Maybe, but it works the other way around too. Just some weeks ago I was sent some Haskell code (has the same indentation is significant philosophy as Python) but in the copy & paste the indentation had gone completely off.... there was no way I could decipher the code anymore. With most other languages you can either still read it without problems or restore (your personal favorite) indentation without any problems.
Cool, but how does it make the claim that.NET (and.NET alone, since he's singling it out - not even Java is getting the same treatment) is "cookie cutter technology"?
I'd say because, in general, Java is NOT cookie cutter technology. One of the big complaints coming out of the.NET camp is that Java just has too many options, that you'll spend more time deciding which technology, library or framework to use than doing actual work.
So in a way I agree with what he says, because from experience I can say that I have met my share of.NET developers who think that a Web Service is that option that appears on the menu of Visual Studio and have no idea how all of it works or how to make it behave differently from the given defaults.
Now, you'll find brilliant people doing.NET and useless ones doing Java, but the moment they put on their CV that they know how to handle a certain technology I can be more or less sure that the Java developer at least read the documentation because most likely there wasn't a button for it on the menu of his/her IDE.
I think you underestimate how far we are already on our way to make our planet uninhabitable (meaning: for humans who want to keep their current lifestiles). You keep talking about potential problems with nuclear reactors, while if they would all explode tomorrow 90% of the world would still be habitable. On the other hand we've been filling the airs and the seas with so much rubbish that slowly but surely we're poisioning ourselves. Now, of course I'm not suggesting we should just ignore problems associated with these kind of reactors, but we have too keep the perspective that we're doing massive damage all over the world and most people don't lose a minute's sleep over it, while on the other hand buying iodine pills because of a reactor that's thousands of miles away. Human nature indeed, but nature also gave us the capacity to learn.
Aknowledging human nature should be the first step towards rationalizing about our fears and being able to put them in perspective to the bigger problems that are still there. And for long-lasting damage... I think cars have already caused much more damage to our environment and our health than 10 Tchernobyls ever will.
100% security does not exist. Car, trains, boats, planes, all have calculated risks of grave/fatal accidents and yet year after year we all accept the possibilities of dying in one of them that are way higher than being affected (let alone killed) by a nuclear accident.
My personal theory always has been that because of Italy's macho culture most Italian men would love to be in his shoes. So they might admit that he's an awful politician but secretely they wish they had a pair of balls like his.;)
I think Notion Ink's Adam (http://notionink.com/) is able to do this. They at least demonstrated at being used as a big digitizer tablet (like the wacom things) while being connected by HDMI to a monitor.
In my message I explicitely said "to the exclusion of everything else". Of course a company has to make money, it has to survive somehow, which is good for its employees, which is good for society.
Like you said people vote with their money and most of the time that works fine, but there are situations where it just breaks down. I doubt many people stopped fillinig their tanks at BP petrol stations for example.
Companies asking themselves "can I do this?" (or even "can I get away with this?") should maybe say a little bit more often "is it right to do this?".
But if the legal framework on one hand and the general way of thinking of the people on the other almost "forces" a company only to take into account any and all ways to wring the last cent from any situation we shouldn't be surprised that some of them turn into regular disasters.
I only ask for more "social responsibility" from companies. They are part of the latticework of society (not only of the financial market) and should behave accordingly.
The way it seems now in the US (and probably many other places as well) is that a company can expect to get away with any behaviour as long as it is not illegal, passively waiting for government to tell them when society thinks they're behaving badly and they should change their ways.
A good example that the contrary seems not only possible but even compatible with being profitable is Google.
I don't doubt you, but I just think you think too higly of Slashdot, in the end it's nothing more than an IT-gossip site, basically. Hugely popular, of course, but that doesn't really translate into quality.
Many of my (IT) friends and co-workers never "set foot" on slashdot exactly because it's so difficult to find the informative gems among the rubbish, the rants and the flames.
So I imagine there are many who prefer a site where most posts are informative or at least well-mannered knowing all the while that moderators are actively deleting anything vile, rude or off-topic (although Groklaw always has a special thread for that allows for that). To me at least Groklaw's comment policy seems reasonable.
I think that rules of conduct (with or without moderation) is almost always necessary in one way or another when you want to build and nourish a community that actively tries to "build" or accomplish something (look at the discussions within the Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora communities about this subject). Slashdot does not fit that bill IMHO.
I have always found this a very American point of view. It always reads as if there is a big [PERIOD] behind it, meaning "to the exclusion of everything else". If that's true than it's just ridiculous. Corporations exist only to make money? If that would be true than we've gone seriously wrong somewhere in history. It should be all about *us*, people, living and breathing beings of flesh and blood. Corporations should exist for the benefit of society and society should exist for the benefit of the people that live in it. Our capitalist system might work best if corporations *focus* on making money, but definitely *not* to the exclusion of everything else. I think it's not too strange to demand that they do so within a certain moral and ethical framework, not passively following the boundries drwan by laws and regulations but actively seeking to be an asset to society and to its people.
I can almost hear you say "dream on", but I think it starts with chaning this way of thinking where nothing else is expected of a corporation than money, money and ever more money.
It's true that Wayland doesn't do everything that X does, but it does do some of the hardest parts, which mean that somebody might think about writing a replacement and not be called a nutter.
In fact it's what they're currently aming for: making GUIs for resource constrained environments where X is just overkill (like tablets and netbooks).
Combine that with years of experience with X and things like RDP and VNC and there are people who are saying we could build network transparancy on top of Wayland without too much trouble and probably out-perform X by a large factor.
Anyway, all these developments are quite interesting, at least things are moving, let's just see where they will take us.
That was defenitely MY reason for donating. I haven't even played any of the games yet, but I'm willing to support the cause for Linux Gaming. For me personally I will purge Windows from my system the moment Valve makes Counter Strike available for Linux:) (no, please don't start telling me about WINE, I've tried it and 30fps (max, it might go as low as 15fps at times while I get 100+ in Windows) are fine for sinlge player games, but in game like CS every frame counts)
I have no inside information about why the didn't include a Linux version of their game, but as a developer I can think of at least two important reasons:
1. The support trouble a Linux version would cause. It's the same on Windows (different problems though) but at least there the size of the market makes it affordable. But it's no surprise many game develoeprs started developing for consoles that are much more regulated and therefore cause much less problems in this area. That's probably the reason some of those developers have at least started testing the waters on the Mac, becasue in a way it's comparable to the console market: at's a much more controlled environment. So it might make up a bit for the fact that the Mac market is quiete small compared to the Windows market.
2. They might have used 3rd party components that have no Linux version. Think DRM, launchers/updaters and/or propietary audio/video codecs. (Which is what rumours said was the problem with the UT3 port)
20-30 years after publication sounds reasonable. But still, I can imagine that I would hate seeing a big film company take my story and turn it into a blockbuster only 30 years after my book was published. So maybe there should be a difference between for-profit and non-profit use? Or in case of re-publication or adaptations?
IMHO Going 100% native only makes sense if you control the hardware and have strict software control. In the case that you need to deliver on all kinds of different hardware and allow users to write about anything they want without too much restrictions security soons becomes a nightmare if you don't have some way to guarantee that they can't do too much harm. Both are much easier to do with a VM.
All true, but the big question is: were the Helios probes made to get to their destination in the fastest possible way? Or more probable, get there fast enough while staying within the budget they were allotted? Are people really suggesting the Helios probes is the best we can do?
Not that I think we're going to suddenly come up with a hyper drive and I actually think it's not feasible to send anything yet. But maybe some day will be able to make something that gets there in a "reasonable" time and then receive the results a couple of generations down the road. A bit like those buried time capsules work, something that benefit future generations.
That was a contract dispute, it was not about patents. And besides it was a different era, Java was young still and Sun was afraid that Microsft would damage the "eco system". Nowadays they probably wouldn't have cared except for the fact that you can't call it Java if it doesn't adhere to the specs or fails the tests.
Actually it is not, especially if you're still young. You would need to know where and how to hit and have the physical strength to do so. Besides that a lot of people will stop at the first sign of blood or pain/anguish from their victim. Statistically you are much more likely to survive multiple stab wounds than one single bullet. The fact that a gun just needs you to point and pull the trigger makes it so simple that it seems unreal until you realize that you've just killed someone.
Besides the fact that installing dummy phones supposedly takes care of the "proximity effect". As if bees are influenced by the same psycholigical effects as humans. Talk about "beyond stupid".
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe, but it works the other way around too. Just some weeks ago I was sent some Haskell code (has the same indentation is significant philosophy as Python) but in the copy & paste the indentation had gone completely off.... there was no way I could decipher the code anymore. With most other languages you can either still read it without problems or restore (your personal favorite) indentation without any problems.
Cool, but how does it make the claim that .NET (and .NET alone, since he's singling it out - not even Java is getting the same treatment) is "cookie cutter technology"?
I'd say because, in general, Java is NOT cookie cutter technology. One of the big complaints coming out of the .NET camp is that Java just has too many options, that you'll spend more time deciding which technology, library or framework to use than doing actual work.
So in a way I agree with what he says, because from experience I can say that I have met my share of .NET developers who think that a Web Service is that option that appears on the menu of Visual Studio and have no idea how all of it works or how to make it behave differently from the given defaults.
Now, you'll find brilliant people doing .NET and useless ones doing Java, but the moment they put on their CV that they know how to handle a certain technology I can be more or less sure that the Java developer at least read the documentation because most likely there wasn't a button for it on the menu of his/her IDE.
I think you underestimate how far we are already on our way to make our planet uninhabitable (meaning: for humans who want to keep their current lifestiles). You keep talking about potential problems with nuclear reactors, while if they would all explode tomorrow 90% of the world would still be habitable. On the other hand we've been filling the airs and the seas with so much rubbish that slowly but surely we're poisioning ourselves.
Now, of course I'm not suggesting we should just ignore problems associated with these kind of reactors, but we have too keep the perspective that we're doing massive damage all over the world and most people don't lose a minute's sleep over it, while on the other hand buying iodine pills because of a reactor that's thousands of miles away.
Human nature indeed, but nature also gave us the capacity to learn.
Aknowledging human nature should be the first step towards rationalizing about our fears and being able to put them in perspective to the bigger problems that are still there. And for long-lasting damage... I think cars have already caused much more damage to our environment and our health than 10 Tchernobyls ever will.
100% security does not exist. Car, trains, boats, planes, all have calculated risks of grave/fatal accidents and yet year after year we all accept the possibilities of dying in one of them that are way higher than being affected (let alone killed) by a nuclear accident.
I had to look this up just to be sure you haden't put a decimal point in the wrong place somewhere. Truly mind-boggling!
If Italy was in another part of the world, there would probably be a lot of questions about how democratic it actually is
In what other part of the world would that be if not so close to the place where democracy was invented? ;)
My personal theory always has been that because of Italy's macho culture most Italian men would love to be in his shoes. So they might admit that he's an awful politician but secretely they wish they had a pair of balls like his. ;)
I think Notion Ink's Adam (http://notionink.com/) is able to do this. They at least demonstrated at being used as a big digitizer tablet (like the wacom things) while being connected by HDMI to a monitor.
In my message I explicitely said "to the exclusion of everything else". Of course a company has to make money, it has to survive somehow, which is good for its employees, which is good for society.
Like you said people vote with their money and most of the time that works fine, but there are situations where it just breaks down. I doubt many people stopped fillinig their tanks at BP petrol stations for example.
Companies asking themselves "can I do this?" (or even "can I get away with this?") should maybe say a little bit more often "is it right to do this?".
But if the legal framework on one hand and the general way of thinking of the people on the other almost "forces" a company only to take into account any and all ways to wring the last cent from any situation we shouldn't be surprised that some of them turn into regular disasters.
I only ask for more "social responsibility" from companies. They are part of the latticework of society (not only of the financial market) and should behave accordingly.
The way it seems now in the US (and probably many other places as well) is that a company can expect to get away with any behaviour as long as it is not illegal, passively waiting for government to tell them when society thinks they're behaving badly and they should change their ways.
A good example that the contrary seems not only possible but even compatible with being profitable is Google.
I don't doubt you, but I just think you think too higly of Slashdot, in the end it's nothing more than an IT-gossip site, basically. Hugely popular, of course, but that doesn't really translate into quality.
Many of my (IT) friends and co-workers never "set foot" on slashdot exactly because it's so difficult to find the informative gems among the rubbish, the rants and the flames.
So I imagine there are many who prefer a site where most posts are informative or at least well-mannered knowing all the while that moderators are actively deleting anything vile, rude or off-topic (although Groklaw always has a special thread for that allows for that). To me at least Groklaw's comment policy seems reasonable.
I think that rules of conduct (with or without moderation) is almost always necessary in one way or another when you want to build and nourish a community that actively tries to "build" or accomplish something (look at the discussions within the Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora communities about this subject). Slashdot does not fit that bill IMHO.
Preferring Slashdot over Groklaw because of its posting policy?
I don't know, but to me it sounds a bit like praising a prostitute for the ease with which she opens her legs.
I have always found this a very American point of view. It always reads as if there is a big [PERIOD] behind it, meaning "to the exclusion of everything else". If that's true than it's just ridiculous. Corporations exist only to make money? If that would be true than we've gone seriously wrong somewhere in history. It should be all about *us*, people, living and breathing beings of flesh and blood. Corporations should exist for the benefit of society and society should exist for the benefit of the people that live in it. Our capitalist system might work best if corporations *focus* on making money, but definitely *not* to the exclusion of everything else. I think it's not too strange to demand that they do so within a certain moral and ethical framework, not passively following the boundries drwan by laws and regulations but actively seeking to be an asset to society and to its people.
I can almost hear you say "dream on", but I think it starts with chaning this way of thinking where nothing else is expected of a corporation than money, money and ever more money.
It's true that Wayland doesn't do everything that X does, but it does do some of the hardest parts, which mean that somebody might think about writing a replacement and not be called a nutter.
In fact it's what they're currently aming for: making GUIs for resource constrained environments where X is just overkill (like tablets and netbooks).
Combine that with years of experience with X and things like RDP and VNC and there are people who are saying we could build network transparancy on top of Wayland without too much trouble and probably out-perform X by a large factor.
Anyway, all these developments are quite interesting, at least things are moving, let's just see where they will take us.
That was defenitely MY reason for donating. I haven't even played any of the games yet, but I'm willing to support the cause for Linux Gaming. :)
For me personally I will purge Windows from my system the moment Valve makes Counter Strike available for Linux
(no, please don't start telling me about WINE, I've tried it and 30fps (max, it might go as low as 15fps at times while I get 100+ in Windows) are fine for sinlge player games, but in game like CS every frame counts)
I have no inside information about why the didn't include a Linux version of their game, but as a developer I can think of at least two important reasons:
1. The support trouble a Linux version would cause. It's the same on Windows (different problems though) but at least there the size of the market makes it affordable. But it's no surprise many game develoeprs started developing for consoles that are much more regulated and therefore cause much less problems in this area. That's probably the reason some of those developers have at least started testing the waters on the Mac, becasue in a way it's comparable to the console market: at's a much more controlled environment. So it might make up a bit for the fact that the Mac market is quiete small compared to the Windows market.
2. They might have used 3rd party components that have no Linux version. Think DRM, launchers/updaters and/or propietary audio/video codecs. (Which is what rumours said was the problem with the UT3 port)
20-30 years after publication sounds reasonable.
But still, I can imagine that I would hate seeing a big film company take my story and turn it into a blockbuster only 30 years after my book was published.
So maybe there should be a difference between for-profit and non-profit use? Or in case of re-publication or adaptations?
IMHO Going 100% native only makes sense if you control the hardware and have strict software control. In the case that you need to deliver on all kinds of different hardware and allow users to write about anything they want without too much restrictions security soons becomes a nightmare if you don't have some way to guarantee that they can't do too much harm. Both are much easier to do with a VM.
All true, but the big question is: were the Helios probes made to get to their destination in the fastest possible way? Or more probable, get there fast enough while staying within the budget they were allotted? Are people really suggesting the Helios probes is the best we can do?
Not that I think we're going to suddenly come up with a hyper drive and I actually think it's not feasible to send anything yet. But maybe some day will be able to make something that gets there in a "reasonable" time and then receive the results a couple of generations down the road. A bit like those buried time capsules work, something that benefit future generations.
"copycounterfeiting"? They even go after people who make copies of copies? That's just... wow... ;)
That was a contract dispute, it was not about patents. And besides it was a different era, Java was young still and Sun was afraid that Microsft would damage the "eco system". Nowadays they probably wouldn't have cared except for the fact that you can't call it Java if it doesn't adhere to the specs or fails the tests.
Actually it is not, especially if you're still young. You would need to know where and how to hit and have the physical strength to do so. Besides that a lot of people will stop at the first sign of blood or pain/anguish from their victim. Statistically you are much more likely to survive multiple stab wounds than one single bullet. The fact that a gun just needs you to point and pull the trigger makes it so simple that it seems unreal until you realize that you've just killed someone.
pseudoscience http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience
Besides the fact that installing dummy phones supposedly takes care of the "proximity effect". As if bees are influenced by the same psycholigical effects as humans. Talk about "beyond stupid".
"randomly assembled machines"
There's no professional serious biologist that says that. Darwinism and evolution is NOT "we somehow spontaneously fell together".