All the "Anonymous Cowards", and everybody who just randomly surfs on in and never even posts at all -- they can't very well, by definition, have any user preferences set; so they must get the static page, no?
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Bwah asks: "I guess you have seen lots of mfc mixed into builder apps then?"
No no; in that sense, you're quite right, of course. That's why I said that "fortunately, it _isn't_ anywhere near 99%" (or words to that effect). Quite probably, as you say, it's closer to 0%... I wouldn't know, since I've never seen, nor will I ever*, _any_ MFC code in apps built in _my_ favourite Borland application builder.
My point was only that since it _can_ be done, there _is_ a possibility that somebody, somewehere, is doing it. In that sense, C++B _is_ more of a "risk of MFC contamination" than Delphi, where that risk is ZERO*.
Can you agree to _that_ tiny little point at least, which is all I was trying to say? Since you didn't explicitly admit that "use" doesn't necessarily mean what you used (Heh!:-) it to mean, I mean...
Christian R. Conrad
*) Unless they do something really stupid to it, in a future version...? Naah, may the Ghods preserve us!
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
"Builder apps can call mfc crap, which is why it ships with mfc, but builder can't and doesn't use it."
No, it doesn't use it in its own IDE -- but linking to it in apps you build with it sure falls within what *I*, at least, would call 'using' it.
"VCL and MFC can coexist, but Builder itself only uses VCL. We're safe.:-)"
Naah. If 99% of all C++B-built *applications* use MFC, then either the port of C++B *without* MFC would be worthless, or we'd see a helluva lot of clamoring for a port of MFC, too. Fortunately, it is of course nowhere near 99% (anybody have any idea about the actual proportion?), but still: That *could* change. With C++B, we are *not* as "safe" from MFC as we are with Delphi.
Christian R. Conrad
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
I can't think of a single event that would do more to accelerate the development of crucial Linux apps than that. [porting C++ Builder to Linux]
I can -- porting Delphi!
Of course, this begs the question of which toolkit the vcl will be based upon:-)
Yup.
Since the win vcl is based on mfc's (through object pascal)
What?!?
What on Earth gave you that bizarre idea??? The VCL is written in Object Pascal, yes -- and MFC is a C++ library, which Delphi can't use. What Delphi gives you access to is the "good" old raw Win-API, as used in C (non-++) programming; and that is what the VCL is built on.
If you fear MFC influence (I would), then what you should be wary of might be, ironically, C++ Builder -- because it can use MFC (and actually comes bundled with it, I think), whereas Delphi does -- and can -- not.
it seems that qt would be the most likely candidate.
On the contrary, a raw API like GNOME's seems more suited to build one's own class library on top of, in stead of fighting with, or at least "going against the grain of", another class library -- like QT -- that almost certainly isn't designed along the same lines as the one you want to implement.
Christian R. Conrad
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
It's not like it's been available for almost a *year* or so (several months before all the other commercial-RDBMS vendors even began to come on board), or as if I ever *said*, right here on/. , that they had done so, or anything...
Oh, wait -- it IS exactly like that!
(See "my" URL above? Yeah, I changed it a few months back -- to keep it current when InterBase re-arranged their site; before that, it pointed to where IB4/Linux was available for download *then*!)
Sheesh, folks, don't you even read your *own* damn site?!?
Christian R. Conrad
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Because the products (Delphi, C++B, and so on) are *still* known as BORLAND Delphi, and so on. It became a "brand name" owned by Inprise, in stead of the name of the company.
The latest development (a month or two ago) is that they seem to be partially backing out of the name change: Inprise now has two divisions: "Inprise" for "enterprise" software, and "Borland.com" as the development tool maker and marketer.
But anyway, look at their website ( http://www.borland.com) and you'll see that the packaging says "Borland" just like it always did -- even when the URL was "inprise.com".
Christian R. Conrad
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Lx writes: "Do Linux users actually follow the philosophy that once you use proprietary software, you're somehow 'enslaved' to the company that made it? Somehow I'm prevented from throwing the software away and using something else?"
Yeah, right.
You didn't read the recent essay by SF writer Neal Stephenson (on/. yesterday), did you? Read (or re-read if you did) the bit about how MS Word held all his older work "hostage" in its proprietary file format.
Or consider for a moment the small- or medium-size company that has its transactional database systems built for it around Vendor X's RDBMS -- and its proprietary X-SQL dialect. The system is built for them by consultant A... is further developed for them by consultant B... new functions are added for them by consultant C... And after a few years they have such a mess of X-SQL procedures that they can't migrate to another RDBMS without a massive (and costly; possibly *prohibitevely* costly) re-write.
Yes, people (or companies) can very easily become "trapped" using proprietary software -- it is often NOT as easy as "throwing the software away and using something else".
Lx goes on: "The guy can't figure out that people want software that works well, and that its freeness is just a perk."
And then, at the end of his post: "Those are just my thoughts. Maybe I'm just one of the unwashed masses that 'don't care about freedom.'"
Yeah, well... I think you've answered that already.
Christian R. Conrad
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Frater 219 writes: [Quoting the previous poster] "Why doesn't ESR ask 'What do you people think?'"
"Because it is your job to tell him what you think."
Uuhh... How can we, if we don't know *what* he'll release an opinion about until he *has* already made it public? Should everybody constantly bombard him with all their thoughts on the philosophy of free software / open source, licensing issues, and everything else, on the off chance that the precise thing they're thinking about *might* be the subject of tomorrow's "Open Source Community"-stamped press release by ESR?
"He's not a pollster or an elected representative any more than he's a boss or leader. He's an opinionated man who gets listened to by the media. If you want him to speak for you, you'd better bother to convince him of what you think."
But then, unless you want thousands of people to flood him with e-mail on everything between heaven and earth -- how the heck would he have time to even *read* it all, let alone to do anything else? -- for that to work, for people to be *able* to "convince him of what you think", *he* would first have to announce his *intentions*. By posting on a newsgroup, here on Slashdot, or on some mailing list, something like "Hey guys, I'm thinking about announcing this and that -- what does everybody think? Mail me at..." Does he do that? Not that I know of; and if he does, apparently he doesn't do it in the right places.
"Given what he said in this article about the APSL debate, it seems to me that he'd prefer that if you have a problem with what he's said or done, that you do the simple and easy thing of emailing him, rather than posting 'ESR Betrays Free Source; Film At 11!' to Slashdot. This is hardly an unreasonable request."
Yes, it is.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong -- I don't follow *all* the news in the free software world, so I might have missed it -- but wasn't the first thing *anybody* (other than Apple and ESR) heard about the APSL, the public announcement that "the Open Source community" had endorsed it? It sure was the first mention of the whole idea that *I* saw.
P/A/J and RMS had to announce their concerns over the APSL *after* the fact, after ESR had told the world that "the Open Source community" had accepted Apple calling it "Open Source". I'm sure if ESR had posted a "Guys, I've been approached by Apple with this suggested license... Mail me" message in some appropriate forum, they *would* have voiced their conccerns to him in private, beforehand. So quite obviously, he *hadn't* done that.
This mess, and others like it, is wholly ESR's fault -- for facing the community he claims to "represent" with the fait accompli of his own unilateral actions time after time. What way is that of "representing" anything?!?
"This isn't a matter of censorship or of ESR refusing to respond to public critiques -- as should be obvious, he does respond to public critiques. It's a matter of politeness. If someone says something mistaken or stupid in public, it might just be better to ask him/her in private 'Did you really mean that? Did you consider the following implications?' rather than denouncing him/her publicly. This gives him/her the chance to amend his/her previous statements without losing face, as well as maintaining a level of civility."
Then those previous statements shouldn't have been *made* public under the label of representing something we don't yet know for sure that they represent -- i.e, the considered opinion of "the Open Source community" -- should they? For behaviour like that, a "representative" *deserves* to lose face, IMO. As an "ambassador", it's part of his job to make sure the community gets a chance to ask "Do we really want to do that? Have we considered the following implications?" BEFORE something is made public "on behalf" of those he claims to represent.
Christian R. Conrad
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
"I can't see any link this has to the net at all, frankly. One slimeball, somewhere, has, according to someone else, somewhere, a misconception about the internet, and about rape. That was about a paragraph of the whole story,"
Yeah, but that was the main *point* of the story: That this dumb-ass dick thought the internet and rape are inextricably *linked* somehow. (The fact that it's only a paragraph of the whole story is neither here nor there -- a short and simple point can be put shortly and simply. And the rest of the story is the necessary background; the point being shorter than the background is only natural and shouldn't be a problem, except to the illiterate.)
That's very much news for Internet nerds, I would think -- or do you *like* being thought of as a rapist just because you're on the 'Net? No? Didn't think so... And neither do I. So the question becomes, what can be done about it? That is precisely the kind of discussion/. is for, IMO.
"and we're not even told the story to the finish! Was the situation resolved? What was the man's story?"
Uh, I got the impression that the case -- as well as any action Kira might take against the clueless dick -- is still pending. But maybe it's my reading comprehension that's deficient.
"I don't doubt that these events occurred, but it's simply playing on people's emotions to post such a one-sided story."
Yeah, let's invite Microsoft to post rebuttals to every story about *their* egregious behaviour too, and not dignify the stories by giving them any attention until Microsoft acknowledges them...
Silly, right?
Often, we can discuss rationally even though we have only one side to go on, because we know the parties from before and already have an opinion about them. In other cases, even if it later turns out that the facts were wrong, it doesn't invalidate the discussion but just makes it hypothetical: The conclusions would still be the correct ones, *if* the facts were this or that. And in this case, I think the story had such ample background precisely so we sould be able to judge its plausibility better for ourselves.
"And, as you can see, all it produced was bickering about rape, and very little about the internet, the supposed link it had."
Either you're using the wrong score level, or the good posts were posted, and active moderating took place, after you posted that but before I replied -- I've seen quite a lot of good thoughtful posts on what I percieve to be the *real* issue. Sure there are a lot of adolescent-seeming comments too; but this is/., so what do you *expect*?!?
Christian R. Conrad
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Deirdre writes: "You miss the obvious: most of the "women" acting like "sluts" online are men."
Yeah, that's surely probable. (I don't know; I've never IRC'ed, only ICQ-chatted online with a few people I've met in newsgroups.)
But I'd guess it's also possible that some girls are taking the opportunity, protected by (what they at least percieve to be) the safe anonymity of the 'Net, to act out a lot more brashly than they normally would -- precisely *because* women are supposed to be such demure and chaste creatures (lest they be "asking for it").
If society's expectations in "real life" were to become a little more realistic, those girls would perhaps act a little more daringly IRL without endangering their reputations (and above all, not fearing that they'd be accused of "asking for it" in "meatspace"). But since society's expectations of "correct" behaviour for women are *not* realistic, some girls act out their "wilder side" in on-line conversations in stead; and since that's just a compensation for a problem with the whole *world* they live in, they may tend to over-act a little.
Just a guess, but it seems plausible to me.
Christian R. Conrad
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
I think you misread Nick's motives, James.
on
ESR Wants to Retire
·
· Score: 1
James Henstridge writes:
"Someone who considers Tim O'Reilly a suitable person to represent, and accept a prize for, the 'colabrorative software movement' (apparently he uses that term because he doesn't care about the free speach aspect of free software) does not get my vote as a representative of the free software community."
No, no, it wasn't like that at all! Nick had a forum at InfoWorld on that award *before* he gave it, asking for input from us regulars on whom he should give it to; so we're partly to "blame" if you're so damn sure the result was bad. But I don't think it was -- what Nick did, and what you seem to see as total cluelessness, was a (pretty darn good, IMO) compromise. Whom should he award? Well, several of the most prominent Open Source / Free Software figures had recently been given other rewards already; selecting any particular one would have a) contributed to "over-hyping" a single person, and b) depending on whom he selected, it would probably have pissed off either the Open Source crowd, or the Free Software crowd.
(More on point a: I personally was of the opinion that the "OSS" guys had been recieving more than their fair share of the limelight, and the FSF had been unfairly ignored. The obvious compromise candidate, in the middle between RMS and ESR/BP, would of course have been Linus. But for one thing, he had been the most media-hyped of them all around New Year's "Award Edition season", and for another, he had already been given credit for what was *not* his invention: There is a Linus quote [someone here on/. has it as a.sig] to the effect that "the best thing about Linux isn't the code itself, but the freedom to change it". I think he's absolutely right in that, and I'm not saying *he* claims to have invented the means to do that, but still: I have seen, both on the 'Net [sorry, can't recall where] and in print, stories that say Linus invented the "Free Software" idea [PC Magazine UK January 1999, p. 140 -- OK, it's ZD, but the UK edition is usually a little less clue deficient than its US sibling: "Taking its cue from founder Linus Torvalds, who concieved the idea that if everyone did the work, everyone would own it..." No, *that* was RMS' idea]. So de-emphasizing Linus the person for a bit, and emphasizing Linux' original debt to the pre-existing FSF, looked like the right thing to me. What Nick did fulfills at least the first half of that idea.)
Well, anyway, many IWE posters suggested Nick give the award to the whole "movement", and that's what he did in the end. But then you have to have someone to recieve it "on behalf of the movement", and since the person chosen for *that* honour will inevitably come to be seen as having a little more share in the award than anybody else -- why else would he be the one to recieve it? -- you're back at problem a), and especially b) above. Who is there that isn't either a Free Software coder, or an Open Source coder, to recieve it? Obviously, somebody who isn't a coder at all! And, disregarding for the moment RMS' outburst about ORA suppressing the chances for Free Documentation, one thing that both sides pretty much agree on is that O'Reilly books are the best. For that reason, Tim O'Reilly was a very good choice for a compromise recipient of the award.
But, there was still one dilemma, and I think the way Nick solved that was pure genius: What do you *call* the movement you are awarding? That's the whole crux again, problem b) in my first paragraph. Call it the "Open Source movement", and you piss off the Free Software crowd; call it the "Free Software movement", and you piss off the Open Source crowd. But what the heck is the "collaborative software movement" -- had *you* ever heard or read the expression before?!? I hadn't, and I don't think I've seen it since, either. But it's obvious that it *means* this same movement that some of us want to call the "Open Source movement", and others want to call the "Free Software movement", isn't it?
Only without *calling* it *either* name, thus avoiding conflict and making it clear that the award goes to both sides of the movement equally. As I said, IMO that was a brilliant solution.
Christian R. Conrad
NOTE: Posted on/. and e-mailed to James.
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
"The article was written by Andrew Schuman, not Andrew Schulman."
It seems to be 'Shuman', actually, with not only the l but the c missing too.
But I did a double-take too when I first saw it, before I noticed the difference.
And that set me thinking -- OK, so am I seeing invisible black helicopters here? -- maybe that's WHY they hired the guy in the first place?
Think about it: If more people are like Bob K, and have heard of the real guy, and miss the difference in how this one spells his name... Cheap extra credibility for Slate, right?
Another reason for my theory: They have to have hired him for *some* reason, and it sure can't be his writing -- that sucks almost as bad as his knowledge...
Christian R. Conrad
Opinions are MINE, not my employer's -- Hedengren, in Finland.
Sorry, Sir Nyet and Pope Lx, I beat you to it; and Erskin, while you are essentially correct, you are only partially so.
The word "Esquire", or "Squire" (also "Equerry"?) originally meant "assistant to a knight" -- the guy who hands him his lances at a jousting tournament, and in between that travels with him and carries his weapons, keeps track of his possessions, shines his (steel?:-) boots and generally maintains the knight as a fighter; a one-man support unit for a one-man army. In mediaeval times, it was a fairly coveted position, and thus a title of some respect.
Then, after feudalism was dropped in England, they kept (and still keep) the concept of nobility; the Queen "knights" people annually, and they become Sir whatever. Or nowadays, when women can be "knighted", Dame Whatever (the only example that comes to mind is Dame Judi Dench, the actress); "lady" is an attribute for the wife of a nobleman, who wasn't nobility in her own right. And, since they didn't have serfs or thralls any more either, "Squire" or "Esquire" became the term for all non-noble men or "ordinary gentlemen"; later, when the Victorian class system was fully crystalized, the form "squire" had negative connotations for a while (kind of like "Sir"-in-a-disdainful-tone as an insult, I guess).
Anyway, what with really poor folk, day labourers and even "lower class" (down to what is called "homeless people" nowadays, I suppose?) apparently not rating even "esquire", it became the mark of a "gentleman of quality" to call himself "Esq."; and this title has for some reason survived among (or perhaps rather, "been appropriated by") the lawyerly profession -- at least in America, I don't think they do it in England -- probably originally just because some lawyers wanted to show that they were trustworthy "gentlemen" and not just any riff-raff. (Heh -- *that* plan sure worked out fine, considering the abundance of lawyer jokes...:-)
Be that as it may, when L.A.M.,E first showed up at the InfoWorld fora, I and another IWE regular called khasim (I think I've seen him here too; I know he sometimes posts ZD talkbacks) got annoyed at this affectation and started calling ourselves "Sirs" -- knights being one step up from squires, you see... And it was Ben Kosse (who posts as "bkosse" here on/. as well as at IWE), I think, who dubbed me "Sir Cyclic", for my initials and the checksum concept. Then the whole thing rapidly got out of hand, with me and khasim competing for who was "the boss": We progressed through various titles like Baronets and Counts through Dukes up to Kings; I can't recall for sure but I think khasim became an Emperor just before I became the Great Khan (from which title I claim the victory; Genghis/Djingis [="the Great"] Khan's empire was the largest ever to have existed); and I think we explored the religious angle too, possibly up to and including the Holy Seat.
To summarize: "Esq." is just a silly affectation among American lawyers, and doesn't really mean anything better than any man can call himself. It certainly isn't an abbreviation of any scholastic degree L.A.M.,E (or any other chaser of ambulances) has earned. And the only positive contribution L.A.M.,E has ever made to anything, AFAICS, is providing the inspiration for why I still sign some of my posts (especially off-topic or jocular ones) on IWE as
Sir Cyclic
Opinions are MINE, not my employer's -- Hedengren, in Finland.
It says in that post: "Date posted: Sat, 19 Sep 1998" -- that's long after L.A.M., E's original appearance on the IWE fora. IIRC, he first showed up back in May or June -98; the forum you point to is from his second or possibly his third "run" at IWE. (Which would explain, if not exactly excuse, my own somewhat hot-tempered and short-shrift responses to him; I *was* among those who tried to argue rationally with him at first.)
Christian R. Conrad
Opinions are MINE, not my employer's -- Hedengren, in Finland.
So, let me get this straight. Linux [...] must now bend to the whims of ISVs?
No, it must give them, the ISVs, something to "bend to" -- state its own "whims" clearly, that's all.
Linux [...] must stifle experimental development, and lockitself to an arbitrary standard (beyond POSIX), to make life easier for ISVs to keep their source code proprietary?
No, but to make life easier for consumers to buy software from those ISVs.
[I]t seems to me that Linux has been doing just fine before all the big names started porting and supporting Linux.
Yeah, it's "doing just fine" among those few (relative to the myriads of Windows users) hackers and techno-nerds who use it today. But who cares about the great unwashed masses -- as long as we "L33T D00DZ" can have our toy to ourselves everything is "just fine", right?
And, now that the media attention is glaring, I see no reason for the current system of distributions and flexibility to change.
Heh... Yes, "glaring" is a good word to use here, given all its connotations... And given those, I'm not sure it's the word you should have chosen, if you wanted to paint a rosy-red picture like it seems you did. That lovely lava-lamp mood light of media attention can soon turn into the harsh glare of oncoming headlights (mounted on a truck known as "wide-spread consumer dissatisfaction"), if Linux doesn't live up to the feel-good hype it is currently recieving.
./configure --switches; make ; make install
Yeah, that will be a hit with the Mom-and-Pop crowd! Hey, what exactly are those "--switches"? And are you sure they'll work on any distribution? Mom and Pop won't be able to figure them out, if the software package they just bought is configured for a distro other than the one they are attempting to install it on, you know.
After all, even if IBM, Intel, and everybody suddenly stops supporting linux, us Free software and Open source types will still be able to do with linux what we already do with it.
Oh, forgive me for not realizing that Linux was built for your pleasure and your pleasure alone. BTW, what exactly is it that you "already" do with Linux -- Web surfing, IRC and games, I suppose...?
Only, as time goes on, free software alternatives grow stronger and stronger. Any Day Now (tm), gnumeric or KOffice or AbiWord or something will be able to do all that MS Word or Excel does for people. Real Soon Now (tm) Corel or Red Hat or somebody will make a distribution that truly is as comfortable for users to install and configure as Windows 98.
The only problem being that gnumeric will run "out-of-the-box" only on Corel or Debian, KOffice on Corel or Red Hat, and AbiWord only on Debian or Red Hat, or something like that. The difference, furthermore, being that MS Word and Excel -- and Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect for Windows -- run "out-of-the-box" on all the distributions" of Windows 98 and NT 4! (Yes, I know there's only one of each!:-) (That's why we need a little standardization among distros, to achieve those same advantages.)
Those of us who like linux are content to bite the bullet and use Windows when we have to, and wait until linux gets all the productivity software it needs, with source code included.
Again, forgive me for not realizing that you and you alone have the authority to decree that ISVs who want to release proprietary software on Linux -- and people who want to run that proprietary software -- should just fuck off and die, what with Linux being your and the other "L33T D00DZ" personal playground and all...
Those of us who have looked at perl, egcs, emacs, KDE, and more know that we don't need no stinkin' linux-specific standards, and we don't need no stinkin' proprietary software.
And your needs are of course the one and only World Needs Standard -- now that seems to be a Standard you're in favour of...
It may sound like wishful thinking; many people do need proprietary software to get their jobs done. But, those people who need that software aren't using linux right now anyway. So, if ISV's don't develop for them, then it won't hurt linux's market share at all.
??? Are you stupid, or what's wrong with you? Of bloody course it will hurt Linux's market share if people who could use Linux if there were a standard for non-OSS ISVs to write to -- can't, because there is no standard for non-OSS ISVs to write to!
linux isn't going to suddenly DIE because a few ISV's decide it's too hard to support Red Hat, SuSE, AND Debian.
No, it won't "suddenly DIE" -- it can live on among those few (yes, relatively speaking it is still a few) hackers and techno-nerds who use it today. If that's what you want, to doom Linux to such a marginal existence, and denying ordinary end-users a realistic chance at using it, then just say so. But please don't try to pass it off as striking some great blow for freedom -- it's just the opposite.
Christian R. Conrad
Opinions are MINE, not my employer's -- Hedengren, in Finland.
That should be "Wouldn't the result be the same in C/C++ if you used 'If (1 & !1)' in stead of 'If (1 && !1)'?" Opinions are MINE, not my employer's -- Hedengren, in Finland.
Their Editor-in-Chief, Sandy Reed, is on record claiming "NT clearly is the future of computing". Just check their "Web-based voting" forum from March/April 1997; especially "Take a look at this Sandy Reed post". For some reason, the post mr Joswig refers to gives a 404 error... But then, IWE's forum software has a habit of crashing now and then, mysteriously mangling posts which make good points againt M$ and IW's pro-M$ bias (I know, it's happened to me too). Anyway, when mr Joswig wrote that, it was still there to be checked, so I don't think he made it up. Another goodie is her post Why should I apologize? -- Her unsubstantiated allegation that "OS/2 Zealots stuffed the ballot" (on the front page of the print edition) has not yet been retracted; all she did was a lame, half-hearted "apology" for calling them "zealots", buried inside her column a few weeks later.
Christian R. Conrad
Opinions are MINE, not my employer's -- Hedengren, in Finland.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, right.
Rome is full of them, bonehead!
Actually, ITALY is full of them.
Sheesh...
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
All the "Anonymous Cowards", and everybody who just randomly surfs on in and never even posts at all -- they can't very well, by definition, have any user preferences set; so they must get the static page, no?
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Bwah asks: "I guess you have seen lots of mfc mixed into builder apps then?"
:-) it to mean, I mean...
No no; in that sense, you're quite right, of course. That's why I said that "fortunately, it _isn't_ anywhere near 99%" (or words to that effect). Quite probably, as you say, it's closer to 0%... I wouldn't know, since I've never seen, nor will I ever*, _any_ MFC code in apps built in _my_ favourite Borland application builder.
My point was only that since it _can_ be done, there _is_ a possibility that somebody, somewehere, is doing it. In that sense, C++B _is_ more of a "risk of MFC contamination" than Delphi, where that risk is ZERO*.
Can you agree to _that_ tiny little point at least, which is all I was trying to say? Since you didn't explicitly admit that "use" doesn't necessarily mean what you used (Heh!
Christian R. Conrad
*) Unless they do something really stupid to it, in a future version...? Naah, may the Ghods preserve us!
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
I was talking about "THE" VCL, and how it is built in OP. Where did I say that C++B uses a different one than Delphi?
Christian R. Conrad
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Bwah writes:
:-)"
"Builder apps can call mfc crap, which is why it ships with mfc, but builder can't and doesn't use it."
No, it doesn't use it in its own IDE -- but linking to it in apps you build with it sure falls within what *I*, at least, would call 'using' it.
"VCL and MFC can coexist, but Builder itself only uses VCL. We're safe.
Naah. If 99% of all C++B-built *applications* use MFC, then either the port of C++B *without* MFC would be worthless, or we'd see a helluva lot of clamoring for a port of MFC, too. Fortunately, it is of course nowhere near 99% (anybody have any idea about the actual proportion?), but still: That *could* change. With C++B, we are *not* as "safe" from MFC as we are with Delphi.
Christian R. Conrad
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
"TooOldForThis" writes:
I can -- porting Delphi!
Yup.
What?!?
What on Earth gave you that bizarre idea??? The VCL is written in Object Pascal, yes -- and MFC is a C++ library, which Delphi can't use. What Delphi gives you access to is the "good" old raw Win-API, as used in C (non-++) programming; and that is what the VCL is built on.
If you fear MFC influence (I would), then what you should be wary of might be, ironically, C++ Builder -- because it can use MFC (and actually comes bundled with it, I think), whereas Delphi does -- and can -- not.
On the contrary, a raw API like GNOME's seems more suited to build one's own class library on top of, in stead of fighting with, or at least "going against the grain of", another class library -- like QT -- that almost certainly isn't designed along the same lines as the one you want to implement.
Christian R. Conrad
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
It's not like it's been available for almost a *year* or so (several months before all the other commercial-RDBMS vendors even began to come on board), or as if I ever *said*, right here on
Oh, wait -- it IS exactly like that!
(See "my" URL above? Yeah, I changed it a few months back -- to keep it current when InterBase re-arranged their site; before that, it pointed to where IB4/Linux was available for download *then*!)
Sheesh, folks, don't you even read your *own* damn site?!?
Christian R. Conrad
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
No, it's probably an English-German thing like "Diese Studie zeigt..." or an English-Swedish thing like "Denna studie visar..."
HTH.
Christian R. Conrad
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Because the products (Delphi, C++B, and so on) are *still* known as BORLAND Delphi, and so on. It became a "brand name" owned by Inprise, in stead of the name of the company.
The latest development (a month or two ago) is that they seem to be partially backing out of the name change: Inprise now has two divisions: "Inprise" for "enterprise" software, and "Borland.com" as the development tool maker and marketer.
But anyway, look at their website ( http://www.borland.com) and you'll see that the packaging says "Borland" just like it always did -- even when the URL was "inprise.com".
Christian R. Conrad
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Lx writes:
/. yesterday), did you? Read (or re-read if you did) the bit about how MS Word held all his older work "hostage" in its proprietary file format.
"Do Linux users actually follow the philosophy that once you use proprietary software, you're somehow 'enslaved' to the company that made it? Somehow I'm prevented from throwing the software away and using something else?"
Yeah, right.
You didn't read the recent essay by SF writer Neal Stephenson (on
Or consider for a moment the small- or medium-size company that has its transactional database systems built for it around Vendor X's RDBMS -- and its proprietary X-SQL dialect. The system is built for them by consultant A... is further developed for them by consultant B... new functions are added for them by consultant C... And after a few years they have such a mess of X-SQL procedures that they can't migrate to another RDBMS without a massive (and costly; possibly *prohibitevely* costly) re-write.
Yes, people (or companies) can very easily become "trapped" using proprietary software -- it is often NOT as easy as "throwing the software away and using something else".
Lx goes on:
"The guy can't figure out that people want software that works well, and that its freeness is just a perk."
And then, at the end of his post:
"Those are just my thoughts. Maybe I'm just one of the unwashed masses that 'don't care about freedom.'"
Yeah, well... I think you've answered that already.
Christian R. Conrad
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Frater 219 writes:
... Mail me" message in some appropriate forum, they *would* have voiced their conccerns to him in private, beforehand. So quite obviously, he *hadn't* done that.
[Quoting the previous poster]
"Why doesn't ESR ask 'What do you people think?'"
"Because it is your job to tell him what you think."
Uuhh... How can we, if we don't know *what* he'll release an opinion about until he *has* already made it public? Should everybody constantly bombard him with all their thoughts on the philosophy of free software / open source, licensing issues, and everything else, on the off chance that the precise thing they're thinking about *might* be the subject of tomorrow's "Open Source Community"-stamped press release by ESR?
"He's not a pollster or an elected representative any more than he's a boss or leader. He's an opinionated man who gets listened to by the media. If you want him to speak for you, you'd better bother to convince him of what you think."
But then, unless you want thousands of people to flood him with e-mail on everything between heaven and earth -- how the heck would he have time to even *read* it all, let alone to do anything else? -- for that to work, for people to be *able* to "convince him of what you think", *he* would first have to announce his *intentions*. By posting on a newsgroup, here on Slashdot, or on some mailing list, something like "Hey guys, I'm thinking about announcing this and that -- what does everybody think? Mail me at..." Does he do that? Not that I know of; and if he does, apparently he doesn't do it in the right places.
"Given what he said in this article about the APSL debate, it seems to me that he'd prefer that if you have a problem with what he's said or done, that you do the simple and easy thing of emailing him, rather than posting 'ESR Betrays Free Source; Film At 11!' to Slashdot. This is hardly an unreasonable request."
Yes, it is.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong -- I don't follow *all* the news in the free software world, so I might have missed it -- but wasn't the first thing *anybody* (other than Apple and ESR) heard about the APSL, the public announcement that "the Open Source community" had endorsed it? It sure was the first mention of the whole idea that *I* saw.
P/A/J and RMS had to announce their concerns over the APSL *after* the fact, after ESR had told the world that "the Open Source community" had accepted Apple calling it "Open Source". I'm sure if ESR had posted a "Guys, I've been approached by Apple with this suggested license
This mess, and others like it, is wholly ESR's fault -- for facing the community he claims to "represent" with the fait accompli of his own unilateral actions time after time. What way is that of "representing" anything?!?
"This isn't a matter of censorship or of ESR refusing to respond to public critiques -- as should be obvious, he does respond to public critiques. It's a matter of politeness. If someone says something mistaken or stupid in public, it might just be better to ask him/her in private 'Did you really mean that? Did you consider the following implications?' rather than denouncing him/her publicly. This gives him/her the chance to amend his/her previous statements without losing face, as well as maintaining a level of civility."
Then those previous statements shouldn't have been *made* public under the label of representing something we don't yet know for sure that they represent -- i.e, the considered opinion of "the Open Source community" -- should they? For behaviour like that, a "representative" *deserves* to lose face, IMO. As an "ambassador", it's part of his job to make sure the community gets a chance to ask "Do we really want to do that? Have we considered the following implications?" BEFORE something is made public "on behalf" of those he claims to represent.
Christian R. Conrad
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Lx writes:
/. is for, IMO.
/., so what do you *expect*?!?
"I can't see any link this has to the net at all, frankly. One slimeball, somewhere, has, according to someone else, somewhere, a misconception about the internet, and about rape. That was about a paragraph of the whole story,"
Yeah, but that was the main *point* of the story: That this dumb-ass dick thought the internet and rape are inextricably *linked* somehow. (The fact that it's only a paragraph of the whole story is neither here nor there -- a short and simple point can be put shortly and simply. And the rest of the story is the necessary background; the point being shorter than the background is only natural and shouldn't be a problem, except to the illiterate.)
That's very much news for Internet nerds, I would think -- or do you *like* being thought of as a rapist just because you're on the 'Net? No? Didn't think so... And neither do I. So the question becomes, what can be done about it? That is precisely the kind of discussion
"and we're not even told the story to the finish! Was the situation resolved? What was the man's story?"
Uh, I got the impression that the case -- as well as any action Kira might take against the clueless dick -- is still pending. But maybe it's my reading comprehension that's deficient.
"I don't doubt that these events occurred, but it's simply playing on people's emotions to post such a one-sided story."
Yeah, let's invite Microsoft to post rebuttals to every story about *their* egregious behaviour too, and not dignify the stories by giving them any attention until Microsoft acknowledges them...
Silly, right?
Often, we can discuss rationally even though we have only one side to go on, because we know the parties from before and already have an opinion about them. In other cases, even if it later turns out that the facts were wrong, it doesn't invalidate the discussion but just makes it hypothetical: The conclusions would still be the correct ones, *if* the facts were this or that. And in this case, I think the story had such ample background precisely so we sould be able to judge its plausibility better for ourselves.
"And, as you can see, all it produced was bickering about rape, and very little about the internet, the supposed link it had."
Either you're using the wrong score level, or the good posts were posted, and active moderating took place, after you posted that but before I replied -- I've seen quite a lot of good thoughtful posts on what I percieve to be the *real* issue. Sure there are a lot of adolescent-seeming comments too; but this is
Christian R. Conrad
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Deirdre writes: "You miss the obvious: most of the "women" acting like "sluts" online are men."
Yeah, that's surely probable. (I don't know; I've never IRC'ed, only ICQ-chatted online with a few people I've met in newsgroups.)
But I'd guess it's also possible that some girls are taking the opportunity, protected by (what they at least percieve to be) the safe anonymity of the 'Net, to act out a lot more brashly than they normally would -- precisely *because* women are supposed to be such demure and chaste creatures (lest they be "asking for it").
If society's expectations in "real life" were to become a little more realistic, those girls would perhaps act a little more daringly IRL without endangering their reputations (and above all, not fearing that they'd be accused of "asking for it" in "meatspace"). But since society's expectations of "correct" behaviour for women are *not* realistic, some girls act out their "wilder side" in on-line conversations in stead; and since that's just a compensation for a problem with the whole *world* they live in, they may tend to over-act a little.
Just a guess, but it seems plausible to me.
Christian R. Conrad
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
James Henstridge writes:
/. has it as a .sig] to the effect that "the best thing about Linux isn't the code itself, but the freedom to change it". I think he's absolutely right in that, and I'm not saying *he* claims to have invented the means to do that, but still: I have seen, both on the 'Net [sorry, can't recall where] and in print, stories that say Linus invented the "Free Software" idea [PC Magazine UK January 1999, p. 140 -- OK, it's ZD, but the UK edition is usually a little less clue deficient than its US sibling: "Taking its cue from founder Linus Torvalds, who concieved the idea that if everyone did the work, everyone would own it..." No, *that* was RMS' idea]. So de-emphasizing Linus the person for a bit, and emphasizing Linux' original debt to the pre-existing FSF, looked like the right thing to me. What Nick did fulfills at least the first half of that idea.)
/. and e-mailed to James.
"Someone who considers Tim O'Reilly a suitable person to represent, and accept a prize for, the 'colabrorative software movement' (apparently he uses that term because he doesn't care about the free speach aspect of free software) does not get my vote as a representative of the free software community."
No, no, it wasn't like that at all! Nick had a forum at InfoWorld on that award *before* he gave it, asking for input from us regulars on whom he should give it to; so we're partly to "blame" if you're so damn sure the result was bad. But I don't think it was -- what Nick did, and what you seem to see as total cluelessness, was a (pretty darn good, IMO) compromise. Whom should he award? Well, several of the most prominent Open Source / Free Software figures had recently been given other rewards already; selecting any particular one would have a) contributed to "over-hyping" a single person, and b) depending on whom he selected, it would probably have pissed off either the Open Source crowd, or the Free Software crowd.
(More on point a: I personally was of the opinion that the "OSS" guys had been recieving more than their fair share of the limelight, and the FSF had been unfairly ignored. The obvious compromise candidate, in the middle between RMS and ESR/BP, would of course have been Linus. But for one thing, he had been the most media-hyped of them all around New Year's "Award Edition season", and for another, he had already been given credit for what was *not* his invention: There is a Linus quote [someone here on
Well, anyway, many IWE posters suggested Nick give the award to the whole "movement", and that's what he did in the end. But then you have to have someone to recieve it "on behalf of the movement", and since the person chosen for *that* honour will inevitably come to be seen as having a little more share in the award than anybody else -- why else would he be the one to recieve it? -- you're back at problem a), and especially b) above. Who is there that isn't either a Free Software coder, or an Open Source coder, to recieve it? Obviously, somebody who isn't a coder at all! And, disregarding for the moment RMS' outburst about ORA suppressing the chances for Free Documentation, one thing that both sides pretty much agree on is that O'Reilly books are the best. For that reason, Tim O'Reilly was a very good choice for a compromise recipient of the award.
But, there was still one dilemma, and I think the way Nick solved that was pure genius: What do you *call* the movement you are awarding? That's the whole crux again, problem b) in my first paragraph. Call it the "Open Source movement", and you piss off the Free Software crowd; call it the "Free Software movement", and you piss off the Open Source crowd. But what the heck is the "collaborative software movement" -- had *you* ever heard or read the expression before?!? I hadn't, and I don't think I've seen it since, either. But it's obvious that it *means* this same movement that some of us want to call the "Open Source movement", and others want to call the "Free Software movement", isn't it?
Only without *calling* it *either* name, thus avoiding conflict and making it clear that the award goes to both sides of the movement equally. As I said, IMO that was a brilliant solution.
Christian R. Conrad
NOTE: Posted on
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
"The article was written by Andrew Schuman, not Andrew Schulman."
It seems to be 'Shuman', actually, with not only the l but the c missing too.
But I did a double-take too when I first saw it, before I noticed the difference.
And that set me thinking -- OK, so am I seeing invisible black helicopters here? -- maybe that's WHY they hired the guy in the first place?
Think about it: If more people are like Bob K, and have heard of the real guy, and miss the difference in how this one spells his name... Cheap extra credibility for Slate, right?
Another reason for my theory: They have to have hired him for *some* reason, and it sure can't be his writing -- that sucks almost as bad as his knowledge...
Christian R. Conrad
Opinions are MINE, not my employer's -- Hedengren, in Finland.
Check out the User Friendly Cartoon for Dec 13, 1998 and you'll see the connection...
Opinions are MINE, not my employer's -- Hedengren, in Finland.
Sorry, Sir Nyet and Pope Lx, I beat you to it; and Erskin, while you are essentially correct, you are only partially so.
:-) boots and generally maintains the knight as a fighter; a one-man support unit for a one-man army. In mediaeval times, it was a fairly coveted position, and thus a title of some respect.
:-)
/. as well as at IWE), I think, who dubbed me "Sir Cyclic", for my initials and the checksum concept. Then the whole thing rapidly got out of hand, with me and khasim competing for who was "the boss": We progressed through various titles like Baronets and Counts through Dukes up to Kings; I can't recall for sure but I think khasim became an Emperor just before I became the Great Khan (from which title I claim the victory; Genghis/Djingis [="the Great"] Khan's empire was the largest ever to have existed); and I think we explored the religious angle too, possibly up to and including the Holy Seat.
The word "Esquire", or "Squire" (also "Equerry"?) originally meant "assistant to a knight" -- the guy who hands him his lances at a jousting tournament, and in between that travels with him and carries his weapons, keeps track of his possessions, shines his (steel?
Then, after feudalism was dropped in England, they kept (and still keep) the concept of nobility; the Queen "knights" people annually, and they become Sir whatever. Or nowadays, when women can be "knighted", Dame Whatever (the only example that comes to mind is Dame Judi Dench, the actress); "lady" is an attribute for the wife of a nobleman, who wasn't nobility in her own right. And, since they didn't have serfs or thralls any more either, "Squire" or "Esquire" became the term for all non-noble men or "ordinary gentlemen"; later, when the Victorian class system was fully crystalized, the form "squire" had negative connotations for a while (kind of like "Sir"-in-a-disdainful-tone as an insult, I guess).
Anyway, what with really poor folk, day labourers and even "lower class" (down to what is called "homeless people" nowadays, I suppose?) apparently not rating even "esquire", it became the mark of a "gentleman of quality" to call himself "Esq."; and this title has for some reason survived among (or perhaps rather, "been appropriated by") the lawyerly profession -- at least in America, I don't think they do it in England -- probably originally just because some lawyers wanted to show that they were trustworthy "gentlemen" and not just any riff-raff. (Heh -- *that* plan sure worked out fine, considering the abundance of lawyer jokes...
Be that as it may, when L.A.M.,E first showed up at the InfoWorld fora, I and another IWE regular called khasim (I think I've seen him here too; I know he sometimes posts ZD talkbacks) got annoyed at this affectation and started calling ourselves "Sirs" -- knights being one step up from squires, you see... And it was Ben Kosse (who posts as "bkosse" here on
To summarize: "Esq." is just a silly affectation among American lawyers, and doesn't really mean anything better than any man can call himself. It certainly isn't an abbreviation of any scholastic degree L.A.M.,E (or any other chaser of ambulances) has earned. And the only positive contribution L.A.M.,E has ever made to anything, AFAICS, is providing the inspiration for why I still sign some of my posts (especially off-topic or jocular ones) on IWE as
Sir Cyclic
Opinions are MINE, not my employer's -- Hedengren, in Finland.
It says in that post: "Date posted: Sat, 19 Sep 1998" -- that's long after L.A.M., E's original appearance on the IWE fora. IIRC, he first showed up back in May or June -98; the forum you point to is from his second or possibly his third "run" at IWE. (Which would explain, if not exactly excuse, my own somewhat hot-tempered and short-shrift responses to him; I *was* among those who tried to argue rationally with him at first.)
Christian R. Conrad
Opinions are MINE, not my employer's -- Hedengren, in Finland.
No, it must give them, the ISVs, something to "bend to" -- state its own "whims" clearly, that's all.
No, but to make life easier for consumers to buy software from those ISVs.
Yeah, it's "doing just fine" among those few (relative to the myriads of Windows users) hackers and techno-nerds who use it today. But who cares about the great unwashed masses -- as long as we "L33T D00DZ" can have our toy to ourselves everything is "just fine", right?
Heh... Yes, "glaring" is a good word to use here, given all its connotations... And given those, I'm not sure it's the word you should have chosen, if you wanted to paint a rosy-red picture like it seems you did. That lovely lava-lamp mood light of media attention can soon turn into the harsh glare of oncoming headlights (mounted on a truck known as "wide-spread consumer dissatisfaction"), if Linux doesn't live up to the feel-good hype it is currently recieving.
Yeah, that will be a hit with the Mom-and-Pop crowd! Hey, what exactly are those "--switches"? And are you sure they'll work on any distribution? Mom and Pop won't be able to figure them out, if the software package they just bought is configured for a distro other than the one they are attempting to install it on, you know.
Oh, forgive me for not realizing that Linux was built for your pleasure and your pleasure alone. BTW, what exactly is it that you "already" do with Linux -- Web surfing, IRC and games, I suppose...?
The only problem being that gnumeric will run "out-of-the-box" only on Corel or Debian, KOffice on Corel or Red Hat, and AbiWord only on Debian or Red Hat, or something like that. The difference, furthermore, being that MS Word and Excel -- and Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect for Windows -- run "out-of-the-box" on all the distributions" of Windows 98 and NT 4! (Yes, I know there's only one of each! :-) (That's why we need a little standardization among distros, to achieve those same advantages.)
Again, forgive me for not realizing that you and you alone have the authority to decree that ISVs who want to release proprietary software on Linux -- and people who want to run that proprietary software -- should just fuck off and die, what with Linux being your and the other "L33T D00DZ" personal playground and all...
And your needs are of course the one and only World Needs Standard -- now that seems to be a Standard you're in favour of...
??? Are you stupid, or what's wrong with you? Of bloody course it will hurt Linux's market share if people who could use Linux if there were a standard for non-OSS ISVs to write to -- can't, because there is no standard for non-OSS ISVs to write to!
No, it won't "suddenly DIE" -- it can live on among those few (yes, relatively speaking it is still a few) hackers and techno-nerds who use it today. If that's what you want, to doom Linux to such a marginal existence, and denying ordinary end-users a realistic chance at using it, then just say so. But please don't try to pass it off as striking some great blow for freedom -- it's just the opposite.
Christian R. Conrad
Opinions are MINE, not my employer's -- Hedengren, in Finland.
That should be "Wouldn't the result be the same in C/C++ if you used 'If (1 & !1)' in stead of 'If (1 && !1)'?"
Opinions are MINE, not my employer's -- Hedengren, in Finland.
Their Editor-in-Chief, Sandy Reed, is on record claiming "NT clearly is the future of computing". Just check their "Web-based voting" forum from March/April 1997; especially "Take a look at this Sandy Reed post". For some reason, the post mr Joswig refers to gives a 404 error... But then, IWE's forum software has a habit of crashing now and then, mysteriously mangling posts which make good points againt M$ and IW's pro-M$ bias (I know, it's happened to me too). Anyway, when mr Joswig wrote that, it was still there to be checked, so I don't think he made it up. Another goodie is her post Why should I apologize? -- Her unsubstantiated allegation that "OS/2 Zealots stuffed the ballot" (on the front page of the print edition) has not yet been retracted; all she did was a lame, half-hearted "apology" for calling them "zealots", buried inside her column a few weeks later.
Christian R. Conrad
Opinions are MINE, not my employer's -- Hedengren, in Finland.