> If M$ made a quality product and charged a lot of money for it, I wouldn't 
> have a problem with that.

The MS shareholders would though, because they wouldn't make as much profit. 
It's the same as if Ford suddenly decided all cars were going to be made to 
Rolls-Royce standards - not exactly a smart business move.

> What I have a problem with is the fact that they charge a fortune for very 
> low-quality products, and get away with it.

Last time I checked, a company was free to sell their products for whatever 
price they wanted to.  If they try to sell them too high, nobody will buy 
them, if they try to sell them too low, they won't make any money.  There's 
a point where you make maximum profit - I assume MS are pretty close to that 
point with their products.

> And they get away with it precisely because of the underhanded techniques 
> they use to eliminate all competition.

Never seen any real competition for Windows, Linux is certainly getting a 
lot better, if they could get people to release games for it (like they do 
for xbox/ps3/pc) then they'd be a strong competitor I think.  Not used 
Apples much, but again lack of games prevents me from looking seriously at 
it.

> Apparently, if you make enough money, the law does not apply to you...

No, it just means you can afford to pay the fines without going bankrupt. 
Which in turn means you can take more risks in the first place.

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:

> If you're referring to your Amiga, then it was the same with my Acorn.  
> But those machines were orders of magnitude less complex than a PC today.

So what you're saying is that if hardware is complicated, it is 
impossible to develop quality software?

>> I don't really see how the software M$ writes is any "bigger" or "more 
>> complex" than what existed before.
> 
> Ha.  Compare what Windows XP does with your Amiga OS.  Think about 
> hardware support, multi-processor support, multi-user support, 
> multi-APIs for everything, wireless networking, and a million other things.

Why do we *need* multi-APIs for everything in the first place?

Leaving aside hardware [bad drivers can screw up any OS], what does 
Windoze actually do that AmigaDOS doesn't? Well, let's see now. It has 
networking. It's multi-user and has access permissions. It... uh... no, 
I'm struggling to think of anything else new it has. That seems to be 
able it, really. (Unless you count IE as part of the OS.)

>> I've also seen software that's much more reliable. *cough* POV-Ray. 
>> When was the last time you saw it crash?
> 
> Apart from the beta, haven't seen it crash - but often it shows weird 
> results or fails to parse.  And if such a relatively small program such 
> as POV with a tiny user-base has bugs, then I think MS has done pretty 
> well with Windows.

I've seen it crash. I discovered that in some version or other, calling 
exp() with a suitably large argument causes POV-Ray to instantly shut 
down. This has since been fixed.

Almost all software possesses something you could describe as a "bug". 
The point is, some bugs are more serious than others. Where I work, Word 
is constantly crashing. The hours we've wasted because Word has crashed 
and eaten somebody's work... I don't hear any stories of POV-Ray 
crashing half way through a million-hour render.

>> Similarly, have you *ever* seen Linux crash? [A huge number of Linux 
>> applications are hopelessly buggy, but the OS itself seems rock-steady 
>> as far as I can tell.]
> 
> When was the last time you saw XP itself crash?  I know I can't remember 
> the last time (and I use it regularly on 4 different machines with very 
> different hardware), apart from when there was faulty hardware.

Interesting. When I got my laptop, it crashed within 14 *seconds* of 
being turned on.

I will say this: As time has gone on, that laptop has crashed less and 
less. So M$ are at least making some kind of positive difference.

But even so, here at work I look after a large cluster of PCs. And 
usually in any given week at least one of them will give be a BSOD. 
Indeed, just this weekend, one of the servers rebooted itself due to one...

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

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> If M$ made a quality product and charged a lot of money for it, I 
>> wouldn't have a problem with that.
> 
> The MS shareholders would though, because they wouldn't make as much 
> profit. It's the same as if Ford suddenly decided all cars were going to 
> be made to Rolls-Royce standards - not exactly a smart business move.

No - but selling cars which you know are going to crash at least once 
every 52 days... well, if a company tried to do that, they'd be shut 
down. However, for software it seems it's OK to sell a malfunctioning 
product.

>> What I have a problem with is the fact that they charge a fortune for 
>> very low-quality products, and get away with it.
> 
> Last time I checked, a company was free to sell their products for 
> whatever price they wanted to.  If they try to sell them too high, 
> nobody will buy them.

Well, sure, if there were an alternative, people would run out and buy 
that in their droves. I'm sure M$ would radically rethink their strategy 
if that happened. But it won't.

>> And they get away with it precisely because of the underhanded 
>> techniques they use to eliminate all competition.
> 
> Never seen any real competition for Windows.

Perhaps not. (Does NetWare count? I don't really know much about it.)

But what about, say, Word? There's quite a few other word processors out 
there - and in past times there were even more. And most of them were a 
lot more reliable than Word...

> Linux is certainly getting 
> a lot better, if they could get people to release games for it (like 
> they do for xbox/ps3/pc) then they'd be a strong competitor I think.  
> Not used Apples much, but again lack of games prevents me from looking 
> seriously at it.

Apple requires you to buy new hardware, so it's not purely a software 
decision. Linux is nice, but... well, it's fundamentally designed for 
UNIX nerds. So if you're not, good luck... Besides, I'm not convinced 
that the whole UNIX design is particularly coherant. (E.g., autoconf 
exists.)

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

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> So what you're saying is that if hardware is complicated, it is impossible 
> to develop quality software?

No, but with complicated hardware, users expect complicated software, and 
with that comes bugs.  Sure, even I could probably write a word processor 
that rivalled what I had on my Acorn, and given a suitable amount of time 
could make it pretty stable.  But everyone would laugh at it.

> Why do we *need* multi-APIs for everything in the first place?

Dunno, just the way it is, because of the wide variety of hardware I guess. 
At least for graphics there's only DirectX and OpenGL now, there used to be 
3Dfx/Glide and some radeon thing IIRC.  I don't know what alternatives there 
are for DirectX for game controller input, sound, networking etc, but I'm 
sure there are some in use.

> Leaving aside hardware

But I think that's one of the key points.  Windows must work with every 
possible piece of hardware that's available now, PLUS it has to work with 
anything that might come out in the future...  Can't imagine Amiga coming 
out with a new 64-bit dual core machine, and then you being able to use the 
same Amiga OS you had before with it...

> [bad drivers can screw up any OS], what does Windoze actually do that 
> AmigaDOS doesn't? Well, let's see now. It has networking. It's multi-user 
> and has access permissions. It... uh... no, I'm struggling to think of 
> anything else new it has. That seems to be able it, really. (Unless you 
> count IE as part of the OS.)

Just have a browse through the services running on your machine...

> Almost all software possesses something you could describe as a "bug". The 
> point is, some bugs are more serious than others. Where I work, Word is 
> constantly crashing.

Oh yeh, you're still running Word 1985 or whatever :-)  Word only crashed 
here when we had a buggy printer driver (but then so did any other 
application that tried to print - it's just we mostly used Word).

>  The hours we've wasted because Word has crashed and eaten somebody's 
> work... I don't hear any stories of POV-Ray crashing half way through a 
> million-hour render.

POV crashed on me during a long animation render, gave me a "variable not 
declared" or something error, even though it'd just rendered 1000 copies of 
the exact same SDL file previously...

> Interesting. When I got my laptop, it crashed within 14 *seconds* of being 
> turned on.

And how many other XP machines exhibited this behaviour?  I've used XP 
(along with friends) right back from the pre-release versions of XP, and the 
only time I've seen that behaviour is due to bad hardware.  Once it was a 
faulty RAM stick, another time was a dodgy hard drive, and the third time 
was heat sink detachment!

> But even so, here at work I look after a large cluster of PCs. And usually 
> in any given week at least one of them will give be a BSOD.

So what's the most common cause of BSODs then?  Once a week on various 
machines sounds like some broken software/driver that everyone has 
installed...

> Indeed, just this weekend, one of the servers rebooted itself due to 
> one...

And what was the reason for that?  If it was my server I would want to find 
out exactly which driver/program/hardware caused the BSOD.

Post a reply to this message

> Apple requires you to buy new hardware, so it's not purely a software 
> decision. Linux is nice, but... well, it's fundamentally designed for UNIX 
> nerds. So if you're not, good luck... Besides, I'm not convinced that the 
> whole UNIX design is particularly coherant. (E.g., autoconf exists.)

It's just because nobody feels that could write something that is superior 
enough to Windows to make enough money to warrant the development?

I mean, come on, Windows is pretty flexible, given that my mum can do stuff 
on it, I can use it to run CFD simulations and design LCD screens, also I 
can play 3D games and even write 3D games on it, plus raytrace :-)

ANd you even said yourself that XP is reliable now (although I always found 
it reliable) - if you upgrade your ancient copy of Word you'll find that is 
reliable too.  Where exactly is any competition meant to improve to get 
people to swap?

Sure, you can reach for niche markets, but you're never going to take over 
from Windows with that approach.

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:

> No, but with complicated hardware, users expect complicated software, 
> and with that comes bugs.  Sure, even I could probably write a word 
> processor that rivalled what I had on my Acorn, and given a suitable 
> amount of time could make it pretty stable.  But everyone would laugh at 
> it.

Personally, I don't think so. People have created products like 
OpenOffice and KOffice and so forth, and they work. Reliably.

>> Leaving aside hardware
> 
> But I think that's one of the key points.  Windows must work with every 
> possible piece of hardware that's available now, PLUS it has to work 
> with anything that might come out in the future...  Can't imagine Amiga 
> coming out with a new 64-bit dual core machine, and then you being able 
> to use the same Amiga OS you had before with it...

Interesing you should say that. You're aware of course that the fist 
Amiga was a 16-bit machine, and the later ones were 32-bit? Or that 
originally the graphics hardware only supported 12-bit colour, and later 
added 24-bit colour? Or that originally you could only have 6 bits per 
pixel and later you could have 8?

And - most importantly - you can take an application written back when 
we only had 6 bits per pixel, and run it on a screen operating at 8 bits 
per pixel. And it can share the screen with other applications and 
change parts of the colour table and so on and so forth, and WORK.

[Assuming it does all this through the OS. The Big Problem the Amiga had 
is that since the hardware is "always" the same, a lot of software 
bypasses the OS. Obviously this breaks horribly when the hardware 
changes...]

>> What does Windoze actually do that 
>> AmigaDOS doesn't? Well, let's see now. It has networking. It's 
>> multi-user and has access permissions. It... uh... no, I'm struggling 
>> to think of anything else new it has. That seems to be able it, 
>> really. (Unless you count IE as part of the OS.)
> 
> Just have a browse through the services running on your machine...

So Windows is designed to do a bunch of unecessary stuff in the 
background by default. I consider this a design flaw. What *useful* 
stuff does Windows do that AmigaDOS doesn't?

>> Almost all software possesses something you could describe as a "bug". 
>> The point is, some bugs are more serious than others. Where I work, 
>> Word is constantly crashing.
> 
> Oh yeh, you're still running Word 1985 or whatever :-)  Word only 
> crashed here when we had a buggy printer driver (but then so did any 
> other application that tried to print - it's just we mostly used Word).

Word 2003, currently. Which, in fairness, seems slightly less buggy. But 
still nowhere near as reliable as we'd like.

>>  The hours we've wasted because Word has crashed and eaten somebody's 
>> work... I don't hear any stories of POV-Ray crashing half way through 
>> a million-hour render.
> 
> POV crashed on me during a long animation render, gave me a "variable 
> not declared" or something error, even though it'd just rendered 1000 
> copies of the exact same SDL file previously...

That's not a crash, that's a parse error. Most likely due to a subtle 
interaction in your SDL code...

>> Interesting. When I got my laptop, it crashed within 14 *seconds* of 
>> being turned on.
> 
> And how many other XP machines exhibited this behaviour?  I've used XP 
> (along with friends) right back from the pre-release versions of XP, and 
> the only time I've seen that behaviour is due to bad hardware.  Once it 
> was a faulty RAM stick, another time was a dodgy hard drive, and the 
> third time was heat sink detachment!

Don't forget MS Blaster. [The only virus I've ever had the misfortune to 
come across. Nice how McAfee automatically removed it. Or at least, it 
*would* have been nice if it had...]

>> But even so, here at work I look after a large cluster of PCs. And 
>> usually in any given week at least one of them will give be a BSOD.
> 
> So what's the most common cause of BSODs then?

And how in the name of God do you find out what *causes* one?

I mean, sure, it tells you what was happening at the exact instant the 
crash happened, but how do you find out what the actual problem is?

All the STOP messages I get are either UNHANDLED_KMODE_EXCEPTION or 
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. Could be anything.

> Once a week on various 
> machines sounds like some broken software/driver that everyone has 
> installed...

Yeah, probably. But how the hell do you find out what it is?

>> Indeed, just this weekend, one of the servers rebooted itself due to 
>> one...
> 
> And what was the reason for that?  If it was my server I would want to 
> find out exactly which driver/program/hardware caused the BSOD.

If there were anything I could do to find out, I'd do it. Unfortunately, 
there isn't.

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

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scott wrote:

> It's just because nobody feels that could write something that is 
> superior enough to Windows to make enough money to warrant the development?

Indeed - primarily because if they somehow managed it, they would 
instantly be bought out. The End.

> I mean, come on, Windows is pretty flexible, given that my mum can do 
> stuff on it, I can use it to run CFD simulations and design LCD screens, 
> also I can play 3D games and even write 3D games on it, plus raytrace :-)

Apart from your mum being able to work it, the same could be said for 
just about any OS. (And even Linux isn't that hard to work these days. 
Damn hard to set up, but not that hard to operate once you eventually 
get it working.)

> ANd you even said yourself that XP is reliable now (although I always 
> found it reliable) - if you upgrade your ancient copy of Word you'll 
> find that is reliable too.  Where exactly is any competition meant to 
> improve to get people to swap?

True story: One of our users was working on a vital report. She hit 
"Save", and Word crashed. From that point onwards, any attempt to access 
this file caused Word to instantly crash. So I loaded it up in 
OpenOffice, saved it again, and several hours of potentially lost work 
were saved - literally.

M$ Word - £300.
OpenOffice - £0.

Why would anybody use Word? 2 reasons:

1. Everybody has heard of Word. Nobody knows what OpenOffice is.
2. OpenOffice still has some rough edges to be smoothed out.

Any idea how many people are switching away from IE? Enough to provoke 
M$ to start development work on it again.

Looks like competition is finding plenty to improve on...

> Sure, you can reach for niche markets, but you're never going to take 
> over from Windows with that approach.

Sadly, it seems we are stuck with M$ Windows forever. I mean, M$ is too 
powerful to beat. They're unstoppable. We're all doomed...

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

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Invisible a écrit :
> http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/SUCSESS.aspx
> 
> So, so wrong...
> 
> Of course, the *real* WTF is that final sentence: Even though this is 
> complete garbage, I couldn't convince my boss because the application 
> "works". (!!)
> 
> If "programmers" like this were to ever get hold of Haskell... my God, 
> it's too horrifying to think about! >_<
> 

(setq t nil)

Post a reply to this message

> Personally, I don't think so. People have created products like OpenOffice 
> and KOffice and so forth, and they work. Reliably.

For me MS Office works reliably - and it's not like I only use 5% of its 
features.

> Interesing you should say that. You're aware of course that the fist Amiga 
> was a 16-bit machine, and the later ones were 32-bit? Or that originally 
> the graphics hardware only supported 12-bit colour, and later added 24-bit 
> colour? Or that originally you could only have 6 bits per pixel and later 
> you could have 8?

And you could use the same OS version with all these hardware 
configurations?

>> Just have a browse through the services running on your machine...
>
> So Windows is designed to do a bunch of unecessary stuff in the background 
> by default. I consider this a design flaw. What *useful* stuff does 
> Windows do that AmigaDOS doesn't?

Virtual memory, automatic updates, protecting itself from nasty programs 
that try to access things they shouldn't, providing common dialogs for all 
applications, plug and play, CD/DVD-RW access, wireless networking, remote 
desktop, configuring machines remotely, network file systems, network 
printing, offline files, hibernating, file type associations, encryption, 
working in multiple time zones, working with different region settings, 
firewall.  I'm sure there are more, but those are the most useful.

> That's not a crash, that's a parse error. Most likely due to a subtle 
> interaction in your SDL code...

Nope, nothing was changing - the next time it stopped on a different frame. 
I narrowed it down to some buggy handling of spline objects and arrays. 
Just had to re-start the rendering on the exact frame whenever it stopped.

> And how in the name of God do you find out what *causes* one?

Gulp.  Look in the event log.  Use Google.

> I mean, sure, it tells you what was happening at the exact instant the 
> crash happened, but how do you find out what the actual problem is?
>
> All the STOP messages I get are either UNHANDLED_KMODE_EXCEPTION or 
> IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. Could be anything.

Those are usually due to bad hardware drivers or bad hardware itself.  Given 
that you're seeing this on several machines, I'd place my bets on some bad 
drivers that you've installed on all your machines.  SOmetimes in the event 
log you get a clue what the problem is, if not you can just use trial and 
error, but it might take some time if you're only getting these errors once 
a week.

> If there were anything I could do to find out, I'd do it. Unfortunately, 
> there isn't.

Of course there is something you can do.  How do you think other people sort 
out problems like this?  It is *not* normal behaviour, no matter what you 
might think of MS.

Post a reply to this message

>> I mean, come on, Windows is pretty flexible, given that my mum can do 
>> stuff on it, I can use it to run CFD simulations and design LCD screens, 
>> also I can play 3D games and even write 3D games on it, plus raytrace :-)
>
> Apart from your mum being able to work it, the same could be said for just 
> about any OS.

The CAD software and CFD software we use only works on Windows.  The games I 
want to play are only for Windows.

> (And even Linux isn't that hard to work these days. Damn hard to set up, 
> but not that hard to operate once you eventually get it working.)

And when my mum tries to plug in her new camera...?  I was actually very 
impressed that my mum managed to install the software for her camera and get 
it working without even a single phone call to me :-)

> True story: One of our users was working on a vital report. She hit 
> "Save", and Word crashed. From that point onwards, any attempt to access 
> this file caused Word to instantly crash.

Did you try using "Open and Repair" from the open dialog box of Word? That 
has worked before when I was sent a corrupt file.  Also, tell her to save 
more often than every few hours.

> Any idea how many people are switching away from IE? Enough to provoke M$ 
> to start development work on it again.

And yet funnily enough since Vista/IE7, I've seen people who previously were 
using FF now going back to IE - "well it has tabbed browsing already doesn't 
it?"

> Sadly, it seems we are stuck with M$ Windows forever. I mean, M$ is too 
> powerful to beat. They're unstoppable. We're all doomed...

Get a life away from computers :-)

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> Personally, I don't think so. People have created products like 
>> OpenOffice and KOffice and so forth, and they work. Reliably.
> 
> For me MS Office works reliably - and it's not like I only use 5% of its 
> features.

I find that rather interesting - Word's inability to not crash is 
legend. Everywhere I've ever been that uses Word has had endless 
reliability issues.

>> Interesing you should say that. You're aware of course that the fist 
>> Amiga was a 16-bit machine, and the later ones were 32-bit? Or that 
>> originally the graphics hardware only supported 12-bit colour, and 
>> later added 24-bit colour? Or that originally you could only have 6 
>> bits per pixel and later you could have 8?
> 
> And you could use the same OS version with all these hardware 
> configurations?

No - principly because much of the OS is in ROM. If it weren't, they'd 
have probably designed it so you can.

>> So Windows is designed to do a bunch of unecessary stuff in the 
>> background by default. I consider this a design flaw. What *useful* 
>> stuff does Windows do that AmigaDOS doesn't?
> 
> Virtual memory

OK. The Amiga lacked the necessary hardware for that.

> automatic updates

Which is only necessary because the software wasn't done right in the 
first place.

> protecting itself from nasty programs 
> that try to access things they shouldn't

Hasn't UNIX been doing this for the last 40 years?

> providing common dialogs for all applications

AmigaDOS does this. (Indeed, I found a program to replace the standard 
dialogs, so I *know* it does this.)

> plug and play

The hardware for that didn't exist at the time. (Although AmigaDOS does 
support hot-swapping PCMCIA cards seemlessly.)

> CD/DVD-RW access

Wrong. My Amiga has a CD-RW drive, and it works just fine.

> wireless networking

Or, indeed, *any* networking. That kind of thing used to be expensive...

> remote desktop

Finally, something useful. Yes, well, if you take it that we don't have 
networking, this is clearly a non-option.

> configuring machines remotely
> network file systems, 
> network printing,
> offline files

...and so are those...

[Although with the right hardware, you could in fact set up primitive 
"network" file systems under AmigaDOS. And they work like local ones. 
Just need the hardware to connect and a driver.]

> hibernating

Doesn't really require much OS support, does it?

> file type associations

OK, that one AmigaDOS did lack. And it was actually annoying.

> encryption

Would be fairly trivial to add.

> working in multiple time zones, working with different 
> region settings,

Nope. AmigaDOS had those.

> firewall.

No network, remember? ;-)

>> And how in the name of God do you find out what *causes* one?
> 
> Gulp.  Look in the event log.  Use Google.

The STOP messages give generic error codes. Google will just tell you to 
check your hardware isn't faulty, uninstall any new software, etc. The 
event log tells me nothing except the STOP code.

>> All the STOP messages I get are either UNHANDLED_KMODE_EXCEPTION or 
>> IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. Could be anything.
> 
> Those are usually due to bad hardware drivers or bad hardware itself.  
> Given that you're seeing this on several machines, I'd place my bets on 
> some bad drivers that you've installed on all your machines.

Well, given that none of the PCs are remotely the same, it's gotta be 
printer drivers. That's the only thing where the same software is 
installed in more than one place.

We had a Toshiba printer that caused endless crashes in anything that 
touched it. We got rid of that! (I used a generic PostScript driver 
instead.) However, the rest of our printers are all HP. I was under the 
impression they're quite good at software...

>> If there were anything I could do to find out, I'd do it. 
>> Unfortunately, there isn't.
> 
> Of course there is something you can do.  How do you think other people 
> sort out problems like this?

They don't?

> It is *not* normal behaviour, no matter what you might think of MS.

Ah, I see. So all PCs that use M$ products do this, but it's not 
"normal"? Interesting definition. ;-)

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

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> Ah, I see. So all PCs that use M$ products do this, but it's not 
> "normal"? Interesting definition. ;-)

All PCs where *you've* worked... ;-)

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:

> The CAD software and CFD software we use only works on Windows.  The 
> games I want to play are only for Windows.

Another big part of why everybody [including me] is still using Windows.

>> (And even Linux isn't that hard to work these days. Damn hard to set 
>> up, but not that hard to operate once you eventually get it working.)
> 
> And when my mum tries to plug in her new camera...?  I was actually very 
> impressed that my mum managed to install the software for her camera and 
> get it working without even a single phone call to me :-)

50% chance it will just do the right thing.
25% chance it will do nothing at all unless you type in some Geek gibberish.
25% chance it's impossible to make it work at all.

>> True story: One of our users was working on a vital report. She hit 
>> "Save", and Word crashed. From that point onwards, any attempt to 
>> access this file caused Word to instantly crash.
> 
> Did you try using "Open and Repair" from the open dialog box of Word?

And how do you do that?

[FWIW, I did spend quite a lot of time researching the options. There's 
a Word experts website that tells you all the little tricks for fixing 
corrupted documents. Sadly, none of them work for a document so broken 
it won't even open at all...]

> Also, tell her to save more often than every few hours.

As I'm sure you know very well, the number one time for Word to crash is 
exactly when you hit Save.

And yes, she saves much more than every few hours. But once the file is 
corrupted, the only resort is to restore from last night's backup - if 
it's there at all. So the whole day's work is gone. Users tend not to be 
amused by that stuff.

I mean, sure, I could use Recover Text. But the formatting is the part 
she's just spent 3 hours adjusting. We've already got the *text*!

>> Any idea how many people are switching away from IE? Enough to provoke 
>> M$ to start development work on it again.
> 
> And yet funnily enough since Vista/IE7, I've seen people who previously 
> were using FF now going back to IE - "well it has tabbed browsing 
> already doesn't it?"

Yes. Because the only difference between IE and FF is tabbed browsing. 
It's not like FF is 98% more efficient or secure or standards-compliant 
or anything like that...

>> Sadly, it seems we are stuck with M$ Windows forever. I mean, M$ is 
>> too powerful to beat. They're unstoppable. We're all doomed...
> 
> Get a life away from computers :-)

And that is an entire *other* story...

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

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> Ah, I see. So all PCs that use M$ products do this, but it's not 
>> "normal"? Interesting definition. ;-)
> 
> All PCs where *you've* worked... ;-)

Oh, right. I missed the white elephant: I make PCs crash.

Hmm, new T-shirt idea. "I crash PCs"...

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

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nemesis wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> How recently has UNIX not used source distributions for programs? How
>> much UNIX shareware could you download as executables, say, in 1998?
> 
> I don't quite understand how this has to do with anything in the discussion.
> But source has always been available in some way or another in the *nix
> community.
> 
>> DOS, Win98, WinXP.
> 
> Win9x did not support DOS programs: they simply had DOS included to handle
> those.  So, basically, M$ can afford backwards compatibility by simply letting
> old code handle old code, because old code everyone's using is M$ code, not
> someone's else.  Single vendor, single solution.
> 

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.



Tom

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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:47b166c6$1@news.povray.org...
> Darren New wrote:
>
>> Nowadays, I get stuff that's too complicated to do that. Several 
>> instances of looping over a result set and building a "Select from X 
>> where X.blah in (....)" where the .... is built programatically based on 
>> another SQL call.  Or places I'm pretty sure I could figure out but don't 
>> have the half a day to spend.  Or stuff I'm pretty sure SQL can do, but I 
>> can't figure out how to (mostly with GROUP-BY selection type stuff).
>
> Given time, you could probably integrate the entire thing into one giant 
> SQL statement. You'd probably find that you can actually simplify it down 
> to something rather smaller once it stated all in one operation. And that 
> the DB engine can do some pretty impressive optimisations after that too.
>

In the application I work on, we produce Financial Statements (not solely, 
but as part of the overall application).  In the old application, this 
involved several SQL statements, each run at various times, as the 
application traversed a simple SQL statement.  Part of the problem was bad 
database design in the old system.  In our new system, it took us perhaps 3 
days, but we was able to combine it all into one long SQL statement.  It was 
the hairiest SQL I'd ever seen, but it now produces statements in seconds, 
whereas the old system would take several minutes.

I'm not an SQL guru by any means, and the knowledge that I gained in those 3 
days was enormous.  It helped me to understand what SQL was actually capable 
of, rather than simply assuming, "SQL can't do that!"  And moving forward to 
other reporting nightmares made many of these new issues seem almost trivial 
by comparison.

It made me a better developer as well as producing a better product for the 
consumer, but the company I work for has a difficult time understanding the 
long term benefit, very much like Gail and others have stated in this 
thread.  Sometimes I even have to hide my time while I make something 
better, for fear of getting reprimanded.  If feature A gets implemented 
quickly, I spend time fixing B to make up the difference, but then don't 
report it.  It's sad.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Because you had lots of OSes called UNIX that weren't compatible with
> each other, even at the source level.  (See autoconf)

that only happens when you exchange a common API for platform-specific APIs that
do the same thing faster or funkier.  It happens even in Java.

It doesn't really happen in M$ because there really is a single vendor with a
single set of solutions and they can cram old APIs to handle old code in their
newer products with newer incompatible APIs.

> > Win9x did not support DOS programs: they simply had DOS included to handle
> > those.
>
> DOS programs ran in a window, just like they do now.

It runs in a window because that's how graphical ambients run console programs:
by opening a window terminal and letting the console program do their job.  It
doesn't magically transform them into full graphical programs with graphical
drop-down menus.  The OS calls such programs did were DOS calls and such calls
are still supported these days by letting an emulated DOS handle those.

So, there's your secret for backwards compatibility:  let old code handle old
code.  or just let user old code die...

> > Single vendor, single solution.
>
> Yes? So?

So they can afford to provide their older APIs together with the new.  It's
their own code, it's not really "2 different OSes"!

> So, different operating systems. You're making my point for me. :-)

old code still handled by old code, not new.

> So you agree with me, but think MS is bad.

Yes, because MS is a monopoly.  That's what is bad about it.  The fact that the
programs are buggy is not as bad, every software has bugs.  What makes it
particularly annoying is the fact that this giant SOB with some of the
brightest minds behind it and tons of money *still* has bugs and steals so much
ideas from other sources.  Or just buy them.

So, it's a giant complex software with tons of interdependencies?!  It should
have bugs?  Linux distributions are also giant complex software with tons of
interdependencies and to get it worse, such software is made by thousands of
little contributions from developers around the world with almost no contact
with each other.  I've been using the likes of Ubuntu, OpenSuse and Fedora the
last few years and while the bugs are certainly different than those of MS
software, there doesn't seem to be as many or as little as those.

So, why is the single largest and richest developer in the world with so many
bright minds and a single set of enforcement rules over their developers about
code quality and API standards get rivalled by ad-hoc developers from around
the world working on many different little pieces of software that eventually
get assembled into a Linux distribution?

It seems to me MS crappy, crippled software is such by design, so people have
always a reason to update.

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"scott" <sco### [at] laptopcom> wrote:
> They are a
> company - they act to generate maximum profit for their shareholders.

and are able to get around delivering crappy software to their customers because
there's no competition around.  Linux is a different beast with a different API
and mindset and so is Mac, which is even worse because of the different
price-range.

Real competition for MS would be when someone tried to support applications
written for MS Windows and make sure they run fine in their platform.  They
could use wine and mono for a headstart and perhaps run a Linux kernel
underneath.

Until then, all that's left for consumers are the offerings from a monopoly.
And consumers are ok with it because there's no way around it and besides they
want to make sure shareholders are happy. :P

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Invisible escribió:
> Warp wrote:
> 
>>   That seems to be a rather common thing people do. It's like they read
>> the first page of the SQL book they were given and skipped the rest 
>> because
>> it "works".
> 
> I find this deeply depressing...
> 

I don't know much SQL, but at least I know I don't know :) Although I'm 
definitely not as stupid as to do a SELECT * without WHERE clause and 
filtering what I want in the code! Geez...

Post a reply to this message

Invisible escribió:
> Darren New wrote:
>> I'll disagree with this one too. In some areas, software is like that. 
>> Not in all fields, however. When's the last time your DVD player crashed?
> 
> DVD player? Actually never.
> 
> [It does, however, fail to correctly play a number of DVDs that play 
> perfectly OK in other players. And it was NOT a cheap player, by any 
> stretch of the imagination. Panasonic too.]

In my and my uncle's experience, cheap players cope with crappy (and 
pirated) DVDs better than expensive and good-brand ones!

> My MP3 player? Roughly once every 4 days. (And it HURTS when it crashes!)
> 
> Then I took the firmware supplied by the people who designed and built 
> the device and replaced it by something written by a bunch of Internet 
> heads in their spare time who didn't even have access to the design 
> specs. And you know what? It has about 4x the functionallity, and it 
> never, ever, under any circumstances, crashes.
> 
> Does that not seem wrong to you? That a bunch of guys in their spare 
> time could do a better job than the people you paid money to?
> 

What player is it? Is the firmware Rockbox? :)

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And lo on Tue, 12 Feb 2008 11:44:31 -0000, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did  
spake, saying:

> scott wrote:
>>> If M$ made a quality product and charged a lot of money for it, I  
>>> wouldn't have a problem with that.
>>  The MS shareholders would though, because they wouldn't make as much  
>> profit. It's the same as if Ford suddenly decided all cars were going  
>> to be made to Rolls-Royce standards - not exactly a smart business move.
>
> No - but selling cars which you know are going to crash at least once  
> every 52 days... well, if a company tried to do that, they'd be shut  
> down.

No it's subject to the same cost/benefit analysis. If I save $50m from not  
installing some widget and worst case scenario is the company paying total  
damages of $25m if 'found out' then you don't install the widget. If  
people die because of that, then people die.

> However, for software it seems it's OK to sell a malfunctioning product.

It's not legal to sell any malfuntioning product, however you first have  
to define malfunction.

>>> What I have a problem with is the fact that they charge a fortune for  
>>> very low-quality products, and get away with it.
>>  Last time I checked, a company was free to sell their products for  
>> whatever price they wanted to.  If they try to sell them too high,  
>> nobody will buy them.

Unless they're a utility company their prices have to be checked with the  
regulators.

> Well, sure, if there were an alternative, people would run out and buy  
> that in their droves. I'm sure M$ would radically rethink their strategy  
> if that happened. But it won't.

At which point we recognise the free market system in action when it comes  
to monopolies, the company in question doesn't have to create a better  
product then their competitors simply a product not bad enough to  
encourage people to turn away from it.

>>> And they get away with it precisely because of the underhanded  
>>> techniques they use to eliminate all competition.
>>  Never seen any real competition for Windows.
>
> Perhaps not. (Does NetWare count? I don't really know much about it.)

and yet prior to Windows 95 there were quite the number of competing OSs.

> But what about, say, Word? There's quite a few other word processors out  
> there - and in past times there were even more. And most of them were a  
> lot more reliable than Word...

See above re monopolies. You buy the Microsoft word processor to go on the  
Microsoft operating system because it's obviously going to work better.  
Home users will use it as that's what they're used to and then you throw  
copies at the educators so that the next generation is brought up using it.

>> Linux is certainly getting a lot better, if they could get people to  
>> release games for it (like they do for xbox/ps3/pc) then they'd be a  
>> strong competitor I think.  Not used Apples much, but again lack of  
>> games prevents me from looking seriously at it.
>
> Apple requires you to buy new hardware, so it's not purely a software  
> decision.

Yet everyone loves their monopolistic ways :-)

> Linux is nice, but... well, it's fundamentally designed for UNIX nerds.  
> So if you're not, good luck... Besides, I'm not convinced that the whole  
> UNIX design is particularly coherant. (E.g., autoconf exists.)

However as has been pointed out here GNU/Linux has been set up for  
non-nerds, the difficulty lies in good old inertia -

So you've got your computer and it's come with Windows pre-installed  
here's another operating system, you've never used it before and it may  
really screw your hard drive up do you want to use it, do you?

So you're buying your computer and you can choose between Windows which  
you've heard of and every program/game you see is designed for, or you can  
choose something you've kind of vaguely heard of before. Hey why not go  
for the dual-boot option and just waste a ton of space on your hard drive?

At least we've LiveCDs now that helps so much.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

> I don't know much SQL, but at least I know I don't know :)

So Greats once said "the greatest knowledge is in knowing that you know 
nothing". That dude lived several centuries before SQL existed, and he 
was right all that time ago!

> Although I'm 
> definitely not as stupid as to do a SELECT * without WHERE clause and 
> filtering what I want in the code! Geez...

At the very least you'd think they would be manually building a SELECT * 
WHERE RecordID = 1376 for every query or something...

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

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And lo on Tue, 12 Feb 2008 12:58:59 -0000, scott <sco### [at] laptopcom> did  
spake, saying:

>> Any idea how many people are switching away from IE? Enough to provoke  
>> M$ to start development work on it again.
>
> And yet funnily enough since Vista/IE7, I've seen people who previously  
> were using FF now going back to IE - "well it has tabbed browsing  
> already doesn't it?"

Exactly the problem, why install Firefox when IE has the same  
functionality and is just there ready for you to use? Feel free to try and  
talk about standards compatibility to the MySpace generation.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

>> DVD player? Actually never.
>>
>> [It does, however, fail to correctly play a number of DVDs that play 
>> perfectly OK in other players. And it was NOT a cheap player, by any 
>> stretch of the imagination. Panasonic too.]
> 
> In my and my uncle's experience, cheap players cope with crappy (and 
> pirated) DVDs better than expensive and good-brand ones!

The player also takes an absurd amount of time to open the drive door. 
Like, turn it on and press eject. Stand there with the DVD in your hands 
for about 45 seconds before the door opens. Put the DVD in. Close the 
door. Wait another 45 seconds for the player to decide whether there's a 
disk in the drive and whether it's playable.

Sheesh. When I turn on my CD player and hit eject, you know how long it 
takes? 0.2 seconds. Even if it's *playing* a disk it takes 0.2 seconds...

>> Does that not seem wrong to you? That a bunch of guys in their spare 
>> time could do a better job than the people you paid money to?
>>
> 
> What player is it?

iAudio M5L.

> Is the firmware Rockbox? :)

Yes. :-D

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

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scott escribió:
> I don't know what 
> alternatives there are for DirectX for game controller input, sound, 
> networking etc, but I'm sure there are some in use.

SDL = Simple Directmedia Layer. Cross platform, can use GDI or DirectX 
on Windows, and a dozen different things on Linux (including aalib for 
ascii-art on your console). Even runs on Amiga, Dreamcast, Atari... now 
*that* is cross platform.

Post a reply to this message

>> Did you try using "Open and Repair" from the open dialog box of Word?
>
> And how do you do that?

In the open file dialog, there's a little arrow right next to the "Open" 
icon - click that and you get some further options, one of which is "Open 
and Repair".

> [FWIW, I did spend quite a lot of time researching the options. There's a 
> Word experts website that tells you all the little tricks for fixing 
> corrupted documents. Sadly, none of them work for a document so broken it 
> won't even open at all...]

IME "Open and Repair" opens documents that would normally be unopenable.  It 
then gives you a list of document sections that are corrupt, and makes the 
rest back into a working file.

> Yes. Because the only difference between IE and FF is tabbed browsing. 
> It's not like FF is 98% more efficient or secure or standards-compliant or 
> anything like that...

Most people don't care about that though, the only difference they see (IME) 
is tabbed browsing, and of course the fact that some websites don't work 
with FF.

>> Get a life away from computers :-)
>
> And that is an entire *other* story...

Hehe, seriously, did you ever wonder what it would be like to have a job 
that didn't involve computers?  I wonder sometimes ...

Post a reply to this message

Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> (And even Linux isn't that hard to work these days.
> Damn hard to set up, but not that hard to operate once you eventually
> get it working.)

hmm, what have you been running?  Linux from Scratch?

Seriously, I've installed Ubuntu 7.10 these days and it starts from a Live-CD,
where you can browse the web while it installs to disk.  The only interventions
it asked were to choose the language from a dropdown, the timezone from a
graphical world map and either choose to eat up all disk in a single partition
or do an assisted partitioning.  3 simple choices, all the rest automated.  All
hardware (pretty standard stuff) correctly detected and set up with reasonable
defaults.

Play some file in a media player and if it doesn't recognize the format, Ubuntu
will offer to download a suitable codec.  If you run a nVidia card, it'll offer
to download and install the official nvidia proprietary driver so that you can
run the composite window manager in all flash bang.

Only thing I needed to know was how to make the ADSL connection:  Help browser
says you have to run pppoeconf from the command-line and provide it with user
login and password for your provider.

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Fa3ien <fab### [at] yourshoesskynetbe> wrote:
> Invisible a écrit :
> > If "programmers" like this were to ever get hold of Haskell... my God,
> > it's too horrifying to think about! >_<
> >
>
> (setq t nil)

(set! bTrue #t)
(set! bFalse #f)

that's the enterprise software developer way... :P

Post a reply to this message

Phil Cook wrote:

>> No - but selling cars which you know are going to crash at least once 
>> every 52 days... well, if a company tried to do that, they'd be shut 
>> down.
> 
> No it's subject to the same cost/benefit analysis. If I save $50m from 
> not installing some widget and worst case scenario is the company paying 
> total damages of $25m if 'found out' then you don't install the widget. 
> If people die because of that, then people die.

M$ is the largest and richest corporation ever to have existed in 
recorded human history. If they wanted to, they could turn out a quality 
product. It's not like it would cost too much to do it - it wouldn't. 
They have more than enough money to do it. They just have no motivation.

They have succeeded in convincing the general public that it's "normal" 
for software to not work properly, and there's no real competition to 
illustrate the falsehood of this idea. So why bother making a better 
product when you can just continue ripping people off?

>> Well, sure, if there were an alternative, people would run out and buy 
>> that in their droves. I'm sure M$ would radically rethink their 
>> strategy if that happened. But it won't.
> 
> At which point we recognise the free market system in action when it 
> comes to monopolies, the company in question doesn't have to create a 
> better product then their competitors simply a product not bad enough to 
> encourage people to turn away from it.

Indeed. This is what M$ does best - they create software that is utterly 
awful, but not *quite* bad enough for mass migration to take place. 
[Part of this equation is obviously preventing the emergence of anything 
worth migrating to...]

>>>> And they get away with it precisely because of the underhanded 
>>>> techniques they use to eliminate all competition.
>>>  Never seen any real competition for Windows.
>>
>> Perhaps not. (Does NetWare count? I don't really know much about it.)
> 
> and yet prior to Windows 95 there were quite the number of competing OSs.

Really? That's news.

[Remember, until roughly Windows 98, I didn't even own an IBM PC.]

>> Apple requires you to buy new hardware, so it's not purely a software 
>> decision.
> 
> Yet everyone loves their monopolistic ways :-)

They make good stuff? ;-)

If M$ suddenly started making really awsome products, people would like 
it. What everybody hates is being forced to buy extortionately 
over-priced crapware because somebody has illegally exterminated all 
competition.

> At least we've LiveCDs now that helps so much.

BTW, have you ever used a Windows Live CD?

If you thought it was slow running from your HD then... you ain't seen 
nothing yet! B-b-b-baby, you just ain't seen nothing yet!!

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

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scott escribió:
> Virtual memory, automatic updates, protecting itself from nasty programs 
> that try to access things they shouldn't, providing common dialogs for 
> all applications, plug and play, CD/DVD-RW access, wireless networking, 
> remote desktop, configuring machines remotely, network file systems, 
> network printing, offline files, hibernating, file type associations, 
> encryption, working in multiple time zones, working with different 
> region settings, firewall.  I'm sure there are more, but those are the 
> most useful.
> 

I just looked through my service list to try proving you wrong, and 
disabled these services:

"Quick wireless networking", enabled by default, yet I'm using a 
Ethernet cable and this machine has no wireless hardware.

DCOM launch, I can't disable this one, but I know I don't need DCOM and 
has been a security hole in the past.

Machine Debug Manager (C:\Program files\Common files\Microsoft 
Shared\VS7DEBUG\MDM.EXE), which I don't need since I use gdb, not Visual 
Studio debugger. Why is this even *installed*??

Remote registry. My sister doesn't need to poke around on my registry 
(but I do need to do it on her machine). Hanged trying to stop it, but 
at least I could set it not to start automatically.

Post a reply to this message

"scott" <sco### [at] laptopcom> wrote:
> And when my mum tries to plug in her new camera...?  I was actually very
> impressed that my mum managed to install the software for her camera and get
> it working without even a single phone call to me :-)

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.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible escribió:
>> automatic updates
> 
> Which is only necessary because the software wasn't done right in the 
> first place.

Or because Internet wasn't as widespread. Where would you get the 
downloads *from*?

>> providing common dialogs for all applications

Uh, this is provided by a SERVICE?

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>>> Did you try using "Open and Repair" from the open dialog box of Word?
>>
>> And how do you do that?
> 
> In the open file dialog, there's a little arrow right next to the "Open" 
> icon - click that and you get some further options, one of which is 
> "Open and Repair".

Hmm. I would have never, ever found that. Not in fifty years.

And who says nobody learns anything by having M$ rants? :-D

[insert HCI comment here]

>> [FWIW, I did spend quite a lot of time researching the options. 
>> There's a Word experts website that tells you all the little tricks 
>> for fixing corrupted documents. Sadly, none of them work for a 
>> document so broken it won't even open at all...]
> 
> IME "Open and Repair" opens documents that would normally be 
> unopenable.  It then gives you a list of document sections that are 
> corrupt, and makes the rest back into a working file.

The advice I read was stuff like saving the file in a different file 
format, cut and pasting everything except section markers into a new 
document, etc. Which would probably work if Word didn't instantly die as 
soon as it touches the file...

>> Yes. Because the only difference between IE and FF is tabbed browsing. 
>> It's not like FF is 98% more efficient or secure or 
>> standards-compliant or anything like that...
> 
> Most people don't care about that though, the only difference they see 
> (IME) is tabbed browsing, and of course the fact that some websites 
> don't work with FF.

You're probably right about that. [Although you'd think most people 
would notice how much faster FF is.] There are of course quite a few 
sites that work fine in FF but not IE. Just nowhere near as many as the 
other way round.

I still think one day M$ will have a big problem because they will 
release IE 28 and discover that all the old crap written for IE 4 
doesn't work any more...

> Hehe, seriously, did you ever wonder what it would be like to have a job 
> that didn't involve computers?  I wonder sometimes ...

Oh, that's easy. I'd be fired. Fairly rapidly.

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

Post a reply to this message

Phil Cook wrote:

> Exactly the problem, why install Firefox when IE has the same 
> functionality and is just there ready for you to use? Feel free to try 
> and talk about standards compatibility to the MySpace generation.

MySpace and standards in the same sentence?

*gaaaaah!* >_<

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

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> (And even Linux isn't that hard to work these days.
>> Damn hard to set up, but not that hard to operate once you eventually
>> get it working.)
> 
> hmm, what have you been running?  Linux from Scratch?

KNOPPIX [which is based on Debian] and SUSE.

I have still yet to figure out how on Earth you make it so you can play 
DVDs...

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

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:
> "scott" <sco### [at] laptopcom> wrote:
>> And when my mum tries to plug in her new camera...?  I was actually very
>> impressed that my mum managed to install the software for her camera and get
>> it working without even a single phone call to me :-)
> 
> 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.

USB is a physical layer standard. The wire protocol? Well, good luck 
with that... If the camera speaks the mass storage device protocol, 
it'll work on just about every OS known to man that supports USB. If it 
uses a custom proprietry protocol... well, you had *better* have 
drivers! What's that? Your manufacturer wouldn't release the protocol 
spec without an NDA? Oh, I'm sorry, you have no Linux driver. :-P

I had endless fun trying to get SUSE to talk to a HP LaserJet 1000 over 
USB. You should try it sometime. 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, and then *maybe* CUPS will 
be able to drive the printer. Oh, but you gotta to it just right. [Gee, 
it almost sounds like Windows!]

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

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Invisible 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.

Post a reply to this message

> Hmm. I would have never, ever found that. Not in fifty years.
> 
> And who says nobody learns anything by having M$ rants? :-D
> 
> [insert HCI comment here]

Help -> "Open a corrupt file"

1st result.

Post a reply to this message

And lo on Tue, 12 Feb 2008 14:46:36 -0000, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did  
spake, saying:

> Phil Cook wrote:
>
>>> No - but selling cars which you know are going to crash at least once  
>>> every 52 days... well, if a company tried to do that, they'd be shut  
>>> down.
>>  No it's subject to the same cost/benefit analysis. If I save $50m from  
>> not installing some widget and worst case scenario is the company  
>> paying total damages of $25m if 'found out' then you don't install the  
>> widget. If people die because of that, then people die.
>
> M$ is the largest and richest corporation ever to have existed in  
> recorded human history. If they wanted to, they could turn out a quality  
> product. It's not like it would cost too much to do it - it wouldn't.  
> They have more than enough money to do it. They just have no motivation.

Which as you pointed out they gained when Firefox started to gain ground  
with regard to IE.

> They have succeeded in convincing the general public that it's "normal"  
> for software to not work properly, and there's no real competition to  
> illustrate the falsehood of this idea. So why bother making a better  
> product when you can just continue ripping people off?

To be fair they've failed to pass the blame on to the faulty/cheating  
device drivers that are more often the cause of the problems, to be unfair  
they should have written an OS that didn't allow faulty/cheating device  
drivers to function.

>>> Well, sure, if there were an alternative, people would run out and buy  
>>> that in their droves. I'm sure M$ would radically rethink their  
>>> strategy if that happened. But it won't.
>>  At which point we recognise the free market system in action when it  
>> comes to monopolies, the company in question doesn't have to create a  
>> better product then their competitors simply a product not bad enough  
>> to encourage people to turn away from it.
>
> Indeed. This is what M$ does best - they create software that is utterly  
> awful, but not *quite* bad enough for mass migration to take place.  
> [Part of this equation is obviously preventing the emergence of anything  
> worth migrating to...]

It's more like swimming by keeping your head just above the water. Sure  
you could flail your arms and lega about to move, but why bother when  
you're doing just fine by doing nothing. The only time you need to exhert  
yourself is if the water rises or something comes along to botehr you.

>>> Apple requires you to buy new hardware, so it's not purely a software  
>>> decision.
>>  Yet everyone loves their monopolistic ways :-)
>
> They make good stuff? ;-)

They make pretty stuff. If Microsoft could control the hardware as tightly  
as Apple I'm sure we'd all be praising the robust nature of Windows and  
not caring about all the products they've integrated into the OS. They had  
a chance with Media Center, but tried to accomodate too many components;  
they had a chance with their Xbox, but made it PC-shaped; and they had a  
chance with the Xbox360, but jumped the gun quality-wise; meh screw them  
they've had their chance.

> If M$ suddenly started making really awsome products, people would like  
> it.

Well yeah and as has been mentioned if Ford started making Rolls Royces at  
'normal' prices then people would like that too.

> What everybody hates is being forced to buy extortionately over-priced  
> crapware because somebody has illegally exterminated all competition.

No-one's forcing you to buy a computer, no-one's forcing you to buy  
Microsoft products

>> At least we've LiveCDs now that helps so much.
>
> BTW, have you ever used a Windows Live CD?

I've yet to be inflicted with the pleasure.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> a écrit dans le message de news: 
47b1b14c$1@news.povray.org...

> M$ is the largest and richest corporation ever to have existed in recorded 
> human history.

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

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

G.

-- 
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http://www.oyonale.com
*****************************
- Graphic experiments
- POV-Ray, Cinema 4D and Poser computer images
- Posters

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Nicolas Alvarez <nic### [at] gmailisthebestcom> wrote:
> Invisible 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.

so that's why he keeps crashing on Linux... :)

it's actually so basic I think the graphical program to unpack archives we'll
recognize it.  But Invisible seems to want to do it the hard way, on the
command-line when he clearly isn't well acquainted with...

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"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>

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nemesis wrote:

> it's actually so basic I think the graphical program to unpack archives we'll
> recognize it.  But Invisible seems to want to do it the hard way, on the
> command-line when he clearly isn't well acquainted with...

The box I was trying to set up as a print server doesn't have X 
installed. It's just a laptop that sits under the printer to allow it to 
be networked. So, when you've finished being smart... :-P

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

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"Gilles Tran" <gil### [at] agroparistechfr> wrote:
> "Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> a écrit dans le message de news:
> 47b1b14c$1@news.povray.org...
>
> > M$ is the largest and richest corporation ever to have existed in recorded
> > human history.
>
> 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

damn!  I guess we IT geeks were in need of some perspective... :P

I'm going bananas!!

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Gilles Tran wrote:

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

That is the most bizzare thing I've read today.

So a company that transports a dirt-cheap commodity item that almost 
nobody buys makes more money than the company that charges an absolute 
fortune for it's products, which are used by the entire industrialised 
world. How does *that* compute?! o_O

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

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Phil Cook wrote:

>> They have succeeded in convincing the general public that it's 
>> "normal" for software to not work properly, and there's no real 
>> competition to illustrate the falsehood of this idea. So why bother 
>> making a better product when you can just continue ripping people off?
> 
> To be fair they've failed to pass the blame on to the faulty/cheating 
> device drivers that are more often the cause of the problems, to be 
> unfair they should have written an OS that didn't allow faulty/cheating 
> device drivers to function.

You can't really prevent crappy software from being crappy. But when you 
release crappy products yourself, and generally create the consumer 
expectation that it's "normal" for software to not work correctly, why 
are 3rd parties going to aim any higher?

>> If M$ suddenly started making really awsome products, people would 
>> like it.
> 
> Well yeah and as has been mentioned if Ford started making Rolls Royces 
> at 'normal' prices then people would like that too.

Software that works properly is *not* Rolls Royce design. It's *basic* 
design! You don't go to a watch shop and hear "well, you can have this 
watch for £30 that kinda mostly works, or this watch for £30,000 which 
actually tells the right time", do you? In a watch shop, *ALL* the 
watches WORK PROPERLY! Even the absurdly cheap ones. Sheesh...

>> What everybody hates is being forced to buy extortionately over-priced 
>> crapware because somebody has illegally exterminated all competition.
> 
> No-one's forcing you to buy a computer, no-one's forcing you to buy 
> Microsoft products

No-one's forcing you to buy a computer. But IF you buy one, it's pretty 
much a certain that you *will* have to run M$ software on it. I tried to 
escape, but it just can't be done...

>>> At least we've LiveCDs now that helps so much.
>>
>> BTW, have you ever used a Windows Live CD?
> 
> I've yet to be inflicted with the pleasure.

Norton Ghost.

The old version I've got at work boots into PC-DOS and lets you run the 
software. However, the newer version my Dad has boots into a Live 
Windows and only lets you perform restores, not backups. You must 
install the bloatware onto your HD to perform backups. >_<

You know how CD-ROMs have a *really* long seek time? Well, for random 
access, that's BAD.

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

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And lo on Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:59:05 -0000, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did  
spake, saying:

> Phil Cook wrote:
>
>>> They have succeeded in convincing the general public that it's  
>>> "normal" for software to not work properly, and there's no real  
>>> competition to illustrate the falsehood of this idea. So why bother  
>>> making a better product when you can just continue ripping people off?
>>  To be fair they've failed to pass the blame on to the faulty/cheating  
>> device drivers that are more often the cause of the problems, to be  
>> unfair they should have written an OS that didn't allow faulty/cheating  
>> device drivers to function.
>
> You can't really prevent crappy software from being crappy. But when you  
> release crappy products yourself, and generally create the consumer  
> expectation that it's "normal" for software to not work correctly, why  
> are 3rd parties going to aim any higher?

As I implied a failure to educate users.

>>> If M$ suddenly started making really awsome products, people would  
>>> like it.
>>  Well yeah and as has been mentioned if Ford started making Rolls  
>> Royces at 'normal' prices then people would like that too.
>
> Software that works properly is *not* Rolls Royce design. It's *basic*  
> design! You don't go to a watch shop and hear "well, you can have this  
> watch for £30 that kinda mostly works, or this watch for £30,000 which  
> actually tells the right time", do you? In a watch shop, *ALL* the  
> watches WORK PROPERLY! Even the absurdly cheap ones. Sheesh...

Er this from a guy whose sister bought him a new watch because the  
batteries weren't lasting in his old one. Crappy watch = short lived life,  
poor time keeping; quality watch = long life, perfect time keeping. Both  
watches work for a given value of work.

>>> What everybody hates is being forced to buy extortionately over-priced  
>>> crapware because somebody has illegally exterminated all competition.
>>  No-one's forcing you to buy a computer, no-one's forcing you to buy  
>> Microsoft products
>
> No-one's forcing you to buy a computer. But IF you buy one, it's pretty  
> much a certain that you *will* have to run M$ software on it. I tried to  
> escape, but it just can't be done...

Depends on what you want to run. Again, as has been pointed out before,  
for basic clerical work Linux works. The problems can be summed up with  
Nicholas's "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."

>>>> At least we've LiveCDs now that helps so much.
>>>
>>> BTW, have you ever used a Windows Live CD?
>>  I've yet to be inflicted with the pleasure.
>
> Norton Ghost.
>
> The old version I've got at work boots into PC-DOS and lets you run the  
> software. However, the newer version my Dad has boots into a Live  
> Windows and only lets you perform restores, not backups. You must  
> install the bloatware onto your HD to perform backups. >_<
>
> You know how CD-ROMs have a *really* long seek time? Well, for random  
> access, that's BAD.

Remind me, was Norton this bad before it was acquired by Symantec.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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>> Software that works properly is *not* Rolls Royce design. It's *basic* 
>> design! You don't go to a watch shop and hear "well, you can have this 
>> watch for £30 that kinda mostly works, or this watch for £30,000 which 
>> actually tells the right time", do you? In a watch shop, *ALL* the 
>> watches WORK PROPERLY! Even the absurdly cheap ones. Sheesh...
> 
> Er this from a guy whose sister bought him a new watch because the 
> batteries weren't lasting in his old one.

Well, for the previous 8 years it worked fine. Clearly something has 
gone wrong with it now. Mechanical devices tend to wear out over time, 
and 8 years is not an unreasonable time frame for a watch to work. If 
I'd bought a more expensive watch, maybe it would have lasted longer.

Similarly, I doubt any software will ever be *completely* bug-free. The 
point is that M$ isn't even trying. They can't be bothered.

>> No-one's forcing you to buy a computer. But IF you buy one, it's 
>> pretty much a certain that you *will* have to run M$ software on it. I 
>> tried to escape, but it just can't be done...
> 
> Depends on what you want to run. Again, as has been pointed out before, 
> for basic clerical work Linux works. The problems can be summed up with 
> Nicholas's "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."

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". E.g., good luck finding any 
headline games that run on Linux. And good luck finding Linux drivers 
for game hardware.

Linux actually makes quite a sensible choice for servers. I mean, if 
you've got a server, one would damn well *hope* you have an expert to 
run it [no matter what software it runs]. So, assuming your software 
runs there, it makes good sense.

[Random: Did you know, you can't play Team Fortress 2 on Linux, but you 
*can* run a dedicated TF2 game server on it? OTOH, I guess the game 
server only needs to send and receive UDP. The game itself needs to do 
fancy DirectX stuff that would be a nightmare to port...]

I have, on several occasions, seriously considered moving to a Mac. 
There are 2 real stopping points:

1. I don't have that kind of money.

2. None of my [very expensive] software would work any more.

>> Norton Ghost.
>>
>> The old version I've got at work boots into PC-DOS and lets you run 
>> the software. However, the newer version my Dad has boots into a Live 
>> Windows and only lets you perform restores, not backups. You must 
>> install the bloatware onto your HD to perform backups. >_<
>>
>> You know how CD-ROMs have a *really* long seek time? Well, for random 
>> access, that's BAD.
> 
> Remind me, was Norton this bad before it was acquired by Symantec.

Both CDs have Symantec written on them. I've got Ghost 2003 at work. 
[The one that actually lets you copy data.] My dad has something newer 
[which doesn't].

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

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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...

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Invisible wrote:
> The box I was trying to set up as a print server doesn't have X 
> installed. It's just a laptop that sits under the printer to allow it to 
> be networked. So, when you've finished being smart... :-P

how are you attempting to setup a print server remotely when you don't 
even know to use gzip?  Then don't come with those stories of Linux not 
being ready for production because it crashes every time.  Because a 
Linux admin is supposed to have some knowledge when running as root.  No 
yes, no cancellation dialogs, remember?

not like some Windows average user would be any luckier to setup a 
remote print server with an admin account...

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