And out of interest, how do these standard parts of.NET compare to J2EE? I mean, if you wanted to put together an N-tier architecture with Mono on Linux using just standards comparable to EJB, JSP, JNLP, JDBC etc. would you be able to? I have read comparisons between.NET & Java and even by Microsoft's own admission, the whole of.NET has big chunks of missing functionality compared to J2EE. Assuming that large portions of that are proprietary, liable to change or shoehorned into the way existing MS products work, I hate to think what the standard parts are like.
So either you would be confined to writing toy apps or playing the follow the leader as Microsoft obsoletes APIs and otherwise leads you around by the nose.
I really don't see the point for any of this at all. It is reinventing the wheel for the sake of it. I can appreciate the benefits of a CLR over a JVM, but frankly the JVM is good enough that there is no need to start from scratch. Modern JVMs are fast, reliable, available from multiple vendors, and targetted for all kinds of deployments from phone size all the way up to big iron. Despite it's supposed faults, Java now runs an unbelievable amount of infrastructure.
And the language differences between C# and Java amount to syntactic sugar and are not difficult to work around. While it would be nice if a future Java supported enum for example, I believe I can cope if it doesn't. Especially if means not selling my soul to a monopoly who like nothing better than to see Linux ground under their boot.
It might have been illegal but now it contains no proprietary code and the project is going strong.
Which where MP3 scores over other formats. There are dozens of encoders and decoders for any platform or OS you care to look at. While there are patents, the technology is ubiquitous and as far as software is concerned, free. In an ideal world, perhaps OGG would be used, but MP3 is still miles better than the alternatives.
Which is irrelevant. It is now the industry standard and it is ubiquitous - every computer, OS, hifi component, and pocket device plays MP3. The licencing has already been paid for the customers.
That Apple doesn't offer it from iTunes shows that they're trying to push their customers down a proprietary path. I suspect it is seen as a way to generate 'loyalty' to the Mac & iPod platforms - if AAC support is spotty or more difficult to set up on other platforms (in particular in transferring rights), it compells people to stick with Apple. After all, who is going to move to a PC or buy someone elses MP3 player if it means throwing away a $1000 music collection?
Unfortunately DRM will have to be there, even in an open format. The issue is how much control you allow a publisher to have over how you use your purchase. Personally I think it would be sufficient to encode the identity of the person into the book content (and make it difficult to remove).
That would deter most people from passing books around but not discourage personal use. Of course you might have lamers using stolen credit cards, and others ripping titles but they would likely be background noise (just like with real books) if the format took off and the publishers charged reasonable prices.
Someone suggested Mobipocket in another response but the prices on that site are ludicrous. I looked up Bill Brysons Short History of Everything and I could have bought for less in town today than the $18 ebook on their site. Perhaps they think the money saved on printing, binding, shipping, retail space and time to market should just line their pockets and not be passed on. My feeling is that if they charge over $5 they may as well be pissing into the wind - I certainly wouldn't waste my money when I can buy something tangible for the same.
Yes it might work everywhere, but what good is that if the book you want is in some other format because the publisher is part owned by Microsoft or has signed an exclusive deal or whatever?
The format needs to be universal, so that I might buy a book from anywhere and read it with any reader. I should not be forced to use Mobipocket software or buy from a select number of sites which offer that format.
Yes, but like with their music venture they'd choose a proprietary format. They could offer music in MP3 (and give the customer the choice which to use), but they didn't. Apparantly even though every music device supports MP3 they still restricted downloads to AAC - a format supported by few devices. That should tell you something. They are using the format to kill off the glut of MP3 players which compete with their iPod. Whether the sound quality is better or track size is smaller is irrelevant. The market has chosen MP3 and Apple have still gone down a proprietary path.
There are literally dozens of proprietary ebook formats, all requiring their own proprietary ebook reader. The likes of Microsoft also ensure that their proprietary ebooks can only be read on Microsoft platforms (e.g. not Palm). Publishers split into factions supporting one format or their other, or even their own.
Is it any wonder the market is dead? Who wants a book that only works on their desktop but not their palm pilot? Or on their pocketpc or not their Mac? Or works everywhere but has a dreadful selection of titles? Or only runs through a reader that is a piece of junk (e.g. MS Reader)?
But does that mean no one is interested? Of course not. Wander into a IRC book warez channel or a ebooks newsgroup and you'll find tens of thousands of books, lovingly hand scanned in for trading and available in formats such as.txt,.doc or.html. Now obviously many of these traders are lamers who'd never buy anything in their lives, but others I suspect would willingly part with a couple of dollars for properly produced ebook that could be read anywhere. It's the same with music - produce a books in a cheap and open format, throw in some value added site content (e.g. ratings, reviews, promos etc.) and people won't be slinking off to IRC to trade them.
I do not believe that it is beyond the realms of probability that an XML format with some form of DRM could be produced. Until these vendors pull their fingers out of their arses and produce such an open format, they can look forward to their beloved market shrivelling on the vine.
The thing is, people don't use the specs properly and it will never, ever happen either until the specs enforce correct behaviour by being strict. This might happen with XHTML but certainly not in HTML. There are literally trillions of pages out there, and I doubt all but a small percentage are actually 'correct'.
That's why the likes of Mozilla take so long to write. Rendering correct content is pretty easy. Rendering the pigswill that inhabits the net, lacking doctypes, abusing tags, with bizarro JS and framesets etc. is a painful trial and error process. A small device with a meg of firmware at most stands no chance.
As I mentioned, it might be possible to use a device in conjunction with a server that funnels content into some kind of digestable form but I doubt anything, ever will render random web content properly onto contstrained devices. Even the likes of Opera which is touted to be the smallest of the conventional browsers is too big for a phone and it fouls up some sites even in its desktop incarnation.
Hence the need for XML, XHTML & WML. HTML is always going to be a cesspool. If people started using XML with server side transformation into XHTML / WML then small devices would get the support they needed to work properly. As it stands, most WAP support on sites feels like an intern's project - when the intern leaves no one bothers to fix it or make it work properly.
WBXML compresses XML down to bytecodes. It's used in WAP and other places. It works off the DTD, assigning bytes to represent the various tags and attributes.
But even if it were plain old text XML, it still poses some real advantages, not least of which you could transport it over SSL, web proxies and other barriers that would stop an X-session cold.
Besides which the transport is probably not as important as the data you are send. If the schema had sophisticated drawing primitives ala SVG you might find it is considerably faster than X which might be forced to move bitmap data around for similar operations.
WAP in itself is okay as a technology. The problem is that sites really can't be arsed to put decent content up for people to use. I have an O2 phone and and the portal is pointless and slow - more interested in junk like horoscopes than giving information you might need on the phone, such as when the next train is arriving, or a minimap of my location, or what restaurants are near me etc. There is little consideration of the format either with linking pointless screens adding minutes to lookup times. Even if you escape the portal, half the wap sites out there are broken. A case in point is the UK MSN site where the news headlines haven't been updated for six months! Some sites also don't serve out content to very small devices such as my phone. I'd love to use the BBC wap site (for its news), but my phone just chokes on the content.
Then there are other stupid things. For example, the most natural way to discover a site would be to start it with wap. instead of www. For example wap.google.com. Some sites actually do this, but some actually put it under www.somewhere.com/mobile/wap or some ludicrously long URL. Try typing URLs on a phone some time and see what a pain this is!
The sad thing is when a site does bother, for example the Vodaphone Live! (O2's competitor) site, the results are quite attractive.
So the problem is not WAP per se, but the implementation. It's like the vendors have just given up even trying, perhaps hoping that micro browsers will eventually render the technology obsolete. Given the amount of crap on the internet this is extremely unlikely. More possible is a server-side assisted protocol which cleans up web content for small devices, but even that wouldn't be a perfect solution.
I have an S750 with 4 seperate ink cartridges. Getting replacements is easy and cheap, there are drivers for Windows, Mac & and Linux and the thing has decent performance & quality. Replacements are $4 for a cartridge and I can even use a refill kit if I choose.
Why the hell anyone would lock themselves into a proprietary solution where the cartridges / printer heads are small or half filled, chipped and cost $60 a pop is beyond me.
All I can say is Canon kicks ass and Lexmark and the others suck! I would be extremely wary of buying anything from HP, Lexmark or Epson given their track record. Let's hope the EU puts an end to it.
What about a digital camera or a portable harddrive or a CD rewriter? If it says USB 2.0, is it high speed or just a relabelled low speed USB 1.1 device? Is it going to have slug like performance or perform the way expected from the implemented version USB? If I plug this device into my existing hub is it going to fuck up the performance for other devices?
The fact is that allowing manufacturers to relabel previously USB 1.1 devices as USB 2.0 is confusing as hell. More honestly they would tag devices with their throughput or as USB high speed and USB low speed devices.
Because in some cases the current situation is carte blanche for deceptive advertising - passing off a device as something it is not. I bet even now there are manufacturers rubbing their hands in glee that they can shift some crappy USB 1.1. portable storage device onto consumers who equate 2.0 with being faster when in fact they're buying junk.
A P2P system which has nodes set by default to route requests and data packets around with a bit of crypto thrown in (a la Freenet but without the storage & ultraparanoid settings). The net result is that 1000s of sites know about some file, but only a handful actually have it with the rest routing packets around. The efforts involved in detecting who is actually doing the sharing would go through the roof. Of course P2P users might disable their settings to improve performance, but then they're exposing themselves to easier detection. So there is an obvious tradeoff, but by default it should be turned on to maximize the amount of noise.
So let's see the RIAA crucify every single P2P user whether they're guilty or not. Altogether now - "I'm Spartacus!"
Employing people to supervise channels costs money, and obviously cannot be done on channels that people aren't paying for.
But they are paying for them with their presence. MSN sells advertising, the more people on their sites, the more advertising they can sell. Presumably MS only put the chat features there in the first place so push more visitors to their sites with value added content. Besides which, it needn't cost them much at all to monitor usage. AOL employs community volunteers to monitor their chat rooms for peanuts. MSN could do the same, but again have chosen not to.
Paid subscribers are also traceable - if someone misbehaves, you've got their real name and address. They can't hide these from you if they paid by credit card.
Unpaid visitors are traceable too. They can be required to register & periodically reconfirm using a non-free email address (or even via Microsoft's own passport system), they can be restricted to certain geographic zones (e.g. only US people only), they can be tracked with cookies, their IP addresses and conversations can be logged, they can be required to open ports via applets / controls that confound anyone hiding behind an anonymising service and so on.
To say that MSN was left with only one choice really is pretty lame. No, the whole thing was just a cost cutting exercise which they have chosen to justify with extremely dubious reasoning.
And ironically the net result of their 'moral' decision is that the paedos scatter to the four winds along with their victims. Where there was once a single, presumably cooperative ISP there are now dozens running all around the world in different jurisdictions. If I were a cop I would be cursing MSN right now for exponentially fucking things up for them to save a few bucks and then having the gall to claim it on moral grounds.
eSlashbots could get all the facts before hysterical anti-MS ranting, but they don't, do they?
Thanks I know my facts quite well. If you can't see through the statement for what it is (cynical costing cutting) I suggest you don't get a career in politics or management.
Lot's of things essential to life are toxic. Ingest too much salt, water, oxygen, iron, copper, selenium etc. and you'll soon find yourself fitted with a wooden overcoat.
That something is toxic in sufficient doses is rather irrelevant to determining if a small amounts are essential or extremely beneficial to your health.
A more pertinent question is why isn't MSN supervising it's channels? AOL does it, so why not them? If I were a parent I would take this as an implicit admission from MSN that kids are not safe using their service. I would see it as a recommendation to use another ISP that does try and provide a kid safe environment.
Secondly, if these sickos are infesting the boards as they claim, one might wonder why there aren't an equal number of policemen and admins there to catch them and protect the kids. I'm sure MSN is in the unique position that it can post warnings, censor & monitor conversations initiated from the chat room and provide all kinds of interesting account data and logging if need be. How is closing the service so that kids and paedos disperse over a dozen unmoderated and worldwide servers going to make the internet a safer place?
All in all, I think this talk of shutting the servers down is bunk. MSN could make their chatrooms safer but have chosen not to. This smacks more of knowing it will cost N million dollars to fix their service on the one hand and on the other to cut the service entirely, push people to their instant messaging and ban 3rd party chat clients all wrapped up in a moral blanket. After all, we all know these sickos are preying on MSN minors through their unauthorized Jabber clients right?
I'm all for multiple implementations of the same protocol simply on the grounds that hetrogenous networks are harder to crack, at least automatically, than ones all using the same software (hello Microsoft).
On the other hand, I wonder if there is any point at all in producing another open source ssh implementation for the same problem space. No one in the real world gives a toss that openssh uses a BSD style licence. Perhaps the lsh people should instead aim for where openssh might suck at (e.g. embedded) and try and capture that market.
Because structured content and presentation should be made as seperate as possible. The reasons that websites use css and html apply here too. If you mix the styles into the document you make documents considerably more difficult to parse, generate and display correctly.
Of course you could mix everything into a single, big mess with different namespaces or hairy grammar for extra complexity but that runs counter to making things easy to parse. This is probably one reason MS does it the way it does.
Words have to be backed up by deeds. At the risk of invoking Godwins law with this comparison, Adoplh Hitler said lots of nice conciliatory words about peace and how Germany wanted nothing but peace, secure borders and cordial relations and then proceeded to systematically break every one of his promises.
I'm sure Bill Gates can be a dab hand at making fawning concilliatory noises too, but while he and his cohorts are doing their best to stifle open standards, open source with their every deed, it all rings extremely hollow.
Potentially it is carbon neutral, but presumably the nuts need transporting, processing etc. so it isn't really. Still, it is miles better than burning fossil fuels.
Java is as mature a technology as you'd find anywhere. While the GUI side is still a bit sluggish, I've used apps written in Java and they're quite tolerable and most of the time it doesn't matter. What does matter is that the apps run anywhere, the language is straightforward, there is a huge number of third party tools to choose from, and the thing is very very reliable and scalable.
And when you're working on the server side with all the latency of networks and databases, any perceived performance issue with Java just disappears. If 99% of the time is spent waiting for some database to do something, it really doesn't matter what language you're using. What does matter is that it can take anything you throw at it, and there are dozens of platforms and third party database / EJB / servlet solutions to meet any requirement.
Frankly it's a wonder why anyone would bother with.NET at all. So the GUI is a bit faster - big deal. If you want a fast GUI write it in C++. If you want to write server apps, write it in something that runs anywhere and in any configuration you wish to use. It makes no sense at all to lock yourself into MS products and operating systems when there is zero reason to do so.
As for mono. I hope someday that it offers something comparable to J2EE, but at the moment it's little more than a runtime and a compiler. The mono boys should get the Apache & postgresql folks on board and see if they can throw out something akin to Tomcat for c#. It would be cool to see a Borland C# dev environment for Linux which could throw out enterprise apps with not a single piece of MS proprietary code, but there is a long way to go before that happens.
To be nit picky alchemy has been proven right since every element there is was formed in the heart of stars from other elements. And of course nuclear decay forms elements in the opposite direction.
Obviously some crackpot mixing chemicals in his crucible isn't going to achieve the same (and may as well be pissing in the wind for all the good it would do him). But the underlying principle that you can make turn base metals or anything else into gold is true if you have a spare ten billion years and a star or two to do it with.
Hmm, and does this NetBeans include documentation or not? Does it keep all it's files in one folder including the JRE, or does it scatter them throughout your system including the Windows folder?
I just ask because DevStudio is useless without a.NET runtime (how many megs?). And throw the weight of the MSDN into that too and I doubt the figure is any different.
Memory wise, you may have a point but a lot of software allocates memory depending on how much you have to begin with (e.g. Mozilla, the JRE etc.) and use memory pressure triggers to free it up if free memory goes down. So memory consumption can be a poor guide of 'bloat'.
I haven't used NetBeans myself, but JBuilder is an example of a well adjusted Java development environment (e.g. 0% CPU usage when idle) and is amazingly productive once you get over its anti-Microsoft way of doing stuff.
Re:Why can't they arleady do this?
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Well that's not true. The likes of JBuilder have some unique and fantastically useful features that are to be found nowhere DevStudio.
Hit shift+ctrl+r over a class or variable and rename it everywhere that it occurs (imports, filenames, projects, the lot). You would not believe how useful this is.
CVS support built in, plus revision history and diffs and support for other version control systems.
On the fly document generation.
On the fly UML diagram generation.
A much better text editor.
Available on Linux.
Able to run and debug multiple apps at the same time (e.g. a server and a test harness)
On the fly compilation and a decent bug summary.
Support for multiple EJB/JSP servers built in.
That's not to say JBuilder is perfect, for example the menu clutter needs working on, and trying to use the layout mode for a GridBagLayout is a major pain, but it kicks the shit out of DevStudio in so many ways that matter that I believe it is a viable alternative.
IIRC Borland are also producing a C# Builder. I have no idea what this is like, but if it inherits some of the features of JBuilder, it might also prove to be better than the MS offering, especially if it goes cross-platform in time and supports Mono. I imagine that they would steal a march on Microsoft if they could pull that one off.
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And out of interest, how do these standard parts of
So either you would be confined to writing toy apps or playing the follow the leader as Microsoft obsoletes APIs and otherwise leads you around by the nose.
I really don't see the point for any of this at all. It is reinventing the wheel for the sake of it. I can appreciate the benefits of a CLR over a JVM, but frankly the JVM is good enough that there is no need to start from scratch. Modern JVMs are fast, reliable, available from multiple vendors, and targetted for all kinds of deployments from phone size all the way up to big iron. Despite it's supposed faults, Java now runs an unbelievable amount of infrastructure.
And the language differences between C# and Java amount to syntactic sugar and are not difficult to work around. While it would be nice if a future Java supported enum for example, I believe I can cope if it doesn't. Especially if means not selling my soul to a monopoly who like nothing better than to see Linux ground under their boot.
Which where MP3 scores over other formats. There are dozens of encoders and decoders for any platform or OS you care to look at. While there are patents, the technology is ubiquitous and as far as software is concerned, free. In an ideal world, perhaps OGG would be used, but MP3 is still miles better than the alternatives.
That Apple doesn't offer it from iTunes shows that they're trying to push their customers down a proprietary path. I suspect it is seen as a way to generate 'loyalty' to the Mac & iPod platforms - if AAC support is spotty or more difficult to set up on other platforms (in particular in transferring rights), it compells people to stick with Apple. After all, who is going to move to a PC or buy someone elses MP3 player if it means throwing away a $1000 music collection?
That would deter most people from passing books around but not discourage personal use. Of course you might have lamers using stolen credit cards, and others ripping titles but they would likely be background noise (just like with real books) if the format took off and the publishers charged reasonable prices.
Someone suggested Mobipocket in another response but the prices on that site are ludicrous. I looked up Bill Brysons Short History of Everything and I could have bought for less in town today than the $18 ebook on their site. Perhaps they think the money saved on printing, binding, shipping, retail space and time to market should just line their pockets and not be passed on. My feeling is that if they charge over $5 they may as well be pissing into the wind - I certainly wouldn't waste my money when I can buy something tangible for the same.
The format needs to be universal, so that I might buy a book from anywhere and read it with any reader. I should not be forced to use Mobipocket software or buy from a select number of sites which offer that format.
Yes, but like with their music venture they'd choose a proprietary format. They could offer music in MP3 (and give the customer the choice which to use), but they didn't. Apparantly even though every music device supports MP3 they still restricted downloads to AAC - a format supported by few devices. That should tell you something. They are using the format to kill off the glut of MP3 players which compete with their iPod. Whether the sound quality is better or track size is smaller is irrelevant. The market has chosen MP3 and Apple have still gone down a proprietary path.
Is it any wonder the market is dead? Who wants a book that only works on their desktop but not their palm pilot? Or on their pocketpc or not their Mac? Or works everywhere but has a dreadful selection of titles? Or only runs through a reader that is a piece of junk (e.g. MS Reader)?
But does that mean no one is interested? Of course not. Wander into a IRC book warez channel or a ebooks newsgroup and you'll find tens of thousands of books, lovingly hand scanned in for trading and available in formats such as
I do not believe that it is beyond the realms of probability that an XML format with some form of DRM could be produced. Until these vendors pull their fingers out of their arses and produce such an open format, they can look forward to their beloved market shrivelling on the vine.
That's why the likes of Mozilla take so long to write. Rendering correct content is pretty easy. Rendering the pigswill that inhabits the net, lacking doctypes, abusing tags, with bizarro JS and framesets etc. is a painful trial and error process. A small device with a meg of firmware at most stands no chance.
As I mentioned, it might be possible to use a device in conjunction with a server that funnels content into some kind of digestable form but I doubt anything, ever will render random web content properly onto contstrained devices. Even the likes of Opera which is touted to be the smallest of the conventional browsers is too big for a phone and it fouls up some sites even in its desktop incarnation.
Hence the need for XML, XHTML & WML. HTML is always going to be a cesspool. If people started using XML with server side transformation into XHTML / WML then small devices would get the support they needed to work properly. As it stands, most WAP support on sites feels like an intern's project - when the intern leaves no one bothers to fix it or make it work properly.
But even if it were plain old text XML, it still poses some real advantages, not least of which you could transport it over SSL, web proxies and other barriers that would stop an X-session cold.
Besides which the transport is probably not as important as the data you are send. If the schema had sophisticated drawing primitives ala SVG you might find it is considerably faster than X which might be forced to move bitmap data around for similar operations.
Then there are other stupid things. For example, the most natural way to discover a site would be to start it with wap. instead of www. For example wap.google.com. Some sites actually do this, but some actually put it under www.somewhere.com/mobile/wap or some ludicrously long URL. Try typing URLs on a phone some time and see what a pain this is!
The sad thing is when a site does bother, for example the Vodaphone Live! (O2's competitor) site, the results are quite attractive.
So the problem is not WAP per se, but the implementation. It's like the vendors have just given up even trying, perhaps hoping that micro browsers will eventually render the technology obsolete. Given the amount of crap on the internet this is extremely unlikely. More possible is a server-side assisted protocol which cleans up web content for small devices, but even that wouldn't be a perfect solution.
Why the hell anyone would lock themselves into a proprietary solution where the cartridges / printer heads are small or half filled, chipped and cost $60 a pop is beyond me.
All I can say is Canon kicks ass and Lexmark and the others suck! I would be extremely wary of buying anything from HP, Lexmark or Epson given their track record. Let's hope the EU puts an end to it.
The fact is that allowing manufacturers to relabel previously USB 1.1 devices as USB 2.0 is confusing as hell. More honestly they would tag devices with their throughput or as USB high speed and USB low speed devices.
Because in some cases the current situation is carte blanche for deceptive advertising - passing off a device as something it is not. I bet even now there are manufacturers rubbing their hands in glee that they can shift some crappy USB 1.1. portable storage device onto consumers who equate 2.0 with being faster when in fact they're buying junk.
Personally I called in sick after seeing the second one.
So let's see the RIAA crucify every single P2P user whether they're guilty or not. Altogether now - "I'm Spartacus!"
But they are paying for them with their presence. MSN sells advertising, the more people on their sites, the more advertising they can sell. Presumably MS only put the chat features there in the first place so push more visitors to their sites with value added content. Besides which, it needn't cost them much at all to monitor usage. AOL employs community volunteers to monitor their chat rooms for peanuts. MSN could do the same, but again have chosen not to.
Paid subscribers are also traceable - if someone misbehaves, you've got their real name and address. They can't hide these from you if they paid by credit card.
Unpaid visitors are traceable too. They can be required to register & periodically reconfirm using a non-free email address (or even via Microsoft's own passport system), they can be restricted to certain geographic zones (e.g. only US people only), they can be tracked with cookies, their IP addresses and conversations can be logged, they can be required to open ports via applets / controls that confound anyone hiding behind an anonymising service and so on.
To say that MSN was left with only one choice really is pretty lame. No, the whole thing was just a cost cutting exercise which they have chosen to justify with extremely dubious reasoning.
And ironically the net result of their 'moral' decision is that the paedos scatter to the four winds along with their victims. Where there was once a single, presumably cooperative ISP there are now dozens running all around the world in different jurisdictions. If I were a cop I would be cursing MSN right now for exponentially fucking things up for them to save a few bucks and then having the gall to claim it on moral grounds.
eSlashbots could get all the facts before hysterical anti-MS ranting, but they don't, do they?
Thanks I know my facts quite well. If you can't see through the statement for what it is (cynical costing cutting) I suggest you don't get a career in politics or management.
That something is toxic in sufficient doses is rather irrelevant to determining if a small amounts are essential or extremely beneficial to your health.
Secondly, if these sickos are infesting the boards as they claim, one might wonder why there aren't an equal number of policemen and admins there to catch them and protect the kids. I'm sure MSN is in the unique position that it can post warnings, censor & monitor conversations initiated from the chat room and provide all kinds of interesting account data and logging if need be. How is closing the service so that kids and paedos disperse over a dozen unmoderated and worldwide servers going to make the internet a safer place?
All in all, I think this talk of shutting the servers down is bunk. MSN could make their chatrooms safer but have chosen not to. This smacks more of knowing it will cost N million dollars to fix their service on the one hand and on the other to cut the service entirely, push people to their instant messaging and ban 3rd party chat clients all wrapped up in a moral blanket. After all, we all know these sickos are preying on MSN minors through their unauthorized Jabber clients right?
On the other hand, I wonder if there is any point at all in producing another open source ssh implementation for the same problem space. No one in the real world gives a toss that openssh uses a BSD style licence. Perhaps the lsh people should instead aim for where openssh might suck at (e.g. embedded) and try and capture that market.
Of course you could mix everything into a single, big mess with different namespaces or hairy grammar for extra complexity but that runs counter to making things easy to parse. This is probably one reason MS does it the way it does.
I'm sure Bill Gates can be a dab hand at making fawning concilliatory noises too, but while he and his cohorts are doing their best to stifle open standards, open source with their every deed, it all rings extremely hollow.
Potentially it is carbon neutral, but presumably the nuts need transporting, processing etc. so it isn't really. Still, it is miles better than burning fossil fuels.
And when you're working on the server side with all the latency of networks and databases, any perceived performance issue with Java just disappears. If 99% of the time is spent waiting for some database to do something, it really doesn't matter what language you're using. What does matter is that it can take anything you throw at it, and there are dozens of platforms and third party database / EJB / servlet solutions to meet any requirement.
Frankly it's a wonder why anyone would bother with
As for mono. I hope someday that it offers something comparable to J2EE, but at the moment it's little more than a runtime and a compiler. The mono boys should get the Apache & postgresql folks on board and see if they can throw out something akin to Tomcat for c#. It would be cool to see a Borland C# dev environment for Linux which could throw out enterprise apps with not a single piece of MS proprietary code, but there is a long way to go before that happens.
Obviously some crackpot mixing chemicals in his crucible isn't going to achieve the same (and may as well be pissing in the wind for all the good it would do him). But the underlying principle that you can make turn base metals or anything else into gold is true if you have a spare ten billion years and a star or two to do it with.
I just ask because DevStudio is useless without a
Memory wise, you may have a point but a lot of software allocates memory depending on how much you have to begin with (e.g. Mozilla, the JRE etc.) and use memory pressure triggers to free it up if free memory goes down. So memory consumption can be a poor guide of 'bloat'.
I haven't used NetBeans myself, but JBuilder is an example of a well adjusted Java development environment (e.g. 0% CPU usage when idle) and is amazingly productive once you get over its anti-Microsoft way of doing stuff.
That's not to say JBuilder is perfect, for example the menu clutter needs working on, and trying to use the layout mode for a GridBagLayout is a major pain, but it kicks the shit out of DevStudio in so many ways that matter that I believe it is a viable alternative.
IIRC Borland are also producing a C# Builder. I have no idea what this is like, but if it inherits some of the features of JBuilder, it might also prove to be better than the MS offering, especially if it goes cross-platform in time and supports Mono. I imagine that they would steal a march on Microsoft if they could pull that one off.