Warp wrote:
>   You are probably right: The damage has already been done and there's
> nothing MS can do to fix it.

Exactly.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> M$ has somehow succeeded in convincing people that it is somehow 
> "normal" for computers to not work correctly.

Not really. Personal computers never worked consistently right. Mainframes, 
yes, but not micros or PCs.  (And by PC, I mean everything from TRS-80 to 
Apple ][ to Commodore PET to ...)

> I mean, if your car occasionally stalled for no apparent reason, you'd 
> demand to have it fixed. But if your computer sometimes doesn't work, 
> everybody seems to think that that's just "how it is", and that this 
> incorrect behaviour is somehow "acceptable".

Because nobody really understands how a computer is *supposed* to work. 
Those that do hang out on geek lists and bitch about how broken they are.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   You are probably right: The damage has already been done and there's
> > nothing MS can do to fix it.

> Exactly.

  But they could at least try, rather than keep making an ass of themselves.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:
> Nicolas Alvarez escreveu:
>> Or the time I saw her very quickly click on all the FlashBlock
>> placeholders on a Flash-heavy page (it was clear she had done that a
>> dozen times). She didn't ever think there had to be an easier way (there
>> is a domain whitelist).
> 
> FlashBlock?!  My sister won't even touch Firefox!  Anytime I'm at my
> parent's and leave the computer for others to use -- it's a single
> Windows passwordless session (because it's "easy") -- I leave Firefox
> open with a clean new tab.  First thing she does is close Firefox and
> click on the old blue e.  It's like dog conditioning, I guess, because
> she seems to not even realize it's a web browser sitting just before
> her...

I used to use that machine until I got a new one, so it has four passworded
accounts, one for each family member.

IE isn't used in any machine in my house :)

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   But they could at least try, rather than keep making an ass of themselves.

Like what? I'm not sure what they do that's "making an ass of themselves" 
that's anywhere near as bad as Apple mocking them, for example.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   But they could at least try, rather than keep making an ass of themselves.

> Like what?

  Like Steve Ballmer stopping making himself the laughingstock of the
world year after year.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Invisible escreveu:
> nemesis wrote:
> 
>> FlashBlock?!  My sister won't even touch Firefox!  Anytime I'm at my 
>> parent's and leave the computer for others to use -- it's a single 
>> Windows passwordless session (because it's "easy") -- I leave Firefox 
>> open with a clean new tab.  First thing she does is close Firefox and 
>> click on the old blue e.  It's like dog conditioning, I guess, because 
>> she seems to not even realize it's a web browser sitting just before 
>> her...
> 
> ...did you just call somebody a dog? ;-)

yes, my sister actually.  It's ok between brothers.  I call her stupid, 
she calls me nerd. ;)

Post a reply to this message

Warp escreveu:
> nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> FlashBlock?!  My sister won't even touch Firefox!  Anytime I'm at my 
>> parent's and leave the computer for others to use -- it's a single 
>> Windows passwordless session (because it's "easy") -- I leave Firefox 
>> open with a clean new tab.  First thing she does is close Firefox and 
>> click on the old blue e.  It's like dog conditioning, I guess, because 
>> she seems to not even realize it's a web browser sitting just before her...
> 
>   Download an IE skin for Firefox and change Firefox's icon to that of IE.
> See how long it takes for her to notice there's something wrong with it.

I might try that.  I remember at University I used to change the IE icon 
to point to Firefox in every station I got to. :D

Post a reply to this message

Nicolas Alvarez escreveu:
> I used to use that machine until I got a new one, so it has four passworded
> accounts, one for each family member.

While I lived in the house, the PC was organized that way, yes.  Once I 
left, they felt there should be an easier way. :P

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   Like Steve Ballmer stopping making himself the laughingstock of the
> world year after year.

Hey, it works for Madonna. At least you know what *his* focus is. :-)

Somehow, I don't see him being all suave like Jobs. And unlike Apple 
computers, people don't generally make the buying decisions on Windows 
enterprise servers based on whether the CEO jumps around a bunch at product 
launches. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 28 Jan 2009 12:01:03 -0500, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> On Tue, 27 Jan 2009 13:26:24 -0500, Warp wrote:
> 
>> >   If Microsoft (and especially Steve Ballmer) stopped trolling around
>> >   and
>> > concentrated only on what they are good at, they could get a better
>> > reputation. But no. I think that at least with Steve Ballmer it's
>> > some kind of odd twisted imago reputation which he *wants* to
>> > maintain, for some incomprehensible reason.
> 
>> For Ballmer (and Gates before him), it's all about control.  They don't
>> like what they can't control, so they have to either try to control it
>> or destroy it.
> 
>   And that's why he always tries as hard as possible to become the
> laughing stock of the internet with his stupid antics?

I have a feeling that he really doesn't care what other people think of 
him.  As much as he's worth, why should he?

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:

>   Download an IE skin for Firefox and change Firefox's icon to that of IE.
> See how long it takes for her to notice there's something wrong with it.

I'm guessing the first time she visits a site that demands ActiveX...?

Still, that's one way to get people to use sane software. ;-) I wonder 
if you can do something similar for OpenOffice? (Although, to be honest, 
you wouldn't need to change *that* many things...)

Also... I remember having a conversation that went something like this:

Me: Dude, you don't seriously use IE, do you?
Her: No, don't be stupid! I use Avant.
Me: ...

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

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Orchid XP v8 escreveu:
> Warp wrote:
> 
>>   Download an IE skin for Firefox and change Firefox's icon to that of 
>> IE.
>> See how long it takes for her to notice there's something wrong with it.
> 
> I'm guessing the first time she visits a site that demands ActiveX...?

She uses MSN a lot and perhaps Hotmail also works better -- integrated 
:P -- in IE.

> Me: Dude, you don't seriously use IE, do you?
> Her: No, don't be stupid! I use Avant.
> Me: ...

LOL

Post a reply to this message

>>> See how long it takes for her to notice there's something wrong with it.
>>
>> I'm guessing the first time she visits a site that demands ActiveX...?
> 
> She uses MSN a lot and perhaps Hotmail also works better -- integrated 
> :P -- in IE.

I'm guessing also that a lot of those pointless Flash games and similar 
only work well in IE.

>> Me: Dude, you don't seriously use IE, do you?
>> Her: No, don't be stupid! I use Avant.
>> Me: ...
> 
> LOL

"No! Of *course* I don't use IE! It's buggy and insecure. I use [a thin 
skin over the top of IE] instead. It's way better."

"...uh..."

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

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On Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:25:27 +0000, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>>> See how long it takes for her to notice there's something wrong with
>>>> it.
>>>
>>> I'm guessing the first time she visits a site that demands ActiveX...?
>> 
>> She uses MSN a lot and perhaps Hotmail also works better -- integrated
>> :P -- in IE.
> 
> I'm guessing also that a lot of those pointless Flash games and similar
> only work well in IE.

Um, not if they're Flash games....Flash runs in Firefox....

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:54:41 +0000, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>   Download an IE skin for Firefox and change Firefox's icon to that of
>>   IE.
>> See how long it takes for her to notice there's something wrong with
>> it.
> 
> I'm guessing the first time she visits a site that demands ActiveX...?

Outside of Microsoft-owned sites, there are sites that still use 
ActiveX?  Really?

I don't run into them *ever* unless I'm downloading something from the 
MSDN site.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

>> I'm guessing also that a lot of those pointless Flash games and similar
>> only work well in IE.
> 
> Um, not if they're Flash games....Flash runs in Firefox....

And how much do you want to bet that the entire site markup is only 
tested with IE?

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

Post a reply to this message

>> I'm guessing the first time she visits a site that demands ActiveX...?
> 
> Outside of Microsoft-owned sites, there are sites that still use 
> ActiveX?  Really?
> 
> I don't run into them *ever* unless I'm downloading something from the 
> MSDN site.

The server administration console for Trend Micro requires ActiveX, for 
example. (Not that this matters to a home user. I'm pretty sure I've 
seen various Internet equipment or ISP websites that also demand ActiveX 
though.)

I'm drawing a blank on real "websites" that require ActiveX, but I think 
there are a few outside M$.

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

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> The server administration console for Trend Micro requires ActiveX,

I've seen a fair number of "enterprise" type sites needing ActiveX. 
Basically, places where it's cheaper to tell your customers what to use than 
it is to maintain multiple versions and break out of the sandbox in various 
ways.

> I'm drawing a blank on real "websites" that require ActiveX, 

Not since XMLHTTP stopped being an ActiveX control and got ported to other 
browsers.

Even MS is getting away from it, really.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> Neither of those is going to stand long.
> 
> I see MS doing lots of new things that aren't on Linux, tho. You don't 
> stay ahead by not inventing anything new.
> 
What exactly? Just being clear that "every time" they announce some new 
"feature", its either something like .NET, which a lot of people don't 
want at all, or trust, *or* someone goes, "Gee, doesn't GFBunk (or some 
similarly weirdly named thing) already do that on such an such OS?"

>> BTW, here the one about how the EU may have finally gotten so annoyed 
>> at IE being integrated in MS' machines that they may require new 
>> installs to "include" an alternative browser "standard" in all of 
>> them? Can't imagine that making things better for them either...
> 
> Or, honestly, for the users or browser vendors. At this point, nobody 
> can actually *sell* a browser, so I'm not sure what the point of not 
> giving away a browser is, or how you decide which of the 8 or 10 popular 
> browsers out there you should be including.
Hmm. Well there is that. But, the point is "competing", not "every", 
so... Sure they will just pick which ever one has the most market share 
at the time, which would be... Hmm... lol

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> its either something like .NET, which a lot of people don't 
> want at all,

There's a lot of people who don't want a computer at all. Hence, OSS is 
worthless.

> or trust, *or* someone goes, "Gee, doesn't GFBunk (or some 
> similarly weirdly named thing) already do that on such an such OS?"

I see Linux copying a lot of stuff that MS does on Linux file systems, for 
example. When Linux adds something like the ability to watch for changes to 
the file system or the ability to take a snapshot of the file system without 
disrupting operations, I don't see too many people complaining "Hey, doesn't 
Microsoft do that already?"  But if Microsoft adds virtual desktops, I can 
guarantee people will croon that's been in Linux for years.

You're getting caught by confirmation bias here, methinks. Any small 
improvement is going to be seen as a small incremental improvement just to 
make money on upgrades, or sufficiently close to what someone else already 
did that you can dismiss it. If they do something large and new, you say "I 
don't trust Microsoft and they're the only ones I can get this from, so it 
isn't valuable." (While leaving off the "to me" you should be putting at the 
end, mind.)  So, no, of course you don't think they've done anything new.

The list of new things they've done recently is widely available, so I won't 
bother going thru it.

> Hmm. Well there is that. But, the point is "competing", not "every", 
> so... Sure they will just pick which ever one has the most market share 
> at the time, which would be... Hmm... lol

That's my point. The inclusion of IE isn't keeping anyone from buying 
Firefox or Safari.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> M$ has somehow succeeded in convincing people that it is somehow 
>> "normal" for computers to not work correctly.
> 
> Not really. Personal computers never worked consistently right. 
> Mainframes, yes, but not micros or PCs.  (And by PC, I mean everything 
> from TRS-80 to Apple ][ to Commodore PET to ...)

Or rather, you mean "any computer that hasn't really worked right"? :-P

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Invisible wrote:
>>> M$ has somehow succeeded in convincing people that it is somehow 
>>> "normal" for computers to not work correctly.
>>
>> Not really. Personal computers never worked consistently right. 
>> Mainframes, yes, but not micros or PCs.  (And by PC, I mean everything 
>> from TRS-80 to Apple ][ to Commodore PET to ...)
> 
> Or rather, you mean "any computer that hasn't really worked right"? :-P

BTW, I'm not sure where Microsoft comes into this, except as being the first 
popular OS that ran on hardware they didn't make themselves. When your PSU 
is flakey and it makes your video card crash your video card driver with 
spurious interrupts, somehow it's Microsoft that gets blamed.

As someone who drove college cars in college, it didn't take Microsoft to 
convince me that if you have POS hardware, you're going to spend most 
weekends underneath it fixing it. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:
> Nicolas Alvarez escreveu:
>>
>> As someone who runs Linux on his desktop... I agree.

I might second this, but I have no idea where KDE and Gnome are going
right now.

> 
> BTW, both latest Gnome and KDE 4 are pure finesse when compared to the
> geeky desktop environments I had to cope with in the old days.  Anyone
> remembers when Gnome used to come with Lispy Sawfish and Xeyes? ;)

Both KDE and Gnome have always (when I've tested them, haven't for a
while now) been awful compared to light, fast, capable and geeky
Afterstep. They are just too Explorer -like with start-bars etc (which
is probably a good thing from a basic user's eye)

> They also hold up quite well when compared to Vista.  Aqua is another
> level, though...

Aqua is the one that OSX uses, right? It's still pretty far narrowed
down to Apple hardware and the short moments I've had with it haven't
been extra pleasant, but it could be good when you get used to it (I
just don't know, the first contacts just haven't been wonderous).

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:
> 
> FlashBlock?!  My sister won't even touch Firefox!  Anytime I'm at my
> parent's and leave the computer for others to use -- it's a single
> Windows passwordless session (because it's "easy") -- I leave Firefox
> open with a clean new tab.  First thing she does is close Firefox and
> click on the old blue e.  It's like dog conditioning, I guess, because
> she seems to not even realize it's a web browser sitting just before her...

Have you ever tried, what happens if you change the Big ol' E to start
Firefox? :)

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> The list of new things they've done recently is widely available, so I 
> won't bother going thru it.
> 
Seen the lists, seen the rebuttals. Still not impressed. Especially when 
some of them are things like "Added a mess of new features to DirectX", 
which would be available without it, except that they insisted you "had 
to" make them only work in DirectX. A lot of the time, the problem with 
OpenGL isn't that it "can't" do something, its that the hardware doesn't 
let it use those features. The other issue is a correlary, "If you can't 
use those features, it takes longer to replicate them the hard way, than 
if it could just "use" them in the first place.

And again. I have "never" seen any case, personally, where someone said, 
"Ooh! MS is doing that with their OS? Better put it in Linux!" Not 
unless it is something in the class of user interfaces, and those tend 
to be used to "hide" things you don't want people mucking with, as much 
as making it easier to use. Its.. taking a 1940's engine, slapping a 
2009 body on it, applying a fancy new kind of paint, then saying, "Look, 
look! Isn't the new version great, compared to that ugly hack over 
their?", while the people you are pointing at have a brand spanking new 
turbo charged, fuel efficient, bio-diesel, electronic fuel injected, 
monster, sitting in a basic frame and a cheap plastic shell. Only... 
That is rapidly changing, and one side still has the better "engine", no 
matter how many gadgets the other one glues onto theirs, without 
fundamentally changing it.

Windows borrows, Linux evolves. The only time it ever seems to work the 
other way around is when MS decides that Windows needs to poison the 
well, and Linux has to adapt by developing resistance to the poison, 
like all the attempts made over the years by MS to "obfuscate" 
protocols, with the clear, and often within internal documents, intent, 
of sabotaging compatibility.

The problem isn't Windows per-say. Its the entire philosophy behind it, 
and the compromises made to a) rush it out the door all the time, or b) 
undermine others, just to get a slight edge over everyone else. Its 
better to work towards a fully usable solution, not keep tacking on half 
assed ones, the way they end up doing it, from their "new" security 
model, which just causes people like me, who "despise" storing data on 
the same partition as the OS, to pull our hair out, to defraggers that 
still, to this day, don't have the common sense to defrag the "unused" 
space, or optimize program access (never mind all the third parties that 
figured that one out as far back as Win3.11), to.. an endless list.

FOSS has an excuse for this, they don't have thousands of developers 
working 24/7 on *one* project, trying to make it bloody work right. 
MS... doesn't. Their goal is just to make things look impressive, and do 
enough to sell the product. Its not until it becomes obvious that they 
have problems, or someone else is biting their ankles, or something 
never did work, and enough people are annoyed, that they even "attempt" 
to fix it.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
>
> I see Linux copying a lot of stuff that MS does on Linux file systems,
> for example. When Linux adds something like the ability to watch for
> changes to the file system or the ability to take a snapshot of the file
> system without disrupting operations, I don't see too many people
> complaining "Hey, doesn't Microsoft do that already?"  

Is there such thing from MS? I know that (at least some) storage systems
can do that and VMWare ESX can do that, but is there implementation from
MS (possibly with HyperV?)?

> But if Microsoft
> adds virtual desktops, I can guarantee people will croon that's been in
> Linux for years.

I'll shout "Finally" rather than croon. One thing I've been missing on
Windows since the 90's.

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott wrote:
>
> MS... doesn't. Their goal is just to make things look impressive, and do
> enough to sell the product. Its not until it becomes obvious that they
> 

Part of this has been disgussed here before - MS lives by selling
software (and hardware) and most of computer users don't have a clue of
what's happening under the bonnet, so they have to do (also) visual
changes (which aren't always improvements) to make people see a
difference to older system. Hence one goal automatically is to make
things look impressive.

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> BTW, I'm not sure where Microsoft comes into this, except as being the 
> first popular OS that ran on hardware they didn't make themselves. When 
> your PSU is flakey and it makes your video card crash your video card 
> driver with spurious interrupts, somehow it's Microsoft that gets blamed.
> 
> As someone who drove college cars in college, it didn't take Microsoft 
> to convince me that if you have POS hardware, you're going to spend most 
> weekends underneath it fixing it. :-)

Yeah, that's right. Because a faulty power supply *completely explains* 
why Word crashes when you open certain documents. Oh, wait... actually 
it doesn't. :-P

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

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Yeah, that's right. Because a faulty power supply *completely explains* 
> why Word crashes when you open certain documents. Oh, wait... actually 
> it doesn't. :-P

I didn't say that.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott wrote:
> And again. I have "never" seen any case, personally, where someone said, 
> "Ooh! MS is doing that with their OS? Better put it in Linux!"

No, but I've seen things added to Linux that were available a while ago on 
Windows. Of course the Linux people didn't go "had to have that," at least 
not out loud, any more than features MS "steals" from Linux are advertised 
that way.

> Windows borrows, Linux evolves.

Yeah, OK. Whatever.

> which just causes people like me, who "despise" storing data on 
> the same partition as the OS, to pull our hair out,

I had no problem moving my home directory to a different partition.

> to defraggers that 
> still, to this day, don't have the common sense to defrag the "unused" 
> space, 

Sure they do. Have for ages.

> or optimize program access (never mind all the third parties that 
> figured that one out as far back as Win3.11), to.. an endless list.

They do that too, and have for ages.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

Eero Ahonen wrote:
> Is there such thing from MS?

What, watching for changes without polling?  There have been multiple ways 
to do that sort of thing for years and years. I think Win95 had it, and more 
recently with NTFS you have the USN journal, so your program doesn't even 
need to be running to watch for changes.

> I'll shout "Finally" rather than croon. One thing I've been missing on
> Windows since the 90's.

Well, there's a bunch of add-on packages that do a decent job of it.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

Eero Ahonen wrote:
> Is there such thing from MS?

Oh, you mean the snapshot stuff? Sure, that's "Volume Shadow Service". Been 
around since XP or so.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Seen the lists, seen the rebuttals. Still not impressed. Especially when 
> some of them are things like "Added a mess of new features to DirectX", 

There's a bunch of internal stuff, as well as things like Media Center, 
.NET, etc.

> unless it is something in the class of user interfaces, and those tend 
> to be used to "hide" things you don't want people mucking with,

Sounds like One True Scotsman syndrome to me.  Because Microsoft doesn't 
innovate, anything Microsoft does is, by definition, not innovation.

> FOSS has an excuse for this, they don't have thousands of developers 
> working 24/7 on *one* project, trying to make it bloody work right. 

Actually, it's worse. FOSS actually discourages getting projects "finished" 
and easy to use and reliable, unless it's infrastructure for the people 
working on other projects. Apache and gcc work great, because on top of 
*that* people can write code that you can sell without giving it away (like 
google does, in other words). But if you actually turned out a 
professional-quality piece of software that needed what it did and it had to 
work well, you couldn't make money off of maintenance. Hence the dearth of 
games, accounting software, user electronics, and so on.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Hence the dearth of
> games, accounting software, user electronics, and so on.

Games are creative endeavours, not programs.  There's a program behind
controlling, yes, but it's the graphics, music and sound effects, level
layouts, story and dialoguing that take center stage.  Hardly something the GPL
can automagically churn out from collaborative efforts.

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Hence the dearth of
>> games, accounting software, user electronics, and so on.
> 
> Games are creative endeavours, not programs.  There's a program behind
> controlling, yes, but it's the graphics, music and sound effects, level
> layouts, story and dialoguing that take center stage. 

Ding ding ding!  Congratulations. You understood my point.

> Hardly something the GPL
> can automagically churn out from collaborative efforts.

Actually, you *can* churn out all that from a collaborative effort. See, for 
example, the "Thief 2X" game.

However, there's little "ongoing maintenance" you can contract for, so once 
you release it and everyone copies it for free, you're pretty SOL if you're 
expecting to make a living at it.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> I see MS doing lots of new things that aren't on Linux, tho. You don't 
>> stay ahead by not inventing anything new.
>>
> What exactly?

BTW, have you looked at Microsoft's open source OS called Singularity? It's 
pretty darn innovative. I guess if you never actually look at what research 
MS is publishing, you're unlikely to find anything they're doing new, no.

> want at all, or trust, *or* someone goes, "Gee, doesn't GFBunk (or some 
> similarly weirdly named thing) already do that on such an such OS?"

BTW, can you name me perhaps three things that Linux does that's 
distinctively new and innovative? Because I thought about it for a couple 
hours, and I can't think of anything significant I can do in Linux that I 
wasn't doing on Version 7 in 1983 or so, except internet stuff which is new 
with BSD 4.2 about oh 15+ years ago?  Linux doesn't even go as far as Apple 
did and rearrange the file system or fix the X-Windows subsystem.  Heck, 
even NeWS would be better than X.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

> Seen the lists, seen the rebuttals. Still not impressed. Especially when 
> some of them are things like "Added a mess of new features to DirectX",

Huh? How many programs have you written using DirectX9 and DirectX10?  Why 
do you think the improvements are a mess?

1) DX10 now allows multiple programs and threads to use the hardware at the 
same time, and is totally integrated with the OS GUI now, unlike in WinXP / 
DX9.  This means that many more fancy stuff can be done with non-fullscreen 
3D apps and multi-threaded programs can use DX without careful programming.
2) DX10 got rid of the fixed function pipeline which has made the API much 
simpler.  Everything must be done with shaders now.
3) Scenes can be rendered to multiple render targets at the same time, which 
makes generating cube-maps and multi-view scenes way faster
4) Geometry shaders have been introduced, which for the first time allows 
the GPU to have some concept of triangles rather than just working blindly 
on vertices and pixels.  This can be widely used to improve performance and 
display quality.
5) Geometry instancing has been much improved, allowing meshes to be 
rendered multiple times without so much overhead as in DX9.  Again, for 
scenes with large amount of vegetation or people etc, this will have big 
speed ups.
6) The usual increase in flexibility of the shaders, including a massive 
increase in the number of registers (like a factor of 1000 increase), 
complete dynamic flow control, unlimited execution length blah blah blah.

Of course some of the above can be implemented using DX9, but it would be 
horrendously complex and very slow.  DX10 is definitely a welcome 
improvement, it will just take a while before game writers can drop DX9 
support and really concentrate on DX10 only games.

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>> Yeah, that's right. Because a faulty power supply *completely 
>> explains* why Word crashes when you open certain documents. Oh, 
>> wait... actually it doesn't. :-P
> 
> I didn't say that.

No. But you make it sound as if all M$'s problems are because computer 
hardware is unreliable. This is manifestly not the case. M$'s problems 
are because they produce poor quality products.

Post a reply to this message

> No. But you make it sound as if all M$'s problems are because computer 
> hardware is unreliable.

IME, every time I am called because of a friend/family computer "not 
working", it is nothing to do with MS.  I can give you a long list of 
reasons, mostly due to other software, hardware malfunction or drivers, but 
none MS.

> This is manifestly not the case. M$'s problems are because they produce 
> poor quality products.

I use MS products daily on 3 or 4 machines and cannot remember the last time 
one of them crashed or when MS Office behaved badly.

You mention corrupted Word documents, but IIRC we decided that was due to 
everyone using the same template/file that was corrupted and spreading this 
corruption through all your documents.  This is not really a fault of MS 
Office, especially when you didn't even use the "Open and Repair" command 
which would have probably fixed the problem.

Post a reply to this message

>> No. But you make it sound as if all M$'s problems are because computer 
>> hardware is unreliable.
> 
> IME, every time I am called because of a friend/family computer "not 
> working", it is nothing to do with MS.  I can give you a long list of 
> reasons, mostly due to other software, hardware malfunction or drivers, 
> but none MS.

Most of the problems I get to look at aren't due to M$ either - but a 
significant number of them are.

>> This is manifestly not the case. M$'s problems are because they 
>> produce poor quality products.
> 
> I use MS products daily on 3 or 4 machines and cannot remember the last 
> time one of them crashed or when MS Office behaved badly.

Actual OS crashes are fairly rare, assuming you use your computer in a 
sane mannar.

But I'm not just talking about complete crashes of the entire OS, or 
even crashes of a single application. I'm talking about the whole 
quality equation - how M$ products in general tend to be unecessarily 
complicated, poorly documented, resource-inefficient, insecure, and so 
forth.

> You mention corrupted Word documents, but IIRC we decided that was due 
> to everyone using the same template/file that was corrupted and 
> spreading this corruption through all your documents.  This is not 
> really a fault of MS Office, especially when you didn't even use the 
> "Open and Repair" command which would have probably fixed the problem.

Let's suppose that a particular Word document is corrupted. Why should 
that make Word crash? Shouldn't it just pop up a message saying "I can't 
read this file, it seems to be corrupted"? Isn't that what "graceful 
failure" is all about? But no, Word just crashes outright.

I opened the same file in OpenOffice, and it just opened up as if there 
was nothing wrong with it. I saved it again, and it has worked in Word 
ever since.

Why is it that Word, a premium product designed and produced by the 
richest software company on earth, cannot do something that OpenOffice 
can? The people developing OO didn't even have access to a description 
of the file format; they had to reverse-engineer it. And yet, they 
somehow did a better job than the people who *designed* that file 
format. How can that be right??

(Let us not go into the fact that Word costs almost infinity times more 
than OpenOffice to start with...)

Post a reply to this message

> how M$ products in general tend to be unecessarily complicated, poorly 
> documented, resource-inefficient, insecure, and so forth.

TBH I've found MS products to be really well documents, in fact I would say 
better than any other software I've used.  Really, even if you have a 
complicated thing you want to do in Excel, the documentation usually has the 
answer.

> Let's suppose that a particular Word document is corrupted. Why should 
> that make Word crash? Shouldn't it just pop up a message saying "I can't 
> read this file, it seems to be corrupted"? Isn't that what "graceful 
> failure" is all about? But no, Word just crashes outright.

Yeh, they should just use the code from "Open and repair" for the normal 
"Open" operation, and if there were no faults just act silently.  OTOH maybe 
load times would increase significantly for large documents?

> Why is it that Word, a premium product designed and produced by the 
> richest software company on earth, cannot do something that OpenOffice 
> can? The people developing OO didn't even have access to a description of 
> the file format; they had to reverse-engineer it. And yet, they somehow 
> did a better job than the people who *designed* that file format. How can 
> that be right??
>
> (Let us not go into the fact that Word costs almost infinity times more 
> than OpenOffice to start with...)

I think you've answered your own questions there anyway, MS has to make 
money so they have all sorts of constraints that OpenOffice doesn't.  If an 
OpenOffice update is delayed by 6 months because they are fixing the 
loading-corrupt-files code, nobody can complain. But if MS attempts to delay 
Office 2013GT by 6 months because they want to fix the loading-corrupt-files 
code, they will likely be forced to release it anyway by the financial 
people.

Post a reply to this message

>> how M$ products in general tend to be unecessarily complicated, poorly 
>> documented, resource-inefficient, insecure, and so forth.
> 
> TBH I've found MS products to be really well documents, in fact I would 
> say better than any other software I've used.  Really, even if you have 
> a complicated thing you want to do in Excel, the documentation usually 
> has the answer.

Well, there are plenty of open-source projects that have *no* 
documentation at all. OTOH, most of what M$ provides leaves much to be 
desired. (E.g., I managed to find a KB article explaining how to use the 
Recovery Console. Except that, actually, it just duplicates, word for 
word, the terse command help built into the Recovery Console...)

In general, if you're trying to do something simple (e.g., how do I 
change the IE start page?), the documentation tells you. If you're 
trying to do anything moderately nontrivial, the documentation tends to 
not help at all... I guess this says something about their intended 
target audience?

>> Let's suppose that a particular Word document is corrupted. Why should 
>> that make Word crash? Shouldn't it just pop up a message saying "I 
>> can't read this file, it seems to be corrupted"? Isn't that what 
>> "graceful failure" is all about? But no, Word just crashes outright.
> 
> Yeh, they should just use the code from "Open and repair" for the normal 
> "Open" operation, and if there were no faults just act silently.  OTOH 
> maybe load times would increase significantly for large documents?

I don't know, but you'd think they could at least install an exception 
handler around the load routine so that if it fails, it doesn't crash 
all of Word, just the document load engine. Or *something*...

>> Why is it that Word, a premium product designed and produced by the 
>> richest software company on earth, cannot do something that OpenOffice 
>> can? The people developing OO didn't even have access to a description 
>> of the file format; they had to reverse-engineer it. And yet, they 
>> somehow did a better job than the people who *designed* that file 
>> format. How can that be right??
>>
>> (Let us not go into the fact that Word costs almost infinity times 
>> more than OpenOffice to start with...)
> 
> I think you've answered your own questions there anyway, MS has to make 
> money so they have all sorts of constraints that OpenOffice doesn't.  If 
> an OpenOffice update is delayed by 6 months because they are fixing the 
> loading-corrupt-files code, nobody can complain. But if MS attempts to 
> delay Office 2013GT by 6 months because they want to fix the 
> loading-corrupt-files code, they will likely be forced to release it 
> anyway by the financial people.

OTOH, OO is developed by a bunch of bored boffins in their spare time, 
whereas M$ can afford to hire the brightest people in the business and 
pay them to work on the problem 9-5 every single day. Given the hugely 
superior resources available to M$, you'd *think* they could produce a 
product that works properly under forceeable circumstances...

Post a reply to this message

> In general, if you're trying to do something simple (e.g., how do I change 
> the IE start page?), the documentation tells you. If you're trying to do 
> anything moderately nontrivial, the documentation tends to not help at 
> all... I guess this says something about their intended target audience?

Dunno, I've found lots of quite detailed articles before.

eg googling "windows recovery console" give me

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058

which tells me that you can use bootcfg without the /scan to avoid spending 
hours scanning all your drives.

> I don't know, but you'd think they could at least install an exception 
> handler around the load routine so that if it fails, it doesn't crash all 
> of Word, just the document load engine. Or *something*...

Maybe the load routine works fine, it just loads some corrupted data so when 
another part of the program comes to use it that bit crashes?

> OTOH, OO is developed by a bunch of bored boffins in their spare time, 
> whereas M$ can afford to hire the brightest people in the business and pay 
> them to work on the problem 9-5 every single day. Given the hugely 
> superior resources available to M$, you'd *think* they could produce a 
> product that works properly under forceeable circumstances...

I think you overestimate how many people MS has working on such things.  The 
main difference is MS can't just go and recruit 20 more people to work on 
something, unless it is going to be *profitable* for them to do so.  If the 
bored boffins at OO want to spend another 1000 man hours perfecting things, 
they can, they don't have to worry about profit.

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> In general, if you're trying to do something simple (e.g., how do I 
>> change the IE start page?), the documentation tells you. If you're 
>> trying to do anything moderately nontrivial, the documentation tends 
>> to not help at all... I guess this says something about their intended 
>> target audience?
> 
> Dunno, I've found lots of quite detailed articles before.
> 
> eg googling "windows recovery console" give me
> 
> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058
> 
> which tells me that you can use bootcfg without the /scan to avoid 
> spending hours scanning all your drives.

The command descriptions given here are a word-for-word reproduction of 
the interactive command help. It does not explain anywhere, for example, 
that bootcfg is merely a programatic way of editing BOOT.INI. (Also, it 
seems that /scan, /add and /rebuild *all* scan your disks for hours - 
I've tried it.)

*This* article explains it properly:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/291980

>> I don't know, but you'd think they could at least install an exception 
>> handler around the load routine so that if it fails, it doesn't crash 
>> all of Word, just the document load engine. Or *something*...
> 
> Maybe the load routine works fine, it just loads some corrupted data so 
> when another part of the program comes to use it that bit crashes?

Thinking about it, the load routine probably does just dump a bunch of 
pointers directly into Word, which probably then trips the rendering 
engine over or something. (I've seen Word go into in infinite loop 
instead of crashing also. That, at least, you'd think would be 
detectable quite easily.)

>> OTOH, OO is developed by a bunch of bored boffins in their spare time, 
>> whereas M$ can afford to hire the brightest people in the business and 
>> pay them to work on the problem 9-5 every single day. Given the hugely 
>> superior resources available to M$, you'd *think* they could produce a 
>> product that works properly under forceeable circumstances...
> 
> I think you overestimate how many people MS has working on such things.  

Uh... they're the largest software corporation on the face of the Earth? 
(And the richest too.)

> The main difference is MS can't just go and recruit 20 more people to 
> work on something, unless it is going to be *profitable* for them to do 
> so.  If the bored boffins at OO want to spend another 1000 man hours 
> perfecting things, they can, they don't have to worry about profit.

Well, if M$ doesn't consider "making our products work properly" to be a 
"profitable" thing to do, then there's your answer. :-}

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>> I think you overestimate how many people MS has working on such things.
>
> Uh... they're the largest software corporation on the face of the Earth? 
> (And the richest too.)

But still they cannot hire or steer extra employees onto projects without 
justification.  That's the main point.  It's simply a matter of economics - 
if MS pushed more resources onto fixing every little bug they'd run out of 
money pretty quickly - it's just not feasible when you have to pay people to 
write/debug your code.

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>>> I think you overestimate how many people MS has working on such things.
>>
>> Uh... they're the largest software corporation on the face of the 
>> Earth? (And the richest too.)
> 
> But still they cannot hire or steer extra employees onto projects 
> without justification.  That's the main point.  It's simply a matter of 
> economics - if MS pushed more resources onto fixing every little bug 
> they'd run out of money pretty quickly - it's just not feasible when you 
> have to pay people to write/debug your code.

Fixing every tiny bug might be infeasible, but you'd think they could at 
least fix the huge ones.

Anyway, somebody asked why people hate M$. And I gave an answer: because 
M$ does not consider performance or reliability to be "important" enough 
to make any attempt to improve them.

Fortunately, the makers of safety-critical hardware and software are 
bound by *laws* which prevent them from not fixing bugs just because 
it's "not profitable".

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> Fortunately, the makers of safety-critical hardware and software are bound 
> by *laws* which prevent them from not fixing bugs just because it's "not 
> profitable".

And as a result their software is orders of magnitudes more expensive, not 
exactly something you could sell to the masses...

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> Fortunately, the makers of safety-critical hardware and software are 
>> bound by *laws* which prevent them from not fixing bugs just because 
>> it's "not profitable".
> 
> And as a result their software is orders of magnitudes more expensive.

I'll grand you that.

OTOH, M$'s products aren't exactly "cheap", by any stretch of the 
imagination. I think what most people really object to is paying vast 
sums of money for a product that isn't actually all that good. Let's 
face if, when you run KLogic and it crashes for the 18th time, you think 
to yourself "oh well, it least it didn't cost me anything". If you paid 
£400 for a piece of software and it behaved the same way, you'd be 
pretty upset.

Post a reply to this message

> OTOH, M$'s products aren't exactly "cheap", by any stretch of the 
> imagination.

I don't think paying 2x-3x the price of a game for your OS and Office suite 
is expensive, and I guess most other people don't either.

> I think what most people really object to is paying vast sums of money for 
> a product that isn't actually all that good. Let's face if, when you run 
> KLogic and it crashes for the 18th time, you think to yourself "oh well, 
> it least it didn't cost me anything". If you paid £400 for a piece of 
> software and it behaved the same way, you'd be pretty upset.

Agreed, but my Windows or Office doesn't crash 18 times, and I didn't pay 
400 pounds for it :-)

However we did pay 10 thousand pounds for some CAD software, and that 
crashes occasionally (which is infinitly more often than the OS!).

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