Video games made more money then Hollywood way back in the early 80's. The fact that the video game market crashed shortly thereafter should put this in perspective.
"all the millions of Windows users that are fed up with an unstable operating system"
Windows NT/2000/XP are not unstable, so you must be referring to the long obsolete Windows 9x series.
Those that are still using Windows 9x today are either not particularly concerned about system stability or don't have a system capable of supporting contemporary versions of Windows or Linux.
"Let's face it folks, the crazy days of "dot.com" when you got a fat sign-on bonus and a sportscar and insane benefits/packages were not a sustainable real world."
Of course the "sports car" scenario is more myth than reality. People thought that all video game programmers in the early 80's were raking it in too.
"Now things are seeming to come on track again with realistic remuneration and a desire for good programmers."
Nobody should assume that being a "good programmer" will protect them. Until there's a turnaround in the market, you should be positioning yourself for your next job because you may need one tomorrow.
Yes, we all understand the difference between an abusing and non-abusing monopoly.
If you read my posts carefully you'll note that I haven't claimed that Apple is any kind of monopoly just that declaration by a court is not necessary for a monopoly to exist, just for a monopoly to be punished.
I agree. The point is that the fact that Apple or TicketMaster has not been found a "legal" monopoly doesn't mean it isn't one. You have to be commonly considered a monopoly or no legal proceedings would ever be started against you.
"No. Not really. This is not Microsoft. Apple has not been declared a monopoly in any market (even if they were, it would only restrict how they enter NEW markets)."
Well, by that measure Microsoft was not Microsoft until they were declared a monopoly a couple of years ago in court. Ticketmaster hasn't been declared a monopoly; do you doubt that it is one?
For most proprietary software, the source is not available. So when contemplating this study the authors should have realized that it couldn't possibly be valid and decided to go do something else. The fact that they went ahead anyway, is a strong indication of their lack of dedication to scientific principles.
I assume that the IT managers are referring to Intranet applications rather than Internet applications. I have little sympathy for anyone who would build an Internet application and not test it on more than one browser. Not even MS has encouraged IE-only applications in the last few years.
"The only reason that Microsoft doesn't have a credible proprietary client+server web development platform yet is that they're so damn late with Longhorn."
Actually MS has been going in the opposite direction for some time. ASP.NET's goals are to move most of the activity on the server and encourage code resuse there. There's very little IE-specific functionality, with the exception of smart navigation.
"On the other hand, in some corners, it is all about market share, so you have to pander to the lowest common denominator"
Well, I think it's about communication commercial or otherwise. Historically, forcing people to do things a particular way hasn't been terribly effective. Perhaps if HTML and JavaScript had been compiled and the philosophy of "anybody can create a web page with a simple text editor" had been avoided, these problems would not exist. If you encourage non-technical people to create web pages, you're not going to get professional results.
I guess the developers of FireFox decided that strict compliance with standards was more important than compatablity with existing pages. Letting your customers view pages as intended even though they were developed by sloppy designers would be considered a virtue in some circles.
Sounds like my conjecture of FireFox taking over may be even more hypothetical than I thought.
This is really the same old argument. Everything from Lotus Notes, Java, Netscape, thin clients and Eclipse were supposed to make Windows irrelevant. It may happen some day, but so called OS-independent platforms have been around along time, and they're not enough.
"IE is also full of extended technology and features that almost nobody uses except for the hardcore base of Micrsoft developers (VB/Internal types mainly). Stuff like Vector Markup Language, HTML animations, scriptlets, etc. Once given, this stuff can't be taken away."
I guess the question is how much of this stuff is used by pages that are meant to be viewed by average users. There are very few serious sites that work only for IE, in most cases, you just get degraded presentation. For example, I have no problem viewing MSN.com, MSNBC.com, or microsoft.com in FireFox. Even if the world switched to Firefox, one could always use IE for Intranet Applications if people wanted to.
"In a sense MS did take over the internet. The biggest hurdle for many people switching to FF or another non-IE browser is sites that were built only to work in IE."
I think that's really just another way of saying that they have the dominant browser.
Remember the days of the browser wars when so many people warned that if IE became the dominant browser MS would take over the Internet. Well it did and they didn't.
Other then ASP.Net's smart navigation feature, MS would lose very little if everybody switched to Firefox.
Well, I already corrected that part of my post about "inventing" before you commented.
You're wrong about the PC specs, the minimum RAM configuration was 16K not 64K. There was 40K of ROM and no floppies.
The PDP-7 that Unix first ran on had 8K of RAM (perhaps 8K by 18? it was an 18 bit machine) and nearly a megabyte of hard disk. So the overall storage resources were about an order of magnitude grater than the PC. The PDP-8 you mentioned also had a much greater storage capacity then the basic PC.
I went too far when I said that "lean and mean" was invented by PC software writers and embedded software writers. I'm sure there has always been "lean and mean" code particularly in the days before conventional OS's were used.
My main point is that Mainframe/Mini-born OS's were not particularly known for being "lean and mean" and were a lot "fatter" than the early PC OS's.
"I would always argue that ms have actually held the industry BACK 10~20 years against their - insert drooling marketing words here - spiel."
I would argue that without MS (or someone else like them) the industry would already by BACK 10 ~20 years. The only reason that we are as far as we are is because MS (with the unwitting help of IBM) allowed the PC clone business to flourish which allowed ordinary people to own computers.
We can debate technical merits endlessly, but the fact is that business considerations are at least as important to the development of the computer industry as technical achievements.
"Without ms we would still have had lean and mean software"
DOS 1.0 was certainly not a great OS, but you could hardly make the case that any version of Unix at that time was leaner. PC hardware had to get a lot "fatter" before any version of Unix could run reliably on it. The fact is that PC software writers (along with embedded ones) invented "lean and mean" and the Mainframe/Mini-born OS's have only gotten fatter over time.
"So that they can save money on maintenanace, of course"
In your example, you've made some tweaks to software that was largely written by others, so your release of modified code has little impact on competitors who could get most of the functionality without your help. There's a lot of code, however, that doesn't fall in to this class.
"The idea that the economics of the programming profession aren't going to change dramatically anyhow is pretty damn hard to believe, too."
Interesting, but not relevent to my argument.
"but I'm part of the solution, thank you much, and screw 'yall if you can't keep up"
I don't know if the major problem of the profession is "expensive maintenance of internal infrastructure code" or not (perhaps because I've never been involved in "internal infrastructure" development), but don't you have to be ahead before the others need to catch up?
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Video games made more money then Hollywood way back in the early 80's. The fact that the video game market crashed shortly thereafter should put this in perspective.
"No Linux viruses in 2005"
Hey, when you return from 2005, can you tell me who wins the SuperBowl? I'd like to make some bets.
"all the millions of Windows users that are fed up with an unstable operating system"
Windows NT/2000/XP are not unstable, so you must be referring to the long obsolete Windows 9x series.
Those that are still using Windows 9x today are either not particularly concerned about system stability or don't have a system capable of supporting contemporary versions of Windows or Linux.
"Let's face it folks, the crazy days of "dot.com" when you got a fat sign-on bonus and a sportscar and insane benefits/packages were not a sustainable real world."
Of course the "sports car" scenario is more myth than reality. People thought that all video game programmers in the early 80's were raking it in too.
"Now things are seeming to come on track again with realistic remuneration and a desire for good programmers."
Nobody should assume that being a "good programmer" will protect them. Until there's a turnaround in the market, you should be positioning yourself for your next job because you may need one tomorrow.
"It's like when Microsoft tried to sell Windows NT for Alpha."
Well, the problem there was demand for the Alpha, not for Windows. Windows just delayed Alpha's demise a bit.
Well, those are some interesting opinions. Too bad they have nothing whatsoever to do with my post.
Yes, we all understand the difference between an abusing and non-abusing monopoly.
If you read my posts carefully you'll note that I haven't claimed that Apple is any kind of monopoly just that declaration by a court is not necessary for a monopoly to exist, just for a monopoly to be punished.
I agree. The point is that the fact that Apple or TicketMaster has not been found a "legal" monopoly doesn't mean it isn't one. You have to be commonly considered a monopoly or no legal proceedings would ever be started against you.
"No. Not really. This is not Microsoft. Apple has not been declared a monopoly in any market (even if they were, it would only restrict how they enter NEW markets)."
Well, by that measure Microsoft was not Microsoft until they were declared a monopoly a couple of years ago in court. Ticketmaster hasn't been declared a monopoly; do you doubt that it is one?
Where do these numbers come from? Are they supposed to be universal constants? This sounds a lot like a stock market get rich formula to me.
For most proprietary software, the source is not available. So when contemplating this study the authors should have realized that it couldn't possibly be valid and decided to go do something else. The fact that they went ahead anyway, is a strong indication of their lack of dedication to scientific principles.
I assume that the IT managers are referring to Intranet applications rather than Internet applications. I have little sympathy for anyone who would build an Internet application and not test it on more than one browser. Not even MS has encouraged IE-only applications in the last few years.
"The only reason that Microsoft doesn't have a credible proprietary client+server web development platform yet is that they're so damn late with Longhorn."
Actually MS has been going in the opposite direction for some time. ASP.NET's goals are to move most of the activity on the server and encourage code resuse there. There's very little IE-specific functionality, with the exception of smart navigation.
"On the other hand, in some corners, it is all about market share, so you have to pander to the lowest common denominator"
Well, I think it's about communication commercial or otherwise. Historically, forcing people to do things a particular way hasn't been terribly effective. Perhaps if HTML and JavaScript had been compiled and the philosophy of "anybody can create a web page with a simple text editor" had been avoided, these problems would not exist. If you encourage non-technical people to create web pages, you're not going to get professional results.
I guess the developers of FireFox decided that strict compliance with standards was more important than compatablity with existing pages. Letting your customers view pages as intended even though they were developed by sloppy designers would be considered a virtue in some circles.
Sounds like my conjecture of FireFox taking over may be even more hypothetical than I thought.
Your assuming that people who have visited MSN for years are going to stop just because it's not automatically the home page.
Also MS's revenue from advertising is not a significant share of their income.
This is really the same old argument. Everything from Lotus Notes, Java, Netscape, thin clients and Eclipse were supposed to make Windows irrelevant. It may happen some day, but so called OS-independent platforms have been around along time, and they're not enough.
Actually, everyone was already breaking the standards when they targeted Netscape.
"IE is also full of extended technology and features that almost nobody uses except for the hardcore base of Micrsoft developers (VB/Internal types mainly). Stuff like Vector Markup Language, HTML animations, scriptlets, etc. Once given, this stuff can't be taken away."
I guess the question is how much of this stuff is used by pages that are meant to be viewed by average users. There are very few serious sites that work only for IE, in most cases, you just get degraded presentation. For example, I have no problem viewing MSN.com, MSNBC.com, or microsoft.com in FireFox. Even if the world switched to Firefox, one could always use IE for Intranet Applications if people wanted to.
"In a sense MS did take over the internet. The biggest hurdle for many people switching to FF or another non-IE browser is sites that were built only to work in IE."
I think that's really just another way of saying that they have the dominant browser.
Remember the days of the browser wars when so many people warned that if IE became the dominant browser MS would take over the Internet. Well it did and they didn't.
Other then ASP.Net's smart navigation feature, MS would lose very little if everybody switched to Firefox.
Well, I already corrected that part of my post about "inventing" before you commented.
You're wrong about the PC specs, the minimum RAM configuration was 16K not 64K. There was 40K of ROM and no floppies.
The PDP-7 that Unix first ran on had 8K of RAM (perhaps 8K by 18? it was an 18 bit machine) and nearly a megabyte of hard disk. So the overall storage resources were about an order of magnitude grater than the PC. The PDP-8 you mentioned also had a much greater storage capacity then the basic PC.
I'm replying to my own post to make a correction.
I went too far when I said that "lean and mean" was invented by PC software writers and embedded software writers. I'm sure there has always been "lean and mean" code particularly in the days before conventional OS's were used.
My main point is that Mainframe/Mini-born OS's were not particularly known for being "lean and mean" and were a lot "fatter" than the early PC OS's.
"I would always argue that ms have actually held the industry BACK 10~20 years against their - insert drooling marketing words here - spiel."
I would argue that without MS (or someone else like them) the industry would already by BACK 10
~20 years. The only reason that we are as far as we are is because MS (with the unwitting help of IBM) allowed the PC clone business to flourish which allowed ordinary people to own computers.
We can debate technical merits endlessly, but the fact is that business considerations are at least as important to the development of the computer industry as technical achievements.
"Without ms we would still have had lean and mean software"
DOS 1.0 was certainly not a great OS, but you could hardly make the case that any version of Unix at that time was leaner. PC hardware had to get a lot "fatter" before any version of Unix could run reliably on it. The fact is that PC software writers (along with embedded ones) invented "lean and mean" and the Mainframe/Mini-born OS's have only gotten fatter over time.
"Beating" your child to the point of abuse is not acceptable, but spanking is not child abuse unless you're some hippy freak."
So if you're going to spank your child, better lose the love beads or you might go to jail.
"So that they can save money on maintenanace, of course"
In your example, you've made some tweaks to software that was largely written by others, so your release of modified code has little impact on competitors who could get most of the functionality without your help. There's a lot of code, however, that doesn't fall in to this class.
"The idea that the economics of the programming profession aren't going to change dramatically anyhow is pretty damn hard to believe, too."
Interesting, but not relevent to my argument.
"but I'm part of the solution, thank you much, and screw 'yall if you can't keep up"
I don't know if the major problem of the profession is "expensive maintenance of internal infrastructure code" or not (perhaps because I've never been involved in "internal infrastructure" development), but don't you have to be ahead before the others need to catch up?