1. A method for asset management utilizing the World Wide Web, comprising:
(a)Accessing the World Wide Web using a user's computer-related hardware device;
(b)transferring information from said computer-related hardware device through said World Wide Web to a remote storage medium;
(c)transferring said information from said remote storage medium to a new computer-related hardware device; and
(d) using said information from said computer-related hardware device on said new computer-related hardware device to update said user's settings on said new computer-related hardware device.
Example: I take my mail settings and zip them.
(a): I then go to my Apache web page and
(b) use an upload script to transfer this information to my server's file system (i.e. remote storage).
(c): I then log on to my new computer at work and go to my web page, and download these files from my server.
(d): Finally I unzip the files and use them to configure my "user settings" for outlook.
Absolutely no brainer prior art found. This patent broadly covers any use of HTTP upload/download scripts in the event that the files transfered are used to configure user settings. Surely you can all find prior art for that! Its a joke, and their lawyers are suckers for settling for contingency fees.
Why are we wasting slashdot pixels with this rubbish??? You have no right to anonymity. Check your constitution. If someone wants to sue you for libel they can do it. The whole thing is just a bunch of children shouting at each other.
Since I use.NET on Windows XP to write applications for Windows XP and Windows XP Embedded I'm quite looking forward to the new language features.
That some people here think it is important that Java has had two of these features already, albeit in a far less efficient form for generics, is neither here nor there. I do not use Java. I'd have to pay for a decent IDE for it, while Visual Studio.NET includes all the languages I need for serious windows development. Eclipse, in case you were going to mention it, doesnt function usably on two monitors.
However, since I used to be a compiled-code snob (i.e. ASM,C or C++ but no byte code!), C# has opened my mind to Java, and I'm looking forward to gnu's own byte code implementation. C# will remove many barriers in peoples minds to using Java. Personally, I find C# easier to use, and I look forward to nice, fast generics.
Next thing you know the government will be holding people offshore so that they can violate their civil rights in ways that would be illegal in america.
Yah patents! I love my X10 home automation stuff. Its useful. But equally, I think that a new and innovative idea about opening one window *underneath* another one is worth $4.3 million. Those silly X10 people for manufacturing useful physical objects and creating manufacturing jobs should pay more attention to the much more valuable world of clever, original ideas.
And there wasn't much chance that the SPA--the Software Protection Authority--would fail to catch him. In his software class, Dan had learned that each book had a copyright monitor that reported when and where it was read, and by whom, to Central Licensing
If it was that good, wouldnt Central Licensing just bill the person doing the reading?
Dan concluded that he couldn't simply lend Lissa his computer. But he couldn't refuse to help her, because he loved her. Every chance to speak with her filled him with delight. And that she chose him to ask for help, that could mean she loved him too.
Read: "I am super geek! See how I create FREE operating systems! I shall help her break the law because I love her and that makes everything ok! Then all the world will know that FREE software is best, and perhaps finally I will GET LAID!!!"
Would it be fair to assume that he was using an IDE drive for several years to create the mail folder, i.e. its all fabulously fragmented. He then copies the mail onto the SCSI drive, i.e. its all fabulously right there and properly optimised. He then tested the two speeds. Woha! The SCSI was faster!!! And then he copied it onto a 160Gb/s $525 Ultra2 SCSI drive and it copied, *even* faster!!
I did that once. I've never bought a SCSI drive again. What a waste of money. If you're that anal about performance spend the same money on an Escalade RAID controller, 4 IDE drives. Then set up 0+1 RAID. I'll bet you get faster speed, more capacity *and* you'll have fault tolerance.
It would be useful if "journalists" could provide references and analysis of their claims. In this so called piece of journalism, the author makes the claim that Mono is patent encumbered. He also makes the claim that Microsoft releasing source code is enough to un-clean-room Mono.
I personally have not read the patents affecting.NET, but I would have to assume that Mono, and even more likely, Novell, have read the patents and think it safe to proceed. I would also have to assume that the FSF have read these patents before starting their dot Net replacement.
Please dont link to shit "journalism" like this on the front page of slashdot. It makes me think that slashdot is a waste of time.
Clearly Suncomm is guilty of illegally accessing your PC. They dont tell you that the Autorun is installing software on your PC and there's no way (other than pressing shift) to stop it from doing so.
Why do companies think they can install software on my PC without my permission? They cant. Its hacking. Its a criminal offense.
There's nothing in the standard to say they cant do sitefinder, well there's nothing in the standard to say we cant modify BIND to return No Domain for any *.verisign.com request.
If they want to claim this is unfair business practices and illegal, they'll be opening themselves up to a counter-suit from www.register.com etc.
I request that the new BIND nukes verisign altogether. If verisign want to claim that there's no legal reason that unknown domains shouldnt resolve to their site finder, then there's no legal reason why BIND has to resolve any verisign address at all. They've just opened a very large can of worms: what happens when someone that controls a large part of the internet starts acting unilaterally. I say lets show them what happens: everyone starts to do it and they get vanished. We need to make a point here.
Lets just wipe those f***** off the net completely. If we're going to route around the damage, lets route around the whole bloody lot of them.
The OpenCable platform is about delivering quality TV programming, including interactive TV, across cable, and displaying it via whatever technology someone cares to manufacture. Specifically, the scrambling system (CSS) is modularised so that it will plug into whatever system supports it. This means it will be perfectly possible to implement a WinTV card that plugs into your PC and allows you to watch whatever TV channels you have paid for. In the UK *right now* you can by a DVB-T receiver that gets you Digital iTV on your PC. The current models do not have CSS, but the chipsets do.
Sun allows Set Top Box manufactures to use non-Sun developed JVM's provided they are clean room implementations, or they allow them to use Sun's own JVM for *free* provided the rest of the implementation is free, or they charge no more than $1 per box. The whole system is very open and easy for anyone to enter the market. Now since most of us here dont manufacture set-top boxes you'll probably be waiting for a linux driver for your OpenCable PCI card. You'll not run into any problems with the DMCA because you wont need to reverse engineer the CSS card - just use it.
OpenCable is a good thing and allows great STB's like Sony's DHG-55 which has 128Mb or RAM and a 430MIPS processor. Its not your DCT2000. So please stop your righteous outrage that someone should use "Open" to refer to something other than a GPL'd value proposition.
I make an absolute valid point, and do so in all seriousness, with no sarcasm, nor baiting, that cuts right to the heart of the whole Free vs free issue (and points out that its bollocks), and what happens? Some fucker Trolls it. Hurray for Slashdot! Lets use "Troll" when we mean "Censored".
First question to ask is "Why am I doing this?" If you dont know the answer to that one then nothing will work. Secondly, if the answer is because "I dont want to be fat", you'll likely find that that wont work either. At the end of the day, being fat isnt such a terrible thing. When confronted with a choice involving hardship (exercise, healthy food) or convenience (lazy, McDonalds), its all to easy to choose convenience. "Not being fat" just isnt a good enough reason. Hell, 60% of Americans are overweight, so it cant be that bad!
So what would light you up? I had two answers:
1. I'm having a baby, and I want to be able to carry her up the two flights of stairs to our appartment, and generally for my wife to have a big strong husband to depend on.
2. To be able to relentlessly f*** the living daylights out of my wife as soon as she's recovered.
As a result of this, I'm motivated to do 2-3 hours of cardio per week, in addition to a weights routine twice a week. My weight is hanging around 220lbs, which is technically overweight for my 6'2 height, but now the bulk is muscle rather than fat. I'm still working on the weight, as my blood pressure is still indicating that I'm too fat, but its all in hand and I'm getting constant remarks about how great I look.
Once you are motivated you will find it possible to make the neccessary choices. I make time for an hour of cardio, plus 30 minutes shower time, every monday, wednesday and friday. I have exercise bikes in the building. Tuesday and thursday I travel 5 minutes to the local gym, and spend about an hour there, before returning to work. I've also managed to do a slightly less rigorous routine while porting Resident Evil 2 to the N64, as did the project leader. We both worked 14 hour days, often 7 days a week. A great workout is beneficial for good coding, and if your boss doesnt get it then find a better job! Thats one of those choices I was talking about : when your job gets in the way of your health and motivation, find a new job. I havent yet had to say to my boss, "What can you say to me that is more important than carrying my baby safely or f****** my wife relentlessly?", but then he founded a fitness company, so I dont think I'll have to.
When you first start working out, you will probably feel tired afterwards. Keep at it. It will pass after a few weeks (4-10).If you work out during work hours, find ways to deal with it. Work later if you have to. Gym's are less busy during the day, and may even be cheaper. If you can afford a trainer, get one. Even if you cant afford one all the time, ask if one will be willing to set you up once, and then see you again in a month. Trainers live to make you healthy and educate themselves constantly. Find one that shares the same fitness goals as you: if you want a body builder physique, talk to a body builder, but if you want a leaner, runner look, then talk to one that looks like a runner. Finally, dont be intimidated down the gym. The massive, bulked up, tattooed guy is probably the nicest guy there. When they see you showing up regularly, you'll automatically earn their respect.
Diet: Eat 5 servings of fruit and vegetables per day (and I'm not counting potatoes or simple carbs). Sounds simple doesnt it! I promise you, if you can manage it, your whole diet will change. For example, I find it really hard to enjoy vegetables with the sweet mixture of phosphoric acid, caffeine and sugar (or aspartame) in my mouth and stomach. To meet your 5 servings, you'll naturally find other unhealthy things become less appealing.
If you live in London, and are a games programmer, send me a CV. We make exercise bikes with video games on. We have four in the office. I made a choice about my health. You can too.
You are right! And while we're at it, we must outlaw those dark satanic mills, because the mill owners are threatening the jobs of hundreds of skilled spinners. And we must lock up all the people at Caterpillar and MAC Trucks for putting hoeers, tillers, dreyers and stableboys out of work.
Similarly, we must ban all japanese car imports because they use (gasp) ROBOTS in their factories, replacing the jobs of people.
Further, we must ban all those record companies making phonographs and phonograms because they have put all the people making printed music out of work!
The music industry once was about printed music. Then about phonograms. Then about CD's. Now its about online distribution. There is no longer a need for record companies: we dont need a company to distribute music. There is only now a need for a rating system - the pollsters - to rate the music. Technology has brought the industry full circle: there is no longer a way for bands to make money distributing music, just like it was 100 years ago. If you want to make money, play gigs.
GPL is "free" with a little f. Its free as in beer. GPL is not FREE, as in liberty, because it has a whole set of restrictive clauses set upon it. The restrictions force the code to remain "free" (as in beer). They do not force the code to remain Free (as in liberty), because, for example, I can take the code and modify it within my company and never release it to the outside world. It says: if you make any proprietary changes, you must not distribute it unless you also do x,y and z. Thats not Freedom.
BSD on the other hand is Free (as in liberty) because it allows anyone to do anything with the code as the license applies to it. For example, if I add code to BSD'd code, the BSD license does not force itself on this *new* code that *I* have written.
If you're going to have a conversation about free vs proprietary software in the context of economics, then lets look at the whole picture shall we.
Most fundamentally useful free software is developed by people who are paid to do it. Could Linus continue to develop the kernel if he wasnt paid by companies willing to pay him to sit around working on it? He left Transmeta because the work he was doing for them was cutting in to his linux time. Would GNU/Linux be so far developed without large companies like IBM and Redhat paying for programmers to work on it? Sure there would be something if no one was paid, but it would be woefully inadequate. Just keeping up with new hardware and new science takes boat loads of programmers. Most are paid a salary or contract fee to do it.
So it is developing free software that is share cropping. You, the programmer, work on God's freely created earth, creating a crop that large Farm Owners take, package, and sell (or sell "support for", or sell "hardware for") at the market. You take away a small amount of money, with which you have to go the market and buy food, and housing, and gas and pay your taxes, until you have nothing left.
With proprietary software, the programmer has an opportunity to own the farm. Sure a much bigger farmer may come along and force him to sell up, but frankly the $50,000 that Microsoft bought DOS for was the price of a house back then.
I'll work on Free Software when real farmers work on Free Food, and Ferrari works on Free Cars.
I make video games, and the video games I develop will not run in a browser. They wont even run in a proprietary flash plugin, or a "free standard" SVG browser. They run at 60Hz, full screen, 1024x768.
And they require a joystick. No Alt-Meta-# here. No keyboard.
And most adults will struggle to use the user interface. I've seen adults struggle with even the simplest games, like Mario Kart 64.
The browser has been chosen by "millions of people" for two reasons:
1. because the people using services on the web are not willing to download software to their PC. They are afraid of viruses. They dont know how. So developers must develop software that runs in a browser, or lose the customer.
2. because web applications have to work for the lowest common denominator. If you are selling to everyone (e.g. Amazon), then the user interface must be usable by someone who may not even know how to turn on a computer.
On the other hand, try to sell to me a piece of version control software that runs on a browser, or a developer IDE. Sorry Mr Linux Hacker, we've replaced Emacs with a Mozilla text box. Heck, if you were to ask my dad if he could use Excel for his financial spreadsheets without using any of the hotkeys, I think your users would be few and far between.
I'd rather see the money going to mono (go-mono.org). C# is a better language and exists as an official standard. The patents Microsoft claims for the CLR are probably the kind that one can work around, since JIT itself has lots of prior art. Best of all.NET is lots of languages, not just C#. And if apps behaved like MSWindows apps, fine by me. Linux apps are a mishmash of whatever shortcut the programmer could take to get it to work. Did you notice that all the games console manufactures have strict definitions for what each button should do when it comes to common functionality? And they only have 10 buttons! They sell millions of copies to punters. Linux should take note. Am I off topic yet?
Ah, the usual slashdot "modded up because it sounds like he knows what he's talking about" problem.
1.Delegates are slower than interfaces.
And interfaces are slower than function pointers. Storing a pointer to an "interface" is actually storing a pointer to an object, which is in turn just an empty object with one data member which is a pointer to a vtable. So it takes two levels of indirection. You cant complain that delegates arent the most efficient way forward when interfaces arent either.
Surely what you mean to say is that interfaces are slow, and we should all just use function pointers? Ah, but function pointers dont carry a this pointer, which means we dont know who called us. But not call-backs are for objects. Some are for global or static objects, so the this pointer is a waste.
Alternatively, perhaps you could create a functor that would create at run time a class that calls your object specifically. Ah, wait, thats delegates!
At the end of day, the extra machine instructions for implementing interfaces and delegates is neglibible compared to the kind of code that gets executed as a result. For example I use delegates a lot for windows messages, which usually result in several thousand to a million pixels being redrawn. Five extra assembly instructions and memory cache miss dont seem like a terrible price to pay for better OO design now does it? And so we come to point 2.
2. Delegates break OO. Suddenly you have something that works differently from other classes for no real benefit.
No programmers break OO. If you think that the class/instance method is the be all and end all of object oriented programming then you need to take a look at Smalltalk or OpenCyc. Using classes does not make you an OO programmer.
Can you write horrible, non-oo code using delegates? Yes. Can you write horrible non-oo code using classes and interfaces? Yes. Is all code using delegates non-OO? No. Is all code using classes non-OO? No.
3. Anonymous inner classes allow you to define the function close to where it is used. With delegates you can have a method body pages away from where it is registered with an event.
So with delegates they are bad because a programmer could write unclear code by putting the delegated function definition well away from where the delegate is initalised? This is as compared to the horrible unreadable code you'll find if you put "anonymous inner class java" into google. If you had to create 10 such inner classes would you advocate putting this code all in one initialisation function (such that it is very big), or would you create 10 seperate initialiser functions that the first calls (such that the code that calls the initialisers is possible pages away from the actual code of the initialiser)?
And the method very often has little do to with the class that contains it?
And anonymous inner classes prevent this how? Oh. They dont.
Give it up mate. Java is an old, hacked, bungled, proprietary language from a monopolistic company. If there's going to be an open source language, get behind Mono, and make open source.NET.
Brokerage firms make deals minute to minute, and conversations with a broker are legally binding. There isnt time to fax a contract back and forth. If you phone anyone at a brokerage firm, you will be recorded. Something to remember before you phone your mate and tell them about your weekend in ibiza. I totally understand why banks would view instant messages as the 21st century equivalent of a phone converstaion. Get over it!
I've been waiting for this for a few weeks now. I've been looking for a PIM that has email, calendar, and tasks. Apart from Outlook, what product has that? I have recently tried:
Outlook OSAF's Chandler PIM Haystack Pogomail (not a PIM) Eudora (not a PIM) Mozilla
I am now using Mozilla because it has bayesian spam filtering built in and because it has a calendar plug in.
I have decided not to use Haystack. It is simply not production ready, and I'm sure the guys at MIT wont mind me saying so. It crashes. It locks up. It doesnt have undo!!!! I cant tell you how many times I screwed up one of the panels and couldnt get it back. I also couldnt figure out how to delete spam. I get about 200 emails per day, of which 8 arent spam. I could use a pop filter, but I have an emap client too.
However, I am very impressed by this software and it is absolutely the way forward. I *want* my information integrated. I want my tasks to automatically reference the people I need to do them with and the web pages I used for reference and the dates in my calendar. I want my contacts to appear in many different categories, instead of as a different copy in each category all of which I'd have to update.
I want email and calendar and tasks to be like a light switch or a tv. I want to just turn it on and it all be there. This software is fabulous and you would all benefit from giving it a test drive, even if you ultimately uninstall it.
Slashdot Mirror
(a): I then go to my Apache web page and
(b) use an upload script to transfer this information to my server's file system (i.e. remote storage).
(c): I then log on to my new computer at work and go to my web page, and download these files from my server.
(d): Finally I unzip the files and use them to configure my "user settings" for outlook.
Absolutely no brainer prior art found. This patent broadly covers any use of HTTP upload/download scripts in the event that the files transfered are used to configure user settings. Surely you can all find prior art for that! Its a joke, and their lawyers are suckers for settling for contingency fees.
Why are we wasting slashdot pixels with this rubbish??? You have no right to anonymity. Check your constitution. If someone wants to sue you for libel they can do it. The whole thing is just a bunch of children shouting at each other.
That some people here think it is important that Java has had two of these features already, albeit in a far less efficient form for generics, is neither here nor there. I do not use Java. I'd have to pay for a decent IDE for it, while Visual Studio .NET includes all the languages I need for serious windows development. Eclipse, in case you were going to mention it, doesnt function usably on two monitors.
However, since I used to be a compiled-code snob (i.e. ASM,C or C++ but no byte code!), C# has opened my mind to Java, and I'm looking forward to gnu's own byte code implementation. C# will remove many barriers in peoples minds to using Java. Personally, I find C# easier to use, and I look forward to nice, fast generics.
There arent. I dont know why the headline says there are either. Bad slashdot! Bad me for believing slashdot without checking the linked story.
Next thing you know the government will be holding people offshore so that they can violate their civil rights in ways that would be illegal in america.
No they really are the same company. Got to x10.com and check it out.
Yah patents! I love my X10 home automation stuff. Its useful. But equally, I think that a new and innovative idea about opening one window *underneath* another one is worth $4.3 million. Those silly X10 people for manufacturing useful physical objects and creating manufacturing jobs should pay more attention to the much more valuable world of clever, original ideas.
If it was that good, wouldnt Central Licensing just bill the person doing the reading?
Read: "I am super geek! See how I create FREE operating systems! I shall help her break the law because I love her and that makes everything ok! Then all the world will know that FREE software is best, and perhaps finally I will GET LAID!!!"
I did that once. I've never bought a SCSI drive again. What a waste of money. If you're that anal about performance spend the same money on an Escalade RAID controller, 4 IDE drives. Then set up 0+1 RAID. I'll bet you get faster speed, more capacity *and* you'll have fault tolerance.
It would be useful if "journalists" could provide references and analysis of their claims. In this so called piece of journalism, the author makes the claim that Mono is patent encumbered. He also makes the claim that Microsoft releasing source code is enough to un-clean-room Mono.
I personally have not read the patents affecting .NET, but I would have to assume that Mono, and even more likely, Novell, have read the patents and think it safe to proceed. I would also have to assume that the FSF have read these patents before starting their dot Net replacement.
Please dont link to shit "journalism" like this on the front page of slashdot. It makes me think that slashdot is a waste of time.
Why do companies think they can install software on my PC without my permission? They cant. Its hacking. Its a criminal offense.
If they want to claim this is unfair business practices and illegal, they'll be opening themselves up to a counter-suit from www.register.com etc.
... But not information.
Lets just wipe those f***** off the net completely. If we're going to route around the damage, lets route around the whole bloody lot of them.
Sun allows Set Top Box manufactures to use non-Sun developed JVM's provided they are clean room implementations, or they allow them to use Sun's own JVM for *free* provided the rest of the implementation is free, or they charge no more than $1 per box. The whole system is very open and easy for anyone to enter the market. Now since most of us here dont manufacture set-top boxes you'll probably be waiting for a linux driver for your OpenCable PCI card. You'll not run into any problems with the DMCA because you wont need to reverse engineer the CSS card - just use it.
OpenCable is a good thing and allows great STB's like Sony's DHG-55 which has 128Mb or RAM and a 430MIPS processor. Its not your DCT2000. So please stop your righteous outrage that someone should use "Open" to refer to something other than a GPL'd value proposition.
I make an absolute valid point, and do so in all seriousness, with no sarcasm, nor baiting, that cuts right to the heart of the whole Free vs free issue (and points out that its bollocks), and what happens? Some fucker Trolls it. Hurray for Slashdot! Lets use "Troll" when we mean "Censored".
First question to ask is "Why am I doing this?" If you dont know the answer to that one then nothing will work. Secondly, if the answer is because "I dont want to be fat", you'll likely find that that wont work either. At the end of the day, being fat isnt such a terrible thing. When confronted with a choice involving hardship (exercise, healthy food) or convenience (lazy, McDonalds), its all to easy to choose convenience. "Not being fat" just isnt a good enough reason. Hell, 60% of Americans are overweight, so it cant be that bad!
So what would light you up? I had two answers:
1. I'm having a baby, and I want to be able to carry her up the two flights of stairs to our appartment, and generally for my wife to have a big strong husband to depend on.
2. To be able to relentlessly f*** the living daylights out of my wife as soon as she's recovered.
As a result of this, I'm motivated to do 2-3 hours of cardio per week, in addition to a weights routine twice a week. My weight is hanging around 220lbs, which is technically overweight for my 6'2 height, but now the bulk is muscle rather than fat. I'm still working on the weight, as my blood pressure is still indicating that I'm too fat, but its all in hand and I'm getting constant remarks about how great I look.
Once you are motivated you will find it possible to make the neccessary choices. I make time for an hour of cardio, plus 30 minutes shower time, every monday, wednesday and friday. I have exercise bikes in the building. Tuesday and thursday I travel 5 minutes to the local gym, and spend about an hour there, before returning to work. I've also managed to do a slightly less rigorous routine while porting Resident Evil 2 to the N64, as did the project leader. We both worked 14 hour days, often 7 days a week. A great workout is beneficial for good coding, and if your boss doesnt get it then find a better job! Thats one of those choices I was talking about : when your job gets in the way of your health and motivation, find a new job. I havent yet had to say to my boss, "What can you say to me that is more important than carrying my baby safely or f****** my wife relentlessly?", but then he founded a fitness company, so I dont think I'll have to.
When you first start working out, you will probably feel tired afterwards. Keep at it. It will pass after a few weeks (4-10).If you work out during work hours, find ways to deal with it. Work later if you have to. Gym's are less busy during the day, and may even be cheaper. If you can afford a trainer, get one. Even if you cant afford one all the time, ask if one will be willing to set you up once, and then see you again in a month. Trainers live to make you healthy and educate themselves constantly. Find one that shares the same fitness goals as you: if you want a body builder physique, talk to a body builder, but if you want a leaner, runner look, then talk to one that looks like a runner. Finally, dont be intimidated down the gym. The massive, bulked up, tattooed guy is probably the nicest guy there. When they see you showing up regularly, you'll automatically earn their respect.
Diet: Eat 5 servings of fruit and vegetables per day (and I'm not counting potatoes or simple carbs). Sounds simple doesnt it! I promise you, if you can manage it, your whole diet will change. For example, I find it really hard to enjoy vegetables with the sweet mixture of phosphoric acid, caffeine and sugar (or aspartame) in my mouth and stomach. To meet your 5 servings, you'll naturally find other unhealthy things become less appealing.
If you live in London, and are a games programmer, send me a CV. We make exercise bikes with video games on. We have four in the office. I made a choice about my health. You can too.
You are right! And while we're at it, we must outlaw those dark satanic mills, because the mill owners are threatening the jobs of hundreds of skilled spinners. And we must lock up all the people at Caterpillar and MAC Trucks for putting hoeers, tillers, dreyers and stableboys out of work.
Similarly, we must ban all japanese car imports because they use (gasp) ROBOTS in their factories, replacing the jobs of people.
Further, we must ban all those record companies making phonographs and phonograms because they have put all the people making printed music out of work!
The music industry once was about printed music. Then about phonograms. Then about CD's. Now its about online distribution. There is no longer a need for record companies: we dont need a company to distribute music. There is only now a need for a rating system - the pollsters - to rate the music. Technology has brought the industry full circle: there is no longer a way for bands to make money distributing music, just like it was 100 years ago. If you want to make money, play gigs.
GPL is "free" with a little f. Its free as in beer. GPL is not FREE, as in liberty, because it has a whole set of restrictive clauses set upon it. The restrictions force the code to remain "free" (as in beer). They do not force the code to remain Free (as in liberty), because, for example, I can take the code and modify it within my company and never release it to the outside world. It says: if you make any proprietary changes, you must not distribute it unless you also do x,y and z. Thats not Freedom.
BSD on the other hand is Free (as in liberty) because it allows anyone to do anything with the code as the license applies to it. For example, if I add code to BSD'd code, the BSD license does not force itself on this *new* code that *I* have written.
Its really simple.
Most fundamentally useful free software is developed by people who are paid to do it. Could Linus continue to develop the kernel if he wasnt paid by companies willing to pay him to sit around working on it? He left Transmeta because the work he was doing for them was cutting in to his linux time. Would GNU/Linux be so far developed without large companies like IBM and Redhat paying for programmers to work on it? Sure there would be something if no one was paid, but it would be woefully inadequate. Just keeping up with new hardware and new science takes boat loads of programmers. Most are paid a salary or contract fee to do it.
So it is developing free software that is share cropping. You, the programmer, work on God's freely created earth, creating a crop that large Farm Owners take, package, and sell (or sell "support for", or sell "hardware for") at the market. You take away a small amount of money, with which you have to go the market and buy food, and housing, and gas and pay your taxes, until you have nothing left.
With proprietary software, the programmer has an opportunity to own the farm. Sure a much bigger farmer may come along and force him to sell up, but frankly the $50,000 that Microsoft bought DOS for was the price of a house back then.
I'll work on Free Software when real farmers work on Free Food, and Ferrari works on Free Cars.
And they require a joystick. No Alt-Meta-# here. No keyboard.
And most adults will struggle to use the user interface. I've seen adults struggle with even the simplest games, like Mario Kart 64.
The browser has been chosen by "millions of people" for two reasons:
1. because the people using services on the web are not willing to download software to their PC. They are afraid of viruses. They dont know how. So developers must develop software that runs in a browser, or lose the customer.
2. because web applications have to work for the lowest common denominator. If you are selling to everyone (e.g. Amazon), then the user interface must be usable by someone who may not even know how to turn on a computer.
On the other hand, try to sell to me a piece of version control software that runs on a browser, or a developer IDE. Sorry Mr Linux Hacker, we've replaced Emacs with a Mozilla text box. Heck, if you were to ask my dad if he could use Excel for his financial spreadsheets without using any of the hotkeys, I think your users would be few and far between.
So develop for your audience.
I'd rather see the money going to mono (go-mono.org). C# is a better language and exists as an official standard. The patents Microsoft claims for the CLR are probably the kind that one can work around, since JIT itself has lots of prior art. Best of all .NET is lots of languages, not just C#. And if apps behaved like MSWindows apps, fine by me. Linux apps are a mishmash of whatever shortcut the programmer could take to get it to work. Did you notice that all the games console manufactures have strict definitions for what each button should do when it comes to common functionality? And they only have 10 buttons! They sell millions of copies to punters. Linux should take note. Am I off topic yet?
Ah, the usual slashdot "modded up because it sounds like he knows what he's talking about" problem.
1.Delegates are slower than interfaces.
And interfaces are slower than function pointers. Storing a pointer to an "interface" is actually storing a pointer to an object, which is in turn just an empty object with one data member which is a pointer to a vtable. So it takes two levels of indirection. You cant complain that delegates arent the most efficient way forward when interfaces arent either.
Surely what you mean to say is that interfaces are slow, and we should all just use function pointers? Ah, but function pointers dont carry a this pointer, which means we dont know who called us. But not call-backs are for objects. Some are for global or static objects, so the this pointer is a waste.
Alternatively, perhaps you could create a functor that would create at run time a class that calls your object specifically. Ah, wait, thats delegates!
At the end of day, the extra machine instructions for implementing interfaces and delegates is neglibible compared to the kind of code that gets executed as a result. For example I use delegates a lot for windows messages, which usually result in several thousand to a million pixels being redrawn. Five extra assembly instructions and memory cache miss dont seem like a terrible price to pay for better OO design now does it? And so we come to point 2.
2. Delegates break OO. Suddenly you have something that works differently from other classes for no real benefit.
No programmers break OO. If you think that the class/instance method is the be all and end all of object oriented programming then you need to take a look at Smalltalk or OpenCyc. Using classes does not make you an OO programmer.
Can you write horrible, non-oo code using delegates? Yes. Can you write horrible non-oo code using classes and interfaces? Yes. Is all code using delegates non-OO? No. Is all code using classes non-OO? No.
3. Anonymous inner classes allow you to define the function close to where it is used. With delegates you can have a method body pages away from where it is registered with an event.
So with delegates they are bad because a programmer could write unclear code by putting the delegated function definition well away from where the delegate is initalised? This is as compared to the horrible unreadable code you'll find if you put "anonymous inner class java" into google. If you had to create 10 such inner classes would you advocate putting this code all in one initialisation function (such that it is very big), or would you create 10 seperate initialiser functions that the first calls (such that the code that calls the initialisers is possible pages away from the actual code of the initialiser)?
And the method very often has little do to with the class that contains it?
And anonymous inner classes prevent this how? Oh. They dont.
Give it up mate. Java is an old, hacked, bungled, proprietary language from a monopolistic company. If there's going to be an open source language, get behind Mono, and make open source .NET.
Brokerage firms make deals minute to minute, and conversations with a broker are legally binding. There isnt time to fax a contract back and forth. If you phone anyone at a brokerage firm, you will be recorded. Something to remember before you phone your mate and tell them about your weekend in ibiza. I totally understand why banks would view instant messages as the 21st century equivalent of a phone converstaion. Get over it!
I've been waiting for this for a few weeks now. I've been looking for a PIM that has email, calendar, and tasks. Apart from Outlook, what product has that? I have recently tried:
Outlook
OSAF's Chandler PIM
Haystack
Pogomail (not a PIM)
Eudora (not a PIM)
Mozilla
I am now using Mozilla because it has bayesian spam filtering built in and because it has a calendar plug in.
I have decided not to use Haystack. It is simply not production ready, and I'm sure the guys at MIT wont mind me saying so. It crashes. It locks up. It doesnt have undo!!!! I cant tell you how many times I screwed up one of the panels and couldnt get it back. I also couldnt figure out how to delete spam. I get about 200 emails per day, of which 8 arent spam. I could use a pop filter, but I have an emap client too.
However, I am very impressed by this software and it is absolutely the way forward. I *want* my information integrated. I want my tasks to automatically reference the people I need to do them with and the web pages I used for reference and the dates in my calendar. I want my contacts to appear in many different categories, instead of as a different copy in each category all of which I'd have to update.
I want email and calendar and tasks to be like a light switch or a tv. I want to just turn it on and it all be there. This software is fabulous and you would all benefit from giving it a test drive, even if you ultimately uninstall it.