"So far, Java seems like a stinker to me. I've never written a Java program, never more than glanced over reference books about it, but I have a hunch that it won't be a very successful language. I may turn out to be mistaken; making predictions about technology is a dangerous business. But for what it's worth, as a sort of time capsule, here's why I don't like the look of Java:
"1. It has been so energetically hyped. Real standards don't have to be promoted. No one had to promote C, or Unix, or HTML. A real standard tends to be already established by the time most people hear about it. On the hacker radar screen, Perl is as big as Java, or bigger, just on the strength of its own merits.
"2. It's aimed low. In the original Java white paper, Gosling explicitly says Java was designed not to be too difficult for programmers used to C. It was designed to be another C++: C plus a few ideas taken from more advanced languages. Like the creators of sitcoms or junk food or package tours, Java's designers were consciously designing a product for people not as smart as them. Historically, languages designed for other people to use have been bad: Cobol, PL/I, Pascal, Ada, C++. The good languages have been those that were designed for their own creators: C, Perl, Smalltalk, Lisp.
"3. It has ulterior motives. Someone once said that the world would be a better place if people only wrote books because they had something to say, rather than because they wanted to write a book. Likewise, the reason we hear about Java all the time is not because it has something to say about programming languages. We hear about Java as part of a plan by Sun to undermine Microsoft.
"4. No one loves it. C, Perl, Python, Smalltalk, and Lisp programmers love their languages. I've never heard anyone say that they loved Java.
"5. People are forced to use it. A lot of the people I know using Java are using it because they feel they have to. Either it's something they felt they had to do to get funded, or something they thought customers would want, or something they were told to do by management. These are smart people; if the technology was good, they'd have used it voluntarily.
"6. It has too many cooks. The best programming languages have been developed by small groups. Java seems to be run by a committee. If it turns out to be a good language, it will be the first time in history that a committee has designed a good language.
"7. It's bureaucratic. From what little I know about Java, there seem to be a lot of protocols for doing things. Really good languages aren't like that. They let you do what you want and get out of the way.
"8. It's pseudo-hip. Sun now pretends that Java is a grassroots, open-source language effort like Perl or Python. This one just happens to be controlled by a giant company. So the language is likely to have the same drab clunkiness as anything else that comes out of a big company.
"9. It's designed for large organizations. Large organizations have different aims from hackers. They want languages that are (believed to be) suitable for use by large teams of mediocre programmers-- languages with features that, like the speed limiters in U-Haul trucks, prevent fools from doing too much damage. Hackers don't like a language that talks down to them. Hackers just want power. Historically, languages designed for large organizations (PL/I, Ada) have lost, while hacker languages (C, Perl) have won. The reason: today's teenage hacker is tomorrow's CTO.
"10. The wrong people like it. The programmers I admire most are not, on the whole, captivated by Java. Who does like Java? Suits, who don't know one language from another, but know that they keep hearing about Java in the press; programmers at big companies, who are amazed to find that there is something even better than C++; and plug-and-chug undergrads, who are ready to like anything that might get them a job (will this be on the test?). These people's opin
Re:welcome to commoditisation
on
You've Got PC
·
· Score: 1
"the AOL Systemax PC runs on the award-winning Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition operating system for incomparable performance and stability"
"Perhaps the FBI is hoping that WHEN someone places a bomb in a locker, they'll be more easily able to identify the perp because their finger print will still be stored in the system...?"
Because a computer right next to the location of an explosion will store its data reliably?
Because el-cheapo scanners have enough resolution to uniquely identify somone in a crowd of more than 50 people? (say, to a resolution of one person in 60 million?)
Because you can accurately identify people by their fingerprints?
Because the address on file for a person newly revealed as a terrorist, is likely to still be correct on the day after an attack?
"Do many people put links in away messages anyway?"
They do now...
Hmm, each AOL user who visits my website gets an advertisement for it inserted into their away message... decisions, decisions. And they're AOL users, so I don't even care if they decide not to return to my website.
"If you're emailing from your work account you are declaring it's *business* email."
Haha. very good. Actually you don't declare anything. In my case, if it's business mail, I move it to a shared folder. You presume too much about other peoples' contracts, or lack of detail thereof.
"If you so happen to send personal email via your work account that's your fault."
Keep telling yourself that as you read your employees' resignation letters. They weren't unhappy about working with you, honest...
"But how do they know that what you sent was a personal email, without reading it?"
It's encrypted. Best possible way of marking your emails as "private", imho, closely followed by interspersing your personal emails with ones containing malicious javascript that your boss' computer is vulnerable to...
"It will be interesting to see if Dell can shake off it's grey box image and entice the more fussy gamers and enthusiasts."
I think Dell's reputation is for black boxes, and they've shaken that off by making this one blue...;-)
From the review: "The power button sits impressively in the top right hand corner and moodily glows yellow when switched on."
Okay, very nice. Looks exactly like a normal dell case to me, complete with the silly front-panel door that always falls off, the interior layout set in stone, with the assumption that nothing will ever be replaced inside, and the 2-man-lift bulk of a computer so large it doesn't fit in any normal location. I never noticed how 'moody' the power lights were before though. Presumably I should be downright spooked by seeing 20 of them illuminating us at work.
It's an interesting review, with no mention of anything important. Do we really care how smart and silvery the Dell logo is, when the technical aspect of this review is limited to mentioning the CPU speed, and the name of the graphics card?
"As mozilla is a cross platform application, it should be able to work with the same offline e-mails.. lets say stored in a fat32 partition, so we could write to it from linux as from windows."
In MozillaMail, you could do this by setting the mail folder to: "/mnt/win_c/documents\ and\ settings/username/.mozilla/default/something.slt/ Mail/mail"
Windows can't read linux partitions (and most people wouldn't trust it with write-access to their linux data anyway), so it's not so easy the other way around.
The general solution would be to put your mail on a USB key if its small enough, or your ipod if it's not, and mount that from either OS.
For anyone seriously needing to migrate from a webmail provider, there are various Perl tools such as yahoo mail downloader.
If your favourite web-based data source doesn't already have a tool to access it using Perl, there are also web-scraper modules (and LWP) which make it easy to build your own. Remember to put it on CPAN if you create something new.
"The tool must export to postscript, support fonts, boxes with multiple lines of text, and connections between these boxes."
OpenOffice Draw is so perfect for this job that it's not even an interesting question. Imagine something like Visio, but better, Free, and native to linux. Doesn't crash like Dia, easier to use, more versatile, and handles all the "linked boxes with translucent backgrounds and text some of which is in different colours or styles" that you'll ever need.
I assume that "print to file" generates some sort of postscript output, but it certainly supports saving as PDF, in addition to bitmap output options. You do know that ImageMagick makes it trivial to convert between images, PS, and PDF from the command-line?
"If voting is anonymous it cannot be completely auditable and secure."
You'll understand we need a proof to believe your assertion, or a link to a proof published on the web? Nothing personal, just that established and reputable cryptographers have proved that it is possible to have anonymous auditable secure voting systems, and if we are to believe your comment, you need to provide a proof more convincing than theirs.
Well.... what else was she supposed to say? "Parry Aftab is one of the leading experts, worldwide, on cybercrime, Internet privacy and cyber-abuse issues."
Apparently, she thinks she's in the same league as Lawrence Lessig...
"Quick, somebody publish a book called "agirlslifeonline.com" and sue them!"
There was a suggestion that Katie (the real Katie) publish a book entitled "penguin.com". According to penguin's reasoning, the author of a book by that name ought to be able to strongarm the holder of a domain-name, regardless of legalities or trademark law or public-opinion..
Sorry penguin, I'm not buying your books in the future, even though many friends of mine write for you. Some behaviour is inexcusable.
"Just because I was here before there was even a registration system shouldn't count for anything. Its like those people who used to think they were cool because they had really low ICQ numbers."
Soon we'll all be able to say we were on slashdot before it started crashing all the time. Those were the days...
"Depending on the purpose of the flight (screwing around or actually going somewhere), and where you were going, it was generally easier to follow the 401 (4 lane highway) than it was to figure out a bearing/heading. That part of the province has got a whack of highways that are pretty easy to distinguish from the air."
So is there a campaign to get road-signs which are visible from the air? "M1 North -->" drawn in a field with a crop-circle or something?
Does anyone remember the documentaries on old East Germany, where they revealed the buildings-full of telephone recording equipment, and said that the communist government had spent more money on equipment for monitoring telephone conversations than they did on the network itself?
People were shocked at how bad a government would have to be to do that to its people. The consensus amonst people who watched the program was that it showed how much better our society is than theirs. "What an evil place to live that must have been..."
"It's their content. Why do you expect them to give it to you and get nothing in return?"
We don't. If it's not available, we won't use it. The washington post is quite welcome to delete their website if they wish. In fact, I'd like to call the bluff of everyone who moans about people using their website for free and how they have to have adverts and subscriptions. Go ahead. Delete your pathetic little website.
See, we phrase the question the other way around. "What do you offer which is worth me viewing adverts or giving you personal information?" Probably very little. See, if your website disappeared tomorrow, I probably wouldn't even notice. The news stories are worth the effort of going to a free website, but only just. It is not even remotely worth $20 of personal information (name, address, salary, phone). There are so many people who are generous enough to share their thoughts, news, programs, music, web-services, or data for free, that I'd prefer to see a paid service disappear, than to encourage the idea that websites should be cash-generators. The websites will work this out eventually, but not before they enter the dying spiral of no subscribers, no ad revenue, and lack of reputation which eventually kills each of the websites who're in it for advertising-money.
How many of you use the oxford english dictionary, where you can't see more than the front page without a subscription? How many of you have donated money to Wikipedia, despite it being free to use?
'"OK, so the primary use of our registration information is for targeting ads," admitted Donald W. Marshall, a spokesman for The Washington Post'
Welcome, Donald Duck, to the Washington Post. Have you tried the internet privacy software offered by our partners? Join EFF now, and get a free subscription to anonymizer.com! These offers are available within 50 miles of your location in CA, 90210.
Free Software can't pay for patent licenses, no matter how trivial the cost, because they'd require an infinite number of licenses for anything they distribute under the GPL.
You make a living preventing other people from having their own ideas which are too similar to yours. You make a living stifling competition, preventing innovation, and obstructing other peoples' work. [ok, that's just a guess, but somebody who makes money off patents, rather than from producing saleable products, will normally fit that description]
"Should I go fucking die just because I want some credit for doing something better than my opposition?"
Well maybe. But the non-fatal plan would be to compete in a free market like everyone else, not to go grovelling to the government asking them to prevent anyone from competing with you.
Remember: if you copyright software, you prevent people from using your work without permission. if you patent something, you prevent them from doing anything even remotely similar, no matter who did all the hard work. Copyright prevents you from distributing Doom3. Patents prevent you from writing games with 3D sound in.
"From the product web page: (Note for SuSE Linux: MultiBay DVD+RW and Intel PRO wireless not supported.) And the base price has changed since the article was published."
If you remove the wireless card from the options (which won't work anyway), and swap the DVD/RW for a normal CD drive, then it seems to reduce the price. I presume it has ethernet, regardless of wifi options?
As to O/S price, they seem to be selling Suse for the same price as Windows XP Home (both cause the notebook to be $50 less than with Windows XP Pro)
Of course, as none of this is relevant to those of us in the UK, it looks like I'll be keeping YellowDog bookmarked for laptops...
Slashdot Mirror
"the AOL Systemax PC runs on the award-winning Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition operating system for incomparable performance and stability"
Incomparable indeed...
"Perhaps the FBI is hoping that WHEN someone places a bomb in a locker, they'll be more easily able to identify the perp because their finger print will still be stored in the system...?"
Because a computer right next to the location of an explosion will store its data reliably?
Because el-cheapo scanners have enough resolution to uniquely identify somone in a crowd of more than 50 people? (say, to a resolution of one person in 60 million?)
Because you can accurately identify people by their fingerprints?
Because the address on file for a person newly revealed as a terrorist, is likely to still be correct on the day after an attack?
"It's been done. Not only that it's been patented."
you say that as if there is usually a disjunction between the two events...
"Do many people put links in away messages anyway?"
They do now...
Hmm, each AOL user who visits my website gets an advertisement for it inserted into their away message... decisions, decisions. And they're AOL users, so I don't even care if they decide not to return to my website.
"If you're emailing from your work account you are declaring it's *business* email."
Haha. very good. Actually you don't declare anything. In my case, if it's business mail, I move it to a shared folder. You presume too much about other peoples' contracts, or lack of detail thereof.
"If you so happen to send personal email via your work account that's your fault."
Keep telling yourself that as you read your employees' resignation letters. They weren't unhappy about working with you, honest...
"They can read whatever they want."
Did I mention it was encrypted?
"But how do they know that what you sent was a personal email, without reading it?"
It's encrypted. Best possible way of marking your emails as "private", imho, closely followed by interspersing your personal emails with ones containing malicious javascript that your boss' computer is vulnerable to...
"It will be interesting to see if Dell can shake off it's grey box image and entice the more fussy gamers and enthusiasts."
;-)
I think Dell's reputation is for black boxes, and they've shaken that off by making this one blue...
From the review: "The power button sits impressively in the top right hand corner and moodily glows yellow when switched on."
Okay, very nice. Looks exactly like a normal dell case to me, complete with the silly front-panel door that always falls off, the interior layout set in stone, with the assumption that nothing will ever be replaced inside, and the 2-man-lift bulk of a computer so large it doesn't fit in any normal location. I never noticed how 'moody' the power lights were before though. Presumably I should be downright spooked by seeing 20 of them illuminating us at work.
It's an interesting review, with no mention of anything important. Do we really care how smart and silvery the Dell logo is, when the technical aspect of this review is limited to mentioning the CPU speed, and the name of the graphics card?
"Please post citations (links) to such proofs."
Of course
"As mozilla is a cross platform application, it should be able to work with the same offline e-mails.. lets say stored in a fat32 partition, so we could write to it from linux as from windows."
In MozillaMail, you could do this by setting the mail folder to:
"/mnt/win_c/documents\ and\ settings/username/.mozilla/default/something.slt/ Mail/mail"
Windows can't read linux partitions (and most people wouldn't trust it with write-access to their linux data anyway), so it's not so easy the other way around.
The general solution would be to put your mail on a USB key if its small enough, or your ipod if it's not, and mount that from either OS.
For anyone seriously needing to migrate from a webmail provider, there are various Perl tools such as yahoo mail downloader.
If your favourite web-based data source doesn't already have a tool to access it using Perl, there are also web-scraper modules (and LWP) which make it easy to build your own. Remember to put it on CPAN if you create something new.
"The tool must export to postscript, support fonts, boxes with multiple lines of text, and connections between these boxes."
OpenOffice Draw is so perfect for this job that it's not even an interesting question. Imagine something like Visio, but better, Free, and native to linux. Doesn't crash like Dia, easier to use, more versatile, and handles all the "linked boxes with translucent backgrounds and text some of which is in different colours or styles" that you'll ever need.
I assume that "print to file" generates some sort of postscript output, but it certainly supports saving as PDF, in addition to bitmap output options. You do know that ImageMagick makes it trivial to convert between images, PS, and PDF from the command-line?
"If voting is anonymous it cannot be completely auditable and secure."
You'll understand we need a proof to believe your assertion, or a link to a proof published on the web? Nothing personal, just that established and reputable cryptographers have proved that it is possible to have anonymous auditable secure voting systems, and if we are to believe your comment, you need to provide a proof more convincing than theirs.
Well.... what else was she supposed to say?
"Parry Aftab is one of the leading experts, worldwide, on cybercrime, Internet privacy and cyber-abuse issues."
Apparently, she thinks she's in the same league as Lawrence Lessig...
Okay, stop laughing before you choke...
"Quick, somebody publish a book called "agirlslifeonline.com" and sue them!"
There was a suggestion that Katie (the real Katie) publish a book entitled "penguin.com". According to penguin's reasoning, the author of a book by that name ought to be able to strongarm the holder of a domain-name, regardless of legalities or trademark law or public-opinion..
Sorry penguin, I'm not buying your books in the future, even though many friends of mine write for you. Some behaviour is inexcusable.
"I have a solitary Windows machine at home for gaming. Lots of nice hardware to play great games."
Dude, you can do it!
Minesweeper
Hearts
Solitaire
Maj-jongg
"Just because I was here before there was even a registration system shouldn't count for anything. Its like those people who used to think they were cool because they had really low ICQ numbers."
Soon we'll all be able to say we were on slashdot before it started crashing all the time. Those were the days...
"Depending on the purpose of the flight (screwing around or actually going somewhere), and where you were going, it was generally easier to follow the 401 (4 lane highway) than it was to figure out a bearing/heading. That part of the province has got a whack of highways that are pretty easy to distinguish from the air."
So is there a campaign to get road-signs which are visible from the air? "M1 North -->" drawn in a field with a crop-circle or something?
Does anyone remember the documentaries on old East Germany, where they revealed the buildings-full of telephone recording equipment, and said that the communist government had spent more money on equipment for monitoring telephone conversations than they did on the network itself?
People were shocked at how bad a government would have to be to do that to its people. The consensus amonst people who watched the program was that it showed how much better our society is than theirs. "What an evil place to live that must have been..."
"It's their content. Why do you expect them to give it to you and get nothing in return?"
We don't. If it's not available, we won't use it. The washington post is quite welcome to delete their website if they wish. In fact, I'd like to call the bluff of everyone who moans about people using their website for free and how they have to have adverts and subscriptions. Go ahead. Delete your pathetic little website.
See, we phrase the question the other way around. "What do you offer which is worth me viewing adverts or giving you personal information?" Probably very little. See, if your website disappeared tomorrow, I probably wouldn't even notice. The news stories are worth the effort of going to a free website, but only just. It is not even remotely worth $20 of personal information (name, address, salary, phone). There are so many people who are generous enough to share their thoughts, news, programs, music, web-services, or data for free, that I'd prefer to see a paid service disappear, than to encourage the idea that websites should be cash-generators. The websites will work this out eventually, but not before they enter the dying spiral of no subscribers, no ad revenue, and lack of reputation which eventually kills each of the websites who're in it for advertising-money.
How many of you use the oxford english dictionary, where you can't see more than the front page without a subscription? How many of you have donated money to Wikipedia, despite it being free to use?
"So I'm not the only non-beverly hills type who enters 90210 as a zip code?"
Go ahead, treat yourself!
'"OK, so the primary use of our registration information is for targeting ads," admitted Donald W. Marshall, a spokesman for The Washington Post'
Welcome, Donald Duck, to the Washington Post. Have you tried the internet privacy software offered by our partners? Join EFF now, and get a free subscription to anonymizer.com! These offers are available within 50 miles of your location in CA, 90210.
"How is this issue specific to linux?"
Free Software can't pay for patent licenses, no matter how trivial the cost, because they'd require an infinite number of licenses for anything they distribute under the GPL.
"I make a living. Selling ideas."
You make a living preventing other people from having their own ideas which are too similar to yours. You make a living stifling competition, preventing innovation, and obstructing other peoples' work. [ok, that's just a guess, but somebody who makes money off patents, rather than from producing saleable products, will normally fit that description]
"Should I go fucking die just because I want some credit for doing something better than my opposition?"
Well maybe. But the non-fatal plan would be to compete in a free market like everyone else, not to go grovelling to the government asking them to prevent anyone from competing with you.
Remember: if you copyright software, you prevent people from using your work without permission. if you patent something, you prevent them from doing anything even remotely similar, no matter who did all the hard work. Copyright prevents you from distributing Doom3. Patents prevent you from writing games with 3D sound in.
"From the product web page: (Note for SuSE Linux: MultiBay DVD+RW and Intel PRO wireless not supported.) And the base price has changed since the article was published."
If you remove the wireless card from the options (which won't work anyway), and swap the DVD/RW for a normal CD drive, then it seems to reduce the price. I presume it has ethernet, regardless of wifi options?
As to O/S price, they seem to be selling Suse for the same price as Windows XP Home (both cause the notebook to be $50 less than with Windows XP Pro)
Of course, as none of this is relevant to those of us in the UK, it looks like I'll be keeping YellowDog bookmarked for laptops...