Posts by Steven Dick

Wallstreet Sucks

Much as I don't think Ballmer is the right guy for the job, this is Wallstreet we're talking about. They only care about having higher numbers quarter-on-quarter and do not have a f**king clue about anything long-term. They are the reason the world economy is in the toilet!

Ballmer has done well to last 9 years in the role considering the average tenure is something like 18 months to 2 years. He was the third billionaire that MS created - he should save himself the stress and retire.

OSGi

OSGi is, today, one of those trendy acronyms that no longer stands for anything. It's just OSGi.

OSGi did start in the embedded Java space, but if you write any plug-ins for the Eclipse development environment, then you're writing OSGi bundles as Eclipse is built upon OSGi.

All of the Java application servers are now talking about OSGi, with many of them using it under the hood in their latest versions.

As a server-side Java developer (myself and my team are using it), I see OSGi in the early stages of adoption with more developers talking about it rather than using it. Only time will tell if it will become mainstream for Java.

Video Playback

Seriously, if you want video playback, get one of these: http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/

Its cheap, plays back all the video standards, networked, HDMI, ... The list goes on.

Oh, and no f****** DRM.

We take this so seriously...

Yeah, they take data security so seriously that unlocked, unencrypted data containing sensitive financial details is left on a laptop that also has no security measures to stop it being nicked.

usual rubbish

At the time of Visual Studio 6, I can't think of any comparable IDE for Java. I don't know much about Visual Studio 2008, but the first 2 versions of Visual Studio .NET were left in the dust by the equivalent releases of Eclipse.

Does the writer actually use these tools?

The time of Microsoft dominance in developer IDEs is over.

Don't comment if you don't know what you're talking about

How many people are commenting from a personal point-of-view compared to a business point-of-view?

I used to run my own mail server so that the multiple PCs I have can all access the same email. After a recent mail server issue I migrated my mail setup to Gmail. I want centralised email but running my own mail server is a pain-in-the-arse. Gmail solves the problem.

It's the same for the small company I work for: we're software developers and we don't want to manage the IT infrastructure, nor is it economically feasible for us to hire a sys admin to do it for us.

And what do we do when we want to test the scaling of our software? Buy 10 additional servers? That doesn't make financial sense, either. That's where the promise of cloud computing's elasticity in provisioning comes into play.

People who talk about the bandwidth cost have a point, but that's why the big bank I used to work at was developing their own cloud.

In short, I think the really big players such as banks will build their own clouds and the small/medium guys will buy from the cloud vendors.

If you think it's still all bollocks, Amazon say that their biggest customers for EC2 (their cloud) are the banks and telcos.

Who wants high performance?

I've given up on lusting after high performance in computing as all it leads to are high prices, high temperatures and too much noise.

I've traded some HD performance for a quieter and cooler drive (the WD's 500GB little brother to be exact).

Redmonk

Yeah, sound quality was a bit off, otherwise an interesting show as always.

I was at QCon 2008 in London last week and we had James Govenor of Redmonk open the "Architectures You've Always Wondered About" track - what a tosser (another british-english phrase beloved of Reg users).

That was a universal opinion of my unscientific poll of 3 other people attending.

Performance

The first poster's comment says more about the professor than Java. I'm a java developer in the real-world and we do care about performance here.

I like the dynamic languages like Python and Ruby too, but I don't see them being able to replace Java in the enterprise area. For one, many companies have a huge investment in Java already.

Please, No!

Please, tell me you're making up the "giga-terror bits" quote. It's depressing when we have people talking about stuff that is completely outside their knowledge and experience and then trying to guide policy and laws based on it.

Where do we get these morons?

Java 6 is used/needed

I'm a Java developer and I need Java 6. This means if I was looking for a new PC, then Macs would be out of the question.

It's bollocks to say that no-one uses Java versions above 1.4.2 (it holds more water for web-based Java and J2EE stuff), as my last major project had everything running on 5.0 and was looking to move to version 6.

You don't need to change any code to use the newer versions and the move from versions 1.4.2 to 5.0 to 6 provided measurable performance improvements.

And lastly, Java 6 has been out for almost a year! Apple need to stop being control freaks and let Sun do the Mac JDK, since Apple don't seem to see it as too important.

I won't, the kids might

It doesn't appeal to me, but then I'm not the target audience (being 35 years old).

As today's teenagers buy mobile ring tones that are shorter, sound worse and cost more than the original song, they very well might buy all these USB sticks.

Doesn't sound good for the environment, though. A big pile of USB sticks for landfill in the next few years?

It's economics, stupid!

It doesn't matter whether you are a gamer that prefers the PS3 or the Wii, what will drive overall success are economic factors.

As of now, the PS3 is screwed: both the Xbox360 and Wii have much larger user-bases. The PS3 is losing every month to the Wii by a factor of 3 or 4, and is close to the Xbox360.

If you're a games company accountant, which platform looks appealing? Hint: the biggest and lowest-cost-to-develop-for.

The PS3 is now stuck in a vicious-circle of low-sales, leading to less game development, leading to low-sales.

The only reason I see to get a PS3 is if you want Blue Ray with a few games and internet connectivity in one box. I've no idea if the PS3 is a good BD player - I'm assuming real AV geeks would prefer something different. That's not a compelling product from my point-of-view. Time will tell.

People are Sheep

I don't understand why people would queue up for any consumer gadget (iPhone) or console/computer game. I'd really like to see a write-up on this type of phenomena from a physiologist, because I find it bizarre.

It's not like these things are rare or rationed.

I don't know

€780 million is a fair chunk of money. Since Microsoft do now pay a dividend, just how much of a cash mountain do they have? I remember that is was around $40 billion a few years ago, but that was before the dividend.

The Consumer Pays?

So the buyer of software will have to pay more for Microsoft products? Does that mean that Vista Ultimate will cost even more that the stupifying amount of £399 (that's the RRP, though Amazon UK are selling for £320)?