I'm paying less than 25 euro per month for my Android experience right now. That includes I think 100 minutes a month (or SMS) and an unlimited 128 Kbit data plan, although that is only valid within the Netherlands (we tend to travel outside a lot, NL is not that large). In addition, I payed just 30 euro for the phone itself. 30 dollars per month seems quite a lot for just a WiFi hotspot feature to me, it's as much as my total costs (if I don't phone over 100 minutes of course - no problem I use email for most of my communications).
30 dollars just to turn on a feature of the mobile phone? Who are they kidding? Will anybody pay that price? And how long until somebody hacks the device to turn it on? Or maybe they are just relying on some businesses and rich people that don't care about 30 dollars a month?
Personally I think it's a ridiculous amount - and I do think they simply disable it because they are afraid of large downloads. Ultimately, I do think that is ungrounded, it will be some time before wireless beats wired internet for continuous downloads.
That said, at least there is the option. I am happily using my android phone as 3G modem while on the road. I've got only 128kbit, but for browsing while I'm in a train, it's just perfect. But there's no way I'm going to pay 30 dollars for that kind of infrequent use.
(in June there will be Android 2.1 for the Hero, I'm looking forward to using bluetooth instead of the USB cable, although that will drain the phones battery instead of charging it)
I like them too, however: - I like very flat keyboards as well (less wrist strain) - they are too regularly shaped, I normally use smiley keyboards or, at work, MS 4000 that is split in two (less wrist strain) - they are awfully loud, don't use them when you've got a colleague sitting next to you - they are awfully expensive, for a keyboard any way - just a bit too much travel (very minor issue)
Having a very high level AEL certification is certainly a boon (I'm personally responsible for an AEL-4+ application). There are a few things though: AEL certification only covers part of the security of an application. Even though it is probably the best certificate to acquire regarding security, it's not all telling. Testing and evaluation by (sideways thinking) security experts may produce additional results.
Having a security certificate for systems is very very expensive. It can only be accomplished for smaller systems. This goes double for anything above AEL-4 where you have to have formal proofs in place. You certainly cannot currently do this for entire software stacks. What you can do is take components like a login process and certify that. But there may be quite a few critical systems that are simply too complex to certify.
(you'll probably know this, but others here may not)
He was talking about the hardware used for android devices (e.g. high res screen and - in my case rollerball on the Hero). This of course for high end android devices.
Sorry, we already are tampering with weather. Lets just be scientific about it, shall we? Not doing it because it does not make you feel good is not much of an argument.
There is a difference in having a Java based environment build up from the ground - including a tweaked VM, development community, IDE etc. etc. etc. - to having native bindings to Qt. I'm sure I don't have to go into details.
The difference is that a smart phone is basically an application platform like the PC. The iPOD is not, it's basically a souped up media player. And don't forget that although these kind of markets are highly volatile, it may take a long time before a relatively good product like the iPOD is taken over by its competitors.
Dunno. That Java machine certainly got a very Java-ish interface including a Java security infrastructure - something that is much harder to do with other languages. Especially for less used app, it's nice to know a tiny game does not send all your personal details to some random site. And don't forget that there are many many Java programmers - many more than Objective C programmers and certainly more than Linux/Unix programmers. It probably also helps that the IDE is based on Eclipse, which can of course also be used for C/C++ but it's base target still is Java.
I've had my Gmail account for ages now (I'm located in the Netherlands) so it's very probably just an issue within the UK. Even then you can probably get around it using a proxy when registering. I do believe that most people here will know where the UK is located. So why the "legal challenges in Europe" thing? It's certainly nowhere in the main article. Or is "united_notions" holding back?
Ah, a photographic memory. Very convenient in case you don't have a camera at hand. As for the other things, if he doesn't take himself seriously, so won't I.
``What is it that lets Java have such a bad name on SlashDot?''
I can only speak for myself, but the beef I have with Java is that it was promoted as if it was a great step ahead in programming languages and really the right way to do things. A lot of people fell for the propaganda (including myself) and an enormous amount of time has been spent on Java since - writing software with it, improving the platform, re-implementing things from other platforms for Java, basing research on Java, etc.
I've been a follower of Java since version 1, and I don't see any difference with other languages. If anything, Java has always been a C/C++ kinda language but much simplified and, indeed, objectified. There are a lot of things that have been done with this re-implementation, and in many cases, rightfully so.
In reality, Java wasn't actually all that great. None of the features that were touted with much fanfare at the time were actually new. The language had a pretty lame type system and a lame implementation. If, at the time, I had known the languages I know now, I never would have thought Java was a great language. But I didn't know many languages back then, so I swallowed the propaganda and was really enthusiastic about Java. I can only assume the same has happened to many other people. At any rate, Java took off and went on to become a dominant language (not to say _the_ dominant language) in the software business and many universities.
Actually, it was and is pretty great. Of course, looking in retrospect, it did some things wrong. Many of those things like the type system were actually thought of as "inefficient" at that time. Now most language purist would like Java to have each and every variable to be an object instance. If they had taken that route back then, they would have been scorned by most of the community.
To be sure, Java has changed a lot since its inception, and there definitely has been improvement. The type system is much better now than it used to be, and there are now several implementations for different niches, some of which are very impressive indeed. Still, after 15 years of enormous exposure, success, and development, I still find the language and platform lacking. Many features or missing features in the language make it difficult to express certain programs in their most natural form, often requiring much more code to write in Java than in another language. The standard library, while indeed extensive, is full of rough edges, bad APIs, and long-unfixed bugs. Many features of the host platform are simply not available in Java. Very few things in Java or the popular frameworks strike me as done right.
Most of the basic objects are now immutable. There are good ways of handling threads with a brilliant java.util.concurrent lib and pretty well worked out collection framework (which is a lot easier and safer than the boost libs, imho). The date and time API still is a mess, but that is being fixed. Java has a good regexp lib, good well defined string handling and many more well defined libs. Of course, new API's (of new languages) will build on this and hopefully be better than Java. But take a look and see how many fail; well designing core classes is no easy task. It's just to big to give all to James and Joshua.
Now, what bothers me is not that there are features of Java I don't like. Even if they could be shown to objectively make Java less good than some other platform or programming language, I wouldn't care very much. My problem is that Java has these shortcomings, has long had such shortcomings, and is _still_ being touted by many as the greatest platform out there, still receives enormous amounts of research and development effort, and is still extremely widely used _and_ taught to students. To me, that's a lot of energy, time, and money that we, as humanity, could have more effectively spent on other things. The way I see it, Java has been a coloss
What is it that lets Java have such a bad name on SlashDot? Even articles that are typical flamebait like the one above get modded up. It's open source, it's relatively secure, it's got loads of libraries and IDE's and developer support. It's even pretty fast compared to most competitors. It's definitely not a closed eco system either. Of course it's got its drawbacks, but come on...
Not really. It might point to BigDecimal, but leave strictfp out of it. Remember, this is for starting programmers, not creators of advanced 3D or math libs.
True, but in many cases (those that don't require too much performance) it is probably better to use BigDecimal anyway. I've never used that keyword, IMHO it's for inner libs only. It's certainly not something I would learn starting programmers (just as you should not learn new programmers the use of wait() or sleep(), rather CountDownLatch and the different Queue's).
Yeah, right, because bugs are always appearing right when something is launched, on your particular system setup no less. There are probably many things that can be said about this issue, but your comment must be the most clueless comment on this article. Anyone that has done *any* test work will confirm this. I'll inform my boss that all my programs are bug free because they are currently running fine on my development PC, shall I?
I've lost more data to McAfee than to malicious application ever. Of course, like most here, I'm not a prime target for these kind of scams.
Deleting backup2.zip because one file contained something malicious. I mean, if you can scan files in a zip archive, surely you can delete files from the archive?
Deleting a well known file from my Windows/system32 folder does not score very high on my list either.
By mechanized pumps and - of course - the tide. You close the I don't believe the pumps use *that* much energy though. The windmills are not used that much anymore for pumping water - they were not that effective energy-wise and take loads of maintenance. When holland was pumped dry they needed loads of windmills, most are now gone.
I've looked at the energy usage of the largest "gemaal" (pump) and it's about 10 milion kWh per year, about 3000 residences. It costs about 700.000 euro for fuel to keep it running. Sounds like a lot, but that thing keeps 2.300 km^2 dry.
As long as you don't really use round desks. If I hate anything it is having anything other than a smoothed down, straight desk to rest my paws on. Although at work I have a lowered desk and a natural 4000 ergonomic keyboard, which makes this point slightly moot since I use the rubbery wrist rest. Most devs use normal flatter keyboards, so they will want straight lines.
Currently I'm in a very very noisy room with about 20 people and a constant temperature of 24 degrees. As long as you don't have that it's probably for the good. I would hate a completely separate room though. I'll be leaving for a room where 4-6 people will be on desks facing each other (we put people that mainly do a single project together). As long as you use rectangular desks, you can do anything you want with them. A quarter round desk basically takes too much room unless it is used to put as a round table.
Personally I would use rectangular desks in a square where 2 persons sit next to each other, facing the other two. And I would have a small table with 4 normal chairs and a white-board for meets right next to that. Oh, and some plants and other stuff that make it look less like a clean room. A cookie jar and a good coffee machine spring to mind, and some space to put books in (books should be visible, otherwise they will just gather dust).
Absolutely, unless there is some well defined expiration date, e.g. those used by web servers and HTTP connections.
As for Java development, my game, there are things like Maven that can cache "artifacts" locally and check if they are up to date when required.
In other words, network caching is only feasible on application level. Caching NFS or SMB file shares is an entirely other matter.
Non-maven release builds can take quite a bit of time at my company, each and every file has to be transmitted over 100 Mbit/s network, each and every time they are needed.
The TN's I tried take away all off-whites colors if you look at them at an angle. The off-whites are regularly used for highlighting. Highlighting is often used within IDE's, such as Eclipse. Of course, you can have use much harsher colors instead, but then you end up with less contrast. And those colors are just painful on the eyes.
Well, I have got a lot of RAM (8 GB cost almost nothing, I've got a way bigger RAM cache installed than the default 50 MB disk cache) and I don't like disk because it sucks when multi-tasking. Unless you can configure FF not to cache to disk when I'm doing other things to it, I would rather have it leave my disk alone. If my 8 GB RAM is not enough, it may always revert back to using the disk to cache unused RAM pages.
That, and I've got a loud HDD (a raptor from before the early SSD age).
Slashdot Mirror
I'm paying less than 25 euro per month for my Android experience right now. That includes I think 100 minutes a month (or SMS) and an unlimited 128 Kbit data plan, although that is only valid within the Netherlands (we tend to travel outside a lot, NL is not that large). In addition, I payed just 30 euro for the phone itself. 30 dollars per month seems quite a lot for just a WiFi hotspot feature to me, it's as much as my total costs (if I don't phone over 100 minutes of course - no problem I use email for most of my communications).
30 dollars just to turn on a feature of the mobile phone? Who are they kidding? Will anybody pay that price? And how long until somebody hacks the device to turn it on? Or maybe they are just relying on some businesses and rich people that don't care about 30 dollars a month?
Personally I think it's a ridiculous amount - and I do think they simply disable it because they are afraid of large downloads. Ultimately, I do think that is ungrounded, it will be some time before wireless beats wired internet for continuous downloads.
That said, at least there is the option. I am happily using my android phone as 3G modem while on the road. I've got only 128kbit, but for browsing while I'm in a train, it's just perfect. But there's no way I'm going to pay 30 dollars for that kind of infrequent use.
(in June there will be Android 2.1 for the Hero, I'm looking forward to using bluetooth instead of the USB cable, although that will drain the phones battery instead of charging it)
I like them too, however:
- I like very flat keyboards as well (less wrist strain)
- they are too regularly shaped, I normally use smiley keyboards or, at work, MS 4000 that is split in two (less wrist strain)
- they are awfully loud, don't use them when you've got a colleague sitting next to you
- they are awfully expensive, for a keyboard any way
- just a bit too much travel (very minor issue)
Having a very high level AEL certification is certainly a boon (I'm personally responsible for an AEL-4+ application). There are a few things though: AEL certification only covers part of the security of an application. Even though it is probably the best certificate to acquire regarding security, it's not all telling. Testing and evaluation by (sideways thinking) security experts may produce additional results.
Having a security certificate for systems is very very expensive. It can only be accomplished for smaller systems. This goes double for anything above AEL-4 where you have to have formal proofs in place. You certainly cannot currently do this for entire software stacks. What you can do is take components like a login process and certify that. But there may be quite a few critical systems that are simply too complex to certify.
(you'll probably know this, but others here may not)
He was talking about the hardware used for android devices (e.g. high res screen and - in my case rollerball on the Hero). This of course for high end android devices.
Sorry, we already are tampering with weather. Lets just be scientific about it, shall we? Not doing it because it does not make you feel good is not much of an argument.
There is a difference in having a Java based environment build up from the ground - including a tweaked VM, development community, IDE etc. etc. etc. - to having native bindings to Qt. I'm sure I don't have to go into details.
The difference is that a smart phone is basically an application platform like the PC. The iPOD is not, it's basically a souped up media player. And don't forget that although these kind of markets are highly volatile, it may take a long time before a relatively good product like the iPOD is taken over by its competitors.
Dunno. That Java machine certainly got a very Java-ish interface including a Java security infrastructure - something that is much harder to do with other languages. Especially for less used app, it's nice to know a tiny game does not send all your personal details to some random site. And don't forget that there are many many Java programmers - many more than Objective C programmers and certainly more than Linux/Unix programmers. It probably also helps that the IDE is based on Eclipse, which can of course also be used for C/C++ but it's base target still is Java.
I've had my Gmail account for ages now (I'm located in the Netherlands) so it's very probably just an issue within the UK. Even then you can probably get around it using a proxy when registering. I do believe that most people here will know where the UK is located. So why the "legal challenges in Europe" thing? It's certainly nowhere in the main article. Or is "united_notions" holding back?
Ah, a photographic memory. Very convenient in case you don't have a camera at hand. As for the other things, if he doesn't take himself seriously, so won't I.
``What is it that lets Java have such a bad name on SlashDot?''
I can only speak for myself, but the beef I have with Java is that it was promoted as if it was a great step ahead in programming languages and really the right way to do things. A lot of people fell for the propaganda (including myself) and an enormous amount of time has been spent on Java since - writing software with it, improving the platform, re-implementing things from other platforms for Java, basing research on Java, etc.
I've been a follower of Java since version 1, and I don't see any difference with other languages. If anything, Java has always been a C/C++ kinda language but much simplified and, indeed, objectified. There are a lot of things that have been done with this re-implementation, and in many cases, rightfully so.
In reality, Java wasn't actually all that great. None of the features that were touted with much fanfare at the time were actually new. The language had a pretty lame type system and a lame implementation. If, at the time, I had known the languages I know now, I never would have thought Java was a great language. But I didn't know many languages back then, so I swallowed the propaganda and was really enthusiastic about Java. I can only assume the same has happened to many other people. At any rate, Java took off and went on to become a dominant language (not to say _the_ dominant language) in the software business and many universities.
Actually, it was and is pretty great. Of course, looking in retrospect, it did some things wrong. Many of those things like the type system were actually thought of as "inefficient" at that time. Now most language purist would like Java to have each and every variable to be an object instance. If they had taken that route back then, they would have been scorned by most of the community.
To be sure, Java has changed a lot since its inception, and there definitely has been improvement. The type system is much better now than it used to be, and there are now several implementations for different niches, some of which are very impressive indeed. Still, after 15 years of enormous exposure, success, and development, I still find the language and platform lacking. Many features or missing features in the language make it difficult to express certain programs in their most natural form, often requiring much more code to write in Java than in another language. The standard library, while indeed extensive, is full of rough edges, bad APIs, and long-unfixed bugs. Many features of the host platform are simply not available in Java. Very few things in Java or the popular frameworks strike me as done right.
Most of the basic objects are now immutable. There are good ways of handling threads with a brilliant java.util.concurrent lib and pretty well worked out collection framework (which is a lot easier and safer than the boost libs, imho). The date and time API still is a mess, but that is being fixed. Java has a good regexp lib, good well defined string handling and many more well defined libs. Of course, new API's (of new languages) will build on this and hopefully be better than Java. But take a look and see how many fail; well designing core classes is no easy task. It's just to big to give all to James and Joshua.
Now, what bothers me is not that there are features of Java I don't like. Even if they could be shown to objectively make Java less good than some other platform or programming language, I wouldn't care very much. My problem is that Java has these shortcomings, has long had such shortcomings, and is _still_ being touted by many as the greatest platform out there, still receives enormous amounts of research and development effort, and is still extremely widely used _and_ taught to students. To me, that's a lot of energy, time, and money that we, as humanity, could have more effectively spent on other things. The way I see it, Java has been a coloss
What is it that lets Java have such a bad name on SlashDot? Even articles that are typical flamebait like the one above get modded up. It's open source, it's relatively secure, it's got loads of libraries and IDE's and developer support. It's even pretty fast compared to most competitors. It's definitely not a closed eco system either. Of course it's got its drawbacks, but come on...
Not really. It might point to BigDecimal, but leave strictfp out of it. Remember, this is for starting programmers, not creators of advanced 3D or math libs.
True, but in many cases (those that don't require too much performance) it is probably better to use BigDecimal anyway. I've never used that keyword, IMHO it's for inner libs only. It's certainly not something I would learn starting programmers (just as you should not learn new programmers the use of wait() or sleep(), rather CountDownLatch and the different Queue's).
Yeah, right, because bugs are always appearing right when something is launched, on your particular system setup no less. There are probably many things that can be said about this issue, but your comment must be the most clueless comment on this article. Anyone that has done *any* test work will confirm this. I'll inform my boss that all my programs are bug free because they are currently running fine on my development PC, shall I?
"I'm not at all sure the greens won't sell us out for environmental causes "
Sell you out for environmental causes? Sell you out to who precisely? Mother Earth?
Maybe HTC did not ask?
I've lost more data to McAfee than to malicious application ever. Of course, like most here, I'm not a prime target for these kind of scams.
Deleting backup2.zip because one file contained something malicious. I mean, if you can scan files in a zip archive, surely you can delete files from the archive?
Deleting a well known file from my Windows/system32 folder does not score very high on my list either.
By mechanized pumps and - of course - the tide. You close the I don't believe the pumps use *that* much energy though. The windmills are not used that much anymore for pumping water - they were not that effective energy-wise and take loads of maintenance. When holland was pumped dry they needed loads of windmills, most are now gone.
I've looked at the energy usage of the largest "gemaal" (pump) and it's about 10 milion kWh per year, about 3000 residences. It costs about 700.000 euro for fuel to keep it running. Sounds like a lot, but that thing keeps 2.300 km^2 dry.
As long as you don't really use round desks. If I hate anything it is having anything other than a smoothed down, straight desk to rest my paws on. Although at work I have a lowered desk and a natural 4000 ergonomic keyboard, which makes this point slightly moot since I use the rubbery wrist rest. Most devs use normal flatter keyboards, so they will want straight lines.
Currently I'm in a very very noisy room with about 20 people and a constant temperature of 24 degrees. As long as you don't have that it's probably for the good. I would hate a completely separate room though. I'll be leaving for a room where 4-6 people will be on desks facing each other (we put people that mainly do a single project together). As long as you use rectangular desks, you can do anything you want with them. A quarter round desk basically takes too much room unless it is used to put as a round table.
Personally I would use rectangular desks in a square where 2 persons sit next to each other, facing the other two. And I would have a small table with 4 normal chairs and a white-board for meets right next to that. Oh, and some plants and other stuff that make it look less like a clean room. A cookie jar and a good coffee machine spring to mind, and some space to put books in (books should be visible, otherwise they will just gather dust).
k that subject lines that continue in the post are annoying, along comes a guy that fini
Dutch too, I'm ashamed.
Absolutely, unless there is some well defined expiration date, e.g. those used by web servers and HTTP connections.
As for Java development, my game, there are things like Maven that can cache "artifacts" locally and check if they are up to date when required.
In other words, network caching is only feasible on application level. Caching NFS or SMB file shares is an entirely other matter.
Non-maven release builds can take quite a bit of time at my company, each and every file has to be transmitted over 100 Mbit/s network, each and every time they are needed.
The TN's I tried take away all off-whites colors if you look at them at an angle. The off-whites are regularly used for highlighting. Highlighting is often used within IDE's, such as Eclipse. Of course, you can have use much harsher colors instead, but then you end up with less contrast. And those colors are just painful on the eyes.
Well, I have got a lot of RAM (8 GB cost almost nothing, I've got a way bigger RAM cache installed than the default 50 MB disk cache) and I don't like disk because it sucks when multi-tasking. Unless you can configure FF not to cache to disk when I'm doing other things to it, I would rather have it leave my disk alone. If my 8 GB RAM is not enough, it may always revert back to using the disk to cache unused RAM pages.
That, and I've got a loud HDD (a raptor from before the early SSD age).