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Dave Barry Does Windows
retrosteve writes: "Well, it's finally happened. Someone (Dave Barry) in the popular press has finally, explicitly and with a sense of humour, pointed out that Microsoft Windows doesn't get any more reliable or usable, no matter how many versions you buy."
Funny how the MSCE in his story has to call tech support and it takes 2 days. Dammit, anyone can call tech support. Do they need a degree too? And why should they get paid for that?
And its unfair to talk about the fact that the previous 40 versions of Windows did not seem to get any more stable unless we have also reviewed version 41? You know, the version which needed a patch before it was released. Well... only if you wanted to use the internet, and who wants to do that?
Give me a break!
The point is, it's funny. The point of posting this article is NOT for Slashdot to be taken seriously. Note the topic: "It's funny. Laugh." This topic wouldn't exist is Slashdot wanted to be taken seriously all the time.
The second point is that the lack of reliability of Windows is actually getting some mainstream national media attention, instead of just the usual articles in tech publications. This doesn't happen too often.
Lighten up, get over it, and move on.
Darryl
http://www.darrylballantyne.com
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Darryl Ballantyne
http://www.darrylballantyne.com
Microsoft (and friends) have taken a long time but they have basically trained the average computer user to expect and accept computer crashes - instead of going back to the store and demanding a refund for a defective product!
This can be both good and bad. Maybe less people will rely on non-fault-tolerant systems for ultra-important issues like emergency/military/banking?
Or maybe people will get desensitized to the crashing. Programmer's don't need to fully test their products anymore since people accept the crashes. People just go along thinking that it is the normal way, wreaking havoc in the world with a simple blue screen on a computer that had no business being in a critical system.
read The Risks Digest for scary stories.
--jeff
ipv6 is my vpn
Win2k and XP are actually quite stable.
I think pretty soon. Windows and linux will be on equal footing for stability and security... we can't ride the "more stable" horse (ha ha, get it?) forever.
So linux is free, which is great, but what else?
Better, but always "not quite there yet". So is Windows not getting better ? no, it is getting better, only it's always at a level of "betterness" that's 10 years behind what Un*x users have come to expect. M$ has fought so hard over the years to brainwash people into thinking that computers naturally and unavoidably hang regularly that people actually believe it ! (remember that famous quote supposedly from a M$ support guy saying to a customer that "memory is like gasoline, you use it up then your computer has to fill up the tank again by restarting" ?)
To M$' credit though, they did design Windows to be run by computer idiots, so I'm not surprised that the OS has a lot of tradeoffs that make it unstable so it's easier to use, but then OS/2 was also designed to be run by anybody and it was a lot better than Windows. So I'd tend to think that Microsoft engineers either (1) suck, (2) are instructed to adopt shitty designs because Microsoft prefers to win battles on the marketing front than on the technical front, or (3) both
So let me get this straight; one badly-written program caused you to switch operating systems...
I think you already wanted to switch, and just needed an excuse. I think you should try Windows XP and then talk about Windows stability. Otherwise, you're just a zealot.
here is what I've seen happening whenever a negative microsoft related article gets posted on slashdot (xbox,windows,.net,etc).
first few hours most comments that spike up to 4 or 5 generally make a few good humored comments, ranging from neutral to chiming in with similiar microsoft dismay stories.
then a few hours later, lets say about 5 or 6 hours since the original post, those posts get sent back to 2 or 3 land, and a new crop of 5's crops up. The strange thing about this new bunch is that they are _all PRO microsoft_!
it is a strange phenomena to say the least. the posts themselves, at least some of them could be genuine, but the way they are moderated is _very_ suspicious.
anyway, my prediction holds that the same will happen today, watch for it.
A program, no matter how badly written, should not cause your entire machine to crash, unless it's integrated down as far as a driver.
Windows simply should not let a program like PGP freeware get that close to the OS. The program should crash, leaving the OS untouched.
When encryption is outlawed, ?o'AZ-,++o+i++##4AoA+-/-C++bI+/.+~
The changes we need to make in software are far greater than just having "the most reliable Windows experience ever".
Windows 3.1/95/98/ME were all horribly unstable - there just isn't any denying that. But the *nix crowd is starting to look incredibly silly sitting over in the corner snickering about the reliability of Windows today.
I hate to break it to you guys, but as far as stability is concerned - Windows 2000/XP are VERY stable operating systems. NT was pretty good, but 2000 and XP will seriously give any desktop OS out there a run for its money.
I'm not claiming 2000 or XP are the most secure OSes out there - far from it. And I still don't think a server should be running a GUI. But zealotry aside, Windows XP is a very good desktop OS.
[Note: For what it's worth I use 2000, XP, and Mandrake for the desktop and Debian or one of the BSDs for servers.]
So once MS catches up in the stability dept (all the while, doing the whiz-bang stuf people want), how will linux be marketed? This isn't a troll, a serious question - in my own opinion it will boil down to price, as linux will likely have no technical advantages by mid-2003.
Have you ever tried developing on a mac?
YMMV but for me it was a nightmare, for a start macadmin and OS9 would randomly crash the machine -- by this I mean boot the machine and wait long enough without touching it and it would die in hours (sometimes days).
And if you didn't free up the memory you malloc'ed uh-oh the system doesn't release it either, time for a reboot.
Having said this I have never really used a mac, only programmed on them (we used them at my uni before changing to linux) so this may not be applicable to the average user.
He who defends everything, defends nothing. -- Fredrick The Great
what a fucking troll - what will linux have to offer? how about freedom from the upgrade yolk that microsoft has you on. how about peace of mind that the time you invest into it, won't be thrown into the garbage in two years when ms dumps what you were working on for the next cools sounding technology.
give me a fucking break. if you want to live in a microsoft only world then just admit it, otherwise grow up and use some real technologies that can be used outside of ms's little pee see sandbox.
oh by the way, I understand quite well that this comment is bound to rise to 5 and stay there, no matter how many times it gets modded down. sometimes I think there are more ms shills on slashdot than actual linux supporters anymore.
I've used '95 and '98 quite a lot over the past six years or so and found them reasonably stable. I did C++ and Oracle development on Solaris and HP-UX using the Hummingbird Xceed X server, and would only switch the Windows box off at weekends. I have also run a mix of Netscape and IE browsers, installed jdk and dozens of Oracle tools including Designer 2000, played rather too many Quake death-matches, and generally flogged Windows about as hard as any other developer in a similar environment.
It bombed rather more often than any UNIX I have used (that is to say, a system crash was not so unusual an occurrence as to occasion earnest headscratching and bug reports) but it was not one of these reboot-before-lunchtime jobs, and I didn't start each week in the expectation of an enforced reboot before Friday.
I've also used NT and found it even more reliable. But I tired of Windows because it's an old fashioned, blinkered and wasteful system.
Microsoft, it seemed to me, had wasted over a decade pursuing a wasteful paradigm for desktop computers--the single user computer. If I wanted to do something that in a UNIX system would require me to run one single application with root privilege (or some lesser, more specialised UNIX privilege, such as the mysql database administrator), I could be sure that in NT I had to log the entire system out of my own user and log it into Administrator or another account with the appropriate privileges.
Then, as often as not, I would be required to reboot the entire system. That is not only wasteful in computer time, it turned out to be very wasteful of my time, because I had to sit by through the incredibly slow NT boot sequence. If the machine in question was a server, this meant a server outage, which to my mind seems quite barking mad.
Then there was the problem that I had to be physically sitting at the computer in order to perform many tasks. The contrast with the UNIX environments I was used to using was very marked.
I encountered these problems during a period when I was actively investigating the possibility of giving Windows development a go, and it was the frustration caused by these problems, as well as the frustration of dealing with Microsoft's rather lacklustre development tools, that finally turned me against Windows. I simply burned out as a Windows user.
OS 9 sucked ass, for all intents. Even mac users knew this. It was the lesser of two evils, but it was still pretty evil.
OS X on the other hand, simply rocks. I've been running it on several machines since 10.0, and I've never (as in not once) crashed it. I'm a rude bastard, too. I'm not saying it's crashproof, but I haven't been able to do it.
there's more than one way to do me.
Most people don't even realize it's the defective OS. Most people fall into 3 catagories;
1) Think it's the hardware
2) Think it's the programs
3) Know it's the OS, but think all OS's do this because the problem is so complex.
I've heard media reports of predictions of new computer technology of the future that will give us stable computers--they have no idea the *nix has been stable from day 1!!
nohup rm -rf ~/. >& zen &
One word: Debian.
One command: apt-get.
And that's without going into Ximian's rather nice Red Carpet tool, which runs on the Debian, Mandrake, Red Hat, SuSE and Yellow Dog distributions.
The Americans had wanted to stay British, but essentially got insulted and pushed out of the British empire
Wealthy Americans (ie John Hancock) were upset that the British elite wouldn't accept them as sophisticated peers.
Many banks are using Windows NT for their CAT machines. They do have strict procedures on what get install (minimal), and how every updates get installed remotely (via their own UNIX network controllers).
NT configured correctly can be reliable considering how little work the CAT machine actually need.
Siemens, NCR/AT&T do produce topnots CAT/ATM machines with IBM/AT core for banks to be customized with their own OSes, often to be Windows NT. The IBM/AT core allow them to sell these boxes cheaply and still satisfy the conformity needed for almost all CAT/ATM machines that banks want. Specially made cryptocards can be added/removed/upgrade very quickly and do not require a complete redesign/code rewrite for the machines.
> has a pitiful market share, even to this day
.. they are built for a specific purpose, and it's only natural that their interface will be different from that of the most widely adopted sibling in it's market. Heck, even Apple only makes half hearted attempts (a la 'just remember we're still here') at competing directly in the home/office OS market. As long as there are media industries, and associated trade papers and mags, Apple will continue to make sense for a significant amount of users out there who require an OS to get the job done.
;)
Like, say, Ferrarris share of the car market? Where people get the idea that one OS cures all that ails you is beyond me. I wouldn't buy a subcompact to win Le Mans, and I wouldn't buy a Ferrarri to make the trip to the corner store. Sheesh.
Just to bring that into perspective:
- Windows is nice for browsing the net, cause, well, duh, every website author thinks you're using Windows.
- Mac is nice to do serious (ie, industry level) graphics and audio. I'll tell you right now that the more services they keep adding to the back of Windows, with each new version, the more frusterating it is to tune it towards pure 'single task' applications.
Anyways, as for the 'use it' comment, people are always more comfortable using the interface style that has dominated the market. Seeing that windows is a laymans OS, and Mac is for people who'd rather spend money on their computer than time fixing/tuning it, it shouldn't be surprising that most people 'cant use it'.
I appreciate this was Barry's comment, but it irks me when people confuse ease of use with the most widely adopted interface. Many people couldn't drive an F1 car without training; does this make them bad cars? Of course not
Anyways, dunno if you're agreeing with Barry there, but I just had to vent in a controlled fasion there.
"Old man yells at systemd"
The fitness center I used to go to had a computerized system for its exercise machines. One day I saw DOS type networking errors scrolling endlessly.
I've seen ATMs here in South Carolina with Windows errors.
I've seen electronic road signs with embarrassing off-center Windows screens and error message boxes.
And we've all probably seen presentations on PowerPoint or Internet Explorer going down in flames when Windows starts cutting up. No doubt, it happens in classrooms, churches, businesses, and wherever Windows is found around the world every day.
Dear AC,
I am a linux supporter. I run linux on my web server, it's great for that. (I had to rewrite some of my network services though, because they were full of security holes and I was sick of patching.) I hope that some day I can run a free OS on my desktop computer too, but in order for that to happen, I need apps, and in order for that to happen, linux needs a stronger desktop user base.
Linux is not a technologically advanced OS. This is another common misconception on slashdot. It is a clone of Unix, a very old (and rather good) idea. There have been loads of new ideas and technologies since them, and I wish that hackers would implement these in new operating systems. (Do we *really* need to be running our network services as root just so that they can bind to a low-numbered port?) But the operating systems world (much like the rest of computer science) is very fad-oriented, and a good idea is worth nothing unless there is good marketing.
Linux has pretty good marketing. Windows has great marketing. But linux marketing is based on stuff that's starting to be less and less true. linux kicked the ass off of Windows 95 in terms of stability and security. (I remember rebooting to linux when the rest of my dorm was getting WinNuked all day.) But, Windows has practically caught up. 2000 is very stable; it crashes about as often as X does for me (and I do a lot more daring things with 2000, like play Quake and watch DVDs and burn CDs and do video capture). As linux has become more and more complex, certain major distributions are just as insecure as (or even more insecure than, perhaps) Windows. My question was, when joe consumer doesn't care about stability because his computer doesn't crash, and doesn't get hacked (Win XP has a personal firewall now, no?), why would he want to use linux?
The post wasn't intended as a troll, merely to stir the waters. Complacency is a terrible thing.
(PS: 12 moderations done to my post! Jeesh!)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Frankly I've had 95, 98, NT, Linux, Solaris, SCO, and Tru64 all crash at some point for differnet reasons. Some are stupid and are my fault like an improperly lined kernel . . . others are plain uncceptable.
.it could be a buggy driver. . .but you'll never know and you don't have the ability to ever find out. All UNIXes that I've used let you at least figure out what happened easily and fix it.
The thing that pisses me off more then anything alse about Windows is that fact that YOU CANT TELL WHY IT CRASHED and you can't fix it!
It could be a slightly incompatible library. .
To fix windows it's either trial and error or a format and re-install. No other option.
Frankly I really don't care if XP is about as stable as Linux. They'll both crash at some point for somthing stupid. What I really care about is that I can fix the reason why it crashed.
I managed to get the end of this fine post before I relised that the author is female (Cathy).
/. isn't always right.
Please be aware the the mail voice you hear in your head while you read posts on
It is clear to me that you've never used a Mac. We've seen the UNIX and Windows arguments so for completeness sake, here's the Mac argument. Mac in this comment refers to Mac OS X 10.1.2.
From first hand experience, a well-administrered Win2k network is a god-send, especially for most "lusers".
From first hand experience, a Mac is a god-send, especially for most "lusers" straight out of the box with no configuration required.
Second, I have no idea why you would think you need to get into DOS to repair an error
I'm yet to experience an error which required at absolute worst a reboot to fix. For the record, I have no real problems with reboots so I use it as a magical fix-all a fair bit, there was likely a way to avoid the reboot but I didn't look for it. Also, this would have happened less than 10 times in what is almost a year of OS X usage now.
Finally, Win2k/XP is such an amazing jump forward in stability compared to 95/98 that its laughable you would deny this. The NT based OS's are the only reedeming feature of the entire histroy of MS OSen.
The BSD underpinnings of OS X are simply delightful. They not only provide exceptional stability and all the other UNIX advantages that NT tries to bring to Windows, but also a really nice, powerful command line to use if you want it either for remote administration or just because that's how you like to work. Most importantly though, the command line isn't required - everything a normal user is going to want to do can be done with the GUI.
True, I have had my share of killed tasks - but then again if you've ever tried to run Netscape on FreeBSD you know the feeling. Bad programs crash. All I ask of the OS is that it doesn't puke when a mal-behaved program dies.
This is a very good point - bad programs do crash, however the OS shouldn't just stay afloat, but continue to work seamlessly. Ever crashed Nero (or probably any other CD burning software)? You suddenly can't burn CDs anymore until you reboot. No such problems on OS X. Ever installed software on Windows - reboot! Much less frequent on OS X though a lot of software has the annoying habit of using a reboot instead of simply running the appropriate startup scripts. Since these scripts are easy to find you can do this manually if you want.
I think in a general sense you miss what typical users, business users, and power users want from a deskop operating. All they really want is to never have to reboot their machine when they don't want to. Win2k made admirable strides in that direction. My first impressions of XP are that the trend continues, though not with the dramatic leaps that a 95->Win2k upgrade would see.
If that's what they want they should undoubtably be using UNIX. Mac OS X is a good UNIX for this but not the best due to the range of programs that claim they require a reboot but don't really need it. Still, you reboot OS X far less than even Windows XP. I would suggest that users want more than this however.
As for security holes - properly setup machines are key.
Bzzt. Bad software design alert! There is no reason that a shipping OS should have security risks turned on. A lot of Linux distros get this wrong and Windows definitely does. Mac OS X seems to get it right however. The root account is disabled encouraging people to use sudo (as is common on BSD systems), software update is set to run weekly, services are all turned off by default and most importantly, the latest copy of the OS is installed on new computers. Things fall behind a bit in the distribution channel but generally when the OS is installed onto new Apple computers, it is the latest version. Windows may run windows update automatically, but newer versions of the OS should be injected straight into the supply chain instead of continuing to create outdated products.
I never attach any desktop to the Internet directly. That includes my Red Hat boxes as well as my Windows machines. Its simply not smart. A nice router/firewall is key to security in any environment - from 1 to 10,000 PCs.
Good for you. Many people don't want to waste time and money to get this kind of thing set up and working. Providing a secure OS is the first step to having a secure system and you should never rely on your firewall/router to protect you (multiple levels of security provide the best security, "give the bastards nothing" mentality).
Second, with a well thoughout and comprehensive security policy you will never feel the pinch of these brazen security holes. WinXP has had one major security bug (UPnP) discovered so far - the vast majority of WinXP users were patched before an exploit has even been developed.
I would tend to suggest that most WinXP boxes are still unpatched and, I haven't checked this, but I wouldn't be surprised if MS is still shipping copies of XP without the security patch. Also, the comprehensive security policy should be enabled by default, you shouldn't have to set it up yourself. Mac OS X to my knowledge has had no remote root exploits and only a couple of other security issues. OS X very clearly has had fewer security issues than any other OS currently available and being almost a year old now, it's not like it's that big a new comer that noone has been looking into it.
The last 6-months have lead to a serious uptick in MS's comittment to security. I expect it to only get better.
Better does not instill much confidence. Apple has a brilliant record for security in the past (okay, so OS 9 lacking a command line was a big advantage to that, but still) so MS has a long way to go to catch up. No points for improvement from me, only points for achieving.
All and all, I can say that Win2k is a great desktop OS. I really think that most of your problems lie in poor administration, poor implementation, and incorrect configuration. And those problems can bring down ANY operating system faster than any silly bug or virus.
Ahh, but if the OS comes poorly configured to start with than it's the OS's fault, not the users. There is absolutely no reason why Windows couldn't be configured properly when it is first installed.
Now a little bit of info on my computing experience: on my desk is a Windows XP box and a Mac OS X laptop. In the corner is a Linux server, firewall and router, at work is a Windows 98 box and a big beefy Solaris server. I've had 3 years plus experience with Windows, Mac and Linux so I'm well positioned to compare all three.
In summary, I prefer the Mac for most things because it just works, I don't have to tweak it all the time. I like Linux because it sits in the corner and does it's job tirelessly and without having to be checked up on - plus it's remote administration abilities are second to none. I don't have any reason to like Windows because it provides me no benefits over OSX and Linux and because it needs so much tweaking to get it into a usable state. However it is the pick of the OSs for games. So there is no answer for which OS is better, but rather which OS is better for a particular task and a particular user.
1) Do not upgrade from Windows95. Do a fresh install.
2) Install a minimum amount of software. Each new package that you install undermines the stability with extra DLLs and registry hacks.
3) Do not use exotic, state-of-the-art hardware. Use slightly older hardware with more mature drivers.
If you follow these simple rules you to can run Windows98 for months at a time. I have a small fileserver at my job which has been rebooted twice in as many years.
If you can afford it, get another computer or install a hard drive tray. Make one your works system and the other a "sandbox". Use the sandbox to evaluate new software and incorporate it into your work box once you completely understand it. Most of Win98's problems seem to happen to people that install all kinds of different software that they never use. The problem is that many vendors give you a computer that is pre-fucked (much useless software already installed). Your best bet is to reformat these disks and reinstall.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
How many of the people responding to statusbar actually read his whole post? He's NOT claiming MS quality is OK or as good as the phone company:
.99999 reliable telephone system that 1/3 of families can't afford, or a .999 reliable (in two tries at dialing) phone in every house?
Problems happen even with properly engineered systems. When an improperly designed system is put into place, all hell will break loose.
I'm not just talking Microsoft here, there is a real problem with companies/programmers seeing their system work once, and then assuming it is good enough to ship.
We've all seen examples of that. (And to be fair, MS does put it's products through quite a lot of testing -- the trouble is, they've made it possible to have far more configurations than it's possible to test, give the users few tools to figure out where things are going wrong, market the software as NOT requiring knowledgeable users or administrators, and create code that is beyond any one person's comprehension.)
But the phone company does maintain pretty good service, and no system can handle a 1000% overload well. But as someone else pointed out, they do have exchanges that handle a single-point overload without blocking other calls; the problem is that Ticket Master bought the wrong kind of service. I agree that phone availability in many parts of the US is less than what I'd really want for life-critical emergency services, however would you rather have a