...you can buy the program without having to worry whether it's going to run on your particular computer.
+5 optimistic. Even with Sun's own JVM (for Windows), I've had problems with Applets not loading properly (when they work fine on other machines). Sure, you can blame the applet or Windows. Actually, the biggest problems with Applets tend to be (from my personal limited experience) with OS X.
I've heard people tell me that the developers coded the applet "wrong", but a "platform-neutral" system should behave the same regardless of what hardware it's on - that's the whole point! And, for the record, I'm fairly certain that the problematic Java apps that I've tested are not using any native code interfacing like JNDI.
Has the semi-failure of the XBox been the first high-profile dent to MS...
Seeing as it has the highest attach rate (more profit per console sold because of the attach rate) and an incredible XBox live customer base (based on percentage of customers), I wouldn't call it a failure of any sorts.
MS has the cash to pay out for an XBox 2 and an Xbox 3 until Sony and Nintendo are gradually put out of the game for the sheer fact that MSoft's bottom line can go deeper than theirs?
You mean, more cash to dump into a console than Sony - a multinational, extremely diverse, multibillion dollar company? MS must answer to shareholders, and they can't just dump money for the sake of market dominance. For the record, the total amount spent for the XBox is nowhere near what Sony invested in the Playstation - it's an expensive market to break into. Do some googling - education is better than fanatacism.
And don't worry about MS breaking into this new market. Apple has the unique edge of having the hardware already in place - and very good hardware at that. Apple's success is based on a total "turn key" solution. Something that MS doesn't have (at least for now).
Your logic would be correct if stock price was the only factor determining a stocks worth. Stock splits alone change the price of the stock, but not the value to a particular shareholder. What used to be a $50 for Ballmer is now twice as many shares for ~$25. It's essentially the same value. Considering his volume this is a great time to sell.
Re:Isn't this a security issue?
on
Hijacking .NET
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Now, in Java, acecss to private class members is strictly forbidden by the JVM.
No, it's not. Please read up in this thread to see a few posts with examples of how to access private members in Java.
But a lot of the.NET classes that Microsoft provides are written in C/C++ and have to access the system - and by messing up the private variables in these classes, there's no end to what you could possibly do...C#/.NET is supposed to be able to run in a sandbox...
The point is that.NET does run in a sandbox of sorts, and the accessability of a class member can not circumvent that. So what if I can access a private member of some class that can delete system files? The runtime will detect that you aren't allowed to access the system files regardless of the accessibility of the method attempting to do so. Even if it's "Microsoft's code", it's not trusted because it's part of your program and running under it's security context, so the same security restrictions are placed on Microsoft's code as is yours, since your program is the one accessing it.
Re:More version incompatible program
on
Hijacking .NET
·
· Score: 1
I hope MSFT programmers are not hiding passwords in.NET classes.
Even if they were, all you'd need is the dissasembly tool "ILDASM" which comes with the.NET Framework SDK as all static strings are viewable in plaintext.
Re:Is this a C# or a .NET problem?
on
Hijacking .NET
·
· Score: 1
So much for that Secure Computing initiative outta Redmond...
The encapsulation of class members has nothing to do with security. Everything is still executing within a sandbox. This is essentially a hack that has similar functionality for the "friend" keyword in C++.
You mean that flaw that has little practical relevance and only occurs in isolated scenario's? Don't get me wrong, MS should fix all flaws, but how does this lose your trust? My XP Sp1 runs on around 150mb, but that's considering that I'm running an Enterprise DB (SqlServer 2000), IIS, at least one ASP.NET worker process, and a couple instances of IE.
With open source, you can patch whatever version you're running...
More specifically, when an open source program is no longer supported by the community, you can hire consultants to patch the program. However, this still costs a lot of money, and is outside of the companies focus. A company should be focusing on it's business domain, not on patching an OS - that's your vendors (eg: Red Hat's) job. Either way, you rely on your vendor. With OSS, there may be more vendors to choose from, but the bottom line is, if you don't want to upgrade, and your vendor has discontinued support for your software (usually after 5+ years), you're going to pay one way or the other.
OSS or Closed Source, it's better to keep reasonably up-to-date on your software.
I'll tell you what I do. I have my own domain name with unlimited aliasing. I have one personal email address, and then I use the company's name or the product for my email. For example, I decided to sign up for MS Passport but I was worried about MS spamming me. So, I created passport@mydomain.com (fyi: I haven't gotten a single unsolicited email to that address). Also for Amazon, I created amazon@mydomain.com. It makes it real easy to manage spam, and track where your spam came from.
Yet, before Win98 saturated the market, IE was the market leader? The IE4 integration to Win98 was a factor, but a small one when looking at the numbers. I was a web developer back then, and I was a die hard NS fan. The problem is that NS4 went proprietary, and IE was ironically the most standards based browser at the time. Face it, NS blew, and Mozilla has only recently caught up (and surpassed, in some ways) to IE.
What happens when the customer orders something from Amazon - the purchase confirmation email comes from a non-human address.
Just the other day I got an email from a company that I ordered software from describing a free upgrade that I could download. It came from donotreply@[host].com, meaning, if I was using Earthlink's system I probably wouldn't have received it.
The problem with Challenge - Response is that it makes the assumption that if there's not a human behind the email that it's spam. In practice, there are many legit emails that are not individually sent by a human.
Microsoft is a platform company. They write the best software with their platform. Java with Microsoft's JVM was way faster on Windows than any other Java, but at the price of cross-platform compatibility. Platform specific technology is almost always faster/better/etc. because it's optimised for that platform and can utilize that platform's specific features. DirectX is another good example of this. Now that DX has matured, developers love deloping for it. There are definitely some areas where OpenGL shines (in comparison with Direct3D), but DX is a clear winner overall.
Also, consider the commodity of the web browser. Having a 3rd party web browser is kind of like having a 3rd party file explorer. Explorer.exe is replaceable in Windows, but I wouldn't say that it's an antitrust violation since MS "pushed other shell developers out of the market". Rather, it was a natural extension to the OS.
As developers, we may dissagree that integrating IE is technically sound, however, that's not the issue. The issue is whether or not it's legit for them to do this as a business, and rather or not it makes the market unfair. I don't think it's unfair at all. Apple and MS can push products that other companies can't because they've invested in a total platform. They are platform companies, and by nature platform companies have the upper hand.
The difference is that one company is an illegal monopoly
No, MS is convicted of illegally _maintaining_ an existing monopoly, which is very different than illegally _obtaining_ a monopoly. This means that their major success w/ Windows + Office was legit.
Furthermore, if MS want's developers to have access to the IE HTML engine for their programs, so be it. Developers love the fact that they can rely on the core rendering engine. If I want Opera on my box, I download it and install it. It's also trivial to make it my default browser (Opera asks you on Install), and MS does nothing to stop this. So, delete the stupid IE icons on your desktop (also trivial) and replace them with Opera? What's the big deal? Furthermore, in XP they created that silly "default programs" or whatever icon which is yet another way to select your default browser, email client, etc.
Read down for my post why this isn't a Pro Tools (or comparable products) replacement. And even if it was, that's only one tool. WAV editing tools are huge. Plugins are even bigger (generally costing several times more than the DAW software) and many people have already invested in them. Software synthesis (eg: Propellerheads "Reason") is rapdily growing and are used almost exlcusively for some productions.
I don't see this making a difference to all but the very casual home music hobbyist. And even then, on Mac's or Windows you can get very powerful and not-so-aptly-named "light" versions of a lot of these tools for an affordable price or even for free.
I don't dissagree, but I contend that this is practically impossible. You'd be amazed at what albums used Pro Tools. For example, many classical recordings use Pro Tools - but what they don't do is over-compress, over-EQ, or over-process the sound. What you're used to hearing has nothing to do with Pro Tools, and everything to do with the Pop Music Industry's production style.
Pro Tools is not just software - you'll normally find it installed as a hardware/software combo. This is in part due to the fact that modern CPU's can not handle mulitple high quality real time effects for larger studio projects. The other big factor with Pro Tools (and comperable systems) is the Control Surface. Sure, there are incredible MIDI controllers out there, but the proprietary Pro Tools control surfaces are second to none.
I'm not going to argue about the cost of CD's - I personlly don't buy RIAA backed music anyway. However, as with many products, the largetst cost is the human cost. You are not buying the 20cent CD, the production, or the marketing. You are paying for the creative talent of the artist, producers, and engineers. No matter how cheap a paintbrush is, a good painting is still worth it's value as art.
The revolution of "cheap studio's" really makes it possible for people without the means that the RIAA has to produce and distribute incredible music. But for large budjet studio's, the overall savings is marginal compared to the per-CD revenue generated. Even if savings were directly passed down, we'd probably be talking about a few pennies on the dollar.
And, if there was a way to do a patch "rollback", then faulty patches wouldn't bring down a system until a new fix-patch was released.
For at least the past few years each patch has been removeable via the Add and Remove programs interface. A much more elegant and stable system debuted in ME (ironically), and is very robust in XP called "system restore". Before any system changes (like a patch) occur, a "snapshot" is automatically taken of the system. You can then rollback the changes if problems occur after the patch is applied.
AFAIK Int64 is as big as it get's in C# (although I don't work with large numbers). Check out this article for the handling of really large numbers(http://www.codeproject.com/csharp/BigInteg er.asp)
There is a huge difference between OSS and art in this case. If I write a song for the joy of it, Microsoft can't use it for profit without paying me royalties. With OSS (GPL'd or otherwise), Microsoft can use it for profit without contributing anything to the project. Why would I work for a multibillion dollar company for free? Even companies that do contribute (IBM), they are still profiting off of your code. All you're getting is some improvements to your OS which you'd get anyway. That's not exactly what I'd call fair compensation.
I code because I love to, but I don't code so that an executive can get a huge bonus for using my software for free.
DISCLAIMER: I'm obviously focusing on free as in beer OSS, and I understand that you can commercialize OSS. However, the vast majority of OSS and the focus of these articles is on public, freely available software.
OpenGL is comparable to Direct3D, not DirectX. DirectX is a huge innovation, and even though earlier versions had their respective messes, it's gotten extremely elegant. It's really the only API in it's class. Again, OpenGL only addresses Direct3D, and not DirectSound, DirectShow, etc.
If you had to activate to swap a HD, that is a bit annoying. AFAIK it should take 2-3 major hardware changes within a 90 day period to require reactivation.
Slashdot Mirror
...you can buy the program without having to worry whether it's going to run on your particular computer.
+5 optimistic. Even with Sun's own JVM (for Windows), I've had problems with Applets not loading properly (when they work fine on other machines). Sure, you can blame the applet or Windows. Actually, the biggest problems with Applets tend to be (from my personal limited experience) with OS X.
I've heard people tell me that the developers coded the applet "wrong", but a "platform-neutral" system should behave the same regardless of what hardware it's on - that's the whole point! And, for the record, I'm fairly certain that the problematic Java apps that I've tested are not using any native code interfacing like JNDI.
Has the semi-failure of the XBox been the first high-profile dent to MS...
Seeing as it has the highest attach rate (more profit per console sold because of the attach rate) and an incredible XBox live customer base (based on percentage of customers), I wouldn't call it a failure of any sorts.
MS has the cash to pay out for an XBox 2 and an Xbox 3 until Sony and Nintendo are gradually put out of the game for the sheer fact that MSoft's bottom line can go deeper than theirs?
You mean, more cash to dump into a console than Sony - a multinational, extremely diverse, multibillion dollar company? MS must answer to shareholders, and they can't just dump money for the sake of market dominance. For the record, the total amount spent for the XBox is nowhere near what Sony invested in the Playstation - it's an expensive market to break into. Do some googling - education is better than fanatacism.
And don't worry about MS breaking into this new market. Apple has the unique edge of having the hardware already in place - and very good hardware at that. Apple's success is based on a total "turn key" solution. Something that MS doesn't have (at least for now).
With MS stock price so low
Your logic would be correct if stock price was the only factor determining a stocks worth. Stock splits alone change the price of the stock, but not the value to a particular shareholder. What used to be a $50 for Ballmer is now twice as many shares for ~$25. It's essentially the same value. Considering his volume this is a great time to sell.
Now, in Java, acecss to private class members is strictly forbidden by the JVM.
.NET classes that Microsoft provides are written in C/C++ and have to access the system - and by messing up the private variables in these classes, there's no end to what you could possibly do...C#/.NET is supposed to be able to run in a sandbox...
.NET does run in a sandbox of sorts, and the accessability of a class member can not circumvent that. So what if I can access a private member of some class that can delete system files? The runtime will detect that you aren't allowed to access the system files regardless of the accessibility of the method attempting to do so. Even if it's "Microsoft's code", it's not trusted because it's part of your program and running under it's security context, so the same security restrictions are placed on Microsoft's code as is yours, since your program is the one accessing it.
No, it's not. Please read up in this thread to see a few posts with examples of how to access private members in Java.
But a lot of the
The point is that
I hope MSFT programmers are not hiding passwords in .NET classes.
.NET Framework SDK as all static strings are viewable in plaintext.
Even if they were, all you'd need is the dissasembly tool "ILDASM" which comes with the
So much for that Secure Computing initiative outta Redmond...
The encapsulation of class members has nothing to do with security. Everything is still executing within a sandbox. This is essentially a hack that has similar functionality for the "friend" keyword in C++.
He was 26 years old at the time. This is amazing...
Furthermore, he didn't have any higher education, let alone a completed degree on any level.
You mean that flaw that has little practical relevance and only occurs in isolated scenario's? Don't get me wrong, MS should fix all flaws, but how does this lose your trust? My XP Sp1 runs on around 150mb, but that's considering that I'm running an Enterprise DB (SqlServer 2000), IIS, at least one ASP.NET worker process, and a couple instances of IE.
With open source, you can patch whatever version you're running...
More specifically, when an open source program is no longer supported by the community, you can hire consultants to patch the program. However, this still costs a lot of money, and is outside of the companies focus. A company should be focusing on it's business domain, not on patching an OS - that's your vendors (eg: Red Hat's) job. Either way, you rely on your vendor. With OSS, there may be more vendors to choose from, but the bottom line is, if you don't want to upgrade, and your vendor has discontinued support for your software (usually after 5+ years), you're going to pay one way or the other.
OSS or Closed Source, it's better to keep reasonably up-to-date on your software.
I'll tell you what I do. I have my own domain name with unlimited aliasing. I have one personal email address, and then I use the company's name or the product for my email. For example, I decided to sign up for MS Passport but I was worried about MS spamming me. So, I created passport@mydomain.com (fyi: I haven't gotten a single unsolicited email to that address). Also for Amazon, I created amazon@mydomain.com. It makes it real easy to manage spam, and track where your spam came from.
Yet, before Win98 saturated the market, IE was the market leader? The IE4 integration to Win98 was a factor, but a small one when looking at the numbers. I was a web developer back then, and I was a die hard NS fan. The problem is that NS4 went proprietary, and IE was ironically the most standards based browser at the time. Face it, NS blew, and Mozilla has only recently caught up (and surpassed, in some ways) to IE.
What happens when the customer orders something from Amazon - the purchase confirmation email comes from a non-human address.
Just the other day I got an email from a company that I ordered software from describing a free upgrade that I could download. It came from donotreply@[host].com, meaning, if I was using Earthlink's system I probably wouldn't have received it.
The problem with Challenge - Response is that it makes the assumption that if there's not a human behind the email that it's spam. In practice, there are many legit emails that are not individually sent by a human.
Microsoft is a platform company. They write the best software with their platform. Java with Microsoft's JVM was way faster on Windows than any other Java, but at the price of cross-platform compatibility. Platform specific technology is almost always faster/better/etc. because it's optimised for that platform and can utilize that platform's specific features. DirectX is another good example of this. Now that DX has matured, developers love deloping for it. There are definitely some areas where OpenGL shines (in comparison with Direct3D), but DX is a clear winner overall.
Also, consider the commodity of the web browser. Having a 3rd party web browser is kind of like having a 3rd party file explorer. Explorer.exe is replaceable in Windows, but I wouldn't say that it's an antitrust violation since MS "pushed other shell developers out of the market". Rather, it was a natural extension to the OS.
As developers, we may dissagree that integrating IE is technically sound, however, that's not the issue. The issue is whether or not it's legit for them to do this as a business, and rather or not it makes the market unfair. I don't think it's unfair at all. Apple and MS can push products that other companies can't because they've invested in a total platform. They are platform companies, and by nature platform companies have the upper hand.
The difference is that one company is an illegal monopoly
No, MS is convicted of illegally _maintaining_ an existing monopoly, which is very different than illegally _obtaining_ a monopoly. This means that their major success w/ Windows + Office was legit.
Furthermore, if MS want's developers to have access to the IE HTML engine for their programs, so be it. Developers love the fact that they can rely on the core rendering engine. If I want Opera on my box, I download it and install it. It's also trivial to make it my default browser (Opera asks you on Install), and MS does nothing to stop this. So, delete the stupid IE icons on your desktop (also trivial) and replace them with Opera? What's the big deal? Furthermore, in XP they created that silly "default programs" or whatever icon which is yet another way to select your default browser, email client, etc.
Read down for my post why this isn't a Pro Tools (or comparable products) replacement. And even if it was, that's only one tool. WAV editing tools are huge. Plugins are even bigger (generally costing several times more than the DAW software) and many people have already invested in them. Software synthesis (eg: Propellerheads "Reason") is rapdily growing and are used almost exlcusively for some productions.
I don't see this making a difference to all but the very casual home music hobbyist. And even then, on Mac's or Windows you can get very powerful and not-so-aptly-named "light" versions of a lot of these tools for an affordable price or even for free.
I don't dissagree, but I contend that this is practically impossible. You'd be amazed at what albums used Pro Tools. For example, many classical recordings use Pro Tools - but what they don't do is over-compress, over-EQ, or over-process the sound. What you're used to hearing has nothing to do with Pro Tools, and everything to do with the Pop Music Industry's production style.
Pro Tools is not just software - you'll normally find it installed as a hardware/software combo. This is in part due to the fact that modern CPU's can not handle mulitple high quality real time effects for larger studio projects. The other big factor with Pro Tools (and comperable systems) is the Control Surface. Sure, there are incredible MIDI controllers out there, but the proprietary Pro Tools control surfaces are second to none.
I'm not going to argue about the cost of CD's - I personlly don't buy RIAA backed music anyway. However, as with many products, the largetst cost is the human cost. You are not buying the 20cent CD, the production, or the marketing. You are paying for the creative talent of the artist, producers, and engineers. No matter how cheap a paintbrush is, a good painting is still worth it's value as art.
The revolution of "cheap studio's" really makes it possible for people without the means that the RIAA has to produce and distribute incredible music. But for large budjet studio's, the overall savings is marginal compared to the per-CD revenue generated. Even if savings were directly passed down, we'd probably be talking about a few pennies on the dollar.
And, if there was a way to do a patch "rollback", then faulty patches wouldn't bring down a system until a new fix-patch was released.
For at least the past few years each patch has been removeable via the Add and Remove programs interface. A much more elegant and stable system debuted in ME (ironically), and is very robust in XP called "system restore". Before any system changes (like a patch) occur, a "snapshot" is automatically taken of the system. You can then rollback the changes if problems occur after the patch is applied.
3% is way too high for the volume that Apple's doing. I would be very surprised if their per-transaction charge was even as high as 1%.
AFAIK Int64 is as big as it get's in C# (although I don't work with large numbers). Check out this article for the handling of really large numbers(http://www.codeproject.com/csharp/BigInteg er.asp)
explain drawing, music, painting, etc.
There is a huge difference between OSS and art in this case. If I write a song for the joy of it, Microsoft can't use it for profit without paying me royalties. With OSS (GPL'd or otherwise), Microsoft can use it for profit without contributing anything to the project. Why would I work for a multibillion dollar company for free? Even companies that do contribute (IBM), they are still profiting off of your code. All you're getting is some improvements to your OS which you'd get anyway. That's not exactly what I'd call fair compensation.
I code because I love to, but I don't code so that an executive can get a huge bonus for using my software for free.
DISCLAIMER: I'm obviously focusing on free as in beer OSS, and I understand that you can commercialize OSS. However, the vast majority of OSS and the focus of these articles is on public, freely available software.
OpenGL is comparable to Direct3D, not DirectX. DirectX is a huge innovation, and even though earlier versions had their respective messes, it's gotten extremely elegant. It's really the only API in it's class. Again, OpenGL only addresses Direct3D, and not DirectSound, DirectShow, etc.
And don't forget SCTF (Super Capture the Flag). I used to play that for hours a day. No multiplayer FPS has inspired me to do such since.
-Zoltar [HoC] (my SCTF nick, I also used to run www.sctf.net)
If you had to activate to swap a HD, that is a bit annoying. AFAIK it should take 2-3 major hardware changes within a 90 day period to require reactivation.