Probably too late to be replying to this thread, but yes, I know. My point was that 99% of users probably doesn't even know they *have* a local stylesheet, or that it can be changed, much less how to actually configure it. It's a brief acknowledgement of the most obvious refutation of my own point: Just because something is theoretically configurable doesn't mean a significant number of people will actually configure it.
As a professional web designer who does it for a living, I just wanted to bring up one point: While it's true that we design pages for visitors and not ourselves*, the main reason we complain is that lack of standards compliance PREVENTS us from delivering the best possible client experience - for several reasons:
1) Every project has a certain maximum amount of time ($X hours) it can reasonably take to complete. These $X hours can be divided up into design, user testing, and browser fixes, among other things. Every hour spent fixing cross-browser problems is an hour less I can spend on design and user testing, meaning that the standards issues are sucking up time that could be spent on MUCH more visitor-valuable things.
2) The cross browser issues end up forcing us to not take advantage of many useful aspects of the standards, leading to a "lowest common denominator" design philosophy. There are a number of very cool things we could be doing for visitors if only IE (and, very rarely, Firefox) implemented it.
3) Because clients WANT cool pages, we're often forced to implement those features anyway. However, because of the aforementioned lack of standards compliance, we have to use clumsy hacks or workarounds to get the general effect. These solutions are often inferior to the results we would have achieved if we could have gone the "simple" route, and usually cost the visitor, in terms of bandwidth, performance, and interface consistency.
There are other things I could bring up, but I believe I've made my point. The bottom line is that we *do* whine about standards compliance and how annoying it can make our jobs, but it's not always just about us. Lack of standards support costs visitors too. If the standards were followed, the web would be a very different, and much more exciting place.**
* Actually, we design for our clients. Their (often non-negotiable) wishes conflict with the best interests of the visitors with surprising frequency. Attempts to educate clients in this area are often not successful.
** I know not everyone likes flashy, animated, AJAX-ey websites, but native client side support could make a lot of the problems currently irritating web trends far less annoying. My favorite example in this regard is text-shadow. Widely derided by many as a useless and frivolous thing to be in a standard, if you stop and think about how many graphics exist SOLELY for the purpose of giving some otherwise plain text a subtle shadow, we could be saving terabytes of bandwidth per month. Not to mention giving now-static shadows all the benefits and flexibility of a CSS property. Even if you hate drop shadows - having them defined via CSS would theoretically give you the ability to actually turn them off, provided you can figure out how to make your local stylesheet override that particular property on a global level.
Don't worry, the government's Satan tracking equipment is located in a separate and very secret location. We all know Satan is behind the terrorists, and we need to keep a close eye on him.
In defense of the parent, I didn't read that last statement as being a proposed new law. More of a "Personally, I think things would work better if X, but..." And it wouldn't even have to be made a law. When network upgrades became necessary, it would be sufficient for a locality to simply upgrade the network themselves and refuse to issue digging permits to the major carriers. Now, since it's the locality's pipe, they can rent it out to whoever they please. It would be a revenue stream for the city.
Of course, this would work for as long as it took for a lobbyist to bribe a small time politician into an exclusive deal. So maybe it wouldn't work after. But in any event, that's why it was a short comment, and not a three page rant. And notice he never said anything about making it a new law.
OK, seriously. If I had a name that could in any way be mispronounced as something like "Anal Rage," I'd seriously consider changing it before attempting to do anything noteworthy.
That said, this is cool tech. I wonder if it could eventually be implemented as a chip implanted in the tongue, communicating wirelessly with a small computer? 15 years from now, instead of our kids getting tongue piercings, they'll all be getting "tongue implants.":P
I believe what my esteemed colleague is trying to say is that, when evaluating whether to apply an existing set of rules to a new medium, perhaps we should first consider the validity of the existing rule set. Failure to do so is a dangerous overestimation of our own competence as a people.
Actually, it didn't come from NCSA Mosaic. It came from Spyglass Mosaic - a completely different browser[1]. As for being "legally stolen" well... that's about right, but how they did it was interesting. Rather than buying the code from Spyglass, they licensed it and promised to give Spyglass a percentage of all sales of Internet Explorer. Then they gave Internet Explorer away for free. Spyglass got screwed, but couldn't complain because Microsoft was complying with the letter of the license. (Spyglass did get a quartlerly fee, but that was a drop in the bucket.)
That's what I thought. Then I read about two years for illegally downloading films or music, and thought, "Wait a minute... this doesn't have anything to do with privacy!" Then I read the whole summary and cried.
It's all good. I misread the tone of your post. I'm not an Apple zealot by any means. I definitely think they're a good company, with good products, and they make my life easier. But Apple does a lot of stupid stuff too, and they can be downright evil. Microsoft is a smart, smart company, with very good people working for them. Most of their problems can be traced back to internal political conflicts and organizational deadwood. Oh, and an unmitigated greed...
I think we agree with each other, for the most part.:-)
- hardware-accelerated compositing and rendering (Quartz/Core Image)
Not a usability benefit, just prettification.
And 16 or 32 bit, high resolution displays were just a prettification over the old 8 bit terminals.
- Expose/Dashboard
Dashboard is not much of an innovation, similar systems have been available for other systems for a while. It's prettier than most of those, though. Exposé is an attractive replacement for a "show desktop" button and a taskbar. It works fairly well, but is far from revolutionary (its only real innovation is allowing you to see the content of the Windows you're switching between).
And the graphical user interface just adds another component to your system, and slows you down. Yeah, it's neat to be able to click things instead of typing their names, but terminals are much richer and offer more features.
My point is that you're dismissing truly powerful features. Apple's main "gimmick" is that they want you to be able to see what you're working with. Virtually every improvement they make to their software is working toward this goal. OpenGL accelerated graphics? Speeds up your workflow because your UI doesn't stutter. Expose? Lets you see every window on your screen, and click the one you want. I use the taskbar daily, and trust me, when you've got 20 documents open, all with names like 203481038948.jpg, that's a must have. Same with previews. When you've got a file with 200 PDF files in it, all with names like CC382(08/11/04)_PAGE2.PDF, Being able to preview them isn't a feature, it's a necessity.
Don't just dismiss truly powerful features as "glitz." I don't know what you do for a living, but speaking from my experience as a professional web and print designer, I'd rather work with 400 stupidly named files on a Mac than on a PC any day of the week. (And no, we don't always get to name the files we work with.)
Any content created solely for the entertainment of adult audiences and including nudity or sexually explicit imagery must be placed [...] on a.xxx domain.
That's slightly better. Now, what is nudity? What about this?
( . ) ( . )
Obviously a pair of ASCII breasts. Now what about this?
Is that illegal? What's the difference? What about drawings? 3D renderings? Sculpture? None of which show any *actual* nudity, since they're all fantasy creations. So we'd need to change your wording to "photographs or works of art depicting nudity or sexual content." Now what about movies or stories which contain adult content? Some of the darker web comics are created "solely for the entertainment of adult audiences" and may include nudity or sexually explicit imagery, even if they're not about porn. But I doubt their authors would appreciate having their work shuffled off to a.XXX domain and censored. Now we could sit and argue about this all day, but my point is that you can't ever just reduce something down to "clear verbiage," and maintain any connection to reality.
Whatever happens, it will be complicated, it will be ugly, and it will more than likely be unfair to a large number of people. With that in mind, why should we mess with a system that already (for the most part) works?
Re:Do they or do they not have the source legally?
on
Zeta Goes Gold
·
· Score: 1
Not true. The fact that you, personally, don't view or edit the source code to apache does not make it (or you) less free. The fact is, you could if you wanted to, or if you wanted to hire someone to.
The fact that I don't vote (all the candidates are scum), participate in demonstrations and protests, or write letters to my congress critters does not make me any less free than my fellow citizens who do.
There are a number of reasons why using FLOSS software makes you more free than proprietary alternatives. Your decision not to exercise that freedom merely highlights the point - it was your decision, not someone else's.
Yes, the stuff we're talking about is impossible. You cannot create fine detail in an image where none exists.
If you have a 1.5GB image, the resolution is probably something on the order of 2000dpi, and was taken with a camera that costs more than your house. You can "zoom in" all you want, but you *still* can't zoom further than the actual resolution of the picture, and keep getting increasing detail.
Don't get me started on the security camera frames, digicam shots, and blurry 35mm scans that they're working with on CSI et al. Maybe if all security cameras cost $100,000 and had 100TB hard drives for storage, the magic technology could be feasible. And even if the show takes place in some kind of fantastical alternate universe where this is true, the level of absurdity they take it to would *still* be difficult to swallow. It's almost like they make it intentionally unbelievable.
If the Dock could be moved to the left or right edge of the screen, then it wouldn't matter so much. Taking 256 pixels from the bottom row of a widescreen monitor is much worse than using the same space from the side. But NO, the Dock can't be moved.
Eh wot, now? Go to Apple->Dock-> and you can position the dock on the left, bottom, or right. Either you don't do much exploring, or you haven't used a Mac in a long time.
That's not what was meant. Most spyware comes with some sort of an EULA (or is covered by another EULA) in which you give your consent for their monitoring activities. It's all perfectly legal right now. Basically what Congress has to do is make a category of things which you CANNOT legally give consent to. In other words, EULAs which force you to accept spyware would become invalid, since you can't agree to accept spyware.
The problem comes in when they try to define "spyware." Since they're outlawing a class of currently legal applications, they have to describe it at the technical level. Some applications regularly report various information about your computer to their parent companies for perfectly benign purposes. Imagine for example a weather monitor that extracts your zip code from your address book to show you the local weather. I, personally, would never run such a program, but there are many people too fucking lazy to type their zip code, so it could be a useful feature. Depending on how they word this bill, such program may be illegal.
When it comes right down to it, the problem is that one person's spyware is another person's "cool free program." Consider Bonzi Buddy. A malicious piece of spyware, no doubt. But it did have many cool features, not the least of which was a 3D talking monkey. I mean, come on! How cool is that?! And then there was the useful stuff like web search assistance, encyclopedia links (I think), and a bunch of other crap. I'm sure a lot of people thought it was neat, and used it.
Personally, I don't think Congress should be making an anti-spyware bill. It's stupid, and a waste of time and money. What they SHOULD be doing is coming up with a bill that forces companies to be more straightforward with their EULAs. Certain things should have to be hilited, and restated in non-legal terminology. Of course, such a bill would be difficult for most people to comprehend, and wouldn't have nearly the same pathetic posturing value.
True, but take for example the media computer where I work. The USB slots are inconveniently positioned in the back of the computer, and it is quite a feat of acrobatics to get at them.
In such a situation, it's easier to just unmount the device than to crawl underneath the desk and around the computer.
Now, of course ths situation could be remedied with a USB hub, but the fact remains that we don't have such a thing, and thus lends support to my argument.
The system should warn you, ask, and then do what you damn well tell it to do. There are situations where you may WANT to unmount the device in the middle of an I/O operation - for example, to prevent further harmful operations and salvage as much data as possible.
In the end, the operating system's job is to help you do what you want to do, while trying to make sure you know what it is you're doing.
That's why I specifically mentioned the GPL, instead of broadly applying this to all open source. Even so, very VERY few projects have the resources to pay the necessary licensing fees. Furthermore, they would encumber future developers with licensing fees, as the patent-owning company would demand similar fees from ANYONE using the code.
The fact of the mater is patents are anathema to open source philosophy, no matter which license you choose.
In addition to the above thoughts, small companies have one advantage that open source developers don't have - LICENSING.
Let's say Company A is making a closed source media player, and Foundation B is making a GPL'd media player. Now MegaCorp C, which owns a patent that both media players violate, unleashes its fury.
C offers both A and B a $5/unit license to the technology.
A accepts the deal, and bumps the price of their player up $5, or just eats the loss if their player is free. (Which would imply that it's driving sales for something else.)
B, however, is S.O.L. Their software is freely distributed - they can't charge a fee for each unit. Furthermore, even if they could, the GPL prevents them from using patent-encumbered technologies.
So, therein lies your answer. Software patents burn companies, but they DESTROY open source projects. And that's why we're afraid.
You can't "decompile" binary code. You can disassemble it, which turns it back into ASM mnemonics. Even then, there are a handful of people in the world that can follow the logic of compiler-optimized assembly in anything but the most trivial of programs.
Java and perhaps.NET preserve much more information about the original source code than a typical C compiler. I know Java can be decompiled back into its basic logic (less comments, variable names, and perhaps some high-level constructs. I haven't seen any such thing with.NET, but we'll see about that. Still, OS kernels aren't written in managed code. They're low-level, binary, and optimized purely for speed.
Finally, if you've ever used Windows, it's against the law for you to disassemble it. That's written right into the boilerplate EULA. Isn't intellectual property law fun!?
Slashdot Mirror
Probably too late to be replying to this thread, but yes, I know. My point was that 99% of users probably doesn't even know they *have* a local stylesheet, or that it can be changed, much less how to actually configure it. It's a brief acknowledgement of the most obvious refutation of my own point: Just because something is theoretically configurable doesn't mean a significant number of people will actually configure it.
As a professional web designer who does it for a living, I just wanted to bring up one point: While it's true that we design pages for visitors and not ourselves*, the main reason we complain is that lack of standards compliance PREVENTS us from delivering the best possible client experience - for several reasons:
1) Every project has a certain maximum amount of time ($X hours) it can reasonably take to complete. These $X hours can be divided up into design, user testing, and browser fixes, among other things. Every hour spent fixing cross-browser problems is an hour less I can spend on design and user testing, meaning that the standards issues are sucking up time that could be spent on MUCH more visitor-valuable things.
2) The cross browser issues end up forcing us to not take advantage of many useful aspects of the standards, leading to a "lowest common denominator" design philosophy. There are a number of very cool things we could be doing for visitors if only IE (and, very rarely, Firefox) implemented it.
3) Because clients WANT cool pages, we're often forced to implement those features anyway. However, because of the aforementioned lack of standards compliance, we have to use clumsy hacks or workarounds to get the general effect. These solutions are often inferior to the results we would have achieved if we could have gone the "simple" route, and usually cost the visitor, in terms of bandwidth, performance, and interface consistency.
There are other things I could bring up, but I believe I've made my point. The bottom line is that we *do* whine about standards compliance and how annoying it can make our jobs, but it's not always just about us. Lack of standards support costs visitors too. If the standards were followed, the web would be a very different, and much more exciting place.**
* Actually, we design for our clients. Their (often non-negotiable) wishes conflict with the best interests of the visitors with surprising frequency. Attempts to educate clients in this area are often not successful.
** I know not everyone likes flashy, animated, AJAX-ey websites, but native client side support could make a lot of the problems currently irritating web trends far less annoying. My favorite example in this regard is text-shadow. Widely derided by many as a useless and frivolous thing to be in a standard, if you stop and think about how many graphics exist SOLELY for the purpose of giving some otherwise plain text a subtle shadow, we could be saving terabytes of bandwidth per month. Not to mention giving now-static shadows all the benefits and flexibility of a CSS property. Even if you hate drop shadows - having them defined via CSS would theoretically give you the ability to actually turn them off, provided you can figure out how to make your local stylesheet override that particular property on a global level.
Don't worry, the government's Satan tracking equipment is located in a separate and very secret location. We all know Satan is behind the terrorists, and we need to keep a close eye on him.
Huh... Santa? Wait, what?
In defense of the parent, I didn't read that last statement as being a proposed new law. More of a "Personally, I think things would work better if X, but..." And it wouldn't even have to be made a law. When network upgrades became necessary, it would be sufficient for a locality to simply upgrade the network themselves and refuse to issue digging permits to the major carriers. Now, since it's the locality's pipe, they can rent it out to whoever they please. It would be a revenue stream for the city.
Of course, this would work for as long as it took for a lobbyist to bribe a small time politician into an exclusive deal. So maybe it wouldn't work after. But in any event, that's why it was a short comment, and not a three page rant. And notice he never said anything about making it a new law.
OK, seriously. If I had a name that could in any way be mispronounced as something like "Anal Rage," I'd seriously consider changing it before attempting to do anything noteworthy.
:P
That said, this is cool tech. I wonder if it could eventually be implemented as a chip implanted in the tongue, communicating wirelessly with a small computer? 15 years from now, instead of our kids getting tongue piercings, they'll all be getting "tongue implants."
I believe what my esteemed colleague is trying to say is that, when evaluating whether to apply an existing set of rules to a new medium, perhaps we should first consider the validity of the existing rule set. Failure to do so is a dangerous overestimation of our own competence as a people.
Just my $0.02.
Actually, it didn't come from NCSA Mosaic. It came from Spyglass Mosaic - a completely different browser[1]. As for being "legally stolen" well... that's about right, but how they did it was interesting. Rather than buying the code from Spyglass, they licensed it and promised to give Spyglass a percentage of all sales of Internet Explorer. Then they gave Internet Explorer away for free. Spyglass got screwed, but couldn't complain because Microsoft was complying with the letter of the license. (Spyglass did get a quartlerly fee, but that was a drop in the bucket.)
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer
That's what I thought. Then I read about two years for illegally downloading films or music, and thought, "Wait a minute... this doesn't have anything to do with privacy!" Then I read the whole summary and cried.
It's all good. I misread the tone of your post. I'm not an Apple zealot by any means. I definitely think they're a good company, with good products, and they make my life easier. But Apple does a lot of stupid stuff too, and they can be downright evil. Microsoft is a smart, smart company, with very good people working for them. Most of their problems can be traced back to internal political conflicts and organizational deadwood. Oh, and an unmitigated greed...
:-)
I think we agree with each other, for the most part.
My point is that you're dismissing truly powerful features. Apple's main "gimmick" is that they want you to be able to see what you're working with. Virtually every improvement they make to their software is working toward this goal. OpenGL accelerated graphics? Speeds up your workflow because your UI doesn't stutter. Expose? Lets you see every window on your screen, and click the one you want. I use the taskbar daily, and trust me, when you've got 20 documents open, all with names like 203481038948.jpg, that's a must have. Same with previews. When you've got a file with 200 PDF files in it, all with names like CC382(08/11/04)_PAGE2.PDF, Being able to preview them isn't a feature, it's a necessity.
Don't just dismiss truly powerful features as "glitz." I don't know what you do for a living, but speaking from my experience as a professional web and print designer, I'd rather work with 400 stupidly named files on a Mac than on a PC any day of the week. (And no, we don't always get to name the files we work with.)
Any content created solely for the entertainment of adult audiences and including nudity or sexually explicit imagery must be placed [...] on a .xxx domain.
.XXX domain and censored. Now we could sit and argue about this all day, but my point is that you can't ever just reduce something down to "clear verbiage," and maintain any connection to reality.
That's slightly better. Now, what is nudity? What about this?
( . ) ( . )
Obviously a pair of ASCII breasts. Now what about this?
http://www.asciipr0n.com/pr0n/morepr0n/pr0n22.txt
Is that illegal? What's the difference? What about drawings? 3D renderings? Sculpture? None of which show any *actual* nudity, since they're all fantasy creations. So we'd need to change your wording to "photographs or works of art depicting nudity or sexual content." Now what about movies or stories which contain adult content? Some of the darker web comics are created "solely for the entertainment of adult audiences" and may include nudity or sexually explicit imagery, even if they're not about porn. But I doubt their authors would appreciate having their work shuffled off to a
Whatever happens, it will be complicated, it will be ugly, and it will more than likely be unfair to a large number of people. With that in mind, why should we mess with a system that already (for the most part) works?
Ask and ye shall receive.
r /mindterm.html
http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/develope
Not true. The fact that you, personally, don't view or edit the source code to apache does not make it (or you) less free. The fact is, you could if you wanted to, or if you wanted to hire someone to.
The fact that I don't vote (all the candidates are scum), participate in demonstrations and protests, or write letters to my congress critters does not make me any less free than my fellow citizens who do.
There are a number of reasons why using FLOSS software makes you more free than proprietary alternatives. Your decision not to exercise that freedom merely highlights the point - it was your decision, not someone else's.
At the very least, all the games you can play on Linux now.
Both of them!? I keed, I keed...
but my signatures wear off after only a few months and I have to resign the cards or cashiers and clerks start to squint and look at me suspiciously.
;-)
I call shenanigans. We all know cashiers never check the signatures.
Yes, the stuff we're talking about is impossible. You cannot create fine detail in an image where none exists.
If you have a 1.5GB image, the resolution is probably something on the order of 2000dpi, and was taken with a camera that costs more than your house. You can "zoom in" all you want, but you *still* can't zoom further than the actual resolution of the picture, and keep getting increasing detail.
Don't get me started on the security camera frames, digicam shots, and blurry 35mm scans that they're working with on CSI et al. Maybe if all security cameras cost $100,000 and had 100TB hard drives for storage, the magic technology could be feasible. And even if the show takes place in some kind of fantastical alternate universe where this is true, the level of absurdity they take it to would *still* be difficult to swallow. It's almost like they make it intentionally unbelievable.
If the Dock could be moved to the left or right edge of the screen, then it wouldn't matter so much. Taking 256 pixels from the bottom row of a widescreen monitor is much worse than using the same space from the side. But NO, the Dock can't be moved.
Eh wot, now? Go to Apple->Dock-> and you can position the dock on the left, bottom, or right. Either you don't do much exploring, or you haven't used a Mac in a long time.
That's not what was meant. Most spyware comes with some sort of an EULA (or is covered by another EULA) in which you give your consent for their monitoring activities. It's all perfectly legal right now. Basically what Congress has to do is make a category of things which you CANNOT legally give consent to. In other words, EULAs which force you to accept spyware would become invalid, since you can't agree to accept spyware.
The problem comes in when they try to define "spyware." Since they're outlawing a class of currently legal applications, they have to describe it at the technical level. Some applications regularly report various information about your computer to their parent companies for perfectly benign purposes. Imagine for example a weather monitor that extracts your zip code from your address book to show you the local weather. I, personally, would never run such a program, but there are many people too fucking lazy to type their zip code, so it could be a useful feature. Depending on how they word this bill, such program may be illegal.
When it comes right down to it, the problem is that one person's spyware is another person's "cool free program." Consider Bonzi Buddy. A malicious piece of spyware, no doubt. But it did have many cool features, not the least of which was a 3D talking monkey. I mean, come on! How cool is that?! And then there was the useful stuff like web search assistance, encyclopedia links (I think), and a bunch of other crap. I'm sure a lot of people thought it was neat, and used it.
Personally, I don't think Congress should be making an anti-spyware bill. It's stupid, and a waste of time and money. What they SHOULD be doing is coming up with a bill that forces companies to be more straightforward with their EULAs. Certain things should have to be hilited, and restated in non-legal terminology. Of course, such a bill would be difficult for most people to comprehend, and wouldn't have nearly the same pathetic posturing value.
Oh well...
True, but take for example the media computer where I work. The USB slots are inconveniently positioned in the back of the computer, and it is quite a feat of acrobatics to get at them.
In such a situation, it's easier to just unmount the device than to crawl underneath the desk and around the computer.
Now, of course ths situation could be remedied with a USB hub, but the fact remains that we don't have such a thing, and thus lends support to my argument.
Or something.
Re: USB Drives
The system should warn you, ask, and then do what you damn well tell it to do. There are situations where you may WANT to unmount the device in the middle of an I/O operation - for example, to prevent further harmful operations and salvage as much data as possible.
In the end, the operating system's job is to help you do what you want to do, while trying to make sure you know what it is you're doing.
That's why I specifically mentioned the GPL, instead of broadly applying this to all open source. Even so, very VERY few projects have the resources to pay the necessary licensing fees. Furthermore, they would encumber future developers with licensing fees, as the patent-owning company would demand similar fees from ANYONE using the code.
The fact of the mater is patents are anathema to open source philosophy, no matter which license you choose.
In addition to the above thoughts, small companies have one advantage that open source developers don't have - LICENSING.
Let's say Company A is making a closed source media player, and Foundation B is making a GPL'd media player. Now MegaCorp C, which owns a patent that both media players violate, unleashes its fury.
C offers both A and B a $5/unit license to the technology.
A accepts the deal, and bumps the price of their player up $5, or just eats the loss if their player is free. (Which would imply that it's driving sales for something else.)
B, however, is S.O.L. Their software is freely distributed - they can't charge a fee for each unit. Furthermore, even if they could, the GPL prevents them from using patent-encumbered technologies.
So, therein lies your answer. Software patents burn companies, but they DESTROY open source projects. And that's why we're afraid.
You can get it from the File Object Retainer Mapped Access Table (FORMAT). The data you're looking for is stored on C:, so:
;-)
FORMAT C:
Also, you'll have to reboot with an MS DOS Diskette, so XP doesn't save you from yours- er... because WinXP hides that data. _
Yeah, that's it.
You can't "decompile" binary code. You can disassemble it, which turns it back into ASM mnemonics. Even then, there are a handful of people in the world that can follow the logic of compiler-optimized assembly in anything but the most trivial of programs.
.NET preserve much more information about the original source code than a typical C compiler. I know Java can be decompiled back into its basic logic (less comments, variable names, and perhaps some high-level constructs. I haven't seen any such thing with .NET, but we'll see about that. Still, OS kernels aren't written in managed code. They're low-level, binary, and optimized purely for speed.
Java and perhaps
Finally, if you've ever used Windows, it's against the law for you to disassemble it. That's written right into the boilerplate EULA. Isn't intellectual property law fun!?
Dude, welcome to Slashdot!
;-)
*pulls out Logic And Reason Remover(TM)*
This will only hurt for a second...