You are confusing freedoms (or rights) with privileges. Those "freedoms" you claim are being taken away are mostly speculation. I don't see what's so bad about paying a "MS tax" on online media when you already pay a "Time Warner" tax on cable. I really hope you understand that VCs work in their own interests, and not yours. Sure, it probably is hard to compete directly against Microsoft. Does that mean impossible? I'd say no. VCs have no interest in funding you because it is (a) too risky (for them, not always you) or (b) there is honestly no market for your product and VCs see that. If you are seeking funding for more of the same (i.e. a competing product, or in other words the market is already crowded) then VCs tend to not want to fund them from what I understand. I'd look for funding elsewhere. Who said you need $10 million to do what you want? Maybe you don't know what you really want. If you want it bad enough there is usually a way.
I think the problem with Microsoft is they are too good at what they do. Do they step on competitors? Sure, but which companies don't? They are good at their marketing, they are good at their business, and a good many people would even say they are great at their products. The best punishment for a company like MS would be extreme competition which traps them into a corner where they have to play follow the leader for once. A game most of the computer industry has learned all too well.
For one thing, Emacs uses elisp. Elisp is not the same as Common Lisp (or Scheme). Common Lisp has "write-line" and Scheme has "display". As for Emacs, well I don't think there is such a thing because it is integrated with a text editor (and has no terminal, or standard output).
I suggest getting CMU Common Lisp (CMUCL) or CLISP. Check out www.lisp.org.
Not exactly. I'm sure you know clock speed is meaningless for determining how fast a CPU really is. Now higher model numbers should mean huge advancements, and they do many times. One reason all applications are not sped up is because the bottleneck is in different places for different applications. If you tried to play those same games that sped up on a newer CPU, but with an older graphics card, well it would be exactly the same. The word processor would then seem faster than games. Another thing, many games take advantage of special CPU instructions which many applications do not need.
Anyone who has ever upgraded or put together their own PC should know that performance depends on all parts, not just the CPU or memory. Maybe your applications don't speed up because you are still using that old hard drive, which is the bottleneck? Yes, it would be nice to purchase a magic chip that you throw into a computer which speeds everything up dramtically, but the reality is no computer (that I know of) works that way. I'd love it if I could install a new CPU and get 20% more bandwidth, but it just ain't gonna happen. The reason your applications do not seem faster is because they are probably already as fast as possible (to detect by any mere mortal, that is).
Initially, yes. The whole market might get hurt. But MS is back on the upswing. The stock is a solid buy from most tipsters. In fact, this page [yahoo.com] shows how out of 28 brokers who are regurarly surveyed by Yahoo, 8 put MS as a buy, 14 as a buy/hold, 4 as a hold, and 0 as a sell.
Either because they own MSFT (buy), or they are planning on buying it (hold). You won't find a broker which says "sell" because their clients (i.e. Joe your nextdoor neighbor) could just happen to like that certain company and want to sink, er, invest $100k into it. Who would turn down that commission..
IMO, Microsoft probably will continue to make money (which translates into stock prices going up). I do see them having issues with selling Windows though. For one thing, they seem to be having a bit of a problem getting release momentum going. They have a huge marketting campaign with WindowsXP, but with Win2k/ME recently released, I don't think it will sell like they hope. They have a huge risk going with.NET and Passport. They are very likely to scare off a portion of their customer base in more than a few different ways. One "scare" factor is security. Another factor is the subscription model they choose. Is MS turning Windows into one big MS Bob? We will soon find out. In the meantime, MS will continue to grow, but at a much slower pace than the Win3.1 and Win95 era. A good number of people still use Win9x and need a reason to upgrade (i.e. Killer App)..NET won't become a killer app until bandwidth increases dramatically, which could take many years.
From watching commercials during World Series game 7, it appears as if XBox will be one of MS' main cash cows for a few years.
There is a huge problem w/ integration of the UI with the system itself. Currently, KDE sits ontop of X which sits ontop of Linux/*BSD/etc. We have a problem here because the desktop is for people new to computers while the underlying Unix system is extremely hard to grasp even to people knowledgable w/ computers (i.e. Windows/DOS). There are two completely different "systems" or "philosophies" which do not integrate well. The desktop philosophy is "show the user how to do something then let them expand their knowledge using keyboard shortcuts, etc." The Unix philosophy is "let the user figure out the system; when they understand the system it will be very powerful."
IMO, nothing is technically stopping Linux from having "The Desktop." Note the word "technically." There is much stopping it philosophically. This is the reason Linux is fragmented into a million different parts which only operate at the level they wish. For example, some people do not believe there should be a desktop on Linux (*gasp* No way!). These people code text-only applications and small "tool" programs which use stdin and stdout. These do not integrate well at all with a desktop metaphor.
The problem Linux has is every programmer wants to implement a "front-end" and call it a desktop or GUI. This does not work. It breaks the desktop metaphor which is _key_ to allowing people new to computers understand them. The seams of the underlying Unix shine through and confuse the hell out of the user. As an example do this: In Mozilla or Netscape go to "File" and then "Print..." You should see something like "Print command" which should have "lpr" in the line. You and I probably know what lpr is, but the end-user would never understand it (and damned if I would ever want to explain to a newbie how to setup a printer in Linux).
I think it may be more feasible to start from scratch rather than having to recode every existing application to work with each other seamlessly. By the time Linux makes it to the desktop (or in other words, has a massive user base), it will hardly matter. The focus as of now is network computing.
public being tricked? If the CPU runs equivalent to "that other processor" then where is the harm? Intel is the one to blame for deceit. Intel makes an inferior product and makes sure the public "understands" that Mhz directly equates to speed.
Mhz is a PR stunt in itself. Who cares if AMD imitates one PR number by their own PR number? The would be lying to the public equally if they used true Mhz but had a superior product. The truth is, people buying processors (other than overclocking weenies) do not care about Mhz. Most simply use it as a gauge for how fast the CPU is. Are they going to feel cheated if they purchase an AMD 1900+ processor that runs only 1.6Ghz, but is _truely_ faster than Intel's 1.9Ghz? No, I think they will feel they have bought a superior product, which they have. If they truely give a damn about some stupid Mhz number then they go to Toms Hardware or similar and find the details.
The overlapping window paradigm makes the user's desktop a mess.
I dunno.. my desktop is fine and dandy.
This creates the need for some centralized window control mechanism that wastes users' time.
And how exactly do we get a 3D desktop without some way to navigate it? 3D will just make the rendering and control more complex than 2D.
Why are we limited to a 2D environment? Games have used 3D heavily in the last several years. Why not bring 3D to the desktop? One way to do this would be to change the "look and feel" of the UI from a 2D window with sub-windows, to a polyhedron, such as a cube.
Probably because 3D video cards are not widespread yet.
Each face of the polyhedron could display a separate application. The user would see all of the apps in perspective. To select a different app, you just click on it. During the task switching process, the user sees the polyhedron move into position.
This is just the 2D desktop with more eye candy and special effects. It doesn't _solve_ any UI problem. Icons, when used properly, solve the problem of having too many windows on the desktop.
Exactly. A desktop is just a desktop today. One is no better than the other. Network computing is where the game is today. I do believe MS won this settlement, because I do not think the settlement applies to any of their.NET vision they have. They will simply reinvent themselves and get off on a hoard of technicalities.
The current shit economy has nothing to do with Microsoft and everything to do with dot-coms. Idiot investors tossed money into worthless "companies" which were really just fronts for robbing investors via IPOs. The shit hit the fan and tons of investors lost their marbles and started to panic.
virtually every other tech company is tanking
Hardly. nVidia's stock jumped from ~23 a share after the Sept. 11 plummet and has risen to ~45-50 a share. They are near the top of their 52-week high.
Let us pretend now that Microsoft had never entered the Internet arena. We have AOL and Netscape basically doing battle. Netscape would ultimately lose because their business model only consists of giving away their flagship product while making money on a portal and a web server. Yahoo would have (and did) kill Netscape (and tons of other's) portals. And we know Netscape couldn't hold their own against Apache, so they can't compete there either. So basically they have no income and are dead in the water. Posterboy for the "New Economy" goes down the drain and starts to raise market hysteria. Investors would soon figure out that they were throwing money into a landfill regardless of Microsoft. Infact, if there was any reason whatsoever to have faith in the "New Economy" it was _because of_ Microsoft. Microsoft stood strong while the dot-coms fell down like dominos.
There is a far greater evil that damaged the economy than Microsoft: greed. The Silly Con Valley gold rush was driven purely by greed. Moronic MBAs rushing to IPO on a non-existant business all while buying pool tables and fucking scooters--using VC money. VC should be VG for Very Greedy. They saw what happened to Netscape's IPO and wanted to get a little action so they invested in every dot-com name under the sun. They got burnt bad, but probably not as bad as Joe Bob home investor who bought $10k worth of dot-com stock _on margin_ from the E-Trade account they recently opened. Tell me now, how does Microsoft do _that_ kind of evil? It's beyond me.
It's not quite as black and white as that, though. Once you start abstracting from the standard C library, or what have you, simple returns mean less as you go higher in abstraction. Sometimes we want to give the user options when an error occurs. This is what makes a user interface a _good_ user interface. How do you retain all that information on exactly what failed and where? Beyond the simple printf(), it becomes tedious at best and damn near impossible at other times.
There's one big point for garbage collection, btw.
Not always. There is a kind of garbage collector known as "conservative." This type of collector actually does _not_ free all memory not in use. The famous Boehm collector for C/C++ uses a conservative method. The tradeoff is you generally get most memory free and extra speed at a cost of having unused memory still allocated from the OS (and the program could potentially use all existing memory).
But, I really think this point is moot. If the program cannot allocate memory, it most likely will quit anyhow. If your program is complex enough to know when it runs out of memory _and_ that it has memory in use it does not need, well it is practically a garbage collector itself and would probably be better off using a higher level language with exceptions and a GC or something.
Better integration with.NET possibly? I read an article yesterday which says something to the effect of Microsoft is their own competition because their old OSes are still selling (and working fine) while they are trying to get new OSes off the shelves.
There is very little incentive, IMO. I don't believe there has been a true incentive to purchase an OS since Win3.1 to Win95. Win98/2k were mostly bug fixes to the product Win95 should have been. Microsoft is making WinXP out to be the generational leap Win3.1 to Win95 was. I don't think it will be the same or their marketting will work the same this time..NET has no "killer app" right now, and XP brings only flashy graphics to the table really.
The next incentive to purchase a new OS will be applications or hardware. Neither has advanced at all (aside from nVidia vs. ATI). The last "killer app" I know of was Napster, which didn't help the computing industry at all. Will 64-bit hardware provide an incentive in the future? Doubt it. I believe the bottlenecks for advancement are internet bandwidth and software development methods. And the dot-bomb era certainly didn't help by flooding the market with nonsense buzzwords that made even the professionals wonder which end is up on the technology scale (many of whom still believe XML is their magic bullet).
Of course MS wants to capture developer attention. They are a business last time I checked.
whould it be better for you if some one took all the information about a Lib out of the header and pasted it into an HTML doc?.
YES!! Better yet, put it in a MANUAL PAGE!! Coherence is key to documentation.
if you know what you need, then why not study up a bit by actualy looking at the code to see what is going on? makes sence to me.
No it does _not_ make sense. If I had to know the innerworkings of every library on Linux, well I would get nowhere. I do not need to know how GNU C library functions work. They have a nice manual page for each function describing what it does. It is _never_ obvious what a function does just by looking at the prototype in the header files. The information in things like man pages is extremely useful. This is why when coding with something like GTK+ you end up spending half your time in header and source files for GTK rather than actually _using_ the library. Fortunately, the GTK+ developers have a very clean layout and naming system.. which is a rare thing in hacker land.
I agree. MS has been smart about being nice to small (and beginning) developers for a long time. From giving away GW-BASIC (then QBASIC) to giving out free SDKs for Windows (packed with _tons_ of information).
I believe this is one thing that Microsoft gets right. The problem I have found with other OSes such as Linux is it is very hard to find useful information about programming the system (for the absolute beginner). When I first started using Linux, man pages were a burden. They still _are_ a burden in most cases, because every library seems to use different documentation styles. Some packages use 'info' some use 'man' while others use HTML or even PostScript. In quite a number of cases, libraries are not even documented. Take GTK+ for example. It is a stable and mature library, yet it still does not have manual pages which blend into the standard C/POSIX man pages. Instead you have to look at every header file to find the interface prototype. Microsoft treats beginning developers very well, IMO (of course I would tell MS to drop BASIC and pick up something like Scheme instead, but that is just my opinion).
The OSS community could make things much more enticing for new developers by giving them a standard that if the software follows it is gauranteed to run on any distrabution without a headache (Quake3 is an excellent example, ID doesn't want to make another version of their software for linux due to tech support issues)
Not quite. Quake 3 on Linux gave id software no revenue. Infact, it was probably a loss for them. The profits in the gaming industry are meager.. and that is for the biggest and best out there. It is very wise to target the key gaming system: Windows. Targetting Linux, BeOS, what have you just does not make good business sense.
Microsoft's success or failure might lie in the hands of Apple. Apple's ability to make a stable, secure, OSS underlying OS that is easy for the average person to use, easy for the average programmer to make inexpensive or free software for, and easy for coorperations to adopt without loosing functionality or money, is a variable that still gives me hope that I won't have to run XP on anything but a test bed.
Apple is very much out of the game at this point. Microsoft probably could care less what Apple does. As long as Apple doesn't create their own version of Java and network computing.
The bottom line is: With Bush as president, MS is pretty much given free reign to be as monopolistic and anti-privacy as they wish. Votes tallied with MS Election.NET next term?
I don't recall Bush having a say one way or another if a business can operate in America.
Re:Did Microsoft set any standards?
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Microsoft's Future
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· Score: 2, Informative
They produced the _model_ of selling software. Like it or not, without Microsoft a great many software developers would have been jobless. There would likely be no PC games, no Photoshop, Autocad, etc.
You see, if Microsoft had not "forced" their computing model (OS, file names, etc.) on consumers, there would likely be no mainstream computing architechture today. I'm not saying MS was the sole cause of it (a great many people helped), but without them I doubt many people today would know how to use a computer at all. Sure, we would have Apple. I don't believe Apple would have lead to the hardware explosion and cheap PCs we have today, though. We would most likely be just now reaching 386 or possibly 486 hardware speed and features.
Let me explain why Microsoft has created an important standard. Software developers need a common architecture to develop and deploy. It costs way too much to port an application to many systems and the payoff is very little. One example is Quake 3. id software has stated that Linux produced no profit for them. They did it because they like Linux, basically. That's good and fine, but you can't expect companies which do not have that kind of extra cash flow to go around porting to your OS of the month.
If Microsoft was not in the right place at the right time, the market would probably be heavily fragmented. What we would have would be IBM with many operating systems and Apple with a tightly locked architecture. Commercial software would not be a viable business. Programmers would be stuck doing database grunt work with no other options.
I believe the software industry of 1980s-90s _needed_ a OS standard (monopoly) for stability and growth. But, now I believe Sun and Java have Microsoft scared shitless. With cheap bandwidth becoming readily available, Microsoft's software standard is capable of being thrown out the window. On top of Java, things like OpenGL are making programs more portable. Once hardware development slows down (which it has) and open software interfaces to hardware (i.e. OpenGL) are available, Microsoft's standard will be useless.
So, yes Microsoft has created a huge software standard. It is a very broad standard, but it is definately part of Microsoft's doing.
Isn't this _always_ the case though? I remember trying out Doom on a 386 or so. Forget this! Then I used a Pentium 75. A world of difference. I thought "how could software ever need more than this?" Then Quake came out. I could only play at 320x200 with my slow P75 and ATI Mach64 card. Once I got a K6-300 Quake ran awesome (even if a tad outdated). I missed the boat on Q2, but once I got Quake3 it happened again. I had purchased an nVidia TNT card which was too slow for Q3. Now I have a GeForce GTS 2 which is great (plus a AMD Athlon 650). All I can say is w/ Quake4, Doom3 and Return to Castle Wolfenstein coming out.. be prepared (not to mention whatever Valve software or Epic Games comes out with).
Where C and C++ tend to optimize for machine speed, Common Lisp tends to optimize for development speed. Where Java sits, I'm not so sure (as I don't use it). I would guess closer to C++ than CL. Common Lisp seems like a good choice to handle your need for "constant evolution."
Um, maybe we're doing that because 5,000 people in our biggest city, who as you've said had little or no say over events in the Middle East, were murdered for living in the USA.
Statistically speaking, 5k is nothing. You are looking at this from the point-of-view of "oh my gosh! 5000 people died at once!" If all people who died in car crashes last year died at the same time it would be horrific (that is, if they showed footage on TV).
Thus we reacted as a nation, and why the hell not?
Yes, "we" did act. "We" killed innocent muslim Americans (and even other faiths) for looking like the terrorists. "We" strapped the nylon flag recently purchased from Wal-Mart on the 12th to our shiny SUVs and showed them terrorists that we can be free and do what we want! (as long as other people still have their flag on their SUV, of course) "We" also fled America for fear of being falsely targeted as "the enemy."
Deaths from cigarettes are a cost of people living their lives freely, as are deaths from vehicle accidents. Sept. 11 was an act of war. Big difference.
Tell that to the people who started smoking before it was widely known that cigarette smoking was harmful--and while cigarette companies _knew_ that it was hazardous and addictive, yet did not warn the public. If the government did not step in, then there would likely be many more deaths than currently. The only "big difference" I see is that cigarette deaths and automobile deaths will continue, while terrorism will be stopped within the next year or two.
Maybe it's because over 20 times as many people were killed at WTC? And before we found out how many people had escaped, we knew it could have been far worse than that.
I think you proved my point. A death is still a death, whether it was at the Pentagon, WTC, Pennsylvania or innocent muslims who were killed because they look different. The only reason to pay more attention to WTC was because it was more exciting. The numbers were so large that you just had to keep watching the "action" at "Ground Zero."
Also, the USA was clearly under attack, and the Pentagon is a military target; not that shocking that it would get hit in wartime.
I was very shocked the Pentagon was hit. The WTC towers, on the other hand, I felt _would_ be hit by an aircraft at some point in time (having actually been to the towers in person and seeing just out enormous they are.. and considering a US Air Force bomber plane flew into the Empire State building in 1930s-40s sometime).
Besides plenty of us listened to this on local radio stations. I didn't even see any of this until I got home from work that day, 10 hours afterwards. I'd already formed my thoughts by then. I didn't get talked into them by President Bush, TV pundits, or anyone other than friends, family, and co-workers.
Well, that's all fine and good, but where did your friends get their news and opinions? Radio can be even more opinionated and biased than TV.
The net has one large advantage. You can find many different viewpoints, all of which may range from idiotic to completely kooky, but here at least you _know_ you are dealing with unreliable newssources and you can sift through them with that in mind.
Exactly. On TV you mostly get the exact same story, but on different stations. For example, we all know Slashdot is biased to Linux, Open Source, etc. so we can all go to Kuro5hin, Advogato, or what have you to get a different (and usually more informed) perspective.
TV is good because it offers yet another needed perspective, but you really have to be careful I believe. A viewer has to keep in mind that TV news is dramatized to keep ratings high. While internet news is dramatized also (Slashdot is, IMO, very bad at this), there are many more sites (channels) to choose from.
As for actually believing the perspectives you see on the internet (i.e. Usenet, this message board, etc.), well, uhm... I'm still trying to figure that one out myself. I guess it boils down to which religion (point of view) has the most subscribers in the end.
Another point I'd like to add: TV is an _entertainment_ medium. Sad as it is, I don't believe people were watching planes fly into the WTC towers because they needed to know that information. It was exciting; it was something _new_. If you asked a random group of people in America before Sept. 11th if they knew where Afghanistan was (or if they even knew it was a country) or if they knew Osama bin Laden, most likely over half would not have a clue who or what either was. Even if they lived in NYC during 1993. Some who worked in the WTC in '93 probably didn't know about either after the bombing. The point is: people don't _need_ to know about worldly events. For the most part, average people cannot control events or have any say in world issues. That same gut wrenching feeling people have after they saw Sept. 11th events is similar to the gut wrenching feeling I guess Friends' fans would have after they found out the show is ending. Just knowing people have died is no reason to get emotional and go flag waving. Americans are doing that because of the TV soap opera called "news." You won't find people rallying together to stop cigarette companies or automakers, even if the statistics are significantly higher than death from terrorism. Something about jetliners flying into enormous buildings going 100's of mph makes people more emotional than seeing someone puffing a cig. *Yawn* You mean I gotta wait 15 more years for this guy to die?
A clear example of this _is_ Sept. 11th. When everyone saw the WTC towers hit by the jets and then saw the Pentagon hit by a jet. Pentagon? *Yawn* Just a few hundred died. Lets switch back to watching the WTC action. When the 4th plane went into the ground at, um, where was that again? I don't know. Haven't heard anything else about it on the news.. (And don't tell me you didn't sense just a _little_ more importance in the WTC than the Pentagon attack.. I know I sure got the feeling that the Pentagon was "ho-hum" after watching NBC/CNN news).
Anyway, I'm sure this video card is really great but I have to admit calling it "Titanium" lowers my level of interest in buying it
That is what everyone said once they got word of the title "GeForce." We then witnessed the collapse of 3dfx. Now it is "GeForce Titanium." Watch out ATI..
Actually the opposite will happen. You hire Mr. Degree who sits at his computer all day downloading mp3s and screwing around in IE. Mr. Degree thinks hes "The Shit" because he has a degree and you don't. Neener Neener. Any problem presented to him will get shot down by an academic diversion ("how tall is the tree?" "It all depends on the species, the age, and the region it lives. The research will take days. Maybe months").
A University degree proves nothing. Both people can have poor work ethic or can have the best work ethic imaginable. Hiring based on degree is just another way to discriminate against people who _are_ qualified for the job and _will_ do good work. It does nothing to prevent those with rich parents who paid for their Harvard education to come to you for a "slack off" job. "Woah. He went to Harvard! He _must_ be smart!"
And to think, all this time I've been led to believe that a University was there to _teach_ and educate. Now I understand it to be a place to "weed out" those who cannot afford it or those who would rather not jump through arbitrary hoops to gain a piece of paper.
I can roll over just like a dog too, but that doesn't mean I'm going to. Even for the prestige of Harvard or Yale.
Oh lord. I would _hate_ to see you mess with jumpers and switches back in the 8086 days. If you can't figure out how to install a heatsink you have no business inside a PC case. You will most likely break the RAM chips trying to install them backwards and connect all cables wrong. That doesn't even mention the mess you would end up with in the BIOS settings. The K7 heatsink is _simple_ to install. Infact, that was the easiest thing to install. My case itself is harder to put back together.
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You are confusing freedoms (or rights) with privileges. Those "freedoms" you claim are being taken away are mostly speculation. I don't see what's so bad about paying a "MS tax" on online media when you already pay a "Time Warner" tax on cable. I really hope you understand that VCs work in their own interests, and not yours. Sure, it probably is hard to compete directly against Microsoft. Does that mean impossible? I'd say no. VCs have no interest in funding you because it is (a) too risky (for them, not always you) or (b) there is honestly no market for your product and VCs see that. If you are seeking funding for more of the same (i.e. a competing product, or in other words the market is already crowded) then VCs tend to not want to fund them from what I understand. I'd look for funding elsewhere. Who said you need $10 million to do what you want? Maybe you don't know what you really want. If you want it bad enough there is usually a way.
I think the problem with Microsoft is they are too good at what they do. Do they step on competitors? Sure, but which companies don't? They are good at their marketing, they are good at their business, and a good many people would even say they are great at their products. The best punishment for a company like MS would be extreme competition which traps them into a corner where they have to play follow the leader for once. A game most of the computer industry has learned all too well.
For one thing, Emacs uses elisp. Elisp is not the same as Common Lisp (or Scheme). Common Lisp has "write-line" and Scheme has "display". As for Emacs, well I don't think there is such a thing because it is integrated with a text editor (and has no terminal, or standard output).
I suggest getting CMU Common Lisp (CMUCL) or CLISP. Check out www.lisp.org.
Not exactly. I'm sure you know clock speed is meaningless for determining how fast a CPU really is. Now higher model numbers should mean huge advancements, and they do many times. One reason all applications are not sped up is because the bottleneck is in different places for different applications. If you tried to play those same games that sped up on a newer CPU, but with an older graphics card, well it would be exactly the same. The word processor would then seem faster than games. Another thing, many games take advantage of special CPU instructions which many applications do not need.
Anyone who has ever upgraded or put together their own PC should know that performance depends on all parts, not just the CPU or memory. Maybe your applications don't speed up because you are still using that old hard drive, which is the bottleneck? Yes, it would be nice to purchase a magic chip that you throw into a computer which speeds everything up dramtically, but the reality is no computer (that I know of) works that way. I'd love it if I could install a new CPU and get 20% more bandwidth, but it just ain't gonna happen. The reason your applications do not seem faster is because they are probably already as fast as possible (to detect by any mere mortal, that is).
IMO, Microsoft probably will continue to make money (which translates into stock prices going up). I do see them having issues with selling Windows though. For one thing, they seem to be having a bit of a problem getting release momentum going. They have a huge marketting campaign with WindowsXP, but with Win2k/ME recently released, I don't think it will sell like they hope. They have a huge risk going with
From watching commercials during World Series game 7, it appears as if XBox will be one of MS' main cash cows for a few years.
There is a huge problem w/ integration of the UI with the system itself. Currently, KDE sits ontop of X which sits ontop of Linux/*BSD/etc. We have a problem here because the desktop is for people new to computers while the underlying Unix system is extremely hard to grasp even to people knowledgable w/ computers (i.e. Windows/DOS). There are two completely different "systems" or "philosophies" which do not integrate well. The desktop philosophy is "show the user how to do something then let them expand their knowledge using keyboard shortcuts, etc." The Unix philosophy is "let the user figure out the system; when they understand the system it will be very powerful."
IMO, nothing is technically stopping Linux from having "The Desktop." Note the word "technically." There is much stopping it philosophically. This is the reason Linux is fragmented into a million different parts which only operate at the level they wish. For example, some people do not believe there should be a desktop on Linux (*gasp* No way!). These people code text-only applications and small "tool" programs which use stdin and stdout. These do not integrate well at all with a desktop metaphor.
The problem Linux has is every programmer wants to implement a "front-end" and call it a desktop or GUI. This does not work. It breaks the desktop metaphor which is _key_ to allowing people new to computers understand them. The seams of the underlying Unix shine through and confuse the hell out of the user. As an example do this: In Mozilla or Netscape go to "File" and then "Print..." You should see something like "Print command" which should have "lpr" in the line. You and I probably know what lpr is, but the end-user would never understand it (and damned if I would ever want to explain to a newbie how to setup a printer in Linux).
I think it may be more feasible to start from scratch rather than having to recode every existing application to work with each other seamlessly. By the time Linux makes it to the desktop (or in other words, has a massive user base), it will hardly matter. The focus as of now is network computing.
public being tricked? If the CPU runs equivalent to "that other processor" then where is the harm? Intel is the one to blame for deceit. Intel makes an inferior product and makes sure the public "understands" that Mhz directly equates to speed.
Mhz is a PR stunt in itself. Who cares if AMD imitates one PR number by their own PR number? The would be lying to the public equally if they used true Mhz but had a superior product. The truth is, people buying processors (other than overclocking weenies) do not care about Mhz. Most simply use it as a gauge for how fast the CPU is. Are they going to feel cheated if they purchase an AMD 1900+ processor that runs only 1.6Ghz, but is _truely_ faster than Intel's 1.9Ghz? No, I think they will feel they have bought a superior product, which they have. If they truely give a damn about some stupid Mhz number then they go to Toms Hardware or similar and find the details.
And how exactly do we get a 3D desktop without some way to navigate it? 3D will just make the rendering and control more complex than 2D. Probably because 3D video cards are not widespread yet.
This is just the 2D desktop with more eye candy and special effects. It doesn't _solve_ any UI problem. Icons, when used properly, solve the problem of having too many windows on the desktop.
Exactly. A desktop is just a desktop today. One is no better than the other. Network computing is where the game is today. I do believe MS won this settlement, because I do not think the settlement applies to any of their .NET vision they have. They will simply reinvent themselves and get off on a hoard of technicalities.
Let us pretend now that Microsoft had never entered the Internet arena. We have AOL and Netscape basically doing battle. Netscape would ultimately lose because their business model only consists of giving away their flagship product while making money on a portal and a web server. Yahoo would have (and did) kill Netscape (and tons of other's) portals. And we know Netscape couldn't hold their own against Apache, so they can't compete there either. So basically they have no income and are dead in the water. Posterboy for the "New Economy" goes down the drain and starts to raise market hysteria. Investors would soon figure out that they were throwing money into a landfill regardless of Microsoft. Infact, if there was any reason whatsoever to have faith in the "New Economy" it was _because of_ Microsoft. Microsoft stood strong while the dot-coms fell down like dominos.
There is a far greater evil that damaged the economy than Microsoft: greed. The Silly Con Valley gold rush was driven purely by greed. Moronic MBAs rushing to IPO on a non-existant business all while buying pool tables and fucking scooters--using VC money. VC should be VG for Very Greedy. They saw what happened to Netscape's IPO and wanted to get a little action so they invested in every dot-com name under the sun. They got burnt bad, but probably not as bad as Joe Bob home investor who bought $10k worth of dot-com stock _on margin_ from the E-Trade account they recently opened. Tell me now, how does Microsoft do _that_ kind of evil? It's beyond me.
I always thought something seemed a bit evil about NSync...
It's not quite as black and white as that, though. Once you start abstracting from the standard C library, or what have you, simple returns mean less as you go higher in abstraction. Sometimes we want to give the user options when an error occurs. This is what makes a user interface a _good_ user interface. How do you retain all that information on exactly what failed and where? Beyond the simple printf(), it becomes tedious at best and damn near impossible at other times.
Better integration with .NET possibly? I read an article yesterday which says something to the effect of Microsoft is their own competition because their old OSes are still selling (and working fine) while they are trying to get new OSes off the shelves.
.NET has no "killer app" right now, and XP brings only flashy graphics to the table really.
There is very little incentive, IMO. I don't believe there has been a true incentive to purchase an OS since Win3.1 to Win95. Win98/2k were mostly bug fixes to the product Win95 should have been. Microsoft is making WinXP out to be the generational leap Win3.1 to Win95 was. I don't think it will be the same or their marketting will work the same this time.
The next incentive to purchase a new OS will be applications or hardware. Neither has advanced at all (aside from nVidia vs. ATI). The last "killer app" I know of was Napster, which didn't help the computing industry at all. Will 64-bit hardware provide an incentive in the future? Doubt it. I believe the bottlenecks for advancement are internet bandwidth and software development methods. And the dot-bomb era certainly didn't help by flooding the market with nonsense buzzwords that made even the professionals wonder which end is up on the technology scale (many of whom still believe XML is their magic bullet).
I agree. MS has been smart about being nice to small (and beginning) developers for a long time. From giving away GW-BASIC (then QBASIC) to giving out free SDKs for Windows (packed with _tons_ of information).
I believe this is one thing that Microsoft gets right. The problem I have found with other OSes such as Linux is it is very hard to find useful information about programming the system (for the absolute beginner). When I first started using Linux, man pages were a burden. They still _are_ a burden in most cases, because every library seems to use different documentation styles. Some packages use 'info' some use 'man' while others use HTML or even PostScript. In quite a number of cases, libraries are not even documented. Take GTK+ for example. It is a stable and mature library, yet it still does not have manual pages which blend into the standard C/POSIX man pages. Instead you have to look at every header file to find the interface prototype. Microsoft treats beginning developers very well, IMO (of course I would tell MS to drop BASIC and pick up something like Scheme instead, but that is just my opinion).
Not quite. Quake 3 on Linux gave id software no revenue. Infact, it was probably a loss for them. The profits in the gaming industry are meager.. and that is for the biggest and best out there. It is very wise to target the key gaming system: Windows. Targetting Linux, BeOS, what have you just does not make good business sense. Apple is very much out of the game at this point. Microsoft probably could care less what Apple does. As long as Apple doesn't create their own version of Java and network computing. I don't recall Bush having a say one way or another if a business can operate in America.
They produced the _model_ of selling software. Like it or not, without Microsoft a great many software developers would have been jobless. There would likely be no PC games, no Photoshop, Autocad, etc.
You see, if Microsoft had not "forced" their computing model (OS, file names, etc.) on consumers, there would likely be no mainstream computing architechture today. I'm not saying MS was the sole cause of it (a great many people helped), but without them I doubt many people today would know how to use a computer at all. Sure, we would have Apple. I don't believe Apple would have lead to the hardware explosion and cheap PCs we have today, though. We would most likely be just now reaching 386 or possibly 486 hardware speed and features.
Let me explain why Microsoft has created an important standard. Software developers need a common architecture to develop and deploy. It costs way too much to port an application to many systems and the payoff is very little. One example is Quake 3. id software has stated that Linux produced no profit for them. They did it because they like Linux, basically. That's good and fine, but you can't expect companies which do not have that kind of extra cash flow to go around porting to your OS of the month.
If Microsoft was not in the right place at the right time, the market would probably be heavily fragmented. What we would have would be IBM with many operating systems and Apple with a tightly locked architecture. Commercial software would not be a viable business. Programmers would be stuck doing database grunt work with no other options.
I believe the software industry of 1980s-90s _needed_ a OS standard (monopoly) for stability and growth. But, now I believe Sun and Java have Microsoft scared shitless. With cheap bandwidth becoming readily available, Microsoft's software standard is capable of being thrown out the window. On top of Java, things like OpenGL are making programs more portable. Once hardware development slows down (which it has) and open software interfaces to hardware (i.e. OpenGL) are available, Microsoft's standard will be useless.
So, yes Microsoft has created a huge software standard. It is a very broad standard, but it is definately part of Microsoft's doing.
Isn't this _always_ the case though? I remember trying out Doom on a 386 or so. Forget this! Then I used a Pentium 75. A world of difference. I thought "how could software ever need more than this?" Then Quake came out. I could only play at 320x200 with my slow P75 and ATI Mach64 card. Once I got a K6-300 Quake ran awesome (even if a tad outdated). I missed the boat on Q2, but once I got Quake3 it happened again. I had purchased an nVidia TNT card which was too slow for Q3. Now I have a GeForce GTS 2 which is great (plus a AMD Athlon 650). All I can say is w/ Quake4, Doom3 and Return to Castle Wolfenstein coming out.. be prepared (not to mention whatever Valve software or Epic Games comes out with).
Where C and C++ tend to optimize for machine speed, Common Lisp tends to optimize for development speed. Where Java sits, I'm not so sure (as I don't use it). I would guess closer to C++ than CL. Common Lisp seems like a good choice to handle your need for "constant evolution."
Yes, "we" did act. "We" killed innocent muslim Americans (and even other faiths) for looking like the terrorists. "We" strapped the nylon flag recently purchased from Wal-Mart on the 12th to our shiny SUVs and showed them terrorists that we can be free and do what we want! (as long as other people still have their flag on their SUV, of course) "We" also fled America for fear of being falsely targeted as "the enemy." Tell that to the people who started smoking before it was widely known that cigarette smoking was harmful--and while cigarette companies _knew_ that it was hazardous and addictive, yet did not warn the public. If the government did not step in, then there would likely be many more deaths than currently. The only "big difference" I see is that cigarette deaths and automobile deaths will continue, while terrorism will be stopped within the next year or two.
I think you proved my point. A death is still a death, whether it was at the Pentagon, WTC, Pennsylvania or innocent muslims who were killed because they look different. The only reason to pay more attention to WTC was because it was more exciting. The numbers were so large that you just had to keep watching the "action" at "Ground Zero."
I was very shocked the Pentagon was hit. The WTC towers, on the other hand, I felt _would_ be hit by an aircraft at some point in time (having actually been to the towers in person and seeing just out enormous they are.. and considering a US Air Force bomber plane flew into the Empire State building in 1930s-40s sometime).
Well, that's all fine and good, but where did your friends get their news and opinions? Radio can be even more opinionated and biased than TV.
TV is good because it offers yet another needed perspective, but you really have to be careful I believe. A viewer has to keep in mind that TV news is dramatized to keep ratings high. While internet news is dramatized also (Slashdot is, IMO, very bad at this), there are many more sites (channels) to choose from.
As for actually believing the perspectives you see on the internet (i.e. Usenet, this message board, etc.), well, uhm
Another point I'd like to add: TV is an _entertainment_ medium. Sad as it is, I don't believe people were watching planes fly into the WTC towers because they needed to know that information. It was exciting; it was something _new_. If you asked a random group of people in America before Sept. 11th if they knew where Afghanistan was (or if they even knew it was a country) or if they knew Osama bin Laden, most likely over half would not have a clue who or what either was. Even if they lived in NYC during 1993. Some who worked in the WTC in '93 probably didn't know about either after the bombing. The point is: people don't _need_ to know about worldly events. For the most part, average people cannot control events or have any say in world issues. That same gut wrenching feeling people have after they saw Sept. 11th events is similar to the gut wrenching feeling I guess Friends' fans would have after they found out the show is ending. Just knowing people have died is no reason to get emotional and go flag waving. Americans are doing that because of the TV soap opera called "news." You won't find people rallying together to stop cigarette companies or automakers, even if the statistics are significantly higher than death from terrorism. Something about jetliners flying into enormous buildings going 100's of mph makes people more emotional than seeing someone puffing a cig. *Yawn* You mean I gotta wait 15 more years for this guy to die?
A clear example of this _is_ Sept. 11th. When everyone saw the WTC towers hit by the jets and then saw the Pentagon hit by a jet. Pentagon? *Yawn* Just a few hundred died. Lets switch back to watching the WTC action. When the 4th plane went into the ground at, um, where was that again? I don't know. Haven't heard anything else about it on the news.. (And don't tell me you didn't sense just a _little_ more importance in the WTC than the Pentagon attack.. I know I sure got the feeling that the Pentagon was "ho-hum" after watching NBC/CNN news).
Actually the opposite will happen. You hire Mr. Degree who sits at his computer all day downloading mp3s and screwing around in IE. Mr. Degree thinks hes "The Shit" because he has a degree and you don't. Neener Neener. Any problem presented to him will get shot down by an academic diversion ("how tall is the tree?" "It all depends on the species, the age, and the region it lives. The research will take days. Maybe months").
A University degree proves nothing. Both people can have poor work ethic or can have the best work ethic imaginable. Hiring based on degree is just another way to discriminate against people who _are_ qualified for the job and _will_ do good work. It does nothing to prevent those with rich parents who paid for their Harvard education to come to you for a "slack off" job. "Woah. He went to Harvard! He _must_ be smart!"
And to think, all this time I've been led to believe that a University was there to _teach_ and educate. Now I understand it to be a place to "weed out" those who cannot afford it or those who would rather not jump through arbitrary hoops to gain a piece of paper.
I can roll over just like a dog too, but that doesn't mean I'm going to. Even for the prestige of Harvard or Yale.
Oh lord. I would _hate_ to see you mess with jumpers and switches back in the 8086 days. If you can't figure out how to install a heatsink you have no business inside a PC case. You will most likely break the RAM chips trying to install them backwards and connect all cables wrong. That doesn't even mention the mess you would end up with in the BIOS settings. The K7 heatsink is _simple_ to install. Infact, that was the easiest thing to install. My case itself is harder to put back together.
IIRC, he actually sued because they did _not_ do anything about him flying into the airport. Talk about an egotistical asshole.