We deploy web applications that answer to a PostgreSQL back end. Assuming that it is possible to write PostgreSQL applications (not just MySQL), then this will be a terrific boost. While the core applications are web based, all the administrative stuff is a pain to do web based. Writing all the error checking in Javascript is irratating, and sometimes gets skimped on.
I'm a former VB Programmer (as well as general NT guy who used Linux as a hobby for a few years), and VB was always irritating to do anything useful. C++ Builder was irratating (I'm not a huge C++ fan), by Delphi was interesting to say the least.
Developing quick database applications is gold. Doing them all web based is irratating, and the UI isn't so hot. The ability to let your administrative tools be written as a desktop applications is awesome. While the Windows only version would be adequate, Linux support makes our life easier. Our development environment in Linux, so while we all have Windows computers as well, it's more convenient to have everything in one place.
About a week ago I was discussing the console market with a friend. I gave him my opinion, and I'll share it here.
The competition is between Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo is a different league. Sony is a consumer electronics company making a gaming platform. Microsoft is a software monopoly looking to extract full rents with hardware. Neither is a game company (MS does have a games division, but it isn't the corporate focus).
This helps them with third party games. The companies don't fear the manufacturer screwing them to help their games. Their licensing fees don't price their games out of the market, everyone is a licensee. In fact, in this point, Sony has a big edge (MS business history AND their game division). However, MS has a big edge, DirectX. If you are making a PC game, the X-Box port will be trivial, this keeps Microsoft in it. I expect both consoles to do well, but I can't tell who has the edge. MS can launch with games, but Sony has loyal players, I can't tell.
Nintendo is NOT a consumer electronics/operating systems play, it is a game company. They make boxes to push their games. They focus on the Japanese market where they dominate. XBox will be states-side, with American companies churning out the games, they are too Amercian-centric to make it in Japan (my opinion).
Nintendo sells to the states as an afterthought. The original gameboy is ancient, but it beat the newer systems that followed it (including color systems, 32-bit systems, etc). Why? It has Nintendo's games.
Nintendo has some GREAT series. The Zelda and Mario series dominate. Even without a single third-party game, we all by the Nintendo consoles to play the Mario Games, the Zelda games, and Mario Kart, etc. This means that they get the consoles into a LOT of homes. Third party support may or may not come, but I'd be shocked of none hitting. I mean, Nintendo can put boxes in people's houses.
They aren't about hype. They aim for the kids market. Their kid focus lets parents feel safe buying the system, and the systems are fun for kids. Nintendo knows this market, and they own this market.
Gee, and I thought that I was the only one who played that. I sat down with a friend and wrote some psycho Scheme code (I was in high school, didn't know the good details of the language) to generate characters and everything.
Was pretty cool, and incredibly detailled and intense.
Fun game, but I recalled it not having a ship-ship combat, but they had a few unrelated ones that they recommend you take a look at.
Or, if I'm misreading you, you thought it was cool that it was all up to the GM and to be role played. Either way, it was pretty cool and caught the flavor of Star Trek.
Re:My Generation's "Kennedy was Shot" moment
on
The Challenger
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· Score: 2
Yeah, I'm also 22 and was in first grade. I'm a Floridian, and we were all watching the television in class (the launch was a few hundred miles away), and the total shock. None of us knew what was going on, and our teacher turned off the TV before we really understood the magnitude of the situation.
While I'm certain that everyone discussed the situation, being so close to the investigation made it dominate the news. I remember hearing about it constantly as they were looking into the cause of the failure.
Like most launches, it was constantly delayed because of weather, etc. Well, they decided to launch the sucker rather than keep waitting, and wow, what a disaster.
A few years later I was doing a "research paper" (I think 6th grade, so it was closer to a book report with 2 books:-) ) on satellites and telecommunication. The book was from the pre-explosion days (82 or 83) when the country could do no wrong. It talked about how, by 1990, there would be a shuttle launch every two weeks... the space program was, in reality, almost completely dead, and even now, NASA is a shell of what it was...
MS doesn't need to make money now, they need to establish a large presence in the market, then games will be written for it. If Linux users buy these by the dozen, and MS loses $10million on Linux users hacking, but they look like the console success of the year, MS will be happy to piss the money away.
It goes beyond risk. If you let the creditors suck a dying company dry, then they'll get pennies on the dollar and shut the company down.
If you can convince a judge that you might get your act together, you can get bankrupcy protection. That means that you can help off from the creditors and try to make money, then you work out a system to pay them back.
This is in the lenders best interests (you didn't think the laws were to protect commoners). For example, say I am one of 10 creditors for a company that owes $10m, and has $1m on hand. They might have money coming in (could pay back in two years). Protection helps us all.
Why can't we do this independently? There is a hold-up problem. Say that I am owed $5m, and cut a deal to be paid back. Someone owed $250,000 demands payment, and they'd get paid in full, (while I get nothing). A few of those situations, and the $1m on hand could be sucked out, leaving the company unable to make payroll and going under.
Even if there weren't people that could be paid, we'd have a problem. Imagine a company with 2 creditors for $10m. They owe one of them $8m, and one $2m, and they have $1m on hand. The $8m agrees to hold off payments so the company can try to pay in full. The $2m company now decides to collect, forces the company into bankrupcy and takes the $1m (because the big boy agreed to put off payments). This would be a mess. The lesser debtor could blackmail the big debtor into transferring debt, because all they can get is $800,000 from them both filing, or $0 from not filing, and that isn't right.
The courts protect creditors from each other more than protecting those that lost it all.
When you need to improve a section, learn what the code does, and if you must, rewrite the section. Keep the general system in place. Designing a system is more fun than debugging an old one, but your new system will be just as painful as the old one is.
In 5-7 years, the programming style you use will look ugly and primitive compared to whatever the latest buzzword in computer science is. If you rewrite whenever something "looks ugly" then you will be perpetually redesigning, and that isn't an efficient use of corporate resources.
Okay, I don't even know why I'm responded to a comment like this.
IP law: it is illegal to due something and you can be held responsible.
Obviously, no laws can STOP you from something. (except the laws of the universe...)
They are using it as their trademark, so they had fun with it. You CAN use a "common word" in a trademark as long as it is descriptive. They can be the only:-( printing house. Apple can be the only Apple in computers.
You can USE:-( as much as you want. If you use:-( in anything close to a printing house, you would probably have to indicate that it is a trademark of despair.
There is a real Trademark, and it is quite reasonable. You can not use the frowny emoticon as representing your trade in business cards and artwork. It is questionable if you can use it as an image in a poster, but I would imagine that prior art covers it.
However, they have that logo. I can't create a printing house and use the frowning logo.
I like there logo, and I thought the page was hysterical.
Remember, this is Microsoft, where Bill Gates discussing market dumping in magazine interviews. When they priced WinCE below cost, he explained that they didn't make money on DOS 1.0, but by becoming the standard, they did well later.
The XBox will be sold at a loss. MS needs to be in the console/IA market, and needs software for their system. MS doesn't need the cash, but they need the presence in this market.
If people hack the X-box, Linux users will by up the suckers to setup Linux boxes. While these boxes cost MS money, and generate no sales revenue, it is another X-box sold. MS needs to have a big chunk of the marketshare, and if they can get another 5%-10% of the market this way, they will.
When you are a game developer, the bigger MS's X-box seems, the more likely you are to develop for it. Expect the X-box to be hacked either within 48 hours of shipping, or before shipping with MS getting some presales to Linux hackers.
You need to worry about your experienced engineers, not your low level programmers (assuming that you have enough programmers that a union would touch you). If your technical team strikes, you'll replace them damned fast. In technology, you don't have weeks to deal with union whining (most strikes that get covered are usually over minute details, although some are caused by genuine issues).
Besides, in tech, the union wouldn't really be able to strike. If they went on strike, the company would likely go under, so there is nothing to negotiate.
Besides, given stock options, most employees are owners, so striking seems counter productive for all but the lowliest employee.
Unions normally exist in a market with one employer or a few employers acting as one. The goal of a union is to stop monopsony power.
The reason for this? The "menial" tasks that the anti-union people talk about in the auto-industry are actually considered skilled labor. They have valuable skills. However, if the "Big Three" decided that they would only pay $12/hr, these people would have nowhere to sell their skills, because there is only one employer. A union (monopoly of labor) and employer (monopsony of labor) negotiate, and you can something similar to a competitive market, but less efficient. However, it is more efficient than union/competitive industry or monopsony/exploited people.
If you have a competetive marketplace like in tech, (there are 10s of thousands of employers, and even in areas with sparse tech, there are probably 15-25) with lots of potential employees.
Unions will fail in tech, because "scabs" will laugh and cross pickup lines, and we're as a rule not imposing enough to scare them. Unlike the teamsters, I can't see tech unions working with the mob to kill scabs, but that's just me.
6.001 (Intro CS), 6.034 (AI) etc., still use Scheme (MIT Lisp's derivative).
I included MIT in the elite shcools.
The difference, 1.00 (taught to Civil Engineers and Business Majors) is Java based (although it might be C++ one term and Java the other, it's hard to keep track off).
6.170, the software engineering lab of Computer Science required for all CSE majors is in Java now, not CLU.
Everyone graduating from MIT with a CS degree knows Java.
Java is useful for teaching software engineering because you focus on design strategy instead of debugging pointers. For MIT, the real world benefit is uninteresting, we're expected to learn new languages quickly. For "lower tier" schools (not to be insulting, hence the quites), like local colleges and community colleges, Java will become increasingly used. This is important, because if you need a lot of programmers, the bulk will be people that learn pragmatic details.
My point is, Computer Scientists will learn whatever language. Computer Programmers will use the few they were taught, and Java is likely to be one of them.
Okay, I think most of us would agree that Slashdot is not a community. It has discussions, but no community. I'll read a post by someone, maybe become more educated, but I won't think to respond and chat.
In the old BBSes (well, the multi-line boards at the end), you could log on to chat, and you'd invite your friends to join to chat (which is now handled with IM/ICQ), the difference was, you'd also interact with other groups.
At random times, you'd be on, your friends wouldn't, and you'd chat and meet new people.
On the Internet, that's gone.
It used to be, getting a modem limited the participation, so there was a shared interest. Then, configuring your modem and a terminal program was a limitation. The web has no enterance requirements, so building community takes effort and creativity. There are limitations to HTML (it wasn't designed for this), and there is a need to create a useful interface for Interacting that will work and provide some community.
Corporate Policy. For example, IBM could develop an extended version of Linux and not give it to the community. If they were to extend Linux, and include the source with the software, then there is no need to provide source code to third parties. IBM could include it with their big iron, and someone would have to buy one of the machines to distribute the code under the GPL.
IBM is making it their corporate policy to be good citizens, those are the steps.
Also, keep in mind the difference between open source and Free Software. The GPL guarantees Free Software, respecting the rights of the users enumerated in the GPL. Open Source is a different animal. Open Source are collaborative projects that many people can submit patches to, that is a different animal. The GNU project is not an open source project, the FSF owns all the copyrights and only accepts patches that are signed over.
Remember what people mean when they say open source on Slashdot, it isn't merely enough to sell stuff under the GPL, to/. open source means downloadable from the corporate site (with ISO if a distribution), a web site with development information, CVS, etc., etc., etc.
Enough of us aren't mindless twits, you'd think that we could all make an effort to post more often so that the unknowledgable users don't dominate. I mean, real posts almost always get a useful mod up, so browing at 2+ or 3+ gets good stuff, I just wish it wasn't always 7 of 300.:)
Agreed, if you are distributing software via CD or large download, including the JRE is trivial. Indeed, if there is a standard way to verify that it is installed (trivial with the Windows Registry, there are advantages to it, even if its a pain in the ass), you can include it without a problem. It shouldn't be a much bigger deal than the MFC/VB runtimes included copies that we used to use in the past.
Now the Sun JREs blow, they need to be improved and optimized. Unfortunately, it is harder to write a JRE without the OS Code. However, I don't know how much that matters.
When I had a Pentium 75, I used to think that Java was unbearably slow, because it would run at half the speed of native code. With a Pentium 166, it was annoying. With my K6-3 450, I wouldn't want to run a spreadsheet in Java. With my Athlon/P3 machines at the office (and what every new computer user has), it is insignificant.
JIT has probably gotten runtime to 80%-90% of native code for "real apps" (where you run the application for a while, so it can optimize), and the 50% hit for trivial apps doesn't matter because they're trivial. Intel/AMD compensated for Java's speed.:)
Okay, I love hysteria, but this is silly. DirecTV can cut off HDTV... They can also cut off your service in general. That is how it works, you pay them for service, they give you service. Remote stoppage is useful. They aren't rendering your TV dead, they are rendering your DSS system for them dead.
If they were to use stuff like this randomly, they'd lose customers. Come on people. DirecTV isn't a necessity, it's a luxury and a monthly service that they can end (barring a contract).
Microsoft settled for VERY intelligent reasons. They need to conserve their legal resources. They got embarassed in the anti-trust suit, and with the findings of fact, there was no way that they'd win this suit.
The injuction about the logo wasn't too big a deal. MS doesn't need it. However, this goes beyond the logo.
They can't use Sun's IP. That means that they can't produce a Java anything. They can keep their existing Java software on the market for 7 years, (very key, screwing with Visual Studio now would annoy them) but they can't make more.
This means that the JVM plug-ins can be used preventing MSIE broken Java. With the next version, the Java VM disappears. Now, it is questionable if a third-party can write a reasonably fast Windows JVM, but who knows.
Java is taught at MIT, it is taught at most schools. Except the "elite" CS schools that still teach whatever their developed version of LISP is, most schools are teaching Java starting from the intros. With the CS curriculum in HS switching, Java programmers will be prevalent.
This won't change. Java is a REALLY good teaching language. Yes, there are easier ones, but schools don't like teaching strange tech. They want to be able to be "real world" enough to interest students. C++ has been a nightmare, Pascal was long dead when it was given up, Java is a nice language. It is easy to teach CS principles in it.
Java will still run on Windows. However, it will be a Sun or IBM Java VM, not a MS one. This means that MS can't break compatibility. Sun won. MS settled because they'd lose everything in the case. Also, this is good for MS Spin because they "drop support" for Java. However, Java won't go away.
Java IDEs are getting better. They will replace VB for "stupid apps." Meaning, I can write my DB applications in Java (possibly for JSP deployment via web browser), and run them on Solaris, Linux, and Macintosh, plus Windows. Someone will have to write a good VM for Windows, but it can be done. Also, Win2K helps here.
Win2K makes it easy to deploy applications across the Enterprise (if you are big enough to waste the time to learn all the stuff for it). This means that big companies can deploy the new VM quickly. This will help Java.
MacOS X is going to help Java, Mac will probably be able to build up to 10-15% of the user base. Why? With the Internet, the local platform matters less, and MacOS X is intuitive and powerful. I expect Linux to grab about 5%-10% of the userbase as it becomes more easily used.
MS will maintain 75%-80%, but a unified front of MacOS/Linux (via Java and a shared UNIX/BSD background) will prevent the monopolization of the past as long as the anti-trust lawsuit stays around.
Expect MacOS X.1 or whatever they call it to support X natively, that will let open source apps run on it. Microsoft isn't going away, they aren't going under, they may not even shrink (the market is still expanding, albeit slowly), but their ability to force everyone out will be gone soon, and Java may do it.
This DOES justify Sun's keeping Java proprietary. That's why MS couldn't kill it with Embrace and Extend. Open Source can "win" in that nobody can destroy it, but it can't "win" in the legal game. Sun was able to fight off MS, even if they weren't as pure with their code as we'd like.
Ashcroft is a conservative southern Republican. He is Pro-life, anti-gun control, opposed affirmative action, etc. This does not make him an extremeist, it makes him a conservative southern Republican, part of the GOP's base. This temper tantrum with his appointment was rude an inconsiderate.
When he opposed the lawsuits in Mo., he was seen as a generous individual, by the left. Their dead candidate winning would probably have gotten screwy in court because you have to inhabit the state. However, Ashcroft let the Gov. appoint a Leftist replacement, and said nothing.
Ashcroft's record on racial appointments is tremendous. He opposed 1 or 28 minority appointments (and I'd like to see his rate of approving Clinton's white appointees, it must be less), did lots of things that were not anti-black is Mo.
Katz says NOTHING of Ashcrofts record other than he supports the 10 Commandments in public buildings. Oh No! Posting the 10 Commandments within a school was an expression of thought to me, why shouldn't it be allowed? (Most of the Congress, BOTH parties, voted that it should be allowed, and it wasn't a Law, it was a resolution expressing the will of the Congress, i.e. advice to the Courts).
Katz, you are welcome to be a DNC partisan warrior. You are welcome to believe what I want. But you are using your position on slashdot in an abusive manner. Many Slashdot readers do NOT get other news outlets (their other outlets are all techie too), to post slanderous and unfounded comments like you did is outrageous.
The only thing we know about Ashcroft, is on some Civil Liberties, he looks very libertarian and sides with us. He is one of the FEW Republicans in office to oppose Carnivore. He opposes restrictions on encryption. He is a BLESSing for high tech.
You were going to get a pro-life, anti-gun control, anti-affirmative action Attorney General. That's what happens when the pro-life, anti-gun control, anti-affirmative action party wins, don't whine about it when for 8 years the AG was anti-death penality and other left-wing ideas, those are the spoils of victory.
However, from the Right, he is the most tech friendly politician, he takes the anti-big-government thing seriously, INCLUDING limitations on the police state. Find another conservative that isn't trying to be so tough on crime that they throw away civil liberties.
Be happy with Ashcroft, you got a tech/civil liberties friendly Right winger when we all should have expected a pro-police-state Right winger.
If the Bells & Whistles are W3C standards, and work in Mac IE and Windows IE, but Netscape doesn't support the standard, is it rude of the web site to utilize them? We had this question with my corporate site.
PHP is usually quick enough that writing the "report" in PHP isn't too painful. And using tables and mime types, you can have it load directly into excel where you can process it further.
Now if you have real reporting to do, this may not work, but I've found that a few hours of coding can solve those problems... albeit not as well as the 10 minute job that Access would take.
It's a tradeoff, with Open Source, you get great programmer resources, moderate user resources, and minimal business resources. With closed source, you normally get minimal (or no) programmer resources, moderate user resources (varies by company, most are better than open source, but some are atrocious), and good-great business resources.
I believe that in school we called it, an engineering tradeoff.
Seriously though, you may want to look at some other packages for this task. I love PHP, but if you need lots of reporting and not coding a PHP script for each report, you may want to switch your system to MS SQL and Access as a client.
At my last fulltime job, I was busy recruiting programmers and undoing the mess left to us by the consultants. A dot-com without a technical team. I had to go through it, replace just about everything, and we did it piecemeal (didn't realize how bad it was until the end, and even then we found ugliness).
Ironically, I'm now trying to get a consulting firm up, and we'd never do a mess like those guys. Still, consultants are risky.
ASPs are also risky, with the market today, check their financials, wouldn't want them to go under in 6 months with no warning (happened to a friend's company with their DSL provider... had 7 lines going to go dead in 2 weeks with 6 weeks to get them switched to a new company).
If you can monitor an ASP, terrific. If you can manage the consultants, terrific. Otherwise, make sure you go with a trustworthy group using standard technology that you can check up on regularly, and if need be take over the project midway.
Slashdot Mirror
We deploy web applications that answer to a PostgreSQL back end. Assuming that it is possible to write PostgreSQL applications (not just MySQL), then this will be a terrific boost. While the core applications are web based, all the administrative stuff is a pain to do web based. Writing all the error checking in Javascript is irratating, and sometimes gets skimped on.
I'm a former VB Programmer (as well as general NT guy who used Linux as a hobby for a few years), and VB was always irritating to do anything useful. C++ Builder was irratating (I'm not a huge C++ fan), by Delphi was interesting to say the least.
Developing quick database applications is gold. Doing them all web based is irratating, and the UI isn't so hot. The ability to let your administrative tools be written as a desktop applications is awesome. While the Windows only version would be adequate, Linux support makes our life easier. Our development environment in Linux, so while we all have Windows computers as well, it's more convenient to have everything in one place.
This, in a work, rocks.
About a week ago I was discussing the console market with a friend. I gave him my opinion, and I'll share it here.
The competition is between Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo is a different league. Sony is a consumer electronics company making a gaming platform. Microsoft is a software monopoly looking to extract full rents with hardware. Neither is a game company (MS does have a games division, but it isn't the corporate focus).
This helps them with third party games. The companies don't fear the manufacturer screwing them to help their games. Their licensing fees don't price their games out of the market, everyone is a licensee. In fact, in this point, Sony has a big edge (MS business history AND their game division). However, MS has a big edge, DirectX. If you are making a PC game, the X-Box port will be trivial, this keeps Microsoft in it. I expect both consoles to do well, but I can't tell who has the edge. MS can launch with games, but Sony has loyal players, I can't tell.
Nintendo is NOT a consumer electronics/operating systems play, it is a game company. They make boxes to push their games. They focus on the Japanese market where they dominate. XBox will be states-side, with American companies churning out the games, they are too Amercian-centric to make it in Japan (my opinion).
Nintendo sells to the states as an afterthought. The original gameboy is ancient, but it beat the newer systems that followed it (including color systems, 32-bit systems, etc). Why? It has Nintendo's games.
Nintendo has some GREAT series. The Zelda and Mario series dominate. Even without a single third-party game, we all by the Nintendo consoles to play the Mario Games, the Zelda games, and Mario Kart, etc. This means that they get the consoles into a LOT of homes. Third party support may or may not come, but I'd be shocked of none hitting. I mean, Nintendo can put boxes in people's houses.
They aren't about hype. They aim for the kids market. Their kid focus lets parents feel safe buying the system, and the systems are fun for kids. Nintendo knows this market, and they own this market.
I love Moo2, but the networking capability was so lame. I remember playing the game on a few P2s on 100 Megabit switched networks.
I figured, well, the game took some time on P166s with modems, so it'll fly now... nope...
They game was mad fun, but waitting to sync was maddening.
Alex
Gee, and I thought that I was the only one who played that. I sat down with a friend and wrote some psycho Scheme code (I was in high school, didn't know the good details of the language) to generate characters and everything.
Was pretty cool, and incredibly detailled and intense.
Fun game, but I recalled it not having a ship-ship combat, but they had a few unrelated ones that they recommend you take a look at.
Or, if I'm misreading you, you thought it was cool that it was all up to the GM and to be role played. Either way, it was pretty cool and caught the flavor of Star Trek.
Yeah, I'm also 22 and was in first grade. I'm a Floridian, and we were all watching the television in class (the launch was a few hundred miles away), and the total shock. None of us knew what was going on, and our teacher turned off the TV before we really understood the magnitude of the situation.
:-) ) on satellites and telecommunication. The book was from the pre-explosion days (82 or 83) when the country could do no wrong. It talked about how, by 1990, there would be a shuttle launch every two weeks... the space program was, in reality, almost completely dead, and even now, NASA is a shell of what it was...
While I'm certain that everyone discussed the situation, being so close to the investigation made it dominate the news. I remember hearing about it constantly as they were looking into the cause of the failure.
Like most launches, it was constantly delayed because of weather, etc. Well, they decided to launch the sucker rather than keep waitting, and wow, what a disaster.
A few years later I was doing a "research paper" (I think 6th grade, so it was closer to a book report with 2 books
Alex
MS doesn't need to make money now, they need to establish a large presence in the market, then games will be written for it. If Linux users buy these by the dozen, and MS loses $10million on Linux users hacking, but they look like the console success of the year, MS will be happy to piss the money away.
It goes beyond risk. If you let the creditors suck a dying company dry, then they'll get pennies on the dollar and shut the company down.
If you can convince a judge that you might get your act together, you can get bankrupcy protection. That means that you can help off from the creditors and try to make money, then you work out a system to pay them back.
This is in the lenders best interests (you didn't think the laws were to protect commoners). For example, say I am one of 10 creditors for a company that owes $10m, and has $1m on hand. They might have money coming in (could pay back in two years). Protection helps us all.
Why can't we do this independently? There is a hold-up problem. Say that I am owed $5m, and cut a deal to be paid back. Someone owed $250,000 demands payment, and they'd get paid in full, (while I get nothing). A few of those situations, and the $1m on hand could be sucked out, leaving the company unable to make payroll and going under.
Even if there weren't people that could be paid, we'd have a problem. Imagine a company with 2 creditors for $10m. They owe one of them $8m, and one $2m, and they have $1m on hand. The $8m agrees to hold off payments so the company can try to pay in full. The $2m company now decides to collect, forces the company into bankrupcy and takes the $1m (because the big boy agreed to put off payments). This would be a mess. The lesser debtor could blackmail the big debtor into transferring debt, because all they can get is $800,000 from them both filing, or $0 from not filing, and that isn't right.
The courts protect creditors from each other more than protecting those that lost it all.
When you need to improve a section, learn what the code does, and if you must, rewrite the section. Keep the general system in place. Designing a system is more fun than debugging an old one, but your new system will be just as painful as the old one is.
In 5-7 years, the programming style you use will look ugly and primitive compared to whatever the latest buzzword in computer science is. If you rewrite whenever something "looks ugly" then you will be perpetually redesigning, and that isn't an efficient use of corporate resources.
Okay, I don't even know why I'm responded to a comment like this.
:-( printing house. Apple can be the only Apple in computers.
:-( as much as you want. If you use :-( in anything close to a printing house, you would probably have to indicate that it is a trademark of despair.
IP law: it is illegal to due something and you can be held responsible.
Obviously, no laws can STOP you from something. (except the laws of the universe...)
They are using it as their trademark, so they had fun with it. You CAN use a "common word" in a trademark as long as it is descriptive. They can be the only
You can USE
Please read my post before responding rudely.
There is a real Trademark, and it is quite reasonable. You can not use the frowny emoticon as representing your trade in business cards and artwork. It is questionable if you can use it as an image in a poster, but I would imagine that prior art covers it.
However, they have that logo. I can't create a printing house and use the frowning logo.
I like there logo, and I thought the page was hysterical.
Remember, this is Microsoft, where Bill Gates discussing market dumping in magazine interviews. When they priced WinCE below cost, he explained that they didn't make money on DOS 1.0, but by becoming the standard, they did well later.
The XBox will be sold at a loss. MS needs to be in the console/IA market, and needs software for their system. MS doesn't need the cash, but they need the presence in this market.
If people hack the X-box, Linux users will by up the suckers to setup Linux boxes. While these boxes cost MS money, and generate no sales revenue, it is another X-box sold. MS needs to have a big chunk of the marketshare, and if they can get another 5%-10% of the market this way, they will.
When you are a game developer, the bigger MS's X-box seems, the more likely you are to develop for it. Expect the X-box to be hacked either within 48 hours of shipping, or before shipping with MS getting some presales to Linux hackers.
Alex
You need to worry about your experienced engineers, not your low level programmers (assuming that you have enough programmers that a union would touch you). If your technical team strikes, you'll replace them damned fast. In technology, you don't have weeks to deal with union whining (most strikes that get covered are usually over minute details, although some are caused by genuine issues).
Besides, in tech, the union wouldn't really be able to strike. If they went on strike, the company would likely go under, so there is nothing to negotiate.
Besides, given stock options, most employees are owners, so striking seems counter productive for all but the lowliest employee.
Alex
Unions normally exist in a market with one employer or a few employers acting as one. The goal of a union is to stop monopsony power.
The reason for this? The "menial" tasks that the anti-union people talk about in the auto-industry are actually considered skilled labor. They have valuable skills. However, if the "Big Three" decided that they would only pay $12/hr, these people would have nowhere to sell their skills, because there is only one employer. A union (monopoly of labor) and employer (monopsony of labor) negotiate, and you can something similar to a competitive market, but less efficient. However, it is more efficient than union/competitive industry or monopsony/exploited people.
If you have a competetive marketplace like in tech, (there are 10s of thousands of employers, and even in areas with sparse tech, there are probably 15-25) with lots of potential employees.
Unions will fail in tech, because "scabs" will laugh and cross pickup lines, and we're as a rule not imposing enough to scare them. Unlike the teamsters, I can't see tech unions working with the mob to kill scabs, but that's just me.
Alex
6.001 (Intro CS), 6.034 (AI) etc., still use Scheme (MIT Lisp's derivative).
I included MIT in the elite shcools.
The difference, 1.00 (taught to Civil Engineers and Business Majors) is Java based (although it might be C++ one term and Java the other, it's hard to keep track off).
6.170, the software engineering lab of Computer Science required for all CSE majors is in Java now, not CLU.
Everyone graduating from MIT with a CS degree knows Java.
Java is useful for teaching software engineering because you focus on design strategy instead of debugging pointers. For MIT, the real world benefit is uninteresting, we're expected to learn new languages quickly. For "lower tier" schools (not to be insulting, hence the quites), like local colleges and community colleges, Java will become increasingly used. This is important, because if you need a lot of programmers, the bulk will be people that learn pragmatic details.
My point is, Computer Scientists will learn whatever language. Computer Programmers will use the few they were taught, and Java is likely to be one of them.
Okay, I think most of us would agree that Slashdot is not a community. It has discussions, but no community. I'll read a post by someone, maybe become more educated, but I won't think to respond and chat.
In the old BBSes (well, the multi-line boards at the end), you could log on to chat, and you'd invite your friends to join to chat (which is now handled with IM/ICQ), the difference was, you'd also interact with other groups.
At random times, you'd be on, your friends wouldn't, and you'd chat and meet new people.
On the Internet, that's gone.
It used to be, getting a modem limited the participation, so there was a shared interest. Then, configuring your modem and a terminal program was a limitation. The web has no enterance requirements, so building community takes effort and creativity. There are limitations to HTML (it wasn't designed for this), and there is a need to create a useful interface for Interacting that will work and provide some community.
Corporate Policy. For example, IBM could develop an extended version of Linux and not give it to the community. If they were to extend Linux, and include the source with the software, then there is no need to provide source code to third parties. IBM could include it with their big iron, and someone would have to buy one of the machines to distribute the code under the GPL.
/. open source means downloadable from the corporate site (with ISO if a distribution), a web site with development information, CVS, etc., etc., etc.
IBM is making it their corporate policy to be good citizens, those are the steps.
Also, keep in mind the difference between open source and Free Software. The GPL guarantees Free Software, respecting the rights of the users enumerated in the GPL. Open Source is a different animal. Open Source are collaborative projects that many people can submit patches to, that is a different animal. The GNU project is not an open source project, the FSF owns all the copyrights and only accepts patches that are signed over.
Remember what people mean when they say open source on Slashdot, it isn't merely enough to sell stuff under the GPL, to
Thanks for the vote of confidence, I try. :)
:)
Enough of us aren't mindless twits, you'd think that we could all make an effort to post more often so that the unknowledgable users don't dominate. I mean, real posts almost always get a useful mod up, so browing at 2+ or 3+ gets good stuff, I just wish it wasn't always 7 of 300.
Alex
Agreed, if you are distributing software via CD or large download, including the JRE is trivial. Indeed, if there is a standard way to verify that it is installed (trivial with the Windows Registry, there are advantages to it, even if its a pain in the ass), you can include it without a problem. It shouldn't be a much bigger deal than the MFC/VB runtimes included copies that we used to use in the past.
:)
Now the Sun JREs blow, they need to be improved and optimized. Unfortunately, it is harder to write a JRE without the OS Code. However, I don't know how much that matters.
When I had a Pentium 75, I used to think that Java was unbearably slow, because it would run at half the speed of native code. With a Pentium 166, it was annoying. With my K6-3 450, I wouldn't want to run a spreadsheet in Java. With my Athlon/P3 machines at the office (and what every new computer user has), it is insignificant.
JIT has probably gotten runtime to 80%-90% of native code for "real apps" (where you run the application for a while, so it can optimize), and the 50% hit for trivial apps doesn't matter because they're trivial. Intel/AMD compensated for Java's speed.
Okay, I love hysteria, but this is silly. DirecTV can cut off HDTV... They can also cut off your service in general. That is how it works, you pay them for service, they give you service. Remote stoppage is useful. They aren't rendering your TV dead, they are rendering your DSS system for them dead.
If they were to use stuff like this randomly, they'd lose customers. Come on people. DirecTV isn't a necessity, it's a luxury and a monthly service that they can end (barring a contract).
Alex
Microsoft settled for VERY intelligent reasons. They need to conserve their legal resources. They got embarassed in the anti-trust suit, and with the findings of fact, there was no way that they'd win this suit.
The injuction about the logo wasn't too big a deal. MS doesn't need it. However, this goes beyond the logo.
They can't use Sun's IP. That means that they can't produce a Java anything. They can keep their existing Java software on the market for 7 years, (very key, screwing with Visual Studio now would annoy them) but they can't make more.
This means that the JVM plug-ins can be used preventing MSIE broken Java. With the next version, the Java VM disappears. Now, it is questionable if a third-party can write a reasonably fast Windows JVM, but who knows.
Java is taught at MIT, it is taught at most schools. Except the "elite" CS schools that still teach whatever their developed version of LISP is, most schools are teaching Java starting from the intros. With the CS curriculum in HS switching, Java programmers will be prevalent.
This won't change. Java is a REALLY good teaching language. Yes, there are easier ones, but schools don't like teaching strange tech. They want to be able to be "real world" enough to interest students. C++ has been a nightmare, Pascal was long dead when it was given up, Java is a nice language. It is easy to teach CS principles in it.
Java will still run on Windows. However, it will be a Sun or IBM Java VM, not a MS one. This means that MS can't break compatibility. Sun won. MS settled because they'd lose everything in the case. Also, this is good for MS Spin because they "drop support" for Java. However, Java won't go away.
Java IDEs are getting better. They will replace VB for "stupid apps." Meaning, I can write my DB applications in Java (possibly for JSP deployment via web browser), and run them on Solaris, Linux, and Macintosh, plus Windows. Someone will have to write a good VM for Windows, but it can be done. Also, Win2K helps here.
Win2K makes it easy to deploy applications across the Enterprise (if you are big enough to waste the time to learn all the stuff for it). This means that big companies can deploy the new VM quickly. This will help Java.
MacOS X is going to help Java, Mac will probably be able to build up to 10-15% of the user base. Why? With the Internet, the local platform matters less, and MacOS X is intuitive and powerful. I expect Linux to grab about 5%-10% of the userbase as it becomes more easily used.
MS will maintain 75%-80%, but a unified front of MacOS/Linux (via Java and a shared UNIX/BSD background) will prevent the monopolization of the past as long as the anti-trust lawsuit stays around.
Expect MacOS X.1 or whatever they call it to support X natively, that will let open source apps run on it. Microsoft isn't going away, they aren't going under, they may not even shrink (the market is still expanding, albeit slowly), but their ability to force everyone out will be gone soon, and Java may do it.
This DOES justify Sun's keeping Java proprietary. That's why MS couldn't kill it with Embrace and Extend. Open Source can "win" in that nobody can destroy it, but it can't "win" in the legal game. Sun was able to fight off MS, even if they weren't as pure with their code as we'd like.
Ashcroft is a conservative southern Republican. He is Pro-life, anti-gun control, opposed affirmative action, etc. This does not make him an extremeist, it makes him a conservative southern Republican, part of the GOP's base. This temper tantrum with his appointment was rude an inconsiderate.
When he opposed the lawsuits in Mo., he was seen as a generous individual, by the left. Their dead candidate winning would probably have gotten screwy in court because you have to inhabit the state. However, Ashcroft let the Gov. appoint a Leftist replacement, and said nothing.
Ashcroft's record on racial appointments is tremendous. He opposed 1 or 28 minority appointments (and I'd like to see his rate of approving Clinton's white appointees, it must be less), did lots of things that were not anti-black is Mo.
Katz says NOTHING of Ashcrofts record other than he supports the 10 Commandments in public buildings. Oh No! Posting the 10 Commandments within a school was an expression of thought to me, why shouldn't it be allowed? (Most of the Congress, BOTH parties, voted that it should be allowed, and it wasn't a Law, it was a resolution expressing the will of the Congress, i.e. advice to the Courts).
Katz, you are welcome to be a DNC partisan warrior. You are welcome to believe what I want. But you are using your position on slashdot in an abusive manner. Many Slashdot readers do NOT get other news outlets (their other outlets are all techie too), to post slanderous and unfounded comments like you did is outrageous.
The only thing we know about Ashcroft, is on some Civil Liberties, he looks very libertarian and sides with us. He is one of the FEW Republicans in office to oppose Carnivore. He opposes restrictions on encryption. He is a BLESSing for high tech.
You were going to get a pro-life, anti-gun control, anti-affirmative action Attorney General. That's what happens when the pro-life, anti-gun control, anti-affirmative action party wins, don't whine about it when for 8 years the AG was anti-death penality and other left-wing ideas, those are the spoils of victory.
However, from the Right, he is the most tech friendly politician, he takes the anti-big-government thing seriously, INCLUDING limitations on the police state. Find another conservative that isn't trying to be so tough on crime that they throw away civil liberties.
Be happy with Ashcroft, you got a tech/civil liberties friendly Right winger when we all should have expected a pro-police-state Right winger.
If the Bells & Whistles are W3C standards, and work in Mac IE and Windows IE, but Netscape doesn't support the standard, is it rude of the web site to utilize them? We had this question with my corporate site.
Alex
Correctness = Proper RDBMS Implementation.
SQL is a language for interfacing with RDBMS, not a reason for existance.
I've worked with both. I like that MySQL is fast with little effort. Connection pooling can mitigate the speed issues, but there is more work in that.
Again MySQL is good for a user with little RDBMS needs that needs a quick way to access data. Postgres is close to being a "real" database.
Alex
PHP is usually quick enough that writing the "report" in PHP isn't too painful. And using tables and mime types, you can have it load directly into excel where you can process it further.
Now if you have real reporting to do, this may not work, but I've found that a few hours of coding can solve those problems... albeit not as well as the 10 minute job that Access would take.
It's a tradeoff, with Open Source, you get great programmer resources, moderate user resources, and minimal business resources. With closed source, you normally get minimal (or no) programmer resources, moderate user resources (varies by company, most are better than open source, but some are atrocious), and good-great business resources.
I believe that in school we called it, an engineering tradeoff.
Seriously though, you may want to look at some other packages for this task. I love PHP, but if you need lots of reporting and not coding a PHP script for each report, you may want to switch your system to MS SQL and Access as a client.
YMMV,
Alex
Good luck.
At my last fulltime job, I was busy recruiting programmers and undoing the mess left to us by the consultants. A dot-com without a technical team. I had to go through it, replace just about everything, and we did it piecemeal (didn't realize how bad it was until the end, and even then we found ugliness).
Ironically, I'm now trying to get a consulting firm up, and we'd never do a mess like those guys. Still, consultants are risky.
ASPs are also risky, with the market today, check their financials, wouldn't want them to go under in 6 months with no warning (happened to a friend's company with their DSL provider... had 7 lines going to go dead in 2 weeks with 6 weeks to get them switched to a new company).
If you can monitor an ASP, terrific. If you can manage the consultants, terrific. Otherwise, make sure you go with a trustworthy group using standard technology that you can check up on regularly, and if need be take over the project midway.
Good luck,
Alex