My father used to bring home stacks of those orange cards with the numbers on them when I was little.
They used to be a blast! Man, the card houses I used to make with those! Nasty paper airplanes, too:).
Apparently they became obsolete when his company upgraded to "round tape". A few years later he brought me these round plastic discs about 9" in diameter and hollow in the middle. Who needs frisbees when you have these! (appartently they had upgraded to "square tape").
Ironically all this talk is making me nostalic also. ..but in a much different manner. ..you're all decribing my childhood toys!:).
Man, I used to remeber going into work with him sometimnes when he was 'on call' during the week-ends. ..used to play with miles of scrap tractor-feed cut-offs as he bitched about a wierd thing called 'JCL'. It was better then plastic ball cages at McDonalds! I used to spend hours staring at the tractor-trailer sized laser printer that ran through a box of tractor feed in about a half hour. . .
He disliked it very much when I used to play "hide and seek" under the raised floor. ..even much more so then when I did the same with my mother in the round clothes racks:). . . later on he made good use of this habit by handing me a cable to snake while I was under there. . .
Man I only wish that I could have so much fun with such simple things today!
"Spend time each with with your analysts and coders, even if it's informal over coffee and doughnuts."
This is important. The most effective thing that I've experienced was an occasion at a previos company called "beer day". Every Friday night all the geeks would gather together and drink beer with managment / manufacturing / support / QA and through the fun a rowdiness we all got to know each other well and when "somthing needed to get done" it was a lot smoother becaus you could "call Bob down in QA" rather then "contacting the QA department". A larger company that did this, though, it did not work well at all -- there were cliques (that's why I feel a company between 50 and 200 people is ideal, but that is a whole other topic).
From a managment standpoint, it softened the "need to impress". Managment was not this evil faceless entity that made your life hell, but a friend named "Joe" that you culd honestly say "this project will take more time" to rather then fearing you'll get laid off for ineffciency "by the numbers".
The only draw-back to this is some people don't understand respect. Later when I was in managment I tried that approach and a *few* underlings took the freindship approch too far into disrespect, however overall it was an excellent approach.
Many managers subscribe to the miltary idealism of officers and enlisted -- the officers NEVER socialize with the enlisted. This works well in environments where people don't understand respect or as a manager you might have to order someone to their death and you don't want frindship interfereing with your decision. In the tech world THIS PISSES PEOPLE OFF. As long as people are mature enough to understand respect I feel the approach I mentioned above is best.
Here is the lines from the MS EULA that say you can't sue them for their products being buggy or insecure, no matter how much gets destroyed in the process:
"CUSTOMER REMEDIES. Microsoft's and its suppliers' entire liability and your exclusive remedy shall be, at Microsoft's option, either (a) return of the price paid, if any, or (b) repair or replacement of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT that does not meet Microsoft's Limited Warranty and that is returned to Microsoft with a copy of your receipt. "
Meaning that if Windows messes up and destoys all your data, MS, *at their option* may refund your money. In addition,
"LIMITATION OF LIABILITY. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL MICROSOFT OR ITS SUPPLIERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES WHATSOEVER (INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF BUSINESS PROFITS, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, LOSS OF BUSINESS INFORMATION, OR ANY OTHER PECUNIARY LOSS) ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE SOFTWARE PRODUCT OR THE FAILURE TO PROVIDE SUPPORT SERVICES, EVEN IF MICROSOFT HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. IN ANY CASE, MICROSOFT'S ENTIRE LIABILITY UNDER ANY PROVISION OF THIS EULA SHALL BE LIMITED TO THE GREATER OF THE AMOUNT ACTUALLY PAID BY YOU FOR THE SOFTWARE PRODUCT OR U.S.$5.00;"
Meaning that no matter how much damage a MS product causes and no matter what it does, they have the option of refunding your money or giving you $5 -- I have no idea where that number came from. Moreover EVEN IF YOU TELL THEM THAT THEIR SOFTWARE HAS A FLAW THAT CUOLD DESTROY ALL YOUR DATA AND THEY DON'T FIX IT, YOU STILL CAN'T SUE THEM!
This type of EULA does not come with bridges and is why you can't sue MS for buggy software. If a Boeing plane were running MS sofware in its navigation system and that system messed up causing the plane to crash no one could sue MS, however if an engineering firm designed a new, let's say rudder for a Boeing jet and it failed causing the plane to crash its most likely the engineering firm can be sued.
Its all about monopoly -- if there was competition, people would not have to accept this implied consent EULA.
"Why, then, when Microsoft is called a Monopoly and Monopolies are illegal, does Microsoft get to use services like the BSA and US Marshalls to punish other businesses breaking laws that are just as illegal? "
LOL. ..sounds like the cry from the book of Job for the software engineer!
"A distro that AOL can use with wine, and minimal changes to their AOL client would allow them a VERY quick deployment of a Linux based installation of an AOL client. "
If they ever decide to use thier own browser [Netscape/Mozilla] that would allow a very quick deployment on just about any OS. The only thing they would need Wine for is proprietary plug-ins [ala Codeweavers], so your argument does have merit.
They're locked into Windows by their own decision (they're no longer legally bound by contract) to continue to buy IE even though they make thier own browser. It absolutely boggles me.
It's like if Chrysler decided to use all GM 4-cylinder engines in thier cars while they continue to manufacture their own engines and sell them to Mitsubishi (as they do) all the while complaining about GM's 'monopoly' and how they are 'being forced out of the market, per say.
This rant is running off-topic, but it completely blows my mind how AOL could complain about MS monopoly while at the same time contributing to it by using IE all the while they have their own browser which they don't use, have never used, nor have any intention to ever use (no AOL person has ever made any public statment that they ever intend not to use IE in thier PC AOL client -- they 'hinted' at perhaps using Gecko in their mythical 'web applicance', which I don't see happening any time soon.)
Can anyone shed any light on WTF AOL is thinking and [back on-topic] how this could relate to wine?
I agree. I love a good book that combines computers and history.
The marketing hype that companies pull versus what *really* happened versus what the public percieves happend is usually very very wide. When you mix that with a socilogical historical analysis it gets to be a damn good drama.
"Why the Wizards Stay up Late" was a good book about the origins of the internet -- it got a little mundane and lacked analysis but I would love to see more books in this area.
Heck, I was thinking about writing a book in this area just because of all the people that I've corrected, the wierd twisted historical facts I've come across and the drama! Alas, I lack the concentration for it:).
For the same reason that DEC's Alpha is not mopping the procesor floor today.
Hell, DEC had 300Mhz *64-bit* Alphas out when P90s were "the bomb" and by the time Intel broke the 100Mhz barrier DEC was spitting out 500Mhz *64 bit* Alphas. Alphas were so friggn fast that they could emulate an x86 and still beat the true x86s.
Roughly 10 years later Intel decided to jump into the 64-bit world with the Itanium and the now defunct no-longer-developed Alpha line still beats the hell out of them. Yet DEC is gone and the Alpha has been officially scrapped.
Roughly 10 years after Sun, MS decides to get into the VM-language game. Currently they have nothing other then vaporware, some specs, alpha code and lots of hype yet Sun's been in the game for a long time. But yet people are buying books and training to be.NET developers like it's the best thing since sliced bread. Java versus.NET is like DEC versus Intel. DEC was in the game a lot earlier, was more mature at it and had perhaps even perfected the 64-bit game. ..in the end, though, Intel's Itanium wins because DEC was kicked out of the game by market share, propoganda, marketing, hype and poor business decisions.
Anyone who has been in the computer industry for any length of time KNOWS that the technologically superior or more mature product rarely wins. The person who screams the loudest about their product wins.
We're all jumping to conclusions trying to speculate what, exactly, did Miguel mean. There are SO MANY different paths that Mono / GNOME /.NET can take.
RMS simply asked the question, "please explain a little better, Miguel". He didn't flame him, and he didn't take an ideological stance, however the./ RMS-haters went nuts and 'interpreted' his words, too.
Let's all sit back and listen carefully and only start the flame wars AFTER we get the whole story from both sides.
"RMS is a political ideologue who thinks in terms of leftist political objectives. Leftist ideologues aren't famous for their customer service."
Although I don't always agree with RMS, his stance is excellent for the OpenSource community.
Think about it. ..if you have heavy-hitting right-wing politicians singing their creed, you have to have heavy left-wing to balance them. If you have a heavy right and a weak left, the policies will tend to go right. If the two are balanced then you get somthing in the middle, which is great for everyone.
When I live in liberal areas, I tend to be more conserviative to balance it out and likewise when I live in conservative areas I tend to be more liberal. Honestly, I'm right in the middle but you need that balance to achive the middle.
Now if both the left and right wings are weak, then you have both sides that tend to be in the middle. In this case the right wing is VERY strong [MS] so we need a way-off leftie to balance it out [RMS]. Kudos to RMS for taking this dauting position.
If the right were not so strong [MS], then we would have no need for RMS because general ideologies would be in the middle.
"Sure Sun insists on maintaining control of the standard. At least they are being honest."
Most companies are only honest when it suits them. Sun has been very nice to the software crowd, however I have no doubt that if someone implemented a "java workalike" and started beating Sun at their own game they would start doing funky stuff to Java [thus breaking compatability] since they have power over the spec (assuming, of course, that they have no legal ground to sue them).
Just look at the way that Sun handles hardware. They're as bad with hardware as MS is with software. Changing DIMMS ever-so-slightly so that non-Sun DIMMS won't work in UltraSPARCs, 'unpublished' UltraSPARC registers so that Sun compilers always perform the best, 'slightly' different Adaptec 2940b so that you can't use a non-Sun SCSI Adaptec card (that costs 5x as much).
The point to all this is the danger of vendor-specific programming languages. If it came down to going bankrupt or changing the Java spec, I'm sure that Sun would throw all their niceness out the window to save themselves.
All this is what Orwell called "NewSpeak" in 1984. If you can manipulate the language people speak in you can indirectly control them. What scares me is all these new vendor-specific languages that change the language programmers speak in. Sure, C# is a 'EMCA' standard but MS has tried many times to *look like* they're playing ball but in fact they find a new loophole every time to cheat with.
Remember that in 1984 the people of Oceania loved NewSpeak for it's simplicity, it's easier syntax and the 'portability' of being able to learn it quickly. Sound familair? What the people of Oceania did not realize is that as the language changed their ability to communicate ideas that did not lign up with the government was eroded.
Sun has dropped the ball a few times in the past in regards to window managers / desktop envornments. I won't hold my breath.
I hope that they still follow through with Gnome and not repeat their past.
* Remember that funky entirely postscrpit-based desktop that Sun was supposed to come out with some years ago? I can't remember the name of it. ..that never came through.
* At some point there was a project at Sun to re-write all their GUI apps in Java starting with that odd Java web browser. ..that got dropped with the Sun-Netscape-AOL alliance.
* OpenWindows, obviosly, got supplanted by CDE.
* CDE was a very odd beast based on the failed HP Windows 3.1 Program Manager called "Dashboard". Obviosly now that looks like it will probably be dropped.
* Like you said Sun has been doing some funky stuff with OpenStep that contradicts their GNOME 'vision'. That and StarOffice, their 'pearl of the desktop' is not a gnome app (I now that OpenOffice is adopting it to some Gnomish things such as bonobo, but it is still not a gnome app).
If the heat gets too hot with GNOME I can forsee them dropping that, too. I hope that they won't because it's the most promising desktop venture that they have made so far. . .
Miguel's comments completely shocked me like when Luke Skywalker got his hand chopped off in "The Empire Strikes Back".
I have no idea about the "technical" pros and cons of.NET, what the future of it holds or whether it is a true "sell-out" to MS, but I can say by embracing the ".NET" name alone Miguel just did a boatload for MS PR.
Average Joe now thinks that MS=.NET and Miguel just said that Gnome=.NET. Sun said they'll use Gnome2 and obviosly Linux uses Gnome, thus indirectly Sun and Linux now support.NET, which again indirectly says that they all support MS.
Next he said that Ximian will lag 1 year behind MS, thus MS is superior and the "leader" in the technology. Now most high-level managers have the technical knowlege of "the average Joe" and to them Miguel just validated that.NET is "the future" and that Microsoft will be "the leader". Is it sound business to use products that lag behind by 1 year? Of course not. They'll all choose MS because now they think.NET is the future to everything, there is no alternative and that MS is the leader of it.
This is so sad. The game's over. MS wins if they pull this off -- it doesn't matter what is technically superior -- if MS wins the PR battle they can make monkey dung and people will flock to buy it. Case and point: OS/2 versus Windows 3.0.
MS just got one of the "leaders" of Open-Source to fully endorse their technology (and thus indirectly thier products). I'm glad I got my class B CDL so that I can drive busses when MS owns the technological world.
Thank you all for the informed replies and the anecdotes. I have a better outlook on Java now and understand better where it is best suited.
I think most of my 'questioning' Java has come from people who try to 'sell' Java as a panacea -- aka 'putting Java in light bulbs', "re-writing OS kernels in Java', etc.
What you mantioned is the clearest and best answer that I've hear for the reasons to use Java thus far -- aka you *can* do it in another language, but the support costs and development time for Java is a lot smaller. That makes sense and in that case the main costs to weigh when choosing Java over another language is what it will cost in developer/support time versus the performance losses.
Thank you for your answers, even though my question did get modded into oblivion:).
"It turns out that the risk of leaking exhaust fumes into the cabin is too great to allow such a design."
Not to mention the noise, too.
A better solution that I thought of a long time ago would be rather then bringing the exhaust into the cabin, bring the antifreeze to the exhaust. That way the exhaust heat would heat the antifreeze faster then the engine and produce heat in the cabin before the engine could. I would also warm up the engine faster. All you need is a thermostat to cut it off after the engine is hot.
Only draw-back is that a new exhaust system would be that much more expensive but if they made it out of stainless steel in the first place that would not be too much of a concern. . .
"cost/effeciency on a car would be "hard" to achieve"
The biggest problem in harnessing heat from exhaust on automobiles is that it tends to take heat away from the catalytic converter which in turn causes the car to produce more pollutants.
"cost/effeciency" probably could be accounted for with innovation and economies of scale, but the catalytic problem is a biggie. It has killed the adoption of so many innovations that use the exhaust in some way.
As mentioned in one of the other replies the efficiency of the gas that is used is not increased, thus no more work per unit gasoline is done.
The thing it does do is increase the efficiency of the whole automobile much like a turbocharger does by harnessing the exhaust pulses into a charge which increses the engine's power-to-weight ratio -- which does nothing for situations where the engine does not propel itself (like in cars, airplanes, etc).
Although what you say may be correct, you have to remember that either using this to cool the intake or even better using it as a below-ambient intercooler on turbos increases the power-to-weight ratio of the engine because you can obviosly get more charge in a cylinder.
Thus you can create a lighter car with the same power and overall the efficiency increases because you have that much less mass to accelerate and that much less rolling resistance on the tires. Granted the efficiciency of the *engine* does not increase, but the efficiency of the entire system [car] does -- and that's the thing in the end that truly matters.
What I'm waiting for is efficient low-temperature thermo-couples to become cheap. That way electricity can be generated from the wasted exhaust heat getting rid of the need for an alternator.
Combine that with regenerative breaking and a few bucks on gas can definately be saved:).
Slashdot Mirror
Does anyone know off hand how I can get diffs from beta2 to KDE3 final?
I would like to conserve bandwith of the mirrors and I'm sure that a lot of other people would like to do the same.
Thanks in advance for you help.
So that's what those things were. Thanks for explaining :).
My father used to bring home stacks of those orange cards with the numbers on them when I was little.
:).
.but in a much different manner. . .you're all decribing my childhood toys! :).
.used to play with miles of scrap tractor-feed cut-offs as he bitched about a wierd thing called 'JCL'. It was better then plastic ball cages at McDonalds! I used to spend hours staring at the tractor-trailer sized laser printer that ran through a box of tractor feed in about a half hour. . .
.even much more so then when I did the same with my mother in the round clothes racks :). . . later on he made good use of this habit by handing me a cable to snake while I was under there. . .
:).
They used to be a blast! Man, the card houses I used to make with those! Nasty paper airplanes, too
Apparently they became obsolete when his company upgraded to "round tape". A few years later he brought me these round plastic discs about 9" in diameter and hollow in the middle. Who needs frisbees when you have these! (appartently they had upgraded to "square tape").
Ironically all this talk is making me nostalic also. .
Man, I used to remeber going into work with him sometimnes when he was 'on call' during the week-ends. .
He disliked it very much when I used to play "hide and seek" under the raised floor. .
Man I only wish that I could have so much fun with such simple things today!
Then I wonder why I am a geek
"Spend time each with with your analysts and coders, even if it's informal over coffee and doughnuts."
This is important. The most effective thing that I've experienced was an occasion at a previos company called "beer day". Every Friday night all the geeks would gather together and drink beer with managment / manufacturing / support / QA and through the fun a rowdiness we all got to know each other well and when "somthing needed to get done" it was a lot smoother becaus you could "call Bob down in QA" rather then "contacting the QA department". A larger company that did this, though, it did not work well at all -- there were cliques (that's why I feel a company between 50 and 200 people is ideal, but that is a whole other topic).
From a managment standpoint, it softened the "need to impress". Managment was not this evil faceless entity that made your life hell, but a friend named "Joe" that you culd honestly say "this project will take more time" to rather then fearing you'll get laid off for ineffciency "by the numbers".
The only draw-back to this is some people don't understand respect. Later when I was in managment I tried that approach and a *few* underlings took the freindship approch too far into disrespect, however overall it was an excellent approach.
Many managers subscribe to the miltary idealism of officers and enlisted -- the officers NEVER socialize with the enlisted. This works well in environments where people don't understand respect or as a manager you might have to order someone to their death and you don't want frindship interfereing with your decision. In the tech world THIS PISSES PEOPLE OFF. As long as people are mature enough to understand respect I feel the approach I mentioned above is best.
Just kill every process except init and unmount filesystems.
Bind "init 3" to a key-combination in inittab and voila!
I'm pretty sure it will work however I have no interest in testing it.
I vote to interview a lawyer for the next Q&A. Frankly between these EULA arguments and the BSA stuff in the last article I'm frankly VERY confused :(.
Here is the lines from the MS EULA that say you can't sue them for their products being buggy or insecure, no matter how much gets destroyed in the process:
"CUSTOMER REMEDIES. Microsoft's and its suppliers' entire liability and your exclusive remedy shall be, at Microsoft's option, either (a) return of the price paid, if any, or (b) repair or replacement of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT that does not meet Microsoft's Limited Warranty and that is returned to Microsoft with a copy of your receipt. "
Meaning that if Windows messes up and destoys all your data, MS, *at their option* may refund your money. In addition,
"LIMITATION OF LIABILITY. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL MICROSOFT OR ITS SUPPLIERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES WHATSOEVER (INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF BUSINESS PROFITS, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, LOSS OF BUSINESS INFORMATION, OR ANY OTHER PECUNIARY LOSS) ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE SOFTWARE PRODUCT OR THE FAILURE TO PROVIDE SUPPORT SERVICES, EVEN IF MICROSOFT HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. IN ANY CASE, MICROSOFT'S ENTIRE LIABILITY UNDER ANY PROVISION OF THIS EULA SHALL BE LIMITED TO THE GREATER OF THE AMOUNT ACTUALLY PAID BY YOU FOR THE SOFTWARE PRODUCT OR U.S.$5.00;"
Meaning that no matter how much damage a MS product causes and no matter what it does, they have the option of refunding your money or giving you $5 -- I have no idea where that number came from. Moreover EVEN IF YOU TELL THEM THAT THEIR SOFTWARE HAS A FLAW THAT CUOLD DESTROY ALL YOUR DATA AND THEY DON'T FIX IT, YOU STILL CAN'T SUE THEM!
This type of EULA does not come with bridges and is why you can't sue MS for buggy software. If a Boeing plane were running MS sofware in its navigation system and that system messed up causing the plane to crash no one could sue MS, however if an engineering firm designed a new, let's say rudder for a Boeing jet and it failed causing the plane to crash its most likely the engineering firm can be sued.
Its all about monopoly -- if there was competition, people would not have to accept this implied consent EULA.
"Why, then, when Microsoft is called a Monopoly and Monopolies are illegal, does Microsoft get to use services like the BSA and US Marshalls to punish other businesses breaking laws that are just as illegal? "
.sounds like the cry from the book of Job for the software engineer!
LOL. .
"Because there is no law against producing security-hole-ridden software. That's called "caveat emptor"."
Wrong. If an engineering firm designs a bridge and it collapses killing people because it was poorly designed the engineering firm can be sued.
It's the EULA, not "caveat emptor", that stops MS from being sued for buggy software.
Imagine if all the bridges in the US had a EULA like that? We would have a lot of dead people.
Very very good point. Mod up parent!
I would love to hear an anser to this.
"A distro that AOL can use with wine, and minimal changes to their AOL client would allow them a VERY quick deployment of a Linux based installation of an AOL client. "
If they ever decide to use thier own browser [Netscape/Mozilla] that would allow a very quick deployment on just about any OS. The only thing they would need Wine for is proprietary plug-ins [ala Codeweavers], so your argument does have merit.
They're locked into Windows by their own decision (they're no longer legally bound by contract) to continue to buy IE even though they make thier own browser. It absolutely boggles me.
It's like if Chrysler decided to use all GM 4-cylinder engines in thier cars while they continue to manufacture their own engines and sell them to Mitsubishi (as they do) all the while complaining about GM's 'monopoly' and how they are 'being forced out of the market, per say.
This rant is running off-topic, but it completely blows my mind how AOL could complain about MS monopoly while at the same time contributing to it by using IE all the while they have their own browser which they don't use, have never used, nor have any intention to ever use (no AOL person has ever made any public statment that they ever intend not to use IE in thier PC AOL client -- they 'hinted' at perhaps using Gecko in their mythical 'web applicance', which I don't see happening any time soon.)
Can anyone shed any light on WTF AOL is thinking and [back on-topic] how this could relate to wine?
I agree. I love a good book that combines computers and history.
:).
The marketing hype that companies pull versus what *really* happened versus what the public percieves happend is usually very very wide. When you mix that with a socilogical historical analysis it gets to be a damn good drama.
"Why the Wizards Stay up Late" was a good book about the origins of the internet -- it got a little mundane and lacked analysis but I would love to see more books in this area.
Heck, I was thinking about writing a book in this area just because of all the people that I've corrected, the wierd twisted historical facts I've come across and the drama! Alas, I lack the concentration for it
For the same reason that DEC's Alpha is not mopping the procesor floor today.
.NET developers like it's the best thing since sliced bread. Java versus .NET is like DEC versus Intel. DEC was in the game a lot earlier, was more mature at it and had perhaps even perfected the 64-bit game. . .in the end, though, Intel's Itanium wins because DEC was kicked out of the game by market share, propoganda, marketing, hype and poor business decisions.
Hell, DEC had 300Mhz *64-bit* Alphas out when P90s were "the bomb" and by the time Intel broke the 100Mhz barrier DEC was spitting out 500Mhz *64 bit* Alphas. Alphas were so friggn fast that they could emulate an x86 and still beat the true x86s.
Roughly 10 years later Intel decided to jump into the 64-bit world with the Itanium and the now defunct no-longer-developed Alpha line still beats the hell out of them. Yet DEC is gone and the Alpha has been officially scrapped.
Roughly 10 years after Sun, MS decides to get into the VM-language game. Currently they have nothing other then vaporware, some specs, alpha code and lots of hype yet Sun's been in the game for a long time. But yet people are buying books and training to be
Anyone who has been in the computer industry for any length of time KNOWS that the technologically superior or more mature product rarely wins. The person who screams the loudest about their product wins.
Let's hope the same doesn't happen with Java.
We're all jumping to conclusions trying to speculate what, exactly, did Miguel mean. There are SO MANY different paths that Mono / GNOME / .NET can take.
./ RMS-haters went nuts and 'interpreted' his words, too.
RMS simply asked the question, "please explain a little better, Miguel". He didn't flame him, and he didn't take an ideological stance, however the
Let's all sit back and listen carefully and only start the flame wars AFTER we get the whole story from both sides.
Offtopic; no one here is arguing the validity nor the reasoning of the Mono project.
.NET.
.NET would be analogous to re-writing KDE with Win32 APIs or ditching kernel NFS for SMB. Different topic.
What this topic is about is re-writing GNOME for
Wine and Samba are equivalent to Mono -- implementing a MS protocol / standard in linux.
Re-writing GNOME for
"RMS is a political ideologue who thinks in terms of leftist political objectives. Leftist ideologues aren't famous for their customer service."
.if you have heavy-hitting right-wing politicians singing their creed, you have to have heavy left-wing to balance them. If you have a heavy right and a weak left, the policies will tend to go right. If the two are balanced then you get somthing in the middle, which is great for everyone.
Although I don't always agree with RMS, his stance is excellent for the OpenSource community.
Think about it. .
When I live in liberal areas, I tend to be more conserviative to balance it out and likewise when I live in conservative areas I tend to be more liberal. Honestly, I'm right in the middle but you need that balance to achive the middle.
Now if both the left and right wings are weak, then you have both sides that tend to be in the middle. In this case the right wing is VERY strong [MS] so we need a way-off leftie to balance it out [RMS]. Kudos to RMS for taking this dauting position.
If the right were not so strong [MS], then we would have no need for RMS because general ideologies would be in the middle.
"Sure Sun insists on maintaining control of the standard. At least they are being honest."
Most companies are only honest when it suits them. Sun has been very nice to the software crowd, however I have no doubt that if someone implemented a "java workalike" and started beating Sun at their own game they would start doing funky stuff to Java [thus breaking compatability] since they have power over the spec (assuming, of course, that they have no legal ground to sue them).
Just look at the way that Sun handles hardware. They're as bad with hardware as MS is with software. Changing DIMMS ever-so-slightly so that non-Sun DIMMS won't work in UltraSPARCs, 'unpublished' UltraSPARC registers so that Sun compilers always perform the best, 'slightly' different Adaptec 2940b so that you can't use a non-Sun SCSI Adaptec card (that costs 5x as much).
The point to all this is the danger of vendor-specific programming languages. If it came down to going bankrupt or changing the Java spec, I'm sure that Sun would throw all their niceness out the window to save themselves.
All this is what Orwell called "NewSpeak" in 1984. If you can manipulate the language people speak in you can indirectly control them. What scares me is all these new vendor-specific languages that change the language programmers speak in. Sure, C# is a 'EMCA' standard but MS has tried many times to *look like* they're playing ball but in fact they find a new loophole every time to cheat with.
Remember that in 1984 the people of Oceania loved NewSpeak for it's simplicity, it's easier syntax and the 'portability' of being able to learn it quickly. Sound familair? What the people of Oceania did not realize is that as the language changed their ability to communicate ideas that did not lign up with the government was eroded.
Sun has dropped the ball a few times in the past in regards to window managers / desktop envornments. I won't hold my breath.
.that never came through.
.that got dropped with the Sun-Netscape-AOL alliance.
I hope that they still follow through with Gnome and not repeat their past.
* Remember that funky entirely postscrpit-based desktop that Sun was supposed to come out with some years ago? I can't remember the name of it. .
* At some point there was a project at Sun to re-write all their GUI apps in Java starting with that odd Java web browser. .
* OpenWindows, obviosly, got supplanted by CDE.
* CDE was a very odd beast based on the failed HP Windows 3.1 Program Manager called "Dashboard". Obviosly now that looks like it will probably be dropped.
* Like you said Sun has been doing some funky stuff with OpenStep that contradicts their GNOME 'vision'. That and StarOffice, their 'pearl of the desktop' is not a gnome app (I now that OpenOffice is adopting it to some Gnomish things such as bonobo, but it is still not a gnome app).
If the heat gets too hot with GNOME I can forsee them dropping that, too. I hope that they won't because it's the most promising desktop venture that they have made so far. . .
http://www.mozilla.org/performance/Performance_Pro ject.html
This is a complete list of performance stuff that they're working on.
I've been watching it for a while because I like Mozilla but just can't use it because the GUI is so damn slow it feels like I'm browsing drunk.
Miguel's comments completely shocked me like when Luke Skywalker got his hand chopped off in "The Empire Strikes Back".
.NET, what the future of it holds or whether it is a true "sell-out" to MS, but I can say by embracing the ".NET" name alone Miguel just did a boatload for MS PR.
.NET, which again indirectly says that they all support MS.
.NET is "the future" and that Microsoft will be "the leader". Is it sound business to use products that lag behind by 1 year? Of course not. They'll all choose MS because now they think .NET is the future to everything, there is no alternative and that MS is the leader of it.
I have no idea about the "technical" pros and cons of
Average Joe now thinks that MS=.NET and Miguel just said that Gnome=.NET. Sun said they'll use Gnome2 and obviosly Linux uses Gnome, thus indirectly Sun and Linux now support
Next he said that Ximian will lag 1 year behind MS, thus MS is superior and the "leader" in the technology. Now most high-level managers have the technical knowlege of "the average Joe" and to them Miguel just validated that
This is so sad. The game's over. MS wins if they pull this off -- it doesn't matter what is technically superior -- if MS wins the PR battle they can make monkey dung and people will flock to buy it. Case and point: OS/2 versus Windows 3.0.
MS just got one of the "leaders" of Open-Source to fully endorse their technology (and thus indirectly thier products). I'm glad I got my class B CDL so that I can drive busses when MS owns the technological world.
Thank you all for the informed replies and the anecdotes. I have a better outlook on Java now and understand better where it is best suited.
:).
I think most of my 'questioning' Java has come from people who try to 'sell' Java as a panacea -- aka 'putting Java in light bulbs', "re-writing OS kernels in Java', etc.
What you mantioned is the clearest and best answer that I've hear for the reasons to use Java thus far -- aka you *can* do it in another language, but the support costs and development time for Java is a lot smaller. That makes sense and in that case the main costs to weigh when choosing Java over another language is what it will cost in developer/support time versus the performance losses.
Thank you for your answers, even though my question did get modded into oblivion
"It turns out that the risk of leaking exhaust fumes into the cabin is too great to allow such a design."
Not to mention the noise, too.
A better solution that I thought of a long time ago would be rather then bringing the exhaust into the cabin, bring the antifreeze to the exhaust. That way the exhaust heat would heat the antifreeze faster then the engine and produce heat in the cabin before the engine could. I would also warm up the engine faster. All you need is a thermostat to cut it off after the engine is hot.
Only draw-back is that a new exhaust system would be that much more expensive but if they made it out of stainless steel in the first place that would not be too much of a concern. . .
"cost/effeciency on a car would be "hard" to achieve"
The biggest problem in harnessing heat from exhaust on automobiles is that it tends to take heat away from the catalytic converter which in turn causes the car to produce more pollutants.
"cost/effeciency" probably could be accounted for with innovation and economies of scale, but the catalytic problem is a biggie. It has killed the adoption of so many innovations that use the exhaust in some way.
As mentioned in one of the other replies the efficiency of the gas that is used is not increased, thus no more work per unit gasoline is done.
The thing it does do is increase the efficiency of the whole automobile much like a turbocharger does by harnessing the exhaust pulses into a charge which increses the engine's power-to-weight ratio -- which does nothing for situations where the engine does not propel itself (like in cars, airplanes, etc).
This may not apply to your thermo-II class.
It actually has a big point.
:).
Although what you say may be correct, you have to remember that either using this to cool the intake or even better using it as a below-ambient intercooler on turbos increases the power-to-weight ratio of the engine because you can obviosly get more charge in a cylinder.
Thus you can create a lighter car with the same power and overall the efficiency increases because you have that much less mass to accelerate and that much less rolling resistance on the tires. Granted the efficiciency of the *engine* does not increase, but the efficiency of the entire system [car] does -- and that's the thing in the end that truly matters.
What I'm waiting for is efficient low-temperature thermo-couples to become cheap. That way electricity can be generated from the wasted exhaust heat getting rid of the need for an alternator.
Combine that with regenerative breaking and a few bucks on gas can definately be saved