Most companies should be using low cost, diskless workstations whose only job is to connect to powerful servers where the real work is done, that can be easily managed by a small staff, instead of giving everyone a full fledged PC, which for most business users, is nothing more than fertile soil for viruses, trojans, and worms, and is a maintenance nightmare for I.T. staffs.
Translation: I am 14 years old and I have no need for any sort of stability in my "rig". I don't have to worry about getting any sort of real work done, so I play games all day and look at porn. If I can overclock a 3% performance increase, I'll cream my virgin shorts.
Better translation: I prefer superior hardware that also happens to cost less.
As someone who's played WoW religiously (2 lvl16 characters on Shattered Hand), I think it's a truly awesome game. It's gigantic, first off, and it's extendable. I like most of the stuff Blizzard comes out with so that may be a bit of a bias. MMORPG's are fun, some of them...I'm really excited about Matrix Online but this is the same thing that happened when SWG came out...Can we have *one* good Sci-Fi MMORPG please?!?
You might want to check out Anarchy Online. It's a sci-fi based MMORPG, and they're currently offering a free client download and free year worth of online play. You don't even have to give them a credit card number.
You have a strange view of the Industry if you think Java has reached "will be with us forever" stage just 10 years after the initial release (and that didn't resemble Java as we know it today in any form).
I won't comment on the "will be with us forever" part, but I will say this: Java is showing every sign of being a long-term player. I'm not sure how you try to estimate the staying power of languages and platforms, but by every reasonable measure, Java will be with us a long time.
Java has too many problems and not enough advantages to stay as long as C has.
This is just a meaningless troll unless you explain what show-stopper problems you think Java has that'll limit its future potential. Java has some problems, yes, but none of them are show-stoppers, and the language continues to evolve nicely (see Java 5).
In addition, the areas where Java and C compete with each other are pretty small already. You typically won't write low level systems code in Java, and writing general purpose applications in C is making less and less sense every day.
Don't get me wrong, the idea of the virtual machine will probably stay for a long time but not Java as a language or as a Runtime Environment.
And you base this conclusion on...what? With all due respect, your post is all words and no substance. As I said before, by every reasonable measure, Java will be with us a long time.
I've looked into D and, frankly, it looks amazing. I've often told C and C++ programmers that the natural direction to evolve is D. Still, I'm concerned about the future of D in terms of market acceptance. It's the only thing stopping me from learning D well and trying it out on some projects.
One thing I'd love to see is a "D source to C source" converter. That would reduce my concern enough that I'd start using D, because I'd know I could always "fall back" on the C code if necessary.
RTFA. The original article was posing Linus Torvalds as the dictator of Linux-and Java as some kind of nice democracy. Also, read the link in my comment please. There is interesting stuff happening well outside the C/C++/Java/C# world.
I read the article. It was nonsense, like your post. You don't refute nonsense with nonsense.
I also read the link in your comment. You conveniently ignored one of the points in my post:
Java is well supported. Most often, how well a language is supported is just as important as how good the language itself is.
I'm sure Ruby is very "cool". It is not, however, nearly as widely supported as Java.
Whatever the claims about "Community Process", Sun runs Java and Scott McNealy runs Sun when it really comes down to it. I would suggest asking long term Sun folks(the folks that built that company and were there over 15 year ago) what they really think of that means of governance.
Say what you will about Java and Sun, but here's how I see things:
I'm much more productive writing Java code than C or C++ code, at least for the kinds of applications I build.
Java is well supported. Most often, how well a language is supported is just as important as how good the language itself is.
Sun has done an excellent job listening to the community and making sure Java continues to grow.
Java is perhaps the only serious competitor to Microsoft's.NET, and in my opinion, if.NET "wins", we all lose.
Suggesting that Scott McNealy has some kind of low level control over Java's growth is ridiculous.
All in all, I would say Java is an excellent technology with a bright future, and to fear it because "OMG OMG, evil dumb stupid Scott McNealy controls Java, OMG OMG, it sux0rz, it's proprietary, run for the hills!" is foolish.
Most of your post is nonsense, and I can't understand why it got modded +5 Interesting.
It's similar with Free Software - you use it if you really like to 'tinker' with everything or are really short on cash. But if you don't like the former and are not limited by latter, you will rather go to a store with proprietary solutions - where your choices are obviously limited, but you're saving time and effort.
With all due respect, screw you. I'm not that fond of tinkering, and I have plenty of cash, but I sure as hell prefer Linux (free software) over Windows (proprietary).
Why? Because Linux does the things I want, and Windows doesn't. And there are plenty of Linux distros for people just like me, where the install and configuration are close to painless.
Suggesting that people who don't like to tinker, and who have money, will always pick the proprietary solution, is just ridiculous. And to suggest the proprietary solution is always more painless than the free software solution is just as ridiculous.
Based on the few responses I see so far, you're getting some good short-term advice. However, you might also want to start considering some long-term solutions.
Switching to MacOS X, Linux, or *BSD would, of course, reduce your risk, since Windows is a much bigger target than all those rest put together. I know this isn't terribly useful advice, but it's worth mentioning since our current software monoculture (the Windows monopoly) is just going to keep getting everyone in trouble.
Even better, companies should start considering moving away from client-centric computing and back to server-centric computing. High speed networks make "remote GUIs" very usable, and nobody can deny the benefits of only having to administrate a few large systems instead of thousands of small ones. (I'm one of those rare people who thinks companies will wake up to this fact eventually, and we'll see companies like Sun flourish again. Big systems are awfully cost effective when you factor in total cost of ownership.)
Before the flames begin, I already know my advice isn't useful in the short-term. I'm just trying to plant some seeds.
Right now, being stupid is what's seen as being cool.
I agree. And what might be even worse:
Even if you're smart and pursue an education, you won't find a job because it'll be offshore outsourced anyway.
The U.S. is on the verge of re-electing the most anti-science president in U.S. history, George W. Bush.
The future doesn't look very bright if you're an American.
Re:Flaws in both Languages
on
Java 1.5 vs C#
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
# Neither are open source.
How can you "open source" a language? Are you talking about compilers themselves being open source, or what? The language specifications for both Java and C# are trivially available for anyone that cares to look at them.
# Both require virtual machines.
This is simply not true. For example, there are at least two Java compilers that produce native executables.
# Despite being marketed as portable, but have portability issues. Java is not backward compatible with older versions. C# has problems with porting some of the graphics stuff to Linux.
I work for a software company whose products target half a dozen operating systems, and based on ample experience, I can say using Java has simplified our life remarkably in terms of portability. Is it perfect? No. But just because it isn't perfect doesn't mean it's not a huge step forward in terms of making it easy to write portable code.
# We don't really need them. PHP/Perl serve my needs on the web/server side. C++ and Python server my needs on the desktop side.
We don't really "need" PHP/Perl/C++/Python either, now do we? This comment is just plain meaningless.
# They're closely tied to their respective companies.
With all due respect, this is about the only thing that makes sense in your entire post.
Offshore Outsourcing Software Development
on
Inside Wal-Mart IT
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Offshore outsourcing software development is all about short-term gains at the expensive of long-term profitability.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that training people who will ultimately take that knowledge and compete against you isn't a viable long-term strategy.
I'm looking forward to seeing the faces of American executives when Indian software companies start competing against those same American companies who decided offshore outsource. "Gosh, we didn't expect them to compete against us after we paid them for years and years, giving them the crucial experience necessary to compete against us!"
Oh, wait. Those executives won't care. They'll already have stolen their millions from the companies whose long-term viability they destroyed, and be sipping drinks while counting their money.
If given a choice, I would take Bill Gates over Steve Jobs anyday. Ever watch that TV special with those two in the 80s. Gates was a complete geek, but Jobs was a geek with serious attitude problems toward his own engineers.
They portrayed him as this abusive chief with absolutely zero respect toward everyone who worked for him. Ego trip every day and made his engineers pushed to an unhealthy limit.
Bill Gates made bad software acceptable in the market. Steve Jobs would have made bad corporate culture acceptable.
I'm not sure which is worse: the fact that you base your opinion of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs on a made-for-TV movie, or the fact that people were dumb enough to rate your post +4, Interesting.
Next time, try to base your opinions of people on something a little more substantial, will you please?
Thanks ALOT!
This is what I try to say here all the time, problem is that/. is overrun by java nuts.
Considering the discussion was not "JIT'd Java vs. precompiled C or C++", I fail to see what point you're trying to make. As an experienced C developer, as well as a Java developer, I'm well aware of the strengths of precompiled C over JIT'd Java.
Precompiled Java vs. JIT'd Java, however, is what we were discussing, at least I thought so...
Precompiling does offer advantages, at least at this point:
While there are almost always "exceptions to the rule", it's been proven out in the real world that precompiled Java generally doesn't offer performance advantages over non-precompiled Java using modern JVMs such as Sun's and IBM's, with some exceptions such as startup time.
1) More efficient binary code. Seriously, if you think you can make Java generate more efficient code than the Intel C compiler in a general purpose situation, you be my guest but you are going to lose. Intel has an extremely efficient compiler for the precompiled world and in general precompiled stuff, even on just an ok compiler, is faster than JIT.
Except we're not talking about C, we're talking about Java.
2) Access to native resources. Java abstracts everything by necessity to pull cross platform compatibility. Fine, but there is a reason for things like DirectDraw, ASIO, OpenGL, etc to exist. For video, using DirectDraw is a major performance boost. You can do it C++, you can't do it in Java.
Except we're not talking about DirectDraw, ASIO, OpenGL, etc. We're talking about Java.
Now neither of these are things that are necessiary perminant truths. It is, in theory, possible to make a JIT compiler generate as or more efficient code to a precomiler. It is also possible, in theory, to modify Java such that it can directly access accelerated OS features.
However the theoritical future has nothing to do with now. At this point, precomiled code is more efficient (in some cases quite a lot) and Java does not provide access to accelerated features. There is a REASON that Doom 3, UT 2004, etc are written in a language that precomiles to native code. Both seek to be cross platform (and UT 2004 is to an amazing extent) however Java is NOT the right tool for them at this time.
So while I certianly think something like this is cool and valuable, and am glad to see it implemented, don't think that it'll be as fast or efficient as a native player compiled with ICC.
The OP was theorizing about precompiling Java to achieve better performance. Not about using the Intel C compiler, or Java's ability (or lack thereof) to call APIs such as DirectDraw, etc.
Makes me curious - at this point, apparently, what Theora most needs is optimization of the code to make it work faster.
How optimized is this Java port of the codec, and will it be possible to compile it to 'native' code using GCJ for maximum performance?
Most of the time, Java code is Just-in-Time (JIT) compiled. Even the old MS Java Virtual Machine that comes with IE will JIT compile Java bytecode.
That means the Java bytecode is compiled on-the-fly. You generally end up running native code.
The latest Sun JVMs (and it's been this way for quite a while) will interpret code that doesn't get called often, but will aggressively compile code that gets called a lot. The theory is that the end result can perform better than Ahead-of-Time (AOT) compiled code.
In a nutshell, pre-compiling doesn't offer any performance advantages.
I want my super-upber-high-end gaming PC to ship with Linux so I can stress it its limits with the absolute latest, bleeding edge, hard core Linux based games...
...like Tux Racer.
That is admittedly very funny, but before people read too much into it, I want to point out two things:
* There are, in fact, some games for Linux which benefit greatly from high-end hardware.
* Some of us already have one or more legal Windows licenses, and we don't want to be forced to buy more with new hardware.
Rip on Miguel as you like, but recall, this is a man that wants the linux desktop to prosper, regardless of what fanboy, ub3r wannabies latch on.
I have no desire to rip on Miguel; however, I think Miguel may have underestimated Microsoft.
My opinion is that.NET is a trojan horse: The "best" and "most up-to-date" implementation will always be on Windows, which will give Microsoft a great deal of marketing strength, even if Mono can run a large number of.NET applications (which seems a long ways off: Windows.Forms isn't "standardized" by ECMA, and it's very Windows-centric. Mono needs Windows.Forms in order to run GUI-based.NET applications).
And if the Linux/Mono combo ever becomes a serious threat, Microsoft can just beat Mono into submission with a fist full of patents.
Even though Java is proprietary, Sun has bent over backwards for years to get the community involved and keep the community involved. The ubiquity, robustness, and maturity of the Java Virtual Machine makes Java ready right now for what Mono may be ready for some day.
Don't be paranoid, but at the same time, don't dismiss Microsoft's pattern of abusive behavior over the years. Before you commit to Mono, think through all the alternatives first, and be sure you're not opening the city gates for a trojan horse.
Slashdot Mirror
That is true, but microsoft will change to whatever the "next big thing" is. Infact they might even be the ones to create it.
Of course Microsoft will create it...
Right after Apple does.
Use the right tool for the job folks.
Most companies should be using low cost, diskless workstations whose only job is to connect to powerful servers where the real work is done, that can be easily managed by a small staff, instead of giving everyone a full fledged PC, which for most business users, is nothing more than fertile soil for viruses, trojans, and worms, and is a maintenance nightmare for I.T. staffs.
In my opinion... :)
Translation: I am 14 years old and I have no need for any sort of stability in my "rig". I don't have to worry about getting any sort of real work done, so I play games all day and look at porn. If I can overclock a 3% performance increase, I'll cream my virgin shorts.
Better translation: I prefer superior hardware that also happens to cost less.
You're a troll, and should be modded as such.
As someone who's played WoW religiously (2 lvl16 characters on Shattered Hand), I think it's a truly awesome game. It's gigantic, first off, and it's extendable. I like most of the stuff Blizzard comes out with so that may be a bit of a bias. MMORPG's are fun, some of them...I'm really excited about Matrix Online but this is the same thing that happened when SWG came out...Can we have *one* good Sci-Fi MMORPG please?!?
You might want to check out Anarchy Online. It's a sci-fi based MMORPG, and they're currently offering a free client download and free year worth of online play. You don't even have to give them a credit card number.
You have a strange view of the Industry if you think Java has reached "will be with us forever" stage just 10 years after the initial release (and that didn't resemble Java as we know it today in any form).
I won't comment on the "will be with us forever" part, but I will say this: Java is showing every sign of being a long-term player. I'm not sure how you try to estimate the staying power of languages and platforms, but by every reasonable measure, Java will be with us a long time.
Java has too many problems and not enough advantages to stay as long as C has.
This is just a meaningless troll unless you explain what show-stopper problems you think Java has that'll limit its future potential. Java has some problems, yes, but none of them are show-stoppers, and the language continues to evolve nicely (see Java 5).
In addition, the areas where Java and C compete with each other are pretty small already. You typically won't write low level systems code in Java, and writing general purpose applications in C is making less and less sense every day.
Don't get me wrong, the idea of the virtual machine will probably stay for a long time but not Java as a language or as a Runtime Environment.
And you base this conclusion on...what? With all due respect, your post is all words and no substance. As I said before, by every reasonable measure, Java will be with us a long time.
I've looked into D and, frankly, it looks amazing. I've often told C and C++ programmers that the natural direction to evolve is D. Still, I'm concerned about the future of D in terms of market acceptance. It's the only thing stopping me from learning D well and trying it out on some projects.
One thing I'd love to see is a "D source to C source" converter. That would reduce my concern enough that I'd start using D, because I'd know I could always "fall back" on the C code if necessary.
RTFA. The original article was posing Linus Torvalds as the dictator of Linux-and Java as some kind of nice democracy. Also, read the link in my comment please. There is interesting stuff happening well outside the C/C++/Java/C# world.
I read the article. It was nonsense, like your post. You don't refute nonsense with nonsense.
I also read the link in your comment. You conveniently ignored one of the points in my post:
Java is well supported. Most often, how well a language is supported is just as important as how good the language itself is.
I'm sure Ruby is very "cool". It is not, however, nearly as widely supported as Java.
Whatever the claims about "Community Process", Sun runs Java and Scott McNealy runs Sun when it really comes down to it. I would suggest asking long term Sun folks(the folks that built that company and were there over 15 year ago) what they really think of that means of governance.
Say what you will about Java and Sun, but here's how I see things:
I'm much more productive writing Java code than C or C++ code, at least for the kinds of applications I build.
Java is well supported. Most often, how well a language is supported is just as important as how good the language itself is.
Sun has done an excellent job listening to the community and making sure Java continues to grow.
Java is perhaps the only serious competitor to Microsoft's .NET, and in my opinion, if .NET "wins", we all lose.
Suggesting that Scott McNealy has some kind of low level control over Java's growth is ridiculous.
All in all, I would say Java is an excellent technology with a bright future, and to fear it because "OMG OMG, evil dumb stupid Scott McNealy controls Java, OMG OMG, it sux0rz, it's proprietary, run for the hills!" is foolish.
Most of your post is nonsense, and I can't understand why it got modded +5 Interesting.
It's similar with Free Software - you use it if you really like to 'tinker' with everything or are really short on cash. But if you don't like the former and are not limited by latter, you will rather go to a store with proprietary solutions - where your choices are obviously limited, but you're saving time and effort.
With all due respect, screw you. I'm not that fond of tinkering, and I have plenty of cash, but I sure as hell prefer Linux (free software) over Windows (proprietary).
Why? Because Linux does the things I want, and Windows doesn't. And there are plenty of Linux distros for people just like me, where the install and configuration are close to painless.
Suggesting that people who don't like to tinker, and who have money, will always pick the proprietary solution, is just ridiculous. And to suggest the proprietary solution is always more painless than the free software solution is just as ridiculous.
Based on the few responses I see so far, you're getting some good short-term advice. However, you might also want to start considering some long-term solutions.
Switching to MacOS X, Linux, or *BSD would, of course, reduce your risk, since Windows is a much bigger target than all those rest put together. I know this isn't terribly useful advice, but it's worth mentioning since our current software monoculture (the Windows monopoly) is just going to keep getting everyone in trouble.
Even better, companies should start considering moving away from client-centric computing and back to server-centric computing. High speed networks make "remote GUIs" very usable, and nobody can deny the benefits of only having to administrate a few large systems instead of thousands of small ones. (I'm one of those rare people who thinks companies will wake up to this fact eventually, and we'll see companies like Sun flourish again. Big systems are awfully cost effective when you factor in total cost of ownership.)
Before the flames begin, I already know my advice isn't useful in the short-term. I'm just trying to plant some seeds.
Right now, being stupid is what's seen as being cool.
I agree. And what might be even worse:
Even if you're smart and pursue an education, you won't find a job because it'll be offshore outsourced anyway.
The U.S. is on the verge of re-electing the most anti-science president in U.S. history, George W. Bush.
The future doesn't look very bright if you're an American.
# Neither are open source.
How can you "open source" a language? Are you talking about compilers themselves being open source, or what? The language specifications for both Java and C# are trivially available for anyone that cares to look at them.
# Both require virtual machines.
This is simply not true. For example, there are at least two Java compilers that produce native executables.
# Despite being marketed as portable, but have portability issues. Java is not backward compatible with older versions. C# has problems with porting some of the graphics stuff to Linux.
I work for a software company whose products target half a dozen operating systems, and based on ample experience, I can say using Java has simplified our life remarkably in terms of portability. Is it perfect? No. But just because it isn't perfect doesn't mean it's not a huge step forward in terms of making it easy to write portable code.
# We don't really need them. PHP/Perl serve my needs on the web/server side. C++ and Python server my needs on the desktop side.
We don't really "need" PHP/Perl/C++/Python either, now do we? This comment is just plain meaningless.
# They're closely tied to their respective companies.
With all due respect, this is about the only thing that makes sense in your entire post.
Offshore outsourcing software development is all about short-term gains at the expensive of long-term profitability.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that training people who will ultimately take that knowledge and compete against you isn't a viable long-term strategy.
I'm looking forward to seeing the faces of American executives when Indian software companies start competing against those same American companies who decided offshore outsource. "Gosh, we didn't expect them to compete against us after we paid them for years and years, giving them the crucial experience necessary to compete against us!"
Oh, wait. Those executives won't care. They'll already have stolen their millions from the companies whose long-term viability they destroyed, and be sipping drinks while counting their money.
If given a choice, I would take Bill Gates over Steve Jobs anyday. Ever watch that TV special with those two in the 80s. Gates was a complete geek, but Jobs was a geek with serious attitude problems toward his own engineers.
They portrayed him as this abusive chief with absolutely zero respect toward everyone who worked for him. Ego trip every day and made his engineers pushed to an unhealthy limit.
Bill Gates made bad software acceptable in the market. Steve Jobs would have made bad corporate culture acceptable.
I'm not sure which is worse: the fact that you base your opinion of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs on a made-for-TV movie, or the fact that people were dumb enough to rate your post +4, Interesting.
Next time, try to base your opinions of people on something a little more substantial, will you please?
Thanks ALOT! /. is overrun by java nuts.
This is what I try to say here all the time, problem is that
Considering the discussion was not "JIT'd Java vs. precompiled C or C++", I fail to see what point you're trying to make. As an experienced C developer, as well as a Java developer, I'm well aware of the strengths of precompiled C over JIT'd Java.
Precompiled Java vs. JIT'd Java, however, is what we were discussing, at least I thought so...
Precompiling does offer advantages, at least at this point:
While there are almost always "exceptions to the rule", it's been proven out in the real world that precompiled Java generally doesn't offer performance advantages over non-precompiled Java using modern JVMs such as Sun's and IBM's, with some exceptions such as startup time.
1) More efficient binary code. Seriously, if you think you can make Java generate more efficient code than the Intel C compiler in a general purpose situation, you be my guest but you are going to lose. Intel has an extremely efficient compiler for the precompiled world and in general precompiled stuff, even on just an ok compiler, is faster than JIT.
Except we're not talking about C, we're talking about Java.
2) Access to native resources. Java abstracts everything by necessity to pull cross platform compatibility. Fine, but there is a reason for things like DirectDraw, ASIO, OpenGL, etc to exist. For video, using DirectDraw is a major performance boost. You can do it C++, you can't do it in Java.
Except we're not talking about DirectDraw, ASIO, OpenGL, etc. We're talking about Java.
Now neither of these are things that are necessiary perminant truths. It is, in theory, possible to make a JIT compiler generate as or more efficient code to a precomiler. It is also possible, in theory, to modify Java such that it can directly access accelerated OS features.
However the theoritical future has nothing to do with now. At this point, precomiled code is more efficient (in some cases quite a lot) and Java does not provide access to accelerated features. There is a REASON that Doom 3, UT 2004, etc are written in a language that precomiles to native code. Both seek to be cross platform (and UT 2004 is to an amazing extent) however Java is NOT the right tool for them at this time.
So while I certianly think something like this is cool and valuable, and am glad to see it implemented, don't think that it'll be as fast or efficient as a native player compiled with ICC.
The OP was theorizing about precompiling Java to achieve better performance. Not about using the Intel C compiler, or Java's ability (or lack thereof) to call APIs such as DirectDraw, etc.
Makes me curious - at this point, apparently, what Theora most needs is optimization of the code to make it work faster.
How optimized is this Java port of the codec, and will it be possible to compile it to 'native' code using GCJ for maximum performance?
Most of the time, Java code is Just-in-Time (JIT) compiled. Even the old MS Java Virtual Machine that comes with IE will JIT compile Java bytecode.
That means the Java bytecode is compiled on-the-fly. You generally end up running native code.
The latest Sun JVMs (and it's been this way for quite a while) will interpret code that doesn't get called often, but will aggressively compile code that gets called a lot. The theory is that the end result can perform better than Ahead-of-Time (AOT) compiled code.
In a nutshell, pre-compiling doesn't offer any performance advantages.
So your argument is that:
System.Object
System.MarshalByRefObject
System.ComponentModel.Component
System.Windows.Forms.Control
System.Windows.Forms.ButtonBase
Windows.Forms.Button
Is more intuitive than:
java.lang.Object
java.awt.Component
java.awt.Container
javax.swing.JComponent
javax.swing.AbstractButton
javax.swing.JButton
Sorry, but they don't seem that different, as far as intuitiveness goes, to me...
Dibs on Legolas. :-P
Dibs on "Legomyegolas". :-)
Yeah! Right on! Me Too!
I want my super-upber-high-end gaming PC to ship with Linux so I can stress it its limits with the absolute latest, bleeding edge, hard core Linux based games...
That is admittedly very funny, but before people read too much into it, I want to point out two things:
* There are, in fact, some games for Linux which benefit greatly from high-end hardware.
* Some of us already have one or more legal Windows licenses, and we don't want to be forced to buy more with new hardware.
Have you seen many high-end gaming systens running Linux? This isn't the free-as-in-beer or free-as-in-freedom market.
Did you ever stop to think that maybe I already own a Windows license and don't want to be forced to buy another one?
Dell can want to sell me a machine all they want, but they won't get my business because:
* The quality of their support has fallen through the floor due to offshore outsourcing it (the non-business support, at least).
* They don't give me the option of buying computers built on AMD CPUs, which have a better price/performance ratio than Intel CPUs.
* In most cases, they still force me to buy their systems bundled with Microsoft software, whether I want it or not.
Sorry, Dell. No sale here.
Thanks, but that's not quite the same thing.
Rip on Miguel as you like, but recall, this is a man that wants the linux desktop to prosper, regardless of what fanboy, ub3r wannabies latch on.
I have no desire to rip on Miguel; however, I think Miguel may have underestimated Microsoft.
My opinion is that .NET is a trojan horse: The "best" and "most up-to-date" implementation will always be on Windows, which will give Microsoft a great deal of marketing strength, even if Mono can run a large number of .NET applications (which seems a long ways off: Windows.Forms isn't "standardized" by ECMA, and it's very Windows-centric. Mono needs Windows.Forms in order to run GUI-based .NET applications).
And if the Linux/Mono combo ever becomes a serious threat, Microsoft can just beat Mono into submission with a fist full of patents.
Even though Java is proprietary, Sun has bent over backwards for years to get the community involved and keep the community involved. The ubiquity, robustness, and maturity of the Java Virtual Machine makes Java ready right now for what Mono may be ready for some day.
Don't be paranoid, but at the same time, don't dismiss Microsoft's pattern of abusive behavior over the years. Before you commit to Mono, think through all the alternatives first, and be sure you're not opening the city gates for a trojan horse.
Maybe if you add together all the small IE updates, it totals more than 4mb at Windows Update.
I can download and install the full Mozilla package faster than I can reboot my computer every time there's an Internet Explorer patch.
That puts Mozilla ahead of IE, at least in my book. :)