And this, in a nutshell, shows why.NET developers are often looked down on. Guttboy think that because you can download Visual Studio Express for free, there is no license cost.
He is completely unable to understand that it runs only on Windows and produces applications that only run on Windows. Both of which carry a license fee.
Bad developers are often perfectly capable of writing code, what they lack is the overview to get the complete picture. To get not just the immidiate effect of their design choices in the program but within the company.
This guy just can't see that by using.NET you tie yourself to MS and sooner or later you WILL pay through the nose for it because that is how MS operates. You don't think MS gives away free licenses if there wasn't a very clear line leading the customer to need the payed for version?
Next below is another developer making the claim a start-ip sure can easily afford the $99 dollar license fee... sure... except that the startup package is limited. LOOK at the license closely, there WILL be a reason for you having to shell out more. You don't think Billy boy got to be the richest man in the word by selling cheap stuff? It is an extra license here, a MS SQl license there, a server license, and before you know it you spend a juniors salary just on software without actually getting anything done yet.
.NET is the new Solaris. In the previous bubble countless startups foolishly decided they needed Solaris machines and when the bubble burts you could get them for a song. Part of the reason Sun failed, their market dried up when it was shown the survivers of the Bubble had done it on commodity hardware with free Linux.
Doesn't mean.NET doesn't have its uses but as person myself who has to comb through dozens of resume's to see which ones are worth an interview which is going to cost me a lot of time that I don't have or I wouldn't be looking to hire new people to help out, I tend to weed people out that don't instantly send up a flag "waste of time".
.NET developers are very high among them. Not so much because of their coding skills, I am sure there are plenty who are skilled enough. But coding skills are only a small part of what a CTO/boss is looking for. Most of it is an attitude that shows you have an understand of cost vs benefits. That you understand that there is often a finite budget and an infinite goal to be achieved with it. Sure, that is impossible BUT the more we can achieve NOW with the finite budget, the more budget we will have available in the future. 400 bucks for a license might not sound much to you and that frankly would be the end of the interview right there.
400 bucks is giving a developer a comfortable chair. A new phone, a long weekend off, a team dinner. And it is not 400 bucks. It is 400 bucks times the team size. And 400 bucks for one license, you will need more then one once you bite into the hook called MS Software. Office suit, Exchange server and god knows what else that a Linux shop gets for free with NO hassle tracking license use or the eternal risk of being auditted.
In a startup, a developer (A developer to me is more then a coder, a coder punches out code, a developer delivers a working profitable solution to a company) must be aware of the true costs of every action he takes. Startups are special places to work and not everyone is suited for it OR would even want to work there. They require more then just wage slaves.
What is most intresting is the reaction of the.NET developers. They have been told by an employer who is more successfull then most of them will ever be, that he has his doubts about.NET and will ask "why". Instead of answer the "why": he is attacked and called a fool.
Good job. That is exactly what an employer wants to hear. When I ask you why you did X based on your CV, you answer: "Your an idiot". Well, the job is yours, when can you start?
Why.NET. That is what he is asking if you RTFA. Am I to presume from the reactions so far that.NET developers can't answer or never bother to RTFA? Not good advertising either way.
In WW2, there were a lot of french people in Great Brittain and some have memories of wanting to pay in say a restaurant and being told "the bill has been paid" referring to the French soldiers protecting the British retreat at Dunkirk.
Now cowardly comedians who never fought for anything and would shit themselves if asked to defend their country claim the French are cowards.
But then we have taken coward actors over real heroes for a long time.
How willing is his army to be slaughtered by far superior western forces? Iraq was plenty willing to face Kuwait. Once the US came onto the scene the soldiers didn't know how fast to run. In fact, there are currently some reports of soldiers changing sides. They might take this turn of events as a way to save their own lives. Wouldn't want to be a government soldier when the rebels win.
Ad for whether it should have been done earlier. Not so long ago Muslims where saying that the killing of Muslims by Muslims was Muslim business and the civilized world should stay out. Some of the Muslims (arab legaue) changed their tone, meaning that no longer can it be seen as a pure western (kolonialism) action. Jordan might only bring a handful of planes but they will be Arab planes flown by (presumably) muslims fighting muslims who are killing muslims. THAT is a HUGE change in the region.
Westerners killing Muslims is bad. An allied force saving Muslim civilians from a universally denounced madmen, that is good. Early this month, the world wasn't ready. Lets hope this time it is.
Let us not forget that the world has practically no experience with doing this right. I am excited to be alive to see the changes in Egypt and other countries but geez god, this could so easily go very very wrong. Most of North Africa is in an uproar and the move of Saudia Arabia into Bahrein is scary as hell. This could easily result in a mass war between Muslim factions and slaughter on a scale unseen in... well quite a few years sadly. God we human beings suck.
You are aware that the techies don't see ads on the internet, don't watch ad blocks on the tv and have an mp3 player in their car?
Who exactly are they advertising to? The late late late adopters?
The problem is also from my own experiences is that people who are at the lower end of the market tend to have bad windows experiences. They don't have a choice for their desktop OS but are hardly going to want their phone to be as malware riddled as their desktops.
As a dutch person, I have of course followed this and the judge simply stated that with the current law, there is no ground for criminal prosecution in breaking into a PURE wifi-router. A lot of modern wifi-routers for consumers are no longer just plain routers but offer computer services like bittorrent and network attached storage.
Anyway, the judge did say you could start a civil case against the hacker.
But also keep in mind that the dutch legal system is extremely wonky, ruled by judges who are completely out of touch with reality. Yeah yeah, that is claim you can make in most countries but personally I expect this loophole, which it is because it goes against the spirit of the law, to be closed pretty fast.
Because right now, this judge has declared that taking fuel from his car is not theft. But oddly enough not said where he parks his car.
These guys are NOT firefighters. Fire fighters get in called AFTER shit has happened over which they had no control and take control and safe peoples lives.
Fire INSPECTORS are supposed to go in BEFORE shit happens and prevent it from ever happening.
I do not want a heroic nuclear engineer, I want one who is an abject coward and so takes every safety precaution before so that when the first real test of the safety comes along it doesn't fail so compeltly and utterly.
All the guys at Fukushima FAILED at their job. Their job was NOT to put the fire out but prevent it from ever happening. If your bus driver drives your bus into the river, do you then hail him as a hero for trying to swim to shore?
Yes, this goes against what people want to hear but it is common sense, do you want your airline pilot to make a heroic landing without fuel after he forgot to fuel up? Yes, yes you do but you would ALSO want him fired for making the mistake in the first place.
There has been renewed effort to get nuclear power accepted with claims it is safe. Yes so safe that they put backup generators where they are affected by fire and put reactors so close that a fire in one affects the others.
That is not the kind of thing you want to see in a nuclear reactor. If these guys had been heroes they would have fought not nuclear radition but politicians and have build safe reactors with reliable safety mechanisms, not ones that are destroyed in an earth quake in an earth quake zone.
Heroism is overcoming the odds, not causing them. Someone who climbs a mountain is not a hero. Someone who goes after them and gets them off is a hero.
Firefighters are heroes. Fire inspectors who fail to prevent fires are NOT even if they help in the putting out of the fire.
Critical thinking it is so essential in today's world.
As for honor and duty above all else, you are talking about nation that mass raped children in WW2 and slaughtered as many if not more then the nazi's.
Now mod me down for choosing not to live in lala-land.
But you are aware that Christians are the sequel to the Jews? And the muslims are the trilogy?
Just like the Matrix. The first is the best, the second sold well but sucked, the third... yuch.
Cue all the matrix fans shouting there was only ONE movie.
Wonder whose outraged nutters I should fear more, Islam or Matrix fans. Maybe they will fight each other trying to get to me and rid the world of two problems at once.
Oh okay, that is enough karma burning (wonder why insulting Muslims burns karma a concept from Hindu/Budhist and some other religions that involve curry)
To finalize this post. The flying spaghetti monster exist, I had him for dinner.
If all of the above is hopelessly confusing, please try to imagine this reality. When you buy your next Dell, you can choose a UI layout for MS Windows that goes anywhere from DOS to Windows 7 to Bob. While underneath it is the latest OS. Now, you might PICK your UI layout but not all programs you wish to run support it. So you might suddenly get a Windows 3.1 window mixed with your Aero display. Google says fuck you and does its own thing whatever you picked for its browser.
Now while there are a LOT of choices, two stand out. Gnome which looks a bit like OSX but not a lot and KDE which looks like Fisher Price did a Windows 95 skin. Both can... or could be heavily modified. That is, KDE becomes ever more modible. Gnome becomes less so.
The silly bit is that what people often like to mod is the login screen. GDM was moddible and then it was removed. LESS functionality as a feature. That is Gnome.
The problem is that both Gnome and KDE are suffering from "what to do next". As a desktop both achieved their goal long ago, so they wanted more and more. Is it the task of a desktop package to supply a video player? Especially video player with far less capabilities then easily available packages installed along side but not made the default? Ubuntu is NOT Microsoft after all. MS just can't go including closed sources payed for products for other companies in its offerings less the true cost of running MS and closed source becomes readily apparent (you did pay for Winzip didn't you Windows user)
Ubuntu CAN and does included countless 3rd party apps. It doesn't have to bother with its own meager zip only archive utility, it can use any of the superior opensource apps out there (Windows user, have you not replaced MS internal Zip support with anything more capable).
KDE especially seems to want to create a complete set of utilities... and fails... it is not that these utils are bad by itself, its notepad is far superior to MS Notepad but still hopelessly inferior to other offerings. MS can't offer those others, Ubuntu and other Disro's can. That is why it seems pointless for KDE to spend its efforts on countless apps that will be replaced instantly while its core desktop is lacking behind. Its network manager is not as smooth as that of Gnome. Its multipe windows settings is neither. Yes, they are in theory more configurable (you can set different wallpapers for each screen, you can select which soundcard should be preffered).
But all of it shows that neither Gnome or KDE are focussed enough anymore on what the end user wants. Gnome in its drive to be simple keeps removing the capability to tune Gnome to your liking. KDE remains horribly unfocussed and keeps giving me a messy early Windows experience. BOTH can be tuned to something smoother but geez gods, not everyone wants to.
Other desktop/windows managers? Enlightenment stuck still in some alpha state. The others focusing on low resource usage when you can't even buy a single core netbook anymore. Fully tricked out Ubuntu barely makes my computer tick over, any lower consumption of resources and my computer will shutdown.
That is the state of Linux. Is it bad? No, I still use it daily as my main and preffered desktop but only after heavy tuning. Tuning I have done for years now. I don't mind that much but having to fight Gnome everytime because they removed yet another feature seems such a waste and I just never liked KDE.
Do I really have to do what Vista buyers did at some point and install an older OS to keep working?
Is it really that hard to figure out what both Apple and MS fear?
Google, RIM, HP, Nokia, Sony, Intel and COUNTLESS others. Bam, there is google with 1 no 2 osses! BAM Rim, just goes to number 1 with its own OS. Here is HP! Another OS. Nokia... oh okay down for the count a bit but damn Meego was scary... Sony still examing its options. Intel... part of Wintel and publicly stated that Meego is still going.
They fear competition. Why do you think MS and Apple HATE the GPL and IBM loves it? Because companies like IBM and Intel won't be selling software, they sell services or hardware. Intel won't want you to buy a Meego Phone, it wants you to buy an Intel powered phone.
MS and Apple sell software (yes I know Apple sells hardware as well but what sells an Intel Mac, the hardware or the OS?) and competitions is coming in from all sides while at the same time they have a hard time competing on other platforms. MS WP7, not exactly taking off is it?
GPL allows not just competition but open competition, it chances the nature of the game. Intel wouldn't care if a hundred different Intel Phone makers spring up using Intel chips and maybe or maybe not Meega as the OS. As long as it sells its chips. MS cares if your next phone isn't running WP7. Same with Apple.
You might laugh at say a Red Hat compared to either of the closed source giants but sales are being lost. Worse, MS software buyers KNOW this and so can drive a harder bargain. Apple fears Android the same. Gosh yes, the iPhone is selling very well, but if it hadn't been for pesky linux and that damned GPL, the android sales would have been iPhone sales.
And app store developers fear the GPL as well. Who can compete? How many crappy video players exist for the iPhone? Would be solved in a flash by a VLC port, which would be free because you can always take the code and compile it yourself which has years ahead of any of its "rivals".
In fact that was one of the ideas behind the N900, linux nokia phone. Full Linux meaning you get all the goodies of a full linux distro ready to go. What remains to be sold? Just games and there are a ton of those also available already.
No, Apple fears the GPL because it fears its effect on its bottom line. Remember, Apple earns cash for every crappy app sold.
See this land here. That is holland... no sea right? That over there is the sea, up there behind the dunes. We are NOT below the sea... we are next to it. And a bit lower but NOT under it.
For those who are a bit to young, CD quality is NOT a very high standard. What it orginally meant is that it lacked the scratches of LP's. CD Quality meant the music stayed the same no matter how many times you played it and that error correction could correct (small) scratches. It did NOT and NEVER meant the ultimate in sound quality.
CD sound is compressed and leaves out "unneeded" bits of audio because it had to be processed by very early and cheap computers. You might as well say MP3 quality. Lossless copies of a lossy media are NOT the holy grail of HiFi.
Downloading in APE or Flac just means you skipped the step of going from lossy to even lossier. It does NOT mean you got the best sound possible at the moment.
Ideally, the music distributor would make use of the very low cost of internet distribution and make music available in a very high quality and then let the end consumer pick his own encoding. Problem solved. You don't think studios actually record music on CD's to start with right? Give us the original and then let us downgrade it ourselves. Oh and if in the process we can skip the guy that thinks every dial should be put to 11 when mastering a track... all the better.
Just maybe we could then pick different encodings for different uses. But no, that would ruin the music industries wet dream of selling us the same content over and over in different packages.
No it isn't censorship if I ban you from posting on my commercial service because any other commercial service is still available to you. Oh they censor too? Not my problem.
you are the kind of person who thinks signs like "Geine Juden" or "Whites only" are perfectly okay because they can go somewhere else don't they? You disgust me.
Floods are nasty but once they are done, they are done. They don't keep on killing for decades after. You don't rescue a drowning victim then have their hair fall out a year later.
Once you get a little bit older you might learn the secret of it all. It is that there is no perfect cure all system. The only thing that works long term, as in your life time, is to constantly find a balance while never actually achieving it.
This is not how people like to think, they want the hero to save the world at the end of the movie. Not spend infinity just avoiding total collapse.
In running a country, there is no end, no financial year, no last chapter. It is an ongoing concern that needs to readjust as the world changes.
Should high-tech firms receive a tax deduction to stimulate them? Yes... we need them to stimulate the economy.
Time passes...
Should high-tech firms receive a tax deduction to stimulate them? No... we got them, now their taxes can help to stimulate other sectors.
See what I did there? I changed a policy as the situation changed. How DARING of me!!! This is what most political parties with an ideology never do. Right - Left, it don't matter. Leave it to a republican and taxes for the rich would go to negative infinity. Leave it to Amnesty International and criminals would be out of jail before they commit the crime. Leave it to the green and humanity would be living on a very small isolated rock less it touch any piece of nature. Leave it to the Libertarians and we would have Somalia.
When you see Thatchet claim that the lady is not for turning, she shows just how bad a politician she was. Ruined the country.
Compromise? Yes, that is one word for it but really it is the realization that the needs of the country cannot be expressed by the needs of a singular group.
We need labour, we need high-tech, we need investors, we need rich people, we need poor people, we need unemployed...
Wait, what? We need unemployed? Yes, we do. Where else is a growing company going to get new people from? 0% unemployment is a nightmare for capitalists who know what they are talking about. Can you say salary inflation? Can you say stagnation?
So you might want to turn off the work stimulation projects BEFORE everyone actually got a job before you run out of people for the jobs. Immigration has proven to be less then an ideal method for solving this and once you got immigration going, it is hard to stop leading to masses of unemployed immigrants.
In politics you can never win because the game never ends. At best you can try to keep the ball somewhat under control. This means you got to shift back and forth on the same issue over and over. Do we build a nuclear plant? How about now? How about now? How about now? How about now? Yes, now it is a good idea.
ACTA seeks to create a cure all with no room for changes in the future. That is why it is bad. The patent system might need to be reformed now AND be reformed again in the future. And again. And again. The idea that you can draft a trade law NOW and be done with it forever and ever is just a silly idea that sadly seems ingrained in our conciousness. If only we did X all our problems would be solved forever. Nope.
Yeah, bread and circusses are cheap and the oil rich nations of the world can certainly afford to spend plenty. So why exactly are the oil rich Arab nations on fire? Lack of money? Really? Libya should be rolling in it.
Greed is all consuming. Why settle for a mere 10 billion if you can have a hundred by bleeding the people just a bit more? If Ghadaffi or whatever he is called had spend most of his fortune on buying bread and circusses and maybe an industry or two he would still be filthy rich and far more popular. But he didn't. Squeezed the country to the max until it broke. People are fighting tanks with what they can get hold off. That means bread and circusses completely failed.
And you are a fool if you think this can't happen in the west. Just see how easily Greece and Ireland fell. See the riots in London by students. Gosh, students rebel in Egypt, the english government applauds. Students rebel in London, shame!
Do you think that when Antionette said "let them eat cake" she saw the true problems in society? You can't see a revolution brewing until it boils over. If you could, people would do more to stop them.
Apple Fanboy: Oh wow, look at those shiny new features in this new product I can buy right now but won't really use and will restrict me in some horrible way.
MS Fanboy: Oh wow, look at those shiny new features MS is claiming will be in its product sometime soon but I got to buy it right now and just take their word for it.
Linux Fanboy: Oh wow, look at those shiny new features that Gnome has taken away, KDE has added with a horrible skin and insane configuration and Enlightenment has had in alpha state for about a decade now!
BSD Fanboy: Oh wow, look at those shiny new features everyone else had for a decade but are really really well tested and secure so nobody can penetrate my system and learn my secret to eternal life!
Apple, MS and Linux fanboys: AAAAH, The undead! Run for your lifes!
Don't forget the countless people on older Windows software that won't be supported. MS fanboys claim that this because IE9 needs the unique features of late Windows versions, despite Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari having the same features and can run on older OS'es some can even run on Linux.
What does that say about MS? Either they are not as capable as their competitors or not as willing.
Make no mistake. MS has NOT changed its attitude. It will simply do IE9 hoping it can dominate again, then ignore it. MS still hates the open web.
Moderation works if the moderators do NOT use moderation to push their own agenda.
Sadly as the article says, a LOT of people think provoking a debate is a bad thing. Oh dear, I might get some new info that doesn't sit well with my world view. HIDE IT!
A troll is someone who provokes for no other reason then to provoke. That doesn't mean all who provoke are trolls. Sometimes they just see the world a different way. By the logic of a lot of Slashdot moderators, Gene Roddenberry was a troll for having a white male and black woman kiss on TV. That certainly caused people to call for censorship and others that TV was not the right medium for creating a debate at this point in history.
The slashdot style moderation system, especially now since meta-moderation seems to be gone, is all to open to abuse where a bleeding heart tries to hide views he disagrees with.
It would help if the moderator had to at least specify WHY he thinks the troll is trolling and if the moderation options included choices like "don't agree with this" and more importantly "this is factually wrong as can be proven by reading these articles".
Now "troll" and "flamebait" are just translated as "do not like" and "do not want to hear this".
MS has in the past had its problems with delivering on time and companies have gotten burned if they planned a release of a product to need a unreleased MS product while MS was dragging its feet. Early Win95 games come to mind. There was a reason Quake was a DOS game. Blue Isle took a hit on making their next Battle Isle game require Win95.
I would be very hesistant to plan hardware yet on a completely unproven platform from a company that has never ever cared a tiny bit about its customers. See MS and the long long delay with 64 bit support until Intel and Dell were ready basically screwing AMD out of its lead advantage.
Just be careful taiwan, you don't want to end up with a stack of hardware getting outdated while MS delays the release month after month.
Gosh, didn't a LOT of people claim this teacher had been wrong and been violating the privacy of the students and what not. Wonder how the responses from the same people compare with their response to their story.
What Apple sells partially is a designed experience. A desgined experience is when something you do has been considered by someone else about how it makes you work.
Buy a HD from a computer store and it is an experience (everything you do is) but nobody has given it a second of thought how getting the HD in a piece of plastic made you feel. The wrapping is functional, nothing else. Yet, you still probably feel something. Some excitement about getting a new HD to store your porn... eh japanese girl group... eh American Chopper... not really any better is it.
When I bought a Drobo file server recently, the inside of the box was painted black. The wrapping was had a cloth feel to it and was black. SOMEBODY had chosen to do this. They had not just picked a box to hold the contents and printed what is inside on the outside, they had thought about what I would see when I opened the box and what it would make me feel.
Apple takes this a level further. All their boxes are clearly designed for far more then just holding their contents. Considering they are one of the biggest if not the biggest PC makers despite (or because of) not doing Windows, clearly people like it.
But creating a designed experience, where you control/dictate what the user feels, requires... control! HD makers have little choice in how people experience their product. It might be shipped from the shop in a box. I might get it from the store in just a wrapper. If I buy in bulk it might come in its original bulk packaging. Apple doesn't want that. It 'dictates' that you buy items in their box displayed in a certain way. It helps sell the quality/expensive hardware compared to the cheap crap because... well everything about its presentation shows it clearly must be better. (Lets not start one of those boring conversations about how your core2duo dell is cheaper then a quad sandy bridge macbook)
Controlling the users experience is about control. Obvious but people often fail to see just how far this goes. Take an amusement park ride. You sit "freely" in this cart being pulled along and things happen all around you. But they are controlled by the position of the cart and the cart determines your experience. I have been in "rides" where you walk and then controlling the action is far harder. An animatronic might fire behind or in front of me, I might even miss it, because the director can't control where I am and where I am looking. One ride has a bullet impacting the water a ride boat is floating on. Not nearly as effective if the boat is 10 meters away from it then when it happens right next to you. Control for an experience.
Why do you think Microsoft and for that matter most desktop makers worry so much about the startup sound. The sound creates an experience, a mood if you like, of what you are about to experience. It is typically a bright sound but not very musical that says "lets do stuff" without offending to much. Ubuntu goes furthest with its seemingly African inspired sound but it is hardly a tribal tune. Only the most extreme redneck could object (but no doubt would).
For Apple, creating this experience has worked well and Steve Jobs seems to believe that is essential and what people want. This is up for debate, do they buy apple purely for usability or because of the experience.
To show there is no clear answer, take sugar. You know, the stuff you put in your coffee. My supermarket has at least three brands of white refined beet sugar. There can be no variance in it except granular size because it is from the same factory and the law says exactly what can and cannot be in it. There is no b-grade sugar.
Yet, people buy the more expensive brands because... not the taste, not health reasons, not biologically grown... pure a different package. Experience, packaging, how it is sold. Matters.
Is the iPod and iTunes about a good music player and efficient and cheap music service or about giving the user an experience they like on an emotional level? Yes. The early iPods espec
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And this, in a nutshell, shows why .NET developers are often looked down on. Guttboy think that because you can download Visual Studio Express for free, there is no license cost.
He is completely unable to understand that it runs only on Windows and produces applications that only run on Windows. Both of which carry a license fee.
Bad developers are often perfectly capable of writing code, what they lack is the overview to get the complete picture. To get not just the immidiate effect of their design choices in the program but within the company.
This guy just can't see that by using .NET you tie yourself to MS and sooner or later you WILL pay through the nose for it because that is how MS operates. You don't think MS gives away free licenses if there wasn't a very clear line leading the customer to need the payed for version?
Next below is another developer making the claim a start-ip sure can easily afford the $99 dollar license fee... sure... except that the startup package is limited. LOOK at the license closely, there WILL be a reason for you having to shell out more. You don't think Billy boy got to be the richest man in the word by selling cheap stuff? It is an extra license here, a MS SQl license there, a server license, and before you know it you spend a juniors salary just on software without actually getting anything done yet.
.NET is the new Solaris. In the previous bubble countless startups foolishly decided they needed Solaris machines and when the bubble burts you could get them for a song. Part of the reason Sun failed, their market dried up when it was shown the survivers of the Bubble had done it on commodity hardware with free Linux.
Doesn't mean .NET doesn't have its uses but as person myself who has to comb through dozens of resume's to see which ones are worth an interview which is going to cost me a lot of time that I don't have or I wouldn't be looking to hire new people to help out, I tend to weed people out that don't instantly send up a flag "waste of time".
.NET developers are very high among them. Not so much because of their coding skills, I am sure there are plenty who are skilled enough. But coding skills are only a small part of what a CTO/boss is looking for. Most of it is an attitude that shows you have an understand of cost vs benefits. That you understand that there is often a finite budget and an infinite goal to be achieved with it. Sure, that is impossible BUT the more we can achieve NOW with the finite budget, the more budget we will have available in the future. 400 bucks for a license might not sound much to you and that frankly would be the end of the interview right there.
400 bucks is giving a developer a comfortable chair. A new phone, a long weekend off, a team dinner. And it is not 400 bucks. It is 400 bucks times the team size. And 400 bucks for one license, you will need more then one once you bite into the hook called MS Software. Office suit, Exchange server and god knows what else that a Linux shop gets for free with NO hassle tracking license use or the eternal risk of being auditted.
In a startup, a developer (A developer to me is more then a coder, a coder punches out code, a developer delivers a working profitable solution to a company) must be aware of the true costs of every action he takes. Startups are special places to work and not everyone is suited for it OR would even want to work there. They require more then just wage slaves.
What is most intresting is the reaction of the .NET developers. They have been told by an employer who is more successfull then most of them will ever be, that he has his doubts about .NET and will ask "why". Instead of answer the "why": he is attacked and called a fool.
Good job. That is exactly what an employer wants to hear. When I ask you why you did X based on your CV, you answer: "Your an idiot". Well, the job is yours, when can you start?
Why .NET. That is what he is asking if you RTFA. Am I to presume from the reactions so far that .NET developers can't answer or never bother to RTFA? Not good advertising either way.
Thanks for clearing that much up. But I, and I am sure lots of other slashdotters, am still unclear on one detail.
What is a female?
Do your research. India has decriminalized homo sexual activity in 2009 and nobody has been convicted for it in twenty years either.
In WW2, there were a lot of french people in Great Brittain and some have memories of wanting to pay in say a restaurant and being told "the bill has been paid" referring to the French soldiers protecting the British retreat at Dunkirk.
Now cowardly comedians who never fought for anything and would shit themselves if asked to defend their country claim the French are cowards.
But then we have taken coward actors over real heroes for a long time.
How willing is his army to be slaughtered by far superior western forces? Iraq was plenty willing to face Kuwait. Once the US came onto the scene the soldiers didn't know how fast to run. In fact, there are currently some reports of soldiers changing sides. They might take this turn of events as a way to save their own lives. Wouldn't want to be a government soldier when the rebels win.
Ad for whether it should have been done earlier. Not so long ago Muslims where saying that the killing of Muslims by Muslims was Muslim business and the civilized world should stay out. Some of the Muslims (arab legaue) changed their tone, meaning that no longer can it be seen as a pure western (kolonialism) action. Jordan might only bring a handful of planes but they will be Arab planes flown by (presumably) muslims fighting muslims who are killing muslims. THAT is a HUGE change in the region.
Westerners killing Muslims is bad. An allied force saving Muslim civilians from a universally denounced madmen, that is good. Early this month, the world wasn't ready. Lets hope this time it is.
Let us not forget that the world has practically no experience with doing this right. I am excited to be alive to see the changes in Egypt and other countries but geez god, this could so easily go very very wrong. Most of North Africa is in an uproar and the move of Saudia Arabia into Bahrein is scary as hell. This could easily result in a mass war between Muslim factions and slaughter on a scale unseen in... well quite a few years sadly. God we human beings suck.
You are aware that the techies don't see ads on the internet, don't watch ad blocks on the tv and have an mp3 player in their car?
Who exactly are they advertising to? The late late late adopters?
The problem is also from my own experiences is that people who are at the lower end of the market tend to have bad windows experiences. They don't have a choice for their desktop OS but are hardly going to want their phone to be as malware riddled as their desktops.
MS just doesn't have a rep.
As a dutch person, I have of course followed this and the judge simply stated that with the current law, there is no ground for criminal prosecution in breaking into a PURE wifi-router. A lot of modern wifi-routers for consumers are no longer just plain routers but offer computer services like bittorrent and network attached storage.
Anyway, the judge did say you could start a civil case against the hacker.
But also keep in mind that the dutch legal system is extremely wonky, ruled by judges who are completely out of touch with reality. Yeah yeah, that is claim you can make in most countries but personally I expect this loophole, which it is because it goes against the spirit of the law, to be closed pretty fast.
Because right now, this judge has declared that taking fuel from his car is not theft. But oddly enough not said where he parks his car.
These guys are NOT firefighters. Fire fighters get in called AFTER shit has happened over which they had no control and take control and safe peoples lives.
Fire INSPECTORS are supposed to go in BEFORE shit happens and prevent it from ever happening.
I do not want a heroic nuclear engineer, I want one who is an abject coward and so takes every safety precaution before so that when the first real test of the safety comes along it doesn't fail so compeltly and utterly.
All the guys at Fukushima FAILED at their job. Their job was NOT to put the fire out but prevent it from ever happening. If your bus driver drives your bus into the river, do you then hail him as a hero for trying to swim to shore?
Yes, this goes against what people want to hear but it is common sense, do you want your airline pilot to make a heroic landing without fuel after he forgot to fuel up? Yes, yes you do but you would ALSO want him fired for making the mistake in the first place.
There has been renewed effort to get nuclear power accepted with claims it is safe. Yes so safe that they put backup generators where they are affected by fire and put reactors so close that a fire in one affects the others.
That is not the kind of thing you want to see in a nuclear reactor. If these guys had been heroes they would have fought not nuclear radition but politicians and have build safe reactors with reliable safety mechanisms, not ones that are destroyed in an earth quake in an earth quake zone.
Heroism is overcoming the odds, not causing them. Someone who climbs a mountain is not a hero. Someone who goes after them and gets them off is a hero.
Firefighters are heroes. Fire inspectors who fail to prevent fires are NOT even if they help in the putting out of the fire.
Critical thinking it is so essential in today's world.
As for honor and duty above all else, you are talking about nation that mass raped children in WW2 and slaughtered as many if not more then the nazi's.
Now mod me down for choosing not to live in lala-land.
But you are aware that Christians are the sequel to the Jews? And the muslims are the trilogy?
Just like the Matrix. The first is the best, the second sold well but sucked, the third... yuch.
Cue all the matrix fans shouting there was only ONE movie.
Wonder whose outraged nutters I should fear more, Islam or Matrix fans. Maybe they will fight each other trying to get to me and rid the world of two problems at once.
Oh okay, that is enough karma burning (wonder why insulting Muslims burns karma a concept from Hindu/Budhist and some other religions that involve curry)
To finalize this post. The flying spaghetti monster exist, I had him for dinner.
Dear Windows user,
If all of the above is hopelessly confusing, please try to imagine this reality. When you buy your next Dell, you can choose a UI layout for MS Windows that goes anywhere from DOS to Windows 7 to Bob. While underneath it is the latest OS. Now, you might PICK your UI layout but not all programs you wish to run support it. So you might suddenly get a Windows 3.1 window mixed with your Aero display. Google says fuck you and does its own thing whatever you picked for its browser.
Now while there are a LOT of choices, two stand out. Gnome which looks a bit like OSX but not a lot and KDE which looks like Fisher Price did a Windows 95 skin. Both can... or could be heavily modified. That is, KDE becomes ever more modible. Gnome becomes less so.
If you have a strong stomach http://ultimateedition.info/Ultimate_Edition_2.8/8.png this blueness is a version of Ubuntu. It is actually a good attempt but the default skin is .... well... you know.
The silly bit is that what people often like to mod is the login screen. GDM was moddible and then it was removed. LESS functionality as a feature. That is Gnome.
The problem is that both Gnome and KDE are suffering from "what to do next". As a desktop both achieved their goal long ago, so they wanted more and more. Is it the task of a desktop package to supply a video player? Especially video player with far less capabilities then easily available packages installed along side but not made the default? Ubuntu is NOT Microsoft after all. MS just can't go including closed sources payed for products for other companies in its offerings less the true cost of running MS and closed source becomes readily apparent (you did pay for Winzip didn't you Windows user)
Ubuntu CAN and does included countless 3rd party apps. It doesn't have to bother with its own meager zip only archive utility, it can use any of the superior opensource apps out there (Windows user, have you not replaced MS internal Zip support with anything more capable).
KDE especially seems to want to create a complete set of utilities... and fails... it is not that these utils are bad by itself, its notepad is far superior to MS Notepad but still hopelessly inferior to other offerings. MS can't offer those others, Ubuntu and other Disro's can. That is why it seems pointless for KDE to spend its efforts on countless apps that will be replaced instantly while its core desktop is lacking behind. Its network manager is not as smooth as that of Gnome. Its multipe windows settings is neither. Yes, they are in theory more configurable (you can set different wallpapers for each screen, you can select which soundcard should be preffered).
But all of it shows that neither Gnome or KDE are focussed enough anymore on what the end user wants. Gnome in its drive to be simple keeps removing the capability to tune Gnome to your liking. KDE remains horribly unfocussed and keeps giving me a messy early Windows experience. BOTH can be tuned to something smoother but geez gods, not everyone wants to.
Other desktop/windows managers? Enlightenment stuck still in some alpha state. The others focusing on low resource usage when you can't even buy a single core netbook anymore. Fully tricked out Ubuntu barely makes my computer tick over, any lower consumption of resources and my computer will shutdown.
That is the state of Linux. Is it bad? No, I still use it daily as my main and preffered desktop but only after heavy tuning. Tuning I have done for years now. I don't mind that much but having to fight Gnome everytime because they removed yet another feature seems such a waste and I just never liked KDE.
Do I really have to do what Vista buyers did at some point and install an older OS to keep working?
Is it really that hard to figure out what both Apple and MS fear?
Google, RIM, HP, Nokia, Sony, Intel and COUNTLESS others. Bam, there is google with 1 no 2 osses! BAM Rim, just goes to number 1 with its own OS. Here is HP! Another OS. Nokia... oh okay down for the count a bit but damn Meego was scary... Sony still examing its options. Intel... part of Wintel and publicly stated that Meego is still going.
They fear competition. Why do you think MS and Apple HATE the GPL and IBM loves it? Because companies like IBM and Intel won't be selling software, they sell services or hardware. Intel won't want you to buy a Meego Phone, it wants you to buy an Intel powered phone.
MS and Apple sell software (yes I know Apple sells hardware as well but what sells an Intel Mac, the hardware or the OS?) and competitions is coming in from all sides while at the same time they have a hard time competing on other platforms. MS WP7, not exactly taking off is it?
GPL allows not just competition but open competition, it chances the nature of the game. Intel wouldn't care if a hundred different Intel Phone makers spring up using Intel chips and maybe or maybe not Meega as the OS. As long as it sells its chips. MS cares if your next phone isn't running WP7. Same with Apple.
You might laugh at say a Red Hat compared to either of the closed source giants but sales are being lost. Worse, MS software buyers KNOW this and so can drive a harder bargain. Apple fears Android the same. Gosh yes, the iPhone is selling very well, but if it hadn't been for pesky linux and that damned GPL, the android sales would have been iPhone sales.
And app store developers fear the GPL as well. Who can compete? How many crappy video players exist for the iPhone? Would be solved in a flash by a VLC port, which would be free because you can always take the code and compile it yourself which has years ahead of any of its "rivals".
In fact that was one of the ideas behind the N900, linux nokia phone. Full Linux meaning you get all the goodies of a full linux distro ready to go. What remains to be sold? Just games and there are a ton of those also available already.
No, Apple fears the GPL because it fears its effect on its bottom line. Remember, Apple earns cash for every crappy app sold.
See this land here. That is holland... no sea right? That over there is the sea, up there behind the dunes. We are NOT below the sea... we are next to it. And a bit lower but NOT under it.
What do you mean "yet".
For those who are a bit to young, CD quality is NOT a very high standard. What it orginally meant is that it lacked the scratches of LP's. CD Quality meant the music stayed the same no matter how many times you played it and that error correction could correct (small) scratches. It did NOT and NEVER meant the ultimate in sound quality.
CD sound is compressed and leaves out "unneeded" bits of audio because it had to be processed by very early and cheap computers. You might as well say MP3 quality. Lossless copies of a lossy media are NOT the holy grail of HiFi.
Downloading in APE or Flac just means you skipped the step of going from lossy to even lossier. It does NOT mean you got the best sound possible at the moment.
Ideally, the music distributor would make use of the very low cost of internet distribution and make music available in a very high quality and then let the end consumer pick his own encoding. Problem solved. You don't think studios actually record music on CD's to start with right? Give us the original and then let us downgrade it ourselves. Oh and if in the process we can skip the guy that thinks every dial should be put to 11 when mastering a track... all the better.
Just maybe we could then pick different encodings for different uses. But no, that would ruin the music industries wet dream of selling us the same content over and over in different packages.
No it isn't censorship if I ban you from posting on my commercial service because any other commercial service is still available to you. Oh they censor too? Not my problem.
you are the kind of person who thinks signs like "Geine Juden" or "Whites only" are perfectly okay because they can go somewhere else don't they? You disgust me.
Next time, just say you solved all your budget worries by cutting food out.
It works, absolutely 100% guaranteed.
Now if only we could get republicans to follow what they preach, then the world would be a better place in, what... about 1-3 weeks?
Floods are nasty but once they are done, they are done. They don't keep on killing for decades after. You don't rescue a drowning victim then have their hair fall out a year later.
Once you get a little bit older you might learn the secret of it all. It is that there is no perfect cure all system. The only thing that works long term, as in your life time, is to constantly find a balance while never actually achieving it.
This is not how people like to think, they want the hero to save the world at the end of the movie. Not spend infinity just avoiding total collapse.
In running a country, there is no end, no financial year, no last chapter. It is an ongoing concern that needs to readjust as the world changes.
Should high-tech firms receive a tax deduction to stimulate them? Yes... we need them to stimulate the economy.
Time passes...
Should high-tech firms receive a tax deduction to stimulate them? No... we got them, now their taxes can help to stimulate other sectors.
See what I did there? I changed a policy as the situation changed. How DARING of me!!! This is what most political parties with an ideology never do. Right - Left, it don't matter. Leave it to a republican and taxes for the rich would go to negative infinity. Leave it to Amnesty International and criminals would be out of jail before they commit the crime. Leave it to the green and humanity would be living on a very small isolated rock less it touch any piece of nature. Leave it to the Libertarians and we would have Somalia.
When you see Thatchet claim that the lady is not for turning, she shows just how bad a politician she was. Ruined the country.
Compromise? Yes, that is one word for it but really it is the realization that the needs of the country cannot be expressed by the needs of a singular group.
We need labour, we need high-tech, we need investors, we need rich people, we need poor people, we need unemployed...
Wait, what? We need unemployed? Yes, we do. Where else is a growing company going to get new people from? 0% unemployment is a nightmare for capitalists who know what they are talking about. Can you say salary inflation? Can you say stagnation?
So you might want to turn off the work stimulation projects BEFORE everyone actually got a job before you run out of people for the jobs. Immigration has proven to be less then an ideal method for solving this and once you got immigration going, it is hard to stop leading to masses of unemployed immigrants.
In politics you can never win because the game never ends. At best you can try to keep the ball somewhat under control. This means you got to shift back and forth on the same issue over and over. Do we build a nuclear plant? How about now? How about now? How about now? How about now? Yes, now it is a good idea.
ACTA seeks to create a cure all with no room for changes in the future. That is why it is bad. The patent system might need to be reformed now AND be reformed again in the future. And again. And again. The idea that you can draft a trade law NOW and be done with it forever and ever is just a silly idea that sadly seems ingrained in our conciousness. If only we did X all our problems would be solved forever. Nope.
Yeah, bread and circusses are cheap and the oil rich nations of the world can certainly afford to spend plenty. So why exactly are the oil rich Arab nations on fire? Lack of money? Really? Libya should be rolling in it.
Greed is all consuming. Why settle for a mere 10 billion if you can have a hundred by bleeding the people just a bit more? If Ghadaffi or whatever he is called had spend most of his fortune on buying bread and circusses and maybe an industry or two he would still be filthy rich and far more popular. But he didn't. Squeezed the country to the max until it broke. People are fighting tanks with what they can get hold off. That means bread and circusses completely failed.
And you are a fool if you think this can't happen in the west. Just see how easily Greece and Ireland fell. See the riots in London by students. Gosh, students rebel in Egypt, the english government applauds. Students rebel in London, shame!
Do you think that when Antionette said "let them eat cake" she saw the true problems in society? You can't see a revolution brewing until it boils over. If you could, people would do more to stop them.
Apple Fanboy: Oh wow, look at those shiny new features in this new product I can buy right now but won't really use and will restrict me in some horrible way.
MS Fanboy: Oh wow, look at those shiny new features MS is claiming will be in its product sometime soon but I got to buy it right now and just take their word for it.
Linux Fanboy: Oh wow, look at those shiny new features that Gnome has taken away, KDE has added with a horrible skin and insane configuration and Enlightenment has had in alpha state for about a decade now!
BSD Fanboy: Oh wow, look at those shiny new features everyone else had for a decade but are really really well tested and secure so nobody can penetrate my system and learn my secret to eternal life!
Apple, MS and Linux fanboys: AAAAH, The undead! Run for your lifes!
Don't forget the countless people on older Windows software that won't be supported. MS fanboys claim that this because IE9 needs the unique features of late Windows versions, despite Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari having the same features and can run on older OS'es some can even run on Linux.
What does that say about MS? Either they are not as capable as their competitors or not as willing.
Make no mistake. MS has NOT changed its attitude. It will simply do IE9 hoping it can dominate again, then ignore it. MS still hates the open web.
Moderation works if the moderators do NOT use moderation to push their own agenda.
Sadly as the article says, a LOT of people think provoking a debate is a bad thing. Oh dear, I might get some new info that doesn't sit well with my world view. HIDE IT!
A troll is someone who provokes for no other reason then to provoke. That doesn't mean all who provoke are trolls. Sometimes they just see the world a different way. By the logic of a lot of Slashdot moderators, Gene Roddenberry was a troll for having a white male and black woman kiss on TV. That certainly caused people to call for censorship and others that TV was not the right medium for creating a debate at this point in history.
The slashdot style moderation system, especially now since meta-moderation seems to be gone, is all to open to abuse where a bleeding heart tries to hide views he disagrees with.
It would help if the moderator had to at least specify WHY he thinks the troll is trolling and if the moderation options included choices like "don't agree with this" and more importantly "this is factually wrong as can be proven by reading these articles".
Now "troll" and "flamebait" are just translated as "do not like" and "do not want to hear this".
MS has in the past had its problems with delivering on time and companies have gotten burned if they planned a release of a product to need a unreleased MS product while MS was dragging its feet. Early Win95 games come to mind. There was a reason Quake was a DOS game. Blue Isle took a hit on making their next Battle Isle game require Win95.
I would be very hesistant to plan hardware yet on a completely unproven platform from a company that has never ever cared a tiny bit about its customers. See MS and the long long delay with 64 bit support until Intel and Dell were ready basically screwing AMD out of its lead advantage.
Just be careful taiwan, you don't want to end up with a stack of hardware getting outdated while MS delays the release month after month.
Can you imagine the place in prison hierarchy for comic book guy?
Sex, drugs and comic books... although since this is comic book guy, he probably skipped on sex... until now.
A while ago, this story: Teacher-Suspended-Over-Blog-About-Students.
Gosh, didn't a LOT of people claim this teacher had been wrong and been violating the privacy of the students and what not. Wonder how the responses from the same people compare with their response to their story.
What Apple sells partially is a designed experience. A desgined experience is when something you do has been considered by someone else about how it makes you work.
Buy a HD from a computer store and it is an experience (everything you do is) but nobody has given it a second of thought how getting the HD in a piece of plastic made you feel. The wrapping is functional, nothing else. Yet, you still probably feel something. Some excitement about getting a new HD to store your porn... eh japanese girl group... eh American Chopper ... not really any better is it.
When I bought a Drobo file server recently, the inside of the box was painted black. The wrapping was had a cloth feel to it and was black. SOMEBODY had chosen to do this. They had not just picked a box to hold the contents and printed what is inside on the outside, they had thought about what I would see when I opened the box and what it would make me feel.
Apple takes this a level further. All their boxes are clearly designed for far more then just holding their contents. Considering they are one of the biggest if not the biggest PC makers despite (or because of) not doing Windows, clearly people like it.
But creating a designed experience, where you control/dictate what the user feels, requires... control! HD makers have little choice in how people experience their product. It might be shipped from the shop in a box. I might get it from the store in just a wrapper. If I buy in bulk it might come in its original bulk packaging. Apple doesn't want that. It 'dictates' that you buy items in their box displayed in a certain way. It helps sell the quality/expensive hardware compared to the cheap crap because... well everything about its presentation shows it clearly must be better. (Lets not start one of those boring conversations about how your core2duo dell is cheaper then a quad sandy bridge macbook)
Controlling the users experience is about control. Obvious but people often fail to see just how far this goes. Take an amusement park ride. You sit "freely" in this cart being pulled along and things happen all around you. But they are controlled by the position of the cart and the cart determines your experience. I have been in "rides" where you walk and then controlling the action is far harder. An animatronic might fire behind or in front of me, I might even miss it, because the director can't control where I am and where I am looking. One ride has a bullet impacting the water a ride boat is floating on. Not nearly as effective if the boat is 10 meters away from it then when it happens right next to you. Control for an experience.
Why do you think Microsoft and for that matter most desktop makers worry so much about the startup sound. The sound creates an experience, a mood if you like, of what you are about to experience. It is typically a bright sound but not very musical that says "lets do stuff" without offending to much. Ubuntu goes furthest with its seemingly African inspired sound but it is hardly a tribal tune. Only the most extreme redneck could object (but no doubt would).
For Apple, creating this experience has worked well and Steve Jobs seems to believe that is essential and what people want. This is up for debate, do they buy apple purely for usability or because of the experience.
To show there is no clear answer, take sugar. You know, the stuff you put in your coffee. My supermarket has at least three brands of white refined beet sugar. There can be no variance in it except granular size because it is from the same factory and the law says exactly what can and cannot be in it. There is no b-grade sugar.
Yet, people buy the more expensive brands because... not the taste, not health reasons, not biologically grown... pure a different package. Experience, packaging, how it is sold. Matters.
Is the iPod and iTunes about a good music player and efficient and cheap music service or about giving the user an experience they like on an emotional level? Yes. The early iPods espec