MSNBC and ZDNet have a content sharing agreement; on MSNBC if you look at the top of the article [at the ZDNet logo] (and the copyright at the bottom), you'll see that it's a ZDNet article being published on the MSNBC site.
So that's why the articles look similar - they're the same article!
"ok i don't want to be all one sided here...but isn't this MS stealing from Apple again...didn't apple have the OSX client and server thing first. Now there is win2k client and server...comeon...how gay."
Try looking at the history of these things -- OSX only came out recently; MS has been working on Terminal server/client since at least 97 (which is when they licensed the WinFrame technology from Citrix).
Provided, of course, that that's what you're talking about.
... some kind of bound function pointer would be good though; it'd mean that you'd be able to write your windowing code in C++/Java and not have to jump through hoops to bind WNDPROC function pointers to objects. Take a look at the MFC source code; it's a mess of hashtables and other binding glue simply because C++ can't do bound function pointers.
Either that, or have something that produces mini code thunks.
"I once got major gloat points when, less than two weeks after I had recommended UPSes as a safety measure to them , one of my company's customers lost upwards of $100,000 of equipment to a thunderstorm."
The thing I don't understand is.... what use is a UPS in a thunderstorm? Sure, if you have a power outage, you're fine. However, you're screwed if you have a power surge of any kind (particularly if you get a direct hit). Also, if the phone lines are down, or the phone lines get hit, your network will be screwed anyway...
*shrugs* maybe it's just me, but with over 1000 lightning strikes in an hour, I'm not surprised that the machine got hit hard...
Kinda cool... destroyed the elevators in my apartment building...
http://www.msnbc.com/local/KING/340593.asp
1,000 lightning strikes in 4 hours
SEATTLE, August 4 - Two men were hit by lightning and nearly 20,000 utility customers lost electricity in thunderstorms around the Puget Sound area Tuesday afternoon and evening.
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE reported 1,000 lightning strikes in 4 hours Tuesday afternoon and evening. Authorities said 44-year-old David Smith of Renton was treated and released from Auburn General Hospital after being hit by a thunderbolt next to a snack bar at Lake Tapps. A 32-year-old man is listed in Satisfactory condition at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle after being hit near the Husky Union Building at the University of Washington. One strike apparently hit the Space Needle, but employees there said they were not aware of it. Meanwhile, a lightning strike in Auburn sparked an explosive barn fire. A propane tank and an acetylene tank inside the southeast Auburn two-story barn exploded in the fire. Half the barn was destroyed, but no people or animals were injured. Officials at the National Weather Service said the storm was active, but not necessarily severe or rare. The National Weather Service said lightning strikes numbered up to 84 in one 15-minute span. Across the Cascades, lightning also was suspected to be the cause of a brush fire that burned about 150 acres a few miles north of the town of Chelan on Tuesday night, a Chelan County fire dispatcher said. No homes were threatened. The dispatcher had no estimate on when the blaze might be contained. The storm was caused by a warm, unstable air mass floating up from northern California, sitting on Seattle and continuing toward Canada before dissipating in the early evening. Power outages affected 8,200 customers of Puget Sound Energy, 10,000 customers of Seattle City Light, 1,100 customers of Tacoma City Light and 400 customers of the Snohomish County Public Utility District. Utilities crews worked throughout the night to restore power.
The spec does indeed say that slow-start should always be used, but if you keep track of how many packets are being lost globablly, you can ignore slow-start except for congestion recovery (and if you've received X lost packet notification in the last X seconds or something). That way, you can start connections at top speed. If you used that trick, that is:)
I've had trouble saving a file w/ Word 97, and then opening it with the exact same program 5 minutes later... I usually have to shut down Word and start it up again and then have a 50% chance of it being read correctly... There is something VERY wrong about that!
Funny.. I used Word 97 to write technical docs, reports and articles for magazines for about a year without ever seeing what you saw. Maybe another program you installed later screwed with the DLLs.
Word2K will by default use the Word97 document format. The XML "format" will be a save-to option, but won't really be one document, but a bunch of pieces saved in a subdirectory...).
... which is a limitation of XML/HTML, in that you have to save images as separate items (ie. GIF/PNG/JPEG files) rather than embedding them in the HTML document direct.
Word's XML stuff will have lots of functionality stuff embedded in it as ActiveX controls... Why not Java? Well (that one is obvious)...
Actually, I believe that's only the case for edit-in-place Excel spreadsheets and Access database forms. If you don't save it out as an editable document, Opera can render it quite happily (though it doesn't get the cell-border rendering quite right).
Actually in almost everyone's opinion here. And yes, I work for a software company and know EXACTLY what it is and what software worth.
Going off your homepage, I hope you don't speak for everyone. And IIRC, I'm pretty sure that some of the other regulars here disagree with your viewpoint too.
So, pray tell, what software company do you work for? And what do you do there? It'd be interesting to know for comparison's sake.
Win98 Second Edition isn't free. I'ts pretty much just a service pack of 98.
Incorrect. Windows 98 Service Pack 1 is free. Windows 98 Step-Up is $20 or so. (It has the service pack, and extra features). The upgrade of 95 and Win3.1 to 98SE is $90. And the full version of 98SE is $190. So there you go.
Windows95 OSR1,2,or 2.5 OR THE FEATURES FOUND ON THEM wasn't free for purchasers of the origional Windows 95 or Windows 95 upgrade. These were all basicly service packs for Win95.
But, as you note (but probably don't notice it), they were only available to people buying brand new machines. (That's what OSR means - OEM Service Release). That is, people who didn't have Windows 95 already. And you're wrong - most of the features on them (Except for FAT32) are available as downloads from the Microsoft site for Windows 95 owners.
The cost of calling Microsoft's tech support for bugs or incompatabilties in the OS isn't free. (I know all about 'profit centers' in tech support).
Incorrect. From the moment you make your first call (and not before), you have 90 days of free Microsoft technical support.
Windows 2000 Beta isn't free.
So? It's not meant for Joe Q. Consumer either; the average home user won't have a spare, clean machine to run it on in case something goes wrong (which is why it's a Beta). Businesses are the expected beta testers for Windows 2k. If it annoys you so much that the Beta isn't free, don't get a copy.
Microsoft's MSCE training for the legions of VARS who get hired to do the hotfixes and upgrades isn't free. Not that it should be, but it is still a profit center.
Mainly for Sylvan Prometric et al. But that's nothing - Sun's Java Certification isn't free. Novell's certification programs aren't free. Show me a free certification and I'll show you something that isn't worth the paper it was scribbled on in yellow crayon.
There is a lot of profit in upgrades and tech support...
Upgrades - yes. Which is why we give away bugfixes for free; why would anyone want to pay for bugfixes? Furthermore, why should they pay for them? So we make sure they don't have to.
As for tech support - you paid for 90 days of it when you bought the product.
You know, I wish I could get the people who make comments like yours to actually work at Microsoft for a month, and see the kind of day-to-day decisions, tradeoffs and hell that we go through to try and produce the best products possible.
My work is worth it. And the funny thing is that you can't dispute that nor can you agree, because frankly, you have no idea what I do or who I am.
What's so frustrating about this, is that if Windows adopted a DLL versioning/numbering scheme it would solve a LOT of stability issues, and create a very minimal amount of problems. This is something that's fixable with almost no effort, and just a little discipline...
It already has one - but a lot of ISV's ignore it.
I have friends and families who work for MS, and I hate to say this, but I don't know if those people are worth it. We are talking about people who sold thier soul for a "stable" salary. these are NOT creators, entrepretres, innovators, self-motivators. They live in another world.
Funny... my soul's just where I left it, thanks very much. Believe it or not, most people here are creators, entrepreneurs, innovators and are highly self-motivated. It's just that we expect a return on our work. Is that too much to ask?
Personally, I'm here so that I can work on user interface design and code up controls.
> Work on improving the quality of their products > instead of replacing defective products with > newer defective products
Why would they do this when they make so much money on bugfixes and upgrades. There is no financial reason for them to do so. That it is 'the right thing to do' doesn't cut it.
Funny... I thought service packs and hotfixes were free. Silly me, I've been living under a cloud of delusion or something all this time.
My statement was that Microsoft benefits from each foulmouthed public message in support of Linux, and it appears to me that Microsoft would not be above making a little of their own particularly nasty messages if they thought it might do them some good.
Oh, come on! The first message was from Joe Barr - of Dweebspeak Primer and Linux World article fame.
Either there should be a method to disable these macros, or the admins at these systems should be processing all incoming/outgoing anything with something to remove the attachments (procmail does this I believe).
There is - it's called the "Disable Macros" button that pops up when you open a document that contains macros.
As I said before though, this most recent virus was not a macro virus.
The same day this is going on we have another round of word macro viruses terrorizing MS users everywhere. Why don't you see Corel and Lotus touting the fact that Word Macro virii don't trash their systems? Because they aren't low-life like Microsoft. Do you see slashdot trashing MS over this? No, even though they richly deserve it.
Listen, dingbat, the Worm.ExplorerZip virus isn't a Macro virus. It's a standard trojan horse attack. It'll run without Office installed on the machine.
OMG. A M$ employee speaks up. This is a good example of MS. What he said was strictly true...it's not nice to have things copied all over. He implies, however, that not copyrighting everything is bad. This is how M$ will work...no outright attacks on OSS, but slow, nasty implications.
Actually, it's a good example of a guy who used to be a freelance journalist (before I decided I was sick of waiting 3 months for every paycheck) and then decided to turn his up-till-then hobby into a profession (coding, of course).
An example of a guy who found that magazines in various places were screwing him out of money by reprinting his articles without permission.
Not copyrighting everything IS bad. When you've copyrighted it, however, it's up to you what you do with it. You can release it as freeware; give it away; allow people to post it up all over the web. But as an author, your most basic right to your own work is the copyright. It's what lets you do anything you want with YOUR work, and stops it from being used in any way that you don't want it to be.
This is actually the basis upon which the GPL works, so don't start up with that "no outright attacks on OSS, but slow, nasty implications" shit, because you don't know jack. Copyright law is the only thing that gives the GPL any teeth.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, you'd be surprised... used to work at MS as a full-time employee... my sex life was never fuller...
;-)
... of course, those Jazz drives tend to chafe after a while
Simon
MSNBC and ZDNet have a content sharing agreement; on MSNBC if you look at the top of the article [at the ZDNet logo] (and the copyright at the bottom), you'll see that it's a ZDNet article being published on the MSNBC site.
So that's why the articles look similar - they're the same article!
Simon
"ok i don't want to be all one sided here...but isn't this MS stealing from Apple again...didn't apple have the OSX client and server thing first. Now there is win2k client and server...comeon...how gay."
Try looking at the history of these things -- OSX only came out recently; MS has been working on Terminal server/client since at least 97 (which is when they licensed the WinFrame technology from Citrix).
Provided, of course, that that's what you're talking about.
... some kind of bound function pointer would be good though; it'd mean that you'd be able to write your windowing code in C++/Java and not have to jump through hoops to bind WNDPROC function pointers to objects. Take a look at the MFC source code; it's a mess of hashtables and other binding glue simply because C++ can't do bound function pointers.
Either that, or have something that produces mini code thunks.
(yuck)
Simon
"I once got major gloat points when, less than two weeks after I had recommended UPSes as a safety measure to them , one of my company's customers lost upwards of $100,000 of equipment to a thunderstorm."
The thing I don't understand is.... what use is a UPS in a thunderstorm? Sure, if you have a power outage, you're fine. However, you're screwed if you have a power surge of any kind (particularly if you get a direct hit). Also, if the phone lines are down, or the phone lines get hit, your network will be screwed anyway...
*shrugs* maybe it's just me, but with over 1000 lightning strikes in an hour, I'm not surprised that the machine got hit hard...
Simon
Kinda cool... destroyed the elevators in my apartment building...
http://www.msnbc.com/local/KING/340593.asp
1,000 lightning strikes in 4 hours
SEATTLE, August 4 - Two men were hit by lightning and nearly 20,000 utility customers lost electricity in thunderstorms around the Puget Sound area Tuesday afternoon and evening.
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE reported 1,000 lightning strikes in 4 hours Tuesday afternoon and evening.
Authorities said 44-year-old David Smith of Renton was treated and released from Auburn General Hospital after being hit by a thunderbolt next to a snack bar at Lake Tapps.
A 32-year-old man is listed in Satisfactory condition at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle after being hit near the Husky Union Building at the University of Washington.
One strike apparently hit the Space Needle, but employees there said they were not aware of it.
Meanwhile, a lightning strike in Auburn sparked an explosive barn fire. A propane tank and an acetylene tank inside the southeast Auburn two-story barn exploded in the fire. Half the barn was destroyed, but no people or animals were injured.
Officials at the National Weather Service said the storm was active, but not necessarily severe or rare. The National Weather Service said lightning strikes numbered up to 84 in one 15-minute span.
Across the Cascades, lightning also was suspected to be the cause of a brush fire that burned about 150 acres a few miles north of the town of Chelan on Tuesday night, a Chelan County fire dispatcher said. No homes were threatened.
The dispatcher had no estimate on when the blaze might be contained.
The storm was caused by a warm, unstable air mass floating up from northern California, sitting on Seattle and continuing toward Canada before dissipating in the early evening.
Power outages affected 8,200 customers of Puget Sound Energy, 10,000 customers of Seattle City Light, 1,100 customers of Tacoma City Light and 400 customers of the Snohomish County Public Utility District.
Utilities crews worked throughout the night to restore power.
Hmmm... how come the Caldera installation "requires" that you move the mouse to detect its presence?
Why can't it just detect the presence of the mouse by strobing the DTS/RTS line (or equivalent on the PS/2 port)? Come on, guys, it's EASY!!!
For more info, check out the Zilog Mouse & Keyboard Controller docs, available from www.zilog.com
The spec does indeed say that slow-start should always be used, but if you keep track of how many packets are being lost globablly, you can ignore slow-start except for congestion recovery (and if you've received X lost packet notification in the last X seconds or something). That way, you can start connections at top speed. If you used that trick, that is :)
AFAIK, NT sticks to the spec though.
Please to be pointing out the PhD theses written by any of them?
And what in hell does this have to do with coding ability? Most of the best coders I know don't even have a bachelor's degree.
(And no, I'm not talking about @ Microsoft here - I'm talking about other people in the industry)
If you ain't got the spark , you may as well forget it. You can be a PhD in CompSci and not have a clue about how to code shit-hot stuff.
I've had trouble saving a file w/ Word 97, and then opening it with the exact same program 5 minutes later...
I usually have to shut down Word and start it up again and then have a 50% chance of it being read correctly... There is something VERY wrong about that!
Funny.. I used Word 97 to write technical docs, reports and articles for magazines for about a year without ever seeing what you saw. Maybe another program you installed later screwed with the DLLs.
Sure. Now try opening those HTML files in Netscape. Hmm... there's a lot missing, no? :)
Try it with NGLayout -- heck, it's not our fault (ie. Microsoft) that Netscape can't handle CSS2/XSL/XML/DHTML well enough to do the job.
Word2K will by default use the Word97 document format. The XML "format" will be a save-to option, but won't really be one document, but a bunch of pieces saved in a subdirectory...).
... which is a limitation of XML/HTML, in that you have to save images as separate items (ie. GIF/PNG/JPEG files) rather than embedding them in the HTML document direct.
Word's XML stuff will have lots of functionality stuff embedded in it as ActiveX controls... Why not Java? Well (that one is obvious)...
Actually, I believe that's only the case for edit-in-place Excel spreadsheets and Access database forms. If you don't save it out as an editable document, Opera can render it quite happily (though it doesn't get the cell-border rendering quite right).
What if they won't publish their DTD or they won't let use use it?
Opera seems to manage MS Word 2K documents quite happily... it gets everything right.
Actually in almost everyone's opinion here. And yes, I work for a software company and know EXACTLY what it is and what software worth.
Going off your homepage, I hope you don't speak for everyone. And IIRC, I'm pretty sure that some of the other regulars here disagree with your viewpoint too.
So, pray tell, what software company do you work for? And what do you do there? It'd be interesting to know for comparison's sake.
Win98 Second Edition isn't free. I'ts pretty much just a service pack of 98.
Incorrect. Windows 98 Service Pack 1 is free. Windows 98 Step-Up is $20 or so. (It has the service pack, and extra features). The upgrade of 95 and Win3.1 to 98SE is $90. And the full version of 98SE is $190. So there you go.
Windows95 OSR1,2,or 2.5 OR THE FEATURES FOUND ON THEM wasn't free for purchasers of the origional Windows 95 or Windows 95 upgrade. These were all basicly service packs for Win95.
But, as you note (but probably don't notice it), they were only available to people buying brand new machines. (That's what OSR means - OEM Service Release). That is, people who didn't have Windows 95 already. And you're wrong - most of the features on them (Except for FAT32) are available as downloads from the Microsoft site for Windows 95 owners.
The cost of calling Microsoft's tech support for bugs or incompatabilties in the OS isn't free. (I know all about 'profit centers' in tech support).
Incorrect. From the moment you make your first call (and not before), you have 90 days of free Microsoft technical support.
Windows 2000 Beta isn't free.
So? It's not meant for Joe Q. Consumer either; the average home user won't have a spare, clean machine to run it on in case something goes wrong (which is why it's a Beta). Businesses are the expected beta testers for Windows 2k. If it annoys you so much that the Beta isn't free, don't get a copy.
Microsoft's MSCE training for the legions of VARS who get hired to do the hotfixes and upgrades isn't free. Not that it should be, but it is still a profit center.
Mainly for Sylvan Prometric et al. But that's nothing - Sun's Java Certification isn't free. Novell's certification programs aren't free. Show me a free certification and I'll show you something that isn't worth the paper it was scribbled on in yellow crayon.
There is a lot of profit in upgrades and tech support...
Upgrades - yes. Which is why we give away bugfixes for free; why would anyone want to pay for bugfixes? Furthermore, why should they pay for them? So we make sure they don't have to.
As for tech support - you paid for 90 days of it when you bought the product.
You ask more -- way more -- than your work worth.
In your not so humble opinion, of course.
You know, I wish I could get the people who make comments like yours to actually work at Microsoft for a month, and see the kind of day-to-day decisions, tradeoffs and hell that we go through to try and produce the best products possible.
My work is worth it. And the funny thing is that you can't dispute that nor can you agree, because frankly, you have no idea what I do or who I am.
What's so frustrating about this, is that if Windows adopted a DLL versioning/numbering scheme it would solve a LOT of stability issues, and create a very minimal amount of problems. This is something that's fixable with almost no effort, and just a little discipline...
It already has one - but a lot of ISV's ignore it.
I have friends and families who work for MS, and I hate to say this, but I don't know if those people are worth it. We are talking about people who sold thier soul for a "stable" salary. these are NOT creators, entrepretres, innovators, self-motivators. They live in another world.
Funny... my soul's just where I left it, thanks very much. Believe it or not, most people here are creators, entrepreneurs, innovators and are highly self-motivated. It's just that we expect a return on our work. Is that too much to ask?
Personally, I'm here so that I can work on user interface design and code up controls.
> Work on improving the quality of their products
> instead of replacing defective products with
> newer defective products
Why would they do this when they make so much money on bugfixes and upgrades. There is no financial reason for them to do so. That it is 'the right thing to do' doesn't cut it.
Funny... I thought service packs and hotfixes were free. Silly me, I've been living under a cloud of delusion or something all this time.
Simon (NSMFSFT)
My statement was that Microsoft benefits from each foulmouthed public message in support of Linux, and it appears to me that Microsoft would not be above making a little of their own particularly nasty messages if they thought it might do them some good.
Oh, come on! The first message was from Joe Barr - of Dweebspeak Primer and Linux World article fame.
Either there should be a method to disable these macros, or the admins at these systems should be processing all incoming/outgoing anything with something to remove the attachments (procmail does this I believe).
There is - it's called the "Disable Macros" button that pops up when you open a document that contains macros.
As I said before though, this most recent virus was not a macro virus.
The same day this is going on we have another round of word macro viruses terrorizing MS users everywhere. Why don't you see Corel and Lotus touting the fact that Word Macro virii don't trash their systems? Because they aren't low-life like Microsoft. Do you see slashdot trashing MS over this? No, even though they richly deserve it.
Listen, dingbat, the Worm.ExplorerZip virus isn't a Macro virus. It's a standard trojan horse attack. It'll run without Office installed on the machine.
Sheesh.
OMG. A M$ employee speaks up. This is a good example of MS. What he said was strictly true...it's not nice to have things copied all over. He implies, however, that not copyrighting everything is bad. This is how M$ will work...no outright attacks on OSS, but slow, nasty implications.
Actually, it's a good example of a guy who used to be a freelance journalist (before I decided I was sick of waiting 3 months for every paycheck) and then decided to turn his up-till-then hobby into a profession (coding, of course).
An example of a guy who found that magazines in various places were screwing him out of money by reprinting his articles without permission.
Not copyrighting everything IS bad. When you've copyrighted it, however, it's up to you what you do with it. You can release it as freeware; give it away; allow people to post it up all over the web. But as an author, your most basic right to your own work is the copyright. It's what lets you do anything you want with YOUR work, and stops it from being used in any way that you don't want it to be.
This is actually the basis upon which the GPL works, so don't start up with that "no outright attacks on OSS, but slow, nasty implications" shit, because you don't know jack. Copyright law is the only thing that gives the GPL any teeth.
I'd get rid of .zip as well -- because if it's an executable archive, most unzipper's will execute that rather than open it themselves...
(At least in my experience)