Stuff coming in from various mailing lists is placed in dedicated folders and automagically expired based on folder-specific rules. Other items of interest (bill notifications, notes from relatives, news items, etc.) are automatically shuffled to their own folders and kept for a longer period of time (some are set to expire in a year, while others don't expire at all).
The bits that are left I go through by hand, but that folder is only kept around for 30 days. If it's something I want to keep, I save it off somewhere else manually.
We used Waterhawks (battery-powered squirtguns), pieces of paper that said "bomb" on them, and various other types of weaponry that were approved by the judges (mainly dart guns, plastic knives, etc.).
No, operating system design isn't all that difficult. Basic operating systems design is undergraduate-level stuff (and that was true even back in the mid-1980's when I got my own BSCS and "specialized" in compiler/OS design), and there are plenty of published examples out there of Good Ways To Design Things which helps a fledgling OS designer address all sorts of initial architectural/security/efficiency issues.
It's getting an OS to be highly functional and responsive under load that's the hard part, but most of that is time and iterative testing, not difficult design work. Complexity tends to be introduced in the form of external layers such as device driver software, not the core operating system. Applications APIs and hooks into shell code can also be complex. The core OS, though, is independent of those things in any well-considered OS design.
Keep in mind that Windows was not developed in a vacuum. Before Windows 1.0 was born, many companies had already designed and implemented multi-user multi-CPU operating systems including CSC, CDC, Sperry UNIVAC, IBM, DEC, and numerous others. Some of those platforms still exist today and have run for YEARS in some cases without crashing or any measurable outages at all (scheduled or unscheduled).
Reliability in recent OS designs is to be expected -- after all, there is 40+ years of prior art out there.
I'm not complaining about the "bugs" in Windows. I'm complaining about the design flaws which manifest themselves in things such as ActiveX, about the lack of attention to standards such as MSIE's lack of CSS support, about the lack of good project management that has resulted in Microsoft presenting timelines and proposed feature sets which seem in almost constant flux (where is WinFS now? What else in Vista has been dropped?), about the apparent lack of basic internal documentation for key items like Microsoft's very own networking protocols (what was Microsoft's excuse again for not giving the EU that stuff?), and about Microsoft's apparent need to create HUGE testing facilities instead of being able to treat OS components like pluggable components and debug them in a modular manner.
Talent my ass.
TO be fair, I'm guessing that there are plenty of people with talent inside MS, but most of that talent is being wasted because it has to penetrate too many layers of middle management, too much procedural inertia, and too many conflicting requirements from marketing (which tend to follow a completely different agenda).
That makes Microsoft similar to many companies, sadly. However, Microsoft is unique in that they provide the OS later for most of the desktops in the business world today, and they also provide much of the common applications software that runs on those desktops.
A Microsoft flaw or inefficiency is magnified many times because of its ubiquity. They, of all people, should be concentrating on security, efficient development process, and design. And it seems that they haven't been.
For that lack of effort, I think my criticism is well-placed... and well-deserved.
One of the first things they did after they purchased Virtual PC from Connectix was to kill the OS/2-native version of Virtual PC. The Mac version was the next logical step.
So, what other platforms are left that Virtual PC will run on? Oh... Windows. That's a surprise...
What evidence can you present that Microsoft has "talented programmers" inside their organization?
Their products don't seem to reflect that.
Their engineering processes don't seem to reflect that.
Their technical documentation doesn't seem to reflect that.
Talent is more than knowing. It's more than drawing a big paycheck. It also includes the ability to create sound software designs, to implement those designs in an efficient manner, to test the end product effectively before it is released into the wild, and to support that product in a timely manner.
That's why Microsoft has such humungous testing labs -- because the software they have to test is designed as a large monolithic entity, not a highly-modular entity, so testing that software is a humungous undertaking.
If their software were written in a more modular manner, such large testing facilities would be far less important to them (and would perhaps be completely unnecessary).
Actually, it should be relatively easy for a software vendor to provide statically linked binaries that install in/usr/local on just about any Linux system using a standard makefile or shell script (or pretty installation routine if they like).
That would remove most library dependencies as well as most of the filesystem idiosyncracies that one finds from distro to distro.
If the software is not accessible to an outside party (either by being embedded in firmware, or by being installed on a machine that does not permit the arbitrary replacement of the control software), then the fact that the software might be open source is irrelevant.
Even if the control software was GPL'd, the control software itself was never distributed. Therefore, there is no requirement at all for the robot garage vendor to make that source available.
And even if the source was available, and were easily replaced by the city, the contract that was signed might make it illegal to do so.
There's a lot more at issue here than FOSS, and I don't think the software being FOSS would help the city all that much...
Dude, I like thunderstorms as much as the next guy, but it's just weird when you're out in shorts on a sunny July day and then out of nowhere... Thunderstorm. I feel like scolding those clouds like I would a small child: "Look, man, there is an appropriate time and place...!". Then I would beat the clouds.
Hey, at least storms in the center of the country move in predictable patterns. When I lived in Minneapolis, we knew the day before that a front was cruising in from the Dakotas.
Here in Atlanta you don't really know whether the stuff is goign to come from the west, the south, the north, or the east, and they have these things called "pop-up" thunderstorms that sort of spontaneously appear out of nowhere. Something about it being 90+F and humid all the time...
Okay, I exaggerated. I only have 4 Discman players + 2 stereo components + 1 car stereo + 7 PCs + 3 boomboxes + 2 alarm clocks = 19 CD players.:-) The 20th is a DVD player which also plays CDs. Does that count?
So I should add every person who sends mail to a busy email list to a white list, one by one? No thanks.
No. Postini has a feature specifically for mailing lists: you can specify the single TO or FROM address which is associated with that list, and Postini will pass everything which contains the address specified for that list.
Even if a new format came out that was somehow better than the classic CD format, my investment is such that a new format is probably not worth converting to. The conversion to CDs from LPs and tapes made sense -- no more crackling from dust, and no more linear-access media. But CDs are already digital, random-access, small, and reliable. All a DVD offers is more space, something a classic album doesn't need (and something which I can already provide with several of my CD players using data CDs with MP3 files).
Postini is easily trainable, however. All you need to do is add the sender of each false positive to the pass list, and you're golden. I've been using both SpamAssassin and Postini for a few years now, and Postini does a better job for me over time once it's been properly trained.
Wow, that map is seriously misleading. I live in a suburb of Atlanta which is shown as orange (4-6 providers), but the only two providers I'm aware of in our area are Comcast (cable) and BellSouth (DSL). That's two.
The same situation existed when I lived five miles away in a different city (different cable company, same number of choices: two). That sure ain't four.:-(
The map also shows most of the Twin Cities metro as orange, but I know for a fact that my old townhouse only had Qwest DSL and RoadRunner available, and there are LOTS of places that have cablemodem but no DSL at all due to distance from the CO or old POTS infrastructure that doesn't support a DSL connection.
I think the map was produced by an extreme optimist.:-)
It isn't just some movie that I want to watch, but I want all the materials associated with it (the bonus stuff found on a typical DVD) along with the sense of ownership that DVD's currently give me.
While being able to watch streaming video is nice, such streaming only suppliments DVDs (in my view) and doesn't directly replace them.
I played nose guard and middle linebacker in school. While there *is* a lot of down time in American football, it's quite possible to make up for it with increased effort. Get in my way at the wrong time, and you WILL remember it afterwards.:-)
And yes, it's lots of fun as a defensive lineman to fsck with the center's mind...:-):-);-)
Unlike most other sports where there is continuous action, American football involves fairly extreme energy releases that I suspect are hard to fully appreciate unless you've been a part of the action...
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Stuff coming in from various mailing lists is placed in dedicated folders and automagically expired based on folder-specific rules. Other items of interest (bill notifications, notes from relatives, news items, etc.) are automatically shuffled to their own folders and kept for a longer period of time (some are set to expire in a year, while others don't expire at all).
The bits that are left I go through by hand, but that folder is only kept around for 30 days. If it's something I want to keep, I save it off somewhere else manually.
OS/2's WorkPlace Shell used context menus heavily almost everywhere ... in 1992.
There's nothing like ignoring 20 years of Microsoft history in order to make one snarky comment, is there?
We used Waterhawks (battery-powered squirtguns), pieces of paper that said "bomb" on them, and various other types of weaponry that were approved by the judges (mainly dart guns, plastic knives, etc.).
:-/
I don't remember doing very well.
No, operating system design isn't all that difficult. Basic operating systems design is undergraduate-level stuff (and that was true even back in the mid-1980's when I got my own BSCS and "specialized" in compiler/OS design), and there are plenty of published examples out there of Good Ways To Design Things which helps a fledgling OS designer address all sorts of initial architectural/security/efficiency issues.
... and well-deserved.
It's getting an OS to be highly functional and responsive under load that's the hard part, but most of that is time and iterative testing, not difficult design work. Complexity tends to be introduced in the form of external layers such as device driver software, not the core operating system. Applications APIs and hooks into shell code can also be complex. The core OS, though, is independent of those things in any well-considered OS design.
Keep in mind that Windows was not developed in a vacuum. Before Windows 1.0 was born, many companies had already designed and implemented multi-user multi-CPU operating systems including CSC, CDC, Sperry UNIVAC, IBM, DEC, and numerous others. Some of those platforms still exist today and have run for YEARS in some cases without crashing or any measurable outages at all (scheduled or unscheduled).
Reliability in recent OS designs is to be expected -- after all, there is 40+ years of prior art out there.
I'm not complaining about the "bugs" in Windows. I'm complaining about the design flaws which manifest themselves in things such as ActiveX, about the lack of attention to standards such as MSIE's lack of CSS support, about the lack of good project management that has resulted in Microsoft presenting timelines and proposed feature sets which seem in almost constant flux (where is WinFS now? What else in Vista has been dropped?), about the apparent lack of basic internal documentation for key items like Microsoft's very own networking protocols (what was Microsoft's excuse again for not giving the EU that stuff?), and about Microsoft's apparent need to create HUGE testing facilities instead of being able to treat OS components like pluggable components and debug them in a modular manner.
Talent my ass.
TO be fair, I'm guessing that there are plenty of people with talent inside MS, but most of that talent is being wasted because it has to penetrate too many layers of middle management, too much procedural inertia, and too many conflicting requirements from marketing (which tend to follow a completely different agenda).
That makes Microsoft similar to many companies, sadly. However, Microsoft is unique in that they provide the OS later for most of the desktops in the business world today, and they also provide much of the common applications software that runs on those desktops.
A Microsoft flaw or inefficiency is magnified many times because of its ubiquity. They, of all people, should be concentrating on security, efficient development process, and design. And it seems that they haven't been.
For that lack of effort, I think my criticism is well-placed
One of the first things they did after they purchased Virtual PC from Connectix was to kill the OS/2-native version of Virtual PC. The Mac version was the next logical step.
So, what other platforms are left that Virtual PC will run on? Oh... Windows. That's a surprise...
What evidence can you present that Microsoft has "talented programmers" inside their organization?
Their products don't seem to reflect that.
Their engineering processes don't seem to reflect that.
Their technical documentation doesn't seem to reflect that.
Talent is more than knowing. It's more than drawing a big paycheck. It also includes the ability to create sound software designs, to implement those designs in an efficient manner, to test the end product effectively before it is released into the wild, and to support that product in a timely manner.
Does Microsoft do those things?
That's why Microsoft has such humungous testing labs -- because the software they have to test is designed as a large monolithic entity, not a highly-modular entity, so testing that software is a humungous undertaking.
If their software were written in a more modular manner, such large testing facilities would be far less important to them (and would perhaps be completely unnecessary).
Actually, it should be relatively easy for a software vendor to provide statically linked binaries that install in /usr/local on just about any Linux system using a standard makefile or shell script (or pretty installation routine if they like).
That would remove most library dependencies as well as most of the filesystem idiosyncracies that one finds from distro to distro.
If the software is not accessible to an outside party (either by being embedded in firmware, or by being installed on a machine that does not permit the arbitrary replacement of the control software), then the fact that the software might be open source is irrelevant.
Even if the control software was GPL'd, the control software itself was never distributed. Therefore, there is no requirement at all for the robot garage vendor to make that source available.
And even if the source was available, and were easily replaced by the city, the contract that was signed might make it illegal to do so.
There's a lot more at issue here than FOSS, and I don't think the software being FOSS would help the city all that much...
We played it in the mid-80's in college. Lots of fun!
How many people who are into "high brow" activities would bother to use a common technology like a video game?
Are gaming consoles or personal computers themselves socially acceptable to that type of person?
If the device is seen as "low brow", the actual content present on that device becomes far less relevant.
My backspace finger stuttetterrered. It does that. :-)
Hey, at least storms in the center of the country move in predictable patterns. When I lived in Minneapolis, we knew the day before that a front was cruising in from the Dakotas.
Here in Atlanta you don't really know whether the stuff is goign to come from the west, the south, the north, or the east, and they have these things called "pop-up" thunderstorms that sort of spontaneously appear out of nowhere. Something about it being 90+F and humid all the time...
It just doesn't get any better than that.
:-)
Okay, maybe a well-timed L2000,M1,M1. Or actually being able to type BAGN^H^H^H^HBANG the first time.
Maybe the problem is the specific RTS games you're playing (e.g., C&C rather than TA). :-)
A decent RTS isn't a clickfest, but rather a strategic conflict over resources. Let the units do the work, and make the high-level decisions.
Okay, I exaggerated. I only have 4 Discman players + 2 stereo components + 1 car stereo + 7 PCs + 3 boomboxes + 2 alarm clocks = 19 CD players. :-) The 20th is a DVD player which also plays CDs. Does that count?
No. Postini has a feature specifically for mailing lists: you can specify the single TO or FROM address which is associated with that list, and Postini will pass everything which contains the address specified for that list.
Here's the screen screen that Postini uses.
Even if a new format came out that was somehow better than the classic CD format, my investment is such that a new format is probably not worth converting to. The conversion to CDs from LPs and tapes made sense -- no more crackling from dust, and no more linear-access media. But CDs are already digital, random-access, small, and reliable. All a DVD offers is more space, something a classic album doesn't need (and something which I can already provide with several of my CD players using data CDs with MP3 files).
Get the authors of such software to port them to Linux instead of writing them exclusively for Windows!
It's quite simple. Get authors to write more software for Linux, and you'll have more software to play with.
Postini is easily trainable, however. All you need to do is add the sender of each false positive to the pass list, and you're golden. I've been using both SpamAssassin and Postini for a few years now, and Postini does a better job for me over time once it's been properly trained.
...the 8th of every month this year is x86 in the US (where X = 1 to 12). :-)
Wow, that map is seriously misleading. I live in a suburb of Atlanta which is shown as orange (4-6 providers), but the only two providers I'm aware of in our area are Comcast (cable) and BellSouth (DSL). That's two.
:-(
:-)
The same situation existed when I lived five miles away in a different city (different cable company, same number of choices: two). That sure ain't four.
The map also shows most of the Twin Cities metro as orange, but I know for a fact that my old townhouse only had Qwest DSL and RoadRunner available, and there are LOTS of places that have cablemodem but no DSL at all due to distance from the CO or old POTS infrastructure that doesn't support a DSL connection.
I think the map was produced by an extreme optimist.
It isn't just some movie that I want to watch, but I want all the materials associated with it (the bonus stuff found on a typical DVD) along with the sense of ownership that DVD's currently give me.
While being able to watch streaming video is nice, such streaming only suppliments DVDs (in my view) and doesn't directly replace them.
I played nose guard and middle linebacker in school. While there *is* a lot of down time in American football, it's quite possible to make up for it with increased effort. Get in my way at the wrong time, and you WILL remember it afterwards. :-)
:-) :-) ;-)
And yes, it's lots of fun as a defensive lineman to fsck with the center's mind...
Unlike most other sports where there is continuous action, American football involves fairly extreme energy releases that I suspect are hard to fully appreciate unless you've been a part of the action...