Hmm, interesting, thanks for the clarification. As a user of Steam, I am looking forward to the Bittorrent integration, as from the start it (or something like Konspire2b) seemed like exactly what should be used to push the downloads out to Steam users. Steam users will continue to run Steam after the download is complete, as it is necessary to play games, and short of hacking the Steam binaries (which I sincerely doubt the target audience is capable or willing to do), it seems like it should work out well.
This is an exhaustive analysis (with pretty charts) why under the above scenario (pushing content, as opposed to pulling), Konspire2b is much more efficient.
* pick a third party garbage collector, or equivalent. There is the Boehm one, and of course lots of people like to use various flavors of the smart pointers that the Boost lib provides. hope that all other projects choose the same one, or learn each one that others pick * use a collections/template library of your choise. hope that all other projects choose the same one, or learn each on that others pick
etc.
You're right in that there are choices. If there were "standard" libraries for all this since day one the problem wouldn't be so large.
Interesting. It was my impression that CLR allowed two-way interoperability with much less explicit coding on the native side to address CLR objects. In JNI you have to use specific APIs to create and refer to objects, ensure they are destroyed and dereferenced, or you get completely screwed over by the garbage collector and/or threading. I thought CLR "did this for you". Also, there is significant overhead in calling out from the Java VM to begin with, whereas I also though CLR, since by policy it is precompiled, doesn't incur that much of an overhead. Informative post anyway, thanks.
"Well that is still hanging around but I see more perl/asp/php then java."
Then you must not be paying attention. Servlets/JSP is HUGE, especially in "middleware", non-end-user-visible stuff (although there are plenty of major sites run on Servlets/JSP).
Maybe because people don't want to keep constant track of memory allocation semantics. Maybe because developers don't want to have to learn a new platform library (e.g. Boost) every time they look at a new project. Maybe because the legions of programmers we expect to build tomorrow's applications will justifiable not give a damn about solving the same old problems we have been solving for decades, and instead want a consistent platform and set of APIs to get their work done safely and with minimal hassle.
"Our guys" are gonna have to fight their guys. And if "their guys" are armed with cheap CLR/VB.net/C# runtimes (meaning there will by about 10x more), we are going to freaking lose even though we have big and complicated C/C++ howitzers.
Oooh you're disagreeing! How independent and freethinking!
Anyway... Java is a language, and the article talks about adopting the/language/ not the/platform/. GCJ natively compiles Java. Sure there is overhead in a VM. There will be unavoidable "overhead" in adopting some higher level platform, no matter what it is. The game we are playing here is not "how fast I can spin my CPU" it's "how can we not lose relevance in the face of obvious productivity gains by higher level languages/platform".
If Java (VM)/was/ open sourced, I'm sure the very first thing that would happen is that open source developers would implement a pre-emptive JIT just like CLR/Mono has.
Hi there. I'm a Java developer too. CLR is not evil. It is actually nice. From what I can tell, it integrates a lot better with native code that Java, which makes it an ideal candidate. Java's native integration is rather damn weak, as well as it's lack of a consistent flexible UI layer (AWT? Swing? nobody is going to implement GTK or QT on that). CLR will not eat your baby, calm down. It may eat your lunch though. On the server side we are pretty safe however, as we actually DON'T want native integration, for security and portability concerns.
Unix and C put a zillion little hammers into open source developers hands. This tool was FAST and UBIQUITOUS. Of course that was in the 60s and 70s where unarguably the software and computing landscape was wildly different. Now we have legions of happy go lucky open source developers running around solving every problem with their cute little hammer. They are painting (GUIs) with their hammer. They are reading and writing (XML) with their hammer. They are describing high level concepts with their hammer (ok, the analogy sort of breaks here). "The Hammer" has been a damn fine tool. It still is a damn fine tool for/certain problem and solution domains/. However it is not the best tool for everything (nothing is). One of the things it is probably NOT the best tool for is the vast wilderness of user-level applications, where the "value" is not in unrolling a loop with duff's device to gain 5% performance, but instead,/integrating/ components together to create something seamless for the end user. Sure you/can/ do this with C. But there is tremendous productivity gains in a high level language (and platform) for which you don't have to resolve all the same damn problems that we have been solving for decades: memory allocation, which libraries to use, consistent user interface, abstracted IO, etc. Of course my saying this doesn't make it so. But there is a big fucking wave of high level component-oriented platform coming - Java came over but for various reasons the crowd with their little hammers didn't like it (mostly because it was a rather large and foamy alternative). The CLR (.NET) alternative however is much more attractive because it can integrate so well with existing C and C++ code. And that allows you to stay 31337 and "keep it real". Good for you. Anyway, this wave is absolutely going to crush you if you don't get on it fast. It will no longer be funny when Microsoft and other proprietary vendors start reaping productivity rewards/despite/ their supposed inferior design methodology.
So don't listen to the din of hammer bearing legions. Open Source needs a damn consistent platform to compete. Pick something. Java, Mono, Parrot... There are several alternatives. (I'm a Java developer, but CLR presents obvious benefits for integration). I think Miguel has his head on right here.
The article indicates that it is indeed a protocol not a new transport medium (err, so Layer 3 instead of Layer 0??). So the analogy is correct but probably could be made more specific by: BIC-TCP/ is 6000 faster than TCP/ for X types of payloads.
Piracy is not the issue. First of all the most-pirated music is usually the most-popular music, and the most-popular music is already usually generating a decent profit for those artists who manage to hit it big. Anybody can burn a CD anyway. That's not new.
The question is, "what exactly does the RIAA provide", and "what exactly does the artist and/or consumer lose by bypassing the RIAA". Well, the first answer is supposedly marketing and distribution, and also to some extent professional music services, recording, editing, mastering, blah blah blah. Note that there is nothing implicit in those services that requires the service provider to own and control the client's music. Let's say the RIAA does in fact provide these services. Who is it providing the services to? Well, mostly bands which they can pump and dump, a very small percentage that they can extract the most amout of revenue from. Is this in the interest of MOST consumers? No. Is this in the interest of MOST musicians. No.
So now we have the internet which essentially does marketing and distribution itself. Sure, the counter argument is that you are not going to get the massive marketing and distribution afforded to that top few percent of massive revenue generating bands. Well boo-fucking-hoo. I would rather MANY bands have a MEDIOCRE income, than a FEW bands having ASTRONOMICAL income. That is better both for the bands and for the consumer. Of course that only answers the "marketing/distribution" side. Now the professional services side is trickier. However: 1) many bands start out with el-cheapola demos anyway, affording them zero-cost introduction to listeners 2) the cost of prosumer music production software and hardware is coming down. That leads me to believe that in the absence of an RIAA monopoly, that there is a good chance for a thriving music SERVICE industry.
The last remaining problem, I will grant, is figuring out how to increase internet sales profits from MEASLY to MEDIOCRE.
I think this can be done. I think people are generally honest and will really pay musicians. Even people who pirate music buy the damn t-shirts!
I think this is slowly proving itself through iTunes etc. (notwithstanding that a lot of iTunes music is just relicensed...let's see where Apple goes with their new label)
I don't think the word 'utility' makes much sense in the context of computing. A utility serves a narrowly defined and constant function. Information on the other hand is infinitely abstract and permutable.
It's like saying self-serve firehose. If you have a general information processor, naturally you want to do GENERAL things with it. Something more along the lines of 'utility' computing would be a dedicated crypto chip or something you could dynamically plug in.
Let me just follow this up: We spend a lot of time claiming to be a beacon of democracy, the city on the hill as it were, and we make "democratic reform" a large part of our foreign policy, we make it a contingent for foreign aid, we make it a cause of war, and we formulate the democracies of other nations. Can we not do the same at home?
We have federal standards for a lot of reasonable things. See how democracy itself is probably the single most common foundation of the nation in general and therefore each state in specific, why the hell shouldn't there be a national standard? I agree that states should have broad rights, but there are some things that are national: human and civil rights, democracy, etc. etc. As long as there are no standards, there will be backwater counties disenfranchising voters either complicitly or through sheer apathy, and there probably will also be no national-level debate on quality if we can always say "oh well, we'll let State Foo decide the quality of their voting".
If you want to watch a good movie on the threat of vast radiation poisoning, watch the BBC movie Threads. I got this tip from another Slashdot post a while ago, and am passing it no. I had to go to my library to find it.
It is about how the "threads" of society essentially unravel within a generation after a nuclear attack, in the face of massive homelessness, starvation and of course widespread and incurable radiation sickness.
For some reason I'm thinking associating your product with a radioactive meltdown tragedy and subsequent radiation poisoning and deaths of thousands of people is maybe not the best marketing move.
No shit. I just recently was informed of a student around this area who, for whatever reason apparently "ate a lot of tuna" with her dog one week, and get this, they are BOTH suffering from mercury POISONING. Now I don't know what the fuck "a lot of tuna" is, maybe they got a whole tuna as a gift or something, but that you can possibly get mercury poisoning from just an amount that you can stuff in your face in a week (and let's assume that's not 24/7 eating tuna, in that case you'd die of your stomach rupturing first), is seriously screwed up.
Now let's say she ate tuna EVERY meal for a whole week...that adds up to what, 21 meals of tuna? How many tuna sandwiches have you had recently? In 21 weeks will you have consumed enough to otherwise qualify you as "mercury poisoned"?
I'm glad the general public has such a say in how our food is raised because, yes sir, I loves me that good old American heavy metal poisonin'! I'll fry it up in my recycled radioactive-waste frying pan!
There are several ways to do anonymous but verifiable electronic voting, at least from what I read in Applied Crypto. There are even ways to make elections very very secure with decentralized vote-counting, etc., but the question is always how hard/confusing do you want to make it on the voter.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm, interesting, thanks for the clarification. As a user of Steam, I am looking forward to the Bittorrent integration, as from the start it (or something like Konspire2b) seemed like exactly what should be used to push the downloads out to Steam users. Steam users will continue to run Steam after the download is complete, as it is necessary to play games, and short of hacking the Steam binaries (which I sincerely doubt the target audience is capable or willing to do), it seems like it should work out well.
"You may use this Software for any non-commercial purpose"
Does that clear it up?
Isn't this just Konspire2b? Konspire2b was designed specifically for this purpose:
Konspire2b
Essentially you subscribe to channels which push content instead of pulling.
Compared to Bittorrent
This is an exhaustive analysis (with pretty charts) why under the above scenario (pushing content, as opposed to pulling), Konspire2b is much more efficient.
Ok, so:
* pick a third party garbage collector, or equivalent. There is the Boehm one, and of course lots of people like to use various flavors of the smart pointers that the Boost lib provides. hope that all other projects choose the same one, or learn each one that others pick
* use a collections/template library of your choise. hope that all other projects choose the same one, or learn each on that others pick
etc.
You're right in that there are choices. If there were "standard" libraries for all this since day one the problem wouldn't be so large.
Interesting. It was my impression that CLR allowed two-way interoperability with much less explicit coding on the native side to address CLR objects. In JNI you have to use specific APIs to create and refer to objects, ensure they are destroyed and dereferenced, or you get completely screwed over by the garbage collector and/or threading. I thought CLR "did this for you". Also, there is significant overhead in calling out from the Java VM to begin with, whereas I also though CLR, since by policy it is precompiled, doesn't incur that much of an overhead. Informative post anyway, thanks.
"Well that is still hanging around but I see more perl/asp/php then java."
Then you must not be paying attention. Servlets/JSP is HUGE, especially in "middleware", non-end-user-visible stuff (although there are plenty of major sites run on Servlets/JSP).
Maybe because people don't want to keep constant track of memory allocation semantics. Maybe because developers don't want to have to learn a new platform library (e.g. Boost) every time they look at a new project. Maybe because the legions of programmers we expect to build tomorrow's applications will justifiable not give a damn about solving the same old problems we have been solving for decades, and instead want a consistent platform and set of APIs to get their work done safely and with minimal hassle.
"Our guys" are gonna have to fight their guys. And if "their guys" are armed with cheap CLR/VB.net/C# runtimes (meaning there will by about 10x more), we are going to freaking lose even though we have big and complicated C/C++ howitzers.
Oooh you're disagreeing! How independent and freethinking!
/language/ not the /platform/. GCJ natively compiles Java. Sure there is overhead in a VM. There will be unavoidable "overhead" in adopting some higher level platform, no matter what it is. The game we are playing here is not "how fast I can spin my CPU" it's "how can we not lose relevance in the face of obvious productivity gains by higher level languages/platform".
/was/ open sourced, I'm sure the very first thing that would happen is that open source developers would implement a pre-emptive JIT just like CLR/Mono has.
Anyway... Java is a language, and the article talks about adopting the
If Java (VM)
Hi there. I'm a Java developer too. CLR is not evil. It is actually nice. From what I can tell, it integrates a lot better with native code that Java, which makes it an ideal candidate. Java's native integration is rather damn weak, as well as it's lack of a consistent flexible UI layer (AWT? Swing? nobody is going to implement GTK or QT on that). CLR will not eat your baby, calm down. It may eat your lunch though. On the server side we are pretty safe however, as we actually DON'T want native integration, for security and portability concerns.
A million times YES.
/certain problem and solution domains/. However it is not the best tool for everything (nothing is). One of the things it is probably NOT the best tool for is the vast wilderness of user-level applications, where the "value" is not in unrolling a loop with duff's device to gain 5% performance, but instead, /integrating/ components together to create something seamless for the end user. Sure you /can/ do this with C. But there is tremendous productivity gains in a high level language (and platform) for which you don't have to resolve all the same damn problems that we have been solving for decades: memory allocation, which libraries to use, consistent user interface, abstracted IO, etc. Of course my saying this doesn't make it so. But there is a big fucking wave of high level component-oriented platform coming - Java came over but for various reasons the crowd with their little hammers didn't like it (mostly because it was a rather large and foamy alternative). The CLR (.NET) alternative however is much more attractive because it can integrate so well with existing C and C++ code. And that allows you to stay 31337 and "keep it real". Good for you. Anyway, this wave is absolutely going to crush you if you don't get on it fast. It will no longer be funny when Microsoft and other proprietary vendors start reaping productivity rewards /despite/ their supposed inferior design methodology.
Unix and C put a zillion little hammers into open source developers hands. This tool was FAST and UBIQUITOUS. Of course that was in the 60s and 70s where unarguably the software and computing landscape was wildly different. Now we have legions of happy go lucky open source developers running around solving every problem with their cute little hammer. They are painting (GUIs) with their hammer. They are reading and writing (XML) with their hammer. They are describing high level concepts with their hammer (ok, the analogy sort of breaks here). "The Hammer" has been a damn fine tool. It still is a damn fine tool for
So don't listen to the din of hammer bearing legions. Open Source needs a damn consistent platform to compete. Pick something. Java, Mono, Parrot... There are several alternatives. (I'm a Java developer, but CLR presents obvious benefits for integration). I think Miguel has his head on right here.
The article indicates that it is indeed a protocol not a new transport medium (err, so Layer 3 instead of Layer 0??). So the analogy is correct but probably could be made more specific by: BIC-TCP/ is 6000 faster than TCP/ for X types of payloads.
Piracy is not the issue. First of all the most-pirated music is usually the most-popular music, and the most-popular music is already usually generating a decent profit for those artists who manage to hit it big. Anybody can burn a CD anyway. That's not new.
The question is, "what exactly does the RIAA provide", and "what exactly does the artist and/or consumer lose by bypassing the RIAA". Well, the first answer is supposedly marketing and distribution, and also to some extent professional music services, recording, editing, mastering, blah blah blah. Note that there is nothing implicit in those services that requires the service provider to own and control the client's music. Let's say the RIAA does in fact provide these services. Who is it providing the services to? Well, mostly bands which they can pump and dump, a very small percentage that they can extract the most amout of revenue from. Is this in the interest of MOST consumers? No. Is this in the interest of MOST musicians. No.
So now we have the internet which essentially does marketing and distribution itself. Sure, the counter argument is that you are not going to get the massive marketing and distribution afforded to that top few percent of massive revenue generating bands. Well boo-fucking-hoo. I would rather MANY bands have a MEDIOCRE income, than a FEW bands having ASTRONOMICAL income. That is better both for the bands and for the consumer. Of course that only answers the "marketing/distribution" side. Now the professional services side is trickier. However: 1) many bands start out with el-cheapola demos anyway, affording them zero-cost introduction to listeners 2) the cost of prosumer music production software and hardware is coming down. That leads me to believe that in the absence of an RIAA monopoly, that there is a good chance for a thriving music SERVICE industry.
The last remaining problem, I will grant, is figuring out how to increase internet sales profits from MEASLY to MEDIOCRE.
I think this can be done. I think people are generally honest and will really pay musicians. Even people who pirate music buy the damn t-shirts!
I think this is slowly proving itself through iTunes etc. (notwithstanding that a lot of iTunes music is just relicensed...let's see where Apple goes with their new label)
I have a great idea. I will develop emulator emulator which will emulate a emulator. Let's see 'em patent that! Huzzah!
I don't think the word 'utility' makes much sense in the context of computing. A utility serves a narrowly defined and constant function. Information on the other hand is infinitely abstract and permutable.
It's like saying self-serve firehose. If you have a general information processor, naturally you want to do GENERAL things with it. Something more along the lines of 'utility' computing would be a dedicated crypto chip or something you could dynamically plug in.
Let me just follow this up: We spend a lot of time claiming to be a beacon of democracy, the city on the hill as it were, and we make "democratic reform" a large part of our foreign policy, we make it a contingent for foreign aid, we make it a cause of war, and we formulate the democracies of other nations. Can we not do the same at home?
We have federal standards for a lot of reasonable things. See how democracy itself is probably the single most common foundation of the nation in general and therefore each state in specific, why the hell shouldn't there be a national standard? I agree that states should have broad rights, but there are some things that are national: human and civil rights, democracy, etc. etc. As long as there are no standards, there will be backwater counties disenfranchising voters either complicitly or through sheer apathy, and there probably will also be no national-level debate on quality if we can always say "oh well, we'll let State Foo decide the quality of their voting".
In Soviet Russia, "In Soviet Russia" jokes are sick of YOU!
Yeah, and what if we run out of sacred Indian sites to bury our toxic waste in? What then, send it into space?
I just want to add a non-sequiter that I find it funny we still use colloquial phrases like "candle" and "horse" to quantify scientific measurements.
If you want to watch a good movie on the threat of vast radiation poisoning, watch the BBC movie Threads. I got this tip from another Slashdot post a while ago, and am passing it no. I had to go to my library to find it.
It is about how the "threads" of society essentially unravel within a generation after a nuclear attack, in the face of massive homelessness, starvation and of course widespread and incurable radiation sickness.
Lovely stuff.
For some reason I'm thinking associating your product with a radioactive meltdown tragedy and subsequent radiation poisoning and deaths of thousands of people is maybe not the best marketing move.
No shit. I just recently was informed of a student around this area who, for whatever reason apparently "ate a lot of tuna" with her dog one week, and get this, they are BOTH suffering from mercury POISONING. Now I don't know what the fuck "a lot of tuna" is, maybe they got a whole tuna as a gift or something, but that you can possibly get mercury poisoning from just an amount that you can stuff in your face in a week (and let's assume that's not 24/7 eating tuna, in that case you'd die of your stomach rupturing first), is seriously screwed up.
Now let's say she ate tuna EVERY meal for a whole week...that adds up to what, 21 meals of tuna? How many tuna sandwiches have you had recently? In 21 weeks will you have consumed enough to otherwise qualify you as "mercury poisoned"?
I'm glad the general public has such a say in how our food is raised because, yes sir, I loves me that good old American heavy metal poisonin'! I'll fry it up in my recycled radioactive-waste frying pan!
There are several ways to do anonymous but verifiable electronic voting, at least from what I read in Applied Crypto. There are even ways to make elections very very secure with decentralized vote-counting, etc., but the question is always how hard/confusing do you want to make it on the voter.
What the Japanese haven't told you is that they plan on turning their elderly INTO robots. That should solve the problem handily.
Hurdeefleurdee! Borg! Borg! Borg!