Minidisc could have been a success. Why? Because when it came out there wasn't an affordable CD burner, and MP3's didn't exist. I bought one of the early ones, which I have used for things like a zero-effort dance (I set up a bunch of Minidiscs with a proper set of songs on each, and just let them play an hour at a time; when there was a request, I put in the disc that had that song). Obviously no longer needed, but it was a good idea back then. But it still has a huge advantage: stability. Many (most?) radio stations now use Minidisc on the air, because, unlike a CD, it never fails. If I ever do another dance, I'll probably use Minidisc again to ensure nothing stupid happens.
Why did they fail? Because they were proprietary. That's the only reason. Other companies came out with them, but by then it was far too late. Like with home Beta, Sony needed other companies on board _before_ launching. Memory sticks will fail for the same cause (besides the fact that they're a dumb idea!).
Everybody seems to be focusing just on Zope, PHP, Perl, and ColdFusion. What about:
(1) Midgard (www.midgard-project.org). It layers on top of PHP, adding functionality, remote administration, more code generation, etc. They plan to do an NT version soon (might be more a matter of just compiling it than doing any coding).
(2) Java Server Pages. They let you embed code into pages the way you do with PHP, ASP, and the rest. But since they're Java, you don't need to learn a new syntax, and you're guaranteed to be able to do anything (remember: Java can also use Perl and C/C++ modules, so anything is fair game). And apache.org supplies a free engine for it. I use JSP's regularly, and they're great.
(3) Servlets. Yes, they're useful and powerful, and standard syntax.
(4) Cocoon (ava.apache.org/cocoon/). It's a project using COM, XML, and XSL, and will probably be the most powerful framework around (but I want to wait to see anybody use it before I try; it's difficult to be first, since there's nobody to ask how to do it!).
Your point is correct. But the ability to use a computer you already have as a general-purpose DSP is very powerful. It allows you to do it without having to add a card to your box, deal with driver / compatibility issues, etc. It lets software designers skip the step of creating hardware (that most people won't want to buy, anyway). And most importantly, it saves on costs: a software-only DSP could be downloaded free, but creating a hard-wired DSP solution means nobody will ever get the result for free.
I have some web domains, but I'm unsure on what to do about them. The ones I've been mailed about don't have the classic really easy to guess passwords (+'nsi'), but they're still pretty easy. But according to the latest info, if I go in to try to change anything, then my account is immediately accessible by anybody regardless of the password. Suggestions? Could some kind hacker please figure out a way to take down their email database permanently, to rescue us all?!
See the previous posting about Medley. It is very fast, allows dynamic changes in allocated space, and immediately makes new mirrors the moment a machine goes down (actually far more secure than most real file servers in that respect). Its only two flaws (and by only, I mean _only_) are that it doesn't have a Linux version and that it isn't free;-)
A buddy of mine (John Carter, professor at the University of Utah) was the chief architect/programmer of Mango's Medley (www.mango.com). It would be ideal. It lets you take spare space on a bunch of Win machines and use them as a virtual fileserver. The really cool thing is that is does transparent mirroring, plus if you're using a file it automatically turns your box into one of the mirrors so that it will be even faster than the fastest file server. And the company has a really cool name;-)
Problems: (1) It has only been written for Windows. But not that hard to port. (2) More serious: they initially did it on Windows because that's where they saw a larger potential customer base. But my friend, last we spoke, said that despite the practicality of the product (and winning best of show 2 or 3 years ago at Comdex) they still haven't had any substantial sales. So a port isn't likely to happen. The best would be if they opened up the source for Linux (they still have a patent on the Windows version, so it probably wouldn't be a problem), but I have no clue if they would ever consider that. Regardless, somebody needs to write such a system for Linux/BSD. Probably wouldn't even be that hard.
My proposed solution: every time an invalid software patent is allowed by our government, let's do a class action against the individual government employee(s) who approved it, on behalf of every person who uses computers and who will have to pay higher software prices to make up for legal fees of the companies unfairly targetted by the companies who receive the invalid patents. It shouldn't take long for the government employees to go bankrupt and figure out that next time they should do their job right. Of course we also need to do the same to every company that receives the invalid patents, so that they lose money by doing so. If we all signed up at maybe $1 a piece on each lawsuit, it would surely cover our end of legal fees. Oh, yeah... we need to figure out a way to do lawsuits against the lawyers representing firms who obtain false patents, so they go bankrupt spending all their time defending themselves. Ha.
(if you consider this to be flamebait, you are one of the guilty parties, and we will also find a way to sue you too!)
I'm involved in some government-funded projects at the moment (test sites for airborn-agents, simulations, etc.), and all coding we do is in Java. Very cool. In fact, they've been given an ultimatum nationally to be compatible with a large common system or lose funding within just over a year, and it's best implemented in Java.
Hmmm... Obviously I didn't participate in that fiasco. I had decided that I would wait for a replacement Amiga (which I had hoped was finally going to arrive!). But at least Phase5 has demonstrated they know how to make an Amiga work with a PPC chip, and QNX's new OS sounds like it's pretty much done. I was actually more worried about the two different companies trying to replace the Amiga in two completely different ways than just P5 doing it. At least this time there will finally be a single target. Right? Correct me if I'm wrong. But with it coming just from Phase5 I don't think it's very likely to catch on (other than in Europe, like always). It will be interesting to see what finally comes out of Transmeta now that their version of the Amiga is dead.
Phase5 (who does the best PPC and video upgrades for the Amiga) has been working on an Amiga replacement for years (the project used to be called A\\Box). They have announced a pretty sweet new version of the Amiga for early next year using the QNX kernel. They're at www.phase5.de.
Unlike Gateway, it appears they really are going to do it.
Isn't there something about the "Mark of the Beast" in the Bible, where there would be something without which you can't buy or sell anything (or do anything at all, for that matter)? This looks suspiciously close. Bible Belters help me out.
The potential good part (is that possible?!): if identity fraud becomes much more difficult, your rates for things like credit cards could drop, since a company that only allows clients in the ID system to get a card would have less fraud to make up for in their rates. It would also potentially let stores drop prices, since only accepting credit cards hooked to the photo system would drop their per-transaction price (or would it? there would be the added expense of the equipment and such).
The real issue isn't the language, it's everything else. The most useful classes and projects I have been in are the ones which focused on how to solve a problem, not how to program it in a particular language. Just like when you're teaching students how to solve math problems you don't teach them how to code it, you teach them how to _solve_ it. You're better off learning how to write down the requirements, specify the assumptions, plan for every condition, and diagram actions/algorithms. Any decent project has more time spent designing than coding. Ideally, the decision on what language to use should come fairly late in the game, when you know which would be most efficient. Far too many coders spend all their time coding first, and trying to make sense out of it later (*see Windows 95, etc.). I'll be forever convinced that Win2000 would have been done and useful ages ago if they had been willing to do a clean start on it and do it right this time instead of trying yet again to insert functionality into code that is already a lost cause. Can't be done! I would bet that truly successful programmers like Carmack at id Software don't try to just keep reusing code, but instead plan ahead for each project and start over when necessary. Carmack, for that reason, probably accomplishes more each day than 1000 programmers combined at many large companies. At my company everyone we ever recruit is someone who knows how to plan, document, coordinate, etc., not just code. And the results from that technique have been wonderful.
And many other locations. I had it as a beginner class at the University of Utah (which has a curriculum quite similar to MIT, I believe. Better, in fact;-). Wonderful language for teaching many beginning concepts (though I wouldn't want to use it in my job).
I would love to see Smalltalk catch on, but IBM's charging $4999 for a single copy of it, plus several thousand more for the matching tools. Meanwhile, they'll almost _give_ you a version of their Java compiler, which, if I remember right, is largely derived from the same code. There's also an expensive version of their Java tools, but it isn't the only option. Nobody will ever take Smalltalk seriously if they have to get a second mortgage to pay for it.
MacOS 7,8,9... no, they don't properly use multiple CPU's. But don't forget: MacOS X is more similar to BSD. More importantly, a chain of events is likely to make a many-CPU PowerPC box even more viable: (1) SGI is donating much of their source to Linux (2) they're likely to donate their multiprocessor code (3) Linux on PPC could use this in Linux to scale to hundreds of CPU's. Oh, yeah: (4) G4 chips are awesome, and will give a wonderful return on the investment in such a machine.
I think it's time for us to team together and try to make Unisys go bankrupt. Why don't we file a class-action suit against them to prove financial damages caused by the GIF format? We can show that it's 256-color format is a useless and that they should have to pay all of us who have sites using it for our costs in converting our web sites to a proper format.
I'm sure in the near future an extremely high-profile case will finally end the capability of law enforcement to steal property from everybody. It's not evidence if it isn't being examined, used in court, returned as soon as possible, and pertinent, so yes, they are _stealing_ huge amounts of property. There will surely be a case where one of two things happens:
1) Law enforcement goes to jail
or
2) Law enforcement has to pay an obscene amount in a class action, and suddenly all of the different groups get targetted by all of their past victims
It will only take one good victory to end the illegal actions by our so-called public servants. The moment the enforcers of the law consider themselves immune to the law, it's time to overhaul / replace / destroy the system.
After all of his free efforts, I think he ought to say he's only available for $1000/hour consulting (but could make an exception when it's someone he would actually like to speak with). That way it's worth his time when he has to put up with clueless reporters asking the same meaningless questions.
A project I did a while back was (because the contract said so) the first major Java-and-XML-based commercial app around (IBM bragged about us because we were the first game in town using their tools).
Problem: it was a web-based app which could have been completed several months faster (and just as easy to use) if we had done the GUI in HTML instead of XML-defined Java (the XML part was cool, and would have translated well to dynamic HTML, but using Java instead for the actual interface was pretty pointless).
The new one in Java is based heavily on NextStep, has great tools (Inprise, IBM, others), is way too easy to program, is quite fast (it now takes advantage of what systems can do natively), and has a cool system that lets you dynamically plug a look and feel into a program (instantaneously make it look like Mac, Next, Windoze, Unix,... whatever). And it's instantly portable to _anything_, including things far from Linux/BSD/UNIX. Seems pretty obvious to me. Besides, lately it's about the only one I've been allowed by contract to use when I code for the military, the medical industry, or whoever, mainly due to the portability.
The _REAL_ issue is that software shouldn't be sold the way it is. If I want to do something with a high-end program just once, I obviously can't justify purchasing it for hundreds or thousands of dollars. The problem is that most of the high-end apps are priced for someone who will use them 40+ hours a week.
The solution is, once you have a fast line, to run applications remotely. I think the ideal would be somewhat like signing up for cable or satellite service, where you would maybe for $20+ a month get a broad selection of apps you can use (and the companies who created the apps would get revenues based on use, the way radio stations pay musicians for airplay of songs). This would let computer illiterates use computers too, since apps wouldn't have to be installed and maintained locally.
To access the really high-end apps, you would pay a larger monthly fee. Obviously some apps (e.g. real-time video editing) would take more bandwidth than anybody has, but applications could be local (self-installing from the web) and require a connection to the web to function for a session (like how Starcraft asks for the CD to start it up).
I have the DishNetwork box that includes an all-digital variation on VHS (DVHS). On the music channels I can record at CD quality, with onscreen titling and everything, and no commercials. When I have a handful of songs I like, I can run them through the computer (never hits analog format) and.... hooray! Perfect MP3 files. Not the easiest way to do it, but I can leave it recording for 5 hours overnight when it's not in use (I'm paying for it; may as well get what I can out of it).
It makes all of the hardware used for rendering for movies look like a waste, doesn't it?! (Makes 3dfx and the rest look pretty bad as well!)Playstation 2 could probably do a fairly convincing job rendering something along the lines of Toy Story in real time (and well beyond what's needed for shows like South Park, which also uses some pretty serious hardware). This may be one of the most significant electronic products ever. I want to figure out how to set their chips up in parallel (like you can do with TNT2 chips) to render a real movie in real time.
If everything vaguely related to computers were common knowledge to every/. user, there wouldn't be much point in having/. at all. I'm sure there are many areas in computers you wouldn't have a clue in, and another/. user will hopefully do you the favor of pointing out what an idiot you are when you don't know something that to them was obvious.
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Minidisc could have been a success. Why? Because when it came out there wasn't an affordable CD burner, and MP3's didn't exist. I bought one of the early ones, which I have used for things like a zero-effort dance (I set up a bunch of Minidiscs with a proper set of songs on each, and just let them play an hour at a time; when there was a request, I put in the disc that had that song). Obviously no longer needed, but it was a good idea back then. But it still has a huge advantage: stability. Many (most?) radio stations now use Minidisc on the air, because, unlike a CD, it never fails. If I ever do another dance, I'll probably use Minidisc again to ensure nothing stupid happens.
Why did they fail? Because they were proprietary. That's the only reason. Other companies came out with them, but by then it was far too late. Like with home Beta, Sony needed other companies on board _before_ launching. Memory sticks will fail for the same cause (besides the fact that they're a dumb idea!).
Everybody seems to be focusing just on Zope, PHP, Perl, and ColdFusion. What about:
(1) Midgard (www.midgard-project.org). It layers on top of PHP, adding functionality, remote administration, more code generation, etc. They plan to do an NT version soon (might be more a matter of just compiling it than doing any coding).
(2) Java Server Pages. They let you embed code into pages the way you do with PHP, ASP, and the rest. But since they're Java, you don't need to learn a new syntax, and you're guaranteed to be able to do anything (remember: Java can also use Perl and C/C++ modules, so anything is fair game). And apache.org supplies a free engine for it. I use JSP's regularly, and they're great.
(3) Servlets. Yes, they're useful and powerful, and standard syntax.
(4) Cocoon (ava.apache.org/cocoon/). It's a project using COM, XML, and XSL, and will probably be the most powerful framework around (but I want to wait to see anybody use it before I try; it's difficult to be first, since there's nobody to ask how to do it!).
Your point is correct. But the ability to use a computer you already have as a general-purpose DSP is very powerful. It allows you to do it without having to add a card to your box, deal with driver / compatibility issues, etc. It lets software designers skip the step of creating hardware (that most people won't want to buy, anyway). And most importantly, it saves on costs: a software-only DSP could be downloaded free, but creating a hard-wired DSP solution means nobody will ever get the result for free.
I have some web domains, but I'm unsure on what to do about them. The ones I've been mailed about don't have the classic really easy to guess passwords (+'nsi'), but they're still pretty easy. But according to the latest info, if I go in to try to change anything, then my account is immediately accessible by anybody regardless of the password. Suggestions? Could some kind hacker please figure out a way to take down their email database permanently, to rescue us all?!
See the previous posting about Medley. It is very fast, allows dynamic changes in allocated space, and immediately makes new mirrors the moment a machine goes down (actually far more secure than most real file servers in that respect). Its only two flaws (and by only, I mean _only_) are that it doesn't have a Linux version and that it isn't free ;-)
A buddy of mine (John Carter, professor at the University of Utah) was the chief architect/programmer of Mango's Medley (www.mango.com). It would be ideal. It lets you take spare space on a bunch of Win machines and use them as a virtual fileserver. The really cool thing is that is does transparent mirroring, plus if you're using a file it automatically turns your box into one of the mirrors so that it will be even faster than the fastest file server. And the company has a really cool name ;-)
Problems:
(1) It has only been written for Windows. But not that hard to port.
(2) More serious: they initially did it on Windows because that's where they saw a larger potential customer base. But my friend, last we spoke, said that despite the practicality of the product (and winning best of show 2 or 3 years ago at Comdex) they still haven't had any substantial sales. So a port isn't likely to happen. The best would be if they opened up the source for Linux (they still have a patent on the Windows version, so it probably wouldn't be a problem), but I have no clue if they would ever consider that. Regardless, somebody needs to write such a system for Linux/BSD. Probably wouldn't even be that hard.
Then a malicious attack on the civil rights of computer geeks it is! ;-)
My proposed solution: every time an invalid software patent is allowed by our government, let's do a class action against the individual government employee(s) who approved it, on behalf of every person who uses computers and who will have to pay higher software prices to make up for legal fees of the companies unfairly targetted by the companies who receive the invalid patents. It shouldn't take long for the government employees to go bankrupt and figure out that next time they should do their job right. Of course we also need to do the same to every company that receives the invalid patents, so that they lose money by doing so. If we all signed up at maybe $1 a piece on each lawsuit, it would surely cover our end of legal fees. Oh, yeah... we need to figure out a way to do lawsuits against the lawyers representing firms who obtain false patents, so they go bankrupt spending all their time defending themselves. Ha.
(if you consider this to be flamebait, you are one of the guilty parties, and we will also find a way to sue you too!)
I'm involved in some government-funded projects at the moment (test sites for airborn-agents, simulations, etc.), and all coding we do is in Java. Very cool. In fact, they've been given an ultimatum nationally to be compatible with a large common system or lose funding within just over a year, and it's best implemented in Java.
Hmmm... Obviously I didn't participate in that fiasco. I had decided that I would wait for a replacement Amiga (which I had hoped was finally going to arrive!). But at least Phase5 has demonstrated they know how to make an Amiga work with a PPC chip, and QNX's new OS sounds like it's pretty much done. I was actually more worried about the two different companies trying to replace the Amiga in two completely different ways than just P5 doing it. At least this time there will finally be a single target. Right? Correct me if I'm wrong. But with it coming just from Phase5 I don't think it's very likely to catch on (other than in Europe, like always). It will be interesting to see what finally comes out of Transmeta now that their version of the Amiga is dead.
Phase5 (who does the best PPC and video upgrades for the Amiga) has been working on an Amiga replacement for years (the project used to be called A\\Box). They have announced a pretty sweet new version of the Amiga for early next year using the QNX kernel. They're at www.phase5.de.
Unlike Gateway, it appears they really are going to do it.
Isn't there something about the "Mark of the Beast" in the Bible, where there would be something without which you can't buy or sell anything (or do anything at all, for that matter)? This looks suspiciously close. Bible Belters help me out.
The potential good part (is that possible?!): if identity fraud becomes much more difficult, your rates for things like credit cards could drop, since a company that only allows clients in the ID system to get a card would have less fraud to make up for in their rates. It would also potentially let stores drop prices, since only accepting credit cards hooked to the photo system would drop their per-transaction price (or would it? there would be the added expense of the equipment and such).
Like it or not, it's on its way.
The real issue isn't the language, it's everything else. The most useful classes and projects I have been in are the ones which focused on how to solve a problem, not how to program it in a particular language. Just like when you're teaching students how to solve math problems you don't teach them how to code it, you teach them how to _solve_ it. You're better off learning how to write down the requirements, specify the assumptions, plan for every condition, and diagram actions/algorithms. Any decent project has more time spent designing than coding. Ideally, the decision on what language to use should come fairly late in the game, when you know which would be most efficient. Far too many coders spend all their time coding first, and trying to make sense out of it later (*see Windows 95, etc.). I'll be forever convinced that Win2000 would have been done and useful ages ago if they had been willing to do a clean start on it and do it right this time instead of trying yet again to insert functionality into code that is already a lost cause. Can't be done! I would bet that truly successful programmers like Carmack at id Software don't try to just keep reusing code, but instead plan ahead for each project and start over when necessary. Carmack, for that reason, probably accomplishes more each day than 1000 programmers combined at many large companies. At my company everyone we ever recruit is someone who knows how to plan, document, coordinate, etc., not just code. And the results from that technique have been wonderful.
And many other locations. I had it as a beginner class at the University of Utah (which has a curriculum quite similar to MIT, I believe. Better, in fact ;-). Wonderful language for teaching many beginning concepts (though I wouldn't want to use it in my job).
I would love to see Smalltalk catch on, but IBM's charging $4999 for a single copy of it, plus several thousand more for the matching tools. Meanwhile, they'll almost _give_ you a version of their Java compiler, which, if I remember right, is largely derived from the same code. There's also an expensive version of their Java tools, but it isn't the only option. Nobody will ever take Smalltalk seriously if they have to get a second mortgage to pay for it.
MacOS 7,8,9... no, they don't properly use multiple CPU's. But don't forget: MacOS X is more similar to BSD. More importantly, a chain of events is likely to make a many-CPU PowerPC box even more viable: (1) SGI is donating much of their source to Linux (2) they're likely to donate their multiprocessor code (3) Linux on PPC could use this in Linux to scale to hundreds of CPU's. Oh, yeah: (4) G4 chips are awesome, and will give a wonderful return on the investment in such a machine.
I think it's time for us to team together and try to make Unisys go bankrupt. Why don't we file a class-action suit against them to prove financial damages caused by the GIF format? We can show that it's 256-color format is a useless and that they should have to pay all of us who have sites using it for our costs in converting our web sites to a proper format.
I'm sure in the near future an extremely high-profile case will finally end the capability of law enforcement to steal property from everybody. It's not evidence if it isn't being examined, used in court, returned as soon as possible, and pertinent, so yes, they are _stealing_ huge amounts of property. There will surely be a case where one of two things happens:
1) Law enforcement goes to jail
or
2) Law enforcement has to pay an obscene amount in a class action, and suddenly all of the different groups get targetted by all of their past victims
It will only take one good victory to end the illegal actions by our so-called public servants. The moment the enforcers of the law consider themselves immune to the law, it's time to overhaul / replace / destroy the system.
After all of his free efforts, I think he ought to say he's only available for $1000/hour consulting (but could make an exception when it's someone he would actually like to speak with). That way it's worth his time when he has to put up with clueless reporters asking the same meaningless questions.
A project I did a while back was (because the contract said so) the first major Java-and-XML-based commercial app around (IBM bragged about us because we were the first game in town using their tools).
Problem: it was a web-based app which could have been completed several months faster (and just as easy to use) if we had done the GUI in HTML instead of XML-defined Java (the XML part was cool, and would have translated well to dynamic HTML, but using Java instead for the actual interface was pretty pointless).
So sometimes HTML is better.
The new one in Java is based heavily on NextStep, has great tools (Inprise, IBM, others), is way too easy to program, is quite fast (it now takes advantage of what systems can do natively), and has a cool system that lets you dynamically plug a look and feel into a program (instantaneously make it look like Mac, Next, Windoze, Unix, ... whatever). And it's instantly portable to _anything_, including things far from Linux/BSD/UNIX. Seems pretty obvious to me. Besides, lately it's about the only one I've been allowed by contract to use when I code for the military, the medical industry, or whoever, mainly due to the portability.
The _REAL_ issue is that software shouldn't be sold the way it is. If I want to do something with a high-end program just once, I obviously can't justify purchasing it for hundreds or thousands of dollars. The problem is that most of the high-end apps are priced for someone who will use them 40+ hours a week.
The solution is, once you have a fast line, to run applications remotely. I think the ideal would be somewhat like signing up for cable or satellite service, where you would maybe for $20+ a month get a broad selection of apps you can use (and the companies who created the apps would get revenues based on use, the way radio stations pay musicians for airplay of songs). This would let computer illiterates use computers too, since apps wouldn't have to be installed and maintained locally.
To access the really high-end apps, you would pay a larger monthly fee. Obviously some apps (e.g. real-time video editing) would take more bandwidth than anybody has, but applications could be local (self-installing from the web) and require a connection to the web to function for a session (like how Starcraft asks for the CD to start it up).
An unknown option:
I have the DishNetwork box that includes an all-digital variation on VHS (DVHS). On the music channels I can record at CD quality, with onscreen titling and everything, and no commercials. When I have a handful of songs I like, I can run them through the computer (never hits analog format) and.... hooray! Perfect MP3 files. Not the easiest way to do it, but I can leave it recording for 5 hours overnight when it's not in use (I'm paying for it; may as well get what I can out of it).
It makes all of the hardware used for rendering for movies look like a waste, doesn't it?! (Makes 3dfx and the rest look pretty bad as well!)Playstation 2 could probably do a fairly convincing job rendering something along the lines of Toy Story in real time (and well beyond what's needed for shows like South Park, which also uses some pretty serious hardware). This may be one of the most significant electronic products ever. I want to figure out how to set their chips up in parallel (like you can do with TNT2 chips) to render a real movie in real time.
If everything vaguely related to computers were common knowledge to every /. user, there wouldn't be much point in having /. at all. I'm sure there are many areas in computers you wouldn't have a clue in, and another /. user will hopefully do you the favor of pointing out what an idiot you are when you don't know something that to them was obvious.