I'm glad China's having good progress (in many respects). I do hope their government loosens up (maybe money'll soften them like it did ours) so they allow freedom (since it means more money) to speech and internet and whatnot. Just tell them that!
Now, I really really do hope China doesn't make giant killer robot, and I'll be fine with them for good.
So... MS invents XMLHttpRequest...
what's logically to follow with *any* new technology MS invents? Here's for hoping that their "magic touch" will end here.
Mr. Lowenstein proceeded to give quite a rallying speech:
"We are one people. With one will. One Resolve. One cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death. And we will bury them with their own confusion! We shall prevail!"
About which time some mysterious running woman threw a hammer into the large projection monitor behind him.
The real vote in democracy is a stock purchase, and Google now has more votes than Microsoft. Google wants open standards, universal and free net access, and to make the operating system layer transparent.
For those reasons, they have my vote. If they turn evil, then I'll "vote" for the next tech company that reflects values I agree with.
MS brought integration to the computing world, if anything. They taught the UNIX world the importance of that idea, to be able to have a (more-or-less) seamless workflow. And MS was the first wave in computer commoditization.
You can say that the main reason corporations have put some much weight behind open standards and open source is because without joining forcing, all these competing companies would eventually be assimilated by MS.
Having a huge, common enemy sure taught the IT market how to work together. Thanks, MS, for being evil.
It seems a lot of people here are basically thinking that by Linus dissing specs, he's dissing interfaces, protocols, and other standards.
I think he's mostly complaining about specs that try to enforce particular models on distinctive software components.
A spec for a particular component might give you a jumping off point, but in reality, you're going to have to tease and experiment with some code first to know exactly what you're going to do. Hasn't anyone ever heard of "iterative development"?
No one is a soothsayer, and good coding, while it should involve adhering to standards for ~communication~ between modules, should always keep machine and human efficiency first, above theoretical correctness.
Specs are good as a starting point (as Linus said, for the "talking" phase of development). But once you start implementing your specs, you have to denormalize them in much the same way as a database cannot practically be completely domain-key normal form -- the reason is almost always performance or ease of implementation.
Or say you were working on a healthcare enterprise application, and you thought, "Gee, wouldn't it be great if we composed our model layer to reflect HL7 specifications?" But in reality, you would end up with a hugely unoptimized and impracticle system with massive numbers of object references.
And this is one reason why I somehwhat dislike purely OO languages -- sometimes, an object isn't what you need best. But OO purists, with theory in mind, will always want to make ~everything~ an object.
I think Linux's possible role in this would be a bit different. If this network paradigm talk turns out true, then the OS won't matter. In situations where "doesn't matter" and "good enough" come into the picture, Linux becomes the top consideration because of its genericness and relative ubiquitousness.
And Microsoft or Apple have no real hope of expanding into non-Western markets. I think the PC revolution outside of America and Europe will be brought on by Linux. Open source has by far the best business model in developing nations.
I still don't think most corporations would want to just "plug-in" to a huge GoogleNet for all their documents and other data. Google would have to get into product sales (like their search appliance) offering companies a local version of their GoogleNet thing. If companies could then use any OS (including cheapo Linux thin-clients) to access all their application and data services from their locally-based (or possibly rented in a data center) company-wide GoogleNet, they could save a lot of money and have much greater reliability.
It's not so much that Microsoft is losing share to OSS and Linux, but that Windows and Office aren't able to expand into the huge markets of the developing world while Linux and OSS are able to. The PC revolution outside the Western market is ~not~ going to include Microsoft or Apple, and they know this.
And what really scares Microsoft on that front I'm sure is when millions of students in Brazil, Peru, Indonesia, China, India, etc. grow up using Linux, many of them will grow up into Linux and OSS developers. That's millions of more eyeballs on open source code. That's millions of new minds with several of them sure to be harboring some groundbreaking ideas.
Have a gmail account? Try the rich text editing for composing emails. Yeah, that's just some basic features now, but what you see is the very beginnings of a Google replacement for Word.
Yeah, I'm still waiting for the Solaris killer... Sun has the internet tight in its grasp! Heck, I'm still waiting for the Xerox killer -- who can stop the might of that enterprise powerhouse? For that matter, when will the AT&T killer be here? That corporation is hugely powerful!
Yep, history has taught us that a company as strong as Microsoft is here to stay, no matter what technology or politics push forward. Why even fight them?
Thanks to some of the brilliant developers at MS, we can get some awesome stuff out of this company, like C#.
Now, too bad management will keep on trying to tie.NET down to their sinking ship, Windows.
If only the.NET framework could be freed from Windows, and given the official blessing to target all platforms, including Linux, then Microsoft could set itself up as the supreme tools vendor for the platform. It'd be a bright future for MS, and overnight.NET would probably become the de facto standard for development on Linux!
But no... the stodgy petrified boys up top will always put Windows first... to MS's undoing, no doubt.
I've always enjoyed programming, but hated math until calculus, which was actually interesting to me since it required more creative thinking. Math isn't necessarily needed to be a good programmer, and I didn't take any math in college. However, math exercises the same parts of the brain as programming, along with music and language (primarily grammar), which all share in common the composition and manipulation of mental structures and symbols.
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Vendor neutrality. Let's see Microsoft attack that one. Be kind of paradoxical, really.
I'm glad China's having good progress (in many respects). I do hope their government loosens up (maybe money'll soften them like it did ours) so they allow freedom (since it means more money) to speech and internet and whatnot. Just tell them that!
Now, I really really do hope China doesn't make giant killer robot, and I'll be fine with them for good.
So ... MS invents XMLHttpRequest ...
what's logically to follow with *any* new technology MS invents? Here's for hoping that their "magic touch" will end here.
Ever try synaptic? Autopackage? The "Install Applications" menu in Ubuntu Breezy? Geez, man ... of course RPMs are crap; that's antiquated.
Mr. Lowenstein proceeded to give quite a rallying speech:
"We are one people. With one will. One Resolve. One cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves
to death. And we will bury them with their own confusion! We shall prevail!"
About which time some mysterious running woman threw a hammer into the large projection monitor behind him.
The real vote in democracy is a stock purchase, and Google now has more votes than Microsoft. Google wants open standards, universal and free net access, and to make the operating system layer transparent. For those reasons, they have my vote. If they turn evil, then I'll "vote" for the next tech company that reflects values I agree with.
MS brought integration to the computing world, if anything. They taught the UNIX world the importance of that idea, to be able to have a (more-or-less) seamless workflow. And MS was the first wave in computer commoditization.
You can say that the main reason corporations have put some much weight behind open standards and open source is because without joining forcing, all these competing companies would eventually be assimilated by MS.
Having a huge, common enemy sure taught the IT market how to work together. Thanks, MS, for being evil.
Now, would you promptly die off?
Is this similar to Stackless Python and green threads? I spend most of my time with interpreted languages, so my C is very lacking.
Then I suppose the website should be named OpenOffice.org.org. That'd put them right up there with News.com.com for silly domain names.
It seems a lot of people here are basically thinking that by Linus dissing specs, he's dissing interfaces, protocols, and other standards.
I think he's mostly complaining about specs that try to enforce particular models on distinctive software components.
A spec for a particular component might give you a jumping off point, but in reality, you're going to have to tease and experiment with some code first to know exactly what you're going to do. Hasn't anyone ever heard of "iterative development"?
No one is a soothsayer, and good coding, while it should involve adhering to standards for ~communication~ between modules, should always keep machine and human efficiency first, above theoretical correctness.
Specs are good as a starting point (as Linus said, for the "talking" phase of development). But once you start implementing your specs, you have to denormalize them in much the same way as a database cannot practically be completely domain-key normal form -- the reason is almost always performance or ease of implementation.
Or say you were working on a healthcare enterprise application, and you thought, "Gee, wouldn't it be great if we composed our model layer to reflect HL7 specifications?" But in reality, you would end up with a hugely unoptimized and impracticle system with massive numbers of object references.
And this is one reason why I somehwhat dislike purely OO languages -- sometimes, an object isn't what you need best. But OO purists, with theory in mind, will always want to make ~everything~ an object.
I think Linux's possible role in this would be a bit different. If this network paradigm talk turns out true, then the OS won't matter. In situations where "doesn't matter" and "good enough" come into the picture, Linux becomes the top consideration because of its genericness and relative ubiquitousness.
And Microsoft or Apple have no real hope of expanding into non-Western markets. I think the PC revolution outside of America and Europe will be brought on by Linux. Open source has by far the best business model in developing nations.
I still don't think most corporations would want to just "plug-in" to a huge GoogleNet for all their documents and other data. Google would have to get into product sales (like their search appliance) offering companies a local version of their GoogleNet thing. If companies could then use any OS (including cheapo Linux thin-clients) to access all their application and data services from their locally-based (or possibly rented in a data center) company-wide GoogleNet, they could save a lot of money and have much greater reliability.
It's not so much that Microsoft is losing share to OSS and Linux, but that Windows and Office aren't able to expand into the huge markets of the developing world while Linux and OSS are able to. The PC revolution outside the Western market is ~not~ going to include Microsoft or Apple, and they know this.
And what really scares Microsoft on that front I'm sure is when millions of students in Brazil, Peru, Indonesia, China, India, etc. grow up using Linux, many of them will grow up into Linux and OSS developers. That's millions of more eyeballs on open source code. That's millions of new minds with several of them sure to be harboring some groundbreaking ideas.
Have a gmail account? Try the rich text editing for composing emails. Yeah, that's just some basic features now, but what you see is the very beginnings of a Google replacement for Word.
Won't somebody please think of the children?!
Dang, why did I just read that, "Won't somebody please link to the children?!"
Case in point. The .iq (iraq) domain STILL hasnt been handed back to the government of Iraq.
I think it's because a lot of those IQ test pop-up sites are really wanting to start using it.
Yeah, I'm still waiting for the Solaris killer ... Sun has the internet tight in its grasp! Heck, I'm still waiting for the Xerox killer -- who can stop the might of that enterprise powerhouse? For that matter, when will the AT&T killer be here? That corporation is hugely powerful!
Yep, history has taught us that a company as strong as Microsoft is here to stay, no matter what technology or politics push forward. Why even fight them?
When we can do that, we'll know this "Web 2.0" is really here finally.
Now, that's even lighter and faster than GZIP+XML!
AJAX!!1
Thanks to some of the brilliant developers at MS, we can get some awesome stuff out of this company, like C#.
.NET down to their sinking ship, Windows.
.NET framework could be freed from Windows, and given the official blessing to target all platforms, including Linux, then Microsoft could set itself up as the supreme tools vendor for the platform. It'd be a bright future for MS, and overnight .NET would probably become the de facto standard for development on Linux!
... the stodgy petrified boys up top will always put Windows first ... to MS's undoing, no doubt.
Now, too bad management will keep on trying to tie
If only the
But no
Hmm ... the syntax reminds me of CCL ....
I guess you'd have to be in healthcare IT to know what I mean, though.
The basis of math is really just a philosophy. Take infinity, for instance ... where would math be without a faith in that as an axiom?
I've always enjoyed programming, but hated math until calculus, which was actually interesting to me since it required more creative thinking. Math isn't necessarily needed to be a good programmer, and I didn't take any math in college. However, math exercises the same parts of the brain as programming, along with music and language (primarily grammar), which all share in common the composition and manipulation of mental structures and symbols.