A very, very small price to pay for much superior text editing, like copying the current line and pasting it below 3 times is just a simple "yy3p", not "HOME,SHIFT+DOWN_ARROW,CTRL+C,CTRL+V,CTRL+V,CTRL+V ,CTRL+V".
Several other usual combinations like that in modeless text editors come down equaly slim under vi keystrokes... i know it, since i was an emacs nut...
"No there isn't this is only for one small feature (Annotations) of the latest Java."
one small feature here, another over there and suddenly, whoops! my language is crap! that's how it works... EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EM PTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!
"Exactly which 1000+ libs do you need for small projects?"
beyond the about 100 standard ones? ok, so i was a little over-the-top...;) EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EM PTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPT Y!EMPTY!EMPTY!
"having a 'hack' built in to the language is no way to go."
it's not a hack when builtin. EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EM PTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPT Y!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY! EMPTY!EMPTY!
"You don't have to have layers of abstraction if you don't want to. Things can be as simple as you like."
this is not what java culture says. i guess you're in denial. If it doesn't use several Struts Action beans, form beans, some ant xml and struts-config.xml, it isn't really serious programming...
"You really do have some weird 'straw man' image of how Java developers work, don't you?"
i see them up close and menacing, dude.:) EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EM PTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPT Y!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY! EMPTY!EMPTY!
"'Configuration validated' - your IDE can see where you have made mistakes without you having to run the thing and get a program crash."
what does this have to do with xml? a simple key=value pair listing should suffice for most tools. it's far easier to parse as well... EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EM PTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPT Y!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!
"you want to combine someone elses config file with yours. You can fix this without causing your program to crash when it reads the new file."
why would my program crash if i just added some more keys to the repertoire? and keys it doesn't reconize are simply passed over with a warning to stderr... EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EM PTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPT Y!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!
"Someone else has a config file format. You need to transfer your format to theirs."
is that like having a camel getting transformed into a lizard? ok, ok, so there are a few intersection between the two formats. Again, they'd be represented by similar keys.:)
"Slow enough for you?"
you sure noticed i was being sarcastic, right? EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EM PTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPT Y!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY! EMPTY!
"Hey - that combines both structure and internationalisation - isn't XML cool?:)"
how about fr_word1=oui fr_word2=mademoseille fr_word3=bonjour
and en_word1=yes en_word2=lady en_word3=good morning
yay! key=val pairs are cool! and very easy to create parsers to.:) EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EM PTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPT Y!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY! EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!
BTW, i saw no "tree structure" whatsoever in your example. I guess there should be so few reasons to put one into a config file that you couldn't even figure out one...:P
"Yes, I find Eclipse immensely annoying - I use NetBeans"
"a lot less baroque - none of the * or & nonsense."
otoh, there's plenty of @ nonsense.:)
"can't take anyone seriously who says anything poor about Java performance."
ok, let me clarify: CPU performance got one better, memory usage grew up like craze -- specially with the 1000+ libs needed even for small projects -- and programmer performance went down a lot, drowned in endless abstraction layers, some dozens of APIs and a few IDEs open...
"the point is to keep the base langauge clean."
it's no that difficult when it's so featureless...
"I have already shown clearly how language builtins hinder things."
you have?! afaik, you've shown how such a featureless language is a great field for implementors of libraries to fill the void...
"Having query features in a language is an utter waste of time for serious work"
in an idealized world, object-relational mappings are perfect, generated queries are perfect and perform great and all that jazz. In the real world, serious work also means a few comprimises, including a few manual hacks so things work properly.
"what you need is an option for external queries in SQL (or some other query language) which can be optimised by people who know what they are doing."
why do they need to be external? why so much loose coupling, so many layers of abstraction? It's portable, modularized, loosely coupled, just like University teachers and academics in general like to tell. But all that at an incredibly brain twisting complexity and a huge framework of many different separate projects...
oh, yeah, i forgot: that's enterprise babe!
"You won't be able to use LINQ in IronPython on.NET like that. Oh, and you will have to upgrade your.NET development anyway (more money for Microsoft)."
i'm not a.net fanboy and am just playing devil's advocate here, but i'd like to point out that.Net is a free download from M$. And you can always have the open-source mono or dotGNU. monoDevelop is shaping up like a cool VS replacement for people who absolutely need an IDE ( and sure complex and verbose techs like java and.net benefit a lot from semantic completion and module navigator )...
"Since when has upgrading an entire language been as simple as placing a library file on the path?"
If its backwards compatible, why not? A library file may require new dependencies not found in your current install and even perhaps language features, in the case of java libs...
"You may want to mess about with language parsers,"
not me, per se, but any interested parties, like people with compilers targeting the CLR...
"I just want to open a library and use method calls."
yes, i know java programmers are very lazy to create theirs own...
"The new Java JDO can be used entirely transparently even with compiled old code from 10 years ago."
well, that's very cool, i admit.
"Not only does it allow any configuration to be validated, it also easily allows existing formats to be cleanly extended and transformed in standard ways, and it has standard mechanisms for embedding binary information and also can handle internationalisation."
wow, man! what a load of marketroid terminology and enterprise jargon! i'll take a week to completely undestand it...
"The 'verbosity' argument is plain nonsense - any decent editor or IDE will not only auto-complete your XML for you, but will also understand the definitions and suggest tags for you."
yes, i know. I've worked with Eclipse and its many views, you know? It's still annoying, regardless, and specially the Ant build.xml. Wow, they really were able to transform a simple Makefile into an incredibly dull and verbose pile of attribute=values inside tags! Tag soup for soup nazis!
Code completion will only get newbies nuts with so many different but similar options, while experient user
"it was carefully designed to take the best of C++"
like the barroque syntax or the performance?;)
"they are added slowly to avoid the mess that other languages grew into."
so, it'll slowly get messy?:)
yeah, even operator overloading eventually gets there. There already are several DSL features in the java world, like its many web "expression languages"...
"there is a very good reason for having things in libraries - it allows competing implementations to provide functionality."
that's no reason for making the language so bare...
"object persistence is handled by language extensions (LINQ). The problems are that (1) everyone has to upgrade to the latest language version to use these features and (2) you only get the features in those languages."
you don't mention the amazing language builtin benefits, like perfect integration with the language. LINQ expressions are expressions like any other. Far better than handling persistence by means of several sequential calls for methods with long names like its been done until now...
(1) - upgrading to the latest language version is no more difficult than installing a new library in java (2) - it's actually just a syntatic extension handled by the parser. You can tweak current language parser to understand them and even get other language parsers to do the same.
"I have never understood the objection to XML."
well, java programmers used to its extreme verborragy actually think of XML as a pretty lightweight solution, comparetively. They'll really never "get it"...
"Having a standard format for configuration that can be easily handled by tools and cleanly upgraded seems like an excellent idea."
i wish it was as simple and straightforward as old fashioned key=value pairs... how much easily handled by both human and tools can it get?
"Configuration by convention has its place, but sometimes having explicit statement of what is being done makes things clearer."
that's "sometimes", not "every-friggin-time" like the java culture predicts...
David Letterman once in the 90's came up with a gag that best described the whole MP3 paranoia the recording industry went into. He showed his "legal mp3 player": a radio with a cassete recorder, which allowed him to record music for free. "MP3 player, ladies and gentlemen!":)
frankly, i don't care for "1 million songs for free": there isn't even one third of that total worth of listening to...
"Japan is among the healthiest and longest-lived countries in the world."
i guess a diet of fish and rice and ninja skills really pay off vs bacon and eggs and TV remote skills...
Re:If they do, it will all depend upon the license
on
Will Sun Open Source Java?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
hi again!;)
"Having a rich and versatile range of libraries is a problem?"
nope. the problem is when you have a poor enough language without support for high level constructs and has to do literally anything with libraries. it's just a lot more tiresome than builtin language support...
"Convention over configuration is nothing new."
yeah, shame it's not used more often in the java world rather than the XML craze...
"if it comes down to 'other people do it', he's undermined his whole political movement."
why? charging for autographs has nothing to do with free (as in freedom) software. Heck! free (as in freedom) software has nothing to do with money: you can charge money for it at will or just deliver it free of charge...
Why would his "political movement" be undermined for a personal option which has nothing to do with free (as in freedom) software?
He's talking about freedom, not money! He's not saying companies like Microsoft or IBM are bad because they charge people for money, but because they hold their customers by releasing software which is not free (as in freedom)...
Terrible acting?! Bad casting choices?! Are you kidding or just being a mindless troll? This is one of the best elements of the show, bar none.
"cheesy sets,"
I hope you're not an Star Trek fan...
"barely acceptable lighting, "
"herky-jerky camera work, "
The camera work -- with its sudden pans and zooms -- tries to be realistic and convey the feeling of iminent attack. It feels just as the nervous cameras depicting the attack and fall of the Two Towers... It was a novelty back then and is still a very powerful instrument of dramatization...
"exceedingly shallow politically correct plotlines and characters,"
politically correct?! gimme i break, will ya! Boomer and cast are all but politically correct. Adama lies to the tripulation. There is a scientist with a moral dillema. There are alcoohol adicts... gimme a break!
"not to mention the barely concealed pro-USA anti-terrorism propaganda agenda in the writing."
while i agree the show depicts this "anti-terrorism propaganda agenda", i don't believe it's a weakness. In fact, it's one of its strong points.
In conclusion, i believe you're just trolling against what is one of the best shows -- SciFi or not -- to ever grace TV. If i had any moderation points left, your Insightful +5 would be history...
"If the original plan to do a continuation of the original series created by Bryan Singer and Tom DeSanto [battlestargalactica.com] had gone forward, the show, and subsequent spin-offs probably would have been very watchable and entertaining."
yeah, Cylons would be mutants in a soap opera setting... gimme a break!
Although probably someone already replied something along these lines, i can't resist:
"When MS-DOS was first written, there was no such thing as directories...necessary to pass arguments to commands, and the natural way to do this was to distinguish them from paramters by pre-pending a character. MS chose to use/."
This seems the typical M$ fanboy who thinks M$ invented everything in the IT business, from directories to operating systems, to GUIs to spreadsheets.
Well, yes, both directories and the convention to use "-" switches to pass command-line options to programs already existed in Unix. And Bill Gates the man was very aware of them and even used vi back them. They purposefully introduced annoying new conventions, like "\", "/" for switches and "dir" rather than "ls", while some other things remained the same such as "cp", "more" etc...
However, since DOS was actually created by another company, it may not be the fault of M$. Just maybe...
"I paid $60 to hear the stuff I like - his old stuff. David Bowie *knows* this and decided to play his new shit that's just awful."
see, the problem with your way of thinking is that what you actually want is to see 70's or 80's Bowie at stage, singing the same old songs, preferably with the very same entonation, clothes and popstar pose. Problem is: he's not that guy anymore. Artists mature and feel bored at the prospect of living from the past.
you're angry for shelling out $60 and not getting what you want? You'd be far better by just shelling some 5 bucks at a discount store for some of his old classics and getting a perfect performance of the old hits...
"Photoshop, that's a good name"
yeah and pretty friggin obvious and unimaginative too. Word, Windows... how many companies can come up with good product names by simply being very direct and obvious?
Can i name a new window manager for X like "New Windows"? Let's rename GIMP like "Photoshop-Killer" or simply very obtuse like "Image Editor", will ya? you'll soon realize trying to trademark common everyday words is pretty hard...
It's rebels vs evil empire all the way: the rebels wear ragged clothes, are almost always dirty looking while the evil empire minions are almost always wearing tight and sometimes even downright cool outfits.
Star Wars and Matrix depict the situation nicely.:)
I think ideology and freedom go hand-to-hand with poor material condition...
"so we've replaced OS-specific software with browser-specific software"
How is this different from writing your apps in java so that they're cross-platform -- at the cost of being tied to the java platform? A XUL app needs a XUL runtime -- just Mozilla apps for now -- just as a Java app needs a java runtime.
There will be, however, a XULRunner standalone lib, which, if LGPLed or something will let other projects use it to run XUL apps as well...
I think it's a much better tradeoff to be cross-platform while being tied to a specific -- but thouroughly good -- technology.
"does IE7 introduce any new functionality that may enhance the current capabilities of AJAX?"
yes, it'll come with the almighty proprietary XAML technology M$ stole from Mozilla XUL. and everyone will bow to it and an html web will be gone...
You're really serious about waiting for something which you even fear might break your efforts? Talk about reasonable businessman...
There should be no wait or fear if you just coded for standards so that it would run on any browser. Or just go for Firefox, which is here now and works great, with great standards-compatibility which won't simply disappear in some future version.
If you're believing IE7 will be any close to Firefox in either standards compatibility or sheer top-notch features, you'll be severely letdown, as with most M$ products: it's nothing but a patched IE6 with some more much-needed uptodate css support, something FF has had for several years by now...
Actually, i believe there is even more, if you put all the best works combined from the likes of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin and others. You know, the carefully crafted musical pieces from those guys are very intrincate, full of substance, with lots of twists and are very long brainstorms, like theatrical plays.
But i guess most people just stuff their iPODs with today's recording industry's puppett's excrements.
What's the matter? Perl is far better than BASIC, and whoemever ever played an MSX knows that Konami developed its many great classics for that platform in that damn language! Some of them were later ported to the Famicom/Nes by the names Castlevania, Metal Gear and the likes...
I'm a happy Linux user with no data being collected by either Microsoft or Google. Unless they make their upcoming closed-source port of GoogleEarth to Linux a trojan, i'm fine, i guess...
"It was much the same 'Hack-n-Slash' game with only a marginal improvement in graphics and playability"
you seem to be purposefuly forgetting to mention the amazing plot and dialogue, which are, frankly, what really set FF apart from old RPGs... and Nobuo Uematsu's superb musical scores!:)
yes, other than that, it's just hack'n'slash, just as most other games, PC or not, are just derivatives of older genres with updated gfx and better narrative devices and production values...
Animals are just food and cheap labor for the human race. At most, toys for old people or children. A robotic pet is just ok for the latter purpose.
Yep, that's the future: artificial, plastic, inorganic stuff devoid of emotions to please the empty souls of a huge mass of individuals in a faceless society. Tigers, horses, dogs and cats will be just stuff of legend, perhaps their DNA stored in some database for some instant food device...
Slashdot Mirror
A very, very small price to pay for much superior text editing, like copying the current line and pasting it below 3 times is just a simple "yy3p", not "HOME,SHIFT+DOWN_ARROW,CTRL+C,CTRL+V,CTRL+V,CTRL+V ,CTRL+V".
;)
Several other usual combinations like that in modeless text editors come down equaly slim under vi keystrokes... i know it, since i was an emacs nut...
and yes, ZZ is way faster than CTRL+S, ALT+F4.
"No there isn't this is only for one small feature (Annotations) of the latest Java."
;) EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EM PTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPT Y!EMPTY!EMPTY!
:) EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EM PTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPT Y!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY! EMPTY!EMPTY!
:)
:)"
:) EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EM PTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPT Y!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY! EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!
:P
one small feature here, another over there and suddenly, whoops! my language is crap! that's how it works... EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EM PTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!
"Exactly which 1000+ libs do you need for small projects?"
beyond the about 100 standard ones? ok, so i was a little over-the-top...
"having a 'hack' built in to the language is no way to go."
it's not a hack when builtin. EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EM PTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPT Y!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY! EMPTY!EMPTY!
"You don't have to have layers of abstraction if you don't want to. Things can be as simple as you like."
this is not what java culture says. i guess you're in denial. If it doesn't use several Struts Action beans, form beans, some ant xml and struts-config.xml, it isn't really serious programming...
"You really do have some weird 'straw man' image of how Java developers work, don't you?"
i see them up close and menacing, dude.
"'Configuration validated' - your IDE can see where you have made mistakes without you having to run the thing and get a program crash."
what does this have to do with xml? a simple key=value pair listing should suffice for most tools. it's far easier to parse as well... EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EM PTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPT Y!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!
"you want to combine someone elses config file with yours. You can fix this without causing your program to crash when it reads the new file."
why would my program crash if i just added some more keys to the repertoire? and keys it doesn't reconize are simply passed over with a warning to stderr... EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EM PTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPT Y!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!
"Someone else has a config file format. You need to transfer your format to theirs."
is that like having a camel getting transformed into a lizard? ok, ok, so there are a few intersection between the two formats. Again, they'd be represented by similar keys.
"Slow enough for you?"
you sure noticed i was being sarcastic, right? EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EM PTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPT Y!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY!EMPTY! EMPTY!
"Hey - that combines both structure and internationalisation - isn't XML cool?
how about
fr_word1=oui
fr_word2=mademoseille
fr_word3=bonjour
and
en_word1=yes
en_word2=lady
en_word3=good morning
yay! key=val pairs are cool! and very easy to create parsers to.
BTW, i saw no "tree structure" whatsoever in your example. I guess there should be so few reasons to put one into a config file that you couldn't even figure out one...
"Yes, I find Eclipse immensely annoying - I use NetBeans"
"a lot less baroque - none of the * or & nonsense."
:)
.NET like that. Oh, and you will have to upgrade your .NET development anyway (more money for Microsoft)."
.net fanboy and am just playing devil's advocate here, but i'd like to point out that .Net is a free download from M$. And you can always have the open-source mono or dotGNU. monoDevelop is shaping up like a cool VS replacement for people who absolutely need an IDE ( and sure complex and verbose techs like java and .net benefit a lot from semantic completion and module navigator )...
otoh, there's plenty of @ nonsense.
"can't take anyone seriously who says anything poor about Java performance."
ok, let me clarify: CPU performance got one better, memory usage grew up like craze -- specially with the 1000+ libs needed even for small projects -- and programmer performance went down a lot, drowned in endless abstraction layers, some dozens of APIs and a few IDEs open...
"the point is to keep the base langauge clean."
it's no that difficult when it's so featureless...
"I have already shown clearly how language builtins hinder things."
you have?! afaik, you've shown how such a featureless language is a great field for implementors of libraries to fill the void...
"Having query features in a language is an utter waste of time for serious work"
in an idealized world, object-relational mappings are perfect, generated queries are perfect and perform great and all that jazz. In the real world, serious work also means a few comprimises, including a few manual hacks so things work properly.
"what you need is an option for external queries in SQL (or some other query language) which can be optimised by people who know what they are doing."
why do they need to be external? why so much loose coupling, so many layers of abstraction? It's portable, modularized, loosely coupled, just like University teachers and academics in general like to tell. But all that at an incredibly brain twisting complexity and a huge framework of many different separate projects...
oh, yeah, i forgot: that's enterprise babe!
"You won't be able to use LINQ in IronPython on
i'm not a
"Since when has upgrading an entire language been as simple as placing a library file on the path?"
If its backwards compatible, why not? A library file may require new dependencies not found in your current install and even perhaps language features, in the case of java libs...
"You may want to mess about with language parsers,"
not me, per se, but any interested parties, like people with compilers targeting the CLR...
"I just want to open a library and use method calls."
yes, i know java programmers are very lazy to create theirs own...
"The new Java JDO can be used entirely transparently even with compiled old code from 10 years ago."
well, that's very cool, i admit.
"Not only does it allow any configuration to be validated, it also easily allows existing formats to be cleanly extended and transformed in standard ways, and it has standard mechanisms for embedding binary information and also can handle internationalisation."
wow, man! what a load of marketroid terminology and enterprise jargon! i'll take a week to completely undestand it...
"The 'verbosity' argument is plain nonsense - any decent editor or IDE will not only auto-complete your XML for you, but will also understand the definitions and suggest tags for you."
yes, i know. I've worked with Eclipse and its many views, you know? It's still annoying, regardless, and specially the Ant build.xml. Wow, they really were able to transform a simple Makefile into an incredibly dull and verbose pile of attribute=values inside tags! Tag soup for soup nazis!
Code completion will only get newbies nuts with so many different but similar options, while experient user
"it was carefully designed to take the best of C++"
;)
:)
like the barroque syntax or the performance?
"they are added slowly to avoid the mess that other languages grew into."
so, it'll slowly get messy?
yeah, even operator overloading eventually gets there. There already are several DSL features in the java world, like its many web "expression languages"...
"there is a very good reason for having things in libraries - it allows competing implementations to provide functionality."
that's no reason for making the language so bare...
"object persistence is handled by language extensions (LINQ). The problems are that (1) everyone has to upgrade to the latest language version to use these features and (2) you only get the features in those languages."
you don't mention the amazing language builtin benefits, like perfect integration with the language. LINQ expressions are expressions like any other. Far better than handling persistence by means of several sequential calls for methods with long names like its been done until now...
(1) - upgrading to the latest language version is no more difficult than installing a new library in java
(2) - it's actually just a syntatic extension handled by the parser. You can tweak current language parser to understand them and even get other language parsers to do the same.
"I have never understood the objection to XML."
well, java programmers used to its extreme verborragy actually think of XML as a pretty lightweight solution, comparetively. They'll really never "get it"...
"Having a standard format for configuration that can be easily handled by tools and cleanly upgraded seems like an excellent idea."
i wish it was as simple and straightforward as old fashioned key=value pairs... how much easily handled by both human and tools can it get?
"Configuration by convention has its place, but sometimes having explicit statement of what is being done makes things clearer."
that's "sometimes", not "every-friggin-time" like the java culture predicts...
David Letterman once in the 90's came up with a gag that best described the whole MP3 paranoia the recording industry went into. He showed his "legal mp3 player": a radio with a cassete recorder, which allowed him to record music for free. "MP3 player, ladies and gentlemen!" :)
frankly, i don't care for "1 million songs for free": there isn't even one third of that total worth of listening to...
"Japan is among the healthiest and longest-lived countries in the world."
i guess a diet of fish and rice and ninja skills really pay off vs bacon and eggs and TV remote skills...
hi again! ;)
"Having a rich and versatile range of libraries is a problem?"
nope. the problem is when you have a poor enough language without support for high level constructs and has to do literally anything with libraries. it's just a lot more tiresome than builtin language support...
"Convention over configuration is nothing new."
yeah, shame it's not used more often in the java world rather than the XML craze...
"if it comes down to 'other people do it', he's undermined his whole political movement."
why? charging for autographs has nothing to do with free (as in freedom) software. Heck! free (as in freedom) software has nothing to do with money: you can charge money for it at will or just deliver it free of charge...
Why would his "political movement" be undermined for a personal option which has nothing to do with free (as in freedom) software?
He's talking about freedom, not money! He's not saying companies like Microsoft or IBM are bad because they charge people for money, but because they hold their customers by releasing software which is not free (as in freedom)...
"Bad casting choices, terrible acting,"
Terrible acting?! Bad casting choices?! Are you kidding or just being a mindless troll? This is one of the best elements of the show, bar none.
"cheesy sets,"
I hope you're not an Star Trek fan...
"barely acceptable lighting, "
"herky-jerky camera work, "
The camera work -- with its sudden pans and zooms -- tries to be realistic and convey the feeling of iminent attack. It feels just as the nervous cameras depicting the attack and fall of the Two Towers... It was a novelty back then and is still a very powerful instrument of dramatization...
"exceedingly shallow politically correct plotlines and characters,"
politically correct?! gimme i break, will ya! Boomer and cast are all but politically correct. Adama lies to the tripulation. There is a scientist with a moral dillema. There are alcoohol adicts... gimme a break!
"not to mention the barely concealed pro-USA anti-terrorism propaganda agenda in the writing."
while i agree the show depicts this "anti-terrorism propaganda agenda", i don't believe it's a weakness. In fact, it's one of its strong points.
In conclusion, i believe you're just trolling against what is one of the best shows -- SciFi or not -- to ever grace TV. If i had any moderation points left, your Insightful +5 would be history...
"If the original plan to do a continuation of the original series created by Bryan Singer and Tom DeSanto [battlestargalactica.com] had gone forward, the show, and subsequent spin-offs probably would have been very watchable and entertaining."
yeah, Cylons would be mutants in a soap opera setting... gimme a break!
Although probably someone already replied something along these lines, i can't resist:
/."
"When MS-DOS was first written, there was no such thing as directories...necessary to pass arguments to commands, and the natural way to do this was to distinguish them from paramters by pre-pending a character. MS chose to use
This seems the typical M$ fanboy who thinks M$ invented everything in the IT business, from directories to operating systems, to GUIs to spreadsheets.
Well, yes, both directories and the convention to use "-" switches to pass command-line options to programs already existed in Unix. And Bill Gates the man was very aware of them and even used vi back them. They purposefully introduced annoying new conventions, like "\", "/" for switches and "dir" rather than "ls", while some other things remained the same such as "cp", "more" etc...
However, since DOS was actually created by another company, it may not be the fault of M$. Just maybe...
"I paid $60 to hear the stuff I like - his old stuff. David Bowie *knows* this and decided to play his new shit that's just awful."
see, the problem with your way of thinking is that what you actually want is to see 70's or 80's Bowie at stage, singing the same old songs, preferably with the very same entonation, clothes and popstar pose. Problem is: he's not that guy anymore. Artists mature and feel bored at the prospect of living from the past.
you're angry for shelling out $60 and not getting what you want? You'd be far better by just shelling some 5 bucks at a discount store for some of his old classics and getting a perfect performance of the old hits...
"since they patented it, nobody else can implement it either"
interested parties don't need to implement it: just pay a fee to Philips for using it...
"Photoshop, that's a good name" yeah and pretty friggin obvious and unimaginative too. Word, Windows... how many companies can come up with good product names by simply being very direct and obvious? Can i name a new window manager for X like "New Windows"? Let's rename GIMP like "Photoshop-Killer" or simply very obtuse like "Image Editor", will ya? you'll soon realize trying to trademark common everyday words is pretty hard...
indeed! how does Longhorn compare after all?
"The bottom line is that commercials give you the ability to watch content for free"
I pay for the content in cable TV, and still, its stuffed with ads...
It's rebels vs evil empire all the way: the rebels wear ragged clothes, are almost always dirty looking while the evil empire minions are almost always wearing tight and sometimes even downright cool outfits.
:)
Star Wars and Matrix depict the situation nicely.
I think ideology and freedom go hand-to-hand with poor material condition...
"so we've replaced OS-specific software with browser-specific software"
How is this different from writing your apps in java so that they're cross-platform -- at the cost of being tied to the java platform? A XUL app needs a XUL runtime -- just Mozilla apps for now -- just as a Java app needs a java runtime.
There will be, however, a XULRunner standalone lib, which, if LGPLed or something will let other projects use it to run XUL apps as well...
I think it's a much better tradeoff to be cross-platform while being tied to a specific -- but thouroughly good -- technology.
"does IE7 introduce any new functionality that may enhance the current capabilities of AJAX?"
yes, it'll come with the almighty proprietary XAML technology M$ stole from Mozilla XUL. and everyone will bow to it and an html web will be gone...
You're really serious about waiting for something which you even fear might break your efforts? Talk about reasonable businessman...
There should be no wait or fear if you just coded for standards so that it would run on any browser. Or just go for Firefox, which is here now and works great, with great standards-compatibility which won't simply disappear in some future version.
If you're believing IE7 will be any close to Firefox in either standards compatibility or sheer top-notch features, you'll be severely letdown, as with most M$ products: it's nothing but a patched IE6 with some more much-needed uptodate css support, something FF has had for several years by now...
"how Microsoft will bring RSS to the mainstream"
Easy: put it into the default web browser that comes with the default operating system that comes with microcomputers. Firefox and Linux ain't it.
Actually, i believe there is even more, if you put all the best works combined from the likes of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin and others. You know, the carefully crafted musical pieces from those guys are very intrincate, full of substance, with lots of twists and are very long brainstorms, like theatrical plays.
But i guess most people just stuff their iPODs with today's recording industry's puppett's excrements.
i believe he was talking about quality music, not junk.
What's the matter? Perl is far better than BASIC, and whoemever ever played an MSX knows that Konami developed its many great classics for that platform in that damn language! Some of them were later ported to the Famicom/Nes by the names Castlevania, Metal Gear and the likes...
I'm a happy Linux user with no data being collected by either Microsoft or Google. Unless they make their upcoming closed-source port of GoogleEarth to Linux a trojan, i'm fine, i guess...
"It was much the same 'Hack-n-Slash' game with only a marginal improvement in graphics and playability"
:)
you seem to be purposefuly forgetting to mention the amazing plot and dialogue, which are, frankly, what really set FF apart from old RPGs... and Nobuo Uematsu's superb musical scores!
yes, other than that, it's just hack'n'slash, just as most other games, PC or not, are just derivatives of older genres with updated gfx and better narrative devices and production values...
i'm done here
Animals are just food and cheap labor for the human race. At most, toys for old people or children. A robotic pet is just ok for the latter purpose.
Yep, that's the future: artificial, plastic, inorganic stuff devoid of emotions to please the empty souls of a huge mass of individuals in a faceless society. Tigers, horses, dogs and cats will be just stuff of legend, perhaps their DNA stored in some database for some instant food device...