Thin clients, as in with networked display? Where? Not in consumer land, that's for sure, which is were Ubuntu lives.
Wait for it....
From what I can see, the move it to the Web, with the interface running locally (either using a browser or a light client like an Android app) and the backend on the 'cloud'.
There it is. The protocols are different but it's still thin client. Incidently, X11 seems to handle firefox very well.
There's still demand for remote desktop. Just ask GoToMyPC of course nothing prevents us from using VNC, RDP, etc. Though remote rendering is better than pushing bits from a server frame buffer. Not to mention having remote desktops on netbooks, laptops, or other lower powered consumer devices is actually quite nice.
Networked displays were never a good solution for normal users, in my opinion, especially through the Internet. Too much bandwidth even if compressed, too much lag between user input and app response. I think the application specific client-server solutions with local caching and much better fault tolerance will be the future.
Funny. I'm using it now. It runs as if I'm at the desktop. My server is currently 360 miles from where I am at this very moment. No lag, the mouse works great, running full screen eclipse and everything. Including *shudder* Flash apps when I need to browse using Firefox.
May I suggest FreeNX for the server and OpenNX for the client? Nomachine's NX protocol does a great job at moving X long distances. Oh did I mention I have to go through a VPN gateway too?
How about OLD, BLOATED, and CRAPPY, as well as built upon a foundation that is no longer necessary or desired?
Evidently you have a short attention span because you didn't bother to read the whole comment. Being BLOATED and CRAPPY are good reasons, but being OLD isn't.
. But anyway, there's nothing odd about reducing excess things people don't really use. Power, in most cases, does have a cost, and simplicity does have a virtue.
Very true. However, there were other alternative OS offerings that were built to fit the multimedia based single user desktop market like BeOS or now its OSS imitator Haiku.
Actually one of Apple's largest enterprise customers use Mac Minis. A bunch of colocation sites also buy a ton of Mac Minis. This is the motivation behind Apple introducing the Mac Mini OS X Server edition.
I have a couple of Xserves and they are okay. They are a little too deep for some of our racks so they stick out a little in the rear. We much prefer the Mac Pros because of its power. I think anybody using 1U cpu racks will probably be better served with a something other than a Xserve anyway. If you need OS X server, you more than likely can get away with using Mac Minis. Otherwise, you need more power than you'd be better off with a Mac Pro anyway. You'd probable save a little power by letting a single Mac Pro replace a couple (or more) Xserves.
Xserves wasn't priced well enough to be between an Mac Mini and Mac Pro. Apple just looked at its numbers and made a inventory decision. Apple did this a couple of years ago when they started selling third party raid assemblies instead of Xraid.
Not to mention, you can get a 1U rack that can accommodate 4 Mac Minis for only $57. For the price of a single Xserve, you can get 3 Mac Minis and spend an extra $57 to put it on the rack. It may even not stick out of the rear.
The Ubuntu distro is showing great maturity and evolving nicely....then "Fuggit!" let's go a different way and start the integration again!
Some people will question the maturity of Ubuntu. I like it's much larger support lifespan when compared to Fedora, but Ubuntu has been making some architectural changes between releases that has broken some of my packages.
Anyway, I think this has more to do with appearances than anything else. Ubuntu has been getting a lot of heat lately about their lack of participation in maintaining the Linux architecture outside their own distributions. So Mark Shuttleworth's ego is a little bruised. Therefore they are picking pet projects to promote in order to give the appearance that Ubuntu is giving something back. I don't think the fact that both Unity and Wayland is immediately apparent to the end user is just coincidental.
Being OLD is never a good excuse to replace it. There may be other issues that need addressing but OLD is never it. If anything, OLD is a good reason to keep it. It's "survival of the fittest" and X11 apparently outlasted many attempts to replace it.
Lusting after shiny objects and doing something solely because its new or trendy has always been an issue in the software development industry. Sometimes it's a good thing since it introduces new ways of doing things, and more frequently it's not.
Now if you said we need a more efficient method of handling large globs of data between the application and the local display device that would be a good reason, but OLD is never one. BTW, obsolescence due to lack of language support, it's written in a dead programming language or lack of use is not the same as OLD. Sorry about the rant about your using OLD as a reason. When I see OLD I see NIH.
Incidentally I think the timing for Wayland is a little off. Sure there are multimedia applications that will benefit from closer ties to the hardware, but the industry as a whole is trending once again to thin clients. If this continues to be the case, I see Wayland trying to reproduce what X11 already does and for a very long time at that.
Then again I find it somewhat odd that we take a very powerful OS platform and begin to remove its power in order to reduce its utility enough to make it more palatable for the single user desktop use case.
I'm not sure how you can equate a loss at the primary as 'no real influence'. You positioning as if the end result is the only thing that matters. Do you genuinely have no idea how much extra effort her campaign had to exert due to that loss? Really??
She still won. She can consider herself as an independent which will place her name on the ballot for the next election. She does not need to worry about a Republican primary unless she wants to.
I'm genuinely asking, because it seems like you're just being obtuse. That's the gap between what I view as reality and what you're displaying.
Frames of reference. You are obviously passionate about the Tea Party movement, and are understandingly optimistic about its future. I on the other hand have no interest in the Tea Party.
Take note, the campaign isn't simply "Obama is the boogey man" but "government is the boogey man". Anti-incumbent sentiment was salient in every race, like the one above that we were just discussing.
What anti-incumbent sentiment? The "anti-incumbent sentiment" doesn't appear to be a factor in this election. Only 53 out of 435 incumbents lost reelection. That only equates to about 12% of the seats. What was a factor was the Republicans being helped by their astro-turfing efforts since all 53 incumbents were Democrats. As for the senate, only 1 incumbent lost his reelection bid. I could also point out that Lisa Murkoski's win seems to counter your anti-incumbent sentiment view. I'm being cynical but I think "anti-incumbent sentiment" is a myth at least on the national level.
It's easy for the republican base to claim to be anti-incumbent when they were a minority in both the senate and house of representatives, and a democrat is in the white house. Don't feel too bad. I've seen both parties use this tactic when it worked to their advantage. It's a very old trick used throughout this nation's history. I've seen nothing new here. Aw sweet memories of the "Contract with America" win of 1994 by the Republicans and the "Fire the Do-Nothing congress / End the war!" win by the Democrats in 2006. Good times!
You don't necessarily need to agree. Time will tell either way, but I'm mildly annoyed at the level of cynicism you're displaying here.
I've seen how the political sausage is made, and am genuinely cynical about it. I'm now an observer and just report what I see.
Your opinion seems to be that one of the single greatest grass-roots changes to the political scene is irrelevant.
Illusions of grandeur! I'm sure the reform party felt the same way. Except in their case, they actually were independent from the Democrats and Republicans.
In two short years we've gone from mocking Ron Paul to agreeing with him - in the mainstream!
Be careful. You've associated yourself with a group of like minded individuals. Don't fall in the trap that just because the people around you share the same sentiment towards Ron Paul it doesn't necessarily make him mainstream.
You didn't notice. That's just odd.
I don't drink from the same pitcher of kool-aid as you.;)
Take Lisa Murkowski. Do you really feel that she's going to turn a blind eye to Tea Party demands once she's in office? It very nearly cost her the last seat, and had Joe Miller not made some costly mistakes, it would have. She got lucky, but if she wants to keep her job, she'd better change her tune.
Actually in Lisa Murkowski's case I see the opposite. It looks like she may have won her reelection bid. If this turns out to be the case, then I see it as a sound defeat of the Tea Party in Alaska. Why? Because Joe Miller was the Tea Party backed candidate not Lisa Murkowski, and she would be reelected despite not being favored by the Tea Party advocates AND having her votes manually done by write-in ballots. Not to mention, it was a three way race with Joe Miller only accumulating 34% of the vote. We don't know how much of that percentage was from straight ticket Republicans and how many were Tea Party supporters. Regardless, Tea Party supporters are a definite minority of her constituents and does not represent any real influence.
Vis-a-vis every Republican, everywhere.
Doubt it. The few Tea Party candidates that actually got elected are still Republicans. They can't expect the "Obama is the boogey man" campaign to keep them in office, so I won't be surprised if they will start appealing to the party faithful as a whole to maintain their office.
During last Tuesday's election, my choices for the US Representative for the 1st congressional district was between a candidate in the Republican Party and a candidate in the Constitutional Party.
There is no spontaneity involved, except that coincidently during the 1996 Presidential election we had a choice between a Republican, a Democrat, and a Reform Party member. This happened almost spontaneously and disappeared just as fast.
I didn't give any time requirements. I just want a political party not a caucus within the current two parties. The "Tea Party" is just a marketing campaign to make the electorate think there is a potential for change without upsetting the status quo. The participants at the local level where probably very sincere with their intentions, but the "party" planners were just rebuilding the Republican conservative base. The "Tea Party" movement was formed to counter the "Move On" organization which is a Democratic caucus to rebuild that party's liberal base.
While the "Tea Party", and "Move On" caucus may be great for their respective parties, they do not represent any significant change in the political system. I'm being very gracious in calling the Tea Party a caucus. In fact Dick Armey's FreedomWorks helped create the Tea Party Patriots in an effort to dupe people into disrupting the town hall meeting about health care reform. And how many "Tea Parties" are there? It's the Tea Party's hooligan beginnings that stigmatize that group today.
Again my definition of a real alternative political party is one that is independent from the current two and can have their own candidate on the election ballot.
This is why I'm so excited about the Paulites and the Tea Party. They're offering something genuinely different at the Federal level.
Well unfortunately the Paulites and "Tea Party" are nothing more than caucuses within the Republican party. So they really are not offering anything genuinely different. Well unless your definition of different is the same as Obama's definition for change (Sorry I couldn't help but say it).
I believe we need a real different party with its own financial resources, not a puppet organization funded by the Koch brothers or Dick Armey that is really a caucus within an existing political party.
As much as I like blaming ills on politics, I don't think the economic mess is their fault. It's not the banks' fault either.
The politicians are at fault because they purposely removed regulations and underfunded oversight which pretty much gave banks free reign. It's the bank's fault because they placed emphasis over profits despite the risks and traded in derivatives. They both should be ashamed because this wasn't the first time banks caused economic problems. Evidently they learned nothing from the Savings and Loans crisis.
We reached a time when people walked away from their mortgages for no reason than that their house had lost a lot of value. This 2nd type of foreclosure involved, I believe, richer and more educated people typically in very high value markets like California. They were simply taking advantage of the terms in their mortgage.
People abandoning "underwater" loans are a new phenomena that developed after the real estate bubble burst. I'm not condoning their actions in fact I think they should suffer years of bad credit like normal people. However, this is an entirely different problem that spawned from the banking crisis. The original problem remains that banks were giving mortgages to people who couldn't afford them, and they were counting on an always growing real estate market to bail them out when they needed to foreclose.
So the whole idea of housing as a safe investment flew out the window. People like you today are looking at banks and seem to me to be assuming they knew how bad and risky the loans were, and then fraudulently sold them off to investors to make a quick buck. It just doesn't make sense to me though. The banks lost a lot of money in this little adventure.
First of all, the banks already experienced something similar called the Saving and Loans crisis (see above link). All the factors that contributed to this financial crisis was already experienced during the S&L crisis. This was not a new phenomena
Also, it's been well documented that the marketing of loans were a bad idea PRIOR to the mortgage crisis (Google it). The mortgage brokers who made the loan didn't care about long term risk because they were selling the loans on the open market. The buyers of these loans didn't fully appreciate the risks because they thought that the portfolio was diversified enough to withstand a economic downturn. In some cases this proved to be true like how the banking industry survived the financial impact of Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately you can't diversify enough to make up for systemic neglect and fraud. Not to mention they didn't know the insurance they purchased to protect themselves from losses was worthless.
Also not all mortgage borrowers were home buyers (as in living on the property), but real estate speculators who purchased homes in need of repair in hopes of reselling the property for a profit ("flipping"). Banks encouraged this behavior by offering interest only loans and sub prime mortgages. This increased real estate market activity raised the average cost of a home which further contributed to people borrowing more than they could afford creating a virtual feedback loop. To use a car metaphor, the banks pressed the accelerator to floor and then fell asleep at the wheel. The US government wound up being the EMTs at the scene of the crash.
Personally I believe that the banks didn't lose enough money on this "little adventure". I believe the government shouldn't have bailed them out, and allow the market to absorb the failed banks. What's wrong with awarding responsible banks with the possibility of buying the assets of a failed bank for pennies on the dollar? This is how the free market is suppose to work.
The other thing people tend to forget for some reason is the extreme gas price crisis that hit a bit befo
Oh, and like I've said... Bush had very little to do with the economy. Obama has little to do with the economy. It's congress. From 1995 to 2007, Republicans held the House. In that time, unemployment went from 5.6% to 4.6% with a low of 3.8% and a high of 6.3% (unemployment climbed form 9-11-2001 to June 2003 before dropping off again). The party that held the WH had little effect. It wasn't Bush's fault and it's not Obama's.
When that bill passed the Republicans had both the house and senate, however only 7 out of 45 Democratic senators and 51 out of 206 Democratic house representatives voted against the bill. Leaving me with only one conclusion that BOTH PARTIES ARE TO BLAME.
This partisan blame game is counter-productive and is used to manipulate the populous into voting against "the other party". We need to keep an eye on our own elected representatives and make sure that their vote represents the views of their constituents. Quit drinking the party politics kool-aid and think for yourself. The other senators and representatives represents their voters not you! So regardless of your political leanings you need to encourage your senator to work together and create legislation that represents the best interest of the country and quit sabotaging the country in hopes of placing blame on the other party.
For example look at health care reform. The overwhelming majority of the nation feels that something needs to be done to improve accessibility to quality health care. The house democrats decided to allow themselves to be extorted into giving ridiculous concessions to fellow Democrats in order to win enough votes to overcome an expected Republican filibuster. Thanks to Nancy Pelosi's hubris we have a health care reform bill that may overwhelmingly be good for the nation, but the Republicans have no vested interested in it and will always use it as some political football.
The Republicans are just as bad. They are willing to let this country go down the tubes in order to win the next election. They acted like a 5 year throwing a tantrum and obstructed every bill that came up for vote. Imagine what the health care bill would be like if the Democrats didn't need to overcome an expected filibuster. Too bad the Republicans will never vote for a bill that made the other party look good. Even bills that they themselves used to push when they had control of the house.
The only good thing that came from the election is that the Republicans control the House and the Democrats control the Senate, so now they have to actually make compromises in order to pass anything. Also Republicans are in the driver's seat in the House and can be held just as accountable as the Democrats for anything that happens from this point on.
I also won't be surprised that the economy will miraculously improve now that the Republicans have no reason to talk down the economy. Thanks to the corporations, we have a consumer based economy and as soon as people feel good about using their credit cards the faster the economy will "improve".
We need more national political parties. The picking the lessor of two evils is not working.
To recap: Both parties to blame. Two-party system sucks. The election ended yesterday so STFU and get back to tech news.
Again, no disrespect, this is honest curiosity. Would you care to list the names of some of those JAVA GUI programs that you used that you thought were great and that were not compromising on performance?
Sure, but it depends on what you mean by "compromising on performance" which is an imprecise and marketing type phrase. I prefer applications that are fast enough to get the job for which it was designed to do done, with responsiveness being one of the factors.
The applications I use are in house, but I can refer you to some elements that form the basis of some of the apps I use. Unfortunately thats the nature of the business, but hopefully you may find the following illustrations of things similar to mine helpful:
NASA's WorldWind is a good example. It uses OpenGL and has a very responsive GUI, well at least on my Mac and on my Linux workstation at work. I play with it at times, but the data I must present has no GIS element to it at the moment (well the end user has no desire for it yet) so I haven't used it for a project. I've seen some neat plugins for it though.
Here's a showcase of some other specialized applications used in my industry: Netbeans showcase. I personally don't use the Netbeans platforms, but the showcase does illustrate programs similar to the ones I create and use. Needless to say that my showing this link in no way is an endorsement of the products or the netbeans platform.
Again, my afforementioned speed issues when trying to use Java IDES. Maybe your users don't have to interact with the GUI component as much as a programmer using a GUI IDE does.
If you are having issues running Eclipse or Netbeans on your machine, then maybe you need to look at your machine. What is this GUI IDE that you speak of? My users abuse the hell out of the strip charts, and other graphical presentation windows and tables that are provided by the GUI. The data arrives in large quantities and in realtime. Experiment command decisions are based on what is being presented on the screen. I think this surpasses any requirements a home user may have with something like Open Office.
For clarification, if I need to do a lot of data transformations it's done prior to being sent to a user workstation. That being said, my personal experience has been that when I needed to have the same data presented on both a Windows machine and a Unix machine, I'll use Java for the presentation layer. I hesitantly use the term "presentation layer" since the users will often treat the Java app as a stand alone application to edit and interpret data stored locally on their machine. But architecturally speaking when compared with the entire data path, it's the presentation layer.
As for Open Office, I think a lot of poor choices were made in its design. Why Sun kept them after they acquired StarOffice probably has more to do with the money and time required to make major changes than the language that the application runs on.
So what is your suggestion for GUI Apps? Keep in mind it needs to be able to run on different platforms, preferably without having to require the end user to install third party libraries or depend on a particular version of a library already being installed. Third party support for libraries outside the scope of GUI is a plus but not required. In my case, be able to run unchanged on a PowerPC based machine and a Intel based machine. Not having to cross compile for a machine you may not have on site is a huge advantage (some of my workstations are not at my office). Even better if you only have to compile once.
Now if I don't need to worry about the code running on different platforms, or don't mind recompiling the source on the target machine, then I use C/C++. Mainly because dealing with pack and unpack on structured data can be a pain in the arse at times. But usually in t
The only significant Java GUI apps I have seen have been those made for developers ( netbeans, JBuilder, intelliJ,Eclipse). All take a long time to load compared to other apps and I have had the irritating experience with each clicking on a menu and having to periodically wait until the entry came up.
I have always had powerful systems at work, yet I have never been able to run a significant Java GUI app with another such Java ( or other app) app without there being decrease in performance.
I think the Java GUI API is well designed. I'm guessing the internals are too, because the non-GUI stuff runs AMAZINGLY GOOD. I just think, from my experience, that interpreted GUI apps just aren't there and aren't likely to be there anytime soon.
I've used some great Java programs, and not so great ones. I can say the same thing about most other programming languages.
Startup times can be an issue. Most of it can be helped by having as much of the JVM library in memory at all times. Microsoft Office, which is not written in Java, used to decrease its startup times by loading as much of its libraries at boot time (Do the current version still run the Helper program?). JVM could do the same (if a version of it doesn't already).
Of all the interpreted languages, I believe Java is the fastest (or pretty damn close to the fastest). The JIT helps a lot. The execution speed most often makes up for the startup times.
I use and occasionally develop Java programs to display telemetry during flight experiments, and haven't experienced any failure due to Java. I use other languages for day-to-day stuff, but when it needs to run on Windows, OS X, and Linux, I use Java or more accurately the JVM which support other interpreted languages. The install base of the JVM is Java's biggest advantage when compared against other languages using cross-platform libraries.
I'm not saying Java is the best. I'm just saying that a lot of its criticisms is unwarranted.
Err, yeah that suddenly makes it better? Oracle is being overly litigious. Its no coincidence that Apple gave up on its own VM short after this lawsuit.
But it is a coincidence, and that doesn't mean that was the motivation behind Apple's move. Apple made its announcement about deprecating Java when it announced the Mac App Store. I could hazard a guess that Apple wants to steer development into Objective-C.
One problem with your theory is that Apple will continue to support Java until 10.7 is released. If Apple was reacting to Oracle's behavior I would believe that they would immediately cease all support. Another problem being that Apple licensed the technology from Sun/Oracle so why would they care if Oracle went after Google? Especially since Google's Dalvik competes with Apple's Objective-C in the mobile app space. If anything, you'd think Apple would support Oracle even more. I can even look at it from a different angle, maybe Apple doesn't want to support Java because it's being used as a development platform for Android Apps. The motivation would still be against Google not Oracle.
I think the truth is less conspiracy derived and more mundane. Apple probably lacks the man power to support a language that they have know real financial interest in. The release schedules for OS X updates and iOS updates seem the lend support to the manpower theory.
Not to mention, Steve Jobs has said that they had trouble keeping up with the Java releases and believed that Oracle could do better. As bad as Jobs has been about being blunt in his emails, I think I'll stick with the lack of resources theory.
Not to mention if this patent was valid, which I doubt, why didn't Sun sue? That's right because Sun was a responsible company.
Maybe because Sun was having financial problems of their own, and starting a court battle with Google may have complicated their sale. Don't forget Sun sued Microsoft over Microsoft's handling of Java. Why would Sun act differently toward Google? How does protecting one's own intellectual property make a corporation less responsible?
I see FUD here and its from you. Face it, Oracle killed Java, everyone is scared of being sued by them and their VMs are total shit software that are responsible for over 50% of browser based malware from analysis of various "crimepack" malware stats.
Java is dead? Who announced that? Wishful thinking perhaps? Does the thought of Java dying provide imaginary restitution for Google being slighted by Oracle? Why is it assume that Google has no culpability?
Rewrite the wizards. Don't push Java. Ideally, Java should be a server-side technology and not yet another exploitable hole for end user's browsers. Both Sun and Oracle seem unable to secure it and now are suing anyone with their own implementation. As a compromise I'd love to see Java install without web browser plugins by default.
FUD.
The problem with exploits is users not keeping their JVMs up to date. Also Sun and Oracle are NOT suing anyone with their own implementation. They are suing Google for infringing on their patent. Google did not make their own implementation of JVM, in fact Dalvik does not run native Java byte codes. What Google did was attempt to make their own Mobile JVM and thought that requiring the byte codes to be translated into "Dalvik compatible" byte codes would be enough to keep them from having to license the technology from Oracle.
However, being honest and not a fan-boy it isn't that great for GUI apps.
I disagree.
Java is great for cross platform GUI apps. I can write a Java app and as long as I use Swing, I'm sure that the app will run on a different platform. You're blaming Java for Open Office's design decision to use "wizards". Wizards are not exclusively tied to Java. Sure Sun made a Swing library to make creating wizards easier, but so did Qt, and WxWidget.
The lawsuit would cripple Android development. Android development is the biggest source of growth for Java development;
Here's the rub. Android probably doesn't deserve to exist in its current state. For all intents and purposes, Google tried to circumvent Sun/Oracle's licensing requirements by not making a byte compatible VM, however it is very evident that it's Java with an extra step of translating the byte-codes.
Java has a healthy development base that really didn't need help from Android. I would go as far as saying Android needed Java more than Java needed Android.
Killing Java isn't Oracle's plan, as Java is one of its biggest assets it bought along with Sun. But Oracle is a ruthless competitor, interested in control more than in the "coopetition" in which Sun engaged to grow Java successfully. As Google's counterclaim cites, Oracle favored the very Java developments at Google that it's now working to stop, until Oracle owned Java. It's a lockdown by definition as you agree, and it's severe by comparison to the successful "laissez faire" management of Java by Sun.
Money does not magically appear from nothing. Oracle (and the previous owner Sun) did not create Java out of the pure kindness of their hearts. They made it to make money. Sun made money by selling licenses to Java ME. Google circumvented that licensing scheme by making a unauthorized version of a Mobile JVM called Dalvik. The fact that Android may increase the number of "Java developers", doesn't matter much to Oracle if it benefits Google and not them.
You seemed to have confused Dalvik with a proper JVM and completely overlook the fact that in the desktop/server area, where the bulk of the Java programming exists, there are alternative versions of the JVM supported by a community whose assets includes source provided by Sun with a license for use in supporting Java SE.
Google could have easily licensed the right to create their own mobile JVM. This would have prevented this lawsuit, and removed the needless step of translating Java byte-codes to Dalvik byte-codes. The "laissez faire" management of Java by Sun never existed, it wasn't until Google decided to violate the open source license or more accurately try to make a "clean room" version of the Mobile JVM that forced Oracle's hand. By the way, by making a so called "clean room" version of the Mobile JVM, Google did not inherit any of the licenses to use the patents granted to the users of OpenJDK.
Slashdot Mirror
Wait for it....
There it is. The protocols are different but it's still thin client. Incidently, X11 seems to handle firefox very well.
There's still demand for remote desktop. Just ask GoToMyPC of course nothing prevents us from using VNC, RDP, etc. Though remote rendering is better than pushing bits from a server frame buffer. Not to mention having remote desktops on netbooks, laptops, or other lower powered consumer devices is actually quite nice.
Funny. I'm using it now. It runs as if I'm at the desktop. My server is currently 360 miles from where I am at this very moment. No lag, the mouse works great, running full screen eclipse and everything. Including *shudder* Flash apps when I need to browse using Firefox.
May I suggest FreeNX for the server and OpenNX for the client? Nomachine's NX protocol does a great job at moving X long distances. Oh did I mention I have to go through a VPN gateway too?
Evidently you have a short attention span because you didn't bother to read the whole comment. Being BLOATED and CRAPPY are good reasons, but being OLD isn't.
Also by my logic being OLD was never a factor.
Very true. However, there were other alternative OS offerings that were built to fit the multimedia based single user desktop market like BeOS or now its OSS imitator Haiku.
Don't let the fact that Apple just announce the Mac Pro Server mess up your theory.
Actually one of Apple's largest enterprise customers use Mac Minis. A bunch of colocation sites also buy a ton of Mac Minis. This is the motivation behind Apple introducing the Mac Mini OS X Server edition.
I have a couple of Xserves and they are okay. They are a little too deep for some of our racks so they stick out a little in the rear. We much prefer the Mac Pros because of its power. I think anybody using 1U cpu racks will probably be better served with a something other than a Xserve anyway. If you need OS X server, you more than likely can get away with using Mac Minis. Otherwise, you need more power than you'd be better off with a Mac Pro anyway. You'd probable save a little power by letting a single Mac Pro replace a couple (or more) Xserves.
Xserves wasn't priced well enough to be between an Mac Mini and Mac Pro. Apple just looked at its numbers and made a inventory decision. Apple did this a couple of years ago when they started selling third party raid assemblies instead of Xraid.
Not to mention, you can get a 1U rack that can accommodate 4 Mac Minis for only $57. For the price of a single Xserve, you can get 3 Mac Minis and spend an extra $57 to put it on the rack. It may even not stick out of the rear.
Some people will question the maturity of Ubuntu. I like it's much larger support lifespan when compared to Fedora, but Ubuntu has been making some architectural changes between releases that has broken some of my packages.
Anyway, I think this has more to do with appearances than anything else. Ubuntu has been getting a lot of heat lately about their lack of participation in maintaining the Linux architecture outside their own distributions. So Mark Shuttleworth's ego is a little bruised. Therefore they are picking pet projects to promote in order to give the appearance that Ubuntu is giving something back. I don't think the fact that both Unity and Wayland is immediately apparent to the end user is just coincidental.
Being OLD is never a good excuse to replace it. There may be other issues that need addressing but OLD is never it. If anything, OLD is a good reason to keep it. It's "survival of the fittest" and X11 apparently outlasted many attempts to replace it.
Lusting after shiny objects and doing something solely because its new or trendy has always been an issue in the software development industry. Sometimes it's a good thing since it introduces new ways of doing things, and more frequently it's not.
Now if you said we need a more efficient method of handling large globs of data between the application and the local display device that would be a good reason, but OLD is never one. BTW, obsolescence due to lack of language support, it's written in a dead programming language or lack of use is not the same as OLD. Sorry about the rant about your using OLD as a reason. When I see OLD I see NIH.
Incidentally I think the timing for Wayland is a little off. Sure there are multimedia applications that will benefit from closer ties to the hardware, but the industry as a whole is trending once again to thin clients. If this continues to be the case, I see Wayland trying to reproduce what X11 already does and for a very long time at that.
Then again I find it somewhat odd that we take a very powerful OS platform and begin to remove its power in order to reduce its utility enough to make it more palatable for the single user desktop use case.
Yes and all 435 seats were up for election.
She still won. She can consider herself as an independent which will place her name on the ballot for the next election. She does not need to worry about a Republican primary unless she wants to.
Frames of reference. You are obviously passionate about the Tea Party movement, and are understandingly optimistic about its future. I on the other hand have no interest in the Tea Party.
What anti-incumbent sentiment? The "anti-incumbent sentiment" doesn't appear to be a factor in this election. Only 53 out of 435 incumbents lost reelection. That only equates to about 12% of the seats. What was a factor was the Republicans being helped by their astro-turfing efforts since all 53 incumbents were Democrats. As for the senate, only 1 incumbent lost his reelection bid. I could also point out that Lisa Murkoski's win seems to counter your anti-incumbent sentiment view. I'm being cynical but I think "anti-incumbent sentiment" is a myth at least on the national level.
It's easy for the republican base to claim to be anti-incumbent when they were a minority in both the senate and house of representatives, and a democrat is in the white house. Don't feel too bad. I've seen both parties use this tactic when it worked to their advantage. It's a very old trick used throughout this nation's history. I've seen nothing new here. Aw sweet memories of the "Contract with America" win of 1994 by the Republicans and the "Fire the Do-Nothing congress / End the war!" win by the Democrats in 2006. Good times!
I've seen how the political sausage is made, and am genuinely cynical about it. I'm now an observer and just report what I see.
Illusions of grandeur! I'm sure the reform party felt the same way. Except in their case, they actually were independent from the Democrats and Republicans.
Be careful. You've associated yourself with a group of like minded individuals. Don't fall in the trap that just because the people around you share the same sentiment towards Ron Paul it doesn't necessarily make him mainstream.
I don't drink from the same pitcher of kool-aid as you. ;)
Actually in Lisa Murkowski's case I see the opposite. It looks like she may have won her reelection bid. If this turns out to be the case, then I see it as a sound defeat of the Tea Party in Alaska. Why? Because Joe Miller was the Tea Party backed candidate not Lisa Murkowski, and she would be reelected despite not being favored by the Tea Party advocates AND having her votes manually done by write-in ballots. Not to mention, it was a three way race with Joe Miller only accumulating 34% of the vote. We don't know how much of that percentage was from straight ticket Republicans and how many were Tea Party supporters. Regardless, Tea Party supporters are a definite minority of her constituents and does not represent any real influence.
Doubt it. The few Tea Party candidates that actually got elected are still Republicans. They can't expect the "Obama is the boogey man" campaign to keep them in office, so I won't be surprised if they will start appealing to the party faithful as a whole to maintain their office.
Well actually no.
During last Tuesday's election, my choices for the US Representative for the 1st congressional district was between a candidate in the Republican Party and a candidate in the Constitutional Party.
There is no spontaneity involved, except that coincidently during the 1996 Presidential election we had a choice between a Republican, a Democrat, and a Reform Party member. This happened almost spontaneously and disappeared just as fast.
I didn't give any time requirements. I just want a political party not a caucus within the current two parties. The "Tea Party" is just a marketing campaign to make the electorate think there is a potential for change without upsetting the status quo. The participants at the local level where probably very sincere with their intentions, but the "party" planners were just rebuilding the Republican conservative base. The "Tea Party" movement was formed to counter the "Move On" organization which is a Democratic caucus to rebuild that party's liberal base.
While the "Tea Party", and "Move On" caucus may be great for their respective parties, they do not represent any significant change in the political system. I'm being very gracious in calling the Tea Party a caucus. In fact Dick Armey's FreedomWorks helped create the Tea Party Patriots in an effort to dupe people into disrupting the town hall meeting about health care reform. And how many "Tea Parties" are there? It's the Tea Party's hooligan beginnings that stigmatize that group today.
Again my definition of a real alternative political party is one that is independent from the current two and can have their own candidate on the election ballot.
Actually my criteria is simple. A real party has there own position on the general election ballot.
Well unfortunately the Paulites and "Tea Party" are nothing more than caucuses within the Republican party. So they really are not offering anything genuinely different. Well unless your definition of different is the same as Obama's definition for change (Sorry I couldn't help but say it).
I believe we need a real different party with its own financial resources, not a puppet organization funded by the Koch brothers or Dick Armey that is really a caucus within an existing political party.
The politicians are at fault because they purposely removed regulations and underfunded oversight which pretty much gave banks free reign. It's the bank's fault because they placed emphasis over profits despite the risks and traded in derivatives. They both should be ashamed because this wasn't the first time banks caused economic problems. Evidently they learned nothing from the Savings and Loans crisis.
People abandoning "underwater" loans are a new phenomena that developed after the real estate bubble burst. I'm not condoning their actions in fact I think they should suffer years of bad credit like normal people. However, this is an entirely different problem that spawned from the banking crisis. The original problem remains that banks were giving mortgages to people who couldn't afford them, and they were counting on an always growing real estate market to bail them out when they needed to foreclose.
First of all, the banks already experienced something similar called the Saving and Loans crisis (see above link). All the factors that contributed to this financial crisis was already experienced during the S&L crisis. This was not a new phenomena
Also, it's been well documented that the marketing of loans were a bad idea PRIOR to the mortgage crisis (Google it). The mortgage brokers who made the loan didn't care about long term risk because they were selling the loans on the open market. The buyers of these loans didn't fully appreciate the risks because they thought that the portfolio was diversified enough to withstand a economic downturn. In some cases this proved to be true like how the banking industry survived the financial impact of Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately you can't diversify enough to make up for systemic neglect and fraud. Not to mention they didn't know the insurance they purchased to protect themselves from losses was worthless.
Also not all mortgage borrowers were home buyers (as in living on the property), but real estate speculators who purchased homes in need of repair in hopes of reselling the property for a profit ("flipping"). Banks encouraged this behavior by offering interest only loans and sub prime mortgages. This increased real estate market activity raised the average cost of a home which further contributed to people borrowing more than they could afford creating a virtual feedback loop. To use a car metaphor, the banks pressed the accelerator to floor and then fell asleep at the wheel. The US government wound up being the EMTs at the scene of the crash.
Personally I believe that the banks didn't lose enough money on this "little adventure". I believe the government shouldn't have bailed them out, and allow the market to absorb the failed banks. What's wrong with awarding responsible banks with the possibility of buying the assets of a failed bank for pennies on the dollar? This is how the free market is suppose to work.
Since you are correctly blaming congress for the mess our economy is in, let's look at the exact cause. It was the passing of the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 that law repealed part of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, opening up the market among banking companies, securities companies and insurance companies. The Glass-Steagall Act prohibited any one institution from acting as any combination of an investment bank, a commercial bank, and an insurance company.
When that bill passed the Republicans had both the house and senate, however only 7 out of 45 Democratic senators and 51 out of 206 Democratic house representatives voted against the bill. Leaving me with only one conclusion that BOTH PARTIES ARE TO BLAME.
This partisan blame game is counter-productive and is used to manipulate the populous into voting against "the other party". We need to keep an eye on our own elected representatives and make sure that their vote represents the views of their constituents. Quit drinking the party politics kool-aid and think for yourself. The other senators and representatives represents their voters not you! So regardless of your political leanings you need to encourage your senator to work together and create legislation that represents the best interest of the country and quit sabotaging the country in hopes of placing blame on the other party.
For example look at health care reform. The overwhelming majority of the nation feels that something needs to be done to improve accessibility to quality health care. The house democrats decided to allow themselves to be extorted into giving ridiculous concessions to fellow Democrats in order to win enough votes to overcome an expected Republican filibuster. Thanks to Nancy Pelosi's hubris we have a health care reform bill that may overwhelmingly be good for the nation, but the Republicans have no vested interested in it and will always use it as some political football.
The Republicans are just as bad. They are willing to let this country go down the tubes in order to win the next election. They acted like a 5 year throwing a tantrum and obstructed every bill that came up for vote. Imagine what the health care bill would be like if the Democrats didn't need to overcome an expected filibuster. Too bad the Republicans will never vote for a bill that made the other party look good. Even bills that they themselves used to push when they had control of the house.
The only good thing that came from the election is that the Republicans control the House and the Democrats control the Senate, so now they have to actually make compromises in order to pass anything. Also Republicans are in the driver's seat in the House and can be held just as accountable as the Democrats for anything that happens from this point on.
I also won't be surprised that the economy will miraculously improve now that the Republicans have no reason to talk down the economy. Thanks to the corporations, we have a consumer based economy and as soon as people feel good about using their credit cards the faster the economy will "improve".
We need more national political parties. The picking the lessor of two evils is not working.
To recap: Both parties to blame. Two-party system sucks. The election ended yesterday so STFU and get back to tech news.
Haven't you seen the commercial. Everyone with a Windows 7 phone have wrecked their cars trying to get it to work.
Could be worse. It could be like the NCAA football's use of the BCS.
Sure, but it depends on what you mean by "compromising on performance" which is an imprecise and marketing type phrase. I prefer applications that are fast enough to get the job for which it was designed to do done, with responsiveness being one of the factors.
The applications I use are in house, but I can refer you to some elements that form the basis of some of the apps I use. Unfortunately thats the nature of the business, but hopefully you may find the following illustrations of things similar to mine helpful:
NASA's WorldWind is a good example. It uses OpenGL and has a very responsive GUI, well at least on my Mac and on my Linux workstation at work. I play with it at times, but the data I must present has no GIS element to it at the moment (well the end user has no desire for it yet) so I haven't used it for a project. I've seen some neat plugins for it though.
Here's a showcase of some other specialized applications used in my industry: Netbeans showcase. I personally don't use the Netbeans platforms, but the showcase does illustrate programs similar to the ones I create and use. Needless to say that my showing this link in no way is an endorsement of the products or the netbeans platform.
If you are having issues running Eclipse or Netbeans on your machine, then maybe you need to look at your machine. What is this GUI IDE that you speak of? My users abuse the hell out of the strip charts, and other graphical presentation windows and tables that are provided by the GUI. The data arrives in large quantities and in realtime. Experiment command decisions are based on what is being presented on the screen. I think this surpasses any requirements a home user may have with something like Open Office.
For clarification, if I need to do a lot of data transformations it's done prior to being sent to a user workstation. That being said, my personal experience has been that when I needed to have the same data presented on both a Windows machine and a Unix machine, I'll use Java for the presentation layer. I hesitantly use the term "presentation layer" since the users will often treat the Java app as a stand alone application to edit and interpret data stored locally on their machine. But architecturally speaking when compared with the entire data path, it's the presentation layer.
As for Open Office, I think a lot of poor choices were made in its design. Why Sun kept them after they acquired StarOffice probably has more to do with the money and time required to make major changes than the language that the application runs on.
So what is your suggestion for GUI Apps? Keep in mind it needs to be able to run on different platforms, preferably without having to require the end user to install third party libraries or depend on a particular version of a library already being installed. Third party support for libraries outside the scope of GUI is a plus but not required. In my case, be able to run unchanged on a PowerPC based machine and a Intel based machine. Not having to cross compile for a machine you may not have on site is a huge advantage (some of my workstations are not at my office). Even better if you only have to compile once.
Now if I don't need to worry about the code running on different platforms, or don't mind recompiling the source on the target machine, then I use C/C++. Mainly because dealing with pack and unpack on structured data can be a pain in the arse at times. But usually in t
Please feel free to disagree.
I've used some great Java programs, and not so great ones. I can say the same thing about most other programming languages.
Startup times can be an issue. Most of it can be helped by having as much of the JVM library in memory at all times. Microsoft Office, which is not written in Java, used to decrease its startup times by loading as much of its libraries at boot time (Do the current version still run the Helper program?). JVM could do the same (if a version of it doesn't already).
Of all the interpreted languages, I believe Java is the fastest (or pretty damn close to the fastest). The JIT helps a lot. The execution speed most often makes up for the startup times.
I use and occasionally develop Java programs to display telemetry during flight experiments, and haven't experienced any failure due to Java. I use other languages for day-to-day stuff, but when it needs to run on Windows, OS X, and Linux, I use Java or more accurately the JVM which support other interpreted languages. The install base of the JVM is Java's biggest advantage when compared against other languages using cross-platform libraries.
I'm not saying Java is the best. I'm just saying that a lot of its criticisms is unwarranted.
But it is a coincidence, and that doesn't mean that was the motivation behind Apple's move. Apple made its announcement about deprecating Java when it announced the Mac App Store. I could hazard a guess that Apple wants to steer development into Objective-C.
One problem with your theory is that Apple will continue to support Java until 10.7 is released. If Apple was reacting to Oracle's behavior I would believe that they would immediately cease all support. Another problem being that Apple licensed the technology from Sun/Oracle so why would they care if Oracle went after Google? Especially since Google's Dalvik competes with Apple's Objective-C in the mobile app space. If anything, you'd think Apple would support Oracle even more. I can even look at it from a different angle, maybe Apple doesn't want to support Java because it's being used as a development platform for Android Apps. The motivation would still be against Google not Oracle.
I think the truth is less conspiracy derived and more mundane. Apple probably lacks the man power to support a language that they have know real financial interest in. The release schedules for OS X updates and iOS updates seem the lend support to the manpower theory.
Not to mention, Steve Jobs has said that they had trouble keeping up with the Java releases and believed that Oracle could do better. As bad as Jobs has been about being blunt in his emails, I think I'll stick with the lack of resources theory.
Maybe because Sun was having financial problems of their own, and starting a court battle with Google may have complicated their sale. Don't forget Sun sued Microsoft over Microsoft's handling of Java. Why would Sun act differently toward Google? How does protecting one's own intellectual property make a corporation less responsible?
Java is dead? Who announced that? Wishful thinking perhaps? Does the thought of Java dying provide imaginary restitution for Google being slighted by Oracle? Why is it assume that Google has no culpability?
FUD.
The problem with exploits is users not keeping their JVMs up to date. Also Sun and Oracle are NOT suing anyone with their own implementation. They are suing Google for infringing on their patent. Google did not make their own implementation of JVM, in fact Dalvik does not run native Java byte codes. What Google did was attempt to make their own Mobile JVM and thought that requiring the byte codes to be translated into "Dalvik compatible" byte codes would be enough to keep them from having to license the technology from Oracle.
I disagree.
Java is great for cross platform GUI apps. I can write a Java app and as long as I use Swing, I'm sure that the app will run on a different platform. You're blaming Java for Open Office's design decision to use "wizards". Wizards are not exclusively tied to Java. Sure Sun made a Swing library to make creating wizards easier, but so did Qt, and WxWidget.
How about the lack of standard of living?
No minimum wage, no pesky labor laws, and no inconvenient safety regulations. That's where the real savings are realized.
Here's the rub. Android probably doesn't deserve to exist in its current state. For all intents and purposes, Google tried to circumvent Sun/Oracle's licensing requirements by not making a byte compatible VM, however it is very evident that it's Java with an extra step of translating the byte-codes.
Java has a healthy development base that really didn't need help from Android. I would go as far as saying Android needed Java more than Java needed Android.
Money does not magically appear from nothing. Oracle (and the previous owner Sun) did not create Java out of the pure kindness of their hearts. They made it to make money. Sun made money by selling licenses to Java ME. Google circumvented that licensing scheme by making a unauthorized version of a Mobile JVM called Dalvik. The fact that Android may increase the number of "Java developers", doesn't matter much to Oracle if it benefits Google and not them.
You seemed to have confused Dalvik with a proper JVM and completely overlook the fact that in the desktop/server area, where the bulk of the Java programming exists, there are alternative versions of the JVM supported by a community whose assets includes source provided by Sun with a license for use in supporting Java SE. Google could have easily licensed the right to create their own mobile JVM. This would have prevented this lawsuit, and removed the needless step of translating Java byte-codes to Dalvik byte-codes. The "laissez faire" management of Java by Sun never existed, it wasn't until Google decided to violate the open source license or more accurately try to make a "clean room" version of the Mobile JVM that forced Oracle's hand. By the way, by making a so called "clean room" version of the Mobile JVM, Google did not inherit any of the licenses to use the patents granted to the users of OpenJDK.