he'd make more difference contributing his time to free software projects (coding, testing, or documentation) than trying to create weapons. Make peace not war!
This is old news, I'm not sure why it's even worth mentioning today? The trend is already going back to standards. For example, IE 6 is more standards compliant than 4 or 5.X. Microsoft Office XP can strip the Word-specific XML tags and produce clean HTML. We the Open Source/Free Software Movement are winning this battle. Microsoft and other businesses are learning that open standards make them more money. For example, if MSNBC used IE-specific coding, they would lose many visitors using embedded devices like palmtops. And on the Linix and BSD side, browsers like Konqueror can get around browser-detection written by clueless developers by identifying itself as IE. Heck, IE identifies itself as Mozilla-compatible. Plug-ins from CodeWeavers, etc, allow non-native plug-ins to work. Overall, I'd say the tide has already turned.
I'm running Cygwin (www.cygwin.com), the set of GNU libraries and tools for Windows 98 on my work pc. Does that mean I have to call this OS GNU/Windows 98? And should SCO Openserver 5 with the GNU libs and tools from the Skunkware CD be called GNU/SCO Openserver? Certainly not! I remember a few months back someone posted a small Linux distro on Freshmeat without any GNU software using an alternate libc and compiler. Hmmm. Maybe this whole issue is that RMS is jealous of Linus's programming skill. More to the point: Richard, how many lines of code have YOU written lately.
Their next move will be lobbying Fritz Hollings to sponsor OSPA, Open Source Prohibition Act: making it illegal to publish your APIs so the "terrorists" can't exploit them. As if terrorists could code:-)
RHCE, Linux+, MCSE, etc? That way you can prove you have some degree of knowledge before you apply for a job. It can take months rather than years and some employers looks at certs over degrees (many comp sci majors know a lot about theory and concepts, but in practice can't write much more than basic "hello world" apps in Java and C++.) They may joke about "paper" MCSE's, but certs + experience is better than college and no experience. You'll be making just as much with 4 years experience as someone who studied for 4 years, but you'll have the practical knowledge.
Try editing your win.ini file, change the line: shell=explorer.exe to shell=progman.exe and then reboot. (This works with Win9X.) Now if IE/Windows Explorer are so integrated into the Win32 API, why do all my programs will work with a Windows 3.1-like interface using Progman as the shell?
Why are legislators who can't even balance their own checkbooks (remember the Congressional Bank scandal) and can't balance the budget trying to deal with information technology issues. Why don't they first deal with real issues like the health care crisis, election and campaign reform, the rising cost of living and lack of affordable housing for low imcome Americans, the problems with the educational system, etc. Or would they rather behave like the cronies of big business and dodge the issues that matter to the average person. And we wonder why half the people in this cuontry don't vote.
NASM is a great multi-platform assembler with useful macro syntax, where you could do defines for Windows and Linux so you call the same macro names for both. Do the low-level stuff in ASM as.dll's,.so's, and you can write the rest of your code code in your language of choice and call your libs.
Now maybe US workers can work even more hours and surpass other countries like South Korea and the Czech Republic who are currently more overworked.
I Just Bet M$ Has The Answer
on
Coding Fair Use
·
· Score: 0
Isn't this what Windows DRM (Digital Rights Management) will be for? An unholy alliance between greedy entertainment companies and our favorite software monopolist, designed to assist Joe Customer out of his hard earned dollars in exchange for his rights as a consumer?
You just illustrated my point. Look at yahoo: a simple design using web standards- only the ads use Flash (which are usually on other servers.)
I didn't say "no one uses flash", I simply said none of the top sites do. Simplicity and content is the key to successful sites. Annoying Flash presentations may amuse someone the first time, but it gets stale quickly, like an overplayed TV commercial.
I seriously doubt cocacola.com gets a million hits a day (maybe a million a year). Really, I doubt anyone visits it daily to get the lastest soft drink news;-P
And the nonsense about about what our LUG stands for shows how mature you are. Based on that and the fact that you mentioned "Harry Potter", I assume you're about 12 years old and fond of your warez copy of Dreamweaver.
None of the popular sites that receive over a million hits a day make use of Flash, with the exception of the occasional movie fad site. (A fact Rob Miller mentioned as a guest speaker at our South West Florida Linux Users Group (http://www.swflug.org) meeting this weekend. Support open standards (http://w3.org) and leave Flash to the fools who are too ignorant or lazy to use anything but Dreamweaver.
The last time I used an ISP's software was back in 1995, when I needed Trumpet Winsock to give Windows 3.1 a TCP/IP stack. (Then I encountered Linux that same year.) Name an OS that doesn't include a TCP/IP stack, dialer, browser, mail client, ftp client, etc, nowadays? ISPs can keep their ADware to themselves. I've helped more friends-of-friends remove garbage installed from the ISP's "connection kits" than I can count, and none of it was necessary. Today all the customers need is the phone number to call, let DHCP do the rest. ISPs will save money and annoy people less when they stop sending them software that installs 4 or 5 apps that run at startup. The last dial-up account I had was entertaining: I called the ISP and they went through their terms, asked me which OS, to which I replied Red Hat Linux. They said, "I'm sorry, but we don't support Linux, we only support Windows and we're working on Mac support." I asked them why, and they replied that their "welcome" software only runs on Windows and their techs are only trained on Windows. I told them to keep their CD and support, bill my credit card, and just give me my username, password, and dial-up numbers. She checked with someone and went ahead and did as I asked. The only time I talked to them again was when I cancelled my dial-up two years later when I got DSL. The point is: ISPs don't need to get invloved in distributing software, it'll probably save them some support calls too.
Microsoft makes all it's money from businesses by using their sales people to convince technologically-illiterate purchasing agents, CFOs, and CEOs that their software has a lower TCO. They're just teaching Unisys (of gif LWZ patent fame) some of their tricks. No serious enterprise runs Windows on their servers. I mean, have you ever seen a bank running Windows 2000 Datacenter? Get real Billy Boy and Stevie Bomber and stick to your Barney-ish workstations.
Methinks the average browsing session may be decreasing due to disconnects. As the national ISPs buy up the little mom-and-pop ISPs, it puts more demand on their dial-up servers and more users get disconnected and have to redial. Even my DSL goes down at least once a day and my Linksys has to reconnect.
Have you been following the MySQL AB case at all? Yes, it is a legal, binding contract like any software license agreement. The Free Software Foundation didn't just write it up on a whim, they put a lot of thought and legal expertise into it. Until now, most challenges to the GPL have been settled out of court because the Free Software Foundation prefers cooperation over lawsuits to encourage compliance, they're not about punitive damages, etc.
1) Microsoft "encourages" motherboard vendors to support the open ACPI standard and disable toggling if on/off in bios. 2) A few months later Linux and BSD kernels fully implement ACPI even better than Windows.
And this seemed like big news? Remember the old days when you would disable plug & play in bios for Linux or BSD. Then we added tools like pnpdump and isapnp, and nobody disables plug & play anymore, because Linux and BSD support it. Same thing here, a weakness will become a strength. ACPI is already coming along nicely. Be patient and let the Free/Open Source Software model prove itself, M$ can implement ACPI, but because we're not driven by marketing deadlines, we WILL IMPLEMENT IT BETTER. And you can take that to the bank.
If Miguel hadn't moved MONO to the X11/MIT license last week, I don't think RMS would be so upset. We're talking about GNOME, the biggest GNU project since HURD being based on an API that is Non-Free-As-In-Freedom, only a portion of NET has been submitted to ECMCA. With the concern the GNU community had over KDE, this would make the GNOME community look like hippocrites (GNOME was started because KDE used to be based on QT, which was not released under GPL.)
FYI I submitted this same story about 5 hours ago. Hmmm.
If you're familiar with C, check out the generic Win32 sample at MSDN to get you started with the basic framework:
Generic Win32 Ap
Windows C++ Programmers prefer ATL/WTL nowadays to the bloat of MFC. ATL (Active Template Library) makes it easy to write COM components and WTL (Windows Template Library) is a lightweight C++ wrapper for Win32 functions that MS uses internally. They released WTL unsupported with the last few Platform SDK CDs.
Some tutorials and articles on ATL/WTL.
Two Words:
Get Konqueror
It supports HTML, CSS, XML, Javascript, Java Plug-ins, Netscape Plug-ins, Mozilla Plug-ins, and Active-X support is in beta using Wine. Oh- and now you can disable pop-ups and control the browser type it provides to the web server. In three years Konqueror has gone from a curious part of KDE to a killer web browser. It crashes less than Netscape, Mozilla, and IE.
Bigger government and more big-brotherly restrictions is a Democratic goal. I think you have your parties mixed up. It has been the Republcans who historically adopt a more "Laissez Faire" position when it comes to business. Remember that the "Radical Christian Right" is a media buzzword used by an overwhelmingly liberal media (85% of media majors are liberal). Not every conservative Christian Republican wants to censor art and kill abortion doctors, dig!
Contributions from government agencies have benefitted the Linux community as a whole in the past - NASA contributed some great work on the Linux ethernet drivers I use at work. I am sure everyone will benefit: the NSA gains the advantage of peer review of their security tweaks and the community receives the source code to incorporate if they so choose.
It's useless to debate Java vs. C++. Let the students learn both and many other useful languages. Unless someone invented a way to write a kernel or device drivers in Java itself or someone wrote a cross-platform C++ runtime for a browser, at some point they will need to know both. Anyone who thinks C++ is dead is being downright silly... ever try writing a 3D game or an OS in Java? At the same time, Java is the right tool for the job in a number of cases where a cross-platform client will save time and development costs. They should continue teaching C also... people say C is not used any more, but look at GTK- or the MS Windows PSDK (yes, you can write GUI aps in C without C++).
I have had a good experience with Sprint/Earthlink DSL in Fort Myers, FL. I ordered DSL mid-July and it was installed mid-August. The Sprint tech had DSL up and running using his test account within half an hour. Then he stayed until he made sure my username and password were working. He was on hold with Earthlink from 12PM to 5PM and was shuffled from one person to another. Finally he got someone who could activate the Earthlink account. I was pleased with the service he gave and wrote him a letter of customer satisfaction. Now while Sprint only supports DSL with Win95/98/NT/2000, I had Linux using the DSL with RP-PPPoe in minutes.
I asked Sprint on their support line why they will only set up DSL for Windows users and they explained that they're not in league with Microsoft, their support people are just not qualified with anything else. I have had my DSL for over a month now and I had only a few hours after midnight one night of downtime. I normally get 50-60 K/sec download speeds throught my Linux box or the other machines connected to it.
Slashdot Mirror
he'd make more difference contributing his time to free software projects (coding, testing, or documentation) than trying to create weapons. Make peace not war!
This is old news, I'm not sure why it's even worth mentioning today? The trend is already going back to standards. For example, IE 6 is more standards compliant than 4 or 5.X. Microsoft Office XP can strip the Word-specific XML tags and produce clean HTML. We the Open Source/Free Software Movement are winning this battle. Microsoft and other businesses are learning that open standards make them more money. For example, if MSNBC used IE-specific coding, they would lose many visitors using embedded devices like palmtops. And on the Linix and BSD side, browsers like Konqueror can get around browser-detection written by clueless developers by identifying itself as IE. Heck, IE identifies itself as Mozilla-compatible. Plug-ins from CodeWeavers, etc, allow non-native plug-ins to work. Overall, I'd say the tide has already turned.
I'm running Cygwin (www.cygwin.com), the set of GNU libraries and tools for Windows 98 on my work pc. Does that mean I have to call this OS GNU/Windows 98? And should SCO Openserver 5 with the GNU libs and tools from the Skunkware CD be called GNU/SCO Openserver? Certainly not! I remember a few months back someone posted a small Linux distro on Freshmeat without any GNU software using an alternate libc and compiler. Hmmm. Maybe this whole issue is that RMS is jealous of Linus's programming skill. More to the point: Richard, how many lines of code have YOU written lately.
Their next move will be lobbying Fritz Hollings to sponsor OSPA, Open Source Prohibition Act: making it illegal to publish your APIs so the "terrorists" can't exploit them. As if terrorists could code :-)
RHCE, Linux+, MCSE, etc? That way you can prove you have some degree of knowledge before you apply for a job. It can take months rather than years and some employers looks at certs over degrees (many comp sci majors know a lot about theory and concepts, but in practice can't write much more than basic "hello world" apps in Java and C++.) They may joke about "paper" MCSE's, but certs + experience is better than college and no experience. You'll be making just as much with 4 years experience as someone who studied for 4 years, but you'll have the practical knowledge.
Try editing your win.ini file, change the line:
and then reboot.
shell=explorer.exe
to
shell=progman.exe
(This works with Win9X.)
Now if IE/Windows Explorer are so integrated into the Win32 API, why do all my programs will work with a Windows 3.1-like interface using Progman as the shell?
Why are legislators who can't even balance their own checkbooks (remember the Congressional Bank scandal) and can't balance the budget trying to deal with information technology issues. Why don't they first deal with real issues like the health care crisis, election and campaign reform, the rising cost of living and lack of affordable housing for low imcome Americans, the problems with the educational system, etc. Or would they rather behave like the cronies of big business and dodge the issues that matter to the average person. And we wonder why half the people in this cuontry don't vote.
NASM is a great multi-platform assembler with useful macro syntax, where you could do defines for Windows and Linux so you call the same macro names for both. Do the low-level stuff in ASM as .dll's, .so's, and you can write the rest of your code code in your language of choice and call your libs.
Now maybe US workers can work even more hours and surpass other countries like South Korea and the Czech Republic who are currently more overworked.
Isn't this what Windows DRM (Digital Rights Management) will be for? An unholy alliance between greedy entertainment companies and our favorite software monopolist, designed to assist Joe Customer out of his hard earned dollars in exchange for his rights as a consumer?
You just illustrated my point. Look at yahoo: a simple design using web standards- only the ads use Flash (which are usually on other servers.)
;-P
I didn't say "no one uses flash", I simply said none of the top sites do. Simplicity and content is the key to successful sites. Annoying Flash presentations may amuse someone the first time, but it gets stale quickly, like an overplayed TV commercial.
I seriously doubt cocacola.com gets a million hits a day (maybe a million a year). Really, I doubt anyone visits it daily to get the lastest soft drink news
And the nonsense about about what our LUG stands for shows how mature you are. Based on that and the fact that you mentioned "Harry Potter", I assume you're about 12 years old and fond of your warez copy of Dreamweaver.
None of the popular sites that receive over a million hits a day make use of Flash, with the exception of the occasional movie fad site. (A fact Rob Miller mentioned as a guest speaker at our South West Florida Linux Users Group (http://www.swflug.org) meeting this weekend. Support open standards (http://w3.org) and leave Flash to the fools who are too ignorant or lazy to use anything but Dreamweaver.
The last time I used an ISP's software was back in 1995, when I needed Trumpet Winsock to give Windows 3.1 a TCP/IP stack. (Then I encountered Linux that same year.) Name an OS that doesn't include a TCP/IP stack, dialer, browser, mail client, ftp client, etc, nowadays? ISPs can keep their ADware to themselves. I've helped more friends-of-friends remove garbage installed from the ISP's "connection kits" than I can count, and none of it was necessary. Today all the customers need is the phone number to call, let DHCP do the rest. ISPs will save money and annoy people less when they stop sending them software that installs 4 or 5 apps that run at startup. The last dial-up account I had was entertaining: I called the ISP and they went through their terms, asked me which OS, to which I replied Red Hat Linux. They said, "I'm sorry, but we don't support Linux, we only support Windows and we're working on Mac support." I asked them why, and they replied that their "welcome" software only runs on Windows and their techs are only trained on Windows. I told them to keep their CD and support, bill my credit card, and just give me my username, password, and dial-up numbers. She checked with someone and went ahead and did as I asked. The only time I talked to them again was when I cancelled my dial-up two years later when I got DSL. The point is: ISPs don't need to get invloved in distributing software, it'll probably save them some support calls too.
Why am I not surprised! I dropped 'em a comment meeself.
Microsoft makes all it's money from businesses by using their sales people to convince technologically-illiterate purchasing agents, CFOs, and CEOs that their software has a lower TCO. They're just teaching Unisys (of gif LWZ patent fame) some of their tricks. No serious enterprise runs Windows on their servers. I mean, have you ever seen a bank running Windows 2000 Datacenter? Get real Billy Boy and Stevie Bomber and stick to your Barney-ish workstations.
Methinks the average browsing session may be decreasing due to disconnects. As the national ISPs buy up the little mom-and-pop ISPs, it puts more demand on their dial-up servers and more users get disconnected and have to redial. Even my DSL goes down at least once a day and my Linksys has to reconnect.
Have you been following the MySQL AB case at all? Yes, it is a legal, binding contract like any software license agreement. The Free Software Foundation didn't just write it up on a whim, they put a lot of thought and legal expertise into it. Until now, most challenges to the GPL have been settled out of court because the Free Software Foundation prefers cooperation over lawsuits to encourage compliance, they're not about punitive damages, etc.
1) Microsoft "encourages" motherboard vendors to support the open ACPI standard and disable toggling if on/off in bios.
2) A few months later Linux and BSD kernels fully implement ACPI even better than Windows.
And this seemed like big news? Remember the old days when you would disable plug & play in bios for Linux or BSD. Then we added tools like pnpdump and isapnp, and nobody disables plug & play anymore, because Linux and BSD support it. Same thing here, a weakness will become a strength. ACPI is already coming along nicely. Be patient and let the Free/Open Source Software model prove itself, M$ can implement ACPI, but because we're not driven by marketing deadlines, we WILL IMPLEMENT IT BETTER. And you can take that to the bank.
If Miguel hadn't moved MONO to the X11/MIT license last week, I don't think RMS would be so upset. We're talking about GNOME, the biggest GNU project since HURD being based on an API that is Non-Free-As-In-Freedom, only a portion of NET has been submitted to ECMCA. With the concern the GNU community had over KDE, this would make the GNOME community look like hippocrites (GNOME was started because KDE used to be based on QT, which was not released under GPL.)
FYI I submitted this same story about 5 hours ago. Hmmm.
Want to -really- know the Windows API, the best challenge would be to write Assembler code, start with: Iczelion's Win32 Assembly Homepage
If you're familiar with C, check out the generic Win32 sample at MSDN to get you started with the basic framework: Generic Win32 Ap
Windows C++ Programmers prefer ATL/WTL nowadays to the bloat of MFC. ATL (Active Template Library) makes it easy to write COM components and WTL (Windows Template Library) is a lightweight C++ wrapper for Win32 functions that MS uses internally. They released WTL unsupported with the last few Platform SDK CDs. Some tutorials and articles on ATL/WTL.
Now you can also go the maverick route and install Cygwin and XFree86 on Windows (next best thing to being able to code on *nix.)
Cygwin GNU Tools for Windows
XFree 86 For Windows
Enjoy
Chris
Two Words: Get Konqueror It supports HTML, CSS, XML, Javascript, Java Plug-ins, Netscape Plug-ins, Mozilla Plug-ins, and Active-X support is in beta using Wine. Oh- and now you can disable pop-ups and control the browser type it provides to the web server. In three years Konqueror has gone from a curious part of KDE to a killer web browser. It crashes less than Netscape, Mozilla, and IE.
Bigger government and more big-brotherly restrictions is a Democratic goal. I think you have your parties mixed up. It has been the Republcans who historically adopt a more "Laissez Faire" position when it comes to business. Remember that the "Radical Christian Right" is a media buzzword used by an overwhelmingly liberal media (85% of media majors are liberal). Not every conservative Christian Republican wants to censor art and kill abortion doctors, dig!
Contributions from government agencies have benefitted the Linux community as a whole in the past - NASA contributed some great work on the Linux ethernet drivers I use at work. I am sure everyone will benefit: the NSA gains the advantage of peer review of their security tweaks and the community receives the source code to incorporate if they so choose.
It's useless to debate Java vs. C++. Let the students learn both and many other useful languages. Unless someone invented a way to write a kernel or device drivers in Java itself or someone wrote a cross-platform C++ runtime for a browser, at some point they will need to know both. Anyone who thinks C++ is dead is being downright silly... ever try writing a 3D game or an OS in Java? At the same time, Java is the right tool for the job in a number of cases where a cross-platform client will save time and development costs. They should continue teaching C also... people say C is not used any more, but look at GTK- or the MS Windows PSDK (yes, you can write GUI aps in C without C++).
I have had a good experience with Sprint/Earthlink DSL in Fort Myers, FL. I ordered DSL mid-July and it was installed mid-August. The Sprint tech had DSL up and running using his test account within half an hour. Then he stayed until he made sure my username and password were working. He was on hold with Earthlink from 12PM to 5PM and was shuffled from one person to another. Finally he got someone who could activate the Earthlink account. I was pleased with the service he gave and wrote him a letter of customer satisfaction. Now while Sprint only supports DSL with Win95/98/NT/2000, I had Linux using the DSL with RP-PPPoe in minutes. I asked Sprint on their support line why they will only set up DSL for Windows users and they explained that they're not in league with Microsoft, their support people are just not qualified with anything else. I have had my DSL for over a month now and I had only a few hours after midnight one night of downtime. I normally get 50-60 K/sec download speeds throught my Linux box or the other machines connected to it.