Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 18th Dec 2012 00:03 UTC
Microsoft has just responded to Google's move regarding Exchange ActiveSync. Sadly, instead of addressing the very real problems consumers are about to face, Microsoft starts talking about switching to Outlook.com.
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RE[5]: Comment by shmerl
by lucas_maximus on Tue 18th Dec 2012 14:47
in reply to "RE[4]: Comment by shmerl"
Member since:2009-08-18
You're now moving the goal posts as 'de facto standard' isn't the same as 'open standard'. You were arguing about open standards.
TBH I don't really care one way or another. I do care about people complaining about Microsoft supporting something that nobody uses and doesn't benefit their customers.
...and Google, IBM, KDE and plenty others I can't be bothered to list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument#Application_support
And? So you have the most popular document format in the world and they make their own competeting standard and it didn't work out well.
Why would Microsoft support such as move, I don't know.
If I made my own popular file format and someone told me I should support it and it isn't nearly as widely used, I wouldn't bother to support it either.
ODF support was one second to MS's own proprietary formats. So if Microsoft cared about open standards, then they'd have switched to an established and widely supported format instead of creating their own one from scratch.
Why would they do that? there is no motivation to do so.
Weird, I seem to recall that .NET v1 stank (and back then I was 100% a Windows user and developer). Though I'll grant you that things have improved massively over the years. I quite enjoy using .NET these days.
YES .NET 1.0 and 1.1 weren't great. C# != .NET.
However technical merits of C# aside, we're talking about open standards. C# was invented to break established standards.
How can something be invented to break standards? It doesn't make sense.
It like saying I am inventing PHP to break Python.
You're obviously too young to remember what life was like before MS's monopoly. Borland's IDEs used to be second to none. It's 'only' in 10 / 15 years that MS had overtaken Borland.
Their Java IDE was still rubbish.
However that's besides the point as you're now arguing about the quality of the IDE, which absolutely nothing to do with the open standards of languages.
I was just stating my preference.
I guess if you've only ever used MS technology then you're bound to be ignorant to the rest of the IT industry and their established standards 
There was nothing that was a dejure standard that everyone used.
You're hardly one to comment on the relevance of example given the number of times you've changed the argument to suit your bias.
To be honest I went down this road because of ASP.NET being open sourced recently.
TBH I don't really care about the rest.
Even IE7 lacked backed standards features that FF1 supported.
Yes IE7 was rubbish and had no excuse to be.
2009 was when IE8 got released and was the f
when talking about standard compliance, you can't just exclude figures that disprove your point, simply because of market share. That's just a whole new level of narrow-mindedness.
when talking about standard compliance, you can't just exclude figures that disprove your point, simply because of market share. That's just a whole new level of narrow-mindedness.
Well this is what a lot of developers are currently doing on Mobile. Webkit is king and anything that isn't Webkit is a second class citizen. Like it or Lump it that the way it is.
IE8 for CSS and XHTML was fine, If you whine about SVG and other things ... these simply aren't used by web developers.
What's more, you're just picking two arbitrary specifications chosen specifically because IE happened get there first. However when you look at the overall performance (eg using ACID as a benchmark), you'll see that IE was consistently one of the last browsers to meet standards (and that's even excluding Opera!)
Two arbitary specifications!! Only the most important 2.
Because I rate my browsing experience on whether something can pass the ACID test.
RE[6]: Comment by shmerl
by Laurence on Tue 18th Dec 2012 15:24
in reply to "RE[5]: Comment by shmerl"
Member since:2007-03-26
TBH I don't really care one way or another. I do care about people complaining about Microsoft supporting something that nobody uses and doesn't benefit their customers.
We're talking about open standards, not MS supporting something that nobody uses
And? So you have the most popular document format in the world and they make their own competeting standard and it didn't work out well.
Why would Microsoft support such as move, I don't know.
If I made my own popular file format and someone told me I should support it and it isn't nearly as widely used, I wouldn't bother to support it either.
Why would Microsoft support such as move, I don't know.
If I made my own popular file format and someone told me I should support it and it isn't nearly as widely used, I wouldn't bother to support it either.
that doesn't even make sense.
Why would they do that? there is no motivation to do so.
You said MS support open standards. If that were true, then there would be motivation to do so. Ergo, you've just disproved your earlier statement.
YES .NET 1.0 and 1.1 weren't great. C# != .NET.
Languages are neither open nor closed nor even copyrighted (as proved with the Oracle vs Google case). It's their framework the decides the open nature of a language. Thus I'm discussing the crux of the matter when arguing about open standards.
How can something be invented to break standards? It doesn't make sense.
It like saying I am inventing PHP to break Python.
Now you're just arguing semantics. Clearly the context is talking about MS breaking from established standards rather than literally breaking the standards themselves.
Their Java IDE was still rubbish.
so you've basically used one IDE and feel you're qualified to make sweeping statements about an entire company? Well done.
There was nothing that was a dejure standard that everyone used.
Clearly there was, but such standards never made it into MS products. However there's a whole industry outside of Microsoft.
To be honest I went down this road because of ASP.NET being open sourced recently.
So, like with Borland, you're making a sweeping generalisation about a whole company based on one product.
Well this is what a lot of developers are currently doing on Mobile. Webkit is king and anything that isn't Webkit is a second class citizen. Like it or Lump it that the way it is.
Yeah. sad but true
IE8 for CSS and XHTML was fine, If you whine about SVG and other things ... these simply aren't used by web developers.
Web developers weren't using advanced techniques because they'd lose a high percentage of Windows users (pretty much half the web). It wasn't a matter of choice, it was because MS forced their hand.
However IE was an improvement and IE9 is actually a fairly decent browser. So web developers are now adding advanced techniques they couldn't risk before.
Two arbitary specifications!! Only the most important 2.
You talk as if the other browsers didn't support everyday features. That wasn't true. Instead they used browser specific extensions because, up until then, W3C dragged their heals in formalising said specifications. (and to be honest, I blame the w3c as much as I blame MS for the fiasco we had in the 90s / early 00s).
Because I rate my browsing experience on whether something can pass the ACID test.
We're talking about support for open standards, not how well web developers got at writing IE-specific hacks to make your browsing experience tolerable.
Member since:2006-11-19
I'll just jump in for the C# part. This is because I like the guy who did it (Anders Hejlsberg, who also gave us Turbo Pascal and Delphi before).
"C# version 1.0 was a superior language to Java, Properties alone in the language make it vastly superior as well as the better designed DateTime libraries (two things I can think of off the top of my head).
Weird, I seem to recall that .NET v1 stank (and back then I was 100% a Windows user and developer). Though I'll grant you that things have improved massively over the years. I quite enjoy using .NET these days.
"
I remember reading "C# for Java Developers" when I was in college. I don't remember being impressed by many books on the technical level as much as I did with that one. Every decision they made was for fixing the problems I had with java (no signed integers, no easy way to talk native, no easy xml processing, and of course properties, and metadata).
C# was only built, because MS could not adopt Java for Windows development (as you said they were sued for J++). But they only reason they wanted to extend Java was they knew (Anders knew) Visual Basic did not have any future (i.e.: pretty much sucked), and Java was the best thing out there. But there were the issues with Java on the desktop front - which they fixed with C#, so they had to extend it. Even today, except for Eclipse framework, the standard Java GUI APIs are real bad compared to C#/XAML.
Were Java an open standard at that time, Sun could not have sued for J++, and we would have a Windows dialect of Java, which would probably be backported to the main standard by open source hobbyists. But since Java was never an open standard (until maybe C# got pretty big), they closed it down from MS's use.
However technical merits of C# aside, we're talking about open standards. C# was invented to break established standards.
As I said, Java was not an open standard (still not an ISO/ECMA standard AFAIK).
"Borland Java IDEs were crap, thank goodness they didn't
You're obviously too young to remember what life was like before MS's monopoly. Borland's IDEs used to be second to none. It's 'only' in 10 / 15 years that MS had overtaken Borland.
"
Again the Anders factor here. Borland was good, while he was at the helm. They went down when he left, and they did not know what to do. I remember trying to use their express editions to come back, but they would not let two different versions (e.g.: C++, and C#) at the same. Then they stopped distributing free starter versions all together. Now look at the size of Delphi developers, and I feel real sad (I started actual programming with Turbo Pascal back in the day).
RE[6]: Comment by shmerl
by Laurence on Tue 18th Dec 2012 15:25
in reply to "RE[5]: Comment by shmerl"
Member since:2007-03-26
RE[6]: Comment by shmerl
by JAlexoid on Fri 21st Dec 2012 00:57
in reply to "RE[5]: Comment by shmerl"
Member since:2009-05-19
You meant Java has no unsigned integers, or any unsigned numeric type.
Were Java an open standard at that time, Sun could not have sued for J++, and we would have a Windows dialect of Java, which would probably be backported to the main standard by open source hobbyists. But since Java was never an open standard (until maybe C# got pretty big), they closed it down from MS's use.
It wasn't due to Java not being an open standard. The issue was Microsoft's breach of contract with Sun.
And it wasn't J++, it was Microsoft's Java. J++ was a result of that legal dispute.
RE[6]: Comment by shmerl
by ze_jerkface on Fri 21st Dec 2012 09:27
in reply to "RE[5]: Comment by shmerl"
Member since:2012-06-22
RE[5]: Comment by shmerl
by ze_jerkface on Fri 21st Dec 2012 09:03
in reply to "RE[4]: Comment by shmerl"
Member since:2012-06-22
However technical merits of C# aside, we're talking about open standards. C# was invented to break established standards.
Java was never an established standard. It would be easier to argue that Java was invented to break established C++ standards.
But the real problem is that C++ was created to break ASM standards. And don't even get me started on what happened to the abacus.
Edited 2012-12-21 09:04 UTC
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:33 UTC
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
Linked by Anonymous on 06/18/13 22:26 UTC
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:25 UTC
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:45 UTC
"I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:32 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)".
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:58 UTC
"The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:52 UTC
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 21:03 UTC
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 20:46 UTC
"And so it is with Dell's Alienware X51 R2, a small form factor gaming PC in console digs. It's shaped similar to Microsoft's Xbox 360 Slim, and though it's slightly larger than either a 360 or PlayStation 3, the X51 R2 would be right at home in a living room setting nestled next to a large screen TV. Indeed, it's adept at running Steam's Big Picture mode, and if your primary objective is to play games in the living room, go ahead and consider the X51 R2 a hybrid game console." This is obviously not the only machine like this - still, these are very valid console alternatives even for those that don't like being hunched over with a cramped WASD-claw. Also, PC gamers among us: could you get away with the $699 model for gaming?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 17:32 UTC
From Bloomberg: "Microsoft, the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes." The lid has officially been blown off.More News »
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Member since:
2007-03-26
I see you've resorted to the "if you can't counter argument, then change the argument" method of trolling the interwebs.
You're now moving the goal posts as 'de facto standard' isn't the same as 'open standard'. You were arguing about open standards.
Sun trying to make people use ODF was a silly move.
...and Google, IBM, KDE and plenty others I can't be bothered to list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument#Application_support
ODF support was one second to MS's own proprietary formats. So if Microsoft cared about open standards, then they'd have switched to an established and widely supported format instead of creating their own one from scratch.
Weird, I seem to recall that .NET v1 stank (and back then I was 100% a Windows user and developer). Though I'll grant you that things have improved massively over the years. I quite enjoy using .NET these days.
However technical merits of C# aside, we're talking about open standards. C# was invented to break established standards.
You're obviously too young to remember what life was like before MS's monopoly. Borland's IDEs used to be second to none. It's 'only' in 10 / 15 years that MS had overtaken Borland.
However that's besides the point as you're now arguing about the quality of the IDE, which absolutely nothing to do with the open standards of languages.
I guess if you've only ever used MS technology then you're bound to be ignorant to the rest of the IT industry and their established standards
You're hardly one to comment on the relevance of example given the number of times you've changed the argument to suit your bias.
Even IE7 lacked backed standards features that FF1 supported.
2009 was when IE8 got released and was the first browser to support CSS 2.1 and XHTML 1.1 properly (I am sure you bring up Opera, but I don't see them as a serious competitor to the other browsers in Market share).
when talking about standard compliance, you can't just exclude figures that disprove your point, simply because of market share. That's just a whole new level of narrow-mindedness.
What's more, you're just picking two arbitrary specifications chosen specifically because IE happened get there first. However when you look at the overall performance (eg using ACID as a benchmark), you'll see that IE was consistently one of the last browsers to meet standards (and that's even excluding Opera!)