Not only that, but we had the hit TV series M*A*S*H, which, while fictional in characters and story, is also very historically accurate. Unfortunately, there are a lot of younger people who don't watch 'old' television programs, so they aren't as familiar with the situation in Korea.
I know what you wrote doesn't actually say it, but what you wrote could be interpreted as 'Microsoft doesn't make anything that's useful.' Anyway, thanks for the laugh.
Well said. I wish I had points (did yesterday, but used them all) so I could soften the undeserved blow of those Troll mods your first post received, since that was also as well stated and reasonable, attacking the issues rather than the person. I only wish more people had your mindset in situations like this. Fortunately, you also have the courage to stand back up when you're down. Thanks, again.
Cell phone usage while driving is not illegal in Utah.
You didn't read the footnote, which clearly states that using a cell phone while driving is classified as careless driving, and is thus illegal. From your link:
Utah's law defines careless driving as committing a moving violation (other than speeding) while distracted by use of a handheld cellphone or other activities not related to driving.
This law has been in effect since 2007 and included cell phone usage at that time, so yes, Utah does have a law against cell phone usage while driving.
I congratulate you on your excellent response that relies on facts and information rather than name calling and insults. If only more people would use such methods of arguments. I'd mod you up if I had points, but since I can't, I'll at least thank you for providing such a reasoned essay.
Fortunately, by the time I reached this, which I know is late, the moderation had been rectified. If only many of the other injustices in the world could be corrected as quickly.
Well stated. Moreover, the President doesn't have the authority to create these regulations, only to pass them. Creating any law is the responsibility of Congress, and during much of Bush's presidency, the Democrats had a slim margin of control, not that Bush helped the situation any.
Depending on what you need, I'd suggest WordPerfect; it doesn't do HTML well, but it has no problems retaining formats after they are saved. I've never had to reformat a document. It also has many features Word cannot have, due to the useless way Word handles data, such as Reveal Codes, Center of Margin, Right Flush, and Indent. Also, it has true WYSIWYG, so you never need to print preview (I use draft mode, and I've still never needed to use print preview, since I can just switch to the regular editing mode if I'm concerned about how tables or pages actually look). Also, it rarely assumes anything; you tell it how you want to format the document, though it does set up outlines if your typing indicates you want it to, and the outline settings are much better than Word (and I'm using WP9, which is about ten years old now).
. . . the reason why I like WordPerfect is because I don't fight against it like I do in the others.
I completely agree, although I cannot say I've used the others for a longer amount of time. I can't stand Word, primarily because I can't see what I'm doing, and it tries to do so many things for me, usually without asking (which WordPerfect never does). Of course, Reveal Codes is the most powerful editing feature I've ever seen, and there are also so many other things, like "Center on Margin", "Right Flush", and "Indent" that allow me to easily do things the others can only do with tabs.
Well stated. I've always laughed inside when I've read someone claiming that Microsoft couldn't have achieved their monopoly without producing quality code. It's nice to see others who understand these basic economic principles.
Besides, if you're dealing with your own programming, why wouldn't you check each individual section of your code independently? As you stated in earlier posts, checking your code after its compiled provides you with information about what the processor's actually doing vs. what you wrote. I only wish we had desktop machines that ran on a better architecture than x86 (by which I mean more organized and less frustrating).
Excellent points, but in all fairness, Commodore took a huge chunk of the home market from Apple with the C=64 (at least 22 million units sold, possibly as many as 30 million) before IBM seized the market from both (and a few other companies as well, notably Atari).
Excellent point. Furthermore, Commodore's final sales figures on the C=64 alone totaled at least 22 million (I've heard as many as 30 million), and the Apple II series had a significant market as well. All without MS-DOS.
I remember on Commodore 64's basic interpreter, if you tried to have the interpreter perform ASC (""), you received an illegal quantity error; the interpreter checked the length of the string, and if that value came back zero, it branched to a jump (to the error message flag) that was used nothing else in the interpreter. Since I regarded the whole error as stupid, I modified one of the ROM images I had to correct the bug, and branch to the jump that assigned the ASCII value to the result.
This is the actual code (comments are mine):
B78B 20 82 B7 JSR $B782 ; Check the length of the string B78E F0 08 BEQ $B798 ; my correction is to change this 08 to 05 B790 A0 00 LDY #$00 ; Grab the byte value of the first character of the string B792 B1 22 LDA ($22),Y B794 A8 TAY B795 4C A2 B3 JMP $B3A2 ; Use the value to create a floating point value
B798 4C 48 B2 JMP $B248 ; Jump to generate an Illegal Quantity error
If you don't understand the relevance, Microsoft wrote the original Commodore BASIC interpreter, but Commodore somehow got the rights to the code.
Thank you for the many well reasoned comments. I'd like to offer a few viewpoints of my own.
I've recently thought about a few of the major differences between human and our so-called primate cousins that I feel support an intelligent design premise that does not invalidate Charles Darwin's theories on evolution, but does conflict with many of today's beliefs.
One, humans have a physiology that is similar, but in several ways very unlike most primates. All the primates I am aware of, many different species, have long arms and short legs, while humans, a single species, have longer legs than arms. We also have flat feet without opposing large toes, which is another major difference between humans and primates; I can't think of a primate species that has flat feet. How it is that there is only a single species with these specific characteristics as opposed to many different species that share another set of specific characteristics challenges, in my opinion, the theory that we evolved from an ancestor to the chimpanzee.
Two, humans use extremely complex speech forms, far more so than what is used by any primate species, even those we've taught to use one of our languages in some form or other. Some humans have the capacity to learn many a variety of different languages fluently; my father alone speaks at least four languages well enough to hold a conversation, namely English, Norwegian, German, and Russian, but also has a basic understanding of many more. I'm not aware of any primate species with this ability, despite their ability to learn basic forms of a single human language.
Three, humans can be taught to follow a specific set of rules, but are capable of making exceptions to those rules based on the circumstances, while most primates have difficulty with applied knowledge. I remember from a years back, the hypothetical example of a primate (a chimpanzee, I believe) that had been taught to drive; at the scene of an accident, the primate would fail to reason that the vehicles blocking traffic superseded the green light, and would therefore fail to stop. Knowing and understanding are very different things.
My point is, while I've not performed any scientific experiments to prove these things are true, I've nonetheless observed them and learned that there is a certain level of truth to each. Furthermore, if any of these beliefs are, at some point proven incorrect (i.e., someone actually demonstrates a chimpanzee truly capable of understanding the immense complexities of just one, if not more, of our languages) I'm willing to accept the new evidence. That, in my mind, is the true scientific method; making a theory based on observations and the present evidence, but accepting the possibility that other evidence may invalidate the theory altogether.
Lastly, my opinion that Darwin's theories are not hampered by these observations is that his theory was based off the many species of finch in the Galapagos Island region; that they may have, at some point in the past, all evolved from one original species of finch has a logical basis. That humans accidentally developed intellectually from some other species lacks that same logical foundation, and is therefore suspect in my view.
The former would surprise me, but the latter wouldn't. Besides, Chickens molt; how is that cruel. Also, if we can do it with chickens, shouldn't we also be able to use turkeys, ducks, geese, and other avian fowl?
I agree with much of what you say, however, the problems Microsoft added with their upgrade to Vista include user interface issues that make Vista more difficult to use. Here are a few examples I've encountered while trying to do ISP support for customers using Vista:
1. Useless Error Messages/Diagnostic Tools: "Unable to connect" means absolutely nothing, and the "Diagnose the problem" feature completely ignores the error token that generated the error message in the first place. I often help customers who have used "Diagnose" and have subsequently been told the problem wasn't with the modem (this is often that they had their username or password entered incorrectly), but they were never told what caused the error in the first place, so when they called me, they couldn't give me anything I could work with. I'm then forced to point them in the right direction and often required to tell them to end the call so they can test (I support dial-up; antiquated, I know, but there are still hundreds of customers).
2. Moving/Removing Features With No Net Gain: I used to be able to point customers to a few simple, albeit less than optimally designed tools, to perform most operations I deal with, but Vista no longer has several of these (such as INETWIZ, which has several faults, but at least has a consistent interface). The only path to Network Connections that I know of in Vista requires that I point the customer through "Network and Sharing Center", and because of point 1, I'm forced to help the customer create a shortcut after creating the connection. Also, what practical purpose does separating the well organized "Display" properties control panel into a bunch of smaller control panels that take more time to reach serve?
3. Redesigning Interfaces With No Net Gain: Similar to point 2, I'll agree, but not quite the same. IE7 still has menus, but they're harder to locate now; I've encountered a customer whose interface has become so fucked up that he can't even locate the address bar. Internet Options now has "Browsing History", which is actually nice in a way, since it consolidates delete options for cache, cookies, history, forms, and passwords into a single spot, but it's still far less efficient than Firefox's "Clear Private Data" and forces me to inquire of my customers how the General tab is laid out (you wouldn't believe how many people can't figure out what a heading is). Also, why did they change "Restore Defaults" in the Advanced tab with "Restore Advance Settings"? The new name for the button is less clear, and uses more words to say the same thing.
I know Vista purportedly offers better security than XP, but why stuff a working, familiar interface through the shredder while fixing security issues? Why make interaction changes so radical, that go gigantic leaps and bounds past what Microsoft did when they changed the interface for XP, when all that was necessary was to fix many of the security issues that had plagued the system since it's inception? I personally believe this is a primary reason Microsoft has been given so much grief since releasing Vista.
Actually, the 8086/8088 internal architecture was only 16-bit; all registers and the ALU were 16-bit. The 68000 internal architecture was 32-bit; all registers were 32-bit and they used two 16-bit ALUs in series for 32 bit arithmetic (if I remember my 68000 architecture studies correctly). Therefore, the 8086 could only support integers up to 65535 (2^16-1) nativly, not integers up to 4294967295 (2^32-1).
To manage 32-bit integers, the 8086 required the use of two registers, and a minimum of two times as much code (add the lower 16 bits, then the upper 16 bits).
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Not only that, but we had the hit TV series M*A*S*H, which, while fictional in characters and story, is also very historically accurate. Unfortunately, there are a lot of younger people who don't watch 'old' television programs, so they aren't as familiar with the situation in Korea.
What also floats in water?
Bread, apples, very small rocks, great gravy, churches, churches, lead, lead!
I know what you wrote doesn't actually say it, but what you wrote could be interpreted as 'Microsoft doesn't make anything that's useful.' Anyway, thanks for the laugh.
Well said. I wish I had points (did yesterday, but used them all) so I could soften the undeserved blow of those Troll mods your first post received, since that was also as well stated and reasonable, attacking the issues rather than the person. I only wish more people had your mindset in situations like this. Fortunately, you also have the courage to stand back up when you're down. Thanks, again.
You didn't read the footnote, which clearly states that using a cell phone while driving is classified as careless driving, and is thus illegal. From your link:
This law has been in effect since 2007 and included cell phone usage at that time, so yes, Utah does have a law against cell phone usage while driving.
I live in Utah, too. I completely agree; we do get a lot wrong, but this is certainly right.
I congratulate you on your excellent response that relies on facts and information rather than name calling and insults. If only more people would use such methods of arguments. I'd mod you up if I had points, but since I can't, I'll at least thank you for providing such a reasoned essay.
Fortunately, by the time I reached this, which I know is late, the moderation had been rectified. If only many of the other injustices in the world could be corrected as quickly.
Well stated. Moreover, the President doesn't have the authority to create these regulations, only to pass them. Creating any law is the responsibility of Congress, and during much of Bush's presidency, the Democrats had a slim margin of control, not that Bush helped the situation any.
Depending on what you need, I'd suggest WordPerfect; it doesn't do HTML well, but it has no problems retaining formats after they are saved. I've never had to reformat a document. It also has many features Word cannot have, due to the useless way Word handles data, such as Reveal Codes, Center of Margin, Right Flush, and Indent. Also, it has true WYSIWYG, so you never need to print preview (I use draft mode, and I've still never needed to use print preview, since I can just switch to the regular editing mode if I'm concerned about how tables or pages actually look). Also, it rarely assumes anything; you tell it how you want to format the document, though it does set up outlines if your typing indicates you want it to, and the outline settings are much better than Word (and I'm using WP9, which is about ten years old now).
I completely agree, although I cannot say I've used the others for a longer amount of time. I can't stand Word, primarily because I can't see what I'm doing, and it tries to do so many things for me, usually without asking (which WordPerfect never does). Of course, Reveal Codes is the most powerful editing feature I've ever seen, and there are also so many other things, like "Center on Margin", "Right Flush", and "Indent" that allow me to easily do things the others can only do with tabs.
I sort of recall 1979; I started kindergarten and turned six. Other than that, I don't remember much.
Well stated. I've always laughed inside when I've read someone claiming that Microsoft couldn't have achieved their monopoly without producing quality code. It's nice to see others who understand these basic economic principles.
Besides, if you're dealing with your own programming, why wouldn't you check each individual section of your code independently? As you stated in earlier posts, checking your code after its compiled provides you with information about what the processor's actually doing vs. what you wrote. I only wish we had desktop machines that ran on a better architecture than x86 (by which I mean more organized and less frustrating).
Excellent points, but in all fairness, Commodore took a huge chunk of the home market from Apple with the C=64 (at least 22 million units sold, possibly as many as 30 million) before IBM seized the market from both (and a few other companies as well, notably Atari).
Excellent point. Furthermore, Commodore's final sales figures on the C=64 alone totaled at least 22 million (I've heard as many as 30 million), and the Apple II series had a significant market as well. All without MS-DOS.
Perhaps if you'd phrased it a little more like "How about Microsoft Bob?", we'd have gotten the joke.
I remember on Commodore 64's basic interpreter, if you tried to have the interpreter perform ASC (""), you received an illegal quantity error; the interpreter checked the length of the string, and if that value came back zero, it branched to a jump (to the error message flag) that was used nothing else in the interpreter. Since I regarded the whole error as stupid, I modified one of the ROM images I had to correct the bug, and branch to the jump that assigned the ASCII value to the result.
This is the actual code (comments are mine):
B78B 20 82 B7 JSR $B782 ; Check the length of the string
B78E F0 08 BEQ $B798 ; my correction is to change this 08 to 05
B790 A0 00 LDY #$00 ; Grab the byte value of the first character of the string
B792 B1 22 LDA ($22),Y
B794 A8 TAY
B795 4C A2 B3 JMP $B3A2 ; Use the value to create a floating point value
B798 4C 48 B2 JMP $B248 ; Jump to generate an Illegal Quantity error
If you don't understand the relevance, Microsoft wrote the original Commodore BASIC interpreter, but Commodore somehow got the rights to the code.
Sorry about the way off topic reply (I agree with your comments), but what is the source of your sig?
Interesting logic. Too bad this isn't a criminal case. By the way, thanks for the laugh.
Thank you for the many well reasoned comments. I'd like to offer a few viewpoints of my own.
I've recently thought about a few of the major differences between human and our so-called primate cousins that I feel support an intelligent design premise that does not invalidate Charles Darwin's theories on evolution, but does conflict with many of today's beliefs.
One, humans have a physiology that is similar, but in several ways very unlike most primates. All the primates I am aware of, many different species, have long arms and short legs, while humans, a single species, have longer legs than arms. We also have flat feet without opposing large toes, which is another major difference between humans and primates; I can't think of a primate species that has flat feet. How it is that there is only a single species with these specific characteristics as opposed to many different species that share another set of specific characteristics challenges, in my opinion, the theory that we evolved from an ancestor to the chimpanzee.
Two, humans use extremely complex speech forms, far more so than what is used by any primate species, even those we've taught to use one of our languages in some form or other. Some humans have the capacity to learn many a variety of different languages fluently; my father alone speaks at least four languages well enough to hold a conversation, namely English, Norwegian, German, and Russian, but also has a basic understanding of many more. I'm not aware of any primate species with this ability, despite their ability to learn basic forms of a single human language.
Three, humans can be taught to follow a specific set of rules, but are capable of making exceptions to those rules based on the circumstances, while most primates have difficulty with applied knowledge. I remember from a years back, the hypothetical example of a primate (a chimpanzee, I believe) that had been taught to drive; at the scene of an accident, the primate would fail to reason that the vehicles blocking traffic superseded the green light, and would therefore fail to stop. Knowing and understanding are very different things.
My point is, while I've not performed any scientific experiments to prove these things are true, I've nonetheless observed them and learned that there is a certain level of truth to each. Furthermore, if any of these beliefs are, at some point proven incorrect (i.e., someone actually demonstrates a chimpanzee truly capable of understanding the immense complexities of just one, if not more, of our languages) I'm willing to accept the new evidence. That, in my mind, is the true scientific method; making a theory based on observations and the present evidence, but accepting the possibility that other evidence may invalidate the theory altogether.
Lastly, my opinion that Darwin's theories are not hampered by these observations is that his theory was based off the many species of finch in the Galapagos Island region; that they may have, at some point in the past, all evolved from one original species of finch has a logical basis. That humans accidentally developed intellectually from some other species lacks that same logical foundation, and is therefore suspect in my view.
Are you referring to scientists or PETA?
The former would surprise me, but the latter wouldn't. Besides, Chickens molt; how is that cruel. Also, if we can do it with chickens, shouldn't we also be able to use turkeys, ducks, geese, and other avian fowl?
I agree with much of what you say, however, the problems Microsoft added with their upgrade to Vista include user interface issues that make Vista more difficult to use. Here are a few examples I've encountered while trying to do ISP support for customers using Vista:
1. Useless Error Messages/Diagnostic Tools: "Unable to connect" means absolutely nothing, and the "Diagnose the problem" feature completely ignores the error token that generated the error message in the first place. I often help customers who have used "Diagnose" and have subsequently been told the problem wasn't with the modem (this is often that they had their username or password entered incorrectly), but they were never told what caused the error in the first place, so when they called me, they couldn't give me anything I could work with. I'm then forced to point them in the right direction and often required to tell them to end the call so they can test (I support dial-up; antiquated, I know, but there are still hundreds of customers).
2. Moving/Removing Features With No Net Gain: I used to be able to point customers to a few simple, albeit less than optimally designed tools, to perform most operations I deal with, but Vista no longer has several of these (such as INETWIZ, which has several faults, but at least has a consistent interface). The only path to Network Connections that I know of in Vista requires that I point the customer through "Network and Sharing Center", and because of point 1, I'm forced to help the customer create a shortcut after creating the connection. Also, what practical purpose does separating the well organized "Display" properties control panel into a bunch of smaller control panels that take more time to reach serve?
3. Redesigning Interfaces With No Net Gain: Similar to point 2, I'll agree, but not quite the same. IE7 still has menus, but they're harder to locate now; I've encountered a customer whose interface has become so fucked up that he can't even locate the address bar. Internet Options now has "Browsing History", which is actually nice in a way, since it consolidates delete options for cache, cookies, history, forms, and passwords into a single spot, but it's still far less efficient than Firefox's "Clear Private Data" and forces me to inquire of my customers how the General tab is laid out (you wouldn't believe how many people can't figure out what a heading is). Also, why did they change "Restore Defaults" in the Advanced tab with "Restore Advance Settings"? The new name for the button is less clear, and uses more words to say the same thing.
I know Vista purportedly offers better security than XP, but why stuff a working, familiar interface through the shredder while fixing security issues? Why make interaction changes so radical, that go gigantic leaps and bounds past what Microsoft did when they changed the interface for XP, when all that was necessary was to fix many of the security issues that had plagued the system since it's inception? I personally believe this is a primary reason Microsoft has been given so much grief since releasing Vista.
No offense, but I'm not sure you can regard the XBox 360 hardware issues as "Classic" PC Design Mistakes at the present; maybe in a few years.
Actually, the 8086/8088 internal architecture was only 16-bit; all registers and the ALU were 16-bit. The 68000 internal architecture was 32-bit; all registers were 32-bit and they used two 16-bit ALUs in series for 32 bit arithmetic (if I remember my 68000 architecture studies correctly). Therefore, the 8086 could only support integers up to 65535 (2^16-1) nativly, not integers up to 4294967295 (2^32-1).
To manage 32-bit integers, the 8086 required the use of two registers, and a minimum of two times as much code (add the lower 16 bits, then the upper 16 bits).