"Even though they may have needed to win (legally) they shouldn't have (quality-wise)."
Well, yeah, Mega Bloks suck compared to Legos, but obviously a court case like this shouldn't take sheer awesomeness into consideration. If it did, I'd become a trial lawyer. Ha!
Seriously, though, that part of it gets sorted out by the market, which is why there's an entire aisle of Legos in my local Target, and I'm not sure if they even stock Mega Bloks anymore.
Whoah, hold on! Protecting the rights of the disabled is not, as you say, sinking to the lowest common denominator. This is serious stuff, and they're right: this is an area where the open source software is deficient.
This isn't just grasping for straws, here. I used to work for the gov, and accessability is, and always has been, a big issue. All our web pages had to be ADA compliant, etc...
Of course it would be a total shame to see this make Mass. switch, but if OSS developers want adoption by government institutions, they'd better make accessability a consideration, otherwise this will always be a roadblock, and one that government institutions can't help but acknowledge.
"Oooh... When you rename a technology, it becomes totaly new and awsome."
OK, funny, but you, and a lot of other people seem to be missing the point. If a webmaster comes up with a few keywords for a page or item or whatever, that's the old-school way.
The cool thing about tagging is that it is allowing the unwashed masses to categorize stuff. It sort of casts aside the idea of a rigid heirarchy of categories, and uses a "free association" style of categorization.
I think it kind of remains to be seen how useful this will be in aiding people's shopping, especially if you're looking for something specific. Still, I think it's a great idea to harness free manpower from the populace to perform tasks that are difficult for a computer to do unaided.
I have to say, I just don't think developers will go for it. First of all, if you're setting up a cluster of, say, 20 machines to run some MPI programs, you're going to be funneling some serious coin microsoft's way.
Secondly, I, like many developers, have been running MPI programs on Linux clusters for some time now. What's my incentive to switch? All I've got is penalties, like having to buy software and stuff. MPI is already free, open source software. So now MS sticks it in their OS and sell it as a new platform?
At least for me, this is too little, too late. I'll do what I've been doing, which is run my parallel code on Linux.
"Seems as if Gartner, the analyst who was deeply in love with Microsoft in the nineties, has turned sour on them lately."
Keep in mind that he's still recommending Windows. He's not so soft on it that he's tell you to install Linux or BSD.
To me, it sounds like the guy's not really trying to rip on Windows, so much as he's offering sound business advice. Right? I mean, what's the benefit of rushing out and buying the latest version when the current one coupled with the third party software that you probably already have installed, is perfectly adequate?
Now, I'm not an apologist for Stalinism, but socialism, in it's most basic form means "sharing." It means looking after your fellow man, particularly those who have nothing. Attach a bearded guy, and a couple of nails and it turns into Christianity.
Right on, brother. When I first read the summary, I was like, "Yeah, open source IS modeled after socialism. So what?" Like it's some kind of crime to collectively come together and create something useful if the end goal does not directly involve financial gain or hunger for power or some other alterior motive.
I personally think it's beautiful that people are willing to put in hard work and mental energy for no reason other than to make something everybody can use and apprecate (and maybe get some geek props). That's not grounds for criticism, that deserves a big pat on the back.
People seem to think that the idea of a patent goes against the idea of open source software. It doesn't have to, though.
Compare it to having a license. Before the GPL and other open-source software licenses, traditional software licensing wouldn't have fit into the open source world. However, it was incorporated the license in a way that maintained the ideals, while protecting the best interests of the movement.
That's what this is. They're adapting, but they're adapting in a way that maintains their ideals. Yeah, they're adopting the practice of aquiring patents, but they're not going to horde them away and not let anybody use them. Anybody can use them, as long as they agree to follow the principals. Just like the GPL allows people to do with their software.
Yeah, um, that only makes sense in certain contexts
For example, I work for a company writing embedded software for medical equipment. For testing and QA purposes, we have to target two different architectures: VxWorks for the embedded stuff, and Windows for simulation. From the start, portability has to be a consideration, because code that doesn't port to these two platforms is completely worthless to us, and will have to be rewritten.
I get your point, and that makes sense when writing desktop apps and plenty of other stuff, but doesn't apply to every situation.
Isn't an OS just a kind of runtime environment? After all, it's just one level of abstraction among many levels of abstraction. A Java Virtual Machine is just one more level of abstraction."
Sort of...
But, if you write C++ for Windows or Linux or whatever, the OS can hand the machine code directly to the processor.
If you write C# or Java, there is a middle man in there. The OS has to load this whole runtime environment, which takes up a big memory footprint and system resources, and then interprets your code, and then based on that tells the processor what to do.
So, every level of abstraction you add in there becomes more and more costly in terms of system resources. Yeah, desktop systems are getting beefier, but what about compiling code for embedded systems and stuff like that? Sometimes efficiency is a big consideration.
Good. This needs to be taught.
on
Write Portable Code
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I got my first job and started digging into some code that was written for portability, it all seemed so obfuscated.
I was like, "Why are they #defining all their data types to something else? And what's with all the crazy compiler directives?" It seemed like they were going out of their way to make the code less readable.
Once I figured out that it was all there so that the code could be recompiled for different platforms, it all clicked together. It's really cool, and I'm pissed that I got out of college not knowing this stuff. It should be a required course, IMHO.
Yeah, total flamebait. If your only solution to writing cross-platform code is by writing everything for a runtime environment, you have a thing or two to learn, there, fella.
This is a completely stupid post from a person who has obviously never taken a computer science course in their life. Man, if I was a moderator, I would mark this down SO FAST. You didn't even understand the original question and what he is talking about studying, so why would you even post? Geez.
That's not necessarily true. MS got in trouble for bundling IE because they didn't offer a way to uninstall it and replace it, and they made it impossible for anyone to compete.
If you're saying that any form of bundling is illegal, then when you buy an OS, all you should recieve is the kernel. Adding in a window manager is bundling. Adding in a file explorer is bundling. Right?
I got a remote control "bundled" with my DVD player. That doesn't stop me from going out and buying a universal remote, though.
"Bundling" is not inherently anti-competitive, and it is not always illegal. It's all a matter of how you do it, and whether or not the end user has a choice. That's why MS is allowing you to swap out their software, if you want.
OK, yeah. MS hasn't done a good job so far protecting their operating systems from malware. We all know that.
Still, I'm already sick of reading people's comments about how they should just design their OS better. Of course there are things they can (and hopefully will) do to reduce the risk of malware. Ditching default root privelidges comes to mind.
End users are still going to compromise themselves, though, with software installs and stuff. Let's face it, as long as Windows is the big target, it will be the OS that spyware developers go after.
So, they're bundling spyware software, and they're making sure you can exchange it for your favorite, if you like. What's wrong with that? There's no reason not to cover your bases, right?
OK, yeah, Windows sucks, and current versions are just begging for spyware infections. If MS hasn't made some drastic revisions in Vista to handle the problems, they're morons. Still, not having a contingency plan in place for if Malware finds it's way through would be just as stupid, in my oppinion.
"You could have a BA in English, and go on to get a job in software engineering; you could have a BS in Chemistry, and go on to work as a journalist."
That's not necessarily true. It's true that you could easily find yourself working in a field that you didn't study as an undergrad, but I think you'll find that it's difficult to make the transition to a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) field if you didn't major in one of these things. Ten years ago, you could find a job in software engineering if you could just hack out a few lines of C++, but if you click around on Monster or HotJobs these days you'll see that if you want to work in software engineering, you need a degree in CS or EE.
The reason is that it's very easy for an employer to look at a CS degree and say, "This person should be aquainted with this, and this, and this." Of course, sometimes they are and sometimes they aren't, but the point is that there is a set curriculum. If you make them start digging to figure out what you learned, then you're making them work too hard.
Of course, if you're planning on going back for a Master's degree, it makes your undergraduate major less relevant. But, if you're planning on graduate studies anyway, why not get the BS in CS like we're all saying here, and then specialize in grad school? It just makes more sense, and things are set up that way for a reason: so that you learn the important things in one field as a basis for future learning, and so that you are an asset to a future employer.
It's cool that you're showing initiative like this, but at this point I think it's slightly misplaced. Not to mention, I think you'll have a hard time finding support from the faculty. I would be surprised if they didn't try to point you to a CS undergrad with a concentration instead.
To me, this sounds like a good idea for your specialization for a masters degree (in computer science), but I don't really think it justifies it's own undergraduate degree. If that's what you're really interested in, I recommend majoring in CS as an undergrad, perhaps with a minor in english, and then submitting this your linguistics stuff as your masters thesis when you get there.
Of course, there are a lot of classes to steer you in that direction. From the computer science field, you have to take compiler structure. That may not sound like a relevant class, but it is. Learning to write good lexers and parsers is going to be vital, and that is the class where you will learn them. Also, seeing how a high-level programming language is parsed can give you a lot of insight into how natural language will be parsed.
Of course, an AI class would be helpful, too. And machine learning, but that's not always offered at the undergraduate level.
Outside CS, I would also recommend taking at least one foreign language to give you a little more basis in how syntax and grammar vary across languages. A non-latin based language, like Japanese, might help.
I agree with you that Open Source will live on regardless of money invested by venture capitalists. The question is, at what level. Hobbyists? Tinkerers?
Or can it exist as a robust business model that can compete with commercial competitors?
I've been seeing more and more paid programming positions advertised on my campus' job site for open source projects. As cool as I think it would be to take a job like this when I get out of school, I don't want to go somewhere where the floor will fall out from underneath me.
Anyway, I'm not trying to predict doom for OSS, I'm just saying that this is a valid discussion, and I'm curious to hear what people have to say.
A really good business model would include a less expensive option with an expiration date for those who only wished to rent, and a more expensive option for those who wish to keep the videos around for future viewing, like me.
I'm thinking, like, $3 for rental or $6 for purchase. And, it would be nice to have the option after paying the $3 for rental to then kick in $3 more if you really liked it to invalidate the expiration date.
As long as there were no shady malware problems and stuff like that, that is somthing I could probably get behind. $8 or $10 is kind of pushing it for me when I don't get the shiny DVD and the cool packaging, but if they knocked it down a little more, it would start to get me thinking about it.
Hmmm.... How can I spin this against MS to make it seem like they're doing something evil...
I am so sick of this nonsense. I swear, I need to stop clicking on any slashdot story with the name "Microsoft", "Google", or "Apple". Or maybe I should stop looking to slashdot thinking that maybe people could somehow look past their biases and read a story for what it is.
Yes, Microsoft is probably acting in their own best interest. So do Google and Apple. They're all trying to make money. That doesn't mean it won't benefit us. Don't try to tell me that you never act in your own self interest.
I know, Microsoft does anti-competitive things, and that's not cool, but don't let your opinion of them cloud your ability to think for yourself. We need to have our personal information protected, and here MS is in agreement with that. What's the big problem? Seriously!
Most of us here on slashdot have an opinion on what should be going on in the GPL, but obviously most of us are not lawyers. This is, without a doubt, a legal matter, and this thing needs to be airtight. I wouldn't want this thing to be a true democracy, but hopefully they will be willing to listen to a little input here and there.
Right. My problem is the fact that I would be doing this for a company that is going to turn around and sell it for a profit. I mean, yeah, the community owns the source code, but that won't make the product any cheaper, when push comes to shove. They may even try to use its openness as a marketing tactic and sell it for more, for all we know.
I'm fine with comtributing time and energy for a good community cause, but when it's making money for somebody else, I think I'd like to see a cut. Am I alone here?
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, though, that part of it gets sorted out by the market, which is why there's an entire aisle of Legos in my local Target, and I'm not sure if they even stock Mega Bloks anymore.
They would think seriously about supporting openDocument.
Whoah, hold on! Protecting the rights of the disabled is not, as you say, sinking to the lowest common denominator. This is serious stuff, and they're right: this is an area where the open source software is deficient.
This isn't just grasping for straws, here. I used to work for the gov, and accessability is, and always has been, a big issue. All our web pages had to be ADA compliant, etc...
Of course it would be a total shame to see this make Mass. switch, but if OSS developers want adoption by government institutions, they'd better make accessability a consideration, otherwise this will always be a roadblock, and one that government institutions can't help but acknowledge.
The cool thing about tagging is that it is allowing the unwashed masses to categorize stuff. It sort of casts aside the idea of a rigid heirarchy of categories, and uses a "free association" style of categorization.
I think it kind of remains to be seen how useful this will be in aiding people's shopping, especially if you're looking for something specific. Still, I think it's a great idea to harness free manpower from the populace to perform tasks that are difficult for a computer to do unaided.
I have to say, I just don't think developers will go for it. First of all, if you're setting up a cluster of, say, 20 machines to run some MPI programs, you're going to be funneling some serious coin microsoft's way.
Secondly, I, like many developers, have been running MPI programs on Linux clusters for some time now. What's my incentive to switch? All I've got is penalties, like having to buy software and stuff. MPI is already free, open source software. So now MS sticks it in their OS and sell it as a new platform?
At least for me, this is too little, too late. I'll do what I've been doing, which is run my parallel code on Linux.
To me, it sounds like the guy's not really trying to rip on Windows, so much as he's offering sound business advice. Right? I mean, what's the benefit of rushing out and buying the latest version when the current one coupled with the third party software that you probably already have installed, is perfectly adequate?
I personally think it's beautiful that people are willing to put in hard work and mental energy for no reason other than to make something everybody can use and apprecate (and maybe get some geek props). That's not grounds for criticism, that deserves a big pat on the back.
People seem to think that the idea of a patent goes against the idea of open source software. It doesn't have to, though.
Compare it to having a license. Before the GPL and other open-source software licenses, traditional software licensing wouldn't have fit into the open source world. However, it was incorporated the license in a way that maintained the ideals, while protecting the best interests of the movement.
That's what this is. They're adapting, but they're adapting in a way that maintains their ideals. Yeah, they're adopting the practice of aquiring patents, but they're not going to horde them away and not let anybody use them. Anybody can use them, as long as they agree to follow the principals. Just like the GPL allows people to do with their software.
Yeah, but if you like listening to CDs on your computer, you're going to be butting heads with DMA before long.
Yeah, um, that only makes sense in certain contexts
For example, I work for a company writing embedded software for medical equipment. For testing and QA purposes, we have to target two different architectures: VxWorks for the embedded stuff, and Windows for simulation. From the start, portability has to be a consideration, because code that doesn't port to these two platforms is completely worthless to us, and will have to be rewritten.
I get your point, and that makes sense when writing desktop apps and plenty of other stuff, but doesn't apply to every situation.
Sort of...
But, if you write C++ for Windows or Linux or whatever, the OS can hand the machine code directly to the processor.
If you write C# or Java, there is a middle man in there. The OS has to load this whole runtime environment, which takes up a big memory footprint and system resources, and then interprets your code, and then based on that tells the processor what to do.
So, every level of abstraction you add in there becomes more and more costly in terms of system resources. Yeah, desktop systems are getting beefier, but what about compiling code for embedded systems and stuff like that? Sometimes efficiency is a big consideration.
I got my first job and started digging into some code that was written for portability, it all seemed so obfuscated.
I was like, "Why are they #defining all their data types to something else? And what's with all the crazy compiler directives?" It seemed like they were going out of their way to make the code less readable.
Once I figured out that it was all there so that the code could be recompiled for different platforms, it all clicked together. It's really cool, and I'm pissed that I got out of college not knowing this stuff. It should be a required course, IMHO.
Yeah, total flamebait. If your only solution to writing cross-platform code is by writing everything for a runtime environment, you have a thing or two to learn, there, fella.
This is a completely stupid post from a person who has obviously never taken a computer science course in their life. Man, if I was a moderator, I would mark this down SO FAST. You didn't even understand the original question and what he is talking about studying, so why would you even post? Geez.
That's not necessarily true. MS got in trouble for bundling IE because they didn't offer a way to uninstall it and replace it, and they made it impossible for anyone to compete.
If you're saying that any form of bundling is illegal, then when you buy an OS, all you should recieve is the kernel. Adding in a window manager is bundling. Adding in a file explorer is bundling. Right?
I got a remote control "bundled" with my DVD player. That doesn't stop me from going out and buying a universal remote, though.
"Bundling" is not inherently anti-competitive, and it is not always illegal. It's all a matter of how you do it, and whether or not the end user has a choice. That's why MS is allowing you to swap out their software, if you want.
OK, yeah. MS hasn't done a good job so far protecting their operating systems from malware. We all know that.
Still, I'm already sick of reading people's comments about how they should just design their OS better. Of course there are things they can (and hopefully will) do to reduce the risk of malware. Ditching default root privelidges comes to mind.
End users are still going to compromise themselves, though, with software installs and stuff. Let's face it, as long as Windows is the big target, it will be the OS that spyware developers go after.
So, they're bundling spyware software, and they're making sure you can exchange it for your favorite, if you like. What's wrong with that? There's no reason not to cover your bases, right?
OK, yeah, Windows sucks, and current versions are just begging for spyware infections. If MS hasn't made some drastic revisions in Vista to handle the problems, they're morons. Still, not having a contingency plan in place for if Malware finds it's way through would be just as stupid, in my oppinion.
That's not necessarily true. It's true that you could easily find yourself working in a field that you didn't study as an undergrad, but I think you'll find that it's difficult to make the transition to a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) field if you didn't major in one of these things. Ten years ago, you could find a job in software engineering if you could just hack out a few lines of C++, but if you click around on Monster or HotJobs these days you'll see that if you want to work in software engineering, you need a degree in CS or EE.
The reason is that it's very easy for an employer to look at a CS degree and say, "This person should be aquainted with this, and this, and this." Of course, sometimes they are and sometimes they aren't, but the point is that there is a set curriculum. If you make them start digging to figure out what you learned, then you're making them work too hard.
Of course, if you're planning on going back for a Master's degree, it makes your undergraduate major less relevant. But, if you're planning on graduate studies anyway, why not get the BS in CS like we're all saying here, and then specialize in grad school? It just makes more sense, and things are set up that way for a reason: so that you learn the important things in one field as a basis for future learning, and so that you are an asset to a future employer.
It's cool that you're showing initiative like this, but at this point I think it's slightly misplaced. Not to mention, I think you'll have a hard time finding support from the faculty. I would be surprised if they didn't try to point you to a CS undergrad with a concentration instead.
To me, this sounds like a good idea for your specialization for a masters degree (in computer science), but I don't really think it justifies it's own undergraduate degree. If that's what you're really interested in, I recommend majoring in CS as an undergrad, perhaps with a minor in english, and then submitting this your linguistics stuff as your masters thesis when you get there.
Of course, there are a lot of classes to steer you in that direction. From the computer science field, you have to take compiler structure. That may not sound like a relevant class, but it is. Learning to write good lexers and parsers is going to be vital, and that is the class where you will learn them. Also, seeing how a high-level programming language is parsed can give you a lot of insight into how natural language will be parsed.
Of course, an AI class would be helpful, too. And machine learning, but that's not always offered at the undergraduate level.
Outside CS, I would also recommend taking at least one foreign language to give you a little more basis in how syntax and grammar vary across languages. A non-latin based language, like Japanese, might help.
I agree with you that Open Source will live on regardless of money invested by venture capitalists. The question is, at what level. Hobbyists? Tinkerers?
Or can it exist as a robust business model that can compete with commercial competitors?
I've been seeing more and more paid programming positions advertised on my campus' job site for open source projects. As cool as I think it would be to take a job like this when I get out of school, I don't want to go somewhere where the floor will fall out from underneath me.
Anyway, I'm not trying to predict doom for OSS, I'm just saying that this is a valid discussion, and I'm curious to hear what people have to say.
I wonder if this is in any way related to Google's possible entry into the DVR market as reported on slashdot?
A really good business model would include a less expensive option with an expiration date for those who only wished to rent, and a more expensive option for those who wish to keep the videos around for future viewing, like me.
I'm thinking, like, $3 for rental or $6 for purchase. And, it would be nice to have the option after paying the $3 for rental to then kick in $3 more if you really liked it to invalidate the expiration date.
As long as there were no shady malware problems and stuff like that, that is somthing I could probably get behind. $8 or $10 is kind of pushing it for me when I don't get the shiny DVD and the cool packaging, but if they knocked it down a little more, it would start to get me thinking about it.
Hmmm.... How can I spin this against MS to make it seem like they're doing something evil...
I am so sick of this nonsense. I swear, I need to stop clicking on any slashdot story with the name "Microsoft", "Google", or "Apple". Or maybe I should stop looking to slashdot thinking that maybe people could somehow look past their biases and read a story for what it is.
Yes, Microsoft is probably acting in their own best interest. So do Google and Apple. They're all trying to make money. That doesn't mean it won't benefit us. Don't try to tell me that you never act in your own self interest.
I know, Microsoft does anti-competitive things, and that's not cool, but don't let your opinion of them cloud your ability to think for yourself. We need to have our personal information protected, and here MS is in agreement with that. What's the big problem? Seriously!
Most of us here on slashdot have an opinion on what should be going on in the GPL, but obviously most of us are not lawyers. This is, without a doubt, a legal matter, and this thing needs to be airtight. I wouldn't want this thing to be a true democracy, but hopefully they will be willing to listen to a little input here and there.
They would be more than happy to take your donation.
Right. My problem is the fact that I would be doing this for a company that is going to turn around and sell it for a profit. I mean, yeah, the community owns the source code, but that won't make the product any cheaper, when push comes to shove. They may even try to use its openness as a marketing tactic and sell it for more, for all we know.
I'm fine with comtributing time and energy for a good community cause, but when it's making money for somebody else, I think I'd like to see a cut. Am I alone here?