That's just from 5 minutes of Googling. Someone with a Lexis account could produce pages and pages of AP stories about Microsoft products.
Sure, the media likes to ooh and ahh over Apple, but the media likes to ooh and ahh over everything. It's ridiculous to suggest that a similar product announcement from Microsoft wouldn't go out over the AP wire.
If those are the motivations, we should have an ImmutableList class without an add function, and derive the List with an add function from it (in C++, probably by private inheritance, that is, inheritance of implementation). Only the List class with the (working) add should publically inherit from the interface with an add function.
Just in case anyone's curious, this is the way the NS* container classes in Objective C work. NSArray is immutable, but the derived class NSMutableArray has add/remove methods, etc.
I personally prefer supporting both in one interface using 'const' in C++, but this approach does make a bit of sense (once you get over the "Why doesn't NSArray have any mutator methods?! reaction.)
I have to agree with Silmaril above.. it doesn't make sense that this long, literate and excellent essay by an insightful and respected writer gets relegated to a quickie, while Rowan van der Molen's whiny, unfocused rant gets a full article.
If Slashdot is going to have such a lax and sloppy editorial policy (further, and more egregious, examples of which abound) then it might be more interesting to pick articles using the same moderation system that's currently used for comments. If it didn't improve things, at least it would be radical.
Speaking as an MIT student, you don't know what the hell you're talking about. Slashdot gets plenty of hits from 18.*.
Be is definitely not a "big boy's club" either.
This story has "leaping to conclusions" written all over it.. has it occured to anyone that there might be technical issues with the OpenGL libraries on R4.0? Be has shown themselves to be pretty up on this sort of thing many times before, and to not give them the benefit of the doubt without even getting comment from them is pretty beat, IMO.
There are problems.. but not the ones you mention
on
Microsoft-Compaq-BeOS
·
· Score: 1
BeOS is still more of a development OS than a production OS, althought at this point it clearly outshines windows as far as reliablilty and performance are concerned.
These two statements seem contradictory to me. BeOS Release 3 may have been a little shaky on Intel, but Release 4 is pretty damn rock solid, and as about as full featured as the first release of Windows 95, plus and minus things here and there. I don't see any reason not to consider BeOS a production OS at this point. Hardware support and applications are issues, as they are for any platform that's not the Microsoft reference system. But they don't detract from Be's viability strictly as an OS, and I think statements like the above are a slander against how far Be has come.
App availibility is Be's biggest problem...
I don't agree with this, either. The only things I can't really do right now on BeOS are check my mail (my mail server uses Kerberos) or use any Java. And many other things don't work as well as, say, their Windows counterparts -- the Be clones of AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ are not full-featured or stable, Javascript support in the NetPositive browser is still in beta, etc. But there are several office productivity suites, which are quite good, and seem like they'll be matching MS Word within a couple releases. There's even Minesweeper, and soon Quake. App support is a problem, but not as big as people make it out to be. And it's certainly not Be's biggest problem. I'd vote for hardware support on that.. it doesn't really matter if an OS doesn't have the apps you want if it doesn't even run on your hardware.:/
and they're still massaging the API's to make them easier to develop for and to maintain.
I don't see what you mean here. The API was pretty well designed from the get-go, and hasn't changed drastically. R4 introduced a new version of the MediaKit API, but that's not really part of the core operating system, and the old API is still around for compatibility, so nothing breaks. It's sort of like Microsoft releasing a new version of DirectX.
Where the APIs need the most work is not "massaging" existing code, but adding the stuff they haven't gotten around to, like some specific networking routines and the last bits of POSIX compatibility (all coming soon.. but soon is never early enough.:P) And hardware 3D acceleration is another API that people are starving for, but it's coming in R4.1 with limited driver support, to be expanded afterwards.
MS really has a great opportunity to slam Be because they don't have a strong application base, and Be knows this.
No, I don't believe that at all. MS has an opportunity to slam Be because Be doesn't have a strong media and mindshare base, with consumers, retailers, and OEMs. Of course the trial is changing this -- I think that's one of my favorite parts of the whole mess, all the attention that Be is getting.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Enters The Living Roomi n648325.shtml
i n695041.shtml
5 5006.htm
a dget_show_gates
a inment/13398835.htm
SAN JOSE, Calif., Oct. 8, 2004 (AP)
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/08/tech/ma
[about the announcement of Windows Media Center Edition 2005, not the Xbox]
Microsoft Unveils New Xbox 360
REDMOND, Wash., May 13, 2005 (AP)
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/05/13/tech/ma
Xbox 360 beats PlayStation to Japan stores
HANS GREIMEL
Associated Press (Posted on Thu, Dec. 08, 2005)
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/business/133
Gates Highlights Windows Vista Program
By MAY WONG, AP Technology Writer Thu Jan 5, 3:53 AM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060105/ap_on_hi_te/g
MTV, Microsoft team up for online music
ALEX VEIGA
Associated Press (Thursday, Jan 12, 2006)
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/entert
That's just from 5 minutes of Googling. Someone with a Lexis account could produce pages and pages of AP stories about Microsoft products.
Sure, the media likes to ooh and ahh over Apple, but the media likes to ooh and ahh over everything. It's ridiculous to suggest that a similar product announcement from Microsoft wouldn't go out over the AP wire.
No, seriously.
n teractive_designer/default.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/i
Prototype in XAML and then hook the prototype UI directly into your back-end code.
Of course, judgment is suspended until it actually ships, but the demos at PDC were very promising.
If those are the motivations, we should have an ImmutableList class without an add function, and derive the List with an add function from it (in C++, probably by private inheritance, that is, inheritance of implementation). Only the List class with the (working) add should publically inherit from the interface with an add function.
Just in case anyone's curious, this is the way the NS* container classes in Objective C work. NSArray is immutable, but the derived class NSMutableArray has add/remove methods, etc.
I personally prefer supporting both in one interface using 'const' in C++, but this approach does make a bit of sense (once you get over the "Why doesn't NSArray have any mutator methods?! reaction.)
Never a dude like this one!
He's got a plan
to stick it to the man!
Oh... Superfl u
The correct URL for Neal Stephenson's essay is http://www.cryptonomicon.com/begi nning_print.html -- just take off the slash. I would have thought Slashdot readers to be a bit more enterprising.
I have to agree with Silmaril above.. it doesn't make sense that this long, literate and excellent essay by an insightful and respected writer gets relegated to a quickie, while Rowan van der Molen's whiny, unfocused rant gets a full article.
If Slashdot is going to have such a lax and sloppy editorial policy (further, and more egregious, examples of which abound) then it might be more interesting to pick articles using the same moderation system that's currently used for comments. If it didn't improve things, at least it would be radical.
As many people have said, R4.1 is NOT available to anyone but a select few right now. Most registered developers DO NOT have it.
Be is definitely not a "big boy's club" either.
This story has "leaping to conclusions" written all over it.. has it occured to anyone that there might be technical issues with the OpenGL libraries on R4.0? Be has shown themselves to be pretty up on this sort of thing many times before, and to not give them the benefit of the doubt without even getting comment from them is pretty beat, IMO.
- BeOS is still more of a development OS than a production OS, althought at this point it clearly outshines windows as far as reliablilty and performance are concerned.
These two statements seem contradictory to me. BeOS Release 3 may have been a little shaky on Intel, but Release 4 is pretty damn rock solid, and as about as full featured as the first release of Windows 95, plus and minus things here and there. I don't see any reason not to consider BeOS a production OS at this point. Hardware support and applications are issues, as they are for any platform that's not the Microsoft reference system. But they don't detract from Be's viability strictly as an OS, and I think statements like the above are a slander against how far Be has come.- App availibility is Be's biggest problem...
I don't agree with this, either. The only things I can't really do right now on BeOS are check my mail (my mail server uses Kerberos) or use any Java. And many other things don't work as well as, say, their Windows counterparts -- the Be clones of AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ are not full-featured or stable, Javascript support in the NetPositive browser is still in beta, etc. But there are several office productivity suites, which are quite good, and seem like they'll be matching MS Word within a couple releases. There's even Minesweeper, and soon Quake. App support is a problem, but not as big as people make it out to be. And it's certainly not Be's biggest problem. I'd vote for hardware support on that.. it doesn't really matter if an OS doesn't have the apps you want if it doesn't even run on your hardware.- and they're still massaging the API's to make them easier to develop for and to maintain.
I don't see what you mean here. The API was pretty well designed from the get-go, and hasn't changed drastically. R4 introduced a new version of the MediaKit API, but that's not really part of the core operating system, and the old API is still around for compatibility, so nothing breaks. It's sort of like Microsoft releasing a new version of DirectX.Where the APIs need the most work is not "massaging" existing code, but adding the stuff they haven't gotten around to, like some specific networking routines and the last bits of POSIX compatibility (all coming soon.. but soon is never early enough. :P) And hardware 3D acceleration is another API that people are starving for, but it's coming in R4.1 with limited driver support, to be expanded afterwards.
- MS really has a great opportunity to slam Be because they don't have a strong application base, and Be knows this.
No, I don't believe that at all. MS has an opportunity to slam Be because Be doesn't have a strong media and mindshare base, with consumers, retailers, and OEMs. Of course the trial is changing this -- I think that's one of my favorite parts of the whole mess, all the attention that Be is getting.