Moore's law is just a way of expressing amazement.
on
Forget Moore's Law?
·
· Score: 1
Moore's Law is not a law, and everyone knows it. Moore's law is just a way of expressing amazement at what we are able to achieve, rapidly.
The entire issue is confused.
on
Forget Moore's Law?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
'His words were both simple and devastating: when asked how the 64-bit Itanium, the new megaprocessor from Intel and Hewlett-Packard, would affect Google, Mr. Schmidt replied that it wouldn't. Google had no intention of buying the superchip. Rather, he said, the company intends to build its future servers with smaller, cheaper processors." '
The parent comment is correct, but the entire issue is confused. In a few years, the Itanium will be the cheapest processor available, and Google will be using it.
Good programmers are not willing to sign the non-competition and non-disclosure agreements that Microsoft
requires. They fear that would put them at risk of a Microsoft lawsuit. Even if they were found in court not to have infringed on
Microsoft's contract, the cost of the lawsuit would be enormous. Also, they could lose their jobs over any such dispute. It is
possible that the only real effect of Microsoft's shared source policy is to cripple an organization's best programmers,
so that they cannot work in any field in which Microsoft has an interest.
Microsoft's policy of allowing government programmers to see source code is not equivalent to having open
source code. A thorough review of the more than 40 million lines of source code in Windows XP is far more than even a government
can attempt. It would be easy for someone to hide spy instructions that could be controlled from outside. This is not unlikely.
The U.S. government's spy agencies, the CIA, NSA, and others, have an essentially unlimited amount of money. They can and do
exploit any method of spying. The U.S. government has bombed 14 countries in 35 years. Organizations should not assume that those
who think killing is a way of solving problems will suddenly become moral when they consider computer software.
We are not only moving toward Open Source, we are moving away
from closed source software. That's because closed source software
companies have become extraordinarily abusive. Anyone who wants to
avoid their abuse must stay away from their products.
I think the NZOSS book should include chapters about what is
driving people away from closed source software, as well as the
chapters about what is moving them toward Open Source software.
Mr. El Fakih's sloppiness is self-destructive. My comment has nothing to do with whether he is a nice guy. His success will depend on whether he is excellent at communicating his message.
Everything I said still stands. Ignore those pretending to be superior by sympathizing. Do you see that I am helping you by showing you the reaction you will get from visitors?
Your sites are sloppy. Everyone makes mistakes of this sort. However, you didn't hire an editor to find them.
Marketing is trying to create a connection between your companies and the outside world. You aren't doing that successfully.
You said, "when you pick on little things like this it hurts". That is an unprofessional reaction. Do you want to be successful or do you want to have realistic criticism?
By being sloppy, you are destroying your own chances.
Everyone wants some scheme like this to succeed. We need micropayments. You seem technically competent, but ignorant about how to become an important public figure, as you will be if your companies succeed.
The bottom of the Centipaid.com home
page says, "2002 c Copyright Centipaid.com, Adonis El Fakih." Is this
person "Adonis the faker"? Is this an elaborate joke?
The Centipaid.com Contact
Us page does not list a telephone number, only an address, email
addresses, and fax numbers. Would you trust your business to someone who won't
give you a telephone number?
The InternetStamps.net web site doesn't seem finished. At present, the Shipping & Returns page
says, "Put here your Shipping & Returns information."
The bottom of the InternetStamps.net page says, "1580 requests since Wednesday
27 November, 2002". These people are not good at marketing. If they were, they
would explain their service better.
The bottom of the InternetStamps.net page also says, "Copyright c 2002
osCommerce Powered by osCommerce". What is osCommerce? Yes, I can guess, but I
would like to be told definitively.
Whoever Adonis El Fakih is, English does not seem to be his first language.
The Services page says,
"For example you can decide to charge 1 cent to grant access for one day to
one section of your site, and , while another area will be 10 cents for a
week."
So, does Stabilant work? You paint the connector contacts and then you have no more trouble with bad contacts? Is there anything I should know about how it is used?
I said that I would like to read 50 more pages of the kind of analysis you wrote, and a moderator called that a troll. I want you to know that I am completely sincere. I feel I need the guidance. I'm not always sure I am picking the best tool for the job, and the cost of making a mistake can be very high.
The single biggest cause of problems in a computer system that was once stable is
bad connections. Just open up the case, pull out all connectors and adapter
cards a few millimeters, and push them back. That cleans the contacts.
People with mirrors and reflecting corner cubes would be dangerous for the Air Force. A aircraft flys by, fires its electromagnetic gun, the energy is reflected back, and Zap! all the electronics in the aircraft is gone and it crashes. The secret elements of the U.S. government don't mind a loss of $5,000,000 of the taxpayer's money. Even $5 billion is no problem for them.
A lot of these weapons don't actually work. They are only ways for the rich to get richer on lucrative government contracts.
Remember Pascal? At one time, Pascal was the major development
language. Pascal was taught at all the universities. But, an amazing thing
happened. In a period of about 4 years, Pascal died. Hundreds of thousands of
people had spent millions of hours learning the particular quirks of Pascal
and of Pascal compilers. All of that time was lost.
If you have never lived through the loss of a major direction in your life,
you may not even realize it can happen. The people saying I'm a troll in this
thread probably haven't seen technology die.
Remember Powerbuilder? At one time there were about 1.5 million active
Powerbuilder programmers.
No really, is Java dying? Now, I'm seeing, or think I'm seeing, the
same thing with Java. The expected energy and support and standards have not
appeared. Or have they? If I'm wrong, prove me wrong; I would like Java to be a
success, that would simplify my choices. We bet part of our lives on our choices of
specialization.
What frightens me is that there is so little support for GUIs in Java. When
programmers don't work to improve their tools, they are consciously or
unconsciously deciding that the technology does not warrant improvement.
I've seen Java programs that are unacceptably slow.
Sun mismanagement of Java makes people look elsewhere. The world is beginning
to realize more fully that proprietary means, "I'm a dog on a leash; I'll bark
whenever you yank my chain; please abuse me."
When you use Java, or any language in a way that is not fully compiled to native instructions, you give away
your source code. Sure, what you give away is without comments or variable
names, but nevertheless you may give away important routines. That's fine if
you intend to make a gift of your work to the world; you should have the
option not to do so. There has been surprisingly little work on full Java
compilers; until Java has acceptable compilers, it hasn't proven itself. Is
GCJ mature?
Visual Basic and Perl are written in C. Should it bother me about other languages that they are written in C or C++? Why not eliminate the middleman? Can an
acceptable result for application development be achieved using something like Boundschecker
and avoiding pointers and using automatic garbage collection where
appropriate?
Slashdot has a moderation problem. You can't comment on and moderate
the same story. So, moderators by definition moderate stories that don't
interest them much.
Bet wrong and go back to being a novice. As I write this, the parent
post has been moderated Flamebait=1, Insightful=1, Overrated=1, Total=3. The
question is a real and important one, not a troll. When you pick a technology,
you lose part of your quality of life if you are wrong; you go back to being a
novice at something else.
If you know better, educate me. If I'm wrong, and you know better, educate me. That's the entire purpose of
Ask Slashdot.
As usual, this thread has wandered pretty far from the original topic,
which is a shame considering that this is a fairly important issue for a lot
of people. I do actually have a little experience in this area, so here's what
I know that might help:
wxWindows: If you're going to stick to a C++
cross-platform application framework, I honestly believe this is the best
option. Most people don't seem to pay much attention to it, and many of those
who have were burned by bugs in earlier versions, but it's really starting to
come together in terms of both stability and functionality. I ported early
code for a pretty complex program from MFC to wxWindows within 2 months, which
impressed me considering that I wasn't familiar with either toolkit and that
was my first real use of C++.
I'm now doing a bit of work with wxPython, which
is also going pretty well.
The Mac port development tends to lag a bit behind
the others, but it has been (and is being) used to deliver several commercial
products, so it seems to be in usable condition; I haven't had a chance to
test it myself yet. By all means, please carefully consider this option; it
seems to be the most capable framework of it's type currently out there, has a
respectable number of users and developers, and will get even better with more
support.
CPLAT: Afraid I can't say anything as positive about this one; the
MFC project I mentioned above was itself a port from CPLAT. After 2 months of
development with CPLAT (ending January 2000), the developers unanimously
agreed that the framework was so buggy that it would be faster to write
separate versions of the program for MFC and PowerPlant. I believe there is
only one developer on the project; that simply isn't enough resources to
properly handle a framework of this magnitude. Whisper: We looked at this one
also, but it didn't have enough of the features we were looking for to be
worth trying. It also looked to be, like CPLAT, a one-man effort.
YAAF:
Another one we passed over after a brief glance. The web site didn't have much
information, and I don't see any indication that it's being used much. I may
have short-changed it, but I just don't see enough activity around it to
indicate a really good product.
GLUI: I haven't used this or looked too
closely at it yet. The lack of native widgets bothers me, though...
Carbonless
Copies: Hadn't heard of this before. The web site given above hasn't been
updated in a while, I haven't heard of many people using it, and it's a
proprietary program; I'd be inclined to avoid it.
Regarding some of the other
options people have suggested:
Java: While useful for some purposes,
cross-platform GUIs arguably isn't one of them. It's relatively easy to get a
Java GUI program to work cross-platform, but practically impossible to get it
to work well. AWT lacks major functionality. Swing is buggy and a *massive*
memory hog; don't even think about running Swing apps on computers with 32 MB
of RAM, and they're not terribly happy even with 64 MB. And Java in general is
lagging far behind on the Mac. Finally, it is a proprietary platform complete
with all of the problems that entails. I used to really like Java, but not
much progress has been made at solving some of it's critical deficiencies. I'm
now hoping Python can take it's place...
Mozilla: Mozilla is useful, but it's
deficiencies have been noted above; lack of native widgets, slow response time
to user input, etc. I look forward to using this for some projects, but it
isn't going to replace the need for a cross-platform C++ application
framework.
GTK+: Doesn't work on the Mac, and won't for some time to come.
Doesn't use native widgets on Windows, either (to my admittedly limited
knowledge.) I agree with the wxWindows approach; use GTK+ on Windows, use the
Windows API on Windows, and use the MacOS API on the Mac.
Qt: Again, doesn't
work on the Mac and doesn't use native widgets on Windows.
Tk: Doesn't have native look and feel, and last I checked has some
issues on MacOS. I've also gotten the impression that the widget selection
isn't as rich as that of wxWindows, although I haven't looked at it closely
enough to judge for myself.
On the topic of RAD tools; wxWindows does not yet have a usable RAD
tool, although the wxStudio IDE is under development and there is a working
dialog and panel editor.
wxPython has the Boa Constructor IDE which seems to be almost in
usable condition; it could also be argued that compared to using C++, even
manually writing Python code practically *is* a RAD environment. Hope this
successfully addresses some of the issues, and hope it isn't buried so far
down in the responses that it never gets noticed...
Slashdot Mirror
Moore's Law is not a law, and everyone knows it. Moore's law is just a way of expressing amazement at what we are able to achieve, rapidly.
'His words were both simple and devastating: when asked how the 64-bit Itanium, the new megaprocessor from Intel and Hewlett-Packard, would affect Google, Mr. Schmidt replied that it wouldn't. Google had no intention of buying the superchip. Rather, he said, the company intends to build its future servers with smaller, cheaper processors." '
The parent comment is correct, but the entire issue is confused. In a few years, the Itanium will be the cheapest processor available, and Google will be using it.
A patent only has meaning in the country in which it was issued.
From Microsoft's shared source policy is not equivalent to open source:
Good programmers are not willing to sign the non-competition and non-disclosure agreements that Microsoft requires. They fear that would put them at risk of a Microsoft lawsuit. Even if they were found in court not to have infringed on Microsoft's contract, the cost of the lawsuit would be enormous. Also, they could lose their jobs over any such dispute. It is possible that the only real effect of Microsoft's shared source policy is to cripple an organization's best programmers, so that they cannot work in any field in which Microsoft has an interest.
Microsoft's policy of allowing government programmers to see source code is not equivalent to having open source code. A thorough review of the more than 40 million lines of source code in Windows XP is far more than even a government can attempt. It would be easy for someone to hide spy instructions that could be controlled from outside. This is not unlikely. The U.S. government's spy agencies, the CIA, NSA, and others, have an essentially unlimited amount of money. They can and do exploit any method of spying. The U.S. government has bombed 14 countries in 35 years. Organizations should not assume that those who think killing is a way of solving problems will suddenly become moral when they consider computer software.
We are not only moving toward Open Source, we are moving away from closed source software. That's because closed source software companies have become extraordinarily abusive. Anyone who wants to avoid their abuse must stay away from their products.
See the article, Windows XP Shows the Direction Microsoft is Going, for documentation of Microsoft's abusive practices.
I think the NZOSS book should include chapters about what is driving people away from closed source software, as well as the chapters about what is moving them toward Open Source software.
Often it seems that Microsoft is not a software company that is sometimes abusive, but is an abuse company that sometimes supplies software.
For example, Microsoft keeps control describes ways in which Microsoft has made Windows XP more difficult for the customer.
Earlier on Slashdot today there was an article about Microsoft deliberately trying to sabotage the Opera browser.
See my comment #5216889 below.
Mr. El Fakih's sloppiness is self-destructive. My comment has nothing to do with whether he is a nice guy. His success will depend on whether he is excellent at communicating his message.
Adonis,
Everything I said still stands. Ignore those pretending to be superior by sympathizing. Do you see that I am helping you by showing you the reaction you will get from visitors?
Your sites are sloppy. Everyone makes mistakes of this sort. However, you didn't hire an editor to find them.
Marketing is trying to create a connection between your companies and the outside world. You aren't doing that successfully.
You said, "when you pick on little things like this it hurts". That is an unprofessional reaction. Do you want to be successful or do you want to have realistic criticism?
By being sloppy, you are destroying your own chances.
Everyone wants some scheme like this to succeed. We need micropayments. You seem technically competent, but ignorant about how to become an important public figure, as you will be if your companies succeed.
The bottom of the Centipaid.com home page says, "2002 c Copyright Centipaid.com, Adonis El Fakih." Is this person "Adonis the faker"? Is this an elaborate joke?
The Centipaid.com Contact Us page does not list a telephone number, only an address, email addresses, and fax numbers. Would you trust your business to someone who won't give you a telephone number?
Centipaid.com depends entirely on another company, InternetStamps.net.
The InternetStamps.net web site doesn't seem finished. At present, the Shipping & Returns page says, "Put here your Shipping & Returns information."
The bottom of the InternetStamps.net page says, "1580 requests since Wednesday 27 November, 2002". These people are not good at marketing. If they were, they would explain their service better.
The bottom of the InternetStamps.net page also says, "Copyright c 2002 osCommerce Powered by osCommerce". What is osCommerce? Yes, I can guess, but I would like to be told definitively.
Whoever Adonis El Fakih is, English does not seem to be his first language. The Services page says, "For example you can decide to charge 1 cent to grant access for one day to one section of your site, and , while another area will be 10 cents for a week."
What is "and
Why the very long page load times?
Don't they have hidden charges? Bigzoo.com charges 75 cents per month to new customers.
Needs emphasis --
Bigzoo.com: 2.9 cents per minute inside the U.S., 4.4 cents per minute to France from the U.S. Sound quality perfect. Honest company.
So, does Stabilant work? You paint the connector contacts and then you have no more trouble with bad contacts? Is there anything I should know about how it is used?
I understand that Stabilant is a good product; I 've never used it. However, it has the world's worst web site.
Remember, this story applies only when the attacker knows the method of encryption, and there is only one method of encryption.
zefnd,
I said that I would like to read 50 more pages of the kind of analysis you wrote, and a moderator called that a troll. I want you to know that I am completely sincere. I feel I need the guidance. I'm not always sure I am picking the best tool for the job, and the cost of making a mistake can be very high.
The single biggest cause of problems in a computer system that was once stable is bad connections. Just open up the case, pull out all connectors and adapter cards a few millimeters, and push them back. That cleans the contacts.
Gold on a metal substrate is a good mirror for everything, not just microwaves.
People with mirrors and reflecting corner cubes would be dangerous for the Air Force. A aircraft flys by, fires its electromagnetic gun, the energy is reflected back, and Zap! all the electronics in the aircraft is gone and it crashes. The secret elements of the U.S. government don't mind a loss of $5,000,000 of the taxpayer's money. Even $5 billion is no problem for them.
A lot of these weapons don't actually work. They are only ways for the rich to get richer on lucrative government contracts.
More on this subject in What should be the Response to Violence? .
You said, "I hope the reply wasn't too long."
I'd be happy to read 50 more pages like you wrote.
Remember Pascal? At one time, Pascal was the major development language. Pascal was taught at all the universities. But, an amazing thing happened. In a period of about 4 years, Pascal died. Hundreds of thousands of people had spent millions of hours learning the particular quirks of Pascal and of Pascal compilers. All of that time was lost.
If you have never lived through the loss of a major direction in your life, you may not even realize it can happen. The people saying I'm a troll in this thread probably haven't seen technology die.
Remember Powerbuilder? At one time there were about 1.5 million active Powerbuilder programmers.
No really, is Java dying? Now, I'm seeing, or think I'm seeing, the same thing with Java. The expected energy and support and standards have not appeared. Or have they? If I'm wrong, prove me wrong; I would like Java to be a success, that would simplify my choices. We bet part of our lives on our choices of specialization.
What frightens me is that there is so little support for GUIs in Java. When programmers don't work to improve their tools, they are consciously or unconsciously deciding that the technology does not warrant improvement.
I've seen Java programs that are unacceptably slow.
Sun mismanagement of Java makes people look elsewhere. The world is beginning to realize more fully that proprietary means, "I'm a dog on a leash; I'll bark whenever you yank my chain; please abuse me."
When you use Java, or any language in a way that is not fully compiled to native instructions, you give away your source code. Sure, what you give away is without comments or variable names, but nevertheless you may give away important routines. That's fine if you intend to make a gift of your work to the world; you should have the option not to do so. There has been surprisingly little work on full Java compilers; until Java has acceptable compilers, it hasn't proven itself. Is GCJ mature?
Visual Basic and Perl are written in C. Should it bother me about other languages that they are written in C or C++? Why not eliminate the middleman? Can an acceptable result for application development be achieved using something like Boundschecker and avoiding pointers and using automatic garbage collection where appropriate?
Slashdot has a moderation problem. You can't comment on and moderate the same story. So, moderators by definition moderate stories that don't interest them much.
Bet wrong and go back to being a novice. As I write this, the parent post has been moderated Flamebait=1, Insightful=1, Overrated=1, Total=3. The question is a real and important one, not a troll. When you pick a technology, you lose part of your quality of life if you are wrong; you go back to being a novice at something else.
If you know better, educate me. If I'm wrong, and you know better, educate me. That's the entire purpose of Ask Slashdot.
Can you post a link to a non-commercial license for Qt? I can't find it.
I reformatted the parent post. No other changes:
As usual, this thread has wandered pretty far from the original topic, which is a shame considering that this is a fairly important issue for a lot of people. I do actually have a little experience in this area, so here's what I know that might help:
wxWindows: If you're going to stick to a C++ cross-platform application framework, I honestly believe this is the best option. Most people don't seem to pay much attention to it, and many of those who have were burned by bugs in earlier versions, but it's really starting to come together in terms of both stability and functionality. I ported early code for a pretty complex program from MFC to wxWindows within 2 months, which impressed me considering that I wasn't familiar with either toolkit and that was my first real use of C++.
I'm now doing a bit of work with wxPython, which is also going pretty well.
The Mac port development tends to lag a bit behind the others, but it has been (and is being) used to deliver several commercial products, so it seems to be in usable condition; I haven't had a chance to test it myself yet. By all means, please carefully consider this option; it seems to be the most capable framework of it's type currently out there, has a respectable number of users and developers, and will get even better with more support.
CPLAT: Afraid I can't say anything as positive about this one; the MFC project I mentioned above was itself a port from CPLAT. After 2 months of development with CPLAT (ending January 2000), the developers unanimously agreed that the framework was so buggy that it would be faster to write separate versions of the program for MFC and PowerPlant. I believe there is only one developer on the project; that simply isn't enough resources to properly handle a framework of this magnitude. Whisper: We looked at this one also, but it didn't have enough of the features we were looking for to be worth trying. It also looked to be, like CPLAT, a one-man effort.
YAAF: Another one we passed over after a brief glance. The web site didn't have much information, and I don't see any indication that it's being used much. I may have short-changed it, but I just don't see enough activity around it to indicate a really good product.
GLUI: I haven't used this or looked too closely at it yet. The lack of native widgets bothers me, though...
Carbonless Copies: Hadn't heard of this before. The web site given above hasn't been updated in a while, I haven't heard of many people using it, and it's a proprietary program; I'd be inclined to avoid it.
Regarding some of the other options people have suggested:
Java: While useful for some purposes, cross-platform GUIs arguably isn't one of them. It's relatively easy to get a Java GUI program to work cross-platform, but practically impossible to get it to work well. AWT lacks major functionality. Swing is buggy and a *massive* memory hog; don't even think about running Swing apps on computers with 32 MB of RAM, and they're not terribly happy even with 64 MB. And Java in general is lagging far behind on the Mac. Finally, it is a proprietary platform complete with all of the problems that entails. I used to really like Java, but not much progress has been made at solving some of it's critical deficiencies. I'm now hoping Python can take it's place...
Mozilla: Mozilla is useful, but it's deficiencies have been noted above; lack of native widgets, slow response time to user input, etc. I look forward to using this for some projects, but it isn't going to replace the need for a cross-platform C++ application framework.
GTK+: Doesn't work on the Mac, and won't for some time to come. Doesn't use native widgets on Windows, either (to my admittedly limited knowledge.) I agree with the wxWindows approach; use GTK+ on Windows, use the Windows API on Windows, and use the MacOS API on the Mac.
Qt: Again, doesn't work on the Mac and doesn't use native widgets on Windows.
Tk: Doesn't have native look and feel, and last I checked has some issues on MacOS. I've also gotten the impression that the widget selection isn't as rich as that of wxWindows, although I haven't looked at it closely enough to judge for myself.
On the topic of RAD tools; wxWindows does not yet have a usable RAD tool, although the wxStudio IDE is under development and there is a working dialog and panel editor.
wxPython has the Boa Constructor IDE which seems to be almost in usable condition; it could also be argued that compared to using C++, even manually writing Python code practically *is* a RAD environment. Hope this successfully addresses some of the issues, and hope it isn't buried so far down in the responses that it never gets noticed...
Mono and GTK can be compiled to native binary, eliminating the possibility that exists with Java of easily seeing the underlying coding.
One person's analysis and comparison of GUI toolkits: Why this GPL programmer didn't choose