One thing mp3.com has proven is that nobody buys such alternatives consistently.
No one consistenly buys anyone's music. Check your ablbum collection. Most of them will be by different artists and it's rare you have more than three by any one of them. Bands come and go, one that lasts is very rare. People get sick of it and want a real life.
MP3.com proved that anyone could have a place to put and promote their music. The RIAA once again proved they would not tollerate competition and nuked it. MP3.com worked, and I learned about lots of good music I never would have and I bought their music. The money those artists earned from my purchases is money they would never have seen otherwise. The music I bought from MP3.com left me much less satisfied with RIAA crap. MP3.com, left on it's own, would be much bigger than iTunes is today. Vivandi killed it with adverts, registration and streaming suckage instead of downloads.
MP3.com's dissapearance is going to make a big hole that someone is going to fill.
Supposedly they [CNET] have a surprise or two up their sleeve that will put a little twist on the whole iTunes music store content
What exactly are they buying? They don't get the address, they don't get the music, they are left with what exactly? A list of suckers dumb enough to register for spam?
Vivandi ripped the heart out of mp3.com, now they are burring it. Here is a nice old site Note all the nice downloads. Good luck finding downloads on newer sites, and don't forget to register for more great spam when you find one. What total suckage. Sure, that Vivandi won't pay their artists is not a big surprise either.
Vivendi, or whatever face of the world's five big music publishers, was only able to buy mp3.com because they had crushed them in court for the mymp3 service. The service alowed you to put a CD into your computer and then have all of the music available at mp3.com's web site when you wanted it. The music industry claimed this was a republication, though no one but you could listen to the music, and won and was awarded all sorts of money.
limitations (three songs, no pay for play, etc...)
Pay for play? Shit, they will only let you stream music these days and they force the listener to register. Fuck that. Their advertisments and page design are bad enough, I don't need them spamming me with Britany Spears junk.
MP3.com was the closet thing to distribution competition the music industry had ever seen, so they destroyed it. Is there any place left where you can get music artists intend to share? If not it's time to make another one, but good luck getting people to invest in something that the RIAA can crush regardless of law.
Yes, multimedia is M$'s stated raison d'etre. Their supposed superiority in devices is why people are supposed to use their garbage. Those issues are trivial when you realize that cultural survival is at stake.
The ONLY reason to use M$ in the first place is their nasty hardware lock that prevents hardware makers from producing anything that works with other platorms. You use it for it's half assed ability to work sound cards, DVD players, firewire devices, crapy USB cameras and such. So what are you left with if M$ kills off Macromedia, Real and even ogg tools? Crap, that's what.
Yeah, Media player sucks big time. It's got awful quality, crashes and does not even recognize Microsoft's own older avi formats. What could be crappier than that? Oh yeah, M$'s proven spying where they record every song you listen to and movie you view for later retrieval. It's as ugly bloated and butty as M$ Word is as a text editor. But quality issues are a side show.
If the EU had any brains, they'd slap enourmous tarrifs on M$ junk and work on develping their own media. Microsoft will lock out all but the highest bidders from digital media and they all have offices in Holywood. Digital media is the future of mass communication. If the EU does not get around monopoly formats, they can forget preserving their cultures and not even think about projecting their ideas elsewhere. If they consider to support M$ in their countries, they will find themselves DRM'd into oblivion. M$ is funding it's expansion into media by monpoly rents and should be taxed for it, if not outright banned. It's the future of ideas they are looking at, and it's more improtant than any material goods. The EU has plenty of free alternatives to chose from and they should support them.
It is just that the punishments for breaking the law seem extremely harsh, given the nature of the crime.
I own movies and I want to be able to see them anywhere I go, but that's going to get me put in jail. I stick them on a box with a good network connection and make them available via ssh. Then I go to jail because "my" movies were posted on a publically accesable network. Does anyone think a judge is going to be able or inclined to tell the difference? No, I'm going to have to cart my DVDs around by hand.
So the cluelessness of MPAA bought senators is demonstrated. Outlawing whole classes of technology and behavior because some people MIGHT abuse them is bad, mmm-kay?
The effect on "piracy" of all these stupid DRM laws is zero. The DVD factories favored by the MPAA for publishing will continue to engage in real piracy. They will continue to print up early releases and overruns and all that regardless of US law and anyone who wants bootledged DVDs will be able to get them for a buck.
What a wonderful breakthrough in law enforcement: assuming that an actual crime has been committed and acting accordingly.
It's worse than that. They have taken an action that is essentially harmless and made it against the law. It would be nice if laws were made to prevent social harm rather than create "rights" for "IP" owners that will land you in jail for exercising what should be considered your fair use right. Suppose I want to be able to get at the movies I bought wherever I go? Putting them on s ssh server can still get me put in jail. That's Bull Shit (TM).
It's just another piece of the **AA putting the screws on any potential competition. Remeber how the RIAA's been claiming all mp3s as their mp3s and abusing people who would dare to share their own content? It's harrasment, pure and simple. Now they can get you tossed into jail. Before you know it, you will need a license to run a computer capable of sharing anything. Fuck them all, the god damn unAmerican assholes.
Way to get your priorities straight, Richard -- putting your pet semantics above the users' ability to use your software legally.
Uhh, the issue is only in doubt if you think SCO has more than a snowballs chance in hell of winning. Because it does not, SCO will go away and this mess will quickly be forgoten, but the confusion SCO is trying to create may remain.
That confusion is worth $20,000,000 to Microsoft and it's a big deal. It's important for the public to know that there are entire operating systems of free software available and that this Linux thing is not just a flash in the pan that can be destroyed by a sinble lawsuit. While the Linux kernel is a large and important project, it's just another replacable component. Indeed the size of the kernel itself makes the SCO suit silly. Any single module that SCO could find infringing could be rewriten in a matter of days.
If the GPL holds up in court, SCO will have a very hard time blaming IBM for distributing the same code that SCO has been distributing.
SCO distributed code under license A. IBM distributed code under license A. SCO is going to have a hard time blaming IBM for distributing code SCO distributed regardless of the license. Calling in RMS is just another outrage from the SCO pirates.
I like tapes too. Analog rules for longevity and ease of use. If you think tapes last a long time, consider regular records. As equipment dies, the end is near but digital does not have to suck. Indeed, free digital is more flexible than analog, offering great storage desity, random play and ease of duplication and archiving. Because the formats are free, you know they won't change and will be easy to convert if something better comes along.
Open Zaurus, Debian, Ogg-Vorbis and some CF cards are all you need. Here's a quick howto. If you can't master the Debian install, use Knoppix. Move your music to free formats and never mess with DRM BS again. If you can't read it and move it to a free format, don't buy it. The RIAA is going to lose this one. The harder they suck the easier it is to be free.
Yeah, you might have been joking. That's OK, I like the chance to sound off about free goodness.
it'll still take a few years to push CDs out of the marketplace.
CD format is already being removed. All of the major music makers are putting out new works in DRM format on CDs that won't work on old players. It is easy to imagine them no longer offering normal CDs and equipment makers no longer selling CD readers.
The important part of this equation is not the media but what's stored on it and the bad laws that back it. The move to DRM'd formats and crap like WMA is what will force you to replace your music. Bad laws and anti-competitive practices have exasperated this. Due to expansion of what's considered "publishing" it's virtually imposible to convert other people's media as a service. Just try opening an LP store with CDs in each record and you will find yourself in the same hole as MP3.com. It's still possible for people to convert their music to free digital forms themselves and each person must chose between time and money. Indeed, friends can still exchange music with each other via CD ROM and devide their labor. New DRM's content will remove those choices and that ability. WMA reduces the quality of the sound at the same time, nice eh?
The fate of those still using non-free software looks worse every day and that's great. This gives free software and hardware that works with it great competitive advantages. Already, it's much easier for me to use a Zaurus with ogg encoded music as a juke box than any comercial alternative. It uses normal CF and a simple script plays music from lists at random. I can exhange CDs or CF with anyone I want and completely avoid nasty BS like the NET act. It's almost as easy and much more flexible than tapes used to be. A laptop with an ftp server is an even easier way to share my music. Musicians and artists who promote themselves outside of the RIAA's clutches will enjoy similar advantages. I rarely listen to the radio, I will pay for recorded music and I will go see concerts. The advantage in promotion is returning to the local scene. The RIAA, with it's dying gasp, is helping to eliminate non-free software. Their inflexibility will destroy them as well.
Eventually, things will normalize and it won't be a crime to share recorded music. The RIAA business model is simply obsolete and they will die.
"All copy-protections can be hacked, but if (we) give people what they are asking for in terms of value, they won't go out and steal it. It's called trusting the consumer."
First what is copy-protection? It's something that keeps people from doing what they want to. They want portability in their music. DRM'd crap makes analog tapes look convenient. Worse, it has the ability to demand payment per play or vanish. The idiot is not giving people what they are asking for, does not trust people with what they have and is developing new ways to cheat you.
Do you think people who buy these new Sony CDs are going to know what they are getting? They don't and they will feel cheated when they find out.
When's the last time someone who trusted you called your fair use rights "stealing"? Would you think I was stealing if I quoted your trolly question?
This is one of the reasons libraries exist and it's why printed material used to cary weight. Time in pulp form, sitting on thousands of shelves around the country, was something that could be researched with confidence. Libraries MUST be given the right to store and republish electronic content if electronic content is going to have any credibility. Sharing is part of your right to read.
Things will sort themselves out if the internet reamains a free place where anyone can get on as a peer and publish. New publications will replace the old ones that act like Time. If the internet becomes more like broadcast TV, where only $pecial people with credentials can publish, it won't be trusted and the information superhighway will be just another billboard.
How would it be if you wanted to IM or VOIP your doctor and you are a Yahoo user and the doc is a AIM user??
Wow, that one is easy, People can't rely on IM because US ISPs suck and that is a direct result of recent US regulatory effort. Broadband penetration is low and run by monopoly service providers who offer high prices and idiotic restrictions such as "no servers". Most people still suffer dial up, which is even less practical for IM. If the US had better ISP:
IM would be possible.
People would quickly ditch junk software and use things that worked with everyone. Computers that don't run 24/7 would no longer be acceptable and M$ would die.
Phones would quickly dissapear as people migrated all of their communications needs to machines with brains, voice, pictures and the ability to access them anywhere. SSH a laptop and a hook up are all you need to get all of your stuff anywhere. This is so much better than the phone system which is expensive, non portable, mindless without optional equipment that does not do very well and has no real storage capacity.
My non regulated GNU/Linux system does a great job of talking to any BSD, Mac, Unix or Windoze system without the first governemnt regulation. What was it that government regs gave you? Oh yeah, a 10 digit number you have to remember. Sure, like that never happens outside regulation - TCP/IP - caugh.
After a silly attempt to justify not including salaries of CEO's like Jack Welch, mega lawyers and other thieves, they go for worker bees and people with real and scare talent:
Mutual-fund managers
Washed-up pro athletes in long-term contracts
CEOs of poorly performing companies
Orthodontists
Motivational speakers and ex-politicians on the lecture circuit
Real estate agents selling high-end homes
Airport skycaps
West Coast longshoremen
Pilots for major airlines
Wedding photographers
The only time someone is really overpaid is when they are in a position where competition is artificially restricted. One or two of the above fall into that catagory, but the people picked on are at the bottom of the food chain and have little responsibility for their position.
It's amazing to me that someone would publish such an article while we are flooded with corporate scandals like Enron or Tyson. The other day I was reading a story about how a former Tyson excutive directly stuck the company with more than a million dollars for his wife's wedding party and another million or so from his outrageous salary. His single birthday party is equivalent to eight to ten of the so called overpaid yearly salaries above.
I envy people who are actually making enough money to have a stay at home wife, educate their children and retire at a reasonable age. These things should not be confined to worthless upper management. Everyone who actually works for a living deserves as much. If there were more competition in the world, things would be better for everyone.
Harder to run Linux, maybe. Getting past their little BIOS BS to run x86 software on a no so spectacular x86 PC was not too much trouble. It might not be worth the trouble when you have to figure out what dumb thing they do next to the hardware on the other side. Time will tell if people put forth the effort. I told them then and I'll tell them now to spend their money and time on honest hardware instead.
The flip side to this is that it will throw their own developers off. They, bless their suffering hearts, must put up with all the ugliness on normal M$ work and then some. Time to buy another SDK, suckers! Considering the poor sales, I don't know where they will get then next batch. What M$ screw their develpers again? Say it ain't so.
Come on, now. We know that US power industry would only use a reliable OS like NT for control and only point them at safe industrial areas like Bohpal.
Just kidding. We should do this and do it right. More megawatts is better megawatts. Grow, Grow, Grow!
g77 does a reasonable job of implementing the Fortran 77 standard, but most of the legacy code (at least the subset that I've come across) relies heavily on VAX extensions.
That's too bad, but I can believe it. Vax was founded in 1977, so some people could have been using their extentions all along. I suppose issues like that keep the G77 team working. I have not run into that problem with my work or I did not recognize it. Most of my pain came from 90/95.
I hate all such extentions because they don't play with each other. I can only hope that free software adoption will provide a reasonable path to language extention for the future. I like fortran 77 because it did a good job of what it was supposed to - formula translation easy enough for scientists and engineers to use.
6. Other g77 extensions (NOT compatible with Fortran90)
Many extensions to the official Fortran77 Standard were introduced by companies which produced Fortran compilers for sale, but not all of these were incorporated into Fortran90. You may find that existing "Fortran77" code makes use of some of these non-standard features. Fortunately g77 supports some of the more common extensions, especially those of VAX Fortran. The most important ones are listed below.
There is even a command line option for it:
"-fvxt Use VAX Fortran interpretation of certain syntax "
Most people debug fortran with print statements, though it would be neat to try gdb one day.
The whole point of running fortran is the legacy code. For this, as you note, G77 rocks. It's also nice to have it available on a free modern OS will all sorts of other goodies not found together on any comercial platform.
Some people are moving to 90/95 for memory management and a hoped for portability, but it looks like the portability issues of the 90/95 remain the same. The hope was to make memory management as portable as FORTAN was. The lack of portablility of the C code, which is also standardized but pains mixed code, should be a clue to problems to come for fortran 90/95. There were some 90/95 to 77 converters the last time I looked, but most developers thought that 77 was a much more important effort.
In any case, M$ is not even in the ballpark. They gave up their fortran effort to DEC years ago after misleading a few people for a few years. M$'s compilers would not compile the legacy code so they were never really useful.
why would they even care if 'they' lost the market for it to another developer - be it Microsoft or anybody else ?
It's not spite, it's horrid experience and survival instinct talking. The "developer" is Microsoft with TONS of money to blow on mindless adverts that will ruin everyone's day. It's bad enough that Microsoft has convinced people to use crap like VB and access. No one wants to imagine having to deal with Visual Cobol. The comments above speak for themsleves:
It's just another case of M$ pushing their own second rate crap onto the world. The fear is that they will be able to do it and there will be no alternative but to meet clueless demand with clueless M$ junk.
lets them pitch COBOL solutions to the enterprise.
I know the Enterprise had GE looking control panels and transitor / relay boards, but COBOL too? OK, I can believe it, but they will really be in deep do-not-do if they go Next Generation M$. To Boldly Blue Screen where no Blue Screen has ever gone! Just think what transporting would be like.
Slashdot Mirror
ampcast is a little slow, but it looks very cool, thank you.
No one consistenly buys anyone's music. Check your ablbum collection. Most of them will be by different artists and it's rare you have more than three by any one of them. Bands come and go, one that lasts is very rare. People get sick of it and want a real life.
MP3.com proved that anyone could have a place to put and promote their music. The RIAA once again proved they would not tollerate competition and nuked it. MP3.com worked, and I learned about lots of good music I never would have and I bought their music. The money those artists earned from my purchases is money they would never have seen otherwise. The music I bought from MP3.com left me much less satisfied with RIAA crap. MP3.com, left on it's own, would be much bigger than iTunes is today. Vivandi killed it with adverts, registration and streaming suckage instead of downloads.
MP3.com's dissapearance is going to make a big hole that someone is going to fill.
What exactly are they buying? They don't get the address, they don't get the music, they are left with what exactly? A list of suckers dumb enough to register for spam?
Vivandi ripped the heart out of mp3.com, now they are burring it. Here is a nice old site Note all the nice downloads. Good luck finding downloads on newer sites, and don't forget to register for more great spam when you find one. What total suckage. Sure, that Vivandi won't pay their artists is not a big surprise either.
Vivendi, or whatever face of the world's five big music publishers, was only able to buy mp3.com because they had crushed them in court for the mymp3 service. The service alowed you to put a CD into your computer and then have all of the music available at mp3.com's web site when you wanted it. The music industry claimed this was a republication, though no one but you could listen to the music, and won and was awarded all sorts of money.
limitations (three songs, no pay for play, etc...)
Pay for play? Shit, they will only let you stream music these days and they force the listener to register. Fuck that. Their advertisments and page design are bad enough, I don't need them spamming me with Britany Spears junk.
MP3.com was the closet thing to distribution competition the music industry had ever seen, so they destroyed it. Is there any place left where you can get music artists intend to share? If not it's time to make another one, but good luck getting people to invest in something that the RIAA can crush regardless of law.
The ONLY reason to use M$ in the first place is their nasty hardware lock that prevents hardware makers from producing anything that works with other platorms. You use it for it's half assed ability to work sound cards, DVD players, firewire devices, crapy USB cameras and such. So what are you left with if M$ kills off Macromedia, Real and even ogg tools? Crap, that's what.
Yeah, Media player sucks big time. It's got awful quality, crashes and does not even recognize Microsoft's own older avi formats. What could be crappier than that? Oh yeah, M$'s proven spying where they record every song you listen to and movie you view for later retrieval. It's as ugly bloated and butty as M$ Word is as a text editor. But quality issues are a side show.
If the EU had any brains, they'd slap enourmous tarrifs on M$ junk and work on develping their own media. Microsoft will lock out all but the highest bidders from digital media and they all have offices in Holywood. Digital media is the future of mass communication. If the EU does not get around monopoly formats, they can forget preserving their cultures and not even think about projecting their ideas elsewhere. If they consider to support M$ in their countries, they will find themselves DRM'd into oblivion. M$ is funding it's expansion into media by monpoly rents and should be taxed for it, if not outright banned. It's the future of ideas they are looking at, and it's more improtant than any material goods. The EU has plenty of free alternatives to chose from and they should support them.
I'm not sure about anti-American, but Knoppix is not hard to find in the US, yet. You don't need to break any laws to download and run it either, yet.
Oh yeah, "Digital Rights Management" is un-American. It gimps my press and that violates the First Amendment to the Constitution, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." When someone else has control of what files can and can't be coppied or created on my primary writng instrument, I have no free press, speech or ability to petition my government. If I'm unable to share files from my primary writing instrument, I'm effectively forbiden to publish. Nothing short of universal censorship will make DRM work and nothing could be less American than that.
Microsoft is not just an embarasement to the technical community, they are an embarasement to all of us.
I own movies and I want to be able to see them anywhere I go, but that's going to get me put in jail. I stick them on a box with a good network connection and make them available via ssh. Then I go to jail because "my" movies were posted on a publically accesable network. Does anyone think a judge is going to be able or inclined to tell the difference? No, I'm going to have to cart my DVDs around by hand.
So the cluelessness of MPAA bought senators is demonstrated. Outlawing whole classes of technology and behavior because some people MIGHT abuse them is bad, mmm-kay?
The effect on "piracy" of all these stupid DRM laws is zero. The DVD factories favored by the MPAA for publishing will continue to engage in real piracy. They will continue to print up early releases and overruns and all that regardless of US law and anyone who wants bootledged DVDs will be able to get them for a buck.
It's worse than that. They have taken an action that is essentially harmless and made it against the law. It would be nice if laws were made to prevent social harm rather than create "rights" for "IP" owners that will land you in jail for exercising what should be considered your fair use right. Suppose I want to be able to get at the movies I bought wherever I go? Putting them on s ssh server can still get me put in jail. That's Bull Shit (TM).
It's just another piece of the **AA putting the screws on any potential competition. Remeber how the RIAA's been claiming all mp3s as their mp3s and abusing people who would dare to share their own content? It's harrasment, pure and simple. Now they can get you tossed into jail. Before you know it, you will need a license to run a computer capable of sharing anything. Fuck them all, the god damn unAmerican assholes.
Uhh, the issue is only in doubt if you think SCO has more than a snowballs chance in hell of winning. Because it does not, SCO will go away and this mess will quickly be forgoten, but the confusion SCO is trying to create may remain.
That confusion is worth $20,000,000 to Microsoft and it's a big deal. It's important for the public to know that there are entire operating systems of free software available and that this Linux thing is not just a flash in the pan that can be destroyed by a sinble lawsuit. While the Linux kernel is a large and important project, it's just another replacable component. Indeed the size of the kernel itself makes the SCO suit silly. Any single module that SCO could find infringing could be rewriten in a matter of days.
SCO distributed code under license A. IBM distributed code under license A. SCO is going to have a hard time blaming IBM for distributing code SCO distributed regardless of the license. Calling in RMS is just another outrage from the SCO pirates.
Open Zaurus, Debian, Ogg-Vorbis and some CF cards are all you need. Here's a quick howto. If you can't master the Debian install, use Knoppix. Move your music to free formats and never mess with DRM BS again. If you can't read it and move it to a free format, don't buy it. The RIAA is going to lose this one. The harder they suck the easier it is to be free.
Yeah, you might have been joking. That's OK, I like the chance to sound off about free goodness.
CD format is already being removed. All of the major music makers are putting out new works in DRM format on CDs that won't work on old players. It is easy to imagine them no longer offering normal CDs and equipment makers no longer selling CD readers.
The important part of this equation is not the media but what's stored on it and the bad laws that back it. The move to DRM'd formats and crap like WMA is what will force you to replace your music. Bad laws and anti-competitive practices have exasperated this. Due to expansion of what's considered "publishing" it's virtually imposible to convert other people's media as a service. Just try opening an LP store with CDs in each record and you will find yourself in the same hole as MP3.com. It's still possible for people to convert their music to free digital forms themselves and each person must chose between time and money. Indeed, friends can still exchange music with each other via CD ROM and devide their labor. New DRM's content will remove those choices and that ability. WMA reduces the quality of the sound at the same time, nice eh?
The fate of those still using non-free software looks worse every day and that's great. This gives free software and hardware that works with it great competitive advantages. Already, it's much easier for me to use a Zaurus with ogg encoded music as a juke box than any comercial alternative. It uses normal CF and a simple script plays music from lists at random. I can exhange CDs or CF with anyone I want and completely avoid nasty BS like the NET act. It's almost as easy and much more flexible than tapes used to be. A laptop with an ftp server is an even easier way to share my music. Musicians and artists who promote themselves outside of the RIAA's clutches will enjoy similar advantages. I rarely listen to the radio, I will pay for recorded music and I will go see concerts. The advantage in promotion is returning to the local scene. The RIAA, with it's dying gasp, is helping to eliminate non-free software. Their inflexibility will destroy them as well.
Eventually, things will normalize and it won't be a crime to share recorded music. The RIAA business model is simply obsolete and they will die.
First what is copy-protection? It's something that keeps people from doing what they want to. They want portability in their music. DRM'd crap makes analog tapes look convenient. Worse, it has the ability to demand payment per play or vanish. The idiot is not giving people what they are asking for, does not trust people with what they have and is developing new ways to cheat you.
Do you think people who buy these new Sony CDs are going to know what they are getting? They don't and they will feel cheated when they find out.
When's the last time someone who trusted you called your fair use rights "stealing"? Would you think I was stealing if I quoted your trolly question?
Things will sort themselves out if the internet reamains a free place where anyone can get on as a peer and publish. New publications will replace the old ones that act like Time. If the internet becomes more like broadcast TV, where only $pecial people with credentials can publish, it won't be trusted and the information superhighway will be just another billboard.
Wow, that one is easy, People can't rely on IM because US ISPs suck and that is a direct result of recent US regulatory effort. Broadband penetration is low and run by monopoly service providers who offer high prices and idiotic restrictions such as "no servers". Most people still suffer dial up, which is even less practical for IM. If the US had better ISP:
My non regulated GNU/Linux system does a great job of talking to any BSD, Mac, Unix or Windoze system without the first governemnt regulation. What was it that government regs gave you? Oh yeah, a 10 digit number you have to remember. Sure, like that never happens outside regulation - TCP/IP - caugh.
Don't worry, SCO will lay claim to it all tomorrow. They already have, you know.
In the mean time, you are right, people who don't smoke crack will figure the issue out.
After a silly attempt to justify not including salaries of CEO's like Jack Welch, mega lawyers and other thieves, they go for worker bees and people with real and scare talent:
The only time someone is really overpaid is when they are in a position where competition is artificially restricted. One or two of the above fall into that catagory, but the people picked on are at the bottom of the food chain and have little responsibility for their position.
It's amazing to me that someone would publish such an article while we are flooded with corporate scandals like Enron or Tyson. The other day I was reading a story about how a former Tyson excutive directly stuck the company with more than a million dollars for his wife's wedding party and another million or so from his outrageous salary. His single birthday party is equivalent to eight to ten of the so called overpaid yearly salaries above.
I envy people who are actually making enough money to have a stay at home wife, educate their children and retire at a reasonable age. These things should not be confined to worthless upper management. Everyone who actually works for a living deserves as much. If there were more competition in the world, things would be better for everyone.
The flip side to this is that it will throw their own developers off. They, bless their suffering hearts, must put up with all the ugliness on normal M$ work and then some. Time to buy another SDK, suckers! Considering the poor sales, I don't know where they will get then next batch. What M$ screw their develpers again? Say it ain't so.
Just kidding. We should do this and do it right. More megawatts is better megawatts. Grow, Grow, Grow!
That's too bad, but I can believe it. Vax was founded in 1977, so some people could have been using their extentions all along. I suppose issues like that keep the G77 team working. I have not run into that problem with my work or I did not recognize it. Most of my pain came from 90/95.
I hate all such extentions because they don't play with each other. I can only hope that free software adoption will provide a reasonable path to language extention for the future. I like fortran 77 because it did a good job of what it was supposed to - formula translation easy enough for scientists and engineers to use.
I'm sure you have been there, but this page claims many common VAX extentions are supported.
6. Other g77 extensions (NOT compatible with Fortran90)
Many extensions to the official Fortran77 Standard were introduced by companies which produced Fortran compilers for sale, but not all of these were incorporated into Fortran90. You may find that existing "Fortran77" code makes use of some of these non-standard features. Fortunately g77 supports some of the more common extensions, especially those of VAX Fortran. The most important ones are listed below.
There is even a command line option for it:
"-fvxt Use VAX Fortran interpretation of certain syntax "
The whole point of running fortran is the legacy code. For this, as you note, G77 rocks. It's also nice to have it available on a free modern OS will all sorts of other goodies not found together on any comercial platform.
Some people are moving to 90/95 for memory management and a hoped for portability, but it looks like the portability issues of the 90/95 remain the same. The hope was to make memory management as portable as FORTAN was. The lack of portablility of the C code, which is also standardized but pains mixed code, should be a clue to problems to come for fortran 90/95. There were some 90/95 to 77 converters the last time I looked, but most developers thought that 77 was a much more important effort.
In any case, M$ is not even in the ballpark. They gave up their fortran effort to DEC years ago after misleading a few people for a few years. M$'s compilers would not compile the legacy code so they were never really useful.
It's not spite, it's horrid experience and survival instinct talking. The "developer" is Microsoft with TONS of money to blow on mindless adverts that will ruin everyone's day. It's bad enough that Microsoft has convinced people to use crap like VB and access. No one wants to imagine having to deal with Visual Cobol. The comments above speak for themsleves:
It's just another case of M$ pushing their own second rate crap onto the world. The fear is that they will be able to do it and there will be no alternative but to meet clueless demand with clueless M$ junk.
I know the Enterprise had GE looking control panels and transitor / relay boards, but COBOL too? OK, I can believe it, but they will really be in deep do-not-do if they go Next Generation M$. To Boldly Blue Screen where no Blue Screen has ever gone! Just think what transporting would be like.