This is why central economic planning doesn't work, and why shortages ran rampant throughout the Soviet Union and eastern communist countries. Simply put - Government politicians are no good at running an economy. They don't have the necessary skills.
I agree. We should have a small cadre of men and women who all know how to run the country. They will be the experts at running things, but there needs to be some oversight like a supreme leader who is the ultimate defacto answer. Granted, people should still be able to vote for their president, but the president should really be more of a figurehead role whereby the experts rule. Is this what you had in mind?
Watch me burn some karma here, but this is the truth.
If you have to preface your comment with sideways plea to the moderators to mod you up, then you are already on shaky ground. Next time out, just say what you mean - consequences be damned.
But Stallman is a zealot who hurts the image of free software, making it difficult to sell the concept of free software to suits.
okay... you've lost the point somewhere... the idea of free software is not to appease to the suits. The idea of free software is not to have a nice looking image. The idea of free software is to be independent of outside interests. period. Stallman views DRM as an enemy since it removes his independence. that's all. there's no good versus evil struggle going on here. It's pure pragmatism with a big scooping of zealotry.
How is this really different from DRM? DRM restricts users to protect the developer/artist from having their property stolen.
You're thinking like a developer. Not an end user. The gpl is nothing like DRM. The GPL is a contract with the end user whereas DRM is an implementation to prevent unauthorized copying. I can download a gpl program and run it on as many computer as i want. I can sell it. I can modify it. I can give it away to all my friends. With DRM, I might be lucky to install the program on two computers.
True freedom is public domain. Public domain certainly doesn't protect your code from being copied or stolen.
Code can't be stolen. It can only be copied which is the whole point of this article.
Not that I disagree with your overall points but you should know that Cleopatra was made in 1963 whereas the first Planet of the Apes was made in 1968.
Before I start my rant, I should let you know that I can't stand Gamestop. I refuse to shop there. That being said... I have no problems buying used games from a brick and motor store. Granted, I might be paying more than I would from an ebay seller, but I consider the mark up to be of value since I have better consumer protection and even better options. For example, say you a buy a game for Joe Blow off ebay and you receive a disc scratched to hell. Have fun getting a refund. With brick and motor stores, I can get a replacement disc usually without any hassle. Want a better case or instruction manual... easy... ask for one. In a brick and motor, I can actually inspect the disc before I buy it. With mail order, you are using trust.
That being said... if the price difference between new and used is five bucks, then I'll opt for the new game. I usually do a preliminary search for prices, but a low price doesn't guarantee a sale. I can't tell you how many times I've spent MORE money for buying low. And yes... sometimes convenience is a huge factor. If a new copy is cheaper at target, but target is a thirty minute car ride away, then the price isn't so sexy because I'm putting wear and tear on my car plus the cost of gas to me there.
My point... as a consumer, you should weigh the value of the entirety of a transaction as opposed to the money figure on the box.
eh... while your analysis is reasonable, it is missing a key point. Gamestop buys a new game for $20, then resell the game for $55. I believe game developers are mad at gamestop for essentially stepping in and taking a sale. In fact, if you track Gamestop used prices, you tend to find the used copy only $5 dollars cheaper than the new version.
Personally, I think games are way to expensive. I just can't justify spending $60 for a game unless I'm absolutely sure about it. I used to buy at least six games a year new, but at the sixty dollar price point, I average about two a year. Now I wait for games to sink like a rock. Usually when the price point is less that thirty bucks, the game becomes more of an impulse purchase and then I like to buy them new.
The thing I don't understand is that films with rival budgets often retail at $20 bucks on dvd. What makes games so different? Seriously, if new games hit the market at thirty dollars a pop, I believe a large portion of the second hand market would dry up.
Orbit? The last message I got through my tin foil hat was that they were still trying to figure out suborbital flight which I think is bogus. This whole flight thing is all a bunch of smoke and mirrors fueled by the liberal media so we will watch more television.
In any case, you should check out the movie Capricorn One. It's an oldie but goodie where NASA fakes a mars landing. Would you believe it stars at young OJ?
Just to nitpick... I can output to the console with one character if I choose. It's quite easy.
import static com.jezner.libraries.io.Console.p;
public class Test { public static void main(String[] args) { p("I am writing to the console"); } }
All the p method does is encapsulate the "System.out.println()" method. Using a static import, you don't need to reference any objects. But you knew that, didn't you?
Java got a bad rap back in the day when the language was poised to take over the desktop and then everyone used it, and were killed by its abysmal performance. Back in the 2000, I cursed java every week as I entered my development time into this crap-ola windows box that performed like a fat man running through a river of melted taffy. Loading an applet was a painful flow breaking experience that usually did nothing to a page. When people think of java, they think of this time. it's the slashdot two minute hate.
These days, Java works well both on the desktop and on the server. Shocking, I know. I'm currently developing a desktop app for OS X and people have no idea it's a java project. It looks and behaves as if written in Objective C. Our engineering team just wrote a server app in java that had over three million entries. At one point, it was creating nine hundred entries per second without breaking a sweat. But people don't see that. They just have mental images of all the crappy applets back in the days of yore, then make uninformed opinions about the current state of the language.
My biggest complaints about java are the inconsistent implementations between platforms so something might work great on a mac, but throws exceptions on windows. Write once, run everywhere is a lie. My code is 100% java (no native code) that runs perfect in both mac and windows, yet makes the official Linux JVM puke. I hate the fact the language is object orientated, but objects are expensive to create. I hate the fact that Swing makes it easy for good java developers to write terrible user interfaces. The GridBag layout was designed by a very bitter programmer. I hate the fact that java eats and eats all the memory it can find like a kid diving his face into birthday cake. People say there's no memory leaks in Java, but once you start playing with JOptionPane, you realize that's a nice little lie. And there is work in managing your objects. I can make an app bloat up like firefox in no time. There's a few other nitpicks, but speed has never been one of them. If it were, I would be writing my app in C++ with QT, or Objective C.
meh... bad analogy. I would say Sony really earns the props for the 360 coming in second place. The fact that MS is not in third place considering the fact it was cause of the largest consumer electronics fuckup in US history showed just how bad Sony screwed the pooch. Especially coming off the runaway success of the playstation 2. If Sony wasn't so incompetent, i would imagine that Microsoft would be probably be in a distant third right now with plans on escaping the market.
The reason I pointed you to StoryTracker was because I am the author of it. The latest blog post was my concern not on the look and feel, but rather Java's nasty memory consumption. Swing is expensive and it is frustrating to watch the application's memory usage increase two megs at time with each creation of a dialog box. If I found the application consuming too much memory, I'd go native with Objective-C (which is something I don't want to do) As for the title bar, it will behave exactly as a Mac user expects. I have a factory class speced out that delegates the look and feel of the title bar according to each operating system. There will be dock icon. The whole works. Those are the last items on my todo before I package the app (come next week).
In any case, you make some good points. I agree with you that Swing will never be on par with Cocoa. You are right that the native look and feel will always fall behind the Java mask. The SWT toolkit tries to resolve this by encapsulating native widgets using JNI. Eclipse is a great example of it. Developing desktop apps requires a hell of a lot of work for a developer to make an app appear to be native, but once that task it complete, I don't believe the end user will know the difference outside of the increased usage of system resources. I may sound like java zealot, but truth be told, if the application cannot handle my requirements, I'll do a full native rewrite, and then you can send me the "told you so email" which I will grudgingly accept. In any case, thanks for the props on StoryTracker.
We've been hearing that for a full decade now... put your money where your mouth is, and show me the app.
If you are so keen to see a native look and feel, head over to www.storytracker.net in the next week or so for the first beta release. You're welcome to judge as you wish. If you don't have the patience (which your tone suggests) I suggest you check out Vuze or Eclipse or LimeWire. You'd be surprised. You see, there's a widget toolkit called SWT that actually utilizes the native OS' widgets. I develop using Swing which is a pure java implementation. When people think of ugly java apps, they think of Swing apps because its very very easy to create an ugly looking app. It takes a lot of work to make a nice looking UI. I'm developing on the Mac, so I've been fortunate to run into a guy named Kenneth Orr who has made wonderful strides in replicating OS X widgets that look and behave native. Check out explodingpixels.wordpress.com and you'll see what I mean.
If you think having the wrong open file dialog is a "small" problem, then you should not be designing UIs. That's a huge problem.
My point went right over your head. The open file dialogue looks a tad bit different. Unusable? Not at all. Especially on a windows platform where you have massive changes in UI designs from application to application. The key point... a user will have no problem using the dialog at all. So no... it's not a huge problem at all and if you think it is, take your beef up with Sun. Or even better, try to build a better implementation.
Yes, but Java's had almost 15 years now to get its act together, even if it's all working now, that doesn't excuse 14 years of shitty Java GUI apps
Dude... just uninstall java if it bothers you. it's an optional package, you know? You don't have to run java apps. The point is... java has reached a state of maturity where java desktop application is a reality. Ugly looking apps are the result of programmers not the available toolkits. I know its fashionable to hate java, but you are really out of touch with the current state of the language.
Hey Putaro, I'm also developing java apps for the mac, and I got to say that it is hard, but it can work out. First, you should google mac widgets which makes swing widgets look very very pretty on a mac. It doesn't look too bad either on Windows (kind of looks like ITunes on windows) which is fine by me. Otherwise, I think the native look and feel for swing widgets isn't so bad in Windows. And as another poster replied, there's always SWT.
As for NetBeans, Matisse is a good tool but I can't be productive in it. I don't know the group layout very well. I don't want to know the group layout and I hate dealing with wizard generate code. In the past two months, I've discovered Mig Layout which is by far, the best layout managers for java. I now mock up my layout in photoshop, then code it in Mig. People are trying to have it included in the JRE. It's just that good. And bonus... it works the same for Swing as well as SWT.
Personally, I'd recommend you package your java app differently for each platform. There are a ton of open source java installers which actually download the JRE if there isn't one on the client's platform.
Java does work for the desktop. It just takes a crapload of spit and polish. If isn't doing what you need it do, I'd work hard as hell to research a solution, and if that still doesn't work, then you need reevaluate your language choice. Personally, in terms of java desktop development, I have yet to find a barrier that I could not cross.
This model is meaningful for Joe Sixpack audience, which does need that click-click-click-bought, installed & running approach. But how many Java apps for that market you know? It's all desktop ones, remember, and Swing still looks and feels horrible on any desktop, from Windows to X to Mac. We're in double digits for the total usable app count, at best...
You obviously do not develop java applications for the desktop. You are probably even clueless when you are running a java app. That's how seamless java desktop apps are becoming when written with the desktop in mind. There are small places that might look different such as open file window on Windows, but that's the exception. Desktop java has come a long way from back in the old days. When you think ugly applications, you are probably thinking of the default "metal" look and feel created by Sun. It looks like crap and I'd say that the good desktop developers ignore it.
A large problem is that is very easy to create fugly looking apps in Swing. You really need to work hard to achieve OS integration and when you do, most people will not be able to tell when they are running a java app.
I'm currently developing a desktop application for my mac, and guess what... you cannot distinguish it from the rest of OS. I kid you not, it looks like a native application. Check out the exploding pixels blog by Kenneth Orr and you'll see that he has recreated a whole library of mac widgets in swing which is cross platform.
A big concern with desktop java has been resource use. Swing consumes A LOT of memory requiring all my dialog boxes to be Singleton objects. This is frustrating because of all the additional code it requires for upkeep. Also, I've noticed that repainting my main application window during a maximize window call creates a small flicker. These are small issues as a whole.
By the way, here's a screenshot of my current app written entirely in java...
Screenshot
If anything, MS keeps things far too long. Ars wrote up an excellent article on it. Here's a snip:
For example, there's a function called OpenFile. OpenFile was a Win16 function. It opens files, obviously enough. In Win32 it was deprecated--kept in, to allow 16-bit apps to be ported to Win32 more easily, but deprecated all the same. In Win32 it has always been deprecated. The documentation for OpenFile says, "Note: Only use this function with 16-bit versions of Windows. For newer applications, use the CreateFile function." But in spite of that, Win64 still has OpenFile. No one should be using it, but it's still there.
The good thing about java is that when the api changes you still have the option of running older JREs. I'm not sure if that's the case with the net framework.
I didn't it was slashdot's five minute hate already. Jeez its early. Anyone have an stray pictures of Gosling that I can yell at? Being somewhat serious, why does the slashdot groupthink give C# a free pass whereas java gets all the hate? I haven't looked, but I assumed both are similar in performance. Is it because one of them is integrated right into gnome? Or is it because Java is the most popular language for enterprise development?
It does help to hold a biscuit or a stick of butter in your hand to get her attention. If you hold it at the right angle, she will be looking right at you although her eyes will be locked on your hand. Then it's just a matter of moving forward while puckering. Er, not that I know anything about this subject. Cough. Cough.;)
I tell you... I remember back in the day when IE was the browser of choice for developers. Netscape was the nightmare. This was the age of table based layouts and one missed closed table tag stopped the entire page from rendering in Netscape. I don't know when that changed, but now, IE is monkey on my back. At my current gig (huge web shop) we do everything in firefox, and then work out all the kinks in the various IE browser. I absolutely loathe MS for not allowing customers have multiple versions of IE on the machines without jumping through some nasty hoops. And the debugging situation on IE is just abysmal. You'd figure if they improved the development situation on the browser, market share would improve from user experience and developer evangelization.
They really need to step it up on all fronts to maintain their position not that I want them to. I think it will be a good thing to have browsers in competition with each other. I certainly don't want Firefox to become the big guy on the block. The only good thing about firefox is the extensions It's the only reason I use the damn thing. 3.0 was supposed to be lean and mean when in reality, it still eats memory like a fat guy at an all-you-can-eat buffet which kills my system. I have hopes for Chrome, but when I'm not in development mode (which is rare since I find myself using firebug all the time to remove annoying pictures from articles or alter inline js), I think Opera is the winner. This is coming from a guy who has been using Mozilla products since the.70 mozilla suite.
The Franconia Notch has been my favorite hiking spot for years. From climbing up to Lonesome Lake to walking down the Flume, I think it is the one place in all of New Hampshire to stand up to the grandeur of places such as Yosemite. Climbing up along the ridge on top of Mount Lafayette is an amazing experience. One of the trails winds up along thirty foot waterfalls. At the top and on clear days, you can see the small black plume of smoke from a railroad car making its way up Mount Washington. The cliffs on Canon Mountain are just breathtaking as you drive by and look up at them.
The old man was just one natural attraction in a place full of them. The big problem with replacing it is that it would be like spray painting over a Da Vinci. Glass or otherwise. The old man was an amazing natural formation, but it is gone. I hope that they don't a dump over a truly beautiful place just so people can relive the past. I thought that was what pictures were for.
This appears to be related to the intel aqua port. I haven't been to activate the spell check right click in version 3.0 as well. I haven't tried 3.1 yet, but it sounds like it is still not resolved.
You're a veteran here. Just go to your preference page and disable to MS stories. The thing you need to understand is that just because an article shows a product in a negative perspective does not mean people will view it in such regard. And while some people may cheer on the negative hooplah, I find the Slashdot discussions rather refreshing since commentary usually ranges the entire spectrum of opinion. What I actually find annoying is people complaining about people complaining since there is rarely any insight in such a rant.
Now granted, there is the occasional Slashdot five minutes hate (bring up any story about Java and MS itself has been known to raise some hackles for good reason), but I think in the case of Windows 7, people are interested in the upcoming release since it will surely effect their lives one way or another. I will say - not being a fan of MS in the least - that they are doing a great job with the open beta since people are finding about these problems now as opposed to on the eve of deployment.
There's a couple of things... first there is a perception issue at hand. I've only dabbled with Vista on my parents computer, so I'm not sure how it reports ram usage. I would hope that it reports cached program data as free memory and once you activate the cached program, that memory is then displayed as used. People freak out when they see their system resources maxed out. It means they need to shut down program x so they can run program y, otherwise the computer starts thrashing trying to keep up with the user and that is a terrible experience. I would think that most users would rather waste ram than go through that hell whereby everything becomes unresponsive. Pre-caching sounds like a great feature to utilize your system's resources and if it really drops the cached program data without any notice to the end user, then I'm all for it. The critical thing is that the user needs to be educated which it sounds like Microsoft failed to do.
The other thing which would bother me is to see my hard drive cranking through bits when I haven't asked it to do anything. When I see that happening on my machine, I immediately open my activity monitor to check on all my processes. Again, this can be alleviated with user notifications and education, but it sounds like Microsoft failed to do that.
I think the meat of the issue is that people want to be in control of their machines. Even at the expense of wasted resources. If Microsoft can educate as well as provide a great service, then there is no issue. Alas, it appears that they failed in that regard.
I've run at least three miles a day. I've run one marathon and I am currently training for another. I've had multiple long runs that have exceeded twenty miles. At one point, I was running at least forty miles a week. I can tell you from my experience is that shoes make a huge difference. Once my shoe starts to go, I'll start to get intense pain in my hips and knees. Changes the shoe, and the pain goes away. It's a form issue in my case which the shoe helps to correct. I'm guessing those people who run barefoot have really good form. Take away my shoes and put me on a flat area without any rocks, I figure I might be able to run a few miles before I'm forced to stop because of knee or hip pain. I'll keep my shoes, thankyouverymuch.
No joke... when a new runner starts to experience pain, the quickest remedy to buy new shoes.
I just switched over to mac this past December, and I will say that for the first time in a long time, I found myself buying smaller twenty dollar applications that have I needed in my work flow. So in some way, my cost of ownership has risen. That said, my laptop satisfaction is off the charts. Sure, I might have been able to get the same components in a cheaper configuration, but it's the little details that make me love this computer - the magnetic power cable - the backlit keyboard - some of the mouse pad gestures - even the OS experience is a nice one. So yes, I might have a higher TOS, but I'm actually happier (ie, spending money is not a bad thing)
Now before you label me an Apple fan boy, let me also say that I absolutely loathe that company for a gazillion different reasons. I mean really, they do shit that MS wishes they could do in their wet dreams. If my computer purchases were ideologically based, I'd be using Linux. But being more pragmatic that ideological, I decided to go with Apple and as long as they stay on an x86 chip, I see no reason choosing any other.
A customer shouldn't be forced to inspect a product that he is buying as new because gamestop opened it and potentially damaged it. Call me a drama queen if you want, but I'm not the one who should lower my standards when making a sale, especially if that price is non-negotiable. That's how you get taken. Today it might be sixty bucks, tomorrow it might be a thousand. Either way you're getting screwed without the niceties of being handed a cigarette.
Slashdot Mirror
This is why central economic planning doesn't work, and why shortages ran rampant throughout the Soviet Union and eastern communist countries. Simply put - Government politicians are no good at running an economy. They don't have the necessary skills. I agree. We should have a small cadre of men and women who all know how to run the country. They will be the experts at running things, but there needs to be some oversight like a supreme leader who is the ultimate defacto answer. Granted, people should still be able to vote for their president, but the president should really be more of a figurehead role whereby the experts rule. Is this what you had in mind?
Watch me burn some karma here, but this is the truth.
If you have to preface your comment with sideways plea to the moderators to mod you up, then you are already on shaky ground. Next time out, just say what you mean - consequences be damned.
But Stallman is a zealot who hurts the image of free software, making it difficult to sell the concept of free software to suits.
okay ... you've lost the point somewhere ... the idea of free software is not to appease to the suits. The idea of free software is not to have a nice looking image. The idea of free software is to be independent of outside interests. period. Stallman views DRM as an enemy since it removes his independence. that's all. there's no good versus evil struggle going on here. It's pure pragmatism with a big scooping of zealotry.
How is this really different from DRM? DRM restricts users to protect the developer/artist from having their property stolen.
You're thinking like a developer. Not an end user. The gpl is nothing like DRM. The GPL is a contract with the end user whereas DRM is an implementation to prevent unauthorized copying. I can download a gpl program and run it on as many computer as i want. I can sell it. I can modify it. I can give it away to all my friends. With DRM, I might be lucky to install the program on two computers.
True freedom is public domain. Public domain certainly doesn't protect your code from being copied or stolen.
Code can't be stolen. It can only be copied which is the whole point of this article.
Not that I disagree with your overall points but you should know that Cleopatra was made in 1963 whereas the first Planet of the Apes was made in 1968.
Before I start my rant, I should let you know that I can't stand Gamestop. I refuse to shop there. That being said ... I have no problems buying used games from a brick and motor store. Granted, I might be paying more than I would from an ebay seller, but I consider the mark up to be of value since I have better consumer protection and even better options. For example, say you a buy a game for Joe Blow off ebay and you receive a disc scratched to hell. Have fun getting a refund. With brick and motor stores, I can get a replacement disc usually without any hassle. Want a better case or instruction manual ... easy ... ask for one. In a brick and motor, I can actually inspect the disc before I buy it. With mail order, you are using trust.
That being said ... if the price difference between new and used is five bucks, then I'll opt for the new game. I usually do a preliminary search for prices, but a low price doesn't guarantee a sale. I can't tell you how many times I've spent MORE money for buying low. And yes ... sometimes convenience is a huge factor. If a new copy is cheaper at target, but target is a thirty minute car ride away, then the price isn't so sexy because I'm putting wear and tear on my car plus the cost of gas to me there.
My point ... as a consumer, you should weigh the value of the entirety of a transaction as opposed to the money figure on the box.
eh ... while your analysis is reasonable, it is missing a key point. Gamestop buys a new game for $20, then resell the game for $55. I believe game developers are mad at gamestop for essentially stepping in and taking a sale. In fact, if you track Gamestop used prices, you tend to find the used copy only $5 dollars cheaper than the new version.
Personally, I think games are way to expensive. I just can't justify spending $60 for a game unless I'm absolutely sure about it. I used to buy at least six games a year new, but at the sixty dollar price point, I average about two a year. Now I wait for games to sink like a rock. Usually when the price point is less that thirty bucks, the game becomes more of an impulse purchase and then I like to buy them new.
The thing I don't understand is that films with rival budgets often retail at $20 bucks on dvd. What makes games so different? Seriously, if new games hit the market at thirty dollars a pop, I believe a large portion of the second hand market would dry up.
Orbit? The last message I got through my tin foil hat was that they were still trying to figure out suborbital flight which I think is bogus. This whole flight thing is all a bunch of smoke and mirrors fueled by the liberal media so we will watch more television.
In any case, you should check out the movie Capricorn One. It's an oldie but goodie where NASA fakes a mars landing. Would you believe it stars at young OJ?
Just to nitpick ... I can output to the console with one character if I choose. It's quite easy.
import static com.jezner.libraries.io.Console.p;
public class Test {
public static void main(String[] args) {
p("I am writing to the console");
}
}
All the p method does is encapsulate the "System.out.println()" method. Using a static import, you don't need to reference any objects. But you knew that, didn't you?
Java got a bad rap back in the day when the language was poised to take over the desktop and then everyone used it, and were killed by its abysmal performance. Back in the 2000, I cursed java every week as I entered my development time into this crap-ola windows box that performed like a fat man running through a river of melted taffy. Loading an applet was a painful flow breaking experience that usually did nothing to a page. When people think of java, they think of this time. it's the slashdot two minute hate.
These days, Java works well both on the desktop and on the server. Shocking, I know. I'm currently developing a desktop app for OS X and people have no idea it's a java project. It looks and behaves as if written in Objective C. Our engineering team just wrote a server app in java that had over three million entries. At one point, it was creating nine hundred entries per second without breaking a sweat. But people don't see that. They just have mental images of all the crappy applets back in the days of yore, then make uninformed opinions about the current state of the language.
My biggest complaints about java are the inconsistent implementations between platforms so something might work great on a mac, but throws exceptions on windows. Write once, run everywhere is a lie. My code is 100% java (no native code) that runs perfect in both mac and windows, yet makes the official Linux JVM puke. I hate the fact the language is object orientated, but objects are expensive to create. I hate the fact that Swing makes it easy for good java developers to write terrible user interfaces. The GridBag layout was designed by a very bitter programmer. I hate the fact that java eats and eats all the memory it can find like a kid diving his face into birthday cake. People say there's no memory leaks in Java, but once you start playing with JOptionPane, you realize that's a nice little lie. And there is work in managing your objects. I can make an app bloat up like firefox in no time. There's a few other nitpicks, but speed has never been one of them. If it were, I would be writing my app in C++ with QT, or Objective C.
meh ... bad analogy. I would say Sony really earns the props for the 360 coming in second place. The fact that MS is not in third place considering the fact it was cause of the largest consumer electronics fuckup in US history showed just how bad Sony screwed the pooch. Especially coming off the runaway success of the playstation 2. If Sony wasn't so incompetent, i would imagine that Microsoft would be probably be in a distant third right now with plans on escaping the market.
The reason I pointed you to StoryTracker was because I am the author of it. The latest blog post was my concern not on the look and feel, but rather Java's nasty memory consumption. Swing is expensive and it is frustrating to watch the application's memory usage increase two megs at time with each creation of a dialog box. If I found the application consuming too much memory, I'd go native with Objective-C (which is something I don't want to do) As for the title bar, it will behave exactly as a Mac user expects. I have a factory class speced out that delegates the look and feel of the title bar according to each operating system. There will be dock icon. The whole works. Those are the last items on my todo before I package the app (come next week).
In any case, you make some good points. I agree with you that Swing will never be on par with Cocoa. You are right that the native look and feel will always fall behind the Java mask. The SWT toolkit tries to resolve this by encapsulating native widgets using JNI. Eclipse is a great example of it. Developing desktop apps requires a hell of a lot of work for a developer to make an app appear to be native, but once that task it complete, I don't believe the end user will know the difference outside of the increased usage of system resources. I may sound like java zealot, but truth be told, if the application cannot handle my requirements, I'll do a full native rewrite, and then you can send me the "told you so email" which I will grudgingly accept. In any case, thanks for the props on StoryTracker.
We've been hearing that for a full decade now... put your money where your mouth is, and show me the app.
... a user will have no problem using the dialog at all. So no ... it's not a huge problem at all and if you think it is, take your beef up with Sun. Or even better, try to build a better implementation.
... just uninstall java if it bothers you. it's an optional package, you know? You don't have to run java apps. The point is ... java has reached a state of maturity where java desktop application is a reality. Ugly looking apps are the result of programmers not the available toolkits. I know its fashionable to hate java, but you are really out of touch with the current state of the language.
If you are so keen to see a native look and feel, head over to www.storytracker.net in the next week or so for the first beta release. You're welcome to judge as you wish. If you don't have the patience (which your tone suggests) I suggest you check out Vuze or Eclipse or LimeWire. You'd be surprised. You see, there's a widget toolkit called SWT that actually utilizes the native OS' widgets. I develop using Swing which is a pure java implementation. When people think of ugly java apps, they think of Swing apps because its very very easy to create an ugly looking app. It takes a lot of work to make a nice looking UI. I'm developing on the Mac, so I've been fortunate to run into a guy named Kenneth Orr who has made wonderful strides in replicating OS X widgets that look and behave native. Check out explodingpixels.wordpress.com and you'll see what I mean.
If you think having the wrong open file dialog is a "small" problem, then you should not be designing UIs. That's a huge problem.
My point went right over your head. The open file dialogue looks a tad bit different. Unusable? Not at all. Especially on a windows platform where you have massive changes in UI designs from application to application. The key point
Yes, but Java's had almost 15 years now to get its act together, even if it's all working now, that doesn't excuse 14 years of shitty Java GUI apps
Dude
Hey Putaro, I'm also developing java apps for the mac, and I got to say that it is hard, but it can work out. First, you should google mac widgets which makes swing widgets look very very pretty on a mac. It doesn't look too bad either on Windows (kind of looks like ITunes on windows) which is fine by me. Otherwise, I think the native look and feel for swing widgets isn't so bad in Windows. And as another poster replied, there's always SWT.
... it works the same for Swing as well as SWT.
As for NetBeans, Matisse is a good tool but I can't be productive in it. I don't know the group layout very well. I don't want to know the group layout and I hate dealing with wizard generate code. In the past two months, I've discovered Mig Layout which is by far, the best layout managers for java. I now mock up my layout in photoshop, then code it in Mig. People are trying to have it included in the JRE. It's just that good. And bonus
Personally, I'd recommend you package your java app differently for each platform. There are a ton of open source java installers which actually download the JRE if there isn't one on the client's platform.
Java does work for the desktop. It just takes a crapload of spit and polish. If isn't doing what you need it do, I'd work hard as hell to research a solution, and if that still doesn't work, then you need reevaluate your language choice. Personally, in terms of java desktop development, I have yet to find a barrier that I could not cross.
This model is meaningful for Joe Sixpack audience, which does need that click-click-click-bought, installed & running approach. But how many Java apps for that market you know? It's all desktop ones, remember, and Swing still looks and feels horrible on any desktop, from Windows to X to Mac. We're in double digits for the total usable app count, at best...
... you cannot distinguish it from the rest of OS. I kid you not, it looks like a native application. Check out the exploding pixels blog by Kenneth Orr and you'll see that he has recreated a whole library of mac widgets in swing which is cross platform.
...
Screenshot
You obviously do not develop java applications for the desktop. You are probably even clueless when you are running a java app. That's how seamless java desktop apps are becoming when written with the desktop in mind. There are small places that might look different such as open file window on Windows, but that's the exception. Desktop java has come a long way from back in the old days. When you think ugly applications, you are probably thinking of the default "metal" look and feel created by Sun. It looks like crap and I'd say that the good desktop developers ignore it.
A large problem is that is very easy to create fugly looking apps in Swing. You really need to work hard to achieve OS integration and when you do, most people will not be able to tell when they are running a java app.
I'm currently developing a desktop application for my mac, and guess what
A big concern with desktop java has been resource use. Swing consumes A LOT of memory requiring all my dialog boxes to be Singleton objects. This is frustrating because of all the additional code it requires for upkeep. Also, I've noticed that repainting my main application window during a maximize window call creates a small flicker. These are small issues as a whole. By the way, here's a screenshot of my current app written entirely in java
You're free to do the same. What's the issue?
If anything, MS keeps things far too long. Ars wrote up an excellent article on it. Here's a snip:
For example, there's a function called OpenFile. OpenFile was a Win16 function. It opens files, obviously enough. In Win32 it was deprecated--kept in, to allow 16-bit apps to be ported to Win32 more easily, but deprecated all the same. In Win32 it has always been deprecated. The documentation for OpenFile says, "Note: Only use this function with 16-bit versions of Windows. For newer applications, use the CreateFile function." But in spite of that, Win64 still has OpenFile. No one should be using it, but it's still there.
from: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2008/05/microsoft-learn-from-apple-II.ars/3
The good thing about java is that when the api changes you still have the option of running older JREs. I'm not sure if that's the case with the net framework.
I didn't it was slashdot's five minute hate already. Jeez its early. Anyone have an stray pictures of Gosling that I can yell at? Being somewhat serious, why does the slashdot groupthink give C# a free pass whereas java gets all the hate? I haven't looked, but I assumed both are similar in performance. Is it because one of them is integrated right into gnome? Or is it because Java is the most popular language for enterprise development?
It does help to hold a biscuit or a stick of butter in your hand to get her attention. If you hold it at the right angle, she will be looking right at you although her eyes will be locked on your hand. Then it's just a matter of moving forward while puckering. Er, not that I know anything about this subject. Cough. Cough. ;)
I tell you ... I remember back in the day when IE was the browser of choice for developers. Netscape was the nightmare. This was the age of table based layouts and one missed closed table tag stopped the entire page from rendering in Netscape. I don't know when that changed, but now, IE is monkey on my back. At my current gig (huge web shop) we do everything in firefox, and then work out all the kinks in the various IE browser. I absolutely loathe MS for not allowing customers have multiple versions of IE on the machines without jumping through some nasty hoops. And the debugging situation on IE is just abysmal. You'd figure if they improved the development situation on the browser, market share would improve from user experience and developer evangelization.
They really need to step it up on all fronts to maintain their position not that I want them to. I think it will be a good thing to have browsers in competition with each other. I certainly don't want Firefox to become the big guy on the block. The only good thing about firefox is the extensions It's the only reason I use the damn thing. 3.0 was supposed to be lean and mean when in reality, it still eats memory like a fat guy at an all-you-can-eat buffet which kills my system. I have hopes for Chrome, but when I'm not in development mode (which is rare since I find myself using firebug all the time to remove annoying pictures from articles or alter inline js), I think Opera is the winner. This is coming from a guy who has been using Mozilla products since the .70 mozilla suite.
The Franconia Notch has been my favorite hiking spot for years. From climbing up to Lonesome Lake to walking down the Flume, I think it is the one place in all of New Hampshire to stand up to the grandeur of places such as Yosemite. Climbing up along the ridge on top of Mount Lafayette is an amazing experience. One of the trails winds up along thirty foot waterfalls. At the top and on clear days, you can see the small black plume of smoke from a railroad car making its way up Mount Washington. The cliffs on Canon Mountain are just breathtaking as you drive by and look up at them.
The old man was just one natural attraction in a place full of them. The big problem with replacing it is that it would be like spray painting over a Da Vinci. Glass or otherwise. The old man was an amazing natural formation, but it is gone. I hope that they don't a dump over a truly beautiful place just so people can relive the past. I thought that was what pictures were for.
This appears to be related to the intel aqua port. I haven't been to activate the spell check right click in version 3.0 as well. I haven't tried 3.1 yet, but it sounds like it is still not resolved.
You're a veteran here. Just go to your preference page and disable to MS stories. The thing you need to understand is that just because an article shows a product in a negative perspective does not mean people will view it in such regard. And while some people may cheer on the negative hooplah, I find the Slashdot discussions rather refreshing since commentary usually ranges the entire spectrum of opinion. What I actually find annoying is people complaining about people complaining since there is rarely any insight in such a rant.
Now granted, there is the occasional Slashdot five minutes hate (bring up any story about Java and MS itself has been known to raise some hackles for good reason), but I think in the case of Windows 7, people are interested in the upcoming release since it will surely effect their lives one way or another. I will say - not being a fan of MS in the least - that they are doing a great job with the open beta since people are finding about these problems now as opposed to on the eve of deployment.
There's a couple of things ... first there is a perception issue at hand. I've only dabbled with Vista on my parents computer, so I'm not sure how it reports ram usage. I would hope that it reports cached program data as free memory and once you activate the cached program, that memory is then displayed as used. People freak out when they see their system resources maxed out. It means they need to shut down program x so they can run program y, otherwise the computer starts thrashing trying to keep up with the user and that is a terrible experience. I would think that most users would rather waste ram than go through that hell whereby everything becomes unresponsive. Pre-caching sounds like a great feature to utilize your system's resources and if it really drops the cached program data without any notice to the end user, then I'm all for it. The critical thing is that the user needs to be educated which it sounds like Microsoft failed to do.
The other thing which would bother me is to see my hard drive cranking through bits when I haven't asked it to do anything. When I see that happening on my machine, I immediately open my activity monitor to check on all my processes. Again, this can be alleviated with user notifications and education, but it sounds like Microsoft failed to do that.
I think the meat of the issue is that people want to be in control of their machines. Even at the expense of wasted resources. If Microsoft can educate as well as provide a great service, then there is no issue. Alas, it appears that they failed in that regard.
I've run at least three miles a day. I've run one marathon and I am currently training for another. I've had multiple long runs that have exceeded twenty miles. At one point, I was running at least forty miles a week. I can tell you from my experience is that shoes make a huge difference. Once my shoe starts to go, I'll start to get intense pain in my hips and knees. Changes the shoe, and the pain goes away. It's a form issue in my case which the shoe helps to correct. I'm guessing those people who run barefoot have really good form. Take away my shoes and put me on a flat area without any rocks, I figure I might be able to run a few miles before I'm forced to stop because of knee or hip pain. I'll keep my shoes, thankyouverymuch.
... when a new runner starts to experience pain, the quickest remedy to buy new shoes.
No joke
I just switched over to mac this past December, and I will say that for the first time in a long time, I found myself buying smaller twenty dollar applications that have I needed in my work flow. So in some way, my cost of ownership has risen. That said, my laptop satisfaction is off the charts. Sure, I might have been able to get the same components in a cheaper configuration, but it's the little details that make me love this computer - the magnetic power cable - the backlit keyboard - some of the mouse pad gestures - even the OS experience is a nice one. So yes, I might have a higher TOS, but I'm actually happier (ie, spending money is not a bad thing)
Now before you label me an Apple fan boy, let me also say that I absolutely loathe that company for a gazillion different reasons. I mean really, they do shit that MS wishes they could do in their wet dreams. If my computer purchases were ideologically based, I'd be using Linux. But being more pragmatic that ideological, I decided to go with Apple and as long as they stay on an x86 chip, I see no reason choosing any other.
A customer shouldn't be forced to inspect a product that he is buying as new because gamestop opened it and potentially damaged it. Call me a drama queen if you want, but I'm not the one who should lower my standards when making a sale, especially if that price is non-negotiable. That's how you get taken. Today it might be sixty bucks, tomorrow it might be a thousand. Either way you're getting screwed without the niceties of being handed a cigarette.