Gilles Tran wrote:

> 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).

Now that makes more sense. I was wondering how the hell you could make 
any significant profile *just* by shipping bananas. If you'd said wheat 
or rice I'd have been more convinced... And if this one company actually 
ships all those different kinds of goods, I can see them making quite a 
lot of money.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Nicolas Alvarez <nic### [at] gmailisthebestcom> wrote:
> IE, on the other hand, has great performance and no standards 
> compliance, and since it hasn't been updated much for years... it was 
> made for older machines :P

  Much of IE's "performance" is deceiving.

  For example, IE seems to take much less memory than other browsers
because many of its components are system components already loaded
into memory, and they are not listed under IE in the task manager.
This means that IE is taking quite a lot of memory, but you won't see
how much using task manager.

  That's also the reason why IE seems to start faster than many other
browsers: Most of its components are already loaded when Windows start,
and thus the *real* launchtime for IE is hidden by having part of it
launch at system startup.

  IE is rather slow at rendering pages. In page rendering speed tests
it performs poorly. (AFAIK in Windows the currently fastest "big" browser
is probably Safari.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> Partly it's the whole "everyone runs only Windows, so we only need to 
> develop for Windows", which creates the whole "people only develop for 
> Windows, so I can only run Windows". 

That's the whole "natural monopoly" sort of thing. That's why there's 
really only one eBay, only one PSTN, and why Linux is really very 
UNIX-like in its APIs.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     On what day did God create the body thetans?

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> On the other hand, Windows has been managing basic installs without user 
> expertise for decades. :-)

  Yes, Windows is clearly superior. Don't you even use anything else.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v7 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> > What I think Nicolas means is that gzip is the *nix standard packing 
> > format, which it's always been indeed.

> The best part is when you say "make configure", and it says 
> "Unrecognised arch 'i586/SuSE 10.3'". And you're like "WTF? Now what do 
> I do??"

  Yes, it's clearly a problem with *linux* when some software you are
trying to install is broken.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> OK. The Amiga lacked the necessary hardware for that.
> 
> I do find it interesting that you ask what Windows does that the Amiga 
> doesn't, and when given an extensive list, everything is dismissed as 
> either "The Amiga didn't have the hardware for that" or "I don't use 
> that so it doesn't count."

Well, if the hardware doesn't support it, how is the software supposed 
to offer that feature? Let's be realistic here. Given the available 
hardware, the software did almost everything you could expect of it. 
There's only a few things it could have provided but didn't. (Like 
multiple users and security. Or a real network stack.)

>> The STOP messages give generic error codes.
> 
> Fortunately, the Amiga was far superior in this regard. ;-)

Yes. It didn't crash. ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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> If that were the case, visiting Windows Update a few times presumably 
> wouldn't have fixed it...

Drivers.

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v7 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Mac OS X is an alternative - if you have several thousand pounds laying 
> spare...

  How much did your Windows cost you, *including* the PC it's running in?

  Besides, the "several thousand pounds" is BS. A fully-working Mac mini
(with MacOS X) is $599, which is about 307 British pounds.

  "Yeah, but it's a slow machine which you can't do anything with."
Maybe, if you consider an Intel Core 2 Duo with 1GB memory "slow".

> And Apple stuff, actually, but that's very expensive...

  You simply refuse to let go of the old myth, don't you?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:

>   It's really scary that one company can have this kind of power.

You know, if IE was actually a great product, I wouldn't mind so much... 
But, how can I put this? It isn't.

Very amusing thing: I said to a friend one time "IE really sucks; I'm 
using Firefox". And she was like "OMG, Firefox sucks!"

"You're not using IE are you?"

"Don't be daft - I'm using Avant."

Irony... much?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Warp wrote:

>> The best part is when you say "make configure", and it says 
>> "Unrecognised arch 'i586/SuSE 10.3'". And you're like "WTF? Now what do 
>> I do??"
> 
>   Yes, it's clearly a problem with *linux* when some software you are
> trying to install is broken.

Right. And the fact that the design of Unix is overly complex and 
incorporates several decades of backwards compatibility is unrelated? ;-)

I do take your point - broken software exists on *all* platforms. 
However, I do feel that Unix really doesn't help matters by being so 
wildly complicated...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Warp escribió:
> Nicolas Alvarez <nic### [at] gmailisthebestcom> wrote:
>> IE, on the other hand, has great performance and no standards 
>> compliance, and since it hasn't been updated much for years... it was 
>> made for older machines :P
> 
>   Much of IE's "performance" is deceiving.

Well, I can't tell for sure. Been a long while since I used it :)

Post a reply to this message

> On Linux she wouldn't need to install any software on CD whatsoever. 
> Digital
> cameras are just USB devices and USB is an industry-strength standard.  It
> works on Linux out-of-the-box.  And it comes with plenty of image 
> visualizers
> to see the content.

So when she plugs in the camera (without installing any drivers or special 
software), a box will pop up asking her if she wants to view a slide show, 
open the folder or print some of the photos?

Post a reply to this message

>> It requires you to connect to the
>> Internet, manually download a tar.gzip file, figure out how to unpack 
>> it, do the whole configure/make/install trip,
> 
> That's the *basic* installation method on Linux. If you don't even know 
> how to unpack a .tar.gz... you don't know Linux.

And you guys are trying to convince me my mum could use Linux .... ha!

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> Orchid XP v7 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> Mac OS X is an alternative - if you have several thousand pounds laying 
>> spare...
> 
>   How much did your Windows cost you, *including* the PC it's running in?

The PC that runs it: £500. Windoze itself was something like £200 at the 
time, IIRC.

OTOH, last time I saw a Mac on the shelf, they wanted £1,999. Which is 
quite a lot more...

>   Besides, the "several thousand pounds" is BS. A fully-working Mac mini
> (with MacOS X) is $599, which is about 307 British pounds.

According to Apple.com, "from £399". Everything else on that page is at 
least twice the figure.

>   "Yeah, but it's a slow machine which you can't do anything with."
> Maybe, if you consider an Intel Core 2 Duo with 1GB memory "slow".

I don't particularly. In fact I'm actually moderately tempted with a Mac 
Mini.

OTOH, I have many hundreds of pounds worth of software that won't work 
on it. Which is fine I guess - I just keep *that* software on my PC 
instead. But then... what exactly am I going to use this shiny new Mac 
for? I guess there's a way to run POV-Ray on it, and it has a nice big 
dual-core CPU in there, so that looks good. But... I don't know... Do I 
really want to spend basically £400 just to find out what a Mac is like?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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scott escribió:
>>> It requires you to connect to the
>>> Internet, manually download a tar.gzip file, figure out how to unpack 
>>> it, do the whole configure/make/install trip,
>>
>> That's the *basic* installation method on Linux. If you don't even 
>> know how to unpack a .tar.gz... you don't know Linux.
> 
> And you guys are trying to convince me my mum could use Linux .... ha!
> 

Will your mom convert her machine into a print server?

Post a reply to this message

"Orchid XP v7" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:47b1efb6@news.povray.org...

> They can, however, pay the hardware guys to only
> supply new computers with M$ Windows preinstalled

Which clearly explains why the haedware companies (like say, Dell, HP, IBM)
would never sell a computer pre-installed with Linux.

Oh, wait....

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>>> It requires you to connect to the
>>> Internet, manually download a tar.gzip file, figure out how to unpack 
>>> it, do the whole configure/make/install trip,
>>
>> That's the *basic* installation method on Linux. If you don't even 
>> know how to unpack a .tar.gz... you don't know Linux.
> 
> And you guys are trying to convince me my mum could use Linux .... ha!

I'm afraid I have to agree here...

[Well, no, I'd say that once everything you want is configured, Linux is 
actually quite easy to use. But every time you want to plug something 
new in... hmm.]

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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scott <sco### [at] laptopcom> wrote:
> And you guys are trying to convince me my mum could use Linux .... ha!

  I wouldn't not recommend Linux for your mother. I would recommend you
buy her a Mac mini.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> If that were the case, visiting Windows Update a few times presumably 
>> wouldn't have fixed it...
> 
> Drivers.

Yeah. Every train should have one.

Oh, wait, what are we talking about here? ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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scott escribió:
>> On Linux she wouldn't need to install any software on CD whatsoever. 
>> Digital
>> cameras are just USB devices and USB is an industry-strength 
>> standard.  It
>> works on Linux out-of-the-box.  And it comes with plenty of image 
>> visualizers
>> to see the content.
> 
> So when she plugs in the camera (without installing any drivers or 
> special software), a box will pop up asking her if she wants to view a 
> slide show, open the folder or print some of the photos?
> 

Correct.

http://www.kde.org/screenshots/images/3.5/19-plug-n-play.png
http://www.kde.org/screenshots/images/3.5/20-plug-n-play-digikam.png
http://www.kde.org/screenshots/images/3.5/21-digiKam.png

That's from KDE 3.5. KDE 4 is out already.

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v7 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >> The best part is when you say "make configure", and it says 
> >> "Unrecognised arch 'i586/SuSE 10.3'". And you're like "WTF? Now what do 
> >> I do??"
> > 
> >   Yes, it's clearly a problem with *linux* when some software you are
> > trying to install is broken.

> Right. And the fact that the design of Unix is overly complex and 
> incorporates several decades of backwards compatibility is unrelated? ;-)

  It's not like Windows is any better in that regard.

  At least Apple dares to break backwards compatibility with ancient
software and architectures. It hasn't slowed them down much.

> I do take your point - broken software exists on *all* platforms. 
> However, I do feel that Unix really doesn't help matters by being so 
> wildly complicated...

  Unix was never designed for people who don't know nor want to know
anything about computers. It was designed for sysadmins and the like.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:
> 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.

Um, yes. So you're saying "Yes, MS made it possible to run the same 
executables on multiple operating systems over the course of decades. 
But that doesn't count, because it wasn't magic"?  I'm not sure why you 
think you're disagreeing with me here.

> What really made cross-platform software a little more closer to reality 
> were industry-strength standards,

Like what? I haven't seen any standards that actually allow for programs 
to run cross-platform. Maybe I'm not following what you mean.

> the internet, 

The internet doesn't make programs run cross-platform. It just gives you 
a way to access them when they're running on someone else's platform.

> quite a few cross-platform development languages (Java, Python, Perl etc)

And BASIC. Which used to run everywhere. And was promoted and 
implemented by MS (amongst others).

Note that Java, Python, etc are all libraries controlled by one company 
or individual that give you cross-platform APIs for your code. Just like 
Win32. Except they don't provide executables.

> and, yes, open-source software.  

Sure.

> You have the source and it's compiled and running 
> everywhere, so let's build more from there on and get done with it.

I agree that open source software is probably a better way to do stuff, 
as long as you aren't worried about making a living at it.

 >  No more proprietary APIs, more portability across truly different 
OSes...

Uh, so, how much Linux software runs without recompiling under Solaris? 
Does that actually work?

I think the only thing that's actually going to satisfy you is virtual 
machine stuff, like VMWare.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     On what day did God create the body thetans?

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Gail Shaw wrote:
> "Orchid XP v7" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
> news:47b1efb6@news.povray.org...
> 
>> They can, however, pay the hardware guys to only
>> supply new computers with M$ Windows preinstalled
> 
> Which clearly explains why the haedware companies (like say, Dell, HP, IBM)
> would never sell a computer pre-installed with Linux.
> 
> Oh, wait....

So M$ didn't win everybody over yet? ;-)

[Last I heard - and I don't have any hard data for this - the guys you 
named aren't exactly short of cash.]

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Warp wrote:

>> Right. And the fact that the design of Unix is overly complex and 
>> incorporates several decades of backwards compatibility is unrelated? ;-)
> 
>   It's not like Windows is any better in that regard.

I'm not going to disagree with you on that.

[At least Unix is mostly documented...]

>   At least Apple dares to break backwards compatibility with ancient
> software and architectures. It hasn't slowed them down much.

Don't have any experiene in that direction, but I've heard good things.

>   Unix was never designed for people who don't know nor want to know
> anything about computers. It was designed for sysadmins and the like.

Again, we are in agreement.

I think it's not so much a case of "Linux isn't ready for the desktop", 
but rather "Linux is misplaced on the desktop". But I don't see anybody 
developing anything else currently...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v7 wrote:
> Well, if the hardware doesn't support it, how is the software supposed 
> to offer that feature? Let's be realistic here.

Let's scroll back to your original question, shall we?

 > What *useful* stuff does Windows do that AmigaDOS doesn't?

Now, are you claiming that all the hardware like virtual memory and 
networking that Windows supports that the Amiga doesn't is not necessary?

Do you remember why the thread started? Because Windows is more buggy 
than AmigaOS, and people said "that's because it does more"? Do you 
seriously think you can add support for VM, protected mode, networking, 
and lots of different kinds of hardware without making the OS more 
complicated?

> There's only a few things it could have provided but didn't.

This is incorrect also.

>>> The STOP messages give generic error codes.
>> Fortunately, the Amiga was far superior in this regard. ;-)
> Yes. It didn't crash. ;-)

Either you weren't programming at the time, or you're a far better 
programmer than I was.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     On what day did God create the body thetans?

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Darren New wrote:
> SUSE 10.1 would crash during install on my machine unless I managed to 
> interrupt it in the 0.75 seconds before it installed the buggy USB 
> driver that would take out the system.  It took me literally two days of 
> trying before I could get to a login prompt after an install.

hmm, you interrupt it before it installs a "buggy" USB driver?  It would 
crash without the interrupting?  what has you hooked to the USB port?

> On the other hand, Windows has been managing basic installs without user 
> expertise for decades. :-)

I understand that Linux just install everything automatically.  Under 
Windows, you install the basic OS and then go on manually inserting 
driver CDs or downloading them and installing for yourself, with any 
luck.  There are pros and cons for each method.

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:
> Tom Austin wrote:
>> IIRC Win95 ran on MS-DOS 7.  It actually booted to DOS and then loaded 
>> windows.  The reboot to DOS only set up the environment customized to 
>> the application you were trying to run.
>>
>> The same went for Win98 & ME.  Just that DOS become less and less 
>> important.  But I remember that they all ran on top of DOS.
> 
> AFAIK, Windows 3.1 was the last purely windows system for DOS.  From W95 
> forward, Windows was already a full OS, though not 32 bits.  But yes, I 
> think DOS booted and then booted Win.  DOS became as irrelevant as the 
> old programs for it began being rewritten for true 32 bit OS.  It then 
> run in emulated mode inside Windows...

I do remember running win95 from DOS and exiting win95 back to day.

Essentially I believe win95, 98, and ME required DOS to run.


Windows NT was the product that what it's 'own' OS and didn't run on DOS.
Windows 2000 and XP are based on the NT code and therefore never needed DOS.



Tom

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:

> Do you 
> seriously think you can add support for VM, protected mode, networking, 
> and lots of different kinds of hardware without making the OS more 
> complicated?

I guess the killer question is "can you do it without making it buggy". 
I think you can. Clearly you think it's impossible. (Or just impossibly 
expensive anyway...)

>>>> The STOP messages give generic error codes.
>>> Fortunately, the Amiga was far superior in this regard. ;-)
>> Yes. It didn't crash. ;-)
> 
> Either you weren't programming at the time, or you're a far better 
> programmer than I was.

I was programming in Pascal - why?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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nemesis wrote:
> hi, I can't help but notice your timezone is wrong.  This is 2008.  We 
> can write to NTFS partitions from LiveCDs,

Really? Which distro is that? It's not in the latest from SuSE 10.2, I 
notice.

 > let alone simple FAT which
> BTW is the standard format in thumbdrives, which work just fine as well.

I didn't say it didn't work. I said it tells me it's "alpha". Now, given 
that it's on a piece of software distributed worldwide, methinks the 
author of that message doesn't know what "ALPHA" means.

> Perhaps it's time to test a new Linux distribution?  From the 2000's?

Put a FAT32 drive in your /etc/fstab and look at the messages during 
boot. Maybe yours doesn't have that any more, but mine does.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     On what day did God create the body thetans?

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"Orchid XP v7" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:47b1f941$1@news.povray.org...

> > Which clearly explains why the haedware companies (like say, Dell, HP,
IBM)
> > would never sell a computer pre-installed with Linux.
> >
> > Oh, wait....
>
> So M$ didn't win everybody over yet? ;-)

Other way round. They all started selling linux installed machines recently.
(Or at least Dell did. Don't know the time frame of the others)

And I highly doubt that MS pays people to sell their software. That's not
exactly a good way to do business. Windows pre-installed on a PC is cheaper
than windows bought seperatly. Means the retailers can get more of a profit
margin, which makes share holders very happy.

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v7 wrote:
> The PC has the hardware necessary to do this with sane performance 
> levels. The Amiga didn't.

Yes. So? Does that mean it isn't a complicated and useful feature?

> Only hyper-nerds are going to be able to get anything remotely useful 
> out of a dump file. To everybody else, it's just wasted disk space.

Generally, the source code is sufficient.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     On what day did God create the body thetans?

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Gail Shaw wrote:

> And I highly doubt that MS pays people to sell their software. That's not
> exactly a good way to do business. Windows pre-installed on a PC is cheaper
> than windows bought seperatly. Means the retailers can get more of a profit
> margin, which makes share holders very happy.

I was thinking more "we'll give you this big bulk discount on a bunch of 
Windows CDs, but only if you sign this agreement not to offer any other 
OS"...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v7 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> I think it's not so much a case of "Linux isn't ready for the desktop", 
> but rather "Linux is misplaced on the desktop". But I don't see anybody 
> developing anything else currently...

  Linux is just superb in my desktop.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:

>> Only hyper-nerds are going to be able to get anything remotely useful 
>> out of a dump file. To everybody else, it's just wasted disk space.
> 
> Generally, the source code is sufficient.

Cool. Let me just contact the makers of every device driver I'm running 
and we can see where th... no, wait, that won't work. ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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"Orchid XP v7" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:47b1ea7b$1@news.povray.org...

> > There's lots you can do. You just don't know how. That's why they give
> > you the stack dump and such.  "Wow, if only I could read a core file,
> > I'd be able to tell which program is dumping core!" :-)
>
> Only hyper-nerds are going to be able to get anything remotely useful
> out of a dump file. To everybody else, it's just wasted disk space.

It's really not hard. All you need is a debugger and the symbols files.
Without the symbols file, you need to be able to read assember. Not
recommended.
At least that's true of the memory dumps I've had before. YMMV.

Post a reply to this message

"Gail Shaw" <initialsurname@sentech sa dot com> wrote in message 
news:47b1bde6@news.povray.org...
>
> "Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
> news:47b1365a$1@news.povray.org...
>
>> I took over (technically) at one place and made the rule that such was
>> disallowed.
>
> The last coding standard I wrote was 6 pages long. Included things like:
> No cursors
> Don't distinct every
> Don't use functions on columns in the where clause
> Don't use SELECT *
> All tables shall have a primary key
> Evaluate all new tables (and modified existing tables) for indexes
>
> Pity none of the devs bother reading it. It would save them some time when 
> I
> review their code. <evil grin>

It's a good list, but it's rather sad that this isn't common-sense, isn't 
it?  :-)

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Yet, funny enough, when I boot Linux, it screams "FAT support is ALPHA!" 
>   I must have missed that. Where does it say it?

In the text that scrolls up the screen during boot, when /etc/fstab 
includes a windows FAT32 partition in the list.

>   I have never had any problems with FAT support. Maybe it's just me.

Me neither. You need to read what I write more closely.

>> Yeah. Better than X-Windows used to be at the same time.
> 
>   Yes, Unix sucks big time. You should never use it. Demand your money
> back immediately.

I didn't say UNIX sucks. I said X-Windows wasn't color-depth independent 
  as early as the Amiga was. Again, it's that reading comprehension thing.

>> Note that Windows supports DOS programs that bypass the OS in exactly 
>> the same way, and it WORKS.
> 
>   I believe the list of DOS games which don't work anymore in current hardware
> with the current Windows is larger than the list of DOS games which do.

Yep, probably. How many Amiga 1000 games are compatible with whatever 
the latest Amiga is?  How many 10-year-old Mac programs that directly 
address hardware run under OS X now?  (Honest questions - maybe they all 
do, I dunno.)

I was simply pointing out that Windows has useful features that the 
Amiga doesn't, and these features are non-trivial.

>   Yes, like once I tried to install some modem drivers into a WinXP
> system, and at the end of the installation it said "failed to install
> driver", nothing more, nothing less. Not a single hint about why it
> failed.

FWIW, you can go into the "hardware manager" and find the failed device 
in the list and ask it what the problem was.  Linux is definitely better 
with its error messages. If I wanted to annoy the Linux enthusiasts, I'd 
add "because they need to be!" ;-)

Of course, a lot of times, if something fails like that, you don't 
really have much information to give, because if you knew what was wrong 
and how to fix it, you would have done so already.

>   Now, try to google without an internet connection because you just
> failed to install the driver necessary for the internet connection.

Go over to the next machine and google it.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     On what day did God create the body thetans?

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Gail Shaw wrote:

> The last coding standard I wrote was 6 pages long. Included things like:
> No cursors
> Don't distinct every
> Don't use functions on columns in the where clause
> Don't use SELECT *
> All tables shall have a primary key
> Evaluate all new tables (and modified existing tables) for indexes

Just being curios... What's a 'cursor', and why is that bad?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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"Jeremy M. Praay" <jer### [at] questsoftwarecmo> wrote in message
news:47b1fd2b$1@news.povray.org...

> It's a good list, but it's rather sad that this isn't common-sense, isn't
> it?  :-)
>

Tell me about it. Half the devs don't even know how to do performance tests
on their code. I ask them how long a query takes to run and they look at me
like I was speaking klingon.

Best one was late last year. I'm reviewing one guy's code and a view that
he's written concerns me. So I run the query on the dev server, in the DB he
was using. I watch it for around 30 sec, then go to get coffee. It was still
running when I got back. (Total 8 min or so)

I call him over and tell him that it's totally unacceptable, he needs to go
and review the query. He comes back not 5 mon later and tell me, with a big
smile, that the view now rund in 5 seconds.

I run the new query and, at about the 5 sec mark, the first 20 or so rows
appear in the result pane. The query carries on executing. At 3 min, I call
the guy over and tell him there's still a problem.

"But," he says, "on my machine it finished in 5 seconds" I go to his
machine. He runs the query. The first few rows return in about 6 seconds.
"There!" he says, pointing at the still executing query "See, it's done"

<sigh>

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Orchid XP v7 wrote:
>> Remote desktop. USB. Networking. 3D accelerated graphics. Memory 
>> protection. Virtual memory. 64-bit OS support. Remote management. 
>> Access control policies. Performance monitoring. Clustered drives. 
>> RAID. Multi-OS boot. Support for about 63,417 different chunks of 
>> hardware.
> 
> OK then. Most of what you just listed is *hardware*, not *software*. 

No it's not. For that which is hardware, add the phrase "support for" in 
front, then.

> But, out of the box, there is no TCP/IP. So that's a 
> useful thing that AmigaDOS doesn't have.

And there's a whole bunch more to "networking" than just "TCP/IP stack".

> Hardware support is... down to 3rd parties. If they write the drivers, 
> you can use it. If they don't, you can't.

Not true. (1) look at how many of your device drivers on your Windows 
box are authored by Microsoft.  (2) The device drivers alone aren't 
enough if there isn't a way of integrating them into the rest of the 
system. (Granted, the Amiga had a fairly elegant way of integrating 
things into the system.)

Consider, for example, the pain you went through on an Apple ][ to use 
the disk drive card. And if Apple Basic didn't have a way to "print to 
the card in slot N", even that wouldn't have worked. Nowadays, of 
course, everyone does this.

Windows has to support all the infrastructure for loading and using and 
unloading device drivers, in addition to the drivers. Yes, the Amiga had 
that too, as do most modern OSes where you no longer recompile the 
kernel to add devices. Just saying that the complexity there isn't 100% 
in the drivers, and the more flexible it is for drivers, the more 
compliated it is in the OS.

> Performance monitoring? I can do that.

You can? You can tell how many process switches per second are 
happening, and whether you're slow because you're doing too many memory 
allocations or too many disk reads or writes? You can map your graph of 
SQL queries per seond on the same table as your graph of network 
retransmissions per second to see if the SQL server is being slowed down 
by that overhead? Cool.

> Oh, wait, aren't you the guy who 
> claimed that AmigaDOS doesn't have premptive multitasking?

Never. You must have me confused with someone else.

> Multi-OS boot? Strange - I also run Debian Linux on my Amiga. :-P

Fair enough. I haven't really used an Amiga since the 1000/500 days. Who 
is selling it nowadays?

> software should NOT crash just because 
> you fed it bad data. Graceful failure, anyone?

Commercial software. Someone did a study

>>> Interesting. When I got my laptop, it crashed within 14 *seconds* of 
>>> being turned on.
>>
>> One would think that would be either a misinstalled OS or a hardware 
>> problem.
> 
> If that were the case, visiting Windows Update a few times presumably 
> wouldn't have fixed it...

If the file is corrupt on the disk, and a later update replaces that 
file, I'd expect that would fix it, yah.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     On what day did God create the body thetans?

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"Gilles Tran" <gil### [at] agroparistechfr> wrote in message 
news:47b1bb80$1@news.povray.org...
>
> Microsoft is the *** 139th *** global corporation in terms of revenue, 
> right after A.P. Moller-Maersk Group, which is a freight company, i.e. 
> folks who use big boats to transport bananas around the globe.
> http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2007/full_list/index.html

Is revenue the best measure?  Or net-worth?

> That should keep Microsoft-themed hyperboles (and the relevance of the 
> software industry compared to the banana shipping industry) in check I 
> guess.

Fine, but we all know Microsoft is The Most Evil corporation ever to have 
existed in recorded human history (aside from Disney).  Then perhaps comes 
Walmart, Exxon and Monsanto...  And a Google search would probably back me 
up.  ;-)

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Gail Shaw wrote:

> "There!" he says, pointing at the still executing query "See, it's done"

Heh. Reminds me of my first attempt to use Perl for CGI. I tried to run 
it, and it didn't work. After a while I gave up waiting and closed IE. I 
did some more poking and prodding of the code before the lead tech came 
over and said "hey, you've using up 100% CPU on the webserver".

Oh. Oh yeah. Closing the window on your PC doesn't *actually* make the 
server stop processing the request. Duh. :-S

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v7 wrote:

> 
> Just being curios... What's a 'cursor', and why is that bad?
> 

Cursors occupy resources on the server, and require the server to 
maintain application state. The general understanding in n-tier systems 
is the only thing that retains application state is the front-end 
application, so resources on back-end servers can be released to other 
clients.

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nemesis wrote:
> 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?

Nope.

> desktop, server?  task?

Desktop, editing code. Actually, I think firefox or thunderbird was 
running. Altho it has also crashed while the screen saver was running. 
The last couple times it was closing a page in firefox, IIRC.

And no, it's not just something doing a global grab or something. Cursor 
locks up, and it doesn't answer pings.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     On what day did God create the body thetans?

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"Orchid XP v7" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:47b1fefc$1@news.povray.org...
>
> Just being curios... What's a 'cursor', and why is that bad?

To quote a friend on SQL central. Cursors are RBAR (Row by agonising row)
processing

SQL's a set-based language. It's supposed to process datasets, not
individual rows. Here's a cursor syntax in T-SQL. My oracle's way too rusty
for me to attempt to do the same in pl-sql.

DECLARE curSomething CURSOR FOR
SELECT somecolumn FROM SomeTable

FETCH NEXT FROM curSomething INTO @AVariable

WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0 -- there are rows in the cursor
BEGIN
  -- Do something with the variable @AVariable
  FETCH NEXT FROM curSomething INTO @AVariable
END

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Warp wrote:
> 
>   Much of IE's "performance" is deceiving.

Yes. But...

>   For example, IE seems to take much less memory than other browsers
> because many of its components are system components already loaded
> into memory, and they are not listed under IE in the task manager.
> This means that IE is taking quite a lot of memory, but you won't see
> how much using task manager.

...plain Win+IE opened can still stay on pretty low memory usage. Try
plain Seamonkey (FF maybe too, haven't used for some time), reduce it
from Win+IE and notice that if IE did take same amount of memory, Win
(without IE) would get on with incredibly low memory.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
   http://www.zbxt.net
      aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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Darren New wrote:
> Um, yes. So you're saying "Yes, MS made it possible to run the same 
> executables on multiple operating systems over the course of decades. 
> But that doesn't count, because it wasn't magic"?

no, I'm simply saying that those "multiple operating systems" are using 
the same old code from the same single company to handle old apps, so 
that doesn't count as multiple operating systems.

Multiple OSes in my book mean "Mac, Linux and Windows" rather than W95, 
W98 or WNT.

I don't know how to make it any more clear so I'm stopping now.

>> What really made cross-platform software a little more closer to 
>> reality were industry-strength standards,
> 
> Like what? I haven't seen any standards that actually allow for programs 
> to run cross-platform. Maybe I'm not following what you mean.

A pure Java/Python/whatever program using standard interprocess 
communication channels to deal with the underlying OS and using a 
cross-platform GUI such as Swing/GTK+ will run in pretty much any major 
OS unaltered.  Blender the graphical modeller has its interface 
implemented in OpenGL, which means little problem porting it everywhere. 
  Coding a database using strict ISO SQL will make it pretty much 
portable among many implementations.

> The internet doesn't make programs run cross-platform. It just gives you 
> a way to access them when they're running on someone else's platform.

It doesn't really matter where a web app is running as long as it does 
what I mean.

>> quite a few cross-platform development languages (Java, Python, Perl etc)
> 
> And BASIC. Which used to run everywhere. And was promoted and 
> implemented by MS (amongst others).

Visual Basic is not plain Basic.  Heck, OpenOffice Basic is neither. 
Yet, since the host app of OOBasic is cross-platform, OOBasic apps are 
far more portable than VB.

> Note that Java, Python, etc are all libraries controlled by one company 
> or individual that give you cross-platform APIs for your code. Just like 
> Win32.

bzzt.  wrong!  They have Foundations behind them and many, many 
individuals from different places moving them forward by meritocracy. 
Everyone can apply to contribute to their development, including 
individuals from Microsoft.

> Except they don't provide executables.

They sure do.  And they are truly cross-platform.

> I agree that open source software is probably a better way to do stuff, 
> as long as you aren't worried about making a living at it.

the folks at RedHat or Novell seem to be doing fine.

> Uh, so, how much Linux software runs without recompiling under Solaris? 
> Does that actually work?

no, different executable format.  One of the areas that are not 
standardized.  But the source is there and autoconf makes sure the right 
  compilation flags for your system is used.  Or just grab it from the 
binary repositories of modern Linux distros...

> I think the only thing that's actually going to satisfy you is virtual 
> machine stuff, like VMWare.

no, because that wold require Windows to be running underneath as well.

If you want truly cross-platform apps without recompiling, target a 
programming language with a cross-platform runtime.  You won't need to 
recompile your apps, but should install the proper runtime for your 
system, which will be provided from the people who compiled them to your 
system.

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Darren New wrote:

>> But, out of the box, there is no TCP/IP. So that's a useful thing that 
>> AmigaDOS doesn't have.
> 
> And there's a whole bunch more to "networking" than just "TCP/IP stack".

OK. I'll grant you that one.

>> Hardware support is... down to 3rd parties. If they write the drivers, 
>> you can use it. If they don't, you can't.
> 
> Not true. (1) look at how many of your device drivers on your Windows 
> box are authored by Microsoft.

I didn't realise there were *any*? [I mean, beyond the generic VGA 
driver, serial port driver, etc.]

> Just saying that the complexity there isn't 100% 
> in the drivers, and the more flexible it is for drivers, the more 
> compliated it is in the OS.

OK. Fair enough.

>> Performance monitoring? I can do that.
> 
> You can? You can tell how many process switches per second are 
> happening, and whether you're slow because you're doing too many memory 
> allocations or too many disk reads or writes? You can map your graph of 
> SQL queries per seond on the same table as your graph of network 
> retransmissions per second to see if the SQL server is being slowed down 
> by that overhead? Cool.

Actually no.

What I can do is get a graph of various things like number of processes 
running, CPU usage per process, memory per process, memory free, etc.

Integrating that with performance data from other apps? Well, that would 
require the other apps to supply performance data. And some ARexx 
scripting to link them together. And by the time you get there, you 
might as well write the monitoring app yourself, at which point it 
ceases to be about what the "OS" can do.

AmigaDOS gives you the system calls to get performance stats. There is 
software that can graph it for you. That I can say.

>> Oh, wait, aren't you the guy who claimed that AmigaDOS doesn't have 
>> premptive multitasking?
> 
> Never. You must have me confused with someone else.

Oh good, that's a start... :-}

>> Multi-OS boot? Strange - I also run Debian Linux on my Amiga. :-P
> 
> Fair enough. I haven't really used an Amiga since the 1000/500 days. Who 
> is selling it nowadays?

Selling it? Heh. Last I heard [long time ago], "Amiga" is a 
software-only company now. No, I have no idea how the hell that makes 
any sense... IIRC, AmigaOS was ported to PPC or something. Whatever.

The hardware hasn't been on sale for a while now, AFAIK. But then, would 
*you* buy a "personal computer" powered by a 20 MHz 68030 with 2 MB RAM?

>>> One would think that would be either a misinstalled OS or a hardware 
>>> problem.
>>
>> If that were the case, visiting Windows Update a few times presumably 
>> wouldn't have fixed it...
> 
> If the file is corrupt on the disk, and a later update replaces that 
> file, I'd expect that would fix it, yah.

Mmm, I guess. However, given how much everybody complained about XP 
crashing when it first came out, and it's not *as bad* today, I think 
it's a case of M$ actually fixing some of the more serious bugs...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Darren New wrote:
> 
> "It is not so much user friendly as it is expert tolerant."
> 

Unfortunately it's becoming TOO "user-friendly" and popular. I think
I'll start looking for *BSD's next, to stay in front of the
hey-you-know-so-you-can-tell-me-why-i'm-stupid -people. Most of them
realize I don't want (or "know" or really know :p) to help them with
some system I don't personally like.

:)

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
   http://www.zbxt.net
      aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> You're right. It isn't. FF is the number one sucker-up-of-useless-memory 
>> -and-cycles on my machines.
> 
>   Yes, everything not made by Microsoft is by definition bad, horrid,
> heavy, a memory-hog and a CPU-hog. Everything made by Microsoft is
> just perfect.

Why do you think I'm saying that? What part of "on my machines" isn't 
clear to you?

You *do* realize that in order for me to be saying this, I'd have to 
actually use firefox on a regular basis, right? If you look at my 
headers, you'll see I'm using thunderbird, and have been since it was 
called "Mozilla 4.x". I haven't opened OE or IE for ... months? Years? 
Outlook is an abomination. Firefox and thunderbird have minor 
annoyances. IE and OE are too dangerous to run.

Happy?

>   You must have a different version of Firefox, as mine is taking 0%
> of CPU time right now.

Depends on what you're surfing, I suppose. Sure, sometimes it works 
great. Sometimes it takes a lot of CPU cycles until I figure out what's 
going on. And you can't tell me you haven't heard people complaining it 
over-buffers stuff.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     On what day did God create the body thetans?

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