Not politics but organisational technology and its ramifications get discussed heavily on this site.
James Gosling wrote:
As several people have noticed at my talks over the past few months, I no longer carry a Mac laptop. As much as I love the Mac's eye candy, it really hasn't been keeping up as a developer's machine - their attention has clearly been elsewhere.
I agree. I have an iBook G4 which is several years old now and has done good service. It has travelled across three continents with me. Its frame is bent, it has no paint on many of the keys and has cracks in the plastic. It is a useful machine - except for development. I am stuck in Java 1.4 and I had all sorts of issues getting Python 2.5 on it. This means I cannot run Eclipse 3.2 either. Windows and Linux are far more reliable as development machines and environments because tools will be built for them no matter how old the operating system. Apple obsoletes what it supports very quickly in computing technology terms.
This now means I will take that into account when making purchases. It will also mean that I will be keeping a Windows/Linux machine around no matter what. OSX is a wonderful operating system but Apple has chosen to make technologies and their support specific to their operating system versions. Which is fine. It is their choice, however it impacts me in how long I can use the machine as a development environment. Something which is important to me.
Despite OSX being the best operating system around at the moment there are trade offs. The single vendor issue being one. Another is that Safari is not particularly good, it is inferior to Firefox, though both put memory pressures on the G4s. I have found that each new update makes my laptop run significantly slower. Especially Safari. Which is disappointing.
The upshot is that there is no one winner in the operating system wars and I cannot choose a single environment. I suspect that may always be the case and despite the inanities in Windows and the haphazard support for new devices in Linux, I will end up running all three at any one time.
Rusty Elliote Harald records
Wilhelm Fitzpatrick writing on the java-dev mailing list:
There's a Java oriented software conference called No Fluff Just Stuff that's been going on for the past six years. When I first started going, I was one of the only guys carrying a Mac. Over the last couple years, Macs have sprung up like weeds, and more importantly, nearly all the presenters were carrying them.
This year, the Mac were still there, but the first thing most presenters did was fire up Parallels and flip over to XP/Vista or Linux. That's not going to sell many Macs when they are just being used as stylish Windows machines...
I need to replace my iBook and the best laptops going are Apples. I will be getting a Macbook, at least it will get me up to date with the Java and Python development environments - for the next couple of years anyway. It will be interesting to see when OSX doesn't become worth it to me and the trade offs to large for me to purchase an Apple laptop. I certainly won't be purchasing an Apple desktop; that will be the domain of Windows/Linux for the foreseeable future.
Most Popular on South Sea Republic
The articles that have been viewed the most:
Most Popular Restaurants in Phoenix
Phoenix Eats Out is the restaurant review site for
Phoenix,
Scottsdale and
Old Town Scottsdale which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants, taverns and bars in the greater Phoenix area.
This is the list of the most popular restaurants pages from phoenixeatsout.com that have been viewed the most;
My personal favourite restaurants in Phoenix are
AZ88,
Postinos,
Bomberos with
Grazie,
Humble Pie,
Orange Table,
The Vig,
Fez and others coming close behind. View the complete list with the photo-journalistic style images on
phoenixeatsout.com
Most Popular Hikes in Arizona
Arizona is an outdoor state and has lots of hiking in the city and around the state. Phoenix is unusual for most cities in having several large mountains in the center of the city with great hiking. Anyone who comes to Phoenix has to do the
Echo Canyon trail on Camelback and the
Summit Hike on Squaw Peak or Piesta Peak. The views of the city, suburbs and surrounding mountains are wonderful from Camelback and Piesta Peak.
For more experienced hikers there is the McDowell Mountains in North Scottsdale that has several difficult and strenuous hikes in
Tom's Thumb and
Bell Pass. Alternatively, you can hike the highest mountain in Arizona. At 12,600 feet
Humphrey's Peak is a long and difficult hike.
Alternate Australian Constitutions
Between 2004 and 2009 this site,
southsearepublic.org, was a constitutional blog based on scoop which focused on Australian and global constitutional issues.
One of the strongest aspects of it was the development of constitutions by those involved in the blog. These constitutions are the outcome:
The constitutions were built using principles from Montesquieu's separation of powers, the enlightnment's universal political rights and the ancient Athenian technology of sortition and choice by lot.
Archives For South Sea Republic
South Sea Republic started in 2004 as an Australian constitutional blog in 2004 based on scoop software. It was an immigrative outgrowth of Kuro5hin. The archives for each year since then;
The articles are ordered by views.
Who Is Cam Riley
I am an Australian living in the United States as a permanent resident.
I am a software developer by trade and mostly work in Java and jump between middleware and front end.
I originally worked in the New York area of the United States in telecommunications before moving to Washington DC and
working in a mix of telecommunications, energy and ITS. I started my own software company before heading out to
Arizona and working with Shutterfly. Since then I have joined a startup in the Phoenix area and am thoroughly enjoying myself.
I do a lot of photography which I post on this website, but also on flickr. I have a photo-journalistic website which lists
the modernist and contemporary restaurants in phoenix. I have a site on the
Australian Flying Corps [AFC] which has been around since the 1990s and which I unfortunately
lost the .org URL to during a life event; however, it is under the
www.australianflyingcorps.com URL now.
The AFC website has gone through several iterations since the 90s and the two most recent are
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2004-2002) and
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2002-1999) which are good places to start.
Websites Worth Reading
Websites of friends, colleagues and of interest;
