The JIT compilers and virtual machines don't make it easier to port between platforms. Java code only runs on the java virtual machine, porting that to the python interpreter or.NET is difficult and time consuming.
If you are refering to being able to run the code on different hardware platforms then software virtual machines make different hardware platforms pointless in creating because to the software they are all the same.
Portability is silly if it makes you unable to take advantage of any of the features of the platform you're developing for.
One of these days, I'm going to go to Slashdot and see that someone has decided that abstracting the Computer hardware, Operating System and user environment isn't enough and they have decided to abstract the browser by creating a standards compliant web browser on top of any browser.
This new abstracted browser will be exactly the same on any computer with a nice API for developing "web web apps"(web apps inside a web app browser)
The more you abstract the more pointless the differences between the lower levels are, and the more duplicate code overall. ie. KDE currently duplicates much functionality that is part of the linux kernel. why? Because they want it to run on other OSs. Seems rather pointless to have other OSs if nobody is using the actually features of the OSs.
With the apparent infinate size of the universe, nearby is any distance. Compared to the size of the universe the distance between there and here approaches zero
-Jesse McNelis ps. infinate planets in universe / populated worlds = population of universe approaches zero
Because the desktop environment guys alway like to put things in the wrong layer and make everyone else re-invent the wheel if they don't choose to use their desktop environment.
We bred these idiot users. Now we have to deal with them. When you attempt to remove the need to learn how to use a tool be ready for people to hurt themselves with it. Imagine if people only knew as much as they do about their cars as they do about their computers.
That will probably be the future. We are not there yet. The Message passing overhead is still large and makes coding difficult. eg. HURD is still not finished after 20 years.
Eventually with multi-core cpus with stupid amounts of threads the micro-kernel will make it's come back.
This is a good point. Since companies are employing the kernel developers, instead of fixing old bugs they'll just continue to work on what every their company wants them to work on and just wait to include it in the next later release cycle. - Jesse McNelis
ummm...isn't the point of sending spam to sell stuff. If you specifically send your spam to users who specific attempted to stop you from sending them spam then you're wasting your time and money. It's like the do-not-call register.
They are much better off using this data to avoid sending spam to these people and just continue sending it to the other millions of addresses
Spammers aren't sending you spam because they hate you, they are trying to sell stuff and people are actually buying that stuff due to the spam.
There is a common confuse, created by marketing, that what people want is software that is 'easy to use'. The thing is that people actually want software that is "easy to learn" even if it is harder to actually use.
This is shown by to expectation that people have that they should be able to use a complex piece of software within minutes without ever reading the manual. But generally people don't care that they end up spending hours manually rename their files in their photo collection because they didn't want to spend the couple of hours to learn some simple scripting that would save them huge amounts of time in completing their many needed tasks.
This culture of "easy to learn" software is making software inefficent and creating so many abstraction layers that nobody really knows what the problem is when things go wrong.
I perfect example is microsoft word, people expect to be able to use Word with in minutes and to be able to type and format a document. But I work at an IT helpdesk, I see issues with alignment and strange formating issues with documents all the time. Nobody is able to fix these issues because nobody really knows what's going on under that graphical interface.
HTML or LATEX on the other hand don't hide anything. Functions that you don't know about or don't understand yet don't randomly appear in the documents you type and format. Learning the syntax is not easy, but actually using it is far less frustrating.
I don't think Free software needs to follow the comercial software entities in to continuing the creation of users who wish to know as little as possible about an essential tool that they use everyday. (and before you start, I also think people who drive cars should know at least the basics of car mechanics too)
I completely agree with you. But firefox as a browser alone is lighter than the whole mozilla suite. Although that it only really so if you fail to notice to tick boxes in the mozilla suite installer that allow you to not install the mail client etc. as part of the suite.
how is 'pf010dd0l3' more secure than 'pfoioddole'? everyone knows that i or l could be replaced by a '1' and e is usually replaced by a '3'.
The reason for having both numbers and letters in a password is to increase the number of combinations(from 26 to 36 times per character). For this to work all numbers and all letters have to be possible in the password.
As for myself I prefer longer passwords that easy to remember because they contain words. As long as you take the "something you have and something you know" aproach and have lock out after a certain number of incorrect password guesses then it really doesn't matter how strong your passwords are as long as they are not completely obvious.
The usual downside of locking people out for incorrect guesses is that this can be used to perform a denial of service attack. The solution to this is the 'something you have', the attacker is required to have already stolen the 'something you have' before they get a chance to brute force your password. In such a case, with a three guess lockout, a three character password is almost sufficient.
Without even reading the article this is already stupid. The future is vector graphics. Scallable to any resolution. Amazingly this concept and the standards have been around for years eg. SVG, CSS, Flash, PDF etc. Creating new standards just because someone doesn't understand the current ones it silly.
I would expect that after afew generation the creatures would be becoming more resistant to the radiation, as it with evolution due to natural selection. The creatures with bad mutations will die off quickly, the creatures with a resistance to the radiation will breed.
Gaming: I agree that GNU\Linux hasn't been the target platform of many games recently. This is generally because games development doesn't work very well with the open source development model. Games are developed quickly and then released once.
Printing: I've always had very good success with CUPS, never had much trouble.
Wireless: I agree, wireless on GNU\Linux is terrible, due to lack of vendor support.
Video drivers: I agree again, but again it's a problem created by the hardware vendors. If they released their spec, open source drivers could be created and quality would improve.
Distribution obfuscatory confusion: This is where I have to stop you. A GNU\Linux distribution should really be thought of as a completely different Operating System(think, Windows XP and MacOS and BSD) that just happens to be quite compatible with other GNU\Linux based Operating Systems. Anyone that says that Gentoo is at all the same as Redhat is insane. So if you want a standard GNU\Linux operating system, then just use Redhat and pretend the other distributions don't exist. Then you won't be confused.
A calendar should also integrate with Instant messaging, PDA, SmartPhone, Watch, Web browser, Email client, Home Phone, as well as integrating with everyone elses calendar.
Ah, yes. It's much better to have users much for wary of patches but the last one's they used broke something. A cracker with knowledge of expolit being patched is much less dangerous than a large user base not patching because they are scared of the patch breaking stuff. - Jesse McNelis
hmmm...root kits ey? seems like the most pointless thing to put in malware, who runs untrusted executables they recieved in an email as an administrative user? Some people have learn. It's been ten years of popular email use and ten years of technical people telling users not to run untrusted executables. It's like telling someone "don't leave that random hitchhiker alone in your house while you go out to work". I am still amazed that people don't get it. There is still definitly something wrong in the world of user education.
Theres a great deal to be said from having a thousand machines running identical binaries when it comes to tracking down bugs. (Sure diversity is good, especially for security, but there comes a point where maybe people take it a little bit too far).
There is also a great deal to be said about having thousands of machines with different cpu archs, compilers and optimisations set attempting to compile your code.
what on earth is an Excel? what about a powerpoint? A Dreamweaver? An access? does it open doors? what is a linux? samba? GoLive? PHP?.NET? Airport card?
Most products aren't named after what they do, because there are so many implementation of the same thing that always run out of proper names. Wouldn't it be even worse if everyone who made a datastorage application called it "database".
"reason they have to work on dull stuff now is so they can work on more interesting stuff later." Forking lies.
In primary school they told me I was doing dull stuff now so I could do fun stuff in high school. In high school they told me I was doing dull stuff now so I could do fun stuff in uni. In uni they told me I was doing dull stuff in first year so I could do fun stuff in second year. I started work and they told me that I had to start at the bottom with the dull stuff and then I could work my way up to the fun stuff.
I'm starting to think it's all just a big lie to keep the masses working hard to achieve something that will never come.
Slashdot Mirror
The JIT compilers and virtual machines don't make it easier to port between platforms. .NET is difficult and time consuming.
Java code only runs on the java virtual machine, porting that to the python interpreter or
If you are refering to being able to run the code on different hardware platforms then software virtual machines make different hardware platforms pointless in creating because to the software they are all the same.
Portability is silly if it makes you unable to take advantage of any of the features of the platform you're developing for.
- Jesse McNelis
One of these days, I'm going to go to Slashdot and see that someone has decided that abstracting the Computer hardware, Operating System and user environment isn't enough and they have decided to abstract the browser by creating a standards compliant web browser on top of any browser.
This new abstracted browser will be exactly the same on any computer with a nice API for developing "web web apps"(web apps inside a web app browser)
The more you abstract the more pointless the differences between the lower levels are, and the more duplicate code overall. ie. KDE currently duplicates much functionality that is part of the linux kernel. why? Because they want it to run on other OSs. Seems rather pointless to have other OSs if nobody is using the actually features of the OSs.
Just Ranting.
-- Jesse McNelis
I'd think their biggest problem would be that they are selling a useless product, not that they have competition in that field of uselessness.
- Jesse McNelis
With the apparent infinate size of the universe, nearby is any distance.
Compared to the size of the universe the distance between there and here approaches zero
-Jesse McNelis
ps.
infinate planets in universe / populated worlds = population of universe approaches zero
Because the desktop environment guys alway like to put things in the wrong layer and make everyone else re-invent the wheel if they don't choose to use their desktop environment.
We bred these idiot users. Now we have to deal with them.
When you attempt to remove the need to learn how to use a tool be ready for people to hurt themselves with it. Imagine if people only knew as much as they do about their cars as they do about their computers.
Dangerous roads.
That will probably be the future. We are not there yet. The Message passing overhead is still large and makes coding difficult. eg. HURD is still not finished after 20 years.
Eventually with multi-core cpus with stupid amounts of threads the micro-kernel will make it's come back.
This is a good point.
Since companies are employing the kernel developers, instead of fixing old bugs they'll just continue to work on what every their company wants them to work on and just wait to include it in the next later release cycle.
- Jesse McNelis
ummm...isn't the point of sending spam to sell stuff.
If you specifically send your spam to users who specific attempted to stop you from sending them spam then you're wasting your time and money.
It's like the do-not-call register.
They are much better off using this data to avoid sending spam to these people and just continue sending it to the other millions of addresses
Spammers aren't sending you spam because they hate you, they are trying to sell stuff and people are actually buying that stuff due to the spam.
- Jesse McNelis
There is a common confuse, created by marketing, that what people want is software that is 'easy to use'. The thing is that people actually want software that is "easy to learn" even if it is harder to actually use.
This is shown by to expectation that people have that they should be able to use a complex piece of software within minutes without ever reading the manual.
But generally people don't care that they end up spending hours manually rename their files in their photo collection because they didn't want to spend the couple of hours to learn some simple scripting that would save them huge amounts of time in completing their many needed tasks.
This culture of "easy to learn" software is making software inefficent and creating so many abstraction layers that nobody really knows what the problem is when things go wrong.
I perfect example is microsoft word, people expect to be able to use Word with in minutes and to be able to type and format a document. But I work at an IT helpdesk, I see issues with alignment and strange formating issues with documents all the time. Nobody is able to fix these issues because nobody really knows what's going on under that graphical interface.
HTML or LATEX on the other hand don't hide anything. Functions that you don't know about or don't understand yet don't randomly appear in the documents you type and format.
Learning the syntax is not easy, but actually using it is far less frustrating.
I don't think Free software needs to follow the comercial software entities in to
continuing the creation of users who wish to know as little as possible about an essential tool that they use everyday.
(and before you start, I also think people who drive cars should know at least the basics of car mechanics too)
- Jesse McNelis
I completely agree with you.
But firefox as a browser alone is lighter than the whole mozilla suite.
Although that it only really so if you fail to notice to tick boxes in the mozilla suite installer that allow you to not install the mail client etc. as part of the suite.
- Jesse McNelis
With all this large scale promoting of Firefox, some how people seem to forgot the facts and just start lying to make their points.
t hs.html
Firefox is not lighter or faster than IE. This is a confusion created by the fact that is it is lighter than the Mozilla suite.
Firefox still has security issues, the firefox people seem to be pretty good at patching rather quickly, but I still won't say that Firefox is 'safe'.
The advertising of a 'pop-up blocker' is bizaar, it's not a feature, it's the removal of a feature.
check it out: http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/FirefoxMy
Don't get me wrong, Firefox is still the best of the meger crap that is the web browser market, but that's no reason to lie to people.
- Jesse McNelis
I agree.
I haven't been paying much attention to the site recently.
Should have it fixed some time soon.
"perhaps culture has changed in that being uneducated and stupid is now cool."
ummmm....that's a change?
how is 'pf010dd0l3' more secure than 'pfoioddole'?
everyone knows that i or l could be replaced by a '1' and e is usually replaced by a '3'.
The reason for having both numbers and letters in a password is to increase the number of combinations(from 26 to 36 times per character). For this to work all numbers and all letters have to be possible in the password.
As for myself I prefer longer passwords that easy to remember because they contain words. As long as you take the "something you have and something you know" aproach and have lock out after a certain number of incorrect password guesses then it really doesn't matter how strong your passwords are as long as they are not completely obvious.
The usual downside of locking people out for incorrect guesses is that this can be used to perform a denial of service attack. The solution to this is the 'something you have', the attacker is required to have already stolen the 'something you have' before they get a chance to brute force your password. In such a case, with a three guess lockout, a three character password is almost sufficient.
- Jesse McNelis
Without even reading the article this is already stupid.
The future is vector graphics. Scallable to any resolution.
Amazingly this concept and the standards have been around for years eg. SVG, CSS, Flash, PDF etc.
Creating new standards just because someone doesn't understand the current ones it silly.
- Jesse McNelis
I would expect that after afew generation the creatures would be becoming more resistant to the radiation, as it with evolution due to natural selection.
The creatures with bad mutations will die off quickly, the creatures with a resistance to the radiation will breed.
- Jesse McNelis
Gaming:
I agree that GNU\Linux hasn't been the target platform of many games recently.
This is generally because games development doesn't work very well with the open source development model. Games are developed quickly and then released once.
Printing:
I've always had very good success with CUPS, never had much trouble.
Wireless:
I agree, wireless on GNU\Linux is terrible, due to lack of vendor support.
Video drivers:
I agree again, but again it's a problem created by the hardware vendors. If they released their spec, open source drivers could be created and quality would improve.
Distribution obfuscatory confusion:
This is where I have to stop you. A GNU\Linux distribution should really be thought of as a completely different Operating System(think, Windows XP and MacOS and BSD) that just happens to be quite compatible with other GNU\Linux based Operating Systems.
Anyone that says that Gentoo is at all the same as Redhat is insane.
So if you want a standard GNU\Linux operating system, then just use Redhat and pretend the other distributions don't exist. Then you won't be confused.
- Jesse McNelis
And the support will never be there unless there is demand for it or people writing web applications in language other than mess that is php.
A calendar should also integrate with Instant messaging, PDA, SmartPhone, Watch, Web browser, Email client, Home Phone, as well as integrating with everyone elses calendar.
Ah, yes.
It's much better to have users much for wary of patches but the last one's they used broke something.
A cracker with knowledge of expolit being patched is much less dangerous than a large user base not patching because they are scared of the patch breaking stuff.
- Jesse McNelis
hmmm...root kits ey?
seems like the most pointless thing to put in malware, who runs untrusted executables they recieved in an email as an administrative user?
Some people have learn. It's been ten years of popular email use and ten years of technical people telling users not to run untrusted executables.
It's like telling someone "don't leave that random hitchhiker alone in your house while you go out to work".
I am still amazed that people don't get it. There is still definitly something wrong in the world of user education.
- Jesse McNelis
Theres a great deal to be said from having a thousand machines running identical binaries when it comes to tracking down bugs. (Sure diversity is good, especially for security, but there comes a point where maybe people take it a little bit too far). There is also a great deal to be said about having thousands of machines with different cpu archs, compilers and optimisations set attempting to compile your code.
what on earth is an Excel? .NET?
what about a powerpoint?
A Dreamweaver?
An access? does it open doors?
what is a linux?
samba?
GoLive?
PHP?
Airport card?
Most products aren't named after what they do, because there are so many implementation of the same thing that always run out of proper names. Wouldn't it be even worse if everyone who made a datastorage application called it "database".
I'm sure you'll get use to the name.
- Jessta
"reason they have to work on dull stuff now is so they can work on more interesting stuff later."
Forking lies.
In primary school they told me I was doing dull stuff now so I could do fun stuff in high school.
In high school they told me I was doing dull stuff now so I could do fun stuff in uni.
In uni they told me I was doing dull stuff in first year so I could do fun stuff in second year.
I started work and they told me that I had to start at the bottom with the dull stuff and then I could work my way up to the fun stuff.
I'm starting to think it's all just a big lie to keep the masses working hard to achieve something that will never come.
- Jessta