"Do you remember how they supported Java? Lots of stalling, equivocating and Windows-only Java extensions, all while promoting ActiveX over Java. Eventually, all these actions prompted a lawsuit from Sun which Sun won. After this, Microsoft totally dropped support of their JVM in a fit of spite."
Actually MS was a rather early adopter of Java. Yes, they made a JVM that ran 100% pure Java apps better on Windows than Sun's could and they added extensions to the Java language (in the form of J++) that made Java more useful to Windows programmers. Apparently the potential of capturing 90% of desktops was less important to Sun than achieving partial WORA on the remaining 10%, so Sun sued MS.
It was perfectly logical and reasonable for MS to get out of the Java business once Sun made it clear they were out for blood.
Actually, if you read this sub-thread carefully you'll notice that I'm actually citicizing WINE not ReactOS. WINE doesn't fully implement any version of the Windows API, the introduction of Vista just means it's falling further behind.
The problem is that GroupLayout that Matisse depends on isn't part of the Java SDK. So it isn't really part of Swing and using it complicates the install process. I haven't had enough experience using it to say how it compares to VS2005 but if past experience is any indication, it's probably more complicated.
"So you think that moving back to 1990s technology is a better step for Swing, since it can't solve the problem of getting a desktop application to automagically work on a cell phone?"
I'm just saying that it's ability to scale to different screen sizes and resolutions is rather limited.
Yes, those companies that went belly-up because they spent too much time getting the GUI to work can be proud that if their product had actually made it into the marketplace they could satisfy the needs of the other 5% of customers that have unusual display requirements.
On the other hand, I didn't realize that a Java app could be truly usable on my cell phone without any GUI modification because of the "fantastic dynamic resizing capabilities" of Swing. Or perhaps this capability is as overhyped as WORA.
Other than licensing fees companies like Microsoft paid, how has Java benefited Sun either? The point is that if Sun hadn't sued MS, Java may have been a much greater force on the desktop. Sun could have incorporated some of the improvements to it's official Java implementation, just as they may eventually embrace IBM's SWT.
After all, you have to use a Java IDE a lot longer to get a GUI layout right. Netbeans and Eclipse should catch up in ease of use in GUI development circa 1990 any day now.
"The "wreck McNeally created" went from startup to $18 billion on his watch -- and yeah, back down to $13 billion. As soon as you get that $13 billion company of your own going, I think you're safe to criticize McNealy for his failings. Heck, check in at two billion and we'll give you a listen."
So I guess the price tag for citicizing Gates should be an order of magnitude higher right?
"He also correctly identified Microsoft as Sun's up-and-coming competitor years before anyone else got it, and then correctly identified that the level of anti-MSFT rhetoric was causing major problems and cleaned that up, netting Sun a nice $2B in the process."
Nope. He incorrectly indentified Microsoft as Sun's competitor, and flushed millions (billions?) down the toilet trying to prove that he was better than Gates. He got lucky when MS took Java seriously rather than ignoring it, but missed the opportunity to make Java a force on the Windows desktop by suing MS over J++. The $2B is the consulation prize for failing to win on the desktop.
Wow. Even an AC is afraid that the AC "cloak" won't protect him from public humilation if he doesn't deny he used a MS product. Your anti-MS manliness has been duly noted.
I agree it's a great book although not really for C# beginners. The remarkable thing about this book is that although it is published by Microsoft Press, Jeffrey Richter (the author) points out of number of pitfalls and downright poor design decisions made in designing C# and the.NET framework. Years ago Richter wrote "Advanced Windows" which was considered the best book for serious Win32 development.
"However, the claim of people buying into the idea of MS or Google superiority without any evidence that it's true seems unsupportable to me."
I hate to see someone expend so much energy answering an argument I didn't make. The issue is the belief people have that MS or Google employees are smarter than everybody else, not that the companies are more successful than everybody else. If all we are interested in is the bottom line, we can check the financials.
"When I was at Microsoft (and this figures into why I no longer work there and am glad to be out) is that Microsoft regularly tells the world and itself that it produces the best software in the world. The propaganda beat in Redmond is unending, and I think that much of the company - and all of its senior management - truly believe this."
This sounds a lot like Google to me. The main point of Google's hiring gimmicks is to convince everyone that Google people are smarter than everybody else. Of course, if you're succesful like MS or Google, there are plenty of people who will buy into your superiority without any real evidence that it is true.
Copyright infringement occurs the instant a single illegal item is posted. The idea that it "doesn't count" if it's just a few items or if you take it down when the copyright holder asks you to, is a post-Napster fantasy. The burden of insuring YouTube is free of illegal material is 100% Google's responsiblity. If Google can't afford to prescreen material before it is posted, than they are free to shut down YouTube.
It's too bad really. Early in my career I answered an Ad for an Atari 2600 video game programmer and got the job rather easily. Video games were so new that almost nobody had any experience writing one, so we didn't have to deal with the "chicken or the egg" effect.
Of course, nothing is perfect. 95% of everyone working on video games lost their jobs in the first crash.
"They're like all the people who jumped into IT a decade ago and ruined the market and the reputation, because it went from being a place for people who enjoyed technology and were thrilled to make a living at it to people who jumped into it because they needed to feed their five kids and they heard it paid more than teaching or digging ditches."
A decade ago there were a lot of dumb business "ideas" that got funded by a lot of dumb investors. These businesses eventually failed as was inevitable. It had nothing to do with the quality of programmers. Naturally the demise of these companies resulted in a lot of out of work programmers which damaged our marketability. If you think the software industry had a good reputation before that time, you haven't been around that long. People have been whining about it for decades.
As for the 5 kids scenario is concerned, I doubt very much that many of those who entered the field were old enough to have 5 kids. The vast majority of them were probably in their early 20's.
"If Apple doesn't want to remove DRM from those files because of lock-in as you assert, how would getting rid of that lock-in make any difference to new sales, since those people won't be locked in in the first place?"
This may come as a shock to you, but there are many people out there who don't have the time or desire to rip CD's and have no interest in pirated music. They want to buy legit music and there's simply no place witht the same terms and selection as iTunes to buy it for the other players. So some of those people will buy an iPod rather than another player because of iTunes even though there are other players that offer more features for the same price.
Obviously competitors wouldn't bother complaining about lock-in if they didn't believe it was hurting them. Not because they are particularly honest or nice, but because they'd be spending their time and money on an effort that wouldn't help their bottom line.
Surely, the acceptibility of an item's cost has to be considered in light of the overall system cost. A single item with a cost of $50 on an product that retails for $100 is very high, for a item that costs more than $1000, not so much. I've seen a number of bone-headed decisions based on focusing soley on bill of materials costs instead of an overall cost/benefit analysis (e.g. not doubling the amount of RAM in an embedded system because it would increase the BOM by 1% even though it would significantly lower software risk, take months off time to market, and potentially extend the market life of the product).
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"Do you remember how they supported Java? Lots of stalling, equivocating and Windows-only Java extensions, all while promoting ActiveX over Java. Eventually, all these actions prompted a lawsuit from Sun which Sun won. After this, Microsoft totally dropped support of their JVM in a fit of spite."
Actually MS was a rather early adopter of Java. Yes, they made a JVM that ran 100% pure Java apps better on Windows than Sun's could and they added extensions to the Java language (in the form of J++) that made Java more useful to Windows programmers. Apparently the potential of capturing 90% of desktops was less important to Sun than achieving partial WORA on the remaining 10%, so Sun sued MS.
It was perfectly logical and reasonable for MS to get out of the Java business once Sun made it clear they were out for blood.
Actually, if you read this sub-thread carefully you'll notice that I'm actually citicizing WINE not ReactOS. WINE doesn't fully implement any version of the Windows API, the introduction of Vista just means it's falling further behind.
Well, Vista is one of the Windows versions these projects don't properly simulate, emulate, or whatever you want to call what they do.
A compatibility layer by any other name, would still be unable to run many Windows applications.
Well, having a product that actually does what these products claim to do might actually be helpful, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
The problem is that GroupLayout that Matisse depends on isn't part of the Java SDK. So it isn't really part of Swing and using it complicates the install process. I haven't had enough experience using it to say how it compares to VS2005 but if past experience is any indication, it's probably more complicated.
"So you think that moving back to 1990s technology is a better step for Swing, since it can't solve the problem of getting a desktop application to automagically work on a cell phone?"
I'm just saying that it's ability to scale to different screen sizes and resolutions is rather limited.
Sure, and before Swing came along nobody was ever able to run anything under any circumstances with different screen resolutions without problems.
"Every phone and high end wireless device on Earth runs a kind of Java."
.NET or LAMP.
There's Java running on analog cell phones. Amazing. And you say my wireless access point uses Java too? I wonder why that would be?
"There are millions downloaded blockbuster java apps for desktop there, enterprise totally relies on J2EE."
I'm not sure what you mean by "blockbuster" here. I know it doesn't mean popular or highly profitable. Are you talking about the video rental chain?
I think there are quite a few enterprises that are stuck with J2EE, but there are many others who have chosen other alternatives such as
Yes, those companies that went belly-up because they spent too much time getting the GUI to work can be proud that if their product had actually made it into the marketplace they could satisfy the needs of the other 5% of customers that have unusual display requirements.
On the other hand, I didn't realize that a Java app could be truly usable on my cell phone without any GUI modification because of the "fantastic dynamic resizing capabilities" of Swing. Or perhaps this capability is as overhyped as WORA.
Other than licensing fees companies like Microsoft paid, how has Java benefited Sun either? The point is that if Sun hadn't sued MS, Java may have been a much greater force on the desktop. Sun could have incorporated some of the improvements to it's official Java implementation, just as they may eventually embrace IBM's SWT.
Infringement can occur with 0 damage to the IP holder. The degree of damage is only relevent to the penalities, not to the act of infringement.
After all, you have to use a Java IDE a lot longer to get a GUI layout right. Netbeans and Eclipse should catch up in ease of use in GUI development circa 1990 any day now.
"The "wreck McNeally created" went from startup to $18 billion on his watch -- and yeah, back down to $13 billion. As soon as you get that $13 billion company of your own going, I think you're safe to criticize McNealy for his failings. Heck, check in at two billion and we'll give you a listen."
So I guess the price tag for citicizing Gates should be an order of magnitude higher right?
"He also correctly identified Microsoft as Sun's up-and-coming competitor years before anyone else got it, and then correctly identified that the level of anti-MSFT rhetoric was causing major problems and cleaned that up, netting Sun a nice $2B in the process."
Nope. He incorrectly indentified Microsoft as Sun's competitor, and flushed millions (billions?) down the toilet trying to prove that he was better than Gates. He got lucky when MS took Java seriously rather than ignoring it, but missed the opportunity to make Java a force on the Windows desktop by suing MS over J++. The $2B is the consulation prize for failing to win on the desktop.
"I don't use MS crap, but .."
Wow. Even an AC is afraid that the AC "cloak" won't protect him from public humilation if he doesn't deny he used a MS product. Your anti-MS manliness has been duly noted.
I agree it's a great book although not really for C# beginners. The remarkable thing about this book is that although it is published by Microsoft Press, Jeffrey Richter (the author) points out of number of pitfalls and downright poor design decisions made in designing C# and the .NET framework. Years ago Richter wrote "Advanced Windows" which was considered the best book for serious Win32 development.
"However, the claim of people buying into the idea of MS or Google superiority without any evidence that it's true seems unsupportable to me."
I hate to see someone expend so much energy answering an argument I didn't make. The issue is the belief people have that MS or Google employees are smarter than everybody else, not that the companies are more successful than everybody else. If all we are interested in is the bottom line, we can check the financials.
"When I was at Microsoft (and this figures into why I no longer work there and am glad to be out) is that Microsoft regularly tells the world and itself that it produces the best software in the world. The propaganda beat in Redmond is unending, and I think that much of the company - and all of its senior management - truly believe this."
This sounds a lot like Google to me. The main point of Google's hiring gimmicks is to convince everyone that Google people are smarter than everybody else. Of course, if you're succesful like MS or Google, there are plenty of people who will buy into your superiority without any real evidence that it is true.
Copyright infringement occurs the instant a single illegal item is posted. The idea that it "doesn't count" if it's just a few items or if you take it down when the copyright holder asks you to, is a post-Napster fantasy. The burden of insuring YouTube is free of illegal material is 100% Google's responsiblity. If Google can't afford to prescreen material before it is posted, than they are free to shut down YouTube.
"I think it's too early to call this one, as we don't have all the details."
If there's some doubt that Viacom's copyrighted material is on YouTube, then you're right. If not, I don't see what relevent details are missing.
The last line on Google's website says this: "©2007 Google"
If Google believes in copyright, I won't dispute it.
It's too bad really. Early in my career I answered an Ad for an Atari 2600 video game programmer and got the job rather easily. Video games were so new that almost nobody had any experience writing one, so we didn't have to deal with the "chicken or the egg" effect.
Of course, nothing is perfect. 95% of everyone working on video games lost their jobs in the first crash.
"They're like all the people who jumped into IT a decade ago and ruined the market and the reputation, because it went from being a place for people who enjoyed technology and were thrilled to make a living at it to people who jumped into it because they needed to feed their five kids and they heard it paid more than teaching or digging ditches."
A decade ago there were a lot of dumb business "ideas" that got funded by a lot of dumb investors. These businesses eventually failed as was inevitable. It had nothing to do with the quality of programmers. Naturally the demise of these companies resulted in a lot of out of work programmers which damaged our marketability. If you think the software industry had a good reputation before that time, you haven't been around that long. People have been whining about it for decades.
As for the 5 kids scenario is concerned, I doubt very much that many of those who entered the field were old enough to have 5 kids. The vast majority of them were probably in their early 20's.
"If Apple doesn't want to remove DRM from those files because of lock-in as you assert, how would getting rid of that lock-in make any difference to new sales, since those people won't be locked in in the first place?"
This may come as a shock to you, but there are many people out there who don't have the time or desire to rip CD's and have no interest in pirated music. They want to buy legit music and there's simply no place witht the same terms and selection as iTunes to buy it for the other players. So some of those people will buy an iPod rather than another player because of iTunes even though there are other players that offer more features for the same price.
Obviously competitors wouldn't bother complaining about lock-in if they didn't believe it was hurting them. Not because they are particularly honest or nice, but because they'd be spending their time and money on an effort that wouldn't help their bottom line.
Surely, the acceptibility of an item's cost has to be considered in light of the overall system cost. A single item with a cost of $50 on an product that retails for $100 is very high, for a item that costs more than $1000, not so much. I've seen a number of bone-headed decisions based on focusing soley on bill of materials costs instead of an overall cost/benefit analysis (e.g. not doubling the amount of RAM in an embedded system because it would increase the BOM by 1% even though it would significantly lower software risk, take months off time to market, and potentially extend the market life of the product).