Discussions

Bass said:

staceyw said:

*snip*

Mono pitchmen mode activated!

Mono is much bigger then Silverlight, it's (trying) to create the entire .NET framework and then some. And Silverlight "multiplatform" means only two platforms: Windows and Mac OS X. There is no other technology that brings C#/.NET to more platforms and devices then Mono. Mono runs on so much more..

Mono runs on Windows, Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X, iPhones, Android Phones, Wii game consoles, processor arches: ARM, MIPS, SPARC, POWER,x86 and x64. And that's just the beggining.

Also Mono is especially suitable for writing video game engines (nevermind XNA) and highly scientific applications: it supports SIMD instructions, something that .NET currently does not. And it has some features like C# interactive evaluation that .NET will only get in .NET 4.0

Mono is also open source. In fact it's 100% open source: you can look at, and even modify the source code for the entire Mono project, and not get the men in black on your a$$ for daring to. Free distribution. Free modification. No compromises.

Mono is also very modular. You can customize Mono down to the method level (without actually modifying the BCL) making it especially suitable for embedded development. You don't need to make comprises based on what some arbitrary defined "edition" tells you can do. It can scale all the way down and all the way up, one codebase, any functionality you need. No worrying about the differences between Compact, Micro, Macro, Enterprise editions or whatever.

If you want a .NET framework with full C# 3.0, Linq, Generics, WinForms 1.0 and 2.0, ASP.NET 1.0 and 2.0, interactive shell, Silverlight + more, an intergrated and extremely powerful plugin framework (Mono.Addins), and you want this framework to support Mac OS X, Linux, Windows, and dozens of other devices and platforms. And you want it to be free both in the sense of charge and of freedom: you have only one option. The Mono option.

 

Now for some cheesy marketing slogans:

Mono. It's .NET. Everywhere.

Mono. The one option for multiplatform .NET. (One = Mono; ha ha ha)

Mono. The code monkey wet dream.

Mono. RAD development wherever development takes you.

Mono. It doesn't need a marketing slogan.

 

End Mono pitchmen mode!

 

Disclaimer: I do not work for Novell or in way affliated with the Mono project. I'm just a bit of a fan.

"And it has some features like C# interactive evaluation that .NET will only get in .NET 4.0"

Won't be till a later version (after 4.0), actually.

LeoDavidson said:

figuerres said:

*snip*

I'm pretty sure MS knew Linux-based devices were using FAT32 long-file-names for many years before they tried to get money out of people for licencing and then sued, so the "knew about it but didn't do anything immediately" angle seems out.

That leaves the "explicitly collaborated or had an agreement in place" angle, but as far as I know that only applies to Novell and not to every other company and their users. MS and Novell have signed some cross-licencing agreements which don't apply to other Linux companies/users.

I'm not an expert on any of this either. I've got zero interest in Mono / Moonlight / Silverlight (beyond the amusement it gives me that Java etc. are all so rubbish, and .Net so much better, that FOSS people are desperate enough to dance with the devil and port a langauge and framework from the enemy ). I'm also far from a fan of Stallman. (Most of his rhetoric and zealotry winds me up.)

I don't know what MS will or won't choose to do or if there's a realistic threat of submarine patents (or even known patents), but I think any argument that requires guessing how the law works based on what makes sense to a layman (which is rarely how laws work) and the assumption of corporate good faith (which is rarely how companies work) is a flawed one.

I'd always assume that any large company is going to screw its competition as much as it possibly can when and if it becomes advantagous to do so, unless there's a law, contract or competing reason which cancels out that advantge. "Bad PR" isn't a big enough reason, given the bad PR caused by the TomTom case.

Edit: If MS really want to endorse Mono and Moonlight being used in the FOSS world (not just Novell) then they could probably resolve the whole thing by explicitly granting a free licence to use all applicable patents which MS hold on the framework (etc.), or explicitly stating in a licence that there are no applicable patents, if that is the case, and they won't sue anyone for implementing a copy of the framework. Anything less than that is a worthless promise at best, and the FOSS world would be right to be suspicious of it, IMO.

 

I've heard murmurings that MSFT and TomTom were embroiled in a dispute about something else and the patent knives only came out as part of the escalation of that dispute.  Dunno the reality of it.

Bass said:

RoyalSchrubber said:

*snip*

Sorry to distract from this the argument..

Many Linux file systems are implemented using FUSE (Filesystem in USErspace). FUSE is a file system driver API that is supported in most *nix operating systems. The file system drivers run completely in user space. It's a very simple API, something like 6-7 (core?) functions, with bindings to just about every language out there including .NET (via Mono.Fuse). There are hundreds of such file systems publically available, from primative WinFS-like expirements to turning your blog into a file system.

I once tried to write one for SkyDrive but failed. The problem with SkyDrive is there is no public API, so to implement any kind of abstraction you have to screen scrape, and it can be difficult to do this (although not impossible).

Anyway, back to the arguing.

I think SkyDrive is going to be moved to the Live Framework in the future, so you could probably program against that?

WindowsGeek said:

I'm new to this Forum/Board.. and I wanted to make a comment about Search.. and I hope the MS personnel who are listening will do something about this:

Background- There seems to be an opinion among MS personnel (no doubt backed up by research) that indexed searching of a limited number of directories is the best search tool one could ever desire.  (I'm sorry, I don't really mean to sound sarcastic.. ) But, I just don't agree with that point of view.

-- Yes, indexed searching of a limited number of directories is a great search technology for files stored in the indexed directories...

BUT,

1, Why change the user interface so dramatically?- such a change seems to assume that nobody needs the old user interface.

2. Why make it so hard to initiate a search for files in some folder other than "C:\Users\MyName\MyDocuments"?  Could be another user told me to find the info in the following folder "C:\Users\HisName\MyDocuments"... Could be the file(s) are on a USB stick, or a USB hard drive, or on a shared drive elsewhere on the network...  These don't need to be indexed, but the user interface should make it easy for me to search there

3. What if I just want to look for all JPG files.. or all MP3 files.. or all XLS files.. AND, I have some directories which are copied over from an older computer.. and I keep them separate because I don't always need to look for one of these files.. but sometimes I do?

5. What if I want to look for a large photograph file (>10 MB) from 3-4 years ago, previously on another computer and I can't remember if it is a JPG, PNG, PSD or PSP file?  Or maybe I want to go back to the original RAW file.  It could be on any of my disks.  Your new user interface "stinks" as far as trying to do such a search.

My recommendation:

1. Keep the indexed searching- it's good for its narrow purpose.

2. Modify the user interface to easily allow additional search parameters (like the XP search dialog)- date range, file size range, possible file locations, file extensions, etc.

"This is my final answer!"

Otherwise I may have to seek out alternative file search tools.

Thank you for your prompt action!

     WindowsGeek

 

Apart from UI changes I don't really understand the problems you're having.  Searching in unindexed folders isn't any more difficult than searching in indexed folders in terms of UI, it's just slower, and at least to me it doesn't seem any slower than it was under XP.  Search parameters are easy enough to enter, though admittedly not very discoverable under Vista.

My gripe with search in Vista (it's fixed in 7) -- and it's a major one -- is that when searching in partially indexed locations, it only searches the indexed files, meaning that it will miss files that are plainly there.  I really think MSFT should be obligated to backport the fix to a Vista service pack.  It may not technically be a bug, but it creates the impression -- and the practical reality -- that search just is not reliable.

btw:

"3. What if I just want to look for all JPG files.. or all MP3 files.. or all XLS files.. AND, I have some directories which are copied over from an older computer.. and I keep them separate because I don't always need to look for one of these files.. but sometimes I do?" --> type "name:*.jpg", "name:*.mp3", etc. into the search box

"5. What if I want to look for a large photograph file (>10 MB) from 3-4 years ago, previously on another computer and I can't remember if it is a JPG, PNG, PSD or PSP file?  Or maybe I want to go back to the original RAW file.  It could be on any of my disks.  Your new user interface "stinks" as far as trying to do such a search." --> "size:>10MB datemodified:‎6/29/‎2005 .. ‎6/29/‎2006 name:(*.jpg OR *.png OR *.psd OR *.psd OR *.raw)"

Ubuntu said:

staceyw said:

*snip*

I think that the hell will freeze over before MS supports any of the following: SharpDevelop, Mono, C# for Eclipse, Wine, non-native file systems etc. (by support MS style I mean recognizing their existence). All it takes is to look at their record and it's clear it won't happen any time soon.

MSFT already supports Mono in your sense, for example they test their F# tools against it.

exoteric said:

Hopefully in time, it will. I really like the task-oriented nature of Bing with these domain-specific searches and calculations. Windows Calculator (Windows 7) is now also task-oriented but is a speck of dust compared to the massive and extreme Wolfram|Alpha which is looking like a potential competitor to Bing for some scenarios. - And an interesting dark horse in the search arms race. We live in interesting times.

Is there some way to create one's own tasks in Calculator, by the way?  I was surprised there didn't seem to be.

Ubuntu said:

matthews said:

*snip*

Dude, everything you wrote in your post is BS.

1. Could you be more specific and tell us which are the features that you miss in OpenOffice so much that you think it's 'horrible'?

2. If nvidia and Ati-AMD open-sourced their drivers there would be no reason to have an open-source 2D driver

3. If your kernel gets updated you may still choose in your boot menu to boot using the old one - didn't you notice that?

4. If you update to a newer kernel you should expect for the supported devices coverage to increase rather than decrease (the opposite to Windows)

I had sh*t to do, and after 3 years on that garbage, I gave up, installed Vista

You mean that WinXP prior to SP2 (at that point in time) was a better choice? It had poor stability and serious security issues.

I won't comment on the rest of your post because it's simply ridiculous - you have your agenda you want to put forward and there is no point in arguing.

my mom (who disliked MS Word and used to like WordPerfect) thought OpenOffice Writer was like everything she hated about MS Word, but slower and with an even clunkier interface.  this was as of 2.0, I dunno if it's improved since.  Personally I also dislike both (though I do like the new Ribbon interface) and would rather use something like TeX for my writing.  I'm sure OO meets many people's needs though (I guess it meets my needs too, those being "read the occasional MS Office document when I'm forced to do so")

Ubuntu said:

staceyw said:

*snip*

windows hating seems to have cut way back from years ago

That's not true - windows hating morphed into Vista hating there has never been a better time to hate Windows than now - We the Windows haters are on a row To the point that ordinary users (not only the power users) are joining forces with us to spread the word (the hate) on the net.

As someone who used almost exclusively Debian, Ubuntu and free software on my desktops and laptops for five years, I have to say that some aspects of the culture surrounding them has been turning me off recently.  Spreading the word is fine, but do we really need a bunch of trolls posting ill-informed knee-jerk b.s. (in the sense that they don't really care whether it's true or not) on every *ing MS-related story on every blog?

Another thing is that a lot of the FUD around Vista is about the same things as the FUD around Linux -- basically compatibility, familiarity and not wanting to have to deal with limited user accounts.  I guess you could say turnabout is fair play, but after five years of frustration at the Linux FUD it kinda bugs me to see the same stuff applied in the other direction.

My impression is that MSFT has been deliberately ambiguous about the patent situation.  They're trying to simultaneously get developers to think they won't need licenses and some businesses to think they will.  (sort of reminds me of the US' "one China" policy)  I don't think it's too unreasonable of Stallman et al. to call them out on it although as someone who likes both .NET and Linux, and really appreciates Mono, I wish the situation were better.

BTW speaking of Tomboy (of which I'm also a big fan), it runs on Windows now and the recent 0.15.1 developer release appears to fix whatever problem prevented 0.14.x from installing on W7 for me.

Bass said:

contextfree said:

*snip*

I just don't like what I percieve as the 'culture' around enterprise RDBMSes. It's about as Office Space as you can get. Plus I think writing database driven business software is fundementally uninteresting. I think there is too more effort being wasted on "ways to store data" and how to present the data and not enough actually using the data. I don't mean building reports and charts ("present the data"), but rather using the data in artificial intelligence applications.

Hmm, I'm not too interested in the domains that RDBMSs tend to be used in but on the other hand I find relational database theory to be pretty interesting.