I should go and take some screenshots of articles and posts saying how Vista is a failure. The same darn thing happened with XP: "OMG! no drivers! Games don't work! its so slow! doesn't work on my 266 mhz celeron!", and now the Slashdot crowd spits out quite a bit that Microsoft is a failure -except- for XP, which is semi-acceptable.
Now we see with Vista? Same damn thing. "OMG no drivers, omg games, omg its slow, omg omg omg failure, I'll never upgrade from the previous version!"
Same. Damn. Thing. Hell, XP was worse: my 1 year old (at the time) lap-top had a hard time with XP, and I had paid a fortune for it. My 3 years old budget lap-top runs Vista just fine.
The only thing that can rival Microsoft's FUD, is the fud coming from thousands of geeks banded together:)
Its a shame really. Anyone who has been able to talk with, or at least follow some of Microsoft's flagship developers and architects, know that for all its flaws, that company has amazing, talented people that strive for nothing but make good products and please their customers.
Then the guys who sign the paychecks pulls stuff like that >.
Well, as many stated to similar post, that is trademark law. You can sit on a patent, point that someone is violating it (no threats though), and do absolutely nothing, then eventually change your mind. Patents are more or less in stone.
In this day and age, an architect in general (and I mean a real software architect, not the kind who take on the architect role without even knowing a thing about the things you mentionned) are rare. Really rare. Rarer than that.
So an architect for emerging technologies is more or less inexistant, and the few that are found, get snatched at rediculously high salaries OR, total opposite, are being made fun at by people who don't know better and forced into lesser roles. Which means that most of these web applications and design jobs are done by architects who are either unfit for their job, or are specialized in a different kind of tech.
The later are the worse. Usually, architects who are responsible of large "Web 2.0" projects, aren't even knowledgeable of the web world. They're most of the time desktop clients based system architects. And thats always a disaster...
95% of the patents that are actually valid among those 2XX patents, are almost certainly in everything thats trying to be carbon copies of Microsoft products. So not really in Linux, KDE, whatever, but more, indeed, in things like Samba, Mono (thats the big one), ReactOS, etc.
Mono is certainly playing with the flames. C# and most of the core framework are definately up for the grab. Visual Basic and ASP.NET, Winform, etc, most definately NOT. Yet they go and play there anyway... So really, anything thats not purposely trying to copy something, is probably safe. Linux for example, surely is touching a patent or two (and not necessarly one of the ones MS is using in its claim, but they have so many...), but thats a non-factor. Clones however... especially a clone of one of MS' main product...thats big ouch.
Sorry: I have learned times and times again, that the only way to try and get some kind of statement on slashdot is to use the mob's language, and carefully word it the way slashdotters want to read it, while still saying what you have to say. The translation would probably sound something like "As a way for Microsoft to show some (if little) good faith in the whole anti-thrust lawsuit deal."
Of course, it was fairly obvious that free software would infridge on some MS patents: there's so much code from so many people, including people who have no clue what they're doing (don't get me wrong, also a lot from totally brilliant people!), and I doubt maintainers check the source at every checkin to be sure no patent is being messed with...
However, I always saw it as a way for Microsoft to loosen its illegal monopoly status: by letting free software use some of its patents, its leveling the playing field.
And now they screwed it up. Countdown before more anti-thrust lawsuits start, 5...4...3...2....
VS2003 = old stuff that sucked, so yes I answered to that.
Backward compatibility was the Windows Vista stuff. Only way to make it "not always administrator" without breaking everything.
And no need to learn Silverlight. Its advertised as a Flash clone, but its not (at the root). Silverlight is a subset of Windows Presentation Foundation from.NET 3.0, which has been out for a while now, and.NET 3.0's technologies (well, except for CardSpace), not counting that WPF is Vista's main UI development API. So really, no need to learn whats new in it, you just have to learn whats -not- in it (in other word, what works cross-browser, since WPF as a whole is a desktop app tech mostly, even though it can be used in a browser).
Which just proves my point. You know nothing (none of that "how much spare time do you have. I'm talking about core, basic MS tech, the stuff junior devs learn within weeks) of MS offering. It could be better, yes, but basically the arguments you gave were garbage.
So, aside for Vista and Zune, your argument comes down to:
A) The old stuff sucked, and I didn't bother looking at the new. B) Backward compatibility is causing them to suck!. But if they dare breaking it to bring something good to the table, they need to die! C) I don't understand what Microsoft tool or platform XYZ is used for at the high end level, but just playing with it for 5 minutes I can't do anything useful with it, so it sucks.
Yup, pretty much. That and the constant changes because the big guys and marketing, on top of lawmakers, change the rules daily. One of the worse thing I had to deal with though, was non-standard EDIs. Almost had to make custom tables for the big customers, because abstracting it to fit all the weird ways would have taken too long (though it wasn't impossible, we just had one amazingly awful architect)
Well, I'd think the point is to only check the pages that are actually displayed in google. If there's a robot.txt blocking a page, Google won't display that -exact- page, and it thus won't even be in the links I might end up clicking directly from google.
The loss is that you could go to a safe link, then be redirected or whatever to an unsafe one, so its indeed not perfect, but...
Because these kinds of systems are notoriously hard to develop, and never actually work right. The only way someone has a chance in hell of making one (without 10 years experience doing nothing but that) is to get something that was made by someone/some company that worked on it for 10 years doing nothing but that, then customise it.
Otherwise, and like 80%+ of companies using such system out there, the system ends up hurting more than helping, might as well do things manually.
The funniest part of that post, is that all of it is true. The amount of people I see take out the SUV or minivan to go than 2 blocks away is sickening.
You more or less described exactly what Windows Presentation Foundation is (and to a lesser but significant extent, Silverlight), down to the XML/declarative bit. Of course, with the last line of your comment, that won't work:)
But something based on a similar idea would work great.
Its quite hard to use something without either: A) have the original, or B) copy it. If the copyright holder doesn't allow you to copy the work, you have to have a way to get the original out of him or her, which most likely fall under the laws of physical properties (you need the harddrive, the original disk, the original painting, etc).
So yeah, it only controls copying, because thats 99% of what you need to control the entire work.
Before someone else says it: nothing stops you from selling GPL code. Its just that the people you sell it to have to get the source, and can then resell it, so you need to be creative and add value to it (like Redhat, etc).
Totally agree with the rest of your argument though.
Thats interesting about the app caching btw. I've noticed Visual Studio and most.NET apps are zippy quick on Vista, but I figured it was because since Vista uses.NET a lot itself, that all the librairies were already in memory, but if it has the same effect on Java, MS must really have optimised something in there that helps such runtimes...
The indexing is most definately one of the main issues, I'd dare say even more than Aero. I have 2 fairly noisy SATA drives in RAID 0 (on a desktop machine though), and since I've moved to Vista, they're driving me insane. I have more than enough RAM to turn off swap completly without any issues on Vista, yet I hear the disks scratching sound almost continually.
Thats the only issue I've had with Vista so I guess its not a big deal, but...
The thing with Silverlight is that its a technology that was made with a certain vision in mind, and that the marketing guys switched.
Its a partial implementation of Windows Presentation Foundation's express client for cross-platform operations.
In other words, originally, it was made to bring business web-based apps to the table without leaving non-IE browsers out of the loop, since a fair amount of large companies have a mixed-browser and platform environment. Then some marketing bozo at Microsoft figured they could kill 2 birds with one stone by using it to fight Adobe at the same time.
Silverlight will still be ungodly useful for those of us who make internal web applications by shaving development time (WPF, even dumbed down, let you develop browser-based apps an order of magnitude faster than HTML/CSS ever will, even if you're a guru) while keeping the deployement issues to a minimum. If it catches on and can be used on the public web too, thats just a bonus.
I don't think the average slashdotter would think that far, but the way I see it is: the rules that protect Microsoft's copyrights, are the same rules that make the GPL valid: in other words, the person with the copyright can make the rules (to some extent).
Cracking MS Office, or using GPLed code in a shrink wrapped closed source software... in the end, its the same thing, protected by more or less the same laws at the core (decorated by a bunch of different ones, but the core ones are the same, is what I mean).
So a smart slashdotter would be against software piracy, if they value the rules in their favorite licenses.
Slashdot Mirror
I should go and take some screenshots of articles and posts saying how Vista is a failure. The same darn thing happened with XP: "OMG! no drivers! Games don't work! its so slow! doesn't work on my 266 mhz celeron!", and now the Slashdot crowd spits out quite a bit that Microsoft is a failure -except- for XP, which is semi-acceptable.
:)
Now we see with Vista? Same damn thing. "OMG no drivers, omg games, omg its slow, omg omg omg failure, I'll never upgrade from the previous version!"
Same. Damn. Thing. Hell, XP was worse: my 1 year old (at the time) lap-top had a hard time with XP, and I had paid a fortune for it. My 3 years old budget lap-top runs Vista just fine.
The only thing that can rival Microsoft's FUD, is the fud coming from thousands of geeks banded together
Its a shame really. Anyone who has been able to talk with, or at least follow some of Microsoft's flagship developers and architects, know that for all its flaws, that company has amazing, talented people that strive for nothing but make good products and please their customers.
Then the guys who sign the paychecks pulls stuff like that >.
Well, as many stated to similar post, that is trademark law. You can sit on a patent, point that someone is violating it (no threats though), and do absolutely nothing, then eventually change your mind. Patents are more or less in stone.
Nope, which is where the whole GIF crap came from back in the days.
In this day and age, an architect in general (and I mean a real software architect, not the kind who take on the architect role without even knowing a thing about the things you mentionned) are rare. Really rare. Rarer than that.
So an architect for emerging technologies is more or less inexistant, and the few that are found, get snatched at rediculously high salaries OR, total opposite, are being made fun at by people who don't know better and forced into lesser roles. Which means that most of these web applications and design jobs are done by architects who are either unfit for their job, or are specialized in a different kind of tech.
The later are the worse. Usually, architects who are responsible of large "Web 2.0" projects, aren't even knowledgeable of the web world. They're most of the time desktop clients based system architects. And thats always a disaster...
95% of the patents that are actually valid among those 2XX patents, are almost certainly in everything thats trying to be carbon copies of Microsoft products. So not really in Linux, KDE, whatever, but more, indeed, in things like Samba, Mono (thats the big one), ReactOS, etc.
Mono is certainly playing with the flames. C# and most of the core framework are definately up for the grab. Visual Basic and ASP.NET, Winform, etc, most definately NOT. Yet they go and play there anyway... So really, anything thats not purposely trying to copy something, is probably safe. Linux for example, surely is touching a patent or two (and not necessarly one of the ones MS is using in its claim, but they have so many...), but thats a non-factor. Clones however... especially a clone of one of MS' main product...thats big ouch.
Sorry: I have learned times and times again, that the only way to try and get some kind of statement on slashdot is to use the mob's language, and carefully word it the way slashdotters want to read it, while still saying what you have to say. The translation would probably sound something like "As a way for Microsoft to show some (if little) good faith in the whole anti-thrust lawsuit deal."
Of course, it was fairly obvious that free software would infridge on some MS patents: there's so much code from so many people, including people who have no clue what they're doing (don't get me wrong, also a lot from totally brilliant people!), and I doubt maintainers check the source at every checkin to be sure no patent is being messed with...
However, I always saw it as a way for Microsoft to loosen its illegal monopoly status: by letting free software use some of its patents, its leveling the playing field.
And now they screwed it up. Countdown before more anti-thrust lawsuits start, 5...4...3...2....
VS2003 = old stuff that sucked, so yes I answered to that.
.NET 3.0, which has been out for a while now, and .NET 3.0's technologies (well, except for CardSpace), not counting that WPF is Vista's main UI development API. So really, no need to learn whats new in it, you just have to learn whats -not- in it (in other word, what works cross-browser, since WPF as a whole is a desktop app tech mostly, even though it can be used in a browser).
Backward compatibility was the Windows Vista stuff. Only way to make it "not always administrator" without breaking everything.
And no need to learn Silverlight. Its advertised as a Flash clone, but its not (at the root). Silverlight is a subset of Windows Presentation Foundation from
Which just proves my point. You know nothing (none of that "how much spare time do you have. I'm talking about core, basic MS tech, the stuff junior devs learn within weeks) of MS offering. It could be better, yes, but basically the arguments you gave were garbage.
So, aside for Vista and Zune, your argument comes down to:
A) The old stuff sucked, and I didn't bother looking at the new.
B) Backward compatibility is causing them to suck!. But if they dare breaking it to bring something good to the table, they need to die!
C) I don't understand what Microsoft tool or platform XYZ is used for at the high end level, but just playing with it for 5 minutes I can't do anything useful with it, so it sucks.
Ok, sure.
Yup, pretty much. That and the constant changes because the big guys and marketing, on top of lawmakers, change the rules daily. One of the worse thing I had to deal with though, was non-standard EDIs. Almost had to make custom tables for the big customers, because abstracting it to fit all the weird ways would have taken too long (though it wasn't impossible, we just had one amazingly awful architect)
Well, I'd think the point is to only check the pages that are actually displayed in google. If there's a robot.txt blocking a page, Google won't display that -exact- page, and it thus won't even be in the links I might end up clicking directly from google.
The loss is that you could go to a safe link, then be redirected or whatever to an unsafe one, so its indeed not perfect, but...
Because these kinds of systems are notoriously hard to develop, and never actually work right. The only way someone has a chance in hell of making one (without 10 years experience doing nothing but that) is to get something that was made by someone/some company that worked on it for 10 years doing nothing but that, then customise it.
Otherwise, and like 80%+ of companies using such system out there, the system ends up hurting more than helping, might as well do things manually.
The funniest part of that post, is that all of it is true. The amount of people I see take out the SUV or minivan to go than 2 blocks away is sickening.
Yes, actually.
You more or less described exactly what Windows Presentation Foundation is (and to a lesser but significant extent, Silverlight), down to the XML/declarative bit. Of course, with the last line of your comment, that won't work :)
But something based on a similar idea would work great.
Its quite hard to use something without either: A) have the original, or B) copy it. If the copyright holder doesn't allow you to copy the work, you have to have a way to get the original out of him or her, which most likely fall under the laws of physical properties (you need the harddrive, the original disk, the original painting, etc).
So yeah, it only controls copying, because thats 99% of what you need to control the entire work.
Before someone else says it: nothing stops you from selling GPL code. Its just that the people you sell it to have to get the source, and can then resell it, so you need to be creative and add value to it (like Redhat, etc).
Totally agree with the rest of your argument though.
"Special" license being half of the versions of Vista. Not all that special.
Thats interesting about the app caching btw. I've noticed Visual Studio and most .NET apps are zippy quick on Vista, but I figured it was because since Vista uses .NET a lot itself, that all the librairies were already in memory, but if it has the same effect on Java, MS must really have optimised something in there that helps such runtimes...
The indexing is most definately one of the main issues, I'd dare say even more than Aero. I have 2 fairly noisy SATA drives in RAID 0 (on a desktop machine though), and since I've moved to Vista, they're driving me insane. I have more than enough RAM to turn off swap completly without any issues on Vista, yet I hear the disks scratching sound almost continually.
Thats the only issue I've had with Vista so I guess its not a big deal, but...
The thing with Silverlight is that its a technology that was made with a certain vision in mind, and that the marketing guys switched.
Its a partial implementation of Windows Presentation Foundation's express client for cross-platform operations.
In other words, originally, it was made to bring business web-based apps to the table without leaving non-IE browsers out of the loop, since a fair amount of large companies have a mixed-browser and platform environment. Then some marketing bozo at Microsoft figured they could kill 2 birds with one stone by using it to fight Adobe at the same time.
Silverlight will still be ungodly useful for those of us who make internal web applications by shaving development time (WPF, even dumbed down, let you develop browser-based apps an order of magnitude faster than HTML/CSS ever will, even if you're a guru) while keeping the deployement issues to a minimum. If it catches on and can be used on the public web too, thats just a bonus.
I don't think the average slashdotter would think that far, but the way I see it is: the rules that protect Microsoft's copyrights, are the same rules that make the GPL valid: in other words, the person with the copyright can make the rules (to some extent).
Cracking MS Office, or using GPLed code in a shrink wrapped closed source software... in the end, its the same thing, protected by more or less the same laws at the core (decorated by a bunch of different ones, but the core ones are the same, is what I mean).
So a smart slashdotter would be against software piracy, if they value the rules in their favorite licenses.
I'm going to start a mass sacrefice of kittens. Please MS, think of the kittens.
Its the typical .NET deal. First time you run something it takes a bit, after that its instant.
So basically, what makes it suck less, is to use it more.