How are they going to prove he never bought a latte? Are they going to be able to swear that in the last three months, of all the lattes they sold, not one was bought by him? How do they know his friend didn't buy one and bring it to him in the car?
JIT code is not slower than native code. In fact, JIT code ends up being native code. I think it was HP that wrote a C compiler that produced code that was faster than any other compiler. How? It didn't produce native code, it produced non-native code with a built-in JIT, and it blew the doors off all the native compilers. Why? because it could optimise things at run time according to how the program actually ran.
>To the point: cheap burnable consumer DVDs are cheap for a reason, their often crap and are >rarely last as long as ones used in DVD reproduction factories.
That's because they are a different technology, not quality. Ones from factories are pressed so that the data is physically in the media. Burnt ones just make ink in the disk become visible.
But "burned" DVDs have a limited life. They may only last a few years depending on the quality of the DVDs etc. Properly pressed DVDs last nearly forever. How happy will the consumers be when a few years down the track the DVDs stop working?
For one thing, Basic is on the way out in favour of C#. It won't disappear soon, but in a few years it might be harder to find people who want to work on it.
In my opinion, if you are re-writing, I would say do it in Java - then it will work on Mac and Linux and everything. But if you are determined to be Gates' whipping boy, at least do it in C#.
I know a lot of people, including me, are skeptical about convergence. But let's face it, convergence is going to happen, the question is when, and who the winners will be. Will it be the Cell phone people (Nokia, Motorola)? Will it be the Palm people (Palm, iPaq), will it be the Laptop people? (Dell, HP, etc), will it be the OS people (Microsoft, Windows CE, their new tablet PC), will it be the games people (Sony, Nintendo) or will it be the MP3 people (principly Apple). Somebody is going to invade the turf of one of the other players, and somebody is going to be badly damaged. Maybe it won't be this year, or maybe it will. Sometime it's going to happen, and probably Apple is worried as they should be.
It seems to me that MS is falling further and further behind. It's been a while since Linux surpassed Windows in throughput. It's been even longer since it surpassed it in stability. I know it's beta, but it's been a while since any Linux beta was as bad as this.
Despite their claims to have learnt their lesson they are still too focused on featureitus, and they are not even that good at that, as a lot of Vista is still catching up to OS-X.
Still, there are some neat things in Vista. MS isn't done for yet. But the reason for MS's existence seems less compelling year by year.
>I don't think that would help. They can nail you for sharing files, even if the >people you are sharing with are outside the USA. I don't believe law enforcement has >to prove the other party downloaded anything, just that you were sharing.
The point is, it's a lot harder to catch you if you're sharing over national borders. German police may try and catch naughty Germans, but the chance that they would be organized enough to share the information to other countries, and figure out all the legal issues is much less likely for a minor-ish crime like copyright infringement.
Television station buys a dozen laptops. Leaves them unprotected in various spots with clearly marked names and addresses. Nabs would-be thieves and shames them on TV.
Yeah ok, but the fact is most thieves are dumb. Maybe 1 in 20 thieves are even going to be capable of understanding these issues, let alone well informed enough to uninstall before they are busted.
>The drawbacks of keeping everything in the shell are mostly the same as the drawbacks from keeping everything >in the kernel; a huge monolithic lump of code, if anything crashes then you're dead.
Some shells allow linking in builtins via shared libraries. Even for a standard shell, the builtins are pretty much self-sufficient and have no need to rummage through other data structures in the shell.
Yes there's a limit to how big one movie will be. But how much limit is there on the number of movies you would like on there? How would you like an entertainment unit with 5000 HD movies sitting on the hard drive and ready to run off the menu??
And then, how would you like the same on a portable ipod or PSP-like device you can take around with you?
I don't see any shortage of uses to which more storage could be put.
I guess if you think hard enough you'll think of a good application for it... but in the case of web server farms, what's the point of having multiple virtual environments unless you are going to open them up to your clients to install their own PHP or postgresql or mysql or whatever darned bit of web technology they want? If all you want is a bunch of web sites on virtual hosts, you can just use the apache virtual hosts function. But if you want to give clients a free for all, you basically have a massive headache to upgrade the OS later on.
I don't doubt that OS-level virtualization is more efficient, but have you ever tried upgrading the OS for hundreds of applications at the same time? It's darned near impossible.
The great benefit of hardware level virtualization is that you can upgrade one app and one environment at a time. If app-"A" needs Linux 2.4 because that is what Oracle supports - fine, no problem. But if app-"B" needs to upgrade to Linux 2.6 because its reporting suite must have that version, that is ok too.
It seems to me that OS-level virtualization is a cool sounding idea that is pretty hopeless in the real world.
I wrote the original version of the National Archives software that does the conversion. The current version of the software is available here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/xena
If anybody wants to ask any questions here I'll try and answer.
Very weak response. Britanicca took issue with "less than half" the problems. Half is a lot! And the year book response is weak too. Nature was busted on this one. They ought to hang their heads and apologise.
The lock? Now there's a damned useless feature. I *like* the ability to be able to make minor adjustments to the volume all the time. I *like* the ability to skip songs without fiddling around with two switches. I *like* the ability to pause it to talk to someone with a simple hand movement.
Apple could get rid of the hold switch and I'd praise them for it.
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How are they going to prove he never bought a latte? Are they going to be able to swear that in the last three months, of all the lattes they sold, not one was bought by him? How do they know his friend didn't buy one and bring it to him in the car?
JIT code is not slower than native code. In fact, JIT code ends up being native code. I think it was HP that wrote a C compiler that produced code that was faster than any other compiler. How? It didn't produce native code, it produced non-native code with a built-in JIT, and it blew the doors off all the native compilers. Why? because it could optimise things at run time according to how the program actually ran.
>To the point: cheap burnable consumer DVDs are cheap for a reason, their often crap and are
>rarely last as long as ones used in DVD reproduction factories.
That's because they are a different technology, not quality. Ones from factories are pressed so that the data is physically in the media. Burnt ones just make ink in the disk become visible.
But "burned" DVDs have a limited life. They may only last a few years depending on the quality of the DVDs etc. Properly pressed DVDs last nearly forever. How happy will the consumers be when a few years down the track the DVDs stop working?
Most users don't give a shit. And if your app is worth having, it's better to have it in Java than to not have it in Cocoa.
For one thing, Basic is on the way out in favour of C#. It won't disappear soon, but in a few years it might be harder to find people who want to work on it.
In my opinion, if you are re-writing, I would say do it in Java - then it will work on Mac and Linux and everything. But if you are determined to be Gates' whipping boy, at least do it in C#.
I know a lot of people, including me, are skeptical about convergence. But let's face it, convergence is going to happen, the question is when, and who the winners will be. Will it be the Cell phone people (Nokia, Motorola)? Will it be the Palm people (Palm, iPaq), will it be the Laptop people? (Dell, HP, etc), will it be the OS people (Microsoft, Windows CE, their new tablet PC), will it be the games people (Sony, Nintendo) or will it be the MP3 people (principly Apple). Somebody is going to invade the turf of one of the other players, and somebody is going to be badly damaged. Maybe it won't be this year, or maybe it will. Sometime it's going to happen, and probably Apple is worried as they should be.
It seems to me that MS is falling further and further behind. It's been a while since Linux surpassed Windows in throughput. It's been even longer since it surpassed it in stability. I know it's beta, but it's been a while since any Linux beta was as bad as this.
Despite their claims to have learnt their lesson they are still too focused on featureitus, and they are not even that good at that, as a lot of Vista is still catching up to OS-X.
Still, there are some neat things in Vista. MS isn't done for yet. But the reason for MS's existence seems less compelling year by year.
>I don't think that would help. They can nail you for sharing files, even if the
>people you are sharing with are outside the USA. I don't believe law enforcement has
>to prove the other party downloaded anything, just that you were sharing.
The point is, it's a lot harder to catch you if you're sharing over national borders. German police may try and catch naughty Germans, but the chance that they would be organized enough to share the information to other countries, and figure out all the legal issues is much less likely for a minor-ish crime like copyright infringement.
Television station buys a dozen laptops. Leaves them unprotected in various spots with clearly marked names and addresses. Nabs would-be thieves and shames them on TV.
Follow the advice of the manufacturer and install a firmware password. Then it WON'T be useless.
Yeah ok, but the fact is most thieves are dumb. Maybe 1 in 20 thieves are even going to be capable of understanding these issues, let alone well informed enough to uninstall before they are busted.
>The drawbacks of keeping everything in the shell are mostly the same as the drawbacks from keeping everything
>in the kernel; a huge monolithic lump of code, if anything crashes then you're dead.
Some shells allow linking in builtins via shared libraries. Even for a standard shell, the builtins are pretty much self-sufficient and have no need to rummage through other data structures in the shell.
> I'm not sure if Sun can win the VM wars
They can win the VM wars, but how does that make them money?
Can anybody verify if the Intel Core 2 will be 32 bit or 64 bit?
>IF there are stupid laws in china, then it is up to the chinese to have a revolt or
>change of government.
Right, so who is forcing the chinese to use this software?
Compression doesn't have to reduce the quality.
Yes there's a limit to how big one movie will be. But how much limit is there on the number of movies you would like on there? How would you like an entertainment unit with 5000 HD movies sitting on the hard drive and ready to run off the menu??
And then, how would you like the same on a portable ipod or PSP-like device you can take around with you?
I don't see any shortage of uses to which more storage could be put.
I guess if you think hard enough you'll think of a good application for it... but in the case of web server farms, what's the point of having multiple virtual environments unless you are going to open them up to your clients to install their own PHP or postgresql or mysql or whatever darned bit of web technology they want? If all you want is a bunch of web sites on virtual hosts, you can just use the apache virtual hosts function. But if you want to give clients a free for all, you basically have a massive headache to upgrade the OS later on.
I don't doubt that OS-level virtualization is more efficient, but have you ever tried upgrading the OS for hundreds of applications at the same time? It's darned near impossible.
The great benefit of hardware level virtualization is that you can upgrade one app and one environment at a time. If app-"A" needs Linux 2.4 because that is what Oracle supports - fine, no problem. But if app-"B" needs to upgrade to Linux 2.6 because its reporting suite must have that version, that is ok too.
It seems to me that OS-level virtualization is a cool sounding idea that is pretty hopeless in the real world.
> Are you going to do what OOo won't?
I very much doubt the NAA will do anything that OOo won't. They don't have enough resources.
I wrote the original version of the National Archives software that does the conversion. The current version of the software is available here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/xena
If anybody wants to ask any questions here I'll try and answer.
Very weak response. Britanicca took issue with "less than half" the problems. Half is a lot! And the year book response is weak too. Nature was busted on this one. They ought to hang their heads and apologise.
Now you won't be considered paranoid if you believe there are black helicopters outside your window observing your every move. It might be true!
Woe oh woe... how will we tell the real lunies from the fake ones, if they really ARE watching you?
The lock? Now there's a damned useless feature. I *like* the ability to be able to make minor adjustments to the volume all the time. I *like* the ability to skip songs without fiddling around with two switches. I *like* the ability to pause it to talk to someone with a simple hand movement.
Apple could get rid of the hold switch and I'd praise them for it.