remarkably, In-N-Out is one of the better ( lower-calorie ) burger places around. You just a have to manage to order the plain burger, and resist the urge to get the double-double... you can even go low-carb on that if you're one of those freaks.
and yea, I know that image is a joke, because if they sold that burger, I'd have ordered one... the double-double is plenty...
gamesarefun has been blown out of the water, and kotaku has the ( sarcasm-mode ) shocking news ( end sarcasm ) that the PS3 will be backwards-compatable and feature multimedia capabilities. To their credit, they're both more informative than Guardian Gamesblog, which doesn't seem to have anything new past their first entry. I guess I'll wait an hour, then read about the console that I'll be buying in 2007 sometime after the price drops...
Damn I hate being a news junkie. I really just want to look away and read all about it tomorrow, but I just can't help adding my requests to the masses bringing these servers to their knees. Must... have... PS3 specs!! Damn, I feel so pathetic... my information lust is only made so much more pathetic by the fact that, whatever the news, not only can I not buy it any time soon, but I actively don't plan to buy it for at least another couple of years... sigh... I just want to know.
I want a low power/low heat computer because I want to be able to leave it on all the time.
How about something like a Mac Mini, some sort of system with adaptive processor usage and an active cooling fan system? Having a good hardware sleep mode helps, too, unless you're actually running a server or something that needs to be up 24/7... my home computer spends most of it's time 'asleep', but is ready to use pretty damn quickly. I don't reboot short of a system upgrade...
LCD monitors are probably the best thing you can do to reduce heat/power consumption of a PC, as well.
Yes, initial implementations of Objective-C were _basically_ precomps for C, except that they added in the run-loop part. Which, IMHO, makes them just a little more than a _literal_ C precompiler. Subtle difference, but it's there. Point is, the two languages are on reasonably similar footing; it strikes me as silly to tout C++ and bash Objective-C.
The big thing separating the two in my eyes are static vs dynamic typing. The thing is, that's a trade-off. I've never decided which is better, and even in Objective-C, I _ususally_ statically type where I can. Flexibility is nice, though. Being able to quickly finish a project is best.
Oh, yea, and for that application, these are actually the perfect type of monitor. For over-the-air HD broadcasts and progressive-scan DVDs, though, they might be somewhat lacking compared to more expensive, widescreen sets.
I had actually been looking at these for gaming as well, but I might end up getting someone's used NTSC set to get me by a few more years, as I'm a bit broke.
Even if you put a 1080i signal into the box and it displays fine, that fact says nothing about what resolution the display is producing. In fact, if the horizontal resolution is 800 lines like the Samsung ( bet it is ), it's not capable of displaying 1080 horizontal lines, which is what 1080i stands for ( i=interlaced in the signal, so there are 540 updated, then 540 interlaced between those updated ). To pull that off, there must be circuitry to map that on the 800-line display, giving you less resolution than the signal provides. Still better than NTSC's 640x480, but not even quite twice the resolution for twice the cost, still. Fine for 480p, though, but not great if you're looking at widescreen data.
Objective-C has no parametric polymorphism, and no ad-hoc polymorphism outside of class types. This gives Objective-C basically two unrelated type systems.... C++ is a far more complicated language but that says nothing about whether its "syntax" is more "object-oriented." It's definitely more polymorphic than Objective-C.
if you weren't an AC, I might actually discuss your otherwise arguably decent points. Though, clearly, plenty of people think a single-inheritance object model is a good thing, along with it's simplicity ( nothing about OO design requires a complicated syntax, it should indicate a simple sytax ).
As it is, I'm just going to ask about C++ support for dynamic types, and ask if Objective-C's 'id' object type along with it's message-passing behavior doesn't allow it to be more "polymorphic" ( whatever you mean by that ) than C++.
To sum up: with dynamic typing, parametric polymorphism isn't needed. Just send messages. If the object can handle them, it will. If not, they're ignored. What's the problem you're trying to solve? Oh, your favorite language is restrictive and needs cryptic workarounds for it's limitations? I'm sorry.
On the other hand, static typing is definitely not without it's benefits, and I'm all for getting things done. C++ is a fine language. But it's silly to knock Objective-C for not having parametric polymorphism; it really doesn't need it.
Obj-C looks like someone came up with the idea to just change some words and symbols from C and call it a new language. And if you ignore the features of the Cocoa framework in OS X, there's nothing revolutionary about Obj-C.
As opposed to C++, which, at least originally, was _literally_ just a precompiler in front of the C compiler ?
We're obviously off-topic here, and I have no desire to open up a language war, I'd like to point out to Decameron81 that he's factually wrong. Objective-C is a strict superset of C, so exactly _no_ words or symbols from C were changed ( thus the 'superset' part ).
Actually, at the time it was created, having a run loop, objects and object messaging ( not function calling ), as well as dynamic types in a superset of C... well, all of those _together_ were pretty groundbreaking. And yea, with the exception of the whole object-definition and messaging additions, not a whole lot was added to C to jump to Objective-C, which is part of the coolness, really.
If anyone actually wants to understand what Objective-C is, I'll direct you to the wiki and this short, interesting Linux Journal article.
Don't lock-in buyers and buyers won't be as likely to leave.
That is a remarkably insightful observation. People like to be in control, but even more than that, they hate to rely on someone out of their control, especially for something critical. If OSS can help push vendors ( and customers ) towards standards-based, interoperable, cross-platform solutions, we'll all benefit.
having developed and tested large systems using Oracle in the past and having developed, tested, and administered a postgresql database currently, I have to say... PostgreSQL is really, really, really great. It keeps getting better, too.
I'm sure there are reasons to use Oracle over PostgreSQL, if you can afford to. I'm just not sure they're good enough to justify the cost. PostgreSQL is simply the most amazing bit of open source code I've seen, and the developers are really, really friendly and helpful- check out the traffic on the mailing list and you'll see what I mean. Now *that* is support.
When it comes to 'trust' and data corruption as you're discussing it, what you really require is an extensive in-house QA period before pushing a production system. Your own code is far more likely to be a source of data corruption than just about any DB engine ( except under real failure conditions, like hardware/power or OS-level problems ), and as someone else pointed out, database-snapshot backups are the only *real* way to secure your data.
Re:Another question
on
Safari vs. KHTML
·
· Score: 5, Informative
C++ IS an objective language. Objective C is the abortion of a language that Apple uses
You call Objective-C an 'abortion of a language', and then mention C++ as an 'objective language', and you are moded 'Insightful' ?!?! Wow. Words fail me. I guess we all get to have an opinion, but which language has a cleaner, more object-oriented syntax, Objective-C or C++ ? Both are useful, practical, powerful languages, but I'm going to have to humbly disagree with you- it's C++ that's the messier, less OO-centric language. What did Objective-C ever do to you?!? It's a fine, clean, well-designed, practical OO language.
I guess at least the remainder of your post is actually *somewhat* insightful, although it leaves me with questions. Did the KHTML guys really do 'a lot of work' to let Apple have access to their code? What, how and why? It would seem Apple couldn't need any more access to their code than any other developer. What special effort did they ask for ?
Is doing a diff of Apple's release vs. what they started with to determine new code that difficult? From what I've seen actual KHTML developers aren't complaining about this near as much as you are... sure, it would be nice if Apple could have it's engineers spend more time releasing modular change packages to KHTML, but where do you draw the line? Remember, it's not like those guys at Apple have tons of free time- they're overworked and understaffed for the amount of things they have on their plate ( I mean, have you ever WORKED for Steve Jobs?!? ), and it's not their responsibility to do more than they've done.
Seriously, I just see this as some KHTML developers wanting some respect, and not neccessarily from Apple. They want people ( like, KDE users and other developers ) to understand that *they*, the KHTML developers, are having to do some real work, that it's not all just Apple doing everything for them. And they're right.
hah, that's funny. Sane moderation strikes back. In the time it took me to write this, you've gone from 'insightful' to 'flamebait'. Let me check again. Yep. Still funny.
If you are wanting a free J2EE application server, why not use http://www.jboss.org/?
Indeed. I see the question as being "when you can't cope with your expanding J2EE app server needs yourself, who do you want to call in, IBM or JBoss ?"
Note that's jboss.com... IBM isn't the only for-profit company involved in open-source J2EE app server products here. Maybe that's what you're missing. Or maybe you're just missing the concept that someone might look to an outside company for help with their app server, rather than hiring more guys like you and I.
$350 US isn't that much more expensive than an NTSC TV. Not all HDTVs are ginormous 50" plasma/LCD/whatever home theater rigs.
Until they tell you what the actual horizontal resolution is, I'm not sure it's even worth that much.
It can display information from a 1080i source, sure, but at what resolution? With a 4:3 aspect ratio ? So, if you have a widescreen 1080i source, you're seeing it letterboxed with about maybe 600 lines of resolution, assuming it's 800 horizontal lines like the slightly more expensive Samsung model ?
And that's still twice the price of a similar NTSC set. I wonder why HDTV adoption hasn't picked up... aside from the fact that it's actually not terribly easy to find signal sources. It's not like either of those sets includes an HDTV tuner... those cost another 300 bucks or so.
Fact is, Yahoo! is the only large company that's actually focused on features for the user, with no alterior motives. We want users. Not only that, we want network users so we can to tie together all the services we offer.
I laughed my friggin' head off. No alterior motives! That's rich.
Since they're running this service out of the kindess of their hearts, just to attract users, I'll be expecting them to let me permanently purchase songs for less than 99 cents. Otherwise, it's clear they're still making something like a dime-a-song profit... which would be an alterior motive. Like wanting to attract 'network users'...
You know, for a company that has gained A LOT of support and respect from the/. type, they really ought to spend the 59 seconds necessary to have iTunes support FLAC and OGG. Seriously, you know how many people they'd make happy?
While I agree with you in principle, in reality I find that it's pretty easy to re-encode any shorten, flac, or other format audio file into something iTunes will manage ( like, oh, I don't know, MP3 ). FLAC and SHN files are for archive use. MP3s sound fine at a high enough bitrate, and have the bonus that they work on all players.
I'm still wondering where you can get OGG files that you don't make yourself. Sorry, Seth, but something tells me that Apple has done the market research and decided that support for FLAC and OGG would confuse more people than it would make happy. Those of us who end up with FLAC or SHN files know how to convert them. If lossless is a big deal, we can use Apple's lossless...
Ultimately, the answer is that iTunes exists for the iPod, and you'll see these formats supported by iTunes just as soon as they're supported by the iPod. I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.
In other news, Tim Berners-Lee is to receive an award for his contributions to US politics.
As much as HTML documents and HTTP transport protocols define the 'web' for the vast majority of end users, the internet itself was a well defined prerequisite for the work Berners-Lee is famous for.
I mean, I know what you're getting at, but... typically, people refer to Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn as creators of the internet, for publishing a paper describing what would become TCP/IP.
I know you're trying to be funny, and you achieved that, but Vinton Cerf would have been a better candidate. The post suggesting Phil Zimmermann is an even better candidate is also dead on, but in a non-funny, non-ironic manner, since PGP really did have an impact on politics.
Of course, HTML-based communication also had an impact on politics, althogh I'd say that's the contribution of web publishers, who were enabled by Tim Berners-Lee and Vinton Cerf and Al Gore and many, many others.
In a single-datapoint study, I've determined that my 3-year-old thinks Jar-Jar Binks is really funny. He also really, really, wants to do a pod race.
Oh, and Qui-Gon needs to see a doctor to have his tummy fixed. These *really* aren't movies for little kids, they're actually quite dark and violent.
Upon reflection, I think Lucas knew what was coming and installed Jar-Jar in a feeble, stupid attempt to lighten things up a touch. Stupid, like I said... but I really think he's targeting the over-7 crowd. Toy manufacturers are aiming lower still, but Lucas is making some dark, messed up stuff not intended for the very young. Younger than 7 or so, seeing someone cut in half is really far from ideal. I somewhat regret agreeing to show the kid the movie, even though he seemed to deal with it quite well. I had naively thought I could show him *just* the pod race, but of course he was interested in the whole thing. I thought he'd get bored, but no such luck.
Eventually he'll ask about the funeral pyre scene and I'll have to explain that Qui-Gon didn't make it. I'm not looking forward to that, I think kids deserve to be shielded from that kind of thing for a while... of course, even Walt Disney disagrees with me on that one. Bambi was frickin' dark that way, too. Given stuff going on in the world, I may just have to accept that he's going to have to learn about human mortality earlier than I'd like.
I'm going to wait as long as possible before letting the kid watch Ep. 3, though, especially after hearing about the whole 'young jedi' thing from Kevin Smith. I'm not sure *I* want to see that myself ! Episodes 4-6 will come first, those are actually a little more kid-friendly. Just a little, though.
Apparently it isn't been ported to OS X yet. Like everything concerning Java, it doesn't live up to the hype.
It's their use of SWT that prevents it from being cross-platform. It's SWT that doesn't live up to the hype.
They could have choosen Swing and it'd work everywhere, right now. But since they chose SWT, which relies on JNI bridges to call native OS UI libraries, they have to wait for SWT builds for 10.4.
I really, really don't understand why you'd write a Java program with SWT, unless you found a serious problem with Swing and were really only looking to support Windows. In which case, why use Java at all? You might as well write in VisualC++ or C# ( or Cocoa/Objective-C ) if you're going to tie yourself closely to native code.
That would be so cool. I'm tempted to think Apple's just not cool enough to use "Liger", but you never know. They've got to run out of cat names some day, and they should use this one while it's still semi-hot, and the geek appeal is undeniable. Maybe it's a release between Tiger and 'Lion'.
Thanks for the link, though. I was sure it was just a dumb Napoleon Dynamite joke, how was I supposed to know they actually exist?!?
The Arstechnica reviewer advocates that the other UNIX type systems immediately steal this idea and code and incorporate it. Nobody here has an opinion on that?
launchd is super-cool. Anyone who writes software or admins systems should be really excited about it. They are also likely doing real work right now, just like I should be.
To be fair, I have seen some comments posted about launchd and it's coolness, some of regarding "if it weren't for that damn Apple license, we could just use their code in Linux". Most people seem more interested in Spotlight searches and the 'ripple effect' in Dashboard. Personally, I'm all charged up about Core Data and how it'll make developing apps even easier. I've seen more posts about launchd than Core Data. The article barely touches Core Data, it gets a paragraph or so in the "Grab Bag" section and talks more about what it's not than what it is.
You can draw your own conclusions about/. posters being developers or users. Despite what some folks say, the readership around here actually seems pretty diverse. It reflects the general population, in that more people are 'tech-interested users' than serious programmers. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. Not everyone who is interested in cars needs to be a mechanic.
Don't fool yourself -- you get what you pay for. TigerDirect is cheap because their service sucks the big one.
Service and products.
A family member bought a WinXP-loaded Celeron from them. I told her to expect the machine to be worth exactly what she paid. I didn't know I should have warned her to expect it to be worth less than she paid. Cheap doesn't begin to describe it... you don't have to know computers to know it's cheap, cheap, cheap. This is the company that makes Dell look good.
It's so transparent, it's just sad. They waited until now for maximum PR buzz. There would be no other reason for waiting.
It's all very silly, really. Apple will hide ( possibly quite effectively ) behind the "the official name is OS X 10.4, 'Tiger' is just a catchy internal release name", and Tiger Direct will get to either settle or withdraw their case after pulling down some nice publicity. Of course, IANAL, who knows how this will turn out. Still, Tiger makes absolutely nothing like an operating system... do they really make software?? I shudder at the thought of what that must be like...
Slashdot Mirror
and yea, I know that image is a joke, because if they sold that burger, I'd have ordered one... the double-double is plenty...
Is it just me, or is that a slot-loading drive?
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/05/16/news_612 4681.html
linked from another post here...
I guess I'll wait an hour, then read about the console that I'll be buying in 2007 sometime after the price drops...
Damn I hate being a news junkie. I really just want to look away and read all about it tomorrow, but I just can't help adding my requests to the masses bringing these servers to their knees. Must... have... PS3 specs!! Damn, I feel so pathetic... my information lust is only made so much more pathetic by the fact that, whatever the news, not only can I not buy it any time soon, but I actively don't plan to buy it for at least another couple of years... sigh... I just want to know.
Damn PR. It works.
How about something like a Mac Mini, some sort of system with adaptive processor usage and an active cooling fan system? Having a good hardware sleep mode helps, too, unless you're actually running a server or something that needs to be up 24/7... my home computer spends most of it's time 'asleep', but is ready to use pretty damn quickly. I don't reboot short of a system upgrade...
LCD monitors are probably the best thing you can do to reduce heat/power consumption of a PC, as well.
Really, it should be required reading in grade schools across the world...
The big thing separating the two in my eyes are static vs dynamic typing. The thing is, that's a trade-off. I've never decided which is better, and even in Objective-C, I _ususally_ statically type where I can. Flexibility is nice, though. Being able to quickly finish a project is best.
Oh, yea, and for that application, these are actually the perfect type of monitor. For over-the-air HD broadcasts and progressive-scan DVDs, though, they might be somewhat lacking compared to more expensive, widescreen sets.
I had actually been looking at these for gaming as well, but I might end up getting someone's used NTSC set to get me by a few more years, as I'm a bit broke.
Even if you put a 1080i signal into the box and it displays fine, that fact says nothing about what resolution the display is producing. In fact, if the horizontal resolution is 800 lines like the Samsung ( bet it is ), it's not capable of displaying 1080 horizontal lines, which is what 1080i stands for ( i=interlaced in the signal, so there are 540 updated, then 540 interlaced between those updated ). To pull that off, there must be circuitry to map that on the 800-line display, giving you less resolution than the signal provides. Still better than NTSC's 640x480, but not even quite twice the resolution for twice the cost, still. Fine for 480p, though, but not great if you're looking at widescreen data.
if you weren't an AC, I might actually discuss your otherwise arguably decent points. Though, clearly, plenty of people think a single-inheritance object model is a good thing, along with it's simplicity ( nothing about OO design requires a complicated syntax, it should indicate a simple sytax ).
As it is, I'm just going to ask about C++ support for dynamic types, and ask if Objective-C's 'id' object type along with it's message-passing behavior doesn't allow it to be more "polymorphic" ( whatever you mean by that ) than C++.
To sum up: with dynamic typing, parametric polymorphism isn't needed. Just send messages. If the object can handle them, it will. If not, they're ignored. What's the problem you're trying to solve? Oh, your favorite language is restrictive and needs cryptic workarounds for it's limitations? I'm sorry.
On the other hand, static typing is definitely not without it's benefits, and I'm all for getting things done. C++ is a fine language. But it's silly to knock Objective-C for not having parametric polymorphism; it really doesn't need it.
As opposed to C++, which, at least originally, was _literally_ just a precompiler in front of the C compiler ?
We're obviously off-topic here, and I have no desire to open up a language war, I'd like to point out to Decameron81 that he's factually wrong. Objective-C is a strict superset of C, so exactly _no_ words or symbols from C were changed ( thus the 'superset' part ).
Actually, at the time it was created, having a run loop, objects and object messaging ( not function calling ), as well as dynamic types in a superset of C... well, all of those _together_ were pretty groundbreaking. And yea, with the exception of the whole object-definition and messaging additions, not a whole lot was added to C to jump to Objective-C, which is part of the coolness, really.
If anyone actually wants to understand what Objective-C is, I'll direct you to the wiki and this short, interesting Linux Journal article.
That is a remarkably insightful observation. People like to be in control, but even more than that, they hate to rely on someone out of their control, especially for something critical. If OSS can help push vendors ( and customers ) towards standards-based, interoperable, cross-platform solutions, we'll all benefit.
It'd be nice to see a larger survey.
I'm sure there are reasons to use Oracle over PostgreSQL, if you can afford to. I'm just not sure they're good enough to justify the cost. PostgreSQL is simply the most amazing bit of open source code I've seen, and the developers are really, really friendly and helpful- check out the traffic on the mailing list and you'll see what I mean. Now *that* is support.
When it comes to 'trust' and data corruption as you're discussing it, what you really require is an extensive in-house QA period before pushing a production system. Your own code is far more likely to be a source of data corruption than just about any DB engine ( except under real failure conditions, like hardware/power or OS-level problems ), and as someone else pointed out, database-snapshot backups are the only *real* way to secure your data.
You call Objective-C an 'abortion of a language', and then mention C++ as an 'objective language', and you are moded 'Insightful' ?!?! Wow. Words fail me. I guess we all get to have an opinion, but which language has a cleaner, more object-oriented syntax, Objective-C or C++ ? Both are useful, practical, powerful languages, but I'm going to have to humbly disagree with you- it's C++ that's the messier, less OO-centric language. What did Objective-C ever do to you?!? It's a fine, clean, well-designed, practical OO language.
I guess at least the remainder of your post is actually *somewhat* insightful, although it leaves me with questions. Did the KHTML guys really do 'a lot of work' to let Apple have access to their code? What, how and why? It would seem Apple couldn't need any more access to their code than any other developer. What special effort did they ask for ?
Is doing a diff of Apple's release vs. what they started with to determine new code that difficult? From what I've seen actual KHTML developers aren't complaining about this near as much as you are... sure, it would be nice if Apple could have it's engineers spend more time releasing modular change packages to KHTML, but where do you draw the line? Remember, it's not like those guys at Apple have tons of free time- they're overworked and understaffed for the amount of things they have on their plate ( I mean, have you ever WORKED for Steve Jobs?!? ), and it's not their responsibility to do more than they've done.
Seriously, I just see this as some KHTML developers wanting some respect, and not neccessarily from Apple. They want people ( like, KDE users and other developers ) to understand that *they*, the KHTML developers, are having to do some real work, that it's not all just Apple doing everything for them. And they're right.
hah, that's funny. Sane moderation strikes back. In the time it took me to write this, you've gone from 'insightful' to 'flamebait'. Let me check again. Yep. Still funny.
Indeed. I see the question as being "when you can't cope with your expanding J2EE app server needs yourself, who do you want to call in, IBM or JBoss ?"
Note that's jboss.com... IBM isn't the only for-profit company involved in open-source J2EE app server products here. Maybe that's what you're missing. Or maybe you're just missing the concept that someone might look to an outside company for help with their app server, rather than hiring more guys like you and I.
Until they tell you what the actual horizontal resolution is, I'm not sure it's even worth that much.
It can display information from a 1080i source, sure, but at what resolution? With a 4:3 aspect ratio ? So, if you have a widescreen 1080i source, you're seeing it letterboxed with about maybe 600 lines of resolution, assuming it's 800 horizontal lines like the slightly more expensive Samsung model ?
And that's still twice the price of a similar NTSC set. I wonder why HDTV adoption hasn't picked up... aside from the fact that it's actually not terribly easy to find signal sources. It's not like either of those sets includes an HDTV tuner... those cost another 300 bucks or so.
Fact is, Yahoo! is the only large company that's actually focused on features for the user, with no alterior motives. We want users. Not only that, we want network users so we can to tie together all the services we offer.
I laughed my friggin' head off. No alterior motives! That's rich.
Since they're running this service out of the kindess of their hearts, just to attract users, I'll be expecting them to let me permanently purchase songs for less than 99 cents. Otherwise, it's clear they're still making something like a dime-a-song profit... which would be an alterior motive. Like wanting to attract 'network users'...
While I agree with you in principle, in reality I find that it's pretty easy to re-encode any shorten, flac, or other format audio file into something iTunes will manage ( like, oh, I don't know, MP3 ). FLAC and SHN files are for archive use. MP3s sound fine at a high enough bitrate, and have the bonus that they work on all players.
I'm still wondering where you can get OGG files that you don't make yourself. Sorry, Seth, but something tells me that Apple has done the market research and decided that support for FLAC and OGG would confuse more people than it would make happy. Those of us who end up with FLAC or SHN files know how to convert them. If lossless is a big deal, we can use Apple's lossless...
Ultimately, the answer is that iTunes exists for the iPod, and you'll see these formats supported by iTunes just as soon as they're supported by the iPod. I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.
The correct question to ask is "I wonder if there will be an SCO to sue for costs and lawyers fees should IBM successfully defend the suit?"
As much as HTML documents and HTTP transport protocols define the 'web' for the vast majority of end users, the internet itself was a well defined prerequisite for the work Berners-Lee is famous for.
I mean, I know what you're getting at, but... typically, people refer to Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn as creators of the internet, for publishing a paper describing what would become TCP/IP.
I know you're trying to be funny, and you achieved that, but Vinton Cerf would have been a better candidate. The post suggesting Phil Zimmermann is an even better candidate is also dead on, but in a non-funny, non-ironic manner, since PGP really did have an impact on politics.
Of course, HTML-based communication also had an impact on politics, althogh I'd say that's the contribution of web publishers, who were enabled by Tim Berners-Lee and Vinton Cerf and Al Gore and many, many others.
Oh, and Qui-Gon needs to see a doctor to have his tummy fixed. These *really* aren't movies for little kids, they're actually quite dark and violent.
Upon reflection, I think Lucas knew what was coming and installed Jar-Jar in a feeble, stupid attempt to lighten things up a touch. Stupid, like I said... but I really think he's targeting the over-7 crowd. Toy manufacturers are aiming lower still, but Lucas is making some dark, messed up stuff not intended for the very young. Younger than 7 or so, seeing someone cut in half is really far from ideal. I somewhat regret agreeing to show the kid the movie, even though he seemed to deal with it quite well. I had naively thought I could show him *just* the pod race, but of course he was interested in the whole thing. I thought he'd get bored, but no such luck.
Eventually he'll ask about the funeral pyre scene and I'll have to explain that Qui-Gon didn't make it. I'm not looking forward to that, I think kids deserve to be shielded from that kind of thing for a while... of course, even Walt Disney disagrees with me on that one. Bambi was frickin' dark that way, too. Given stuff going on in the world, I may just have to accept that he's going to have to learn about human mortality earlier than I'd like.
I'm going to wait as long as possible before letting the kid watch Ep. 3, though, especially after hearing about the whole 'young jedi' thing from Kevin Smith. I'm not sure *I* want to see that myself ! Episodes 4-6 will come first, those are actually a little more kid-friendly. Just a little, though.
It's their use of SWT that prevents it from being cross-platform. It's SWT that doesn't live up to the hype.
They could have choosen Swing and it'd work everywhere, right now. But since they chose SWT, which relies on JNI bridges to call native OS UI libraries, they have to wait for SWT builds for 10.4.
I really, really don't understand why you'd write a Java program with SWT, unless you found a serious problem with Swing and were really only looking to support Windows. In which case, why use Java at all? You might as well write in VisualC++ or C# ( or Cocoa/Objective-C ) if you're going to tie yourself closely to native code.
Here's a great rant on SWT.
Personally, I've never used SWT, but... it just doesn't sound like a great idea.
Thanks for the link, though. I was sure it was just a dumb Napoleon Dynamite joke, how was I supposed to know they actually exist?!?
launchd is super-cool. Anyone who writes software or admins systems should be really excited about it. They are also likely doing real work right now, just like I should be.
To be fair, I have seen some comments posted about launchd and it's coolness, some of regarding "if it weren't for that damn Apple license, we could just use their code in Linux". Most people seem more interested in Spotlight searches and the 'ripple effect' in Dashboard. Personally, I'm all charged up about Core Data and how it'll make developing apps even easier. I've seen more posts about launchd than Core Data. The article barely touches Core Data, it gets a paragraph or so in the "Grab Bag" section and talks more about what it's not than what it is.
You can draw your own conclusions about /. posters being developers or users. Despite what some folks say, the readership around here actually seems pretty diverse. It reflects the general population, in that more people are 'tech-interested users' than serious programmers. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. Not everyone who is interested in cars needs to be a mechanic.
Service and products.
A family member bought a WinXP-loaded Celeron from them. I told her to expect the machine to be worth exactly what she paid. I didn't know I should have warned her to expect it to be worth less than she paid. Cheap doesn't begin to describe it... you don't have to know computers to know it's cheap, cheap, cheap. This is the company that makes Dell look good.
It's all very silly, really. Apple will hide ( possibly quite effectively ) behind the "the official name is OS X 10.4, 'Tiger' is just a catchy internal release name", and Tiger Direct will get to either settle or withdraw their case after pulling down some nice publicity. Of course, IANAL, who knows how this will turn out. Still, Tiger makes absolutely nothing like an operating system... do they really make software?? I shudder at the thought of what that must be like...