According to Microsoft's site: "Microsoft tested Windows NT 4.0 and Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition. These platforms are vulnerable to the denial of service attack however due to architectural limitations it is infeasible to rebuild the software for Windows NT 4.0 to eliminate the vulnerability."
Perhaps they had an analyst estimate the time/effort involved in fixing this issue, and found that it's based on such a fundamental flaw in the very foundation of NT 4.0 that it would take until well past June 30th to code a fix. If that's the case, then they're not actually cutting off the support early.
Okay people, first, take a valium. Next, recognize a couple of important points here:
This is an Office Depot decision, not a Microsoft decision.
It does not necessarily mean they won't carry non-Windows software (ie. Red Hat Linux), just that all Windows software will have to be XP-certified.
Consider the source of this information. It's not exactly a shining example of quality journalism. Reading the "memo" in the article, there are a couple things that pop out that make it sound a bit like a fake, written to get all the ABMers riled up (and if so, it clearly worked).
Fun quote extracted from the article: "There was really nothing like Grand Theft Auto a few years ago." -- um, actually there was something very much like Grand Theft Auto a few years ago. It was called...... GRAND THEFT AUTO. The game came out in, like, 1996 or something like that. Or does "a few years ago" translate to "more than 7 years ago"?
I definitely wouldn't say the Puzzle genre is dying. It's just moved to a new medium. Sure, few are interested in spending $40+ on a Puzzle game for their XBox or PS2, but many people waste many hours playing online Puzzle games. I think what it comes down to is not that these genres area all necessarily dead or dying, but they're not good candidates for console games.
I guess the folks at GameSpy think "Game Industry" = "Console Industry".
My latest tech support job was for a friend/sort-of-family-member. Everything you can imagine that could be wrong with a computer, was wrong with his computer. Viruses, spyware, you name it. It basically didn't work. I mean, it booted to Windows, and that's about it. Everything else was pooched.
Anyway, when all was said and done, I had fixed it as best I could, and I wrote up a report which I placed on his desktop explaining what was wrong, how it happened as best as I could figure, what I did to fix it, and what he can do to prevent it in the future.
I think I'm going to keep a copy of that report to turn it into a template (mostly for the "what you can do in the future" section), and put it on a CD to include in my "Tech Support Kit".
Not everyone wants to learn what sort of maintenance things they can/should do, but some folks are willing to learn, and are actually even willing to do them. If I ever get so inundated with these "projects" that I decide to start charging, those are the people who will get the discounted rate.:)
"Okay, call me silly--but why don't they just outlaw porn"
You're silly.
But seriously, the world really doesn't need more pointless, unenforceable laws regulating what adults can do by themselves (or with a loved one, as the case occasionally is) in the privacy of their own homes.
I do realize we're talking about Utah here, so something like that is unfortunately the sort of thing that could happen, but don't even those who are so obsessed with sex that they feel the need to attempt to erase any reference to its existence from their reality realize that law enforcement resources are better used hunting down murderers, rapists, and kidnappers of young girls than ordinary people who've been classified as "criminals" simply because somebody else has a serious hang-up about all things sexual?
"They speak to structures and themes rather than methodology"
Um, that's because...... they're not a methodology.
Every programmer uses a pattern, whether they realize it or not. The point of studying design patterns is to be aware of them, and how best to use them, and how to identify which ones to use, and when.
Methodologies, on the other hand, are not used by every programmer. That's quite unfortunate.
>> "Of course, no sensible person would use this kind of feature in a way that would cause these kind of side-effects, but when debugging a system you don't know whether the original implementor was sensible."
This seems an odd criticism. It seems you're criticizing AOP for what people can do with it when using it incorrectly. In that case, all programming should be criticized, since all programming (AOP, OOP, procedural, whatever) can be made to be extremely ugly and unmaintainable when done incorrectly.
AOP is not supposed to be used the way you've described it. I won't throw away the concept simply because somebody who doesn't know what they're doing might mess things up. I'll just try to make sure the only people using it on my project know what they're doing.
Actually, I think that's kind of the point of Aspect-Oriented Development. Basically, somebody ignored the dogmatic preaching of the OO-obsessed long enough to realize that there are some things that OO just doesn't handle properly. So he came up with a different way to do it, and it's AO. It's not a new dogma to replace OO, it's just a way to handle what OO is lacking in.
>> "I think that within 2 years there will be a mass exodus from Microsoft by developers, OEMs, large and small business sites, and finally, even home computer users.
"
That seems unlikely. First of all, what incentive do developers have to migrate away from Windows development? As long as the vast majority of users are runing Windows, there is no incentive whatsoever for commercial developers to make anything but Windows applications. And as along as the vast majority of commercial developers are making Windows applications, there is no incentive for users to migrate away from Windows. It's an infinite loop.
You also mention.NET as one of the evils. I'm curious why you think this is so..NET is actually a great incentive for developers, particularly in corporate IT departments, to continue developing for the Windows platform.
If users are still primarily using Windows because developers are primarily writing for Windows (which, in turn, is because users are using Windows, etc.), then OEMs will continue to sell it, and especially so if businesses continue to use it as well. And there is little incentive for companies to switch desktop OSes right now (servers are a different story).
The crappy new licensing scheme is one thing that will have a small effect on IT departments. But most companies, particularly large companies, will not switch just because of that.
I honestly don't see Microsoft maintaining the dominance they enjoy today. I see the Microsoft of the future looking like the IBM of today. They'll still be massive, and a huge influence on the industry, just not a "Super Power" like they currently are.
You know all those Star Wars toys you still have? DON'T SELL THEM IN A GARAGE SALE!!!!!!!
While you're at it, hang on to the Battlestar Galactica ones, too. That Ceylon Raider that actually fires the missiles will one day be extremely rare. And that Land Rover, too.
>> "If a company could package O/S software with nice manuals and guaranteed 'support' then it'd gain much more acceptance, however, I suppose it would stop being 'free' software then."
This is happening. The various Linux distributions are the most obvious example, although the documentation and support do cost money, while the software remains free. They're still much cheaper than closed source alternatives.
I agree that open source in general has a long way to go on this issue, but a great many open source products are, right now, perfectly viable alternatives to costly closed source products. My favourite example is Eclipse, which is my Java IDE of choice. Why spend thousands of dollars on JBuilder or WSAD (which is Eclipse, only with a big price tag attached), when Eclipse is free and does (almost) everything you could ever want an IDE to do. It may not have the support options that something like JBuilder has, but here's the thing: I've never needed support. It's a solid product. On those rare occasions where you might have a problem with it, there is plenty of information online, but I've never known anyone to need it.
>> "The client can't just pull in any run-of-the-mill certified MSCE to maintain the OS system."
Well, judging by your reference to MCSEs, I'm forced to assume that you are assuming that my reference to open source products necessarily equates to choosing Linux over Windows. Which it does not.
Regardless, this "vendor lock-in" is really not an issue. Basically, because we are not the creators of the open source software in question, we actually have little advantage over our clients in terms of knowledge and resources for support. We have to pour through the same newsgroups that their own IT departments would have to pour through in order to diagnose a problem. So there's really little advantage for them to insist on continually hiring us to support the system, when all we would do is precisely the same thing their own IT people would do. Granted, we wouldn't recommend a specific open source solution if we didn't have some experience with it, but over time their own IT staff will acquire that experience as well.
On the other hand, if we were to sell them a proprietary solution, we have the benefit of partnerships and certifications which we can use to "lock them in", or at least give them the illusion of being "locked in".
To put this in perspective, let's look at a real example. We do a lot of J2EE development. We could sell a client a complete proprietary IBM package, including WebSphere for the application server and WSAD for the IDE. This means they will primarily rely on IBM for the bulk of their support, or else turn to us, as we have lots of WebSphere certified people (myself included). Or, we can sell them an open source solution that includes JBoss for the application server and Eclipse for the IDE. Eclipse is open source, but it's primarily backed by IBM, so they would still have IBM available for support, as well as us, as well as the Internet community (it's all too easy to assume that "open source" equals "some virgin hacker in a basement", but that's not always the case). JBoss comes with plenty of readily available support -- lots of books on the subject, newsgroups, etc.
As far as application servers go, JBoss is no more complicated than WebSphere (WebSphere requires a certain amount of "command-line configuration" and "regular updates"). Eclipse and WSAD are actually pretty much the same tool (WSAD is built out of Eclipse). I don't see how using tools such as these locks our customers into relying on us to support them.
Which is not to say that "locking them in" is a bad thing, from a business perspective. I just don't think it's an accurate assessment in this case.
Your response makes me sad. How are we to get PHBs past the perception of open source as sloppy unsupported crap slapped together by idiots in basements, if we can't even get geeks past this perception. Yes, some of it is. The same is true of some of the crappy closed source software that is for sale these days. We don't recommend crappy unsupported software to our clients, whether it's open source or proprietary.
I'm quite happy to report that this is not entirely the case everywhere in the industry. I happen to work for a consulting company that has become quite fascinated in recent times with the magic that is open source. And we love selling open source-based solutions to our customers, who in turn, love buying them.
Basically, the business logic goes something like this:
We can build your application in one of two ways.
$5000 for proprietary products (app servers, IDEs, etc.), and $5000 for our time and effort (total = $10000), or...
$1000 for proprietary products (the rest are all open source), and $7000 for our time and effort (total = $8000)
Needless to say, this goes over well for the client ($8000 expense is better than $10000 expense), and also for us ($7000 revenue is better than $5000 revenue ).
Obviously, I'm just picking numbers at random, but I think you get my point.
Not every client is eager to jump on open source tools, but more and more they're finding that it's a really good idea. Especially when a major consulting company with an excellent reputation (ie. us) comes along and tells them that this is a good idea. People tend to listen to us, because we tend (historically speaking) to be right a lot of the time.
PHBs might tend to be stuck in the mindset that "if it's free, it must suck, if it's expensive, it must be worth it". But when they pay a high-priced consultant to come in and give them advice, and that consultant says "you know, you can buy IBM's WebSphere Portal Server for $140,000 per CPU, or you can use the open source Jetspeed, which is practically the same thing, in fact, WebSphere Portal is basically just Jetspeed repackaged with some extra tools that you probably don't even need," even PHBs can understand that kind of logic.
Wow. I'm stunned by these responses. Everyone who's responded gets multitudes of telemarketing calls every day. I'm a homeowner with a listed phone number, but still almost never receive a single one.
This is what I meant about the regional thing. I live in Canada. Is it all over the US that telemarketers are like this? Are there other Canadians (or any other non-Americans) who also get deluged with spam-calls?
Is this a regional thing or something? I'm stunned that someone would claim 50% of their calls are from telemarketers. On average, I would estimate that I get 2 or 3 telemarketing calls per year. Is it normal for people to receive that many telemarketing calls?
First, I'd recommend seeing what's in use in the industry in your area. Where I live, almost nobody's using.NET, while J2EE is big and getting bigger. I'm a consultant, so it's important I focus on what local businesses need the most. Last year I was planning to start learning.NET, but ended up heading down the J2EE path instead..NET looks cool, and I still plan to do some work with it in the future, but right now Java, JSP, servlets, EJBs, and portlets are the skills in high demand around here, so that's what I'm focusing on.
I'm primarily a Java programmer, so I should be forgiven for that blunder. Well, except that right at this particular point in time, I happen to be doing some enhancements on our intranet using ASP (the pre-.NET VB form of it).
.NET is a framework that is not tied to any specific language. ANY language could be made into a.NET language. C++, C#, ASP, VB -- these are the primary languages Microsoft has chosen to use with.NET, but any language could be used. Other vendors are already releasing.NET versions of various development tools, although off the top of my head I don't remember which ones are already out or in the works, but essentially you could have PHP.NET, Delphi.NET, Java.NET (hey, it could happen), even PowerBuilder.NET (it's in the works).
Maybe the problem is that you got too "involved" in it.
I've been a casual Simpsons fan for years. I don't watch it religiously. There are plenty of episodes I've never seen. But whenever I happen to have the TV on and it starts, I put aside all other plans I may have had for the upcoming half hour and laugh my silly ass off. I love The Simpsons.
As a result, I tend to see reruns more often than new shows, so I don't get to see them "in order", just randomly chosen from throughout the history. I think it's better that way. I haven't truly noticed a decline. Obviously there are some episodes that are funnier than others, but even the one that the article ranked as the worst episode is one that I recall finding quite funny -- although I agree that it was a bad knock-up of the older "Lisa's Wedding" episode, which is a classic in my mind.
Neither does using less-functional technology, simply because it's "new" and "exciting".
This has nothing to do with "nostalgia". It's not nostalgia to use technology that does the job. The frikkin' airplane is old technology. Do we use it because of nostalgia? No, we use it because it does the job. Period.
And what's this crap about taking away space from newer technology? My PC case is about 80% empty space. I could stick a pillow in there and still have room to add a couple more drives. Space is not the issue. The floppy serves a purpose, and it's so cheap that I just don't see any reason not to have one. I've still got plenty of room for newer, more exciting technologies.
Slashdot Mirror
So, a store that doesn't sell any Linux software is now going to stop selling Linux software. Bastards! Oh wait.....
Perhaps they had an analyst estimate the time/effort involved in fixing this issue, and found that it's based on such a fundamental flaw in the very foundation of NT 4.0 that it would take until well past June 30th to code a fix. If that's the case, then they're not actually cutting off the support early.
I dunno. Just a thought.
Fun quote extracted from the article: "There was really nothing like Grand Theft Auto a few years ago." -- um, actually there was something very much like Grand Theft Auto a few years ago. It was called...... GRAND THEFT AUTO. The game came out in, like, 1996 or something like that. Or does "a few years ago" translate to "more than 7 years ago"?
I definitely wouldn't say the Puzzle genre is dying. It's just moved to a new medium. Sure, few are interested in spending $40+ on a Puzzle game for their XBox or PS2, but many people waste many hours playing online Puzzle games. I think what it comes down to is not that these genres area all necessarily dead or dying, but they're not good candidates for console games.
I guess the folks at GameSpy think "Game Industry" = "Console Industry".
Anyway, when all was said and done, I had fixed it as best I could, and I wrote up a report which I placed on his desktop explaining what was wrong, how it happened as best as I could figure, what I did to fix it, and what he can do to prevent it in the future.
I think I'm going to keep a copy of that report to turn it into a template (mostly for the "what you can do in the future" section), and put it on a CD to include in my "Tech Support Kit".
Not everyone wants to learn what sort of maintenance things they can/should do, but some folks are willing to learn, and are actually even willing to do them. If I ever get so inundated with these "projects" that I decide to start charging, those are the people who will get the discounted rate. :)
You're silly.
But seriously, the world really doesn't need more pointless, unenforceable laws regulating what adults can do by themselves (or with a loved one, as the case occasionally is) in the privacy of their own homes.
I do realize we're talking about Utah here, so something like that is unfortunately the sort of thing that could happen, but don't even those who are so obsessed with sex that they feel the need to attempt to erase any reference to its existence from their reality realize that law enforcement resources are better used hunting down murderers, rapists, and kidnappers of young girls than ordinary people who've been classified as "criminals" simply because somebody else has a serious hang-up about all things sexual?
Whew! That was along sentence.
Um, that's because...... they're not a methodology.
Every programmer uses a pattern, whether they realize it or not. The point of studying design patterns is to be aware of them, and how best to use them, and how to identify which ones to use, and when.
Methodologies, on the other hand, are not used by every programmer. That's quite unfortunate.
Unfortunately, one of our network guys knocked out the Exchange Server. I haven't had a single email all day, and man am I jonesin'!
This seems an odd criticism. It seems you're criticizing AOP for what people can do with it when using it incorrectly. In that case, all programming should be criticized, since all programming (AOP, OOP, procedural, whatever) can be made to be extremely ugly and unmaintainable when done incorrectly.
AOP is not supposed to be used the way you've described it. I won't throw away the concept simply because somebody who doesn't know what they're doing might mess things up. I'll just try to make sure the only people using it on my project know what they're doing.
Actually, I think that's kind of the point of Aspect-Oriented Development. Basically, somebody ignored the dogmatic preaching of the OO-obsessed long enough to realize that there are some things that OO just doesn't handle properly. So he came up with a different way to do it, and it's AO. It's not a new dogma to replace OO, it's just a way to handle what OO is lacking in.
That seems unlikely. First of all, what incentive do developers have to migrate away from Windows development? As long as the vast majority of users are runing Windows, there is no incentive whatsoever for commercial developers to make anything but Windows applications. And as along as the vast majority of commercial developers are making Windows applications, there is no incentive for users to migrate away from Windows. It's an infinite loop.
You also mention .NET as one of the evils. I'm curious why you think this is so. .NET is actually a great incentive for developers, particularly in corporate IT departments, to continue developing for the Windows platform.
If users are still primarily using Windows because developers are primarily writing for Windows (which, in turn, is because users are using Windows, etc.), then OEMs will continue to sell it, and especially so if businesses continue to use it as well. And there is little incentive for companies to switch desktop OSes right now (servers are a different story).
The crappy new licensing scheme is one thing that will have a small effect on IT departments. But most companies, particularly large companies, will not switch just because of that.
I honestly don't see Microsoft maintaining the dominance they enjoy today. I see the Microsoft of the future looking like the IBM of today. They'll still be massive, and a huge influence on the industry, just not a "Super Power" like they currently are.
Absolutely. And, like all my other toys (with the exception of a few Star Wars figures that lost their heads), it was in great shape.
My toys saw much use, but tended to remain in excellent shape.
The only thing I kept was my 12" Chewbacca.
I'd tell the 12-year old me the same thing that the 30-year old me told me when I was 12.
While you're at it, hang on to the Battlestar Galactica ones, too. That Ceylon Raider that actually fires the missiles will one day be extremely rare. And that Land Rover, too.
Other than that, just carry on.
This is happening. The various Linux distributions are the most obvious example, although the documentation and support do cost money, while the software remains free. They're still much cheaper than closed source alternatives.
I agree that open source in general has a long way to go on this issue, but a great many open source products are, right now, perfectly viable alternatives to costly closed source products. My favourite example is Eclipse, which is my Java IDE of choice. Why spend thousands of dollars on JBuilder or WSAD (which is Eclipse, only with a big price tag attached), when Eclipse is free and does (almost) everything you could ever want an IDE to do. It may not have the support options that something like JBuilder has, but here's the thing: I've never needed support. It's a solid product. On those rare occasions where you might have a problem with it, there is plenty of information online, but I've never known anyone to need it.
Well, judging by your reference to MCSEs, I'm forced to assume that you are assuming that my reference to open source products necessarily equates to choosing Linux over Windows. Which it does not.
Regardless, this "vendor lock-in" is really not an issue. Basically, because we are not the creators of the open source software in question, we actually have little advantage over our clients in terms of knowledge and resources for support. We have to pour through the same newsgroups that their own IT departments would have to pour through in order to diagnose a problem. So there's really little advantage for them to insist on continually hiring us to support the system, when all we would do is precisely the same thing their own IT people would do. Granted, we wouldn't recommend a specific open source solution if we didn't have some experience with it, but over time their own IT staff will acquire that experience as well.
On the other hand, if we were to sell them a proprietary solution, we have the benefit of partnerships and certifications which we can use to "lock them in", or at least give them the illusion of being "locked in".
To put this in perspective, let's look at a real example. We do a lot of J2EE development. We could sell a client a complete proprietary IBM package, including WebSphere for the application server and WSAD for the IDE. This means they will primarily rely on IBM for the bulk of their support, or else turn to us, as we have lots of WebSphere certified people (myself included). Or, we can sell them an open source solution that includes JBoss for the application server and Eclipse for the IDE. Eclipse is open source, but it's primarily backed by IBM, so they would still have IBM available for support, as well as us, as well as the Internet community (it's all too easy to assume that "open source" equals "some virgin hacker in a basement", but that's not always the case). JBoss comes with plenty of readily available support -- lots of books on the subject, newsgroups, etc.
As far as application servers go, JBoss is no more complicated than WebSphere (WebSphere requires a certain amount of "command-line configuration" and "regular updates"). Eclipse and WSAD are actually pretty much the same tool (WSAD is built out of Eclipse). I don't see how using tools such as these locks our customers into relying on us to support them.
Which is not to say that "locking them in" is a bad thing, from a business perspective. I just don't think it's an accurate assessment in this case.
Your response makes me sad. How are we to get PHBs past the perception of open source as sloppy unsupported crap slapped together by idiots in basements, if we can't even get geeks past this perception. Yes, some of it is. The same is true of some of the crappy closed source software that is for sale these days. We don't recommend crappy unsupported software to our clients, whether it's open source or proprietary.
Basically, the business logic goes something like this:
We can build your application in one of two ways.
- $5000 for proprietary products (app servers, IDEs, etc.), and $5000 for our time and effort (total = $10000), or...
- $1000 for proprietary products (the rest are all open source), and $7000 for our time and effort (total = $8000)
Needless to say, this goes over well for the client ($8000 expense is better than $10000 expense), and also for us ($7000 revenue is better than $5000 revenue ).Obviously, I'm just picking numbers at random, but I think you get my point.
Not every client is eager to jump on open source tools, but more and more they're finding that it's a really good idea. Especially when a major consulting company with an excellent reputation (ie. us) comes along and tells them that this is a good idea. People tend to listen to us, because we tend (historically speaking) to be right a lot of the time.
PHBs might tend to be stuck in the mindset that "if it's free, it must suck, if it's expensive, it must be worth it". But when they pay a high-priced consultant to come in and give them advice, and that consultant says "you know, you can buy IBM's WebSphere Portal Server for $140,000 per CPU, or you can use the open source Jetspeed, which is practically the same thing, in fact, WebSphere Portal is basically just Jetspeed repackaged with some extra tools that you probably don't even need," even PHBs can understand that kind of logic.
This is what I meant about the regional thing. I live in Canada. Is it all over the US that telemarketers are like this? Are there other Canadians (or any other non-Americans) who also get deluged with spam-calls?
Is this a regional thing or something? I'm stunned that someone would claim 50% of their calls are from telemarketers. On average, I would estimate that I get 2 or 3 telemarketing calls per year . Is it normal for people to receive that many telemarketing calls?
An anonymous reader writes...
(From the post)
...it's a complete non-story
Agreed. 'Nuff said.
First, I'd recommend seeing what's in use in the industry in your area. Where I live, almost nobody's using .NET, while J2EE is big and getting bigger. I'm a consultant, so it's important I focus on what local businesses need the most. Last year I was planning to start learning .NET, but ended up heading down the J2EE path instead. .NET looks cool, and I still plan to do some work with it in the future, but right now Java, JSP, servlets, EJBs, and portlets are the skills in high demand around here, so that's what I'm focusing on.
This is true.
I'm primarily a Java programmer, so I should be forgiven for that blunder. Well, except that right at this particular point in time, I happen to be doing some enhancements on our intranet using ASP (the pre-.NET VB form of it).
:)
Oops.
.NET is a framework that is not tied to any specific language. ANY language could be made into a .NET language. C++, C#, ASP, VB -- these are the primary languages Microsoft has chosen to use with .NET, but any language could be used. Other vendors are already releasing .NET versions of various development tools, although off the top of my head I don't remember which ones are already out or in the works, but essentially you could have PHP.NET, Delphi.NET, Java.NET (hey, it could happen), even PowerBuilder.NET (it's in the works).
I've been a casual Simpsons fan for years. I don't watch it religiously. There are plenty of episodes I've never seen. But whenever I happen to have the TV on and it starts, I put aside all other plans I may have had for the upcoming half hour and laugh my silly ass off. I love The Simpsons.
As a result, I tend to see reruns more often than new shows, so I don't get to see them "in order", just randomly chosen from throughout the history. I think it's better that way. I haven't truly noticed a decline. Obviously there are some episodes that are funnier than others, but even the one that the article ranked as the worst episode is one that I recall finding quite funny -- although I agree that it was a bad knock-up of the older "Lisa's Wedding" episode, which is a classic in my mind.
Neither does using less-functional technology, simply because it's "new" and "exciting".
This has nothing to do with "nostalgia". It's not nostalgia to use technology that does the job. The frikkin' airplane is old technology. Do we use it because of nostalgia? No, we use it because it does the job. Period.And what's this crap about taking away space from newer technology? My PC case is about 80% empty space. I could stick a pillow in there and still have room to add a couple more drives. Space is not the issue. The floppy serves a purpose, and it's so cheap that I just don't see any reason not to have one. I've still got plenty of room for newer, more exciting technologies.