foamdino

I can relate to this thought process and had my own conflicted thoughts about AI and the role it (and I) play in the SWE future: https://medium.com/@kev.jackson/two-months-of-an-ai-partners... - I'm still conflicted

We're working with the Morello processor and have had to wrestle a bit with allocation from a block based allocator: https://medium.com/thg-tech-blog/morello-and-memory-pools-91...

As someone that spends a lot of time reading about games, gaming culture and gaming hardware, I can assert that the Xbox One is not the most impressive console of the next (soon to be launched) gen.

In terms of GPU hardware it is a reduced version of the PS4 GPU (50% fewer compute units).

As a package XBox One + Kinect 2 might be quite impressive, but in which markets? None of the TV integration technology works outside of the US (as far as anyone can tell).

Between PS4 and XBox One there are many similarities and a few differences - and in terms of console hardware they're both very impressive pieces of kit.

Microsoft's messaging has been atrocious though - a case study in how not to launch a games console.

As someone who bought AMD/ATi to 'support' the idea of a more open linux, I regret the decision daily. Very little works on linux and performance on windows (I dual boot for gaming), is not very good.

I'll never buy ATi again after my experience with them.

There is significant code in the Java libraries that was first written by people outside of Sun/Oracle.

Back in the Java5 days some APIs provided by Java were simply javax.something wrapped around org.apache code.

I'm not seeing where Android has caused fragmentation - which you keep mentioning.

Java is by definition fragmented. Java on phones has been fragmented for ages (pre-Android). Look at all the competing OS/APIs available for jme phones (BREW, Symbian, BlackBerry etc).

Java on phones has always been fragmented at the API level - wilfully ignoring this fact is basically saying that Java EE and Java SE and JavaCard are exactly the same and programs written for a giant cluster of enterprise machines that need to screen scrape terminals and connect to esoteric datasources, should run without modification on a Java capable phone circa 2007 - this is simply not the case and has never been the case. Face it Oracle are saying WORA is good and Android is killing WORA via 'fragmentation' - the reality is that WORA is basically a myth and marketing hype.

Oracle are a troll in so much as they fully supported an ASL licensed version of Java (APIs and vm) when they didn't own Java and then decided that having a truly open source implementation was a bad idea after they owned the IP.

Google cleanroom'd (and used libraries which had an appropriate license) - this was expensive and not necessarily the best thing to do - who knows apart from Andy Rubin I guess, but I cannot see how this was illegal, or even morally wrong as you are suggesting.

Google could reasonably point to the fact that Apache had been working for 6 years on a fully open source version of Java without any legal problems - why should they suddenly find themselves in trouble for using that software and adding their own vm?

Personally I think you're mistaken about the history of this case, who is acting in good faith and who isn't and the realities of developing Java programs for phones and in general. I'm honestly exasperated by people who seem to ignore the evidence that is in the open about what transpired when and then go on about how 'evil' Google has been over this whole thing. Google acted in their best interests as a company and what they did hasn't negatively impacted any Java developers that I know about. The only people that claim that Google has stolen Java or have destroyed Java or any other hyperbolic negative affect they claim seem to have a personal axe to grind and/or work for Oracle.

Just because I believe something is so (Andriod == Java) doesn't make it so.

Google do not claim (as far as I've seen anywhere) that Android is Java. They must name the APIs java.x to ensure source compatibility, but they chuck the class file format and the dalvik vm is certainly not a jvm.

Please do some research on the background of the whole sordid affair - Google did not steal 'Java' - they took ASL licensed libraries and used them as an API and they built their own VM.

Guess who did the same thing? Sun and Oracle. Did Sun steal Java too? Look inside the current java source code and you'll find code originally written by open source developers under the ASL (xml libraries [crimson etc] spring to mind immediately, but I'm sure there is other stuff in there too))

As far as I know at no point did they claim that Android was Java (which is what the Microsoft case was about).

For more information on the vote of Java 7: http://blog.joda.org/2011/06/java-se-7-passes-in-zombie-jcp_...

And an excellent summary of how the FOU came to be (with pictures): http://blog.joda.org/2009/03/sun-apache-ip-in-pictures_9067....

As far as I know the FOU was in place way before 2005 when Apache started on Harmony. Oracle did a 180 on supporting Apache then stabbing them in the back.

When Sun owned Java, Oracle are documented as supporting Apache's requests to get the FOU restrictions lifted and helped Apache slow the development of Java at the JCP level. When Oracle bought out Sun, they immediately stopped supporting Apache for both FOU and rammed through Java 7 without really getting many of JCP on board. IBM basically folded (after spending so much effort on Harmony - I suspect that IBM are kicking themselves for not buying Sun when they had the chance, I and many other people involved in Java at the time thought it was certain IBM were going to buy Sun out) and most of the other JCP members abstained or quit. Even members who voted for Java 7 added comments to the effect that they were not happy.

This is all in the public record : https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/entry/the_asf_resigns_fr...

The key points are here: "So where does this whole thing about the field-of-use restrictions (that prevent an independent implementation from being used on mobile devices) come into play. Why, it's in that separate TCK license referred to in Oracle's third slide above. But notice that in that slide Oracle maintains that "[t]hese restrictions prevent Apache Harmony from implementing Java SE." They do no such thing! Apache never signed the TCK license. That didn't prevent Apache from creating and distributing Harmony; it only meant that they couldn't call it Java or imply that it was Java-compliant, a point which Sun admitted (see Jonathan Schwartz's comment in the second Google slide).

Many of Oracle's claims and presentation in this case will be based on misdirection and creating a false understanding of Oracle's rights and Oracle's right to restrict the activities of others. The Oracle position is in direct conflict with the previous statements and actions of Sun upon which Google relied. If Google can keep the jury straight on these points, Oracle will be shown to have significantly overreached in bringing the copyright claims in this suit."

Apache started the Harmony project in 'co-operation' with Sun on the understanding that they would be given access to the TCK tests when they needed them. This was based on Sun telling Apache that they would 'waive' the FOU restrictions for Apache so that Harmony could claim to be Java (ie. it passes the tests).

IBM and others contributed significant amounts of code to Harmony - why, because having a truly independent version of Java has real value to them as they base a lot of their business on Java infrastructure.

Google got involved and licensed the Harmony libraries (which is fine, ASL allows that).

Oracle buys Sun and then does 180 degree turn on its stance for supporting Harmony (Oracle where one of the bug supporters of Harmony when Sun owned Java).

People just reading a tiny bit of the press on this and thinking they understand the nuances are almost certainly wrong. There is a lot of history around the licensing of the TCK and Oracle is trying to deceive people about the TCK license vs the license to use Java.

Oracle's behaviour ensured that Apache dropped out of the JCP (along with many other high profile open source people).

see: http://www.apache.org/jcp/sunopenletter.html

SEEKING WORK - remote/freelance Developer with 10+ years java experience, lots of ruby and more recently some python (GAE + django). I also have some experience with Erlang - but I haven't built anything with it for a while.

Worked on government projects, marketing sites and ecommerce sites.

Currently learning Go, Objective-C/iPhone dev

Contact me : foamdino at gmail dot com

Indeed, get someone like MIT to do an OpenJournal to complement the rest of their OpenX initiatives and you might start getting buy-in.

The problem is that the system is broken - publish n papers => you're better than before (ignoring the content of the papers of course). Academics are encouraged to publish (and re-publish older stuff with a slight tweak) to meet publishing 'targets' handed down by government.

This model feeds into the Elsiver etc closed publishing as academics are forced to compete to earn their stripes - so now we have a model that encourages re-publishing crap and then locking it behind a paywall, but when I ask PhDs if they think this is fine, they don't see the problem :(

This is what I do, Win7 for games, debian for work.

I like the dualboot nature as when in debian I have no excuse to startup a game and get distracted, when in windows I know I'm off work and I can relax.

Also having access to good command line tools is priceless - I'm not conversant with powershell, so maybe windows is good for this now, but being able to quickly grep/sed/awk/vi/etc is so useful.

My understanding of the comment is that the commenter makes the point that VS is almost too comfortable (sorry if I'm mis-reading this), and that comfort is actually a hindrance to learning things.

I see it where I teach, the students that come in are most comfortable with windows + VS and they are productive in this environment. However, after just one course in C programming using vim, the students have a much greater appreciation of the process of producing software. They gain an understanding of compiling and linking, Makefiles and automated builds. (I'm not sure all of them like vim + make, but they see where VS is automating stuff for them and I think this is a valuable thing to learn).

Do you need this understanding to be a productive programmer? Of course not and indeed learning it is a bit of a timesink compared to getting your features finished.

Eventually like most things it is horses for courses (it doesn't make sense to me to develop C# code using vim as you have the worlds best(tm) IDE to help you), but personally I feel that IDEs have become too much of a crutch, they help so much that you can be productive without knowing what you are doing and, this maybe elitist, I feel this harms the industry a little.

Good programmers will always be good programmers, bad programmers can hide with an IDE, they have to learn what they are doing when dropped into vim + make (or other lo-fi tools of choice).

"there is not a whole lot you can do to tune your queries"

What does this even mean? For any query which relies on data from different tables, yes there are opportunities to tune the query, and there are opportunities to build different kinds of indexes, and there are opportunities to de-normalize the data and remove the join completely. This is independent of your RDBMS vendor.

The statement that Oracle/SQL Server are 'high quality' and the implication that open source RDBMSes are not, is flame-bait. All RDBMSes (that I have experience with - including Oracle and SQL server - so caveat emptor) will hit a performance wall when an index becomes invalid and the engine has to table-scan - and indexes can become invalid automatically as the amount of data in the tables changes - typically this will happen at 3am in the morning when you are on call.

There is also the hardware that the files are stored on, and the balancing act of price/performance of splitting tables onto separate spindles, using SSDs for semi-hot tables, cramming in more ram, upgrading the network connection between db and app servers etc etc. Every real world application needs constant tweaking from query to hardware as bottlenecks appear in different layers. Again these issues are almost entirely independent of the RDBMS (apart from with SQL Server that only runs on Windows, so the deployment platform is limited by what Windows server supports).

Nonrelational datastores can also hit performance walls too - the fact that some of the nonrelational stores are newer also has the added 'fun' that the performance characteristics are not completely known.

Thanks - this is something I've not come across before. Looking on wikipedia it seems to be pre-dominantly US based.

Sorry that this is off-topic, but what the hell is a 'giftie'?

What defines a 'gifted child' in this context? I'm interested to know.

Are the positions only available for US citizens/residents? I'm basically what you're after (senior java dev with 10+ years experience), but I'm British.

I suspect (and I've heard tell, but I have no data to support this), that the UK universities cannot afford the same salaries as their US counterparts.

If your a prof and you have two offers (let's stay technical as it's HN):

1 Cambridge - £90,000/year (~$160,000) and you can go and watch the boat race (yay)

2 MIT (or caltech, berkley, princeton etc etc) - $400,000/year and you can live somewhere where it doesn't rain for 10 months of the year

Now which would you choose?

NB - figures pulled out of my ass, but I suspect that the ratio is probably accurate enough (ie US unis can afford to pay 2* UK).

One of my professors talked about the day he hoped the UK system would allow universities to become private institutions (they're quasi-private now in that 'foreign' students are charged a lot more than 'home/EU' students where the fees are capped)

First define useful? I have an undergrad technical degree and yes it was useful to me. I do however have an appreciation of the arts and, if time and funds permitted, would gladly study multiple undergrad and masters courses in philosophy, economics (art or science, depends on where you go), history and linguistics.

There is a technical snobbery that demeans all 'art' as useless and elevates all technical degrees to, IMO, an unworthy height.

Your definition of useful seems to be 'produces economic value to the graduate'. Another person could have a very different definition of useful.

Taking the point back on-topic, if your view of education is something that allows you to earn more during your working life, then I can understand some people questioning it.

I enjoy learning for its own sake, not for some bauble held out in front of me - maybe that's because I'm wealthy enough (relatively speaking) to have been able to study what I like without worrying about practical issues.

I live in a country where people see education (typically business degrees and technical subjects) as a means to an end - quite rightly as often their families have sold everything they own to be able to afford to send one child to get a 'good education' and then expect that child to be able to support the family in the future.

I teach undergrad IT, so I do have a dog in this particular 'education isn't worth it' fight. /rant off

$10K/month would give me freedom to spend 4+ hours with my son/day and not give a crap about how to get php+jquery+mysql to behave sensibly today. What do I care about FU money? If x$ gives you freedom, by definition it is FU money.

I'm looking into Guice + Roboguice (which seems to be the way to go), but I really need to understand Guice semantics first - Guice != Spring and I have a fair bit of 'unlearning' to do

I agree that the Java culture is significantly poisoned by the 'enterprise architect' culture, but Spring if anything has been the saviour of Java.

Compare IoC (Spring setter injection), with J2EE+EJB2.x - it's night and day - and I know which I would prefer to code using. Spring introduced POJO programming and explicitly called out the crappy J2EE design patterns in favour of simplicity.

Now, Spring has accumulated so much cruft (and become much more commercial with the vmware buyout), that it is becoming the new J2EE.

I've been doing some android programming recently, and working with Java without IoC is simply unbearable.

It's almost as if the vendors of such awesome technology as the .Net stack and the wonderful world of Java app servers was trying to get you to buy some brain-dead tools to manage what should be as simple http get/post

The only useful thing SOAP has done for the entire development community is to give lead developers or tech managers making hiring decisions a huge red-flag. As soon as anyone mentions SOAP with enthusiasm (instead of the disgust it deserves), you know it's 'no-hire'

My reading of the whole incident is that the exploit was disclosed (responsibly) to the banks 1 year ago and the banks have done nothing to fix the problem. Since then the professor (along with others) published a paper detailing the exploit. Finally the MPhil student cited the previously published paper in his thesis (it would be a crappy thesis to not reference current similar work)

At no point do I get the indication that the MPhil student was acting in a way that was 'irresponsible' - I don't know how you have come to that conclusion.

Having just researched Personal Learning Environments (PLE's) [1] - this is a timely reminder of just how bad standard teaching portal type application are for the goal of teaching and learning. Hopefully this will spawn a few imitators which will drive the costs down so that it isn't just useful in the US.

[1]http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.97....