"I really don't give a damn whether Microsoft signed in blood on a contract written by Mephistopheles himself, their player works with a minimum of hassle or nags."
This more then anything else represents the moral decrepitude our nation has into. I find it so sad that people are so willing to abandon all the moral and ethical lessons given to them by their mothers, schools, and churches. Without a sense of right and wrong our country is doomed.
"BTW, how come there is no open-source VB? I once heard of a project called something like "Arizona", but never found it."
Most likely this is due to several factors not the least of which are patents MS holds. And to be fair who would build VB from scratch? It makes no sense when you have perl, python, java, c#, delphi to clone VB. Even MS ditched VB in favor of C#. They introduced VB.NET which is nothing but a baby step to wean VB developers to C#.
There was a project one time called envelope or something but it didn't go anywhere.
I have hit the old windows update button and it says I am up to snuff. The fact that the entire machine can be sent into a tizzy because I installed and am using some software is a testament to how badly designed windows is. The fact the It works fine if you do a reinstall is a testament to how it suffers from bitrot. This is windows 2000 I am talking about here for christs sake. you'd think by now they would have gotten a fucking clue and written a decent operating system. Give a 50 billion dollars and you can bet your ass I'd get a decent one written.
"Perhaps, but why is the OCX approach simple for me but the Java approach not? IOW, why am I allegedly brain-damaged under one but not the other? You have not explained the inconsistency."
I have no idea why you are not able to grasp java. Only you can answer that. Considering that there are millions of java developers all around the world it is obvious that the reason is not java itself. If people of different colors, races, languages, religions, cultures, and world views can grasp the fundementals of java then I'd say they are on to something. I am not saying you should be ashamed or anything it's just that you can't grasp it. I can't grasp baking a pie that does not make me dumb either. People are just wired differently.
"Is the choice being married to MS or married to Sun? They are both mud-crawling greedbags. "
Not true on both counts. First of all you can JVMs from IBM and MS not to mention open source ones. So no you are not married to sun. Secondly I'd say on the evil scale MS is much more evil then sun. At least sun has not been convicted in court twice. That's not to say that sun is "good" like mother theresa just not as evil. In a very real sense you are choosing the lesser of two evils. If you really want to be on the side of good you'd get a job programming in an open source language like python, perl, php, ruby etc. Open source is the good in this case.
Re:Doesn't have much on the good old Libretto
on
Tiqit Handheld PC
·
· Score: 2
"Oh yeah, and the Libretto suffers from being discontinued; very sad how this amazing machine was never marketed well in North America at all."
what's funnier is that they are selling for a mint at ebay to this date. How stupid are coporations anyway? It seems like somebody would get off their ass and make a modest performance (200mz or so) x86 PC in a small form factor and sell it for $300 to $400 and make a mint.
It's becoming obvious to me that you have no idea what you are talking about.
If you are unable to to use the JAVA API then fine. Apparently millions of other programmers are able to do just that without problems including me. This is a shortcoming with you and not the programming language.
Also there is a huge difference between "this call is depreciated" and this VBX that you paid 500 dollars for does not work at all. Again you don't seem to be able to tell the difference.
There is nothing wrong with my machine. It's an off the shelf dell, it came with W2K installed on it. About six months after I got it it got so bad I did a fresh reinstall. When the time comes I will load freebsd on it and it will stop crashing. That's what always happens to my old machines. This is not a hardware problem. When I re-installed W2K it stopped crashing for about a month or two then it started again. I must have installed something that sent it into never never land.
"But spent one day per line? I am arguing mostly about total programming effort, and not resulting lines-of-code. "
What kind of a programmer spends one day per line? Usually the efficiency of a programming language is measured in lines of code.
"I have also written a Spam-A-Tron using Xbase in about 50 lines of code. (I felt guilty about automating spam, but that was the biz at the time. Also, the Xbase called a command line IIRC to do that actual sending.)"
Well duh! anybody can write it in 50 lines if they has an add on. I could do it in 50 if I had an OCX in VB too. The point is that this is all built into java.
"Sorry, I should have said "OCX" or something, but MS keeps changing the name every year or so based on their rapidly rotating buzzmarketing tactics and thus I lost track."
Well they have to do that to keep VB programmers forking over the dough. The poor suckers fall for it every time too!
My work machine crashes at least once a day (dell). My home machine is OK and crashes only once a week or so. The harder you use it the more it crashes. It might be OK if you only run MS software though. I run "foreign" software on it frequently. I think it's MS way of punishing me for not buying their software.
That remains to be seen. Let's check back here next year and see if any new drugs have been developed at all. If there were new drugs developed then you are wrong. Your assertion is easy to test. We'll see next year.
That's got to be one of the most incoherent posts I have ever read.
I wrote a simple server in under 50 lines of code. I wrote a mass mailer in about the same number of lines. And I didn't even pay for any components. BTW nobody sells VBXs anymore that was VB3 technology.
It was a tough choice. Respect the IP rights of a foreign company and let a few hundred thousand people die, strip the IP rights from that company and let your citizens live. In the US there would be no question we would let the people die. In brazil apparently the govt cares more about it's citizens then the IP rights of foreign corporations.
Yes it seems like a weird concept but I guess that's the way those foreigners think.
Yet the fact remains. Corporations are not human beings and software is not gardening tools. It's possible to stretch analogies too far and in this case I think you have just that.
Corporations are routinely held to different standards then human beings. Nothing new about that.
That's becasue you are a human being. A corporation on the other hand is a legal entity. A corporation has different set of rights then you do. A corporation was given many many benefits that are ot available to human beings because it was in the public interest to do (theoretically anyways). For example a corporation pays taxes under a completely different structure then then you.
Once a corporation is not acting in the public good, or if a corporation can be made to act in the public good without harming the corporation or the shareholders there is nothing wrong with compelling them to do something.
In the case of this software the corporation decided not to sell it anymore. It would do no harm to the corporation or it's shareholders to release it to the public and it would do the public a lot good.
I think java on the client is about to make a big comeback. Machines are faster now, the JVMs are faster too. Recently I downloaded jedit (jedit.org) and I have to say I just love it. It's the best windows editor I have used so far. I am amazed at how well it runs.
Don't count java on the client out yet.
Re:Who is buying this?
on
More on MPEG4
·
· Score: 2
"To to extent you must believe that corporate elites are trying to screw somebody, this is really about different corporate elites trying to screw each other."
The corporate elites are always trying to screw somebody it's in their genes. George Carlin has a very funny bit he does about business people. I don't remember it verbatim but it goes something like.
"If you don't believe me that businesspeople are always trying to screw you just put two of them across the table from each other and watch. each one will be convinced the other is trying to screw him."
His version is much funnier and on the point then mine of course but the idea is valid. In any business negotiation the presumption of both parties is that the other is a lying, unethical bastard trying to screw you. That's because they themselves are lying, unethical bastards trying to screw the other person.
I say let the human race decide as a collective what is moral and what is not. I would rather have that then to have a small tribe of jews who lived 2000 years ago decide.
That's just me though. I know many people disagree.
I think you got it backwards. When I tried to install the MS XML parser it insisted that I upgrade my browser. I was thinking to myself. What kind of an idiot builds an XML parser that requires a browser? Now I can maybe understand it going the other way (the browser needs an XML parser) but WTF?
The guys who built the XML parsers for perl, python, java, delphi etc were able to do it without requiring a browser. I guess they were more competent then the MS programmers. In the end it took something like 30 megabytes of stuff just so I can install the MS XML parser. Fucking idiots.
"Could Microsoft go run to the DoJ and complain that giving away Red Hat Linux for free with Dell computers (and no Windows came installed) was driving them out of business?"
Sure they could. All kinds of business go running to the DOJ or congress when their bottom line is threatened. Just look at the RIAA or Disney for example. In this case it may or may not work. Dell does not have a monopoly. Everything changes when you have a monopoly.
BTW. MS went running to the DOJ and the govt many times themselves. They complained to the DOJ about AOL IM remember that? That and the 4.3 million in bribe money proves that MS sees nothing wrong with govt interference in the tech sector.
Well that's funny all of your links actually vindicate my post. That being.
1) for years the govt helped out enron. 2) In the end bush backstabbed his friend and did not help him during the collapse of enron. 3) Even during the end Enron had access to the highest levels of govt that you and I don't.
None of your posts indicate anything about how much the state of texas helped enron when dubya was the pres though.
Kenneth Lay made an obcene amount of money with thelp of the govt. If he is not grateful then he deserved to be stabbed in the back. I would guess that he will still keep his jets and mansions though so I don't think anybody will take his whining seriously.
Slashdot Mirror
Well it could happen but I'd doubt it. Case is not nearly as evil as gates is. Time will tell whether you are right or I am.
Also AOL has a long way to go before it becomes dominant. 34 million is a lot but it's a pittance when compared the hundreds of millions of IE users.
"I really don't give a damn whether Microsoft signed in blood on a contract written by Mephistopheles himself, their player works with a minimum of hassle or nags."
This more then anything else represents the moral decrepitude our nation has into. I find it so sad that people are so willing to abandon all the moral and ethical lessons given to them by their mothers, schools, and churches. Without a sense of right and wrong our country is doomed.
Ah so true. The best and the brightest of our nation being put to work on killing people.
"BTW, how come there is no open-source VB? I once heard of a project called something like "Arizona", but never found it."
Most likely this is due to several factors not the least of which are patents MS holds. And to be fair who would build VB from scratch? It makes no sense when you have perl, python, java, c#, delphi to clone VB. Even MS ditched VB in favor of C#. They introduced VB.NET which is nothing but a baby step to wean VB developers to C#.
There was a project one time called envelope or something but it didn't go anywhere.
Which DLL? Which Registry setting?
I have hit the old windows update button and it says I am up to snuff. The fact that the entire machine can be sent into a tizzy because I installed and am using some software is a testament to how badly designed windows is. The fact the It works fine if you do a reinstall is a testament to how it suffers from bitrot. This is windows 2000 I am talking about here for christs sake. you'd think by now they would have gotten a fucking clue and written a decent operating system. Give a 50 billion dollars and you can bet your ass I'd get a decent one written.
"Perhaps, but why is the OCX approach simple for me but the Java approach not? IOW, why am I allegedly brain-damaged under one but not the other? You have not explained the inconsistency."
I have no idea why you are not able to grasp java. Only you can answer that. Considering that there are millions of java developers all around the world it is obvious that the reason is not java itself. If people of different colors, races, languages, religions, cultures, and world views can grasp the fundementals of java then I'd say they are on to something. I am not saying you should be ashamed or anything it's just that you can't grasp it. I can't grasp baking a pie that does not make me dumb either. People are just wired differently.
"Is the choice being married to MS or married to Sun? They are both mud-crawling greedbags. "
Not true on both counts. First of all you can JVMs from IBM and MS not to mention open source ones. So no you are not married to sun. Secondly I'd say on the evil scale MS is much more evil then sun. At least sun has not been convicted in court twice. That's not to say that sun is "good" like mother theresa just not as evil. In a very real sense you are choosing the lesser of two evils. If you really want to be on the side of good you'd get a job programming in an open source language like python, perl, php, ruby etc. Open source is the good in this case.
"Oh yeah, and the Libretto suffers from being discontinued; very sad how this amazing machine was never marketed well in North America at all."
what's funnier is that they are selling for a mint at ebay to this date. How stupid are coporations anyway? It seems like somebody would get off their ass and make a modest performance (200mz or so) x86 PC in a small form factor and sell it for $300 to $400 and make a mint.
It's becoming obvious to me that you have no idea what you are talking about.
If you are unable to to use the JAVA API then fine. Apparently millions of other programmers are able to do just that without problems including me. This is a shortcoming with you and not the programming language.
Also there is a huge difference between "this call is depreciated" and this VBX that you paid 500 dollars for does not work at all. Again you don't seem to be able to tell the difference.
There is nothing wrong with my machine. It's an off the shelf dell, it came with W2K installed on it. About six months after I got it it got so bad I did a fresh reinstall. When the time comes I will load freebsd on it and it will stop crashing. That's what always happens to my old machines. This is not a hardware problem. When I re-installed W2K it stopped crashing for about a month or two then it started again. I must have installed something that sent it into never never land.
"But spent one day per line? I am arguing mostly about total programming effort, and not resulting lines-of-code. "
What kind of a programmer spends one day per line? Usually the efficiency of a programming language is measured in lines of code.
"I have also written a Spam-A-Tron using Xbase in about 50 lines of code. (I felt guilty about automating spam, but that was the biz at the time. Also, the Xbase called a command line IIRC to do that actual sending.)"
Well duh! anybody can write it in 50 lines if they has an add on. I could do it in 50 if I had an OCX in VB too. The point is that this is all built into java.
"Sorry, I should have said "OCX" or something, but MS keeps changing the name every year or so based on their rapidly rotating buzzmarketing tactics and thus I lost track."
Well they have to do that to keep VB programmers forking over the dough. The poor suckers fall for it every time too!
My work machine crashes at least once a day (dell). My home machine is OK and crashes only once a week or so. The harder you use it the more it crashes. It might be OK if you only run MS software though. I run "foreign" software on it frequently. I think it's MS way of punishing me for not buying their software.
Are you quoting Gates or Ballmer. It sounds like something they would say.
That remains to be seen. Let's check back here next year and see if any new drugs have been developed at all. If there were new drugs developed then you are wrong. Your assertion is easy to test. We'll see next year.
That's got to be one of the most incoherent posts I have ever read.
I wrote a simple server in under 50 lines of code. I wrote a mass mailer in about the same number of lines. And I didn't even pay for any components. BTW nobody sells VBXs anymore that was VB3 technology.
Why is red baiting popular again all of a sudden. Jesus I feel like I have been thrown back into the fourties.
"Yes, Brazil, that great bastion of liberty..."
It was a tough choice. Respect the IP rights of a foreign company and let a few hundred thousand people die, strip the IP rights from that company and let your citizens live. In the US there would be no question we would let the people die. In brazil apparently the govt cares more about it's citizens then the IP rights of foreign corporations.
Yes it seems like a weird concept but I guess that's the way those foreigners think.
Yet the fact remains. Corporations are not human beings and software is not gardening tools. It's possible to stretch analogies too far and in this case I think you have just that.
Corporations are routinely held to different standards then human beings. Nothing new about that.
That's becasue you are a human being. A corporation on the other hand is a legal entity. A corporation has different set of rights then you do. A corporation was given many many benefits that are ot available to human beings because it was in the public interest to do (theoretically anyways). For example a corporation pays taxes under a completely different structure then then you.
Once a corporation is not acting in the public good, or if a corporation can be made to act in the public good without harming the corporation or the shareholders there is nothing wrong with compelling them to do something.
In the case of this software the corporation decided not to sell it anymore. It would do no harm to the corporation or it's shareholders to release it to the public and it would do the public a lot good.
I think java on the client is about to make a big comeback. Machines are faster now, the JVMs are faster too. Recently I downloaded jedit (jedit.org) and I have to say I just love it. It's the best windows editor I have used so far. I am amazed at how well it runs.
Don't count java on the client out yet.
"To to extent you must believe that corporate elites are trying to screw somebody, this is really about different corporate elites trying to screw each other."
The corporate elites are always trying to screw somebody it's in their genes. George Carlin has a very funny bit he does about business people. I don't remember it verbatim but it goes something like.
"If you don't believe me that businesspeople are always trying to screw you just put two of them across the table from each other and watch. each one will be convinced the other is trying to screw him."
His version is much funnier and on the point then mine of course but the idea is valid. In any business negotiation the presumption of both parties is that the other is a lying, unethical bastard trying to screw you. That's because they themselves are lying, unethical bastards trying to screw the other person.
True or false?
Columbus discovered america.
Jesus Christ is the son of god.
A gallon of gasoline costs $1.10
The truth is much slipperier then you think.
I say let the human race decide as a collective what is moral and what is not. I would rather have that then to have a small tribe of jews who lived 2000 years ago decide.
That's just me though. I know many people disagree.
I think you got it backwards. When I tried to install the MS XML parser it insisted that I upgrade my browser. I was thinking to myself. What kind of an idiot builds an XML parser that requires a browser? Now I can maybe understand it going the other way (the browser needs an XML parser) but WTF?
The guys who built the XML parsers for perl, python, java, delphi etc were able to do it without requiring a browser. I guess they were more competent then the MS programmers. In the end it took something like 30 megabytes of stuff just so I can install the MS XML parser. Fucking idiots.
"Could Microsoft go run to the DoJ and complain that giving away Red Hat Linux for free with Dell computers (and no Windows came installed) was driving them out of business?"
Sure they could. All kinds of business go running to the DOJ or congress when their bottom line is threatened. Just look at the RIAA or Disney for example. In this case it may or may not work. Dell does not have a monopoly. Everything changes when you have a monopoly.
BTW. MS went running to the DOJ and the govt many times themselves. They complained to the DOJ about AOL IM remember that? That and the 4.3 million in bribe money proves that MS sees nothing wrong with govt interference in the tech sector.
Well that's funny all of your links actually vindicate my post. That being.
1) for years the govt helped out enron.
2) In the end bush backstabbed his friend and did not help him during the collapse of enron.
3) Even during the end Enron had access to the highest levels of govt that you and I don't.
None of your posts indicate anything about how much the state of texas helped enron when dubya was the pres though.
Kenneth Lay made an obcene amount of money with thelp of the govt. If he is not grateful then he deserved to be stabbed in the back. I would guess that he will still keep his jets and mansions though so I don't think anybody will take his whining seriously.