At least a writer would be able to form a complete sentence.
Additionally, your logic, which equates to "no writers are brilliant geniuses/visionaries", is flawed: it is within the realm of possibility that at least some SciFi writers are and were brilliant and visionary - if not for their scientific insight, certainly for their writing (Asimov and Bradbury come to mind).
What a narrow minded, ignorant view. (plus, I am a Science Fiction writer who has a vested interest in this stuff - so please, for the sake of my children's college fund - DON'T DIS SCIFI WRITERS!)
Ignorant people should pay $$$ if they are not willing to understand the technology to do it themselves.
The funny thing is how indignant they get about the whole thing. They seem to think it should just 'work' right out of the box. Computers and computer networks are complex beasts not easily understood by a layperson. Why? Because computers and computer networks were designed, from the begining, to be as flexible and general purpose tools as possible.
This allows us use the network to do things the original inventors never dreamed of (instant messaging, multimedia delivery, VOIP telephony etc...). This allows computers to 'simulate' just about anything you can imagine (an airplane, a race car, a storm system, a stock market, a map, a book, a writing tablet, the mind for a robot on Mars, etc...).
The day these tools are limited to a few predefined functions is the day computer science will die. Sadly, the anti-intellectuals in power would like nothing better.
I put my money on Burt Rutan's team. They have proven themselves in other record breaking aviation events - and given the great flights they have had - are a leg up on the competition.
Most of the places I sign my signature are starting to use electronic signature collection...so there are no 'dips', 'furrows' etc... embedded in the 'paper' (actually it is kept in a digital format). Essentially, this software would be creating a 3D image of a 2D surface...which would give you - you guessed it! - a 2D surface. Since we can probably bet that these systems and others (like RFIDs - like the one embedded in my keyfob for the gas station - I never sign for anything at my favorite gas station anymore) will be ubiquitous, this software seems like too little too late.
As for the wife issue: both of us have signed documents, checks, and what not for the other person to facilitate meeting deadlines when the other person can't be present (usually when I am out of town on business). I suppose they could say that is not my signature using this new technology - but I would simply certify both mine and my wife's version as correct - and that would (hopefully) be that.
Ah - so while Jobs hates the Newton, due to his misplaced 'not invented here' or more exactly, 'not invented by me' syndrome, he does recognize the power of the technology Scully's team came up with - and intends to leverage the 10 year old technology for profit, rather than sharing it with the world (as could have been done while the rest of us limped along with the PalmPilot, its clones, and other blecherous handwriting interfaces).
It would be really nice if they built a tablet PC incorporating much of the technology they have been greedily holding since the Newton was pulled (natural handwriting recognition etc...)
Sounds like the begining of one of those action adventure movies, where the girl is really not in the bathroom to use it, rather to get away from 2 thugs following her on the street, because she has the plans to the new uberwidget from her corporation. Feeling sorry for her, the young man offers his services and helps her on her quest. Several car chases, gun battles, and brawls later we discover she was using the guy, and is, in fact, a spy attempting to shuttle the goods out of the country. Broken hearted (literally) our protagonist is left in a pool of his own assorted body fluids as his view of her walking away with her smoking handgun fades to black FIN
We have seen the garbage collector not work under these conditions. We presume it has to do with the GC not being able to access whether a particular instance will be accessed, and thus does not collect it. The application is a service that is continually running (for all intents and purposes the loop is endless).
In all cases the application eventually locks up, and we see out of memory errors in the logs. We tried enlarging the memory allocated to the application - but this only postphoned the inevitable.
I will concede there could be something else going on inside of the loop that defeats the GC algorithm - but I am not sure what it is (could be a linked list that points to the objects etc...). All I know is something inside of the loop is defeating the GC - hence my statement.
"Were I a CIO facing these issues [the technical effort needed to port an app off one app server to another], I'd stay focused on the one thing definitively under my control - keeping the cost of substitution, of at least application portability, as close to zero as possible. How? You guessed it, I'd write to Java." - Jonathan Schwartz Sun COO
Ummm - what about python or perl? Both of these are just as portable - requiring zero modification of the code to port to any OS.
And don't pull out the 'java is more efficient' bull scatology. I have a java application right now that my team is rewriting in perl because it runs too slow (and also has a memory leak - code is vendor proprietary, so they won't let us see/modify the source to fix it). There is nothing I can do with java that I can't do with perl or python - as much as David Berlind would say otherwise (his statement in the article suggests perl and python are good for 'scripting', but not robust enough for large applications). As a supposedly impartial journalist/editor for ZDnet - I have to question his motives for jumping on this bandwagon. Also, his primary focus on writing, rather than building apps, hardly makes him qualified to make such an accessment, imo.
Given that I would have to disagree with this editorial in JDJ.
The words of the COO of SUN, who has a vested interest in the success of java, and the words of a journalist, who from all appearances doesn't have the technical background to be taken seriously concerning application development issues, in an editorial on a website dedicated to java development, hardly seems like 'news' more than a marketing ploy.
Java garbage collection doesn't work in all cases. If a programmer instantiates multiple objects inside of a loop - and doesn't exit the loop or explicitly destruct the objects, a pseudo-memory leak will occur (basically the amount of ram allocated to java will be reached, and the application will lock up; I suppose you could effect the operating system if you set the high water mark large enough).
If you avoid this, then java is not a problem.
However, other 4GLs - like python and perl don't have that problem at all... and both are just as portable as java.
You miss the point. The reason the hacks have to be done in the first place is the poor design of Windows - the company was more interested in obfuscating their internals than they were in creating a solid product (which would have accomplished the #1 customer requirement).
No - because the people in the middle will hold the core ideology while willing to negotiate and find compromises on more radical issues. If everyone is polarized, the differences will be too significant to find any middle ground. The problem with that is when one side or the other gets control (controlling the Congress, the Presidency and the Supreme Court) there will be no consideration for finding any middle ground and thought will only be for pursuing the most radical actions.
On the other hand, with moderates in both parties being a significant influence, more consideration would be given to not running rough shod over everyone.
Senator John McCaine is an example of the type of people I am talking about. We need more folks who are willing to negotiate - rather than run off and do their own thing because they can.
It would probably take years for the OSS community just to read the code, let alone understand or improve it...
Actually, you are right - but for the wrong reason.
Certainly it would take a long time for the OSS community to read the bloated MS code; however, understanding it would not be as much of a time sink as the time spent choking back the bile that would come up from seeing the blecherous implementation.
(It is well known that Windows DLLS/API code has all kinds of hacks to make them work with other DLLs and programs of MS as well as other vendors; rather than looking at the cause of the problem - poor assumptions and interface standards - they chose to hack around the problems. I can only imagine what the MS code looks like - interspersed with all kinds of exceptions hard coded in. As another reader pointed out, Longhorn must be double ugly - given the amount of 'phone home' spyware built into that puppy.)
You do have a third option if you are not satisfied - get involved, work within the parties to change the ideological dogma/zealousness of the party - or perhaps even the mind of a politician or two. Eventually, you might be in a position to pursue public office and put your ideas into play.
This is precisely why I came to the conclusion that it is better to put your energies into effecting change within either party (Dem/Rep) - than going the third party route.
As long as moderates (for want of a better word) continue to court third parties, or sit in apathy on the sidelines, both major parties will continue to further radicalize.
You would think that the more radical elements would be marginalized, but our history is showing that the middle - potentially the most numerous source of voters - is instead losing influence - while politicians continue to pander to them during elections - and like sheep we continue to vote for the radicals in both parties.
So I urge everyone interested in political involvement to join either the Democratic or Republican party, and start the long hard task of pulling them back to the middle ground where logic, reason, and compromise prevail.
If that corporation had the assets and lawyers at the Microsoft or IBM level - I guarantee they will get away with a slap on the wrist, in the form of fines, and a 'don't do it again'...
I would like to see you try to detain and lockup a corporation...;p
The whole concept of the corporation as an entity is a legal fiction designed to allow the owners to avoid the liabilities that their actions would incur if they were held directly responsible (as would be the case in a sole proprietorship, or a limited partnership).
We do have some redress against corporations, in the form of antitrust law, and the fact that we can bring 'it' to court (although it is difficult for individual citizens to afford to fund a lawsuit against a corporation with its cornucopia of lawyers).
Corporations also allow proper capitalization of a business through stock, that might otherwise grow too fast for traditional means of finance to be brought to bare in a timely manner (venture capital, bank loans etc...).
Until someone comes up with a clearly better means of keeping the business engine running, corporations will continue to rule the world.
Then how do you make images taken from a device available to the doctor in another building?
You need networking to be efficient. The problem is, it seems the medical manufacturers and Hospitals skimped on building a systematic network security infrastructure around these critical devices.
If I saw a guy pointing a gun at me from far away...
If someone is 1 mile away - with your naked eye -
a) You are not going to be able to tell what they are holding/pointing if you do notice them at all. b) You probably won't be able to see them at that distance, or if you do, distinctly as a seperate person from the background - particularly if they are in foliage, in a crowd of other people, or hidden inside of a building.
A mile is about 1609 meters; the longest successful sniping on record (by a team of Canadian soldiers in Afganistan) is about 2200 meters. If someone is pointing this thing at you from a mile or more away, you aren't going to see it.
Never trust anyone in a position of authority to do the right thing. Never answer leading questions from them like, "how would you run this shop...", "show me how our system would be compromised...", or "what is your view on [politics/religeon/sports]..."
Once they have you pigeonholed on their blacklist, your ability to be effective will be much diminished beyond anything they think it is safe for you to do, and your opportunities for moving around and/or up in the company will be sharply curtailed.
Just because you are the most loyal and effective employee in your office means nothing if they percieve you as otherwise due to their misunderstanding of your skills. As a security/network professional you have a duty to 'know thy enemy' - regardless of how unenlightened your boss may be.
I would expect squatter's rights to have presidence in most cases - unless, of course, 'moon men' or 'native martians' show up with the titles to the land.
My question is, how did we go from nomadic tribesmen to our current property based system? Perhaps that would be instructive for future outer space explorers, realters and land speculators.
Slashdot Mirror
Funny that since they're just writers.
At least a writer would be able to form a complete sentence.
Additionally, your logic, which equates to "no writers are brilliant geniuses/visionaries", is flawed: it is within the realm of possibility that at least some SciFi writers are and were brilliant and visionary - if not for their scientific insight, certainly for their writing (Asimov and Bradbury come to mind).
What a narrow minded, ignorant view. (plus, I am a Science Fiction writer who has a vested interest in this stuff - so please, for the sake of my children's college fund - DON'T DIS SCIFI WRITERS!)
Ignorant people should pay $$$ if they are not willing to understand the technology to do it themselves.
:p
The funny thing is how indignant they get about the whole thing. They seem to think it should just 'work' right out of the box. Computers and computer networks are complex beasts not easily understood by a layperson. Why? Because computers and computer networks were designed, from the begining, to be as flexible and general purpose tools as possible.
This allows us use the network to do things the original inventors never dreamed of (instant messaging, multimedia delivery, VOIP telephony etc...). This allows computers to 'simulate' just about anything you can imagine (an airplane, a race car, a storm system, a stock market, a map, a book, a writing tablet, the mind for a robot on Mars, etc...).
The day these tools are limited to a few predefined functions is the day computer science will die. Sadly, the anti-intellectuals in power would like nothing better.
I blame it all on Bill Gates.
I put my money on Burt Rutan's team. They have proven themselves in other record breaking aviation events - and given the great flights they have had - are a leg up on the competition.
Most of the places I sign my signature are starting to use electronic signature collection...so there are no 'dips', 'furrows' etc... embedded in the 'paper' (actually it is kept in a digital format). Essentially, this software would be creating a 3D image of a 2D surface...which would give you - you guessed it! - a 2D surface. Since we can probably bet that these systems and others (like RFIDs - like the one embedded in my keyfob for the gas station - I never sign for anything at my favorite gas station anymore) will be ubiquitous, this software seems like too little too late.
As for the wife issue: both of us have signed documents, checks, and what not for the other person to facilitate meeting deadlines when the other person can't be present (usually when I am out of town on business). I suppose they could say that is not my signature using this new technology - but I would simply certify both mine and my wife's version as correct - and that would (hopefully) be that.
My cpu cycles would be better spent running an RSS feed aggregator...
I am still waiting for my Mr Fusion equipped DeLorean...
Ah - so while Jobs hates the Newton, due to his misplaced 'not invented here' or more exactly, 'not invented by me' syndrome, he does recognize the power of the technology Scully's team came up with - and intends to leverage the 10 year old technology for profit, rather than sharing it with the world (as could have been done while the rest of us limped along with the PalmPilot, its clones, and other blecherous handwriting interfaces).
:|
I suddenly feel like I need a bath...
As long as it has some of the Newton tech - I don't care what they call it (providing the name does not involve something gross, of course)...
It would be really nice if they built a tablet PC incorporating much of the technology they have been greedily holding since the Newton was pulled (natural handwriting recognition etc...)
Sounds like the begining of one of those action adventure movies, where the girl is really not in the bathroom to use it, rather to get away from 2 thugs following her on the street, because she has the plans to the new uberwidget from her corporation. Feeling sorry for her, the young man offers his services and helps her on her quest. Several car chases, gun battles, and brawls later we discover she was using the guy, and is, in fact, a spy attempting to shuttle the goods out of the country. Broken hearted (literally) our protagonist is left in a pool of his own assorted body fluids as his view of her walking away with her smoking handgun fades to black FIN
We have seen the garbage collector not work under these conditions. We presume it has to do with the GC not being able to access whether a particular instance will be accessed, and thus does not collect it. The application is a service that is continually running (for all intents and purposes the loop is endless).
In all cases the application eventually locks up, and we see out of memory errors in the logs. We tried enlarging the memory allocated to the application - but this only postphoned the inevitable.
I will concede there could be something else going on inside of the loop that defeats the GC algorithm - but I am not sure what it is (could be a linked list that points to the objects etc...). All I know is something inside of the loop is defeating the GC - hence my statement.
"Were I a CIO facing these issues [the technical effort needed to port an app off one app server to another], I'd stay focused on the one thing definitively under my control - keeping the cost of substitution, of at least application portability, as close to zero as possible. How? You guessed it, I'd write to Java." - Jonathan Schwartz Sun COO
Ummm - what about python or perl? Both of these are just as portable - requiring zero modification of the code to port to any OS.
And don't pull out the 'java is more efficient' bull scatology. I have a java application right now that my team is rewriting in perl because it runs too slow (and also has a memory leak - code is vendor proprietary, so they won't let us see/modify the source to fix it). There is nothing I can do with java that I can't do with perl or python - as much as David Berlind would say otherwise (his statement in the article suggests perl and python are good for 'scripting', but not robust enough for large applications). As a supposedly impartial journalist/editor for ZDnet - I have to question his motives for jumping on this bandwagon. Also, his primary focus on writing, rather than building apps, hardly makes him qualified to make such an accessment, imo.
Given that I would have to disagree with this editorial in JDJ.
The words of the COO of SUN, who has a vested interest in the success of java, and the words of a journalist, who from all appearances doesn't have the technical background to be taken seriously concerning application development issues, in an editorial on a website dedicated to java development, hardly seems like 'news' more than a marketing ploy.
Java garbage collection doesn't work in all cases. If a programmer instantiates multiple objects inside of a loop - and doesn't exit the loop or explicitly destruct the objects, a pseudo-memory leak will occur (basically the amount of ram allocated to java will be reached, and the application will lock up; I suppose you could effect the operating system if you set the high water mark large enough).
If you avoid this, then java is not a problem.
However, other 4GLs - like python and perl don't have that problem at all... and both are just as portable as java.
You miss the point. The reason the hacks have to be done in the first place is the poor design of Windows - the company was more interested in obfuscating their internals than they were in creating a solid product (which would have accomplished the #1 customer requirement).
No - because the people in the middle will hold the core ideology while willing to negotiate and find compromises on more radical issues. If everyone is polarized, the differences will be too significant to find any middle ground. The problem with that is when one side or the other gets control (controlling the Congress, the Presidency and the Supreme Court) there will be no consideration for finding any middle ground and thought will only be for pursuing the most radical actions.
On the other hand, with moderates in both parties being a significant influence, more consideration would be given to not running rough shod over everyone.
Senator John McCaine is an example of the type of people I am talking about. We need more folks who are willing to negotiate - rather than run off and do their own thing because they can.
It would probably take years for the OSS community just to read the code, let alone understand or improve it...
Actually, you are right - but for the wrong reason.
Certainly it would take a long time for the OSS community to read the bloated MS code; however, understanding it would not be as much of a time sink as the time spent choking back the bile that would come up from seeing the blecherous implementation.
(It is well known that Windows DLLS/API code has all kinds of hacks to make them work with other DLLs and programs of MS as well as other vendors; rather than looking at the cause of the problem - poor assumptions and interface standards - they chose to hack around the problems. I can only imagine what the MS code looks like - interspersed with all kinds of exceptions hard coded in. As another reader pointed out, Longhorn must be double ugly - given the amount of 'phone home' spyware built into that puppy.)
IBM still sells mainframes, as well as providing services...
You do have a third option if you are not satisfied - get involved, work within the parties to change the ideological dogma/zealousness of the party - or perhaps even the mind of a politician or two. Eventually, you might be in a position to pursue public office and put your ideas into play.
This is precisely why I came to the conclusion that it is better to put your energies into effecting change within either party (Dem/Rep) - than going the third party route.
As long as moderates (for want of a better word) continue to court third parties, or sit in apathy on the sidelines, both major parties will continue to further radicalize.
You would think that the more radical elements would be marginalized, but our history is showing that the middle - potentially the most numerous source of voters - is instead losing influence - while politicians continue to pander to them during elections - and like sheep we continue to vote for the radicals in both parties.
So I urge everyone interested in political involvement to join either the Democratic or Republican party, and start the long hard task of pulling them back to the middle ground where logic, reason, and compromise prevail.
Get out the Vote in November!
My Microsoft (ugh - I know...) natural keyboard rox!
I use one at home and one at work - and my capeltunnel is a dim memory now.
I have no problems going between a standard 101 and a natural - although I can't stand being on a standard keyboard for any length of time.
If that corporation had the assets and lawyers at the Microsoft or IBM level - I guarantee they will get away with a slap on the wrist, in the form of fines, and a 'don't do it again'...
I would like to see you try to detain and lockup a corporation... ;p
The whole concept of the corporation as an entity is a legal fiction designed to allow the owners to avoid the liabilities that their actions would incur if they were held directly responsible (as would be the case in a sole proprietorship, or a limited partnership).
We do have some redress against corporations, in the form of antitrust law, and the fact that we can bring 'it' to court (although it is difficult for individual citizens to afford to fund a lawsuit against a corporation with its cornucopia of lawyers).
Corporations also allow proper capitalization of a business through stock, that might otherwise grow too fast for traditional means of finance to be brought to bare in a timely manner (venture capital, bank loans etc...).
Until someone comes up with a clearly better means of keeping the business engine running, corporations will continue to rule the world.
Then how do you make images taken from a device available to the doctor in another building?
You need networking to be efficient. The problem is, it seems the medical manufacturers and Hospitals skimped on building a systematic network security infrastructure around these critical devices.
If I saw a guy pointing a gun at me from far away...
If someone is 1 mile away - with your naked eye -
a) You are not going to be able to tell what they are holding/pointing if you do notice them at all.
b) You probably won't be able to see them at that distance, or if you do, distinctly as a seperate person from the background - particularly if they are in foliage, in a crowd of other people, or hidden inside of a building.
A mile is about 1609 meters; the longest successful sniping on record (by a team of Canadian soldiers in Afganistan) is about 2200 meters. If someone is pointing this thing at you from a mile or more away, you aren't going to see it.
Never trust anyone in a position of authority to do the right thing. Never answer leading questions from them like, "how would you run this shop...", "show me how our system would be compromised...", or "what is your view on [politics/religeon/sports]..."
Once they have you pigeonholed on their blacklist, your ability to be effective will be much diminished beyond anything they think it is safe for you to do, and your opportunities for moving around and/or up in the company will be sharply curtailed.
Just because you are the most loyal and effective employee in your office means nothing if they percieve you as otherwise due to their misunderstanding of your skills. As a security/network professional you have a duty to 'know thy enemy' - regardless of how unenlightened your boss may be.
I would expect squatter's rights to have presidence in most cases - unless, of course, 'moon men' or 'native martians' show up with the titles to the land.
My question is, how did we go from nomadic tribesmen to our current property based system? Perhaps that would be instructive for future outer space explorers, realters and land speculators.