Then again, KDE also works in *BSD, Solaris, HP-UX, and even Windows, to name a few. Writing kernel modules that work for every one of these systems would be a bit of a hassle, no?
And what good does that do? Yes, I can run KDE on all of those, but each non-KDE application on those platforms is going to see a different file system from KDE applications. So, you have a desktop that integrates poorly on a lot of platforms, as opposed to one that integrates well with the system on a single platform.
The US space program doesn't look a lot better: a reusable launch vehicle that is more expensive per launch than disposable launch vehicles, two shuttles that have blown up, Mars probes that just disappear, and on and on.
Over the last couple of decades, the European space program doesn't seem to have screwed up any more than the US space program. OTOH, it seems to be a bit more cost-effective and fewer people die in it.
No, it's a shortfall of KDE developers: instead of spending time on writing Konqueror modules, they could be writing the equivalent kernel modules.
But that isn't really anything new: a lot of the KDE effort could be written as more independent, stand-alone functionality, useful to lots of non-KDE software. Instead, KDE produces tightly integrated C++ modules that only work if you are running a large amount of KDE support infrastructure.
Gtk+, wxWindows, would only be a small subset of the.NET libraries or JAVA core libraries.
That's fine. There are plenty of other libraries. Mono programmers can use the best of C, C++, C#,.NET, Fortran, and Java (!) libraries in their programming because C# and Mono interoperate easily with all of them.
It's also very hard to get an entire team of developers on the same page concerning all these issues, so having them all in a single framework is very cost effect.
You are making the same mistake that people who bet on Microsoft made, you are just picking a different wannabe monopolist.
Because this was the only thing that prevented Microsoft from trashing Java last time they tried,
Java needed a good trashing because Sun just wasn't doing their job. And the changes Sun has made to Java in 1.5 pretty much confirm Microsoft's complaints. The fact that Microsoft is the evil empire doesn't mean that they are always wrong.
Browse that site a bit if you would like to know what true community development/standardization is ( ie. compared to the patent/ip riddled shared source nonsense ).
Java is covered by numerous Sun patents, and unlike C#/.NET, those patents cover core aspects of the runtime. Sun has not dedicated those patents to the public domain, but they are using them to control who can and cannot implement Java. Furthermore, Sun has successfully used the same legal strategy as SCO--making contamination claims. As I was saying: I don't know whether Microsoft will cause IP problems or whether they will play fair, but I already know Sun doesn't.
As for the JCP, I consider it an underhanded attempt by Sun to get free development done for their proprietary platform and to control what would otherwise be open source efforts entirely outside of Sun's control. In fact, the JCP may well preclude APIs developed under the JCP to be used in Mono or.NET, while giving Sun free use of them; why should people volunteer for that sort of thing?
Overall, I'd love to see Microsoft's monopoly destroyed, but not at the cost of handing the keys to open source software to Sun, which would be the result if Java became widely used on Linux. And Java is too poor technically anyway to play any significant role on Linux.
but if you stub your toe, it still hurts. In different words: the question whether it's a "simulation" or not is meaningless. You can call it a "simulation" or you can call it "physical law", but it won't make any difference.
Of course, this theme--simulated people living in a simulated world and being aware of it to various degrees--has been explored over and over again in the literature. Looks like failed science fiction writers are becoming Oxford philosophy professors these days.
As in "that is what we would do if we were still able to be that powerful."
Europe is still able to do that (its total GDP is bigger than that of the US, and it has the technology), it just chooses not to. What would be the point? Spend half a trillion dollars a year to be able to invade countries like Grenada and Iraq?
The residue of the COMINTERN effort to destroy the West; preparing it for conquest by spreading defeatist memes.
Hello? Were you frozen in the 1960's and have just woken up? There is no "COMINTERN effort" anymore.
Shhhh! You're supposed to pretend that it's the United States which has been trying for centuries to become a fascist, totalitarian empire, and Europe which is trying desperately to preserve Western civilization. It's the new fad, you see.
Sadly, you completely misunderstand why Europeans don't like US policies. Europeans don't argue about whether it is the US or Europe that should "preserve Western civilization", they believe that any such undertaking is intrinsically flawed. That was a lesson painfully learned over several centuries by Europeans, but America seems intent on repeating the same mistakes.
As for fascism and totalitarianism, no nation is immune, not even the US. But maybe that, too, is a lesson Americans may have to discover for themselves.
The US has ID cards, too: social security and drivers licenses. No modern society can function without them. In contrast to the US, Europeans have worked out strong privacy laws and carefully designed ID cards to address privacy concerns. The net effect is that privacy protections in Europe are stronger than in the US because Europeans are actually tackling issues of privacy, while Americans just stick their heads in the sand and pretend that the problem doesn't exist.
Similar comments apply to cameras. As for key escrow, I'm not aware of any Europe-wide adoption of key escrow policies. Can you point to any?
Oh your argument is that the system libraries are inadequate. In what way do you feel they are less in capability than.Net?
C# lets me call system libraries directly, and it lets me access native data structures directly and efficiently. For Java, I have to write cumbersome and slow JNI wrappers to native libraries.
Furthermore, people are developing Linux-specific libraries for Mono at a rapid pace, while Java program on Linux mostly use Sun's WORA libraries, which aren't very good.
If you use mono at work assuming its mature enough and ms pulls a sco you can kiss your linux workstation goodbye.
Even if Mono was found to infringe on Microsoft's rights, all that would do is affect the Mono implementation (and it would be easy to work around). It wouldn't affect anything else on the Linux machine.
Of course, Sun at this point looks far more likely to "pull an SCO" than Microsoft: unlike Microsoft, Sun is in financial troubles, they have lots of patents on Java, they have already threatened programmers over having looked at Sun's source code and then participating in other projects, and Sun has pulled out of any effort that would create an open, unencumbered Java standard.
Mono may not be completely legally risk free, but if you are worried about anybody "pulling an SCO", be worried about Sun first.
To be quite honest, I dont care at all if.net is better than Java. The point is that.net is controlled by Microsoft, and currently only runs (officially) on M$ products. Mono might be outlawed by Microsoft at any point. You are at their mercy.
It is far from clear that Microsoft has any control over who implements.NET. Furthermore, the Mono project is only in part about implementing.NET; right now, it looks like Mono is going to produce lots of Linux-native APIs for C#.
And you are assuming that Sun is any better. But Sun has patents on many aspects of Java, including key parts of the byte code.
choose to fight Microsoft by writing code that will run on all platforms from mobile phones to IBM mainframes. Believe me when I say we will all be better off in the long run.
That is, until Sun's business starts falling apart and they become as litigious as SCO. In fact, Sun already has pulled an SCO and threatened companies and employees over their involvement in open source Java projects after having looked at Sun's source code.
I honestly don't know what legal stupidity Microsoft is going to commit. But I don't have to guess about Sun: Sun has already proven that they are going to break promises, that they are going to keep Java proprietary through patents, and that they are going to interfere with open source efforts when it looks like that they may cut into their businesses (look at the recent JBoss tiff).
So, if you are really worried about lawsuits and all that, stay away from either C# or Java. But between the two, legally, C# seems less risky than Java.
I'm not talking about "fear, uncertainty, and doubt". What I'm complaining about with Java is not uncertain at all:
Sun pulled out of standardization efforts despite their promises to make Java an open standard.
Sun has failed to deliver shared VMs.
Sun has failed to deliver the numerical enhancements they promised for Java.
All implementations that may call themselves "Java" are derived from Sun's source code (otherwise, show me a third party implementation of Swing).
Java is real freedom. Because i can change my OS, the product i use, the business model i got without beeing linked to a provider.
You are "linked to a provider": Sun. You are linked to Sun as much as Windows programmers are linked to Microsoft.
If you still think Java is a niche, is because since nearly 10 years you was sleepy;-)
Quite to the contrary. When I started out using Java in 1996, it had the promise of becoming a full cross-platform, general-purpose, open programming language. But Sun failed to follow on so many promises that today it is a niche programming language. Java is mostly used for certain server-side applications.
Java is not the "magic key" for "IT magic kingdom", it is real, effective, efficient and fit your need.
Maybe it fits your needs, it doesn't fit my needs: its awful toolkit, poor numerical support, proprietary runtime, flaky cross-platform behavior, and lack of third party implementations alone make it a poor choice for me.
If the Linux gurus where stoping the bashing against Java and looks at the marvelous project made from the opensource comunity they will understand that Java is realy an opportunity to strengthen Linux as an OS leader.
Open source users use open source software. Java isn't open source. It's free-as-in-beer, and that isn't good enough. All efforts to produce a complete, conforming open source Java implementation for Linux have failed, mostly because Sun, like Microsoft, keeps adding APIs faster than people can re-implement them, and because Sun's APIs are not very well suited to implementation on Linux.
Linux may need some improvements on the desktop/client side (but, then, so does Windows), but Java isn't providing them. In fact, even Sun is using Gnome/Gtk+/C++, not Swing/Java, as the desktop for their workstations.
So you're saying you don't use Java because Sun controls it,
I'm phasing out my use of Java not because "Sun controls it", but because Sun has done a poor job over the last few years with the control they have had.
If you want to write Unix-only applications, it hardly makes sense to use C# at all.
C# is easier to use and safer than C++, yet it gives me full access to native APIs. And it's standardized. Seems like a great application programming language for UNIX to me. Why doesn't that make sense to you?
Well, first of all, saying that Java (J2EE, really) gives you "bloated web services" isn't the same as saying "don't ever use it". Bloated, complex systems sometimes are the best available solution, and they are great for making money as a consultant or programmer.
But, in any case, there are lots of alternatives. I suspect that for most applications, you are probably better off using PHP, mod_perl, mod_python, or maybe Zope.
Other API's are NOT standardized and are in full control of Microsoft [...] I think that mono will have some major problems in the future. Sure they can implement C# and CLR, but they virtually have to reengineer all other API's, because there are no formal specs available.
How is that different from C++ and the Win32 APIs? The fact that Microsoft controls the Win32 APIs doesn't matter to me when programming in C++--I just write my code in Gtk+ or wxWindows. Likewise, the fact that Microsoft controls the.NET APIs doesn't matter to me when programming in C#--I can just use Gtk#.
Furthermore, you don't need Sun-style central control over everything in order to get good cross-platform toolkits, as toolkits like Qt, FLTK, and wxWindows show. C# will have good cross platform support, either by successfully cloning.NET, or by binding to an existing cross-platform toolkit, or by creating a new cross-platform toolkit just for C#.
You see, the fact that C# doesn't come with philosophical baggage like WORA and "100% purity" is an advantage as far as I'm concerned. What WORA and "100% purity" has brought us is lousy implementations of Java on Linux, and APIs that don't even let me access environment variables.
I've pretty much stopped using Java. Sun has broken their promises when it comes to making Java an open standard (and, in fact, they have several patents on core Java technologies). And technically, even with these additions, Java 1.5 is still behind C# in several important areas (native code/data interfaces, genericity, support for numerical computations).
Also, after trying to live with it for years, I have concluded that "100% pure Java" just doesn't meet my needs. "99% pure" is good enough for me: it means that porting is easy, but the last 1% of platform specific code is what makes the difference between applications that merely run and applications that integrate well with each platform.
I expect Java will continue to survive in some niches (most notably, bloated web services implementations), but Sun has largely missed the boat when it comes to creating a general-purpose programming language: it's too little too late technically, and they have annoyed too many people. I think C#,.NET, and Mono have a chance if Microsoft doesn't shoot themselves in the foot with stupid legal threats against open source projects. Otherwise, there are plenty of other languages; the choice isn't just between Java and C#, you know.
Re:I'll care when native compilers become the norm
on
Preview of Java 1.5
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Java can walk on water and I'm still not going to use it to develop anything I expect anyone to use. Give me a native optimizing compiler and I just might reconsider.
You mean like GNU gcj?
For languages that are intended for general purpose use and especially for situations where performance/efficiency is important they're just a BAD idea.
You seem to think that by compiling stuff to native code things magically run fast when the problems are actually library design, class loader design, bad memory management, and other issues. Java's JIT is about as fast as natively compiled C code and Java's lousy performance is living proof for the fact that making a great native code compiler is not sufficient for getting good performance.
Python and Perl programs often run rings around equivalent Java programs in terms of actual, end-user visible performance and memory usage, despite being interpreted. If anything, the compromises people need to make to make languages easily compilable into native code make it much harder to build efficient systems in them.
Of course, it's not like we needed any more proof of that: the inefficiency and bloat of systems like Windows, Gnome, and KDE demonstrate the same point, as did several generations of systems before them. And generation after generation of programmers repeats the same mistake you are making.
If you want a one-handed keyboard, have a look here. You can implement that kind of half keyboard with a simple xmodmap and continue to use your regular keyboard hardware.
When OS X came out, I was really excited and a year ago decided to give it a serious try. A year later, both my iMac and my iBook are running Linux--OS X just didn't cut it: too slow, too limited, not enough software. And, frankly, the UI wasn't all that hot either. I wouldn't buy another Mac.
well, there are probably better choices now
on
fvwm Turns Ten
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· Score: 5, Informative
Fvwm was nice back then. But even if you want a small, light-weight window manager, there are probably better choices than fvwm these days: Oroborus, Blackbox, IceWM, Ion, to name just a few. Their code tends to be cleaner and their configuration and code tends to be more modular.
Re:looks a lot better than the Zaurus
on
YOPY Arrives
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· Score: 1
You can run X on your Z but why would you want that ?
Because then I can program it in FLTK, Gtk+, Tcl/Tk, wxWindows, Gtkmm, wxPython, PyGnome, wxLua, Gtk#, etc.--the toolkits I actually use. Qt doesn't even have (usable) OCAML or Lua bindings.
99% of X apps cannot even cope with 320x240 screen and these that can are practically unusable.
It's a lot easier to change the UI for an application to work well on a small screen than to start from scratch.
Also, there are lots of X apps that are specifically written for pen-based devices and small screens: handwriting recognizers, document viewers, gesture recognizers, multimedia players, etc. All those just work on X-based handhelds.
Sure I can. Get yours here. It's like a 4" iBook, except that it's smaller and lighter. Flip over for a small tablet/pen-based PDA. And, like Apple, it runs a proprietary window system on top of a UNIX-clone, which is an advantage or a disadvantage, depending on where you are coming from.
Slashdot Mirror
you loose a lot of the consistency and integration that makes an application framework so nice to program for in the first place.
Yes. Too bad that KDE doesn't use the standard application framework on Linux: the Linux kernel and X11.
Then again, KDE also works in *BSD, Solaris, HP-UX, and even Windows, to name a few. Writing kernel modules that work for every one of these systems would be a bit of a hassle, no?
And what good does that do? Yes, I can run KDE on all of those, but each non-KDE application on those platforms is going to see a different file system from KDE applications. So, you have a desktop that integrates poorly on a lot of platforms, as opposed to one that integrates well with the system on a single platform.
The US space program doesn't look a lot better: a reusable launch vehicle that is more expensive per launch than disposable launch vehicles, two shuttles that have blown up, Mars probes that just disappear, and on and on.
Over the last couple of decades, the European space program doesn't seem to have screwed up any more than the US space program. OTOH, it seems to be a bit more cost-effective and fewer people die in it.
we could have been to Mars and back 3 times by then (and I hope we will have)
We will have. There are several Mars missions in progress, including sample return missions (see here).
However, if there were manned Mars missions planned, we wouldn't have any money left for all this neat science.
The sooner we get ourselves (and more importantly, all our heavy, polluting industry) off this planet, the better.
Going into space won't help with that. Conserving energy and resources, family planning, and other measures will.
No, it's a shortfall of KDE developers: instead of spending time on writing Konqueror modules, they could be writing the equivalent kernel modules.
But that isn't really anything new: a lot of the KDE effort could be written as more independent, stand-alone functionality, useful to lots of non-KDE software. Instead, KDE produces tightly integrated C++ modules that only work if you are running a large amount of KDE support infrastructure.
Gtk+, wxWindows, would only be a small subset of the .NET libraries or JAVA core libraries.
.NET, Fortran, and Java (!) libraries in their programming because C# and Mono interoperate easily with all of them.
.NET, while giving Sun free use of them; why should people volunteer for that sort of thing?
That's fine. There are plenty of other libraries. Mono programmers can use the best of C, C++, C#,
It's also very hard to get an entire team of developers on the same page concerning all these issues, so having them all in a single framework is very cost effect.
You are making the same mistake that people who bet on Microsoft made, you are just picking a different wannabe monopolist.
Because this was the only thing that prevented Microsoft from trashing Java last time they tried,
Java needed a good trashing because Sun just wasn't doing their job. And the changes Sun has made to Java in 1.5 pretty much confirm Microsoft's complaints. The fact that Microsoft is the evil empire doesn't mean that they are always wrong.
Browse that site a bit if you would like to know what true community development/standardization is ( ie. compared to the patent/ip riddled shared source nonsense ).
Java is covered by numerous Sun patents, and unlike C#/.NET, those patents cover core aspects of the runtime. Sun has not dedicated those patents to the public domain, but they are using them to control who can and cannot implement Java. Furthermore, Sun has successfully used the same legal strategy as SCO--making contamination claims. As I was saying: I don't know whether Microsoft will cause IP problems or whether they will play fair, but I already know Sun doesn't.
As for the JCP, I consider it an underhanded attempt by Sun to get free development done for their proprietary platform and to control what would otherwise be open source efforts entirely outside of Sun's control. In fact, the JCP may well preclude APIs developed under the JCP to be used in Mono or
Overall, I'd love to see Microsoft's monopoly destroyed, but not at the cost of handing the keys to open source software to Sun, which would be the result if Java became widely used on Linux. And Java is too poor technically anyway to play any significant role on Linux.
but if you stub your toe, it still hurts. In different words: the question whether it's a "simulation" or not is meaningless. You can call it a "simulation" or you can call it "physical law", but it won't make any difference.
Of course, this theme--simulated people living in a simulated world and being aware of it to various degrees--has been explored over and over again in the literature. Looks like failed science fiction writers are becoming Oxford philosophy professors these days.
As in "that is what we would do if we were still able to be that powerful."
Europe is still able to do that (its total GDP is bigger than that of the US, and it has the technology), it just chooses not to. What would be the point? Spend half a trillion dollars a year to be able to invade countries like Grenada and Iraq?
The residue of the COMINTERN effort to destroy the West; preparing it for conquest by spreading defeatist memes.
Hello? Were you frozen in the 1960's and have just woken up? There is no "COMINTERN effort" anymore.
Shhhh! You're supposed to pretend that it's the United States which has been trying for centuries to become a fascist, totalitarian empire, and Europe which is trying desperately to preserve Western civilization. It's the new fad, you see.
Sadly, you completely misunderstand why Europeans don't like US policies. Europeans don't argue about whether it is the US or Europe that should "preserve Western civilization", they believe that any such undertaking is intrinsically flawed. That was a lesson painfully learned over several centuries by Europeans, but America seems intent on repeating the same mistakes.
As for fascism and totalitarianism, no nation is immune, not even the US. But maybe that, too, is a lesson Americans may have to discover for themselves.
The US has ID cards, too: social security and drivers licenses. No modern society can function without them. In contrast to the US, Europeans have worked out strong privacy laws and carefully designed ID cards to address privacy concerns. The net effect is that privacy protections in Europe are stronger than in the US because Europeans are actually tackling issues of privacy, while Americans just stick their heads in the sand and pretend that the problem doesn't exist.
Similar comments apply to cameras. As for key escrow, I'm not aware of any Europe-wide adoption of key escrow policies. Can you point to any?
Also, the higher temperatures will form more carbon monoxide vs dioxide ratios than normal
That would be a neat trick, given that neither the fuel nor the air contain significant amounts of carbon. Transmutation in a two-stroke engine.
Oh your argument is that the system libraries are inadequate. In what way do you feel they are less in capability than .Net?
C# lets me call system libraries directly, and it lets me access native data structures directly and efficiently. For Java, I have to write cumbersome and slow JNI wrappers to native libraries.
Furthermore, people are developing Linux-specific libraries for Mono at a rapid pace, while Java program on Linux mostly use Sun's WORA libraries, which aren't very good.
If you use mono at work assuming its mature enough and ms pulls a sco you can kiss your linux workstation goodbye.
Even if Mono was found to infringe on Microsoft's rights, all that would do is affect the Mono implementation (and it would be easy to work around). It wouldn't affect anything else on the Linux machine.
Of course, Sun at this point looks far more likely to "pull an SCO" than Microsoft: unlike Microsoft, Sun is in financial troubles, they have lots of patents on Java, they have already threatened programmers over having looked at Sun's source code and then participating in other projects, and Sun has pulled out of any effort that would create an open, unencumbered Java standard.
Mono may not be completely legally risk free, but if you are worried about anybody "pulling an SCO", be worried about Sun first.
To be quite honest, I dont care at all if .net is better than Java. The point is that .net is controlled by Microsoft, and currently only runs (officially) on M$ products. Mono might be outlawed by Microsoft at any point. You are at their mercy.
.NET. Furthermore, the Mono project is only in part about implementing .NET; right now, it looks like Mono is going to produce lots of Linux-native APIs for C#.
It is far from clear that Microsoft has any control over who implements
And you are assuming that Sun is any better. But Sun has patents on many aspects of Java, including key parts of the byte code.
choose to fight Microsoft by writing code that will run on all platforms from mobile phones to IBM mainframes. Believe me when I say we will all be better off in the long run.
That is, until Sun's business starts falling apart and they become as litigious as SCO. In fact, Sun already has pulled an SCO and threatened companies and employees over their involvement in open source Java projects after having looked at Sun's source code.
I honestly don't know what legal stupidity Microsoft is going to commit. But I don't have to guess about Sun: Sun has already proven that they are going to break promises, that they are going to keep Java proprietary through patents, and that they are going to interfere with open source efforts when it looks like that they may cut into their businesses (look at the recent JBoss tiff).
So, if you are really worried about lawsuits and all that, stay away from either C# or Java. But between the two, legally, C# seems less risky than Java.
Java is real freedom. Because i can change my OS, the product i use, the business model i got without beeing linked to a provider.
You are "linked to a provider": Sun. You are linked to Sun as much as Windows programmers are linked to Microsoft.
If you still think Java is a niche, is because since nearly 10 years you was sleepy
Quite to the contrary. When I started out using Java in 1996, it had the promise of becoming a full cross-platform, general-purpose, open programming language. But Sun failed to follow on so many promises that today it is a niche programming language. Java is mostly used for certain server-side applications.
Java is not the "magic key" for "IT magic kingdom", it is real, effective, efficient and fit your need.
Maybe it fits your needs, it doesn't fit my needs: its awful toolkit, poor numerical support, proprietary runtime, flaky cross-platform behavior, and lack of third party implementations alone make it a poor choice for me.
If the Linux gurus where stoping the bashing against Java and looks at the marvelous project made from the opensource comunity they will understand that Java is realy an opportunity to strengthen Linux as an OS leader.
Open source users use open source software. Java isn't open source. It's free-as-in-beer, and that isn't good enough. All efforts to produce a complete, conforming open source Java implementation for Linux have failed, mostly because Sun, like Microsoft, keeps adding APIs faster than people can re-implement them, and because Sun's APIs are not very well suited to implementation on Linux.
Linux may need some improvements on the desktop/client side (but, then, so does Windows), but Java isn't providing them. In fact, even Sun is using Gnome/Gtk+/C++, not Swing/Java, as the desktop for their workstations.
So you're saying you don't use Java because Sun controls it,
I'm phasing out my use of Java not because "Sun controls it", but because Sun has done a poor job over the last few years with the control they have had.
If you want to write Unix-only applications, it hardly makes sense to use C# at all.
C# is easier to use and safer than C++, yet it gives me full access to native APIs. And it's standardized. Seems like a great application programming language for UNIX to me. Why doesn't that make sense to you?
Well, first of all, saying that Java (J2EE, really) gives you "bloated web services" isn't the same as saying "don't ever use it". Bloated, complex systems sometimes are the best available solution, and they are great for making money as a consultant or programmer.
But, in any case, there are lots of alternatives. I suspect that for most applications, you are probably better off using PHP, mod_perl, mod_python, or maybe Zope.
Other API's are NOT standardized and are in full control of Microsoft [...] I think that mono will have some major problems in the future. Sure they can implement C# and CLR, but they virtually have to reengineer all other API's, because there are no formal specs available.
.NET APIs doesn't matter to me when programming in C#--I can just use Gtk#.
.NET, or by binding to an existing cross-platform toolkit, or by creating a new cross-platform toolkit just for C#.
How is that different from C++ and the Win32 APIs? The fact that Microsoft controls the Win32 APIs doesn't matter to me when programming in C++--I just write my code in Gtk+ or wxWindows. Likewise, the fact that Microsoft controls the
Furthermore, you don't need Sun-style central control over everything in order to get good cross-platform toolkits, as toolkits like Qt, FLTK, and wxWindows show. C# will have good cross platform support, either by successfully cloning
You see, the fact that C# doesn't come with philosophical baggage like WORA and "100% purity" is an advantage as far as I'm concerned. What WORA and "100% purity" has brought us is lousy implementations of Java on Linux, and APIs that don't even let me access environment variables.
I've pretty much stopped using Java. Sun has broken their promises when it comes to making Java an open standard (and, in fact, they have several patents on core Java technologies). And technically, even with these additions, Java 1.5 is still behind C# in several important areas (native code/data interfaces, genericity, support for numerical computations).
.NET, and Mono have a chance if Microsoft doesn't shoot themselves in the foot with stupid legal threats against open source projects. Otherwise, there are plenty of other languages; the choice isn't just between Java and C#, you know.
Also, after trying to live with it for years, I have concluded that "100% pure Java" just doesn't meet my needs. "99% pure" is good enough for me: it means that porting is easy, but the last 1% of platform specific code is what makes the difference between applications that merely run and applications that integrate well with each platform.
I expect Java will continue to survive in some niches (most notably, bloated web services implementations), but Sun has largely missed the boat when it comes to creating a general-purpose programming language: it's too little too late technically, and they have annoyed too many people. I think C#,
Java can walk on water and I'm still not going to use it to develop anything I expect anyone to use. Give me a native optimizing compiler and I just might reconsider.
You mean like GNU gcj?
For languages that are intended for general purpose use and especially for situations where performance/efficiency is important they're just a BAD idea.
You seem to think that by compiling stuff to native code things magically run fast when the problems are actually library design, class loader design, bad memory management, and other issues. Java's JIT is about as fast as natively compiled C code and Java's lousy performance is living proof for the fact that making a great native code compiler is not sufficient for getting good performance.
Python and Perl programs often run rings around equivalent Java programs in terms of actual, end-user visible performance and memory usage, despite being interpreted. If anything, the compromises people need to make to make languages easily compilable into native code make it much harder to build efficient systems in them.
Of course, it's not like we needed any more proof of that: the inefficiency and bloat of systems like Windows, Gnome, and KDE demonstrate the same point, as did several generations of systems before them. And generation after generation of programmers repeats the same mistake you are making.
If you want a one-handed keyboard, have a look here. You can implement that kind of half keyboard with a simple xmodmap and continue to use your regular keyboard hardware.
When OS X came out, I was really excited and a year ago decided to give it a serious try. A year later, both my iMac and my iBook are running Linux--OS X just didn't cut it: too slow, too limited, not enough software. And, frankly, the UI wasn't all that hot either. I wouldn't buy another Mac.
Fvwm was nice back then. But even if you want a small, light-weight window manager, there are probably better choices than fvwm these days: Oroborus, Blackbox, IceWM, Ion, to name just a few. Their code tends to be cleaner and their configuration and code tends to be more modular.
You can run X on your Z but why would you want that ?
Because then I can program it in FLTK, Gtk+, Tcl/Tk, wxWindows, Gtkmm, wxPython, PyGnome, wxLua, Gtk#, etc.--the toolkits I actually use. Qt doesn't even have (usable) OCAML or Lua bindings.
99% of X apps cannot even cope with 320x240 screen and these that can are practically unusable.
It's a lot easier to change the UI for an application to work well on a small screen than to start from scratch.
Also, there are lots of X apps that are specifically written for pen-based devices and small screens: handwriting recognizers, document viewers, gesture recognizers, multimedia players, etc. All those just work on X-based handhelds.
Sure I can. Get yours here. It's like a 4" iBook, except that it's smaller and lighter. Flip over for a small tablet/pen-based PDA. And, like Apple, it runs a proprietary window system on top of a UNIX-clone, which is an advantage or a disadvantage, depending on where you are coming from.