That research is flawed. It sounds like a high school project more than anything college related. This would be the equivalent of saying, we had a group that did not cross the street and one that crossed the street, therefore we conclude that people who cross the street will feel successful. The article doesn't even mention what they were asked afterwards, but hey, as the media have done in the past, if they say they have WMDs they have WMDs, screw the sources.
Open development? Sure they provide the Windows SDK for free, and surely enough you can get gcc or Visual C++ Express to program in C. But try to do a professional application using only the Win32 API and you will spend years and end up with very messy code. Either you have to use Microsoft's MFC or ATL which are not free, or some other open source library like Win32++, SmartWin or wxWindows that are not part of the OS in the first place. Now compare this situation with Linux and Mac OS X. We all know in Linux almost everything is open source so it's a no-brainer there, but in Mac OS X, being commercial, you get Xcode for free and a very cool set of libraries that allows you to develop in a relatively modern programming language like Objective-C without any third-party libraries.
"Instead it's is a case of metonomy"
I'm no linguist but I'm pretty sure that's incorrect. That aside, very well written post:), you sure you aren't a guy carrying a Guy Fawkes mask?
I think I'll stick with my iPhone, four versions already and I haven't had to deal with crap like that. Call Apple the mother of all evils if you want but they at least work their ass off so you don't have to.
Agreed, but still that's no reason to keep the production going. It's like trying to keep CRTs alive because certain high-end monitors were way better than current LCDs.
You do make a good point with the patents though, but hey, you have to give credit where credit is due. Innovation is what keeps us going even if it is propietary.
Actually they are building new plants, it's just that they can't keep up with the demand. Part of the problem was lack of enough investment in infrastructure over the years, and also very cheap electricity anywhere. We are an energy-rich nation mainly through oil and gas, and that means people waste a lot of electricity and energy in general. You pay around 2 dollars to get gas for your SUV here and most people have A/C units that are old an inefficient, so you get the idea why it is important to promote a culture of using your resources wisely.
Seriously, judging by the comments I wonder how many people actually read the article. This paragraph should put people's doubts at rest:
"He expects all Americans would back the law if they knew it does not ban incandescents but simply requires them to be more efficient. So the old-fashioned 100-watt bulb, which U.S. companies cannot make after Jan. 2012, will be replaced by a halogen version that produces the same light, as measured in lumens, but uses only 72 watts of electricity."
You seriously believe that there won't be alternatives for specialized applications? Every single day somebody wakes up trying to make money by building something, so I'm pretty sure your needs will be covered in no time.
You are saving money because they use less electricity. Get a Kill-a-watt device to see for yourself and multiply the number the device gives (after you convert it to kWH) with whatever they charge you for kWH.
The issue with CFLs is not about choice but environmental and electricity generation issues. You are free to spend your money in whatever you like, but here in Venezuela the government created a replacement program where you would trade in your incandescent light bulbs and also get new CFL as long as you brought the damaged CFL, and it has been wildly successful. They replaced around 50 million light bulbs and saved 1750 MW of electricity.
Fighting against a law like that is not about fighting for freedom of choice, it's just fighting for irresponsible behaviour.
Actually, you are the perfect example why this kind of things need to be enforced sometimes. Has it ocurred to you that the reason pipes freeze in the first place is because of water in it. If you are going to be away from that place just close the main water valve and then open all your faucets connected to that pipe. Also insulating the pipe will work wonders instead of wasting electricity like you are doing at the moment.
Yeah, definitely Blizzard is not a reference here. Blizzard used to be a top-notch quality developer, but some of the stuff they did previous to the release of Cataclysm was downright outrageous, especially if you consider you are paying monthly for that stuff. Oh, and don't forget those maintenance days where you don't get to play but still get charged the same fee over and over.
Blizzard still has cool graphics and ideas in their games, but that Activision partnership or whatever it is that made them forget their "no release till ready" rule, really sucks.
"Craigslist has become almost synonymous with crime."
Yes, it is a crime to be able to find a place to live without the usual crap. Please bring back the apartment gu
Apple just didn't like the fact that Flash was charging them a premium to use their plugin, plus the fact that Flash could be used to bypass their business model with the App Store. I don't see it as a vice per se, it was just a business decision by Apple, then we got "informed" of it by some crazy Steve Jobs stunt, and then it was business as usual in the Apple world.
Nobody should support Flash because your web access shouldn't be restricted by any company, call it Microsoft, Adobe or Apple. By having this model where they charge certain people or business for the viewer plugin they are breaking that innocent view of "oh, we just charge for the content generation". Besides, Flash only adds video and vector graphics, and breaks web browsing in the process since you can't select text, create application that scan text from a site and just requires a fast cpu to display properly. Vector graphics was a novelty the first time I saw it but I see it more as a gimmick than a real feature, and web video is where Flash really shines, and then again, we all should be using a standard for that, or at the very least have options like we had with RealPlayer, Windows Media and Quicktime. Java was perfectly positioned to solve the web video issue, but for some reason it didn't catch up.
What makes you think that a browser will render all of its HTML 5 components in the same thread? If anything, all new code is going to be heavily multithreaded with the upcoming 10-core processors.
I believe it's a good idea and frankly I'm surprised with all the conservative comments to preserve the status quo. Even if you don't like it, give it a try and we'll see. There were some things in the past that I flat out refused on paper, but when you get to experience it everyday, changes your perception a lot. The iPhone did this in my case. I'll look forward to try this new Chrome feature.
State's nuclear weapons program? You should really stop repeating what the media feeds you. The US govt and Israel are pushing that agenda but to this day there is no proof whatsoever to that claim.
Terrorism, according to the UN: "Criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or any other nature that may be invoked to justify them"
Believe it or not, I downloaded their SDK for the N97 two days before the news piece came out. First off, you have to patch the included arm-gcc to use it under anything greater than Windows XP, and then you get the wonderful incentive of just wasting your time in technology that is going to get thrown away. After getting the impression I was using beta software instead of a commercial SDK, I really believe that Nokia had it coming. iPhone, Android and Blackberry are better overall platforms.
Maybe the deal won't be so bad for Nokia after all, since all they really had was excellent hardware but lackluster software. This way they get to excel at what they do best, the cell phone itself. Also choosing Android instead of WP7 would have been wiser IMHO, considering that it is the only real rival to Apple's App Store.
The Russians thought the same with their advanced military technology until they discovered the Chinese are pretty clever at copying stuff, so they decided to to stop those sales before being left in the dust.
You need to read more about cloud computing before making such strange comments. Cloud computing is like a Beowulf cluster on steroids and if you think it's just the latest fad, go to the Amazon Web Services site and see if you can build that kind of stuff with a traditional setup. The cloud is creating so many changes that even SQL databases will be going the way of the dodo. Go look at the Netflix tech blogs to understand the kind of abilities that companies will need from engineers 5 years from now on.
Slashdot Mirror
That research is flawed. It sounds like a high school project more than anything college related. This would be the equivalent of saying, we had a group that did not cross the street and one that crossed the street, therefore we conclude that people who cross the street will feel successful. The article doesn't even mention what they were asked afterwards, but hey, as the media have done in the past, if they say they have WMDs they have WMDs, screw the sources.
Open development? Sure they provide the Windows SDK for free, and surely enough you can get gcc or Visual C++ Express to program in C. But try to do a professional application using only the Win32 API and you will spend years and end up with very messy code. Either you have to use Microsoft's MFC or ATL which are not free, or some other open source library like Win32++, SmartWin or wxWindows that are not part of the OS in the first place. Now compare this situation with Linux and Mac OS X. We all know in Linux almost everything is open source so it's a no-brainer there, but in Mac OS X, being commercial, you get Xcode for free and a very cool set of libraries that allows you to develop in a relatively modern programming language like Objective-C without any third-party libraries.
I was able to get the SDK for the N97 for free, so I don't know what you are talking about.
"Instead it's is a case of metonomy" I'm no linguist but I'm pretty sure that's incorrect. That aside, very well written post :), you sure you aren't a guy carrying a Guy Fawkes mask?
I think I'll stick with my iPhone, four versions already and I haven't had to deal with crap like that. Call Apple the mother of all evils if you want but they at least work their ass off so you don't have to.
Agreed, but still that's no reason to keep the production going. It's like trying to keep CRTs alive because certain high-end monitors were way better than current LCDs. You do make a good point with the patents though, but hey, you have to give credit where credit is due. Innovation is what keeps us going even if it is propietary.
Actually they are building new plants, it's just that they can't keep up with the demand. Part of the problem was lack of enough investment in infrastructure over the years, and also very cheap electricity anywhere. We are an energy-rich nation mainly through oil and gas, and that means people waste a lot of electricity and energy in general. You pay around 2 dollars to get gas for your SUV here and most people have A/C units that are old an inefficient, so you get the idea why it is important to promote a culture of using your resources wisely.
Greedy bastards. Just suck it up like everybody else is doing it these days.
Seriously, judging by the comments I wonder how many people actually read the article. This paragraph should put people's doubts at rest: "He expects all Americans would back the law if they knew it does not ban incandescents but simply requires them to be more efficient. So the old-fashioned 100-watt bulb, which U.S. companies cannot make after Jan. 2012, will be replaced by a halogen version that produces the same light, as measured in lumens, but uses only 72 watts of electricity."
You seriously believe that there won't be alternatives for specialized applications? Every single day somebody wakes up trying to make money by building something, so I'm pretty sure your needs will be covered in no time.
You are saving money because they use less electricity. Get a Kill-a-watt device to see for yourself and multiply the number the device gives (after you convert it to kWH) with whatever they charge you for kWH.
The issue with CFLs is not about choice but environmental and electricity generation issues. You are free to spend your money in whatever you like, but here in Venezuela the government created a replacement program where you would trade in your incandescent light bulbs and also get new CFL as long as you brought the damaged CFL, and it has been wildly successful. They replaced around 50 million light bulbs and saved 1750 MW of electricity. Fighting against a law like that is not about fighting for freedom of choice, it's just fighting for irresponsible behaviour.
Actually, you are the perfect example why this kind of things need to be enforced sometimes. Has it ocurred to you that the reason pipes freeze in the first place is because of water in it. If you are going to be away from that place just close the main water valve and then open all your faucets connected to that pipe. Also insulating the pipe will work wonders instead of wasting electricity like you are doing at the moment.
Yeah, definitely Blizzard is not a reference here. Blizzard used to be a top-notch quality developer, but some of the stuff they did previous to the release of Cataclysm was downright outrageous, especially if you consider you are paying monthly for that stuff. Oh, and don't forget those maintenance days where you don't get to play but still get charged the same fee over and over. Blizzard still has cool graphics and ideas in their games, but that Activision partnership or whatever it is that made them forget their "no release till ready" rule, really sucks.
"Craigslist has become almost synonymous with crime." Yes, it is a crime to be able to find a place to live without the usual crap. Please bring back the apartment gu
Apple just didn't like the fact that Flash was charging them a premium to use their plugin, plus the fact that Flash could be used to bypass their business model with the App Store. I don't see it as a vice per se, it was just a business decision by Apple, then we got "informed" of it by some crazy Steve Jobs stunt, and then it was business as usual in the Apple world. Nobody should support Flash because your web access shouldn't be restricted by any company, call it Microsoft, Adobe or Apple. By having this model where they charge certain people or business for the viewer plugin they are breaking that innocent view of "oh, we just charge for the content generation". Besides, Flash only adds video and vector graphics, and breaks web browsing in the process since you can't select text, create application that scan text from a site and just requires a fast cpu to display properly. Vector graphics was a novelty the first time I saw it but I see it more as a gimmick than a real feature, and web video is where Flash really shines, and then again, we all should be using a standard for that, or at the very least have options like we had with RealPlayer, Windows Media and Quicktime. Java was perfectly positioned to solve the web video issue, but for some reason it didn't catch up.
What makes you think that a browser will render all of its HTML 5 components in the same thread? If anything, all new code is going to be heavily multithreaded with the upcoming 10-core processors.
I believe it's a good idea and frankly I'm surprised with all the conservative comments to preserve the status quo. Even if you don't like it, give it a try and we'll see. There were some things in the past that I flat out refused on paper, but when you get to experience it everyday, changes your perception a lot. The iPhone did this in my case. I'll look forward to try this new Chrome feature.
"she said she's optimistic the US government can find incentives for companies" Dammit, time to open my Yandex.ru e-mail account I guess.
You are an a-hole. I don't find this funny at all.
State's nuclear weapons program? You should really stop repeating what the media feeds you. The US govt and Israel are pushing that agenda but to this day there is no proof whatsoever to that claim. Terrorism, according to the UN: "Criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or any other nature that may be invoked to justify them"
Yet I don't see anybody complaining that much about Israel, so what's your point?
Believe it or not, I downloaded their SDK for the N97 two days before the news piece came out. First off, you have to patch the included arm-gcc to use it under anything greater than Windows XP, and then you get the wonderful incentive of just wasting your time in technology that is going to get thrown away. After getting the impression I was using beta software instead of a commercial SDK, I really believe that Nokia had it coming. iPhone, Android and Blackberry are better overall platforms. Maybe the deal won't be so bad for Nokia after all, since all they really had was excellent hardware but lackluster software. This way they get to excel at what they do best, the cell phone itself. Also choosing Android instead of WP7 would have been wiser IMHO, considering that it is the only real rival to Apple's App Store.
The Russians thought the same with their advanced military technology until they discovered the Chinese are pretty clever at copying stuff, so they decided to to stop those sales before being left in the dust.
You need to read more about cloud computing before making such strange comments. Cloud computing is like a Beowulf cluster on steroids and if you think it's just the latest fad, go to the Amazon Web Services site and see if you can build that kind of stuff with a traditional setup. The cloud is creating so many changes that even SQL databases will be going the way of the dodo. Go look at the Netflix tech blogs to understand the kind of abilities that companies will need from engineers 5 years from now on.