Java is just great for strategy or RPG games that do NOT need high end graphics.
As Java's performance has improved, so has the situation with "high end graphics". Check out Arkanae for instance. It is awesome that OpenGL and Java are playing nicely together (and it will only get better). Also check out the Grand Canyon Demo for what will be possible with JDK 1.4, OpenGL and the DirectBuffer interface.
The best graphics card is your imagination!
True, but I find mine is helped quite a bit by a 10 million poly/sec rendering engine.;-)
Stallman is making a very good and important point here.
It seems like every time I hear the media covering the terrorist attacks, I hear someone saying "Of course I'm ready to give up some freedom to improve security." These people don't seem to realize that if we give up civil liberties in response to these attacks, the terrorists have succeeded! Giving up those freedoms means the terrorists have forced us to change our way of life - that should be the LAST thing we want or allow.
On the specific subject of flight safety, I've heard two proposals that (especially combined) would eliminate the threat of this type of attack almost completely without requiring additional airport security at all:
More armed air marshals in plainclothes randomly on flights.
Armored (Kevlar) secure bulkheads for the flight compartment of commercial planes.
The only other flight related measure that would impact airport/airline employess (but not the general public) would be greater security measures for them to eliminate problems like the ramp access that one terrorist team apparently had, allowing them to get a bomb on board.
Instead of these relatively unobtrusive measures, we will likely get very expensive, intrusive and draconian measures like automated chemical sniffers and millimeter wave "x-ray" machines. My prediction is that the terrorists will not attempt this type of attack again, and the public will absorb the cost and inconvenience for no gain whatever. Also we will likely be faced with fairly massive domestic surveillance, which will be useless if the enemy has half a clue, and will only serve to further erode our personal liberties (see the proposed encryption backdoors, for instance).
Don't forget the words of a great American (the only person to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution):
"Those that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety."
--Ben Franklin--
I hope that our current leaders can step up to the plate and make the right decisions, so that America can remain free, while eliminating the international terrorist threat to the extent possible.
To respond to a few of your points (I agree that a VM is the way to go for applets, for instance):
Okay, so scrap that idea - clearly we'll have to give some things up. So instead of javac only producing executables, we'll change it to instead produce an intermediate format, and then have it automatically translated into the final representation as soon as we know what that representation is. Well, guess what, genius! VMs have been doing exactly that for five years.
Yes, but there are deficient things about the current Sun & IBM VM approach. There is no provision for caching translation results, meaning if you restart a program all the same cycles need to be spent on JITC and analysis, again. Every time. Secondly, current VMs are very bad about sharing resources (such as Swing and other class libraries) between different VM instances, meaning (for instance) that Swing programs suffer from long startup times no matter now many other instances are running (not to mention the significant memory hit).
Personally, I'd like to see the.class ->.exe compilation happen at app install time. Gcj will be able to do exactly that. It would also be nice to have natively compiled shared libraries for Java. However, I'm willing to be impressed with TFM (Total F***ing Magic) dynamic compilation that produces such efficient code by comparison that it can erase the overhead and result in overall faster programs. All that said, the performance of current VMs is pretty amazing.
Others have addressed some of your 'points' adequately, so I won't bother, but:
The fact is, Java is NEVER used in serious numerical compution.
It is still a young language, but its use seems to be growing all the time. The Java Grande Forum is an active and vocal group of scientists and numeric programmers who certainly seem to think Java has tremendous potential in those areas. A quote from the site:
Java has potential to be a better environment for Grande application development than any previous languages such as Fortran and C++.
2) Most scientists are not fancy programers and don't care too much about OO, garbage collection, and other frills.
Most scientists who do a lot of programming (in my experience, and I work with several PhD physicists) are extremely interested in new techniques and technologies that'll make them more productive and result in robust, predictable programs. Java does a good job in both areas, and performance is very good with modern VMs.
In short, as far as I can tell, you are clueless.:-)
I agree both that the US needs to find and eradicate the responsible groups (interestingly possibly including the government of Iraq), and that blanket condemnation of Arabs (and Muslims) is wrong, so no more on that...
*and* to get serious about figuring out why the USA is so thoroughly hated and then figuring out how to
gain, if not friendly terms, neutral terms with other nations/cultures/peoples.
I can't agree that the US is "thoroughly hated". There are many nations that respect and like us. There are many more that respect and envy us. It is impossible to please everyone in the world, and personally I'm fairly happy with the way the US has positioned itself. It is certainly a champion of democracy and personal opportunity, and has made itself a symbol of those ideals.
It also seems that the vast majority of the world is on our side at the moment...
186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
Re:Not this stupid 'programming is art' BS again!
on
Software Aesthetics
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· Score: 5, Insightful
What pretentious bullshit. Software is NOT art. It can be closely compared to bricklaying, or cabinet making, it is a CRAFT.
Very perceptive...coding software is like crafting a cabinet. However, designing a cabinet is art...and so is designing software.
Try expressing an emotion in C++. It cannot be done.
jesus->loves(you);// Sarcasm, for the humor impaired
Regardless, art doesn't just express emotion, it inspires emotion. And trust me, I've had (mostly other people's) C++ code inspire some pretty horrific emotions.;-)
Good design and coding, on the other hand, can truly be things of beauty, regardless of language.
Please think before repeating these banal opinions that software is art. It just isn't. Deal with it, and if you want to be an artist, learn to paint.
Spoken like someone who just doesn't really comprehend software design, or why one design might be more elegant than another. I suppose you don't think mathematics is beautiful either...
186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
Re:IA64 is the "heir apparent"
on
Itanium Update
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· Score: 1
First off, I agree with your comments regarding Intel's missteps lately.
AMD has a good product, I just wish they were a little less mum, and had a better response than warmed-over P-numbers. I also wish we could hear a bit more noise about the Hammers.
I'm hoping that AMD will really trumpet the Hammer message once they have actual silicon. It should be a great alternative to Itanium, and will be positioned to immediately make inroads in the desktop/workstation market as well. I hope AMD will do a good job (as Intel has with P4 and Itanium) with helping the compiler writers get the most out of the chip. The Linux based Hammer simulation tools are at least a good start.
I know AMD released less than stellar numbers regarding current sales (although it may have been mainly flash related), but I'd have to think Athlon would be doing very, very well in the current economic climate...
At any rate, if AMD can execute well on Hammer, it should quickly make major inroads at the high end, IMO. AMD's reputation has grown tremendously with the success of Athlon.
The way things are headed, I can GUARANTEE you that things like speeding WILL INDEED be monitored. It starts slowly, but we're already on that slope. Put a toll transponder in your car. We've already seen these transponders used to track people [yahoo.com]. Next up, you'll get a ticket if you jump on a toll road and get from Exit A to Exit B in an average time that would exceed the speed limit.
There's an even more straightforward method than the transponders - speed sensors along the freeway at frequent intervals coupled with still cameras. The sensors are already there in many places in California, for instance, see
the San Diego Area Traffic Report page.
As I understand it, systems like this coupled with cameras are already used to send automated tickets to people in Europe. Neat, eh?
But why stop there? These things are cheap enough. Make them mandatory in all cars. Monitor your car speed through GPS. Violate the speed limit, get a ticket in the mail. Plus tracking devices can help the cops find any car at any time because they're ALL being tracked. That's a GOOD thing, right? Fight crime, right?
This country is going to hell quickly. I fear for the life that my son is going to have.
I couldn't agree more, and the 'no illegal surveillance' issue is one worth getting involved in. One good place to start is boycotting anything that promotes hidden cameras for anything. Spy TV and its ilk, for instance.
Perhaps with enough public outcry we can prevent 1984 (ala George Orwell) from happening here in the US...but at this point I wouldn't count on it. Robert Heinlein was right on target many years ago (~30) when he pointed out that the US started on the road to hell when a national ID system was established. Now we have national crime databases, and a national police apparatus that grows ever stronger and prone to abuse. Time to colonize the ocean floor, or another planet...we desperately need a new frontier, with elbow room and actual freedom.
Sklyarov is clearly guilty of violating the DMCA. The not guilty plea is stupid nonsense.
You forgot the IANAL, which is massively evident. Sklyarov is almost certainly not guilty, since the DMCA is a US law and Sklyarov lives in a different country with no such law.
Remember when the author of the Melissa virus wasn't prosecuted? Why was that, again?
I'm not saying he should be charged or jailed or such. God forbid I support the government's actions here. Thing is, the issue isn't his guilt (as he is clearly guilty) but why the DMCA exists in the first place.
Don't proclaim Sklyarov's innocence, because he isn't. Instead, proclaim the injustice of a law that imposes draconian punishments for things that should not be illegal in the first place.
The DMCA should be fought as well...but don't dismiss Sklyarov's innocence so quickly!
It'll be interesting to see what the courts decide, once they have a chance.
In the end, virtually ALL the units used for measuring processor performance have died ugly, brutal deaths.
Um, no. And I'm not even talking about Q3 640x480.;-)
Try the SPEC website, and look at CPU2000 results.
And, you know what? Within a week, we all sigh with relief, because the old units never worked anyway!
Disagree again. What do you find wrong with SPEC? Its a very useful tool for measuring CPU and memory subsystem performance (bearing in mind that for many applications other factors are important as well - which is why application benchmarks are necessary).
When was the last time you heard the MIPS or FLOPS rating for a processor? When the RISC processors came out, and scored 100 x the nearest CISC chip, we suddenly started hearing how worthless those ratings really were. (Which was true, only the people saying it had been using them to crush the competition under their feet, the previous week.)
Coincidentally, I looked at Dell's 800 Mhz. Itanimum SPECint and SPECfp numbers this morning, along with Athlon and P4. Quite interesting. The integer performance of Itanium has been pretty abysmal so far (Athlon and P4 are both about twice
as fast on average)- I can't wait for the Hammer processors myself...
What's the FLOPS rating for a Pentium IV? Anyone seen it listed on any of Intel's adverts? Curious, that.
Athlon 1.4, DDR: CINT2000 495, CFP2000 426
Pentium 4 1.8, RDRAM: CINT2000 596, CFP2000 618
Before screaming about how non-representative these scores are, you should read about the SPEC2000 methodology. It's fairly rigorous, and the benchmarks are actual real-world programs.
The benchmark scores reflect the ratio of the tested system to a Sun Ultra5_10 with a 300MHz processor. This means the P4 is (on average) 6.18 times faster at running the SPECfp benchmark suite.
Nothing is perfect, but SPEC is a useful CPU/memory benchmark.
It seems that a quantum computer could calculate every possible double answer simultaneously, given a 64 qubit processor. The only problem is that, if the answer is read out, its guaranteed to be wrong!;-)
This is something of a drop from conventional computer performance, in which the answer is merely often wrong.
Somehow I think this article 'dumbed things down' a bit too much...
Id is still using OpenGL for Doom3, and there are scads of games using the Quake* engines. Soldier of Fortune is a particularly excellent example.;-)
Its true that XBox is giving DirectX a second platform, but OpenGL is doing well, and the preferred 3D API everywhere but WinWhatever (the Mac being a notable example).
There is intensive ongoing work on both APIs, and don't think for a minute that Direct3D would be what it is today without OpenGL driving it.
By the way, Direct3D is precisely nowhere in the higher end 3D marketplace...games are by no means the only 3D application. I doubt they're even the major money maker - I suspect CAD/CAM has that honor.
We'll see how things look going forward...I expect OpenGL to be around for a good, long time.
Just take a look at the Official OpenGL Website to get a feel for how lively the OpenGL world is...the laptop version of the NVIDIA Quadro2 professional GPU looks pretty sweet!
I have to laugh every time I see these claims, because the people making them always fail to back them up with proof.
There are some benchmarks at Ace's hardware (search for binaries vs. bytecodes) that aren't perfect, but make some very valid points. Perhaps a/. based C++ vs. Java coding contest would be interesting. Any interesting problems come to mind? I'm sure we have the talent around here to get close to max performance with both languages.
If you like, you may even compare it to a real OO C-based language like Objective-C, but not C++, which is one crappy OO language.
I'd expect Objective-C to be a bit slower than C++ in general, given the method lookup overhead, and lack of generic types. I do like Objective-C, but I really don't think it'll ever gain mainstream acceptance. Garbage collection is stronger than reference counting as well. Plus (assuming you're talking about a traditional compiler like gcc) you lose the advantages of bytecode like dynamic compilation tuned for the exact CPU (say Athlon for instance) that you're using.
Please give hard evidence that Java is on par with C (within 10% of both CPU and RAM usage) for a significant, parity task.
I didn't make that claim, so I'm not sure why I'd want to do that. I'll stand by my claim WRT C++ (used as an OOL).
Spoken like someone who doesn't really understand OO. OO programming can be done in any language, even C, though certain things are made easier for the programmer if the language has OO support.
I don't recall saying it was impossible to do OO in C, but why would one want to? That's the point of having OO support built into the language (which is of course what I was referring to).
Uh, how about C?
Do you honestly feel C is as productive as Java? I certainly don't. Both its language features and standard library are seriously lacking. Plus you can't move your app to a new architecture or OS without recompiling.
You also have to work a lot harder to write good cross-platform C code, and there is no really worthwhile solution for cross-platform GUI development (at least compared to Java).
For those of us who lived through the C++ hype, you people who are riding the Java bandwagon are downright funny. They're all just languages, not ways of life.
I lived through the C++ hype...and several before that. C++, though, was such a major disappointment...it sounded great on paper, but actually implementing software with it was a severe pain. Bugs were often very subtle and difficult to find. Java has been a massive breath of fresh air by comparison, and it looks like eventually they'll add back in a couple things I miss (generics and operator overloading). In the meantime, there are preprocessors.
The C++ people said the very same things . . .
To a large extent they were right. Have you checked the ratio of C++ to C jobs lately? And that was in spite of how badly C++ sucked... Java, on the other hand, is a major step in the right direction.
Maybe I have entirely missed the point, but compare C/C++ to Java is like comparing apples to oranges. C is not generally an interpreted language and therefore has completely different applications. Perl, Python, C#, and BASIC are usually interpreted languages and are comparable.
Yes, you missed the point. First, the VM based versions of Java (using adaptive compilation as opposed to simple interpretation) are now very competitive with C++ speedwise. Sometimes slower, sometimes faster with usually a fairly small delta.
C is generally more efficient, but you lose object orientation.
Finally, there are traditional ahead-of-time compilers for Java like gcj (which shipped with gcc 3.0).
Java is well suited to a large percentage of programming tasks. For those areas where its not appropriate it can (fairly;) easily call C/C++.
Java is open, productive, fast, cross-platform, widely taught, supported by every significant software company, and somewhat future-proof. What other language/platform comes close?
The real proof will be forthcoming - when many anti-Java Luddites are in the unemployment lines, still complaining about it...;-)
o Single inheritance only
o All memory access through references
o Garbage collected
o No templates
o No operator overloading
o No preprocessor
Differences between D and Java:
o Unicode supported in source code
o No religion (ROFL)
Walter seems to be confused about some things. First, Java doesn't require a VM. See gcj for instance (there are also other traditional Java compilers, such as Transvirtual).
Also, Walter seems to not understand the value of operator overloading in a very large problem domain - mathematics. This is especially sad given Unicode source code, meaning real math symbols could be used.
Overall, if I had to grade this language design, I'd have to give it a "D".;-) It is a very minor knockoff of Java.
I seriously doubt this language will become popular. If you like it, learn Java...the "Java is slow" mantra is just plain wrong these days.
Jesus H., man, how much did Sun pay you for that one? As much as the guy who wrote the article? Could your post have possibly been any more pro-Sun/Java? Yeah, that kind of objectivity will win 'em over every time...
Sun paid me nothing. I'm simply a happy Java developer, and I see the potential of the technology. Rather than simply complain about my objectivity, why don't you raise objective points that refute mine?
Also, please note that the first part of my post was promoting gcj, which has nothing to do with Sun, and everything to do with Free Software.
This article was great, and right on target. I *totally* agree with his comments regarding Mono blindly chasing Microsoft's 'architecture' (and I use that term loosely).
My feeling is that a dedicated group of Java fans needs to get involved in Mono, and promote Java as a first class citizen alongside C#. Heck, the open source community already has a Java compiler that's miles ahead of the Mono C#/CLR combo. It shipped as part of gcc 3.0.
While Java was not submitted to ECMA, Sun has stated that anyone is free to implement it based on the open specification as long as the "Java" brand isn't mentioned. This is quite similar to the Mesa 3D library vis a vis OpenGL, and Mesa has been quite successful. Further, Sun and IBM have both provided high quality VMs and development kits for Linux.
Java (despite all of Microsoft's spin to the contrary) is still growing in popularity, and is the dominant technology in several important areas. Over 100 million Java enabled phones should ship this year, for instance. Java is also dominant in the application server arena. Sun is still investing heavily in desktop Java (most of the 1.4 release is aimed at an improved client side experience), and MacOS X proves that Java on the client can be very nice. In fact, another area that could really use work is simply better integrating Swing applications into the Gnome/Ximian desktop.
As a final point, Sun has stated that it has no problem open sourcing Java at some point...when it is clear that Microsoft won't co-opt the platform with it's famous 'embrace and extend' tactics. C# is the latest (weak) attempt to do so. The best thing you can do to prevent.NET (.NOT!) from taking over e-commerce is to learn Java, and leverage the tremendous amount of high quality Java code out there to write great cross-platform web applications.
Extra credit for client side development...check out the Grand Canyon Demo for inspiration...it is pretty awesome!
if things are done properly, as they are at Fictionwise. They were recently featured in Newsweek (IIRC) as an example of a successful.com with over 10,000 paid downloads for content per month. Their approach is very sane - you pay for the content, and then have the right to download it in various formats in perpetuity. Although none of these formats are particularly open, they offer reasonable support for a variety of readers. I'd prefer to see a nice open non-encrypted format, since that is what a book is. The.pdb format is probably the closest available at Fictionwise. There are several books there available for free download, so check it out for yourself!
Aside from content availability and format concerns, the other obstacle to e-books is handheld technology. Laptops are simply too big, cumbersome, and short-lived to be effective readers. The current crop of Palm devices are barely useable as readers due to poor screen resolution (speaking from experience with a Visor Platinum), although the iPaq type devices and Sony CLIE both look somewhat better. What I'm waiting for, though, is the webpad type device with at least a 640x480 color screen, Linux, less than 1 in. thick, a decent processor, and at least 8 hour battery life between charges. Now *THAT* will be a usable ebook reader!!!:-)
I'm amazed (and less than amused) by the number of people that don't see these technologies as threatening our freedoms.
I think one of the most basic freedoms in the US is to be free of government surveillance unless there is at least some evidence (ahead of time!) that a crime has been committed. Otherwise, mistakes may happen, and apparently they often end with innocent people in prison - even on death row. Certainly DNA testing has recently borne this out on numerous occasions.
The Fourth Amendment must be used to prevent such invasions of privacy, or we'll slide down the slippery slope until we're living in a country that'd make the old Soviet Union look open and enlightened.
On a somewhat related note, I'd be very wary of a government that repeatedly calls for more police and prisons, even though the crime rate has been going down for years. (This same government has also decided to artificially inflate the crime rate by pursuing an unwinnable "war on drugs"...and is using that as an excuse for all sorts of excesses including confiscating vast amounts of private property.)
First of all, I'd like to congratulate you on a highly perceptive (and fact-filled) post which should be modded to +5, Insightful.
I think several initiatives should be started to promote Java alongside C# for Gnome development (dotGNU has Java as a first class citizen, so no extra effort will be needed on the web services front).
First, Mono should develop class libraries for Gnome development that are identical between Java and C#. In fact, all gratuitous incompatibilities between C# and Java should be removed in their compiler (i.e. method names should begin with lower case). Given the poor class library coverage in the ECMA standard (as detailed in the parent article), its not as though we're giving up much in doing so (most Windows C# code will be a major port regardless).
It should be possible to use either gcj or one of the commercial Java VMs to run Gnome GUIs.
Work should begin on a JVM that runs on the CLR. This means that Java could be used as a first-class language with the Mono runtime, and will also be useful in a variety of other settings (such as Windows;). Perhaps a bytecode to CIL translator would suffice.
Ultimately, I think Java will prevail. First of all, Microsoft may face very significant political pressure over.NET, Hailstorm, and Passport. Secondly, Microsoft is far behind in terms of VM technology. Third, Java is better designed, and supported by just about everyone in the industry besides Microsoft. Fourth, Java has a tremendous head start in education, which Microsoft is just now trying to counter. Floods of new Java programmers hitting the market can only help Java. Fifth, Java is far more open than C# (even with a rubber-stamp ECMA standard), and I think in the end that will count for the most.
I'm also trying to figure out exactly what the complaint is with Passport, but my mind isn't as creative as someone like Petreley.
As best I've been able to ascertain, Passport is essentially an e-wallet, connected to your Hailstorm information. Hailstorm is your online database, including all sorts of personal details and credit card information. Hailstorm allows Microsoft (via its monopoly position) to grab a giant piece of the online information access market, as well as all kinds of marketing information. Microsoft will subsidize this service as part of its OS subscription service.
Passport will only be available for Windows, Microsoft (AFAICR) has stated it will not be an open standard, and will be only available on Windows (and perhaps Mac, I'd guess MS will do a deal there). But there potential for locking out any 'less favored' OS out of the Passport pie. Reverse engineering it will be culpable under the DMCA, no? If Passport becomes a defacto standard, all the Linux clients out there could be out of luck.
Personally, I hope the current furor over Windows XP and.net (.not!) will nip things in the bud.
My position on Ximian using C# etc. for mono was presented here (and modded very poorly I might add;).
Slashdot Mirror
As Java's performance has improved, so has the situation with "high end graphics". Check out Arkanae for instance. It is awesome that OpenGL and Java are playing nicely together (and it will only get better). Also check out the Grand Canyon Demo for what will be possible with JDK 1.4, OpenGL and the DirectBuffer interface.
The best graphics card is your imagination!
True, but I find mine is helped quite a bit by a 10 million poly/sec rendering engine. ;-)
186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
You didn't see the articles about Carnivore being installed at major ISPs? That means the Feds will be scanning any of your mail that passes that way.
Also, if you send any international email, it was likely already being scanned by Echelon, courtesy of the NSA.
Feel better now? ;-)
Sometimes paranoia is justified...
186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
It seems like every time I hear the media covering the terrorist attacks, I hear someone saying "Of course I'm ready to give up some freedom to improve security." These people don't seem to realize that if we give up civil liberties in response to these attacks, the terrorists have succeeded! Giving up those freedoms means the terrorists have forced us to change our way of life - that should be the LAST thing we want or allow.
On the specific subject of flight safety, I've heard two proposals that (especially combined) would eliminate the threat of this type of attack almost completely without requiring additional airport security at all:
The only other flight related measure that would impact airport/airline employess (but not the general public) would be greater security measures for them to eliminate problems like the ramp access that one terrorist team apparently had, allowing them to get a bomb on board.
Instead of these relatively unobtrusive measures, we will likely get very expensive, intrusive and draconian measures like automated chemical sniffers and millimeter wave "x-ray" machines. My prediction is that the terrorists will not attempt this type of attack again, and the public will absorb the cost and inconvenience for no gain whatever. Also we will likely be faced with fairly massive domestic surveillance, which will be useless if the enemy has half a clue, and will only serve to further erode our personal liberties (see the proposed encryption backdoors, for instance).
Don't forget the words of a great American (the only person to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution):
"Those that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
--Ben Franklin--
I hope that our current leaders can step up to the plate and make the right decisions, so that America can remain free, while eliminating the international terrorist threat to the extent possible.
186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
Okay, so scrap that idea - clearly we'll have to give some things up. So instead of javac only producing executables, we'll change it to instead produce an intermediate format, and then have it automatically translated into the final representation as soon as we know what that representation is. Well, guess what, genius! VMs have been doing exactly that for five years.
Yes, but there are deficient things about the current Sun & IBM VM approach. There is no provision for caching translation results, meaning if you restart a program all the same cycles need to be spent on JITC and analysis, again. Every time. Secondly, current VMs are very bad about sharing resources (such as Swing and other class libraries) between different VM instances, meaning (for instance) that Swing programs suffer from long startup times no matter now many other instances are running (not to mention the significant memory hit).
Personally, I'd like to see the .class -> .exe compilation happen at app install time. Gcj will be able to do exactly that. It would also be nice to have natively compiled shared libraries for Java. However, I'm willing to be impressed with TFM (Total F***ing Magic) dynamic compilation that produces such efficient code by comparison that it can erase the overhead and result in overall faster programs. All that said, the performance of current VMs is pretty amazing.
186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
The fact is, Java is NEVER used in serious numerical compution.
It is still a young language, but its use seems to be growing all the time. The Java Grande Forum is an active and vocal group of scientists and numeric programmers who certainly seem to think Java has tremendous potential in those areas. A quote from the site:
Java has potential to be a better environment for Grande application development than any previous languages such as Fortran and C++.
2) Most scientists are not fancy programers and don't care too much about OO, garbage collection, and other frills.
Most scientists who do a lot of programming (in my experience, and I work with several PhD physicists) are extremely interested in new techniques and technologies that'll make them more productive and result in robust, predictable programs. Java does a good job in both areas, and performance is very good with modern VMs.
In short, as far as I can tell, you are clueless. :-)
186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
*and* to get serious about figuring out why the USA is so thoroughly hated and then figuring out how to gain, if not friendly terms, neutral terms with other nations/cultures/peoples.
I can't agree that the US is "thoroughly hated". There are many nations that respect and like us. There are many more that respect and envy us. It is impossible to please everyone in the world, and personally I'm fairly happy with the way the US has positioned itself. It is certainly a champion of democracy and personal opportunity, and has made itself a symbol of those ideals.
It also seems that the vast majority of the world is on our side at the moment...
186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
Very perceptive...coding software is like crafting a cabinet. However, designing a cabinet is art...and so is designing software.
Try expressing an emotion in C++. It cannot be done.
jesus->loves(you); // Sarcasm, for the humor impaired
Regardless, art doesn't just express emotion, it inspires emotion. And trust me, I've had (mostly other people's) C++ code inspire some pretty horrific emotions. ;-)
Good design and coding, on the other hand, can truly be things of beauty, regardless of language.
Please think before repeating these banal opinions that software is art. It just isn't. Deal with it, and if you want to be an artist, learn to paint.
Spoken like someone who just doesn't really comprehend software design, or why one design might be more elegant than another. I suppose you don't think mathematics is beautiful either...
186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
AMD has a good product, I just wish they were a little less mum, and had a better response than warmed-over P-numbers. I also wish we could hear a bit more noise about the Hammers.
I'm hoping that AMD will really trumpet the Hammer message once they have actual silicon. It should be a great alternative to Itanium, and will be positioned to immediately make inroads in the desktop/workstation market as well. I hope AMD will do a good job (as Intel has with P4 and Itanium) with helping the compiler writers get the most out of the chip. The Linux based Hammer simulation tools are at least a good start.
I know AMD released less than stellar numbers regarding current sales (although it may have been mainly flash related), but I'd have to think Athlon would be doing very, very well in the current economic climate...
At any rate, if AMD can execute well on Hammer, it should quickly make major inroads at the high end, IMO. AMD's reputation has grown tremendously with the success of Athlon.
186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
There's an even more straightforward method than the transponders - speed sensors along the freeway at frequent intervals coupled with still cameras. The sensors are already there in many places in California, for instance, see the San Diego Area Traffic Report page.
As I understand it, systems like this coupled with cameras are already used to send automated tickets to people in Europe. Neat, eh?
But why stop there? These things are cheap enough. Make them mandatory in all cars. Monitor your car speed through GPS. Violate the speed limit, get a ticket in the mail. Plus tracking devices can help the cops find any car at any time because they're ALL being tracked. That's a GOOD thing, right? Fight crime, right?
This country is going to hell quickly. I fear for the life that my son is going to have.
I couldn't agree more, and the 'no illegal surveillance' issue is one worth getting involved in. One good place to start is boycotting anything that promotes hidden cameras for anything. Spy TV and its ilk, for instance.
Perhaps with enough public outcry we can prevent 1984 (ala George Orwell) from happening here in the US...but at this point I wouldn't count on it. Robert Heinlein was right on target many years ago (~30) when he pointed out that the US started on the road to hell when a national ID system was established. Now we have national crime databases, and a national police apparatus that grows ever stronger and prone to abuse. Time to colonize the ocean floor, or another planet...we desperately need a new frontier, with elbow room and actual freedom.
186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
You forgot the IANAL, which is massively evident. Sklyarov is almost certainly not guilty, since the DMCA is a US law and Sklyarov lives in a different country with no such law.
Remember when the author of the Melissa virus wasn't prosecuted? Why was that, again?
I'm not saying he should be charged or jailed or such. God forbid I support the government's actions here. Thing is, the issue isn't his guilt (as he is clearly guilty) but why the DMCA exists in the first place.
Don't proclaim Sklyarov's innocence, because he isn't. Instead, proclaim the injustice of a law that imposes draconian punishments for things that should not be illegal in the first place.
The DMCA should be fought as well...but don't dismiss Sklyarov's innocence so quickly!
It'll be interesting to see what the courts decide, once they have a chance.
BTW, IANAL either. ;-)
186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
Um, no. And I'm not even talking about Q3 640x480. ;-)
Try the SPEC website, and look at CPU2000 results.
And, you know what? Within a week, we all sigh with relief, because the old units never worked anyway!
Disagree again. What do you find wrong with SPEC? Its a very useful tool for measuring CPU and memory subsystem performance (bearing in mind that for many applications other factors are important as well - which is why application benchmarks are necessary).
When was the last time you heard the MIPS or FLOPS rating for a processor? When the RISC processors came out, and scored 100 x the nearest CISC chip, we suddenly started hearing how worthless those ratings really were. (Which was true, only the people saying it had been using them to crush the competition under their feet, the previous week.)
Coincidentally, I looked at Dell's 800 Mhz. Itanimum SPECint and SPECfp numbers this morning, along with Athlon and P4. Quite interesting. The integer performance of Itanium has been pretty abysmal so far (Athlon and P4 are both about twice as fast on average)- I can't wait for the Hammer processors myself...
What's the FLOPS rating for a Pentium IV? Anyone seen it listed on any of Intel's adverts? Curious, that.
Athlon 1.4, DDR: CINT2000 495, CFP2000 426
Pentium 4 1.8, RDRAM: CINT2000 596, CFP2000 618
Before screaming about how non-representative these scores are, you should read about the SPEC2000 methodology. It's fairly rigorous, and the benchmarks are actual real-world programs.
The benchmark scores reflect the ratio of the tested system to a Sun Ultra5_10 with a 300MHz processor. This means the P4 is (on average) 6.18 times faster at running the SPECfp benchmark suite.
Nothing is perfect, but SPEC is a useful CPU/memory benchmark.
186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
This is something of a drop from conventional computer performance, in which the answer is merely often wrong.
Somehow I think this article 'dumbed things down' a bit too much...
186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
Its true that XBox is giving DirectX a second platform, but OpenGL is doing well, and the preferred 3D API everywhere but WinWhatever (the Mac being a notable example).
There is intensive ongoing work on both APIs, and don't think for a minute that Direct3D would be what it is today without OpenGL driving it.
By the way, Direct3D is precisely nowhere in the higher end 3D marketplace...games are by no means the only 3D application. I doubt they're even the major money maker - I suspect CAD/CAM has that honor.
We'll see how things look going forward...I expect OpenGL to be around for a good, long time.
Just take a look at the Official OpenGL Website to get a feel for how lively the OpenGL world is...the laptop version of the NVIDIA Quadro2 professional GPU looks pretty sweet!
186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law.
Binaries vs. Byte-codes
There are some benchmarks at Ace's hardware (search for binaries vs. bytecodes) that aren't perfect, but make some very valid points. Perhaps a /. based C++ vs. Java coding contest would be interesting. Any interesting problems come to mind? I'm sure we have the talent around here to get close to max performance with both languages.
If you like, you may even compare it to a real OO C-based language like Objective-C, but not C++, which is one crappy OO language.
I'd expect Objective-C to be a bit slower than C++ in general, given the method lookup overhead, and lack of generic types. I do like Objective-C, but I really don't think it'll ever gain mainstream acceptance. Garbage collection is stronger than reference counting as well. Plus (assuming you're talking about a traditional compiler like gcc) you lose the advantages of bytecode like dynamic compilation tuned for the exact CPU (say Athlon for instance) that you're using.
Please give hard evidence that Java is on par with C (within 10% of both CPU and RAM usage) for a significant, parity task.
I didn't make that claim, so I'm not sure why I'd want to do that. I'll stand by my claim WRT C++ (used as an OOL).
Spoken like someone who doesn't really understand OO. OO programming can be done in any language, even C, though certain things are made easier for the programmer if the language has OO support.
I don't recall saying it was impossible to do OO in C, but why would one want to? That's the point of having OO support built into the language (which is of course what I was referring to).
Uh, how about C?
Do you honestly feel C is as productive as Java? I certainly don't. Both its language features and standard library are seriously lacking. Plus you can't move your app to a new architecture or OS without recompiling.
You also have to work a lot harder to write good cross-platform C code, and there is no really worthwhile solution for cross-platform GUI development (at least compared to Java).
For those of us who lived through the C++ hype, you people who are riding the Java bandwagon are downright funny. They're all just languages, not ways of life.
I lived through the C++ hype...and several before that. C++, though, was such a major disappointment...it sounded great on paper, but actually implementing software with it was a severe pain. Bugs were often very subtle and difficult to find. Java has been a massive breath of fresh air by comparison, and it looks like eventually they'll add back in a couple things I miss (generics and operator overloading). In the meantime, there are preprocessors.
The C++ people said the very same things . . .
To a large extent they were right. Have you checked the ratio of C++ to C jobs lately? And that was in spite of how badly C++ sucked... Java, on the other hand, is a major step in the right direction.
186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
Yes, you missed the point. First, the VM based versions of Java (using adaptive compilation as opposed to simple interpretation) are now very competitive with C++ speedwise. Sometimes slower, sometimes faster with usually a fairly small delta.
C is generally more efficient, but you lose object orientation.
Finally, there are traditional ahead-of-time compilers for Java like gcj (which shipped with gcc 3.0).
Java is well suited to a large percentage of programming tasks. For those areas where its not appropriate it can (fairly;) easily call C/C++.
Java is open, productive, fast, cross-platform, widely taught, supported by every significant software company, and somewhat future-proof. What other language/platform comes close?
The real proof will be forthcoming - when many anti-Java Luddites are in the unemployment lines, still complaining about it... ;-)
186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
o Single inheritance only
o All memory access through references
o Garbage collected
o No templates
o No operator overloading
o No preprocessor
Differences between D and Java:
o Unicode supported in source code
o No religion (ROFL)
Walter seems to be confused about some things. First, Java doesn't require a VM. See gcj for instance (there are also other traditional Java compilers, such as Transvirtual).
Also, Walter seems to not understand the value of operator overloading in a very large problem domain - mathematics. This is especially sad given Unicode source code, meaning real math symbols could be used.
Overall, if I had to grade this language design, I'd have to give it a "D". ;-) It is a very minor knockoff of Java.
I seriously doubt this language will become popular. If you like it, learn Java...the "Java is slow" mantra is just plain wrong these days.
186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
Sun paid me nothing. I'm simply a happy Java developer, and I see the potential of the technology. Rather than simply complain about my objectivity, why don't you raise objective points that refute mine?
Also, please note that the first part of my post was promoting gcj, which has nothing to do with Sun, and everything to do with Free Software.
Thanks for playing, and have a nice day. :-)
186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
My feeling is that a dedicated group of Java fans needs to get involved in Mono, and promote Java as a first class citizen alongside C#. Heck, the open source community already has a Java compiler that's miles ahead of the Mono C#/CLR combo. It shipped as part of gcc 3.0.
While Java was not submitted to ECMA, Sun has stated that anyone is free to implement it based on the open specification as long as the "Java" brand isn't mentioned. This is quite similar to the Mesa 3D library vis a vis OpenGL, and Mesa has been quite successful. Further, Sun and IBM have both provided high quality VMs and development kits for Linux.
Java (despite all of Microsoft's spin to the contrary) is still growing in popularity, and is the dominant technology in several important areas. Over 100 million Java enabled phones should ship this year, for instance. Java is also dominant in the application server arena. Sun is still investing heavily in desktop Java (most of the 1.4 release is aimed at an improved client side experience), and MacOS X proves that Java on the client can be very nice. In fact, another area that could really use work is simply better integrating Swing applications into the Gnome/Ximian desktop.
As a final point, Sun has stated that it has no problem open sourcing Java at some point...when it is clear that Microsoft won't co-opt the platform with it's famous 'embrace and extend' tactics. C# is the latest (weak) attempt to do so. The best thing you can do to prevent .NET (.NOT!) from taking over e-commerce is to learn Java, and leverage the tremendous amount of high quality Java code out there to write great cross-platform web applications.
Extra credit for client side development...check out the Grand Canyon Demo for inspiration...it is pretty awesome!
186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
Aside from content availability and format concerns, the other obstacle to e-books is handheld technology. Laptops are simply too big, cumbersome, and short-lived to be effective readers. The current crop of Palm devices are barely useable as readers due to poor screen resolution (speaking from experience with a Visor Platinum), although the iPaq type devices and Sony CLIE both look somewhat better. What I'm waiting for, though, is the webpad type device with at least a 640x480 color screen, Linux, less than 1 in. thick, a decent processor, and at least 8 hour battery life between charges. Now *THAT* will be a usable ebook reader!!! :-)
186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
I think one of the most basic freedoms in the US is to be free of government surveillance unless there is at least some evidence (ahead of time!) that a crime has been committed. Otherwise, mistakes may happen, and apparently they often end with innocent people in prison - even on death row. Certainly DNA testing has recently borne this out on numerous occasions.
The Fourth Amendment must be used to prevent such invasions of privacy, or we'll slide down the slippery slope until we're living in a country that'd make the old Soviet Union look open and enlightened.
On a somewhat related note, I'd be very wary of a government that repeatedly calls for more police and prisons, even though the crime rate has been going down for years. (This same government has also decided to artificially inflate the crime rate by pursuing an unwinnable "war on drugs"...and is using that as an excuse for all sorts of excesses including confiscating vast amounts of private property.)
186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
I think several initiatives should be started to promote Java alongside C# for Gnome development (dotGNU has Java as a first class citizen, so no extra effort will be needed on the web services front).
First, Mono should develop class libraries for Gnome development that are identical between Java and C#. In fact, all gratuitous incompatibilities between C# and Java should be removed in their compiler (i.e. method names should begin with lower case). Given the poor class library coverage in the ECMA standard (as detailed in the parent article), its not as though we're giving up much in doing so (most Windows C# code will be a major port regardless).
It should be possible to use either gcj or one of the commercial Java VMs to run Gnome GUIs.
Work should begin on a JVM that runs on the CLR. This means that Java could be used as a first-class language with the Mono runtime, and will also be useful in a variety of other settings (such as Windows;). Perhaps a bytecode to CIL translator would suffice.
Ultimately, I think Java will prevail. First of all, Microsoft may face very significant political pressure over .NET, Hailstorm, and Passport. Secondly, Microsoft is far behind in terms of VM technology. Third, Java is better designed, and supported by just about everyone in the industry besides Microsoft. Fourth, Java has a tremendous head start in education, which Microsoft is just now trying to counter. Floods of new Java programmers hitting the market can only help Java. Fifth, Java is far more open than C# (even with a rubber-stamp ECMA standard), and I think in the end that will count for the most.
Thanks for reading... ;-)
186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
As best I've been able to ascertain, Passport is essentially an e-wallet, connected to your Hailstorm information. Hailstorm is your online database, including all sorts of personal details and credit card information. Hailstorm allows Microsoft (via its monopoly position) to grab a giant piece of the online information access market, as well as all kinds of marketing information. Microsoft will subsidize this service as part of its OS subscription service.
Passport will only be available for Windows, Microsoft (AFAICR) has stated it will not be an open standard, and will be only available on Windows (and perhaps Mac, I'd guess MS will do a deal there). But there potential for locking out any 'less favored' OS out of the Passport pie. Reverse engineering it will be culpable under the DMCA, no? If Passport becomes a defacto standard, all the Linux clients out there could be out of luck.
Personally, I hope the current furor over Windows XP and .net (.not!) will nip things in the bud.
My position on Ximian using C# etc. for mono was presented here (and modded very poorly I might add;).
186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!