By business applications, we actually do mean applications that run on servers. That is where Java is king. Very few real business apps are actual desktop apps. Thus real large business don't have to worry about pushing out updates to their users, they just upgrade their servers.
Java is one of the most popular programming languages today. It is arguably the default language for modern business applications. You may not like it, but that does mean it is doomed.
That being said, this seems like a strange move for sun. Their influence over Java is already fading, and this only makes them look more like a one trick pony that has only really made one worthwhile contribution to the IT industry.
Well, cheap is a relative term. The Voyager program has already cost hundreds of millions of dollars and to this day still costs millions each year to maintain. And Cassini-Huygens cost several billion.
And probes really can't be shot out willy-nilly, at least not if you want them to visit things we might consider interesting. The planets have to be aligned (literally) in order for it to be economical for them to visit specific targets in a timely fashion. For instance the Planetary Grand Tour that Voyager 2 took won't be available again until the middle of the 22nd century. And most of space is empty and boring, so if you don't have those targets you might as well be loading the rocket full of hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and sending that directly into space.
Manned space exploration has the advantage in that you are giving the space program a goal for it to work towards. The Apollo program motivated many advancements, not to mention engineers, because it had an achievable but difficult high profile goal for NASA to reach for.
Site seems to be back up, here is what he had to say:
I suspect a lot of people really don't much like CVS, so I didn't really even expect anybody to argue that CVS was really anything but a legacy system. And while I've gotten a few people who argued that I shouldn't have been quite so impolite against SVN (and hey, that's fair -- I'm really not a very polite person!), I don't think anybody actually argued that SVN was 'good'.
SVN is, I think, a classic case of 'good enough'. It's what people are used to, and it's 'good enough' to be used fairly widely, but it's good enough in exactly the sense DOS and Windows were 'good enough'. Not great technology, just very widely available, and it works well enough for people and looks familiar enough that people use it. But very few people are 'proud' of it, or excited about it.
And here is the reaction from the subversion team. For those of you who don't want to RTFA, they basically say they agree, its not appropriate for something like Linux.
BTW, isn't this all old news? His original comment on subversion was dated from 05
"Educational material should be presented in a way that is easy to understand. "
Some things simply are not easy to understand. Einstein's theory of general relativity, for instance, is very complicated and full of mathematics that someone without a PhD in theoretical physics will struggle through. Sure it can be dumbed down to the point where a layperson can get a general idea of what he is saying, but the argument that such interpretations should replace all journal papers on the subject is ludicrous.
There are dangers of "infotainment". People get used to their education being fun and become unable to concentrate on real learning. There is a big difference between reading a journal on the the big bang and watching a Naked Science episode on the subject. But if your goal is entertainment instead of education, which are you going to choose?
"What each and every vendor refuses to do, against all economic theory, is offer what a small but non zero minority of customers have been yelling loudly for over a decade for, to be able to buy a naked PC that is in every way exactly like the same machine offered with Windows, sold for a lower price without a preloaded copy of Windows. Always smoke and mirrors and the naked or Linux preload ends up the same or more and you can't shake a sneaking suspicion you paid the Microsoft tax anyway and they just kept the media and sticker. There are enough of us that basic economic theory says ONE vendor would have satisfied the market unless Microsoft is still illegally distorting it."
Lets pretend for a second that WalMart, Dell, and now soon Lenovo have all sold or announced the intention to sell computers with Linux pre-installed (and at lower prices than their Windows brethren). Yeah, they might not be that much cheaper, just a few hundred bucks (compared to the cost of the rest of the machine which can easily be over a grand), but thats about how much Windows costs.
If you really are a die hard computer geek, there is a good chance you won't even buy from a major vendor but just build your own machine. And many of the rest of them want a dual boot machine so they can play games that are only available on Windows. And despite what we say around here, Linux has never been big on the desktop, which is what these computers you are speaking of are sold for. It is primarily used on machines like servers (where you can easily buy it preloaded). Thus the minority of users who will buy a naked or Linux PC is very, very small indeed.
And the cost of selling machines without the standard OS is not non-zero. They have to pay to support them, install them (in the case of Linux preloaded machines), sell them, stock them, and then deal with all the cranky old ladies who didn't understand what they were buying and accidentally bought a computer without an OS. So actually economics states that it is not necessarily a profitable idea.
So a person who can't install their own OS is an idiot because they can't do something you can do (and which is likely in your area of expertise since you are here)? I assume you think the same of people who can't change their own oil (since many people can do that), grow their own food (many people are capable of doing that), or build their own house (some people are capable of that as well). Hell in your mind anyone who is not completely self sufficient must be an idiot.
Please. I know how to install an operating system, but then again I am a software engineer. You know how to install an OS, you are also likely a computer professional. But the vast majority of people out there are much more casual users who treat their computers much like we would treat our cars, food, and houses. As something that someone else fixes, grows, or builds while you worry about other things (in our cases, our computers). As such they would view buying a computer without an OS much like we would view our real estate agent handing us some lumber instead of the keys to our new house. And its not because they are idiots, its because they have better things to do.
Well for starters, your pet name for a programming language is not something you should continuously use while in a job interview. Basically what it tells the interviewer is that you really have very little experience with it, and probably have never heard it spoken before.
"Tell that to the poor bodybuilder schmuck who had to find out what renal dialysis means; and he did not eat plenty of carbs because carbs are bad."
Steroid injecting bodybuilders and followers of fad diets are not people who I would call healthy either. Incidentally, their BMIs are usually high as well.
"if 3500+ calories means starving... unless you count them according to the fitness manuals."
Sure, if you are burning well over 3500 calories a day (which wouldn't surprise me if you were trekking through the mountains).
"... so we might differ on what "fat" means. Can you explain me your scale ?"
Having significantly more fat in your body than your body needs. No, I don't have anything more specific, due to the fact that I am a software engineer and not a nutritionist.
"Those were not extreme conditions, only the conditions for which the fitness advocates pretend you need to prepared for: the tracks were not much more difficult than what a tourist does while backpacking in the mountains."
I've been backpacking in the mountains and there the fat people do much worse than the fit people. And no, they don't burn their muscles like you were describing in your little story because they remember to eat plenty of carbs before and while they were out. Your situation was extreme because people were basically forced to starve themselves, a situation where people with fat reserves do have an advantage. However, in our current society where food is anything but scarce, those situations are very rare.
"My point was that people that claimed to be fit, looked as if they were fit, and kept on the regime that previously made them look "fit" failed to keep up with people that believed that being fit is being able to perform, and not necessarily have the looks and the BMI."
The alpine troops are not a good representative sample of fat people in our society. Most fat people could not even come close to performing in situations like that.
"Fat is unhealthy ? Fat is your long term energy storage."
Which you don't need in our society. And the consequences of having too much unneeded fat in your body can include heart attacks and diabetes, both of which will either kill you or cost a small fortune to treat.
"My take is that some people get obese because they are already sick: something is wrong with their metabolism. Otherwise, fat is good."
Most people in our society who get fat do so because they don't exercise enough and eat too much. No conspiracy, nothing more complicated than that. They are simply lazy and eat at McDonalds too much.
"I have seen this in the alpine troops..."
Yes, in certain extreme conditions a fat body can be advantageous. However, the vast majority of fat people are not in the alpine troops. And by vast majority, I really mean virtually all of them.
In certain conditions cocaine can be medically beneficial, its a very good pain reliever. In fact, those conditions are much more common in our society than those where fat is beneficial. By your logic, would that mean that it would be wrong to say coke is unhealthy?
"
"as a general rule fat people weigh a lot for their height"... that's a pleonasm:)"
Very good, that was the intent of that statement. Now what does the BMI measure?
RTFA. This is the employer (which happens to be a hospital) making this policy, not the insurance company. So if you don't like it, you are free to find a different employer. And employers often give little benefits for these things. My company gave me $150 for working out 4 days a week for a few months earlier this year.
Imperfect? Yes, absolutely. It is far from a perfect measure. Different body shapes can throw it off pretty easily. But its hardly useless. Being fat is unhealthy, and as a general rule fat people weigh a lot for their height.
You could have saved yourself a lot of time. From TFA:
SUSE will be available on T-series ThinkPads (Lenovo's business-class notebooks) beginning in the fourth quarter. Aside from the choice of operating system, the SUSE ThinkPads should be in all respects identical to their Windows-running brethren.
Yes, you don't blind your readers. Black on white is much easier to the eye.
The little energy you might save (and from the WSJ article, the difference in energy use for LCD monitors was in the margin of error for the tool used to measure it) would be wasted from people who now need to spend more time on their computer because they cannot read your site, and from people who have to turn their brightness setting way up.
THREAT LEVEL can only wonder how long will it be until war protesters and Rio Grande swimmers start wearing reflective clothing?
Though it would be nice to find a real news source on this (note: Wired is not a real news source, not even close) which might cover if such countermeasures would work. I would think the fact that it is flashing might make it still effective against a person wearing sunglasses; even if they have some protection, their eyes will still need to be able to adjust to constantly changing amounts of light. And since it is apparently range dependent, I doubt reflective clothing would be very effective.
The claims being made by the actual researchers (as opposed to the/. editors) include no conclusions regarding the causation. They hypothesize that eating habits may be "socially contagious" (which is perfectly reasonable, its well known peer pressure commonly influences behavior), but admit that requires further study.
The problem here isn't that scientists are making claims they cannot support. In fact, these types of studies are often needed, as they form the basis for further research. The problem is that the media exaggerates it to no end. I do think the scientific community has a definite problem, but it is in media relations, not in the validity of scientific research.
"It's quite plausible that there are people whose body needs 20 hours a day of constant sprinting and one stick of celery a week to maintain a healthy weight."
First, walking at a leisurely pace is not the same as working out strenuously.
Second, unless you stalked her while you were dating, you have no way of knowing how many Twinkies she scarfed down while you were not looking.
Third, unless you stalked her before you were dating, you have no way of knowing whether or not she was eating less and exercising more than normal. Just because someone has a slow metabolism and it takes more exercise for them to maintain a healthy weight than other people does not mean they can't lose weight. It means their body needs more exercise or less food than other people.
Fourth, you lost all credibility with your second sentence anyways.
Slashdot Mirror
By business applications, we actually do mean applications that run on servers. That is where Java is king. Very few real business apps are actual desktop apps. Thus real large business don't have to worry about pushing out updates to their users, they just upgrade their servers.
Java is one of the most popular programming languages today. It is arguably the default language for modern business applications. You may not like it, but that does mean it is doomed.
That being said, this seems like a strange move for sun. Their influence over Java is already fading, and this only makes them look more like a one trick pony that has only really made one worthwhile contribution to the IT industry.
Well, cheap is a relative term. The Voyager program has already cost hundreds of millions of dollars and to this day still costs millions each year to maintain. And Cassini-Huygens cost several billion.
And probes really can't be shot out willy-nilly, at least not if you want them to visit things we might consider interesting. The planets have to be aligned (literally) in order for it to be economical for them to visit specific targets in a timely fashion. For instance the Planetary Grand Tour that Voyager 2 took won't be available again until the middle of the 22nd century. And most of space is empty and boring, so if you don't have those targets you might as well be loading the rocket full of hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and sending that directly into space.
Manned space exploration has the advantage in that you are giving the space program a goal for it to work towards. The Apollo program motivated many advancements, not to mention engineers, because it had an achievable but difficult high profile goal for NASA to reach for.
Think that could be because its an Indian news site and the guy himself is Indian?
Believe it or not, just because something is published on the world wide web doesn't mean it has to cut out everything of local interest.
And here is the reaction from the subversion team. For those of you who don't want to RTFA, they basically say they agree, its not appropriate for something like Linux.
BTW, isn't this all old news? His original comment on subversion was dated from 05
"Educational material should be presented in a way that is easy to understand. "
Some things simply are not easy to understand. Einstein's theory of general relativity, for instance, is very complicated and full of mathematics that someone without a PhD in theoretical physics will struggle through. Sure it can be dumbed down to the point where a layperson can get a general idea of what he is saying, but the argument that such interpretations should replace all journal papers on the subject is ludicrous.
Except...
There are dangers of "infotainment". People get used to their education being fun and become unable to concentrate on real learning. There is a big difference between reading a journal on the the big bang and watching a Naked Science episode on the subject. But if your goal is entertainment instead of education, which are you going to choose?
"What each and every vendor refuses to do, against all economic theory, is offer what a small but non zero minority of customers have been yelling loudly for over a decade for, to be able to buy a naked PC that is in every way exactly like the same machine offered with Windows, sold for a lower price without a preloaded copy of Windows. Always smoke and mirrors and the naked or Linux preload ends up the same or more and you can't shake a sneaking suspicion you paid the Microsoft tax anyway and they just kept the media and sticker. There are enough of us that basic economic theory says ONE vendor would have satisfied the market unless Microsoft is still illegally distorting it."
Lets pretend for a second that WalMart, Dell, and now soon Lenovo have all sold or announced the intention to sell computers with Linux pre-installed (and at lower prices than their Windows brethren). Yeah, they might not be that much cheaper, just a few hundred bucks (compared to the cost of the rest of the machine which can easily be over a grand), but thats about how much Windows costs.
If you really are a die hard computer geek, there is a good chance you won't even buy from a major vendor but just build your own machine. And many of the rest of them want a dual boot machine so they can play games that are only available on Windows. And despite what we say around here, Linux has never been big on the desktop, which is what these computers you are speaking of are sold for. It is primarily used on machines like servers (where you can easily buy it preloaded). Thus the minority of users who will buy a naked or Linux PC is very, very small indeed.
And the cost of selling machines without the standard OS is not non-zero. They have to pay to support them, install them (in the case of Linux preloaded machines), sell them, stock them, and then deal with all the cranky old ladies who didn't understand what they were buying and accidentally bought a computer without an OS. So actually economics states that it is not necessarily a profitable idea.
So a person who can't install their own OS is an idiot because they can't do something you can do (and which is likely in your area of expertise since you are here)? I assume you think the same of people who can't change their own oil (since many people can do that), grow their own food (many people are capable of doing that), or build their own house (some people are capable of that as well). Hell in your mind anyone who is not completely self sufficient must be an idiot.
Please. I know how to install an operating system, but then again I am a software engineer. You know how to install an OS, you are also likely a computer professional. But the vast majority of people out there are much more casual users who treat their computers much like we would treat our cars, food, and houses. As something that someone else fixes, grows, or builds while you worry about other things (in our cases, our computers). As such they would view buying a computer without an OS much like we would view our real estate agent handing us some lumber instead of the keys to our new house. And its not because they are idiots, its because they have better things to do.
Well for starters, your pet name for a programming language is not something you should continuously use while in a job interview. Basically what it tells the interviewer is that you really have very little experience with it, and probably have never heard it spoken before.
"Tell that to the poor bodybuilder schmuck who had to find out what renal dialysis means; and he did not eat plenty of carbs because carbs are bad."
Steroid injecting bodybuilders and followers of fad diets are not people who I would call healthy either. Incidentally, their BMIs are usually high as well.
"if 3500+ calories means starving ... unless you count them according to the fitness manuals."
Sure, if you are burning well over 3500 calories a day (which wouldn't surprise me if you were trekking through the mountains).
" ... so we might differ on what "fat" means. Can you explain me your scale ?"
Having significantly more fat in your body than your body needs. No, I don't have anything more specific, due to the fact that I am a software engineer and not a nutritionist.
Wow, is it fat pride week or something?
"Those were not extreme conditions, only the conditions for which the fitness advocates pretend you need to prepared for: the tracks were not much more difficult than what a tourist does while backpacking in the mountains."
I've been backpacking in the mountains and there the fat people do much worse than the fit people. And no, they don't burn their muscles like you were describing in your little story because they remember to eat plenty of carbs before and while they were out. Your situation was extreme because people were basically forced to starve themselves, a situation where people with fat reserves do have an advantage. However, in our current society where food is anything but scarce, those situations are very rare.
"My point was that people that claimed to be fit, looked as if they were fit, and kept on the regime that previously made them look "fit" failed to keep up with people that believed that being fit is being able to perform, and not necessarily have the looks and the BMI."
The alpine troops are not a good representative sample of fat people in our society. Most fat people could not even come close to performing in situations like that.
"Fat is unhealthy ? Fat is your long term energy storage."
Which you don't need in our society. And the consequences of having too much unneeded fat in your body can include heart attacks and diabetes, both of which will either kill you or cost a small fortune to treat.
"My take is that some people get obese because they are already sick: something is wrong with their metabolism. Otherwise, fat is good."
Most people in our society who get fat do so because they don't exercise enough and eat too much. No conspiracy, nothing more complicated than that. They are simply lazy and eat at McDonalds too much.
"I have seen this in the alpine troops..."
Yes, in certain extreme conditions a fat body can be advantageous. However, the vast majority of fat people are not in the alpine troops. And by vast majority, I really mean virtually all of them.
In certain conditions cocaine can be medically beneficial, its a very good pain reliever. In fact, those conditions are much more common in our society than those where fat is beneficial. By your logic, would that mean that it would be wrong to say coke is unhealthy?
" "as a general rule fat people weigh a lot for their height" ... that's a pleonasm :)"
Very good, that was the intent of that statement. Now what does the BMI measure?
Then shouldn't engineers also get a lower rate?
Just kidding, sort of...
RTFA. This is the employer (which happens to be a hospital) making this policy, not the insurance company. So if you don't like it, you are free to find a different employer. And employers often give little benefits for these things. My company gave me $150 for working out 4 days a week for a few months earlier this year.
Imperfect? Yes, absolutely. It is far from a perfect measure. Different body shapes can throw it off pretty easily. But its hardly useless. Being fat is unhealthy, and as a general rule fat people weigh a lot for their height.
Then you need to turn down the brightness on your monitor. Now that will save energy.
You know, you are pretty much repeating exactly what was in the WSJ article that was included in the summary as a rebuttal.
Yes, you don't blind your readers. Black on white is much easier to the eye.
The little energy you might save (and from the WSJ article, the difference in energy use for LCD monitors was in the margin of error for the tool used to measure it) would be wasted from people who now need to spend more time on their computer because they cannot read your site, and from people who have to turn their brightness setting way up.
From the FA:
Though it would be nice to find a real news source on this (note: Wired is not a real news source, not even close) which might cover if such countermeasures would work. I would think the fact that it is flashing might make it still effective against a person wearing sunglasses; even if they have some protection, their eyes will still need to be able to adjust to constantly changing amounts of light. And since it is apparently range dependent, I doubt reflective clothing would be very effective.
"A scientific proof isn't a mathematical proof"
And this is neither. Its a study, not a scientific experiment, so it proves nothing but a correlation.
The claims being made by the actual researchers (as opposed to the /. editors) include no conclusions regarding the causation. They hypothesize that eating habits may be "socially contagious" (which is perfectly reasonable, its well known peer pressure commonly influences behavior), but admit that requires further study.
The problem here isn't that scientists are making claims they cannot support. In fact, these types of studies are often needed, as they form the basis for further research. The problem is that the media exaggerates it to no end. I do think the scientific community has a definite problem, but it is in media relations, not in the validity of scientific research.
"It's quite plausible that there are people whose body needs 20 hours a day of constant sprinting and one stick of celery a week to maintain a healthy weight."
That isn't plausible at all.
First, walking at a leisurely pace is not the same as working out strenuously.
Second, unless you stalked her while you were dating, you have no way of knowing how many Twinkies she scarfed down while you were not looking.
Third, unless you stalked her before you were dating, you have no way of knowing whether or not she was eating less and exercising more than normal. Just because someone has a slow metabolism and it takes more exercise for them to maintain a healthy weight than other people does not mean they can't lose weight. It means their body needs more exercise or less food than other people.
Fourth, you lost all credibility with your second sentence anyways.