As several other posters have noted, VMS has/had this feature, which incidentally was the only one I liked during the brief period in which i had to develop code on VMS (COBOL, too---talk about the worst of both worlds!).
Perhaps someone with some experience in the filesystem development area could comment on this for me:
as someone else noted, VMS's implementation of versioning saves the full version of each file. How feasible would it be to be able to mark certain files as 'versioned' (with non-versioned files ignored in this scheme) and upon a save of a versioned file, the fs would perform some sort of a diff on it and save the patch? Obviously you wouldn't want that on all files, because i would think that a diff cycle on each and every file of a heavily used system would eat some serious cpu time. but for important ones: devel code, system files, etc., i could see that as a usable feature. How practical would something like that be?
If you could invent the internet all over again, would you have stuck with the traditional copper-line technology or switched to highly-touted super-high-bandwidth can-and-string paradigm? and do you think the internet should be patented by the US Gov't, as bill gates did with the Bit?
i was really going to moderate this story, but i couldn't help but comment.
BAD IDEA!!!
One aspect of government in America, one of the few duties I believe it SHOULD perform, is to protect the rights of the minority. That is a key aspect of life in America: majority rule, with protection of minority rights!!! Its hard enough for those of us in the bible belt to keep what services are available despite arcane biblical restrictions against them, without taking away what rights the minority has to those services. For instance, I like strip clubs. God help me, I like naked women. Many people don't, and that's fine. There is no law that says they have to attend services at Rick's Cabaret on saturday nights. But if the bible-thumpers had their way, no one would be able to enjoy that activity. Porn on the internet would be outlawed, gambling, as well as any number of other activities.
Back to cable, i used to live in an apartment complex with its own cable system. there were a lot of old people there, and what young people did live there usually had younger school age children, say, 5 to 12 years old. These people found channels like MTV and Comedy Central to be either offensive or dangerous to young minds, so they successfully lobbied the complex to remove those channels from the lineup. So now nobody has the option of watching them. God help me I haven't seen South Park in four years! (or however long its been since it started) That's not just wrong, its un-frikkin-American!
so that's why this idea, though well-intentioned, should NEVER be implemented. Aside from that, its also rather socialistic in nature and I disagree with that as well, but that's a little off-topic. Now i've got to go find a new story to moderate.
I used to use Netdoor for access, as well as Bellsouth, and i'm currently with YA3PDSLP (Yet Another 3rd Party DSL Provider). So far, here are my observations:
1.) there are inherent problems with 3rd party providers. they don't have access to the physical lines usually, and so their technical support may not have all the information necessary to resolve problems quickly.
2.) (1) DOES NOT prevent a 3rd party from being a reliable ISP. It just means that in some cases issues may take slightly longer to resolve.
3.) Performance-wise, my DSL provider is as fast (and in some cases faster) than Bellsouth. In addition, they give me a static IP and a linux-friendly dsl modem unit, as opposed to Bellsouth, who uses a USB unit which i was only able to use under windows, meaning i had to run all my connection sharing software under (yech!) Win98.
4.) While its been some time since I used Netdoor, my experience with them was that they perenially had their head up their collective ass. I had problems dialing into their servers about 1/3 of the time, and even on their 56k lines i rarely got above 33.6 connections. Note: I have had no experience with them as a DSL provider.
While I disagree with the conclusions of the article in general (I agree with the earlier poster who noted that the 'drug craze' mentioned in the article is more composed of individuals who are trying to ride the wave rather than hackers from the start) I have to take exception to this statement:
Like most press articles about drugs, they're failing to make the distinction between users and abusers.
there's no such thing as a 'user' of cocaine or any of the other hard-core drugs mentioned in the article, with the exception of prescription drugs. if you've progressed to the point that your conception of acceptable use includes these drugs, then chances are, you already have a problem.
Which isn't to say that someone who is abusing drugs can't get it under control themselves, without outside treatment. as spiralx noted, he apparently has some success in it. But the sinister allure of these drugs is that you are in control of them. Make no mistake--you aren't. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but with continued use, one day--these drugs will assert themselves over you and you'll have to acknowledge who's the boss.
While i can't speak for most people, if the MPAA came a-knockin' on my door, I'd gladly meet them in the courts. What they're trying to do is clearly in violation of the constitution, and i feel confident that the higher courts will see that. I also think that Congress will eventually rethink this whole IP issue, now that there's been some real publicity. Hopefully sooner or later, someone will pass a Consumer's Bill of Rights, or better yet, repeal these ridiculous IP laws like the DCMA and let the markets regulate themselves. If congress wouldn't have passed the thing in the first place, then media industries would have had to find a different way of making money instead of trying to control the distribution channels, which is what they're going to eventually have to do anyway. Any time you create a regulation, someone's going to get screwed. much better to let the free markets do their own regulating.
Are you suggesting that an amendment is a reinterpretation of the Constitution? If so, then I don't think you really understand the concept. If not, ignore me.
The concept is called Civil Disobedience, and while it has been a well-respected method of protesting laws and societal problems for centuries, a key component of it is willingness to pay for your crimes. The idea is not to say "fuck you I'll do what I want and you can't do anything to me"; its "fuck you, I'm doing what I want because it shouldn't be illegal and I want everyone to know that it is illegal and they need to help change the laws".
(I mean the actual written Constitution as intended by the writers, not the "living document" which only exists in the fevered imaginations of leftist jurists and their apologists).
Why do you think the Constitution (as written) included a method for amendments, if not to be a document that would change over time? The framers of the Constitution KNEW that political climates could and would change over time, and provided a way for the country to change with them. There's nothing worse than a pseudo-libertarian nut who ignores facts in evidence which are blatantly obvious, even to a casual (and international) observer.
Any intelligent atheist will *self-describe* as someone who *fails* to believe in god, not someone who *actively disbelieves* in God.
No, an athiest is someone who DISBELIEVES in a higher power. To be an athiest requires a postive action, some kind of change in mental inertia. Failing to believe is an attribute of an agnostic. Either belief that a higher power does exist or does not exist is a hypothesis. To say I don't know if it exists or not is essentially the lack of a hypothesis. You can't say "I don't know" and "I know its not" and be consistent. As for the meaning of agnostic, regardless of what Mr. Huxley meant when he said it, the etymology of it has nothing to do with morality of claiming knowledge one does not posses--it is merely a factual word meaning "I don't possess knowledge". Athiest, on the other hand, from the modifier 'a' (not) and the greek 'theos' meaning god, means literally 'godless' and practically one who denies the existence of god. To say merely that an athiest doesn't believe is insufficient and inadequate. It is much more apropo to say that an athiest believes there is no god, for such a belief is an affirmative statement on the part of the athiest in question.
And for the record, while you may disagree, I consider myself fairly intelligent and definitely an athiest, and *I* describe myself as actively disbelieving.
The first assumption is that the poster is living in a country with laws and a society like the US... possibily the public would not support something like a group of anonymous hackers, but perhaps they would somewhere like china.
Secondly, perhaps its software that is illegal, but your morals and ethics say it shouldn't be. Cryptographics, for instance.
All things considered, I think its a good question that needs consideration. If there aren't systems in place to do things anonymously, there should be.
Hackers/geeks like everyone else *want* to believe in religion a higher power to give them comfort. While some may deny this I think the prevalance of religious people on earth (for whatever reason) is more than enough to establish that the human pysche naturally craves something outside itself.
No, hackers and geeks don't want to believe in a higher power. Some of them do in fact believe in a higher power, some do not. I think what most hackers and geeks want is a) the truth. [wanting something doesn't make it true] b) a consistent worldview. [exceptions in life are as frustrating as in code]c) free beer. and d)pizza. [if you really need to have c) and d) elaborated then you probably should not be on slashdot] Not necessarily in that order.
One who believes that there can be no proof of the existence of God but does not deny the possibility that God exists.
-------------------------
Gnostic (nstk) adj.
gnostic. Of, relating to, or possessing intellectual or spiritual knowledge.
Of or relating to Gnosticism.
-------------------------
atheist (th-st) n. One that disbelieves or denies the existence of God or gods.
Atheist and agnostic are mutually exclusive. Aside from that, I agree with you. Although I am actively hostile to organized religions and mystics in general, which in my mind includes most (all?) religious people, though I have different reasons for different people. Or more than one reason for some people. Look at it how you want to. Yes, I'm aware this is closed-minded and probably makes me a bad person. I'm ok with that.
As a recent college dropout, I believe that college did serve an important purpose in my life--it gave me a chance to grow up a little, get lots of beer, and find some jobs I wouldn't otherwise have been exposed to. I DIDN'T LEARN ANYTHING ABOUT PROGRAMMING THERE!!! I'm a good programmer. Not the best--there are many people I've worked with who have forgotten more than I'll ever know about programming. But I learn quickly, and I have enough initiative to ask questions and find the answers for myself. That's all you really need to succeed, in the vast majority of jobs. Not that there aren't jobs which do require a degree, but for most of them, its overkill and a waste of time. If you're in high school, want to be a programmer, and are wondering whether to go to college, do it for a couple of years, but don't waste them. Learn about yourself, and learn about your trade. When you get tired of it, find a job. But don't jump ship until you've got one.
yeah, RMS is intelligent, but not intelligent enough to realize that life isn't GPL/non-GPL, but shades of GPL mixed with QPL mixed with MPL, mixed with BSDL, and that's ok. RMS would have you believe that simply because software isn't GPL it isn't free, which is not true. RMS would have you believe that anyone who isn't for the GPL is against every form of freedom. I can't decide who RMS reminds me more of, Lenin or McCarthy.
Re:There's really not much difference between the
on
GPG vs. PGP?
·
· Score: 1
correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the original PGP designed for use under Unix and then ported to DOS? (I'm not emotionally attached to the idea, so if i'm wrong, no need to flame me, just trying to clear up a possible point of confusion in my mind)
Until it's tested in court, no one knows the GPL the way RMS claims to. The fact is, the only sole authority regarding anything legal in this country is the US Supreme Court, and they are quite unlikely to take on a case solely to decide whether the GPL is a valid license... I would much sooner expect to see Napster or DeCSS in their halls than RMS.
But, FWIW, I think that the interpretation of forgiveness is a little off. Forgive in a financial sense means to rescind responsibility on the part of the forgiven. I believe RMS here meant it in the same fashion--to forgive kde developers I think means to rescind their obligations of formerly non-GPL code in their base. However, I still think RMS is probably the most arrogant member of the open-source community, and certainly the most fanatical, with the result that his opinions are often dismissed out of hand (and often, rightly so) by the community.
1.) I hate codewarrior. I think its a crappy IDE, and that's a personal preference.
2.) I like CL tools.
3.) Most of what you'll do in a basic C++ or OOP class should move between them with no problem, so just do a check before you turn it in.
4.) Unfortunately, the choice of compiler is typically not up to the developer. Most companies (at least, all the one's i've worked for) will let you use anything you want as an IDE, but you have to use the compiler they've standardized on. there's nothing wrong with that, its a business decision.
5.) It won't kill anyone to learn to use another IDE. At the very least, its something you can put as a keyword on a resume for the text scanners to pick up. Even if it is a crappy IDE.
I've also used MainWin in the recent past (6 months back) and I can attest that it hasn't gotten any better. In fact, it ships to developers with a ported version of IE, which I can also tell you SUCKS. Its slow as hell, crash-prone, and doesn't adapt to whatever window manager you're using, which is to say, it either compiles looking like Motif or Win32. No choices there. As if that's not bad enough, its really, REALLY bloated, since it has to duplicate pretty much an entire OS. It kind of reminds me of Netscape 4, to tell you the truth.
MainWin is one of those things that you use when you want to 'rehost' (they don't even call it porting) an in-house application of some sort. Nobody who's really serious about porting tries to use it to port an app. Apparently the rocket scientists over at microsoft didn't learn the basic rules of development that 90% of/.'s readership knows: separate form and function. But then again, with windows, they amount to the same thing, don't they?
From reading the response to the WSP letter, as well as numerous comments both on MozillaZine's site and/., it is clear to me that many in the pro-Netscape camp just don't get it. While I am not pro-Microsoft in the slightest, as a web-applications developer (distinct from the concept of a web author) I for one am glad Microsoft chose to extend the standards in the way it has, for many reasons. For one thing, the extensions Microsoft built into the DOM and JScript make it MUCH easier to develop real applications. Before much longer, the only thing that won't be provided in IE that you can find in the Win32 environment is pixel manipulations, and I don't think those are too far behind. Does anyone else see where that is going? I should hope so--its been all over the media for the better part of a year. Microsoft is positioning IE as a platform in and of itself, which is good news for those of us in the cross-platform apps camp. Why? Because those standards, proprietary or not, can be implemented much more easily and quickly on other platforms than a binary library.
Another thing I noticed about a lot of the comments being made is that they're just plain whiny. "Netscape doesn't suck, MS is a monopoly and THAT's why more people use it..." Fact of the matter is, Netscape DOES suck, and while MS may be a monopoly, its because of business practices, not a lack of product competition. IE has more users because ITS A BETTER BROWSER! Its faster than Netscape or opera and easier to script for. Its embeddable in other applications (on win32, of course). Most of the reasons IE is a better browser than IE have been addressed in Gecko, notably the embeddability and speed. Gecko far surpasses IE in terms of platforms it runs on. However, its ultra-important to note that gecko and mozilla are not one and the same--mozilla has so much extra crap involved that it holds back gecko. I was inordinately pleased to see that someone had made a wrapper for gecko in the form of Galeon.
As for the point raised above, that Microsoft would simply introduce new standards whenever it wanted to break the competition, I thought that was something the OSS community prided itself on: the speed with which it could implement things like new features and bug fixes.
In summary, I guess my point is this: if you don't like the way somebody's doing something, don't bitch about it; do it better.
(as an aside, I do want to commend the mozilla developers on a brilliant rendering engine--but I'm still waiting before i trust the interface)
At times like this, I really wish I had some company to be pissed off at. Please, someone, help me find a company to hate just for the sake of exercising a constitutional right and having it take away from me.
support projects like freenet to prevent companies like this from eroding our rights and freedoms.
Slashdot Mirror
As several other posters have noted, VMS has/had this feature, which incidentally was the only one I liked during the brief period in which i had to develop code on VMS (COBOL, too---talk about the worst of both worlds!).
Perhaps someone with some experience in the filesystem development area could comment on this for me:
as someone else noted, VMS's implementation of versioning saves the full version of each file. How feasible would it be to be able to mark certain files as 'versioned' (with non-versioned files ignored in this scheme) and upon a save of a versioned file, the fs would perform some sort of a diff on it and save the patch? Obviously you wouldn't want that on all files, because i would think that a diff cycle on each and every file of a heavily used system would eat some serious cpu time. but for important ones: devel code, system files, etc., i could see that as a usable feature. How practical would something like that be?
For Mr. Gore:
If you could invent the internet all over again, would you have stuck with the traditional copper-line technology or switched to highly-touted super-high-bandwidth can-and-string paradigm? and do you think the internet should be patented by the US Gov't, as bill gates did with the Bit?
i was really going to moderate this story, but i couldn't help but comment.
BAD IDEA!!!
One aspect of government in America, one of the few duties I believe it SHOULD perform, is to protect the rights of the minority. That is a key aspect of life in America: majority rule, with protection of minority rights!!! Its hard enough for those of us in the bible belt to keep what services are available despite arcane biblical restrictions against them, without taking away what rights the minority has to those services. For instance, I like strip clubs. God help me, I like naked women. Many people don't, and that's fine. There is no law that says they have to attend services at Rick's Cabaret on saturday nights. But if the bible-thumpers had their way, no one would be able to enjoy that activity. Porn on the internet would be outlawed, gambling, as well as any number of other activities.
Back to cable, i used to live in an apartment complex with its own cable system. there were a lot of old people there, and what young people did live there usually had younger school age children, say, 5 to 12 years old. These people found channels like MTV and Comedy Central to be either offensive or dangerous to young minds, so they successfully lobbied the complex to remove those channels from the lineup. So now nobody has the option of watching them. God help me I haven't seen South Park in four years! (or however long its been since it started) That's not just wrong, its un-frikkin-American!
so that's why this idea, though well-intentioned, should NEVER be implemented. Aside from that, its also rather socialistic in nature and I disagree with that as well, but that's a little off-topic. Now i've got to go find a new story to moderate.
I used to use Netdoor for access, as well as Bellsouth, and i'm currently with YA3PDSLP (Yet Another 3rd Party DSL Provider). So far, here are my observations:
1.) there are inherent problems with 3rd party providers. they don't have access to the physical lines usually, and so their technical support may not have all the information necessary to resolve problems quickly.
2.) (1) DOES NOT prevent a 3rd party from being a reliable ISP. It just means that in some cases issues may take slightly longer to resolve.
3.) Performance-wise, my DSL provider is as fast (and in some cases faster) than Bellsouth. In addition, they give me a static IP and a linux-friendly dsl modem unit, as opposed to Bellsouth, who uses a USB unit which i was only able to use under windows, meaning i had to run all my connection sharing software under (yech!) Win98.
4.) While its been some time since I used Netdoor, my experience with them was that they perenially had their head up their collective ass. I had problems dialing into their servers about 1/3 of the time, and even on their 56k lines i rarely got above 33.6 connections. Note: I have had no experience with them as a DSL provider.
While I disagree with the conclusions of the article in general (I agree with the earlier poster who noted that the 'drug craze' mentioned in the article is more composed of individuals who are trying to ride the wave rather than hackers from the start) I have to take exception to this statement:
Like most press articles about drugs, they're failing to make the distinction between users and abusers.
there's no such thing as a 'user' of cocaine or any of the other hard-core drugs mentioned in the article, with the exception of prescription drugs. if you've progressed to the point that your conception of acceptable use includes these drugs, then chances are, you already have a problem.
Which isn't to say that someone who is abusing drugs can't get it under control themselves, without outside treatment. as spiralx noted, he apparently has some success in it. But the sinister allure of these drugs is that you are in control of them. Make no mistake--you aren't. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but with continued use, one day--these drugs will assert themselves over you and you'll have to acknowledge who's the boss.
Rumour has it that their key linux hacker fled to Iceland for some R&R. Expect big things in October.
sounds like one of those fuckedcompany.com rumors...
While i can't speak for most people, if the MPAA came a-knockin' on my door, I'd gladly meet them in the courts. What they're trying to do is clearly in violation of the constitution, and i feel confident that the higher courts will see that. I also think that Congress will eventually rethink this whole IP issue, now that there's been some real publicity. Hopefully sooner or later, someone will pass a Consumer's Bill of Rights, or better yet, repeal these ridiculous IP laws like the DCMA and let the markets regulate themselves. If congress wouldn't have passed the thing in the first place, then media industries would have had to find a different way of making money instead of trying to control the distribution channels, which is what they're going to eventually have to do anyway. Any time you create a regulation, someone's going to get screwed. much better to let the free markets do their own regulating.
That's not civil disobedience, that's seeking asylum from abuses of human rights. People still do it today.
Are you suggesting that an amendment is a reinterpretation of the Constitution? If so, then I don't think you really understand the concept. If not, ignore me.
The concept is called Civil Disobedience, and while it has been a well-respected method of protesting laws and societal problems for centuries, a key component of it is willingness to pay for your crimes. The idea is not to say "fuck you I'll do what I want and you can't do anything to me"; its "fuck you, I'm doing what I want because it shouldn't be illegal and I want everyone to know that it is illegal and they need to help change the laws".
Why do you think the Constitution (as written) included a method for amendments, if not to be a document that would change over time? The framers of the Constitution KNEW that political climates could and would change over time, and provided a way for the country to change with them. There's nothing worse than a pseudo-libertarian nut who ignores facts in evidence which are blatantly obvious, even to a casual (and international) observer.
Actually, that's a pretty good description of the current DeCSS case...
No, an athiest is someone who DISBELIEVES in a higher power. To be an athiest requires a postive action, some kind of change in mental inertia. Failing to believe is an attribute of an agnostic. Either belief that a higher power does exist or does not exist is a hypothesis. To say I don't know if it exists or not is essentially the lack of a hypothesis. You can't say "I don't know" and "I know its not" and be consistent. As for the meaning of agnostic, regardless of what Mr. Huxley meant when he said it, the etymology of it has nothing to do with morality of claiming knowledge one does not posses--it is merely a factual word meaning "I don't possess knowledge". Athiest, on the other hand, from the modifier 'a' (not) and the greek 'theos' meaning god, means literally 'godless' and practically one who denies the existence of god. To say merely that an athiest doesn't believe is insufficient and inadequate. It is much more apropo to say that an athiest believes there is no god, for such a belief is an affirmative statement on the part of the athiest in question.
And for the record, while you may disagree, I consider myself fairly intelligent and definitely an athiest, and *I* describe myself as actively disbelieving.
The first assumption is that the poster is living in a country with laws and a society like the US... possibily the public would not support something like a group of anonymous hackers, but perhaps they would somewhere like china.
Secondly, perhaps its software that is illegal, but your morals and ethics say it shouldn't be. Cryptographics, for instance.
All things considered, I think its a good question that needs consideration. If there aren't systems in place to do things anonymously, there should be.
Hackers/geeks like everyone else *want* to believe in religion a higher power to give them comfort. While some may deny this I think the prevalance of religious people on earth (for whatever reason) is more than enough to establish that the human pysche naturally craves something outside itself.
No, hackers and geeks don't want to believe in a higher power. Some of them do in fact believe in a higher power, some do not. I think what most hackers and geeks want is a) the truth. [wanting something doesn't make it true] b) a consistent worldview. [exceptions in life are as frustrating as in code]c) free beer. and d)pizza. [if you really need to have c) and d) elaborated then you probably should not be on slashdot] Not necessarily in that order.
One who believes that there can be no proof of the existence of God but does not deny the possibility that God exists.
-------------------------
Gnostic (nstk) adj.
gnostic. Of, relating to, or possessing intellectual or spiritual knowledge.
Of or relating to Gnosticism.
-------------------------
atheist (th-st) n.
One that disbelieves or denies the existence of God or gods.
Atheist and agnostic are mutually exclusive. Aside from that, I agree with you. Although I am actively hostile to organized religions and mystics in general, which in my mind includes most (all?) religious people, though I have different reasons for different people. Or more than one reason for some people. Look at it how you want to. Yes, I'm aware this is closed-minded and probably makes me a bad person. I'm ok with that.
As a recent college dropout, I believe that college did serve an important purpose in my life--it gave me a chance to grow up a little, get lots of beer, and find some jobs I wouldn't otherwise have been exposed to. I DIDN'T LEARN ANYTHING ABOUT PROGRAMMING THERE!!! I'm a good programmer. Not the best--there are many people I've worked with who have forgotten more than I'll ever know about programming. But I learn quickly, and I have enough initiative to ask questions and find the answers for myself. That's all you really need to succeed, in the vast majority of jobs. Not that there aren't jobs which do require a degree, but for most of them, its overkill and a waste of time. If you're in high school, want to be a programmer, and are wondering whether to go to college, do it for a couple of years, but don't waste them. Learn about yourself, and learn about your trade. When you get tired of it, find a job. But don't jump ship until you've got one.
yeah, RMS is intelligent, but not intelligent enough to realize that life isn't GPL/non-GPL, but shades of GPL mixed with QPL mixed with MPL, mixed with BSDL, and that's ok. RMS would have you believe that simply because software isn't GPL it isn't free, which is not true. RMS would have you believe that anyone who isn't for the GPL is against every form of freedom. I can't decide who RMS reminds me more of, Lenin or McCarthy.
correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the original PGP designed for use under Unix and then ported to DOS? (I'm not emotionally attached to the idea, so if i'm wrong, no need to flame me, just trying to clear up a possible point of confusion in my mind)
But, FWIW, I think that the interpretation of forgiveness is a little off. Forgive in a financial sense means to rescind responsibility on the part of the forgiven. I believe RMS here meant it in the same fashion--to forgive kde developers I think means to rescind their obligations of formerly non-GPL code in their base. However, I still think RMS is probably the most arrogant member of the open-source community, and certainly the most fanatical, with the result that his opinions are often dismissed out of hand (and often, rightly so) by the community.
well, those who are vehemently opposed to this chap can take comfort in the fact that he appears to have been /.'ed
"Life is a disease with a 100% fatality rate."
1.) I hate codewarrior. I think its a crappy IDE, and that's a personal preference.
2.) I like CL tools.
3.) Most of what you'll do in a basic C++ or OOP class should move between them with no problem, so just do a check before you turn it in.
4.) Unfortunately, the choice of compiler is typically not up to the developer. Most companies (at least, all the one's i've worked for) will let you use anything you want as an IDE, but you have to use the compiler they've standardized on. there's nothing wrong with that, its a business decision.
5.) It won't kill anyone to learn to use another IDE. At the very least, its something you can put as a keyword on a resume for the text scanners to pick up. Even if it is a crappy IDE.
I've also used MainWin in the recent past (6 months back) and I can attest that it hasn't gotten any better. In fact, it ships to developers with a ported version of IE, which I can also tell you SUCKS. Its slow as hell, crash-prone, and doesn't adapt to whatever window manager you're using, which is to say, it either compiles looking like Motif or Win32. No choices there. As if that's not bad enough, its really, REALLY bloated, since it has to duplicate pretty much an entire OS. It kind of reminds me of Netscape 4, to tell you the truth.
/.'s readership knows: separate form and function. But then again, with windows, they amount to the same thing, don't they?
MainWin is one of those things that you use when you want to 'rehost' (they don't even call it porting) an in-house application of some sort. Nobody who's really serious about porting tries to use it to port an app. Apparently the rocket scientists over at microsoft didn't learn the basic rules of development that 90% of
Another thing I noticed about a lot of the comments being made is that they're just plain whiny. "Netscape doesn't suck, MS is a monopoly and THAT's why more people use it..." Fact of the matter is, Netscape DOES suck, and while MS may be a monopoly, its because of business practices, not a lack of product competition. IE has more users because ITS A BETTER BROWSER! Its faster than Netscape or opera and easier to script for. Its embeddable in other applications (on win32, of course). Most of the reasons IE is a better browser than IE have been addressed in Gecko, notably the embeddability and speed. Gecko far surpasses IE in terms of platforms it runs on. However, its ultra-important to note that gecko and mozilla are not one and the same--mozilla has so much extra crap involved that it holds back gecko. I was inordinately pleased to see that someone had made a wrapper for gecko in the form of Galeon.
As for the point raised above, that Microsoft would simply introduce new standards whenever it wanted to break the competition, I thought that was something the OSS community prided itself on: the speed with which it could implement things like new features and bug fixes.
In summary, I guess my point is this: if you don't like the way somebody's doing something, don't bitch about it; do it better.
(as an aside, I do want to commend the mozilla developers on a brilliant rendering engine--but I'm still waiting before i trust the interface)
At times like this, I really wish I had some company to be pissed off at. Please, someone, help me find a company to hate just for the sake of exercising a constitutional right and having it take away from me.
support projects like freenet to prevent companies like this from eroding our rights and freedoms.