Nothing magically grants you "the ability to design large or complex software systems", no matter what degree or title you have.
All this discussion about Computer Science vs. Software Engineering vs. Programming is really about ego and will not lead to any improvement in any discipline.
"What do corporations do with profits? They use them to PAY STAFF, GIVE RAISES, purchase companies, save for bad economies (like the current one??), and return money to investors."
If you think corporations pay staff with profits, why should anyone take you seriously?
Balmer is just bluffing to see if he can stop the legislation.
I noticed the summary was not too subtle about its bias though since it threw in the word "billionaire". Would the issue by any different if Balmer was a mere millionaire?
I think it's logical to assume if the situation were that simple, corporations wouldn't spend so much money and time fighting corporate taxes. They're just not that interested in the consumer's problems.
Specifically when it comes to MS, many Slashdotters claim they don't buy MS products, so they wouldn't pay any tax anyway.
The "it" in "Accompany it with a written offer" refers to your application does it not? Those people who you're not giving "it" to, are not entitled to receive such an offer. They could, however, get that offer through people who did receive the application.
The sound of Slashdotters' infinitely broad universe of "special rules" for monopolies collapsing as anti-MS fans realize it could apply to Apple, Google, and Yahoo.
I think the problem is that you can't produce the hardware cheap enough to make Windows compatibility a non-issue. If you could buy a typical sized netbook that could just do email and browse the internet (including supporting things like flash, like it or not) nobody would care which OS it used.
There could be things in common, but the main point is that designing for one type of task and then trying to shoehorn another type of task into that design isn't a very good method.
For example, if your going to standardize the syntax and semantics of markup, an understanding of the various types of systems that are going to use it should be reflected in the design.
The problem isn't so much that HTML has too much stuff in it for documents, but rather it has too little stuff in it for web apps. A lot of boilerplate javascript is used to implement functionality that would have been built-in if the original design anticipated web apps. I'm not knocking the original designers, they just weren't designing the kind of system we need now.
Perhaps this happens because most of the discussion is focused on "getting rid of flash". If getting rid of flash is the key motivation for using it, who cares about quality?
"Dude, HTML 5 is still in the process of being finalized, and it makes a LOT of things much easier to develop."
So, is your point is that we shouldn't complain about HTML 5 because the standard isn't finished, but we can talk about how great it is because the standard.. how does that go again?
Actually, no version of HTML is really suited for "web applications" but that's how we roll anyway.
I'd love it if documents and web applications were really treated as "entirely different entities" (i.e. the only thing they'd have in common is the set of transport layers).
I'm not sure if that's really considered marketing or not. Of course, Apple's version is "Charge customers what we tell you and we'll let you sell them."
"This is not the competition for Windows we've been looking for."
Your unlikely to find an effective competitor to Windows that meets your criteria.
Google doesn't avoid using standard Java or standard Linux in Android for spurious reasons. They want to minimize resources and maximize performance in a constrained environment.
The typical consumer is oblivious to Linux standard libraries or Java portability. From a business perspective these issues are only relevant to the extent that they produce value for the consumer relative to their cost.
It's not clear that whatever benefits these internal features could bring to the table are direct enough to drive sales.
"Microsoft cheated its way into the netbook market by strongarming Asus and others into bulking up their netbooks until they were basically underpowered laptops that were barely good enough to run Windows XP."
By "strongarming", do you mean paying them? Or perhaps offering an OS that runs programs people are familiar with?
Be honest, if you could choose to get the profits from an XP-based netbook vs. the profits from a Linux-based netbook, which would you choose?
While I don't subscribe to the belief that everything Google does is smart, I'd wager they're going after the smartphone market leaders Symbian and RIM rather than 3rd or 4th place MS.
I can only guess that some people call MS a "marketing company first and foremost" because they don't want to admit that it might just produce products that a lot of people want or like.
Which is the best example of MS's excellent marketing skills? Was it the hit slogan "Where do you want to go today?" or the popular and long-running "Gates and Seinfeld" ads?
Seriously, MS spends a higher percentage on R&D than Apple and Steve Jobs has been at least an order of magnitude more effective promoting Apple than Gates or Ballmer.
It would be much more accurate to say that Apple is a marketing company than MS. That doesn't mean Apple doesn't make good products, but let's get real.
You make some good points, but don't forget the other lesson of the dot-com boom - even an unoriginal, unremarkable, unsustainable, stupid, worthless idea can make you a shitload of money if you embrace it early and don't get too greedy to get out before it explodes.
"In fact you will often see today that a job that could be handled by a 555 and a couple of caps has been replaced with an internally-clocked microcontroller..."
A 555 timer is pretty nice, but given it's poor accuracy, I don't see it as a viable alternative to a microcontroller in most cases. Do you have any examples of jobs that are being done today by a microcontroller that could use a 555 instead?
Slashdot Mirror
Nothing magically grants you "the ability to design large or complex software systems", no matter what degree or title you have.
All this discussion about Computer Science vs. Software Engineering vs. Programming is really about ego and will not lead to any improvement in any discipline.
"What do corporations do with profits? They use them to PAY STAFF, GIVE RAISES, purchase companies, save for bad economies (like the current one??), and return money to investors."
If you think corporations pay staff with profits, why should anyone take you seriously?
Balmer is just bluffing to see if he can stop the legislation.
I noticed the summary was not too subtle about its bias though since it threw in the word "billionaire". Would the issue by any different if Balmer was a mere millionaire?
I think it's logical to assume if the situation were that simple, corporations wouldn't spend so much money and time fighting corporate taxes. They're just not that interested in the consumer's problems.
Specifically when it comes to MS, many Slashdotters claim they don't buy MS products, so they wouldn't pay any tax anyway.
The "it" in "Accompany it with a written offer" refers to your application does it not? Those people who you're not giving "it" to, are not entitled to receive such an offer. They could, however, get that offer through people who did receive the application.
"The powerless HR employees ..."
Don't blame individuals for a systemic problem.
The price would be OK if it played Blu-ray Discs.
The sound of Slashdotters' infinitely broad universe of "special rules" for monopolies collapsing as anti-MS fans realize it could apply to Apple, Google, and Yahoo.
I forgot the most important part "for $99.95".
I think the problem is that you can't produce the hardware cheap enough to make Windows compatibility a non-issue. If you could buy a typical sized netbook that could just do email and browse the internet (including supporting things like flash, like it or not) nobody would care which OS it used.
No, it doesn't support browser-integrated bloatons.
You can download Opera for AmigaOS 4.1 from the Timex-Sinclair server.
There could be things in common, but the main point is that designing for one type of task and then trying to shoehorn another type of task into that design isn't a very good method.
For example, if your going to standardize the syntax and semantics of markup, an understanding of the various types of systems that are going to use it should be reflected in the design.
The problem isn't so much that HTML has too much stuff in it for documents, but rather it has too little stuff in it for web apps. A lot of boilerplate javascript is used to implement functionality that would have been built-in if the original design anticipated web apps. I'm not knocking the original designers, they just weren't designing the kind of system we need now.
Sure. We can look forward to content that is state-of-the-art garage quality.
Perhaps this happens because most of the discussion is focused on "getting rid of flash". If getting rid of flash is the key motivation for using it, who cares about quality?
"Dude, HTML 5 is still in the process of being finalized, and it makes a LOT of things much easier to develop."
So, is your point is that we shouldn't complain about HTML 5 because the standard isn't finished, but we can talk about how great it is because the standard .. how does that go again?
Actually, no version of HTML is really suited for "web applications" but that's how we roll anyway.
I'd love it if documents and web applications were really treated as "entirely different entities" (i.e. the only thing they'd have in common is the set of transport layers).
I'm not sure if that's really considered marketing or not. Of course, Apple's version is "Charge customers what we tell you and we'll let you sell them."
"This is not the competition for Windows we've been looking for."
Your unlikely to find an effective competitor to Windows that meets your criteria.
Google doesn't avoid using standard Java or standard Linux in Android for spurious reasons. They want to minimize resources and maximize performance in a constrained environment.
The typical consumer is oblivious to Linux standard libraries or Java portability. From a business perspective these issues are only relevant to the extent that they produce value for the consumer relative to their cost.
It's not clear that whatever benefits these internal features could bring to the table are direct enough to drive sales.
"Microsoft cheated its way into the netbook market by strongarming Asus and others into bulking up their netbooks until they were basically underpowered laptops that were barely good enough to run Windows XP."
By "strongarming", do you mean paying them? Or perhaps offering an OS that runs programs people are familiar with?
Be honest, if you could choose to get the profits from an XP-based netbook vs. the profits from a Linux-based netbook, which would you choose?
While I don't subscribe to the belief that everything Google does is smart, I'd wager they're going after the smartphone market leaders Symbian and RIM rather than 3rd or 4th place MS.
I can only guess that some people call MS a "marketing company first and foremost" because they don't want to admit that it might just produce products that a lot of people want or like.
Which is the best example of MS's excellent marketing skills? Was it the hit slogan "Where do you want to go today?" or the popular and long-running "Gates and Seinfeld" ads?
Seriously, MS spends a higher percentage on R&D than Apple and Steve Jobs has been at least an order of magnitude more effective promoting Apple than Gates or Ballmer.
It would be much more accurate to say that Apple is a marketing company than MS. That doesn't mean Apple doesn't make good products, but let's get real.
You make some good points, but don't forget the other lesson of the dot-com boom - even an unoriginal, unremarkable, unsustainable, stupid, worthless idea can make you a shitload of money if you embrace it early and don't get too greedy to get out before it explodes.
Hey, it's great to hear from a few people on Slashdot who actually understand real-time and don't assume it means "fast as a bunny".
"In fact you will often see today that a job that could be handled by a 555 and a couple of caps has been replaced with an internally-clocked microcontroller ..."
A 555 timer is pretty nice, but given it's poor accuracy, I don't see it as a viable alternative to a microcontroller in most cases. Do you have any examples of jobs that are being done today by a microcontroller that could use a 555 instead?