This is why I abandoned SuSE after using it for over 3 years. It looked completely and utterly unstable in terms of whether it was going to be supported tomorrow and in the same fashion as it is today. Now, of course, nothing has probably changed in that regard, yet. However this continued churn doesn't bode well for the future.
This is the sad thing about this. People like you and I who actually *prefer* PDAs may face a future where they just don't make them any longer. My current PDA, which is very pedestrian by some standards (a Zire 31), is no longer available. There is no replacement for it really. I think that's the future, unfortunately.
You're not alone. I finally got a "modern" phone last week (camera, mp3 player, etc.) only because I got it cheap because I'd been using the same ancient phone with Sprint forever. While the phone is fine it's uncomfortable to use the keypad (the reason I got it was for voice dialing, bluetooth, so this is okay), the menu system is way too overtaken with options. It's more of a pain than something I want to utilize. Alternatively, my Palm is very intuitive and easy to use. So I won't stop using my Palm any time soon. Especially because I'd much rather peck at a screen then press a tiny Tic-Tac-sized key 3 times for every letter as I try to enter someone's contact information. It's ridiculous. I don't see how anyone can see a phone (save for the giant Treos that weigh half a pound and need to be rebooted constantly) replacing a PDA and still being usable. The technology is too far off. If I could tell it by voice when to schedule an appt. or put in someone's information, that would be a different story. But I can't do that, so it's actually worse, in my book, than my PDA.
Re:I never understood gaming...
on
Flashback NES
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· Score: 1
I think that was his point. He's better because he spent his childhood working, being a savant and all that good stuff. Meanwhile I played T-Ball, Nintendo and had fun. Stupid me.
Re:I never understood gaming...
on
Flashback NES
·
· Score: 1
You like to do work in your free time. Great for you. Now back to my graphic novels, games and skateboard.
The big deal is that if GPL3 gets a lot of negative press the decision makers, the pointy haired bosses who you often have to REALLY do a hard sell on the virtues of Linux will read some article in Business Week about how terrible the GPL is, making no distinction between versions. And then once said pointy haired boss finds out that the GPL is "bad" he/she will be less likely to go for it.
Similarly, hardware manufacturers may be concerned that Linux will eventually move to it and see it as risky. So in many ways it's guilt by association.
Finally, I'm curious what this does with all the tools that the FSF maintains. I mean, aren't most of the regular unix userspace tools maintained by them? Wouldn't this license possibly get slapped on those GNU tools?
No. I just missed everything after you started cussing because you seemed angry, thus your post didn't seem worth reading. That's what cussing gets you sometimes. Sorry.
Indeed. That's the irony. Of course, one could argue that maybe they wouldn't be doing that AS MUCH if Nintendo would release these games for the DS in emulation themselves. Sell them, iPod style or something.
I've never understood people getting on "teams" for this kind of thing. It's very surreal. Rooting for one multinational billion dollar company to beat another one? What does the consumer get out of that? Less competition.
I would like to think that the main driving force (as I can see this as the only possible justification unless you hold stock in either company) would be that you have an intense desire to see your chosen platform not die and get well supported. Dreamcast fans could identify with this sentiment, I think. Of how the market, regardless of the quality of a product, can completely destroy a company and a system based on fanboy-dom.
But EVEN THAT justification is still weak. It's a video game system. If they stop making games for it enjoy the ones you have or pick a new one or quit gaming. If someday all gaming is Sony, since I don't like Sony consoles, I probably won't game. I'll pick up a new hobby and move no with my life.
Actually, ironically, the Advance is still beating both systems, but no one bothers to mention that (even thought it has the highest installed base of any video game platform ever).
Once again. More emulation. I'd like to see some stats on the MONEY being made off each system. Because I'm guessing that Nintendo is actually selling games. Not just emulation machines.
I agree, of course. But I guess it had never occurred to me until this article that the antibiotics arms race isn't just a war taking place inside of our bodies, but also in the ecosystem as well. Interesting.
I instantly thought of this when I read the headline. I'm sure you've seen the studies. The ones that say that the average tap water has X-particles per million of Prozac, X-particle per million of Xanax, etc. The point being that human beings consume large amounts of medicine and then much of them gets excreted out somehow and eventually (and unfortunately) find their way into the ecosystem. Our water and probably our land. So a study like this makes me wonder (and feel free to club me over the head if this is impossible, because I'm just a programmer, not a a biologist) if it's possible that as we use more and more antibiotics on ourselves, on cows and chickens in large amounts, if at some point these don't make their way into the system and possibly help promote a more aggressive evolution of these superbugs. I would like to see a study done on that if there isn't already a definitive answer to *that* question.
#1 - The robustness of "web applications" being provided today is much greater than during the time of the web terminals you mention. A hacked FreeBSD OS set to basically boot into FireFox could actually do most things the average user of computers does these days. Check email, use the Internet, etc.
#2 - Branding it with Google also makes a difference. People are comfortable with Google, Google Maps, etc.
It was a typo. Or a brain fart or something. I meant to that there's been a backlash against calling C# features "syntactic sugar" in some books/articles I've read. The Rubyists especially seem to like syntactic sugar.
I would second this, only in this respect. Microsoft included a lot of "syntactic sugar" in C#. This is a much maligned phrase as I think there is harm that comes with syntactic sugar. It may make things look prettier, take less characters, etc. but it tends to make code less verbose. And that's one of the HUGE strengths of Java. It's very verbose. So learning it as an OO language is a good way to go. Find a good book (Learning Java, etc.) for the 1.4.x version of the JDK and start there.
Alternatively, consider Ruby. I know, I know I was just yesterday saying Rails and Ruby were overhyped. The reason I suggest this is because if you get a good book that doesn't focus heavily on the syntactic sugar, Ruby, as a language, is completely OO. In other words the following doesn't work in Java....
float i = 3.54; i.intValue();...whereas in Ruby you can do something like...
$i = 3.54 $i.round
Or checking if an integer is really an int in Java...
Not a huge difference? Well, if you're wanting to learn a language to learn OO Ruby is pure OO if you don't abuse the syntactic sugar. On the other hand Java is kind of the de-facto standard and there are jobs out there, so it depends on your reason for learning the language.
I would also note that C# also is more pure OO in that sense, so I guess by that criteria you could lump it with Ruby as a good starter language. But if you're shooting for a language on which you can easily run and get lots of stuff done on Linux, I think C# is a second class citizen.
That's funny. I use the same version of Eclipse, Tomcat, Ant, JUnit (all written in Java, of course) on my Windows box as I do on my Linux box. Yet I've never been able to run Visual Studio on Linux. Am I not installing it correctly since it's apparently so cross-platform?
Exactly. Having more "hyper-enthusiasts" is exactly a badge of honor I'd wear proudly.
And for the record, I like Ruby on Rails. But when it comes to just getting work done, Java works fine for me and I'm still finding employment doing it. Go figure.
This is more accurate. But the original poster has a point. The reason many of us settled into Java wasn't the hype. It wasn't the conferences (never attended one), the magazines or books similar to Mr. Tate's (which I've read, btw). The reason many of us settled into Java was because it made sense. The language and the spirit of coding in Java was all about being explicit, having the code be readable and maintainable and doing things the right way like type safety, etc. In Mr. Tate's book, he brushes away type safety by saying that it's a crutch for a lack of unit testing. Maybe, maybe not. He thinks you have to jump through too many hoops and you should just be unit testing and your problems will be solved.
But then aren't there many crutches in Rails? Many things that framework forces you to do in order to maintain some kind of sanity? This isn't a bad thing. Neither is type safety. If type safety is good and unit testing is good then isn't haven't both like twice as good?:-)
Anyway, Mr. Tate's book is as Mr. Eckel describes it. One long screed against Java and for Rails, often not bothering to back up his assertions and altogether tossing aside other languages like Python and C# without any real reason. So if the end result of Mr. Eckel's assessment is that Java is loosing people like Bruce Tate I would argue this is a GOOD THING. Good luck with him, Rubyists. May he write crummy books for you (like he did with "Spring, a Developer's Notebook", which he even *apologizes* for in the beginning of "Beyond Java") and may he embarrass your community just like he did with Java. Maybe one day someone will stop listening to him altogether and just proceed with getting work done. Whether they choose Rails or Java (both of which offer fine solutions, IMHO).
Yeah, this is what's so funny to me about hype. I don't hear from C++ or C enthusiasts too often these days, but last time I checked there's still lots of work happening in C and C++. Where are the SQL enthusiasts? I think the thing is, Java (while still evolving) has reached a point of sanity. Frameworks and tools like Hibernate, Struts, JSF, Tapestry, Ant, JUnit, etc. have created a sane, relatively lightweight toolkit for doing J2EE development. So what is there to get hyped about? Most people I know that do Java are just quietly getting work done. Which is actually kind of nice. The Rubyists can have the hype.
I actually like Ruby and I like Rails. I just don't think the speed gains that come from it being interpreted necessarily outweight the explicitness of Java as it's currently used. I can get anything I need to done in Java, it's easy to install and it's easy to test and log. It just works.
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This is why I abandoned SuSE after using it for over 3 years. It looked completely and utterly unstable in terms of whether it was going to be supported tomorrow and in the same fashion as it is today. Now, of course, nothing has probably changed in that regard, yet. However this continued churn doesn't bode well for the future.
This is the sad thing about this. People like you and I who actually *prefer* PDAs may face a future where they just don't make them any longer. My current PDA, which is very pedestrian by some standards (a Zire 31), is no longer available. There is no replacement for it really. I think that's the future, unfortunately.
You're not alone. I finally got a "modern" phone last week (camera, mp3 player, etc.) only because I got it cheap because I'd been using the same ancient phone with Sprint forever. While the phone is fine it's uncomfortable to use the keypad (the reason I got it was for voice dialing, bluetooth, so this is okay), the menu system is way too overtaken with options. It's more of a pain than something I want to utilize. Alternatively, my Palm is very intuitive and easy to use. So I won't stop using my Palm any time soon. Especially because I'd much rather peck at a screen then press a tiny Tic-Tac-sized key 3 times for every letter as I try to enter someone's contact information. It's ridiculous. I don't see how anyone can see a phone (save for the giant Treos that weigh half a pound and need to be rebooted constantly) replacing a PDA and still being usable. The technology is too far off. If I could tell it by voice when to schedule an appt. or put in someone's information, that would be a different story. But I can't do that, so it's actually worse, in my book, than my PDA.
I think that was his point. He's better because he spent his childhood working, being a savant and all that good stuff. Meanwhile I played T-Ball, Nintendo and had fun. Stupid me.
You like to do work in your free time. Great for you. Now back to my graphic novels, games and skateboard.
The big deal is that if GPL3 gets a lot of negative press the decision makers, the pointy haired bosses who you often have to REALLY do a hard sell on the virtues of Linux will read some article in Business Week about how terrible the GPL is, making no distinction between versions. And then once said pointy haired boss finds out that the GPL is "bad" he/she will be less likely to go for it.
Similarly, hardware manufacturers may be concerned that Linux will eventually move to it and see it as risky. So in many ways it's guilt by association.
Finally, I'm curious what this does with all the tools that the FSF maintains. I mean, aren't most of the regular unix userspace tools maintained by them? Wouldn't this license possibly get slapped on those GNU tools?
No. I just missed everything after you started cussing because you seemed angry, thus your post didn't seem worth reading. That's what cussing gets you sometimes. Sorry.
You're wrong, actually. But cuss and I guess that makes your point stronger. Good show.
Indeed. That's the irony. Of course, one could argue that maybe they wouldn't be doing that AS MUCH if Nintendo would release these games for the DS in emulation themselves. Sell them, iPod style or something.
Who am I kidding, they'd still pirate the games.
I've never understood people getting on "teams" for this kind of thing. It's very surreal. Rooting for one multinational billion dollar company to beat another one? What does the consumer get out of that? Less competition.
I would like to think that the main driving force (as I can see this as the only possible justification unless you hold stock in either company) would be that you have an intense desire to see your chosen platform not die and get well supported. Dreamcast fans could identify with this sentiment, I think. Of how the market, regardless of the quality of a product, can completely destroy a company and a system based on fanboy-dom.
But EVEN THAT justification is still weak. It's a video game system. If they stop making games for it enjoy the ones you have or pick a new one or quit gaming. If someday all gaming is Sony, since I don't like Sony consoles, I probably won't game. I'll pick up a new hobby and move no with my life.
Actually, ironically, the Advance is still beating both systems, but no one bothers to mention that (even thought it has the highest installed base of any video game platform ever).
Once again. More emulation. I'd like to see some stats on the MONEY being made off each system. Because I'm guessing that Nintendo is actually selling games. Not just emulation machines.
Right. So, so far the best use of the PSP (and I hear this from everyone who owns one or is buying one) is to pirate games.
I agree, of course. But I guess it had never occurred to me until this article that the antibiotics arms race isn't just a war taking place inside of our bodies, but also in the ecosystem as well. Interesting.
I instantly thought of this when I read the headline. I'm sure you've seen the studies. The ones that say that the average tap water has X-particles per million of Prozac, X-particle per million of Xanax, etc. The point being that human beings consume large amounts of medicine and then much of them gets excreted out somehow and eventually (and unfortunately) find their way into the ecosystem. Our water and probably our land. So a study like this makes me wonder (and feel free to club me over the head if this is impossible, because I'm just a programmer, not a a biologist) if it's possible that as we use more and more antibiotics on ourselves, on cows and chickens in large amounts, if at some point these don't make their way into the system and possibly help promote a more aggressive evolution of these superbugs. I would like to see a study done on that if there isn't already a definitive answer to *that* question.
There's a difference, though.
#1 - The robustness of "web applications" being provided today is much greater than during the time of the web terminals you mention. A hacked FreeBSD OS set to basically boot into FireFox could actually do most things the average user of computers does these days. Check email, use the Internet, etc.
#2 - Branding it with Google also makes a difference. People are comfortable with Google, Google Maps, etc.
Only 25??? Doesn't the statute of limitations on being an idiot end somewhere around 23?
#1 - Any Java IDE worth anything cuts down on your typing by a large percentage.
#2 - Carpal Tunnel was recently debunked as being directly directed to keyboarding, wasn't it?
#3 - As I understand it, the mouse is one of the biggest causes of carpal tunnel, especially the context switch from keyboard to mouse.
It was a typo. Or a brain fart or something. I meant to that there's been a backlash against calling C# features "syntactic sugar" in some books/articles I've read. The Rubyists especially seem to like syntactic sugar.
I would second this, only in this respect. Microsoft included a lot of "syntactic sugar" in C#. This is a much maligned phrase as I think there is harm that comes with syntactic sugar. It may make things look prettier, take less characters, etc. but it tends to make code less verbose. And that's one of the HUGE strengths of Java. It's very verbose. So learning it as an OO language is a good way to go. Find a good book (Learning Java, etc.) for the 1.4.x version of the JDK and start there.
...whereas in Ruby you can do something like...
// etc;
Alternatively, consider Ruby. I know, I know I was just yesterday saying Rails and Ruby were overhyped. The reason I suggest this is because if you get a good book that doesn't focus heavily on the syntactic sugar, Ruby, as a language, is completely OO. In other words the following doesn't work in Java....
float i = 3.54;
i.intValue();
$i = 3.54
$i.round
Or checking if an integer is really an int in Java...
try {
int i2 = Integer.parseInt(i1);
} catch {
}
Something like that. vs. this in Ruby...
$i1.integer
Not a huge difference? Well, if you're wanting to learn a language to learn OO Ruby is pure OO if you don't abuse the syntactic sugar. On the other hand Java is kind of the de-facto standard and there are jobs out there, so it depends on your reason for learning the language.
I would also note that C# also is more pure OO in that sense, so I guess by that criteria you could lump it with Ruby as a good starter language. But if you're shooting for a language on which you can easily run and get lots of stuff done on Linux, I think C# is a second class citizen.
Sarcasm, anyone?
That's funny. I use the same version of Eclipse, Tomcat, Ant, JUnit (all written in Java, of course) on my Windows box as I do on my Linux box. Yet I've never been able to run Visual Studio on Linux. Am I not installing it correctly since it's apparently so cross-platform?
Exactly. Having more "hyper-enthusiasts" is exactly a badge of honor I'd wear proudly.
And for the record, I like Ruby on Rails. But when it comes to just getting work done, Java works fine for me and I'm still finding employment doing it. Go figure.
This is more accurate. But the original poster has a point. The reason many of us settled into Java wasn't the hype. It wasn't the conferences (never attended one), the magazines or books similar to Mr. Tate's (which I've read, btw). The reason many of us settled into Java was because it made sense. The language and the spirit of coding in Java was all about being explicit, having the code be readable and maintainable and doing things the right way like type safety, etc. In Mr. Tate's book, he brushes away type safety by saying that it's a crutch for a lack of unit testing. Maybe, maybe not. He thinks you have to jump through too many hoops and you should just be unit testing and your problems will be solved.
:-)
But then aren't there many crutches in Rails? Many things that framework forces you to do in order to maintain some kind of sanity? This isn't a bad thing. Neither is type safety. If type safety is good and unit testing is good then isn't haven't both like twice as good?
Anyway, Mr. Tate's book is as Mr. Eckel describes it. One long screed against Java and for Rails, often not bothering to back up his assertions and altogether tossing aside other languages like Python and C# without any real reason. So if the end result of Mr. Eckel's assessment is that Java is loosing people like Bruce Tate I would argue this is a GOOD THING. Good luck with him, Rubyists. May he write crummy books for you (like he did with "Spring, a Developer's Notebook", which he even *apologizes* for in the beginning of "Beyond Java") and may he embarrass your community just like he did with Java. Maybe one day someone will stop listening to him altogether and just proceed with getting work done. Whether they choose Rails or Java (both of which offer fine solutions, IMHO).
Yeah, this is what's so funny to me about hype. I don't hear from C++ or C enthusiasts too often these days, but last time I checked there's still lots of work happening in C and C++. Where are the SQL enthusiasts? I think the thing is, Java (while still evolving) has reached a point of sanity. Frameworks and tools like Hibernate, Struts, JSF, Tapestry, Ant, JUnit, etc. have created a sane, relatively lightweight toolkit for doing J2EE development. So what is there to get hyped about? Most people I know that do Java are just quietly getting work done. Which is actually kind of nice. The Rubyists can have the hype.
I actually like Ruby and I like Rails. I just don't think the speed gains that come from it being interpreted necessarily outweight the explicitness of Java as it's currently used. I can get anything I need to done in Java, it's easy to install and it's easy to test and log. It just works.