An excellent point. Google should have, and it was a strategic mistake not to do it. Google uses Java quite a bit internally, it would have not only insulated Google from any Java hijinks, but Google would have (I believe) been a far better steward of Java than Oracle. Google still could have spun off Sun's hardware division, which had not interest for it.
In fact, Java could finally have become what it should have to begin with, and been the premier client-side language for web development, instead of Dart.
Oracle buying Sun was a real inflection point in IT history.
If you really like freedom a little bit, you need to be on your guard lest all manufacturers of computing devices priced for home users collude to design their products to take away the computing freedom of home users. This already happened decades ago in the video game industry.
Due to a wonderful concept called "free markets" this will almost certainly not happen. That is, unless perhaps the government decides that "free computing" is dangerous, and mandates that all PCs are locked down. The government, in particular the current US idiocracy, is the main enemy of free markets. In fact, the PS3 tried to make one if its distinguishing characteristics that it was a general-purpose device, but apparently rethought that for various reasons. Since video consoles are essentially fixed-function devices I guess it made sense to Sony, besides Sony's approach was always half-hearted.
Until then, someone will always offer "unlocked" computers due to market demand. Macs are in this category, along with virtually all desktops/laptops in the world. One of the more interesting developments in the area of "cheap, general purpose computing" lately is the sub $50 Raspberry Pi. Now there's a hacker platform if I've ever seen one! =:-D
However, the real issue Apple is going to have is MacOS or iOS. There's a lot of compelling reasons to move to iOS for Apple, but ultimately the closed nature of iOS would likely alienate the large programmer base they have built up.
I don't think Apple is doing away with MacOS X. Remember that something like 80-90% of the code is shared between MacOS X and iOS. Apple has plenty of money for developers to maintain the two.
Apple is certainly big enough at this point to support two architectures. You may or may not be aware that, with Xcode, generating a fat binary supporting multiple CPU architectures involves nothing more than a setting. Of course testing may not be quite that smooth, especially at first.
At any rate, I'm quite sure Apple won't drop x86 support for the foreseeable future. However, there may be some real advantages to supporting both, including price competition for Intel.
Don't forget that Microsoft has already promised Windows for ARM (NVIDIA's "Project Denver"), so it may also be in Apple's best interest to be a player there as well - especially if the NVIDIA CPUs have some real advantages.
I have some hope that Apple will open up some more under Cook.
Regardless, Apple is certainly not any worse than Microsoft, the maker of the only other viable desktop/laptop OS, in the "do no evil" department.
Apple also produces some of the nicest products, and what's widely regarded as the best user experience - and has the highest customer satisfaction for its products of any of the big players.
Apple innovation has also outshined the rest of the industry in a big way over the last few years.
It isn't that the republicans get corrupt faster so much as they wear it on their sleeves more. Republican corruption tends to be ignoring the majority to serve a very few rich. This is very easy to see and very easy to blame.
I'm sure it is "very easy to blame". The problem is, the logic that's what good for the rich is bad for everyone else is crap. In fact, the "rich" are largely the job providers in this country. Just think of some of the tech leaders that are popular on Slashdot...like Bill Gates! (lol, just kidding) Truthfully though, Gates, Jobs, Brin, Zuckerberg and others started companies that directly employ thousands, and indirectly employ millions. The other thing you're missing is that the "pro rich" policies of the Republicans are also "pro business". Watch and see after November (presuming the Republicans win, which I do think is highly likely), you will see a real boom in the economy as business heave a sigh of relief and really get going.
The Tea Party is also a very healthy movement, since it will hold the Republicans feet to the fire and make sure that "regular folks" are considered as well.
The democrats on the other hand are just more subtle, but no better overall. They tend to serve special interest through either restriction of rights or providing broad funding to over-bloated graft. It doesn't become readily apparent until you look at their spending habits. Republicans don't like to tax for what has to be spent and democrats like to spend what they don't have, all to try and serve their special interests without upsetting anyone enough to raise a shit storm.
Well you're sort of close, but you've missed the fact the the Dems have massively expanded the government under 0bama. He's run up over twice the deficit GWB did in eight years, in only a bit over three. Plus he's made some very stupid mistakes with government money, one of the biggest being massive investment in "green" energy when many of the beneficiaries had no viable business plan and went bankrupt. His desire to keep his "green" constituents also made him oppose, and so far block, the Keystone pipeline which from any rational perspective would be a great thing to build.
Anyone on the younger side should be extremely concerned about the level of debt the government has accumulated, because it will have a major impact on economic progress and the standard of living in the US for many decades - and it will be a disaster if it's not reduced in the near future.
At any rate, this will be a crucial election - vote Republican because if 0bama is elected he will get to stack the Supreme Court with lefties, and then this country will be in for a world of hurt. You don't want to see what a "fundamental transformation of America" looks like, trust me on that one.;-)
A hoax? From the scientific community? Maybe you could lay off the magic mushrooms for a bit.
I'm a scientist. We live or die by how well our theories explain the natural world. You seem to be suggesting that there's a cabal of scientists who are for various reasons trumpeting "the hoax" for precisely what? Our reward system would make any of us fabulously rich if only we could conclusively prove man-made warming is wrong. It hasn't happened.
I think waaay too much time is spent on man-made warming is "right" versus "wrong". Very basic physics suggests more CO2 in the atmosphere should result in some temperature increase. The $40 trillion question is "how significant is the warming, and is it beneficial or not?".
I personally have a huge problem with the current approach penalizing Western civilization, while giving China (the worlds biggest CO2 producer) and much of the rest of the world a free pass. We shouldn't wreck the US economy to benefit the rest of the world - we need a level playing field. The US has done a lot to improve the standard of living around the world, and it may well come up with a solution to global warming if in fact it turns out to be a problem.
What everyone in a frenzy about global warming should agree on, is that there should be a huge push for more nuclear power. It's the only technology that comes close to meeting our future energy needs while emitting no greenhouse gasses.
The good news is that we probably have a good bit longer than the IPCC predicts due low solar activity for the next few decades. We're also about due for a major volcanic eruption...
I'm surprised there are people who think that we have the technology to program computers to make decisions about how to control things like airplanes better then a human being.
We do, at least better than 99% of human beings. It is true that the plane's AI is dependent on good sensor inputs, but then so is a human. Humans do have some built in sensors (eyes, ears etc.) but those are often wrong or useless. For instance, eyes don't do much good during a dark night, or in the middle of a cloud. Many a plane has hit the deck due to pilot error - John Kennedy Jr.'s being one example.
There are many good reasons to think that in the next couple decades autonomous fighter planes with computer pilots will outperform all human pilots.
we're going to see a huge change in programming methods coming pretty soon. Today, A.I. is still math and computer based. The problem is that data, input, and all of the algorithms you're going to write can result in a plane nose-diving -- even though no human being has ever chosen to nose-dive under any scenario in a commercial flight.
I'm not sure that's the case, and I'm aware of at least one instance where it would have been a good idea:
In that case the "non-AI" pilots kept pulling back on the stick instead of going nose-down, which would have corrected the stall. The whole thing was caused by the single airspeed indicator reading wrong since it had frozen over.
That's the eternal question that's usually asked out of complete cluelessness. One does not "need" those features, but perhaps by buying a tablet with them you'll future-proof yourself for a few years. That's well worth whatever additional cost.
But you don't need tablets of iPad spec for educational use, so they do cost significantly more than is necessary.
That's entirely a supposition on your part. The iPad screen is a lot closer in form factor to a traditional textbook than the Fire's. What about kids with vision problems?
Something like the Fire might not be specced high enough for the latest 3D games, but it would be perfectly adequate for textbooks and supplementary material.
It would indeed need to be "something like the Fire" and not "the Fire" since one of the major complaints with the Fire is lack of parental control settings. As to "perfectly adequate", that would depend on what apps were desired to run, and which are available on Android. I'd suggest the iPad is far more likely to get educational content than is the Kindle Fire.
The Fire is designed to drive Amazon sales, and is much less of a general purpose device than the iPad.
C# and the CLR runtime brought very little to the table that Java already didn't. The Base Class Library (BCL) for the CLR shows that imitation of Java is the sincerest form of flattery. Scala, running on the JVM, leapfrogs C# nicely in almost all respects.
It's worth noting that Microsoft, in its typical schizophrenic fashion, has backed away from.Net for Win 8 development, and instead is pushing HTML 5 and Javascript, of all things. Meanwhile, Java and other JVM hosted languages are seeing steadily increasing use solving real-world problems. Android is the most recent Java based environment to attract tons of developers.
The basic value proposition of Java and the JVM, true portability, endures.
More and more my friends, mostly younger people 18-25, aren't bothering to replace their PCs when they die. They find that a combination of an iPad, iPhone, and a PS3 meets all their needs much better than the "jack of all trades, master of none" PC did. The iPhone is always with them, so they are always connected. The iPad is with them in classes and at home, sometimes elsewhere. The PS3 for gaming of course, to avoid the annoying mess that is PC gaming.
Sooner or later the more talented/educated of them will realize they need a PC-like device, and most likely will buy a Mac. Not only is there an iDevice halo effect, but Macs really do provide a more hassle-free PC experience.
The post-PC world is coming, and it's because people WANT it. Because PCs are too complex for most people to want to deal with, and a range of consumer-friendly devices meets their needs better. That's where the market is being driven, and for good reason.
Except for those who need more horsepower...there will always be a good number who do.
Among others, those who develop for the "walled gardens".
Now that sounds like a reasonably sensible approach.
I'm quite surprised to see the number of people here defending the idea of noisy cars. Noise pollution is a major problem that affects almost everyone, as opposed to the small minority that can't see quiet cars. It seems to me there are better solutions that making quiet cars noisy, but if it must be done something like the Nissan system seems best.
This of course ignores the point that the "eco-friendly" competitors would also endure higher cost of production, which must be passed on to the customers. If "green" manufacturing were cost-effective, companies would already be doing it.
I would think we are beyond the point of no return and global warming is irreversible.
One problem with these discussions is the widespread lack of precision in terminology. "Global warming" has been happening since the last Ice Age started to wind down. It is very possibly "irreversible" by humans, though it remains to be seen if so by nature.
On the other hand, anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is stacked to whatever extent on natural warming. The extent of AGW versus natural GW is still under debate, although the climate alarmist faction would have you believe that it understands every climate input and system in sufficient detail, as well as being able to predict future inputs sufficiently well, to make detailed predictions. I find that to be doubtful at best.
But saying so would be counter productive so claiming it is X years away where X is small is the ticket.
Worse, the half that keeps their industry at full power at the cost of ecosystem gains an economic, and ultimately a military upper edge. In a world that's split into borderline-hostile factions, no-one's going to be the first guy to drop his gun.
One beauty of the truly anti-human is they're self-limiting. It is sad, though, that the stupid and uneducated are producing the bulk of the next generation, worldwide.
What if the industries don't alter their carbon emissions at all, but just pass the cost on to their customers?
The other major problem with this (as you mention with China) is that it is not a level playing field - many major economies have rejected such a course. Regardless of import duties in some countries, there will be major economic advantages to not having a carbon tax. What that means is that you're simply ensuring the success (and dominance) of those countries that embrace fossil fuels.
That is, unless you're willing to embrace advanced nuclear power. There's really no practical, cost-effective alternative - especially if the insane regulatory process here in the US were improved.
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Yes, and the other point you didn't mention involves a "I want it free" mentality, and piracy.
iOS is very attractive to developers as it largely avoids such problems.
If I want a game machine I'll get a desktop.
I think that's a backwards way of thinking about it.
Wouldn't it be cool if you could have fun with your phone or tablet when you're out and about?
The iOS devices do this well, and it is clearly a huge advantage for them versus their Android counterparts.
That still means that fragment ration is a problem. If you can't count on at minimum a real GPU. No software emulation won't usually cut it.
"Fragment ration"? That sounds like an interesting OpenGL metric... ;-)
An excellent point. Google should have, and it was a strategic mistake not to do it. Google uses Java quite a bit internally, it would have not only insulated Google from any Java hijinks, but Google would have (I believe) been a far better steward of Java than Oracle. Google still could have spun off Sun's hardware division, which had not interest for it.
In fact, Java could finally have become what it should have to begin with, and been the premier client-side language for web development, instead of Dart.
Oracle buying Sun was a real inflection point in IT history.
If you really like freedom a little bit, you need to be on your guard lest all manufacturers of computing devices priced for home users collude to design their products to take away the computing freedom of home users. This already happened decades ago in the video game industry.
Due to a wonderful concept called "free markets" this will almost certainly not happen. That is, unless perhaps the government decides that "free computing" is dangerous, and mandates that all PCs are locked down. The government, in particular the current US idiocracy, is the main enemy of free markets. In fact, the PS3 tried to make one if its distinguishing characteristics that it was a general-purpose device, but apparently rethought that for various reasons. Since video consoles are essentially fixed-function devices I guess it made sense to Sony, besides Sony's approach was always half-hearted.
Until then, someone will always offer "unlocked" computers due to market demand. Macs are in this category, along with virtually all desktops/laptops in the world. One of the more interesting developments in the area of "cheap, general purpose computing" lately is the sub $50 Raspberry Pi. Now there's a hacker platform if I've ever seen one! =:-D
However, the real issue Apple is going to have is MacOS or iOS. There's a lot of compelling reasons to move to iOS for Apple, but ultimately the closed nature of iOS would likely alienate the large programmer base they have built up.
I don't think Apple is doing away with MacOS X. Remember that something like 80-90% of the code is shared between MacOS X and iOS. Apple has plenty of money for developers to maintain the two.
Apple is certainly big enough at this point to support two architectures. You may or may not be aware that, with Xcode, generating a fat binary supporting multiple CPU architectures involves nothing more than a setting. Of course testing may not be quite that smooth, especially at first.
At any rate, I'm quite sure Apple won't drop x86 support for the foreseeable future. However, there may be some real advantages to supporting both, including price competition for Intel.
Don't forget that Microsoft has already promised Windows for ARM (NVIDIA's "Project Denver"), so it may also be in Apple's best interest to be a player there as well - especially if the NVIDIA CPUs have some real advantages.
I have some hope that Apple will open up some more under Cook.
Regardless, Apple is certainly not any worse than Microsoft, the maker of the only other viable desktop/laptop OS, in the "do no evil" department.
Apple also produces some of the nicest products, and what's widely regarded as the best user experience - and has the highest customer satisfaction for its products of any of the big players.
Apple innovation has also outshined the rest of the industry in a big way over the last few years.
NVIDIA is also working on high-end desktop/workstation ARM CPUs, under "Project Denver".
If something compelling emerges, perhaps ARM could be a player for sheer compute power.
Fat binaries might be useful again... ;-)
It isn't that the republicans get corrupt faster so much as they wear it on their sleeves more. Republican corruption tends to be ignoring the majority to serve a very few rich. This is very easy to see and very easy to blame.
I'm sure it is "very easy to blame". The problem is, the logic that's what good for the rich is bad for everyone else is crap. In fact, the "rich" are largely the job providers in this country. Just think of some of the tech leaders that are popular on Slashdot...like Bill Gates! (lol, just kidding) Truthfully though, Gates, Jobs, Brin, Zuckerberg and others started companies that directly employ thousands, and indirectly employ millions. The other thing you're missing is that the "pro rich" policies of the Republicans are also "pro business". Watch and see after November (presuming the Republicans win, which I do think is highly likely), you will see a real boom in the economy as business heave a sigh of relief and really get going.
The Tea Party is also a very healthy movement, since it will hold the Republicans feet to the fire and make sure that "regular folks" are considered as well.
The democrats on the other hand are just more subtle, but no better overall. They tend to serve special interest through either restriction of rights or providing broad funding to over-bloated graft. It doesn't become readily apparent until you look at their spending habits. Republicans don't like to tax for what has to be spent and democrats like to spend what they don't have, all to try and serve their special interests without upsetting anyone enough to raise a shit storm.
Well you're sort of close, but you've missed the fact the the Dems have massively expanded the government under 0bama. He's run up over twice the deficit GWB did in eight years, in only a bit over three. Plus he's made some very stupid mistakes with government money, one of the biggest being massive investment in "green" energy when many of the beneficiaries had no viable business plan and went bankrupt. His desire to keep his "green" constituents also made him oppose, and so far block, the Keystone pipeline which from any rational perspective would be a great thing to build.
Anyone on the younger side should be extremely concerned about the level of debt the government has accumulated, because it will have a major impact on economic progress and the standard of living in the US for many decades - and it will be a disaster if it's not reduced in the near future.
At any rate, this will be a crucial election - vote Republican because if 0bama is elected he will get to stack the Supreme Court with lefties, and then this country will be in for a world of hurt. You don't want to see what a "fundamental transformation of America" looks like, trust me on that one. ;-)
A hoax? From the scientific community? Maybe you could lay off the magic mushrooms for a bit.
I'm a scientist. We live or die by how well our theories explain the natural world. You seem to be suggesting that there's a cabal of scientists who are for various reasons trumpeting "the hoax" for precisely what? Our reward system would make any of us fabulously rich if only we could conclusively prove man-made warming is wrong. It hasn't happened.
I think waaay too much time is spent on man-made warming is "right" versus "wrong". Very basic physics suggests more CO2 in the atmosphere should result in some temperature increase. The $40 trillion question is "how significant is the warming, and is it beneficial or not?".
I personally have a huge problem with the current approach penalizing Western civilization, while giving China (the worlds biggest CO2 producer) and much of the rest of the world a free pass. We shouldn't wreck the US economy to benefit the rest of the world - we need a level playing field. The US has done a lot to improve the standard of living around the world, and it may well come up with a solution to global warming if in fact it turns out to be a problem.
What everyone in a frenzy about global warming should agree on, is that there should be a huge push for more nuclear power. It's the only technology that comes close to meeting our future energy needs while emitting no greenhouse gasses.
The good news is that we probably have a good bit longer than the IPCC predicts due low solar activity for the next few decades. We're also about due for a major volcanic eruption...
Place one hand in the ice bath and the other in the boiling water. On the average, you are comfortable!
Presuming, of course, that you're comfortable in 50 C temperatures...most die of heat stroke. ;-)
I'm surprised there are people who think that we have the technology to program computers to make decisions about how to control things like airplanes better then a human being.
We do, at least better than 99% of human beings. It is true that the plane's AI is dependent on good sensor inputs, but then so is a human. Humans do have some built in sensors (eyes, ears etc.) but those are often wrong or useless. For instance, eyes don't do much good during a dark night, or in the middle of a cloud. Many a plane has hit the deck due to pilot error - John Kennedy Jr.'s being one example.
There are many good reasons to think that in the next couple decades autonomous fighter planes with computer pilots will outperform all human pilots.
we're going to see a huge change in programming methods coming pretty soon. Today, A.I. is still math and computer based. The problem is that data, input, and all of the algorithms you're going to write can result in a plane nose-diving -- even though no human being has ever chosen to nose-dive under any scenario in a commercial flight.
I'm not sure that's the case, and I'm aware of at least one instance where it would have been a good idea:
Air France Flight 447
In that case the "non-AI" pilots kept pulling back on the stick instead of going nose-down, which would have corrected the stall. The whole thing was caused by the single airspeed indicator reading wrong since it had frozen over.
but do you need the iPad's CPU and GPU?
That's the eternal question that's usually asked out of complete cluelessness. One does not "need" those features, but perhaps by buying a tablet with them you'll future-proof yourself for a few years. That's well worth whatever additional cost.
But you don't need tablets of iPad spec for educational use, so they do cost significantly more than is necessary.
That's entirely a supposition on your part. The iPad screen is a lot closer in form factor to a traditional textbook than the Fire's. What about kids with vision problems?
Something like the Fire might not be specced high enough for the latest 3D games, but it would be perfectly adequate for textbooks and supplementary material.
It would indeed need to be "something like the Fire" and not "the Fire" since one of the major complaints with the Fire is lack of parental control settings. As to "perfectly adequate", that would depend on what apps were desired to run, and which are available on Android. I'd suggest the iPad is far more likely to get educational content than is the Kindle Fire.
The Fire is designed to drive Amazon sales, and is much less of a general purpose device than the iPad.
Why create C#? We already had VB, C++, and Java.
Precisely because we had Java.
C# and the CLR runtime brought very little to the table that Java already didn't. The Base Class Library (BCL) for the CLR shows that imitation of Java is the sincerest form of flattery. Scala, running on the JVM, leapfrogs C# nicely in almost all respects.
It's worth noting that Microsoft, in its typical schizophrenic fashion, has backed away from .Net for Win 8 development, and instead is pushing HTML 5 and Javascript, of all things. Meanwhile, Java and other JVM hosted languages are seeing steadily increasing use solving real-world problems. Android is the most recent Java based environment to attract tons of developers.
The basic value proposition of Java and the JVM, true portability, endures.
More and more my friends, mostly younger people 18-25, aren't bothering to replace their PCs when they die. They find that a combination of an iPad, iPhone, and a PS3 meets all their needs much better than the "jack of all trades, master of none" PC did. The iPhone is always with them, so they are always connected. The iPad is with them in classes and at home, sometimes elsewhere. The PS3 for gaming of course, to avoid the annoying mess that is PC gaming.
Sooner or later the more talented/educated of them will realize they need a PC-like device, and most likely will buy a Mac. Not only is there an iDevice halo effect, but Macs really do provide a more hassle-free PC experience.
The post-PC world is coming, and it's because people WANT it. Because PCs are too complex for most people to want to deal with, and a range of consumer-friendly devices meets their needs better. That's where the market is being driven, and for good reason.
Except for those who need more horsepower...there will always be a good number who do.
Among others, those who develop for the "walled gardens".
Actually, if done properly, "Angry Nerds" could be a huge winner in the App Store! heh
Now that sounds like a reasonably sensible approach.
I'm quite surprised to see the number of people here defending the idea of noisy cars. Noise pollution is a major problem that affects almost everyone, as opposed to the small minority that can't see quiet cars. It seems to me there are better solutions that making quiet cars noisy, but if it must be done something like the Nissan system seems best.
I just hope Nissan hasn't patented it... ;-)
This of course ignores the point that the "eco-friendly" competitors would also endure higher cost of production, which must be passed on to the customers. If "green" manufacturing were cost-effective, companies would already be doing it.
I would think we are beyond the point of no return and global warming is irreversible.
One problem with these discussions is the widespread lack of precision in terminology. "Global warming" has been happening since the last Ice Age started to wind down. It is very possibly "irreversible" by humans, though it remains to be seen if so by nature.
On the other hand, anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is stacked to whatever extent on natural warming. The extent of AGW versus natural GW is still under debate, although the climate alarmist faction would have you believe that it understands every climate input and system in sufficient detail, as well as being able to predict future inputs sufficiently well, to make detailed predictions. I find that to be doubtful at best.
But saying so would be counter productive so claiming it is X years away where X is small is the ticket.
Eco-tyranny to the rescue!
"Climate alarmists" is the perfect term.
Worse, the half that keeps their industry at full power at the cost of ecosystem gains an economic, and ultimately a military upper edge. In a world that's split into borderline-hostile factions, no-one's going to be the first guy to drop his gun.
Well said. You deserve some mod points.
LOL! Exactly.
One beauty of the truly anti-human is they're self-limiting. It is sad, though, that the stupid and uneducated are producing the bulk of the next generation, worldwide.
What if the industries don't alter their carbon emissions at all, but just pass the cost on to their customers?
The other major problem with this (as you mention with China) is that it is not a level playing field - many major economies have rejected such a course. Regardless of import duties in some countries, there will be major economic advantages to not having a carbon tax. What that means is that you're simply ensuring the success (and dominance) of those countries that embrace fossil fuels.
That is, unless you're willing to embrace advanced nuclear power. There's really no practical, cost-effective alternative - especially if the insane regulatory process here in the US were improved.