"The haven't announced yet whether their future unreleased service will, at launch or at some point in the future, support streaming."
FTFY
They may well not support it on day one - Apple has a long history of playing it relatively safe on release-day. They probably will support it at some point in the future, because its both an obvious advantage and a reasonably trivial technical feat to do so. But that's nowhere near as sensational/interesting a comment, is it?
BTW, a little extra digging reveals that the code was written by a C/C++ compiler writer who's a novice developer in Java/Scala. I'd say that the fact he did so well, comparatively speaking, in Java and Scala would be more noteworthy than the current takeaway.
The benchmark did not use Java collections effectively. It was generating millions of unnecessary objects per second, and the runtime was swamped by GC overhead. In addition to the collections-related fixes I made (as described in the paper), the benchmark also used a HashMap when it should have just stored a primitive int in Type; it also used a LinkedList where it should have used an ArrayDeque. In fact, after being pressed on the matter by other Googlers (and seeing the response the C++ version got), I did make these changes to the benchmark, which brought the numbers down by another factor of 2-3x. The mail I sent Robert about it got lost in the shuffle (he's a busy guy), but he later said he would update the web site.
Changes which, I might add, are still far easier for the average Java peon-on-the-street to understand than the C++ equivalents. The fact that the paper was comparing one program in C++ that had been optimized to within an inch of its life with another program, in Java, that had had someone spend about an hour "cleaning it up a little," makes for a grossly unfair comparison.
The fact that the "naive" (far more common) programs were all relatively the same speed was insightful.
Also, one of (if not the) main goal of Java today is that it is very, very hard to write unmanageable code in it. Its still possible, don't get me wrong, but I'd much rather be dropped into the middle of a million lines of Enterprise Java than a million lines of Enterprise C++ to try to figure out a problem.
Not that either of those scenarios would be fun, mind you. But they do happen. As long as Java is easier to maintain and fast enough, it'll do just fine.
Its worth noting that approximately 60% of the US population lives in cities of 200,000 people and above. Lubbock, at 60,000 people in spacious (and relatively recently developed) West Texas, is actually quite different.
Currently in the USA, lived in the UK, so I do know what you mean - and you're right, to a point. But sitting in traffic for long periods of time is unlikely to cause fatal road accidents (I'd agree more if the stats were quoting all accidents, not just fatalities). And plenty of people in the UK commute by car. Still, that was an adjunct point - the drivers on the roads over there appear more skillful, and in fact are tested to be so; this allows the rules of the road to be set up far more intelligently. Which was itself an adjunct to the point that the original GPP was making which was that the US had rules that swaddled people up with safety.
Also remember: this is actually true. You can have the best engineers building the best products in the world, but if it isn't sold to anyone, they won't be getting paid for long. This happens far more often than most people realize.
Spoken like a true American, living your life from safety-tested cradle to carefully scrubbed and disinfected coffin, and in between using gallons of hand sanitizer and standing in line with your shoes off at the airport.
Actually the US driving test has reached the point that its stupid-easy. When I hear about people taking several attempts to pass it (at $20 each, one per day with no limit) I get a little concerned. In exchange, we have stupid road rules and enforcement because they have to be set up on the assumption that every driver is a no-talent assclown.
Contrast this to the UK drivers' test which, at least back in the 80s when I left, was long, extensive, had a limited number of attempts per year, and on which you could be failed for "lack of confidence." As a result you seemed, at least, to have far fewer completely moronic drivers on the road and could set things up with the assumption that most drivers actually knew how to drive.
The United Kingdom has a good record for road safety compared with most European Union (EU) countries. In 1999 the United Kingdom had the lowest road death rates per 100,000 population in the EU, at 6 per 100,000 of population. This compares to figures of 9.3 per 100,000 population in Australia, 8.2 in Japan and 15.3 in the USA. Across the EU, the average road death rate for children was around 2.6 per 100,000 of population - again, the UK had the lowest rate at 1.9 per 100,000.
Sometimes having to actually pass a real test before doing things that are hazardous to other people can be a good thing.
What I do insist on is technology that works, out of the box, without RTFM.
And yet you bought an iPhone, that doesn't work out of the box like every other phone on the market does. You have to take it home, plug it into a computer, having already installed iTunes first. iTunes topped 80mb last time I looked too, and takes a while to download and install.
Take a step back.
Oh, come on. In the real world, iPhones do actually work for many people. Using iTunes to update the OS once a calendar quarter is, actually, not that burdensome.
The way I look at it (and I'm also in IT, have been for ~20 years and unfortunately have not retired today, congratulations to GPP) the iPhone experience is about 95% out of the box. And that's what you get. In exchange for using a Solution and having almost everything Just Work, you get to live with the warts too.
For me, an Android device is about 85% out of the box. Assuming I put the time and effort into figuring out which one to get, and get that right, I believe fully that I could spend a bunch of my time researching and testing and get it to 99% ideal, or better than the iPhone.
The thing is, 99% is still not 100%. And for that level of incremental improvement, I'm unwilling to spend the necessary time - I just don't care. I know the iPhone has problems. As a developer, I understand many of the trade-offs that Apple has embraced. I agree with most of them, but not with others... but the last thing I want to spend my own, valuable, free time on is hacking my phone. I'd rather just use it too.
18 years ago I'd have been all over Android. Then again, 18 years ago I also owned a LaserDisc player...
However. My impression is that if most android users were told the reason why their android phone beats their old flip or candy bar feature phone was because it was open, they'd be largely thankful.
And if they were told the reason why their android phone beats their old flip or candy bar feature phone was because it was because it was now allowed to contain 27% more aluminum than before by the Federal Government, they'd be largely thankful too.
Uninformed people agreeing to be happy when they're told something does not make the point correct.
I don't see a problem with an underground flywheel, but the idea of some heavy thing rotating at 30krpm in a _moving car_ makes me blink. I want to see a video of a(n even slow speed) crash before I want to see them on the road.
How about something rotating at just 10krpm but only thinly shielded and mounted right between your legs?
Nah, OS/2 died because of its stellar Windows compatibility.
Once it could run almost every Windows app, It had two main advantages over Windows itself - it was more stable, and it could also run OS/2 apps. The thing is, at that point there was also zero incentive for an app developer to build a separate OS/2 version of their software and voluntarily limit their market.
This meant that the supply of good OS/2 software dwindled. Soon, most software was written for Windows. This meant that the practical differences between OS/2 and Windows were that OS/2 was more stable, and also that it was more expensive.
When tasked with cutting expenses, it became very hard to justify buying OS/2 for corporate use when Windows was "stable enough" and ran "all the same software." Thus OS/2's death knell was sounded. This is also why, IMO, OSX will never run Windows apps natively - Parallels is enough of a threat there.
FWIW I still have my old conference button: "OS/2 for PS/2 - Half an operating system for half a computer." Somewhere...
I'd say ask around your local area. No point in getting a plate full of certifications if they mean nothing to the employers in your area.
Here's a revolutionary idea - figure out what you know, first. See if its marketable. If not, learn something else. Once you have a marketable skill, if you're having a hard time talking to people who want to hire folks with said skill, then get some 3rd party certifications that they respect.
If you try to get certified in an area you don't already know then either you won't pass, or you'll be getting a certification that people will treat as waste-paper (either now or soon), because its not a good indicator that somebody actually knows something - by definition.
Whale populations are extremely difficult to estimate, though the Japanese method of hauling them ashore and counting them one at a time is probably not the best.
but has thus far declined to provide details or a sensible alternative for users of the API
Just because they used to offer a free service, and will soon stop doing so, people aren't just offended at that but are also attacking them for not recommending a competitive service? Again, all with absolutely no compensation?
I know they're doing well, but that doesn't mean we (as a society) should start assuming that they owe us.
...they'll be coy, and not come out with a real color tablet. I think that makes the average person underestimate just what they do.
The odds of them coming out with a non e-ink tablet are pretty long. Part of the draw of the Kindle is the massive battery life; until they can offer that in the same e-ink format, I don't see this happening. The Kindle is focussed on book-reading first instead of second, and it shows, both in good ways and bad.
Ah. Under OSX they're actually almost all left-hand chords. CMD-TAB for apps, CMD-~ for windows within an app, CMD-Q for quit, CMD-W for close-window, etc. Quite different in reachability from ALT-F4 and its friends.
Interesting points on the keypad. I just don't do enough raw data entry to justify the extra movement - I prefer using the keyboard numbers so that everything else is right at hand, especially with a trackpad centered below the keyboard for rapid switching.
I've tried mouse gestures but never really seen the point; most operating systems already have very well established conventions for those operations (close app, close window, new tab, etc) - they involve a two-key keyboard chord. Conveniently, when using the mouse or trackpad, I'm lucky enough to always have a second hand free to perform those actions asynchronously. Adding more control to my mousing hand while ignoring the beautifully accessible keypad my idle hand is resting on just doesn't make much sense to me.
Why limit yourself to a single button that does everything. Put all your fingers to work.
And as anecdotal evidence goes, my two-year old was able to figure out how to use the photo viewer on my phone about as quickly as an adult was, when they were each introduced to it for the first time.
NOTE: Those gestures are very different than the trackpad gestures for "reply all" and their ilk, which are completely artificial.
Slashdot Mirror
"The haven't announced yet whether their future unreleased service will, at launch or at some point in the future, support streaming."
FTFY
They may well not support it on day one - Apple has a long history of playing it relatively safe on release-day. They probably will support it at some point in the future, because its both an obvious advantage and a reasonably trivial technical feat to do so. But that's nowhere near as sensational/interesting a comment, is it?
BTW, a little extra digging reveals that the code was written by a C/C++ compiler writer who's a novice developer in Java/Scala. I'd say that the fact he did so well, comparatively speaking, in Java and Scala would be more noteworthy than the current takeaway.
Talk to Java heads they'll tell you Java is already faster than C++. They can show you some contrived tests to demonstrate this too!
Take a look at the comments on http://jeremymanson.blogspot.com/2011/06/scala-java-shootout.html about the paper:
Here's one from the top:
The benchmark did not use Java collections effectively. It was generating millions of unnecessary objects per second, and the runtime was swamped by GC overhead. In addition to the collections-related fixes I made (as described in the paper), the benchmark also used a HashMap when it should have just stored a primitive int in Type; it also used a LinkedList where it should have used an ArrayDeque. In fact, after being pressed on the matter by other Googlers (and seeing the response the C++ version got), I did make these changes to the benchmark, which brought the numbers down by another factor of 2-3x. The mail I sent Robert about it got lost in the shuffle (he's a busy guy), but he later said he would update the web site.
Changes which, I might add, are still far easier for the average Java peon-on-the-street to understand than the C++ equivalents. The fact that the paper was comparing one program in C++ that had been optimized to within an inch of its life with another program, in Java, that had had someone spend about an hour "cleaning it up a little," makes for a grossly unfair comparison.
The fact that the "naive" (far more common) programs were all relatively the same speed was insightful.
This is a key point.
Also, one of (if not the) main goal of Java today is that it is very, very hard to write unmanageable code in it. Its still possible, don't get me wrong, but I'd much rather be dropped into the middle of a million lines of Enterprise Java than a million lines of Enterprise C++ to try to figure out a problem.
Not that either of those scenarios would be fun, mind you. But they do happen. As long as Java is easier to maintain and fast enough, it'll do just fine.
Its worth noting that approximately 60% of the US population lives in cities of 200,000 people and above. Lubbock, at 60,000 people in spacious (and relatively recently developed) West Texas, is actually quite different.
Source: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/census_issues/metropolitan_planning/cps2k.cfm
Of course, one mitigating benefit is that electric motors weigh far less than gasoline-powered ones do, and are more efficient.
If that was really the case - and you were any good at it - you'd have told us how to buy things from you. Just saying.
Currently in the USA, lived in the UK, so I do know what you mean - and you're right, to a point. But sitting in traffic for long periods of time is unlikely to cause fatal road accidents (I'd agree more if the stats were quoting all accidents, not just fatalities). And plenty of people in the UK commute by car. Still, that was an adjunct point - the drivers on the roads over there appear more skillful, and in fact are tested to be so; this allows the rules of the road to be set up far more intelligently. Which was itself an adjunct to the point that the original GPP was making which was that the US had rules that swaddled people up with safety.
Also remember: this is actually true. You can have the best engineers building the best products in the world, but if it isn't sold to anyone, they won't be getting paid for long. This happens far more often than most people realize.
ObOatmeal: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/literally
Spoken like a true American, living your life from safety-tested cradle to carefully scrubbed and disinfected coffin, and in between using gallons of hand sanitizer and standing in line with your shoes off at the airport.
Actually the US driving test has reached the point that its stupid-easy. When I hear about people taking several attempts to pass it (at $20 each, one per day with no limit) I get a little concerned. In exchange, we have stupid road rules and enforcement because they have to be set up on the assumption that every driver is a no-talent assclown.
Contrast this to the UK drivers' test which, at least back in the 80s when I left, was long, extensive, had a limited number of attempts per year, and on which you could be failed for "lack of confidence." As a result you seemed, at least, to have far fewer completely moronic drivers on the road and could set things up with the assumption that most drivers actually knew how to drive.
Indeed, from http://www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBASE/ssdataset.asp?vlnk=5180 :
The United Kingdom has a good record for road safety compared with most European Union (EU) countries. In 1999 the United Kingdom had the lowest road death rates per 100,000 population in the EU, at 6 per 100,000 of population. This compares to figures of 9.3 per 100,000 population in Australia, 8.2 in Japan and 15.3 in the USA. Across the EU, the average road death rate for children was around 2.6 per 100,000 of population - again, the UK had the lowest rate at 1.9 per 100,000.
Sometimes having to actually pass a real test before doing things that are hazardous to other people can be a good thing.
And yet you bought an iPhone, that doesn't work out of the box like every other phone on the market does. You have to take it home, plug it into a computer, having already installed iTunes first. iTunes topped 80mb last time I looked too, and takes a while to download and install.
Take a step back.
Oh, come on. In the real world, iPhones do actually work for many people. Using iTunes to update the OS once a calendar quarter is, actually, not that burdensome.
The way I look at it (and I'm also in IT, have been for ~20 years and unfortunately have not retired today, congratulations to GPP) the iPhone experience is about 95% out of the box. And that's what you get. In exchange for using a Solution and having almost everything Just Work, you get to live with the warts too.
For me, an Android device is about 85% out of the box. Assuming I put the time and effort into figuring out which one to get, and get that right, I believe fully that I could spend a bunch of my time researching and testing and get it to 99% ideal, or better than the iPhone.
The thing is, 99% is still not 100%. And for that level of incremental improvement, I'm unwilling to spend the necessary time - I just don't care. I know the iPhone has problems. As a developer, I understand many of the trade-offs that Apple has embraced. I agree with most of them, but not with others... but the last thing I want to spend my own, valuable, free time on is hacking my phone. I'd rather just use it too.
18 years ago I'd have been all over Android. Then again, 18 years ago I also owned a LaserDisc player...
Normally id be on your side
However. My impression is that if most android users were told the reason why their android phone beats their old flip or candy bar feature phone was because it was open, they'd be largely thankful.
And if they were told the reason why their android phone beats their old flip or candy bar feature phone was because it was because it was now allowed to contain 27% more aluminum than before by the Federal Government, they'd be largely thankful too.
Uninformed people agreeing to be happy when they're told something does not make the point correct.
The obese cat would be spinning if he was cycling on an exercise bike instead of running in a giant hamster wheel.
Thanks to their quadruped nature, cats can actually spin two exercise bikes, for bursts up to double their rated output.
Well, they don't, but they could if they wanted to.
I don't see a problem with an underground flywheel, but the idea of some heavy thing rotating at 30krpm in a _moving car_ makes me blink. I want to see a video of a(n even slow speed) crash before I want to see them on the road.
How about something rotating at just 10krpm but only thinly shielded and mounted right between your legs?
You know, like the engine on a motorcycle?
Nah, OS/2 died because of its stellar Windows compatibility.
Once it could run almost every Windows app, It had two main advantages over Windows itself - it was more stable, and it could also run OS/2 apps. The thing is, at that point there was also zero incentive for an app developer to build a separate OS/2 version of their software and voluntarily limit their market.
This meant that the supply of good OS/2 software dwindled. Soon, most software was written for Windows. This meant that the practical differences between OS/2 and Windows were that OS/2 was more stable, and also that it was more expensive.
When tasked with cutting expenses, it became very hard to justify buying OS/2 for corporate use when Windows was "stable enough" and ran "all the same software." Thus OS/2's death knell was sounded. This is also why, IMO, OSX will never run Windows apps natively - Parallels is enough of a threat there.
FWIW I still have my old conference button: "OS/2 for PS/2 - Half an operating system for half a computer." Somewhere...
I'd say ask around your local area. No point in getting a plate full of certifications if they mean nothing to the employers in your area.
Here's a revolutionary idea - figure out what you know, first. See if its marketable. If not, learn something else. Once you have a marketable skill, if you're having a hard time talking to people who want to hire folks with said skill, then get some 3rd party certifications that they respect.
If you try to get certified in an area you don't already know then either you won't pass, or you'll be getting a certification that people will treat as waste-paper (either now or soon), because its not a good indicator that somebody actually knows something - by definition.
Whale populations are extremely difficult to estimate, though the Japanese method of hauling them ashore and counting them one at a time is probably not the best.
Ah... "Research."
I have no problem with killing the animals you eat.
Although you might be quite busy if several people take you up on that offer, all claiming to be the Anonymous Coward...
More to the point:
but has thus far declined to provide details or a sensible alternative for users of the API
Just because they used to offer a free service, and will soon stop doing so, people aren't just offended at that but are also attacking them for not recommending a competitive service? Again, all with absolutely no compensation?
I know they're doing well, but that doesn't mean we (as a society) should start assuming that they owe us.
It means too many people are using it for free, and Google is too stingy to allow that.
And why, exactly, should they?
...they'll be coy, and not come out with a real color tablet. I think that makes the average person underestimate just what they do.
The odds of them coming out with a non e-ink tablet are pretty long. Part of the draw of the Kindle is the massive battery life; until they can offer that in the same e-ink format, I don't see this happening. The Kindle is focussed on book-reading first instead of second, and it shows, both in good ways and bad.
Ah. Under OSX they're actually almost all left-hand chords. CMD-TAB for apps, CMD-~ for windows within an app, CMD-Q for quit, CMD-W for close-window, etc. Quite different in reachability from ALT-F4 and its friends.
Interesting points on the keypad. I just don't do enough raw data entry to justify the extra movement - I prefer using the keyboard numbers so that everything else is right at hand, especially with a trackpad centered below the keyboard for rapid switching.
I've tried mouse gestures but never really seen the point; most operating systems already have very well established conventions for those operations (close app, close window, new tab, etc) - they involve a two-key keyboard chord. Conveniently, when using the mouse or trackpad, I'm lucky enough to always have a second hand free to perform those actions asynchronously. Adding more control to my mousing hand while ignoring the beautifully accessible keypad my idle hand is resting on just doesn't make much sense to me.
Why limit yourself to a single button that does everything. Put all your fingers to work.
s/finders/hands/
And as anecdotal evidence goes, my two-year old was able to figure out how to use the photo viewer on my phone about as quickly as an adult was, when they were each introduced to it for the first time.
NOTE: Those gestures are very different than the trackpad gestures for "reply all" and their ilk, which are completely artificial.