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Lots of .NET stories in the news today and yesterday; it's a total coincidence that Microsoft started a huge marketing push on Wednesday, including the occasional Doubleclick ad running on Slashdot. BrendanL79 writes: "Peter Wright at Salon.com contributes to public awareness of Microsoft's .NET with this exuberant piece. The praise borders on sycophancy ("Gutenberg ... Babbage ... now Gates") with no apparent tongue in his cheek. Comments?" Reader vw writes: "Active State has just released Visual Perl 1.2, Visual Python 1.2, and Visual XSLT 1.2 as plugins for Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET. Wonder how long it will take for a Mono hack." Numerous readers pointed to several stories about a buffer overflow problem in Visual Studio .NET which was supposed to be immune to buffer overflows - but it had passed Microsoft's stringent new security audit.
I'm a little surprised with the article's tone, especially coming from Salon. While reading this article I'm reminded of marketing drivel coming directly from Redmond itself. This is not a news story, it's just straight-out gushing and it's the disgusting type of a "article" I'd expect from a heavily sponsored e-rag like ZDNET. Frankly, I will never look at Salon the same way.
----- rL
I would like to know the answer to that as well. I went looking for Visual Python earlier today and there's zero info (that I could find at any rate) on Active State's site on interoperability with the other Python implementations (cPython and Jython mostly). No word on the standard library (that has a few C extensions; how will those be managed in .NET?) or win32all and the Python-COM bindings.
As a python fan I had high hopes that Python would be the only language to bridge the JVM-CLR religious war and allow you to work in both.
It seems that ActiveState is just plugging in Python to VS, not compiling python to IL.
What does this mean exactly?: "Microsoft apparently adopted a technique for improving its compiler that has been used with the Linux operating system and shown to be vulnerable to attack." It's been in every article about the compiler vulnerability, and offers no information except to suggest that the problem originates in Linux. WTF?
I heard Steve Ballmer speak Tuesday night in Chicago at the VisulaStudio.net kickoff. In response to an audience question about the Mono project he said two things. "First, we're not afraid of competition. Second, we're not used to competing with our own intellectual property and we will defend ourselves. So I guess you could say I don't think very much of it."
:-)
I put this in quotes but I'm paraphrasing based on my best recollection. I gotta give him credit for being accessible and for answering questions. Still can't help hating him, though.
Take off the tin foil hat for a second, would ya?
How long did it take for Microsoft to dominate the desktop market? They released Windows 1.0 a long time before OS/2 fell off the competitive map.
Microsofts domination kinda snuck up on everyone, since the IT industry assumed that there would allways be a company to compete with Bill&Co in the OS/Office Productivity space. This time, no such assumptions will be made. If they actually get something like this off the ground, there will be lots of people (Miguel) making great things that compete with Microsoft's offerings by the time it gets pervasive enough.
I'd suggest you take this for what it is at a base level - something that could be useful and cool. Remember, it is possible to enter a cage with a dangerous beast, as long as you know what to expect and how to counter it's natural responses.
IMHO, it's time to accept Microsoft as an industry leader. You just have to think of them in the same way that you do a clueless PHB.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Please post a link, possibly one from Microsoft.com that explains what .net is. I failed to find it a few months ago. All i found was buzz and stuff you could buy. Some link that is useful for a developer beyond "XML and VB and can do everything and more productive. "
hmm, might be a good one for ask slashdot.
This is real. This is not a hoax. This was just launched by IBM. Reeks of desperation, and follows the typical methodology of MS's competitors: attack, attack, attack and then attack some more.
.NET strategy.
.NET strategy
Take Out Microsoft Campaign is part of Crush the Competition Series
developed and delivered by the Americas Software Marketing team. It is
designed to equip you with sales and marketing tools to deliver an
end-to-end IBM proposal to take out Microsoft and its
Participate and engage your customers in our marketing activities to move
them through the sales cycle.
Use the Take out Microsoft Campaign to build your pipeline and close sales
for 2002!
Customer Communication
Please note that our customer communications do not mention Microsoft but
rather focus on IBM's messaging, products and solutions. The Take out
Microsoft title is internal only!
Upon registering your customers (see instructions below), they will receive
the attached letter which focuses on the benefits and differentiators of
the IBM Software Strategy and encourages them to visit the customer Web
site and register their interest to engage with an IBM IT architect. View
the customer Web site at http://www.ibm.com/software/solutions/swstrategy
(See attached file: Final Take out MS Customer Invite.lwp)
Customer Registration - How it works:
Visit http://www6.software.ibm.com/crushmicrosoft and register your
customer
Your customer will receive a letter that talks about IBM's SW Strategy
value
The marketing team will immediately send the letter to customers and
entice them to visit the
Take Out Microsoft Customer Web site
Customers will have the opportunity to visit the Take out Microsoft
Customer Web site and
register his/her interest to talk to an IBM architect/representative
Marketing team will pass the request on to the sales person who
originally registered the customer *
The sales person is responsible for following up with the customer and
ensuring that they
connect an IT Architect with the customer
* Please be aware, that sales will be launched leads under an S1 status
because they have not been
BANT qualified by a Lead Development Representative (LDR). As you nurture
the lead, please
progress the lead into status S2.
This campaign is another crucial step to CRUSHING our competition and
positioning IBM as the leading software company. Microsoft's
directly competes with the IBM SW Strategy. The "Take out Microsoft"
campaign will address the leading value of our strategy.
Be at the forefront and take advantage of this campaign to close new
business!
Anita Orphanidou
Marketing Manager, Americas Enterprise SW Marketing
tel: (905) 316-2732 tie line: 886-2732
e-mail: aorphani@ca.ibm.com notes: Anita Orphanidou/Markham/IBM
Fax : 905 316-3699
Mailing Address:
IBM Canada Ltd.
3600 Steeles Avenue East
Markham, Ontario, L3R 9Z7
Canada
In my vision of computers, they are mere tools
to use for other ends, not ends in themselves,
even though I pay my bills because of my understanding of computers. I certainly do not want to become a slave to a stinking computer which is the gates vision of computers. Net is
stupid because it tries to integrate a bunch of useless technologies into a large useless mass of donothingness-all making him money.
I think the average Salon reader is not the kind of reader who takes things at face value. I think the editors know it too. Look at it as a subtle editorial troll, designed to provoke an outraged response. Which it has.
.Net titles for Apress slated for release later this year.
.Net, the Internet will be transformed from a complex, un-standardized mishmash of awkward static views of data to a dynamic pool of data connected by a true web of Web services all working together to make your life easier.
.NET, however. It seems that the people most excited about it are the VB types. .NET will probably end up displacing VB, not Java. Personally, I think James Gosling has a pretty good take on Java vs. .NET. After all, he invented both. :)
I don't think you can discount it so easily:
About the writer
Peter Wright is a software consultant and the author of numerous books on Visual Basic programming. He is currently working on two
Have you read some of these quotes?
Bill Gates has already changed the face of the world as we know it, but his magnum opus has yet to be fully appreciated. On Wednesday, Microsoft unveiled Bill's greater masterpiece -- in the guise of the Visual Studio.Net development tools suite.
It would be easy to dismiss this as just another Microsoft product launch, just another example of the Redmond behemoth rolling ever onward in its quest to gain enough funds to brand a continent. Don't. Visual Studio.Net will have as profound an effect on the way that we live our lives as the labors of love Babbage and Gutenberg gave us. To dismiss Visual Studio.Net and the technology it encompasses is to go back in time and dismiss Henry Ford's automobile as a passing fad.
[several pages of excited babbling deleted]
As developers move to embrace
.Net marks the dawn of the third age of computing -- embrace it.
It reminded me of Will Ferrell's Actor's Studio sketch as well. ".Net is such a masterpiece that there are no words to describe it- so I will make one up: Scrumtrilescent."
I guess if you've been stuck with Visual Basic for the past several years, an MS ripoff of Java would look pretty interesting. I doubt that Java programmers are going to flock to
I thought about this, but two things make it hard for me to dismiss it as just a troll:
I want to dismiss it as a troll. If there was any type of framing by the usual staff, or it was within a week of April 1st I wouldn't give it a second thought.
But now I keep coming back to the fact that the Microsoft PR machine can link to this seemingly glowing comment in "Linux friendly" Salon. We may know it's totally out of character, but a PHB concerned about Hailstorm or
That makes me wonder if I've been playing the fool on other stories. Salon has been valuable precisely because the articles often surprise me, but it's precisely because I'm not knowledgeable about those topics that I'll mistake a 'wink, wink, nudge, nudge' troll for a serious piece.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Maury Markowitz wrote:
.NET has been done
.net will be one of the most used systems out there.
;) and happy customers that come back for more. That is a far cry from Microsoft's bid for world domination: Millenium.Net. Apple gives me hope that the computer industry can have a bright future. ;)
:b
> Once again I find myself ashamed to be a part of an industry that can't
> remember anything five years into the past.
> before, many times. The only news here is the hype, as always.
>
> Let's see, unified runtime, libraries of code with multiple versions,
> simplified networked object support, standardized metadata...
>
> OpenStep circa 1995.
You can go back even farther than that. OpenStep was based on NeXT, which was created by Steve Jobs in 1989. In 1990, it was used to create the world's first web server and client. NeXT was the cradle of the web itself! (http://www.netvalley.com/intvalnext.html)
> And years later no one is using OS (mostly), whereas I'm sure five
> years from now
> That's the power of marketting. Look how well it worked on the droid
> on Salon.
The plists are in XML now, but NeXT lives on in its beautiful child: Mac OS X. In fact, the new G4 iMacs running OS X are the only desktop computers on the planet that can be said to be "selling like hotcakes".
Apple is still selling WebObjects, only at $699 instead of $50,000. OS X ships with the Apache web server included. OS X is the best Java 2 desktop, with a full set of J2SE development tools in the OS X boxed version or as a free download or for $20 FedEx shipping. J2EE tools are readily available in open source or commercial form. If you don't care about portability, you can rapidly create a Cocoa front end on your application, and use any J2SE or J2EE classes on the back end to create a native compiled application with all the power of Java. If you are careful to separate the GUI classes from the rest, you can use the RAD Cocoa front end for prototyping, and replace it with a Swing front end after the back end is tested.
Apple's big goal in life right now is 10% of the market (probably with 20% coming after that
Microsoft? Well they mostly give me the urge to loose my lunch.
On December 14, 1996, Mothra resurrected an apple tree.
On December 14, 2001, she returned to see its fruit:
OS X, the Apple of Mothra's Aqua eye.
I don't think sun is laying or hiding things from us; 1. It's not an 'unsafe' mode like in the CLR, it apears to be just a wrapper around some JNI calls. It's not the same thing.
2. It may be undocumented but you can do the exact same thing with the documented java.nio.ByteBuffer
3. It's not that 'unsafe' you can only access bytes in memory you have allocated yourself
When you go to the activestate site and look under more betas you will find perl for asp.net, .net version of perl.
.NET as it does outside
.NET applications using .NET components
.NET components
.NET components written in Perl
.NET component with Perl "
l NE T/)
.NET compiler is written using CPython. It compiles Python source code, and uses the .NET Reflection::Emit library to generate a .NET assembly."
.NET is the performance of both the compiler and the runtime. The speed of the runtime must be the more critical issue, as the fastest compiler in the world would not be used if the generated code is too slow to be useful."
h on _whitepaper.doc) sorry word-doc.
which seems to be a
they say on the web-site:
"PerlNET provides the following functionality:
Perl code runs at the same speed within
All extension modules, including the ones using XS code, are supported
PerlNET code is completely compatible with the standard Perl language, including the string form of eval and the runtime use of require
Features
Create
Wrap existing Perl modules into
Create new
Extend existing
(http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Downloads/Per
It seems that they really have done it !
python.net seems to be in a pre-alpha stage, as they say here:
"The Python for
and further:
"Probably the biggest single issue with Python for
(http://www.activestate.com/Initiatives/NET/Pyt
But it is only a matter of time that a python.net will exist.
I reported the Salon piece because I didn't notice it linked with all of these others. It REALLY should be on it's own story - I am simply amazed Salon let this through.
.Net when it comes it's current overly marketed and under explained status.
.Net is great, fine. ArsTechnica did a great job of explaining it's strengths, I thought. This is nothing but fluff, and poorly written fluff as well.
/. for absent mindly submitting already posted news :( )
This isn't an anti-MS thing. That piece is some of the worst writing I've seen on a professional site in years, if not ever, on the web. It overly glorifies hyped up marketing concepts without going into any real details. It makes outlandshish claims about bringing about nirvana, a Star Trekkian society, and the "third age of computing".
Microsoft should be beggin Salon to pull this piece - it's horrible advertising. Comparing Bill Gates to Henry Ford is not exactly going to help their current PR angle. Plus, the over-glorification only reinforces common myths about
I urge everyone to write Salon and ask them to do a better job editing. If someone is going to write a piece explaining why
inky
(apologies to
There was a presentation by the author of "XML and ASP.NET".
He started by indicating the Microsoft "gets it" as regards unhappiness WRT its philosophy of "embrace and extend". He even showed a page with a list of standards with which Microsoft's new XML technology is compliant.
He then, without blush, went on to describe Microsoft extensions that make the XML technology more "usable".
In his discussion of C#, he pitched the language, not as a Java-killer, but rather as a compromise language easy enough for VB know-nothings (not his phrase, but the import of his language) and with the features beloved by C++ bigots. (Pointers!)
He described how easy it is to put tags in generated HTML (CSS, anyone?) before going on to describe Microsoft's newest idea in XML technology, the iterator. Of course, the methods available from various iterators over various classes are different, so learning how one works does not guarantee understanding of how all works.
I know a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a small mind, but this boggles.
Anyway, a number of things came to me from the talk:
1. There are a lot of VB programmers out there. They're not terribly smart, and Microsoft wants to protect their rice bowl.
2. Microsoft is making it very easy for people to generate really crappy HTML from XML.
3. There are a lot of great ideas in the Java world that Microsoft is glomming onto.
The author is quite a nice guy, and bore well my comments about billg as Satan.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
About the writer
Peter Wright is a software consultant and the author of numerous books on Visual Basic programming. He is currently working on two .Net titles for Apress slated for release later this year.