It's like all development tools. You need to use the best tool for the job. If you have an app used by hundreds of widely distributed community clients, then yeah, a web interface would likely be best. If you are looking for a local tool used by 3 developers to track bugs, fixes, and updates, then the amount of effort getting a web system up and running will quickly out weigh the distibution benefit. A smart/thick client would be easier to set up and maintain in that senerio.
It would sure seem like BugZilla would be better off with a web interface, but maybe someone was board and wanted some Windows development experience.
My question is how do they handle Out of Order opperations? They mentioned in the article data flow and immediate execution after receiving inputs, which is great, but could lead of OOO output couldn't it?
In short, never. With out a degree, you can get into some jobs though. After highschool I joined the Marine Corps and spent 3+ years developing military applications. Moved to the civilian world, picked up a few contracts, but it was tough running. When you put your resume in for a job, there are a lot of other people who do so also. One job I applied for (and later got) had 400+ resumes. I wouldn't have even been considered except that it was a state job and my military time bumped me up. When a HR person is flipping through 400 resumes to find 3 primary and 3 secondary interviews, they have to quickly weed out the list. And that means toss anyone with out a degree, and toss anyone with out experience (depending on pay scale, entry level positions will likely toss anyone with more experience). Their goal is to find a hand full of people that will fit the pay range and perform well. A college degree doesn't garuntee that you are great at something, but it does show you have the dedication and work ethics to make it through a few more years of school.
After 3 years of hit and miss contracts and part time gigs, I went back to school. And I must say, I've learned more there then I ever thought I would. And not all just technical, a lot of business sence and networking skills. For anyone in the South Central Wisconsin area, I would highly recommend Herzing's (http://www.herzing.edu/ Comp Sci and Graphic Design degrees. I can't speak for the other campuses, but the Madison site has some damn good teachers.
err, not sure how we got from stability vs freedom to the benefits and downfalls of ocupation forces. As far as Iraq is concerned, it is currently highly unstable and highly free. As freedoms are reigned in, stability settles and life smooths out. The trick is knowing which freedoms to reign in (say like, the freedom to make a car bomb and use it as a daily commuter) and which ones to not reign in (freedom to assemble), etc.
And as for the US dividing up natural resources, I would point your attention to Kuwait, where the population has a much better opinion of Americans. Not in part because when we liberated them we left the oil fields to the government and citizens (as opposed to a private company) which gets each citizen a fat yearly check from the government for their portion of the oil field profits.
"If there is a lesson to be learned it is that freedom is more important than stability even if the stability is achieved under authoritarian means. There may be hiccups but I'm sure there are some smart people outside of the USA who can figure out this problem."
Me personally, I'd rather live in peace and stability in a republic, than instability and bloodshed for true freedom. Would you rather live in Rome in 100 AD with running water sewers, hygene, public entertainment, representation in the government, libraries, etc. Or in the 5th century in Germany? Heck, the 12th Century in France? Maybe 14th century England for the rich. So yeah, the "slaves" picked up the reins, and it only took a millenium to get things straightened out.
My bust, just realized that site pulls data from search engines. It is interesting that they use Altavista though.
Gogle
"Linux Rules" - 60,300
"Linux Sucks" - 67,800
"Windows Rules" - 15,100
"Windows Sucks" - 72,300
Altavista
"Linux Rules" - 75,000
"Linux Sucks" - 66,600
"Windows Rules" - 3,840
"Windows Sucks" - 122,000
Just another example of picking the best data to prove a point. Altavista shows the majority of Linux sites claiming Linux rules, and only 1 in 40 Windows sites claiming Windows rules. Where as google show the majority of Linux sites claim Linux sucks and 1 in 5 Windows sites claim windows Rules. If you assume there is 50% over lap (Linux Rules sites that claim Windows Sucks, and vica versa) you wind up with:
Gogle
"Linux Rules" - 60,300
"Linux Sucks" - 60,000
"Windows Rules" - 15,100
"Windows Sucks" - 42,300
True, it still portrays Windows in a poor light, not nearly to the skew that your link claims. And there's lots of other things that have effect on this, but in the end, it's just a whole lot of anecdotal evidence. And no matter how much we wish it were, large amounts of Anecdotal evidence is not data.
"Incompetent few? I hope you're joking. My family contains some brilliant and successful people..."
You're the one who said you have to tell your mom to re-plug her computer in time after time. And even the most intelligent people can be completely incompotent in some facets of their lives. My wife can splice plant genes, rebuild an engine, and perform basic computer maintenance, but she can't follow logic code to save her life. There is tons of anecdotal evidence out there that will show sample after sample of peoples short comings, and some people just "don't get" computers and technology. Not much can be done for them no matter what OS they are on. Their computer could be a life sized Barney doll that holds their hands and sings output to them and they would still have problems.
"Maybe you have been fooled by spending to much time among computer experts here on Slashdot."
Now I know you are joking;)
"The truth is most computers are not very well designed, fixable, easily understood, reliable, or refined. We're in the Model-T phase of computers, they are being mass produced and widely distributed. They are better than the old way, but still not very good and everyone except experts expects them to break regularly."
I disagree. I think we are in the late 60's/early 70's of cars erra for computers. Things are reletively simple, anyone with a highschool education can tear one apart, rebuild it, supe it up, tweek the OS and make a basic html web page. All it takes is the guts to do it. Just like building up a shoebox in the 70's. If we progress on the same path, support will become more and more speciallized to the point where a highschool education and a little curiocity won't get you though it.
"I suspect we'd be a lot further along if their was real competition for desktop operating systems, but we don't and it has slowed advancement in the field to a crawl."
I agree to an exent. OS advancement has hardly been at a snalls pace, but I do think the competition Linux brings to the table has and will continue to improve Windows and Mac. Just look at what FF has done for IE!
All that chart shows is that 130k Linux fans have visited that site. Which rules out the majority of computer users. Most computer users don't even know that site exists, and most of the people who know that site exists are not average users.
My proof is in the sales. If the majority of average computer users were not satified by Windows, then the they would turn to alternatives. True, MS has performed some admirable feets to make it harder to switch, but the majority of users are still running windows and upgrading to XP. Linux is growing in market share, but it still has a long way to go in useability to get to the point of XP. My guess is 2007. By 2007 Linux interfaces will have improved to the point where it is as useable if not more so then the comprable windows OS of the time (XP, or maybe Vista will be out by then). At that point I would say that Linux can outperform Windows for home and end user satisfaction.
Don't let the incompotent few skew your view. Your mother's incompotence would make her dislike any solution. Most of my family treats their computers like an applicance or vehicle. Most of the time, it works just as they need it to, but every once and a while it needs servicing. And just like any other appliance or vehicle, some preventative maintenance will save you a lot of other maintenance.
I disagree. I'm a windows user and a Linux/BSD user. Overall, I prefer Windows for my daily work and play. But I use Linux and BSD in the places where they are strong (ie a FreeBSD firewall, and an old Lunux based file server that sits in a closet). I have my home machine set to dual boot Ubuntu, which overall I have to admit I was grossly underimpressed by. My Unix buddy keeps trying to talk me into loading up Mandriva, so maybe some day I'll give it a whirl. But by and large, Windows does everything I need to do, on all of my hardware, performs exceptable, and is very easy to work with (for end user concerns).
-Rick
Another delusional zealiot
on
Pepping Up Windows
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
'The average Windows user tends to be less than satisfied with Windows. And that's no surprise, either, given the rather woeful state of its default applications.'
Not quite. The article has lots of great links and tools, but the majority of windows users are perfectly content. This is another great example of how someone's zealiot attitude ruin what could have been a great article.
"Canadians illegally download 14 music CDs or other files from the Internet for every file they take from the web legally, a new recording-industry poll suggests."
/.'s home page has atleast 1 html file and 1 CSS file (not sure about the new system) and atleast 10 image files. All of which you have legally downloaded.
That means that you damn Canadians who visit only the/. home page would have to download 168 CDs worth of music for your first visit here. Call it a wild guess, but I doubt there are many people who have P2P a library of anything close to that size.
Beleive it or not, Google Desktop search has saved me many a minutes of searching for opps manuals, work orders, business rule documents, log files, and many other assorted goodies. I'm not recommending it as a long term solution, but it works for short/mid range for small shops where the presure is on development.
Agreed on the off topic, but as long as we are discussion...
VB.Net is not the next version of VB. Just like C# is not the next version of C++. All.Net languages (C#, J#, VB.Net, ASP.Net, etc) are CLI based. When I compile my application in VB6, it creates a COM based Win 32 compatible, x86 native assembly. When I compile my app in VB.Net, C#, or any other.Net language, it gets compiles to CLI. The CLI assembly is then distributed. When a user runs it, the local Framework compiles the CLI into what ever native type is needed.
The converter is great. it works exactly how a converter should. The problem though is that VB.Net requires a completely different design theory. Imagine a 'converter' that changes a bicycle (VB 6) into a Car (VB.Net). The converter can identify the bicycle's frame, wheels, steering controls, and brakes and match them up loosely with the car's components. But a bike only has 2 wheels, a car has 4. The car now has an engine, but the bike doesn't, so it can't be converted. And so on.
As for the labeling. Yeah for some reason there are obscure references to VB7, which drives me nuts. But all of the presented version identifiers refer to it as VB.Net (2k2, 2k3, and 2k5)
-Rick
I changed my password this morning
on
Too Many Passwords
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
And I had some app running in the background (something FF related?) that kept trying to auto apply my original password (yes I cleared password from inside FF). After the 6th lock out of the day, I got my network tek's to let me reset my password.
Total cost of the password change? Maybe a manhour's worth of time (between myself and waiting on the teks, and the teks stoping their work to fix my account). So maybe a hundred dollars or so. But we have 800+ employees in 5 branches. That's a lot of password change headaches.
VB.Net (any version) IS NOT the next version of VB.
VB.Net is a fully object oriented language, it is fundamentally different then VB6. Your best option is to document the heck out of the current app's functionality and behavior, and then look into developing a.Net app from scratch to match those behaviors.
The built in porting tool will not work. It's kind of like an san script to english translator. It can replace old words with new words, and guess at what the code means, but since the two are fundamentally different, it can not effectively convert everything appropriatly. If your entire VB6 app was writen perfectly in an object oriented manor (as best as was possible in VB6), then the converter might work acceptably. But realisticly, running the converter is going to leave you with a uncompilable piece of crap.
I understand the Free as in beer analogy vs free as in speech. My reply was in reference to the larger picture. And as I was playing off of the "No such thing as a free lunch" analogy, I assumed that the repliers would follow the free as in beer interpretation. Because, so far as I know, there is no constitutional protection of the noon time meal.
I'm going to get modded down to -16 for this, but I'm sticking to it. There is no free software. Someone must pay the developers who write it(not necesarily TOO write it). Removing sales revenue from the developers will reduce their ability to write code. And now development companies need to look elsewheres for money. Support is the golden goose that everyone screams for. But if I release a piece of open source software that cost $500,000 in labor alone to develope (1 year with a small team of developers(5) and support staff), I need to recoupe that cost, and the cost of continuing development. Which means I need to sell atleast 100 $5,000 yearly support contracts. But then I'll also need a staff to run support, so toss in another $200,000 for 4 decent support techs. So we have 140 $5,000 yearly support contracts to break even on labor alone (not including bandwidth, phones, location, power, etc). Now let's say support person A and a few OSS community friends decide to open their own support company. They don't have to cover the cost of development, just their own $150,000 labor plus other expences. So if they can get 75 contracts, they only need to charge $2,000 a pop.
Ask your local CFO if he'd like to cut $3,000 off his annual IT support costs.;)
In any case, the development company hemroges money as their clients jump to the cheaper, and just as effective support company. Cost cutting measures take effect and developers are layed off, salaries are cut, and the work environment becomes over stressed. Quality drops, and eventually the company folds, is bought out, or the developers split and fork the code.
There is no free lunch, and the is no free app. And I'm not looking forward to the day that the job I love so much is delegated to either high end research at universities, or a hobby that you can't make money from.
Slashdot Mirror
It's like all development tools. You need to use the best tool for the job. If you have an app used by hundreds of widely distributed community clients, then yeah, a web interface would likely be best. If you are looking for a local tool used by 3 developers to track bugs, fixes, and updates, then the amount of effort getting a web system up and running will quickly out weigh the distibution benefit. A smart/thick client would be easier to set up and maintain in that senerio.
It would sure seem like BugZilla would be better off with a web interface, but maybe someone was board and wanted some Windows development experience.
-Rick
My question is how do they handle Out of Order opperations? They mentioned in the article data flow and immediate execution after receiving inputs, which is great, but could lead of OOO output couldn't it?
-Rick
In short, never. With out a degree, you can get into some jobs though. After highschool I joined the Marine Corps and spent 3+ years developing military applications. Moved to the civilian world, picked up a few contracts, but it was tough running. When you put your resume in for a job, there are a lot of other people who do so also. One job I applied for (and later got) had 400+ resumes. I wouldn't have even been considered except that it was a state job and my military time bumped me up. When a HR person is flipping through 400 resumes to find 3 primary and 3 secondary interviews, they have to quickly weed out the list. And that means toss anyone with out a degree, and toss anyone with out experience (depending on pay scale, entry level positions will likely toss anyone with more experience). Their goal is to find a hand full of people that will fit the pay range and perform well. A college degree doesn't garuntee that you are great at something, but it does show you have the dedication and work ethics to make it through a few more years of school.
After 3 years of hit and miss contracts and part time gigs, I went back to school. And I must say, I've learned more there then I ever thought I would. And not all just technical, a lot of business sence and networking skills. For anyone in the South Central Wisconsin area, I would highly recommend Herzing's (http://www.herzing.edu/ Comp Sci and Graphic Design degrees. I can't speak for the other campuses, but the Madison site has some damn good teachers.
-Rick
err, not sure how we got from stability vs freedom to the benefits and downfalls of ocupation forces. As far as Iraq is concerned, it is currently highly unstable and highly free. As freedoms are reigned in, stability settles and life smooths out. The trick is knowing which freedoms to reign in (say like, the freedom to make a car bomb and use it as a daily commuter) and which ones to not reign in (freedom to assemble), etc.
And as for the US dividing up natural resources, I would point your attention to Kuwait, where the population has a much better opinion of Americans. Not in part because when we liberated them we left the oil fields to the government and citizens (as opposed to a private company) which gets each citizen a fat yearly check from the government for their portion of the oil field profits.
-Rick
"If there is a lesson to be learned it is that freedom is more important than stability even if the stability is achieved under authoritarian means. There may be hiccups but I'm sure there are some smart people outside of the USA who can figure out this problem."
Me personally, I'd rather live in peace and stability in a republic, than instability and bloodshed for true freedom. Would you rather live in Rome in 100 AD with running water sewers, hygene, public entertainment, representation in the government, libraries, etc. Or in the 5th century in Germany? Heck, the 12th Century in France? Maybe 14th century England for the rich. So yeah, the "slaves" picked up the reins, and it only took a millenium to get things straightened out.
-Rick
Gogle
Altavista
Just another example of picking the best data to prove a point. Altavista shows the majority of Linux sites claiming Linux rules, and only 1 in 40 Windows sites claiming Windows rules. Where as google show the majority of Linux sites claim Linux sucks and 1 in 5 Windows sites claim windows Rules. If you assume there is 50% over lap (Linux Rules sites that claim Windows Sucks, and vica versa) you wind up with:
Gogle
True, it still portrays Windows in a poor light, not nearly to the skew that your link claims. And there's lots of other things that have effect on this, but in the end, it's just a whole lot of anecdotal evidence. And no matter how much we wish it were, large amounts of Anecdotal evidence is not data.
-Rick
"Incompetent few? I hope you're joking. My family contains some brilliant and successful people..."
;)
You're the one who said you have to tell your mom to re-plug her computer in time after time. And even the most intelligent people can be completely incompotent in some facets of their lives. My wife can splice plant genes, rebuild an engine, and perform basic computer maintenance, but she can't follow logic code to save her life. There is tons of anecdotal evidence out there that will show sample after sample of peoples short comings, and some people just "don't get" computers and technology. Not much can be done for them no matter what OS they are on. Their computer could be a life sized Barney doll that holds their hands and sings output to them and they would still have problems.
"Maybe you have been fooled by spending to much time among computer experts here on Slashdot."
Now I know you are joking
"The truth is most computers are not very well designed, fixable, easily understood, reliable, or refined. We're in the Model-T phase of computers, they are being mass produced and widely distributed. They are better than the old way, but still not very good and everyone except experts expects them to break regularly."
I disagree. I think we are in the late 60's/early 70's of cars erra for computers. Things are reletively simple, anyone with a highschool education can tear one apart, rebuild it, supe it up, tweek the OS and make a basic html web page. All it takes is the guts to do it. Just like building up a shoebox in the 70's. If we progress on the same path, support will become more and more speciallized to the point where a highschool education and a little curiocity won't get you though it.
"I suspect we'd be a lot further along if their was real competition for desktop operating systems, but we don't and it has slowed advancement in the field to a crawl."
I agree to an exent. OS advancement has hardly been at a snalls pace, but I do think the competition Linux brings to the table has and will continue to improve Windows and Mac. Just look at what FF has done for IE!
-Rick
All that chart shows is that 130k Linux fans have visited that site. Which rules out the majority of computer users. Most computer users don't even know that site exists, and most of the people who know that site exists are not average users.
My proof is in the sales. If the majority of average computer users were not satified by Windows, then the they would turn to alternatives. True, MS has performed some admirable feets to make it harder to switch, but the majority of users are still running windows and upgrading to XP. Linux is growing in market share, but it still has a long way to go in useability to get to the point of XP. My guess is 2007. By 2007 Linux interfaces will have improved to the point where it is as useable if not more so then the comprable windows OS of the time (XP, or maybe Vista will be out by then). At that point I would say that Linux can outperform Windows for home and end user satisfaction.
-Rick
Don't let the incompotent few skew your view. Your mother's incompotence would make her dislike any solution. Most of my family treats their computers like an applicance or vehicle. Most of the time, it works just as they need it to, but every once and a while it needs servicing. And just like any other appliance or vehicle, some preventative maintenance will save you a lot of other maintenance.
-Rick
I disagree. I'm a windows user and a Linux/BSD user. Overall, I prefer Windows for my daily work and play. But I use Linux and BSD in the places where they are strong (ie a FreeBSD firewall, and an old Lunux based file server that sits in a closet). I have my home machine set to dual boot Ubuntu, which overall I have to admit I was grossly underimpressed by. My Unix buddy keeps trying to talk me into loading up Mandriva, so maybe some day I'll give it a whirl. But by and large, Windows does everything I need to do, on all of my hardware, performs exceptable, and is very easy to work with (for end user concerns).
-Rick
'The average Windows user tends to be less than satisfied with Windows. And that's no surprise, either, given the rather woeful state of its default applications.'
Not quite. The article has lots of great links and tools, but the majority of windows users are perfectly content. This is another great example of how someone's zealiot attitude ruin what could have been a great article.
-Rick
"Canadians illegally download 14 music CDs or other files from the Internet for every file they take from the web legally, a new recording-industry poll suggests."
/.'s home page has atleast 1 html file and 1 CSS file (not sure about the new system) and atleast 10 image files. All of which you have legally downloaded.
/. home page would have to download 168 CDs worth of music for your first visit here. Call it a wild guess, but I doubt there are many people who have P2P a library of anything close to that size.
That means that you damn Canadians who visit only the
-Rick
I love the network indexing. I can pull up network resources faster the the networkers next door now ;)
-Rick
Beleive it or not, Google Desktop search has saved me many a minutes of searching for opps manuals, work orders, business rule documents, log files, and many other assorted goodies. I'm not recommending it as a long term solution, but it works for short/mid range for small shops where the presure is on development.
-Rick
With the Grokster presidence discussed here: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/29/16 5213&tid=187&tid=123&tid=95
7 52209&tid=123&tid=101
/. for posting links/advertising copyrighted material?
And the 8 people indited on distributing the movie here: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/28/1
What kind of liability does that put on
On a side note, I hope the site stays up till tonight so I can grab the files at home.
-Rick
I'm out of mod points, but that is so true.
-Rick
Agreed on the off topic, but as long as we are discussion...
.Net languages (C#, J#, VB.Net, ASP.Net, etc) are CLI based. When I compile my application in VB6, it creates a COM based Win 32 compatible, x86 native assembly. When I compile my app in VB.Net, C#, or any other .Net language, it gets compiles to CLI. The CLI assembly is then distributed. When a user runs it, the local Framework compiles the CLI into what ever native type is needed.
VB.Net is not the next version of VB. Just like C# is not the next version of C++. All
The converter is great. it works exactly how a converter should. The problem though is that VB.Net requires a completely different design theory. Imagine a 'converter' that changes a bicycle (VB 6) into a Car (VB.Net). The converter can identify the bicycle's frame, wheels, steering controls, and brakes and match them up loosely with the car's components. But a bike only has 2 wheels, a car has 4. The car now has an engine, but the bike doesn't, so it can't be converted. And so on.
As for the labeling. Yeah for some reason there are obscure references to VB7, which drives me nuts. But all of the presented version identifiers refer to it as VB.Net (2k2, 2k3, and 2k5)
-Rick
And I had some app running in the background (something FF related?) that kept trying to auto apply my original password (yes I cleared password from inside FF). After the 6th lock out of the day, I got my network tek's to let me reset my password.
Total cost of the password change? Maybe a manhour's worth of time (between myself and waiting on the teks, and the teks stoping their work to fix my account). So maybe a hundred dollars or so. But we have 800+ employees in 5 branches. That's a lot of password change headaches.
-Rick
LOL, good catch. I'm going to go replace myself with a small shell script.
-Rick
Just saw you said VC, not VB. Not quite as bad in the conversion that way as you should already be using OO design. -Rick
Okay, I preach on this at http://www.tek-tips.com/ way too much.
.Net app from scratch to match those behaviors.
VB.Net (any version) IS NOT the next version of VB.
VB.Net is a fully object oriented language, it is fundamentally different then VB6. Your best option is to document the heck out of the current app's functionality and behavior, and then look into developing a
The built in porting tool will not work. It's kind of like an san script to english translator. It can replace old words with new words, and guess at what the code means, but since the two are fundamentally different, it can not effectively convert everything appropriatly. If your entire VB6 app was writen perfectly in an object oriented manor (as best as was possible in VB6), then the converter might work acceptably. But realisticly, running the converter is going to leave you with a uncompilable piece of crap.
-Rick
I understand the Free as in beer analogy vs free as in speech. My reply was in reference to the larger picture. And as I was playing off of the "No such thing as a free lunch" analogy, I assumed that the repliers would follow the free as in beer interpretation. Because, so far as I know, there is no constitutional protection of the noon time meal.
-Rick
My response was based on the larger picture, not this law specificly.
-Rick
for the free lunch to get moldy.
;)
I'm going to get modded down to -16 for this, but I'm sticking to it. There is no free software. Someone must pay the developers who write it(not necesarily TOO write it). Removing sales revenue from the developers will reduce their ability to write code. And now development companies need to look elsewheres for money. Support is the golden goose that everyone screams for. But if I release a piece of open source software that cost $500,000 in labor alone to develope (1 year with a small team of developers(5) and support staff), I need to recoupe that cost, and the cost of continuing development. Which means I need to sell atleast 100 $5,000 yearly support contracts. But then I'll also need a staff to run support, so toss in another $200,000 for 4 decent support techs. So we have 140 $5,000 yearly support contracts to break even on labor alone (not including bandwidth, phones, location, power, etc). Now let's say support person A and a few OSS community friends decide to open their own support company. They don't have to cover the cost of development, just their own $150,000 labor plus other expences. So if they can get 75 contracts, they only need to charge $2,000 a pop.
Ask your local CFO if he'd like to cut $3,000 off his annual IT support costs.
In any case, the development company hemroges money as their clients jump to the cheaper, and just as effective support company. Cost cutting measures take effect and developers are layed off, salaries are cut, and the work environment becomes over stressed. Quality drops, and eventually the company folds, is bought out, or the developers split and fork the code.
There is no free lunch, and the is no free app. And I'm not looking forward to the day that the job I love so much is delegated to either high end research at universities, or a hobby that you can't make money from.
-Rick
What if my "community" is alt.sex?
-Rick