.NETly News 301
Lots of .NET stories in the news today and yesterday; it's a total coincidence that Microsoft started a huge marketing push on Wednesday, including the occasional Doubleclick ad running on Slashdot. BrendanL79 writes: "Peter Wright at Salon.com contributes to public awareness of Microsoft's .NET with this exuberant piece. The praise borders on sycophancy ("Gutenberg ... Babbage ... now Gates") with no apparent tongue in his cheek. Comments?" Reader vw writes: "Active State has just released Visual Perl 1.2, Visual Python 1.2, and Visual XSLT 1.2 as plugins for Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET. Wonder how long it will take for a Mono hack." Numerous readers pointed to several stories about a buffer overflow problem in Visual Studio .NET which was supposed to be immune to buffer overflows - but it had passed Microsoft's stringent new security audit.
Tone of the article (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Perl, Python under .NET? (Score:3, Interesting)
As a python fan I had high hopes that Python would be the only language to bridge the JVM-CLR religious war and allow you to work in both.
It seems that ActiveState is just plugging in Python to VS, not compiling python to IL.
blame it on Linux? (Score:1, Interesting)
Ballmer on Mono (Score:2, Interesting)
I put this in quotes but I'm paraphrasing based on my best recollection. I gotta give him credit for being accessible and for answering questions. Still can't help hating him, though.
Re:Am I the only person who is hesitent about this (Score:3, Interesting)
How long did it take for Microsoft to dominate the desktop market? They released Windows 1.0 a long time before OS/2 fell off the competitive map.
Microsofts domination kinda snuck up on everyone, since the IT industry assumed that there would allways be a company to compete with Bill&Co in the OS/Office Productivity space. This time, no such assumptions will be made. If they actually get something like this off the ground, there will be lots of people (Miguel) making great things that compete with Microsoft's offerings by the time it gets pervasive enough.
I'd suggest you take this for what it is at a base level - something that could be useful and cool. Remember, it is possible to enter a cage with a dangerous beast [crocodilehunter.com], as long as you know what to expect and how to counter it's natural responses.
IMHO, it's time to accept Microsoft as an industry leader. You just have to think of them in the same way that you do a clueless PHB.
Soko
I dare you. (Score:2, Interesting)
hmm, might be a good one for ask slashdot.
IBM's new marketing strategy (Score:1, Interesting)
Take Out Microsoft Campaign is part of Crush the Competition Series
developed and delivered by the Americas Software Marketing team. It is
designed to equip you with sales and marketing tools to deliver an
end-to-end IBM proposal to take out Microsoft and its
Participate and engage your customers in our marketing activities to move
them through the sales cycle.
Use the Take out Microsoft Campaign to build your pipeline and close sales
for 2002!
Customer Communication
Please note that our customer communications do not mention Microsoft but
rather focus on IBM's messaging, products and solutions. The Take out
Microsoft title is internal only!
Upon registering your customers (see instructions below), they will receive
the attached letter which focuses on the benefits and differentiators of
the IBM Software Strategy and encourages them to visit the customer Web
site and register their interest to engage with an IBM IT architect. View
the customer Web site at http://www.ibm.com/software/solutions/swstrategy
(See attached file: Final Take out MS Customer Invite.lwp)
Customer Registration - How it works:
Visit http://www6.software.ibm.com/crushmicrosoft and register your
customer
Your customer will receive a letter that talks about IBM's SW Strategy
value
The marketing team will immediately send the letter to customers and
entice them to visit the
Take Out Microsoft Customer Web site
Customers will have the opportunity to visit the Take out Microsoft
Customer Web site and
register his/her interest to talk to an IBM architect/representative
Marketing team will pass the request on to the sales person who
originally registered the customer *
The sales person is responsible for following up with the customer and
ensuring that they
connect an IT Architect with the customer
* Please be aware, that sales will be launched leads under an S1 status
because they have not been
BANT qualified by a Lead Development Representative (LDR). As you nurture
the lead, please
progress the lead into status S2.
This campaign is another crucial step to CRUSHING our competition and
positioning IBM as the leading software company. Microsoft's
directly competes with the IBM SW Strategy. The "Take out Microsoft"
campaign will address the leading value of our strategy.
Be at the forefront and take advantage of this campaign to close new
business!
Anita Orphanidou
Marketing Manager, Americas Enterprise SW Marketing
tel: (905) 316-2732 tie line: 886-2732
e-mail: aorphani@ca.ibm.com notes: Anita Orphanidou/Markham/IBM
Fax : 905 316-3699
Mailing Address:
IBM Canada Ltd.
3600 Steeles Avenue East
Markham, Ontario, L3R 9Z7
Canada
bad vision (Score:1, Interesting)
to use for other ends, not ends in themselves,
even though I pay my bills because of my understanding of computers. I certainly do not want to become a slave to a stinking computer which is the gates vision of computers. Net is
stupid because it tries to integrate a bunch of useless technologies into a large useless mass of donothingness-all making him money.
.NET is SCRUMTRILESCENT! (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think you can discount it so easily:
About the writer
Peter Wright is a software consultant and the author of numerous books on Visual Basic programming. He is currently working on two
Have you read some of these quotes?
Bill Gates has already changed the face of the world as we know it, but his magnum opus has yet to be fully appreciated. On Wednesday, Microsoft unveiled Bill's greater masterpiece -- in the guise of the Visual Studio.Net development tools suite.
It would be easy to dismiss this as just another Microsoft product launch, just another example of the Redmond behemoth rolling ever onward in its quest to gain enough funds to brand a continent. Don't. Visual Studio.Net will have as profound an effect on the way that we live our lives as the labors of love Babbage and Gutenberg gave us. To dismiss Visual Studio.Net and the technology it encompasses is to go back in time and dismiss Henry Ford's automobile as a passing fad.
[several pages of excited babbling deleted]
As developers move to embrace
.Net marks the dawn of the third age of computing -- embrace it.
It reminded me of Will Ferrell's Actor's Studio sketch as well. ".Net is such a masterpiece that there are no words to describe it- so I will make one up: Scrumtrilescent."
I guess if you've been stuck with Visual Basic for the past several years, an MS ripoff of Java would look pretty interesting. I doubt that Java programmers are going to flock to
Re: Now Waaaaait a Minute here.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I thought about this, but two things make it hard for me to dismiss it as just a troll:
I want to dismiss it as a troll. If there was any type of framing by the usual staff, or it was within a week of April 1st I wouldn't give it a second thought.
But now I keep coming back to the fact that the Microsoft PR machine can link to this seemingly glowing comment in "Linux friendly" Salon. We may know it's totally out of character, but a PHB concerned about Hailstorm or
That makes me wonder if I've been playing the fool on other stories. Salon has been valuable precisely because the articles often surprise me, but it's precisely because I'm not knowledgeable about those topics that I'll mistake a 'wink, wink, nudge, nudge' troll for a serious piece.
Re:This is not news. Doesn't ANYONE study history (Score:3, Interesting)
> Once again I find myself ashamed to be a part of an industry that can't
> remember anything five years into the past.
> before, many times. The only news here is the hype, as always.
>
> Let's see, unified runtime, libraries of code with multiple versions,
> simplified networked object support, standardized metadata...
>
> OpenStep circa 1995.
You can go back even farther than that. OpenStep was based on NeXT, which was created by Steve Jobs in 1989. In 1990, it was used to create the world's first web server and client. NeXT was the cradle of the web itself! (http://www.netvalley.com/intvalnext.html)
> And years later no one is using OS (mostly), whereas I'm sure five
> years from now
> That's the power of marketting. Look how well it worked on the droid
> on Salon.
The plists are in XML now, but NeXT lives on in its beautiful child: Mac OS X. In fact, the new G4 iMacs running OS X are the only desktop computers on the planet that can be said to be "selling like hotcakes".
Apple is still selling WebObjects, only at $699 instead of $50,000. OS X ships with the Apache web server included. OS X is the best Java 2 desktop, with a full set of J2SE development tools in the OS X boxed version or as a free download or for $20 FedEx shipping. J2EE tools are readily available in open source or commercial form. If you don't care about portability, you can rapidly create a Cocoa front end on your application, and use any J2SE or J2EE classes on the back end to create a native compiled application with all the power of Java. If you are careful to separate the GUI classes from the rest, you can use the RAD Cocoa front end for prototyping, and replace it with a Swing front end after the back end is tested.
Apple's big goal in life right now is 10% of the market (probably with 20% coming after that
Microsoft? Well they mostly give me the urge to loose my lunch.
On December 14, 1996, Mothra resurrected an apple tree.
On December 14, 2001, she returned to see its fruit:
OS X, the Apple of Mothra's Aqua eye.
Re:Here's a reference (Score:2, Interesting)
2. It may be undocumented but you can do the exact same thing with the documented java.nio.ByteBuffer [sun.com]
3. It's not that 'unsafe' you can only access bytes in memory you have allocated yourself
Python and Perl under .NET (Score:3, Interesting)
which seems to be a
they say on the web-site:
"PerlNET provides the following functionality:
Perl code runs at the same speed within
All extension modules, including the ones using XS code, are supported
PerlNET code is completely compatible with the standard Perl language, including the string form of eval and the runtime use of require
Features
Create
Wrap existing Perl modules into
Create new
Extend existing
(http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Downloads/Per
It seems that they really have done it !
python.net seems to be in a pre-alpha stage, as they say here:
"The Python for
and further:
"Probably the biggest single issue with Python for
(http://www.activestate.com/Initiatives/NET/Pyt
But it is only a matter of time that a python.net will exist.
DOH (Score:2, Interesting)
This isn't an anti-MS thing. That piece is some of the worst writing I've seen on a professional site in years, if not ever, on the web. It overly glorifies hyped up marketing concepts without going into any real details. It makes outlandshish claims about bringing about nirvana, a Star Trekkian society, and the "third age of computing".
Microsoft should be beggin Salon to pull this piece - it's horrible advertising. Comparing Bill Gates to Henry Ford is not exactly going to help their current PR angle. Plus, the over-glorification only reinforces common myths about
I urge everyone to write Salon and ask them to do a better job editing. If someone is going to write a piece explaining why
inky
(apologies to
Last night at the Atlanta XML Users Group (Score:2, Interesting)
He started by indicating the Microsoft "gets it" as regards unhappiness WRT its philosophy of "embrace and extend". He even showed a page with a list of standards with which Microsoft's new XML technology is compliant.
He then, without blush, went on to describe Microsoft extensions that make the XML technology more "usable".
In his discussion of C#, he pitched the language, not as a Java-killer, but rather as a compromise language easy enough for VB know-nothings (not his phrase, but the import of his language) and with the features beloved by C++ bigots. (Pointers!)
He described how easy it is to put tags in generated HTML (CSS, anyone?) before going on to describe Microsoft's newest idea in XML technology, the iterator. Of course, the methods available from various iterators over various classes are different, so learning how one works does not guarantee understanding of how all works.
I know a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a small mind, but this boggles.
Anyway, a number of things came to me from the talk:
1. There are a lot of VB programmers out there. They're not terribly smart, and Microsoft wants to protect their rice bowl.
2. Microsoft is making it very easy for people to generate really crappy HTML from XML.
3. There are a lot of great ideas in the Java world that Microsoft is glomming onto.
The author is quite a nice guy, and bore well my comments about billg as Satan.
Hahaha... The author bio on the Salon piece says (Score:3, Interesting)
About the writer
Peter Wright is a software consultant and the author of numerous books on Visual Basic programming. He is currently working on two .Net titles for Apress slated for release later this year.
Here's the letter that I wrote to the Salon editor (Score:2, Interesting)
I've never seen a more slanted piece of journalism since the last political spot I watched on TV during the previous Presidential election.
I doubt that anyone would equate Bill Gates' reputation with the near mythical standing that Charles Babbage has in the computer world.
And Gutenberg? If Bill G had invented the transistor, I *might* find this a plausible comparison. But comparing the total value of all Microsoft products to the PRINTING PRESS is ludicrous. That's like comparing NyQuil to public sewer systems. (For those who don't get this analogy: NyQuil is good; it makes you feel better; it puts you in a coma so you won't walk around infecting other people with your germs...sewer systems are the most significant public health innovation of all time).
The author's treatment of the arguments about
One, he says that the negative view of
Two, the argument about youth. He squirms out of this one by saying: it's new; but you don't have to buy in right now; just play with it for a while - it's 'risk-free'. Let's look at this argument. Mr. Wright says, "The
A factual note, Ximian is not "the coordinator of the GNOME Linux user interface project". Prhaps Mr. Wright might want to substitue "GNOME Foundation" for "Ximian" in his next article.
He also slides by the privacy argument by saying, "there is nothing in the
Mr. Wright seems to have decided that
Finally, as I said in the beginning, Mr. Wright's article is doubtlessly the most one-sided, biased piece of journalism that I have ever seen in a forum that purports to have the slightest apprehension of journalistic integrity.
Re:Here's the letter that I wrote to the Salon edi (Score:2, Interesting)
I actually got response from Andrew L. Basically saying that they simply are trying to show all viewpoints. I admire that, but I don't think this guy really represent a majority of anyone's viewpoints - even MS Developers.
My response to his reply was:
Andrew,
Thanks for a swift response. I've read and enjoyed many of your articles.
It's not the Microsoft slant that I am objecting to here. In fact, I appreciate a well-written pro-Microsoft article due to the fact that they typically cut through the hype that surrounds that giant company. The recent article in ArsTechnica detailing what
I'm objecting to the fact that the piece contains very little in the way of fact and for the most part engages in wild hyperbole.
For instance:
"Visual Studio.Net is the result, a set of development tools that really do make that almost "Star-Trek" view of the world possible, not in years to come, but tomorrow. "
I greatly doubt when I wake up tomorrow that I'll be carrying around a dog collar which will be accessing my email, which is almost an exact concept alluded to by the author.
"Bill Gates has already changed the face of the world as we know it, but his magnum opus has yet to be fully appreciated"
Bill Gates, the person, has actually done very little to change the world. His company, Microsoft, has certainly done a lot. While I wouldn't expect the average slashdot poster to make the distinction, I would hope a professional writer would.
The most impressive bit is the fact that he mentions, but never really goes into, the potential security risks inherent in such a system, particularly when provided by a company plagued by security problems like Microsoft. Also, the fact that he mentions other "players" in the distributed service industry, but doesn't exactly give them credit (this is, after all, Bill's opus) seems a contradiction in his own logic. He even states:
".Net is a platform based around open standards such as XML (for managing self-describing data), SOAP (for XML-based, Internet-wide component reuse) and UDDI (for locating and deploying other "Web services" based on these standards)."
If the platform are based on these standards, standards written by groups of people and representatives of industry leaders (including Microsoft), how is the author justified to write two more pages telling us how this is Bill's vision?
I think there are many Windows developers who will object to this piece as well. It does little to enhance Microsoft's image as a marketing-not-technical company.
I appreciate Salon's desire to publish a wide variety of viewpoints. I'm always willing to engage in a discussion with someone who differs from myself, provided they are willing to create a logical argument. Also, apologies if I implied you were selling editorial space. My intention was merely to indicate that the piece reads more like something for a brochure, not a serious editorial.
Part of my response is merely shock, as I've grown accustomed to a high level of quality from all of the viewpoints on Salon, whether I agreed with them or not.