"No, I am saying there aren't any good ones that _come with the IDE_. "
Honestly I just don't get you guys GUI designer fixation but.....
If it's an eclipse plug-in that what is your damage?
"How much of an application's total programming time is spent on the UI depends entirely on the application. Front-ends to databases for example (a very common sort of application) are little more than UIs, so 90% of their total coding time will be UI-related; by contrast, the database manager that said application interfaces with may have little or no UI code in it. You cannot therefore make a blanket statement about the importance of a good UI builder without knowing what people are expecting to do with it."
Aah but writing of the code is less then 10% of the total lifecycle of the product.
"ndeed. But this is something that is at best tangentially related to what is being discussed because it is a project management issue rather than an IDE/framework issue. Both VS /.NET and Eclipse / Java can be used to write un-maintainable crud if a project is poorly managed."
No this is where VS is totally outclassed by eclipse. For two years now eclipse had real refactoring support while VS had nothing. Eclipse had read debugging while VS had crappy debugging. Eclipse had real build and deployment tools while VS had shit. Same goes goes for documentation and such too.
Now VS has come up about 80% of what eclipse has and will still for another two years while eclipse advances.
The 90% of the product life cycle which concerns itself with refactoring, debugging, deployment, maintenance etc is where VS falls miserably short of eclipse.
"I have seen two solutions to using RMI applications with SOAP that do not require significant rewrites. "
I hate to break it to you but Java supports SOAP without RMI.
"And none that I have seen support VS' ability to drag a component written in one language on to parts of a program written in a different one, and then step through the code in one straight into the other using both (or in the case of several components, several) original source languages."
Yea, eclipse can do that. The JVM supports more languages then.NET too.
"Is really better? Then why don't Sun use it to install Java instead of an installation program? "
Because web start requires java. What an ignorant question.
"But they are reasons why others select it: companies can get a MSDN Universal subscription that gives them access to pretty much everything MS produce, including betas of upcoming products and tools so that they can evaluate them and plan product strategies accordingly. It's a difficult package to beat for Windows development shops."
Windows shops are zealots by definition. Only a zealot thinks that all their problems should be solved by one vendor. Zealots will always choose MS products no matter what.
"That would have been a valid point two or three years ago, but it isn't now. There are a wide variety of "Windows Mobile" (as they're now calling it: name-change number #3, if memory serves) phones being offered by by several vendors (Treo are the latest), and more importantly, quite a large number of operators."
Saying there is a "huge variety" is very nice and professional marketing speak. It looks like you are either a professional marketing person or specially trained to use terms like this on public boards.
Look at the market share. Just because there are fifty types of MS smartphones it doesn't mean they are selling. Every nokia, motorola, sanyo, LG etc phone supports java out of the box.
"Microsoft _have_ made significant inroads into the sector now (and are growing steadily), and are a very viable option if phones are only one of several types of mobile device that one is writing for."
if you want to go after less then 5% of the market by all means go ahead. I aint' going to stop you. If you want to make money though you may want to consider targetting a platform people actually use.
"Better is subjective. And in what way are Java IDEs more productive? Certainly not for building GUI apps, for example."
Why not? Are you saying there are no GUI designers on the market for Java?
Also designing the GUI is a small part of writing the program.
"DOT-NET also has a huge library, and there are tons of open source frameworks and helpers for native Windows API programming."
About a tenth of what's available for Java I'd say. That's not scientific of course but yea right about there.
"Which is not well leveraged by any tools. Java GUI builders are still primitive compared with what was available in VB 1.0 and Delphi 1.0, and editing said GUIs once any builders you can find have finished with them can be painful and error-prone."
Sounds like man who has never used one. But like I said designing the GUI is a tiny percentage of writing the app. Hell writing the app is a tiny percentage of the total software lifecycle. Maintenance and debugging is where the most effort goes to.
1. Full integration with native Windows technologies without the need for bridges, JNI, etc..NET needs a bridge to interact with non managed code just similar to JNI.
2. True drag-and-drop programming for both GUI apps and web apps.
Yup eclipse has that.
3. WebForms can easily be converted to WinForms and vice-versa.
Yup there are similar things for java.
4. Completely transparent SOAP via.NET remoting.
Yup
5. Supports the latest Windows technologies the moment they appear.
No, not the moment they appear. But then again if you are going to be chasing after MS pradigm of the day you will spend all your time rewriting all your code in whatever MS thinks is the next big thing.
6. Provides in-built mechanisms for directly accessing Windows APIs, external libraries written in C, C++, etc.
Haven't you already said this three times now?
7. Mixed language projects can be managed and debugged from within the same IDE.
Yup, eclipse can do that.
8. IDE can build and test Windows Installer Files.
Yup eclipse can do that with java web start which is even better then installing software with a MSI.
9. Everything required is available from a single source, which greatly simplifies the process of ensuring that the entire development system is kept up to date.
Vendor lock is never good but whatever rocks your boat. Eclipse can update all itself and all of it's plug ins and keep them up to date.
10. Build, test, and deploy Compact Framework apps for mobile devices from within the IDE.
Yup. Unlike.NET the market for java phones is HUGE. MS has utterly failed to make any inroads into the smart phone market while virtually every phone in the market supports java.
The GUI is described in XML. That's shit. It's shit of the stinkiest kind. It's stupid. There was a reason both delphi and VB didn't use XML to describe the GUI and it was a good reason.
Only an idiot thinks it's a good idea to add the overhead of interpreting XML to a gui display program.
"However, I have to work with windows. Regardless of where the fault lies, this is problematic on the best of days."
If it's problematic then you need to pick up the phone to MS and complain about how their stuff is not interporating with the rest of the software on your network. Once again your boss picked MS stuff because MS promised them that they would provide support and that he would have somebody to blame when things went wrong.
If things are going wrong then you should demand your support. You are paying for this shit remember that. They are the vendor you are the customer.
If after calling MS you don't get satisfaction and if having somebody to blame ends up not being that great of a thing then make a report and give it to your boss. Your boss needs to know that MS is not delivering on what they promised.
Saying "my boss doesn't care who is at fault" is not true. Your boss cares very much who is at fault. Your boss is paying big bucks and making decisions based on who is at fault. It's not your job to protect vendors from your boss. It's your job to feed accurate and timely information to your boss so he/she can make better decisions.
"Java has no real advantages for Windows programmers unless want its cross-platform capabilities (most don't), so where are the better tools for people to evaluate?"
It has many advantages. A better more productive IDE is just one. There is also the huge library, tons of open source frameworks and helpers, a sane GUI programming paradigm etc.
REally? I didn't know that. So can it only manipulate XML data or can it manipulate other types of data too?
"How much easier would it be when the designer can just hand over the UI design and plug it in? How much easier is it to refresh that xml when the UI designer decides they want to change some aspect of how the UI interacts with the user?"
It would be much harder. It's going to be so hard nobody is going to manipulate the XML by hand. You are going to need a GUI designer to do it. If the GUI designer is going to do it anyway then why pick XML and add all that parsing overhead.
"They provide basic controls. Want a more complicated control? You have to write it yourself. Here, that whole process is encapulated in the UI design."
So if somebody wants a more complicated control they are going to do it XML?
"Why don't you actually, I dunno, try to read about what this is before you start trying to wave the "it's from microsoft, it must be shit" flag?"
I have read about it. It's shit. It's so shitty no human being will ever program in their XML format. They will be using the GUI painter just like the VB people have done for decades.
It's shit, it really is. It's new shit, its shit based on XML but it's still shit.
"And, practically, does this make a difference? Can I look my boss in the eye and tell him that the mail server doesn't know who it's users are, but it's ok because it's MS's fault?"
Isn't the fact that "you have somebody to blame when things go wrong" a strong selling point for proprietary software? Why don't you give it a shot. If your boss finds out that the so called support you get from MS is worthless and then even when it's their fault they do nothing then next time your boss will have less incentive to go with MS.
"I'm attacking the idea that the actions of the China and the US are anyway similar, or are based on remotely similar justifications."
The justifications are exactly the same. These people are a threat to us and our way of life. They must be eliminated. Oddly enough both are based on religion.
"Beating people with truncheon welding storm troopers and then sending them to forced labor camps for the state crime of stretching = trying to catch Muslim terrorists before they carry out another 9-11 by limited wire tapping is equivilent?"
Except that people are not being sent to forced labor camps for stretching. So before you get any further you need to educate yourself on that issue. Secondly muslims too have been carried to concentration camps and torture chambers. Not to labor camps (although we have no idea what goes on at any of the concentration camps spread throughout the word) but people are shipped all over the world to be tortured and killed.
So the only point of moral superiority you have in that regard is that the US does not torture and kill as many people as the chinese an does it for similar but the nat the same reasons.
"trying to catch Muslim terrorists before they carry out another 9-11 by limited wire tapping is equivilent?"
Well this is another topic. There was no need to sidestep FISA which is a kangroo court designed to rubberstamp the president. It's a mystery to me why Bush felt the need to sidestep them. I suspect he is doing much more then trying to catch the bad muslims.
"Not that I disagree with most of your points, but I had to correct your notion that the entire world was in agreement with Clinton's decision. I often hear this point raised, and it's just not right."
While there was not universal support the kosovo adventure was carried out with NATO co-operation. The level of disagreement with kosovo and the gulf war would be a facinating comparison. I certainly don't recall billions of people worldwide doing co-ordinated protests during the clinton administration.
Furthermore Clinton never occupied kosovo. He just conducted airstrikes and special ops. He certainly didn't confiscate any of their natural resources and turned them over to American companies.
Finally he never tortured people and never destroyed entire cities (a-la fallujia). You may recall images of soccer fields outside of fallujia being turned into mass graves after the first time we bombed the shit out of that city. There were no similar incidents in kosovo.
"Actually, quick fact check. The UN did not agree to Kosovo. It was blocked by Russia and China instead of by France. Apparently that makes all the difference."
First of all it does indeed make a difference. If you don't think there is any difference between a modern european democracy and russia and china then you need to get your head out of your ass and stop listening to Rush.
Secondly it was a NATO project. You may want to look up NATO on the web. I know Rush doesn't talk about it much so you won't get any information about it on the radio.
"(Oh, and by the way, Clinton also bombed the daylight out of the Iraqi's without even informing our allies to say nothing of UN approval)"
Only for a republitard definition of "bombed the daylights out". To a republitard there is no difference between dropping a bomb in a isolated area which is launcing missiles at you and destroying 75% of fallujia (twice!) and having the grim spectre of mass graves in soccer fields to bury all the civillians.
Oh and one last thing. CLinton did not occupy any nation, he did not lie about weapons of mass destruction, he did not torture anybody, he did not set up concentration camps all over the world either.
Only the most idiotic of the republitards thinks there is no difference between clinton and bush. Of course the fact that the republitards have now resorted to saying "bush is just like clinton" is a wealth of irony considering how much they hate the clinton familiy.
"Because they can afford to be. Microsoft have the dominant IDE for the dominant OS"
That can't be it because eclipse and intellij (as well as delphi, jdeveloper, jbuilder etc) all run on windows.
THe real reason is zealotry. MS shops only use MS products and MS languages. They don't do honest evaluations of what is out there and choose the best product. They think that no matter what the problem is the MS tool is the only one suitable.
You first have to overcome the zealot mind who thinks that all problems need an MS solution.
"This is the problem when people who don't understand morality try to argue moral equivilence."
Not that much of a difference. You are no different then the chinese because you equavate all muslims and arabs with people who commit suicide bombings. Furthermore you don't take into cnsideration that the people who commit suicide bombings are under occupation and are trying to repel a superior military presence which is occupying their country and subjugating them to their will.
There is a difference between killing people who are attacking your country, invading your cities, and occupying your town and killing people in order to gain control over oil wells and install your puppet governments.
"Oppressing people who like to stretch in parks for stretching in parks because they scare you is not the same as arresting terrorists because they are planning to blow up more citizens"
Killing is killing. Whether you kill a family of eight with a missile launched from a drone or a bomb strapped to your chest doesn't really matter does it? I mean just because you lable people who object to your invation of their country as "terrorists" does it really give you the right to kill their children?
"If Bill Clinton starts a war, it is good. If George W. Bush does,"
Mmmm Bill Clinton didn't start a war. The US military intervened in a war which was already being waged after being asked by the UN.
You can tell the difference between a war on which the entire world is in agreement and one which is waged for fun and profit right? Unlike Clinton Bush did indeed start a war.
Oh and it's wrong to torture no matter who does it.
I hate to inject actual facts into your fantasy world but I thought I should anyway.
"That's just it, the dev's don't code in XML. The XML defines what the UI looks like and how elements of the UI interact (either though more XML, or by referencing some code snippet)"
So why have it in XML in the first place. What exactly do you gain from adding that layer of parsing? It seems silly especially if the programmer will be using a GUI designer in the first place. Why not have the GUI designer spit out objects or even the exact same frm files that VB used for over a decade?
"The XML is converted into a set of objects. Those objects are responsible for managing all of the fun nitty gritty details of the UI; they also have events that de which have events that the developers can interact with."
Mmm yea, but why? What is the advantage over what delphi did, what vb did, what.net did or what swing does?
"You can actually create a project where the UI management logic and the application logic is completely separate; you can change how the UI looks and responds to events without touching one piece of application logic."
Wow, amazing, that's some cool innovation there. I bet nobody has ever done anything like that before!.
"I completely expect someone to create some sort of advanced tool to create this XML -- the same way I'd expect someone to use a tool to manipulate a resource file. However, that tool won't be limited to just defining a static layout -- THAT is the "innovative" part."
Since when has any other GUI toolkit by any major vendor been only good for defining static layout? That's not innovation. That technology has been around for twenty years or more.
You know what the innovation is? IT USES XML!!!!!!. That's the innovation.
"YET. Considering things like Sarbane-Oxley and new rules for medical records losing or misplacing data matters. It costs money to comply with those rules. And if you lose data you shouldn't, it can cost more money. You also might say that some expensive rules come in to being BECAUSE other companies have mishandled data."
Lets be real companies just give lip service to complying with regulations. If they get caught with their pants down the govt slaps their hand with a wet noodle and goes about their way. Again see choicepoint for an example.
Then why are they always one to two years behind eclipse and intelliJ in features? Look how long it took VS to get refactoring support, unit testing tools and a halfway decent build system for god's sake.
Face it they make a mediocre IDE. Sure the VB guys think it's great but to the people who have been programming in Java for the last couple of years it still has a way to go to catch up to what they are using.
Now that VS 2005 is out you will have to wait another two years while the eclipse programmers get ahead even further.
I honestly don't know of any developer who would rather code in XML then a proper language. That's why XUL never took off either.
The end result will be that there will be GUI drawing tool which will spit out the XML and for the GUI designer will be no different then VB and the geek it will be no different then Glade.
Just re-inventing the same wheel over and over again. Wake me up when someboy innovates.
"And if you can figure out exactly what as little as possible translates to in the real world, you will be hailed as the greatest statesman-philosopher that ever lived."
In the real world this transaltes to "Give me mine, take away his".
"Wouldn't most Democrats be a little happier if the government wasn't able to take a huge chunk of your wealth in order to buy bombs to drop on brown people? And wouldn't most Republicans be a little happier of the government didn't take the rest of your money to spend on government employees' unions and welfare queens?"
Sure but you don't get to pick and choose do you. The repubs don't want the unions or the teachers getting any money but they want to dole it out to miners, loggers, oil barrons, ranchers, hunters, farmers, defense contractors and other people who vote for them.
Same with demos, they don't want the money going to kill a-rabs but they want to dole it out to the teachers, cops, firemen, road workers, welfare queens and other people who might vote for them.
Slashdot Mirror
"No, I am saying there aren't any good ones that _come with the IDE_. "
.NET and Eclipse / Java can be used to write un-maintainable crud if a project is poorly managed."
.NET too.
Honestly I just don't get you guys GUI designer fixation but.....
If it's an eclipse plug-in that what is your damage?
"How much of an application's total programming time is spent on the UI depends entirely on the application. Front-ends to databases for example (a very common sort of application) are little more than UIs, so 90% of their total coding time will be UI-related; by contrast, the database manager that said application interfaces with may have little or no UI code in it. You cannot therefore make a blanket statement about the importance of a good UI builder without knowing what people are expecting to do with it."
Aah but writing of the code is less then 10% of the total lifecycle of the product.
"ndeed. But this is something that is at best tangentially related to what is being discussed because it is a project management issue rather than an IDE/framework issue. Both VS /
No this is where VS is totally outclassed by eclipse. For two years now eclipse had real refactoring support while VS had nothing. Eclipse had read debugging while VS had crappy debugging. Eclipse had real build and deployment tools while VS had shit. Same goes goes for documentation and such too.
Now VS has come up about 80% of what eclipse has and will still for another two years while eclipse advances.
The 90% of the product life cycle which concerns itself with refactoring, debugging, deployment, maintenance etc is where VS falls miserably short of eclipse.
"I have seen two solutions to using RMI applications with SOAP that do not require significant rewrites. "
I hate to break it to you but Java supports SOAP without RMI.
"And none that I have seen support VS' ability to drag a component written in one language on to parts of a program written in a different one, and then step through the code in one straight into the other using both (or in the case of several components, several) original source languages."
Yea, eclipse can do that. The JVM supports more languages then
"Is really better? Then why don't Sun use it to install Java instead of an installation program? "
Because web start requires java. What an ignorant question.
"But they are reasons why others select it: companies can get a MSDN Universal subscription that gives them access to pretty much everything MS produce, including betas of upcoming products and tools so that they can evaluate them and plan product strategies accordingly. It's a difficult package to beat for Windows development shops."
Windows shops are zealots by definition. Only a zealot thinks that all their problems should be solved by one vendor. Zealots will always choose MS products no matter what.
"That would have been a valid point two or three years ago, but it isn't now. There are a wide variety of "Windows Mobile" (as they're now calling it: name-change number #3, if memory serves) phones being offered by by several vendors (Treo are the latest), and more importantly, quite a large number of operators."
Saying there is a "huge variety" is very nice and professional marketing speak. It looks like you are either a professional marketing person or specially trained to use terms like this on public boards.
Look at the market share. Just because there are fifty types of MS smartphones it doesn't mean they are selling. Every nokia, motorola, sanyo, LG etc phone supports java out of the box.
"Microsoft _have_ made significant inroads into the sector now (and are growing steadily), and are a very viable option if phones are only one of several types of mobile device that one is writing for."
if you want to go after less then 5% of the market by all means go ahead. I aint' going to stop you. If you want to make money though you may want to consider targetting a platform people actually use.
"Better is subjective. And in what way are Java IDEs more productive? Certainly not for building GUI apps, for example."
.NET needs a bridge to interact with non managed code just similar to JNI.
.NET remoting.
.NET the market for java phones is HUGE. MS has utterly failed to make any inroads into the smart phone market while virtually every phone in the market supports java.
Why not? Are you saying there are no GUI designers on the market for Java?
Also designing the GUI is a small part of writing the program.
"DOT-NET also has a huge library, and there are tons of open source frameworks and helpers for native Windows API programming."
About a tenth of what's available for Java I'd say. That's not scientific of course but yea right about there.
"Which is not well leveraged by any tools. Java GUI builders are still primitive compared with what was available in VB 1.0 and Delphi 1.0, and editing said GUIs once any builders you can find have finished with them can be painful and error-prone."
Sounds like man who has never used one. But like I said designing the GUI is a tiny percentage of writing the app. Hell writing the app is a tiny percentage of the total software lifecycle. Maintenance and debugging is where the most effort goes to.
1. Full integration with native Windows technologies without the need for bridges, JNI, etc.
2. True drag-and-drop programming for both GUI apps and web apps.
Yup eclipse has that.
3. WebForms can easily be converted to WinForms and vice-versa.
Yup there are similar things for java.
4. Completely transparent SOAP via
Yup
5. Supports the latest Windows technologies the moment they appear.
No, not the moment they appear. But then again if you are going to be chasing after MS pradigm of the day you will spend all your time rewriting all your code in whatever MS thinks is the next big thing.
6. Provides in-built mechanisms for directly accessing Windows APIs, external libraries
written in C, C++, etc.
Haven't you already said this three times now?
7. Mixed language projects can be managed and debugged from within the same IDE.
Yup, eclipse can do that.
8. IDE can build and test Windows Installer Files.
Yup eclipse can do that with java web start which is even better then installing software with a MSI.
9. Everything required is available from a single source, which greatly simplifies the process of ensuring that the entire development system is kept up to date.
Vendor lock is never good but whatever rocks your boat. Eclipse can update all itself and all of it's plug ins and keep them up to date.
10. Build, test, and deploy Compact Framework apps for mobile devices from within the IDE.
Yup. Unlike
The GUI is described in XML. That's shit. It's shit of the stinkiest kind. It's stupid. There was a reason both delphi and VB didn't use XML to describe the GUI and it was a good reason.
Only an idiot thinks it's a good idea to add the overhead of interpreting XML to a gui display program.
"However, I have to work with windows. Regardless of where the fault lies, this is problematic on the best of days."
If it's problematic then you need to pick up the phone to MS and complain about how their stuff is not interporating with the rest of the software on your network. Once again your boss picked MS stuff because MS promised them that they would provide support and that he would have somebody to blame when things went wrong.
If things are going wrong then you should demand your support. You are paying for this shit remember that. They are the vendor you are the customer.
If after calling MS you don't get satisfaction and if having somebody to blame ends up not being that great of a thing then make a report and give it to your boss. Your boss needs to know that MS is not delivering on what they promised.
Saying "my boss doesn't care who is at fault" is not true. Your boss cares very much who is at fault. Your boss is paying big bucks and making decisions based on who is at fault. It's not your job to protect vendors from your boss. It's your job to feed accurate and timely information to your boss so he/she can make better decisions.
Wow, I find that kind of shocking. So do they only support their Z4I product then? Maybe it would have been cheaper to buy Z4I.
Anyway Plone support, mmm, let me see. If I were you I would give http://zettai.net/ a look.
"End of the day, my boss doesn't care why something broke. She's just more concerned with why it's still not working."
In that case your boss should be perfectly happy with an open source product.
"Java has no real advantages for Windows programmers unless want its cross-platform capabilities (most don't), so where are the better tools for people to evaluate?"
It has many advantages. A better more productive IDE is just one. There is also the huge library, tons of open source frameworks and helpers, a sane GUI programming paradigm etc.
"Software can easily manipulate data."
REally? I didn't know that. So can it only manipulate XML data or can it manipulate other types of data too?
"How much easier would it be when the designer can just hand over the UI design and plug it in? How much easier is it to refresh that xml when the UI designer decides they want to change some aspect of how the UI interacts with the user?"
It would be much harder. It's going to be so hard nobody is going to manipulate the XML by hand. You are going to need a GUI designer to do it. If the GUI designer is going to do it anyway then why pick XML and add all that parsing overhead.
"They provide basic controls. Want a more complicated control? You have to write it yourself. Here, that whole process is encapulated in the UI design."
So if somebody wants a more complicated control they are going to do it XML?
"Why don't you actually, I dunno, try to read about what this is before you start trying to wave the "it's from microsoft, it must be shit" flag?"
I have read about it. It's shit. It's so shitty no human being will ever program in their XML format. They will be using the GUI painter just like the VB people have done for decades.
It's shit, it really is. It's new shit, its shit based on XML but it's still shit.
I have seen a lot of gripes about OSX on this topic but I haven't seen mine so I will toss it in here.
"Finder sucks big wet sloppy camel balls"..
Thank you very much. If it could simply remember my preferences then I might upgrade my evaluation to simply "finder sucks big wet sloppy balls".
Didn't you get a quote from the zope corporation for support?
"And, practically, does this make a difference? Can I look my boss in the eye and tell him that the mail server doesn't know who it's users are, but it's ok because it's MS's fault?"
Isn't the fact that "you have somebody to blame when things go wrong" a strong selling point for proprietary software? Why don't you give it a shot. If your boss finds out that the so called support you get from MS is worthless and then even when it's their fault they do nothing then next time your boss will have less incentive to go with MS.
"I'm attacking the idea that the actions of the China and the US are anyway similar, or are based on remotely similar justifications."
The justifications are exactly the same. These people are a threat to us and our way of life. They must be eliminated. Oddly enough both are based on religion.
"Beating people with truncheon welding storm troopers and then sending them to forced labor camps for the state crime of stretching = trying to catch Muslim terrorists before they carry out another 9-11 by limited wire tapping is equivilent?"
Except that people are not being sent to forced labor camps for stretching. So before you get any further you need to educate yourself on that issue. Secondly muslims too have been carried to concentration camps and torture chambers. Not to labor camps (although we have no idea what goes on at any of the concentration camps spread throughout the word) but people are shipped all over the world to be tortured and killed.
So the only point of moral superiority you have in that regard is that the US does not torture and kill as many people as the chinese an does it for similar but the nat the same reasons.
"trying to catch Muslim terrorists before they carry out another 9-11 by limited wire tapping is equivilent?"
Well this is another topic. There was no need to sidestep FISA which is a kangroo court designed to rubberstamp the president. It's a mystery to me why Bush felt the need to sidestep them. I suspect he is doing much more then trying to catch the bad muslims.
"Not that I disagree with most of your points, but I had to correct your notion that the entire world was in agreement with Clinton's decision. I often hear this point raised, and it's just not right."
While there was not universal support the kosovo adventure was carried out with NATO co-operation. The level of disagreement with kosovo and the gulf war would be a facinating comparison. I certainly don't recall billions of people worldwide doing co-ordinated protests during the clinton administration.
Furthermore Clinton never occupied kosovo. He just conducted airstrikes and special ops. He certainly didn't confiscate any of their natural resources and turned them over to American companies.
Finally he never tortured people and never destroyed entire cities (a-la fallujia). You may recall images of soccer fields outside of fallujia being turned into mass graves after the first time we bombed the shit out of that city. There were no similar incidents in kosovo.
"Actually, quick fact check. The UN did not agree to Kosovo. It was blocked by Russia and China instead of by France. Apparently that makes all the difference."
First of all it does indeed make a difference. If you don't think there is any difference between a modern european democracy and russia and china then you need to get your head out of your ass and stop listening to Rush.
Secondly it was a NATO project. You may want to look up NATO on the web. I know Rush doesn't talk about it much so you won't get any information about it on the radio.
"(Oh, and by the way, Clinton also bombed the daylight out of the Iraqi's without even informing our allies to say nothing of UN approval)"
Only for a republitard definition of "bombed the daylights out". To a republitard there is no difference between dropping a bomb in a isolated area which is launcing missiles at you and destroying 75% of fallujia (twice!) and having the grim spectre of mass graves in soccer fields to bury all the civillians.
Oh and one last thing. CLinton did not occupy any nation, he did not lie about weapons of mass destruction, he did not torture anybody, he did not set up concentration camps all over the world either.
Only the most idiotic of the republitards thinks there is no difference between clinton and bush. Of course the fact that the republitards have now resorted to saying "bush is just like clinton" is a wealth of irony considering how much they hate the clinton familiy.
"Because they can afford to be. Microsoft have the dominant IDE for the dominant OS"
That can't be it because eclipse and intellij (as well as delphi, jdeveloper, jbuilder etc) all run on windows.
THe real reason is zealotry. MS shops only use MS products and MS languages. They don't do honest evaluations of what is out there and choose the best product. They think that no matter what the problem is the MS tool is the only one suitable.
You first have to overcome the zealot mind who thinks that all problems need an MS solution.
"This is the problem when people who don't understand morality try to argue moral equivilence."
Not that much of a difference. You are no different then the chinese because you equavate all muslims and arabs with people who commit suicide bombings. Furthermore you don't take into cnsideration that the people who commit suicide bombings are under occupation and are trying to repel a superior military presence which is occupying their country and subjugating them to their will.
There is a difference between killing people who are attacking your country, invading your cities, and occupying your town and killing people in order to gain control over oil wells and install your puppet governments.
"Oppressing people who like to stretch in parks for stretching in parks because they scare you is not the same as arresting terrorists because they are planning to blow up more citizens"
Killing is killing. Whether you kill a family of eight with a missile launched from a drone or a bomb strapped to your chest doesn't really matter does it? I mean just because you lable people who object to your invation of their country as "terrorists" does it really give you the right to kill their children?
Plenty of people have been "disapeared" in the US. Not for dong tai chi but for doing other things the govt doesn't like.
The chinese don't like tai chi (it's actually not tai chi but I'll go along with your delusion) and the american govt doesn't like other acts.
"If Bill Clinton starts a war, it is good. If George W. Bush does,"
Mmmm Bill Clinton didn't start a war. The US military intervened in a war which was already being waged after being asked by the UN.
You can tell the difference between a war on which the entire world is in agreement and one which is waged for fun and profit right? Unlike Clinton Bush did indeed start a war.
Oh and it's wrong to torture no matter who does it.
I hate to inject actual facts into your fantasy world but I thought I should anyway.
"That's just it, the dev's don't code in XML. The XML defines what the UI looks like and how elements of the UI interact (either though more XML, or by referencing some code snippet)"
.net did or what swing does?
So why have it in XML in the first place. What exactly do you gain from adding that layer of parsing? It seems silly especially if the programmer will be using a GUI designer in the first place. Why not have the GUI designer spit out objects or even the exact same frm files that VB used for over a decade?
"The XML is converted into a set of objects. Those objects are responsible for managing all of the fun nitty gritty details of the UI; they also have events that de which have events that the developers can interact with."
Mmm yea, but why? What is the advantage over what delphi did, what vb did, what
"You can actually create a project where the UI management logic and the application logic is completely separate; you can change how the UI looks and responds to events without touching one piece of application logic."
Wow, amazing, that's some cool innovation there. I bet nobody has ever done anything like that before!.
"I completely expect someone to create some sort of advanced tool to create this XML -- the same way I'd expect someone to use a tool to manipulate a resource file. However, that tool won't be limited to just defining a static layout -- THAT is the "innovative" part."
Since when has any other GUI toolkit by any major vendor been only good for defining static layout? That's not innovation. That technology has been around for twenty years or more.
You know what the innovation is? IT USES XML!!!!!!. That's the innovation.
"YET. Considering things like Sarbane-Oxley and new rules for medical records losing or misplacing data matters. It costs money to comply with those rules. And if you lose data you shouldn't, it can cost more money. You also might say that some expensive rules come in to being BECAUSE other companies have mishandled data."
Lets be real companies just give lip service to complying with regulations. If they get caught with their pants down the govt slaps their hand with a wet noodle and goes about their way. Again see choicepoint for an example.
In the world of polyanna maybe. I don't see any conservative or libertarian anywhere sending back a penny of the money govt gives them.
"..is create good IDEs."
Then why are they always one to two years behind eclipse and intelliJ in features? Look how long it took VS to get refactoring support, unit testing tools and a halfway decent build system for god's sake.
Face it they make a mediocre IDE. Sure the VB guys think it's great but to the people who have been programming in Java for the last couple of years it still has a way to go to catch up to what they are using.
Now that VS 2005 is out you will have to wait another two years while the eclipse programmers get ahead even further.
I honestly don't know of any developer who would rather code in XML then a proper language. That's why XUL never took off either.
The end result will be that there will be GUI drawing tool which will spit out the XML and for the GUI designer will be no different then VB and the geek it will be no different then Glade.
Just re-inventing the same wheel over and over again. Wake me up when someboy innovates.
"And if you can figure out exactly what as little as possible translates to in the real world, you will be hailed as the greatest statesman-philosopher that ever lived."
In the real world this transaltes to "Give me mine, take away his".
"Wouldn't most Democrats be a little happier if the government wasn't able to take a huge chunk of your wealth in order to buy bombs to drop on brown people? And wouldn't most Republicans be a little happier of the government didn't take the rest of your money to spend on government employees' unions and welfare queens?"
Sure but you don't get to pick and choose do you. The repubs don't want the unions or the teachers getting any money but they want to dole it out to miners, loggers, oil barrons, ranchers, hunters, farmers, defense contractors and other people who vote for them.
Same with demos, they don't want the money going to kill a-rabs but they want to dole it out to the teachers, cops, firemen, road workers, welfare queens and other people who might vote for them.