I think that the editorial attached to the article waxes over an important point: Software is a TOOL. Just as we do not necessarily mandate that the government use specific shovels for digging, we should not mandate that they use specific (read open-source) software, but instead that they be able to use the "best" tool for the job (and make sure they know that open source tools are valid ones).
First, if you are a.NET programmer, one such community is dotNet247.com. They have excellent discussion threads. They, also, are indexed by google. If you use Google's Microsoft only search you'll be sure to easily find the answer to the question you are looking for.
MSDN is also an invaluable resource. Not only do they have a stream of articles, but they are searchable, and it is generally rather easy to find the answer to the question you are looking for.
I've had 99% of my programming experience in the Widnows world, so I actually suffer the reverse anomaly... I don't know where to look for my *nix answers.
Opera's had MDI browsing for quite some time. I still don't know why IE doesn't
One of the new features in Windows XP is that when you have too many instances of one program window open, it collapses them into on the task bar. Interestingly enough, MS seems to be moving away from MDIs in a number of their apps, as both Word and Excel also aren't MDIs anymore.(Well, you can set them to be, but they aren't by default.)
I can run.NET compiled programs on Solaris, Linux, Windows, MacOS?
Well, let's first be honest. People say with java, "write one, run anywhere", and you couldn't run Java 2 apps on FreeBSD, Mac OS, HP-UX or many other OS' either.
In contrast, once you have amortized the cost of creating a piece of software, there is essentially no marginal cost associated with creating another copy.
This is not exactly true. True enough that each physical product associated with software has a marginal cost of zero, however more goes into any specific software product than just the cd's and the packaging. There also significant marketing costs, research costs, and support costs associated with each purchased item. This does not exactly fit into the classical Marshallian economic model, because often people don't know about everything a product can do, and thus don't know in advance the true benifit they would reap from purchasing a product. In this sense marketing manipulates the demand (marginal benifit) curve.
Can we amortise the creation cost of software without a direct revenue capture per unit sold? The answer seems to be yes for a lot of people.
While I certainly agree with this point, most firms (the ones without an idealogical agenda, but simply those in the business of making money) maximize profit. I'm quite certain that Microsoft knows that the model you specify above does not maximize corportate profits. Moreover, the viral nature of the GPL further prevents any corportation from truly maximizing profits once they use GPL'ed software, even though these corporations (with the taxes they pay) actually supported the development of those products.
if you want to consider me as selling out the software development profession, I'm doing it for the customer.
I object to this argument in particular. Naiively, the best model for consumers is for everyone to produce software for free, and provide support for free and give everything away for free. While this, in the short run, would be quite advantageous for consumers, after a while, all corporate profits (and earnings) would run dry, killing the industry. Moreover, if all industries were to do this, and consumers were only to pay for the natural resources involved in making a product, this would essentially de-value labor and make fixed resources the only tenable currency, and would simply be an exchange economy with labor as a free good. This model is defintily Pareto Optimal, but I doubt you would find anybody who advocates such a model.
This week's column is pretty vacant. He says that Gates should be force out of the company. Of course, I guess he doesn't know anything about how Gates can do whatever he wants unless he is found Criminally liable.
My CS dept. used Sun Rays linked to an E5000 machine with sixteen processors. And while, most of the time, this machine supported 30 or 40 concurrent users, when people were doing some assignments, it was downright aweful.
For example, when the CS Theory class was implementing their Kruskal sort in C++, lots of them kept hitting these infinite loops that would keep creating new objects, and with 20 or 30 people doing this, every few minutes, everybody's machine would grind to a halt while the renegade process swallowed up 4 or 5 gigs of memory. It was immensly annoying and made it impossible to get my work done. I don't know if Solaris would have allowed them to implement CPU quotas, but I know that i always ended up moving to the Intel machines.
OTOH, the damages they could land could put Be back on its feet.
I seriously doubt this. Anyways, they sold their IP, so all their real assets now are a possible claim against Microsoft. I'm sure that these profits would be used by many of Be's investors to recoup losses. At any rate, Be is done for. Even if they do get a few billion.
Re:.NET good, not evil
on
What is .NET?
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· Score: 1
I said nothing about Apple or Java
Obviously you didn't. I was using a well-known rhetorical strategy known as "Sarcasm." In fact it would be quite strange if either Apple or Java were anti-competitive considering their lack of market share. I was saying that simply because a product does not emit code for every known operating system does not mean it is anti-competitive. If this were the case, as I believe was your thesis, ALL compilers that targeted a specific platform or processor would be deemed (by that definition) anti-competitive, which obviously isn't very reasonable.
Re:I honestly can't figure out
on
What is .NET?
·
· Score: 1
unless Microsoft managed to get a copyright on all the method names in WindowsForms
Actually, Sun attempted to make a similar claim about the Java framework back when IBM and Microsoft were spatting with them. Tim O'Reilly actually mentioned this.
Re:.NET good, not evil
on
What is .NET?
·
· Score: 1
The biggest problem I see with.NET is that the apps that get created with it will only run on Windows servers. This is yet another example of Microsoft unfairly stiffling competition because not only does it create the most widely used OS, they can also create applications that only work on it OS's
Ummmmmmmm.... I suppose then that Apple engages in anti-competitive practices as well... or wait! do Carbon apps run on Windows?! Moreover I'm sure ALL linux apps run on Windows boxes as well. Oh wait... maybe you mean that any non-Java language is anti-competive. I can't tell!
If that's your worry, then it is justified. There was an interview on MSDN (The.NET show) with the program manager of the CLR group (I don't remember his name) and he said the one thing that you couldn't do in the CLR was continuations. He especially lamented this because Scheme was his favorite language.
.NET has distinctions between managed and unmanaged code. Furthermore, managed code has distinctions between safe and unsafe code. Unmanaged and unsafe code (as I understand things) need much more liberal execution permissions than does safe, managed code. If you want much more in-depth information, you'll have to go to the documentation for the System.Security namespace and look at the api. There is a tutorial on it from MSDN magazine
here.
I imagine it also has something to do with taxes. A US X-Box including tax (8.25% in california) is approximately 324.74. However, with higher European VATs that are included in the price, the cost an X-Box could be 360 (assuming a 20% tax). This does close the gap a little.
Why should Oracle care though? This isn't anti-competitive because there ARE altertanitives in the Server OS market. If Microsoft makes it so nobody else can develop anything for Windows.NET Server, for server OS' we have tons of other alternatives.
It seems that these days no matter what Microsoft does, some ignorant writer will insert an obligatory "Well.. for so-and-so, this might be antitrust violation."
In this case, it's simply not true! Microsoft was deemed to have a monopoly in the HOME COMPUTING market. Oracle doesn't do a damn thing in the HOME COMPUTING market. MS, however does NOT have a Monopoly (in ANY sense of the word) on server software (operating systems included). Moreover, it hassn't deemed anti-competitive to bundle IIS, so it shouldn't be to have a stripped down version of SQL Server either.
For instance, I doubt that they will ship a ".Net clean" version of Office that would run on Mono
The way.NET works is that code can be managed or unmanaged. Managed code is written in IL, and anything written in IL should be compatible. So as long as an application is 100% managed (EG.. does not use or link to any unmanaged libraries or classes (COM objects or Windows DLLs), or does not itself contain any unmanaged code) it will be compatible provided that the Mono.NET foundation classes are the same.
Furthermore,.NET applications link to a specific.NET library version, so even if Microsoft changes their libraries to be incompatible (everybody's chief fear), all of the old applications still link to the old Mono (and Microsoft.NET) libraries and binaries, and any new applications will run once Mono implements the same changes.
Personally, I think this liscence change is great (have been a BSD Liscence fan myself, anyway).
This is a step in the right direction, but true kernel compilation for the masses is still a ways off. I think for custom kernel compilation to hit the mainstream there needs to be an automated tool that will inspect your machine configuration and hardware and then automatically configure most options (eg... don't compile in X.25 drivers if you don't have an X.25 device). Just my 2 cents.
Well, Linux isn't necessarily free to use. If you want enterprise middleware (Application Servers, et al.) some buy WebShpere/WebLogic/whatever, which will set you back a few thousand bucks. MS platforms give you that middleware included in the price, moreover, if you're spending 80k on DB Server software, what does a couple thousnad bucks for Windows matter? Hey... But at least it's AN alternative.
I've actually done much study on how the system works. When traveling with a family in Germany, we were discussing this very issue (hate speech), when the father noted that the source of neo-nazis in Germany were youths who "did nothing, and didn't want to do anything." While I think this oversimplfies the problem, creating jobs is important too. Simply giving away money to those without isn't a very good solution to the lack of jobs.
And.... I've lived in Los Angeles most of my life, and now live in San Francisco. I think you're "aweful distance" is somewhat exaggerated, but on the other hand i do think that a better solution to this welfare plan would be to supplement income already earned.
The problem with this argument is that if you prohibit hate literature, you cannot assume that this will completley stop all racist or anti-semitic thoughts.
Hatred and racisim have deep roots in not only ignorance, but personal disssatisfaction. The fact is, almost all facist movements have come about in economically troubling times. The fact is, European unemployment rates are unbelievably high (compared to American ones), and that breeds hatred. In the US, when there was an economic downturn, it prompted the temporary success of xenophobes like Pat Buchanan.
The fact is, Europe has much more protection for the workers, but this comes at a price. High unemployment and the social problems that come with it.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that the editorial attached to the article waxes over an important point: Software is a TOOL. Just as we do not necessarily mandate that the government use specific shovels for digging, we should not mandate that they use specific (read open-source) software, but instead that they be able to use the "best" tool for the job (and make sure they know that open source tools are valid ones).
First, if you are a .NET programmer, one such community is dotNet247.com. They have excellent discussion threads. They, also, are indexed by google. If you use Google's Microsoft only search you'll be sure to easily find the answer to the question you are looking for.
MSDN is also an invaluable resource. Not only do they have a stream of articles, but they are searchable, and it is generally rather easy to find the answer to the question you are looking for.
I've had 99% of my programming experience in the Widnows world, so I actually suffer the reverse anomaly... I don't know where to look for my *nix answers.
Opera's had MDI browsing for quite some time. I still don't know why IE doesn't
.(Well, you can set them to be, but they aren't by default.)
One of the new features in Windows XP is that when you have too many instances of one program window open, it collapses them into on the task bar. Interestingly enough, MS seems to be moving away from MDIs in a number of their apps, as both Word and Excel also aren't MDIs anymore
I can run .NET compiled programs on Solaris, Linux, Windows, MacOS?
Well, let's first be honest. People say with java, "write one, run anywhere", and you couldn't run Java 2 apps on FreeBSD, Mac OS, HP-UX or many other OS' either.
Oh yeah, and uh, http://www.go-mono.com/.
So 3 out of 4 ain't bad.
m
I use WinXP remote desktop to connect to my work machine (through a VPN) from home and do all my work on it and it SCREAMS, even over cable.
I've even actually used it over a 56k and it was still pretty fast (except when web browsing). Overall I think this is a pretty good solution.
In contrast, once you have amortized the cost of creating a piece of software, there is essentially no marginal cost associated with creating another copy.
This is not exactly true. True enough that each physical product associated with software has a marginal cost of zero, however more goes into any specific software product than just the cd's and the packaging. There also significant marketing costs, research costs, and support costs associated with each purchased item. This does not exactly fit into the classical Marshallian economic model, because often people don't know about everything a product can do, and thus don't know in advance the true benifit they would reap from purchasing a product. In this sense marketing manipulates the demand (marginal benifit) curve.
Can we amortise the creation cost of software without a direct revenue capture per unit sold? The answer seems to be yes for a lot of people.
While I certainly agree with this point, most firms (the ones without an idealogical agenda, but simply those in the business of making money) maximize profit. I'm quite certain that Microsoft knows that the model you specify above does not maximize corportate profits. Moreover, the viral nature of the GPL further prevents any corportation from truly maximizing profits once they use GPL'ed software, even though these corporations (with the taxes they pay) actually supported the development of those products.
if you want to consider me as selling out the software development profession, I'm doing it for the customer.
I object to this argument in particular. Naiively, the best model for consumers is for everyone to produce software for free, and provide support for free and give everything away for free. While this, in the short run, would be quite advantageous for consumers, after a while, all corporate profits (and earnings) would run dry, killing the industry. Moreover, if all industries were to do this, and consumers were only to pay for the natural resources involved in making a product, this would essentially de-value labor and make fixed resources the only tenable currency, and would simply be an exchange economy with labor as a free good. This model is defintily Pareto Optimal, but I doubt you would find anybody who advocates such a model.
just my 2 cents (as an economist).
This week's column is pretty vacant. He says that Gates should be force out of the company. Of course, I guess he doesn't know anything about how Gates can do whatever he wants unless he is found Criminally liable.
My CS dept. used Sun Rays linked to an E5000 machine with sixteen processors. And while, most of the time, this machine supported 30 or 40 concurrent users, when people were doing some assignments, it was downright aweful.
For example, when the CS Theory class was implementing their Kruskal sort in C++, lots of them kept hitting these infinite loops that would keep creating new objects, and with 20 or 30 people doing this, every few minutes, everybody's machine would grind to a halt while the renegade process swallowed up 4 or 5 gigs of memory. It was immensly annoying and made it impossible to get my work done. I don't know if Solaris would have allowed them to implement CPU quotas, but I know that i always ended up moving to the Intel machines.
Does everybody really need a 64 bit version of Office and IE? Doubt it...
The apps w/ the big 64 bit / Improved fp unit benifits aren't MS apps anyway. All we need in 64 bit is quake and the 3d programs.
OTOH, the damages they could land could put Be back on its feet.
I seriously doubt this. Anyways, they sold their IP, so all their real assets now are a possible claim against Microsoft. I'm sure that these profits would be used by many of Be's investors to recoup losses. At any rate, Be is done for. Even if they do get a few billion.
I said nothing about Apple or Java
Obviously you didn't. I was using a well-known rhetorical strategy known as "Sarcasm." In fact it would be quite strange if either Apple or Java were anti-competitive considering their lack of market share. I was saying that simply because a product does not emit code for every known operating system does not mean it is anti-competitive. If this were the case, as I believe was your thesis, ALL compilers that targeted a specific platform or processor would be deemed (by that definition) anti-competitive, which obviously isn't very reasonable.
unless Microsoft managed to get a copyright on all the method names in WindowsForms
Actually, Sun attempted to make a similar claim about the Java framework back when IBM and Microsoft were spatting with them. Tim O'Reilly actually mentioned this.
The biggest problem I see with .NET is that the apps that get created with it will only run on Windows servers. This is yet another example of Microsoft unfairly stiffling competition because not only does it create the most widely used OS, they can also create applications that only work on it OS's
Ummmmmmmm.... I suppose then that Apple engages in anti-competitive practices as well... or wait! do Carbon apps run on Windows?! Moreover I'm sure ALL linux apps run on Windows boxes as well. Oh wait... maybe you mean that any non-Java language is anti-competive. I can't tell!
If that's your worry, then it is justified. There was an interview on MSDN (The .NET show) with the program manager of the CLR group (I don't remember his name) and he said the one thing that you couldn't do in the CLR was continuations. He especially lamented this because Scheme was his favorite language.
Maybe some /. people were included in the "dismiseed because they were simply expressing opinion -- 'Microsoft Sucks!!'". That make 22,000
.NET has distinctions between managed and unmanaged code. Furthermore, managed code has distinctions between safe and unsafe code. Unmanaged and unsafe code (as I understand things) need much more liberal execution permissions than does safe, managed code. If you want much more in-depth information, you'll have to go to the documentation for the System.Security namespace and look at the api. There is a tutorial on it from MSDN magazine
here.
I imagine it also has something to do with taxes. A US X-Box including tax (8.25% in california) is approximately 324.74. However, with higher European VATs that are included in the price, the cost an X-Box could be 360 (assuming a 20% tax). This does close the gap a little.
Why should Oracle care though? This isn't anti-competitive because there ARE altertanitives in the Server OS market. If Microsoft makes it so nobody else can develop anything for Windows .NET Server, for server OS' we have tons of other alternatives.
It seems that these days no matter what Microsoft does, some ignorant writer will insert an obligatory "Well.. for so-and-so, this might be antitrust violation."
In this case, it's simply not true! Microsoft was deemed to have a monopoly in the HOME COMPUTING market. Oracle doesn't do a damn thing in the HOME COMPUTING market. MS, however does NOT have a Monopoly (in ANY sense of the word) on server software (operating systems included). Moreover, it hassn't deemed anti-competitive to bundle IIS, so it shouldn't be to have a stripped down version of SQL Server either.
For instance, I doubt that they will ship a ".Net clean" version of Office that would run on Mono
.NET works is that code can be managed or unmanaged. Managed code is written in IL, and anything written in IL should be compatible. So as long as an application is 100% managed (EG.. does not use or link to any unmanaged libraries or classes (COM objects or Windows DLLs), or does not itself contain any unmanaged code) it will be compatible provided that the Mono .NET foundation classes are the same.
.NET applications link to a specific .NET library version, so even if Microsoft changes their libraries to be incompatible (everybody's chief fear), all of the old applications still link to the old Mono (and Microsoft .NET) libraries and binaries, and any new applications will run once Mono implements the same changes.
The way
Furthermore,
Personally, I think this liscence change is great (have been a BSD Liscence fan myself, anyway).
This is a step in the right direction, but true kernel compilation for the masses is still a ways off. I think for custom kernel compilation to hit the mainstream there needs to be an automated tool that will inspect your machine configuration and hardware and then automatically configure most options (eg... don't compile in X.25 drivers if you don't have an X.25 device). Just my 2 cents.
This email doesn't sound that authentic. It more seems like it was written by a child. I half expected him to call Linus a "Poopy Head".
Well, Linux isn't necessarily free to use. If you want enterprise middleware (Application Servers, et al.) some buy WebShpere/WebLogic/whatever, which will set you back a few thousand bucks. MS platforms give you that middleware included in the price, moreover, if you're spending 80k on DB Server software, what does a couple thousnad bucks for Windows matter? Hey... But at least it's AN alternative.
I've actually done much study on how the system works. When traveling with a family in Germany, we were discussing this very issue (hate speech), when the father noted that the source of neo-nazis in Germany were youths who "did nothing, and didn't want to do anything." While I think this oversimplfies the problem, creating jobs is important too. Simply giving away money to those without isn't a very good solution to the lack of jobs.
And.... I've lived in Los Angeles most of my life, and now live in San Francisco. I think you're "aweful distance" is somewhat exaggerated, but on the other hand i do think that a better solution to this welfare plan would be to supplement income already earned.
The problem with this argument is that if you prohibit hate literature, you cannot assume that this will completley stop all racist or anti-semitic thoughts.
Hatred and racisim have deep roots in not only ignorance, but personal disssatisfaction. The fact is, almost all facist movements have come about in economically troubling times. The fact is, European unemployment rates are unbelievably high (compared to American ones), and that breeds hatred. In the US, when there was an economic downturn, it prompted the temporary success of xenophobes like Pat Buchanan.
The fact is, Europe has much more protection for the workers, but this comes at a price. High unemployment and the social problems that come with it.