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Eh... do a bit of googling. That clown is an admin at a site called ihateapple.com

http://www.ihateapple.com/forums/showprofile.aspx?forumid=3&user=Sycraft

I'd put any "memories" or "opinions" of his, with regard to Apple, somewhere between absurdly biased and complete bullshit.

Apple's business model seems to be working just fine.

Your suggestion that Steve Jobs used his wealth to obtain a liver through less than ethical means has been thoroughly debunked in the media and through UNOS.

If you want your rants to fall on more sym(pathetic) ears, might I suggest here.

If you want to read a well thought out and constructive rebuttle to this article, click here.

Everyone talks about us Mac zealots, and yet no one ever talks about the Anti-Mac zealots, and let me tell you there are a lot of them.

From a end-user support standpoint, this appears to a more critical bug due to the ease of use. Anyone can email someone a fake link that deletes their system folders. I'm not sure that Microsoft has addressed this in anyway. Maybe they don't know about it yet.

If link above goes down, here's the quoted text:

There has been a very serious flaw discovered in the "Help Center" included in Windows XP.

To try it out, do the following, but, BE WARNED. IT WILL LIKELY delete anything you put in the "test" directory.

Create a folder called "test" at the root directory of your hard drive. Put some files in it (junk, whatever, stuff you don't care about losing). YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED AGAIN!

Then, copy and paste the "link" below into any address bar and hit enter.

Wait a few seconds, then, check that directory again. Gone, gone, gone.

This is a HORRIBLE exploit because it can be a link in any web page and exploits a terrible flaw in the Windows Help Center included in XP.

hcp://system/DFS/uplddrvinfo.htm?file://c:\test\*

Ways to fix this issue:

Delete/rename the "uplddrvinfo.htm" file (located in C:\WINDOWS\PCHEALTH\HELPCTR\System\DFS).

Or, open it , find, and delete the following section of code:

var oFSO = new ActiveXObject ( "Scripting.FileSystemObject" ); try { oFSO.DeleteFile( sFile ); }

Or unregister the hcp protocol handler.

Deleting the section of code breaks the exploit (I have verified it myself) and it is highly recommended that anyone here using XP take steps to fix this because it won't be fixed until SP1 for XP comes out.

-Remember when some users got together and tried to make a theme creation app for the Mac?
Yeah, and there's lots of those kinds of apps still thirving. Just because a company has a right (and obligation to investors and employees) to protect their intellectual property in 'look and feel' does not mean they are an 'evil corporate dictatorship'

-Remember when Apple didn't want to let their users upgrade their machines?
No, and neither does anyone else because that buggy firmware update was fixed the same month. Save the conspiracy theories for /. story submissions, OK?

-Remember when some people made Apple parody sites?
Yeah, and like any popular company there's more hilarious parody sites than ever before.

-What happens when you want to upgrade your video card?
The same thing as what happens on the Wintel side of things: you go out and buy another from ATI, Matrox, an Nvidia card, whatever. There are fewer choices available to Mac owners, sure, but that's through no fault of Apple in trying to woo gfx card manufacturers.

The Mac user experience is highly customizeable; it's less so on the hardware side than software but since Apple has adopted many open standards like AGP ports, PCI busses, ATA HDs, USB & other interfaces, etc etc it is getting less and less 'dictatorial' yearly. Just buy a standard HD for instance and slap it in. By the way Y-Crate, have you ever actually used a Mac lately?

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggghh hhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I tried to point out reasons why Apple are a monopoly, without repeating something someone else posted. So I still have to come up with my own arguments then? Ok, then...

You can run Linux, [Open|Net|Free]BSD, BeOS, AtheOS, Solaris (yes, Solaris), Darwin and God-knows how many other OSen on an Intel box. Yet Microsoft are still the monopoly?

You can run Linux or NetBSD on a Mac. You can't run BeOS on it any more. Why? Because Apple stopped them. Isn't that monopolistic?

Apple control everything from the number of buttons on the mice, to the colour of the buttons on screen (Aqua Blue or Graphite - thats all folks!). They won't allow anyone else to manufacture compatible hardware, and (Linux and NetBSD notwithstanding, since they are open source) won't allow any operating system other than their own to run on said hardware. They tried to trademark the GUI! They did trademark the colours of the iMac. They lie about performance. They make SMP machines without an SMP-capable OS (this was before OSX). They try to make pure java programs run only on OSX. They have learned a bit from Microsoft too. They include apps to do everything in their OS. Quicktime, iTunes, burning CDs from Finder, and so on.

But, more than anything else, they copy ideas from elsewhere and convince their lusers that they invernted it. The most well-known example being the Wimp environment they stole/bought/begged from XeroX parc. DVD recording, USB (created by a working group headed by Intel) and Firewire (aka iLink, invented by Sony) were all allegedly invented by Apple.

Does this sound monopolistic?

I think we all need to give AOL praise for this recent action. Granted, we like to cry and moan when corporations trample our rights and give us the shaft, but we also need to make it known when we approve of what they do, in the hopes that they will keep doing those things that make us happy :)

Sure, there may be some self-serving interest at the heart of this matter, but such is the way of capitalism. If their greed and annoyance at having to constantly deal with these cases results in their requesting that the courts block some of these ridiculous suits, I'm all for it.
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The IHA Forums

But the big difference is that with AT&T, you really DIDN'T have any other choices!

With the Open Source movement, there are plenty of non-MS alternatives. No one is twisting your arm here. Even before Linux became the hot buzzword of the day, there were other alternative platforms and systems, some of which are still around today.

Microsoft may have used dirty business practices in promoting Internet Explorer, but I don't know anyone who would argue, in their right mind, that Netscape 4.x is better than IE 5.x; even NS6 doesn't have the polish and features that IE has.

I only hope that the rumors of IE being ported to Linux systems is true.... that would ease my pain and suffering when dealing with Linux machines quite a bit.
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The IHA Forums

Does anyone get angry that KDE distributes Konquerer free of charge? Nope.

Does anybody get mad that just about EVER Linux distro comes with Netscape preinstalled? Nope.

These are the exact SAME things. Browsing has become central to computing. I don't see anyone crying about Microsoft including a TCP/IP stack in Windows.... yet they put several companies out of business that made quite a bit of money selling IP stacks for Windows. The fact is that eventually voice control will become very important, and Microsoft will put several speech software vendors out of business when they make that a standard part of Windows (actually, Whistler will have a native, standard voice API and engine.)

I think many people just hate Microsoft so much, that they want this case to go forward, facts be damned.

If you don't like Microsoft, or their products, that's fine. But at least be honest and truthful. Don't try to manufacture reasons to get them.... let the market topple them on its own.
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The IHA Forums

You are confusing several things here.

the NT kernel provides an API, called the Executive. It is usually hidden from most programs, for portability reasons, as well as logistical reasons. The native set has less than 300 APIs... most of the legwork is done in the individual subsystems. Win32 is *NOT* a simple wrapper to the Native API set....

There are several "subsystems", each of which talks to the kernel in its native API. The Win32 subsystem is the most common, and the one that the shell is based on. You also have the Win16, DOS, and POSIX subsystems.

Why couldn't IBM port PM to NT? They could, quite easily. Any company can sign agreements to get access to the kernel code; Executive software did that on NT3.x b/c that version of the kernel lacked defrag APIs.... ES signed with MS and gained the rights not only to get the code, but to modify it and distribute an updated kernel patch.

As it stands, anyone can replace the standard Explorer shell with something else, written to the Win32 API, or any other API subsystem. The graphics interface is also overridable... just look at Stardock's Windowblinds. The latest Version 2.x series is super fast (I can't tell the difference between it and native), and has few compatibility issues (mostly with apps that draw their own borders or widgets.)

It would be quite possible to design a *nix compatible subsystem/API, and Microsoft sells just such a thing called Interix. Why there isn't an Open Source project for this purpose, I don't know. If I were better at C++, I might just take it up myself.
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The IHA Forums

You've made one misstatement, and that concerns what people like to call the "Microsoft tax." In fact, there is no such thing. The OEM process works like this:

OEM predicts they will sell 2 million PCs this next year. Microsoft says if you buy 2 million licenses, you can pay $x. OEM agrees and buys the licenses.

Now the kicker comes when you want to order that new PC w/o Windows... until the recent build-to-order crazy, most companies had no infrastructure for managing customizations very well.... all of their Hard Drives came preloaded with their software.
At any rate, they just take the cost they paid for those 2 million licenses and divy that up across all the PCs. This is just the standard they use for management simplicity, and is NOT SOMETHING ENFORCED BY MICROSOFT. ANY OEM IS FREE AND CLEAR TO SELL PCs WITHOUT ANY OS CHARGES WHATSOEVER. This has *always* been the case.

In effect, you are blaming Microsoft because the OEMs were too lazy to deal with shipping PCs with no (or alternative) OSes installed. Besides... before the most recent times, the overhead with that sort of thing would negate any additional profits... until Linux became a buzzword, nobody WANTED PCs without Windows.

If you don't wanna get a PC with any software preloaded, do what I do and build your own.
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The IHA Forums

I live in Texas, so I know a little bit about it. By "Oil Companies" I meant both the suppliers (exxon, mobil, etc) as well as the producers (opec, etc)

Gas was near $.80 a gallon here two summers ago... do you really think any of the CEOs were losing money? Do you think anyone in OPEC starved? Not likely.
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The IHA Forums

Actually, if the US government would axe the monopoly they have granted to today's communication companies, broadband would be much better off.

Out in front of my workplace runs a bunch of dark fibre. Southwestern Bell runs that fibre at about 10% capacity or less. We have another location across town. We would like to lease one of those dark fibre lines to connect us together. Will they let us? Nope. SWB won't let ANYONE, no matter how much money they offer, onto their fibre lines w/o going through their ancient frame-relay network, and they charge you an arm and a leg for it.

I know a guy who was working for a Houston company that is actually going to run new fibre lines on the telephone poles into EVERY home in that area. He worked measuring the distance between the poles so they would know how much cable to buy and plan for the installation.
The telcos and cable companies fought them TOOTH AND NAIL the ENTIRE WAY to stop this. Why? Because suddenly their government-granted monopoly went out the window.

There is another company in Dallas, featured here on slashdot a little while back, that is installing 100mbps links to various buildings around Dallas for like $1k per month, using fibre lines that they have laid underground.

It is high time compulsory sales of fibre lines is forced upon the telcos. If they won't bother to move, we should make them move. They are the problem. Bandwidth isn't scarce. There is no shortage of fibre or etherswitches. It is all an artificial constraint placed upon us because certain corporations are more concerned with an extra two cents per share than human progress. Same deal as oil companies: can they still make an insane profit if gas sells for $.80 per gallon? ABSOLUTELY. Why don't they? Because the CEO wants to line his pockets with another few million that he won't ever get to spend in his lifetime anyhow. That's why.

Capitalism isn't failing; our government has just herded us into a corporatist economy.
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The IHA Forums

I sincerly doubt that this type of system would pass the legality test in the United States. I can see this being taken all the way to the Supreme Court (possibly in a class-action suit). Importers could argue that they are illegally fixing prices by creating devices that won't function. Consumers could argue the devices are defective; they abided by all laws, paid their import dues, did everything correctly, yet their device won't work because it is in the wrong region.

We still have a few sane people left in our court system. I really don't fear it; let them introduce it, then we will take the bastards down in court and make a public example of them, and perhaps other corporations will take notice..... at least, that is my hope.


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The IHA Forums

I can't comment on Palm programming, although I've heard it is fairly easy.

However, I have downloaded the Visual Basic WinCE Dev kit, and it works quite well. Visual Basic, since version 5, has had the ability to compile to native x86 code. However, it still retains the p-code mode, which is very beneficial on PDA devices. You get this fairly complex program and it takes only a few K. It has a full emulation environment, where you can simulate different screens, etc.

If timothy finds VB too hard of a language to program in.... well..... Seek help ;)
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The IHA Forums

I don't know WTF was going on with /. earlier today (CmdrTaco ever hear of a SYSTEM STATUS PAGE?), but D*mmit that was annoying. I kept trying to log in and got randomly kicked to different pages, my viewing prefs started going nuts. It was complete and utter chaos. I really did feel as if the world were spinning out of control! Then I snapped out of it and clicked on another website :)

While Mozilla is looking better, I still don't feel that it is up to snuff. Our company is standardized on Netscape right now, but I figure we will move to Internet Explorer / Outlook soon. It is just taking way too long for us to consider keeping Netscape around. Of course, as the clients start making their way to the preverbial bit bucket, so will the Servers.... and guess who is gonna replace them? You guessed it: Microsoft.

If there are any open-source email servers that can interface with an LDAP directory service for authentication (like Active directory), I'd be quite interested in them. The biggest problem is we MUST have a calendar system, and to date I am not aware of any good open-source calendar systems that can auth to LDAP and have Windows clients available.
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The IHA Forums

The bottom line here is that we DONT KNOW what would happen if all closed-source were abolished. Can services-based development efforts generate the same levels of innovations and revenues that the current closed-source systems do? That is highly in doubt given the recent financial statements from many Linux vendors.

Personally, I say let's revise the copyright laws with a Consumer Bill of Rights, and reform the patent process.

This doesn't have to be an either-or situation; Open source and closed source both have their place, and will continue to co-exist for some time.
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The IHA Forums

Odd... my support incidents have been the exact opposite. The support engineer assigned to my case took the time to call from home, and was very frank with me. He even went so far as to request some changes in their network config so they could reproduce the exact situation we were seeing. We weren't charged a dime for the whole thing, and he still answers the occasional email question I toss his way.

I have been impressed with MS tech support. I suppose it just depends on who you actually get to talk to and how much of an ass they are (or aren't.)
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The IHA Forums

provided that the management isn't incompetent, of course Well that's the real rub isn't it? Most companies, once they reach a certain size, start carrying around management deadweight, and can't ever seem to get rid of it.
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The IHA Forums

What exactly is that post supposed to prove? You've done nothing but quote a few poorly translated scriptures out of context.

ex: Your first example: Nowhere does it say that A&E didn't have other children, nor does it say God didn't create other humans besides A&E.

The Bible shows people truthfully -- as human beings. At times, they are awesome people who do so much good.... at other times, those same individuals commit horrid acts. That pretty much sounds like most of the individuals I encounter every day.

You either accept or reject the Bible based on faith... just as you would Islam, Judaism, Humanism, or any other belief system. Stop pretending that you have somehow made sense of it all.
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The IHA Forums

OK, no problem :)

.NET compiles down to what is called "Microsoft Intermediary Language" or MSIL for short. It is a complete "virtualized" processor.... in other words, it is a complete virtual instruction set, and programs are compiled down to this assembly language. The difference between it and x86, is that MSIL is verifyable, whereas you can't ever be sure that next x86 instruction isn't going to wig out and screw something up.

When you install a program, the local .NET runtime automatically compiles it down to whatever your native processor is and writes that to disk. From then forward, you are running in your processor's native mode... not byte code interpretations.

Of course for applets over the web (replacements for ActiveX controls), there is also a JIT compiling option. This is also the method used to run ASP.NET scripts -- when they are uploaded, the system JITs them and then caches the compilation for later usage.
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The IHA Forums

You are incorrect.... many of the .NET classes are in fact written in C# (a .NET language)

Perhaps you should sign up for the beta or go read through the online docs.
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The IHA Forums

IPv6 won't come into real widespread use until a large number of machines can take advantage of it, which given the current OS marketshare means when Windows will support it. Fortunately, there is good news on that front. You can download the beta versions for NT/2000 from MS right now, but around the time Whistler is released, the STABLE release of IPv6 for all Win32 clients should be out and about... once there are lots of consumers that can take advantage of it, I think you will see many more people offering it..... of course, upgrading all those switches and routers is going to be a major PITA.
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The IHA Forums

• "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence."

If your concern is beating Windows, then you'd better hope they hurry really quickly, because Whistler will ship with native voice support built-in.... probably this year.

As for what that means performance-wise, I have no idea at this point. We'll just have to wait and see.
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The IHA Forums

The security systems in .NET are a lot more than just a sandbox.... you really should read up on how it all works. The thing is, there is no sense in just having all or nothing, ala Java's method. Plus, with .NET, unsafe programs can call safe libraries, because of the way the security system works, the runtime will prevent the trusted library from doing anything disallowed on behalf of the untrusted program.... for example, if the .NET Active X applet wants to write to disk, and calls a "safe" object to write to C:\WINNT, it will fail, even though the library it called has the authority to do so.

This is just a gross oversimplification. I encourage anyone interested to seriously check out the docs.

Also, something I forgot to mention in my first message was web services. This allows you to expose and easily call services over the web as easily as one can take advantag of COM today. A lot of the COM "goo" is gone, making things generally easier on the programmer. But I don't have enough space here to do that subject justice.

The bottom line is the same for .NET as it always has been for Windows vs theWorld: With Microsoft, you get one cohesive package that flows well and works together giving you everything you need with awesome developer tools. With other solutions, you've got to piece together 20 different packages by 10 different vendors and hope it all works together, not to mention that in general, the development tools suck, or don't work together well. That is why Microsoft will win: IT managers want to cut a single check and get everything they need to make the whole system work in one box.
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The IHA Forums

As a beta tester, I think I have a bit of authority on the subject :)

They are doing a number of things that will make .NET more successful than JAVA, such as:

1. Any Language. The .NET platform doesn't limit you in language choice... you can use C#, VB, Perl, or any one of the other 15 or so supported languages. Plus, the architecture is extensible, so support for additional languages can be plugged into Visual Studio with ease. I know the Java bytecode isn't tied to Java the language, but realistically, that's the way Sun as limited it.

2. Native execution. There are two options for compilation. The first, JIT, would be used on servers and such where users upload scripts and similar items. On first run, they are compiled into NATIVE x86 code (assuming you are on an x86 processor). The other option is mostly for desktop apps: when the app is first installed, the built-in MSIL compiler reads the MSIL on the CD and writes native x86 code that is fully optimized for the processor on which you are installing... so years down the road when the Pentium-6 is out, and you install that program, it will be fully optimized for the Pentium-6.

3. Cross-platform. Let's just say that more than Win32, MacOS, and WinCE are on the roadmap for the Common Language Runtime. More will be revealed with this in time.

4. Security. Native x86 code is unverifiable.... you cannot guarantee that the code won't do something stupid and overwrite its own memory or deref an invalid pointer. But the MSIL is verifiable.... the system can cast all the calls it makes against its security context. This allows apps downloaded off the web to be executed, knowing that even though they are compiled down to native code from MSIL, they aren't going to do anything funky behind your back. It also gives admins in a corporation complete control. There is a lot to the security subsystem, so I suggest you read up on it for yourself.

5. ASP Enhancements: First of all, IIS/ASP.NET will monitor all the processes and components... if there is a memory or resource leak detected (or a timer expires), it will spawn a new process and start funneling all new sessions to that process... when the last session to the old process closes, it will be terminated and the resources reclaimed.

6. More on ASP: Secondly, when you write an ASP app from Visual Studio, you design the forms and such in a RAD environment using an event-driven model (think VB). However, the server automatically cast the forms down to the highest HTML that the browser supports.... visit the page with IE 6 and you won't be able to tell the difference between it and a regular app. Visit it with Netscape 3, and you'll see a regular static page. The difference here is that the programmer doesn't have to worry about it.

7. Distribution. With desktop apps, an x-copy will actually suffice as the install routine. All apps install their custom components into their own dirs. The system repository tracks all versions of all DLLS installed, and automatically produces the proper version for the proper app at launch time. No more DLL hell.

These are just some of the improvements. As far as stability goes, the pre-alpha version of .NET ran as an ASP service on a test website for 52 days before the auto-detection kicked in and spawned a new process. Since that time it ran up until beta 1, at which time it was shut down to update it. One such test website is Ibuyspy.com

For those who automatically blast it just because it is from Microsoft, get ready to be steamrolled just like everyone else was when MS took over the world with Win3.1/95. For the rest of you, read up on the MS documents. There is a lot of good stuff in there.
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The IHA Forums

BTW--anyone else notice that it is no longer the Budwieser blimp, it's the Budwieser.com blimp. I think they missed that bandwagon by a year.

LOL... more proof that humans have this knack for restating the obvious. For example: (refer to 'Hitchhiker's Guide')

"It's a nice day outside."

"You are very tall."

"WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!!!!1"
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The IHA Forums

You once said that you had to learn Windows NT because you couldn't criticize what you didn't know. What I'd like to know (as a primarily Windows programmer) is what do you consider to be the best and worst parts of both the Windows NT/2000 model and the UNIX model. What advice can you give? Also, has working on the UWIN project given you any insights that you can share with the rest of the community?
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The IHA Forums

Well, in terms of the whole year, the server hasn't been up for a whole year, so that number could change. It was installed, service pack 1 and all patches were applied, and now the box runs and hasn't been rebooted since.

It isn't a web server, so there isn't much need to patch all the IIS issues -- its not running IIS.

Now as I stated above, after we put it on the web server, we shall see how it goes. I'm keeping an open mind.
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The IHA Forums

Tounge in cheek man... Don't take it to seriously. It isn't my site anyway, I just do some programming work for it.
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The IHA Forums

Could you please provide details of this so that others can verify it? I have navigator and ie here at work and I haven't noticed what you are describing.... if it is true, it is a very serious accusation.
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The IHA Forums

I think a lot of that results from people who are used to NT4 and having to reboot regularly.... or crappily written components being run in-process instead of pooled or out-of-process.

Personally, our one current Windows 2000 server has had 99.999% uptime easily. We are getting ready to deploy it to our webserver, so we'll see how it goes.

We are also deploying it to our whole enterprise to replace Netware 4.11; we looked at Linux, but it doesn't have a real enterprise directory service or the type of ACL control that we need. Running NDS for Linux wasn't an option, because we wanted to get the bastardized crappy Novell client off our workstations.


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The IHA Forums

If you want Slashdot to be taken as seriously as print media, you are going to have to drop the "holy war" stance. Microsoft plays a very important part in the computing industry, and they have the 3rd largest website in the world.

Perhaps even more important is the fact that if some fool can corrupt DNS and take Yahoo and Microsoft offline, they can take anybody offline. The DNS system needs to be fixed, but with your snide comments about Microsoft the focus of that issue is lost.

I might add that I do in fact use Windows 2000 because it is stable (2 BSODs since Dec. 1999) and supports everything I need. Many people that use Linux do so because it fits their specific needs, and that's great. But I get the feeling from some of the /. staff that they only use Linux to spite Microsoft. I say use what works best for you.


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The IHA Forums

But it still doesn't have foreign key support, transactions, true stored procedures with views, a variety of integrity checks, etc....

I would *never* consider running anything that needs 100% data safety on MySQL.... There are other open-source alternatives, or for those with open minds (and pocketbooks), closed-source databases. Each of which have much better features and support.
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The IHA Forums

Also have a haters page where people that don't like your interface/ideas/code/moderation can have all their flames posted for other people to laugh at. (slash dot needs this badly)

Now this is one thing that bugs me about the current attitudes in the OpenSource movement... if it is ever going to gain wide-spread acceptance, this "only my opinion counts" kinda stuff has got to go. If a lot of people start pointing out where they see faults and issues, don't dismiss them as idiots. Remember: those same idiots are the ones who make IT purchasing decisions and buy computers at the local ChumpUSA.... the world isn't full of geeks; they don't care what kernel you are using. They just want the pretty colors and funky screensavers on their new PC. So while improved UIs and flashy graphics don't do anything to help the geeks, they do serve a very useful function that shouldn't be taken lightly.

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The IHA Forums

it is about time someone with the power to do so is taking on ICANN. For all their fluff about being open and listening to the people, they are really pandering to the corporations with the biggest pocketbooks.
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The IHA Forums

If this were a Microsoft product, many slashdot readers would start saying "This is what you get" and "M$ sucks!"

In reality, most security issues with Windows are of the same ilk: Admins that haven't a clue as to what they are doing and manage to fsck everything up and leave holes wide open.

Next time you read about some hole in Windows, or are tempted to say something smug about Windows 2000 security: Just remember this.... Nobody likes a smart ass, especially a hypocritical one :)


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The IHA Forums

Well, first of all this is an issue with site designers. I write ASP code quite fluently, and it doesn't take much effort to ensure you are compatible with most browsers out there, as the ASP is executed server-side and only HTML is tossed back to the clients. Just a case of poor programming on the website.

Contrary to popular opinion, Microsoft is actually going to be very proactive in this area with the upcoming ASP.NET. Now we can go over all the nice features like native x86 compilation of scripts, support for just about any lanauge (PHP, perl, etc. included), and more, but the real feature has to do with the new development environment in Visual Studio.NET:

Basically, when I design a website on VS.NET, I just create it like I would a normal Windows application. I just drag & drop controls, position text, and do everything else I want to with the same ease that RAD tool developers have now. Then, I double-click a button for example and start adding code to that button. Let's say that button will cause a piece of text to be rotated 90 degrees ok? Just because I happen to like Perl, I'll write that one in perl. Now what happens when someone with IE5 or NS6 views the site? fully interactive DHTML.

But what if you are using Netscape 4? or IE2? Or another browser that doesn't have Javascript or DHTML support? No problem either. "HOW???" you say? Easy: The server automatically casts the forms down to the level of HTML & such that the client supports. That's right: I don't have to program custom IE and NS tags or screw with viewing the page in every single browser. The server takes care of that for me.

BTW: I can't say much on what platforms will be able to run ASP.NET in terms of hosting, other than to say that the list of alternate platforms that will have the .NET compact runtime includes more than MacOS or Windows CE.


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The IHA Forums

Actually, when the bad guys assume someone else's body, they person is lost and therefore "flushed" from the system. So each time you see them assume someone's "body" they are killing that person.
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The IHA Forums

It is very simple: DVD lasers are on slightly different wavelengths. But if you use pressed CDs or phthalocyanine-on-gold CD-Rs, you won't have any problems. The "GOLD" discs have higher reflectivity, and therefore can be "read" by a much wider range of lasers.
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The IHA Forums

Typical European... always barging in telling us how to run our country.... Did you people want to lift a hand to create the internet in the first place? Noooo.... but now that the Internet is the greatest thing since sliced bread you wanna take control.
GRASSHOPPERS I TELL YOU! GRASSHOPPERS!

(just kidding)
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The IHA Forums

Actually since we created the .NET and we control most of the servers and pipes, we get to make the rules.

Personally, I welcome the government's inquiries... I hope they dissolve ICANN or restructure it. It has served no other purpose than to promote the interests of those with the most $$, in the same way that the WTO has decided to hand out previously legally owned domain names to any corporation with a few $$.
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The IHA Forums

Now would be a prime time for GE and other companies to release their home power generation systems. They all work a bit differently, but the basic concept is that you slap this air-conditioner sized box in your garage, hook it up to some supply (hydrogen, propane, natural gas, etc...). The box runs the supply through the fuel cells and produces power for your home.

Definitely the wave of the future.


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The IHA Forums

From what I see by the submitter, he seems to think that any time a reporter praises something about Windows and/or derieds a *nix variant, that the reporter in question must be paid by Microsoft.

The reality is, in my opinion, that the free software movement must learn to accept that is GOOD about other platforms, which includes Windows, and take people's criticisms to heart. If people are complaining that Linux doesn't have "FEATURE-X", in many cases energy would be better spend developing something similar (and hopefully, though not always, better) than in trying to tell people why "FEATURE-X" sucks or isn't relevant. (Granted, in some cases that mindset is appropriate.)

Anyhow, those are just my musings.
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The IHA Forums

I saw this in a magazine over six months ago. Quite an old story.

All the bot can do is roll around until its battery runs out, then you feed it more sugar. It sits there for a few hours charging on the sugar, then rolls some more.

All in all, not really much in the way of a threat, but a pretty neat idea. As for flesh-eating robots bent on human destruction taking over the earth one day, I seriously doubt it. That would require some pretty good intelligence, and I just don't know if we would ever come that close.
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The IHA Forums

Finally, someone who is starting to grasp the point! You see, what Microsoft is doing now is the same thing they did with DOS, and Windows 3.x, and Windows 9x, and most recently with activeX/COM. What are 90% of the world's components written in? COM. What OS runs 90% of the world's computers? Windows.

Do you honestly think Apple, IBM, or anyone else saw what was coming down the road? The same arguments that have been used against .NET were used against previous Microsoft movements, and this one is no different. They are getting ready to pull the rug out from under everyone and usher in a new era, and nobody here can see beyond the idea of renting applications (which is not what .NET is about).

I would seriously ask everyone to reconsider what they think they know about .NET and examine it based on the code and apps that have already been released, and what Microsoft has said about it.

You can see more info at http://www.microsoft.com/net/

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The IHA Forums

True... this is one area where Linux will have to improve greatly before we would ever consider it for our NOS. We are currently looking at upgrading from Novell 4.11 to either Netware 5.1 or Windows 2000. We need a good directory service, and fine-grained file permissions.
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The IHA Forums

You are right about the 64,000 figure, but wrong about the serious ones. Windows 2000 shipped with *NO* "Showstopper" bugs listed in the database.

After the shipment, the programmers went back and reviewed the 64,000 bugs and immediately eliminated 25,000 of them as previously fixed, which is where I think you get that figure from. The rest of the issues were either a) simple things, like the word "microsoft" not being capitalized.... a button in the wrong place.... etc. Nothing that would cause a crash or prevent you from using a feature, or b) issues with specific hardware.

Whether you like Microsoft or not, I haven't had any major crashes on Windows 2000 with this machine, other than a beta driver which happened twice. I've used it as my primary since December of 1999, since I was a beta tester.

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The IHA Forums

Actually in September we may have Windows 2001, Pentum-4's at 2GHz, and a 64-bit x86 chip from AMD.... as well as a new revision of the Linux kernel, VisualStudio.NET final (or at least the last RC), and probably hundreds of new KDE themes :)
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The IHA Forums