Tone of the article
on
.NETly News
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I'm a little surprised with the article's tone, especially coming from Salon. While reading this article I'm reminded of marketing drivel coming directly from Redmond itself. This is not a news story, it's just straight-out gushing and it's the disgusting type of a "article" I'd expect from a heavily sponsored e-rag like ZDNET. Frankly, I will never look at Salon the same way.
FYI: I'm paying $160 CAN$ (~$100 US) for my academic-priced Professional version copy. Maybe unfair to regular developers, but at least MS realises two things:
1) Students are important seeds to sow.
2) Students barely have enough money to afford the student version.
As a result, I'll be programming in VB.NET and C#.NET this weekend.
On a side note, what MS is really selling is the IDE, and all of the nice integration with other tools. If you want a cheaper compiler and runtime, wait a bit.... they'll be out very soon from third parties - like Borland, as was said in the VS.NET conference today.
... or wait for Mono. I'm very excited about porting my Windows apps to Linux... and I'm interested in seeing if that's actually possible.
Seriously though, when we start dealing with International issues (and free software and open source software are become increasingly International) we need reliable translation, not some reporter using the Altavista babel fish. This whole misunderstanding could have been avoided if:
1. The reported got his facts straight and asked the right questions in the first place.
2. A rather suggestive translation wasn't posted by The Register (whether they were given this information by another party is not an issue, they should have checked their sources - including talking directly to Stallman!).
If you have a good idea and good product
management, any group of decent programmers
can deliver it.
Wow, this is pretty wishful thinking. This statement is about one quarter right. That is, it's right until you try to maintain the code you created. That's usually where you see the difference between quality veteran design and programming and an amaturish job... and that's what you have to pay the big bucks for.
Otherwise, all you end up with is a nice shiny beautiful candy shell with a bunch of crap for guts (Windows 95 comes to mind).
So go ahead and get your awesome saleman and sell your pig shit, but that same farmer won't buy your cow shit when Mr. Salesman comes knocking a year later, and then you're shit out of luck, so to speak.
Now, no one's asking you to show up wearing a starched shirt and pressed pants, but would holding the minimum to clean jeans and non-t-shirts be too much to ask? And before you ask, I'm a Solaris admin, ok?
Everyone has their own opinion on dress code, and really if the dress code of the company you are working for is too restristive for you, then you should leave or grin and bear it. That's why smelly geeks wearing wookie t-shirts don't work at IBM (that and the caliber issue, but I digress).
Also, progress helps us move on from the days when people had to sit in sticky offices in the summer time. We can look back on it and say "gee, those were rougher times" but to tell you the truth, it doesn't matter a hill of beans any more. We should take advantage of the fact that we have air conditioning and computers and e-mail and use these things to be more productive in the present. Nostalgia for the past gets you nowhere.
Now I'm not saying I'm going to show up to work in jeans and a "FUCK YOU" t-shirt. I'm saying I'll wear pants (not only jeans) and a nice, clean non-offensive t-shirt. If I'm not directly in contact with potential clients (or anyone that could report my casual dress to the outside, god forbid), I don't need the layer of squeeky-clean BS covering me (ie. a nice suit, ass kissing remarks, etc). I just want to be left alone to code. I don't want my Brooks Brothers button-down collar shirt (or a sweater or anything) bugging me all day. I want my clothes to be comfortable so it's just one less thing to worry about.
I've met quite a few VB developers who are unwilling to give up their syntax yet would love to take advantage of.Net.
It should be known that VB syntax in.NET is actually a bit different than VB6, to accomodate support for assemblies, classes, OOP, etc and other things (sorry I'm short on details, but I'm no VB expert). So your friends may have to give up a bit of their syntax after all.
I agree wholeheartedly. Great teams are those that span many different kinds of people, specialized in each of the areas required to run a business. Though everyone would like to think that these people can be merry and get along, sometimes it's best for these distinct groups to be on seperate floors and only see each other at Christmas parties, when they can appreciate each others' nuances with a drunken sense of humour.:)
Of course we appreciate everything management does for us developers. Without them, we wouldn't be able to code all day and get paid for it. The joke's on them, because we love our work.;-)
Ooh, and lets pamper the programmers with soda and candy and teddy bears and futuristic chairs. Until the rest of the company, who work just as hard as the programmers, begin to get a little pissed off.
Let's start out by not pretending that everyone is NOT of the same intelligence, shall we? Therefore, one person's "working hard" might be another's "bullshit busy-work". Just because you stay for the same amount of time a programmer does, doesn't mean you worked just as hard as (s)he did, and vice versa.
That said, it's not as if you can go out and claim any programming job without a degree, unless you are coding web scripts for Amazon. This is NOT programming. It's scripting. And frankly, anyone can learn to Script in 21 days. That said, programmers ARE very educated people and THEY make the product YOU are cold-calling people to trying to sell.
Let's pretend now that they didn't exist at your company - oops, now you have no job. I'm not saying that other people at the company aren't important, but let's not forget who is actually CREATING PRODUCT here.
Soda is 30 cents a can. Suck it up.
Exactly. If I make $40 an hour and drink 1 soda an hour, what's 30 cents more? Stop fucking whining.
Two guys want to fuck around, so the entire floor can't get anything done because two guys are running around screaming. "Oh, please hold Mr. Potential Customer, I have a nerf dart in my fucking eye."
If you're "working hard" talking to a client, why are you in the development area? Typical of me, a developer, to blame management on this one, but shouldn't you be in an office so that even conversations at a reasonable volume won't disturb your conversations with potential customers? Seems like a no-brainer there.
Lets not forget a dress code. Yeah, lets not enforce that, you don't need to look good to program, man. Until that one programmer wearing the 2 sizes too small phantom menace t-shirt with the body odor turns off a potential client. Is wearing a pair of dockers and a shirt that doesn't have a fucking wookie on it going to kill you?
I don't know about everyone else, but I can't think when the clothes I'm wearing are uncomfortable. If I am more productive when I'm wearing jeans and a t-shirt then management will allow it. No one fucking sees me anyway, unless I go to the cafeteria and even then they probably think I'm on the janitorial staff. Who cares??
Yeah, its really hip to have that one guy come in at work at 2pm and work until 9 at night, because he's so damn elite, until you realize that he's unable to interact with all of the _adults_ who have children and real-life responsibilities. Its called a team. "Oh, I don't work well in the morning." Oh, i'm so sorry! Gee, because the rest of us automatically wake up at 6:30am chipper and ready to go!
It's funny you claim you're an adult - because after reading this rant, I don't believe it.
Where the source code does become useful is in the hands of developers
Well then it's not useless. Make up your mind.
I believe I did - my main point was that usefulness is all about context. Programs are made for end users and from their perspective, the source code is useless.
There are a few people that have said that source code is useless even to developers, which I can see. Unless the documentation fairy has visited the company that produced the source and made absolutely superb docs, chances are you won't be able to make heads or tails of the code without a serious time investment. What percentage of developers have this amount of time to fix a bug that might be fixed in a service pack in a month or two?
"The only point that didn't made sense in this summary was the one about "source code being useless"."
Source code *is* useless to about 99% of the people that use the program. My aunt Benita isn't going to track down a Microsoft Word bug and fix it even if she HAD the source. She wouldn't care - she'd just wait for the update. So in that context, the source code is useless.
Where the source code does become useful is in the hands of developers, but for users it's just another disk of stuff they get in the package that they'll never use.
If it fails the verification check due to using any unsafe feature, it won't be allowed to run in a safe context.
So it is the feature or instruction that is unsafe and if the program is in a sandbox which is not allowed to use the feature, then it flat out doesn't allow it. It doesn't sound like UNSAFE code is a security risk then.... is Bill just blowing FUD?
I've been reading a lot of comments about the IL code having some sort of flag mechanism indicating unsafe portions.
My question is this: since the end-user JIT executes IL, what stops someone from editing the IL so that it becomes 'unflagged' as unsafe and tricks the end-user into thinking it is a safe portion? Are there a group of unsafe instructions? Is the IL obfuscated in some way? Or is it just as simple as an 'unsafe=1' in the.exe header?
I think many of our concerns about unsafe code could be answered by knowing these details. Could someone with the technical knowledge step forward?
The biggest problem is support. The government runs mainly on HP-UX and Solaris, and they do that because they know that if something goes wrong, it can be fixed by tomorrow at the latest. Linux needs solutions providers - one company that sells the hardware, the operating system and the support.
For high-performance, specialized servers maybe, but you can get commercial-off-the-shelf support for x86 machines from just about anyone. As for the OS, I think RedHat has the Linux support market covered, enough at least to get IBM's attention.
So the gov't may not have ideas of replacing EVERY machine with opensource, but I don't see much of a barrier with replacing low-traffic servers, databases and desktop machines (negating the obvious MS Office file format issues). The support is already there.
The government will not change because the corporations (who own the government, figuratively speaking) will not let them change. Until we get rid of campaign contributions and begin doing public funding of campaigns, the corporations will continue to control the government and the open-source movement (and all other movements) will get stomped on.
This only prevents a global change. Individual managers can decide if they want to use a certain open source product. If enough do this, it could initiate change from the inside out, showing the reduced costs, benefits from having the code, etc.
Software is something that bigwigs in the gov't can't make a decision on without proven results relating to government, so it's a no-brainer to calve to the people that are contributing money to their compaigns or parties (and have a proven track record). If the software is going to save their department millions in licensing fees and maintainance while providing the same functionality, then they have to justify why they want the costly proprietary solution TO THE PUBLIC. As open source becomes more commonplace, this will become an increasingly difficult thing to do.
Some people do things well enough that they don't have to worry about the things other people consider serious flaws.
Some people stick their noses up at new things because they like the tried and true proven way, even if it takes many more keystrokes. While it's probably safe to say you'll be put to pasture soon (given your old age) and don't need to worry about all of these newfangled developments in languages, other people will. So I don't think your original opinion is very (Score:3, Insightful) - which is why I even bothered to respond to it in the first place.
However, Miguel expresses a real concern about developer TIME that you still refuse to address. It's probably true that after coding classes for 10 years you have become very efficient at it, but who says it should take that long to be that good (from a quality standpoint) at something like memory management when it can be taken care of automatically? Now it's true that you take a performance hit with the overhead it takes to manage memory, but performance is becoming relatively irrelevant in most cases when people just want to get something completed. THAT is Miguel's focus - to construct a tool to make software QUICKLY for GNOME.
People aren't going to waste their time farting around with memory management in C++ when C# solves the problem. Well, people who are open to change that is...
C++ memory management is much better because it is done by ME.
.... and while I'm sure you claim to have ZERO memory leaks in any of your software, some people would rather not worry about de-allocating a linked list, thank you very much. The point Miguel is making (and that you keep missing) is that implementing all of this memory management is BORING and takes valuable developer TIME. At some point you have to sacrifice performance for productivity and get the dang software out the door.
... picturing Emacs in the old days...
Yes, and I'm sure that absolutely no progress has been made on the performance of garbage collection of the language it was implemented in OR the speed of computers in general. </sarcasm>
Well, I have been doing this longer than he has... I still haven't come to that "point in my life" yet. That is why I bring up how old I am.
You are either far more patient or more set in your ways than he is then. It still doesn't matter how old you are.
There are two kinds of people - those that just sit and take it up the ass repeatedly and those that try to find a better way of doing things. Miguel is one of those latter people.
Microsoft whips out a patent and demands royalties for all the labor that we have done under the illusion that it would be free.
IANAL, but common sense dictates that a stardard cannot be patented. Otherwise, who would implement ANY standard not knowing if/when the 'owner' would want to collect royalties. I find it very unlikely.
Perhaps the only "evil" involved here is that Miguel's efforts may legitimize Microsoft's monopoly as a false example of the "openness" the monster of Redmond.
Let me get this straight:
An open source developer implementing a STANDARD is legitimizing a monopoly? Please.
What Mono is all about is USING Microsoft's generosity to create a better GNOME development environment.
If that opens the doors to many more GNOME developers, how does that help the Microsoft monopoly? If programs can be easily ported between.NET and Linux how does that help the Microsoft monopoly?
The bottom line is that Miguel is legitimizing an open standard, not a monopoly. If Microsoft plans to deviate from the standard (ie. without publishing how), then why would Microsoft make it a standard in the first place? It just doesn't add up.
Can it really be a bad thing to have too much information about any changes?
Yes, when the information is so detailed that you can't cut through the BS to find the meat. Some people just want a brief list to skim in order to decide if it's worth downloading or not.
I also used Rogers in Ottawa. It slowed down to that level until they installed a new Mysterious Green Box(tm) at the corner of my street a few months back. Then speeds went back up to over 200 KB/s (that's for a single download; I don't know what the aggregate max was.) I'm guessing that speed depends quite a bit on how well-equipped they are to handle the number of subscribers that exist in your neighbourhood.
Yeah, they had the same problem two years ago in Sandy Hill, a student neighborhood. Everyone decided to get cable at once, and the network slowed down to a crawl.
Two months and two different new IPs - with totally different numbers in the second last entry, which probably means two complete network rebalances - later I was tearing it up again. But it was a real PITA.
I was also in a university residence with a "quote" weak signal "unquote" (said the network admin I called once). It was a "corporate" bulk account and they had the signal barely high enough to support just the right number of connections to TVs. As soon as people started splitting the cable and using modems, it went right to shit. No wonder the university discouraged us using cable 'net connections.;)
I'm not sure what speed Rogers is offering, but say its 512Kbps. If 100 users use all that, they need a T3 just for 100 users!
FYI, I've used Rogers in Ottawa, Canada for 4 years and I have a hard time getting over 100KB/s (800Kbps) now. AFAIK, Rogers implemented a cap (also halving the max. upload speed) a few years ago to discourage FTP servers hogging bandwidth.
I'm not complaining about 100KB/s, but if I have to pay $80CAN a month just so I can download at 'high speed' when I need to, I'm gonna snap. I would rather they implemented some sort of 'throughput' math on it (like x gigabytes per month), instead of a speed cap, which is more likely. *sigh*
Regardless, there will always be a cheaper option for geeks that just want to wail on an Internet connection. As soon as it becomes available, the 'early adopters' (ie. those same 4 year-long customers alienated by Rogers that early-adopted waaay back when) will flock to it. Buh-bye Rogers. Nice to know you.
At that size, a smallish mug should fit nicely on it. No use wasting all that heat!
For now, maybe. According to an article linked in an above post, the chips will be cooling down... to room temperature! Unfortunately, this means no more hot coffee.:) Here's the quote from the article:
And Intel claims McKinleys in the future will run at.13 micron and at 5GHz at normal room temperature, because of the low power circuits it will use.
I don't drink coffee, but I was kinda hoping to have something to keep my feet warm.:)
I could use the (surely) fat pipe of the building to DoS some poor person, and who would catch me?
Assuming there's no per-user cap on bandwidth, which is unlikely enough, but...
It also assumes there's no one at the airport monitoring abuse of the system, which is very unlikely, especially on a $250,000 network. If they have the network set up right, they could triangulate your position (or at least the offending computer), tell security, and they'd be on your ass in a few minutes. But I'd still like to see someone try it.:)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a little surprised with the article's tone, especially coming from Salon. While reading this article I'm reminded of marketing drivel coming directly from Redmond itself. This is not a news story, it's just straight-out gushing and it's the disgusting type of a "article" I'd expect from a heavily sponsored e-rag like ZDNET. Frankly, I will never look at Salon the same way.
FYI: I'm paying $160 CAN$ (~$100 US) for my academic-priced Professional version copy. Maybe unfair to regular developers, but at least MS realises two things:
.... they'll be out very soon from third parties - like Borland, as was said in the VS.NET conference today.
... and I'm interested in seeing if that's actually possible.
1) Students are important seeds to sow.
2) Students barely have enough money to afford the student version.
As a result, I'll be programming in VB.NET and C#.NET this weekend.
On a side note, what MS is really selling is the IDE, and all of the nice integration with other tools. If you want a cheaper compiler and runtime, wait a bit
... or wait for Mono. I'm very excited about porting my Windows apps to Linux
... Partial quotes, reassembled sentences, poor fact checking ...
:)
Uh, I believe you forgot botched translations.
Seriously though, when we start dealing with International issues (and free software and open source software are become increasingly International) we need reliable translation, not some reporter using the Altavista babel fish. This whole misunderstanding could have been avoided if:
1. The reported got his facts straight and asked the right questions in the first place.
2. A rather suggestive translation wasn't posted by The Register (whether they were given this information by another party is not an issue, they should have checked their sources - including talking directly to Stallman!).
Is that really too much to ask from The Press??
If you have a good idea and good product
... and that's what you have to pay the big bucks for.
management, any group of decent programmers
can deliver it.
Wow, this is pretty wishful thinking. This statement is about one quarter right. That is, it's right until you try to maintain the code you created. That's usually where you see the difference between quality veteran design and programming and an amaturish job
Otherwise, all you end up with is a nice shiny beautiful candy shell with a bunch of crap for guts (Windows 95 comes to mind).
So go ahead and get your awesome saleman and sell your pig shit, but that same farmer won't buy your cow shit when Mr. Salesman comes knocking a year later, and then you're shit out of luck, so to speak.
Now, no one's asking you to show up wearing a starched shirt and pressed pants, but would holding the minimum to clean jeans and non-t-shirts be too much to ask? And before you ask, I'm a Solaris admin, ok?
Everyone has their own opinion on dress code, and really if the dress code of the company you are working for is too restristive for you, then you should leave or grin and bear it. That's why smelly geeks wearing wookie t-shirts don't work at IBM (that and the caliber issue, but I digress).
Also, progress helps us move on from the days when people had to sit in sticky offices in the summer time. We can look back on it and say "gee, those were rougher times" but to tell you the truth, it doesn't matter a hill of beans any more. We should take advantage of the fact that we have air conditioning and computers and e-mail and use these things to be more productive in the present. Nostalgia for the past gets you nowhere.
Now I'm not saying I'm going to show up to work in jeans and a "FUCK YOU" t-shirt. I'm saying I'll wear pants (not only jeans) and a nice, clean non-offensive t-shirt. If I'm not directly in contact with potential clients (or anyone that could report my casual dress to the outside, god forbid), I don't need the layer of squeeky-clean BS covering me (ie. a nice suit, ass kissing remarks, etc). I just want to be left alone to code. I don't want my Brooks Brothers button-down collar shirt (or a sweater or anything) bugging me all day. I want my clothes to be comfortable so it's just one less thing to worry about.
I've met quite a few VB developers who are unwilling to give up their syntax yet would love to take advantage of .Net.
.NET is actually a bit different than VB6, to accomodate support for assemblies, classes, OOP, etc and other things (sorry I'm short on details, but I'm no VB expert). So your friends may have to give up a bit of their syntax after all.
It should be known that VB syntax in
I agree wholeheartedly. Great teams are those that span many different kinds of people, specialized in each of the areas required to run a business. Though everyone would like to think that these people can be merry and get along, sometimes it's best for these distinct groups to be on seperate floors and only see each other at Christmas parties, when they can appreciate each others' nuances with a drunken sense of humour. :)
;-)
Of course we appreciate everything management does for us developers. Without them, we wouldn't be able to code all day and get paid for it. The joke's on them, because we love our work.
Wow, nice rant.
Ooh, and lets pamper the programmers with soda and candy and teddy bears and futuristic chairs. Until the rest of the company, who work just as hard as the programmers, begin to get a little pissed off.
Let's start out by not pretending that everyone is NOT of the same intelligence, shall we? Therefore, one person's "working hard" might be another's "bullshit busy-work". Just because you stay for the same amount of time a programmer does, doesn't mean you worked just as hard as (s)he did, and vice versa.
That said, it's not as if you can go out and claim any programming job without a degree, unless you are coding web scripts for Amazon. This is NOT programming. It's scripting. And frankly, anyone can learn to Script in 21 days. That said, programmers ARE very educated people and THEY make the product YOU are cold-calling people to trying to sell.
Let's pretend now that they didn't exist at your company - oops, now you have no job. I'm not saying that other people at the company aren't important, but let's not forget who is actually CREATING PRODUCT here.
Soda is 30 cents a can. Suck it up.
Exactly. If I make $40 an hour and drink 1 soda an hour, what's 30 cents more? Stop fucking whining.
Two guys want to fuck around, so the entire floor can't get anything done because two guys are running around screaming. "Oh, please hold Mr. Potential Customer, I have a nerf dart in my fucking eye."
If you're "working hard" talking to a client, why are you in the development area? Typical of me, a developer, to blame management on this one, but shouldn't you be in an office so that even conversations at a reasonable volume won't disturb your conversations with potential customers? Seems like a no-brainer there.
Lets not forget a dress code. Yeah, lets not enforce that, you don't need to look good to program, man. Until that one programmer wearing the 2 sizes too small phantom menace t-shirt with the body odor turns off a potential client. Is wearing a pair of dockers and a shirt that doesn't have a fucking wookie on it going to kill you?
I don't know about everyone else, but I can't think when the clothes I'm wearing are uncomfortable. If I am more productive when I'm wearing jeans and a t-shirt then management will allow it. No one fucking sees me anyway, unless I go to the cafeteria and even then they probably think I'm on the janitorial staff. Who cares??
Yeah, its really hip to have that one guy come in at work at 2pm and work until 9 at night, because he's so damn elite, until you realize that he's unable to interact with all of the _adults_ who have children and real-life responsibilities. Its called a team. "Oh, I don't work well in the morning." Oh, i'm so sorry! Gee, because the rest of us automatically wake up at 6:30am chipper and ready to go!
It's funny you claim you're an adult - because after reading this rant, I don't believe it.
Just because something is not usefull to everyone does not make it useless; you're just contradicting yourself.
Any given thing is always going to be useless to someone. It is the context that matters.
Where the source code does become useful is in the hands of developers
Well then it's not useless. Make up your mind.
I believe I did - my main point was that usefulness is all about context. Programs are made for end users and from their perspective, the source code is useless.
There are a few people that have said that source code is useless even to developers, which I can see. Unless the documentation fairy has visited the company that produced the source and made absolutely superb docs, chances are you won't be able to make heads or tails of the code without a serious time investment. What percentage of developers have this amount of time to fix a bug that might be fixed in a service pack in a month or two?
"The only point that didn't made sense in this summary was the one about "source code being useless"."
Source code *is* useless to about 99% of the people that use the program. My aunt Benita isn't going to track down a Microsoft Word bug and fix it even if she HAD the source. She wouldn't care - she'd just wait for the update. So in that context, the source code is useless.
Where the source code does become useful is in the hands of developers, but for users it's just another disk of stuff they get in the package that they'll never use.
If it fails the verification check due to using any unsafe feature, it won't be allowed to run in a safe context.
.... is Bill just blowing FUD?
So it is the feature or instruction that is unsafe and if the program is in a sandbox which is not allowed to use the feature, then it flat out doesn't allow it. It doesn't sound like UNSAFE code is a security risk then
I've been reading a lot of comments about the IL code having some sort of flag mechanism indicating unsafe portions.
.exe header?
My question is this: since the end-user JIT executes IL, what stops someone from editing the IL so that it becomes 'unflagged' as unsafe and tricks the end-user into thinking it is a safe portion? Are there a group of unsafe instructions? Is the IL obfuscated in some way? Or is it just as simple as an 'unsafe=1' in the
I think many of our concerns about unsafe code could be answered by knowing these details. Could someone with the technical knowledge step forward?
The biggest problem is support. The government runs mainly on HP-UX and Solaris, and they do that because they know that if something goes wrong, it can be fixed by tomorrow at the latest. Linux needs solutions providers - one company that sells the hardware, the operating system and the support.
For high-performance, specialized servers maybe, but you can get commercial-off-the-shelf support for x86 machines from just about anyone. As for the OS, I think RedHat has the Linux support market covered, enough at least to get IBM's attention.
So the gov't may not have ideas of replacing EVERY machine with opensource, but I don't see much of a barrier with replacing low-traffic servers, databases and desktop machines (negating the obvious MS Office file format issues). The support is already there.
The government will not change because the corporations (who own the government, figuratively speaking) will not let them change. Until we get rid of campaign contributions and begin doing public funding of campaigns, the corporations will continue to control the government and the open-source movement (and all other movements) will get stomped on.
This only prevents a global change. Individual managers can decide if they want to use a certain open source product. If enough do this, it could initiate change from the inside out, showing the reduced costs, benefits from having the code, etc.
Software is something that bigwigs in the gov't can't make a decision on without proven results relating to government, so it's a no-brainer to calve to the people that are contributing money to their compaigns or parties (and have a proven track record). If the software is going to save their department millions in licensing fees and maintainance while providing the same functionality, then they have to justify why they want the costly proprietary solution TO THE PUBLIC. As open source becomes more commonplace, this will become an increasingly difficult thing to do.
Some people do things well enough that they don't have to worry about the things other people consider serious flaws.
...
Some people stick their noses up at new things because they like the tried and true proven way, even if it takes many more keystrokes. While it's probably safe to say you'll be put to pasture soon (given your old age) and don't need to worry about all of these newfangled developments in languages, other people will. So I don't think your original opinion is very (Score:3, Insightful) - which is why I even bothered to respond to it in the first place.
However, Miguel expresses a real concern about developer TIME that you still refuse to address. It's probably true that after coding classes for 10 years you have become very efficient at it, but who says it should take that long to be that good (from a quality standpoint) at something like memory management when it can be taken care of automatically? Now it's true that you take a performance hit with the overhead it takes to manage memory, but performance is becoming relatively irrelevant in most cases when people just want to get something completed. THAT is Miguel's focus - to construct a tool to make software QUICKLY for GNOME.
People aren't going to waste their time farting around with memory management in C++ when C# solves the problem. Well, people who are open to change that is
C++ memory management is much better because it is done by ME.
... picturing Emacs in the old days ...
.... and while I'm sure you claim to have ZERO memory leaks in any of your software, some people would rather not worry about de-allocating a linked list, thank you very much. The point Miguel is making (and that you keep missing) is that implementing all of this memory management is BORING and takes valuable developer TIME. At some point you have to sacrifice performance for productivity and get the dang software out the door.
Yes, and I'm sure that absolutely no progress has been made on the performance of garbage collection of the language it was implemented in OR the speed of computers in general. </sarcasm>
Well, I have been doing this longer than he has... I still haven't come to that "point in my life" yet. That is why I bring up how old I am.
You are either far more patient or more set in your ways than he is then. It still doesn't matter how old you are.
There are two kinds of people - those that just sit and take it up the ass repeatedly and those that try to find a better way of doing things. Miguel is one of those latter people.
Microsoft whips out a patent and demands royalties for all the labor that we have done under the illusion that it would be free.
IANAL, but common sense dictates that a stardard cannot be patented. Otherwise, who would implement ANY standard not knowing if/when the 'owner' would want to collect royalties. I find it very unlikely.
Perhaps the only "evil" involved here is that Miguel's efforts may legitimize Microsoft's monopoly as a false example of the "openness" the monster of Redmond.
.NET and Linux how does that help the Microsoft monopoly?
Let me get this straight:
An open source developer implementing a STANDARD is legitimizing a monopoly? Please.
What Mono is all about is USING Microsoft's generosity to create a better GNOME development environment.
If that opens the doors to many more GNOME developers, how does that help the Microsoft monopoly? If programs can be easily ported between
The bottom line is that Miguel is legitimizing an open standard, not a monopoly. If Microsoft plans to deviate from the standard (ie. without publishing how), then why would Microsoft make it a standard in the first place? It just doesn't add up.
I think this remark just demonstrates a serious lack of proper experience with C++.
C++ may be a great language in certain areas, but the memory management sucks ass compared to Java/C# - this is the point Miguel is driving home here.
Automatic garbage collection is here to stay.
BTW, your "I'm older than HE is" remark irked me. Who cares how old you are?
Can it really be a bad thing to have too much information about any changes?
Yes, when the information is so detailed that you can't cut through the BS to find the meat. Some people just want a brief list to skim in order to decide if it's worth downloading or not.
I also used Rogers in Ottawa. It slowed down to that level until they installed a new Mysterious Green Box(tm) at the corner of my street a few months back. Then speeds went back up to over 200 KB/s (that's for a single download; I don't know what the aggregate max was.) I'm guessing that speed depends quite a bit on how well-equipped they are to handle the number of subscribers that exist in your neighbourhood.
;)
Yeah, they had the same problem two years ago in Sandy Hill, a student neighborhood. Everyone decided to get cable at once, and the network slowed down to a crawl.
Two months and two different new IPs - with totally different numbers in the second last entry, which probably means two complete network rebalances - later I was tearing it up again. But it was a real PITA.
I was also in a university residence with a "quote" weak signal "unquote" (said the network admin I called once). It was a "corporate" bulk account and they had the signal barely high enough to support just the right number of connections to TVs. As soon as people started splitting the cable and using modems, it went right to shit. No wonder the university discouraged us using cable 'net connections.
I'm not sure what speed Rogers is offering, but say its 512Kbps. If 100 users use all that, they need a T3 just for 100 users!
FYI, I've used Rogers in Ottawa, Canada for 4 years and I have a hard time getting over 100KB/s (800Kbps) now. AFAIK, Rogers implemented a cap (also halving the max. upload speed) a few years ago to discourage FTP servers hogging bandwidth.
I'm not complaining about 100KB/s, but if I have to pay $80CAN a month just so I can download at 'high speed' when I need to, I'm gonna snap. I would rather they implemented some sort of 'throughput' math on it (like x gigabytes per month), instead of a speed cap, which is more likely. *sigh*
Regardless, there will always be a cheaper option for geeks that just want to wail on an Internet connection. As soon as it becomes available, the 'early adopters' (ie. those same 4 year-long customers alienated by Rogers that early-adopted waaay back when) will flock to it. Buh-bye Rogers. Nice to know you.
At that size, a smallish mug should fit nicely on it. No use wasting all that heat!
... to room temperature! Unfortunately, this means no more hot coffee. :) Here's the quote from the article:
.13 micron and at 5GHz at normal room temperature, because of the low power circuits it will use.
:)
For now, maybe. According to an article linked in an above post, the chips will be cooling down
And Intel claims McKinleys in the future will run at
I don't drink coffee, but I was kinda hoping to have something to keep my feet warm.
I could use the (surely) fat pipe of the building to DoS some poor person, and who would catch me?
...
:)
Assuming there's no per-user cap on bandwidth, which is unlikely enough, but
It also assumes there's no one at the airport monitoring abuse of the system, which is very unlikely, especially on a $250,000 network. If they have the network set up right, they could triangulate your position (or at least the offending computer), tell security, and they'd be on your ass in a few minutes. But I'd still like to see someone try it.