.NET is a marketting term for a safer, easier to use Windows API. It is a set of technologies including a virtual machine and a series of wrappers around DLLs outside of the VM.
Essentially, it's the first step towards a Windows that has no native code other than the virtual machine itself. In this way, it's sort of like making a JavaOS, only without a lot of the harder to implement baggage of trying to implement a VM on top of an OS on top of a real machine.
In the end, it's also a step towards safer, more secure computing...with the dream being that no software can thwart the VM command interpretter and thus gain complete access to the machine.
Of course, right now it's a marketting mess that looks a lot like Java without the hardware and OS flexibility. Once you've written code in it, you start to see the benefits VERY quickly. They're just not the readily impressive sort of benefits that sell hardware to non programmers. So marketting gussied it up a bit, threw together some neat case studies and some concepts like "every program works in a web broswer," and managed to get people to buy into what's a great system, just for completely different reasons than it's being sold for.
I quit my corporate job because I like to use the words dynamic, deploy, paradigm and real-time and was tired of people looking confused because I wasn't using them to reference business practices.
Yeah, I think it's funny that their examples list a choice between two virtual software machines -- Java's VM and Microsoft's.NET -- while offering no choices at all in hardware. It's like they're saying, "Yes, your business should be agile and adaptive, but ours shouldn't."
Ideally, the choice of virtual machine really should be inconsequential to anything other than the OS. Both Java and.NET frameworks can run excellent, scalable applications, everything from GUI applications to server application and web services. It's almost a non issue, mostly a "who do you trust" issue, with some Cost of UNIX/Linus vs Cost of Windows and scalability limitations hyperbole thrown in for color. Neither is going to disappear any time soon. However, the hardware could be a big decision. If your hardware becomes unsupportable because your platform's end of lined, you're out a crapload of money.
Where's the ability to adapt your business in realtime when your hardware/software vendor has put all his eggs in one basket so as not to piss off Intel, a waning market leader with a solution many experts regard as too little too late?
And incorrectly several dozen times reported apple portables, product end of lifings that never happened, and tons of other things. Most of the time they're duped by hoaxers, sometimes ones with no credibility whatsoever.
The occasional success does not make up for these stupid mistakes. Like all prophets, Think Secret is guilty of retroactive clairvoyance, confirmational bias, and shoehorning. Such as when the 3G ipod came out...they had "mock ups" of it which they claimed to be development samples, but a month later were shown to have the buttons in the wrong place. Or when they finally released the new 15" PowerBook...something they had been predicting would be out "next month, they're all made up and ready to ship!" for close to 6 months. And the specs on the released models were, of course, completely different from the ones that were "boxed."
Whoa. This product, Exchange 2000, was designed in 1999. Back then, Spam was not a problem and open relays were everywhere. Back then, a wide open SMTP account for guest connections would have been a good thing for many organizations.
Even if it wasn't, it's a feature that's easily turned off. There's nothing to fix. Their newest version of Exchange, designed now that SPAM is a huge problem, no longer does this. There's no NEED to upgrade, just fix the damn thing.
To go back to your car analogy, I drive a car designed before airbags were a proven technology. Hence, no airbags. Airbags are now standard -- do I expect them to retrofit it? Shit no.
Aw, come on. Most people, including myself, don't think this is too big a deal, at least not one worth boycotting their products over. I'm a developer, and I've actually been in the same situation as this guy, and I still don't think it's a problem. Why? Because the developer doesn't seem to think it's worth risking his job over -- meaning it probably wasn't making a ton of money as shareware anyway, certainly not worth fighting over. At the very least, it means his job is worth more to him then the silly little applet.
It took Think Secret, a notoriously haven for rumour mongering that is usually just plain wrong, to turn this into a California case. And it's foolish, since they only have the facts posted in a single paragraph on a website. It is quite possible that the development of this software was illegal even considering the oft mentioned law, merely because most large software developers have fierce compulsory non-compete agreements. Meaning if Apple plans to move Sherlock into this space, he would be in violation of his own agreement unless he took the program offline.
Yeah, it sucks that programmers get corralled into agreements and strongarmed into dropping software, but I don't think it's really all that bad. It's still better than having to subsist on shareware licensing fees while your job moves to India.
I use IM to do customer support with clients and prospective clients. I can't hide myself away without running the possibility of missing somebody. IM is, for me, mission critical and part of that is unfortunately keeping myself wide open.
Good news is, I don't maintain a profile. I hazard that's where spimmers are harvesting their addresses, because my IM screenname is ALL OVER the website yet none of my work IM accounts has ever gotten. My home account has gotten them...it has a profile, too. There's no real reason to have a profile unless you're looking to meet new people over the client...and it looks like some of those new people want me to check out their new porn websites.
Yeah. It should have read, "A girlfriend...who reads Slashdot aloud to you." Because even those of us who actively deal with the fairer sex can agree, when she's softly trilling the copy to the latest SCO fiasco, we're in Geek Heaven.
Especially if she's in a chainmail brasierre. Mmmm.
If DRM is the technology that allows companies to feel safe enough about their control over their assets to allow you to listen to a song you like, then it's improved your life.
A world where music companies are afraid to release music, or have to increase prices because their executives feel they're losing sales, is a world that's equally negative for consumers. Independent labels are NOT the answer -- if all labels were poorly distributed independents, we'd have less incentive for distribution companies or record stores to sell music, which would result in even lower sales, even higher prices. I don't want to see music pushed over the $20 mark by perceived piracy and some idyllic crusade to preserve the "right" of pure digital manipulation.
Since I'm not pirating music, and DRM enabled technologies still play in any system I care about, I personally don't mind it. I don't need to use Linux to play my music, and neither do you. Linux doesn't play any of my records or tapes, either.
I just want to be able to pay for music, listen to it, and know that the money went to the artist being able to EAT FOOD so maybe they'll be alive to make more music. If, due to some fatheads in the "biz," I need to accept DRM for this to happen, I accept it. It's a pitiably small issue blown out of proportion by people scared to lose their ability to steal CDs from their friends.
What kind of cheap ass CD player are you buying? I still have my Aiwa portable unit from 1989, and my mom's been running her Sony unit since before that. The changer in my Dad's Jeep has been in prime condition for over 10 years. In fact, I've never had a CD player break when it wasn't from leaving it in the car in below freezing weather.
I dunno...given the right marketting, 5 years isn't so outrageous. I ask you, didn't DVD hit the big time about 4 or 5 years ago? That was when cheap DVD players like the Apex started bringing home the medium to non-videophiles. Now VHS tapes are in their death throes, DVD is so ubiquitous it's showing up in cars and so cheap it's offered free with a big screen TV. Hell, I even got a DVD in a box of cereal once. It was the Muppet Movie (rock!)
Uh, sorry to say this man, but the per-client decryption fee for every method of DRM I can think of is WAY less than the licensing fees people paid to SONY for CD mechanisms back in the day. Those were around $5 a unit, if I remember correctly, whereas per-client decrtption licenses are generally under $1.
Licensing technology is the way we pay for research. I think it's unconscionable that you don't want companies to make money off the riskiest part of business.
Let me just say this: the tom bombadil affairs in FotR got so wierd and silly that for years I never got any further into the book. In fact, I didn't finish the trilogy until college.
Removing parts that don't play well to a modern audience without bastardizing the work takes great care and skill and the end result is as valid a piece of art as the original. Take John Gardener's retelling of the Beowulf legend, Grendel, told from the eyes of the monster.
You're joking, but you raise a great point. Jackson is really running with the Tolkein rights, and in the process he's streamlining and enhancing the story for a modern artist without losing the essential theme or style of the novels.
As such, once these movies are all out in the world, we're going to wind up with two sorts of LotR fans: fans of Jackson's version, and fan's of Tolkeins. That's not necesarily a bad thing...I don't think either is better and arguing it is on the same level of pleasant futility as arguing Guiness over Newcastle. They're both great examples of how imaginative people can suck us into their works.
Oh, and I'll be assuming the role of the Jackson LotR fan, merely because I think John Rhys Davies is the bomb yo.
If, as other posts have suggested, the 7 minutes were cut from the theatrical version to give it better flow from the get go, then I'd have to say that they were well worth it. Remember the beginning of the Two Towers? Gandalf falling through Moria, kicking the SHIT out of the Balrog the whole way down? How it immediately sucked you into the new movie and left you breathless? I'd have to say the reason I saw the movie the third time in the theatre was to get that rush again, because it wouldn't be as fresh or powerful on DVD (and it wasn't, still BADASS though).
You can't get that kind of passion recapping Sauron for seven minutes. If they want to really start this next piece en media res, then saving that footage for the director's cut was a wise decision. It's fun to see Sauron get his just deserts, but it's more of a "Mr. Smith goes to Washington" fun than a "Jackie Chan fight sequence" fun.
Uh, drop the conspiracy, K? Use Occam's Razor for chrissakes. It's unnecessary to con anybody into buying the DVD..."Geeks" are going to buy the movie on DVD no matter what. Since the release on the first movie, I've bought tickets to 5 showings (2 of FotR, 3 of TT) and bought three DVDs, soon to be 4. I haven't felt ripped off in the least...I bought this shit because *I* loved it and *I* got sucked into it and *I* enjoyed every minute of it.
The last two Matrix films? Marketting ploy. Star Wars...now there's a marketting ploy. Did you hear they're rewriting Darth Vader's past to preserve the innocence of the Obi Wan character? Not that this surprises any of you, I'm sure...
It's not the judge, but the JURY that Stallman has to impress. Juries are notoriously naive when it comes to technology; they only know what they are told. And I guarantee if some bearded geek is up on the witness stand raving about Free as in Beer and Free as in Speech and recursive acronyms and calling himself a Hacker, they're going to think he's some kind of digital Chuck Manson. I know I do...
Are you fucking stoned? I work in government software, and every one of the IT guys I've met was hopelessly clueless on everything from how to network a printer to how to give a user privleges on a local machine. Not to discount open source software, but in this case the county would have had to hire SOMEBODY to fix the problem -- if it weren't for the support contract they had with the closed source vendor!
OSS voting isn't a bad idea, but it's not going to be run like Apache. It's going to have to be some big, reliable, accountable software vendor willing to make usable, flexible software and put his source up for viewing.
The government has nothing to do with RFID yet. If they did, then RFID projects would be going ahead unabated despite public outcry against them and dramatic evidence showing that they don't work. If there's one thing this administration has shown, it's the tenacity to go against facts and public opinion when they wish to. I guess you have to respect that, in a quixotic kind of way...
Good idea. Except that purposefully sabotaging a government database is as close to terrorism as makes no odds. After all, it's illegal to prank call 911, it's illegal to jam police radar or scanners, shit it's even illegal to alter UPC codes, why shouldn't it be illegal to mess with RFID?
*WHEW*, and I was worried. My Mobil speed pass only works about half the time when you stick it right up next to the pump. I'd say 50/50 odds of detection at less than an inch of distance are sufficiently poor for me to ignore RFID completely.
You're assuming by "copying" he means "cut and paste." Not at all. Copying could be somebody who read the JBoss code (which is open, and pretty good. I read quite a bit of it myself trying to decide whether it was a viable alternative to the ghastly expensive BEA WebSphere) writing identical functions for Geronimo. A bit like aspiring artists copying a famous painting, only much more illegal. Alternatively, it could be some well meaning developer thinking that "clean room" just means he has to retype it.
I've seen a lot of aspiring programmers retype what's "in the book" and consider it their own work. It's entirely possible a contributor to Geronimo did the exact same thing.
We also had an amateur shoot our wedding. Result? $200 for over 400 pictures that were completely unusable. Every single shot was metered wrong...and the camera itself was broken, so only the bottom half developed correctly. Thank god my mom paid for that...I love photographs and was personally crushed that our records were so spoiled.
I had to fall back on shutterbug friends...some of whom took some bangin' shots (all of which are online at images.dasmegabyte.org, of course).
Slashdot Mirror
.NET is a marketting term for a safer, easier to use Windows API. It is a set of technologies including a virtual machine and a series of wrappers around DLLs outside of the VM.
Essentially, it's the first step towards a Windows that has no native code other than the virtual machine itself. In this way, it's sort of like making a JavaOS, only without a lot of the harder to implement baggage of trying to implement a VM on top of an OS on top of a real machine.
In the end, it's also a step towards safer, more secure computing...with the dream being that no software can thwart the VM command interpretter and thus gain complete access to the machine.
Of course, right now it's a marketting mess that looks a lot like Java without the hardware and OS flexibility. Once you've written code in it, you start to see the benefits VERY quickly. They're just not the readily impressive sort of benefits that sell hardware to non programmers. So marketting gussied it up a bit, threw together some neat case studies and some concepts like "every program works in a web broswer," and managed to get people to buy into what's a great system, just for completely different reasons than it's being sold for.
I quit my corporate job because I like to use the words dynamic, deploy, paradigm and real-time and was tired of people looking confused because I wasn't using them to reference business practices.
marketing speak CAN have a real meaning in a marketing context
Or as we rhetoric majors say, "Total fucking bullshit can have meaning in a total fucking bullshit context."
(We always say clever things like this. Then we talk about paradigms and Noam Chomsky until you walk away.)
Yeah, I think it's funny that their examples list a choice between two virtual software machines -- Java's VM and Microsoft's .NET -- while offering no choices at all in hardware. It's like they're saying, "Yes, your business should be agile and adaptive, but ours shouldn't."
.NET frameworks can run excellent, scalable applications, everything from GUI applications to server application and web services. It's almost a non issue, mostly a "who do you trust" issue, with some Cost of UNIX/Linus vs Cost of Windows and scalability limitations hyperbole thrown in for color. Neither is going to disappear any time soon. However, the hardware could be a big decision. If your hardware becomes unsupportable because your platform's end of lined, you're out a crapload of money.
Ideally, the choice of virtual machine really should be inconsequential to anything other than the OS. Both Java and
Where's the ability to adapt your business in realtime when your hardware/software vendor has put all his eggs in one basket so as not to piss off Intel, a waning market leader with a solution many experts regard as too little too late?
And incorrectly several dozen times reported apple portables, product end of lifings that never happened, and tons of other things. Most of the time they're duped by hoaxers, sometimes ones with no credibility whatsoever.
The occasional success does not make up for these stupid mistakes. Like all prophets, Think Secret is guilty of retroactive clairvoyance, confirmational bias, and shoehorning. Such as when the 3G ipod came out...they had "mock ups" of it which they claimed to be development samples, but a month later were shown to have the buttons in the wrong place. Or when they finally released the new 15" PowerBook...something they had been predicting would be out "next month, they're all made up and ready to ship!" for close to 6 months. And the specs on the released models were, of course, completely different from the ones that were "boxed."
Whoa. This product, Exchange 2000, was designed in 1999. Back then, Spam was not a problem and open relays were everywhere. Back then, a wide open SMTP account for guest connections would have been a good thing for many organizations.
Even if it wasn't, it's a feature that's easily turned off. There's nothing to fix. Their newest version of Exchange, designed now that SPAM is a huge problem, no longer does this. There's no NEED to upgrade, just fix the damn thing.
To go back to your car analogy, I drive a car designed before airbags were a proven technology. Hence, no airbags. Airbags are now standard -- do I expect them to retrofit it? Shit no.
Aw, come on. Most people, including myself, don't think this is too big a deal, at least not one worth boycotting their products over. I'm a developer, and I've actually been in the same situation as this guy, and I still don't think it's a problem. Why? Because the developer doesn't seem to think it's worth risking his job over -- meaning it probably wasn't making a ton of money as shareware anyway, certainly not worth fighting over. At the very least, it means his job is worth more to him then the silly little applet.
It took Think Secret, a notoriously haven for rumour mongering that is usually just plain wrong, to turn this into a California case. And it's foolish, since they only have the facts posted in a single paragraph on a website. It is quite possible that the development of this software was illegal even considering the oft mentioned law, merely because most large software developers have fierce compulsory non-compete agreements. Meaning if Apple plans to move Sherlock into this space, he would be in violation of his own agreement unless he took the program offline.
Yeah, it sucks that programmers get corralled into agreements and strongarmed into dropping software, but I don't think it's really all that bad. It's still better than having to subsist on shareware licensing fees while your job moves to India.
I use IM to do customer support with clients and prospective clients. I can't hide myself away without running the possibility of missing somebody. IM is, for me, mission critical and part of that is unfortunately keeping myself wide open.
Good news is, I don't maintain a profile. I hazard that's where spimmers are harvesting their addresses, because my IM screenname is ALL OVER the website yet none of my work IM accounts has ever gotten. My home account has gotten them...it has a profile, too. There's no real reason to have a profile unless you're looking to meet new people over the client...and it looks like some of those new people want me to check out their new porn websites.
Yeah. It should have read, "A girlfriend...who reads Slashdot aloud to you." Because even those of us who actively deal with the fairer sex can agree, when she's softly trilling the copy to the latest SCO fiasco, we're in Geek Heaven.
Especially if she's in a chainmail brasierre. Mmmm.
If DRM is the technology that allows companies to feel safe enough about their control over their assets to allow you to listen to a song you like, then it's improved your life.
A world where music companies are afraid to release music, or have to increase prices because their executives feel they're losing sales, is a world that's equally negative for consumers. Independent labels are NOT the answer -- if all labels were poorly distributed independents, we'd have less incentive for distribution companies or record stores to sell music, which would result in even lower sales, even higher prices. I don't want to see music pushed over the $20 mark by perceived piracy and some idyllic crusade to preserve the "right" of pure digital manipulation.
Since I'm not pirating music, and DRM enabled technologies still play in any system I care about, I personally don't mind it. I don't need to use Linux to play my music, and neither do you. Linux doesn't play any of my records or tapes, either.
I just want to be able to pay for music, listen to it, and know that the money went to the artist being able to EAT FOOD so maybe they'll be alive to make more music. If, due to some fatheads in the "biz," I need to accept DRM for this to happen, I accept it. It's a pitiably small issue blown out of proportion by people scared to lose their ability to steal CDs from their friends.
What kind of cheap ass CD player are you buying? I still have my Aiwa portable unit from 1989, and my mom's been running her Sony unit since before that. The changer in my Dad's Jeep has been in prime condition for over 10 years. In fact, I've never had a CD player break when it wasn't from leaving it in the car in below freezing weather.
I dunno...given the right marketting, 5 years isn't so outrageous. I ask you, didn't DVD hit the big time about 4 or 5 years ago? That was when cheap DVD players like the Apex started bringing home the medium to non-videophiles. Now VHS tapes are in their death throes, DVD is so ubiquitous it's showing up in cars and so cheap it's offered free with a big screen TV. Hell, I even got a DVD in a box of cereal once. It was the Muppet Movie (rock!)
Uh, sorry to say this man, but the per-client decryption fee for every method of DRM I can think of is WAY less than the licensing fees people paid to SONY for CD mechanisms back in the day. Those were around $5 a unit, if I remember correctly, whereas per-client decrtption licenses are generally under $1.
Licensing technology is the way we pay for research. I think it's unconscionable that you don't want companies to make money off the riskiest part of business.
Let me just say this: the tom bombadil affairs in FotR got so wierd and silly that for years I never got any further into the book. In fact, I didn't finish the trilogy until college.
Removing parts that don't play well to a modern audience without bastardizing the work takes great care and skill and the end result is as valid a piece of art as the original. Take John Gardener's retelling of the Beowulf legend, Grendel, told from the eyes of the monster.
You're joking, but you raise a great point. Jackson is really running with the Tolkein rights, and in the process he's streamlining and enhancing the story for a modern artist without losing the essential theme or style of the novels.
As such, once these movies are all out in the world, we're going to wind up with two sorts of LotR fans: fans of Jackson's version, and fan's of Tolkeins. That's not necesarily a bad thing...I don't think either is better and arguing it is on the same level of pleasant futility as arguing Guiness over Newcastle. They're both great examples of how imaginative people can suck us into their works.
Oh, and I'll be assuming the role of the Jackson LotR fan, merely because I think John Rhys Davies is the bomb yo.
If, as other posts have suggested, the 7 minutes were cut from the theatrical version to give it better flow from the get go, then I'd have to say that they were well worth it. Remember the beginning of the Two Towers? Gandalf falling through Moria, kicking the SHIT out of the Balrog the whole way down? How it immediately sucked you into the new movie and left you breathless? I'd have to say the reason I saw the movie the third time in the theatre was to get that rush again, because it wouldn't be as fresh or powerful on DVD (and it wasn't, still BADASS though).
You can't get that kind of passion recapping Sauron for seven minutes. If they want to really start this next piece en media res, then saving that footage for the director's cut was a wise decision. It's fun to see Sauron get his just deserts, but it's more of a "Mr. Smith goes to Washington" fun than a "Jackie Chan fight sequence" fun.
Civil trials, at least in this state, still get a jury. I've served on one.
Uh, drop the conspiracy, K? Use Occam's Razor for chrissakes. It's unnecessary to con anybody into buying the DVD..."Geeks" are going to buy the movie on DVD no matter what. Since the release on the first movie, I've bought tickets to 5 showings (2 of FotR, 3 of TT) and bought three DVDs, soon to be 4. I haven't felt ripped off in the least...I bought this shit because *I* loved it and *I* got sucked into it and *I* enjoyed every minute of it.
The last two Matrix films? Marketting ploy. Star Wars...now there's a marketting ploy. Did you hear they're rewriting Darth Vader's past to preserve the innocence of the Obi Wan character? Not that this surprises any of you, I'm sure...
It's not the judge, but the JURY that Stallman has to impress. Juries are notoriously naive when it comes to technology; they only know what they are told. And I guarantee if some bearded geek is up on the witness stand raving about Free as in Beer and Free as in Speech and recursive acronyms and calling himself a Hacker, they're going to think he's some kind of digital Chuck Manson. I know I do...
Are you fucking stoned? I work in government software, and every one of the IT guys I've met was hopelessly clueless on everything from how to network a printer to how to give a user privleges on a local machine. Not to discount open source software, but in this case the county would have had to hire SOMEBODY to fix the problem -- if it weren't for the support contract they had with the closed source vendor!
OSS voting isn't a bad idea, but it's not going to be run like Apache. It's going to have to be some big, reliable, accountable software vendor willing to make usable, flexible software and put his source up for viewing.
The government has nothing to do with RFID yet. If they did, then RFID projects would be going ahead unabated despite public outcry against them and dramatic evidence showing that they don't work. If there's one thing this administration has shown, it's the tenacity to go against facts and public opinion when they wish to. I guess you have to respect that, in a quixotic kind of way...
Good idea. Except that purposefully sabotaging a government database is as close to terrorism as makes no odds. After all, it's illegal to prank call 911, it's illegal to jam police radar or scanners, shit it's even illegal to alter UPC codes, why shouldn't it be illegal to mess with RFID?
*WHEW*, and I was worried. My Mobil speed pass only works about half the time when you stick it right up next to the pump. I'd say 50/50 odds of detection at less than an inch of distance are sufficiently poor for me to ignore RFID completely.
You're assuming by "copying" he means "cut and paste." Not at all. Copying could be somebody who read the JBoss code (which is open, and pretty good. I read quite a bit of it myself trying to decide whether it was a viable alternative to the ghastly expensive BEA WebSphere) writing identical functions for Geronimo. A bit like aspiring artists copying a famous painting, only much more illegal. Alternatively, it could be some well meaning developer thinking that "clean room" just means he has to retype it.
I've seen a lot of aspiring programmers retype what's "in the book" and consider it their own work. It's entirely possible a contributor to Geronimo did the exact same thing.
We also had an amateur shoot our wedding. Result? $200 for over 400 pictures that were completely unusable. Every single shot was metered wrong...and the camera itself was broken, so only the bottom half developed correctly. Thank god my mom paid for that...I love photographs and was personally crushed that our records were so spoiled.
I had to fall back on shutterbug friends...some of whom took some bangin' shots (all of which are online at images.dasmegabyte.org, of course).