Your post is well thought out, but I must disagree with your stance on the economy. I believe history will show his handling of the economy was just short of brilliant - not to mention gutsy considering the politics of it. I think his bold and aggressive moves made a big difference in the shallowness and relatively short period of this market correction. I honestly believe we could have had another Great Depresssion and his moves helped in the prevention of it. Deficits are easy to erase when the economy recovers and a recovering economy with a large deficit is vastly preferable to a plummeting economy with a small deficit which quickly becomes a large deficit as well.
The test of Bush's legacy will be whether he follows through and cuts the spending as quickly as he can as the economy recovers. Governments, both Republican and Democrat have great difficulty doing that, but Bush has repeatedly shown he's more interested in doing the right thing than being popular. Truly the epitome of a great leader.
As for turning differently than the rest of the world . . . well, if you want to argue results . . . I think we're in pretty good shape over the last 200 years of being as little like the rest of the world as we can. We weren't exactly popular at any point in history except with the weak countries when there was a big bully to scare them into feigning friendship with us so I don't think we have much to worry about there.
I respect your point of view except on your critical thinking tangent which I think is a little silly. It's tempting to disparage others who happen to disagree with you, but a mulitiple choice exit poll question doesn't really some up the complex balance of values that go into making a voting decision, does it?
I absolutely agree with you that there were many reasons to vote against George Bush. My post's main point was responding to the previous post's rather poor analysis of the reasoning behind his victory. It just isn't that simple.
For instance, I happen to disagree with you about Bush's handling of the economy. I believe his handling of the economy was just short of brilliant (and undeniably gutsy) and I believe history will side with me. I think his bold and aggressive moves made a big difference in the shallowness and relatively short period of this market correction. I honestly believe we could have had another Great Depresssion and his moves helped in the prevention of it. But hey, I've been wrong many times before and I'm willing to admit that I could be very very wrong. However, my opinion, right or wrong has nothing to do with not understanding concepts or symbolism and I think you should recognize that my disagreement with you says very little about my intelligence or that of others like me.
Most Americans *want* the US to be better off than it is now. And as you said, America has decided we don't need a change in order to get there. I don't believe it's from lack of understanding that they reached this conclusion.
They do love it and they should. It's good for the American economy to outsource low paying jobs to other countries, thus creating high paying jobs here. The Democrats know this just as well as the Republicans do and that's why we have NAFTA, etc. They may not like to admit it because of union affiliations, but no one, even Kerry (if you look at his real positions, not the ones he shouted for the camera once he was running for President), denies that outsourcing is a good thing.
Perhaps you should rethink your analysis a little. Some southern states are known to vote based upon their beliefs on abortion, etc., but by your analysis Bush would be the overwhelming favorite considering the United States is overwhelmingly Christian and overwhelminging against gay marriage.
On jobs I think you're seeing that not everyone blames Bush and in fact many are thankful of his actions. I think it would be difficult to rationally blame Bush for any significant loss of jobs in the United States. You could very much claim he hasn't done enough to recover them quickly enough, but the loss was clearly beyond the control of any mere president.
Just because the country's voting is very polar doesn't mean you have to see the candidates that way. In reality Bush and Kerry are not all that dissimilar on most issues including the economy, gay marriage and the issues in Iraq.
This is essentially what they do at TopCoder all the time. It's a neat way to show off your skills and make a little money on the coding side and a discounted development cost for the company. Pretty slick idea.
Thanks for this post. No matter what your coding background, if you can't appreciate the sheer beauty of the way.NET works and what it has done and is doing for development, then you're either a blinded zealot or someone who needs to give it a try. It's not the answer for everything, but what is? Not admitting what a great accomplishment it is (marketing failures aside) is pure bias.
I'd mod you up if I was a moderator today. Thanks for this post..NET is the biggest improvement in coding technology since we went OO IMHO. Admittedly, MS has done a poor job of explaining it to the masses, but ANY programmer should realize within a few minutes of using it that it does everything Java was supposed to do, but failed at and a lot more. It is the tits right now. And the 2.0 spec is even better.
I think you're being a little too technical here. The analogy may not be perfect, but it gets the point across. What the court will be looking at is the program itself, not the code it is written in. So we said the same thing. Just with different words.
So what if it's written in different code? I can play pop songs on a trombone and record it. It's still the same song and it's still infringement.
Copyrighting an idea is wrong, but that's not what the question is here. This is an example of determining whether both products implement the idea in a close enough way to be infringement and code is completely irrelevant to that discussion.
Yes, all of them. I like the idea of modding certain things up because they are particularly interesting, but modding things down is a little too close to censorship for me. Sure, the Goat.se is an obvious troll, but if everyone spent their 5 points modding up instead of down, the same purpose would be served as the trolls would be drowned out by the higher rated posts.
The problem I see right now is that if one group outnumbers another group then not only do that group's posts get modded higher, but the other groups get modded down which puts alternative but no less valid ideas down in the gutter with the trolls. I would get rid of the +5 cap also. Let the good (or at least interesting) ideas soar.
Wow. I can't disagree more, but I guess everyone has their own opinion. I have hit no bugs and works like a dream for ASP.NET or desktop C#. Sweet tool, though it could definitely be improved upon.
Presumably because they want to recover at least some of their development costs. I was never that impressed with VS6, but the.NET platform is pretty darn nice and obviously many many development hours went into it. And they *did* lose money on VS6. Since M$ is a publicly traded company you can go look it up in their financials. Since they keep supporting it and came out with a new version, the only reasonable conclusion is that they are willing to take a loss on development tools to push the platform which is where they make all their money (besides what they bring in from Office).
Microsoft has never made money on its development tools and I don't think they're betting they will now so there would be little reason to pull the leash on C# development tools and the language itself. C#'s purpose is to sell Windows Server 2003 and the other.NET servers as well. If you use Linux to write C# for a Windows server, that's a happy day for M$. Now, running.aspx pages on a non-Windows-based server on the other hand . . .
Yes, if the Internet and connectivity has done anything, it has reduced the response times in the world. News breaks in China and people in Podunk USA know about it hours later. Give me my security and stability patches via Internet and let me burn them to a CD if that's how I want it.
I don't see why distributing a CD would be any different from using Windows Update and I DO receive update CD's from M$ every month right now . ..
As for dealing directly with their customers, I'm not sure of the answer, but I don't think it's a big deal. When my car breaks down, I don't go to GM and ask them to fix it, I go to a mechanic or the dealer who sold it to me. If my Playstation stops working I take it back to Wal-Mart to return it, not Sony. So what's the big deal?
"Since the inception...", but it doesn't say "Because of..." and that's the difference. He's saying that Windows Update has failed to protect those computers, not that it caused a problem. It doesn't say how many millions of computers *didn't* get infected because of Windows Update, so it's not really a very fair argument. It only shows one side.
I agree with you on the false positive scenario except that you've left out the most likely case without Windows Update, a nothing, because without Windows Update right there quick and easy to use, most people just wouldn't check at all.
So I stand by my first statement. It's better than nothing.
It's been proven time and time again that people don't patch their systems by hand. Windows Update is at least a step in the right direction, even if it does have some flaws. I can only imagine the outcry if M$ DIDN'T have a Windows Update. It would be an evil scheme or something.
Iowa is the holy grail of Internet connectivity. Most towns of over 10,000 people in Iowa have cheap broadband via DSL, cable-modem and fixed wireless. For Internet access, you won't much better.
It's easy to bash Iowa, but not on Internet access. But nice try at being funny. (Oh yeah, it's also ranked top 10 in education for the last decade or so and one of the only places in America with pretty much no accent so you missed there too). Sorry.
I'll agree with you that the alternative to clear evil is not necessarily de facto good, but don't go so far trying to prove it that you fall hook line and sinker for the propaganda going the other way.
The United States good care less about the oil rights of Iraq. If you really think the U.S. will take the oil from Iraq, you really need put your ideology to the side and re-examine the situation.
I would presume they were referring to using stored procedures instead of straight SQL on the page, but if that's the case, then I see it all the time too. I code almost everything to use stored procedures, but occasionally where a complex SQL statement is being dynamically built, it's easier to just code it on the page than try to put all the same logic into a stored procedure that probably won't receive the pre-compiled benefits anyway because it differs too much from run to run. Then again, I could be completely wrong on what they meant.:)
That's a very good point, but a difficult sell to management. From my experience if management gets sold on J2EE or anything Sun related, they swallow the whole damn load.
The companies I've worked for have never had much trouble with IIS (maybe just lucky if you believe what you hear around this site) and they are definitely cheaper labor..NET is very easy to code with and it's very fast to develop in. That's why I would go that way, but there are always good alternatives.
Regardless of how you argue the testing parameters, it's pretty clear the.NET implementation won out. Even if it didn't, the Price/Performance chart makes this a pretty easy pick for most businesses.
You can probably get much higher performance out of the J2EE stuff at the very top end, but only by running it on the 'big iron' that most companies can't afford and even fewer actually need.
M$ has a lot of problems, but this.NET stuff is cool and people should take notice. Even the evil empire can raise the bar. And competition helps us all in the end. Lower those prices SUN and Oracle!!
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Your post is well thought out, but I must disagree with your stance on the economy. I believe history will show his handling of the economy was just short of brilliant - not to mention gutsy considering the politics of it. I think his bold and aggressive moves made a big difference in the shallowness and relatively short period of this market correction. I honestly believe we could have had another Great Depresssion and his moves helped in the prevention of it. Deficits are easy to erase when the economy recovers and a recovering economy with a large deficit is vastly preferable to a plummeting economy with a small deficit which quickly becomes a large deficit as well.
The test of Bush's legacy will be whether he follows through and cuts the spending as quickly as he can as the economy recovers. Governments, both Republican and Democrat have great difficulty doing that, but Bush has repeatedly shown he's more interested in doing the right thing than being popular. Truly the epitome of a great leader.
As for turning differently than the rest of the world . . . well, if you want to argue results . . . I think we're in pretty good shape over the last 200 years of being as little like the rest of the world as we can. We weren't exactly popular at any point in history except with the weak countries when there was a big bully to scare them into feigning friendship with us so I don't think we have much to worry about there.
I respect your point of view except on your critical thinking tangent which I think is a little silly. It's tempting to disparage others who happen to disagree with you, but a mulitiple choice exit poll question doesn't really some up the complex balance of values that go into making a voting decision, does it?
I absolutely agree with you that there were many reasons to vote against George Bush. My post's main point was responding to the previous post's rather poor analysis of the reasoning behind his victory. It just isn't that simple.
For instance, I happen to disagree with you about Bush's handling of the economy. I believe his handling of the economy was just short of brilliant (and undeniably gutsy) and I believe history will side with me. I think his bold and aggressive moves made a big difference in the shallowness and relatively short period of this market correction. I honestly believe we could have had another Great Depresssion and his moves helped in the prevention of it. But hey, I've been wrong many times before and I'm willing to admit that I could be very very wrong. However, my opinion, right or wrong has nothing to do with not understanding concepts or symbolism and I think you should recognize that my disagreement with you says very little about my intelligence or that of others like me.
Most Americans *want* the US to be better off than it is now. And as you said, America has decided we don't need a change in order to get there. I don't believe it's from lack of understanding that they reached this conclusion.
They do love it and they should. It's good for the American economy to outsource low paying jobs to other countries, thus creating high paying jobs here. The Democrats know this just as well as the Republicans do and that's why we have NAFTA, etc. They may not like to admit it because of union affiliations, but no one, even Kerry (if you look at his real positions, not the ones he shouted for the camera once he was running for President), denies that outsourcing is a good thing.
Perhaps you should rethink your analysis a little. Some southern states are known to vote based upon their beliefs on abortion, etc., but by your analysis Bush would be the overwhelming favorite considering the United States is overwhelmingly Christian and overwhelminging against gay marriage.
On jobs I think you're seeing that not everyone blames Bush and in fact many are thankful of his actions. I think it would be difficult to rationally blame Bush for any significant loss of jobs in the United States. You could very much claim he hasn't done enough to recover them quickly enough, but the loss was clearly beyond the control of any mere president.
Just because the country's voting is very polar doesn't mean you have to see the candidates that way. In reality Bush and Kerry are not all that dissimilar on most issues including the economy, gay marriage and the issues in Iraq.
This is essentially what they do at TopCoder all the time. It's a neat way to show off your skills and make a little money on the coding side and a discounted development cost for the company. Pretty slick idea.
Thanks for this post. No matter what your coding background, if you can't appreciate the sheer beauty of the way .NET works and what it has done and is doing for development, then you're either a blinded zealot or someone who needs to give it a try. It's not the answer for everything, but what is? Not admitting what a great accomplishment it is (marketing failures aside) is pure bias.
I'd mod you up if I was a moderator today. Thanks for this post. .NET is the biggest improvement in coding technology since we went OO IMHO. Admittedly, MS has done a poor job of explaining it to the masses, but ANY programmer should realize within a few minutes of using it that it does everything Java was supposed to do, but failed at and a lot more. It is the tits right now. And the 2.0 spec is even better.
So Indian law prevents you from getting the point of what I'm trying to say?
Simpler terms: language of the program is irrelevant - court looking at program itself - and not in India
I think you're being a little too technical here. The analogy may not be perfect, but it gets the point across. What the court will be looking at is the program itself, not the code it is written in. So we said the same thing. Just with different words.
And that's what the court is considering. Did you RTFP? I'm only saying the point the original poster made about using the same code is irrelevant.
So what if it's written in different code? I can play pop songs on a trombone and record it. It's still the same song and it's still infringement.
Copyrighting an idea is wrong, but that's not what the question is here. This is an example of determining whether both products implement the idea in a close enough way to be infringement and code is completely irrelevant to that discussion.
Yes, all of them. I like the idea of modding certain things up because they are particularly interesting, but modding things down is a little too close to censorship for me. Sure, the Goat.se is an obvious troll, but if everyone spent their 5 points modding up instead of down, the same purpose would be served as the trolls would be drowned out by the higher rated posts.
The problem I see right now is that if one group outnumbers another group then not only do that group's posts get modded higher, but the other groups get modded down which puts alternative but no less valid ideas down in the gutter with the trolls. I would get rid of the +5 cap also. Let the good (or at least interesting) ideas soar.
Wow. I can't disagree more, but I guess everyone has their own opinion. I have hit no bugs and works like a dream for ASP.NET or desktop C#. Sweet tool, though it could definitely be improved upon.
Presumably because they want to recover at least some of their development costs. I was never that impressed with VS6, but the .NET platform is pretty darn nice and obviously many many development hours went into it. And they *did* lose money on VS6. Since M$ is a publicly traded company you can go look it up in their financials. Since they keep supporting it and came out with a new version, the only reasonable conclusion is that they are willing to take a loss on development tools to push the platform which is where they make all their money (besides what they bring in from Office).
Microsoft has never made money on its development tools and I don't think they're betting they will now so there would be little reason to pull the leash on C# development tools and the language itself. C#'s purpose is to sell Windows Server 2003 and the other .NET servers as well. If you use Linux to write C# for a Windows server, that's a happy day for M$. Now, running .aspx pages on a non-Windows-based server on the other hand . . .
Yes, if the Internet and connectivity has done anything, it has reduced the response times in the world. News breaks in China and people in Podunk USA know about it hours later. Give me my security and stability patches via Internet and let me burn them to a CD if that's how I want it.
And thanks for the nice comment reply.
Please see my response to someone else who made this point above here
I don't see why distributing a CD would be any different from using Windows Update and I DO receive update CD's from M$ every month right now . . .
As for dealing directly with their customers, I'm not sure of the answer, but I don't think it's a big deal. When my car breaks down, I don't go to GM and ask them to fix it, I go to a mechanic or the dealer who sold it to me. If my Playstation stops working I take it back to Wal-Mart to return it, not Sony. So what's the big deal?
"Since the inception...", but it doesn't say "Because of..." and that's the difference. He's saying that Windows Update has failed to protect those computers, not that it caused a problem. It doesn't say how many millions of computers *didn't* get infected because of Windows Update, so it's not really a very fair argument. It only shows one side.
I agree with you on the false positive scenario except that you've left out the most likely case without Windows Update, a nothing, because without Windows Update right there quick and easy to use, most people just wouldn't check at all.
So I stand by my first statement. It's better than nothing.
It's been proven time and time again that people don't patch their systems by hand. Windows Update is at least a step in the right direction, even if it does have some flaws. I can only imagine the outcry if M$ DIDN'T have a Windows Update. It would be an evil scheme or something.
Iowa is the holy grail of Internet connectivity. Most towns of over 10,000 people in Iowa have cheap broadband via DSL, cable-modem and fixed wireless. For Internet access, you won't much better.
It's easy to bash Iowa, but not on Internet access. But nice try at being funny. (Oh yeah, it's also ranked top 10 in education for the last decade or so and one of the only places in America with pretty much no accent so you missed there too). Sorry.
I'll agree with you that the alternative to clear evil is not necessarily de facto good, but don't go so far trying to prove it that you fall hook line and sinker for the propaganda going the other way.
The United States good care less about the oil rights of Iraq. If you really think the U.S. will take the oil from Iraq, you really need put your ideology to the side and re-examine the situation.
I would presume they were referring to using stored procedures instead of straight SQL on the page, but if that's the case, then I see it all the time too. I code almost everything to use stored procedures, but occasionally where a complex SQL statement is being dynamically built, it's easier to just code it on the page than try to put all the same logic into a stored procedure that probably won't receive the pre-compiled benefits anyway because it differs too much from run to run. Then again, I could be completely wrong on what they meant. :)
That's a very good point, but a difficult sell to management. From my experience if management gets sold on J2EE or anything Sun related, they swallow the whole damn load.
.NET is very easy to code with and it's very fast to develop in. That's why I would go that way, but there are always good alternatives.
The companies I've worked for have never had much trouble with IIS (maybe just lucky if you believe what you hear around this site) and they are definitely cheaper labor.
Regardless of how you argue the testing parameters, it's pretty clear the .NET implementation won out. Even if it didn't, the Price/Performance chart makes this a pretty easy pick for most businesses.
.NET stuff is cool and people should take notice. Even the evil empire can raise the bar. And competition helps us all in the end. Lower those prices SUN and Oracle!!
You can probably get much higher performance out of the J2EE stuff at the very top end, but only by running it on the 'big iron' that most companies can't afford and even fewer actually need.
M$ has a lot of problems, but this