This is not Borland's C++Builder product. What's being offered is the the command line compiler, linker, resource compiler (which translates descriptions of a program's GUI into something executable), and some other stuff.
It appears to be enough to build software from source. It appears not to be enough to do serious software development (e.g., no debugger).
What's announced is a Windows-only compiler. (It might work with Wine, but what's the point?)
"The new browser looks similar to Communicator 4.7, with some noticeable differences... the most notable difference is the way AOL said it will distribute the product... The company plans to allow Web sites to launch their own branded versions of the browser"
That tells me it's not Mozilla (which doesn't look that much like 4.7, according to screenshots I've seen.) More likely, it's just good (?) old (!) Communicator, with some little frills, and the ability to distribute branded versions.
Branded versions of Netscape are nothing new. When AT&T WorldNet Services first launched, we distributed Netscape (2.0 I think) with a "death star" logo in the upper right.
... but IE 5.0 does a pretty good job of handling this for expert users only.
IE divides the universe into four "zones": "Internet" (the default), "Trusted sites", "Restricted sites", and "Local intranet". (An explanation of the last would be really complicated.)
It's possible -- but not easy -- to designate certainly sites (e.g., *.yahoo.com) as trusted, with one set of policies for cookies and "active content" (Javascript and Active X), another set (e.g., *.doubleclick.net) with a much more restrictive policy, and the Internet (default) zone with fairly paranoid policies.
On the system I'm most paranoid about (the laptop I use for e-mail), every attempt to send persistent cookies or run Javascript is flagged, and permitted only if I say it is. (Hint: Slashdot runs just fine thank you without Javascript.) It's a pain in the tush, but scary enough to keep me at it.
If Microsoft had lost the Caldera case -- if it had gotten to the point where a jury reached a verdict -- there would be a legal precedent on the books. Microsoft has managed to avoid that so far, always stalling or settling before anything goes in the record.
(Microsoft went to verdict in the Bristol case, but they won. There was only a preliminary injunction, since overturned, in Sun's Java case. Of course, the original DOJ case against Microsoft was settled.)
Jackson's finding of fact is preliminary; if he never reaches endgame (not even the finding of law, but an actual verdict with remedy/punishment), it's so much hearsay.
[If you don't know who Clifford Stoll is, run do not walk to your favorite bookstore, perhaps F atbrain or Amazon.com, and get a copy of The Cuckoo's Egg : Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage. --PSRC]
Not any longer. I tend to overwork the welds and have burnt myself too often. Worse, I take a long time to make a Klein Bottle. To keep prices reasonable, professional glassblowers make these to my specs.
Van Someren said nCipher decided to go after encryption keys because "we make products that redress these problems." The company offers a hardware solution to the problem of encryption-key security.
Translation: nCipher decided to make you paranoid about storing your decryption key anyone on your hard disk, so you'd store it with nCipher's hardware solution instead. *Very* thoughtful of them.-(
If I understand this "vunerability" correctly, the approach is to read every block on the hard disk, looking for sequences that are unusually random. Is this supposed to be more effective than looking for strings around the words "decryption key"?-|
Any time I see a wannabe guru say, "Right now X is hot, but soon Y's going to be hot," my digital BS meter lights up a few more pixels.
Wireless instead of cable... business-to-business e-commerce instead of consumer sales... Linux invisibly in appliances instead of visibly as desktop systems... all the things he says are going to grow will grow (and grow faster, because they're so small today), but so will all the things he's not as impressed with.
I think he's flat-out wrong about Internet stocks. I think the bubble will burst, but not this year... and there will be nothing "gradual" about it, and it'll take the whole market with it for a while. (Maybe wishful thinking from a long term investor.)
Caveat: I was one of the technical reviewers of the book. (Yes, Kent misspelled my name.)-: Funny coincidence: I got my copy of the book Tuesday, just about exactly when the review was posted at Slashdot.
I can't find fault with anything in particular with the review, but to me it doesn't capture what makes XP so, um, extreme. Here's my take.
XP is a lightweight, high discipline method (to quote Alistair Cockburn). You don't write a lot of documents; no "Victorian novel" requirements boat anchors. What you do, you do all the time; no "cowboy coders" (despite what you might guess from this or other reviews).
What you do in XP:
o Programming in pairs: No one designs, codes, tests, or debugs by themselves. There's an incredible gestalt you can take advantage of; if you've done it, you know what I mean. (If not, read the book.)
o Unit tests: Hundreds, thousands of them, more every time you make a change, run several times an hour, all available at the touch of a button. The idea is to save time, not spend it; if you make a mistake, the unit tests have a good chance to find it fast.
o Refactoring: Don't design or code your system to do what you think it might do; instead, implement the features you're working on currently, but be willing to go back and refactor it (make big changes) "just in time". You're not making the smallest, simplest change each time; that leads to the evolution of unmaintainable dinosaurs. Instead, you're creating the smallest, simplest system that does what you need it to do, even if that's big time different that the smallest, simplest system that does what you needed last week. (How can you be sure you didn't break anything? Hit that "unit test" button, early and often.)
o Low tech project management. Break the project down into "user stories" (use cases); track the estimates and actual time for each; learn what your project's "load factor" is, and how to improve your future estimates. Gantt chart weinies need not apply.
o Short development intervals; incremental releases every few (two to six, often) weeks. Avoid the "90% done" disasters. Yes, this is in the spirit of what Grady Booch calls "spiral development." (Does anyone still think they're following the "waterfall" model???)
o Teamwork. Kent doesn't say so, but XP's not likely to work for programmers who punch a time clock (though he strongly encourages working only eight intense hours a day and then going home!)
XP is a very new method. There's not a lot of track record, sucesses or failures, out there yet. Consider it for a project with three to ten developers and the need for having something minimal working fast, and more features on a regular basis after that. (Read the book first!) Don't bet your next hundred developer project on it... not yet, anyway.
Caveat: I was one of the technical reviewers of the book. (Yes, Kent misspelled my name.)-:
I see some big problems with the technique:
There are concerns about when and how to apply XP (Kent raises some of them in the book), but your response based on the review is off base.
I haven't "done" XP; I have successfully used some of the practices Kent calls for as part of XP. Here's my experience on how some of those practices work.
no individual code ownership: this seems to suggest that the design would either be imposed from the top, which implies that coders would be treated as unspecialized labor, or that the entire team would be involved in the design of every piece of the code
No. Lack of individual code ownership is one of the extreme practices, but neither of your deductions is correct. The design is fluid (as it is with any working method); no one is forbidden from making changes (there's no code only I can touch), but no one [pair] makes changes without understanding the code as proven by the fact that their changes must pass the existing unit tests and must be supported by additional unit tests created before or at the same time as the changes.
Lack of code ownership is controversial. I work in a project with a couple hundred thousand lines of code, and half a dozen programmers, that makes it work just fine (not using XP). I work alongside a much larger project, with hundreds of programmers, that also works that way.
new team members: the review asserts that "New programmers can also be brought in and up to speed much more quickly." but doesn't specify how.
By pairing new members with more experienced members. (The new member "drives" most of the time, so the information flows through him or her; he/she's not watching, but doing.)
debugging in pairs is a good idea, and should be used by any programming team that has the personnel to spare
No no no no no no no. Programming in pairs is *not* just about debugging, and is NOT about "spare" staff. When it works, two people programming (designing/ coding/ testing/ debugging) in pairs work faster than the two individuals working together... often much faster.
XP (and refactoring, as described in a book reviewed here a few weeks ago) calls for generating huge numbers of unit tests, completely automated, that can be run at the push of a button, and which are run several times per hour by each pair. That's where your coverage comes from.
design to throw one away... A methodology that doesn't address the need to redesign...
XP calls for continous refactoring of the system "to work around mistakes and compromises made when" developing, not disposable prototypes, but earlier versions of the system.
Most programming projects don't have the latitude to set prices for each feature
Each feature will take as long as it takes. XP suggests ways a project can learn how to better estimate these "prices", and spell them out for the customer. Any project, XP or not, where the customer says, "You say this will take six weeks, but I need it in one, so you'll have it in one week," is doomed anyway.
... I agree with a lot of the things he says... but he somehow really annoys me with just about every pronouncement he makes.
"The net routes around censorship ..."
on
License to Surf
·
· Score: 2
Give everyone an unforgable "license" to identify them on every Web site they hit, and you'll immediately drive a lot of people to proxies that hide the licenses.
I understand Hemos' logic: Anyone can subscribe to the debian-legal mailing list (there may even be a Web-accessible archive), so Bruce Perens' suggestion, "It's time for us to bring suit," could be considered a statement to have been made in public view, and fair game for journalists.
I still have two problems with Hemos's posting.
First, I think Bruce's preferences (for where his words appear) should be respected. If he'd wanted a discussion on this in Slashdot, likely to be picked up by WSJ/NYT/Salon/Wired/etc., he certainly knew how to submit it, and the Slashdot editorial staff would have posted it in seconds (and Bruce knew that too). He didn't, so presumably, he didn't.
Second, if Bruce can't quietly raise a suggestion such as this on debian-legal, where *can* he raise it? Alan Greenspan can meet with his peers behind closed doors. Bruce could have (maybe should have) picked a few close friends on the list and asked them to keep the subject private for the moment; not clear he would have gotten the kind of feedback he needed.
I know privacy on debian-legal (or lots of places on the net) is not guaranteed. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be respected.
Simon Singh, Fermat's Enigma : The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem. Based on the (excellent) BBC/PBS television show (it was a Nova episode). Highly recommended.
Get it h ere at Fatbrain (does/. get a cut that way?), or here at Amazon.com.
(Caveats/credits: I wrote about half a dozen articles for PC MAGAZINE about a decade ago, before my then-employer got too deeply into the PC business for me to avoid conflicts of interest. I interviewed at c|net a couple of years ago; they and I were very interested, but there were reservations on both sides, and I turned down their not-too-strong offer.)
c|net, like Mark Twain's would-be obituary writer, might be right eventually, but is 'way too early.
Yes, BYTE shot themselves in the foot when they lost track of their audience. PC may be heading in exactly the same direction: do they want the enterprise crowd, the home crowd, or both? (They're walking the line more carefully then BYTE did.) The Web is faster, cheaper, and bigger than even COMPUTER SHOPPER at its peak.
Still, the Web has its weaknesses. Primary among them is its lack of ability to generate (and earn!) big advertising revenues. PC may get all its review hardware and software for free, but the test lab isn't cheap.
I think a lot of the dead tree publications, especially from the ZD family, are doing a good job at working both paper and electronic publication. The trick is to keep the latter from killing the revenue stream of the former.
BTW, if there's anything I've learned from watching the personal computer press for twenty years, its that "newbie" magazines don't last. Yes, the first time PC buyer will pick up a copy of FAMILY PC about the time he/she signs up for AOL, but won't be back to the newsstand, and won't subscribe.
One person's opinion. --PSRC (likely to fall asleep tonight with the current PC issue; less likely to renew my subscription, but we'll see)
I was at a science fiction convention a few months before DUNE (the Lynch movie) premiered. Frank Herbert was one of the speakers. He said, "It begins the same as the book, and it ends the same as the book, and I think that's about all an author can ask for."
We in the audience had no idea how desperate Herbert must have been (at the time) to say something nice about the movie.
My wife summed it up best: Herbert's novel was all about political struggle and environmentalism. Lynch made an action film.
A friend of mine (Mark Leeper) enjoyed the film for providing illustrations of several scenes from the novel. Another friend of mine had a shorter, harsher review: "Yuchh, blech!"
Here is her entry in the Internet Movie Database. She's done a huge number of movies, including STAR WARS Episode 1, THE IRON GIANT, and four Disney animated features, plus over half a dozen video games.
IMDB credits her with the following SOUTH PARK characters: Mrs. Cartman, Sheila, Female Body Part, Nurse, Mole's Mother, Little Girls, Wendy Testaburger, Stan's Mom, Kenny's Mom, Mayor McDaniels, Ms. Crabtree, Principal Victoria, Shelly Marsh, Nurse Gollem.
IANAL, but AFAIK, the proscecution has filed a complaint regarding a specific violation or set of violations. Judge Jackson can only impose a judgement that addresses the violation(s) discussed in this case. For example, since no evidence (presented this time around) alleged how Microsoft might have abused its Windows monopoly to push Office, does that mean Judge Jackson cannot impose a remedy splitting OSs and applications into different companies?
To me, the most significant aspect of the Findings of Fact was Jackson's constant use of the phrase, "application barrier to entry." It seems to me as if the judge is using this concept, rather than the narrow Netscape vs. IE browser war, to broaden the scope of the trial, and thus the remedies open to him.
So, how broad a scope can Judge Jackson's potential remedies address? --PSRC
"An Entry Edition of Version 3.0 for Linux will be available at no charge from VADD late in November."
This continues IBM's tradition of offering entry-level versions of VisualAge (for Java and Smalltalk, anyway) at no charge (free beer).
Fascinating strategy. The traditional route is to sell your tools to schools, and get kids hooked there. IBM may be doing that, but they're also offering it to us who are picking up these technologies on our own.
A lot of/.'ers hear "low power" chip and think "laptops." Don't be so limited.
Obviously, low power chips are good for any battery-powered applications: PDAs, cell phones, devices we haven't thought of yet.
Low power chips are also important when you have a lot of them. Say, for the sake of argument, the Transmeta chip is very well suited to parallel processing, maybe massively parallel processing. You'd have a lot of such chips in one box. You'd want low power chips, both to reduce power consumption and to ease the cooling requirements. I presume low power chips also generate less EMF.
For example, along these lines, low power chips are useful in the telecommunications market. I've been associated (loosely) with some hardware that needed to be redesigned to have more fans. One customer was the electric company's third biggest customer in that city (and you've heard of the city and the two bigger customers).
I'll admit Microsoft has done at least the moral equivalent of making the trains run on time.
But I think the key to understanding both their response to the finding of fact, and the whole position they've found themselves in, is this:
Microsoft honestly believes that everything they've done is right, and that they've never done anything wrong.
I don't buy that. (Planning to "cut off the oxygen supply" of a competitor, or a partner who doesn't want to play the Microsoft Way, is at least unethical. IANAL.)
I think Microsoft really does believe that. From the days of the CP/M-80 Basic interpreter, Microsoft's official mission statement was, "A computer in every home [and every office], running Microsoft software." They believe they're making the best possible products, that they have the vision for making computers better and better every year, and that they shouldn't allow folks from those inferior companies to interfere with Microsoft's continued progress of adding value everywhere they can.
If you equate "innovation" with "Microsoft innovation," naturally you'd be upset by the direction Judge Jackson has taken. If you equate "innovation" with "innovation from Microsoft and other companies," then Judge Jackson is on the right track.
Naturally, Microsoft's belief that "everything we do is right" has the potential for serious abuse. (I like understatement.-) --PSRC
P.S.: Shoe-on-the-other-foot: When was the last time you cast your own actions as villainous?
"Consumers could not turn from Intel-compatible PC operating systems to Intel-compatible server operating systems without incurring substantial costs, since the latter type of system is sold at a significantly higher price than the former. A consumer intent on acquiring a server operating system would also have to buy a computer of substantially greater power and price than an Intel-compatible PC, because server operating systems generally cannot function properly on PC hardware."
Huh?? I agree Microsoft has an effective monopoly (network effect and such), but did the judge just completely ignore OS/2, Be, and Linux?
Slashdot Mirror
This is not Borland's C++Builder product. What's being offered is the the command line compiler, linker, resource compiler (which translates descriptions of a program's GUI into something executable), and some other stuff.
It appears to be enough to build software from source. It appears not to be enough to do serious software development (e.g., no debugger).
What's announced is a Windows-only compiler. (It might work with Wine, but what's the point?)
"The new browser looks similar to Communicator 4.7, with some noticeable differences ... the most notable difference is the way AOL said it will distribute the product ... The company plans to allow Web sites to launch their own branded versions of the browser"
That tells me it's not Mozilla (which doesn't look that much like 4.7, according to screenshots I've seen.) More likely, it's just good (?) old (!) Communicator, with some little frills, and the ability to distribute branded versions.
Branded versions of Netscape are nothing new. When AT&T WorldNet Services first launched, we distributed Netscape (2.0 I think) with a "death star" logo in the upper right.
... but IE 5.0 does a pretty good job of handling this for expert users only.
IE divides the universe into four "zones": "Internet" (the default), "Trusted sites", "Restricted sites", and "Local intranet". (An explanation of the last would be really complicated.)
It's possible -- but not easy -- to designate certainly sites (e.g., *.yahoo.com) as trusted, with one set of policies for cookies and "active content" (Javascript and Active X), another set (e.g., *.doubleclick.net) with a much more restrictive policy, and the Internet (default) zone with fairly paranoid policies.
On the system I'm most paranoid about (the laptop I use for e-mail), every attempt to send persistent cookies or run Javascript is flagged, and permitted only if I say it is. (Hint: Slashdot runs just fine thank you without Javascript.) It's a pain in the tush, but scary enough to keep me at it.
I can deal with this. My mother couldn't. --PSRC
If Microsoft had lost the Caldera case -- if it had gotten to the point where a jury reached a verdict -- there would be a legal precedent on the books. Microsoft has managed to avoid that so far, always stalling or settling before anything goes in the record.
(Microsoft went to verdict in the Bristol case, but they won. There was only a preliminary injunction, since overturned, in Sun's Java case. Of course, the original DOJ case against Microsoft was settled.)
Jackson's finding of fact is preliminary; if he never reaches endgame (not even the finding of law, but an actual verdict with remedy/punishment), it's so much hearsay.
[If you don't know who Clifford Stoll is, run do not walk to your favorite bookstore, perhaps F atbrain or Amazon.com, and get a copy of The Cuckoo's Egg : Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage. --PSRC]
...
http://www.kleinbottle.com/acme_faq.htm
Who's behind Acme Klein Bottle?
Just me, Cliff Stoll. Nobody else.
Are you the same guy that
Yep, same guy.
Do you make these Klein Bottles yourself?
Not any longer. I tend to overwork the welds and have burnt myself too often. Worse, I take a long time to make a Klein Bottle. To keep prices reasonable, professional glassblowers make these to my specs.
Van Someren said nCipher decided to go after encryption keys because "we make products that redress these problems." The company offers a hardware solution to the problem of encryption-key security.
Translation: nCipher decided to make you paranoid about storing your decryption key anyone on your hard disk, so you'd store it with nCipher's hardware solution instead. *Very* thoughtful of them.-(
If I understand this "vunerability" correctly, the approach is to read every block on the hard disk, looking for sequences that are unusually random. Is this supposed to be more effective than looking for strings around the words "decryption key"?-|
Any time I see a wannabe guru say, "Right now X is hot, but soon Y's going to be hot," my digital BS meter lights up a few more pixels.
... business-to-business e-commerce instead of consumer sales ... Linux invisibly in appliances instead of visibly as desktop systems ... all the things he says are going to grow will grow (and grow faster, because they're so small today), but so will all the things he's not as impressed with.
... and there will be nothing "gradual" about it, and it'll take the whole market with it for a while. (Maybe wishful thinking from a long term investor.)
Wireless instead of cable
I think he's flat-out wrong about Internet stocks. I think the bubble will burst, but not this year
Caveat: I was one of the technical reviewers of the book. (Yes, Kent misspelled my name.)-: Funny coincidence: I got my copy of the book Tuesday, just about exactly when the review was posted at Slashdot.
... not yet, anyway.
I can't find fault with anything in particular with the review, but to me it doesn't capture what makes XP so, um, extreme. Here's my take.
XP is a lightweight, high discipline method (to quote Alistair Cockburn). You don't write a lot of documents; no "Victorian novel" requirements boat anchors. What you do, you do all the time; no "cowboy coders" (despite what you might guess from this or other reviews).
What you do in XP:
o Programming in pairs: No one designs, codes, tests, or debugs by themselves. There's an incredible gestalt you can take advantage of; if you've done it, you know what I mean. (If not, read the book.)
o Unit tests: Hundreds, thousands of them, more every time you make a change, run several times an hour, all available at the touch of a button. The idea is to save time, not spend it; if you make a mistake, the unit tests have a good chance to find it fast.
o Refactoring: Don't design or code your system to do what you think it might do; instead, implement the features you're working on currently, but be willing to go back and refactor it (make big changes) "just in time". You're not making the smallest, simplest change each time; that leads to the evolution of unmaintainable dinosaurs. Instead, you're creating the smallest, simplest system that does what you need it to do, even if that's big time different that the smallest, simplest system that does what you needed last week. (How can you be sure you didn't break anything? Hit that "unit test" button, early and often.)
o Low tech project management. Break the project down into "user stories" (use cases); track the estimates and actual time for each; learn what your project's "load factor" is, and how to improve your future estimates. Gantt chart weinies need not apply.
o Short development intervals; incremental releases every few (two to six, often) weeks. Avoid the "90% done" disasters. Yes, this is in the spirit of what Grady Booch calls "spiral development." (Does anyone still think they're following the "waterfall" model???)
o Teamwork. Kent doesn't say so, but XP's not likely to work for programmers who punch a time clock (though he strongly encourages working only eight intense hours a day and then going home!)
XP is a very new method. There's not a lot of track record, sucesses or failures, out there yet. Consider it for a project with three to ten developers and the need for having something minimal working fast, and more features on a regular basis after that. (Read the book first!) Don't bet your next hundred developer project on it
Caveat: I was one of the technical reviewers of the book. (Yes, Kent misspelled my name.)-:
... often much faster.
... A methodology that doesn't address the need to redesign ...
I see some big problems with the technique:
There are concerns about when and how to apply XP (Kent raises some of them in the book), but your response based on the review is off base.
I haven't "done" XP; I have successfully used some of the practices Kent calls for as part of XP. Here's my experience on how some of those practices work.
no individual code ownership: this seems to suggest that the design would either be imposed from the top, which implies that coders would be treated as unspecialized labor, or that the entire team would be involved in the design of every piece of the code
No. Lack of individual code ownership is one of the extreme practices, but neither of your deductions is correct. The design is fluid (as it is with any working method); no one is forbidden from making changes (there's no code only I can touch), but no one [pair] makes changes without understanding the code as proven by the fact that their changes must pass the existing unit tests and must be supported by additional unit tests created before or at the same time as the changes.
Lack of code ownership is controversial. I work in a project with a couple hundred thousand lines of code, and half a dozen programmers, that makes it work just fine (not using XP). I work alongside a much larger project, with hundreds of programmers, that also works that way.
new team members: the review asserts that "New programmers can also be brought in and up to speed much more quickly." but doesn't specify how.
By pairing new members with more experienced members. (The new member "drives" most of the time, so the information flows through him or her; he/she's not watching, but doing.)
debugging in pairs is a good idea, and should be used by any programming team that has the personnel to spare
No no no no no no no. Programming in pairs is *not* just about debugging, and is NOT about "spare" staff. When it works, two people programming (designing/ coding/ testing/ debugging) in pairs work faster than the two individuals working together
XP (and refactoring, as described in a book reviewed here a few weeks ago) calls for generating huge numbers of unit tests, completely automated, that can be run at the push of a button, and which are run several times per hour by each pair. That's where your coverage comes from.
design to throw one away
XP calls for continous refactoring of the system "to work around mistakes and compromises made when" developing, not disposable prototypes, but earlier versions of the system.
Most programming projects don't have the latitude to set prices for each feature
Each feature will take as long as it takes. XP suggests ways a project can learn how to better estimate these "prices", and spell them out for the customer. Any project, XP or not, where the customer says, "You say this will take six weeks, but I need it in one, so you'll have it in one week," is doomed anyway.
... I agree with a lot of the things he says ... but he somehow really annoys me with just about every pronouncement he makes.
Give everyone an unforgable "license" to identify them on every Web site they hit, and you'll immediately drive a lot of people to proxies that hide the licenses.
I understand Hemos' logic: Anyone can subscribe to the debian-legal mailing list (there may even be a Web-accessible archive), so Bruce Perens' suggestion, "It's time for us to bring suit," could be considered a statement to have been made in public view, and fair game for journalists.
I still have two problems with Hemos's posting.
First, I think Bruce's preferences (for where his words appear) should be respected. If he'd wanted a discussion on this in Slashdot, likely to be picked up by WSJ/NYT/Salon/Wired/etc., he certainly knew how to submit it, and the Slashdot editorial staff would have posted it in seconds (and Bruce knew that too). He didn't, so presumably, he didn't.
Second, if Bruce can't quietly raise a suggestion such as this on debian-legal, where *can* he raise it? Alan Greenspan can meet with his peers behind closed doors. Bruce could have (maybe should have) picked a few close friends on the list and asked them to keep the subject private for the moment; not clear he would have gotten the kind of feedback he needed.
I know privacy on debian-legal (or lots of places on the net) is not guaranteed. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be respected.
Simon Singh, Fermat's Enigma : The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem. Based on the (excellent) BBC/PBS television show (it was a Nova episode). Highly recommended.
/. get a cut that way?), or here at Amazon.com.
Get it h ere at Fatbrain (does
(Caveats/credits: I wrote about half a dozen articles for PC MAGAZINE about a decade ago, before my then-employer got too deeply into the PC business for me to avoid conflicts of interest. I interviewed at c|net a couple of years ago; they and I were very interested, but there were reservations on both sides, and I turned down their not-too-strong offer.)
c|net, like Mark Twain's would-be obituary writer, might be right eventually, but is 'way too early.
Yes, BYTE shot themselves in the foot when they lost track of their audience. PC may be heading in exactly the same direction: do they want the enterprise crowd, the home crowd, or both? (They're walking the line more carefully then BYTE did.) The Web is faster, cheaper, and bigger than even COMPUTER SHOPPER at its peak.
Still, the Web has its weaknesses. Primary among them is its lack of ability to generate (and earn!) big advertising revenues. PC may get all its review hardware and software for free, but the test lab isn't cheap.
I think a lot of the dead tree publications, especially from the ZD family, are doing a good job at working both paper and electronic publication. The trick is to keep the latter from killing the revenue stream of the former.
BTW, if there's anything I've learned from watching the personal computer press for twenty years, its that "newbie" magazines don't last. Yes, the first time PC buyer will pick up a copy of FAMILY PC about the time he/she signs up for AOL, but won't be back to the newsstand, and won't subscribe.
One person's opinion. --PSRC (likely to fall asleep tonight with the current PC issue; less likely to renew my subscription, but we'll see)
Did anybody every buy COMPUTER SHOPPER for the editorial content?-)
I was at a science fiction convention a few months before DUNE (the Lynch movie) premiered. Frank Herbert was one of the speakers. He said, "It begins the same as the book, and it ends the same as the book, and I think that's about all an author can ask for."
We in the audience had no idea how desperate Herbert must have been (at the time) to say something nice about the movie.
My wife summed it up best: Herbert's novel was all about political struggle and environmentalism. Lynch made an action film.
A friend of mine (Mark Leeper) enjoyed the film for providing illustrations of several scenes from the novel. Another friend of mine had a shorter, harsher review: "Yuchh, blech!"
Here is a link to a ZDNet article on Yahoo! News. The New York Times' "AP Breaking News" link appears to be down already.
Here is her entry in the Internet Movie Database. She's done a huge number of movies, including STAR WARS Episode 1, THE IRON GIANT, and four Disney animated features, plus over half a dozen video games.
IMDB credits her with the following SOUTH PARK characters: Mrs. Cartman, Sheila, Female Body Part, Nurse, Mole's Mother, Little Girls, Wendy Testaburger, Stan's Mom, Kenny's Mom, Mayor McDaniels, Ms. Crabtree, Principal Victoria, Shelly Marsh, Nurse Gollem.
... at least it's not a case where there's lots of prior art.-)
IANAL, but AFAIK, the proscecution has filed a complaint regarding a specific violation or set of violations. Judge Jackson can only impose a judgement that addresses the violation(s) discussed in this case. For example, since no evidence (presented this time around) alleged how Microsoft might have abused its Windows monopoly to push Office, does that mean Judge Jackson cannot impose a remedy splitting OSs and applications into different companies?
To me, the most significant aspect of the Findings of Fact was Jackson's constant use of the phrase, "application barrier to entry." It seems to me as if the judge is using this concept, rather than the narrow Netscape vs. IE browser war, to broaden the scope of the trial, and thus the remedies open to him.
So, how broad a scope can Judge Jackson's potential remedies address? --PSRC
"An Entry Edition of Version 3.0 for Linux will be available at no charge from VADD late in November."
This continues IBM's tradition of offering entry-level versions of VisualAge (for Java and Smalltalk, anyway) at no charge (free beer).
Fascinating strategy. The traditional route is to sell your tools to schools, and get kids hooked there. IBM may be doing that, but they're also offering it to us who are picking up these technologies on our own.
A lot of /.'ers hear "low power" chip and think "laptops." Don't be so limited.
Obviously, low power chips are good for any battery-powered applications: PDAs, cell phones, devices we haven't thought of yet.
Low power chips are also important when you have a lot of them. Say, for the sake of argument, the Transmeta chip is very well suited to parallel processing, maybe massively parallel processing. You'd have a lot of such chips in one box. You'd want low power chips, both to reduce power consumption and to ease the cooling requirements. I presume low power chips also generate less EMF.
For example, along these lines, low power chips are useful in the telecommunications market. I've been associated (loosely) with some hardware that needed to be redesigned to have more fans. One customer was the electric company's third biggest customer in that city (and you've heard of the city and the two bigger customers).
I'll admit Microsoft has done at least the moral equivalent of making the trains run on time.
But I think the key to understanding both their response to the finding of fact, and the whole position they've found themselves in, is this:
Microsoft honestly believes that everything they've done is right, and that they've never done anything wrong.
I don't buy that. (Planning to "cut off the oxygen supply" of a competitor, or a partner who doesn't want to play the Microsoft Way, is at least unethical. IANAL.)
I think Microsoft really does believe that. From the days of the CP/M-80 Basic interpreter, Microsoft's official mission statement was, "A computer in every home [and every office], running Microsoft software." They believe they're making the best possible products, that they have the vision for making computers better and better every year, and that they shouldn't allow folks from those inferior companies to interfere with Microsoft's continued progress of adding value everywhere they can.
If you equate "innovation" with "Microsoft innovation," naturally you'd be upset by the direction Judge Jackson has taken. If you equate "innovation" with "innovation from Microsoft and other companies," then Judge Jackson is on the right track.
Naturally, Microsoft's belief that "everything we do is right" has the potential for serious abuse. (I like understatement.-) --PSRC
P.S.: Shoe-on-the-other-foot: When was the last time you cast your own actions as villainous?
I am shocked ... shocked ... to find Microsoft is considered a monopoly!
(Your stock options, sir.)
Thank you. Shocked, I tell you!
:-)
Weird statement early on:
"Consumers could not turn from Intel-compatible PC operating systems to Intel-compatible
server operating systems without incurring substantial costs, since the latter type of system is
sold at a significantly higher price than the former. A consumer intent on acquiring a server operating
system would also have to buy a computer of substantially greater power and price than an Intel-compatible
PC, because server operating systems generally cannot function properly on PC hardware."
Huh?? I agree Microsoft has an effective monopoly (network effect and such), but did the judge just completely ignore OS/2, Be, and Linux?