Friday, December 30, 2011

Happy New Year

Happy New Year


Our reviewer, our correspondents wishes our readers a Happy New Year.


We look forward to Delphi XE3 - will it be yet another Delphi version to milk Delphi developers of their hard-earned cash or another attempt to exorcise the TDemons?


Will the next year be the last 361 days or will it be the dawn of a New Age, one where Delphi Haters and Delphi Lovers can live in peace?


The Delphi Haters wishes for fairness, correct working solutions for problems, better prices, moderation to remove trolls, fair gain for fair work, not constantly paying for nonsense works, not getting insulted when helping others, hiring other people for proper wages, recovering wages from rubbish developers

The Delphi Lovers wants everything to be free and don't want to pay anything. They want to be bosses, yet leeching the work of others. They want to be kings of their domains, disrespect others continually. Poverty begets poverty. Without just works, how can one lift themselves out of poverty? Customers do not tolerate badly written software nor badly made products.

Perhaps, the New Age will be one where there are two heavens - one, where those who made past choices towards living their lives in truth, exposing misdeeds, taking responsibility for their actions, and one - for those who wishes to live in dishonor, distrust and that of selfishness. Both of them are heavens for them.

If our Father came and ask us what we did during our lives on Earth, what would we say?

Suppose that we are playing a game of cards where everyone can see each others cards. Because we can see each others cards, we can play without learning and experiencing things because all things are known. Then, one day, someone changed the rules to make the cards hidden. Then, we have to play the cards correctly and try to win the game. Then, instead of knowing things, we have to inquire, deeply search for things, deeply find the correct answers. For every action came a reaction. By doing so, the people playing this kind of game learn faster and deeply experience it.

To play cards right, you have to forget the game and eventually learn to play the game. The only way how you can win, is to help the others win. To win, you must get people to play with you instead of playing against you. The more you play to win, the more people you need to play with you.

If you left the table without all your winnings, what could you take with you? Then you understand what the game of life is.












Thursday, December 29, 2011

Case of the Delphi Peng Yu

Foreign Correspondent from Hong Kong
With translation help from our Correspondent in New York
With updated information given from readers

The problem with C++ Builder and Delphi in China is that Chinese C++ Builder and Delphi developers who try to help another land often end-up with loss of reputation, losing career prospects and no appreciation for their works.


Case Background
In China, there is an infamous case, 'Case of Peng Yu', which a driver supposedly helped an old woman who fell down on the road-side and escorted her to hospital, according to the driver's version.
(Google: "Case of Peng Yu")

The old lady, who took advantage of his generosity said that he knocked down her instead and after a long legal trial, the court ordered the driver to pay the old woman 45,000 Yuan in damages.

Now people think twice before helping others for fear of being falsely accused of wrongdoings while helping others.




Delphi Peng Yu?

The reason why nobody wants to help anymore in the China Delphi community reflects the lawlessness of the Chinese on-line forums, where one person can vilify another person, causing him or her to suffer deep loss to his or her reputation. The Chinese forum moderators, do nothing to stop the vilification of those who do not have any knowledge about Delphi or stop those other individuals attacking others.


For example, recently, a high-school teacher in Juling (China) used his Real Name™ and did not know some functions or asked some basic questions about C++ Builder and Delphi on a certain Chinese Delphi forums. Since, he did not get a straight answer and his English was not good, he was scolded by others, including insults, like - what kind of a teacher would ask basic questions about Delphi?, among other things. He got angry and decided to confront the other people on the Chinese forums. The war of words become very bad and he eventually lost his reputation on-line, his students started calling him the stupid rat, mad teacher (transliterated into English). Since his real-name was known, unknown perpetrators went and impersonate him on-line. He was devastated when he was forced to resign from his position earlier this year.


The high-prices (around ~50,000 Yuan per person) and low wages (~1200 Yuan) in Central China make for amusing questions about C++ Builder and Delphi. If someone asks about Delphi in China, you are either very rich person (read: sucker and ready to be cheated) or a software pirate. Then, using your real-name means that you can your reputation ruined if you speak-up against high-prices, which leads to "no complaints" about high prices of Embarcadero's products in China. The solution for many Chinese companies is to use Microsoft's product or home-grown Red-Flag Linux. Embarcardero had many opportunities to reduce prices from 50,000 Yuan to [20 Yuan per student] or [500 Yuan per developer in a company] in an effort to curb software piracy.


There is no need to think about doing free development work in Delphi, since the cost of Delphi vs. wages is deeply imbalanced. An American Cowboy Delphi developer would charge US$80/hour (and probably be jobless for the next 2 years waiting for that dream job) and easily afford a copy of Delphi, but Delphi in China is very expensive with annual costs eating into profits.


(The people behind CNPack get free software from Embarcardero by becoming an Embarcardero Technology Partner. But for the fellow Delphi developers, will Embarcardero release a version of Delphi that Chinese developers can afford?)



Shooting the messenger instead
When someone reports about software piracy and stealing intellectual property in China, everyone else gangs-up against those persons (including those who report about software piracy -- like this blog), falsely accusing them of telling lies, vilifying them, being software pirates and other misdeeds, but in reality -- their copy-protection mechanisms are deeply flawed, Embarcardero's business subscription business model making slaves out of developers instead.


Software pirates are happy when the good people turn blind-eyes to them, including the absence of legal action and legal notices against several pirate developer forums in China, complete lack of DMCA notices against non-Chinese websites. Delphi in China is almost like non-existent (Mirrors of this blog on blog-copied sites ranks high on Baidu and Google.HK). The result is Delphi-Jobs and C++ Builder jobs are hard to come by, nobody cares about this product.


Chinese companies making computer hardware uses Microsoft Visual C++ with the Windows DDK to build drivers and not interested in Delphi 64-bit offerings since it is so expensive. Buying Delphi for a 5-man team, you could pay for their wages for two years including give them a bonus during Chinese New Year time.


Now, if someone posts for help on support forum, people would not act at all, for fear of being vilified or loss of reputation, to steer clear of unwanted trouble, not to mention about their bosses looking over their shoulders concerned about work-productivity.


Which, is perfectly fine for the Delphi community. Just don't bother the software pirates busy uploading Delphi & Delphi-related software to file-sharing sites because they will frame and vilify you instead.



Monday, December 26, 2011

Fan Feedback

H Says:
After working in c++ builder for 3 days this is my new favorite blog!


H, Thanks for the feedback!

Friday, December 23, 2011

Never gets old

Correspondent from New York

It never gets old.
Three years later your correspondent still get these security warnings.






Embarcardero should start considering getting replacements for their network guys. Three years and still same errors. Does David I. browse their own websites? Did they try browsing their web-sites from home or from say, when they visit other countries and cities during their Delphi World-wide tour (e.g., Brazil, Toronto, Illinois) and wonder how slow their websites are?


Wednesday, December 7, 2011

12 ways hardware makers screw up a perfectly good Windows PC

Correspondent from New York

Few days ago, your correspondent received a news alert from ZDNet "12 ways hardware makers screw up a perfectly good Windows PC". It is often quoted Delphi is good for making system utilities...


Guess which Delphi apps are featured in ZDNet's article?