I can't understand people who want a salary because of security. Where is the security? If the company doesn't need you any longer, you'll get fired anyway.
What's more, after the first 2 months in the year, I could be out of a job for the rest of the year, because all my expenses are covered already.
What's more, the negotiations about pay are so much fairer, because you supply a market and several companies make you an offer and I tend to choose the company with the highest hourly rate. Why? Because the only thing you can be sure of is the rate they pay. Anything else are just promises.
Further, I only take projects in the line of my skills, or the skills I'm interested in. That's why I have a consistent experience in my field. I don't know one employee who has a consistent skillset, because employees are forced to do whatever job the company assigns them to, and get paid fsckall to do it.
Last, but not least, as a contractor you get to defend yourself against predatory taxes. There's always ways to avoid them. As an employee, the taxes are taken out of your salary, even before you had the chance to argue. I hate that.
Especially here in Europe, if you charge $120 inclusive of value added taxes, you end up with $25 as an employee. As a contractor you can organise your personal corporate structure and make sure that you pocket $90 instead of $25, or even more. It pays to pay your tax lawyer.
That's why a contractor usually end up with 3 times more money than the manager, not to mention the collegues-employees. In almost every project the company asks me if I'm interested to become a project manager on their payroll: no thanks, I like the money too much.
And then some people moan: but money is not everything...
But it is not a question of money! It's a question of principle! Companies only have one long-term goal: maximize their profits. Why should I help any company make money, if I'm not getting a fair share of the cake? And let the markets decide what that fair share should be.
This forces us to revert to the question: What is then knowledge? But then you should answer the fundamental question first, that comes before any other: What is to be?
And as soon as we have understood the conventional character of to be, we understand that nothing has changed, because we are still the same.
Today's picture of high schools doesn't always look good, but we can do with it.
If you really want good teachers in the schools, there should be a system that rewards good teachers and sacks bad ones. That means competition between teachers to offer their services, and competition between school boards to hire the best talent.
If you want to deregulate the labour market for school teachers, you will have to deregulate the market for education too and have consumers, that is, the parents, vote with their dollars; where else would the pressure come from, on the school boards to perform?
I'm absolutely sure that deregulating the whole lot would increase average quality, reduce costs, and reward the best players, say teachers, in the field.
On the other hand, not everybody would have equal access to the best education around. It would depend on the amount of dollars you are able and willing to throw at it, on your previous grades, and on your ability to perform during interviews. Maybe a small number of pupils would obtain protection through quotas or scholarships, but most would have to put in hard work and real dollars.
Don't you recognize this situation? It already exists in colleges and universities; the quality of which is variable on the talent you have, the willingness to work and, not to mention, the dollars you are willing to put in.
The best will get even better, but the worst will go down the drain, totally.
But then again, if we don't want any of that, we must continue to put up with the lack of incentives to perform, the self-serving bureaucracies, and the quite mediocre outcomes.
SGI is suffocating on the consequences of Moore's law. Every nine months the commodity market doubles its performance. How in hell can one single company outpace that race?
I'm sure the next ones will be Sun. Unlike IBM, with MVS, CICS, and so on, Sun has fewer proprietary APIs and other hooks protecting it from customers moving to the cheaper end of the market.
Oracle, on the contrary, has always embraced and extended its proprietary APIs, beyond the reach of competing ODBC databases. You won't see Oracle submerged that fast in the sea of rising commoditazation.
Another strong API in the market is SAP R/3. No way customers who have implemented those APIs will ever be able to get rid of SAP Inc, without forfeiting a huge outlay in implementation costs.
The strongest hooks are of course the ones in Win32.
Since there are no significant proprietary APIs tying SGI to its customer base, customers incur no cost in moving to whatever they want. The same holds true for Sun.
Five years from now, there will be no SGI and no Sun to speak of any longer. Ten years from now, I guess most Unix vendors will have disappeared. I think Microsoft is right to say that Linux will, in the first place, eat into the Unix market.
Imagine I have a serious problem with my telephone company, because I think they overcharged me. Well, in that case, I simply don't pay the bill, and use another telephone company. If we cannot settle one way or the other, they would have to drop the charge or else go to court.
In the US, this telephone company would report me to the credit rating agencies, or could actually leverage this fact while negotiating with me by threatening me that they will report it. On the other hand, I would not be able to leverage anything against them. I'm absolutely sure about the fact that this kind of situation must one way or the other lead to abuse.
Furthermore, this detracts from the reason why I continue to pay my telephone company: because I'm happy with the service and I want to keep using it. I don't pay my telephone company because they could report me to a credit rating agency. In such case, where is the incentive for the telephone company to settle, or even to investigate the consumer's allegations?
Therefore, it is obvious that the privacy laws in Belgium and other European countries protect consumers from abuse.
The sudden surge in the internet and especially the web almost drove Microsoft into obsolence. Obviously they did everything to prevent open protocols like SMTP,POP3,http,HTML from becoming successful. They recovered, however, part of the control lost, by distributing IE for free and pushing Netscape out of business. On the server side, however, they have had to concede quite a lot of business to Unix and Linux.
This is, however, not the last time that a new technology will suddenly surge and take over. As we are stretching the applicability of the current internet protocols to its limit and while we are slowly realizing that we will need something new and different to enable e-commerce massively, out there somewhere the next Tim Berners-Lee is writing the next hot thing that will take the world by storm. The next hot thing will not come from Microsoft, IBM, Sun, or any other vendor with an established customer base that they can continue milking. Hot things are more of a threat than an opportunity to these companies. But nonetheless, the next hot thing may eat well into Microsoft's desktop domination well before they have had the opportunity to re-organize and counterattack.
Bill Gates says himself "we are continuously only 2 years away from failure". And I think he's definitely right. But then it also testifies to the fact that he's a damn good player at these games.
There are serious differences in how Americans view privacy versus how Europeans view it.
For example, the credit rating agencies that collect financial information in the US on individuals are absolutely illegal in Belgium.
Except for a well-regulated database maintained by the National Bank on individuals who are behind more than 3 consecutive instalments on a personal loan, there is not one single publicly available, or against payment, financial database on individuals, because that's against the law.
It's also against the law to share or sell databases with information on individuals.
I don't understand how you can justify the buying and selling of information on private individuals, without their explicit consent. As far as I am concerned, I strongly believe that my private information is my personal property, and no one is allowed to trade in it, or disclose it otherwise, without asking me first for permission. I alone hold the copyright on my personal information, and I can assure you that I will prosecute any company that dares to disclose personal information on me to the maximum extent possible under the law, and I am sure that the amount in fines and punitive damages would drive this kind of company out of business right away.
If Intel manages to associate its serial number to my name, and then this serial number to any other personal information ot transactions I do online, they will very soon have to say goodbye to doing business in Europe.
Its obvious, as we are stretching the web to its limits, that a new burst of innovation will again change the ball game completely. It's just a question of time. We know from experience that the innovation will impossible come from Microsoft. By the time they manage to dominate the web, something else will have taken over, and they will have to start from scratch again, fighting it, and if it fails, try to embrace and extend it.
With one major difference, the world will have gone through the browser wars and the endless DOJ trials already, and this time, Microsoft will not have the leeway to run competition out of business. What's more, even consumers and mainstream media are now turning against Microsoft. Whatever they come up with, is greeted with sceptiscism.
I'd love to start using Linux in replacement of Windooz, and deploy software on Linux.
It's true that my users are to a large extent clueless as to what OS to choose. They simply use the OS and the software I install, and because all of that is a solution to their problem, they are quite happy too; if there is a problem, they call me, I walk in, and I solve the problem.
So, if I said from now on, it will be Linux, my users would not object. As a matter of fact, they couldn't care less, as long as they keep getting the service they are paying for.
Now, why am I not moving to Linux. Well, I'm waiting for the development tools that will enable me to write those custom office procedures that my users pay me for. I use VB/MsAccess on Windows, and I haven't found anything on Linux that allows for rapid development as much as VB/Access. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't mind writing the custom office procedures using gcc, but I am quite sure nobody will pay for the drastically extended amount of development time.
So, because Linux is not fit for the purpose of deploying typical workgroup database-driven client/server business office procedures, I tell my customers it's still a lot cheaper to pay Bill Gates.
Why don't we look at the pieces of software out there that people install and consider to be operating systems. Let's accept that when a minimum of 10,000 people have installed software and consider it to be an operating system, it fits the definition of operating system.
Next, of all the operating systems found above, let's list the features, according to an acceptable classification list of features.
Next, let's take the minimal set of features, to be found in all operating systems, as found to be used. This minimal set then defines the today concept of operating system. The feature list may change, but I don't think it will change that rapidly.
Does a browser belong to the operating system? According to the definition above, no. You can easily find operating systems installed by 10,000 people or more, that do not come with a browser.
Ho ho, I think all the criticism on the Babelfish translation is unwarranted.
To tell you the truth, the bad translation is much clearer to me than the original German text, because I don't speak German at all, but I was able make up out of the bad translation what the intended meaning was.
What's more, Babelfish wins on counts of being available, right now, without being perfect, but being quite helpful.
Anybody who doesn't like the bad translation, should read the original German text instead or else shut up.
AWT versus Swing and the compatibility and deprecation problem points to the root of the problem: the fact that Java can mathematically not deliver on its promises.
"Write once, run anywhere" not only makes abstraction of the fact that there is already a large installed base of different things, with no realistic cross-upgrade path, it even doesn't work when the whole world would be Java-only already.
Imagine Java does not change, and that there would only be one single release, then it would quickly fail to address new problems, take advantage of new research and development and in time be abandoned for newer technologies.
Imagine Java does change and gets upgraded. That means that it will get new features. If your code takes advantage of these new features, it will not be compatible with the old Java run-time. Therefore, your code does not "run anywhere". It doesn't even run on the previous Java platforms.
Everybody could have seen the AWT to Swing problem coming from day one.
Any technology that makes abstraction of the fact that there is already an installed base, is bound to fail. What's more, any technology that pretends that it will fill all holes, is a scam.
Everyone with half a brain could have seen this problem arriving, from day one, hour one, and minute one. If some idiot comes and tells you that your software will run out of the box on every single platform in the universe, and you believe him, you should check the content of your skull for contamination by animal defecation.
The less someone has a brain, the more that person is bound to be incompetent, and the more he is likely to hype along with the rest. The people who I saw jumping on the Java bandwagon, were already failing in their existing projects, didn't master their old technology and were hoping desperately for something new like Java to make up for their incompetence. I am sorry, but if you can't do the job, not one single technology is going to help.
If Microsoft shipped products in which they knew the bugs already, before shipping them, they would be liable to.
If the bugs are discovered afterwards, they've still dealt in good faith, and are not liable.
Microsoft may ship a lot of crap, but to this day, no one has been able to prove that Microsoft knew beforehand of any bugs in the software, and shipped it anyway.
Hey guys, we're not talking about a company that shipped defective products. That's not the issue at all.
Anybody can ship defective products and not be sued at all: Anybody can fail.
The issue is that they damn well knew the problem, and as a matter of policy, shoved the crap down the throat of unknowing customers, thinking that it wouldn't be discovered it anyway.
And then it becomes one big, massive scam. Then, they haven't dealt in good faith any longer; on the contrary, they've massively misrepresented facts, subverted the truth, lied and cheated for ten years in a row.
Ok, Toshiba, how much money did you make by doing that?
That's the minimum you gonna pay in punitive damages.
HTML & Java can't do the job. What's more, the typical client/server app would cost 5 times more in HTML & Java than with a typical client/server tool.
Java is a transitional technology that will exist long enough for us the discover why we shouldn't use it, and then disappear, and be replaced by something that works much better.
The revolution of the Internet is not HTML, is not Java, is not XML, or any other misguided and overhyped buzzword. The revolution of the Internet is the connectivity itself that is on its way to become ubiquitous. Everyone can potentially reach anyone, in almost real time. The ways in which we use this connectivity will change and gradually improve over time.
One thing is for sure, the next breakthrough of the size of HTML/http will not come from Microsoft of from Sun. Very simply, because of the way Microsoft and Sun make money, ubiquitous connectivity is a threat to them. If everyone can communicate with anyone else, what would we need them for? The sole reason for existence of Microsoft and Sun is to make sure that we cannot communicate properly without using their products. Their goal is to stand between you and the rest of the world. That's why they will continue to either try to control or else try to destroy the internet.
The next breakthrough will come again from some humble individual or group of individuals like Tim Berners-Lee, who will propose a solution so good that it will take the world by storm again.
The so-called added value in compaq PCs is in their proprietary design: ranging from connectors, modems, various cards built in, to even their version of Windooz. The most visible result of proprietary designs, is that you can hardly change or upgrade anything, or they break down completely. That's why I consider compaq to be amongst the lowest quality pc vendors around.
No matter how much money they put into marketing, I'd rather buy anything else before considering compaq.
My impression of Dell is that they are still ok, but they may soon develop a penchant for proprietary designs to *differentiate* their products from the crowd and command a *premium* on top of the market prices.
I'd rather stick to no-brand clones that sports hardware components that follow well-known standards. Even if the pc is going to run Windows, I'll make sure that all components are on the Linux compatibility list, not because the pc is ever going to run Linux, but because that means that the components have well-known interfaces and properties; and then I know what I am buying and then I can compare prices and quality.
Compaq PCs are for people who want quality, but do not have the brains to assess it by themselves. In the end they just get crap.
The very last thing you can say to a new employer, is what you really want: to make good, good money. And the very last thing you can say to a woman you're trying to seduce, is what you really want: to get her in your bed.
I think of culture as the commonly accepted answers to these contradictions. Culture seems to be a set of standardised lies that you are expected to apply in well-defined situations.
Women emancipation has brought a number of new standardised lies, like: we want them to be equal to us; we will do the cooking too.
If I have to, I will apply the appropriate standardised lie to the pre-defined situation.
However, the more my disposable income grows, the less I seem to be inclined to do so. What's more, I need to do it less and less. In situations in which I used to accommodate, I tell people more often to f*ck off.
If there's one thing good about being a geek, it is that there's a lot of money in technology.
Instead of moaning about VB's popularity, why don't you come up with something that matches its features? Well, because there's nothing. As long as there is nothing, you can't write the apps that people are now writing in VB, and therefore, you cannot abandon Windows, and therefore, Linux will never be used by the masses.
It wouldn't be difficult to move from MsOffice to any office suite on Linux, if it weren't for the automated office procedures written in MsAccess and VB.
Forget MsOffice: it's not keeping people on Windows. VB and Access are!
Thanks. I'm now reading the article on behalf of Mr. slashdoted. I will summarize the gist and forward it to him. I wish to emphasize that I am not reading on my own behalf! Legally, Mr. slashdoted is now reading.
It's been in Napoleon's code for over 200 years by now, that debts from gambling are void. It doesn't matter if these debts have been run up over the internet or in any other way. Debts from gambling are void, and so are debts from prostitution, ransom, and any other illegal act. Gambling itself may not be illegal, or legal within regulations, but the debts incurred will still be void.
Visa and Mastercard should know this. If they still try to collect the cash, I feel that they should be slapped with severe punitive damages.
If Linux ever truly breaks through with the masses of this world, it will be smuggled into the office, just like the original PCs were, at the time, when the mainframe sysadmins used to dictatorship the electronic universe.
Regardless of whatever Gartners says.
After all this years of users using computers, their average level has increased slowly, steadily, gradually, painstakingly, but increased it has, and increasing it still is. At the same time, Micros~1 continues to dumb down their software to the point that it even starts sickening computer novices. It doesn't take that much more *intellisense*, *auto-correct*, *autoformat*, *office assistant*, *Are you really sure(y/n)*, before every single user will start looking out for software that does not automatically waste your time, and quite often, ruin your hard work as a matter of policy.
Time is Micros~1's worst enemy. As linux is becoming more and more complete, and users accumulate their exposure to computers, the day will come that a lot of people suddenly start moving.
For me that day will come when something as good as MsAccess (or VB) shows up for linux. I will not hesitate one second.
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I can't understand people who want a salary because of security. Where is the security? If the company doesn't need you any longer, you'll get fired anyway.
What's more, after the first 2 months in the year, I could be out of a job for the rest of the year, because all my expenses are covered already.
What's more, the negotiations about pay are so much fairer, because you supply a market and several companies make you an offer and I tend to choose the company with the highest hourly rate. Why? Because the only thing you can be sure of is the rate they pay. Anything else are just promises.
Further, I only take projects in the line of my skills, or the skills I'm interested in. That's why I have a consistent experience in my field. I don't know one employee who has a consistent skillset, because employees are forced to do whatever job the company assigns them to, and get paid fsckall to do it.
Last, but not least, as a contractor you get to defend yourself against predatory taxes. There's always ways to avoid them. As an employee, the taxes are taken out of your salary, even before you had the chance to argue. I hate that.
Especially here in Europe, if you charge $120 inclusive of value added taxes, you end up with $25 as an employee. As a contractor you can organise your personal corporate structure and make sure that you pocket $90 instead of $25, or even more. It pays to pay your tax lawyer.
That's why a contractor usually end up with 3 times more money than the manager, not to mention the collegues-employees. In almost every project the company asks me if I'm interested to become a project manager on their payroll: no thanks, I like the money too much.
And then some people moan: but money is not everything...
But it is not a question of money! It's a question of principle! Companies only have one long-term goal: maximize their profits. Why should I help any company make money, if I'm not getting a fair share of the cake? And let the markets decide what that fair share should be.
This forces us to revert to the question: What is then knowledge? But then you should answer the fundamental question first, that comes before any other: What is to be?
And as soon as we have understood the conventional character of to be, we understand that nothing has changed, because we are still the same.
Today's picture of high schools doesn't always look good, but we can do with it.
If you really want good teachers in the schools, there should be a system that rewards good teachers and sacks bad ones. That means competition between teachers to offer their services, and competition between school boards to hire the best talent.
If you want to deregulate the labour market for school teachers, you will have to deregulate the market for education too and have consumers, that is, the parents, vote with their dollars; where else would the pressure come from, on the school boards to perform?
I'm absolutely sure that deregulating the whole lot would increase average quality, reduce costs, and reward the best players, say teachers, in the field.
On the other hand, not everybody would have equal access to the best education around. It would depend on the amount of dollars you are able and willing to throw at it, on your previous grades, and on your ability to perform during interviews. Maybe a small number of pupils would obtain protection through quotas or scholarships, but most would have to put in hard work and real dollars.
Don't you recognize this situation? It already exists in colleges and universities; the quality of which is variable on the talent you have, the willingness to work and, not to mention, the dollars you are willing to put in.
The best will get even better, but the worst will go down the drain, totally.
But then again, if we don't want any of that, we must continue to put up with the lack of incentives to perform, the self-serving bureaucracies, and the quite mediocre outcomes.
SGI is suffocating on the consequences of Moore's law. Every nine months the commodity market doubles its performance. How in hell can one single company outpace that race?
I'm sure the next ones will be Sun. Unlike IBM, with MVS, CICS, and so on, Sun has fewer proprietary APIs and other hooks protecting it from customers moving to the cheaper end of the market.
Oracle, on the contrary, has always embraced and extended its proprietary APIs, beyond the reach of competing ODBC databases. You won't see Oracle submerged that fast in the sea of rising commoditazation.
Another strong API in the market is SAP R/3. No way customers who have implemented those APIs will ever be able to get rid of SAP Inc, without forfeiting a huge outlay in implementation costs.
The strongest hooks are of course the ones in Win32.
Since there are no significant proprietary APIs tying SGI to its customer base, customers incur no cost in moving to whatever they want. The same holds true for Sun.
Five years from now, there will be no SGI and no Sun to speak of any longer. Ten years from now, I guess most Unix vendors will have disappeared. I think Microsoft is right to say that Linux will, in the first place, eat into the Unix market.
Imagine I have a serious problem with my telephone company, because I think they overcharged me. Well, in that case, I simply don't pay the bill, and use another telephone company. If we cannot settle one way or the other, they would have to drop the charge or else go to court.
In the US, this telephone company would report me to the credit rating agencies, or could actually leverage this fact while negotiating with me by threatening me that they will report it. On the other hand, I would not be able to leverage anything against them. I'm absolutely sure about the fact that this kind of situation must one way or the other lead to abuse.
Furthermore, this detracts from the reason why I continue to pay my telephone company: because I'm happy with the service and I want to keep using it. I don't pay my telephone company because they could report me to a credit rating agency. In such case, where is the incentive for the telephone company to settle, or even to investigate the consumer's allegations?
Therefore, it is obvious that the privacy laws in Belgium and other European countries protect consumers from abuse.
The sudden surge in the internet and especially the web almost drove Microsoft into obsolence. Obviously they did everything to prevent open protocols like SMTP,POP3,http,HTML from becoming successful. They recovered, however, part of the control lost, by distributing IE for free and pushing Netscape out of business. On the server side, however, they have had to concede quite a lot of business to Unix and Linux.
This is, however, not the last time that a new technology will suddenly surge and take over. As we are stretching the applicability of the current internet protocols to its limit and while we are slowly realizing that we will need something new and different to enable e-commerce massively, out there somewhere the next Tim Berners-Lee is writing the next hot thing that will take the world by storm. The next hot thing will not come from Microsoft, IBM, Sun, or any other vendor with an established customer base that they can continue milking. Hot things are more of a threat than an opportunity to these companies. But nonetheless, the next hot thing may eat well into Microsoft's desktop domination well before they have had the opportunity to re-organize and counterattack.
Bill Gates says himself "we are continuously only 2 years away from failure". And I think he's definitely right. But then it also testifies to the fact that he's a damn good player at these games.
There are serious differences in how Americans view privacy versus how Europeans view it.
For example, the credit rating agencies that collect financial information in the US on individuals are absolutely illegal in Belgium.
Except for a well-regulated database maintained by the National Bank on individuals who are behind more than 3 consecutive instalments on a personal loan, there is not one single publicly available, or against payment, financial database on individuals, because that's against the law.
It's also against the law to share or sell databases with information on individuals.
I don't understand how you can justify the buying and selling of information on private individuals, without their explicit consent. As far as I am concerned, I strongly believe that my private information is my personal property, and no one is allowed to trade in it, or disclose it otherwise, without asking me first for permission. I alone hold the copyright on my personal information, and I can assure you that I will prosecute any company that dares to disclose personal information on me to the maximum extent possible under the law, and I am sure that the amount in fines and punitive damages would drive this kind of company out of business right away.
If Intel manages to associate its serial number to my name, and then this serial number to any other personal information ot transactions I do online, they will very soon have to say goodbye to doing business in Europe.
Its obvious, as we are stretching the web to its limits, that a new burst of innovation will again change the ball game completely. It's just a question of time. We know from experience that the innovation will impossible come from Microsoft. By the time they manage to dominate the web, something else will have taken over, and they will have to start from scratch again, fighting it, and if it fails, try to embrace and extend it.
With one major difference, the world will have gone through the browser wars and the endless DOJ trials already, and this time, Microsoft will not have the leeway to run competition out of business. What's more, even consumers and mainstream media are now turning against Microsoft. Whatever they come up with, is greeted with sceptiscism.
Microsoft will never be able to repeat 1995.
I'd love to start using Linux in replacement of Windooz, and deploy software on Linux.
It's true that my users are to a large extent clueless as to what OS to choose. They simply use the OS and the software I install, and because all of that is a solution to their problem, they are quite happy too; if there is a problem, they call me, I walk in, and I solve the problem.
So, if I said from now on, it will be Linux, my users would not object. As a matter of fact, they couldn't care less, as long as they keep getting the service they are paying for.
Now, why am I not moving to Linux. Well, I'm waiting for the development tools that will enable me to write those custom office procedures that my users pay me for. I use VB/MsAccess on Windows, and I haven't found anything on Linux that allows for rapid development as much as VB/Access. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't mind writing the custom office procedures using gcc, but I am quite sure nobody will pay for the drastically extended amount of development time.
So, because Linux is not fit for the purpose of deploying typical workgroup database-driven client/server business office procedures, I tell my customers it's still a lot cheaper to pay Bill Gates.
Why don't we look at the pieces of software out there that people install and consider to be operating systems. Let's accept that when a minimum of 10,000 people have installed software and consider it to be an operating system, it fits the definition of operating system.
Next, of all the operating systems found above, let's list the features, according to an acceptable classification list of features.
Next, let's take the minimal set of features, to be found in all operating systems, as found to be used. This minimal set then defines the today concept of operating system. The feature list may change, but I don't think it will change that rapidly.
Does a browser belong to the operating system? According to the definition above, no. You can easily find operating systems installed by 10,000 people or more, that do not come with a browser.
Ho ho, I think all the criticism on the Babelfish translation is unwarranted.
To tell you the truth, the bad translation is much clearer to me than the original German text, because I don't speak German at all, but I was able make up out of the bad translation what the intended meaning was.
What's more, Babelfish wins on counts of being available, right now, without being perfect, but being quite helpful.
Anybody who doesn't like the bad translation, should read the original German text instead or else shut up.
> These two statements don't just apply to Java,
> but to all programming languages!
True, but the other programming languages did not promise "write once, run anywhere".
Can you hear that deep, sucking sound of the next crap Sun has thrown up over the world?
It's called rabbit-dung,jinibean-enabled bullshit builder. And believe me, they will do everything to shove it down your throat!
Yeah? So where are those tools then? Anything I've come across s*cks like a cheap whore.
AWT versus Swing and the compatibility and deprecation problem points to the root of the problem: the fact that Java can mathematically not deliver on its promises.
"Write once, run anywhere" not only makes abstraction of the fact that there is already a large installed base of different things, with no realistic cross-upgrade path, it even doesn't work when the whole world would be Java-only already.
Imagine Java does not change, and that there would only be one single release, then it would quickly fail to address new problems, take advantage of new research and development and in time be abandoned for newer technologies.
Imagine Java does change and gets upgraded. That means that it will get new features. If your code takes advantage of these new features, it will not be compatible with the old Java run-time. Therefore, your code does not "run anywhere". It doesn't even run on the previous Java platforms.
Everybody could have seen the AWT to Swing problem coming from day one.
Any technology that makes abstraction of the fact that there is already an installed base, is bound to fail. What's more, any technology that pretends that it will fill all holes, is a scam.
Everyone with half a brain could have seen this problem arriving, from day one, hour one, and minute one. If some idiot comes and tells you that your software will run out of the box on every single platform in the universe, and you believe him, you should check the content of your skull for contamination by animal defecation.
The less someone has a brain, the more that person is bound to be incompetent, and the more he is likely to hype along with the rest. The people who I saw jumping on the Java bandwagon, were already failing in their existing projects, didn't master their old technology and were hoping desperately for something new like Java to make up for their incompetence. I am sorry, but if you can't do the job, not one single technology is going to help.
You're missing the point!
If Microsoft shipped products in which they knew the bugs already, before shipping them, they would be liable to.
If the bugs are discovered afterwards, they've still dealt in good faith, and are not liable.
Microsoft may ship a lot of crap, but to this day, no one has been able to prove that Microsoft knew beforehand of any bugs in the software, and shipped it anyway.
Hey guys, we're not talking about a company that shipped defective products. That's not the issue at all.
Anybody can ship defective products and not be sued at all: Anybody can fail.
The issue is that they damn well knew the problem, and as a matter of policy, shoved the crap down the throat of unknowing customers, thinking that it wouldn't be discovered it anyway.
And then it becomes one big, massive scam. Then, they haven't dealt in good faith any longer; on the contrary, they've massively misrepresented facts, subverted the truth, lied and cheated for ten years in a row.
Ok, Toshiba, how much money did you make by doing that?
That's the minimum you gonna pay in punitive damages.
HTML & Java can't do the job. What's more, the typical client/server app would cost 5 times more in HTML & Java than with a typical client/server tool.
Java is a transitional technology that will exist long enough for us the discover why we shouldn't use it, and then disappear, and be replaced by something that works much better.
The revolution of the Internet is not HTML, is not Java, is not XML, or any other misguided and overhyped buzzword. The revolution of the Internet is the connectivity itself that is on its way to become ubiquitous. Everyone can potentially reach anyone, in almost real time. The ways in which we use this connectivity will change and gradually improve over time.
One thing is for sure, the next breakthrough of the size of HTML/http will not come from Microsoft of from Sun. Very simply, because of the way Microsoft and Sun make money, ubiquitous connectivity is a threat to them. If everyone can communicate with anyone else, what would we need them for? The sole reason for existence of Microsoft and Sun is to make sure that we cannot communicate properly without using their products. Their goal is to stand between you and the rest of the world. That's why they will continue to either try to control or else try to destroy the internet.
The next breakthrough will come again from some humble individual or group of individuals like Tim Berners-Lee, who will propose a solution so good that it will take the world by storm again.
True. No offense, but someone@aol.com sounds like Mickey Mouse is on the line.
The so-called added value in compaq PCs is in their proprietary design: ranging from connectors, modems, various cards built in, to even their version of Windooz. The most visible result of proprietary designs, is that you can hardly change or upgrade anything, or they break down completely. That's why I consider compaq to be amongst the lowest quality pc vendors around.
No matter how much money they put into marketing, I'd rather buy anything else before considering compaq.
My impression of Dell is that they are still ok, but they may soon develop a penchant for proprietary designs to *differentiate* their products from the crowd and command a *premium* on top of the market prices.
I'd rather stick to no-brand clones that sports hardware components that follow well-known standards. Even if the pc is going to run Windows, I'll make sure that all components are on the Linux compatibility list, not because the pc is ever going to run Linux, but because that means that the components have well-known interfaces and properties; and then I know what I am buying and then I can compare prices and quality.
Compaq PCs are for people who want quality, but do not have the brains to assess it by themselves. In the end they just get crap.
The very last thing you can say to a new employer, is what you really want: to make good, good money. And the very last thing you can say to a woman you're trying to seduce, is what you really want: to get her in your bed.
I think of culture as the commonly accepted answers to these contradictions. Culture seems to be a set of standardised lies that you are expected to apply in well-defined situations.
Women emancipation has brought a number of new standardised lies, like: we want them to be equal to us; we will do the cooking too.
If I have to, I will apply the appropriate standardised lie to the pre-defined situation.
However, the more my disposable income grows, the less I seem to be inclined to do so. What's more, I need to do it less and less. In situations in which I used to accommodate, I tell people more often to f*ck off.
If there's one thing good about being a geek, it is that there's a lot of money in technology.
Instead of moaning about VB's popularity, why don't you come up with something that matches its features? Well, because there's nothing. As long as there is nothing, you can't write the apps that people are now writing in VB, and therefore, you cannot abandon Windows, and therefore, Linux will never be used by the masses.
It wouldn't be difficult to move from MsOffice to any office suite on Linux, if it weren't for the automated office procedures written in MsAccess and VB.
Forget MsOffice: it's not keeping people on Windows. VB and Access are!
Thanks. I'm now reading the article on behalf of Mr. slashdoted. I will summarize the gist and forward it to him. I wish to emphasize that I am not reading on my own behalf! Legally, Mr. slashdoted is now reading.
It's been in Napoleon's code for over 200 years by now, that debts from gambling are void. It doesn't matter if these debts have been run up over the internet or in any other way. Debts from gambling are void, and so are debts from prostitution, ransom, and any other illegal act. Gambling itself may not be illegal, or legal within regulations, but the debts incurred will still be void.
Visa and Mastercard should know this. If they still try to collect the cash, I feel that they should be slapped with severe punitive damages.
If Linux ever truly breaks through with the masses of this world, it will be smuggled into the office, just like the original PCs were, at the time, when the mainframe sysadmins used to dictatorship the electronic universe.
Regardless of whatever Gartners says.
After all this years of users using computers, their average level has increased slowly, steadily, gradually, painstakingly, but increased it has, and increasing it still is. At the same time, Micros~1 continues to dumb down their software to the point that it even starts sickening computer novices. It doesn't take that much more *intellisense*, *auto-correct*, *autoformat*, *office assistant*, *Are you really sure(y/n)*, before every single user will start looking out for software that does not automatically waste your time, and quite often, ruin your hard work as a matter of policy.
Time is Micros~1's worst enemy. As linux is becoming more and more complete, and users accumulate their exposure to computers, the day will come that a lot of people suddenly start moving.
For me that day will come when something as good as MsAccess (or VB) shows up for linux. I will not hesitate one second.