Do you mean funneling the wealth to a smaller percentage of people and increasing the masses dependence on these people?
Are you saying that it is more important for BigCompany to make money than you? BigCompany needs the money more than you do, so it can invest the R&D dollars to improve our society, because you can't?
"If there was something designed a little like the iPod (i.e. easy to use, nothing fancy, clean and simple, not 100s of buttons) for around the $200-$300 mark with, say, recording, and a 20-40GB hard drive"
Yeah, I know, recommending a Dell over Apple is the like trying to convince a teenager that Old Navy clothes will do the job just as well as Abercrombie & Fitch.
window.open() allows you to reference the window that opened you (window.opener?). Think of a pop-up calendar for example. You pop-up a new page, click the calendar, and it fills in the date in the original page. (I understand the calendar could be rendered completely with javascript, this is just an example).
I disagree 3000% that a pop-up blocker should be on by default. I would call that a crippled browser. You are unable to see content that the website author intended you to see, unless you perform further action. HOWEVER, if you know that 90% of pop-up windows are advertisements you don't care to see, you should be able to make the choice to disable them. But that choice shouldn't be made for you.
Anyone recall the outrage when SmartTags for IE was announced? "Microsoft has no right to add/change the content of my web page!"
That is absurd. Microsoft wants to kill ActiveX on the web just as much as you do. I can't remember the last time I read an article on MSDN or any other MS developer website where it was suggested you should use a client side ActiveX component to provide a rich interface.
They have already recognized its major shortcomings (notably "all or nothing" trust of components) and are now pushing new alternatives to a rich web experience (.NET smart clients, Avalon XAML apps in Longhorn, etc).
The reason they can't block ActiveX controls is that an ActiveX control can do whatever it wants if the browser allows it to execute. There is no fine grained control over what it is allowed to do.
They have, they just haven't marketed it very loudly.
It is a print driver installed with Office 2003. You can print anything (Word doc, text file, web page) using this driver to create a file in.MDI format. It is the Microsoft equivalent of a PDF file. Of course, until a free reader is available for other platforms, Acrobat won't be going anywhere soon.
Also- the SimCity that was available for the C64 was incredibly crippled compared to its Amiga and IBM PC counterparts. It had horrible graphics (a square with a letter in it to indicate zone, rather than graphics of buildings), and was missing major gameplay elements.
Somehow, I still spent a million hours playing it.
That little exercise showed no bias at all! Let me try my own experiment... I'll search for "powerpoint":
Google: 6,260,000 hits MSN: 14 hits
I conclude that Microsoft is trying to kill their own PowerPoint product (even more than they want to kill Linux!). Thankfully, the people at Google must rely on PowerPoint so much, they want to make sure to keep the word out there.
Or... stay with me here... maybe Google has a more powerful and capable search engine that can harvest more results. I suppose its possible THAT could explain why Microsoft would want to buy them.
Well then go ahead and try to exploit it, if you think this model is insecure. It has already been implemented - any machine that has the.NET Framework installed can run a.NET application embedded in a web page - with no prompts or warnings. The application can "potentially" have access to the entire framework (akin to saying "all the APIs in Longhorn").
BUT. The key is "Code Access Security" (google it for details). Now the APIs themselves can check who is calling them, and how/if they should execute given the context of the caller.
My quick introduction to code access security:
If I create an application that says "Hello World" when the user clicks a button, and put the.exe on a website - the application will run without problem on.NET computers, without any prompts.
But if I create an application that reads the user's hard drive when the user clicks a button, and put it on a website - the application will run UNTIL the user clicks the button. As soon as the app attempts to call the filesytem, the API's will recognize the caller as an untrusted source and throw a security exception.
That is all they are referring to when saying the Flash like tool will have access to the API's.
If you think that is a security issue, demonstrate the exploit. There are plenty of machines out there already with the.NET Framework installed that will happily run your code -- until you attempt to do something nasty.
It is interesting how calmly the majority of posts are justifying this as an "ok" move.
Yet, I STILL see posts about how Dell (and other major PC manufacturers that don't sell Linux to home consumers) is lame because they got rid of Linux as a choice for home computers.
It comes down to support. It is not yet cost effective for a corporation to support Linux on the home desktop. Dell learned it a couple years ago, and now Red Hat agrees.
If you're not going to beat up Red Hat over this (I wouldn't), you should not beat up PC manufacturers for making the same decision.
"The bits aren't even to an alpha stage yet, but if you've got some time to play, please do. The more time you spend playing with Longhorn and the development platform, and the more feedback you send us, the better job we can do making sure that when Longhorn does ship, it kicks butt."
"Giving a preview of something that won't be out for several years is questionable."
How long was Mozilla "out" before it reached 1.0?
They are sharing information with developers for 2 reasons: 1) Educate developers on the new API's so that they can create applications. A platform without applications is useless. Sure, the API's may change, but the basic concepts shouldn't. 2) They want feedback from developer's. If one of their API's is really clunky or stupid, people will complain, and MS will react. This has been stated on many MS developer's blogs, etc. Of course to believe this, you have to be able to get your head around the concept that individual developers that work for Microsoft are just as interested in cool technology as you are. They are not responsible for the marketing or business tactics of the company as a whole.
And since when is sharing information a bad thing?
Microsoft hides their API's, they suck! Microsoft divulges their API's, they suck!
"A customized version of Musicmatch 8.1 comes bundled with the hard-drive player. (The Dell DJ also works with Windows Media Player 9 and RealOne Player.)"
Do I get points for just re-printing part of the article linked from the story submission?
Of course the fact that Microsoft gives away for free in the form of service packs what their competitors charge you for never crossed your mind, did it?
Actually, Microsoft no longer includes new features in their Service Packs, as a policy. They only include fixes to existing features.
So a competitor's Service Pack that has new features should be compared to something like "Microsoft Plus!" (which costs money)
I can think of no valuable reason why 3rd party developers would want any information on an upcoming operating system. Why not release the OS with no software and THEN let everyone figure out how to take advantage of its new features?
This "hype" you refer to is called the "Professional Developer's Conference". I have yet to see a Longhorn advertisement on TV or a billboard or anywhere.
I love how the story submission mentions that the code has been leaked (actual builds of the software in question), and then sums it up by calling it "vaporware". Hmmm...
I can think of one other MAJOR computer company that doesn't offer a table PC for the very same reason.
The CEO of that company used the same rational when asked why not: (paraphrased) "How much does a laptop keyboard cost us? About $5? People get a heck of a lot of functionality out of that $5 part." That was just before the launch of the tablet PC. The interview with Jobs you quote was from March 2003. So I don't think Apple really deserves all the credit.
Are you going to try and tell me that every piece of hardware you use is officially supported on linux by the manufacturer?
Linux will work on Virtual PC. Microsoft doesn't want to spend money answering your support calls when you configure X-Windows incorrectly.
Linux will work with your digital camera. But Canon doesn't want to spend money answering your support calls either.
There is a difference between "you can't use linux" and "we don't support linux".
A LOT of non-Microsoft companies do not support linux. When the linux user base becomes large enough that non-support effects a company's bottom line, this may change.
The picture shows that the adapter is designed to fit the port connections on the GBA SP. That is pretty frustrating for us GBA "early adopters" that didn't feel like buying the same console twice. Maybe the port connections are the same, but I don't think so. Hopefully there will be a model for the many GBA "classic" owners.
This is the only response I am going to reply to, I guess because I was called a nimwit.
I didn't do the Google exercise, but I believe that what you say is true. That really had nothing to do with my point. It makes sense that they would lock down the playback of DRM'd files all the way through the drivers, to prevent "intercepting" the signal.
My point was regarding non-DRM'd files. If you don't like them, don't use them. Use non-DRM'd files, and continue to use applications that do not require DRM.
I repeat the gist of my initial post: if they cripple WMP so that it only works with DRM'd files, I'll use a WMP alternative for all of my non-DRM files. If the time comes that I want to buy a song online that grants me acceptable rights, I'll use WMP.
Ok, so maybe it becomes mandatory and gets installed on my computer. It will enable me to use rights protected files. If I don't want to use any rights protected files, then I won't.
Winzip has had a password protection feature for its archives for a long time. Doesn't mean I have to use it. But if someone sent me a password protected zip file, along with the password (giving me permission to extract the files), I'd be happy that my version of Winzip supported passwords. It doesn't mean that my archives that are not password protected can no longer be extracted, or that I must password protect everything.
Sure, Microsoft could lock down Windows Media Player so that RM is required, etc, but then everyone (that cares) would just stop using WMP. You think they're going to lock down the sound & video API's in the OS so that nobody can make their own media players?
Visual Studio.NET is not a good example of a product with.NET tacked on for marketing reasons. It is, after all, the primary development environment offered by Microsoft for building.NET applications.
And there is no such thing as Windows.NET Server. There may have been some betas under that name, but no released products.
But I would agree, the "JAVA" does seem to be tacked on.
This is getting ridiculous. Can't we just say "you should read Wired" instead of posting each individual story?
All Slashdot stories, from the latest issue: case mod roundup disney & dali record companies use P2P research data companies ranked for privacy in the workplace
Re:Java's not exactly pining for the fields just n
on
Java vs .NET
·
· Score: 1
"there's no such thing as embedded dot Net just et"
Actually, there is, it's called the.NET Compact Framework. It contains a subset of the.NET Framework, and can be used for PocketPC/SmartPhone development.
(Did anyone else think the Kuro5hin article screamed "I'm new to this technology I was forced to use, I haven't gotten the hang of it yet, I hate it." ?)
The.NET Framework has great built-in support for code generation, called the CodeDOM model. It is the mechanism used by all of the Visual Studio IDE wizards.
What is great is how they abstracted out the target language. Once you build a CodeDOM graph in your generator, you can pass it to any language generator (C#, VB.NET, J#, write your own) to create the result.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you mean funneling the wealth to a smaller percentage of people and increasing the masses dependence on these people?
Are you saying that it is more important for BigCompany to make money than you? BigCompany needs the money more than you do, so it can invest the R&D dollars to improve our society, because you can't?
"There are two things that separate people like me from the Neistat Bros. First is that they listen to a whole lot more music than I do."
Second, is that it would seem you have a whole lot more disposable income than they do.
$400 for a barely used walkman?
"If there was something designed a little like the iPod (i.e. easy to use, nothing fancy, clean and simple, not 100s of buttons) for around the $200-$300 mark with, say, recording, and a 20-40GB hard drive"
Yeah, I know, recommending a Dell over Apple is the like trying to convince a teenager that Old Navy clothes will do the job just as well as Abercrombie & Fitch.
window.open() allows you to reference the window that opened you (window.opener?). Think of a pop-up calendar for example. You pop-up a new page, click the calendar, and it fills in the date in the original page. (I understand the calendar could be rendered completely with javascript, this is just an example).
I disagree 3000% that a pop-up blocker should be on by default. I would call that a crippled browser. You are unable to see content that the website author intended you to see, unless you perform further action.
HOWEVER, if you know that 90% of pop-up windows are advertisements you don't care to see, you should be able to make the choice to disable them. But that choice shouldn't be made for you.
Anyone recall the outrage when SmartTags for IE was announced? "Microsoft has no right to add/change the content of my web page!"
That is absurd. Microsoft wants to kill ActiveX on the web just as much as you do.
I can't remember the last time I read an article on MSDN or any other MS developer website where it was suggested you should use a client side ActiveX component to provide a rich interface.
They have already recognized its major shortcomings (notably "all or nothing" trust of components) and are now pushing new alternatives to a rich web experience (.NET smart clients, Avalon XAML apps in Longhorn, etc).
The reason they can't block ActiveX controls is that an ActiveX control can do whatever it wants if the browser allows it to execute. There is no fine grained control over what it is allowed to do.
No conspiracy here.
They have, they just haven't marketed it very loudly.
.MDI format. It is the Microsoft equivalent of a PDF file. Of course, until a free reader is available for other platforms, Acrobat won't be going anywhere soon.
It is a print driver installed with Office 2003. You can print anything (Word doc, text file, web page) using this driver to create a file in
Also- the SimCity that was available for the C64 was incredibly crippled compared to its Amiga and IBM PC counterparts. It had horrible graphics (a square with a letter in it to indicate zone, rather than graphics of buildings), and was missing major gameplay elements.
Somehow, I still spent a million hours playing it.
That little exercise showed no bias at all! Let me try my own experiment... I'll search for "powerpoint":
Google: 6,260,000 hits
MSN: 14 hits
I conclude that Microsoft is trying to kill their own PowerPoint product (even more than they want to kill Linux!). Thankfully, the people at Google must rely on PowerPoint so much, they want to make sure to keep the word out there.
Or... stay with me here... maybe Google has a more powerful and capable search engine that can harvest more results. I suppose its possible THAT could explain why Microsoft would want to buy them.
Well then go ahead and try to exploit it, if you think this model is insecure. It has already been implemented - any machine that has the .NET Framework installed can run a .NET application embedded in a web page - with no prompts or warnings. The application can "potentially" have access to the entire framework (akin to saying "all the APIs in Longhorn").
.exe on a website - the application will run without problem on .NET computers, without any prompts.
.NET Framework installed that will happily run your code -- until you attempt to do something nasty.
BUT. The key is "Code Access Security" (google it for details). Now the APIs themselves can check who is calling them, and how/if they should execute given the context of the caller.
My quick introduction to code access security:
If I create an application that says "Hello World" when the user clicks a button, and put the
But if I create an application that reads the user's hard drive when the user clicks a button, and put it on a website - the application will run UNTIL the user clicks the button. As soon as the app attempts to call the filesytem, the API's will recognize the caller as an untrusted source and throw a security exception.
That is all they are referring to when saying the Flash like tool will have access to the API's.
If you think that is a security issue, demonstrate the exploit. There are plenty of machines out there already with the
It is interesting how calmly the majority of posts are justifying this as an "ok" move.
Yet, I STILL see posts about how Dell (and other major PC manufacturers that don't sell Linux to home consumers) is lame because they got rid of Linux as a choice for home computers.
It comes down to support. It is not yet cost effective for a corporation to support Linux on the home desktop. Dell learned it a couple years ago, and now Red Hat agrees.
If you're not going to beat up Red Hat over this (I wouldn't), you should not beat up PC manufacturers for making the same decision.
"The bits aren't even to an alpha stage yet, but if you've got some time to play, please do. The more time you spend playing with Longhorn and the development platform, and the more feedback you send us, the better job we can do making sure that when Longhorn does ship, it kicks butt."
g /c olumns/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnfoghorn/ html/foghorn10272003.asp
-Chris Sells
Microsoft
http://msdn.microsoft.com/Longhorn/understandin
"Giving a preview of something that won't be out for several years is questionable."
How long was Mozilla "out" before it reached 1.0?
They are sharing information with developers for 2 reasons:
1) Educate developers on the new API's so that they can create applications. A platform without applications is useless. Sure, the API's may change, but the basic concepts shouldn't.
2) They want feedback from developer's. If one of their API's is really clunky or stupid, people will complain, and MS will react. This has been stated on many MS developer's blogs, etc. Of course to believe this, you have to be able to get your head around the concept that individual developers that work for Microsoft are just as interested in cool technology as you are. They are not responsible for the marketing or business tactics of the company as a whole.
And since when is sharing information a bad thing?
Microsoft hides their API's, they suck!
Microsoft divulges their API's, they suck!
IIS 6.0 is Windows Server 2003
"A customized version of Musicmatch 8.1 comes bundled with the hard-drive player. (The Dell DJ also works with Windows Media Player 9 and RealOne Player.)"
Do I get points for just re-printing part of the article linked from the story submission?
Actually, Microsoft no longer includes new features in their Service Packs, as a policy. They only include fixes to existing features.
So a competitor's Service Pack that has new features should be compared to something like "Microsoft Plus!" (which costs money)
This "hype" you refer to is called the "Professional Developer's Conference". I have yet to see a Longhorn advertisement on TV or a billboard or anywhere.
I love how the story submission mentions that the code has been leaked (actual builds of the software in question), and then sums it up by calling it "vaporware". Hmmm...
I can think of one other MAJOR computer company that doesn't offer a table PC for the very same reason.
The CEO of that company used the same rational when asked why not: (paraphrased) "How much does a laptop keyboard cost us? About $5? People get a heck of a lot of functionality out of that $5 part." That was just before the launch of the tablet PC. The interview with Jobs you quote was from March 2003. So I don't think Apple really deserves all the credit.
This is such a non-issue.
Are you going to try and tell me that every piece of hardware you use is officially supported on linux by the manufacturer?
Linux will work on Virtual PC. Microsoft doesn't want to spend money answering your support calls when you configure X-Windows incorrectly.
Linux will work with your digital camera. But Canon doesn't want to spend money answering your support calls either.
There is a difference between "you can't use linux" and "we don't support linux".
A LOT of non-Microsoft companies do not support linux. When the linux user base becomes large enough that non-support effects a company's bottom line, this may change.
The picture shows that the adapter is designed to fit the port connections on the GBA SP. That is pretty frustrating for us GBA "early adopters" that didn't feel like buying the same console twice. Maybe the port connections are the same, but I don't think so.
Hopefully there will be a model for the many GBA "classic" owners.
This is the only response I am going to reply to, I guess because I was called a nimwit.
I didn't do the Google exercise, but I believe that what you say is true. That really had nothing to do with my point. It makes sense that they would lock down the playback of DRM'd files all the way through the drivers, to prevent "intercepting" the signal.
My point was regarding non-DRM'd files. If you don't like them, don't use them. Use non-DRM'd files, and continue to use applications that do not require DRM.
I repeat the gist of my initial post: if they cripple WMP so that it only works with DRM'd files, I'll use a WMP alternative for all of my non-DRM files. If the time comes that I want to buy a song online that grants me acceptable rights, I'll use WMP.
It's an optional install.
You say "we'll see how long that lasts".
Ok, so maybe it becomes mandatory and gets installed on my computer. It will enable me to use rights protected files. If I don't want to use any rights protected files, then I won't.
Winzip has had a password protection feature for its archives for a long time. Doesn't mean I have to use it. But if someone sent me a password protected zip file, along with the password (giving me permission to extract the files), I'd be happy that my version of Winzip supported passwords. It doesn't mean that my archives that are not password protected can no longer be extracted, or that I must password protect everything.
Sure, Microsoft could lock down Windows Media Player so that RM is required, etc, but then everyone (that cares) would just stop using WMP. You think they're going to lock down the sound & video API's in the OS so that nobody can make their own media players?
Visual Studio .NET is not a good example of a product with .NET tacked on for marketing reasons. It is, after all, the primary development environment offered by Microsoft for building .NET applications.
.NET Server. There may have been some betas under that name, but no released products.
And there is no such thing as Windows
But I would agree, the "JAVA" does seem to be tacked on.
This is getting ridiculous. Can't we just say "you should read Wired" instead of posting each individual story?
All Slashdot stories, from the latest issue:
case mod roundup
disney & dali
record companies use P2P research data
companies ranked for privacy in the workplace
"there's no such thing as embedded dot Net just et"
.NET Compact Framework. It contains a subset of the .NET Framework, and can be used for PocketPC/SmartPhone development.
Actually, there is, it's called the
(Did anyone else think the Kuro5hin article screamed "I'm new to this technology I was forced to use, I haven't gotten the hang of it yet, I hate it." ?)
The .NET Framework has great built-in support for code generation, called the CodeDOM model. It is the mechanism used by all of the Visual Studio IDE wizards.
What is great is how they abstracted out the target language. Once you build a CodeDOM graph in your generator, you can pass it to any language generator (C#, VB.NET, J#, write your own) to create the result.