You don't beleive IE is a part of the OS because you clearly dont understand how windows and COM work.
IE hosts the HTML rendering COM component that essentially everything in windows uses. Think of it as a shared library.
How functional would your linux install be if you started removing shared librares. Say you removed libpng ? Sure, the system would boot, many many things would work, but suddenly apps compiled to render pngs wouldn't - at all. Depending on how they were written, they might not even start, because ld would not resolve the symbol at load time. Or, more analagous to the situation with COM, they'd load and start executing, and when they tried a dlopen() (or LoadLibrary or CoCreate or similar on windows) the app would be unable to continue properly.
So, given the huge number of apps that rely on the IE-supplied HTML rendering library (HTML help, the Add/Remove programs control panel iirc, just to name two big ones), blindly yanking all traces of IE seems like a monumentally stupid idea, no ?
Linux will run into the same thing in a few years, if app developers ever get smart and start using moz_embed instead of writing their own crappy broken HTML parsers/renderers. Suddenly browser choice will go away because effectively every app requires the mozilla rendering engine to be included.
Incidentally the way this could be avoided would be to write a shared library HTML renderer specification (something like a COM Interface in windows) that could be implemented by a stub.so library that mapped the incoming library calls to a run-time bindable implementation library of moz_embed, konquerer_whatever, or anything else you might like. The same could be done on windows, but there was never any collaboration to come up with a COM Interface for a "System html rendering component".
You're right. MS isn't generally sued over a bug. If the bug affects most people, it will be released typically in the next SP for that product, although people with support contracts get all kinds of fixes that never make it into the public's hands. If the problem is a bit wider and is hurting a mission critical app, but the next SP isn't yet ready to go out, theres something _else_ that only those customers get but is designed/tested a bit more thoughtfully than just a 1-customer fix. Call it an n-customer fix, where n is the number of customers that care about the issue and have contracts.
The servicing work is different on a per product team basis with MS. Both the product service life cycles, the types of issues that are considered for fixes. Additionally, each team has its own schedules and metrics regarding what needs to be fixed when.
Generally, "bugs" are NOT fixed in the next paid release. Paid releases tend to focus around new feature work and existing feature improvements. Its likely that something that is a fixable bug in this release wont even have the same code in the next release (it will have its own set of different bugs:)
The sorts of bugs that make it to the SE teams are things like 'using this particular widget in this particular situation causes a crash, here is my solid repro case'. Things like "adding new users sucks" or "the scheduler sucks, please make it better" are NOT generally "bug fixes".
Beleive it or not, when a bug comes into a team, typically its from a high profile customer with a contract. They get a private fix in bounded time, based upon a pre-agreed contract and the problem severity.
If the fix is low risk and the problem is likely to be run into by others, then that fix gets rolled into the next SP cycle.
So the people paying for support contracts are funding improvements that everyone else gets for free. Doesn't sound too different from the redhat service model, eh ?
(the difference being, that with redhat you can fix the problem yourself. but if you're that damn smart and have that much disposable time, why did you buy a support contract anyway ?)
This is one thing that i think people may fail to realize. Many of the bugs that Microsoft SE teams get do NOT affect a wide number of customers. It is a subtle bug that affects a few customers doing a few things.
The "community" is not in a position to fix such bugs, because they tend to never get discovered by the community at large, or even by the developer who owns the component. Infact, they wont even affect the majority of the community. It is essentially up to the person who has run into the bug to isolate it, research it, and then present the case to the person who owns the development of that software. In the case of MS, its MS. In the case of some open source component, it is quite often, the author. The author can fall off the face of the earth at any moment. the author can refuse to make the fix. the author can not understand the problem. the author could be on vacation. Unless the customer wants to be in the business of fixing software that they rely on instead of being in the business of their business (selling shoes, for instance), open source really isn't benefitting them.
This is why the community-fixes-my-bugs scenario really isn't all that realistic. Many bugs that really end up breaking people are too subtle to find in everyday perusal. If they affected _everyone_, they wouldn't be bugs in the first place.
Hi. I'm calling BS on this. Show me the data that supports these WACs*.
*Wild Assed Claim
i like mySQL a whole bunch too. But unless your contention is that the majority of all databases (and more interestingly, all people coding against databases) are home users or oss-friendly isp's or the other niche places mySQL is used, i think you're full of it.
It's a point worth considering. And its a low hanging fruit in political discourse, given how oftwen americans are bombarded with "give money to this random charity that spends 90% of your money on administrative fees and sends the other 10% to the dictatorship in power in some random country"
I'm sick of hearing of africas problems. I'm also sick of people criticizing america when it doesn't bail someone out, and then critcizing america again when we _do_ bail someone out.
I've owned 2 different BMWs and done moderate interior work on both of them. The seat he's pulled here looks like its from an E34 5 series (1989-1995). It might be from a similar vintage 7 series as well.
Had he chosen a slightly earlier seat, mounting it would have been significantly easier, as the E12 and E28 5 series seats simply bolt to the floor of the vehicle with 4 17mm bolts.
Incidentally, you can often get these seats _extremely_ cheaply at junkyards. I got an entire 1985 528e interior (non power seats, however) for $60 bucks at a junkyard.
Also, the seats he has pictured are in no way high performance seats. they have the collapsable arm rest which makes them more like captains chairs. BMW sport seats have thick deep side bolsters that keep your body planted during high side loading conditions. These seats are from a comfortable touring car, not a racing machine.
Excellent list. Two domain specific ones i'd add are:
Expert C Programming: Deep C Secrets
This is the orange book with a blue fish on the cover. the guy that wrote it worked for Sun on the c-compiler or the kernel (dont recall, honestly).
This book is hillarious and manages to tackle all the ugliest quirks of C.
Next (hold your breath)
Inside Windows 2000, 3rd Edition.
This was written by the guy that does the Sysinternals website. If you have any NT/2k/XP machines at _all_, this book is like the bible. All the guts of everything in the architecture and implementation of windows 2000 is explained. Want to know what csrss.exe does ? It's in there. Want to know how kernel debug your windows machine ? included on cd. This book lives on my work bookshelf. I answer more questions for people out of it than anything else i have. Everytime i go to the can, i take the book with me and read a little bit more. It's a good read for no other reason than to stop making stuff up when you want something to insult microsoft for:) I'd much rather read well reasoned technical arguments about the shortcomings of W2k than "it sucks d00d" and "BS0D city!". And maybe, just maybe, you might learn something about your quirky w2k box:)
Thats too bad. I've been doing unix since middle school both professionally and as a hobby.
On the other hand, Currently i do the vast majority of my work work in VB6, VB.NET, and SQL.
I worry that on my resume, if i mention that im a competant VB/COM/ASP/VB.NET developer, they wouldn't take me seriously for a unix/c admin or programming job (even though thats where my roots are)
People that have never used something like tcsh or bash for their day-to-day one-off scripts are really missing something.
Similarly, people that have never used something like VB6 or VB.NET to write a fully fledged deployable app in just a matter of a few days are also missing something.
The best programmers and admins love technology. They don't care who makes it, who its targeted at, or about any theology behind it. They evaluate it for what it can help them do.
People that snub their nose at VB are generally irritating theologians. People that bitch about commandline scripting are just as bad, if not worse.
My advice - learn everything you can about everything you can. Even if you have 10% knowledge across 10 different subjects, in the vast majority of positions, thats going to be much better than having 100% knowledge in _one_ subject. You can always add depth when you need it, where you need it. But getting exposure to the different paradigms and mindsets from all these different toolsets is beyond beneficial.
Re:Microsoft doesn't even use its own products ...
on
Subversion Hits Alpha
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· Score: 4, Informative
Not quite:
There are lots and lots of DNS/AD servers at MS, although not as many running W2k anymore (they're running W2k + 1 mostly)
And, unfortuneately, we have LOTS of boxes running ISA server. On numerous occasions i've emailed the relevant admins saying "please let me setup 1 squid box for you so i dont have to put up with this crap anymore". It's gotten better but man dogfooding is painful sometimes.
I can think of 1 team larger than 50 using VSS. There's an internal-only project spread over several teams that has been the same source base for 4+ years that is using VSS. There are easily over 50 people who've made checkins. Thats probably different than 50 active developers.
You're generally right though about VSS - it's not being used anymore internally for large projects. It's an adequate SCM for small projects or groups of small projects. The project I mentioned has about 5GB under VSS control and it works reasonably well, but I probably wouldn't start with VSS if i were starting from scratch.
GLIBC is LGPL. A license made because GPL is ridiculous.
The existance of LGPL (and that GLIBC uses it rather than GPL) It is _Exactly_ my point, and everyone else point, about GPL being viral.
Notice ZLIB doesn't use GPL. Countless libraries do not and cannot use GPL because of GPL's viral nature. Do you debate this ?
If the GPL license prevents me from even using a library written under it, (Because it would subject my program to GPL licensing as well) then how can it not be the case that GPL is viral and is a problem for software developers - if they want to use readline then they are GPL or nothing.
the overwhelming majority of libraries are royalty free and do not impose restrictions on developers that use them.
The link you posted to is a reactionary move on MS's part. They apparently dont want people using their patents in an IP-destroying manner. How unthinkable.
If you are a software developer and want to leverage a GPL component, you have exactly zero choices as to what license your software will be under.
Other licenses are much less restrictive in this regard.
It frankly doesn't matter whether you think everything should be GPL'd, or GPL prevents this or does that. GPL removes licensening choices from those that would make derivative works.
How can you be in favor of eliminating choice, even if you think that you're just eliminating "Bad choices" ?
it is difficult for my tiny brain to avoid resorting to good old fashioned insults, but inspite of your galactically ignorant post, im going to do my best.
1) MS never said anything about OpenSource and cancer. It was GPL. GPL != OpenSource. Read the fucking articles and understand MS's point of view. MS is more than thrilled with BSD code and other non-ip-destroying licenses. They are not happy with GPL and they (correctly) point out that GPL infects everything it touches because it is viral in nature. This is not a debatable point, unless you just dont get GPL.
2) White flag on IIS ? IIS is a highly performant webserver that has a huge market share and is dirt easy to setup. It has a large selection of ISAPI applications and all kinds of software relies on it in ways that apache does not provide out-of-box (NTLM client auth for instance, or multiple hosted vdirs running with separate credentials but not using fork/suexec)
IIS is not dead. It's not even sick. I think you and the rest of the world will be pleasantly (or unpleasantly if you're an anti-ms zealot) surprised with IIS in the coming year.
Incidentally, you assume a lot of stuff about microsoft that is wrong, which makes you kind of an idiot. If microsoft has never done anything to help any apache or open source effort, why did they fly a few of the zend people into redmond for a week, having them perf tune php on iis ? Why is there a mod_frontpage for apache that microsoft publishes ?
If you want to hate microsoft, thats your choice. But really, please try and do a credible, intelligent job at it. Responding to sophomoric hip shot posts about Microsoft-this and microsoft-that which contain nothing but baseless opinion, speculation, and outright falsehoods gets irritating.
That hasn't been my experience. Even the SFU 3.0 beta releases ran without incident (occasionally the posix subsystem would hang preventing further SFU apps from running, but it never took the entire machine with it)
I also am surprised that you thought it was slow. Did you try asking about your SFU problems ?
There was an actual GPL court challenge regarding a product that used GNU bison because bison generates code that USES GPL code. I beleive the bison license was modified to allow people to continue using it without having to GPL their entire fucking software just because of using bison.
People that think the GPL is cut and dry for software companies are naive. Yeah, nobody gives a shit about GPL violation for some random group of people working on a project in their spare time. What about when millions of dollars and the livlihood of hundreds of people are tied up in something. It sucks to find out that legally, yes the GPL is amibugous, and yes, you DO have to give up your intellectual property (because the GPL is designed to destroy IP, so what the hell would a traditional software company ever consider using it for?!)
Hrm. In an economic climate where other companies are folding, people are going to jail,.com's are a distant memory, MS has actually been doing pretty well. Infact within the last year or two they had record quarter revenue. Naturally thats different from profits, but there has been plenty of effective cost cutting work at MS as well. I'm surprised that you are making a big deal about MS's financial health declining. I'm curious to know how you conclude that.
Win2k does indeed support NFS and NIS, both as a client and a server. Check out Services For UNIX. Additionally, it has Active Directory NIS interop stuff.
Windows doesn't support PAM, but its had a workalike long before there was PAM. Anyone can write their own GINA DLL and replace the systems, additionally, anyone can write their own password complexity policies and rules and drop themin.
It's pretty cool. My w2k box at home says "hit ctrl-alt del or insert your Smartcard to begin"
I highly recommend you investigate the SFU product. For $99 bucks, it blows the pants off of cygwin. It's the best "hey, this is unix!" experience on a windows box i've ever tried.
Did you own an apple ][ ? Did you have one of the earlier S-100 bus computers ?
Once upon a time computers were relegated to the realm of hobbyists ONLY. Incidentally, who do you think wrote Applesoft basic for the apple ][ ?
You may not feel that microsoft had anything to do with the popularity and adoption of the PC for yourself, but do you feel the same way about their affect on the masses ? Can you imagine an apple][ that booted directly into a BASIC interpreter in every home in america ?
Somebody worked really hard on the idea that normal people should be able to use computers. Someone made it a priority to "get a computer into every home".
Is it beyond all comprehension and possibility that Gates thinks hes doing the right things ?
I've got the floorplan to bill gates office. There's no architectual elements that look like a throne, pit of fire, or dungeon room. I don't see anywhere he could sit in solitude contemplating his next evil move.
People that are worth billions of dollars and don't retire are into life for more than money, and more than evil. There's something else going on.
Here's a question for contemplation: Without Microsoft, how many of you would be using a PC ?
Sure they could. It wouldn't be a prudent financial move, but they would exhaust less than 50% of their cash on hand with an outright purchase of $16 billion.
Please stop considering the Register as some sort of legitimate news source. Slashdot ought to be more than just a way to funnel a fuckload of pageviews onto the registers banner ad trackers.
Next, XP cannot replace Win2k. W2k is the server operating system, regardless of the existance of XP. It may be the case that MS doesn't want anyone else running W2k Pro as opposed to XP pro, but w2k server skus certainly aren't going away (the xp-generation server skus aren't ready yet, and even if they were available tomorrow w2k server skus will be supported for some time into the future)
Basically, everything that the register publishes is such a non-story its embarassing to get so worked up over it.
But i guess it generates lots of page views at both places. (yay:/)
you are dumb. you are exactly what the story author is talking about. anecdotal crap with no explanation of the theory involved.
how will a 4bbl carb help a fuel injected motor ? how will a 3" exhaust help a car that already flows enough that its torque peak is beyond the redline of the engine, and is thus gutless off idle and until redline ?
There are a number of formulae for calculating basic performance issues. But much of the literature on the subject is closely guarded, unknown, or both. For instnace, the best publication on exhaust design is a book called "the scientific design of exhaust and intakes". it was published in like 1956 or some such ridiculous timeframe. it gives some basic math for designing collector lengths and header lengths and so on. getting the exhaust correct is significantly more important and more involved than your infantile suggestion of putting a 3" exhaust on every vehicle.
incidentally, one nerd has seemed to do pretty well using computers to analyze and develop performance modifications for cars. Hes a software engineer that completely reveresed engineered the Motronic DME system found on all post 1984 BMWs. Once upon a time you could download a windows app that would burn you a custom chip program, and let you create the relevant curves for engine performance you desired, then wrote out the right tables into the eeprom.
I run 50 series tires on my car. 225/50R16 actually. The stock wheels.
Two of them have bends in the inner lip.
You are entirely wrong about low profile tires leading to damage no matter what. There are plenty of people running 17, 18, 19, or even 20" wheels and the correspondingly ridiculous rubberband tires. They enjoy the benefits of decreased sidewall flex on well maintained roads -- namely, the track.
I fail to see how my tires are improperly sized - given they're the stock wheel on the vehicle.
Incidentally, my tires have nothing to do with your safety (apart from improving it since they happen to have much better wet and dry characteristics than the "all season" garbage most tire manufacturers put on cars these days), they dont impede your ability to see around my vehicle, they help my car have one of the best stopping distances ever recorded, and so on.
Theres actually nothing to bitch about at all.
So no, I don't quite see where you get off justifying SUV ownership, or comparing it to wheels that get bent on miserably maintained public roads. I think rice-wheels and the tires that go with them are ridiculous just like everyone else. But I run a street tire on the OEM wheel.
Ask anyone that owns a car with expensive wheels shod with low-profile tires what they think about how the govenrment handles public roads. One pothole and its a bent wheel and an annoying steering wheel vibration until you replace the wheel.. usually at a tune of several hundred dollars.
Or think of this - the roads are perpetually underconstruction to provide work for the latest general contractor who had a 500 plate at the latest politicians power-lunch.
Government is the most inefficient possible action agency. It has the curious talent of doing the pathalogically worse possible thing in all situations. Destryoing roads that are good, never fixing roads that suck, always destroying traffic flow for months at a time (i have NEVER seen a sign saying 'fines double in construction zones' and actually seen construction WORKERS in said zone!)
So, imagine what internet access would be like if the govt managed the last mile. It'd take 3 days for someone to walk over to the dslam and notice that now _both_ power supplies had failed (the primary having failed 6 months prior and no one cared at the time). it'd take another 2 weeks to get someone from the Power-Supply-Installers union to replace them both (finding this person would require 2 or more layers of contracting agencies).
I dislike big corporate involvement in my data access. I dislike big government involvement in anything. I can choose a different big company, or i can choose no company at all.
When you try and choose no government at all, you usually end up getting shot.
a) originally a.plan file said doom3 would come to xbox b) no other console is powerful enough to do it, if a gf3 is going to be a "moderately performing" card when the game comes out.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't beleive IE is a part of the OS because you clearly dont understand how windows and COM work.
.so library that mapped the incoming library calls to a run-time bindable implementation library of moz_embed, konquerer_whatever, or anything else you might like. The same could be done on windows, but there was never any collaboration to come up with a COM Interface for a "System html rendering component".
IE hosts the HTML rendering COM component that essentially everything in windows uses. Think of it as a shared library.
How functional would your linux install be if you started removing shared librares. Say you removed libpng ? Sure, the system would boot, many many things would work, but suddenly apps compiled to render pngs wouldn't - at all. Depending on how they were written, they might not even start, because ld would not resolve the symbol at load time. Or, more analagous to the situation with COM, they'd load and start executing, and when they tried a dlopen() (or LoadLibrary or CoCreate or similar on windows) the app would be unable to continue properly.
So, given the huge number of apps that rely on the IE-supplied HTML rendering library (HTML help, the Add/Remove programs control panel iirc, just to name two big ones), blindly yanking all traces of IE seems like a monumentally stupid idea, no ?
Linux will run into the same thing in a few years, if app developers ever get smart and start using moz_embed instead of writing their own crappy broken HTML parsers/renderers. Suddenly browser choice will go away because effectively every app requires the mozilla rendering engine to be included.
Incidentally the way this could be avoided would be to write a shared library HTML renderer specification (something like a COM Interface in windows) that could be implemented by a stub
You're right. MS isn't generally sued over a bug. If the bug affects most people, it will be released typically in the next SP for that product, although people with support contracts get all kinds of fixes that never make it into the public's hands. If the problem is a bit wider and is hurting a mission critical app, but the next SP isn't yet ready to go out, theres something _else_ that only those customers get but is designed/tested a bit more thoughtfully than just a 1-customer fix. Call it an n-customer fix, where n is the number of customers that care about the issue and have contracts.
:)
The servicing work is different on a per product team basis with MS. Both the product service life cycles, the types of issues that are considered for fixes. Additionally, each team has its own schedules and metrics regarding what needs to be fixed when.
Generally, "bugs" are NOT fixed in the next paid release. Paid releases tend to focus around new feature work and existing feature improvements.
Its likely that something that is a fixable bug in this release wont even have the same code in the next release (it will have its own set of different bugs
The sorts of bugs that make it to the SE teams are things like 'using this particular widget in this particular situation causes a crash, here is my solid repro case'. Things like "adding new users sucks" or "the scheduler sucks, please make it better" are NOT generally "bug fixes".
Beleive it or not, when a bug comes into a team, typically its from a high profile customer with a contract. They get a private fix in bounded time, based upon a pre-agreed contract and the problem severity.
If the fix is low risk and the problem is likely to be run into by others, then that fix gets rolled into the next SP cycle.
So the people paying for support contracts are funding improvements that everyone else gets for free. Doesn't sound too different from the redhat service model, eh ?
(the difference being, that with redhat you can fix the problem yourself. but if you're that damn smart and have that much disposable time, why did you buy a support contract anyway ?)
This is one thing that i think people may fail to realize. Many of the bugs that Microsoft SE teams get do NOT affect a wide number of customers. It is a subtle bug that affects a few customers doing a few things.
The "community" is not in a position to fix such bugs, because they tend to never get discovered by the community at large, or even by the developer who owns the component. Infact, they wont even affect the majority of the community. It is essentially up to the person who has run into the bug to isolate it, research it, and then present the case to the person who owns the development of that software. In the case of MS, its MS. In the case of some open source component, it is quite often, the author. The author can fall off the face of the earth at any moment. the author can refuse to make the fix. the author can not understand the problem. the author could be on vacation. Unless the customer wants to be in the business of fixing software that they rely on instead of being in the business of their business (selling shoes, for instance), open source really isn't benefitting them.
This is why the community-fixes-my-bugs scenario really isn't all that realistic. Many bugs that really end up breaking people are too subtle to find in everyday perusal. If they affected _everyone_, they wouldn't be bugs in the first place.
Hi. I'm calling BS on this. Show me the data that supports these WACs*.
*Wild Assed Claim
i like mySQL a whole bunch too. But unless your contention is that the majority of all databases (and more interestingly, all people coding against databases) are home users or oss-friendly isp's or the other niche places mySQL is used, i think you're full of it.
It's too bad you got modded as flamebait.
It's a point worth considering. And its a low hanging fruit in political discourse, given how oftwen americans are bombarded with "give money to this random charity that spends 90% of your money on administrative fees and sends the other 10% to the dictatorship in power in some random country"
I'm sick of hearing of africas problems. I'm also sick of people criticizing america when it doesn't bail someone out, and then critcizing america again when we _do_ bail someone out.
Fuck off, world.
I've owned 2 different BMWs and done moderate interior work on both of them. The seat he's pulled here looks like its from an E34 5 series (1989-1995). It might be from a similar vintage 7 series as well.
Had he chosen a slightly earlier seat, mounting it would have been significantly easier, as the E12 and E28 5 series seats simply bolt to the floor of the vehicle with 4 17mm bolts.
Incidentally, you can often get these seats _extremely_ cheaply at junkyards. I got an entire 1985 528e interior (non power seats, however) for $60 bucks at a junkyard.
Also, the seats he has pictured are in no way high performance seats. they have the collapsable arm rest which makes them more like captains chairs. BMW sport seats have thick deep side bolsters that keep your body planted during high side loading conditions. These seats are from a comfortable touring car, not a racing machine.
Excellent list. Two domain specific ones i'd add are:
:) I'd much rather read well reasoned technical arguments about the shortcomings of W2k than "it sucks d00d" and "BS0D city!". And maybe, just maybe, you might learn something about your quirky w2k box :)
Expert C Programming: Deep C Secrets
This is the orange book with a blue fish on the cover. the guy that wrote it worked for Sun on the c-compiler or the kernel (dont recall, honestly).
This book is hillarious and manages to tackle all the ugliest quirks of C.
Next (hold your breath)
Inside Windows 2000, 3rd Edition.
This was written by the guy that does the Sysinternals website. If you have any NT/2k/XP machines at _all_, this book is like the bible. All the guts of everything in the architecture and implementation of windows 2000 is explained. Want to know what csrss.exe does ? It's in there. Want to know how kernel debug your windows machine ? included on cd. This book lives on my work bookshelf. I answer more questions for people out of it than anything else i have. Everytime i go to the can, i take the book with me and read a little bit more. It's a good read for no other reason than to stop making stuff up when you want something to insult microsoft for
Thats too bad. I've been doing unix since middle school both professionally and as a hobby.
On the other hand, Currently i do the vast majority of my work work in VB6, VB.NET, and SQL.
I worry that on my resume, if i mention that im a competant VB/COM/ASP/VB.NET developer, they wouldn't take me seriously for a unix/c admin or programming job (even though thats where my roots are)
People that have never used something like tcsh or bash for their day-to-day one-off scripts are really missing something.
Similarly, people that have never used something like VB6 or VB.NET to write a fully fledged deployable app in just a matter of a few days are also missing something.
The best programmers and admins love technology. They don't care who makes it, who its targeted at, or about any theology behind it. They evaluate it for what it can help them do.
People that snub their nose at VB are generally irritating theologians. People that bitch about commandline scripting are just as bad, if not worse.
My advice - learn everything you can about everything you can. Even if you have 10% knowledge across 10 different subjects, in the vast majority of positions, thats going to be much better than having 100% knowledge in _one_ subject. You can always add depth when you need it, where you need it. But getting exposure to the different paradigms and mindsets from all these different toolsets is beyond beneficial.
Not quite:
There are lots and lots of DNS/AD servers at MS, although not as many running W2k anymore (they're running W2k + 1 mostly)
And, unfortuneately, we have LOTS of boxes running ISA server. On numerous occasions i've emailed the relevant admins saying "please let me setup 1 squid box for you so i dont have to put up with this crap anymore". It's gotten better but man dogfooding is painful sometimes.
I can think of 1 team larger than 50 using VSS. There's an internal-only project spread over several teams that has been the same source base for 4+ years that is using VSS. There are easily over 50 people who've made checkins. Thats probably different than 50 active developers.
You're generally right though about VSS - it's not being used anymore internally for large projects. It's an adequate SCM for small projects or groups of small projects. The project I mentioned has about 5GB under VSS control and it works reasonably well, but I probably wouldn't start with VSS if i were starting from scratch.
GLIBC is LGPL. A license made because GPL is ridiculous.
The existance of LGPL (and that GLIBC uses it rather than GPL) It is _Exactly_ my point, and everyone else point, about GPL being viral.
Notice ZLIB doesn't use GPL. Countless libraries do not and cannot use GPL because of GPL's viral nature. Do you debate this ?
If the GPL license prevents me from even using a library written under it, (Because it would subject my program to GPL licensing as well) then how can it not be the case that GPL is viral and is a problem for software developers - if they want to use readline then they are GPL or nothing.
the overwhelming majority of libraries are royalty free and do not impose restrictions on developers that use them.
The link you posted to is a reactionary move on MS's part. They apparently dont want people using their patents in an IP-destroying manner. How unthinkable.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html
Microsoft doesn't give a damn what license i use when i write something that links against msvcrt.dll
How does GPL fare ?
It's really easy.
If you are a software developer and want to leverage a GPL component, you have exactly zero choices as to what license your software will be under.
Other licenses are much less restrictive in this regard.
It frankly doesn't matter whether you think everything should be GPL'd, or GPL prevents this or does that. GPL removes licensening choices from those that would make derivative works.
How can you be in favor of eliminating choice, even if you think that you're just eliminating "Bad choices" ?
it is difficult for my tiny brain to avoid resorting to good old fashioned insults, but inspite of your galactically ignorant post, im going to do my best.
1) MS never said anything about OpenSource and cancer. It was GPL. GPL != OpenSource. Read the fucking articles and understand MS's point of view. MS is more than thrilled with BSD code and other non-ip-destroying licenses. They are not happy with GPL and they (correctly) point out that GPL infects everything it touches because it is viral in nature. This is not a debatable point, unless you just dont get GPL.
2) White flag on IIS ? IIS is a highly performant webserver that has a huge market share and is dirt easy to setup. It has a large selection of ISAPI applications and all kinds of software relies on it in ways that apache does not provide out-of-box (NTLM client auth for instance, or multiple hosted vdirs running with separate credentials but not using fork/suexec)
IIS is not dead. It's not even sick. I think you and the rest of the world will be pleasantly (or unpleasantly if you're an anti-ms zealot) surprised with IIS in the coming year.
Incidentally, you assume a lot of stuff about microsoft that is wrong, which makes you kind of an idiot. If microsoft has never done anything to help any apache or open source effort, why did they fly a few of the zend people into redmond for a week, having them perf tune php on iis ? Why is there a mod_frontpage for apache that microsoft publishes ?
If you want to hate microsoft, thats your choice. But really, please try and do a credible, intelligent job at it. Responding to sophomoric hip shot posts about Microsoft-this and microsoft-that which contain nothing but baseless opinion, speculation, and outright falsehoods gets irritating.
That hasn't been my experience. Even the SFU 3.0 beta releases ran without incident (occasionally the posix subsystem would hang preventing further SFU apps from running, but it never took the entire machine with it)
I also am surprised that you thought it was slow. Did you try asking about your SFU problems ?
This is why Microsoft is right and you are dumb.
There was an actual GPL court challenge regarding a product that used GNU bison because bison generates code that USES GPL code. I beleive the bison license was modified to allow people to continue using it without having to GPL their entire fucking software just because of using bison.
People that think the GPL is cut and dry for software companies are naive. Yeah, nobody gives a shit about GPL violation for some random group of people working on a project in their spare time. What about when millions of dollars and the livlihood of hundreds of people are tied up in something. It sucks to find out that legally, yes the GPL is amibugous, and yes, you DO have to give up your intellectual property (because the GPL is designed to destroy IP, so what the hell would a traditional software company ever consider using it for?!)
Hrm. In an economic climate where other companies are folding, people are going to jail, .com's are a distant memory, MS has actually been doing pretty well. Infact within the last year or two they had record quarter revenue. Naturally thats different from profits, but there has been plenty of effective cost cutting work at MS as well. I'm surprised that you are making a big deal about MS's financial health declining. I'm curious to know how you conclude that.
Win2k does indeed support NFS and NIS, both as a client and a server. Check out Services For UNIX. Additionally, it has Active Directory NIS interop stuff.
Windows doesn't support PAM, but its had a workalike long before there was PAM. Anyone can write their own GINA DLL and replace the systems, additionally, anyone can write their own password complexity policies and rules and drop themin.
It's pretty cool. My w2k box at home says "hit ctrl-alt del or insert your Smartcard to begin"
I highly recommend you investigate the SFU product. For $99 bucks, it blows the pants off of cygwin. It's the best "hey, this is unix!" experience on a windows box i've ever tried.
Did you own an apple ][ ? Did you have one of the earlier S-100 bus computers ?
Once upon a time computers were relegated to the realm of hobbyists ONLY.
Incidentally, who do you think wrote Applesoft basic for the apple ][ ?
You may not feel that microsoft had anything to do with the popularity and adoption of the PC for yourself, but do you feel the same way about their affect on the masses ? Can you imagine an apple][ that booted directly into a BASIC interpreter in every home in america ?
Somebody worked really hard on the idea that normal people should be able to use computers. Someone made it a priority to "get a computer into every home".
Guess who.
Is it beyond all comprehension and possibility that Gates thinks hes doing the right things ?
I've got the floorplan to bill gates office. There's no architectual elements that look like a throne, pit of fire, or dungeon room. I don't see anywhere he could sit in solitude contemplating his next evil move.
People that are worth billions of dollars and don't retire are into life for more than money, and more than evil. There's something else going on.
Here's a question for contemplation: Without Microsoft, how many of you would be using a PC ?
Sure they could. It wouldn't be a prudent financial move, but they would exhaust less than 50% of their cash on hand with an outright purchase of $16 billion.
Please stop considering the Register as some sort of legitimate news source. Slashdot ought to be more than just a way to funnel a fuckload of pageviews onto the registers banner ad trackers.
:/)
Next,
XP cannot replace Win2k. W2k is the server operating system, regardless of the existance of XP. It may be the case that MS doesn't want anyone else running W2k Pro as opposed to XP pro, but w2k server skus certainly aren't going away (the xp-generation server skus aren't ready yet, and even if they were available tomorrow w2k server skus will be supported for some time into the future)
Basically, everything that the register publishes is such a non-story its embarassing to get so worked up over it.
But i guess it generates lots of page views at both places. (yay
Check out the official definition of a meter. It is now defined as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1 / c seconds
The concept of 1 second is already integral to the metric system, and many other systems.
you are dumb. you are exactly what the story author is talking about. anecdotal crap with no explanation of the theory involved.
how will a 4bbl carb help a fuel injected motor ? how will a 3" exhaust help a car that already flows enough that its torque peak is beyond the redline of the engine, and is thus gutless off idle and until redline ?
There are a number of formulae for calculating basic performance issues. But much of the literature on the subject is closely guarded, unknown, or both. For instnace, the best publication on exhaust design is a book called "the scientific design of exhaust and intakes". it was published in like 1956 or some such ridiculous timeframe. it gives some basic math for designing collector lengths and header lengths and so on. getting the exhaust correct is significantly more important and more involved than your infantile suggestion of putting a 3" exhaust on every vehicle.
incidentally, one nerd has seemed to do pretty well using computers to analyze and develop performance modifications for cars. Hes a software engineer that completely reveresed engineered the Motronic DME system found on all post 1984 BMWs. Once upon a time you could download a windows app that would burn you a custom chip program, and let you create the relevant curves for engine performance you desired, then wrote out the right tables into the eeprom.
I run 50 series tires on my car. 225/50R16 actually. The stock wheels.
Two of them have bends in the inner lip.
You are entirely wrong about low profile tires leading to damage no matter what. There are plenty of people running 17, 18, 19, or even 20" wheels and the correspondingly ridiculous rubberband tires. They enjoy the benefits of decreased sidewall flex on well maintained roads -- namely, the track.
I fail to see how my tires are improperly sized - given they're the stock wheel on the vehicle.
Incidentally, my tires have nothing to do with your safety (apart from improving it since they happen to have much better wet and dry characteristics than the "all season" garbage most tire manufacturers put on cars these days), they dont impede your ability to see around my vehicle, they help my car have one of the best stopping distances ever recorded, and so on.
Theres actually nothing to bitch about at all.
So no, I don't quite see where you get off justifying SUV ownership, or comparing it to wheels that get bent on miserably maintained public roads. I think rice-wheels and the tires that go with them are ridiculous just like everyone else. But I run a street tire on the OEM wheel.
Thats a terrible idea.
Ask anyone that owns a car with expensive wheels shod with low-profile tires what they think about how the govenrment handles public roads. One pothole and its a bent wheel and an annoying steering wheel vibration until you replace the wheel.. usually at a tune of several hundred dollars.
Or think of this - the roads are perpetually underconstruction to provide work for the latest general contractor who had a 500 plate at the latest politicians power-lunch.
Government is the most inefficient possible action agency. It has the curious talent of doing the pathalogically worse possible thing in all situations. Destryoing roads that are good, never fixing roads that suck, always destroying traffic flow for months at a time (i have NEVER seen a sign saying 'fines double in construction zones' and actually seen construction WORKERS in said zone!)
So, imagine what internet access would be like if the govt managed the last mile. It'd take 3 days for someone to walk over to the dslam and notice that now _both_ power supplies had failed (the primary having failed 6 months prior and no one cared at the time). it'd take another 2 weeks to get someone from the Power-Supply-Installers union to replace them both (finding this person would require 2 or more layers of contracting agencies).
I dislike big corporate involvement in my data access. I dislike big government involvement in anything. I can choose a different big company, or i can choose no company at all.
When you try and choose no government at all, you usually end up getting shot.
This almost isn't worth responding to.
.plan file said doom3 would come to xbox
If Doom3 comes to any console, its xbox.
a) originally a
b) no other console is powerful enough to do it, if a gf3 is going to be a "moderately performing" card when the game comes out.