The way I see it is that people who want to use Vista will and those don't won't. Sure its an obvious statement, but it is one that seems to need repeating so often. Not true at all. Everyone I know that recently bought a computer tried desperately to get it with XP instead of Vista or without any OS at all, and the store they bought it from told them there was no way that would happen. Many are trying to live with Vista. Many have installed their old OEM XP illegally or installed Linux or dual booting. Statistics will chalk them up as a happy Vista user, and all paid for a product they did not want.
Then there are many of my fellow programmers. If the products they work on are Windows only or Windows-primary, their bosses often require them to use Vista because "that's what everyone will be using soon, and we need to be using the OS that our customers will be using." They do not want Vista, but they're using it.
I know two people that switched to Vista voluntarily: a clueless gamer and a MS fanboi. Oh, and the gamer got fed up and is dual booting with XP.
My parents got my bro and I a computer in 1995... they saved for ages to get it. It was no easy feat for them. We played a bunch of video games, sure... then we started breaking things. Then we learned to fix them. Then we started wondering how to make games, and started to program (in QBasic, at first, then in ASM then C). When I got to college I was astounded at how little my classmates knew, even 2+ years into our education.
College taught me very little compared to what I learned with curiosity and search engines in my Jr. High years. Having graduated with my CS degree my only regret is having wasted my money on tuition when I could have spent that money on just learning for myself. I learned more before high school with no formal tutor than any high school "how to use a word processor" course could dream to teach me.
I remember when I was in college and I sucked at programming... I had a software engineering professor that (for some LUNATIC reason) would not let us use #include but insisted on us using C. He seriously expected us to copy+paste every line of #included code manually. That was his idea of good software engineering. Even though I sucked hardcore at programming, Ruby made it easy for me to recurse our source tree and replace every "#delude" we put in our files with the contents of the files we meant to include.
I'm not the greatest coder by far. I lack a lot, but thanks to Ruby I was able to save my group hours and hours of work, and it was really easy for me.
You say you disagree with the majority of his points except the two you talked about. I'd like to discuss that...
So you're telling me you disagree with
Use mature, well-tested, effective software (eg. Solaris, Oracle, FreeBSD) ?
No discussion necessary.
Also, he didn't say "avoid ajax", he said
"Avoid immature fad "technologies" like AJAX" He's making a generalization and using Ajax as one example. Also, he doesn't say to do so at all costs - he's saying "as a rule of thumb". I agree - new technologies are great and should be encouraged, but not trusted with the fate of your business(unless your business is new technology). I know he didn't phrase it that way, so I can see how you could disagree, but I think that's what he meant. Regardless, I think it's a reasonable rule.
"Traditional applications offer more flexibility than Web-based applications" I can see how you would disagree with this - traditional apps and web apps offer different kinds of flexibility. To say one is "more flexible" than the other really depends on your needs.
"Sometimes a text-based interface is far more efficient than a GUI." Why you would contest this is beyond me - to disagree with this point is to say 'no text based interface is ever more efficient than a gui'. Take, for example, a command line. If I know what I want, I can just type a word and I've got it - no need to open the "everything" menu, select the "category I want" sub menu, select the "particular program I want" submenu, select the "configuration options" option, check a check box, hit "ok". If your hands never have to leave the keyboard you can drive a computer much faster. By muscle memory, your hands can remember where the 'r' key, the 'q' key, etc are. If you have to click a button ("say, the OK button") that will be at a different place on different dialogs in different programs, and the programs can move around the screen based on where the windowing system wants to put them, muscle memory is useless to you. I can think of a few console programs that I'm glad just stayed as console programs.
"Get user feedback on software early and often." This is a point you agreed with, but then you stated that the main problem with the project was "poorly specified requirements". I agree with you that this was a problem, but getting user feedback early and often really serves to regulate poor initial requirements.
" Maintain a reasonable level of heterogeneity, when it comes to software, hardware and vendors." This one can be contested, I understand - but it should be noted there are cases either way. On one end, homogeneous technologies offer great integration. On the other, if you can meet all your needs with heterogeneous technologies and do so well, you maintain MUCH more flexibility and a much greater set of options. If you can get "cat" server and "dog" client to work well together, you know dang well you could switch to "dog" server or "cat" client and work just as well - so now they have to give you a better reason than "well... you're using a bunch of our other products, so you should use this one too." - they have to compete on merit. That leaves you with LOTS of options, and is a Good Thing(tm).
How does this say "Reliable, Trusted Operating System" to the user who is outside the geek circles? Did it occur to you that nobody outside of geek circles cares about "Reliable, Trusted Operating Systems"? Computers scare the shit out of the older generation and even a fair amount of the young. People tend to like animals - having a name that doesn't involve numbers and involves something natural often has a comforting affect on people.
Besides - it's kind of like the only guy in the board meeting wearing a T-shirt and jeans instead of a 3 piece suit. He already knows he's important - he doesn't have to try to look like it. Everyone else may not approve, but they'll just have to accept it.
The really interesting part is that everywhere I go, Ron Paul campaign signs and posters are the only ones that are up yet. The 'little guy' seems to really be stoked about Ron Paul, which is very interesting because he still hasn't gotten enough media attention to be that popular, traditionally. He seems to be spreading by word of mouth. That's how I heard about him - an e-mail from a friend asking me to just take 10 minutes and type his name into YouTube.
Actually, I can't wait for the end of OpenGL. I want to use my card to the fullest and forcing it to support two different API's won't allow that. I call bullshit. That's like saying because your OS runs on both AMD and Intel chips it's not running your hardware to the fullest. Supporting multiple APIs has no effect on your card's performance. The only performance detriment comes from when software chooses to provide shoddy support for one type of driver.
I also very very rarely play games that aren't natively supported in Linux anymore. I mess with some old favorites (Starcraft for example) in Wine, but I don't purchase anything new unless I can run it in Linux. I just don't like rebooting into Windows and missing out on all the other cool stuff I have in Lin.
Virtual desktop behavior, multiple monitor behavior when one app is fullscreen and grabs DirectInput, etc are just annoying to me in Windows.
The only people I personally know that are excited about Vista (and were before it was even released) are gamers. Oh, and one REALLY dumb classmate of mine in college. He was pro-Microsoft everything and never tried anything else. He also constantly tried to get everyone else to do his homework for him because he couldn't figure it out and consistently failed to grasp the entire point of many assignments or chapters of lecture.
So yeah, I agree with you - gamers and (one very stupid programmer) are the only real Windows zealots I've found out there.
That and people that have families, whose income depends on working with Microsoft stuff. I can't blame them - their families depend on them so they do what they can - but I'd love to see a world where they don't have to support the bully just to get sleep at night without worrying about the future of their families.
I enjoyed some aspects of OSX, but some weren't so hot. Being an "advanced user" I enjoy doing such advanced things as trying to view hidden files in my file manager. OSX is not your friend for such uses (open a command line, edit a preference file with a command line editor, save it, kill Finder so it restarts... now there's an elegant user interface. Do the same to hide the files again).
Now I don't blame Apple - 90% of users will never need to even know such a thing as a hidden file exists (and would probably screw something up if they did), but for the rest of us... well there's Gnome and KDE:-)
Now this is just an example - there were other things that frustrated me and I admit they won't frustrate a lot of people. I really like OSX - I'd recommend it to most people, but definitely not for everyone. I ran screaming back to Ubuntu. I'm just not Apple's target user.
I think it is an issue you are one of the few people who do. Linux users have a strong trend of Wanting things free no matter at the cost of the developer. Naw. I buy lots of software, and I've worked on plenty of closed source stuff. I tend to choose the open source stuff because I like how it works or I like the freedom (not free cost - freedom) it promotes.
If I just didn't like paying for shit I'd pirate the commercial stuff - that's plenty easy and free.
In the few situations where I find myself absolutely needing some Windows-only software I boot into my (legal and paid for) copy of Windows and run it. For the most part I don't even use all the Windows software that I've already paid for in favor of open source stuff, and I know I'm not alone nor even in the minority (in regards to Linux users) from my observations.
Re:got Mono - stay away or risk infection w/MS ger
on
GNOME 2.20 Released
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· Score: 1
If you're so afraid of some kind of "Microsoft infection" why don't you try reading the source?
http://download.gnome.org/sources/tomboy/0.8/tomboy-0.8.0.tar.gz Because the infection isn't in the source, it's in the standard. Now I wouldn't go near as far as the GP and claim that because a project is using Mono it'll get a visit from Microsoft lawyers, but I can't believe that there are people that actually think including a product based on a Microsoft standard is a good idea. Microsoft has never proven themselves to be trustworthy to the competition.
Strategically Mono seems shortsighted and foolish to me.
And of course Bill Gates will give more money to non-profits then everyone who has ever posted on Slashdot x100. Doesn't change the fact that the money he's putting into those NPOs came from illegal business practices. He can't possibly give enough to charities to redeem his image in my eyes - it's all effectually stolen money.
... this may be anecdotal experience, but I hear the same things or worse from friends and family running Vista. I'm sure I sound trollish, but I'm honestly relaying what I hear from Vista users.
Maybe it will, but I'd still like to see it replace mp3. If some law comes out soon saying that old patents are still valid (for whatever reason... let's just not discount the possibility), I'm still protected with Ogg. So you're right- Mp3 will be freeish by certain laws soon. Good. But I know Ogg is free forever.
Slashdot Mirror
1. The parent was joking.
2. Having a completely re-written kernel, it's not a member of the NT family.
Then there are many of my fellow programmers. If the products they work on are Windows only or Windows-primary, their bosses often require them to use Vista because "that's what everyone will be using soon, and we need to be using the OS that our customers will be using." They do not want Vista, but they're using it.
I know two people that switched to Vista voluntarily: a clueless gamer and a MS fanboi. Oh, and the gamer got fed up and is dual booting with XP.
Dude even on a 2 GHz processor with 2 gigs of memory, my Canadian Copyright Official crawls.
My parents got my bro and I a computer in 1995... they saved for ages to get it. It was no easy feat for them. We played a bunch of video games, sure... then we started breaking things. Then we learned to fix them. Then we started wondering how to make games, and started to program (in QBasic, at first, then in ASM then C). When I got to college I was astounded at how little my classmates knew, even 2+ years into our education.
College taught me very little compared to what I learned with curiosity and search engines in my Jr. High years. Having graduated with my CS degree my only regret is having wasted my money on tuition when I could have spent that money on just learning for myself. I learned more before high school with no formal tutor than any high school "how to use a word processor" course could dream to teach me.
I'll check out what you wrote. Thanks for letting me know so I could follow up.
Heh :-) Where were you 2 years ago?
I hope it has flash ads. Firefox's flashblock extension makes Flash ads very convenient for me.
I remember when I was in college and I sucked at programming... I had a software engineering professor that (for some LUNATIC reason) would not let us use #include but insisted on us using C. He seriously expected us to copy+paste every line of #included code manually. That was his idea of good software engineering. Even though I sucked hardcore at programming, Ruby made it easy for me to recurse our source tree and replace every "#delude" we put in our files with the contents of the files we meant to include.
I'm not the greatest coder by far. I lack a lot, but thanks to Ruby I was able to save my group hours and hours of work, and it was really easy for me.
So you're telling me you disagree with Use mature, well-tested, effective software (eg. Solaris, Oracle, FreeBSD) ?
No discussion necessary.
Also, he didn't say "avoid ajax", he said "Avoid immature fad "technologies" like AJAX" He's making a generalization and using Ajax as one example. Also, he doesn't say to do so at all costs - he's saying "as a rule of thumb". I agree - new technologies are great and should be encouraged, but not trusted with the fate of your business(unless your business is new technology). I know he didn't phrase it that way, so I can see how you could disagree, but I think that's what he meant. Regardless, I think it's a reasonable rule.
"Traditional applications offer more flexibility than Web-based applications" I can see how you would disagree with this - traditional apps and web apps offer different kinds of flexibility. To say one is "more flexible" than the other really depends on your needs.
"Sometimes a text-based interface is far more efficient than a GUI." Why you would contest this is beyond me - to disagree with this point is to say 'no text based interface is ever more efficient than a gui'. Take, for example, a command line. If I know what I want, I can just type a word and I've got it - no need to open the "everything" menu, select the "category I want" sub menu, select the "particular program I want" submenu, select the "configuration options" option, check a check box, hit "ok". If your hands never have to leave the keyboard you can drive a computer much faster. By muscle memory, your hands can remember where the 'r' key, the 'q' key, etc are. If you have to click a button ("say, the OK button") that will be at a different place on different dialogs in different programs, and the programs can move around the screen based on where the windowing system wants to put them, muscle memory is useless to you. I can think of a few console programs that I'm glad just stayed as console programs.
"Get user feedback on software early and often." This is a point you agreed with, but then you stated that the main problem with the project was "poorly specified requirements". I agree with you that this was a problem, but getting user feedback early and often really serves to regulate poor initial requirements.
" Maintain a reasonable level of heterogeneity, when it comes to software, hardware and vendors." This one can be contested, I understand - but it should be noted there are cases either way. On one end, homogeneous technologies offer great integration. On the other, if you can meet all your needs with heterogeneous technologies and do so well, you maintain MUCH more flexibility and a much greater set of options. If you can get "cat" server and "dog" client to work well together, you know dang well you could switch to "dog" server or "cat" client and work just as well - so now they have to give you a better reason than "well... you're using a bunch of our other products, so you should use this one too." - they have to compete on merit. That leaves you with LOTS of options, and is a Good Thing(tm).
Common sense is expensive. I'd say $100 is pretty cheap a price to pay for a lesson, really.
Besides - it's kind of like the only guy in the board meeting wearing a T-shirt and jeans instead of a 3 piece suit. He already knows he's important - he doesn't have to try to look like it. Everyone else may not approve, but they'll just have to accept it.
The really interesting part is that everywhere I go, Ron Paul campaign signs and posters are the only ones that are up yet. The 'little guy' seems to really be stoked about Ron Paul, which is very interesting because he still hasn't gotten enough media attention to be that popular, traditionally. He seems to be spreading by word of mouth. That's how I heard about him - an e-mail from a friend asking me to just take 10 minutes and type his name into YouTube.
No. You're just plain wrong.
They messed up because of serious corporate leadership issues.
I also very very rarely play games that aren't natively supported in Linux anymore. I mess with some old favorites (Starcraft for example) in Wine, but I don't purchase anything new unless I can run it in Linux. I just don't like rebooting into Windows and missing out on all the other cool stuff I have in Lin.
Virtual desktop behavior, multiple monitor behavior when one app is fullscreen and grabs DirectInput, etc are just annoying to me in Windows.
The only people I personally know that are excited about Vista (and were before it was even released) are gamers. Oh, and one REALLY dumb classmate of mine in college. He was pro-Microsoft everything and never tried anything else. He also constantly tried to get everyone else to do his homework for him because he couldn't figure it out and consistently failed to grasp the entire point of many assignments or chapters of lecture.
So yeah, I agree with you - gamers and (one very stupid programmer) are the only real Windows zealots I've found out there.
That and people that have families, whose income depends on working with Microsoft stuff. I can't blame them - their families depend on them so they do what they can - but I'd love to see a world where they don't have to support the bully just to get sleep at night without worrying about the future of their families.
I enjoyed some aspects of OSX, but some weren't so hot. Being an "advanced user" I enjoy doing such advanced things as trying to view hidden files in my file manager. OSX is not your friend for such uses (open a command line, edit a preference file with a command line editor, save it, kill Finder so it restarts... now there's an elegant user interface. Do the same to hide the files again).
:-)
Now I don't blame Apple - 90% of users will never need to even know such a thing as a hidden file exists (and would probably screw something up if they did), but for the rest of us... well there's Gnome and KDE
Now this is just an example - there were other things that frustrated me and I admit they won't frustrate a lot of people. I really like OSX - I'd recommend it to most people, but definitely not for everyone. I ran screaming back to Ubuntu. I'm just not Apple's target user.
If I just didn't like paying for shit I'd pirate the commercial stuff - that's plenty easy and free.
In the few situations where I find myself absolutely needing some Windows-only software I boot into my (legal and paid for) copy of Windows and run it. For the most part I don't even use all the Windows software that I've already paid for in favor of open source stuff, and I know I'm not alone nor even in the minority (in regards to Linux users) from my observations.
http://download.gnome.org/sources/tomboy/0.8/tomboy-0.8.0.tar.gz Because the infection isn't in the source, it's in the standard. Now I wouldn't go near as far as the GP and claim that because a project is using Mono it'll get a visit from Microsoft lawyers, but I can't believe that there are people that actually think including a product based on a Microsoft standard is a good idea. Microsoft has never proven themselves to be trustworthy to the competition.
Strategically Mono seems shortsighted and foolish to me.
That may be exactly what they're doing.
:-)
Not in this case, though I do switch between KDE, Gnome, and Enlightenment pretty regularly. They each have their strengths - it's all in the mood.
Two words: Divx, Windows. You're done.
... this may be anecdotal experience, but I hear the same things or worse from friends and family running Vista. I'm sure I sound trollish, but I'm honestly relaying what I hear from Vista users.
Maybe it will, but I'd still like to see it replace mp3. If some law comes out soon saying that old patents are still valid (for whatever reason... let's just not discount the possibility), I'm still protected with Ogg. So you're right- Mp3 will be freeish by certain laws soon. Good. But I know Ogg is free forever.