Re:Jeremiah Cornelius - quoting a hero of mine
on
Windows NT Turns 20
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· Score: 1
Right you really are on most of this.
You cite imitation, derivation, improvement and tribute as the way that progress is made, in the arts and sciences. I actually advocate that.
But in the instance of Microsoft as a company, there are endless back-room rip-offs, double crosses and secret handshakes. They extend from (at least) QDOS through VMS and VINES to SGI (Rick Belluzzo, look closely) - right to the present day: Nokia and Win7 stink to heaven. This was a weird deal in the back room, if ever their were one.
Nokia is essentially a subsidiary of MS, without the legal tripwires. They ditched a successful if future challenged business, to sell devices by the folks behind Zune and Kin.
I know of at least TWO Sr. Execs at MS, who were dismissed because of flagrant sexual harassment, who each went to "penitence" jobs at minor MS partners, only to surface 6-9 months later in Sr Exec jobs at Nokia - where their function relates to Microsoft, corollary partner to their former roles.
Gates stole BASIC, in the beginning. Everything thereafter followed this pattern.
I can see the misunderstanding. I didn't claim they were kernel - just that perceived problems with Windows were seldom actually kernel issues. At least directly.
Kernel-level drivers, with bad or non-existant threading models, mechanically executed ports from earlier Windows versions and crappy error handling. That has polluted the NTExecutive kernel - an otherwise admirable piece of software.
The modern Windows kernel is much improved from the original. Design ideas around NUMA that hearken to Cray and SGI are present, and support multi-core in remarkable ways, that differ from the old SMP problems. The support of virtualization is also an ESX rival.
These ideas were also cleverly pilfered. The most unethical sorts of things happen at MS - and I happen to know of at least two competitive marketing-funded operations, which could be called "dirty tricks" or "black bag" teams.
There have been brilliant technical leaders in this space beside Cutler - who has been at pasture for years. Bill Laing is salt-of-the-earth. I am fond to recollect the few occasions I had to meet him. Mark Russinovich is also a certifiable genius, and responsible for influencing the additional capabilities in NTExec in impressive fashion.
We have 25 years, passing from those old days. So? NT Exec was more-or-less VMS. Shall we say a strongly typed derivative? Those who say they don't see the resemblance, are like those who don't know why OS X is like BSD.;-)
This brings up another comparison: Modern Windows is an updated, VMS legacy branch in much the way OS X is an updated, NeXTStep branch...
It is the perversion of microkernel VMS by a flawed loadable driver model, and the.DLL nightmare that really sucks, and introduces "unpredictable" behaviors.
No, no, of course not. What I mean is that the German supply lines were stretched, Zhukov countered and the siege was broken. And that's the story of Stalingrad.
Microsoft evolve? Wrong metaphor! Repent and rehabilitate... maybe. I shall not hold my breath.
The Microsoft business is largely built on the corpse of DEC, who they slew on its deathbed, before the will could be attested.
Microsoft "conned" QDOS and ripped-off the creator to deal as an unscrupulous OEM to IBM. (BASIC is as BASIC does. I wonder if the source of MS BASIC can be audited for its original derivation?)
Microsoft "stole" Windows from Presentation Manager. (How many.DLLs had Microsoft written before OS/2)
Microsoft "stole" NT from VMS. (Dave Cutler, you didn't even change addresses or debug message locations!)
Microsoft "stole" AD from Banyan Vines (Hey! Why'd Banyan go out-of-business, instead of sue? Boardroom shenanigans?)
Microsoft completely ripped-off the display and windowing stack of NeXT/OSX, with their weird XML in place of PostScript/PDF.
Those are just egregious highlights. There is nothing MS ever invented and brought to market.
I can change one word of your sentence, altering its meaning without changing its truthfulness: "I think an observation of history shows that business gravitates toward the corrupt."
We can repeat the experiment with "finance" or "the church", or what have you. There will be plenty of supporting anecdote, and quite a bit of usable data that could support such statements.
So? There is likely a deeper, foundational feature - or flaw - which invites organisations of people to corruption of intent and personal reward, over commitment to mission.
Yet we need to organise toward common and mutual purpose. The establishment of an American Government prior to 1789 was intended to focus on the beneficial aspects of that mutual purpose, and hold in abeyance the opportunities for exploitation.
Actually, the problems with management by the Federal Government appear to be features introduced to serve those who own it.
Magically proclaiming that government is inherently a flawed way to accomplish anything, bordering on the criminal and immoral? That is a fantastical proposition. The corollary is stating that the only objective around which people can operate toward shared purpose is ambition and blind, greedy profit incentive.
The people who sponsored Reagan called him "The Great Communicator", because he so effectively broadcast this type of brainwashing. This type of belief has become the principal defect of the American character.
That is if one can use the mythical beast of national-character, to make a point...:-)
Right. The existing economy of institutionalised graft, extortion and threat of incarceration is infinitely preferable.
Inefficiency is a point of view - a pipe through which one may look at a system. Efficient to what end? Are you accumulating fat for winter? Or are you efficiently burning everything from your intake?
Unlike the REAL pretense of servicing financial derivatives, or selling cable subscriptions to watch "It's Always Hot in Cleveland"?
All value in an economy is not transactional profit.
In fact, that is the difference between an "Economy" and a "Marketplace". The difference is not taught, and in fact? The confusion is actively promoted.
But the difference between these two things is analogous that between the concepts of "Strategic" and "Tactical".
I won't labour arguments about that. It is fairly self-evident that one scenario involves violation of property, coupled with an element of coercion and violence. Let's not think of the ramification of encouraging a certain segment to violent, destructive action, while inuring another segment to the inevitability of such violence...
The other involves a sequence of activities that generate marginal commercial value and opportunity for greater social benefit.
Slashdot Mirror
Right you really are on most of this.
You cite imitation, derivation, improvement and tribute as the way that progress is made, in the arts and sciences. I actually advocate that.
But in the instance of Microsoft as a company, there are endless back-room rip-offs, double crosses and secret handshakes. They extend from (at least) QDOS through VMS and VINES to SGI (Rick Belluzzo, look closely) - right to the present day: Nokia and Win7 stink to heaven. This was a weird deal in the back room, if ever their were one.
Nokia is essentially a subsidiary of MS, without the legal tripwires. They ditched a successful if future challenged business, to sell devices by the folks behind Zune and Kin.
I know of at least TWO Sr. Execs at MS, who were dismissed because of flagrant sexual harassment, who each went to "penitence" jobs at minor MS partners, only to surface 6-9 months later in Sr Exec jobs at Nokia - where their function relates to Microsoft, corollary partner to their former roles.
Gates stole BASIC, in the beginning. Everything thereafter followed this pattern.
And duplicated work belonging to DEC, and went through losses in court because of it. Yes.
I can see the misunderstanding. I didn't claim they were kernel - just that perceived problems with Windows were seldom actually kernel issues. At least directly.
Kernel-level drivers, with bad or non-existant threading models, mechanically executed ports from earlier Windows versions and crappy error handling. That has polluted the NTExecutive kernel - an otherwise admirable piece of software.
The modern Windows kernel is much improved from the original. Design ideas around NUMA that hearken to Cray and SGI are present, and support multi-core in remarkable ways, that differ from the old SMP problems. The support of virtualization is also an ESX rival.
These ideas were also cleverly pilfered. The most unethical sorts of things happen at MS - and I happen to know of at least two competitive marketing-funded operations, which could be called "dirty tricks" or "black bag" teams.
There have been brilliant technical leaders in this space beside Cutler - who has been at pasture for years. Bill Laing is salt-of-the-earth. I am fond to recollect the few occasions I had to meet him. Mark Russinovich is also a certifiable genius, and responsible for influencing the additional capabilities in NTExec in impressive fashion.
We have 25 years, passing from those old days. So? NT Exec was more-or-less VMS. Shall we say a strongly typed derivative? Those who say they don't see the resemblance, are like those who don't know why OS X is like BSD. ;-)
This brings up another comparison: Modern Windows is an updated, VMS legacy branch in much the way OS X is an updated, NeXTStep branch...
You're missing the rsync component of the equation, but yes. This is the essence.
Now, administer for 250 users. :-)
See driver madness, above.
Debug an NT device driver.
Hey! I recognize this!
This is not the Cheese you're looking for.
"The secret is, there is no Cheese..."
HORIZON WORKSPACE!
https://www.vmware.com/products/desktop_virtualization/horizon-workspace/overview.html
The kernel is not structurally flawed.
It's just as sound as it was, the day Dave Cutler's team built an experimental port of VMS to CMU Mach. It's just as sound a kernel, as the day Microsoft ripped-off VMS from DEC.
It is the perversion of microkernel VMS by a flawed loadable driver model, and the .DLL nightmare that really sucks, and introduces "unpredictable" behaviors.
"Hey! PDP-11? Ask me how!"
I am talking about the Display Model introduced with Vista. Not Legacy GDI. That was part of Presentation Manager, stolen from IBM.
These are listed in chronological order. I am sorry if that is not apparent to children. This was all before your time.
No, no, of course not. What I mean is that the German supply lines were stretched, Zhukov countered and the siege was broken. And that's the story of Stalingrad.
-- Mark
Microsoft evolve? Wrong metaphor! Repent and rehabilitate... maybe. I shall not hold my breath.
The Microsoft business is largely built on the corpse of DEC, who they slew on its deathbed, before the will could be attested.
Microsoft "conned" QDOS and ripped-off the creator to deal as an unscrupulous OEM to IBM. (BASIC is as BASIC does. I wonder if the source of MS BASIC can be audited for its original derivation?)
Microsoft "stole" Windows from Presentation Manager. (How many .DLLs had Microsoft written before OS/2)
Microsoft "stole" NT from VMS. (Dave Cutler, you didn't even change addresses or debug message locations!)
Microsoft "stole" AD from Banyan Vines (Hey! Why'd Banyan go out-of-business, instead of sue? Boardroom shenanigans?)
Microsoft completely ripped-off the display and windowing stack of NeXT/OSX, with their weird XML in place of PostScript/PDF.
Those are just egregious highlights. There is nothing MS ever invented and brought to market.
I can change one word of your sentence, altering its meaning without changing its truthfulness:
"I think an observation of history shows that business gravitates toward the corrupt."
We can repeat the experiment with "finance" or "the church", or what have you. There will be plenty of supporting anecdote, and quite a bit of usable data that could support such statements.
So? There is likely a deeper, foundational feature - or flaw - which invites organisations of people to corruption of intent and personal reward, over commitment to mission.
Yet we need to organise toward common and mutual purpose. The establishment of an American Government prior to 1789 was intended to focus on the beneficial aspects of that mutual purpose, and hold in abeyance the opportunities for exploitation.
It worked, more or less, for a little while.
I think they DO have names!
Thurston Howell III and "Lovey" Howell are two, that come to mind.
:-)
Actually, the problems with management by the Federal Government appear to be features introduced to serve those who own it.
Magically proclaiming that government is inherently a flawed way to accomplish anything, bordering on the criminal and immoral? That is a fantastical proposition. The corollary is stating that the only objective around which people can operate toward shared purpose is ambition and blind, greedy profit incentive.
The people who sponsored Reagan called him "The Great Communicator", because he so effectively broadcast this type of brainwashing. This type of belief has become the principal defect of the American character.
That is if one can use the mythical beast of national-character, to make a point... :-)
It's been done. I don't know if that adds any value along the chain, tho'.
All US airwaves are "public" but regulated.
Mail makes you angry? That's a likely a transferal displacement reaction.
Why do you feel that your mother didn't love you, and when did you first become aware of this feeling? :-)
Right. The existing economy of institutionalised graft, extortion and threat of incarceration is infinitely preferable.
Inefficiency is a point of view - a pipe through which one may look at a system. Efficient to what end? Are you accumulating fat for winter? Or are you efficiently burning everything from your intake?
Some inefficiencies are virtues.
A LOT more.
BTW: I asked my Dominatrix for a "happy ending".
She sang me "The Pina Colada Song", and sent me home.
Trope.
Truism.
Bad analogy.
I could go on...
Unlike the REAL pretense of servicing financial derivatives, or selling cable subscriptions to watch "It's Always Hot in Cleveland"?
All value in an economy is not transactional profit.
In fact, that is the difference between an "Economy" and a "Marketplace". The difference is not taught, and in fact? The confusion is actively promoted.
But the difference between these two things is analogous that between the concepts of "Strategic" and "Tactical".
Oh yeah. Highly and effectively managed...
I remember when Reagan had the limits on commercial message length lifted. All night movies disappeared in months, around '82.
Welcome, Real Estate Seminar Infomercial! John Wayne and Bette Davis gave way to Thom Vu and Sy Sperling.
Culture? Died.
One IS a constructive activity. :-)
I won't labour arguments about that. It is fairly self-evident that one scenario involves violation of property, coupled with an element of coercion and violence. Let's not think of the ramification of encouraging a certain segment to violent, destructive action, while inuring another segment to the inevitability of such violence...
The other involves a sequence of activities that generate marginal commercial value and opportunity for greater social benefit.
So.
Mail carriers too, had their own "greatest generation". :-)