The problem is that the separation between form and content isn't as clear as many pretend. Take the obvious example, albeit one not that common any more. Back in the day when there were many different used word processing formats things came up differently. Perhaps the words (the content) were more or less the same. However if tables and so forth came out differently then the content really wasn't the same because of the problem of getting the original content into a form you could read.
Put in more simple terms - content is only content when it can be discerned as such. Perhaps someone speaking Russian to you is saying something useful. But if you don't speak Russian, it does you know good.
The big problem from day one with the world wide web was assuming that a very simple display engine was sufficient. This was naive and in part led to all that fracturing of the market that enabled Microsoft to take it over. Yes CSS helps a bit (although it came rather late). However the problem of fonts is still a big one that has not, in my opinion, been adequately solved.
Admittedly it is one that is more of a problem for people in academics. (i.e. physics and mathematics) And for web display most of these people simply convert their equations to GIFs or (more commonly now) simply keep everything in PDF. While Adobe tried to leverage their Acrobat product as an alternative to many web standards, the fact is that PDFs have many limits.
And of course there is still that problem of generating PDFs. This being Slashdot and all, I'm sure that all the TeX fans will come out of the woodwork. However for regular users it is often less than helpful. Even the equation editor in Word, while helpful, isn't the ideal solution in my opinion.
Unfortunately, given that the number of people who write equations is such a small niche, I don't think we'll see this solved in a nice fashion. And, to be fair, things today are VASTLY superior to how things were back in the days of typewriters.
Perhaps. But copyprotection on software was huge in the 80's and then by the 90's died out. All that was left were "dongles" for a few specialized apps.
If the music industry tries it I think they'll discover they are simply replaying events from 1982-1989.
This certainly is a big carrot to hold over developers. However if the Open Source project is such that only a few developers are working on it I think that they might very well take money to add features.
Once again it really depends upon what Open Source product you are talking about. Some are only half-maintained and you'd likely be an idiot to use them. You might be half-way through your development, find a serious bug and have no recourse. With a commercial app you've signed a contract with they'll typically help you a great deal. Some Open Source projects as well. Others. . .
I think part of the problem is that most people hear Open Source and think Apache or the like. Yet those are but a small segment of the overall Open Source movement.
As many others have said, deciding on software really depends upon the individual product and (to be fair) your development staff.
Just to point out though, the Mac ports often are inferior to the PC versions. For instance frame rates for animations are almost always much lower. I'm not sure why that is, but if gaming were a high priority for me I don't think I'd go for the Mac.
However I think that for many people such things aren't a big priority. Personally I just bought an XBox and played Halo instead of worrying about Warcraft or whatever other shooter is around. But then I'm not a huge gamer. Most of the games I like are more strategy like Go or a few other more "thinking" games for the Mac.
OrborusX really is an amazing window manager as it makes X11 look much more like OSX apps. Installing X11 is a joke now with Fink. Go to the Fink site and pretty much all the applications you'd run on Linux that don't come with OSX get installed. It is easier enough that even Unix newbies can do it.
About the only problem is that it installs a second copy of Python for some reason which may cause problesm. I can't get wxWindows to work with Python properly and I think it is because of Fink's install of Python.
There still are a few odd things with Darwin as opposed to other BSD distros. However with each release Apple has been improving things. The big flaw with 10.2 has been in how shutdown scripts are called when you select shutdown from the menu. That'll probably be fixed in the next release which is rumored out in the next week or two.
One other thing for programmers is that Apple's developer tools are free and are very nice. They provide and excellent IDE for gcc. (Although you can continue to use makefiles if you wish) They have a very nice interface to gdb as well, although the watch windows don't hold their values between debugging sessions. (Something I've griped to Apple about and is the only thing keeping me from moving from Visual Studio entirely)
True - although remember that you can buy USB 2.0 cards for the Mac fairly easily. Typically not a big deal unless you are sharing some USB 2.0 only hard drive or similar device.
Likely though the reason they are holding off is because Firewire 2.0 (or whatever it is called) will be out within 8 months on Apple systems.
The Patriot missiles were largely "unfinished" when deployed. Their deployment was purely a deceit on the part of the Bush administration so as to keep Israel out of the war and thus keep it from going regional. (Something the younger Bush ought to keep in mind)
Several of the high up administration officials admitted this on that excellent Frontline special on the Gulf War from a couple of years ago.
Nothing wrong with that, btw. I think it was very wise on the Bush administration. The Patriots purportedly worked better after a later software upgrade. They still are not useful for protecting civilians, mind you.
With many cars it definitely is a factor. That's why intelligent people take into consideration the amount of repairs you have to expect with a vehicle.
Now it may well turn out that between two cars there is little difference. It may also turn out that other factors are important. For instance I'm willing to pay a premium for an SUV because I frequently head off into the mountains to rock climb or hike. However if I was solely communting I'd probably reconsider.
So I'm not saying that total cost of ownership is the only consideration. Utilitity and aesthetic also play very significant factors. What I am saying is that for all things being equal, Americans tend to look at initial cost as being far more significant than total cost.
Don't you typically have a much longer flight with a rocket as well? Seems like that would make targeting easier. I'd think that a shell would be typically within a few miles. I'm sure they are using trajectory informaiton to aim the laser.
But being able to reduce mortars or cannon fire is no small matter. Especially if along with the lasers you have computer controlled counter batteries. The laser stops or minimizes the initial shot and then your artillery makes sure there is no second shot.
I think that this would be very significant for battlefield conditions. Especially in a guerilla war where you may have some rogue guy wandering around with a mortar. Putting such lasers around fuel dumps, C&C centers and so forth would make a lot of sense.
Just to add to this. The idea isn't to make the shell "disappear" but simply to make it tactically fail. i.e. if it was trying to hit your command and control center now it falls far short.
Part of the problem is that defensive weapons like this have traditionally been oversold to the public. (Remember the Patriot during the Gulf War?) In a battle though the important thing is protecting your assets. Yeah there may still be stuff going around - but likely it will do far, far less damage.
I think it is more that Americans tend to look at initial sticker cost rather than total cost of ownership. You see this in cars and much else.
For instance I got a front load washer which ended up costing $400 more than what I could have got a regular washer for. However over five years I should make up for that in water and power savings. (Plus it cleans clothes better and works on my sleeping bags) But front load washers aren't as popular because of that initial cost.
You see the same thing with computers and many other things. For instance with kitchen supplies people will buy the cheap knives and silverwear rather than spending a few extra dollars for something that will last far longer.
Have you got wxPython to work though? (That's what I was alluding to) I don't know if it is because I installed Fink, which has its own Python disto, but I never was able to get it to work right.
Has anyone else had these problems? I'm thinking it was due to Fink as I've had other subtle problems with Python since I installed it.
Using GCC across all platforms doesn't guarantee no problems. (Although clearly it will simplify problems) I remember spending over a day tracking down a problem that was due to differences between GCC on OSX and GCC on Linux.
The problem with Python is that its GUI features are not fully cross-platform yet. We're still eagerly awaiting full OSX support. I don't know how that is going. There was a windowing manager I downloaded off of Source Forge but I couldn't get it working right.
If you regularly compile your code on multiple platforms this is less of an issue. For instance we compile our crossplatform code on Visual Studio, Borland, GCC on Linux, GCC on OSX, GCC on Solaris, and Codewarior on OSX/OS9.
It's amazing how many things you find this way. It actually a good way to find many bugs as well. Since we've been doing this a while we also decided to avoid a lot of the "newer" C++ features and that really helped both speed and portability. (Since not all compilers did STL well for some time)
I've heard good things about QT. How good are its non-GUI classes? i.e. for numerics and more importantly for threads?
We're looking at doing some crossplatform stuff and QT's support of the Mac is a major selling point.
Actually wasn't there a huge scandal in Las Vegas a few years ago where someone hacked a lot of the slot machines to screw with the odds? If I recall it actually was one of the distributors of the slot machines. So it wasn't some obscure employee but some people fairly high up in the company. But it is the same idea.
I'm sure that had the company tried to screw over one of the bigger casinos that they'd have been caught. (And depending upon the casino probably taken care of independently from the police) However so long as regular people are getting screwed, they don't care.
Same thing with gas stations. Once again I remember a scheme that extra charged gas slightly using computers. Nothing but a few cents on every fillup. But it added up. Once again more the company themselves. But how hard would it have been for an employee to do it?
The only thing that keeps these schemes for working for individual employees is the cost/danger ratio. These schemes are only worth the risk if you make a fair amount of money. But to make a fair amount of money you have to get that check from the company which is then noticable by the company auditors. If the "checks" or "expense" is spread out over thousands of people, the auditors are far less likely to discover it. But by the same measure you are far less likely to be able to make use of the money.
Well most do come up with well thought out plans and don't screw it up. At least I'd bet that's what happens. It's just that the ones who get caught are always the idiots. I mean if they weren't idiots they'd have little chance of being caught!
Anyone remember Office Space and their scheme to get a few thousand dollars and they end up "accidentally" getting something like $300,000.
No business is likely to have "Apple on their mind" as a sever except for small businesses with existing OSX systems. For those people the "out of the box" solution of Apple is much more likely than a rolled up OpenBSD system they have to tweak. For heterogenus networks then I think Apple can compete against Dell or Compact, especially since their system is Unix and thus not as "proprietary" as once was.
But aren't the large companies doing DNA analysis going to be doing them enough that having their data center would be more cost effective? I could see it for smaller companies who don't want the IT headaches. But most of the DNA analysis is done by companies who are doing a *lot* of them.
The other alternative is general research. However frequently they are poor enough that they will be doing cheaper distributed computing solutions.
There may be a middle group. But I'd imagine that they are a relatively small group.
But what does PHP do that Python can't? I admit that for having your code interspersed in your HTML rather than as separate files then PHP makes sense. However for other applications I'd think that PHP loses some benefits. While I can think of reasons I'd not want to use Perl, Python doesn't share those problems.
After all the problem isn't what a programming language was designed *for*. It is how well it does a project. If someone judges a language based upon the origins of that language then I think they are being silly. It's like complaining about FORTH languages because they were designed for astronomy and robotics.
Slashdot Mirror
Put in more simple terms - content is only content when it can be discerned as such. Perhaps someone speaking Russian to you is saying something useful. But if you don't speak Russian, it does you know good.
The big problem from day one with the world wide web was assuming that a very simple display engine was sufficient. This was naive and in part led to all that fracturing of the market that enabled Microsoft to take it over. Yes CSS helps a bit (although it came rather late). However the problem of fonts is still a big one that has not, in my opinion, been adequately solved.
Admittedly it is one that is more of a problem for people in academics. (i.e. physics and mathematics) And for web display most of these people simply convert their equations to GIFs or (more commonly now) simply keep everything in PDF. While Adobe tried to leverage their Acrobat product as an alternative to many web standards, the fact is that PDFs have many limits.
And of course there is still that problem of generating PDFs. This being Slashdot and all, I'm sure that all the TeX fans will come out of the woodwork. However for regular users it is often less than helpful. Even the equation editor in Word, while helpful, isn't the ideal solution in my opinion.
Unfortunately, given that the number of people who write equations is such a small niche, I don't think we'll see this solved in a nice fashion. And, to be fair, things today are VASTLY superior to how things were back in the days of typewriters.
If the music industry tries it I think they'll discover they are simply replaying events from 1982-1989.
It already is guaranteed a niche market - video.
Once again it really depends upon what Open Source product you are talking about. Some are only half-maintained and you'd likely be an idiot to use them. You might be half-way through your development, find a serious bug and have no recourse. With a commercial app you've signed a contract with they'll typically help you a great deal. Some Open Source projects as well. Others. . .
I think part of the problem is that most people hear Open Source and think Apache or the like. Yet those are but a small segment of the overall Open Source movement.
As many others have said, deciding on software really depends upon the individual product and (to be fair) your development staff.
I must admit though that I wonder why anyone buys these memory based MP3 players when the hard drive ones are out and frequently only a bit more.
However I think that for many people such things aren't a big priority. Personally I just bought an XBox and played Halo instead of worrying about Warcraft or whatever other shooter is around. But then I'm not a huge gamer. Most of the games I like are more strategy like Go or a few other more "thinking" games for the Mac.
About the only problem is that it installs a second copy of Python for some reason which may cause problesm. I can't get wxWindows to work with Python properly and I think it is because of Fink's install of Python.
There still are a few odd things with Darwin as opposed to other BSD distros. However with each release Apple has been improving things. The big flaw with 10.2 has been in how shutdown scripts are called when you select shutdown from the menu. That'll probably be fixed in the next release which is rumored out in the next week or two.
One other thing for programmers is that Apple's developer tools are free and are very nice. They provide and excellent IDE for gcc. (Although you can continue to use makefiles if you wish) They have a very nice interface to gdb as well, although the watch windows don't hold their values between debugging sessions. (Something I've griped to Apple about and is the only thing keeping me from moving from Visual Studio entirely)
Likely though the reason they are holding off is because Firewire 2.0 (or whatever it is called) will be out within 8 months on Apple systems.
Several of the high up administration officials admitted this on that excellent Frontline special on the Gulf War from a couple of years ago.
Nothing wrong with that, btw. I think it was very wise on the Bush administration. The Patriots purportedly worked better after a later software upgrade. They still are not useful for protecting civilians, mind you.
Now it may well turn out that between two cars there is little difference. It may also turn out that other factors are important. For instance I'm willing to pay a premium for an SUV because I frequently head off into the mountains to rock climb or hike. However if I was solely communting I'd probably reconsider.
So I'm not saying that total cost of ownership is the only consideration. Utilitity and aesthetic also play very significant factors. What I am saying is that for all things being equal, Americans tend to look at initial cost as being far more significant than total cost.
But being able to reduce mortars or cannon fire is no small matter. Especially if along with the lasers you have computer controlled counter batteries. The laser stops or minimizes the initial shot and then your artillery makes sure there is no second shot.
I think that this would be very significant for battlefield conditions. Especially in a guerilla war where you may have some rogue guy wandering around with a mortar. Putting such lasers around fuel dumps, C&C centers and so forth would make a lot of sense.
Part of the problem is that defensive weapons like this have traditionally been oversold to the public. (Remember the Patriot during the Gulf War?) In a battle though the important thing is protecting your assets. Yeah there may still be stuff going around - but likely it will do far, far less damage.
For instance I got a front load washer which ended up costing $400 more than what I could have got a regular washer for. However over five years I should make up for that in water and power savings. (Plus it cleans clothes better and works on my sleeping bags) But front load washers aren't as popular because of that initial cost.
You see the same thing with computers and many other things. For instance with kitchen supplies people will buy the cheap knives and silverwear rather than spending a few extra dollars for something that will last far longer.
I don't know why this is.
Has anyone else had these problems? I'm thinking it was due to Fink as I've had other subtle problems with Python since I installed it.
Using GCC across all platforms doesn't guarantee no problems. (Although clearly it will simplify problems) I remember spending over a day tracking down a problem that was due to differences between GCC on OSX and GCC on Linux.
The problem with Python is that its GUI features are not fully cross-platform yet. We're still eagerly awaiting full OSX support. I don't know how that is going. There was a windowing manager I downloaded off of Source Forge but I couldn't get it working right.
It's amazing how many things you find this way. It actually a good way to find many bugs as well. Since we've been doing this a while we also decided to avoid a lot of the "newer" C++ features and that really helped both speed and portability. (Since not all compilers did STL well for some time)
I've heard good things about QT. How good are its non-GUI classes? i.e. for numerics and more importantly for threads? We're looking at doing some crossplatform stuff and QT's support of the Mac is a major selling point.
I'm sure that had the company tried to screw over one of the bigger casinos that they'd have been caught. (And depending upon the casino probably taken care of independently from the police) However so long as regular people are getting screwed, they don't care.
Same thing with gas stations. Once again I remember a scheme that extra charged gas slightly using computers. Nothing but a few cents on every fillup. But it added up. Once again more the company themselves. But how hard would it have been for an employee to do it?
The only thing that keeps these schemes for working for individual employees is the cost/danger ratio. These schemes are only worth the risk if you make a fair amount of money. But to make a fair amount of money you have to get that check from the company which is then noticable by the company auditors. If the "checks" or "expense" is spread out over thousands of people, the auditors are far less likely to discover it. But by the same measure you are far less likely to be able to make use of the money.
Well most do come up with well thought out plans and don't screw it up. At least I'd bet that's what happens. It's just that the ones who get caught are always the idiots. I mean if they weren't idiots they'd have little chance of being caught! Anyone remember Office Space and their scheme to get a few thousand dollars and they end up "accidentally" getting something like $300,000.
I love OmniWeb and it is my primary browser. But this is something I hope they fix in the next version.
No business is likely to have "Apple on their mind" as a sever except for small businesses with existing OSX systems. For those people the "out of the box" solution of Apple is much more likely than a rolled up OpenBSD system they have to tweak. For heterogenus networks then I think Apple can compete against Dell or Compact, especially since their system is Unix and thus not as "proprietary" as once was.
I said OpenBSD *or* Linux and a nice multiprocessor AMD system. So yes, I do know. You just parsed the "or" wrong.
The other alternative is general research. However frequently they are poor enough that they will be doing cheaper distributed computing solutions.
There may be a middle group. But I'd imagine that they are a relatively small group.
After all the problem isn't what a programming language was designed *for*. It is how well it does a project. If someone judges a language based upon the origins of that language then I think they are being silly. It's like complaining about FORTH languages because they were designed for astronomy and robotics.