and abandones the advantage of shared libraries: one DLL ABC which is used by several applications.
Sharing a library has one disadvantage: the interface of the library should not change, otherwise using applications will crash. When an interface changes, you have to update the version. Now, you can do this in several ways, most likely this is doable by using a filename version scheme, or as in.NET metadata with a versionnumber.
The central point where you register shared dll's shouldn't be based on a directory though, but a central repository which holds ID's that refer to files on disk. This is implemented in COM somewhat: COM objects are stored in DLL's mostly and when you register a COM dll, its COM Objects are registered in the registry: each CLSID is stored with the physical file where to find the object. If you now store the files locally with the app, as it should be, you can register the com dll's and each application using a COM object with a given CLSID that is stored in the local stored dll can use them.
The problem arises when you install 2 applications which use the same DLL with the same objects, only application A uses v1.0 and application B uses v2.0. v2.0 of the library has all the objects of v1.0 but also newer objects. You first install A. All dll's are stored local. Then you install B. A works, it will probably use the dll of B because B registered all teh objects with the local stored DLL. When you UNinstall B, A will not work anymore, unless you keep the dll with the objects around. Most people don't do this ("Hey the uninstaller left some dll files behind!" *executing del command*). That's DLL hell.
What's best is thus a central repository (Be it the GAC or the registry) and a central store which allows multiple versions of a DLL to be stored. I'm pretty sure that's what MS is heading at, and not your MacOS X nor any Unix does this.
For what it's worth: this only seems for US citisens, since f.e. in europe we don't have software patents nor are we affected by US only patents.
Futhermore, how can a USER of a piece of software, which the user licensed in full (payed a license fee to MS), still be charged for patent-infrigment while USING the piece of software? This doesn't make sense. IF there is one company who has to pay for this patent infrigment, it's Microsoft: after all, it's not the end-user's problem MS didn't license enough from Timeline so the end-user is licensing software from MS which in fact isn't covering the whole package.
What also seems odd is that the article mentiones SqlServer '7', not SqlServer 2000. '7' had an Add-on OLAP package while SqlServer 2000 has everything integrated. IANAL but this seems only to be about the add-on OLAP package for SqlServer 7, not about the integrated logic in SqlServer 2000.
To the people who don't have a clue about databases and cry about MySql: please... come back when MySql has the features SqlServer provides.
An Amiga 500, a P2-400 Slot 1, an AMD Athlon 550 Slot A, a P3-933 and a celeron 1100 in my laptop. The p3-933 is my current workstation and is fast enough, typing code is not going to be faster on a 3GHz box, but games lack a bit. The p2-400 and Athlon are testboxes and are mostly switched off, but still do what they must do.:)
What I found suprising in the article was that an 166MMX with a radeon 9700pro can still run Q3A at a reasonable speed on a reasonable resolution. A new PC is not a right investment, a new videocard might be.
I wanted to say what you already said, so a dupe posting is not that interesting then. It's the matter of: I patent now what I have here, before another patents it so I can pay my ass off, plus I protect my own investments in the matter. MS has numerous patents and hasn't enforced any of them on any company till today.
Oh my... a bucket full of "Q: What's.NET?" "A:[insert synonym for crap here]" postings...
If you can't figure out what.NET is, you don't know what software deveopment is. What's Java? (besides the slang for coffee or the Indonesian Island). A language? true. But also a platform..NET is a platform. Not a language, but a set of api's, functionality if you will. So it compares to 'Java, The Platform (tm)'. C# compares to 'Java, The Language (tm)'.
So there. Now we got that out of the way, can we discuss the review instead of the crippleness of MS' marketing-droids? thanks.
http://www.drbob42.net/SideWinder/. First shots of Borland's.NET IDE. I'm looking forward to this IDE, because I'm getting pretty tired of all the bugs in VS.NET EA, plus the service pack we should have had a loooong time ago is released AFTER April 24th, when VS.NET 2003 is released (with the fixes). VS.NET 2002 can't work with.NET v1.1, so you have to upgrade. This will cost $29.- but still... 2003 doesn't have refactoring f.e. So yeah, I'm pretty looking forward what Borland is releasing this summer. Especially their integration of tools for the complete development path from design to code is interesting. VS.NET EA fails on that part imho (visio 2002.NET is horrible).
He also could have kept the patch local. That's the whole point: he wants to patch the central source-tree with a hack he only needs (since there are other workarounds as people have suggested to him on the mailinglist). Patching a central source-tree with a temporary solution is ONLY wise as a last resort and only IF you absolutely know for sure you are going to fix the temp-patch very very soon. Too many 'temp-hacks' are inserted in central source-trees and are never removed because they're forgotten and will limit future developments (since the code expected is patched with a temp-hack and not with code that is crafted to match rules for reliability and maintainability.).
It's not about a 'perfect world', it's about avoiding the easy road to Crud Ville.
He writes: "If/when Luigi fixes the ABI problems with IPFW, we can remove this 'hack'. Until then, I do not consider the hackiness nature of the patch sufficient reason to not put it in."
I never saw one brilliant remark from this guy and by reading his interviews and his design documents I could only conclude that Mr Dillon was so incredibly blind and biased towards "there is only one solution to all problems and that's my solution". This remark quoted above is the most utterly stupid thing you can do as a developer, because it proves that the no.1 reason why software sux so much most of the time so true:
Nothing lasts that long as a temporary solution.
Think about it. When was the last time you hacked something in "just to patch this problem for now, I'll fix it later", while you never fixed it properly? The 'solution' Mr. Dillon wants to commit into the tree is a temp-solution. You shouldn't commit temporary CRUD into a development tree. Period.
1434 is the general connection accept port.
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SQLServer listens to 1434 to accept incomming connections. SQLServer 7 would then normally transfer these connections to 1433 by default. SQLServer 2000 would transfer the connection to a random port.
It's best to 'hide' the SQLServer from the internet, and/or disable TCP/IP listening for SQLServer totally when it's connected to the Internet. MS also suggests SQLServer should never be exposed to the Internet directly. You can hide SQLServer (2000) directly, using the Server network utility, shipped with SQLServer. You can there first deselect TCP/IP as a protocol that's active, and if you need it, you can select 'hide' to hide the server on the internet, however it's better to disable TCP/IP totally, since you do not need it when you work with SQLServer from the same box (f.e. a website running on the same box accessing the SQLServer).
Oh, of course it should be mentioned, there is a patch for this available at MS' technet site.
Because when the graphical subsystem should be placed outside the kernel, you would have a lot of CPU statechanges (which costed a lot of cycles) in gui applications, including a lot of messaging going on between kernel and userland. Now this is optimized and does not take place. It's however a myth that the total graphical subsystem is in the kernel, still a lot of drawing is going on outside the kernel, however the logic that controls the gui is inside the kernel and I think that was a wise decision.
PC's do have correct color output, you just have to calibrate the card plus the monitor. Todays videocards all have software calibration tools for colors. Photoshop on the PC also lets you calibrate your monitor when you first start the program.
FYI: a lot of paperfocussed designers are already moved to PC's.
Microsoft acquired all of Sendo's intellectual property related to the z100 Stinger SmartPhone, and was then free to do whatever it wanted, which in this case turned out to be going behind Sendo's back and making a deal with Orange SPA Erm... it clearly says: "[microsoft] was then free to do whatever it wanted". Which part of "was then free to do" do you all not understand? If Sendo would have had any managers with a vision and who could envision a set of concequences related to a buy out of IP by MS, this never would have happened... but no, they were eager to sell, money in the bank!...
Ask 10 random computerusers what they think "Windows" means, and 9 will say "Microsoft Windows Operating System". The 10th is a granny who was born before computers took off and knows the concept of the large rectangled pieces of glass people tended to put in walls to look through.
Who are we kidding here? Even on/. when someone mentiones "Windows", in 99% of the cases, that person isn't refering to X11, but MS Windows.
"Lindows" has just 1 character different from the synonym of the OS it wants to emulate (!), hence confusion is born. Allthough with the US' system of justice, you'll never know what you're gonna get, I don't think Lindows will win this case: its name looks too much like the OS it wants to emulate.
(MS trademarked "MS Windows" btw, not just "Windows").
Years ago, when gfx developers ruled the demoscene, content was not that important. Today, it's the other way around: developers can program whatever they want, if you don't have awesome 3D models, textures and sound, it will not draw the attention expected.
The same goes for games. A 3D engine/2D tile engine is one thing, but what will you show with that engine? The programmer art cooked up by the developer? I hope not:). No, what's needed is a big pile of content: 3D models/textures, backgrounds, fonts, sounds, musicscores etc. etc.
So I don't see the 'independent game developer' as a valuable jobdescription. What's needed for development of a good game is a complete team, with of course one or 2 developers but above all: a couple of contentproducers with excellent skills.
Err no. To enlighten you a bit: Apple: Rip-off Hardly. Xerox was ripped of by both MS and Apple (and others)
IBM: OS/2 It was a joined effort. MS has worked on OS/2 as well. No-one talks about the fact that IBM used MS' work when selling OS/2
Sendo: Rip-off This is to be seen. If Sendo signed a contract MS could use the material, Sendo'll stay empty handed. And most of the time when it comes to a Company A sues company B because of IP theft it is basicly regret of company A that they've signed the wrong contract with B.
Sun: Java & C# Come on... Both have C++ as their predecessor. If you say C# is based on Java, you then claim also that Java is the start of a new, unique path in the languages-tree. But that's not true. Java is based on C++, so C# is also based on C++.
Sybase: SQL Server Also very wrong. MS and Sybase worked together on SQLServer, using a codebase provided by Sybase. However after 6.0 MS decided to part ways with Sybase, resulting in a 100% rewrite of SQLServer in v7.0.
Besides that, doing business with companies when IP is involved is a thing where you have to keep your IP attorney at hand for most of the time: nail everything off in tight contracts so no-one can fool you, steal your IP or rip you off in the long run. But what happens most of the time is this:
Company A, large big company, decides it's cheaper to work together with company B, small company with some intellectual property A wants. A does a proposal to B, which B rejects because it means B is selling the IP to A for a bargain. A then decides it is perhaps better to work it out in-house, so leaves B alone. B sees its targetmarket soon be transfered to the targetmarket of A, so decides to accept the offer of A. However, after a few years, B regrets this decision and wants to turn back the tables. No can do. Contracts are signed, B should have payed more attention. B can go to court, perhaps A will settle the case for some money to stop the bad press, but that will be all.
A isn't necessarily Microsoft. All big companies have this kind of cases regularly, especially companies who are in markets where having IP is having the advantage over your competitors.
Do you know the exact contract details? It appears to be secret. I guess then that you don't know the exact details. Then my conclusion is: texts like MORE EVIL: Here, have all the.NET crap you want, and we better see this entering your curriculum or else you lose your discounts and we audit your asses. are just speculation and ment to be insulting for MS and.NET using people.
If MS gives away tons of computers and software to schools they're up to "converting these children over to their side", when they are making deals with universities (which are just companies if you don't know that, every university has research sponsored by large companies, oh the horror), they are bending courses.
If you really think "java" or "C#" or whatever language you get on your university is more important than the real point of what you get taught: "OO development using an imperitive language", you don't know jack about computer science and how it is taught to students.
and no, to answer your question, I don't see the difference.
There is already not a friendly atmosphere between.NET developers and Java developers when it comes to their technologies and this ruling will not be a startingpoint to open the minds and work together instead of against each other. I already moved away from sun 8 years ago and now I've decided throughout my company no-one should have java on their machines nor work with sun-related material. Why? Because I've had it with Sun. Totally. Java might be a nice platform, I don't care anymore. I also don't have to,.NET is also extremely nice and with Mono around the corner, my software will also run on Linux and other platforms Mono is ported to.
I'm all for fair competition, but this ruling is insane. What's next? RealPlayer bundled with XP because it's crushed by the unfair competition of WMP, which is bundled with XP? Apple Quicktime too? I surely hope not! I mention these two allthough MS hasn't signed a contract whatsoever with Apple nor Real Networks about distributing them, because Sun has settled a lawsuit with MS years ago (1997) so that MS was forced to stop distributing the latest java and had the option to distribute java in the last known good state for 7 more years (but there wasn't an option which forced MS to do so for 7 more years). So legally: MS didn't had the obligation to distribute java, it was Sun's wish, well, what's the saying? "Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it" ?
If I may add: the first lawsuit of Sun against MS about Java truely hurted developers on windows: after the lawsuit they weren't able to develop COM objects running in native code using Java, but had to fall back to VB for ease of use or to C++ which requires more in depth knowledge of COM to produce COM objects. If Sun hadn't sued MS for that, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have had.NET today, but everyone on Windows was developing in Java for COM objects. Ah well...
They just implemented some specs differently: COM components were possible and some interfaces were developed using native code. (the things Sun does too in the JVM for Solaris). Sun dit sue, won, and in the end, MS was ordered by a settlement to stop producing an own JVM and they had a limit amount of time (7 years) to keep distributing the JVM they had. (which is still distributed). Sun wanted that, but figured out that in the end the settlement wasn't very positive for Sun so they sued again with this ruling as a result. Did Sun win? No. All they will achieve is more hate among MS developers towards everything that's ever touched by Sun. More and more developers who produce software for MS-related platforms (.net/win32) will turn their back agains Sun.
After I've read the ruling, I've removed all JVM's from my machines, disabled Java whereever I could. I'll never ever do business with Sun nor using sun-related techniques. And with Mono around the corner I don't have to either.
_THAT_'s the true 'win' Sun will get and of course I'm just a lonely geek behind a keyboard;) but I'm sure I'm not alone in this. Sun's whining in court is starting to get pathetic and it definitely hurts the already bad image of IT/software development in general.
I looked at the screenshots, and there are icons for Quake 2 and Quake 3. I don't know, but IIRC Quake 2 is never released for Amiga, nor is Quake 3. To me this seems a bit fake, like "Look, we can run native apps released for other platforms".
What I ment was: Windows (the server variants) are designed to be application / functionality servers, that is: they provide functionality to others, be it clients or other servers. Now, when you have functionality build into com objects, you can now instantiate, as you know, that object from another server, by using DCOM. You can use this same functionality from.NET.
When is this useful? Well, f.e. in the following scenario (don't bug on my that its a sucking solution, I didn't cook it up;)): 2 months ago I was hired to help with a project that was about an intranet application build with.NET. It had to have print functionality, for letters, generated with data from the application. How to print the letters with templates that can easily be changed by the customer? We choose for word, since it has a COM interface. Now we managed to build.NET code which instantiated word on another machine which was the letter machine (old win32 box with a dedicated printer for this) and which was able to generate the letter on that machine from the intranet webapp. Now, if the webapp was moved to Mono, it will fail, since mono doesn't support the instantiating of COM objects on other machines. And believe me, allthough word is heavy for this usage, a lot of intranet applications use it for printing and generating letters. This is just 1 example of using a COM object on another machine in a.NET application, but I'm sure there are more. Mono will not support these structures. True, it would be great to just keep everything 100%.NET code so the transfer to mono would be free of pain, but in the real world this is hardly the case. At least for some time.
.NET assembly names match the actual assembly file name..NET searchs the exe dir and bin sub dir.
No. You create references to assembly filesnames in your own assembly and with that also a version of the assembly so you can install multiple assemblies with the same filename. I can call my assembly FOO and the assembly file bar.dll. The compiler creates a reference to 'bar.dll' with a certain version. When I start the program with that reference, the CLR will look in the current directory for bar.dll to load the assembly objects I try to instantiate. If bar.dll is missing it will consult the GAC (Global Assembly Cache). If bar.dll is not found there, it's not loaded.
Mono is designed to be cross platform.
No. _.NET_ is designed to be cross platform, since the platform a class talks to, uses and consumes is.NET, using the CLR, not the platform where the CLR and the implementation of the.NET api are located on. So running Rotor on FreeBSD will run my C# programs as good as the.NET CLR, as long as the necessary assemblies of the.NET API are there with Rotor. The same goes for Mono.
Supporting COM in.NET was a wise decision. Leaving it out of Mono will developers limit to use DCOM enabled execution of COM objects on windows servers from Linux servers running Mono. True, this will take a big effort and it might not be a big advantage, but it can be a limit on Mono's acceptance among windows developers. That last part is the main issue here: attrackt windows developers to use Mono on linux instead of.NET on Windows. Your point about supporting CORBA and bonobo is therefor missing the point completely: a windows developer doesn't care about CORBA nor will he do that in the future. He does care about code he already wrote and want to reuse f.e. Can he do that on Linux with Mono? If so, perhaps Mono is an alternative. If not, Mono is nice but not an alternative and the windows programmer will stay where he is: on windows.
IE runs on a COM support layer, ported to Mac OS X and earlier version, plus Solaris/ HP-UX. The COM Specifications, written by the Open Group, is os/platform independent. It's the implementation which has to retrieve the CLSID to read the actual binary from disk (i.e. where it is located). But that moniker logic can be done without a registry entry on windows as well: a file moniker. (i.e. at runtime binding of a com object located in a file).
I agree that there is no need for porting COM to Linux. COM was a great technology to provide functionality to a wide spread of languages. That is now taken care of by.NET. All MS and others (like Oracle has done with their System.Data provider) have to do is release.NET assemblies now.
Mono implements a piece of technology offered by Microsoft. There is no innovation there, at least not on the Mono part. Nothing wrong with that, but please, stop briinging the 'innovation' term into the discussion, since Mono is not about innovation.
It CAN be about innovation by implementing generics into the Mono runtime before MS does this (MS will release the updated 2.0.NET when Yukon (SQLServer 2003) comes out, late 2003, which will have generics support). However I don't see this happen soon.
Let me start by saying that programming COM objects is the most retarted way of programming functionality. True, using VB or Delphi, it is easy, but using f.e. C++, it's not. Read Don Box' book Essential COM to see what I mean.
COM as a functionality is great, but it should have been more transparent for the developer, like VB did this: you just program classes and hey, check it out, they're COM objects now!. Using Visual Studio, creating COM objects was (at least using ATL) a bit painless, but don't try it using f.e. UltraEdit32 and no helper library.
So if I understand you correctly,.NET is kind of like the enhancement of what automation was set out to be: a common way for any COM object abiding to automation rules and specifications to be able to use the environment (such as data, variables etc) of the application without doing 'marshalling conversions' when switching between languages? (for example: using variants and safe arrays to access data both in C++ and VB). No..NET is the replacement for the VB runtime for VB programmers, the C(++) Runtime / STL / Win32 lib for C/C++ programmers etc. It's the general target platform for _ALL_ CLS compliant languages (C#, VB.NET, J#, JSCript.net etc. C++ is partly CLS compliant, if you want to use templates or multiple inheritance, you can't).
The multi-language part is not a result of 'making it a better marshaller' or better 'automation platform', but simply a result because now all languages have the same API, the same functionality on board: it doesn't matter which language you pick, you can target the same API and use the same cool functions with ease in VB.NET as you can in C++.NET.
As a result of this, the code you compile will run in a VM. This VM, the CLR, is the heart of.NET. The objects you create, run inside application domains, which is totally different than COM objects do, in relation to the SCM.
Webservices is a term for a piece of 'logic' as I call it. Functionality. It's not 1:1 projectable on a piece of code, like 'that class can serve as the base class for all webservices'. This is due to the fact that a webservice, when you use SOAP f.e., depends on a lot of tiny building blocks to do whatever it should do. That's why it couldn't be another Interface. (I also doubt what that would have brought to the plate, you can create webservices using the new ATL extensions and using plain C++, thus not.NET, but its harder). Webservices is not a 'part' of.NET, you can build webservices WITH.NET. That's a different thing!
About the productivity: Now people can use a language that suits their needs and preferences (f.e. I prefer C# over VB.NET, while I've developer a lot of COM objects for n-tier systems in VB) and use a much richer API than they ever could. It doesn't depend on MS' tools. Sure the new VS.net is great, but the rich.NET api is the key of its success. Add to that the wonderful ASP.NET functionality (which is really years ahead of anything else) and the very good documentation of the API and you're set.
Also I don't see your kick in the balls towards IIS style security. To me this sounds like you really do not understand 1) the power of the strong typing inside.NET and the amazing security featureset available to a developer and 2) that COM IS one of the causes of security leaks and DDos attack possibilities, simply because people forgot to use smartpointers and kept memory nonfreed. This is over now.
I mean: there are not that much crypting settings available and 1 setting f.e. excludes multiple options in the reader.
An example: I recently bought Thinking in C# (almost finished version), in e-book format (pdf) which the writers offered for 5$. That's a bargain, so I thought "lets give it a shot". I tried acrobat, but I soon found out that the e-book was not that handy: i.e.: the advantages an e-book has over a paper-version (searching, bookmarking for fast browsing, highlighting and deleting, unlimited notes on 1 page etc) were gone in the acrobat reader since the e-book as encrypted and printing was disabled, plus there was no bookmark browse tree included. Search did work however but I couldn't print a page, couldn't copy/paste a section of a page and I couldn't create bookmarks!. I found out that Adobe offered another tool, eBook reader. So I downloaded that tool, opened the book and what a suprise: search was disabled too but I could create bookmarks.
So here I was: I paid for a legal ebook and there wasn't software to use it in full. I downloaded Jaws PDF Editor for windows. It's not a free program but the trial was enough. I loaded the ebook in the PDF editor and unlocked the encryption settings. By enabling printing, everything worked again in the eBook reader and now I can use the ebook I bought with all the features only available for electronic versions of a book.
Not thanks to adobe however, who offered only rotten tools to use the book I bought. What's wrong with having a lot of options to secure a book but still allowing users to fully enjoy the benefits of an electronic version of a book?
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and abandones the advantage of shared libraries: one DLL ABC which is used by several applications.
.NET metadata with a versionnumber.
Sharing a library has one disadvantage: the interface of the library should not change, otherwise using applications will crash. When an interface changes, you have to update the version. Now, you can do this in several ways, most likely this is doable by using a filename version scheme, or as in
The central point where you register shared dll's shouldn't be based on a directory though, but a central repository which holds ID's that refer to files on disk. This is implemented in COM somewhat: COM objects are stored in DLL's mostly and when you register a COM dll, its COM Objects are registered in the registry: each CLSID is stored with the physical file where to find the object. If you now store the files locally with the app, as it should be, you can register the com dll's and each application using a COM object with a given CLSID that is stored in the local stored dll can use them.
The problem arises when you install 2 applications which use the same DLL with the same objects, only application A uses v1.0 and application B uses v2.0. v2.0 of the library has all the objects of v1.0 but also newer objects. You first install A. All dll's are stored local. Then you install B. A works, it will probably use the dll of B because B registered all teh objects with the local stored DLL. When you UNinstall B, A will not work anymore, unless you keep the dll with the objects around. Most people don't do this ("Hey the uninstaller left some dll files behind!" *executing del command*). That's DLL hell.
What's best is thus a central repository (Be it the GAC or the registry) and a central store which allows multiple versions of a DLL to be stored. I'm pretty sure that's what MS is heading at, and not your MacOS X nor any Unix does this.
For what it's worth: this only seems for US citisens, since f.e. in europe we don't have software patents nor are we affected by US only patents.
Futhermore, how can a USER of a piece of software, which the user licensed in full (payed a license fee to MS), still be charged for patent-infrigment while USING the piece of software? This doesn't make sense. IF there is one company who has to pay for this patent infrigment, it's Microsoft: after all, it's not the end-user's problem MS didn't license enough from Timeline so the end-user is licensing software from MS which in fact isn't covering the whole package.
What also seems odd is that the article mentiones SqlServer '7', not SqlServer 2000. '7' had an Add-on OLAP package while SqlServer 2000 has everything integrated. IANAL but this seems only to be about the add-on OLAP package for SqlServer 7, not about the integrated logic in SqlServer 2000.
To the people who don't have a clue about databases and cry about MySql: please... come back when MySql has the features SqlServer provides.
An Amiga 500, a P2-400 Slot 1, an AMD Athlon 550 Slot A, a P3-933 and a celeron 1100 in my laptop. The p3-933 is my current workstation and is fast enough, typing code is not going to be faster on a 3GHz box, but games lack a bit. The p2-400 and Athlon are testboxes and are mostly switched off, but still do what they must do. :)
What I found suprising in the article was that an 166MMX with a radeon 9700pro can still run Q3A at a reasonable speed on a reasonable resolution. A new PC is not a right investment, a new videocard might be.
I wanted to say what you already said, so a dupe posting is not that interesting then. It's the matter of: I patent now what I have here, before another patents it so I can pay my ass off, plus I protect my own investments in the matter. MS has numerous patents and hasn't enforced any of them on any company till today.
Oh my... a bucket full of "Q: What's .NET?" "A:[insert synonym for crap here]" postings...
.NET is, you don't know what software deveopment is. What's Java? (besides the slang for coffee or the Indonesian Island). A language? true. But also a platform. .NET is a platform. Not a language, but a set of api's, functionality if you will. So it compares to 'Java, The Platform (tm)'. C# compares to 'Java, The Language (tm)'.
If you can't figure out what
So there. Now we got that out of the way, can we discuss the review instead of the crippleness of MS' marketing-droids? thanks.
http://www.drbob42.net/SideWinder/. First shots of Borland's .NET IDE. I'm looking forward to this IDE, because I'm getting pretty tired of all the bugs in VS.NET EA, plus the service pack we should have had a loooong time ago is released AFTER April 24th, when VS.NET 2003 is released (with the fixes). VS.NET 2002 can't work with .NET v1.1, so you have to upgrade. This will cost $29.- but still... 2003 doesn't have refactoring f.e. So yeah, I'm pretty looking forward what Borland is releasing this summer. Especially their integration of tools for the complete development path from design to code is interesting. VS.NET EA fails on that part imho (visio 2002.NET is horrible).
He also could have kept the patch local. That's the whole point: he wants to patch the central source-tree with a hack he only needs (since there are other workarounds as people have suggested to him on the mailinglist). Patching a central source-tree with a temporary solution is ONLY wise as a last resort and only IF you absolutely know for sure you are going to fix the temp-patch very very soon. Too many 'temp-hacks' are inserted in central source-trees and are never removed because they're forgotten and will limit future developments (since the code expected is patched with a temp-hack and not with code that is crafted to match rules for reliability and maintainability.).
It's not about a 'perfect world', it's about avoiding the easy road to Crud Ville.
He writes:
"If/when Luigi fixes the ABI problems with IPFW, we can remove this 'hack'. Until then, I do not consider the hackiness nature of the patch sufficient reason to not put it in."
I never saw one brilliant remark from this guy and by reading his interviews and his design documents I could only conclude that Mr Dillon was so incredibly blind and biased towards "there is only one solution to all problems and that's my solution". This remark quoted above is the most utterly stupid thing you can do as a developer, because it proves that the no.1 reason why software sux so much most of the time so true:
Nothing lasts that long as a temporary solution.
Think about it. When was the last time you hacked something in "just to patch this problem for now, I'll fix it later", while you never fixed it properly? The 'solution' Mr. Dillon wants to commit into the tree is a temp-solution. You shouldn't commit temporary CRUD into a development tree. Period.
SQLServer listens to 1434 to accept incomming connections. SQLServer 7 would then normally transfer these connections to 1433 by default. SQLServer 2000 would transfer the connection to a random port.
It's best to 'hide' the SQLServer from the internet, and/or disable TCP/IP listening for SQLServer totally when it's connected to the Internet. MS also suggests SQLServer should never be exposed to the Internet directly. You can hide SQLServer (2000) directly, using the Server network utility, shipped with SQLServer. You can there first deselect TCP/IP as a protocol that's active, and if you need it, you can select 'hide' to hide the server on the internet, however it's better to disable TCP/IP totally, since you do not need it when you work with SQLServer from the same box (f.e. a website running on the same box accessing the SQLServer).
Oh, of course it should be mentioned, there is a patch for this available at MS' technet site.
Because when the graphical subsystem should be placed outside the kernel, you would have a lot of CPU statechanges (which costed a lot of cycles) in gui applications, including a lot of messaging going on between kernel and userland. Now this is optimized and does not take place. It's however a myth that the total graphical subsystem is in the kernel, still a lot of drawing is going on outside the kernel, however the logic that controls the gui is inside the kernel and I think that was a wise decision.
PC's do have correct color output, you just have to calibrate the card plus the monitor. Todays videocards all have software calibration tools for colors. Photoshop on the PC also lets you calibrate your monitor when you first start the program.
FYI: a lot of paperfocussed designers are already moved to PC's.
Microsoft acquired all of Sendo's intellectual property related to the z100 Stinger SmartPhone, and was then free to do whatever it wanted, which in this case turned out to be going behind Sendo's back and making a deal with Orange SPA
Erm... it clearly says: "[microsoft] was then free to do whatever it wanted". Which part of "was then free to do" do you all not understand? If Sendo would have had any managers with a vision and who could envision a set of concequences related to a buy out of IP by MS, this never would have happened... but no, they were eager to sell, money in the bank!...
Ask 10 random computerusers what they think "Windows" means, and 9 will say "Microsoft Windows Operating System". The 10th is a granny who was born before computers took off and knows the concept of the large rectangled pieces of glass people tended to put in walls to look through.
/. when someone mentiones "Windows", in 99% of the cases, that person isn't refering to X11, but MS Windows.
Who are we kidding here? Even on
"Lindows" has just 1 character different from the synonym of the OS it wants to emulate (!), hence confusion is born. Allthough with the US' system of justice, you'll never know what you're gonna get, I don't think Lindows will win this case: its name looks too much like the OS it wants to emulate.
(MS trademarked "MS Windows" btw, not just "Windows").
Years ago, when gfx developers ruled the demoscene, content was not that important. Today, it's the other way around: developers can program whatever they want, if you don't have awesome 3D models, textures and sound, it will not draw the attention expected.
:). No, what's needed is a big pile of content: 3D models/textures, backgrounds, fonts, sounds, musicscores etc. etc.
The same goes for games. A 3D engine/2D tile engine is one thing, but what will you show with that engine? The programmer art cooked up by the developer? I hope not
So I don't see the 'independent game developer' as a valuable jobdescription. What's needed for development of a good game is a complete team, with of course one or 2 developers but above all: a couple of contentproducers with excellent skills.
Err no. To enlighten you a bit:
Apple: Rip-off
Hardly. Xerox was ripped of by both MS and Apple (and others)
IBM: OS/2
It was a joined effort. MS has worked on OS/2 as well. No-one talks about the fact that IBM used MS' work when selling OS/2
Sendo: Rip-off
This is to be seen. If Sendo signed a contract MS could use the material, Sendo'll stay empty handed. And most of the time when it comes to a Company A sues company B because of IP theft it is basicly regret of company A that they've signed the wrong contract with B.
Sun: Java & C#
Come on... Both have C++ as their predecessor. If you say C# is based on Java, you then claim also that Java is the start of a new, unique path in the languages-tree. But that's not true. Java is based on C++, so C# is also based on C++.
Sybase: SQL Server
Also very wrong. MS and Sybase worked together on SQLServer, using a codebase provided by Sybase. However after 6.0 MS decided to part ways with Sybase, resulting in a 100% rewrite of SQLServer in v7.0.
Besides that, doing business with companies when IP is involved is a thing where you have to keep your IP attorney at hand for most of the time: nail everything off in tight contracts so no-one can fool you, steal your IP or rip you off in the long run. But what happens most of the time is this:
Company A, large big company, decides it's cheaper to work together with company B, small company with some intellectual property A wants. A does a proposal to B, which B rejects because it means B is selling the IP to A for a bargain. A then decides it is perhaps better to work it out in-house, so leaves B alone. B sees its targetmarket soon be transfered to the targetmarket of A, so decides to accept the offer of A. However, after a few years, B regrets this decision and wants to turn back the tables. No can do. Contracts are signed, B should have payed more attention. B can go to court, perhaps A will settle the case for some money to stop the bad press, but that will be all.
A isn't necessarily Microsoft. All big companies have this kind of cases regularly, especially companies who are in markets where having IP is having the advantage over your competitors.
Do you know the exact contract details? It appears to be secret. I guess then that you don't know the exact details. Then my conclusion is: texts like .NET crap you want, and we better see this entering your curriculum or else you lose your discounts and we audit your asses. .NET using people.
MORE EVIL: Here, have all the
are just speculation and ment to be insulting for MS and
If MS gives away tons of computers and software to schools they're up to "converting these children over to their side", when they are making deals with universities (which are just companies if you don't know that, every university has research sponsored by large companies, oh the horror), they are bending courses.
If you really think "java" or "C#" or whatever language you get on your university is more important than the real point of what you get taught: "OO development using an imperitive language", you don't know jack about computer science and how it is taught to students.
and no, to answer your question, I don't see the difference.
There is already not a friendly atmosphere between .NET developers and Java developers when it comes to their technologies and this ruling will not be a startingpoint to open the minds and work together instead of against each other. I already moved away from sun 8 years ago and now I've decided throughout my company no-one should have java on their machines nor work with sun-related material. Why? Because I've had it with Sun. Totally. Java might be a nice platform, I don't care anymore. I also don't have to, .NET is also extremely nice and with Mono around the corner, my software will also run on Linux and other platforms Mono is ported to.
.NET today, but everyone on Windows was developing in Java for COM objects. Ah well...
I'm all for fair competition, but this ruling is insane. What's next? RealPlayer bundled with XP because it's crushed by the unfair competition of WMP, which is bundled with XP? Apple Quicktime too? I surely hope not! I mention these two allthough MS hasn't signed a contract whatsoever with Apple nor Real Networks about distributing them, because Sun has settled a lawsuit with MS years ago (1997) so that MS was forced to stop distributing the latest java and had the option to distribute java in the last known good state for 7 more years (but there wasn't an option which forced MS to do so for 7 more years). So legally: MS didn't had the obligation to distribute java, it was Sun's wish, well, what's the saying? "Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it" ?
If I may add: the first lawsuit of Sun against MS about Java truely hurted developers on windows: after the lawsuit they weren't able to develop COM objects running in native code using Java, but had to fall back to VB for ease of use or to C++ which requires more in depth knowledge of COM to produce COM objects. If Sun hadn't sued MS for that, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have had
They just implemented some specs differently: COM components were possible and some interfaces were developed using native code. (the things Sun does too in the JVM for Solaris). Sun dit sue, won, and in the end, MS was ordered by a settlement to stop producing an own JVM and they had a limit amount of time (7 years) to keep distributing the JVM they had. (which is still distributed). Sun wanted that, but figured out that in the end the settlement wasn't very positive for Sun so they sued again with this ruling as a result. Did Sun win? No. All they will achieve is more hate among MS developers towards everything that's ever touched by Sun. More and more developers who produce software for MS-related platforms (.net/win32) will turn their back agains Sun.
;) but I'm sure I'm not alone in this. Sun's whining in court is starting to get pathetic and it definitely hurts the already bad image of IT/software development in general.
After I've read the ruling, I've removed all JVM's from my machines, disabled Java whereever I could. I'll never ever do business with Sun nor using sun-related techniques. And with Mono around the corner I don't have to either.
_THAT_'s the true 'win' Sun will get and of course I'm just a lonely geek behind a keyboard
I looked at the screenshots, and there are icons for Quake 2 and Quake 3. I don't know, but IIRC Quake 2 is never released for Amiga, nor is Quake 3. To me this seems a bit fake, like "Look, we can run native apps released for other platforms".
What I ment was: .NET.
;)): 2 months ago I was hired to help with a project that was about an intranet application build with .NET. It had to have print functionality, for letters, generated with data from the application. How to print the letters with templates that can easily be changed by the customer? We choose for word, since it has a COM interface. Now we managed to build .NET code which instantiated word on another machine which was the letter machine (old win32 box with a dedicated printer for this) and which was able to generate the letter on that machine from the intranet webapp. Now, if the webapp was moved to Mono, it will fail, since mono doesn't support the instantiating of COM objects on other machines. And believe me, allthough word is heavy for this usage, a lot of intranet applications use it for printing and generating letters. This is just 1 example of using a COM object on another machine in a .NET application, but I'm sure there are more. Mono will not support these structures. True, it would be great to just keep everything 100% .NET code so the transfer to mono would be free of pain, but in the real world this is hardly the case. At least for some time.
Windows (the server variants) are designed to be application / functionality servers, that is: they provide functionality to others, be it clients or other servers. Now, when you have functionality build into com objects, you can now instantiate, as you know, that object from another server, by using DCOM. You can use this same functionality from
When is this useful? Well, f.e. in the following scenario (don't bug on my that its a sucking solution, I didn't cook it up
No. You create references to assembly filesnames in your own assembly and with that also a version of the assembly so you can install multiple assemblies with the same filename. I can call my assembly FOO and the assembly file bar.dll. The compiler creates a reference to 'bar.dll' with a certain version. When I start the program with that reference, the CLR will look in the current directory for bar.dll to load the assembly objects I try to instantiate. If bar.dll is missing it will consult the GAC (Global Assembly Cache). If bar.dll is not found there, it's not loaded.
Mono is designed to be cross platform.
No. _.NET_ is designed to be cross platform, since the platform a class talks to, uses and consumes is
Supporting COM in
IE runs on a COM support layer, ported to Mac OS X and earlier version, plus Solaris/ HP-UX. The COM Specifications, written by the Open Group, is os/platform independent. It's the implementation which has to retrieve the CLSID to read the actual binary from disk (i.e. where it is located). But that moniker logic can be done without a registry entry on windows as well: a file moniker. (i.e. at runtime binding of a com object located in a file).
.NET. All MS and others (like Oracle has done with their System.Data provider) have to do is release .NET assemblies now.
I agree that there is no need for porting COM to Linux. COM was a great technology to provide functionality to a wide spread of languages. That is now taken care of by
Mono implements a piece of technology offered by Microsoft. There is no innovation there, at least not on the Mono part. Nothing wrong with that, but please, stop briinging the 'innovation' term into the discussion, since Mono is not about innovation.
.NET when Yukon (SQLServer 2003) comes out, late 2003, which will have generics support). However I don't see this happen soon.
It CAN be about innovation by implementing generics into the Mono runtime before MS does this (MS will release the updated 2.0
Let me start by saying that programming COM objects is the most retarted way of programming functionality. True, using VB or Delphi, it is easy, but using f.e. C++, it's not. Read Don Box' book Essential COM to see what I mean.
.NET is kind of like the enhancement of what automation was set out to be: a common way for any COM object abiding to automation rules and specifications to be able to use the environment (such as data, variables etc) of the application without doing 'marshalling conversions' when switching between languages? (for example: using variants and safe arrays to access data both in C++ and VB). .NET is the replacement for the VB runtime for VB programmers, the C(++) Runtime / STL / Win32 lib for C/C++ programmers etc. It's the general target platform for _ALL_ CLS compliant languages (C#, VB.NET, J#, JSCript.net etc. C++ is partly CLS compliant, if you want to use templates or multiple inheritance, you can't).
.NET. The objects you create, run inside application domains, which is totally different than COM objects do, in relation to the SCM.
.NET, but its harder). Webservices is not a 'part' of .NET, you can build webservices WITH .NET. That's a different thing!
.NET api is the key of its success. Add to that the wonderful ASP.NET functionality (which is really years ahead of anything else) and the very good documentation of the API and you're set.
.NET and the amazing security featureset available to a developer and 2) that COM IS one of the causes of security leaks and DDos attack possibilities, simply because people forgot to use smartpointers and kept memory nonfreed. This is over now.
COM as a functionality is great, but it should have been more transparent for the developer, like VB did this: you just program classes and hey, check it out, they're COM objects now!. Using Visual Studio, creating COM objects was (at least using ATL) a bit painless, but don't try it using f.e. UltraEdit32 and no helper library.
So if I understand you correctly,
No.
The multi-language part is not a result of 'making it a better marshaller' or better 'automation platform', but simply a result because now all languages have the same API, the same functionality on board: it doesn't matter which language you pick, you can target the same API and use the same cool functions with ease in VB.NET as you can in C++.NET.
As a result of this, the code you compile will run in a VM. This VM, the CLR, is the heart of
Webservices is a term for a piece of 'logic' as I call it. Functionality. It's not 1:1 projectable on a piece of code, like 'that class can serve as the base class for all webservices'. This is due to the fact that a webservice, when you use SOAP f.e., depends on a lot of tiny building blocks to do whatever it should do. That's why it couldn't be another Interface. (I also doubt what that would have brought to the plate, you can create webservices using the new ATL extensions and using plain C++, thus not
About the productivity: Now people can use a language that suits their needs and preferences (f.e. I prefer C# over VB.NET, while I've developer a lot of COM objects for n-tier systems in VB) and use a much richer API than they ever could. It doesn't depend on MS' tools. Sure the new VS.net is great, but the rich
Also I don't see your kick in the balls towards IIS style security. To me this sounds like you really do not understand 1) the power of the strong typing inside
I mean: there are not that much crypting settings available and 1 setting f.e. excludes multiple options in the reader.
An example: I recently bought Thinking in C# (almost finished version), in e-book format (pdf) which the writers offered for 5$. That's a bargain, so I thought "lets give it a shot". I tried acrobat, but I soon found out that the e-book was not that handy: i.e.: the advantages an e-book has over a paper-version (searching, bookmarking for fast browsing, highlighting and deleting, unlimited notes on 1 page etc) were gone in the acrobat reader since the e-book as encrypted and printing was disabled, plus there was no bookmark browse tree included. Search did work however but I couldn't print a page, couldn't copy/paste a section of a page and I couldn't create bookmarks!. I found out that Adobe offered another tool, eBook reader. So I downloaded that tool, opened the book and what a suprise: search was disabled too but I could create bookmarks.
So here I was: I paid for a legal ebook and there wasn't software to use it in full. I downloaded Jaws PDF Editor for windows. It's not a free program but the trial was enough. I loaded the ebook in the PDF editor and unlocked the encryption settings. By enabling printing, everything worked again in the eBook reader and now I can use the ebook I bought with all the features only available for electronic versions of a book.
Not thanks to adobe however, who offered only rotten tools to use the book I bought. What's wrong with having a lot of options to secure a book but still allowing users to fully enjoy the benefits of an electronic version of a book?