I want to download the source from microsoft.com! I want to be able to figure out what the **** all those undocumented registry settings are for. Working with CE is like wandering through a swamp at night. Bad documentation, weird registry settings, crappy APIs. Don't get me started on the steamy pile of llama dung that is Connection Manager.
Any embedded system without a display or user interface or the necessity to run user's programs probably will run Linux. True embedded systems will be running Linux or another RTOS.
Conversely, any device requiring a user behind the screen (PDA or related), will be running Windows CE. If your product has a display and will be used by 99% of people, using Windows CE is a major selling advantage. "It's the interface you know! It's the apps you know!"
I've been thinking about picking up an inexpensive iBook for a while now. Still not sure.
Re:Best years of my life...
on
Generation Wrecked
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Thank you for a very thoughtful posting! You've hit the nail in the head. Like you, programming is something I enjoy and I'm lucky enough to get paid (well!) for it.
I was born in 1969. Generation X? WTF? I consider myself very lucky. When my employer went public during the dot-com hype, I sold enough stock during the hype to pay off my debts: credit cards, vehicle, student loans. Their stock has since dropped from $150 to $1.50 but I haven't dug myself back into the hole.
Best years of my life? Har har har. The best years of your life are *right now* whenever right now might be.
How is the status of Linux and a high quality NFS?
Has anyone ever thought to combine NFS with LDAP to offer something similar to Microsoft's "network browse" feature? Browsing is a nice feature for non-technical users.
Has to be better, faster, easier than MS browse or there won't be any reason to switch to the new system.
I like the KDE/Win32 style alt-tab window list (small window pops up with all available windows listed; alt-tab selects between them).
Very user friendly and very quick to pop between a large collection of windows. No need to mess up your stacking order plowing through umpteen windows to find the one you're looking for.
Why wasn't such a feature implemented in Sawfish? General unpopularity with the feature? Too similar to Windows?
Does Metacity have a similar window list? Or does it use the annoying Sawfish style?
Re:Most Notable Improvements - export?
on
GCC 3.1 Released
·
· Score: 1
That's why I think large web pages will turn into purely marketing vehicles. www.pepsi.com www.ford.com www.coke.com are the future. Web pages as commercials.
Not because of some Evil Conspiracy to try to convert to a pay service. Bandwidth is expensive, folks. Any Internet site that is too popular will eventually become too expensive to be free. Stay small and niche-ish, and your home DSL line will be just fine.
With the dotcom kablooie, Universities are going to become the only organizations interested in providing high bandwidth without any interest in a return on investment. Businesses won't be interested in spending money without some sort of return in the future. Why shell out major bucks for a big server and fat pipe unless you expect to get revenue for it?
Large free pages are going to turn into pure marketing vehicles. Anything with a great deal of meaningful (ie, non-company specific, non-techsupport) content will have to be a pay site.
_The Pragmatic Programmer_ by Andrew Hunt. Lots of "well, duh" stuff after you've been programming for several years and have the scars to prove it. None of the stuff in this book was covered in my CS program. I wish I could force my younger co-workers to read AND FOLLOW this book.
I'm up to my eyes in beginner's and slightly beyond beginner's books on a myriad of subjects. I'd like to see more advanced PRACTICAL (no theory) software engineering books like the above.
How about _Massive Scale Server Design_; i.e., how to design and code scalable server software (I don't have time to go through Apache's source and learn the hard way).
_Super Advanced C Tricks_ How to do interesting and completely useful things in the world's most portable assembly language.
In particular I'd like a book on everything I don't know.:-) (Big book...)
I think the bottleneck would become the device manufacturer. Unless a device like that could be put together from off-the-shelf commodity parts (like current PCs can--anybody can build one out of 100% legal parts), the manufacturer could be sued out of existance.
Something that small and (slightly) specialized would require custom manufacturing.
However, image a new generic motherboard spec (picoATA?) the size of a credit card. Thumbnail sized expansion cards plug into it via PCI-2010 or gigabit Bluetooth. Something that small + ubiquitous + cheap + low power + no single manufacturer would lead to wandering P2P.
Would like to find a picoATA board now that I think of it...
Re:Finally Learning From The Open Source Community
on
Windows XP Embedded
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
IMO, the main difference between the MS and Open Source/GNU community is the OS/GNU folks are passionate about the technology itself. The MS people want a solution to their problem. MS provides that solution quickly and easily.
One of the genius things MS has done is to provide one and only one solution to the problem. Speeds up development for people who want to get the project *done*. Most businesses aren't interested in beautiful technology or ideal code. The have a problem and need a solution, quickly and easily.
Communities tend to form around people who enjoy a particular activity at least partially for the sake of the activity itself. OS/GNU people enjoy computers. I'm not sure MS's efforts will create a community with members that have any interest other than their own problems.
When there is only one solution to the problem, why get together and discuss it? People will pop up, ask a question, get The Answer, then disappear. The most frequent posters will be the flamers with an axe to grind and MS employees.
I think 90% of embedded devices are 16-bit or lower; 90% of those are probably 8-bit. Devices that must run literally for years without human intervention. DOS isn't reliable and Linux is too big.
My thought has always been that MS targets systems that must interact with a human. GUIs have always been their strength. But I think people are missing the point of this article. MS is evolving again, tapping into the greatest thing about Linux--the developer community. MS has always had the ability to take what is best from an existing technology and integrate it into themselves.
The main character of _Fountains of Paradise_ was outfitted with a device (called "CORA") that would monitor his heart. When the character had a heart attack, CORA tried to call a hospital for help and eventually began to yell verbally for human assistance.
I think I've seen medical alert devices like this, especially for live-at-home elderly.
I remember reading an inverview circa 1980's with Isaac Asimov where he was talking about science fiction writers not predicting the rise of the personal computer. All the old sci-fi I've read (a lot) always had massive (some planet-sized) computers that were access through some sort of terminal device, hand-held (like Star Trek) or otherwise such as the ear-based terminals (?) in _Ender's Game_.
Would be interesting if someone knew of a pre-1970 sci-fi reference to the personal computer.
I remember reading somewhere that Heinlein not only predicted the answering machine, but also predicted ghost screening (the practice of letting the answering machine pick up the phone before answering it yourself).
In that context, there was a quote from another sci-fi author (name forgotten): "A good science fiction writer predicts the automobile. A great science fiction writer predicts the traffic jam."
$NN million in free software is NOT any sort of punishment. Aside from the free publicity, the free expansion of marketshare, software costs almost NOTHING itself. The development / advertising / support costs money. Once you've developed the software, rolling out copies of it is relatively cheap.
It's like Microsoft printing their own money.
Why don't we let MS pay their taxes with copies of XP? Would employees like to be paid with copies of Office?
I thought BillG was a business genius before, but this is off the scale. Paying a massive monetary fine with non-corporeal assets is brilliant beyond words.
Qwest runs the available DSL in the Boise, ID area. Eventually MSN will tell me I can't use Linux as my DSL gateway because I have to use Microsoft-PPPOE or some dumba** thing.
When you have 98% market share, you don't have to care.
Companies relying on IIS will most likely never dump it. I just started at a shop using ASPs, VB, and IIS with SQL Server. Top to bottom, a Microsoft shop. To convert all that VB to PHP/Perl/Python (yes, there are tools) is scarier for them than just staying with IIS and riding out the crashes, the viruses, and the constant reboot-to-make-it-go-away problems.
Better the devil you know than the devil you don't.
Most end-user business types aren't interested in what's technically superior. They're just interested in what's easiest. It's a time versus money thing; Microsoft gets them up and running faster in the short run. Once you start using MS software, it's a tarpit. It's easier and easier to continue to use MS once you have MS. And harder and harder to move to something better when all the problems start to appear.
Had an announcement on the local (Boise, Idaho, USA) news this evening. Albertsons (a big Western USA grocery store chain) will be putting disaster relief donation boxes at their cash registers starting tommorrow. Will match up to $50,000 as well.
Try to keep a level head. Remember Richard Jewell. First impressions aren't always right.
Hear hear! I have lost more time and hair due to debugging ****ing ASN.1 encoding problems in our SNMP stack. What a pain in the ***. We couldn't pitch SNMP off the sleigh fast enough when customers started asking for HTTP (Web) management interfaces to our products.
Oh, gee. I don't know. Cisco is deepdeepdeep in the red. Microsoft has $30 billion in cash.
Gee. I wonder....hmmm......
Didn't MS give Apple $150 million to keep Apple afloat as token competition? I'm sure a $1 billion "investment" in Cisco would help things along.
If I hid the penguin logo and didn't tell people, you wouldn't know QPE sits on top of Linux. I'm very impressed.
"No one buys operating systems. People buy applications and then chose the best operating system to run those applications."
- Bob Young (of RedHat, Inc.)
The best thing about Palm is that they are as reliable as a toaster. They're very weak in the display, processor, memory, and peripherals department, but they're still very very popular with folks. They're a computer that doesn't suck.
> Does it suspend when I push the power button?
Yes.
> does it come back again flawlessly?
So far, yes.
> does it sync with linux?
Unfortunately, no. Doesn't sync with anything.
That's something I'm looking into.
The power usage isn't great. If I switch it "off" and leave it off, I still have to plug it in. I think this is a problem with the iPaq; I had the same problems with WinCE. I'd not use it for a couple of days and discover the battery had been run down.
I find the text input pretty nasty, but I thought the same thing on the Palm. QPE needs a lot of polish until it's consumer ready, but it's a good starting point. Familiar+QPE is a good starting point.
Of course, to get VC, I need to find if there's a market or not.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I want to download the source from microsoft.com! I want to be able to figure out what the **** all those undocumented registry settings are for. Working with CE is like wandering through a swamp at night. Bad documentation, weird registry settings, crappy APIs. Don't get me started on the steamy pile of llama dung that is Connection Manager.
So where is the source?
Life is so much easier with the source code.
Any embedded system without a display or user interface or the necessity to run user's programs probably will run Linux. True embedded systems will be running Linux or another RTOS.
Conversely, any device requiring a user behind the screen (PDA or related), will be running Windows CE. If your product has a display and will be used by 99% of people, using Windows CE is a major selling advantage. "It's the interface you know! It's the apps you know!"
Inquiring minds want to know! Write a review!
I've been thinking about picking up an inexpensive iBook for a while now. Still not sure.
Thank you for a very thoughtful posting! You've hit the nail in the head. Like you, programming is something I enjoy and I'm lucky enough to get paid (well!) for it.
I was born in 1969. Generation X? WTF? I consider myself very lucky. When my employer went public during the dot-com hype, I sold enough stock during the hype to pay off my debts: credit cards, vehicle, student loans. Their stock has since dropped from $150 to $1.50 but I haven't dug myself back into the hole.
Best years of my life? Har har har. The best years of your life are *right now* whenever right now might be.
How is the status of Linux and a high quality NFS?
Has anyone ever thought to combine NFS with LDAP to offer something similar to Microsoft's "network browse" feature? Browsing is a nice feature for non-technical users.
Has to be better, faster, easier than MS browse or there won't be any reason to switch to the new system.
Just a weird thought.
I like the KDE/Win32 style alt-tab window list (small window pops up with all available windows listed; alt-tab selects between them).
Very user friendly and very quick to pop between a large collection of windows. No need to mess up your stacking order plowing through umpteen windows to find the one you're looking for.
Why wasn't such a feature implemented in Sawfish? General unpopularity with the feature? Too similar to Windows?
Does Metacity have a similar window list? Or does it use the annoying Sawfish style?
Forgive my ignorance, but what is export?
...the entertainment 'tainment industry will drop crap like SSSCA.
Why bother mandating copy protection and making the non-music people suffer through crappy software when there is no need?
Pay for the damn music. If you don't like it, don't buy it. Duh. Vote with your wallet.
That's why I think large web pages will turn into purely marketing vehicles. www.pepsi.com www.ford.com www.coke.com are the future. Web pages as commercials.
Not because of some Evil Conspiracy to try to convert to a pay service. Bandwidth is expensive, folks. Any Internet site that is too popular will eventually become too expensive to be free. Stay small and niche-ish, and your home DSL line will be just fine.
With the dotcom kablooie, Universities are going to become the only organizations interested in providing high bandwidth without any interest in a return on investment. Businesses won't be interested in spending money without some sort of return in the future. Why shell out major bucks for a big server and fat pipe unless you expect to get revenue for it?
Large free pages are going to turn into pure marketing vehicles. Anything with a great deal of meaningful (ie, non-company specific, non-techsupport) content will have to be a pay site.
We'll all be back to using NNTP.
Hear hear! Both excellent books!
:-) (Big book...)
_The Pragmatic Programmer_ by Andrew Hunt. Lots of "well, duh" stuff after you've been programming for several years and have the scars to prove it. None of the stuff in this book was covered in my CS program. I wish I could force my younger co-workers to read AND FOLLOW this book.
I'm up to my eyes in beginner's and slightly beyond beginner's books on a myriad of subjects. I'd like to see more advanced PRACTICAL (no theory) software engineering books like the above.
How about _Massive Scale Server Design_; i.e., how to design and code scalable server software (I don't have time to go through Apache's source and learn the hard way).
_Super Advanced C Tricks_ How to do interesting and completely useful things in the world's most portable assembly language.
In particular I'd like a book on everything I don't know.
I think the bottleneck would become the device manufacturer. Unless a device like that could be put together from off-the-shelf commodity parts (like current PCs can--anybody can build one out of 100% legal parts), the manufacturer could be sued out of existance.
Something that small and (slightly) specialized would require custom manufacturing.
However, image a new generic motherboard spec (picoATA?) the size of a credit card. Thumbnail sized expansion cards plug into it via PCI-2010 or gigabit Bluetooth. Something that small + ubiquitous + cheap + low power + no single manufacturer would lead to wandering P2P.
Would like to find a picoATA board now that I think of it...
IMO, the main difference between the MS and Open Source/GNU community is the OS/GNU folks are passionate about the technology itself. The MS people want a solution to their problem. MS provides that solution quickly and easily.
One of the genius things MS has done is to provide one and only one solution to the problem. Speeds up development for people who want to get the project *done*. Most businesses aren't interested in beautiful technology or ideal code. The have a problem and need a solution, quickly and easily.
Communities tend to form around people who enjoy a particular activity at least partially for the sake of the activity itself. OS/GNU people enjoy computers. I'm not sure MS's efforts will create a community with members that have any interest other than their own problems.
When there is only one solution to the problem, why get together and discuss it? People will pop up, ask a question, get The Answer, then disappear. The most frequent posters will be the flamers with an axe to grind and MS employees.
I think 90% of embedded devices are 16-bit or lower; 90% of those are probably 8-bit. Devices that must run literally for years without human intervention. DOS isn't reliable and Linux is too big.
My thought has always been that MS targets systems that must interact with a human. GUIs have always been their strength. But I think people are missing the point of this article. MS is evolving again, tapping into the greatest thing about Linux--the developer community. MS has always had the ability to take what is best from an existing technology and integrate it into themselves.
The main character of _Fountains of Paradise_ was outfitted with a device (called "CORA") that would monitor his heart. When the character had a heart attack, CORA tried to call a hospital for help and eventually began to yell verbally for human assistance.
I think I've seen medical alert devices like this, especially for live-at-home elderly.
I remember reading an inverview circa 1980's with Isaac Asimov where he was talking about science fiction writers not predicting the rise of the personal computer. All the old sci-fi I've read (a lot) always had massive (some planet-sized) computers that were access through some sort of terminal device, hand-held (like Star Trek) or otherwise such as the ear-based terminals (?) in _Ender's Game_.
Would be interesting if someone knew of a pre-1970 sci-fi reference to the personal computer.
I remember reading somewhere that Heinlein not only predicted the answering machine, but also predicted ghost screening (the practice of letting the answering machine pick up the phone before answering it yourself).
In that context, there was a quote from another sci-fi author (name forgotten): "A good science fiction writer predicts the automobile. A great science fiction writer predicts the traffic jam."
$NN million in free software is NOT any sort of punishment. Aside from the free publicity, the free expansion of marketshare, software costs almost NOTHING itself. The development / advertising / support costs money. Once you've developed the software, rolling out copies of it is relatively cheap.
It's like Microsoft printing their own money.
Why don't we let MS pay their taxes with copies of XP? Would employees like to be paid with copies of Office?
I thought BillG was a business genius before, but this is off the scale. Paying a massive monetary fine with non-corporeal assets is brilliant beyond words.
Qwest runs the available DSL in the Boise, ID area. Eventually MSN will tell me I can't use Linux as my DSL gateway because I have to use Microsoft-PPPOE or some dumba** thing.
When you have 98% market share, you don't have to care.
Companies relying on IIS will most likely never dump it. I just started at a shop using ASPs, VB, and IIS with SQL Server. Top to bottom, a Microsoft shop. To convert all that VB to PHP/Perl/Python (yes, there are tools) is scarier for them than just staying with IIS and riding out the crashes, the viruses, and the constant reboot-to-make-it-go-away problems.
Better the devil you know than the devil you don't.
Most end-user business types aren't interested in what's technically superior. They're just interested in what's easiest. It's a time versus money thing; Microsoft gets them up and running faster in the short run. Once you start using MS software, it's a tarpit. It's easier and easier to continue to use MS once you have MS. And harder and harder to move to something better when all the problems start to appear.
Had an announcement on the local (Boise, Idaho, USA) news this evening. Albertsons (a big Western USA grocery store chain) will be putting disaster relief donation boxes at their cash registers starting tommorrow. Will match up to $50,000 as well.
Try to keep a level head. Remember Richard Jewell. First impressions aren't always right.
My 2c.
Hear hear! I have lost more time and hair due to debugging ****ing ASN.1 encoding problems in our SNMP stack. What a pain in the ***. We couldn't pitch SNMP off the sleigh fast enough when customers started asking for HTTP (Web) management interfaces to our products.
Oh, gee. I don't know. Cisco is deepdeepdeep in the red. Microsoft has $30 billion in cash.
Gee. I wonder....hmmm......
Didn't MS give Apple $150 million to keep Apple afloat as token competition? I'm sure a $1 billion "investment" in Cisco would help things along.
Welcome to IPv7.
If I hid the penguin logo and didn't tell people, you wouldn't know QPE sits on top of Linux. I'm very impressed.
"No one buys operating systems. People buy applications and then chose the best operating system to run those applications."
- Bob Young (of RedHat, Inc.)
The best thing about Palm is that they are as reliable as a toaster. They're very weak in the display, processor, memory, and peripherals department, but they're still very very popular with folks. They're a computer that doesn't suck.
> Does it suspend when I push the power button?
:-)
Yes.
> does it come back again flawlessly?
So far, yes.
> does it sync with linux?
Unfortunately, no. Doesn't sync with anything.
That's something I'm looking into.
The power usage isn't great. If I switch it "off" and leave it off, I still have to plug it in. I think this is a problem with the iPaq; I had the same problems with WinCE. I'd not use it for a couple of days and discover the battery had been run down.
I find the text input pretty nasty, but I thought the same thing on the Palm. QPE needs a lot of polish until it's consumer ready, but it's a good starting point. Familiar+QPE is a good starting point.
Of course, to get VC, I need to find if there's a market or not.