That's a rather absurd statement to make. I could just as easily say "with features like object orientation, it makes me wonder if C++ developers really qualify as programmers anymore." Linq is a higher level abstraction to let you write less code. But it doesn't do anything you couldn't without it. Just like C++ allows you to write less code than if you used assembly.
What does it matter if the other APIs are Windows only? I thought competition was a good thing. The fact that WPF is tied to Windows doesn't make it less powerful in the slightest. If I can get something done quicker and cheaper using the Windows platform, but that means I have to give up cross platform ability.. well, it doesn't become as cut and dry as "well its not cross platform so its not an option."
If you can't proudly defend the things you say, perhaps you should reevaluate them-- this isn't stifling free speech, it's part of distilling sound ideas.
No, I don't agree with that. You may not be proudly able to defend something just because the majority of others make your life a living hell. It's hard to justify putting yourself though that when you may not in fact have enough support to change the prevailing opinion.
Added to that, people today seem to have abandoned logic; you can't have a dicussion with society when society turns around and yells "think of the children" and comes after you with pitchforks.
A company will lose more employees by being seen as intrusive (and it will be quite a few) than those it would lose by not being intrusive (which is very likely to be zero).
I think the lose of customers is probably a very real thing though. Personally I don't care what people are doing when I buy something from their company, as long as it works and they have good service.
This is one of the reasons I haven't embraced gaming platforms, and prefer to do my gaming on a computer. At least with a computer, there are LAN gaming options (although some game platforms may have LAN gaming capabilities, they don't seem to be as flexible or easy to set up, or even as well thought-out).
Huh? That's just silly. Take 2+ xboxs, connect to hub. You're done. How much simpler can it be? We used to have 16 player halo nights at my former employer this way.
.Net has been growing very quickly, and the latest version of the framework will likely accelerate that. Linq is really a great feature, as are some of the other stuff you can do with.net (wpf, wcf, wf, etc).
You have the answer; not enough market share. Why should they spend money to help increase market share of an OS? Especially since its not clear making a Linux port would even have that effect.
linux developers have to reverse engineer most of the hardware on their own, without help from the manufacturers because they don't want to contribute, fear lost trade secrets, etc. (remember broadcom, anyone? they are so anti-linux, it ridiculous)
so before you start badmouthing something, step back and compare apples to apples. and look at where the true problem lies: hardware manufactures are failing with the drivers, NOT LINUX!
When all is said and done, I really don't care who's fault it is. I don't want to go hunting for the one device linux supports when I can be reasonably sure just about any device I buy will work with windows.
Your comment is interesting, since in the past five years here, there were zero bike / car accidents resulting in fatality.
It is interesting to note that people stick up for bikers "rights" on the road. Funny because cars may run red lights JUST after they turn red, but almost EVERY biker I've seen runs the light well AFTER the cross traffic has started moving.. and the bikers get pissed when they're honked at.
I walk/bike exclusively and at least once per week am confronted with angry drivers who speed up and swerve towards me. Now, they are counting on not hitting me, but are acting in a way that removes any tolerance for error. So if I trip, or swerve, then I'm dead.
Are you sure they're not speeding up to get AROUND you, and not attempting to hit you? I find allowing bikes onto roadways a stupid idea. I have to ask.. how is anyone in a position to hit you when walking though? I'd expect you would be on a side walk, and obeying the cross signals. Well... that's what I do expect, but pedestrians rarely seem to do so. I've never sped up to hit one though.
People who are frustrated and or angry are capable of doing almost anything.
So if someone frustrates / pisses you off, I can expect you would kill them?
And the US is becoming a country full of people who are frustrated and or angry.
Agreed.. I think that has to do with problems which are not being solved, because our government is focusing on issues like batteries, which have not yet caused an issue..
Yes, loss of rights is a high cost. Wasted items are a real cost.
Shall we now pull over every vehical to see if the driver is drunk? Should we be compelling blood samples on the spot because of such suspecion? Surely we can stop a lot of crime if we let the government arbitrarly search everyone's home, or detain people at will?
The cost of the war is American lives; so far double the amount killed in 9/11. So instead of 3,000, we now have 9,000 dead Americans, and even more severly wounded. And is there an ounce of proof that the war has stopped any terrorist attacks?
Eventually the cost of fighting diabetes outweighted the benefits of continued life for my grandmother; she chose to pass on rather than fight. Many terminally ill people reach that point and decide the same.
So yes, there ARE things worse than death, and things which have a heavier cost than someone's death. What good is being alive if you have no control over your own life or must fight a hard battle which you cannot win every day?
like anything, it's costs versus benefits. costs of having to go to the post office if you have a package, costs of not flying with my trusty shotgun: neglible
No, there is a cost. The cost of security screeners to take your gun, call the police and arrest you. Just like a package in a roadside bin today would have the bombsquad out.
At airports, we now have wasted tickets because you can't change last minute, wasted time and delays, innocent people being killed (albiet by accident), and the benefits are small, if any. So its really a high cost, low benefit situtation... not low cost high benefit as you claim it to be.
Well, if you had a gun, would you shoot anyone that annoys you? Perhaps you would just be annoyed, yet not murder anyone. If you wouldn't, there's a good chance other people won't either. Honestly, do you think that large numbers of people aren't murdered everyday simply because most aren't carrying? Or are most people just not going to kill someone over something stupid. Peole get mad, yes, but the person that would actually kill when pissed is rare.
Well a cell phone is quite a different story than a camera. I have a Razr as well, and on XP it does only charge if you have the drivers installed, in my experience. This seems to be the phone refusing the charge though, although I don't know why it'd let linux charge. But even with the standard wall charger, sometimes the phone refuses to charge.. I get a message Invalid Battery.
Of course it doesn't help that I had to jump through hoops to unlock the Verizon crippled phone. I haven't tried it with Vista because I don't know if the drivers I bought 3rd party work with Vista or not, and its been a while since I needed to move anything off or onto my phone.
Then Windows is probably for you. Nothing wrong with that (and I am not attempting to insult you in any way). Hell, I earn a living designing software for Windows.
It's refreshing to have a non-fanboy response. I don't hate Linux, although it did frustrate me, and as someone else said my time became more limited and valuable to me. I also earn a living developing software for Windows.
Linux is touted as an OS that works as long as you are willing to make it work. To some, that's a godsend, as they get a little more control over their environment than they might with Windows or MacOS. To others, it's a huge pain in the ass. Personally, I fluctuate depending on how long I've been at it.;)
I think that's the biggest problem Linux needs to overcome to succeed in the desktop. Personally I didn't feel as though I had more control with Linux, but it did feel more tedious. I'd love to give Linux another go... but then I remember all the time I spent fighting with it, and I don't really have a good reason to invest time into trying out one of the newest distros. Which is why I haven't done Java in a while too, although I am coming up with a good reason, now I just need the time;-)
Are you sure you spent enough time looking? Good software doesn't just fall into your lap. Aggressively marketed software, on the other hand...
Yes, which is part of the problem. Linux was taking too much of my time to do almost anything. I haven't found anything except GNUCash, for example, for finances. I guess that just isn't a sexy enough area to put time into.
I guess one bad apple ruined your bunch. Are you sure you didn't accidentally post your questions to the MSN Linux forum? Just kidding. Just ignore the idiots. If that's all you see, go to a different forum. Go to Google. There are more sources of information on Linux than you could possibly count, if you are willing to look for them.
I could have ignored the few idiots; the problem was that many of my issues / questions just went completely unanswered. Total silence. This was using google groups and such. Combine that with a few bad apples, and it does leave a rather bad taste.
Contrast that to my experience posting in any microsoft.* newsgroup or even contacting MS, its night and day.
So.. like I said, I don't hate Linux, but I certainly won't recommend it. The bottom line is that many start with JUST surfing and email, but I know it will always start moving beyond that. Starting with Windows, there's an upgrade path for both hardware and software that's relatively easy. With Linux, you quickly hit a wall. Maybe that's just been my experience though and it doesn't reflect reality. Who knows.
...sure, 'cause it's a LOT harder to move the mouse 'n' click icons in Linux than it is in Windows...
Isn't upgrading software part of using a computer though? Surely a simple thing like upgrading to the lastest version of IM or web browsing software also falls under ease of use? Yet when I tried to upgrade Kopete, it was a nightmare. Funny that..
Yeah, that MS-Paint has GIMP beat somethin' fierce. If you're thinking Adobe, enjoy paying $649 for functionality the average Ubuntu user has built-in.
I'm actually thinking more along the lines of GNUCash vs. MS Money (or Quicken, if you prefer). And yes, I'd rather pay $60 for something that works easily and intuitively over something that lacks major features and isn't intuitive.
Hint: An Apache server is NOT a web server run by Native Americans. It's used by many providers for a reason. Guess what that reason is?
I'm sorry, I thought we were discussing things along the lines of what a normal user would do with their PC. Since we're here though, IIS 5+ is reliable and easier to maintain than Apache. Why yes, I have used both.
Installed Ubuntu 6.10/XP dual-boot on my work and one of my home PCs. XP needed me to hunt down drivers for my video card, TV card, NIC, and sound card. Ubuntu recognized 'em all and I was watching TV on it 20 minutes later. Yay, TVtime!
Hunt down drivers? You mean find the disc with the drivers on them? Or let Windows update find them for you? Sorry, there's no way in hell you're going to win this one, when my Lexmark x4200 series printer was little more than a BRICK to Linux.
Still not convinced? Friend of mine asked me to get their PC to recognize their digital camera. Took a driver disk before Windows would recognize the cam. I plugged it into my Ubuntu box....
Nope. I actually have used Linux, and the camera scenario you describe is the sasme experience in both; its reconized as a removable drive. Both will prompt you to copy pictures off the device. I've NEVER had a camera not reconized by Windows. I can only conclude you're making up this story, because I've never heard it related except on/.
Linux is starting to get device drivers down better than Windows, if you're willing to look.
Look, and spend days figuring out why the driver doesn't work, then finding the 2.6.12 driver because I actually found the 2.6.10 driver. Blah. I'd rather just pop in a CD and be done with it, or find it at the manufactor's website. Really, that is much easier than blindly looking, and many times finding NO driver, see Lexmark X4200 series, for Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
Windows is known to spontaneously corrupt its OS files
Ya.. ok. I guess fanboism knows no bounds..
I dunno, maybe they aren't doctors?
Yes, I believe that's what the OP was getting at.. he said the developers just didn't put the effort into seamless loading.
That's a rather absurd statement to make. I could just as easily say "with features like object orientation, it makes me wonder if C++ developers really qualify as programmers anymore." Linq is a higher level abstraction to let you write less code. But it doesn't do anything you couldn't without it. Just like C++ allows you to write less code than if you used assembly.
What does it matter if the other APIs are Windows only? I thought competition was a good thing. The fact that WPF is tied to Windows doesn't make it less powerful in the slightest. If I can get something done quicker and cheaper using the Windows platform, but that means I have to give up cross platform ability.. well, it doesn't become as cut and dry as "well its not cross platform so its not an option."
If you can't proudly defend the things you say, perhaps you should reevaluate them-- this isn't stifling free speech, it's part of distilling sound ideas.
No, I don't agree with that. You may not be proudly able to defend something just because the majority of others make your life a living hell. It's hard to justify putting yourself though that when you may not in fact have enough support to change the prevailing opinion.
Added to that, people today seem to have abandoned logic; you can't have a dicussion with society when society turns around and yells "think of the children" and comes after you with pitchforks.
I tend to think this is more likely:
A company will lose more employees by being seen as intrusive (and it will be quite a few) than those it would lose by not being intrusive (which is very likely to be zero).
I think the lose of customers is probably a very real thing though. Personally I don't care what people are doing when I buy something from their company, as long as it works and they have good service.
Except that we can never power cars soley on ethanol, simply because we don't have enough room to grow the required amount of fuel.
This is one of the reasons I haven't embraced gaming platforms, and prefer to do my gaming on a computer. At least with a computer, there are LAN gaming options (although some game platforms may have LAN gaming capabilities, they don't seem to be as flexible or easy to set up, or even as well thought-out).
Huh? That's just silly. Take 2+ xboxs, connect to hub. You're done. How much simpler can it be? We used to have 16 player halo nights at my former employer this way.
.Net has been growing very quickly, and the latest version of the framework will likely accelerate that. Linq is really a great feature, as are some of the other stuff you can do with .net (wpf, wcf, wf, etc).
You have the answer; not enough market share. Why should they spend money to help increase market share of an OS? Especially since its not clear making a Linux port would even have that effect.
linux developers have to reverse engineer most of the hardware on their own, without help from the manufacturers because they don't want to contribute, fear lost trade secrets, etc. (remember broadcom, anyone? they are so anti-linux, it ridiculous)
so before you start badmouthing something, step back and compare apples to apples. and look at where the true problem lies: hardware manufactures are failing with the drivers, NOT LINUX!
When all is said and done, I really don't care who's fault it is. I don't want to go hunting for the one device linux supports when I can be reasonably sure just about any device I buy will work with windows.
Like I said, I just want my computer to work.
I've tried Wine as recently as 2006. I wouldn't trust it to reliably run my games, let alone my financial software.
I believe then that 90% well fits the definition of "most."
Your comment is interesting, since in the past five years here, there were zero bike / car accidents resulting in fatality.
It is interesting to note that people stick up for bikers "rights" on the road. Funny because cars may run red lights JUST after they turn red, but almost EVERY biker I've seen runs the light well AFTER the cross traffic has started moving.. and the bikers get pissed when they're honked at.
Nice to see ass-hats equating civil liberties with a broken fingernail. I guess some people won't be happy until our government mirrors the PRC.
I walk/bike exclusively and at least once per week am confronted with angry drivers who speed up and swerve towards me. Now, they are counting on not hitting me, but are acting in a way that removes any tolerance for error. So if I trip, or swerve, then I'm dead.
Are you sure they're not speeding up to get AROUND you, and not attempting to hit you? I find allowing bikes onto roadways a stupid idea. I have to ask.. how is anyone in a position to hit you when walking though? I'd expect you would be on a side walk, and obeying the cross signals. Well... that's what I do expect, but pedestrians rarely seem to do so. I've never sped up to hit one though.
People who are frustrated and or angry are capable of doing almost anything.
So if someone frustrates / pisses you off, I can expect you would kill them?
And the US is becoming a country full of people who are frustrated and or angry.
Agreed.. I think that has to do with problems which are not being solved, because our government is focusing on issues like batteries, which have not yet caused an issue..
Yes, loss of rights is a high cost. Wasted items are a real cost.
Shall we now pull over every vehical to see if the driver is drunk? Should we be compelling blood samples on the spot because of such suspecion? Surely we can stop a lot of crime if we let the government arbitrarly search everyone's home, or detain people at will?
The cost of the war is American lives; so far double the amount killed in 9/11. So instead of 3,000, we now have 9,000 dead Americans, and even more severly wounded. And is there an ounce of proof that the war has stopped any terrorist attacks?
Eventually the cost of fighting diabetes outweighted the benefits of continued life for my grandmother; she chose to pass on rather than fight. Many terminally ill people reach that point and decide the same.
So yes, there ARE things worse than death, and things which have a heavier cost than someone's death. What good is being alive if you have no control over your own life or must fight a hard battle which you cannot win every day?
Wouldn't a better solution be an air-tight box in which to store said batteries?
Of course we can have security people check the safety and allow people to board...
like anything, it's costs versus benefits. costs of having to go to the post office if you have a package, costs of not flying with my trusty shotgun: neglible
No, there is a cost. The cost of security screeners to take your gun, call the police and arrest you. Just like a package in a roadside bin today would have the bombsquad out.
At airports, we now have wasted tickets because you can't change last minute, wasted time and delays, innocent people being killed (albiet by accident), and the benefits are small, if any. So its really a high cost, low benefit situtation... not low cost high benefit as you claim it to be.
Well, if you had a gun, would you shoot anyone that annoys you? Perhaps you would just be annoyed, yet not murder anyone. If you wouldn't, there's a good chance other people won't either. Honestly, do you think that large numbers of people aren't murdered everyday simply because most aren't carrying? Or are most people just not going to kill someone over something stupid. Peole get mad, yes, but the person that would actually kill when pissed is rare.
Well a cell phone is quite a different story than a camera. I have a Razr as well, and on XP it does only charge if you have the drivers installed, in my experience. This seems to be the phone refusing the charge though, although I don't know why it'd let linux charge. But even with the standard wall charger, sometimes the phone refuses to charge.. I get a message Invalid Battery.
Of course it doesn't help that I had to jump through hoops to unlock the Verizon crippled phone. I haven't tried it with Vista because I don't know if the drivers I bought 3rd party work with Vista or not, and its been a while since I needed to move anything off or onto my phone.
Then Windows is probably for you. Nothing wrong with that (and I am not attempting to insult you in any way). Hell, I earn a living designing software for Windows.
;)
;-)
It's refreshing to have a non-fanboy response. I don't hate Linux, although it did frustrate me, and as someone else said my time became more limited and valuable to me. I also earn a living developing software for Windows.
Linux is touted as an OS that works as long as you are willing to make it work. To some, that's a godsend, as they get a little more control over their environment than they might with Windows or MacOS. To others, it's a huge pain in the ass. Personally, I fluctuate depending on how long I've been at it.
I think that's the biggest problem Linux needs to overcome to succeed in the desktop. Personally I didn't feel as though I had more control with Linux, but it did feel more tedious. I'd love to give Linux another go... but then I remember all the time I spent fighting with it, and I don't really have a good reason to invest time into trying out one of the newest distros. Which is why I haven't done Java in a while too, although I am coming up with a good reason, now I just need the time
Are you sure you spent enough time looking? Good software doesn't just fall into your lap. Aggressively marketed software, on the other hand...
Yes, which is part of the problem. Linux was taking too much of my time to do almost anything. I haven't found anything except GNUCash, for example, for finances. I guess that just isn't a sexy enough area to put time into.
I guess one bad apple ruined your bunch. Are you sure you didn't accidentally post your questions to the MSN Linux forum? Just kidding. Just ignore the idiots. If that's all you see, go to a different forum. Go to Google. There are more sources of information on Linux than you could possibly count, if you are willing to look for them.
I could have ignored the few idiots; the problem was that many of my issues / questions just went completely unanswered. Total silence. This was using google groups and such. Combine that with a few bad apples, and it does leave a rather bad taste.
Contrast that to my experience posting in any microsoft.* newsgroup or even contacting MS, its night and day.
So.. like I said, I don't hate Linux, but I certainly won't recommend it. The bottom line is that many start with JUST surfing and email, but I know it will always start moving beyond that. Starting with Windows, there's an upgrade path for both hardware and software that's relatively easy. With Linux, you quickly hit a wall. Maybe that's just been my experience though and it doesn't reflect reality. Who knows.
...sure, 'cause it's a LOT harder to move the mouse 'n' click icons in Linux than it is in Windows...
/.
Isn't upgrading software part of using a computer though? Surely a simple thing like upgrading to the lastest version of IM or web browsing software also falls under ease of use? Yet when I tried to upgrade Kopete, it was a nightmare. Funny that..
Yeah, that MS-Paint has GIMP beat somethin' fierce. If you're thinking Adobe, enjoy paying $649 for functionality the average Ubuntu user has built-in.
I'm actually thinking more along the lines of GNUCash vs. MS Money (or Quicken, if you prefer). And yes, I'd rather pay $60 for something that works easily and intuitively over something that lacks major features and isn't intuitive.
Hint: An Apache server is NOT a web server run by Native Americans. It's used by many providers for a reason. Guess what that reason is?
I'm sorry, I thought we were discussing things along the lines of what a normal user would do with their PC. Since we're here though, IIS 5+ is reliable and easier to maintain than Apache. Why yes, I have used both.
Installed Ubuntu 6.10/XP dual-boot on my work and one of my home PCs. XP needed me to hunt down drivers for my video card, TV card, NIC, and sound card. Ubuntu recognized 'em all and I was watching TV on it 20 minutes later. Yay, TVtime!
Hunt down drivers? You mean find the disc with the drivers on them? Or let Windows update find them for you? Sorry, there's no way in hell you're going to win this one, when my Lexmark x4200 series printer was little more than a BRICK to Linux.
Still not convinced? Friend of mine asked me to get their PC to recognize their digital camera. Took a driver disk before Windows would recognize the cam. I plugged it into my Ubuntu box....
Nope. I actually have used Linux, and the camera scenario you describe is the sasme experience in both; its reconized as a removable drive. Both will prompt you to copy pictures off the device. I've NEVER had a camera not reconized by Windows. I can only conclude you're making up this story, because I've never heard it related except on
Linux is starting to get device drivers down better than Windows, if you're willing to look.
Look, and spend days figuring out why the driver doesn't work, then finding the 2.6.12 driver because I actually found the 2.6.10 driver. Blah. I'd rather just pop in a CD and be done with it, or find it at the manufactor's website. Really, that is much easier than blindly looking, and many times finding NO driver, see Lexmark X4200 series, for Linux.
Yes, it's possible. Do most people have that issue though? No. So yes, it usually is sterile.