My main observation about use of tools like VS (and also the speed modern compiles are done compared to the slower past) is the mentality of keep fiddling until it compiles and it probably works once it does.
This is because the actual learning about the language and reading lots of other code doesn't happen (some times ever it seems).
Me and the other developers all laughed with horror when on a course and the new boy described that. We all worked in safety critical software and on the whole only got around to typing make when we felt sure it was right. By that I mean we had thought carefully reading and re-reading the code, perhaps had an informal review done.
Then of course when it more often than not compiled first time you ran it against the test suite to.
In short it is my opinion that such tools reduce the care and thought put in, breeding bad habits along the way.
If they watched and chose to change once it would be daft to then swear any such change as being for all time. If they have changed once for advantage they will probably have cause to do so again (given time).
Therefore your reasoning appears flawed.
The fact is history repeats wearing different hats. Which (continuing deviating aka. mind wander ) makes me wonder if we are stuck in a control loop and only capable of minor course change to remain stable. Anything to big and we are doomed!!!
If (and I'm not saying it is) the human imagination and therefore power of invention is boundless we are trying to use a quite restrictive system to cover ownership of something boundless.
People who know there is an alternative to Windows are still a minority. That doesn't just apply to them not knowing any Linux or BSD exists but to them not knowing about Mac's.
Yes I expect this applies less to people working in areas of IT but I bet it is still more the vase than not. So choosing a neutral (standard) format probably just wasn't an issue that crossed anyones mind.
This seems obvious but as MS have for a long time had a monopoly of the desktop it seems blatant they will be the main producer of developments on that platform.
If they want to do things not yet possible they can alter the API, if they want to do something currently impossible due to the OS they splice in the necessaries.
When may I ask have MS been the lead innovator on the any desktop available for Linux or on the Mac?
It doesn't matter who funds the schools it is what they make/require them to teach and how.
I went to a Church Primary School (Methodist) and yes there were Christian assemblies but no one prodded me with a pain stick to make me say the Lord's Prayer in a morning which I stopped doing once I was old enough to have my own mind.
The school other than that did not teach the Bible in a way that said "This is true believe or be damned" it taught it very much as "this is here if you want to take a look"
I think everyone at that scool benefitted from being taught "real" subjects well and picking up the "do as you would be done by" attitude (perhaps more modernly the prisoner's dilemma?) and other ways of living well (as in wholesome not financially well off).
The USA won't be irrelevant just nearer to some kind of standards of living parity with China. Of course that will have meant a drop for the USA which will probably mean hard times and anger there (amongst the work force anyway, the rich won't even blink until or unless mobs start banging on the fortress gates).
If that happens it won't be a storm I'll be wanting to live through. (Not meaning I'll want to die just that I'll try and be a long way from it!)
They should do it with a hint of real world attachment to it. Set a budget of a few thousand pounds to build a system and say it has to run these applications. Then devise some ways to load them to see which crumbles first whilst monitoring heat, power and performance over a Le mans style period (24 hours endurance battle)
The price performance might be discernable somehow then.
The "Justification for the proposal" includes the following:
"Counterfeiting and piracy, and infringements of intellectual property... since they are a serious threat to national economies and governments."
It suffers from the appalling abuse of piracy for one. But worse to me is the unsubstantiated argument that it is a serious threat to economies and governments. It might be but I really would like to see them cite a justification rather than justify something by pulling a statement out of the air and pretending that it is self evident.
I'm not a fan of the way we treat copyright and have general contempt for the areas labelled IP. However...
My big worry with this EU proposal was that it would not have "intent" as part of it thus making it a crime merely to do it by accident. Which in my opinion would have made the offense be treated as something more serious than murder because even for that intent must be proven to the jury.
Article 3 does I am glad to say have intentional in its current drafting. How that will translate into national laws through Europe though is another question.
Unfortunately they do refer to intellectual property and as far as I know that is quite an undefined term hence RMS getting so upset about its use as a term.
My first impression reading this story posting was why do we get excited about something that isn't new. It might be great but wouldn't it be nice to spend more time excited about new things. I guess as you get a little older you suffer from "been there seen/done that".
In much the same way as I find myself speed reading books (fiction) and eventually skimming them adding items to the list of things I have read before.
What's needed is the Borg's reading list. In theory it should contain only those things they see as having uniqueness and diversity to add to their own.
I think you have a point. If the idea is to abstract more into the libraries. All that needs to be done is refine the libraries and also further test the libraries.
What about better tools for checking. Better ways of using it have come along through books like Effective C++ and more recent things like Modern C++ design.
The refinements can be written in the langugage itself. Until you run up against points where it is just broken which there may be my C++ is far short of expert let alone master.
A bit of a case of a know thine enemy type principle?
Also ask what kind of peace. Is there peace because all the opposition have been crushed or peace because agreement was possible or peace because no one has any ammunition left and really can't face getting up and stabbing, throttling or kneck snapping etc. their "enemies".
I suspect the bombers just got unlucky with their nasty plan. More unfortunate timing or slightly different planning and maybe things would have been much worse.
I sort of agree. I read Perdido Street Station and whilst it was a book interesting enough to finish (the more books I read the fewer I can be bothered to finish) it didn't really have me running out to get any of his other work.
I didn't find the ideas original but I did think they were very well blended.
And by that I don't mean I have work to be protected by it.
Anything that hinders the proliferation, re-invention and reuse of culture gets a big thumbs down from me and I don't buy into the monopolies being good even when sanctioned.
It's one of those instances where it would be good to see heads of the company thrown in prison for 6 months as punishment for contempt of court.
After all in England (UK in fact) we even do that to parents who allow their children to play truant and the directors failing blatantly to comply must surely be a more serious offence.
Your comment about how rapidly they would be replaced is surely an example of a strength of democracy. Which is why I think we are massively over precious concerning our national leaders. If someone wants to blow them up they can try, if they succeed we just vote in new ones until (in the UK) all approx. 60 million people are gone.
That's to highlight the principle rather than say it should be run that way mind.
I think you may have hit the nail. My mum's PC was running Win95 (it did all she needed quickly! on an old machine) and no firewall. She was only using dial up but in two years never got hit.
The I know the ISP in that case does do some protective work!
Because with the BSD license if IBM added code (functionality) and released it its competitors would be able to take it and use it without needing to release it.
The GPL means they can add to Linux and it can't end up being used by Windows or other competition.
As for the apt destabilising of your system I sort of accept that eventually my system will need polishing back up. I just celebrate it doesn't happen to my with the frequency Windows used to. (Not having experienced more recent WinXP mind you, but all the service pack woes of that doesn't really make it sound any better).
The upgrade problem, does it really have an answer? If you want stability don't make changes (except security I suppose). Doing anything generally carries more risk than doing nothing in the upgrade sense. The only answer is perfection.
On the other hand if the proprietary company had a patented 200 line algorithm that formed part of anothers 2 million line application the patent owner with the billion dollar budget would sue for great buckets of cash.
And win!
I'm not sure why one side should be able to function so differently from the other. "Hey you can't license your product or stuff so we can't use it but we can"
Besides those 200 lines form part of many millions of lines that are available for your use. You just happen to only want to use those few, but you are welcome to the other millions too. But in order to use them you just have to play fair, meaning on equal terms of share and share alike.
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This is because the actual learning about the language and reading lots of other code doesn't happen (some times ever it seems).
Me and the other developers all laughed with horror when on a course and the new boy described that. We all worked in safety critical software and on the whole only got around to typing make when we felt sure it was right. By that I mean we had thought carefully reading and re-reading the code, perhaps had an informal review done.
Then of course when it more often than not compiled first time you ran it against the test suite to.
In short it is my opinion that such tools reduce the care and thought put in, breeding bad habits along the way.
Therefore your reasoning appears flawed.
The fact is history repeats wearing different hats. Which (continuing deviating aka. mind wander ) makes me wonder if we are stuck in a control loop and only capable of minor course change to remain stable. Anything to big and we are doomed!!!
If (and I'm not saying it is) the human imagination and therefore power of invention is boundless we are trying to use a quite restrictive system to cover ownership of something boundless.
Yes I expect this applies less to people working in areas of IT but I bet it is still more the vase than not. So choosing a neutral (standard) format probably just wasn't an issue that crossed anyones mind.
If they want to do things not yet possible they can alter the API, if they want to do something currently impossible due to the OS they splice in the necessaries.
When may I ask have MS been the lead innovator on the any desktop available for Linux or on the Mac?
I went to a Church Primary School (Methodist) and yes there were Christian assemblies but no one prodded me with a pain stick to make me say the Lord's Prayer in a morning which I stopped doing once I was old enough to have my own mind.
The school other than that did not teach the Bible in a way that said "This is true believe or be damned" it taught it very much as "this is here if you want to take a look"
I think everyone at that scool benefitted from being taught "real" subjects well and picking up the "do as you would be done by" attitude (perhaps more modernly the prisoner's dilemma?) and other ways of living well (as in wholesome not financially well off).
If that happens it won't be a storm I'll be wanting to live through. (Not meaning I'll want to die just that I'll try and be a long way from it!)
The price performance might be discernable somehow then.
It suffers from the appalling abuse of piracy for one. But worse to me is the unsubstantiated argument that it is a serious threat to economies and governments. It might be but I really would like to see them cite a justification rather than justify something by pulling a statement out of the air and pretending that it is self evident.
My big worry with this EU proposal was that it would not have "intent" as part of it thus making it a crime merely to do it by accident. Which in my opinion would have made the offense be treated as something more serious than murder because even for that intent must be proven to the jury.
Article 3 does I am glad to say have intentional in its current drafting. How that will translate into national laws through Europe though is another question.
Unfortunately they do refer to intellectual property and as far as I know that is quite an undefined term hence RMS getting so upset about its use as a term.
In much the same way as I find myself speed reading books (fiction) and eventually skimming them adding items to the list of things I have read before.
What's needed is the Borg's reading list. In theory it should contain only those things they see as having uniqueness and diversity to add to their own.
What about better tools for checking. Better ways of using it have come along through books like Effective C++ and more recent things like Modern C++ design.
The refinements can be written in the langugage itself. Until you run up against points where it is just broken which there may be my C++ is far short of expert let alone master.
A bit of a case of a know thine enemy type principle?
Or is it just lunch time.
I suspect the bombers just got unlucky with their nasty plan. More unfortunate timing or slightly different planning and maybe things would have been much worse.
I didn't find the ideas original but I did think they were very well blended.
Anything that hinders the proliferation, re-invention and reuse of culture gets a big thumbs down from me and I don't buy into the monopolies being good even when sanctioned.
I just don't see any benefit.
Do you know where in any relevant WTO agreement I can find that written?
After all in England (UK in fact) we even do that to parents who allow their children to play truant and the directors failing blatantly to comply must surely be a more serious offence.
As soon as they realise that they are paying $1.8 Billions a year to efficient competition they will comply.
That's to highlight the principle rather than say it should be run that way mind.
I think you may have hit the nail. My mum's PC was running Win95 (it did all she needed quickly! on an old machine) and no firewall. She was only using dial up but in two years never got hit. The I know the ISP in that case does do some protective work!
you forgot the end of the world is nigh
The GPL means they can add to Linux and it can't end up being used by Windows or other competition.
As for the apt destabilising of your system I sort of accept that eventually my system will need polishing back up. I just celebrate it doesn't happen to my with the frequency Windows used to. (Not having experienced more recent WinXP mind you, but all the service pack woes of that doesn't really make it sound any better).
The upgrade problem, does it really have an answer? If you want stability don't make changes (except security I suppose). Doing anything generally carries more risk than doing nothing in the upgrade sense. The only answer is perfection.
Book what a great name for a "word processor".
And win!
I'm not sure why one side should be able to function so differently from the other. "Hey you can't license your product or stuff so we can't use it but we can"
Besides those 200 lines form part of many millions of lines that are available for your use. You just happen to only want to use those few, but you are welcome to the other millions too. But in order to use them you just have to play fair, meaning on equal terms of share and share alike.