Sean Kelly wrote:
> Jari-Matti Mäkelä wrote:
>>
>> Yeah, of course it makes sense. Let's abstract away the underlying
>> hardware
>> & operating system and lock people on this new highly portable platform
>> with IP stuff, patents and DMCA. Problem solved.
> 
> To be fair, Ms does target ARM as well, for its handheld devices. Though I wonder if those devices have a full .NET VM.  In any case, pre-generating binary code is obviously more efficient, so why not use it for a VM?  The original point of .NET is a COM replacement anyway, regardless of how things have been spun.
> 
>> It's interesting to see how much effort MS has put into .NET platform and
>> language research (well, except Java for some unknown reason :P)
>> lately. I
>> don't think they will be giving it all away for free.
> 
> They have to.  The CLI is an open standard.  They may choose to sell their implementation of it of course, but they can't forbid anyone from implementing a compatible VM.

Being a standard doesn't mean that it's free of patent
problems, so it may not be freely implementable.  Patents
*do* allow you a monopoly on devices implementing their
claims.  (Though recent US Supreme Court rulings might
help to reduce the lunacy that has been ruling the
software industry of late.)

-- James

Jari-Matti Mäkelä wrote:
> Pragma wrote:
> 
>> Bruno Medeiros wrote:
>>> lubosh wrote:
>>>> Sean Kelly Wrote:
>>>>
>>>> That's why Microsoft provided utility called NGEN which is producing
>>>> native binaries of .NET bytecode so JIT compilation won't be needed.
>>>> Whole .NET framework is practically NGENed during installation.
>>>>
>>> Ah, interesting, so that's why the installtion of the the .NET framework
>>> takes a rather long time, mistery explained.
>>>
>> But what's truly ridiculous is that .NET has exactly *one* target
>> platform.
> 
> Hehe, on slashdot a 'you must be new here' reply would be modded +5
> informative :P
> 
> Yeah, of course it makes sense. Let's abstract away the underlying hardware
> & operating system and lock people on this new highly portable platform
> with IP stuff, patents and DMCA. Problem solved.
> 
> It's interesting to see how much effort MS has put into .NET platform and
> language research (well, except Java for some unknown reason :P) lately. I
> don't think they will be giving it all away for free.

True enough.  Perhaps this is your reply sailing right over my head, but I was commenting more about how the .NET installer spends all this effort NGEN-ing the CLI distribution on install (supposedly anyway).  If they're deploying to just one target platform, why wouldn't they just pre-compile before release?

But you have a point - they're obviously not trying to solve any portability problems.

-- 
- EricAnderton at yahoo

Joel Lucsy wrote:
> Pragma wrote:
>> But what's truly ridiculous is that .NET has exactly *one* target platform.
> 
> Oh? So you're saying the optimized code coming out of the NGEN sequence for a P4 CPU will be identical to the code for a P3 CPU? And what about Itaniums (or any other CPU) running 64 bit? I'd pretty sure Microsoft is counting those variations as "platforms".
> 

Good point.  -1 for me for not recalling what started this particular portion of the thread. ;)

-- 
- EricAnderton at yahoo

Pragma wrote:
> Perhaps this is your reply sailing right over my head, but I
> was commenting more about how the .NET
> installer spends all this effort NGEN-ing the CLI distribution on install
> (supposedly anyway).  If they're deploying to just one target platform,
> why wouldn't they just pre-compile before release?

Oh, that. I've probably spent one year too many compiling Gentoo, it didn't even come to my head until some time after pressing the 'Send'. :)

Pragma wrote:
> Joel Lucsy wrote:
>> Pragma wrote:
>>> But what's truly ridiculous is that .NET has exactly *one* target platform.
>>
>> Oh? So you're saying the optimized code coming out of the NGEN sequence for a P4 CPU will be identical to the code for a P3 CPU? And what about Itaniums (or any other CPU) running 64 bit? I'd pretty sure Microsoft is counting those variations as "platforms".
>>
> 
> Good point.  -1 for me for not recalling what started this particular portion of the thread. ;)
> 

Yup, that's was I was going to say, platform != CPU configuration. ^^

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - MSc in CS/E student
http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?BrunoMedeiros#D