Lets go digital... and follow the US model???

Hahaha I couldn't help but laugh when I read this article (http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=15368). Basically it tells about the problems the Americans are currently having, in their quest to digitise their TV broadcasts. 

Now that leaves us with our own plans... SA good news posted this article back in 2008, while I applaud their positive attitude, do we really think that R700 per set-top box is going to drive the general public to go digital? And even with the subsidy is there really a chance of a family pooling their weekly wages for a set-top box. Hell R210 is still a lot of money, and can easily feed many mouths for the week.

Also the fact that the US spent much effort in advertising and education of the general populace, here in SA there has been NONE/NADA/NIKS. I guarrantee you, that the majority of consumers if asked about a digital signal will look at you blankly, and this is not taking into account those that are less knowledgable about technology.

But to leave Telkom out of this equation would be to miss an oppurtunity to slate them for any reason ;)
Surely, some blame, can be laid at the feet of this anti-progressive company, that is only interested in their own profit margin? If the back bone of SA communication was better and we had a half decent international internet connection SA would have the privilege of having pay per view internet shows or the likes. This would have at least made people more aware of a form of digital broadcasting, without lag. But alas we don't. Most of the time even utube suffers to my house. oooh it must be because I live in an established area and the copper wires haven't been upgraded in a while, which is causing your connection to suffer. No seriously that is the excuses I been given in the past. Even with the 'new' upgrades its no better and way to expensive to be called a service, Extortion more like it.

But in any case I digress... a lot... I just hope in short, that the SA government gets its act together and move on this digital advancement path it has embarked on. Learn a lesson from the Americans and lets do it better. PLEASE!!!!!

Finally its pretty sad that wikipedia is like the de-facto go to place to get information about your own countries plans...

JavaFX is so cool, or rather it would be...

Finding something to rant about is not always easy so, having two things come to mind in one week is like so cool!!!
Being a semi-decent type of developer, thus being lazy by definition, I like to find tools that help me achieve my goals quickly. Thus my new found fascination with MIDp development lead me to find/investigate easy form builders and the likes. After speaking to colleagues and the likes, I was pretty much sold on the idea of using JavaFX, as the easy, and what was going to be the time saver that I was looking for.
Some quick background... I hate GUI's and the inane bugs that users log with regards to them. Labels are labels and if I put them in THAT place on the page, then it belongs there!!!
So anyway I started reading about it, and found indeed it was what I wanted to use. Only to click over to my current favourite IDE download centre, ala netbeans.org and find that there is NO Linux version!!! Thinking this was a bit of a mistake I searched and googled(same thing) for the answer, only to find that Sun, has not even released a version for Solaris! What utter nonsense, they release a toolkit for Mac first, an OS that is generally 6 months behind the normal release cycle. Crap, crap and more crap.
Sure they are now saying that a release is imminent, but do they realise, that they are treating us like Mac users now, and this surely is not right. We live in the same family, as far as OS's go.

Abandoning us for the likes of Windows and Mac is like selling yur soul... ooooh wait they did... to Oracle... oh well I see there is no point in carrying on with this rant anymore, it just makes sense now.

Oracle gets one over Sun

Ok Ok so this is a little late to enter this fray.
But I seriously don't know if I'm all that thrilled with Oracle bailing out Sun.

What will become of Netbeans for one. Having used Eclipse for a while and abandoning Netbeans a while back. Due to performance issues, I have found myself using Netbeans more and more frequently since the beginning of last year again. As much as I would like to prefer eclipse, netbeans is just mmm so ... mmm... is smooth, the right way to describe it?

And what about the beloved GlassFish??? will the water be sucked out of the bowl and tipped into another lame application server that Oracle has acquired down the line? Only time will tell, I guess.

Is Java doomed to be released as a pure open source project with no guiding hand? Am I missing the link to dedicated funds for a project and a project that is only part of a community effort?
Don't get me wrong, I love Linux and use it at home and work, but to see the painful progress of our beloved OS onto the desktop, smacks of lack of funding and interest in things that the so-called every day user needs and wants. Are we all doomed to start writing code in *gasp* silverlight, flex or heaven forbid .net???? I'd rather be a pair of panty hose on a drainpipe keeping the rain from leeking into the house. Yes indeed I said it, I'd much rather go back to writing PERL applications anyday, over those other alternatives.

So lets hope, for hopes sake, that this acquisition is not the end all, of all that we hold dear. (was that too many alls in that sentence or what!!!)