Looking at the comparison lists, D looks pretty nice. It has a lot of features that I'd consider switching languages for (from C++), but any such language would have to have a few particular properties (due to the kinds of things I program): 1. Must be able to disable garbage collection and manage allocation explicitly 2. Must be able to allocate classes on the stack 3. Must minimize use of exceptions in the standard library (in other words, exceptions must only be used for exceptional cases)
Java fails all of them, if I recall correctly (I don't know that much about Java, actually). C# fails 2 and 3. It looks like you can disable garbage collection in D, but in the comparison list I didn't see mention of 2 or 3. Does anybody know, off the top of their head?
Obviously the probability that you can make upgrades to core pieces of an OS and not break SOMETHING approaches 0 as the number of things that are possible to break increases. But MS has actually done an exceptional job of keeping the percentage of old things that work on new OS high (feel free to try to prove me wrong with your own calculations with regard to the percent compatibility of other major OS). MS also produces some of the most correct (in terms of complying with things like limited user restrictions, etc.) programs I've ever seen (now if they could only get a handle on those security problems...).
Thus it's alarming that so many major programs are failing on Vista. With as much effort as they put into maintaining backward compatibility with the most obscure programs, it's rather pathetic that they didn't notice compatibility problems in one of their own flagship products. Maybe MS is changing, after all (who was it that wanted that, again?):P
Indeed. My sister-in-law just bought a Dell, and I spent *hours* installing patches (about 50 for a fresh SP2 install), removing all of the "free trials" and "buy me" nags, installing windows versions of open source stuff (Postgres, Open Office, Firefox, Thunderbird), and setting her up to run as a limited user instead of administrator.
While you may have a point, your example blows monkey balls. A Dell should have come with MS Office and at least some of the patches installed (and the patches are almost entirely automated). As she doesn't sound like a developer, I can't imagine why you felt it was necessary to install Postgres. The only things that would have taken any effort at all (and were worth doing) were installing Firefox, setting her up as a limited user, and removing trialware and nagware. Almost everything you listed was either your own fault (e.g. Postgres), Dell's fault (nagware and trialware), or massively blown out of proportion (difficulty/time of installing Firefox).
if your really good you get a hold of their code fix it and give it back to him in the interview
That actually works; I've done it before. Well, to be precise, it was the various bugs I told them about from looking at their disassembly that got me the job offer (it wasn't an interview, and I was never actually trying to get hired). But try that with Microsoft or Sony at your own risk (though I doubt most people here would even consider working for one of them an option):P
Novell did what was in its business interest (and that of its customers, as Novell is a business in a competitive market) to do. The people who are up in arms over this deal are the ones that may be hurt by it - that is, non-Novell customers.
I had this problem with the company laptop I used over the summer, running XP. As our product includes a driver component, the computer was prepared for it, generating BSOD crash dumps which I then sent to our driver guys (as I first suspected it was a bug in our product). They ultimately found that it was due to a bug in the NIC driver (RTL was the manufacturer, I think), and told me that they've seen this before in other computers using NICs by the same manufacturer.
I think you're overreacting. While they may be exaggerating a bit, the Cell is a pretty insane piece of hardware. I'm a professional programmer (though not on the Cell), and I've been reading various architecture specs for the Cell. Its peculiar architecture means that it's difficult to make use of its full power for many types of tasks (don't ask me why they're selling Cell-based blade servers; it doesn't make much sense to me); but if you have an application that fits with what the Cell is optimized for, that thing is ungodly fast. Expect to see it become popular in rendering and scientific clusters. Whether it's a good fit for a game console requires more industry-specific knowledge than I have.
"You won't find a news outlet completely free of bias; that just isn't going to happen. The idea of a bias-free blog (and groklaw -first and foremost- is a blog) is absurd on its' face."
Yes and no. Everyone is biased in some way, but I think some people can manage to be unbiased in some particular domains (particularly in subjects that they do not hold any emotional or moral attachment to).
"As to your second claim; that it's not a reliable source of information; I would like to know why specifically you assert that their information is unreliable and what specifically they get wrong.
Or is it (as I suspect) that you simply disagree with their bias, and have a hard time seperating their bias from the accuracy of their reporting."
Bias and accuracy are connected to the extent that the bias influences the conclusion drawn from a given set of data. It's possible for a biased person to present facts accurately, even when those facts are in domains in which that person is biased. But if there is a significant bias that is relevant to the reasoning process, the conclusion may be incorrect.
That said, I used ambiguous wording to indicate the fact that bias does not always lead to inaccurate conclusions. Just take conclusions from such a person with a grain of salt.
"Why did MS change the format of their documents in the next version of Office anyway? It seems like the current version was getting to be pretty well supported across the board... what do they possibly gain by breaking compatibility with third party office suites? People that could afford Office will still buy and use office, but everyone else gets screwed. If you're going to switch to a completely new format that even breaks Office 2003, why not adopt the OpenDocument format that's a standard instead of inventing your own new kludgey format?
I know, because they're greedy sons of bitches and they need to make a profit for their shareholders by selling new versions of Office. I know that's the real reason, but it just doesn't seem logical from a computing standpoint."
1. The old Office file formats were more or less memory dumps of the internal structures used by Office. At the time the formats were designed, they made it easy for MS, because they required minimal effort to save. But as version after version of Office came out, the internal structures changed, and this shortcut was no longer a shortcut. So MS decided to do a major redesign to provide a less messy format that would work better with updates to the engines and the format. 2. Trying to keep control of the format and trying to prevent people from switching to ODF probably was also a factor, yes. 3. I believe there either is now or will be (and is already announced) an addon pack for Office pre-2007 to support the new format.
I've been a fence-sitter for a while, with respect to the accuracy of Groklaw, due mostly to the fact that I'm too lazy to research and confirm the accuracy of PJ's interpretations of the SCO/Linux legalese (which is almost everything I've ever read on Groklaw). This article, as well as many of the comments PJ made under the article, have lead me to the conclusion that Groklaw is not an objective and/or reliable source of information, and would be better regarded as a political activist site.
What, you thought a company having some products based on FOSS would make them automatically immune to Common Business Sense (doing what most benefits their company, even if it harms others)? FOSS isn't magic, you know.
Novell is paying for their customers' peace of mind. Regardless of what Novell says (or what may be true), MS says that Linux violates MS' IP, implying that MS might sue Linux coders and/or users. That makes Novell's users nervous. They want guarantees that either MS' claims are false, or MS will not sue them, even if they are true. This contract provides that guarantee.
While that does vaguely resemble mafia "protection" payments (though not as closely as many Slashdotters seem to believe), I really don't see why people are having such a hard time wrapping their heads around the reason for this deal.
This is also reminiscent of what was going on in the US during the cold war - everyone building bomb shelters, stockpiling food, etc. The reality was that none of this would have been able to keep anybody alive, had nuclear war broken out. But the fact that people thought it would put their minds at ease, and that made all the difference in the cold war.
Yeah. I'm also a biologist fresh out of college (though I don't specialize in cancer), and I only heard about this in one group presentation one group did in medical genetics class. It definitely would make sense for most cancers to arise from stem cells (although the fringe hypothesis that most cancers are caused by major physical damage to the chromosomes - e.g. breakage and mis-reassembly - is also appealing).
Actually, I have been hearing about the supposed connection between cancer and stem cells for longer than that, but that was from anti-ESC research people:P
What's interesting is that in the leaked WoW alpha was something that looked like it might have been a Linux build of WoW. I haven't heard of anybody managing to get it running, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Looking at the comparison lists, D looks pretty nice. It has a lot of features that I'd consider switching languages for (from C++), but any such language would have to have a few particular properties (due to the kinds of things I program):
1. Must be able to disable garbage collection and manage allocation explicitly
2. Must be able to allocate classes on the stack
3. Must minimize use of exceptions in the standard library (in other words, exceptions must only be used for exceptional cases)
Java fails all of them, if I recall correctly (I don't know that much about Java, actually). C# fails 2 and 3. It looks like you can disable garbage collection in D, but in the comparison list I didn't see mention of 2 or 3. Does anybody know, off the top of their head?
Obviously the probability that you can make upgrades to core pieces of an OS and not break SOMETHING approaches 0 as the number of things that are possible to break increases. But MS has actually done an exceptional job of keeping the percentage of old things that work on new OS high (feel free to try to prove me wrong with your own calculations with regard to the percent compatibility of other major OS). MS also produces some of the most correct (in terms of complying with things like limited user restrictions, etc.) programs I've ever seen (now if they could only get a handle on those security problems...).
:P
Thus it's alarming that so many major programs are failing on Vista. With as much effort as they put into maintaining backward compatibility with the most obscure programs, it's rather pathetic that they didn't notice compatibility problems in one of their own flagship products. Maybe MS is changing, after all (who was it that wanted that, again?)
There goes my reason to feel superior to Sweden.
Seems to me that it would make rare, intermittent bugs almost always occur. That's a very good thing for bug-hunting.
I think he was saying that OS X and Linux are also crap, and they just don't smell as bad as Windows.
Indeed. My sister-in-law just bought a Dell, and I spent *hours* installing patches (about 50 for a fresh SP2 install), removing all of the "free trials" and "buy me" nags, installing windows versions of open source stuff (Postgres, Open Office, Firefox, Thunderbird), and setting her up to run as a limited user instead of administrator.
While you may have a point, your example blows monkey balls. A Dell should have come with MS Office and at least some of the patches installed (and the patches are almost entirely automated). As she doesn't sound like a developer, I can't imagine why you felt it was necessary to install Postgres. The only things that would have taken any effort at all (and were worth doing) were installing Firefox, setting her up as a limited user, and removing trialware and nagware. Almost everything you listed was either your own fault (e.g. Postgres), Dell's fault (nagware and trialware), or massively blown out of proportion (difficulty/time of installing Firefox).
"Do you know any other logical fallacies? You must lead a horrible life to have such an opinion."
Was that a joke, as it's obviously a logical fallacy? I can't really tell.
if your really good you get a hold of their code fix it and give it back to him in the interview
:P
That actually works; I've done it before. Well, to be precise, it was the various bugs I told them about from looking at their disassembly that got me the job offer (it wasn't an interview, and I was never actually trying to get hired). But try that with Microsoft or Sony at your own risk (though I doubt most people here would even consider working for one of them an option)
Novell did what was in its business interest (and that of its customers, as Novell is a business in a competitive market) to do. The people who are up in arms over this deal are the ones that may be hurt by it - that is, non-Novell customers.
I had this problem with the company laptop I used over the summer, running XP. As our product includes a driver component, the computer was prepared for it, generating BSOD crash dumps which I then sent to our driver guys (as I first suspected it was a bug in our product). They ultimately found that it was due to a bug in the NIC driver (RTL was the manufacturer, I think), and told me that they've seen this before in other computers using NICs by the same manufacturer.
I think you're overreacting. While they may be exaggerating a bit, the Cell is a pretty insane piece of hardware. I'm a professional programmer (though not on the Cell), and I've been reading various architecture specs for the Cell. Its peculiar architecture means that it's difficult to make use of its full power for many types of tasks (don't ask me why they're selling Cell-based blade servers; it doesn't make much sense to me); but if you have an application that fits with what the Cell is optimized for, that thing is ungodly fast. Expect to see it become popular in rendering and scientific clusters. Whether it's a good fit for a game console requires more industry-specific knowledge than I have.
I don't suppose this could be used to set a precedent to be used by the defense in media company law suits in the future? Any lawyers here?
"You won't find a news outlet completely free of bias; that just isn't going to happen. The idea of a bias-free blog (and groklaw -first and foremost- is a blog) is absurd on its' face."
Yes and no. Everyone is biased in some way, but I think some people can manage to be unbiased in some particular domains (particularly in subjects that they do not hold any emotional or moral attachment to).
"As to your second claim; that it's not a reliable source of information; I would like to know why specifically you assert that their information is unreliable and what specifically they get wrong.
Or is it (as I suspect) that you simply disagree with their bias, and have a hard time seperating their bias from the accuracy of their reporting."
Bias and accuracy are connected to the extent that the bias influences the conclusion drawn from a given set of data. It's possible for a biased person to present facts accurately, even when those facts are in domains in which that person is biased. But if there is a significant bias that is relevant to the reasoning process, the conclusion may be incorrect.
That said, I used ambiguous wording to indicate the fact that bias does not always lead to inaccurate conclusions. Just take conclusions from such a person with a grain of salt.
"Why did MS change the format of their documents in the next version of Office anyway? It seems like the current version was getting to be pretty well supported across the board... what do they possibly gain by breaking compatibility with third party office suites? People that could afford Office will still buy and use office, but everyone else gets screwed. If you're going to switch to a completely new format that even breaks Office 2003, why not adopt the OpenDocument format that's a standard instead of inventing your own new kludgey format?
I know, because they're greedy sons of bitches and they need to make a profit for their shareholders by selling new versions of Office. I know that's the real reason, but it just doesn't seem logical from a computing standpoint."
1. The old Office file formats were more or less memory dumps of the internal structures used by Office. At the time the formats were designed, they made it easy for MS, because they required minimal effort to save. But as version after version of Office came out, the internal structures changed, and this shortcut was no longer a shortcut. So MS decided to do a major redesign to provide a less messy format that would work better with updates to the engines and the format.
2. Trying to keep control of the format and trying to prevent people from switching to ODF probably was also a factor, yes.
3. I believe there either is now or will be (and is already announced) an addon pack for Office pre-2007 to support the new format.
I've been a fence-sitter for a while, with respect to the accuracy of Groklaw, due mostly to the fact that I'm too lazy to research and confirm the accuracy of PJ's interpretations of the SCO/Linux legalese (which is almost everything I've ever read on Groklaw). This article, as well as many of the comments PJ made under the article, have lead me to the conclusion that Groklaw is not an objective and/or reliable source of information, and would be better regarded as a political activist site.
NIST echoes what critics have been saying all along, that due to the lack of verifiability, 'a single programmer could rig a major election.'
I knew there had to be a reason the Democrats won congress! Hopefully they'll have this fixed by 2008!
What, you thought a company having some products based on FOSS would make them automatically immune to Common Business Sense (doing what most benefits their company, even if it harms others)? FOSS isn't magic, you know.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc.
Quod erat demonstrandum.
Novell is paying for their customers' peace of mind. Regardless of what Novell says (or what may be true), MS says that Linux violates MS' IP, implying that MS might sue Linux coders and/or users. That makes Novell's users nervous. They want guarantees that either MS' claims are false, or MS will not sue them, even if they are true. This contract provides that guarantee.
While that does vaguely resemble mafia "protection" payments (though not as closely as many Slashdotters seem to believe), I really don't see why people are having such a hard time wrapping their heads around the reason for this deal.
This is also reminiscent of what was going on in the US during the cold war - everyone building bomb shelters, stockpiling food, etc. The reality was that none of this would have been able to keep anybody alive, had nuclear war broken out. But the fact that people thought it would put their minds at ease, and that made all the difference in the cold war.
This is Slashdot! Of COURSE Microsoft is taking heat!
Yeah. I'm also a biologist fresh out of college (though I don't specialize in cancer), and I only heard about this in one group presentation one group did in medical genetics class. It definitely would make sense for most cancers to arise from stem cells (although the fringe hypothesis that most cancers are caused by major physical damage to the chromosomes - e.g. breakage and mis-reassembly - is also appealing). Actually, I have been hearing about the supposed connection between cancer and stem cells for longer than that, but that was from anti-ESC research people :P
But does it run Windows?
That's about all I have to say on the matter.
It's Australian for "OWNED"
What's interesting is that in the leaked WoW alpha was something that looked like it might have been a Linux build of WoW. I haven't heard of anybody managing to get it running, though.