I wouldn't be so quick to make that assumption. I work for a government contractor (one that actually deals specifically with nuclear weapons). Someone above mentioned that we contractors tend to be more meticulous than the government. True, but that doesn't mean everything is encrypted. Half the time, stuff is just locked away somewhere safe so nobody ever gets to it. Unfortunately, the classified data world is not the world of Mission Impossible (too bad, it might be more fun that way).
You can't blame Clinton for ALL of the problems with the Chinese getting our nuclear secrets. Some of the blame should go to Janet Reno too.:-) Of course, Clinton denied all knowledge of the campaign contributions from the Chinese. That may or may not be true, but I wonder... If the (communist) Chinese wanted him elected so badly, why did the (ostensibly deomcratic-republican) American people also want him? 100 or 200 years ago, the man would have been hung as a traitor. Now we elect him President. Then, someone will flame me because they like Clinton. What is this world coming to...
I saw Bill on 60 minutes a couple of nights ago and had a good laugh. He said something like, "I had this naive notion that if you just went about your business, made the best product and sold a lot of it that people would just leave you alone." Poor, naive Bill. Now he says that the jealous competitors are just out to get him. Maybe, but M$ is a cutthroat pirate, and they could have given the "jealous competitors" less ammo. Besides, I find it hard to feel sorry for a poor, naive guy with about $100 Billion to his name.
Okay, but... Pike mentions M$ as the great innovators of this decade. What have they done that's so spectacular as far as systems? In his paper, he says most systems are just UNIX clones. Look at M$ operating systems. Underneath all the GUI, they've been trying for a decade to become another UNIX (stable, distributed network OS), and are finally getting close. They haven't pioneered anything except a marketing (pirating)model. So if M$ is a UNIX clone with a GUI layer to make it easier, how is it so different from Linux?
The innovation of Linux is not in creating a bunch of new (usually dumbed-down) tools. It's in taking a bunch of very powerful existing tools and making them accessible to mortals running desktop machines. I would say Linux has done a lot of innovation in this area.
The best defense against bad reviews and negative comments is to have a good product. Just like pleading the 5th can make you look guilty, trying to supress negative comments about your product just makes it look like you're producing crap.
You're not going to learn programming without frustration. However, overcoming those frustrations turns out to be very rewarding. My first structured language was Pascal (on old UNIX dumb terminals with VI no less), and I think it was a great starting point. There are lots of free tools and tutorials. Search the web.
Perhaps you are unaware of the break and continue keywords in C. goto is not necessary. However, I think the real flaw in your argument is that VB, Java and C are very different creatures with different applications. C offers a great deal of control for the experienced programmer because it does almost nothing to insulate you from the workings of the machine (hence, its reputation as "high-level assembly"). It's very useful for number-crunching type tasks. On the other hand, I wouldn't try to write a GUI interface with it. There are other tools for that, and in that case, I don't generally need the visibility that C offers. Java (which does indeed use pointers, but hides them from the programmer) is great for applets. There are lots of different programming tools for different tasks, so trashing C because it's not intuitive hardly sounds "well-rounded". And if you feel THAT strongly about VB, why don't you attach your name to your self-described flamebait? Gentlemen should not have to duel with strangers.
I think we should let M$ go on their merry way. Let them have all the rope they need to hang themselves. If they keep doing what they're doing, they'll get split up, people will get sick of them, and the software and OS market will once again be competitive. Competition stimulates growth. I for one look forward to MS-Office for Linux (produced by a software division uleashed from the OS division).
This is the kind of response I like to see in the Open Source world. It is calm, well thought out, and backed by fact. I think that the Open Source community, and Linux in particular, often gets a bad rap for being a movement of fanatics and funcamentalists. Articles like Bob's posted on a very public forum (and one frequented by Wintel users) provide some substance to the movement.
I don't think solid, open standards generally have many drawbacks for users. They never have. The problem with them is that corporations have huge vested interests in their proprietary binary formats, and as long as people are willing to pay money for their product, they're going to use those formats. I look forward to a world where a web page is a web page, a document is a document, a spreadsheet is a spreadsheet and so on. But I can't see large corporations benevolently giving up their hold on whatever part of the market they individually hold in the near future.
I agree with sorceress on most points. Every tool has its place. I wouldn't let Linux loose on my wife, who uses the Win98 partition on our computer to write in her journal and e-mail her sister. There is such a thing as too much. And I would be foolish not to use M$Office at work simply because we have to be able to interface with our customers (StarOffice does not keep my TOC and paragraph formatting correctly, and I'm not going to spend hours fixing it just to make a point). On the other hand, when we talk about building a high-powered computer, nobody even considers NT because that would be flat stupid. I'm perfectly content to use Linux for most of my needs, and I think that on most counts it is leaps and bounds beyond M$. But I don't want Linux to be the ONLY choice any more than I want Windoze or MacOS as the only choice. Competition stimulates growth.
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You forgot Canada's most repulsive, dangerous and downright hideous threat to the United States... CELINE DIONE!!!! AHHHHHHHH!!!!! SAVE ME!!!!
I wouldn't be so quick to make that assumption. I work for a government contractor (one that actually deals specifically with nuclear weapons). Someone above mentioned that we contractors tend to be more meticulous than the government. True, but that doesn't mean everything is encrypted. Half the time, stuff is just locked away somewhere safe so nobody ever gets to it. Unfortunately, the classified data world is not the world of Mission Impossible (too bad, it might be more fun that way).
You can't blame Clinton for ALL of the problems with the Chinese getting our nuclear secrets. Some of the blame should go to Janet Reno too. :-) Of course, Clinton denied all knowledge of the campaign contributions from the Chinese. That may or may not be true, but I wonder... If the (communist) Chinese wanted him elected so badly, why did the (ostensibly deomcratic-republican) American people also want him? 100 or 200 years ago, the man would have been hung as a traitor. Now we elect him President. Then, someone will flame me because they like Clinton. What is this world coming to...
It looks like a Palm V on sterroids. Cool. I want one.
You couldn't pay me enough to work at Microsoft. Just because you would doesn't mean everyone else would.
I saw Bill on 60 minutes a couple of nights ago and had a good laugh. He said something like, "I had this naive notion that if you just went about your business, made the best product and sold a lot of it that people would just leave you alone." Poor, naive Bill. Now he says that the jealous competitors are just out to get him. Maybe, but M$ is a cutthroat pirate, and they could have given the "jealous competitors" less ammo. Besides, I find it hard to feel sorry for a poor, naive guy with about $100 Billion to his name.
Okay, but... Pike mentions M$ as the great innovators of this decade. What have they done that's so spectacular as far as systems? In his paper, he says most systems are just UNIX clones. Look at M$ operating systems. Underneath all the GUI, they've been trying for a decade to become another UNIX (stable, distributed network OS), and are finally getting close. They haven't pioneered anything except a marketing (pirating)model. So if M$ is a UNIX clone with a GUI layer to make it easier, how is it so different from Linux?
The innovation of Linux is not in creating a bunch of new (usually dumbed-down) tools. It's in taking a bunch of very powerful existing tools and making them accessible to mortals running desktop machines. I would say Linux has done a lot of innovation in this area.
The best defense against bad reviews and negative comments is to have a good product. Just like pleading the 5th can make you look guilty, trying to supress negative comments about your product just makes it look like you're producing crap.
You're not going to learn programming without frustration. However, overcoming those frustrations turns out to be very rewarding. My first structured language was Pascal (on old UNIX dumb terminals with VI no less), and I think it was a great starting point. There are lots of free tools and tutorials. Search the web.
Perhaps you are unaware of the break and continue keywords in C. goto is not necessary. However, I think the real flaw in your argument is that VB, Java and C are very different creatures with different applications. C offers a great deal of control for the experienced programmer because it does almost nothing to insulate you from the workings of the machine (hence, its reputation as "high-level assembly"). It's very useful for number-crunching type tasks. On the other hand, I wouldn't try to write a GUI interface with it. There are other tools for that, and in that case, I don't generally need the visibility that C offers. Java (which does indeed use pointers, but hides them from the programmer) is great for applets. There are lots of different programming tools for different tasks, so trashing C because it's not intuitive hardly sounds "well-rounded". And if you feel THAT strongly about VB, why don't you attach your name to your self-described flamebait? Gentlemen should not have to duel with strangers.
I think we should let M$ go on their merry way. Let them have all the rope they need to hang themselves. If they keep doing what they're doing, they'll get split up, people will get sick of them, and the software and OS market will once again be competitive. Competition stimulates growth. I for one look forward to MS-Office for Linux (produced by a software division uleashed from the OS division).
This is the kind of response I like to see in the Open Source world. It is calm, well thought out, and backed by fact. I think that the Open Source community, and Linux in particular, often gets a bad rap for being a movement of fanatics and funcamentalists. Articles like Bob's posted on a very public forum (and one frequented by Wintel users) provide some substance to the movement.
I don't think solid, open standards generally have many drawbacks for users. They never have. The problem with them is that corporations have huge vested interests in their proprietary binary formats, and as long as people are willing to pay money for their product, they're going to use those formats. I look forward to a world where a web page is a web page, a document is a document, a spreadsheet is a spreadsheet and so on. But I can't see large corporations benevolently giving up their hold on whatever part of the market they individually hold in the near future.
I agree with sorceress on most points. Every tool has its place. I wouldn't let Linux loose on my wife, who uses the Win98 partition on our computer to write in her journal and e-mail her sister. There is such a thing as too much. And I would be foolish not to use M$Office at work simply because we have to be able to interface with our customers (StarOffice does not keep my TOC and paragraph formatting correctly, and I'm not going to spend hours fixing it just to make a point). On the other hand, when we talk about building a high-powered computer, nobody even considers NT because that would be flat stupid. I'm perfectly content to use Linux for most of my needs, and I think that on most counts it is leaps and bounds beyond M$. But I don't want Linux to be the ONLY choice any more than I want Windoze or MacOS as the only choice. Competition stimulates growth.