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! >_<

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

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Working where I do, I've found quite a few WTF's myself.

In one of my recent favorites, the programmer had done a query like:
SELECT * FROM CUSTOMERS

Then he went through every single record (in a loop), until he found the 
record that matched the value he was looking for, or hit the end of the 
file.  Moreover, all he needed to return was the name.  Honestly, there is 
absolutely no excuse for code like that.  While he worked here, he generally 
maintained his own code, so we didn't run across that stuff until he was 
gone.  I have to wonder what other surprises lay in store...

In many ways I'm glad he doesn't work here anymore (obviously).   But in 
other ways, I wish he did, so I could punch him in the face...  ;-)

Post a reply to this message

Jeremy M. Praay wrote:
> Working where I do, I've found quite a few WTF's myself.
> 
> In one of my recent favorites, the programmer had done a query like:
> SELECT * FROM CUSTOMERS
> 
> Then he went through every single record (in a loop), until he found the 
> record that matched the value he was looking for, or hit the end of the 
> file.  Moreover, all he needed to return was the name.  Honestly, there is 
> absolutely no excuse for code like that.

There was one *precisely* like that the other day... let me find it...

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Rutherford,-Price,-Atkinson,-Strickland,-and-Associates-Dentistry,-Inc.aspx

Read it and weep.

Seriously, the fundamental purpose for a database to *exist* is exactly 
TO DO THIS STUFF FOR YOU! It's like using a knife and not realising you 
can use it to cut things with... WTF?! >_<

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

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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:47b07dd9@news.povray.org...
> 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". (!!)

"Works" Definition: Does (mostly) what the users expect. Doesn't contain
(too many) bugs. Doesn't (often) crash.

Way too common an attitude. In commercial programming, any time not spent
working toward the next version/next application/next feature is time
wasted, as customers don't pay for pretty code. They pay for features (often
features that they'll never use, but take comfort in having)

I'm still fighting for a redesign and rewrite of the ball of garbage that
went into my system last year. Everyone says its a good idea, but can't seem
to find the tome to do it. Instead they're busy with new features, like
partially overnormalising a table (it's heading for 5th normal form) and
planning a server upgrade (from a 12 proc server with 48GB memory to a 8
proc server with 8 GB memory)

The only time fixes are prioritised is when a large number of users are
complaining very loudly.

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"Orchid XP v7" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:47b0920b@news.povray.org...

> Seriously, the fundamental purpose for a database to *exist* is exactly
> TO DO THIS STUFF FOR YOU! It's like using a knife and not realising you
> can use it to cut things with... WTF?! >_<

It's called. "Of course I know how to write SQL. SQL's easy, unlike C#"
(Yup. That explains why every piece of SQL you write almost brings the
server down when it runs)
Yes, I had one of my devs say that to me.

Want some fun reading? (though there's not that much there)
http://sqldumbass.com/

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Gail Shaw wrote:

> "Works" Definition: Does (mostly) what the users expect. Doesn't contain
> (too many) bugs. Doesn't (often) crash.
> 
> Way too common an attitude. In commercial programming, any time not spent
> working toward the next version/next application/next feature is time
> wasted, as customers don't pay for pretty code. They pay for features (often
> features that they'll never use, but take comfort in having)

...and *this* is why Micro$oft is allowed to exist. >_<

> I'm still fighting for a redesign and rewrite of the ball of garbage that
> went into my system last year.

Oh dear God!

> The only time fixes are prioritised is when a large number of users are
> complaining very loudly.

How pathetic. It's like short-sightedness is taught in schools or 
something. Sure, users don't care about pretty code. I'm sure if you 
asked them though, they care rather a lot about *reliable* code...

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

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Gail Shaw wrote:

> "Of course I know how to write SQL. SQL's easy, unlike C#"
> Yes, I had one of my devs say that to me.

OMG! o_O

Unfortunately I presume the laws of your country prevent you from 
smacking this person in the face and saying "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU 
TALKING ABOUT?! WAKE UP!!"

> Want some fun reading? (though there's not that much there)
> http://sqldumbass.com/

GAH! I want to rip out my own eyes!! >_<

Seriously, how did the world become so *stupid*? I worry about the 
future of mankind...

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

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"Orchid XP v7" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:47b0aa9f$1@news.povray.org...

> ...and *this* is why Micro$oft is allowed to exist. >_<

Any just about every other software company in existance. It's not unique to
MS. In fact, through dealings with MS's tech support anda  lot of vender's
tech support, I've found that the people at MS care more. Far too many
software venders have the attitude "You bought it, now its your problem"

There are a couple of exceptions (fog creek probably), but they are very
definitly a minority.

> Sure, users don't care about pretty code. I'm sure if you
> asked them though, they care rather a lot about *reliable* code...

They'll probably say they will, but offer, for the same price, a piece of
software with 10 features that's fairly reliable and a piece of software
with 4 features that's very reliable and see which they'll choose to buy.

I'll be you anything, 80%+ will go for the one with more features,
rationalising that it can do more.

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"Orchid XP v7" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:47b0abef@news.povray.org...

>
> Unfortunately I presume the laws of your country prevent you from
> smacking this person in the face.

I'm not sure if a slap here is classified assault. I don't think so.

He most defintly got the sharp edge of my tongue. I'd had a really foul day
up until that point and it was all his fault (really)

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On Mon, 11 Feb 2008 16:54:48 +0000, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:

>Of course, the *real* WTF is ...

>_<

Now I want to choke you for typing that.  It's worse than nails on a chalkboard to me
and is the reason I stopped reading The Daily WTF comments, and then stopped reading
The Daily WTF altogether.

I'm now going to have my pet basilisk IM you.  :-P

Post a reply to this message

Gail Shaw wrote:

>> ...and *this* is why Micro$oft is allowed to exist. >_<
> 
> Any just about every other software company in existance. It's not unique to
> MS.

I beg to differ.

Before M$ came along, buying software was like buying any other product; 
people *expected* it to work properly. And if it didn't, it was taken 
back to the shop. Companies that regularly produced poor quality junk 
didn't stay around for very long.

After M$, it became somehow "OK" for software to not actually work 
properly. If M$ can be credited with one original invention, this is it. 
They've somehow made it "acceptable" for software to not really work 
properly. Year after year, they churn out semi-functional bloatware, and 
yet everybody keeps buying it. And it doesn't quite work properly, but 
people think this is somehow "normal".

This is probably why people have such a hard time convincing their 
bosses that bad code should be replaced; bosses [and everybody else] 
*expect* software to not quite work properly any more. It's somehow 
acceptable now...

> In fact, through dealings with MS's tech support and a lot of vender's
> tech support, I've found that the people at MS care more. Far too many
> software venders have the attitude "You bought it, now its your problem"

The company I work for isn't nearly big enough for *any* tech support 
people to speak to us, so I couldn't comment...

>> Sure, users don't care about pretty code. I'm sure if you
>> asked them though, they care rather a lot about *reliable* code...
> 
> They'll probably say they will, but offer, for the same price, a piece of
> software with 10 features that's fairly reliable and a piece of software
> with 4 features that's very reliable and see which they'll choose to buy.
> 
> I'll be you anything, 80%+ will go for the one with more features,
> rationalising that it can do more.

The people who write the cheques? Or the people who have to *use* the 
software? They aren't the same people. ;-)

[But no, I won't bet any actual money, because then I'd loose. No matter 
what I bet on, I loose. I even bet on the chemical symbol for tin - a 
value that cannot ever change - and *still* lost!]

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

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Jeremy M. Praay <jer### [at] questsoftwarecmo> wrote:
> In one of my recent favorites, the programmer had done a query like:
> SELECT * FROM CUSTOMERS

> Then he went through every single record (in a loop), until he found the 
> record that matched the value he was looking for, or hit the end of the 
> file.

  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".

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Orchid XP v7 wrote:
> Before M$ came along, buying software was like buying any other product; 
> people *expected* it to work properly. 

Ummmm. I'll have to beg to differ with you here.  How much software did 
you use before MS was around?

The thing that MS did that nobody else really did well was integrate 
lots of layers of stuff from lots of people.  You never had one piece of 
software that ran on multiple operating systems before MS. You never had 
reliable device drivers from third-party vendors before MS was around. 
You never had six layers of functionality, all of which had to work 
together, coming from different competing companies, before MS was around.

MS happened to be doing Windows when the complexity of stuff that 
average users saw just took off. *That* is what you're seeing.

> After M$, it became somehow "OK" for software to not actually work 
> properly. If M$ can be credited with one original invention, this is it. 

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?

-- 
   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:
> The thing that MS did that nobody else really did well was integrate
> lots of layers of stuff from lots of people.

when you're given control over the infrastructure software powering IBM's
microcomputer offering and its dozens of successful clones, you can do
anything, including dictating standards and APIs.

> You never had one piece of
> software that ran on multiple operating systems before MS.

which multiple OSes from MS?  The home edition and office edition?

> You never had
> reliable device drivers from third-party vendors before MS was around.

change MS for monopoly and you'll understand why they work so well.

> You never had six layers of functionality, all of which had to work
> together, coming from different competing companies, before MS was around.

here too.

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 11 Feb 2008 18:03:34 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> When's the last time your DVD player crashed?

About a year ago for our Sony.  Known firmware issue, but it takes a Sony 
technician to reflash it, apparently - 6 weeks without the thing if we 
wanted to get the problem fixed.

Jim

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"Orchid XP v7" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:47b0bb28@news.povray.org...

> Before M$ came along, buying software was like buying any other product;
> people *expected* it to work properly. And if it didn't, it was taken
> back to the shop. Companies that regularly produced poor quality junk
> didn't stay around for very long.

And how much software did you buy before MS was around? Don't confuse
correlation with causation.

The difference is the scale. Before MS became big (and I'm talking before
around 1988 here) software was a niche market. Small, specialised, very few
users, small.

I'm emphasising small, because small software is 'easy' to write. The biger
the app becomes (lines of code, modules, classes, etc) the harder it becomes
to maintain, the more bugs creep in, the more chance for unexpected
behaviours, etc It becomes harder and harder to add new features required
for version 2.

At the same time, you can't go back and scrap the codebase and write from
scratch. It takes too long (time in which you're loosing market share to
other companies who didn't scrap the code base) and you're loosing time that
was invested in the first in bugfixing. Witness Netscape's mistake of trying
to rewrite the code base completely for one version (I think it was 6 or 7)

Ask anyone who's worked on large software projects.

> After M$, it became somehow "OK" for software to not actually work
> properly.

Honestly, I'll take MS's products any day over some of the crap that I've
seen from ISVs

> The people who write the cheques? Or the people who have to *use* the
> software? They aren't the same people. ;-)

I'm talking about Joe Average User going down to the shop to buy a boxed
piece of software.

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nemesis wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> The thing that MS did that nobody else really did well was integrate
>> lots of layers of stuff from lots of people.
> 
> when you're given control over the infrastructure software powering IBM's
> microcomputer offering and its dozens of successful clones, you can do
> anything, including dictating standards and APIs.

Indeed yes.  On the other hand, lots of people had monopolies over their 
own systems, and never managed to support this properly: CP/M, Radio 
Shack, etc.  Apple didn't do too bad a job with the Apple ][. Of course, 
the hardware was much more primitive at the time.

How recently has UNIX not used source distributions for programs? How 
much UNIX shareware could you download as executables, say, in 1998?

>> You never had one piece of
>> software that ran on multiple operating systems before MS.
> 
> which multiple OSes from MS?  The home edition and office edition?

DOS, Win98, WinXP.

And before you say "Windows NT is the same OS as Windows 98", remember 
all the people that accuse MS of stealing Windows NT from DEC? :-)

Show me an executable that runs on TRS-DOS and CP/M?

It's only now (as in, since OS X) that the Mac is starting to manage 
this as well. A couple other systems managed it as well (VM/CMS, for 
example), but nothing affordable to mere mortals.

>> You never had
>> reliable device drivers from third-party vendors before MS was around.
> 
> change MS for monopoly and you'll understand why they work so well.

I'm not sure what that sentence means, given the unusual syntax.

>> You never had six layers of functionality, all of which had to work
>> together, coming from different competing companies, before MS was around.
> 
> here too.

If what you're saying is that MS being a monopoly is what made this 
possible, then sure, I might agree with that. It doesn't mean that makes 
it easier or less prone to mistakes. Just like saying "Cars that go 200 
MPH crash more often than cars that go 30 MPH" isn't disputed by a 
complaint that they got exclusive use of the race track.

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

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Darren New escribió:
> nemesis wrote:
>> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>> You never had
>>> reliable device drivers from third-party vendors before MS was around.
>>
>> change MS for monopoly and you'll understand why they work so well.
> 
> I'm not sure what that sentence means, given the unusual syntax.

It means: In the sentence "You never had reliable device drivers from 
third-party vendors before MS was around", replace "MS" with "monopoly", 
and you'll understand why they are sort-of-reliable now.

[not my opinion, just clarifying his sentence]

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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.

> And before you say "Windows NT is the same OS as Windows 98", remember
> all the people that accuse MS of stealing Windows NT from DEC? :-)

WNT <- VMS

same engineer...

> Show me an executable that runs on TRS-DOS and CP/M?

Thank God the industry has settled on standards for interoperation.

> If what you're saying is that MS being a monopoly is what made this
> possible, then sure, I might agree with that.

yes, that's it exactly.

Post a reply to this message

"Jeremy M. Praay" <jer### [at] questsoftwarecmo> wrote:
> Working where I do, I've found quite a few WTF's myself.

yes, offices are full with it.  and they generally come from programmers not
well aquainted with povray... :)

> In one of my recent favorites, the programmer had done a query like:
> SELECT * FROM CUSTOMERS

in my place, people seem to love using cursors and manually looping over it
rather than using a simpler and much faster INNER JOIN.

BTW, why are we yelling, huh?  so démodé writing Sql as COBOL... ;)

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nemesis wrote:
> in my place, people seem to love using cursors and manually looping over it
> rather than using a simpler and much faster INNER JOIN.

I took over (technically) at one place and made the rule that such was 
disallowed. You were not allowed to loop over a result set and put its 
contents into another SQL call. I sometimes spent half a day figuring 
out the right SQL to accomplish something, but I got it working about 
six times as fast.

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).

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

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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.

Because you had lots of OSes called UNIX that weren't compatible with 
each other, even at the source level.  (See autoconf)

>> DOS, Win98, WinXP.
> 
> 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.

> Single vendor, single solution.

Yes? So?

> 
>> And before you say "Windows NT is the same OS as Windows 98", remember
>> all the people that accuse MS of stealing Windows NT from DEC? :-)
> 
> WNT <- VMS
> 
> same engineer...

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

>> Show me an executable that runs on TRS-DOS and CP/M?
> 
> Thank God the industry has settled on standards for interoperation.

Yep.

>> If what you're saying is that MS being a monopoly is what made this
>> possible, then sure, I might agree with that.
> 
> yes, that's it exactly.

So you agree with me, but think MS is bad. OK. I'm not disputing MS is 
bad. (Not agreeing, but not disputing. That's just a different 
conversation.)

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

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> I beg to differ.

I don't.  You are just blaming MS because they write some of the most 
complex software that is used by a huge number of people.  Of course there 
will be bugs, they're not writing an OS for a nuclear reactor, or a game for 
an 32K machine - it simply isn't profitable to write big bits of software 
for home/office use that are totally bullet-proof.

Post a reply to this message

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...

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

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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.

OTOH, if you haven't got enough time to do it... what can you do?

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

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Gail Shaw wrote:

> And how much software did you buy before MS was around? Don't confuse
> correlation with causation.

Quite a lot. (Well, my parents anyway, not me personally. I didn't have 
any money...)

We had premptive multitasking operating systems and large C compilers 
and ray tracers and modellers and music sequencing software and complex 
computer games and so on and so forth. And they all worked properly. Any 
programs that didn't were laughed at and thrown away. (Heck, we didn't 
even have protected execution yet, so a single bug could shut down your 
entire machine. And yet this virtually never happened...)

> The difference is the scale. Before MS became big (and I'm talking before
> around 1988 here) software was a niche market. Small, specialised, very few
> users, small.

I don't know that it was that specialised - from the number of consumer 
magazines about it on the shelves, I wouldn't have thought so. I don't 
have hard numbers though...

> I'm emphasising small, because small software is 'easy' to write.

I don't really see how the software M$ writes is any "bigger" or "more 
complex" than what existed before.

>> After M$, it became somehow "OK" for software to not actually work
>> properly.
> 
> Honestly, I'll take MS's products any day over some of the crap that I've
> seen from ISVs

M$ certainly don't produce the *worst* software on the market - I've 
seen crud that's much worse. OTOH, nobody buys that stuff. People do buy 
M$ products.

I've also seen software that's much more reliable. *cough* POV-Ray. When 
was the last time you saw it crash? 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.]

Obviously, when you're not being paid to produce software, you can spend 
"infinite" resources on debugging. But take, for example, NI Reaktor, or 
Steinburg Cubase. I have yet to see either of those crash, and they're 
far more complicated than M$ Word. (I believe they might even be cheaper 
too... I'd have to check prices.)

>> The people who write the cheques? Or the people who have to *use* the
>> software? They aren't the same people. ;-)
> 
> I'm talking about Joe Average User going down to the shop to buy a boxed
> piece of software.

I think if you could actually explain to Joe Average "hey, *this* one 
NEVER EVER CRASHES", that'd be pretty impressed.

Of course, you can write that on the box, but why would anyone believe 
what it says on the box? It's easy to claim your software has fewer bugs 
- even M$ claim that! (Surely that should be illegal under the trade 
descriptions act?)

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

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Darren New wrote:

> Ummmm. I'll have to beg to differ with you here.  How much software did 
> you use before MS was around?

Quite a lot, actually.

>> After M$, it became somehow "OK" for software to not actually work 
>> properly. If M$ can be credited with one original invention, this is it. 
> 
> 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.]

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?

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

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scott wrote:
>> I beg to differ.
> 
> I don't.

There's a surprise...

> You are just blaming MS because they write some of the most 
> complex software that is used by a huge number of people.  Of course 
> there will be bugs - it simply isn't profitable to write big bits 
> of software for home/office use that are totally bullet-proof.

No, 100% bug-free would be pretty damn hard. But M$ is the largest and 
most profitable corporation that has ever existed in the history of 
mankind. If they actually cared, they could produce a vastly superior 
product and still make a stackload of money. The point is THEY DON'T 
CARE. They produce a barely-functional product and people still buy is. 
So why bother making a quality product when people will buy crap?

Of course, if there were actually some viable competition, people would 
realise that it is *not* "normal" for computer software to be buggy and 
unreliable, and people would switch. Unfortunately, thanks to M$, this 
situation will never arise. If anybody starts making really good 
software, they'll just get bought...

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

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> If they actually cared, they could produce a vastly superior product and 
> still make a stackload of money.

But it won't be as much money, compared to if they got on and started 
working on their next OS or whatever.  That's the point.  They are a 
company - they act to generate maximum profit for their shareholders.

I've said this before, but why do so many people think that they know a 
better strategy for Microsoft to increase their profits?  I'm pretty sure MS 
employs some of the best guys in the business for making strategic decisions 
like this, if you think you are better than them then you're in the wrong 
job!!!

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scott wrote:

> I've said this before, but why do so many people think that they know a 
> better strategy for Microsoft to increase their profits?  I'm pretty 
> sure MS employs some of the best guys in the business for making 
> strategic decisions like this, if you think you are better than them 
> then you're in the wrong job!!!

The problem is that M$ extracts maximum profit basically by ripping 
their customers off.

If M$ made a quality product and charged a lot of money for it, I 
wouldn't have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is the 
fact that they charge a fortune for very low-quality products, and get 
away with it. And they get away with it precisely because of the 
underhanded techniques they use to eliminate all competition.

This stuff should be illegal... Oh, wait. It is. And M$ has been 
convicted. Several times. And yet still they are allowed to trade with 
no sanctions at all. Great.

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

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

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> We had premptive multitasking operating systems and large C compilers and 
> ray tracers and modellers and music sequencing software and complex 
> computer games and so on and so forth.

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.

> 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.

> 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.

> 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.

Post a reply to this message

> 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*

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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)

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> 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*

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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.

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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...

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