Software Publishers Association (SPA) estimates that 16 percent of computer users are on Macs.
Maybe in the USA and possibly UK. I live in Poland and I don't know a person using a Mac. According to
this site
Mac users constitute a 0.3% minority among Internet users. Linux is 0.9% and Windows - 98.5%.
I suppose it is similar in Eastern Europe, Russia, India, China, Brazil, Chile, Malaysia,...
Windows wins, Linux comes distant second and Mac is a curiosity. Sorry to bring you down to earth folks
I tried advice from fedorafaq for nvidia and it worked and was very simple. Essentially I just entered one command as root as written on this site and that was it (after configuring yum as they say). Hope it helps.
The numbers seem to apply only to the US. In Poland for example (http://ranking.pl/rank.php?stat=browPL) MSIE has 85.7% and Gecko 9.1%. What about other countries ?
I kind of lived in Poland during communism (I was a child then) and what you say is BS. Back then it was like nobody really wanted to work. There was even a saying, sth like: "whether you stand or lie - you get paid the same". I remember shopping, when they had goods on display, that you just couldn't buy, because the shop wouldn't sell it - they were just for the show. We had a regulated system sometimes, like there was one gray soap bar per person per month, a quarter of kilo of butter per person/month and so on. The only thing that was on the empty shelves was often vinegar. My parents friends related once, like they hunted for toilet papers whole days! I believe they even had a photo with their trophies around their necks stringed on a rope! This was during communism. It sounds so unbelievable to us youngsters today that we find it hard to believe! Now I just enter a supermarket and can buy more gooods than I can possibly use! (yes I can afford it).
"So, the day the prices were "liberated" in Polandand in the former Soviet Union as well, the stores simply increased their prices, so that the amount of products they could sell at that price became approximately equal to the amount of prodcuts they could buy at that price. Bingo. The prices shot up, the demand dropped, no more empty shelves." 1) First of all liberated, not "liberated", because it was for real! 2) not: stores simply started to increase their prices, but rather people started to work for real.
"Wasn't it great? Well, no, it wasn't. The reality is that while the empty shelves were gone, the average consumption of all useful products (such as meat, poultry, vegetables, cheese, chocolate, basically everything, which is not a Giffen good) dropped, sometimes several times. " AFAIK there was no real chocolate during the last decade of communism, only chocolate-like sweets, because the country was to poor too produce it!
I can tell you what is fake in your reasoning. I will give you a lesson in microeconomics. A carpenter makes two tables. His lazy neighbour does nothing. Here comes the party, takes the tables, one gives to his lazy neighbour who laughs at the carpenter, and one to themselves for the trouble. The carpenter might face charges for not sharing - he obviously doesn't need two tables! Who is going to produce the next tables ?
I remember some things from communism and believe me - it was hell in many ways you don't comprehend. I would never want it come back! One last note - I don't believe there would be Polish jokes without communism, and just compare East and West Germany.
It's because all the tests were 32-bit I can't find the link at the moment, but 64-bit apps can be even two times faster than 32bit for Athlon 64. (This of course among other things due to the additional registers). And Windows XP 64 has reached RC status recently...
>All that C++ needs now is garbage collection, and we can forget about Java!
The thing that is really important is called reflection. Without it tools like Hibernate, Struts, Tapestry, Spring, Hivemind, probably EJB and many more wouldn't be possible. Garbage Collection is just a nice touch.
I generally agree with this opinion, especially about the part of using a web application if possible, because it simplifies distributing the application greatly.
Some random thoughts though: * you can talk to you manager about the time you can save by using the orm (object-relational mapping) technique vs. sql in general (from my experience you can save a lot of time). Then you can tell him/her about hibernate. There is also ibatis which is available for.net * The opinion about java and.net that asp.net is fun to program and java is not really comes from (I believe) the legacy technology called struts (yes, I know, I have the asbestos suit, etc.) Two currently best java web frameworks probably are: 1) Tapestry (jakarta.apache.org/tapestry). It is used by nhl.com and theserverside.net (check by seeing the source for the pages and search for the word Tapestry in it). Tapestry uses a component based approach. Sample components: a nice table, a tree, a date picker in js... It is trivial to write your own and there is a plugin for eclipse called spindle 2) WebWorks - I have only heard good opinions about it, haven't used it personally. * when presenting and using/developing in java avoid using swing when possible. It is ugly, user unfriendly and slow. SWT/JFace is the way to go. You can also check out the eclipse rich client platform (rcp) tutorial on developerworks at ibm.com - it was two part, probably still available at their web page * if possible don't use ejb - especially entity beans. Hibernate/Spring (you can also check hivemind - another IOC), WebServices can be very useful * when talking to a manager - references, references, and one more time - references. Who uses this technology, what successful project is based on this technology, who backs that technology (you check who is behind eclipse). * Java and J2EE by itself (servlets, jsp, ejbs, swing, jdbc, JDO) as it comes from SUN is rather weak and I would recommend not to use it if it wasn't for open source addons and replacements. *.NET is ok, but it might be difficult if not impossible to use Linux for the server. If it was not for its lock-in to Microsoft - well, I would say it's a solid piece of technology (not in every aspect, perhaps, but rather good).
I come from a rather poor country (Poland), so let me explain. First, you treat a computer like an investment, something like you Americans treat higher education or a big house (well not that expensive of course, but you get the idea). You often pay for it in *installments*. This way you can easily purchase a computer worth $1500. Now two rules about pirating. People who do it generally pirate Windows XP Pro Corporate Edition - no activation. They also pirate everything else, like Office 2003 CE, lots of games, perhaps Corel. It doesn't make much sense to buy original Windows and then pirate Office. Buying Home Edition OEM isn't always the best option - if you your computer breaks, you can loose your license (costs sth like $125 I believe). If you replace a part with a better one you might loose it as well. If you buy HE not OEM, you might not be able to play most recent games or use advanced software (perhaps you plan to become a programmer) because then your save on the hardware.Remember - this is an investment, something that costs you a lot, you don't want it to be crippled. People in developing countries often have as good computers as you in America, sometimes even better , with good Internet connection (dsl) - because they pirate software and save money! Posting from Linux;)
As if VS didn't have its own set of problems. I used to program in VS (MFC) some time ago, and here are some of the quirks we had:
After moving some modules to DLLs we had constant error messages: "Internal error during pass #2" and we had to build things twice (VS 2002). (The second time it was faster). It turned out, I believe, that the problem was known, but MS didn't seem to care
The incremental build was not working too well (VS 2002 again). Sometimes a build would behave strangely and we had to rebuild the whole project (it took time- again).
VS6 had problems with STL - I remember I couldn't compile an example from Bruce Eckels because a method or two were just missing. "using std" could work strange and I had to resort to things like std::cout
VS 2002 and MFC 7 had problems with localization (kind of didn't have it for my country), whereas VS 6 was alright
VS 2002 has confusing error message with regard to STL - my boss by chance included my STL header files below (I believe) sth like #ifdef DEBUG and the project started to break in a weird way
When crashing, the VS has checkbox (checked by default) to restart the ide. It's funny, because if it crashes when quitting, and you hit sth like 'cancel' it restarts itself again;)
Project compiled with VS 2002 and MFC 7 had problems on Windows 98, which was a supported platform . It was difficult to do something about it, because VS 2002 doesn't run on Windows 98!
It's difficult to get VS 2002 to integrate with CVS (VSS costs extra money I believe).
There's a little misunderstanding, I presume. I wrote, that you can buy 100 boxed copies and usually (I suppose) install it on 200 machines: 100 with support, 100 without - note that you cannot do it with Windows. I was also refering to the support you get, when you buy a boxed version of Windows, not paying extra for PSS (note, that you don't have such issues with Linux). I don't want to defend ESR, but if you need Linux (to run a server, or write a program) and you are a programmer or an admin, you just install it for free and you don't have to go through that whole bureaucracy, write tons of paper, get your management and god knows whose signature, justify your needs etc. If Linux required paid support, it wouldn't be so widespread, believe me! Of course, for wide deployment it's probably a must, but it's still cheaper than Windows...
The point is that the majority of corporate customers are not going to just download a freely available distribution of Linux, because most enterprise customers NEED support. AFAIK, you can buy support (boxed copies) in the number of 100 and install it on 200 computers and no one BSA should harass you with an audit. They are no activations, no license tracking, etc. Boxed copies of Linux are cheaper than Windows XP Professional (Home edition is not allowed in the company I work at present for example). Plus, where is that support from Microsft you talk about ? Are you refering to windowsupdate.microsoft.com ?
In my country until very recently all cell phone operators subsidized the device, locked you in, etc. About 2-3 months ago one of them decided to conduct an experiment - they have set up a new brand and said that you have to buy the phone yourself and in return you get much lower and very easy to understand prices (something like - 30 cents per minute always, whereas competitors offered something like - it's 30 cents per minute starting with second minute every second Friday and Tuesday starting from 20 till 7 but not from 11 to 11.47 and otherwise 78 cents). Clear, understandable rules, zero lock-in. They got 1 million (!) customers within 8 weeks(!) in a 38.5 million country, where there are like 12 million cell phones total and GSM cell phones are available since around 1996. They were so surprised by their own success that they had a shortage of starting sets for some time!
This a major advantage. Currently I develope java web applications. I generally avoid GPL stuff (obviously), but LGPL seems to be ok so far. The truth is, my boss doesn't seem to care. He often doesn't know how much it takes to write something (he probably knows only VB) and to him , if I use free/open source, well why not ? So far I have used a) Tomcat b) DHTML calendar
http://dynarch.com/mishoo/calendar.epl c) htmlarea d) jetspeed (includes Turbine) e) Postgres Since the stuff I write runs under AIX I have installed Linux on my laptop and use Mozilla for web page viewing (of course customer uses IE, so I have to check if everything works every now and then). I also plan to use Intake and Fulcrum and a discussion forum (BSD license). Why do you need your boss permission to use something that is free ?
For instance you still have manual memory management
You can actually write C++ code without pointers, new and delete (provided the libraries you use don't require it somehow). You achieve this via STL. For example, to read the contents of a text file you can use sth similar (may contain bugs, did not try to compile):
you can even create trees without pointers - to achieve this simply use a map - every node has an int id (like a primary key) - this id is a key in the map - the value is the node. The node looks like this:
struct Node { int myId; int parentId; std::set<int> children; data custom_data; };
and you store the nodes in a map like this:
std::map<int, Node> aTree;
By using a set you can ensure, that you won't reference several times from one parent to the same child. Such trees are very easy to store in a database, as you can imagine.
One of the problems with not using pointers is achieving polymorphism, since you cannot store derived types in a container, but it turns out that virtual functions are not that often necessary (at least that's my case).
Another issue are iterators - because of speed(?) they are not boundary checked, so if you
std::advance(it, 100);
over a vector of 50 elements and then do
obj = *it;
you have an ooops !!!
you can hovewer reference elements in sequence container like this:
v.at(100);
which would throw an exception in case of a 50 element vector v.
I wonder why nobody seems to
Use C++ w/STL and avoid pointers - they are seldom needed
Solve the problem with iterators (implement boundary checking - that can't be that difficult!).
I have been writing C++ / Java programs for several years and from my own experience, if you really use many of C++ features and avoid certain pitfalls, there is little more Java can offer - it doesn't even have the approx. 50 algorithms that STL has!
I have also done some benchmarks for myself - if you replace STL containers with plain arrays, you get a 6x speed gain. I don't believe Java with all its objects is similar in speed to a properly coded C app - maybe both are so fast it doesn't matter, but a C app should be about 10 times faster than a similar Java app with all objects in their places!!!;)
If I lead a open source project, I am talking about project management over virtual medium. How will this show on CV? Pretty, isn't it?
No it's not that pretty. You have no deadlines. Your feature set is arbitrary. You have no crunch time. If one of your developers goes prima dona on you, you just ignore it and go with someone else. Completely different than the real world.
Who told you that? Serious open source projects always have deadlines (KDE, Mozilla), which are sometimes even met (KDE 3.2). Hey they sometimes even have code audits (KDE 3.1), which many commercial products do not (managers want to save money, you know). The thing about developers going prima donna is particularly funny - have you ever tried to participate in well known open source project ??? I once thought I would give it a try - I examined xmlbeans on apache.org, subscribed to the mailing list and all. Guess what - most developers where from BEA, someone was from Reuters, someone from Bank of NY, someone from Toyota asked a question and so on. When someone with a weird nick from yahoo offered to write documentation he or she was ignored!!!. You must be reaaally someone to write important open source projects!!!
Then, companies such as yours take his work, make it their own (as they have every right to do--he specifically grants them that right when he releases the software), and profit from it
You forgot about the GPL;). And LGPL or MPL - there was no real mass open source before this licenses had become common. Look at Trolltech or MySQL, look at RedHat or JBoss - this are all healthy profitable companies.
There is also another reason for open source - Microsoft. Recently in Poland
(sorry for the language) there was a campaign by Microsoft - companies that managed to release a software product within half a year that used ms server product(s) got MSDN for ridiculously low price (half or even lower). Then, when this companies got their products released, convinced their customers to use MS SQL, Windows on the server and stuff, guess what happened ?? MS started to offer competing software. These buissnesses were just to "pave" the way for MS software and infrastructure, so that is was cheaper and easier for MS to distribute their software! They were reportedly even so kind as to offer some of the naive buisnessmen to sell MS software instead of their own;).
Now, could such a thing happen to Trolltech or MySQL ? There is something more important than fast money - independence and stability that stems from it!!!
Actually it is $500 / month (that is a $6000 a year) and that is the average - of course there are many who earn much more (or much less). I write this from a 19'' LCD, DSL, wireless keyboard/mouse, Pentium 4HT, etc. I also have a company laptop at my disposal, and an older computer (and I could go on (I have been on Crete on holidays!) , but it's pointless). I know several people, who really have the money, and they wouldn't waste it on Mac, because no one here uses it. Desktop computers in Poland are mainly bought from local vendors and there are no Mac clones. Don't offend people defending your favourite platform;).
But SWT/JFace works, there is a version of Eclipse compiled with gcj, right (from redhat I believe)? Swing and AWT have failed on the desktop, no question about it. Java is nowadays mainly used for jsp/j2ee. Does anyone knows, if I can use tomcat and jboss with gcj (no sun vm)?
I have a Master degree in computer science. I studied together with a 100 people at my faculty. I work as an IT consultant at a rather respectable company, yet I have never seen a Mac in my life (just in pictures). Suprised ? Well, I live in Poland (approx 40 million inhabitants).
Apple is pretty nonexistant in my country and probably in many others as well. The barrier in a country where the average salary is $500 and there is 20% unemployment is the price.
The IDC survey, as I understand it applies
to users worldwide and new computers! Your survey measures existing usage, which is something much different
I've actually had people scream at me for not installing Clippy. Office 2003 doesn't have Clippy anymore... Some of our custom apps are written to integrate with Word and that integration doesn't function. Asking for OOo intergration?Not gonna happen. The same was said aboud WordPerfect and Word back in 1994. It was predicted that secretaries where to used to wordperfect interface and key bindings and that they would never switch...
Consider this: I sell a product to customers and allow them and everybody to copy it for free. They run their buisnesses on it and get dependent on it. So do friends and acquintances of my customers. Then I claim that the product I sold was something different than I originally thought and demand money for it - much more than I did in the beginning. Profit!!! I sell houses. People get loans to buy them, move in, live there for several years, have jobs in the neighbourhood, buy furniture, invest in the house. After several years I decide that I didn't know what I was selling to them and demand them to move out or pay me 10 times more than they did originally. This is was SCO is trying to do with Linux. Comments ?
Wipe of the smoke from your looking glass and you may start seeing that you don't understand what success is. Nor do you understand what beauty is, nor do you understand what wealth is.
I wasn't talking about success, wealth or beauty, only survival. Only a fool would want a wife he can afford. Whatever do you mean by that? How many homeless beggars dating supermodels have you seen ? Has Jennifer Loper, Madonna, Victoria Addams, Cindy Crawford or any famous and pretty girl go out with a homeless rag dressed dumb guy ? What determines survival is not how you look or how much money you have. Talk to me more. And tommorrow go to work with grease hair, stinking breath, dressed in rags with holes, and dirty. After you have been fired try to pick up an attractive, popular girl, by talking to her about your experiences so far and why you are right. And try to live a month without any money (not even begging) then comment again! If you think Bill gates is a success because of his financial wealth, think again. An experiment was made in France using DNA tests to see how many children are bastards (their "guessed" father is not the real one; the "guessed" didn't have a clue of course). The rate was 15%. So about every seventh child in France has a "wrong father". You don't really know, how many children Bill has. But possibly a lot, and if that's right, people in the future will be more like him, than like you, sorry , tough luck. he hasn't found what he is seeking in life There's is a saying, that people are generally unhappy, because all happy people just died out - there were not paranoid enough. If you are happy, you are careless and an easy target. What is nice about Linux is just the fact that it eliminates greed. If that is communism, then so be it. For the same reason you would argue that democracy is anti-evolution because it respects the rights of the minority. Or maybe you agree that humans should be allowed to 'con' each other if they can since that is survival of the fittest. As usual, people just don't get. In order to survive you **have** to ***cooperate***!!!. I'll take your sentences one by one, in reverse order: Or maybe you agree that humans should be allowed to 'con' each other if they can since that is survival of the fittest. You have two societies, one where people kill each other easilly, and the other, where such things are strictly forbidden and punished. The society, where people kill each other is a total anarchy, there are no institutions like universities, thus no technologies, thus no weapons. On the other hand, the cooperating society is *very advanced*. One day, just by accident and without much notice the advanced civilization crushes the brutal one and casts it into oblivion. Sorry. For the same reason you would argue that democracy is anti-evolution because it respects the rights of the minority. Doesn't make much sense to me. In order for any community to be strong, it has to be well integrated. Discriminating minorities is very inefficient, since you waste time and energy, that other communities employ to building and developing and advancing. They might (and have - see Nazis or the Soviet Union vs. the USA) crush the discriminating ones. What is nice about Linux is just the fact that it eliminates greed As I said before, cooperation is the key. Software is unique, say to screens or wardrobes, because you build it on layers. To view a Java applet you have to: a) have an operating system b) have a browser that works on a) c) have a java plugin that works on b) The company that controls the lowest layer can use it to extinguish competition. You have a monopoly and the whole system is ineffective. Linux and the GPL is a much stronger environment, because it is much more diverse. People do contribute to Linux, because it benefits them: a) large companies can be independent of microsoft and earn more money. Every one can contribute using the GPL, b
Slashdot Mirror
Software Publishers Association (SPA) estimates that 16 percent of computer users are on Macs. ...
Windows wins, Linux comes distant second and Mac is a curiosity. Sorry to bring you down to earth folks
Maybe in the USA and possibly UK. I live in Poland and I don't know a person using a Mac. According to this site Mac users constitute a 0.3% minority among Internet users. Linux is 0.9% and Windows - 98.5%. I suppose it is similar in Eastern Europe, Russia, India, China, Brazil, Chile, Malaysia,
http://www.fedorafaq.org/#radeon
I tried advice from fedorafaq for nvidia and it worked and was very simple.
Essentially I just entered one command as root as written on this site and that was it (after configuring yum as they say). Hope it helps.
- IE: 84.6%
- Gecko: 10.2%
- Opera 4.9%
IE is going down at a pace of 0.2%-0.3% per week. How about other countries ?The numbers seem to apply only to the US. In Poland for example (http://ranking.pl/rank.php?stat=browPL) MSIE has 85.7% and Gecko 9.1%. What about other countries ?
Does it work also for Fedora x86_64 ?
I kind of lived in Poland during communism (I was a child then) and what you say is BS. Back then it was like nobody really wanted to work. There was even a saying, sth like: "whether you stand or lie - you get paid the same". I remember shopping, when they had goods on display, that you just couldn't buy, because the shop wouldn't sell it - they were just for the show. We had a regulated system sometimes, like there was one gray soap bar per person per month, a quarter of kilo of butter per person/month and so on. The only thing that was on the empty shelves was often vinegar. My parents friends related once, like they hunted for toilet papers whole days! I believe they even had a photo with their trophies around their necks stringed on a rope!
This was during communism. It sounds so unbelievable to us youngsters today that we find it hard to believe!
Now I just enter a supermarket and can buy more gooods than I can possibly use! (yes I can afford it).
"So, the day the prices were "liberated" in Polandand in the former Soviet Union as well, the stores simply increased their prices, so that the amount of products they could sell at that price became approximately equal to the amount of prodcuts they could buy at that price. Bingo. The prices shot up, the demand dropped, no more empty shelves."
1) First of all liberated, not "liberated", because it was for real!
2) not: stores simply started to increase their prices, but rather people started to work for real.
"Wasn't it great? Well, no, it wasn't. The reality is that while the empty shelves were gone, the average consumption of all useful products (such as meat, poultry, vegetables, cheese, chocolate, basically everything, which is not a Giffen good) dropped, sometimes several times. "
AFAIK there was no real chocolate during the last decade of communism, only chocolate-like sweets, because the country was to poor too produce it!
I can tell you what is fake in your reasoning.
I will give you a lesson in microeconomics. A carpenter makes two tables. His lazy neighbour does nothing. Here comes the party, takes the tables, one gives to his lazy neighbour who laughs at the carpenter, and one to themselves for the trouble. The carpenter might face charges for not sharing - he obviously doesn't need two tables! Who is going to produce the next tables ?
I remember some things from communism and believe me - it was hell in many ways you don't comprehend. I would never want it come back!
One last note - I don't believe there would be Polish jokes without communism, and just compare East and West Germany.
It's because all the tests were 32-bit
I can't find the link at the moment, but 64-bit apps can be even two times faster than 32bit for Athlon 64.
(This of course among other things due to the additional registers).
And Windows XP 64 has reached RC status recently...
>All that C++ needs now is garbage collection, and we can forget about Java!
The thing that is really important is called reflection. Without it tools like Hibernate, Struts, Tapestry, Spring, Hivemind, probably EJB and many more wouldn't be possible. Garbage Collection is just a nice touch.
I generally agree with this opinion, especially about the part of using a web application if possible, because it simplifies distributing the application greatly.
.net .net that asp.net is fun to program and java is not really comes from (I believe) the legacy technology called struts (yes, I know, I have the asbestos suit, etc.) Two currently best java web frameworks probably are: .NET is ok, but it might be difficult if not impossible to use Linux for the server. If it was not for its lock-in to Microsoft - well, I would say it's a solid piece of technology (not in every aspect, perhaps, but rather good).
Some random thoughts though:
* you can talk to you manager about the time you can save by using the orm (object-relational mapping) technique vs. sql in general (from my experience you can save a lot of time). Then you can tell him/her about hibernate. There is also ibatis which is available for
* The opinion about java and
1) Tapestry (jakarta.apache.org/tapestry). It is used by nhl.com and theserverside.net (check by seeing the source for the pages and search for the word Tapestry in it). Tapestry uses a component based approach. Sample components: a nice table, a tree, a date picker in js... It is trivial to write your own and there is a plugin for eclipse called spindle
2) WebWorks - I have only heard good opinions about it, haven't used it personally.
* when presenting and using/developing in java avoid using swing when possible. It is ugly, user unfriendly and slow. SWT/JFace is the way to go. You can also check out the eclipse rich client platform (rcp) tutorial on developerworks at ibm.com - it was two part, probably still available at their web page
* if possible don't use ejb - especially entity beans. Hibernate/Spring (you can also check hivemind - another IOC), WebServices can be very useful
* when talking to a manager - references, references, and one more time - references. Who uses this technology, what successful project is based on this technology, who backs that technology (you check who is behind eclipse).
* Java and J2EE by itself (servlets, jsp, ejbs, swing, jdbc, JDO) as it comes from SUN is rather weak and I would recommend not to use it if it wasn't for open source addons and replacements.
*
I come from a rather poor country (Poland), so let me explain. ;)
First, you treat a computer like an investment, something like you Americans treat higher education or a big house (well not that expensive of course, but you get the idea). You often pay for it in *installments*. This way you can easily purchase a computer worth $1500.
Now two rules about pirating.
People who do it generally pirate Windows XP Pro Corporate Edition - no activation.
They also pirate everything else, like Office 2003 CE, lots of games, perhaps Corel. It doesn't make much sense to buy original Windows and then pirate Office.
Buying Home Edition OEM isn't always the best option - if you your computer breaks, you can loose your license (costs sth like $125 I believe). If you replace a part with a better one you might loose it as well.
If you buy HE not OEM, you might not be able to play most recent games or use advanced software (perhaps you plan to become a programmer) because then your save on the hardware.Remember - this is an investment, something that costs you a lot, you don't want it to be crippled.
People in developing countries often have as good computers as you in America, sometimes even better , with good Internet connection (dsl) - because they pirate software and save money!
Posting from Linux
There's a little misunderstanding, I presume. I wrote, that you can buy 100 boxed copies and usually (I suppose) install it on 200 machines: 100 with support, 100 without - note that you cannot do it with Windows. I was also refering to the support you get, when you buy a boxed version of Windows, not paying extra for PSS (note, that you don't have such issues with Linux). I don't want to defend ESR, but if you need Linux (to run a server, or write a program) and you are a programmer or an admin, you just install it for free and you don't have to go through that whole bureaucracy, write tons of paper, get your management and god knows whose signature, justify your needs etc. If Linux required paid support, it wouldn't be so widespread, believe me! Of course, for wide deployment it's probably a must, but it's still cheaper than Windows...
The point is that the majority of corporate customers are not going to just download a freely available distribution of Linux, because most enterprise customers NEED support.
AFAIK, you can buy support (boxed copies) in the number of 100 and install it on 200 computers and no one BSA should harass you with an audit. They are no activations, no license tracking, etc. Boxed copies of Linux are cheaper than Windows XP Professional (Home edition is not allowed in the company I work at present for example).
Plus, where is that support from Microsft you talk about ? Are you refering to windowsupdate.microsoft.com ?
In my country until very recently all cell phone operators subsidized the device, locked you in, etc. About 2-3 months ago one of them decided to conduct an experiment - they have set up a new brand and said that you have to buy the phone yourself and in return you get much lower and very easy to understand prices (something like - 30 cents per minute always, whereas competitors offered something like - it's 30 cents per minute starting with second minute every second Friday and Tuesday starting from 20 till 7 but not from 11 to 11.47 and otherwise 78 cents). Clear, understandable rules, zero lock-in.
They got 1 million (!) customers within 8 weeks(!) in a 38.5 million country, where there are like 12 million cell phones total and GSM cell phones are available since around 1996.
They were so surprised by their own success that they had a shortage of starting sets for some time!
This a major advantage. Currently I develope java web applications. I generally avoid GPL stuff (obviously), but LGPL seems to be ok so far.
The truth is, my boss doesn't seem to care. He often doesn't know how much it takes to write something (he probably knows only VB) and to him , if I use free/open source, well why not ?
So far I have used
a) Tomcat
b) DHTML calendar
http://dynarch.com/mishoo/calendar.epl
c) htmlarea
d) jetspeed (includes Turbine)
e) Postgres
Since the stuff I write runs under AIX I have installed Linux on my laptop and use Mozilla for web page viewing (of course customer uses IE, so I have to check if everything works every now and then).
I also plan to use Intake and Fulcrum and a discussion forum (BSD license).
Why do you need your boss permission to use something that is free ?
You can actually write C++ code without pointers, new and delete (provided the libraries you use don't require it somehow). You achieve this via STL. For example, to read the contents of a text file you can use sth similar (may contain bugs, did not try to compile) :
you can even create trees without pointers - to achieve this simply use a map - every node has an int id (like a primary key) - this id is a key in the map - the value is the node. The node looks like this:and you store the nodes in a map like this:
By using a set you can ensure, that you won't reference several times from one parent to the same child. Such trees are very easy to store in a database, as you can imagine.
One of the problems with not using pointers is achieving polymorphism, since you cannot store derived types in a container, but it turns out that virtual functions are not that often necessary (at least that's my case).
Another issue are iterators - because of speed(?) they are not boundary checked, so if you
over a vector of 50 elements and then doyou have an ooops !!! you can hovewer reference elements in sequence container like this:which would throw an exception in case of a 50 element vector v.I wonder why nobody seems to
- Use C++ w/STL and avoid pointers - they are seldom needed
- Solve the problem with iterators (implement boundary checking - that can't be that difficult!).
I have been writing C++ / Java programs for several years and from my own experience, if you really use many of C++ features and avoid certain pitfalls, there is little more Java can offer - it doesn't even have the approx. 50 algorithms that STL has!I have also done some benchmarks for myself - if you replace STL containers with plain arrays, you get a 6x speed gain. I don't believe Java with all its objects is similar in speed to a properly coded C app - maybe both are so fast it doesn't matter, but a C app should be about 10 times faster than a similar Java app with all objects in their places!!! ;)
Why not buy indemnification from HP or Novell ? I guess it's cheaper and wiser.
Who told you that? Serious open source projects always have deadlines (KDE, Mozilla), which are sometimes even met (KDE 3.2). Hey they sometimes even have code audits (KDE 3.1), which many commercial products do not (managers want to save money, you know). The thing about developers going prima donna is particularly funny - have you ever tried to participate in well known open source project ??? I once thought I would give it a try - I examined xmlbeans on apache.org, subscribed to the mailing list and all. Guess what - most developers where from BEA, someone was from Reuters, someone from Bank of NY, someone from Toyota asked a question and so on. When someone with a weird nick from yahoo offered to write documentation he or she was ignored!!!. You must be reaaally someone to write important open source projects!!!
There is also another reason for open source - Microsoft. Recently in Poland (sorry for the language) there was a campaign by Microsoft - companies that managed to release a software product within half a year that used ms server product(s) got MSDN for ridiculously low price (half or even lower). Then, when this companies got their products released, convinced their customers to use MS SQL, Windows on the server and stuff, guess what happened ?? MS started to offer competing software. These buissnesses were just to "pave" the way for MS software and infrastructure, so that is was cheaper and easier for MS to distribute their software! They were reportedly even so kind as to offer some of the naive buisnessmen to sell MS software instead of their own ;).
Now, could such a thing happen to Trolltech or MySQL ? There is something more important than fast money - independence and stability that stems from it!!!
Actually it is $500 / month (that is a $6000 a year) and that is the average - of course there are many who earn much more (or much less). ;).
I write this from a 19'' LCD, DSL, wireless keyboard/mouse, Pentium 4HT, etc. I also have a company laptop at my disposal, and an older computer (and I could go on (I have been on Crete on holidays!) , but it's pointless).
I know several people, who really have the money, and they wouldn't waste it on Mac, because no one here uses it. Desktop computers in Poland are mainly bought from local vendors and there are no Mac clones.
Don't offend people defending your favourite platform
But SWT/JFace works, there is a version of Eclipse compiled with gcj, right (from redhat I believe)?
Swing and AWT have failed on the desktop, no question about it. Java is nowadays mainly used for jsp/j2ee.
Does anyone knows, if I can use tomcat and jboss with gcj (no sun vm)?
I have a Master degree in computer science. I studied together with a 100 people at my faculty. I work as an IT consultant at a rather respectable company, yet I have never seen a Mac in my life (just in pictures). Suprised ? Well, I live in Poland (approx 40 million inhabitants).
Apple is pretty nonexistant in my country and probably in many others as well. The barrier in a country where the average salary is $500 and there is 20% unemployment is the price.
The IDC survey, as I understand it applies to users worldwide and new computers! Your survey measures existing usage, which is something much different
I've actually had people scream at me for not installing Clippy.
Office 2003 doesn't have Clippy anymore...
Some of our custom apps are written to integrate with Word and that integration doesn't function. Asking for OOo intergration?Not gonna happen.
The same was said aboud WordPerfect and Word back in 1994. It was predicted that secretaries where to used to wordperfect interface and key bindings and that they would never switch...
Consider this: I sell a product to customers and allow them and everybody to copy it for free. They run their buisnesses on it and get dependent on it. So do friends and acquintances of my customers. Then I claim that the product I sold was something different than I originally thought and demand money for it - much more than I did in the beginning.
Profit!!!
I sell houses. People get loans to buy them, move in, live there for several years, have jobs in the neighbourhood, buy furniture, invest in the house. After several years I decide that I didn't know what I was selling to them and demand them to move out or pay me 10 times more than they did originally.
This is was SCO is trying to do with Linux. Comments ?
Wipe of the smoke from your looking glass and you may start seeing that you don't understand what success is. Nor do you understand what beauty is, nor do you understand what wealth is.
I wasn't talking about success, wealth or beauty, only survival.
Only a fool would want a wife he can afford.
Whatever do you mean by that? How many homeless beggars dating supermodels have you seen ? Has Jennifer Loper, Madonna, Victoria Addams, Cindy Crawford or any famous and pretty girl go out with a homeless rag dressed dumb guy ?
What determines survival is not how you look or how much money you have.
Talk to me more. And tommorrow go to work with grease hair, stinking breath, dressed in rags with holes, and dirty. After you have been fired try to pick up an attractive, popular girl, by talking to her about your experiences so far and why you are right. And try to live a month without any money (not even begging) then comment again!
If you think Bill gates is a success because of his financial wealth, think again.
An experiment was made in France using DNA tests to see how many children are bastards (their "guessed" father is not the real one; the "guessed" didn't have a clue of course). The rate was 15%. So about every seventh child in France has a "wrong father". You don't really know, how many children Bill has. But possibly a lot, and if that's right, people in the future will be more like him, than like you, sorry , tough luck.
he hasn't found what he is seeking in life
There's is a saying, that people are generally unhappy, because all happy people just died out - there were not paranoid enough. If you are happy, you are careless and an easy target.
What is nice about Linux is just the fact that it eliminates greed. If that is communism, then so be it. For the same reason you would argue that democracy is anti-evolution because it respects the rights of the minority. Or maybe you agree that humans should be allowed to 'con' each other if they can since that is survival of the fittest.
As usual, people just don't get. In order to survive you **have** to ***cooperate***!!!. I'll take your sentences one by one, in reverse order:
Or maybe you agree that humans should be allowed to 'con' each other if they can since that is survival of the fittest.
You have two societies, one where people kill each other easilly, and the other, where such things are strictly forbidden and punished. The society, where people kill each other is a total anarchy, there are no institutions like universities, thus no technologies, thus no weapons. On the other hand, the cooperating society is *very advanced*. One day, just by accident and without much notice the advanced civilization crushes the brutal one and casts it into oblivion. Sorry.
For the same reason you would argue that democracy is anti-evolution because it respects the rights of the minority.
Doesn't make much sense to me. In order for any community to be strong, it has to be well integrated. Discriminating minorities is very inefficient, since you waste time and energy, that other communities employ to building and developing and advancing. They might (and have - see Nazis or the Soviet Union vs. the USA) crush the discriminating ones.
What is nice about Linux is just the fact that it eliminates greed
As I said before, cooperation is the key. Software is unique, say to screens or wardrobes, because you build it on layers. To view a Java applet you have to:
a) have an operating system
b) have a browser that works on a)
c) have a java plugin that works on b)
The company that controls the lowest layer can use it to extinguish competition. You have a monopoly and the whole system is ineffective. Linux and the GPL is a much stronger environment, because it is much more diverse. People do contribute to Linux, because it benefits them:
a) large companies can be independent of microsoft and earn more money. Every one can contribute using the GPL, b