Some few years back, in the early promotion of the JVM, various technical articles seemed to be saying:
VM's would be highly optimized.
VM's could be faster than 'native' code because bytecodes are smaller than machine code and the VM would need less frequent access to memory outside of the cache.
The best way to maintain software compatability as hardware is improved is through VM's. Thus, new processors would use VM's extensively, even 'native' personalities would be implemented by VM's, and since you'll be talking to a VM whether you like it or not, why fight it?
Since processors will be designed to run VM's, you will lose performance as well as portability if you don't program for a VM.
At present, one would suspect that none of this is coming true. What's really going on and when?
Years back, when Sun first came out with the java VM, some suggested that Python should either scrap its bytecodes for those of the JVM or at least do something to run as fast as the JVM. Guido, the controlling force behind Python, emphatically replied that because Python was a much more dynamic language than java and allowed many more things to happen at run-time than the JVM could support, Python never could compete and never would try to compete with a fast VM like java's.
My experience is that java is faster than Python, but that speed almost never matters for me.
The IDE's that Watcom had were refreshingly different. Their C++ IDE was good, but when they upgraded the C++, they came out with Power++, which was a very nice RAD product, but it was too buggy. If the compilers are cleaned up and they open source the IDE's too, this might be of value.
What killed them? Did they pull all their brains off C++ to work on PB? Was competition from MS too tough? Was their GUI builder (licensed from some 3rd party) too lame?
Was the cost of implementing the C++ standard too high? (Watcom was late to offer STL -- they included their own (way different) libs instead.)
We were a couple of generations back on chips when Watcom pretty much stopped pushing their compiler technologies. I wonder how much they lose by not having optimizations targetting new hardware features.
I've got a legitimate business. There are only about 80,000 organizations on earth that might want my firm's software. Many of those 80,000 would not mind getting an email, because they need some solution and wouldn't mind comparing what they have with what my company offers. The email addresses are hard to dredge up, and I have not tried to market by email at all so far. I get about one email per week from competitors who somehow have me on their email lists. No big deal. And, I might consider it not nearly as bad as sending unsolicited ads for porn for me to send a couple of dozen, or a couple of hundred, or even one polite and informative email trying to attract a sale. But now, because of all the smut and scams, it might make me a criminal to try to promote my business. Jeez.
The ANSI/ISO standard was finalized around 1998, wasn't it? Gcc/djgpp had STL in 1998, maybe even 1997 or 1996. There was an STL for the Borland compiler in 1998.
Yes. The MS site does not work with NS4.7x either. I have no idea how intentional or unintentional that is, but if MS is interested in customizing their site for different clients, why didn't they fix that one first. BTW, the MS site also doesn't work with IE with large fonts. Trying to resize the main frame to be wider so that all the text fits into the frame horizontally does not work -- IE keeps re adjusting its line breaks so that the right side of the text is off the screen and the user must scroll back and forth horizontally to read each line. And when I right click on the main frame in IE and select 'Open Frame in New Window' (which does indicate that MS knows that it is a frame), it reloads the page with the same flippin' framed layout. So this indicates that MS ain't geniuses at web usability, and the Opera problem all might be just another egregious blunder, but who wants to buy software from such a bunch of meatheads?
I noticed the NS problems today while trying to download the patch that MS released yesterday for the IE security problems. Of course, they miss no opportunity to lock you into something. The patch is available only for certain combinations of MS OS and MS IE. Those who have NT and IE5.5 (eg I) don't have any patch available. There is a patch for IE5.5 with ME, but not for NT. There is also a patch for IE6 and NT, so it looks like they want me to upgrade to IE6 and accept their new and improved terms of license. No thanks. They also mention that the patch breaks HTMLHelp, and various other things that the user taking the security patch must do to keep their system reasonably functional. Who wants to deal with such meatheads?
Not me. The Opera situation sure makes MS look like it's run by a bunch of heavy-handed wannabes all trying to display the maximum of rapacity in emulation of the company's renowned leaders. This is minor-league sleaze, paradoxically common
nowadays among the most successful(?) and most respected. I hope to drop MS from my firm's suppliers' list in a few days, and I think that anyone in favor of integrity in business should give serious thought to doing the same. I can accept avarice. I can deal with meatheads. Avaricious meatheads, good riddance.
The classic case was Snap-On Tools. They were clean, and they weren't busted, but they were just about shut down for the audit for longer than they could afford. It cost them into 6 figures.
Then why do they call this bucket of random bits a 'browser'?
Fine to have volume 1 and volume 2, but in this age of the digital wonderland, shouldn't there be hyperlinks from volume 1 to volume 2? The concept of the smart library was one of the original dreams of the juicy fruits of smart technology, and that was 50 or more years ago. What we have equals dead trees converted to digital media, with some of the benefits of dead trees lost and few of the potential advantages of digital media realized. And this is for presenting information about the computer to someone who is trying to use the computer. That paper can be at all competitive in this market is most telling -- telling about the low value of IT, even to IT people.
I agree 100%. The value added by putting existing docs on paper is minimal. It is nice to be able to look at the paper and the screen simultaneously, some time. But that is not justification for charging about what it would cost for the user to simply put the docs on paper with their own inkjet.
It is fairly boggling that the man pages don't contain examples. (I'm not sure if this is part of the standard for man pages, but I don't recall seeing examples at all). Better docs would not only include examples of each option, but guide the reader to an understanding of (1) when to do this, (2) why to do this, (3) what else you need to do this, (4) if he really wants to do this, (5) likely problems with doing this, (6) blah, blah, blah...
Then you need to keep it all up to date as the software continuously evolves and do some packaging and presentation to convince the reader that the doc is correct for someone with his distro, his data, his computer,... (I once wanted to be a mathematician, but all I learned was the "..." part.)
Anyway, that means that maybe there is some need to include a little original work to the 'get stuff free, sell it, PROFIT!' business model before you've got a lucrative business. The approach without original content that I could suggest would be to add original cross-referencing, linking, and indexing to the free docs. Put it all on a CD so that when the user gets boggled by one section of the docs, he at least gets a link there to another section of the docs to click on so that he might forget that he is boggled.
The 30% figure for MS is not "estimated". Last time I divided MS net profit by MS gross revenue I got about 32%. These were bottom-line numbers reported to the SEC, including all current expenses, ie all overhead. This figure is astronomical in comparison to the gross margin of typical firms.
There is some issue about the amount of stock options that should be showing as a current expense, but no one wants another market crash, so don't worry.
Back around 1986, IBM had the PC/370. It was a PC that could run mainframe applications. The PC was typical Intel, and the mainframe was emulated by a 680x0.
I'm a little ahead of the baby boom, so my eyes are a little worse than those of most people, but they are catching up. This is something that is long overdue and will be most valuable or just about essential as the demographic bulge moves into its later years. We can't go on creating every UI like it was designed by a 22-year-old with no idea that vision doesn't deteriorate for some of us. It's just about criminal that if you are having trouble reading the screen and go out and buy a better, higher-resolution monitor, everything gets harder to read.
We were at about the same stage of adoption of 32 bits then as for 64 bits now. The first 32-bit machines were coming out and MS and IBM were committed to OS2 running on 16-bit hardware. It took about 4 years for 32-bit hardware to become fairly typical and about 4 more years for software to catch up. But this was driven by a widespread discomfort living within the confines of the 16-bit world. Such discomfort with 32 bits is not now common except for server applications in large organizations. So, we can expect it to take at least as long for the 64-bit technology to dominate.
It is something of a question whether this change will open up opportunities for new software. I think it will. Think shared memory -- very large memory spaces being simultaneously updated and accessed by multiple independent processes and processors performing different tasks possibly for different users. The three drivers of technology are corporate databases, games, and pornography. Huge memory spaces with multiple processors attached have many possible breathtaking applications in each of these domains. Start coding.
Yes. 2%, then 3% increases. About equal to inflation. However, he has increased funding for nuclear power in space and cut funding for the ISS and shuttle pretty seriously.
The stories I find on-line mention that the decision to cut the shuttle program were caused by previous problems in shuttle safety upgrades. Can anyone explain WTH that's all about? Also mentioned are plans to privatize major parts of the shuttle program, letting Boeing and Lockheed run it like a business, whatever that means.
There is usually another guy besides the captain in charge of defending the ship when it comes under attack, ie some kind of gunnery control officer or such. Much better to have him and the captain close together instead of roaming the decks.
The Navy is very authoritarian, and this model doesn't work well in modern warfare. Often the captain leaves orders and goes somewhere. Then the situation can change suddenly and the responding officer not only has to decide what to do, sometimes he has to decide if it's ok to violate the captain's orders to respond to the unforeseen. And he might have just minutes or seconds to respond. That's bad enough. With this high-tech, the captain may have the remote control, but he won't have all the information available as quickly as on the bridge. It would be like channel-surfing while looking at the TV Guide instead of at the TV. The subordinate on the bridge will have to factor in all the uncertainty about where is the captain, what does he know, is he sober and awake,... Too confusing.
War takes plenty of brains, but peace takes even more.
IIRC, he was some years back the mastermind of a big OO project at Cash'n'Carry stores. Is that right? It was supposed to be a killer major competitive advantage kind of huge leading edge triumph. Somehow, I never heard a success story kind of post-mortem on that one. What happened?
A few years ago, the XP promoters were bragging about the Chrysler Compensation System, the first big XP project. They were redoing all of Chrysler's payroll systems, they were part done, they were succeeding where much larger efforts had failed, and the new managers from Mercedes wanted them to finish it so that they could go on and apply XP to other problems.
Last I heard, the Chrysler Compensation System was not finished, scrapped prior to going into production. What are the more recent projects that demonstrate how well XP works?
What are the criteria by which a circle is judged 'authentic'
Have these criteria been published and agreed upon for more than a few months?
Which circles qualify according to these criteria? (Be specific)
What have you seen that makes you think that any of these formations are authentic?
How do you analyze all these far-out ideas?
The basic crop circle is just an artifact we find that could be made by people. Why in the world would you associate ET's with crop circles? There is no evidence connecting crop circles and ET's. There is no need to hypothesize ET's to explain crop circles. More likely the plants have acquired distributed intelligence and are talking to us than these are made by ET's.
On some of the arms, the last circle of the arm at the end away from the center is only a little smaller than the preceding. On others it's tiny, looking more like a dot. The arms were obvioulsy drawn starting at the center and working outward, and on some of the arms, they ran out of space before they could complete the last circle. This is not near-perfect geometry.
Funny about this one out of 100. The percentage of crop circles said to be authentic by those who think this is a truly unexplained phenomenon is dropping like a rock. Used to be 75%, then 50%, then 20%, then 10%, now we see 1%. It's tracked very closely with the percentage who believe that dotcoms are a good investment.
The first crop circles, a couple of decades back were very simple. Were these authentic? If so, how come we never see crop circles like those anymore? Did the aliens get into a race to outdo each other with Mandelbrot sets? OTOH, if those first crop circles were among the 99% bogus, we have now a case of an authentic phenomenon that is copying a hoax(?!?!?!?). Could happen, but very curious.
Nearly Perfect Geometrical Shapes
on
Top of the Crops 2002
·
· Score: 4, Informative
No. All the mistakes you'd expect from human
beings cavorting in the dead of night. Take a look at these, presented as evidence of the precise geometry:
Perfect geometry? The spiral arms don't even have the same number of circles in each arm. The Milk Hill formation has 13 circles on five of six arms of the spiral; the other arm has only 12. The 3-arm spiral has two arms with 11 circles and one with 12.
Stand in awe if you like, but jeez, this is obvious BS that these things are anything like 'perfect'.
Slashdot Mirror
Now that someone has figured out unbreakable encryption, we can use this to figure out the Beale code.
- VM's would be highly optimized.
- VM's could be faster than 'native' code because bytecodes are smaller than machine code and the VM would need less frequent access to memory outside of the cache.
- The best way to maintain software compatability as hardware is improved is through VM's. Thus, new processors would use VM's extensively, even 'native' personalities would be implemented by VM's, and since you'll be talking to a VM whether you like it or not, why fight it?
- Since processors will be designed to run VM's, you will lose performance as well as portability if you don't program for a VM.
At present, one would suspect that none of this is coming true. What's really going on and when?My experience is that java is faster than Python, but that speed almost never matters for me.
What killed them? Did they pull all their brains off C++ to work on PB? Was competition from MS too tough? Was their GUI builder (licensed from some 3rd party) too lame? Was the cost of implementing the C++ standard too high? (Watcom was late to offer STL -- they included their own (way different) libs instead.)
We were a couple of generations back on chips when Watcom pretty much stopped pushing their compiler technologies. I wonder how much they lose by not having optimizations targetting new hardware features.
I've got a legitimate business. There are only about 80,000 organizations on earth that might want my firm's software. Many of those 80,000 would not mind getting an email, because they need some solution and wouldn't mind comparing what they have with what my company offers. The email addresses are hard to dredge up, and I have not tried to market by email at all so far. I get about one email per week from competitors who somehow have me on their email lists. No big deal. And, I might consider it not nearly as bad as sending unsolicited ads for porn for me to send a couple of dozen, or a couple of hundred, or even one polite and informative email trying to attract a sale. But now, because of all the smut and scams, it might make me a criminal to try to promote my business. Jeez.
The ANSI/ISO standard was finalized around 1998, wasn't it? Gcc/djgpp had STL in 1998, maybe even 1997 or 1996. There was an STL for the Borland compiler in 1998.
I noticed the NS problems today while trying to download the patch that MS released yesterday for the IE security problems. Of course, they miss no opportunity to lock you into something. The patch is available only for certain combinations of MS OS and MS IE. Those who have NT and IE5.5 (eg I) don't have any patch available. There is a patch for IE5.5 with ME, but not for NT. There is also a patch for IE6 and NT, so it looks like they want me to upgrade to IE6 and accept their new and improved terms of license. No thanks. They also mention that the patch breaks HTMLHelp, and various other things that the user taking the security patch must do to keep their system reasonably functional. Who wants to deal with such meatheads?
Not me. The Opera situation sure makes MS look like it's run by a bunch of heavy-handed wannabes all trying to display the maximum of rapacity in emulation of the company's renowned leaders. This is minor-league sleaze, paradoxically common nowadays among the most successful(?) and most respected. I hope to drop MS from my firm's suppliers' list in a few days, and I think that anyone in favor of integrity in business should give serious thought to doing the same. I can accept avarice. I can deal with meatheads. Avaricious meatheads, good riddance.
The classic case was Snap-On Tools. They were clean, and they weren't busted, but they were just about shut down for the audit for longer than they could afford. It cost them into 6 figures.
Fine to have volume 1 and volume 2, but in this age of the digital wonderland, shouldn't there be hyperlinks from volume 1 to volume 2? The concept of the smart library was one of the original dreams of the juicy fruits of smart technology, and that was 50 or more years ago. What we have equals dead trees converted to digital media, with some of the benefits of dead trees lost and few of the potential advantages of digital media realized. And this is for presenting information about the computer to someone who is trying to use the computer. That paper can be at all competitive in this market is most telling -- telling about the low value of IT, even to IT people.
It is fairly boggling that the man pages don't contain examples. (I'm not sure if this is part of the standard for man pages, but I don't recall seeing examples at all). Better docs would not only include examples of each option, but guide the reader to an understanding of (1) when to do this, (2) why to do this, (3) what else you need to do this, (4) if he really wants to do this, (5) likely problems with doing this, (6) blah, blah, blah ...
Then you need to keep it all up to date as the software continuously evolves and do some packaging and presentation to convince the reader that the doc is correct for someone with his distro, his data, his computer, ... (I once wanted to be a mathematician, but all I learned was the "..." part.)
Anyway, that means that maybe there is some need to include a little original work to the 'get stuff free, sell it, PROFIT!' business model before you've got a lucrative business. The approach without original content that I could suggest would be to add original cross-referencing, linking, and indexing to the free docs. Put it all on a CD so that when the user gets boggled by one section of the docs, he at least gets a link there to another section of the docs to click on so that he might forget that he is boggled.
There is some issue about the amount of stock options that should be showing as a current expense, but no one wants another market crash, so don't worry.
Back around 1986, IBM had the PC/370. It was a PC that could run mainframe applications. The PC was typical Intel, and the mainframe was emulated by a 680x0.
I'm a little ahead of the baby boom, so my eyes are a little worse than those of most people, but they are catching up. This is something that is long overdue and will be most valuable or just about essential as the demographic bulge moves into its later years. We can't go on creating every UI like it was designed by a 22-year-old with no idea that vision doesn't deteriorate for some of us. It's just about criminal that if you are having trouble reading the screen and go out and buy a better, higher-resolution monitor, everything gets harder to read.
It is something of a question whether this change will open up opportunities for new software. I think it will. Think shared memory -- very large memory spaces being simultaneously updated and accessed by multiple independent processes and processors performing different tasks possibly for different users. The three drivers of technology are corporate databases, games, and pornography. Huge memory spaces with multiple processors attached have many possible breathtaking applications in each of these domains. Start coding.
The stories I find on-line mention that the decision to cut the shuttle program were caused by previous problems in shuttle safety upgrades. Can anyone explain WTH that's all about? Also mentioned are plans to privatize major parts of the shuttle program, letting Boeing and Lockheed run it like a business, whatever that means.
Rest assured that FEMA, headed by Bush's campaign manager, is investigating.
Wasn't that a key part of the Bismarck's defeat, ie that its cabling was damaged in combat?
The Navy is very authoritarian, and this model doesn't work well in modern warfare. Often the captain leaves orders and goes somewhere. Then the situation can change suddenly and the responding officer not only has to decide what to do, sometimes he has to decide if it's ok to violate the captain's orders to respond to the unforeseen. And he might have just minutes or seconds to respond. That's bad enough. With this high-tech, the captain may have the remote control, but he won't have all the information available as quickly as on the bridge. It would be like channel-surfing while looking at the TV Guide instead of at the TV. The subordinate on the bridge will have to factor in all the uncertainty about where is the captain, what does he know, is he sober and awake, ... Too confusing.
War takes plenty of brains, but peace takes even more.
That's a wonderful goal. And, though just halfway through my career, I've already achieved half of it.
IIRC, he was some years back the mastermind of a big OO project at Cash'n'Carry stores. Is that right? It was supposed to be a killer major competitive advantage kind of huge leading edge triumph. Somehow, I never heard a success story kind of post-mortem on that one. What happened?
Last I heard, the Chrysler Compensation System was not finished, scrapped prior to going into production. What are the more recent projects that demonstrate how well XP works?
What are the criteria by which a circle is judged 'authentic'
Have these criteria been published and agreed upon for more than a few months?
Which circles qualify according to these criteria? (Be specific)
What have you seen that makes you think that any of these formations are authentic?
How do you analyze all these far-out ideas? The basic crop circle is just an artifact we find that could be made by people. Why in the world would you associate ET's with crop circles? There is no evidence connecting crop circles and ET's. There is no need to hypothesize ET's to explain crop circles. More likely the plants have acquired distributed intelligence and are talking to us than these are made by ET's.
On some of the arms, the last circle of the arm at the end away from the center is only a little smaller than the preceding. On others it's tiny, looking more like a dot. The arms were obvioulsy drawn starting at the center and working outward, and on some of the arms, they ran out of space before they could complete the last circle. This is not near-perfect geometry.
The first crop circles, a couple of decades back were very simple. Were these authentic? If so, how come we never see crop circles like those anymore? Did the aliens get into a race to outdo each other with Mandelbrot sets? OTOH, if those first crop circles were among the 99% bogus, we have now a case of an authentic phenomenon that is copying a hoax(?!?!?!?). Could happen, but very curious.
Milk Hill 2001 (scroll down, it's the 3rd one)
Possibly made by the same people but with only 3 arms in the spiral
Perfect geometry? The spiral arms don't even have the same number of circles in each arm. The Milk Hill formation has 13 circles on five of six arms of the spiral; the other arm has only 12. The 3-arm spiral has two arms with 11 circles and one with 12.
Stand in awe if you like, but jeez, this is obvious BS that these things are anything like 'perfect'.