Re:Been saying it for years
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CNet on WinFS
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· Score: 1
I'm well aware of this theory, but in the context of:
1) Increasing size and need for search on home computers.
2) Explosion of media and information on consumer machines.
3) Increasing need for data transparency across machines.
I'd say it's a task worth undertaking.
Putting any kind of standard database into the file system is not going to help with any of those. Search is already handled quite well anyway. Media (images, video, audio, etc.) are not well addressed by the kind of database Microsoft is proposing to put in. And how exactly is a database supposed to help with "data transparency across machines? That's something file systems know how to do and know how to do well, but the equivalent database functionality requires high-end, costly, and complex databases--in different words, the problem gets worse.
And, yes, this has been tried in the past but disk drive technology has come quite a way since then. I'm sure Google searches weren't possible back then either.
Funny thing is: Google is using a file system for their data storage, and they are definitely not using the kinds of databases that Microsoft wants to put in. If Google did use a design like Microsoft, they would be out of business.
It doesn't seem like they're converting the filesystem into an enterprise level database. They're just enabling the core features of a db (search) for a filesystem that is long overdue.
That's already there, on Linux, today. You don't need any more enabling.
Just about every disk-based player ships with a seamlessly integrated front-end player.
Still, Apple is doing what other companies can't do. Small companies don't have the resources to ship software, hardware players, and an on-line service. Microsoft can't ship tightly integerated player software, an on-line music service, and a portable because people would be screaming "monopoly" (and they would be right). And the media companies can't do the same either, for the same reason.
The tight integration Apple provides is exclusionary to other products, and it is what we always complain about with other companies. The only reason Apple can get away with it is their brand name, their supposed underdog status, and the fact that they are too insigificant to worry about. But if Apple actually became much bigger than they are, we'd all be in trouble.
There are dozens of music players for Windows, Linux, and MacOS, some of them with tie-ins to on-line stores. While it's fairly well written and easy to use, iTunes is just one of them. If it didn't come from Apple, nobody would think it worth mentioning.
Re:Been saying it for years
on
CNet on WinFS
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· Score: 1
What do you mean? To this day IBM uses a database AS the filesystem in the AS/400.
Congratulations: you could inded tell how far that went, namely as far as a few niche operating systems.
Ever heard of DB/2?
Not only heard of, I have developed software for it. Incidentally, DB/2 (well, the UNIX version at least, the mainframe version is a completely different beast) has facilities in it to store large chunks of data in the file system--because it's much more efficient.
PHP has shared memory and similar features built in. Also, running as part of Apache, the primary use for NIO in a web server (dealing with lots of connections) is already taken care of in Apache anyway.
Think about it: PHP is used extensively in web programming, that's the only thing it's used for, and it's easy to add native code; it is going to have everything people need for writing efficient web apps.
There are plenty of tools for indexing and searching your disk; that stuff shouldn't go into fhe file system.
I haven't worked out all the kinks, but to me, being able to find stuff quickly in file systems that are continually growing would be a huge bonus.
Well, duh: that's what UNIX is all about. That's why you have dozens of command line tools to search and manipulate files with. For example, to find all TeX files in your home directory containing a keyword, use this:
$ locate.tex | grep $HOME | xargs grep -l keyword
For finding images, many of the image browsing applications for Linux now include search as well, both by keywords and by appearance.
Re:Been saying it for years
on
CNet on WinFS
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Filesystems are just inefficient, shitty databases.
The fact that file systems are databases has been recognized since, oh, databases were invented. One of the first things IBM tried after inventing the relational database was to replace the file system with it. You can tell how far that went.
The choice to make the UNIX file system the kind of database that it is was deliberate. UNIX file systems are a highly efficient and robust database, with proven metadata, security, and data consistency models. They do almost exactly what people want databases to do with their unstructured data.
For anything else, they use other databases. By a stroke of genius (or maybe just historical inevitability), those more specialized databases can be stored and accessed inside the file system database.
A database file system is quite accurately described as "The Holy Grail": it's an ancient mythological object of no practical value, something that only insane people would pursue.
NTFS has been an excellent FS for years! It's fast, it supports massive drives and massive quantities of files and directories, and it's incredibly fault-tolerant.
Yes, compared to (V)FAT, it's a great file system. But don't worry, Microsoft is trying to give you that old DOS feeling again by adding ample new opportunities for data loss and performance bottlenecks.
Computers are so fast that even very inefficient systems can easily saturate any network connection you could possibly have. All of Microsoft could probably be served from a single laptop by PHP or Java (not so sure about IIS/.NET--there are limits:-) if it was just a question of how quickly scripts get invoked and can pump out data.
What makes web applications slow is database and file system access. So, no matter what language you use, you primarily have to worry about the scalability of your storage and database component.
The major difference between PHP and Java is how they scale in terms of programming effort and complexity. PHP is great for projects of small to medium sized complexity, but not so good for anything really large. Java, on the other hand, is equally bad for everything: it's tedious to use for small projects and it's better than PHP for large projects, but that isn't saying much.
Commercial software APIs are undertandably less stable than their *NIX counterparts.
UNIX was a commercial API long before Macintosh or Windows even existed. It just happens to be developed with a long term perspective, rather than the cut-throat consumer stuff Microsoft and Apple put out.
X11 has aged just as much as it has stayed compatible. While Aqua made the leap from a standard display to a fully OpenGL-rendered display in UNDER TWO YEARS,
Aqua is far from a "fully OpenGL-rendered display".
X11 still can't alpha-blend.
Sure it can: the standard is there, and both commercial and free X servers support it.
Where Aqua is only steps away from a fully vector-based window manager X11 is trying to wrangle font management.
Quite to the contrary: the Gnome desktop uses SVG, and all Gnome applications use anti-aliased scalable fonts. It's beautiful. Mac users should try it some time.
And you get all that goodness while at the same time, X11 is fully backwards compatible: an X11 client running on an old SunOS box or VAX can connect to the same server. Furthermore, X11 also supports the old imaging model, which is still important and will continue to be important; all-vector may be a good choice for a consumer product like MacOS, but professional applications require both.
Sorry, I just don't believe it. Sure, he seems to spend lots of time talking to people inside his company, but it's not like he can have informal water cooler talks with people. If you have a company boss worth, what, $35bn, someone who can buy a medium sized country out of his own pocket, someone who inside his company has the reputation of a genius (no matter what the rest of the world may think), would you be too critical of his decisions or honest about your own shortcomings?
There are big inefficiencies in big companies; this is one of them. That's why companies like Microsoft need dirty tricks and patents to stay in business--otherwise, small competitors would be eating their lunch.
Big Mac achieves around 14 TFlops with 128 Nodes [...] If the Big Mac cluster achieves 60% of peak it would displace the 2,300 2.4 GHz Xeon cluster at LLNL for the number three spot on the current list.
Uh, huh. So, if those statements were true, the G5 would be 12 times faster than a Xeon. Quite a feat of engineering that would be. But I don't think so. The folks at VT are extrapolating their 64 node performance to a 2300 node cluster.
This tells us two things:
Mac advocates have stooped to new lows in trying to create the impression that the PPC has a huge performance advantage.
The guys who did the extrapolation have no clue about parallel computing: just because you get 80% efficiency on a 128 node cluster doesn't mean you get 80% efficiency on a 2300 node cluster. In fact, they'd be lucky to get 60% when/if they scale up.
Basically, you can't believe anything anymore anybody says about the supposedly stellar performance of PPC: the hype has simply drowned out all reality. Personally, I found the G5 acceptable but nothing extraordinary. Run your own benchmarks and see how well it works for you.
Your G3/300 is not an orphan... it will run Linux perfectly, it will be a lot faster than with OS X, and with Gnome, it also looks really nice. And you can run the same OS not only on all your Mac hardware but also on all your PC hardware.
But, hey, if you don't want your G3/300 anymore, just send it over here.
It's just a discussion forum. But people learn from it.
And another thing, it's pointless trying to have any sort of controversial discussion around here because you just end up getting bitchslapped if you're not advocating the slashbot party line.
Well, if that actually is the Slashdot party line, that would be very nice, because people are finally coming around to seeing the light. I have been telling people to look at the Java licenses for a couple of years and see the danger they pose, and people seem to be slowly getting it.
Currently that's that Sun is evil and must be in league with Microsoft and SCO to bring about the End of the World or something.
Well, when Sun's Schwartz refers to Gnome and Linux as "open source crap", what are we supposed to think?
But the point is: it doesn't matter whether Sun is evil or not. If the licenses for Java were acceptable, Schwartz could go on foaming at the mouth about whatever he likes. The problem with Sun is that their Java licenses are a grave threat to open source because they end up giving Sun so much control.
I can not understand how pandering to Microsoft, developing a whole load of Free software based on their architecture (which may or may not be patent encumbered) and denouncing Sun and everyone else is suddenly a good idea. I may come across as an irrational zealot, by when Microsoft is invovled, it pays not to trust them.
Of course, you shouldn't trust Microsoft. I don't trust Microsoft. But you also shouldn't trust Sun. When billion dollar markets are involved, you should trust no company, you should look at the licenses and patent situation. The license and patent situation for Java is really, really bad: every Java implementation in the world is under a dark cloud from Sun's licenses and extensive patent portfolio. On the other hand, Mono is pretty much free and clear no matter what evil tricks Microsoft wants to play. The fact that everybody realizes that Microsoft can't be trusted is a big plus because everybody watches out for legal traps. Even in the worst possible scenario, where Microsoft gets their.NET patent issued and they can enforce it, the effect on Mono would be small.
You will remain on my foes list because you persist in attacking me personally rather than disproving my arguments
I am honored; that makes you a "Freak".
I refuse to take part in any more discussion on this topic.
No, they've had a shit feature that I'd never use because my windows are sized the way I like them to be sized and it fucks that up. It also does not allow this to be done on an application-specific basis, like Expose. For fuck's sake, would it be so difficult for Windows users to give Apple at least a little credit when it's due?
This discussion seems so ironic because it is on systems like X11, Cedar, Smalltalk, and others, where people have done most of the interesting work with window management--many years ago. Apple and Microsoft are both years behind and muddle through with one reinvention after another.
Expose! is just a minor variation on well-known window management techniques. It's nice engineering but no fundamentally new insight. But, of course, Apple and Microsoft folks will keep accusing each other of stealing such stuff from each other.
The idea of having zoomable overviews of desktops really isn't all that new. Some X11 window managers have had them in one form or another. The 3dDesktop project gives you that capability and more (Expose! is a special case in which you map all the windows onto a flat surface).
Expose! sounds like it's nice engineering, but it's not a ground-breaking new insight.
I can still run HyprCard 1.4 (released in '87, I believe) on a brand-new G4. That says something. That's an app compiled for a DIFFERENT ARCHITECTURE goddammit!
So can my Linux machine. It can also run Palm Pilot applications perfectly, as well as numerous old games.
You see, emulating an old architecture that is very different is much easier than being compatible between OS releases.
When the 68040 came out it crashed TONS of apps because developers were using self-modifying code that got mangled in the (then new to Mac) L1 cache. Apple had been telling folks for YEARS not to write code like that because it would bite them later, but some didn't listen.
Apple's advice sounds a bit hollow given all the unportable low-level tricks they played in their APIs. Remember 24bit pointers?
I think the responsibility lies MOSTLY with the application developers who want you to buy a new copy of their product whenever Apple releases a major update.
I think the responsibility lies to a large degree with Apple. Compare the Mac APIs with those of UNIX and X11: UNIX and X11 from 15 years ago is still source compatible with today's systems, and X11 is even fully binary compatible, not in emulation but natively. Most modern X11 applications will even run on decade-old X11 servers; try running an OS X application on MacOS 6.
That's because the UNIX and X11 folks really think about long-term viability of APIs and worry about interoperability among many different versions. In contrast, Microsoft and Apple just seem to keep throwing out whatever comes into their minds and looks good at a demo, and they seem to assume that everybody will upgrade within a few years.
There are probably 16% of CIOs that already didn't really want to implement Linux and now have a great excuse to give to their management not to do it.
*16%* of all CIOs were negatively influenced (seems unlikely that it's a positive influence) toward Linux because of this one SCO money grab.
That's probably 16% that already weren't planning on implementing Linux and were just looking for an excuse for not doing it. That is, SCO lawsuit makes a great excuse for CIOs who aren't smart enough to implement Linux in the first place.
If you really don't like Sun, you can get Java from IBM or kaffe etc.
Did you even read what I wrote? My point is: it doesn't matter whether anybody likes a company, the thing that matters is the actual licenses.
I don't like Sun; I think they are a failing company that's engaging in sleazy business tactics, run by a bunch of guys that keep putting down open source software. But I have no problems using OpenOffice because the OpenOffice license is acceptable. When Sun self-destructs, as they doubtlessly will over the next few years, OpenOffice will still be around because its license is an open source license. That guarantees stability and continued maintenance.
On the other hand, I do like IBM. I think they are a good, solid company that is honest in their support of open source. But using Java from IBM won't make any difference because Java from IBM has the same intellectual property problems that Java from Sun has: the Java specification is still closed, and large parts of the IBM Java implementation are based on code licensed from Sun. And when Sun implodes, they may well take IBM's Java implementation with them because IBM does not fully own what they are shipping.
Kaffe is not a Java implementation. From a practical point of view, is ridiculously incomplete. From a legal point of view, it isn't a Java implementation because Sun hasn't blessed it as such.
Really, you need to get over this thing of picking software because you like or trust the company at the moment. People like you keep getting open source project into deep trouble.
Anybody who thinks that 802.11 is an alternative to Bluetooth doesn't know what they are talking about. 802.11 is power hungry, it is a pain to configure, it requires a complete TCP/IP stack, and it requires separate 802.1x services in order to be acceptably secure. Right now, there is no shipping standard that is even close to being an alternative to Bluetooth.
Bluetooth, in contrast, is pretty miserly with power, it's trivial to configure, even securely, it can be attached to anything with a serial line (even a microcontroller), and its crypto seems to be reasonably secure all by itself. Furthermore, Bluetooth comes in three range varieties, including a very short-range mode, which makes it a great choice for lots of different applications.
Yeah, the Bluetooth folks screwed up big time, but they have learned their lesson and are getting their act together. Any new standard is likely going to make lots of mistakes as well, so it won't be ready for several years either. By the time they are finally ready, Bluetooth will be very cheap, very widely used, and probably have a high-speed version as well.
The only thing that might make a dent in Bluetooth is wireless USB--provided the wireless USB folks get everything right the first time. Wireless USB is an attractive proposition because it just builds on USB. But even it would only occupy a niche market.
For PAN applications like connecting cell phones, organizers, headsets, and desktop machines on-the-fly, there is nothing like Bluetooth out there or even on the horizon.
When Mathias says "now is the time to move on", he has failed to answer the question "to what". None of the systems he talks about are alternatives to Bluetooth.
You can't count the number of patents that have something as generic as "An electronic device" as the first claim.
Sure I can. The number of such patents is zero (well, barring a few typos, perhaps). There is no patent that says:
1. An electronic device. 2. The device in claim one that...
Even the first claim is qualified so that it stands on its own. In fact, in this patent, the qualification is extensive (but what it claims is still broad):
1. A method of providing a network document over a network to each of multiple users of corresponding client computers, the network document for each user being customized according to predetermined user selections of the user, comprising:
during first accessing of a server computer on the network by each user client computer, obtaining customization information from the corresponding user, assigning to the customization information a unique user identifier corresponding to the user, storing the customization information in association with the unique user identifier on the server computer, and returning the unique user identifier to the client computer; and
during subsequent accessing of a selected address on the network by each user client computer, retrieving the customization information stored on the server computer by using the unique user identifier and returning to the corresponding client computer over the network a document customized according to the customization information.
Claims are the only thing with meaning in a patent. The rest is provided for reference, clarification, and simple defence.
That statement, of course, is complete nonsense. The primary purpose of a patent is to teach an invention. The claims don't do that, the body does. If the patent isn't written sufficiently so that your average engineer or programmer can implement it, then the patent is not valid. The "meaning" of a patent is not in the claims, it is in the rest of the patent.
The claims primarily matter for certain formal aspects of the legal process, but it has never been the intent of patent law to become some kind of playground for IP legal battles. The intent of patent law is to get people to publish novel ideas and for the patent office to determine what is novel and what is not. Legal disputes over patents were meant to be the exception, not the rule. Of course, today, the process seems to have become one where the patent office approves just about anything and then lets the courts sort it out. And the reason why we aren't seeing even more lawsuits is that almost all of the invalid patents that the patent office lets through are also worthless, so people never sue over them.
The fact that the process has become corrupted into something where many people believe that "the claims are the only thing with meaning in a patent", is one of the problems with patent law. But, of course, even in our litigious times, if you don't write the rest of the patent properly, you are still going to be in deep trouble when there is some dispute and things go to court. So even today, your claim is simply false.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm well aware of this theory, but in the context of :
1) Increasing size and need for search on home computers.
2) Explosion of media and information on consumer machines.
3) Increasing need for data transparency across machines.
I'd say it's a task worth undertaking.
Putting any kind of standard database into the file system is not going to help with any of those. Search is already handled quite well anyway. Media (images, video, audio, etc.) are not well addressed by the kind of database Microsoft is proposing to put in. And how exactly is a database supposed to help with "data transparency across machines? That's something file systems know how to do and know how to do well, but the equivalent database functionality requires high-end, costly, and complex databases--in different words, the problem gets worse.
And, yes, this has been tried in the past but disk drive technology has come quite a way since then. I'm sure Google searches weren't possible back then either.
Funny thing is: Google is using a file system for their data storage, and they are definitely not using the kinds of databases that Microsoft wants to put in. If Google did use a design like Microsoft, they would be out of business.
It doesn't seem like they're converting the filesystem into an enterprise level database. They're just enabling the core features of a db (search) for a filesystem that is long overdue.
That's already there, on Linux, today. You don't need any more enabling.
Just about every disk-based player ships with a seamlessly integrated front-end player.
Still, Apple is doing what other companies can't do. Small companies don't have the resources to ship software, hardware players, and an on-line service. Microsoft can't ship tightly integerated player software, an on-line music service, and a portable because people would be screaming "monopoly" (and they would be right). And the media companies can't do the same either, for the same reason.
The tight integration Apple provides is exclusionary to other products, and it is what we always complain about with other companies. The only reason Apple can get away with it is their brand name, their supposed underdog status, and the fact that they are too insigificant to worry about. But if Apple actually became much bigger than they are, we'd all be in trouble.
There are dozens of music players for Windows, Linux, and MacOS, some of them with tie-ins to on-line stores. While it's fairly well written and easy to use, iTunes is just one of them. If it didn't come from Apple, nobody would think it worth mentioning.
What do you mean? To this day IBM uses a database AS the filesystem in the AS/400.
Congratulations: you could inded tell how far that went, namely as far as a few niche operating systems.
Ever heard of DB/2?
Not only heard of, I have developed software for it. Incidentally, DB/2 (well, the UNIX version at least, the mainframe version is a completely different beast) has facilities in it to store large chunks of data in the file system--because it's much more efficient.
PHP has shared memory and similar features built in. Also, running as part of Apache, the primary use for NIO in a web server (dealing with lots of connections) is already taken care of in Apache anyway.
Think about it: PHP is used extensively in web programming, that's the only thing it's used for, and it's easy to add native code; it is going to have everything people need for writing efficient web apps.
Easy:
It is really good at all of those things.
I haven't worked out all the kinks, but to me, being able to find stuff quickly in file systems that are continually growing would be a huge bonus.
Well, duh: that's what UNIX is all about. That's why you have dozens of command line tools to search and manipulate files with. For example, to find all TeX files in your home directory containing a keyword, use this:
For finding images, many of the image browsing applications for Linux now include search as well, both by keywords and by appearance.
Filesystems are just inefficient, shitty databases.
The fact that file systems are databases has been recognized since, oh, databases were invented. One of the first things IBM tried after inventing the relational database was to replace the file system with it. You can tell how far that went.
The choice to make the UNIX file system the kind of database that it is was deliberate. UNIX file systems are a highly efficient and robust database, with proven metadata, security, and data consistency models. They do almost exactly what people want databases to do with their unstructured data.
For anything else, they use other databases. By a stroke of genius (or maybe just historical inevitability), those more specialized databases can be stored and accessed inside the file system database.
A database file system is quite accurately described as "The Holy Grail": it's an ancient mythological object of no practical value, something that only insane people would pursue.
NTFS has been an excellent FS for years! It's fast, it supports massive drives and massive quantities of files and directories, and it's incredibly fault-tolerant.
Yes, compared to (V)FAT, it's a great file system. But don't worry, Microsoft is trying to give you that old DOS feeling again by adding ample new opportunities for data loss and performance bottlenecks.
Computers are so fast that even very inefficient systems can easily saturate any network connection you could possibly have. All of Microsoft could probably be served from a single laptop by PHP or Java (not so sure about IIS/.NET--there are limits :-) if it was just a question of how quickly scripts get invoked and can pump out data.
What makes web applications slow is database and file system access. So, no matter what language you use, you primarily have to worry about the scalability of your storage and database component.
The major difference between PHP and Java is how they scale in terms of programming effort and complexity. PHP is great for projects of small to medium sized complexity, but not so good for anything really large. Java, on the other hand, is equally bad for everything: it's tedious to use for small projects and it's better than PHP for large projects, but that isn't saying much.
Commercial software APIs are undertandably less stable than their *NIX counterparts.
UNIX was a commercial API long before Macintosh or Windows even existed. It just happens to be developed with a long term perspective, rather than the cut-throat consumer stuff Microsoft and Apple put out.
X11 has aged just as much as it has stayed compatible. While Aqua made the leap from a standard display to a fully OpenGL-rendered display in UNDER TWO YEARS,
Aqua is far from a "fully OpenGL-rendered display".
X11 still can't alpha-blend.
Sure it can: the standard is there, and both commercial and free X servers support it.
Where Aqua is only steps away from a fully vector-based window manager X11 is trying to wrangle font management.
Quite to the contrary: the Gnome desktop uses SVG, and all Gnome applications use anti-aliased scalable fonts. It's beautiful. Mac users should try it some time.
And you get all that goodness while at the same time, X11 is fully backwards compatible: an X11 client running on an old SunOS box or VAX can connect to the same server. Furthermore, X11 also supports the old imaging model, which is still important and will continue to be important; all-vector may be a good choice for a consumer product like MacOS, but professional applications require both.
Sorry, I just don't believe it. Sure, he seems to spend lots of time talking to people inside his company, but it's not like he can have informal water cooler talks with people. If you have a company boss worth, what, $35bn, someone who can buy a medium sized country out of his own pocket, someone who inside his company has the reputation of a genius (no matter what the rest of the world may think), would you be too critical of his decisions or honest about your own shortcomings?
There are big inefficiencies in big companies; this is one of them. That's why companies like Microsoft need dirty tricks and patents to stay in business--otherwise, small competitors would be eating their lunch.
Uh, huh. So, if those statements were true, the G5 would be 12 times faster than a Xeon. Quite a feat of engineering that would be. But I don't think so. The folks at VT are extrapolating their 64 node performance to a 2300 node cluster.
This tells us two things:
Basically, you can't believe anything anymore anybody says about the supposedly stellar performance of PPC: the hype has simply drowned out all reality. Personally, I found the G5 acceptable but nothing extraordinary. Run your own benchmarks and see how well it works for you.
Your G3/300 is not an orphan... it will run Linux perfectly, it will be a lot faster than with OS X, and with Gnome, it also looks really nice. And you can run the same OS not only on all your Mac hardware but also on all your PC hardware.
But, hey, if you don't want your G3/300 anymore, just send it over here.
You really shouldn't take slashdot too seriously.
.NET patent issued and they can enforce it, the effect on Mono would be small.
It's just a discussion forum. But people learn from it.
And another thing, it's pointless trying to have any sort of controversial discussion around here because you just end up getting bitchslapped if you're not advocating the slashbot party line.
Well, if that actually is the Slashdot party line, that would be very nice, because people are finally coming around to seeing the light. I have been telling people to look at the Java licenses for a couple of years and see the danger they pose, and people seem to be slowly getting it.
Currently that's that Sun is evil and must be in league with Microsoft and SCO to bring about the End of the World or something.
Well, when Sun's Schwartz refers to Gnome and Linux as "open source crap", what are we supposed to think?
But the point is: it doesn't matter whether Sun is evil or not. If the licenses for Java were acceptable, Schwartz could go on foaming at the mouth about whatever he likes. The problem with Sun is that their Java licenses are a grave threat to open source because they end up giving Sun so much control.
I can not understand how pandering to Microsoft, developing a whole load of Free software based on their architecture (which may or may not be patent encumbered) and denouncing Sun and everyone else is suddenly a good idea. I may come across as an irrational zealot, by when Microsoft is invovled, it pays not to trust them.
Of course, you shouldn't trust Microsoft. I don't trust Microsoft. But you also shouldn't trust Sun. When billion dollar markets are involved, you should trust no company, you should look at the licenses and patent situation. The license and patent situation for Java is really, really bad: every Java implementation in the world is under a dark cloud from Sun's licenses and extensive patent portfolio. On the other hand, Mono is pretty much free and clear no matter what evil tricks Microsoft wants to play. The fact that everybody realizes that Microsoft can't be trusted is a big plus because everybody watches out for legal traps. Even in the worst possible scenario, where Microsoft gets their
You will remain on my foes list because you persist in attacking me personally rather than disproving my arguments
I am honored; that makes you a "Freak".
I refuse to take part in any more discussion on this topic.
Well, since you never have, that's not a change.
No, they've had a shit feature that I'd never use because my windows are sized the way I like them to be sized and it fucks that up. It also does not allow this to be done on an application-specific basis, like Expose. For fuck's sake, would it be so difficult for Windows users to give Apple at least a little credit when it's due?
This discussion seems so ironic because it is on systems like X11, Cedar, Smalltalk, and others, where people have done most of the interesting work with window management--many years ago. Apple and Microsoft are both years behind and muddle through with one reinvention after another.
Expose! is just a minor variation on well-known window management techniques. It's nice engineering but no fundamentally new insight. But, of course, Apple and Microsoft folks will keep accusing each other of stealing such stuff from each other.
The idea of having zoomable overviews of desktops really isn't all that new. Some X11 window managers have had them in one form or another. The 3dDesktop project gives you that capability and more (Expose! is a special case in which you map all the windows onto a flat surface).
Expose! sounds like it's nice engineering, but it's not a ground-breaking new insight.
I can still run HyprCard 1.4 (released in '87, I believe) on a brand-new G4. That says something. That's an app compiled for a DIFFERENT ARCHITECTURE goddammit!
So can my Linux machine. It can also run Palm Pilot applications perfectly, as well as numerous old games.
You see, emulating an old architecture that is very different is much easier than being compatible between OS releases.
When the 68040 came out it crashed TONS of apps because developers were using self-modifying code that got mangled in the (then new to Mac) L1 cache. Apple had been telling folks for YEARS not to write code like that because it would bite them later, but some didn't listen.
Apple's advice sounds a bit hollow given all the unportable low-level tricks they played in their APIs. Remember 24bit pointers?
I think the responsibility lies MOSTLY with the application developers who want you to buy a new copy of their product whenever Apple releases a major update.
I think the responsibility lies to a large degree with Apple. Compare the Mac APIs with those of UNIX and X11: UNIX and X11 from 15 years ago is still source compatible with today's systems, and X11 is even fully binary compatible, not in emulation but natively. Most modern X11 applications will even run on decade-old X11 servers; try running an OS X application on MacOS 6.
That's because the UNIX and X11 folks really think about long-term viability of APIs and worry about interoperability among many different versions. In contrast, Microsoft and Apple just seem to keep throwing out whatever comes into their minds and looks good at a demo, and they seem to assume that everybody will upgrade within a few years.
Pot, meet kettle.
It is pointless to try to explain to you why that is a non-sequitur--you apparently just refuse to think about licensing issues rationally.
But thanks for adding me to your "Foes" list; it is good that people like yourself classify themselves as irrational zealots.
There are probably 16% of CIOs that already didn't really want to implement Linux and now have a great excuse to give to their management not to do it.
*16%* of all CIOs were negatively influenced (seems unlikely that it's a positive influence) toward Linux because of this one SCO money grab.
That's probably 16% that already weren't planning on implementing Linux and were just looking for an excuse for not doing it. That is, SCO lawsuit makes a great excuse for CIOs who aren't smart enough to implement Linux in the first place.
If you really don't like Sun, you can get Java from IBM or kaffe etc.
Did you even read what I wrote? My point is: it doesn't matter whether anybody likes a company, the thing that matters is the actual licenses.
I don't like Sun; I think they are a failing company that's engaging in sleazy business tactics, run by a bunch of guys that keep putting down open source software. But I have no problems using OpenOffice because the OpenOffice license is acceptable. When Sun self-destructs, as they doubtlessly will over the next few years, OpenOffice will still be around because its license is an open source license. That guarantees stability and continued maintenance.
On the other hand, I do like IBM. I think they are a good, solid company that is honest in their support of open source. But using Java from IBM won't make any difference because Java from IBM has the same intellectual property problems that Java from Sun has: the Java specification is still closed, and large parts of the IBM Java implementation are based on code licensed from Sun. And when Sun implodes, they may well take IBM's Java implementation with them because IBM does not fully own what they are shipping.
Kaffe is not a Java implementation. From a practical point of view, is ridiculously incomplete. From a legal point of view, it isn't a Java implementation because Sun hasn't blessed it as such.
Really, you need to get over this thing of picking software because you like or trust the company at the moment. People like you keep getting open source project into deep trouble.
Anybody who thinks that 802.11 is an alternative to Bluetooth doesn't know what they are talking about. 802.11 is power hungry, it is a pain to configure, it requires a complete TCP/IP stack, and it requires separate 802.1x services in order to be acceptably secure. Right now, there is no shipping standard that is even close to being an alternative to Bluetooth.
Bluetooth, in contrast, is pretty miserly with power, it's trivial to configure, even securely, it can be attached to anything with a serial line (even a microcontroller), and its crypto seems to be reasonably secure all by itself. Furthermore, Bluetooth comes in three range varieties, including a very short-range mode, which makes it a great choice for lots of different applications.
Yeah, the Bluetooth folks screwed up big time, but they have learned their lesson and are getting their act together. Any new standard is likely going to make lots of mistakes as well, so it won't be ready for several years either. By the time they are finally ready, Bluetooth will be very cheap, very widely used, and probably have a high-speed version as well.
The only thing that might make a dent in Bluetooth is wireless USB--provided the wireless USB folks get everything right the first time. Wireless USB is an attractive proposition because it just builds on USB. But even it would only occupy a niche market.
For PAN applications like connecting cell phones, organizers, headsets, and desktop machines on-the-fly, there is nothing like Bluetooth out there or even on the horizon.
When Mathias says "now is the time to move on", he has failed to answer the question "to what". None of the systems he talks about are alternatives to Bluetooth.
Sure I can. The number of such patents is zero (well, barring a few typos, perhaps). There is no patent that says:
Even the first claim is qualified so that it stands on its own. In fact, in this patent, the qualification is extensive (but what it claims is still broad):
So, basically, you are wrong.
Claims are the only thing with meaning in a patent. The rest is provided for reference, clarification, and simple defence.
That statement, of course, is complete nonsense. The primary purpose of a patent is to teach an invention. The claims don't do that, the body does. If the patent isn't written sufficiently so that your average engineer or programmer can implement it, then the patent is not valid. The "meaning" of a patent is not in the claims, it is in the rest of the patent.
The claims primarily matter for certain formal aspects of the legal process, but it has never been the intent of patent law to become some kind of playground for IP legal battles. The intent of patent law is to get people to publish novel ideas and for the patent office to determine what is novel and what is not. Legal disputes over patents were meant to be the exception, not the rule. Of course, today, the process seems to have become one where the patent office approves just about anything and then lets the courts sort it out. And the reason why we aren't seeing even more lawsuits is that almost all of the invalid patents that the patent office lets through are also worthless, so people never sue over them.
The fact that the process has become corrupted into something where many people believe that "the claims are the only thing with meaning in a patent", is one of the problems with patent law. But, of course, even in our litigious times, if you don't write the rest of the patent properly, you are still going to be in deep trouble when there is some dispute and things go to court. So even today, your claim is simply false.