But outlook CALs are not 'unlimited' when you buy Exchange. I think you no longer are allowed to run Outlook with Exchange 2007 but the new licence terms are too complicated for my tiny mind to comprehend:-)
To port C/C++ to another platform generally needs a recompile, possibly a little modification with some conditional compilation. People have been doing that for years - look at linux for example.
If your Java app doesn't work correctly on a different platform, you're stuffed. Java's never been quite as cross-platform as the marketing hype suggested.
Microsoft answers the question: "What if Linux had a userland based on a managed language runtime and every application used the same UI classes (and what if a company with sufficient resourced to do it right did it)?"
there, fixed that for you.
Just imagine, Linux with a standard GUI, managed runtime, and a company with sufficient resources behind it. Sounds remarkably like another operating system I know of. Perhaps they'll also provide the same level of lock-in, vendor-exclusivity, big-buck addons, and horrible performance and maintenance.
don't forget there are millions of desktop/enterprise java developers. People who think 2Gb RAM and dual core is a minimum spec:)
Java on embedded devices is relatively small, certainly not as widespread as you'd think. I'd go out on a limb and guess that there are more Symbian developers (who use C++) as there are simply far more Nokia phones in circulation than any java-based phones.
I would think Google should release a C/C++ application environment for Android, lots of people want it, lots of code already exists to make use of it (or the underlying Linux platform), I can't really think there's a good reason to restrict use to java only.
In fact, the java-only model is a poor one, you're locked in to java, get what the environment gives you. Having Android linux based makes such good sense you're likely to get as wide a range of software running on it as you have with Linux. Making it Java only stops that, you only get Android programmers coding for it.
Beats me why they bothered - its not even real Java, considering they reimplemented their JVM to get round the licencing issues.
Its nothing new, the idea of cars talking to each other to transmit road conditions, keep a certain distance, allow faster fluid road usage, impose road-travel pricing, etc have been around for a while.
There are probably other reasons to have it, from the 2nd link:
Google is also taking a strong interest in this technology. Why would an Internet search company be interested in car technology? Because it wants to extend its reach into your car. And where Google goes, Yahoo and Microsoft are likely to follow. Right now, navigation systems have static databases of restaurants, gas stations, and other businesses. A vehicle communication infrastructure could make that dynamic by sending requests for local restaurants, for example, over the network, with results coming back from Google, Yahoo, or any other online database.
so - safety, taxation, and advertising. I suppose it would also make stealing your car nigh on impossible, and it might help with congestion too.
* I just saw a cop with a speed camera, everyone behind slow down now. (you'd probably get this for free as cars behind are informed you slammed on your brakes, so they know to slow down to avoid the accident/obstacle/whatever you just braked for)
eg. When I move a file from firectory A to B, you'd think that was an instant-completed operation? Oh no.... it takes time for Vista to calculate a new thumbnail, check for DRM violation, calculate space required and disk throughput, then to pop a little dialog saying "moving..." then to update it with "moving 1 file will take 0 seconds", then to actually move the frigging file.
Try it with a large video file and see how 'quick' it is.
Other things are just as bad, open a program, hear your hard disc grind away as all the bloated app is loaded into memory, all the.NET assemblies are then security checked to see if they've been modified (I downloaded the Visual Studio SP1 yesterday and read the web blurb to go with it. It said:
When installing on Windows Vista(TM) with User Account Control (UAC) active, there can be a substantial delay before the initial setup dialog is displayed. During this time, a UAC function is verifying digital signatures within the installation package. This service pack carries a large number of files causing the process to take up to one hour in some cases.
only 1 frikkin' hour! That's actually better than my experience so far with the thing.
Anybody who thinks it's a good idea to depend on the size of structure padding, on one specific platform, with one specific compiler, and code a memory violation on that expectation, deserves to be a Windows developer using Microsoft-only tools in a Microsoft-only shop.
Actually, people who think that probably are devs in shops like that.
Its easy to look back in hindsight and say how it is, but back then things were different. The fire bombing raids on Japan already killed hundreds of thousands, and General Groves opposed the nuke because he felt that "the effect would not be sufficiently distinct from our regular air force [bombing] program."
Estimates of damage were approximated at 1/10 to 1/2 of the actual damage, not counting subsequent radiation damage.
I suppose if they knew the actual damage that could have been caused, they could have dropped the bomb on somewhere unpopulated after warning the Japanese that they'd use it on their cities if they didn't surrender. The Japanese already were wanting an end to the war as seen by the resignation of Prime Minister Koiso and his cabinet. If the US hadn't demanded unconditional surrender, the war may well have ended earlier and without the use of nukes at all.
Estimates of casualties due to the bombs were 200,000 people. During the fighting, that's about 2 months worth of lives lost. However, the firebombing of Tokyo cost roughly 100,000 lives, so the nuke was effectively more a psychological weapon than one used to kill (otherwise the conventional bombing raids would have had the same effect)
We all know what differentiates Macs - photo, video and other "design" applications. Some people buy a mac because its seen as 'cool' too.
Now, what feature drives Linux? So far, I've only seen "its as good as Windows but cheaper". To get the same kind of market share as Macs, we need to make people want Linux for something that it does significantly better than Windows.
On the other hand, if all we're going for is Mac market share, then we might as well be "as good as windows but cheaper".
Or you could use these stats, which show 4% from browsing OSes.
You'd think this showed more desktop usage, as most people don't use a server OS (that's used for servers) to browse the web - hence the Windows 2003 server showing at 1.7%
so the number of Linux users would be out by a factor of.. 3? Its still better than the finger-in-the-air method.
Mind, you'd have to do the same for Fedora and Suse, and try to not count wipe-and-reinstalls to get better results, but that shouldn't stop them trying.
true, but an off-site backup is only ever needed if the original site disappears. Its a risk-management strategy that is surprisingly effective. I mean, if your primary and backup location both go *at the same time*, you've likely much more significant worries (like a natural disaster or war).
The biggest problem with backups (no matter where they are kept) is restoring them. That's why making a backup is useless unless you at least attempt to restore from it occasionally. The time you really don't want to find out your backups were corrupt, or you've been backing up the porn folder instead of the work one, is when you need to restore for real.
that's a simplistic view of things. What does happen is that people consume less (this might be quite a surprise to you if you're an American:))
Our biggest customer is a car breakdown service, we get logs of all breakdowns and server performance etc etc, when the oil price shot up and petrol was more expensive, the number of breakdowns got significantly less, simply put people stopped driving so much.
Now, put taxes up, and everything goes up in price, but you'll find that consumers stop buying so much, and then price wars start as companies start to fight each other for the reduced number of customers. I'm not sure if the end result makes any difference in the log run, but it helps the politicans say they're doing something.
I think slashdot is far better - SO's idea of moderation is good, but does suffer from groupthink somewhat. Slashdot has similar, but at least slashdot has a better means of moderating the moderators.
OpenID, so what. if you want, go to MyOpenID and set it up for your own domain,
firstly, you'll have problems if they did that as a lot (ie nearly all) of the.NET framework is a managed wrapper over the underlying, native, Win32 or COM code that already exists. You didn't think.NET was completely new and 100% 'pure' managed did you? How naive.
Most of MS security issues are architectural, ie design issues, that will not be solved by a rewrite in.NET, you'd still have stuff like conficker or smiley central replacing icons and allowing the user to unwittingly run the virus app.
As for 'anything that needs to be added could be added quickly', lol. When would that be? service pack 1? how about a Windows update patch - you'd never be able to release anything unless all your target computers were fully patched to the absolute latest version, but even then you occasionally find updates that are not installed because they break existing things (eg many corporates still run IE6 because of broken apps on IE7).
No, if you want a brand new, completely fresh OS to work with that doesn't suffer from nearly as much "legacy crap", then you want a Mac or Linux. Sorry, but you'd get better results that way, MS releasing a.NET onyl version of Windows would be so broken (and require so much RAM and CPU) that it'd destroy their established market base.
no, not at all. I know we've all been brainwashed into the 'must upgrade' way of thinking, but for many places once you have something working, don't touch it and it'll keep working.
So, no, many places run NT4, it was quite a good OS, before MS started adding 'value added features' to it.
IPv6 killer app... how about video-on-demand phone calls that appear on your TV set?
TVs are becoming internet-enabled, if each could be addressable, then you could add a webcam and use it as a scifi-style video phone, for free calls anywhere in the world.
You could also have your ISP push programmes to your set-top box instead of you going and fetching them.
The only 'killer apps' I can think of that'd make sense are for entertainment purposes; that are your ISP refusing to connect you to the internet because they have no IPs to hand out anymore.
That 6to4 support is bundling IPv6 packets and transmitting them inside an IPv4 packet. So technically, the poster is still using IPv4 with his linksys router.
I think the home router issue is the one that matters. I want IPv6, but simply cannot have it (unless I cough up lots of cash for a serious router). I think the home router manufacturers are missing something here, they just need to say they cannot release firmware updates, and that you need to buy a new router to get IPv6, which is obviously better. They then sell loads more routers.. I don't understand why they don't do this.
Mind you, a firmware update would be better for me:)
Slashdot Mirror
and don't forget the good concurrent stuff - OpenMP for example:
#pragma parallel for
// do ten iterations in parallel.
for (i=0; i < 10; i++)
{
}
so easy! Add Intel's TBB and you have seriously easy and powerful concurrent programming. Without having to reengineer to MS-Java++.
But outlook CALs are not 'unlimited' when you buy Exchange. I think you no longer are allowed to run Outlook with Exchange 2007 but the new licence terms are too complicated for my tiny mind to comprehend :-)
To port C/C++ to another platform generally needs a recompile, possibly a little modification with some conditional compilation. People have been doing that for years - look at linux for example.
If your Java app doesn't work correctly on a different platform, you're stuffed. Java's never been quite as cross-platform as the marketing hype suggested.
Microsoft answers the question: "What if Linux had a userland based on a managed language runtime and every application used the same UI classes (and what if a company with sufficient resourced to do it right did it)?"
there, fixed that for you.
Just imagine, Linux with a standard GUI, managed runtime, and a company with sufficient resources behind it. Sounds remarkably like another operating system I know of. Perhaps they'll also provide the same level of lock-in, vendor-exclusivity, big-buck addons, and horrible performance and maintenance.
don't forget there are millions of desktop/enterprise java developers. People who think 2Gb RAM and dual core is a minimum spec :)
Java on embedded devices is relatively small, certainly not as widespread as you'd think. I'd go out on a limb and guess that there are more Symbian developers (who use C++) as there are simply far more Nokia phones in circulation than any java-based phones.
I would think Google should release a C/C++ application environment for Android, lots of people want it, lots of code already exists to make use of it (or the underlying Linux platform), I can't really think there's a good reason to restrict use to java only.
In fact, the java-only model is a poor one, you're locked in to java, get what the environment gives you. Having Android linux based makes such good sense you're likely to get as wide a range of software running on it as you have with Linux. Making it Java only stops that, you only get Android programmers coding for it.
Beats me why they bothered - its not even real Java, considering they reimplemented their JVM to get round the licencing issues.
Its nothing new, the idea of cars talking to each other to transmit road conditions, keep a certain distance, allow faster fluid road usage, impose road-travel pricing, etc have been around for a while.
http://www.today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/070508_network-on-wheels.aspx
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10895_7-6733591-1.html
There are probably other reasons to have it, from the 2nd link:
Google is also taking a strong interest in this technology. Why would an Internet search company be interested in car technology? Because it wants to extend its reach into your car. And where Google goes, Yahoo and Microsoft are likely to follow. Right now, navigation systems have static databases of restaurants, gas stations, and other businesses. A vehicle communication infrastructure could make that dynamic by sending requests for local restaurants, for example, over the network, with results coming back from Google, Yahoo, or any other online database.
so - safety, taxation, and advertising. I suppose it would also make stealing your car nigh on impossible, and it might help with congestion too.
And for a different kind of privacy nightmare:
* I just saw a cop with a speed camera, everyone behind slow down now. (you'd probably get this for free as cars behind are informed you slammed on your brakes, so they know to slow down to avoid the accident/obstacle/whatever you just braked for)
It's all that space taken up by roads and parking that stretches out the distance between travel points.
umm, I think you've missed the difference between length and width.
oh no. speed now is responsiveness.
eg. When I move a file from firectory A to B, you'd think that was an instant-completed operation? Oh no.... it takes time for Vista to calculate a new thumbnail, check for DRM violation, calculate space required and disk throughput, then to pop a little dialog saying "moving..." then to update it with "moving 1 file will take 0 seconds", then to actually move the frigging file.
Try it with a large video file and see how 'quick' it is.
Other things are just as bad, open a program, hear your hard disc grind away as all the bloated app is loaded into memory, all the .NET assemblies are then security checked to see if they've been modified (I downloaded the Visual Studio SP1 yesterday and read the web blurb to go with it. It said:
When installing on Windows Vista(TM) with User Account Control (UAC) active, there can be a substantial delay before the initial setup dialog is displayed. During this time, a UAC function is verifying digital signatures within the installation package. This service pack carries a large number of files causing the process to take up to one hour in some cases.
only 1 frikkin' hour! That's actually better than my experience so far with the thing.
These are some of the reasons Vista is pants.
free shipping? I doubt its Shuttleworth shilling it, more likely one of those pesky postal service employees!
Anybody who thinks it's a good idea to depend on the size of structure padding, on one specific platform, with one specific compiler, and code a memory violation on that expectation, deserves to be a Windows developer using Microsoft-only tools in a Microsoft-only shop.
Actually, people who think that probably are devs in shops like that.
Its easy to look back in hindsight and say how it is, but back then things were different. The fire bombing raids on Japan already killed hundreds of thousands, and General Groves opposed the nuke because he felt that "the effect would not be sufficiently distinct from our regular air force [bombing] program."
Estimates of damage were approximated at 1/10 to 1/2 of the actual damage, not counting subsequent radiation damage.
I suppose if they knew the actual damage that could have been caused, they could have dropped the bomb on somewhere unpopulated after warning the Japanese that they'd use it on their cities if they didn't surrender. The Japanese already were wanting an end to the war as seen by the resignation of Prime Minister Koiso and his cabinet. If the US hadn't demanded unconditional surrender, the war may well have ended earlier and without the use of nukes at all.
Estimates of casualties due to the bombs were 200,000 people. During the fighting, that's about 2 months worth of lives lost. However, the firebombing of Tokyo cost roughly 100,000 lives, so the nuke was effectively more a psychological weapon than one used to kill (otherwise the conventional bombing raids would have had the same effect)
You want the IMF website.
Or take a look at these 2 articles. We're all stuffed. - and the 2nd uses 2007 figures!
Imagine what happens if #1 in the 1st link defaults on its debts.
We all know what differentiates Macs - photo, video and other "design" applications. Some people buy a mac because its seen as 'cool' too.
Now, what feature drives Linux? So far, I've only seen "its as good as Windows but cheaper". To get the same kind of market share as Macs, we need to make people want Linux for something that it does significantly better than Windows.
On the other hand, if all we're going for is Mac market share, then we might as well be "as good as windows but cheaper".
Or you could use these stats, which show 4% from browsing OSes.
You'd think this showed more desktop usage, as most people don't use a server OS (that's used for servers) to browse the web - hence the Windows 2003 server showing at 1.7%
so the number of Linux users would be out by a factor of.. 3? Its still better than the finger-in-the-air method.
Mind, you'd have to do the same for Fedora and Suse, and try to not count wipe-and-reinstalls to get better results, but that shouldn't stop them trying.
true, but an off-site backup is only ever needed if the original site disappears. Its a risk-management strategy that is surprisingly effective. I mean, if your primary and backup location both go *at the same time*, you've likely much more significant worries (like a natural disaster or war).
The biggest problem with backups (no matter where they are kept) is restoring them. That's why making a backup is useless unless you at least attempt to restore from it occasionally. The time you really don't want to find out your backups were corrupt, or you've been backing up the porn folder instead of the work one, is when you need to restore for real.
surely, if there's ever a targetted list of people who are going to actually buy penis enlargement pills and anti-ageing wrinkle cream, this is it.
that's a simplistic view of things. What does happen is that people consume less (this might be quite a surprise to you if you're an American :))
Our biggest customer is a car breakdown service, we get logs of all breakdowns and server performance etc etc, when the oil price shot up and petrol was more expensive, the number of breakdowns got significantly less, simply put people stopped driving so much.
Now, put taxes up, and everything goes up in price, but you'll find that consumers stop buying so much, and then price wars start as companies start to fight each other for the reduced number of customers. I'm not sure if the end result makes any difference in the log run, but it helps the politicans say they're doing something.
I think slashdot is far better - SO's idea of moderation is good, but does suffer from groupthink somewhat. Slashdot has similar, but at least slashdot has a better means of moderating the moderators.
OpenID, so what. if you want, go to MyOpenID and set it up for your own domain,
firstly, you'll have problems if they did that as a lot (ie nearly all) of the .NET framework is a managed wrapper over the underlying, native, Win32 or COM code that already exists. You didn't think .NET was completely new and 100% 'pure' managed did you? How naive.
Most of MS security issues are architectural, ie design issues, that will not be solved by a rewrite in .NET, you'd still have stuff like conficker or smiley central replacing icons and allowing the user to unwittingly run the virus app.
As for 'anything that needs to be added could be added quickly', lol. When would that be? service pack 1? how about a Windows update patch - you'd never be able to release anything unless all your target computers were fully patched to the absolute latest version, but even then you occasionally find updates that are not installed because they break existing things (eg many corporates still run IE6 because of broken apps on IE7).
No, if you want a brand new, completely fresh OS to work with that doesn't suffer from nearly as much "legacy crap", then you want a Mac or Linux. Sorry, but you'd get better results that way, MS releasing a .NET onyl version of Windows would be so broken (and require so much RAM and CPU) that it'd destroy their established market base.
no, not at all. I know we've all been brainwashed into the 'must upgrade' way of thinking, but for many places once you have something working, don't touch it and it'll keep working.
So, no, many places run NT4, it was quite a good OS, before MS started adding 'value added features' to it.
IPv6 killer app... how about video-on-demand phone calls that appear on your TV set?
TVs are becoming internet-enabled, if each could be addressable, then you could add a webcam and use it as a scifi-style video phone, for free calls anywhere in the world.
You could also have your ISP push programmes to your set-top box instead of you going and fetching them.
The only 'killer apps' I can think of that'd make sense are for entertainment purposes; that are your ISP refusing to connect you to the internet because they have no IPs to hand out anymore.
Start making Yahoo.com and Google.com junk with IPv4
so *that's* Microsoft's plan to get some users for their search engine!
That 6to4 support is bundling IPv6 packets and transmitting them inside an IPv4 packet. So technically, the poster is still using IPv4 with his linksys router.
I think the home router issue is the one that matters. I want IPv6, but simply cannot have it (unless I cough up lots of cash for a serious router). I think the home router manufacturers are missing something here, they just need to say they cannot release firmware updates, and that you need to buy a new router to get IPv6, which is obviously better. They then sell loads more routers.. I don't understand why they don't do this.
Mind you, a firmware update would be better for me :)