A lot of people seem to be expressing surprise that Object Pascal (OP) got the high votes that it did. And while yes, some of that is due to the fact that Borland's flagship product is Delphi (which is an OP IDE), there is more to it then that.
OP, for those that do not know, is Borland's own version of Pascal, extended to support OOP and a number of other things. Unlike MS's Visual Basic, however, it actually comes with a full language grammar spec, and it neatly separates the core language from the RTL (like C and C++ do).
I can speak from experience that OP is *NOT* like ISO ("Standard") Pascal. ISO Pascal has a number of enforced brain damages that make it nearly unusable for real-world development. OP does not.
OP is actually very like C++, once you get past the language grammar layer. Indeed, the back-end optimizer and translator for C++Builder and Delphi are the same. There are a few things OP does not support that C++ does. The biggest are multiple inheritance and templates. Multiple inheritance is useful but relatively uncommon; I don't miss it. The lack of templates really sucks at times, but OP at least gives all objects a root ancestor (TObject), so you can fake some of it. (I sure hope the next OP rev will have templates, though!)
Personally, I find the language design and syntax of OP much, much cleaner and easier to read then C++. C++ sometimes seems like a collection of "const" and the ampersand; the code can look like line noise if you're not very careful. OP looks much neater, even if you're several levels deep in an expression. Part of this is because it uses spelled words instead of symbols for most things, which I agree with. (So does C++, apparently, as the newest spec gives you "or" and "and" operators instead of || and &&).
OP even has some features that C++ does not: Named constructors, properties, and closures, just to name a few. Properties are awesome: They allow you to declare a class member that functions like a variable to class users, but can call class methods when read or assigned. It is much cleaner and more intuitive then Get/Set methods; I miss it whenever I write pure C++ code.
Delphi's exception handling architecture is *much* cleaner then C++. For one, it gives a pre-existing class hierarchy for standard exceptions, and it uses them in a consistent manner. Half the things in C++ throw exceptions on error, half return NULL, and half do some other thing. (Yes, I know that adds up to 1.5 -- I'm making a point!)
Delphi also lets you selectively enable/disable runtime checks for range, bounds, NULL dereference, and the like. This is *great* during development, as it can uncover stupid mistakes and assumptions as they happen. Then you can turn it off for release, and get performance very near that of "bare metal" C/C++.
As for the Visual Component Library (VCL), OP's runtime library and application framework, I love it. It is very elegantly designed, easily extensible, and flawlessly supported by the IDE. It gives the "drag-and-drop" ease-of-use of Visual Basic, but without all the brain damage. I pity the people stuck using MFC -- VCL is *infinitely* better.
The design of the VCL's RAD support is particularly neat. You can create VCL GUIs using the IDE or code or both: They mix seamlessly. (Try *that* with VB!) The IDE can even note changes you make in code and back-update the IDE, and vice-versa. Any VCL component that is persistent (i.e., can be used in the RAD IDE) does so by providing standard methods to read and write its properties to an I/O stream. That stream is saved to a file (.DFM - Delphi Form) for design, and embedded in the.EXE for runtime. All an IDE form is, is a component that the IDE automatically feeds an embedded I/O stream to at construction. Very smooth!
(For those that just refuse to use Pascal, the VCL is also used in C++Builder. The same library, just with C++ bindings.)
Anyway, I hope this little tirade of mine makes the point that OP is not just a VB clone, or another implementation of broken ISO Pascal. I'm not saying C++ is better or worse, just that OP has its advantages too, and is quite usable for real-world development.:-)
The original survey had several questions of the "Pick all that apply" type. From a UI standpoint, they used checkboxes, not radio buttons. Thus, the answers reflect what percentage of people are interested in each specific thing, not which thing is the most popuplar. I find that to be a more useful statistic, anyway. Anyone who focuses on just *one* thing and one thing only is asking for trouble.:-)
Perl is very dynamic, in terms of runtime data storage, execution, etc. Thus, it does well at things that change frequently or are largely undefined at design time.
It makes text/string manipulation very easy. A good deal of what computers do is string processing of some kind.
It uses C-like syntax, and C is very familar to a lot of people already.
It integrates with the POSIX (UNIX) environment very well. Perl is ideal for "gluing" separate, unrelated tools together.
Perl is extremely portable. If you are looking to implement something that will run on as many platforms as possible, Perl is a good choice.
There are a lot of already-written Perl "modules" which are freely available. It is often easier to piece together several Perl modules then to solve a problem from scratch. In particular, there are a lot of web- and database-related modules.
Perl is faster then most interpreted langauges, and there are a number of optimizations which can make it even faster for specific cases (caching compiled Perl scripts in the Apache web server being the popular one).
This is not to say Perl is the perfect language. Far from it. The lack of imposed structure and data types is not always a Good Thing. Like anything else, you need to evaluate the available tools, and choose the best one for the task at hand.
As far as learning it does, I think a lot of that is the way it is taught. A lot of books ("Programming Perl" especially) introduce a lot of the Perl "tricks" right away. These "tricks" are useful in contests, one-liners, and write-only code, but for professional projects, they are to be avoided. Again, the lack of imposed structure is not always a Good Thing.:-)
Yes, there is more to good programming than performance. However, this is a *contest*. It does not reflect practical job skill. It simply challenges you to solve an arbitrary problem. If you wish to avoid that, do not enter.:-)
One little problem. Lightning strikes typcially go into the *millions* of volts. A direct lightening strike is going to go through consumer-class protection devices like a hot knife through butter. In those cases, APC or whoever pays off the $25K in insurance. It doesn't happen that often.
However, a top-ten site like Microsoft should have more available to them then a simple UPS. Such places typcially use online power conditioning, electrically isolated systems, lightning arresters, and such.
One way or the other, Microsoft loses. If you are a e-commerce site, then it doesn't matter *why* your site goes down -- it is still down, and you still lose money. A $50 billion dollar software company could not create a site that stayed up. Would you trust *your* site to them?
REDMOND, WA - Today, Microsoft, the world's largest software company, announced a new technology called ActiveOpen(TM). "ActiveOpen(TM) is designed to pick up where OpenSource(TM) left off", said Microsoft Product Manager Dewy Chetumorwhut. "It will enabled users, designer, developers, and managers to collaborate on software projects in a free and open way more productive then the existing legacy models, such as GPL and BSD". Microsoft officials said the product will initially be available for Windows 2000 Advanced Super-Duper Server, with releases for "legacy operating systems such as Linux" being made available "real soon now".
Further details about ActiveOpen will be made available to Microsoft Certified Developers under NDA for a fee, Microsoft said.
While I like text-mode editing (emacs, vi, pico, "cat>prog.c", whatever) as much as the next guy, something they all lack is "GUI GUI designers". That is, a GUI designer that is itself a GUI. That is where Borland's C++Builder leaves traditional text-mode editors in the dust. Designing a GUI form using the keyboard makes as much sense as writting code using the mouse.
Of course, while Borland's IDE's text editor isn't bad, I do wish I had the power of emacs in there at times.
I work for a USAF contractor. We are provided GFE (government furnished equipment) for test reference. One machine is a GTSI desktop PC that, at one point, was used by most of the Air Force's COMSEC (communications security) people. Supposedly, as long as you use certified periphials and properly shielded cables, the thing has no problems with EMSEC (emissions security, the result of the TEMPEST program).
The funny part is, it is an IBM Aptiva with a new sticker pasted on the front of it. Apparently, you don't need to use a two-inch-thick, lead-lined case for TEMPEST after all.....:-)
I'm not Alpha expert, but I got to study the Alpha design while taking an assembly language course at UNH.
The Alpha is a really nice design. It has 32 integer registers and 32 separate floating-point registers (all 64 bits). 64 registers total. Function arguments are usually passed entirely in registers, greatly reducing function call overhead and stack usage.
It has a well-designed, compact instruction set - this is a very RISC machine. Its memory management is very elegant -- I am told it is a breath of fresh air compared to other architectures. The native CPU bus itself screams, even if the peripheral bus (PCI) is not as fast as, say, SGI's proprietary buses.
All of this means that with a good optimizing compiler, you get *outstanding* real-world performance. Your typical benchmark is designed to run on CPU itty-bitty Intel CPUs, and doesn't take advantage of all the things the Alpha can do. This makes Alpha look less good then it is. In the real world, though, all of this sweet hardware design gives you a significant performance boost. Furthermore, the Alpha tops out much higher then Intel. An Intel box, even SMP, will start to max out when an equivalent Alpha is still running at idle. At UNH, there was a dual 200 MHz CPU Alpha box that routinely had 200+ students on it, doing everything from reading mail to running emacs to compiling projects, and it never starved for CPU - it was always a lack of memory that caused it to bog (it had 348 MB, I think).
The Alpha also scales higher in an absolute sense -- you can get bigger Alpha boxes (16 CPUs, at least) then Intel boxes.
And, of course, 64-bits of address space means you can use VLM (Very Large Memory) techniques to boost performance. Throw enough RAM at a problem, and it usually goes faster.
What does this mean to us? Well, the Alpha is a great workhorse for multiuser systems running lots of jobs. Also databases, compilers, numeric and scientific programs, anything that chews on lots of data.
It does not do quite so well at pushing data off a disk and onto a network wire. It is still pretty darn good, it just is not as amazing as the rest. This has as much to do with PCI and software as anything, I'm sure. If you can afford to throw enough RAM at it, Alpha pulls ahead again by virtue of having everything in cache buffers.
On a related note, I have found Digital UNIX (or OSF/1 or Tru64 or whatever you want to call it) to be one of the better commercial UNIXes I have used.
Well, to some people it is, but I cannot speak for them.
To me, it is the operating system I use. I do not use Solaris (or SCO UNIX, or NT, or anything else (Well, I boot Win95 to play games. So sue me.)).
It is really simple. If I work for company XYZ, and I have 50 Linux boxes deployed, and I want network cards for them, I am going to go to a company that supports Linux. If Nortel does not support Linux, they lose a sale.
As for what Solaris and Linux have or do not have, well, Solaris is generally run on more high-end hardware, and scales like a dream. Linux is cheaper and comes with source code.
"We've had several large enterprise accounts send directives that under no circumstances is Linux to be loaded on any of their systems," said Mark Romanowski...
Who, and more importantly, why? The who is important if it is, say, Microsoft that requested that. The why is more important. Is it the lack of key application(s)? Is it corporate fear and doubt of anything new? Or is it the Linux-specific fears about suport, device drivers, somebody to sue, etc.?
Without reason or explanation, this quote seems pretty weak.
Religion (OS, editor, or God) is a personal thing
on
Linux Advocacy Hurts
·
· Score: 1
The author makes a good point or two. This is the body of my response sent to the him.
I just wanted to say that I think you are pretty much right on the mark as far as "over advocacy" goes. Far too much of that sort of thing goes on. Too many people are willing to rake any reporter who voices an opinion over the coals, simply because they disagree. I really cannot abide such childish behavior.
I put it this way: I am a Linux zealot, and I work within the Linux world with religious fanaticism. However, as with my feelings on "real" religion, my zeal stops with me. Just because I believe something about a particular product (or religion) does not mean everyone should. At most, I make sure others know other churches, er, products, do exist.:-)
Now, if someone wants to get into a discussion of the merits of one product or another for a particular situations, I will certain advocate Linux if it fits. But I stop at stating my opinions and pointing to facts, and if Linux is not the right answer, I can deal with that. I feel no need to go off into a rage simply because Linux is not always the best solution for a problem.
Now, there is one thing I feel worth pointing out about the catalyst of this entire mess. You say, "I mean, the test did happen, right?". Well, true, but the configuration used appears to put NT at a considerable and unfair advantage, which is why so *many* Linux people have gone haywire. Likewise, I suspect some of those other tests you mention have been setup in favor of Linux. Any sensible person evaluates competing products based on a variety of criteria, and arbitrary benchmarks should be pretty far down on the list.:)
... to the words "Read More" in the hyperlink on the home page. Heh heh.:-)
Keep in mind this isn't even BETA quality yet
on
Mozilla M4 is Out
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· Score: 1
Just wanted to remind everyone that this is not even considered a "beta test" release yet. M4 is "Development Milestone 4". This just means the Mozilla folks have reached a certain stage in their development of the program. A bit better then "Wow, it compiled!", but not by much. Do not expect production-quality code out of a development release, let alone beta.
It also appears the release notes page contains a list of problems reported. That does not make them universal. I suspect some things (e.g., JavaScript) work poorly for some, better for others. But that is pure speculation on my part.
I take my freedom of speech very seriously. I find threats to them very worring. The "unnamed" company in question I dislike a lot, and for me, this was a final straw. I started writting letters and was getting ready to organize protest. Now I look like an idiot.
I work for a software company. We develop custom software for the US Air Force. Very niche market stuff. We have been doing this for almost ten years. Normally, I would say free software (as in free speech, not free beer) would be ideally suited for such a custom application. But.
The people in the field use and like our software. In fact, they generally cannot get by without it. However, they do not have the time and/or the technical expertise to improve it. Nor do they control the funding to pay others (us) to improve it for them. The people who do control the funding are not end-users. They are what we in corporate America call "suits".
If these suits were given the source code to the software, they would no longer fund us to improve it. Instead, they would give the task to over-worked, under-paid, inexperienced USAF people who have too much to do as it is. The over-all quality of the software would decrease. The field -- the end users -- would suffer. We know this from first-hand experience. This is fact, not conjecture.
The product is useful only to the USAF. Thus, there is no one outside the USAF who would improve the software just to scratch their "personal itch".
"Get rid of the suits" is one idea that comes to mind. Unfortunately, and for entirely separate reasons, changing the power structure of the military is neither viable, nor a good idea in general.
So what *do* we do?
This is not troll-bait. This is a serious question, one that I struggle with frequently. I am looking for ideas, comments, and maybe even suggestions. My thanks, in advance. And clear skies to all.
ESR was a great help to the cause. No, he was not perfect, but then, show me a perfect human being. He put free/open/whatever software *on the map*. He has done more to make sure open source gets attention and actually *continues to exist* then most people I know of. Yes, there are bad apples (read that as a pun if you want), but they are not ESR's fault. Linux and other free/open software being taken more seriously, and ESR *did* contribute to that.
Personally, I am rather sick of RMS whining about "GNU/Linux". Apple takes a bunch of BSD-licensed code, changes a little, and slaps their name on it. That is bad, I agree. But somehow, it is okay for RMS to take credit for something which is not his, either? I am really starting to believe RMS is another Henry Ford. "You should run free software, as long as it comes from GNU." There is *not one word* in the GPL about giving credit where credit is due - in fact, I believe GNU left such restrictions out on purpose. So how come RMS gets to do it, but Apple does not?
Important Note #1: Do not misunderstand me. I think RMS has contributed a fantastic amount to the cause as well. He did "invent" it, he formalized it and codified it, and most of all, contributed to it. He helps. But so does ESR.
Important Note #2: The GPL is a great concept. Software that is not only free, but legally required to remain free. I am as wary of these "semi-open" licenses as the next guy. However, ESR seems to be being blamed for them, and I really cannot abide that. If you want to blame someone, blame Bill Gates.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of people seem to be expressing surprise that Object Pascal (OP) got the high votes that it did. And while yes, some of that is due to the fact that Borland's flagship product is Delphi (which is an OP IDE), there is more to it then that.
.EXE for runtime. All an IDE form is, is a component that the IDE automatically feeds an embedded I/O stream to at construction. Very smooth!
:-)
OP, for those that do not know, is Borland's own version of Pascal, extended to support OOP and a number of other things. Unlike MS's Visual Basic, however, it actually comes with a full language grammar spec, and it neatly separates the core language from the RTL (like C and C++ do).
I can speak from experience that OP is *NOT* like ISO ("Standard") Pascal. ISO Pascal has a number of enforced brain damages that make it nearly unusable for real-world development. OP does not.
OP is actually very like C++, once you get past the language grammar layer. Indeed, the back-end optimizer and translator for C++Builder and Delphi are the same. There are a few things OP does not support that C++ does. The biggest are multiple inheritance and templates. Multiple inheritance is useful but relatively uncommon; I don't miss it. The lack of templates really sucks at times, but OP at least gives all objects a root ancestor (TObject), so you can fake some of it. (I sure hope the next OP rev will have templates, though!)
Personally, I find the language design and syntax of OP much, much cleaner and easier to read then C++. C++ sometimes seems like a collection of "const" and the ampersand; the code can look like line noise if you're not very careful. OP looks much neater, even if you're several levels deep in an expression. Part of this is because it uses spelled words instead of symbols for most things, which I agree with. (So does C++, apparently, as the newest spec gives you "or" and "and" operators instead of || and &&).
OP even has some features that C++ does not: Named constructors, properties, and closures, just to name a few. Properties are awesome: They allow you to declare a class member that functions like a variable to class users, but can call class methods when read or assigned. It is much cleaner and more intuitive then Get/Set methods; I miss it whenever I write pure C++ code.
Delphi's exception handling architecture is *much* cleaner then C++. For one, it gives a pre-existing class hierarchy for standard exceptions, and it uses them in a consistent manner. Half the things in C++ throw exceptions on error, half return NULL, and half do some other thing. (Yes, I know that adds up to 1.5 -- I'm making a point!)
Delphi also lets you selectively enable/disable runtime checks for range, bounds, NULL dereference, and the like. This is *great* during development, as it can uncover stupid mistakes and assumptions as they happen. Then you can turn it off for release, and get performance very near that of "bare metal" C/C++.
As for the Visual Component Library (VCL), OP's runtime library and application framework, I love it. It is very elegantly designed, easily extensible, and flawlessly supported by the IDE. It gives the "drag-and-drop" ease-of-use of Visual Basic, but without all the brain damage. I pity the people stuck using MFC -- VCL is *infinitely* better.
The design of the VCL's RAD support is particularly neat. You can create VCL GUIs using the IDE or code or both: They mix seamlessly. (Try *that* with VB!) The IDE can even note changes you make in code and back-update the IDE, and vice-versa. Any VCL component that is persistent (i.e., can be used in the RAD IDE) does so by providing standard methods to read and write its properties to an I/O stream. That stream is saved to a file (.DFM - Delphi Form) for design, and embedded in the
(For those that just refuse to use Pascal, the VCL is also used in C++Builder. The same library, just with C++ bindings.)
Anyway, I hope this little tirade of mine makes the point that OP is not just a VB clone, or another implementation of broken ISO Pascal. I'm not saying C++ is better or worse, just that OP has its advantages too, and is quite usable for real-world development.
</SOAPBOX>
The original survey had several questions of the "Pick all that apply" type. From a UI standpoint, they used checkboxes, not radio buttons. Thus, the answers reflect what percentage of people are interested in each specific thing, not which thing is the most popuplar. I find that to be a more useful statistic, anyway. Anyone who focuses on just *one* thing and one thing only is asking for trouble. :-)
Perl is very dynamic, in terms of runtime data storage, execution, etc. Thus, it does well at things that change frequently or are largely undefined at design time.
It makes text/string manipulation very easy. A good deal of what computers do is string processing of some kind.
It uses C-like syntax, and C is very familar to a lot of people already.
It integrates with the POSIX (UNIX) environment very well. Perl is ideal for "gluing" separate, unrelated tools together.
Perl is extremely portable. If you are looking to implement something that will run on as many platforms as possible, Perl is a good choice.
There are a lot of already-written Perl "modules" which are freely available. It is often easier to piece together several Perl modules then to solve a problem from scratch. In particular, there are a lot of web- and database-related modules.
Perl is faster then most interpreted langauges, and there are a number of optimizations which can make it even faster for specific cases (caching compiled Perl scripts in the Apache web server being the popular one).
:-)
:-)
This is not to say Perl is the perfect language. Far from it. The lack of imposed structure and data types is not always a Good Thing. Like anything else, you need to evaluate the available tools, and choose the best one for the task at hand.
As far as learning it does, I think a lot of that is the way it is taught. A lot of books ("Programming Perl" especially) introduce a lot of the Perl "tricks" right away. These "tricks" are useful in contests, one-liners, and write-only code, but for professional projects, they are to be avoided. Again, the lack of imposed structure is not always a Good Thing.
All IMHO, YMMV, etc.
If you were this abusive then, I do not doubt in the least that he skipped right over your mail.
Yes, there is more to good programming than performance. However, this is a *contest*. It does not reflect practical job skill. It simply challenges you to solve an arbitrary problem. If you wish to avoid that, do not enter. :-)
One little problem. Lightning strikes typcially go into the *millions* of volts. A direct lightening strike is going to go through consumer-class protection devices like a hot knife through butter. In those cases, APC or whoever pays off the $25K in insurance. It doesn't happen that often.
However, a top-ten site like Microsoft should have more available to them then a simple UPS. Such places typcially use online power conditioning, electrically isolated systems, lightning arresters, and such.
One way or the other, Microsoft loses. If you are a e-commerce site, then it doesn't matter *why* your site goes down -- it is still down, and you still lose money. A $50 billion dollar software company could not create a site that stayed up. Would you trust *your* site to them?
REDMOND, WA - Today, Microsoft, the world's largest software company, announced a new technology called ActiveOpen(TM). "ActiveOpen(TM) is designed to pick up where OpenSource(TM) left off", said Microsoft Product Manager Dewy Chetumorwhut. "It will enabled users, designer, developers, and managers to collaborate on software projects in a free and open way more productive then the existing legacy models, such as GPL and BSD". Microsoft officials said the product will initially be available for Windows 2000 Advanced Super-Duper Server, with releases for "legacy operating systems such as Linux" being made available "real soon now".
Further details about ActiveOpen will be made available to Microsoft Certified Developers under NDA for a fee, Microsoft said.
While I like text-mode editing (emacs, vi, pico, "cat>prog.c", whatever) as much as the next guy, something they all lack is "GUI GUI designers". That is, a GUI designer that is itself a GUI. That is where Borland's C++Builder leaves traditional text-mode editors in the dust. Designing a GUI form using the keyboard makes as much sense as writting code using the mouse.
Of course, while Borland's IDE's text editor isn't bad, I do wish I had the power of emacs in there at times.
I work for a USAF contractor. We are provided GFE (government furnished equipment) for test reference. One machine is a GTSI desktop PC that, at one point, was used by most of the Air Force's COMSEC (communications security) people. Supposedly, as long as you use certified periphials and properly shielded cables, the thing has no problems with EMSEC (emissions security, the result of the TEMPEST program).
:-)
The funny part is, it is an IBM Aptiva with a new sticker pasted on the front of it. Apparently, you don't need to use a two-inch-thick, lead-lined case for TEMPEST after all.....
I'm not Alpha expert, but I got to study the Alpha design while taking an assembly language course at UNH.
The Alpha is a really nice design. It has 32 integer registers and 32 separate floating-point registers (all 64 bits). 64 registers total. Function arguments are usually passed entirely in registers, greatly reducing function call overhead and stack usage.
It has a well-designed, compact instruction set - this is a very RISC machine. Its memory management is very elegant -- I am told it is a breath of fresh air compared to other architectures. The native CPU bus itself screams, even if the peripheral bus (PCI) is not as fast as, say, SGI's proprietary buses.
All of this means that with a good optimizing compiler, you get *outstanding* real-world performance. Your typical benchmark is designed to run on CPU itty-bitty Intel CPUs, and doesn't take advantage of all the things the Alpha can do. This makes Alpha look less good then it is. In the real world, though, all of this sweet hardware design gives you a significant performance boost. Furthermore, the Alpha tops out much higher then Intel. An Intel box, even SMP, will start to max out when an equivalent Alpha is still running at idle. At UNH, there was a dual 200 MHz CPU Alpha box that routinely had 200+ students on it, doing everything from reading mail to running emacs to compiling projects, and it never starved for CPU - it was always a lack of memory that caused it to bog (it had 348 MB, I think).
The Alpha also scales higher in an absolute sense -- you can get bigger Alpha boxes (16 CPUs, at least) then Intel boxes.
And, of course, 64-bits of address space means you can use VLM (Very Large Memory) techniques to boost performance. Throw enough RAM at a problem, and it usually goes faster.
What does this mean to us? Well, the Alpha is a great workhorse for multiuser systems running lots of jobs. Also databases, compilers, numeric and scientific programs, anything that chews on lots of data.
It does not do quite so well at pushing data off a disk and onto a network wire. It is still pretty darn good, it just is not as amazing as the rest. This has as much to do with PCI and software as anything, I'm sure. If you can afford to throw enough RAM at it, Alpha pulls ahead again by virtue of having everything in cache buffers.
On a related note, I have found Digital UNIX (or OSF/1 or Tru64 or whatever you want to call it) to be one of the better commercial UNIXes I have used.
Well, to some people it is, but I cannot speak for them.
To me, it is the operating system I use. I do not use Solaris (or SCO UNIX, or NT, or anything else (Well, I boot Win95 to play games. So sue me.)).
It is really simple. If I work for company XYZ, and I have 50 Linux boxes deployed, and I want network cards for them, I am going to go to a company that supports Linux. If Nortel does not support Linux, they lose a sale.
As for what Solaris and Linux have or do not have, well, Solaris is generally run on more high-end hardware, and scales like a dream. Linux is cheaper and comes with source code.
Yeah, and the second place winner gets *TWO* copies of MS Office. ;-)
"We've had several large enterprise accounts send directives that under no circumstances is Linux to be loaded on any of their systems," said Mark Romanowski...
Who, and more importantly, why? The who is important if it is, say, Microsoft that requested that. The why is more important. Is it the lack of key application(s)? Is it corporate fear and doubt of anything new? Or is it the Linux-specific fears about suport, device drivers, somebody to sue, etc.?
Without reason or explanation, this quote seems pretty weak.
The author makes a good point or two. This is the body of my response sent to the him.
:-)
:)
I just wanted to say that I think you are pretty much right on the mark as far as "over advocacy" goes. Far too much of that sort of thing goes on. Too many people are willing to rake any reporter who voices an opinion over the coals, simply because they disagree. I really cannot abide such childish behavior.
I put it this way: I am a Linux zealot, and I work within the Linux world with religious fanaticism. However, as with my feelings on "real" religion, my zeal stops with me. Just because I believe something about a particular product (or religion) does not mean everyone should. At most, I make sure others know other churches, er, products, do exist.
Now, if someone wants to get into a discussion of the merits of one product or another for a particular situations, I will certain advocate Linux if it fits. But I stop at stating my opinions and pointing to facts, and if Linux is not the right answer, I can deal with that. I feel no need to go off into a rage simply because Linux is not always the best solution for a problem.
Now, there is one thing I feel worth pointing out about the catalyst of this entire mess. You say, "I mean, the test did happen, right?". Well, true, but the configuration used appears to put NT at a considerable and unfair advantage, which is why so *many* Linux people have gone haywire. Likewise, I suspect some of those other tests you mention have been setup in favor of Linux. Any sensible person evaluates competing products based on a variety of criteria, and arbitrary benchmarks should be pretty far down on the list.
... to the words "Read More" in the hyperlink on the home page. Heh heh. :-)
Just wanted to remind everyone that this is not even considered a "beta test" release yet. M4 is "Development Milestone 4". This just means the Mozilla folks have reached a certain stage in their development of the program. A bit better then "Wow, it compiled!", but not by much. Do not expect production-quality code out of a development release, let alone beta.
It also appears the release notes page contains a list of problems reported. That does not make them universal. I suspect some things (e.g., JavaScript) work poorly for some, better for others. But that is pure speculation on my part.
I take my freedom of speech very seriously. I find threats to them very worring. The "unnamed" company in question I dislike a lot, and for me, this was a final straw. I started writting letters and was getting ready to organize protest. Now I look like an idiot.
I am not amused.
Subject line says it all. This is like joking about the death of a loved one. Not very damn funny, if you ask me.
Submitted for your approval...
I work for a software company. We develop custom software for the US Air Force. Very niche market stuff. We have been doing this for almost ten years. Normally, I would say free software (as in free speech, not free beer) would be ideally suited for such a custom application. But.
The people in the field use and like our software. In fact, they generally cannot get by without it. However, they do not have the time and/or the technical expertise to improve it. Nor do they control the funding to pay others (us) to improve it for them. The people who do control the funding are not end-users. They are what we in corporate America call "suits".
If these suits were given the source code to the software, they would no longer fund us to improve it. Instead, they would give the task to over-worked, under-paid, inexperienced USAF people who have too much to do as it is. The over-all quality of the software would decrease. The field -- the end users -- would suffer. We know this from first-hand experience. This is fact, not conjecture.
The product is useful only to the USAF. Thus, there is no one outside the USAF who would improve the software just to scratch their "personal itch".
"Get rid of the suits" is one idea that comes to mind. Unfortunately, and for entirely separate reasons, changing the power structure of the military is neither viable, nor a good idea in general.
So what *do* we do?
This is not troll-bait. This is a serious question, one that I struggle with frequently. I am looking for ideas, comments, and maybe even suggestions. My thanks, in advance. And clear skies to all.
I really hate to see this happen.
ESR was a great help to the cause. No, he was not perfect, but then, show me a perfect human being. He put free/open/whatever software *on the map*. He has done more to make sure open source gets attention and actually *continues to exist* then most people I know of. Yes, there are bad apples (read that as a pun if you want), but they are not ESR's fault. Linux and other free/open software being taken more seriously, and ESR *did* contribute to that.
Personally, I am rather sick of RMS whining about "GNU/Linux". Apple takes a bunch of BSD-licensed code, changes a little, and slaps their name on it. That is bad, I agree. But somehow, it is okay for RMS to take credit for something which is not his, either? I am really starting to believe RMS is another Henry Ford. "You should run free software, as long as it comes from GNU." There is *not one word* in the GPL about giving credit where credit is due - in fact, I believe GNU left such restrictions out on purpose. So how come RMS gets to do it, but Apple does not?
Important Note #1: Do not misunderstand me. I think RMS has contributed a fantastic amount to the cause as well. He did "invent" it, he formalized it and codified it, and most of all, contributed to it. He helps. But so does ESR.
Important Note #2: The GPL is a great concept. Software that is not only free, but legally required to remain free. I am as wary of these "semi-open" licenses as the next guy. However, ESR seems to be being blamed for them, and I really cannot abide that. If you want to blame someone, blame Bill Gates.
In short: United We Stand, Divided We Fall.