Microsoft.Net is free? Really? The cheapest version of visual studio appears to be $800 (and that version has far fewer "enterprise-y" features than the $5500 premium or $12,000 ultimate versions).
I realize there are "free" parts of.Net, including the express editions of visual studio but there are already arguably superior equivalents available in the Java community.
Regarding the dropped call when switching between 3G and Edge: I can't speak to the underlying cause, but over the past few years I've had a Palm Treo and a blackberry that did this constantly (Dallas area was especially bad). From my personal experience, the iPhone seems to do this less than these older phones.
... no pesky ozone layer to hinder the telescope!!
'Because the sky there is so much darker and drier, it means that a modestly-sized telescope would be as powerful as the largest telescopes anywhere else on earth.'
...was that they did not make the same channels available over internet that did on their satellite broadcast. The terrestrial coverage didn't work for me in my location. Had they just made the same channels available via internet, I'd still have my subscription today ($12/month, I think is what it was a couple of years ago).
Amazing...my recent experience has been the opposite of the two parent comments.
Sun's may have good support, but you'll need it because it's always breaking. Defintitely not hardware I'd choose to run HA stuff. Memory error? Machine goes down. CPU failure (one of 20)? Machine goes down. From what I understand (I'm in s/w, not h/w), this isn't supposed to happen, but generally does with Sun's hardware.
I think if Sun's lunch continues to get eaten by Linux on Intel, the quality of their hardware vs. Intel will be just as big a factor as price.
Dell, while it may be solid hardware, has terrible support when (if) you do need it. I suppose, though, sometimes you really do get what you pay for.
Basically, in the past when Ive had a NT/2000 or MSSQL issues I've paid my $200 bucks and got it worked out... everytime.
Wow, not me. Everytime we have legit tough questions, we haven't gotten satisfactory answer from M$. To qualify that, when they recommend that a production server running IIS/Exchange has to be rebooted weekly in order to "avoid downtime"...I don't consider that "getting things worked out".
From my experience with windows, so called solutions that include reboots and reinstalls aren't that uncommon. On the other hand, whenever I've had a linux related problem, I can typically run a search on google and find that someone else has already run into it and obtained an answer. Because of this, I've rarely ever had to post a new question.
Not to rub it in here, and not that this is news either, but the only time I've ever reinstalled linux was when trying out new/diff distributions.
VB supports interface inheritance which is a feature of COM.
....
It's pretty standard. I honestly use inheritance all the time in VB.
Hmm....I wouldn't mix the two words 'inheritance' and 'interfaces'. The 'interfaces' I've dealt with (as language features, e.g., Delphi, Java) usually lack an implementation (interfaces hide implementation), while inheritance generally refers to inheritance of attributes and/or behavior (implementation).
I'm by no means a VB expert, however, saying that VB supports inheritance because it lets your classes (or whatever they are in Vb)extend interfaces is not a compelling argument.
So the next time you decide to put down VB, remember that you are deriding a compiled, object-oriented language. Java can't even claim to be that.
Well, as you pointed out, VB lacks inheritance which is generally considered one of the big 3 features it takes to qualify a language as OO.
As far as being compiled, any language can be compiled, dipshit.
In the meantime, the U.S. government is approaching the problem by eliminating regulations on the Baby Bells, which is sort of like combating street crime by taking police officers off the street.
That's is a braindead assessment. They aren't trying to "eliminate" regulations but rather remove those that prevent some of the baby bells from providing a service that they are CAPABLE of, but are currently not ALLOWED to because some laws that were instituted with the stated intent of providing for more "fair" competition. I'd be curious how much money was involved in that decision...
What it's done is to unfortunately, it's given a bunch of companies with shitty speculative business plans the opportunity to have a go at it, while disqualifying other companies from competing at all (at least in certain areas).
I thought the best comment came at the end of the article. It confirms one of the fundamental advantages of open-source:
In a nod to the open-source community, he said that--for the NSA's purposes--seeing the source code and testing its security is extremely important. "You wouldn't want to do it on Windows NT, because you know nothing about what is going on inside NT," he said.
In a word: Bullshit!
Perhaps you mean that Microsoft had the fastest JVM for Java, although you'd have to qualify that to say that it was not Java-compatible. Hell, I've run into problems with M$'s JVM's released a few last summer because they've obviously done some "neat" stuff to make their JVM fly, which, by the way, breaks little things like object serialization. Yes, I'm talking JVM, as the code I've run into problems with (byte-code, that is) ran fine under every Sun & IBM JVM back to 1.1.
RMI was a mess? Excuse me? RMI's a helluva lot more elegant, maintainable, debuggable, etc, etc, than COM...now there's a mess.
Nope, given the choice I'd much rather continue developing on the Java platform. I've been in the unfortunate position of having to work with Microsoft's convoluted brain-dead band-aided API's and I'll take Java over that anyday. The platform independence is a great feature for me(maybe crucial for others), but it's the advantage of being able to crank out more robust, more secure, more maintainable software in less time (and with less gray hairs) that's Java's main attraction for me.
I'd certainly agree with the pro-open-source comments above and suggest that ALL the pieces need to be open source... In light of the recent backdoor news, this blurb off FREE's site was particularly interesting:
16-11-2000 Ron King has submitted a handy patch to use Interbase with FREE. See it on our Sourceforge tools >>>
I don't know about Starband, but DirecPC, by default, will set up a proxy server as part of it's install. This is supposed to allow you to capture broadcasts of "popular" websites so you can browse them entirely offline. You select from a list of 30 or sites they broadcast and set limits on disk space.
Problem is, the damn software doesn't work for crap. First thing that most DPC users learn is to turn off the proxying entirely otherwise you'll see tons of broken images, 404's, etc, etc.
In short, DirecPC's software seems to be buggy.
They also broadcast newsgroups (again, you're basically setting up a news server on your box), but what they broadcast (from what I've seen) is several days old.
Protocols are switchable to be terrestrial only (e.g., DNS) for those things that don't require bandwidth and where low latency is critical.
I haven't tried it yet, but from what I've elsewhere, VPN and the like becomes virtually unusable over satellite.
OTOH, downloads can fly during off-peak hours and when using a download accelerator I've seen 100-150K/sec speeds (bytes).
I've been playing around with MTU and RWIN pretty frequently, but haven't noticed much difference between an RWIN of ~32K and 64K...matter of fact, really haven't noticed a diff at all.
According to the standard formula you'll find on sites like dslreports, I should be running with an RWIN of like 500K (terrible terrible latency averages around 800ms).
From what I've read elsewhere, my experiences aren't unique. With the wild variance of bandwidth you'll see on satellite, with latency swinging from 500ms on the low end up to 1500, the registry tweaks are only going to give moderate increases.
I've been using DirecPC for the past month and a half, and I'll just say that using satellite should be your last choice, IMHO. Latency is bad enough on one-way, and on two way it basically kills anything other than straight browsing and FTP's. Bandwidth can drop to modem speeds. Do yourself a favor and research the experience of current users before ya take the plunge.
If you can get cable or DSL (even at a higher cost), you'll probably be much happier...if you have no other options at all, satellite can be a decent, though often frustrating service.
Actually, javascript (ECMA script) can be used server-side (not "purely client side")... Other than that, I wholeheartedly agree with you.
I wonder sometimes if some of the java-naysayers on slashdot (who I assume are mostly pro-linux) understand that server-side java web-app development is one of the big wide open doors for getting linux into the enterprise. When you can pick up a web app developed on ATG's Dynamo, for example, and plop it onto a linux box because the whole thing is written in Java (including the app server), I think it removes a major barrier in getting folks to give Linux a fair shot.
"Remember, it wasn't the sex that Clinton was impeached for, it was the lying."
Bullshit, it wasn't comparable to lying on a talk-show, it was because he lied under oath while giving testimony to a court of law (and during a trial that revolved around the very thing he was lying about). Whether or not we see a difference, ethically, and say "lying is lying", there is a difference in the eyes of the law (or at least the courts).
I sure hope they don't automatically include the JRE! It's a better assumption that someone who wants java support already has a copy of the JRE installed, and I sure don't want to have to download it with every product that could possibly use it.
By the way, running M17 for the past couple of hours and I've gotta say "WOW!" Great to see. Can't wait give it a whirl on Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft .Net is free? Really? The cheapest version of visual studio appears to be $800 (and that version has far fewer "enterprise-y" features than the $5500 premium or $12,000 ultimate versions).
I realize there are "free" parts of .Net, including the express editions of visual studio but there are already arguably superior equivalents available in the Java community.
Regarding the dropped call when switching between 3G and Edge: I can't speak to the underlying cause, but over the past few years I've had a Palm Treo and a blackberry that did this constantly (Dallas area was especially bad). From my personal experience, the iPhone seems to do this less than these older phones.
... no pesky ozone layer to hinder the telescope!!
'Because the sky there is so much darker and drier, it means that a modestly-sized telescope would be as powerful as the largest telescopes anywhere else on earth.'
...was that they did not make the same channels available over internet that did on their satellite broadcast. The terrestrial coverage didn't work for me in my location. Had they just made the same channels available via internet, I'd still have my subscription today ($12/month, I think is what it was a couple of years ago).
I just installed iTunes 7, then the iPod update...verified that a couple of my MP3 ripped songs were correctly degapitated.
Amazing...my recent experience has been the opposite of the two parent comments.
Sun's may have good support, but you'll need it because it's always breaking. Defintitely not hardware I'd choose to run HA stuff. Memory error? Machine goes down. CPU failure (one of 20)? Machine goes down. From what I understand (I'm in s/w, not h/w), this isn't supposed to happen, but generally does with Sun's hardware.
I think if Sun's lunch continues to get eaten by Linux on Intel, the quality of their hardware vs. Intel will be just as big a factor as price.
Dell, while it may be solid hardware, has terrible support when (if) you do need it. I suppose, though, sometimes you really do get what you pay for.
You're absolutely right. Note to self: If I'm every writing an OS, be sure to use java...
This gives a whole new meaning to: "Let's not, and say we did!"
Yeah, just like Americans to lump a whole group of people under one label then make a derogatory comment about them...[BG]
That's is a braindead assessment. They aren't trying to "eliminate" regulations but rather remove those that prevent some of the baby bells from providing a service that they are CAPABLE of, but are currently not ALLOWED to because some laws that were instituted with the stated intent of providing for more "fair" competition. I'd be curious how much money was involved in that decision...
What it's done is to unfortunately, it's given a bunch of companies with shitty speculative business plans the opportunity to have a go at it, while disqualifying other companies from competing at all (at least in certain areas).
In a word: Bullshit! Perhaps you mean that Microsoft had the fastest JVM for Java, although you'd have to qualify that to say that it was not Java-compatible. Hell, I've run into problems with M$'s JVM's released a few last summer because they've obviously done some "neat" stuff to make their JVM fly, which, by the way, breaks little things like object serialization. Yes, I'm talking JVM, as the code I've run into problems with (byte-code, that is) ran fine under every Sun & IBM JVM back to 1.1. RMI was a mess? Excuse me? RMI's a helluva lot more elegant, maintainable, debuggable, etc, etc, than COM...now there's a mess. Nope, given the choice I'd much rather continue developing on the Java platform. I've been in the unfortunate position of having to work with Microsoft's convoluted brain-dead band-aided API's and I'll take Java over that anyday. The platform independence is a great feature for me(maybe crucial for others), but it's the advantage of being able to crank out more robust, more secure, more maintainable software in less time (and with less gray hairs) that's Java's main attraction for me.
I'd certainly agree with the pro-open-source comments above and suggest that ALL the pieces need to be open source... In light of the recent backdoor news, this blurb off FREE's site was particularly interesting: 16-11-2000 Ron King has submitted a handy patch to use Interbase with FREE. See it on our Sourceforge tools >>>
Problem is, the damn software doesn't work for crap. First thing that most DPC users learn is to turn off the proxying entirely otherwise you'll see tons of broken images, 404's, etc, etc. In short, DirecPC's software seems to be buggy.
They also broadcast newsgroups (again, you're basically setting up a news server on your box), but what they broadcast (from what I've seen) is several days old.
Protocols are switchable to be terrestrial only (e.g., DNS) for those things that don't require bandwidth and where low latency is critical.
I haven't tried it yet, but from what I've elsewhere, VPN and the like becomes virtually unusable over satellite.
OTOH, downloads can fly during off-peak hours and when using a download accelerator I've seen 100-150K/sec speeds (bytes).
According to the standard formula you'll find on sites like dslreports, I should be running with an RWIN of like 500K (terrible terrible latency averages around 800ms).
From what I've read elsewhere, my experiences aren't unique. With the wild variance of bandwidth you'll see on satellite, with latency swinging from 500ms on the low end up to 1500, the registry tweaks are only going to give moderate increases.
I've been using DirecPC for the past month and a half, and I'll just say that using satellite should be your last choice, IMHO. Latency is bad enough on one-way, and on two way it basically kills anything other than straight browsing and FTP's. Bandwidth can drop to modem speeds. Do yourself a favor and research the experience of current users before ya take the plunge. If you can get cable or DSL (even at a higher cost), you'll probably be much happier...if you have no other options at all, satellite can be a decent, though often frustrating service.
Sounds like an interesting story, but I'm getting a 'Forbidden' message on the 3drage link...anyone got another link handy?
Actually, javascript (ECMA script) can be used server-side (not "purely client side")... Other than that, I wholeheartedly agree with you. I wonder sometimes if some of the java-naysayers on slashdot (who I assume are mostly pro-linux) understand that server-side java web-app development is one of the big wide open doors for getting linux into the enterprise. When you can pick up a web app developed on ATG's Dynamo, for example, and plop it onto a linux box because the whole thing is written in Java (including the app server), I think it removes a major barrier in getting folks to give Linux a fair shot.
"Remember, it wasn't the sex that Clinton was impeached for, it was the lying." Bullshit, it wasn't comparable to lying on a talk-show, it was because he lied under oath while giving testimony to a court of law (and during a trial that revolved around the very thing he was lying about). Whether or not we see a difference, ethically, and say "lying is lying", there is a difference in the eyes of the law (or at least the courts).
You have to especially appreciate the dialog box with the message: "File too large: FaultLog.txt" Guess some things never change...
I sure hope they don't automatically include the JRE! It's a better assumption that someone who wants java support already has a copy of the JRE installed, and I sure don't want to have to download it with every product that could possibly use it.
By the way, running M17 for the past couple of hours and I've gotta say "WOW!" Great to see. Can't wait give it a whirl on Linux.
>>"What Tom Clancy would write if he were smart."
>"if he were a geek" is better, Tom Clancy's smarter than most people I've ever read."
Sounds like that's what Hemos would have written if he were smart.
Sorry...couldn't resist.