Games run faster in 2k than XP, in my experience. Rise of Nations, for example, simply performs letter on 2k (starts faster, runs faster, shuts down faster).
XP seems to be 2k plus slowness, annoyance, and "better power management" -- but I have it running on a desktop, so I wouldn't know.
I find it irritating that the Microsoft hype machine is already in gear for Longhorn. I also find it irritating that Microsoft sees it as their manifest destiny to control the entire computing universe.
I find it depressing that I may end up having no choice but to use and develop for MSFT products, only. That's very clearly Microsoft's intention. It'll be interesting to see how the governments of the world handle Microsoft-2008 (the next round of anti-competitive/anti-trust actions).
The beast must be stopped, if only because of the perception that its unstoppable.
The U.S. is not a direct democracy. The Federal government is a creation of the "sovereign states," and a number of its officials are elected by the state legislatures. The president and vice president, for example, and originally, senators.
So technically, your vote for President matters exactly as much as your state legislature chooses to allow it to matter. States can send delegates to the electoal college using any rules they want, more or less. Your state could, for example, choose to not follow the "winner taks all" rules, and send delegates proportional to the popular vote.
I have a five-button scroll-wheel optical mouse (MSFT brand!) hooked to my Mac, and it works just fine. When I use it w/o the mouse (it's a laptop), I really have no problems with that either; it's not even slow or annoying the get a context menu to appear. I can hold down a keyboard key, which is right under my fingers anyway, or I can press and hold.
My wife got an iBook last month, after using a PC (HP/WinXP) laptop for years, and you know what? She's NEVER asked "where is the second mouse button." Zero training on my part, and she's doing everything she needs to do on the laptop, without two buttons. She actualyl complained about the second mouse button on the HP laptop from time to time, because it's easy to hit the wrong one (laptop trackpads can be awkward to use, especially for the left-handed).
"The companies have also entered into agreements on patents and other issues. [...] It will stimulate new products, delivering great new choices for customers who want to combine server products from multiple vendors and achieve seamless computing in a heterogeneous computing environment. We look forward to this opportunity - it provides a framework for cooperation between Sun and Microsoft going forward. [...] Sun and Microsoft engineers will cooperate to allow identity information to be easily shared between Microsoft Active Directory and the Sun Java System Identity Server, resulting in less complex and more secure computing environments. Sun and Microsoft have agreed that they will work together to improve technical collaboration between their Java and.NET technologies."
Sun's own press release goes on to add this:
"Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential."
My prediction for the future:
Sun announces support for Dot Net on Solaris, but not its Linux distro.
Sun announces Java will be transitioned to run on the CLR, not the JVM.
Microsoft is all about control, of course. For people like Bill and Steve, and their pet monkeys Paul and Rob, it's not abotu customers, or money, or good ideas. It's about control -- other things are a means to that end.
Sun's next press release: Hello, gated community members! Here on the MS Ranch, we don't use anything Unca Bill doesn't make himself. Click here to read our white paper on transitioning your Java applications to Windows applicatios based on DotNet!
5. Lastly, you can say to yourself when you use a spreadsheet, "Look Mom, I'm not programming." Pretty soon you are using Macros, then Word Basic then Visual Basic for Applications. Pretty soon you have a maintenance nightmare since you have spent more time getting immediate answers than you have spent in thinking about design.
This is a common thing, in my (corporate) experience. Not much thought is put into how the business fundamentally goes about its tasks, but there is a lot of time spent, e.g., masturbating with time sheet data for salaried employees, etc.
Making things worse, Microsoft's tools encourage instant gratification over design: VBA, Office Macros, ASP and Visual Basic lend themselves not to rapid application devlopment, but stupid application development. It's so easy to tweak and reload that the "right" answer often ends up being the "easy" answer. It's development by instant gratification. The resulting "solutions" are often fragile and difficult to maintain. It's like Powerpoint for Programmers (referencing Tufte), in that the cognitive model of the tools distorts the outcome as much or more than it helps produce it. I'm not convinced that these convenience tools result in less time spent in development, either; quite the opposite. I think any amount of time spent in design and planning will be outweighed by all of the re-work that will usually have to be done because of the mindset the tools engender. This is overlooked because planning isn't a source of instant gratification (it seems to drag on forever, as it requires actual thinking) -- whereas development with tools like these is a source of instant gratification, thus masking their own consumption of your time.
On Windows and Mac there is no cost for a license to use the bult-in widget kit, only for extra tools, like compilers, IDEs, etc.
On Novell Linux, there will be a cost. So-long, shareware market! Not that there is really a Linux shareware market now, but this would be pretty effective in stopping one from appearing. I also wonder if Trolltech will try to submarine Linux at some point in the future, ala SCO.
Novell could sell "Novell Developer Studio," which includes KDevelop, QT Designer, etc. plus a QT license. This would make it look like "Windows plus Visual Studio," except more expensive.
I'm going to take a stab in the dark and either assume Open Office has never changed it's file formats or saves them in such a way that old versions can ignore new data it doesn't understand. Or, all documents are saved in all formats simultaniously and the version loading the version just picks the one it understands best.
OpenOffice uses XML for its file format. It seems reasonable that it could be programmed to ignore parts of the XML document that it doesn't understand, when reading in files from future versions of itself.
I don't know if OOo actually does do that, but that's what I would do with file formats for my applications.
Thoughtfully crafted upgrades in the file format would also make "forward compatibility" easier.
Capitalism requires a government to create and enforce the rules of the market, including regulations and contracts. It is impossible to have true capitalism without government involvement.
"Unfettered capitalism" probably isn't capitalism at all, but some sort of government-sponsored favoritism towards a few at the expense of the many.
I don't think you're a socialist, but I think your use of the term "unrestrained, true capitalism" is mistaken. If some players in the market are truely unrestrained, then we don't have capitalism and we don't have a free market; we have some sort of oligopoly.
PassPort? Jeesh - you/. dorks will replace a simple 2 second process with one incredibly difficult and annoying just to stay away from MS... You may think you're some sort of "Freedom Fighter", when really you're just a retard.
How's the weather in Redmond?
I'm sure PassPort will protect you from spyware, such as keystroke loggers, on those public terminals, right? And I'm sure that giving MSFT control over my personal authentication tokens is really in my best interest, never mind passport's publicised security problems. Yeah, I'm the retard for not trusting it.
How are Apples the solution? No DRM in the BIOS/Firmware, and you can run Linux, BSD, OSX, and other OSes on the hardware w/o the vendor standing in your way.
Slashdot Mirror
Win2k has the same DirectX as XP.
Games run faster in 2k than XP, in my experience. Rise of Nations, for example, simply performs letter on 2k (starts faster, runs faster, shuts down faster).
XP seems to be 2k plus slowness, annoyance, and "better power management" -- but I have it running on a desktop, so I wouldn't know.
I find it irritating that the Microsoft hype machine is already in gear for Longhorn. I also find it irritating that Microsoft sees it as their manifest destiny to control the entire computing universe.
I find it depressing that I may end up having no choice but to use and develop for MSFT products, only. That's very clearly Microsoft's intention. It'll be interesting to see how the governments of the world handle Microsoft-2008 (the next round of anti-competitive/anti-trust actions).
The beast must be stopped, if only because of the perception that its unstoppable.
I beg to differ. Windows 2000 was the first, and last, good version of Windows.
The U.S. is not a direct democracy. The Federal government is a creation of the "sovereign states," and a number of its officials are elected by the state legislatures. The president and vice president, for example, and originally, senators.
So technically, your vote for President matters exactly as much as your state legislature chooses to allow it to matter. States can send delegates to the electoal college using any rules they want, more or less. Your state could, for example, choose to not follow the "winner taks all" rules, and send delegates proportional to the popular vote.
SubEthaEdit plus Fugu does a nice job; I can sftp to a server and double-click a file. It opens in SubEthaEdit. When I save, Fugu copies it back.
I have a five-button scroll-wheel optical mouse (MSFT brand!) hooked to my Mac, and it works just fine. When I use it w/o the mouse (it's a laptop), I really have no problems with that either; it's not even slow or annoying the get a context menu to appear. I can hold down a keyboard key, which is right under my fingers anyway, or I can press and hold.
My wife got an iBook last month, after using a PC (HP/WinXP) laptop for years, and you know what? She's NEVER asked "where is the second mouse button." Zero training on my part, and she's doing everything she needs to do on the laptop, without two buttons. She actualyl complained about the second mouse button on the HP laptop from time to time, because it's easy to hit the wrong one (laptop trackpads can be awkward to use, especially for the left-handed).
So you're what, a philosophy major?
Ah, yes, the standard definition of "portable" and "cross platform" as meaning, "runs on several versions of Microsoft's software."
"fanboi?" How about the folks that think Microsoft's control of the computing industry is some type of manifest destiny!
Now, there's more J2EE than DotNet. So, yes, that's my prediction for the future, dude.
Microsoft is all about control, of course. For people like Bill and Steve, and their pet monkeys Paul and Rob, it's not abotu customers, or money, or good ideas. It's about control -- other things are a means to that end.
Sun's next press release:
Hello, gated community members! Here on the MS Ranch, we don't use anything Unca Bill doesn't make himself. Click here to read our white paper on transitioning your Java applications to Windows applicatios based on DotNet!
</bitter>
5. Lastly, you can say to yourself when you use a spreadsheet, "Look Mom, I'm not programming." Pretty soon you are using Macros, then Word Basic then Visual Basic for Applications. Pretty soon you have a maintenance nightmare since you have spent more time getting immediate answers than you have spent in thinking about design.
This is a common thing, in my (corporate) experience. Not much thought is put into how the business fundamentally goes about its tasks, but there is a lot of time spent, e.g., masturbating with time sheet data for salaried employees, etc.
Making things worse, Microsoft's tools encourage instant gratification over design: VBA, Office Macros, ASP and Visual Basic lend themselves not to rapid application devlopment, but stupid application development. It's so easy to tweak and reload that the "right" answer often ends up being the "easy" answer. It's development by instant gratification. The resulting "solutions" are often fragile and difficult to maintain. It's like Powerpoint for Programmers (referencing Tufte), in that the cognitive model of the tools distorts the outcome as much or more than it helps produce it. I'm not convinced that these convenience tools result in less time spent in development, either; quite the opposite. I think any amount of time spent in design and planning will be outweighed by all of the re-work that will usually have to be done because of the mindset the tools engender. This is overlooked because planning isn't a source of instant gratification (it seems to drag on forever, as it requires actual thinking) -- whereas development with tools like these is a source of instant gratification, thus masking their own consumption of your time.
On Windows and Mac there is no cost for a license to use the bult-in widget kit, only for extra tools, like compilers, IDEs, etc.
On Novell Linux, there will be a cost. So-long, shareware market! Not that there is really a Linux shareware market now, but this would be pretty effective in stopping one from appearing. I also wonder if Trolltech will try to submarine Linux at some point in the future, ala SCO.
Novell could sell "Novell Developer Studio," which includes KDevelop, QT Designer, etc. plus a QT license. This would make it look like "Windows plus Visual Studio," except more expensive.
- Will they be writing a GTK-on-top-of-QT layer?
- Ditching GTK apps?
- Using GTK apps but not encouraging their creation?
- Just using QT for Novell-specific stuff (like Redhat uses GTK for its configurators, etc)?
*confused*I'm going to take a stab in the dark and either assume Open Office has never changed it's file formats or saves them in such a way that old versions can ignore new data it doesn't understand. Or, all documents are saved in all formats simultaniously and the version loading the version just picks the one it understands best.
OpenOffice uses XML for its file format. It seems reasonable that it could be programmed to ignore parts of the XML document that it doesn't understand, when reading in files from future versions of itself.
I don't know if OOo actually does do that, but that's what I would do with file formats for my applications.
Thoughtfully crafted upgrades in the file format would also make "forward compatibility" easier.
FairPlay Explained ... from the company (not Apple) that created it.
Not having MSFT products would "out the EU back in the damn stoneage?" Riiiight.
Capitalism requires a government to create and enforce the rules of the market, including regulations and contracts. It is impossible to have true capitalism without government involvement.
"Unfettered capitalism" probably isn't capitalism at all, but some sort of government-sponsored favoritism towards a few at the expense of the many.
I don't think you're a socialist, but I think your use of the term "unrestrained, true capitalism" is mistaken. If some players in the market are truely unrestrained, then we don't have capitalism and we don't have a free market; we have some sort of oligopoly.
Dumbass
You still didn't tell me how the weather is in Redmond.
PassPort? Jeesh - you /. dorks will replace a simple 2 second process with one incredibly difficult and annoying just to stay away from MS... You may think you're some sort of "Freedom Fighter", when really you're just a retard.
How's the weather in Redmond?
I'm sure PassPort will protect you from spyware, such as keystroke loggers, on those public terminals, right? And I'm sure that giving MSFT control over my personal authentication tokens is really in my best interest, never mind passport's publicised security problems. Yeah, I'm the retard for not trusting it.
Reminds me of the Viz-O-Matic (warning: WMV file).
That same virus could also delete the "product activation" databases of MSFT software -- chaos!
How are Apples the solution?
No DRM in the BIOS/Firmware, and you can run Linux, BSD, OSX, and other OSes on the hardware w/o the vendor standing in your way.
"Average Instructions Per Second" might be a good replacement for "Clock Cycles Per Second."
Good article.