SeaLand was originally outside UK territory but the UK later extended its territorial waters so that SeaLand is now *INSIDE* UK borders. They tried to get some people living on SeaLand for not paying taxes but if memory serves, the court gave them some kind of special permission to NOT have to do it. In other words, it's up to interpretation if SeaLand is actually part of the UK or not. If they start creating lots of problems, I'm pretty sure it won't take long before the UK government shuts them down and throws their silly asses in jail. Putting a lot of faith in SeaLand is naive and not very realistic. In any case, even if nobody touches SeaLand, they have to connect to the net somehow so you can just shut down their net connection.
+1 for informative?! What the hell is wrong with moderators here? That links to a page that is full of racist slur about how "jews run america". Informative? While on the topic, I'm seriously wondering what the meta moderation is doing because I've noticed that whenever I moderate, I lose shitloads of karma. Now I don't moderate down posts because I would disagree with the poster. The last time I had moderation rights, I did an experiment and only moderated REALLY obvious posts such as "first post!" and "fuck off bitch!" etc. Before, I had a karma of 48. After, it had gone down 5 points without me posting anything inbetween. I don't know about you but I'm seriously losing faith in the moderation system when I see shit like this.
How about the Psion Netbook or Psion Series 7? They run EPOC so you can run Opera on them for your browser needs. Symbian has a GCC based toolchain for your C++ development needs (tho I think the SDK is Win32 only), there's a decent Java VM for it, no hard drive, PC(MCIA) card support so you should be able, at least in theory, to use the IBM microdrive and (wireless) lan or cellular modem cards..
jikes is just a whole lot faster.. startup is really speedy because it's implemented in C and thus pretty compact. compiling is also very speedy, probably for the same reason, possibly because of better algos.
To be more precise: yes Windows hides the default filename extension but you still see the.jpb.vbs part on an incoming email. The hiding is in Explorer.
Windows, in its infinite wisdom, defaults to hiding filename extensions from the user, so as not to confuse them. Thus 'AnnaKornikova.jpg.vbs' appears as 'AnnaKornikova.jpg', but still launches the Visual Basic interpreter when you launch it.
No it doesn't. I know cause I got that and I saw the.vbs extension and laughed at it and then deleted it. Please, stop making things up!
"Let's look at what else MS has given us:
The ILOVEYOU virus and its infinite children.
Though MS didn't write the virus, the existence of the hole combined with the monopoly they have in the OS market are what really caused the problem. If somebody wrote a virus for a tiny hole in BeOS would it have affected the world like this one did?"
Oh come on! You can't show that Microsoft "harms consumers" because some idiot wrote a worm and other idiots helped spread it by executing a script file attachment to an email. It's not like the thing just auto-spread. There was a lot of stupidity involved. You could as easily send a Perl script to any UNIX out there ask the users to save the attachment and then execute it. Same result. Granted Outlook didn't have enough warnings about executing scripts but to say tht it shows that *Microsoft* has harmed consumers is just plain stupid. I mean really, wake up!
"Incompatible file formats between its own products year after year. I love it when Office97 tells me "Oh, not everyone has Office97, you should save in Office95 format.""
Incompatible file formats is nothing Microsoft specific. If you wrote something with the latest version of Word Perfect, you can't open it in Word Perfect 4.2, nor can you open it in emacs or possibly in Star Office (not sure about that but you get my point). Yes, Microsoft isn't any better than the rest, and quite possibly is the worst of them all, but again, it's nothing that Microsoft introduced. The same problem has always been there. And at least Office supports a ton of formats so you can communicate with the rest of the world if you know what you're doing.
"Machines that you expect to have to reboot every day."
We have shitloads of servers at work - both Linux and NT, about 50% of each.. We run pretty similar stuff on them; a database (MS SQL and Oracle mostly), a web server (IIS & Apache), a Java servlet engine (JRun) and a variety of other stuff like SMS gateways, SMTP servers, LDAP servers etc. etc. and uptime is not a problem for any of these machines. Yes, the Linux boxes have less problems but we consistently have uptimes of several months on all of the machines. Rebooting typically happens when we need to do some major upgrage - not when something crashes.
As workstations, we have NT4's and Windows 2000 and there too uptime and crashes are not a problem. I can't remember when I would have rebooted my NT4 workstation last - must be several months ago. On my laptop, I have Windows 2000 and I haven't seen a single blue screen of death or OS crash.
To say that crashing machines and daily reboots are such a horrible problem, caused by Microsoft, is just a plain lie - or maybe you just haven't used anything Microsoft has made in the past couple of years. Maybe you should try so that you know what you're talking about.
Please people, realize that this isn't some blind pro-Microsoft post. I would just prefer that people stick to FACTS when they post their anti-Microsoft ramblings.
And you know, there are always two sides on the coin. I had HUGE problems with various Linux distros some time ago on my desktop machine at home. It would freeze every once in a while (maybe every 2-3 hours or so) under X, no matter what I tried. I changed hardware, changed my motherboard, CPU, memory.. no change.. Finally I installed Windows 98 on it and I had no problems. Sure, typically it would be the other way around, but if you have had 100 blue screens of death in one day on a Windows box, remember that there are people who have had similar experiences with other OS's. It's nothing Microsoft specific.
Don't believe me? Take a look at what Java does to your system. That's right, that screenshot shows one stinking Java Applet using up 73% of the CPU. Boy, am I glad that treeloot switched to an animated GIF.
So somebody coded a bad applet that eats up all resources by not yielding or sleeping. What's your point? And.. that's on ONE virtual machine (Microsoft's since it's inside IE) so it could also be the case of a poorly implemented VM, though in this case, I would suspect it's the applet.
I agree.. It's the first anime I ever saw - years ago - and it's still the best I've seen. Truly breath taking. That's why I was so happy when I saw it on DVD some time ago in a store here in Helsinki. I immediately bought it and was crushed when I played it at home and noticed that the sound was lagging with about 1 second. I watched it and then took it back to the store. I figure it must have been a bad master so I didn't bother to even try another disc.:(
Tell me something.. As I understand it, if I use GPL code in *any way* together with some closed-source (or let's just say non-GPL) code, then I have to GPL *ALL* of the code. Right? Well, what about a Linux distro that contains GPL stuff and.. say.. Netscape Communicator? It's one product but I certainly don't have the source to Communicator. So where's the line? If I have to apps, compiled separately, but working very tightly together (a video codec and a multimedia player) is that ok? Under what circumstances WOULD it be ok? Now that we have RPC over HTTP such as SOAP and XML-RPC, it's hard to say what "one software" is.
I find it a little odd that everyone seems to be so negative about subscription fees for software. I mean, think about an apartment. There are two ways to get one; 1) buy 2) rent. Most people prefer #1 but cannot afford it and thus pick #2 and rent an apartment.
While most people on Slashdot think everything should be free (as in beer), the typical argument for *piracy* seems to be that "I can't afford to buy CD's / software with the current prices!". Well, with subscription, you *can* afford it so what's the problem?
Subscription already works for many things and nobody complains about it so why complain now? Personally, I'd prefer to own my software (and music) but subscription is a good thing and suitable for software in many cases - especially if it's offered as an option. Don't complain just because it's Microsoft that is doing it.
I've thought about this myself and I know that hundreds if not thousands of satellites are being constantly tracked (their orbits, that is) and whenever a shuttle or payload rocket goes up, they check to make sure they won't hit any well known object.
But since objects in space have a good chance to hit eachother at very high speeds (depending on how their orbits happen to cut) even very small objects can do large damage. Now.. and I'm not kidding now.. think about space stations and astronauts or kosmonauts taking a dump. What happens? I would assume they don't store the shit onboard.. After all, what interest do they have to bring it back? So.. if they just launch it off into space, there must be thousands and thousands of.. turds.. floating around in space. What happens when an umm.. piece of shit (pun intended) hits the windshield of a space shuttle at 25000 km/h? Can't be good.
.NET runtime can only be installed on MSFT platforms, the JVM can be installed everywhere in principle.
Not true. The.NET runtime can be installed on any platform it is implemented for, just like a JVM. Right now, there's only one runtime, and that one for Win32 and it's only in beta yet. For Java, the situation is, of course, much different. The common language runtime WILL however be ported to various other platforms. Hell, the standardization of.NET that Microsoft is doing through ECMA *requires* two reference implementations, and Microsoft has stated that one of them will be "an open source OS" - my guess is BSD.
JVM spec is published, thus you see JVM implementations from different makers, all executing the same Java classes. In contrast,.NET runtime is not an open spec
This is very relevant. While Microsoft *IS* standardizing C# (which doesn't really matter that much in.NET since you can use any language) and the common language runtime, they haven't decided if they will standardize the spec for the framework API. It will be open in the sense that all public methods and classes will be documented, of course, but it will not be standardized and frozen and the source will not be available for them. On the Java side, in theory, the API is frozen, but it's not standardized. The source IS available for both the JVM and for the core API.
While the common language runtime will most likely be quite quickly ported to at least Win32, Win64, Mac OS X, BSD and *possibly* Linux, it will take considerably longer for the framework to appear - in particular in a stable and identical form. Hell, just look at Java...NET will have to go through basically the exact same process that Java has.. Only Microsoft is not so interested in other platforms as Sun is.
For GUI apps, it's my understanding that.NET doesn't even support them directly through the framework API. Instead, something called the Windows Forms API is used. AFAIK, this is NOT part of.NET. So if you want to develop cross platform apps with a GUI, you can't even use.NET for it, regardless if there is a ported framework and common language runtime for it or not. With Java, you can.
I think a lot of people here are missing the point and the idea of the article. Jef Raskin isn't saying that computers don't need OS's. He isn't saying that UNIX sucks. He isn't saying that when you start typing, the keystrokes should end up in a word processor -> document. Hell, you might want your keystrokes to end up in an email or any number of apps. I mean, how would the joystick know which game to load? That's NOT the point at all!
His point is that the OS, from a user perspective (in the context of being the "app you use before you use other apps"), should be as transparent as possible. My view of this is that you have an empty screen in front of you (think "desktop"). You click on an empty spot and up comes a slightly different colored area with a number of icons that represents various types of documents. An empty paper, some notes, a videoclip.. When I select the empty paper, the computer zooms into it and allows me to start working on it. It doesn't matter if I want to type on it (word processing) or draw on it. It's a document (paper) and drawing or typing are just a set of tools for this particular type of canvas. The apps are not like we traditionally see them. Instead, they are tools to use for this type of canvas. Also, you don't need to "save" anything. Whatever you do on the canvas is automatically stored. Instead there could be some kind of visual revision control system that allows you to go back in time and see what you've done.. Unlimited, visual undo, essentially..
Now how do you save, open and remove documents ("files")? Just like clicking on the empty "desktop" brought up a "window" with options for new documents, there could be some kind of file manager on the desktop that could be opened up to access documents. This would be a different mechanism from loading applications. Physically, they would be in a file system - it could be a UNIX underneath.. and there could be a command line shell for it.. But that's just for coders, admins and power users. Apps would be launched from some kind of dock, just like in Mac OS X. Files would be accessed from some kind of *VERY* simple file manager that would only show you documents - not.ini files, not executables, nothing like that.
This kind of simplicity and transparency (the user can't see where a document ends, where an app begins and where the os begins) is what Jef Raskins wants. At least that's how I read it.. And that's what I want too!
Remember the Netscape Constellation project back in umm.. 1997 I think.. It was rumored to become a part of Netscape Communicator 4.0 and it was to integrate the OS shell, your browser, your push channels (heh) and your calendar. Netscape was going to build it with HTML, Java and JavaScript - a "platform" they called "Netscape ONE" as in Open Network Environment.
Then NS4 came but there was no Constellation. Instead, and I think it didn't even come right away, there was Netcaster, a crappy app put together in a hurry, made from signed JavaScript, Java applets and HTML, that received Marimba and HTML channels. Microsoft quickly followed with IE4 that had true desktop and OS integration to the browser, and a solid push implementation (not that it mattered, since push was dead at birth).
Desktop integration has never really been a big thing, though it lives on in Windows OS's. What HAS been successful is Windows OS's sharing the Explorer app (think "file manager") with the web browser. Directories can be customized using HTML files in just about any way you want.
Some 3 years later, Nautilus arrives on Linux. What I would like to know is what it does differently (better?) than IE/Explorer or Constellation. Does it also copy/inherit from other similar systems that I fail to remember and mention? I know it embeds Mozilla, which means it can probably also easily embed another browser Konqueror.. but then again, the same is true for the Microsoft shell, as IE is just an ActiveX component.. So.. what's new? What's good? What's better?
I know.. If there's more than one probe from one IP, I always check out who it is. My ISP does probes too, for instance every time I send an email I get a probe.. but that's different.
The vulnerabilities / exploit list is long! And while 9.1.0 doesn't have any known explots according to this list, I think this should be an eye-opener to people when it comes to security. Like Microsoft likes pointing out, you are unsafe with *ANY* OS if you don't stay up to date with the patches. I'm not "pro MS" or anything, but there's a lot of rhetoric on Slashdot about how Microsoft OS's are safe. The idea a lot of people get is that Linux is automatically completely safe. This is, of course, not the case. Unless you know what's going on and what has been hacked, you're leaving your system wide open.
For those who feel safe and comfortable with their home box, especially those hooked up to DSL or cabel, I strongly recommend checking out that list. It's scary and it's only bind! To keep the balance, the fix list for Win2K SP1 is even longer... and scarier..
I run a box at home that is connected to the net 24/7 on a dynamic IP without an easy-to-guess hostname and I get about 10 probes a day.. FTP, ping, SSH, telnet, http.. you name it.. I assume most boxes get the same amount.. If you have an open door, it WILL be exploited!
Who cares about lack of Java VM's in the browser? That has nothing to do with running Java on Microsoft operating systems. I've NEVER used a Microsoft VM (other than testing) for running Java on Windows - Sun's and IBM's VM's are *SO* much better.
It's silly to compare Java to Delphi since Java is far more successful than Delphi ever was. In fact, I'd guess Java is the most successful language ever, next to VB maybe..
Disclaimer: I'm what you would call a "Java evangelizer" so I'm biased... Keep that in mind.
Some of your points were a little inaccurate...NET will actually be multiplatform even though Microsoft is not split up. Already there are ports being made for other platforms AND other languages; Perl and Python by Active State for instance. I talked to a MS guy who said Microsoft will port the common language runtime of.NET to at least one "open source os", "maybe two". Because I don't know enough about.NET, I don't know if.NET apps will be cross platform, but the platform itself will be supported on various OS's. I imagine than Microsoft with some interest in the Mac platform (they own a large-ish portion of Apple) would port.NET to Mac OS X soon too.
Java is controlled by the Java Community Process, *NOT* Sun and there are lots of companies on the JCP! The process works by voting and is a true democracy. It is organized by Sun, yes, but it's definitely wrong to not recognize this and just say it's "not an open standard".
.NET will be standardized by Microsoft. Well, let me be more accurate.. The common language runtime will be standardized by Microsoft. If I recall correct, they have already submitted it to ECMA.. One of the reasons behind this is to win those people who have a problem with Java *NOT* being 100% open. For a lot of people, including me, this is not a problem at all. I don't mind Sun controlling it because I think they have done a great job so far.. Now with JCP, I have even more faith in the Java platform.
"For those who don't know it yet"? Please.. C# is just one language that "powers" the.NET platform. Another language is Perl.. And VB.. And C++.. And get this.. Java. Java is no more history with.NET than it was with J++ a few years ago. J++ on the other hand *is* history. I firmly believe C# and.NET *will* be big things and yeah, they probably will eat away a little bit from Java, but kill Java? No more than it will kill Linux.
Funny how Slashdot used to be full of people talking about "the death of Java" in past tense. It's pretty amazing how Java keeps finding new homes these days.. First it was applets in the browser; bad Java VM's and even worse coders who gave Java a bad rep ruined that. Then there was the servers, which worked great (maybe the coders are better, at least the VM's are) and now there seems to be something of a comeback of Java to the client side with digi-TV and cellular Java.. First Symbian, then Siemens, then Nokia, Sega, Sony, Motorola.. I'd say Java is about as far from dead as can be - and this is DESPITE Microsoft's furious efforts to kill it.
The moderation has gone to hell recently.. I've had some *REALLY* on-topic posts being marked "off topic", probably because the moderator didn't read the article or my post properly.. I've seen lots of good posts being moderated down recently for no good reason other than the moderator not agreeing with the posters opinion. I really wish moderators would focus on moderating good posts *UP* and moderating pure shit ("first post", "beowulf cluster", "goat sex" etc.) down. Moderating something "off topic" is almost always a waste of moderation points anyway, since there are bigger fish to catch.
After the news on VA Linux and RedHat, it seems to me that a business model built on Open Source software seems more and more difficult.
I don't know.. I'm one of those people who are interested in Linux and Open Source in general and appreciate the availability of source code (and may even contribute once in a while) but who don't see it as a silver bullet suitable for everything. I for one have never really believed that open source is a good business model and seeing all kinds of "open source companies" (that is, companies that have an open source related business model) fail only confirms my belief.
While some older companies like IBM might have some use of open source (their ventures into Apache and use of Linux for example), I see it largely as a PR manouver.
I recently read The Cluetrain Manifesto (www.cluetrain.com) and some of the stuff really hit me while a large part didn't. I mean, yeah, I believe companies should have conversations with the market, like open source does, and yeah, I believe in subverting hierarchy, something open source accomplishes, and yes, companies don't speak in a human voice, which open source does, but businesses need to keep secrets and everything can't and shouldn't be open.
The problem is that people (and therefore companies) don't have a lot of self confidence.. When they have stumbled upon some working piece of code that they refine into a product, they fear that if it got out into the open, their competitor would just reap the benefits of their hard labour and sell it for cheaper. Maybe their fear is rightly founded too! In any case, the result is that they hide the code as well as they can and try to make as much money from it as possible until the others "figure it out". The worst possible thing that could happen, they think, is if the competitor would get their secret!
People (and therefore also companies) are greedy and interested in making money. They do whatever gets them the most money - and preferably, gets them a lot of money soon! Open Source is not a great way to make a lot of money.
It's a question of values really.. It is very rooted into us people in the western world that money is the most important thing. For companies (publicly listed ones especially), money *IS* the most important thing. Whatever we do is determined by how much money that will get us. If we had different values; if we could work for the society, for example, and try to build as good a society as possible, then open source would probably blossom as a business model. Now, I just don't believe in it - not as a business model.. I for one am not surprised at open source businesses failing.
Slashdot Mirror
SeaLand was originally outside UK territory but the UK later extended its territorial waters so that SeaLand is now *INSIDE* UK borders. They tried to get some people living on SeaLand for not paying taxes but if memory serves, the court gave them some kind of special permission to NOT have to do it. In other words, it's up to interpretation if SeaLand is actually part of the UK or not. If they start creating lots of problems, I'm pretty sure it won't take long before the UK government shuts them down and throws their silly asses in jail. Putting a lot of faith in SeaLand is naive and not very realistic. In any case, even if nobody touches SeaLand, they have to connect to the net somehow so you can just shut down their net connection.
+1 for informative?! What the hell is wrong with moderators here? That links to a page that is full of racist slur about how "jews run america". Informative? While on the topic, I'm seriously wondering what the meta moderation is doing because I've noticed that whenever I moderate, I lose shitloads of karma. Now I don't moderate down posts because I would disagree with the poster. The last time I had moderation rights, I did an experiment and only moderated REALLY obvious posts such as "first post!" and "fuck off bitch!" etc. Before, I had a karma of 48. After, it had gone down 5 points without me posting anything inbetween. I don't know about you but I'm seriously losing faith in the moderation system when I see shit like this.
How about the Psion Netbook or Psion Series 7? They run EPOC so you can run Opera on them for your browser needs. Symbian has a GCC based toolchain for your C++ development needs (tho I think the SDK is Win32 only), there's a decent Java VM for it, no hard drive, PC(MCIA) card support so you should be able, at least in theory, to use the IBM microdrive and (wireless) lan or cellular modem cards..
jikes is just a whole lot faster.. startup is really speedy because it's implemented in C and thus pretty compact. compiling is also very speedy, probably for the same reason, possibly because of better algos.
To be more precise: yes Windows hides the default filename extension but you still see the .jpb.vbs part on an incoming email. The hiding is in Explorer.
No it doesn't. I know cause I got that and I saw the .vbs extension and laughed at it and then deleted it. Please, stop making things up!
dmorin writes:
"Let's look at what else MS has given us:
The ILOVEYOU virus and its infinite children.
Though MS didn't write the virus, the existence of the hole combined with the monopoly they have in the OS market are what really caused the problem. If somebody wrote a virus for a tiny hole in BeOS would it have affected the world like this one did?"
Oh come on! You can't show that Microsoft "harms consumers" because some idiot wrote a worm and other idiots helped spread it by executing a script file attachment to an email. It's not like the thing just auto-spread. There was a lot of stupidity involved. You could as easily send a Perl script to any UNIX out there ask the users to save the attachment and then execute it. Same result. Granted Outlook didn't have enough warnings about executing scripts but to say tht it shows that *Microsoft* has harmed consumers is just plain stupid. I mean really, wake up!
"Incompatible file formats between its own products year after year. I love it when Office97 tells me "Oh, not everyone has Office97, you should save in Office95 format.""
Incompatible file formats is nothing Microsoft specific. If you wrote something with the latest version of Word Perfect, you can't open it in Word Perfect 4.2, nor can you open it in emacs or possibly in Star Office (not sure about that but you get my point). Yes, Microsoft isn't any better than the rest, and quite possibly is the worst of them all, but again, it's nothing that Microsoft introduced. The same problem has always been there. And at least Office supports a ton of formats so you can communicate with the rest of the world if you know what you're doing.
"Machines that you expect to have to reboot every day."
We have shitloads of servers at work - both Linux and NT, about 50% of each.. We run pretty similar stuff on them; a database (MS SQL and Oracle mostly), a web server (IIS & Apache), a Java servlet engine (JRun) and a variety of other stuff like SMS gateways, SMTP servers, LDAP servers etc. etc. and uptime is not a problem for any of these machines. Yes, the Linux boxes have less problems but we consistently have uptimes of several months on all of the machines. Rebooting typically happens when we need to do some major upgrage - not when something crashes.
As workstations, we have NT4's and Windows 2000 and there too uptime and crashes are not a problem. I can't remember when I would have rebooted my NT4 workstation last - must be several months ago. On my laptop, I have Windows 2000 and I haven't seen a single blue screen of death or OS crash.
To say that crashing machines and daily reboots are such a horrible problem, caused by Microsoft, is just a plain lie - or maybe you just haven't used anything Microsoft has made in the past couple of years. Maybe you should try so that you know what you're talking about.
Please people, realize that this isn't some blind pro-Microsoft post. I would just prefer that people stick to FACTS when they post their anti-Microsoft ramblings.
And you know, there are always two sides on the coin. I had HUGE problems with various Linux distros some time ago on my desktop machine at home. It would freeze every once in a while (maybe every 2-3 hours or so) under X, no matter what I tried. I changed hardware, changed my motherboard, CPU, memory.. no change.. Finally I installed Windows 98 on it and I had no problems. Sure, typically it would be the other way around, but if you have had 100 blue screens of death in one day on a Windows box, remember that there are people who have had similar experiences with other OS's. It's nothing Microsoft specific.
So somebody coded a bad applet that eats up all resources by not yielding or sleeping. What's your point? And.. that's on ONE virtual machine (Microsoft's since it's inside IE) so it could also be the case of a poorly implemented VM, though in this case, I would suspect it's the applet.
I agree.. It's the first anime I ever saw - years ago - and it's still the best I've seen. Truly breath taking. That's why I was so happy when I saw it on DVD some time ago in a store here in Helsinki. I immediately bought it and was crushed when I played it at home and noticed that the sound was lagging with about 1 second. I watched it and then took it back to the store. I figure it must have been a bad master so I didn't bother to even try another disc. :(
Tell me something.. As I understand it, if I use GPL code in *any way* together with some closed-source (or let's just say non-GPL) code, then I have to GPL *ALL* of the code. Right? Well, what about a Linux distro that contains GPL stuff and.. say.. Netscape Communicator? It's one product but I certainly don't have the source to Communicator. So where's the line? If I have to apps, compiled separately, but working very tightly together (a video codec and a multimedia player) is that ok? Under what circumstances WOULD it be ok? Now that we have RPC over HTTP such as SOAP and XML-RPC, it's hard to say what "one software" is.
I find it a little odd that everyone seems to be so negative about subscription fees for software. I mean, think about an apartment. There are two ways to get one; 1) buy 2) rent. Most people prefer #1 but cannot afford it and thus pick #2 and rent an apartment.
While most people on Slashdot think everything should be free (as in beer), the typical argument for *piracy* seems to be that "I can't afford to buy CD's / software with the current prices!". Well, with subscription, you *can* afford it so what's the problem?
Subscription already works for many things and nobody complains about it so why complain now? Personally, I'd prefer to own my software (and music) but subscription is a good thing and suitable for software in many cases - especially if it's offered as an option. Don't complain just because it's Microsoft that is doing it.
I've thought about this myself and I know that hundreds if not thousands of satellites are being constantly tracked (their orbits, that is) and whenever a shuttle or payload rocket goes up, they check to make sure they won't hit any well known object.
.. turds.. floating around in space. What happens when an umm.. piece of shit (pun intended) hits the windshield of a space shuttle at 25000 km/h? Can't be good.
But since objects in space have a good chance to hit eachother at very high speeds (depending on how their orbits happen to cut) even very small objects can do large damage. Now.. and I'm not kidding now.. think about space stations and astronauts or kosmonauts taking a dump. What happens? I would assume they don't store the shit onboard.. After all, what interest do they have to bring it back? So.. if they just launch it off into space, there must be thousands and thousands of
Not true. The .NET runtime can be installed on any platform it is implemented for, just like a JVM. Right now, there's only one runtime, and that one for Win32 and it's only in beta yet. For Java, the situation is, of course, much different. The common language runtime WILL however be ported to various other platforms. Hell, the standardization of .NET that Microsoft is doing through ECMA *requires* two reference implementations, and Microsoft has stated that one of them will be "an open source OS" - my guess is BSD.
JVM spec is published, thus you see JVM implementations from different makers, all executing the same Java classes. In contrast, .NET runtime is not an open spec
This is very relevant. While Microsoft *IS* standardizing C# (which doesn't really matter that much in .NET since you can use any language) and the common language runtime, they haven't decided if they will standardize the spec for the framework API. It will be open in the sense that all public methods and classes will be documented, of course, but it will not be standardized and frozen and the source will not be available for them. On the Java side, in theory, the API is frozen, but it's not standardized. The source IS available for both the JVM and for the core API.
While the common language runtime will most likely be quite quickly ported to at least Win32, Win64, Mac OS X, BSD and *possibly* Linux, it will take considerably longer for the framework to appear - in particular in a stable and identical form. Hell, just look at Java.. .NET will have to go through basically the exact same process that Java has.. Only Microsoft is not so interested in other platforms as Sun is.
For GUI apps, it's my understanding that .NET doesn't even support them directly through the framework API. Instead, something called the Windows Forms API is used. AFAIK, this is NOT part of .NET. So if you want to develop cross platform apps with a GUI, you can't even use .NET for it, regardless if there is a ported framework and common language runtime for it or not. With Java, you can.
I think a lot of people here are missing the point and the idea of the article. Jef Raskin isn't saying that computers don't need OS's. He isn't saying that UNIX sucks. He isn't saying that when you start typing, the keystrokes should end up in a word processor -> document. Hell, you might want your keystrokes to end up in an email or any number of apps. I mean, how would the joystick know which game to load? That's NOT the point at all!
.ini files, not executables, nothing like that.
His point is that the OS, from a user perspective (in the context of being the "app you use before you use other apps"), should be as transparent as possible. My view of this is that you have an empty screen in front of you (think "desktop"). You click on an empty spot and up comes a slightly different colored area with a number of icons that represents various types of documents. An empty paper, some notes, a videoclip.. When I select the empty paper, the computer zooms into it and allows me to start working on it. It doesn't matter if I want to type on it (word processing) or draw on it. It's a document (paper) and drawing or typing are just a set of tools for this particular type of canvas. The apps are not like we traditionally see them. Instead, they are tools to use for this type of canvas. Also, you don't need to "save" anything. Whatever you do on the canvas is automatically stored. Instead there could be some kind of visual revision control system that allows you to go back in time and see what you've done.. Unlimited, visual undo, essentially..
Now how do you save, open and remove documents ("files")? Just like clicking on the empty "desktop" brought up a "window" with options for new documents, there could be some kind of file manager on the desktop that could be opened up to access documents. This would be a different mechanism from loading applications. Physically, they would be in a file system - it could be a UNIX underneath.. and there could be a command line shell for it.. But that's just for coders, admins and power users. Apps would be launched from some kind of dock, just like in Mac OS X. Files would be accessed from some kind of *VERY* simple file manager that would only show you documents - not
This kind of simplicity and transparency (the user can't see where a document ends, where an app begins and where the os begins) is what Jef Raskins wants. At least that's how I read it.. And that's what I want too!
Remember the Netscape Constellation project back in umm.. 1997 I think.. It was rumored to become a part of Netscape Communicator 4.0 and it was to integrate the OS shell, your browser, your push channels (heh) and your calendar. Netscape was going to build it with HTML, Java and JavaScript - a "platform" they called "Netscape ONE" as in Open Network Environment.
Then NS4 came but there was no Constellation. Instead, and I think it didn't even come right away, there was Netcaster, a crappy app put together in a hurry, made from signed JavaScript, Java applets and HTML, that received Marimba and HTML channels. Microsoft quickly followed with IE4 that had true desktop and OS integration to the browser, and a solid push implementation (not that it mattered, since push was dead at birth).
Desktop integration has never really been a big thing, though it lives on in Windows OS's. What HAS been successful is Windows OS's sharing the Explorer app (think "file manager") with the web browser. Directories can be customized using HTML files in just about any way you want.
Some 3 years later, Nautilus arrives on Linux. What I would like to know is what it does differently (better?) than IE/Explorer or Constellation. Does it also copy/inherit from other similar systems that I fail to remember and mention? I know it embeds Mozilla, which means it can probably also easily embed another browser Konqueror.. but then again, the same is true for the Microsoft shell, as IE is just an ActiveX component.. So.. what's new? What's good? What's better?
I know.. If there's more than one probe from one IP, I always check out who it is. My ISP does probes too, for instance every time I send an email I get a probe.. but that's different.
Uh, that should have been:
"but there's a lot of rhetoric on Slashdot about how Microsoft OS's are *UN*safe."
The vulnerabilities / exploit list is long! And while 9.1.0 doesn't have any known explots according to this list, I think this should be an eye-opener to people when it comes to security. Like Microsoft likes pointing out, you are unsafe with *ANY* OS if you don't stay up to date with the patches. I'm not "pro MS" or anything, but there's a lot of rhetoric on Slashdot about how Microsoft OS's are safe. The idea a lot of people get is that Linux is automatically completely safe. This is, of course, not the case. Unless you know what's going on and what has been hacked, you're leaving your system wide open.
For those who feel safe and comfortable with their home box, especially those hooked up to DSL or cabel, I strongly recommend checking out that list. It's scary and it's only bind! To keep the balance, the fix list for Win2K SP1 is even longer... and scarier..
I run a box at home that is connected to the net 24/7 on a dynamic IP without an easy-to-guess hostname and I get about 10 probes a day.. FTP, ping, SSH, telnet, http.. you name it.. I assume most boxes get the same amount.. If you have an open door, it WILL be exploited!
Who cares about lack of Java VM's in the browser? That has nothing to do with running Java on Microsoft operating systems. I've NEVER used a Microsoft VM (other than testing) for running Java on Windows - Sun's and IBM's VM's are *SO* much better.
It's silly to compare Java to Delphi since Java is far more successful than Delphi ever was. In fact, I'd guess Java is the most successful language ever, next to VB maybe..
Disclaimer: I'm what you would call a "Java evangelizer" so I'm biased... Keep that in mind.
.NET will actually be multiplatform even though Microsoft is not split up. Already there are ports being made for other platforms AND other languages; Perl and Python by Active State for instance. I talked to a MS guy who said Microsoft will port the common language runtime of .NET to at least one "open source os", "maybe two". Because I don't know enough about .NET, I don't know if .NET apps will be cross platform, but the platform itself will be supported on various OS's. I imagine than Microsoft with some interest in the Mac platform (they own a large-ish portion of Apple) would port .NET to Mac OS X soon too.
Some of your points were a little inaccurate..
Java is controlled by the Java Community Process, *NOT* Sun and there are lots of companies on the JCP! The process works by voting and is a true democracy. It is organized by Sun, yes, but it's definitely wrong to not recognize this and just say it's "not an open standard".
.NET will be standardized by Microsoft. Well, let me be more accurate.. The common language runtime will be standardized by Microsoft. If I recall correct, they have already submitted it to ECMA.. One of the reasons behind this is to win those people who have a problem with Java *NOT* being 100% open. For a lot of people, including me, this is not a problem at all. I don't mind Sun controlling it because I think they have done a great job so far.. Now with JCP, I have even more faith in the Java platform.
"For those who don't know it yet"? Please.. C# is just one language that "powers" the .NET platform. Another language is Perl.. And VB.. And C++.. And get this.. Java. Java is no more history with .NET than it was with J++ a few years ago. J++ on the other hand *is* history. I firmly believe C# and .NET *will* be big things and yeah, they probably will eat away a little bit from Java, but kill Java? No more than it will kill Linux.
Funny how Slashdot used to be full of people talking about "the death of Java" in past tense. It's pretty amazing how Java keeps finding new homes these days.. First it was applets in the browser; bad Java VM's and even worse coders who gave Java a bad rep ruined that. Then there was the servers, which worked great (maybe the coders are better, at least the VM's are) and now there seems to be something of a comeback of Java to the client side with digi-TV and cellular Java.. First Symbian, then Siemens, then Nokia, Sega, Sony, Motorola.. I'd say Java is about as far from dead as can be - and this is DESPITE Microsoft's furious efforts to kill it.
The moderation has gone to hell recently.. I've had some *REALLY* on-topic posts being marked "off topic", probably because the moderator didn't read the article or my post properly.. I've seen lots of good posts being moderated down recently for no good reason other than the moderator not agreeing with the posters opinion. I really wish moderators would focus on moderating good posts *UP* and moderating pure shit ("first post", "beowulf cluster", "goat sex" etc.) down. Moderating something "off topic" is almost always a waste of moderation points anyway, since there are bigger fish to catch.
I don't know.. I'm one of those people who are interested in Linux and Open Source in general and appreciate the availability of source code (and may even contribute once in a while) but who don't see it as a silver bullet suitable for everything. I for one have never really believed that open source is a good business model and seeing all kinds of "open source companies" (that is, companies that have an open source related business model) fail only confirms my belief.
While some older companies like IBM might have some use of open source (their ventures into Apache and use of Linux for example), I see it largely as a PR manouver.
I recently read The Cluetrain Manifesto (www.cluetrain.com) and some of the stuff really hit me while a large part didn't. I mean, yeah, I believe companies should have conversations with the market, like open source does, and yeah, I believe in subverting hierarchy, something open source accomplishes, and yes, companies don't speak in a human voice, which open source does, but businesses need to keep secrets and everything can't and shouldn't be open.
The problem is that people (and therefore companies) don't have a lot of self confidence.. When they have stumbled upon some working piece of code that they refine into a product, they fear that if it got out into the open, their competitor would just reap the benefits of their hard labour and sell it for cheaper. Maybe their fear is rightly founded too! In any case, the result is that they hide the code as well as they can and try to make as much money from it as possible until the others "figure it out". The worst possible thing that could happen, they think, is if the competitor would get their secret!
People (and therefore also companies) are greedy and interested in making money. They do whatever gets them the most money - and preferably, gets them a lot of money soon! Open Source is not a great way to make a lot of money.
It's a question of values really.. It is very rooted into us people in the western world that money is the most important thing. For companies (publicly listed ones especially), money *IS* the most important thing. Whatever we do is determined by how much money that will get us. If we had different values; if we could work for the society, for example, and try to build as good a society as possible, then open source would probably blossom as a business model. Now, I just don't believe in it - not as a business model.. I for one am not surprised at open source businesses failing.
When going to the second page of the story, I get this (looks like dutch to me) with a bunch of car pictures:
YESS! Tweakers.net is kaputt!
Wij knielen voor admin Rick in de hoop dat dit de heling van Tweakers.net zal bespoedigen.
In de tussentijd een paar pics zodat we ons niet hoeven te vervelen: