but profits is not high on the list of goals for the Microsoft/Yahoo deal. HP shareholders were pissed at how it was handled. With this Microsoft/Yahoo proposition, it's all about Microsoft purchasing mindshare and marketshare so they can LOOK like a contender. Right now, Google looks, acts, and is a mighty technical powerhouse and even Wall Street sees this. It makes Microsoft look like an old out-of-touch company and having Gates leave the company this year is not going to help.
So don't think that ANY Microsoft technology or purchase is about them getting direct profits from those deals. They need to protect their position on the desktop and and on the server. Heck, on the server, they had to go out and pay GoDaddy to host parked domains on Windows based server so the NetCraft marketshare numbers for Windows/IIS looked respectable. Until they started spending tons of money to companies like GoDaddy, Windows/IIS was heading into the dirt. It's not about profits, it's about mindshare and marketshare. IMO.
This is the ONLY way they get marketshare when they can't get it by leveraging their position on the desktop. And look what marketshare purchases did hotmail.com. They took those numbers and tacked them onto their new-ish MS Exchange numbers and for a couple of years drilled it into the market that Exchange was a contender against Lotus Notes. Purchased marketshare allows them to purchase mindshare. While that has never produced profits for them, it has controlled their competitors growth and therefore controlled that threat.
It does not hurt that they are just filthy rich with cash either. What other company can continue to lose billions annually on 80% of their business units, do this for at least a decade, and stock holders don't complain? The US Government does not count.;-) Who else does this?
outside of being able to leverage their position with the desktop OS, they have lost billions annually on everything else. They are fine with that too, not happy but ok with it since it keeps others in-check. It is the same for this deal with Yahoo since they need to keep Google in-check. They did it with Netscape by forcing MS IE on ISPs and OEMs. They did it to Palm by selling WinCE/PocketPC/PocketMobile/etc at losses in excess of over $10 billion. MSN was an attack on AOLs market position and that too is losing billions and the internet and broadband helped knock AOL down a notch anyways. Xbox was designed to try and box in Sony from being the digitial centerpiece of the living room. Again, losing billions.
But, Microsoft brings in so much profit from the position desktop Windows and MS Office have that they can fund these for a very long time. So this is the same tactic to be used for Google in the MSFT/Yahoo proposal. They need to knock humpty dumpty(Google) off the wall because they feel he is a threat to their market position with him looking so good where he is. And the fact that Google is built and run on Linux technology means that they'll be willing to use a bulldozer full of money to knock that wall down. IMO.
I will agree that on the Windows platform, there are many many GUI builders for the non-programmer and manager types. And that is a problem for the GNU/Linux. So although real programmers don't need no stinking GUI builder and are far more efficient writing apps when they know the APIs, from the outside, it looks like the "polished" tools are not there.
What is a shame is that VX-REXX has not been open sourced and ported to GNU/Linux. Just that one tool would be enough to quite 80% of those saying no good GUI builder/app builder is available.
Also, if there really is anything like that already available, there needs to be a champion to help bring that project into the media/press/public eye.
Other than that, Microsoft's software had almost always been about 10 years behind tech already on the market else where. It cracks me up hearing the press bringing up multi threading in 2008 when it was a very common subject amongst OS/2 developers in the early/mid 90s. IMO.
being a monopoly is not illegal but being a monopoly means having a monopoly position in a market and new rules apply. The courts not only determined Microsoft had a monopoly position in operating systems but also illegally leveraged that position to harm competition. What I found disheartening was that the courts, after Judge Jackson was removed, did not institute any kind of penalty for the illegal behavior. It'll be a decade before the courts can possibly say that the required remedies have been implemented to the courts satisfaction. Ten freak'n years!
You want to bet there are Microsoft lawyers and exec's laughing their asses off at how easily they are able to drag out these pithy remedies. The US Federal courts were castrated by the Bush Administration when they put Ashcroft in place and he disemboweled the remedies Judge Jackson imposed.
But I will say that the lack of penalties imposed on Microsoft has helped open source software tremendously. Had Microsoft be split into three independent business units, competition amongst proprietary software vendors large and small would have flourished. Also, the industry support behind Linux and OSS we've seen over the last 8 years would likely have been 1/10 - 1/4 of what it is now. And a larger percentage of IT budgets go only to Microsoft.com, the easier it is for the businesses and governments to see savings from moving some of that to GNU/Linux. Look at the recent news of the French police. First it was huge savings by dropping MS Office and the security afforded by moving to Firefox. Then they save more by removing the Microsoft Windows OS and are better able to leverage much much more open source software after that.
The Bush backed US Federal courts are gutless in dealing with Microsoft and as you mentioned, think they know how to prevent Microsoft from further monopoly abuse. They've already shown they have no clue. The EU on the other hand has no problem using the stick and inflict penalties for the abuses and further penalize them for mocking the EU courts and dragging out the process. I applaud the EU justices for their handling of this. IMO.
I was a few years ago but I remember someone was threatening school districts across the country with some kind of audit which would have cost at the low end 10's of thousands of dollars and 100's of thousands for larger districts. Something about the Microsoft EULA or the BSA comes to mind but the real story was how the LTSP( Linux Terminal Server Project ) came to the rescue and stopped it. The timing of the threats was poor because there was some national conference around the time and the LTSP group met with many of those threatened. Some jumped onboard with LTSP and off Windows ASAP and others told Microsoft they were going too. Microsoft sent out apology letters and tried to make it look like a big mistake but the end result was that a handful of districts switched to Linux and the others did not but were left alone.
I'm surprised this hasn't been brought up since if it wasn't the BSA directly, it was Microsoft and those two are tied at the hip with how they do 'business'. IMO
I'm no railgun expert but if they are using magnetic fields to propel the projectile, there is an expanding field which pushes the object and that field is moved down the rail with the object. Isn't there then a collapsing field they are letting go to waste? I guess there would need to be some kind of switch/conductor which would allow the expanding field to be free to expand but when the field starts collapsing, the switch/conductor becomes a generator. Throwing that generated energy back into the system reduces the total energy required.
It's so obvious that they must already be doing this but I just figure I'd throw it out there anyway.
it is amazing that today we still see Microsoft pulling up the dump truck and dropping a 'new' desktop OS on the market and that OS can not scale down. And what's worst, it takes someone in the population to start pulling it apart to product a lighter version. I mean holly crap, they are still pushing Windows XP on products to compete with Linux. You know, that Microsoft OS which originally shipped in something like 2001.
So here Microsoft is, claiming to the world for almost 10 years that their company motto is Microsoft software on every DEVICE( changed from on every PC ) yet they design a new OS where the kernel and OS software can not scale down to even moderately powerful computers( ClassMate PC, OLPC XO, Eeee, etc ). Instead, the OS Microsoft is saying is out dated and insecure is the same OS they are pushing to fight GNU/Linux. And it is because their new OS is so poorly designed it won't run on these computers effectively.
More proof that Microsoft is a marketing company and not a technology company IMO. They probably wrote Vista in VisualBasic....wait for it.....Net.
Here's why the Vista numbers look good for Microsoft's PR department: It'll run your code at half the speed of open XP boxen and when the user plays music, all your SPAM profits shrink because the bandwidth is limited. Who would want to 'own' a Windows Vista box? And it looks like the numbers are there to prove it.;-)
what market economy? Surely the RIAA/etc have not been moving pricing of music based on any economic market indicators. It's like the cable industry in a way. They force a whole bunch of stuff together in a package, fix the prices and then say take or go without because you have not other choice. Choice showed up in the music industry and unfortunately for them, the choice( digital music ) was one which had tons of upside for the end users.
The cable industry, well we're already downloading alot of video, have Tivo getting some over the LAN, along with other mechanisms at our fingers( Amazon, Netflix, etc ). They should be watching their down side, if you know what I mean.
To debug the target( quad DSP ) an external computer was needed and it required running OS/2. On OS/2 was TI's DSP debugger/dev software kit. The TI DSP debugger kit was multi-threaded. Got it now?
that was a good start and had a few good features. Another one which came to mind that I loved was the "workspace" or "workarea" attribute. With that, if you had say FolderOne on your desktop, it contained FolderTwo which in turn contained data files with one being an OpenOffice text data file. You right-click on each of the Folder icons and check the "workspace" attribute. Now, when you are done working with that OpenOffice text file and save it, by closing the first folder/FolderOne, you will have all the subfolders and OpenOffice closed down. If you now open FolderOne, it will open up all the subfolders and applications which were open when it was closed.
That workspace feature was just one of the productivity features built into the original Workplace Shell. Templates were another I remember and it helped a few dozen customers really understand computers could be like an extension of their real life desktop metaphor.
this is a joke right? Hangs, graphic stuff with no threading? Both mouse buttons for no reason? OS/2's reliability was what I liked about it and so was its heavy use of threading. It's been all over the press recently about how developers are just now starting to bother with multi-threading applications because of all the multi-core chips. When Microsoft previewed Chicago/Win95, they tried a version of Explorer which was multi-threaded all the way through and it stunk because that OS and NT sucked at threading. The shipped version of Explorer used less than 6 threads IIRC. And OS/2 apps were REQUIRED to have atleast 2 threads and most OS/2 developers took advantage of threading. It was what made the OS, its utilities, and applications feel incredibly fast on 486's and Pentium-I's. The mouse buttons made total sense to me. Right-click to select things, left-click to see the objects context menu(s). Drag-and-drop was left-click-drag with single key modifiers for move/copy/link/etc capabilities.
If those seem different today they are and that is mostly because no OS had those back in 1991/1992 when it was originally released. IIRC, C++ was only something like 6 years old, CORBA wasn't even a complete spec back then, and the 32bit 486 was king. Yet IBM build a 32bit desktop OS with incredible multi-threading, allowed both C and C++ application development with the desktop and programming model based on and industry standard/designed object systems( CORBA ). It should have rocked the PC world with the technology it provided to both users and developers. I once worked on a Quad TI DSP board with a TI development kit for OS/2. OS/2 to debug the system because its threading was the only way to get close to tracking what was going on across 4 DSPs with each having 3 HS pipelines to the other DSPs. This was with PC hardware like a Pentium 100MHz and 8 or 10 MB of RAM. Windows might be able to do that on todays hardware, Vista probably not without a quad core CPU.;-) on the Vista comment.
If you're any kind of 'techie', OS/2 was dabomb. IMO.
I'm surprised I've not seen anything referencing code like SOM, DSOM, OpenDoc etc. And damn, I'm almost tempted to fire up an Warp 4 CD in VirtualBox and see how well OpenDoc runs on todays supersized CPUs and memory footprints. There was some pretty cool stuff in those.
thinking about OpenDoc, it makes me wonder if something like that can't be incorporated into AJAX. you know, all the components/js code to view the page might come from the the page server but if there's an editor or similar component locally stored/cached then it is used for viewing/editing/etc. There'd have to be part registration body or service and all that jazz but it would be cool if it could happen IMO. Personally, I like the idea of specialized components since it's very similar to the *nix design philosophy of a lot of small, efficient, special purpose tools used together for a wide variety of larger applications.
For some reason, I thought IBM did open source some of the OS/2 tech but maybe not. I heard about JFS being ported from OS/2's version in all that SCO-IBM AIX stuff. There was an IBM speech recognition system they either open source or provided free but that could have come from OS/2 or AIX. Obviously SOM and DSOM which should be all IBM tech since it came after the Microsoft/IBM split. OpenDOC was based on SOM with some Apple tech in there for things like Bento and other OpenDoc-isms.
There was alot of cool tech which ran on OS/2 and it would still be useful today on Linux IMO. There is nothing today anywhere which comes even close to what the WorkplaceShell provided.
Windows XP-SP2 was an out of the ordinary release for Microsoft. There were still massive security holes in the OS and the industry was really getting pissed with the holes taking out their networks. IMO, Windows XP-SP2 was, in Microsoft's domain, a new OS release since there so many major changes to the standard Windows XP OS. I don't think you could get Windows XP-SP2 if you just rolled up all the updates for Windows XP and installed them. It was a "new" release.
Windows XP-SP3 is going to be the same and Windows 7 is actually going to be Windows XP-SP4.
Windows 7/XP-SP4 will have the obvious GUI changes to make it look like a sister of Vista, but it will really be Vista's little brother(XP) in drag. IMO.
considering we still hear of Microsoft pushing XP on things to compete with Linux, I think you've nailed it.
for instance, that Nigerian Classmate PC deal where Microsoft was paying them to replace Linux with Windows XP. And the OLPC where they are trying to run XP on it. In the embedded space, it's XP embedded and WinCE is a problematic bastard step-child. So given that in designing and building WinVista they have completely ignored the OS market for anything with less than a 2 core 2GHz CPU and >2GB of RAM and keep pushing XP, I'm with you. Windows 7 is Windows XP SP3+ where the "+" is some GUI dressing and subset of ported subsystems from Vista.
Vista is a pig and the only people taking it up are those ignorant/naive to the fact and are just getting it on pre-loads. The shipping date for Windows 7 helps support this case IMO.
I've seen reports of WinVista being 50% slower than XP-SP2 and that XP-SP3 is 10% faster than XP-SP2. By the mid 90s, I was finally seeing OS updates where the OS was getting faster( OS/2 ) instead of slower. Microsoft never did hit that mark and keeps putting out slower and slower code/OS's over 10 years later. They also keep doing these ridiculous "new" releases instead of upgrades. I guess that is what you have to deal with when your OS is a 500 lb ball of spaghetti instead of a 50 lb Buckyball as UNIX, Linux, and OS/2 are. I'm betting on WinXP-SP4(3+).
That's impossible or it should be. Where's the 'languages' course, where's the hardware/assembly course. I thought it was bad enough when most of the coders around me had no clue what a hardware register was or really just a serial port. I started off on hardware as a tech writing C code to test hardware to the component level. Some aspect of software were a breeze after knowing what it's doing under-the-hood. Cutting out all the embedded work on the market or in science/labs is what this Java-only CS major is doing and that's not good for anybody IMO.
If this is the norm rather than the exception, the author of the article has a bit more validity added to his complaint. As much as I like the Java language, this kind of CS degree would not be as good as it can be. And there is actually some hope of doing embedded work with things like the SNAP modules, Sun SPOTs, etc. Still, knowing what the bits/bytes are seems to be getting lost.
as an ancillary tool for other degree majors I can see Java having a place. Mainly because you can still get algorithms and structures taught with Java and bit twiddling is not so important. Also, the author of that article went off on the loss of command line skills and that has nothing to do with Java. Again, the curriculum could include ant or make for compiling to Java class files. It is not Java's fault schools have gone GUI gaga. Heck, he could go off on the Windows desktop and their poor command shell as the reason for the loss of command line skils. Not Java.
But it sounds like you really had it bad. I'd only touched Ada for about an hour in a languages class where we did something like 8 different languages and Ada was one of them. Oh, and you don't do 8 different languages which span 20 something years with an IDE. I feel your pain and just be happy you we not a CS major at the time.
again, he goes off on Java and claims it is all bad for everyone because they'll end up graduating and only knowing how to cobble libraries of Java parts together. WTF, what university is ONLY teaching Java for a CS degree? He could say the same thing about Ada and pretty much not change another word in his bashing of Java and it would be just as true.
There's validity to some of what he says but his continued bashing of Java is just bull IMO. He must have Java envy or something.
Wow, that is ancient for sure. So why are people not wanting to update the browser? Heck, Firefox has been around with better features for far longer than MS IE 7. Maybe, by forcing the browser into the OS to fool an anti-trust judge also removed the browser from the mindset of needing updating like regular applications?
Microsoft is finally pulling the 'security' card to force users to new versions of their products. It must be nice to be a MSFT programmer when you don't have to work on one rev old products no matter how large the install base.
Seriously, it blew me away in the mid 90s when the press+dog just let Microsoft refuse to provide USB support for the previous OS product and claimed that if you want USB support, you must purchase a new computer or fumble through an upgrade. IIRC, Windows 98 and NT v4 were such products though NT v4 was a larger update since they both moved the graphics subsystem into the kernel and added the win95 shell/desktop along with adding USB support.
I would love to be a fly on the wall for all those meetings they have on how to get customers to upgrade. There's got to be some very funny and some very scary recommendations being thrown around those meetings. It's got to be tough for Microsoft, wanting customers to be lame enough to not look outside of Microsoft for software solutions yet at the same time, be willing to keep upgrading Microsoft products every couple of months and like it.
problems and they had to pull the laptops off the market. Microsoft's Xbox originally used the Nvidia GPU but Microsoft tried to shaft Nvidia and got sued for it. Microsoft finally gave in and paid up after Nvidia asked to see Microsoft's books but when it came time for the Xbox 360, Microsoft went with ATI. And now we hear that the GPU is getting so hot that it's warping a circuit board. Surprise! And that has got to be pretty hot to do that. Did you know what FR-4 PCB stands for? That is Fire Retardant 4( FR-4 ) Printed Circuit Board( PCB ). It is what a standard circuit board is made of. I thought the Fire Retardant part seemed appropriate.;-)
Anyways, what the heck were they thinking when they designed these? Burning PCBs are not good and IMO, only should occur in failure situations not general operating conditions. So I'm wondering if they saw the spec's on the PS3 and figured they needed more oomph from their system and overclocked the GPU? That or maybe their original cooling designs were too noisy so they figured they could get away with 50% cooling and 50% less noise. Regardless, a whole bunch of other parts will also show failures if there's enough heat in there to warp or burn the PCB so it sounds like the majority of the problem is cooling and that seems to be a system design issue. IMO.
Red Ring of Fire... How appropriate.
How's the PS3 doing? I've not heard much in the way of failures there. Just stuff on slow sales due to pricing and the Blue-ray/HD-DVD wars. Any of those PS3 clusters showing signs of over heating?
kinda like Steroids but instead being a physical attribute. The lines are definitely getting discussed more and more as technology marches forward. I remember reading about how Babe Ruth could have had an artificial advantage based on how his body handled alcohol and smoking. Eventually, it'll have to be regulated down to what foods are consumed since that too has a direct relationship on performance.
I think it's awesome that technology has enabled this guy to do more than an "abled" body person can. I hope he can find competitors in his league though or he'll be feeling left out unless he can break some records and start a new class of records. For way too long, adapted technologies resulted in inferior abilities and that not only limited the inflicted capabilities but also psychologically they were looked at as inferior and "handicapped". When they can be fitted with technology to make up for what was lost and the result is the same or better abilities...well that's fantastic IMO.
another made a good point, it's probably IP/NDA control which will limit how useful this is going to be at making anything from it which improved ODF acceptance. The goal is to kill ODF since that was the purpose of MS OOXML to begin with and it was a response to ODF acceptance.
So yes, having the code will make it easier to see what was going on, there must be something in all this which will limit ODF in the market and/or propel MS OOXML forward. Microsoft remains in control of changes to the MS OOXML spec so regaining anything lost due to some temporary openness is still in the hands of Microsoft.
I think you probably hit the nail on the head with the IP/NDA comment. It is just not in Microsofts DNA to do anything to help competition. There is a plan to stop ODF in here because as I said, Microsoft does not do this and never has.
I guess the fact that they took back control of MS OOXML from ISO means that they could, for a short period, do everything to really show MS OOXML is an open spec. And after that period, as ODF withers away, they can start changing the format and only release the changes after they have shipped MS Office already having those changes. Public perception of inferiority and the inability to exchange data with MS Office users will eliminate those competitors in a few years. So they only need to keep MS Office in a majority position to regain anything lost in order to kill off ODF.
Slashdot Mirror
but profits is not high on the list of goals for the Microsoft/Yahoo deal. HP shareholders were pissed at how it was handled. With this Microsoft/Yahoo proposition, it's all about Microsoft purchasing mindshare and marketshare so they can LOOK like a contender. Right now, Google looks, acts, and is a mighty technical powerhouse and even Wall Street sees this. It makes Microsoft look like an old out-of-touch company and having Gates leave the company this year is not going to help.
So don't think that ANY Microsoft technology or purchase is about them getting direct profits from those deals. They need to protect their position on the desktop and and on the server. Heck, on the server, they had to go out and pay GoDaddy to host parked domains on Windows based server so the NetCraft marketshare numbers for Windows/IIS looked respectable. Until they started spending tons of money to companies like GoDaddy, Windows/IIS was heading into the dirt. It's not about profits, it's about mindshare and marketshare. IMO.
LoB
This is the ONLY way they get marketshare when they can't get it by leveraging their position on the desktop. And look what marketshare purchases did hotmail.com. They took those numbers and tacked them onto their new-ish MS Exchange numbers and for a couple of years drilled it into the market that Exchange was a contender against Lotus Notes. Purchased marketshare allows them to purchase mindshare. While that has never produced profits for them, it has controlled their competitors growth and therefore controlled that threat.
;-) Who else does this?
It does not hurt that they are just filthy rich with cash either. What other company can continue to lose billions annually on 80% of their business units, do this for at least a decade, and stock holders don't complain? The US Government does not count.
LoB
outside of being able to leverage their position with the desktop OS, they have lost billions annually on everything else. They are fine with that too, not happy but ok with it since it keeps others in-check. It is the same for this deal with Yahoo since they need to keep Google in-check. They did it with Netscape by forcing MS IE on ISPs and OEMs. They did it to Palm by selling WinCE/PocketPC/PocketMobile/etc at losses in excess of over $10 billion. MSN was an attack on AOLs market position and that too is losing billions and the internet and broadband helped knock AOL down a notch anyways. Xbox was designed to try and box in Sony from being the digitial centerpiece of the living room. Again, losing billions.
But, Microsoft brings in so much profit from the position desktop Windows and MS Office have that they can fund these for a very long time. So this is the same tactic to be used for Google in the MSFT/Yahoo proposal. They need to knock humpty dumpty(Google) off the wall because they feel he is a threat to their market position with him looking so good where he is. And the fact that Google is built and run on Linux technology means that they'll be willing to use a bulldozer full of money to knock that wall down. IMO.
LoB
I will agree that on the Windows platform, there are many many GUI builders for the non-programmer and manager types. And that is a problem for the GNU/Linux. So although real programmers don't need no stinking GUI builder and are far more efficient writing apps when they know the APIs, from the outside, it looks like the "polished" tools are not there.
What is a shame is that VX-REXX has not been open sourced and ported to GNU/Linux. Just that one tool would be enough to quite 80% of those saying no good GUI builder/app builder is available.
Also, if there really is anything like that already available, there needs to be a champion to help bring that project into the media/press/public eye.
Other than that, Microsoft's software had almost always been about 10 years behind tech already on the market else where. It cracks me up hearing the press bringing up multi threading in 2008 when it was a very common subject amongst OS/2 developers in the early/mid 90s. IMO.
LoB
being a monopoly is not illegal but being a monopoly means having a monopoly position in a market and new rules apply. The courts not only determined Microsoft had a monopoly position in operating systems but also illegally leveraged that position to harm competition. What I found disheartening was that the courts, after Judge Jackson was removed, did not institute any kind of penalty for the illegal behavior. It'll be a decade before the courts can possibly say that the required remedies have been implemented to the courts satisfaction. Ten freak'n years!
You want to bet there are Microsoft lawyers and exec's laughing their asses off at how easily they are able to drag out these pithy remedies. The US Federal courts were castrated by the Bush Administration when they put Ashcroft in place and he disemboweled the remedies Judge Jackson imposed.
But I will say that the lack of penalties imposed on Microsoft has helped open source software tremendously. Had Microsoft be split into three independent business units, competition amongst proprietary software vendors large and small would have flourished. Also, the industry support behind Linux and OSS we've seen over the last 8 years would likely have been 1/10 - 1/4 of what it is now. And a larger percentage of IT budgets go only to Microsoft.com, the easier it is for the businesses and governments to see savings from moving some of that to GNU/Linux. Look at the recent news of the French police. First it was huge savings by dropping MS Office and the security afforded by moving to Firefox. Then they save more by removing the Microsoft Windows OS and are better able to leverage much much more open source software after that.
The Bush backed US Federal courts are gutless in dealing with Microsoft and as you mentioned, think they know how to prevent Microsoft from further monopoly abuse. They've already shown they have no clue. The EU on the other hand has no problem using the stick and inflict penalties for the abuses and further penalize them for mocking the EU courts and dragging out the process. I applaud the EU justices for their handling of this. IMO.
LoB
I was a few years ago but I remember someone was threatening school districts across the country with some kind of audit which would have cost at the low end 10's of thousands of dollars and 100's of thousands for larger districts. Something about the Microsoft EULA or the BSA comes to mind but the real story was how the LTSP( Linux Terminal Server Project ) came to the rescue and stopped it. The timing of the threats was poor because there was some national conference around the time and the LTSP group met with many of those threatened. Some jumped onboard with LTSP and off Windows ASAP and others told Microsoft they were going too. Microsoft sent out apology letters and tried to make it look like a big mistake but the end result was that a handful of districts switched to Linux and the others did not but were left alone.
I'm surprised this hasn't been brought up since if it wasn't the BSA directly, it was Microsoft and those two are tied at the hip with how they do 'business'. IMO
LoB
I'm no railgun expert but if they are using magnetic fields to propel the projectile, there is an expanding field which pushes the object and that field is moved down the rail with the object. Isn't there then a collapsing field they are letting go to waste? I guess there would need to be some kind of switch/conductor which would allow the expanding field to be free to expand but when the field starts collapsing, the switch/conductor becomes a generator. Throwing that generated energy back into the system reduces the total energy required.
It's so obvious that they must already be doing this but I just figure I'd throw it out there anyway.
LoB
it is amazing that today we still see Microsoft pulling up the dump truck and dropping a 'new' desktop OS on the market and that OS can not scale down. And what's worst, it takes someone in the population to start pulling it apart to product a lighter version. I mean holly crap, they are still pushing Windows XP on products to compete with Linux. You know, that Microsoft OS which originally shipped in something like 2001.
.Net.
So here Microsoft is, claiming to the world for almost 10 years that their company motto is Microsoft software on every DEVICE( changed from on every PC ) yet they design a new OS where the kernel and OS software can not scale down to even moderately powerful computers( ClassMate PC, OLPC XO, Eeee, etc ). Instead, the OS Microsoft is saying is out dated and insecure is the same OS they are pushing to fight GNU/Linux. And it is because their new OS is so poorly designed it won't run on these computers effectively.
More proof that Microsoft is a marketing company and not a technology company IMO. They probably wrote Vista in VisualBasic....wait for it....
LoB
Here's why the Vista numbers look good for Microsoft's PR department: ;-)
It'll run your code at half the speed of open XP boxen and when the user plays music, all your SPAM profits shrink because the bandwidth is limited. Who would want to 'own' a Windows Vista box? And it looks like the numbers are there to prove it.
LoB
what market economy? Surely the RIAA/etc have not been moving pricing of music based on any economic market indicators. It's like the cable industry in a way. They force a whole bunch of stuff together in a package, fix the prices and then say take or go without because you have not other choice. Choice showed up in the music industry and unfortunately for them, the choice( digital music ) was one which had tons of upside for the end users.
The cable industry, well we're already downloading alot of video, have Tivo getting some over the LAN, along with other mechanisms at our fingers( Amazon, Netflix, etc ). They should be watching their down side, if you know what I mean.
LoB
To debug the target( quad DSP ) an external computer was needed and it required running OS/2. On OS/2 was TI's DSP debugger/dev software kit. The TI DSP debugger kit was multi-threaded. Got it now?
LoB
that was a good start and had a few good features. Another one which came to mind that I loved was the "workspace" or "workarea" attribute. With that, if you had say FolderOne on your desktop, it contained FolderTwo which in turn contained data files with one being an OpenOffice text data file. You right-click on each of the Folder icons and check the "workspace" attribute. Now, when you are done working with that OpenOffice text file and save it, by closing the first folder/FolderOne, you will have all the subfolders and OpenOffice closed down. If you now open FolderOne, it will open up all the subfolders and applications which were open when it was closed.
That workspace feature was just one of the productivity features built into the original Workplace Shell. Templates were another I remember and it helped a few dozen customers really understand computers could be like an extension of their real life desktop metaphor.
LoB
this is a joke right? Hangs, graphic stuff with no threading? Both mouse buttons for no reason? OS/2's reliability was what I liked about it and so was its heavy use of threading. It's been all over the press recently about how developers are just now starting to bother with multi-threading applications because of all the multi-core chips. When Microsoft previewed Chicago/Win95, they tried a version of Explorer which was multi-threaded all the way through and it stunk because that OS and NT sucked at threading. The shipped version of Explorer used less than 6 threads IIRC. And OS/2 apps were REQUIRED to have atleast 2 threads and most OS/2 developers took advantage of threading. It was what made the OS, its utilities, and applications feel incredibly fast on 486's and Pentium-I's. The mouse buttons made total sense to me. Right-click to select things, left-click to see the objects context menu(s). Drag-and-drop was left-click-drag with single key modifiers for move/copy/link/etc capabilities.
;-) on the Vista comment.
If those seem different today they are and that is mostly because no OS had those back in 1991/1992 when it was originally released. IIRC, C++ was only something like 6 years old, CORBA wasn't even a complete spec back then, and the 32bit 486 was king. Yet IBM build a 32bit desktop OS with incredible multi-threading, allowed both C and C++ application development with the desktop and programming model based on and industry standard/designed object systems( CORBA ). It should have rocked the PC world with the technology it provided to both users and developers. I once worked on a Quad TI DSP board with a TI development kit for OS/2. OS/2 to debug the system because its threading was the only way to get close to tracking what was going on across 4 DSPs with each having 3 HS pipelines to the other DSPs. This was with PC hardware like a Pentium 100MHz and 8 or 10 MB of RAM. Windows might be able to do that on todays hardware, Vista probably not without a quad core CPU.
If you're any kind of 'techie', OS/2 was dabomb. IMO.
LoB
I'm surprised I've not seen anything referencing code like SOM, DSOM, OpenDoc etc. And damn, I'm almost tempted to fire up an Warp 4 CD in VirtualBox and see how well OpenDoc runs on todays supersized CPUs and memory footprints. There was some pretty cool stuff in those.
thinking about OpenDoc, it makes me wonder if something like that can't be incorporated into AJAX. you know, all the components/js code to view the page might come from the the page server but if there's an editor or similar component locally stored/cached then it is used for viewing/editing/etc. There'd have to be part registration body or service and all that jazz but it would be cool if it could happen IMO. Personally, I like the idea of specialized components since it's very similar to the *nix design philosophy of a lot of small, efficient, special purpose tools used together for a wide variety of larger applications.
For some reason, I thought IBM did open source some of the OS/2 tech but maybe not. I heard about JFS being ported from OS/2's version in all that SCO-IBM AIX stuff. There was an IBM speech recognition system they either open source or provided free but that could have come from OS/2 or AIX. Obviously SOM and DSOM which should be all IBM tech since it came after the Microsoft/IBM split. OpenDOC was based on SOM with some Apple tech in there for things like Bento and other OpenDoc-isms.
There was alot of cool tech which ran on OS/2 and it would still be useful today on Linux IMO. There is nothing today anywhere which comes even close to what the WorkplaceShell provided.
LoB
Windows XP-SP2 was an out of the ordinary release for Microsoft. There were still massive security holes in the OS and the industry was really getting pissed with the holes taking out their networks. IMO, Windows XP-SP2 was, in Microsoft's domain, a new OS release since there so many major changes to the standard Windows XP OS. I don't think you could get Windows XP-SP2 if you just rolled up all the updates for Windows XP and installed them. It was a "new" release.
Windows XP-SP3 is going to be the same and Windows 7 is actually going to be Windows XP-SP4.
Windows 7/XP-SP4 will have the obvious GUI changes to make it look like a sister of Vista, but it will really be Vista's little brother(XP) in drag. IMO.
LoB
considering we still hear of Microsoft pushing XP on things to compete with Linux, I think you've nailed it.
for instance, that Nigerian Classmate PC deal where Microsoft was paying them to replace Linux with Windows XP. And the OLPC where they are trying to run XP on it. In the embedded space, it's XP embedded and WinCE is a problematic bastard step-child. So given that in designing and building WinVista they have completely ignored the OS market for anything with less than a 2 core 2GHz CPU and >2GB of RAM and keep pushing XP, I'm with you. Windows 7 is Windows XP SP3+ where the "+" is some GUI dressing and subset of ported subsystems from Vista.
Vista is a pig and the only people taking it up are those ignorant/naive to the fact and are just getting it on pre-loads. The shipping date for Windows 7 helps support this case IMO.
I've seen reports of WinVista being 50% slower than XP-SP2 and that XP-SP3 is 10% faster than XP-SP2. By the mid 90s, I was finally seeing OS updates where the OS was getting faster( OS/2 ) instead of slower. Microsoft never did hit that mark and keeps putting out slower and slower code/OS's over 10 years later. They also keep doing these ridiculous "new" releases instead of upgrades. I guess that is what you have to deal with when your OS is a 500 lb ball of spaghetti instead of a 50 lb Buckyball as UNIX, Linux, and OS/2 are. I'm betting on WinXP-SP4(3+).
LoB
That's impossible or it should be. Where's the 'languages' course, where's the hardware/assembly course. I thought it was bad enough when most of the coders around me had no clue what a hardware register was or really just a serial port. I started off on hardware as a tech writing C code to test hardware to the component level. Some aspect of software were a breeze after knowing what it's doing under-the-hood. Cutting out all the embedded work on the market or in science/labs is what this Java-only CS major is doing and that's not good for anybody IMO.
If this is the norm rather than the exception, the author of the article has a bit more validity added to his complaint. As much as I like the Java language, this kind of CS degree would not be as good as it can be. And there is actually some hope of doing embedded work with things like the SNAP modules, Sun SPOTs, etc. Still, knowing what the bits/bytes are seems to be getting lost.
LoB
as an ancillary tool for other degree majors I can see Java having a place. Mainly because you can still get algorithms and structures taught with Java and bit twiddling is not so important. Also, the author of that article went off on the loss of command line skills and that has nothing to do with Java. Again, the curriculum could include ant or make for compiling to Java class files. It is not Java's fault schools have gone GUI gaga. Heck, he could go off on the Windows desktop and their poor command shell as the reason for the loss of command line skils. Not Java.
But it sounds like you really had it bad. I'd only touched Ada for about an hour in a languages class where we did something like 8 different languages and Ada was one of them. Oh, and you don't do 8 different languages which span 20 something years with an IDE. I feel your pain and just be happy you we not a CS major at the time.
LoB
again, he goes off on Java and claims it is all bad for everyone because they'll end up graduating and only knowing how to cobble libraries of Java parts together. WTF, what university is ONLY teaching Java for a CS degree? He could say the same thing about Ada and pretty much not change another word in his bashing of Java and it would be just as true.
There's validity to some of what he says but his continued bashing of Java is just bull IMO. He must have Java envy or something.
LoB
Wow, that is ancient for sure. So why are people not wanting to update the browser? Heck, Firefox has been around with better features for far longer than MS IE 7. Maybe, by forcing the browser into the OS to fool an anti-trust judge also removed the browser from the mindset of needing updating like regular applications?
LoB
Microsoft is finally pulling the 'security' card to force users to new versions of their products. It must be nice to be a MSFT programmer when you don't have to work on one rev old products no matter how large the install base.
Seriously, it blew me away in the mid 90s when the press+dog just let Microsoft refuse to provide USB support for the previous OS product and claimed that if you want USB support, you must purchase a new computer or fumble through an upgrade. IIRC, Windows 98 and NT v4 were such products though NT v4 was a larger update since they both moved the graphics subsystem into the kernel and added the win95 shell/desktop along with adding USB support.
I would love to be a fly on the wall for all those meetings they have on how to get customers to upgrade. There's got to be some very funny and some very scary recommendations being thrown around those meetings. It's got to be tough for Microsoft, wanting customers to be lame enough to not look outside of Microsoft for software solutions yet at the same time, be willing to keep upgrading Microsoft products every couple of months and like it.
LoB
problems and they had to pull the laptops off the market. Microsoft's Xbox originally used the Nvidia GPU but Microsoft tried to shaft Nvidia and got sued for it. Microsoft finally gave in and paid up after Nvidia asked to see Microsoft's books but when it came time for the Xbox 360, Microsoft went with ATI. And now we hear that the GPU is getting so hot that it's warping a circuit board. Surprise! And that has got to be pretty hot to do that. Did you know what FR-4 PCB stands for? That is Fire Retardant 4( FR-4 ) Printed Circuit Board( PCB ). It is what a standard circuit board is made of. I thought the Fire Retardant part seemed appropriate. ;-)
Anyways, what the heck were they thinking when they designed these? Burning PCBs are not good and IMO, only should occur in failure situations not general operating conditions. So I'm wondering if they saw the spec's on the PS3 and figured they needed more oomph from their system and overclocked the GPU? That or maybe their original cooling designs were too noisy so they figured they could get away with 50% cooling and 50% less noise. Regardless, a whole bunch of other parts will also show failures if there's enough heat in there to warp or burn the PCB so it sounds like the majority of the problem is cooling and that seems to be a system design issue. IMO.
Red Ring of Fire... How appropriate.
How's the PS3 doing? I've not heard much in the way of failures there. Just stuff on slow sales due to pricing and the Blue-ray/HD-DVD wars. Any of those PS3 clusters showing signs of over heating?
LoB
kinda like Steroids but instead being a physical attribute. The lines are definitely getting discussed more and more as technology marches forward. I remember reading about how Babe Ruth could have had an artificial advantage based on how his body handled alcohol and smoking. Eventually, it'll have to be regulated down to what foods are consumed since that too has a direct relationship on performance.
I think it's awesome that technology has enabled this guy to do more than an "abled" body person can. I hope he can find competitors in his league though or he'll be feeling left out unless he can break some records and start a new class of records. For way too long, adapted technologies resulted in inferior abilities and that not only limited the inflicted capabilities but also psychologically they were looked at as inferior and "handicapped". When they can be fitted with technology to make up for what was lost and the result is the same or better abilities...well that's fantastic IMO.
LoB
another made a good point, it's probably IP/NDA control which will limit how useful this is going to be at making anything from it which improved ODF acceptance. The goal is to kill ODF since that was the purpose of MS OOXML to begin with and it was a response to ODF acceptance.
So yes, having the code will make it easier to see what was going on, there must be something in all this which will limit ODF in the market and/or propel MS OOXML forward. Microsoft remains in control of changes to the MS OOXML spec so regaining anything lost due to some temporary openness is still in the hands of Microsoft.
LoB
I think you probably hit the nail on the head with the IP/NDA comment. It is just not in Microsofts DNA to do anything to help competition. There is a plan to stop ODF in here because as I said, Microsoft does not do this and never has.
I guess the fact that they took back control of MS OOXML from ISO means that they could, for a short period, do everything to really show MS OOXML is an open spec. And after that period, as ODF withers away, they can start changing the format and only release the changes after they have shipped MS Office already having those changes. Public perception of inferiority and the inability to exchange data with MS Office users will eliminate those competitors in a few years. So they only need to keep MS Office in a majority position to regain anything lost in order to kill off ODF.
LoB