I work for a company that is just wrapping up 3 in-house software projects totaling 38 million USD. Do you know what technology was used for all of them?
It doesn't matter, I dare say in all three cases the tech decision was made by the same small group of people. Expand your survey to 5,000 projects in 2,000 businesses in at least 3 different countries spread over a variety of market areas, company ages and structural types and I'll start accepting it as meaningful..NET is a joke. The only people that think.NET is an Enterprise-class answer for anything are the people that don't work in an enterprise.
Funny. The Enterprise developers I've talked to will generally tell you that the language you're working with is irrelevant. Only the architecture you build is important. You need access to reliable messaging systems (which.NET gives you) and access to reliable data storage systems (which.NET gives you) and the ability to integrate a wide variety of standard external components for a variety of purposes from reporting to integrating with external communication networks (which.NET gives you). Beyond that, the only important thing is that you have enough programmers who are experienced enough with the platform you're working on. This may be.NET's stumbling point: it hasn't existed for long enough, and as most CS graduates of the last 10 years have acquired extensive Java experience by the time they graduate even, it seems a natural choice. This distinction won't last forever.
DCOM sucks.
You can find people with that opinion about any distributed component system. The most commonly complained-about seems to be CORBA.
The CLR is a performance _joke_ in the automotive and financial industries.
I've got a friend who's a programmer in the automotive industry. Yes, you're right he wouldn't consider using the CLR for any of his work. He works in C, mostly, with hand-crafted assembly language for a large portion of his code. He produces systems that have hard real-time requirements of responding within a few hundred processor cycles of an incoming event. Of course any kind of garbage-collected, just-in-time compiled system is a joke for this kind of application.
As for financial industries, I've worked there myself (admittedly before.NET was an option) and don't expect they'd have a huge amount of trouble with it. But the financial industry is a late adopter of most new technologies. Last financial corp I worked with was still developing their desktop apps in C and Motif in 1998, and was still using an e-mail system that ran on a VAX that you had to access via a serial cable plugged into the back of your PC. So no, I don't expect you'd see a lot of.NET apps springing up in that market, either. This has nothing to do with the quality of the system.
All my comments aside, how can anyone with a modicum of professional experience think a 5yr old technology(.NET) would be a better choice then a 15yr old technology that is 64% of the market and still under heavy development and support?
Because the market is changeable. When Java was 5 years old, people were saying exactly the same thing about the likelihood of that taking over from C++ and Corba. It happened in fairly short order, though.
The Constitution grants individuals all rights not specifically enumerated (Ninth Amendment).
That's a rather screwy interpretation. The constitution states "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." This doesn't mean that all unmentioned rights are included. It means they aren't excluded.
That's BS. Program Managers are usually technical and Product Managers are marketing folks. They work on different things. A Product Manager takes the product when it's done positions it on the market.
That's BS. For example, Jim Allchin is the Windows Product Manager. He had pretty much the final say over what features were and weren't included in Vista during its development.
You're out of your gourd. Core Duo is a significantly better chip than the Pentium D.
You're right that it's better, but "significantly" isn't the word. If that 2.8GHz chip were a 3.0GHz one, the performance would be almost identical, according to most benchmarks. Add to the fact that when you've added the cost of a 17" TFT monitor to the Mac Mini it works out significantly more expensive, the Pentium D machine is a much better deal. Unless you're looking for that tiny amount extra performance.
While many of you Linux user don't seem to be too worried about this, I think you should be. As pointed out by others, it will have a detrimental effect right across the board. No more dual boot with Windows and Linux. No Wine, no more popular drivers for Linux because of the DRM, no virtual machines that run Linux without paying a Windows tax, and in the end, it will get harder every day to find a computer that will even run Linux.
As a Window's programmer since 3.1, I am seeing a nightmare scenario staring me in the face. I can see the day coming when a person can no longer develop software on their own computer, because it will only run in some kind of sandbox, if at all, unless you buy a special developer's license. Of course I too will finally defect to Linux long before that happens, if that is still an option.
I think you're being paranoid. Reasoning this out:
* There's no reason why computer manufacturers should go out of their way (and they would have to) in order to prevent the possibility of dual booting. Microsoft couldn't get away with it, it would be held to be an abuse of their monopoly position, probably by both US and EU courts. Media companies might want it, but they don't have that kind of power -- PC manufacturers know that their main customer is large business, which cares more about an open, upgradable platform than ability to play the latest format media file.
* Wine will be largely unaffected -- it will simply not implement the DRM mechanisms, which is unlikely to have a serious negative effect.
* I'm not even sure why you say "no virtual machines that run Linux without paying a Windows tax", that conclusion just doesn't make any sense to me.
* And PCs will continue to run Linux because nobody has proposed and nobody is likely to propose any kind of break in backwards compatibility like that. PCs that can't run Linux can't run Windows Vista either. A new windows version would have to be released for them, but backwards compatibility is a big issue in this business, and such PCs would be a market failure while the old-style compatible PCs are still available.
* MS know that a large reason for their market dominance is third party applications. They're not going to go out of their way to make it hard for developers.
and of course the petition for the prime mininster to stand on his head and juggle ice-cream. All feasible, most narrowly defined, or at least easy to investigate ways of achieving.
Yep. A good number of people don't seem to grasp that by getting Windows pre-loaded, they've not purchased a Windows license, their manufacturer has, ergo why it is tied to the specific hardware and you don't get an install disk, you get a "recovery" disk, if anything at all.
No, actually, they've purchased whatever it said on the advert next to the computer when they handed over their cash. If it said "Windows XP", then they're entitled to either (a) a copy of Windows XP or (b) a refund. It should say "Windows XP*... * Preloaded only, recovery disk included" or something like that... but most manufacturers don't bother.
I've successfully got a refund for an XP license from DSG (large UK retail chain) in court with this argument.
There are, however, still many applications where CFLs just aren't a good choice.
1. There are dimmable CFLs but they only dim so much and not very smoothly
True. But it doesn't seem as though this legislation would cover low-power halogen lights, which are typically ~20-30% more efficient than tungsten filament incadescents (IIRC), and are ideal for use in dimmable installations.
2. Not recommended for enclosed fixtures (trapped heat shortens life of electronics)
Bah. I've had CFLs in enclosed fixtures for 4 years and they're all still going strong. It might reduce the lifetime, but the lifetime's high enough that it doesn't matter anyway.
3. Not recommended for use with photocells
Or with timers. I understand that both of these issues are solved with new designs, I believe by arranging the switching circuitry so there isn't a low-voltage trickle through the lamp when it is switched off, which was present with (some) old designs for incadescent lamps but which damages the circruitry in a CFL. At least, my local electrical shop is selling an externally-mounted light with a full enclosure and combined photo-sensitive cell and timer control unit to allow evening-only activation, and it's supplied with a CFL.
That was in the days of Cheeseplant's House (wow, I got a great thrill writing my own version of something like that, many years later!) and Monochrome (kind of Slashdot forerunner, fondly missed).
Cheeseplant was a little before my time, but Monochrome was quite popular in my day, and is still around. ssh mono@el.mono.org.
Also, running long lengths of VGA cable may be expensive and result in poor quality.
I didn't make it clear that to achieve that length, you'd really need to be using DVI.
Regarding compatibility problems, the people I've talked to who've done this (I'm planning on doing it myself within the next year) have used framebuffer-based X servers with acceptable results for most applications. The Matrox 1x PCIe graphics cards tend to come highly recommended, not least because on most modern motherboards you can stick 3 or 4 of them in.
Yes. It allows faster chips with lower power consumption, and Intel have stated they're targetting low power apps.
2. If so, how long will it take for it to be integrated into laptops?
Not until end of the year.
3. Will it make them more or less expensive?
The ones with the technology will initially be more expensive, as always with new tech. But the older designs will become less expensive and after a while the new tech will drop to about the same price as the current tech. This is the way it always works.
4. Will it be a huge jump in performance, or a smaller one?
Without actually seeing a review of the new chips, it's hard to tell, but I'd be hoping for a 25-30% increase in cycles per second for the same power usage, or a slightly lower drop in power usage for the same speed.
And most of all, would it be ok to go ahead and get a laptop now or better because of either cost or performance to wait until they have integrated this into a laptop?
Depends. You're looking at waiting an entire year. They'll be pricey when they do come out. You'll have to make the decision yourself.
Why doesn't Jimbo just say he's an individualist, why bring up Rand at all?
Because a lot more people know about Rand and what she wrote than actually understand the implication of the term Objectivist. It's the easiest way of explaining it to most people.
That's easy, just ask the government. The site can send the federal government the Social Security number you gave them and the full name of the person setting up the account. The government knows the birth date of the owner of that SSN and the names of any dependents, so that takes care of a) and b). As for forgery or the child just using their parent's name and number, also include some other identifying information of some sort that only the person would know. See, that isn't too hard, is it?
"omg are you serious?" replies in 3, 2, 1...
Hold on... do you mean to say that the US government will hand out your personal information to anyone who knows your SSN?
Besides, I compile FPGAs on my PC. Please don't make me do that remotely. I will have to take lives if I do.
Would you rather have a single-core 1.5GHz celeron box, or shared access to a 2x quad-core beast with huge amounts of memory?
If I ran compute-intensive tasks, I think I'd probably choose the latter. Assuming the IT staff were competent enough to spread the demand for the processors and buy enough of those boxes to keep up with demand.
At Aston Uni, we had mainly VT-220s and QVT-203+s. Some VT-100 clones, too; even at least one real VT-100 with the remotely programmable indicator lights! {Why did they stop putting those on terminals? Even the VT-220s didn't have them, not even emulated on the status line.
Over at Warwick, we had ADM-3es. Now there was a terminal and a half. So obscure that anywhere external you telnetted to was highly unlikely to have a termcap entry for it.
Just something compact with most of the room only needed for monitor, keyboard and mouse.
If you can find space for a PC within 10m of each of the points you want to use it from, you could hook up multiple monitors, keyboards and mice. You'll need powered USB hubs within 5m of the PC for the mice and keyboards. With a little work, Linux can be made to run independent desktops on each.
I would think these locations would be prime spots to put just one computer with a decent amount of ram, and just 6 dumb terminals to browse the web.
Problem is, if there's any necessity to run windows, the cost of this would be higher than the normal PCs, because you'll need a Windows Server licence on one of them, with 5 client access licenses, and windows desktop licenses for the other 5. Cost of software = about $1500 rather than about $600.
Windows can't cope with using multiple monitors/keyboards/mice to give separate user sessions, so you can't just put in one PC with extra consoles. Linux can, with a little hacking, do this.
Not saying I agree with them, but the lawmakers' response is likely something along the lines of "that's your problem."
Which is funny, seeing as the only workable solution I can think of (an internationally-organised public key distribution system that ensures that everyone can get a key and that their identity is appropriately confirmed) is on the sort of scale where only governments could achieve it.
"[T]he Constitution does not recognize a generalized right of "social association" that includes chance encounters in dance halls." DALLAS v. STANGLIN, 490 U.S. 19 (1989)
From the same decision:
Respondent's patrons, who may number as many as 1,000 per night, are not engaged in a form of "intimate association." Nor do the opportunities of adults and minors to dance with one another, which might be described as "associational" in common parlance, involve the sort of "expressive association" that the First Amendment has been held to protect
These are the key bases upon which this decision was made. I don't believe either statement could reasonably be made about MySpace.
Slashdot Mirror
I work for a company that is just wrapping up 3 in-house software projects totaling 38 million USD. Do you know what technology was used for all of them?
.NET is a joke. The only people that think .NET is an Enterprise-class answer for anything are the people that don't work in an enterprise.
.NET gives you) and access to reliable data storage systems (which .NET gives you) and the ability to integrate a wide variety of standard external components for a variety of purposes from reporting to integrating with external communication networks (which .NET gives you). Beyond that, the only important thing is that you have enough programmers who are experienced enough with the platform you're working on. This may be .NET's stumbling point: it hasn't existed for long enough, and as most CS graduates of the last 10 years have acquired extensive Java experience by the time they graduate even, it seems a natural choice. This distinction won't last forever.
.NET was an option) and don't expect they'd have a huge amount of trouble with it. But the financial industry is a late adopter of most new technologies. Last financial corp I worked with was still developing their desktop apps in C and Motif in 1998, and was still using an e-mail system that ran on a VAX that you had to access via a serial cable plugged into the back of your PC. So no, I don't expect you'd see a lot of .NET apps springing up in that market, either. This has nothing to do with the quality of the system.
It doesn't matter, I dare say in all three cases the tech decision was made by the same small group of people. Expand your survey to 5,000 projects in 2,000 businesses in at least 3 different countries spread over a variety of market areas, company ages and structural types and I'll start accepting it as meaningful.
Funny. The Enterprise developers I've talked to will generally tell you that the language you're working with is irrelevant. Only the architecture you build is important. You need access to reliable messaging systems (which
DCOM sucks.
You can find people with that opinion about any distributed component system. The most commonly complained-about seems to be CORBA.
The CLR is a performance _joke_ in the automotive and financial industries.
I've got a friend who's a programmer in the automotive industry. Yes, you're right he wouldn't consider using the CLR for any of his work. He works in C, mostly, with hand-crafted assembly language for a large portion of his code. He produces systems that have hard real-time requirements of responding within a few hundred processor cycles of an incoming event. Of course any kind of garbage-collected, just-in-time compiled system is a joke for this kind of application.
As for financial industries, I've worked there myself (admittedly before
All my comments aside, how can anyone with a modicum of professional experience think a 5yr old technology(.NET) would be a better choice then a 15yr old technology that is 64% of the market and still under heavy development and support?
Because the market is changeable. When Java was 5 years old, people were saying exactly the same thing about the likelihood of that taking over from C++ and Corba. It happened in fairly short order, though.
The Constitution grants individuals all rights not specifically enumerated (Ninth Amendment).
That's a rather screwy interpretation. The constitution states "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." This doesn't mean that all unmentioned rights are included. It means they aren't excluded.
That's BS. Program Managers are usually technical and Product Managers are marketing folks. They work on different things. A Product Manager takes the product when it's done positions it on the market.
That's BS. For example, Jim Allchin is the Windows Product Manager. He had pretty much the final say over what features were and weren't included in Vista during its development.
You're out of your gourd. Core Duo is a significantly better chip than the Pentium D.
You're right that it's better, but "significantly" isn't the word. If that 2.8GHz chip were a 3.0GHz one, the performance would be almost identical, according to most benchmarks. Add to the fact that when you've added the cost of a 17" TFT monitor to the Mac Mini it works out significantly more expensive, the Pentium D machine is a much better deal. Unless you're looking for that tiny amount extra performance.
Lower price? Not really. There's at least one Apple model that's cheaper than the equivalent Windows box (the Mac Mini),
Mac Mini Combodrive - £399
"Core Duo" @1.66GHz
512MB
60GB
No keyboard, mouse or monitor.
Packard Bell 354 - £430
Pentium D @ 2.8GHz
512MB
80GB
Includes 17" TFT monitor, keyboard and mouse.
I think the latter is a substantially better deal.
While many of you Linux user don't seem to be too worried about this, I think you should be. As pointed out by others, it will have a detrimental effect right across the board. No more dual boot with Windows and Linux. No Wine, no more popular drivers for Linux because of the DRM, no virtual machines that run Linux without paying a Windows tax, and in the end, it will get harder every day to find a computer that will even run Linux.
As a Window's programmer since 3.1, I am seeing a nightmare scenario staring me in the face. I can see the day coming when a person can no longer develop software on their own computer, because it will only run in some kind of sandbox, if at all, unless you buy a special developer's license. Of course I too will finally defect to Linux long before that happens, if that is still an option.
I think you're being paranoid. Reasoning this out:
* There's no reason why computer manufacturers should go out of their way (and they would have to) in order to prevent the possibility of dual booting. Microsoft couldn't get away with it, it would be held to be an abuse of their monopoly position, probably by both US and EU courts. Media companies might want it, but they don't have that kind of power -- PC manufacturers know that their main customer is large business, which cares more about an open, upgradable platform than ability to play the latest format media file.
* Wine will be largely unaffected -- it will simply not implement the DRM mechanisms, which is unlikely to have a serious negative effect.
* I'm not even sure why you say "no virtual machines that run Linux without paying a Windows tax", that conclusion just doesn't make any sense to me.
* And PCs will continue to run Linux because nobody has proposed and nobody is likely to propose any kind of break in backwards compatibility like that. PCs that can't run Linux can't run Windows Vista either. A new windows version would have to be released for them, but backwards compatibility is a big issue in this business, and such PCs would be a market failure while the old-style compatible PCs are still available.
* MS know that a large reason for their market dominance is third party applications. They're not going to go out of their way to make it hard for developers.
Sixth is more like. Simonyi is scheduled to go up before the winner of this prize.
You would think that there would be a way for the winner to avoid having to pay the taxes for winning this trip.
There is, and they're doing it. Prizes in the UK are tax exempt; this prize is only available to UK residents.
So no need to worry about the IRS demanding a share... just Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs.
Fortunately for us Brits, prize winnings are tax exempt.
If the petitions are narrow & specific, then I agree this might be a useful tool.
A lot of them are. Some which may be of interest to slashdotters include:
to make software patents clearly unenforcible
to Abandon plans to make it a criminal offence to possess "violent pornography"
to Abolish all faith schools and prohibit the teaching of creationism and other religious mythology in all UK schools
to levy a tax on energy inefficient light bulbs so that their long term financial and environmental cost is visible in their retail price
to force Ofcom [UK equivalent of FCC] to allocate the unused radio spectrum after the analogue switchover to HDTV services
to ensure that any website launched by the government complies with accessibility standards (WCAG AA at least)
to Improve Open Source use in govenment and local govenment work places
to Reject any motions to extend the copyright term for sound recordings
to award Professor Stephen W. Hawking a Knighthood
to Arrange for British Standard Time to be maintained in England permanently
and of course the petition for the prime mininster to stand on his head and juggle ice-cream. All feasible, most narrowly defined, or at least easy to investigate ways of achieving.
Yep. A good number of people don't seem to grasp that by getting Windows pre-loaded, they've not purchased a Windows license, their manufacturer has, ergo why it is tied to the specific hardware and you don't get an install disk, you get a "recovery" disk, if anything at all.
... * Preloaded only, recovery disk included" or something like that... but most manufacturers don't bother.
No, actually, they've purchased whatever it said on the advert next to the computer when they handed over their cash. If it said "Windows XP", then they're entitled to either (a) a copy of Windows XP or (b) a refund. It should say "Windows XP*
I've successfully got a refund for an XP license from DSG (large UK retail chain) in court with this argument.
Now we have to wait for the ballast to warm up before inspiration strikes!
I just turned on my CFL desk lamp and temporarily blinded myself while I was still watching where I'd put my fingers to find the switch.
They're not as slow as they were once.
There are, however, still many applications where CFLs just aren't a good choice.
1. There are dimmable CFLs but they only dim so much and not very smoothly
True. But it doesn't seem as though this legislation would cover low-power halogen lights, which are typically ~20-30% more efficient than tungsten filament incadescents (IIRC), and are ideal for use in dimmable installations.
2. Not recommended for enclosed fixtures (trapped heat shortens life of electronics)
Bah. I've had CFLs in enclosed fixtures for 4 years and they're all still going strong. It might reduce the lifetime, but the lifetime's high enough that it doesn't matter anyway.
3. Not recommended for use with photocells
Or with timers. I understand that both of these issues are solved with new designs, I believe by arranging the switching circuitry so there isn't a low-voltage trickle through the lamp when it is switched off, which was present with (some) old designs for incadescent lamps but which damages the circruitry in a CFL. At least, my local electrical shop is selling an externally-mounted light with a full enclosure and combined photo-sensitive cell and timer control unit to allow evening-only activation, and it's supplied with a CFL.
That was in the days of Cheeseplant's House (wow, I got a great thrill writing my own version of something like that, many years later!) and Monochrome (kind of Slashdot forerunner, fondly missed).
Cheeseplant was a little before my time, but Monochrome was quite popular in my day, and is still around. ssh mono@el.mono.org.
Also, running long lengths of VGA cable may be expensive and result in poor quality.
I didn't make it clear that to achieve that length, you'd really need to be using DVI.
Regarding compatibility problems, the people I've talked to who've done this (I'm planning on doing it myself within the next year) have used framebuffer-based X servers with acceptable results for most applications. The Matrox 1x PCIe graphics cards tend to come highly recommended, not least because on most modern motherboards you can stick 3 or 4 of them in.
1. Is this technology applicable to laptops?
Yes. It allows faster chips with lower power consumption, and Intel have stated they're targetting low power apps.
2. If so, how long will it take for it to be integrated into laptops?
Not until end of the year.
3. Will it make them more or less expensive?
The ones with the technology will initially be more expensive, as always with new tech. But the older designs will become less expensive and after a while the new tech will drop to about the same price as the current tech. This is the way it always works.
4. Will it be a huge jump in performance, or a smaller one?
Without actually seeing a review of the new chips, it's hard to tell, but I'd be hoping for a 25-30% increase in cycles per second for the same power usage, or a slightly lower drop in power usage for the same speed.
And most of all, would it be ok to go ahead and get a laptop now or better because of either cost or performance to wait until they have integrated this into a laptop?
Depends. You're looking at waiting an entire year. They'll be pricey when they do come out. You'll have to make the decision yourself.
Why doesn't Jimbo just say he's an individualist, why bring up Rand at all?
Because a lot more people know about Rand and what she wrote than actually understand the implication of the term Objectivist. It's the easiest way of explaining it to most people.
That's easy, just ask the government. The site can send the federal government the Social Security number you gave them and the full name of the person setting up the account. The government knows the birth date of the owner of that SSN and the names of any dependents, so that takes care of a) and b). As for forgery or the child just using their parent's name and number, also include some other identifying information of some sort that only the person would know. See, that isn't too hard, is it?
"omg are you serious?" replies in 3, 2, 1...
Hold on... do you mean to say that the US government will hand out your personal information to anyone who knows your SSN?
Besides, I compile FPGAs on my PC. Please don't make me do that remotely. I will have to take lives if I do.
Would you rather have a single-core 1.5GHz celeron box, or shared access to a 2x quad-core beast with huge amounts of memory?
If I ran compute-intensive tasks, I think I'd probably choose the latter. Assuming the IT staff were competent enough to spread the demand for the processors and buy enough of those boxes to keep up with demand.
At Aston Uni, we had mainly VT-220s and QVT-203+s. Some VT-100 clones, too; even at least one real VT-100 with the remotely programmable indicator lights! {Why did they stop putting those on terminals? Even the VT-220s didn't have them, not even emulated on the status line.
Over at Warwick, we had ADM-3es. Now there was a terminal and a half. So obscure that anywhere external you telnetted to was highly unlikely to have a termcap entry for it.
Just something compact with most of the room only needed for monitor, keyboard and mouse.
If you can find space for a PC within 10m of each of the points you want to use it from, you could hook up multiple monitors, keyboards and mice. You'll need powered USB hubs within 5m of the PC for the mice and keyboards. With a little work, Linux can be made to run independent desktops on each.
I would think these locations would be prime spots to put just one computer with a decent amount of ram, and just 6 dumb terminals to browse the web.
Problem is, if there's any necessity to run windows, the cost of this would be higher than the normal PCs, because you'll need a Windows Server licence on one of them, with 5 client access licenses, and windows desktop licenses for the other 5. Cost of software = about $1500 rather than about $600.
Windows can't cope with using multiple monitors/keyboards/mice to give separate user sessions, so you can't just put in one PC with extra consoles. Linux can, with a little hacking, do this.
What's next? Minicomputers?
Not saying I agree with them, but the lawmakers' response is likely something along the lines of "that's your problem."
Which is funny, seeing as the only workable solution I can think of (an internationally-organised public key distribution system that ensures that everyone can get a key and that their identity is appropriately confirmed) is on the sort of scale where only governments could achieve it.
From the same decision: These are the key bases upon which this decision was made. I don't believe either statement could reasonably be made about MySpace.