Ha, I see it now. The use of a double negative threw me off. Either way, the poster before him was talking about "non-technical" users rebooting their OWN machines multiple times.
Those non-technical users probably hang out in an office between 9-5 and when the non-non-technical people there have to reboot
The original poster must have poorly worded his argument because it looks to me like he's talking about a "non-technical" user having to reboot their workstation, which surely doesn't involve incredible amounts of coordination...
I find it humorous that Slashdotters go on and on about how terrible mainstream music is and then listen to artists who produce albums full of fart jokes.
Don't forget that the record label puts up tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars for studio time and marketing. ..
Don't forget that the artists owe this back to the record company.
Well no shit, it's not a gift, it's a loan. For the artists to go out and accomplish what they could with the money the studio loans to them would require the money in the first place. So either way it's gonna cost them lots of money, whether they pay it back to someone or pay it upfront.
I think it's probably because Java is a much cleaner language than C++ and has a massive standard library. That cuts development time and bugs down tremendously. Building Java applications is a lot easier, as generally building a component of an application (or an entire application itself) boils down to a single "compile all files in this directory" command. But for anything more complicated, Ant is lightyears ahead of makefiles.
Most universities now teach object orientation with java (something I don't agree to, I prefer C++ for learning OOP)
Why would you prefer C++ to Java for teaching OOP concepts? So students can get bogged down in all the cruft and baggage associated with C++? Java is a far cleaner language, allowing you to focus on pure OOP concepts as opposed to kludgy hacks built on top of a procedural language.
OTOH, corporations prefer Java to reduce costs in case of porting apps
From my experience, the corporate choice of Java boils down to TIME. A Java app can be developed in FAR less time than a C++ app.
After downloading the VC++ Toolkit 2003 it was sad to see that the C++ standard library implementation appears to lack iostreams..
Are you sure about that? That's quite a fundamental piece of the C++ standard library, I would be quite surprised if it was missing, especially considering that VC++ 6 (fairly old) had iostreams support.
Can you ssh into your windows machine and restart the webserver with one simple command?
Uh, yes. Guess what, cygwin has a port of sshd! So yes, you can ssh into your machine. And if you're running Apache (also ported to Windows), you can do just what you described quite easily.
Can you totally modify the way your computer runs by writing shell scripts or modifying existing ones?
For instance, in this article, you could have sent pricing information out in plain text, or binary, or whatever. They chose to use XML because... well, we'd have to ask the developers.
I believe the article writeup is a little misleading. They used XML because they're using Web Services to accomplish what they're doing. A Web Service call is basically a remote procedure call, but instead of using some bizarre format for passing back and forth data, it uses XML. The nice thing about Web Services is that ultimately the caller and the callee can be using two totally different programming languages, so long as each language has an implementation of Web Service libraries. The data on either end gets transformed into a neutral, XML-based format, so neither end knows (or cares) what platform the other is running on.
You must be joking! But I see what "uninstall" you are talking about. Sure I can uninstall anything from Windows like that.
I hate to break it to you but all Internet Explorer is is a simple wrapper application over the MSHTML, JavaScript, etc. libraries. Just like konqueror is. There are parts of the OS (like the integrated help system) and third party apps that require the IE libraries to function properly, hence you cannot remove them without unpredictable results. But again, if you don't believe the analogy I drew to Konqueror and KDE, then please delete libkonq.so and see what happens. It's the exact same thing that'll happen if you gut out all of the IE components in Windows (i.e., breakage).
I just find odd the fact that while you use FreeBSD I didn't find any possitive comments about it
Just not many chances to say much about it. That, and I've taken it upon myself to correct some of the blatant zealotry I see on Slashdot...
I haven't found any single occasion of any user being exposed to open source and not liking at least some part of it.
Again, I have said many times that there are parts of Open Source that I like. However, the current Open Source desktop offerings and the occasional setup/dependency issues that I go through are not things that I find enjoyable about Open Source software.
I don't know you either but I can draw conclusions from your stance and history.
Bear in mind that you're also looking at less than 10% of all my postings on Slashdot...
It's not the same thing at all. "Windows" isn't an operating system kernel, it's the whole damn thing. "Linux" is simply the kernel.
Stop being a pedantic nerd for once and realize that when 99% of people are talking about "Linux" they're talking about the kernel AND whatever other software comprises the entire OS. Windows is a kernel AND an OS and Linux is a kernel AND and OS too. Nobody is basing their desktop user experience off of the "kernel", it's the software that comprises the user interface that matters when making a judgement about an OS, really.
Have you ever tried to teach anybody to use a Windows-style interface? Something that keeps cropping up is that people who aren't very good with the mouse keep accidentally clicking on the close button, which is right next to the maximise button. that's a usability disaster - a destructive button a pixel or two away from a frequently used non-destructive button. In KDE I can move it to the other side with a couple of clicks. I do not have this option in Microsoft Windows. That is one example of an easy customisation that many people are capable of doing, that benefits users, that KDE provides and Microsoft Windows does not. The same thing not only applies to newbies, but to people with poor motor control.
Just because it's not built-in doesn't mean you can't do it. There's plenty of third party software that lets you completely change the window manager. LiteStep, for instance, replaces the usual Windows window manager with a Nextstep-esque one. Yes it requires third party software, but so what? All Linux is is a kernel with a bunch of third party software thrown on top of it. If someone hadn't had the foresight to include whatever it is you use to customize your desktop, you'd have to download it yourself, just like with Windows.
Please point out where anybody stated that free software is flawless and beyond reproach. You are once again constructing and attacking a straw-man argument.
And the original poster implying that I'm a Microsoft employee because I don't denounce all Microsoft software as awful isn't...?
Can I uninstall IE for example? (Please don't tell me about the "uncheck IE" box in add/remove components)
Absolutely. Find iexplore.exe and delete it. No more Internet Explorer. The only thing that remains are the HTML rendering libraries and other associated libraries that it requires at runtime. Can't delete those without breaking the system as there are components that rely on embedding IE's HTML rendering. But then again, the same thing is true of e.g., Konqueror. You can remove the konqueror executable but if you delete libkonqueror.so (or whatever it's called) you'll find that all those KDE apps that embed Konqueror are broken.
Well, here's one on SourceForge that I wrote a number of years ago and only recently have started working on again (there's no recent release at the moment, but soon): cRPL, which is the beginnings of a stack-based RPL programming language.
There's also linleech, which, again, I wrote many years ago and have ceased development on. There's no homepage for that project anymore, but a few years ago someone decided to pick the project up and include it in Debian and OpenBSD as a package:
Work and whatnot have kept me from doing much work in the free software arena, but in another week or two I'll be making my first release of a Java-based remote execution tool (check the project page for a link), so it's not like I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to this whole free software thing. Yes it's been a long time since I've published any free software but at least I've contributed instead of sitting on Slashdot and paying lip service.
You must be joking! You complain about the security holes of Red Hat Enterprise and enthusiastically embrace Microsoft software? That is very interesting!:-)
Who said I was enthusiastically embracing Microsoft? I was just making the point that free software has the same problems that closed source software has, thus rendering the original poster's joke to be, well, not a joke.
Right! And why haven't you installed the Superior Software to them as well?
Because I never said Microsoft's software is the superior software? I just find the desktop experience to be superior. You'll also noticed that I make no mention of those machines being desktop machines. They're server machines. You see, unlike clueless zealots such as yourself, I don't believe in an all-or-nothing philosophy. Whereas you make it very clear that the "truth" is that Linux is better than Microsoft bar none, I don't think so. It's better in some areas, and worse in others.
Here we go again. No, GNOME and KDE are not linux. Linux is just a kernel and yes you can customize GNOME and KDE to any degree you want.
The original poster said Linux community, and I'm taking that to mean Open Source community, ergo the GNOME/KDE comments. Besides, no one talks exclusively about the "Windows kernel", they talk about Windows itself, which is much more than a kernel. Same thing with Linux. You've gotta throw in some sort of Linux equivalent to Microsoft's desktop environment...
That in not true in MS software unless I pay (more) money for a third party software to do this for me (possibly) without braking anything.
Depends what you mean by "customize". If you want Windows to have all the 1337 themez that Linux desktop environments have, that's easy enough to do with all sorts of free software. If you're talking about doing extensive customizations to the point where you're gutting the innards of GNOME and making it something completely different, I suppose there's that advantage over Windows, but chances are very, very few people would ever embark on such a task.
So let's see I have a choice to get free software with maybe a few bugs and buy software with a few bugs (and security holes). Hmmm what will it be?
I know, what will it be? It seems that if I buy a copy of RedHat Enterprise that I'm effectively paying for software with bugs and security holes, at least, judging by all the security notices that go out here at work...
Now let's have a look at your history in/.
You know, contrary to popular belief here on Slashdot, not everyone who doesn't immediately swallow the load about all free software being flawless and beyond reproach is a Microsoft employee, planted here to "astroturf". For the record, I keep two FreeBSD boxes at home and have written and published my own free software. However, I still use Windows on my desktop and have done Windows development because I still believe that the Windows desktop is superior to the Linux desktop. Let's not even mention that fact that I have a very low UID, indicating that I joined this site back when it was almost exclusively Linux entusiasts...
(Gee, maybe YOU'RE a RedHat plant because you praise Linux and bash Microsoft!)
Hate to rain on your parade, but the Linux kernel itself is between 1.8M and 3.3M LOC (I say "between" because I'm not sure what kernel version the Zaurus has). So any way you look at it, when you add up all the source for the Zaurus's components and the Linux kernel you're getting up to or above the 2.5M LOC figure that you seem to think is unacceptable for an embedded device.
IBM, for instance, has a piece of PDA client software used in conjuction with WebSphere portal server. That's at least one company doing it. Let's not forget game makers like PopCap, etc. They're real companies too.
If someone wants to write some free software, fine. There's free tools for that. If someone wants to sell their software, hopefully they're expecting to sell the 50 copies at $20 needed to recoup the inital investment.
I hope you're not implying that dereferncing NULL pointers is something that happens exclusively at Microsoft. But either way, this happens frequently enough with free software. Check.
Program major security holes into common apps like xterm
The problem you and many others make is you look at these software prices through the eyes of an average programmer, coding stuff in his spare time. You have to realize that software like this is not targeted at such a person, but to companies that intend on developing products which are sold for profit. From that perspective, $995 is a drop in the bucket. It's less than the cost of paying a small group programmers for a day's worth of work.
I hope you realize that not a single one of those items you cite contains a direct quote by Mr. Eisner or Disney stating that they chose not to distribute the film because of tax breaks. The original poster stated that the rumblings about "tax breaks" were originally said by Moore and his camp, which your cites clearly demonstrate.
You have absolutely no evidence to support your claim that SP2 is causing your machine to access hotmail.com. In fact, it was probably a virus your machine got earlier that is making it act as an email relay. You're just aware of it now.
What the hell are you talking about? Back in 2000 I bought a 10/100 NIC (I _assume_ that's what we're talking about here) for $20. Did they really drop in price that fast?
And Windows drivers for ethernet NICs are pretty much a no-brainer. Please elaborate on the bugginess...
Dia is terrible. I had a hell of a time just getting the thing to do grid snapping consistently and having a drag selection actually SELECT the objects I was trying to select.
Just because it's an OSS "clone" of Visio doesn't actually mean it comes anywhere close to being a replacement for Visio except in the simplest of cases.
Slashdot Mirror
Ha, I see it now. The use of a double negative threw me off. Either way, the poster before him was talking about "non-technical" users rebooting their OWN machines multiple times.
Those non-technical users probably hang out in an office between 9-5 and when the non-non-technical people there have to reboot
The original poster must have poorly worded his argument because it looks to me like he's talking about a "non-technical" user having to reboot their workstation, which surely doesn't involve incredible amounts of coordination...
it means a call to the missus "I'll be home late tonight, gotta wait till the last person leaves and cheak this thing comes back up".
Oh for Christ's sake, it's a reboot, it doesn't take hours. It takes about two minutes.
I find it humorous that Slashdotters go on and on about how terrible mainstream music is and then listen to artists who produce albums full of fart jokes.
Don't forget that the record label puts up tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars for studio time and marketing. . .
Don't forget that the artists owe this back to the record company.
Well no shit, it's not a gift, it's a loan. For the artists to go out and accomplish what they could with the money the studio loans to them would require the money in the first place. So either way it's gonna cost them lots of money, whether they pay it back to someone or pay it upfront.
I think it's probably because Java is a much cleaner language than C++ and has a massive standard library. That cuts development time and bugs down tremendously. Building Java applications is a lot easier, as generally building a component of an application (or an entire application itself) boils down to a single "compile all files in this directory" command. But for anything more complicated, Ant is lightyears ahead of makefiles.
Most universities now teach object orientation with java (something I don't agree to, I prefer C++ for learning OOP)
Why would you prefer C++ to Java for teaching OOP concepts? So students can get bogged down in all the cruft and baggage associated with C++? Java is a far cleaner language, allowing you to focus on pure OOP concepts as opposed to kludgy hacks built on top of a procedural language.
OTOH, corporations prefer Java to reduce costs in case of porting apps
From my experience, the corporate choice of Java boils down to TIME. A Java app can be developed in FAR less time than a C++ app.
After downloading the VC++ Toolkit 2003 it was sad to see that the C++ standard library implementation appears to lack iostreams..
Are you sure about that? That's quite a fundamental piece of the C++ standard library, I would be quite surprised if it was missing, especially considering that VC++ 6 (fairly old) had iostreams support.
Can you ssh into your windows machine and restart the webserver with one simple command?
Uh, yes. Guess what, cygwin has a port of sshd! So yes, you can ssh into your machine. And if you're running Apache (also ported to Windows), you can do just what you described quite easily.
Can you totally modify the way your computer runs by writing shell scripts or modifying existing ones?
Elaborate.
For instance, in this article, you could have sent pricing information out in plain text, or binary, or whatever. They chose to use XML because... well, we'd have to ask the developers.
I believe the article writeup is a little misleading. They used XML because they're using Web Services to accomplish what they're doing. A Web Service call is basically a remote procedure call, but instead of using some bizarre format for passing back and forth data, it uses XML. The nice thing about Web Services is that ultimately the caller and the callee can be using two totally different programming languages, so long as each language has an implementation of Web Service libraries. The data on either end gets transformed into a neutral, XML-based format, so neither end knows (or cares) what platform the other is running on.
You must be joking! But I see what "uninstall" you are talking about. Sure I can uninstall anything from Windows like that.
I hate to break it to you but all Internet Explorer is is a simple wrapper application over the MSHTML, JavaScript, etc. libraries. Just like konqueror is. There are parts of the OS (like the integrated help system) and third party apps that require the IE libraries to function properly, hence you cannot remove them without unpredictable results. But again, if you don't believe the analogy I drew to Konqueror and KDE, then please delete libkonq.so and see what happens. It's the exact same thing that'll happen if you gut out all of the IE components in Windows (i.e., breakage).
I just find odd the fact that while you use FreeBSD I didn't find any possitive comments about it
Just not many chances to say much about it. That, and I've taken it upon myself to correct some of the blatant zealotry I see on Slashdot...
I haven't found any single occasion of any user being exposed to open source and not liking at least some part of it.
Again, I have said many times that there are parts of Open Source that I like. However, the current Open Source desktop offerings and the occasional setup/dependency issues that I go through are not things that I find enjoyable about Open Source software.
I don't know you either but I can draw conclusions from your stance and history.
Bear in mind that you're also looking at less than 10% of all my postings on Slashdot...
It's not the same thing at all. "Windows" isn't an operating system kernel, it's the whole damn thing. "Linux" is simply the kernel.
Stop being a pedantic nerd for once and realize that when 99% of people are talking about "Linux" they're talking about the kernel AND whatever other software comprises the entire OS. Windows is a kernel AND an OS and Linux is a kernel AND and OS too. Nobody is basing their desktop user experience off of the "kernel", it's the software that comprises the user interface that matters when making a judgement about an OS, really.
Have you ever tried to teach anybody to use a Windows-style interface? Something that keeps cropping up is that people who aren't very good with the mouse keep accidentally clicking on the close button, which is right next to the maximise button. that's a usability disaster - a destructive button a pixel or two away from a frequently used non-destructive button. In KDE I can move it to the other side with a couple of clicks. I do not have this option in Microsoft Windows. That is one example of an easy customisation that many people are capable of doing, that benefits users, that KDE provides and Microsoft Windows does not. The same thing not only applies to newbies, but to people with poor motor control.
Just because it's not built-in doesn't mean you can't do it. There's plenty of third party software that lets you completely change the window manager. LiteStep, for instance, replaces the usual Windows window manager with a Nextstep-esque one. Yes it requires third party software, but so what? All Linux is is a kernel with a bunch of third party software thrown on top of it. If someone hadn't had the foresight to include whatever it is you use to customize your desktop, you'd have to download it yourself, just like with Windows.
Please point out where anybody stated that free software is flawless and beyond reproach. You are once again constructing and attacking a straw-man argument.
And the original poster implying that I'm a Microsoft employee because I don't denounce all Microsoft software as awful isn't...?
Can I uninstall IE for example? (Please don't tell me about the "uncheck IE" box in add/remove components)
:-)
Absolutely. Find iexplore.exe and delete it. No more Internet Explorer. The only thing that remains are the HTML rendering libraries and other associated libraries that it requires at runtime. Can't delete those without breaking the system as there are components that rely on embedding IE's HTML rendering. But then again, the same thing is true of e.g., Konqueror. You can remove the konqueror executable but if you delete libkonqueror.so (or whatever it's called) you'll find that all those KDE apps that embed Konqueror are broken.
Well, here's one on SourceForge that I wrote a number of years ago and only recently have started working on again (there's no recent release at the moment, but soon): cRPL, which is the beginnings of a stack-based RPL programming language.
There's also linleech, which, again, I wrote many years ago and have ceased development on. There's no homepage for that project anymore, but a few years ago someone decided to pick the project up and include it in Debian and OpenBSD as a package:
Debian
OpenBSD
Work and whatnot have kept me from doing much work in the free software arena, but in another week or two I'll be making my first release of a Java-based remote execution tool (check the project page for a link), so it's not like I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to this whole free software thing. Yes it's been a long time since I've published any free software but at least I've contributed instead of sitting on Slashdot and paying lip service.
You must be joking! You complain about the security holes of Red Hat Enterprise and enthusiastically embrace Microsoft software? That is very interesting!
Who said I was enthusiastically embracing Microsoft? I was just making the point that free software has the same problems that closed source software has, thus rendering the original poster's joke to be, well, not a joke.
Right! And why haven't you installed the Superior Software to them as well?
Because I never said Microsoft's software is the superior software? I just find the desktop experience to be superior. You'll also noticed that I make no mention of those machines being desktop machines. They're server machines. You see, unlike clueless zealots such as yourself, I don't believe in an all-or-nothing philosophy. Whereas you make it very clear that the "truth" is that Linux is better than Microsoft bar none, I don't think so. It's better in some areas, and worse in others.
Here we go again. No, GNOME and KDE are not linux. Linux is just a kernel and yes you can customize GNOME and KDE to any degree you want.
/.
The original poster said Linux community, and I'm taking that to mean Open Source community, ergo the GNOME/KDE comments. Besides, no one talks exclusively about the "Windows kernel", they talk about Windows itself, which is much more than a kernel. Same thing with Linux. You've gotta throw in some sort of Linux equivalent to Microsoft's desktop environment...
That in not true in MS software unless I pay (more) money for a third party software to do this for me (possibly) without braking anything.
Depends what you mean by "customize". If you want Windows to have all the 1337 themez that Linux desktop environments have, that's easy enough to do with all sorts of free software. If you're talking about doing extensive customizations to the point where you're gutting the innards of GNOME and making it something completely different, I suppose there's that advantage over Windows, but chances are very, very few people would ever embark on such a task.
So let's see I have a choice to get free software with maybe a few bugs and buy software with a few bugs (and security holes). Hmmm what will it be?
I know, what will it be? It seems that if I buy a copy of RedHat Enterprise that I'm effectively paying for software with bugs and security holes, at least, judging by all the security notices that go out here at work...
Now let's have a look at your history in
You know, contrary to popular belief here on Slashdot, not everyone who doesn't immediately swallow the load about all free software being flawless and beyond reproach is a Microsoft employee, planted here to "astroturf". For the record, I keep two FreeBSD boxes at home and have written and published my own free software. However, I still use Windows on my desktop and have done Windows development because I still believe that the Windows desktop is superior to the Linux desktop. Let's not even mention that fact that I have a very low UID, indicating that I joined this site back when it was almost exclusively Linux entusiasts...
(Gee, maybe YOU'RE a RedHat plant because you praise Linux and bash Microsoft!)
Artifical barrier to whose entry? Microsoft's goal certainly isn't to deny as many developers as possible from developing on its platforms.
Hate to rain on your parade, but the Linux kernel itself is between 1.8M and 3.3M LOC (I say "between" because I'm not sure what kernel version the Zaurus has). So any way you look at it, when you add up all the source for the Zaurus's components and the Linux kernel you're getting up to or above the 2.5M LOC figure that you seem to think is unacceptable for an embedded device.
The original poster linked you to a download for the old version, for some reason. Make no mistake, the latest dev tools are also freely available:
eVC++ 4.0
IBM, for instance, has a piece of PDA client software used in conjuction with WebSphere portal server. That's at least one company doing it. Let's not forget game makers like PopCap, etc. They're real companies too.
If someone wants to write some free software, fine. There's free tools for that. If someone wants to sell their software, hopefully they're expecting to sell the 50 copies at $20 needed to recoup the inital investment.
PalmOS has been another stable hand-held system that amateurs can actually write software for as well.
Are you implying that amateurs can't write for WinCE devices? I'll remind you that the development tools are free and widely available.
Create bloat in disk and RAM usage
GNOME and KDE. Check.
Access NULL pointers to decrease stability
I hope you're not implying that dereferncing NULL pointers is something that happens exclusively at Microsoft. But either way, this happens frequently enough with free software. Check.
Program major security holes into common apps like xterm
Is ssh good enough for you? Check.
The problem you and many others make is you look at these software prices through the eyes of an average programmer, coding stuff in his spare time. You have to realize that software like this is not targeted at such a person, but to companies that intend on developing products which are sold for profit. From that perspective, $995 is a drop in the bucket. It's less than the cost of paying a small group programmers for a day's worth of work.
I hope you realize that not a single one of those items you cite contains a direct quote by Mr. Eisner or Disney stating that they chose not to distribute the film because of tax breaks. The original poster stated that the rumblings about "tax breaks" were originally said by Moore and his camp, which your cites clearly demonstrate.
You have absolutely no evidence to support your claim that SP2 is causing your machine to access hotmail.com. In fact, it was probably a virus your machine got earlier that is making it act as an email relay. You're just aware of it now.
Well, you can tell I'm a true Slashdotter... not even bothering to read the writeup.
What the hell are you talking about? Back in 2000 I bought a 10/100 NIC (I _assume_ that's what we're talking about here) for $20. Did they really drop in price that fast?
And Windows drivers for ethernet NICs are pretty much a no-brainer. Please elaborate on the bugginess...
Dia is terrible. I had a hell of a time just getting the thing to do grid snapping consistently and having a drag selection actually SELECT the objects I was trying to select.
Just because it's an OSS "clone" of Visio doesn't actually mean it comes anywhere close to being a replacement for Visio except in the simplest of cases.