This post is closest to my personal feelings. It comes down to a perception of value. She doesn't value the computer because she paid nothing for it, and gets her support for free, while at the same time ridiculing the person who is supporting her.
I used to be the support person in my family. Then I started running Linux, then I got a Mac. Over time my Windows skills greatly diminished because I just forgot the stuff. Then I realized that there are solutions that work, Linux and Macs. The fact that people could just keep tapping me for free Windows support was what made it possible for them to run Windows. It was my time and energy that allowed them to live in denial. So, I stopped supporting Windows. I made it a policy that if you wanted support from me you either had to run Linux, or get a Mac. My support outlay dropped precipitously. Slowly my friends switched. Started using their computers a lot more, and I get almost no calls. But when I do I know something is actually wrong, not some virus, or the latest malware BS. Most of the time I can trace it back to a hardware issue, which I do not consider a waste of my time. I'm happy to trouble shoot actual problems.
I don't have an issue with doing support for free. After all we are talking about family, but if they are simply going to use you so they can take the cheapest route, one we know will lead to problems, then I don't feel like I need to support that. It would be like some family member buying a used Yugo, a car that is known to be bad, and repeatedly asking for help fixing it, for free.
Thanks for the politics. Already knew that Java wasn't OSS. No doubt we'll get there eventually. (cf. Apache Harmony Project) And no Sun does not have a Linux/PPC distribution of the JDK.
Basically the question in short is: Is there a third party JDK that will run on YDL? I know that IBM makes other Linux/Power JDK's. I just don't know if those work under YDL.
Does anyone here run Java applications, such as JBoss, ant, javac, javadoc, etc. under YDL? I looked at the package and there does not seem to be a JDK shipped with the distribution. I'd like to consider YDL as a server OS, but lacking Java it's a no go.
I did a similar transition two years ago. I went from a 1GHz PIII Dell Laptop running Red Hat something or other, probably 7.X, to a 450 MHz G4 PowerMac. The Power Mac was slower there is no question, but being able to have a Unix box with a native version of MS Office, and a complete Java environment was the clincher for me.
My development environment at the time:
Terminal.app with Vim
JBoss 2.4
Ant
Enhydra 3.1
MySQL w/ InnoDB
I did extensive testing at the Apple store near me to make sure everything would work before making the move. They let me use a machine for two weekends solid. I would show up Saturday morning with my Dell laptop. I would take their top machine off the network and cross over cable it to the Dell, then copy all of my stuff over to the Power Mac. What I found after extensive testing is that the G4 running Java is basically MHz for MHz equivalent to a PIII.
Now, I was very happy switching to the Power Mac. Since then I have acquired a new Power Mac DP 1GHz, and an iBook 700, and both of them handle my environment very well. Of course the Power Mac is faster, but the iBook is acceptable. I would never go back to an Intel based laptop for Java development. Apple laptops are simply first rate, OS X stays out of the way, and the JVM is rock solid. I would guess that my next Apple laptop will be a PowerBook simply for the ability to pack it full of RAM.
So, get the PowerBook and come on in the waters fine,
I find it interesting that many people here are wringing hands and bemoaning the space program. I would simply say that this is to expected. Accidents happen. Life happens. NASA is engaged in some of the most dangerous endeavours humans have ever undertaken. The reality is vehicles will be lost, people will die. It is the nature of things.
All of us undertake serious risk in pushing forward our human lot every day. Just getting in a car and going to work places us in seroius danger of our lives. You could die tomorrow. NASA is launching people into space on the backs of rockets and plunging them back into the atmosphere at incredible speeds. All to improve the lot of our species, to push the envelope, to reach for greater achievements.
Does this mean we should stop the space program? No. We should honor the lives of those lost and continue in the path they lead.
This is a development environment for creating applications in the Eiffel programming language. Eiffel was created by Dr. Bertrand Meyer.
Eiffel is a completely OO language supporting several advanced features and particularly focused on creating safe bug free systems. It's main claim to fame is its integration of design by contract into the language with method pre and post conditions and class invariants. This allows a developer to express the possible states an object can be in, and the necessary pre and post condictions before a method can be called on an object. It also support a very safe method of expressing multiple inheritance that allows the developer to control which ancestor a method is inherited from if there is a conflict, thus allowing the developer compelte control over the inheritance of methods. It also supports garbage collection. I'm sure there are other things it supports that I'm forgetting.
Bertrand Meyer is also the author of "Object Oriented Software Construction" which has been described as: "The definitive tome on Object-Orientation..." It is well worth a read. A review was done here in 1998. I picked up the book because of that review. I personally learned a great deal from it. I had been doing OO programming for some time at that point, but after reading OOSC I "owned" the methodology. I have had every employee I have hired to do development read significant portions of it as part of their training. I can't recommend it too highly. This from a person who has never used Eiffel. What he has to say is highly valuable regardless of what OO language you are using.
Seeing as the systems incorporates Darwin which is open source I don't really think they could keep this a secret. Anyone can download Darwin and see the implementation of the ABI. Also they have been using GCC for some time and the implementation of the ABI would also be exposed there.
At the fundamental levels of OS X, below the GUI, there is very little that Apple can dissemble about. It is OSS. Anyone can download it and read the code.
I'm curious why you think writing the app in Cocoa would make it more portable. Cocoa is an Apple only thing. Even if you write the app in Java and use Cocoa the app will not run on Windows, or any other platform. It would require the Cocoa libraries to be present to make it work.
Now I have to admit that I'm not up to date on the GnuStep project, but last I heard there was still a lot of work to be done. The other thing is I think GnuStep is a *nix thing. Although OpenStep used to run on Windows I don't think GnuStep does, although I could be wrong, and wouldn't mind finding out that I'm wrong.
So, I don't think going back to scratch with Cocoa would be a reasonable option for this author. Most of his source base was in C++, and it would be a question of how much of that he could use in his Cocoa app, as to whether it would be worth it.
Disclaimer: I haven't read this book, but I have read many in the Addison-Wesley series on UML, RUP, etc.
Can't agree with you at all. Once you have more then a handful of members on a development team a process of some type is necessary. Otherwise you have people wandering off doing their own thing and duplicating work, or contravening major design principles.
I have personally used UML and a modification of the RUP process for projects under $50,000. My team delivered these projects under tight time and budget constraints. Without the ability to design ideas and document them ahead of time I feel we would have wasted significant time and blown the dead lines out of the water. This doesn't fly with clients.
Unfortunately some people, mainly clients, think creating diagrams of the system is busy work. I've found the easiest way to deal with that is to share the diagrams with clients and explain them as you go. This works good with activity diagrams that illustrate business processes. This helps catch errors in our perception of what the clients want before any code is commited. Once you explain that to the client they are generally sold.
The other things is unless you have a process of some type you are bound to forget things. Things will slip through the cracks. Things will get off radar. A process and UML help keep things organized.
So, I would say that the real world requires something like the Rational Unified Process once yet have more programmers than fit in a VW Bug, or you get over a handful of classes.
Ok, I wasn't completely accurate in my description. I'm refering the display sleeping. Not sleeping the whole system. I have that set to "never" as I use the machine remotely on a regular basis.
I went to the 100 Minutes event and picked up my copy of Jaguar and upgraded that night. Machine is a plain vanilla Quicksilver, 17" LCD and a Viewsonic PS790 monitor. (Dual heads are nice.)
Overall I would agree that things are much faster in Jaguar. Quartz Extreme definitely makes a difference. Scrolling windows in IE, Mozilla, Word, Excel, etc. are all faster. The UI in general feels crisper.
Now the issues:
iChat is unstable. I haven't been able to keep it running for more then an hour or so at a time. It just dies in the middle of conversations, or the screens start going blank and all I see are the metal borders. Very annoying. Annoying enough that I went back to the AIM client.
Running dual head has issues. When waking up from sleep frequently I find whatever was on my main monitor, the one with the menu and the dock, painted on the secondary monitor. What's interesting is that it really isn't over there. If I open a window and move it over to the second monitor and move it around what is actually on the second monitor gets painted, and I can go on working. More annoying then a show stopper, but definitely a bug.
Power saving seems to have an issue. This morning I went to the machine and moved the mouse to wake things up. Nada! No wake up. Not having another machine around to use for remote log in I had to hit the power switch. The machine wasn't locked up. Holding down the power button did a clean shutdown. This is VERY annoying. I expect a Unix box to just work. When it doesn't it's upsetting, especially when it's my brother coming over to use my machine and he doesn't have these issues with XP. I expect my machine to be more stable then anything that MS makes. It's Unix, it should be better.
General instability: More applications have died in the past two days on me then have ever died in OS X 10.1.
Well that's enough griping for now. Overall I would say that once these issues are ironed out Jaguar is going to make the best desktop Unix out there.
I haven't bought anything from Amazon since they sued to enforce their "one click" patent. Although I'd love the $50.00 off I can't do it. I hope someone else matches them.
Show a documentary called "Promises" to the kids on both sides. It looks to be a powerful documentary of interviews with the children on both sides of this conflict taken over a period of five years from 1995 to 2000. The same children are interviewed over time. Over the course of the creation of the project the producers showed pictures of the Jewish kids to the Palestinian kids and vice-versa. Eventually the kids decided they wanted to meet each other. It was never the intent of the producers to put these kids together, but they did. The outcome is interesting.
I haven't seen the whole thing, but I intend to. All I have seen are out takes from the film on Fox News. As soon as it becomes available I intend to see it. I have seen another one that was done some years ago with Palestinian and Jewish persons that were resident here in the US and that was also interesting. Another one that is interesting to see, and I don't remember the name, was done with Protestant and Catholic children that were sponsored to live here in the US for a year, and interact with each other outside the context of N. Ireland, and the change in those kids was absolutely incredible.
I know this program would not solve the problem, but having both sides begin to view the other as equally human would start. Also having others, like US citizens and government officials, see that both sides have culpability in the ongoing situation I think would help. The younger generation needs to be willing to make significant changes in their leadership if they are going to achieve peace.
This would be so helpful. The Jakarta project has gotten big, and I'm sure there are jems in there. A well written book would shorten the learning curve immensely.
"Under the 1974 Tunney Act, designed to make sure settlements with the government are in the public interest, a proposed settlement must be published in the Federal Register and undergo a 60-day public comment period before gaining approval. At the end of that period, the government has 30 days to respond to those comments. The court then determines whether the settlement is indeed in the public interest."
So the community needs to get organized and be prepared to speak to the settlement and why it is or isn't in the public interest.
Jakarta is the project. Tomcat is one of the products of the project. In particular Tomcat is the servlet engine. I think the name of the JSP implementation is Jasper, but don't quote me on that.
Aditionally there are a lot of other things happening in the project, like application frame works, the Jakarta ORO Matcher regular expression library, and a number of other things. Take a look at the site.
Personally I picked up this book a while ago. I needed to get up to speed on JSP. It is a good read. I didn't find I needed the JSP or the Servlet specification handy to get through it, and I had only a passing familiarity with JSP when I started.
Mark and Duane deal with the subject well. The chapter on "Architecting JSP applications" is very helpful for someone coming new to the Java way. The coverage of java beans is decent, although I'm not personally a big user of them.
I would recommend the book as a good starting point for using Java as a web development platform, but as a starting point. Take a look at some of the alternatives to JSP. Personally I've moved away from JSP, and haven't used them in a single large project to date, except in a purely cursorial manner. We've since moved to using Enhydra as our framework for using Java on the web. I highly recommend it, but also check out some of the stuff over at the Jakarta Project for some other alternatives to JSP.
Slashdot Mirror
(And no, I'm not exactly new here.)
Yes you are.
This post is closest to my personal feelings. It comes down to a perception of value. She doesn't value the computer because she paid nothing for it, and gets her support for free, while at the same time ridiculing the person who is supporting her.
I used to be the support person in my family. Then I started running Linux, then I got a Mac. Over time my Windows skills greatly diminished because I just forgot the stuff. Then I realized that there are solutions that work, Linux and Macs. The fact that people could just keep tapping me for free Windows support was what made it possible for them to run Windows. It was my time and energy that allowed them to live in denial. So, I stopped supporting Windows. I made it a policy that if you wanted support from me you either had to run Linux, or get a Mac. My support outlay dropped precipitously. Slowly my friends switched. Started using their computers a lot more, and I get almost no calls. But when I do I know something is actually wrong, not some virus, or the latest malware BS. Most of the time I can trace it back to a hardware issue, which I do not consider a waste of my time. I'm happy to trouble shoot actual problems.
I don't have an issue with doing support for free. After all we are talking about family, but if they are simply going to use you so they can take the cheapest route, one we know will lead to problems, then I don't feel like I need to support that. It would be like some family member buying a used Yugo, a car that is known to be bad, and repeatedly asking for help fixing it, for free.
Mark
Thanks, that is great information.
Mark
Thanks for the politics. Already knew that Java wasn't OSS. No doubt we'll get there eventually. (cf. Apache Harmony Project) And no Sun does not have a Linux/PPC distribution of the JDK.
Basically the question in short is: Is there a third party JDK that will run on YDL? I know that IBM makes other Linux/Power JDK's. I just don't know if those work under YDL.
Thanks,
Mark
Does anyone here run Java applications, such as JBoss, ant, javac, javadoc, etc. under YDL? I looked at the package and there does not seem to be a JDK shipped with the distribution. I'd like to consider YDL as a server OS, but lacking Java it's a no go.
Thanks,
Mark
Ah... home sweet home...
I did a similar transition two years ago. I went from a 1GHz PIII Dell Laptop running Red Hat something or other, probably 7.X, to a 450 MHz G4 PowerMac. The Power Mac was slower there is no question, but being able to have a Unix box with a native version of MS Office, and a complete Java environment was the clincher for me.
My development environment at the time:
I did extensive testing at the Apple store near me to make sure everything would work before making the move. They let me use a machine for two weekends solid. I would show up Saturday morning with my Dell laptop. I would take their top machine off the network and cross over cable it to the Dell, then copy all of my stuff over to the Power Mac. What I found after extensive testing is that the G4 running Java is basically MHz for MHz equivalent to a PIII.
Now, I was very happy switching to the Power Mac. Since then I have acquired a new Power Mac DP 1GHz, and an iBook 700, and both of them handle my environment very well. Of course the Power Mac is faster, but the iBook is acceptable. I would never go back to an Intel based laptop for Java development. Apple laptops are simply first rate, OS X stays out of the way, and the JVM is rock solid. I would guess that my next Apple laptop will be a PowerBook simply for the ability to pack it full of RAM.
So, get the PowerBook and come on in the waters fine,
Mark
That's funny. I remember when Red Hat was the stepping-stone to Solaris.
Mark
I find it interesting that many people here are wringing hands and bemoaning the space program. I would simply say that this is to expected. Accidents happen. Life happens. NASA is engaged in some of the most dangerous endeavours humans have ever undertaken. The reality is vehicles will be lost, people will die. It is the nature of things.
All of us undertake serious risk in pushing forward our human lot every day. Just getting in a car and going to work places us in seroius danger of our lives. You could die tomorrow. NASA is launching people into space on the backs of rockets and plunging them back into the atmosphere at incredible speeds. All to improve the lot of our species, to push the envelope, to reach for greater achievements.
Does this mean we should stop the space program? No. We should honor the lives of those lost and continue in the path they lead.
Mark
That's all, nothing more to see here. Move along...
Mark
PS: Couldn't resist.
This is a development environment for creating applications in the Eiffel programming language. Eiffel was created by Dr. Bertrand Meyer.
Eiffel is a completely OO language supporting several advanced features and particularly focused on creating safe bug free systems. It's main claim to fame is its integration of design by contract into the language with method pre and post conditions and class invariants. This allows a developer to express the possible states an object can be in, and the necessary pre and post condictions before a method can be called on an object. It also support a very safe method of expressing multiple inheritance that allows the developer to control which ancestor a method is inherited from if there is a conflict, thus allowing the developer compelte control over the inheritance of methods. It also supports garbage collection. I'm sure there are other things it supports that I'm forgetting.
Bertrand Meyer is also the author of "Object Oriented Software Construction" which has been described as: "The definitive tome on Object-Orientation..." It is well worth a read. A review was done here in 1998. I picked up the book because of that review. I personally learned a great deal from it. I had been doing OO programming for some time at that point, but after reading OOSC I "owned" the methodology. I have had every employee I have hired to do development read significant portions of it as part of their training. I can't recommend it too highly. This from a person who has never used Eiffel. What he has to say is highly valuable regardless of what OO language you are using.
MarkX
Seeing as the systems incorporates Darwin which is open source I don't really think they could keep this a secret. Anyone can download Darwin and see the implementation of the ABI. Also they have been using GCC for some time and the implementation of the ABI would also be exposed there.
At the fundamental levels of OS X, below the GUI, there is very little that Apple can dissemble about. It is OSS. Anyone can download it and read the code.
MarkX
I'm curious why you think writing the app in Cocoa would make it more portable. Cocoa is an Apple only thing. Even if you write the app in Java and use Cocoa the app will not run on Windows, or any other platform. It would require the Cocoa libraries to be present to make it work.
Now I have to admit that I'm not up to date on the GnuStep project, but last I heard there was still a lot of work to be done. The other thing is I think GnuStep is a *nix thing. Although OpenStep used to run on Windows I don't think GnuStep does, although I could be wrong, and wouldn't mind finding out that I'm wrong.
So, I don't think going back to scratch with Cocoa would be a reasonable option for this author. Most of his source base was in C++, and it would be a question of how much of that he could use in his Cocoa app, as to whether it would be worth it.
Mark
Disclaimer: I haven't read this book, but I have read many in the Addison-Wesley series on UML, RUP, etc.
Can't agree with you at all. Once you have more then a handful of members on a development team a process of some type is necessary. Otherwise you have people wandering off doing their own thing and duplicating work, or contravening major design principles.
I have personally used UML and a modification of the RUP process for projects under $50,000. My team delivered these projects under tight time and budget constraints. Without the ability to design ideas and document them ahead of time I feel we would have wasted significant time and blown the dead lines out of the water. This doesn't fly with clients.
Unfortunately some people, mainly clients, think creating diagrams of the system is busy work. I've found the easiest way to deal with that is to share the diagrams with clients and explain them as you go. This works good with activity diagrams that illustrate business processes. This helps catch errors in our perception of what the clients want before any code is commited. Once you explain that to the client they are generally sold.
The other things is unless you have a process of some type you are bound to forget things. Things will slip through the cracks. Things will get off radar. A process and UML help keep things organized.
So, I would say that the real world requires something like the Rational Unified Process once yet have more programmers than fit in a VW Bug, or you get over a handful of classes.
MarkX
Ok, I wasn't completely accurate in my description. I'm refering the display sleeping. Not sleeping the whole system. I have that set to "never" as I use the machine remotely on a regular basis.
MarkX
I went to the 100 Minutes event and picked up my copy of Jaguar and upgraded that night. Machine is a plain vanilla Quicksilver, 17" LCD and a Viewsonic PS790 monitor. (Dual heads are nice.)
Overall I would agree that things are much faster in Jaguar. Quartz Extreme definitely makes a difference. Scrolling windows in IE, Mozilla, Word, Excel, etc. are all faster. The UI in general feels crisper.
Now the issues:
Well that's enough griping for now. Overall I would say that once these issues are ironed out Jaguar is going to make the best desktop Unix out there.
MarkX
I haven't bought anything from Amazon since they sued to enforce their "one click" patent. Although I'd love the $50.00 off I can't do it. I hope someone else matches them.
MarkX
Show a documentary called "Promises" to the kids on both sides. It looks to be a powerful documentary of interviews with the children on both sides of this conflict taken over a period of five years from 1995 to 2000. The same children are interviewed over time. Over the course of the creation of the project the producers showed pictures of the Jewish kids to the Palestinian kids and vice-versa. Eventually the kids decided they wanted to meet each other. It was never the intent of the producers to put these kids together, but they did. The outcome is interesting.
I haven't seen the whole thing, but I intend to. All I have seen are out takes from the film on Fox News. As soon as it becomes available I intend to see it. I have seen another one that was done some years ago with Palestinian and Jewish persons that were resident here in the US and that was also interesting. Another one that is interesting to see, and I don't remember the name, was done with Protestant and Catholic children that were sponsored to live here in the US for a year, and interact with each other outside the context of N. Ireland, and the change in those kids was absolutely incredible.
I know this program would not solve the problem, but having both sides begin to view the other as equally human would start. Also having others, like US citizens and government officials, see that both sides have culpability in the ongoing situation I think would help. The younger generation needs to be willing to make significant changes in their leadership if they are going to achieve peace.
Continuing the off topic thread,
Mark
Me too.
This would be so helpful. The Jakarta project has gotten big, and I'm sure there are jems in there. A well written book would shorten the learning curve immensely.
Mark
This an interesting quote from TheStreet.com
"Under the 1974 Tunney Act, designed to make sure settlements with the government are in the public interest, a proposed settlement must be published in the Federal Register and undergo a 60-day public comment period before gaining approval. At the end of that period, the government has 30 days to respond to those comments. The court then determines whether the settlement is indeed in the public interest."
So the community needs to get organized and be prepared to speak to the settlement and why it is or isn't in the public interest.
MarkX
Jakarta is the project. Tomcat is one of the products of the project. In particular Tomcat is the servlet engine. I think the name of the JSP implementation is Jasper, but don't quote me on that.
Aditionally there are a lot of other things happening in the project, like application frame works, the Jakarta ORO Matcher regular expression library, and a number of other things. Take a look at the site.
Mark
Uh huh... found that out at my third degree.
Fraternally,
Bro. Mark
VanRensselaer Lodge, No. 87, F&AM of NY
Personally I picked up this book a while ago. I needed to get up to speed on JSP. It is a good read. I didn't find I needed the JSP or the Servlet specification handy to get through it, and I had only a passing familiarity with JSP when I started.
Mark and Duane deal with the subject well. The chapter on "Architecting JSP applications" is very helpful for someone coming new to the Java way. The coverage of java beans is decent, although I'm not personally a big user of them.
I would recommend the book as a good starting point for using Java as a web development platform, but as a starting point. Take a look at some of the alternatives to JSP. Personally I've moved away from JSP, and haven't used them in a single large project to date, except in a purely cursorial manner. We've since moved to using Enhydra as our framework for using Java on the web. I highly recommend it, but also check out some of the stuff over at the Jakarta Project for some other alternatives to JSP.
Mark
Have you tried the latest JDK from Sun? I have tried it, working with Enhydra, and it seems very good.
Later,
Mark
I believe the vote was ~160,000 to ~195,000 pretty much a landslide.
Mark