Mostly because more and more, computers are being treated like appliances... So anything basic that it cannot do straight out of the box, or by installing only ONE package, is something "missing" from a user's point of view.
The equivalent of sudo is "runas.exe". I didn't use XP/2k for a while so I forget if they allows it, but I can debug as a normal user just fine as a normal user in Vista, thats for sure. as for installing software, that depends on the installer (unfortunately Windows Installer requires admin, and thats a huge problem, but many don't).
The only times I need to elevate priviledge (never have to actually login as admin) is: 1)Dealing with actual admin stuff (computer diagnostic, IIS, TFS, etc) 2)installing stuff with Windows installer (thats so stupid, I'll agree) or for all users (normal) 3)messing with non-user files (normal)
I wouldn't get my hopes up too much on Windows 7... it will be -just- enough not to violate anti-thrust laws.
Version -after- that will be "the one". A company like MS cannot move that fast... Vista took everything they had since it was a big direction shift (people can say what they want, but security wise, Vista is quite solid...and thats saying much from an MS product). It will took everything they have to make anti-thrust people ok. And then it will take everything they have again to be open-ish.
They're moving in the right direction though...even if half the company is doing it kicking and screaming (I say half, because a lot of these things are from their own "star" employes pushing them, too).
One thing that makes me wonder about it. Any half assed programmer knows that literals are easy to notice in an hex editor, or with a decompiler. If someone with an automatic decompiler was able to look at the output and find something suspecious, it means it really wasnt obfuscated or hidden really well... So the guy would have known he ran a high risk of getting caught.
I'm unfamiliar with the tool really, but I'd be guessing its not really aimed at the "Click Here for Free Smilies!!!" crowd...so that was a very poor move to do something this easily noticed...
So either way, its incompetence: either he mistakenly left debug code in, either he did the worse attempt at spyware in history.
I completly agree with you. Then again, its little different from, let say, people who talk about abolishing copyright in the name of "freedom of speech", when all they care about is "free as in beer".
Of course, we can't generalise, for a large chunk of people thats not true, but forthe majority....
Seriously, everyone's the same... the thing that makes the RIAA worse is that they do it on such a large scale fueled by millions.
They're doing things the vigilante way... "If no one is going to stop people from infringing copyright, we will!!!". Which is obviously illegal and bad in so many ways... However, aside for the vast difference in budget and power, the idea isn't too different from people (and they're common on this site) going: "If no one will change the law, I will simply ignore it!!! Come on the free downloads!! GOOOO PIRATE BAY!" or whatsnot... Both sides are overzealous people wanting to take the law into their own hand.
And its not a matter of people vs corporation either...as both sides are just people wanting to handle their money the way they wish... Also interesting to note that the second group from my example started before the former...
In the end, MOST people think they're above the law and that their own moral, judgement, and wallet is above everyone else's.
From my experience, when a codebase is bad, everyone knows it really quick, and has already admitted failure years ago. Its just (and thats statistically shown in countless studies) that restarting a codebase from scratch is the fastest way to bankrupcy.
No, remaking a 40 screen web apps from scratch doesn't count. Not the same level as I'm talking about.
Definately a good idea, if its possible. Right now when looking at buying a new computer, i'm looking at the dual cores, not quad core machines. Why? Because the dual cores will have higher clock speed (much higher) at the same price. Most software (read:games, hehehe) are poorly multithreaded, and will benefit more from higher clock speed than multi core. So overall, the computer feels faster. A suggestion like yours would be a cool compromise.
To be fair, you have to realise how crappy at decision making most IT people are... If all managers had that "humility", even more projects would fail than they do now...
Manager: "Hmm....well, on this decision, I guess I'll have to delegate to you. Now, honestly, what do you think we should do??" Dev: "Scrap the java codebase and start over from scratch in Ruby on Rails" Manager: "Hmm...didn't we work on this for 10 years and have millions of lines of code invested, including stuff that we can't readily replace because we're still trying to replace that last senior dev?" Dev: "Scrap the codebase and start over" Manager: "Well...ok!"
That wouldn't go too well:) Now, some IT people have good decision making skills and can readily assist managers... but thats rare:)
"In thst thry have a small market share". Thats it. They ARE using strongarm tactics to maintain their dominance, especially with their satellite products (iTune, iPods, etc). But by law, it IS fine as long as their market share is small (and are having issues in certain countries already over iPods and whatsnot).
I think the issue is, let say you buy an average/high end computer from dell (minus the XPS line). You can get something like a Core 2 Duo 2.6 ghz with 2-4 gigs of ram and a 500 gigs harddrive....not too shabby....with an integrated intel chipset by default.
So the rest of the machine will be screaming... People then have expectations on their games going on from there. Its silly, I know...but those chipsets are used -everywhere-, not just in low end computers or work lap-tops, and customers arent properly warned about them.
A big group of people who disagree with each other. Its like if they werent participating, because the result will be a big soup of everyone's idea... so the entity may as well be separate. (Its a big complain about the W3C from its own members, thus why you see things like HTML5 pop up)
On Slashdot, you keep hearing about "This is the standard!!!", but the W3C and other such entities do not make standards. They propose standards. Then the market decides if it wants it or not. Since a lot of bodies don't have the time or manpower to make anything better (and even if they could, it would be quite a waste of time and money), they take what the W3C spits out and implement it. As good a spec as any. And -then- it becomes the standard. Stuff like Acid Test helps meet that goal.
That being said, as time went on, the W3C really started spitting out real crap, so I'm not sure that its such a good goal to have... As opposed to standards like WS-I, which represents the real world and really do help on a day to day basis.
Indeed... as someone who game on PC a lot, Im used to minimum requirements ("capable") meaning "the game won't crash when you start it up, and thats all you get". So thats what I expected there too, honestly.
I guess the only thing is the marketing swing to it...it wasnt very obvious when you saw a "Capable" sticker that there even WAS a "Designed For" one, as opposed to a game box, where the "recommended" requirements are right next to the "minimum" requirements...
The difference is fairly big: the customers here aren't the people using Silverlight to use the applications. Its the developers and content providers. If MS stops providing it cross platform, it becomes useless to the developers. And that is more troublesome.
Little piece of info: Silverlight was originaly WPF/E (Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere), a subset of Windows' new UI framework, but crossplatform. The developers who liked WPF (especially the XBAPs, which are WPF applications that can be served through a browser, with zero HTML and stuff...), but figured it would be totally useless on the mainstream web (its useful internally for business apps though), pushed very hard on WPF/E (Which is now Silverlight 2.0. The first Silverlight has very little to do with the WPF/E previews) to have as much as possible included in it, so they could serve WPF on Windows and Macs (at the time, Linux wasn't in the picture). People also pushed a lot to have it elsewhere, thus MS' indirect support for Moonlight.
Assuming it catch on (and it will: the problem is that Silverlight 1.0 is NOT what developers have been pushing and hyping... Silverlight 2.0 is... 1.0 was just released to help make its name, but it has very little to do with WPF/E, unlike 2.0. Crossplatform web-deployable.NET development will be part of 2.0, which a lot of.NET developers are drooling over), MS will simply not be able to pull the plug on it. The developer push is too strong.
Thats again, fairly different from things like IE and WMP for Macs. MS isn't supplying a product to people who wish Microsoft didn't exist. They're supplying a product to the people who live and breath Microsoft:.NET developers. And those developers request cross-platform support. (And I'm not talking about the average forum dweller. I'm talking about the corporate customers here, the big cash cows). In those situations, Microsoft has mostly always delivered. Crap products sometimes, but they never dropped support. (Before pointing out VB6 and COM, keep in mind COM/COM+ interop is a fully supported part of.NET)
Of course, you're duplicating a ton of stuff in there. Workflow Foundation, Comm Foundation and Presentation Foundation are.NET 3.0. SQL Server 2008 isn't out yet. Visual Studio Team System is something developers don't need to worrie about (a few features of Visual Studio that should be 5 minutes to pick up if you have the 6000$ version of VS, and a server component that should be handled by infrastructure people), etc. LINQ is just a part of.NEt 3.5, nothing special. Silverlight 1.0 can be safely ignored, and Silverlight 2.0 is just Presentation Foundation with less features (but is effectively the same model). Office development is nothing new, and Sharepoint's been around for a long time.
So that really leaves a list of:.NET 3.5, the formerly known as WinFX stack (.NET 3.0), the 2008 stack of tools, Win Server 2008 (IIS7 is part of it really, there's been a new IIS with every Windows Server), and a new version of Office with its associated stack.
Virtually all of the serious Windows developers I know are already heavily familiar with 2/3rd of that list, and the rest is stuff they don't need for their work (most don't need to know about Office development, very few use Workflow cuz its a niche tool, SQL Server 2008 won't be deployed in most places for years, etc).
Very few people looked at.NET 3.0 because aside for Workflow Foundation (which is fairly high end, few.NET devs will ever touch it, though its wonderful by the way), it wasn't integrated in.NET 3.0, so for all practical purpose, no one did.NET 3.0 until 3.5. And very few people touched 3.5 because it just came out (especially if you don't have an MSDN subscription... the boxed product only recently become available. Its a bit hard to buy something thats not even available yet. It takes more than 3 months.
On our side, we ported our application to 2008 this week. It took... two days. Considering.NET 3.5 is fully backward compatible, expect people to switch as soon as time allows (or funds are allocated). Thats rare early in the year, but by summer, a large amount of projects should be shifted.
Get rid of cd keys, license terms, eulas, and stop suing your customers!!!
I hear that a lot. "They sue their customers!!", when talking about MS, the RIAA, etc... Yet it so rarely happens, I don't know why people use that in their arguments. They sue everyone BUT their customers...which is the whole point: sue people trying to get your product without being your customer.
Now, don't get me wrong: I'm not saying its right, and I agree with the idea of your point... But they don't sue their customers (at least, almost never, there are exceptions to every rules).
Exactly. And in the current economic context, GOOD (emphasis: good!) developers are in such high demand, they can be incredibly picky about the job they take... in 2001-2002, you could get anyone to do anything. In 2008, even if you have someone work on the coolest project -EVER-, they will find a COOLER project to work on, and ditch you for it... nevermind if your project sucks:)
A company I did contractual work for a while ago had a big legacy of PowerBuilder stuff... The only way they could get anyone to maintain it was hire straight-out-of-school students with no experience, through a consulting firm with a huge markup (and the new hired were paid huge premiums too). They sucked, and they were incredibly expensive...but its all they had to work with... Fortunately it was an incredibly large company, so they could afford it. If the company's small....it sinks.
All technology is extict and replaced within a decade.
More than long enough, if you play your cards right. Both ways have merits. If you back a technology and get actual specialists, you can get things done way faster than with generic "good" devs that "can learn anything". From too many companies to count I worked for, and seeing both side of the fence more times than I can count, the difference is quite extreme. Just use some mostly technology agnostic protocols on the parts harder to replace (here we have a top of the line, custom made operational research problems solving engine that is realisticaly impossible to replace, so its wrapped with an XML-based messenging system that can be used by anything that can manipulate strings, from Cobol to Javascript going by Ruby, so we're fine, for example), and you're good to go.
So you specialise in a tech, get the job done in half the time, and replace it twice as often. Different advantages and drawbacks in both cases, so one has to study and make sure they pick what suits their business model best, but both ways are viable in their own situations. When that tech is about to tank, retrain your specialists, no big deal. The main issue the summary talked about was when you lose your employees... Thats where it gets tricky. If you have a technology that anyone can learn, but no one WANTS to learn (for example: Powerbuilder, Coldfusion, etc), thats when you're screwed. You have to pick SOMETHING to make your applications with...
Actually, the main thing that makes what the article states possible is FastCGI for IIS 7 and Windows Server 2008 (though there is one decent version for WinServer2003 I beleive). Its just that Zend made a version of PHP that got certified for that version of FastCGI.
If you get any relatively tested "CGI-compliant" environment and use it with that new FastCGI version, it should run just as well. Not just Zend's PHP, and heck, not just PHP at all, it will work with the others too.
Err? Its not even ambiguous. "Developing on Windows workstations". Developing and Workstation next to each other.
And it would make sense. Obviously tons and tons of people use Windows (and there are some decent web tools to complement the PHP developement, plus stuff like photoshop, etc), but PHP on Windows sucked ass. So obviously the hosting wouldn't be on Windows (most of the time).
Now with this, while you would not migrate a Linux box to a Windows one for PHP, if you just so happen to have a Windows Server with fully configured IIS around (more common than you'd think, with Sharepoint, Exchange, TFS, etc, being relatively popular), you don't need to setup a Linux box just for PHP and nothing else.
There still has to be existing investment reasons and stuff though... one of the main advantages of PHP is that its free... so dumping free PHP on a 4 digit $ box is a bit counter productive in quite a few situations.
Slashdot Mirror
Mostly because more and more, computers are being treated like appliances... So anything basic that it cannot do straight out of the box, or by installing only ONE package, is something "missing" from a user's point of view.
The equivalent of sudo is "runas.exe". I didn't use XP/2k for a while so I forget if they allows it, but I can debug as a normal user just fine as a normal user in Vista, thats for sure. as for installing software, that depends on the installer (unfortunately Windows Installer requires admin, and thats a huge problem, but many don't).
The only times I need to elevate priviledge (never have to actually login as admin) is:
1)Dealing with actual admin stuff (computer diagnostic, IIS, TFS, etc)
2)installing stuff with Windows installer (thats so stupid, I'll agree) or for all users (normal)
3)messing with non-user files (normal)
I wouldn't get my hopes up too much on Windows 7... it will be -just- enough not to violate anti-thrust laws.
Version -after- that will be "the one". A company like MS cannot move that fast... Vista took everything they had since it was a big direction shift (people can say what they want, but security wise, Vista is quite solid...and thats saying much from an MS product). It will took everything they have to make anti-thrust people ok. And then it will take everything they have again to be open-ish.
They're moving in the right direction though...even if half the company is doing it kicking and screaming (I say half, because a lot of these things are from their own "star" employes pushing them, too).
One thing that makes me wonder about it. Any half assed programmer knows that literals are easy to notice in an hex editor, or with a decompiler. If someone with an automatic decompiler was able to look at the output and find something suspecious, it means it really wasnt obfuscated or hidden really well... So the guy would have known he ran a high risk of getting caught.
I'm unfamiliar with the tool really, but I'd be guessing its not really aimed at the "Click Here for Free Smilies!!!" crowd...so that was a very poor move to do something this easily noticed...
So either way, its incompetence: either he mistakenly left debug code in, either he did the worse attempt at spyware in history.
To do a lookup to see if the email was received. Common stuff when debugging email sending software.
I completly agree with you. Then again, its little different from, let say, people who talk about abolishing copyright in the name of "freedom of speech", when all they care about is "free as in beer".
Of course, we can't generalise, for a large chunk of people thats not true, but forthe majority....
Seriously, everyone's the same... the thing that makes the RIAA worse is that they do it on such a large scale fueled by millions.
They're doing things the vigilante way... "If no one is going to stop people from infringing copyright, we will!!!". Which is obviously illegal and bad in so many ways... However, aside for the vast difference in budget and power, the idea isn't too different from people (and they're common on this site) going: "If no one will change the law, I will simply ignore it!!! Come on the free downloads!! GOOOO PIRATE BAY!" or whatsnot... Both sides are overzealous people wanting to take the law into their own hand.
And its not a matter of people vs corporation either...as both sides are just people wanting to handle their money the way they wish... Also interesting to note that the second group from my example started before the former...
In the end, MOST people think they're above the law and that their own moral, judgement, and wallet is above everyone else's.
From my experience, when a codebase is bad, everyone knows it really quick, and has already admitted failure years ago. Its just (and thats statistically shown in countless studies) that restarting a codebase from scratch is the fastest way to bankrupcy.
No, remaking a 40 screen web apps from scratch doesn't count. Not the same level as I'm talking about.
Definately a good idea, if its possible. Right now when looking at buying a new computer, i'm looking at the dual cores, not quad core machines. Why? Because the dual cores will have higher clock speed (much higher) at the same price. Most software (read:games, hehehe) are poorly multithreaded, and will benefit more from higher clock speed than multi core. So overall, the computer feels faster. A suggestion like yours would be a cool compromise.
To be fair, you have to realise how crappy at decision making most IT people are... If all managers had that "humility", even more projects would fail than they do now...
:) Now, some IT people have good decision making skills and can readily assist managers... but thats rare :)
Manager: "Hmm....well, on this decision, I guess I'll have to delegate to you. Now, honestly, what do you think we should do??"
Dev: "Scrap the java codebase and start over from scratch in Ruby on Rails"
Manager: "Hmm...didn't we work on this for 10 years and have millions of lines of code invested, including stuff that we can't readily replace because we're still trying to replace that last senior dev?"
Dev: "Scrap the codebase and start over"
Manager: "Well...ok!"
That wouldn't go too well
"In thst thry have a small market share". Thats it. They ARE using strongarm tactics to maintain their dominance, especially with their satellite products (iTune, iPods, etc). But by law, it IS fine as long as their market share is small (and are having issues in certain countries already over iPods and whatsnot).
I think the issue is, let say you buy an average/high end computer from dell (minus the XPS line). You can get something like a Core 2 Duo 2.6 ghz with 2-4 gigs of ram and a 500 gigs harddrive....not too shabby....with an integrated intel chipset by default.
So the rest of the machine will be screaming... People then have expectations on their games going on from there. Its silly, I know...but those chipsets are used -everywhere-, not just in low end computers or work lap-tops, and customers arent properly warned about them.
A big group of people who disagree with each other. Its like if they werent participating, because the result will be a big soup of everyone's idea... so the entity may as well be separate. (Its a big complain about the W3C from its own members, thus why you see things like HTML5 pop up)
On Slashdot, you keep hearing about "This is the standard!!!", but the W3C and other such entities do not make standards. They propose standards. Then the market decides if it wants it or not. Since a lot of bodies don't have the time or manpower to make anything better (and even if they could, it would be quite a waste of time and money), they take what the W3C spits out and implement it. As good a spec as any. And -then- it becomes the standard. Stuff like Acid Test helps meet that goal.
That being said, as time went on, the W3C really started spitting out real crap, so I'm not sure that its such a good goal to have... As opposed to standards like WS-I, which represents the real world and really do help on a day to day basis.
Hey hey...part per trillions are POWERFUL! Ever heard of homeopathy?! ::cough:: /sarcasm
Indeed... as someone who game on PC a lot, Im used to minimum requirements ("capable") meaning "the game won't crash when you start it up, and thats all you get". So thats what I expected there too, honestly.
I guess the only thing is the marketing swing to it...it wasnt very obvious when you saw a "Capable" sticker that there even WAS a "Designed For" one, as opposed to a game box, where the "recommended" requirements are right next to the "minimum" requirements...
The difference is fairly big: the customers here aren't the people using Silverlight to use the applications. Its the developers and content providers. If MS stops providing it cross platform, it becomes useless to the developers. And that is more troublesome.
.NET development will be part of 2.0, which a lot of .NET developers are drooling over), MS will simply not be able to pull the plug on it. The developer push is too strong.
.NET developers. And those developers request cross-platform support. (And I'm not talking about the average forum dweller. I'm talking about the corporate customers here, the big cash cows). In those situations, Microsoft has mostly always delivered. Crap products sometimes, but they never dropped support. (Before pointing out VB6 and COM, keep in mind COM/COM+ interop is a fully supported part of .NET)
Little piece of info: Silverlight was originaly WPF/E (Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere), a subset of Windows' new UI framework, but crossplatform. The developers who liked WPF (especially the XBAPs, which are WPF applications that can be served through a browser, with zero HTML and stuff...), but figured it would be totally useless on the mainstream web (its useful internally for business apps though), pushed very hard on WPF/E (Which is now Silverlight 2.0. The first Silverlight has very little to do with the WPF/E previews) to have as much as possible included in it, so they could serve WPF on Windows and Macs (at the time, Linux wasn't in the picture). People also pushed a lot to have it elsewhere, thus MS' indirect support for Moonlight.
Assuming it catch on (and it will: the problem is that Silverlight 1.0 is NOT what developers have been pushing and hyping... Silverlight 2.0 is... 1.0 was just released to help make its name, but it has very little to do with WPF/E, unlike 2.0. Crossplatform web-deployable
Thats again, fairly different from things like IE and WMP for Macs. MS isn't supplying a product to people who wish Microsoft didn't exist. They're supplying a product to the people who live and breath Microsoft:
Of course, you're duplicating a ton of stuff in there. Workflow Foundation, Comm Foundation and Presentation Foundation are .NET 3.0. SQL Server 2008 isn't out yet. Visual Studio Team System is something developers don't need to worrie about (a few features of Visual Studio that should be 5 minutes to pick up if you have the 6000$ version of VS, and a server component that should be handled by infrastructure people), etc. LINQ is just a part of .NEt 3.5, nothing special. Silverlight 1.0 can be safely ignored, and Silverlight 2.0 is just Presentation Foundation with less features (but is effectively the same model). Office development is nothing new, and Sharepoint's been around for a long time.
.NET 3.5, the formerly known as WinFX stack (.NET 3.0), the 2008 stack of tools, Win Server 2008 (IIS7 is part of it really, there's been a new IIS with every Windows Server), and a new version of Office with its associated stack.
.NET 3.0 because aside for Workflow Foundation (which is fairly high end, few .NET devs will ever touch it, though its wonderful by the way), it wasn't integrated in .NET 3.0, so for all practical purpose, no one did .NET 3.0 until 3.5. And very few people touched 3.5 because it just came out (especially if you don't have an MSDN subscription... the boxed product only recently become available. Its a bit hard to buy something thats not even available yet. It takes more than 3 months.
.NET 3.5 is fully backward compatible, expect people to switch as soon as time allows (or funds are allocated). Thats rare early in the year, but by summer, a large amount of projects should be shifted.
So that really leaves a list of:
Virtually all of the serious Windows developers I know are already heavily familiar with 2/3rd of that list, and the rest is stuff they don't need for their work (most don't need to know about Office development, very few use Workflow cuz its a niche tool, SQL Server 2008 won't be deployed in most places for years, etc).
Very few people looked at
On our side, we ported our application to 2008 this week. It took... two days. Considering
Now, don't get me wrong: I'm not saying its right, and I agree with the idea of your point... But they don't sue their customers (at least, almost never, there are exceptions to every rules).
Exactly. And in the current economic context, GOOD (emphasis: good!) developers are in such high demand, they can be incredibly picky about the job they take... in 2001-2002, you could get anyone to do anything. In 2008, even if you have someone work on the coolest project -EVER-, they will find a COOLER project to work on, and ditch you for it... nevermind if your project sucks :)
A company I did contractual work for a while ago had a big legacy of PowerBuilder stuff... The only way they could get anyone to maintain it was hire straight-out-of-school students with no experience, through a consulting firm with a huge markup (and the new hired were paid huge premiums too). They sucked, and they were incredibly expensive...but its all they had to work with... Fortunately it was an incredibly large company, so they could afford it. If the company's small....it sinks.
So you specialise in a tech, get the job done in half the time, and replace it twice as often. Different advantages and drawbacks in both cases, so one has to study and make sure they pick what suits their business model best, but both ways are viable in their own situations. When that tech is about to tank, retrain your specialists, no big deal. The main issue the summary talked about was when you lose your employees... Thats where it gets tricky. If you have a technology that anyone can learn, but no one WANTS to learn (for example: Powerbuilder, Coldfusion, etc), thats when you're screwed. You have to pick SOMETHING to make your applications with...
I can picture that... gasping for his last breath, with billions of people watching it on TV....
::gasps:: by the way ::gasps:: when I was 16 ::gasps:: I screwed my sister ::dies::"
"And
Actually, the main thing that makes what the article states possible is FastCGI for IIS 7 and Windows Server 2008 (though there is one decent version for WinServer2003 I beleive). Its just that Zend made a version of PHP that got certified for that version of FastCGI.
If you get any relatively tested "CGI-compliant" environment and use it with that new FastCGI version, it should run just as well. Not just Zend's PHP, and heck, not just PHP at all, it will work with the others too.
Err? Its not even ambiguous. "Developing on Windows workstations". Developing and Workstation next to each other.
And it would make sense. Obviously tons and tons of people use Windows (and there are some decent web tools to complement the PHP developement, plus stuff like photoshop, etc), but PHP on Windows sucked ass. So obviously the hosting wouldn't be on Windows (most of the time).
Now with this, while you would not migrate a Linux box to a Windows one for PHP, if you just so happen to have a Windows Server with fully configured IIS around (more common than you'd think, with Sharepoint, Exchange, TFS, etc, being relatively popular), you don't need to setup a Linux box just for PHP and nothing else.
There still has to be existing investment reasons and stuff though... one of the main advantages of PHP is that its free... so dumping free PHP on a 4 digit $ box is a bit counter productive in quite a few situations.