their OS, however, and over the years it just got worse. They've gone in the right direction with OS X, but they're smart to try to ride the linux wave.
Put another way: linux is going to be ported to mac hardware one way or another. Apple can help and try to use it for some pro-linux PR value, or they can shoot themselves in the foot.
You have to choose the theory which best fits the available evidence.
Evolution is currently the best fit. So much so that it can be considered true, with possible modifications as we learn more.
Creationism, (and by creationism I refer to the fundamentalist Christian Genesis story) fails to explain all available evidence, and is contradicted by much of what it doesn't explain.
For an example of (1) checkout the latest versions of licq... the author has yanked the gui out of the code and has it loaded as a module...
(2) doesn't really help matters... why not just use one toolkit if both have to be installed?
(3) #ifdefs would be incredibly messy in this case, considering QT's main language is C++, and gtk prefers C. True they both have wrappers for other languages, but afaik, they're really no substitute.
Whose job is it really to write the specs? Who talks with the customers, writes the ad copy, puts out the press releases and talks to the shareholders? Management of course!
The design process is inherently a management task: weighing priorities and task scheduling.
Often times the marketing department tries to add stuff, its not in the spec, but because there's a discontinuity between the programmers and upper management, the project balloons.
Half the time I need to overestimate how long something will take because I know that if I say 2 weeks, the customer will be promised 1.
Don't even get me started about initial quotes. It is standard business practice to vastly underestimate the timeframe for a project in order to get the contract, then breaking deadlines and going overbudget once a customer is committed.
I have developed on both NT and Windows98 (for either) and can tell you the OS can stop software development cold.
ActiveX controls and DLL's... I can't tell you how many times a bug is introduced in a new version of Comctl32.dll but is then fixed in a later version. It is often extremely difficult to determine whether the bug lies in your code, the development environment you are using, or in the operating system. The more time you have to spend tracking down OS bugs, the more of your own bugs get through.
There is also an extremely annoying bug in Windows 9X which causes the tab button to switch between programs rather than (seems the taskbar has grabbed the focus). If you use the tab key to autocomplete or to indent your code, it makes the system unuseable. The only solution I've found to date is to reboot.
So with NT/98 I waste my time debugging and rebooting when I should be coding and bugfixing.
now all thos suckers who got "6.0" training need 6.1 training, now all the people who have support contracts need downtime to upgrade after only having a system up for 5 months..
Not really... 6.1 is 99% the same as 6.0, just with bugfixes, new versions (which usually means bugfixes on that end as well).
Impossible, the force they measured was towards the sun, not opposite the probe's line of motion (which would be the case if it were losing velocity to collisions).
To be fair, this was my first thought on the subject too, however:)
It is simply the largest of a body of objects beyond the orbit of Neptune (or mostly beyond in Pluto's case), but which lie in the plane of the planets' orbits (as opposed to the Oort cloud).
These objects are known as Kuiper belt objects after Gerard Kuiper of the University of Arizona who first predicted their existence.
Well first of all, when Intel introduces new opcodes, all of their own processors become obsolete, so it forces everyone to upgade anyway.
It sounded to me like they were planning on keeping processor images (for the lack of a better description) in CMOS, so that Transmeta's chips would actually be able to be upgraded.
Although that patent is so wordy its impossible to really know what their end product will look like.
How ironic that I ordered the Dr. Strangelove DVD just a few days ago. I hope it comes here soon.
Besides Strangelove, if you haven't seen him in Patton you're missing out. He becomes the character of Patton so completely and so believably that it is hard to imagine that there was a General Patton who WASN'T George C. Scott.
Doug
"But Mr. President, the war room? He'll see the big board!" -- George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove
The pgcs project takes releases of egcs and optimizes it to use pentium, pentium II, and other newer processor instructions.
Kind of like Mandrake does with Redhat if you think about it:)
I like it for most applications, but it is a little more risky to use as it can optimize away crucial code that was written using poor syntax. (read: linux kernel).
I've been using a kernel compiled on it for months now, however, and never had a problem, but let the buyer beware:)
IIRC the way you solve that problem is to run in 32-bit color, rather than 24. For some reason, Netscape doesn't understand 24-bit color as reported by X on some systems... so it instead defaults to the 2-bit black and white icons.
Right now a program that questioned the basis of say a fundamental faith system would probably get some sort of adult tag.
That's a really good point. I seem to remember a scandal involving one of the internet blockers who were blocking Jewish sites....
Censorship is too easily misused. If I'm in charge and I don't like what someone else thinks or says... blip... censored... regardless of the validity or invalidity of their viewpoints.
Any minority viewpoint is destined to be censored in such an arrangement. Check out Alexis De Toqueville, a Frenchman who toured the early United States and pointed out that American democracy will inevitably lead to a "tyranny of the majority"
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I think Java could only be helped by removing it from Sun's control.
The difficulty with any language or standard which is controlled solely by a corporation which stands to profit from its control is that the company will naturally move to protect its control.
Other companies (Microsoft!) will move to undermine control or use of that standard, regardless of technical merit.
This only undermines the advance in computing technology as major corporations fight over market share rather than promoting the best tools available.
Doug
Considering that system worked wonders for the RAF during WWII.
Even with the increased speed of planes today, a decently well trained, well dispersed program of ground observation could be quite useful against stealthy aircraft.
Doug
The problem with that line of thinking is that it leads to real invasions of privacy anyway.
If we roll over time and again to seemingly benign invasions of privacy, they will become commonplace. What will then stop so called "real" invasions of our privacy? If you then try to stand up and challenge them, companies will point to the fact that you didn't complain when all they asked for was your video card and OS. Besides... its "for our own good."
Rights are like copyrights, if you don't try to enforce them, you lose them.
Doug
Not really. Consider the case where there are an infinite number of parallel universes.
Then there are an infinite number "above" and "below" and no one universe is at the "center."
Besides, you are using the word universe in two different ways, one to describe the set of "parallel universes" and another describing an object which is in parallel with other similar objects.
Doug
The biggest problem is a lack of support for decoder cards.
After Creative's recent support for several of their soundcards (which isn't too big of a deal anyway, as their soundcards were among the best supported anyway) makes me hope they will release drivers for their dxr2 card.
Anyway, DVD support and mpeg decoder support goes hand in hand. If linux can read encrypted dvd's, then there is an incentive to have drivers for decoder cards. Alternately, the best use for supported decoder cards is to play DVD movies.
Either way, as linux moves towards the mainstream, this type of hardware will by necessity be better supported.
Doug
I agree that we're in a difficult transition period. During the early part of this century it was easy to see that technology was going to take off, but not to see exactly where it would lead.
Modern authors have the difficult task of incorporating the latest advances in science and technology, while retaining the mysticism and fantacy which authors like Bradbury brought to their works.
Reality is almost a hinderance to modern authors. No longer can we imagine vast civilizations on Mars.
On the other hand, technology has brought about great change in our society. This allows SF authors to do what they do best: explore new facets of human experience. Where Bradbury explored Mars, authors like David Brin explore the stars, and Neal Stephenson explores the infinite virtual worlds of human imagination.
Hopefully the next few generations of SF writers will be frontier poets and authors writing of new-found opportunity, not academics writing of that which could have been.
Douglas Rudd
Exactly! If I want to use my PC (my only DVD-player) to watch my admittedly modest DVD collection, I must boot 98.
DVD playing is one of the last few items left which is saving my 98 partition from final destruction.
Doug
Can't think of any reason? Howabout the billions of dollars they've invested in this format.
You don't throw away billions in R&D, marketing and production, simply because you're afraid that a small minority of that product will be lost to piracy.
Say they cut off production. They would be open to class-action lawsuits from the people who bought players in good faith.
There's also nothing they can do to fix the situation. There are millions of players out there which use specific keys, some of which have been cracked. They can't release DVD's without those cracks, otherwise those players will become useless.
Essentially the industry will make a lot of noise, and possibly line the pockets of their favorite legislators, but other than that, there's not much they can do about the situation.
Doug
The problem with this tax is that it only harms the small isp's who can't simply absorb such a tax, and thus need to increase their rates significantly.
AOL and other large isp's can absorb the tax much more easily, and, depending on the details of the tax, could probably leave their rates steady, or at least be able to undercut the smaller isp's.
It would also be interesting to see the tax's influence on the recent trend of free internet access bundled with computers/free computers bundled with internet access.
drudd
The problem with "spurious" patents is you'll need precedent in order to define what "spurious" really means.
The other problem with this is I can still grab up stupid patents, as long as it's cheaper for companies to pay me a pitance rather than try to challenge it in court.
Essentially what you're asking is for companies to take gambles that their huge court bills will be reimbursed when they win. This is a risky business at the very least. Who knows what a judge will think is logical and what isn't. Remember, most judges are not technologically savvy (my father is a Judge in Maricopa County, AZ (USA), and has little to no clue about computers/other technology).
The problem with opening the patent process up to the public is that you are exposing your idea. It behooves everyone else out there to shout down your patent idea, then try to beat you to market.
As to limiting the life of a patent, that's an interesting idea. It gives a company a chance to grab the market, while still allowing for competition down the road.
drudd
I don't find it all that surprising.
Apple's hardware is pretty decent, particularly in their recent models, and would make for good low end servers.
I've never liked their OS, however, and over the years it just got worse. They've gone in the right direction with OS X, but they're smart to try to ride the linux wave.
Put another way: linux is going to be ported to mac hardware one way or another. Apple can help and try to use it for some pro-linux PR value, or they can shoot themselves in the foot.
drudd
Remember, this is the Microsoft Software Life Cycle... it goes like this:
Marketing
Requirements
Marketing
Coding
Marketing
Release
Marketing
Analysis
Marketing
Design
Maintenance
Marketing
Re-release
Marketing
Doug
That's the idea with scientific theory though...
You have to choose the theory which best fits the available evidence.
Evolution is currently the best fit. So much so that it can be considered true, with possible modifications as we learn more.
Creationism, (and by creationism I refer to the fundamentalist Christian Genesis story) fails to explain all available evidence, and is contradicted by much of what it doesn't explain.
Doug
Brilliant.
:)
Now write it.
The difficulty with Linux getting popular is people expect things to be done for them, but aren't willing or able to contribute themselves.
Doug
For an example of (1) checkout the latest versions of licq... the author has yanked the gui out of the code and has it loaded as a module...
(2) doesn't really help matters... why not just use one toolkit if both have to be installed?
(3) #ifdefs would be incredibly messy in this case, considering QT's main language is C++, and gtk prefers C. True they both have wrappers for other languages, but afaik, they're really no substitute.
Doug
Whose job is it really to write the specs? Who talks with the customers, writes the ad copy, puts out the press releases and talks to the shareholders? Management of course!
The design process is inherently a management task: weighing priorities and task scheduling.
Often times the marketing department tries to add stuff, its not in the spec, but because there's a discontinuity between the programmers and upper management, the project balloons.
Half the time I need to overestimate how long something will take because I know that if I say 2 weeks, the customer will be promised 1.
Don't even get me started about initial quotes. It is standard business practice to vastly underestimate the timeframe for a project in order to get the contract, then breaking deadlines and going overbudget once a customer is committed.
Doug
I have developed on both NT and Windows98 (for either) and can tell you the OS can stop software development cold.
ActiveX controls and DLL's... I can't tell you how many times a bug is introduced in a new version of Comctl32.dll but is then fixed in a later version. It is often extremely difficult to determine whether the bug lies in your code, the development environment you are using, or in the operating system. The more time you have to spend tracking down OS bugs, the more of your own bugs get through.
There is also an extremely annoying bug in Windows 9X which causes the tab button to switch between programs rather than (seems the taskbar has grabbed the focus). If you use the tab key to autocomplete or to indent your code, it makes the system unuseable. The only solution I've found to date is to reboot.
So with NT/98 I waste my time debugging and rebooting when I should be coding and bugfixing.
Doug
now all thos suckers who got "6.0" training need 6.1 training, now all the people who have support contracts need downtime to upgrade after only having a system up for 5 months..
Not really... 6.1 is 99% the same as 6.0, just with bugfixes, new versions (which usually means bugfixes on that end as well).
Doug
Impossible, the force they measured was towards the sun, not opposite the probe's line of motion (which would be the case if it were losing velocity to collisions).
:)
To be fair, this was my first thought on the subject too, however
Doug
It is simply the largest of a body of objects beyond the orbit of Neptune (or mostly beyond in Pluto's case), but which lie in the plane of the planets' orbits (as opposed to the Oort cloud).
These objects are known as Kuiper belt objects after Gerard Kuiper of the University of Arizona who first predicted their existence.
Doug
Well first of all, when Intel introduces new opcodes, all of their own processors become obsolete, so it forces everyone to upgade anyway.
It sounded to me like they were planning on keeping processor images (for the lack of a better description) in CMOS, so that Transmeta's chips would actually be able to be upgraded.
Although that patent is so wordy its impossible to really know what their end product will look like.
Doug
How ironic that I ordered the Dr. Strangelove DVD just a few days ago. I hope it comes here soon.
Besides Strangelove, if you haven't seen him in Patton you're missing out. He becomes the character of Patton so completely and so believably that it is hard to imagine that there was a General Patton who WASN'T George C. Scott.
Doug
"But Mr. President, the war room? He'll see the big board!" -- George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove
The pgcs project takes releases of egcs and optimizes it to use pentium, pentium II, and other newer processor instructions.
:)
:)
Kind of like Mandrake does with Redhat if you think about it
I like it for most applications, but it is a little more risky to use as it can optimize away crucial code that was written using poor syntax. (read: linux kernel).
I've been using a kernel compiled on it for months now, however, and never had a problem, but let the buyer beware
Doug
IIRC the way you solve that problem is to run in 32-bit color, rather than 24. For some reason, Netscape doesn't understand 24-bit color as reported by X on some systems... so it instead defaults to the 2-bit black and white icons.
Doug
Right now a program that questioned the basis of say a fundamental faith system would probably get some sort of adult tag.
That's a really good point. I seem to remember a scandal involving one of the internet blockers who were blocking Jewish sites....
Censorship is too easily misused. If I'm in charge and I don't like what someone else thinks or says... blip... censored... regardless of the validity or invalidity of their viewpoints.
Any minority viewpoint is destined to be censored in such an arrangement. Check out Alexis De Toqueville, a Frenchman who toured the early United States and pointed out that American democracy will inevitably lead to a "tyranny of the majority"
Doug