I went to the forbes site and looked at the list of fortune 500 companies, and then checked at netcraft to see what they were running as web servers, and then tallied up the first 100. 55 - Netscape Enterprise, 26 - IIS, 15 - Apache (I didn't count Walmart). Of the first 50, only 2 sites were running Exchange.
You do realize that Exchange isn't a web server, right? Look at your statistics -- IIS is used on nearly twice as many web servers as Apache in the topp 100 Fortune 500 companies. IIS is Microsoft's web server.
But they have proven to be anti-open source with recent comments from one of their exec's.
No, they've proven themselves to be anti-GPL, which is 100% completely understandable. The GPL is too viral to be used where a company has hopes of making money off of their software. Don't misquote people. It reflects poorly on you.
This issue has been addressed by the upcoming Windows XP (codename Whistler). Based on Terminal Server, Windows XP allows you to setup one-time trust relationships with a set time duration, allowing somebody else to gain remote access to your desktop for situations like this. Really neat stuff.
Haven't Windows users had this since IE4 on Win98? Some progress..
Nope. Windows users have had this since Windows 95, regardless of IE version. You needed to have the Plus! pack installed, but if you didn't feel like spending the ~$30 on that, MS offered a free download to get the AA font capabilities.
So, yeah, Windows users have had this for a while now.
I'm not advocating theft in any way, but I found this to be amazing, that rogue codewarriors had enough diligence to be able to figure a way around what everyone (Hughes included) thought was permanent.
That's not amazing. If anything, it's extremely sad. Would these same people expend as much effort getting and retaining a job as they do stealing DSS, they'd have more than enough money to be able to PAY for DSS. People like this make me sick.
i don't know about you, but I get bit by web pages that have incomplete tags all the time. That, in the context of this recommendation:
1.7 Warn users about incomplete documents and transfers.
Please read what you quote, and have a look at your browser next time. Elsewhere in the article, it's insinuated that displaying a warning on the status bar is "good enough". And you know what? IE does that. Look at the status bar next you load a partial page. You should get a little icon with a yield-like symbol and an exclamation point, saving something to the effect of "Page loaded, but with errors". How is that not warning the users? It's not IE's fault you didn't look at the warning.
You obviously have no clue how Microsoft's.NET architectures work. Data is stored locally, as well as on the server. The whole point of having the server in the architecture at all is for replication to other machines and/or devices. So, no, you won't be writing your monthly report online, but when you save it, it will get replicated to the server (and probably at intervals before you save it, as well, as a work-in-progress).
So, some skript kiddie takes out the connection to your.NET server. Maybe you can't get your e-mail, but any documents that have been replicated to your local store, and any documents you're currently working on, will be perfectly accessible. Any changes you make won't get replicated to the server yet, as you can't reach it, but at that point it's back to pre-.NET business-as-usual. You'll just have to do "old-fashioned" replication to your mobile devices and such.
Project code names have no relation at all to released product names. Earlier versions of Windows CE have gone under various names as Wyvern, Gryphon, Rapier, Jupiter, Goldeneye, and more. And yet, the products using each one of those do not even reference the codenames.
Nope, because DOS is a 16-bit OS. Windows CE is a completely new (well, five-ish years old new) 32-bit operating system, written from the ground-up for embedded systems. No DOS, no legacy Windows code, no nothing. In fact, the only similarity it even shares with Windows is that it supports a subset of the Win32 API, as well as a few other Windows APIs (MAPI, TAPI, a few others).
I think "Windows," which basically means "GUI," is the antithesis of the requirements of embedded software.
Of course, if you knew anything about Windows CE, you'd not have said this. Windows CE was designed from the ground up to be used in embedded systems. Sure, the first real application of Windows CE was clamshell handhelds. But that doesn't change the fact that CE was designed for embedded systems from the start. The OS is completely modular, allowing the developer to only use the portions of the platform neccessary to the system. Don't need keyboard input, video output, touchscreen/mouse input, networking, etc? Don't build those modules into your platform.
Muhaha! That's rich. This guy should get a +1 Funny. Yeah, like people using linux can't be idiots. Best joke I've heard all day.
Of course, that's not saying that all linux users are idiots. Many (I'd say "most", but that'd be generalizing too much, and would also be incorrect based on empirical evidence of my own) are not. But many are. These include the kind that won't read books or documentation or man pages, and expect everything to be spoon-fed to them. To paraphrase a smart guy I know, "Give a man a fish and he'll insult you and leave. Teach a man to fish and he'll complain about just wanting the fish and you owing him one. This is the Linux Experience."
They're going to try to ramp up C# to use the VB VM. They realize that C# doesn't quite cut it as a language (like they care about semantic and syntactic purity,) and that VB's VM is pokin' slow and its been cracked to bits.
That's rather incorrect. The Common Language Runtime (CLR, the core of.NET development) is not the VB Runtime. Totally different technologies. If anything, VB7 will target the CLR, not the other way around with C# targetting VBRUN.
Do some research before you start spouting, or you'll look like a fool.
Don't you just love the way MySQL gives reasons not to use SQL features they don't support? And not just foreign keys, either, but transactions as well, among other things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's now rudimentary transaction support via BDB. Not that I'd trust any important data to something that is considered "rudimentary".
Then again, some people just have to reinvent the wheel several times over. One could wish that MySQL would just go away, in favor of more mature products that are also "Free". It won't happen anytime soon, but we can dream.
Uh... the E-125 is still the MIPS VR41xx (4122, in this case) CPU that all Cassiopeia's have used. If a piece of software supports Pocket PC and MIPS, then it'll run on the E-125. Even some non-Pocket PC (Windows CE 2.1x Palm-size PC) software will still run on Pocket PC PDAs.
When will people get it through their thick heads that there is much more to "usability" and "user friendliness" than a slick installation? It's great if a user can install the system easily, to be sure. But once that slick installation is done with, you've got a user left staring at an XDM login screen or a console login, thinking, "Okay, what next? How do I get into linux? What do I do?"
System installation is simply a means to an end (the means - installing an OS. the end - an installed OS). Why do we need fancy X-based gui installers that let you play tetris while the packages are installing? The goal of an installation tool is to get the packages on the system, and get the system setup in more-or-less working order. Too much effort has been wasted by the likes of Redhat, Mandrake, Corel, Caldera, and even SuSE (though YaST1 is still an excellent installer and system management tool) developing ever slicker installation routines, while that effort could've been put to use somewhere important, like writing better documentation, or increasing usability of system management tools (linuxconf is a joke), or other more-worthwhile endeavors.
How often does a typical Linux user install any Linux distribution? Aside from the newbie who probably should reinstall every other week or so (knowing you'll be reinstalling eventually is a good way to clear your conscience about "breaking" the system while learning), the loonies that need the latest and greatest Redhat, and reviewers who focus all too much on installation, for most of us installation is a one-shot deal. We install the system, tweak it, and then let it run for who knows how long.
It simply boggles the mind, seeing developers spend so much effort on something that is such a small percentage of the overall user experience, and then seeing users encourage such behavior. Installation needs to be "Good Enough", meaning it's fairly easy to comprehend (a good manual and help system goes a long way, here) and doesn't screw up your system. It doesn't need a gui, and it doesn't need to play games.
Insignificant piece of trivia I didn't bother to research: It'd be hard for Bill to be wearing a different "toupee", as he has plugs instead. Not so easy to change plugs.
Don't they have any projects going on the side that they could Shanghai a talented young coder into helping them out with?
Since when does "Cracker" == "Coder"? I'm sorry, but with the proliferation of script kiddies and packet monkeys and all the other 1337 h4}{0rs, I'd say it's very unlikely "Cracker" will also mean "Coder" these days. Educating a young adult is a worthwhile endeavor, but please, let's educate them in something worthwhile, not how to crack systems.
after 16 million colours.. what real benifit would there be?
That's been answered several times over, now, but the idea here is that although your eye might not be able to distinguish that many colors, rendering an image with > 32bpp can increase the image clarity (especially when doing multiple passes for effects like pixel shading). It's the same idea as high framerates. 60-75fps would be ideal, but to get that in the average case, you generally need to be able to push 120fps or more max.
after we get real time life like images what more benifit could there be?? (making them play faster would detract not enhance the experience)
"Faster" in this context should actually be "smoother", as in you're not decreasing the playing time, but you're decreasing the time between "frames" (where by "frame" I mean a slice of the rendering at a specific point in time, rather than something like a movie still. Think of a movie that would normally run at 24fps, but with all the tweens filled in running at an actual framerate of something more like 60fps).
also the monitors can only get so big before people's homes don't have the space for them
Think "Flat Panel LCD" and "wall". People have walls, and before you know it, that's where they'll be hanging their 100" diagonal LCD monitors. As well, increasing the dpi on a monitor has the effect of increasing the resolution (where "resolution" is an incorrect term, as real "resolution" is the same as the dpi, but is meant to mean "number of pixels displayed"). Maybe your little 15" monitor can only do 1024x768 at 60dpi or something like that, but when you have a 15" LCD with a 200dpi, you're going to be able to put more pixels on the screen.
although at some point maybe the game designers will think "hmmm maybe i should concentrate on my content rather than how flashy i can make this finish"... wouldn't that be novel
And with the help of GPUs, game designers have have both content and flash, because all the flashy stuff is essentially done for them already (at which point, they set the artists to work, and deal with their own interesting problem areas, like AI). Look at some of the current crop of games, for instance. Giants is excellent, content-wise (it's got some crazy humorous elements to it), and yet is quite pretty. Rune takes advantage of the hardware T&L in all the new video boards, and yet has an interesting story behind it as well (although being a Viking-based game, it has a goodly amount of blood and guts and gore). Sacrificing visuals for content is nearly as bad as sacrificing content for visuals. Most don't realize that, however, because it's rare that game designers will make that trade-off. The goal is to have great content, great visuals, and great gameplay. With GPU advancements, the visuals almost take care of themselves, leaving more time and resources for the other areas.
The Charisma (what ATI call their design) engine should be faster than NVidia's, as they compress things in hardware. As all tests indicate, however, that this is not the case due to poor drivers.
Poor drivers aren't the only reason the Radeon isn't faster than nVidia's offerings. The GeForce line (especially the GeForce 2 GTS and GeForce 2 GTS Ultra) are extreme powerhouses. They have power down to the raw metal. Radeon's speed comes from fancy bit twiddling which may or may not (but usually does) make a difference in speed. Sharky Extreme has a good review of the Radeon, comparing it against the GeForce 2 standard. The interesting thing to note is that when they turned off all the fancy performance-enhancing stuff (ie, ran metal to metal against a GeForce 2), the Radeon suffered horribly. Sure, drivers can fix this to a certain extent, and ATI does have a bad reputation for their drivers, but without the hardware backing it, there's only so much fancy software-based performance enhancement that can be done.
Re:When the Martians Land
on
Perl and .NET
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· Score: 1
Both you and the original poster have completely missed the point of.NET. Shame on you. It's not about any one language being the Offical Language of.NET. It's about providing a platform that can be cross-platform (though it's true MS is only building the platform for MS OSen, it's possible to port the platform and thus gain the benefit of apps built to it). The list of languages supporting the.NET CLR is positively huge (don't have a link right now), and includes C#, VB, and Perl, along with managed C++, Python, Haskell, Lisp, and many other not-so-useful languages, including Java (kinda like the JVM is supported by a number of not-so-useful languages, specifically Java).
The moral of the story? Don't expect to see an "Official" language of.NET. That's not the point. That's never been the point, and never will be.
Consider learning a bit about economics and history before you start moaning about this being bad.
Several points:
In a competitive market, somebody has to be the loser. And loser's tend not to survive very long
The GPU market has been shrinking (number of firms producing) for the last few years. Losing one more is not that big of a deal.
Sure, 3dfx was responsible for bringing about the whole 3D acceleration thing, but they got lazy, and they got their asses handed to them. Anybody with eyes could've seen this (or something like it, where 3dfx ends up not existing) coming way back with the introduction of the Voodoo2.
If nVidia were to increase prices (which is actually economically impossible for them to do, given the state of the market), competitors such as ATi and Matrox would benefit, not nVidia. Add to that the fact that if nVidia were to increase prices, it's very likely we'll see new firms entering the market to take advantage of the situation. In short, nVidia might raise the prices on their chips, but they don't have the market clout to increase prices overall.
In short, this is neither unexpected, nor bad, and in fact has a number of good qualities.
Mods have been "Foxed"[1] for quite some time now. This is nothing new, and it's certainly not illegal (see other comments).
[1] The term "Foxed" came into being when the old Alien Quake mod for Quake 1 was cease-and-desisted by Fox, prior to Fox publishing their own Aliens-based FPS, namely Aliens Vs. Predator.
Re:Games are kind of a weird case...
on
EULA In Games
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· Score: 1
According to that then, I can readily buy (for an added price) versions of software that allow me to reverse engineer them.
But you can! That's the point of the statement. For instance, if you just want to play Quake 3 Arena, go out and buy the game (for $50, which is too much to pay for a glorified technology demo, but I digress). If you want to make freely available (free as in beer) modifications to Quake 3 Arena (within certain guidelines, anyway), you don't need anything more than the standard commercial version. However, if you want to create a new game using Quake 3 Arena and want to be compensated monetarily for it, you need to talk to Id about purchasing an engine license. At that poing, you won't need to reverse engineer anything, because they'll give you everything you need (including source code). However, the cost of that license is extremely high, which is exactly that comment was getting at -- if companies like Ravensoft or others only had to purchase the standard commercial Quake 3 Arena package to be able to make other commercial games from the game engine, Id would be forced to spread the amount of lost revenue from engine licenses across all users, thus making that overpriced $50 into a very overpriced $500, or even more.
The same holds true for other pieces of commercial software, not just Quake 3 Arena. You want the source for Windows 2000? It's available, but it's prohibitively expensive. You must partner yourself with MS, and pay them large sums of money. You want to build a game using Bioware's Infinity Engine? Again, you can do it -- just go talk to Bioware about licensing their technology. Just because you can't readily buy engine licenses in stores doesn't mean that they're not readily available.
As slimey as lawyers may or may not be, the good ones generally know what's going on around them
Slashdot Mirror
I went to the forbes site and looked at the list of fortune 500 companies, and then checked at netcraft to see what they were running as web servers, and then tallied up the first 100. 55 - Netscape Enterprise, 26 - IIS, 15 - Apache (I didn't count Walmart). Of the first 50, only 2 sites were running Exchange.
You do realize that Exchange isn't a web server, right? Look at your statistics -- IIS is used on nearly twice as many web servers as Apache in the topp 100 Fortune 500 companies. IIS is Microsoft's web server.
But they have proven to be anti-open source with recent comments from one of their exec's.
No, they've proven themselves to be anti-GPL, which is 100% completely understandable. The GPL is too viral to be used where a company has hopes of making money off of their software. Don't misquote people. It reflects poorly on you.
This issue has been addressed by the upcoming Windows XP (codename Whistler). Based on Terminal Server, Windows XP allows you to setup one-time trust relationships with a set time duration, allowing somebody else to gain remote access to your desktop for situations like this. Really neat stuff.
Haven't Windows users had this since IE4 on Win98? Some progress..
Nope. Windows users have had this since Windows 95, regardless of IE version. You needed to have the Plus! pack installed, but if you didn't feel like spending the ~$30 on that, MS offered a free download to get the AA font capabilities.
So, yeah, Windows users have had this for a while now.
I'm not advocating theft in any way, but I found this to be amazing, that rogue codewarriors had enough diligence to be able to figure a way around what everyone (Hughes included) thought was permanent.
That's not amazing. If anything, it's extremely sad. Would these same people expend as much effort getting and retaining a job as they do stealing DSS, they'd have more than enough money to be able to PAY for DSS. People like this make me sick.
i don't know about you, but I get bit by web pages that have incomplete tags all the time. That, in the context of this recommendation:
1.7 Warn users about incomplete documents and transfers.
Please read what you quote, and have a look at your browser next time. Elsewhere in the article, it's insinuated that displaying a warning on the status bar is "good enough". And you know what? IE does that. Look at the status bar next you load a partial page. You should get a little icon with a yield-like symbol and an exclamation point, saving something to the effect of "Page loaded, but with errors". How is that not warning the users? It's not IE's fault you didn't look at the warning.
You obviously have no clue how Microsoft's .NET architectures work. Data is stored locally, as well as on the server. The whole point of having the server in the architecture at all is for replication to other machines and/or devices. So, no, you won't be writing your monthly report online, but when you save it, it will get replicated to the server (and probably at intervals before you save it, as well, as a work-in-progress).
So, some skript kiddie takes out the connection to your .NET server. Maybe you can't get your e-mail, but any documents that have been replicated to your local store, and any documents you're currently working on, will be perfectly accessible. Any changes you make won't get replicated to the server yet, as you can't reach it, but at that point it's back to pre-.NET business-as-usual. You'll just have to do "old-fashioned" replication to your mobile devices and such.
Project code names have no relation at all to released product names. Earlier versions of Windows CE have gone under various names as Wyvern, Gryphon, Rapier, Jupiter, Goldeneye, and more. And yet, the products using each one of those do not even reference the codenames.
Nope, because DOS is a 16-bit OS. Windows CE is a completely new (well, five-ish years old new) 32-bit operating system, written from the ground-up for embedded systems. No DOS, no legacy Windows code, no nothing. In fact, the only similarity it even shares with Windows is that it supports a subset of the Win32 API, as well as a few other Windows APIs (MAPI, TAPI, a few others).
I think "Windows," which basically means "GUI," is the antithesis of the requirements of embedded software.
Of course, if you knew anything about Windows CE, you'd not have said this. Windows CE was designed from the ground up to be used in embedded systems. Sure, the first real application of Windows CE was clamshell handhelds. But that doesn't change the fact that CE was designed for embedded systems from the start. The OS is completely modular, allowing the developer to only use the portions of the platform neccessary to the system. Don't need keyboard input, video output, touchscreen/mouse input, networking, etc? Don't build those modules into your platform.
Surely they aren't idiots if they use linux.
Muhaha! That's rich. This guy should get a +1 Funny. Yeah, like people using linux can't be idiots. Best joke I've heard all day.
Of course, that's not saying that all linux users are idiots. Many (I'd say "most", but that'd be generalizing too much, and would also be incorrect based on empirical evidence of my own) are not. But many are. These include the kind that won't read books or documentation or man pages, and expect everything to be spoon-fed to them. To paraphrase a smart guy I know, "Give a man a fish and he'll insult you and leave. Teach a man to fish and he'll complain about just wanting the fish and you owing him one. This is the Linux Experience."
They're going to try to ramp up C# to use the VB VM. They realize that C# doesn't quite cut it as a language (like they care about semantic and syntactic purity,) and that VB's VM is pokin' slow and its been cracked to bits.
That's rather incorrect. The Common Language Runtime (CLR, the core of .NET development) is not the VB Runtime. Totally different technologies. If anything, VB7 will target the CLR, not the other way around with C# targetting VBRUN.
Do some research before you start spouting, or you'll look like a fool.
Don't you just love the way MySQL gives reasons not to use SQL features they don't support? And not just foreign keys, either, but transactions as well, among other things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's now rudimentary transaction support via BDB. Not that I'd trust any important data to something that is considered "rudimentary".
Then again, some people just have to reinvent the wheel several times over. One could wish that MySQL would just go away, in favor of more mature products that are also "Free". It won't happen anytime soon, but we can dream.
Uh ... the E-125 is still the MIPS VR41xx (4122, in this case) CPU that all Cassiopeia's have used. If a piece of software supports Pocket PC and MIPS, then it'll run on the E-125. Even some non-Pocket PC (Windows CE 2.1x Palm-size PC) software will still run on Pocket PC PDAs.
Except that none of the games listed there are made by Microsoft. Try paying a bit more attention, next time.
I think that would fall under "Chat Room Monitor" in the Forbes article. It's the same idea, just not real-time
When will people get it through their thick heads that there is much more to "usability" and "user friendliness" than a slick installation? It's great if a user can install the system easily, to be sure. But once that slick installation is done with, you've got a user left staring at an XDM login screen or a console login, thinking, "Okay, what next? How do I get into linux? What do I do?"
System installation is simply a means to an end (the means - installing an OS. the end - an installed OS). Why do we need fancy X-based gui installers that let you play tetris while the packages are installing? The goal of an installation tool is to get the packages on the system, and get the system setup in more-or-less working order. Too much effort has been wasted by the likes of Redhat, Mandrake, Corel, Caldera, and even SuSE (though YaST1 is still an excellent installer and system management tool) developing ever slicker installation routines, while that effort could've been put to use somewhere important, like writing better documentation, or increasing usability of system management tools (linuxconf is a joke), or other more-worthwhile endeavors.
How often does a typical Linux user install any Linux distribution? Aside from the newbie who probably should reinstall every other week or so (knowing you'll be reinstalling eventually is a good way to clear your conscience about "breaking" the system while learning), the loonies that need the latest and greatest Redhat, and reviewers who focus all too much on installation, for most of us installation is a one-shot deal. We install the system, tweak it, and then let it run for who knows how long.
It simply boggles the mind, seeing developers spend so much effort on something that is such a small percentage of the overall user experience, and then seeing users encourage such behavior. Installation needs to be "Good Enough", meaning it's fairly easy to comprehend (a good manual and help system goes a long way, here) and doesn't screw up your system. It doesn't need a gui, and it doesn't need to play games.
* William Shatner is still using that same Toupee
Insignificant piece of trivia I didn't bother to research: It'd be hard for Bill to be wearing a different "toupee", as he has plugs instead. Not so easy to change plugs.
Don't they have any projects going on the side that they could Shanghai a talented young coder into helping them out with?
Since when does "Cracker" == "Coder"? I'm sorry, but with the proliferation of script kiddies and packet monkeys and all the other 1337 h4}{0rs, I'd say it's very unlikely "Cracker" will also mean "Coder" these days. Educating a young adult is a worthwhile endeavor, but please, let's educate them in something worthwhile, not how to crack systems.
after 16 million colours.. what real benifit would there be?
That's been answered several times over, now, but the idea here is that although your eye might not be able to distinguish that many colors, rendering an image with > 32bpp can increase the image clarity (especially when doing multiple passes for effects like pixel shading). It's the same idea as high framerates. 60-75fps would be ideal, but to get that in the average case, you generally need to be able to push 120fps or more max.
after we get real time life like images what more benifit could there be?? (making them play faster would detract not enhance the experience)
"Faster" in this context should actually be "smoother", as in you're not decreasing the playing time, but you're decreasing the time between "frames" (where by "frame" I mean a slice of the rendering at a specific point in time, rather than something like a movie still. Think of a movie that would normally run at 24fps, but with all the tweens filled in running at an actual framerate of something more like 60fps).
also the monitors can only get so big before people's homes don't have the space for them
Think "Flat Panel LCD" and "wall". People have walls, and before you know it, that's where they'll be hanging their 100" diagonal LCD monitors. As well, increasing the dpi on a monitor has the effect of increasing the resolution (where "resolution" is an incorrect term, as real "resolution" is the same as the dpi, but is meant to mean "number of pixels displayed"). Maybe your little 15" monitor can only do 1024x768 at 60dpi or something like that, but when you have a 15" LCD with a 200dpi, you're going to be able to put more pixels on the screen.
although at some point maybe the game designers will think "hmmm maybe i should concentrate on my content rather than how flashy i can make this finish"... wouldn't that be novel
And with the help of GPUs, game designers have have both content and flash, because all the flashy stuff is essentially done for them already (at which point, they set the artists to work, and deal with their own interesting problem areas, like AI). Look at some of the current crop of games, for instance. Giants is excellent, content-wise (it's got some crazy humorous elements to it), and yet is quite pretty. Rune takes advantage of the hardware T&L in all the new video boards, and yet has an interesting story behind it as well (although being a Viking-based game, it has a goodly amount of blood and guts and gore). Sacrificing visuals for content is nearly as bad as sacrificing content for visuals. Most don't realize that, however, because it's rare that game designers will make that trade-off. The goal is to have great content, great visuals, and great gameplay. With GPU advancements, the visuals almost take care of themselves, leaving more time and resources for the other areas.
The Charisma (what ATI call their design) engine should be faster than NVidia's, as they compress things in hardware. As all tests indicate, however, that this is not the case due to poor drivers.
Poor drivers aren't the only reason the Radeon isn't faster than nVidia's offerings. The GeForce line (especially the GeForce 2 GTS and GeForce 2 GTS Ultra) are extreme powerhouses. They have power down to the raw metal. Radeon's speed comes from fancy bit twiddling which may or may not (but usually does) make a difference in speed. Sharky Extreme has a good review of the Radeon, comparing it against the GeForce 2 standard. The interesting thing to note is that when they turned off all the fancy performance-enhancing stuff (ie, ran metal to metal against a GeForce 2), the Radeon suffered horribly. Sure, drivers can fix this to a certain extent, and ATI does have a bad reputation for their drivers, but without the hardware backing it, there's only so much fancy software-based performance enhancement that can be done.
Both you and the original poster have completely missed the point of .NET. Shame on you. It's not about any one language being the Offical Language of .NET. It's about providing a platform that can be cross-platform (though it's true MS is only building the platform for MS OSen, it's possible to port the platform and thus gain the benefit of apps built to it). The list of languages supporting the .NET CLR is positively huge (don't have a link right now), and includes C#, VB, and Perl, along with managed C++, Python, Haskell, Lisp, and many other not-so-useful languages, including Java (kinda like the JVM is supported by a number of not-so-useful languages, specifically Java).
The moral of the story? Don't expect to see an "Official" language of .NET. That's not the point. That's never been the point, and never will be.
Consider learning a bit about economics and history before you start moaning about this being bad.
Several points:
In short, this is neither unexpected, nor bad, and in fact has a number of good qualities.
Mods have been "Foxed"[1] for quite some time now. This is nothing new, and it's certainly not illegal (see other comments).
[1] The term "Foxed" came into being when the old Alien Quake mod for Quake 1 was cease-and-desisted by Fox, prior to Fox publishing their own Aliens-based FPS, namely Aliens Vs. Predator.
According to that then, I can readily buy (for an added price) versions of software that allow me to reverse engineer them.
But you can! That's the point of the statement. For instance, if you just want to play Quake 3 Arena, go out and buy the game (for $50, which is too much to pay for a glorified technology demo, but I digress). If you want to make freely available (free as in beer) modifications to Quake 3 Arena (within certain guidelines, anyway), you don't need anything more than the standard commercial version. However, if you want to create a new game using Quake 3 Arena and want to be compensated monetarily for it, you need to talk to Id about purchasing an engine license. At that poing, you won't need to reverse engineer anything, because they'll give you everything you need (including source code). However, the cost of that license is extremely high, which is exactly that comment was getting at -- if companies like Ravensoft or others only had to purchase the standard commercial Quake 3 Arena package to be able to make other commercial games from the game engine, Id would be forced to spread the amount of lost revenue from engine licenses across all users, thus making that overpriced $50 into a very overpriced $500, or even more.
The same holds true for other pieces of commercial software, not just Quake 3 Arena. You want the source for Windows 2000? It's available, but it's prohibitively expensive. You must partner yourself with MS, and pay them large sums of money. You want to build a game using Bioware's Infinity Engine? Again, you can do it -- just go talk to Bioware about licensing their technology. Just because you can't readily buy engine licenses in stores doesn't mean that they're not readily available.
As slimey as lawyers may or may not be, the good ones generally know what's going on around them