Java failed because Sun assumed it was good to use on the web and it simply wasnt.
No, Java "failed" [as a web app framework] because Sun never could put together an applets platform that was fast and produced professional-looking apps.
If you really believe there has never been any demand for fully functional applications running in a browser, your vision of the demand for apps has been far too narrow over the last 10 years. There was absolutely high demand for this type of application in 1995, and even more so now. Some isolated examples are coming closer and closer to this vision already, just making use of DHTML and proprietary browser enhancements. Good examples are the newer versions of Exchange Web Access and Hotmail, which are both coming closer to fully functional web apps with every new release. Once.NET (and Java too) come up with good, interoperable, solid ways to make this happen, web apps will be springing up in areas that you have never imagined.
More importantly, there is high demand for easily deployable applications in many business environments, and it's obvious that the easiest deployment is no deployment - something which is only accomplished via a universal tool that everyone already has - i.e. The Browser. Just because you personally don't see the need for a web app, does not mean that many thousands of companies with billions of dollars to spend don't have business needs for them.
"If I could find a 7200 rpm drive that didn't destroy the battery life in my PowerBook I would be very happy."
I have been running with the 80GB (7200 rpm) TravelStar drive mentioned above, for several months now in my Compaq Evo N610c- and I haven't noticed a significant drop in battery life - although I must admit I don't think it was that great to begin with. But I have DEFINITELY noticed a huge speed increase in seek time - I am now able to perform a number of disk-intensive operations in time that seems much more comparable to what I would expect on a desktop.
HOWEVER: To respond to the grandparent and great-grandparent posts:
"Dropping the power consumption by 20% sounds like a win."
"Well, it doesn't hurt, but it's not a huge deal. When I'm unplugged and working, the hard drive is sitting idle so lowering power consumption doesn't significantly affect battery life."
I'm not sure about that, because I am very often plugged in anyways, but I do know one thing: when I do anything that uses the harddrive, such as playing a DivX or something, the bottom of my laptop easily reaches the melting point of the skin on my thighs - MUCH more quickly than it did with my previous 60GB 5400 rpm drive...
So if reducing power consumption by 20% also reduces the the heat generation of my laptop, I will grab the first one I can find!
You must not live in the suburbs of New York City.
First of all, ouch...
No, as I mentioned, my numbers are based on Texas in particular, although typcially I would certainly consider that lower than NYC.
Second, let me add a disclaimer - I consider myself on the generous side, probably since I myself am also a developer and so have a personal stake in this. I'm also lucky to be in a position where I don't have anyone above me who knows the market well enough to contradict my decisions in this area. I'm sure that 90% of the employers out there are under a lot more budgetary pressure, and are forced to take advantage of developers.
However, having placed all of these disclaimers, I must now say - 27K is too low for the skillset you are describing. I could certainly see how this can become a reality in today's market, and I'm sure it is happening far too often. But it is definitely too low.
The only assessment I can give, based on what you've listed here, is that you are being evaluated far more as a sys-admin and/or as a lower-level-language-only and/or web-only type of guy - all labels which will instantly get you a signficant salary drop in my book. Sorry, I don't have anything against C++ developers, but today with the availability of multiple high-level platforms (Java/.NET/others), low-level-language-only guys are one area that is going to be more and more discounted. To be specific here: I qualify C++ as lower-level-only unless it is accompanied by some other qualifiers such as MFC, ATL, or Managed C++, and even then, without some accompanying Java or C#, I personally am not too interested in looking at it.
But as I've said, 27K is just too low for the breadth of skill and depth of experience that you are describing. I would advise you to look around. If I were in the market for someone with your skills, considering experience I would rate you at minimum 45K right now, probably more. This is all speculation - I'd have to meet you to reall know, of course...
I was wondering if anyone was going to say this. I'll throw my 2 cents in, as I have been responsible for a fair bit of hiring during the last few years, during, before, and after the bubble - although recently, unfortunately I spend a lot more time doing firing than hiring.
have spent 4 years of college and years before that developing my programming skills.
I'm not sure exactly what you've been learning in your degree program, or what kind of "programming skills" you've picked up on your own, but my guess is that right now you have a choice:
(1) Go into the market as fresh meat, get a job making less than you could waiting tables;
(2) Hone a few practical skills, and put them on your resume, and be sure you can talk the talk during a tech interview, and hopefully walk the walk during the initial "prove yourself" period;
Let me be more specific. Here is a realistic example: I, employer of FooBar Programming Co, am hiring a few positions. Although I make specific job postings, claiming that I am looking for a specific set of positions, these are actually fairly flexible, and the salary will be flexibile accordingly. So, lets say I do some interviews and find two people I like - in this case, both fresh out of school (that doesn't have to matter at all btw):
#1 - fresh out of school, learned a bit of c++ and java in school, knows all the academic stuff;
===} 30-38K
#2 - fresh out of school, in addition to the school stuff, has been a significant contributor on a few small but interesting open source projects using some recent technologies (java;.NET c#; c++ with MFC/ATL/STL/etc.; php; asp; etc.); plus can talk the talk to prove he knows what some of the industry tools are all about (source control; ide's - visual studio / eclipse; xml; servers; frameworks)
===} 45-60K
Both of these guys could be the exact same age, with the exact same graduation date - but the salary an employer is going to be willing to dish out could vary significantly. The point here is that a bit of proven practical experience (even the non-paid kind), plus a bit of ability to talk the talk and make the employer feel comfortable that you are beyond the fish out of water stage, can guarantee you a spot in the bracket above most newly-grads.
This can also potentially get you out of that danger area where you are competing directly with workers in Bangalor. An employer who is not fully bought in to the offshoring solution is much more likely to stick with the local talent if there is a level of comfort with the local talent that does not exist with the offshore talent.
*NOTE: the numbers I am throwing out are based on Texas cost of living - could vary significantly in other locales.
In addition to go back to the point of the original poster, specifically on Domain Knowledge - beyond the technical ability, a specific secondary focus in a domain area that is related to my company's business domain is the other thing that will help to enhance the two effects I described above - ensuring a better position and salary; and securing against offshore talent. For example, if I work in a company making financial software (which I do), and the candidate has some specific knowledge about finance, relating to our specific domain - i.e. we build software for trading fixed income securities - so if the candidate can tell me a bit about their own experience studying or trading bonds, for example, that would be a definite strong point.
Yes, my sentiments exactly. Oh, and for all of those culinary students out there - you are getting too attached to gas/electric ovens and stoves. Try rubbing a couple of sticks together every once in a while!
First of all, to answer this question, yes my 3D card and other devices all install fine with XP's built-in plug-and-play drivers. I'm not a huge gamer or anything like that, but I believe I have never seen any normal hardware (i.e. things other than my smartphone, mp3 player, etc.) that didn't install automatically on XP. Perhaps you are underestimating the extensive driver support built in to XP, based on historical experience back in the days of Win95-OSR1, where almost nothing was truly plug and play. In today's world, I think that for 99.something% of the cases, XP provides 100% driver support on a clean install.
But more to the point - you are asking the wrong question. The question should not be about drivers - because as I just said, that is a problem that was conquered several years ago in the desktop OS space, as far as most Windows users are concerned. Based on my limited experience trying to do a few Linux installs (Mandrake, in case you are curious), the issue is about *bundled software*.
As the great-great-grandparent post here mentioned, there are plenty of newbie-friendly installers coming out for Linux these days - 3 clicks and it's done! Great!
...but then what do I have? Oh, so to get any kind of decent media player, I have to download and install mplayer? But, that requires GTK, and unfortunately I am running KDE? But before I can do that, I need ATK? And before I can do that...
"But at least you have 37 different choices for your media player and aren't stuck to the one that was bundled!!!"
Great, but that doesn't help much when none of the decent ones came with my 3-click install.
What about these other wonderful applications? DVD player? CD burner? DVD burner? GIMP? Mono?... Great, I see that the list goes on and on, but unfortunately, NONE of these are part of that 3-click install.
Guess what:
The Windows install may be 6 clicks instead of 3, but it came with ALL of the things I just mentioned, out of the box, without even having to ask for them.
Conclusion:
Comparing the 3-click install of a Linux distribution to the N-click install of WinXP is comparing apples to oranges, because at the end you simply don't get your 3-clicks-worth.
the abnormal condition here is the fact that someone has written a virus or work for a specific exploit, as you've mentioned (Nimda, malware, Code Red, Blaster, etc.) - that is the rocket launcher. Yes you are right, the usage is a normal condition, as driving a car down the road is the normal condition. However, combine driving the car down the road with a rocket launcher, and that's where the problems start.
So, to summarize:
Normal condition == normal computer usage == driving car down road
Abnormal condition == writing a virus == firing a rocket launcher at car
Wow, I can't believe you just typed all that...it is really nice to take that trip back to memory lane, like in 1997, right? Oh, I see - you're still there...
Seriously, wake up and smell the benchmark reviews. If you really think no F500 co's are using MS-SQL, you are beyond on crack. Maybe heroin or something...
Regarding uptime, I'm not F500 CTO, but I do happen to have my own Win2k and Win2k3 servers running websites and mail servers (yes, pretty much all on MS servers - IIS, ASP.NET, MSSQL, and Exchange), and I have never, EVER had to reboot any of them for any other reason than service pack installs. My main webserver, which is running Win2k3, has not required a single reboot since the day I put it online, which was very shortly after the final Win2K3 release - I believe that was back in the summer of last year sometime, if I remember correctly. Every once in a while I have to restart IIS on this machine, when I want to upgrade a server component library for one of the web applications I have running (but I would assume pretty much any webserver requires a restart for this type of upgrade)... Note that this is simply a right click to restart IIS, not a reboot or anything like that.
My main DB server (running MSSQL) is still on win2k for one simple reason - I have been too damn lazy to upgrade it because it simply never needs a reboot! I moved locations once, and so I had to bring the server down briefly. I also may have had one power outage before I installed my UPS system. Other than that, I believe this machine has not been rebooted in over 2 years - because it is not exposed externally on the network, I do not typically keep it updated with all the service patches, so it does not get rebooted for those.
ok, well I admit, I do have one machine running emule which requires rebooting every once in a while, or at least killing some emule processes and restarting them, but other than that...
I agree with this - we should not expect any major changes to the way the registry works in the forseeable future. As the parent notes, it does work when used correctly. However, the newer trend with.NET and applications written on that framework is to begin to move away from using the registry for normal applications - these types of settings are more commonly stored in normal configuration files on the file system. This is taking precedence for a number of reasons, including easier relocation of apps (to different machines for example), XML standardization, and reducing complexity.
So while I would say that the registry is certainly not going away any time soon, it is less and less encouraged for normal end-user applications, and we may see a breaking point some day when it is made obsolete.
Another Hint: The EU is not going to get very far now that they have lost the support of their biggest witness. Or perhaps you think Real is going to be able to carry the torch on their own now? Government agencies (yes even the EU) are guided by beurocrats. Who knows, maybe IBM will give up their multi-billion-dollar deals and take their rightful place in the witness chair...
I like the +4 Funny here, but I also realize you were making a point.
Thus, I will make a counter-point, as if your post was serious. Also, note that this is a point that has been made by myself and others in the past on/., and it is not specifically intended as a troll or flame, although the subject is still a bit taboo.
This sounds like my first car.
No, I would say this sounds more like our first "twin towers". You know, they were pretty secure until a group of terrorists drove two planes into them.
Or maybe...
This sounds like my current car - it is safe unless someone fires a rocket launcher at it.
The point here is that I believe your analogy (and so may similar ill-fated attempts before it) are highly flawed. The "security flaws" being exposed are not due just randomly stumbling across problems during normal usage - they are due to specifically targeted exploits, which have been found using devious, subversive, and abnormal means. All of the cases you've listed with your car are standard design flaws that are clearly noticeable under normal conditions (not conditions like people driving planes into you or launching rockets at you).
And MS-SQL is a piece of shit, everyone knows that.
I would love to know where this idea comes from that MS SQL or any other one of the major professional db products is significantly ahead of or behind the others (using "major professional" to indicate that I am consciously excluding certain products such as MySQL). Clearly people who say this are still living in 1997.
In the modern landscape of DB software, the actual relational DB component is close to commoditized - in the sense that you can easily pick any one of the major vendors for about 99.5% of all of the DB applications out there, with the appropriate tuning for that system. This was not the case 5 or 6 years ago, but for the last few years, the only edge we have seen of any major DB over any other has been marginal, and always a result of biased vendor-commissioned benchmarks.
This is exactly what the grandparent or great-grandparent or whatever was getting at - DBs are already commoditized, and the only way a DB product distinguishes itself today is by providing some distinguishing factor outside of the core DB functionality. For MySQL (lets pretend for a moment that it was actually up to par with true professional db products) the distinguishing factors are "free" and "open source". For Oracle, the distinguishing factors are integration with Oracle analysis tools, and also Oracle enterprise applications (ERP, CRM, etc.). For Microsoft, the factors (today) are similar to Oracle's - integration with Microsoft analysis tools and enterprise servers - plus integration with MS development tools; but in the not-too-distant future, Microsoft is aiming to completely change the landscape, and to take a product that is already commoditized, and turn it into a true bundled commodity, just as the browser and media player have already been.
Am I the only one here who realizes how ridiculous it is that we are having a discussion where one post starts with "everyone knows that MS-SQL sucks" and the next response is "yeah, and MySQL is where it's at" - or perhaps I just forgot that we are on/....
I have not worked for Microsoft, but here is my understanding:
The Technical Evangelist role essentially involves two major parts - one is kind of what you are describing - reaching out to the developer and IT communities through training and public announcement events, such as PDC, MSDN local events, etc.;
the other is working directly with paying customers (small to large business) to implement custom systems on Microsoft technology, often including a lot of study and/or small-group training on how to apply best practices of MS development to those projects;
Last time I checked out CinemaNow (actually that was like 6 months ago, but looks like they haven't changed dramatically), the selection was horrible (new releases were limited to films that usually go straight to video, and the overall selection was also poor), and quality/portability/drm restrictions were a joke. I found that quality didn't even seem to have a standard - different films came with entirely different encodings, so you never knew what you would get.
I see these quite commonly in hotels in Italy. Not sure if they are actually meant to be used, or if they are even functional, or maybe just for decoration...
"...we wanted the ability to save the state of the device to memory immediately before powering off - and be able to resume work in that same position when the device is power on again. But since operating the device in this fashion made freezes very likely, we let Windows go."
Just curious - isn't this exactly what Windows allows you to do (i.e. Hibernate and/or Suspend in XP, or normal power down/resume in PocketPC/MobileOS)?
I'm not sure I understand what NEC is trying to say here - clearly MS has as many (reliable) options for state persistence as Linux, if not more. n'est pas?
wow, you must be a true visionary! just reading your post, i now see that you have completely predicted everything we will see microsoft accomplish during the next few y....
wait, that was 2002.
where have you been? under a rock or something? all of this already happened. this mysterious 'dotnet library' you have imagined is already a reality, and it already does everything you've described and much more. and, oh did i forget to mention - it is (1) free; and (2) an open standard;
you might want to try coming out of your cave every once and a while.
welcome to the real world.
Where did you get that idea? The (EU) case in particular is about software companies who build media players, such as Real. However, I was referring to the overall discussion of Microsoft vis-a-vis antitrust (not just this particular case), which is what the parent comment appeared to be directed towards.
In any case, it doesn't change the point - we are talking about "dominant [consumer] desktop systems", as opposed to say, the server OS, or some other type of OS where media player is not a naturally bundled-in product. In this area (consumer desktop OS), if you still believe it is not important or relevant for the product (a consumer desktop OS) to come with a media player, you are living in the stone ages.
1. I'm not sure who told you what media player you can use or can't use, but it definitely wasn't Microsoft. As far as I'm aware, there are no issues with installing any of the leading alternative media players on any current versions of Windows.
2. I'm not sure what media player is crashing once per week for you, but my WMP has never, ever crashed.
3. If there really was a "better product" in this category (media players), I would love to see it. Obviously it's not Real - at least no one here seems to be claiming that - that's why this whole discussion is ridiculous.
Don't like RealPlayer? Fine don't use it, but then go find an Open Source or commercial media player that does not dictate what you can and cannot run on your PC - because that's precisely what WMP is starting to do now and will do more and more in the future.
Are you just planning to spread FUD, or did you actually have any evidence to back up a claim like this? I don't know what version of WMP you have, but my WMP allows me to play whatever I want, including ripping mp3s from CDs (using a plugin).
agree with other poster - you heard what you wanted to hear, or are just making this up.
in any case - you are missing an important distinction: in this simplistic mind of your hypothetical "ms zealot", he would have said "the purpose of a consumer OS". it's obvious that non-consumer OS's may not need to bundle browsers or media players, and it's also clear that this discussion has always been about the consumer desktop OS.
Slashdot Mirror
Only on /. can the (erroneous) parent of this post be allowed to get away with +5 Interesting while this post gets buried. MOD UP PLEASE.
sorry about that, brain not working today - you know what i meant...
1995 ^H^H^H^H 2000
Java failed because Sun assumed it was good to use on the web and it simply wasnt.
.NET (and Java too) come up with good, interoperable, solid ways to make this happen, web apps will be springing up in areas that you have never imagined.
No, Java "failed" [as a web app framework] because Sun never could put together an applets platform that was fast and produced professional-looking apps.
If you really believe there has never been any demand for fully functional applications running in a browser, your vision of the demand for apps has been far too narrow over the last 10 years. There was absolutely high demand for this type of application in 1995, and even more so now. Some isolated examples are coming closer and closer to this vision already, just making use of DHTML and proprietary browser enhancements. Good examples are the newer versions of Exchange Web Access and Hotmail, which are both coming closer to fully functional web apps with every new release. Once
More importantly, there is high demand for easily deployable applications in many business environments, and it's obvious that the easiest deployment is no deployment - something which is only accomplished via a universal tool that everyone already has - i.e. The Browser. Just because you personally don't see the need for a web app, does not mean that many thousands of companies with billions of dollars to spend don't have business needs for them.
"If I could find a 7200 rpm drive that didn't destroy the battery life in my PowerBook I would be very happy."
I have been running with the 80GB (7200 rpm) TravelStar drive mentioned above, for several months now in my Compaq Evo N610c- and I haven't noticed a significant drop in battery life - although I must admit I don't think it was that great to begin with. But I have DEFINITELY noticed a huge speed increase in seek time - I am now able to perform a number of disk-intensive operations in time that seems much more comparable to what I would expect on a desktop.
HOWEVER: To respond to the grandparent and great-grandparent posts:
"Dropping the power consumption by 20% sounds like a win."
"Well, it doesn't hurt, but it's not a huge deal. When I'm unplugged and working, the hard drive is sitting idle so lowering power consumption doesn't significantly affect battery life."
I'm not sure about that, because I am very often plugged in anyways, but I do know one thing: when I do anything that uses the harddrive, such as playing a DivX or something, the bottom of my laptop easily reaches the melting point of the skin on my thighs - MUCH more quickly than it did with my previous 60GB 5400 rpm drive...
So if reducing power consumption by 20% also reduces the the heat generation of my laptop, I will grab the first one I can find!
You must not live in the suburbs of New York City.
First of all, ouch...
No, as I mentioned, my numbers are based on Texas in particular, although typcially I would certainly consider that lower than NYC.
Second, let me add a disclaimer - I consider myself on the generous side, probably since I myself am also a developer and so have a personal stake in this. I'm also lucky to be in a position where I don't have anyone above me who knows the market well enough to contradict my decisions in this area. I'm sure that 90% of the employers out there are under a lot more budgetary pressure, and are forced to take advantage of developers.
However, having placed all of these disclaimers, I must now say - 27K is too low for the skillset you are describing. I could certainly see how this can become a reality in today's market, and I'm sure it is happening far too often. But it is definitely too low.
The only assessment I can give, based on what you've listed here, is that you are being evaluated far more as a sys-admin and/or as a lower-level-language-only and/or web-only type of guy - all labels which will instantly get you a signficant salary drop in my book. Sorry, I don't have anything against C++ developers, but today with the availability of multiple high-level platforms (Java/.NET/others), low-level-language-only guys are one area that is going to be more and more discounted. To be specific here: I qualify C++ as lower-level-only unless it is accompanied by some other qualifiers such as MFC, ATL, or Managed C++, and even then, without some accompanying Java or C#, I personally am not too interested in looking at it.
But as I've said, 27K is just too low for the breadth of skill and depth of experience that you are describing. I would advise you to look around. If I were in the market for someone with your skills, considering experience I would rate you at minimum 45K right now, probably more. This is all speculation - I'd have to meet you to reall know, of course...
I wish you the best of luck.
I was wondering if anyone was going to say this. I'll throw my 2 cents in, as I have been responsible for a fair bit of hiring during the last few years, during, before, and after the bubble - although recently, unfortunately I spend a lot more time doing firing than hiring.
.NET c#; c++ with MFC/ATL/STL/etc.; php; asp; etc.); plus can talk the talk to prove he knows what some of the industry tools are all about (source control; ide's - visual studio / eclipse; xml; servers; frameworks)
have spent 4 years of college and years before that developing my programming skills.
I'm not sure exactly what you've been learning in your degree program, or what kind of "programming skills" you've picked up on your own, but my guess is that right now you have a choice:
(1) Go into the market as fresh meat, get a job making less than you could waiting tables;
(2) Hone a few practical skills, and put them on your resume, and be sure you can talk the talk during a tech interview, and hopefully walk the walk during the initial "prove yourself" period;
Let me be more specific. Here is a realistic example: I, employer of FooBar Programming Co, am hiring a few positions. Although I make specific job postings, claiming that I am looking for a specific set of positions, these are actually fairly flexible, and the salary will be flexibile accordingly. So, lets say I do some interviews and find two people I like - in this case, both fresh out of school (that doesn't have to matter at all btw):
#1 - fresh out of school, learned a bit of c++ and java in school, knows all the academic stuff;
===} 30-38K
#2 - fresh out of school, in addition to the school stuff, has been a significant contributor on a few small but interesting open source projects using some recent technologies (java;
===} 45-60K
Both of these guys could be the exact same age, with the exact same graduation date - but the salary an employer is going to be willing to dish out could vary significantly. The point here is that a bit of proven practical experience (even the non-paid kind), plus a bit of ability to talk the talk and make the employer feel comfortable that you are beyond the fish out of water stage, can guarantee you a spot in the bracket above most newly-grads.
This can also potentially get you out of that danger area where you are competing directly with workers in Bangalor. An employer who is not fully bought in to the offshoring solution is much more likely to stick with the local talent if there is a level of comfort with the local talent that does not exist with the offshore talent.
*NOTE: the numbers I am throwing out are based on Texas cost of living - could vary significantly in other locales.
In addition to go back to the point of the original poster, specifically on Domain Knowledge - beyond the technical ability, a specific secondary focus in a domain area that is related to my company's business domain is the other thing that will help to enhance the two effects I described above - ensuring a better position and salary; and securing against offshore talent. For example, if I work in a company making financial software (which I do), and the candidate has some specific knowledge about finance, relating to our specific domain - i.e. we build software for trading fixed income securities - so if the candidate can tell me a bit about their own experience studying or trading bonds, for example, that would be a definite strong point.
Yes, very curious...what about Mono?
More controversial is the introduction of a new and elegant foreach construct.
Wonder where they got that idea...
Yes, my sentiments exactly. Oh, and for all of those culinary students out there - you are getting too attached to gas/electric ovens and stoves. Try rubbing a couple of sticks together every once in a while!
First of all, to answer this question, yes my 3D card and other devices all install fine with XP's built-in plug-and-play drivers. I'm not a huge gamer or anything like that, but I believe I have never seen any normal hardware (i.e. things other than my smartphone, mp3 player, etc.) that didn't install automatically on XP. Perhaps you are underestimating the extensive driver support built in to XP, based on historical experience back in the days of Win95-OSR1, where almost nothing was truly plug and play. In today's world, I think that for 99.something% of the cases, XP provides 100% driver support on a clean install.
...but then what do I have? Oh, so to get any kind of decent media player, I have to download and install mplayer? But, that requires GTK, and unfortunately I am running KDE? But before I can do that, I need ATK? And before I can do that...
But more to the point - you are asking the wrong question. The question should not be about drivers - because as I just said, that is a problem that was conquered several years ago in the desktop OS space, as far as most Windows users are concerned. Based on my limited experience trying to do a few Linux installs (Mandrake, in case you are curious), the issue is about *bundled software*.
As the great-great-grandparent post here mentioned, there are plenty of newbie-friendly installers coming out for Linux these days - 3 clicks and it's done! Great!
"But at least you have 37 different choices for your media player and aren't stuck to the one that was bundled!!!"
Great, but that doesn't help much when none of the decent ones came with my 3-click install.
What about these other wonderful applications? DVD player? CD burner? DVD burner? GIMP? Mono?... Great, I see that the list goes on and on, but unfortunately, NONE of these are part of that 3-click install.
Guess what:
The Windows install may be 6 clicks instead of 3, but it came with ALL of the things I just mentioned, out of the box, without even having to ask for them.
Conclusion:
Comparing the 3-click install of a Linux distribution to the N-click install of WinXP is comparing apples to oranges, because at the end you simply don't get your 3-clicks-worth.
the abnormal condition here is the fact that someone has written a virus or work for a specific exploit, as you've mentioned (Nimda, malware, Code Red, Blaster, etc.) - that is the rocket launcher. Yes you are right, the usage is a normal condition, as driving a car down the road is the normal condition. However, combine driving the car down the road with a rocket launcher, and that's where the problems start.
So, to summarize:
Normal condition == normal computer usage == driving car down road
Abnormal condition == writing a virus == firing a rocket launcher at car
Wow, I can't believe you just typed all that...it is really nice to take that trip back to memory lane, like in 1997, right? Oh, I see - you're still there...
;)
Seriously, wake up and smell the benchmark reviews. If you really think no F500 co's are using MS-SQL, you are beyond on crack. Maybe heroin or something...
Regarding uptime, I'm not F500 CTO, but I do happen to have my own Win2k and Win2k3 servers running websites and mail servers (yes, pretty much all on MS servers - IIS, ASP.NET, MSSQL, and Exchange), and I have never, EVER had to reboot any of them for any other reason than service pack installs. My main webserver, which is running Win2k3, has not required a single reboot since the day I put it online, which was very shortly after the final Win2K3 release - I believe that was back in the summer of last year sometime, if I remember correctly. Every once in a while I have to restart IIS on this machine, when I want to upgrade a server component library for one of the web applications I have running (but I would assume pretty much any webserver requires a restart for this type of upgrade)... Note that this is simply a right click to restart IIS, not a reboot or anything like that.
My main DB server (running MSSQL) is still on win2k for one simple reason - I have been too damn lazy to upgrade it because it simply never needs a reboot! I moved locations once, and so I had to bring the server down briefly. I also may have had one power outage before I installed my UPS system. Other than that, I believe this machine has not been rebooted in over 2 years - because it is not exposed externally on the network, I do not typically keep it updated with all the service patches, so it does not get rebooted for those.
ok, well I admit, I do have one machine running emule which requires rebooting every once in a while, or at least killing some emule processes and restarting them, but other than that...
umm, did i just say that... ?
I agree with this - we should not expect any major changes to the way the registry works in the forseeable future. As the parent notes, it does work when used correctly. However, the newer trend with .NET and applications written on that framework is to begin to move away from using the registry for normal applications - these types of settings are more commonly stored in normal configuration files on the file system. This is taking precedence for a number of reasons, including easier relocation of apps (to different machines for example), XML standardization, and reducing complexity.
So while I would say that the registry is certainly not going away any time soon, it is less and less encouraged for normal end-user applications, and we may see a breaking point some day when it is made obsolete.
Another Hint: The EU is not going to get very far now that they have lost the support of their biggest witness. Or perhaps you think Real is going to be able to carry the torch on their own now? Government agencies (yes even the EU) are guided by beurocrats. Who knows, maybe IBM will give up their multi-billion-dollar deals and take their rightful place in the witness chair...
I like the +4 Funny here, but I also realize you were making a point.
/., and it is not specifically intended as a troll or flame, although the subject is still a bit taboo.
Thus, I will make a counter-point, as if your post was serious. Also, note that this is a point that has been made by myself and others in the past on
This sounds like my first car.
No, I would say this sounds more like our first "twin towers". You know, they were pretty secure until a group of terrorists drove two planes into them.
Or maybe...
This sounds like my current car - it is safe unless someone fires a rocket launcher at it.
The point here is that I believe your analogy (and so may similar ill-fated attempts before it) are highly flawed. The "security flaws" being exposed are not due just randomly stumbling across problems during normal usage - they are due to specifically targeted exploits, which have been found using devious, subversive, and abnormal means. All of the cases you've listed with your car are standard design flaws that are clearly noticeable under normal conditions (not conditions like people driving planes into you or launching rockets at you).
And MS-SQL is a piece of shit, everyone knows that.
/. ...
I would love to know where this idea comes from that MS SQL or any other one of the major professional db products is significantly ahead of or behind the others (using "major professional" to indicate that I am consciously excluding certain products such as MySQL). Clearly people who say this are still living in 1997.
In the modern landscape of DB software, the actual relational DB component is close to commoditized - in the sense that you can easily pick any one of the major vendors for about 99.5% of all of the DB applications out there, with the appropriate tuning for that system. This was not the case 5 or 6 years ago, but for the last few years, the only edge we have seen of any major DB over any other has been marginal, and always a result of biased vendor-commissioned benchmarks.
This is exactly what the grandparent or great-grandparent or whatever was getting at - DBs are already commoditized, and the only way a DB product distinguishes itself today is by providing some distinguishing factor outside of the core DB functionality. For MySQL (lets pretend for a moment that it was actually up to par with true professional db products) the distinguishing factors are "free" and "open source". For Oracle, the distinguishing factors are integration with Oracle analysis tools, and also Oracle enterprise applications (ERP, CRM, etc.). For Microsoft, the factors (today) are similar to Oracle's - integration with Microsoft analysis tools and enterprise servers - plus integration with MS development tools; but in the not-too-distant future, Microsoft is aiming to completely change the landscape, and to take a product that is already commoditized, and turn it into a true bundled commodity, just as the browser and media player have already been.
Am I the only one here who realizes how ridiculous it is that we are having a discussion where one post starts with "everyone knows that MS-SQL sucks" and the next response is "yeah, and MySQL is where it's at" - or perhaps I just forgot that we are on
I have not worked for Microsoft, but here is my understanding:
The Technical Evangelist role essentially involves two major parts - one is kind of what you are describing - reaching out to the developer and IT communities through training and public announcement events, such as PDC, MSDN local events, etc.;
the other is working directly with paying customers (small to large business) to implement custom systems on Microsoft technology, often including a lot of study and/or small-group training on how to apply best practices of MS development to those projects;
yes, exactly...
take my XBox for example...
um, nevermind...gotta go!
"Hard to beat"?
Last time I checked out CinemaNow (actually that was like 6 months ago, but looks like they haven't changed dramatically), the selection was horrible (new releases were limited to films that usually go straight to video, and the overall selection was also poor), and quality/portability/drm restrictions were a joke. I found that quality didn't even seem to have a standard - different films came with entirely different encodings, so you never knew what you would get.
Hard to beat indeed...
I see these quite commonly in hotels in Italy. Not sure if they are actually meant to be used, or if they are even functional, or maybe just for decoration...
However, I have heard that...
In Soviet Russia, Trousers Press You!
"...we wanted the ability to save the state of the device to memory immediately before powering off - and be able to resume work in that same position when the device is power on again. But since operating the device in this fashion made freezes very likely, we let Windows go."
Just curious - isn't this exactly what Windows allows you to do (i.e. Hibernate and/or Suspend in XP, or normal power down/resume in PocketPC/MobileOS)?
I'm not sure I understand what NEC is trying to say here - clearly MS has as many (reliable) options for state persistence as Linux, if not more. n'est pas?
wow, you must be a true visionary! just reading your post, i now see that you have completely predicted everything we will see microsoft accomplish during the next few y....
wait, that was 2002.
where have you been? under a rock or something? all of this already happened. this mysterious 'dotnet library' you have imagined is already a reality, and it already does everything you've described and much more. and, oh did i forget to mention - it is (1) free; and (2) an open standard;
you might want to try coming out of your cave every once and a while.
welcome to the real world.
"locking out content servers"???
Where did you get that idea? The (EU) case in particular is about software companies who build media players, such as Real. However, I was referring to the overall discussion of Microsoft vis-a-vis antitrust (not just this particular case), which is what the parent comment appeared to be directed towards.
In any case, it doesn't change the point - we are talking about "dominant [consumer] desktop systems", as opposed to say, the server OS, or some other type of OS where media player is not a naturally bundled-in product. In this area (consumer desktop OS), if you still believe it is not important or relevant for the product (a consumer desktop OS) to come with a media player, you are living in the stone ages.
1. I'm not sure who told you what media player you can use or can't use, but it definitely wasn't Microsoft. As far as I'm aware, there are no issues with installing any of the leading alternative media players on any current versions of Windows.
2. I'm not sure what media player is crashing once per week for you, but my WMP has never, ever crashed.
3. If there really was a "better product" in this category (media players), I would love to see it. Obviously it's not Real - at least no one here seems to be claiming that - that's why this whole discussion is ridiculous.
Don't like RealPlayer? Fine don't use it, but then go find an Open Source or commercial media player that does not dictate what you can and cannot run on your PC - because that's precisely what WMP is starting to do now and will do more and more in the future.
Are you just planning to spread FUD, or did you actually have any evidence to back up a claim like this? I don't know what version of WMP you have, but my WMP allows me to play whatever I want, including ripping mp3s from CDs (using a plugin).
agree with other poster - you heard what you wanted to hear, or are just making this up.
in any case - you are missing an important distinction: in this simplistic mind of your hypothetical "ms zealot", he would have said "the purpose of a consumer OS". it's obvious that non-consumer OS's may not need to bundle browsers or media players, and it's also clear that this discussion has always been about the consumer desktop OS.