Did you just say discriminating other people based on their sexuality, which is solely determined by their *genetic* *material*, counts as an expression of "moral criticism"? Talking about stone age views...
You're beliefs are all fine with me. You're entitled to believe whatever you like.
One thing, however, I must point out. There is a WORLD of difference between a "Flying Spaghetti Monster" on the one side, which is an imaginary creature thought out to produce some laughs, and a "god" on the other, which is an imaginary creature in whose name bloody wars were fought (and are still being fought), which is promoted by a notoriously rich, completely un-democratic, organization practicing brain wash to small children, often enough actively hiding child molesters in their rows, and repeatedly pointing out how their way is the ONLY way and all the stupid rest of the world is going to burn in hell because... well, because they chose NOT to believe in the same imaginary "big-guy-in-the-sky". Or, what amuses me the most, does choose to believe in the same god, but in a slightly different way.
You see, whether you like it or not, by taking an oath proscribed by that organization (church) one actually implicitly expresses ones support for that organization. No, I really don't see how commiting to "do ones duty to god" is the same as "do ones duty to FSM".
Besides, labeling atheists as "self-described", just to put us down, is not very nice or tolerant of you. Atheists are just people who chose to think differently than you. We're not some evil-doers who should be forced to "recite the same oath as everybody else" if we don't want to, just to become boy scouts.
It always amused me how many US citizens wholeheartedly hate the very notion of Communism as a totalitarian regime, while on the other hand openly endorsing the religion, which is per definitionem a totalitarian regime.
There are quite a few guys around here who moderate "insightfull" instead of "funny" because "funny" gets you no karma and "insightfull"... well, does.:-)
This is a usual argument, I know. However, each time I read it, I can't help but to ask myself "whose fault is it?" The answer is obvious, isn't it?
It's unfair to pretend non-MS solutions are somehow expensive because it's so hard to break free from MS once you allowed yourself to get hooked into their proprietary world. You could just as well have developed your enterprise apps in something other than ASP, haven't you?
OK, I know I'm probably barking up the wrong tree here - probably it's not *your* fault after all. But I guess you know what I'm trying to point out.
Sorry, I didn't realize there is no Flash for BSD.
Anyway, as I already said in one of my previous posts, I have a strong dislike for Flash *and* for web sites that demand Flash. However, Adobe is a devil we know and we learned to live with. That devil at least offers me SOME confidence that they do care about me.
And talking about SL for Linux: I don't yet see it being there. Where can I download it? You don't mean that Novell Moonlight thing, do you? The one you still have to get from the svn repository? Here the quote from the project's web site:
Currently Moonlight is not packaged as it is still under heavy development
I actually never said I like Flash. In fact, I don't like it AT ALL. And I hate to see web pages relying on Flash.
It's only that it seems to be a "lesser evil" compared to the MS controlled SL, which is not even available on Linux, let alone on even less visible operating systems.
There is no.NET for Linux, apart from Mono, which is not a viable alternative. There are also no plans from MS to provide.NET on Linux, Solaris or BSD. Therefore no chance for me to just "install the libraries".
Low-level programming for specific chips is what I do for living. And before I started to work where I work now, I was programming a compiler. However, low-level differences in single chips have nothing to do with closing parts of the internet for people not willing to use Windows, does it?
There are incompatibilities in areas where they are just not avoidable, that's true. Having Honda build different motors than Ford is beneficial for the customer, because the customer can chose between different makers to find the car that best suits his needs.
On the other hand, there are also incompatibilities in the basis infrastructure, which are NOT good. To remain with your car analogy, imagine a road demanding you to drive a Honda. Bought a Ford? Well, tough luck, no go. And there's no other way to reach your skiing resort, sorry for the inconvenience.
Before you say it's far-fetched: I *still* can't make a seat reservation for most movie theaters where I live without resorting to ie4linux.
And in the mean-time, waiting for the market to fix itself, I suddenly wouldn't be able to access my bank account or to make a seat reservation in the cinema because my browser/OS is not supported by Microsoft. Again.
Besides, the original question was not whether MS crushing Flash would our would not alter the place forever. The original question, as I remember it, was why competing linux distros are fine, but this kind of competing technologies is not.
Actually, I said "pretty much compatible" where I could have said "compatible". Personally, I NEVER had a program compile and run under one distribution and not compile and run under another. Give me a few prominent examples, and I'll give you half a point, if you wish.:-) And Gnome vs. KDE ist actually just bells & wistles. Nothing really important. I have UBUNTU here, which is actually GNOME only. Nevertheless, there are KDE packages for that as well, which were a snap to install. Way easier than to port.NET to java - even if you actually had the source.
Regarding AMD vs. INTEL, you seem to be forgetting that those are instruction set compatible. When I buy the one or the other, I guide my decision based solely on the current capabilities and price of the two, nothing else. Pretty compatible, if you ask me, and still a competition.
I'm all for competition, as long as it's carried out at least in a half-way fair way and if it can actually bring the benefit to MYSELF, the CUSTOMER. So far, I have experienced ZERO benefit from MS penetrating any place. Actually, during the browser wars, I experienced a real set-back, as the lemmings among web designers (and their bosses, to be fair) decided IE is the only browser worth supporting. I don't want to see that happen again.
I'm afraid you are comparing apples and oranges here.
Various linux distributions are pretty much application compatible. It's mainly just the packaging and the configuration tools that make two distributions look differently and maybe one or two specific drivers.
Silverlight vs. Flash or.NET vs. Java is something completely different. Those are competing technologies, incompatible with each other, and also not available on the same platforms (Flash & Java pretty much everywhere,.NET and Silverlight only where Microsoft sees fit).
Don't kid yourself - the reasoning behind Silverlight has nothing to do with Microsoft striving to make the Web a better place. It's all about gaining more control of a medium they never had much to say with (apart from the dominance of the IE, which is now being chewed at by Mozilla/Firefox)
Please show me where I said it wouldn't mean that?
The code base we are working on is some 20+ years old, developed by more than one company, changing the owner multiple times. When working on such a code base, you don't have the choice but to treat it as a heart surgery.:-)
The new systems, however, which are currently being designed and developed, offer a completely different picture.
Anyway, we have moved a LONG way away from the actual topic, which was the necessity for the term "re-factoring". It seems the proponents of the term, so far, have done nothing but to point out that semantically neutral modifications to the code are sometimes a good thing to do, which is a completely different thing.
Tell me one thing. Did your 100% test coverage only cover modules, nicely and cleanly separated and spoon fed under controlled conditions, or did you also test concurrency issues under various heavy processing and communication loads? All that on embedded hardware? Oh... I thought so.
Not every piece of code is a Windows GUI to access a database. Where I work, we are in a highly competitive safety related embedded market. Our customers are mainly military all over the world. In case our hardware or software makes a mistake, we can't pop up a window and say "sorry for the inconvenience". In the extreme cases, people's lives can be at stake. We are EXTREMELY cautious about how we write code, up to the point of being PARANOID, and believe me, if you knew who we are, you'd be glad we are like that.
Of course we have a rigid development process with all kinds of code reviews, sometimes theoretical proofs of correctness, a safety case and as many constraints on how we are allowed to code that the coding almost doesn't make fun any more (that's why I moved to the management a few years ago). Look up "Safety Integrity Level 2 and higher" for details - the sheer amount of documentation (including test documentation) we ship our systems with is overwhelming.
And according to your remark on what we deserve: tell that to Ariane V people. NO amount of testing, code reviews or strict coding standards and processes makes your code completely free of errors. Some of our customers even want to know the exact numbers of code lines added/modified/removed while accessing the criticality of a change request. Beautifying the variables "to be more readable" can be an option for you. It's not for us.
Of course no code is bug-free. Ever. Regardless of the test coverage (which can be 100% complete only for the most trivial examples anyway).
However, having the code X working at the customer, with a few months of real-life testing behind it, without showing any bugs, means that the potential bugs in that code are not triggered the way your customer uses the program.
"Re-factoring" the code, e.g. by changing the layout of the variables in the memory, could suddenly change that: if the code now, under certain unlucky conditions, smears junk into *another*, more critical variable, you could introduce very hard-to-find regression bugs. Now, if those "unlucky" conditions don't get cought during your internal tests, and if they *do* get triggered by the way your customer uses the program...
And let's agree that we don't agree about whether "In order to get this done, I am going to reorganize classes, rename variables, and split/move functions around" is or is not more informative to the rest of the team than "I am going to do some refactoring".:-)
The key is "Not supposed to alter functionality". Can you be *sure* the functionality is unchanged? Maybe the new ordering of variables shows a wierd bug (overflow) which was previously hiden? Just moving a struct from one header file into another, not noticing some fuckhead changed the alignment in that other header file, can also get you into serious problems. I've seen tons of presumably harmless modifications in my life who turned out to be anything but harmless!
No code change, except for the most obvious ones, can be said to be safe per se.
Besides, I don't quite see how this what you said invalidates my stance:
1. There is absolutely no need for the term "re-factoring". If you change a variable name, call it so. If you split the class in two, say you do so. Using "re-factoring" for an entire class of code modifications only hides the information from the rest of the team resp. from the management.
2. Even if "refactoring" is not supposed to alter the functionality, the term is widely misused for all imaginable stuff.
3. No modification to the code, except for the *most obvious* ones, can be viewed as "safe per definition". Calling a change "re-factoring" somehow paints it into a nicer, more benign light.
I know. That's exactly what I hate about it: when you hear "I'll have to refactor it", you can never know what the sayer means. It can be everything or nothing. If he wants to rename a global variable, then he should god damnit say "I'll rename a global variable". If he plans to re-design a perfectly working and well tested class, he should say so, so that everybody involved knows how much risk is associated with the action.
The existance of this term adds absolutely nothing to the clarity of conversation. Au contraire, it just muds the water.
Even if the moderator who modded you down is a Gateway fanboy, it's not a valid reason to mod you down. It's a misuse of the moderation system.
You have all the rights in the world to express your oppinion about the quality of a certain company WITHOUT having to fear getting modded down. "Troll" != "Disagree", as somebody here repeatedly points out in his.sig, but it is almost exclusively used as that!
As to why I got modded down into oblivion - search me. Probably the mod who modded you down was not the only dumbfuck on crack running around with mod points. Now watch me getting modded down for this as well, just for the fun of it. Something's seriously wrong with/. moderation system.:-(
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Did you just say discriminating other people based on their sexuality, which is solely determined by their *genetic* *material*, counts as an expression of "moral criticism"? Talking about stone age views...
Personally, I find grown up people who choose to spend their time in the woods with small boys kind of suspect anyway... :-)
You're beliefs are all fine with me. You're entitled to believe whatever you like.
One thing, however, I must point out. There is a WORLD of difference between a "Flying Spaghetti Monster" on the one side, which is an imaginary creature thought out to produce some laughs, and a "god" on the other, which is an imaginary creature in whose name bloody wars were fought (and are still being fought), which is promoted by a notoriously rich, completely un-democratic, organization practicing brain wash to small children, often enough actively hiding child molesters in their rows, and repeatedly pointing out how their way is the ONLY way and all the stupid rest of the world is going to burn in hell because... well, because they chose NOT to believe in the same imaginary "big-guy-in-the-sky". Or, what amuses me the most, does choose to believe in the same god, but in a slightly different way.
You see, whether you like it or not, by taking an oath proscribed by that organization (church) one actually implicitly expresses ones support for that organization. No, I really don't see how commiting to "do ones duty to god" is the same as "do ones duty to FSM".
Besides, labeling atheists as "self-described", just to put us down, is not very nice or tolerant of you. Atheists are just people who chose to think differently than you. We're not some evil-doers who should be forced to "recite the same oath as everybody else" if we don't want to, just to become boy scouts.
It always amused me how many US citizens wholeheartedly hate the very notion of Communism as a totalitarian regime, while on the other hand openly endorsing the religion, which is per definitionem a totalitarian regime.
So... you look like Mc Cain ?
Justified. :-)
There are quite a few guys around here who moderate "insightfull" instead of "funny" because "funny" gets you no karma and "insightfull"... well, does. :-)
Apart from your somewhat unorthodox definition of the word "great!", it seems you forgot the Windows 2000 in your list.
This is a usual argument, I know. However, each time I read it, I can't help but to ask myself "whose fault is it?" The answer is obvious, isn't it?
It's unfair to pretend non-MS solutions are somehow expensive because it's so hard to break free from MS once you allowed yourself to get hooked into their proprietary world. You could just as well have developed your enterprise apps in something other than ASP, haven't you?
OK, I know I'm probably barking up the wrong tree here - probably it's not *your* fault after all. But I guess you know what I'm trying to point out.
Sorry, I didn't realize there is no Flash for BSD.
Anyway, as I already said in one of my previous posts, I have a strong dislike for Flash *and* for web sites that demand Flash. However, Adobe is a devil we know and we learned to live with. That devil at least offers me SOME confidence that they do care about me.
And talking about SL for Linux: I don't yet see it being there. Where can I download it? You don't mean that Novell Moonlight thing, do you? The one you still have to get from the svn repository? Here the quote from the project's web site:
Currently Moonlight is not packaged as it is still under heavy development
I don't call that "there is a linux version".
I actually never said I like Flash. In fact, I don't like it AT ALL. And I hate to see web pages relying on Flash.
It's only that it seems to be a "lesser evil" compared to the MS controlled SL, which is not even available on Linux, let alone on even less visible operating systems.
Oh, come on! :-)
.NET program on a platform not supported by MS.
We were talking about compatibility here, but the context was about the ability to execute a
Well, for you, maybe making Internet Windows-Only wouldn't be a bad thing. For my part, I would be pissed.
There is no .NET for Linux, apart from Mono, which is not a viable alternative. There are also no plans from MS to provide .NET on Linux, Solaris or BSD. Therefore no chance for me to just "install the libraries".
Low-level programming for specific chips is what I do for living. And before I started to work where I work now, I was programming a compiler. However, low-level differences in single chips have nothing to do with closing parts of the internet for people not willing to use Windows, does it?
There are incompatibilities in areas where they are just not avoidable, that's true. Having Honda build different motors than Ford is beneficial for the customer, because the customer can chose between different makers to find the car that best suits his needs.
On the other hand, there are also incompatibilities in the basis infrastructure, which are NOT good. To remain with your car analogy, imagine a road demanding you to drive a Honda. Bought a Ford? Well, tough luck, no go. And there's no other way to reach your skiing resort, sorry for the inconvenience.
Before you say it's far-fetched: I *still* can't make a seat reservation for most movie theaters where I live without resorting to ie4linux.
And in the mean-time, waiting for the market to fix itself, I suddenly wouldn't be able to access my bank account or to make a seat reservation in the cinema because my browser/OS is not supported by Microsoft. Again.
Besides, the original question was not whether MS crushing Flash would our would not alter the place forever. The original question, as I remember it, was why competing linux distros are fine, but this kind of competing technologies is not.
Actually, I said "pretty much compatible" where I could have said "compatible". Personally, I NEVER had a program compile and run under one distribution and not compile and run under another. Give me a few prominent examples, and I'll give you half a point, if you wish. :-) And Gnome vs. KDE ist actually just bells & wistles. Nothing really important. I have UBUNTU here, which is actually GNOME only. Nevertheless, there are KDE packages for that as well, which were a snap to install. Way easier than to port .NET to java - even if you actually had the source.
Regarding AMD vs. INTEL, you seem to be forgetting that those are instruction set compatible. When I buy the one or the other, I guide my decision based solely on the current capabilities and price of the two, nothing else. Pretty compatible, if you ask me, and still a competition.
I'm all for competition, as long as it's carried out at least in a half-way fair way and if it can actually bring the benefit to MYSELF, the CUSTOMER. So far, I have experienced ZERO benefit from MS penetrating any place. Actually, during the browser wars, I experienced a real set-back, as the lemmings among web designers (and their bosses, to be fair) decided IE is the only browser worth supporting. I don't want to see that happen again.
I'm afraid you are comparing apples and oranges here.
.NET vs. Java is something completely different. Those are competing technologies, incompatible with each other, and also not available on the same platforms (Flash & Java pretty much everywhere, .NET and Silverlight only where Microsoft sees fit).
Various linux distributions are pretty much application compatible. It's mainly just the packaging and the configuration tools that make two distributions look differently and maybe one or two specific drivers.
Silverlight vs. Flash or
Don't kid yourself - the reasoning behind Silverlight has nothing to do with Microsoft striving to make the Web a better place. It's all about gaining more control of a medium they never had much to say with (apart from the dominance of the IE, which is now being chewed at by Mozilla/Firefox)
Please show me where I said it wouldn't mean that?
:-)
The code base we are working on is some 20+ years old, developed by more than one company, changing the owner multiple times. When working on such a code base, you don't have the choice but to treat it as a heart surgery.
The new systems, however, which are currently being designed and developed, offer a completely different picture.
Anyway, we have moved a LONG way away from the actual topic, which was the necessity for the term "re-factoring". It seems the proponents of the term, so far, have done nothing but to point out that semantically neutral modifications to the code are sometimes a good thing to do, which is a completely different thing.
As the matter of fact, we are using a VERY old compiler indeed on our mainline systems.
The new stuff, written (almost) from scracth, gets the new compiler.
> while accessing the criticality of a change request. of course means "while assessing the criticality of a change request".
No need to get personal, boy.
Tell me one thing. Did your 100% test coverage only cover modules, nicely and cleanly separated and spoon fed under controlled conditions, or did you also test concurrency issues under various heavy processing and communication loads? All that on embedded hardware? Oh... I thought so.
Not every piece of code is a Windows GUI to access a database. Where I work, we are in a highly competitive safety related embedded market. Our customers are mainly military all over the world. In case our hardware or software makes a mistake, we can't pop up a window and say "sorry for the inconvenience". In the extreme cases, people's lives can be at stake. We are EXTREMELY cautious about how we write code, up to the point of being PARANOID, and believe me, if you knew who we are, you'd be glad we are like that.
Of course we have a rigid development process with all kinds of code reviews, sometimes theoretical proofs of correctness, a safety case and as many constraints on how we are allowed to code that the coding almost doesn't make fun any more (that's why I moved to the management a few years ago). Look up "Safety Integrity Level 2 and higher" for details - the sheer amount of documentation (including test documentation) we ship our systems with is overwhelming.
And according to your remark on what we deserve: tell that to Ariane V people. NO amount of testing, code reviews or strict coding standards and processes makes your code completely free of errors. Some of our customers even want to know the exact numbers of code lines added/modified/removed while accessing the criticality of a change request. Beautifying the variables "to be more readable" can be an option for you. It's not for us.
Of course no code is bug-free. Ever. Regardless of the test coverage (which can be 100% complete only for the most trivial examples anyway).
:-)
However, having the code X working at the customer, with a few months of real-life testing behind it, without showing any bugs, means that the potential bugs in that code are not triggered the way your customer uses the program.
"Re-factoring" the code, e.g. by changing the layout of the variables in the memory, could suddenly change that: if the code now, under certain unlucky conditions, smears junk into *another*, more critical variable, you could introduce very hard-to-find regression bugs. Now, if those "unlucky" conditions don't get cought during your internal tests, and if they *do* get triggered by the way your customer uses the program...
And let's agree that we don't agree about whether "In order to get this done, I am going to reorganize classes, rename variables, and split/move functions around" is or is not more informative to the rest of the team than "I am going to do some refactoring".
The key is "Not supposed to alter functionality". Can you be *sure* the functionality is unchanged? Maybe the new ordering of variables shows a wierd bug (overflow) which was previously hiden? Just moving a struct from one header file into another, not noticing some fuckhead changed the alignment in that other header file, can also get you into serious problems. I've seen tons of presumably harmless modifications in my life who turned out to be anything but harmless!
No code change, except for the most obvious ones, can be said to be safe per se.
Besides, I don't quite see how this what you said invalidates my stance:
1. There is absolutely no need for the term "re-factoring". If you change a variable name, call it so. If you split the class in two, say you do so. Using "re-factoring" for an entire class of code modifications only hides the information from the rest of the team resp. from the management.
2. Even if "refactoring" is not supposed to alter the functionality, the term is widely misused for all imaginable stuff.
3. No modification to the code, except for the *most obvious* ones, can be viewed as "safe per definition". Calling a change "re-factoring" somehow paints it into a nicer, more benign light.
I know. That's exactly what I hate about it: when you hear "I'll have to refactor it", you can never know what the sayer means. It can be everything or nothing. If he wants to rename a global variable, then he should god damnit say "I'll rename a global variable". If he plans to re-design a perfectly working and well tested class, he should say so, so that everybody involved knows how much risk is associated with the action.
The existance of this term adds absolutely nothing to the clarity of conversation. Au contraire, it just muds the water.
Even if the moderator who modded you down is a Gateway fanboy, it's not a valid reason to mod you down. It's a misuse of the moderation system.
.sig, but it is almost exclusively used as that!
/. moderation system. :-(
You have all the rights in the world to express your oppinion about the quality of a certain company WITHOUT having to fear getting modded down. "Troll" != "Disagree", as somebody here repeatedly points out in his
As to why I got modded down into oblivion - search me. Probably the mod who modded you down was not the only dumbfuck on crack running around with mod points. Now watch me getting modded down for this as well, just for the fun of it. Something's seriously wrong with