There is almost no difference between C#/Mono/.NET and Java, but almost no Linux developers write in Java. Check out your distribution's packages and you'll almost see more JVMs than Java apps. And for some reason Linux developers avoid Java like the plague, even though it's got a godzillion features that make everything so much easier (garbage collection, huge consistent class library, security, etc). Put in a GTK or QT library interface instead of the slow and huge Swing (that Smalltalkers foisted on Java) and you're golden -- there's every reason to use Java, especially for applications.
The Linux culture has so far prevented Linux from taking the next step. Just look the (essentially) complete lack of interest in gcj (gcc open-source java). Just look at the slow pace of Mono. It isn't goind to happen anytime soon, unless the Linux app community wakes up and sees the future. Yeah, 10 years from now we'll still be doing manual memory management. Sure...
Others have mentioned the California code that prohibits employers from extorting the product of your own personal time just to get a job. Delaware also has a similar law (bottom of page).
My experience is that the single best thing you can do is to actually get the contract source from HR. Insert the sections from the California/Delaware code and show it to the Man, along with the text of the law so they knows it's real, tried-n-true Legalese and safe (especially if you have to modify some wording to match the rest of the contract). And it'll be on non-marked-up paper, which employers also like.
Nobody is going to let you get away with just striking out the IP clause, like lots of posters have suggested, and most of the clauses are too complicated to tweak with a pen. Keep it the way it is, but add an "except as provided by section X" (which is the California/Deleware section). It may not be perfectly solid legally, but in the worst case it takes puts the burden of proof on them. They won't bother trying to steal your IP in court unless it's really valuable, and in that case you can hire a lawyer of your own and win.
I wish gnome developers would study the
UI Hall of Shame and fix the many glaring UI problems -- then gnome would be a really nice desktop.
Consider:
The main point of a file selector is to choose a file. In the mock-up, only 22% of the dialog's space actually shows files compared to XP where 60% of the space is used for files. And honestly, a lot of the 22% is wasted in the GTK mockup. Defaulting to 'list' instead of 'small icons' doesn't help.
There is lots of empty space next to the cancel/open buttons and 'send to' checkbox that is just wasted (see XP for how to do it right and still look appealing).
Having 'Show All Files' button next to the filename field means there is less space to see the filename or type in a path into that field.
the 'up' button is located about as far away from the files as possible, ensuring lots of extra mouse movement. There is no 'back' button.
The 'shortcuts' list takes up lots of space and looks terrible when shortcuts with short and longs names are mixed, like in the example. Please tell me it doesn't resize with the window!
I use gnome instead of kde (on gentoo) but the lack of any UI sense is frustrating. Another example: the gnome-panel buttons grow to be unbelievably large if there are only a few windows open. This just looks terrible and combined with the layout problems make it nearly impossible to have a vertical or expanding bar that doesn't just look disgusting.
I really think linux is set to take off on the desktop this year, but these usability/aesthetic details can really have a large negative impact.
Almost everything in this article only applies because of hacker languages like C and C++, which Linux and FreeBSD use for virtually everything. It is so easy to forget to double-check bounds, input format, pointers, and all the other usual suspects. It's bizarre how programmers will use these error-prone languages for marginal performance gains just because their ego and haxor status is on the line. Sure, the kernel and drivers need to be in C. Sure, a Java VM needs to be in C. Sure, C++ is a good langage for game engines. But almost nothing else should be written in C/C++.
Command-line type programs can be written in Java and statically compiled into small, low-memory, fairly fast programs. And the JVM overhead is has almost no affect on the larger programs. But you have to work really hard to put a security problem into a Java app instead of working really hard not to. And you get garbage collection, an awesome API, security, faster compiling, dynamic classloading/linking, easier coding, etc. People think Java takes a lot of memory, is slow, and ugly. But that's almost entirely because of the Swing GUI, which is not actually all bad. Replace with IBM's SWT and you'll see a dramatic difference.
Of course there are other languages besides Java that protect against security problems, but few that do so as completely and easily. If half the effort had been put into inplementing the Java APIs in open source as just on GTK/GTK+ then linux/bsd could do nothing for ten years and still be ahead of the rest.
Seriously the fonts in Linux are just terrible. I used to think I screwed up my Fedora install since the Windows fonts were so crisp compared to Linux, but judging by the screenshots it's just all Linux I guess.
My eyes used to hurt looking at Linux until I changed my fonts to a non-proportional bitmap font and turned off antialiasing -- now it's crisp even though it looks butt ugly. I tried every setting (days of goofing around) and nothing else worked. I even copied the Windows fonts to Linux, but they were blurred too.
Does anybody know how to get crisp fonts on Linux? Thx.
The reason why the vast majority of people side with the filesharers instead of the mega-corporations like the RIAA is not because of some David-vs-Goliath underdog syndrome, it's because the RIAA and labels are making money from doing nothing.
Back in the analog days, actual physical copies of works had real value (each copy had real costs associated with it and took time to make), but in the digital world the copy has no value; anybody can make 100s of thousands of copies of a song per day using the most basic features of their computers. Aside from other factors such paying for convenience, supply and demand dictates that copies of works have zero value since the supply is effectively unlimited. Sure, creating the actual song itself required work, but they are trying to sell us the copy not the song itself.
People are simply rejecting the idea that they should pay for nothing, which is why we should change the copyright laws to recognize the basic principle of "no work, no money". People could download songs all they want completely legally as long as they don't make money off of it. If a company wants to use a song in their commercial then they pay the artist/authors for it because otherwise the company is making money from increased sales without doing the work of writing the song (this is the same principle the GPL is founded on). This preserves the author's incentive for creating a song in addition to concerts, selling the rights, fame, and other forms of compensation.
In other words, Digital Copyright should prevent others from making money off your work instead of preventing people from enjoying your work without paying for it.
If you actually RTFLaw, it clearly says "no person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
Any protection that is bypassed by holding down the shift key, disabling autorun, using Linux, disabling a device driver through normal means, etc is not effective and not illegal to bypass. The student should counter-sue and put SunnComm out of business. That's the only precedent that can actually come out of this.
The RIAA does not want to file actual lawsuits for lots of reasons. There's the higher initial cost, but the real problem for them is that they have to actually come up with evidence.
They want to be able to write you a letter, DirecTV-style, that says "we know you are a pirate, pay us $3500 or we'll send you to debter's prison" without having to come up with decent evidence (or any evidence at all). They want to send these letters to people who haven't even downloaded/shared music and extort money from them. Preparing an actual lawsuit will cost a lot, and if they screw up they'll get smacked by the counter-suit. Plus anybody can demand a jury trial since the potential damages are large enough. It'll be hard for the RIAA to get a jury without filesharers on it and the courts and congress will not take kindly to lots of jury trials for this kind of thing.
The next generation of P2P clients, which will provide forms of statistical anonymity, combined with DCMA exceptions, will make it extremely difficult to actually come up with evidence that anybody actually infringed on their copy right. The RIAA is just causing people to use stronger filesharing, which hurts our government's ability to find actual criminals. Not only does nobody benefit from their actions (not users, artists, or the government) but it's actually causing damange to everybody else.
SCO has just announced that the "Open Letter" is actually a Trade Secret never intended for publication; Daryl regularly adds "open" to the titles of Works until finished writing and editing.
Any copying of the letter, including but not limited to downloading the letter from an HTTP or other server for display purposes, consitutes misuse of intellectual property and is punishable by up to $150,000 in fines per occurrance. Such fines are justified due to the letter being one of the most valuable Intellectual Property contributions Daryl has ever produced. However, SCO will graciously license a copy for only $69.99 -- purchase now! This offer is only valid while supplies last.
- can distribute 100k dynamically linked code on web (WebStart; no install needed) - typically only 1-2 megs RAM used for actual UI (Mac OS / shared VM) - runs on all operating systems without recompile (compile once) - much easier, much more powerful GUI - huge class library
Why not Qt?
- don't want buffer overflows and crashes - don't want to rewrite everytime APIs change - don't want to reinvent the wheel to do double-buffering, gradients, anti-aliasing, etc. - requires finding, linking other libraries to do any real application.
But it doesn't matter since all electronic voting is untrustworthy no matter how much review and or so-called security. There is no way for people to verify or track the electronic votes without using machines, and machines can be made to lie. People can too, but look at the typical poll worker...
if thousands of grandmas are riggin votes then you're really screwed.
The site mentions Liebowitz's article that contrary to common sense and empirical data the QWERTY layout is better than the Dvorak one. Lieby claims Dvorak (the man) used special texts designed to make his keyboard look superior, but you can try it yourself on virtually any text and verify Dvorak's numbers.
Dvorak users consistently report less effort in typing and that it just "feels" better, but they must be wrong since QWERTY is better. QED. Even though the
fastest typer uses dvorak and other dvorak typers cleaned house in competitions, these results are all faked or "suspect". Even though all reason points to markets acheiving local maxima, just like theory says they should, Liebo insists that if one just defines the value of technology based on what the market has chosen then it proves that the market always right.
And oh yeah, therefore Microsoft never had an OS monopoly.
Kazaa is legal, so what difference is there between Right-Click Download on a file listed in kazaa and Right-Click Copy on a local copy of the exact same file? The RIAA says one should cost $1000 per file while the other you can do a billion times for free as long as you 'own' it (bought it on CD).
It's retarded. The other day a co-worker copied over 20 gb of music files from other co-workers with a single right-click. There was no Kazaa involved and the RIAA will never know about it to sue. Even if they stamp out distributed filesharing people will still get huge libraries of music and other files from their friends.
Furthermore, the constitution only grants power to congress to make laws granting artists exclusive right to their inventions and creations. Since the RIAA did not create the songs (the individual songwriters did), contracts and sales granting them 'ownership' of the copyright are unconstitutional.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned fractals. A simulation in a simulation is just like a mountain with a molehill -- it doesn't matter if we are real or sim since it all repeates to any level of detail. Unless we create one of those big black fractal holes right next to use that is.
the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true.
BUNK: Smalltalk not OO, didn't invent GUI
on
Opencroquet
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The greatest invention of Smalltalk is hype: co-opting and taking credit for other people's inventions.
Simula 67 was the first object-oriented language, and all practical/successful OO languages follow from it: C++, Java, C#, Eiffel, etc. But even Smalltalk experts mistakenly believe that Smalltalk invented OO. Smalltalk isn't even OO as we know it.
Similarly, the mouse was invented by Doug Englebart (movie evidence - ) along with the idea of the word processor and many other things we take for granted now. And the GUI was invented by Ivan Sutherland in Sketchpad: pop-up menus, drag and drop, etc (used a light pen).
is too slow
on
Opencroquet
·
· Score: 3, Informative
First poster says Smalltalk is no longer slow and that Java is "dangerous", but fairly recent testing showed the truth:
Math: 20x-300x slower than C or Java.
Method calls: 5x slower.
Overall overhead from OO is at least 10x for Smalltalk over C++ (there are a LOT more messages/method calls and almost none are inlined). Also since everything is a 'live' object when people screw up their desktop they have to do the moral equivalent of reinstalling the OS.
Slashdot Mirror
There is almost no difference between C#/Mono/.NET and Java, but almost no Linux developers write in Java. Check out your distribution's packages and you'll almost see more JVMs than Java apps. And for some reason Linux developers avoid Java like the plague, even though it's got a godzillion features that make everything so much easier (garbage collection, huge consistent class library, security, etc). Put in a GTK or QT library interface instead of the slow and huge Swing (that Smalltalkers foisted on Java) and you're golden -- there's every reason to use Java, especially for applications.
The Linux culture has so far prevented Linux from taking the next step. Just look the (essentially) complete lack of interest in gcj (gcc open-source java). Just look at the slow pace of Mono. It isn't goind to happen anytime soon, unless the Linux app community wakes up and sees the future. Yeah, 10 years from now we'll still be doing manual memory management. Sure...
Others have mentioned the California code that prohibits employers from extorting the product of your own personal time just to get a job. Delaware also has a similar law (bottom of page).
My experience is that the single best thing you can do is to actually get the contract source from HR. Insert the sections from the California/Delaware code and show it to the Man, along with the text of the law so they knows it's real, tried-n-true Legalese and safe (especially if you have to modify some wording to match the rest of the contract). And it'll be on non-marked-up paper, which employers also like.
Nobody is going to let you get away with just striking out the IP clause, like lots of posters have suggested, and most of the clauses are too complicated to tweak with a pen. Keep it the way it is, but add an "except as provided by section X" (which is the California/Deleware section). It may not be perfectly solid legally, but in the worst case it takes puts the burden of proof on them. They won't bother trying to steal your IP in court unless it's really valuable, and in that case you can hire a lawyer of your own and win.
Consider:
I use gnome instead of kde (on gentoo) but the lack of any UI sense is frustrating. Another example: the gnome-panel buttons grow to be unbelievably large if there are only a few windows open. This just looks terrible and combined with the layout problems make it nearly impossible to have a vertical or expanding bar that doesn't just look disgusting.
I really think linux is set to take off on the desktop this year, but these usability/aesthetic details can really have a large negative impact.
Almost everything in this article only applies because of hacker languages like C and C++, which Linux and FreeBSD use for virtually everything. It is so easy to forget to double-check bounds, input format, pointers, and all the other usual suspects. It's bizarre how programmers will use these error-prone languages for marginal performance gains just because their ego and haxor status is on the line. Sure, the kernel and drivers need to be in C. Sure, a Java VM needs to be in C. Sure, C++ is a good langage for game engines. But almost nothing else should be written in C/C++.
Command-line type programs can be written in Java and statically compiled into small, low-memory, fairly fast programs. And the JVM overhead is has almost no affect on the larger programs. But you have to work really hard to put a security problem into a Java app instead of working really hard not to. And you get garbage collection, an awesome API, security, faster compiling, dynamic classloading/linking, easier coding, etc. People think Java takes a lot of memory, is slow, and ugly. But that's almost entirely because of the Swing GUI, which is not actually all bad. Replace with IBM's SWT and you'll see a dramatic difference.
Of course there are other languages besides Java that protect against security problems, but few that do so as completely and easily. If half the effort had been put into inplementing the Java APIs in open source as just on GTK/GTK+ then linux/bsd could do nothing for ten years and still be ahead of the rest.
Seriously the fonts in Linux are just terrible. I used to think I screwed up my Fedora install since the Windows fonts were so crisp compared to Linux, but judging by the screenshots it's just all Linux I guess.
My eyes used to hurt looking at Linux until I changed my fonts to a non-proportional bitmap font and turned off antialiasing -- now it's crisp even though it looks butt ugly. I tried every setting (days of goofing around) and nothing else worked. I even copied the Windows fonts to Linux, but they were blurred too.
Does anybody know how to get crisp fonts on Linux? Thx.
The reason why the vast majority of people side with the filesharers instead of the mega-corporations like the RIAA is not because of some David-vs-Goliath underdog syndrome, it's because the RIAA and labels are making money from doing nothing.
Back in the analog days, actual physical copies of works had real value (each copy had real costs associated with it and took time to make), but in the digital world the copy has no value; anybody can make 100s of thousands of copies of a song per day using the most basic features of their computers. Aside from other factors such paying for convenience, supply and demand dictates that copies of works have zero value since the supply is effectively unlimited. Sure, creating the actual song itself required work, but they are trying to sell us the copy not the song itself.
People are simply rejecting the idea that they should pay for nothing, which is why we should change the copyright laws to recognize the basic principle of "no work, no money". People could download songs all they want completely legally as long as they don't make money off of it. If a company wants to use a song in their commercial then they pay the artist/authors for it because otherwise the company is making money from increased sales without doing the work of writing the song (this is the same principle the GPL is founded on). This preserves the author's incentive for creating a song in addition to concerts, selling the rights, fame, and other forms of compensation.
In other words, Digital Copyright should prevent others from making money off your work instead of preventing people from enjoying your work without paying for it.
If you actually RTFLaw, it clearly says "no person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
Any protection that is bypassed by holding down the shift key, disabling autorun, using Linux, disabling a device driver through normal means, etc is not effective and not illegal to bypass. The student should counter-sue and put SunnComm out of business. That's the only precedent that can actually come out of this.
They want to be able to write you a letter, DirecTV-style, that says "we know you are a pirate, pay us $3500 or we'll send you to debter's prison" without having to come up with decent evidence (or any evidence at all). They want to send these letters to people who haven't even downloaded/shared music and extort money from them. Preparing an actual lawsuit will cost a lot, and if they screw up they'll get smacked by the counter-suit. Plus anybody can demand a jury trial since the potential damages are large enough. It'll be hard for the RIAA to get a jury without filesharers on it and the courts and congress will not take kindly to lots of jury trials for this kind of thing.
The next generation of P2P clients, which will provide forms of statistical anonymity, combined with DCMA exceptions, will make it extremely difficult to actually come up with evidence that anybody actually infringed on their copy right. The RIAA is just causing people to use stronger filesharing, which hurts our government's ability to find actual criminals. Not only does nobody benefit from their actions (not users, artists, or the government) but it's actually causing damange to everybody else.
Any copying of the letter, including but not limited to downloading the letter from an HTTP or other server for display purposes, consitutes misuse of intellectual property and is punishable by up to $150,000 in fines per occurrance. Such fines are justified due to the letter being one of the most valuable Intellectual Property contributions Daryl has ever produced. However, SCO will graciously license a copy for only $69.99 -- purchase now! This offer is only valid while supplies last.
- can distribute 100k dynamically linked code on web (WebStart; no install needed)
But it takes forever to start
On Linux.
- typically only 1-2 megs RAM used for actual UI (Mac OS / shared VM)
Actually at least 20MB for the whole program, on windows
Windows sucks.
- runs on all operating systems without recompile (compile once)
Yes if you don't use JIT, which compiles every time when you run the program.
Equivalent to linking libc.so every run. Ooh, scary.
- huge class library
Where's the html browser widget??
new javax.swing.JEditorPane(documentURL);
Why Swing?
- can distribute 100k dynamically linked code on web (WebStart; no install needed)
- typically only 1-2 megs RAM used for actual UI (Mac OS / shared VM)
- runs on all operating systems without recompile (compile once)
- much easier, much more powerful GUI
- huge class library
Why not Qt?
- don't want buffer overflows and crashes
- don't want to rewrite everytime APIs change
- don't want to reinvent the wheel to do double-buffering, gradients, anti-aliasing, etc.
- requires finding, linking other libraries to do any real application.
But it doesn't matter since all electronic voting is untrustworthy no matter how much review and or so-called security. There is no way for people to verify or track the electronic votes without using machines, and machines can be made to lie. People can too, but look at the typical poll worker...
if thousands of grandmas are riggin votes then you're really screwed.
Dvorak users consistently report less effort in typing and that it just "feels" better, but they must be wrong since QWERTY is better. QED. Even though the fastest typer uses dvorak and other dvorak typers cleaned house in competitions, these results are all faked or "suspect". Even though all reason points to markets acheiving local maxima, just like theory says they should, Liebo insists that if one just defines the value of technology based on what the market has chosen then it proves that the market always right.
And oh yeah, therefore Microsoft never had an OS monopoly.
Kazaa is legal, so what difference is there between Right-Click Download on a file listed in kazaa and Right-Click Copy on a local copy of the exact same file? The RIAA says one should cost $1000 per file while the other you can do a billion times for free as long as you 'own' it (bought it on CD).
It's retarded. The other day a co-worker copied over 20 gb of music files from other co-workers with a single right-click. There was no Kazaa involved and the RIAA will never know about it to sue. Even if they stamp out distributed filesharing people will still get huge libraries of music and other files from their friends.
Furthermore, the constitution only grants power to congress to make laws granting artists exclusive right to their inventions and creations. Since the RIAA did not create the songs (the individual songwriters did), contracts and sales granting them 'ownership' of the copyright are unconstitutional.
I'll sell you a right-click for only $10!
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned fractals. A simulation in a simulation is just like a mountain with a molehill -- it doesn't matter if we are real or sim since it all repeates to any level of detail. Unless we create one of those big black fractal holes right next to use that is.
the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true.
The greatest invention of Smalltalk is hype: co-opting and taking credit for other people's inventions.
Simula 67 was the first object-oriented language, and all practical/successful OO languages follow from it: C++, Java, C#, Eiffel, etc. But even Smalltalk experts mistakenly believe that Smalltalk invented OO. Smalltalk isn't even OO as we know it.
Similarly, the mouse was invented by Doug Englebart (movie evidence - ) along with the idea of the word processor and many other things we take for granted now. And the GUI was invented by Ivan Sutherland in Sketchpad: pop-up menus, drag and drop, etc (used a light pen).
First poster says Smalltalk is no longer slow and that Java is "dangerous", but fairly recent testing showed the truth:
Math: 20x-300x slower than C or Java.
Method calls: 5x slower.
Overall overhead from OO is at least 10x for Smalltalk over C++ (there are a LOT more messages/method calls and almost none are inlined). Also since everything is a 'live' object when people screw up their desktop they have to do the moral equivalent of reinstalling the OS.