Wish I had the points to mod you up. Pascal is designed to be understood; C was designed to be expedient. With the extensions added to Standard Pascal, there's very little you can do in C that you can't do in Pascal.
Surf to Pascal Central, open the archives and look for the article entitled "The Pascal Programming Language" written by Bill Catambay for a discussion of "Why Pascal?"
The release of Free Pascal is good news. If it catches on, it'll mean cleaner, more reliable code that's easier to maintain.
I develop for Mac OS X and use Adrian Van Os's gpc plug-in for CodeWarrior. FreePascal is just one more tool for me to look into.
C and C++ have caused more than their share of trouble. It's time to give Pascal another look.
I have an original iPod 5GB. I've slammed it in a car door. I've dropped it from various heights. I've left it in the car in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees. It got smacked against a wall while it was in my pocket.
It still plays after around four years of loving abuse. I couldn't abide the abysmal radio market here without it.
Arianna Huffington has been putting this website together for some time now. Today is its first day of operation. I seriously doubt that a new venture like this would put up such an aggressive spoof--complete with accurate bio--on its first day of publication. It would be in serious trouble in its first twenty-four hours.
I know that Apple is far from perfect, but I have never seen the kind of vehemence against a particular product--the iPod--in my life. Every other article is "Is this the next iPod Killer?" and "When will the iPod lose its cool?" It would be different if the criticisms were grounded in reality, but sitres like C|Net whip Apple and the iPod like second-hand mules.
Reminds me of those scenes in The Godfather and The Sopranos where one mobster latches onto a sweet deal and the others are clamoring to let the fortunate one "wet their beaks" on the proceeds of that good fortune.
The iPod came out of left field, has kept coming, and parts of three or four industries are screaming "no fair!" Bitching is easier than innovating.
DING-DING-DING! SMB is a moving target. Microsoft has placed a number of potholes in what SHOULD be an open standard (delineated in RFC 1001 and 1002). There is a number of reserved, undocumented and falsely documented fields in the CIFS protocol that are used as stumbling blocks to seamless SMB connectivity.
I wouldn't be surprised to find a recent Windows update somewhere at the root of Tiger's SMB troubles. There may be a bug in Apple's code, but I doubt it.
Remember 1997? When Apple and Microsoft signed a five-year pact? The terms of which included an agreement to continue development and production of Microsoft Office for Macintosh? The purchase of $150 million of Apple stock by Microsoft? And a technology sharing agreement? Apple has been serving as Microsoft's R&D department for quite a while now.
Because it would be a massive support headache. Every idiot with a PC would install Mac OS and immediately expect nirvana. Apple would have to expand help staff exponentially to deal with the floodtide of yokels wondering why OS X doesn't work on their x386 box with 64 MB of memory.
Control freaks? Maybe... but smart control freaks.
Just takes the will to do it. It means getting quality personnel involved from the beginning--in the design phase of the project.
It means allocating resources to each project module (and if the project isn't modular, it's crap). The quality people don't have to be geeks, in most cases. But they do have to be smart, diligent and detail-oriented.
It means adopting a professional testing approach and sticking with it.
It means demanding that programmers do their own unit testing before submitting their work to the code base and having acceptance testers who confirm that before a build is released into the general quality process.
I was a white-box tester because I had a programming background. I would generate a list of test cases from the code for which I was responsible, but I also believe that testing a product means using it as it is intended to be used, if possible.
There's no excuse for not expending the time, money and effort on assuring a quality product. Better not to do a project at all than to do it badly.
Apple finally realizes the advantages of nurturing opportunities for third-parties. It wasn't always that way.
Now, Apple creates the basic technology and lets third-party accessorizors create marketing oppportunities. This keeps Apple free to determine the destiny of its own products.
Partnering with anyone on basic design aspects of the iPod means that Apple throws away the leverage it has worked so hard to build. There is plenty of opportunities for third-party providers with iPod just as it is.
Condi Rice is nothing more than a glorified parrot. She has never mounted a policy initiative of her own. I defy anyone to find one original thought in her entire canon--both working and academic. She learned early in her career to regurgitate the tenets of George Kennan and gained the attention and favor of the fossils at Stanford's Hoover Institution.
I think you have it backwards about Condi: She is bright, but not particularly intelligent. Intelligence implies the ability and the resources to identify and to apply solutions to problems, both anticipated and unanticipated (which is why I think the article that started the thread is bullshit; An intelligent person doesn't have time to panic: They're too busy winnowing solutions. It's just like experienced pilots who say that they were too busy working the problem to worry about dying when trouble came along). Condi Rice is an elegant piece of work in a strategic sense. But she's crap when it comes to tactics. No imagination. No originality. Too much respect for the rules.
Re:Apple's Great Quality Meltdown
on
Top 10 Apple Flops
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
The breakup of the quality organization happened under Sculley's watch. I know 'cause I got in trouble for opposing it. I was part of the centralized group that rode herd over Apple quality until the breakup happened. Everything new that Apple made was tossed into this group and tested for compatibility with existing Apple products and with third-party products. It was a great job because it afforded the chance to be the first person in the world to try something.
The group wasn't composed entirely of geeks--most of them were smart, talented diligent people who knew their products and loved working at Apple. The advantages of it are readily apparent: Economies of scale... independence... cross-training... centralized quality information for management, engineering and marketing... It was an excellent idea and an excellent group.
I pointed this out in an email to John Sculley when the breakup was proposed. He answered me, said that the points I brought up were good ones that hadn't been raised to him before and asked if I minded if he took it up with the responsible managers.
Next thing I knew, I was in a small conference room with five layers of management and HR suggesting that I might want to forget my objections and shut the hell up. The breakup went through and quality took a nosedive for a while.
However, the people from that group were dispersed throughout the company. As time went on, they gained control of their own quality organizations. By the time Steve Jobs returned, he had seasoned, knowledgeable, dedicated quality people throughout the company. Many of them are still there.
Mod this guy up except for the last line. One of the biggest hurdles for wireless signals is metal construction of any kind. Check to see if your building has any metal framing. Even a doorframe has the power to cut your signal significantly.
If you have a cordless phone, it's probably a 2.4 GHz model: Get one that's in another band.
Position your wireless router as far away from kitchen microwave units as possible.
Lastly, use a Macintosh if you have the choice. The antennas are built in instead of tacked on. They've been working on this for over six years now--nobody else is even close (an exception is the Titanium PowerBook... see the thing about metal construction). I'm in a situation where there are six WAP's broadcasting into my office. My Macs always pick up our signal. My partner's Vaio laptop is fond of a SonicWall AP across the hall. We've had to switch to wired connection because it just can't remember to stay with its network. Macs also work better with closed networks (no IBSS broadcast).
I have to disagree with you on this. The most scrutinized combination right now is Windows/Firefox because it's starting to take a bite out of IE's market share. If you don't think there's a team of Microsoft-funded gremlins whacking the bejesus out of Firefox in a dungeon somewhere, you haven't been paying attention.
If I'd had a chance to control events, I would have sent a cable to the Japanese telling them to evacuate an island and have observers standing by at a safe distance on the morning of August 6th. I'd have dropped the bomb and followed up with another cable: Surrender now and we won't drop another one.
Amen, but don't forget to carry a CD with all that stuff on it, too. Some viruses now attack anti-spyware software and they'll corrupt whatever they find on your key drive. It happened to me.
Mark my words - Apple will NEVER release smth like that - at least with the type of specs mentioned on the RUMOR site. This goes against everything Apple prophets...
They already exist: the LC II, LC III, and Quadra 475. These were primarily for use in schools, but were sold to the public (with monitors, IIRC). You can buy a used/refurb unit for around $50. Just slip an Apple-to-VGA adapter on the video port, soup it up to 7.5.3 and you've got a slow, but reliable workstation. Check here for more info (they're listed in the Performa category).
Ron's story points to the reason he and Greg felt compelled to do it at Apple. It was the best environment in the world to accomplish the Graphing Calculator. The resources were there. There was a top-notch research library there at the time. Many of the people who are determining the course of computing at Apple and in other places today were either interning there or working there after graduating from college or had been there for a while. He mentioned the QA people. They were and are true advocates of the users.
I don't know about other places, but working at Apple was--and, I imagine, still is--like playing for the Yankees. The expectations of the fans was everything. The penchant for doing things the right way permeated every nook and cranny of the place (except upper management until Steve Jobs returned). Little bits of fit and finish that weren't even noticeable until you had them pointed out to you (or they were missing from a product) were all-important. The best projects assembled teams of people who were involved from the design phase to product release; the good managers made sure that everyone stayed on the same page.
It is the people that make Apple so special. They care about the customers. They care about the products. They care about each other, for the most part. Reading Ron Avitzur's reiteration of what passes for high praise at Apple ("this doesn't suck"), brought a tear to my eye. Another saying--at least among my group--was "we do good work." I have my own business now, and the things I learned at Apple guide everything I do.
Your misgivings are well-taken. I've been using Macs for seventeen years. I came to them after a career as a programmer on PC's and the HP3000. Just some observations:
--You immediately jettison your obsession with malware/spyware/worms, etc. If you aren't obsessed with them on a PC, you're cruisin' for a bruisin'. And that's worth something right there.
--I don't use AppleWorks unless it's necessary. But there's a myriad of software--free, shareware and commercial--that fits the bill. BBEdit, Nisus Writer, TextEdit--it's MUCH easier to find all kinds of good quality, low-cost software for Macintosh than it is for Windows. There's a much lower ratio of trash-to-treasure on Macintosh because crap just doesn't survive very long. A trip to the Mac OS X side of Versiontracker will bear me out.
--Wireless networking is mature in Mac OS X. Acquisition of networks is easier. Configuration is easier. The antennas built into the machines get better reception than Windows machines do--and that's laptop AND desktop.
--Apple hardware purchases hold their value. This machine is four years old. It can be had for about $800. I'd take one in a minute for running Mac OS X. But a new iBook G4 is $100 more. The used Mac market is crazy because the machines are so useful.
It's not all sunshine and roses by any stretch of the imagination. Panther Release 10.3.6 was a disaster, from what I hear. Busts FireWire. Windows-Mac networking interoperability suffers. There are the shortcomings you mentioned in your own situation. It's a balance. Since you're a knowledgeable user, you can make a more informed decision than most people. Macintosh does have its shortcomings, but everything about it is geared toward one thing: Helping you get your work done.
DING-DING-DING!!! If I had mod points, I'd give you one. There used to be an adage in the industry: No one ever got fired for buying IBM. That attitude is what early big-iron computing and it helped Wintel steal the initiative in personal computing. The company still has that "We're button-down grown-ups who know what we're doing" attitude. And, if you notice, they've been working hand-in-glove with Apple ever since the formation with Motorola of the consortium that developed PowerPC.
IBM would provide Apple with the cover it needs to withstand any onslaught from Microsoft (who would put on its ass-kicking shoes, anti-trust or no anti-trust), and Apple would provide an operating system that scales.
Just as HP is making a killing from selling co-branded iPods, I think IBM would probably clean up selling co-branded x86 notebooks and desktops as well as POWER-based enterprise products.
Re:lazarus is maturing too
on
Delphi Renaissance
·
· Score: 3, Informative
There's an excellent version of the gpc Pascal compiler for Mac OS X available. There's even a plug-in for the Metrowerks CodeWarrior IDE (not free). Anyone familiar with Objective-C and Mac OS X's Cocoa/Carbon development model is invited to help generate wrappers to call the code, Join the mailing list here. The site and mailing-list are also excellent resources for Pascal syntax and engineering questions, so Delphi coders can benefit, as well.
If you give a chimp an Uzi with a defective trigger mechanism and a bunch of people get shot, whose fault is it: the chimp's or the Uzi's? My first networking experience was with AppleTalk; plug it in and you had a network. I was subsequently required--with co-worker--to learn everything we could about Windows networking so we could implement it in one of our products.
My co-worker and I spent the next period AMAZED that Windows networking even worked at all. The system of domain controllers and WINS servers and browse lists and host files... it's too byzantine to be believed. There is, without doubt, a corporate network somewhere that could be comopletely undone by someone opening a wireless laptop in the wrong place at the wrong time. Add Windows XP and the attendant SP2 fun they're having and you get chaos.
Yes, those delightful folks at EDS are the chimps in this scenario, but Microsoft's products are definitely the defective Uzi. And I note that the BBC News article studiously avoided mentioning either of them. Hmm... Microsoft wouldn't be doing everything it can to tamp down this PR disaster, would it?
Wish I had the points to mod you up. Not only do you get FireWire, high-speed Internet, built-in wilreless capability (in a desktop), but you also get software that manages your pictures ($80), allows you to create simple movies ($129, for anything halfway decent on the Windows side), create your own music (lots of cheap midi-capture apps in Windows, so this is a wash). The only sticking point is that Word or Excel doen't come with it, but I always suggest that customers find used copies of Office 2001 (it runs native under X and has all the features you need---heck, Word 5.1a still woks in Classic under OS X).
Plus, you can surf without worry. I've convinced four of my customers to switch and that's the one thing they mention to me more often than anything else; the absence of worry about malware and spyware. I just installed a used PowerMac G4 for an elderly couple here in Hawaii and they love the freedom of it. I started trying to convince them to make the switch almost $1000 ago and now, I'll only see them for their regularly-scheduled tune-up. They won't be paying me for spyware, malware and virus removal again.
Check out this link and look for the gpc compiler, The guys on the site--especially Adiraan van Os--have been doing some great work recently. Adriaan has developed a plug-in that works with Metrowerks Codewarrior (I was using it with Version 7).
I was one of the first to compile Pascal on Mac OS X (translated a C project to Pascal, kludged the resource file and voila! Pascal will continue to be useful for a long time to come.
Slashdot Mirror
Wish I had the points to mod you up. Pascal is designed to be understood; C was designed to be expedient. With the extensions added to Standard Pascal, there's very little you can do in C that you can't do in Pascal.
Surf to Pascal Central, open the archives and look for the article entitled "The Pascal Programming Language" written by Bill Catambay for a discussion of "Why Pascal?"
The release of Free Pascal is good news. If it catches on, it'll mean cleaner, more reliable code that's easier to maintain.
I develop for Mac OS X and use Adrian Van Os's gpc plug-in for CodeWarrior. FreePascal is just one more tool for me to look into.
C and C++ have caused more than their share of trouble. It's time to give Pascal another look.
I have an original iPod 5GB. I've slammed it in a car door. I've dropped it from various heights. I've left it in the car in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees. It got smacked against a wall while it was in my pocket.
It still plays after around four years of loving abuse. I couldn't abide the abysmal radio market here without it.
Arianna Huffington has been putting this website together for some time now. Today is its first day of operation. I seriously doubt that a new venture like this would put up such an aggressive spoof--complete with accurate bio--on its first day of publication. It would be in serious trouble in its first twenty-four hours.
I know that Apple is far from perfect, but I have never seen the kind of vehemence against a particular product--the iPod--in my life. Every other article is "Is this the next iPod Killer?" and "When will the iPod lose its cool?" It would be different if the criticisms were grounded in reality, but sitres like C|Net whip Apple and the iPod like second-hand mules.
Reminds me of those scenes in The Godfather and The Sopranos where one mobster latches onto a sweet deal and the others are clamoring to let the fortunate one "wet their beaks" on the proceeds of that good fortune.
The iPod came out of left field, has kept coming, and parts of three or four industries are screaming "no fair!" Bitching is easier than innovating.
DING-DING-DING! SMB is a moving target. Microsoft has placed a number of potholes in what SHOULD be an open standard (delineated in RFC 1001 and 1002). There is a number of reserved, undocumented and falsely documented fields in the CIFS protocol that are used as stumbling blocks to seamless SMB connectivity.
I wouldn't be surprised to find a recent Windows update somewhere at the root of Tiger's SMB troubles. There may be a bug in Apple's code, but I doubt it.
Remember 1997? When Apple and Microsoft signed a five-year pact? The terms of which included an agreement to continue development and production of Microsoft Office for Macintosh? The purchase of $150 million of Apple stock by Microsoft? And a technology sharing agreement? Apple has been serving as Microsoft's R&D department for quite a while now.
And revolution isn't as powerful as evolution.
Because it would be a massive support headache. Every idiot with a PC would install Mac OS and immediately expect nirvana. Apple would have to expand help staff exponentially to deal with the floodtide of yokels wondering why OS X doesn't work on their x386 box with 64 MB of memory.
Control freaks? Maybe... but smart control freaks.
Just takes the will to do it. It means getting quality personnel involved from the beginning--in the design phase of the project.
It means allocating resources to each project module (and if the project isn't modular, it's crap). The quality people don't have to be geeks, in most cases. But they do have to be smart, diligent and detail-oriented.
It means adopting a professional testing approach and sticking with it.
It means demanding that programmers do their own unit testing before submitting their work to the code base and having acceptance testers who confirm that before a build is released into the general quality process.
I was a white-box tester because I had a programming background. I would generate a list of test cases from the code for which I was responsible, but I also believe that testing a product means using it as it is intended to be used, if possible.
There's no excuse for not expending the time, money and effort on assuring a quality product. Better not to do a project at all than to do it badly.
Apple finally realizes the advantages of nurturing opportunities for third-parties. It wasn't always that way.
Now, Apple creates the basic technology and lets third-party accessorizors create marketing oppportunities. This keeps Apple free to determine the destiny of its own products.
Partnering with anyone on basic design aspects of the iPod means that Apple throws away the leverage it has worked so hard to build. There is plenty of opportunities for third-party providers with iPod just as it is.
Condi Rice is nothing more than a glorified parrot. She has never mounted a policy initiative of her own. I defy anyone to find one original thought in her entire canon--both working and academic. She learned early in her career to regurgitate the tenets of George Kennan and gained the attention and favor of the fossils at Stanford's Hoover Institution.
I think you have it backwards about Condi: She is bright, but not particularly intelligent. Intelligence implies the ability and the resources to identify and to apply solutions to problems, both anticipated and unanticipated (which is why I think the article that started the thread is bullshit; An intelligent person doesn't have time to panic: They're too busy winnowing solutions. It's just like experienced pilots who say that they were too busy working the problem to worry about dying when trouble came along). Condi Rice is an elegant piece of work in a strategic sense. But she's crap when it comes to tactics. No imagination. No originality. Too much respect for the rules.
The breakup of the quality organization happened under Sculley's watch. I know 'cause I got in trouble for opposing it. I was part of the centralized group that rode herd over Apple quality until the breakup happened. Everything new that Apple made was tossed into this group and tested for compatibility with existing Apple products and with third-party products. It was a great job because it afforded the chance to be the first person in the world to try something.
The group wasn't composed entirely of geeks--most of them were smart, talented diligent people who knew their products and loved working at Apple. The advantages of it are readily apparent: Economies of scale... independence... cross-training... centralized quality information for management, engineering and marketing... It was an excellent idea and an excellent group.
I pointed this out in an email to John Sculley when the breakup was proposed. He answered me, said that the points I brought up were good ones that hadn't been raised to him before and asked if I minded if he took it up with the responsible managers.
Next thing I knew, I was in a small conference room with five layers of management and HR suggesting that I might want to forget my objections and shut the hell up. The breakup went through and quality took a nosedive for a while.
However, the people from that group were dispersed throughout the company. As time went on, they gained control of their own quality organizations. By the time Steve Jobs returned, he had seasoned, knowledgeable, dedicated quality people throughout the company. Many of them are still there.
Mod this guy up except for the last line. One of the biggest hurdles for wireless signals is metal construction of any kind. Check to see if your building has any metal framing. Even a doorframe has the power to cut your signal significantly.
If you have a cordless phone, it's probably a 2.4 GHz model: Get one that's in another band.
Position your wireless router as far away from kitchen microwave units as possible.
Lastly, use a Macintosh if you have the choice. The antennas are built in instead of tacked on. They've been working on this for over six years now--nobody else is even close (an exception is the Titanium PowerBook... see the thing about metal construction). I'm in a situation where there are six WAP's broadcasting into my office. My Macs always pick up our signal. My partner's Vaio laptop is fond of a SonicWall AP across the hall. We've had to switch to wired connection because it just can't remember to stay with its network. Macs also work better with closed networks (no IBSS broadcast).
I have to disagree with you on this. The most scrutinized combination right now is Windows/Firefox because it's starting to take a bite out of IE's market share. If you don't think there's a team of Microsoft-funded gremlins whacking the bejesus out of Firefox in a dungeon somewhere, you haven't been paying attention.
What do youy propose they would have shot down the bomber with?
How did two bombers obliterate Hiroshima and Nagasaki without escorts?
You may be a "physic/comp sci" major, but you should have paid attention in history class.
If I'd had a chance to control events, I would have sent a cable to the Japanese telling them to evacuate an island and have observers standing by at a safe distance on the morning of August 6th. I'd have dropped the bomb and followed up with another cable: Surrender now and we won't drop another one.
But that's just me..;
Amen, but don't forget to carry a CD with all that stuff on it, too. Some viruses now attack anti-spyware software and they'll corrupt whatever they find on your key drive. It happened to me.
I live in that fantasy-world, although I occasionally do things that aren't exactly innocent. It's called "Mac OS."
Ron's story points to the reason he and Greg felt compelled to do it at Apple. It was the best environment in the world to accomplish the Graphing Calculator. The resources were there. There was a top-notch research library there at the time. Many of the people who are determining the course of computing at Apple and in other places today were either interning there or working there after graduating from college or had been there for a while. He mentioned the QA people. They were and are true advocates of the users.
I don't know about other places, but working at Apple was--and, I imagine, still is--like playing for the Yankees. The expectations of the fans was everything. The penchant for doing things the right way permeated every nook and cranny of the place (except upper management until Steve Jobs returned). Little bits of fit and finish that weren't even noticeable until you had them pointed out to you (or they were missing from a product) were all-important. The best projects assembled teams of people who were involved from the design phase to product release; the good managers made sure that everyone stayed on the same page.
It is the people that make Apple so special. They care about the customers. They care about the products. They care about each other, for the most part. Reading Ron Avitzur's reiteration of what passes for high praise at Apple ("this doesn't suck"), brought a tear to my eye. Another saying--at least among my group--was "we do good work." I have my own business now, and the things I learned at Apple guide everything I do.
Wonderful article, Slashdot. Thanks.
Your misgivings are well-taken. I've been using Macs for seventeen years. I came to them after a career as a programmer on PC's and the HP3000. Just some observations:
--You immediately jettison your obsession with malware/spyware/worms, etc. If you aren't obsessed with them on a PC, you're cruisin' for a bruisin'. And that's worth something right there.
--I don't use AppleWorks unless it's necessary. But there's a myriad of software--free, shareware and commercial--that fits the bill. BBEdit, Nisus Writer, TextEdit--it's MUCH easier to find all kinds of good quality, low-cost software for Macintosh than it is for Windows. There's a much lower ratio of trash-to-treasure on Macintosh because crap just doesn't survive very long. A trip to the Mac OS X side of Versiontracker will bear me out.
--Wireless networking is mature in Mac OS X. Acquisition of networks is easier. Configuration is easier. The antennas built into the machines get better reception than Windows machines do--and that's laptop AND desktop.
--Apple hardware purchases hold their value. This machine is four years old. It can be had for about $800. I'd take one in a minute for running Mac OS X. But a new iBook G4 is $100 more. The used Mac market is crazy because the machines are so useful.
It's not all sunshine and roses by any stretch of the imagination. Panther Release 10.3.6 was a disaster, from what I hear. Busts FireWire. Windows-Mac networking interoperability suffers. There are the shortcomings you mentioned in your own situation. It's a balance. Since you're a knowledgeable user, you can make a more informed decision than most people. Macintosh does have its shortcomings, but everything about it is geared toward one thing: Helping you get your work done.
Good luck. Hope this helps.
DING-DING-DING!!! If I had mod points, I'd give you one. There used to be an adage in the industry: No one ever got fired for buying IBM. That attitude is what early big-iron computing and it helped Wintel steal the initiative in personal computing. The company still has that "We're button-down grown-ups who know what we're doing" attitude. And, if you notice, they've been working hand-in-glove with Apple ever since the formation with Motorola of the consortium that developed PowerPC.
IBM would provide Apple with the cover it needs to withstand any onslaught from Microsoft (who would put on its ass-kicking shoes, anti-trust or no anti-trust), and Apple would provide an operating system that scales.
Just as HP is making a killing from selling co-branded iPods, I think IBM would probably clean up selling co-branded x86 notebooks and desktops as well as POWER-based enterprise products.
The links that didn't appear above:
http://www.microbizz.nl/gpc.html
http://www.pascal-central.com
There's an excellent version of the gpc Pascal compiler for Mac OS X available. There's even a plug-in for the Metrowerks CodeWarrior IDE (not free). Anyone familiar with Objective-C and Mac OS X's Cocoa/Carbon development model is invited to help generate wrappers to call the code, Join the mailing list here. The site and mailing-list are also excellent resources for Pascal syntax and engineering questions, so Delphi coders can benefit, as well.
If you give a chimp an Uzi with a defective trigger mechanism and a bunch of people get shot, whose fault is it: the chimp's or the Uzi's? My first networking experience was with AppleTalk; plug it in and you had a network. I was subsequently required--with co-worker--to learn everything we could about Windows networking so we could implement it in one of our products.
My co-worker and I spent the next period AMAZED that Windows networking even worked at all. The system of domain controllers and WINS servers and browse lists and host files... it's too byzantine to be believed. There is, without doubt, a corporate network somewhere that could be comopletely undone by someone opening a wireless laptop in the wrong place at the wrong time. Add Windows XP and the attendant SP2 fun they're having and you get chaos.
Yes, those delightful folks at EDS are the chimps in this scenario, but Microsoft's products are definitely the defective Uzi. And I note that the BBC News article studiously avoided mentioning either of them. Hmm... Microsoft wouldn't be doing everything it can to tamp down this PR disaster, would it?
Naaah!
Wish I had the points to mod you up. Not only do you get FireWire, high-speed Internet, built-in wilreless capability (in a desktop), but you also get software that manages your pictures ($80), allows you to create simple movies ($129, for anything halfway decent on the Windows side), create your own music (lots of cheap midi-capture apps in Windows, so this is a wash). The only sticking point is that Word or Excel doen't come with it, but I always suggest that customers find used copies of Office 2001 (it runs native under X and has all the features you need---heck, Word 5.1a still woks in Classic under OS X).
Plus, you can surf without worry. I've convinced four of my customers to switch and that's the one thing they mention to me more often than anything else; the absence of worry about malware and spyware. I just installed a used PowerMac G4 for an elderly couple here in Hawaii and they love the freedom of it. I started trying to convince them to make the switch almost $1000 ago and now, I'll only see them for their regularly-scheduled tune-up. They won't be paying me for spyware, malware and virus removal again.
Check out this link and look for the gpc compiler, The guys on the site--especially Adiraan van Os--have been doing some great work recently. Adriaan has developed a plug-in that works with Metrowerks Codewarrior (I was using it with Version 7).
I was one of the first to compile Pascal on Mac OS X (translated a C project to Pascal, kludged the resource file and voila! Pascal will continue to be useful for a long time to come.