Such a transparent attempt to kill Net Neutrality, when all we as user want is: It's our pipe. We pay for it. So let us decide how we want to utilize our paid-for bandwidth. And don't make it our problem that you have oversold your system capacity by hundreds of times!
Absolutely. And if they actually do need to limit bandwidth (which shouldn't be the normal state, but say they're doing maintenance or something and have reduced capacity), then just do it on a content-neutral basis. It shouldn't matter whether I'm downloading a file over HTTP from a single site, or over Bittorrent from multiple peers.
I've heard these arguments over and over, saying you're more productive doesn't really mean much.
It means quite a bit to me, although I'll grant it's difficult to put an objective number on.
what it really means is you know python better than you know java
Well, as I said I've been writing Java for more than 10 years and Python less than 2. I used to be in the static typing camp, figuring that mass chaos would ensue if you didn't religiously inform the compiler of the type of every variable. In practice, I've found there are many benefits and few costs.
The differences between the Python code and Java code sample are really pretty small, tooling will fix most of it, in Idea or Eclipse it will auto populate most of those key strokes for you
The problem isn't the keystrokes when first typing it. The problem is the mental shift between levels of abstraction, which happens both when you initially write it and when you subsequently read it. It lumps together code that describes the essential purpose of the algorithm with code that only exists because the language isn't sufficiently expressive.
Where it seems to matter if you ask me is in C and C++ where there are pages and pages of definitions included and boiler plate included just to use libraries, compare a C GTK+ pop-up dialog to a Java swing popup dialog and there is a verbosity argument.
Right, we're just drawing the line in different places. Personally I don't like loops in general; I find most of the time they're a low-level distraction from what I really want to do, and a frequent source of silly bugs (off by 1 in the indices, using the wrong local variable inside the loop, etc). I'm even slightly annoyed by the "for e in employees" implicit loop in the Python list comprehension. I'd prefer something like a "select" method like the C# code above. (Although that would require improving Python's lambda syntax, which Guido doesn't want to do. But I digress).
Also I don't think you can really label Java as "verbose" when it shares mostly the same the syntax as C++ and C# (unless you assume those to be verbose too).
I do. Simple example: given a list of employees, find the ones with salary above a given limit. Python: emps = [e for e in employees if e.salary>limit]
Java: List emps = new ArrayList(); for(Employee e : employees) {
if (e.salary()>limit) {
emps.add(e);
} } And that's assuming that employees has the right template declaration, otherwise I have to cast. Yes, it's only a couple of lines difference, but that can be multiplied by hundreds over the course of a program. More importantly, having to wade through the Java boilerplate can easily disrupt my flow. The Python very closely matches my internal thought process..."ok, I need the employees with salary above the limit...e in employees if e.salary>limit...done, what next". Java forces me to go down a level and manually create and populate the list. (And the pre-1.5 version is even worse, since you have to create and manage an irrelevant Iterator). By the time I'm done with that the real problem I'm trying to solve may have gotten swapped out of my brain's working set. I find myself substantially more productive in Python, and I've had few cases of nontrivial typing bugs due to dynamic typing. Most typing bugs are trivial; they fail immediately upon running and it's easy to see where.
I'd be interested to see a breakdown of static vs dynamic advocates and Myers-Briggs personality types. I suspect Ps like me go for dynamic, and Js for static.
But anything involving Python is going to presume that a compatible interpreter is installed on every system that hosts it.
py2exe and py2app can help there, although I'm in the process of dealing with their poor support for eggs.
Re:Skill and not language used?
on
The Return of Ada
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
That extra security/straightjacket can mean it works right the first time.
Or not. I'm not quite sure why, but my Python code has a significantly higher frequency of working right the first time than my Java code, and that's after developing in Java for 10 years and Python for less than 2. My theory is that it Java's static typing and verbosity consumes a portion of my mental energy that makes it harder to focus on the actual algorithm.
All that vulnerable client-side code (image libraries, HTML parser, etc.) would be immune to buffer overflows if it were in Ada.
Or Java, C#, Python, or anything else that doesn't allow stomping on arbitrary memory locations. C is the exception in terms of how badly and easily you can shoot yourself in the foot, yet for some reason we keep using it in scenarios where security and reliability are much more important than performance.
That totally happened..... oh wait, it didn't! So now Adobe is caught with their pants down and doesn't want to admit it, despite Apple saying "You're not supposed to use Carbon anymore!" for years.
Except that's not what Apple had been saying. They've always encouraged developers to use Cocoa for new apps (mainly because it's almost always more productive), but never said that you needed to rewrite your existing Carbon apps. Furthermore, they specifically said that 64-bit Carbon would be available in Leopard, and shipped it on developer releases, which undoubtedly led many developers down what turned out to be a blind alley. If Apple had officially put Carbon in maintenance mode with Tiger or earlier, there would be a lot fewer complaints.
I'm sure adobe was waiting for Apple to finally provide c++ bindings for Cocoa. It probably will happen eventually.
It won't, unless C++ changes significantly. The fundamental issue is that Cocoa needs to be able to call arbitrary methods on arbitrary objects when both are determined at runtime (see the NSObject "performSelector" method). As far as I know C++ can't do that.
Apple refuses to provide C++ bindings for Cocoa. You want to write a cocoa app, you have to use Objective-C.
Or Python or Ruby or Perl or Lisp. Cocoa requires a reasonably dynamic language and C++ doesn't make the cut. (Yes, Turing equivalence, but you'd end up essentially recreating the ObjC runtime in C++ which would give you the worst of both worlds).
Basically Apple is asking Adobe to rewrite photoshop from scratch. It will never happen.
They "only" have to rewrite the UI portions, which is certainly a major undertaking but they're going to do it.
I would say Apple's products are often better because it offers better control over your experience. That's why it "just works," and why DIY FOSS does not. There are great advantages to open ended freedom, but there are drawbacks too. Most people don't want a car that forces them to do daily maintenance on it for it to work.
This is the fundamental false dichotomy that Apple's defenders always end up at. There's no reason why a system can't be both simple for nontechnical users and powerful in the hands of advanced users; Mac OS X achieves exactly that. 9 years ago many Mac users were horrified that OS X was going to ship with a command line, which would inevitably result in developers abandoning the Mac UI and forcing us all to become Unix experts. Obviously that didn't happen; normal users never have to touch the command line, but for experts and geeks it's extremely valuable. Likewise, there are 3 main categories of potential iPhone users:
1. "It's a phone and it has to work every time": don't install any extra apps, and no worries. 2. "Maybe some games and utilities would be cool, but I don't want to break it": get all your apps from Apple's store (yes, the store itself is a good idea, the only problem is prohibiting alternate channels). 3. "It's a handheld Unix computer": all Apple has to do here is allow the option of running unsigned code, off by default of course. They don't have to support it, and they can require that you restore to factory settings before getting it serviced.
Those of us in group 3 have no problem coexisting with groups 1 and 2, but for some reason the reverse is often not the case.
Every unlocked phone deprives Apple of a large chunk of potential revenue from the sale of its device in the form of monthly cash payments.
Assuming that the purchaser would have still bought the iPhone even if she couldn't unlock it. That's unlikely in most cases, and impossible in nations that don't have official iPhone carriers. "Losses" due to iPhone unlocking are even less plausible than the inflated "losses" from software piracy.
Apple's continued invocation of the Herculean nature of its visual voicemail is a marketing smokescreen designed to convince its more fannish customers that bedding down with the telcos comes from necessity, not avarice.
True. They've developed a disturbing habit of justifying anti-consumer policies with BS. See also: "we can't allow unsigned apps because they could take down the cell network".
A simple XML query once every 5 minutes is enough to drain the battery in just 4 hours.
It isn't remotely plausible that 48 ordinary network requests can drain the battery. If that were the case, using Safari would be impossible. Either the numbers are way off (I could believe 5 seconds) or those queries are far from "simple".
Apple said they will allow free apps to be distributed
True, and Apple also has to approve everything before it's available. So if EA releases a popular Sudoku game or something at $10 (giving Apple $3 per sale), are they going to be motivated to approve a free alternative? Whether or not Apple plans on behaving like that (and to be clear, there's no evidence that they are), the potential for anti-competitive and user-hostile actions is quite large.
When you jailbreak an iPhone or iPod Touch, most (if not all) tools install an SSH server to let them do their stuff. This SSH server stays on by default. If not turned off, it runs the battery down in a few hours, instead of a few days.
My jailbroken iPhone and its full battery after 24 hours disagrees. It's Unix after all; server processes take virtually zero CPU unless you're actively using them.
What Apple should do is add a network-connected notification to the API. Say the user connects to the network in another app. The iPhone should wake up other apps that have registered themselves for this notification, allow them to download a reasonable amount of data, notify the user of new IMs or tweets or whatever, and shut them back down.
Interesting idea, although it could actually lead to more battery drain if a bunch of apps keep launching and quitting.
Sorry, but 17 USC 117 says that owning the binary copy already grants me the right to install and use the software.
I've been saying that for years, and I'm still baffled that EULAs haven't been laughed out of court. Apparently you don't actually "own" a copy because the EULA says that you're only licensing it, therefore you have to agree to it in order to run the software, even though if the EULA didn't exist there would be no need for one. Somehow a smart lawyer got a stupid judge to buy into this legal version of quantum tunneling, and now software publishers can effectively write their own laws.
On the third hand, the Mac mini itself makes a fine Ubuntu system, especially if you're specifically looking for an SFF box. Depending on configuration a Koala might be cheaper, but if the mini is updated soon it should reclaim the advantage.
A couple months later, Apple had a 'revelation' and switched to Intel based chips, and Adobe continued development on Mac compatible software.
That seems odd, got a source? If anything, the switch to Intel increased the amount of work Adobe had to do, by making them migrate from CodeWarrior to Xcode.
And yes, I remember college instructors telling me how fast/better Apple products were for video editing with IBM processors, compared to the 'slow' Intel chips in PC's. They quickly changed their tune when Apple's marketing told them to; Now 5-time's faster!
Well, there was an interval where PPC really was faster. The G3 in particular was far superior to the Pentium II. Sadly at the time Macs were crippled with a technically obsolete OS that couldn't properly take advantage of the CPU power. Core was nail in the coffin for PPC; faster than the G5 per cycle, and it could go into laptops where it crushed the G4.
This is an issue that both liberals and conservatives should be united on.
Exactly. As a conservative/libertarian (not to be confused with the current White House occupants), I despise DRM because it's an assault on real property rights. It means that I own my computer only in the sense that I paid for it. The Cato Institute has an excellent analysis here.
Javascript is a decent language by itself. It's the obtuse DOM and the eleventy billion browser incompatibilities that make it appear to suck; no language could look good under those conditions.
It's a device that can make phone calls, amongst other functionality. My Power Mac 7500 was making and receiving phone calls 10 years ago; that didn't transform it into a single-purpose appliance that would crash and burn if I did anything else with it.
Also, the iPod touch is not a phone.
It is NOT a general purpose computer.
Why not? It runs Unix, and its API looks a whole lot like that for Mac OS X. Apple may not want you to think of it as a computer, but objectively speaking it is.
Most people who bought or will buy this expensive gadget want a phone first of all and want that to work as reliably as any other phone at LEAST.
And yet if there's any way to run apps not approved by Apple, these same people who insist on reliability above all else will be stampeding to download malware-infested porn apps from the Elbonian mafia?
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Such a transparent attempt to kill Net Neutrality, when all we as user want is: It's our pipe. We pay for it. So let us decide how we want to utilize our paid-for bandwidth. And don't make it our problem that you have oversold your system capacity by hundreds of times!
Absolutely. And if they actually do need to limit bandwidth (which shouldn't be the normal state, but say they're doing maintenance or something and have reduced capacity), then just do it on a content-neutral basis. It shouldn't matter whether I'm downloading a file over HTTP from a single site, or over Bittorrent from multiple peers.
I've heard these arguments over and over, saying you're more productive doesn't really mean much.
It means quite a bit to me, although I'll grant it's difficult to put an objective number on.
what it really means is you know python better than you know java
Well, as I said I've been writing Java for more than 10 years and Python less than 2. I used to be in the static typing camp, figuring that mass chaos would ensue if you didn't religiously inform the compiler of the type of every variable. In practice, I've found there are many benefits and few costs.
The differences between the Python code and Java code sample are really pretty small, tooling will fix most of it, in Idea or Eclipse it will auto populate most of those key strokes for you
The problem isn't the keystrokes when first typing it. The problem is the mental shift between levels of abstraction, which happens both when you initially write it and when you subsequently read it. It lumps together code that describes the essential purpose of the algorithm with code that only exists because the language isn't sufficiently expressive.
Where it seems to matter if you ask me is in C and C++ where there are pages and pages of definitions included and boiler plate included just to use libraries, compare a C GTK+ pop-up dialog to a Java swing popup dialog and there is a verbosity argument.
Right, we're just drawing the line in different places. Personally I don't like loops in general; I find most of the time they're a low-level distraction from what I really want to do, and a frequent source of silly bugs (off by 1 in the indices, using the wrong local variable inside the loop, etc). I'm even slightly annoyed by the "for e in employees" implicit loop in the Python list comprehension. I'd prefer something like a "select" method like the C# code above. (Although that would require improving Python's lambda syntax, which Guido doesn't want to do. But I digress).
Also I don't think you can really label Java as "verbose" when it shares mostly the same the syntax as C++ and C# (unless you assume those to be verbose too).
I do. Simple example: given a list of employees, find the ones with salary above a given limit.
Python:
emps = [e for e in employees if e.salary>limit]
Java:
List emps = new ArrayList();
for(Employee e : employees) {
if (e.salary()>limit) {
emps.add(e);
}
}
And that's assuming that employees has the right template declaration, otherwise I have to cast. Yes, it's only a couple of lines difference, but that can be multiplied by hundreds over the course of a program. More importantly, having to wade through the Java boilerplate can easily disrupt my flow. The Python very closely matches my internal thought process..."ok, I need the employees with salary above the limit...e in employees if e.salary>limit...done, what next". Java forces me to go down a level and manually create and populate the list. (And the pre-1.5 version is even worse, since you have to create and manage an irrelevant Iterator). By the time I'm done with that the real problem I'm trying to solve may have gotten swapped out of my brain's working set. I find myself substantially more productive in Python, and I've had few cases of nontrivial typing bugs due to dynamic typing. Most typing bugs are trivial; they fail immediately upon running and it's easy to see where.
I'd be interested to see a breakdown of static vs dynamic advocates and Myers-Briggs personality types. I suspect Ps like me go for dynamic, and Js for static.
Points aren't awarded for how few lines you can get away with.
Lines you don't have to write don't have bugs.
But anything involving Python is going to presume that a compatible interpreter is installed on every system that hosts it.
py2exe and py2app can help there, although I'm in the process of dealing with their poor support for eggs.
That extra security/straightjacket can mean it works right the first time.
Or not. I'm not quite sure why, but my Python code has a significantly higher frequency of working right the first time than my Java code, and that's after developing in Java for 10 years and Python for less than 2. My theory is that it Java's static typing and verbosity consumes a portion of my mental energy that makes it harder to focus on the actual algorithm.
All that vulnerable client-side code (image libraries, HTML parser, etc.) would be immune to buffer overflows if it were in Ada.
Or Java, C#, Python, or anything else that doesn't allow stomping on arbitrary memory locations. C is the exception in terms of how badly and easily you can shoot yourself in the foot, yet for some reason we keep using it in scenarios where security and reliability are much more important than performance.
That totally happened..... oh wait, it didn't! So now Adobe is caught with their pants down and doesn't want to admit it, despite Apple saying "You're not supposed to use Carbon anymore!" for years.
Except that's not what Apple had been saying. They've always encouraged developers to use Cocoa for new apps (mainly because it's almost always more productive), but never said that you needed to rewrite your existing Carbon apps. Furthermore, they specifically said that 64-bit Carbon would be available in Leopard, and shipped it on developer releases, which undoubtedly led many developers down what turned out to be a blind alley. If Apple had officially put Carbon in maintenance mode with Tiger or earlier, there would be a lot fewer complaints.
I'm sure adobe was waiting for Apple to finally provide c++ bindings for Cocoa. It probably will happen eventually.
It won't, unless C++ changes significantly. The fundamental issue is that Cocoa needs to be able to call arbitrary methods on arbitrary objects when both are determined at runtime (see the NSObject "performSelector" method). As far as I know C++ can't do that.
As of 10.5 you can unload bundles.
Apple refuses to provide C++ bindings for Cocoa. You want to write a cocoa app, you have to use Objective-C.
Or Python or Ruby or Perl or Lisp. Cocoa requires a reasonably dynamic language and C++ doesn't make the cut. (Yes, Turing equivalence, but you'd end up essentially recreating the ObjC runtime in C++ which would give you the worst of both worlds).
Basically Apple is asking Adobe to rewrite photoshop from scratch. It will never happen.
They "only" have to rewrite the UI portions, which is certainly a major undertaking but they're going to do it.
It's not like driving 25 MPH is going to kill you now is it?
If everyone else is doing 40, it very well might.
I would say Apple's products are often better because it offers better control over your experience. That's why it "just works," and why DIY FOSS does not. There are great advantages to open ended freedom, but there are drawbacks too. Most people don't want a car that forces them to do daily maintenance on it for it to work.
This is the fundamental false dichotomy that Apple's defenders always end up at. There's no reason why a system can't be both simple for nontechnical users and powerful in the hands of advanced users; Mac OS X achieves exactly that. 9 years ago many Mac users were horrified that OS X was going to ship with a command line, which would inevitably result in developers abandoning the Mac UI and forcing us all to become Unix experts. Obviously that didn't happen; normal users never have to touch the command line, but for experts and geeks it's extremely valuable. Likewise, there are 3 main categories of potential iPhone users:
1. "It's a phone and it has to work every time": don't install any extra apps, and no worries.
2. "Maybe some games and utilities would be cool, but I don't want to break it": get all your apps from Apple's store (yes, the store itself is a good idea, the only problem is prohibiting alternate channels).
3. "It's a handheld Unix computer": all Apple has to do here is allow the option of running unsigned code, off by default of course. They don't have to support it, and they can require that you restore to factory settings before getting it serviced.
Those of us in group 3 have no problem coexisting with groups 1 and 2, but for some reason the reverse is often not the case.
Every unlocked phone deprives Apple of a large chunk of potential revenue from the sale of its device in the form of monthly cash payments.
Assuming that the purchaser would have still bought the iPhone even if she couldn't unlock it. That's unlikely in most cases, and impossible in nations that don't have official iPhone carriers. "Losses" due to iPhone unlocking are even less plausible than the inflated "losses" from software piracy.
Apple's continued invocation of the Herculean nature of its visual voicemail is a marketing smokescreen designed to convince its more fannish customers that bedding down with the telcos comes from necessity, not avarice.
True. They've developed a disturbing habit of justifying anti-consumer policies with BS. See also: "we can't allow unsigned apps because they could take down the cell network".
If you want to jailbreak an ipod touch/iphone you still have to downgrade to 1.1.1
Not any more. With ziPhone, jailbreaking and unlocking any iPhone up to 1.1.4 is trivial; details here.
A simple XML query once every 5 minutes is enough to drain the battery in just 4 hours.
It isn't remotely plausible that 48 ordinary network requests can drain the battery. If that were the case, using Safari would be impossible. Either the numbers are way off (I could believe 5 seconds) or those queries are far from "simple".
Apple said they will allow free apps to be distributed
True, and Apple also has to approve everything before it's available. So if EA releases a popular Sudoku game or something at $10 (giving Apple $3 per sale), are they going to be motivated to approve a free alternative? Whether or not Apple plans on behaving like that (and to be clear, there's no evidence that they are), the potential for anti-competitive and user-hostile actions is quite large.
When you jailbreak an iPhone or iPod Touch, most (if not all) tools install an SSH server to let them do their stuff. This SSH server stays on by default. If not turned off, it runs the battery down in a few hours, instead of a few days.
My jailbroken iPhone and its full battery after 24 hours disagrees. It's Unix after all; server processes take virtually zero CPU unless you're actively using them.
What Apple should do is add a network-connected notification to the API. Say the user connects to the network in another app. The iPhone should wake up other apps that have registered themselves for this notification, allow them to download a reasonable amount of data, notify the user of new IMs or tweets or whatever, and shut them back down.
Interesting idea, although it could actually lead to more battery drain if a bunch of apps keep launching and quitting.
Sorry, but 17 USC 117 says that owning the binary copy already grants me the right to install and use the software.
I've been saying that for years, and I'm still baffled that EULAs haven't been laughed out of court. Apparently you don't actually "own" a copy because the EULA says that you're only licensing it, therefore you have to agree to it in order to run the software, even though if the EULA didn't exist there would be no need for one. Somehow a smart lawyer got a stupid judge to buy into this legal version of quantum tunneling, and now software publishers can effectively write their own laws.
On the third hand, the Mac mini itself makes a fine Ubuntu system, especially if you're specifically looking for an SFF box. Depending on configuration a Koala might be cheaper, but if the mini is updated soon it should reclaim the advantage.
A couple months later, Apple had a 'revelation' and switched to Intel based chips, and Adobe continued development on Mac compatible software.
That seems odd, got a source? If anything, the switch to Intel increased the amount of work Adobe had to do, by making them migrate from CodeWarrior to Xcode.
And yes, I remember college instructors telling me how fast/better Apple products were for video editing with IBM processors, compared to the 'slow' Intel chips in PC's. They quickly changed their tune when Apple's marketing told them to; Now 5-time's faster!
Well, there was an interval where PPC really was faster. The G3 in particular was far superior to the Pentium II. Sadly at the time Macs were crippled with a technically obsolete OS that couldn't properly take advantage of the CPU power. Core was nail in the coffin for PPC; faster than the G5 per cycle, and it could go into laptops where it crushed the G4.
This is an issue that both liberals and conservatives should be united on.
Exactly. As a conservative/libertarian (not to be confused with the current White House occupants), I despise DRM because it's an assault on real property rights. It means that I own my computer only in the sense that I paid for it. The Cato Institute has an excellent analysis here.
Javascript is a decent language by itself. It's the obtuse DOM and the eleventy billion browser incompatibilities that make it appear to suck; no language could look good under those conditions.
I have only learned perl, and am quite content with it as it does the jobs I need it to.
I was content with Perl, then learned Python and never looked back. Python does everything Perl does, with much less weirdness.
The iPhone is a PHONE a wireless PHONE.
It's a device that can make phone calls, amongst other functionality. My Power Mac 7500 was making and receiving phone calls 10 years ago; that didn't transform it into a single-purpose appliance that would crash and burn if I did anything else with it.
Also, the iPod touch is not a phone.
It is NOT a general purpose computer.
Why not? It runs Unix, and its API looks a whole lot like that for Mac OS X. Apple may not want you to think of it as a computer, but objectively speaking it is.
Most people who bought or will buy this expensive gadget want a phone first of all and want that to work as reliably as any other phone at LEAST.
And yet if there's any way to run apps not approved by Apple, these same people who insist on reliability above all else will be stampeding to download malware-infested porn apps from the Elbonian mafia?