Yet, he's not even been given admin access to his own desktop.
I worked at a small ISP before as well and didn't know anything about Irix when I started there, but that was the desktop chosen to run all monitoring tools (even though the servers were Sun boxes). But I learned...and I loved it. I didn't have full access to the machine to do what I wanted with it, but I did have enough access to get to the tools which I needed. Now, he doesn't mention anything like if the new management was planning on switching to Windows for servers as well and he may not be privvy to that knowledge at the time (management likes to do that for some odd reason). Another reason could be that the new managemet has decided to use a different accounting system or whatever for their desktop services. Now, that would mean he *has* to have a Windows machine (maybe they use Office exclusively or switching to it). We simply don't know enough about his situation. If the assumption of Windows for running the reorganized business is valid, there's still nothing preventing him from using a telnet session to manage his servers. It's his workstation that's changed, not the servers he administers.
Honestly, he doesn't give enough information about what's really going on and that's either because he's griping or management didn't give him more info (I think it's the latter). But the advice is still there: learn it. And I don't remember ever seeing an ISP (unless really small) where the only thing they ran were Unices. In my experience, it's always been pretty heterogenous.
As for installing Windows himself as practice, I meant to say on his own time with his own machines. Of course, what we mean to say and what gets typed are two different things.:)
BTW, I loathe running Windows in comparison to Linux, but guess what? My job is a Windows programmer (by choice) for economic reasons, but I've still had projects where I needed to know Linux or some other OS. Better to be armed with a Swiss Army Knife(tm) with a toothpick than with just a toothpick.
Wow. They said something to the effect of being able to see other objects that was not completely visible in the image. "We work out what's behind an object and how we can automatically fill in what's not seen by cameras or painted." I wonder if this would allow you to rotate around objects that are halfway hidden, but what about asymmetrical objects? How can they extrapolate what's not known? Interesting none the less, but where's the video they talked about?
All these people that tell you to quit or try to convince the bosses otherwise aren't giving you sound advice. I am proficient with both Linux variants and Windows. What does that mean? I'm a professional who isn't afraid to learn a new evironment and that I can find more jobs than someone who refuses to learn the other camp's tools and trade. Reality is, you never know when management will ask you to learn something new and you should see that as a challenge.
Now, as for learning Windows, take the good advice of some of the other posts and install, learn, rinse, repeat until you have a better understading of Windows. It wonn't be fun, but it is worth it. Knowledge has always been key to advancement at anything and you should see this as our opportunity grow as a professional and as a person. Griping about it will not help your situation and as the saying goes: "If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen".
Don't forget that the virtual actor also has to have a virtual home pr0n released and sold without their virtual permission. Sheesh! And to think that Pamela and Paris had issues. Imagine what Lara must think of Nude Raider!
What would there be for them to react to? You can't use Jet Li's image in a game without asking for permission first. And yes, it *can* be a bad thing when the game developers aren't allowed to create PC versions of their games because of the modding possibilities.
Draconian enforcement, that is. Has anyone thought about the ramifactions this will have to how "open" games will be? Here's a choice quote from the article: "The fact that a player has the ability to control the character presents issues,".
It's already been announced by EA that there will be no PC version of the upcoming "Everything or Nothing" Bond game. I wonder why? "What would happen to an actor's career, for example, if it was discovered that a player could have use his or her character to perform violent or sordid acts and then post screenshots on the Internet?"
Although I love the idea of game developers getting more access to Hollywood, the possiblities for abuse of the medium will be incredibly high...all too easy even. What will happen when people try to crack the console-only versions of the games and post working hacks on hacked Xboxes, GameCubes and PS2s? Can anyone smell DMCA waving all over that? Don't be surprised when the first $100+ million game is developed, with 90% being agent, lawyer, producers, etc. fees. This is not entirely good news for the gaming industry as a whole, especially after the new FBI seal they got.
There will be a war on consumers and it's already gearing up.
That's an interesting observation. I've been wanting to put my programming and artisitc skills towards creating games as well, but in today's environment, it does't seem very conducive (for me at least) to do so.
That being said, I agree that even though I don't get to play as many games as I'd like, I find that I still do play games, but only for small stretches of time. I don't think it's just because I've gotten older, but it probably has a lot to do with how I want to spend my time, not necessarily the quality of the games.
I don't know about the "false dichotomy between life and play". I'd always assumed they were one and the same and didn't represent two sides of a coin. Even though I don't play games as much anymore (a rather fun expenditure of my time), I do play/have fun while doing other things (like programming or playing guitar). I don't feel that the dichotomy is there, only that we as people tend to juxtapose the two to try to explain this feeling that we have that there must be a reason, a moment of clarity if you will.
Anyway, I hope that you do channel those feelings towards creating more expansive and engrossing playgrounds, though not all of us can be there playing as long as we'd like.
I love the project's goal: to take SGI's well known desktop environment and re-create it to run on Linux. I'm not surprised that SGI hasn't done this before themselves or has given him any "blessings" that he's looking for. 4Dwm/5Dwm is old and kind of antiquated as a desktop, but still remains fast and stable. I have several SGI Indys, Octanes, and Indigos that I still run to this day, if only for nostalgia. I really like those Indys as they make great web servers. On the other hand, the desktop interface is antiquated and you can find most of the features in other WMs (such as Enlightenment). Either way, I don't think SGI will sue him for releasing his code. I'm afraid SGI might not even be around in 10 years for anyone to even care. Has anyone even seen the cost of buying Irix CDs? Although they still update the OS, who would buy them except for people like me who remember what it was like to work with these machines in their hayday?
You should read the site carefully (although even I had some difficulty with this due to misspellings). He has re-created the SGI desktop interface and applications. He is *not* taking SGI code. He should be commended for taking the old 5Dwm environment and trying to create one that will work on Linux. I do agree with you though that he definitely needs someone to help him with writing his project goals in clear and precise English, or at least do it in his native language.
BTW, your comment seems to be a very typicaly slashdot reponse, I'm sorry to say.
Someone please mod this from Insightful to Funny.:D
What in the hell did I start? It was a simple quote to highlight the article itself! Boy, I guess slashdot can easily be compared to Pi: never repeating, but always looking. Sheesh!:D
Anyway, I just wanted to point out, in my childish way, in case you missed it...FIRST POST!:D
Oh yeah. Here's sage advice from the worse movie in the world:
"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things."
I feel like my gaming glory days are behind me. I see all the latest games that I *want* to play, but either I can't bring myself to play (let alone buy) or I find something else more important to do (like programming). I think it's just age. I've heard from others though that gamers that turn about 40ish seem to pickup gaming again (assuming their spouse, if they have one, let's them).
Harlan Ellison should be thrown to the Lions. This is another case, like L. Ron Hubbard, where a Sci-Fi author thinks he has more "power" than he really has as an impotent prose con-artist. Let's review his other communist act: James Cameron and The Terminator. What that suit says, is basically, you can't derive new works from multiple existings works, even if said work has any form of originality in it. It's not like taking one work and changing a few words. This was a case where stupid Ellison sued because the new work was too closely related to two of his works *combined*. Someone shoot Ellison, please!
BTW, I don't see why anyone finds him interesting. I've seen him typing on his stone-aged typewriter stories (not even original stories at that) with typos and all. BFD. Brings a tear to my eye to think anyone respects such a flagrant demigogue.
"Not easy to locate" is an understatement. I just spent the last hour looking on MSDN for something like that and haven't found it, but I'll take your word for it.
As for why I don't particularly like Joel, it has a lot to do with personal experience talking with him and his development philosophies. Although I find he has very clear and concise writing (I do like reading his blog, I'll admit), I just don't buy into all of his world views and how singularly focused those views are. I like to keep an open mind and he seems to have his closed more often than not.
At some point in the future,.NET will replace the Win32 API as the preferred method of writing for Windows, but you're right in that it won't and can't go away. It's a compatibility issue that MS will be stuck with for decades to come (unless they finally make sense of their OS development). I too feel fenced in with.NET in regards to app development on their platform, but the same is true on almost any platform, even those that provide multiple APIs (like OS/2) to said platform. I'd rather be open to programming for any platform than to be herded into one paradigm just to make a living, but there's always that balance between developing for a platform with a small audience or one with a large one.
As for writing a system service in.NET, you're right there also in that there isn't a great facility for this yet, but I'm sure that will come with time. It really comes down to the right tool for the job, at least for me. I still defer to use Delphi or C++ when doing low-level stuff (like services and drivers) and.NET/C# for UI stuff. Boy, that sure does make.NET sound like VB of the bad old days, doesn't it?:)
I have to say, as a side note, that I'm glad this hasn't turned into a spat between two programmers who happen to have differing views, like most posters on here I've had to deal with, and has been a rather constructive conversation.
If you find a link to the redist package, please feel free to post that as a reply. I'm always open to learning new things and I know I am by no means the end-all of knowledge in.NET stuff (let alone programming in general).:D
As a final note, you really should try the Salamander product. I just wish there was an open-source one instead of having to purchase someone else's code I could never see. But regardless, it does do what Joel was asking for without the end-user hassles he mentioned.
Actually, in VS.NET 2003 (which uses 1.1 by default), you can still choose to target the 1.0 runtime. It's a quick checkbox in the project's properties.
I understand Joel's point of view. I happen to agree that a linker would be nice, but the fact is, he didn't do the research (have you seen my sig?). There is a linker out there, as pointed out by another poster, and you can *easily* target a specific version (which Joel says you have to run through hoops with a manifest to do). Joels just doesn't understand what a manifest is for. As far as I'm concerned, he's an idiot for saying that making a manifest is so hard. It's actually very easy, as it's just an XML file and there are plenty of examples out there on how to write one. Besides that, you only need a manifest for 3rd party DLLs. If you just want to target between 1.0 and 1.1 of the framework, it's a click-away. But yes, he's right in that people still need to download either 1.0 or 1.1 of the framework, unless you use Salamander's product.
Just curious, but how do you install just the CLR runtime without the framework libraries from Microsoft's installer? I haven't seen this before. It's really just semantics. The CLR itself is separate from the framework (DLLs), but I've never seen how to separate them (other than in the SDK install, which a user won't ever get).
As for the "long time" bit, hehe, yeah, that's not a long time for a programming language, but it is in today's environment. We'll see how long-lived.NET is in a decade. I've been doing C/C++ and assembly for ages (20+ years as well), but we're talking about the grandfather of almost all languages (yes, I'm still skipping quite a few languages before that, but I consider C the first really modern programming language).
I was just disagreeing with what you were saying about what a user needs with the salamander product. Yes, it's not a real linker in the sense of 1 single EXE, but it's close enough to what that idiot Joel was talking about. It does allow you to deploy a.NET app without the requirement that the end-user downloads the 22MB framework install (with the CLR). I just want to point that out so that people who read this understand that there is a valid solution for that need and I wouldn't want to dissuade people from going that route, especially with some of the already erroneous information from other posters.
I've been doing.NET development for a long time now (2 years) and for all intents and purposes, the Framework install and the run-time is the same thing. There is no separate download of the Framework classes and the run-time. The framework is merely class libraries bundled into assemblies. Besides, have you even tried the linker mentioned? I have. I've taken the assembly generated and run an EXE on a machine with no updates and no run-time.
Actually,.NET does have a stable ABI with each release of the framework. 1.0 and 1.1 can run side-by-side, so they the 1.0 DLLs become essentially static. It's Java that doesn't have a stable ABI. Have you tried running older 1.0 or 1.1.java files where they depended on interfaces that are broken in 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4? One of the reasons I don't program in Java anymore. It's not dependable across all versions and try running all of the various JVM versions on the same machine, just to maintain ABI. Ugh.
Actually, althought IL is close to machine code, it's still not machine code. The CLR still has to load the IL, compile to real native code (machine code) and then run it. So,.NET IL is still interpreted and re-compiled before running, hence it's kind of slow the first time a particular code path is run. But each subsequent call actually calls the native code version, not the IL.
Microsoft.NET Framework is by any standard a significant installation that one would easily notice; some users may not be willing to install it at all. On the other hand, there are still many PCs that may not be suitable for.NET framework installation. This tool helps you to reach more customers as it silently deploys a trimmed down version of the framework without any noticeable effects and conflicts. The framework appears as an integrated part of your own application.
and...
The mini-deployment tool puts together the minimum set of CLR runtime files and dependent assemblies that can be simply copied to a single folder on a target machine, and your application runs as if the whole framework is installed. Since the installation is isolated into a single folder, there will be no conflicts with future.NET installation. When linking is used for the dependent assemblies, it will further reduce the file size.
In layman's terms, you the developer needs to have the framework installed, but the user does not. It doesn't support Windows 95 because that OS is not supported by the.NET CLR itself. Duh.
I guess Joel or his programmers couldn't figure out that you can open the project properties and actually select which run-time you're targeting. It's rather easy and doesn't require you to write your own manifest (although you could). The idea behind the manifest is when you have to dynamically link to other people's DLLs or apps and not the run-time. If the 3rd party happens to upgrade to another version, that's okay. That's why they came up with the idea (or rather re-invented) of side-by-side execution, which allows you to specify with version of the 3rd party DLL you want to use.
Joel, get a clue, man! I've been doing.NET development for 2 years now and the first thing that I learned about was the versioning aspects that.NET brings. I will admit that there's nothing new or "brilliant" about.NET, other than it's a vast improvement over Java. But come one guy, do a little reading and research before moaning and grunting at Microsoft. I'll even admit I have no great love for MS either.
I do love the comment from an above poster that points out the.NET linker available. If only he'd gone a little googling, he could have saved us all a few more minutes on our tickers by not writing such an asinine rant, er, article.
Slashdot Mirror
I worked at a small ISP before as well and didn't know anything about Irix when I started there, but that was the desktop chosen to run all monitoring tools (even though the servers were Sun boxes). But I learned...and I loved it. I didn't have full access to the machine to do what I wanted with it, but I did have enough access to get to the tools which I needed. Now, he doesn't mention anything like if the new management was planning on switching to Windows for servers as well and he may not be privvy to that knowledge at the time (management likes to do that for some odd reason). Another reason could be that the new managemet has decided to use a different accounting system or whatever for their desktop services. Now, that would mean he *has* to have a Windows machine (maybe they use Office exclusively or switching to it). We simply don't know enough about his situation. If the assumption of Windows for running the reorganized business is valid, there's still nothing preventing him from using a telnet session to manage his servers. It's his workstation that's changed, not the servers he administers.
Honestly, he doesn't give enough information about what's really going on and that's either because he's griping or management didn't give him more info (I think it's the latter). But the advice is still there: learn it. And I don't remember ever seeing an ISP (unless really small) where the only thing they ran were Unices. In my experience, it's always been pretty heterogenous.
As for installing Windows himself as practice, I meant to say on his own time with his own machines. Of course, what we mean to say and what gets typed are two different things. :)
BTW, I loathe running Windows in comparison to Linux, but guess what? My job is a Windows programmer (by choice) for economic reasons, but I've still had projects where I needed to know Linux or some other OS. Better to be armed with a Swiss Army Knife(tm) with a toothpick than with just a toothpick.
Wow. They said something to the effect of being able to see other objects that was not completely visible in the image. "We work out what's behind an object and how we can automatically fill in what's not seen by cameras or painted." I wonder if this would allow you to rotate around objects that are halfway hidden, but what about asymmetrical objects? How can they extrapolate what's not known? Interesting none the less, but where's the video they talked about?
Now, as for learning Windows, take the good advice of some of the other posts and install, learn, rinse, repeat until you have a better understading of Windows. It wonn't be fun, but it is worth it. Knowledge has always been key to advancement at anything and you should see this as our opportunity grow as a professional and as a person. Griping about it will not help your situation and as the saying goes: "If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen".
Don't listen to him. He just wants your job before it's shipped overseas. :D BTW, when you quit, where can I send my resume?
Don't forget that the virtual actor also has to have a virtual home pr0n released and sold without their virtual permission. Sheesh! And to think that Pamela and Paris had issues. Imagine what Lara must think of Nude Raider!
What would there be for them to react to? You can't use Jet Li's image in a game without asking for permission first. And yes, it *can* be a bad thing when the game developers aren't allowed to create PC versions of their games because of the modding possibilities.
It's already been announced by EA that there will be no PC version of the upcoming "Everything or Nothing" Bond game. I wonder why? "What would happen to an actor's career, for example, if it was discovered that a player could have use his or her character to perform violent or sordid acts and then post screenshots on the Internet?"
Although I love the idea of game developers getting more access to Hollywood, the possiblities for abuse of the medium will be incredibly high...all too easy even. What will happen when people try to crack the console-only versions of the games and post working hacks on hacked Xboxes, GameCubes and PS2s? Can anyone smell DMCA waving all over that? Don't be surprised when the first $100+ million game is developed, with 90% being agent, lawyer, producers, etc. fees. This is not entirely good news for the gaming industry as a whole, especially after the new FBI seal they got.
There will be a war on consumers and it's already gearing up.
That being said, I agree that even though I don't get to play as many games as I'd like, I find that I still do play games, but only for small stretches of time. I don't think it's just because I've gotten older, but it probably has a lot to do with how I want to spend my time, not necessarily the quality of the games.
I don't know about the "false dichotomy between life and play". I'd always assumed they were one and the same and didn't represent two sides of a coin. Even though I don't play games as much anymore (a rather fun expenditure of my time), I do play/have fun while doing other things (like programming or playing guitar). I don't feel that the dichotomy is there, only that we as people tend to juxtapose the two to try to explain this feeling that we have that there must be a reason, a moment of clarity if you will.
Anyway, I hope that you do channel those feelings towards creating more expansive and engrossing playgrounds, though not all of us can be there playing as long as we'd like.
Laught. It's not *that* funny.
I love the project's goal: to take SGI's well known desktop environment and re-create it to run on Linux. I'm not surprised that SGI hasn't done this before themselves or has given him any "blessings" that he's looking for. 4Dwm/5Dwm is old and kind of antiquated as a desktop, but still remains fast and stable. I have several SGI Indys, Octanes, and Indigos that I still run to this day, if only for nostalgia. I really like those Indys as they make great web servers. On the other hand, the desktop interface is antiquated and you can find most of the features in other WMs (such as Enlightenment). Either way, I don't think SGI will sue him for releasing his code. I'm afraid SGI might not even be around in 10 years for anyone to even care. Has anyone even seen the cost of buying Irix CDs? Although they still update the OS, who would buy them except for people like me who remember what it was like to work with these machines in their hayday?
BTW, your comment seems to be a very typicaly slashdot reponse, I'm sorry to say.
Someone please mod this from Insightful to Funny. :D
Anyway, I just wanted to point out, in my childish way, in case you missed it...FIRST POST! :D
Oh yeah. Here's sage advice from the worse movie in the world: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things."
I feel like my gaming glory days are behind me. I see all the latest games that I *want* to play, but either I can't bring myself to play (let alone buy) or I find something else more important to do (like programming). I think it's just age. I've heard from others though that gamers that turn about 40ish seem to pickup gaming again (assuming their spouse, if they have one, let's them).
You all can blow his! :D
BTW, I don't see why anyone finds him interesting. I've seen him typing on his stone-aged typewriter stories (not even original stories at that) with typos and all. BFD. Brings a tear to my eye to think anyone respects such a flagrant demigogue.
As for why I don't particularly like Joel, it has a lot to do with personal experience talking with him and his development philosophies. Although I find he has very clear and concise writing (I do like reading his blog, I'll admit), I just don't buy into all of his world views and how singularly focused those views are. I like to keep an open mind and he seems to have his closed more often than not.
At some point in the future, .NET will replace the Win32 API as the preferred method of writing for Windows, but you're right in that it won't and can't go away. It's a compatibility issue that MS will be stuck with for decades to come (unless they finally make sense of their OS development). I too feel fenced in with .NET in regards to app development on their platform, but the same is true on almost any platform, even those that provide multiple APIs (like OS/2) to said platform. I'd rather be open to programming for any platform than to be herded into one paradigm just to make a living, but there's always that balance between developing for a platform with a small audience or one with a large one.
As for writing a system service in .NET, you're right there also in that there isn't a great facility for this yet, but I'm sure that will come with time. It really comes down to the right tool for the job, at least for me. I still defer to use Delphi or C++ when doing low-level stuff (like services and drivers) and .NET/C# for UI stuff. Boy, that sure does make .NET sound like VB of the bad old days, doesn't it? :)
I have to say, as a side note, that I'm glad this hasn't turned into a spat between two programmers who happen to have differing views, like most posters on here I've had to deal with, and has been a rather constructive conversation.
If you find a link to the redist package, please feel free to post that as a reply. I'm always open to learning new things and I know I am by no means the end-all of knowledge in .NET stuff (let alone programming in general). :D
As a final note, you really should try the Salamander product. I just wish there was an open-source one instead of having to purchase someone else's code I could never see. But regardless, it does do what Joel was asking for without the end-user hassles he mentioned.
I understand Joel's point of view. I happen to agree that a linker would be nice, but the fact is, he didn't do the research (have you seen my sig?). There is a linker out there, as pointed out by another poster, and you can *easily* target a specific version (which Joel says you have to run through hoops with a manifest to do). Joels just doesn't understand what a manifest is for. As far as I'm concerned, he's an idiot for saying that making a manifest is so hard. It's actually very easy, as it's just an XML file and there are plenty of examples out there on how to write one. Besides that, you only need a manifest for 3rd party DLLs. If you just want to target between 1.0 and 1.1 of the framework, it's a click-away. But yes, he's right in that people still need to download either 1.0 or 1.1 of the framework, unless you use Salamander's product.
As for the "long time" bit, hehe, yeah, that's not a long time for a programming language, but it is in today's environment. We'll see how long-lived .NET is in a decade. I've been doing C/C++ and assembly for ages (20+ years as well), but we're talking about the grandfather of almost all languages (yes, I'm still skipping quite a few languages before that, but I consider C the first really modern programming language).
I was just disagreeing with what you were saying about what a user needs with the salamander product. Yes, it's not a real linker in the sense of 1 single EXE, but it's close enough to what that idiot Joel was talking about. It does allow you to deploy a .NET app without the requirement that the end-user downloads the 22MB framework install (with the CLR). I just want to point that out so that people who read this understand that there is a valid solution for that need and I wouldn't want to dissuade people from going that route, especially with some of the already erroneous information from other posters.
I've been doing .NET development for a long time now (2 years) and for all intents and purposes, the Framework install and the run-time is the same thing. There is no separate download of the Framework classes and the run-time. The framework is merely class libraries bundled into assemblies. Besides, have you even tried the linker mentioned? I have. I've taken the assembly generated and run an EXE on a machine with no updates and no run-time.
ROFL! I love your post. Someone mod the humor up on this one! :D
Actually, .NET does have a stable ABI with each release of the framework. 1.0 and 1.1 can run side-by-side, so they the 1.0 DLLs become essentially static. It's Java that doesn't have a stable ABI. Have you tried running older 1.0 or 1.1 .java files where they depended on interfaces that are broken in 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4? One of the reasons I don't program in Java anymore. It's not dependable across all versions and try running all of the various JVM versions on the same machine, just to maintain ABI. Ugh.
Actually, althought IL is close to machine code, it's still not machine code. The CLR still has to load the IL, compile to real native code (machine code) and then run it. So, .NET IL is still interpreted and re-compiled before running, hence it's kind of slow the first time a particular code path is run. But each subsequent call actually calls the native code version, not the IL.
Microsoft .NET Framework is by any standard a significant installation that one would easily notice; some users may not be willing to install it at all. On the other hand, there are still many PCs that may not be suitable for .NET framework installation. This tool helps you to reach more customers as it silently deploys a trimmed down version of the framework without any noticeable effects and conflicts. The framework appears as an integrated part of your own application.
and...
The mini-deployment tool puts together the minimum set of CLR runtime files and dependent assemblies that can be simply copied to a single folder on a target machine, and your application runs as if the whole framework is installed. Since the installation is isolated into a single folder, there will be no conflicts with future .NET installation. When linking is used for the dependent assemblies, it will further reduce the file size.
In layman's terms, you the developer needs to have the framework installed, but the user does not. It doesn't support Windows 95 because that OS is not supported by the .NET CLR itself. Duh.
I guess Joel or his programmers couldn't figure out that you can open the project properties and actually select which run-time you're targeting. It's rather easy and doesn't require you to write your own manifest (although you could). The idea behind the manifest is when you have to dynamically link to other people's DLLs or apps and not the run-time. If the 3rd party happens to upgrade to another version, that's okay. That's why they came up with the idea (or rather re-invented) of side-by-side execution, which allows you to specify with version of the 3rd party DLL you want to use. Joel, get a clue, man! I've been doing .NET development for 2 years now and the first thing that I learned about was the versioning aspects that .NET brings. I will admit that there's nothing new or "brilliant" about .NET, other than it's a vast improvement over Java. But come one guy, do a little reading and research before moaning and grunting at Microsoft. I'll even admit I have no great love for MS either.
I do love the comment from an above poster that points out the .NET linker available. If only he'd gone a little googling, he could have saved us all a few more minutes on our tickers by not writing such an asinine rant, er, article.