In article <47fbacee$1@news.povray.org>, dne### [at] sanrrcom says...
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
> > Yeah, so what went wrong? lol Lets see. Code bloat, 
> 
> Sure, bloat my OS code with printer drivers. I'll take that over having
 
> six disks of printer drivers distributed with each application any day.
>
Umm. Actually, I was referring to Windows there, not the bloat in Linux, 
which at its most bloated looks anorexic by comparison. lol
 
>  > people actually
> > wanting to be able to transfer documents between unlike systems (with
 
> > filenames intact),
> 
> Never really had a problem with that...
> 
Well, it didn't come up often, but some times...

> >>> Even with the need to make some adjustments, there is still a basic
 
> >>> standardization to internals, and commands.
> >> As with various versions of Windows. Yes?
> >>
> > Umm. Not really.. Half the stuff that doesn't work between 3.1 and XP i
s 
> > a result of hacks needed to make it work right at all on 3.1, but which
 
> > where bugs, hole or unintended interfaces.
> 
> Yes. If you take advantage of bugs or undocumented interfaces, or bypass
 
> the API to try to do the same thing yourself without using the API, then
 
> when the API gets upgraded, your program breaks.
> 
> It's not like nothing got rewritten since System 7 either. This is all 
> normal computer stuff that happens on every operating system and 
> application and framework everywhere.
> 
True enough. One wonders why most of that stuff was so deeply buried in 
the first place though. Try, for example, writing your own program, 
which doesn't use IE core or export to wsh, so that it can a) run 
scripts, b) use "createobject" like COM support *and* also correctly 
bond those objects connection points to event managers. Two years I have 
been looking for a solution and all I have gotten is "Well, why no just 
rewrite everything in .NET, .NET is magical (never mind it seems to have 
some similar problems), or 2-3 articles involving work arounds, none of 
which supply useful example code, but just babble about theory and how, 
"If you are as skilled and well versed as I am, implementing this 
wizbang solution should be trivial!". Uh, yeah, that *kind of* why I 
went looking for answers, because some of us don't have leet skillz. lol

Even knowing, in theory, all the bits that make it work, I can't find 
any damn way to use it, without practically rewriting the entire program 
I want to do it in from scratch, and then, it might still not work. Bad 
enough when you don't document unknown interfaces, but to intentionally 
make every single library so that it *prevents* people from being able 
to use the documented interfaces to do anything but use early bound 
objects... That is just perverse.

> > The other half are cases 
> > where MS changed the underlying implementations, so you just *can't* do
 
> > it any more. 
> 
> Sure. See above. If you want a multi-user system, you can't take a 
> single-user application and expect it to run without giving it undue 
> privileges.  I mean, heck, even POV-Ray had to get beaten over the head
 
> before it stopped writing per-user configuration into per-computer 
> directories. How long was Windows doing multi-user systems before Vista
 
> finally said "OK, enough, really, you have to deal with multi-user 
> configuration"?
> 
> Things that are actually written to the documented APIs port 
> surprisingly well. If you write your own INI file parser, don't expect 
> the next upgrade of Windows to put your stuff in the right place in the
 
> registry for you.
> 
Yes, yes, I can understand that. Tha isn't the problem though. Its not 
privilege levels that are being screwed up, its stuff like the patch 
that prevents you executing certain types of packets on a network, which 
only inconveniences the hackers, but, in some configurations/networks, 
also hoses certain tools use to do determine what is wrong with your 
network. And then there are issues like deciding that no one is going to 
care if you make 99% of all games prior to Vista stop working, because 
you think you have a *better* solution for sound support than 20 years 
of sound card manufacturers, and it doesn't actually try to support the 
old method. Sure, lots of processing power. But, are you *sure* that 
**no one** is going to be trying to use any of it for other things 
"while" playing the games that need that sound?

Look, we can go back and forth all day about why they decide to do some 
things, how its bad, or not bad, etc. Just saying, if you are the guy 
that needs something to work the way it did, and not the other 90% who 
don't know a phone jack from a cat5e jack, some of this stuff is a pain 
in the ass when they start messing with it.

> > They are still doing that, releasing .NET, then basically 
> > making it very very hard to code anything with MFC. 
> 
> In what way are they making it hard?
> 
Umm. Other than buying the full compiler because they decided that the 
"free" version would only support the newest version, there is the fact 
that MFC was a bonehead design to start with, and its not easy to recode 
any of it to work under a different library. Mostly, in my case, its 
that I never had a reasonably up to date copy of MS' compiler, so I 
would have to sell a kidney to be able to make changes to a product 
written in something that they don't freely support. Which seems wacky 
to me. You would think that writing the .NET system and releasing it 
would cost "more" than dropping the 10+ year old MFC libraries on a 
website and saying, "we don't support this anymore, but for that that 
want it, here you go." They are going to charge me for the stuff that 
obsolete, but not the newest stuff?

Yeah, yeah, I know the reason. It doesn't help my mood when I look at 
the price tag. lol

>  > Besides, now you are talking
> > about odometers, gas gages, or steering wheels, which is a bit higher
 
> > level than the "core" systems.
> 
> I haven't any clue where your analogy is supposed to be going. You seem
 
> to be arguing that since cars are built from physical parts, Windows suck
s.
> 
No, I mean that I was talking about core features, while you are talking 
about a layer higher than that. Its bound to be easier, within limits, 
to rewrite something where 90% of the function is "in" the application 
and its only a few interfaces and the display that need tweaking. Its a 
bit more serious if the heart of your application is relying on some 
core feature working, which doesn't work the same on the new OS, or come 
close enough to patch over.

Point was, unless its hardware related (and that is a whole new can of 
worms), *nix isn't likely to have too many of those, even between 
different "versions".

> IME, hardware is much flakier than software. I have about 40 Linux 
> servers I'm controlling right now. Between the colo "testing" their 
> generator and frobbing the power on and off, the bakery dumping a 
> 50-pound bag of flour into the fans, the brand new expensive Dell 
> servers just deciding the disk controller doesn't exist any more, I've 
> had way more crashes than anything in software causes.
> 
Got an external HD with similar issues. Power goes out, I have to reboot 
for some reason (something messed up Halo so bad I had to reinstall, 
after rebooting, since it froze solid), and the drivers and drive 
monitor both insist that its unformatted... Not as bad as insisting it 
doesn't exist, but geeze... Oh, well, they hosed the backup software on 
it anyway. It doesn't backup anything not in its "approved" list, 
including settings, databases for your browser and email, etc... Oh, 
and, just to be real jerks, they don't sell an upgrade that *does* work 
like the older version that did do all those things. WTF?

> I've also worked at companies where the servers were running Windows, 
> and they just never died unless the hardware did.
> 
> Indeed, the worst OS I've used is actually Solaris, where we had to 
> rearchitect a number of services to account for the bugs in the OS that
 
> would (for example) not reap processes spawned by cron such that even 
> kill -9 didn't stop them, or write file data over top of the inodes just
 
> because the disk got busy.
> 
Gah.. Ok, that is just nuts. Yeah, if someone can manage to fowl up 
something that is *usually* stable, they will find a way to do it.

> So I don't know what kind of professional experience you've had with 
> long-running Windows machines, but "drunken sailor on marbles" is far 
> from my experience.
> 
Oh, Windows 95 worked great, so did Win3.1, as long as I was careful 
what I let it patch over. XP has been good so far. 98... Lets not talk 
about it. lol

> > argue that we have, partly in XP, and hugely in Vista, traded stability
 
> > for the equivalent of some goon at the door saying, "Now, you know we
 
> > can't do nothing about the bad guys outside, so whys you want to leave?
 
> > Just stay here, nice and safe like, and let us decide if that packet 
> > shood get sent or not." Security via not letting you do anything. 
> 
> Again, a bizarre analogy. How about explaining what you dislike about XP
 
> by means of a reference to computers rather than to the Godfather movie?
> 
Because, its like having a goon sitting "inside" your house telling you 
what *you* are allowed to do sometimes, instead of standing "outside" 
the house, to protect you from the real problems. Sure, some people 
*need* the goon, since they are not too bright and will do dumb things. 
I get a bit annoyed trying to learn how to "not" do dumb things and 
having the goon tell me, "Yous sure you wanna do that?", all the time, 
even when I know that it will work. Its almost as bad, but less 
intrusive, than the stupid paperclip thing they had/have in certain 
applications.

>  > Or an
> > admittance that they can't stop the stuff that "requires" that kind of
 
> > security. 
> 
> What kind of "stuff" are you talking about?
> 
Umm. People making your machine a zombie. They seemed to figure that no 
one has a legitimate reason to create certain types of arbitrary 
packets, so no one would mind if they limited what zombies could do, 
even though it also torpedoed things that used the same principle to 
work, and where legitimate products. Heh, its just one I ran into 
recently, not a huge issue, but its not the only thing I hear people 
griping about with how they did Vista's security model (and also partly 
XP).

> > Either way, I didn't like 95/98 because it robbed me of a lot 
> > of control I *used to have* over my system. 
> 
> Like what?
> 
Mostly trying to fix things if they broke, or changing settings that 
even the admin user doesn't necessary have clear access to. I haven't 
run into it recently, since for the most part the case where you needed 
to do those things where ones where it was just easier to find some 
other way to solve the problem. I am not going to go into a list, since 
its been a while since I used either OS, and I don't remember half the 
annoying things I tried to adjust in them. (some there cases where you 
could only change the setting via regedit though).

> > XP, is kind of getting on my 
> > nerves, and what I have seen of Vista... Well, I am not the only one fe
d 
> > up at this point.
> 
> Yeah, Vista is certainly a step back in many ways. Many of the problems
 
> it's trying to solve, tho, are people who are saying "I should be able 
> to do anything I want, oh and when it breaks we'll blame Microsoft."
> 
> The thing I don't really understand is the number of people who use 
> MacOSX, Linux, and Windows, and complain that Windows asks for 
> confirmation for privileged operations, but equally croon about how 
> great Linux is that you have to sudo a program so you know it's 
> something dangerous.
> 
lol Yeah. Though, at times I wish Sudo existed on Windows. Frankly, I am 
running, and shouldn't be, in a full access user, precisely because I 
know if I change to a protected one I am going to be spending way too 
much time arguing with the OS about what I am doing, or situations where 
a sudo would solve an issue real easy, but where only logging out and 
back in as admin would fix in Windows (and having to close down 
applications that I either don't want to, or can't afford to if they are 
doing something, like BeyondTV. Mind you, once in a while you get one of 
the system updates that the OS **incists** you reboot with, and you 
don't even realize it happened until the next morning when you find that 
a) the applications you had open are all closed and b) what ever you had 
it doing overnight never finished... There doesn't seem to be a "let me 
fracking reboot when "I" want to option. Instead it keeps popping up 
ever 5-10 minutes to ask you, "Heh! You done yet. Want to reboot?" No 
frell you!!

-- 
void main () {

    if version = "Vista" {
      call slow_by_half();
      call DRM_everything();
    }
    call functional_code();
  }
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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