Java is being used for serious numerical work right now.
So is assembly language. That doesn't make assembly language a high performance language for numerical computing.
For example, it is one of the supported languages on the University of Edinborough's supercomputer.
So is awk. That doesn't make awk a high performance numerical language.
Years ago, IBM produced research that showed that one of the Java implementations ran at FORTRAN-equalent speed.
So they did. In fact, even Sun's lousy JVM is up to speed now. That doesn't make Java a high performance numerical language.
Look, why not quote facts? Paragraphs like this are meaningless. I have provided direct proof of errors in your statements (such as 'Java isn't suitable for numerical work').
A bunch of erroneous, unsubstantiated assertions from you do not constitute "proof".
Java is certainly not a niche language, and to claim it is blatantl nonsense,
Java is confined to specific market niches (or "market segments" if you like): enterprise computing, some custom application development, and education. Important niches, but not the kind of usage a general purpose programming language has. And, fortunately, that's where it's going to remain--it has failed to capture the two primary market segments that it started out to capture: desktop applications and applets.
The fact remains that there is and gave been. HP produced clean room full Java platform implementations.
Ah, so you will have no trouble pointing at the product or download page for HP's cleanroom Java 5 J2SE implementation, plus at a statement by Sun certifying it. Come on, we're waiting.
Sorry, but nyone who things that Java doesn't matter must be sadly out of touch with current IT and development. You may dislike it - I can understand that, but to claim it 'doesn't matter' is to be simply blinkered.
I didn't say that "Java doesn't matter", I said that it's not worth worrying about Java taking over the world anymore because it's clear that it won't do so; Java, at this point, is roughly like C or COBOL--a historical nuisance.
Ah - goalpost moving! Change the language to mean the 'platform'.
No, I'm not moving the goalpost. I have been clear in my statements that there are no independent implementations of the Java platform. Independent implementations of the JVM or the Java language are useless by themselves because they are not sufficient for running Java applications; many of the purported advantages of "Java" are advantages (OS independence, etc.) of the Java platform.
"And like Lisp with declarations, Java fails to solve the hard problems." Like what?
Like efficient implementations of C-like structs, genericity with structs and numerical type arguments, and efficient native code binding. You know, like both C++ and C# support.
Java performance is substantially better than those equivalent languages - it approaches or matches C speed, which is something that was almost never the case for such other languages, at least, in their cross-platform implementations.
Lisp with declarations was just as fast as Fortran and C. And like Lisp with declarations, Java fails to solve the hard problems.
I occasionally do high-performance numerical work.
You can write fast loops in it, but speed alone is insufficient for high-performance numerical work--Java is simply unsuitable for serious numerical work.
Again, factually incorrect. Many others have fully implemented the JVM. TowerJ for example is a certified Java that does not rely on Sun's code. HP have produced clean-room certified Java.
That's typical: when people talk about implementations of the Java platform, people like you try to quietly change the subject and slip in "JVM". When people explicitly talk about J2SE, you try to confuse the issue by making remarks about J2ME. And TowerJ is an example of how successfully Sun has eliminated competing implementations--I suggest you look up what happened to it (TowerJ also never was a clean-room implementation of the Java platform--they relied on Sun's libraries).
The fact remains: there is no certified clean-room implementation of the J2SE platform; all conforming J2SE implementations are licensed derivatives of Sun's code.
However, arguing against Java based on common myths about performance and client-side use does not help an argument, because thousands of developers know you are factually incorrect and will immediately dismiss what you say.
Actually, it's you who is factually incorrect on many things, and who is using the distortions and misrepresentations typical of Java zealots. What you keep saying is what Sun promised (good numerical support, high performance generics, multiple independent implementations, good desktop implementation, universal in-browser delivery, open standards,...), but Sun has failed to deliver. I don't know whether people like you simply have trouble keeping reality and marketing apart, or whether you are deliberately astroturfing.
In any case, I used to worry about this, but given that it looks like Java is going to remain confined to its niches, that Sun is going nowhere fast as a company, and that better alternatives to Java are widely available now, it simply doesn't matter much anymore.
Sorry, but this is wrong. For example Algol was neither safe, garbage-collected or object oriented.
Algol 68 certainly had garbage collection, had a type system that was reasonably safe. It also had things that were roughly like things you would also call "classes" and "objects" in C++, but (like their equivalents in C++) no dynamic method binding.
In any case, the point is that none of the individual features of Java were new, and you could get most of them in combination in prior languages. Other examples of very Java-like languages are Eiffel, ObjectPascal, Turing, Modula-3, and Simula 67.
None of these languages combined high performance, multi-vendor support for the same dialect
There is no multi-vendor support for Java; all conforming Java (J2SE) platform implementations derive directly or indirectly from Sun. Java is a single implementation that is repackaged by multiple vendors.
good performance
Java performance is no better than other safe languages with declared primitive types and arrays of primitive types in the past (actually, Java is a little worse because the garbage collector still sucks in the only official implementation). And like most other such languages, Java fails to address the hard cases: efficiency when using complicated abstractions, and genericity involving primitive types and user defined classes. It's the same stupid mistake that CommonLisp, Smalltalk, and other languages made. In fact, the only widely used platform that gets this right is C#/.NET 2.0.
and cross-platform portability at the binary level
Useless because the market demands standard installers, so you have to repackage anyway. Also, other languages have provided this in the past.
(and with a cross-platform gui)
A GUI of poor quality and with poor desktop integration.
and also being free (as in beer).
Yes, and that's a problem, because it has been Sun's strategy for killing competitors. The end result? A situation like Windows, in which we have a single vendor shipping and sublicensing a single, ill-defined platform that nobody else can implement fully.
There are standard packaging methods such as Jar and WAR which are fully platform independent. I have deployed identical JARs on Windows and Linux, and MacOS/X.
Yes, and that kind of nonsense is exactly why Java has failed on the desktop: people want packages for their platform, they don't want a JAR file that doesn't integrate with the desktop.
You would be surprised. Azeurus is Java. Moneydance (one of the most popular personal accounts packages) is Java. Java is now even starting to be used for PC games! (Tribal Trouble!)
First of all, those applications are far and few between (that's why I said "regularly"). Azureus isn't even a Java platform application because it uses SWT. And Moneydance is packaged in a platform-specific way and under Windows includes the entire Java runtime.
In any case, I'm not sure what you're trying to argue. It's a fact that Java has failed on the desktop and it's a fact that it has failed as an applet language. With only a few years of development, both.NET and Mono are more widely used on their respective platforms than Java. I gave you some of the reasons why I think that's the case, but, of course, you are free to continue tilting at windmills and assume that Java is perfect and Java's failure to fulfill its original aspirations are everybody else's fault but Sun's.
Berkeley UNIX (the original BSD) was full of security holes. It shipped with such beauties like being able to get a shell by typing the right command at the SMTP server and multiple buffer overflow bugs in just about every server and command line program. And many people knew about it, both at Berkeley and elsewhere, but nobody cared much until the Morris worm. Apparently, while the world has moved forward, Berkeley still isn't taking security all that seriously.
I think Schwartz will drive the company into the ground even faster than McNealy could: McNealy failed through inaction, but Schwartz actively antagonizes potential partners and allies.
Even if was not cross platform, Java would be an important language as it removes the horrors of C/C++ memory management
What's your point? Algol, Smalltalk, and Lisp were safe, garbage-collected, object-oriented languages in widespread use before either C or C++ ever became popular, let alone Java. Java's contribution to the world of programming languages is exactly nothing.
No longer do developers have to build and maintain binaries for different processor architectures, word sizes and operating systems.
Processor, word size, and OS dependencies, they are not an issue even in correctly written C/C++, and certainly not in most other languages.
And even in Java, developers still have to build and maintain binaries for different processor architectures, because properly packaging applications for different platforms requires that.
It is this sort of thing that makes C++ look, in this respect, primitive.
Well, what can I say, both C++ and Java suck, albeit in different ways. But while C++ sucks, at least people regularly write high quality desktop apps in it, which is more than one can say for Java.
Even Qt/C++ is a better cross-platform solution than Java.
What distinguishes Java from other cross-platform solutions is that you only have to compile once, but that's a nearly useless feature, and one that comes at a huge price in terms of quality and performance.
Re:Duh WebOS IS a Product and has been...
on
WebOS Market Review
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· Score: 1
but WebOS is still a registered Trademak, I wouldnt be making it generic like kleenex just yet.
Why not? Whether it becomes generic is up to us, the people.
Well, the people working on Web 2.0 are likely fully aware of Java's existence, so the fact that they aren't using it tells you that Java must fall short somewhere.
Reasons we aren't using Java much anymore include lack of an ANSI/ISO standard, Sun's JCP process, technical limitations, bad technical decisions in versions 1.4 and 1.5, and lack of good open source implementations. I don't even think that Java lives up to its hype as a good cross-platform tool. I suspect other organizations have similar reasons.
I think Java on the desktop is history and it's not coming back.
To what extent is it possible to adapt web sites to cell phones?
People do it all the time; Slashdot, Yahoo, and Google all have been adapted to cell phones. However, unlike what the original poster was saying, making it work well requires much more than just using CSS and SVG--the sites have to be redesigned from the ground up, and you end up with two versions: one for desktop use and one for cell phone use.
The original poster has a perfectly valid point. While your point is also a good one, it's really an extension to what the other poster was saying.
The original poster's claim isn't "extensible"; the original poster made this claim:
With a move to liquid layouts and SVG, and a lack of references to pixels, the devices the webpage will be rendered on should become completely irrelevant to web developers.
That claim remains fundamentally wrong. If you want a web site that works on a desktop, a PDA, and a phone, then you need to explicitly design for those classes of devices. CSS and SVG may make your life a little easier, but the target devices do not become "irrelevant to web developers".
While I do support the right to the works of Miro by the current copyright owners
I don't. Miro has been dead for a long time. His works should have passed into the public domain by now; that's, after all, the whole purpose of copyright: to create a body of high quality public domain works. The fact that this work (and a lot of other) is still protected by copyright has more to do with corrupt politics than anything else.
Artistic styles cannot be copyrighted or patented. In limited cases, people can get design patents or trademarks, but I seriously doubt that that would apply here. Furthermore, it's not like Miro was the only person to have drawn in that style.
ARS and the Miro family seem particularly stupid in this case because Google probably gives them a lot more exposure for free than they have received in a long time.
The problem is that all resources spent on government research are taken from elsewhere.
No, that's not a "problem", that's the only way public goods can be paid for.
Quite a lot of government R&D goes nowhere, and is often funded due to politics and inertia, and nothing to do with the "public good".
Your response shows that (despite my recommendation to look up the term "public good"), you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Go look it up, understand it, and then maybe come back and opine on this.
As for funding "due to politics", that is basically corruption. The fact that corruption exists in our political system (big time) doesn't alter the need to fund public goods, it simply makes such funding less efficient.
Simply because a few projects strike it lucky doesn't mean that it's a wholesale vindication of government-funded R&D.
Government-funded R&D doesn't need to be "vindicated"--when it funds public goods, then there simply is no alternative, no matter what the success rate; the market creates public goods only in exceptional circumstances.
Ever since the seperation of style and content via CSS, the web has been moving much faster towards the goal of being equally well rendered in every medium.
Adapting to different media requires much more than playing around with fonts, sizes, and CSS. Usually, the navigation structure and content itself need to change.
With a move to liquid layouts and SVG, and a lack of references to pixels, the devices the webpage will be rendered on should become completely irrelevant to web developers.
People like you should be kept as far away as possible from creating either software or content for the web; you simply don't have a clue.
That heuristic only works for devices that don't emit anything else, and even then it ignores a lot of important factors.
Furthermore, it doesn't tell you whether a component is responsible for high overall power consumption; in order to be responsible for high overall power consumption, a component doesn't need to use a lot of power itself.
Great! Then it will be in style again right after the rounded-white-plastic look that Apple revived from the 1970's will seem old (Apple already has gotten past the 1960's big bold colors and flowers look).
A lot of desktop Linux usage is not in places where people surf a lot (at least not to the kinds of sites that publish statistics), places like school labs, university labs, government, and corporate desktops. Many people also use Linux for many desktop applications, but do so by running the actual applications on a server (thanks to X11).
Furthermore, web site-based statistics consistently undercount Linux users (there are many reasons why Linux users are misidentified as Windows users, but few reasons why OS X users are misidentified as Windows users, and no reasons why Windows users are misidentified as anything else).
Overall, OS X is clearly still more widely used among home users, but probably not among desktop users.
OS X will probably focus further and further at the upscale home market; commercial desktop use, as well as nations like China and India, will be a battle ground only between Windows and Linux desktop systems.
I don't see the point. If you're gonna dock to your computer, then you only need memory for one battery charge, and 2G is plenty. If you're going to use a charger while traveling, 10G strikes me as too small for a regular music collection.
I bought the 4G but discovered through use that I could have saved my money and lived just fine with the 1G or 2G model.
You mean like in the commercial world, the Apple faction said "screw you" to the Microsoft/IBM faction and did everything their own way? Or like the MS Office group said "screw you" to both the MFC and Vista groups and keeps violating GUI guidelines on Windows? Or like Mac developers can't agree on a consistent toolkit (there are half a dozen different ones in common use), consistent look, or consistent installer?
It's good that the Linux desktop is being unified further, but it certainly has to fear no comparison with other platforms. You can start complaining again once Apple and Microsoft sit down together and decide on a consistent place for the menu bar. (KDE at least gives you a choice.)
Well, it' good for rightwingers like Bush to acknowledge the importance of government funding of research; in their free market fervor, right wing ideologues often forget that there is something called a "public good" (that's a technical term--look it up before you comment).
As for the iPod, Apple "invented" it in the sense of design and marketing. Almost all of Apple's underlying technology comes from elsewhere; Apple is "innovative" only in the sense of defining new product categories, not in terms of technology.
Most Microsoft employees are good, dedicated people, and from what I can tell is a good place to work.
The company has had some problems, like hiring too many smart but inexperienced people out of college and giving them tasks they weren't up to, but even that largely stopped as the company has matured.
Nevertheless, some people at Microsoft haven't matured, notably at the top. People like Ballmer still behave like they're running a small, fast-growing company that has a license to do anything in order to compete. But that sort of behavior is inappropriate for a company that has >80% market share in some markets. I don't know whether "evil" is the right word, but, in the end, Microsoft's business practices are increasingly running into trouble not only with regulators, but also customers and investors.
Slashdot Mirror
Java is being used for serious numerical work right now.
So is assembly language. That doesn't make assembly language a high performance language for numerical computing.
For example, it is one of the supported languages on the University of Edinborough's supercomputer.
So is awk. That doesn't make awk a high performance numerical language.
Years ago, IBM produced research that showed that one of the Java implementations ran at FORTRAN-equalent speed.
So they did. In fact, even Sun's lousy JVM is up to speed now. That doesn't make Java a high performance numerical language.
Look, why not quote facts? Paragraphs like this are meaningless. I have provided direct proof of errors in your statements (such as 'Java isn't suitable for numerical work').
A bunch of erroneous, unsubstantiated assertions from you do not constitute "proof".
Java is certainly not a niche language, and to claim it is blatantl nonsense,
Java is confined to specific market niches (or "market segments" if you like): enterprise computing, some custom application development, and education. Important niches, but not the kind of usage a general purpose programming language has. And, fortunately, that's where it's going to remain--it has failed to capture the two primary market segments that it started out to capture: desktop applications and applets.
The fact remains that there is and gave been. HP produced clean room full Java platform implementations.
Ah, so you will have no trouble pointing at the product or download page for HP's cleanroom Java 5 J2SE implementation, plus at a statement by Sun certifying it. Come on, we're waiting.
Sorry, but nyone who things that Java doesn't matter must be sadly out of touch with current IT and development. You may dislike it - I can understand that, but to claim it 'doesn't matter' is to be simply blinkered.
I didn't say that "Java doesn't matter", I said that it's not worth worrying about Java taking over the world anymore because it's clear that it won't do so; Java, at this point, is roughly like C or COBOL--a historical nuisance.
Ah - goalpost moving! Change the language to mean the 'platform'.
No, I'm not moving the goalpost. I have been clear in my statements that there are no independent implementations of the Java platform. Independent implementations of the JVM or the Java language are useless by themselves because they are not sufficient for running Java applications; many of the purported advantages of "Java" are advantages (OS independence, etc.) of the Java platform.
"And like Lisp with declarations, Java fails to solve the hard problems." Like what?
Like efficient implementations of C-like structs, genericity with structs and numerical type arguments, and efficient native code binding. You know, like both C++ and C# support.
Java performance is substantially better than those equivalent languages - it approaches or matches C speed, which is something that was almost never the case for such other languages, at least, in their cross-platform implementations.
...), but Sun has failed to deliver. I don't know whether people like you simply have trouble keeping reality and marketing apart, or whether you are deliberately astroturfing.
Lisp with declarations was just as fast as Fortran and C. And like Lisp with declarations, Java fails to solve the hard problems.
I occasionally do high-performance numerical work.
You can write fast loops in it, but speed alone is insufficient for high-performance numerical work--Java is simply unsuitable for serious numerical work.
Again, factually incorrect. Many others have fully implemented the JVM. TowerJ for example is a certified Java that does not rely on Sun's code. HP have produced clean-room certified Java.
That's typical: when people talk about implementations of the Java platform, people like you try to quietly change the subject and slip in "JVM". When people explicitly talk about J2SE, you try to confuse the issue by making remarks about J2ME. And TowerJ is an example of how successfully Sun has eliminated competing implementations--I suggest you look up what happened to it (TowerJ also never was a clean-room implementation of the Java platform--they relied on Sun's libraries).
The fact remains: there is no certified clean-room implementation of the J2SE platform; all conforming J2SE implementations are licensed derivatives of Sun's code.
However, arguing against Java based on common myths about performance and client-side use does not help an argument, because thousands of developers know you are factually incorrect and will immediately dismiss what you say.
Actually, it's you who is factually incorrect on many things, and who is using the distortions and misrepresentations typical of Java zealots. What you keep saying is what Sun promised (good numerical support, high performance generics, multiple independent implementations, good desktop implementation, universal in-browser delivery, open standards,
In any case, I used to worry about this, but given that it looks like Java is going to remain confined to its niches, that Sun is going nowhere fast as a company, and that better alternatives to Java are widely available now, it simply doesn't matter much anymore.
Sorry, but this is wrong. For example Algol was neither safe, garbage-collected or object oriented.
.NET and Mono are more widely used on their respective platforms than Java. I gave you some of the reasons why I think that's the case, but, of course, you are free to continue tilting at windmills and assume that Java is perfect and Java's failure to fulfill its original aspirations are everybody else's fault but Sun's.
Algol 68 certainly had garbage collection, had a type system that was reasonably safe. It also had things that were roughly like things you would also call "classes" and "objects" in C++, but (like their equivalents in C++) no dynamic method binding.
In any case, the point is that none of the individual features of Java were new, and you could get most of them in combination in prior languages. Other examples of very Java-like languages are Eiffel, ObjectPascal, Turing, Modula-3, and Simula 67.
None of these languages combined high performance, multi-vendor support for the same dialect
There is no multi-vendor support for Java; all conforming Java (J2SE) platform implementations derive directly or indirectly from Sun. Java is a single implementation that is repackaged by multiple vendors.
good performance
Java performance is no better than other safe languages with declared primitive types and arrays of primitive types in the past (actually, Java is a little worse because the garbage collector still sucks in the only official implementation). And like most other such languages, Java fails to address the hard cases: efficiency when using complicated abstractions, and genericity involving primitive types and user defined classes. It's the same stupid mistake that CommonLisp, Smalltalk, and other languages made. In fact, the only widely used platform that gets this right is C#/.NET 2.0.
and cross-platform portability at the binary level
Useless because the market demands standard installers, so you have to repackage anyway. Also, other languages have provided this in the past.
(and with a cross-platform gui)
A GUI of poor quality and with poor desktop integration.
and also being free (as in beer).
Yes, and that's a problem, because it has been Sun's strategy for killing competitors. The end result? A situation like Windows, in which we have a single vendor shipping and sublicensing a single, ill-defined platform that nobody else can implement fully.
There are standard packaging methods such as Jar and WAR which are fully platform independent. I have deployed identical JARs on Windows and Linux, and MacOS/X.
Yes, and that kind of nonsense is exactly why Java has failed on the desktop: people want packages for their platform, they don't want a JAR file that doesn't integrate with the desktop.
You would be surprised. Azeurus is Java. Moneydance (one of the most popular personal accounts packages) is Java. Java is now even starting to be used for PC games! (Tribal Trouble!)
First of all, those applications are far and few between (that's why I said "regularly"). Azureus isn't even a Java platform application because it uses SWT. And Moneydance is packaged in a platform-specific way and under Windows includes the entire Java runtime.
In any case, I'm not sure what you're trying to argue. It's a fact that Java has failed on the desktop and it's a fact that it has failed as an applet language. With only a few years of development, both
Berkeley UNIX (the original BSD) was full of security holes. It shipped with such beauties like being able to get a shell by typing the right command at the SMTP server and multiple buffer overflow bugs in just about every server and command line program. And many people knew about it, both at Berkeley and elsewhere, but nobody cared much until the Morris worm. Apparently, while the world has moved forward, Berkeley still isn't taking security all that seriously.
I think Schwartz will drive the company into the ground even faster than McNealy could: McNealy failed through inaction, but Schwartz actively antagonizes potential partners and allies.
Even if was not cross platform, Java would be an important language as it removes the horrors of C/C++ memory management
What's your point? Algol, Smalltalk, and Lisp were safe, garbage-collected, object-oriented languages in widespread use before either C or C++ ever became popular, let alone Java. Java's contribution to the world of programming languages is exactly nothing.
No longer do developers have to build and maintain binaries for different processor architectures, word sizes and operating systems.
Processor, word size, and OS dependencies, they are not an issue even in correctly written C/C++, and certainly not in most other languages.
And even in Java, developers still have to build and maintain binaries for different processor architectures, because properly packaging applications for different platforms requires that.
It is this sort of thing that makes C++ look, in this respect, primitive.
Well, what can I say, both C++ and Java suck, albeit in different ways. But while C++ sucks, at least people regularly write high quality desktop apps in it, which is more than one can say for Java.
Nothing comes close.
Even Qt/C++ is a better cross-platform solution than Java.
What distinguishes Java from other cross-platform solutions is that you only have to compile once, but that's a nearly useless feature, and one that comes at a huge price in terms of quality and performance.
but WebOS is still a registered Trademak, I wouldnt be making it generic like kleenex just yet.
Why not? Whether it becomes generic is up to us, the people.
Well, the people working on Web 2.0 are likely fully aware of Java's existence, so the fact that they aren't using it tells you that Java must fall short somewhere.
Reasons we aren't using Java much anymore include lack of an ANSI/ISO standard, Sun's JCP process, technical limitations, bad technical decisions in versions 1.4 and 1.5, and lack of good open source implementations. I don't even think that Java lives up to its hype as a good cross-platform tool. I suspect other organizations have similar reasons.
I think Java on the desktop is history and it's not coming back.
To what extent is it possible to adapt web sites to cell phones?
People do it all the time; Slashdot, Yahoo, and Google all have been adapted to cell phones. However, unlike what the original poster was saying, making it work well requires much more than just using CSS and SVG--the sites have to be redesigned from the ground up, and you end up with two versions: one for desktop use and one for cell phone use.
The original poster's claim isn't "extensible"; the original poster made this claim:That claim remains fundamentally wrong. If you want a web site that works on a desktop, a PDA, and a phone, then you need to explicitly design for those classes of devices. CSS and SVG may make your life a little easier, but the target devices do not become "irrelevant to web developers".
While I do support the right to the works of Miro by the current copyright owners
I don't. Miro has been dead for a long time. His works should have passed into the public domain by now; that's, after all, the whole purpose of copyright: to create a body of high quality public domain works. The fact that this work (and a lot of other) is still protected by copyright has more to do with corrupt politics than anything else.
Well, TVs are becoming furniture again, but this time it's in the style of mirrors, framed paintings, photographic frames, and doorways.
Artistic styles cannot be copyrighted or patented. In limited cases, people can get design patents or trademarks, but I seriously doubt that that would apply here. Furthermore, it's not like Miro was the only person to have drawn in that style.
ARS and the Miro family seem particularly stupid in this case because Google probably gives them a lot more exposure for free than they have received in a long time.
The problem is that all resources spent on government research are taken from elsewhere.
No, that's not a "problem", that's the only way public goods can be paid for.
Quite a lot of government R&D goes nowhere, and is often funded due to politics and inertia, and nothing to do with the "public good".
Your response shows that (despite my recommendation to look up the term "public good"), you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Go look it up, understand it, and then maybe come back and opine on this.
As for funding "due to politics", that is basically corruption. The fact that corruption exists in our political system (big time) doesn't alter the need to fund public goods, it simply makes such funding less efficient.
Simply because a few projects strike it lucky doesn't mean that it's a wholesale vindication of government-funded R&D.
Government-funded R&D doesn't need to be "vindicated"--when it funds public goods, then there simply is no alternative, no matter what the success rate; the market creates public goods only in exceptional circumstances.
Ever since the seperation of style and content via CSS, the web has been moving much faster towards the goal of being equally well rendered in every medium.
Adapting to different media requires much more than playing around with fonts, sizes, and CSS. Usually, the navigation structure and content itself need to change.
With a move to liquid layouts and SVG, and a lack of references to pixels, the devices the webpage will be rendered on should become completely irrelevant to web developers.
People like you should be kept as far away as possible from creating either software or content for the web; you simply don't have a clue.
That heuristic only works for devices that don't emit anything else, and even then it ignores a lot of important factors.
Furthermore, it doesn't tell you whether a component is responsible for high overall power consumption; in order to be responsible for high overall power consumption, a component doesn't need to use a lot of power itself.
The thing looks like a late 80's television...
Great! Then it will be in style again right after the rounded-white-plastic look that Apple revived from the 1970's will seem old (Apple already has gotten past the 1960's big bold colors and flowers look).
A lot of desktop Linux usage is not in places where people surf a lot (at least not to the kinds of sites that publish statistics), places like school labs, university labs, government, and corporate desktops. Many people also use Linux for many desktop applications, but do so by running the actual applications on a server (thanks to X11).
Furthermore, web site-based statistics consistently undercount Linux users (there are many reasons why Linux users are misidentified as Windows users, but few reasons why OS X users are misidentified as Windows users, and no reasons why Windows users are misidentified as anything else).
Overall, OS X is clearly still more widely used among home users, but probably not among desktop users.
OS X will probably focus further and further at the upscale home market; commercial desktop use, as well as nations like China and India, will be a battle ground only between Windows and Linux desktop systems.
Yes, but I find 2G already gives me plenty of extra space for those unanticipated musical urges.
I don't see the point. If you're gonna dock to your computer, then you only need memory for one battery charge, and 2G is plenty. If you're going to use a charger while traveling, 10G strikes me as too small for a regular music collection.
I bought the 4G but discovered through use that I could have saved my money and lived just fine with the 1G or 2G model.
You mean like in the commercial world, the Apple faction said "screw you" to the Microsoft/IBM faction and did everything their own way? Or like the MS Office group said "screw you" to both the MFC and Vista groups and keeps violating GUI guidelines on Windows? Or like Mac developers can't agree on a consistent toolkit (there are half a dozen different ones in common use), consistent look, or consistent installer?
It's good that the Linux desktop is being unified further, but it certainly has to fear no comparison with other platforms. You can start complaining again once Apple and Microsoft sit down together and decide on a consistent place for the menu bar. (KDE at least gives you a choice.)
Well, it' good for rightwingers like Bush to acknowledge the importance of government funding of research; in their free market fervor, right wing ideologues often forget that there is something called a "public good" (that's a technical term--look it up before you comment).
As for the iPod, Apple "invented" it in the sense of design and marketing. Almost all of Apple's underlying technology comes from elsewhere; Apple is "innovative" only in the sense of defining new product categories, not in terms of technology.
A few percent desktop marketshare is what Macintosh has. Seems to me that the "fractured" Linux desktop is doing pretty well already.
Most Microsoft employees are good, dedicated people, and from what I can tell is a good place to work.
The company has had some problems, like hiring too many smart but inexperienced people out of college and giving them tasks they weren't up to, but even that largely stopped as the company has matured.
Nevertheless, some people at Microsoft haven't matured, notably at the top. People like Ballmer still behave like they're running a small, fast-growing company that has a license to do anything in order to compete. But that sort of behavior is inappropriate for a company that has >80% market share in some markets. I don't know whether "evil" is the right word, but, in the end, Microsoft's business practices are increasingly running into trouble not only with regulators, but also customers and investors.