 |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Invisible wrote:
> so... you'd have to eat A LOT of bananas to even approach the amount of
> money that M$ makes on a single transaction.
>
> And these guys don't even *grow* bananas. They most *ship* them. They
Do you have any idea the cost involved in making a major OS update like
vista, including support and maintenance on the project versus plucking
bananas from a tree?
Last I checked, banana plantation workers don't make $75,000+/year
salaries.
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
47b1cf6d$2@news.povray.org...
> I mean, I guess the numbers must stack up somehow, but DAMN, that's
> far-out!
Well, it's well-established by now that you live in a parallel world, and
that povray.off-topic is some kind of portal window into this amazing real
world you keep hearing about. Nothing wrong with that of course, but you
should definitely understand that the realities in your parallel world are
far different from the realities in this world.
So, while in your world nobody eats bananas and Microsoft is the biggest
company in the world, in this real world, people eat 70 million tons of
bananas each year and Microsoft is a small outfit (relatively speaking).
1 ton of bananas = 1000 to 2000 $ so a rough estimate of the banana trade is
about 70-140 billion dollars = more or less twice the revenue of Microsoft.
And that's only for bananas. Look up the figures for wheat, maize or
soybeans.
Of course, in the real world, food is actually more important that software,
now how does *that* compute? :P
(Also, I said that the Maersk group shipped bananas, but that was a joke;
indeed, they may ship more profitable stuff such as oil, cars and Chinese
Christmas toys http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_M%C3%A6rsk; freight is a
gigantic business that made billionaires such as
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onassis, who was more famous than Bill Gates in
his time).
G.
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
"nemesis" <nam### [at] nospamgmail com> wrote in message
news:47b1d19d$1@news.povray.org...
> there's an ogg video of Nelson Mandela -- as if you would know who is he
> -- in the Examples directory. He speaks about the ancient Ubuntu
> african concept...
If he doesn't, I'm contemplating shooting him!
The video's also on wiki -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Experience_ubuntu.ogg
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Invisible wrote:
> Given time, you could probably integrate the entire thing into one giant
> SQL statement. You'd probably find that you can actually simplify it
> down to something rather smaller once it stated all in one operation.
> And that the DB engine can do some pretty impressive optimisations after
> that too.
Yeah, that's why I'm after it.
On the other hand, I've done SQL statements that I gave up on after
they'd run for a couple of days, recoded it as a "SELECT *" without a
where clause, calculated the new column, and wrote it back, and *that*
ran in about 90 seconds.
(Basically, a bunch of streams, each with an event having a start time
but no end time. Each event ends when the next event starts on the same
stream. Assign the "duration" column to any row that doesn't have a
duration and isn't the most recent record for that stream.)
> OTOH, if you haven't got enough time to do it... what can you do?
Post to p.o-t too much?
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
On what day did God create the body thetans?
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
didn't you have a counter somewhere on the number of crashes you
experienced with it?
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
nemesis wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Because you had lots of OSes called UNIX that weren't compatible with
>> each other, even at the source level. (See autoconf)
>
> that only happens when you exchange a common API for platform-specific APIs that
> do the same thing faster or funkier. It happens even in Java.
>
> It doesn't really happen in M$ because there really is a single vendor with a
> single set of solutions and they can cram old APIs to handle old code in their
> newer products with newer incompatible APIs.
Yes. And how does that mean that MS didn't cause that to happen?
>>> Win9x did not support DOS programs: they simply had DOS included to handle
>>> those.
>> DOS programs ran in a window, just like they do now.
>
> It runs in a window because that's how graphical ambients run console programs:
> by opening a window terminal and letting the console program do their job. It
> doesn't magically transform them into full graphical programs with graphical
> drop-down menus.
Who said anything about graphics, let alone magic?
> The OS calls such programs did were DOS calls and such calls
> are still supported these days by letting an emulated DOS handle those.
Yes. But there's also a whole bunch of things the old code did that
didn't go through APIs, like writing directly to screen memory or
invoking hardware INT calls. Those got caught and emulated too.
> So they can afford to provide their older APIs together with the new. It's
> their own code, it's not really "2 different OSes"!
The program runs on two different OSes. Of course, to make this happen,
the new OS has to support the old API. I'm not sure which of my
statements you think you're disputing here.
>> So, different operating systems. You're making my point for me. :-)
> old code still handled by old code, not new.
Not true. What's the code in DOS that handles writing to screen memory?
Where's the code in DOS that handles moving the cursor via IBM BIOS calls?
> last few years and while the bugs are certainly different than those of MS
> software, there doesn't seem to be as many or as little as those.
And Linux still isn't as big as MS. Yes, MS has more bugs per line of
code than Linux. About 2 or 3 times as many, last study I saw. But MS
is a commercial concern. The bugs that MS has don't seriously affect
their profitability. (Well, before Vista, at least.)
> So, why is the single largest and richest developer in the world with so many
> bright minds and a single set of enforcement rules over their developers about
> code quality and API standards get rivalled by ad-hoc developers from around
> the world working on many different little pieces of software that eventually
> get assembled into a Linux distribution?
I'm not sure. I'd guess it's because the people working on Linux don't
have nearly as much backward compatibility problems, and they don't have
nearly as many cost concerns. I.e., if there's a bug in a popular Linux
application, Linux kernel authors don't add code to the kernel to work
around the bug - they fix the bug in the application. MS doesn't really
have that option. Plus, if there's a problem with Linux, the person who
fixes it is the person with the problem. With MS, the bug in the OS gets
fixed for the customer only if it's worthwhile to MS, not if it's
worthwhile to the customer. Economics is always skewed by having the
benefits go to someone other than the person paying.
> It seems to me MS crappy, crippled software is such by design, so people have
> always a reason to update.
I'm sure there are decisions made to ship less-than-optimal products
that can have an upgrade path. Every commercial company does this,
monopoly or not.
On the other hand, I've been getting free updates and bugfixes from MS
for years and years. So I'm not sure what incentive you think they'd
have to ship buggy products if they're going to fix them for free.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
On what day did God create the body thetans?
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Gilles Tran wrote:
> 47b1cf6d$2@news.povray.org...
>
>> I mean, I guess the numbers must stack up somehow, but DAMN, that's
>> far-out!
>
> Well, it's well-established by now that you live in a parallel world, and
> that povray.off-topic is some kind of portal window into this amazing real
> world you keep hearing about. Nothing wrong with that of course, but you
> should definitely understand that the realities in your parallel world are
> far different from the realities in this world.
>
> So, while in your world nobody eats bananas and Microsoft is the biggest
> company in the world, in this real world, people eat 70 million tons of
> bananas each year and Microsoft is a small outfit (relatively speaking).
ROTFLOL
you know deep inside you like the lil' guy, Gilles...
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Invisible wrote:
> Gail Shaw wrote:
>
>> And how much software did you buy before MS was around? Don't confuse
>> correlation with causation.
>
> Quite a lot. (Well, my parents anyway, not me personally. I didn't have
> any money...)
>
> We had premptive multitasking operating systems and large C compilers
> and ray tracers and modellers and music sequencing software and complex
> computer games and so on and so forth.
And what machine were you running this stuff on?
"""
After reading the January 1, 1975 issue of Popular Electronics that
demonstrated the Altair 8800, Bill Gates called the creators of the new
microcomputer, MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems),
offering to demonstrate an implementation of the BASIC programming
language for the system
"""
What large C compilers and music sequencing software was running before
MS was writing software?
>> I'm emphasising small, because small software is 'easy' to write.
>
> I don't really see how the software M$ writes is any "bigger" or "more
> complex" than what existed before.
Uh... You don't think Windows XP is bigger or more complex than the
mainframe OSes of the mid-70s? It's not bigger and more complex than CP/M?
> Similarly, have you *ever* seen Linux crash?
Regularly. 3 or 4 times last week alone. On a machine where Windows
never crashes. Sure, go ahead, blame the hardware.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
On what day did God create the body thetans?
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Darren New wrote:
> nemesis wrote:
>> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>> Because you had lots of OSes called UNIX that weren't compatible with
>>> each other, even at the source level. (See autoconf)
>>
>> that only happens when you exchange a common API for platform-specific
>> APIs that
>> do the same thing faster or funkier. It happens even in Java.
>>
>> It doesn't really happen in M$ because there really is a single vendor
>> with a
>> single set of solutions and they can cram old APIs to handle old code
>> in their
>> newer products with newer incompatible APIs.
>
> Yes. And how does that mean that MS didn't cause that to happen?
because apps running in Windows don't magically run on Solaris, Mac OS,
Linux or whatever. What I'm trying to say is that W95, WNT or Vista,
while not the same OS, continue using old API code to handle old user
apps. So, it's MS made cross-platform software possible. The old apps
are still relying on old API code, not new code from the new OS handling
the old apps.
What really made cross-platform software a little more closer to reality
were industry-strength standards, the internet, quite a few
cross-platform development languages (Java, Python, Perl etc) and, yes,
open-source software. You have the source and it's compiled and running
everywhere, so let's build more from there on and get done with it. No
more proprietary APIs, more portability across truly different OSes...
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> Similarly, have you *ever* seen Linux crash?
>
> Regularly. 3 or 4 times last week alone. On a machine where Windows
> never crashes. Sure, go ahead, blame the hardware.
were you running as root?
desktop, server? task?
Post a reply to this message
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
