Faulty hardware found on shuttle

In article ,
(Derek Lyons) writes:
Marvin wrote:

Microsoft has a great sales department, second only to their legal staff.
But quality control is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down on the
priority list.

*Right*. That's why millions of people around the world use it on a
daily basis. It's far from perfect, but it does work, people hold it
to an unrealistic standard and them complain when it fails to meet
that standard.

But nobody used Windows in a situation where Somebody COuld Die or Go
To Jail.

One of the biggest problems with Windows-based systems is that you
don't ever really know what's on it. Every bit of code, every
application, every little widget has to insert its own little bit of
cruft into the fundamental operation of the machine. With that many
cooks whizzing into the soup, you aren't going to get Lobster Bisque.
(Which leads to another big gripe about MS-Window-oid code - the UI is
shotgunned throughout the OS Kernal, and through all of the app &
middleware. This makes layering, and optimizing the function of any
particular bit of code an almost unworkable nightmare, for any sort of
serious project.)

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster

Peter Stickney wrote:

In article ,
Herb Schaltegger writes:
In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote:

Every time I read a post like this, I laugh at thinking about just what
archeologists are going to make of all this terminology a couple of
hundred years down the road....it will be about as comprehensible as
Etruscan. :-)


Hell, Pat, in 200 years, I'm sure folks will still be bitching about
Windows XP 2204 being too bloated and crash-prone to run ANY of the
latest 4D-games in 37.1-channel psionic surround-think. I mean, come
ON! Win2200 rulz! W00T!

And MS_Word 2204 will require a semitrailer full of terabyte
SVHDDVDs. run like a Sloth on your MeraHertz Anthill processor, and
provide no more useful functionality than Word 6.
ANd the Stupid Paper Clip will still be standing over your shoulder in
3-D. (I don't wnat to think about the Idiot Butterflies)


Luckily by then the BSOD, countdown timer and auto reboot
will happen in mere microseconds, so fast that the average
user won't even realize that their system is crashing,
locking up, and rebooting hundreds of times a day.

JazzMan
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In article , says...
Kevin Willoughby wrote in
:
Which is cheaper: a microsecond of computer time, or 24+ hours of
people time?
Get a clue!
Sloppy memory management relates not only to processing time, but also to
system stability! You are thinking like microsoft.

No need for insults.


Pity your remarks place you in the "sloppy" category.

I tried, now I give up:
-*ploink*-
--
Kevin Willoughby lid

Imagine that, a FROG ON-OFF switch, hardly the work
for test pilots. -- Mike Collins

Brett Buck wrote:
VMS is as good as you could possibly get from a command-line system,

But VMS, like Unix has both command line as well as GUI. X-Windows appeared on
VMS at about the same time it did on Unix, and in fact, VMS had VWS (more
primitive GUI) prior to that. (this was before Windows was actually usable,
but well after MacOS).

Microsoft started with a toy operating system for single users without any
security then added windowing as an application. Even though Microsoft finally
wrote an OS and new look, the need to keep upwards compatibility to preserve
market monopoly required the current windows to inherit many of the problems
of the DOS/Windows days. And the current windows is still not really designed
for multi-users. (although it now has multi tasking).

VMS started as a multi user system with security, and windowing was added as
an application and there was no need to rewrite the OS because it was rock
solid.

Unix started off as a geek operating system without much of a need for
security, and security was progressively added, but at the core, it is a
multi-user system.

But what users actually need (despite contrary propaganda from microsoft),
is a *stable* and *predictable* and *secure* system.
That's not sufficient.

Agreed. However:

There are any number of stable, predictable and secure systems that
are unusable by all but a handful of specially trained experts
(VMS, Linux, VxWare, Multics, OS/390...).

I wouldn't think they're only useable by specially trained experts.
They didn't see their market as a consumer OS (the owners of VMS didn't
think it had any market at all, judging by appaerances), and thus
didn't make them as easy to use as could have been done. Remember, WNT
conceptually is VMS V1 underneath.

No, it's the applications that made Windows the success it is. Standard
evolution in action: a small advantage in fitness will, in finite time,
lead to extinction of all competitors. Only changes to the fitness land-
scape can change that.

Jan

Jan Vorbrüggen wrote:

But what users actually need (despite contrary propaganda from
microsoft), is a *stable* and *predictable* and *secure* system.

That's not sufficient.


Agreed. However:

There are any number of stable, predictable and secure systems that

are unusable by all but a handful of specially trained experts

(VMS, Linux, VxWare, Multics, OS/390...).


I wouldn't think they're only useable by specially trained experts.
They didn't see their market as a consumer OS (the owners of VMS didn't
think it had any market at all, judging by appaerances), and thus
didn't make them as easy to use as could have been done.

VMS is as good as you could possibly get from a command-line system,
and you hardly need to be a "specially-trained expert" to run it. Far,
far easier than UNIX or DOS. Let's say that "Search" is a lot easier to
explain than "grep" and all the versions of VMS more-or less work the
same. And $ Help is a lot better than man .

We plunk people with no command-line experience at all down at a
VMS terminal with a cheat sheet and they are doing something useful in
an hour. Plus you can get a GUI wrapper for VMS that's at least as
straightforward as Windows - and about 10 orders of magnitude more
reliable. It's also far more reliable than Sun UNIX.

I use 4 different OSes almost daily - VAX is the most reliable by
far, Mac OS 8.6 is by far the easiest and most useful, Sun UNIX is at
least tolerable, and Windows is like a f*cking torture session that
seems to have trouble reliably retrieving email from it's own dedicated
server designed to work with it. And requires almost constant
maintainence by me (and the other users) and an entire IT department.

Brett

"Kevin Willoughby" wrote ...
says...
Thus, the free market in action. Nobody is forced to buy MS products.

Wrong. My brother is a Linux guru, hates Windows, so his new laptop was
purchased with, yes, Windows. The manufacturer can't sell him a laptop
without some version of Windows on it.

It is quite common for people to be told they can't sell computers without
Windows on it. In doing so they are either a) Misinformed, b) Lying
or c) Following a (probably illegal) company line.

If you are sold a computer with Windows included that you do not wish
to use I believe you can get a refund on the OS cost.

"Jan Vorbrüggen" wrote ...
XP *is* a vast improvement. Nonetheless, a screwy WDM sound or video
driver can still BSOD the system.

I've only heard rumours of OSes that could withstand a substantial driver
bug, never seen one - and I've seen a lot.

I think there was an anouncement recently of some 'middle layer' system

OS - middle layer - drivers

set up in such a way that the most a driver could crash was itself and would
then be auto-restarted (if appropriate).

Kevin Willoughby wrote in
:

In article , says...
If you allocate some memory and the code that deallocates it doesn't
always get executed, it means that your logic is flawed and you
haven't done the due diligence to ensure your code reflects the
intentions all the time.

Or it may mean a deliberate decision that 0.000001 seconds of CPU time
is less valuable than hours spent by a programmer, followed up by
hours and hours spent by program reviewers.

Which is cheaper: a microsecond of computer time, or 24+ hours of
people time?

(Oddly enough, this is on-topic for sci.space. Misplaced priorities
aren't limited to software engineering. Spacecraft engineers sometimes
focus on launch mass or GLOW to the exclusion of other important
parameters.)

Get a clue!
Sloppy memory management relates not only to processing time, but also to
system stability! You are thinking like microsoft.

As to your remark :
Which is cheaper: a microsecond of computer time, or 24+ hours of
people time?
The microsecond, when it is in a piece of code that is executed thousands
of times per hour, on millions of computers running that code.

Accurate coding only requires more time than sloppy coding when the
programmer's skill is not sufficient to the task. For a fully competent
coder, accurate code is *easier* to create and debug than sloppy code!
Pity your remarks place you in the "sloppy" category.

On or about Tue, 30 Mar 2004 01:03:24 GMT, Greg D. Moore (Strider)
made the sensational claim that:
How quickly people forget the Sendmail worm which was quite disruptive in
its day.

I think that safely qualifies as prehistory here on teh interweb. Anyone who
thinks unix should be held up as a shining example of operating systems should
be forced (preferably at gunpoint) to read the Unix Hater's Handbook.
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