Tom Clancy's book is the Binary, not the source code. The source code is his creative process, which is why after reading 10 TC books you still can't write like he can. However, you take the source code the dynamic occlusion culling from Doom3, you can have that great algorithm for your next gen game engine.
Or, Consumer Reports could this _try the product_ instead of looking at code and claiming that there "may be a potential problem" (when really they just don't understand the code).
You can get XP Pro full for about $80 if you buy the OEM version (ie: if you build your own machine). Plus, you don't have the activation crap (although I personally bought the boxed version with activation).
Actually this is incorrect. The SEC filings are incredibly misleading. For example, Windows XP get's all of it's technology from the server team, so it therefore doesn't have to do a whole lot of R&D for the kernal and things like that. That's just one of many examples of how it's difficult to track profits within each MS department.
Specialized price cuts are strictly prohibited by order of the government of the United States of America.
No they aren't!
There, now our "must be fact because it's bolded" statements have nullified each other. Seriously, either Yale Law School is turning out bad students, or the law is so rediculously misworded that no one could even attempt to understand it. The settlement, in my rendering, appeared to put certain limitations on a) the kind of specialized price cuts and b) a limit on price cuts to certain OEM's. However, this issue is not about OEM's selling to consumers, it's about CTO's making educated decisions. It's a totally different ball game.
The antitrust settlment is online. Go read it. There are now strict guidlines for discounting for large OEM's, but that doesn't mean Microsoft can't make it's products cheaper.
I didn't have to waste my time substantiating it because, as I mentioned, the well reasoned posts in the thread did the talking for me. I was just protesting the rediculous moderation - not because I disagree with the post, but because it is clear that the post was moderated for loud nonsense, not because of insightfulness.
Also, most everything that you mention that hasn't improved much on I could not only disagree with, but you also limit the scope to open source software which makes me wonder if you have ever used an enterprise version and change control system before (for example).
This is my one problem with VS.NET. It doesn't have any refactoring tools (at least in Pro - maybe it's in "Enterprise" or "Enterprise Architect"). Although I disagree that refactoring is the most important part of an IDE (although I generally work on codebases of less then 100,000 lines).
Unfortunately I don't believe that you appreciate the seperation of programming and computer science. Allthough computer science involves programming, computer science also involves math, engineering, software design, etc. Programming is a skill, not a science. A programmer who does not know how to write an ACID SQL RDBMS (like those on the MySql team... sorry, I couldn't resist!) can write a business app using J2EE just as well as a programmer who did her CS thesis paper on data structures and complex sorting algorithms.
If software is to truely evolve, we must absolutely extract the necessity for low level understanding. True, if you want to design AI, 3D engines, or RDBMS's, you will need certain disciplines that you mentioned. There will always be applications in which you must work closer to the hardware, and which abstraction would not yield a benefit.
MSIE was always huge, slow, and bloated. But, Netscape wasn't much better.
What? Netscape has never been better since 4.x - it has since then been huge, slow, and bloated. MSIE on the other hand has been VERY fast. Opera, until 5.0, didn't render accurately enough to matter. Now that it does (esp with 7 coming on the way) it's definitely the fastest browser that can render the vast majority of web pages.
MS doesn't control the desktop platform, just the Windows desktop platform (as they should, it's their product). I can use any browser on any OS, and OS X, Linux, favor Mozilla.
This is so silly. "Not Microsoft" is such a zealous thing to say. It's one thing to boycott a company that runs sweatshops (even then, it's better to lobby government), but Microsoft is only as Evil as you make them out to be because you have a vested interest in OSS (I could go on, but it's not worth my time or yours).
Back to reality, we see that Opera is A) a fraction of the size of IE, B) a lot faster than IE, C) seems to finally be following the W3C a little better than IE, and D) has a lot more features than IE.
The only other aspect is cost, which I don't know. The point is, choose technology based on it's merit. IF MS is succeeding with crappy tech and strong-armed tactics, then don't go with MS. The reality is, however, in most all markets they don't do this, and the ONE market that they were found guilty of doing this it was only for maintaining an already successful product (meaning, it was successful due to the products merit - without underhanded tactics).
I agree - IIS has been probably the worst scriptable program that MS has - but it's all scriptable. SqlServer, Exchange 2000, ISA Server, etc. is all scriptable. That's my point. IIS6 drastically improves this via XML with a documented Schema, as do many other products that make it into the.NET family. Again, I never said that Unix was not more scriptable by nature (because it is), but my point is that just because Windows has a GUI doesn't mean that it's not completly scriptable. Also, I wouldn't be suprised if all the.NET family of products aren't easier to script then unix equiv's, because they will all be based on XML, instead of on Unix based systems where you have a lot of different config formats that don't conform to standards (yet, anyway). But, I could be wrong - we'll just have to see.
Actually, everything has been scriptable in IIS sicne 4.0. It's not clean, but it could be worse. You can definitely have entire configurations scriptable for production, development, and staging environments. Do you really think Dell, Microsoft, etc. all use MCSE monkey's to configure their 400+ server web farms? Unfortunately, all scripting needs to be done through ADSI which means the best language for the job is VBScript. So, although not as easy as httpd.conf, it's still very possible. Microsoft has also released details on IIS6's XML configuration. It's difficult to determine what can and can't be done wtih Windows when your core competancy is Unix (and visa vera), so you've just got to do some homework to find this information.
Is that the Irish pub with the Scottish guy doing trivia on the West side of I-5 near the U-District? If so my roommate goes regularly and I go with him occasionally.
Slashdot Mirror
Tom Clancy's book is the Binary, not the source code. The source code is his creative process, which is why after reading 10 TC books you still can't write like he can. However, you take the source code the dynamic occlusion culling from Doom3, you can have that great algorithm for your next gen game engine.
Or, Consumer Reports could this _try the product_ instead of looking at code and claiming that there "may be a potential problem" (when really they just don't understand the code).
Your entire argument is substantiated only on one crappy application out of hundreds of great applications.
OS X is not completely OSS! It is a proprietary OS that is simply based on a semi-open unix core.
You can get XP Pro full for about $80 if you buy the OEM version (ie: if you build your own machine). Plus, you don't have the activation crap (although I personally bought the boxed version with activation).
Actually this is incorrect. The SEC filings are incredibly misleading. For example, Windows XP get's all of it's technology from the server team, so it therefore doesn't have to do a whole lot of R&D for the kernal and things like that. That's just one of many examples of how it's difficult to track profits within each MS department.
Specialized price cuts are strictly prohibited by order of the government of the United States of America.
No they aren't!
There, now our "must be fact because it's bolded" statements have nullified each other. Seriously, either Yale Law School is turning out bad students, or the law is so rediculously misworded that no one could even attempt to understand it. The settlement, in my rendering, appeared to put certain limitations on a) the kind of specialized price cuts and b) a limit on price cuts to certain OEM's. However, this issue is not about OEM's selling to consumers, it's about CTO's making educated decisions. It's a totally different ball game.
Microsoft hopes to kill ... competition
Yes, they are a business. Welcome to capitalism.
Tie them down to the apps, and they are forced to the OS.
Well, that's how it is with any OS. There's no point in an OS without the Apps.
The antitrust settlment is online. Go read it. There are now strict guidlines for discounting for large OEM's, but that doesn't mean Microsoft can't make it's products cheaper.
I didn't have to waste my time substantiating it because, as I mentioned, the well reasoned posts in the thread did the talking for me. I was just protesting the rediculous moderation - not because I disagree with the post, but because it is clear that the post was moderated for loud nonsense, not because of insightfulness.
Also, most everything that you mention that hasn't improved much on I could not only disagree with, but you also limit the scope to open source software which makes me wonder if you have ever used an enterprise version and change control system before (for example).
This post is hogwash, and only got it's moderation because of how LOUD it was (a common problem on /.).
Read the more balanced posts in the parent thread to see why software development has improved.
This is my one problem with VS.NET. It doesn't have any refactoring tools (at least in Pro - maybe it's in "Enterprise" or "Enterprise Architect"). Although I disagree that refactoring is the most important part of an IDE (although I generally work on codebases of less then 100,000 lines).
Unfortunately I don't believe that you appreciate the seperation of programming and computer science. Allthough computer science involves programming, computer science also involves math, engineering, software design, etc. Programming is a skill, not a science. A programmer who does not know how to write an ACID SQL RDBMS (like those on the MySql team... sorry, I couldn't resist!) can write a business app using J2EE just as well as a programmer who did her CS thesis paper on data structures and complex sorting algorithms.
If software is to truely evolve, we must absolutely extract the necessity for low level understanding. True, if you want to design AI, 3D engines, or RDBMS's, you will need certain disciplines that you mentioned. There will always be applications in which you must work closer to the hardware, and which abstraction would not yield a benefit.
The real issue here is soft money and the lobbyists, which is well beyond the scope of this conversation.
I'm talking about my Cell Phone - they own my number.
MSIE was always huge, slow, and bloated. But, Netscape wasn't much better.
What? Netscape has never been better since 4.x - it has since then been huge, slow, and bloated. MSIE on the other hand has been VERY fast. Opera, until 5.0, didn't render accurately enough to matter. Now that it does (esp with 7 coming on the way) it's definitely the fastest browser that can render the vast majority of web pages.
MS doesn't control the desktop platform, just the Windows desktop platform (as they should, it's their product). I can use any browser on any OS, and OS X, Linux, favor Mozilla.
If it was open source it would get more support and would develop faster.
That's why Opera is ahead of Mozilla even though Opera is NEWER than Moz?
This is so silly. "Not Microsoft" is such a zealous thing to say. It's one thing to boycott a company that runs sweatshops (even then, it's better to lobby government), but Microsoft is only as Evil as you make them out to be because you have a vested interest in OSS (I could go on, but it's not worth my time or yours).
Back to reality, we see that Opera is A) a fraction of the size of IE, B) a lot faster than IE, C) seems to finally be following the W3C a little better than IE, and D) has a lot more features than IE.
The only other aspect is cost, which I don't know. The point is, choose technology based on it's merit. IF MS is succeeding with crappy tech and strong-armed tactics, then don't go with MS. The reality is, however, in most all markets they don't do this, and the ONE market that they were found guilty of doing this it was only for maintaining an already successful product (meaning, it was successful due to the products merit - without underhanded tactics).
No problem, I will:
A) Give up my number that all my clients, partners, friends, and family have.
B) Switch to another large corporation that is also looking to profit more and will probably be following Verizon's act.
This, my friend, is why we have regulation. Because really, in many cases, we don't have much of a choice.
I agree - IIS has been probably the worst scriptable program that MS has - but it's all scriptable. SqlServer, Exchange 2000, ISA Server, etc. is all scriptable. That's my point. IIS6 drastically improves this via XML with a documented Schema, as do many other products that make it into the .NET family. Again, I never said that Unix was not more scriptable by nature (because it is), but my point is that just because Windows has a GUI doesn't mean that it's not completly scriptable. Also, I wouldn't be suprised if all the .NET family of products aren't easier to script then unix equiv's, because they will all be based on XML, instead of on Unix based systems where you have a lot of different config formats that don't conform to standards (yet, anyway). But, I could be wrong - we'll just have to see.
Actually, everything has been scriptable in IIS sicne 4.0. It's not clean, but it could be worse. You can definitely have entire configurations scriptable for production, development, and staging environments. Do you really think Dell, Microsoft, etc. all use MCSE monkey's to configure their 400+ server web farms? Unfortunately, all scripting needs to be done through ADSI which means the best language for the job is VBScript. So, although not as easy as httpd.conf, it's still very possible. Microsoft has also released details on IIS6's XML configuration. It's difficult to determine what can and can't be done wtih Windows when your core competancy is Unix (and visa vera), so you've just got to do some homework to find this information.
The UnRedmond Store: Show your true colors.
It should be noted that the UnRedmond Store runs on the Microsoft.NET Framework.
Is that the Irish pub with the Scottish guy doing trivia on the West side of I-5 near the U-District? If so my roommate goes regularly and I go with him occasionally.