Re:This must be the most useless slashdot thread e
on
The Podjacker Threat
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· Score: 1
Oh thank whoever modded my comment redundant--I laughed my ass off. Never saw a mod that I would rank "Funny" before.
This must be the most useless slashdot thread ever
on
The Podjacker Threat
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· Score: 0, Redundant
The breakdown of this thread so far: 20% I hate podcasting! 60% Stop making up new words! 19% Repeating the problem and saying it's "No big deal" 1% Noticing how useless these comments are.
There, now go on to the next article or get back to work.
I was mostly being sarcastic, however Americans tend to be so varied and generally, umm, not bright that we often vote for a candidate or buy a product simply because we have heard the name. I think that's what the original poster was trying to say.
Many of these people can't even find USA on a map--to recognize that any given repetition of some name is positive or negative is too much to ask of most Americans.
> GWB got a lot of free advertisement in the arab world for the iraq war, strangely, I don't think it qualifies as "free ad campain" for Bush's popularity.
Probably got the moran a second term--If that's not a good ad campaign, what is? (Of course, it's only free from his personal point of view)
I kind of wondered about that in SL (Never played). How do they charge for materials and features?
How do you build a gun? There must be some cost in building a bigger gun than a smaller one, right? How does the company determine which is smarter?
And if you allow it to be really flexible (as they seem to in Second Life), how do you stop people from making killer toys really cheaply by combining unexpected traits?
For instance, say a lame gun costs 10 to make (assume the cost is based on what kind damage each bullet does) and a good gun costs 10000. Also say a dog costs 5. What's to stop a programmer from creating 500 dogs with 2 guns mounted on the back of each that can run behind a shield or something and attack from behind?
Or, create a gun that can auto-aim and fire it from a second gun... As it passes by the target, it turns and fires a dozen bullets into it at close range.
Or write a scripted item that slowly drains the users money into the creators account? (I'm sure that's stopped, but since sometimes it's allowed, how does the user ensure it's not happening with any given item?)
I don't understand how the building features can work without constant supervision. Asking the managers of the system for approval of every new item doesn't seem very scalable.
Maybe a part--but the biggest is sharing an avatar across multiple rulesets.
All you need is one renegade sysop handing out +127 boltlightnings or modifying stat points and the entire site is gone, all users have to reset. Do you trust others with that much control over your system?
I suppose if you really had to do something like that you could introduce realms where attributes didn't carry over (say, air, fire, water, spirit or some such garbage). The problem is that to make it work your stats and items can't carry over, but I'm sure that's exactly what people think they want.
I love Google, every damn thing about it, but I have to admit that the poster before you was right. It's not like Google is going to self-destruct overnight or anything, but the net result of our form of capitalism is a bunch of nudges towards maximizing profits.
The thing is, as long as the company is making money, everything will remain fine. As soon as the profits stop and the stock price dips, the noose tightens. A few community projects are killed, free lunches go away, a few talented engineers are laid off, etc. This cycle happens, a little at a time, until each company is reduced into a steaming pile of shit.
The problem with a public company in our current environment is that "Evil" always gets a positive nudge, and "Good" always gets a little negative nudge. There will be ups and downs, but over time, we are bound to lose. This is simply what happens when you can turn stock over tomorrow. Why would it make sense to keep a stock gaining 1% when you can switch over to a stock which is burning itself up at 30% until it's gone, then jumping to another.
Really the only way to fix it is start having a minimum 5 or 10 year stock holding period, and I don't see that happening in our greedy-ass future.
I'm starting to wonder how it's physically possible that an OS would allow ANY app to install a hook into something as important as a keyboard driver or monitor without catching it and asking the user (at least).
Perhaps we could, hmm, motivate MS by publishing this ability as a vulnerability in the OS.
In fact, maybe we should stop allowing the OS Manufacturers to specify what a vulnerability is and come out with a list of requirements/standards that we can validate consistently against all OSes to qualify and rate their security against each other.
Not that everyone wants to be bothered with every little app, but we should be able to turn off the ability to install dangerous hooks just like we can turn off the ability to set cookies.
Either that or just make M$ financially responsible for every time a keylogger steals a bank password.
What kind of moderators would moderate this as insightful and not the (hopefully) intentional funny or flaimbait??? This mod system is getting bizarre.
It's not like the "media and attorneys general" told me to think any way. I learned exactly how rebates work first hand:
1) You send it in 2) They don't reply 3) You call 4) They fix it and send you the rebate.
They make step 3 so simple you don't even notice that you are doing it, and there is always some reasonable excuse (they don't have enough info, or "But we were gunna send it, give us time!"), but if you don't call you get:
1) You send it in 2) They don't reply 5) Profit!
Now, to hear that the media and attorneys general have come to the same conclusion??? Only evidence that this is not some atypical experience but real.
Point to one. It is certainly possible, but I haven't seen it (and would probably enjoy it).
The most important part is the ending. To say that a TV series will end after five years--sorry, I really do believe that at least THAT part was a first.
I'm open to the possibility--If you can show me one that has multiple interacting story arcs, relatively well thought out and not just scripted day-to-day... Wow, I'd absolutely go watch it (because I certainly missed it the first time)
>> What is the advantage of opening Java over the users you listed just creating a similar related language or set of languages? In your previous post you never addressed that.
>You can keep running whatever version of the VM you like (and it probably won't be touched at all except for maybe some securiy-critical back-ports). We're not stopping you. I'm talking about Java 3, 4 and 5 in 2007, 2010 and 2013.
I like the bugfixes and slow/steady pace of feature addition (except, as I said, for templates which are the worst thing ever to happen to the language, and it will get much worse if they open it up!)
Also, you didn't attempt to answer the question at all. What is the advantage to SUN opening it up over just creating all the other versions you said without Sun open-sourcing it?
> Can't you admit that different programmers need different things, and that java is just what I need, and that sun opening it would simply ruin it for me and not help anyone else (since nobody is preventing them from creating their own now?)
> I absolutely think the appropriate programming languages should be used for the tasks at hand. Sun can do whatever they want, and you can do whatever you want. But neither you or they should complain that nobody uses java in 8 years, and billions of lines of codes go to waste, including yours. What do you think is happening now with people that programmed all those client-server apps in VB5&6 in the 1995-2000 timeframe? Companies are setting up servers and terminal servicing into them to run "old" vb5 apps.
> Sun it taking Java down that road.
C has not gone down that road because it's useful. VB is a joke, I used it quite a bit, and it is a horrible development platform, really only good for prototyping. Java is the opposite, I've never seen a language that has come close, and I've used many of them.
The problem with VB is that it has no ability to work with a group of developers. It's made as a scripting language to allow people who can't do any better to write apps. You will never see a group larger than 5-10 developers choosing to work in VB.
> By the way, Python started in 1991 to Java's 1995. Smalltalk goes back further. Java is the new kid on the block.
Of course. I used Python before Java. Used a few others too. I generally don't like them. For me, the most important features of a language are simplicity, readability, flexibility... things like that.
> I feel your pain and frustration, Bill, but in this world what you don't know can definitely hurt you. I'm not trying to hurt you, I'm trying to help you. (not-so-obscure movie line).
My guess is that we are in different realms. I work with a group on an app. Java works very well. The tools are solid and well-developed. The different versions are still very similar, so upgrades are simple. The OO model and reflection gives us the freedom to eliminate nearly all the redundant code.
I suppose I would say that the key to coding is to be able to specify each logical concept exactly once, in the simplest most easy to read manner possible.
In basic, the code wasn't very consistent and I could not factor the code well enough, the same with C (and C wasn't always easy to read). C++ is too confusing and the language has too many features and is quite hard to read.
Java is just a good balance. It may not be as quick to code in as a scripting language, but it is very good at helping my team to be clear in their code and it can be used to write very good readable code.
Any alterations can make it less so. When Sun (Well, actually the community process) added the super-for statement, auto-boxing and annotations I was quite happy. Those are all features that increase readability first, simplify code second.
The crap about Generics is the other side of the coin. It complicates my code and has very little advantage (I generally know what I put into my collections, and auto-boxing should have been able t
The difference is that B5 was scripted as a multi-season arc before hand. Soaps have had multi-season stories for ever, but they were not scripted before hand, leading to inconsistencies, poor storyline progressions and horrible emergency arc terminations (or they just never get closed like half the crap on X-files).
Also, the concept of an "Arc" implies pre-written and thought-out scripts. Saying that a soap has an arc is kind of an insult.
I agree, but if you go look at the difference between enterprise and TNG you will find that TNG almost never had any sense of Arc, it had a few repeating characters, but up until B5 it was a basic requirement that episodes must be able to be shown in any order without losing any enjoyment.
The exception, as stated elsewhere, was soap operas which had continuing story lines but they generally weren't pre-scripted (as you said, they make it up as they go)
Yeah, I meant to include that but it got left out of my rant.
What B5 brought to that was the concept of an ending, known from the beginning. What the other shows got out of B5 was that it was OK to write a continuous story (Like a soap opera with a script that is more than day-to-day).
The problem is, there is no reason for Java to grow. It absolutely should not change. The whole point of Java is that it is a simple and elegant solution to most programming problems.
I don't use python, ruby, smalltalk or a veritable army of smaller, nimbler tools because they are smaller and nimbler! They move. Geeks play with them. I just want to work. I don't want my language changing out from under me.
Why not leave Java the way it is (for me) and you take any of these other tools. As you age (I've been programming for 25 years or so) you may start to see the advantages of stability, elegance and readability and how they strongly overweigh agility and the feature of the day.
Until then, all I can do is beg sun to continue to defend my favorite language against those that want to add features, fracture it, etc.
Seriously, if someone thinks they would prefer a more nimble language, why are they even concerned what sun does with Java? It is obviously not the language for them, and since Sun doesn't prevent you from making a similar language--feel free to do so and start modifying it.
What is the advantage of opening Java over the users you listed just creating a similar related language or set of languages? In your previous post you never addressed that.
Can't you admit that different programmers need different things, and that java is just what I need, and that sun opening it would simply ruin it for me and not help anyone else (since nobody is preventing them from creating their own now?)
Nearly every show now has a multi-season arc. These were inexistent when B5 was created (aside from the occasional and rare cliffhanger). Joss picked it up for Buffy, Angel and Firefly. The last few seasons of the X files started to concentrate more on scripting ahead. DS9 and Enterprise started making use of larger arcs (although still lacked any sense of long-term continuity), and it enabled the multi-season dramas like Lost. It heavily affected/enabled nearly all the following sci-fi series like Stargate, farscape and Battlestar Galactica.
The thing nobody has been able to match is to have an END. This sounds stupid, but it implies closure and a pre-written script that arcs over multiple seasons. It allows you to set up character attributes in season one that they will not make use of until season 4, and when done right it makes for a fantastic viewing experience.
Pre-scripting the story arc also allows for a continuity that would stop you from making a mish-mash of abandon technology and general stupidity like you always get in the Star Trek universe.
My point was, this is not a good thing and I don't want it. Anyone who does is just anti-Java and using that as an excuse, or doesn't understand the issue. Period.
SUN SHOULD NOT OPEN SOURCE JAVA. When they do it will be bad for all involved--NOTHING GOOD CAN COME FROM IT.
I completely disagree with the security argument, but I do think that it's much better to have a single unified platform.
Sun hasn't stopped people from making other compiliers (Jikes), libraries or tools. As far as I can tell, the only thing they are keeping pure is the language definition, and IMO they did that much better than any larger group could have (the development team was small and focused initially)
Not only that, but they have been very open about the process to add features, allowing community input.
Not only THAT, but there are systems that create their own language based on Java like BeanShell, JavaScript and Aspect Java.
I'm MUCH more comfortable with Java in the hands of SUN than in the hands of a bunch of hackers that want to add piles of unnecessary features--I'm mad enough that sun hammered readability by adding Generics, what would have happened if we had let it become fractured.
If you "Opened" it up, what would stop Microsoft from investing engineers and money to shred it into hundreds of confused, unsupported projects--effictivly neutering it and paving the way for a mono-platform C-flat (what they tried to accomplish in the first place)?
Unless I'm missing something, the only reason someone might be complaining about sun not opening up java is because they have run out of other reasons to bash java and really don't want to learn a new language, or maybe they are m$ sales-scum.
Keep that in mind next time you see a post complaining that sun won't "open up" java.
You might check out his podcast where he mentions it. If you email him with questions about it, he will be guaranteed to add it to his podcast.
The name is Doug's daily tech--it's about his job as an IT manager and has some good insight.
Since he is currently upgrading his company to asterisk, I'm sure he'd love to discuss it.
He made a custom Knoppix distro with Asterisk and some other utilities needed to run such a beast. Send an email asking if you are interested: ddtcast@gmail.com.
What will happen when computers start watching people. When this stuff becomes common place, everything is going to change--possibly as big a change as the web itself.
With a reasonable API for camera movement, some things that seem impossible will become trivial, and within a very short period of time you will have things like:
- Log of who entered your house and when that spans years, and what they used (drawers, couches) while they were there. - Completely automated and safe cars that drive better than you ever could in any condition. - Smart key locks that not only see your face or fingerprints, but watch your body as you walk up, looking for your face, your pattern of walking and possibly even hand or facial gestures. - Never lose anything again, the computer could watch certain items in a room and tell you where that remote control or your cell phone is. - Dancer-Musicians who create music through dance. Music that is actually good. (I'd like to see this done as an art project NOW. Just put some cameras outside a building and as people step into a circle drawn on the sidewalk, music plays based on their entire body position. See what people can create--imagine dance-dance revolution on steroids.) - Entire entertainment walls that can be reconfigured with your hands while you sit on the couch--the entire wall being LCD panels, a camera can watch gestures and manipulate images.... - Data entry faster than a keyboard with no hardware. - 4-d (moving) images of entire car trips (2 video cameras on a car, one pointing to the left, one to the right. Knit all the images together, use time/movement to act as separation.) - The ability to have a complete, detailed 4-d model of anyone who had ever been in your house, (including movement). - Unmanned gun defense with near-perfect accuracy. This could be so easy to put together that you could kill 20 armed soldiers with one gun and some good timing, or hold off an invasion with a few well-placed, camouflaged gun "mines".
The last point scares the crap out of me, but it's one of the easiest and most likely to become important. Picture it in Iraq: Deployment takes 5 minutes, you hide a video camera on either side of the street (for accurate 3-d calculations and improved target identification), and a single gun mounted somewhere, covered by a light layer of plaster or behind painted glass, perhaps. As soon as more than 20 soldiers enter the area, the automatic gun starts firing a couple rounds, spinning within a fraction of a second, and opening fire on another target. Within 10 seconds, 20 people are dead, and the terrorists are already setting up a similar installation in the next city. If you can't afford servos with that kind of speed, mount 3 or 4 guns for the same effect. Total cost, probably less than training one terrorist, certainly less than training a soldier.
The best part is calibration. With cameras, calibration is completely unnecessary. Simply give the system a general idea of where the cameras and guns are located and have the computer track the first shot fired. After calibrating on 1 or 2 shots, every single shot should hit it's target--without fail--with enough accuracy to hit vulnerable spots in armor.
This is so easy that governments will probably start deploying cheap, intelligent systems within a few years. I'm sure the only reason the US doesn't use this kind of system (if it doesn't) is because it so enjoys funding it's military contractors, and the big boondoggle projects achieve that goal so well.
This isn't stuff that's hard. All this stuff could be done today if "Hackers" had access to the right APIs--and the APIs should be there within the next couple years because of the research done by projects like this. Pretty cool over all.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh thank whoever modded my comment redundant--I laughed my ass off. Never saw a mod that I would rank "Funny" before.
The breakdown of this thread so far:
20% I hate podcasting!
60% Stop making up new words!
19% Repeating the problem and saying it's "No big deal"
1% Noticing how useless these comments are.
There, now go on to the next article or get back to work.
Works fine. Of course, I don't put quicktime or flash on my FF browser, I put them on IE and use open in IE when I really want them.
I was mostly being sarcastic, however Americans tend to be so varied and generally, umm, not bright that we often vote for a candidate or buy a product simply because we have heard the name. I think that's what the original poster was trying to say.
Many of these people can't even find USA on a map--to recognize that any given repetition of some name is positive or negative is too much to ask of most Americans.
> GWB got a lot of free advertisement in the arab world for the iraq war, strangely, I don't think it qualifies as "free ad campain" for Bush's popularity.
Probably got the moran a second term--If that's not a good ad campaign, what is? (Of course, it's only free from his personal point of view)
I kind of wondered about that in SL (Never played). How do they charge for materials and features?
How do you build a gun? There must be some cost in building a bigger gun than a smaller one, right? How does the company determine which is smarter?
And if you allow it to be really flexible (as they seem to in Second Life), how do you stop people from making killer toys really cheaply by combining unexpected traits?
For instance, say a lame gun costs 10 to make (assume the cost is based on what kind damage each bullet does) and a good gun costs 10000. Also say a dog costs 5. What's to stop a programmer from creating 500 dogs with 2 guns mounted on the back of each that can run behind a shield or something and attack from behind?
Or, create a gun that can auto-aim and fire it from a second gun... As it passes by the target, it turns and fires a dozen bullets into it at close range.
Or write a scripted item that slowly drains the users money into the creators account? (I'm sure that's stopped, but since sometimes it's allowed, how does the user ensure it's not happening with any given item?)
I don't understand how the building features can work without constant supervision. Asking the managers of the system for approval of every new item doesn't seem very scalable.
Maybe a part--but the biggest is sharing an avatar across multiple rulesets.
All you need is one renegade sysop handing out +127 boltlightnings or modifying stat points and the entire site is gone, all users have to reset. Do you trust others with that much control over your system?
I suppose if you really had to do something like that you could introduce realms where attributes didn't carry over (say, air, fire, water, spirit or some such garbage). The problem is that to make it work your stats and items can't carry over, but I'm sure that's exactly what people think they want.
I love Google, every damn thing about it, but I have to admit that the poster before you was right. It's not like Google is going to self-destruct overnight or anything, but the net result of our form of capitalism is a bunch of nudges towards maximizing profits.
The thing is, as long as the company is making money, everything will remain fine. As soon as the profits stop and the stock price dips, the noose tightens. A few community projects are killed, free lunches go away, a few talented engineers are laid off, etc. This cycle happens, a little at a time, until each company is reduced into a steaming pile of shit.
The problem with a public company in our current environment is that "Evil" always gets a positive nudge, and "Good" always gets a little negative nudge. There will be ups and downs, but over time, we are bound to lose. This is simply what happens when you can turn stock over tomorrow. Why would it make sense to keep a stock gaining 1% when you can switch over to a stock which is burning itself up at 30% until it's gone, then jumping to another.
Really the only way to fix it is start having a minimum 5 or 10 year stock holding period, and I don't see that happening in our greedy-ass future.
It's also missing the fact that more problems would go away if they upgraded to Linux with it's improved everything.
Life is incomplete.
I'm starting to wonder how it's physically possible that an OS would allow ANY app to install a hook into something as important as a keyboard driver or monitor without catching it and asking the user (at least).
Perhaps we could, hmm, motivate MS by publishing this ability as a vulnerability in the OS.
In fact, maybe we should stop allowing the OS Manufacturers to specify what a vulnerability is and come out with a list of requirements/standards that we can validate consistently against all OSes to qualify and rate their security against each other.
Not that everyone wants to be bothered with every little app, but we should be able to turn off the ability to install dangerous hooks just like we can turn off the ability to set cookies.
Either that or just make M$ financially responsible for every time a keylogger steals a bank password.
What kind of moderators would moderate this as insightful and not the (hopefully) intentional funny or flaimbait??? This mod system is getting bizarre.
> You need to grow up and realize that breaking the rules/law is wrong whether or not you get caught.
Like reading slashdot at work?
Multi-season arcs? I haven't heard of that. All our stuff that is scripted like that is short 5-10 episodes or something (long movie).
Are there examples I can view through, umm, BBC or something?
It's not like the "media and attorneys general" told me to think any way. I learned exactly how rebates work first hand:
1) You send it in
2) They don't reply
3) You call
4) They fix it and send you the rebate.
They make step 3 so simple you don't even notice that you are doing it, and there is always some reasonable excuse (they don't have enough info, or "But we were gunna send it, give us time!"), but if you don't call you get:
1) You send it in
2) They don't reply
5) Profit!
Now, to hear that the media and attorneys general have come to the same conclusion??? Only evidence that this is not some atypical experience but real.
Thanks for confirming my suspicions.
Bloody corporations
Point to one. It is certainly possible, but I haven't seen it (and would probably enjoy it).
The most important part is the ending. To say that a TV series will end after five years--sorry, I really do believe that at least THAT part was a first.
I'm open to the possibility--If you can show me one that has multiple interacting story arcs, relatively well thought out and not just scripted day-to-day... Wow, I'd absolutely go watch it (because I certainly missed it the first time)
>> What is the advantage of opening Java over the users you listed just creating a similar related language or set of languages? In your previous post you never addressed that.
>You can keep running whatever version of the VM you like (and it probably won't be touched at all except for maybe some securiy-critical back-ports). We're not stopping you. I'm talking about Java 3, 4 and 5 in 2007, 2010 and 2013.
I like the bugfixes and slow/steady pace of feature addition (except, as I said, for templates which are the worst thing ever to happen to the language, and it will get much worse if they open it up!)
Also, you didn't attempt to answer the question at all. What is the advantage to SUN opening it up over just creating all the other versions you said without Sun open-sourcing it?
> Can't you admit that different programmers need different things, and that java is just what I need, and that sun opening it would simply ruin it for me and not help anyone else (since nobody is preventing them from creating their own now?)
> I absolutely think the appropriate programming languages should be used for the tasks at hand. Sun can do whatever they want, and you can do whatever you want. But neither you or they should complain that nobody uses java in 8 years, and billions of lines of codes go to waste, including yours. What do you think is happening now with people that programmed all those client-server apps in VB5&6 in the 1995-2000 timeframe? Companies are setting up servers and terminal servicing into them to run "old" vb5 apps.
> Sun it taking Java down that road.
C has not gone down that road because it's useful. VB is a joke, I used it quite a bit, and it is a horrible development platform, really only good for prototyping. Java is the opposite, I've never seen a language that has come close, and I've used many of them.
The problem with VB is that it has no ability to work with a group of developers. It's made as a scripting language to allow people who can't do any better to write apps. You will never see a group larger than 5-10 developers choosing to work in VB.
> By the way, Python started in 1991 to Java's 1995. Smalltalk goes back further. Java is the new kid on the block.
Of course. I used Python before Java. Used a few others too. I generally don't like them. For me, the most important features of a language are simplicity, readability, flexibility... things like that.
> I feel your pain and frustration, Bill, but in this world what you don't know can definitely hurt you. I'm not trying to hurt you, I'm trying to help you. (not-so-obscure movie line).
My guess is that we are in different realms. I work with a group on an app. Java works very well. The tools are solid and well-developed. The different versions are still very similar, so upgrades are simple. The OO model and reflection gives us the freedom to eliminate nearly all the redundant code.
I suppose I would say that the key to coding is to be able to specify each logical concept exactly once, in the simplest most easy to read manner possible.
In basic, the code wasn't very consistent and I could not factor the code well enough, the same with C (and C wasn't always easy to read). C++ is too confusing and the language has too many features and is quite hard to read.
Java is just a good balance. It may not be as quick to code in as a scripting language, but it is very good at helping my team to be clear in their code and it can be used to write very good readable code.
Any alterations can make it less so. When Sun (Well, actually the community process) added the super-for statement, auto-boxing and annotations I was quite happy. Those are all features that increase readability first, simplify code second.
The crap about Generics is the other side of the coin. It complicates my code and has very little advantage (I generally know what I put into my collections, and auto-boxing should have been able t
The difference is that B5 was scripted as a multi-season arc before hand. Soaps have had multi-season stories for ever, but they were not scripted before hand, leading to inconsistencies, poor storyline progressions and horrible emergency arc terminations (or they just never get closed like half the crap on X-files).
Also, the concept of an "Arc" implies pre-written and thought-out scripts. Saying that a soap has an arc is kind of an insult.
I agree, but if you go look at the difference between enterprise and TNG you will find that TNG almost never had any sense of Arc, it had a few repeating characters, but up until B5 it was a basic requirement that episodes must be able to be shown in any order without losing any enjoyment.
The exception, as stated elsewhere, was soap operas which had continuing story lines but they generally weren't pre-scripted (as you said, they make it up as they go)
Yeah, I meant to include that but it got left out of my rant.
What B5 brought to that was the concept of an ending, known from the beginning. What the other shows got out of B5 was that it was OK to write a continuous story (Like a soap opera with a script that is more than day-to-day).
Thanks for pointing that out.
The problem is, there is no reason for Java to grow. It absolutely should not change. The whole point of Java is that it is a simple and elegant solution to most programming problems.
I don't use python, ruby, smalltalk or a veritable army of smaller, nimbler tools because they are smaller and nimbler! They move. Geeks play with them. I just want to work. I don't want my language changing out from under me.
Why not leave Java the way it is (for me) and you take any of these other tools. As you age (I've been programming for 25 years or so) you may start to see the advantages of stability, elegance and readability and how they strongly overweigh agility and the feature of the day.
Until then, all I can do is beg sun to continue to defend my favorite language against those that want to add features, fracture it, etc.
Seriously, if someone thinks they would prefer a more nimble language, why are they even concerned what sun does with Java? It is obviously not the language for them, and since Sun doesn't prevent you from making a similar language--feel free to do so and start modifying it.
What is the advantage of opening Java over the users you listed just creating a similar related language or set of languages? In your previous post you never addressed that.
Can't you admit that different programmers need different things, and that java is just what I need, and that sun opening it would simply ruin it for me and not help anyone else (since nobody is preventing them from creating their own now?)
Nearly every show now has a multi-season arc. These were inexistent when B5 was created (aside from the occasional and rare cliffhanger). Joss picked it up for Buffy, Angel and Firefly. The last few seasons of the X files started to concentrate more on scripting ahead. DS9 and Enterprise started making use of larger arcs (although still lacked any sense of long-term continuity), and it enabled the multi-season dramas like Lost. It heavily affected/enabled nearly all the following sci-fi series like Stargate, farscape and Battlestar Galactica.
The thing nobody has been able to match is to have an END. This sounds stupid, but it implies closure and a pre-written script that arcs over multiple seasons. It allows you to set up character attributes in season one that they will not make use of until season 4, and when done right it makes for a fantastic viewing experience.
Pre-scripting the story arc also allows for a continuity that would stop you from making a mish-mash of abandon technology and general stupidity like you always get in the Star Trek universe.
And I'm STILL understating it.
My point was, this is not a good thing and I don't want it. Anyone who does is just anti-Java and using that as an excuse, or doesn't understand the issue. Period.
SUN SHOULD NOT OPEN SOURCE JAVA. When they do it will be bad for all involved--NOTHING GOOD CAN COME FROM IT.
I completely disagree with the security argument, but I do think that it's much better to have a single unified platform.
Sun hasn't stopped people from making other compiliers (Jikes), libraries or tools. As far as I can tell, the only thing they are keeping pure is the language definition, and IMO they did that much better than any larger group could have (the development team was small and focused initially)
Not only that, but they have been very open about the process to add features, allowing community input.
Not only THAT, but there are systems that create their own language based on Java like BeanShell, JavaScript and Aspect Java.
I'm MUCH more comfortable with Java in the hands of SUN than in the hands of a bunch of hackers that want to add piles of unnecessary features--I'm mad enough that sun hammered readability by adding Generics, what would have happened if we had let it become fractured.
If you "Opened" it up, what would stop Microsoft from investing engineers and money to shred it into hundreds of confused, unsupported projects--effictivly neutering it and paving the way for a mono-platform C-flat (what they tried to accomplish in the first place)?
Unless I'm missing something, the only reason someone might be complaining about sun not opening up java is because they have run out of other reasons to bash java and really don't want to learn a new language, or maybe they are m$ sales-scum.
Keep that in mind next time you see a post complaining that sun won't "open up" java.
You might check out his podcast where he mentions it. If you email him with questions about it, he will be guaranteed to add it to his podcast.
The name is Doug's daily tech--it's about his job as an IT manager and has some good insight.
Since he is currently upgrading his company to asterisk, I'm sure he'd love to discuss it.
He made a custom Knoppix distro with Asterisk and some other utilities needed to run such a beast. Send an email asking if you are interested: ddtcast@gmail.com.
http://wiki.ddtcast.com/wakka.php?wakka=HomePage
What will happen when computers start watching people. When this stuff becomes common place, everything is going to change--possibly as big a change as the web itself.
With a reasonable API for camera movement, some things that seem impossible will become trivial, and within a very short period of time you will have things like:
- Log of who entered your house and when that spans years, and what they used (drawers, couches) while they were there.
- Completely automated and safe cars that drive better than you ever could in any condition.
- Smart key locks that not only see your face or fingerprints, but watch your body as you walk up, looking for your face, your pattern of walking and possibly even hand or facial gestures.
- Never lose anything again, the computer could watch certain items in a room and tell you where that remote control or your cell phone is.
- Dancer-Musicians who create music through dance. Music that is actually good. (I'd like to see this done as an art project NOW. Just put some cameras outside a building and as people step into a circle drawn on the sidewalk, music plays based on their entire body position. See what people can create--imagine dance-dance revolution on steroids.)
- Entire entertainment walls that can be reconfigured with your hands while you sit on the couch--the entire wall being LCD panels, a camera can watch gestures and manipulate images....
- Data entry faster than a keyboard with no hardware.
- 4-d (moving) images of entire car trips (2 video cameras on a car, one pointing to the left, one to the right. Knit all the images together, use time/movement to act as separation.)
- The ability to have a complete, detailed 4-d model of anyone who had ever been in your house, (including movement).
- Unmanned gun defense with near-perfect accuracy. This could be so easy to put together that you could kill 20 armed soldiers with one gun and some good timing, or hold off an invasion with a few well-placed, camouflaged gun "mines".
The last point scares the crap out of me, but it's one of the easiest and most likely to become important. Picture it in Iraq: Deployment takes 5 minutes, you hide a video camera on either side of the street (for accurate 3-d calculations and improved target identification), and a single gun mounted somewhere, covered by a light layer of plaster or behind painted glass, perhaps. As soon as more than 20 soldiers enter the area, the automatic gun starts firing a couple rounds, spinning within a fraction of a second, and opening fire on another target. Within 10 seconds, 20 people are dead, and the terrorists are already setting up a similar installation in the next city. If you can't afford servos with that kind of speed, mount 3 or 4 guns for the same effect. Total cost, probably less than training one terrorist, certainly less than training a soldier.
The best part is calibration. With cameras, calibration is completely unnecessary. Simply give the system a general idea of where the cameras and guns are located and have the computer track the first shot fired. After calibrating on 1 or 2 shots, every single shot should hit it's target--without fail--with enough accuracy to hit vulnerable spots in armor.
This is so easy that governments will probably start deploying cheap, intelligent systems within a few years. I'm sure the only reason the US doesn't use this kind of system (if it doesn't) is because it so enjoys funding it's military contractors, and the big boondoggle projects achieve that goal so well.
This isn't stuff that's hard. All this stuff could be done today if "Hackers" had access to the right APIs--and the APIs should be there within the next couple years because of the research done by projects like this. Pretty cool over all.