Yes, but that market is rising, and as it does so it will pull up everything including the prices they pay for local products.
I know this isn't an issue now, but how we treat them now will be remembered in ten years when they are making their policies. Right now we are teaching them how to behave, in a way (Or more accurately, how badly they may be allowed to behave).
So how are we going to feel when they start to act as we do now:
--When they use their control over our vast debt to, say, influence choice of rulers or busines directions as we often do with other countries that owe us money or want our aid?
--If they tell us that they consider Cigarets a dangerous import and start spraying our tobacco fields like we spray central & south american drug fields?
--If they feel we are dangerous (I think we are currently the most dangerous force in the history of the world, asteroids and volcanos included!) and tell us that we must destroy all our WMDs or face UN sanctions that will cause mass starvation across the US (In the case of Oil sanctions, for instance)?
--What if they send "Communist Missionaries" across america the way we send "Christian Missionaries" to other countries. Is this acceptable? What if their missionaries convince your children to become communist, I'm sure that's no more offensive than one of our christian missionaries convincing children of other religions to switch to christianity.
Americans are so wrapped up in themselves that they can't ever begin to concieve how people outside must percieve us, and most of us seem to think that it's absolutely fine to treat other countries in a way that, if we were treated the same would be horrified (and angered to war which most americans seem to be very anxious to throw out--thinking we are completely safe behind our wall of "Nukes" and not even having to deal with a draft!). We may learn better soon.
You recommend abolishing IE, but what other commercial web browser is there for Windows? I guess there is Opera, though I don't think it has much mind-share...
Is this thread full of Microsoft trolls trying to do damage control or what? There is no way the parent can be that utterly ignorant.
The word "Commercial" is a pretty good sign that it's a paid microsoft poster--kind of like the way all the commenters use the same magic words ("Talking Points") about whatever brainfart the government is pushing today.
For the current matter, I would guess that some domestic PC maker is trying to take advantage of the situation, *cough*Dell*cough*HP*cough, pardon me!
If they had any sense they would be scared to death.
They have over-saturated the US market and now this entire, giant foreign market could (SHOULD!) be closed off as China treats us in kind.
China has many many times the potential of the US market, even IF the entire US market were to go out en mass today and all buy new PCS, and China has, in the past, refused to submit to our pompus posturing.
Could it be that the super resolution problems are mostly in in current software design and current hardware performance and not true (permanent) problems? I'd really love to see--for instance a movie pan broken into individual frames and combined into a giant very high resolution panorama.
Once we can do things like this with video, a whole new world opens up--seriously, possibly as big a change in our world as the computer revolution itself.
I Expect that you would couple it with a lens better than the pinhole lenses that are used on cameras today.
If the lens is much better, pulling in 4x as much light, wouldn't the picture be much better too?
It's strange how people don't think of things like that.
What I hate is how still you have to hold your hands, but that seems to have more to do with optical zoom level than pixel density.
Hey, why hasn't anyone made a processing system that can take a long exposure movie at low res (Say 3 seconds) including all the bumps and jitters and process it into a single picture with a significantly higher resolution, say 100x higher? You've got so many more data points in video than you will ever get with a still-shot.
hec, for that matter, couldn't you pan a movie camera back and forth across a large scene and have software process it into an ultra hi-rez panoramic still?
I've noticed a similar thing--one that's actually kind of annoying.
If you are watching a show at 9:00 or 9:30, you will see a lot of ads for the 10:00 news. We don't record the news, but occasionally they will have a pretty good teaser and we'll stop and watch it. Bummer is, we are ALWAYS watching after the fact so we can't switch over and start recording the news because it's typically finished before we notice.
What I might be interested in is "Sets" of adds. Upcoming specials on the network channels, upcoming news teasers and maybe new adds.
Hell, I'd watch all the news ads once, and I'd pay attention to them! (if they just didn't waste so much time playing the same exact add every 10-20 minutes throughout a two hour movie!)
I suppose some might find APL beautiful in the way an abstract set of paint splotches is pretty.
C is somewhat beautiful in it's simplicity--absolutely trivial to implement a compiler, but the fact that they targeted writing simple compilers kinda bums me out.
C++ is simply UGLY, makes COBOL look somewhat pretty. They managed to take all the worst parts of C and add some really ugly junk syntax.
Basic is certainly readable but the syntax is bizarre and random. Even with the new constructs and quasi-OO ability, it's still sloppy.
Java has the small language definition of C (most of the syntax follows the exact same pattern), removes nearly all the boilerplate of C++, makes constructs like extending classes, threading and references so consistent and simple that you nearly ever have to refer to any sort of documentation.
On top of this, Garbage Collection adds to the object manipulation abilities by allowing you to create an object and just pass it off into the wilderness without having to keep track of who's going to destroy it. Trust me, this requirement of monitoring classes for distruction makes OO programming in C significantly more difficult--makes it almost impossible to "Think" in OO.
As if this was not enough, Relfection, annotations and Javadocs are all indispensable and gorgeous.
Now, I have to admit that it will never have the look of an APL program which is pretty much a piece of abstract art in itself, but otherwise I gotta say I absolutely love this language.
REBOL looks interesting--I'm going to look at it further, I love the idea of combining metadata with code--something Java was just getting into with annotations.
Alice seems at a (admittedly quick) glance like another catch-all language.
Beautiful to me means the language definition must be as small and simple as possible while delivering the ability to keep your code as close as possible to fully factored (no repeating lines or patterns) while retaining optimum readability.
Structures and patterns that eliminate errors are also great as long as they don't require boilerplate code or impear readibility (for instance, I'd love a "nonull" keyword in Java to force an exception if a given variable ever becomes null.)
As I view it--anything code structure that does not directly improve either readability or the ability to factor out repeated code should be deliberatly excluded from the language definition.
Personally, I'll probably stop at a near-future release and not go forward. I'm guessing I'm not the only one.
I expect java will fork a few times, then the forks will fork. It will quickly descend into dozens of incompatible custom builds while those who want to get work done stick with 1.5 or 2.0 or whatever sun ends with.
I imagine an official sun build going forward for a while--pulling along behind it an ever-increasing pile of hanging-on junk projects. Eventually it will lose it's steam because of the fragmentation of the user base and the requests to "Keep up" with features in these side versions until it grinds to a complete halt.
All this time, committees will be adding "Features" that sun has been holding off on. Features that might save a programmer two keystrokes or allow some trixy maneuver while sacrificing "just a little" readability (like Generics did--IMO sun is already moving too fast!).
I guess now I'll start the search for the next beautiful language that can pull itself up above the fray--above the garbage that is the syntax of Ruby, C++, VB and all these other pretenders.
I suppose that it is possible that Sun will manage to keep control over the language definition via licensing, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
Okay, these guys are slow... real slow. They try stuff over and over a hundred times.
What they are doing, however, is separating the concept of control system from a bunch of wires down to a single signal containing a data stream.
When they figure out how vulnerable this is (and trust me, they will), they will try to figure out some other ways to deliver the data packets to the rest of the plane--at this point the design of microcontrollers at every interface point will have been completed and so all it will take is simply modifying the transport mechanism.
They will probably, at this point, figure out that a few fiber cables (say between 2 and 8 in redundant loops that each connect to every system like SONET) can deliver the signal just as easily and with little additional weight over wireless, and on top of that is virtually unhackable without physical access--even safer than copper.
They're good people, they are saying "this is out of control and the citizenry must not take it any more".
Which makes it all the much sadder that we don't do anything about it.
All these people are putting their carreers (and lives) on the line to let us know that now is the time to care and now is the time to act and we just sit here and say "Yeah, that really sucks, someone should complain about this".
I'm sure that as Hitler came to power there were many conversations similar to these in pubs and taverns, but they never went beyond that.
What we have this time is going to be looked back as the most well-documented failure of a citizenry ever to stop an obvious, looming world-wide disaster. They are going to be able to look at the idiots who supported this mess and say "They were wrong", they will look at those of us who didn't support it and yet did almost nothing and say "They were worse".
Anyone have any good ideas?
Preferably one that doesn't simply involve switching rule to the other branch of the corporate-republicrat party?
Kind of an aside, but the notes you can read from a hundred years ago are those worth saving--the very best samples of writing available. Others were lost or destroyed through the ages as either not worth keeping or not worth spending the money to preserve.
If you read the top 0.01% of email correspondence as selected by the mercilessly accurate lens of historical elimination a hundred years from now, you'd probably find them pretty impressive as well.
In other words, some people (today and then) were/are able to craft their documents as you speak, some people (today and then) were/are not.
For some it is an art form, and for some it is a tool. To ask those who use language as a tool to craft as you are suggesting is akin to asking a house painter to paint a masterpiece on every house he works on.
It just ain't gonna fly.
Oh, and on that "Lower" level of writing, Our language is completely inadequate when it comes to precisely conveying concepts as well as we are able to when speaking.
We don't want it all open source, all we want is the C code opened, changable, and distributable.
Sorry, you are right. that is a completely reasonable thing to ask for. My only assertion is that the Java API and possibly the JVM API should remain in Sun's control. Perhaps when people discuss "Open Sourcing Java", they should be more specific like you just were.
Is the documentation for that part of the libraries so bad that you can't do a white-box implementation? Or is there just a lot more of it than I thought--I alwasy figured it was just a few low-level routines scattered around the libraries, but I've never looked in detail at that low a level.
Now, if you are talking the JVM and not the libraries, I suppose that's a little more of a question. For instance, which JVM? Do they have to give away their most highly optomized one, or just one that works? There are already Open Source JVMs, aren't there? If not, I know there used to be a java compilier.
If this is just a case of Sun being able to write better code than the Open Source community because they invest a ton of money to get a highly optomized virtual machine and that sun doesn't choose to share, I can't say I have a huge problem with that, it would be an awful lot to ask of a company.
If you feel that way, why do you care if it is open source. Just use C++ and be happy with it. Can't you accept that there is a language that doesn't have to run on your computer? Can't you accept that I would prefer such a language even if it doesn't suit you?
Also, aren't there open-source java solutions you could ship? It's not like sun is doing anything tricky here... They are very clear about documenting the API.
What's the actual problem here? Please, yours is exactly the argument I'd like to understand.
Ch1na sux0rs. You can never fi1t3r me, i r 2 l337 4 u!
Side note: This brings up an interesting discussion a chineese friend and I had the other day.
There are some things in America that simply won't work in China. One, he claims, is all you can eat restaraunts. People will just move in until you kick them out. When they have a salad bar, people will build 3 foot high salads (Search for it on Flicker--it's a pretty amazing sight to behold).
This also came up when we were discussing selling a house. He was wondering why we clean the house when we leave. We don't have to clean the carpets or drapes, but you just do--often spending quite a bit of money that we don't have to.
Apparently there are many other examples, all coming down to, he claims and I paraphrase: Chineese people are much less likely to look out for the "Common Good" unless forced to by law.
With this concept in mind, I kind of wonder if open source concepts (including the contents of the wikipedia) will work in China, or will it all be like our whitehouse/wallmart where everyone is only adding entries when it helps themselves personally.
ps: I wouldn't even consider that this might be a racial issue, it's obviously cultural (if it existis at all--if not please correct me!)
Java developers, meanwhile, want to preserve interoperability and reliability, which is maintained by the current rules governing Java, Gosling said. To be certified as Java-compliant, software most undergo a test suite.
"They really like the fact that we're very compulsive about the whole testing thing," Gosling said.
Exactly. I think that the people calling for Java to be open sourced don't get the concept. Honestly, I think they must all be either people who are against java just because they have a platform they prefer (A very common occurrence among engineers) or they are trying to destroy the advantages of Java (Simplicity, slow and deeply considered addition of new features, compatibility) in order to make it easier to sell a competing product.
The fact is, nothing will be gained from open-sourcing Java that you can't get by evolving the existing license (for instance, sun is modifying it to be able to ship the JDK with other products). On the other hand, much will be lost. Sun has been a creator and beneficial guardian of this language, and has crafted it into something that many users just love.
Now, many people don't need Java. For instance, if you are making a smallish website, you are just stupid if you try to use java--use ROR or.net technologies that just slide together.
However, if you have a project with an architect, a handful of software engineers and dozens of programmers working on a huge code base at the same time I don't think you can pick a better platform.
If you are not in java's target audience, please SHUT THE HELL UP about it having to be open source. You don't have to feel bad about java not being appropriate for you! I give you permission to go use a scripting type of tool and solve your problem much quicker, but don't try to mold my favorite tool into something that fits your job just because it has a cool name and you think you should be using it because everyone else is.
Those of us who really need java like it pretty much as it is--slow intelligent improvements, fewer terse, confusing or overloaded language features and a large number of users more interested in making readable/reusable code (as opposed to the users who just want to get the job done with write-once code). Overall it's just a good, solid, readable language, leave it at that.
The same thing was said about GUIs. 3D can be a very useful way of displaying information, there is an automatic, intuitive zoom in/out by moving yourself or objects. many operations that now require key combinations or multiple click/drag/wheel operations become simple 3-d drag operations.
People like Apple and (I hate to say it) Microsoft were pushing the GUI before anyone in the business world thought it could ever be useful. It helped.
I suppose there were a lot of people saying that GUIs couldn't offer any benefits we don't have currently--In fact, I remember a few.
Perhaps some day in the future someone will look at the parent of this post and say it was stunning in it's lack of insight. It could, of course, be completely accurate too, but what fun is that?
I understand how you feel, it sucks to move to an inferior model.
I've had Ultimate TV for a few years now and I really dread losing it. Everyone I know who has had UTV boxes holds on to them for dear life--and I haven't heard those who have had to switch away bragging happily about their new systems.
Doesn't have to be. If he starts a roll towards hydrogen power--maybe it takes 5-10 years before it seriously starts effecting the electricity supply, so what? As you said, they have enough money for now. In 5 years, all of a sudden we start needing much more electricity. What do we run the plants with?
The only "Good" solution is that we get a viable, distributed solution like wind/solar, but I don't really know how far we'll get on that front.
Aaw, the worlds's going to be pretty damn different in 10-20 years anyway, so why do I care.
Our government has SOME ability to be overthrown non-violently. It doesn't happen often, but if they are extremely neglegant we can force a reset. As is, the government is extra-scary because it's being coopted by business again, but as I said, at least a non-viloent reset is possible.
This cannot be done with corporations--there is no non-violent way to force an industry to stop doing something that is making them money. Their morals are completely short-term cash-centric, often leading to a continual repeated selection of the worst possible choices.
I'm afraid I am in agreement with you on individuals--I guess that's why rocket launchers have to be illegal:(
This is one of the two theroies I was taught in grade school. There was the "Big Bang" theory and the "Cyclic" theory that said that the universe would eventually contract and the whole thing would start over.
Did someone forget about this? Perhaps I have shifted realities since I went to school, but you'd think I'd remember that happening.
Or did TFA (Which, I'm afraid I didn't read) say that this is subtly different from the "Old" cyclic theory in some subtle way?
BTW, the other strange thing is that the general concept of an expanding/changing/contracting universe wasn't challenged when I went to school in the 70's, not in the slightest.
Perhaps there is also a "Cyclic" theory about how we allow religion to destroy our scientific progress, and the expansion/contraction of ignorance?
This is the case, and it really pisses me off when I hear GWB say that "Hydrogen" is going to save us from oil concerns.
I really think that Hydrogen is simply a back-door to bring nuclear power in, after electricity prices start to rise, centralized cheap power will be needed. What will he suggest to fix that? Something where his cronies can still get rich, so it has to be centralized and not easily implemented by consumers...hmmm.
Personally, I think nuclear power can be safe, but NOTHING is ever safe in the hands of our corporations, and that's where it will end up--so for now I'm going to grab a sign and go a-protesting with the anti-nuke freaks.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but that market is rising, and as it does so it will pull up everything including the prices they pay for local products.
I know this isn't an issue now, but how we treat them now will be remembered in ten years when they are making their policies. Right now we are teaching them how to behave, in a way (Or more accurately, how badly they may be allowed to behave).
So how are we going to feel when they start to act as we do now:
--When they use their control over our vast debt to, say, influence choice of rulers or busines directions as we often do with other countries that owe us money or want our aid?
--If they tell us that they consider Cigarets a dangerous import and start spraying our tobacco fields like we spray central & south american drug fields?
--If they feel we are dangerous (I think we are currently the most dangerous force in the history of the world, asteroids and volcanos included!) and tell us that we must destroy all our WMDs or face UN sanctions that will cause mass starvation across the US (In the case of Oil sanctions, for instance)?
--What if they send "Communist Missionaries" across america the way we send "Christian Missionaries" to other countries. Is this acceptable? What if their missionaries convince your children to become communist, I'm sure that's no more offensive than one of our christian missionaries convincing children of other religions to switch to christianity.
Americans are so wrapped up in themselves that they can't ever begin to concieve how people outside must percieve us, and most of us seem to think that it's absolutely fine to treat other countries in a way that, if we were treated the same would be horrified (and angered to war which most americans seem to be very anxious to throw out--thinking we are completely safe behind our wall of "Nukes" and not even having to deal with a draft!). We may learn better soon.
You recommend abolishing IE, but what other commercial web browser is there for Windows? I guess there is Opera, though I don't think it has much mind-share...
Is this thread full of Microsoft trolls trying to do damage control or what? There is no way the parent can be that utterly ignorant.
The word "Commercial" is a pretty good sign that it's a paid microsoft poster--kind of like the way all the commenters use the same magic words ("Talking Points") about whatever brainfart the government is pushing today.
For the current matter, I would guess that some domestic PC maker is trying to take advantage of the situation, *cough*Dell*cough*HP*cough, pardon me!
If they had any sense they would be scared to death.
They have over-saturated the US market and now this entire, giant foreign market could (SHOULD!) be closed off as China treats us in kind.
China has many many times the potential of the US market, even IF the entire US market were to go out en mass today and all buy new PCS, and China has, in the past, refused to submit to our pompus posturing.
Could it be that the super resolution problems are mostly in in current software design and current hardware performance and not true (permanent) problems? I'd really love to see--for instance a movie pan broken into individual frames and combined into a giant very high resolution panorama.
Once we can do things like this with video, a whole new world opens up--seriously, possibly as big a change in our world as the computer revolution itself.
I should get into image processing.
I Expect that you would couple it with a lens better than the pinhole lenses that are used on cameras today.
If the lens is much better, pulling in 4x as much light, wouldn't the picture be much better too?
It's strange how people don't think of things like that.
What I hate is how still you have to hold your hands, but that seems to have more to do with optical zoom level than pixel density.
Hey, why hasn't anyone made a processing system that can take a long exposure movie at low res (Say 3 seconds) including all the bumps and jitters and process it into a single picture with a significantly higher resolution, say 100x higher? You've got so many more data points in video than you will ever get with a still-shot.
hec, for that matter, couldn't you pan a movie camera back and forth across a large scene and have software process it into an ultra hi-rez panoramic still?
Seriously, what gives?
I've noticed a similar thing--one that's actually kind of annoying.
If you are watching a show at 9:00 or 9:30, you will see a lot of ads for the 10:00 news. We don't record the news, but occasionally they will have a pretty good teaser and we'll stop and watch it. Bummer is, we are ALWAYS watching after the fact so we can't switch over and start recording the news because it's typically finished before we notice.
What I might be interested in is "Sets" of adds. Upcoming specials on the network channels, upcoming news teasers and maybe new adds.
Hell, I'd watch all the news ads once, and I'd pay attention to them! (if they just didn't waste so much time playing the same exact add every 10-20 minutes throughout a two hour movie!)
I suppose some might find APL beautiful in the way an abstract set of paint splotches is pretty.
C is somewhat beautiful in it's simplicity--absolutely trivial to implement a compiler, but the fact that they targeted writing simple compilers kinda bums me out.
C++ is simply UGLY, makes COBOL look somewhat pretty. They managed to take all the worst parts of C and add some really ugly junk syntax.
Basic is certainly readable but the syntax is bizarre and random. Even with the new constructs and quasi-OO ability, it's still sloppy.
Java has the small language definition of C (most of the syntax follows the exact same pattern), removes nearly all the boilerplate of C++, makes constructs like extending classes, threading and references so consistent and simple that you nearly ever have to refer to any sort of documentation.
On top of this, Garbage Collection adds to the object manipulation abilities by allowing you to create an object and just pass it off into the wilderness without having to keep track of who's going to destroy it. Trust me, this requirement of monitoring classes for distruction makes OO programming in C significantly more difficult--makes it almost impossible to "Think" in OO.
As if this was not enough, Relfection, annotations and Javadocs are all indispensable and gorgeous.
Now, I have to admit that it will never have the look of an APL program which is pretty much a piece of abstract art in itself, but otherwise I gotta say I absolutely love this language.
REBOL looks interesting--I'm going to look at it further, I love the idea of combining metadata with code--something Java was just getting into with annotations.
Alice seems at a (admittedly quick) glance like another catch-all language.
Beautiful to me means the language definition must be as small and simple as possible while delivering the ability to keep your code as close as possible to fully factored (no repeating lines or patterns) while retaining optimum readability.
Structures and patterns that eliminate errors are also great as long as they don't require boilerplate code or impear readibility (for instance, I'd love a "nonull" keyword in Java to force an exception if a given variable ever becomes null.)
As I view it--anything code structure that does not directly improve either readability or the ability to factor out repeated code should be deliberatly excluded from the language definition.
Thank you for the references!
Personally, I'll probably stop at a near-future release and not go forward. I'm guessing I'm not the only one.
I expect java will fork a few times, then the forks will fork. It will quickly descend into dozens of incompatible custom builds while those who want to get work done stick with 1.5 or 2.0 or whatever sun ends with.
I imagine an official sun build going forward for a while--pulling along behind it an ever-increasing pile of hanging-on junk projects. Eventually it will lose it's steam because of the fragmentation of the user base and the requests to "Keep up" with features in these side versions until it grinds to a complete halt.
All this time, committees will be adding "Features" that sun has been holding off on. Features that might save a programmer two keystrokes or allow some trixy maneuver while sacrificing "just a little" readability (like Generics did--IMO sun is already moving too fast!).
I guess now I'll start the search for the next beautiful language that can pull itself up above the fray--above the garbage that is the syntax of Ruby, C++, VB and all these other pretenders.
I suppose that it is possible that Sun will manage to keep control over the language definition via licensing, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
It's been fun.
Okay, these guys are slow... real slow. They try stuff over and over a hundred times.
What they are doing, however, is separating the concept of control system from a bunch of wires down to a single signal containing a data stream.
When they figure out how vulnerable this is (and trust me, they will), they will try to figure out some other ways to deliver the data packets to the rest of the plane--at this point the design of microcontrollers at every interface point will have been completed and so all it will take is simply modifying the transport mechanism.
They will probably, at this point, figure out that a few fiber cables (say between 2 and 8 in redundant loops that each connect to every system like SONET) can deliver the signal just as easily and with little additional weight over wireless, and on top of that is virtually unhackable without physical access--even safer than copper.
Just give 'em time.
They're good people, they are saying "this is out of control and the citizenry must not take it any more".
Which makes it all the much sadder that we don't do anything about it.
All these people are putting their carreers (and lives) on the line to let us know that now is the time to care and now is the time to act and we just sit here and say "Yeah, that really sucks, someone should complain about this".
I'm sure that as Hitler came to power there were many conversations similar to these in pubs and taverns, but they never went beyond that.
What we have this time is going to be looked back as the most well-documented failure of a citizenry ever to stop an obvious, looming world-wide disaster. They are going to be able to look at the idiots who supported this mess and say "They were wrong", they will look at those of us who didn't support it and yet did almost nothing and say "They were worse".
Anyone have any good ideas?
Preferably one that doesn't simply involve switching rule to the other branch of the corporate-republicrat party?
Kind of an aside, but the notes you can read from a hundred years ago are those worth saving--the very best samples of writing available. Others were lost or destroyed through the ages as either not worth keeping or not worth spending the money to preserve.
If you read the top 0.01% of email correspondence as selected by the mercilessly accurate lens of historical elimination a hundred years from now, you'd probably find them pretty impressive as well.
In other words, some people (today and then) were/are able to craft their documents as you speak, some people (today and then) were/are not.
For some it is an art form, and for some it is a tool. To ask those who use language as a tool to craft as you are suggesting is akin to asking a house painter to paint a masterpiece on every house he works on.
It just ain't gonna fly.
Oh, and on that "Lower" level of writing, Our language is completely inadequate when it comes to precisely conveying concepts as well as we are able to when speaking.
Don't forget the guy from the "Blinded me with Science" video.
We don't want it all open source, all we want is the C code opened, changable, and distributable.
Sorry, you are right. that is a completely reasonable thing to ask for. My only assertion is that the Java API and possibly the JVM API should remain in Sun's control. Perhaps when people discuss "Open Sourcing Java", they should be more specific like you just were.
Is the documentation for that part of the libraries so bad that you can't do a white-box implementation? Or is there just a lot more of it than I thought--I alwasy figured it was just a few low-level routines scattered around the libraries, but I've never looked in detail at that low a level.
Now, if you are talking the JVM and not the libraries, I suppose that's a little more of a question. For instance, which JVM? Do they have to give away their most highly optomized one, or just one that works? There are already Open Source JVMs, aren't there? If not, I know there used to be a java compilier.
If this is just a case of Sun being able to write better code than the Open Source community because they invest a ton of money to get a highly optomized virtual machine and that sun doesn't choose to share, I can't say I have a huge problem with that, it would be an awful lot to ask of a company.
If you feel that way, why do you care if it is open source. Just use C++ and be happy with it. Can't you accept that there is a language that doesn't have to run on your computer? Can't you accept that I would prefer such a language even if it doesn't suit you?
Also, aren't there open-source java solutions you could ship? It's not like sun is doing anything tricky here... They are very clear about documenting the API.
What's the actual problem here? Please, yours is exactly the argument I'd like to understand.
Ch1na sux0rs. You can never fi1t3r me, i r 2 l337 4 u!
Side note: This brings up an interesting discussion a chineese friend and I had the other day.
There are some things in America that simply won't work in China. One, he claims, is all you can eat restaraunts. People will just move in until you kick them out. When they have a salad bar, people will build 3 foot high salads (Search for it on Flicker--it's a pretty amazing sight to behold).
This also came up when we were discussing selling a house. He was wondering why we clean the house when we leave. We don't have to clean the carpets or drapes, but you just do--often spending quite a bit of money that we don't have to.
Apparently there are many other examples, all coming down to, he claims and I paraphrase: Chineese people are much less likely to look out for the "Common Good" unless forced to by law.
With this concept in mind, I kind of wonder if open source concepts (including the contents of the wikipedia) will work in China, or will it all be like our whitehouse/wallmart where everyone is only adding entries when it helps themselves personally.
ps: I wouldn't even consider that this might be a racial issue, it's obviously cultural (if it existis at all--if not please correct me!)
Java developers, meanwhile, want to preserve interoperability and reliability, which is maintained by the current rules governing Java, Gosling said. To be certified as Java-compliant, software most undergo a test suite.
"They really like the fact that we're very compulsive about the whole testing thing," Gosling said.
Exactly. I think that the people calling for Java to be open sourced don't get the concept. Honestly, I think they must all be either people who are against java just because they have a platform they prefer (A very common occurrence among engineers) or they are trying to destroy the advantages of Java (Simplicity, slow and deeply considered addition of new features, compatibility) in order to make it easier to sell a competing product.
The fact is, nothing will be gained from open-sourcing Java that you can't get by evolving the existing license (for instance, sun is modifying it to be able to ship the JDK with other products). On the other hand, much will be lost. Sun has been a creator and beneficial guardian of this language, and has crafted it into something that many users just love.
Now, many people don't need Java. For instance, if you are making a smallish website, you are just stupid if you try to use java--use ROR or
However, if you have a project with an architect, a handful of software engineers and dozens of programmers working on a huge code base at the same time I don't think you can pick a better platform.
If you are not in java's target audience, please SHUT THE HELL UP about it having to be open source. You don't have to feel bad about java not being appropriate for you! I give you permission to go use a scripting type of tool and solve your problem much quicker, but don't try to mold my favorite tool into something that fits your job just because it has a cool name and you think you should be using it because everyone else is.
Those of us who really need java like it pretty much as it is--slow intelligent improvements, fewer terse, confusing or overloaded language features and a large number of users more interested in making readable/reusable code (as opposed to the users who just want to get the job done with write-once code). Overall it's just a good, solid, readable language, leave it at that.
The same thing was said about GUIs. 3D can be a very useful way of displaying information, there is an automatic, intuitive zoom in/out by moving yourself or objects. many operations that now require key combinations or multiple click/drag/wheel operations become simple 3-d drag operations.
People like Apple and (I hate to say it) Microsoft were pushing the GUI before anyone in the business world thought it could ever be useful. It helped.
I suppose there were a lot of people saying that GUIs couldn't offer any benefits we don't have currently--In fact, I remember a few.
Perhaps some day in the future someone will look at the parent of this post and say it was stunning in it's lack of insight. It could, of course, be completely accurate too, but what fun is that?
I understand how you feel, it sucks to move to an inferior model.
I've had Ultimate TV for a few years now and I really dread losing it. Everyone I know who has had UTV boxes holds on to them for dear life--and I haven't heard those who have had to switch away bragging happily about their new systems.
I believe there are quite a few sims mods out there, I'm sure some are done the same way this one is--using the male skin as a "Suite" for the female.
I bet they are following this case with a pretty extreme interest.
Syntax code is useful while writing code? Hmph, and I'd only needed it for reading and debugging.. Guess I'm unimaginative.
Doesn't have to be. If he starts a roll towards hydrogen power--maybe it takes 5-10 years before it seriously starts effecting the electricity supply, so what? As you said, they have enough money for now. In 5 years, all of a sudden we start needing much more electricity. What do we run the plants with?
The only "Good" solution is that we get a viable, distributed solution like wind/solar, but I don't really know how far we'll get on that front.
Aaw, the worlds's going to be pretty damn different in 10-20 years anyway, so why do I care.
Our government has SOME ability to be overthrown non-violently. It doesn't happen often, but if they are extremely neglegant we can force a reset. As is, the government is extra-scary because it's being coopted by business again, but as I said, at least a non-viloent reset is possible.
:(
This cannot be done with corporations--there is no non-violent way to force an industry to stop doing something that is making them money. Their morals are completely short-term cash-centric, often leading to a continual repeated selection of the worst possible choices.
I'm afraid I am in agreement with you on individuals--I guess that's why rocket launchers have to be illegal
This is one of the two theroies I was taught in grade school. There was the "Big Bang" theory and the "Cyclic" theory that said that the universe would eventually contract and the whole thing would start over.
Did someone forget about this? Perhaps I have shifted realities since I went to school, but you'd think I'd remember that happening.
Or did TFA (Which, I'm afraid I didn't read) say that this is subtly different from the "Old" cyclic theory in some subtle way?
BTW, the other strange thing is that the general concept of an expanding/changing/contracting universe wasn't challenged when I went to school in the 70's, not in the slightest.
Perhaps there is also a "Cyclic" theory about how we allow religion to destroy our scientific progress, and the expansion/contraction of ignorance?
This is the case, and it really pisses me off when I hear GWB say that "Hydrogen" is going to save us from oil concerns.
I really think that Hydrogen is simply a back-door to bring nuclear power in, after electricity prices start to rise, centralized cheap power will be needed. What will he suggest to fix that? Something where his cronies can still get rich, so it has to be centralized and not easily implemented by consumers...hmmm.
Personally, I think nuclear power can be safe, but NOTHING is ever safe in the hands of our corporations, and that's where it will end up--so for now I'm going to grab a sign and go a-protesting with the anti-nuke freaks.