What I have trouble understanding is building an app fully and solely for IE.
I can understand if one actually needs IE-specific features, but then those should be built in modularly, so that when more browser support that kind of feature, it can be broadened.
We're stuck with some Windows-only items, and it is extremely frustrating because we continue to need to buy Windows licenses to put IE on machine for people to use these apps, when the VAST majority of our users have NO NEED whatsoever to have Windows on their machine, except for this compatability.
I'm not saying that these people aren't developers, as some others have said. I'm saying that they are lazy coders, though, just as bad as people who insist on using table layouts for non-tabular data, and fill web pages with tag soup.
By Steven Johnson, Steven Johnson's "Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter" was published by Riverhead Books in May.
True enough, although my experience has been that a lot of software didn't want to install for me without root access (apparently a lot of games request that). However, I'm not entirely sure if that's simply a matter of the game or not. Probably.
If I could get my boss weaned off the Windows, we'd have a MUCH easier time supporting our business. Chances are we'd still have plenty of calls, but they would all be concerning computer lab software (where they have Windows and things like calendar creators, etc.).
While the initial story lacked a date, I found another story, with basically the same info on Novell (same status, same projected dates, etc.), dated back to March 10th of this year.
When the article deals primarily with Novell and what Novell is doing regarding their desktop solution, it's really a waste of my time to wade through responses regarding Debian or Ubuntu or whatever else. Are those designed for an office enivronment? Not that I've seen.
When we talked about users in an office enivronment, we're primarily talking about a bunch of people who use an office suite, perhaps instant message others, and access a lot of web-based apps. Assuming that those web-based apps are platform-independent (i.e. not dependent on Internet Explorer), then the majority of people in an office setting will be perfectly fine with using a Linux desktop.
Having managed an IT infrastructure, I can tell you that I would not want users to be able to do most of the things people complain about with Linux. I do not want them playing Sims 2 at work. I don't want them playing Doom 3. I don't want them trying to install new programmes at all, let alone new drivers.
I have SUSE 9.3 at home and it works very well. Can I do everything I want to do at home yet? No. Did I have to tweak my install? Yes. But would I have needed to do that to do office-related work? No.
For the business desktop scenario, I would say that Linux IS ready. With proper user security (don't give them all root), Linux would actually cut down the number of support requests for supported software (because they wouldn't be able to install unsupported software).
The sad fact is that most users use search to find anything. In fact, a great number of users will put a domain name in the search engine to find a site, rather than enter the address itself.
So, what this means is that Canadian e-business will go straight down the tubes.
Your comment shows that you haven't engaged in the new d20 stuff.
I started off with D&D (Basic and Expert - red and blue books). Then I saw AD&D and though it was really cool (1st edition). I liked the flavour of 1st Ed., but it felt a little limited.
2nd Ed. was when I really started playing. TSR released loads of books, and it was interesting, but the Non-Weapon Proficiencies made little sense (high stats meant FAR more than practice). They finally got some things right with the Player's Options, but that should've been in the original, IMHO.
3rd Ed., which is the original d20, is a fairly decent game. Yeah, some things were a little broken (haste and cast more spells, etc.) 3.5 fixed a number of things, and the expansions allow for a better game, especially since with the d20 licensing, some other writers have been able to contribute.
Perhaps you don't like the abstraction of hit points? Maybe you don't understand some of the new changes (like criticial hits changed). Most of the complaints I ever hear are that it's too simple and that someone wants more rules. If you want them, add them.
For many of us, the ease of gaming, particularly in d20, means less memorisation of rules and more real gaming. If I compare two WotC games, Magic: The Gathering and Duel Masters, I find them very similar. But with all the expansions, it can take me about 20 minutes to get somebody up and running on MTG, whereas with DM, it takes about 5. D&D 3.5 is a lot easier to learn than Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, World of Darkness, and many more. They're all games I like, but they are definitely geared for the hard-core gamer who loves rules.
As has been pointed out by many other posters, this has been known for some time. The reality of the problem with the compiler is that while the AMD chips support a lot of the speed features in the compiler, if the compiler doesn't detect an Intel processor, it poops out and gives up.
Far more interesting are the allegations regarding Intel's actions with OEMs. They've threatened to do plenty of things to the OEMs. If the market were fair, then Dell would've been putting out AMD processors ages ago. (Of course, Dell has it's own problems - DFS and shutting down customers service forums among them.)
For me, AMD has been reliable for a long time. I refuse to buy an Intel processor because I dislike monopoly, as well as the Blue Man Group ads.
Were I a manufacturer, I would be working with Novell left and right, since the SUSE/AMD partnership led to real 64-bit support. I wish more organisations would follow behind the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, and roll over to the Novell Linux environment. Then they'd have real benefit from buying AMD processors.
I'll admit that once upon a time I thought the MCSE was a really cool thing.
My first clue came really early on, when back in the days of the NT 4.0 exams, I bought the official books for server administration. Then I was working on installing a server for a company and realised that these books didn't cover even half the stuff I came across.
Nowadays, I use Linux at home, and have Windows 2000 at work. My boss apparently has some MCSE training, and yet I seem to know how to handle basic Windows stuff far better than he does. We have no sensible standard policy for installing workstations (fixed size pagefiles are a good idea), no fixed maintenance schedules aside from anti-virus (how many years have most of these people gone without a defrag?), and a load of thing using more/less default settings.
I've been looking at Novell's CLP and CLE certs myself, but primarily because I want the further education. They would qualify me to run systems for a quite small company, at least at first glance.
Having used SUSE for quite some time, and having recently kicked all the Windows out, I would go with Novell for the support.
Yast2 is dead simple. There's a lot of great material regarding migration on the Novell website, which is really geared towards Windows people.
I also like that they seem to have reasonable self-study kits.
Red Hat, no matter what they say, has always seemed to be more server-oriented anyway. I think your Windows guys would get confused. (My boss seems to get confused anytime I suggest anything away from Windows 2000.)
The only answer I could figure is that he creates static HTML pages and uses Javascript 1% of the time.
But them HTML is a markup language, not a programming language. So, still, he must write some really boring code that consists of next to nothing but arrays and lists.
Except that the underpinnings of all the abstractions the average programmer uses are mathematically based.
I don't think we can patent the basics of logic either, so even when the syntax actually doesn't have any numbers, it's basic reasoning is still mathematical.
And honestly, I can't think of an actual programming language that doesn't use mathematical operators of some kind. Even VBScripting uses it in some bastardised fashion.
It sounds like the ostrich head-in-the-sand argument. I can't see it, hence it doesn't exist.
Actually, both of those are grammatically ok, but they result in two different semantic meanings.
The first example of "I dislike you talking about this subject" means that the person dislikes you when you are talking about this subject.
The second example of "I dislike your talking about this subject" means that you dislike the action, not the person.
Most of use don't differentiate between people and their actions anyway, so in most circumstance it wouldn't make it a difference, but if you were talking to a loved one and used hate instead of dislike, the meaning might be taken quite differently between the two.
The reality is that this statistic doesn't mean jack. Some households have more TVs than people. (Like mine - two people, three TVs).
What's more important is the percentage of households using OTA transmissions. That's probably above 12%.
Also, unless I get a digital box, I'm going to have a heck of a time during storms. I have a digital satellite, and I don't mind losing my network stuff during a major electrical storm. But then I watch all the tornado alert on my little old aerial TV.
Until they start mandating that all TVs sold have built-in digital receivers, dropping analogue is stupid.
Google will serve the market. So, if the market is Windows-oriented, they will product for it first almost every time. Will they do anything with Linux? I'm sure they will, but it takes time. As organisations shift to Linux, then Google will move apps for Linux. Google's stock is valued in part because they know how to reach a paying market.
I agree that Microsoft is little clueless regarding the portal wars... But then again, they seem to be attempting to move into the home box market. That's why the Xbox and Xbox 360 are so important. If they can get use hooked on their search and then use it through their appliance, they get market share, and a very targetted market share at that (particularly if they start stuffing TiVo-like functions into that box).
And why do people search their own desktops? Ok, clearly you've never worked on developing an intranet for a company. People dump stuff anywhere and everywhere. What makes sense for one person doesn't make sense for the next. They forget where they put their own files, and then they need to find files on shared drives.
Yeah, tech-wise, a lot of these things make little sense. To evaluate a corporations actions, you need to start thinking moneywise. (And know that the morons who will stick magnets on the side of a metal case for their computer are the market.)
Script kiddie takes the lists, and pops them into his new trojan that turns the average not updated Windoze box into a zombie.
Some poor schmuck's machine sends out erectile dysfunction spam to all the addresses on the list. Is indicted in Michigan and Utah.
Script kiddie laughs his arse off in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, France, Germany, Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea, or wherever that Michigan and Utah law doesn't touch.
I would personally love it if they spent money making people more aware of the criminality of duplicating media. If we spent the money we do on fighting drugs on educating the public about this, they'd be much more aware.
And then the shit would hit the fan.
I think most people are unaware of how long copyright last on so many things. People don't seem to be aware of the ridiculousness of current legislation. That's why these organisations don't go after the average guy. They make bold statements about so much money being lost, and they whine and lobby lawmakers, so that they can entrench market share by making it illegal to have copyrighted software on your machine that you didn't pay for. (Some legislation as of late has been so poorly worded as to possibly make software you wrote yourself illegal.)
Yeah, go for it. Please. Maybe then the people will take back the concept of public domain. Personally, I think any music company that engages in payola to the point where a crappy song is stuck in my head all the time should lose rights quickly.
Oh, and I'd be far more willing to support a lot of these guys if they had a decent licensing scheme in place where I could upgrade media cheaply, so I could go from VHS to DVD to whatever, without having to pay a second time for the same licence to view.
For most companies using Windows 2000, I don't see much of a reason to shift. The main reason for this is that their staff know how to use the machines, most of the stuff that was broken has been patched, and they simply don't need most of the newer features.
As a Linux guy at home, yeah, I get frustrated in a Win2K environment at work. If we had more 'cutting-edge' people who were happy with upgrades, we'd probably still stick with Win2K for most of our users, switching to Linux for our servers and people who are comfortable on Linux.
As a web guy, my only complaint with Win2K is that it won't support IE7. While I evangelise about Firefox and Opera, the reality is that most users here use IE6, and without an upgrade to XP SP2 or Longhorn, they won't get IE7. Now, granted, I haven't seen what Microsoft might do wrong with IE7, but given all the feedback they've gotten, it'll have to beat IE6.
Context sensitivity for ads on Slashdot are not the best. This ad for Visual Web Developer 2005 came up as I opened this.
Considering the article is oriented towards ditching Windows in favour of Macs, why advertise a Windows-based development tool?
At any rate, I went from Windows to Linux, so I didn't have to change hardware. I'm happy, and Windows is relegated to a virtual machine for a few games, which, IMHO, is about the security level its worth.
Most of what you'd want to protect is covered by copyright. If it can't be covered by copyright, well, then it's something so basic (like "the dog is big") that it's almost impossible to express something without doing it that way.
Again, this is where the idea of a software patent is stupid. Don't allow people to do things in ways that you really couldn't cover with copyright?
Ok, now I find myself back to the argument that source code is speech, and hence not patentable.
This is honestly one of the worst things that can be imagined for most of us in the web world. The reality being that web development products will suddenly be submerged in a see of pure WYSIWYG. While I've been looking forward to seeing what features are going to be in GoLive CS2, I'm not too optimistic.
I don't know how many other people feel like this, but it does seem that we're heading back to the days of developer and designer being in completely different realms, and where the graphic designer thinks he or she can do whatever as long as they see it beautifully.
At least there's still GIMP and NVU, right? Maybe they'll get a lot more support once Adobe jacks up all the prices again.
Slashdot Mirror
What I have trouble understanding is building an app fully and solely for IE.
I can understand if one actually needs IE-specific features, but then those should be built in modularly, so that when more browser support that kind of feature, it can be broadened.
We're stuck with some Windows-only items, and it is extremely frustrating because we continue to need to buy Windows licenses to put IE on machine for people to use these apps, when the VAST majority of our users have NO NEED whatsoever to have Windows on their machine, except for this compatability.
I'm not saying that these people aren't developers, as some others have said. I'm saying that they are lazy coders, though, just as bad as people who insist on using table layouts for non-tabular data, and fill web pages with tag soup.
If you RTFA, you'll see:
True enough, although my experience has been that a lot of software didn't want to install for me without root access (apparently a lot of games request that). However, I'm not entirely sure if that's simply a matter of the game or not. Probably.
If I could get my boss weaned off the Windows, we'd have a MUCH easier time supporting our business. Chances are we'd still have plenty of calls, but they would all be concerning computer lab software (where they have Windows and things like calendar creators, etc.).
Something smelled fishy with the details.
While the initial story lacked a date, I found another story, with basically the same info on Novell (same status, same projected dates, etc.), dated back to March 10th of this year.
Basically, this is not news.
When the article deals primarily with Novell and what Novell is doing regarding their desktop solution, it's really a waste of my time to wade through responses regarding Debian or Ubuntu or whatever else. Are those designed for an office enivronment? Not that I've seen.
When we talked about users in an office enivronment, we're primarily talking about a bunch of people who use an office suite, perhaps instant message others, and access a lot of web-based apps. Assuming that those web-based apps are platform-independent (i.e. not dependent on Internet Explorer), then the majority of people in an office setting will be perfectly fine with using a Linux desktop.
Having managed an IT infrastructure, I can tell you that I would not want users to be able to do most of the things people complain about with Linux. I do not want them playing Sims 2 at work. I don't want them playing Doom 3. I don't want them trying to install new programmes at all, let alone new drivers.
I have SUSE 9.3 at home and it works very well. Can I do everything I want to do at home yet? No. Did I have to tweak my install? Yes. But would I have needed to do that to do office-related work? No.
For the business desktop scenario, I would say that Linux IS ready. With proper user security (don't give them all root), Linux would actually cut down the number of support requests for supported software (because they wouldn't be able to install unsupported software).
The sad fact is that most users use search to find anything. In fact, a great number of users will put a domain name in the search engine to find a site, rather than enter the address itself.
So, what this means is that Canadian e-business will go straight down the tubes.
Brilliant foresight.
Your comment shows that you haven't engaged in the new d20 stuff.
I started off with D&D (Basic and Expert - red and blue books). Then I saw AD&D and though it was really cool (1st edition). I liked the flavour of 1st Ed., but it felt a little limited.
2nd Ed. was when I really started playing. TSR released loads of books, and it was interesting, but the Non-Weapon Proficiencies made little sense (high stats meant FAR more than practice). They finally got some things right with the Player's Options, but that should've been in the original, IMHO.
3rd Ed., which is the original d20, is a fairly decent game. Yeah, some things were a little broken (haste and cast more spells, etc.) 3.5 fixed a number of things, and the expansions allow for a better game, especially since with the d20 licensing, some other writers have been able to contribute.
Perhaps you don't like the abstraction of hit points? Maybe you don't understand some of the new changes (like criticial hits changed). Most of the complaints I ever hear are that it's too simple and that someone wants more rules. If you want them, add them.
For many of us, the ease of gaming, particularly in d20, means less memorisation of rules and more real gaming. If I compare two WotC games, Magic: The Gathering and Duel Masters, I find them very similar. But with all the expansions, it can take me about 20 minutes to get somebody up and running on MTG, whereas with DM, it takes about 5. D&D 3.5 is a lot easier to learn than Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, World of Darkness, and many more. They're all games I like, but they are definitely geared for the hard-core gamer who loves rules.
As has been pointed out by many other posters, this has been known for some time. The reality of the problem with the compiler is that while the AMD chips support a lot of the speed features in the compiler, if the compiler doesn't detect an Intel processor, it poops out and gives up.
Far more interesting are the allegations regarding Intel's actions with OEMs. They've threatened to do plenty of things to the OEMs. If the market were fair, then Dell would've been putting out AMD processors ages ago. (Of course, Dell has it's own problems - DFS and shutting down customers service forums among them.)
For me, AMD has been reliable for a long time. I refuse to buy an Intel processor because I dislike monopoly, as well as the Blue Man Group ads.
Were I a manufacturer, I would be working with Novell left and right, since the SUSE/AMD partnership led to real 64-bit support. I wish more organisations would follow behind the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, and roll over to the Novell Linux environment. Then they'd have real benefit from buying AMD processors.
I'll admit that once upon a time I thought the MCSE was a really cool thing.
My first clue came really early on, when back in the days of the NT 4.0 exams, I bought the official books for server administration. Then I was working on installing a server for a company and realised that these books didn't cover even half the stuff I came across.
Nowadays, I use Linux at home, and have Windows 2000 at work. My boss apparently has some MCSE training, and yet I seem to know how to handle basic Windows stuff far better than he does. We have no sensible standard policy for installing workstations (fixed size pagefiles are a good idea), no fixed maintenance schedules aside from anti-virus (how many years have most of these people gone without a defrag?), and a load of thing using more/less default settings.
I've been looking at Novell's CLP and CLE certs myself, but primarily because I want the further education. They would qualify me to run systems for a quite small company, at least at first glance.
Having used SUSE for quite some time, and having recently kicked all the Windows out, I would go with Novell for the support.
Yast2 is dead simple. There's a lot of great material regarding migration on the Novell website, which is really geared towards Windows people.
I also like that they seem to have reasonable self-study kits.
Red Hat, no matter what they say, has always seemed to be more server-oriented anyway. I think your Windows guys would get confused. (My boss seems to get confused anytime I suggest anything away from Windows 2000.)
What are you talking about? There's no 600+ megabytes on a fingernail.
It's more like 600+ kilobytes. Better than an old floppy, but not better than my USB memory stick.
Damn it! I broke a nail. There went my passwords!
I love how they reported the results in megabits. So is that 5000000 bits? Whee! I usually do my data in bytes.... Divide by 8, no?
I was trying to figure that one out myself.
The only answer I could figure is that he creates static HTML pages and uses Javascript 1% of the time.
But them HTML is a markup language, not a programming language. So, still, he must write some really boring code that consists of next to nothing but arrays and lists.
Except that the underpinnings of all the abstractions the average programmer uses are mathematically based.
I don't think we can patent the basics of logic either, so even when the syntax actually doesn't have any numbers, it's basic reasoning is still mathematical.
And honestly, I can't think of an actual programming language that doesn't use mathematical operators of some kind. Even VBScripting uses it in some bastardised fashion.
It sounds like the ostrich head-in-the-sand argument. I can't see it, hence it doesn't exist.
Actually, both of those are grammatically ok, but they result in two different semantic meanings.
The first example of "I dislike you talking about this subject" means that the person dislikes you when you are talking about this subject.
The second example of "I dislike your talking about this subject" means that you dislike the action, not the person.
Most of use don't differentiate between people and their actions anyway, so in most circumstance it wouldn't make it a difference, but if you were talking to a loved one and used hate instead of dislike, the meaning might be taken quite differently between the two.
The reality is that this statistic doesn't mean jack. Some households have more TVs than people. (Like mine - two people, three TVs).
What's more important is the percentage of households using OTA transmissions. That's probably above 12%.
Also, unless I get a digital box, I'm going to have a heck of a time during storms. I have a digital satellite, and I don't mind losing my network stuff during a major electrical storm. But then I watch all the tornado alert on my little old aerial TV.
Until they start mandating that all TVs sold have built-in digital receivers, dropping analogue is stupid.
Google will serve the market. So, if the market is Windows-oriented, they will product for it first almost every time. Will they do anything with Linux? I'm sure they will, but it takes time. As organisations shift to Linux, then Google will move apps for Linux. Google's stock is valued in part because they know how to reach a paying market.
I agree that Microsoft is little clueless regarding the portal wars... But then again, they seem to be attempting to move into the home box market. That's why the Xbox and Xbox 360 are so important. If they can get use hooked on their search and then use it through their appliance, they get market share, and a very targetted market share at that (particularly if they start stuffing TiVo-like functions into that box).
And why do people search their own desktops? Ok, clearly you've never worked on developing an intranet for a company. People dump stuff anywhere and everywhere. What makes sense for one person doesn't make sense for the next. They forget where they put their own files, and then they need to find files on shared drives.
Yeah, tech-wise, a lot of these things make little sense. To evaluate a corporations actions, you need to start thinking moneywise. (And know that the morons who will stick magnets on the side of a metal case for their computer are the market.)
Here comes the real fun.
Script kiddie takes the lists, and pops them into his new trojan that turns the average not updated Windoze box into a zombie.
Some poor schmuck's machine sends out erectile dysfunction spam to all the addresses on the list. Is indicted in Michigan and Utah.
Script kiddie laughs his arse off in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, France, Germany, Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea, or wherever that Michigan and Utah law doesn't touch.
I would personally love it if they spent money making people more aware of the criminality of duplicating media. If we spent the money we do on fighting drugs on educating the public about this, they'd be much more aware.
And then the shit would hit the fan.
I think most people are unaware of how long copyright last on so many things. People don't seem to be aware of the ridiculousness of current legislation. That's why these organisations don't go after the average guy. They make bold statements about so much money being lost, and they whine and lobby lawmakers, so that they can entrench market share by making it illegal to have copyrighted software on your machine that you didn't pay for. (Some legislation as of late has been so poorly worded as to possibly make software you wrote yourself illegal.)
Yeah, go for it. Please. Maybe then the people will take back the concept of public domain. Personally, I think any music company that engages in payola to the point where a crappy song is stuck in my head all the time should lose rights quickly.
Oh, and I'd be far more willing to support a lot of these guys if they had a decent licensing scheme in place where I could upgrade media cheaply, so I could go from VHS to DVD to whatever, without having to pay a second time for the same licence to view.
For most companies using Windows 2000, I don't see much of a reason to shift. The main reason for this is that their staff know how to use the machines, most of the stuff that was broken has been patched, and they simply don't need most of the newer features.
As a Linux guy at home, yeah, I get frustrated in a Win2K environment at work. If we had more 'cutting-edge' people who were happy with upgrades, we'd probably still stick with Win2K for most of our users, switching to Linux for our servers and people who are comfortable on Linux.
As a web guy, my only complaint with Win2K is that it won't support IE7. While I evangelise about Firefox and Opera, the reality is that most users here use IE6, and without an upgrade to XP SP2 or Longhorn, they won't get IE7. Now, granted, I haven't seen what Microsoft might do wrong with IE7, but given all the feedback they've gotten, it'll have to beat IE6.
An aside, not totally off-topic.
Context sensitivity for ads on Slashdot are not the best. This ad for Visual Web Developer 2005 came up as I opened this.
Considering the article is oriented towards ditching Windows in favour of Macs, why advertise a Windows-based development tool?
At any rate, I went from Windows to Linux, so I didn't have to change hardware. I'm happy, and Windows is relegated to a virtual machine for a few games, which, IMHO, is about the security level its worth.
Unless I'm totally mistaken, Footprints ain't free.
Looks like a nice piece of software, particularly if your in MS-Only land, but this guy needs freeware.
Again, I hate software patents. There's no point.
Most of what you'd want to protect is covered by copyright. If it can't be covered by copyright, well, then it's something so basic (like "the dog is big") that it's almost impossible to express something without doing it that way.
Again, this is where the idea of a software patent is stupid. Don't allow people to do things in ways that you really couldn't cover with copyright?
Ok, now I find myself back to the argument that source code is speech, and hence not patentable.
This is honestly one of the worst things that can be imagined for most of us in the web world. The reality being that web development products will suddenly be submerged in a see of pure WYSIWYG. While I've been looking forward to seeing what features are going to be in GoLive CS2, I'm not too optimistic.
I don't know how many other people feel like this, but it does seem that we're heading back to the days of developer and designer being in completely different realms, and where the graphic designer thinks he or she can do whatever as long as they see it beautifully.
At least there's still GIMP and NVU, right? Maybe they'll get a lot more support once Adobe jacks up all the prices again.
Is reader 7 bad?
I had Acrobat 6 on my system and it would chug and chug. I have 7 professional now, and in Firefox it runs fine.