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Microsoft to Give Away Developer Tools to Students
beuges writes "The Associated Press is reporting that Microsoft will make full versions of their development tools available to students.
"The Redmond-based software maker said late Monday it will let students download Visual Studio Professional Edition, a software development environment; Expression Studio, which includes graphic design and Web site and hybrid Web-desktop programming tools; and XNA Game Studio 2.0, a video game development program. Gates said students will want to try Microsoft's tools because they're more powerful than the open-source combination of Linux-based operating systems, the Apache Web server, the MySQL database and the PHP scripting language used to make complex Web sites.
But Gates said giving away Microsoft software isn't intended to turn students against open source software entirely. Rather, he hopes it will just add one more tool to their belt.""
From the downloads page "Now remember these are professional tools. This means they are pretty big files so make sure you have the bandwidth and space to bring them to your machine."
That kind of cracked me up. Remember kids, professional tools take up lots of storage space. If it's not big, it's not 'professional'.
Also - this is not open to any student in the countries listed. There is a list of about 42 schools in the US that are plugged into their student verification system. In Belgium it is 2 schools, China 3 schools, etc.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
But I don't quite agree with Gates here. Gates said students will want to try Microsoft's tools
... because they're more powerful than the open-source combination of Linux-based operating systems, the Apache Web server, the MySQL database and the PHP scripting language used to make complex Web sites. False. This is an opinion. It may be true for some cases but it is ignorance to say that any aspect of coding has a magic bullet. Even XML has it's trade offs. To say this only expresses ignorance or a poor attempt at brainwashing/marketing.So this is all around good. I like it even though it's not open source, I think it will overall help Microsoft but may also clarify student's understandings of when to use what tools. I think the next step is for Microsoft to make another license that says you can use it for personal use but once you use it to make money (commercial) you need a commercial license. I don't find anything wrong with that business model. One step further and it could be released under a pseudo MSPL license and another step in the distant future might also entail an even more open state for their development tools. Who knows? All I know is that although this isn't perfect, it's a move in the right direction.
What would really be juicy for me to hear is what Ballmer's take is on this move. I think Gates is generally moving in the right direction but I get this sense that Steve Ballmer is pure evil. Is he seething over this move which to him might just look like lost revenue? Is he even pretending to see this the same way Gates does or is he still in the blind rage "I will f*cking kill ____" mode? I think there are rough times ahead when Gates leaves the scene altogether and I think we will see Ballmer say some pretty stupid things directly contradicting Gates' "just another tool for their belt" view on this.
My work here is dung.
Apple's development tools have been available free of charge since the Apple/NeXT merger.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I know that back in my CS days, I frequently thought about buying their suite to mess around with. The reason I didn't was simply a matter of economics. It is like crack, get the kids using their products when they are young. Then they become too lazy to learn something new.
Why don't they give away the sourcecode for Windows to students? This would be far more beneficial to them especially if they hold on to the rights of created/modified windows. Then they might have a viable OS for the future.
It never really made sense to me how
A) A student is supposed to afford these $9000 suites that we're supposed to be familiar with before we get a job that licenses it?
B) I have to pay to develop for microsoft's OS..
I've found Microsoft's VS tools to be pretty useful & feature-rich - maybe this will encourage us, as open-source developers, to add some missing features to our toolchains / IDEs.
I know at the university I attend we get e-mails about once a year offering free microsoft products for educational use, and that includes non-developer tools.
I never really cared about it, and I will continue to do so.
Windows Server 2003 Standard
SQL Server 2005 Express
Microsoft Expression Studio
And Visual Studio 2005 and 2008
Is it just me, or do you hate it when people say "Is it just me..."?
In other news, Jimmy De Brondi, a local crack dealer at Sando-Brando University sues Microsoft for illegally using his patented business practice.
[alk]
This smells a little like Netscape-gate. It would seem that giving away (very expensive) software to the demographic of "beginners" is using Microsoft's monopoly position to affect competition in another market, in this case software development.
While Open Source tools are available for free, this smacks of Microsoft competing by giving something of perceived monetary value for free too, thus offering something with the imprimatur of "valuable". This is similar to the Netscape debacle. The only difference is that a tool such as Eclipse's starting price already is zero. But, this move by Microsoft unbalances the playing field again with the deep pockets backing them as long as necessary. I'd guess their hope is they plant the seed early enough, and corner the student market and their future work to be always Microsoft products until other tools are no longer used.
When the rest of the competition disappears, Microsoft gets to charge as much as they want. If Microsoft wants to compete like this, I wish the government would do what they'd discussed doing before, and break Microsoft up into separate companies. This would force them to compete along product lines without the ability to destroy competition without fear of losing money in the process. They will lose money in the process, but they won't fear it. And, in the long run, this is a huge money and market grab for them.
Not only as a Linux guy but as someone who has used both sets of products frequently...do they really think people don't search around and will believe that, especially if they're student developers?
I tried signing up and they wanted to charge 2.95. Meh. Not a big deal really considering what you get, but come on. Free != 2.95.
Also, the pages take for.fucking.ever to load.
yes, sadly, even xml has limitations.
in fact, one might go as far as to say that even xml is useful. Sometimes. If it's used correctly.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
This sounds like that time the guy down on the street corner gave me some "candy" for free. Next thing I know, I can stay up for for days straight and I'm paying the guy big bucks for more "candy" that I can't now live without.
I got a catholic block.
I'm amused that the "Microsoft Community" page the article links to is called Channel 8. I guess they're not quite brave enough to call it, say, 8chan.
This is a good move, but not because it gives students access to the tools,
The reason that it is good is that it means students now have legal access to the tools. Let's be real here, plenty of IT students already have all the M$ tools on their pcs, they just pirate them. Decriminilising students has got to be a good thing.
Woohoo!!!!!!
No tax rebate and no refundable kid credits but at least this year I can get a free copy of Dev Studio. Finally, a chance to pimp my kid.
Thanks, Uncle Bill!
a new round of virii will be created..thanks Microsoft
The fun you could have with the reject letter, but can they make coffee ?
As a DOT NET developer, I use MS VS. Why not? I love the autocomplete and the list of Properties and Events for each control once I type the name of the control. Makes me look like a wizard when the boss is watching me code (urk) and I toss in a SqlDataSource, a DropDownList, type "ddlGetStates." and select Databind, save, alt-tab, refresh BAM!!! States DDL... (ok, before you mod me MS Fan-boi, keep reading...)
But then I go home, and having thought of a great feature on the drive home, I FTP into my site, open with a text editor, (insert notepad/BBedit/eMacs/Vi here to taste), and write the code by hand. Even if that means copying an pasting, I... how shall I say this... ***still have to know what I'm doing***. Yeah, all you n00bs, you drag and drop those controls and use F4 to set the properties...Go 'head...
But the minute you have to do that with your ARMPIT, you are sunk. I took a written (the process of leaving graphite trails on paper) test for ASP.NET once... Unless you know what your are doing, you are screwed. Use whatever tools you want, whatever LAMP/.NET. But make sure you learn what you are doing, and not just doing.
Help me out here, I have a Pentium III 877Mhz processor machine with about a half gig of DDR ram that I purchased in 2000. It still runs fine. For some reason when I install Visual Studio on the Win XP partition, it does not work so well. As in, it is barely usable for small applications and hangs indefinitely for large projects I have. Yet when I write a C++ application in the Linux partition using a number of various open source editors that utilize GCC, it works quite well. I don't mean just VI or Emacs, I mean several things including Gnome and KDE graphical editors (like Glade & KDevelop).
So tell me, what am I doing wrong? Several people have instructed me to buy a new computer but for some reason I do not think that I should have to buy a new computer every time a new version of Visual Studio comes out.
My work here is dung.
I heavily use MS tools (day job) and open source tools and Linux only tools. For argument sake lets say it costs me the same amount of dollars for all the applications/tools regardless of if it is MS or if it is open source -- I still prefer the open source tools. Obviously I don't prefer all the open source tools, there are plenty that I don't like. But those that I do like, I prefer them over their equivalent MS tools (or at least what MS would like to believe are the equivalents).
So this will likely just have the same IE/Netscape effect -- but who didn't see that coming.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
So in other words, Microsoft wants students to have free as in beer access to Microsoft software development tools. Students have always had free as in beer access to Microsoft software development tools through piracy.
Nothing has changed except Microsoft has decided that permitting a previously prohibited activity is a good idea. Quibble all you want about the differences between "downloading from Microsoft's server" versus "downloading from a friend's server."
The important thing is that this is a good example of copyright hurting business and the public instead of helping. A lot of people in my girlfriend's art classes at college were convinced that pirating Photoshop was stealing, was wrong, and was hurting Adobe. Maybe I'll have better luck explaining the truth to this kind of person now that I have an example like this backed by a big corporation.
Microsoft training tomorrow's slaves, today!
Hate to say it, but there's enough extensions and non-standard behavior in Visual Studio to make porting C++ programs to GNU not nearly so straightforward for even simple console applications.
This is my sig.
Is this an admission that MS is loosing significant mindshare to open source, or has the world changed to the point where dev tools have to be free to students to get traction? Personally, I'd have been better off is I'd been provided more than printf as a debugging tool in University.
-- http://thegirlorthecar.com funny dating game for guys
About a decade too late, Microsoft is finally seeing the light.
A recent article (registration required) in the New York Times discusses how the Redmond giant is now "giving students free access to its most sophisticated tools for writing software and making media-rich Web sites."
Ha! I would definitely disagree on the "sophisticated" adjective. Are these noble motives? Hardly. But for non-technical types, this could easily be painted as a seeming variety of evangelical philanthropy. Truth-seekers might ask: does Microsoft really care about all those poor, starving students of the Universe? And if so, why does it care now instead of before; haven't computers been around quite awhile? If (past) actions speak louder than words, the obvious answer would be "Microsoft doesn't care." This futile freebie is far too little, far too late. The computing world got along just fine before there was a Microsoft, and it will continue to get along well whether or not Microsoft does. It could probably be easily proven that the legally-laden profit-seeking motives of the MSFT corporation have actually hindered progress, especially progress of technically-inclined students.
One of the main problems with capitalism is that it is based on the assumption that every single action by every person everywhere has a monetary-based profit motive. If this were true, libraries would not exist. Indeed, in a purely profit-motivated society, freedom itself would not exist, as time itself would be handcuffed to the dollar sign; choice, the ability to research between or among alternatives, and a non time-constrained intuition are keys for progress.
A related, but somewhat tangent aside: I cannot quantify the irritation I have with my Business 2.0 magazine subscription being replaced by the megacorporate-centric Fortune magazine. The latest two editions have been severely disappointing. Business 2.0 was about innovation, ideas, progression, change for the better. Fortune had "The $100 Billion Woman" Melinda Gates on the cover for January 2008 and some corporate greed investment propaganda on the cover for February of 2008. Evil real estate people. While I can respect "rich, powerful" women, I don't really aspire to go about having dollar signs attached to my "net worth".
I sometimes wonder what direction my academic career might have taken if I'd discovered Free Open-Source Software sooner. My advocation of FOSS stands today stronger than before; it is indeed a particularly useful tool for students, teachers, professors, small-medium business owners and other efficient people of the world.
is an atrocity and who ever designed it should be taken out behind Redmond and shot.
It reads like it's been written by a mentally deficient 16 year old.
Microsoft is presenting this as an additional tool to the developer arsenal. Which is fine, if I find myself forced to use Visual Studio for a project now I can only be grateful. But knowing the Microsoft executive mindset, I can assure you that this educational benefactor is nothing more than a facade for supplanting the open source software communities hold in the academic world. But that's dramatic, let me think this out.
February 27th Microsoft will be unveiling their new open source movement with things such as Windows Server 2008, and SQL Server 2008. I won't go into details as you can already find them on google. All this coupled with the new Yahoo merger and it becomes apparent that the over-aggressive left hand is no longer speaking to the old school executive right hand. It's all rather disorienting to the consumer, which may help them in the end.
However, the OSS community should be at ease right now. While the hype of this is allowing students (who were already Microsoft oriented in the first place) to download their software, there is confusion and misdirection internally at Microsoft. For the product marketing teams,developers, and project leaders this is a bittersweet victory. Not only that, but the dynamics of the OSS development process are really about to shine. Tested and proven versus hasty deadline shipments.
They are up against a market that is not drawn to pretty themes and hype out of ignorance. This market inherently demands results.
Looks like you can download V2.0 here:
http://creators.xna.com/Education/GettingStarted.aspx
Yesfan001
I have been in the industry, professionally, since the early 80s and as a hobbyist since the mid 70s. Microsoft is the worst of the worst cheapskate companies. Gates once scolded people for copying BASIC. That *is* the core of his being. He doesn't share. He's a cheap bastard, and the only way he'll give a dollar away is if he thinks he can make two more back. Bill Gates does not understand "good will" or notions like societal benefit. He's a greedy low life who'll take what he can any way he can and hire lawyers to make sure he's never does time.
And if Mr. Gates would like to step outside and deal with this like a man, without hiding behind lawyers or corporate shields, I would be the first to roll up my sleeves.
Say what you will, I AM BIASED and I do not like the man, his politics, or his business practices. There is nothing wrong with the notion that business is a member of a community and owes the community from which it benefits. That's how capitalism won the cold war.
All that has changed in the last 25 years with the fundamentalist capitalists in power. Now it is all greed. Nothing else has a place in the economics policy dialog. Bill Gates has done a lot to further this decline of western "civilization" with the way Microsoft does business. Practices once unheard of and shameful are rewarded by wall street and politicians alike.
When you think about how the Microsoft monopoly has propped up the prices of commodity software, and how much raw cash has been siphoned out of the economy because of the monopoly it is sickening.
The "free" student editions of the development tools are nothing more than a trap. You don't actually get anything. You merely get to invest YOUR time learning THEIR system so that anything you write with THEIR tools has to run on THEIR operating system which you have to pay for,
With a free software strategy, you invest YOUR time learning about tools and systems that everyone has access to for free and can run anywhere you want, including, if it suits you, Windows.
Students of the world don't be fools. It is a transparent attempt to thwart real and substantive change in the IT industry by the free software movement.
I can't wait until they add a WGA-like feature. "We're sorry, but you are no longer verified as a student"...
I bet they are giving Visual Studio away to everyone within 2 years. They can feel their developer market share slip and they are not stupid.
Having recently attended a top 5 CS department university, I can tell you that most students are developing in linux. Windows development (.NET to be specific) is only done by about 15% of students (my guess) and it is NEVER used in courses. Course projects that require UI's use Java. Otherwise, it is written in C, C++, Java, oCaml, Scheme, Perl, and PHP. I've taken upwards of 40 CS classes in the last 8 years and I have NEVER used Microsoft tools for coursework.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5... That's the combination on my luggage!
This isn't new to students who are in schools which are part of the MSDNAA. I get free copies of XP Pro, Vista Business (x64 Editions), Visual Studio 2008 Pro, etc.
Microsoft is trying to get students used to using Microsoft software to develop software, so when they go out in the workforce, they'll use *gasp*Microsoft Software*gasp*.
This software isn't free, you'll pay with your soul.
Microsoft was handing out free licenses to their operating system and development tools/IDE when I went to college in the 90's.
All you had to do was drop by the local students computer center and fill out some forms for registration.
FYI for anybody that might be trying to authenticate themselves through University of California, it seems Microsoft's Shibboleth client is not interfacing well with the schools.
This is a good move.
They have recently also given away books, with similar goal: get as many people programming for their OS'es as they can.
Like several guys have pointed out, OSes don't sell themselves, the applications that are developed for the OS does.
[snide]Besides, students are just going to pirate the stuff anyway. Might as well win some much needed brownie points[/snide]
"...students will want to try Microsoft's tools because they're more powerful than the open-source combination of Linux-based operating systems, the Apache Web server, the MySQL database and the PHP scripting language used to make complex Web sites."
Then why does Facebook use Linux Apache MySQL and PHP? (You remember Facebook don't you Bill? The massive social networking site MS just bought into...) Perhaps it slipped your mind. Yeah, must be a fluke. What these big sites need is some powerful MS software. That'll be why Wikipedia runs on Server 2003, MSSQL, ASP and IIS... Oh wait a minute, that runs on LAMP too... What about Google then? Any MS software on their servers? Didn't think so... erm if I were you I'd get my coat...
What a load of tosh...I'm a Computer Engineering student, so I've done quite a bit of coding in classes and have also had two programming jobs. Just some thoughts on what I've experienced:
In CS 1, they started us out using Macs (yeah, ugh, etc.) to ssh into the CS dept's Sun boxes. With Emacs and the command line java tools, we learned basic coding. When we advanced to CS 2, though, the professor decided it was time to give us Eclipse. I guess this was supposed to be a favor. Instead, I found that I now had less of a feel for how things were going together. Eclipse was hiding stuff from me, and I didn't like it; in trying to make stuff like CVS, compilation, debugging, etc. more transparent, Eclipse was making it harder to understand what was going on. By CS 3, I had reverted to Emacs. When CS 4 rolled around and we moved on to C++, my now Eclipse-dependent compatriots were left in the cold; they fiddled with various Eclipse plugins for a while, then came back to Emacs. Other classes such as Assembly and Applied Programming (C) were also best performed with a text editor and some command line tools.
My first coding job was a summer internship writing C# under Visual Studio. I liked the job but didn't like the development environment. VS seemed to hide things even more than Eclipse... I felt far away from the code. As I recall, I wasn't able to compile my stuff outside of Visual Studio. The super tight integration just didn't work for me. VS struck me as the Disneyland of development tools--flashy, costly, structured; all your lodging (repositories), activities (coding), eating (compilation?), etc. are all right there.
I'm still at my second job. I write C code for the Plan 9 operating system using the Acme text editor, a compiler (8c), a linker (8l), and a debugger (acid). They're good tools and they have the advantage of keeping everything out in the open. I can poke around in the source files and see all the data that acme could show me; there are no hidden properties or anything like that. A utility called the plumber helps link the shell, the editor and the debugger in a useful way. It's a rather looser system, and I have a greater feeling of control when I'm programming with it. If VS is Disneyland, the Plan 9 (or *nix) tools are a hiking trail in the mountains--cheap, allows you to go off the beaten path, the users tend to be dirty... ok, I'm stretching a little.
At last, the point! In my experience, as a computer engineer/student, I want control of my code. I want to know where things are and what they do. I don't like applications that hold my hand too much. Some of my friends prefer to have the development environment do as much as possible, but I think there's a weakness to this--they tend to get lost when something new/unexpected comes up. Even if it's just that their box got fsck'd up and they have to use ssh and emacs to finish a project; at the very least, they're going to be in trouble without some of the features they've come to expect, while at the worst, their code simply will not work/will be unmodifiable (I've seen this happen).
Klingon programs don't timeshare, they battle for supremacy.
When you hit that brick wall which is a near certainty with MS tools you quickly
realize that "NOTHING IS MORE POWERFUL THAN THE SOURCE!"
Got Code?
Google image search for 'ISIC'.
Get number off some generic webperson's ISIC card.
Register for download, change one digit in the legit ISIC.
Download away, you student type person!
XNA and Expression Studio do nothing for me, but a free copy of Server2003 Standard and VisStudio 2008 Pro is worth a little dishonest work.
Has any one read recently that "Evangelism is war" thing? I just hope students aren't retarded enough to fall on these market drugs.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
*swim, swim*
Oh... so they're for the expanding FEMALE coder market then?
"my grades literally dropped"
If your ability to code depends on what IDE you're using then I think its fair to say you're probably no good at it. Perhaps you should consider doing an MBA instead.
Someone needs to let university network administrators know that students are downloading Microsoft's copyrighted software!
- Are running it on a virus-infected Windoze machine that's already thrashing
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Funny too but insightful helps "teh karma"
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"Rather, he hopes it will just add one more tool to their belt."
Who is/are the tool/s? Are m$' warez the tools for the students, or are the students the tools for m$ income stream. I wonder if these $tudent$ think critically...
"But Gates said giving away Microsoft software isn't intended to turn students against open source software entirely."
Was this an editorial, or what Gates said? Either way, it's a fallacious/deceitful statement. Students who get hooked on ms warez will probably not be able to export their files (if there is a Student Professional Version File Format involved. These $tudent$ might find they can't easily export or convert their data and apps.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Hey, lets beat Microsoft at their own game... Lets give away our tools too!
Oh wait - we already do, and have been for years... AND already have millions of satisfied users!
Sounds like Hillary Clinton trying to catch up to Barack Obama....
The Truth is a Virus!!!
List of countries...India is missing !
*sigh*
-- John
It's called Linux, GCC, G++, Eclipse, PHP, MySQL, Apache... the list goes on and on.
I know what will happen here. Visual Studio 2008 will be free, but what about the next version of VS? besides, LInux is much better for programming. I just hope the collage people realize this.
Come one, come all. It is time from SlashDot's daily Microsoft bashing session.
Tin foil hats and refreshments available at the side door. Please hurry, the tin foil is going fast.
_______________________________________
Ever notice that Microsoft fans don't find the need to constantly bash Apple? Think about it.
I'll try anything once. Twice if it tastes good
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Microsoft always giving this shit away for free? I know that I never bought a copy of Visual Studio when I was in school....we had access to some MS academic alliance site where we could go and download this stuff for free.
One of the main problems with capitalism is that it is based on the assumption that every single action by every person everywhere has a monetary-based profit motive.
Incorrect. A better (although still grossly over-simplified) statement might be that efficiency in a capitalist economy can be achieved if every transaction has a utility-based profit motive. A capitalist economy is perfectly happy when I exchange $2.00 for a loaf of bread; I have decided that I will get more utility from having bread than from having said $2.00. A capitalist economy is also happy with me paying $10 to watch a movie. I have decided that I will get more utility from the 2 hours of movie enjoyment than from having said $10. These choices are monetary-negative, but utility-positive.If this were true, libraries would not exist.
Libraries can certainly exist in a capitalist economy; all it requires is the library model being more efficient than alternatives. In many respects, it is.First, from the perspective of internal benefits to a taxpayer (assuming we are talking about "publicly funded" libraries for the moment), I pay $X in taxes for access to thousands of books. Clearly, that is better for me than purchasing each of these books. Of course, it is unlikely that I will be able to utilize all of the books in the library. So the real cost comparison is between my library taxes and the annual cost of my reading in a hypothetical world without libraries.
To throw some numbers, let's say my library taxes per year are $100. Let's also say that I read about 10 $20 books per year. Without a library, I would pay $200 for my reading. By paying the library tax, I save $100. Any rational actor in my situation would agree to funding the library.
"But wait," you say, "everyone can't come out ahead. If you're paying less than your fair share, others must be paying more!" The fallacy here is that the library isn't a zero-sum game; everyone *can* be better off. The trivial example is if you split the cost of a novel with your friend. You each get 95% of the benefits of sole ownership (occasionally you may have to wait for access, but for the most part you can read the whole novel at your leisure), but at 50% the cost. A library is simply this scheme multiplied by a few hundred thousand.
Now, there are also benefits "external" to the taxpayer. In addition to the taxpayers, there are freeloaders: people who don't pay taxes (again, assuming a public library). They get all the benefits of the library at zero cost. However, an argument can be made that providing benefits to these freeloaders can also create some benefit to the taxpayer, by contributing to a more educated society. In other words, there is some finite amount of money (let's say $100) that I would be willing to pay in order to increase the literacy rate in my neighborhood. Increased literacy will presumably (though many intermediate steps) decrease crime, increase per capita income in my area, increase property values, etc. All of these will indirectly benefit the taxpayer, to the point where even if I didn't ever read myself, it would still be worthwhile to pay some library tax.
While I was in college, my computer science department was a member of the Microsoft Academic Alliance. This allowed me as a student to download all of Microsoft's development tools including: Server 2003, Visual Studio Professional, SQL Server 2005, XP Pro, Vista... I think the only thing I couldn't get through there was Office because it was not a development tool.
Wow. This comes as a shock to me. Especially since the person delivering this message to me has the /. name of cplusplus
I wholeheartedly agree.
Yes, for C#, Visual Studio is amazing, but for C++, Linux is better.
I like KDevelop.
1) Solutions management is better - KDevelop is much better at managing multiple build targets, working with complicated builds, and more.
2) Source control is better - that's really for any Unix system. MS source control blows compared to what you get out of subversion, just because vss uses that stupid check out model.
3) Collaboration is better. If you want a genuine team suite type of thing, its pretty hard to top SourceForge.
4) Standards are better. If you are -really- into C++, the GNU compiler is simply better because it follows the standards. If I had a dollar for every time I ported something from VC to GCC, found that GCC rejected the code, did some research, and found that GCC actually did the right thing, I'd be pretty rich. On the flip side, I don't think I've ever run into a situation where GCC did something non-standards compliant that VC++ actually did do.
5) Performance coding is better. The whole point of C++ is to be doing systems programming. That means you need to consider architectural things like integer sizes, interfacing with assembly language, and good timer calls. On all of these fronts, Linux is better. The sizeof(int) is right on Linux and wrong on Windows for 64 bit platforms.. and the calling convention and stack situation in 64 bit Linux is just better. It's almost as if Microsoft chose their convention deliberately to not be like what the rest of the world was doing. Interfacing with assembly is better on Linux. It used to be in Windows that you could do inline assembly, but -not any more- in 64 bit land, so it becomes a push between AT&T syntax versus MS syntax. I prefer AT&T assembler syntax just because it seems cleaner. Finally, gettimeofday() works really well on Linux, whereas Windows gives you a mishmash of calls... the basic SYSTEMTIME call stinks, then there is QueryPerformanceCounter, and whatever new one they through into Vista. Enough already. And I'll toss in that dealing with UTF8 is probably faster than doing UTF16 all the time, especially if you writing quick and dirty code to be hosted on western european and American servers.
6) Code is more accurate. Everyone deals with temporal data lately and that means time zone conversions. On Windows these do not work and cannot work because the OS does not consider historic time zone transitions, while Linux does.
7) There is no COM on Linux. A few years ago, I would have argued this to be a disadvantage for Linux, but, having seen the disaster that resulted from COM, I'd have to say that Linux sticking to a basic C style call for the vast majority of its services turned out to be a pretty good plan.
Really, I'd almost have to say that people who say Microsoft is better for C++ haven't really programmed in C++ enough to know what they are talking about. If C++ on Windows was that good, the world would not be beating down the doors to C#...
'Nuff said.
This is my sig.
If you read their fine print in the FAQ for administrators:
https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/FAQ/UniversityAdministrators.aspx
it looks like the school needs to register their student list/database etc. with Microsoft.
The FAQ seems to imply that this requires Microsoft's software to interact with the student database on campus.
This may or may not be a violation of Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), but I know that if I were still a student, I would not be comfortable with the school sharing my enrollment information with companies without my knowledge and approval (Microsoft or other).
Developers are pawns ... if they can't or won't help [Microsoft], Screw `em! Help their competitors instead.
http://outcampaign.org/
I tried using it.
Downloaded Eclipse, unpacked it, (no install on windows?) and started it.
After I started it, I wanted to write a small C++ program.
Whooops, no compiler. So I downloaded mingw32. Then I had to configure that.
To tell you the truth I stopped after a few tries.
And I don't want to think about what might have happened if I wanted to
use the online help or the debugger.
Seriously, give me something that is close to Visual Studio.
That simply does not exist on Windows.
I'll try KDevelop (using Qt 4) if its available for Windows.
Yeah I learned about power when I started work on VisualBasic Script ASP back in 1998. I used it a couple of years and then discovered PHP - where all sorts of things that had been impossible (or required clunky plugins and server tsuris) were effortless: things like file uploads, dynamic image creation, and even mail. By that point Microsoft was selling .NET which required completely relearning everything you used to know. "No thanks," I said, and I learned PHP. And the great thing about PHP is that it changes incrementally, with no one completely redoing it from scratch so I have to go back for a complete (and infuriating) re-education every couple of years.
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
More dollar $ign$! MORE!!
Comment of the year
"VS2005/SQLServer2005/IIS6 is something they got right, and students should be exposed to that."
:)
How do they compare to smalltalk tools?
I think it'd be nothing short of hilarious if students modified the environment provided to compile executable code for Linux. It would likely cause some sort of reaction from Microsoft. And really, to make an environment that could compile for multiple environments and operating systems would be an incredible tool for porting Windows stuff to Linux. I presume it can be done... I just don't know how difficult it might be.
That's not big at all, for an OS manual!
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Just reminds me way too much of tool time. I could totally see classes now... So you want to create a linked list. Alright.. open up VS, select new, create, vc++ program, ... Okay has everyone done that? Great, now include the 3 utilities from windows, excellent, now write this, and compile. OH! You are not i debug mode I hope, no you can't print to the screen easily, what do you mean what are those 0x numbers mean when you step through your code... No I won't tell you what refactoring means... ignore all of the tool bar, assume that if you click on any of it except bookmarks your code won't work anymore...
Or even for the more advanced classes...
So finding information on networking, try man. No doesn't work? hmm... what about MSDN resources, too many and too hard to navagate? Spent more time looking up a function call then using it...
VS in a learning environment it like getting a jackhammer to put in a nail... sure you COULD do it, but honestly, why would you ever want to?
It doesn't take much to be better than MySQL and PHP. What about PostgreSQL and the various Python frameworks, like Pylons, Django, TurboGears, or even something heavy like Zope?
Oh, and what about freedom to run my business without interference? With free software, I don't have to trust that Microsoft doesn't really see me as a pawn.
Microsoft: Call me back once you've had a clean record for a decade. Until then, bugger off.
http://outcampaign.org/
I'm going to tread very lightly here, as I do not want to become a Rails fanboy.
That said, the two languages that were most useful for me at my current job are Ruby and Javascript. Ruby for Rails, and Javascript for HDi (before HD-DVD died). For the HD-DVD stuff, I had to use Visual Studio occasionally, but just look how useful my HDi skills are now... For the Rails stuff, I run Linux. Two of my co-workers run Windows, one runs OS X. The OS X guy uses TextMate, the Windows guys use Eclipse/Aptana (I think), and I haven't touched Visual Studio since the HDi stuff.
So it may not be easy (or even possible) to avoid ever seeing the MS tools, but "real businesses" use the right tool for the job -- or at least, what they think is the right tool for the job. It is possible to find an MS shop and never leave Visual Studio. It is also possible that you'll never touch Visual Studio.
I'm allowed to use whatever tools make me the most productive. Out of habit, that's vim and bash right now, but your mileage may vary -- a lot. What you already know has a big impact (I knew vim), and if you don't know anything (you're in school), you should be exposed to everything.
In particular, did you learn any Lisp/Scheme in school? What about Haskell? Or Erlang, or Smalltalk/Squeak? If not, you owe it to yourself to learn these now, even if you'll never use them at work. They will force you to think in different ways, and you'll come away with skills that apply to any language.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Code completion? Syntax highlighting? Bah. That's not how real programmers do the job
Wonder if it will have any effect on the schools who use linux. Guess this will be no more then a footnote.
http://www.codeblocks.org/. It might be the most mature IDE, but it has the auto finishing I liked in VS.
ASP php + Dreamweaver.
Whereas before Microsoft charged 6$ through an educational discount for the full version of their tools. Wow, how generous of them...
Don't valgrind every day. Use a fast computer for that.
But if your midrange current spec computer doesn't handle the application OK, you're telling your users they need bigger computers.
Don't tell them what they need. They should be buying new computers to do stuff FASTER not do the new version at the same speed as the old one.
I'm a high school student, that means I don't get free stuff. Not cool.
Judging from some of the activity here, that's probably not a serious question. But let's pretend it is. However, a lot of little Bill fans will get their feelings hurt.
Bill's toy bag is just that, a toy bag, that what little it does is on and for Windows -- only. And it's near a few decades late in coming. A comprehensive answer could go on for pages if you start to include various languages like Java, Python, Perl, C, and Ada. or Tomcat, Lenya, Swish, and many others staples. That's not even counting PHP and PHP-based kit, CPAN and others.
However the press release does not say what the MS "tools" do or, more correctly, claim to do. Students would be more employable playing WoW. For those that have been living in a cave for the last 15 years here's a recap of the main professional tools you will find in industry. There are others, but they're mostly open source, too, except a few big items like Oracle and DB2. None are MS.
IDEs
Databases
GUI toolkits
MS has held back computing far too long. The sooner it gets out of the way, the sooner both business and research can get back on track. Bill and his anti-American movement can go take a hike, there's no place for either MS or MS boosters in today's economy.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
It isn't a false opinion however it isn't a fact (it's an opinion) so what is false is not the statement itself but the statement that the statement is a fact.
But you don't like that fact...
Obligatory blog plug: http://www.caseybanner.ca/
Drug dealers often give drugs away for free initially to get the dependency going. I spent a small portion of my freshman year under the misunderstanding that MS VS was the only usable compiler out for school projects and bought student versions of all of there software. I have worked at many companies were MS is the only game in town not because the were the best for the job but more because of market dominance.
I don't see why this is so bad. It's another tool, and yes, it may lead to a lot of people using MS products, but Linux is free too. No one's decrying their attempt to undermine Microsoft. People will use what they're comfortable with.
"Teach a man to build a fire, and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life."
Hmm, need to have registered an email address with Microsoft LiveID. Nah, just make me a new one. More spam fodder.
Verify my school against the list here. No go, just the big universities listed. Oh, but there's another way!
So, purchase a free item from JourneyEd, and we'll get an email with authorization to download. Sure, click-click.
Oh, look. "VeriClick - The easiest way to provide proof of your academic status." For the low price of $2.95, we'll look into our master database of registered students from 1,500 colleges and see if you're in there. Or I can email or fax proof for free. I'm sure the verification process will take at least a week or so.
New account with JourneyEd, usual account information. Skipped the payment step, that's good.
Apparently, nobody told JourneyEd about this, their webserver is full of molasses. I can't go any farther right now.
Well, there's always the MSDNAA (It looks like a troll), where for the low fee of $799 we'll send you discs for the campus (or $499 for download only). Still have to get keys from MSDN web server.
This is not looking free in time or money.
Dear Mr. Gates,
I'd like to try your tools, but they do not work on my computer!
Please port them to Linux. Thank you.
Have a nice day.
I am not really here right now.
Its amazing that no matter what Microsoft does you guys attack it like they have just killed your first born.
.NET development platform
This is a good move as it gives more options to students. If the students choose to use Eclipse thats perfectly fine. They can use Notepad, they can do whatever they want.
What bothers me is how a very good (but not perfect, nothings perfect) platform called Visual Studio gets so much bad press on Slashdot. What else is new...
Regards,
Dmitry
http://blog.lyalin.com/
Disclainmer: Yes I am part of the evil empire, but by choice and the love of the
Microsoft has been doing this for years through its Academic Alliance program. Here's the list of free MS software (with legit licenses) that I currently get through the alliance with my university:
.NET Component Update CD, .NET Framework 1.1 SDK,
Access 2003,
Access 2007,
Compute Cluster Pack,
Compute Cluster Pack SDK,
Exchange Server 2000 Enterprise Edition,
Exchange Server 2003 Enterprise Edition,
Exchange Server 2007 Enterprise Edition,
Exchange Server 2007 Standard Edition,
Expression Blend,
Expression Studio,
Expression Web,
InfoPath 2003,
InfoPath 2003 Toolkit for Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005,
InfoPath 2007,
ISA Server 2006 Enterprise Edition,
Macro Assembler 6.11,
MapPoint 2004 European - Run Disc (2/2),
MapPoint 2004 European - Setup Disc (1/2),
MapPoint 2004 North America - Run Disc (2/2),
MapPoint 2004 North America - Setup Disc (1/2),
MELL - Developer Edition for MSDNAA,
MSDN Library - April 2007 (DVD),
MSDN Library - December 2006 - (DVD),
MSDN Library - May 2006 - CD1,
MSDN Library - May 2006 - CD2,
MSDN Library - May 2006 - CD3,
MSDN Library (Visual Studio .NET) CD1 ISO (Jan 2004),
MSDN Library (Visual Studio .NET) CD2 ISO (Jan 2004),
MSDN Library (Visual Studio .NET) CD3 ISO (Jan 2004),
MSDN Library (Visual Studio .NET) Full (Jan 2004),
MSDN Library for Visual Studio 2005 - CD1,
MSDN Library for Visual Studio 2005 - CD2,
MSDN Library for Visual Studio 2005 - CD3,
MSDN Library for Visual Studio 2008 (x86 and x64 WoW) - DVD,
MSDN Subscriptions Library (Full),
MS-DOS 6.0,
Office Communications Server 2007 Enterprise Edition,
Office FrontPage 2003,
Office Groove 2007,
Office Groove Server 2007,
Office Project Server 2007,
Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise,
Office SharePoint Server 2007 Standard,
OneNote 2003,
OneNote 2007,
Project Professional 2002 (Single-User),
Project Professional 2003,
Project Professional 2007,
Project Server 2003,
SharePoint Designer 2007,
SQL Server 2000 Developer Edition,
SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition,
SQL Server 2000 SP3a,
SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition - 32-bit - CD1,
SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition - 32-bit - CD2,
SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition - 64-bit Extended - CD1,
SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition - 64-bit Extended - CD2,
SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition - DVD,
SQL Server 2005 Express Edition,
SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition - 32-bit - CD1,
SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition - 32-bit - CD2,
SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition - 32-bit - DVD,
SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition - 64-bit Extended - CD1,
SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition - 64-bit Extended - CD2,
SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition - 64-bit Extended - DVD,
SQL Server 2005 Workgroup Edition - 32-bit - DVD,
System Center Essentials 2007 - DVD,
System Center Operations Manager 2007,
Virtual PC 2004,
Virtual PC 2007,
Virtual PC for Mac 7.0.2,
Visio for Enterprise Architects,
Visio Professional 2002 (Single User),
Visio Professional 2003,
Visio Professional 2007,
Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition,
Visual C# 2005 Express Edition,
Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition,
Visual J# .NET,
Visual J# 2005 Express Edition,
Visual SourceSafe 6.0d,
Visual Studio .NET 2003 Professional - Full Install,
Visual Studio .NET 2005 Professional - Full Install,
Visual Studio .NET Academic Student Tools 2003,
Visual Studio .NET Academic Teaching Tools 2003,
Visual Studio .NET Pro 2002 - ISO Image - CD1,
Visual Studio .NET Pro 2002 - ISO Image - CD2,
Visual Studio .NET Pro 2002 - ISO Image - CD3,
Visual Studio .NET Pro 2002 - ISO Image - CD4,
Visual Studio .NET Pro 2002 - ISO Image - CD5,
Visual Studio .NET Professional 2002 (Full),
Visual Studio .NET Professional 2003 - CD1,
Visual Studio .NET Professional 2003 - CD2,
Visual Studio .NET Professional 2003 CD1 ISO,
V
project-wide renames:
:argdo %s/\<MyClassName\>/my_class_name/ge | update
vim *.[ch]
Except our campus had a student Microsoft representative, and to get the software you had to bring your resume to one of his talks. A lot of those that got the software, however, wound up selling it on eBay. Not bad if you needed to pay for beer.
-50 DKP for lame post!
I can only comment on pure C++ (not the .NET/cli) development with IDEs, where I've used KDevelop,
Eclipse Emacs and Visual Studio extensively.
All I can say without any hesitation or doubt, that for pure C++ development VS2005/2008 make KDevelop,
Eclipse(cdt) and Emacs (cscope) look like Notepad. Add the Visual Assist plugin, the fact that the
debugger is TREULY integrated with the IDE and the fact that the IDE has access to the AST, then using
KDevelop, Eclipse(cdt) and Emacs(cscope) seems like your programming with punch-cards.
The MS C++ compiler is actually quite good and conforming as well, and has nearly shed its VC++6 lineage.
Its not the best C++ compiler on the market but it is definitely in the top 3.
I'm not an MS fanboy and don't use any other MS product other than their OS and even that is for the purpose
of using VS. In the area of C++ development there is nothing in the open source space that can come close,
I would very much like to know if anyone can prove me wrong.
Arash Partow's Philosophy: Be a person who knows what they don't know, and not a person who doesn't know.
If I say "The sky is green", it is a factual statement, you can produce the scientific evidence to prove that the spectrum of light that we view as that coming from the sky is in fact, blue.
So regardless of my preference of IDE's, if you identify an opinion of a selection of software, you can not say that the opinion is false. You can voice your opposition to that opinion, you can state your disagreement, and even your own opinion, but there is no fact to dispute. You can show that every other developer in the world disagrees with the person who posted their opinion, but that still doesn't make their opinion false, it just makes them unpopular.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
The AC University was founded today. Full-time enrollment is a mere $25/semester, and life experience counts as credit. You can pursue your non-accredited degree in any field you like, and when you finish one, you can just begin another. Complimentary copies of .Net are provided upon enrollment. Simply make your cheque or money order payable to me, Anonymo...
Hang on a minute.. I believe I need to rethink my business model.
Unselfish actions pay back better
I use an entirely different portion of the brain to code than to write. (I've written novels, so I have somewhat of a sample size here). I was amazed at what I realized that I was typing AUTOMAGICALLY. Once I had to think about it and translate it into graphite... it was lost. ;-)
With tons of new developers using their tools for free they are benefiting both the students and Microsoft. I think the open-source hard-heads need to face the facts, Microsoft's tools are the easiest to use and very feature rich and there is no getting around this. Each new library they come out with just gets better and better. From MFC to VB to .NET, their tools integrate well.
I look at it this way, programming is hard enough without having to learn how to use a complex and painful development system. It's a shame but the open-source world never really united to create a serious IDE that could even remotely compete with Visual Studio. Hopefully this will change one day. However, the result of this is exactly why most open-source applications are third rate and have never won over the average computer user. I feel there is a definite correlation between the quality of the development tools and the quality of the finished product. All things being equal, if the developer has an easier time developing, then this almost always translates to better software.
For me, this move from Microsoft is bleedin amazing, and fantastically well timed.
I'm trying to start a software house to develop a game I've been designing for the last year, and I've faced a serious brick wall in finding a high quality toolchain that I can afford. Now its being given away free, and as a student I'm able to get it.
This means my speculative software house has just become a reality, and I am so happy I could hug whoever it was that dreamed this scheme up.
Perhaps this isn't quite the right attitude for the slashdot masses, but I don't care, I've been walking on air since I read this article and started my downloads.
Assembler, Perl, shell, C, Java, Erlang, makefiles, SQL... all gets pounded through my trusty Eclipse workspace. The Subclipse plugin is very nice integration with Subversion too (which I use constantly).
you had me at #!
But Gates said giving away Microsoft software isn't intended to turn students against open source software entirely. Rather, he hopes it will just add one more tool to their belt.
Lying dog.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Apparently we have a software distribution-of-wealth system coming into place called 'Microsoft'. Earn a salary or have a company? Pay some hefty licensing fees and we make our 40-50% profit margin off of you. Are you a student or live in other parts of the world? Well then it's the same products free or at greatly reduced cost for you! Yay!
Hey. WTF?
This is starting to get like prescription drugs.
Have to say, if one person mods you troll, they may be an jacka55. But, looking at your scores on this, if 6 people think you're a tool, then you are a tool.
Magic Negro Powers...ACTIVATE!!!
The MSDNAA programme is hardly new. Students have been able to take away pro and sometimes enterprise level tools for years under that scheme. Hey - there's even the source code to NT4 lying there somewhere (look for Windows Research Kernel Source Code or WRK). You can get pretty much all OS's (not Bob sorry) all free
VS only compiles for x86 processors running Windows.
GCC and friends, on the other hand, will generate binaries for pretty much every system imaginable, from just about any system, and will take source in about 10 different programming languages. Likewise, GDB allows one to do some fairly complicated stuff, like debug code remotely over a network or serial cable, and is equally as flexible.
The scope of these tools is thus MUCH wider than it is with VS.
I won't even get into the part where Bill Gates claims that Microsoft has "more powerful" web products than the LAMP stack, except to point out that webhosting really requires an OS that's good at running a lot of concurrent threads...
Actually, I found this to be the case when I tried VS, when I used it to develop a Symbian C++ application ... or more like spending time recovering from VS pissing over all my build files. I guess that could have been the Nokia VS plugin though, I suppose, and not VS specifically.
Whatever it was, it kept changing all the makefiles/etc from under me, and various other annoying things that I couldn't understand, and it kept getting me into a mess. It basically just took over and assumed it had control of everything. The Nokia S60 build environment is very complicated with many different bits in it, and the last thing I needed was it changing things like that without telling me or putting them back again afterwards.
I went back to the command line (cygwin and dos) and wrong my own perl script to do the job - much easier to figure out when you write it yourself, though there's a certain amount of wheel reinvention, I suspect, and never could get perl to work properly on Windows (mostly problems with installing/loading modules). Seems like VS required some training to use properly.
I eventually figured out how to stop it from doing that annoying stuff, but I rarely found it useful enough to use - the only time I can remember is when I had to look at how stuff was stored in memory (some unicode issue, iirc).
I did try to use Eclipse - new Nokia tools seem to use that now - but wasn't very successful (the full version costs money anyway, and my company is poor).
My other experience with Eclipse was working through the Google Android tutorials. I even had to get it running in 32-bit mode on my 64-bit amd. Google had a 'step-by-step' and the whole process seemed to work just fine and was very pleasant. Everything just worked. Very nice.
Max.
One thing I have noticed about some MS fanboys i know is they seem to wait for MS to develop/release something and when there do the say now they can finally do XYZ. Linux people don't wait, they develop. I always love it when the brag about all the cool feature the new versions of Windows have.
cases in point: Remote Desktop connection 2000
X windows 1980 something
Windows PowerShell 2007?
Unix shells 1970
TCP/IP support
Windows 1995
UNIX 1970's, maybe the 80's im not sure
Multiuser
Windows never, you cant have 20 users logged into the same Windows box from 6 locations.
Unix nearly forever, if you belive the U in UNIX stands for Uniplexed (see MULTICS)
keep in mind most of the "cool" stuff i mention is avalible in Windows, its just only available in the server editions which cost tons more then the standard editions. I shouldn't have to shell out more $$$ just to do multi seat, because in Linux its a 5 line edit to your xorg.conf file and your done.
Visual Studio is the best IDE I have ever worked with, but I don't use them (IDEs) much any more. Most of the work I do requires coding and building software in multiple programming languages for multiple targets and UltraEdit is flexible enough and powerful enough to organize the code files and display build output so I can one-click error messages to go right to the offending statement. It offers book-marking, code-folding and easy to use and powerful search/replace. So there is my shameless plug for my favorite editor.
... if you are stuck on Windows, and will only ever use Windows. However, I work on embedded Linux and build web-based infrastructural tools at my company and I need a development platform that works well on Linux (the host platform for building and deploying), Mac OS X (my preferred development platform), and WIndows (my company's preferred desktop platform). For that, I use Eclipse which I have grown to love.
Nothing is pure! http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com/
Natural languages have a very hard time describing logic, you need to create a new one to be able to write about logic. Even people who rely heavily on natural languages to communicate in their work, for example a politician, they just twist things around never giving you any thing logical.
So don't translate from natural languages, it can't be done.
You only need to start Eclipse every few months or years (especially true of Apple laptops, which sleep).
Doesn't take long to amortise a 30 second startup over 6 months of working without restarting, relaunching, crashes or BSODs.
you had me at #!
Yeah that's wonderfull, lets all pay for the privilege to let someone else run my code
the real world where real businesses use MS tools.
Not any business I'd work for. Funny, I thought I'd been in the "real world" all these years.
The MS-addicted world is a nightmare ghetto of lock-in, closed source, and closed minds. Thank God there is a world outside that cave.
you had me at #!
n/t
you had me at #!
Uh, okay. Maybe the MS technologies at issue (which mostly aren't web-app technologies) are "more powerful" than LAMP (how you measure the "power" of XNA Game Studio against LAMP is beyond me.) So what? LAMP is simple, well-known and documented, and free. If you want more powerful (and still well-documented) tools for any given role than the standard LAMP components (particularly MySQL and PHP), they aren't hard to find.
"Gates said students will want to try Microsoft's tools because they're more powerful than the open-source combination of Linux-based operating systems, the Apache Web server, the MySQL database and the PHP scripting language used to make complex Web site"
.. :)
Like, isn't there a more powerfull development environment in 'open-source' than LAMP and what's not powerful about LAMP and doesn't Apples' WebObjects or Suns Java Platform count
davecb5620@gmail.com
Intel's P3 chipset never had DDR support due to some idiotic exclusive contract with Rambus. The opened opportunities for several other companies, including VIA which made chipset that brought this missing feature.
I bet the author specially choose to buy one of those motherboards that could accommodate with cheaper RAM.
And neither did they make CPU running at 1236Mhz (12x103).
It's called overclocking, its completely harmless if done within a reasonable range. (The author is probably using a 135MHz clock. Or one of those "choose-your-frequency-in-1-MHz-increments" motherboard that started appearing during that period).
The avarage
(In fact I've had Coppermine and Tualatins CPUs running on 440BX based motherboards - which was declared by Intel to be "un-possible, you have to rebuy new motherboards").
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]