Discussions

Cairo wrote:

#include <stdint.h>

... then you can use things like int32_t, uint64_t, etc.

With the exception of Sven, every single one of you need to purchase the standard.  Sheesh.

ChrisA wrote:



W3bbo wrote:  ChrisA wrote: Not controlled by any entity, hundreds of thousands of developers can help to improve java as a language, long term survival of the language should Sun go under as a company, formal support by Linux companies in their products. But .NET isn't either.

Yes it is, its controlled by Microsoft.  Can I see the source code to the .NET Framework?  Can I modify it and redistribute it? As long as I pass the compatibility tests with Java I can do that with Java.

This is actually what's wrong with much of Open Source.  The source is the documentation, the design and the specification.

A standard is a much better specification.  If there's a bug in Sun's implementation, in order to "pass compatibility tests" I've got to implement the bug.  Then we they fix the bug, I'm no longer compatible.  Granted, a specification can have flaws as well but the types of flaws are very different (you won't find an overflow or off by one error in a specification).

I'm not making the argument that Open Source is bad.  I've been involved with (both consuming and producing) Open Source for years.  But black and white arguments like yours just don't work.

Java was the worst of all worlds before... closed source, no standard and yet "designed by internet/committee/participating corporations".  If they move to Open Source it would be a step in the right direction, but for languages I'd much rather have them standardized.

Harlequin wrote:

Legitimate owners aren't "suffering". The detection software of Microsoft's is buggy, and some are getting annoyed. Once it's running at 100%, then only pirates shalt be concerned.

Hopefully sooner than later, if it does this for Vista, then it will be a big black mark.

Wrong.  W3bbo's example is a great example.  Activation doesn't even slow down the hackers/pirates, but legitimate owners suffer from this.  Activation is a pita in many circumstances.  Enough so, that I find ways to avoid having to deal with it.  I feel the same way about CD keys.  They are a pointless invention that at best costs me time, and at worst actually prevents me from being able to do something I have every right (ethical, not necessarily legal, though I don't believe license terms have been fought in court yet) to do.  W3bbo chose to work around that pita, and WGA will cause him to have to suffer through a different pita.

In the mean time, the pirates haven't been stopped.  They haven't even been slowed down.  This is the exact wrong tactic to take.  Don't penalize your customers, instead prosecute the pirates.

W3bbo wrote:


Burn.

You're calling me a pirate?

Technically, you are, and you've admitted it yourself.  Not that I don't agree with you, and that's a stance I would, and have, taken myself.  In the name of fighting piracy, many corporations go too far, and the only ones who suffer in this scenario are the legitimate owners, while the pirates continue along with no more trouble than they had before.

DoomBringer wrote:



BenZilla wrote: Definatlly, you see Microsoft with all these advanced code analysis tools and internal audits and you still see bugs/security holes. And yet OSS does very little of this. Is it a case of impending security doom for various major linux software packages? Dig a little deeper into various major pieces of Linux technology and find a big mess.

It really depends on what part of Linux.  It will vary by distro.  I'd wager a lot of the standard parts have been picked apart by people all over.  The more extraneous bits will be more vulnerable.

In other news, someone wrecked right outside my house.  This is about the 10th accident this year.  bleh

X11 *IS* a "standard part".  However, I don't think this one incident is an indication of impending doom for Linux.  Rather, it's just evidence that despite the zealotry, Linux is no more secure.

CannotResolveSymbol wrote:

Testing Mono too sounds like a good idea.  The reason Java is more platform independent is (1) it has more first-party support for platform independence (Sun makes a Unix-like operating system) and (2) it is older.  Mono will get better with time; the project hasn't really been around for all that long.

1) Mono has been around as long as .NET has, which is less than Java but significant enough time not to be considered "new".

2) Mono is nearly "complete".  The compiler has been complete for some time.  So has the BCL.  Their packages for MS specific APIs are nearing completion (ASP.NET is nearly 2.0 complete, and WinForms now can run many existing applications).

In regards to this thread, Mono has also been doing a lot of optimization work lately.

zzzzz wrote:

Java:   main problem is the framework keeps changing so much between even minor releases.  In fact the problem with the java framework is so bad Sun's own development staff won't use it.    I don't know how many times i have had a java app stop working because the next release of the JVM or framework changed one of the more advance features by renaming or removing it .  A leaked memo from Sun

In the interest of fairness, this is FUD nearly on the level of the stuff Nanite is spewing.  This memo is quite old, and was addressing a specific JVM implementation and faults in it.  Granted, that impelementation was one written by Sun and on their own OS, which DOES still speak volumes about Sun's real commitment to Java.  But even at the time, there were numerous examples of very large, very scalable applications (well, web apps) built using Java running on JVMs on platforms other than Solaris.  No objective analysis would conclude based on the facts of the time that the memo was full stop proof that Java was an ill suited technology for many uses.  And since then things have only improved for Java.

Still can't stand that platform myself, and I have both personal as well as technical reasons for this opinion, but let's be better than the Nanite's/Beer28's of the world and try not to dabble in FUD shoveling.

nanite wrote:

Look at using the eclipse/java/swt stack.  It's better supporting in the long run - and you can deploy your own JDK with your application (no relying on windows update or non-embeddable installers).

You can even patch your runtime as you need!

Not that anyone didn't already know it, but you've just proven yourself a troll.  First you try and bash .NET based on it being "bloated", "slow" and "locks up the system" (none of which is you back up with facts or even anecdotal evidence), then you turn around and suggest eclipse/java/swt?  I've got plenty of experience with all of those technologies, and though I think Eclipse is wonderfully designed in a lot of ways, every one of your slurs can be applied to it.  In our professional use of this we had to run desktops with 1 GB of memory and still had frequent "system freezes" lasting as long as 10 seconds.  And by frequent I mean 2-20 times every 10 minutes.  To be usable, we had to "boot" (kill and restart) Eclipse at least once a day.  And Eclipse, AFAIAC, is the flagship application of the Java world.  I've used many other applications, commercial and freeware/OSS, that are Java based and every one left a bad impression.

I've not used that many .NET applications, but none of those that I have used left a bad impression.  I used SharpReader for almost a year and never once experienced performance issues with it.  I've used Paint.NET, which performs admirably.  I've also used several .NET applications on the Mono/Linux platform, many of which are currently topping the "must have" lists.  None of them showed any performance issues either.  I've hit many an ASP.NET site, every one of which performed very well, while I can often tell when I've hit a J2EE site based solely on the page refresh rates.

The C# equivalent is pretty close, making both arguments for/against (at least for this specific example) a little off the base.

IEnumberable<MyType> bfs(MyType e)
{
   List<MyType> q = new ArrayList();
   e.Mark();
   yield return e;
   while (q.Count > 0)
   {
      object u = q[0];
      q.RemoveAt(0);
      foreach (MyType v in u.EdgeIterator())
      {
         if (!v.Marked)
         {
            v.Mark();
            yield return v;
            q.Add(v);
         }
      }
   }
}

foreach(MyType v in bfs(e))
{
   Console.WriteLine(v);
}

Note: This was typed free form and may contain numerous errors, but it should illustrate the point.

Which is worse:

1)  Ability to crash a browser (in pre-beta form) and *maybe* run code via the bug found in less than 15 minutes.

2) Ability to "root" a Mac system (in production form) in 30 minutes.

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/soa/Mac_OS_X_hacked_in_less_than_30_minutes/0,2000061744,39241748,00.htm

Note that I'm only semi-serious.