Maybe he should install Linux instead. I'm sure the Audio drivers and WiFi drivers will work perfectly out of the box. So because they don't, Linux blows! That's some faulty logic if I ever heard it.
What becomes viable? Almost any manufactured product the Indian middle class want can be made in India less expensively than the US can make it. If the Indians can't do it, the Chinese will do it for them.
How about x86 cpus, cell phones, optical equipment (for baliwood), chemical products and consulting. Indians buy all of those things and don't manufacture them domestically.
I can't believe you guys. The lashing start.com has gotten makes slashdotters look like a bunch of immature kiddies. Please! Start.com is an expirimental site mostly made by two people (now 3). If you want to watch a video with the creators, you can go here.
Instead of thoughtful analysis, we get this thought process:
OOOH, another Microsoft product to bash!
Go to site
Look furously for any mistakes or problems no matter how small.
Post on slashdot: MICROSOFT SUCKS!!! LINUX RULEZ! We are l33t hax0rs!!!
How about a unified screen and printing graphics subsystem. In both OSX and WinXP you get the same drawing toolkit for printing and drawing on the screen. Why invent the wheel twice?!
I'm not a Unix programmer, but the lack of such a think seemed to me as a HUGE programming shortfall.
Read the blog. This guy is one prolific programmer. He's the guy who ensures that all the old windows apps (like the ones from 10 years ago) keep running on the latest versions of windows. He has all sorts of stories about windows bugs and idiosyncracies and explains how they all came to be. It's a fascinating read and I have an RSS subscrption to his blog.
Read this article which is all about his quest for windows and developer backwards compatiblity.
He give this story about Sim City: It deallocated memory, and then used it right after deallocation. It was a bug that windows 95 allowed. So his code make a special check that you were running sim city and if you were, you could use memory right after you deallocated it. It's pretty amazing to see all the hoops that he and his team jump through. But he's a MSFT ledgend.
PS. That blog entry I linked to sent Shockwaves through Microsoft. It's changed the new XML api design, and resulted in the backporting of Avalon to Windows XP.
One huge advantage.NET has over java is it's pretty P/Invoke mechanism. With this, i can execute code from an arbitrary dll. This is exceptionally useful especially for developing Win32 applications as I can call into user32.dll or gdi32.dll (for example) whenver i need to, and it only takes two lines of code:
To do such a thing in Java would require quite a bit more work. And, to be honest, Swing with a Win32 plaf is significantly slower and SWT still doesn't exactly look like a Win32 app (not to mention that I wouldn't even know how to get Office 2003 style menus with SWT)..NET does have its uses. If you have quite a bit of legacy code, or you want to do Win32 cheaply and easily,.NET is a fantastic toolset.
The MONO team implimented P/Invoke as well (it's how the GTK# libraries work, if I'm not mistaken). This allows you to leverage all sorts of native platform code simply and easily without the sources.
Have you read anything from Reuters lateley? I would say they're the worst when it comes to editorializing in their so-called news stories. IIRC Reuters is a British news outlet.
But in the US, political (which includes hate) speech deserves the highest protections. I have yet to see the FBI crack down on newspapers across the country. The problem is... that once you start banning hate speech, who decides what's hate speech and what's not. Demonstrations against Jews? Pro-Choice propaganda? Maybe? What about burning efigees of the US President or the American Flag? It's too easy for fucked up law enforcers to create their own vigilante justice.
I think you misunderstood. This guy is saying he wants to be the standard software. For a console, that means the OS. They make the OS, and other companies make the hardware. There is no Linux, no BeOS or Standard Windows Installation. It's just so they don't have to be in the business of manufacturing consoles.
But MSFT is a _SOFTWARE_ company. They'd rather be making only the software... thus, the standard API, the sandard console OS.
The relavance of the UN to the US is (and should be) related to the general philosophy of the body.
I think a large part of the problem is the current structure of the UN. First, you have a "has-been" country like France with more authority than India, and you have inane votes that allow Libia to chair the Human Rights Comission.
There were also several resolutions threatening "serious consequences" for Iraq if Sadaam didn't comply. Do you think it's odd that people would be dissatisfied with a body who's threats were all empty?
Re:Liberalism != (Communism || Socialism)
on
Working Hard?
·
· Score: 1
While I agree with your statements about liberalism in principle, I don't think that they are true about todays "liberals."
By your defintition, the modern Republicans are the ones advocating radical changes. Think about it: The GOP wants to tear away Affirmative Action, attack Iraq, create new government institution (dept of homeland security) and decrease taxes. The democrats, on the other hand, want Affirmative Action to stay put, stay out of Iraq, not have new government instituions and leave taxes as they are (except in California). It is the Republicans pushing for social change.
Of course, this is merely a comment about liberalism in general regardless of your political affiliation.
Re:By design?
on
Hijacking .NET
·
· Score: 2, Informative
In fact, Microsoft ships a lite obfuscator with VS.NET 2003. I don't think most other IDEs do. You can buy better ones too if you really want to protect your source code.
I have an Inspiron 4100 (1400x1050) and I can definitly say there is absolutley nothing good about the machine.
I hate it with the deepest passion. It's flimsy and plastic parts are always falling off of it, the driver are crappy: the Mouse always goes haywire flying across the screen... OR it loses it and you have to pound the touchpad to get it to recognize that you are using the mouse, and support has not responded to my TWO tickets about the item. I'll buy a Thinkpad instead next time, thank you very much.
Some of us believe that the function of the U.S. military should be to defend the citizens of the U.S., not to run around the world "installing" democracies. We should lead by example, not by force.
I suppose "those of us" that you mention would have said that the second world war was a European squabble. Hitler wasn't directly threatening any Americans, and... he was just exterminating jews within his own borders. I supposed they would also be opposed to the United States military intervening anywhere a people are threatened by a tyrranical dictator.
People are going to die anyway. The question is, will it be Iraqi civilians at the hands of Saddam, or Iraqi troops at the hand of American ones. To simply say "WAR EVIL!" doesn't really save lives. In the long run, it will probably cost them.
Well... you still get that stupid-ass Real "inbox" that pops up in your system tray (for Windows users). My BEST solution, is just to not install Real player at all. I think we should push back on orgs that stream only Real Player content. Real is such an evil company. One install and the program thinks it has a right to your desktop! argh!!!
Re:Corporatizing the Death of Democracy
on
Free Speech And WebLogs
·
· Score: 2, Informative
"Your freedom of speech exists only on paper, and we're going to make sure it isn't worth even the paper it is written on."
Ok. I think people often misunderstand what this means. Freedom of speech implies a freedom to have your opinions and let them be known. It however, does not guarantee you a freedom from consequences, because we must live with the consequences of what we and others say. If you call your best friend a "lying, cheating bitch" you must then live with the consequence that he may no longer be your friend. Similarly, there are consequences for others based on what you say. To allow total license to make completley unsubstantiated claims that damage another's credibility or reputation with no consequences, however, seems not to be guaranteed by the constitution.
I have actually read a lot of advanced microeconomics:
First, monopolies exist in free markets. A free market is one where buyers and sellers determine output and demand. A monopoly reduces its output to maximize profit, but make no mistake, the market is still free.
Second, what i think you actually meant is that competive markets are a good thing. Of course, the classic (basic) microeconomics that you refer to has a set of assumptions, prime among them that the market has no externalities. This is actually not the case with the market for operating systems (or browsers for that matter). The externality is introduced by the fact that both provide a development platform, and companies must then produce software for multiple platforms, which increases cost. So while a competitive market might be ultimately good for consumers in the market for OS's, it would induce higher costs in other software industries. This concern, could be mitigated by a forced API standard, but then new OS comapnies would be prevented from adding new features into their operating system (Imagine a uniform Windows/Linux/MacOS API; that doesn't seem like the best option either).
As you learn in economics, basic economics paints a picture, but it seldom paints the entire picture. Microsoft's monopoly might ultimately be bad for consumers, but the proof of that is far beyond basic micro.
... in having a free press? I guess a free press only includes the things that the popular government considers amenable to their beliefs. But wait, then isn't China's press free then? riiiiiiiiiight...
But those rankings were done in France. I smell a rat!
This seems like an absolute load of crap of American-envy. I've spent a considerable ammount of time in Germany, and the press is much more restricted. For example, the Germans (who are ranked 7th), do not allow news establishments to disciminate pro-nazi information. While, I certainly oppose any nazi-ism, the right to voice your opinion (no matter how idiotic it may be) is guaranteed by the constitution. Absolute shite!
First, Microsoft has made it very easy and obvious to turn DRM on and off. With WMP8 it wasn't so easy to figure out, but WMP9 (Beta) has made this a question asked on install.
Second, Microsoft CAN'T change the file format very easily. They added two new formats (Variable Bit Rate and Losless), but there wouldn't be much point in locking people out, because then they'd lock out all the devices already designed for WMA.
Moreover, given the choice between WMA and MP3, i would choose WMA because the audio quality is clearly superior.
One of the things that creating their own platform (eg DX vs OpenGL) is that this allows Microsoft to "certify" drivers. While this could also be viewed as a bad (read monopolisic) thing, the cert process forces vendors to properly implement an api. There is no corresponding cert body for OpenGL, and, in theory, companies could ship incomplete or buggy implementations. Also, having tight control of a standard allows them to add new features at will. I could be mistaken, but I think that new features are added to the DX api faster than to the OpenGL api.
Yeah, I think C# is MS's way to convert everyone to VB.NET.
Actually, you are incorrect. I am a former VB developer who has switeched to C#. In fact, the largest number of C# adoptees has come from VB developers if i read correctly.
The thing that draws me to C# over VB.NET is that C# gives you as much power as you need, and you never think (gollie, I wish I could do this, but I can't), and has much more terse syntax.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe he should install Linux instead. I'm sure the Audio drivers and WiFi drivers will work perfectly out of the box. So because they don't, Linux blows! That's some faulty logic if I ever heard it.
Nothing to see here, move along.
What becomes viable? Almost any manufactured product the Indian middle class want can be made in India less expensively than the US can make it. If the Indians can't do it, the Chinese will do it for them.
How about x86 cpus, cell phones, optical equipment (for baliwood), chemical products and consulting. Indians buy all of those things and don't manufacture them domestically.
Instead of thoughtful analysis, we get this thought process:
Come on guys. We can do better.
California has special protections for journalistic sources. I suspect those override the trade secret laws.
How about a unified screen and printing graphics subsystem. In both OSX and WinXP you get the same drawing toolkit for printing and drawing on the screen. Why invent the wheel twice?!
I'm not a Unix programmer, but the lack of such a think seemed to me as a HUGE programming shortfall.
Old Europe at that. The Eastern Block disagrees.
Maybe there's a connection between that and their ridiculously high unemployment rate.
Read the blog. This guy is one prolific programmer. He's the guy who ensures that all the old windows apps (like the ones from 10 years ago) keep running on the latest versions of windows. He has all sorts of stories about windows bugs and idiosyncracies and explains how they all came to be. It's a fascinating read and I have an RSS subscrption to his blog.
Read this article which is all about his quest for windows and developer backwards compatiblity.
He give this story about Sim City: It deallocated memory, and then used it right after deallocation. It was a bug that windows 95 allowed. So his code make a special check that you were running sim city and if you were, you could use memory right after you deallocated it. It's pretty amazing to see all the hoops that he and his team jump through. But he's a MSFT ledgend.
PS. That blog entry I linked to sent Shockwaves through Microsoft. It's changed the new XML api design, and resulted in the backporting of Avalon to Windows XP.
One huge advantage .NET has over java is it's pretty P/Invoke mechanism. With this, i can execute code from an arbitrary dll. This is exceptionally useful especially for developing Win32 applications as I can call into user32.dll or gdi32.dll (for example) whenver i need to, and it only takes two lines of code:
.NET does have its uses. If you have quite a bit of legacy code, or you want to do Win32 cheaply and easily, .NET is a fantastic toolset.
.NET developer.
[DllImport("User32.dll", CharSet=CharSet.Auto)]
public static extern bool RedrawWindow(IntPtr hWnd, IntPtr rect, IntPtr hRgnUpdate, UInt32 flags);
To do such a thing in Java would require quite a bit more work. And, to be honest, Swing with a Win32 plaf is significantly slower and SWT still doesn't exactly look like a Win32 app (not to mention that I wouldn't even know how to get Office 2003 style menus with SWT).
The MONO team implimented P/Invoke as well (it's how the GTK# libraries work, if I'm not mistaken). This allows you to leverage all sorts of native platform code simply and easily without the sources.
Just my 2 cents as a
Have you read anything from Reuters lateley? I would say they're the worst when it comes to editorializing in their so-called news stories. IIRC Reuters is a British news outlet.
But in the US, political (which includes hate) speech deserves the highest protections. I have yet to see the FBI crack down on newspapers across the country. The problem is... that once you start banning hate speech, who decides what's hate speech and what's not. Demonstrations against Jews? Pro-Choice propaganda? Maybe? What about burning efigees of the US President or the American Flag? It's too easy for fucked up law enforcers to create their own vigilante justice.
I think you misunderstood. This guy is saying he wants to be the standard software. For a console, that means the OS. They make the OS, and other companies make the hardware. There is no Linux, no BeOS or Standard Windows Installation. It's just so they don't have to be in the business of manufacturing consoles.
But MSFT is a _SOFTWARE_ company. They'd rather be making only the software... thus, the standard API, the sandard console OS.
Nice try... but no.
And by the way, those weren't Swiss tanks i saw freeing the victims of the holocaust.
Agreed! The Swiss also took an inactive role in the holocaust. They refused to take refugees.
A friend of mine refers to them as Nazis with Chocolate.
Success indeed, I'll take my chances.
The relavance of the UN to the US is (and should be) related to the general philosophy of the body.
I think a large part of the problem is the current structure of the UN. First, you have a "has-been" country like France with more authority than India, and you have inane votes that allow Libia to chair the Human Rights Comission.
There were also several resolutions threatening "serious consequences" for Iraq if Sadaam didn't comply. Do you think it's odd that people would be dissatisfied with a body who's threats were all empty?
While I agree with your statements about liberalism in principle, I don't think that they are true about todays "liberals."
By your defintition, the modern Republicans are the ones advocating radical changes. Think about it: The GOP wants to tear away Affirmative Action, attack Iraq, create new government institution (dept of homeland security) and decrease taxes. The democrats, on the other hand, want Affirmative Action to stay put, stay out of Iraq, not have new government instituions and leave taxes as they are (except in California). It is the Republicans pushing for social change.
Of course, this is merely a comment about liberalism in general regardless of your political affiliation.
In fact, Microsoft ships a lite obfuscator with VS.NET 2003. I don't think most other IDEs do. You can buy better ones too if you really want to protect your source code.
I have an Inspiron 4100 (1400x1050) and I can definitly say there is absolutley nothing good about the machine.
I hate it with the deepest passion. It's flimsy and plastic parts are always falling off of it, the driver are crappy: the Mouse always goes haywire flying across the screen... OR it loses it and you have to pound the touchpad to get it to recognize that you are using the mouse, and support has not responded to my TWO tickets about the item. I'll buy a Thinkpad instead next time, thank you very much.
Some of us believe that the function of the U.S. military should be to defend the citizens of the U.S., not to run around the world "installing" democracies. We should lead by example, not by force.
I suppose "those of us" that you mention would have said that the second world war was a European squabble. Hitler wasn't directly threatening any Americans, and... he was just exterminating jews within his own borders. I supposed they would also be opposed to the United States military intervening anywhere a people are threatened by a tyrranical dictator.
People are going to die anyway. The question is, will it be Iraqi civilians at the hands of Saddam, or Iraqi troops at the hand of American ones. To simply say "WAR EVIL!" doesn't really save lives. In the long run, it will probably cost them.
Well... you still get that stupid-ass Real "inbox" that pops up in your system tray (for Windows users). My BEST solution, is just to not install Real player at all. I think we should push back on orgs that stream only Real Player content. Real is such an evil company. One install and the program thinks it has a right to your desktop! argh!!!
Ok. I think people often misunderstand what this means. Freedom of speech implies a freedom to have your opinions and let them be known. It however, does not guarantee you a freedom from consequences, because we must live with the consequences of what we and others say. If you call your best friend a "lying, cheating bitch" you must then live with the consequence that he may no longer be your friend. Similarly, there are consequences for others based on what you say. To allow total license to make completley unsubstantiated claims that damage another's credibility or reputation with no consequences, however, seems not to be guaranteed by the constitution.
"Read a little basic microeconomics"
I have actually read a lot of advanced microeconomics:
First, monopolies exist in free markets. A free market is one where buyers and sellers determine output and demand. A monopoly reduces its output to maximize profit, but make no mistake, the market is still free.
Second, what i think you actually meant is that competive markets are a good thing. Of course, the classic (basic) microeconomics that you refer to has a set of assumptions, prime among them that the market has no externalities. This is actually not the case with the market for operating systems (or browsers for that matter). The externality is introduced by the fact that both provide a development platform, and companies must then produce software for multiple platforms, which increases cost. So while a competitive market might be ultimately good for consumers in the market for OS's, it would induce higher costs in other software industries.
This concern, could be mitigated by a forced API standard, but then new OS comapnies would be prevented from adding new features into their operating system (Imagine a uniform Windows/Linux/MacOS API; that doesn't seem like the best option either).
As you learn in economics, basic economics paints a picture, but it seldom paints the entire picture. Microsoft's monopoly might ultimately be bad for consumers, but the proof of that is far beyond basic micro.
martin
... in having a free press? I guess a free press only includes the things that the popular government considers amenable to their beliefs. But wait, then isn't China's press free then? riiiiiiiiiight...
But those rankings were done in France. I smell a rat!
This seems like an absolute load of crap of American-envy. I've spent a considerable ammount of time in Germany, and the press is much more restricted. For example, the Germans (who are ranked 7th), do not allow news establishments to disciminate pro-nazi information. While, I certainly oppose any nazi-ism, the right to voice your opinion (no matter how idiotic it may be) is guaranteed by the constitution. Absolute shite!
Two things:
First, Microsoft has made it very easy and obvious to turn DRM on and off. With WMP8 it wasn't so easy to figure out, but WMP9 (Beta) has made this a question asked on install.
Second, Microsoft CAN'T change the file format very easily. They added two new formats (Variable Bit Rate and Losless), but there wouldn't be much point in locking people out, because then they'd lock out all the devices already designed for WMA.
Moreover, given the choice between WMA and MP3, i would choose WMA because the audio quality is clearly superior.
One of the things that creating their own platform (eg DX vs OpenGL) is that this allows Microsoft to "certify" drivers. While this could also be viewed as a bad (read monopolisic) thing, the cert process forces vendors to properly implement an api. There is no corresponding cert body for OpenGL, and, in theory, companies could ship incomplete or buggy implementations. Also, having tight control of a standard allows them to add new features at will. I could be mistaken, but I think that new features are added to the DX api faster than to the OpenGL api.
Yeah, I think C# is MS's way to convert everyone to VB.NET.
Actually, you are incorrect. I am a former VB developer who has switeched to C#. In fact, the largest number of C# adoptees has come from VB developers if i read correctly.
The thing that draws me to C# over VB.NET is that C# gives you as much power as you need, and you never think (gollie, I wish I could do this, but I can't), and has much more terse syntax.