As someone who routinely scitters his cell phone across the concrete floor at the firestation, I didn't want to spend several hundred bucks on a fragile one.
I got a Motorola e815 -- it is first and foremost great at being A PHONE. Reception and clarity being the key. It does bluetooth and is easily hacked to remove the verizon crippleware. It does EVDO and can act as a broadband modem. It has a pop3 client, calendar, text message, camera, and MP3 player. It has a 512 meg transflash card I can pop into my laptop and move music and pictures without using minutes.
If I want, I can write my own applications for it using a variant of Java without doing the stupid "get it now" crap because there are hacks out there to unlock it.
For the "push" technology, I write my own. Since I control my mail server, I can make it push whatever I want as a text message to the phone -- so it can easily interact with me for calendaring and so on.
What more do I really want out of a phone?
Also, remember, its best at BEING A PHONE -- which the crackberries basically suck for. Its reliable, can take a little abuse, and didn't cost a fortune.
Are you producing excess helium with your basement fusion unit just so you can run your massively overclocked Intel Macintosh on your zero refresh time flat screen monitor at enough frames per second to keep you alive in Duke Nukem Forever?
What about all that helium produced when you're charging up your jet pack or opening the wormhole to your new office in Tokyo?
We're producing so much helium now that that the earth is lighter than its ever been! People are speaking in high pitched voices remote regions of New Jersey, and there are reports of rain falling up! Soon, we could see the earth become light enough that its mass is no longer in balance with its speed and our orbit of the sun increases, causing a new ice age! And its your fault! Stop the madness, burn fossil fuels.
Maybe he just likes dumping on as many products as possible. His "Linux is for loosers" article sure was a brilliant piece of journalistic skill -- oh, no, wait a minute, I'm confusing it with journalism. I mean to say a steaming pile of shit.
..not directly geared toward Microsoft's message. That's not going to come close to making him or anything he writes worth my respect.
Maybe he just likes dumping on as many products as possible. His "Linux is for loosers" article sure was a brilliant piece of journalistic skill -- oh, no, wait a minute, I'm confusing it with journalism. I mean to say a steaming pile of shit.
...whatever Microsoft wants him to say. And in fact, this article is written to look unbiased and maybe pokes at MS just a bit, but really just repeats the same crap. He's also the journalist who found nothing wrong with Sara Radicatti's group making predictions the same way and calling them unbiased, then astroturfing their own article in the blogsphere.
I won't even open the Forbes website any more. The last time I did, was to count how many blocked ads there were once I'd installed a dns based ad-blocker. It was 36 on the home page.
WTF? Early adopters see more bugs. I'm stunned. You mean if you buy the very first run of a new product it may not be as good as say, once they've had a few thousand of them on the street and gotten service calls? Really?
Hello? What part of "Bleeding Edge" are they not getting here?
I remember that ctrl-shift popup like it was yesterday. Man, what a great tool that was. Sidekick2 was never as good. It took like 30k -- man, who has 30k to blow on something like that?:-)
Why is it so hard to understand that people are different?
ADHD is a name we put on a combination of attributes common in some portion of the population which gives them specifically different ways of processing information. I am one of them.
It is not a disease, nor is it "made up to sell drugs".
Its a difference in what the brain considers INTERESTING or IMPORTANT.
Some people are "wired" to notice things like movement, change, differences, instantly. They're hyper-aware of these things. It prevents them from ignoring those things they someone who is wired more toward the opposite end of the spectrum.
Want to know what it is like?
Telling a child who happens to think this way that has been placed in a busy classroom with big windows that she shouldn't look at the bird landing on the branch outside is like telling you not to blink execpt once every 20 seconds, exactly on the 20 second mark. You have control over your blinking right? Assuming you were told it was REALLY important that you not blink -- that you would be in TROUBLE and LOOSE RECESS if you fail -- you could control EXACTLY when you blink. As long as you remembered to CONCENTRATE on that 20 seconds you could do it. After about a minute, it would become extremely onerous to keep up. After as little as two minutes, you would become angry at anyone who started talking to you because it would make your job harder. With practice, you could get the timing right -- as long as something didn't interrupt you. You would become very irritable, probably frustrated and depressed as well. If you found that drugs helped you, you would take them.
That, exactly, is what school can be like for someone who's brain works in a way we classify as ADHD.
ADHD is NOT an inability to pay attention. It is a very big difference in what the brain considers important and interesting. The classic reference is hunter/farmer in developing societies. A farmer needs to be able to ignore the woods, the sounds, the noises, and plant his crops for weeks at a time. Routine, hard work day after day. The hunter needs to be automatically aware of EVERYTHING without having to look. When something is spotted, the hunter has to just REACT without thought and take action. The skills each have are valuable -- and would cause each to fail at the job of the other.
So, kids who have genetic tendancies toward this kind of brain focus, are poorly suited to sitting in classrooms and learning. Its not how they (we) learn. Your making a hunter into a farmer and it doesn't fit. So, here's the real deal on what happens to kids who are not treated as they are being forced into a role they are ill suited to:
A high incidence of failure in school, as well as a high incidence of drug addiction, early pregnancy, criminality, risk taking, depression, and violence. Why? It is INCREDIBLY frustrating. Drugs HELP. Why? Damn if I know why drugs that that would hype you out the to moon, calm me down and let me get started. Its a brain chemistry thing. Nicotine works too -- but not as well. Caffine works -- poorly -- if you take enough of it. High grade speed works perfectly. Its best, however, if you have perspription for it in one form or another. If you like, I can describe the differences in detail between the various sorts.
As to video games, sports, etc.. -- ALL THOSE THINGS that require a lot of focus? Guess what? HYPER-FOCUS is another KEY indicator of this syndrome. You see, the brain in this case is fined tuned to notice things QUICKLY and constantly until it finds something that it considers important. Typically, these are activities that require intense concentration and focus to the exclusion of all else. Again, the common metaphor is hunting. Once that rabbit pops out the bushes, the hunter will give chase and will run headlong through brambles, jumping logs, wherever the rabbit goes. Its hyper-focus.
There are two designer tools. Domino Designer is unchanged - though it is possible they'll reparent the windows into the framework. Like the Notes client, moving it into the Workplace Rich Client (the Eclipsed based tool) changes only the display input & output. The code itself in 99% of the libraries and executables is unchanged. The Notes products where designed from day 1 - 20 years ago -- with a "separation layer" which means that 90% of the code is cross platform C. Last I knew, there was a single dll for windows that had to be replaced with a comperable library for other operating systems to move the product from one platform to another. At one time, Solaris was supported. Apple has been (poorly) supported for a long time -- and is about to go back to being fully supported 100% with this release. The server side runs natively on Linux, Win32, iSeries (os400), etc. IMO, it runs best on Linux.
The Workpace designer is new. Its a Domino designer like tool, in that its target is the same skill level developers and the same development community. If you're making applications for Domino as a back end and traditional Notes applications -- or maintaining old ones -- there will be very little functional difference for you other than a little nicer environment. If you're making new applications for the Workplace back end -- which is more well suited to relational integration, and is natively more XML oriented, you'll use Workplace Designer.
The way the Eclipse framework combined with IBM's "Workplace" plug in layers supports wiring these design elements together is where the real advantage comes for existing developers. You can finally build something with a UI that is outside the traditional Notes client but is still fully integrated "on the glass" with your application as a whole. Right now, if you're an ISV, your add-on tools is either outside Notes and thus less beneficial or its inside Notes but then looks just like any other cheap Notes application which limits you on price and 'bling'.
The Reasons -- (and History)
The reasons for all this separation and options is the long standing policy IBM has about backward compatibility. You can still open a Notes 2.0 application (like a user's Mail file, which is an application) from 1991 in your current Notes 7.x client or designer and use it, upgrade it, add new capabilities to it, and work with its data. The 'law' for new versions of Notes has always been "NO RIP AND REPLACE" -- some of the developers go as far as the term "Bugward Compatible" which means that if something worked in a way that we'd now consider "Broken" in a former release, that way of working must still always be supported --as the default behavior when you upgrade.
Compare that policy with others and you see the benefits. The downsides are that when you have a changing IT world, it can be hard to keep moving the product forward and keep that old compatibility. Some things hang around that have little current relevance (like IPX and VINES network support, or the ability to do its own dialup networking protocol between servers and clients). The same is true for design elements.
Notes suffers from an aging UI design and many adminstration elements and new features that have been grafted on year after year to keep up. When Notes was new, TCPIP was expensive for most companies to implement. IPX was the most common protocol, along with Netbios/Netbui based networks and Ethertalk. Virtually all other mail systems (other than in the Unix world in which SMTP had been gaining popularity of course) for corporate users were single server islands -- with difficult methods for connecting those islands (remember CC:Mail post offices). Notes was the first mainstream application to make the daily use of public/private key encryption part of the routine office workers day (without them even realizing it) and offered a secure way to share ownership of documents and processes across enterprises both connected and disconnected. In 1991.
Is eclipse packaged as an IDE for Java that you download. What IBM's "workplace rich client" installs will that framework -- menus, ability to handle plug-ins, etc.. but instead of a Java IDE, it will have their workflow, messaging, etc.. toolkits layered on. There are still perspectives, plug in technology, all that stuff. Its just got different stuff plugged in -- including some stuff that is IBM specific and commercial that is what makes it their product.
They also provision it rather than making users go download bits and parts.
Eclipse is very tightly tied to IBM -- was from the beginning. If I recall, they actually were very heavily involved in making it open source from code they and others were doing. They've taken a branch of that and added their own stuff.
I happen to like it as an IDE, but don't use it as you do so I can't really speak to your issues.
What IBM is using it for is as a framework to build applications in -- just as the JAVA IDE you're talking to is an application built on the framework. Eclipse gives them a stable place to build user applications from, that's got its own installation and management issues fairly well in hand.
Gosh, talk about assuming the worst --- It was a compliment I was making, and when I read something that I consider worthwhile, it can be interesting to read other things the person has written and sometimes mark their posts as +1 for the future.
This has been coming for a long time. Remember that IBM has been one of the largest forces behind Eclipse. Not because its great as a development platform -- because its got potential as a great APPLICATION platform.
Roughly 50% of the large enterprise email market is using IBM Lotus Notes. You may not like it, but its true. Different studies wieght it differently by a few points to either side. Pick the study and you can find all kinds of results. The counts are close enough that the difference is accounted for by what you count as client use, who gives you the numbers, etc. For example, MS typically likes to count anyone who owns Office as an Outlook user which will skew the numbers quite a bit. Regardless, the market is split nearly in have between MS and IBM for that market with small shares going to a few other players (like Groupwise).
* Keep in mind, we're talking LARGE ENTERPRISE here. Annecdotes about companies under 500,000,000 in gross revenue don't count.
IBM has been pushing Linux at the desktop in their offices where possible for at least three years. One thing holding them back has been that their own platform, Notes, doesn't run easily on Linux natively. The reason isn't Notes -- which was built to be cross platform, resulting in some often critisized UI choices. The reason is the same as so many other companies don't support Linux for the workstation. Its difficult to make a generic installation and maintenance solution.
With Eclipse as the base, IBM has spent a few years on their new WORKPLACE products. The grand plan is pretty different from what they've ended up with, but they are very close to roll out of their "Hannover" product which is Lotus Notes (actual, real code - not rewritten or made compatible) with a UI done in Eclipse. On top of that, Eclipse becomes Workplace Rich Client when you add a few plug in layers which allow managment, server based rollout and maintenance, and other portal stuff they use.
It also handles off-line use and synchronization for out of office and traveling.
It works. I've seen it. I've played with it.
What that means is that their "killer apps" -- those applications critical to the success of people working in IBM offices don't even need to be "ported". They're in Lotus Notes applications already and keep working as they have. Also, their Email client works as it always has.
Add to this that Workplace has Open Office based applications built into it as well, and a new thing called an "Activity Explorer" (which IMO is going to be the most important NEW thing from them).
Tie it all together and they can do everything they need to do without a Windows based application. They've cut themselves free entirely.
What IBM has done is not just TALK about making a linux desktop workable -- they've created the missing pieces so that they can actually support their own massive workforce with such a rollout.
Its good on a number of fronts -- first, I've been leaning toward AMD for my near future machines based in part on heat and power use. These seem to show Intel in a good light -- which is hard to believe, but if true is a good thing.
Its also interesting that you point out the choice of ram will be up to board manufacturers. I wasn't considering that -- assuming that the processors would generally be driven by specific chipsets and thus tend to favor one type of ram over another.
...and I'm not going to go off and try to compile them for the sake of this discussion. You may then write my comments here off as unsubstantiated or subjective if you like -- they are not, however.
The shortest answer is that wealth (distributed wealth, not a single ruling party's wealth) buys flexibility, health, and realistic population growth.
1. When you talk about wealthy nations producing more waste, that's sort of true on a per person basis but its not true overall. With wealth comes declining birth rates (because your retirement plan isn't to have enough children so one or two survive to take care of you). Less people put less strain on the available resources than more people, and thus there are more resources to be spread around.
2. Waste produced by a wealthy population tends to be drastically more controlled. I'm talking about biological waste, consumer waste, and energy waste. Wealth buys flexibility. It means you don't have to burn all the wood and eat all the available vegetation nearby to survive this week leaving you nothing by a soil poor dustbowl left for next.
3. "Simple, Low-Tech, Local solutions are not available to handle the vast needs of the largest and poorest populations in the world. Sure, solar powered radio-telephone rigs in remote villages make great press and provide great help as spot solutions. They won't help major population centers. Further, wind technology and the like is anything but low-tech and simple to maintain. A modern wind farm requires a good bit of upkeep and in fact can become radically less efficient if not kept properly lubricated, cleaned, and maintained on a regular basis.
4. There is, contrary to commonly held belief, a great deal more undevoloped land in North America than in Africa (as an example). We see pictures of the great savanas and deserts but most of the continent isn't actually well represented by that. The populations of the poorest nations are vast and their suffering is equally vast because they don't benefit from the simple efficiencies we take for granted.
5. Why do you suppose people take live chickens on trains in many countries? One reason is that you don't have to refrigerate your lunch if its still walking around. Refrigeration is nearly as important as food, water, and medicine in terms of the health of a population.
There is a lot more to picking a processor than just how fast it runs. Personally, I have more bottlenecks with I/O (as I've said before) than I do with video or processor performance.
Of importance to me in addition to raw speed are are the number of concurrent threads, the power consumption and with that the heat output I have to dissapate into my office or my lap, and of course the expense of both the processor and the ram it needs to get these kinds of speeds.
Frankly, I'm looking for which allows me to build the most efficient system for my needs at the least cost.
Are you suggesting that we turn off all non-essential electronics in the wealthy nations so that some of that energy can provide fuel to cook and preserve food in the developing world? Maybe you're just suggesting we tell the developing world to (in the words of Dick Cheney) Go F*** itself. We in the west, after all, are the only ones who count. Forget the fact that we are a small minority of the ACTUAL population of the planet.
No, you'd rather believe some bullshit about a few windmills providing enough power for your needs while in truth, a few perfectly safe pre-fab pebble bed reactors could provide both the power and clean (desalinated) water needed for a fair portion of the poorest nations -- turning arid wastelands full of disease and starvation into working cropland.
Let me tell you something...A man desperate to keep his family from starving to death will not give a fart in a hurricane worth of damn about his "carbon footprint" (more B.S.) while he burns any damn thing he needs to in order to make a living.
You want to know what protects the environment more than anything else? Wealth. Wealth protects the environment. Poverty destroys it through despairation. To save the planet (which will be here long after you and I, and doesn't give a rat's ass about being saved) you need the energy to provide water, food, and education to the poorest.
"By 2035" -- its sounds like a long way off, no? Lets suppose the modular plants the South Africans are building take of like wildfire. 2035 -- by that point you'd just be seeing real productive use of any significant number of them. That's a best possible outcome.
Are these the same people telling us we should just give up fossil fuels for WIND? That some combination of animal dung methane and solar power will make it happen?
Look, we rely on fossil fuels because they have a huge amount of easily available energy in a very dense package. Where else do you find that kind of energy density? Seems like the nuc plants work -- though they're expensive.
How about magic microwave beams from spacecraft with huge solar sails? Ummmmm......ok. Right after Scotty rides down in the space elevator to show us how to make transparent aluminium out of mile long flexible carbon nanotubes. Let me know when its working, I swing by in my flying car to come check it out.
I've been using MS compiled basics since Professional Basic back in the late 80's. I've used VB, VB.NET, etc. I've used variants of it like vbscript and lotusscript. I've used turbobasic and qbasic.
I also write in Java, and sometimes C, C++, and C#.
Issue #1. If you're starting from scratch, why pick something owned by a single vendor?
Issue #2. VB.NET isn't even remotely like old world BASIC. Even Quickbasic and Visual Basic were pretty much still very much like working with the original language. VB.NET just isn't. Starting fresh, there is very little difference in time and skill required to learn Java or C#.
Issue #3. VB is the only language in common use that I'm aware of which is NOT case sensitive. That means you're going to pick up REALLY bad habbits by learning with it. Personally, I think it stupid that modern languages are case sensitive -- it smacks more of arrogance than anything else and I just don't believe it matters that much at compile time. Still, why learn the bad habbits?
Issue #4. Personally - purely subjectively - I find Microsoft's documentation terrible, and their own support of VB to be secondary. If you don't already know what you're looking for, finding something entirely new is a nightmare with the vs.net languages. You are in a maze of web pages which all look the same. There is a mushroom growing on the way.:-)
My recommendation would be to pick up Kathy Sierra's book "Head First Java" and download Eclipse. Eclipse, as an IDE is fantastic and fun to work in. Kathy's book is the best learn-to-code book I've ever seen, hands down. Between the two, you can be doing good work very quickly.
Slashdot Mirror
As someone who routinely scitters his cell phone across the concrete floor at the firestation, I didn't want to spend several hundred bucks on a fragile one.
I got a Motorola e815 -- it is first and foremost great at being A PHONE. Reception and clarity being the key. It does bluetooth and is easily hacked to remove the verizon crippleware. It does EVDO and can act as a broadband modem. It has a pop3 client, calendar, text message, camera, and MP3 player. It has a 512 meg transflash card I can pop into my laptop and move music and pictures without using minutes.
If I want, I can write my own applications for it using a variant of Java without doing the stupid "get it now" crap because there are hacks out there to unlock it.
For the "push" technology, I write my own. Since I control my mail server, I can make it push whatever I want as a text message to the phone -- so it can easily interact with me for calendaring and so on.
What more do I really want out of a phone?
Also, remember, its best at BEING A PHONE -- which the crackberries basically suck for. Its reliable, can take a little abuse, and didn't cost a fortune.
May the FSM have mercy on us all, I hope not.
>
Do you know what your helium footprint is?
Are you producing excess helium with your basement fusion unit just so you can run your massively overclocked Intel Macintosh on your zero refresh time flat screen monitor at enough frames per second to keep you alive in Duke Nukem Forever?
What about all that helium produced when you're charging up your jet pack or opening the wormhole to your new office in Tokyo?
We're producing so much helium now that that the earth is lighter than its ever been! People are speaking in high pitched voices remote regions of New Jersey, and there are reports of rain falling up! Soon, we could see the earth become light enough that its mass is no longer in balance with its speed and our orbit of the sun increases, causing a new ice age! And its your fault! Stop the madness, burn fossil fuels.
Maybe he just likes dumping on as many products as possible. His "Linux is for loosers" article sure was a brilliant piece of journalistic skill -- oh, no, wait a minute, I'm confusing it with journalism. I mean to say a steaming pile of shit.
The Dan Lyons wiki
Ref: http://wiki.vowe.org/DanLyons
..not directly geared toward Microsoft's message. That's not going to come close to making him or anything he writes worth my respect.
f /d6plinks/RSCZ-6DFH52J E5ER
Maybe he just likes dumping on as many products as possible. His "Linux is for loosers" article sure was a brilliant piece of journalistic skill -- oh, no, wait a minute, I'm confusing it with journalism. I mean to say a steaming pile of shit.
Ref:
http://wiki.vowe.org/DanLyons
http://www.rhs.com/web/blog/poweroftheschwartz.ns
http://www.billbuchan.com/web.nsf/d6plinks/DOMM-6
...whatever Microsoft wants him to say. And in fact, this article is written to look unbiased and maybe pokes at MS just a bit, but really just repeats the same crap. He's also the journalist who found nothing wrong with Sara Radicatti's group making predictions the same way and calling them unbiased, then astroturfing their own article in the blogsphere.
I won't even open the Forbes website any more. The last time I did, was to count how many blocked ads there were once I'd installed a dns based ad-blocker. It was 36 on the home page.
...that I can order my Jet-Pack now? I keep waiting for a Jet Pack to put in the trunk of my FLYING CAR for emergencies, but so far, nothing.
WTF? Early adopters see more bugs. I'm stunned. You mean if you buy the very first run of a new product it may not be as good as say, once they've had a few thousand of them on the street and gotten service calls? Really?
Hello? What part of "Bleeding Edge" are they not getting here?
I remember that ctrl-shift popup like it was yesterday. Man, what a great tool that was. Sidekick2 was never as good. It took like 30k -- man, who has 30k to blow on something like that? :-)
...a f***** day off every once in a while. :-)
You're welcome. Drop me email if I can answer any questions. In the meantime, I highly recommend a fantastic book "ADHD: A different perspective".
Why is it so hard to understand that people are different?
ADHD is a name we put on a combination of attributes common in some portion of the population which gives them specifically different ways of processing information. I am one of them.
It is not a disease, nor is it "made up to sell drugs".
Its a difference in what the brain considers INTERESTING or IMPORTANT.
Some people are "wired" to notice things like movement, change, differences, instantly. They're hyper-aware of these things. It prevents them from ignoring those things they someone who is wired more toward the opposite end of the spectrum.
Want to know what it is like?
Telling a child who happens to think this way that has been placed in a busy classroom with big windows that she shouldn't look at the bird landing on the branch outside is like telling you not to blink execpt once every 20 seconds, exactly on the 20 second mark. You have control over your blinking right? Assuming you were told it was REALLY important that you not blink -- that you would be in TROUBLE and LOOSE RECESS if you fail -- you could control EXACTLY when you blink. As long as you remembered to CONCENTRATE on that 20 seconds you could do it. After about a minute, it would become extremely onerous to keep up. After as little as two minutes, you would become angry at anyone who started talking to you because it would make your job harder. With practice, you could get the timing right -- as long as something didn't interrupt you. You would become very irritable, probably frustrated and depressed as well. If you found that drugs helped you, you would take them.
That, exactly, is what school can be like for someone who's brain works in a way we classify as ADHD.
ADHD is NOT an inability to pay attention. It is a very big difference in what the brain considers important and interesting. The classic reference is hunter/farmer in developing societies. A farmer needs to be able to ignore the woods, the sounds, the noises, and plant his crops for weeks at a time. Routine, hard work day after day. The hunter needs to be automatically aware of EVERYTHING without having to look. When something is spotted, the hunter has to just REACT without thought and take action. The skills each have are valuable -- and would cause each to fail at the job of the other.
So, kids who have genetic tendancies toward this kind of brain focus, are poorly suited to sitting in classrooms and learning. Its not how they (we) learn. Your making a hunter into a farmer and it doesn't fit. So, here's the real deal on what happens to kids who are not treated as they are being forced into a role they are ill suited to:
A high incidence of failure in school, as well as a high incidence of drug addiction, early pregnancy, criminality, risk taking, depression, and violence. Why? It is INCREDIBLY frustrating. Drugs HELP. Why? Damn if I know why drugs that that would hype you out the to moon, calm me down and let me get started. Its a brain chemistry thing. Nicotine works too -- but not as well. Caffine works -- poorly -- if you take enough of it. High grade speed works perfectly. Its best, however, if you have perspription for it in one form or another. If you like, I can describe the differences in detail between the various sorts.
As to video games, sports, etc.. -- ALL THOSE THINGS that require a lot of focus? Guess what? HYPER-FOCUS is another KEY indicator of this syndrome. You see, the brain in this case is fined tuned to notice things QUICKLY and constantly until it finds something that it considers important. Typically, these are activities that require intense concentration and focus to the exclusion of all else. Again, the common metaphor is hunting. Once that rabbit pops out the bushes, the hunter will give chase and will run headlong through brambles, jumping logs, wherever the rabbit goes. Its hyper-focus.
Sometimes, its called emerency focus.
Where do you find the adults who's brains wo
There are two designer tools. Domino Designer is unchanged - though it is possible they'll reparent the windows into the framework. Like the Notes client, moving it into the Workplace Rich Client (the Eclipsed based tool) changes only the display input & output. The code itself in 99% of the libraries and executables is unchanged. The Notes products where designed from day 1 - 20 years ago -- with a "separation layer" which means that 90% of the code is cross platform C. Last I knew, there was a single dll for windows that had to be replaced with a comperable library for other operating systems to move the product from one platform to another. At one time, Solaris was supported. Apple has been (poorly) supported for a long time -- and is about to go back to being fully supported 100% with this release. The server side runs natively on Linux, Win32, iSeries (os400), etc. IMO, it runs best on Linux.
The Workpace designer is new. Its a Domino designer like tool, in that its target is the same skill level developers and the same development community. If you're making applications for Domino as a back end and traditional Notes applications -- or maintaining old ones -- there will be very little functional difference for you other than a little nicer environment. If you're making new applications for the Workplace back end -- which is more well suited to relational integration, and is natively more XML oriented, you'll use Workplace Designer.
The way the Eclipse framework combined with IBM's "Workplace" plug in layers supports wiring these design elements together is where the real advantage comes for existing developers. You can finally build something with a UI that is outside the traditional Notes client but is still fully integrated "on the glass" with your application as a whole. Right now, if you're an ISV, your add-on tools is either outside Notes and thus less beneficial or its inside Notes but then looks just like any other cheap Notes application which limits you on price and 'bling'.
The Reasons -- (and History)
The reasons for all this separation and options is the long standing policy IBM has about backward compatibility. You can still open a Notes 2.0 application (like a user's Mail file, which is an application) from 1991 in your current Notes 7.x client or designer and use it, upgrade it, add new capabilities to it, and work with its data. The 'law' for new versions of Notes has always been "NO RIP AND REPLACE" -- some of the developers go as far as the term "Bugward Compatible" which means that if something worked in a way that we'd now consider "Broken" in a former release, that way of working must still always be supported --as the default behavior when you upgrade.
Compare that policy with others and you see the benefits. The downsides are that when you have a changing IT world, it can be hard to keep moving the product forward and keep that old compatibility. Some things hang around that have little current relevance (like IPX and VINES network support, or the ability to do its own dialup networking protocol between servers and clients). The same is true for design elements.
Notes suffers from an aging UI design and many adminstration elements and new features that have been grafted on year after year to keep up. When Notes was new, TCPIP was expensive for most companies to implement. IPX was the most common protocol, along with Netbios/Netbui based networks and Ethertalk. Virtually all other mail systems (other than in the Unix world in which SMTP had been gaining popularity of course) for corporate users were single server islands -- with difficult methods for connecting those islands (remember CC:Mail post offices). Notes was the first mainstream application to make the daily use of public/private key encryption part of the routine office workers day (without them even realizing it) and offered a secure way to share ownership of documents and processes across enterprises both connected and disconnected. In 1991.
When the web go
Is eclipse packaged as an IDE for Java that you download. What IBM's "workplace rich client" installs will that framework -- menus, ability to handle plug-ins, etc.. but instead of a Java IDE, it will have their workflow, messaging, etc.. toolkits layered on. There are still perspectives, plug in technology, all that stuff. Its just got different stuff plugged in -- including some stuff that is IBM specific and commercial that is what makes it their product.
They also provision it rather than making users go download bits and parts.
Eclipse is very tightly tied to IBM -- was from the beginning. If I recall, they actually were very heavily involved in making it open source from code they and others were doing. They've taken a branch of that and added their own stuff.
I happen to like it as an IDE, but don't use it as you do so I can't really speak to your issues.
What IBM is using it for is as a framework to build applications in -- just as the JAVA IDE you're talking to is an application built on the framework. Eclipse gives them a stable place to build user applications from, that's got its own installation and management issues fairly well in hand.
Gosh, talk about assuming the worst --- It was a compliment I was making, and when I read something that I consider worthwhile, it can be interesting to read other things the person has written and sometimes mark their posts as +1 for the future.
Its global, and pervasive.
This has been coming for a long time. Remember that IBM has been one of the largest forces behind Eclipse. Not because its great as a development platform -- because its got potential as a great APPLICATION platform.
Roughly 50% of the large enterprise email market is using IBM Lotus Notes. You may not like it, but its true. Different studies wieght it differently by a few points to either side. Pick the study and you can find all kinds of results. The counts are close enough that the difference is accounted for by what you count as client use, who gives you the numbers, etc. For example, MS typically likes to count anyone who owns Office as an Outlook user which will skew the numbers quite a bit. Regardless, the market is split nearly in have between MS and IBM for that market with small shares going to a few other players (like Groupwise).
* Keep in mind, we're talking LARGE ENTERPRISE here. Annecdotes about companies under 500,000,000 in gross revenue don't count.
IBM has been pushing Linux at the desktop in their offices where possible for at least three years. One thing holding them back has been that their own platform, Notes, doesn't run easily on Linux natively. The reason isn't Notes -- which was built to be cross platform, resulting in some often critisized UI choices. The reason is the same as so many other companies don't support Linux for the workstation. Its difficult to make a generic installation and maintenance solution.
With Eclipse as the base, IBM has spent a few years on their new WORKPLACE products. The grand plan is pretty different from what they've ended up with, but they are very close to roll out of their "Hannover" product which is Lotus Notes (actual, real code - not rewritten or made compatible) with a UI done in Eclipse. On top of that, Eclipse becomes Workplace Rich Client when you add a few plug in layers which allow managment, server based rollout and maintenance, and other portal stuff they use.
It also handles off-line use and synchronization for out of office and traveling.
It works. I've seen it. I've played with it.
What that means is that their "killer apps" -- those applications critical to the success of people working in IBM offices don't even need to be "ported". They're in Lotus Notes applications already and keep working as they have. Also, their Email client works as it always has.
Add to this that Workplace has Open Office based applications built into it as well, and a new thing called an "Activity Explorer" (which IMO is going to be the most important NEW thing from them).
Tie it all together and they can do everything they need to do without a Windows based application. They've cut themselves free entirely.
What IBM has done is not just TALK about making a linux desktop workable -- they've created the missing pieces so that they can actually support their own massive workforce with such a rollout.
Bravo to them.
Its good on a number of fronts -- first, I've been leaning toward AMD for my near future machines based in part on heat and power use. These seem to show Intel in a good light -- which is hard to believe, but if true is a good thing.
Its also interesting that you point out the choice of ram will be up to board manufacturers. I wasn't considering that -- assuming that the processors would generally be driven by specific chipsets and thus tend to favor one type of ram over another.
A shame you posted as an anonymous coward and not a registered user. Its a great point.
...and I'm not going to go off and try to compile them for the sake of this discussion. You may then write my comments here off as unsubstantiated or subjective if you like -- they are not, however.
The shortest answer is that wealth (distributed wealth, not a single ruling party's wealth) buys flexibility, health, and realistic population growth.
1. When you talk about wealthy nations producing more waste, that's sort of true on a per person basis but its not true overall. With wealth comes declining birth rates (because your retirement plan isn't to have enough children so one or two survive to take care of you). Less people put less strain on the available resources than more people, and thus there are more resources to be spread around.
2. Waste produced by a wealthy population tends to be drastically more controlled. I'm talking about biological waste, consumer waste, and energy waste. Wealth buys flexibility. It means you don't have to burn all the wood and eat all the available vegetation nearby to survive this week leaving you nothing by a soil poor dustbowl left for next.
3. "Simple, Low-Tech, Local solutions are not available to handle the vast needs of the largest and poorest populations in the world. Sure, solar powered radio-telephone rigs in remote villages make great press and provide great help as spot solutions. They won't help major population centers. Further, wind technology and the like is anything but low-tech and simple to maintain. A modern wind farm requires a good bit of upkeep and in fact can become radically less efficient if not kept properly lubricated, cleaned, and maintained on a regular basis.
4. There is, contrary to commonly held belief, a great deal more undevoloped land in North America than in Africa (as an example). We see pictures of the great savanas and deserts but most of the continent isn't actually well represented by that. The populations of the poorest nations are vast and their suffering is equally vast because they don't benefit from the simple efficiencies we take for granted.
5. Why do you suppose people take live chickens on trains in many countries? One reason is that you don't have to refrigerate your lunch if its still walking around. Refrigeration is nearly as important as food, water, and medicine in terms of the health of a population.
There is a lot more to picking a processor than just how fast it runs. Personally, I have more bottlenecks with I/O (as I've said before) than I do with video or processor performance.
Of importance to me in addition to raw speed are are the number of concurrent threads, the power consumption and with that the heat output I have to dissapate into my office or my lap, and of course the expense of both the processor and the ram it needs to get these kinds of speeds.
Frankly, I'm looking for which allows me to build the most efficient system for my needs at the least cost.
...before you type something equally rediculous.
Are you suggesting that we turn off all non-essential electronics in the wealthy nations so that some of that energy can provide fuel to cook and preserve food in the developing world? Maybe you're just suggesting we tell the developing world to (in the words of Dick Cheney) Go F*** itself. We in the west, after all, are the only ones who count. Forget the fact that we are a small minority of the ACTUAL population of the planet.
No, you'd rather believe some bullshit about a few windmills providing enough power for your needs while in truth, a few perfectly safe pre-fab pebble bed reactors could provide both the power and clean (desalinated) water needed for a fair portion of the poorest nations -- turning arid wastelands full of disease and starvation into working cropland.
Let me tell you something...A man desperate to keep his family from starving to death will not give a fart in a hurricane worth of damn about his "carbon footprint" (more B.S.) while he burns any damn thing he needs to in order to make a living.
You want to know what protects the environment more than anything else? Wealth. Wealth protects the environment. Poverty destroys it through despairation. To save the planet (which will be here long after you and I, and doesn't give a rat's ass about being saved) you need the energy to provide water, food, and education to the poorest.
"By 2035" -- its sounds like a long way off, no? Lets suppose the modular plants the South Africans are building take of like wildfire. 2035 -- by that point you'd just be seeing real productive use of any significant number of them. That's a best possible outcome.
Are these the same people telling us we should just give up fossil fuels for WIND? That some combination of animal dung methane and solar power will make it happen?
Look, we rely on fossil fuels because they have a huge amount of easily available energy in a very dense package. Where else do you find that kind of energy density? Seems like the nuc plants work -- though they're expensive.
How about magic microwave beams from spacecraft with huge solar sails? Ummmmm......ok. Right after Scotty rides down in the space elevator to show us how to make transparent aluminium out of mile long flexible carbon nanotubes. Let me know when its working, I swing by in my flying car to come check it out.
I've been using MS compiled basics since Professional Basic back in the late 80's. I've used VB, VB.NET, etc. I've used variants of it like vbscript and lotusscript. I've used turbobasic and qbasic.
:-)
I also write in Java, and sometimes C, C++, and C#.
Issue #1. If you're starting from scratch, why pick something owned by a single vendor?
Issue #2. VB.NET isn't even remotely like old world BASIC. Even Quickbasic and Visual Basic were pretty much still very much like working with the original language. VB.NET just isn't. Starting fresh, there is very little difference in time and skill required to learn Java or C#.
Issue #3. VB is the only language in common use that I'm aware of which is NOT case sensitive. That means you're going to pick up REALLY bad habbits by learning with it. Personally, I think it stupid that modern languages are case sensitive -- it smacks more of arrogance than anything else and I just don't believe it matters that much at compile time. Still, why learn the bad habbits?
Issue #4. Personally - purely subjectively - I find Microsoft's documentation terrible, and their own support of VB to be secondary. If you don't already know what you're looking for, finding something entirely new is a nightmare with the vs.net languages. You are in a maze of web pages which all look the same. There is a mushroom growing on the way.
My recommendation would be to pick up Kathy Sierra's book "Head First Java" and download Eclipse. Eclipse, as an IDE is fantastic and fun to work in. Kathy's book is the best learn-to-code book I've ever seen, hands down. Between the two, you can be doing good work very quickly.
Hope this helps.
Newer versions actually STOP WORKING in some respects if you don't upgrade (so I'm told, anyway). Bastards.