Since windows is more widely used than Java, by your argument, it's even better to be stuck on Windows.
Ummmm, Windows is NOT more widely used than Java. It's not even close. Java is in use on over 1.5 *billion* devices compared to Windows being in use on most of the ~800M PCs in operation world wide. Remove from that total the 650M PCs with Java installed and you have 150M PCs with Windows only compared to 1.5B Java-enabled devices. So, at most, Windows-only-enabled devices enjoys a whopping 10% of the market of Java-enabled devices.
Oh, I see. It will work on any platform as long as that platform is Java. Got it.
No, because Java isn't a platform -but- it will work on any *Java-enabled* platform, that means Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, AIX, HPUX, *BSD, Symbian, PalmOS, BREW, ORIGIN, etc...
This is more of a VmWare type thing. Win4Lin doesn't emulate the hardware, it emulates DOS. Something comparable would be more like if FreeDOS could be made to run in userspace on Linux and then used it to run Win98. The real selling point about Win4Lin over VmWare is that, like WINE, it uses your local filesystem so there no disk image file. Now, I think (think) that the latest VmWare allows this too but I haven't tried it.
Just thought of another app... it was a old VB 3 16-bit app... WINE gacked on it with some Win16 heap error but it ran fine in Win4Lin. This isn't the WINE-devs fault, looking at the WINE traces this thing was doing all kinds of crazy heap juggling to get around addressing limits and besides who in the hell uses 16-bit apps anymore??? If you're interested, I logged a WINE bug on it about 2 years ago if I remember correctly. Anyhow, the point is that this is a good example of the type of unbelievable non-mainstream legacy bullshit apps that are still in use out there. BTW, I hate VB with an insane passion, I think it's Linda Blair in the Exorcist kind of evil.
You've got a point on the whole WINE thing. I'm not a big fan of running apps under Wine although I think it's a "neat" idea. Actually, I was a paying Transgaming and Codewavers customer at one time, until I discovered Win4Lin. Now, if I need to run a Windows app under Linux, and for the record, the only one I do run is mofo-ing WebEx, then Win4Lin is the best way to do it. You get to run a full Win98 instance on top of the stability and security of Linux. Why use Win4Lin instead of Wine? It's fast, really fast, since Win98, although not the stablest OS ever, was actually very stingy on resources. Also, pretty much any non-3D app for Windows runs on it. If it crashes, it takes about 5 seconds to restart it. If they took the time to add full 3D support into Win4Lin the whole game thing would also become less of an issue. It's too bad Win4Lin doesn't have an open source alternative to help move along in that direction, but for $89 it's priced comparably to the Crossover product in terms of what people purchase that for.
Forget North Korea, they're small fry. China, the guys who make 99% of the junk at Target and WalMart, have some brand new ICBMs with a range of 8000 miles being deployed as we speak. Considering most of China's traditional enemies are located within walking distance, and the distance from Beijing to New York is about 6500 miles, wtf do they need these long range nukes for??? Hmmmm... I ponder.
Well, it only makes no sense if you've bought the Windows version already. I wouldn't mind having this game. However, I don't use Windows or a Mac, so I haven't and won't purchase a copy *unless* they come out with a Linux version. They're not competing with themselves, they're expanding their potential customer base. Besides, since BF 1942 is about to slide into the $5 bin at BestBuy, why not port to the Mac and try to milk a few thousand extra $40 sales out of code that's essentially obselete.
Are the Doom / Quake / Whatever engine APIs backwards compatible??? They're probably vaguely similar but I imagine it would be a pretty significant porting job to get the original Doom to build against the Doom 3 engine.
That said, open sourcing old games would be (and is... ID) very cool. I still fire up the original SimCity on my laptop once in a blue moon. That has to be at least circa 1991. Having the sources would allow for some pretty interesting modding.
Anybody who runs services as root on any *NIX is an idiot. I have several Solaris and one Linux box sitting in the wild and NONE expose services running as root. They may be launched *from* root, but they ALL su to a non-root owning account.
Case in point, I rescued a box a few years back that some know-it-all had gone and edited/etc/passwd by hand and screwed up the root shell entry. It was pretty much game over for this box since root was completely unaccessible. They had a local account that I used to find if anything was running as root... and there Tomcat was running as root. I whipped up a quick servlet to edit/etc/passwd and voila. This was a "good" hack but an "evil" hack would have been just as easy.
To get back on point, I think your observation of the "turn-key" effect is bang on. It may not be MS's fault ultimately, but they certainly need to shoulder some of the responsibility. It's like going to a gun store and they hand you a loaded gun with a hair trigger. The gun store may not be responsible if you accidentally shoot yourself or someone else since the gun had a hair trigger but they sure didn't help any by putting the bullets in the gun for you. That said, financial penalties for software failure is the realm of support contracts, not software licenses. If you have a 99.999% uptime contact with a vendor and their software fails to deliver that, then you collect. Microsoft as a company makes my stomach turn, but there's no way they owe anybody money regardless of how crap their software is unless that person is in a service contract with MS and they fail to live up to the service level agreements in that contract.
To tie this back to cars, Ford isn't responsible if someone's '76 Pinto explodes tomorrow in a rear end collision. The service contract (warranty) on that car is long expired. However, if that collision had happened back in '77 when that car was under a service contract, Ford would have had a financial obligation.
I skimmed that article and I totally agree. The author fails to mention is that the S in SQL is for STRUCTURED, as in structured (aka. relational) data. Hierachical databases are by definition unstructured (LDAP, SleepyCat, etc). So no shit SQL doesn't mesh well with XML dbs, it was never meant to.
XPI is not exactly the same as ActiveX. It's only used to install packages for the browser, it's not a format for web applications like Applets, Flash, etc. That said, you're right, you can install malicious code via XPI just like you can via ActiveX. However, *most* browser extensions are written using XUL and JavaScript in Mozilla which is sandboxed... and cross platform too!
I work with some pretty hefty code files, maximizing lets me get the biggest "eye view" of what I'm working on. I've only got a 19" monitor so my real estate might be tighter than others. I'm sure there's a point where I wouldn't need to maximize all the time, I just don't know where it is yet... probably a 23" cinematic would be enough not to maximize. Did the price on these go down? I remember them being a hell of a lot more than $2K.
Good point about key bindings, my mind's a little cluttered this morning... there are probably key bindings in LG already.
My guess is that they want widespread adoption. By going the GPL route, they make it palletable for all the distros. Also, I don't think it ranks in the "deal-making" category. It's certainly a determinant, PHBs love that eye candy, but I'd be shocked to see it on any RFIs that they come across.
Personally, I use all my screen real estate for my current app. I might be in a minority but how many people don't maximize the application that they're working in? Also, I avoid my mouse as much as possible and LG looks pretty mouse intensive. So it's not a CPU cycle thing that would keep me from using it as my primary WM, it's more of an ergonomics problem. However, I probably would run it when doing a presentation to wow customers and coworkers!
There's no technical support beyond bug identification included in that figure, that's just the price of the dev kit license. Information on Essential and Premier support for devs requiring a SLA is available at the included links. That $995 is pocket change compared to the price of a support contract but that's no surprise since support and runtime fees are where the money is at in the embedded space.
Another case in point: don't you just cringe when you load up a big application that was written in Java? Sure, you can run it anywhere, but it feels like silly putty.
That's no longer true. Install Java 1.5 Beta 2 and the Azureus bittorrent client from SourceForge. It'll be virtually impossible for you to tell you're not running a native app.
Actually, there's a huge profit MARGIN on those items since they're dirt cheap to buy in bulk. The problem is that you'd need to sell an insane amount of bumper stickers and mouse pads to make a viable business out of it. Which brings to mind some other odd retail stores such as a place near here that ONLY sells bar stools. If somebody had dropped that business plan in my lap, I'd have bust a gut laughing, but they've been in business for 8 years... on second thought they're probably a front for a money laundering operation, otherwise I can't explain it.
First, I haven't disconnected from Yahoo in over a week, so I can't say if CONNECTING works. However, I can vouch that chat works in GAIM if you connected before the changeover. So the problem, if there is one, likely stems from session initiation.
Me neither, those brain cells have long since been purged via alcohol... the IPX thing only stuck because it was such an unbelievable pain in the arse to get our routers to play along.
I'm pretty sure it was IPX (Novell), I remember we had to reconfig our routers to be able to play in the office back in the day. Also, they only passed coordinate and state info over the network, all the graphics and sprites were local.
Pffft... I want Yet Again Castle Wolfenstein and Enemy Territory II. RTCW, and especially ET are my favorite games. Finding a good place to hide and taking the enemy out with a sniper rifle is strangely addictive!
Slashdot Mirror
Since windows is more widely used than Java, by your argument, it's even better to be stuck on Windows.
...
Ummmm, Windows is NOT more widely used than Java. It's not even close. Java is in use on over 1.5 *billion* devices compared to Windows being in use on most of the ~800M PCs in operation world wide. Remove from that total the 650M PCs with Java installed and you have 150M PCs with Windows only compared to 1.5B Java-enabled devices. So, at most, Windows-only-enabled devices enjoys a whopping 10% of the market of Java-enabled devices.
Oh, I see. It will work on any platform as long as that platform is Java. Got it.
No, because Java isn't a platform -but- it will work on any *Java-enabled* platform, that means Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, AIX, HPUX, *BSD, Symbian, PalmOS, BREW, ORIGIN, etc
This is more of a VmWare type thing. Win4Lin doesn't emulate the hardware, it emulates DOS. Something comparable would be more like if FreeDOS could be made to run in userspace on Linux and then used it to run Win98. The real selling point about Win4Lin over VmWare is that, like WINE, it uses your local filesystem so there no disk image file. Now, I think (think) that the latest VmWare allows this too but I haven't tried it.
Just thought of another app ... it was a old VB 3 16-bit app ... WINE gacked on it with some Win16 heap error but it ran fine in Win4Lin. This isn't the WINE-devs fault, looking at the WINE traces this thing was doing all kinds of crazy heap juggling to get around addressing limits and besides who in the hell uses 16-bit apps anymore??? If you're interested, I logged a WINE bug on it about 2 years ago if I remember correctly. Anyhow, the point is that this is a good example of the type of unbelievable non-mainstream legacy bullshit apps that are still in use out there. BTW, I hate VB with an insane passion, I think it's Linda Blair in the Exorcist kind of evil.
You've got a point on the whole WINE thing. I'm not a big fan of running apps under Wine although I think it's a "neat" idea. Actually, I was a paying Transgaming and Codewavers customer at one time, until I discovered Win4Lin. Now, if I need to run a Windows app under Linux, and for the record, the only one I do run is mofo-ing WebEx, then Win4Lin is the best way to do it. You get to run a full Win98 instance on top of the stability and security of Linux. Why use Win4Lin instead of Wine? It's fast, really fast, since Win98, although not the stablest OS ever, was actually very stingy on resources. Also, pretty much any non-3D app for Windows runs on it. If it crashes, it takes about 5 seconds to restart it. If they took the time to add full 3D support into Win4Lin the whole game thing would also become less of an issue. It's too bad Win4Lin doesn't have an open source alternative to help move along in that direction, but for $89 it's priced comparably to the Crossover product in terms of what people purchase that for.
Forget North Korea, they're small fry. China, the guys who make 99% of the junk at Target and WalMart, have some brand new ICBMs with a range of 8000 miles being deployed as we speak. Considering most of China's traditional enemies are located within walking distance, and the distance from Beijing to New York is about 6500 miles, wtf do they need these long range nukes for??? Hmmmm ... I ponder.
Well, it only makes no sense if you've bought the Windows version already. I wouldn't mind having this game. However, I don't use Windows or a Mac, so I haven't and won't purchase a copy *unless* they come out with a Linux version. They're not competing with themselves, they're expanding their potential customer base. Besides, since BF 1942 is about to slide into the $5 bin at BestBuy, why not port to the Mac and try to milk a few thousand extra $40 sales out of code that's essentially obselete.
ditto ... but also Linux Magazine and 2600.
Are the Doom / Quake / Whatever engine APIs backwards compatible??? They're probably vaguely similar but I imagine it would be a pretty significant porting job to get the original Doom to build against the Doom 3 engine.
... ID) very cool. I still fire up the original SimCity on my laptop once in a blue moon. That has to be at least circa 1991. Having the sources would allow for some pretty interesting modding.
That said, open sourcing old games would be (and is
Anybody who runs services as root on any *NIX is an idiot. I have several Solaris and one Linux box sitting in the wild and NONE expose services running as root. They may be launched *from* root, but they ALL su to a non-root owning account.
/etc/passwd by hand and screwed up the root shell entry. It was pretty much game over for this box since root was completely unaccessible. They had a local account that I used to find if anything was running as root ... and there Tomcat was running as root. I whipped up a quick servlet to edit /etc/passwd and voila. This was a "good" hack but an "evil" hack would have been just as easy.
Case in point, I rescued a box a few years back that some know-it-all had gone and edited
To get back on point, I think your observation of the "turn-key" effect is bang on. It may not be MS's fault ultimately, but they certainly need to shoulder some of the responsibility. It's like going to a gun store and they hand you a loaded gun with a hair trigger. The gun store may not be responsible if you accidentally shoot yourself or someone else since the gun had a hair trigger but they sure didn't help any by putting the bullets in the gun for you. That said, financial penalties for software failure is the realm of support contracts, not software licenses. If you have a 99.999% uptime contact with a vendor and their software fails to deliver that, then you collect. Microsoft as a company makes my stomach turn, but there's no way they owe anybody money regardless of how crap their software is unless that person is in a service contract with MS and they fail to live up to the service level agreements in that contract.
To tie this back to cars, Ford isn't responsible if someone's '76 Pinto explodes tomorrow in a rear end collision. The service contract (warranty) on that car is long expired. However, if that collision had happened back in '77 when that car was under a service contract, Ford would have had a financial obligation.
I skimmed that article and I totally agree. The author fails to mention is that the S in SQL is for STRUCTURED, as in structured (aka. relational) data. Hierachical databases are by definition unstructured (LDAP, SleepyCat, etc). So no shit SQL doesn't mesh well with XML dbs, it was never meant to.
Don't forget the matching $599 nVIDIA cards ... still, a 30" screen ... oh-h-h-h-h yeah baby, that's nice!
XPI is not exactly the same as ActiveX. It's only used to install packages for the browser, it's not a format for web applications like Applets, Flash, etc. That said, you're right, you can install malicious code via XPI just like you can via ActiveX. However, *most* browser extensions are written using XUL and JavaScript in Mozilla which is sandboxed ... and cross platform too!
I work with some pretty hefty code files, maximizing lets me get the biggest "eye view" of what I'm working on. I've only got a 19" monitor so my real estate might be tighter than others. I'm sure there's a point where I wouldn't need to maximize all the time, I just don't know where it is yet ... probably a 23" cinematic would be enough not to maximize. Did the price on these go down? I remember them being a hell of a lot more than $2K.
... there are probably key bindings in LG already.
Good point about key bindings, my mind's a little cluttered this morning
My guess is that they want widespread adoption. By going the GPL route, they make it palletable for all the distros. Also, I don't think it ranks in the "deal-making" category. It's certainly a determinant, PHBs love that eye candy, but I'd be shocked to see it on any RFIs that they come across.
Personally, I use all my screen real estate for my current app. I might be in a minority but how many people don't maximize the application that they're working in? Also, I avoid my mouse as much as possible and LG looks pretty mouse intensive. So it's not a CPU cycle thing that would keep me from using it as my primary WM, it's more of an ergonomics problem. However, I probably would run it when doing a presentation to wow customers and coworkers!
There's no technical support beyond bug identification included in that figure, that's just the price of the dev kit license. Information on Essential and Premier support for devs requiring a SLA is available at the included links. That $995 is pocket change compared to the price of a support contract but that's no surprise since support and runtime fees are where the money is at in the embedded space.
... or they could have simply made Java a requirement in their RFI and this runtime platform BS would be irrelevant.
Another case in point: don't you just cringe when you load up a big application that was written in Java? Sure, you can run it anywhere, but it feels like silly putty.
That's no longer true. Install Java 1.5 Beta 2 and the Azureus bittorrent client from SourceForge. It'll be virtually impossible for you to tell you're not running a native app.
Actually, there's a huge profit MARGIN on those items since they're dirt cheap to buy in bulk. The problem is that you'd need to sell an insane amount of bumper stickers and mouse pads to make a viable business out of it. Which brings to mind some other odd retail stores such as a place near here that ONLY sells bar stools. If somebody had dropped that business plan in my lap, I'd have bust a gut laughing, but they've been in business for 8 years ... on second thought they're probably a front for a money laundering operation, otherwise I can't explain it.
There is a problem connecting ... just gotta hope I don't drop my connection until a the new authent scheme is cracked.
First, I haven't disconnected from Yahoo in over a week, so I can't say if CONNECTING works. However, I can vouch that chat works in GAIM if you connected before the changeover. So the problem, if there is one, likely stems from session initiation.
Use them daily in CLI mode and you'll have to pry em from my cold dead fingers ...
Me neither, those brain cells have long since been purged via alcohol ... the IPX thing only stuck because it was such an unbelievable pain in the arse to get our routers to play along.
I'm pretty sure it was IPX (Novell), I remember we had to reconfig our routers to be able to play in the office back in the day. Also, they only passed coordinate and state info over the network, all the graphics and sprites were local.
Pffft ... I want Yet Again Castle Wolfenstein and Enemy Territory II. RTCW, and especially ET are my favorite games. Finding a good place to hide and taking the enemy out with a sniper rifle is strangely addictive!
Finally a Microsoft product that I would gladly hand over money for ... XBoxers.