Again, It's true that some things cannot/will not be made at home, always.
You're wrong about heat treating, by the way. Plenty of folks out there have set up their own small foundries, and are casting aluminum and iron. Plenty of other folks (like me) have computer controlled kilns for case hardening.
I think if some complex process is a stumbling block to making a desired item, the designer will try to work around it... redesign a part so it doesn't need the complex process, or substitute a process that can be performed simply. If you post on certain engineering or DIY boards online with a challenge like "design a toaster that can be built with hand tools" you'll get 20-30 people giving it a shot.
I'm not saying that grandma is going to have a forging press in her living room. I'm saying that there will probably be a couple of people living in her town that build things, and then a couple more, until down the line the "best" stuff won't come from big factories, but from small shops. eg. look at the high end bicycle world... all the top of the line stuff is from tiny makers who specialize in a small list of items.
There's a world of difference between benchtop tools and small CNC. The latter requires far less skill to produce far more complex parts. More to the point, CNC permits easy replication or repeated parts with high tolerances. Make one for yourself, and one for a friend.
There'll always be professional engineers and drafters, but there are also people who love to design things for free.. witness the availability of free CNC machine designs online, and patterns to run on them. Or free software, for that matter.
Woodwork and metalwork are apples and oranges. You can make some nice things with wood, but unless you love having nice furniture, the options are limited. For metal though, you can make machine parts that will handle large forces and wear well.
Note that I'm not saying that all things will be made at home... just some things, enough to turn the economy on its ear and change the way the government has to try to control objects... which is a futile endeavor anyway.
Oddly enough I had to replace an axle stub about a month ago:)
Yes, but there's a world of difference between a talented criminal making a working revolver or two and every john doe who can run a computer being able to turn out automatic weapons....
A huge trend in the near future (0-20 years) will be home and distributed engineering (inventing) and manufacturing. People will trade information on technologies, how-to information, plans, and parts to make sophisticated products in their home or workshop.
This is not to say we're all going to get replicators or nanotech manufacturing like in "The Diamond Age" but the level of sophistication of home built products is going to go way, way up. From small appliances to tools to vehicles to weapons, it'll be possible to make a large number of items in places other than traditional factories, in small quantity and high quality.
To see this sort of thing emerging, look at efforts like Reprap to make a self replicating 3d prototyping machine (which probably won't be 100% self replicating for a long time, but which is a great starting point for at-home applications of the technology) or home CNC machines like router tables and small CNC machine tools. You can buy a CNC milling machine capable of producing small parts eg. for firearms and small engines for less than $3000 with computer. Once these become widespread part libraries for them will be as available as clip-art. Want a new part for your bicycle? Download the pattern, place the raw material in the machine, and walk away.
As quality items become harder to find in mass produced outlets, items made at home will take their place. Any item with a niche market will probably be made in these mini manufactoria... there won't be a profit any more in making small quantity items since there'll be tremendous competition from small manufacturers.
No need to keep an inventory of obscure auto parts on hand (or to pay for storage space or sunk costs in the inventory). Just keep the pattern available and churn out parts as needed. Need a part you don't have a pattern for? Ask someone on the internet to measure their part and make a pattern from it, using the same CNC mill to automate the measurements.
I like the trend myself... but can you imagine the fit the government will throw when it figures out it can no longer regulate eg. firearms because anyone with a CNC mill can turn one out in a day or two? I can see them at first trying to ban home manufacturing, trying to ban precursor items and materials, then trying to create an overarching government agency to police the whole thing.
It'll be similar to recording companies figuring out they're no longer needed since anyone can distribute or purchase music on-line without their involvement.
Likewise I can see large corporate manufacturers of some items begging for a government bail-out because no one wants to buy their mass produced crap any more. Why pay $100 for a cheap wal-mart bike when the CNC machine shop in the next town can produce one with 3x the quality for the same price? Why pay a computer store $35 for a plastic keyboard when you can get a solid brass one with better components made at home?
Erik
PS: For those of you that know what this means... we'll be able to evolve an STC pattern for common items:)
This is a fine illustration of the mindset of a lot of Linux and open source "fans".
There's a self identification happening here with the "open source community" for a number of reasons, and it's a common occurrence among a lot of open source advocates. What usually happens is that fans end up with a binary view of the software production system... specifically the idea that there exists an "us and them" conflict between open source and commercial software, and between the authors of same. It's kind of the same impulse that makes people identify with a sports team based in their city or state as "their" team, or advocating their own brand of computer for emotional rather than rational reasons.
Humans want to belong to groups, they get a good feeling from it. So even in cases where clear "us and them" groups don't exist, they perceive them, since without a group they have nowhere to belong.
There are a lot of reasons for this both biological and social. The phenomenon seems to be a human universal, though.
To make things more complicated, once a person identifies his or herself with a group, then they personalize attacks on or praise for that group themselves.. it's a major reason they want to belong in the first place, since it can provide immense positive feelings with little effort, and can provide them more often than a single person's efforts alone would.
This personalization usually means whomever is involved can no longer be effectively reasoned with where the group, it's attributes, or goals are concerned. This is because either consciously or subconsciously that person feels threatened by any suggestion that the group is "wrong" or incorrect, or even worse that the perceived group doesn't exist.
So, in this case the submitter is assuming that the rest of the folks here on Slashdot are A) Aware of the "us and them" groups, B) Part of the "us" group, and C) Also concerned about this "issue" which has been brought to light (probably only partly for advocacy reasons... another large burst of good emotional feelings comes from actively representing the group to which one belongs, and warning of impending doom is a good way to represent. See also the football fans that paint themselves and wear their team's colors.
The truth in this case is that there are many more parties involved than just two, and that the assumed conflict doesn't exist. If one looks back to the origins of the free software movement, there were no restrictions placed on commercial use of the GPL software (or its predecessors). In fact, the GPL allows commercial use of licensed software without fee or restriction except for the provision to distribute source code.
The hard thing for a lot of people who are concerned about this "conflict" to wrap their head around is that there's no conflict, and in fact commercial software stacked on top of open source is a very good thing for any open source platform... it means everyone wins. People can make money off of their work, other people can get commercially supported apps they need, and no one is held hostage to a closed source operating system or distribution method.
Imagine what the iPhone would be like if Apple didn't control the OS, and wasn't able to control the software written for the device... there'd be far fewer $9 apps that are crap since someone would immediately write something better, and having no one to say "no" would get it published.
It's amusing and sad to see "industry pundits" guess at what Google might be planning. After all, this is a company which has grown huge and leads in many areas of technology and business by virtue of its ethics, good governance, foresight, and research.
If the pundits could predict what Google was doing, they'd be rich corporate heads, not writers trying to guess what's going on.
I personally think that just maybe Google is going to offer a "free" phone.. not free as in beer, free as in speech.. where it costs more than a "subscriber sponsored" phone, maybe more than the iPhone, but which users will buy if it's not insanely expensive simply to get a "free" device... one not locked to a carrier with features turned off because the carrier wants to protect its business model.
One with a standard design and API that permits software to be developed with more than generic features, like the iPhone. But one that's not locked to Apple's corporate policies and whims, like the iPhone.
One that will set a standard for a new type of wireless phone system that is "the way it ought to be" with users owning their full featured phones and having the freedom to buy minutes from whichever carrier they like on a day to day basis, or to buy none at all but to use the ubiquitous wireless hotspots and networks to make calls.
Google may be using its corporate muscle to break the wireless carriers' hold on the market, a hold which has ensured them profits but which has stymied development of truly next generation wireless connectivity, which itself would drive a major change in society. Remember what internet access was like before wireless? Imagine that kind of change if the wireless carriers loosen their government ensured grip on the market.
Data and voice for everyone, "the way it ought to be". And it may start with a free phone.
I have run into the same problem with printers... by the time I print enough to use up the first ink cartridge, there's a better new printer with ink for less money than the new cartridges.
No problem... I just buy the new printer. It's a loss leader, aka the company selling it takes a loss it plans to make back through ink sales, and I don't buy ink. So they subsidize my new printer.
For the old printer, I recycle it... either through an electronics recycling facility, or through my own hobbies. Printers usually have one or more stepper motors, timing pulleys, belts, useful metal shafts... great for amateur robotics folks. The electronics can be used for BEAM robots.
Long term I'm planning on dumping the printer altogether... once e-ink books get to the point where they're color and cheap, I won't need paper hardcopy, I'll just transfer over the docs to my e-book.
LOL... so I'm "free" to write and use whatever software I want, as long as I don't spread it around? Do you even understand how ridiculous that is? It's like a typewriter manufacturer dictating what kinds of books can be written using their machine. It's *mine*, I bought it, so I'll write what I want and do with it what I want, thank you.
To use a car metaphor, buy a VW Beetle and ask them if you can go off-roading with it. They'll tell you not to do it. If you say, "I'll get big shocks and knobby tires", they--and your insurance company--will tell you that it's not supported. If you do it anyway, and take it to a location where it's legal to do that kind of driving, VW's not going to stop you.
Same thing here. Difference is that VW will actually void your warranty. With Apple, you can re-set to factory defaults and everything's still intact.
This is kinda apples and oranges, but I'll go with it a bit.
The difference between iPhone and VW is that Apple's not just dictating appropriate and safe use... if I wanted to use my iPhone as a pacemaker they'd be quite right to void my warranty and run screaming from the whole idea.
What they're doing, though, is more like dictating what appropriate use is, apart from simply letting common sense and consumers decide.
To use the VW analogy, it would be like VW requiring VW only gas to be used in their cars, which is more expensive and harder to get than non VW gas. Even though chemically identical and quite usable non-VW gas is out there, and some of it might offer more horsepower or cleaner emissions, VW would threaten to void your warranty if you used it and would verify use via an internal sensor in the gas tank.
The thing that makes this behavior unacceptable isn't even the whole "VW only" rules and mechanisms described above, although it's a red flag to me. It's the reason VW would do it... to preserve their control of their cars and how they're used, because control means more profit for them from "VW Brand" gas and the ability to alter that fuel's composition or delivery mechanism as they see fit.
Apple isn't trying to keep consumers safe or indicate which uses of its products will result in damage to them or injury. They're exercising a level of control over items no longer theirs that no manufacturer should have.
It'd be different if they were up front and said something like "You're not buying your iPhone, you're just leasing it from us..." but they're not. They sell them.
When I buy something, it's mine. So I'm going to show my disagreement with their behavior by not buying their products.
You know, it's a red flag to me and many people when someone quotes numbers like this. "you have only a 0.7% margin in which they respond with a 10-second lag".
Other than the fact that there's not enough information here to be meaningful, this is like saying about cars that "You have a 2 second lag between gas pedal control and acceleration, enough to be dangerous, and top speed is only 70 kph".
Apart from the fact there's no way to verify the numbers given, this ignores the fact obvious to even amateur engineers that NOT ALL NUCLEAR PLANTS ARE ENGINEERED THE SAME.
ONE plant might have the numbers given for reaction control. Who knows?
But really what quoting exact numbers that spell doom and gloom and then claiming they apply across all instances of something as complex as power plants says to anyone reading it: "I don't know what I'm talking about, but I memorized these numbers because they agree with my beliefs and I can use them as 'proof' that I'm right."
Man, the last time I wanted to talk to the hardware directly was on a C64, appropriately enough. Why would you want to do that on a modern, multitasking system? Are you building some sort of dedicated control console for which the overhead of an OS/abstraction layer is not acceptable?
So your justification for this is "you don't need that"? I can in fact think of plenty of cases where I'd like to talk directly to the underlying hardware... to get the most out of a given system, to replace firmware routines or BIOS with better software... But the main issue remains unchanged.. it's not whether I have an immediate need to do something, it's whether I'm *allowed* to use my own computer, which I've paid for, to do it, and publish my results.
They wouldn't make any money doing that if there weren't some sort of trade-off.
Yeah, if they didn't supply cool features people wouldn't accept their level of control:)
They make things easier and more reliable for people. If you don't build in some limits while you're doing that, you end up with a system that is prime host territory for viruses and trojans.
Um, no. Making things "easier and more reliable" has in fact the opposite effect... a "more reliable" system usually is also more resistant to malicious software than one less carefully engineered. Sorry, but I'm not buying Apple's explanation here. It's an excuse to justify their control.
Besides, as others have pointed out, they're not all evil.
I didn't say they were. Only Sith deal in absolutes.
Want to develop for the Mac? Xcode and their docs are free as in beer. Want to develop for the iPhone? If you just want to do it yourself and only to your own phone, it's free. It's only if you want to distribute it to the general public that it costs anything.
LOL... so I'm "free" to write and use whatever software I want, as long as I don't spread it around? Do you even understand how ridiculous that is? It's like a typewriter manufacturer dictating what kinds of books can be written using their machine. It's *mine*, I bought it, so I'll write what I want and do with it what I want, thank you.
Don't forget: people choose the iPhone. They chose it even when there was no app store, no third-party development. The only reason this is an interesting topic of discussion is that it's the most popular phone out there. And with the cost of ownership, they're not exactly forcing anyone to buy...
Forcing, no. That's the center of the ethical argument, actually. They aren't forcing people, they're just acting within the gray area of law and ethical behavior, holding out the shiny bauble with one hand to distract customers who aren't bright enough to watch the other hand carefully herding them away from things that "no one really needs to do"... things that coincidentally would threaten their profit margin.
I see the shiny, and I like it, but I like freedom more, and I'm gonna wait and hope someday Apple either changes, or some more ethical corporation out-competes them... shiny things *with* freedom can't be beat.
Apple's doing what they've done for years... limiting the amount of information and freedom they give to programmers and ordinary people who buy their products. For a long time when the Mac came out you couldn't "talk" to the hardware directly (or get any docs for it), you had to use hardware functions via the apple exposed and documented API, and apple would fight you creating and distributing any program that did otherwise. That's why I never bought a Mac... the interface was very good, much better for a long time than the PC/Windows interface, but the trade-offs in freedom weren't worth it.
Same thing nowadays with the iPhone... you can get this neat phone with a super cool interface and great responsiveness... frankly it's a great product. But you can't do just anything you want with it, despite the fact you paid for it and now own it. You have to use the cell network provider apple approves, pay apple's prices, sell your app via Apple's store (okay, they may not require this, but they don't support easy sales any other way, so it's effectively a requirement) and follow apple's rules for acceptable application behavior.
Sure, they can list semi-acceptable business reasons for wanting this kind of control (want to make sure apps all work/are high quality, want to make sure network connectivity is good, etc) but the real reason for the restrictions is the same one it's always been.
Apple makes a lot of their money by exercising tight control over not just their products' design and software, but how they're sold and used... a level of control which, if most people were told about it up front, would make them very, very uncomfortable. But of course all you hear about up front is how cool the product is.
So I'm still boycotting Apple products... which hurts sometimes because frankly they're pretty cool... Apple really broke the industrial design mold with iMac, and hasn't looked back.
But Apple the corporation has always made a lot of money by taking away little bits of freedom here and there. It's amazing that otherwise intelligent geeks don't seem to recognize this nowadays... they've been doing this as long as Macs have been out. I guess it's more important to have a cool toy than to recognize that they're being taken for a ride by a large corporation.
Apple... business as usual since 1984... and that's not a coincidence.
Right now you can use things like barbed wire fences and electric fences to keep the cows safe and corralled. If they couldn't feel pain it'd be a cross between a cow and "Darkman". They'd charge through fences getting cut to ribbons and never noticing the blood, or stand on electric fences until they caught fire.
Cattle are painfully stupid. Stupid livestock are expensive and annoying to deal with. Ask a turkey farmer.
Okay, then allow me to rephrase, splitter of hairs.
If we consider a computer to be a device that is capable of flexibly running general purpose programs (a non embedded system) then the PC has the highest count.
If you're going to count embedded systems, then we can make a similar statement about them: Among embedded systems, Java is not the most run software, or even in the majority. Symbian, Windows Mobile, or real-time OSs like vxWorks are. Java is used for small apps and games in certain cases, and I note that above.. interactive embedded systems are part of Java's niche, but it's certainly not taking over the space.
"A lot" of work PCs using java in the enterprise is vague, but somewhat true. However, for each of those PCs that runs a java program, it's got 10 or 100 non java programs that do other work or are utilities. I have worked in plenty of fortune 500 companies that have a couple of java programs for web access or systems management, along with 10 more for word processing, spreadsheets, and customer contact management. Again, these are part of Java's niche.
So, that goes back toward my original statement: Java is a niche product, not the most common environment on the planet, and it's not going to be. Releasing the JVM as open source is a nice step, but it's too late to do more than just give people a warm fuzzy feeling.
So, yay for Sun making the gesture, but I don't think it'll alter the user count for Java much. It it used or not based on its own merits, and it's too late for a grassroots Java project.
"Most developers are building apps for the real world, not the desktop"
Last time I checked, desktops were in the real world... or did you mean portables, palm devices and embedded systems? There's some Java there.
If you classify by unit count, dollar sales figures, or user count, I think you'll find the most used computers in the world are PC class single user systems, and on those systems java is installed so web pages look right, not because it's the number one user app.
Java currently gets used in a couple major places: Large web applications, under a servlet container, and graphical client or management applications. Oh, and development tools like eclipse.
I believe there's also a lot of use on small portable devices, like smart phones.
Other than that, Java isn't the language of choice. How many Windows desktop programs are Java? How many open source programs are written in Java? You can search freshmeat by language I think to find out. How many successful shrink-wrapped Java games have there been?
Java isn't a universal computer language and VM as it was sold to be originally. Sure, it's useful, and great for certain things, but it's not on the road to replacing ordinary C code.
Outside the areas listed, it's just not considered as a potential development language because of its deficiencies.
You mean you didn't believe that Java was the second coming of the messiah, and that we would all be programming in it just after dropping all other languages, and no one would ever write machine-specific code again?:):)
I've considered spending time to learn java better, and knowing that the JVM is open sourced is a good thing, but Java as a whole would have benefitted from being open sourced a long time ago, when some of the community that uses it could have fed knowledge and information back into the language and VM design.
Now it's basically a niche product that's more or less complete, and we either have to accept it as is for use or break compatibility with existing code to make any major mods to it.
The major advantages java has always had are 1) Increased programmer productivity and 2) Code portability. Both of these are achieved by other platforms now in different ways, so Java is now one of many instead of the only solution.
Open sourcing it is more insurance for its users than anything else... it won't drive a Java renaissance any more than open source Solaris will, because there are already good alternatives.
Sun... producing good open source products that would have better been open sourced years ago.
So I'm guessing you're not real familiar with teenagers?
Depending on mood, they can ignore you completely, and actually avoid you, or, they can compete with your bathroom breaks for your time.
What I'm saying is that a teenager giving an anecdote about her parents' behavior is enough to warrant a second look by someone else (not a social worker) but is not enough to diagnose her parents with some type of behavioral disorder.
It's not the amount of time, it's the ability to go without or put down the game for other reasons, real-life or otherwise, and whether or not playing is a detriment to your life.
If you suspect addiction, then take a break, and if you're really not sure, see a psych. or counselor.
It's supposed to be for-fun, to enhance your life, not replace it.
BTW, I play WoW too, mostly at night before bed, when I have time.
Slashdot Mirror
Again, It's true that some things cannot/will not be made at home, always.
You're wrong about heat treating, by the way. Plenty of folks out there have set up their own small foundries, and are casting aluminum and iron. Plenty of other folks (like me) have computer controlled kilns for case hardening.
I think if some complex process is a stumbling block to making a desired item, the designer will try to work around it... redesign a part so it doesn't need the complex process, or substitute a process that can be performed simply. If you post on certain engineering or DIY boards online with a challenge like "design a toaster that can be built with hand tools" you'll get 20-30 people giving it a shot.
I'm not saying that grandma is going to have a forging press in her living room. I'm saying that there will probably be a couple of people living in her town that build things, and then a couple more, until down the line the "best" stuff won't come from big factories, but from small shops. eg. look at the high end bicycle world... all the top of the line stuff is from tiny makers who specialize in a small list of items.
There's a world of difference between benchtop tools and small CNC. The latter requires far less skill to produce far more complex parts. More to the point, CNC permits easy replication or repeated parts with high tolerances. Make one for yourself, and one for a friend.
There'll always be professional engineers and drafters, but there are also people who love to design things for free.. witness the availability of free CNC machine designs online, and patterns to run on them. Or free software, for that matter.
Woodwork and metalwork are apples and oranges. You can make some nice things with wood, but unless you love having nice furniture, the options are limited. For metal though, you can make machine parts that will handle large forces and wear well.
Note that I'm not saying that all things will be made at home... just some things, enough to turn the economy on its ear and change the way the government has to try to control objects... which is a futile endeavor anyway.
Oddly enough I had to replace an axle stub about a month ago :)
Yes, but there's a world of difference between a talented criminal making a working revolver or two and every john doe who can run a computer being able to turn out automatic weapons....
A huge trend in the near future (0-20 years) will be home and distributed engineering (inventing) and manufacturing. People will trade information on technologies, how-to information, plans, and parts to make sophisticated products in their home or workshop.
This is not to say we're all going to get replicators or nanotech manufacturing like in "The Diamond Age" but the level of sophistication of home built products is going to go way, way up. From small appliances to tools to vehicles to weapons, it'll be possible to make a large number of items in places other than traditional factories, in small quantity and high quality.
To see this sort of thing emerging, look at efforts like Reprap to make a self replicating 3d prototyping machine (which probably won't be 100% self replicating for a long time, but which is a great starting point for at-home applications of the technology) or home CNC machines like router tables and small CNC machine tools. You can buy a CNC milling machine capable of producing small parts eg. for firearms and small engines for less than $3000 with computer. Once these become widespread part libraries for them will be as available as clip-art. Want a new part for your bicycle? Download the pattern, place the raw material in the machine, and walk away.
As quality items become harder to find in mass produced outlets, items made at home will take their place. Any item with a niche market will probably be made in these mini manufactoria... there won't be a profit any more in making small quantity items since there'll be tremendous competition from small manufacturers.
No need to keep an inventory of obscure auto parts on hand (or to pay for storage space or sunk costs in the inventory). Just keep the pattern available and churn out parts as needed. Need a part you don't have a pattern for? Ask someone on the internet to measure their part and make a pattern from it, using the same CNC mill to automate the measurements.
I like the trend myself... but can you imagine the fit the government will throw when it figures out it can no longer regulate eg. firearms because anyone with a CNC mill can turn one out in a day or two? I can see them at first trying to ban home manufacturing, trying to ban precursor items and materials, then trying to create an overarching government agency to police the whole thing.
It'll be similar to recording companies figuring out they're no longer needed since anyone can distribute or purchase music on-line without their involvement.
Likewise I can see large corporate manufacturers of some items begging for a government bail-out because no one wants to buy their mass produced crap any more. Why pay $100 for a cheap wal-mart bike when the CNC machine shop in the next town can produce one with 3x the quality for the same price? Why pay a computer store $35 for a plastic keyboard when you can get a solid brass one with better components made at home?
Erik PS: For those of you that know what this means... we'll be able to evolve an STC pattern for common items :)
There's a self identification happening here with the "open source community" for a number of reasons, and it's a common occurrence among a lot of open source advocates. What usually happens is that fans end up with a binary view of the software production system... specifically the idea that there exists an "us and them" conflict between open source and commercial software, and between the authors of same. It's kind of the same impulse that makes people identify with a sports team based in their city or state as "their" team, or advocating their own brand of computer for emotional rather than rational reasons.
Humans want to belong to groups, they get a good feeling from it. So even in cases where clear "us and them" groups don't exist, they perceive them, since without a group they have nowhere to belong.
There are a lot of reasons for this both biological and social. The phenomenon seems to be a human universal, though.
To make things more complicated, once a person identifies his or herself with a group, then they personalize attacks on or praise for that group themselves.. it's a major reason they want to belong in the first place, since it can provide immense positive feelings with little effort, and can provide them more often than a single person's efforts alone would.
This personalization usually means whomever is involved can no longer be effectively reasoned with where the group, it's attributes, or goals are concerned. This is because either consciously or subconsciously that person feels threatened by any suggestion that the group is "wrong" or incorrect, or even worse that the perceived group doesn't exist.
So, in this case the submitter is assuming that the rest of the folks here on Slashdot are A) Aware of the "us and them" groups, B) Part of the "us" group, and C) Also concerned about this "issue" which has been brought to light (probably only partly for advocacy reasons... another large burst of good emotional feelings comes from actively representing the group to which one belongs, and warning of impending doom is a good way to represent. See also the football fans that paint themselves and wear their team's colors.
The truth in this case is that there are many more parties involved than just two, and that the assumed conflict doesn't exist. If one looks back to the origins of the free software movement, there were no restrictions placed on commercial use of the GPL software (or its predecessors). In fact, the GPL allows commercial use of licensed software without fee or restriction except for the provision to distribute source code.
The hard thing for a lot of people who are concerned about this "conflict" to wrap their head around is that there's no conflict, and in fact commercial software stacked on top of open source is a very good thing for any open source platform... it means everyone wins. People can make money off of their work, other people can get commercially supported apps they need, and no one is held hostage to a closed source operating system or distribution method.
Imagine what the iPhone would be like if Apple didn't control the OS, and wasn't able to control the software written for the device... there'd be far fewer $9 apps that are crap since someone would immediately write something better, and having no one to say "no" would get it published.
Erik
If the pundits could predict what Google was doing, they'd be rich corporate heads, not writers trying to guess what's going on.
I personally think that just maybe Google is going to offer a "free" phone.. not free as in beer, free as in speech.. where it costs more than a "subscriber sponsored" phone, maybe more than the iPhone, but which users will buy if it's not insanely expensive simply to get a "free" device... one not locked to a carrier with features turned off because the carrier wants to protect its business model.
One with a standard design and API that permits software to be developed with more than generic features, like the iPhone. But one that's not locked to Apple's corporate policies and whims, like the iPhone.
One that will set a standard for a new type of wireless phone system that is "the way it ought to be" with users owning their full featured phones and having the freedom to buy minutes from whichever carrier they like on a day to day basis, or to buy none at all but to use the ubiquitous wireless hotspots and networks to make calls.
Google may be using its corporate muscle to break the wireless carriers' hold on the market, a hold which has ensured them profits but which has stymied development of truly next generation wireless connectivity, which itself would drive a major change in society. Remember what internet access was like before wireless? Imagine that kind of change if the wireless carriers loosen their government ensured grip on the market.
Data and voice for everyone, "the way it ought to be". And it may start with a free phone.
Erik
No problem... I just buy the new printer. It's a loss leader, aka the company selling it takes a loss it plans to make back through ink sales, and I don't buy ink. So they subsidize my new printer.
For the old printer, I recycle it... either through an electronics recycling facility, or through my own hobbies. Printers usually have one or more stepper motors, timing pulleys, belts, useful metal shafts... great for amateur robotics folks. The electronics can be used for BEAM robots.
Long term I'm planning on dumping the printer altogether... once e-ink books get to the point where they're color and cheap, I won't need paper hardcopy, I'll just transfer over the docs to my e-book.
Erik
Erik
Great, now even my computer is getting more TRIM than I am.
LOL... so I'm "free" to write and use whatever software I want, as long as I don't spread it around? Do you even understand how ridiculous that is? It's like a typewriter manufacturer dictating what kinds of books can be written using their machine. It's *mine*, I bought it, so I'll write what I want and do with it what I want, thank you.
To use a car metaphor, buy a VW Beetle and ask them if you can go off-roading with it. They'll tell you not to do it. If you say, "I'll get big shocks and knobby tires", they--and your insurance company--will tell you that it's not supported. If you do it anyway, and take it to a location where it's legal to do that kind of driving, VW's not going to stop you. Same thing here. Difference is that VW will actually void your warranty. With Apple, you can re-set to factory defaults and everything's still intact.
This is kinda apples and oranges, but I'll go with it a bit.
The difference between iPhone and VW is that Apple's not just dictating appropriate and safe use... if I wanted to use my iPhone as a pacemaker they'd be quite right to void my warranty and run screaming from the whole idea.
What they're doing, though, is more like dictating what appropriate use is, apart from simply letting common sense and consumers decide.
To use the VW analogy, it would be like VW requiring VW only gas to be used in their cars, which is more expensive and harder to get than non VW gas. Even though chemically identical and quite usable non-VW gas is out there, and some of it might offer more horsepower or cleaner emissions, VW would threaten to void your warranty if you used it and would verify use via an internal sensor in the gas tank.
The thing that makes this behavior unacceptable isn't even the whole "VW only" rules and mechanisms described above, although it's a red flag to me. It's the reason VW would do it... to preserve their control of their cars and how they're used, because control means more profit for them from "VW Brand" gas and the ability to alter that fuel's composition or delivery mechanism as they see fit.
Apple isn't trying to keep consumers safe or indicate which uses of its products will result in damage to them or injury. They're exercising a level of control over items no longer theirs that no manufacturer should have. It'd be different if they were up front and said something like "You're not buying your iPhone, you're just leasing it from us..." but they're not. They sell them.
When I buy something, it's mine. So I'm going to show my disagreement with their behavior by not buying their products.
Erik
You know, it's a red flag to me and many people when someone quotes numbers like this. "you have only a 0.7% margin in which they respond with a 10-second lag".
Other than the fact that there's not enough information here to be meaningful, this is like saying about cars that "You have a 2 second lag between gas pedal control and acceleration, enough to be dangerous, and top speed is only 70 kph".
Apart from the fact there's no way to verify the numbers given, this ignores the fact obvious to even amateur engineers that NOT ALL NUCLEAR PLANTS ARE ENGINEERED THE SAME.
ONE plant might have the numbers given for reaction control. Who knows?
But really what quoting exact numbers that spell doom and gloom and then claiming they apply across all instances of something as complex as power plants says to anyone reading it: "I don't know what I'm talking about, but I memorized these numbers because they agree with my beliefs and I can use them as 'proof' that I'm right."
Meh
Man, the last time I wanted to talk to the hardware directly was on a C64, appropriately enough. Why would you want to do that on a modern, multitasking system? Are you building some sort of dedicated control console for which the overhead of an OS/abstraction layer is not acceptable?
So your justification for this is "you don't need that"? I can in fact think of plenty of cases where I'd like to talk directly to the underlying hardware... to get the most out of a given system, to replace firmware routines or BIOS with better software... But the main issue remains unchanged.. it's not whether I have an immediate need to do something, it's whether I'm *allowed* to use my own computer, which I've paid for, to do it, and publish my results.
They wouldn't make any money doing that if there weren't some sort of trade-off.
Yeah, if they didn't supply cool features people wouldn't accept their level of control :)
They make things easier and more reliable for people. If you don't build in some limits while you're doing that, you end up with a system that is prime host territory for viruses and trojans.
Um, no. Making things "easier and more reliable" has in fact the opposite effect... a "more reliable" system usually is also more resistant to malicious software than one less carefully engineered. Sorry, but I'm not buying Apple's explanation here. It's an excuse to justify their control.
Besides, as others have pointed out, they're not all evil.
I didn't say they were. Only Sith deal in absolutes.
Want to develop for the Mac? Xcode and their docs are free as in beer. Want to develop for the iPhone? If you just want to do it yourself and only to your own phone, it's free. It's only if you want to distribute it to the general public that it costs anything.
LOL... so I'm "free" to write and use whatever software I want, as long as I don't spread it around? Do you even understand how ridiculous that is? It's like a typewriter manufacturer dictating what kinds of books can be written using their machine. It's *mine*, I bought it, so I'll write what I want and do with it what I want, thank you.
Don't forget: people choose the iPhone. They chose it even when there was no app store, no third-party development. The only reason this is an interesting topic of discussion is that it's the most popular phone out there. And with the cost of ownership, they're not exactly forcing anyone to buy...
Forcing, no. That's the center of the ethical argument, actually. They aren't forcing people, they're just acting within the gray area of law and ethical behavior, holding out the shiny bauble with one hand to distract customers who aren't bright enough to watch the other hand carefully herding them away from things that "no one really needs to do"... things that coincidentally would threaten their profit margin. I see the shiny, and I like it, but I like freedom more, and I'm gonna wait and hope someday Apple either changes, or some more ethical corporation out-competes them... shiny things *with* freedom can't be beat.
Erik
Apple's doing what they've done for years... limiting the amount of information and freedom they give to programmers and ordinary people who buy their products. For a long time when the Mac came out you couldn't "talk" to the hardware directly (or get any docs for it), you had to use hardware functions via the apple exposed and documented API, and apple would fight you creating and distributing any program that did otherwise. That's why I never bought a Mac... the interface was very good, much better for a long time than the PC/Windows interface, but the trade-offs in freedom weren't worth it.
Same thing nowadays with the iPhone... you can get this neat phone with a super cool interface and great responsiveness... frankly it's a great product. But you can't do just anything you want with it, despite the fact you paid for it and now own it. You have to use the cell network provider apple approves, pay apple's prices, sell your app via Apple's store (okay, they may not require this, but they don't support easy sales any other way, so it's effectively a requirement) and follow apple's rules for acceptable application behavior.
Sure, they can list semi-acceptable business reasons for wanting this kind of control (want to make sure apps all work/are high quality, want to make sure network connectivity is good, etc) but the real reason for the restrictions is the same one it's always been.
Apple makes a lot of their money by exercising tight control over not just their products' design and software, but how they're sold and used... a level of control which, if most people were told about it up front, would make them very, very uncomfortable. But of course all you hear about up front is how cool the product is.
So I'm still boycotting Apple products... which hurts sometimes because frankly they're pretty cool... Apple really broke the industrial design mold with iMac, and hasn't looked back.
But Apple the corporation has always made a lot of money by taking away little bits of freedom here and there. It's amazing that otherwise intelligent geeks don't seem to recognize this nowadays... they've been doing this as long as Macs have been out. I guess it's more important to have a cool toy than to recognize that they're being taken for a ride by a large corporation.
Apple... business as usual since 1984... and that's not a coincidence.
Erik
No, then the cows just ram into them... again, and again, and again. You'd have to put hockey helmets on all of 'em...
Right now you can use things like barbed wire fences and electric fences to keep the cows safe and corralled. If they couldn't feel pain it'd be a cross between a cow and "Darkman". They'd charge through fences getting cut to ribbons and never noticing the blood, or stand on electric fences until they caught fire. Cattle are painfully stupid. Stupid livestock are expensive and annoying to deal with. Ask a turkey farmer.
Erik
They should have just gone ahead and called them ADAM and EVE :)
If we consider a computer to be a device that is capable of flexibly running general purpose programs (a non embedded system) then the PC has the highest count.
If you're going to count embedded systems, then we can make a similar statement about them: Among embedded systems, Java is not the most run software, or even in the majority. Symbian, Windows Mobile, or real-time OSs like vxWorks are. Java is used for small apps and games in certain cases, and I note that above.. interactive embedded systems are part of Java's niche, but it's certainly not taking over the space.
"A lot" of work PCs using java in the enterprise is vague, but somewhat true. However, for each of those PCs that runs a java program, it's got 10 or 100 non java programs that do other work or are utilities. I have worked in plenty of fortune 500 companies that have a couple of java programs for web access or systems management, along with 10 more for word processing, spreadsheets, and customer contact management. Again, these are part of Java's niche.
So, that goes back toward my original statement: Java is a niche product, not the most common environment on the planet, and it's not going to be. Releasing the JVM as open source is a nice step, but it's too late to do more than just give people a warm fuzzy feeling.
So, yay for Sun making the gesture, but I don't think it'll alter the user count for Java much. It it used or not based on its own merits, and it's too late for a grassroots Java project.
Erik
"Most developers are building apps for the real world, not the desktop"
Last time I checked, desktops were in the real world... or did you mean portables, palm devices and embedded systems? There's some Java there.
If you classify by unit count, dollar sales figures, or user count, I think you'll find the most used computers in the world are PC class single user systems, and on those systems java is installed so web pages look right, not because it's the number one user app.
Erik
I believe there's also a lot of use on small portable devices, like smart phones.
Other than that, Java isn't the language of choice. How many Windows desktop programs are Java? How many open source programs are written in Java? You can search freshmeat by language I think to find out. How many successful shrink-wrapped Java games have there been?
Java isn't a universal computer language and VM as it was sold to be originally. Sure, it's useful, and great for certain things, but it's not on the road to replacing ordinary C code.
Outside the areas listed, it's just not considered as a potential development language because of its deficiencies.
Erik
I've considered spending time to learn java better, and knowing that the JVM is open sourced is a good thing, but Java as a whole would have benefitted from being open sourced a long time ago, when some of the community that uses it could have fed knowledge and information back into the language and VM design.
Now it's basically a niche product that's more or less complete, and we either have to accept it as is for use or break compatibility with existing code to make any major mods to it.
The major advantages java has always had are 1) Increased programmer productivity and 2) Code portability. Both of these are achieved by other platforms now in different ways, so Java is now one of many instead of the only solution.
Open sourcing it is more insurance for its users than anything else... it won't drive a Java renaissance any more than open source Solaris will, because there are already good alternatives.
Sun... producing good open source products that would have better been open sourced years ago.
Erik
Depending on mood, they can ignore you completely, and actually avoid you, or, they can compete with your bathroom breaks for your time.
What I'm saying is that a teenager giving an anecdote about her parents' behavior is enough to warrant a second look by someone else (not a social worker) but is not enough to diagnose her parents with some type of behavioral disorder.
If it was a 5 year old, sure, but a teenager?
Maybe.
If you suspect addiction, then take a break, and if you're really not sure, see a psych. or counselor.
It's supposed to be for-fun, to enhance your life, not replace it.
BTW, I play WoW too, mostly at night before bed, when I have time.
You can't win the game... it's like a never ending soap opera or comic book. Actually providing resolution so people walk away is not in the plan.
There's always another carrot.
Erik