The fact that star office has lame registry entries doesn't say much. And you still don't get my XML suggestion.
A set of APIs that converts requests to a key written in XML to win32 api calls then responds with the results in XML.
A standard XML registry format would also be cross platform.
*idea comes to mind* i think i might implement it. In Unix it could write to silly text files, in windows the registry , in java silly text files etc:P
Speed matters a lot less than stability and maintainability in this case -- do you need to update your settings a zillion times inside a tight loop, or do you need to be able to back-up, transfer, and maintain them? Does it matter more if users get to wait a millisecond more on starting your application, than if some other application (or a random Windows crash) clobbers the settings for your app for some unlucky users?
Explain why having a database rather than a text file reduces reliability!? or managablility?
Just cause regedit isn't wonderful doesn't mean you can't write a better one.
Would you rather not use databases and just use ascii files next time you write your db app?
Well I didn't see Windows 2000 crash. What they did do was have a cluster of 5 machines running over 12000 requests per second(or something like that), and then they purposly unplugged one of them to show have transactions (webbased) weren't lost even tho that user was on that machine.
All that sill isn't the fault of the registry. Maybe the registry should have had documentation entries in the keys. Anyway the structure of the filesystem and conf files is not unlike the strcutor of the registry. AAnd there's no reason why you can't bind grep to a program that prints out the registry...of just write a better registry editor.
And about XML. What I meant was a program that converts standard regs keys into XML and back..give a transparent XML interface to the existing registry.
Well scalability is as much a matter of pratical implementation, as a matter of design. For instance in the Mindcraft becnhmark, the speedup for using 4 processors instead of 1 is only 2 (and only 50% for Linux).
Well I still take the fact that NT is very good at SMP a sign that Linux still needs growing up before every can continue yelling scalability praises w.r.t linux.
might well compare with starting a new thread on Windows NT.
Starting a process in Linux is faster than in NT (however that doesn't help linux much by the way NT is very good at caching and has good ways of loading apps fast - Most GUI apps load much faster on NT).
The *.pid are for inter-process locking, so Mutexes/Semaphores/CriticalSections can't be used here. The *.pid files provide also precious information for the administrator.
Semaphores in NT are shared across all threads on the system. *.pid files suck big time. If you want information, log it or list the processes.
That's right, people in free unices write programs, not libraries. That's why the API is a mess. (Un)Fortunatly Windows isn't that clean, so this doesn't not appear as shocking as it should be.
I hate that about Unix. Too many people write apps not libraries.
The registry makes a little easier for the application programmer, but it is an absolute, total, and definitive nightmare for the admistrator. It is the reason why you have to go to the console and act like a clicking-monkey on NT: only the application is able to modify its registry entries. It is the reason why you can't understand why your Windows system has ceased to work. It is ultimatly one of the reasons why you have to periodically reinstall Windows, (or to avoid installing any superfluous application on your server). It is the reason why you can't take the configuration of some application and replicate it on hundreds of machines with hereogenuous hardware. Heck, with Linux you could even copy all your apache configuration/data files from your x86 server to your new Alpha server with two commands, and have the new over-powered Alpha serving the WWW in a matter of minutes, while operating from a telnet terminal 1000 miles away.
Sorry have to totally disagree with you. You are trying to say that the registry is bad cause app designers don't mention what's in the registry. If you knew where to go in the registry (decent software companies do tell) then I fail to see the difference - except speed. I fail to see how not knowing where in the registry the network card settings are (forget the network control panel) and not knowing where abouts in the unix scripts the network card settings are are different. Just cause you know where everything is in your hundreds of untidy conf files and you don't know the windows registry well, doesn't mean the registry is bad.
Also, there's no reason why a registry can't be modelled around XML. Heck the current windows registry can have an XML wrapper if you really want. You're trying to push your biasedness against Windows onto the registry. Like I've said before...what's the diff between the registry as a database and the 'registry' as several conf files. Database is faster, safer(backup) etc. If you want you can make the database an XML file or have XML outputted and Inputted to a real database.
As for administration. Write your own tools, registry APIs aren't hard. There's also no reason why you can't makea text based registry editor to work over telnet. Infact Windows Scripting supports the registry thru the scripting object i belive. Sure you can't by usually read the registry like conf files, but then you can't read SQL databases like that either. However you can make applications which make it appear you're doing it that way.
As for moving apps around, well, the biggest problem is COM object definitions in the registry, most people (including me) stick the settings in HKCU\Software\Company\Product and that tree can be easily exported (and edited with your favourite text editor:P) and then merged with the new registry.
Look at it this way, the registry is like your filesystem with your little *.conf and rc files. It's just faster and easier to develop for.
NT was designed to do this sort of thing - keyword designed. Linus didn't design Linux for the kind of work which NT is excelling at in these benchmarks. When Dave Cutler sat down and designed NT, this was the kind of things they were trying to do, fine grain kernel locks, high performance and scalability. The market place has unfortunately seen many of the good things about NT get forgotten (portability for example), but NT still stands there with the ability to scale MUCH MUCH better than Linux can at the present. Yes you may feel like going out and burning a few MS cds or whatever, but at the end of the day it's true. Improvements ofcourse are being made to linux, and linux may catch up. However, I'm actually a bit worried about the fundamental design of Linux itself - I'm not saying it's totally 30 year old technology - far from it - but having experience with linux and NT for quite a number of years now, to me, NT seems like it is better designed and had good goals. I won't bother to argue about whether they were met or not here tho:P.
Some fiddly things about Linux/Unix I don't like are: -Threading. According to IBM, Linux native threads are mapped processes!??! which makes their JDK rather slow compared to NT. -Mutexes/Semaphores/CriticalSections etc - why doesn't Linux use them? I mean for god sakes what the hell are linux applications writing *.pid files around for? And what about/tmp/X11-unix lock files? ERK. -Componentisation - it's happening slowly but only in the past few months (maybe a year). I'm still waiting to see the Unix APIs wrapped up. -Registry. I've said it before and I'll say it again:P, the registry is a good thing. Yes when win95 came out there were registry problems but I haven't had any problems since 1996. It's a great idea, it's like having a database to store all your settings. Now I don't really care whether the registry is one huge file or several files (user and system) like in NT, but I just want some STANDARD APIs for reading writing settings - fast APIs. Ofcourse the registry has other uses too, like storing COM/CORBA UUIDs etc etc etc. Being a database it'll definitely be faster than parsing text files, and even better it's much easier to programatically add/remove/change settings (trying to parse text files to do that sort of thing sucks).
Anyway, it seems everytime something about Linux comes up the response is "someone is working on it". When it comes up again the answer is the same, and then everyone ignores the strengths that NT does have because Linux will have it cause "someone is working on it". Just give NT, MS and Dave credit, and move on. Linux is not the solution to everything. It's a great free small-medium server & emerging desktop OS. Let's leave it at that for the next year or so.
Reference counting (along with explicit freeing, which is just RC the hard way) is the only GC schemes that take O(n) time in the number of objects killed by one lost reference.
Yes, O(n) time for the numberof objects killed by one lost reference, however if the number of objects destroyed isn't that high, it's possible it'll be faster than having garbage collector scan for what's not garbage.
JRMP (the old RMI wire protocol) could be implemented by any platform, though having a JVM certainly makes it easier. But RMI can use IIOP now, so that doesn't matter anyway.
Same as COM but it doesn't stop people complaining.
COM uses reference counting (the most unimaginably inefficient form of garbage collection ever devised), mandates vtbls (when we've known better ways to dispatch methods on pipelined architectures for years), gets inheritance wrong, makes dynamic invocation fragile if not impossible, and makes both introspection and exceptions optional and too painful to use much. Don't even mention Automation - all that does is (optionally) support functionality a better-designed ORB could provide for every interface.
You mean DCOM. Reference counting isn't the best, but it is one of the easiest to implement and can be rather fast. Mandating vtables also is a speed issue. If you don't like it, how about SOAP. Inheritance wrong? How so? COM specifies interfaces not implementation, and interface inheritance works fine thats. Exceptions are bad compared to java yes.
. But just wrapping your code in activeX doesn't make it any better
It would make it better, and the fact that IE is faster, leaner etc than Netscape makes it even better. Components are better than no components IMHO.
As far as I know mozilla is crossplatform which means it is definately not based on COM
It's called xpCOM and is based very much on COM (right down to many of the interface names). COM is also cross platform and language nuetral - it's just not very popular on other platforms. A few companies like Bristal and Software (oh and Microsoft) have COM engines for Unix. COM was designed to be language and platform neutral. It's better than having Java (controlled by sun) with all these things like RMI and JINI which rely on Java:|. With COM, from the ground up it was designed to just allow you to quickly turn anything into a COM object. In fact, you can turn a standard DLL into a COM server just by writing a type libary for it (IDL), same with java classes. And with windows monikers, you can create any type of object from any language and especially scripting languages. eg.
// from javascript javaobject=GetObject("java:myjavaclass");
Microsoft are big and considered evil, but they really do have some pretty neat technologies, and they manage to integrate them well into the windows api (giving them away free). WinInet for example makes it easy to FTP etc etc...
Big deal they first wiped out the competition and only then could they claim to offer the best support for standards. Just wait two months or so, then mozilla comes out
Big deal? The original post said IE was bad at standards. Pst. Netscape never had the same level of standards IE4/5 had nor did they even attempt it until IE4 came out and killed them on technical levels.
That's what we call a messy program. Netscape proves that you don't have to do things that way to make a browser so IE's insecurity is inexcusable.
Uh. Yeah, you can not COMPONENTISE things, not reuse code and not add advanced features if you want to. "messy" is what I'd call netscape.
Why do you think they threw away the old source and started a new new componentised model...funnily enough, they based it on COM.
I really don't like it when people complain about microsoft on technical merits (esp since i think they make quite decent software & hardware most of the time), but it's a different matter when you all abuse the hell out of programmers who just want to make a living. They aren't as big as Microsoft, so they can't survive bashing like this.
I can't help but feel really sorry for relatively small companies who try to make a living, but then get bashed around by a community which really should either support them or shutup.
BTW XFree is more unstable, and yes, I do believe it is one of the most unstable aspects of Linux (since it's so important too). XFree + Netscape 4.x == RUN, argh RUN!!
Um, databases use fixed length strings (generally) so limiting the length of a password makes sense. Although I wish the limit would be something like 255 bytes:).
Internet Explorer is not done properly. Standard support is poor, and undoubtedly the code implementing it is shoddy.
Excuse me? Not done properly how huh? Hrm, it's componentised, it's fast, it's lean and mean. Standard support is the BEST of any browser currently out there - so what if it has more non standard features - that doesn't make the standard features dissapear.
Security in IE has repeatedly been shown to be badly broken, and almost certainly not an integral part of the design. The idea that digital signatures can protect a user from malicious code is ludicrous.
Security in some windows components are broken, which cause IE uses, makes IE broken (it's hard to draw the line where IE ends and other things start - ala COM). Anyway, digital signatures don't protect stupid users. And their very concept is not sand box code, but to allow code to run, but only if the user agrees. Signatures basically allow people to sue the ones responsible if the code is bad. Java is limited cause it's sand boxed, and already there are efforts to extend it with signatures.
And BTW, have you ever looked at the security options in IE? It looks like just a long list box, but there are advanced features, there are at least 5 different dialogs each with their own dialogs and settings especially for Java. IE allows a flexible range of customization and settings - MUCH more so that Netscape. BTW, netscape plugins aren't secure either.
That's why AOL bought them out in the first place, cause they were struggling. Netscape prolly had low moral in the first place. How else can you explain Netscape 4.x?
I've always thought Corel Draw was a very nice product. I think it's very good, and I don't use the advanced features, but I used to use it for doing news paper adverts etc. It was sweet.
Corel 8 look even better haven't tried Corel 9 tho.
I think what Corel aparently has already done looks like innovation to me. Innovation to me is the same as innovation as Bill Gates calls it. Innovation is something you just look at and go "wow".
I've already decided that Corel Linux will be by distribution of choice (without even touching it).
Why?
Cause it has that professional polished look I like about windows. And belive it or not, corporate development always produces much more complete polished products. Corel is a professional company (look at Corel Draw for example - very nice). I'm looking forward to drooling over it when I get my hands on a copy. From the screen shots it functionally looks like Windows 2000:) (KFM/IE5 anyway).
I downloaded the BETAs and it was quite hard to get used to. Big ugly buttons, and I didn't like the way each method was edited in it's own window (didn't MS give that up after QB:P)...i didn't bother to check to see if it could change (you can actually do thatin VB).
I much prefer J++ as an IDE, even if it's far far behind cause it has a very nice editor. I've managed to get Swing and RMI working with J++ so it keeps me content:) Very fast compiler too.
I think Microsoft might lose part (well more than is already lot) of me to Linux if they started porting Visual Studio & IE5 to linux:).
That's a stupid definition IMHO. Everyone in the world except for *some* people (especially geeks who like to make themselves identifiable) considers the OS as more than the hardware abstraction.
And even so, what about keyboard routines, are they part of the OS? What about the mouse? What about Voice Recognition Interfaces? What about Web interfaces?
They're all hardware abstraction to one level or another.
I mean, operating systems have always been considered something more than just the kernel. They're also at least a set of APIs and some utils. DOS had edit for example. However, you meantioned windwos 2000. Windows 2000 is MORE than an OS. Just like Solaris is MORE than an OS and REDHAT Linux is MORE than an OS. But when I say OS there I mean the meaning i defined above. Without being an idiot about things just to help the DOJ beat Microsoft, I think it's safe to say that now days almost everyone considers an OS to be the OS and support applications.
Windows 2000 wouldn't be much of an OS without Explorer (an Application), IIS (an application), COM (an API), IE (an API that explorer uses) etc.
With COM, microsoft has melded the line between APIs and applications. IE itself is really just an ActiveX control - an applet if you will. However, with a small 200k exe they can make a browser out of it, add a few more plugins and they can make it explore the filesystem, and tada you have the new Windows Shell.
Remeber, OSs are targetted at end users (well, Microsoft OSs at least) and someone else mentioned that an OS is the bare minimun you need to start/run an application. An the end user can't do much with a kernel and an assembler. Now days in the internet age, we may even need to consider a bit beyond that. Noone in their right mind would consider any OS an Internet OS without TCP/IP support etc. (you see where I'm getting at).
Windows 95/98/2000 kernel is older than Dirt (Dirt, of course, having been invented in 1994, just after MS-DOS 6.0
Gee when did the linux kernel get made? When did Unix get invented?
Oh hang on, all those things actually have improvements over the years - even the *evil* microsoft empire seems to continue development on the NT kernel.
Slashdot Mirror
ALT - CONTROL - DELETE
:P
It's also the order in which the keys are arragned on the keyboard.
Ofcourse it won't be if you're one of those lame people who use two hands for A-C-D
The fact that star office has lame registry entries doesn't say much. And you still don't get my XML suggestion.
:P
A set of APIs that converts requests to a key written in XML to win32 api calls then responds with the results in XML.
A standard XML registry format would also be cross platform.
*idea comes to mind* i think i might implement it. In Unix it could write to silly text files, in windows the registry , in java silly text files etc
Speed matters a lot less than stability and maintainability in this case -- do you need to update your settings a zillion times inside a tight loop, or do you need to be able to back-up, transfer, and maintain them? Does it matter more if users get to wait a millisecond more on starting your application, than if some other application (or a random Windows crash) clobbers the settings for your app for some unlucky users?
Explain why having a database rather than a text file reduces reliability!? or managablility?
Just cause regedit isn't wonderful doesn't mean you can't write a better one.
Would you rather not use databases and just use ascii files next time you write your db app?
Well I didn't see Windows 2000 crash. What they did do was have a cluster of 5 machines running over 12000 requests per second(or something like that), and then they purposly unplugged one of them to show have transactions (webbased) weren't lost even tho that user was on that machine.
All that sill isn't the fault of the registry. Maybe the registry should have had documentation entries in the keys.
..give a transparent XML interface to the existing registry.
Anyway the structure of the filesystem and conf files is not unlike the strcutor of the registry. AAnd there's no reason why you can't bind grep to a program that prints out the registry...of just write a better registry editor.
And about XML. What I meant was a program that converts standard regs keys into XML and back
Well scalability is as much a matter of pratical implementation, as a matter of design. For instance in the Mindcraft becnhmark, the speedup for using 4 processors instead of 1 is only 2 (and only 50% for Linux).
Well I still take the fact that NT is very good at SMP a sign that Linux still needs growing up before every can continue yelling scalability praises w.r.t linux.
might well compare with starting a new thread on Windows NT.
Starting a process in Linux is faster than in NT (however that doesn't help linux much by the way NT is very good at caching and has good ways of loading apps fast - Most GUI apps load much faster on NT).
The *.pid are for inter-process locking, so Mutexes/Semaphores/CriticalSections can't be used here. The *.pid files provide also precious information for the administrator.
Semaphores in NT are shared across all threads on the system. *.pid files suck big time. If you want information, log it or list the processes.
That's right, people in free unices write programs, not libraries. That's why the API is a mess. (Un)Fortunatly Windows isn't that clean, so this doesn't not appear as shocking as it should be.
I hate that about Unix. Too many people write apps not libraries.
The registry makes a little easier for the application programmer, but it is an absolute, total, and definitive nightmare for the admistrator.
It is the reason why you have to go to the console and act like a clicking-monkey on NT: only the application is able to modify its registry entries. It is the reason why you can't understand why your Windows system has ceased to work. It is ultimatly one of the reasons why you have to periodically reinstall Windows, (or to avoid installing any superfluous application on your server). It is the reason why you can't take the configuration of some application and replicate it on hundreds of machines with hereogenuous hardware. Heck, with Linux you could even copy all your apache configuration/data files from your x86 server to your new Alpha server with two commands, and have the new over-powered Alpha serving the WWW in a matter of minutes, while operating from a telnet terminal 1000 miles away.
Sorry have to totally disagree with you. You are trying to say that the registry is bad cause app designers don't mention what's in the registry. If you knew where to go in the registry (decent software companies do tell) then I fail to see the difference - except speed.
I fail to see how not knowing where in the registry the network card settings are (forget the network control panel) and not knowing where abouts in the unix scripts the network card settings are are different.
Just cause you know where everything is in your hundreds of untidy conf files and you don't know the windows registry well, doesn't mean the registry is bad.
Also, there's no reason why a registry can't be modelled around XML. Heck the current windows registry can have an XML wrapper if you really want. You're trying to push your biasedness against Windows onto the registry.
Like I've said before...what's the diff between the registry as a database and the 'registry' as several conf files. Database is faster, safer(backup) etc. If you want you can make the database an XML file or have XML outputted and Inputted to a real database.
As for administration. Write your own tools, registry APIs aren't hard. There's also no reason why you can't makea text based registry editor to work over telnet. Infact Windows Scripting supports the registry thru the scripting object i belive.
Sure you can't by usually read the registry like conf files, but then you can't read SQL databases like that either. However you can make applications which make it appear you're doing it that way.
As for moving apps around, well, the biggest problem is COM object definitions in the registry, most people (including me) stick the settings in HKCU\Software\Company\Product and that tree can be easily exported (and edited with your favourite text editor
Look at it this way, the registry is like your filesystem with your little *.conf and rc files. It's just faster and easier to develop for.
NT was designed to do this sort of thing - keyword designed. :P.
/tmp/X11-unix lock files? ERK. :P, the registry is a good thing. Yes when win95 came out there were registry problems but I haven't had any problems since 1996. It's a great idea, it's like having a database to store all your settings.
Linus didn't design Linux for the kind of work which NT is excelling at in these benchmarks.
When Dave Cutler sat down and designed NT, this was the kind of things they were trying to do, fine grain kernel locks, high performance and scalability. The market place has unfortunately seen many of the good things about NT get forgotten (portability for example), but NT still stands there with the ability to scale MUCH MUCH better than Linux can at the present.
Yes you may feel like going out and burning a few MS cds or whatever, but at the end of the day it's true. Improvements ofcourse are being made to linux, and linux may catch up.
However, I'm actually a bit worried about the fundamental design of Linux itself - I'm not saying it's totally 30 year old technology - far from it - but having experience with linux and NT for quite a number of years now, to me, NT seems like it is better designed and had good goals.
I won't bother to argue about whether they were met or not here tho
Some fiddly things about Linux/Unix I don't like are:
-Threading. According to IBM, Linux native threads are mapped processes!??! which makes their JDK rather slow compared to NT.
-Mutexes/Semaphores/CriticalSections etc - why doesn't Linux use them? I mean for god sakes what the hell are linux applications writing *.pid files around for? And what about
-Componentisation - it's happening slowly but only in the past few months (maybe a year). I'm still waiting to see the Unix APIs wrapped up.
-Registry. I've said it before and I'll say it again
Now I don't really care whether the registry is one huge file or several files (user and system) like in NT, but I just want some STANDARD APIs for reading writing settings - fast APIs.
Ofcourse the registry has other uses too, like storing COM/CORBA UUIDs etc etc etc.
Being a database it'll definitely be faster than parsing text files, and even better it's much easier to programatically add/remove/change settings (trying to parse text files to do that sort of thing sucks).
Anyway, it seems everytime something about Linux comes up the response is "someone is working on it". When it comes up again the answer is the same, and then everyone ignores the strengths that NT does have because Linux will have it cause "someone is working on it".
Just give NT, MS and Dave credit, and move on.
Linux is not the solution to everything. It's a great free small-medium server & emerging desktop OS. Let's leave it at that for the next year or so.
Is Redhat going to do what MS did with Transvirtual and ActiveState and let the products continue, or are they going to wipe it?
Besides, even DATA couldn't quite "get the hair right".
Are you talking about STTNG:Reunification Part 2?
Or sdo i just watch too much star trek..?
Reference counting (along with explicit freeing, which is just RC the hard way) is the only GC schemes that take O(n) time in the number of objects killed by one lost reference.
Yes, O(n) time for the numberof objects killed by one lost reference, however if the number of objects destroyed isn't that high, it's possible it'll be faster than having garbage collector scan for what's not garbage.
JRMP (the old RMI wire protocol) could be implemented by any platform, though having a JVM certainly makes it easier. But RMI can use IIOP now, so that doesn't matter anyway.
Same as COM but it doesn't stop people complaining.
COM uses reference counting (the most unimaginably inefficient form of garbage collection ever devised), mandates vtbls (when we've known better ways to dispatch methods on pipelined architectures for years), gets inheritance wrong, makes dynamic invocation fragile if not impossible, and makes both introspection and exceptions optional and too painful to use much. Don't even mention Automation - all that does is (optionally) support functionality a better-designed ORB could provide for every interface.
You mean DCOM.
Reference counting isn't the best, but it is one of the easiest to implement and can be rather fast. Mandating vtables also is a speed issue.
If you don't like it, how about SOAP.
Inheritance wrong? How so? COM specifies interfaces not implementation, and interface inheritance works fine thats.
Exceptions are bad compared to java yes.
. But just wrapping your code in activeX doesn't make it any better
It would make it better, and the fact that IE is faster, leaner etc than Netscape makes it even better. Components are better than no components IMHO.
As far as I know mozilla is crossplatform which means it is definately not based on COM
It's called xpCOM and is based very much on COM (right down to many of the interface names).
COM is also cross platform and language nuetral - it's just not very popular on other platforms. A few companies like Bristal and Software (oh and Microsoft) have COM engines for Unix.
COM was designed to be language and platform neutral.
It's better than having Java (controlled by sun) with all these things like RMI and JINI which rely on Java
With COM, from the ground up it was designed to just allow you to quickly turn anything into a COM object.
In fact, you can turn a standard DLL into a COM server just by writing a type libary for it (IDL), same with java classes.
And with windows monikers, you can create any type of object from any language and especially scripting languages.
eg.
// from javascript
javaobject=GetObject("java:myjavaclass");
'from vb/vbscript
javaobject=CreateObject("java:myjavaclass");
Microsoft are big and considered evil, but they really do have some pretty neat technologies, and they manage to integrate them well into the windows api (giving them away free).
WinInet for example makes it easy to FTP etc etc...
Big deal they first wiped out the competition and only then could they claim to offer the best support for standards. Just wait two months or so, then mozilla comes out
Big deal? The original post said IE was bad at standards.
Pst. Netscape never had the same level of standards IE4/5 had nor did they even attempt it until IE4 came out and killed them on technical levels.
That's what we call a messy program. Netscape proves that you don't have to do things that way to make a browser so IE's insecurity is inexcusable.
Uh. Yeah, you can not COMPONENTISE things, not reuse code and not add advanced features if you want to.
"messy" is what I'd call netscape.
Why do you think they threw away the old source and started a new new componentised model...funnily enough, they based it on COM.
I really don't like it when people complain about microsoft on technical merits (esp since i think they make quite decent software & hardware most of the time), but it's a different matter when you all abuse the hell out of programmers who just want to make a living. They aren't as big as Microsoft, so they can't survive bashing like this.
I can't help but feel really sorry for relatively small companies who try to make a living, but then get bashed around by a community which really should either support them or shutup.
BTW XFree is more unstable, and yes, I do believe it is one of the most unstable aspects of Linux (since it's so important too). XFree + Netscape 4.x == RUN, argh RUN!!
Um, databases use fixed length strings (generally) so limiting the length of a password makes sense. Although I wish the limit would be something like 255 bytes :).
Internet Explorer is not done properly. Standard support is poor, and undoubtedly the code implementing it is shoddy.
Excuse me? Not done properly how huh?
Hrm, it's componentised, it's fast, it's lean and mean. Standard support is the BEST of any browser currently out there - so what if it has more non standard features - that doesn't make the standard features dissapear.
Security in IE has repeatedly been shown to be badly broken, and almost certainly not an integral part of the design.
The idea that digital signatures can protect a user from malicious code is ludicrous.
Security in some windows components are broken, which cause IE uses, makes IE broken (it's hard to draw the line where IE ends and other things start - ala COM).
Anyway, digital signatures don't protect stupid users. And their very concept is not sand box code, but to allow code to run, but only if the user agrees. Signatures basically allow people to sue the ones responsible if the code is bad.
Java is limited cause it's sand boxed, and already there are efforts to extend it with signatures.
And BTW, have you ever looked at the security options in IE? It looks like just a long list box, but there are advanced features, there are at least 5 different dialogs each with their own dialogs and settings especially for Java. IE allows a flexible range of customization and settings - MUCH more so that Netscape.
BTW, netscape plugins aren't secure either.
along.
That's why AOL bought them out in the first place, cause they were struggling.
Netscape prolly had low moral in the first place. How else can you explain Netscape 4.x?
I've always thought Corel Draw was a very nice product. I think it's very good, and I don't use the advanced features, but I used to use it for doing news paper adverts etc. It was sweet.
Corel 8 look even better haven't tried Corel 9 tho.
I think what Corel aparently has already done looks like innovation to me.
Innovation to me is the same as innovation as Bill Gates calls it. Innovation is something you just look at and go "wow".
I don't think of Innovation as invention.
I've already decided that Corel Linux will be by distribution of choice (without even touching it).
:) (KFM/IE5 anyway).
Why?
Cause it has that professional polished look I like about windows. And belive it or not, corporate development always produces much more complete polished products. Corel is a professional company (look at Corel Draw for example - very nice). I'm looking forward to drooling over it when I get my hands on a copy.
From the screen shots it functionally looks like Windows 2000
I downloaded the BETAs and it was quite hard to get used to. Big ugly buttons, and I didn't like the way each method was edited in it's own window (didn't MS give that up after QB :P)...i didn't bother to check to see if it could change (you can actually do thatin VB).
:) Very fast compiler too.
:).
I much prefer J++ as an IDE, even if it's far far behind cause it has a very nice editor.
I've managed to get Swing and RMI working with J++ so it keeps me content
I think Microsoft might lose part (well more than is already lot) of me to Linux if they started porting Visual Studio & IE5 to linux
Hello?
Uh *waves* hi.
That's a stupid definition IMHO.
Everyone in the world except for *some* people (especially geeks who like to make themselves identifiable) considers the OS as more than the hardware abstraction.
And even so, what about keyboard routines, are they part of the OS? What about the mouse?
What about Voice Recognition Interfaces?
What about Web interfaces?
They're all hardware abstraction to one level or another.
Excuse me? You call Windows Explorer not an application but you all the replacement Windows/IE explorer hybrid an application?
How so mr DOJ/Sun/Netscape/Oracle/Sun person?
I mean, operating systems have always been considered something more than just the kernel. They're also at least a set of APIs and some utils. DOS had edit for example.
However, you meantioned windwos 2000. Windows 2000 is MORE than an OS. Just like Solaris is MORE than an OS and REDHAT Linux is MORE than an OS. But when I say OS there I mean the meaning i defined above.
Without being an idiot about things just to help the DOJ beat Microsoft, I think it's safe to say that now days almost everyone considers an OS to be the OS and support applications.
Windows 2000 wouldn't be much of an OS without Explorer (an Application), IIS (an application), COM (an API), IE (an API that explorer uses) etc.
With COM, microsoft has melded the line between APIs and applications. IE itself is really just an ActiveX control - an applet if you will. However, with a small 200k exe they can make a browser out of it, add a few more plugins and they can make it explore the filesystem, and tada you have the new Windows Shell.
Remeber, OSs are targetted at end users (well, Microsoft OSs at least) and someone else mentioned that an OS is the bare minimun you need to start/run an application. An the end user can't do much with a kernel and an assembler.
Now days in the internet age, we may even need to consider a bit beyond that. Noone in their right mind would consider any OS an Internet OS without TCP/IP support etc. (you see where I'm getting at).
Windows 95/98/2000 kernel is older than Dirt (Dirt, of course, having been invented in 1994, just after MS-DOS 6.0
Gee when did the linux kernel get made? When did Unix get invented?
Oh hang on, all those things actually have improvements over the years - even the *evil* microsoft empire seems to continue development on the NT kernel.