You're missing my point too. I'm not saying MS is going to make Windows another Unix. I'm saying it will give Windows some of the advantages of Unix environments. That does not mean GNU tools. That just means the ability to natively admin a server with a command line (instead of having to use remote desktop or install SSH)), a way to make minimal installs, a way to do most tasks with a shell and automate them along with better scripting, more protocol compatibility, etc.
Who talked about using existing scripts? We're talking about giving it equivalent abilities. Not to make it a clone. Again, if this strategy from Microsoft is new to you people, you know even less about MS than I thought so far. What the article describes has been going on for a -while-, and its not new. People in this discussion (like you) are just reading too much into it.
All it means is that Windows (which btw, already has a partial, optional, Unix-like stack btw!) is going to offer more open source tools, more command-line utilities, more GUI-less fonctions, more open protocols.
Thats it. And thats been in the process for like ever (The latest version of Exchange for example, is fully administrated from Windows Powershell. The GUI works Unix-style, with a front end calling the CLI commands.).
OSs don't sell if they're not bundled, aside in the enterprise space (which you often DO have to buy separately... most Dell servers for example).
I do agree though that when someone goes to Dell (or whatever)'s web site, when they pick the OS, it should be like (depending on the package), Windows or Ubuntu as the default, and then +100$ (or -100$ depending on the default) for the other option. Then I feel it would be fair for everyone. It would show that Windows is not free, it would give the user a choice, the user would not have to install the OS himself/herself, and all around, would give a kind of "full disclosure".
Copyright is there because while, once the work is created, copying it indefinitely is "free", for that to happen the work has to exist in the first place. And a significant (note: I did not say the majority) amount of valuable work would not exist without it.
Try copying something that doesn't exist for kicks::cough how many good open source AAA videogames are there cough::.
And thats just as stupid as the comment in the article. The copyright and patent systems may be out of wack, but the concept of closed source brings to the table certain things Open Source never will.
Forsaking -either- open source or closed source would harm the market and most importantly, the customers.
You didn't know of synonyms, but you've also haven't been working (from your post) with RDBMSs that have it as a first class feature for almost a decade, so its normal... I don't know much about non-standard compliant features of MySQL or Postgres either. In an SQL Server environment however, its no more obscure than the temporary table syntax. For locking issues, in SQL Server, its stupid simple: if your stored procedure is used mostly in static data (a report or something), you add the No Lock optimizer hint. If you're in SQL Server 2005, you have to investigate the various locking mechanisms, especially the snapshot kind. While thats not the answer to everything, 90% of the time those 2 things solve it (assuming you don't use explicit cursors, in which case it does become tricky, but in SQL Server, which is the environment it was in, there's a big red flag around cursors, so there wasn't a single one in any of the T-SQL written anywhere). For the other 10%, you have system stored procedures that will pop up exactly the cause of the lock, when it happened, why, at which level, its progression, etc. Add the SQL Server profiler, and you're set.
For horizontal scaling, I said no clue on how to configure. That is, didn't even know which options were available. The method they selected was a real time replication. If you're willing to take the performance hit of real time synchronisation of any kind (that is, transaction per transaction), then virtually all methods you can pick WILL be "point and click". The only time its tricky is if its not real time sync (which is most of the time for any real system, and THAT is hard...but its not what that DBA had picked). Mirroring, table partitioning. All simple methods that need to at least be CONSIDERED. But if you don't even know they -exist- (not you, the person I'm replying to, but them), its quite troublesome.
For "the impact of adding an index on a table", I may not be a DBA, but I've always had to handle this, yes, including on live databases. So yes, I am well aware of how that works:)
Really, I don't know which RDBMS you are used to admining...different ones have different things that are easy or hard about them. There are a lot of things about SQL Server and Oracle that are far beyond my grasp. Even the most complex index, locking scheme, or replication system aren't part of them.
Again though: If you're neither a Oracle or SQL Server DBA (which are more or less direct competitor, so have a remotely similar set of features), then obviously my comment may come as a huge "WTF!". For the little I've worked with DB2, MySQL, DBase, Pervasive and Postgres, they were totally different beasts. The DBA I'm thinking off was purely an SQL Server/Oracle DBA, however (we had DB2 databases, but aside for the security aspect, they were handled by external consultants).
Totally agree with you there, and I'm having exactly that problem in my current work place... They've been doing Ajax since a few -months- after the introduction of the XML HTTP active X in internet explorer for Outlook Web Access, something like 6-7 years ago, long before the word AJAX came out...
So even though Im fairly knowledgeable in virtually all mainstream or semi-mainstream web technologies of the past decade, from raw C with CGI Bin to.NET with ASP.NET AJAX, I'm looking at the code going "WHAT THE ****". The only thing I can do is either get me one of the "veterans" of the place to spend a week walking me through each sections, or copy pasting, modifying, and hope it works...
Newer ajax applications however, tend to be gems of software architecture... When you use frameworks such as ExtJS or ASP.NET AJAX, with all of the OOP and design patterns, modern software architecture techniques, and loose coupling of components, you end up with extremely clean, easy to understand code. Bonus if you use tools like VS2008 that give intellisense of these frameworks (VS2008's isn't so hot yet, but its just an example instead of naming more obscure javascript IDEs).
From those apps, you can learn a lot of stuff, really easily. My ONLY gripe, is using javascript notations in constructors. You end up with 4 levels of nested javascript object notation constructors, and have absolutely no clue which types are being passed down...so its hard to learn that. I wish Javascript used the C# 3.0 way (having the name of the object in front of the object initializer). Then you could learn how to use it from reading the code... otherwise its documentation time:(
Yup. I worked in a company thats in the fortune top 10... so a company that has millions upon millions of dollars of transaction saved per day... Their DBA Is a "Senior" DBA, having almost more years of DBA experience than I have years of BREATHING experience...
Yet they had no clue what synonyms were... no clue how to solve table locking issues (a common SQL Server problem and one of its main flaws in the 2000 edition and before, but if you're going to go the SQL Server route, you need to know how to handle it), no clue how to configure any kind of horizontal scaling except for replications... It was seriously pathetic... And that person was the only one who had admin access to the database... it was rediculous.
I know close to nothing about database administration, and I could remotely own that server in 20 minutes, and cause all sorts of hell. In the current IT environment, good DBAs are rare...and existing (crappy) DBAs are never replaced unless things aren't working (and as long as they're not hacked, things are "working", even if poorly).
A well designed web app using ExtJS is faster than an average desktop app sometimes... Using Adobe Air, its much, MUCH faster than the same app running in IE or Firefox... so performance should be acceptable.
Except the Linux version isn't maintained by Microsoft. AND even if it was, the web technologies development team at Microsoft is quite different from most of their other teams... (Many of them rave about Firefox and MAC OSX on their blogs for one...)
xhtml/css can only be handled if the proper properties are set and the markup is semantic. Else you get the text, yes, but it wont make any sense. The idea is with other technologies, making the application semanticaly correct is easier. They also provide more tools to give more info for the reader to parse.
Also keep in mind that Silverlight 1.0 is still just markup, and can be parsed the same way, at the worse.
Its probably EASIER to make a site accessible for the disabled using Flash, Silverlight, fucking ActiveX, whatever, than with straight XHTML/CSS. The former technologies have the features built in, and can more reliably interact with screen readers and whatsnot. Of course, the little 5 minutes 2 cent demos you see if you google for Silverlight don't use it, but its fairly simple. And definately easier to learn than the very simple, but incredibly numerous details you need to think about in XHTML for the disabled.
Indeed. Yahoo's management seems to be the only sane people in all this. Microsoft is out of wack for wanting to buy Yahoo, Yahoo's shareholders are being retards with this lawsuit.
It shouldn't be too hard to prove why Yahoo's management took that decision though.
I've worked for companies of 10 people who had enforceable (not trollish, genuinly new stuff) patents that we had valid implementations for. Do you really think Microsoft doesn't have any in such complex products?
(I'm not talking about if they SHOULD be inforceable. I'm talking about if they ARE).
Thinking Microsoft has very little is an opinion, and possibly a valid one. Saying they have nothing, is something else, and quite stupid.
Sorry. I guess my point was a bit vague. Or more accurately, I misunderstood the comment I replied to. I've just heard that argument a million times, and usually it is by people who equate: lots of people breaking a law = bad law.
Personally, I think that ALL laws must always be reevaluated for relevence, accuracy, and how well they meet their goals. But a lot of people breaking a law often has more to do with poor education, or misunderstanding of the goals of such laws (see: speeding laws... How many people don't realise that going 60 mph vs 50 mph is going to take much more than 20% more time to break?).
Basically, from the way I see it... we agree with each other. My communication skills were just lacking:)
Government sucks. The population does too. But I DEFINATELY agree with you the law needs to be re-examined, as do most contreversial laws, especially lately.
If you don't want much that Hollywood churns out, then nothing would happen to you. I mean, if its so crappy, you wouldn't download it, even for free, no? If you pirate it, its because you actually did want it: its just the price you weren't happy with.
Me, when I think something is shit, I go and get something better. If you think Windows is crap, get Linux. If you think Britney Spears is shit (who doesn't?), don't buy her music, get other stuff. If you think most commercial music is crap (I do), get indy music.
There, problem solved. I have something like 15 gigs of free (as in beer) music on my harddrive. Works for me.
Thats not how it works. With that logic, black men and women still shouldn't have any rights. There are WAY more people who go above speed limits than there are file sharers. Should we abolish those? (I know that a significant percentage of Slashdot readers think so, but...).
The government is given (indeed, by its people) the authority to do whats best for the country for the present and the future. Remember, these are not democracies, but democratic republics, or variations of it. Its job is to handle issues that the population might not be able to handle, or understand the implications of. A lot of people who share files illegaly don't even KNOW its against the law... many (including here on Slashdot) are not even knowledgeable of the impact of these laws, going from word to mouth, and crap they see on websites like this one, with absolutely no critical thought put into it (they beleive what they want to beleive). Now, because of that, it is totally pointless to try and have a balanced debate on if these laws are good or not.... Point is: Its not because half a country breaks a law, that its a bad law.
Now, thats cute in theory. In practice governments tend to totally suck at their job. But thats another story altogether. If -THIS- law is a good or bad one, is also a different debate. All i'm trying to say is, saying "If a lot of people break a law its a bad law, because its the people who decide!!!1!1!" is simply not a valid point.
Obviously because censorship and invasion of privacy is so evil, even parents shouldn't be able to do that to their childs! So it is the job of the older brother to protect the girl from her parents!!! OBVIOUSLY!/sarcasm.
For top notch positions, the yearly salary is just cosmetic. Its not uncommon for high ranked managers and architects to make some silly salary like minimum wadge, but get hundreds over hundreds of thousands in bonus every year. Its a whole different ballbark from the average salaried developer monkey.
Slashdot Mirror
You're missing my point too. I'm not saying MS is going to make Windows another Unix. I'm saying it will give Windows some of the advantages of Unix environments. That does not mean GNU tools. That just means the ability to natively admin a server with a command line (instead of having to use remote desktop or install SSH)), a way to make minimal installs, a way to do most tasks with a shell and automate them along with better scripting, more protocol compatibility, etc.
Who talked about using existing scripts? We're talking about giving it equivalent abilities. Not to make it a clone. Again, if this strategy from Microsoft is new to you people, you know even less about MS than I thought so far. What the article describes has been going on for a -while-, and its not new. People in this discussion (like you) are just reading too much into it.
Err? Nothing even remotely hint at that.
All it means is that Windows (which btw, already has a partial, optional, Unix-like stack btw!) is going to offer more open source tools, more command-line utilities, more GUI-less fonctions, more open protocols.
Thats it. And thats been in the process for like ever (The latest version of Exchange for example, is fully administrated from Windows Powershell. The GUI works Unix-style, with a front end calling the CLI commands.).
Nothing more, nothing less.
A business tries to appeal to its market. The market changed. MS will change too. Its just long to shift gears of such a behemoth.
OSs don't sell if they're not bundled, aside in the enterprise space (which you often DO have to buy separately... most Dell servers for example).
I do agree though that when someone goes to Dell (or whatever)'s web site, when they pick the OS, it should be like (depending on the package), Windows or Ubuntu as the default, and then +100$ (or -100$ depending on the default) for the other option. Then I feel it would be fair for everyone. It would show that Windows is not free, it would give the user a choice, the user would not have to install the OS himself/herself, and all around, would give a kind of "full disclosure".
Thats what MS used to do. Its not really in a situation to do that anymore though.
Copyright is there because while, once the work is created, copying it indefinitely is "free", for that to happen the work has to exist in the first place. And a significant (note: I did not say the majority) amount of valuable work would not exist without it.
::cough how many good open source AAA videogames are there cough::.
Try copying something that doesn't exist for kicks
And thats just as stupid as the comment in the article. The copyright and patent systems may be out of wack, but the concept of closed source brings to the table certain things Open Source never will.
Forsaking -either- open source or closed source would harm the market and most importantly, the customers.
You didn't know of synonyms, but you've also haven't been working (from your post) with RDBMSs that have it as a first class feature for almost a decade, so its normal... I don't know much about non-standard compliant features of MySQL or Postgres either. In an SQL Server environment however, its no more obscure than the temporary table syntax. For locking issues, in SQL Server, its stupid simple: if your stored procedure is used mostly in static data (a report or something), you add the No Lock optimizer hint. If you're in SQL Server 2005, you have to investigate the various locking mechanisms, especially the snapshot kind. While thats not the answer to everything, 90% of the time those 2 things solve it (assuming you don't use explicit cursors, in which case it does become tricky, but in SQL Server, which is the environment it was in, there's a big red flag around cursors, so there wasn't a single one in any of the T-SQL written anywhere). For the other 10%, you have system stored procedures that will pop up exactly the cause of the lock, when it happened, why, at which level, its progression, etc. Add the SQL Server profiler, and you're set.
:)
For horizontal scaling, I said no clue on how to configure. That is, didn't even know which options were available. The method they selected was a real time replication. If you're willing to take the performance hit of real time synchronisation of any kind (that is, transaction per transaction), then virtually all methods you can pick WILL be "point and click". The only time its tricky is if its not real time sync (which is most of the time for any real system, and THAT is hard...but its not what that DBA had picked). Mirroring, table partitioning. All simple methods that need to at least be CONSIDERED. But if you don't even know they -exist- (not you, the person I'm replying to, but them), its quite troublesome.
For "the impact of adding an index on a table", I may not be a DBA, but I've always had to handle this, yes, including on live databases. So yes, I am well aware of how that works
Really, I don't know which RDBMS you are used to admining...different ones have different things that are easy or hard about them. There are a lot of things about SQL Server and Oracle that are far beyond my grasp. Even the most complex index, locking scheme, or replication system aren't part of them.
Again though: If you're neither a Oracle or SQL Server DBA (which are more or less direct competitor, so have a remotely similar set of features), then obviously my comment may come as a huge "WTF!". For the little I've worked with DB2, MySQL, DBase, Pervasive and Postgres, they were totally different beasts. The DBA I'm thinking off was purely an SQL Server/Oracle DBA, however (we had DB2 databases, but aside for the security aspect, they were handled by external consultants).
Totally agree with you there, and I'm having exactly that problem in my current work place... They've been doing Ajax since a few -months- after the introduction of the XML HTTP active X in internet explorer for Outlook Web Access, something like 6-7 years ago, long before the word AJAX came out...
.NET with ASP.NET AJAX, I'm looking at the code going "WHAT THE ****". The only thing I can do is either get me one of the "veterans" of the place to spend a week walking me through each sections, or copy pasting, modifying, and hope it works...
:(
So even though Im fairly knowledgeable in virtually all mainstream or semi-mainstream web technologies of the past decade, from raw C with CGI Bin to
Newer ajax applications however, tend to be gems of software architecture... When you use frameworks such as ExtJS or ASP.NET AJAX, with all of the OOP and design patterns, modern software architecture techniques, and loose coupling of components, you end up with extremely clean, easy to understand code. Bonus if you use tools like VS2008 that give intellisense of these frameworks (VS2008's isn't so hot yet, but its just an example instead of naming more obscure javascript IDEs).
From those apps, you can learn a lot of stuff, really easily. My ONLY gripe, is using javascript notations in constructors. You end up with 4 levels of nested javascript object notation constructors, and have absolutely no clue which types are being passed down...so its hard to learn that. I wish Javascript used the C# 3.0 way (having the name of the object in front of the object initializer). Then you could learn how to use it from reading the code... otherwise its documentation time
Yup. I worked in a company thats in the fortune top 10... so a company that has millions upon millions of dollars of transaction saved per day... Their DBA Is a "Senior" DBA, having almost more years of DBA experience than I have years of BREATHING experience...
Yet they had no clue what synonyms were... no clue how to solve table locking issues (a common SQL Server problem and one of its main flaws in the 2000 edition and before, but if you're going to go the SQL Server route, you need to know how to handle it), no clue how to configure any kind of horizontal scaling except for replications... It was seriously pathetic... And that person was the only one who had admin access to the database... it was rediculous.
I know close to nothing about database administration, and I could remotely own that server in 20 minutes, and cause all sorts of hell. In the current IT environment, good DBAs are rare...and existing (crappy) DBAs are never replaced unless things aren't working (and as long as they're not hacked, things are "working", even if poorly).
A well designed web app using ExtJS is faster than an average desktop app sometimes... Using Adobe Air, its much, MUCH faster than the same app running in IE or Firefox... so performance should be acceptable.
Except the Linux version isn't maintained by Microsoft. AND even if it was, the web technologies development team at Microsoft is quite different from most of their other teams... (Many of them rave about Firefox and MAC OSX on their blogs for one...)
xhtml/css can only be handled if the proper properties are set and the markup is semantic. Else you get the text, yes, but it wont make any sense. The idea is with other technologies, making the application semanticaly correct is easier. They also provide more tools to give more info for the reader to parse.
Also keep in mind that Silverlight 1.0 is still just markup, and can be parsed the same way, at the worse.
Its probably EASIER to make a site accessible for the disabled using Flash, Silverlight, fucking ActiveX, whatever, than with straight XHTML/CSS. The former technologies have the features built in, and can more reliably interact with screen readers and whatsnot. Of course, the little 5 minutes 2 cent demos you see if you google for Silverlight don't use it, but its fairly simple. And definately easier to learn than the very simple, but incredibly numerous details you need to think about in XHTML for the disabled.
Who needs a text editor in emacs anyway? Good old C-x M-c M-butterfly is all you need...
http://www.xkcd.com/378/
Thompson just ran out of bribe money faster than the RIAA.
Indeed. Yahoo's management seems to be the only sane people in all this. Microsoft is out of wack for wanting to buy Yahoo, Yahoo's shareholders are being retards with this lawsuit.
It shouldn't be too hard to prove why Yahoo's management took that decision though.
I've worked for companies of 10 people who had enforceable (not trollish, genuinly new stuff) patents that we had valid implementations for. Do you really think Microsoft doesn't have any in such complex products?
(I'm not talking about if they SHOULD be inforceable. I'm talking about if they ARE).
Thinking Microsoft has very little is an opinion, and possibly a valid one. Saying they have nothing, is something else, and quite stupid.
Sorry. I guess my point was a bit vague. Or more accurately, I misunderstood the comment I replied to. I've just heard that argument a million times, and usually it is by people who equate: lots of people breaking a law = bad law.
:)
Personally, I think that ALL laws must always be reevaluated for relevence, accuracy, and how well they meet their goals. But a lot of people breaking a law often has more to do with poor education, or misunderstanding of the goals of such laws (see: speeding laws... How many people don't realise that going 60 mph vs 50 mph is going to take much more than 20% more time to break?).
Basically, from the way I see it... we agree with each other. My communication skills were just lacking
Government sucks. The population does too. But I DEFINATELY agree with you the law needs to be re-examined, as do most contreversial laws, especially lately.
If you don't want much that Hollywood churns out, then nothing would happen to you. I mean, if its so crappy, you wouldn't download it, even for free, no? If you pirate it, its because you actually did want it: its just the price you weren't happy with.
Me, when I think something is shit, I go and get something better. If you think Windows is crap, get Linux. If you think Britney Spears is shit (who doesn't?), don't buy her music, get other stuff. If you think most commercial music is crap (I do), get indy music.
There, problem solved. I have something like 15 gigs of free (as in beer) music on my harddrive. Works for me.
Thats not how it works. With that logic, black men and women still shouldn't have any rights. There are WAY more people who go above speed limits than there are file sharers. Should we abolish those? (I know that a significant percentage of Slashdot readers think so, but...).
The government is given (indeed, by its people) the authority to do whats best for the country for the present and the future. Remember, these are not democracies, but democratic republics, or variations of it. Its job is to handle issues that the population might not be able to handle, or understand the implications of. A lot of people who share files illegaly don't even KNOW its against the law... many (including here on Slashdot) are not even knowledgeable of the impact of these laws, going from word to mouth, and crap they see on websites like this one, with absolutely no critical thought put into it (they beleive what they want to beleive). Now, because of that, it is totally pointless to try and have a balanced debate on if these laws are good or not.... Point is: Its not because half a country breaks a law, that its a bad law.
Now, thats cute in theory. In practice governments tend to totally suck at their job. But thats another story altogether. If -THIS- law is a good or bad one, is also a different debate. All i'm trying to say is, saying "If a lot of people break a law its a bad law, because its the people who decide!!!1!1!" is simply not a valid point.
Obviously because censorship and invasion of privacy is so evil, even parents shouldn't be able to do that to their childs! So it is the job of the older brother to protect the girl from her parents!!! OBVIOUSLY! /sarcasm.
Btrieve back then was top notch. Its just not quite as top notch with modern requirements, under the piece of crap that is Pervasive SQL.
I doubt the university's IT department has much control on what a student does to his/her personal computer.
For top notch positions, the yearly salary is just cosmetic. Its not uncommon for high ranked managers and architects to make some silly salary like minimum wadge, but get hundreds over hundreds of thousands in bonus every year. Its a whole different ballbark from the average salaried developer monkey.