My point at the end of the post has to do with the standards body. Microsoft is hijacking the standards body by putting enough of their own people on them so that they can control the standards. From internal only slides I have seen that their strategy is to control and shape the standards to their fashion. Therefore submitting to the standard bodies means SQUAT!
And right now the C# standards are anything but neutral standards. They are dominated by Microsoft. This reminds me of when Microsoft submitted ActiveX to the standards body. Did not get very far!!!
Microsoft is playing the favourites game again. First MS gives the rights to MFC to Bristol (where is Bristol today? Notice also that Bristol did not get the rights for COM?), then COM and MFC to Mainsoft (where is Mainsoft today? Notice that Mainsoft does not have the rights for.NET?), and now finally Ximian is the "annointed one".
This is a Microsoft play through and through. And it surprises me that Michel is that STUPID to fall for it. I think the reason is because MS seriously sweet talks into into Michel's ear. And most likely the Ximian team went through various scenarios and thought, "Hey this is a win win situation." But the reality is that it is not a win win situation. Microsoft will string along Michel until they do not need him and Ximian anymore. And then there will be a new annointed one.
What disappoints me is that Michel thinks he can outfox Microsoft. Bigger people have tried and have their problems. Michel is a small fry and when Bristol or Mainsoft or Software AG tried to get more action MS stopped them dead in their tracks. Standards mean squat to Microsoft. How many people does Microsoft have on the standard bodies and how many does Ximian? Get my point folks!!! Sorry for being so harsh, but after having talked and written about Microsoft for a decade (switched to Open Source) I am amazed that people still fall for this tatic.
I think this has nothing to with LINUX. And the GPL is good because how often has it happened that good code was lost because the company went under.
The problem with palmtops is that I have tried and tried to use them. But what I keep going back to is the smallest leanest notebook possible. And many other people think the same way. A Palmtop is in many ways a "toy".
MS's kernel is not what you think it is. Sure in Windows NT 3.1 there was the "client server" notion. But come NT 3.5 those concepts were thrown out the window. Notice why NT 3.5 is so much faster than 3.1? Simple they started developing a monolithic kernel again.
Now about being able to drop in drivers. Well Linux can do that as much as Windows. Ever notice in Windows 2000 and Windows XP that Windows seems to have the correct driver stuck somewhere in the directories, without going to a CD? Guess what monolithic kernel!!!
Again Linus was correct that micro-kernels look cool they do not work well in implementation.
Actually I cannot wait until MS picks up on this. Because in the same breath I can say, sure, then Bill Gates should retire or step back as well.
While Bill Gates has different ethics than Linus (thankfully so), they do share the same passion for doing their thing well. Microsoft got so far because Bill was in control. Apple came back because Steve Jobs was in control. Linux does so well because Linus is in control.
But lets all remember that Linus is not ignorant he does have other people doing things. I followed the thread and I agree with him. The point is not to have a generic "Penguin Patcher", but people in charge of their domains. A generic developer does not have the breadth to manage what is asked for. Read the thread and maybe you will see that Linus is in fact correct yet again.
I read the article and it missed several fundamental points.
1) SMS do not cost on average 30 cents USD. More like 10 cents EURO. This is by looking at the big carriers in Europe. But SMS is catching on because people thinking it is trendy and cool and IT KILLS TIME.
2) Imode is popular in Japan because of the problems with Internet in general. In Japan land lines are expensive and take a long time to get installed. Hence landline Internet access is not a viable solution. However IMode was priced right and the Japanese mentality "small is beautiful" works. Try that in Europe and North America and it will flop on its face. Europe and North America has cheap Internet and hence wants the full experience.
3) They are all missing the real reason why some wireless works and not others. It is COST and only COST. SMS is cheap in contrast to other wireless. IMode is cheap in contrast to others. WLan is cheap in contrast to 3-G or GPRS.
Hence all of the solutions have nothing to do with security, or coolness of the factors, but COST. If two wireless technologies beside each other were cheap then there is a different story to tell. But in wireless it is basically either cheap or expensive and the people go to droves to the cheap one.
Yeah I do remember the ICON. I graduated from Highschool in 87. When we first got them in 84 nobody knew how to use them.
I remember we all wanted to get ROOT user access since this would give us super powers. The teachers had no clue as how to use them and just looked at these monsters like monsters. Then one day a teacher was clueless and let some kids watch over his shoulder and to see the ROOT password. Within a couple of hours the entire network came crashing.
The problem was that nobody knew what they were doing, students included, and the "hacker" copied the entire operating system from the root directory to his directory. But instead of a copy it was a move. The network came to a screeching halt for a week since nobody knew what to do.
After that everyone was more nervous... Ahhh... The good ol' days.
But what was cool about the ICON was even in 1984 it worked in a multi-tasking environment. Not like the networks of C64's or Commodore Pets with its muppet network system.
Ok I am OT with this posting, but let me go really OT.
Before the ICON we had Commodore Pets networked together with a serial cable using the muppet network. The muppet network was not intelligent enough to figure out who was writing what and when. Therefore if somebody wrote to the printer or the disk while someone else was already doing something the two would get joined. So you could end up with a printout that was the concatnation of two documents. To get around this we had to yell "Writing", "Printing" and "Done". At the same time somebody had to go to the chalkboard and draw an X.
My wife works for a large investment house. And they have not bought into this scheme. They are now thinking about deploying LINUX. This is done for two reasons:
1) Put Microsoft in its place
2) Test LINUX and see if it actually is usable.
I think now is a good time to show how good LINUX is. Corporations have the ear of the other software vendors.
Interesting that Microsoft always said they would never make the mistake that other corporations did when they got large. True they did not, but they are making their own mistake. It is not arrogance, but "Microsoft rightness". I bet this will make interesting business case in the future.
I agree with the article 100%. But I would go even further and think about Peer to Peer. Right now something like GnuTella is used for MP3's. But after having read the specifications I could see how GnuTella and google together could be absolutely cool.
For those wondering what GnuTella has to do with searching it lies in the protocol definition. Whereas most P2P search for filenames, GnuTella considers everything a search on a distributed network. Add some smart routine and replication and we have a killer network... Maybe this could topple Google
I have looked into that, but like you said battery sucks. And then I scratch my head about the usefulness.
Here is my point, having owned a PPC I liked it, but the wife and I only ended up playing games with it. I kept trying to make more use, but it just never materialized. Instead what did happen is that I kept going to a notebook.
Interestingly enough Sony is getting out of the "tablet PC" business because they say it is a niche. Specifically they explained that people are so used to computers and their form factor that regardless if it is good or bad they keep to that method of input and output. And I agree since I cannot imagine myself using anything else. I have tried other techniques so it cannot be said I am not opened minded to try.
I looked at the Treo device and thought really cool.
But some poster mentioned that the PDA market is collapsing, or the PocketPC is eating everyone's lunch.
Well I do not know. Here is what I do know. Companies are not allowing things like Blackberries anymore (PDA inclusive). I have owned about 5 PDA's in different form factors and the result is that I use none of them.
So I kept thinking why this is the case? The answer is that I have several notebooks and I find the problem with PDA's is that there is simply not enough space. I get quite a bit of email and documents. A PDA just sucks. However, notebooks have become small, work everywhere, etc, etc.
So I think the black knight is the notebook market.
I would be a bit careful with comments like that. Switzerland is not a country that harbors criminals nor do they "just take money". Also Lichtenstein is not part of Switzerland. It is an independent country. Lichtenstein and Switzerland are associated together because Lichtenstein does not want to create its own infrastructure for everything. Exactly same scenario like Monaco and France.
Back to Switzerland. Let me put into terms that maybe you can understand (assuming you live in the US). In the US there is freedom of speech. That means I can say things like ni...r and be part of the KKK. Many countries do not accept this behavior, but the US defends it. And I agree with it as well. But freedom of speech is a double edge sword as showin in the KKK example since it is racist.
In Switzerland privacy is very much like the US freedom of speech. This means everything is private and all personal information is strictly guarded. I like that as well because I do not want everyone to know what I do. However, the Swiss do not harbor criminals. Lets say if a drug lord did put his money in Switzerland. If another country can prove that the drug lord is a criminal then the Swiss will lock the accounts. But the Swiss will not simply lock the accounts on a "hunch" that the person is a criminal. Nor will they give out information "on a hunch". Privacy is treated like freedom of speech and like freedom of speech it is a double edged sword.
What I was trying to get at is the following. From their explanation they were saying that even though there is randomness there is order. And that order was explained simply using pigeons going through a hole. So create a higher plane of dimensions and things become ordered. Consider for example fractals. Totally underorder, but pattern based. I think they are using chaos mathematics, but then I may be wrong.
Folks hate to break this bubble. But the Windows community does have a community. It is called PDC or TechEd. These are the big events. And Windows has its heros, Charles Petzold, Kraig Brockshmidt, Don Box, Chris Sells, Jeff Prosie, etc, etc, etc.
The problem is that if you are NOT in that community you will never know that there is a community.
For example to me there is no MAC community (I use LINUX and Windows). But my personal perception does not fit reality. Hence the assertion that there is no Windows community is absolutely false.
Many people may say this is bull, but think of it in another way.
Instead of assuming that data is static, think of it constantly moving. Even in random data, moving data can be compressed because it constantly moving along. It is sort of like when a herd of people file into hall. Sure everyone is unique, but you could organize and say, "Hey five red shirts now", "ten blue shirts now".
And I think that is what they are trying to achieve. Move the dimensions into a different plane. However, and this is what I wonder about. How fast will it actually be? I am not referring to the mathematical requirements, but the data will stream and hence you will attempt to organize. Does that organization mean that some bytes have to wait?
I agree I do not like this concept of "sealed agreement". CDDB sued via a patent. But since it was dealt with a sealed deal nobody knows what has happened with the patent. So in other words yet another company may get threatened by CDDB. In moments like this you really begin to wonder about capitalism!!!! I love competition and freedom like the rest of us, but man this secrecy thing bugs me...
And do you want to know why they were stars? Because they were in the US. Seriously and this is not to belittle the issue. When the programmers become REALLY good in the "under-developed" countries they leave because they know they can make money. India has a real brain drain problem.
Now about India and cheaper programming countries. To be very frank I am not worried in the least.
And here is why. It has all to do with power of money. When I was contracting in India I saw how the developers worked.
First their hardware was not quite up to snuff. It was good enough.
Secondly because the people were not as well paid they did not have as much disposable income. As a result people did not have the ability to further their own talent independently. For example something as simple as a book had to be read in the company library.
Thirdly, never underestimate the work required to keep everyone in sync. It requires long term investments and the desire to make it work.
But now that India and their programmers are doing better they are becoming more expensive and undercut by other countries. In other words India is facing the same problem "developed" countries are.
After having worked in India I am not worried that they will take my job. There is plenty of work to go around and market forces will level the play field.
What we all should really be worried about is not countries taking over, but machines. Seriously think about it. Thus far automation has simplified many tasks outside of the computer industry. What will happen once automation simplifies programming (Generative programming, etc)? Then we will face massive layoffs...
"How will reducing software licensing costs transform china in 30 years, when its been an agrarian society for thousands, and poverty stricken for a couple hundred, at least ?"
Many countries have been agrarian societies. But some countries in the last 100 years transformed themselves. For example France is one of the few countries in the world that is 100% self sufficient in terms of feedding itself. But throughout that time France organized and modernized itself. Hence they have more money and a better standard of living.
But the catch in the loop is that to take advantage of automation you need a specific sum of money. And you cannot become modern without the automation. Hence by lowering the cost to entry a society can transform itself.
Way back when with a 100 USD you actually used to get quite a bit of software.
It is more than just the logo. Most users I have noticed now do not want to see the C:\ location. They actually want My Documents. The reason is because the Windows Explorer makes it really easy to reference. And when developing shareware you have to make it easy on the user.
I am doing nothing more than read and writing data. The problem is that having been in the past XMLSpy Program Manager I saw the problems of not doing things to the MS way. The problems have to do with rollout and security. A regular user has only user rights and hence limited read write abilities.
BTW the recommendations are not recommendations when trying to create a Windows Logo application.
In enterprise and large coporation situations things break very quickly. Especially with the release of Windows XP the security thing is becoming crucial. There are things that you cannot do anymore because of security.
To test what I mean log onto a Windows 2000 box. Create a user and make that user a part of the users group only. Log off and log on as that user. Next try to manipulate things in the file system. At this point only the My Documents directory is read write.
This behavior is identical to a UNIX user account. But the problem is that people are used to writing things all over the place. Now they cannot. So how do you retrieve the "My Documents" directory. Some folks say use GetEnv since that works. But the thing is that that is not the legal way and may break sometime in the future. So you use the MS API which resides in ShFolder
So now here you are a shareware programmer. Which way do you follow? Do you be a UNIX guy or do you be a Windows guy? Most likely a Windows guy because you are lead to the impression that this is the only legal way of doing things. Are you as a software developer going to release something that needs to be patched later? Not likely...
That is exactly the point I am trying to point out. MS has introduced new API to get the home directory.
While some folks have pointed out that you can save to other directories, try that on an enterprise release. Things break very quickly because of security priviledges.
While generally you can ignore Microsoft's rules you cannot do so if you want to be MS approved. And to sell to larger accounts you need to be MS approved. I just went through this as Program Manager for the XMLSpy product.
Slashdot Mirror
My point at the end of the post has to do with the standards body. Microsoft is hijacking the standards body by putting enough of their own people on them so that they can control the standards. From internal only slides I have seen that their strategy is to control and shape the standards to their fashion. Therefore submitting to the standard bodies means SQUAT!
And right now the C# standards are anything but neutral standards. They are dominated by Microsoft. This reminds me of when Microsoft submitted ActiveX to the standards body. Did not get very far!!!
That was the sweetest machine that Toshiba produced. It was SO COOL and SO SMALL. But yes exactly that is what I mean.
Microsoft is playing the favourites game again. First MS gives the rights to MFC to Bristol (where is Bristol today? Notice also that Bristol did not get the rights for COM?), then COM and MFC to Mainsoft (where is Mainsoft today? Notice that Mainsoft does not have the rights for .NET?), and now finally Ximian is the "annointed one".
This is a Microsoft play through and through. And it surprises me that Michel is that STUPID to fall for it. I think the reason is because MS seriously sweet talks into into Michel's ear. And most likely the Ximian team went through various scenarios and thought, "Hey this is a win win situation." But the reality is that it is not a win win situation. Microsoft will string along Michel until they do not need him and Ximian anymore. And then there will be a new annointed one.
What disappoints me is that Michel thinks he can outfox Microsoft. Bigger people have tried and have their problems. Michel is a small fry and when Bristol or Mainsoft or Software AG tried to get more action MS stopped them dead in their tracks. Standards mean squat to Microsoft. How many people does Microsoft have on the standard bodies and how many does Ximian? Get my point folks!!! Sorry for being so harsh, but after having talked and written about Microsoft for a decade (switched to Open Source) I am amazed that people still fall for this tatic.
I think this has nothing to with LINUX. And the GPL is good because how often has it happened that good code was lost because the company went under.
The problem with palmtops is that I have tried and tried to use them. But what I keep going back to is the smallest leanest notebook possible. And many other people think the same way. A Palmtop is in many ways a "toy".
MS's kernel is not what you think it is. Sure in Windows NT 3.1 there was the "client server" notion. But come NT 3.5 those concepts were thrown out the window. Notice why NT 3.5 is so much faster than 3.1? Simple they started developing a monolithic kernel again.
Now about being able to drop in drivers. Well Linux can do that as much as Windows. Ever notice in Windows 2000 and Windows XP that Windows seems to have the correct driver stuck somewhere in the directories, without going to a CD? Guess what monolithic kernel!!!
Again Linus was correct that micro-kernels look cool they do not work well in implementation.
Actually I cannot wait until MS picks up on this. Because in the same breath I can say, sure, then Bill Gates should retire or step back as well.
While Bill Gates has different ethics than Linus (thankfully so), they do share the same passion for doing their thing well. Microsoft got so far because Bill was in control. Apple came back because Steve Jobs was in control. Linux does so well because Linus is in control.
But lets all remember that Linus is not ignorant he does have other people doing things. I followed the thread and I agree with him. The point is not to have a generic "Penguin Patcher", but people in charge of their domains. A generic developer does not have the breadth to manage what is asked for. Read the thread and maybe you will see that Linus is in fact correct yet again.
I read the article and it missed several fundamental points.
1) SMS do not cost on average 30 cents USD. More like 10 cents EURO. This is by looking at the big carriers in Europe. But SMS is catching on because people thinking it is trendy and cool and IT KILLS TIME.
2) Imode is popular in Japan because of the problems with Internet in general. In Japan land lines are expensive and take a long time to get installed. Hence landline Internet access is not a viable solution. However IMode was priced right and the Japanese mentality "small is beautiful" works. Try that in Europe and North America and it will flop on its face. Europe and North America has cheap Internet and hence wants the full experience.
3) They are all missing the real reason why some wireless works and not others. It is COST and only COST. SMS is cheap in contrast to other wireless. IMode is cheap in contrast to others. WLan is cheap in contrast to 3-G or GPRS.
Hence all of the solutions have nothing to do with security, or coolness of the factors, but COST. If two wireless technologies beside each other were cheap then there is a different story to tell. But in wireless it is basically either cheap or expensive and the people go to droves to the cheap one.
Yeah I do remember the ICON. I graduated from Highschool in 87. When we first got them in 84 nobody knew how to use them.
I remember we all wanted to get ROOT user access since this would give us super powers. The teachers had no clue as how to use them and just looked at these monsters like monsters. Then one day a teacher was clueless and let some kids watch over his shoulder and to see the ROOT password. Within a couple of hours the entire network came crashing.
The problem was that nobody knew what they were doing, students included, and the "hacker" copied the entire operating system from the root directory to his directory. But instead of a copy it was a move. The network came to a screeching halt for a week since nobody knew what to do.
After that everyone was more nervous... Ahhh... The good ol' days.
But what was cool about the ICON was even in 1984 it worked in a multi-tasking environment. Not like the networks of C64's or Commodore Pets with its muppet network system.
Ok I am OT with this posting, but let me go really OT.
Before the ICON we had Commodore Pets networked together with a serial cable using the muppet network. The muppet network was not intelligent enough to figure out who was writing what and when. Therefore if somebody wrote to the printer or the disk while someone else was already doing something the two would get joined. So you could end up with a printout that was the concatnation of two documents. To get around this we had to yell "Writing", "Printing" and "Done". At the same time somebody had to go to the chalkboard and draw an X.
Wow, now things simply work!!!!
My wife works for a large investment house. And they have not bought into this scheme. They are now thinking about deploying LINUX. This is done for two reasons:
1) Put Microsoft in its place
2) Test LINUX and see if it actually is usable.
I think now is a good time to show how good LINUX is. Corporations have the ear of the other software vendors.
Interesting that Microsoft always said they would never make the mistake that other corporations did when they got large. True they did not, but they are making their own mistake. It is not arrogance, but "Microsoft rightness". I bet this will make interesting business case in the future.
I agree with the article 100%. But I would go even further and think about Peer to Peer. Right now something like GnuTella is used for MP3's. But after having read the specifications I could see how GnuTella and google together could be absolutely cool.
For those wondering what GnuTella has to do with searching it lies in the protocol definition. Whereas most P2P search for filenames, GnuTella considers everything a search on a distributed network. Add some smart routine and replication and we have a killer network... Maybe this could topple Google
I have looked into that, but like you said battery sucks. And then I scratch my head about the usefulness.
Here is my point, having owned a PPC I liked it, but the wife and I only ended up playing games with it. I kept trying to make more use, but it just never materialized. Instead what did happen is that I kept going to a notebook.
Interestingly enough Sony is getting out of the "tablet PC" business because they say it is a niche. Specifically they explained that people are so used to computers and their form factor that regardless if it is good or bad they keep to that method of input and output. And I agree since I cannot imagine myself using anything else. I have tried other techniques so it cannot be said I am not opened minded to try.
I looked at the Treo device and thought really cool.
But some poster mentioned that the PDA market is collapsing, or the PocketPC is eating everyone's lunch.
Well I do not know. Here is what I do know. Companies are not allowing things like Blackberries anymore (PDA inclusive). I have owned about 5 PDA's in different form factors and the result is that I use none of them.
So I kept thinking why this is the case? The answer is that I have several notebooks and I find the problem with PDA's is that there is simply not enough space. I get quite a bit of email and documents. A PDA just sucks. However, notebooks have become small, work everywhere, etc, etc.
So I think the black knight is the notebook market.
I would be a bit careful with comments like that. Switzerland is not a country that harbors criminals nor do they "just take money". Also Lichtenstein is not part of Switzerland. It is an independent country. Lichtenstein and Switzerland are associated together because Lichtenstein does not want to create its own infrastructure for everything. Exactly same scenario like Monaco and France.
Back to Switzerland. Let me put into terms that maybe you can understand (assuming you live in the US). In the US there is freedom of speech. That means I can say things like ni...r and be part of the KKK. Many countries do not accept this behavior, but the US defends it. And I agree with it as well. But freedom of speech is a double edge sword as showin in the KKK example since it is racist.
In Switzerland privacy is very much like the US freedom of speech. This means everything is private and all personal information is strictly guarded. I like that as well because I do not want everyone to know what I do. However, the Swiss do not harbor criminals. Lets say if a drug lord did put his money in Switzerland. If another country can prove that the drug lord is a criminal then the Swiss will lock the accounts. But the Swiss will not simply lock the accounts on a "hunch" that the person is a criminal. Nor will they give out information "on a hunch". Privacy is treated like freedom of speech and like freedom of speech it is a double edged sword.
What I was trying to get at is the following. From their explanation they were saying that even though there is randomness there is order. And that order was explained simply using pigeons going through a hole. So create a higher plane of dimensions and things become ordered. Consider for example fractals. Totally underorder, but pattern based. I think they are using chaos mathematics, but then I may be wrong.
Folks hate to break this bubble. But the Windows community does have a community. It is called PDC or TechEd. These are the big events. And Windows has its heros, Charles Petzold, Kraig Brockshmidt, Don Box, Chris Sells, Jeff Prosie, etc, etc, etc.
The problem is that if you are NOT in that community you will never know that there is a community.
For example to me there is no MAC community (I use LINUX and Windows). But my personal perception does not fit reality. Hence the assertion that there is no Windows community is absolutely false.
Many people may say this is bull, but think of it in another way.
Instead of assuming that data is static, think of it constantly moving. Even in random data, moving data can be compressed because it constantly moving along. It is sort of like when a herd of people file into hall. Sure everyone is unique, but you could organize and say, "Hey five red shirts now", "ten blue shirts now".
And I think that is what they are trying to achieve. Move the dimensions into a different plane. However, and this is what I wonder about. How fast will it actually be? I am not referring to the mathematical requirements, but the data will stream and hence you will attempt to organize. Does that organization mean that some bytes have to wait?
I agree I do not like this concept of "sealed agreement". CDDB sued via a patent. But since it was dealt with a sealed deal nobody knows what has happened with the patent. So in other words yet another company may get threatened by CDDB. In moments like this you really begin to wonder about capitalism!!!! I love competition and freedom like the rest of us, but man this secrecy thing bugs me...
And do you want to know why they were stars? Because they were in the US. Seriously and this is not to belittle the issue. When the programmers become REALLY good in the "under-developed" countries they leave because they know they can make money. India has a real brain drain problem.
Now about India and cheaper programming countries. To be very frank I am not worried in the least.
And here is why. It has all to do with power of money. When I was contracting in India I saw how the developers worked.
First their hardware was not quite up to snuff. It was good enough.
Secondly because the people were not as well paid they did not have as much disposable income. As a result people did not have the ability to further their own talent independently. For example something as simple as a book had to be read in the company library.
Thirdly, never underestimate the work required to keep everyone in sync. It requires long term investments and the desire to make it work.
But now that India and their programmers are doing better they are becoming more expensive and undercut by other countries. In other words India is facing the same problem "developed" countries are.
After having worked in India I am not worried that they will take my job. There is plenty of work to go around and market forces will level the play field.
What we all should really be worried about is not countries taking over, but machines. Seriously think about it. Thus far automation has simplified many tasks outside of the computer industry. What will happen once automation simplifies programming (Generative programming, etc)? Then we will face massive layoffs...
"How will reducing software licensing costs transform china in 30 years, when its been an agrarian society for thousands, and poverty stricken for a couple hundred, at least ?"
Many countries have been agrarian societies. But some countries in the last 100 years transformed themselves. For example France is one of the few countries in the world that is 100% self sufficient in terms of feedding itself. But throughout that time France organized and modernized itself. Hence they have more money and a better standard of living.
But the catch in the loop is that to take advantage of automation you need a specific sum of money. And you cannot become modern without the automation. Hence by lowering the cost to entry a society can transform itself.
Way back when with a 100 USD you actually used to get quite a bit of software.
Well I think it is not fraud that they are concerned about. I think it is that they are in violation of an agreement made earlier.
Basically the law states that I can make backup of media so long as it is for personal use. Now that RIAA is blocking it the RIAA is illegal.
It is more than just the logo. Most users I have noticed now do not want to see the C:\ location. They actually want My Documents. The reason is because the Windows Explorer makes it really easy to reference. And when developing shareware you have to make it easy on the user.
Believe it or not it is...
But most legacy applications have already been updated to worked properly.
I am doing nothing more than read and writing data. The problem is that having been in the past XMLSpy Program Manager I saw the problems of not doing things to the MS way. The problems have to do with rollout and security. A regular user has only user rights and hence limited read write abilities.
BTW the recommendations are not recommendations when trying to create a Windows Logo application.
In enterprise and large coporation situations things break very quickly. Especially with the release of Windows XP the security thing is becoming crucial. There are things that you cannot do anymore because of security.
To test what I mean log onto a Windows 2000 box. Create a user and make that user a part of the users group only. Log off and log on as that user. Next try to manipulate things in the file system. At this point only the My Documents directory is read write.
This behavior is identical to a UNIX user account. But the problem is that people are used to writing things all over the place. Now they cannot. So how do you retrieve the "My Documents" directory. Some folks say use GetEnv since that works. But the thing is that that is not the legal way and may break sometime in the future. So you use the MS API which resides in ShFolder
So now here you are a shareware programmer. Which way do you follow? Do you be a UNIX guy or do you be a Windows guy? Most likely a Windows guy because you are lead to the impression that this is the only legal way of doing things. Are you as a software developer going to release something that needs to be patched later? Not likely...
That is exactly the point I am trying to point out. MS has introduced new API to get the home directory.
While some folks have pointed out that you can save to other directories, try that on an enterprise release. Things break very quickly because of security priviledges.
While generally you can ignore Microsoft's rules you cannot do so if you want to be MS approved. And to sell to larger accounts you need to be MS approved. I just went through this as Program Manager for the XMLSpy product.