redleg141 is correct, C Sharp is Al Stevens' baby (see post #226, http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/06/22/16432 37&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread &cid=226 ).
BTW, Al's column alone makes Dr. Dobbs Journal worth the price. The synapses are going. What I had in mind was Middle C.
In case Microsoft didn't notice, there is/was an implementation of C sold under the name C Sharp. It is for 68x family processors. I have a copy, bought in 1984. I wonder if the copyright is still valid.
X Windows isn't a static target. Some of these, and other, complaints have already been addressed in Version 4.
X Windows serves a much larger community than just in-my-box video display generators, allowing remote connections with anything you can throw at it. That is good when you need it, but "a lot of bloat" if you don't. X has been modularized in Version 4, allowing a much smaller RAM footprint, and numerous other changes make X faster.
Buggy servers seem to be a big source of complaint for X, but all the servers have been rolled into one, with card/chip-specifics split out into drivers. This won't eliminate bugginess for new drivers, but should reduce the problem. A considerable amount of work has been done in the more central parts of X to speed it up, reduce its size and kill bugs.
Don't confuse KDE with X, 'cuz it's just a layer on top, as is Gnome, etc. There are other WM's and both KDE and Gnome are improving steadily.
There is a lot of complaining about X's fonts, which is fair. Part of the problem is with coprights and patents, but even so, there has been a lot of work done on X fonts.
This isn't to say that Berlin isn't important new technology for *n*x-es. Regardless of the outcome, both X Windows and Berlin are bound to influence each other, both for the better.
Information "mining" by DoubleClick et al is the moral equivalent of physical wire tapping of one's telephone. It seems amazing that this has never occured to any government entity. If it it is illegal to make a physical wire tap on a telephone to intercept messages, why ought it be legal to intercept other's messages or information through a legal physical messaging connection? No telephone subscriber would ever allow these people to "listen" to voice communations for the purpose of information mining. One may only record voice communication with permission of the sender. Data communication should be held to a like test.
Solution: run MS Office etc. on *n*x by installing Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator). I don't have first hand evidence, but others claim this is at least as stable as running MS Office under MS Windows.
This is true for all technical skills
on
Too Old To Code?
·
· Score: 1
"Too old to X" isn't just an artifact of the software industry, but is true for all scientific and technical skills. Studies done in the middle sixties to late seventies showed that roughly half of all degreed engineers at retirement were working in some area other than engineering.
If you think you are immune, think again. There are many factors that contribute to this, many of which have nothing to do with knowledge or skills. Be sure to stash away some goodies, "just in case," while the good times are rolling.
I suspect that this is a "because it's there" thing. Hillary had to climb Everest. These people had to prove that they could build a non-MS Windows.
We have to admit it is the result of heavy duty sleuth work.
Even if WINE never achieves the full level of Windows 95/98, it will still be a major achievement for these people. They should be congratulated for having tried.
Australia is a large enough market to support competition. Good telco management is what is needed.
Roughly 16 million of its 18.75 million population is concentrated in southeastern Australia, in an area rougly 200 miles E-W by 500 miles N-S. This is only slightly fewer people than the population of the State of Texas, in an area roughly the size of Oklahoma.
Southwestern Bell Telephone Company provides excellent service to most of the area South of Nebraska lying between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, with a total population of rougly 27 million, 21 million of which are in Texas, Oklahoma and Eastern New Mexico, and most of the population is concentrated, like Australia's, in large metropolitan areas. Though SW Bell gives excellent service, until recently their intrastate and intralata rates were absolutely predatory - 42 cents a minute to call Amarillo from as little as 40 miles away. I can call anywhere in the U.S. for 5 cents a minute, and only a little more to Canada. It just takes some competitive pressure to bring the rates down. Now that Texas allows subscribers to choose their local service carrier, you can bet rates will come down.
SW Bell has commited to providing DSL service in all the larger cities it serves and seems to be making good progress, as recent comments on ZD Net indicate. And the rates are reasonable. Without impending competition, this would almost certain have been delayed for as long as possible.
With competition, deregulation and good management Aussie telcos ought to be able to do as well as Southwestern Bell has in a roughly equivalent market.
This is similar to the tactic IBM used when they chose the 8088 processor for the IBM PC. As I recall, though, IBM bought a bundle of Intel stock after they announced their decision.
Many believed the principal reason IBM chose the Intel processor was because they could leverage a huge profit from the stock ploy, whereas if they chose the Motorola 68000, nada, because Motorola was a much larger company.
Why didn't IBM chose Zilog, which had a much larger share of the PC processor market at that time? That may have been a technology decision because the Z80, Z8000 and Z80000 (did I remember the right numbers of zeros?) were mutually incompatible (far more so than the 8008/8080/8085/80186/80188/8086/8088 line), not a good portent for the future.
Incentives like this may be "good business", but they seldom benefit the consumer. As, when a vendor has to "buy" a market for an inferior product, such as RAMBUS.
Absolutely. And AMD announced several months ago (sorry, I don't have a link) a comparable bit of silicon that WOULD be fully backwards compatible with existing IA32 code. And, as I recall, AMD has plans for a 128 bit chip, real-soon-now (TM). Anybody know of any eval units out yet?
Intel has managed with the IA64 to pull off another 8008/8080/8085/8086/8088/80186/80188/80286 mutual incompatibility trick. Intel got away with it last time(s) - sort of - 'cuz IBM saved their tail by choosing the 8088 for their PC, but only because Zilog did even worse going from the Z80 to Z8000. Anybody seen any Zilogs in a LONG time?
Hmm. I just got a Compaq brochure in the mail hyping their Alpha Boxes with Linux. Nothing like solid, proven performance. Attaboy. Now, with a ton of really nice applications...
Well, the Intel/Microsoft combo has a lot of FUD going for it in a lot of business managers' minds - and the public's, too. It will be "interesting" to see how it all sorts out.
Slashdot Mirror
redleg141 is correct, C Sharp is Al Stevens' baby (see post #226, http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/06/22/16432 37&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread &cid=226 ).
...
BTW, Al's column alone makes Dr. Dobbs Journal worth the price. The synapses are going. What I had in mind was Middle C.
... wanders off, muttering to self
In case Microsoft didn't notice, there is/was an implementation of C sold under the name C Sharp. It is for 68x family processors. I have a copy, bought in 1984. I wonder if the copyright is still valid.
X Windows isn't a static target. Some of these, and other, complaints have already been addressed in Version 4.
X Windows serves a much larger community than just in-my-box video display generators, allowing remote connections with anything you can throw at it. That is good when you need it, but "a lot of bloat" if you don't. X has been modularized in Version 4, allowing a much smaller RAM footprint, and numerous other changes make X faster.
Buggy servers seem to be a big source of complaint for X, but all the servers have been rolled into one, with card/chip-specifics split out into drivers. This won't eliminate bugginess for new drivers, but should reduce the problem. A considerable amount of work has been done in the more central parts of X to speed it up, reduce its size and kill bugs.
Don't confuse KDE with X, 'cuz it's just a layer on top, as is Gnome, etc. There are other WM's and both KDE and Gnome are improving steadily.
There is a lot of complaining about X's fonts, which is fair. Part of the problem is with coprights and patents, but even so, there has been a lot of work done on X fonts.
This isn't to say that Berlin isn't important new technology for *n*x-es. Regardless of the outcome, both X Windows and Berlin are bound to influence each other, both for the better.
Information "mining" by DoubleClick et al is the moral equivalent of physical wire tapping of one's telephone. It seems amazing that this has never occured to any government entity. If it it is illegal to make a physical wire tap on a telephone to intercept messages, why ought it be legal to intercept other's messages or information through a legal physical messaging connection? No telephone subscriber would ever allow these people to "listen" to voice communations for the purpose of information mining. One may only record voice communication with permission of the sender. Data communication should be held to a like test.
Solution: run MS Office etc. on *n*x by installing Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator). I don't have first hand evidence, but others claim this is at least as stable as running MS Office under MS Windows.
"Too old to X" isn't just an artifact of the software industry, but is true for all scientific and technical skills. Studies done in the middle sixties to late seventies showed that roughly half of all degreed engineers at retirement were working in some area other than engineering.
If you think you are immune, think again. There are many factors that contribute to this, many of which have nothing to do with knowledge or skills. Be sure to stash away some goodies, "just in case," while the good times are rolling.
Octalman
Been there. Done that.
I suspect that this is a "because it's there" thing. Hillary had to climb Everest. These people had to prove that they could build a non-MS Windows.
We have to admit it is the result of heavy duty sleuth work.
Even if WINE never achieves the full level of Windows 95/98, it will still be a major achievement for these people. They should be congratulated for having tried.
Australia is a large enough market to support competition. Good telco management is what is needed.
Roughly 16 million of its 18.75 million population is concentrated in southeastern Australia, in an area rougly 200 miles E-W by 500 miles N-S. This is only slightly fewer people than the population of the State of Texas, in an area roughly the size of Oklahoma.
Southwestern Bell Telephone Company provides excellent service to most of the area South of Nebraska lying between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, with a total population of rougly 27 million, 21 million of which are in Texas, Oklahoma and Eastern New Mexico, and most of the population is concentrated, like Australia's, in large metropolitan areas. Though SW Bell gives excellent service, until recently their intrastate and intralata rates were absolutely predatory - 42 cents a minute to call Amarillo from as little as 40 miles away. I can call anywhere in the U.S. for 5 cents a minute, and only a little more to Canada. It just takes some competitive pressure to bring the rates down. Now that Texas allows subscribers to choose their local service carrier, you can bet rates will come down.
SW Bell has commited to providing DSL service in all the larger cities it serves and seems to be making good progress, as recent comments on ZD Net indicate. And the rates are reasonable. Without impending competition, this would almost certain have been delayed for as long as possible.
With competition, deregulation and good management Aussie telcos ought to be able to do as well as Southwestern Bell has in a roughly equivalent market.
Octalman
This is similar to the tactic IBM used when they chose the 8088 processor for the IBM PC. As I recall, though, IBM bought a bundle of Intel stock after they announced their decision.
Many believed the principal reason IBM chose the Intel processor was because they could leverage a huge profit from the stock ploy, whereas if they chose the Motorola 68000, nada, because Motorola was a much larger company.
Why didn't IBM chose Zilog, which had a much larger share of the PC processor market at that time? That may have been a technology decision because the Z80, Z8000 and Z80000 (did I remember the right numbers of zeros?) were mutually incompatible (far more so than the 8008/8080/8085/80186/80188/8086/8088 line), not a good portent for the future.
Incentives like this may be "good business", but they seldom benefit the consumer. As, when a vendor has to "buy" a market for an inferior product, such as RAMBUS.
Octalman
Absolutely. And AMD announced several months ago (sorry, I don't have a link) a comparable bit of silicon that WOULD be fully backwards compatible with existing IA32 code. And, as I recall, AMD has plans for a 128 bit chip, real-soon-now (TM). Anybody know of any eval units out yet?
...
Intel has managed with the IA64 to pull off another 8008/8080/8085/8086/8088/80186/80188/80286 mutual incompatibility trick. Intel got away with it last time(s) - sort of - 'cuz IBM saved their tail by choosing the 8088 for their PC, but only because Zilog did even worse going from the Z80 to Z8000. Anybody seen any Zilogs in a LONG time?
Hmm. I just got a Compaq brochure in the mail hyping their Alpha Boxes with Linux. Nothing like solid, proven performance. Attaboy. Now, with a ton of really nice applications
Well, the Intel/Microsoft combo has a lot of FUD going for it in a lot of business managers' minds - and the public's, too. It will be "interesting" to see how it all sorts out.