I love how everyone implies through all of their Microsoft bashing that IE is the only browser that isn't "standards compliant". This statement from webreference.com really sums it up nicely:
A compliant browser is one that follows the CSS and HTML specifications to the letter. Well, that's not really true--as of early 2006, no browser can legitimately claim 100% standards compliance. However, there are browsers that get very close, to the extent that they can be treated as basically compliant. This is the category we'll call compliant browsers, although if you want to be pedantic, you can think of this as the "almost compliant" group instead. -- Kynn Bartlett, webreference.com
The fact is, this all important and gospel standard has exactly ZERO fully compliant implementations. What other language specification used so widely has exactly zero fully compliant implementations? Apparently the rule for deciding if a browser is going to be bashed for standards compliance is "at least as good as Firefox." So we ignore the fact that none of the other browsers have got it right yet, they got it "close enough."
Obviously, the CSS support in IE is currently shit, and we'd all like to see it improve. I just don't like how everyone treats the CSS standards as if they're some holy gospel of truth, and as if the standard has been *right there* for years and you still can't get it right. If the standards were so great and so obvious to implement, there would be 100% standards compliant browsers out there. If Firefox and Safari were 100% standards compliant and IE was not, you'd have a leg to stand on. The fact is, the web standards are growing, as the web is growing, and there are going to be growing pains along the way.
Microsoft is finally taking action to reach at least the same "good enough" level of CSS support that we accept in other browsers. In doing so they can't break half the sites on the web. So shut the hell up and let them get IE8 out so we can have some kind of calm on this subject, and so our web developers can work within some kind of compatible CSS environment, even if it requires a stupid transitionary tag.
When version 2, or 3, or w/e, of Silverlight comes out will they be releasing the Linux version too? Or do I have to wait for some nice Open Source chaps to figure out how it works then implement it themselves? When a new version of HTML comes out, from MY understanding, whoever makes the browser just releases a new version of the browser that supports the new HTML code... not dependent on a company providing the spec.
Here you can see that Mono developers are directly in contact with their Microsoft counterparts to ask them questions about what they're doing and what they should do: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=MONO81685
You seem to be ignorant of the fact that the specs for both Silverlight and Flash specs are available. Microsoft doesn't release a Linux version of Silverlight, the Mono project does. It's GPL and open source, and the Mono project is getting direct help from Microsoft developers, and Microsoft has signed a patent covenant protecting Novell and the code they contribute to Mono from patent claims.
When a new version of the HTML spec comes out, it takes YEARS for browsers to get even close to full support for the new spec. It isn't dependent on a company providing the spec, it's dependent on companies making the browsers to actually support the spec. You show me one mainstream browser with full Strict HTML 4.01 and full CSS3 support. It doesn't exist. I just don't understand how you place HTML so far above everything when it comes to standardizing the web, when HTML standards come out twice as fast as browsers implement them, and no browser has complete implementations of the most current versions of those specs.
I think you need to look to your favorite standard and get a real view of what's going on there before you use it to set the bar for other web standards and languages.
This is your big misunderstanding. What makes Mono a "systemwide library system" and Flash just a library? Do they go in different folders? Is installing Adobe Flash not "modifying your system"?
Silverlight works with Firefox, Safari, and IE.
You know the spec for HTML? Which one? Transitional HTML 4.01? Strict HTML 4.01? XHTML? I highly doubt you actually *know* the spec for HTML. What you know is how to write HTML that works. Other people know how to write Silverlight code that works. Your arguments for Microsoft cutting support for Linux don't make any sense. Mono is an open source GPLed project, which happens to have some Microsoft backing and support due to their own desire to see Silverlight succeed and the agreement they have with Novell who is backing Mono. However, it's still an open source GPL project. Saying "what if Microsoft changes everything" doesn't make sense. You could make the same argument against Samba (prior to the recent release of the SMB documentation after many years of reverse engineering).
The fact is, once Moonlight is up and rolling, there's no need for Microsoft's support to continue keeping it up to date. If they add some new function blah(x,y) they have to document that function in order for Silverlight users to actually make use of it, which means writing your own version of blah(x,y) from scratch wouldn't be that big of a deal. Open source projects like Samba have been doing this for years with NO documentation.
Considering Microsoft's very early support for multiple platforms and for an open source implementation, and the years it took to even get a crappy version of Adobe Flash for Linux out of Adobe, it's really funny that you consider Flash the lesser of two evils.
It's also really funny that you're so hot on the standards body for HTML and how great it is to have one true standard, when the whole HTML "standard(s)" and all of the commercial implementations of it are in shambles. No disrespect to the W3C community, but right now the par for a good HTML rendering browser is "whatever is better than Microsoft's support". We have 3 rolling standards, of which there is no actual implementation of 100% of the standard. I'm pretty sure Flash renders 100% compatible Flash, and Silverlight renders 100% compatible Silverlight. If you look at the same HTML on Windows and Mac, you'll get different output on many web pages, but if you look at Silverlight on Windows and Mac, you'll get the same output.
With HTML you do have to worry about what kindness an organization provides, because you have to worry about how much of your HTML "standard" (and which one) they choose to support, and how much of it they choose to support. You're just as dependent on browser implementations as Silverlight and Flash people are on their plugins. There's no difference anywhere except in your mind.
Oh, and both Silverlight and Flash are filing to become standardized specifications under standards bodies. Look at.NET, it's an open standard for anyone to implement. Silverlight will be the same. So again, where is this dependency on Microsoft's kindness again? They're doing everything that everyone demands of them: support multiple platforms, have an open specification, submit your spec for standardization, and help open source implementations of your spec get developed. And yet still there are people like this who knock their every move. Here's a hint: If you want Microsoft to change their behavior, don't give them a damned if you do damned if you don't scenario and don't be a hypocrite by being willing to be owned by Adobe but not by Microsoft. In my opinion Adobe has shown just as bad of behavior, and they clearly have a monopoly in several markets as well.
So Microsoft ported it to Mac OSX and made it work with Firefox and Safari in Windows or Mac, and they worked with the Mono project to help them get Moonlight rolling so that Silverlight is basically available for all major platforms and browsers, and the spec for Silverlight is freely available and there is now an open source GPL implementation of that spec, but it's still not open enough for you.
And what does that mean "special libraries" like Mono. Windows doesn't come with Silverlight either. So basically, on Windows you have to download Silverlight, on Mac OS-X you have to download Silverlight, and on Linux you have to download Mono/Moonlight. It has absolutely nothing to do with "your(sic) not running a main OS". How exactly is having Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux platform coverage tying you to any OS? Especially with a GPL implementation?!
It is a Microsoft technology, which also has a GPL open source implementation and runs on all platforms.
Thank you for the anti-MS FUD. Please drive through.
What's funny to me is, Linux kiddies* and Mac fanboys have used # of vulnerabilities to claim how much more secure Linux and Macs are compared to Windows for years. Then when the empirical count of vulnerabilities no longer favors the point they're trying to prove, we get a thousand angry fanboys posting about how stupid the method is. It's blatent hypocrisy.
Linux fanboys* used to do the same thing with narrow performance benchmarks, showing how much faster Linux was than Windows. Once the benchmarks started favoring Windows, it became a "stupid and unrealistic way to compare performance that has no relation to real world performance." Again, the hypocrisy.
What's sad is how frantic and how rabidly they rush to take apart anything that might show Microsoft having a lead in any area. But the same outdated arguments and complaints about vulernabilities in outdated products are getting tired. The fact is, Micrsoft's security is getting better, and their products are improving, due in large part to the challenge presented by open source software. They're still far from perfect, but you're going to find that they will get better and better, and they might take the lead in certain areas while still being far behind in other areas.
What's the big deal? It doesn't take away anything from how great Linux and Mac OS X are at what they do.
*The phrase "Linux kiddies" does not include professionals who deploy Linux for systems where Linux makes sense. I'm talking about rabid fanboys who can't accept that every OS has benefits, and you need to find the one that suits for the problem you're trying to solve.
Mod parent up for educating LingNoi on logical fallacies. LingNoi, maybe next time you can try Google when people are using words you don't understand. Otherwise, let the grown-ups talk. Thanks.
This is pure spin. Look at how this article takes Microsoft's huge jump in profits and manages to turn it into somehow Microsoft is failing and covering up their failure. Of course sales of Vista fell compared to the first few months it was being sold! Everyone who was going to be an early adopter of Vista bought it within that time frame. Now sales are going to be more linked to the OEM channel, and independant sales are going to slow as cautious users wait for SP1.
Seriously, articles like this are pure FUD, trying to take a moment of Microsoft's success and some how make it about their failure. If the OSS community wants to support article writers like the jackass who wrote this one, you're just going to hoodwink yourselves into thinking you're destroying Microsoft when in fact, they're posting record profits and sales of Vista are moving along quite nicely.
Here's a little dose of reality: Source And while the Cupertino-based company crossed its fingers and hoped that the trade-off was the right strategy, statistics released by Market Share by Net Applications paint an entirely different picture. Market Share by Net Applications data reveals that MacIntel has lost market share and is down to 2.48% in June compared with 2.51% in May. Mac OS has also dropped to 3.52% from 3.95% two months ago.
The open source Linux operating system is stagnating. The various distributions of Linux are credited with only 0.71% of the operating system market in June 2007, up from 0.70% in May. One other platform that has been continuously experiencing the erosion of its market share is Windows XP. With Windows Vista available for five months already, XP users are increasingly upgrading their operating systems. Vista has a good momentum in the detriment of XP, which dropped from 82.02% in May to 81.94% in June. By comparison, Vista continues to increase its installed base and has jumped from 3.74% in May to 4.52% of the operating system market in June.
The reality of the situation is, Vista surpassed Mac OS X and Linux in desktop usage without breaking a sweat. The reality of the situation is, XP users are upgrading to Vista. The reality of the situation is, IE6 users are upgrading to IE7, either through Vista upgrades or Windows Update. If you don't like any of these realities, and you want to do something to advance the cause, please do. But don't let idiotic propaganda articles trick you into thinking the battle is already being won, because it isn't.
The only credit I can give to the author of this sad excuse for journalism is that I simply couldn't imagine it was possible to spin a leap in revenue and profit, in the billions of dollars, for a single quarter, into somehow saying Microsoft is suffering. Making a big fuss about "slowing" sales of Vista, when any operating system sold, including OSX has the exact same sales characteristic. After the initial rush of sales during the first few months of product release, sales of OSX slowed! OH NOES! And pointing out that Microsoft's advertising unit posted a loss due to an acquisition... duh.
This article is crap, and it's sad that it got posted on slashdot because it only feeds the flow of misinformation to the OSS community. I remember how upset we all used to get about Microsoft FUD articles, yet it seems some of those pretending to support OSS have figured out that they can write pro-OSS or anti-Microsoft FUD articles and most people will lap it up because that's what they want to hear.
Wow, I guess my stance that common users are employed as legitimate agents of the Open Source community does not hold water. Whew, for a second there I thought the point had been made that Open Source projects should make some kind of effort to stop the flow of misinformation against competing products from the same fanbois that they ask to spread the word. We definitely don't want that kind of accountability hanging over our heads.
Yes, it's very nice to avoid accountability as a group, while taking pride in being a group. Too bad corporations can't just say, well that one asshole in marketing is responsible for that anti-Linux FUD, the rest of us don't feel that way.
The truth is, if you label yourself a part of the group, you paint yourself with that brush. The Firefox community, like many OSS communities, spend a lot of effort convincing their users to push the cause, but spend zero effort attempting to reign in those in their community who employ bad tactics and give the others a bad name. Personally, I belive it is because while they (the more respectable members of OSS communities) don't respect the fanbois any more than anyone else does, they believe that anything to get the message out and push their supported project only helps the cause. I've yet to hear one OSS project leader speak out about fanboism that leads to improper behavior on behalf of their project.
We hold the corporations accountable for the things their agents say, and we employ common users of OSS products as agents to spread the word, but we don't hold OSS projects accountable for the fact that they don't even make an effort to discourage fanbois from spreading positive misinformation about their product, or negative misinformation about a competing product.
Websites put up that annoying IE blocker which tells you the site is too geeky for you unless you run Firefox, and it's just helping the cause.
Websites put up content that blocks Firefox or content that Firefox cannot render due to plugins etc, it's the crime of the century.
If the open source community wants to help improve the IT industry as a whole, it might start by ending the hypocrisy that is the center piece of their common rants. If OSS does it, yay team, if anyone else does it, OMG EVIL! It gets worse when the OSS apologists and MS haters start making excuses for the hypocrisy, explaining how blocking Firefox and blocking IE are completely different, MS is the evil empire etc.
You'll see a few of these idiotic excuses for what is blatently hypocritical behavior in response to this post. Enjoy!:)
Since we've converted our systems and middleware development to C#.NET, all of our developers have become much much more effective. The defect rates of our new C# code compared to our old C++ code are microscopic. We've converted our Apache based SOAP server to ASP.NET's XML WebServices and found that the development is faster, the code is cleaner, and again the defect rate is down. Our web development is currently in PHP, but we've found that if our web developers write C# / ASP.NET, our systems developers can help out with quality control, supplying code samples and advice, and even directly coding for the web. We're in the process of planning the ASP.NET version of our web applications.
The simple fact is, whether you like Microsoft or not,.NET is a great platform for the rapid development of low defect applications. If you don't develop on Windows, give Mono a shot. I consider their successful efforts to be amazing.
For our purposes, the fact that we use.NET and we want to stay on the.NET train (advancements in IIS7 are going to be very useful to us) using IIS6 as our webserver is a no-brainer.
Apache certainly works, but the question for us is, why use Apache? What is so compelling about Apache that would make us want to give up IIS6? We've used Apache for years and continue to do so to this day, but it isn't doing anything special for us except hosting PHP scripts (the performance of which, even with an accelerator, could be better).
The kid kills Megatron with the All-Spark cube at the end, rather than Optimus Prime committing suicide to save the Earth. The only good transformer to die is Jazz (the "black" transformer).
It's called Commitment and Consistency, and it's one of the fixed action patterns described by Dr. Robert Cialdini in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. In my opinion this is one of the most common fixed action patterns today. People buy in to technologies through Social Proof, and then once they consider themselves part of the group, Commitment and Consistency kicks in.
"Once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment."
I'd like to point out that although there are many good reasons to run Linux and I certainly appreciate it as a product (I run Linux, FreeBSD and Windows), there are many people who run Linux but can't give you a reasonable explanation as to why. It's a perfectly legitimate choice if you were to pick operating systems out at random, or if you could not afford a commercial operating system, or for many other reasons. However, most "fanboi" type Linux advocates and users don't have a logical reason for using Linux. Instead, they rely heavily on social proof. Linux users are "sticking it to the man", a perspective which fits with the age and demographics of many Linux "fanbois". More specifically, Linux "fanbois" will describe Microsoft's business practices as a reason to run Linux. This is a valid reason to run Linux and to advocate Linux if you're informed on what exactly Microsoft's business practices are, but most Linux "fanbois" will only say that Microsoft is a monopoly and that they bundle products. They have no knowledge of the specifics, they're only parroting what they read in forums and someone's blog. They claim there is evidence out there to support their position (And there is!) but they have no knowledge of it. Basically, you could say they're right for the wrong reason. The "reasoning" that drove them towards the "right" answer is Social Proof. The Linux movement, composed of Linux advocates, manages to convince not only intelligent people who choose the operating system for logical reasons, but also empty minded "fanbois" who are convinced by Social Proof that Linux is superior, and that by running Linux they will be part of an exclusive club of the Elite who run Linux (starting to relate to Scarcity). This easily convinced "fanboi" then spends the time to get Linux working on his computer. This isn't always an easy task depending on driver support, learning how to install an operating system in the first place, and other technical factors that can make switching to Linux difficult for a novice. Once that difficulty has been overcome, the "fanboi" feels that he has invested a great deal of time and energy into Linux, therefore there must be some kind of payoff. The "fanboi" is very unlikely to be able to even use Linux for anything other than an internet appliance, running a web browser, email software, etc, from X, so very little of the actual benefit of Linux is lost on the "fanboi". Yet after having invested himself in Linux and "learning how to use it" (even though he didn't really), the "fanboi" has finally reached Commitment and Consistency. Having put time and effort into Linux, committing himself to it, he can't believe that he spent all that time and effort for nothing. Even if Linux was a horrible operating system (which it isn't), the "fanboi" would still be a solid believer in the superiority of the system he installed, because he cannot accept that idea that he might have wasted his time installing something either horrible OR closer to reality: something he isn't knowledgable enough to use.
There's nothing wrong with any of this, with one major exception. The "fanboi" may end up learning Linux really well which makes for a great job skill and a deeper understanding of computers as a whole. What's wrong with the "fanboi" is the fact that he and his ilk act as advocates of the system while speaking from a position of ignorance, based on Social Proof (other really smart people run Linux) and Commitment and Consistency (I run it so it's t
John Carmack is the Chuck Norris of video games. He could write SSE3 inline assembly that would cause your computer to suck you into the screen and then it would be like Tron except you'd be getting your ass kicked for talking all that shit.
What's wrong with you? One of the Slashdot Commandments is:
EULAs and the GPL are completely and totally different! One is a company telling you what you may or may not do with their software (aka a license), and one is an independant developer telling you what you may or may not do with their software (aka a license).
GPL developers have every right to tell you how to use their code, like telling you not to link your application, statically or dynamically, to their libraries unless your application is GPL. Microsoft on the other hand, has no right to issue a license that says that you "cannot circumvent the technical limitations of the product", and have one of those limitations be, don't link a 3rd party application to our product.
It's totally a different situation, and definately isn't hypocrisy.
Don't believe me? The replies to this post will (try to) explain why I'm sure.
You're not alone. We only seem like a minority because most of us only have time to read the articles before we get back to work, rather than jumping into these MS hating flame wars. Computer science has its Linux/OSS fundamentalists just like Islam and Christianity have their fundamentalists. If you don't agree with them 100%, you're evil and damned.
No disrespect to those who love Linux/OSS but aren't fundie retards btw.
Amen brother. I work as a Windows based developer, although I've also done some work on OSS projects. I love FreeBSD and MySQL and a bunch of other major OSS projects. Great stuff, and I have all the respect in the world for people who spend a lot of time on those projects.
But I have a real job and a real life. I am a very well paid Systems Architect, and currently the language of choice for me is C#.NET, although I'm traditionally a C++ developer. There are a ridiculous number of very high paying job opportunities for.NET developers right now. I think the market for them has only begun to explode. I have job offers all the time trying to buy me away from my current employer for.NET work. It's a great system, and I love coding in C#.NET. I make really good money and I get to enjoy a life that comes with making that kind of money. I'm not some kind of *whore* just because I like to make good money and be successful. I am not selling out my morals/values/ethics to make this money, because I DON'T AGREE with most of the Microsoft hating. So I make my money, I start my family, I drive my MazdaSpeed6 (I love this car), I recently bought a house (which in San Diego cost me half a mil), etc. That's called life my friends.
I support open source, I donate to projects I like, I contribute code once in a great while, and life is good. If you want to fight the open source like it's a jihad against the evil machine of Microsoft, go right ahead. But considering the glass houses most jihadis live in, I wouldn't be throwing stones at those of us who choose to make a good living using a technology that's really great for development and great for your career.
I'm a computer scientist and a developer. Some of us are too busy doing grown up things to play stop the Evil Empire.
Being part of a group of Samy's RL friends, we're not sure what his restitution is, but he is very likely not allowed to disclose it. We're just glad he's staying out of prison. Everything else is a secondary concern.
Oh you mean like UNIX's all or nothing security model as opposed to Windows fine grained permissions / ACL based model? It's not Windows' "security model" that allows it to be infected with viruses you ass.
It's users using Windows as Administrator, which is just as dumb as people using UNIX as root, and poorly written programs with vulnerabilities, which I'll be damned if most common UNIX style operating systems and applications didn't have to clear a whole hell of a lot of strcpy() and friends out of their source trees to avoid remote exploitation. Just because UNIX hacks are written as sploits rather than viruses, that doesn't mean they aren't vulnerable. Get off your "I RUN LOONIX" high horse and learn something about what you're talking about.
I really apprecite some of the sweet improvements coming out of Microsoft these days, unlike a lot of the Linux fanbois here who will knock anything Microsoft does. I know SQL Server 2005 has some massive enhancements over SQL Server 2000, and some of them are amazing. I actually just finished reading Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: The Storage Engine, and it was a very interesting read. I was considering switching from InnoDB to SQL Server 2005 depending on the results of my research and in-house testing of the performance. But the one thing that really disappointed me was that Microsoft JUST added MVCC in 2005. I personally consider the concurrency of MVCC to be essential for modern applications, at least in the field I work. The fact that they didn't even have it available as an option until now is incredible, and from what I read, you have to maintain the tempdb database when you're using MVCC (aka snapshot) or you could receive errors on update operations. It seems like they hacked snapshot on, rather than making MVCC a core feature of their database engine. I know row level locking gives a great deal of concurrency, and Microsoft's locking types are amazingly fine grained, but MVCC's memory footprint for large numbers of row level locks destroys Microsoft's which just starts escalating locks to save memory, and MVCC beats simple row level locking for concurrency any day. I'll take the 100% non-locking selects.
Also, although my applications rarely involve large transactions, I find it interesting that InnoDB's default mode is repeatable read, while MS sticks with read committed by default (especially if you want snapshot that isn't nearly serialized, you use RCSI). InnoDB's repeatable read is more than Microsoft's RR, because it also protects against phantom rows, giving you near serialized consistancy with fairly high performance. I'm afraid that to get comparable performance on MS SQL 2005, I'd have to give up certain levels of transactional consistancy, in addition to MVCC.
Most MS SQL 2005 users tell me "concurrency / transaction consistancy has never been a problem for me" because they're running their servers at 10-25% load and not exactly serving real time systems with it. But in my industry (telecom) I have to have the best possible concurrency while maintaining data consistancy, and I run my database servers a lot harder than most people do, and have a lot higher requirements for response times.
I am still looking into the advantages of both systems, and intend to test MS SQL 2005 head to head with MySQL 5.0.30 Enterprise / InnoDB in the near future. If anyone has any input on this subject, I would be very interested in hearing it. Feel free to email basharteg@basharteg.com
I certainly understand the benefits of using GUID/UUIDs for primary keys, I often need to generate PKs/tags/identifiers in my real time system without doing a blocking INSERT and read the auto-increment value.
However, as a user of InnoDB and its clustered indexes, I've found that you can easily use a UNIQUE index for the table and either let InnoDB create the "unseen" auto-increment INT PK, or just create the auto-increment INT PK openly, but use the UNIQUE GUID key for your identifiers. The performance is good, and it's easy enough to work out a join against child records by matching against the UNIQUE field, and then joining that PK against the child records or even joining on the GUID.
Performance would probably be better if you could create non-clustered PKs for GUID PK tables, but I haven't seen any slowness with the UNIQUE method.
My perspective might be slightly skewed on the performance because I'm running 8 core opteron, 32gb, on Solaris 10, but seriously if you benchmark it I think it's fine using UNIQUE.
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I love how everyone implies through all of their Microsoft bashing that IE is the only browser that isn't "standards compliant". This statement from webreference.com really sums it up nicely:
A compliant browser is one that follows the CSS and HTML specifications to the letter. Well, that's not really true--as of early 2006, no browser can legitimately claim 100% standards compliance. However, there are browsers that get very close, to the extent that they can be treated as basically compliant. This is the category we'll call compliant browsers, although if you want to be pedantic, you can think of this as the "almost compliant" group instead. -- Kynn Bartlett, webreference.com
The fact is, this all important and gospel standard has exactly ZERO fully compliant implementations. What other language specification used so widely has exactly zero fully compliant implementations? Apparently the rule for deciding if a browser is going to be bashed for standards compliance is "at least as good as Firefox." So we ignore the fact that none of the other browsers have got it right yet, they got it "close enough."
Obviously, the CSS support in IE is currently shit, and we'd all like to see it improve. I just don't like how everyone treats the CSS standards as if they're some holy gospel of truth, and as if the standard has been *right there* for years and you still can't get it right. If the standards were so great and so obvious to implement, there would be 100% standards compliant browsers out there. If Firefox and Safari were 100% standards compliant and IE was not, you'd have a leg to stand on. The fact is, the web standards are growing, as the web is growing, and there are going to be growing pains along the way.
Microsoft is finally taking action to reach at least the same "good enough" level of CSS support that we accept in other browsers. In doing so they can't break half the sites on the web. So shut the hell up and let them get IE8 out so we can have some kind of calm on this subject, and so our web developers can work within some kind of compatible CSS environment, even if it requires a stupid transitionary tag.
When version 2, or 3, or w/e, of Silverlight comes out will they be releasing the Linux version too? Or do I have to wait for some nice Open Source chaps to figure out how it works then implement it themselves? When a new version of HTML comes out, from MY understanding, whoever makes the browser just releases a new version of the browser that supports the new HTML code... not dependent on a company providing the spec.
Here you can see that Mono developers are directly in contact with their Microsoft counterparts to ask them questions about what they're doing and what they should do: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=MONO81685
You seem to be ignorant of the fact that the specs for both Silverlight and Flash specs are available. Microsoft doesn't release a Linux version of Silverlight, the Mono project does. It's GPL and open source, and the Mono project is getting direct help from Microsoft developers, and Microsoft has signed a patent covenant protecting Novell and the code they contribute to Mono from patent claims.
When a new version of the HTML spec comes out, it takes YEARS for browsers to get even close to full support for the new spec. It isn't dependent on a company providing the spec, it's dependent on companies making the browsers to actually support the spec. You show me one mainstream browser with full Strict HTML 4.01 and full CSS3 support. It doesn't exist. I just don't understand how you place HTML so far above everything when it comes to standardizing the web, when HTML standards come out twice as fast as browsers implement them, and no browser has complete implementations of the most current versions of those specs.
I think you need to look to your favorite standard and get a real view of what's going on there before you use it to set the bar for other web standards and languages.
This is your big misunderstanding. What makes Mono a "systemwide library system" and Flash just a library? Do they go in different folders? Is installing Adobe Flash not "modifying your system"?
.NET, it's an open standard for anyone to implement. Silverlight will be the same. So again, where is this dependency on Microsoft's kindness again? They're doing everything that everyone demands of them: support multiple platforms, have an open specification, submit your spec for standardization, and help open source implementations of your spec get developed. And yet still there are people like this who knock their every move. Here's a hint: If you want Microsoft to change their behavior, don't give them a damned if you do damned if you don't scenario and don't be a hypocrite by being willing to be owned by Adobe but not by Microsoft. In my opinion Adobe has shown just as bad of behavior, and they clearly have a monopoly in several markets as well.
Silverlight works with Firefox, Safari, and IE.
You know the spec for HTML? Which one? Transitional HTML 4.01? Strict HTML 4.01? XHTML? I highly doubt you actually *know* the spec for HTML. What you know is how to write HTML that works. Other people know how to write Silverlight code that works. Your arguments for Microsoft cutting support for Linux don't make any sense. Mono is an open source GPLed project, which happens to have some Microsoft backing and support due to their own desire to see Silverlight succeed and the agreement they have with Novell who is backing Mono. However, it's still an open source GPL project. Saying "what if Microsoft changes everything" doesn't make sense. You could make the same argument against Samba (prior to the recent release of the SMB documentation after many years of reverse engineering).
The fact is, once Moonlight is up and rolling, there's no need for Microsoft's support to continue keeping it up to date. If they add some new function blah(x,y) they have to document that function in order for Silverlight users to actually make use of it, which means writing your own version of blah(x,y) from scratch wouldn't be that big of a deal. Open source projects like Samba have been doing this for years with NO documentation.
Considering Microsoft's very early support for multiple platforms and for an open source implementation, and the years it took to even get a crappy version of Adobe Flash for Linux out of Adobe, it's really funny that you consider Flash the lesser of two evils.
It's also really funny that you're so hot on the standards body for HTML and how great it is to have one true standard, when the whole HTML "standard(s)" and all of the commercial implementations of it are in shambles. No disrespect to the W3C community, but right now the par for a good HTML rendering browser is "whatever is better than Microsoft's support". We have 3 rolling standards, of which there is no actual implementation of 100% of the standard. I'm pretty sure Flash renders 100% compatible Flash, and Silverlight renders 100% compatible Silverlight. If you look at the same HTML on Windows and Mac, you'll get different output on many web pages, but if you look at Silverlight on Windows and Mac, you'll get the same output.
With HTML you do have to worry about what kindness an organization provides, because you have to worry about how much of your HTML "standard" (and which one) they choose to support, and how much of it they choose to support. You're just as dependent on browser implementations as Silverlight and Flash people are on their plugins. There's no difference anywhere except in your mind.
Oh, and both Silverlight and Flash are filing to become standardized specifications under standards bodies. Look at
So Microsoft ported it to Mac OSX and made it work with Firefox and Safari in Windows or Mac, and they worked with the Mono project to help them get Moonlight rolling so that Silverlight is basically available for all major platforms and browsers, and the spec for Silverlight is freely available and there is now an open source GPL implementation of that spec, but it's still not open enough for you.
And what does that mean "special libraries" like Mono. Windows doesn't come with Silverlight either. So basically, on Windows you have to download Silverlight, on Mac OS-X you have to download Silverlight, and on Linux you have to download Mono/Moonlight. It has absolutely nothing to do with "your(sic) not running a main OS". How exactly is having Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux platform coverage tying you to any OS? Especially with a GPL implementation?!
It is a Microsoft technology, which also has a GPL open source implementation and runs on all platforms.
Thank you for the anti-MS FUD. Please drive through.
What's funny to me is, Linux kiddies* and Mac fanboys have used # of vulnerabilities to claim how much more secure Linux and Macs are compared to Windows for years. Then when the empirical count of vulnerabilities no longer favors the point they're trying to prove, we get a thousand angry fanboys posting about how stupid the method is. It's blatent hypocrisy.
Linux fanboys* used to do the same thing with narrow performance benchmarks, showing how much faster Linux was than Windows. Once the benchmarks started favoring Windows, it became a "stupid and unrealistic way to compare performance that has no relation to real world performance." Again, the hypocrisy.
What's sad is how frantic and how rabidly they rush to take apart anything that might show Microsoft having a lead in any area. But the same outdated arguments and complaints about vulernabilities in outdated products are getting tired. The fact is, Micrsoft's security is getting better, and their products are improving, due in large part to the challenge presented by open source software. They're still far from perfect, but you're going to find that they will get better and better, and they might take the lead in certain areas while still being far behind in other areas.
What's the big deal? It doesn't take away anything from how great Linux and Mac OS X are at what they do.
*The phrase "Linux kiddies" does not include professionals who deploy Linux for systems where Linux makes sense. I'm talking about rabid fanboys who can't accept that every OS has benefits, and you need to find the one that suits for the problem you're trying to solve.
Posting code publicly, aka in the public domain, aka distributing it without a license, does not put the code in the public domain? That's news to me!
Mod parent up for educating LingNoi on logical fallacies. LingNoi, maybe next time you can try Google when people are using words you don't understand. Otherwise, let the grown-ups talk. Thanks.
This is pure spin. Look at how this article takes Microsoft's huge jump in profits and manages to turn it into somehow Microsoft is failing and covering up their failure. Of course sales of Vista fell compared to the first few months it was being sold! Everyone who was going to be an early adopter of Vista bought it within that time frame. Now sales are going to be more linked to the OEM channel, and independant sales are going to slow as cautious users wait for SP1.
Seriously, articles like this are pure FUD, trying to take a moment of Microsoft's success and some how make it about their failure. If the OSS community wants to support article writers like the jackass who wrote this one, you're just going to hoodwink yourselves into thinking you're destroying Microsoft when in fact, they're posting record profits and sales of Vista are moving along quite nicely.
Here's a little dose of reality:
Source
And while the Cupertino-based company crossed its fingers and hoped that the trade-off was the right strategy, statistics released by Market Share by Net Applications paint an entirely different picture. Market Share by Net Applications data reveals that MacIntel has lost market share and is down to 2.48% in June compared with 2.51% in May. Mac OS has also dropped to 3.52% from 3.95% two months ago.
The open source Linux operating system is stagnating. The various distributions of Linux are credited with only 0.71% of the operating system market in June 2007, up from 0.70% in May. One other platform that has been continuously experiencing the erosion of its market share is Windows XP. With Windows Vista available for five months already, XP users are increasingly upgrading their operating systems. Vista has a good momentum in the detriment of XP, which dropped from 82.02% in May to 81.94% in June. By comparison, Vista continues to increase its installed base and has jumped from 3.74% in May to 4.52% of the operating system market in June.
The reality of the situation is, Vista surpassed Mac OS X and Linux in desktop usage without breaking a sweat. The reality of the situation is, XP users are upgrading to Vista. The reality of the situation is, IE6 users are upgrading to IE7, either through Vista upgrades or Windows Update. If you don't like any of these realities, and you want to do something to advance the cause, please do. But don't let idiotic propaganda articles trick you into thinking the battle is already being won, because it isn't.
The only credit I can give to the author of this sad excuse for journalism is that I simply couldn't imagine it was possible to spin a leap in revenue and profit, in the billions of dollars, for a single quarter, into somehow saying Microsoft is suffering. Making a big fuss about "slowing" sales of Vista, when any operating system sold, including OSX has the exact same sales characteristic. After the initial rush of sales during the first few months of product release, sales of OSX slowed! OH NOES! And pointing out that Microsoft's advertising unit posted a loss due to an acquisition... duh.
This article is crap, and it's sad that it got posted on slashdot because it only feeds the flow of misinformation to the OSS community. I remember how upset we all used to get about Microsoft FUD articles, yet it seems some of those pretending to support OSS have figured out that they can write pro-OSS or anti-Microsoft FUD articles and most people will lap it up because that's what they want to hear.
Oh, I forgot to quote the site:
http://www.spreadfirefox.com/
Mozilla's official community marketing site
Wow, I guess my stance that common users are employed as legitimate agents of the Open Source community does not hold water. Whew, for a second there I thought the point had been made that Open Source projects should make some kind of effort to stop the flow of misinformation against competing products from the same fanbois that they ask to spread the word. We definitely don't want that kind of accountability hanging over our heads.
Your stance that common users--"fanbois"--are employed as legitimate agents of the Open Source community does not hold water.
A laughable statement.
http://www.spreadfirefox.com/
Yes, it's very nice to avoid accountability as a group, while taking pride in being a group. Too bad corporations can't just say, well that one asshole in marketing is responsible for that anti-Linux FUD, the rest of us don't feel that way.
The truth is, if you label yourself a part of the group, you paint yourself with that brush. The Firefox community, like many OSS communities, spend a lot of effort convincing their users to push the cause, but spend zero effort attempting to reign in those in their community who employ bad tactics and give the others a bad name. Personally, I belive it is because while they (the more respectable members of OSS communities) don't respect the fanbois any more than anyone else does, they believe that anything to get the message out and push their supported project only helps the cause. I've yet to hear one OSS project leader speak out about fanboism that leads to improper behavior on behalf of their project.
We hold the corporations accountable for the things their agents say, and we employ common users of OSS products as agents to spread the word, but we don't hold OSS projects accountable for the fact that they don't even make an effort to discourage fanbois from spreading positive misinformation about their product, or negative misinformation about a competing product.
Websites put up that annoying IE blocker which tells you the site is too geeky for you unless you run Firefox, and it's just helping the cause.
:)
Websites put up content that blocks Firefox or content that Firefox cannot render due to plugins etc, it's the crime of the century.
If the open source community wants to help improve the IT industry as a whole, it might start by ending the hypocrisy that is the center piece of their common rants. If OSS does it, yay team, if anyone else does it, OMG EVIL! It gets worse when the OSS apologists and MS haters start making excuses for the hypocrisy, explaining how blocking Firefox and blocking IE are completely different, MS is the evil empire etc.
You'll see a few of these idiotic excuses for what is blatently hypocritical behavior in response to this post. Enjoy!
Have you ever used .NET? That's why.
.NET, all of our developers have become much much more effective. The defect rates of our new C# code compared to our old C++ code are microscopic. We've converted our Apache based SOAP server to ASP.NET's XML WebServices and found that the development is faster, the code is cleaner, and again the defect rate is down. Our web development is currently in PHP, but we've found that if our web developers write C# / ASP.NET, our systems developers can help out with quality control, supplying code samples and advice, and even directly coding for the web. We're in the process of planning the ASP.NET version of our web applications.
.NET is a great platform for the rapid development of low defect applications. If you don't develop on Windows, give Mono a shot. I consider their successful efforts to be amazing.
.NET and we want to stay on the .NET train (advancements in IIS7 are going to be very useful to us) using IIS6 as our webserver is a no-brainer.
Since we've converted our systems and middleware development to C#
The simple fact is, whether you like Microsoft or not,
For our purposes, the fact that we use
Apache certainly works, but the question for us is, why use Apache? What is so compelling about Apache that would make us want to give up IIS6? We've used Apache for years and continue to do so to this day, but it isn't doing anything special for us except hosting PHP scripts (the performance of which, even with an accelerator, could be better).
The kid kills Megatron with the All-Spark cube at the end, rather than Optimus Prime committing suicide to save the Earth. The only good transformer to die is Jazz (the "black" transformer).
It's called Commitment and Consistency, and it's one of the fixed action patterns described by Dr. Robert Cialdini in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. In my opinion this is one of the most common fixed action patterns today. People buy in to technologies through Social Proof, and then once they consider themselves part of the group, Commitment and Consistency kicks in.
"Once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment."
I'd like to point out that although there are many good reasons to run Linux and I certainly appreciate it as a product (I run Linux, FreeBSD and Windows), there are many people who run Linux but can't give you a reasonable explanation as to why. It's a perfectly legitimate choice if you were to pick operating systems out at random, or if you could not afford a commercial operating system, or for many other reasons. However, most "fanboi" type Linux advocates and users don't have a logical reason for using Linux. Instead, they rely heavily on social proof. Linux users are "sticking it to the man", a perspective which fits with the age and demographics of many Linux "fanbois". More specifically, Linux "fanbois" will describe Microsoft's business practices as a reason to run Linux. This is a valid reason to run Linux and to advocate Linux if you're informed on what exactly Microsoft's business practices are, but most Linux "fanbois" will only say that Microsoft is a monopoly and that they bundle products. They have no knowledge of the specifics, they're only parroting what they read in forums and someone's blog. They claim there is evidence out there to support their position (And there is!) but they have no knowledge of it. Basically, you could say they're right for the wrong reason. The "reasoning" that drove them towards the "right" answer is Social Proof. The Linux movement, composed of Linux advocates, manages to convince not only intelligent people who choose the operating system for logical reasons, but also empty minded "fanbois" who are convinced by Social Proof that Linux is superior, and that by running Linux they will be part of an exclusive club of the Elite who run Linux (starting to relate to Scarcity). This easily convinced "fanboi" then spends the time to get Linux working on his computer. This isn't always an easy task depending on driver support, learning how to install an operating system in the first place, and other technical factors that can make switching to Linux difficult for a novice. Once that difficulty has been overcome, the "fanboi" feels that he has invested a great deal of time and energy into Linux, therefore there must be some kind of payoff. The "fanboi" is very unlikely to be able to even use Linux for anything other than an internet appliance, running a web browser, email software, etc, from X, so very little of the actual benefit of Linux is lost on the "fanboi". Yet after having invested himself in Linux and "learning how to use it" (even though he didn't really), the "fanboi" has finally reached Commitment and Consistency. Having put time and effort into Linux, committing himself to it, he can't believe that he spent all that time and effort for nothing. Even if Linux was a horrible operating system (which it isn't), the "fanboi" would still be a solid believer in the superiority of the system he installed, because he cannot accept that idea that he might have wasted his time installing something either horrible OR closer to reality: something he isn't knowledgable enough to use.
There's nothing wrong with any of this, with one major exception. The "fanboi" may end up learning Linux really well which makes for a great job skill and a deeper understanding of computers as a whole. What's wrong with the "fanboi" is the fact that he and his ilk act as advocates of the system while speaking from a position of ignorance, based on Social Proof (other really smart people run Linux) and Commitment and Consistency (I run it so it's t
John Carmack is the Chuck Norris of video games. He could write SSE3 inline assembly that would cause your computer to suck you into the screen and then it would be like Tron except you'd be getting your ass kicked for talking all that shit.
What's wrong with you? One of the Slashdot Commandments is:
EULAs and the GPL are completely and totally different! One is a company telling you what you may or may not do with their software (aka a license), and one is an independant developer telling you what you may or may not do with their software (aka a license).
GPL developers have every right to tell you how to use their code, like telling you not to link your application, statically or dynamically, to their libraries unless your application is GPL. Microsoft on the other hand, has no right to issue a license that says that you "cannot circumvent the technical limitations of the product", and have one of those limitations be, don't link a 3rd party application to our product.
It's totally a different situation, and definately isn't hypocrisy.
Don't believe me? The replies to this post will (try to) explain why I'm sure.
You're not alone. We only seem like a minority because most of us only have time to read the articles before we get back to work, rather than jumping into these MS hating flame wars. Computer science has its Linux/OSS fundamentalists just like Islam and Christianity have their fundamentalists. If you don't agree with them 100%, you're evil and damned.
No disrespect to those who love Linux/OSS but aren't fundie retards btw.
Amen brother. I work as a Windows based developer, although I've also done some work on OSS projects. I love FreeBSD and MySQL and a bunch of other major OSS projects. Great stuff, and I have all the respect in the world for people who spend a lot of time on those projects.
.NET developers right now. I think the market for them has only begun to explode. I have job offers all the time trying to buy me away from my current employer for .NET work. It's a great system, and I love coding in C#.NET. I make really good money and I get to enjoy a life that comes with making that kind of money. I'm not some kind of *whore* just because I like to make good money and be successful. I am not selling out my morals/values/ethics to make this money, because I DON'T AGREE with most of the Microsoft hating. So I make my money, I start my family, I drive my MazdaSpeed6 (I love this car), I recently bought a house (which in San Diego cost me half a mil), etc. That's called life my friends.
But I have a real job and a real life. I am a very well paid Systems Architect, and currently the language of choice for me is C#.NET, although I'm traditionally a C++ developer. There are a ridiculous number of very high paying job opportunities for
I support open source, I donate to projects I like, I contribute code once in a great while, and life is good. If you want to fight the open source like it's a jihad against the evil machine of Microsoft, go right ahead. But considering the glass houses most jihadis live in, I wouldn't be throwing stones at those of us who choose to make a good living using a technology that's really great for development and great for your career.
I'm a computer scientist and a developer. Some of us are too busy doing grown up things to play stop the Evil Empire.
Yes, it is true. If you note at the end of that animation, BasharTeg has big balls.
Being part of a group of Samy's RL friends, we're not sure what his restitution is, but he is very likely not allowed to disclose it. We're just glad he's staying out of prison. Everything else is a secondary concern.
Oh you mean like UNIX's all or nothing security model as opposed to Windows fine grained permissions / ACL based model? It's not Windows' "security model" that allows it to be infected with viruses you ass.
It's users using Windows as Administrator, which is just as dumb as people using UNIX as root, and poorly written programs with vulnerabilities, which I'll be damned if most common UNIX style operating systems and applications didn't have to clear a whole hell of a lot of strcpy() and friends out of their source trees to avoid remote exploitation. Just because UNIX hacks are written as sploits rather than viruses, that doesn't mean they aren't vulnerable. Get off your "I RUN LOONIX" high horse and learn something about what you're talking about.
I really apprecite some of the sweet improvements coming out of Microsoft these days, unlike a lot of the Linux fanbois here who will knock anything Microsoft does. I know SQL Server 2005 has some massive enhancements over SQL Server 2000, and some of them are amazing. I actually just finished reading Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005: The Storage Engine, and it was a very interesting read. I was considering switching from InnoDB to SQL Server 2005 depending on the results of my research and in-house testing of the performance. But the one thing that really disappointed me was that Microsoft JUST added MVCC in 2005. I personally consider the concurrency of MVCC to be essential for modern applications, at least in the field I work. The fact that they didn't even have it available as an option until now is incredible, and from what I read, you have to maintain the tempdb database when you're using MVCC (aka snapshot) or you could receive errors on update operations. It seems like they hacked snapshot on, rather than making MVCC a core feature of their database engine. I know row level locking gives a great deal of concurrency, and Microsoft's locking types are amazingly fine grained, but MVCC's memory footprint for large numbers of row level locks destroys Microsoft's which just starts escalating locks to save memory, and MVCC beats simple row level locking for concurrency any day. I'll take the 100% non-locking selects.
Also, although my applications rarely involve large transactions, I find it interesting that InnoDB's default mode is repeatable read, while MS sticks with read committed by default (especially if you want snapshot that isn't nearly serialized, you use RCSI). InnoDB's repeatable read is more than Microsoft's RR, because it also protects against phantom rows, giving you near serialized consistancy with fairly high performance. I'm afraid that to get comparable performance on MS SQL 2005, I'd have to give up certain levels of transactional consistancy, in addition to MVCC.
Most MS SQL 2005 users tell me "concurrency / transaction consistancy has never been a problem for me" because they're running their servers at 10-25% load and not exactly serving real time systems with it. But in my industry (telecom) I have to have the best possible concurrency while maintaining data consistancy, and I run my database servers a lot harder than most people do, and have a lot higher requirements for response times.
I am still looking into the advantages of both systems, and intend to test MS SQL 2005 head to head with MySQL 5.0.30 Enterprise / InnoDB in the near future. If anyone has any input on this subject, I would be very interested in hearing it. Feel free to email basharteg@basharteg.com
Modded Informative? InnoDB is totally an MVCC database. It has 100% non-locking SELECTs. Come on.
I certainly understand the benefits of using GUID/UUIDs for primary keys, I often need to generate PKs/tags/identifiers in my real time system without doing a blocking INSERT and read the auto-increment value.
However, as a user of InnoDB and its clustered indexes, I've found that you can easily use a UNIQUE index for the table and either let InnoDB create the "unseen" auto-increment INT PK, or just create the auto-increment INT PK openly, but use the UNIQUE GUID key for your identifiers. The performance is good, and it's easy enough to work out a join against child records by matching against the UNIQUE field, and then joining that PK against the child records or even joining on the GUID.
Performance would probably be better if you could create non-clustered PKs for GUID PK tables, but I haven't seen any slowness with the UNIQUE method.
My perspective might be slightly skewed on the performance because I'm running 8 core opteron, 32gb, on Solaris 10, but seriously if you benchmark it I think it's fine using UNIQUE.