It depends on your definition of "thriving". Without Wintel (or some other standard platform), most of us couldn't even afford a computer.
Obviously Crays and Connection Machines were never going to be home computers.
Although the design legacy of the x86 still sucks today, their really isn't a microprocessor significantly faster. Also keep in mind that Windows NT ran on the Alpha as well as x86 and the marketplace couldn't care less.
There's still no definitive evidence that there's a viable business model in an open source, software only company.
Most profitable "open source" companies are in the closed hardware business and just use Linux inside.
It's still an open question whether traditional companies who buy open source companies like MySQL will ever see their investment pay off. What is the balance sheet for Sun with respect to Star/Open Office?
If you had inside information that MS was going to make all their products open source, that would be a great time to sell the stock short.
Vunerabilities aren't defects unless the behavior of the application is inconsistent with it's requirements.
In any case, the solution isn't likely to be found in rewarding or punishing developers, but rather making security part of the requirements and providing enough development and testing time to insure that the software is secure.
Generally the market drives the process rather than software quality.
I wonder if part of MS's motivation was to distract the F/OSS community from real progress by getting them all excited by this meaningless issue. Do you remember the predictions that MS was going to control the Internet if Netscape didn't prevail? Has that happened yet?
Well, look at it this way: who made the key contributions to Linux? Linus and the pre-Red Hat developers or RedHat? The fact is that Red Hat would not exist without the work of others and Red Hat has profited out of proportion to their contributions.
Actually Apple got NeXT for free. They paid $400 million for the service contract with Jobs. He could have sold them NeXT-branded T-shirts and Mugs instead, but they didn't have enough storage space for $400 million worth of them.
So let me get this straight: because some of the people who switched to the Mac did so after getting your and your friends' advice you conclude that most people who bought Macs did so because the people they asked advice from had the same opinion as yours?
It sounds to me like the "technologically elite" aren't part of the "logically elite".
Well, you said "you don't need to learn a new language". Did you assume that all the readers of the comment were javascript or python programmers? There are plenty of companies with software engineers that don't know either of those languages (or VBA for that matter).
I think it was more like Apple bought Jobs for 400 million dollars. Being able to pretend that NeXT was successful was the price Jobs demanded from Apple.
Actually the time between the introduction of the Mac and Jobs departure, Apple wasn't all that successful. It was his second coming that led to Apple's first big financial success following the Apple II. In any case, I wasn't talking about Apple's success as a function of Jobs overall performance, but rather about the claim that his being a jerk was the cause for Apple's success. What about Next? Wasn't he enough of a jerk there to be successful?
"It's not new, but OpenOffice.org macros and scripting support both Javascript and Python. So, you don't need to learn a separate language just for macros."
Sure because it's a known fact that VBA programmers are also experts in Javascript and Python.
You can have vision and have the force of personality to see it through without being aggressive and dictatorial. Anyway, this is really a Post hoc ergo propter hoc argument anyway. It's quite possible that Jobs and Apple have been successful in spite of Jobs abrasive personality rather than because of it.
By the time OEMs were bundling Works with Windows, the game was already over. Prior to that time WordPerfect was the leading Word Processor so Word's file formats had nothing to do with it.
WordPerfect was designed from the ground up to be a non-GUI application. The fact that the product presented you with a blank sheet uncluttered by menus (until very late versions) was a bragging point. It was a very efficient interface for those who spent hours day after day using it. In other words it was great for the secretarial business model (that's why it's still effective for law offices). Unfortunately for WordPerfect, this model was in decline. The new market was for people who didn't use a word processor all day and just wanted to get up to speed quickly.
Actually, WordPerfect Corporation was dead set against creating a Windows version for a long time. When they finally did so reluctantly, it was a half-assed job. Of course, the silliest part of this suit is that WordPerfect and Quatro were already failing products before Novell bought them. Otherwise WordPerfect Corp and Borland wouldn't have sold them to Novell in the first place.
I'd say being cautious and being clever are orthogonal. I "hacked" (in the classic sense) the Atari 2600 many years ago (given the primitive hardware, almost all 2600 programmers were hackers) that shouldn't lead to any conclusions about how well I protect my computer.
Every time somebody mentions being unable to run their favorite application on Linux, there are plenty of Slashdotters claiming that Wine is the answer. Apparently Google doesn't think so.
Wine is really a project that attempts to get specific Windows apps to run on Linux, it isn't a full Windows "emulator/simulator/whatever" and was never intended to be.
Re:when all you have is a hammer...
on
The Future of XML
·
· Score: 1
"That's the problem with XML. We have all these wonderful XML tools, so the solution to everything looks like XML."
That sounds like the problem with ASCII as well. Yet, the availability of tools is a legitimate factor to consider when chosing a technology.
The idea that MS was going to control the Internet because of their desktop market share or IE usage has already been shown to be false. In fact, the more general idea - that the company who had the dominant market share in browsers was going to control the Internet was flawed. The idea that the company that has the greatest market share in search is going to control the Internet is equally flawed.
"A lot of people have faith in Sergey Brin's corporate motto. The creation of class B stock at Google, which gives Sergey and Larry ten votes for every share, ensures that they will be able to keep Google from being corrupted, so long as they themselves remain uncorrupt."
Thanks for giving us an authoritative finding that Sergey and Larry aren't corrupt yet. How else would the rest of us know, if not for you?
Slashdot Mirror
"Microsoft needs to hire new employees if it wants to stay relevant, and it competes with the likes of Google and others for these new hires."
Stay relevant to what or whom?
"It also happens that probably the very best college candidates are the ones that have contributed to open source projects."
What do you base this on?
"Remember, the user experience is irrelevant to management, it's all about lock-in and unfair competition."
Sure, all the money they spent on usability studies for Windows 95 was just for show.
"If it was about making a better product, Vista would still be in development."
And you'd be saying that Vista was vaporware.
It depends on your definition of "thriving". Without Wintel (or some other standard platform), most of us couldn't even afford a computer.
Obviously Crays and Connection Machines were never going to be home computers.
Although the design legacy of the x86 still sucks today, their really isn't a microprocessor significantly faster. Also keep in mind that Windows NT ran on the Alpha as well as x86 and the marketplace couldn't care less.
That's Internet Bubble talk.
There's still no definitive evidence that there's a viable business model in an open source, software only company.
Most profitable "open source" companies are in the closed hardware business and just use Linux inside.
It's still an open question whether traditional companies who buy open source companies like MySQL will ever see their investment pay off. What is the balance sheet for Sun with respect to Star/Open Office?
If you had inside information that MS was going to make all their products open source, that would be a great time to sell the stock short.
Redefining something rarely changes anyone's behavior.
Vunerabilities aren't defects unless the behavior of the application is inconsistent with it's requirements.
In any case, the solution isn't likely to be found in rewarding or punishing developers, but rather making security part of the requirements and providing enough development and testing time to insure that the software is secure.
Generally the market drives the process rather than software quality.
It should be called FrackYou_Conversion. On our compiler it "converted" an 8 bit value to a 16 bit value by just grabbing the next byte.
So you could end up with 256 different conversions depending on where in memory you code is located.
I wonder if part of MS's motivation was to distract the F/OSS community from real progress by getting them all excited by this meaningless issue. Do you remember the predictions that MS was going to control the Internet if Netscape didn't prevail? Has that happened yet?
Well, look at it this way: who made the key contributions to Linux? Linus and the pre-Red Hat developers or RedHat? The fact is that Red Hat would not exist without the work of others and Red Hat has profited out of proportion to their contributions.
We've made lots of money selling other people's free work and we would like to make more money buy selling other stuff we didn't pay for.
Actually Apple got NeXT for free. They paid $400 million for the service contract with Jobs. He could have sold them NeXT-branded T-shirts and Mugs instead, but they didn't have enough storage space for $400 million worth of them.
So let me get this straight: because some of the people who switched to the Mac did so after getting your and your friends' advice you conclude that most people who bought Macs did so because the people they asked advice from had the same opinion as yours?
It sounds to me like the "technologically elite" aren't part of the "logically elite".
Well, you said "you don't need to learn a new language". Did you assume that all the readers of the comment were javascript or python programmers? There are plenty of companies with software engineers that don't know either of those languages (or VBA for that matter).
I think it was more like Apple bought Jobs for 400 million dollars. Being able to pretend that NeXT was successful was the price Jobs demanded from Apple.
Actually the time between the introduction of the Mac and Jobs departure, Apple wasn't all that successful. It was his second coming that led to Apple's first big financial success following the Apple II. In any case, I wasn't talking about Apple's success as a function of Jobs overall performance, but rather about the claim that his being a jerk was the cause for Apple's success. What about Next? Wasn't he enough of a jerk there to be successful?
"It's not new, but OpenOffice.org macros and scripting support both Javascript and Python. So, you don't need to learn a separate language just for macros."
Sure because it's a known fact that VBA programmers are also experts in Javascript and Python.
You can have vision and have the force of personality to see it through without being aggressive and dictatorial. Anyway, this is really a Post hoc ergo propter hoc argument anyway. It's quite possible that Jobs and Apple have been successful in spite of Jobs abrasive personality rather than because of it.
MS Works isn't a trial version of anything.
By the time OEMs were bundling Works with Windows, the game was already over. Prior to that time WordPerfect was the leading Word Processor so Word's file formats had nothing to do with it.
WordPerfect was designed from the ground up to be a non-GUI application. The fact that the product presented you with a blank sheet uncluttered by menus (until very late versions) was a bragging point. It was a very efficient interface for those who spent hours day after day using it. In other words it was great for the secretarial business model (that's why it's still effective for law offices). Unfortunately for WordPerfect, this model was in decline. The new market was for people who didn't use a word processor all day and just wanted to get up to speed quickly.
Actually, WordPerfect Corporation was dead set against creating a Windows version for a long time. When they finally did so reluctantly, it was a half-assed job. Of course, the silliest part of this suit is that WordPerfect and Quatro were already failing products before Novell bought them. Otherwise WordPerfect Corp and Borland wouldn't have sold them to Novell in the first place.
Is PJ writing this based on her expertise as a non-lawyer or her expertise as a non-programmer?
I'd say being cautious and being clever are orthogonal. I "hacked" (in the classic sense) the Atari 2600 many years ago (given the primitive hardware, almost all 2600 programmers were hackers) that shouldn't lead to any conclusions about how well I protect my computer.
Every time somebody mentions being unable to run their favorite application on Linux, there are plenty of Slashdotters claiming that Wine is the answer. Apparently Google doesn't think so.
Wine is really a project that attempts to get specific Windows apps to run on Linux, it isn't a full Windows "emulator/simulator/whatever" and was never intended to be.
"That's the problem with XML. We have all these wonderful XML tools, so the solution to everything looks like XML."
That sounds like the problem with ASCII as well. Yet, the availability of tools is a legitimate factor to consider when chosing a technology.
The idea that MS was going to control the Internet because of their desktop market share or IE usage has already been shown to be false. In fact, the more general idea - that the company who had the dominant market share in browsers was going to control the Internet was flawed. The idea that the company that has the greatest market share in search is going to control the Internet is equally flawed.
"A lot of people have faith in Sergey Brin's corporate motto. The creation of class B stock at Google, which gives Sergey and Larry ten votes for every share, ensures that they will be able to keep Google from being corrupted, so long as they themselves remain uncorrupt."
Thanks for giving us an authoritative finding that Sergey and Larry aren't corrupt yet. How else would the rest of us know, if not for you?