The raw performance differences between C/C++ and, for example, HotSpot have been negligible for some time. Moore's law and clustering have made questions of raw performance irrelevant.
The relevant questions are all about time to market, scalability (hand-helds to mainframes), networking, security, and quality. We should have benchmarks on these. Java would win hands down.
Interested parties should check out the JavaLobby and consider joining. There is a very interesting discussion on JSP vs. ASP performance there now.
We don't even have a common HTML. Maybe the W3C can release a human language standard that we can all follow the way the browsers follow the HTML standards.
The risk of being supplanted by a higher order species is no risk. We are already "human users of high technology" and have already supplanted "human users of lesser technology." It's now a science fiction commonplace that the interfaces between humans and machines are just going to get closer and closer until the two are indistinguishable.
We may actually have to evolve into pure machines or pure virtual beings just to be able to continue to exist. The ecosystem we need for biological life may not be fault-tolerant enough for a brew like human civilization.
I'm an optimist. I think we will make it to the next phase and will be very "content." I do expect a lot of close calls along the White Plague lines though, and I think we ought to be very respectful or our natural environment.
For one thing, we will need it for a while. For another, we'll miss it a lot if we lose it -- even if we no longer need it. A lot of what it means to be human has to do with the natural world, in my opinion. It's home.
Your post could not prove my point better! Thank you! The article you site could not be better support for what I am saying.
The article, and specifically your quote from it (thanks, seriously) makes the very mistake I was pointing out. Namely, it actually says that Gore claimed to be the "inventor of the Internet." However, if you read Gore's quote, he says no such thing.
Your article notes that Gore has a 133-134 IQ and went to college with a 1355 SAT. Please don't say you think that someone this smart says or thinks he "invented the Internet." I know you're too smart for that.
Reread Wired magazine's original post and, if you feel like it, CmdrTaco's fateful and uncharacteristically shallow propagation of the article to Slashdot.
If you read it, you will begin to see why Brill's Content is such a great magazine. It's sad to see someone like Gore, who was legitimately among the first to even use the term "information superhighway" in politics, suffer so much from the media's techno-illiteracy and incompetence.
Quite simply, after Gore said he "took the initiative in creating the Internet," Wolf Blitzer could have sought clarification. Any reader of Slashdot would have, but Blitzer fumbled. Blitzer should have said, "You're not suggesting you created the Internet yourself, are you?"
Had he done that (or had Gore chosen his words more carefully), the issue would be where it belongs, squarely in Gore's asset column.
People should try to get the full story on Gore before dismissing the one candidate who actually knows something about technology. Gore's comment was that he "took the initiative in creating the Internet," and he said it in the context of trying to differentiate himself from Bradley and other challengers. A charitable reading (and what Gore should have said) is "among the candidates for President, I am the only one who showed significant government leadership in helping to foster the Internet."
Slashdotter's should consider reading "Brill's Content" magazine for its recent story on the media's incompetent handling of the "Gore invented Love Canal" story. Then they should ask themselves if a guy as smart as Gore, who actually does have well-reported techno-wonk credentials, would really have claimed to have "invented the Internet."
Gore was one of the leading proponents of the "information superhighway." Now, if he wants to talk more about it, he runs the risk of a bunch of know-it-nothings laughing at him and hurling once-funny cheap shots.
This "Gore says he invented the Internet (har-har)" stuff is a silly mental virus propagated by people with relatively weak intellectual immune systems, IMHO. That's not to say they are stupid, just susceptible. Gore fouled up his line, true. But anyone interested in Slashdot should still be for him.
Thus far the Clinton administration has nothing in its scandal history as glorious as the Iran/Contra affair. That was a Clancy-esque mix of drugs, weapons, hostage-dealing, and espionage. Reagan couldn't remember what happened, Bush Sr. was out of the loop, Ollie North and Fawn Hall shredded and smuggled documents.
The difference between that scandal and the so-called "Clinton scandals" is that Iran/Contra ended up amounting to more than a hill of beans. Power was truly abused in the Iran/Contra scandal.
Let's see how this new scandal plays out. Frankly, Clinton's Republican opposition has gone off half-cocked so often that they have no credibility left. They are just sore losers, IMHO. Also, let's get off the administration's back on encryption and CDA. A lot of techies just have the most absurd knee-jerk response to that. Even if these initiatives are hopeless, they still must be tried. It's just a no-brainer.
Suppose, for example, Clinton had just openly done nothing WRT export restrictions on encryption. The very first time a terrorist used strong encryption in an e-mail, the administration would have been hung out to dry by the same yahoos who now attack him every time he adjusts his tie.
Sure, we all know that such export restrictions are futile, but that's, unfortunately, beside the point.
We could have had a programming language that runs identical binaries on every major computing OS and in hand-helds, phones, etc. We could have had a language with built-in safe multi-threading, standard networking, directory, crypto, database access...
Just think, it could have run directly inside databases. It could have had ORBs run inside it. It could have had a state-of-the-art, multi-platform GUI. It could have dynamically loaded classes across networks in a safe way. Maybe it might have even had reflection, and open specifications for application and component models.
It could have been adopted as the OO teaching language of choice by many universities and a primary business direction of many major software, hardware, and content vendors.
It could have been the first thing listed at the top of Dr. Dobb's Journal, ahead of Linux and C++.
Why not just have one browser and use a combination of XUL and Java to tighten integration with Web sites? Mozilla shows signs of being the first to provide this sort of platform convergence. I can't wait to program on it, but I'm not wild about yet more distro proliferation.
To me, this is the biggest headache of Open Source. It creates multiple adversarial distros for commercial motives. The core of Linux, for example, is relatively pure. But the distros that carry it that important last mile to the user are commercial adversaries.
Just try running a big system (e.g., Oracle) on different versions and distros of Linux. (What? You don't have the right version of glibc installed? Your Enlightenment environment has the "foo" bug?)
I would not wish a similar situation on Mozilla. This is one reason that I like XUL and Java. The skin of the browser can be different for commercial reasons, but the underlying stuff will be reliable enough to program for a universal audience.
Don't count Microsoft out yet, though. (Strange to say that since the numbers apparently have them in the lead!) There may be a Round 2 of the browser wars in the offing once Microsoft thaws out their Java technology post-litigation. They may be forced, kicking and screaming, to "innovate" once again.
Come on. Think it through a little and then repost. You can do better than this.
The world is a better place than it has ever been, and the trend is very good. The only problem is that the lights are coming on, and we're seeing ourselves for the flabby, whining pessimists most of us are.
The Unabomber and the Columbine "script kiddies" show us examples of negative analysis without positive analysis and positive synthesis. If you are going to address the problems of the world, you should be prepared for a big job and a scholarly, serious effort. It's pure ego to just point out a few problems and feebly propose hackneyed solutions. Check out Camus and Jung, and heed what they have to say about the results of this type of "thinking."
Intelligent people like the AC above and Katz and Gleick have all of this negative stuff to say, and it resonates. People earnestly feel these things. But it's lazy and useless. It's passive and pathetic. I simply can't stomach it.
Our parents had it worse than us, and they did magnificent things. We could too, but we won't if we are paralyzed with fear. Let's snap out of this. Let's stop feeding on this opiate of despair. Stop visualizing Armageddon. Visualize a sustainable, pleasant Earth, and it will happen.
Use your mind to make things better. It will work. Forget the greed-heads. Would anyone you know change places with Bill Gates? Michael Jackson? People are relatively smart.
Safety Net? How about a Safety Elevator? The safety net was turning into a spider's web.
Stock market crash a good thing? Please. We haven't transcended a utilitarian economy yet. Everyone would suffer.
Society is not empty, it's just misguided. But the net is making us smarter all the time. If we can get some of this negative noise out of the system (and out of our attitudes), we can make the world a much better place.
Slashdot Mirror
The relevant questions are all about time to market, scalability (hand-helds to mainframes), networking, security, and quality. We should have benchmarks on these. Java would win hands down.
Interested parties should check out the JavaLobby and consider joining. There is a very interesting discussion on JSP vs. ASP performance there now.
We don't even have a common HTML. Maybe the W3C can release a human language standard that we can all follow the way the browsers follow the HTML standards.
We may actually have to evolve into pure machines or pure virtual beings just to be able to continue to exist. The ecosystem we need for biological life may not be fault-tolerant enough for a brew like human civilization.
I'm an optimist. I think we will make it to the next phase and will be very "content." I do expect a lot of close calls along the White Plague lines though, and I think we ought to be very respectful or our natural environment.
For one thing, we will need it for a while. For another, we'll miss it a lot if we lose it -- even if we no longer need it. A lot of what it means to be human has to do with the natural world, in my opinion. It's home.
The article, and specifically your quote from it (thanks, seriously) makes the very mistake I was pointing out. Namely, it actually says that Gore claimed to be the "inventor of the Internet." However, if you read Gore's quote, he says no such thing.
Your article notes that Gore has a 133-134 IQ and went to college with a 1355 SAT. Please don't say you think that someone this smart says or thinks he "invented the Internet." I know you're too smart for that.
Reread Wired magazine's original post and, if you feel like it, CmdrTaco's fateful and uncharacteristically shallow propagation of the article to Slashdot.
If you read it, you will begin to see why Brill's Content is such a great magazine. It's sad to see someone like Gore, who was legitimately among the first to even use the term "information superhighway" in politics, suffer so much from the media's techno-illiteracy and incompetence.
Quite simply, after Gore said he "took the initiative in creating the Internet," Wolf Blitzer could have sought clarification. Any reader of Slashdot would have, but Blitzer fumbled. Blitzer should have said, "You're not suggesting you created the Internet yourself, are you?"
Had he done that (or had Gore chosen his words more carefully), the issue would be where it belongs, squarely in Gore's asset column.
Slashdotter's should consider reading "Brill's Content" magazine for its recent story on the media's incompetent handling of the "Gore invented Love Canal" story. Then they should ask themselves if a guy as smart as Gore, who actually does have well-reported techno-wonk credentials, would really have claimed to have "invented the Internet."
Gore was one of the leading proponents of the "information superhighway." Now, if he wants to talk more about it, he runs the risk of a bunch of know-it-nothings laughing at him and hurling once-funny cheap shots.
This "Gore says he invented the Internet (har-har)" stuff is a silly mental virus propagated by people with relatively weak intellectual immune systems, IMHO. That's not to say they are stupid, just susceptible. Gore fouled up his line, true. But anyone interested in Slashdot should still be for him.
The difference between that scandal and the so-called "Clinton scandals" is that Iran/Contra ended up amounting to more than a hill of beans. Power was truly abused in the Iran/Contra scandal.
Let's see how this new scandal plays out. Frankly, Clinton's Republican opposition has gone off half-cocked so often that they have no credibility left. They are just sore losers, IMHO. Also, let's get off the administration's back on encryption and CDA. A lot of techies just have the most absurd knee-jerk response to that. Even if these initiatives are hopeless, they still must be tried. It's just a no-brainer.
Suppose, for example, Clinton had just openly done nothing WRT export restrictions on encryption. The very first time a terrorist used strong encryption in an e-mail, the administration would have been hung out to dry by the same yahoos who now attack him every time he adjusts his tie.
Sure, we all know that such export restrictions are futile, but that's, unfortunately, beside the point.
Don't even get me started on star wars.
We could have had a programming language that runs identical binaries on every major computing OS and in hand-helds, phones, etc. We could have had a language with built-in safe multi-threading, standard networking, directory, crypto, database access...
Just think, it could have run directly inside databases. It could have had ORBs run inside it. It could have had a state-of-the-art, multi-platform GUI. It could have dynamically loaded classes across networks in a safe way. Maybe it might have even had reflection, and open specifications for application and component models.
It could have been adopted as the OO teaching language of choice by many universities and a primary business direction of many major software, hardware, and content vendors.
It could have been the first thing listed at the top of Dr. Dobb's Journal, ahead of Linux and C++.
Alas, poor Java. If only it...
To me, this is the biggest headache of Open Source. It creates multiple adversarial distros for commercial motives. The core of Linux, for example, is relatively pure. But the distros that carry it that important last mile to the user are commercial adversaries.
Just try running a big system (e.g., Oracle) on different versions and distros of Linux. (What? You don't have the right version of glibc installed? Your Enlightenment environment has the "foo" bug?)
I would not wish a similar situation on Mozilla. This is one reason that I like XUL and Java. The skin of the browser can be different for commercial reasons, but the underlying stuff will be reliable enough to program for a universal audience.
Don't count Microsoft out yet, though. (Strange to say that since the numbers apparently have them in the lead!) There may be a Round 2 of the browser wars in the offing once Microsoft thaws out their Java technology post-litigation. They may be forced, kicking and screaming, to "innovate" once again.
The world is a better place than it has ever been, and the trend is very good. The only problem is that the lights are coming on, and we're seeing ourselves for the flabby, whining pessimists most of us are.
The Unabomber and the Columbine "script kiddies" show us examples of negative analysis without positive analysis and positive synthesis. If you are going to address the problems of the world, you should be prepared for a big job and a scholarly, serious effort. It's pure ego to just point out a few problems and feebly propose hackneyed solutions. Check out Camus and Jung, and heed what they have to say about the results of this type of "thinking."
Intelligent people like the AC above and Katz and Gleick have all of this negative stuff to say, and it resonates. People earnestly feel these things. But it's lazy and useless. It's passive and pathetic. I simply can't stomach it.
Our parents had it worse than us, and they did magnificent things. We could too, but we won't if we are paralyzed with fear. Let's snap out of this. Let's stop feeding on this opiate of despair. Stop visualizing Armageddon. Visualize a sustainable, pleasant Earth, and it will happen.
Use your mind to make things better. It will work. Forget the greed-heads. Would anyone you know change places with Bill Gates? Michael Jackson? People are relatively smart.
Safety Net? How about a Safety Elevator? The safety net was turning into a spider's web.
Stock market crash a good thing? Please. We haven't transcended a utilitarian economy yet. Everyone would suffer.
Society is not empty, it's just misguided. But the net is making us smarter all the time. If we can get some of this negative noise out of the system (and out of our attitudes), we can make the world a much better place.