Well, I'll give the satisfaction hardly anyone ever gives me and say I was wrong about something critical; last I looked, not so long ago, Novell had not yet done their devil's bargain with Microsoft, and while the Mono guys were hard at work cloning the.NET APIs, it was a reverse engineering effort, they were not done, and there was every indication that Microsoft would sue the crap out of them once they finished... though they might choose to wait a little while after, till more people were using Mono, and sue them all, just to make a point.
It seems now Mono and Novell are good friends with Microsoft, and MS is opening up the platform more after all. At least to them.
This changes my whole perspective on the thing.
With a few caveats, that is:
You're still dodging the issue of which language is bigger - they compared posted jobs on craigslist, c# is not really placing as well as perl, simple as that. Divide and multiply the job posting numbers by other things to your hearts' content, if it makes you feel better. That said, if.NET is truly going to be open, it has a future, so the trend will be better for it.
I think you answering "Never said I wanted to" about leaving Microsoft is hilarious - if you ever get in bed with a vendor and find you can't get out, you will learn why having the option matters soon enough.
Microsoft's.NET is not free - unless you steal Windows Server, that is.:)
I never said.NET was a language. Try and quote where I did.
All this said, if I can go to Mono and get a GPL.NET implementation, then I might use it. And that certainly would be free. It's not caught up with Microsoft now, but say they stay on schedule, and/or MS helps them, I suppose they could.
Java has been encouraging others to make totally compatible JREs and JDKs since the beginning. There have been GPL ones from early on - Sun encouraged it, unlike Microsoft, who I don't think were so encouraging of Mono at first. So it's hardly lock in, is it.:) Also, the source was open for most of the time - just not under a free software license.:) But now even Sun uses the GPL.
The interesting thing will be: will Microsoft really allow Mono to be a free replacement for their platform? And will the free alternative really be adopted in production, in major enterprises?
Will it really be possible/practical to migrate a.NET app from Windows to Linux, actually creating competition? Maybe not... after all, while Pure Java is a credo everyone knows, MS encourages users to interop with native code, making things non-portable. Time will tell. But I'll be very surprised if Microsoft makes it so easy to escape their platform.
So those references you gave are just a compilation of web search hits based on language.
No, they aren't.
You should have actually read them. There are many different metrics included there. Not least, the counts of job postings - pretty easy to measure. Since I have to spell it out, on craigslist, C# is less frequent than Perl, around 1/3 of Java, and somewhere around 6% of the whole..NET loses hugely on almost every measure, though not all - for instance not on cost per click on the keyword for advertising.
Boo Fucking Hoo.
I can always tell when people have maintained a large codebase and when they haven't.
I didn't get stuck holding that particular bag, but many companies are out billions of dollars because they have millions of lines of code they now either have to refactor or try to support on a proprietary platform that's end-of-life.
Yeah, the new version had great new features for a low low price. But customers don't always want to be on a treadmill. Most just want their apps to work.
MS has a different goal. They want you to pay, and pay on a regular basis. And they are totally happy holding you hostage to get you to do it.
Business is all about money. That's why MS is the way they are. So the question is, how many times will everyone want to be a sucker?
That's why everyone's demanding openness now, and that's why MS has a mendacious PR campaign to try to convince the world that.NET is too, even though it's not.
C# is open!
And when I say the.NET hype is tired, it's because honestly, not many people were fooled by this nonsense even at first, and now it's a joke.
C# !=.NET.
It's you who'se being corrected here.
Java is a language, and a runtime, and an API.
The standardized portions of.NET are the language and the runtime.
Notice the critical missing piece?
What do you think happens when you want to leave Microsoft?
I can just picture the post now. "Hey ECMA said it's a standard but strangely when I tried to leave Microsoft, I got all these errors about missing classes? I don't understand."
You didn't write an app to add numbers forever without doing input or output. You wrote an actual app that uses the API. And now you can't leave because you need the API (if not whatever COM or other native stuff you used - notice MS encourages this as well). You are locked in.
What do you think MS does when they've got you locked in? What they always do. What any vendor that gets you locked in does. They bend you over a barrel.
You will be stuck watching Java people migrate from machine to machine, OS to OS, VM to VM, App Server to App Server... taking advantage of actual marketplaces full of innovation and competition... while you stagnate in MS's walled garden.
Java will be ported to new hardware architectures that the inventors of which haven't even been born..NET has never been ported anywhere, and it never will.
(Go ahead, say that Mono will do it. I dare you.)
That is the definition of openness - when you don't have to pay MS a cent to use.NET.
Perfect example. We use a Java servlet container. One day we discover it has a bug. We go to the vendor. The vendor refuses to fix the bug. We switch to another container. Presto. The bug is gone.
Imagine, too, that if there is only one vendor and you are locked into them, they no longer care so much about fixing bugs or keeping you happy at all, because they have a monopoly, and they act like it. And I've had exactly this problem with MS. I catch IIS blowing up? I debug it with MS support, who actually talk to me because the client is fortune 50, and what do they say when we catch them red-handed? "Oh yeah, sorry, we know all about that bug after all. It's marked WONTFIX. Bye."
Imagine never having to hear that kind of thing again, because now you have a market instead of a monopoly. That's what real open standards do. That's what scares MS to death.
Java is a major player. C is a major player..NET, maybe in a few more years, but I doubt it. They will have to do something truly innovative.
Today,.NET is marketing hype - and as I said, that hype is now getting tired.
My judgment that it's dead-end isn't really so pejorative. It goes for just about everything like it that isn't truly open. I say the same for VB, though they add features to it every year. Sure, MS would be crazy to drop.NET. Right? Never happen. It sounds familiar because the VB guys said the same thing. Look what happened to them.
The landscape is littered with the graves of proprietary systems like these. Most languages we use widely today are truly open. These days the world is finally learning you have to be crazy to hitch your wagon to a single vendor, let alone the world's most notorious. Who wants to have their platform supported only at the pleasure of the king? And you don't have to.
If Microsoft wanted to beat the crap out of Java all they'd need to do would be to put down the patent gun, open up their sources, and let.NET embrace cross platform. They could perhaps out-Java Java.
We both know very well they wont. It's because.NET is not designed to win the language wars or be the best language. It is designed to stop the bleeding from developers breaking out of MS's jail, by providing a new way of locking developers (and their code) into the proprietary Microsoft platform.
OK, you guessed wrong. I know quite well what's released and what's in the roadmap.
Vector and 3D graphics (Swing and Java3D, check); interop via soap-like protocols (too many ways to list, check); workflow libraries (check); security library (check)... Oh it's not to say that there aren't a few things about these which aren't nicer than their counterparts (just as there are a few things which really aren't as nice or as interesting)... especially Avalon IMO... but there's nothing novel here.
Now LINQ, that's at least interesting. Until then, Hibernate 3+Java is a better (and better supported) ORM solution... perhaps the best widely used one in the world, but who could agree on such a thing.
"C# sucks, pure and simple. Java is a JOY compared to C#. And yeah, I program in C# at work 90% of the time. If Java would have made it here sooner they would have chosen that language for sure."
See how easy it is to spout off nonsense?
So, do you have anything concrete to say - something I could learn how right you are from? I'll give you some examples.
Here, I'll do some of your work for you. That's a comprehensive, balanced comparison of the language features.
Here and here are some measures by which you can measure the relative popularity of programming languages, the availability of jobs, etc.
Think about your career, man.
And, next time, at least link some MS marketing materials or something.
Even if Java wasn't about to be GPLd, was it really worth all the effort, plus daring the world's most notorious IP barratrers' fairly obvious patent/IP trap, so you can get...
Operator overloading? Unsafe code in a VM? Not to say there aren't a few nice things. But too few. Mono is a dangerous waste of time.
That C#/.NET hype is so damn tired. It's a dead-end platform, unless MS opens it up, or chooses to add some truly novel features to it in the future.
Carrier Command. Now that was an underrated gem. Not certain if it was an Amiga game first, though. There was certainly a (not as good looking) PC version, and I played both at various times.
Sad to say, I seem to recall some bugs in the Amiga version that weren't in the PC version. Your inventory would get screwed, and you'd have to restart your game to get it working right again. And on the PC you could send a set of walruses with a set of mantas way off on expeditions to capture other islands, as long as one of the mantas had a long-range communications pod, and one or two of the walruses had extra fuel... and you set all the fighters to go as slow as possible...
It was a pretty effective little strategy, almost too much so. But it seemed obvious the designers had intended to make it possible. Unfortunately I noticed on the Amiga a weird glitch would usually cause this not to work somehow.
By the way, there's a very long running fan project to remake the game on modern hardware, in OpenGL (here)... still kicking, from the looks of it.:)
There's also a modern remake in the early production phases at a small developer (here).
By way of contrast, I thought I would spice things up a bit with a few links to actual data.
Nasa, via a program called the ASRS, maintains a database of all aviation "safety occurrences" since the 40's - this is online and somewhat searchable. Good architecture in action.:)
This seems to be the result of a search; it includes everything from frightening incidents with malfunctioning instrumentation that have been associated with PEDs, to "1st class passenger won't turn off his cell phone" reports. But in the end it's clear that there are some worrying issues with PED interference - or at least the waters are muddied enough that I wouldn't expect relaxation of PED use restrictions to be entirely safe without costly equipment upgrades and testing.
And why, really, should this money be spent? So your call doesn't have to wait a few hours?
But TFA does make one critical point - if planes are fragile enough for consumer devices to interfere with them, this isn't about passenger convenience - this is a major security problem. Plane electronics do need to be properly shielded, or it's a matter of time before someone begins deliberately attempting to exploit the vulnerability. The debate about whether cell phones should be allowed in flight in general is less interesting to me, personally.
For those curious, there have been some more determined efforts to explore the problem by more professional trade journalists:
To the Verizon Employee/Shareholder - Bzzzt!
on
The End for Vonage?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
You are smoking crack.
They've demonstrated that you can do telephony over cheap packet switched networks like the internet for a tiny fraction of the costs of the incumbent telecoms. Not that that was a shocker. Those stupendously greedy assholes at the old school telecom companies have been price gouging so bad they've even intermittently attracted federal regulation. And we know how hard that is to do.
Voip providers don't need the telecoms. As old-line telecom customers switch to Voip, then usage of bridges to the old line telecom network declines to zero. Data is carried according to the (slightly less rigged) internet pricing model. Everyone saves a fuckload of money and the economy grows. End of story.
(P.S. - there's no "maybe" - that's why vonage-to-vonage calls are already free for vonage customers. Vonage users are largely paying - being price gouged, technically - for the use of the telecom bridge, for as long as it lasts. Once that goes, then prices drop even further, to the actual value of carrying a few kilobits a second...)
Just stepping in here... I think I can answer for him. I'll be brief.
Are you seriously suggesting that all objections to the GPL are groundless and that all other licenses are somehow undermining 'software freedom' (What does that mean exactly?), because they aren't part of the one true way?
No.
A fair case could be made for the GPL being unfree in that it excludes all other licenses. Akin to monotheism's insistence that you shall not worship other gods.
No.
Why would anyone possibly agree to be bound by any and all future conditions that they haven't even seen
Why would people do FOSS at all? Who knows? Not that anyone who used GPLv2 really did - I think there was a misunderstanding here, though not a critical one to the point.
I doubt that clause is even legally binding.
No reason why not. Such language would be as ordinary as boilerplate assigning all rights to the FSF, which folks do without much fanfare. Let them collect donations, hire lawyers, and deal with the paperwork... these new drafts, a perfect example.
Who are 'the free software community' and why do you presume to speak for them?
Why do his opinions about the community involve presumption? How many communities are precisely defined, and why quibble about it?
I personally don't see any problem with a proliferation of licenses
I think you're much closer to the truth here than most, and I appreciate you whacking in a good rebuttal.
You're right about the main point - that Linus can't relicense the kernel. He doesn't control the copyrights - he never had committers assign rights to him. You're certainly right that his complaints about the GPLv3 draft were both over the top absurd and inflammatory - and most of all gratuitous, for the foregoing reason. He couldn't relicense if he wanted to. His rant about the draft was therefore was not only either astoundingly ignorant or mendacious, but just simply caddish behavior of a (heretofore) unbelievable degree.
He's also in no position to make threats anyway. Even if it was his choice, he can't release a Linux distro without the FSF's code. That's the whole toolchain just for a start. And they have assigned copyrights. They will be GPLv3. They are in the driver's seat on this one.
I think, though, that the "can use a later version of the GPLv3" clause is not quite what you might think. Can being the operative word. That would mean that you have the option to use the later version. It's not the same as giving the FSF a blanket right to revise the license whenever they like.
If I'm right, and the later version denies you rights you had under the original version of the license, then you just use the original (you decline the option). So Linus removing such an option would be much more of a minor thing.
I haven't fully digested the latest draft; what's the damage? Do you really think they nerfed it to the point where it won't be worth it anymore? How so?
Any Debian derivative (using.deb packages) will do this easily.
The package metadata makes it easy to determine when a package was installed to satisfy a dependency. There are also trivial tools for identifying orphans.
Methods for keeping your system clean vary, in a way dating those who use them. Some people use the old way:
apt-get remove `deborphan`
Although many modern package management UIs (aptitude is one I'm certain of) will offer to cull your orphaned packages automatically (or just do it quietly by default).
In between, I believe there's even an apt-get command line option for removing orphaned dependent packages when removing a package, but I can't remember it right now.
You know, the ones who talk about Fox News' sacred right to broadcast propaganda and call it news?
You know, the sacred right they've had since the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in the last decade or so?
When you talk about government regulating what they say on TV, some Republicans trot out the constitution like a prayer rug and wave it all around in the air. Their Speech Is Free. How dare the government regulate the media.
(I mean, the government has to decide who can broadcast. And it can only pick a few lucky people, and everyone else can't broadcast on pain of huge penalties.)
(But aside from that, those lucky few should be able to say whatever they want on TV. If you don't like it, print a newspaper.)
The Republicans said, Americans are smart. Americans are free. Americans can handle their own media without getting confused. They don't need anyone to look out for them. They choose what media to watch and what not to watch, and if they happen to see something not so cool when switching channels, oh, they can handle it.
And they are lying through their teeth. They don't really believe a word of that.
Their coming out to censor the media like this is how you can tell.
You're supposed to be able to take care of yourself when consuming the information that powers, oh, this entire democracy. But not be able to handle some violent or sexual imagery.
I just don't get it. Sure, the sleazy publishers associations can talk a line about how there's no such thing as a backup (or at least a legitimate one), but why do we actually slurp it up and start regurgitating it ourselves?
I back stuff up, and play the backups. I've been doing this since the 8-bit days.
Backups are not a myth. They're not a euphemism. They're a simple practical thing that people should do, especially people with little kids. And no matter who lies to you about it, you have a right to make them.
If this very simple, practical right endangers someone's revenue model, the answer is not to try some futile measures to prevent it (or even try to outlaw it), but to get a new revenue model. And the publishers (obviously) don't even need to, since there has never been a working copy protection system in the history of mankind, yet they seem to be doing just fine anyway.
Next we'll be talking about how libraries are illegal because people can share media using them. Sheesh.
What I'm seeing now are people who went google-style with blades buying empty rackspace to cope with hosting providers' power per rack ratio.
Meanwhile Sun's sales guys are selling $14k 72 watt, 8-way, 32-thread T2000's that can replace multiple Opteron (or Core:) blades... IF you're within its application domain. Interesting gamble.
Most webapps probably are... not actually a lot of hot floating point, or math code in general, in that space. But you have to be very careful.
So, it's possible that Sun has turned their biggest disadvantage into their biggest advantage: they're in a niche! Yet they can design whole hardware architectures. So it frees them up to find ways to specialize, and it seems that there may be some payoffs there.
You've got it wrong. It doesn't have to do anything.
Quite often markets naturally consolidate into a trust or monopoly situation.
If no one thinks they can make money competing against Microsoft, then they simply wont. They'll invest their time and money where they can get an easier return. Then eventually Microsoft can get lazy or sloppy or expensive enough that there will finally be enough incentive for people to come back and take a shot at it... but this could take years or decades and there is no guarantee, if the barriers to entry are high enough, that it will ever happen in your lifetime.
OK, I'm a game developer. I suffered through a thousand tribulations to reach the point I'm at today. I paid my dues, I beat out the world's stiffest competition, and I have secured an 8 figure budget to make a console title.
Maybe my next game will change the world. Or maybe it will merely be entertaining for a week. Maybe it will suck. Who knows? But anyway... I will spend the next several years of my life making it. I will only make a few games this big in my career.
What system will I develop my game for?
Xbox 360?
Wii?
PS3?
My game will take 2 years to write. Well, 2 years and six months, realistically. Lets say three and call it even. So, starting today, what system will I target? What system will have the biggest audience in 2009?
Wii looks pretty good. For one, my cost of entry is the lowest with Wii. So is the consumers'. With their pricepoint so low, you basically have to admit that they will sell more units than Microsoft. Probably quite a lot more... the Wii hardware sale is already profitable for Nintendo. Within 3 years the price will come down... plus the controller is cool. Hmm.
Then there's MS. Hmm. Their hardware is nice. My game will definitely look better on the 360. And no one can match their online infrastructure. MS's rep wants to talk about a promo deal - a demo and some making-of reels on XBL. Sounds interesting.
There's no denying that they're the next-gen market leader today - pushing 10 million units sold. If my game were coming out tomorrow, it would need to be a 360 game - unless I wanted to make a PS2 title. I hear that John and Tim are both putting in the most work on pipelines tailored to its GPU. Oh yeah, and there's one thing about Microsoft. You know they are not going to go and pull a Sega. They are fucking RICH. They're not going anywhere. They know the PC is dead, and they know the console is the future. They're in this to win, all hundred gajillion dollars worth. And so far, you have to admit, betting against them has never been smart.
Oh yeah. Sony. Hmm.
Right. Well, maybe, if it's cheap, we can port to the playstation 3. And the PC even? We'll have to look at the budget. If the audience is there... Say Sony has 10 million users by 2009 to the winner's 40 million. Say a 10% uptake......
OK, stop. Even if I just ported to the PS3, Sony loses. You don't buy the most expensive system to play a port, nor do you put the effort into a single target of a port game to take advantage of Sony's expensive, unique hardware.
To succeed, they need to be attractive to 3rd party developers - now, today. For that matter, a year ago, or 18 months ago - because those are the titles coming out in 2007 and 2008. They failed at this before they even launched. The best they can hope for now is what Nintendo had - a niche, buoyed with some strong first-party titles over its life. It's difficult to estimate what it would take for them to recoup their investment. You could argue that even a modest success could put their blu-ray media play over the top and, if blu-ray wins the format war, the associated profits could in some sense justify PS3 costs. Is that worth it? I don't know.
The PS3 will never capture the success of the previous two systems. I will still buy it, becuase I loved Ico, and in addition to renting blu-rays from netflix I know there will be a few more games like it I would miss, otherwise. But I'm the exception, not the rule.:)
You got it. I've been saying this over and over and I'm absolutely stunned that there are some people who still don't get it.
You don't even have any choice as to whether or not to ignore software patents. There are hundreds of thousands of them. Then there are several thousand new applications a day. I'll give you a hint. It's impossible.
That's why Microsoft ignores software patents. Even they, the richest company on the planet, have no alternative. And that's also why they're getting hit with a few 9-figure verdicts already. But they still play the game and pretend they're legitimate, because they somehow think they'll benefit, in the end, using them to crush current and potential competition with multi-million legal actions and the threat thereof.
It is mpossible to tell if any piece of code infringes. By the way, have you read many of these things? Almost every line of code does infringe.
Every line written is a ticking patent timebomb. Every player has to ante up and make their own "patent portfolio" which they can then apply against whoever sues them. If that sounds like it excludes everyone but a few rich, dominant corporations... now you're getting the idea. Only minor fly in the ointment: those patent shell companies that actually don't do any work except suing people, therefore can't be hit with a retaliatory claim. Ooops. And yet even after getting whacked by a few, MS is still winking and continuing to play the game. Shows you how much they hate honest competition.
Software Patents are currently ignored by almost everyone. But to the extent they are enforced, they will categorically end the American software industry, and software will continue to be a business in Europe, Asia, and... well basically every other civilized nation, who have soundly rejected this silly game and are by the way laughing their asses off at us.
That logic is about the same as saying that your purchase is free at the time you leave the checkout.
It's an idiom, not an attempt at logic. Let's not change the subject.
Electricity has not been truly deregulated.
Do you believe it ever can be? Do you imagine there can be a functional market for electricity?
Some argue that interest rates should be set by the market, not some fed chairman.
I don't know who these "some" are, and your statement doesn't seem to make sense. It's also a good idea to be specific instead of referring to "interest rates," otherwise you might give the impression you don't actually understand what you're saying.
Assuming you mean the federal funds rate, even this is set by the market - that is, what someone is willing to pay. The FOMC sets a "target" rate and then does what any government who wishes to maintain a currency must do - they print and destory money. Their goal in doing so is to try to get the market to hit the target. These days they don't actually use a printing press and a furnace - they use financial instruments executed electronically with primary dealers (i.e. big banks) - but the result is the same.
It sounds like you are suggesting you can somehow have a currency without human agency, but the money supply cannot regulate itself, nor can the "market" regulate it - an incoherent concept.
I am being vague only because in the end it all comes down to tampering with a natural system.
This is the crux of the matter.
There is no "One, True Natural Market," nor is the concept of "natural" meaningful in terms of markets. Supply and demand are expressed in a market, but they are not themselves a market, unless you want to loosen the definition to the point of meaninglessness.
Markets run on rules, and those rules are made by human agency, and no one set of rules is any more natural than the other. Yes, that also means that the term "free market" is in one sense an oxymoron.
You cannot reduce economic inequality and still have a viable economic system any more than you can reduce diversity and still have a viable gene pool.
This is a shocking and frankly absurd statement, lavishly contradicted by common sense, not to mention all known economic history.
If after everything I've said, you can simply respond with this blanket statement, I don't think you're having an honest discussion anymore.
Ask yourself this, as a thought exercise. If "inequality" approaches completeness (where completeness means one person has all the money), what does ths do to the economy?
Fear of where your next meal will come from is a great motivator to work. Living on the dole is a great motivator to not work.
Ah, notice what I have not said. I have not said that welfare is a good idea, or that sustenance should be guaranteed for all regardless of work. In fact, it's a bad idea - for the reason you state.
You're confusing Socialism with Communism again. The idea is not to stop competition, just to use it effectively instead of badly.
Income inequality is a fact of life. If we did not have it, we would not have had the great artists and musicians that we have had, etc. While I agree that there should be some safety net to get you back on your feet, it should be just that. There is not a fixed supply of wealth. Wealth can be created. Google is a great example of this.
Aside from your comment on artists and musicians, which I don't really get, I wholeheartedly agree.
Yes, their grandfathers died on Europe's soil so that the "first world" could have a 9% unemployment rate:
Another confusion you seem to have; I'm not endorsing the "European" approach; frankly I think it's basically proven that the American (lighter touch) way works better, though I suspect the sweet spot is somewhere in between.
And be careful again, Europe is a big continent - you don't want to give the impression you'r
Slashdot Mirror
Mm. Interesting.
.NET APIs, it was a reverse engineering effort, they were not done, and there was every indication that Microsoft would sue the crap out of them once they finished... though they might choose to wait a little while after, till more people were using Mono, and sue them all, just to make a point.
.NET is truly going to be open, it has a future, so the trend will be better for it.
.NET is not free - unless you steal Windows Server, that is. :)
.NET was a language. Try and quote where I did.
.NET implementation, then I might use it. And that certainly would be free. It's not caught up with Microsoft now, but say they stay on schedule, and/or MS helps them, I suppose they could.
:) Also, the source was open for most of the time - just not under a free software license. :) But now even Sun uses the GPL.
.NET app from Windows to Linux, actually creating competition? Maybe not... after all, while Pure Java is a credo everyone knows, MS encourages users to interop with native code, making things non-portable. Time will tell. But I'll be very surprised if Microsoft makes it so easy to escape their platform.
Well, I'll give the satisfaction hardly anyone ever gives me and say I was wrong about something critical; last I looked, not so long ago, Novell had not yet done their devil's bargain with Microsoft, and while the Mono guys were hard at work cloning the
And there were lines of reasoning like this.
It seems now Mono and Novell are good friends with Microsoft, and MS is opening up the platform more after all. At least to them.
This changes my whole perspective on the thing.
With a few caveats, that is:
You're still dodging the issue of which language is bigger - they compared posted jobs on craigslist, c# is not really placing as well as perl, simple as that. Divide and multiply the job posting numbers by other things to your hearts' content, if it makes you feel better. That said, if
I think you answering "Never said I wanted to" about leaving Microsoft is hilarious - if you ever get in bed with a vendor and find you can't get out, you will learn why having the option matters soon enough.
Microsoft's
I never said
All this said, if I can go to Mono and get a GPL
Java has been encouraging others to make totally compatible JREs and JDKs since the beginning. There have been GPL ones from early on - Sun encouraged it, unlike Microsoft, who I don't think were so encouraging of Mono at first. So it's hardly lock in, is it.
The interesting thing will be: will Microsoft really allow Mono to be a free replacement for their platform? And will the free alternative really be adopted in production, in major enterprises?
Will it really be possible/practical to migrate a
So those references you gave are just a compilation of web search hits based on language.
.NET loses hugely on almost every measure, though not all - for instance not on cost per click on the keyword for advertising.
.NET is too, even though it's not.
.NET hype is tired, it's because honestly, not many people were fooled by this nonsense even at first, and now it's a joke.
.NET.
.NET are the language and the runtime.
.NET has never been ported anywhere, and it never will.
.NET.
No, they aren't.
You should have actually read them. There are many different metrics included there. Not least, the counts of job postings - pretty easy to measure. Since I have to spell it out, on craigslist, C# is less frequent than Perl, around 1/3 of Java, and somewhere around 6% of the whole.
Boo Fucking Hoo.
I can always tell when people have maintained a large codebase and when they haven't.
I didn't get stuck holding that particular bag, but many companies are out billions of dollars because they have millions of lines of code they now either have to refactor or try to support on a proprietary platform that's end-of-life.
Yeah, the new version had great new features for a low low price. But customers don't always want to be on a treadmill. Most just want their apps to work.
MS has a different goal. They want you to pay, and pay on a regular basis. And they are totally happy holding you hostage to get you to do it.
Business is all about money. That's why MS is the way they are. So the question is, how many times will everyone want to be a sucker?
That's why everyone's demanding openness now, and that's why MS has a mendacious PR campaign to try to convince the world that
C# is open!
And when I say the
C# !=
It's you who'se being corrected here.
Java is a language, and a runtime, and an API.
The standardized portions of
Notice the critical missing piece?
What do you think happens when you want to leave Microsoft?
I can just picture the post now. "Hey ECMA said it's a standard but strangely when I tried to leave Microsoft, I got all these errors about missing classes? I don't understand."
You didn't write an app to add numbers forever without doing input or output. You wrote an actual app that uses the API. And now you can't leave because you need the API (if not whatever COM or other native stuff you used - notice MS encourages this as well). You are locked in.
What do you think MS does when they've got you locked in? What they always do. What any vendor that gets you locked in does. They bend you over a barrel.
You will be stuck watching Java people migrate from machine to machine, OS to OS, VM to VM, App Server to App Server... taking advantage of actual marketplaces full of innovation and competition... while you stagnate in MS's walled garden.
Java will be ported to new hardware architectures that the inventors of which haven't even been born.
(Go ahead, say that Mono will do it. I dare you.)
That is the definition of openness - when you don't have to pay MS a cent to use
Perfect example. We use a Java servlet container. One day we discover it has a bug. We go to the vendor. The vendor refuses to fix the bug. We switch to another container. Presto. The bug is gone.
Imagine, too, that if there is only one vendor and you are locked into them, they no longer care so much about fixing bugs or keeping you happy at all, because they have a monopoly, and they act like it. And I've had exactly this problem with MS. I catch IIS blowing up? I debug it with MS support, who actually talk to me because the client is fortune 50, and what do they say when we catch them red-handed? "Oh yeah, sorry, we know all about that bug after all. It's marked WONTFIX. Bye."
Imagine never having to hear that kind of thing again, because now you have a market instead of a monopoly. That's what real open standards do. That's what scares MS to death.
It's not really a major player.
.NET, maybe in a few more years, but I doubt it. They will have to do something truly innovative.
.NET is marketing hype - and as I said, that hype is now getting tired.
.NET. Right? Never happen. It sounds familiar because the VB guys said the same thing. Look what happened to them.
.NET embrace cross platform. They could perhaps out-Java Java.
.NET is not designed to win the language wars or be the best language. It is designed to stop the bleeding from developers breaking out of MS's jail, by providing a new way of locking developers (and their code) into the proprietary Microsoft platform.
Reference 1. Reference 2.
Java is a major player. C is a major player.
Today,
My judgment that it's dead-end isn't really so pejorative. It goes for just about everything like it that isn't truly open. I say the same for VB, though they add features to it every year. Sure, MS would be crazy to drop
The landscape is littered with the graves of proprietary systems like these. Most languages we use widely today are truly open. These days the world is finally learning you have to be crazy to hitch your wagon to a single vendor, let alone the world's most notorious. Who wants to have their platform supported only at the pleasure of the king? And you don't have to.
If Microsoft wanted to beat the crap out of Java all they'd need to do would be to put down the patent gun, open up their sources, and let
We both know very well they wont. It's because
Was your point that, to like .NET so much, you have to be fairly divorced from rational argument? Is your point that you're easy to embarrass?
OK, you guessed wrong. I know quite well what's released and what's in the roadmap.
Vector and 3D graphics (Swing and Java3D, check); interop via soap-like protocols (too many ways to list, check); workflow libraries (check); security library (check)... Oh it's not to say that there aren't a few things about these which aren't nicer than their counterparts (just as there are a few things which really aren't as nice or as interesting)... especially Avalon IMO... but there's nothing novel here.
Now LINQ, that's at least interesting. Until then, Hibernate 3+Java is a better (and better supported) ORM solution... perhaps the best widely used one in the world, but who could agree on such a thing.
Anything else?
"C# sucks, pure and simple. Java is a JOY compared to C#. And yeah, I program in C# at work 90% of the time. If Java would have made it here sooner they would have chosen that language for sure."
See how easy it is to spout off nonsense?
So, do you have anything concrete to say - something I could learn how right you are from? I'll give you some examples.
Here, I'll do some of your work for you. That's a comprehensive, balanced comparison of the language features.
Here and here are some measures by which you can measure the relative popularity of programming languages, the availability of jobs, etc.
Think about your career, man.
And, next time, at least link some MS marketing materials or something.
Even if Java wasn't about to be GPLd, was it really worth all the effort, plus daring the world's most notorious IP barratrers' fairly obvious patent/IP trap, so you can get...
Operator overloading? Unsafe code in a VM? Not to say there aren't a few nice things. But too few. Mono is a dangerous waste of time.
That C#/.NET hype is so damn tired. It's a dead-end platform, unless MS opens it up, or chooses to add some truly novel features to it in the future.
Carrier Command. Now that was an underrated gem. Not certain if it was an Amiga game first, though. There was certainly a (not as good looking) PC version, and I played both at various times.
:)
Sad to say, I seem to recall some bugs in the Amiga version that weren't in the PC version. Your inventory would get screwed, and you'd have to restart your game to get it working right again. And on the PC you could send a set of walruses with a set of mantas way off on expeditions to capture other islands, as long as one of the mantas had a long-range communications pod, and one or two of the walruses had extra fuel... and you set all the fighters to go as slow as possible...
It was a pretty effective little strategy, almost too much so. But it seemed obvious the designers had intended to make it possible. Unfortunately I noticed on the Amiga a weird glitch would usually cause this not to work somehow.
By the way, there's a very long running fan project to remake the game on modern hardware, in OpenGL (here)... still kicking, from the looks of it.
There's also a modern remake in the early production phases at a small developer (here).
By way of contrast, I thought I would spice things up a bit with a few links to actual data.
:)
. asp?id=80
Nasa, via a program called the ASRS, maintains a database of all aviation "safety occurrences" since the 40's - this is online and somewhat searchable. Good architecture in action.
http://aviation-safety.net/database/
A report about "safety incidents" related to the use of Portable Electronic Devices (PED's) based on their data was released a while ago.
http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/report_sets/ped.pdf
This seems to be the result of a search; it includes everything from frightening incidents with malfunctioning instrumentation that have been associated with PEDs, to "1st class passenger won't turn off his cell phone" reports. But in the end it's clear that there are some worrying issues with PED interference - or at least the waters are muddied enough that I wouldn't expect relaxation of PED use restrictions to be entirely safe without costly equipment upgrades and testing.
And why, really, should this money be spent? So your call doesn't have to wait a few hours?
But TFA does make one critical point - if planes are fragile enough for consumer devices to interfere with them, this isn't about passenger convenience - this is a major security problem. Plane electronics do need to be properly shielded, or it's a matter of time before someone begins deliberately attempting to exploit the vulnerability. The debate about whether cell phones should be allowed in flight in general is less interesting to me, personally.
For those curious, there have been some more determined efforts to explore the problem by more professional trade journalists:
http://www.issues.org/19.2/strauss.htm
http://www.popularaviation.com/ListNewsArticleDtl
You are smoking crack.
They've demonstrated that you can do telephony over cheap packet switched networks like the internet for a tiny fraction of the costs of the incumbent telecoms. Not that that was a shocker. Those stupendously greedy assholes at the old school telecom companies have been price gouging so bad they've even intermittently attracted federal regulation. And we know how hard that is to do.
Voip providers don't need the telecoms. As old-line telecom customers switch to Voip, then usage of bridges to the old line telecom network declines to zero. Data is carried according to the (slightly less rigged) internet pricing model. Everyone saves a fuckload of money and the economy grows. End of story.
(P.S. - there's no "maybe" - that's why vonage-to-vonage calls are already free for vonage customers. Vonage users are largely paying - being price gouged, technically - for the use of the telecom bridge, for as long as it lasts. Once that goes, then prices drop even further, to the actual value of carrying a few kilobits a second...)
Thanks for your oh-so-enlightening answers.
Anytime.
Care to explain the misunderstanding you feel took place?
Sure.
He didn't speak *about* the community, he spoke for it when he said we. That is presumption.
That's your presumption.
Just stepping in here... I think I can answer for him. I'll be brief.
... these new drafts, a perfect example.
Are you seriously suggesting that all objections to the GPL are groundless and that all other licenses are somehow undermining 'software freedom' (What does that mean exactly?), because they aren't part of the one true way?
No.
A fair case could be made for the GPL being unfree in that it excludes all other licenses. Akin to monotheism's insistence that you shall not worship other gods.
No.
Why would anyone possibly agree to be bound by any and all future conditions that they haven't even seen
Why would people do FOSS at all? Who knows? Not that anyone who used GPLv2 really did - I think there was a misunderstanding here, though not a critical one to the point.
I doubt that clause is even legally binding.
No reason why not. Such language would be as ordinary as boilerplate assigning all rights to the FSF, which folks do without much fanfare. Let them collect donations, hire lawyers, and deal with the paperwork
Who are 'the free software community' and why do you presume to speak for them?
Why do his opinions about the community involve presumption? How many communities are precisely defined, and why quibble about it?
I personally don't see any problem with a proliferation of licenses
Hang around a while.
I think you're much closer to the truth here than most, and I appreciate you whacking in a good rebuttal.
You're right about the main point - that Linus can't relicense the kernel. He doesn't control the copyrights - he never had committers assign rights to him. You're certainly right that his complaints about the GPLv3 draft were both over the top absurd and inflammatory - and most of all gratuitous, for the foregoing reason. He couldn't relicense if he wanted to. His rant about the draft was therefore was not only either astoundingly ignorant or mendacious, but just simply caddish behavior of a (heretofore) unbelievable degree.
He's also in no position to make threats anyway. Even if it was his choice, he can't release a Linux distro without the FSF's code. That's the whole toolchain just for a start. And they have assigned copyrights. They will be GPLv3. They are in the driver's seat on this one.
I think, though, that the "can use a later version of the GPLv3" clause is not quite what you might think. Can being the operative word. That would mean that you have the option to use the later version. It's not the same as giving the FSF a blanket right to revise the license whenever they like.
If I'm right, and the later version denies you rights you had under the original version of the license, then you just use the original (you decline the option). So Linus removing such an option would be much more of a minor thing.
I haven't fully digested the latest draft; what's the damage? Do you really think they nerfed it to the point where it won't be worth it anymore? How so?
Any Debian derivative (using .deb packages) will do this easily.
The package metadata makes it easy to determine when a package was installed to satisfy a dependency. There are also trivial tools for identifying orphans.
There's an extensive discussion here.
Methods for keeping your system clean vary, in a way dating those who use them. Some people use the old way:
apt-get remove `deborphan`
Although many modern package management UIs (aptitude is one I'm certain of) will offer to cull your orphaned packages automatically (or just do it quietly by default).
In between, I believe there's even an apt-get command line option for removing orphaned dependent packages when removing a package, but I can't remember it right now.
You know, the ones who talk about Fox News' sacred right to broadcast propaganda and call it news?
You know, the sacred right they've had since the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in the last decade or so?
When you talk about government regulating what they say on TV, some Republicans trot out the constitution like a prayer rug and wave it all around in the air. Their Speech Is Free. How dare the government regulate the media.
(I mean, the government has to decide who can broadcast. And it can only pick a few lucky people, and everyone else can't broadcast on pain of huge penalties.)
(But aside from that, those lucky few should be able to say whatever they want on TV. If you don't like it, print a newspaper.)
The Republicans said, Americans are smart. Americans are free. Americans can handle their own media without getting confused. They don't need anyone to look out for them. They choose what media to watch and what not to watch, and if they happen to see something not so cool when switching channels, oh, they can handle it.
And they are lying through their teeth. They don't really believe a word of that.
Their coming out to censor the media like this is how you can tell.
You're supposed to be able to take care of yourself when consuming the information that powers, oh, this entire democracy. But not be able to handle some violent or sexual imagery.
Megalomaniacal hypocrites.
I just don't get it. Sure, the sleazy publishers associations can talk a line about how there's no such thing as a backup (or at least a legitimate one), but why do we actually slurp it up and start regurgitating it ourselves?
I back stuff up, and play the backups. I've been doing this since the 8-bit days.
Backups are not a myth. They're not a euphemism. They're a simple practical thing that people should do, especially people with little kids. And no matter who lies to you about it, you have a right to make them.
If this very simple, practical right endangers someone's revenue model, the answer is not to try some futile measures to prevent it (or even try to outlaw it), but to get a new revenue model. And the publishers (obviously) don't even need to, since there has never been a working copy protection system in the history of mankind, yet they seem to be doing just fine anyway.
Next we'll be talking about how libraries are illegal because people can share media using them. Sheesh.
You're quite right - competitors, including Nintendo, could certainly close down. Sega certainly did.
What I'm seeing now are people who went google-style with blades buying empty rackspace to cope with hosting providers' power per rack ratio.
:) blades... IF you're within its application domain. Interesting gamble.
Meanwhile Sun's sales guys are selling $14k 72 watt, 8-way, 32-thread T2000's that can replace multiple Opteron (or Core
Most webapps probably are... not actually a lot of hot floating point, or math code in general, in that space. But you have to be very careful.
So, it's possible that Sun has turned their biggest disadvantage into their biggest advantage: they're in a niche! Yet they can design whole hardware architectures. So it frees them up to find ways to specialize, and it seems that there may be some payoffs there.
the market has to stay competitive.
You've got it wrong. It doesn't have to do anything.
Quite often markets naturally consolidate into a trust or monopoly situation.
If no one thinks they can make money competing against Microsoft, then they simply wont. They'll invest their time and money where they can get an easier return. Then eventually Microsoft can get lazy or sloppy or expensive enough that there will finally be enough incentive for people to come back and take a shot at it... but this could take years or decades and there is no guarantee, if the barriers to entry are high enough, that it will ever happen in your lifetime.
OK, I'm a game developer. I suffered through a thousand tribulations to reach the point I'm at today. I paid my dues, I beat out the world's stiffest competition, and I have secured an 8 figure budget to make a console title.
...
:)
Maybe my next game will change the world. Or maybe it will merely be entertaining for a week. Maybe it will suck. Who knows? But anyway... I will spend the next several years of my life making it. I will only make a few games this big in my career.
What system will I develop my game for?
Xbox 360?
Wii?
PS3?
My game will take 2 years to write. Well, 2 years and six months, realistically. Lets say three and call it even. So, starting today, what system will I target? What system will have the biggest audience in 2009?
Wii looks pretty good. For one, my cost of entry is the lowest with Wii. So is the consumers'. With their pricepoint so low, you basically have to admit that they will sell more units than Microsoft. Probably quite a lot more... the Wii hardware sale is already profitable for Nintendo. Within 3 years the price will come down... plus the controller is cool. Hmm.
Then there's MS. Hmm. Their hardware is nice. My game will definitely look better on the 360. And no one can match their online infrastructure. MS's rep wants to talk about a promo deal - a demo and some making-of reels on XBL. Sounds interesting.
There's no denying that they're the next-gen market leader today - pushing 10 million units sold. If my game were coming out tomorrow, it would need to be a 360 game - unless I wanted to make a PS2 title. I hear that John and Tim are both putting in the most work on pipelines tailored to its GPU. Oh yeah, and there's one thing about Microsoft. You know they are not going to go and pull a Sega. They are fucking RICH. They're not going anywhere. They know the PC is dead, and they know the console is the future. They're in this to win, all hundred gajillion dollars worth. And so far, you have to admit, betting against them has never been smart.
Oh yeah. Sony. Hmm.
Right. Well, maybe, if it's cheap, we can port to the playstation 3. And the PC even? We'll have to look at the budget. If the audience is there... Say Sony has 10 million users by 2009 to the winner's 40 million. Say a 10% uptake...
OK, stop. Even if I just ported to the PS3, Sony loses. You don't buy the most expensive system to play a port, nor do you put the effort into a single target of a port game to take advantage of Sony's expensive, unique hardware.
To succeed, they need to be attractive to 3rd party developers - now, today. For that matter, a year ago, or 18 months ago - because those are the titles coming out in 2007 and 2008. They failed at this before they even launched. The best they can hope for now is what Nintendo had - a niche, buoyed with some strong first-party titles over its life. It's difficult to estimate what it would take for them to recoup their investment. You could argue that even a modest success could put their blu-ray media play over the top and, if blu-ray wins the format war, the associated profits could in some sense justify PS3 costs. Is that worth it? I don't know.
The PS3 will never capture the success of the previous two systems. I will still buy it, becuase I loved Ico, and in addition to renting blu-rays from netflix I know there will be a few more games like it I would miss, otherwise. But I'm the exception, not the rule.
Why, exactly, are we giving any credibility to these totally irrelevant written comments by the President?
Is there any respect (or even understanding) of the process of law in this country anymore?
What's next? If Bush says something three times and crosses his fingers, can he override the Supreme Court?
(Thank you)
You got it. I've been saying this over and over and I'm absolutely stunned that there are some people who still don't get it.
You don't even have any choice as to whether or not to ignore software patents. There are hundreds of thousands of them. Then there are several thousand new applications a day. I'll give you a hint. It's impossible.
That's why Microsoft ignores software patents. Even they, the richest company on the planet, have no alternative. And that's also why they're getting hit with a few 9-figure verdicts already. But they still play the game and pretend they're legitimate, because they somehow think they'll benefit, in the end, using them to crush current and potential competition with multi-million legal actions and the threat thereof.
It is mpossible to tell if any piece of code infringes. By the way, have you read many of these things? Almost every line of code does infringe.
Every line written is a ticking patent timebomb. Every player has to ante up and make their own "patent portfolio" which they can then apply against whoever sues them. If that sounds like it excludes everyone but a few rich, dominant corporations... now you're getting the idea. Only minor fly in the ointment: those patent shell companies that actually don't do any work except suing people, therefore can't be hit with a retaliatory claim. Ooops. And yet even after getting whacked by a few, MS is still winking and continuing to play the game. Shows you how much they hate honest competition.
Software Patents are currently ignored by almost everyone. But to the extent they are enforced, they will categorically end the American software industry, and software will continue to be a business in Europe, Asia, and... well basically every other civilized nation, who have soundly rejected this silly game and are by the way laughing their asses off at us.
Full of holes?
I'll be charitable and simply not make any comment. Readers at this point can clearly judge for themselves.
Socialists have it backwards. They value dependence on the government and forced equality over individual liberty.
Absurd, and dishonest - but I fear not, since everyone can see what I'm actually saying, as opposed to what you say I'm saying.
The best schools in the world are not state run.
Actually, many are. Also note my earlier point, very specifically, about the difference between schools and school systems.
For the rest, continue here...
That logic is about the same as saying that your purchase is free at the time you leave the checkout.
It's an idiom, not an attempt at logic. Let's not change the subject.
Electricity has not been truly deregulated.
Do you believe it ever can be? Do you imagine there can be a functional market for electricity?
Some argue that interest rates should be set by the market, not some fed chairman.
I don't know who these "some" are, and your statement doesn't seem to make sense. It's also a good idea to be specific instead of referring to "interest rates," otherwise you might give the impression you don't actually understand what you're saying.
Assuming you mean the federal funds rate, even this is set by the market - that is, what someone is willing to pay. The FOMC sets a "target" rate and then does what any government who wishes to maintain a currency must do - they print and destory money. Their goal in doing so is to try to get the market to hit the target. These days they don't actually use a printing press and a furnace - they use financial instruments executed electronically with primary dealers (i.e. big banks) - but the result is the same.
It sounds like you are suggesting you can somehow have a currency without human agency, but the money supply cannot regulate itself, nor can the "market" regulate it - an incoherent concept.
I am being vague only because in the end it all comes down to tampering with a natural system.
This is the crux of the matter.
There is no "One, True Natural Market," nor is the concept of "natural" meaningful in terms of markets. Supply and demand are expressed in a market, but they are not themselves a market, unless you want to loosen the definition to the point of meaninglessness.
Markets run on rules, and those rules are made by human agency, and no one set of rules is any more natural than the other. Yes, that also means that the term "free market" is in one sense an oxymoron.
You cannot reduce economic inequality and still have a viable economic system any more than you can reduce diversity and still have a viable gene pool.
This is a shocking and frankly absurd statement, lavishly contradicted by common sense, not to mention all known economic history.
If after everything I've said, you can simply respond with this blanket statement, I don't think you're having an honest discussion anymore.
Ask yourself this, as a thought exercise. If "inequality" approaches completeness (where completeness means one person has all the money), what does ths do to the economy?
Fear of where your next meal will come from is a great motivator to work. Living on the dole is a great motivator to not work.
Ah, notice what I have not said. I have not said that welfare is a good idea, or that sustenance should be guaranteed for all regardless of work. In fact, it's a bad idea - for the reason you state.
You're confusing Socialism with Communism again. The idea is not to stop competition, just to use it effectively instead of badly.
Income inequality is a fact of life. If we did not have it, we would not have had the great artists and musicians that we have had, etc. While I agree that there should be some safety net to get you back on your feet, it should be just that. There is not a fixed supply of wealth. Wealth can be created. Google is a great example of this.
Aside from your comment on artists and musicians, which I don't really get, I wholeheartedly agree.
Yes, their grandfathers died on Europe's soil so that the "first world" could have a 9% unemployment rate:
Another confusion you seem to have; I'm not endorsing the "European" approach; frankly I think it's basically proven that the American (lighter touch) way works better, though I suspect the sweet spot is somewhere in between.
And be careful again, Europe is a big continent - you don't want to give the impression you'r