You can install firefox in MyDocuments and run it fine. Everyone has access to their own My Documents. Firefox makes no system changes and therefore needs no system files. It's perfectly happy running from its own little folder wherever you put it. Regards, Steve
I responded to your grandparent post as well, but here we go correcting you again. Check up on things first:-) You said java can't compile to native code, and here it is The GNU Compiler for Java. Right on its front page it says "GCJ is a portable, optimizing, ahead-of-time compiler for the Java Programming Language. It can compile: * Java source code directly to native machine code, * Java source code to Java bytecode (class files), * and Java bytecode to native machine code."
Just give up hating java, it is truly an amazing language. Regards, Steve
Java is not slow. Have you used it in the past 3 years? With the JIT compiler alone, you achieve C++ performance, in come cases better (believe me, I've had to run these benchmarks a million times), and with HotSpot, some java apps run so fast that similar speed can only be achieved by hand coding the app in assembly. HotSpot does on the fly optimizations at the lowest level. It pretty much learns what paths the program takes most often and optimizes for them, its a truly amazing and indispensable thing. The notion of java being slow came from the Swing gui. Swing is a little slow to react everynow and then, but its mainly due to its robustness. Regardless, even Swing isn't really an issue anymore. One of the greatest java apps I've seen recently that was coded really well and shows some of java's potential is Azureus. Java is a great tool in a toolbox of many great tools (i.e. python), and thats how it should be treated. Also, deploying an application with Java's WebStart makes deploying applications fun again:) Regards, Steve
Here. I guess java is a cool language after all. BTW, the OS I just linked to is pure java with a little assembly stub that loads just enough to get a JVM running, from that paoint on its pure java. I love java, I also like C++, but I have yet to find a language that is comparable to java. If for nothing else, it is indispensable because of its amazing APIs, ease of use, amazing IDEs, speed (with the 1.5 VM from Sun, you can only achieve similar performance hand coding the app in assembly - look into hotspot, its on the fly optimizations at the lowest level), portability, and deployability (google for WebStart). Any real programmer understands the value of Java, we are just too busy being productive to convince the/. groupthink otherwise. Regards, Steve
Highly off-topic, but just curious, what 64-bit distro are you using? I'm getting an amd64 and have been looking around for a distro of choice. Seems like its going to be Fedora, or possibly Gentoo. Any suggestions? Oh and is it true that all plug ins like Flash etc... are broken because they are 32 bits running on a 64 bit browser? Regards, Steve
Not sure when you last used Fedora, but you can easily upgrade without burning new media. Yum, up2date, or (IMHO)preferably Apt will all happily upgrade you to the latest core. But most non-techy people dont want an entire OS upgrade, would a typically Windows 2000 user just click a button and get WinXP? I think as long as the user gets all of the necessary security updates then a Core change (although easily achieved) is not necessary. Once a system is up and running why change anything major? Keep the user happy, no interface changes, keep them secure, and let them keep doing what they do. Don't fix it if its not broken. The only issue I can see here is support for older cores. At a minimum it will be about 1.5 years, but most likely as long as 3 years, and perhaps even longer. Personally, I use Fedora on all my desktops, and Debian on all my servers. As long as we get more people using Linux I don't care which distro they are using. I personally do feel however that Fedora is a very good choice, if for some reason you can't use Fedora, then Mandrake would be my second recommendation. Regards, Steve
What forced upgrades? I still run FC1 on a machine, its the msot stable OS i've ever used, well its on par with Debian Stable. I have FC2 on my laptop. Both Fedora machines run perfect and there has never been a forced upgrade. Up2date is like windows update, except it updates everything on your system, instead of what MS wants updated. And you get to pick and choose. Nothing is ever forced on you, ever. I personally use apt because my roots in linux are in debian, and I use debian daily, but for an end user, you just cant beat Fedora. Suse is nice but I have my issues with it. Mandrake is the only other non-MS OS I'd recommend to a typical user. People keep saying that Fedora is bleeding edge, and it is if you want it to be, but it can also move at a slower pace if you'd like and every Core so far has been extreemly stable. Saying Fedora is bleeding edge is like saying Debian is bleeding edge, its up to you if you wanna run stable, testing or unstable, and Fedora defaults to stable, and everythign is extensively tested at RH. Also, dealing with RH developers is such a nice experience as compared to dealing with the typical arogant Debain dev.(Not all Debian devs are that way, but more then I'd like)I don't see the problem here. Regards, Steve
Didn't they also give us ext3? You know that filesystem that just about everyone uses. Also, just about every major kernel enhancment that was necessary for linux to be used in the enterprise was coded by a dev at Red Hat, check out the kernel list and see how many folks from redhat are contributing constantly. And everyone forgets how back when RH had their desktop edition everyone complained that it was too closed, so RH opens it up and literally gave it all to the community, and then the community still bitches. Its nuts, regardless I think the silent majority knows how important Red Hat is and its shown in the numbers of people using fedora. Regards, Steve
Now I didn't mean to come off as an asshole with that statement. I have nothing against homeless people simply for being homeless. Some people really lost a job and really can't help but live off the streets, I feel for them and wish them the best. I will gladly help pay for them to live a better life. I do have a problem with 99% of the homeless people I've come in contact with though. I will usually give them money if they are playing an instrument or doing something for the money, but so many just sit there asking for money and they just take it and go buy drugs/cigareetes or alcohol. Its ridiculous, I've been cursed by bums before for offering to take them to the burger king across the street for some food. One even nearly attacked me, although he was happy as hell when he got money from people. Its such a messed up system, I've helped at a shelter before and so many people just go there, get free food, and spend every dime they got on drugs. I personally don't want any of my money going to support these people, it disgusted me seeing this everyday. I eventually joined a differnt group for a little bit and helped build houses for those in need. I *knew* that the house would most likely hold a family in it that really needed help, not some druggy. Regards, Steve
I know folks in Canada and they have such a hard time seeing doctors when they need them. If I wake up tomorrow morning and feel sick I'll go to the doctor without giving it a second thought and if all is well, be in work by 10:30. From what I hear, you can't quite do that in Canada. Regardless, it's motivation for people to get a job, and more importantly, to keep the job. I like Canada alot, in particular Toronto, but I disagree with government hand outs like this. Government should govern, I don't wanna pay taxes for bums and other low lifes too lazy to get a job. Regards, Steve
I took my friend war driving for his first time the other night. He had just gotten a new AMD64 laptop. We picked up 41 APs at houses within about a 5 square block area, and when we drove by the local public grade school we picked up about 20 open access points, it was nuts. Most successful war driving ever. We had a blast. We are going to go back out one night and try out AirPwn just for fun, and let people know that they could be encrypted. Regards, Steve
Anyone know of a tool similar to AirPwn that doesn't require two cards? Just curious, or can you use a standard packet forger for a similar effect?
The current situation in Iraq seems to imply that we can't.
What makes you think that? The current kill ratio is something like 1000 of their soldiers for every 1 of ours, it may be higher then that actually. Also, although its becoming less and less popular for obvious reasons, for the first half of the war any terrorist that was shot that still survived but was unable to fight we took to a hospital or medic and just kind of hoped they wouldn't go back fighting. Meanwhile, they are literally ripping our dead soldiers apart, beheading them, hanging their dead bodies on bridges and showing absolutely no respect. Another thing is that this is urban warfare where the enemy is deeply entrenched and is far more familiar with the surrounding areas. Urban warfare is a pain in the ass, especially when the other side is using underhanded and disgraceful tactics such as suicide bombing and using women and children as shields, or more recently holy shrines and cemeteries as fortification. Also, the US soldiers can not just go around shooting anything that moves, there is a large population that they are protecting and the terrorists walk amongst that population to blend in. A soldier pretty much can't shoot anything until he is shot at or sees a gun/threat. We have no way of knowing who is good or who is bad until they show themselves, where as the terrorists know exactly who to shoot at and where they are. This war is so much in their favor its amazing that we are doing as well as we are. If it was just your typical large scale war where the opposing side just comes in, carpet bombs, invades with infantry and then kills anything remaining, this would be no contest. We could have had this over in a month if it was like that. But we aren't invading, or trying to take over, we are jsut helping and the other side is too scared to fight fair despite what nice guys we are being. Oh and just so you know, I hate this war, I don't necessarily agree with it, and I'm going to do whatever I can to try to make it end successfully as soon as possible (I probably won't vote for Bush). Regards, Steve
You have no idea what you are talking about. Most apps use some kind of lib or something to access their configs, that keeps the config to a standard, at least internally to the app. If you have another application that needs to access that config, its usually fairly easy to do so. What your saying is, its good to make it easy for any application to access any other application's configuration. How often do you just randomly pick a registry entry and decide to use it for something? When you write your program you know what you'll need and you predefine the config files or in your case the registry. As long as you know what your accessing and how to access it, nothing else matters. The worse thing about the registry is how easily it becomes corrupted. Also, as far as I know there is no tool bundled with Windows to allow you to edit the registry from the command line. So what do you do when your registry is hosed and you can't boot to a gui? I may be wrong, but I don't beleive there is a way to edit it easily from DOS, and booting into Linux is useless because the registry isn't editable with a text editor or something simple like it should be. The registry is a great idea in theory, but horrible in practice. Regards, Steve
What are you talking about? What news that really is news worthy don't we get? In most people's books seeing how much noise little groups in other countries can make about how much they hate America is not news worthy. Neither is a lot of stuff, its not that we don't wanna see it, its that itd be pointless to see it. The british news is just filled with things that william and harry have been up to, the news isn't any better across the pond. Anyway, for serious things such as when a US soldier is murdered by an iraqi, or a hostage is, despite the citizens of the United States becoming upset with the news, we are still showed it, and its better that way. Every soldier killed has been reported and that can be verified. Please give me an example of our crappy news? I know many foreigners who would disagree with your statement and/ or think that their news media is worse. At least in America you are guaranteed freedom of speech, and also our news outlets tend to be liberal and try to get everything out to the public as much possible. They only have so much time and space and must decide whats important. Regards, Steve
I'm no python expert, but how would you do something like say: int b = 0; { int a = 32; b += a; } { int c = 43; b += c; } ? Granted that it isn't the best example, but you get the idea, i mean both set of brackets would imply one indent in from the code block prior, so would you double indent the second set of brackets? That might be the answer, I'm really not sure though and can't test it right now. Regards, Steve
Thats great... really it is... but I can write a much smaller python script using an openGL binding. By much smaller, I mean probably under 30 bytes. Anyone can do anything in a line or two of code when there are 50 megs of libraries behind it that it is calling. Your post was dumb. Regards, Steve
Java is real easy to learn. I mean really really easy. Especially if you know C++. And there is so much documentation on the net that you'd never need a book on it. It also has the most kick-ass APIs available. I do however have a book on python, although there is also enough on the net to learn python without a book as well. I do use python quite frequently, but for anything serious, its pure java. Any language that uses whitespace as a main aspect of the language and for defining scope needs to be looked at again. Although its nice and forces your code to look clean, it does have its limitations when it comes to defining scope and what not, at least as far as I can tell. There should at least be an alternative, i.e. brackets. Regardless, if I were you I'd go download Netbeans and/or Eclipse (personally I find netbeans easier to start with, it just works out of the box) and start reading up on java, its a great language. Regards, Steve
There are much cleaner ways to do such a a thing in java then what you noted, even prior to the 1.5 jvm, but regardless, that Ruby code does not look cleaner to me. Smaller yes, but if we are going for small then use perl or something. For instance, what the hell is the x for in the ruby statement? Is it some magical variable that popped out of nowhere and was never declared (I know you don't need to declare variables but its good to do so)? I have not a clue. I only briefly used Ruby a while back, i found it nice that it told you that a number was near infinity rather then keep going like python, although both have their uses. I use python for arbitrary integer calculations and for scripting little things, and java for everything else. Java fixed everything bad about C++ and it is still superior to C#. It is also extremely fast, if you need something faster then java then you should be using assembly. Python on the other hand is slow as hell, it has its place, but I am much more proficient in java. Also, as far as deployment goes, you can't beat Java WebStart, it is essential to me now a days. In conclusion, I find that Java is my first choice for any real programming that is done on a large scale or is "critical" in one sense or another. Python for little things that can be scripted. I don't see a need for Ruby, it is neat as an educational device but nothing more. Regards, Steve
Huh? Welcome to Moore's Law. Thats like saying will Intel and AMD ever stop making faster processors so it will be safe to upgrade a company's computers. Regards, Steve
I agree with your post about it being good, but why the hell wouldn't they just ssh in and restart the service? Driving to another state simply because one service crashed is bad design, not trying to be nitpicky or anything though:) Regards, Steve
Agreed! It's not like this gene is responsible for our logic, common sense, or personality. If anything it would be one less thing stopping humans from procrastinating. But if someone is hungry and eats, or found a fun game to play, or is reading slashdot, that is instant gratification. And things like waiting for products, or waiting on someone else, or frequently getting to work late, all play a role in projects being completed late. The worst thing that could happen is I wouldn't know when to stop reading slashdot:) I guess to sum it up, if I can't feel my hand but see that its in a flame, I'm going to move it, and if I am doing a ton of work but see something more fun, I'm going to naturally be inclined to have a little fun here and there. We are humans, nothing you can do about it. Regards, Steve
Actually, Rob reads his email very frequently and often responds quickly. I've had to email him once or twice about relativly stupid issues and have always gotten back a well thought out and thorough answer (as in it wasn't rushed). Regards, Steve
"Computer Science has about as much to do with computers as Astronomy does with telescopes" -EW Dijkstra
Yes, I completely agree with you. Figuring out the fastest way to sort and sift through 200 million sets of data, or creating algorithms to give computers sight and the ability to track objects, or AI or anything along those lines has a lot less to do with being a code monkey and more to do with being a scientist/mathematician and *real* programmer. Too many people think CS is just programming all day. Anyone can code, just as anyone can add or subtract. You separate the real men from the mice when you get to integration, fractals, recursion etc... In programming, you can tell anyone to turn to open up a BASIC interpreter and type: 10 a = 2 20 if a = 2 then 30 Print "2" 40 End If (Is that even proper BASIC syntax? Its been a bit since I've done anything in it,but you get the idea) and I think kids learn those little things in gradeschool and highschool and then think they can make millions by simply doing little things like that.I'm glad that there are less CS people around, more oppurtunities for me and the ones who really appreciate what its all about. Regards, Steve
Slashdot Mirror
You can install firefox in MyDocuments and run it fine. Everyone has access to their own My Documents. Firefox makes no system changes and therefore needs no system files. It's perfectly happy running from its own little folder wherever you put it.
Regards,
Steve
I responded to your grandparent post as well, but here we go correcting you again. Check up on things first :-) You said java can't compile to native code, and here it is The GNU Compiler for Java. Right on its front page it says
"GCJ is a portable, optimizing, ahead-of-time compiler for the Java Programming Language. It can compile:
* Java source code directly to native machine code,
* Java source code to Java bytecode (class files),
* and Java bytecode to native machine code."
Just give up hating java, it is truly an amazing language.
Regards,
Steve
Java is not slow. Have you used it in the past 3 years? With the JIT compiler alone, you achieve C++ performance, in come cases better (believe me, I've had to run these benchmarks a million times), and with HotSpot, some java apps run so fast that similar speed can only be achieved by hand coding the app in assembly. HotSpot does on the fly optimizations at the lowest level. It pretty much learns what paths the program takes most often and optimizes for them, its a truly amazing and indispensable thing. The notion of java being slow came from the Swing gui. Swing is a little slow to react everynow and then, but its mainly due to its robustness. Regardless, even Swing isn't really an issue anymore. One of the greatest java apps I've seen recently that was coded really well and shows some of java's potential is Azureus. Java is a great tool in a toolbox of many great tools (i.e. python), and thats how it should be treated. Also, deploying an application with Java's WebStart makes deploying applications fun again:)
Regards,
Steve
Thats a programmer error. A bad programmer can make anything happen.
Here. I guess java is a cool language after all. BTW, the OS I just linked to is pure java with a little assembly stub that loads just enough to get a JVM running, from that paoint on its pure java. I love java, I also like C++, but I have yet to find a language that is comparable to java. If for nothing else, it is indispensable because of its amazing APIs, ease of use, amazing IDEs, speed (with the 1.5 VM from Sun, you can only achieve similar performance hand coding the app in assembly - look into hotspot, its on the fly optimizations at the lowest level), portability, and deployability (google for WebStart). Any real programmer understands the value of Java, we are just too busy being productive to convince the /. groupthink otherwise.
Regards,
Steve
Highly off-topic, but just curious, what 64-bit distro are you using? I'm getting an amd64 and have been looking around for a distro of choice. Seems like its going to be Fedora, or possibly Gentoo. Any suggestions? Oh and is it true that all plug ins like Flash etc... are broken because they are 32 bits running on a 64 bit browser?
Regards,
Steve
Not sure when you last used Fedora, but you can easily upgrade without burning new media. Yum, up2date, or (IMHO)preferably Apt will all happily upgrade you to the latest core. But most non-techy people dont want an entire OS upgrade, would a typically Windows 2000 user just click a button and get WinXP? I think as long as the user gets all of the necessary security updates then a Core change (although easily achieved) is not necessary. Once a system is up and running why change anything major? Keep the user happy, no interface changes, keep them secure, and let them keep doing what they do. Don't fix it if its not broken. The only issue I can see here is support for older cores. At a minimum it will be about 1.5 years, but most likely as long as 3 years, and perhaps even longer. Personally, I use Fedora on all my desktops, and Debian on all my servers. As long as we get more people using Linux I don't care which distro they are using. I personally do feel however that Fedora is a very good choice, if for some reason you can't use Fedora, then Mandrake would be my second recommendation.
Regards,
Steve
What forced upgrades? I still run FC1 on a machine, its the msot stable OS i've ever used, well its on par with Debian Stable. I have FC2 on my laptop. Both Fedora machines run perfect and there has never been a forced upgrade. Up2date is like windows update, except it updates everything on your system, instead of what MS wants updated. And you get to pick and choose. Nothing is ever forced on you, ever. I personally use apt because my roots in linux are in debian, and I use debian daily, but for an end user, you just cant beat Fedora. Suse is nice but I have my issues with it. Mandrake is the only other non-MS OS I'd recommend to a typical user. People keep saying that Fedora is bleeding edge, and it is if you want it to be, but it can also move at a slower pace if you'd like and every Core so far has been extreemly stable. Saying Fedora is bleeding edge is like saying Debian is bleeding edge, its up to you if you wanna run stable, testing or unstable, and Fedora defaults to stable, and everythign is extensively tested at RH. Also, dealing with RH developers is such a nice experience as compared to dealing with the typical arogant Debain dev.(Not all Debian devs are that way, but more then I'd like)I don't see the problem here.
Regards,
Steve
Didn't they also give us ext3? You know that filesystem that just about everyone uses. Also, just about every major kernel enhancment that was necessary for linux to be used in the enterprise was coded by a dev at Red Hat, check out the kernel list and see how many folks from redhat are contributing constantly. And everyone forgets how back when RH had their desktop edition everyone complained that it was too closed, so RH opens it up and literally gave it all to the community, and then the community still bitches. Its nuts, regardless I think the silent majority knows how important Red Hat is and its shown in the numbers of people using fedora.
Regards,
Steve
Now I didn't mean to come off as an asshole with that statement. I have nothing against homeless people simply for being homeless. Some people really lost a job and really can't help but live off the streets, I feel for them and wish them the best. I will gladly help pay for them to live a better life. I do have a problem with 99% of the homeless people I've come in contact with though. I will usually give them money if they are playing an instrument or doing something for the money, but so many just sit there asking for money and they just take it and go buy drugs/cigareetes or alcohol. Its ridiculous, I've been cursed by bums before for offering to take them to the burger king across the street for some food. One even nearly attacked me, although he was happy as hell when he got money from people. Its such a messed up system, I've helped at a shelter before and so many people just go there, get free food, and spend every dime they got on drugs. I personally don't want any of my money going to support these people, it disgusted me seeing this everyday. I eventually joined a differnt group for a little bit and helped build houses for those in need. I *knew* that the house would most likely hold a family in it that really needed help, not some druggy.
Regards,
Steve
I know folks in Canada and they have such a hard time seeing doctors when they need them. If I wake up tomorrow morning and feel sick I'll go to the doctor without giving it a second thought and if all is well, be in work by 10:30. From what I hear, you can't quite do that in Canada. Regardless, it's motivation for people to get a job, and more importantly, to keep the job. I like Canada alot, in particular Toronto, but I disagree with government hand outs like this. Government should govern, I don't wanna pay taxes for bums and other low lifes too lazy to get a job.
Regards,
Steve
I took my friend war driving for his first time the other night. He had just gotten a new AMD64 laptop. We picked up 41 APs at houses within about a 5 square block area, and when we drove by the local public grade school we picked up about 20 open access points, it was nuts. Most successful war driving ever. We had a blast. We are going to go back out one night and try out AirPwn just for fun, and let people know that they could be encrypted.
Regards,
Steve
Anyone know of a tool similar to AirPwn that doesn't require two cards? Just curious, or can you use a standard packet forger for a similar effect?
The current situation in Iraq seems to imply that we can't.
.
What makes you think that? The current kill ratio is something like 1000 of their soldiers for every 1 of ours, it may be higher then that actually. Also, although its becoming less and less popular for obvious reasons, for the first half of the war any terrorist that was shot that still survived but was unable to fight we took to a hospital or medic and just kind of hoped they wouldn't go back fighting. Meanwhile, they are literally ripping our dead soldiers apart, beheading them, hanging their dead bodies on bridges and showing absolutely no respect. Another thing is that this is urban warfare where the enemy is deeply entrenched and is far more familiar with the surrounding areas. Urban warfare is a pain in the ass, especially when the other side is using underhanded and disgraceful tactics such as suicide bombing and using women and children as shields, or more recently holy shrines and cemeteries as fortification. Also, the US soldiers can not just go around shooting anything that moves, there is a large population that they are protecting and the terrorists walk amongst that population to blend in. A soldier pretty much can't shoot anything until he is shot at or sees a gun/threat. We have no way of knowing who is good or who is bad until they show themselves, where as the terrorists know exactly who to shoot at and where they are. This war is so much in their favor its amazing that we are doing as well as we are. If it was just your typical large scale war where the opposing side just comes in, carpet bombs, invades with infantry and then kills anything remaining, this would be no contest. We could have had this over in a month if it was like that. But we aren't invading, or trying to take over, we are jsut helping and the other side is too scared to fight fair despite what nice guys we are being. Oh and just so you know, I hate this war, I don't necessarily agree with it, and I'm going to do whatever I can to try to make it end successfully as soon as possible (I probably won't vote for Bush)
Regards,
Steve
You have no idea what you are talking about. Most apps use some kind of lib or something to access their configs, that keeps the config to a standard, at least internally to the app. If you have another application that needs to access that config, its usually fairly easy to do so. What your saying is, its good to make it easy for any application to access any other application's configuration. How often do you just randomly pick a registry entry and decide to use it for something? When you write your program you know what you'll need and you predefine the config files or in your case the registry. As long as you know what your accessing and how to access it, nothing else matters. The worse thing about the registry is how easily it becomes corrupted. Also, as far as I know there is no tool bundled with Windows to allow you to edit the registry from the command line. So what do you do when your registry is hosed and you can't boot to a gui? I may be wrong, but I don't beleive there is a way to edit it easily from DOS, and booting into Linux is useless because the registry isn't editable with a text editor or something simple like it should be. The registry is a great idea in theory, but horrible in practice.
Regards,
Steve
Even with the interframe bit reservoir you only need to pull out a maximum of 9 frames to have playable audio.
Regards,
Steve
What are you talking about? What news that really is news worthy don't we get? In most people's books seeing how much noise little groups in other countries can make about how much they hate America is not news worthy. Neither is a lot of stuff, its not that we don't wanna see it, its that itd be pointless to see it. The british news is just filled with things that william and harry have been up to, the news isn't any better across the pond. Anyway, for serious things such as when a US soldier is murdered by an iraqi, or a hostage is, despite the citizens of the United States becoming upset with the news, we are still showed it, and its better that way. Every soldier killed has been reported and that can be verified. Please give me an example of our crappy news? I know many foreigners who would disagree with your statement and/ or think that their news media is worse. At least in America you are guaranteed freedom of speech, and also our news outlets tend to be liberal and try to get everything out to the public as much possible. They only have so much time and space and must decide whats important.
Regards,
Steve
I'm no python expert, but how would you do something like say:
int b = 0;
{
int a = 32;
b += a;
}
{
int c = 43;
b += c;
}
? Granted that it isn't the best example, but you get the idea, i mean both set of brackets would imply one indent in from the code block prior, so would you double indent the second set of brackets? That might be the answer, I'm really not sure though and can't test it right now.
Regards,
Steve
Thats great... really it is... but I can write a much smaller python script using an openGL binding. By much smaller, I mean probably under 30 bytes. Anyone can do anything in a line or two of code when there are 50 megs of libraries behind it that it is calling. Your post was dumb.
Regards,
Steve
Java is real easy to learn. I mean really really easy. Especially if you know C++. And there is so much documentation on the net that you'd never need a book on it. It also has the most kick-ass APIs available. I do however have a book on python, although there is also enough on the net to learn python without a book as well. I do use python quite frequently, but for anything serious, its pure java. Any language that uses whitespace as a main aspect of the language and for defining scope needs to be looked at again. Although its nice and forces your code to look clean, it does have its limitations when it comes to defining scope and what not, at least as far as I can tell. There should at least be an alternative, i.e. brackets. Regardless, if I were you I'd go download Netbeans and/or Eclipse (personally I find netbeans easier to start with, it just works out of the box) and start reading up on java, its a great language.
Regards,
Steve
There are much cleaner ways to do such a a thing in java then what you noted, even prior to the 1.5 jvm, but regardless, that Ruby code does not look cleaner to me. Smaller yes, but if we are going for small then use perl or something. For instance, what the hell is the x for in the ruby statement? Is it some magical variable that popped out of nowhere and was never declared (I know you don't need to declare variables but its good to do so)? I have not a clue. I only briefly used Ruby a while back, i found it nice that it told you that a number was near infinity rather then keep going like python, although both have their uses. I use python for arbitrary integer calculations and for scripting little things, and java for everything else. Java fixed everything bad about C++ and it is still superior to C#. It is also extremely fast, if you need something faster then java then you should be using assembly. Python on the other hand is slow as hell, it has its place, but I am much more proficient in java. Also, as far as deployment goes, you can't beat Java WebStart, it is essential to me now a days. In conclusion, I find that Java is my first choice for any real programming that is done on a large scale or is "critical" in one sense or another. Python for little things that can be scripted. I don't see a need for Ruby, it is neat as an educational device but nothing more.
Regards,
Steve
Huh? Welcome to Moore's Law. Thats like saying will Intel and AMD ever stop making faster processors so it will be safe to upgrade a company's computers.
Regards,
Steve
I agree with your post about it being good, but why the hell wouldn't they just ssh in and restart the service? Driving to another state simply because one service crashed is bad design, not trying to be nitpicky or anything though:)
Regards,
Steve
Agreed! It's not like this gene is responsible for our logic, common sense, or personality. If anything it would be one less thing stopping humans from procrastinating. But if someone is hungry and eats, or found a fun game to play, or is reading slashdot, that is instant gratification. And things like waiting for products, or waiting on someone else, or frequently getting to work late, all play a role in projects being completed late. The worst thing that could happen is I wouldn't know when to stop reading slashdot:) I guess to sum it up, if I can't feel my hand but see that its in a flame, I'm going to move it, and if I am doing a ton of work but see something more fun, I'm going to naturally be inclined to have a little fun here and there. We are humans, nothing you can do about it.
Regards,
Steve
Actually, Rob reads his email very frequently and often responds quickly. I've had to email him once or twice about relativly stupid issues and have always gotten back a well thought out and thorough answer (as in it wasn't rushed).
Regards,
Steve
"Computer Science has about as much to do with computers as Astronomy does with telescopes" -EW Dijkstra
Yes, I completely agree with you. Figuring out the fastest way to sort and sift through 200 million sets of data, or creating algorithms to give computers sight and the ability to track objects, or AI or anything along those lines has a lot less to do with being a code monkey and more to do with being a scientist/mathematician and *real* programmer. Too many people think CS is just programming all day. Anyone can code, just as anyone can add or subtract. You separate the real men from the mice when you get to integration, fractals, recursion etc... In programming, you can tell anyone to turn to open up a BASIC interpreter and type:
10 a = 2
20 if a = 2 then
30 Print "2"
40 End If
(Is that even proper BASIC syntax? Its been a bit since I've done anything in it,but you get the idea) and I think kids learn those little things in gradeschool and highschool and then think they can make millions by simply doing little things like that.I'm glad that there are less CS people around, more oppurtunities for me and the ones who really appreciate what its all about.
Regards,
Steve