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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."
... that someone explain to end users that by it's nature, Windows is unstable.
I'm not saying it's a bad product, but for those of us who support users, we know a machine DOES crash once in a while.
When a user tells me a machine crashed, and it's only happened once, they've been using the machine for a year, I explain that is a better then average track record, and they want it fixed.
oy.
The way Dave Barry keeps on talking about how the computer "blames him" reminds me of the way Alan Cooper said that error messages are often worded to make "The User" feel responsible when something goes wrong.
Personally, I just think of error messages as "status indicators" -- much like a "paper jam" light on a copy machine. Apparently lots of other people don't feel this way.
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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."
if the same was said about linux, it would be taken as a threat, rather than a joke....
I say this not because Dave Barry is a humorist. It is possible for humorists, comedians or whatever, to really get people pissed off motivated, or at least make people think: think Lenny Bruce; think "A Modest Proposal". But Dave Barry and Dilbert are not that kind of humor. They are both the kind of humor that makes its reader laugh at himself, giggle at the funny things people do, the funny stuff we get ourselves into, without thinking for a moment that any real change is necessary. I've always felt that Dilbert is an oppressive force, because by making people think that incompetent management is normal and funny, it keeps people from bothering to actually demand competent management. Same thing with this column: by commiserating about Windows, by poking fun at the flaws that it has on every level, from technological to social, it serves only to further entrench people in a Windows monopoly. I'm sure this column is making the rounds at Microsoft, and I'm sure it is universally loved. I bet Bill Gates tapes it to his monitor, or invites Dave Barry to his next keynote. The message here is "Windows is crap, but there are 200,000,000 people in America who will NEVER SWITCH TO ANOTHER OS, NO MATTER WHAT. Ha ha ha."
This is not to say that humor necessarily trivializes an issue: maybe it's a distinction between "parody" -- which, we'll say, gently pokes fun without suggesting alternatives, thereby reinforcing norms -- and "satire" -- which, let's say, savagely disillusions people and has at least a shot at changing their minds.
95, the first release, was atrocious. Gradually enough patches and services packs fixed it up. Then came Win95SR2. This code was good stuff. Never had alot problems with it. Then came 98 -- it sucked. 98SE was rock solid (unfortunately, $100 upgrade for no more features, just reliability increase). Then WinME -- ick. How did this get out of QA, one wonders.
NT4 and Win2K have been great to me. Just use WHQL'd drivers for everything and your problems vanish (well, at least for my usage patterns). NT4 reliability was cyclical in service pack releases, but at 6a, it was rock solid for a desktop OS.
NT4 and Win2K and for the most part Windows 98SE, were OSs that I could sit in front of and get work done and not worry about the machine dying of some ill conceived crash from Windows. A feeling I had only known before as a Solaris workstation user. I'm not sure what some of the people here used nt4/win2k on that gave them such a bad experience or bad uptime for a workstation, but your habits must not fall to the areas as mine, as I don't hit them.
What about Linux you ask, since this is slashdot. Well, my experience with linux as a server has been that the kernel and daemon apps like samba and the appleshare IP stuff are rock solid, handling heavy loads and delivering long uptimes. But the "modern window managers" like KDE and GNome suck bad, like the bad versions of Windows I mentioned above. I never know when the window manager is going to die, leaving me with the only choice of CTRL-ALT-BKSPC to get out (and sometimes that even doesn't work, I have to ssh into the machine and kill X the hard way). I may reinstall X on a machine in the near future, but I am staying well away from the new glitzy window managers. They are all up on features, down on performance and reliability.
TurboD
2 years ago I picked up my phone. No dial tone. Huh. Did I forget to pay my bill? No. Checked the wiring and the phone. 15 minutes later still no dial tone. My cell phone worked though, so I called the operator and asked her about my phone.
The problem was that Spice Girls tickets just went on sale. The phone call load to the nearby Ticket Master outlet flooded the system. No one in my area had a dial tone for half an hour. No one could call 911 on a land line!
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.
--jeff
ipv6 is my vpn
I agree with you about the reliability -- they've made great strides. For a long time it seemed that they just didn't care, but as soon as linux appeared on the distant edge of the radar screen they started to get serious.
.NET is going to be the biggest security quagmire in the industry's history, and as MS has said repeatedly, they're "betting the company on .NET".
.NET idea is to allow developers to build programs VB style, except that the components can live anywhere on the Internet. By "VB" style, we're talking about low end programmers who don't cost as much as the other guys -- are these guys going to be able to think about threats in a sophisticated way?
.NET is a train wreck waiting to happen.
In this sense, linux has already done the vast majority of PC users a great service.
They still don't seem to be taking security seriously, though, and I think it's going to hurt them. The problem isn't buffer overflows, or individual programming mistakes -- the problem is that they pick business models and marketing strategies even if those models and strategies entail inherently unsecurable designs.
All of the virus problems flow out of MS's desire to link products -- that's why word processor documents can contain VB programs, and why email clients used to open up office docs automatically.
As other people have pointed out, MS has plenty of smart engineers working for them -- there had to have been people there complaining about this. But they didn't have the clout to carry the day. It must be frustrating as hell to be a security wonk at MS.
I predict that
The whole
The security seems to be tacked on to this model as an afterthought, and it doesn't inspire much confidence in me. Passport's already had problems, and that service was designed by MS itself, and it's at the very center of their business model.
Who believes that the low end visual developers who populate so many corporate offices are going to do a better job than the elite MS employees who built Passport?
Not many people can say they know the entire system, every program, every lib, dll or driver.
.net. I like being in control of my OS, and Linux isn't ready to take over the Desktop yet. Maybe in 10 years Games and Applications will run on any OS, but until then, M$ will keep the market.
Windows and Linux(or BSD) for the whole distribution take hundreds of megabytes. Yes, Even thou linux the kernel can boot up under a meg and give you a shell its rather useless other than a rescue disk.
Windows XP is a great workstation os. There is just so much going on you need 3rd party utilities to see whats happening. Tasks running in the background, files loading and unloading, registry updates/calls, files trying to update themselves, etc.. And then there is all the tweaks you have to put on for common sense options, tcp/ip QOS at 80% wasting 20% of your bandwidth, Explorer and Internet Explorer sharing the same memory if 1 crashes they both crash, Turning off Last access attribute in ntfs for performance, etc... Play around with sys-internals utilities you can see programs looking for missing fonts, updates to the registry, all kinds of system functions.
Linux on the other hand is rather up front with what it needs. You see what libs a program needs with ldd. lsof shows all files open and what program is using them. Good for a server, more secure when you know whats running. Bad points are the software releases, even thou most of the software is free, it can either not compile, not like the version of libraries you have, or need libraries you cant find. You don't have these problems on the windows os.
Even thou things are getting more complex, things are getting better. Good linux distributions that install and detect most hardware, X configuration, less configuration and more operation. Windows XP has a nice GUI, very intelligent user interface, more stable, great workstation os.
Only thing that scares me, is if M$ goes totally
I dont see the OS as perfected yet, but its come along way since DOS.
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The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials. - Chinese Proverb
Don't confuse the issue. There's a big difference between failing because of an overload and just never working.
The New York Times ran dozzens of articles about what a pain it was for victims to get help. Collection became a full time effort as they wandered from agency to agency and filled out horrendous and mind numbing forms with exactly the same information! They did this instead of finding loved ones, shelter, clothes or food.
While agencies not sharing information is nothing new, you have to wonder how much more could have been done if those agencies were using reasonable software. Nothing M$ talks to anything else M$. I know, because we use the junk at my Fortune 500 company. What proportion of innacurate, duplicate, non shared data came from inadequate tools, and what share from the nature of the organizations themselves? It's had to tell about there from here, but where I work it's hard to share information you want to share with other departments in the same building, much has to be entered multiple times and is often corrupted, and data sometimes just goes away on it's own. No, our tech support folks are not incompetent. No, the people I work with are not incompetent. We simply have second rate tools. Pity those same tools have been used in an emergency situation.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
These exchanges are specifically designed to communicate back to other COs when a crush of calls happen. Those COs back off and return busy to everyone in the CO trying to get that number for a period of time to prevent the end-point CO from going down. ie, they don't even attempt to complete the call.
Ever wonder why all the radio station contest lines are all in the same exchange in your area?!
I suspect the spice girl ticket number was not on a choke exchange like it was supposed to be.
Here's a tip. Next time you need to get a call through to a choke exchange number, get a friend from out-of-the-area to try it. If Philadelphia is having tickets go on sale for some big act at 9am, chances are there won't be people from Nebraska calling in. Their CO won't be "choked."
Systems Administrator (21yo, 4YR exp, Clue, MCP, SCNA, SCSA) = $39,500 + Shitty bene's.
If I may be so bold as to contribute, I think you could be doing better, as long as your count "real companies" only as your experience, in lieu of "freelance consultant" as your 4 years' experience.
I do Widnows NT and in-house application support for a large company, which categorizes me as a "Senior Application Systems Programmer." For me, it's 26 yo, 7 years exp (3 years as tech support/PC maintenance at University, 4 years at my current corporation), Clue, no certs = 49,000 + 100% Matching 401K, Pension, 4 weeks vacation, Full Medical and Dental for benefits.
After three years at minimum wage at the University, I applied for two full-time positions paying $16,500 and $18,000 US and was denied for both for having insufficient education and experience. The corporation (which required me to move out of state, but back home for me) offered me $35,000 to start, and I've gotten two good raises, one cost of living increase, and one promotion in four years. Without any college to speak of, or any certifications.
Just my experience. On the other hand, you may just have to prove yourself with a couple of years corporate experience before someone else will pay you "market value."
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
The home edition especially is a lame disabled version of win2K. The new web look of folders, control panels is pretty ugly and annoying. It's a good thing you can change it to classic. Overall, XP is a better OS than 95/98, but it is still not better than win2K. But I'm biased.
Only one linux distro out of zillions i tried played nice with my OPL3-SA2 sound chip (redhat), no matter how many gurus pointed at it. The most intuitive distro (mandrake) is not regarded as the best, and the installer won't finish on my system. ever. The debian installer still is hairy enough to make most 1st timers cringe. SuSE has a similar problem. I have yet to see an office suite that doesn't suck. StarOffice is close, but has a long way to go.
"but wait" i hear you say, "there are too many different types of hardware to support to get linux to work with everything perfectly..."
well, same is true with windows. so what point exactly is trying to be made with this article? no software is perfect, duh.
the biggest problem with windows are the number of people that don't patch their systems, that are still running the 9x code base as opposed to the NT code base, and those that are running a ton of crappy registry thrashing shareware.
windows 2000 is great, i have had insanely long runtimes, and am very happy with it. XP moreso, although i have had problems with office XP running on it.
zealotry is not an effective weapon. you are not going to win any converts to *nix by loudly claiming how much windows sucks. really. trust me here. the key is to make your side look so much better, people flock to it.
or shock horror, DUAL BOOT. jesus. every OS has a potential use or niche. get over this weird belief that there can only be one OS. if windows went away and all you had was linux, what would your arguments for using linux be? you are left with a non-centralized, fairly slow moving, non standard army. wow. I think i will stick with FreeBSD as my *nix. they don't yell as much, and they rock harder.
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.
This is unfounded Microsoft bashing at its worst. Anyone who has used Windows over the years knows that each version has improved reliability and usability over its predecessor. Most people fail to realize that their computer problems are due to faulty hardware and/or buggy device drivers, not the OS.
No matter how you architect an OS, at some point you have to rely upon a device driver (coded by someone else) to do the underlying work. That "someone else" part is the biggest problem, because you never know the quality of the code that comprises the driver.
The only way to assure the quality of a mystery box is to test the hell out of it. Microsoft has a "WHQL" certification program that is supposed to test driver binaries for correctness and completeness, but the label is meaningless in practice. Microsoft grants WHQL certifications to crappy drivers all the time in an effort to please device manufacturers.
Device manufacturers make money off hardware, not software. Drivers are always an afterthought, and their quality is always subject to the shipping schedule of the hardware. Drivers are often stamped WHQL and shipped along with the finished hardware even when the manufacturer and Microsoft know full well that the drivers aren't yet finished.
Computer reliability won't improve until device manufacturers realize drivers and devices are equally important. And that will only happen when consumers behave as if they are equally important. So stop whining about buggy drivers and actually do something about it. If substandard drivers prevent a device from working as advertised then take the manufacturer to court. False advertising is a crime, so why should device manufacturers get away with it? Usually there are thousands or millions of other consumers who would eagerly join a class-action lawsuit, if someone would just start one.
- "It's just a matter of opinion!" - PRIMUS
I still use Win98SE. It doesn't usually crash, but I do usually reboot it every couple of days to make sure I clean any memory leaks. But other than that, it's pretty decent. I'll switch to Linux as soon as there is enough of a market to justify developing programs for it.
But XP? Never.
A friend of mine just bought a new laptop which, of course, came with XP installed. I had heard that XP was as much as 40% slower than 98 on the same hardware. I have a Pentium II-550 (bought it 1.5 years ago) and he has some new fangled 1.0GHz+ machine. The details are unimportant. The fact is, we did some speed tests and my machine ran several tests faster using the same software. And his hardware is at least twice as fast as mine!
Another friend of mine purchased a new desktop system, I believe it was HP. Came pre-installed with XP (his coice). The hardware came and we tried to get some of his favorite games working. They would not, or executed too slowly. He later tried to get the thing to dual boot between Win98SE and WinXP. He couldn't make it happen. A few days later he emailed me and told me he had returned the machine to HP and he would be receiving a "custom-built" system from HP... With Win2K, I believe.
There is nothing in WinXP that is worth your time and money. It is slower than previous versions of Windows. The look-and-feel has changed (again). It looks like a kiddie cartoon, not a serious OS. I don't believe it to be any more reliable than the uncounted times in the past that MS has said their new OS was "the most reliable yet." They've said that with every release of Windows since 3.1.
I'll be helping my laptop friend install either Win98SE or Win2K on his laptop sometime in the next week.
The only cool thing about WinXP is the Ray of Light music they play in the commercials. Unfortunately, they have ruined that song for me since I can't listen to the song without thinking of XP.
Okay, let's give the NT kernel it's due.
First, and foremost, NT stands for new technology (or newer depending on the source) but newer than what? The old windows kernel? Linux would have to name every version nt, if they followed the microsoft standarded, so let's get this out of the way. Quite frankly I'm tired of people talking about nt like it's the second comming, it isn't. It stopped being new more than a few years ago.
I've had machines where 2k runs fine, but most of those are people who work at maintaining their computer all the time. For the regular user it isn't smart (especially ntfs, we had one luser removed everyone's rights [including hers] to read and write to the hd, and it took a lot of work to fix it.) Also when the system goes bad, I've found that the only way to fix it is to wipe the system and reinstall, unlike 98 which you can get into dos and copy new dlls to fix the corupt ones.
Quite frankly, there is no reason anyone should use anything more than 98 if you choose to use Micro$oft, IMHO, becuase the new versions don't give you anything more. Although the nt kernel has protected memory making a crash of the whole system less likely, I'm willing to bet that you've had more than your share of killed tasks and such.
Even if XP makes your system more stable, do you want to be running an operating system with such brazen security holes?
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Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
Here is a gem for you. This stupid locker ruined my trip to Munich, Germany. In fact, they've computerized a lot of these lockers in the train station in Munich where I was staying. *None* of them worked. This one (and the it was the only one) just gave the pretense of working. It would take your five DM and allow you to select a locker, and then you'd get the above error and lose your money. Since I could not find a working locker, I was forced to skip Munich altogether this summer.
Yea, Windows is unreliable.. although Win2K, I will admit, *is* pretty reliable.
XP reliable? Ahem.. well, it's less reliable than any OS which *doesn't* deliberately crash itself after 90 days (WPA). I won't even get into the stories about spyware, the mysterious unauthorized Bandwidth usage, or the Helpassistant account (because I don't know if they're true or not). Reliable means it reliably does WHAT THE USER WANTS IT TO DO, not anything else.
The point is, though, that this is what users *want*. Gasps of shock? Users want an unreliable, slow operating system with lots of extra baggage. It lets them feel like they're using a really impressive computer, lets them blame the computer for not being able to get work done, etc. You can see this in modern UIs, where the UI has stopped trying to be friendly to the user and instead concentrated on adding fluff to make the user feel "wow, I'm using a computer!".
When I was a totally green, newbie consultant for a specific, industry strength database I was hired into a major- major project (one of those systems, that move 10billion$ plus a day, literally). The project manager and senior dba knew precisely what they got and that totally matched their needs.
They had their own wiz-bang specialists, but needed an interface to the database vendors tech support and engineering full time.
They where willing to spend 250'000$ a year for a glorified switchboard operator and asskicker at that specific vendor. And ass kicking I did, very much to the dismay of some of the management type geezers at the vendor.
My point is: For really important projects it can make sense to hire a dedicated support liaison to keep the back of those folks that actually work on the project free.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Anyhow, she needed a new computer, but didn't want to spend much money. So, she goes down to Fry's, and they sell her a $300 machine with "Fast Windows" preinstalled. You guessed it...it's some sort of weird Taiwanese Linux distribution!
Someone figured out they could hit a price point by eliminating the most expensive item in a PC today: Microsoft software.