second, for all the/. FUD and hyperbole about the evils of software patents, the big winners in recent years have been the small independent developers like mike doyle and thomas woolston. and it is the goliaths such as microsoft, e-bay, and barnes and noble, and soon IBM, who have had to pay.
Oh yeah, lets all cheer on Mike Doyle with his company Eolas. They contributed lots.. software? no.. hauling back world wide web innovation 5 years.. yes.
I'm sorry, but I don't find what nearly amounts to extortion to be considered 'winning'.
Yes, it looks like it is tailored to building web applications and web services. Though with the current direction of the industry, I think more and more applications are being pushed to the web, instead of being fat-client/server applicatons. At least the smaller type projects that this tool is targetting.
I also agree that Java is a more complicated language, and so it will hinder being able to do some things in the GUI builder. However VB.Net has gotten much more complex than VB 6, and so the differences and gap in 'ease-of-use' have become smaller.
I doubt it will be free. But hopefully they do not make it $1000/seat, and relegate the tool to the dustpin. If they charge around $100-$150, and the tool works I can see it becoming very popular.
Frankly, I have been burnt by microsoft enough times, that I won't do anything with.NET unless it's a client deployed application that I understand will be limited to a 9x/win2k/XP environment. Java would of been my next choice if we had to suport macs or linux, but we don't.
There are a lot of good things about.Net that actually made it a decent choice for the server, IF you are a pure-Windows shop already. VS.Net makes building web services and such very, very easy to do. So please do not dismiss.Net as junk relegated to the client only. I will agree it is not as mature as Java, but to deny that it has any advantages over Java is being blind.
Not all projects are the same, and sometimes it really does make sense to use one tool over another.
That is because the world has woken up to the fact that writing most applications in managed code (.Net and Java for example) is a good idea. No more buffer overflows, no array out-of-bounds, no crazy user input bringing the whole system down, no more worrying about details of memory management and resource leaks.
C++ and C should be used only where they are needed. In the kernel of the OS, and in applications that absolutely need to touch to levels below what the OS normally handles, like RDBMS do.
Something occured to me as I was reading the article. I find it almost too hard to comprehend the author actually believed what he wrote. Personally, I think the article was a somewhat elegant troll. He decided to write something completely off base and semi-contraversial about modern computers, find some way to tie it to the Matrix (ride the hype for all its worth!), and end with a such a ridiculous and fear-mongering conclusion that it will make people remember the article (and author and the Guardian) for at least longer than it takes to finish their morning coffee.
No, the logic of ones and zeros (true and false) is really the lowest level you can go. Everything else, including the transistors are built on the logic. And be careful with the analogy of the lowest level of it being electrons. The fact that today's computers are operated with electrical energy is merely an implementation detail. The first computer was a mechanical device, and the next generation of computers are likely to be based on fiber-optics.
When CASE tools/visual programming finally succeed in replacing 'code writing' with 'diagram drawing' then computers drawing boxes are your future programmers.
I think that will never happen. Code writing will definitely get easier and more abstracted, but there are things much easier, or only possible to implement in code than through a CASE tool.
Plus with each generation of CASE tools you are limited to the constraints of what the original designers of the tool could comprehend. I doubt the tools designed 10 years ago could handle a concept as radical as a KaZaa-like P2P architecture. It is true that with each generation of these tools, they are able to handle more and more, but it is a sort of never-ending race.
Well, managed code (both.Net and Java) protects against most of these errors. Array bounds and most types of naughty input crashing the application are protected against in.Net and Java. What it doesn't protect against, is stupid programmer errors like SQL Injection attacks.
Yes they have a lot of control over the desktop market, but not in the server market. They have pretty much saturated the desktop market. If they are going to grow like they have in the past, they need to find new markets and succeed in those markets like gaming consoles, server software, and embedded devices. So far they are not fairing that well in all of these markets.
And utterly destroy email in the process. Just think of all of the additional infrastructure that would have to be put in place to manage a micropayment system for email. Instant messaging ( or a derivative of it ) will completely take over in this case. Instead of having one big open email system based on SMTP where everyone and anyone is allowed to send email, it will decline into a bunch of closed systems.
Well, according to a CNET article, some senators are saying they will be negotiating over the weekend and return to the topic next week. So maybe it's not quite dead yet.
A PBX is an internal phone system: a privatebranch exchange.
The 'tie lines' you speak of are probably leased lines from various telcos. There is no way any company could afford to run its own physical wire all the way around the world to connect all of its offices. But by changing over their internal phone system to VoIP, they can now easily use the Internet and other data networks to carry their voice traffic from branch-to-branch. And so now they no longer have to pay all the various telephone companies for these leased lines, they only have one bill now, for internet access.
The difference between other industries is that software by nature seems too easily distributed illegally, and therefore without revenue. It's not like physical consumables which aren't duplicated/shared by the consumer.
It's a double-sided sword. The very nature that makes software so easily distributed illegally, also makes it very cheap to distribute legally. And that is why some companies like Microsoft have something like 80-90% margins on some of their products!
So long as pure software companies can keep piracy under control reasonably they will always be making lots of money. Complete control is impossible, but if you make it sufficiently hard to for Joe Blow to pirate the software, you've won the battle. The same thing is happening in the music industry, the RIAA is not really seeking the complete removal of all piracy. Media content by its very nature, is impossible to stop entirely. So long as people can listen to it, they will find a way to pirate it. But if it becomes hard enough for the average user to find/download, they will have won their war.
Niche piracy avenues like Direct Connect, IRC, etc. will always be around because they are not as easy to use for non-technical users. The content and software industries do not really care about these places, so long as they don't improve to the point where they become easy enough for anyone to search & download from.
Agreed, the sweet spot for Sun and AMD I think will be in selling 2-way and 4-way boxes. That is something that Dell doesn't have the research and development to do anything more than put together parts in bare bones commodity boxes. Sun's expertise has always been in building complete systems. They need to grow that knowledge base to include AMD chip based systems running both Linux and Solaris, and transform themselves into a company more reliant on revenue from services and support than selling uber-expensive hardware. People are willing to pay a small premium if it will get them really good service with the box. But they aren't willing to pay outrageous prices, where performance will suffer and the only good thing is the support.
They still have very good brand recognition in the big enterprises, and they should capitalize on that before it is gone.
I see this as a real possibility, if Sun's management at least will wake up to the possibility. In recent history, they seem to be showing no ability to execute well on many different fronts.
They need to abandon the SPARC ship, but they still have a lot of good engineering talent in that division so it would be a waste to just let them all go. They need to move that talent to working on AMD's chips, and compete with Intel not on pure price, but new features as well. Intel is a slow moving giant, if they can stay nimble and innovative enough to move ahead of Intel, it will bring them a lot of success. I'm tired of the constant churn to only build purely faster processors. Hyper-threading has been one nice innovation, but I think both companies are capable of introducing further technologies instead of just upping clock speeds.
I think that Sun should merge with AMD. AMD seems to be doing a lot of good things right now in competing with Intel, and by combining the know-how from the SPARC engineering to making AMD chips they could probably go even farther. Then Sun could built in additional features on top of the base AMD architecture for use in their home-brew systems ( while still selling the basic chips to other manufacturers), and people will have a new choice instead of IBM when they want really reliable Intel-compatible servers.
Has anyone done a comparison between the routing efficiency of using an old Pentium running Linux for a router, compared to the black-box commodity NetGear/Linux routers?
I am considering replacing my Linksys with a box running Linux so that I can run additional features like a 6to4 gateway, but I don't want to lose any efficiency of the network. Is there even a difference? Or will the Linux box be faster?
I'm not so sure. Most of them appear to be automatic sales by top executives. It is fairly common practice for senior management to diversify their investments.
Slashdot Mirror
second, for all the /. FUD and hyperbole about the evils of software patents, the big winners in recent years have been the small independent developers like mike doyle and thomas woolston. and it is the goliaths such as microsoft, e-bay, and barnes and noble, and soon IBM, who have had to pay.
Oh yeah, lets all cheer on Mike Doyle with his company Eolas. They contributed lots.. software? no.. hauling back world wide web innovation 5 years.. yes.
I'm sorry, but I don't find what nearly amounts to extortion to be considered 'winning'.
Fatal Exception Occured.
Computer: "To be or not to be a calculator, that is the question."
Poor choice of words, but right idea. Innovative it is not. Good business sense it is (at least on Microsoft's behalf).
Yeah, with the huge NEUSPEED sticker to stick across the CD drive opening on the front of the computer.
"But.. but.. it will make my car^H^H^Hcomputer go faster!"
Yes, it looks like it is tailored to building web applications and web services. Though with the current direction of the industry, I think more and more applications are being pushed to the web, instead of being fat-client/server applicatons. At least the smaller type projects that this tool is targetting.
I also agree that Java is a more complicated language, and so it will hinder being able to do some things in the GUI builder. However VB.Net has gotten much more complex than VB 6, and so the differences and gap in 'ease-of-use' have become smaller.
I doubt it will be free. But hopefully they do not make it $1000/seat, and relegate the tool to the dustpin. If they charge around $100-$150, and the tool works I can see it becoming very popular.
Frankly, I have been burnt by microsoft enough times, that I won't do anything with .NET unless it's a client deployed application that I understand will be limited to a 9x/win2k/XP environment. Java would of been my next choice if we had to suport macs or linux, but we don't.
.Net that actually made it a decent choice for the server, IF you are a pure-Windows shop already. VS.Net makes building web services and such very, very easy to do. So please do not dismiss .Net as junk relegated to the client only. I will agree it is not as mature as Java, but to deny that it has any advantages over Java is being blind.
There are a lot of good things about
Not all projects are the same, and sometimes it really does make sense to use one tool over another.
That is because the world has woken up to the fact that writing most applications in managed code (.Net and Java for example) is a good idea. No more buffer overflows, no array out-of-bounds, no crazy user input bringing the whole system down, no more worrying about details of memory management and resource leaks.
C++ and C should be used only where they are needed. In the kernel of the OS, and in applications that absolutely need to touch to levels below what the OS normally handles, like RDBMS do.
Something occured to me as I was reading the article. I find it almost too hard to comprehend the author actually believed what he wrote. Personally, I think the article was a somewhat elegant troll. He decided to write something completely off base and semi-contraversial about modern computers, find some way to tie it to the Matrix (ride the hype for all its worth!), and end with a such a ridiculous and fear-mongering conclusion that it will make people remember the article (and author and the Guardian) for at least longer than it takes to finish their morning coffee.
No, the logic of ones and zeros (true and false) is really the lowest level you can go. Everything else, including the transistors are built on the logic. And be careful with the analogy of the lowest level of it being electrons. The fact that today's computers are operated with electrical energy is merely an implementation detail. The first computer was a mechanical device, and the next generation of computers are likely to be based on fiber-optics.
When CASE tools/visual programming finally succeed in replacing 'code writing' with 'diagram drawing' then computers drawing boxes are your future programmers.
I think that will never happen. Code writing will definitely get easier and more abstracted, but there are things much easier, or only possible to implement in code than through a CASE tool.
Plus with each generation of CASE tools you are limited to the constraints of what the original designers of the tool could comprehend. I doubt the tools designed 10 years ago could handle a concept as radical as a KaZaa-like P2P architecture. It is true that with each generation of these tools, they are able to handle more and more, but it is a sort of never-ending race.
The embedded market is much larger than the PDA market. Think cellphones. Think consumer electronics, connected DVD players, industrial products, etc.
Well, managed code (both .Net and Java) protects against most of these errors. Array bounds and most types of naughty input crashing the application are protected against in .Net and Java. What it doesn't protect against, is stupid programmer errors like SQL Injection attacks.
Yes they have a lot of control over the desktop market, but not in the server market. They have pretty much saturated the desktop market. If they are going to grow like they have in the past, they need to find new markets and succeed in those markets like gaming consoles, server software, and embedded devices. So far they are not fairing that well in all of these markets.
And utterly destroy email in the process. Just think of all of the additional infrastructure that would have to be put in place to manage a micropayment system for email. Instant messaging ( or a derivative of it ) will completely take over in this case. Instead of having one big open email system based on SMTP where everyone and anyone is allowed to send email, it will decline into a bunch of closed systems.
Well, according to a CNET article, some senators are saying they will be negotiating over the weekend and return to the topic next week. So maybe it's not quite dead yet.
A PBX is an internal phone system: a private branch exchange.
The 'tie lines' you speak of are probably leased lines from various telcos. There is no way any company could afford to run its own physical wire all the way around the world to connect all of its offices. But by changing over their internal phone system to VoIP, they can now easily use the Internet and other data networks to carry their voice traffic from branch-to-branch. And so now they no longer have to pay all the various telephone companies for these leased lines, they only have one bill now, for internet access.
Compulsory licensing will not happen. The telco's tried to achieve this, and even with their massive lobbying power failed.
So they form a shell company called XYZ Music Inc. and put the music part of their business under that. Can anyone tell me why this wouldn't work?
The difference between other industries is that software by nature seems too easily distributed illegally, and therefore without revenue. It's not like physical consumables which aren't duplicated/shared by the consumer.
It's a double-sided sword. The very nature that makes software so easily distributed illegally, also makes it very cheap to distribute legally. And that is why some companies like Microsoft have something like 80-90% margins on some of their products!
So long as pure software companies can keep piracy under control reasonably they will always be making lots of money. Complete control is impossible, but if you make it sufficiently hard to for Joe Blow to pirate the software, you've won the battle. The same thing is happening in the music industry, the RIAA is not really seeking the complete removal of all piracy. Media content by its very nature, is impossible to stop entirely. So long as people can listen to it, they will find a way to pirate it. But if it becomes hard enough for the average user to find/download, they will have won their war.
Niche piracy avenues like Direct Connect, IRC, etc. will always be around because they are not as easy to use for non-technical users. The content and software industries do not really care about these places, so long as they don't improve to the point where they become easy enough for anyone to search & download from.
Agreed, the sweet spot for Sun and AMD I think will be in selling 2-way and 4-way boxes. That is something that Dell doesn't have the research and development to do anything more than put together parts in bare bones commodity boxes. Sun's expertise has always been in building complete systems. They need to grow that knowledge base to include AMD chip based systems running both Linux and Solaris, and transform themselves into a company more reliant on revenue from services and support than selling uber-expensive hardware. People are willing to pay a small premium if it will get them really good service with the box. But they aren't willing to pay outrageous prices, where performance will suffer and the only good thing is the support. They still have very good brand recognition in the big enterprises, and they should capitalize on that before it is gone.
I see this as a real possibility, if Sun's management at least will wake up to the possibility. In recent history, they seem to be showing no ability to execute well on many different fronts.
They need to abandon the SPARC ship, but they still have a lot of good engineering talent in that division so it would be a waste to just let them all go. They need to move that talent to working on AMD's chips, and compete with Intel not on pure price, but new features as well. Intel is a slow moving giant, if they can stay nimble and innovative enough to move ahead of Intel, it will bring them a lot of success. I'm tired of the constant churn to only build purely faster processors. Hyper-threading has been one nice innovation, but I think both companies are capable of introducing further technologies instead of just upping clock speeds.
I think that Sun should merge with AMD. AMD seems to be doing a lot of good things right now in competing with Intel, and by combining the know-how from the SPARC engineering to making AMD chips they could probably go even farther. Then Sun could built in additional features on top of the base AMD architecture for use in their home-brew systems ( while still selling the basic chips to other manufacturers), and people will have a new choice instead of IBM when they want really reliable Intel-compatible servers.
Has anyone done a comparison between the routing efficiency of using an old Pentium running Linux for a router, compared to the black-box commodity NetGear/Linux routers? I am considering replacing my Linksys with a box running Linux so that I can run additional features like a 6to4 gateway, but I don't want to lose any efficiency of the network. Is there even a difference? Or will the Linux box be faster?
I'm not so sure. Most of them appear to be automatic sales by top executives. It is fairly common practice for senior management to diversify their investments.