If you want statistically sound data analysis and graphing, look no further than the R Project. It's a complete programming environment and is extensively used by working statisticians.
Python, Numerical Python, various Python plot packages, and VTK also make for very powerful visualizations if you want something more do-it-yourself.
How does one willingly pay $25,250,000, without trial, and not admit to wrong doing?
That's lost in the noise for Microsoft. A single court appearance would probably cost them more. This is simply a cheap settlement of a nuisance lawsuit for Microsoft.
I see. So the reason for cloning Dotnet is so you can be sure that Windows programs won't run on Linux. Have I got that right?
I have no idea why the Mono developers bother cloning.NET. I think it's a pointless waste of time, just like Java Swing is a pointless waste of time.
My point is that.NET is only part of the Mono effort. To me, it's the other parts of the Mono platform that matter. I predict that if Mono catches on, it will be because of Gtk# and similar Linux-specific libraries, not any.NET compatibility.
Re:Java is finished for most open source work
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In that you can't create an implementation and call it "Java" without Sun giving you the okay.
That would be fine, but that is not what the license says. The license says that you cannot create any implementation of the Java specification or any part of it without Sun giving you the OK. And that is not acceptable. Here is what the license says:
Sun Microsystems, Inc. ("Sun") hereby grants you a fully-paid, non-exclusive, non-transferable, worldwide, limited license (without the right to sublicense), under the Sun's applicable intellectual property rights to view, download, use and reproduce the Specification only for the purpose of internal evaluation, which shall be understood to include developing applications intended to run on an implementation of the Specification provided that such applications do not themselves implement any portion(s) of the Specification.
Sun also grants you a perpetual, non-exclusive, worldwide, fully paid-up, royalty free, limited license (without the right to sublicense) under any applicable copyrights or patent rights it may have in the Specification to create and/or distribute an Independent Implementation of the Specification that: (i) fully implements the Spec(s) including all its required interfaces and functionality; (ii) does not modify, subset, superset or otherwise extend the Licensor Name Space, or include any public or protected packages, classes, Java interfaces, fields or methods within the Licensor Name Space other than those required/authorized by the Specification or Specifications being implemented; and (iii) passes the TCK (including satisfying the requirements of the applicable TCK Users Guide) for such Specification. The foregoing license is expressly conditioned on your not acting outside its scope. No license is granted hereunder for any other purpose. [emphasis added]
This is not a license about what you can call your implementation, it's a license restricting what you can actually implement.
Furthermore, Sun has the legal muscle to make this stick: in addition to this contractual language, Sun has dozens of patents on techniques related to the implementation of the Java 2 platform. Sun can get you on breach of contract, copyright violations, patent violations, and trademark violations if you implement any part of the specification without their OK.
Why? Because there are no "licensing problems" with Java. This is just something you seem to have invented! I can create all the Java apps I like... Sun's license on the JDK and their control of it plays no part in the license I choose for my software. Basically, it's a *completely* different issue. In this case, my project can be as "free" as I want... it's simply the platform which (arguably) isn't.
So you don't care. Fine. Millions of Windows developers don't care either. I'm not telling you what to do. I'm not telling anyone else what to do. I simply made an observation, namely that I believe that Java is "finished" for open source work, in the sense that I don't believe we will see much more growth or enthusiasm about it. License issues are part of the problem, the stagnation of the platform is another. You are free to disagree with my assessment.
Re:Java, success, failure
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The "langauges" PHP, Python and Perl may or may not semantically be better than Java. That's not what I'm arguing. It's the "platform" that is J2EE that PHP, Python and Perl are nowhere close to (nor are they intended to be). The main point is that your comparison is off. Examine the list of features provided by the J2EE platform (even the small subset I provided in my post).
Which part of
No. PHP, Python, and Perl are not just languages, they are
platforms with extensive standard libraries. They rival, and in some cases exceed, what is available for Java, both in scope and quality.
do you not understand? These platforms include application servers, cache managers, toolkits, application frameworks, distributed programming toolkits, and numerous other components. They cover more ground than the entire Java 2 specification, and they give you far more choice and variety.
It's illogical to point out that some of the most useful and well supported set of tools, libraries and applications for Java are entirely open source when you state that Java's popularity in open source has peaked?
You are confusing the prevalence and importance of open source for Java with the prevalence and importance of Java for open source. Open source will become ever more important for Java as the Java platform declines, but at the same time, Java will become less and less important for open source as a whole.
If Sun had made the platform open (not open source, just open standard)
I see you are unfamiliar with the JCP. By its definition, its a community process. Comparably, it has worked very well and allowed input from many industry sources and experts. Saying that the platform is not open is simply untrue.
I am very familiar with the JCP, which is why I state that the platform is not open. I suggest you familiarize yourself with the legally binding contract you have to enter in order to participate in the JCP (or even just download the JCP specifications). You can argue that the JCP is benficial, benign, and participatory, but when all is said and done, the resulting specifications are encumbered by the obligations and intellectual property rights that come along with the JCP. Sun merely has been trying to redefine the meaning of the terms "open standard" and "open systems" in order to hide the fact that Java is not such a standard.
It hasn't? JBoss is not a success? Jakarta is not helpful nor successful? NetBeans is not a decent IDE (or Eclipse)? The Java Foundry at SourceForge is not teaming with projects?
Again, you are confusing the importance of open source to Java with the importance of Java to open source. No Linux distribution and no BSD distribution depends on Java, Mozilla doesn't come with Java, neither Gnome nor KDE rely on Java. Most Apache installations and most Linux/BSD-based web servers don't use Java. If Java went away tomorrow, it would barely make a dent in the open source world.
I would be interested to know how you differentiate between those projects or products developed in the commercial world, and those that are done in the "open source" world? Things like JBoss are good examples of open source products that mirror commercial ones. One might argue that 90% of open source products mirror commercial ones.
Of course they do. Cloning commercial products is one of the major, stated goals of open source efforts. The fact that open source efforts apparently cannot clone the Java platform without violating Sun's licenses is a serious problem with the Java platform. So, what's your point?
Re:Java is finished for most open source work
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I've *never* heard of these "patent and intellectual property problems" you're referring to. Ever.
Well, I suggest you actually read the licenses you agree to when you download Java and the Java specification from Sun. Both the language and its implementations are tightly controled, in a way that practically no other language or platform is.
Please... it's not like people can't create their own competing version.
People can't. Read the licenses.
GNU gcj, anyone? Kaffee, on the VM side? There's just been no push toward it, mostly because it's *hard*.
You are damned right it's hard. But it's not technically hard, it's "hard" in the same sense that a Windows clone like Wine is hard: Java is a platform controled by a consortium, driven in such a way that people can't successfully create third party implementations.
Most people have a JVM on their boxes these days.
What planet are you from? Maybe there is some form of "JVM" on their machines, but it's completely unpredictable what version it is (1.1? Microsoft? 1.3? 1.4?). I used to be able to use Java applets on my site (for SSH and other services), but that's become pretty much pointless these days.
As for OS support, Java is still *far FAR* superior to.NET, so given the choice, I'd select Java for cross-platform development.
I'd select Java for cross-platform development as well. But most of my development is not cross-platform. Cross platform development is a tiny specialty niche with little relevance to either mainstream Windows or mainstream Linux applications development.
Besides, KDE developers certainly represented a segment of "main stream... open source", and they had no problems using a closed toolkit. And their project is quite healthy, and I'd contend they'd still be doing just fine, even if Qt hadn't opened their toolkit...
The KDE developers were headed for a legal disaster: they had created a desktop whose license was incompatible with the toolkit they were using. If Troll Tech hadn't changed their license to dual-license, KDE would have been dead, in particular because it's not clear they could have legally created an open-source version of Qt. The KDE project was oblivious and ignorant of the license problems they were getting themselves into. And so are many open source Java developers.
lest we forget that microsoft did -not- shut down the open source.Net compatible project, i'll even grant a link. Mono [go-mono.com]
The.NET implementation is only part of Mono, and probably not the best part.
I suspect that most open source uses of Mono will be based Mono's C# implementation, the core ECMA library, and the Gtk#, OpenGL, and POSIX interfaces being developed.
Overall, the nice thing about C# is that it's more of a language, not a philosophy. Platform-specificity is ultimately good, both for Windows and for Linux programmers; Sun's WORA, which pretty much comes along with Java, is a distraction.
When it comes to Java implementations, they are: all conforming Java implementations are derived from Sun source code.
The JCP is a far more public process for directing Java than anything we'll ever see from MS for.NET.
And what does that matter? Do you think Microsoft doesn't listen to the wishes of their (big) customers? The JCP is a mechanism by which Sun can get free consulting services from their user community.
What I don't understand is why people like you think it's an either/or choice. Microsoft is an evil monopoly, and Sun is an evil monopoly wannabe. So, just don't use either platform. There are plenty of other choices around.
Re:Java, success, failure
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I don't think it's accurate to portray PHP, Perl or Python as "platforms". I think what you meant to do was compare "Java the language" with PHP, Perl and Python rather than "Java the platform" with PHP, Perl and Python. While I won't argue the language semantic merits with you, I will argue the "platform" issue.
No. PHP, Python, and Perl are not just languages, they are platforms with extensive standard libraries. They rival, and in some cases exceed, what is available for Java, both in scope and quality.
This is fairly misguided as well..NET is meant to be a direct threat to Java and the J2EE platform.
Microsoft already had a large platform for both client side development (ActiveX, MFC, COM/OLE, Win32) and server side development (COM, DCOM, etc.). Sun created the threat to Microsoft's market by trying to push into that space with Java. McNealy was even gloating about how he would destroy Microsoft. Microsoft then took the best bits and pieces of Java, created.NET, and defended their turf. Sun initiated this "war", and.NET is just an attempt by Microsoft to restore the status quo.
Portraying Sun as the innocent bystander that is getting crushed by an evil monopoly is bogus. Both Microsoft and Sun are trying to establish monopolies, it's just that Microsoft is still a little better at it.
[I suspect Java has seen its best days in the open source world.]
I point you to the Apache foundation and it's Jakarta sub-project for a shining example of Java in the "open source world".
Your response is completely illogical. I didn't say that nobody was using Java, I said I think its popularity in the open source world has peaked.
How exactly has "Sun screwed up"?
If Sun had made the platform open (not open source, just open standard) and kept it clean and tight, it could have been a huge success in the open source world. As it is, Java is stagnating technically and people have serious license worries about it.
[Java] certainly won't disappear "overnight".
We completely agree there. Java will remain a big player in the commercial world (in particular for some web services and in niches like cell phones), and it will remain a modest success in open source.
Re:Java is finished for most open source work
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But to dismiss Java out of hand because it doesn't mesh with your and some other zealots ideals is pretty narrow minded.
I don't "dismiss Java out of hand". As I was saying, people will continue to use Java. But it won't become the juggernaut in open source that it could have become. And a large fraction of open source "Java" programming will probably be based on non-standard implementations (gcj, SWT, etc.).
Yeah, except that some people actually just, *gasp*, *like* to program in Java. It provides a nice, strongly typed, compiled, object oriented language
So do dozens of other languages. Among them, Java is pretty mediocre and has numerous limitations and design flaws. For example, the array conformance is just broken, and so is the genericity implementation. The only thing Java has going for it over the competition is name recognition.
Besides, if you are willing to put up with the patent and intellectual property problems that Java has, why not simply use Mono? It actually has an open source implementation, and C# is a superset of Java that fixes some of Java's most glaring problems. And if you don't use the.NET APIs with Mono, you are even free and clear of any Microsoft patents.
As long as I can release my source code, who gives a damn As long as I can release my source code, who gives a damn if it runs on a proprietary substrate.
You will give a damn, when Sun goes out of business, or when Sun does something stupid with Java2D (like basing it on OpenGL), or when they don't support your favorite operating system.
Sure, there were people who complained, but there were also plenty of people who didn't give a damn (myself included).
Yes, and there are lots of people who also write open source Windows software. But they don't represent the mainstream of open source, and as a general approach to open source, it's self-defeating in the long run.
Re:Java is finished for most open source work
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IMO, this is why WORA is good for open source. An application that is designed to run under Linux can run under Windows with much less pain than pretty much any other environment.
Linux isn't going to succeed on the desktop if applications are mediocre, and Swing applications are condemned to mediocrity because of WORA.
Cross platform C[++]-based libraries, like Qt and wxWindows make you have to worry more about platform-specific idiosyncracies.
wxWindows has a large, cross-platform core that works at least as well on different platforms as Swing. But in addition, you actually can add platform specific functionality. That is, unlike Swing, you can actually write cross-platform applications that, with very little additional work, integrate very well with each native platform.
wxWindows is showing its age, but its basic approach--cross-platform core and a few optional platform specific classes--is much better than Swing.
Java is finished for most open source work
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I don't believe Java (by which I mean the entire Java 2 platform, not just the language) is "finished" as a commercial platform, but I think it is finished as an open source platform unless Sun makes some radical changes. Why?
Maintaining WORA and interoperability among implementations is the stated goal of Java, and Sun has put teeth into their licenses to try and enforce that. That is, even the Java specification is covered by a license that prohibits you from releasing your own non-conforming version. While that may or may not be a laudable goal, it is in conflict with the fundamental principles of open source that you can take stuff, improve it, and release the improved version. And I think it actually is harming the technical development of Java.
Another way of looking at it is that Java is too encumbered by intellectual property--copyrights, patents, and licenses--held in part by Sun and in part by an industry consortium (JCP). Anybody that builds applications on top of Java becomes as dependent on Sun as people who write Windows software become dependent on Microsoft. While there are plenty of open source projects for both Java and Windows, ultimately, that is not a good state of affairs for open source developers.
WORA brings with it a lot of costs but few benefits for Linux developers. When I write a Linux desktop application, I want it to work well on Linux, I don't care about whether it runs on Windows. But if I use Java, there are all sorts of Linux desktop and Linux kernel features I can't access. And the entire design of Swing and Java2D is based on a Windows/Mac-like local display model, something that simply does not work well with X11.
WORA made sense for Java's original purpose in life, that of a thin, universal client platform. WORA makes no sense for Linux developers trying to develop high-quality Linux applications. (And, frankly, I think Windows programmers are saying the same about Java on Windows, which is why.NET will probably be more popular with Windows developers).
Java is just not a very convenient language to program in. For most needs, something like Python, Perl, PHP, or Ruby is simpler. And when those are not powerful enough, people just drop into C/C++ anyway.
Java held a lot of promise for open source development at one point, but I think that's over now. The Java platform will continue to be used widely in many commercial (and some free) server-side applications. Subsets of Java will be used in teaching and research. And you will see more and more partial clones of Java appearaing. Open source will probably continue with a mix of languages. gcj+SWT, which implements the Java language but not the Sun APIs, may achieve modest popularity. Mono+Gtk# may become fairly popular (but the.NET clone that is part of Mono probably won't--both for legal and technical reasons).
Java, success, failure
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Java originally promised to become a small, universal client-side platform for the delivery of applications to clients over the web. Java has almost completely failed in that mission: Flash is far more widely used, no browsers ship with the latest version of Java, and even if you stick to Java 1.1, there are numerous compatibility problems.
What Java has become instead is a semi-open server-side platform. It's quite successful at that, but it is only one of many platforms in that space. PHP, Perl, Python, and.NET will continue to exist in that space as well and probably take away market share. And because Sun's restrictive licenses on both the implementation and the specification of Java, I suspect Java has seen its best days in the open source world.
Now, about.NET,.NET is simply more of what Microsoft has always given us: a proprietary platform completely controlled by Microsoft. It's not primarily an alternative to Java, it's simply what Microsoft programmers will move to from MFC and Win32. Thankfully, it's at least a lot cleaner than Microsoft's previous APIs and systems.
So, Java has failed to become what it originally promised to become, but it is a fairly successful platform that won't disappear overnight. But Sun's dreams of industry domination are pipe dreams. Java could have become much bigger and more important than it has become, but Sun screwed up (and is continuing to screw up).
All technical reasons are business reasons in that they take time and money to implement.
Yes: less time than for thousands of UNIX programmers to rewrite their interfaces. And, in fact, the Mac is not popular enough to warrant that, so the applications stay in X11. Investing this time and money for Apple would more software more usable on their platform.
Things like printing, clipboard, and drag-n-drop are borked badly enough in a pure X11 environment, so I'm guessing that you are badly underestimating the difficulty in welding those things to another paradigm.
That's just the typical Apple-zealot prejudice against X11. Clipboard and drag-and-drop work just fine under X11. Printing is not a traditional part of X11, although now XPrint offers a solution that is integrated with the window system, giving you both traditional UNIX-style printing and Windows/Macintosh-style printing.
Also, if your suggested X11 integration points are so "little work", why are the OO developers pursuing a native port?
Well, apparently only two people are pursuing it, which is why we are discussing this in the first place. And even though they probably could solve the general problem, applications programmers don't generally think of improving the OS in order to solve their problems. Apple's party line is "port to Cocoa", and Mac programmers follow Apple's party line.
Utimately this scratches the major Unixhead issue that Apple didn't think X11 was "good enough" for them and chose to roll their own on top of a Unix-based OS.
Apple didn't "roll their own"; Apple bought Jobs's company, NeXT, and together with it a PostScript-based window system. Then, they hacked all of that up a little and added OS 9 compatibility. That purchase was driven by the personality of Jobs, not by the relative merits of NeXT and X11. In fact, in the market, X11 competed against other window systems and handily won over many other competitors on UNIX workstations, including SunView, NeXTStep, and NeWS. That was despite aggressive marketing by the owners of those competitors.
Of course, databases are very useful for organizing user data. People already keep PIM info, images, and lots of other stuff in databases. Lotus Notes is built entirely on databases.
But "replacing the traditional file system" carries with it the notion of ripping ext3 out of the kernel and putting a relational database there. That's a very bad idea. Databases don't belong into the kernel. They are far too inefficient to handle most storage needs, they are far too complex to go into the kernel, and they just don't need to be in the kernel. Operating system kernels need simple, fast storage systems. Something like ext3. ReiserFS is pushing the limits. PostgreSQL would be going too far.
As an aside, this is an idea that just about every nerd has when they learn about databases and retrieval. It's been tried various times since the 1960's. There are probably good reasons why interfaces don't use them. Perhaps most importantly, keep in mind that the vast majority of files on your system are not user files, they are bits and pieces of the operating system. And for the files that actually are used by users (mail, PIM info, images, text, etc.), they usually already have special-purpose database interfaces available to them as part of the applications that users use to access them.
Yes, and there is a lot of research software that's only available for Windows, and there is a lot of research software that's available only for UNIX. You see, sometimes people write software for specific platforms.
Getting wars - Wars plural. yes let's let osma just run free and attack more people.. oh yeah sounds like a plan.
You mean as opposed to killing thousands of Afghans, wasting billions of dollars, and then letting Osama still run around free? War simply is not an effective response to terrorism.
No other president would have sent troops to afganistan for this. Please.
Oh, I'm sure there are plenty more nuts like Bush around.
Economic problems - Dotcom bomb.. mmm bush sure fucked up that one. Oh look! our economy is recorving as we speak! damned we're all doomed.
Yeah, too bad that most people won't benefit from the recovery.
HUge Budget deficits - This is new how??
They are much more huge because of Bush's don't-tax-and-spend-freely policies.
Failing Education System - I dunno how it's exactly failing like everyone seems to think. but they've thought this for a long time too.
Yeah, and with Bush's war on public education, it's getting worse.
Rollback of civil rights - DMCA oh oops clinton signed that one, Patriot act? yeah overeaction from 9/11
DMCA isn't primarily about civil rights. And, overreaction or not, the PATRIOT act is a result of what the Bush administration wanted; they could have acted as a moderating influence, instead they are creating more fear to give the executive branch ever more powers.
Yes that's what they went after clinton for.. having sex with interns. Oh wait no, for obstruction of justice and such.. wait that has nothing to do with sex. Gee?
If you ask me a question that is none of your business, I have no moral obligation to answer you truthfully. Clinton's response may have been legally wrong and politically stupid, but so what?
And all of that is required by Mac end users for an "acceptable" application.
Yes, and you know what? Apple isn't the only company that has those features: they exist on all major platforms, and GUI users on all major platforms demand them. In fact, if anything, OS X lacks a few features and mechanisms that X11 has.
But, in fact, functionally, there is very little of importance that is missing in OpenOffice/X11 on OS X. Note that cut-and-paste already works for text.
I haven't tried the X11 port, but I can imagine there could be a metric tonne of problems: Clipboard handling, Printing, Drag-n-Drop are all very different under X11. [...] You ain't gonna get that by using X11 like "just another toolkit", you need a native port.
No, you don't need a native port. It would not be very little work for the OpenOffice developers to add a little bit of OS X-specific code to improve desktop integration in the few areas where it isn't yet working. I think that would be cut-and-paste for images and drag-and-drop from the OS X desktop, two rarely used features. (For printing, OS X already uses CUPS, a UNIX system.)
But if Apple cared to, they could actually just make X11 a fully functional component of the OS X desktop, indistinguishable from Carbon and Cocoa. That would involve some automatic clipboard and drag-and-drop translation (between X11 and OS X), making X11 executables double-clickable, and fixing Apple X11 window management.
Apple has tackled a project many orders of magnitude harder: integrating the OS 9 and NeXTStep UIs and APIs. The reason Apple isn't expending the miniscule effort to fix the few remaining X11 integration issues is because they actually prefer people rewriting their apps for Apple-proprietary APIs--it's a business reason, not a technical reason.
OpenOffice already runs on OS X. What they are talking about is a Quartz/Aqua port. But, frankly, why bother? Even if people use Quartz/Aqua APIs, OpenOffice still won't look or behave exactly like a Cocoa-native application, so it really won't be any more "native" than the existing X11 port. Furthermore, Apple's X11 server for OS X is just fine for running software like OpenOffice, it's free, and it's easy to install.
There probably isn't much interest in the Quartz/Aqua port because there doesn't seem to be much point to it: it's a lot of work and won't behave much differently.
As OS X becomes more mainstream, the "purity" of its user interface (if you can call the mix of Cocoa and Carbon "pure") will increasingly go away: people will port MFC, Swing,.NET, Gtk+, wxWindows, and FLTK applications to it. OpenOffice on X11 is just another toolkit. What people could spend time more profitably on is cleaning up the few remaining glitches in the integration of X11 with the OS X desktop. Most of those can be done fairly easily, but Apple might consider adding a small X11 extension that would allow people to add OS X-specific features to their X11 applications without a complete rewrite.
It is clear that the majority intent of Florida's voters was to send Gore to the White House. Furthermore, it is clear that Florida's voting process was seriously biased against minorities, who predominantly vote Democratic.
The only reason why this wasn't discovered during the recount was because the Bush family managed to cut the recount short as long as it was still favorable for Bush.
Or we need to add a new mod of "+1 strong opinion of of a bitter loser."
With Bush as president, we all are losing: we are getting wars, economic problems, huge budget deficits, a failing educational system, rollback of civil rights protections, deterioration of international relations, etc.
It is pretty depressing that Republicans care more about who the President had sex with than about how the country is doing.
I don't know about Itanium, but the power dissipation of the G5 and the AMD Opteron are not all that different.
PPC used to have a big advantage over the x86 architecture in the past, both in terms of performance and power, but those days are behind us: PPC and x86 designers are designing in the same space and using similar techniques and skills; the actual instruction set is just a minor detail.
You could buy several AMD's for that. You might be able to, but the G5's they are buying already have 2 very good processors. As long as they're dividing up tasks among processors, it's nice to have all the memory management and overhead taken care of at a level of two processors per node instead of one. To be honest, I've never seen it done before, and it could have very interesting results.
Dual processor AMD Opteron systems are 64bit, performance-competitive with G5, and considerably cheaper. Furthermore, you can choose among half a dozen vendors, and you can get them in rack mounts.
Anyway, when it comes to speed of high precision calculations, the G* chips have proven their worth.
That's a myth Apple has created by harping on rarely achievable AltiVec performance figures. And people who are happy with their Macs for desktop use like to give lip-service to that myth because it gives them a better excuse to buy Macs for servers and compute clusters.
In real life, the G4 is a couple of years out of date in terms of performance, and the G5 is basically just keeping up with Opteron and Itanium.
Apple's machines aren't bad, in particular for home and office use, but they are not the super UNIX workstations and scientific powerhouses Apple claims.
Apparently the PHD's at Virginia Tech disagree with you 5.2 million ($) times. Or 1,100 times, depending on your view of the world...
Most likely, they got a special deal from Apple, or maybe some other deal was tied in with this and they get a discount on the other deal.
There are thousands of x86/Linux-based Beowulf clusters. There are hundreds of NT-based compute clusters. So, a few universities who also use Macs for compute clusters--not exactly surprising. Maybe they have a good reason why it makes sense in their environment or maybe they are simply making a mistake--it happens.
I see little to recommend a Mac cluster over a Linux cluster. The G5 processors are pretty nice, but in terms of bang-for-the-buck, they aren't anything special. And while OS X makes a pretty desktop operating system, it is very rarely used for compute clusters so there isn't a lot of software for it for that purpose.
Wonderful: three pointers to Apple's web site, pointing to pages with slick corporate "interviews". Do you actually work for Apple or are you just insanely zealous?
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If you want statistically sound data analysis and graphing, look no further than the R Project. It's a complete programming environment and is extensively used by working statisticians.
Python, Numerical Python, various Python plot packages, and VTK also make for very powerful visualizations if you want something more do-it-yourself.
...and have a bunch of embarrassing court appearances? This is simpler, quicker, and, in the end, cheaper.
How does one willingly pay $25,250,000, without trial, and not admit to wrong doing?
That's lost in the noise for Microsoft. A single court appearance would probably cost them more. This is simply a cheap settlement of a nuisance lawsuit for Microsoft.
I see. So the reason for cloning Dotnet is so you can be sure that Windows programs won't run on Linux. Have I got that right?
.NET. I think it's a pointless waste of time, just like Java Swing is a pointless waste of time.
.NET is only part of the Mono effort. To me, it's the other parts of the Mono platform that matter. I predict that if Mono catches on, it will be because of Gtk# and similar Linux-specific libraries, not any .NET compatibility.
I have no idea why the Mono developers bother cloning
My point is that
That would be fine, but that is not what the license says. The license says that you cannot create any implementation of the Java specification or any part of it without Sun giving you the OK. And that is not acceptable. Here is what the license says:
This is not a license about what you can call your implementation, it's a license restricting what you can actually implement.
Furthermore, Sun has the legal muscle to make this stick: in addition to this contractual language, Sun has dozens of patents on techniques related to the implementation of the Java 2 platform. Sun can get you on breach of contract, copyright violations, patent violations, and trademark violations if you implement any part of the specification without their OK.
Why? Because there are no "licensing problems" with Java. This is just something you seem to have invented! I can create all the Java apps I like... Sun's license on the JDK and their control of it plays no part in the license I choose for my software. Basically, it's a *completely* different issue. In this case, my project can be as "free" as I want... it's simply the platform which (arguably) isn't.
So you don't care. Fine. Millions of Windows developers don't care either. I'm not telling you what to do. I'm not telling anyone else what to do. I simply made an observation, namely that I believe that Java is "finished" for open source work, in the sense that I don't believe we will see much more growth or enthusiasm about it. License issues are part of the problem, the stagnation of the platform is another. You are free to disagree with my assessment.
Which part of
do you not understand? These platforms include application servers, cache managers, toolkits, application frameworks, distributed programming toolkits, and numerous other components. They cover more ground than the entire Java 2 specification, and they give you far more choice and variety.
It's illogical to point out that some of the most useful and well supported set of tools, libraries and applications for Java are entirely open source when you state that Java's popularity in open source has peaked?
You are confusing the prevalence and importance of open source for Java with the prevalence and importance of Java for open source. Open source will become ever more important for Java as the Java platform declines, but at the same time, Java will become less and less important for open source as a whole.
I see you are unfamiliar with the JCP. By its definition, its a community process. Comparably, it has worked very well and allowed input from many industry sources and experts. Saying that the platform is not open is simply untrue.
I am very familiar with the JCP, which is why I state that the platform is not open. I suggest you familiarize yourself with the legally binding contract you have to enter in order to participate in the JCP (or even just download the JCP specifications). You can argue that the JCP is benficial, benign, and participatory, but when all is said and done, the resulting specifications are encumbered by the obligations and intellectual property rights that come along with the JCP. Sun merely has been trying to redefine the meaning of the terms "open standard" and "open systems" in order to hide the fact that Java is not such a standard.
It hasn't? JBoss is not a success? Jakarta is not helpful nor successful? NetBeans is not a decent IDE (or Eclipse)? The Java Foundry at SourceForge is not teaming with projects?
Again, you are confusing the importance of open source to Java with the importance of Java to open source. No Linux distribution and no BSD distribution depends on Java, Mozilla doesn't come with Java, neither Gnome nor KDE rely on Java. Most Apache installations and most Linux/BSD-based web servers don't use Java. If Java went away tomorrow, it would barely make a dent in the open source world.
I would be interested to know how you differentiate between those projects or products developed in the commercial world, and those that are done in the "open source" world? Things like JBoss are good examples of open source products that mirror commercial ones. One might argue that 90% of open source products mirror commercial ones.
Of course they do. Cloning commercial products is one of the major, stated goals of open source efforts. The fact that open source efforts apparently cannot clone the Java platform without violating Sun's licenses is a serious problem with the Java platform. So, what's your point?
I've *never* heard of these "patent and intellectual property problems" you're referring to. Ever.
.NET, so given the choice, I'd select Java for cross-platform development.
... open source", and they had no problems using a closed toolkit. And their project is quite healthy, and I'd contend they'd still be doing just fine, even if Qt hadn't opened their toolkit...
Well, I suggest you actually read the licenses you agree to when you download Java and the Java specification from Sun. Both the language and its implementations are tightly controled, in a way that practically no other language or platform is.
Please... it's not like people can't create their own competing version.
People can't. Read the licenses.
GNU gcj, anyone? Kaffee, on the VM side? There's just been no push toward it, mostly because it's *hard*.
You are damned right it's hard. But it's not technically hard, it's "hard" in the same sense that a Windows clone like Wine is hard: Java is a platform controled by a consortium, driven in such a way that people can't successfully create third party implementations.
Most people have a JVM on their boxes these days.
What planet are you from? Maybe there is some form of "JVM" on their machines, but it's completely unpredictable what version it is (1.1? Microsoft? 1.3? 1.4?). I used to be able to use Java applets on my site (for SSH and other services), but that's become pretty much pointless these days.
As for OS support, Java is still *far FAR* superior to
I'd select Java for cross-platform development as well. But most of my development is not cross-platform. Cross platform development is a tiny specialty niche with little relevance to either mainstream Windows or mainstream Linux applications development.
Besides, KDE developers certainly represented a segment of "main stream
The KDE developers were headed for a legal disaster: they had created a desktop whose license was incompatible with the toolkit they were using. If Troll Tech hadn't changed their license to dual-license, KDE would have been dead, in particular because it's not clear they could have legally created an open-source version of Qt. The KDE project was oblivious and ignorant of the license problems they were getting themselves into. And so are many open source Java developers.
lest we forget that microsoft did -not- shut down the open source .Net compatible project, i'll even grant a link. Mono [go-mono.com]
.NET implementation is only part of Mono, and probably not the best part.
The
I suspect that most open source uses of Mono will be based Mono's C# implementation, the core ECMA library, and the Gtk#, OpenGL, and POSIX interfaces being developed.
Overall, the nice thing about C# is that it's more of a language, not a philosophy. Platform-specificity is ultimately good, both for Windows and for Linux programmers; Sun's WORA, which pretty much comes along with Java, is a distraction.
Sun's not a monopoly
.NET.
When it comes to Java implementations, they are: all conforming Java implementations are derived from Sun source code.
The JCP is a far more public process for directing Java than anything we'll ever see from MS for
And what does that matter? Do you think Microsoft doesn't listen to the wishes of their (big) customers? The JCP is a mechanism by which Sun can get free consulting services from their user community.
What I don't understand is why people like you think it's an either/or choice. Microsoft is an evil monopoly, and Sun is an evil monopoly wannabe. So, just don't use either platform. There are plenty of other choices around.
I don't think it's accurate to portray PHP, Perl or Python as "platforms". I think what you meant to do was compare "Java the language" with PHP, Perl and Python rather than "Java the platform" with PHP, Perl and Python. While I won't argue the language semantic merits with you, I will argue the "platform" issue.
.NET is meant to be a direct threat to Java and the J2EE platform.
.NET, and defended their turf. Sun initiated this "war", and .NET is just an attempt by Microsoft to restore the status quo.
No. PHP, Python, and Perl are not just languages, they are platforms with extensive standard libraries. They rival, and in some cases exceed, what is available for Java, both in scope and quality.
This is fairly misguided as well.
Microsoft already had a large platform for both client side development (ActiveX, MFC, COM/OLE, Win32) and server side development (COM, DCOM, etc.). Sun created the threat to Microsoft's market by trying to push into that space with Java. McNealy was even gloating about how he would destroy Microsoft. Microsoft then took the best bits and pieces of Java, created
Portraying Sun as the innocent bystander that is getting crushed by an evil monopoly is bogus. Both Microsoft and Sun are trying to establish monopolies, it's just that Microsoft is still a little better at it.
[I suspect Java has seen its best days in the open source world.]
I point you to the Apache foundation and it's Jakarta sub-project for a shining example of Java in the "open source world".
Your response is completely illogical. I didn't say that nobody was using Java, I said I think its popularity in the open source world has peaked.
How exactly has "Sun screwed up"?
If Sun had made the platform open (not open source, just open standard) and kept it clean and tight, it could have been a huge success in the open source world. As it is, Java is stagnating technically and people have serious license worries about it.
[Java] certainly won't disappear "overnight".
We completely agree there. Java will remain a big player in the commercial world (in particular for some web services and in niches like cell phones), and it will remain a modest success in open source.
But to dismiss Java out of hand because it doesn't mesh with your and some other zealots ideals is pretty narrow minded.
.NET APIs with Mono, you are even free and clear of any Microsoft patents.
I don't "dismiss Java out of hand". As I was saying, people will continue to use Java. But it won't become the juggernaut in open source that it could have become. And a large fraction of open source "Java" programming will probably be based on non-standard implementations (gcj, SWT, etc.).
Yeah, except that some people actually just, *gasp*, *like* to program in Java. It provides a nice, strongly typed, compiled, object oriented language
So do dozens of other languages. Among them, Java is pretty mediocre and has numerous limitations and design flaws. For example, the array conformance is just broken, and so is the genericity implementation. The only thing Java has going for it over the competition is name recognition.
Besides, if you are willing to put up with the patent and intellectual property problems that Java has, why not simply use Mono? It actually has an open source implementation, and C# is a superset of Java that fixes some of Java's most glaring problems. And if you don't use the
As long as I can release my source code, who gives a damn As long as I can release my source code, who gives a damn if it runs on a proprietary substrate.
You will give a damn, when Sun goes out of business, or when Sun does something stupid with Java2D (like basing it on OpenGL), or when they don't support your favorite operating system.
Sure, there were people who complained, but there were also plenty of people who didn't give a damn (myself included).
Yes, and there are lots of people who also write open source Windows software. But they don't represent the mainstream of open source, and as a general approach to open source, it's self-defeating in the long run.
IMO, this is why WORA is good for open source. An application that is designed to run under Linux can run under Windows with much less pain than pretty much any other environment.
Linux isn't going to succeed on the desktop if applications are mediocre, and Swing applications are condemned to mediocrity because of WORA.
Cross platform C[++]-based libraries, like Qt and wxWindows make you have to worry more about platform-specific idiosyncracies.
wxWindows has a large, cross-platform core that works at least as well on different platforms as Swing. But in addition, you actually can add platform specific functionality. That is, unlike Swing, you can actually write cross-platform applications that, with very little additional work, integrate very well with each native platform.
wxWindows is showing its age, but its basic approach--cross-platform core and a few optional platform specific classes--is much better than Swing.
Another way of looking at it is that Java is too encumbered by intellectual property--copyrights, patents, and licenses--held in part by Sun and in part by an industry consortium (JCP). Anybody that builds applications on top of Java becomes as dependent on Sun as people who write Windows software become dependent on Microsoft. While there are plenty of open source projects for both Java and Windows, ultimately, that is not a good state of affairs for open source developers.
WORA made sense for Java's original purpose in life, that of a thin, universal client platform. WORA makes no sense for Linux developers trying to develop high-quality Linux applications. (And, frankly, I think Windows programmers are saying the same about Java on Windows, which is why
Java held a lot of promise for open source development at one point, but I think that's over now. The Java platform will continue to be used widely in many commercial (and some free) server-side applications. Subsets of Java will be used in teaching and research. And you will see more and more partial clones of Java appearaing. Open source will probably continue with a mix of languages. gcj+SWT, which implements the Java language but not the Sun APIs, may achieve modest popularity. Mono+Gtk# may become fairly popular (but the
Java originally promised to become a small, universal client-side platform for the delivery of applications to clients over the web. Java has almost completely failed in that mission: Flash is far more widely used, no browsers ship with the latest version of Java, and even if you stick to Java 1.1, there are numerous compatibility problems.
.NET will continue to exist in that space as well and probably take away market share. And because Sun's restrictive licenses on both the implementation and the specification of Java, I suspect Java has seen its best days in the open source world.
.NET, .NET is simply more of what Microsoft has always given us: a proprietary platform completely controlled by Microsoft. It's not primarily an alternative to Java, it's simply what Microsoft programmers will move to from MFC and Win32. Thankfully, it's at least a lot cleaner than Microsoft's previous APIs and systems.
What Java has become instead is a semi-open server-side platform. It's quite successful at that, but it is only one of many platforms in that space. PHP, Perl, Python, and
Now, about
So, Java has failed to become what it originally promised to become, but it is a fairly successful platform that won't disappear overnight. But Sun's dreams of industry domination are pipe dreams. Java could have become much bigger and more important than it has become, but Sun screwed up (and is continuing to screw up).
All technical reasons are business reasons in that they take time and money to implement.
Yes: less time than for thousands of UNIX programmers to rewrite their interfaces. And, in fact, the Mac is not popular enough to warrant that, so the applications stay in X11. Investing this time and money for Apple would more software more usable on their platform.
Things like printing, clipboard, and drag-n-drop are borked badly enough in a pure X11 environment, so I'm guessing that you are badly underestimating the difficulty in welding those things to another paradigm.
That's just the typical Apple-zealot prejudice against X11. Clipboard and drag-and-drop work just fine under X11. Printing is not a traditional part of X11, although now XPrint offers a solution that is integrated with the window system, giving you both traditional UNIX-style printing and Windows/Macintosh-style printing.
Also, if your suggested X11 integration points are so "little work", why are the OO developers pursuing a native port?
Well, apparently only two people are pursuing it, which is why we are discussing this in the first place. And even though they probably could solve the general problem, applications programmers don't generally think of improving the OS in order to solve their problems. Apple's party line is "port to Cocoa", and Mac programmers follow Apple's party line.
Utimately this scratches the major Unixhead issue that Apple didn't think X11 was "good enough" for them and chose to roll their own on top of a Unix-based OS.
Apple didn't "roll their own"; Apple bought Jobs's company, NeXT, and together with it a PostScript-based window system. Then, they hacked all of that up a little and added OS 9 compatibility. That purchase was driven by the personality of Jobs, not by the relative merits of NeXT and X11. In fact, in the market, X11 competed against other window systems and handily won over many other competitors on UNIX workstations, including SunView, NeXTStep, and NeWS. That was despite aggressive marketing by the owners of those competitors.
Of course, databases are very useful for organizing user data. People already keep PIM info, images, and lots of other stuff in databases. Lotus Notes is built entirely on databases.
But "replacing the traditional file system" carries with it the notion of ripping ext3 out of the kernel and putting a relational database there. That's a very bad idea. Databases don't belong into the kernel. They are far too inefficient to handle most storage needs, they are far too complex to go into the kernel, and they just don't need to be in the kernel. Operating system kernels need simple, fast storage systems. Something like ext3. ReiserFS is pushing the limits. PostgreSQL would be going too far.
As an aside, this is an idea that just about every nerd has when they learn about databases and retrieval. It's been tried various times since the 1960's. There are probably good reasons why interfaces don't use them. Perhaps most importantly, keep in mind that the vast majority of files on your system are not user files, they are bits and pieces of the operating system. And for the files that actually are used by users (mail, PIM info, images, text, etc.), they usually already have special-purpose database interfaces available to them as part of the applications that users use to access them.
Yes, and there is a lot of research software that's only available for Windows, and there is a lot of research software that's available only for UNIX. You see, sometimes people write software for specific platforms.
Getting wars - Wars plural. yes let's let osma just run free and attack more people.. oh yeah sounds like a plan.
You mean as opposed to killing thousands of Afghans, wasting billions of dollars, and then letting Osama still run around free? War simply is not an effective response to terrorism.
No other president would have sent troops to afganistan for this. Please.
Oh, I'm sure there are plenty more nuts like Bush around.
Economic problems - Dotcom bomb.. mmm bush sure fucked up that one. Oh look! our economy is recorving as we speak! damned we're all doomed.
Yeah, too bad that most people won't benefit from the recovery.
HUge Budget deficits - This is new how??
They are much more huge because of Bush's don't-tax-and-spend-freely policies.
Failing Education System - I dunno how it's exactly failing like everyone seems to think. but they've thought this for a long time too.
Yeah, and with Bush's war on public education, it's getting worse.
Rollback of civil rights - DMCA oh oops clinton signed that one, Patriot act? yeah overeaction from 9/11
DMCA isn't primarily about civil rights. And, overreaction or not, the PATRIOT act is a result of what the Bush administration wanted; they could have acted as a moderating influence, instead they are creating more fear to give the executive branch ever more powers.
Yes that's what they went after clinton for.. having sex with interns. Oh wait no, for obstruction of justice and such.. wait that has nothing to do with sex. Gee?
If you ask me a question that is none of your business, I have no moral obligation to answer you truthfully. Clinton's response may have been legally wrong and politically stupid, but so what?
And all of that is required by Mac end users for an "acceptable" application.
Yes, and you know what? Apple isn't the only company that has those features: they exist on all major platforms, and GUI users on all major platforms demand them. In fact, if anything, OS X lacks a few features and mechanisms that X11 has.
But, in fact, functionally, there is very little of importance that is missing in OpenOffice/X11 on OS X. Note that cut-and-paste already works for text.
I haven't tried the X11 port, but I can imagine there could be a metric tonne of problems: Clipboard handling, Printing, Drag-n-Drop are all very different under X11. [...] You ain't gonna get that by using X11 like "just another toolkit", you need a native port.
No, you don't need a native port. It would not be very little work for the OpenOffice developers to add a little bit of OS X-specific code to improve desktop integration in the few areas where it isn't yet working. I think that would be cut-and-paste for images and drag-and-drop from the OS X desktop, two rarely used features. (For printing, OS X already uses CUPS, a UNIX system.)
But if Apple cared to, they could actually just make X11 a fully functional component of the OS X desktop, indistinguishable from Carbon and Cocoa. That would involve some automatic clipboard and drag-and-drop translation (between X11 and OS X), making X11 executables double-clickable, and fixing Apple X11 window management.
Apple has tackled a project many orders of magnitude harder: integrating the OS 9 and NeXTStep UIs and APIs. The reason Apple isn't expending the miniscule effort to fix the few remaining X11 integration issues is because they actually prefer people rewriting their apps for Apple-proprietary APIs--it's a business reason, not a technical reason.
OpenOffice already runs on OS X. What they are talking about is a Quartz/Aqua port. But, frankly, why bother? Even if people use Quartz/Aqua APIs, OpenOffice still won't look or behave exactly like a Cocoa-native application, so it really won't be any more "native" than the existing X11 port. Furthermore, Apple's X11 server for OS X is just fine for running software like OpenOffice, it's free, and it's easy to install.
.NET, Gtk+, wxWindows, and FLTK applications to it. OpenOffice on X11 is just another toolkit. What people could spend time more profitably on is cleaning up the few remaining glitches in the integration of X11 with the OS X desktop. Most of those can be done fairly easily, but Apple might consider adding a small X11 extension that would allow people to add OS X-specific features to their X11 applications without a complete rewrite.
There probably isn't much interest in the Quartz/Aqua port because there doesn't seem to be much point to it: it's a lot of work and won't behave much differently.
As OS X becomes more mainstream, the "purity" of its user interface (if you can call the mix of Cocoa and Carbon "pure") will increasingly go away: people will port MFC, Swing,
Please provide the source for your statement. Otherwise it should be modded as -1 for troll.
Look around the web on site:
here,
here,
here,
here, and lots more places.
It is clear that the majority intent of Florida's voters was to send Gore to the White House. Furthermore, it is clear that Florida's voting process was seriously biased against minorities, who predominantly vote Democratic.
The only reason why this wasn't discovered during the recount was because the Bush family managed to cut the recount short as long as it was still favorable for Bush.
Or we need to add a new mod of "+1 strong opinion of of a bitter loser."
With Bush as president, we all are losing: we are getting wars, economic problems, huge budget deficits, a failing educational system, rollback of civil rights protections, deterioration of international relations, etc.
It is pretty depressing that Republicans care more about who the President had sex with than about how the country is doing.
I don't know about Itanium, but the power dissipation of the G5 and the AMD Opteron are not all that different.
PPC used to have a big advantage over the x86 architecture in the past, both in terms of performance and power, but those days are behind us: PPC and x86 designers are designing in the same space and using similar techniques and skills; the actual instruction set is just a minor detail.
You could buy several AMD's for that.
You might be able to, but the G5's they are buying already have 2 very good processors. As long as they're dividing up tasks among processors, it's nice to have all the memory management and overhead taken care of at a level of two processors per node instead of one. To be honest, I've never seen it done before, and it could have very interesting results.
Dual processor AMD Opteron systems are 64bit, performance-competitive with G5, and considerably cheaper. Furthermore, you can choose among half a dozen vendors, and you can get them in rack mounts.
Anyway, when it comes to speed of high precision calculations, the G* chips have proven their worth.
That's a myth Apple has created by harping on rarely achievable AltiVec performance figures. And people who are happy with their Macs for desktop use like to give lip-service to that myth because it gives them a better excuse to buy Macs for servers and compute clusters.
In real life, the G4 is a couple of years out of date in terms of performance, and the G5 is basically just keeping up with Opteron and Itanium.
Apple's machines aren't bad, in particular for home and office use, but they are not the super UNIX workstations and scientific powerhouses Apple claims.
Apparently the PHD's at Virginia Tech disagree with you 5.2 million ($) times. Or 1,100 times, depending on your view of the world...
Most likely, they got a special deal from Apple, or maybe some other deal was tied in with this and they get a discount on the other deal.
There are thousands of x86/Linux-based Beowulf clusters. There are hundreds of NT-based compute clusters. So, a few universities who also use Macs for compute clusters--not exactly surprising. Maybe they have a good reason why it makes sense in their environment or maybe they are simply making a mistake--it happens.
I see little to recommend a Mac cluster over a Linux cluster. The G5 processors are pretty nice, but in terms of bang-for-the-buck, they aren't anything special. And while OS X makes a pretty desktop operating system, it is very rarely used for compute clusters so there isn't a lot of software for it for that purpose.
Wonderful: three pointers to Apple's web site, pointing to pages with slick corporate "interviews". Do you actually work for Apple or are you just insanely zealous?