It amazes me how shortsighted some people can be, telling MSFT has been good for consumers. They don't have a clue what would have happened without them, and seem to forget that fair competition is good for consumers. They seem to have only one point of reference (brainwashed as they are by using MSFT products) and cannot imagine that other systems could have been developed for their PC's, with better quality and lower prices.
So can you predict what would have happened if MSFT would not have been around? Who says that no-one else would have made an easy-to-use and stable GUI that average users are happy with?
Apple, Next, Be and others have shown that MSFT is not the only one who can do that (and that most can do it better).
Probably, UNIX would have come to the desktop much sooner without MSFT. There would not have been one important vendor of PC operating systems, but lots of them. But all follow the same open (UNIX) standards. A de facto standard would have emerged for an X-window based GUI with easy-to-use toolkits, like what is happening now (but much later and much slower) on Linux.
So consumers would have benefitted much more without MSFT: For years they would have had a stable OS with an easy GUI, yet with choice (thus competition) from many OS and application vendors.
Because this might put pressure on the price for Internet through normal phone such as ISDN (128 kbit).
For the time being I'll stick to normal 128kbit ISDN with it's open and generic access. Only the price is high. I hope that all these cable and DSL alternatives make the cost per minute for normal access go down further.
The BSD's such as FreeBSD have an advantage here. There is only one variant (or 'distribution' or 'operating system' whatevery you want to name it) maintained by a group of people called core.
This group develops the kernel and the rest as one unit (of course different people in the group have different responsibilities).
For software suppliers, the BSD situation must be endlessly more pleasant and predictable. Yet somehow 3rd party support for FreeBSD is much less than for Linux.
Up to now this division hasn't hindered Linux's success. But it might, and to say the least it is annoying for the users and also for 3rd party software developers that have to account for all the little differences.
If only the main Linux distribution providers and kernel developers could get together and form a similar group that develops the Linux OS as a whole (concentrating on the core OS, leaving all kinds of add-ons and ports to others).
10 years ago there was a great debate on SMP versus distributed computing. Already then it became clear that SMP is a dead end. It cannot scale because of cache coherency etc.
IBM for example never wanted to make SMP machines. Later they gave in to customer demand and made some SMP AIX machines, but internally they still don't believe in it (they push more for massively parallel, so distributed such as the SP2 machines).
Linux on the desktop, BSD in the server room? Why?!?
There is *no reason* to use one of them as desktop, the other as server. If you use one of them, it'd be a waste of resources to do this; you'd better spend your time on only one of them and use both on the server and the desktop.
Purely as hobby I use both though.
What Linux can do on the desktop, FreeBSD can too (partially through the excellent Linux emulator that can even run vmware or Oracle or Netscape+plug-ins, i.e. everything that is available for Linux at native speed).
OTOH, there isn't much difference between both for server stability/performance nowadays (BSD used to lead but with kernel 2.4 coming...). Just use what you like most. Personally I find BSD easier to maintain and keep up-to-date (never had to reinstall in 5 years time; constant incremental updates where possible).
In a normal democracy (which the US may not be) the government is supposed to represent the people (at least they are checked by parliament, which is elected by people). In some democracies like Switserland this is even more direct through referenda. I don't understand how one could trust corporations more than government...
Corporations have only 1 ultimate goal: profit. The government (should) serve the public interest. If they don't, at next elections they are replaced. This supposes of course that political parties cannot have much money to influence public opinion (which alas is not the case in the US, but is in most european countries where parties have only little money).
The government should not try to do anything by themselves (as the french tend to do, too much centralism) but should leave practical tasks to corporations which can do it more efficiently. But they should always be the ultimate source of power and be in control.
France is not member of NATO. They are kind of associated, but already in the 50s they left NATO because they felt it might damage their sovereignty. In the context of this story, they might have been right.
Talking about shareholder value: Their value might decrease from actions like this (so they might get sued by their shareholders).
Having shareholders doesn't mean that they have to behave like pigs.
I for one have a deep rooted hatred against Unisys (for several reasons, the GIF issue is just one of them but they are simply a company with very bad ethical values). I'm not sure if I am the only one, but I guess there must be more. If you make yourself very impopular (and don't have a monopoly such as MSFT) this means that some decision makers will avoid your products, some of the brilliant engineers will refuse to work for you, etc. Thus, they damage themselves.
Whether the GIF issue costs more damage as that it earns them in licence fees is hard to judge for me. But anyway the point is that having shareholders and operating in their interest does not mean that you have to be as aggressive and unethical as possible.
I will be relieved when I don't have to see these irritating flashing advertisement banners anymore.
If only it was possible to turn off animations alltogether. Whenever Mozilla starts being useable, and I have a browsers whose source code I can modify, it will be one of the first things I do with it.
Re:Great news?? I think not...
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As much open as possible. Well when it's not 100% it's not good enough.
I still won't be able to use it under FreeBSD even if I try to port it myself because of the CSS piece. Or on Linux/sparc.
Don't tell me that I should "just" give in and run Linux/i386. That would sound just like "go with the mainstream and use Windows".
Using this under Linux would be damaging to open source as a whole, and if the mentality takes on in the Linux/i386 world ("we have apps and the rest should just give up and use Linux/i386 too") that would be very bad for open source. It would remove the incentive for many (companies) to go open source.
You're right for application software, but system software (i.e. the operating system) tends to become cheap or even free these days.
Even a succesful company like SUN, who are not in a difficult position at all, now give away their OS to support hardware sales (and also applications on that hardware).
Beos is another example. Prices of other OSses have been dropping too (such as Unixware).
Maybe M$ is the only exception to this. They are the only ones that can (still) dictate a high price for the OS.
Moving to being a software company and trying to sell their (excellent) OS X would, IMO, be a disaster to apple. They fully depend and have to depend on their hardware sales.
I think Apple does want to see Darwin run on Intel, but not OS X (for reasons others have mentioned).
The advantage of (only) Darwin running on Intel: They'd continue to share and thus receive input from the BSD world, improving their Darwin base for OS X for free. All behind the scenes software (i.e. non-GUI, server type software) would profit from this.
The advantage for BSD is also to receive improvements (SMP, gcc extentions) to incorporate into their own variants like FreeBSD. Not to run the full OS X (would be nice, but Apple won't allow it).
So it is a normal open source thing for mutual benefit, but only at the (low) Darwin level.
This is sort of true. I've had both Nokia and Motorola Phones. The first Nokia phone's display would keep fading out, even though the batteries were completely charged. If you smacked the phone against the palm of your hand it would come back for a while then fade away again.
This was a known problem with some Nokia models. I had it with my 6110. Brought it to a service centrer where the display was replaced. Never had the problem again.
Apart from that the Nokia's have the name of being very robust, unlike Motorola. That is at least what three (different) phone companies told me.
Therefore, most democratic countries (at least all european ones) don't have elections for judges etcetera. The independance of the legal system is and should be highly valued, and the thought of judges or police chiefs etc. being influenced by electoral motives (thus bribable) is sickening and unbelievable.
Are you talking about SCO UNIX, or about Unixware? It must be SCO (which I don't know too well personally).
They bought Unixware some years ago, and that has always been (IMO) the best and most standard implementation of SYSVR4 for PC's. In fact, the Unixware group, bought from Novell, and bought by them from AT&T, is/was the original AT&T UNIX group, the place where UNIX was born. It is/was *THE* standard UNIX. (Personally though, I'm more a BSD guy, and I run FreeBSD at home, occasionally Solaris/x86 because I work with Solaris/sparc for my job).
I've tought UNIX coarses on it for a year. That was on 486's with 32MB of RAM. The students always were truely amazed when I told them that the 10 of them were all using the same single machine (compiling, editing etc, accessed by X-terminals).
Nowadays, Solaris kind of has taken over the status of the keeper of the UNIX standard, because of their big market share. I don't see much future for UnixWare esp. since Solaris/x86 now is freely available. That is sad, Unixware dying is a tragic milestone in the history of UNIX.
Course, it's not the fastest, or the slickest, or the coolest. You really think the business world cares about all the nifty little features in Linux? They don't - they care about the bottom line. When you need stability, SCO can deliver.
One could say the same things about Solaris/x86, plus that is gratis nowadays. I think only old customers would stick to SCO now, I don't see any future for it. I ordered one of the "free" licences once, in fact it wasn't exactly free since the media kit was $100. Yes I liked it, and I've worked a year at a UNIX-teaching company that used Unixware.
But Solaris/x86 is about as stable, is less standard SYSV.R4, but OTOH Solaris is almost a de facto UNIX standard nowadays. Now that it is free, any companies needing a commercially supported UNIX OS are likely to choose Solaris.
I guess Sun will continue to fund and develop Solaris/x86 even if they don't make profit from it. Reason: it's users, if they want to scale up, will be more likely to migrate to Sun Sparc hardware with more or less the same Operating System. Indirectly, it helps their Sparc hardware sales.
Indeed Win98 behaves strange. For my games environment I "downgraded" to win95 which has less problems. It also runs better in Vmware (which I run under FreeBSD to access some Windows programs if there is no UNIX equivalent yet).
Since I don't install/deinstall too many stuff I don't have to reinstall win95 every few months. OTOH I have a FreeBSD-current which was upgraded for the last 5 years, without reinstall from scratch. There is no other OS I know of that could do that (and the system is still 100% clean, every file is known, no old trash laying around).
FreeBSD may cost a bit more effort to install the first time (including installing ports that you need) but you really have to do it only once. It moved with me through 3 motherboard upgrades, numerous harddisks and other hardware changes.
NetBSD has fallen behind on multi-platform support and now FreeBSD is betetr in even this niche
Not true. FreeBSD only supports i386 and alpha, NetBSD about 15 platforms (see the list in the article). OpenBSD also has more support for platforms since it was split off from NetBSD.
As for myself, since I only have PC hardware I use FreeBSD since it is the best for PC hardware from the three free *BSD's. But FreeBSD regularly takes things (drivers, such as USB) from NetBSD and OpenBSD and thus also owes to them.
A lot of those net firms, before running out of money the first time, had or have an IPO and raise lots of money.
This can't go on forever: A company like amazon can't keep selling new stocks. Also many that are willing to invest in such firms, have already done so.
Maybe after the IPO they can repeat this trick once more, but after 1 or 2 times they'll have to continue on their own and some day start making profits.
I think we'll see quite some of these new companies go bankrupt soon. In Holland one of these new firms, the largest ISP, also had their IPO last week. It was the largest IPO in dutch history, and their market capitalization was bigger than big established firms (and that while this ISP has only been making losses up till now).
The founders of this company are billionaires now, the IPO was 20 times more demanded than stocks were available. But after two days they are 25% down already. I think after the initial success stories we'll see some more failures. People who blindly put their money in the 'new economy' will see that it isn't that easy. Future attempts to raise money with stocks or whatever will require more perspective to profits, and no longer will people be prepared to blindly buy any stock for any price in this sector.
I'm thinking of buying some of these cards, to be able to put my server upstairs. There is one thick concrete wall in between then. Distance about 5 metres.
Before I buy and find that it doesn't work: does anyone have experience with this? Would it work?
All the whining about MP3's is primarily an attempt to prepare the legal grounds for supression of the format later, when they can force hardware manufacturers to suspend MP3 playback capability in favor of SDMI and/or its latest flavor.
Luckily, they won't succeed. Control of hardware playback doesn't work anymore, since you no longer need special purpose hardware nowadays. MP3 can be played back on almost anything, lately too on PDA's. On PDA's for which anyone can write software. So even if the RIO etc. would get forbidden somehow, it wouldn't make a difference.
I can only laugh about their pathetic attempts to avoid the unavoidable.
Ideally I would like to read Slashdot, but all of the AvantGo-channel-ready Slashdot hacks out there only show the articles, not the talkback. I tried setting up my own page through some CGI that parsed the
I'm annoyed every day by the format of Slashdot. I read it because of it's interesting articles and discussions, but actually the interface sucks. Slashdot, and many other discussion sites, just should use NNTP/Usenet. That was made for discussions, you can have the same program to access lots of such discussion forums, with the same keybindings, scoring mechanisms etc.
It is really a pity that Usenet is falling apart, and is fragmented into so many clumsy-to-access discussion forums.
I'd suggest reading a few books on object-oriented design, and on best practices in C++. Books that have worked well for me are: C++ FAQ's, Design Patterns, Object Oriented Software Construction, Effective C++ and More Effective C++. I was writing 10's of thousands of lines projects before I really learned how to use the language properly too. Don't be fooled into thinking that just becuase you've managed to write a relatively big project you know everything
The fact that someone who manages to write a tool like Lilypond (can't be an idiot), and also yourself, has to read lots and lots of books and learn through writing 10's of thousands of lines on how to really use the language, is not a good sign.
As for myself, I have about 5 years of exp. with C++ and two years now with STL. It is a big improvement (STL), I can write nice programs in C++ after all these years. BUT: I think it takes too long, and average people may never make it to understand the language and use it effectively.
Currently I'm using Java, swearing a lot and longing back for C++ often. Still I'd really like to try Phyton or Scheme once. There must be an easier and more fool-proof way to do the nice things that can be done in C++.
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It amazes me how shortsighted some people can be, telling MSFT has been good for consumers. They don't have a clue what would have happened without them, and seem to forget that fair competition is good for consumers. They seem to have only one point of reference (brainwashed as they are by using MSFT products) and cannot imagine that other systems could have been developed for their PC's, with better quality and lower prices.
So can you predict what would have happened if MSFT would not have been around? Who says that no-one else would have made an easy-to-use and stable GUI that average users are happy with?
Apple, Next, Be and others have shown that MSFT is not the only one who can do that (and that most can do it better).
Probably, UNIX would have come to the desktop much sooner without MSFT. There would not have been one important vendor of PC operating systems, but lots of them. But all follow the same open (UNIX) standards. A de facto standard would have emerged for an X-window based GUI with easy-to-use toolkits, like what is happening now (but much later and much slower) on Linux.
So consumers would have benefitted much more without MSFT: For years they would have had a stable OS with an easy GUI, yet with choice (thus competition) from many OS and application vendors.
Because this might put pressure on the price for Internet through normal phone such as ISDN (128 kbit).
For the time being I'll stick to normal 128kbit ISDN with it's open and generic access. Only the price is high. I hope that all these cable and DSL alternatives make the cost per minute for normal access go down further.
I see that only happening when Java catches on a bit more. There are already Java programs distributed as a single .class file (installer).
You run java xxx.class on any platform with a JVM and the stuff gets installed.
Now we only need better Java performance. But gcj (GNU java -> binary compiler) might help. You can also apply it to class files.
The BSD's such as FreeBSD have an advantage here. There is only one variant (or 'distribution' or 'operating system' whatevery you want to name it) maintained by a group of people called core.
This group develops the kernel and the rest as one unit (of course different people in the group have different responsibilities).
For software suppliers, the BSD situation must be endlessly more pleasant and predictable. Yet somehow 3rd party support for FreeBSD is much less than for Linux.
Up to now this division hasn't hindered Linux's success. But it might, and to say the least it is annoying for the users and also for 3rd party software developers that have to account for all the little differences.
If only the main Linux distribution providers and kernel developers could get together and form a similar group that develops the Linux OS as a whole (concentrating on the core OS, leaving all kinds of add-ons and ports to others).
He's repeating a very old idea.
10 years ago there was a great debate on SMP versus distributed computing. Already then it became clear that SMP is a dead end. It cannot scale because of cache coherency etc.
IBM for example never wanted to make SMP machines. Later they gave in to customer demand and made some SMP AIX machines, but internally they still don't believe in it (they push more for massively parallel, so distributed such as the SP2 machines).
Linux on the desktop, BSD in the server room? Why?!?
There is *no reason* to use one of them as desktop, the other as server. If you use one of them, it'd be a waste of resources to do this; you'd better spend your time on only one of them and use both on the server and the desktop.
Purely as hobby I use both though.
What Linux can do on the desktop, FreeBSD can too (partially through the excellent Linux emulator that can even run vmware or Oracle or Netscape+plug-ins, i.e. everything that is available for Linux at native speed).
OTOH, there isn't much difference between both for server stability/performance nowadays (BSD used to lead but with kernel 2.4 coming...). Just use what you like most. Personally I find BSD easier to maintain and keep up-to-date (never had to reinstall in 5 years time; constant incremental updates where possible).
In a normal democracy (which the US may not be) the government is supposed to represent the people (at least they are checked by parliament, which is elected by people). In some democracies like Switserland this is even more direct through referenda. I don't understand how one could trust corporations more than government...
Corporations have only 1 ultimate goal: profit. The government (should) serve the public interest. If they don't, at next elections they are replaced. This supposes of course that political parties cannot have much money to influence public opinion (which alas is not the case in the US, but is in most european countries where parties have only little money).
The government should not try to do anything by themselves (as the french tend to do, too much centralism) but should leave practical tasks to corporations which can do it more efficiently. But they should always be the ultimate source of power and be in control.
France is not member of NATO. They are kind of associated, but already in the 50s they left NATO because they felt it might damage their sovereignty. In the context of this story, they might have been right.
Talking about shareholder value: Their value might decrease from actions like this (so they might get sued by their shareholders).
Having shareholders doesn't mean that they have to behave like pigs.
I for one have a deep rooted hatred against Unisys (for several reasons, the GIF issue is just one of them but they are simply a company with very bad ethical values). I'm not sure if I am the only one, but I guess there must be more. If you make yourself very impopular (and don't have a monopoly such as MSFT) this means that some decision makers will avoid your products, some of the brilliant engineers will refuse to work for you, etc. Thus, they damage themselves.
Whether the GIF issue costs more damage as that it earns them in licence fees is hard to judge for me. But anyway the point is that having shareholders and operating in their interest does not mean that you have to be as aggressive and unethical as possible.
I will be relieved when I don't have to see these irritating flashing advertisement banners anymore.
If only it was possible to turn off animations alltogether. Whenever Mozilla starts being useable, and I have a browsers whose source code I can modify, it will be one of the first things I do with it.
As much open as possible. Well when it's not 100% it's not good enough.
I still won't be able to use it under FreeBSD even if I try to port it myself because of the CSS piece. Or on Linux/sparc.
Don't tell me that I should "just" give in and run Linux/i386. That would sound just like "go with the mainstream and use Windows".
Using this under Linux would be damaging to open source as a whole, and if the mentality takes on in the Linux/i386 world ("we have apps and the rest should just give up and use Linux/i386 too") that would be very bad for open source. It would remove the incentive for many (companies) to go open source.
You can't compile it, but everything runs.
Code (object code) doesn't become GNU just because you used a GNU compiler to compile it.
If you get a (precompiled) FreeBSD without GNU, everything runs but you just cannot compile new C or C++ programs.
You're right for application software, but system software (i.e. the operating system) tends to become cheap or even free these days.
Even a succesful company like SUN, who are not in a difficult position at all, now give away their OS to support hardware sales (and also applications on that hardware).
Beos is another example. Prices of other OSses have been dropping too (such as Unixware).
Maybe M$ is the only exception to this. They are the only ones that can (still) dictate a high price for the OS.
Moving to being a software company and trying to sell their (excellent) OS X would, IMO, be a disaster to apple. They fully depend and have to depend on their hardware sales.
I think Apple does want to see Darwin run on Intel, but not OS X (for reasons others have mentioned).
The advantage of (only) Darwin running on Intel: They'd continue to share and thus receive input from the BSD world, improving their Darwin base for OS X for free. All behind the scenes software (i.e. non-GUI, server type software) would profit from this.
The advantage for BSD is also to receive improvements (SMP, gcc extentions) to incorporate into their own variants like FreeBSD. Not to run the full OS X (would be nice, but Apple won't allow it).
So it is a normal open source thing for mutual benefit, but only at the (low) Darwin level.
This was a known problem with some Nokia models. I had it with my 6110. Brought it to a service centrer where the display was replaced. Never had the problem again.
Apart from that the Nokia's have the name of being very robust, unlike Motorola. That is at least what three (different) phone companies told me.
Therefore, most democratic countries (at least all european ones) don't have elections for judges etcetera. The independance of the legal system is and should be highly valued, and the thought of judges or police chiefs etc. being influenced by electoral motives (thus bribable) is sickening and unbelievable.
Are you talking about SCO UNIX, or about Unixware? It must be SCO (which I don't know too well personally).
They bought Unixware some years ago, and that has always been (IMO) the best and most standard implementation of SYSVR4 for PC's. In fact, the Unixware group, bought from Novell, and bought by them from AT&T, is/was the original AT&T UNIX group, the place where UNIX was born. It is/was *THE* standard UNIX. (Personally though, I'm more a BSD guy, and I run FreeBSD at home, occasionally Solaris/x86 because I work with Solaris/sparc for my job).
I've tought UNIX coarses on it for a year. That was on 486's with 32MB of RAM. The students always were truely amazed when I told them that the 10 of them were all using the same single machine (compiling, editing etc, accessed by X-terminals).
Nowadays, Solaris kind of has taken over the status of the keeper of the UNIX standard, because of their big market share. I don't see much future for UnixWare esp. since Solaris/x86 now is freely available. That is sad, Unixware dying is a tragic milestone in the history of UNIX.
One could say the same things about Solaris/x86, plus that is gratis nowadays. I think only old customers would stick to SCO now, I don't see any future for it. I ordered one of the "free" licences once, in fact it wasn't exactly free since the media kit was $100. Yes I liked it, and I've worked a year at a UNIX-teaching company that used Unixware.
But Solaris/x86 is about as stable, is less standard SYSV.R4, but OTOH Solaris is almost a de facto UNIX standard nowadays. Now that it is free, any companies needing a commercially supported UNIX OS are likely to choose Solaris.
I guess Sun will continue to fund and develop Solaris/x86 even if they don't make profit from it. Reason: it's users, if they want to scale up, will be more likely to migrate to Sun Sparc hardware with more or less the same Operating System. Indirectly, it helps their Sparc hardware sales.
Indeed Win98 behaves strange. For my games environment I "downgraded" to win95 which has less problems. It also runs better in Vmware (which I run under FreeBSD to access some Windows programs if there is no UNIX equivalent yet).
Since I don't install/deinstall too many stuff I don't have to reinstall win95 every few months. OTOH I have a FreeBSD-current which was upgraded for the last 5 years, without reinstall from scratch. There is no other OS I know of that could do that (and the system is still 100% clean, every file is known, no old trash laying around).
FreeBSD may cost a bit more effort to install the first time (including installing ports that you need) but you really have to do it only once. It moved with me through 3 motherboard upgrades, numerous harddisks and other hardware changes.
Not true. FreeBSD only supports i386 and alpha, NetBSD about 15 platforms (see the list in the article). OpenBSD also has more support for platforms since it was split off from NetBSD.
As for myself, since I only have PC hardware I use FreeBSD since it is the best for PC hardware from the three free *BSD's. But FreeBSD regularly takes things (drivers, such as USB) from NetBSD and OpenBSD and thus also owes to them.
A lot of those net firms, before running out of money the first time, had or have an IPO and raise lots of money.
This can't go on forever: A company like amazon can't keep selling new stocks. Also many that are willing to invest in such firms, have already done so.
Maybe after the IPO they can repeat this trick once more, but after 1 or 2 times they'll have to continue on their own and some day start making profits.
I think we'll see quite some of these new companies go bankrupt soon. In Holland one of these new firms, the largest ISP, also had their IPO last week. It was the largest IPO in dutch history, and their market capitalization was bigger than big established firms (and that while this ISP has only been making losses up till now).
The founders of this company are billionaires now, the IPO was 20 times more demanded than stocks were available. But after two days they are 25% down already. I think after the initial success stories we'll see some more failures. People who blindly put their money in the 'new economy' will see that it isn't that easy. Future attempts to raise money with stocks or whatever will require more perspective to profits, and no longer will people be prepared to blindly buy any stock for any price in this sector.
I'm thinking of buying some of these cards, to be able to put my server upstairs. There is one thick concrete wall in between then. Distance about 5 metres.
Before I buy and find that it doesn't work: does anyone have experience with this? Would it work?
Luckily, they won't succeed. Control of hardware playback doesn't work anymore, since you no longer need special purpose hardware nowadays. MP3 can be played back on almost anything, lately too on PDA's. On PDA's for which anyone can write software. So even if the RIO etc. would get forbidden somehow, it wouldn't make a difference.
I can only laugh about their pathetic attempts to avoid the unavoidable.
I'm annoyed every day by the format of Slashdot. I read it because of it's interesting articles and discussions, but actually the interface sucks. Slashdot, and many other discussion sites, just should use NNTP/Usenet. That was made for discussions, you can have the same program to access lots of such discussion forums, with the same keybindings, scoring mechanisms etc.
It is really a pity that Usenet is falling apart, and is fragmented into so many clumsy-to-access discussion forums.
The fact that someone who manages to write a tool like Lilypond (can't be an idiot), and also yourself, has to read lots and lots of books and learn through writing 10's of thousands of lines on how to really use the language, is not a good sign.
As for myself, I have about 5 years of exp. with C++ and two years now with STL. It is a big improvement (STL), I can write nice programs in C++ after all these years. BUT: I think it takes too long, and average people may never make it to understand the language and use it effectively.
Currently I'm using Java, swearing a lot and longing back for C++ often. Still I'd really like to try Phyton or Scheme once. There must be an easier and more fool-proof way to do the nice things that can be done in C++.