It's really strange to read your post. I don't get how you can say that the current democratic government of Belgium is similar to the Nazis while not noting all the similarities between the Vlaams Blok and the nazis. Well...
I understand Apple if the wholesale price really is increased for music without DRM. But why is it increased? This just doesn't make any sense to me and you did not give a valid reason for it to be more expensive besides EMI want's to sell at a higher price.
I really do think that copying is related to price and value especially copying using filesharing networks. The cheaper the product is when it is bought legally the higher the probability that people just pick the legal offering. The more expensive and restricted the legal offerings are, the more likely it gets that people say the legal offering is to expensive right now, I'll take the risk using filesharing.
Can anyone here explain to me, why getting rid of DRM has to be connected to better Quality and higher price? I totally understand that higher quality warrants a higher price since the files take up more space and distributing them costs more bandwidth. But why oh why would they couple both moves? I sometimes get the impression that the music industry just does not want to accept the demands of the market. It just does not make any sense. Up to now, the argue for DRM because they imho wrongly believe that ditching DRM would cause even more copied music. That is indeed possible but increasing the price will just make it more probable. It should be the other way round. Getting rid of DRM eliminates costs for license management and support. All those calls by people reinstalling their machines not being able to listen to their music anymore because the counter is at the top will suddenly go away (for newly bought tracks that is). They should make DRM-free music cheaper. This would reduce the probability of people copying.
I agree with you but since you mentioned office I tend to disagree there. Office 2003 is rather feature complete but I find that the ribbon interface is really great. There MS really did innovate. It's questionable though wether the ribbon interface alone is worth paying big bucks for the upgrade.
It's not that easy. Microsoft would pull the Mac version of office in the blink of an eye once Apple announced OSX for the general PC population. That would annoy many Mac users and eventually probably force them to switch. There just is no alternative to Word on the Mac yet that allows you to not use Office as a professional user in the current market.
While the Apple tools are nice for home users and even the smallest of businesses. And it currently lacks a spreadsheet application which is a major point. What else is there? OpenOffice would be a candidate but there the official version is X11. Not good enough. NeoOffice is a nice effort but not quite there yet.
MS pulling the plug on MacOffice would be a major blow to apple. But what about hardware? Do you really think you can make money with operating systems? I don't think so. Currently Apple is in the nice position to have a controlled hardware base to support. Changing that will result in significantly increased trouble to get the operating system stable and supported on the millions of confiugrations out there. I'm not sure if the needed effort will ever pay up especially since OSX on your average PC will cause Apple to loose sales of their hardware. While it's not exactly true, apple hardware is seen as expensive. But it's not really expensive but it's higher end than many of the machines of the likes of Dell and HP. Many people would probalby stop buying Apple hardware to save some bucks because they want the experience Apple provides but don't really care that much about the looks of their hardware.
So in the end I tend to not see apple actually winnig by opening OSX. The Apple ecosystem currently enjoys a healthy amount of software. While some of the Windows Titles are missing, you usually have adequate alternatives. Think Visio and Omni Graffle or Nero and Toast or Mind Manager and Novamind etc. Opening up OSX would significantly increase the installed base but would it really change the software landscape? What other advantages would there be? I can only see disadvantages for Apple.
Of course if you are a PC user envyous of OSX I can understand your point:-)
I'm a Mac user at home but I (have to) use Windows in the office. Since I need to know about Windows I gave it a try on my bootcamp partition. I removed my rather well working XP installation and went about to set up a similar working environment with Vista Ultimate Super Duper Everything in it edition on my first generation MacBook Pro with 2GB RAM and 2GHz Core duo.
After installing Vista and Office 2007 I was shocked to see that more than half of the 20GB I reserved for bootcamp were gone (12.somthing GB actually). While this is a lot it's actually ok since one can only run Vista on higher end machines and most people probably do not only have 20GB for their installation.
But trouble really starts when one tries to work with Vista. While I really like the new Office 2007 I can only describe Vista as a PITA.
I would think that my one year old MBP is still a rather fast machine. But Vista takes its time on day to day operations and does not at all feel responsive: * Copying a few small files takes seconds to even start and then you can watch each file being copied very slowly * Sometimes the operating system just waits for no particular reason. Checking the taskmanager during this does not reveal CPU or Disk activity. What's happening?
Then there are the issues with the new gui which of course can be overcome by going back to traditional style and the issues with the new security features. * Switching between windows with the new (very stylish) GUI is a pain. It's really hard to recognize which application you switch to and for some reason only known to the developers, the first app after hitting alt tab is not the next one in the list as it used to be but the current one. This is annoying since you need two tabs to quickly move to the next app. * The confirmation dialog is frustrating as well. It pops up way too often. One would think that it would not ask you to confirm opening something after explicitly clicking on it but it does. So compared to the Mac, it does not only ask you once changes are actually made but it asks you in advance and sometimes when you confirm the changes. That's too much. * The new gui really looks nice but it's sluggish. While I can't measure anything I have noticed that I tend to click in the wrong places or at least windows thinks I do. I've been using many window managers including older Versions of Windows, various Linux desktops and OSX. I never had that many problems hitting the right spots to resize windows etc. * Then there is all that flashy stuff trying to catch your attention. Come on, copying some files is not that interesting. Is usually use two monitors and I park long running status windows on my smaller screen while working on the larger one. Vista is really annoying in that those flashy status bars keep on blinking in your peripheral vision and that blinking is really distracting. It tends to generate the impression with me that something needs my attention. But of course it's only the statusbar telling me that the operation is of course not yet done. All those notifications originating from the status bar are in the same class of distractions. As with XP I don't care about most of them and some outright make me angry because the operating system tries to tell me how to work with my computer.
Compatibility? What? * It's really frustrating to see how many of my Windows apps have problems running on Vista.
After all my impression of Vista is really bad. It's unresponsive, sometimes even slow and it generally feels very bloated. It is even worse than XP because it continuously wants your attention. If you switch to the classic look most of the "wow-factor" is gone and only some of the annoying stuff is left. I don't game so I don't care about the new directX. So what exactly are the advantages of using a more unresponsive system that is overprotective, tries to tell you even more how to work with your machine and has lots of compatibility issues with hardware and software you spent significant amounts of money on?
The price is not the point. You are not forced to buy the album online for ten bucks. Price is a normal mechanism here. You can decide wether you accept the terms and the price for the convienience to have your music nearly instantaniously or not.
Microsoft is doing something very similar. The passport to all music stores using WMA with DRM is Microsoft Windows. In the long run, they are not only forcing you to use a limited set of players but they are also forcing you to stick with their operating systems.
Spending the money is not the problem. It's the lock in. If you spent a significant amount of money in iTS, your next player will most certainly be another iPod because everything else would be a lot of work or loss of the music.
Same goes with WMA. There it's not the player but the operating system.
This critisism has nothing to do with consumer rights at all. If it had, she wouldn't point her finger at Apple but at DRM as a whole. All major DRM systems known to me lock the consumer in.
WMA: Microsofts usual way of doing things. Use the market share of Windows to push forward the format. Many stores consider DRM and choose Microsofts because Windows is nearly everywhere and they will have an instant consumer base. While one can choose from a few players, I have yet to see a system that allows you to use it without Windows. So you have a choice with players but a large collection keeps you sticking with windows.
Fair-Play: You can choose from two operating systems but you can only use Apples Players. You have a little more freedom choosing your computing platform but the devices are more limited.
Of course Apple had to open itself towards Windows. Without it, they would not have the userbase that made them successful.
In the end though, there is not much difference between the two. Why is it that she attacked Apple then? In Europe WMA has a significant market share and the domination of the iPod is far from as big as in other parts of the world. I believe she is as bought by the music industry as those in the EU implementing ever more drastic copyright regimes. Why? It's a known fact that the big 4 love and hate Apple at the same time. Getting Apple to open up their DRM would most probably reduce the power of the position they are in now. With Apple's market share, Jobs can actually resist the big 4 labels and not raise prices for certain tracks, somthing the majors want for quite some time. But less power for Apple doesn't mean less sales and revenues for the music industry.
Therefore, if she was actually fighting for consumer rights, she'd attack DRM and with that the major 4, Apple and Microsoft at the same time. But nobody in the EU fights agains the powerful lobby of the music industry. They usually get what they want fairly easily. Attacking Apple however helps the music industry.
I'm sure it's the same kind of **** we've been seeing for quite some time now -- badly concealed lobbyism and nothing more.
Once again an example of how globalization is supposed to work. It's perfectly ok if corporations move their operations in less developed countries to save money. Nobody cares if they kill jobs when they leave. But as soon as there is a chance for the average consumer to gain advantage of globalization it's piracy or otherwise illegal.
I agree with your statements but I don't think they really apply to the question of using an IDE or not. Using an editor is still far from doing it by hand. The difference is mainly if you catch your error running the compiler or if the ide catches your error and marks it nicely or if you have to look things up in huge piles of documentation or if you have the lookup feature of your ide that gives you the details if you already know where to look.
If you never learned the principles of programming in theory or never at least got an idea how a compiler works, how libraries are found and linked to your program, how objects, polymorphism and the like work in object oriented languages you feel and use magic no matter if you use an IDE or a simple editor. But those things are nothing using an editor can really teach you.
While this seems a similar question at first I'd suggest to keep the caluclator out of math as long as possible. Learning to add, substract, divide and multiply quickly in your head or if need be on a piece of paper is a basic tool you need again and again and again in your daily life. I'm alway surprised at people in a restaurant if they can't spot that by accident they were charged for one beer to many because they can't simply add what they had in their heads or at least get a quick idea about wether it's around 25$ or around 35$ they have to pay. Those are the things people should get out of elementary school math. Later on if numbers get really big or people need to calculate Nth roots and other difficult things a calculator really saves time and helps too keep focus on the subject. But then, being able to use your head still has an advantage. You should be able to notice if you missed to type in a digit while multiplying. There's not a chance you'll notice that if you can't do basic math in your head. This makes it much harder to verify your results.
But in my opinion using an IDE is a different matter. There is not too much of a difference between the IDE reminding you of a missing semicolon or the compiler. It just takes more time if you notice at compile time. What do you gain by typing in a complete method name of a library class and getting it slightly wrong and then hunting down the errors with api docs and compiler messages compared to the IDE telling you the difference or even helping you to get it right in the first place. I don't see too much of a difference there except for the increase in productivity and the possibility to actually concentrate on what you want to program.
I would definately teach with an IDE. But for me the reason is not to prepare them for the job where they have to know IDEs. In my opinion it's seldom a problem to get to know the toolchain used once you start working somewhere. The real question is what is to gain from not using an IDE? In my opinion it's not much. The students will probably have better syntax skills sooer because making syntax errors is much more time consuming than with using an IDE. They might get to know the languages apis better but that really depends.
With using an IDE they can concentrate more on the programming side. They don't waste valuable time fixing stupid syntax errors or searching for why there are errors. They are even sometimes told if they produced not so ideal code. IDEs like eclipse support certain kinds of refactoring pattens. If it's about the patterns there's nothing to be gained from actually copy and pasting a method to the source file of the parent class but from applying the concept.
In my experience you can learn a language much quicker with a good IDE because it guides you with all the small things you usually have problems with in the beginning and you can therfore concentrate on the programming much quicker. But you will eventually also learn the small things eventually and then the ide just makes you be more productive and focused because it helps identify the occasional typo. That's especially usefull with languages having huge libraries like Java.
Really. The argument is: Linux doesn't get there because it's not out of the box. Besides OSX which really comes close, which OS is out of the box? Windows is far from being out of the box. People just got so used to Windows being crap that has to be tuned and configured with click orgies and reboots that they don't really notice anymore. Even systems with preinstalled windows are usually unusable at first. Granted, most hardware components work right away but usability is a completely different matter.
But as soon as someone compares Linux with windows and points out the problems with windows, the next person chimes in and makes clear, that the shortcomings of windows don't make linux any better. Of course I agree with that.
This discussion is going in circles. For me the main reason people have problems with linux are hardware vendors since most if not all the major problems originate here. Installation of *finished* Software is just something to get used to. Don't compare Installation of Software XYZ Version 0.15 with setup.exe of MS office. You can't compare the two. You have to weigh in the completely different way of software distribution in the open source world.
At the end of the day all depends. It depends on the level of preconfiguration of both operating systems, it depends on the hardware you run the systems on, it depends on the amount of willingness to learn new, different but not necessarily more difficult things. In the end one will find more than enough pluses and minuses for both platforms. The only real killers being left over are unsupported hardware and softwarepackages which are not available.
I have a bulkload of Hardware that's not working properly anymore since XP or XP SP2. It works perfectly with Linux though. You can use your own "good" computer and I bet a load of money that you won't fix the problem in few minutes.
This is the second take on copyright laws in Germany within the last couple of years. But with regard to copying solely for personal use, things didn't really change. You are allowed to do that if the copyright holders explicitly allow it or if there is no *effective* copyprotection in place.
The strangest thing is the wording here. For all normal human beings a copyright protection is effective as long as it stops copying. For Lawyers and German Politicians effective seems to mean it's written on the cover or something similar since they are always talking about CSS encrypted DVDs. Nobody in their right minds would call css effective, not anymore.
> Now, with Windows XP Pro, this is starting to change. Microsoft now requires user programs > to run on non-privileged accounts. It's much clearer where user-specific information goes. > But the damage has been done. Windows XP Home defaults to an administrator account for all new accounts.
Hmm. Up to now in every single XP Pro installation I did, the first users I added to the system were admins. You have to manually remove the rights and set passwords (Installation medium was XP Pro with SP1 included). After the first login Windows bugs you with all sorts of things but doesn't ask if you really want to be administrator.
After installing SP2, you get bugged even more. This happened, that happended, we don't know your virus scanner, do you want to install one etc. etc. Still no warning about the administrative account even though there is only one user account on the system.
And I have yet to see a Userland application that complains about an administrative user.
and two weeks later they are again spyware infested because they rather buy new hardware than figuring out what's the reason for it in the first place.
Yes. DB has a monopoly and yes, you pay significant money for going by train. But you can't take the regular price for reference.
Munich Berlin two way is 222 Euros second class. As soon as you take that trip twice, a Bahncard 50 makes sense. That is around 200 euros and gives you half prices. That means the two trips cost you 422 euros instead of 444. Every next trip helps you to make the investment even better. If you really take all the costs into account you have with a car (original investment including tax, gasoline, insurance etc.) you can't take the trip for less with a car. In addition by car you drive and you arrive tired instead of well fairly rested. You can't use the time for reading a book or prepare a meeting etc..
I travel from Cologne to Nuremberg every monday morning and back every friday for 135 euros first class. You'd have to book the planeticket weeks in advance to get a similar price. But what happens if you need to stay a little longer on Fridays? You are out of luck. With the train, I can simply take the next train two hours later.
It takes me 3,5 hours to get from one city to another. By plane it's only a bit less even though the actual flight is only about an hour.
Train is not that bad and I know a lot of people me included that really like travelling by train. The overall opinion about DB seems to be a lot worse than the service actually is.
He's right. It's stated in the license. But that kind of thing is stated in just about any major software license. It's simply a legal protection. If a nuclear powerplant blows up and for example JAVA was used for the software that caused the blowup, SUN can simply say we told you not to use it for that.
This thread seems to be a little pro patents. I don't understand that. The problems for US companies you describe are not caused by the lack of patents in the EU and elsewhere but by the patent laws established in the US. The problem will go away as soon as trivial software patents are not possible anymore.
Patents were invented to nurish inovation. Companies that developed something were able to open up their ideas for others to use and the patent helped to get compensation for the development efforts despite the idea being open in the public.
Currently in the software area, patents have another effect, at least considering the way they are used today. Companies file patents for rather simple everyday things like crazy. Compared to patents in the pharma or hardware area the have minimal development costs and wouldn't really need patent protection. They use this portfolio of patents to drive competitors out of the market. So it's not that they have developed something big and allow others to use it licensed but they haven't really developed anything but have others pay for doing similar trivial things.
This completely invalidates the good idea behind patents. And some posters already described the possible negative effect software patents can have on US companies.
Uhm, where exactly is widespread adoption of Linux really in danger? What is it you want? A mostly closed source System? Use Solaris or whatever else if you want that. You might have to switch to AIX or HPUX soon since Solaris is about to be opensourced.
It definately is a good thing that there are efforts to keep as many drivers as possible open source.
Slashdot Mirror
It's really strange to read your post. I don't get how you can say that the current democratic government of Belgium is similar to the Nazis while not noting all the similarities between the Vlaams Blok and the nazis. Well...
I understand Apple if the wholesale price really is increased for music without DRM. But why is it increased? This just doesn't make any sense to me and you did not give a valid reason for it to be more expensive besides EMI want's to sell at a higher price.
I really do think that copying is related to price and value especially copying using filesharing networks. The cheaper the product is when it is bought legally the higher the probability that people just pick the legal offering. The more expensive and restricted the legal offerings are, the more likely it gets that people say the legal offering is to expensive right now, I'll take the risk using filesharing.
Can anyone here explain to me, why getting rid of DRM has to be connected to better Quality and higher price? I totally understand that higher quality warrants a higher price since the files take up more space and distributing them costs more bandwidth. But why oh why would they couple both moves? I sometimes get the impression that the music industry just does not want to accept the demands of the market. It just does not make any sense. Up to now, the argue for DRM because they imho wrongly believe that ditching DRM would cause even more copied music. That is indeed possible but increasing the price will just make it more probable. It should be the other way round. Getting rid of DRM eliminates costs for license management and support. All those calls by people reinstalling their machines not being able to listen to their music anymore because the counter is at the top will suddenly go away (for newly bought tracks that is). They should make DRM-free music cheaper. This would reduce the probability of people copying.
I agree with you but since you mentioned office I tend to disagree there. Office 2003 is rather feature complete but I find that the ribbon interface is really great. There MS really did innovate. It's questionable though wether the ribbon interface alone is worth paying big bucks for the upgrade.
It's not that easy. Microsoft would pull the Mac version of office in the blink of an eye once Apple announced OSX for the general PC population. That would annoy many Mac users and eventually probably force them to switch. There just is no alternative to Word on the Mac yet that allows you to not use Office as a professional user in the current market.
:-)
While the Apple tools are nice for home users and even the smallest of businesses. And it currently lacks a spreadsheet application which is a major point. What else is there? OpenOffice would be a candidate but there the official version is X11. Not good enough. NeoOffice is a nice effort but not quite there yet.
MS pulling the plug on MacOffice would be a major blow to apple. But what about hardware? Do you really think you can make money with operating systems? I don't think so. Currently Apple is in the nice position to have a controlled hardware base to support. Changing that will result in significantly increased trouble to get the operating system stable and supported on the millions of confiugrations out there. I'm not sure if the needed effort will ever pay up especially since OSX on your average PC will cause Apple to loose sales of their hardware. While it's not exactly true, apple hardware is seen as expensive. But it's not really expensive but it's higher end than many of the machines of the likes of Dell and HP. Many people would probalby stop buying Apple hardware to save some bucks because they want the experience Apple provides but don't really care that much about the looks of their hardware.
So in the end I tend to not see apple actually winnig by opening OSX. The Apple ecosystem currently enjoys a healthy amount of software. While some of the Windows Titles are missing, you usually have adequate alternatives. Think Visio and Omni Graffle or Nero and Toast or Mind Manager and Novamind etc. Opening up OSX would significantly increase the installed base but would it really change the software landscape? What other advantages would there be? I can only see disadvantages for Apple.
Of course if you are a PC user envyous of OSX I can understand your point
Normal will start as soon as XP cannot be sold anymore.
I'm a Mac user at home but I (have to) use Windows in the office. Since I need to know about Windows I gave it a try on my bootcamp partition. I removed my rather well working XP installation and went about to set up a similar working environment with Vista Ultimate Super Duper Everything in it edition on my first generation MacBook Pro with 2GB RAM and 2GHz Core duo.
After installing Vista and Office 2007 I was shocked to see that more than half of the 20GB I reserved for bootcamp were gone (12.somthing GB actually). While this is a lot it's actually ok since one can only run Vista on higher end machines and most people probably do not only have 20GB for their installation.
But trouble really starts when one tries to work with Vista. While I really like the new Office 2007 I can only describe Vista as a PITA.
I would think that my one year old MBP is still a rather fast machine. But Vista takes its time on day to day operations and does not at all feel responsive:
* Copying a few small files takes seconds to even start and then you can watch each file being copied very slowly
* Sometimes the operating system just waits for no particular reason. Checking the taskmanager during this does not reveal CPU or Disk activity. What's happening?
Then there are the issues with the new gui which of course can be overcome by going back to traditional style and the issues with the new security features.
* Switching between windows with the new (very stylish) GUI is a pain. It's really hard to recognize which application you switch to and for some reason only known to the developers, the first app after hitting alt tab is not the next one in the list as it used to be but the current one. This is annoying since you need two tabs to quickly move to the next app.
* The confirmation dialog is frustrating as well. It pops up way too often. One would think that it would not ask you to confirm opening something after explicitly clicking on it but it does. So compared to the Mac, it does not only ask you once changes are actually made but it asks you in advance and sometimes when you confirm the changes. That's too much.
* The new gui really looks nice but it's sluggish. While I can't measure anything I have noticed that I tend to click in the wrong places or at least windows thinks I do. I've been using many window managers including older Versions of Windows, various Linux desktops and OSX. I never had that many problems hitting the right spots to resize windows etc.
* Then there is all that flashy stuff trying to catch your attention. Come on, copying some files is not that interesting. Is usually use two monitors and I park long running status windows on my smaller screen while working on the larger one. Vista is really annoying in that those flashy status bars keep on blinking in your peripheral vision and that blinking is really distracting. It tends to generate the impression with me that something needs my attention. But of course it's only the statusbar telling me that the operation is of course not yet done. All those notifications originating from the status bar are in the same class of distractions. As with XP I don't care about most of them and some outright make me angry because the operating system tries to tell me how to work with my computer.
Compatibility? What?
* It's really frustrating to see how many of my Windows apps have problems running on Vista.
After all my impression of Vista is really bad. It's unresponsive, sometimes even slow and it generally feels very bloated. It is even worse than XP because it continuously wants your attention. If you switch to the classic look most of the "wow-factor" is gone and only some of the annoying stuff is left. I don't game so I don't care about the new directX. So what exactly are the advantages of using a more unresponsive system that is overprotective, tries to tell you even more how to work with your machine and has lots of compatibility issues with hardware and software you spent significant amounts of money on?
The price is not the point. You are not forced to buy the album online for ten bucks. Price is a normal mechanism here. You can decide wether you accept the terms and the price for the convienience to have your music nearly instantaniously or not.
Microsoft is doing something very similar. The passport to all music stores using WMA with DRM is Microsoft Windows. In the long run, they are not only forcing you to use a limited set of players but they are also forcing you to stick with their operating systems.
Spending the money is not the problem. It's the lock in. If you spent a significant amount of money in iTS, your next player will most certainly be another iPod because everything else would be a lot of work or loss of the music.
Same goes with WMA. There it's not the player but the operating system.
This critisism has nothing to do with consumer rights at all. If it had, she wouldn't point her finger at Apple but at DRM as a whole. All major DRM systems known to me lock the consumer in.
WMA: Microsofts usual way of doing things. Use the market share of Windows to push forward the format. Many stores consider DRM and choose Microsofts because Windows is nearly everywhere and they will have an instant consumer base. While one can choose from a few players, I have yet to see a system that allows you to use it without Windows. So you have a choice with players but a large collection keeps you sticking with windows.
Fair-Play: You can choose from two operating systems but you can only use Apples Players. You have a little more freedom choosing your computing platform but the devices are more limited.
Of course Apple had to open itself towards Windows. Without it, they would not have the userbase that made them successful.
In the end though, there is not much difference between the two. Why is it that she attacked Apple then? In Europe WMA has a significant market share and the domination of the iPod is far from as big as in other parts of the world. I believe she is as bought by the music industry as those in the EU implementing ever more drastic copyright regimes. Why? It's a known fact that the big 4 love and hate Apple at the same time. Getting Apple to open up their DRM would most probably reduce the power of the position they are in now. With Apple's market share, Jobs can actually resist the big 4 labels and not raise prices for certain tracks, somthing the majors want for quite some time. But less power for Apple doesn't mean less sales and revenues for the music industry.
Therefore, if she was actually fighting for consumer rights, she'd attack DRM and with that the major 4, Apple and Microsoft at the same time. But nobody in the EU fights agains the powerful lobby of the music industry. They usually get what they want fairly easily. Attacking Apple however helps the music industry.
I'm sure it's the same kind of **** we've been seeing for quite some time now -- badly concealed lobbyism and nothing more.
Once again an example of how globalization is supposed to work. It's perfectly ok if corporations move their operations in less developed countries to save money. Nobody cares if they kill jobs when they leave. But as soon as there is a chance for the average consumer to gain advantage of globalization it's piracy or otherwise illegal.
Yeah and if you are lucky, a small part of your students can even do the most basic tasks with that editor at the end of the semster.
I agree with your statements but I don't think they really apply to the question of using an IDE or not. Using an editor is still far from doing it by hand. The difference is mainly if you catch your error running the compiler or if the ide catches your error and marks it nicely or if you have to look things up in huge piles of documentation or if you have the lookup feature of your ide that gives you the details if you already know where to look.
If you never learned the principles of programming in theory or never at least got an idea how a compiler works, how libraries are found and linked to your program, how objects, polymorphism and the like work in object oriented languages you feel and use magic no matter if you use an IDE or a simple editor. But those things are nothing using an editor can really teach you.
While this seems a similar question at first I'd suggest to keep the caluclator out of math as long as possible. Learning to add, substract, divide and multiply quickly in your head or if need be on a piece of paper is a basic tool you need again and again and again in your daily life. I'm alway surprised at people in a restaurant if they can't spot that by accident they were charged for one beer to many because they can't simply add what they had in their heads or at least get a quick idea about wether it's around 25$ or around 35$ they have to pay. Those are the things people should get out of elementary school math. Later on if numbers get really big or people need to calculate Nth roots and other difficult things a calculator really saves time and helps too keep focus on the subject. But then, being able to use your head still has an advantage. You should be able to notice if you missed to type in a digit while multiplying. There's not a chance you'll notice that if you can't do basic math in your head. This makes it much harder to verify your results.
But in my opinion using an IDE is a different matter. There is not too much of a difference between the IDE reminding you of a missing semicolon or the compiler. It just takes more time if you notice at compile time. What do you gain by typing in a complete method name of a library class and getting it slightly wrong and then hunting down the errors with api docs and compiler messages compared to the IDE telling you the difference or even helping you to get it right in the first place. I don't see too much of a difference there except for the increase in productivity and the possibility to actually concentrate on what you want to program.
I would definately teach with an IDE. But for me the reason is not to prepare them for the job where they have to know IDEs. In my opinion it's seldom a problem to get to know the toolchain used once you start working somewhere. The real question is what is to gain from not using an IDE? In my opinion it's not much. The students will probably have better syntax skills sooer because making syntax errors is much more time consuming than with using an IDE. They might get to know the languages apis better but that really depends.
With using an IDE they can concentrate more on the programming side. They don't waste valuable time fixing stupid syntax errors or searching for why there are errors. They are even sometimes told if they produced not so ideal code. IDEs like eclipse support certain kinds of refactoring pattens. If it's about the patterns there's nothing to be gained from actually copy and pasting a method to the source file of the parent class but from applying the concept.
In my experience you can learn a language much quicker with a good IDE because it guides you with all the small things you usually have problems with in the beginning and you can therfore concentrate on the programming much quicker. But you will eventually also learn the small things eventually and then the ide just makes you be more productive and focused because it helps identify the occasional typo. That's especially usefull with languages having huge libraries like Java.
Really. The argument is: Linux doesn't get there because it's not out of the box. Besides OSX which really comes close, which OS is out of the box? Windows is far from being out of the box. People just got so used to Windows being crap that has to be tuned and configured with click orgies and reboots that they don't really notice anymore. Even systems with preinstalled windows are usually unusable at first. Granted, most hardware components work right away but usability is a completely different matter.
But as soon as someone compares Linux with windows and points out the problems with windows, the next person chimes in and makes clear, that the shortcomings of windows don't make linux any better. Of course I agree with that.
This discussion is going in circles. For me the main reason people have problems with linux are hardware vendors since most if not all the major problems originate here. Installation of *finished* Software is just something to get used to. Don't compare Installation of Software XYZ Version 0.15 with setup.exe of MS office. You can't compare the two. You have to weigh in the completely different way of software distribution in the open source world.
At the end of the day all depends. It depends on the level of preconfiguration of both operating systems, it depends on the hardware you run the systems on, it depends on the amount of willingness to learn new, different but not necessarily more difficult things. In the end one will find more than enough pluses and minuses for both platforms. The only real killers being left over are unsupported hardware and softwarepackages which are not available.
I have a bulkload of Hardware that's not working properly anymore since XP or XP SP2. It works perfectly with Linux though. You can use your own "good" computer and I bet a load of money that you won't fix the problem in few minutes.
This is the second take on copyright laws in Germany within the last couple of years. But with regard to copying solely for personal use, things didn't really change. You are allowed to do that if the copyright holders explicitly allow it or if there is no *effective* copyprotection in place.
The strangest thing is the wording here. For all normal human beings a copyright protection is effective as long as it stops copying. For Lawyers and German Politicians effective seems to mean it's written on the cover or something similar since they are always talking about CSS encrypted DVDs. Nobody in their right minds would call css effective, not anymore.
> Now, with Windows XP Pro, this is starting to change. Microsoft now requires user programs
> to run on non-privileged accounts. It's much clearer where user-specific information goes.
> But the damage has been done. Windows XP Home defaults to an administrator account for all new accounts.
Hmm. Up to now in every single XP Pro installation I did, the first users I added to the system were admins. You have to manually remove the rights and set passwords (Installation medium was XP Pro with SP1 included). After the first login Windows bugs you with all sorts of things but doesn't ask if you really want to be administrator.
After installing SP2, you get bugged even more. This happened, that happended, we don't know your virus scanner, do you want to install one etc. etc. Still no warning about the administrative account even though there is only one user account on the system.
And I have yet to see a Userland application that complains about an administrative user.
and two weeks later they are again spyware infested because they rather buy new hardware than figuring out what's the reason for it in the first place.
Weird reasoning, really.
Hmm...
Yes. DB has a monopoly and yes, you pay significant money for going by train. But you can't take the regular price for reference.
Munich Berlin two way is 222 Euros second class. As soon as you take that trip twice, a Bahncard 50 makes sense. That is around 200 euros and gives you half prices. That means the two trips cost you 422 euros instead of 444. Every next trip helps you to make the investment even better. If you really take all the costs into account you have with a car (original investment including tax, gasoline, insurance etc.) you can't take the trip for less with a car. In addition by car you drive and you arrive tired instead of well fairly rested. You can't use the time for reading a book or prepare a meeting etc..
I travel from Cologne to Nuremberg every monday morning and back every friday for 135 euros first class. You'd have to book the planeticket weeks in advance to get a similar price. But what happens if you need to stay a little longer on Fridays? You are out of luck. With the train, I can simply take the next train two hours later.
It takes me 3,5 hours to get from one city to another. By plane it's only a bit less even though the actual flight is only about an hour.
Train is not that bad and I know a lot of people me included that really like travelling by train. The overall opinion about DB seems to be a lot worse than the service actually is.
He's right. It's stated in the license. But that kind of thing is stated in just about any major software license. It's simply a legal protection. If a nuclear powerplant blows up and for example JAVA was used for the software that caused the blowup, SUN can simply say we told you not to use it for that.
This thread seems to be a little pro patents. I don't understand that. The problems for US companies you describe are not caused by the lack of patents in the EU and elsewhere but by the patent laws established in the US. The problem will go away as soon as trivial software patents are not possible anymore.
Patents were invented to nurish inovation. Companies that developed something were able to open up their ideas for others to use and the patent helped to get compensation for the development efforts despite the idea being open in the public.
Currently in the software area, patents have another effect, at least considering the way they are used today. Companies file patents for rather simple everyday things like crazy. Compared to patents in the pharma or hardware area the have minimal development costs and wouldn't really need patent protection. They use this portfolio of patents to drive competitors out of the market. So it's not that they have developed something big and allow others to use it licensed but they haven't really developed anything but have others pay for doing similar trivial things.
This completely invalidates the good idea behind patents. And some posters already described the possible negative effect software patents can have on US companies.
Uhm, where exactly is widespread adoption of Linux really in danger? What is it you want? A mostly closed source System? Use Solaris or whatever else if you want that. You might have to switch to AIX or HPUX soon since Solaris is about to be opensourced.
It definately is a good thing that there are efforts to keep as many drivers as possible open source.