I used Hotmail for much the same reason that you do, but I now use Yahoo mail for the same reasons. Yahoo mail has better spam protection, down to being able to mark particular messages as spam. I like it a lot better. It's bizarre how spammers latch on to certain email addresses-- but people have to have a way to get themselves "unlatched".
They would start by giving Hotmail users real spam filtering, instead of a limit of 250 blocked addresses. It's incredibly easy for spammers to cycle through that many addresses-- especially if you have more than one spammer throwing that sh*t at you.
One day this week, I had 20 new emails when I logged into Hotmail, and they were all spam. This is a little more than usual, but this is a dormant account, folks! I am considering abandoning my Hotmail account because of this sorry situation. Other email accounts I have use more effective spam fighting measures, and I have the ability to filter it in Evolution, thank goodness. I have a hard time believing that the 'penny black' scheme would be much of a solution-- I think we're talking about legislating fines, a la telemarketers. We already pay our ISPs for the privilege of email and other services, and I presume spammers are paying for the bandwidth they're using, too. If MS wants to impose this upon its own Internet customers, more power to them if they're really spammers, but I don't think they should be in charge of this issue for the Internet.
I wonder if this bill will be the real deal. Skimming over it on Thomas, the bill is merely what they call an 'implementation' act. Both the FCC and FTC are to submit suggested reglations for the do-not-call list. Apparently the FCC is given precedence, and AFAIK they haven't come out with any proposed rules yet. They may not be as tough as those already proposed by the FTC.
What I do know is that a few weeks ago, Rep. Billy Tauzin was all-fired against the FTC regulations. Yet, in the article I read on a service supplied by AP, he was very supportive of this bill passing. Perhaps, because the devil is in the details. Sen. Fritz Hollings, proponent of that wonderful "Fritz chip" we've heard so much about, also was mentioned as lauding the passage of this bill.
I sense that if consumer advocates don't keep their eyes on the ball, do-not-call advocates will get rolled by Tauzin and Hollings, who have a reputation for standing up for big business interests in Hollywood and among the telcos. I am sure they will be ready to assist the telemarketers, if the price is right.
Imagine if Windows cost $25? Instead of Joe-Blow doing cartwheels to get around XP Activation, they'd just buy 3 copies, one for each machine.
Imagine if Windows cost $9.99? People would buy copies for their mothers, friends, families, etc, just to "free them of those stupid problems they have with Windows 98/ME".
Actually, this is how it's playing out in China, Russia, and other piracy dens. MS is just mad 'cause they can't get $300 apiece for each install. How's that for "bottom line" impact?
The concern over possible decline of sales and earnings shows where MS' focus is-- it's all about the money, honey. Now, I'll admit to you that I first tried Linux because of what it would cost me to set up an all-Windows network for my SOHO, and I didn't feel like paying $1000 just for Win 2k Server. So the "free as in beer" aspect has been part of what motivated me. As I continued with Linux/Open Source, however, I have come to appreciate the difference from proprietary software in terms of the very different SW development model, and the "free as in freedom" aspect of the licensing. As a developer, this freedom has lured me away from the MS world and toward the open source arena: I feel that it is just a better way for people to do their computing.
In addition, MS keeps ratcheting down the freedom of its software licensees (does the concept of "customer" really exist for them?), and their platforms have, unfortunately for them, become the target of a lot of worms, viruses, cyberattacks, etc. that have raised questions about their commitment to security. Their cavalier attitude toward security problems, and the fundamental flaws in Windows that they won't even acknowledge, should raise eyebrows. I don't think there's much chance that MS will collapse, for they seem to find a way to milk the dollars out of those who are caught in their clutches. What open source might do is encourage MS to change their behavior toward their customers, so that they really care about their product instead of the almighty buck, or shilling for the music or movie moguls.
If you read the article about Glasgow, KY, the service is being provided by the city, so they have the voters to answer to if the price gets too dear. It makes sense that this would work out well in a small town; the big players may not be interested in serving them anyway. It'd be interesting to see what would happen if power companies all over were allowed to provide cable/internet-- it could introduce some real competition, instead of the oligopoly we have now. Or, at least, it would be an oligopoly with more players.
that 35-45% of IT positions in the U.S. may be outsorced, not that they will be eliminated. And just because the positions are outsourced doesn't necessarily mean they move overseas. I might also note that a lot of the managers they interviewed for the story on outsourcing didn't think it was cost-effective. Do you really believe that someone halfway around the world is really going to understand what your needs in software are? That's a tall order. It can be tough enough to make systems work when you are dealing face-to-face with a customer. I think career planning is helpful, but I think it revolves around the notion that you affirm that this is what you really want to do, and that you are going to commit to doing what is necessary to be gainfully employed, such as keeping up with new technologies and being open to changing employment arrangements.
This native Buckeye knows that MSNBC is partly owned by Microsoft, and that the Mono article could just be a piece of disinformation to pretty up their image. The rules of their contest support their aim, which is to lock student programmers like yourself into Windows.
Go check out the Ohio Supercomputing Center. Just about everything there runs on Linux or Solaris, and they support some complex research projects. Open source is unstoppable, Microsoft knows it, and this is just their way of getting developers on the hook. I wouldn't bite.
I am speaking as a recovering VB programmer, and the way that I see.net is as a way for MS to lock developers and their companies into Windows. Frankly, I can't understand why Ximian is wasting their efforts on Mono; it would be better spent improving GNOME and giving Linux/Unix a superior desktop. One change in APIs that Judge CKK allows MS not to document and, POOF! Compatibility disappears.
As for your comment that Mono might be a useful tool for helping Windows programmers move to Linux, it might be so for C++ developers, but IMHO, for VB hacks,.net, and, by extension, Mono, are a whole new ballgame. Previous editions of VB abstracted away a great deal from the details of applications, and.net involves getting more involved with the nitty-gritty. It's more "C++ like", and the approach to building programs through "assemblies" is different as well. But this is not the real reason I chose not to adopt.net...
I see where things are going on the server side, and my preference is to migrate to open source tools that will allow for real multi-platform development-- Python, Perl, and Java. While it essentially means that I had to retool, I would have had to do that anyway if I moved to.net. I would have chosen C# as primary language since it is a standard and there are third parties that plan have released C# compilers . But by choosing true multi-platform tools, it makes the choice of OS irrelevant to my skillset. With.net or Mono, the choice of OS drives the decision to use one or the other, or vice-versa.
Or maybe it would prompt people to think about whether they really want/need this "product activation" hassle that comes with Windows XP. That would get the Beast to come around.
In a sense, yes, C# is meant to replace C++ on Windows. C# is a new-from-the-ground-up programming language that is object-oriented. With C# on the.net platform, you can only write what is known as managed code, meaning it utilizes classes from the.net framework to build applications. Visual C++ is still available on the.net platform as well, and provides you with the ability to write both managed and unmanaged code-- where you don't use the.net framework and can instead write Microsoft Foundation Classes applications-- essentially, just like you can with VC++ 6.
I don't develop with VC++, but it seems to me that using the.net version of the language to develop managed code would be very different from writing MFC apps-- the APIs are completely different. And, of course, both bear little resemblance to standard C++ or other development platforms. C# and the.net framework are a lot closer to Java in syntax than VC++ MFC, as well. So if you currently program with VC++ 6, and want to use managed code, you might have to retrain like the rest of us who were using Visual Studio 6.
Any campers out there, correct me if my observations are off.
If.net is really about trying to solve the problem of remote object invocation, why do it in pretty much the same manner that Java does it-- with a language runtime that, as it turns out, will run only on Windows, which slaps another layer on top of COM and essentially abandons DCOM? Why not instead just extend Visual Studio 6 COM/DCOM and make it easier to use XML, SOAP, and other web services protocols to do remote method invocations? As it is, it seems like.net imposes a performance penalty on Windows machines-- applications are slow.
The only answer I can come up with is that.net is about locking developers, and therefore enterprises, into Windows. I conclude that.net is about a specific technology, and other object technologies (RPC, CORBA, SOAP) are about standards. In a perfect world, standards win every time, but MS will always see its best interest in forking away from standards to uphold its market share. I have been a Visual Basic developer up to this point, and I appreciate having COM as an object model and bus. I have been giving other object platforms a serious look, though, as well as the open source tools associated with them, to see if it makes any sense to adopt one or the other.
This is why I am staying the hell away from Mono. Miguel would do better to put Ximian's efforts into other areas,like the desktop, Evolution, and anything else that gives them a real opportunity to grow. You play with fire, you get burned.
It's not so much how many exploits affect each OS, it's how quickly Microsoft and the Linux/Open Source camps respond to the exploits with a patch. MS has developed a nasty habit of denying vulnerabilities in its software until a white hat actually takes it public; and even then, they hem and haw about coming up with a patch for the problem. Contrast this with the attitude from open source developers: they are alerted to a vulnerability, they work to come up with a patch as soon as they can. No whining or kvetching.
A case in point is earlier this year when a vulnerability in SSL was discovered on both Internet Explorer and Konqueror web browsers. The folks at KDE came up with a patch in a matter of a few days; it took MS two weeks to fix the problem. To me, this speaks volumes about which camp cares about its products: in open source, there is a real sense of ownership and pride of accomplishment, which is why fixes get delivered so quickly.
Wow, IBM had $20 bil. in their most recent quarter. I'm surprised. And they made $8 bil. in earnings. It has to be the industry's best-kept secret. (It shows you how much I've been following balance sheets lately) One would think that MS was bigger than B. Blue given the amount of publicity they generate. Perhaps what Hruska was talking about was the fact that MS drove IBM off most desktops way back when. Things have changed a lot for them in the past 4-5 years though.
Other than that oversight, I think Joel Hruska delivered the most concise, complete critique of Redmond I've read all year. MS really is their own worst enemy. You would think a company who has experienced the success they have would figure out a way to continue to be successful by supporting and promoting open standards, seriously committing themselves to security and reliability for their products, completely opening up their APIs to encourage developers toward Windows, and have flexible, reasonable licensing agreements to satisfy the interests of all their customers. But then, that has never been characteristic of MS, has it?
Instead, for this camper, MS's moves over the past twelve months have meant the following:
Dual-booting a machine with Win98 and Linux, then blowing away Windows when I turned the machine into a server (after all, getting Win 2k Server would be $1000 list, and might not be all that stable)
Figuring out that.NET is nothing more than a way to freeze its Windows developers in place, and lock organizations into Windows, I decide not to migrate to VB.NET or C#. Understand, my background had been as a VB developer. I go exploring alternatives. Python is looking mighty good to me right now.
After finding out that Win XP contains "product activation" modules that rob one of one's dignity, and SP's that give MS admin rights on your machines, I decide I will install Win 2k on my new "naked" PC and my old laptop, but I will not go beyond SP2. In fact, Win 2k will be the last version of Windows I will ever buy.
Seeing the incredible amount of security vulnerabilities that IE, Outlook, and Windows itself continue to experience, on my Windows machimes, I install and run Mozilla as my default web browser.
On my laptop and Linux machine (by now upgraded to RH 8), I have OpenOffice 1.0.1 installed, and I enjoy the ability to share files among the machines, as well as read files created by MS Office programs on the other PC. I also enjoy the fact that I saved at least $400- 500 by using OOo.
If my experience is any example of how MS is trying to win friends and influence people in the know, it ain't happening, folks. For Joel and others who say that the learning curve is too steep, I say, give Linux a try-- you'd be surprised how much has changed in the past couple years.
Mono may never be 100% compatible with MS.NET but that doesn't prevent it from being an extremely useful development framework.
Well, if Mono isn't 100% compatible with.net, then might I not be forced to use.net to do what I want on Windoze? What has been done in the past is that there are APIs that MS shares only with its "partners", or uses for its own software. They have been unwilling to share these APIs,resulting in their own or partner SW shutting SW from other developers out of whole market sectors. I guess we'll have to see if the.net framework is under the jurisdiction of one court or another.
My take is,.net is just a ploy to hook developers and lock them in MS. You can build web services without Java,.net, etc., you can develop and deploy apps without.net, and you can use another infrastructure (like CORBA or RPC) for remoting. As I have said before on/. it's about control and trust. MS wants control, and I don't trust them.
The truth about.net is that the Common Language Infrastructure and the C# language are the only things that are ECMA standards. The Common Language Runtime, which lies at the heart of the.net framework, is a superset of CLI; so, like we have seen in the past, there are a lot of classes/APIs that may not be accessible to non-MS implementations of the CLI. You can have a Common Type System (which is the main component of CLI), but if you don't know which classes/functions on.net to access, what parameters they're expecting, etc., resolving to common types won't do much good. It's gonna depend on Microsoft, and how open they are. Their track record is not good on these matters, as we well know.
I think you've got it right--.net will only run on Windows, although I understand that they have ported a subset of the.net framework to FreeBSD. I would be very surprised if we ever see a port to anything else. Microsoft is just trying to pull more developers into developing for Windows and nothin' but. "Write in any language to run on Windows". Furthermore, they are using a backdoor approach to lock organizations into Windoze, by getting developers onto the bandwagon. This is why I am staying away from.net, or Mono, or DotGnu, because of the potential for IP challenges by MS. Plus, it forces me and my potential employers or clients into restricting our choices instead of increasing them. If you want me to develop on Windoze, its Visual Studio 6, or Python/Tkinter, or maybe even Java-- but not.net.
Linux on the desktop sucks for one reason: fragmentation.
If there wasn't a bunch of if distribution == x && graphical environment == y in the HOWTOs, we'd be much further along right now.
I keep hearing this argument,and I think it's overblown. The key apps on Linux (Mozilla, OpenOffice, Evolution, etc) will work with either KDE or GNOME. There might be some apps that are written specifically for one environment or the other that are "crufty", but overall, if I want to run a KDE app on GNOME, it's no problem.
If you're waiting for Apple to port OS X to x86, you could be waiting...forever. Apple's business model is dependant on selling you a complete package, not just the software. Like Sun Microsystems, they refuse to change to concentrate on software.
I agree that the dual boot with an NTFS partition is a problem. I would have liked to have dual booted Win 2k with RH 7.2 on my laptop, and pretty much discovered what the trouble was when using FIPS. No can do. At least, not without resizing the NTFS partition. I think the next best thing to getting people to use Linux is getting them to use the Win32 ports of Mozilla, OpenOffice, and other apps as alternatives to expensive or vulnerable Windoze apps. If users become familiar with those, then it might not be too much of a leap to Linux.
It's more like, if Judge Motz hadn't ruled in Sun's favor, what you're talking about is a distinct possibility--.net is still new and hasn't received the level of adoption from Windoze customers that MS would like. And from this developer-- not at all.:) If they were to continue to peddle the POS they call the MS VM, that would be trouble for Java. And as far as putting.net on Win XP, that would be prima facie evidence for Sun that they were trying to drive them off the Windows platform. Hence, it's not included. We'll see whether they can now bundle.net with the OS-- it'll probably require another legal proceeding to decide that matter.
Me, I'm cheering for endless litigation. That will delay any implementation of DRM. If MS fights to be a player in this arena, that's what you'll see. OTOH, if InterTrust is just looking to shake them down for the rights to use DRM, they might well pay up.
Slashdot Mirror
I used Hotmail for much the same reason that you do, but I now use Yahoo mail for the same reasons. Yahoo mail has better spam protection, down to being able to mark particular messages as spam. I like it a lot better. It's bizarre how spammers latch on to certain email addresses-- but people have to have a way to get themselves "unlatched".
They would start by giving Hotmail users real spam filtering, instead of a limit of 250 blocked addresses. It's incredibly easy for spammers to cycle through that many addresses-- especially if you have more than one spammer throwing that sh*t at you.
One day this week, I had 20 new emails when I logged into Hotmail, and they were all spam. This is a little more than usual, but this is a dormant account, folks! I am considering abandoning my Hotmail account because of this sorry situation. Other email accounts I have use more effective spam fighting measures, and I have the ability to filter it in Evolution, thank goodness. I have a hard time believing that the 'penny black' scheme would be much of a solution-- I think we're talking about legislating fines, a la telemarketers. We already pay our ISPs for the privilege of email and other services, and I presume spammers are paying for the bandwidth they're using, too. If MS wants to impose this upon its own Internet customers, more power to them if they're really spammers, but I don't think they should be in charge of this issue for the Internet.
I wonder if this bill will be the real deal. Skimming over it on Thomas, the bill is merely what they call an 'implementation' act. Both the FCC and FTC are to submit suggested reglations for the do-not-call list. Apparently the FCC is given precedence, and AFAIK they haven't come out with any proposed rules yet. They may not be as tough as those already proposed by the FTC.
What I do know is that a few weeks ago, Rep. Billy Tauzin was all-fired against the FTC regulations. Yet, in the article I read on a service supplied by AP, he was very supportive of this bill passing. Perhaps, because the devil is in the details. Sen. Fritz Hollings, proponent of that wonderful "Fritz chip" we've heard so much about, also was mentioned as lauding the passage of this bill.
I sense that if consumer advocates don't keep their eyes on the ball, do-not-call advocates will get rolled by Tauzin and Hollings, who have a reputation for standing up for big business interests in Hollywood and among the telcos. I am sure they will be ready to assist the telemarketers, if the price is right.
I'll take LEFT JOIN and you take RIGHT JOIN... D'oh, I think Microsoft patented those already...
Imagine if Windows cost $25? Instead of Joe-Blow doing cartwheels to get around XP Activation, they'd just buy 3 copies, one for each machine. Imagine if Windows cost $9.99? People would buy copies for their mothers, friends, families, etc, just to "free them of those stupid problems they have with Windows 98/ME".
Actually, this is how it's playing out in China, Russia, and other piracy dens. MS is just mad 'cause they can't get $300 apiece for each install. How's that for "bottom line" impact?
The concern over possible decline of sales and earnings shows where MS' focus is-- it's all about the money, honey. Now, I'll admit to you that I first tried Linux because of what it would cost me to set up an all-Windows network for my SOHO, and I didn't feel like paying $1000 just for Win 2k Server. So the "free as in beer" aspect has been part of what motivated me. As I continued with Linux/Open Source, however, I have come to appreciate the difference from proprietary software in terms of the very different SW development model, and the "free as in freedom" aspect of the licensing. As a developer, this freedom has lured me away from the MS world and toward the open source arena: I feel that it is just a better way for people to do their computing.
In addition, MS keeps ratcheting down the freedom of its software licensees (does the concept of "customer" really exist for them?), and their platforms have, unfortunately for them, become the target of a lot of worms, viruses, cyberattacks, etc. that have raised questions about their commitment to security. Their cavalier attitude toward security problems, and the fundamental flaws in Windows that they won't even acknowledge, should raise eyebrows. I don't think there's much chance that MS will collapse, for they seem to find a way to milk the dollars out of those who are caught in their clutches. What open source might do is encourage MS to change their behavior toward their customers, so that they really care about their product instead of the almighty buck, or shilling for the music or movie moguls.
If you read the article about Glasgow, KY, the service is being provided by the city, so they have the voters to answer to if the price gets too dear. It makes sense that this would work out well in a small town; the big players may not be interested in serving them anyway. It'd be interesting to see what would happen if power companies all over were allowed to provide cable/internet-- it could introduce some real competition, instead of the oligopoly we have now. Or, at least, it would be an oligopoly with more players.
that 35-45% of IT positions in the U.S. may be outsorced, not that they will be eliminated. And just because the positions are outsourced doesn't necessarily mean they move overseas. I might also note that a lot of the managers they interviewed for the story on outsourcing didn't think it was cost-effective. Do you really believe that someone halfway around the world is really going to understand what your needs in software are? That's a tall order. It can be tough enough to make systems work when you are dealing face-to-face with a customer. I think career planning is helpful, but I think it revolves around the notion that you affirm that this is what you really want to do, and that you are going to commit to doing what is necessary to be gainfully employed, such as keeping up with new technologies and being open to changing employment arrangements.
This native Buckeye knows that MSNBC is partly owned by Microsoft, and that the Mono article could just be a piece of disinformation to pretty up their image. The rules of their contest support their aim, which is to lock student programmers like yourself into Windows.
Go check out the Ohio Supercomputing Center. Just about everything there runs on Linux or Solaris, and they support some complex research projects. Open source is unstoppable, Microsoft knows it, and this is just their way of getting developers on the hook. I wouldn't bite.
I am speaking as a recovering VB programmer, and the way that I see .net is as a way for MS to lock developers and their companies into Windows. Frankly, I can't understand why Ximian is wasting their efforts on Mono; it would be better spent improving GNOME and giving Linux/Unix a superior desktop. One change in APIs that Judge CKK allows MS not to document and, POOF! Compatibility disappears.
As for your comment that Mono might be a useful tool for helping Windows programmers move to Linux, it might be so for C++ developers, but IMHO, for VB hacks, .net, and, by extension, Mono, are a whole new ballgame. Previous editions of VB abstracted away a great deal from the details of applications, and .net involves getting more involved with the nitty-gritty. It's more "C++ like", and the approach to building programs through "assemblies" is different as well. But this is not the real reason I chose not to adopt .net...
I see where things are going on the server side, and my preference is to migrate to open source tools that will allow for real multi-platform development-- Python, Perl, and Java. While it essentially means that I had to retool, I would have had to do that anyway if I moved to .net. I would have chosen C# as primary language since it is a standard and there are third parties that plan have released C# compilers . But by choosing true multi-platform tools, it makes the choice of OS irrelevant to my skillset. With .net or Mono, the choice of OS drives the decision to use one or the other, or vice-versa.
Or maybe it would prompt people to think about whether they really want/need this "product activation" hassle that comes with Windows XP. That would get the Beast to come around.
In a sense, yes, C# is meant to replace C++ on Windows. C# is a new-from-the-ground-up programming language that is object-oriented. With C# on the .net platform, you can only write what is known as managed code, meaning it utilizes classes from the .net framework to build applications. Visual C++ is still available on the .net platform as well, and provides you with the ability to write both managed and unmanaged code-- where you don't use the .net framework and can instead write Microsoft Foundation Classes applications-- essentially, just like you can with VC++ 6.
I don't develop with VC++, but it seems to me that using the .net version of the language to develop managed code would be very different from writing MFC apps-- the APIs are completely different. And, of course, both bear little resemblance to standard C++ or other development platforms. C# and the .net framework are a lot closer to Java in syntax than VC++ MFC, as well. So if you currently program with VC++ 6, and want to use managed code, you might have to retrain like the rest of us who were using Visual Studio 6.
Any campers out there, correct me if my observations are off.
Do you pronounce that as "Windows F-U" or "Windows Fu" as in Kung Fu? :P
If .net is really about trying to solve the problem of remote object invocation, why do it in pretty much the same manner that Java does it-- with a language runtime that, as it turns out, will run only on Windows, which slaps another layer on top of COM and essentially abandons DCOM? Why not instead just extend Visual Studio 6 COM/DCOM and make it easier to use XML, SOAP, and other web services protocols to do remote method invocations? As it is, it seems like .net imposes a performance penalty on Windows machines-- applications are slow.
The only answer I can come up with is that .net is about locking developers, and therefore enterprises, into Windows. I conclude that .net is about a specific technology, and other object technologies (RPC, CORBA, SOAP) are about standards. In a perfect world, standards win every time, but MS will always see its best interest in forking away from standards to uphold its market share. I have been a Visual Basic developer up to this point, and I appreciate having COM as an object model and bus. I have been giving other object platforms a serious look, though, as well as the open source tools associated with them, to see if it makes any sense to adopt one or the other.
This is why I am staying the hell away from Mono. Miguel would do better to put Ximian's efforts into other areas,like the desktop, Evolution, and anything else that gives them a real opportunity to grow. You play with fire, you get burned.
It's not so much how many exploits affect each OS, it's how quickly Microsoft and the Linux/Open Source camps respond to the exploits with a patch. MS has developed a nasty habit of denying vulnerabilities in its software until a white hat actually takes it public; and even then, they hem and haw about coming up with a patch for the problem. Contrast this with the attitude from open source developers: they are alerted to a vulnerability, they work to come up with a patch as soon as they can. No whining or kvetching.
A case in point is earlier this year when a vulnerability in SSL was discovered on both Internet Explorer and Konqueror web browsers. The folks at KDE came up with a patch in a matter of a few days; it took MS two weeks to fix the problem. To me, this speaks volumes about which camp cares about its products: in open source, there is a real sense of ownership and pride of accomplishment, which is why fixes get delivered so quickly.
Other than that oversight, I think Joel Hruska delivered the most concise, complete critique of Redmond I've read all year. MS really is their own worst enemy. You would think a company who has experienced the success they have would figure out a way to continue to be successful by supporting and promoting open standards, seriously committing themselves to security and reliability for their products, completely opening up their APIs to encourage developers toward Windows, and have flexible, reasonable licensing agreements to satisfy the interests of all their customers. But then, that has never been characteristic of MS, has it?
Instead, for this camper, MS's moves over the past twelve months have meant the following:
If my experience is any example of how MS is trying to win friends and influence people in the know, it ain't happening, folks. For Joel and others who say that the learning curve is too steep, I say, give Linux a try-- you'd be surprised how much has changed in the past couple years.
DRM == Digital Reach for your Money You == Troll
Mono may never be 100% compatible with MS.NET but that doesn't prevent it from being an extremely useful development framework.
Well, if Mono isn't 100% compatible with .net, then might I not be forced to use .net to do what I want on Windoze? What has been done in the past is that there are APIs that MS shares only with its "partners", or uses for its own software. They have been unwilling to share these APIs,resulting in their own or partner SW shutting SW from other developers out of whole market sectors. I guess we'll have to see if the .net framework is under the jurisdiction of one court or another.
My take is, .net is just a ploy to hook developers and lock them in MS. You can build web services without Java, .net, etc., you can develop and deploy apps without .net, and you can use another infrastructure (like CORBA or RPC) for remoting. As I have said before on /. it's about control and trust. MS wants control, and I don't trust them.
The truth about .net is that the Common Language Infrastructure and the C# language are the only things that are ECMA standards. The Common Language Runtime, which lies at the heart of the .net framework, is a superset of CLI; so, like we have seen in the past, there are a lot of classes/APIs that may not be accessible to non-MS implementations of the CLI. You can have a Common Type System (which is the main component of CLI), but if you don't know which classes/functions on .net to access, what parameters they're expecting, etc., resolving to common types won't do much good. It's gonna depend on Microsoft, and how open they are. Their track record is not good on these matters, as we well know.
I think you've got it right-- .net will only run on Windows, although I understand that they have ported a subset of the .net framework to FreeBSD. I would be very surprised if we ever see a port to anything else. Microsoft is just trying to pull more developers into developing for Windows and nothin' but. "Write in any language to run on Windows". Furthermore, they are using a backdoor approach to lock organizations into Windoze, by getting developers onto the bandwagon. This is why I am staying away from .net, or Mono, or DotGnu, because of the potential for IP challenges by MS. Plus, it forces me and my potential employers or clients into restricting our choices instead of increasing them. If you want me to develop on Windoze, its Visual Studio 6, or Python/Tkinter, or maybe even Java-- but not .net.
Linux on the desktop sucks for one reason: fragmentation. If there wasn't a bunch of if distribution == x && graphical environment == y in the HOWTOs, we'd be much further along right now.
I keep hearing this argument,and I think it's overblown. The key apps on Linux (Mozilla, OpenOffice, Evolution, etc) will work with either KDE or GNOME. There might be some apps that are written specifically for one environment or the other that are "crufty", but overall, if I want to run a KDE app on GNOME, it's no problem.
If you're waiting for Apple to port OS X to x86, you could be waiting...forever. Apple's business model is dependant on selling you a complete package, not just the software. Like Sun Microsystems, they refuse to change to concentrate on software.
I agree that the dual boot with an NTFS partition is a problem. I would have liked to have dual booted Win 2k with RH 7.2 on my laptop, and pretty much discovered what the trouble was when using FIPS. No can do. At least, not without resizing the NTFS partition. I think the next best thing to getting people to use Linux is getting them to use the Win32 ports of Mozilla, OpenOffice, and other apps as alternatives to expensive or vulnerable Windoze apps. If users become familiar with those, then it might not be too much of a leap to Linux.
It's more like, if Judge Motz hadn't ruled in Sun's favor, what you're talking about is a distinct possibility-- .net is still new and hasn't received the level of adoption from Windoze customers that MS would like. And from this developer-- not at all. :) If they were to continue to peddle the POS they call the MS VM, that would be trouble for Java. And as far as putting .net on Win XP, that would be prima facie evidence for Sun that they were trying to drive them off the Windows platform. Hence, it's not included. We'll see whether they can now bundle .net with the OS-- it'll probably require another legal proceeding to decide that matter.
Yeah, haven't we seen him hang out with Billg?
Me, I'm cheering for endless litigation. That will delay any implementation of DRM. If MS fights to be a player in this arena, that's what you'll see. OTOH, if InterTrust is just looking to shake them down for the rights to use DRM, they might well pay up.