Democrats and leftists assume that the Bush Justice Dept. is just in the pocket of Big Business, but that's as simplistic as most of their theories. The major opponents of MS are also giant corporations.
There are three major reasons for the lack of interest.
The first is the Republican belief in market forces. The Democrats have a strong belief in "levers of power" -- that the government "runs" the economy. The Republicans think that most of that is an illusion, especially in high-growth, rapidly changing areas such as high tech. There's some truth in both views, but true or not, that's a reason for less interest from Republicans.
The second is that when this lawsuit started, the Internet was supposed to subsume most of the US economy within two or three presidential terms, by some accounts. This was a major "lever of power" over the future of the economy as a whole. Since then, the Internet bubble has burst, making Big News in the Internet industry much smaller news to everyone else.
The third is the terrorist attack of Sept. 11. The Justice Dept. has to be seen to make steady progress at making people safe. Most people are more afraid of death than of Windows -- some Slashdotters excepted. A department with limited resources and answering to elected politicians will tend to focus on political hot topics.
The cost of Windows to small OEMs is about $50, less at high volumes.
It's a mandatory component, just like a CPU or RAM or a keyboard. You don't say that when the price falls below X, you can no longer afford a CPU. The cost is whatever the cost is when you include all the components. The big players will use their purchasing muscle to get lower component costs and price so as to drive smaller players out of business, but nobody is going to price in a way that is independent of the cost of a mandatory component.
On the other hand, MS wants a broader consumer presence, so they may choose to create a separate "lite" version that they sell for less in order to make $350 computers possible. They could go all the way down to free for lite versions built around access portals to MS online services.
ESR's open source experience has apparently been more about politics than economics.
And below $100, won't be able to afford a power cord!
Silly claims. Windows is just one of the components. You can't use the argument that the difference between some price and the cost of components won't enable the purchase of Windows. You could easily make the same argument for a CPU or a keyboard or a mouse by leaving in the Windows but removing that other component from the cost calculation.
If Windows could be replaced by Linux, PC makers would do it and pocket the extra margin. Doing so makes the PCs unsellable, though. It's been tried.
So then if Windows and a CPU and keyboard, mouse, RAM etc. are mandatory, the price won't fall below the cost of the mandatory components -- at least not below the cost for the biggest players, and not for longer than needed to drive out smaller players and raise prices again.
His perspective is too narrow, clearly. Neither Sun nor MS have claimed that their operating systems will be rewritten in Java or.Net. These languages / platforms are designed to give custom app developers a better toolbox, but they aren't designed for all programming tasks.
Even at Sun and MS, they'll take the extra time and effort to write in C/C++ if the breadth of deployment can support the extra hassle and cost. This choice will remain available to all other developers as well, along with quite a few other languages for other purposes (Perl for unix admin work, Fortran for number crunching, and so on.)
As a legal resident of both the Singapore and the US who has spent a lot of time working in Taiwan, I'm afraid you're the one who's dead wrong. Any given restaurant can blow it, but the consistency is remarkable, though there are local menu additions and deletions, of course.
Based on some discussions with actual Nigerians, I think it's likely that they are. A few years ago, the "60 Minutes" TV crew even met with some of these bank scammers in Nigeria.
Technology is advancing so quickly that people would realize that any group that launched such a voyage would be passed by a faster group within a few years.
That thought is likely to limit our voyages at any given time to a radius that can be reached in probably about a decade or less with current technology.
In the meantime, they'll be pushing the limits harder with unmanned probes that can endure tremendous accelerations.
And until such probes provide proof that there is an inhabitable world at the end of the journey, I find it extremely unlikely that anyone will put together a space city and launch themselves into the unknown for an unknown number of centuries toward an end that's more likely to be a massive destructive event (either external or internal) than an accidental discovery of Earth II.
Can't bring yourself to admit it?
on
What is .NET?
·
· Score: 2
It's amazing to hear the lengths to which some Slashdotters will go.
Start with the mandatory MS bash, "Java ripoff", for example. Then start daydreaming about how nice it would be if the non-MS technology could someday become as good as the MS version.
What nonsense. If it's from Microsoft it's a ripoff of its predecessors. Otherwise, it's an advancement beyond its predecessors. Sure, that's "simple", in more ways than one.
All serious next-gen GUI platforms are Unicode now. If you're not using C++ for other reasons, don't pick a language that isn't fundamentally Unicode-based if your goal is GUI apps.
Ruby is like Perl. It's for parsing and filtering byte streams, and like Perl it's great for that sort of app.
Such languages are not ideal for interactive GUI apps that are all about visual display and interaction. Go for Java or C# or VB.Net or C++/KDE and forget the MI or overloading nonsense. That's not how you pick a language.
RMS's ideals of freedom don't impress me as being very ideal, or very free.
Freedom is when you give someone something, and they can do what they like with it because now it's theirs. Lots of good people in the open source community give such gifts. I appreciate it a great deal and try to return the favor.
RMS's "ideals" are of the coercive sort: you are free to do what he tells you you can do. It is a license, not a gift.
I used "+friend" as an example, but you can see that, in essence, it's a password. For that reason, people could make it as easy or as convoluted as they like, so there would be billions of possibilities per email address.
Lets just take the case where they use a 10,000 word dictionary containing the most common words in the most common languages plus the most common names (given names and surnames) plus the most populous place names.
Even that system could be fooled by just using "+bluebanana" or the like. But let's suppose it were used anyway to catch as many as it could.
A 20 million name spam database (typical) times 1000 tries, lets say, before they get a hit, means they'd have to send 20 BILLION messages just to recover the number of working addresses they currently have.
If you want to talk about cost, NO ISP is going to let you send 1000 times as many emails for the same price. Whatever it costs you is likely to be way more than the return you can expect from the one in a million response rate (1/1000 estimated further reduced by a factor of 1000 or more).
And if spammers reach you eventually, you just resort to ever more obscure plus extensions, and for your highest priority people, immediate family for example, you just rotate them as often as necessary.
If we had this system, someone could build an analog of "spread spectrum" among participating clusters of friendly clients, where they coordinate the switches in email address extensions amongst themselves without human intervention, using long random sequences that humans wouldn't even need to remember.
I think we should have a server feature that is configurable from the client. The client would be able to tell the server that if a message has certain characteristics, the server should respond to the sender in the same way it would respond if the address didn't exist at all.
Any message that your client would filter into the trash, your client should be able to tell the server to bounce.
Perhaps we could also use the "plus convention" to allow users to effectively manage their own email address(es). Many servers are set up so that if my assigned email address is fred@foo.com, then fred+[anystring]@foo.com is still sent to fred. Tell your friends to address you as fred+friend@foo.com, and then have your client sort the "+friend" messages into a friends folder.
Why not be able to create a list of valid plus extensions in your client, which would then post them to the server? Why not be able to create your own rule for messages that arrive with no extension? You could instruct your client to instruct the server to accept them or to bounce them back to the sender as simply nonexistent addresses.
You could create an extension in your client and specify an expiration date. Your client informs the server. Then you post your email address publicly, a Usenet question perhaps, and your server would accept responses until the date you specify, and then bounce everything thereafter as spam.
With so many addresses expiring quickly and users able to get their servers to hide their non-expiring addresses from mail with certain characteristics, the spammers databases would become much less usable.
It's a good question..Net has several categories of pointer. Some are there to allow you to use efficient indirection as a programming paradigm without simultaneously exposing the underlying memory system of the machine. The two do *not* have to go together.
.Net uses security exceptions, too. It's finer grained than Java (or ActiveX) and is managed by a security admin system local to the client. You maintain the security rules yourself, or your office "helpdesk" guys do it for you, but it's done locally.
It would be a very common thing for code to ask the runtime for permission to save a file automatically, and if permission is denied to then drop back and ask for a "safe file save" dialog box, which lets the user decide where to put the file and what to call it. The safe file save dialog doesn't even tell the app the name or location of the file that was saved. It just gives it a certificate for it, like having a valet park your car. The app doesn't know where it went, but if it wants it back, it can request it and have the contents only (not name or location) delivered back to it.
If even this is denied, then the app can save files in a walled-off section of the hard drive managed by the.Net runtime, as something akin to a super-cookie. In this region, max file size, amount of allowed disk thrashing, etc. are all moderated by the.Net runtime.
Java has nothing like this, and Bill Joy is hardly likely to bring that to your attention.
I really hope that Microsoft simply makes it impossible to run "Unsafe" CLR code in the browser. Not even an option.
No, that's not necessarily what we want, at least in the long run. It's more limiting than necessary for many purposes.
.Net has a security model that lets you configure your runtime to allow various levels of access depending on digital signature. If I'm the family computer guru, I might set up my parents' computers and my sister's computer to run -- with full access -- anything stamped with my digital signature. I would do that locally on their machines during a holiday visit.
After setting the security admin rules locally on their machines, I can thereafter deploy full-power software that I write to their (and my own!) browsers.
I like Java. I'd just like to point out that even in Java you have safe and unsafe runtime environments.
I could easily write a Java app that would write binary op codes for a virus directly into some of your favorite application executables. The sandbox runtime wouldn't execute you it, but the standalone runtime would if you told it to.
Bill Joy claims that there is a form of coding called "unsafe" in C# and expects you to draw the conclusion that C# is dangerous to use. Pretty pathetic argument for someone with his technical background.
Notice that Joy's article starts off sounding very technical, but never quite gets to any specific technical flaw in.Net. He just implies that it probably has a lot, without offering a single example, based on historical complaints about the company.
If you think the "untrusted code" part was a (single) example, note that he doesn't actually point out any specific flaw.
Java itself allows a program to delete user's entire hard drive, or write the binary op codes for a virus into a file and label it "readmeNOW.exe", if that user chooses to run the program as a standalone app. So Java has the concept of trusted and untrusted, too.
If Joy wants to convince a technical audience that C# is dangerously insecure, you'd think he could come up with an example.
Otherwise, it's nothing more than a fluff "I just don't like Microsoft, the company" piece.
For heaven's sake, don't pit them against each other across cultural/national dividing lines. If you must divide them into teams, make the teams cross-cultural. Even better would be to make them all one team.
Then come up with a dramatic demonstration of what they can accomplish as a human swarm if they ignore cultural boundaries and all cooperate. Concentrate on drama. Give them an experience that will imprint on their minds the power of letting go of nationality and attacking problems instead of each other.
Really, those people who claim that if you start implementing.Net you'll always be behind -- I don't understand the argument. If you *don't* start implementing it, you'll be even farther behind -- unless they're suggesting that you use something even better. If that's their suggestion, then perhaps they could point it out to you.
Miguel's experience with.Net seems to mirror my own. It's a very productive environment that's a blast to work in.
Have you ever gotten used to working in a Unix/Linux shell then had to jump over to Windows and do something on the command line in *DOS*? Know what that feels like, that helpless feeling of losing all your magical powers?
That's what it feels like to work in.Net on Windows, then having to do some work in any current GUI app dev system on Linux.
If RMS thinks he or his minions can design a better architecture than.Net, let him prove it, but don't suggest that we have to learn to live with less for political reasons.
Miguel is thinking in terms of technology, of usefulness, of practical value to users..Net is a great platform, and Microsoft's dominance of the client is going to guarantee its widespread use. If you want the great features of the platform, and want to interact with.Net systems created by others, but you hate the thought of being forced to use Microsoft Windows, Miguel is your friend.
RMS is a political ideologue who thinks in terms of leftist political objectives. Leftist ideologues aren't famous for their customer service. They would prefer to fight valiantly against the Enemies of the People, and heaven help any people who don't demonstrate political correctness.
I've been playing with.Net, and I love it. I'd love to have the advantages of.Net and Linux without it implying two different operating systems. Go Miguel!
And RMS, you don't represent me, buddy. I don't see my needs high on your list of priorities.
You start off heading toward the obvious (but very good) point that a good story is necessary for broad-based success no matter what else you do. But then you wander into the tired, predictable slashdot anti-money, anti-corporate, power to the people diatribe that also predictably misses the point: you have to match your product to your market.
You certainly *can* buy success, but you have to know where to shop and how much to spend -- though I'll admit that no success is ever guaranteed. You have to spend your resources appropriately for the market you're targeting. If it's a niche movie, you can focus on the niche and scrimp elsewhere, but then you'll have to keep your expenses low enough to be recovered from the niche. Nobody else will be interested.
If you're targeting a broad audience, niche value -- like a new CG medium -- won't work. A broad, diverse audience demands something of universal interest. Tell them how to get rich, or stay young forever, or lacking that, tell them a good story of universal appeal. If you scrimp on the plot -- don't hire proven screenwriters, or buy the rights to a proven story, or at least thoroughly test the plot you've come up with against a diverse audience -- then you may have a fatally flawed business plan, regardless of what else you do.
I keep waiting for somebody to take the breathtaking implications of things like nanotech, hacking matter, hacking biology, quantum computing, AI, the Internet, etc., and weave them into a breathtaking, serious novel.
[flame suit on] Instead, all we get are comic books. William Gibson is just goth mood music in print with a little tech thrown in for effect. In person, he admitted as much, but said that was fine with him. It was all about the style, nothing deeper.
Stephenson starts to get imaginative regarding tech, then throws it all away with goofy comic book plots. Lots of ideas I thought were clever enough to build intelligent novels around -- but no such luck.
(All I've read of his have been Snow Crash and Diamond Age, but that left me uninterested in trying again. Maybe Cryptonomicon is different....)
And don't get me started on Speilberg and AI!
The implications of what we can reasonably assume we'll be able to do within a few decades are mind blowing. Surely there must be someone who can bring it to life, to put us there and make it feel real, without wimping out and turning it into just a big joke.
I don't think I have the talent to do it myself, but I can't believe that nobody else does either.
Instead, we have a wasteland of black leather and sunglasses, of elves and trolls, of light sabers and aliens that all look like humans with lumpy heads....
I know the natural response among slashdotters is to assume that the Evil US Government wants to ban Enlightened People in order to protect Evil Corporations.
What you have here, though, is pretty standard diplomatese used in most high-profile joint ventures involving less-than-friendly major powers, for "we understand that some of our partner *states* frown on on concepts such as freedom, so in order to avoid a diplomatic row over issues unrelated to our space agenda, we will avoid sending up Taiwanese politicians, Tibetan lamas residing in India, Chinese slave labor opponents, etc." China refers to such people as "criminals who negatively impact confidence in the State and threaten public order," and the wording of this reflects their sentiments.
It will almost certainly also prohibit people closely identified with any political cause, US or non-US, that is highly controversial (abortion, Israel vs. Palestine, etc.). To do otherwise risks having a bunch of activists protesting NASA over non-technical issues, and they have a hard enough time staying out of trouble as it is without asking for it.
Slashdot Mirror
Democrats and leftists assume that the Bush Justice Dept. is just in the pocket of Big Business, but that's as simplistic as most of their theories. The major opponents of MS are also giant corporations.
There are three major reasons for the lack of interest.
The first is the Republican belief in market forces. The Democrats have a strong belief in "levers of power" -- that the government "runs" the economy. The Republicans think that most of that is an illusion, especially in high-growth, rapidly changing areas such as high tech. There's some truth in both views, but true or not, that's a reason for less interest from Republicans.
The second is that when this lawsuit started, the Internet was supposed to subsume most of the US economy within two or three presidential terms, by some accounts. This was a major "lever of power" over the future of the economy as a whole. Since then, the Internet bubble has burst, making Big News in the Internet industry much smaller news to everyone else.
The third is the terrorist attack of Sept. 11. The Justice Dept. has to be seen to make steady progress at making people safe. Most people are more afraid of death than of Windows -- some Slashdotters excepted. A department with limited resources and answering to elected politicians will tend to focus on political hot topics.
The cost of Windows to small OEMs is about $50, less at high volumes.
It's a mandatory component, just like a CPU or RAM or a keyboard. You don't say that when the price falls below X, you can no longer afford a CPU. The cost is whatever the cost is when you include all the components. The big players will use their purchasing muscle to get lower component costs and price so as to drive smaller players out of business, but nobody is going to price in a way that is independent of the cost of a mandatory component.
On the other hand, MS wants a broader consumer presence, so they may choose to create a separate "lite" version that they sell for less in order to make $350 computers possible. They could go all the way down to free for lite versions built around access portals to MS online services.
ESR's open source experience has apparently been more about politics than economics.
And below $100, won't be able to afford a power cord!
Silly claims. Windows is just one of the components. You can't use the argument that the difference between some price and the cost of components won't enable the purchase of Windows. You could easily make the same argument for a CPU or a keyboard or a mouse by leaving in the Windows but removing that other component from the cost calculation.
If Windows could be replaced by Linux, PC makers would do it and pocket the extra margin. Doing so makes the PCs unsellable, though. It's been tried.
So then if Windows and a CPU and keyboard, mouse, RAM etc. are mandatory, the price won't fall below the cost of the mandatory components -- at least not below the cost for the biggest players, and not for longer than needed to drive out smaller players and raise prices again.
His perspective is too narrow, clearly. Neither Sun nor MS have claimed that their operating systems will be rewritten in Java or .Net. These languages / platforms are designed to give custom app developers a better toolbox, but they aren't designed for all programming tasks.
Even at Sun and MS, they'll take the extra time and effort to write in C/C++ if the breadth of deployment can support the extra hassle and cost. This choice will remain available to all other developers as well, along with quite a few other languages for other purposes (Perl for unix admin work, Fortran for number crunching, and so on.)
As a legal resident of both the Singapore and the US who has spent a lot of time working in Taiwan, I'm afraid you're the one who's dead wrong. Any given restaurant can blow it, but the consistency is remarkable, though there are local menu additions and deletions, of course.
Based on some discussions with actual Nigerians, I think it's likely that they are. A few years ago, the "60 Minutes" TV crew even met with some of these bank scammers in Nigeria.
Technology is advancing so quickly that people would realize that any group that launched such a voyage would be passed by a faster group within a few years.
That thought is likely to limit our voyages at any given time to a radius that can be reached in probably about a decade or less with current technology.
In the meantime, they'll be pushing the limits harder with unmanned probes that can endure tremendous accelerations.
And until such probes provide proof that there is an inhabitable world at the end of the journey, I find it extremely unlikely that anyone will put together a space city and launch themselves into the unknown for an unknown number of centuries toward an end that's more likely to be a massive destructive event (either external or internal) than an accidental discovery of Earth II.
He's an interesting guy, the Father of ASCII.
It's amazing to hear the lengths to which some Slashdotters will go.
Start with the mandatory MS bash, "Java ripoff", for example. Then start daydreaming about how nice it would be if the non-MS technology could someday become as good as the MS version.
What nonsense. If it's from Microsoft it's a ripoff of its predecessors. Otherwise, it's an advancement beyond its predecessors. Sure, that's "simple", in more ways than one.
All serious next-gen GUI platforms are Unicode now. If you're not using C++ for other reasons, don't pick a language that isn't fundamentally Unicode-based if your goal is GUI apps.
Ruby is like Perl. It's for parsing and filtering byte streams, and like Perl it's great for that sort of app.
Such languages are not ideal for interactive GUI apps that are all about visual display and interaction. Go for Java or C# or VB.Net or C++/KDE and forget the MI or overloading nonsense. That's not how you pick a language.
RMS's ideals of freedom don't impress me as being very ideal, or very free.
Freedom is when you give someone something, and they can do what they like with it because now it's theirs. Lots of good people in the open source community give such gifts. I appreciate it a great deal and try to return the favor.
RMS's "ideals" are of the coercive sort: you are free to do what he tells you you can do. It is a license, not a gift.
I used "+friend" as an example, but you can see that, in essence, it's a password. For that reason, people could make it as easy or as convoluted as they like, so there would be billions of possibilities per email address.
Lets just take the case where they use a 10,000 word dictionary containing the most common words in the most common languages plus the most common names (given names and surnames) plus the most populous place names.
Even that system could be fooled by just using "+bluebanana" or the like. But let's suppose it were used anyway to catch as many as it could.
A 20 million name spam database (typical) times 1000 tries, lets say, before they get a hit, means they'd have to send 20 BILLION messages just to recover the number of working addresses they currently have.
If you want to talk about cost, NO ISP is going to let you send 1000 times as many emails for the same price. Whatever it costs you is likely to be way more than the return you can expect from the one in a million response rate (1/1000 estimated further reduced by a factor of 1000 or more).
And if spammers reach you eventually, you just resort to ever more obscure plus extensions, and for your highest priority people, immediate family for example, you just rotate them as often as necessary.
If we had this system, someone could build an analog of "spread spectrum" among participating clusters of friendly clients, where they coordinate the switches in email address extensions amongst themselves without human intervention, using long random sequences that humans wouldn't even need to remember.
I think we should have a server feature that is configurable from the client. The client would be able to tell the server that if a message has certain characteristics, the server should respond to the sender in the same way it would respond if the address didn't exist at all.
Any message that your client would filter into the trash, your client should be able to tell the server to bounce.
Perhaps we could also use the "plus convention" to allow users to effectively manage their own email address(es). Many servers are set up so that if my assigned email address is fred@foo.com, then fred+[anystring]@foo.com is still sent to fred. Tell your friends to address you as fred+friend@foo.com, and then have your client sort the "+friend" messages into a friends folder.
Why not be able to create a list of valid plus extensions in your client, which would then post them to the server? Why not be able to create your own rule for messages that arrive with no extension? You could instruct your client to instruct the server to accept them or to bounce them back to the sender as simply nonexistent addresses.
You could create an extension in your client and specify an expiration date. Your client informs the server. Then you post your email address publicly, a Usenet question perhaps, and your server would accept responses until the date you specify, and then bounce everything thereafter as spam.
With so many addresses expiring quickly and users able to get their servers to hide their non-expiring addresses from mail with certain characteristics, the spammers databases would become much less usable.
It's a good question. .Net has several categories of pointer. Some are there to allow you to use efficient indirection as a programming paradigm without simultaneously exposing the underlying memory system of the machine. The two do *not* have to go together.
.Net uses security exceptions, too. It's finer grained than Java (or ActiveX) and is managed by a security admin system local to the client. You maintain the security rules yourself, or your office "helpdesk" guys do it for you, but it's done locally.
.Net runtime, as something akin to a super-cookie. In this region, max file size, amount of allowed disk thrashing, etc. are all moderated by the .Net runtime.
It would be a very common thing for code to ask the runtime for permission to save a file automatically, and if permission is denied to then drop back and ask for a "safe file save" dialog box, which lets the user decide where to put the file and what to call it. The safe file save dialog doesn't even tell the app the name or location of the file that was saved. It just gives it a certificate for it, like having a valet park your car. The app doesn't know where it went, but if it wants it back, it can request it and have the contents only (not name or location) delivered back to it.
If even this is denied, then the app can save files in a walled-off section of the hard drive managed by the
Java has nothing like this, and Bill Joy is hardly likely to bring that to your attention.
I really hope that Microsoft simply makes it impossible to run "Unsafe" CLR code in the browser. Not even an option.
No, that's not necessarily what we want, at least in the long run. It's more limiting than necessary for many purposes.
.Net has a security model that lets you configure your runtime to allow various levels of access depending on digital signature. If I'm the family computer guru, I might set up my parents' computers and my sister's computer to run -- with full access -- anything stamped with my digital signature. I would do that locally on their machines during a holiday visit.
After setting the security admin rules locally on their machines, I can thereafter deploy full-power software that I write to their (and my own!) browsers.
I like Java. I'd just like to point out that even in Java you have safe and unsafe runtime environments.
I could easily write a Java app that would write binary op codes for a virus directly into some of your favorite application executables. The sandbox runtime wouldn't execute you it, but the standalone runtime would if you told it to.
Bill Joy claims that there is a form of coding called "unsafe" in C# and expects you to draw the conclusion that C# is dangerous to use. Pretty pathetic argument for someone with his technical background.
Notice that Joy's article starts off sounding very technical, but never quite gets to any specific technical flaw in .Net. He just implies that it probably has a lot, without offering a single example, based on historical complaints about the company.
If you think the "untrusted code" part was a (single) example, note that he doesn't actually point out any specific flaw.
Java itself allows a program to delete user's entire hard drive, or write the binary op codes for a virus into a file and label it "readmeNOW.exe", if that user chooses to run the program as a standalone app. So Java has the concept of trusted and untrusted, too.
If Joy wants to convince a technical audience that C# is dangerously insecure, you'd think he could come up with an example.
Otherwise, it's nothing more than a fluff "I just don't like Microsoft, the company" piece.
For heaven's sake, don't pit them against each other across cultural/national dividing lines. If you must divide them into teams, make the teams cross-cultural. Even better would be to make them all one team.
Then come up with a dramatic demonstration of what they can accomplish as a human swarm if they ignore cultural boundaries and all cooperate. Concentrate on drama. Give them an experience that will imprint on their minds the power of letting go of nationality and attacking problems instead of each other.
I hope it helps convey your message.
.Net you'll always be behind -- I don't understand the argument. If you *don't* start implementing it, you'll be even farther behind -- unless they're suggesting that you use something even better. If that's their suggestion, then perhaps they could point it out to you.
Really, those people who claim that if you start implementing
Miguel's experience with .Net seems to mirror my own. It's a very productive environment that's a blast to work in.
.Net on Windows, then having to do some work in any current GUI app dev system on Linux.
.Net, let him prove it, but don't suggest that we have to learn to live with less for political reasons.
Have you ever gotten used to working in a Unix/Linux shell then had to jump over to Windows and do something on the command line in *DOS*? Know what that feels like, that helpless feeling of losing all your magical powers?
That's what it feels like to work in
If RMS thinks he or his minions can design a better architecture than
Miguel is thinking in terms of technology, of usefulness, of practical value to users. .Net is a great platform, and Microsoft's dominance of the client is going to guarantee its widespread use. If you want the great features of the platform, and want to interact with .Net systems created by others, but you hate the thought of being forced to use Microsoft Windows, Miguel is your friend.
.Net, and I love it. I'd love to have the advantages of .Net and Linux without it implying two different operating systems. Go Miguel!
RMS is a political ideologue who thinks in terms of leftist political objectives. Leftist ideologues aren't famous for their customer service. They would prefer to fight valiantly against the Enemies of the People, and heaven help any people who don't demonstrate political correctness.
I've been playing with
And RMS, you don't represent me, buddy. I don't see my needs high on your list of priorities.
You start off heading toward the obvious (but very good) point that a good story is necessary for broad-based success no matter what else you do. But then you wander into the tired, predictable slashdot anti-money, anti-corporate, power to the people diatribe that also predictably misses the point: you have to match your product to your market.
You certainly *can* buy success, but you have to know where to shop and how much to spend -- though I'll admit that no success is ever guaranteed. You have to spend your resources appropriately for the market you're targeting. If it's a niche movie, you can focus on the niche and scrimp elsewhere, but then you'll have to keep your expenses low enough to be recovered from the niche. Nobody else will be interested.
If you're targeting a broad audience, niche value -- like a new CG medium -- won't work. A broad, diverse audience demands something of universal interest. Tell them how to get rich, or stay young forever, or lacking that, tell them a good story of universal appeal. If you scrimp on the plot -- don't hire proven screenwriters, or buy the rights to a proven story, or at least thoroughly test the plot you've come up with against a diverse audience -- then you may have a fatally flawed business plan, regardless of what else you do.
I keep waiting for somebody to take the breathtaking implications of things like nanotech, hacking matter, hacking biology, quantum computing, AI, the Internet, etc., and weave them into a breathtaking, serious novel.
[flame suit on] Instead, all we get are comic books. William Gibson is just goth mood music in print with a little tech thrown in for effect. In person, he admitted as much, but said that was fine with him. It was all about the style, nothing deeper.
Stephenson starts to get imaginative regarding tech, then throws it all away with goofy comic book plots. Lots of ideas I thought were clever enough to build intelligent novels around -- but no such luck.
(All I've read of his have been Snow Crash and Diamond Age, but that left me uninterested in trying again. Maybe Cryptonomicon is different....)
And don't get me started on Speilberg and AI!
The implications of what we can reasonably assume we'll be able to do within a few decades are mind blowing. Surely there must be someone who can bring it to life, to put us there and make it feel real, without wimping out and turning it into just a big joke.
I don't think I have the talent to do it myself, but I can't believe that nobody else does either.
Instead, we have a wasteland of black leather and sunglasses, of elves and trolls, of light sabers and aliens that all look like humans with lumpy heads....
Where is the "2001" for our age?
I know the natural response among slashdotters is to assume that the Evil US Government wants to ban Enlightened People in order to protect Evil Corporations.
What you have here, though, is pretty standard diplomatese used in most high-profile joint ventures involving less-than-friendly major powers, for "we understand that some of our partner *states* frown on on concepts such as freedom, so in order to avoid a diplomatic row over issues unrelated to our space agenda, we will avoid sending up Taiwanese politicians, Tibetan lamas residing in India, Chinese slave labor opponents, etc." China refers to such people as "criminals who negatively impact confidence in the State and threaten public order," and the wording of this reflects their sentiments.
It will almost certainly also prohibit people closely identified with any political cause, US or non-US, that is highly controversial (abortion, Israel vs. Palestine, etc.). To do otherwise risks having a bunch of activists protesting NASA over non-technical issues, and they have a hard enough time staying out of trouble as it is without asking for it.