I doubt they are "factualy accurate". I have been close to three or four news stories in my life. So far I have never seen the news get any of the details right. If I had to make a judgement, I would say they got about 20% of the details right. They report on things they don't know. They don't check up on the facts.
Example I work for a compnay where a bank we had some loans with accused us of over-infating the value of the company to get a larger loan. Well, beause as some time we talked to the bank on the phone, they went to a Federal Judge and got a warrant for Wire Fraud.
So the FBI storms the building, I help their crew pull all the data they need from our computer systems. 80 computers, and they only one they take was a computer in a meeting room which had a hard drive go out on it the day before. Since it was the one computer I would not allow them to pull data off of (duh, it had a broken hard drive) they siezed it. News that night runs a story that over 100 computers were siezed.
2 weeks later the news covred a story where they said that the FBI had analyzed our financials and found such and such out. Two days later I got a call from the Lab at the FBI asking which version of the accouting software we used that we were running and what were the passwords.
If that is the general quality of reporting and getting the facts right. I am afraid that every time I turn on the TV and watch the news, or read a newspaper I actually get dummer.
The problem with.NET/Mono is even though the language is a ECMA standard. There are things in.NET that are patented and live outside that standard. The only way for MONO to be 100% compatible is the bring in things that Microsoft has the right to sue over.
In the short term, due to the license agreement between Microsoft and Novel, the MONO folks at Novel can even implement these features and they are OK if you get your Linux/MONO combo from Novel. If anyone else uses that code, again Microsoft has the right to sue.
Right now, it does not matter if it is true or not. Microsoft loves FUD and as long as there is a specter of fear over this, it gives the MS platform an advantage over the Linux platform. And that is what really counts.
Yes I did. I was not required to learn anything at all about the engine of the car. There is not even a requirement to understand the lights that say "check engine" or "oil". How many RPM's are bad for the car? What should my tire pressure be? How do I open the hood? None of those things are requirements.
Knowing how to open the door, operate the gas/break, read the stuff in the dash, that is about the same as "put a CD in" or "click on that icon there."
There is a requirement on how operate a car. Not how to buid, fix, troubleshoot, or maintain one.
Probably. Not that it is imposible for Mac OSX and Linux to be compromised. But right now the numbers show that almost all bot net activity comes from compromised Windows PC's.
The average user wants to be able to use a computer like they use a car, or a door, or a toaster, or a toilet. No need for technical training, no cryptic messages, etc. The problem is a computer is not that kind of device. It is more like an aircraft. If you don't gain some level of technial expertise, it is easy to "crash and burn" the system.
It is a crime to put John Q Public on the internet with a Windows PC. Watching it is like watchin a baby seal be clubbed to death. They are helpless and have no clue the danger they are in.
If the government, or banks or anyone with a vested interest in the web being secure (let alone spam free) was serious. Every user would be given a liveCD of some Linux to run on their computer to browse the internet.
Wordperfect replaced Wordstar because WordPerfect is night and day, leaps and bounds better than Wordstar.
The others, Microsoft illegaly levereged their monopoly status to kill those other products.
The PC market was younger and was growing at such a fast pace that if you could put your stuff on NEW PC's while DOS or windows was being installed on it. In a year you would have over 50% of the market and in 2 years 80%.
Wordperfect replaced Wordstar by adding new customers more than just replacing WordStar on old computers. It did this by offering at full price the best product on the market.
Microsoft did this by "bundeling" it's office apps for $50 bucks when you purchased your new computer with DOS/Windows. They only had to do this for 3 years to kill off their competitors regardless if their product offered any benefits over the competitors products or not.
Without being a skilled Forth programmer, it would be hard to tell what it is good for. It is still used by NASA. It is easy to port to new platforms. It is very compact. One advantage is that a skillful Forth programmer may experiment more to find the optimal way to write an app.
In Forth circiles on of the advantages is the ability to find the "ah" factor. When you have found the right solution to a problem, it is very evident how right the solution feels.
Microsoft designed a single user OS with no in built security in a time where networks were rare and have been forced to continue on with it by their customer base. All security ended up being tacked on because MS cant afford to kill legacy applications.
I can agree with the first and third statements but not the second. Microsoft was NOT forced to continue on by their customer base. They had a choice. Now that choice may have been to develop a better product with no backward compatibility, and thus risk people sticking with DOS or moving to something else like beOS. But it was Microsoft's choice to create a backward compatible but network insecure product, not the customers.
And just like you can walk into ANY McDonalds in the world and get the same food with no surprises, the same can go for television.
In Star Trek TOS, we have Kirk, Spock, Bones, Scotty, etc. We care about the characters. We know how they should each act, etc. The fun comes from seeing them put into different situations and seeing how they work through them.
It is the only reason to watch something like Star Trek Voyager. Where each episode they would kill people off, or mutate or something and then hit the big ol' reset button to reset things back to how they were at the start of the episode.
If all you wanted was an episode of trek where a problem happens, they try <insert technobable here> but it does not work, things get worse so in desperation they try <insert more technobable> and that works. Then in sickbay or whatever the Dues Ex Machina happens so we are ready for next week. Pure comfort food.
Week 1: The different versions of windows Vista and what they do and do not have in them.
Week 2: Whats new in Windows Vista
Week 3: Disk Volumes and Partitioning Schemes
Week 4: Performing an Upgrade Install
Week 5: Performing a Clean Install
Week 6: Setting up a Dual Boot System
Week 7: Networking
Week 8: File Permissions
Week 9: Sharing Files
Week 10: Printing
If you have ever installed windows from scratch, then Weeks 1 to 4 should take a single 2 hour lecture to cover. The problem is most of the class has never done an install. So now we are back to massive quantities of reading, and questions just to make sure they understand how to partition a drive. When actually doing a nuke and paves (partition and install windows) will get you there much faster than the read/homework/test cycle.
Which is what makes me despair. With apologies to H.L. Mencken, "The public should not witness the making of a CIS degree nor of sausages." The more I know about getting this piece of paper the more I think that I will be going to work for idiots if they use having one of these degrees as an indicator of any type of competency in a subject.
I have done some consulting work in the past. It is funny. A full time job for $20 an hour plus benefits, requires a degree. But if you have a friend recommend you to someone important, you can "consult" for the company at $50.00 an hour and never need to prove any education.
I was between jobs and attened a community college for a year. For the most part, what a waste of time. I found any "Dummies" or "Learn xxxx in 24 hours" or "Learn xxx in 30 days" book better than the textbooks the college used. It seems like they had a plan
1. Collect a tuition 2. Sell you a "text book" 3. The textbook is a bit of reading, then homework and a test. 4. The instructor was there to a) Repeat in Class what was in the book b) answer questions for the slower students about homework assignments c) grade homework. 5. Move at such a pace that after reading, writing, testing on a topic, in 2 weeks you could not remember what you had done. 6. Believe you had master of a topic even when you got 3 out of 10 questions wrong. (The guy who is wrong 30% of the time gets the same degree as the guy who is only wrong 2% of the time).
In my "vocational" CIS degree course work I had an instructor who only knew what Microsoft has told him to believe. And Instructor who said the book sucked but would not talk about anything that was NOT in the book. It was fustrating talking to a man with 30 years experience who would not tell me anything useful.
It was a total waste of time. I did not realize college was paying someone to verify I answered questiosn correctly to prove I read a chapter and a final test to prove I learned something. Maybe it is because I am 43 and not 19. But I KNOW if I have learned anything or not, I don't need 30 distracting questions for some to grade. I need to "apply" what I have leanred. Since I knew more than the instructors on many of the topics, and anytime I had a question they either did not know the answer to it, or dodged it, I was paying $75.00 a credit hour for a proctor to score my work not an instructor to teach me anything useful.
Examples: 10 weeks to learn how to install Windows Vista and set up printers and file sharing. 10 weeks to learn how to install Windows Server 2008 and set up DHCP, DNS, printers and file sharing 20 weeks to learn how to run Visual Dev Studio, and write a small application with variables, loops, subroutines and can open and read a text file.
I can lean more on any of these topics in 10 weeks of reading Slashdot than what I learned in class. I will never fear going up against a college graduate who graduated from the local community college.
I am all for anyone who will explain things the way I think and record it and put it up on Youtube. Especially since you can actualy email them anything you dont' follow or have a question about and there is a possibility or receiving some feedback.
Show me a computer a normal user could purchase like that in 1995 (cant)
Show me a computer a normal user could purchase like that in 2000 (cant)
Show me a computer a normal user could purchase like that in 2005 (cant)
Show me a computer a normal user could purchase like that in 2010 (can happen)
Show me a computer a normal user could purchase like that in 2015 (market will have shifted to laptops and handled devices)
With more things becoming "net centric" (I won't call it cloud computing). It is only a matter of time that any old computer will get the job done. Microsoft thrives on a 3 year upgrade cycle in an expanding desktop/laptop PC market. Apples owns the market above $1,000. As prices drop on hardware the "price" of windows is more and more of a computers price. If a PC is offered at $250.00 with Linux and $400.00 with Windows and Office. Their market will shrink further.
The PC market is likely to look very different between 2015 and 2020. More so than the changes in PC's from 1995 to 2010. Without a big breakthrough in mobile. Microsoft is going to be the king of the hill of a market no one wants.
Ok, call me paranoid. I just picked one of the major languages on the CLR. The same holds true of the other. In real life VB and C# run on the CLR. And not every facet of C#, VB or the CLR is free enough that I can be sure anything I write in it to be cross platform today does not violate some MS patent which MS will at some point later choose to enforce.
It is there right to enforce those patents. It is my right to choose a language and platform that will not land me in patent enforcement hell someday.
It's all "open" at CodePlex, except for the patent issues, NDA's, ownership of the code, what I can do with code I find there, etc. Microsoft means something different than what I mean when I think "I want to contribute to an 'Open' source project"
Which is why CodePlex is spurned. After 4 years they have 16,000 projects listed, not all active. Just sourceforge alone has over 230,000 with at least 80,000 projects active, or with beta code you can look at and use.
Are there any real success stories at CodePlex? I have not heard of any. Maybe next time I need a program I will do a CodePlex search for something. Which should be interesting, 80% of what I need will have to run in a Linux Environment.
Profile of a OSS Zealot: Thinks M$ is bad because M$ is big huh company lots of money, eats little children; Linux rocks, every OS steals code from linux, you to xBSD, that network stack is ours; GPL is the one and only opensource license, everything else must be compatible; Anything thats not copyleft is not free; Freedom is a word created by the FSF, and no one has the right to redefine it;
Profile of an OSS Realist:
Think Microsoft has a track record of looking out for its stockholders and has done so by abusively using its position as a monopoly.
Linux is a good OS, which I actually prefer over Windows. Every OS wants to borrow code and concepts from others. You can "borrow" concepts from Linux and not be sued. The same does not hold true for MS or MacOS X.
GPL is a very useful open source license. If you want to come to the biggest open source party out there, you need to be able to dance with the GPL. If you don't want to, fine. You just cant use GPL'd code. You will have to buy it elsewhere or write it yourself. Also don't expect folks to come along and improve your code for you if it is not GPL. The GPL is a free invitation for people to borrow your code and to improve it. If you choose not to leverage the power of the GPL, that is fine with me.
Define your terms. The freedom we are interested in here is the freedom to have access to the code and to be able to modify and use it and will remain that way so that it can not be revoked. Any code that does not live up to that standard is not "free" in every sense. Again, you get to decide what you think is Free (xBSD) and I get to decide what I think is free (GPL).
When someone who has chosen to invest in GPL software talks of freedom, a good definition can be found at the FSF. Take a look at Microsofts definition of "Genuine" or "Open". You have to understand their terms to know what you are getting. Same goes here, those terms have been staked out since the mid 1980s. When I talk to someone about software freedom we both know what we are talking about. Microsoft (among others) would like to redefine those terms. I don't get the right to say that xcalc is a "windows application" because it runs on Xwindows. When I say "windows application" it is commonly understood to mean it will run on Microsoft Windows. In the same way Free Software and Software Freedom has a common meaning and you will get flack if you come along and try to redefine what it means.
Still all is based on Microsoft Technologies. So if you design and "Open" killer application in VB dotNet it is not a threat. VB dotNet only runs on Windows. To properly implement it in Mono, you need the odd bits that Microsoft owns the patents on.
The idea is that you develop cool projects that the community can contribute to, but only the coolest of the cool and the best of the best will be able to run on Windows. That's what they call open source.
I would call it a failure. How long did it take source forge to be successful? 6 months? 12 months? Even after 48 months and Microsoft pouring money into it, it is still a failure.
But why should it not be. If I want to write real open source apps for linux or to be cross platform, I am going to use some "open" technology that makes sourceforge a better home than CodePlex. If I wanted to write something that was going to be Windows only, why not make it shareware, or a real paid for product? Which again would negate CodePlex.
What about other activities the brain is trained by? There are things that require the kind of "deep thought" that browsing the internet does not provide. Things such as programming, writing, or even solving complex puzzles.
Security is all or nothing. If you are not balls to the wall about it,why bother?
I have worked in an environment where you would be fired after 3 warnings for being more than 5 feet from your computer with the desktop unlocked, or writing down a password.
There are three types of environments out there. 1. Hardened, to the max, secure passwords, can't repeat, changed on a very regular basis, are not allowed to install or run any software not approved by IT. IT does sweeps, port scans, looks at logs, audits, etc. People are fired for ANY infraction. 2. Where they realize they don't want to bother with security, they use a standard password for any app that requires a password and they can't turn the feature off. 3. Places that think any level of security below how example 1 does it is "good enough", when in reality they are only as secure as example 2.
If I can't set up the most stringent rules and have the authority to see someone fired who breaks a rule, I want to disable as much security as possible.
I can not be accountable if someone comes in at 6:30 in the morning, sits down at your desk, reads the password off the post it note at your desk and proceeds to poison the data in all the excel spreadsheets. If ANYONE can get your password, I can't be expected to secure information you have the right to change. And no amount of Security Theater will change that.
Lies I have to tell at work. 1. Nope, I am not using that bandwith to do personal downloads. 2. Yup, our systems are secured with passwords and I can tell who is making deletes and edits. 3. Yup, we self audit ever 6 months but we could always pass a BSA audit.
I call BS. You can tell me that Windows 7 is more secure and has fewer venerabilities than the Linux kernel. But when you add it all up, you have to decide which one you can turn your workplace users loose and and keep secured.
In my experience that is Linux hands down. In the short term (the next 3 to 5 years), Linux exploits are not an issue. Right now I live in dread every day that the people who wrote AntiVirus 2009 will start installing it along with a root-kit and a signature based anti-cleanup tool to prevent removal.
Try running Windows Explorer that way. Since Windows "sees" a process already running it attaches to it. To bad that process is the current users process. You get another copy of explorer, it just is not an admin copy, it is another copy running as the current user.
There are ways around that, but I have not seen anyone post it in a long time. Plus some software does not play nice with Runas. Many HP printer installers will complain bitterly if you try to use RunAs to install them.
I have not run anything newer than Quickbooks 2005, but try getting that to function without admin privilages. Trying to run down every registry key and file system wide that needs the permissions changed is a real pain.
There are many places that run some windows app or another that will only run with full Administrator privileges. Any company that would change course and say "no" to such software could switch to Mac or Linux. Instead, they keep saying "Yes", and keep living with the administrative security nightmare of the worst that windows has to offer.
We'll see how long it takes Google to start frantically doing the back-stroke.
I don't think we will see Google doing a backstroke anytime soon. When you think about how badly Google was compromised, and what someone could do to them if they are every compromised like that again. What are their options.
1. Find a way to live without Microsoft and all the software that will ONLY run in a MS Environment.
or
2. Give to it, take the easy way, run MS software and just expect that you can survive any system breach no matter how badly you are compromised.
If it takes 5 years and a billion dollars, I am sure it will be worth it to Google in the long run. Also note. Google is not "talking" about switching. They are not trying to get a better price from Microsoft. They just quietly started to mandate that MS is not an option any longer.
I also agree that epub is the most sensible solution right now, but like I said it's not there yet and simply doesn't work for non-reflowable content (think anything rich media, graphic or design heavy) which is a lot of content...
Yes there is a lot of content that ePub does not address. But there is a whole lot more that it does address. There are millions of books that will do just fine without pictures. The next big hit by Steven King? It would work in ePub. Harry Potter? It will work in ePub. As a recreational reader, everything I would want to read could be done in ePub format.
Slashdot Mirror
I doubt they are "factualy accurate". I have been close to three or four news stories in my life. So far I have never seen the news get any of the details right. If I had to make a judgement, I would say they got about 20% of the details right. They report on things they don't know. They don't check up on the facts.
Example I work for a compnay where a bank we had some loans with accused us of over-infating the value of the company to get a larger loan. Well, beause as some time we talked to the bank on the phone, they went to a Federal Judge and got a warrant for Wire Fraud.
So the FBI storms the building, I help their crew pull all the data they need from our computer systems. 80 computers, and they only one they take was a computer in a meeting room which had a hard drive go out on it the day before. Since it was the one computer I would not allow them to pull data off of (duh, it had a broken hard drive) they siezed it. News that night runs a story that over 100 computers were siezed.
2 weeks later the news covred a story where they said that the FBI had analyzed our financials and found such and such out. Two days later I got a call from the Lab at the FBI asking which version of the accouting software we used that we were running and what were the passwords.
If that is the general quality of reporting and getting the facts right. I am afraid that every time I turn on the TV and watch the news, or read a newspaper I actually get dummer.
The problem with .NET/Mono is even though the language is a ECMA standard. There are things in .NET that are patented and live outside that standard. The only way for MONO to be 100% compatible is the bring in things that Microsoft has the right to sue over.
In the short term, due to the license agreement between Microsoft and Novel, the MONO folks at Novel can even implement these features and they are OK if you get your Linux/MONO combo from Novel. If anyone else uses that code, again Microsoft has the right to sue.
Right now, it does not matter if it is true or not. Microsoft loves FUD and as long as there is a specter of fear over this, it gives the MS platform an advantage over the Linux platform. And that is what really counts.
Yes I did. I was not required to learn anything at all about the engine of the car. There is not even a requirement to understand the lights that say "check engine" or "oil". How many RPM's are bad for the car? What should my tire pressure be? How do I open the hood? None of those things are requirements.
Knowing how to open the door, operate the gas/break, read the stuff in the dash, that is about the same as "put a CD in" or "click on that icon there."
There is a requirement on how operate a car. Not how to buid, fix, troubleshoot, or maintain one.
Probably. Not that it is imposible for Mac OSX and Linux to be compromised. But right now the numbers show that almost all bot net activity comes from compromised Windows PC's.
The average user wants to be able to use a computer like they use a car, or a door, or a toaster, or a toilet. No need for technical training, no cryptic messages, etc. The problem is a computer is not that kind of device. It is more like an aircraft. If you don't gain some level of technial expertise, it is easy to "crash and burn" the system.
It is a crime to put John Q Public on the internet with a Windows PC. Watching it is like watchin a baby seal be clubbed to death. They are helpless and have no clue the danger they are in.
If the government, or banks or anyone with a vested interest in the web being secure (let alone spam free) was serious. Every user would be given a liveCD of some Linux to run on their computer to browse the internet.
Wordperfect replaced Wordstar because WordPerfect is night and day, leaps and bounds better than Wordstar.
The others, Microsoft illegaly levereged their monopoly status to kill those other products.
The PC market was younger and was growing at such a fast pace that if you could put your stuff on NEW PC's while DOS or windows was being installed on it. In a year you would have over 50% of the market and in 2 years 80%.
Wordperfect replaced Wordstar by adding new customers more than just replacing WordStar on old computers. It did this by offering at full price the best product on the market.
Microsoft did this by "bundeling" it's office apps for $50 bucks when you purchased your new computer with DOS/Windows. They only had to do this for 3 years to kill off their competitors regardless if their product offered any benefits over the competitors products or not.
Without being a skilled Forth programmer, it would be hard to tell what it is good for. It is still used by NASA. It is easy to port to new platforms. It is very compact. One advantage is that a skillful Forth programmer may experiment more to find the optimal way to write an app.
In Forth circiles on of the advantages is the ability to find the "ah" factor. When you have found the right solution to a problem, it is very evident how right the solution feels.
Microsoft designed a single user OS with no in built security in a time where networks were rare and have been forced to continue on with it by their customer base. All security ended up being tacked on because MS cant afford to kill legacy applications.
I can agree with the first and third statements but not the second. Microsoft was NOT forced to continue on by their customer base. They had a choice. Now that choice may have been to develop a better product with no backward compatibility, and thus risk people sticking with DOS or moving to something else like beOS. But it was Microsoft's choice to create a backward compatible but network insecure product, not the customers.
It is called "comfort food".
And just like you can walk into ANY McDonalds in the world and get the same food with no surprises, the same can go for television.
In Star Trek TOS, we have Kirk, Spock, Bones, Scotty, etc. We care about the characters. We know how they should each act, etc. The fun comes from seeing them put into different situations and seeing how they work through them.
It is the only reason to watch something like Star Trek Voyager. Where each episode they would kill people off, or mutate or something and then hit the big ol' reset button to reset things back to how they were at the start of the episode.
If all you wanted was an episode of trek where a problem happens, they try <insert technobable here> but it does not work, things get worse so in desperation they try <insert more technobable> and that works. Then in sickbay or whatever the Dues Ex Machina happens so we are ready for next week. Pure comfort food.
Week 1: The different versions of windows Vista and what they do and do not have in them.
Week 2: Whats new in Windows Vista
Week 3: Disk Volumes and Partitioning Schemes
Week 4: Performing an Upgrade Install
Week 5: Performing a Clean Install
Week 6: Setting up a Dual Boot System
Week 7: Networking
Week 8: File Permissions
Week 9: Sharing Files
Week 10: Printing
If you have ever installed windows from scratch, then Weeks 1 to 4 should take a single 2 hour lecture to cover. The problem is most of the class has never done an install. So now we are back to massive quantities of reading, and questions just to make sure they understand how to partition a drive. When actually doing a nuke and paves (partition and install windows) will get you there much faster than the read/homework/test cycle.
Which is what makes me despair. With apologies to H.L. Mencken, "The public should not witness the making of a CIS degree nor of sausages." The more I know about getting this piece of paper the more I think that I will be going to work for idiots if they use having one of these degrees as an indicator of any type of competency in a subject.
I have done some consulting work in the past. It is funny. A full time job for $20 an hour plus benefits, requires a degree. But if you have a friend recommend you to someone important, you can "consult" for the company at $50.00 an hour and never need to prove any education.
I was between jobs and attened a community college for a year. For the most part, what a waste of time. I found any "Dummies" or "Learn xxxx in 24 hours" or "Learn xxx in 30 days" book better than the textbooks the college used. It seems like they had a plan
1. Collect a tuition
2. Sell you a "text book"
3. The textbook is a bit of reading, then homework and a test.
4. The instructor was there to a) Repeat in Class what was in the book b) answer questions for the slower students about homework assignments c) grade homework.
5. Move at such a pace that after reading, writing, testing on a topic, in 2 weeks you could not remember what you had done.
6. Believe you had master of a topic even when you got 3 out of 10 questions wrong. (The guy who is wrong 30% of the time gets the same degree as the guy who is only wrong 2% of the time).
In my "vocational" CIS degree course work I had an instructor who only knew what Microsoft has told him to believe. And Instructor who said the book sucked but would not talk about anything that was NOT in the book. It was fustrating talking to a man with 30 years experience who would not tell me anything useful.
It was a total waste of time. I did not realize college was paying someone to verify I answered questiosn correctly to prove I read a chapter and a final test to prove I learned something. Maybe it is because I am 43 and not 19. But I KNOW if I have learned anything or not, I don't need 30 distracting questions for some to grade. I need to "apply" what I have leanred. Since I knew more than the instructors on many of the topics, and anytime I had a question they either did not know the answer to it, or dodged it, I was paying $75.00 a credit hour for a proctor to score my work not an instructor to teach me anything useful.
Examples:
10 weeks to learn how to install Windows Vista and set up printers and file sharing.
10 weeks to learn how to install Windows Server 2008 and set up DHCP, DNS, printers and file sharing
20 weeks to learn how to run Visual Dev Studio, and write a small application with variables, loops, subroutines and can open and read a text file.
I can lean more on any of these topics in 10 weeks of reading Slashdot than what I learned in class. I will never fear going up against a college graduate who graduated from the local community college.
I am all for anyone who will explain things the way I think and record it and put it up on Youtube. Especially since you can actualy email them anything you dont' follow or have a question about and there is a possibility or receiving some feedback.
They lost 711 million last quarter on search, compared to like 470 million this time last year and they are doing pretty well on search?
Please explain your logic?
Depends on WHEN you ask that question.
Show me a computer a normal user could purchase like that in 1995 (cant)
Show me a computer a normal user could purchase like that in 2000 (cant)
Show me a computer a normal user could purchase like that in 2005 (cant)
Show me a computer a normal user could purchase like that in 2010 (can happen)
Show me a computer a normal user could purchase like that in 2015 (market will have shifted to laptops and handled devices)
With more things becoming "net centric" (I won't call it cloud computing). It is only a matter of time that any old computer will get the job done. Microsoft thrives on a 3 year upgrade cycle in an expanding desktop/laptop PC market. Apples owns the market above $1,000. As prices drop on hardware the "price" of windows is more and more of a computers price. If a PC is offered at $250.00 with Linux and $400.00 with Windows and Office. Their market will shrink further.
The PC market is likely to look very different between 2015 and 2020. More so than the changes in PC's from 1995 to 2010. Without a big breakthrough in mobile. Microsoft is going to be the king of the hill of a market no one wants.
Ok, call me paranoid. I just picked one of the major languages on the CLR. The same holds true of the other. In real life VB and C# run on the CLR. And not every facet of C#, VB or the CLR is free enough that I can be sure anything I write in it to be cross platform today does not violate some MS patent which MS will at some point later choose to enforce.
It is there right to enforce those patents. It is my right to choose a language and platform that will not land me in patent enforcement hell someday.
It's all "open" at CodePlex, except for the patent issues, NDA's, ownership of the code, what I can do with code I find there, etc. Microsoft means something different than what I mean when I think "I want to contribute to an 'Open' source project"
Which is why CodePlex is spurned. After 4 years they have 16,000 projects listed, not all active. Just sourceforge alone has over 230,000 with at least 80,000 projects active, or with beta code you can look at and use.
Are there any real success stories at CodePlex? I have not heard of any. Maybe next time I need a program I will do a CodePlex search for something. Which should be interesting, 80% of what I need will have to run in a Linux Environment.
Profile of a OSS Zealot:
Thinks M$ is bad because M$ is big huh company lots of money, eats little children;
Linux rocks, every OS steals code from linux, you to xBSD, that network stack is ours;
GPL is the one and only opensource license, everything else must be compatible;
Anything thats not copyleft is not free;
Freedom is a word created by the FSF, and no one has the right to redefine it;
Profile of an OSS Realist:
Think Microsoft has a track record of looking out for its stockholders and has done so by abusively using its position as a monopoly.
Linux is a good OS, which I actually prefer over Windows. Every OS wants to borrow code and concepts from others. You can "borrow" concepts from Linux and not be sued. The same does not hold true for MS or MacOS X.
GPL is a very useful open source license. If you want to come to the biggest open source party out there, you need to be able to dance with the GPL. If you don't want to, fine. You just cant use GPL'd code. You will have to buy it elsewhere or write it yourself. Also don't expect folks to come along and improve your code for you if it is not GPL. The GPL is a free invitation for people to borrow your code and to improve it. If you choose not to leverage the power of the GPL, that is fine with me.
Define your terms. The freedom we are interested in here is the freedom to have access to the code and to be able to modify and use it and will remain that way so that it can not be revoked. Any code that does not live up to that standard is not "free" in every sense. Again, you get to decide what you think is Free (xBSD) and I get to decide what I think is free (GPL).
When someone who has chosen to invest in GPL software talks of freedom, a good definition can be found at the FSF. Take a look at Microsofts definition of "Genuine" or "Open". You have to understand their terms to know what you are getting. Same goes here, those terms have been staked out since the mid 1980s. When I talk to someone about software freedom we both know what we are talking about. Microsoft (among others) would like to redefine those terms. I don't get the right to say that xcalc is a "windows application" because it runs on Xwindows. When I say "windows application" it is commonly understood to mean it will run on Microsoft Windows. In the same way Free Software and Software Freedom has a common meaning and you will get flack if you come along and try to redefine what it means.
Still all is based on Microsoft Technologies. So if you design and "Open" killer application in VB dotNet it is not a threat. VB dotNet only runs on Windows. To properly implement it in Mono, you need the odd bits that Microsoft owns the patents on.
The idea is that you develop cool projects that the community can contribute to, but only the coolest of the cool and the best of the best will be able to run on Windows. That's what they call open source.
I would call it a failure. How long did it take source forge to be successful? 6 months? 12 months? Even after 48 months and Microsoft pouring money into it, it is still a failure.
But why should it not be. If I want to write real open source apps for linux or to be cross platform, I am going to use some "open" technology that makes sourceforge a better home than CodePlex. If I wanted to write something that was going to be Windows only, why not make it shareware, or a real paid for product? Which again would negate CodePlex.
What about other activities the brain is trained by? There are things that require the kind of "deep thought" that browsing the internet does not provide. Things such as programming, writing, or even solving complex puzzles.
Security is all or nothing. If you are not balls to the wall about it,why bother?
I have worked in an environment where you would be fired after 3 warnings for being more than 5 feet from your computer with the desktop unlocked, or writing down a password.
There are three types of environments out there.
1. Hardened, to the max, secure passwords, can't repeat, changed on a very regular basis, are not allowed to install or run any software not approved by IT. IT does sweeps, port scans, looks at logs, audits, etc. People are fired for ANY infraction.
2. Where they realize they don't want to bother with security, they use a standard password for any app that requires a password and they can't turn the feature off.
3. Places that think any level of security below how example 1 does it is "good enough", when in reality they are only as secure as example 2.
If I can't set up the most stringent rules and have the authority to see someone fired who breaks a rule, I want to disable as much security as possible.
I can not be accountable if someone comes in at 6:30 in the morning, sits down at your desk, reads the password off the post it note at your desk and proceeds to poison the data in all the excel spreadsheets. If ANYONE can get your password, I can't be expected to secure information you have the right to change. And no amount of Security Theater will change that.
Lies I have to tell at work.
1. Nope, I am not using that bandwith to do personal downloads.
2. Yup, our systems are secured with passwords and I can tell who is making deletes and edits.
3. Yup, we self audit ever 6 months but we could always pass a BSA audit.
they would've been safe for the most part.
And I am sure that inspires a lot of confidence in a company that is being hacked by the government of a foreign country.
And I agree it was their own fault. Either for running Windows in the first place if it can't be secured. Or for not securing it.
I call BS. You can tell me that Windows 7 is more secure and has fewer venerabilities than the Linux kernel. But when you add it all up, you have to decide which one you can turn your workplace users loose and and keep secured.
In my experience that is Linux hands down. In the short term (the next 3 to 5 years), Linux exploits are not an issue. Right now I live in dread every day that the people who wrote AntiVirus 2009 will start installing it along with a root-kit and a signature based anti-cleanup tool to prevent removal.
Yes, they do.
Try running Windows Explorer that way. Since Windows "sees" a process already running it attaches to it. To bad that process is the current users process. You get another copy of explorer, it just is not an admin copy, it is another copy running as the current user.
There are ways around that, but I have not seen anyone post it in a long time. Plus some software does not play nice with Runas. Many HP printer installers will complain bitterly if you try to use RunAs to install them.
What part of "as a developer" did you miss?
I have not run anything newer than Quickbooks 2005, but try getting that to function without admin privilages. Trying to run down every registry key and file system wide that needs the permissions changed is a real pain.
There are many places that run some windows app or another that will only run with full Administrator privileges. Any company that would change course and say "no" to such software could switch to Mac or Linux. Instead, they keep saying "Yes", and keep living with the administrative security nightmare of the worst that windows has to offer.
We'll see how long it takes Google to start frantically doing the back-stroke.
I don't think we will see Google doing a backstroke anytime soon. When you think about how badly Google was compromised, and what someone could do to them if they are every compromised like that again. What are their options.
1. Find a way to live without Microsoft and all the software that will ONLY run in a MS Environment.
or
2. Give to it, take the easy way, run MS software and just expect that you can survive any system breach no matter how badly you are compromised.
If it takes 5 years and a billion dollars, I am sure it will be worth it to Google in the long run. Also note. Google is not "talking" about switching. They are not trying to get a better price from Microsoft. They just quietly started to mandate that MS is not an option any longer.
I also agree that epub is the most sensible solution right now, but like I said it's not there yet and simply doesn't work for non-reflowable content (think anything rich media, graphic or design heavy) which is a lot of content...
Yes there is a lot of content that ePub does not address. But there is a whole lot more that it does address. There are millions of books that will do just fine without pictures. The next big hit by Steven King? It would work in ePub. Harry Potter? It will work in ePub. As a recreational reader, everything I would want to read could be done in ePub format.