It's not about what platform it's running on, it's about giving users as much choice as possible. For those of us who are forced to work on Windows, I think it's great that there are a lot of emerging OSS projects. I use the GIMP in Windows every day for example. In my case, working on a Linux box is not an option.
If we eliminate open source software from Windows, then we're giving MS and other proprietary vendors more money because we won't have a choice. I say Bring Me Your KDE and your KOFFICE!
You make it sound simple..Net on Linux doesn't imply the Windows libraries are being ported as well; just the Common Language Runtime for running code (byte) compiled for it. Unless the Wine guys or someone else decides to integrate their Windows emulation stuff with MONO (I hope they're listening...) you won't be able to run the same code on each platform.
Of course, MS will probably change the.Net spec in version 2 thereby making Mono obsolete and byte-code incompatible anyway... As is their way.
...is why would Microsoft distribute drawing and music libraries in what is essentially a server operating system? (WinServer2k3) Why these aren't optional components that an administrator could choose to include at install time is a good question, and should be asked of Microsoft.
The reader with 200 NT/2K boxes to patch would probably be grateful if he didn't have to worry about patching whatever bogus components MS includes by default.
I say we take 'em back to court and get them to rip out ALL the unnecessary functionality from the kernel.
The office probably isn't the best place to get into shape. Let's face it, there's not a whole lot you can do besides watching what you put into your pie-hole and the odd bit of flexing in your chair.
Me? I'm in top-shape. I smoke and drink lots of coffee. When it gets dark out, I put on my sunglasses...
There's no question that these technologies are big, complex masses of code. It's also unlikely that I'll be able to become certified in all of them (WebLogic, WebSphere, etc) because it's prohibitively expensive. I'm going to have to pick one and specialize in it.
If my end-goal is to be able to sell myself as a consultant who "knows something" about one of these technologies, I'm going to have to pick the one that I feel most comfortable with and which I feel will end up paying for itself in the long run. I don't feel that I'd be gaining enough from JBoss for $5000 per year to justify that expense.
Alternatively, I could label myself an expert, declare that I have a good background in all of the technologies and farm myself out as an "architect" and recommend technologies that I like.
You're right: these tactics do make me a little bitter. They force developers to lay their chips on a given technology if they want to compete in that arena. Developers are rarely the ones making software decisions in a corporate environment. I think the JBoss people should look elsewhere for a business model instead of shafting the people who push for their technology. They already have a strong word-of-mouth "human network" working for them. Why not make certifications open and ask corporations to buy licenses for corporate use? Corporations have very little trouble spending thousands of dollars for licenses and in most cases actually see it as a sign of validity for a given product.
Five large is a lot of cheese. Being a self-starting, motivated developer, there's nothing stopping me from browsing JBoss' code and learning all about it myself. Because it's an open-source system with no restrictions on use (other than the usual LGPL hoopla), I can suggest it as a technology and implement my solution using it as I wish.
I see this is another grab in the vein of the MSCE, Java Certfied, ITI college grad vein of resume padding for the benefit of the company, not the individual who pays it.
The state of Audio on Linux is pretty poor. None of the big names, (e.g., Steinberg, Emagic, Digidesign) will bother with Linux because the underlying audio architecture is too limiting. With Windows various driver levels (ASIO, WDM, Dx) and now Mac's delicious-looking CoreAudio there's very little need to provide software for Linux.
In the audio world, for better or worse, is one that doesn't care about getting a decent solution for free. If it sounds better but costs more, people will buy it.
Did you notice from the screenshots that ReBorn provides matrix-style pattern editors? That alone improves its useability by quite a lot. Like others have posted, most people use some sort of midi controller to tweak knobs and not a mouse.
Katz' comments about children being ungrounded if they get lost in one particular system of values applies equally to adults who do the same. How many adults do you know or work with who have the unhealthy palor of computer addicts or game addicts? That describes many of my friends, many of whom are over 30.
No question, technology has given teenagers unprecedented access to knowledge and a medium for global communication, but as Katz does manage to point out, they're still teenagers replete with the lack of experience that implies. Now take 10 million of them and put them on the web. Expect chaos.
It's obvious from reading the majority of responses why there are so few OODBMSes installed and running: ignorance.
Comments such as unproven and untested ignore even the attached article about successful terabyte OODBMSes running at CERN in Switzerland on Objectivity, not to mention several enterprise-wide installations at OOCL, several major financial institutions and a whole bunch of others. Just check out Brocat's webpage for a list of GemStone users.
The lack of third-party reporting tools aren't terribly important if you consider that writing code to access your database can be done inside a running environment on live data. Your development environment (eg, IBM's VisualAge Smalltalk or Cincom's VisualWorks Smalltalk) gives developers the ability to access their objects. Your manager wants a prettified report? Build a reporting system. Stop being so lazy!:)
I'm amazed that no-one has written in saying that they've worked on a successful OO database. They've been around (in GemStone's case, again) for 15 years and are hardly new.
The biggest problem with MS' ownership of the office is that the MS Office file formats are considered "standards". As others here have mentioned, MS has a tendency to change its own formats (not to mention compatibility) as they release new versions.
To whit: documents generated using Word 2000 and saved in MS Word 95/6.0 RTF may not be useable with Word 95/6.0 because of add-ons to the RTF "language"... I hesitate to call it a language, really because it's just one big ugly spec that keeps getting added to (e.g., Word 2000 prints out table definitions at both the beginning and the end of a row "to maintain compatibility" with readers that expect it at one end or the other - all the while breaking readers that don't expect it at the end).
Sorry, I'm writing a document conversion/creation app right now that is due in one week and is just a tad frustrating because of this very reason. To the point...
What we need are open source document formats that can be implemented relatively easily (look at XML, it's the way to go) and will not allow companies like MS to bastardize them with implementation-specific "features". (again, look at what MS is doing with their Word2000-generated "HTML" docs. If they're displayable in anything other than IE5, I'll be highly surprised)
Calendar and task sharing is not difficult when you have your organizer built-in to your email client. This isn't an ideal solution though, because your organizer and email client should be separate, IMHO. Why not have a centralized organizer/planner running that other applications can communicate with via CORBA or some other communications scheme? Hell, you could bundle it into the OS and beat MS at their own game.
Now I must play Unreal Tournament and cleanse my mind of these foibles.
Where does it end? I think what's important is that UI's offer a consistent feel on the platform they're written for. X apps in Linux are already doomed because that platform looks inherently inconsistent to begin with.
The new trend in apps (like Mozilla / Netscape 6, StarOffice, Corel Office (for Linux and to some extent, Windows) to provide their own UI layer, or worse, a user-customizeable look and feel go against the whole notion of having an operating system provide that goodness for you. Microsoft is no exception because they keep reinventing their UI with every iteration of Office and their cursed MFCs.
What is truly needed is consistency. Some form of standardized input protocols might be even more useful than a new UI look and feel.
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It's not about what platform it's running on, it's about giving users as much choice as possible. For those of us who are forced to work on Windows, I think it's great that there are a lot of emerging OSS projects. I use the GIMP in Windows every day for example. In my case, working on a Linux box is not an option.
If we eliminate open source software from Windows, then we're giving MS and other proprietary vendors more money because we won't have a choice. I say Bring Me Your KDE and your KOFFICE!
What about all the real-time unix talk variants? I used them back in '90, '91 and could actually see what the user was typing!
How rude. How dare you enjoy your work and get a decent wage for it!
You make it sound simple. .Net on Linux doesn't imply the Windows libraries are being ported as well; just the Common Language Runtime for running code (byte) compiled for it. Unless the Wine guys or someone else decides to integrate their Windows emulation stuff with MONO (I hope they're listening...) you won't be able to run the same code on each platform.
.Net spec in version 2 thereby making Mono obsolete and byte-code incompatible anyway... As is their way.
Of course, MS will probably change the
...is why would Microsoft distribute drawing and music libraries in what is essentially a server operating system? (WinServer2k3) Why these aren't optional components that an administrator could choose to include at install time is a good question, and should be asked of Microsoft.
The reader with 200 NT/2K boxes to patch would probably be grateful if he didn't have to worry about patching whatever bogus components MS includes by default.
I say we take 'em back to court and get them to rip out ALL the unnecessary functionality from the kernel.
The office probably isn't the best place to get into shape. Let's face it, there's not a whole lot you can do besides watching what you put into your pie-hole and the odd bit of flexing in your chair.
Me? I'm in top-shape. I smoke and drink lots of coffee. When it gets dark out, I put on my sunglasses...
There's no question that these technologies are big, complex masses of code. It's also unlikely that I'll be able to become certified in all of them (WebLogic, WebSphere, etc) because it's prohibitively expensive. I'm going to have to pick one and specialize in it.
If my end-goal is to be able to sell myself as a consultant who "knows something" about one of these technologies, I'm going to have to pick the one that I feel most comfortable with and which I feel will end up paying for itself in the long run. I don't feel that I'd be gaining enough from JBoss for $5000 per year to justify that expense.
Alternatively, I could label myself an expert, declare that I have a good background in all of the technologies and farm myself out as an "architect" and recommend technologies that I like.
You're right: these tactics do make me a little bitter. They force developers to lay their chips on a given technology if they want to compete in that arena. Developers are rarely the ones making software decisions in a corporate environment. I think the JBoss people should look elsewhere for a business model instead of shafting the people who push for their technology. They already have a strong word-of-mouth "human network" working for them. Why not make certifications open and ask corporations to buy licenses for corporate use? Corporations have very little trouble spending thousands of dollars for licenses and in most cases actually see it as a sign of validity for a given product.
I see this is another grab in the vein of the MSCE, Java Certfied, ITI college grad vein of resume padding for the benefit of the company, not the individual who pays it.
Do you know most musicians? I've paid for all my software, thanks, and I could care less if it runs on linux.
who modded this to "Troll"? It's a valid point.
The state of Audio on Linux is pretty poor. None of the big names, (e.g., Steinberg, Emagic, Digidesign) will bother with Linux because the underlying audio architecture is too limiting. With Windows various driver levels (ASIO, WDM, Dx) and now Mac's delicious-looking CoreAudio there's very little need to provide software for Linux.
In the audio world, for better or worse, is one that doesn't care about getting a decent solution for free. If it sounds better but costs more, people will buy it.
Did you notice from the screenshots that ReBorn provides matrix-style pattern editors? That alone improves its useability by quite a lot. Like others have posted, most people use some sort of midi controller to tweak knobs and not a mouse.
PS, I'm waiting for a Reason clone.
No question, technology has given teenagers unprecedented access to knowledge and a medium for global communication, but as Katz does manage to point out, they're still teenagers replete with the lack of experience that implies. Now take 10 million of them and put them on the web. Expect chaos.
It's obvious from reading the majority of responses why there are so few OODBMSes installed and running: ignorance. Comments such as unproven and untested ignore even the attached article about successful terabyte OODBMSes running at CERN in Switzerland on Objectivity, not to mention several enterprise-wide installations at OOCL, several major financial institutions and a whole bunch of others. Just check out Brocat's webpage for a list of GemStone users. The lack of third-party reporting tools aren't terribly important if you consider that writing code to access your database can be done inside a running environment on live data. Your development environment (eg, IBM's VisualAge Smalltalk or Cincom's VisualWorks Smalltalk) gives developers the ability to access their objects. Your manager wants a prettified report? Build a reporting system. Stop being so lazy! :)
I'm amazed that no-one has written in saying that they've worked on a successful OO database. They've been around (in GemStone's case, again) for 15 years and are hardly new.
katananja shouldn't do math. Pixels != Polygons.
To whit: documents generated using Word 2000 and saved in MS Word 95/6.0 RTF may not be useable with Word 95/6.0 because of add-ons to the RTF "language"... I hesitate to call it a language, really because it's just one big ugly spec that keeps getting added to (e.g., Word 2000 prints out table definitions at both the beginning and the end of a row "to maintain compatibility" with readers that expect it at one end or the other - all the while breaking readers that don't expect it at the end).
Sorry, I'm writing a document conversion/creation app right now that is due in one week and is just a tad frustrating because of this very reason. To the point...
What we need are open source document formats that can be implemented relatively easily (look at XML, it's the way to go) and will not allow companies like MS to bastardize them with implementation-specific "features". (again, look at what MS is doing with their Word2000-generated "HTML" docs. If they're displayable in anything other than IE5, I'll be highly surprised)
Calendar and task sharing is not difficult when you have your organizer built-in to your email client. This isn't an ideal solution though, because your organizer and email client should be separate, IMHO. Why not have a centralized organizer/planner running that other applications can communicate with via CORBA or some other communications scheme? Hell, you could bundle it into the OS and beat MS at their own game.
Now I must play Unreal Tournament and cleanse my mind of these foibles.
Where does it end? I think what's important is that UI's offer a consistent feel on the platform they're written for. X apps in Linux are already doomed because that platform looks inherently inconsistent to begin with.
The new trend in apps (like Mozilla / Netscape 6, StarOffice, Corel Office (for Linux and to some extent, Windows) to provide their own UI layer, or worse, a user-customizeable look and feel go against the whole notion of having an operating system provide that goodness for you. Microsoft is no exception because they keep reinventing their UI with every iteration of Office and their cursed MFCs.
What is truly needed is consistency. Some form of standardized input protocols might be even more useful than a new UI look and feel.