As for the "sane" devices you mention: Looking at my Palm Tungsten T - there's no way to (easily) replace the battery in there, nor can the same be said about the other PDAs (Palm and Pocket PC) I see around me in my office.
Where exactly did I mention specific sane examples? Nowhere? Uh?
Did I say the Palm was any good? If you can't replace the battery then it isn't sane and I would never buy one.
but if you just unplug and replug the battery terminal inside it has a tendacy to jump back up to its original 10 hour claim.
Now that is interesting. That would suggest a bad connection to the battery. So cleaning the terminals may be all that's needed on some of these. Just the act of unplugging and pluging it back in would clean them a little.
I've seen that problem on lots of devices. Portable phones, my Palm Pilot, car batteries, etc. Just cleaning the terminals made the batteries seem newer/better.
Interesting. I didn't make the connection until you mentioned that... Hmmm.
Well, it's not a problem with the device per se. It's the battery.
All batteries wear out. It's just what they do. With most sanely designed devices you just pop out the old and pop in a new one...
Of course Apple now has their replacement program. You have to give the thing to Apple for service though. Kinda stupid if you ask me. They could've just made the battery replaceable. You know, like everything else.
Nice device you people got there. $500 and designed to be thrown away after a year or two. Apple, pfffft.
So I take a look at the new license. I'm thinking "What the hell is the problem?"
So I read some comments and see this reference to a mailing list post about some of the licensing issues. In there I see things that don't exist in the license on the XFree86 site (like a reference to clause 6 even though the XF86 license only has 4 clauses).
Unless you are trying to describe something completely new or you don't otherwise know of an existing word then making up a new word is completely stupid.
Obviously "computer" exists in some form or another in several languages. Use one of those dumbasses! Too many idiots have complicated things enough as it is.
There haven't been any major 2D ehancements in years. You'll get a bit more bandwidth for pushing data around but my 6 year old 4MB video card does 2D just as fast as my 1 year old 64MB card.
The focus is 3D performance. 2D is limited by motherboard bus speeds and things like that.
A high-performance hardware vector based 2D card might be cool. You know, running display PDF in hardware or something.
Rest assured that pure OO languages are not the answer to everything. This was even mentioned in the article.
They sound neat when you're learning programming or don't have much experience but just wait till you join a new OO project that has 1000's or 10's of thousands of classes. It'll be real fun, trust me. Even the very best designed systems can turn into an OO nightmare. Just trying to read and understand large OO code is often very painful.
Just like with everything in life the answer is most likely moderation. A balance of techniques. OO, functional, <insert new programming model here>, can and probably should be mixed together in a new language that has the best features of all the systems.
Ok, so the article is a bit harsh. I agree with a lot of what he said but he missed one major point and is just plain wrong on a number of things. I don't think Mono is about destroying Microsoft or providing choice. It's about using a nice(*) language like C# on Linux. That statement alone kills his whole argument.
He missed a very important problem though. Performance. I admit that I haven't played with Mono in 6 months or so but last time I tried it the Microsoft runtime/compiler/JIT/whatever was hella faster than Mono. Several times faster.
I'm not sure if the Mono developers will be able to achieve the sophistication required in the compiler and runtime while still doing all the other stuff that needs to be done. Time will tell.
(*) I like C# better than Java. Especially the interface to native DLL's (not perfect but way easier/simple than Java). Plus C# was designed from the beginning to have things that Java only recently got (generics anyone?).
With that said, I still think C/C++ are just as portable, much faster, and don't require stupid memory sucking VM environments. If only we had C++ equivalents to the huge Java and.Net libraries.
Maybe for an extremely complex system but not these little things they send into space. Yes, yes they are complex but not that complex.
I've done work for NASA writing software and I can tell you that almost all these problems would've been caught if there were good testing procedures. I've seen the stuff these engineers create and most of it isn't good.
That's why I always test my own software before it goes to the test people. I'm not the typical programmer. I test the extremes of the software. I push it beyond what it was suppose to do. Guess what? My stuff is usually of a much higher quality than what most programmers turn out.
This is hardly a technology issue. Human beings are social in nature and therefore we all experience social pressures. It's a fact of being alive. To ignore the fact that women and men are different is assine.
Using marketing is only natural. It works, and it works very well is all aspects of life, not just technology.
Not that I would expect anything better from Acer (ugh) but come on, do a little design work.
The thing is red on top with a red stripe on the side and a cheap looking silver everywhere else (I don't know about the back). It looks nasty. They could've integrated the red so much better (think Alienware in Ferrari red).
And the case is a regular old Acer case. It would've been so cool if them Italian engineers could've added a little flare or something, sheesh.
Right now it's just a dorky laptop that looks like it was made with some duct tape and a spray can.
Too many package formats, too many window managers, too many GUI toolkits, too many desktop environments, too many Linux distributions, etc, etc.
I like choice, I really do, but this is madness. Not only is a great deal of time used to create competing software (Kword, Abiword, Open-Office) but now we're creating more work for ourselves by trying to integrate it all (packages managers, RedHat trying to unify GNOME and KDE, etc). Wow, this can't be good.
How is all of this going to compete with entities that have a more focused approach? I believe the only reason why anything has gotten done at all is because there's just so damn many people working on things. This causes serious talent dilution though. Things are nowhere near as good as they could be (or could have been).
This is quite disturbing.
It's interesting to note the things where this hasn't happened. Just try to create a competing standard to HTML, XML, SQL, or OpenGL (note that I'm talking Linux/FreeBSD, etc, not Windows). Not that people don't try but they never gain momentum. I have to think if there was an ANSI, ISO, or whatever standard desktop evironment then that would help. I seriously doubt something like that could be done in a reasonable time, I'm just saying it might help.
Isn't taking off where?? Both GNOME and KDE are moving to full SVG environments (icons and eventually everything).
Things like this don't happen overnight but it is happening. Vector formats are the future. Apple (actually NeXT) realized this a long time ago. Notice display PDF, scalable "stuff", and all the vector icons they've had for ages?
Not always, but often I find it easier to create better looking stuff using vector formats. For the most part it is basically the same thing you would be doing to create a raster image except it remains 100% dynamic. Photos and real-life pictures are the obvious exceptions.
The same thing is happening in other areas. Eventually we won't be using static textures in the 3D world. Everything will be procedural and dynamic. Notice all the newer 3D video cards have shading languages and stuff built right in?
Slashdot Mirror
No accounting for taste! I figured it'd get a +5 Funny no problem.
Ellison == Hans Gruber
Ellison has always creeped me out. And not in a good way. Kinda like Gates does.
As for the "sane" devices you mention: Looking at my Palm Tungsten T - there's no way to (easily) replace the battery in there, nor can the same be said about the other PDAs (Palm and Pocket PC) I see around me in my office.
Where exactly did I mention specific sane examples? Nowhere? Uh?
Did I say the Palm was any good? If you can't replace the battery then it isn't sane and I would never buy one.
but if you just unplug and replug the battery terminal inside it has a tendacy to jump back up to its original 10 hour claim.
Now that is interesting. That would suggest a bad connection to the battery. So cleaning the terminals may be all that's needed on some of these. Just the act of unplugging and pluging it back in would clean them a little.
I've seen that problem on lots of devices. Portable phones, my Palm Pilot, car batteries, etc. Just cleaning the terminals made the batteries seem newer/better.
Interesting. I didn't make the connection until you mentioned that... Hmmm.
I'm curious as to your usage rates?
I don't know anyone that uses theirs daily (usually recharge at least once a day) that had one last more than 2 years or so.
Well, it's not a problem with the device per se. It's the battery.
All batteries wear out. It's just what they do. With most sanely designed devices you just pop out the old and pop in a new one...
Of course Apple now has their replacement program. You have to give the thing to Apple for service though. Kinda stupid if you ask me. They could've just made the battery replaceable. You know, like everything else.
Nice device you people got there. $500 and designed to be thrown away after a year or two. Apple, pfffft.
I was going to make nearly the same post. Shame this isn't modded up.
What was the first system to use CDROM's?
So I take a look at the new license. I'm thinking "What the hell is the problem?"
So I read some comments and see this reference to a mailing list post about some of the licensing issues. In there I see things that don't exist in the license on the XFree86 site (like a reference to clause 6 even though the XF86 license only has 4 clauses).
So what's up?
Unless you are trying to describe something completely new or you don't otherwise know of an existing word then making up a new word is completely stupid.
Obviously "computer" exists in some form or another in several languages. Use one of those dumbasses! Too many idiots have complicated things enough as it is.
There haven't been any major 2D ehancements in years. You'll get a bit more bandwidth for pushing data around but my 6 year old 4MB video card does 2D just as fast as my 1 year old 64MB card.
The focus is 3D performance. 2D is limited by motherboard bus speeds and things like that.
A high-performance hardware vector based 2D card might be cool. You know, running display PDF in hardware or something.
Rest assured that pure OO languages are not the answer to everything. This was even mentioned in the article.
They sound neat when you're learning programming or don't have much experience but just wait till you join a new OO project that has 1000's or 10's of thousands of classes. It'll be real fun, trust me. Even the very best designed systems can turn into an OO nightmare. Just trying to read and understand large OO code is often very painful.
Just like with everything in life the answer is most likely moderation. A balance of techniques. OO, functional, <insert new programming model here>, can and probably should be mixed together in a new language that has the best features of all the systems.
Ok, so the article is a bit harsh. I agree with a lot of what he said but he missed one major point and is just plain wrong on a number of things. I don't think Mono is about destroying Microsoft or providing choice. It's about using a nice(*) language like C# on Linux. That statement alone kills his whole argument.
.Net libraries.
He missed a very important problem though. Performance. I admit that I haven't played with Mono in 6 months or so but last time I tried it the Microsoft runtime/compiler/JIT/whatever was hella faster than Mono. Several times faster.
I'm not sure if the Mono developers will be able to achieve the sophistication required in the compiler and runtime while still doing all the other stuff that needs to be done. Time will tell.
(*) I like C# better than Java. Especially the interface to native DLL's (not perfect but way easier/simple than Java). Plus C# was designed from the beginning to have things that Java only recently got (generics anyone?).
With that said, I still think C/C++ are just as portable, much faster, and don't require stupid memory sucking VM environments. If only we had C++ equivalents to the huge Java and
Please cite some specific examples Mr. Jones.
I mean, there is a whole friggin lot of open-source out there, there's bound to be a few examples of the problem? Right? Right???
Does Fedora have a net installer?
You know, I small ISO that I can bootstrap the install from. That way I only download what I need.
Maybe I'm just too used to non-Red-Hat based distros but I rather prefer net installers.
There is that much performance difference, but I still agree. I wish there was an i686 version of both Fedora and Debian.
i686 should be the default build and special low-end builds could be made for i386. I'd say i386 is more the exception than the rule.
Complete testing is impossible.
Maybe for an extremely complex system but not these little things they send into space. Yes, yes they are complex but not that complex.
I've done work for NASA writing software and I can tell you that almost all these problems would've been caught if there were good testing procedures. I've seen the stuff these engineers create and most of it isn't good.
That's why I always test my own software before it goes to the test people. I'm not the typical programmer. I test the extremes of the software. I push it beyond what it was suppose to do. Guess what? My stuff is usually of a much higher quality than what most programmers turn out.
What did they do then?
The system failed a lot.
I bet they had much wider safety margins built into the system which prevented blackouts.
Haha. Just like every 1940's automobile had wider safety margins because they didn't have stuff like anti-lock brakes and air-bags.
The point is that should've never happened.
The software should be failsafe. Why didn't they test what would happen if the flash failed? Duh.
Most programmers are morons and engineers that think they can program are even worse.
Test better people. You can't just gloss over things.
This is hardly a technology issue. Human beings are social in nature and therefore we all experience social pressures. It's a fact of being alive. To ignore the fact that women and men are different is assine.
Using marketing is only natural. It works, and it works very well is all aspects of life, not just technology.
Tabbed browsing? Once you use this you'll never want a regular browser again.
Pop-up and script blocking built right in.
PKCS#11 based certificate modules which allows you to use Smartcards, biometrics, etc for web site authentication and e-mail stuff.
It's fast, relatively lightweight.
You won't be exposed to all those nasty IE security holes.
Firefox has an excellent extension/plugin/theme system build right in. Easy to use.
It complies with the W3C standards better than IE.
That's just off the top of my head...
Um, Firefox may just be one person (dunno), but I can tell you for a fact that Mozilla is not.
The Mozilla people continue to provide most of the good stuff. For the most part Firefox just uses what they create. For now.
I believe eventually we'll see the majority of Mozilla developers working on Firefox & Thunderfox (er... bird).
I wonder the same thing. Your experience mirrors mine.
I've run Mozilla/Phoenix/Firebird on many platforms (Windows, Linux, OS X, and Solaris) for years without any problems at all.
I think these people are remembering using it "just the other day" (ie. 3 years ago) and basing their opinions on that.
Not that I would expect anything better from Acer (ugh) but come on, do a little design work.
The thing is red on top with a red stripe on the side and a cheap looking silver everywhere else (I don't know about the back). It looks nasty. They could've integrated the red so much better (think Alienware in Ferrari red).
And the case is a regular old Acer case. It would've been so cool if them Italian engineers could've added a little flare or something, sheesh.
Right now it's just a dorky laptop that looks like it was made with some duct tape and a spray can.
Does anyone else see what's happening?
Too many package formats, too many window managers, too many GUI toolkits, too many desktop environments, too many Linux distributions, etc, etc.
I like choice, I really do, but this is madness. Not only is a great deal of time used to create competing software (Kword, Abiword, Open-Office) but now we're creating more work for ourselves by trying to integrate it all (packages managers, RedHat trying to unify GNOME and KDE, etc). Wow, this can't be good.
How is all of this going to compete with entities that have a more focused approach? I believe the only reason why anything has gotten done at all is because there's just so damn many people working on things. This causes serious talent dilution though. Things are nowhere near as good as they could be (or could have been).
This is quite disturbing.
It's interesting to note the things where this hasn't happened. Just try to create a competing standard to HTML, XML, SQL, or OpenGL (note that I'm talking Linux/FreeBSD, etc, not Windows). Not that people don't try but they never gain momentum. I have to think if there was an ANSI, ISO, or whatever standard desktop evironment then that would help. I seriously doubt something like that could be done in a reasonable time, I'm just saying it might help.
Unfortunately SVG isn't taking off.
Isn't taking off where?? Both GNOME and KDE are moving to full SVG environments (icons and eventually everything).
Things like this don't happen overnight but it is happening. Vector formats are the future. Apple (actually NeXT) realized this a long time ago. Notice display PDF, scalable "stuff", and all the vector icons they've had for ages?
Not always, but often I find it easier to create better looking stuff using vector formats. For the most part it is basically the same thing you would be doing to create a raster image except it remains 100% dynamic. Photos and real-life pictures are the obvious exceptions.
The same thing is happening in other areas. Eventually we won't be using static textures in the 3D world. Everything will be procedural and dynamic. Notice all the newer 3D video cards have shading languages and stuff built right in?
The future is coming.