I don't know why you geeks have such a downer on Microsoft for writing buggy software. If it didn't, do you have any idea about how many of you would be out of a job? [...] And all you want is to be out of a job?
Sorry, but I don't want a job dealing with Microsoft's (and other vendor's) problems. I want a job writing software that does what its supposed to. If the vendors and third party tools I depend on work without issue that makes my job and my life that much easier and allows me to deliver solutions quicker and satisfy my customers.
I accept that, as a developer, I have to deal with all kinds of issues that arise. But I'd rather have these issues reduced to a minimum so I can spend most of my time creating, not fixing. That's one of the reasons I avoid Microsoft products when developing a solution.
An analogy to your argument is "why do you geeks hate spyware/adware so much? you get paid to clean up the mess, don't you?" My job is not to scrub down Windows machines, and I don't want it to be, even if I was an admin. If I was an admin I would rather be busy writing utilities to automate business processes, not sitting around running adware-removal and virus programs.
Granted, there is a demand for removing a lot of the ugliness that surrounds computing (viruses, adware, spam, insecurity), but to actually be glad that they exist so you can get paid is just idiotic, there is so much other creative work that needs to be done.
.NET is the most advanced RAD environment on the market today. It's a joy to program in, and it's so well designed that in 99.5% of cases you don't even need documentation. Things are just done the way they should be done..NET is also standardized with open, publicly available specification available to anyone. Whidbey release gets even more things right (generics, partial classes, nullable types, etc.)
The only downside is that.NET only runs on Windows. I know about Mono, but it's not quite there yet, and my guess is it'll always be at least one year behind and not ready for deployment.
You have got to be fucking kidding. Microsoft.Net 1.1 and Visual Studio.Net 2003 is total garbage. With the new release (2005 or will it be 2006), it might actually start to be usable. What kind of moron designs a language (even a 1.0 version) without nullable types? It's as if the language was not designed to be used with databases. I know there are 3rd party libraries to correct this, and I've used them in my projects, but really this should have been supported out-of-box.
Then there is Windows.Forms. If you used it, you probably know how much of a piece of crap it is. No ability to do input masks on textboxes (corrected in 2.0, which isn't here yet), and all kinds of weird issues like keyboard and mouse controls for a treeview not working well together. It's as if they expect you to resort to writing Win32 libraries instead of using pure.Net. Those are just two examples, I'm sure there's more.
It's typical of Microsoft to put out a half-assed product and hype it up. It's sad that all the PHB's thought it was a usable system and have pushed for using it in projects.
Take a good look at what's going on the Java world, especially in open source..Net has a lot of catching up to do. All the interesting stuff in.Net is basically just re-write's of Java projects in C#, and they are only the very beginnings.
Parody is funny when it's based on the truth. As much as a piece of garbage that XP Home is, arguing (tongue in cheek or otherwise) that it's not ready for the desk top is a bit silly.
Well, I don't consider an OS that causes 50% of the worlds PC's to be virus-infected zombie machines to be ready for the desktop let alone ready for use by humans.
I haven't tried out Netscape 8.0 (Firefox is fine with me for now), but what are some reasons people are switching to Netscape 8.0?
Surprisingly I know a good number of people using it. Though these are generally non-techies. Netscape's marketing seems to actually get some people to use it. I then have to go on to explain to them how Netscape is just a derivative of Firefox/Mozilla. Though in all these cases, these people have said they don't like IE or won't even allow IE usage on their PC. That's a good thing that they have awareness of that. Though Netscape allowing the usage of IE's rendering kinda defeats that.
This was a while ago (before Firefox 1.0), but one of my friends chose to use Netscape over Mozilla because Netscape setup a lot of plugins (Flash, etc) out-of-box.
Firefox reaches 10 %. Then I will be *really* impressed. We just had a discussion on the "alleged" decrease in Firefox growth rate right.. This one appears a little redundant to me.
There are plenty of standards-compliant browsers other than Firefox. I'm happy to see less people using IE and using stanrdards-compliant browsers that don't suck such as anything Gecko-based, KHTML-based, or Opera.
Microsoft Operating Systems are used daily in environments where it really isn't useful to display large blue screens with technical error information. Printing that information to a file crit_error.dat and displaying a black screen will be much less obtrusive and obvious in what you call "high traffic areas", and probably wont add much tech time.
Windows (at least W2K server to my knowledge) can be configured to reboot instead of the blue screen. There's a lot of situations (such as public terminals) where you'd want to configure it that way and its partially the fault of those who administer those systems for not doing so.
Of course, it would be preferable to use a real operating system for these kinds of things, but this is the world we live in.
that was a typo.. I meant to say Sun's JDK.. It is essentially vendor lockin.
Although I like Java and the open-source community that surrounds it, I do think having a complete free open source implementation is a very good idea, and I hope Apache Harmony succeeds. I don't understand the huge amount of backlash that Harmony got. It IS an important project and there ARE many people who want such a thing to exist.
The BitKeeper issue is different entirely; it was a commercial product being offered for free, with the possibility that it could be yanked out from under them at any time. There should have been background work on an eventual replacement for BitKeeper well before anything happened. Why is this different from the Java example? Because the OS kernel is totally different and there was no alternative. If Sun were to suddenly make Java pay-to-use, the programs could, for the most part, be rewritten in C++ with minimal effort (most of the work could be done in 15 minutes by a Lisp program.)
You have got to be fucking kidding. How on earth did this comment get modded up with this last paragraph is a mystery to me.
Yes, the Bitkeeper situation is different, because the Java situation is MUCH WORSE. Bitkeeper was being used to manage kernel development, but Linux kernel code didn't actually depend on Bitkeeper. People who use the Linux kernel aren't depending on Bitkeeper. With Java code, the software itself depends on the tools to compile AND run. And this case (OOo 2.0) is especially worse because the use of Sun-specific API's (not just Java API's) forces you to use Sun's API's for those tasks. And for any situation, your "rewrite in C++" solution (even if you had said "rewrite in C#/Mono"), in addition to being completely unreasonable, is not possible because you don't have a license to do that with Sun's classes even if you do have the source code for all of it.
"1) The JRE is NOT freely redistributable. Therefore I can't legally add it to my OOo CD's that I pass on to customers and I have to make them download it first."
1) this is bullshit. 2) this is wrong. 3) this is FUD. 4) Sorry to say that... wow I see my Karma burning: you are an idiot!
May want to do some research before you go calling someone an idiot. Read the license, it comes with strings attach, one of which is you cannot distribute it alongside another version of the JVM:
(iii) you do not distribute additional software intended to replace any component(s) of the Software
That is why Debian (and others) does not have Sun Java included in its non-free repository, they don't have the licence to because they distribute open-source versions of the JVM such as Kaffe. Sure, these versions are uncertified, but I think it would apply even if they were certified. Redhat and Suse (I believe) can distribute Sun Java but they had to sacrifice being able to distribute free versions of a JVM. Here is the bit from the license text:
There are also some other questionable parts, though this one is big enough to be troublesome.
When a license places restrictions like this, it IS a big deal. What reason does Sun have for this, other than to squash competing JVM's?
Yes, but the idea of a lot of startups isn't to find customers. It's to build something customers need, and then convince someone who has a product to integrate it the technology into their products.
So develop a wonderful grammer checker. YOu don't sell that to end users. You sell it to Sun, IBM, and Microsoft.
Those are still customers. Sure, there are plenty of business models where you need to sell to bigger companies rather than individuals. But that's all sales and marketing and still needs a huge amount of attention in addition to actually producing a product. Sales is what makes or breaks a company.
And then there are those who have a degree and still don't have a clue.
There are the super-nerd types who can learn all of that without going to school for it simply because they are interested.
I have a degree myself, but I can see the cases where it doesn't matter.
What a degree really does is give a potential employer concrete evidence that you have been able to function in a structured environment. Someone with only work experience may have a disadvantage because the potential employer has no way of knowing whether they really sucked at their last job (unless they contact the person past employers, but even then you still can't tell). Sample code and open source projects may help, but that's a lot of work for a potential employer to go through and then will more than likely just move on to the next resume.
Note that with the menubar at the top its impossible to even use focus-follows-mouse. As soon as you move your mouse towards the menubar, it finds another window and switches to it. Of course, I found this out while using KDE, but if it was implemented in OS X they would have the same problem and would have to come up with some way around it (delayed switching, hold down a key to either switch to another window or use menubar, etc)..
One theory: In India, men's lives and careers come first and women sacrifice their own interests for their husband's
Women in India "sacrifice" by not having to work and being housewives. But families with even a moderate amount of money (one's with a husband as engineer for example) can afford to hire people to cook, clean, and even drive their cars. So the life of an Indian engineer's wife is pretty easy (usually pretty stress free). Indian women who have moved to U.S. are even jealous of this because they have to work like everyone else here. In India, the work week is 6 days long, so the men are making their own kind of sacrifice in order to provide for their families.
Of course, there are a lot of women in India who have careers and work, but as said somewhere in this thread, they do that when they are young and can switch over to being housewives once they have children.
Another thing to note is that the family unit is different. You have extended families where married couples continue to live with the (man's) parents.
So... why would anyone choose such a device over the PC??
Mac's are much better for running Linux on than PC's due to better supported and more stable hardware. This is due to the lack of variation in hardware compared to PC's, resulting in more solid drivers. Linux driver developers simply have less combinations to worry about. And Apple hardware engineers also have to worry about less combinations. Thus, with a Power Mac, you end up with a stable, powerful, quiet, high-quality Linux machine.
provided with wives who are forced into marriage through misogynistic traditions such as in India
Most women in India are not forced into marriage. They have a choice. It's more that their culture tells them they have to get married (both men and women are expected to conform to this), whereas in American culture women (and men) can be independent. In Indian culture people are more willing to jump into marriage. People can get married within 2 weeks of meeting someone. Sometimes the decision is made on the first meeting. Love comes after marriage, not before. Sometimes family pressure may make a man or woman agree to get married, but its still their choice. In any case, once someone is married they take their commitment seriously. Divorce is generally unheard of, though it is starting to happen more due to Western influence.
Very different from American culture, where both men and women expect so much from each other, and generally put off getting married until later. We have relationships which are essentially "mini-marriages".. There is little security in both American marriages and relationships. If you don't pay enough attention to your American wife (because you are busy with work or school), she will leave you or cheat on you. Indian women are more willing to make sacrifices and won't do this.
That's why I think the gp was saying Indian men have it easier, its generally easier for them to find a wife, and they don't have to worry so much about their wives leaving them because they've been working too hard. Indian women understand and accept the life of an engineer.
I should probably keep my mouth shut on this one since I'm only peripheraly aware of what's going on with the release schedule. If I'm wrong, hopefully someone might step up and correct me. But isn't the release delay also responsible for some packages and updates not making it into even unstable, such as x.org or kde 3.4?
KDE releases have always been slow to enter Debian unstable. If it takes them a month I wouldn't be surprised. x.org, I'm not sure what the deal is, but I recall an XFree86 release (4.3?) taking a huge amount of time (almost a year).. There are some things that make it in right away, and some things they really take their time with.
What about the fact that DRM allows Napster to offer an excellent service like Napster-to-Go?
There is a huge difference between something that you are renting (subscription-based) and something you buy to own. I would not want any kind of DRM on something that I have bought and shall keep forever. Subscription-style services where you store content is where I think DRM may have a place.
This is where you seem to be missing the point. People don't rely on their internet connections the way they do power. Part of the reason is that internet connections aren't all that reliable.
My company has a DS3, and it rarely has any problems. But it does sometimes. At home I have both cable and DSL, because I do rely on the internet and neither is reliable enough.
Hmmm... In one sentence you say people don't rely on the internet [the way they do power]. In other sentence you say you rely on the internet and have both cable and DSL at home just like I described would happen for people who really needed 24/7 internet reliability. I was speaking more about the future, but it looks like you're doing exactly what I'm talking about right now.
Maybe I missed some point somewhere, but sounds more like you are proving my point.
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I don't know why you geeks have such a downer on Microsoft for writing buggy software. If it didn't, do you have any idea about how many of you would be out of a job?
[...]
And all you want is to be out of a job?
Sorry, but I don't want a job dealing with Microsoft's (and other vendor's) problems. I want a job writing software that does what its supposed to. If the vendors and third party tools I depend on work without issue that makes my job and my life that much easier and allows me to deliver solutions quicker and satisfy my customers.
I accept that, as a developer, I have to deal with all kinds of issues that arise. But I'd rather have these issues reduced to a minimum so I can spend most of my time creating, not fixing. That's one of the reasons I avoid Microsoft products when developing a solution.
An analogy to your argument is "why do you geeks hate spyware/adware so much? you get paid to clean up the mess, don't you?" My job is not to scrub down Windows machines, and I don't want it to be, even if I was an admin. If I was an admin I would rather be busy writing utilities to automate business processes, not sitting around running adware-removal and virus programs.
Granted, there is a demand for removing a lot of the ugliness that surrounds computing (viruses, adware, spam, insecurity), but to actually be glad that they exist so you can get paid is just idiotic, there is so much other creative work that needs to be done.
But you can't. Unless you decide to stop browsing your hard drive using Windows.
;)
Yes you can. I browse my hard drive with either bash and other utilities or Konqueror
Oh, you mean if I was a Windows user...
Damn, you beat me too it. I was getting ready to post "most ghetto keyboard mod evar"..
.NET is the most advanced RAD environment on the market today. It's a joy to program in, and it's so well designed that in 99.5% of cases you don't even need documentation. Things are just done the way they should be done. .NET is also standardized with open, publicly available specification available to anyone. Whidbey release gets even more things right (generics, partial classes, nullable types, etc.)
.NET only runs on Windows. I know about Mono, but it's not quite there yet, and my guess is it'll always be at least one year behind and not ready for deployment.
.Net 1.1 and Visual Studio .Net 2003 is total garbage. With the new release (2005 or will it be 2006), it might actually start to be usable. What kind of moron designs a language (even a 1.0 version) without nullable types? It's as if the language was not designed to be used with databases. I know there are 3rd party libraries to correct this, and I've used them in my projects, but really this should have been supported out-of-box.
.Net. Those are just two examples, I'm sure there's more.
.Net has a lot of catching up to do. All the interesting stuff in .Net is basically just re-write's of Java projects in C#, and they are only the very beginnings.
The only downside is that
You have got to be fucking kidding. Microsoft
Then there is Windows.Forms. If you used it, you probably know how much of a piece of crap it is. No ability to do input masks on textboxes (corrected in 2.0, which isn't here yet), and all kinds of weird issues like keyboard and mouse controls for a treeview not working well together. It's as if they expect you to resort to writing Win32 libraries instead of using pure
It's typical of Microsoft to put out a half-assed product and hype it up. It's sad that all the PHB's thought it was a usable system and have pushed for using it in projects.
Take a good look at what's going on the Java world, especially in open source.
Parody is funny when it's based on the truth. As much as a piece of garbage that XP Home is, arguing (tongue in cheek or otherwise) that it's not ready for the desk top is a bit silly.
Well, I don't consider an OS that causes 50% of the worlds PC's to be virus-infected zombie machines to be ready for the desktop let alone ready for use by humans.
How is it possible to have "a copy of Windows that did not have IE installed" ??? :)
I would really like to know this, please post instructions !
I assume something like:
1. Install Windows 98
2. Uninstall Internet Explorer
I haven't tried out Netscape 8.0 (Firefox is fine with me for now), but what are some reasons people are switching to Netscape 8.0?
Surprisingly I know a good number of people using it. Though these are generally non-techies. Netscape's marketing seems to actually get some people to use it. I then have to go on to explain to them how Netscape is just a derivative of Firefox/Mozilla. Though in all these cases, these people have said they don't like IE or won't even allow IE usage on their PC. That's a good thing that they have awareness of that. Though Netscape allowing the usage of IE's rendering kinda defeats that.
This was a while ago (before Firefox 1.0), but one of my friends chose to use Netscape over Mozilla because Netscape setup a lot of plugins (Flash, etc) out-of-box.
isn't Java bad enough already?!
I would say isn't it good enough already?
plus, both interpretetive performance hogs...
Java isn't interpreted. In any case, what do you propose be used for web applications?
Firefox reaches 10 %. Then I will be *really* impressed. We just had a discussion on the "alleged" decrease in Firefox growth rate right.. This one appears a little redundant to me.
There are plenty of standards-compliant browsers other than Firefox. I'm happy to see less people using IE and using stanrdards-compliant browsers that don't suck such as anything Gecko-based, KHTML-based, or Opera.
Microsoft Operating Systems are used daily in environments where it really isn't useful to display large blue screens with technical error information. Printing that information to a file crit_error.dat and displaying a black screen will be much less obtrusive and obvious in what you call "high traffic areas", and probably wont add much tech time.
Windows (at least W2K server to my knowledge) can be configured to reboot instead of the blue screen. There's a lot of situations (such as public terminals) where you'd want to configure it that way and its partially the fault of those who administer those systems for not doing so.
Of course, it would be preferable to use a real operating system for these kinds of things, but this is the world we live in.
transalation:
All the geeks on planet Earth are not using IE.
(If you're using IE as your main browser, you're obviously not a geek.)
forces you to use Sun's API's for those tasks
that was a typo.. I meant to say Sun's JDK.. It is essentially vendor lockin.
Although I like Java and the open-source community that surrounds it, I do think having a complete free open source implementation is a very good idea, and I hope Apache Harmony succeeds. I don't understand the huge amount of backlash that Harmony got. It IS an important project and there ARE many people who want such a thing to exist.
The BitKeeper issue is different entirely; it was a commercial product being offered for free, with the possibility that it could be yanked out from under them at any time. There should have been background work on an eventual replacement for BitKeeper well before anything happened. Why is this different from the Java example? Because the OS kernel is totally different and there was no alternative. If Sun were to suddenly make Java pay-to-use, the programs could, for the most part, be rewritten in C++ with minimal effort (most of the work could be done in 15 minutes by a Lisp program.)
You have got to be fucking kidding. How on earth did this comment get modded up with this last paragraph is a mystery to me.
Yes, the Bitkeeper situation is different, because the Java situation is MUCH WORSE. Bitkeeper was being used to manage kernel development, but Linux kernel code didn't actually depend on Bitkeeper. People who use the Linux kernel aren't depending on Bitkeeper. With Java code, the software itself depends on the tools to compile AND run. And this case (OOo 2.0) is especially worse because the use of Sun-specific API's (not just Java API's) forces you to use Sun's API's for those tasks. And for any situation, your "rewrite in C++" solution (even if you had said "rewrite in C#/Mono"), in addition to being completely unreasonable, is not possible because you don't have a license to do that with Sun's classes even if you do have the source code for all of it.
"1) The JRE is NOT freely redistributable. Therefore I can't legally add it to my OOo CD's that I pass on to customers and I have to make them download it first."
... wow I see my Karma burning: you are an idiot!
1) this is bullshit. 2) this is wrong. 3) this is FUD. 4) Sorry to say that
May want to do some research before you go calling someone an idiot. Read the license, it comes with strings attach, one of which is you cannot distribute it alongside another version of the JVM:
(iii) you do not distribute additional software intended to replace any component(s) of the Software
That is why Debian (and others) does not have Sun Java included in its non-free repository, they don't have the licence to because they distribute open-source versions of the JVM such as Kaffe. Sure, these versions are uncertified, but I think it would apply even if they were certified. Redhat and Suse (I believe) can distribute Sun Java but they had to sacrifice being able to distribute free versions of a JVM. Here is the bit from the license text:
There are also some other questionable parts, though this one is big enough to be troublesome.
When a license places restrictions like this, it IS a big deal. What reason does Sun have for this, other than to squash competing JVM's?
I don't have an upgrade arrow yet :P
Options -> Advanced -> Software Update -> "Check Now" button
Yes, but the idea of a lot of startups isn't to find customers. It's to build something customers need, and then convince someone who has a product to integrate it the technology into their products.
So develop a wonderful grammer checker. YOu don't sell that to end users. You sell it to Sun, IBM, and Microsoft.
Those are still customers. Sure, there are plenty of business models where you need to sell to bigger companies rather than individuals. But that's all sales and marketing and still needs a huge amount of attention in addition to actually producing a product. Sales is what makes or breaks a company.
If you're afraid of something don't use it. Where's the problem here?
:)
In that case I am not using Windows!
And then there are those who have a degree and still don't have a clue.
There are the super-nerd types who can learn all of that without going to school for it simply because they are interested.
I have a degree myself, but I can see the cases where it doesn't matter.
What a degree really does is give a potential employer concrete evidence that you have been able to function in a structured environment. Someone with only work experience may have a disadvantage because the potential employer has no way of knowing whether they really sucked at their last job (unless they contact the person past employers, but even then you still can't tell). Sample code and open source projects may help, but that's a lot of work for a potential employer to go through and then will more than likely just move on to the next resume.
No focus-follows-mouse (this drives me insane)
Note that with the menubar at the top its impossible to even use focus-follows-mouse. As soon as you move your mouse towards the menubar, it finds another window and switches to it. Of course, I found this out while using KDE, but if it was implemented in OS X they would have the same problem and would have to come up with some way around it (delayed switching, hold down a key to either switch to another window or use menubar, etc)..
One theory: In India, men's lives and careers come first and women sacrifice their own interests for their husband's
Women in India "sacrifice" by not having to work and being housewives. But families with even a moderate amount of money (one's with a husband as engineer for example) can afford to hire people to cook, clean, and even drive their cars. So the life of an Indian engineer's wife is pretty easy (usually pretty stress free). Indian women who have moved to U.S. are even jealous of this because they have to work like everyone else here. In India, the work week is 6 days long, so the men are making their own kind of sacrifice in order to provide for their families.
Of course, there are a lot of women in India who have careers and work, but as said somewhere in this thread, they do that when they are young and can switch over to being housewives once they have children.
Another thing to note is that the family unit is different. You have extended families where married couples continue to live with the (man's) parents.
So ... why would anyone choose such a device over the PC??
:P
Mac's are much better for running Linux on than PC's due to better supported and more stable hardware. This is due to the lack of variation in hardware compared to PC's, resulting in more solid drivers. Linux driver developers simply have less combinations to worry about. And Apple hardware engineers also have to worry about less combinations. Thus, with a Power Mac, you end up with a stable, powerful, quiet, high-quality Linux machine.
Other than that, I don't really know
provided with wives who are forced into marriage through misogynistic traditions such as in India
Most women in India are not forced into marriage. They have a choice. It's more that their culture tells them they have to get married (both men and women are expected to conform to this), whereas in American culture women (and men) can be independent. In Indian culture people are more willing to jump into marriage. People can get married within 2 weeks of meeting someone. Sometimes the decision is made on the first meeting. Love comes after marriage, not before. Sometimes family pressure may make a man or woman agree to get married, but its still their choice. In any case, once someone is married they take their commitment seriously. Divorce is generally unheard of, though it is starting to happen more due to Western influence.
Very different from American culture, where both men and women expect so much from each other, and generally put off getting married until later. We have relationships which are essentially "mini-marriages".. There is little security in both American marriages and relationships. If you don't pay enough attention to your American wife (because you are busy with work or school), she will leave you or cheat on you. Indian women are more willing to make sacrifices and won't do this.
That's why I think the gp was saying Indian men have it easier, its generally easier for them to find a wife, and they don't have to worry so much about their wives leaving them because they've been working too hard. Indian women understand and accept the life of an engineer.
I should probably keep my mouth shut on this one since I'm only peripheraly aware of what's going on with the release schedule. If I'm wrong, hopefully someone might step up and correct me. But isn't the release delay also responsible for some packages and updates not making it into even unstable, such as x.org or kde 3.4?
KDE releases have always been slow to enter Debian unstable. If it takes them a month I wouldn't be surprised. x.org, I'm not sure what the deal is, but I recall an XFree86 release (4.3?) taking a huge amount of time (almost a year).. There are some things that make it in right away, and some things they really take their time with.
What about the fact that DRM allows Napster to offer an excellent service like Napster-to-Go?
There is a huge difference between something that you are renting (subscription-based) and something you buy to own. I would not want any kind of DRM on something that I have bought and shall keep forever. Subscription-style services where you store content is where I think DRM may have a place.
This is where you seem to be missing the point. People don't rely on their internet connections the way they do power. Part of the reason is that internet connections aren't all that reliable.
My company has a DS3, and it rarely has any problems. But it does sometimes. At home I have both cable and DSL, because I do rely on the internet and neither is reliable enough.
Hmmm... In one sentence you say people don't rely on the internet [the way they do power]. In other sentence you say you rely on the internet and have both cable and DSL at home just like I described would happen for people who really needed 24/7 internet reliability. I was speaking more about the future, but it looks like you're doing exactly what I'm talking about right now.
Maybe I missed some point somewhere, but sounds more like you are proving my point.