I suggest you keep track of C, C++ and Java in job sites, software sites and language resources sites (like TIOBE). Over time you will see C++ falling significantly, C falling (but less so) and Java growing, replacing them.
Contrary to what you seem to think, programming languages aren't just a matter of fashion. Java won't be replacing C or C++ because it can't--it lacks the low-level, platfom dependent, and systems programming capabilities of C and C++, and the Java 5 design decisions have made it clear that Sun is not going to fix this. Many of the early Java adopters (including our organization) have gone back to C++ for the time being.
In any case, this discussion is pointless: you just keep quoting back irrelevant job site statistics. The question will resolve itself over the next few years; you'll see.
Which part does it fail to be the definition of according to you? "Most" or "development"?
you usually don't write your HR or finance system in PHP.
You usually don't write your HR or finance system at all, you buy them from a small number of established vendors. Since the generation of software that they're now selling was developed over the last half dozen years when Java was hot, yes, a lot of it is in Java.
In fact the biggest use of Java of all is at the lowest end - mobile applications.
Have you actually ever tried to use mobile Java applications? They're a pain to install and function poorly on any of the major mobile platforms: PPC, Palm, or the various J2ME/MIDP phones.
You really do need to have a deeper look at what is going on in the IT world. Lets have a look at the jobs on dice.com: out of about 90,000 jobs....
You're making a serious mistake if you project the future of IT, corporate or otherwise, based on the current job openings on dice.com. If the future of IT were determined by job postings, we'd all still be programming in COBOL on IBM mainframes, or maybe Visual Basic on NT, the past frontrunners. By the time a platform makes it to the top of the job postings, it's already past its prime.
What you need to look at is what the technologies are that hot new companies are using, and it ain't usually Java, that's for sure.
I think that clarifies who is in the dreamworld!
Yeah, it's still you. You see that Java is well-established in some significant areas, and you falsely extrapolate future growth from it. Java has gotten about as big as it's gonna get--competition from.NET and PHP, as well as other issues, mean it's on a plateau, followed by a slow but steady decline. Like all platforms before it.
If Microsoft retaliates? They started this and nearly killed Mozilla with it. This is Mozilla's retaliation against Microsoft using Microsoft's tactics.
Yes. And when Microsoft uses it, it's a monopoly with a billion dollar marketing budget using it to promote a monopoly. When Firefox uses it, it's a community project trying to get noticed against Microsoft's billion dollar ad budget. I'm sorry you don't understand the difference, but it's a big and important difference nonetheless.
The majority of server side development is done in Java.
I think you're living in a corporate dreamworld. When I look at hosting providers, I find that there are 10x as many PHP providers than Java hosting providers, and having installed both of them myself, it's not hard to see why. Surveys (eg Netcraft) also suggest that ASP.NET has already overtaken JSP and servlet hosting in 2004. PHP and ASP hosting are so easy to set up and get started with that it's the obvious first choice for anybody needed to do a little bit of server-side programming. In terms of applications, on Freshmeat, there are more than 5x as many CMS's listed that are written in PHP than in Java. And, perhaps most importantly, PHP seems to be more widely used for people trying new ideas on the web, including many Web 2.0 applications.
Java clearly has a good chunk of the high end of server-side development: banks and corporations use it a lot, and it will stay entrenched there for another decade or two. But that's a small part of overall server-side development. Most server-side development is probably developing small scripts, putting together a few existing components, or small customizations of CMSs.
Perhaps you could explain how you know you are rarely seeing Java-powered web servers - some interesting techniques to probe the structure of the HTML?
Yes, I usually try to figure out what sites run. For most of the sites I use, I succeed and it's not Java.
The shrink-wrapped desktop application market is totally insignificant compared to the number of applications developed for internal desktop use within companies, and even that is negligible compared with server side development.
I agree that Java is widely used for internal desktop application development and for some server side development. I believe you are overestimating the economic importance of those areas, or the hold Java has on them.
Are you just a C# fanboy or did you miss the fact that there have been multiple JVM implementations
It's irrelevant to my point whether there are multiple JVM implementations; it's a fact that Java just isn't being used significantly by Linux distributions. Debian, Ubuntu, OpenSuSE and Fedora don't even ship with a compliant Java implementation.
And, yes, I am a C# fanboy because it gets my work done a lot better than Java.
Finally, the JCP doesn't change the fact that people can't implement and change Java without Sun's blessing; that means that Java is closed in any sense that I care about.
It was the Debain distributors who descided not to distribute Java (in opposite like other Linux distros did) and not Suns license restriicting them.
Sun's restrictive licensing has affected all free Linux distributions, and been a problem for BSD as well. OpenSuSE: "Because of licensing issues Sun's Java Edition can not be included on the CDs of the download edition of SUSE Linux." Fedora: "Fedora Core 4 users are advised not to use the Java RPM provided by Sun. It contains Provides that conflict with names used in packages provided as part of Fedora Core 4. Because of this, Sun Java might disappear from an installed system during package upgrade operations."
Mono, in contrast, is shipping without restrictions and with no packaging problems on all Linux distributions.
From "opening" in the sense of "giving" away you cant pay your employees.
I'm talking about "opening" in the sense of "open standards", not in the sense of "giving away". Java is not an open standard. With Java, Sun has taken us back to the bad old days before POSIX and C, the days when individual vendors owned languages. I'd much rather have Sun open the Java standard and sell the JDK than have the current situation.
Let's see: there is one Java application I use regularly (and it looks like shit). I haven't seen a Java applet in years, I have not bothered to install Java on any machine that it didn't ship on, and I rarely see Java-powered web servers. Seems pretty obscure to me. Tell us: where exactly do you think Java is going?
Well, and what actually happened with the strategy Sun adopted? Sun lost control to "Microsoft bastardization"--.NET is essentially an incompatible Java, completely with Java backwards compatibility.
If Sun had turned Java into an open standard, every Linux system would be using Java now, for both desktop and server apps, many of Java's technical bugs would be fixed, and C# would have ended up like VisualBasic. Instead, Sun's move allowed Microsoft to take the high ground and make C# an open standard. The open source community has created multiple C# implementations and gone to work innovating and improving the platform, as well as integrating it with the Linux desktop. As a result, some really nifty Linux desktop apps are being written in C#. And, as a bonus, there are also open source.NET implementations, giving developers easy cross-platform capabilities between Windows and Linux should they desire that.
BTW, this is a repeat of the NeWS disaster; that, too, was a nice core idea, the design had some serious flaws, the implementation was mediocre at best, and ultimately the industry rejected it because Sun was waffling on whether to open it or not. Sun apparently doesn't learn from their mistakes.
I think it's an open question what will happen (otherwise, the lawsuit wouldn't have gone so far).
What are the grounds here? The two parties to the contract are not equals--Sony is almost free to impose any terms they like; that fact, combined with the fact that the clause is intended to cover breakage where none actually occurs, may be sufficient.
I'm not sure if the band's cut is out of the Sony cut or what, but Sony getting 70% of the money seems excessive. Remind me why artists need companies like Sony? Especially known bands.
How did those bands get to be known? Is it because of exceptional musical talent? I don't think so. I'll tell you the usual reason: it's because they signed a contract with Sony and Sony's marketing machinery kicked into high gear. And Sony's use of the money isn't entirely frivolous either--they invest a lot of money into lots of bands and only some of them pay off.
Still, I think Sony and the bands that sign up with them are getting way too much money for the kind of product they are producing. I hope that with the Internet, the music scene will become more rational, without middle men or marketing hype.
Good in what sense? Apple is still fairly litigious, they still claim to have invented things they haven't actually invented, and they are still highly proprietary in many areas. They're "good" relative to Microsoft, but I think that's not saying all that much, and there are more than two choices, you know.
It's easy to program, its hard to design software in a well organized, modular, scalable way. And it requires good leadership... Apple is more immature than I thought.
Actually, it's you who's being immature if you think that producing a high quality product is merely a question of software engineering or leadership. In order to do a good job at design, the entire development team needs several years of hands-on experience in a domain. For a first version, Aperture is actually pretty good. If Apple is doing a major reorganization now, that's their real mistake--they should keep the team together as much as possible and only make changes that are absolutely necessary.
Aperture can wedge the system so badly during an import that clicking on a menu in the Finder (nothing else open), the system takes 10+ seconds to respond. On a Macbook with 1GB of ram.
This is an OS problem--other applications show the same behavior, and not just during import. And it's not limited to the Mac Book.
You can't use != in any of the smart folder/album/whatevers. Let's say I want to find all images in my project that I haven't tagged with "adjusted" (more on why this is necessary below); I can't.
That's a common problem in many of Apple's metadata handling: the set of choices and operators for rules is maddeningly and unnecessarily restrictive. I think they do it to keep the applications (in their mind) "easy to use".
Nope, sorry, can't do that- masters reside in the Project all together. If you import a folder with 6 subfolders, the main folder is created as a folder, and the subfolders are created as "albums". The wonderful joy with albums is that a "version" can be in multiple albums.
Again, that's a common theme in Apple's media handling: the way they handle folders is quite restrictive. I think they must think it just doesn't matter because, after all, why would anybody ever think about folders again? It's the whole "metadata will replace file system" thinking.
Anyway, thanks for this list; I had been thinking about getting Aperture, but it seems like Apple's "professional" software is afflicted by the same metadata handling problems as their consumer software, so there isn't much point.
Re:Apple has been a leader in addressing this prob
on
Apple's All-Seeing Screen
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· Score: 0, Flamebait
First, it connected via FireWire.
People have been using USB because it has been sufficiently fast, cheaper, and universally available. Firewire is an Apple idiosyncracy.
Second, it came with mounting brackets (included, for free in the iSight box) to attach the camera securely to the top center of Apple's LCD monitors and laptop screens.
Are you really so naive to believe that it has occurred to nobody else before that that's a good place to put a video camera? In fact, for as long as there have been desktop video cameras (hint: Apple didn't invent them either), that's where most people have been putting them, and cameras have generally included mounting options for that. And Sony and other manufacturers have been putting video cameras at the top center of laptops for many years.
As far as mounting options go, iSight is actuall poor--it fails to attach to many non-Apple monitors. I had to use duct tape to stick it to my monitor (but I used a designer color!). If the choices of video conferencing cameras for Mac weren't so darned limited, I'd happily toss out the iSight.
Re:Apple has been a leader in addressing this prob
on
Apple's All-Seeing Screen
·
· Score: 2, Informative
That's a good idea, but it's actually non-trivial to do this well for a variety of reasons. Microsoft has a technical report on how they do it; there are other approaches possible.
Of course it would be nice to be able to place a camera inside the LCD screen so that the image is captured from the same position as where the teleconferencing partner is being displayed. But Apple has done none of the hard technical work to actually make this work well in real life--they have simply patented the concept--a concept obvious to anybody skilled in the art. So, people who actually do the hard and clever work to make this work will now have to contend with Apple's patent.
This particular patent is not likely ever going to be important, since there are already several ways in which video conferencing systems can achieve eye contact. But the patent illustrates the kind of bullshit that the USPTO approves. While not a panacea, if the USPTO required demonstrably working implementations of a patent, patent abuse like this would be cut down.
Microsoft, in contrast, has actually demonstrated a working system for maintaining eye contact during video conferencing that actually has real, novel technology in it.
(Microsoft does real research but their software sucks, while Apple does good design but their research sucks. Go figure.)
Any vehicle more efficient than a car will probably be smaller than a car, and that smaller vehicle will lose in a collision with a car.
The vehicles that protect you in a collision are those designed with safety in mind; size has little to do with it.
That includes pedestrians in crosswalks. What are you going to do? Stop walking?
For walking, my risk is fairly low: I stick to sidewalks and cross only where the visibility is good and where even an inattentive driver can't hit me. For bicycle and motorcycle riding, I can't avoid risky circumstances to the same degree.
First, you enter any of these contracts completely by choice. If you don't want to sign up for a two-year commitment, buy your phone on the open market -- without their discount. It's an incentive, not an imperative.
Actually, that's not necessarily true. Some markets simply don't offer no-commitment contracts.
But the free market is still out there.
You're making a common mistake: you assume that if there is more than one source and if people have a choice whether and which contract to enter, the market is a free market. That's wrong. For a market to function like a free market, there need to be numerous other conditions. Usually, they won't be met unless there are dozens of competitors with similar product offerings.
Calling a market a "free market" when it is not is a way for companies to avoid the kind of government regulation that is necessary to keep monopolies and oligopolies in check.
Why bother with either really? Motorcycles can get 45 or so miles per gallon and they are safe provided:
So, you're saying motorcycles are safe provided their riders never make mistakes and provided that all other drivers on the road start behaving sensibly. Well, neither is gonna happen, which means that motorcycles remain risky.
Munich for breakfast, Tokyo for lunch, NYC for dinner.
Slashdot Mirror
I suggest you keep track of C, C++ and Java in job sites, software sites and language resources sites (like TIOBE). Over time you will see C++ falling significantly, C falling (but less so) and Java growing, replacing them.
Contrary to what you seem to think, programming languages aren't just a matter of fashion. Java won't be replacing C or C++ because it can't--it lacks the low-level, platfom dependent, and systems programming capabilities of C and C++, and the Java 5 design decisions have made it clear that Sun is not going to fix this. Many of the early Java adopters (including our organization) have gone back to C++ for the time being.
In any case, this discussion is pointless: you just keep quoting back irrelevant job site statistics. The question will resolve itself over the next few years; you'll see.
That is not the definition of 'most development'.
.NET and PHP, as well as other issues, mean it's on a plateau, followed by a slow but steady decline. Like all platforms before it.
Which part does it fail to be the definition of according to you? "Most" or "development"?
you usually don't write your HR or finance system in PHP.
You usually don't write your HR or finance system at all, you buy them from a small number of established vendors. Since the generation of software that they're now selling was developed over the last half dozen years when Java was hot, yes, a lot of it is in Java.
In fact the biggest use of Java of all is at the lowest end - mobile applications.
Have you actually ever tried to use mobile Java applications? They're a pain to install and function poorly on any of the major mobile platforms: PPC, Palm, or the various J2ME/MIDP phones.
You really do need to have a deeper look at what is going on in the IT world. Lets have a look at the jobs on dice.com: out of about 90,000 jobs....
You're making a serious mistake if you project the future of IT, corporate or otherwise, based on the current job openings on dice.com. If the future of IT were determined by job postings, we'd all still be programming in COBOL on IBM mainframes, or maybe Visual Basic on NT, the past frontrunners. By the time a platform makes it to the top of the job postings, it's already past its prime.
What you need to look at is what the technologies are that hot new companies are using, and it ain't usually Java, that's for sure.
I think that clarifies who is in the dreamworld!
Yeah, it's still you. You see that Java is well-established in some significant areas, and you falsely extrapolate future growth from it. Java has gotten about as big as it's gonna get--competition from
Until IE falls below 30% and Firefox goes above 30%, your concerns are unwarranted. Until then, there is still a lot of work to do.
If Microsoft retaliates? They started this and nearly killed Mozilla with it. This is Mozilla's retaliation against Microsoft using Microsoft's tactics.
Yes. And when Microsoft uses it, it's a monopoly with a billion dollar marketing budget using it to promote a monopoly. When Firefox uses it, it's a community project trying to get noticed against Microsoft's billion dollar ad budget. I'm sorry you don't understand the difference, but it's a big and important difference nonetheless.
The majority of server side development is done in Java.
I think you're living in a corporate dreamworld. When I look at hosting providers, I find that there are 10x as many PHP providers than Java hosting providers, and having installed both of them myself, it's not hard to see why. Surveys (eg Netcraft) also suggest that ASP.NET has already overtaken JSP and servlet hosting in 2004. PHP and ASP hosting are so easy to set up and get started with that it's the obvious first choice for anybody needed to do a little bit of server-side programming. In terms of applications, on Freshmeat, there are more than 5x as many CMS's listed that are written in PHP than in Java. And, perhaps most importantly, PHP seems to be more widely used for people trying new ideas on the web, including many Web 2.0 applications.
Java clearly has a good chunk of the high end of server-side development: banks and corporations use it a lot, and it will stay entrenched there for another decade or two. But that's a small part of overall server-side development. Most server-side development is probably developing small scripts, putting together a few existing components, or small customizations of CMSs.
Perhaps you could explain how you know you are rarely seeing Java-powered web servers - some interesting techniques to probe the structure of the HTML?
Yes, I usually try to figure out what sites run. For most of the sites I use, I succeed and it's not Java.
The shrink-wrapped desktop application market is totally insignificant compared to the number of applications developed for internal desktop use within companies, and even that is negligible compared with server side development.
I agree that Java is widely used for internal desktop application development and for some server side development. I believe you are overestimating the economic importance of those areas, or the hold Java has on them.
Are you just a C# fanboy or did you miss the fact that there have been multiple JVM implementations
It's irrelevant to my point whether there are multiple JVM implementations; it's a fact that Java just isn't being used significantly by Linux distributions. Debian, Ubuntu, OpenSuSE and Fedora don't even ship with a compliant Java implementation.
And, yes, I am a C# fanboy because it gets my work done a lot better than Java.
Finally, the JCP doesn't change the fact that people can't implement and change Java without Sun's blessing; that means that Java is closed in any sense that I care about.
It was the Debain distributors who descided not to distribute Java (in opposite like other Linux distros did) and not Suns license restriicting them.
Sun's restrictive licensing has affected all free Linux distributions, and been a problem for BSD as well. OpenSuSE: "Because of licensing issues Sun's Java Edition can not be included on the CDs of the download edition of SUSE Linux." Fedora: "Fedora Core 4 users are advised not to use the Java RPM provided by Sun. It contains Provides that conflict with names used in packages provided as part of Fedora Core 4. Because of this, Sun Java might disappear from an installed system during package upgrade operations."
Mono, in contrast, is shipping without restrictions and with no packaging problems on all Linux distributions.
From "opening" in the sense of "giving" away you cant pay your employees.
I'm talking about "opening" in the sense of "open standards", not in the sense of "giving away". Java is not an open standard. With Java, Sun has taken us back to the bad old days before POSIX and C, the days when individual vendors owned languages. I'd much rather have Sun open the Java standard and sell the JDK than have the current situation.
Let's see: there is one Java application I use regularly (and it looks like shit). I haven't seen a Java applet in years, I have not bothered to install Java on any machine that it didn't ship on, and I rarely see Java-powered web servers. Seems pretty obscure to me. Tell us: where exactly do you think Java is going?
Well, and what actually happened with the strategy Sun adopted? Sun lost control to "Microsoft bastardization"--.NET is essentially an incompatible Java, completely with Java backwards compatibility.
.NET implementations, giving developers easy cross-platform capabilities between Windows and Linux should they desire that.
If Sun had turned Java into an open standard, every Linux system would be using Java now, for both desktop and server apps, many of Java's technical bugs would be fixed, and C# would have ended up like VisualBasic. Instead, Sun's move allowed Microsoft to take the high ground and make C# an open standard. The open source community has created multiple C# implementations and gone to work innovating and improving the platform, as well as integrating it with the Linux desktop. As a result, some really nifty Linux desktop apps are being written in C#. And, as a bonus, there are also open source
BTW, this is a repeat of the NeWS disaster; that, too, was a nice core idea, the design had some serious flaws, the implementation was mediocre at best, and ultimately the industry rejected it because Sun was waffling on whether to open it or not. Sun apparently doesn't learn from their mistakes.
I think it's an open question what will happen (otherwise, the lawsuit wouldn't have gone so far).
What are the grounds here? The two parties to the contract are not equals--Sony is almost free to impose any terms they like; that fact, combined with the fact that the clause is intended to cover breakage where none actually occurs, may be sufficient.
I'm not sure if the band's cut is out of the Sony cut or what, but Sony getting 70% of the money seems excessive. Remind me why artists need companies like Sony? Especially known bands.
How did those bands get to be known? Is it because of exceptional musical talent? I don't think so. I'll tell you the usual reason: it's because they signed a contract with Sony and Sony's marketing machinery kicked into high gear. And Sony's use of the money isn't entirely frivolous either--they invest a lot of money into lots of bands and only some of them pay off.
Still, I think Sony and the bands that sign up with them are getting way too much money for the kind of product they are producing. I hope that with the Internet, the music scene will become more rational, without middle men or marketing hype.
The modern Apple as we know it -- the good one
Good in what sense? Apple is still fairly litigious, they still claim to have invented things they haven't actually invented, and they are still highly proprietary in many areas. They're "good" relative to Microsoft, but I think that's not saying all that much, and there are more than two choices, you know.
The only thing I still dual-boot for is games, and that doesn't require accessing the Windows partitions from Linux.
It's easy to program, its hard to design software in a well organized, modular, scalable way. And it requires good leadership... Apple is more immature than I thought.
Actually, it's you who's being immature if you think that producing a high quality product is merely a question of software engineering or leadership. In order to do a good job at design, the entire development team needs several years of hands-on experience in a domain. For a first version, Aperture is actually pretty good. If Apple is doing a major reorganization now, that's their real mistake--they should keep the team together as much as possible and only make changes that are absolutely necessary.
Aperture can wedge the system so badly during an import that clicking on a menu in the Finder (nothing else open), the system takes 10+ seconds to respond. On a Macbook with 1GB of ram.
This is an OS problem--other applications show the same behavior, and not just during import. And it's not limited to the Mac Book.
You can't use != in any of the smart folder/album/whatevers. Let's say I want to find all images in my project that I haven't tagged with "adjusted" (more on why this is necessary below); I can't.
That's a common problem in many of Apple's metadata handling: the set of choices and operators for rules is maddeningly and unnecessarily restrictive. I think they do it to keep the applications (in their mind) "easy to use".
Nope, sorry, can't do that- masters reside in the Project all together. If you import a folder with 6 subfolders, the main folder is created as a folder, and the subfolders are created as "albums". The wonderful joy with albums is that a "version" can be in multiple albums.
Again, that's a common theme in Apple's media handling: the way they handle folders is quite restrictive. I think they must think it just doesn't matter because, after all, why would anybody ever think about folders again? It's the whole "metadata will replace file system" thinking.
Anyway, thanks for this list; I had been thinking about getting Aperture, but it seems like Apple's "professional" software is afflicted by the same metadata handling problems as their consumer software, so there isn't much point.
First, it connected via FireWire.
People have been using USB because it has been sufficiently fast, cheaper, and universally available. Firewire is an Apple idiosyncracy.
Second, it came with mounting brackets (included, for free in the iSight box) to attach the camera securely to the top center of Apple's LCD monitors and laptop screens.
Are you really so naive to believe that it has occurred to nobody else before that that's a good place to put a video camera? In fact, for as long as there have been desktop video cameras (hint: Apple didn't invent them either), that's where most people have been putting them, and cameras have generally included mounting options for that. And Sony and other manufacturers have been putting video cameras at the top center of laptops for many years.
As far as mounting options go, iSight is actuall poor--it fails to attach to many non-Apple monitors. I had to use duct tape to stick it to my monitor (but I used a designer color!). If the choices of video conferencing cameras for Mac weren't so darned limited, I'd happily toss out the iSight.
That's a good idea, but it's actually non-trivial to do this well for a variety of reasons. Microsoft has a technical report on how they do it; there are other approaches possible.
Of course it would be nice to be able to place a camera inside the LCD screen so that the image is captured from the same position as where the teleconferencing partner is being displayed. But Apple has done none of the hard technical work to actually make this work well in real life--they have simply patented the concept--a concept obvious to anybody skilled in the art. So, people who actually do the hard and clever work to make this work will now have to contend with Apple's patent.
This particular patent is not likely ever going to be important, since there are already several ways in which video conferencing systems can achieve eye contact. But the patent illustrates the kind of bullshit that the USPTO approves. While not a panacea, if the USPTO required demonstrably working implementations of a patent, patent abuse like this would be cut down.
Microsoft, in contrast, has actually demonstrated a working system for maintaining eye contact during video conferencing that actually has real, novel technology in it.
(Microsoft does real research but their software sucks, while Apple does good design but their research sucks. Go figure.)
A motorcycle is probably almost as safe as these little cars
It's hard to tell. If they construct the passenger cell well and people buckle up, it could be a lot safer than a motorcycle or scooter.
Any vehicle more efficient than a car will probably be smaller than a car, and that smaller vehicle will lose in a collision with a car.
The vehicles that protect you in a collision are those designed with safety in mind; size has little to do with it.
That includes pedestrians in crosswalks. What are you going to do? Stop walking?
For walking, my risk is fairly low: I stick to sidewalks and cross only where the visibility is good and where even an inattentive driver can't hit me. For bicycle and motorcycle riding, I can't avoid risky circumstances to the same degree.
heaps a load of pressure on incoming CEO Jonathan Schwartz - he will have to get working on his anti-Microsoft gags quick-sharp.
That's because it worked so well for McNealy, right?
First, you enter any of these contracts completely by choice. If you don't want to sign up for a two-year commitment, buy your phone on the open market -- without their discount. It's an incentive, not an imperative.
Actually, that's not necessarily true. Some markets simply don't offer no-commitment contracts.
But the free market is still out there.
You're making a common mistake: you assume that if there is more than one source and if people have a choice whether and which contract to enter, the market is a free market. That's wrong. For a market to function like a free market, there need to be numerous other conditions. Usually, they won't be met unless there are dozens of competitors with similar product offerings.
Calling a market a "free market" when it is not is a way for companies to avoid the kind of government regulation that is necessary to keep monopolies and oligopolies in check.
Why bother with either really? Motorcycles can get 45 or so miles per gallon and they are safe provided:
So, you're saying motorcycles are safe provided their riders never make mistakes and provided that all other drivers on the road start behaving sensibly. Well, neither is gonna happen, which means that motorcycles remain risky.
Munich for breakfast, Tokyo for lunch, NYC for dinner.
You're... Godzilla?