This is soooo true. Purify is a bitch to use on NT. Most of the leaks and bad stuff come from MFC and NT DLLs. Purify can maintain a list of known problems to ignore, but as a developer, you still know the problems are there and they do not inspire confidence in Microsoft or its developers...:-(
Anyone who has programmed for Windows will tell you that there is so much kruft all over their API's (in order to remain compatible with Win16), the programming is an nightmare. Its Microsoft's marketing dumps technology every six months, renames it and resurrects it.
Many users find sites via searching, not typing.
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$7.5m for Domain Name
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· Score: 2
Your site's domain name doesn't matter if users find you via search engines, other site links, or bookmarks! I think that generic names like Business.com don't have that much "power". Who would type in Business.com, unless they already knew about it? A user would probably go to AltaVista/Yahoo/whatever and search for "business". Search engines don't care what your domain name is..
The police have successfully secured downtown Seattle. Unfortunately, the violent crowd of "several hundred" people have not dispersed, they have simply moved. The unruly crowd is now moving into Capitol Hill, a densely populated neighborhood. Unfortunately, I live in Capitol Hill! I am actually kinda scared tongith.. The crowd doesn't look like they are going to leave anytime soon.
According to local news, 300 armed state troopers will join Seattle's 1,300 police to enforce the curfew. 200 unarmed national guard will arrive at dawn to help police control crowds tomorrow.
This could very well happen now. The Seattle mayor has declared a city-wide state of emergency. The police will enforce a downtown curfew starting at 7:00pm tonight. In case any of you live in Seattle, the curfew area extends from Yesler up to Denny and from I-5 down to the waterfront.
According to the local Seattle news, the police have admitted to using tear gas on protesters. Some protesters have created human chains to block I-5 freeway entrances. The 20,000 person AFL-CIO march has been very peaceful, but a group of self-proclaimed anarachists are vandalizing downtown. There are about 30 "anarchists", dressed in black hooded sweatshirts and hiding behind gasmasks, smashing store windows (such as GAP and Starbacks) and spraypainting police cars and news cameras! They don't seem to have a cause or message; they just wanna have fun. One "anarachist" spoke with a news reporter and rambled about the Bush family being Nazis. Do we get to invoke Godwin's Law on these wanna-be anarchists?:-)
There are about 3000-6000 protesters in downtown Seattle, but 20,000 more people now at Memorial Stadium for a huge rally and parade. The parade planned for this afternoon expects between 20,000 and 50,000 marchers. My previous comment about "50,000 people by week's end" was wrong. Expect 50,000 people by this afternoon.
I live in Seattle and there are (according to police estimates on the local news) 3000-6000 protesters downtown. The city expects 50,000 people by weeks end. WAT teams and police in riot gear have blocked the streets near the Seattle Convention Center. They have built barricades using city busses, but protesters have climbed on top of the busses. Many downtown intersections have been "owned" by protesters, too, and traffic is blocked. There have only been a few arrests, but the news estimates that protesters outnumber police 10:1.
We have nothing to fear from Microsoft's threats about a single, unified Windows source base.
Everyone knows that the current Windows family is not based on a single source code base. From Windows 3.1, 95, OSR2, 98, NT, Embedded NT ("NT for Toasters"), Embedded CE, 2000, Millenium, Neptune,... Microsoft has its hands full maintaining app compatibility across multiple code bases. Microsoft has been preaching for years that Windows 2000 will be the convergence of Windows and NT for servers, workstations, and home computers. This is a lie! Microsoft continues to develop Windows 9x (under the codename Millenium) for home users. This product will probably be called something like "Windows 2000" (but without the "Professional" or "Server" suffix, just to confuse things more: same product name, different code base!) Microsoft has forked the Windows 2000 code slightly for Win2K Professional, Server, Advanced Server, and Datacenter. Microsoft has already forked the Windows 2000 code for Win64 because the Win32 code is not 64-bit friendly. Microsoft has forked the Windows 2000 code yet again for Neptune, the codename for "NT Consumer" product that is to ship after Millenium (Windows 9x cum "Windows 2000 Consumer").
Microsoft encircles AOL, crushing them entirely in the media and possibly even in the courts, depending on the trap they've set.
I bet you are right. I'm just curious to hear people's theories about what kind of trap Microsoft has set. Microsoft is a very deliberate company. Their retreat is probably a pseudo-defeat to look weak for the DOJ trial. Plus, Microsoft recognizes the Internet train is leaving without BillG. They want to own the Internet, or at least its users, at any cost. Linux and Apache are far more popular on the Internet than Windows NT and IIS. I've read some recent articles pointing out how Microsoft is retargeting at corporate intranets with Windows 2000 and the ActiveDirectory, trying to win the Internet war from the "inside out". Maybe Microsoft is working on an IM strategy or product that involves intranet or business features. B2B is a bigger, richer market than B2C (or C2C?).
Microsoft is so focused on rushing Windows 2000 out the door, how could they have time/people to test "every" NT application on new NT4 service packs? Remember how crappy SP4 was? SP5 was OK because it was much smaller, but I'm not surprised SP6 is crappy. The press is turning up the heat as Microsoft continues to slip the Windows 2000 ship date. If you were Microsoft what would you do, focus on NT4 SPs or Windows 2000? From a financial perspective, Microsoft will make big cash money with Windows 2000, while NT4 SP development time/people/equipment is just a cash sinkhole.
Also, to quote Microsoft's own Jim McCarthy in Dynamics of Software Development (an insightful but "fluffy" book, BTW): "Shipping a product is like watching a large-sized serving of quivering Jell-O. Gradually, the Jell-O slows its vibrations. But then you fix a bunch of bugs, and it starts quivering again. Then slowly, ever so slowly, the quivering subsides. You wait, focused and primed, for the instant the Jell-O stops shaking. Then... you ship it! And then it starts shaking again."
Maybe the libc maintainers should remove unsafe functions like strcpy() and gets() from the standard C library. Force developers to use safer versions like strncpy(). Am I overlooking something here? Isn't strcpy() the most common buffer overflow problem?
This would be a painful libc upgrade, but maybe it would be worthwhile. A possible upgrade path could be to leave strcpy() and friends in "libc7", but remove it from the headers. This would allow binary compatibility, but not source compatibility. Then in "libc8", remove the code for strcpy() and friends from the actual.so library! Backwards compatibility is important, but sometimes safety requires a little extra work.
It's called WOW (Windows On Windows). All Win16 apps run in the same address space (WOWEXEC) because many Win16 apps were designed to share data between processes. IPC was super-easy on Win16 because there is no boundary between processes. A Win16 app can simply send a pointer address (maybe via a Windows message) to another app. The other Win16 app can simply deference the pointer. cheap IPC.
Building daily just means the the production/stable source tree builds correctly. It does not mean that all checked out source code compiles or must be checked in daily. Groups that do daily builds often have two source trees: production/stable and dev/current. When code is solid, it can be moved from the dev/current tree to the production/stable. This method is as old as the sun. Check out Fred Brook's Mythical Man-Month. Published in 1975, he describes using a production source tree and a "developer sandbox". The point of daily builds is to have recent, but stable, software builds for internal "dogfooding".
The most recent Linux 2.3.25 kernel does not have ext3. ext3 is still way alpha. Linux 2.3 is already under feature freeze. If Linus plans to release Linux 2.4 by 2000 Q1, I doubt ext3 will be part of it.
I read some comment from web guru Philip Greenspun that claimed Yahoo Stores' backend code was written in Common Lisp. Just a fun bit of trivia.:-)
Covad has been a nightmare.
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VDSL Demoed
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· Score: 2
I live in Seattle and I too live "too far" from the US West DSL hubs. Then I found out that Covad does support my area. My roommates and I immediately signed up for 784kbps DSL. Unfortunately, Covad's customer service has been horrendous. We signed up two months ago and still don't have DSL. Covad has postponed our installation date twice due to "facility problems". Currently, we're hanging in the wind with no planned installation date.
And where is Covad's network? Apparently, they get the "last mile" network from US West, the same US West that didn't want to give us DSL service but will give DSL network support to Covad for the same area!?
(sorry for venting, they're holding my bandwidth hostage:-)
As someone else mentioned, Microsoft Research is not "product-focused". They have a 5-10 year outlook. Some of their technology, though, has been incorporated in real Microsoft products. I believe the Office grammar checker, Office paper clip help (not necessarily the paper clip icon, but the "smart" help), and the Microsoft Chat avatars.
Slashdot Mirror
This is soooo true. Purify is a bitch to use on NT. Most of the leaks and bad stuff come from MFC and NT DLLs. Purify can maintain a list of known problems to ignore, but as a developer, you still know the problems are there and they do not inspire confidence in Microsoft or its developers... :-(
Anyone who has programmed for Windows will tell you that there is so much kruft all over their API's (in order to remain compatible with Win16), the programming is an nightmare. Its Microsoft's marketing dumps technology every six months, renames it and resurrects it.
Amen..
True, Microsoft did get it wrong. Microsoft has "standard" Windows protocols and standards, but a varity of Microsoft implementations!
Windows 3.1, 95, 98, CE, NT, 2000?
ODBC, OLEDB, ADO, XDO?
DCE, OLE, COM, DCOM, ActiveX, COM+, SOAP/XML-RPC?
;-)
Did I forget anything?
They are also NASA spin-offs.
Your site's domain name doesn't matter if users find you via search engines, other site links, or bookmarks! I think that generic names like Business.com don't have that much "power". Who would type in Business.com, unless they already knew about it? A user would probably go to AltaVista/Yahoo/whatever and search for "business". Search engines don't care what your domain name is..
The police have successfully secured downtown Seattle. Unfortunately, the violent crowd of "several hundred" people have not dispersed, they have simply moved. The unruly crowd is now moving into Capitol Hill, a densely populated neighborhood. Unfortunately, I live in Capitol Hill! I am actually kinda scared tongith.. The crowd doesn't look like they are going to leave anytime soon.
:-(
According to local news, 300 armed state troopers will join Seattle's 1,300 police to enforce the curfew. 200 unarmed national guard will arrive at dawn to help police control crowds tomorrow.
This could very well happen now. The Seattle mayor has declared a city-wide state of emergency. The police will enforce a downtown curfew starting at 7:00pm tonight. In case any of you live in Seattle, the curfew area extends from Yesler up to Denny and from I-5 down to the waterfront.
According to the local Seattle news, the police have admitted to using tear gas on protesters. Some protesters have created human chains to block I-5 freeway entrances. The 20,000 person AFL-CIO march has been very peaceful, but a group of self-proclaimed anarachists are vandalizing downtown. There are about 30 "anarchists", dressed in black hooded sweatshirts and hiding behind gasmasks, smashing store windows (such as GAP and Starbacks) and spraypainting police cars and news cameras! They don't seem to have a cause or message; they just wanna have fun. One "anarachist" spoke with a news reporter and rambled about the Bush family being Nazis. Do we get to invoke Godwin's Law on these wanna-be anarchists? :-)
There are about 3000-6000 protesters in downtown Seattle, but 20,000 more people now at Memorial Stadium for a huge rally and parade. The parade planned for this afternoon expects between 20,000 and 50,000 marchers. My previous comment about "50,000 people by week's end" was wrong. Expect 50,000 people by this afternoon.
More info from Wired: Tear Gas Debuts at WTO.
I live in Seattle and there are (according to police estimates on the local news) 3000-6000 protesters downtown. The city expects 50,000 people by weeks end. WAT teams and police in riot gear have blocked the streets near the Seattle Convention Center. They have built barricades using city busses, but protesters have climbed on top of the busses. Many downtown intersections have been "owned" by protesters, too, and traffic is blocked. There have only been a few arrests, but the news estimates that protesters outnumber police 10:1.
Those trust fund kiddies playing rastafarian.
Alan Cooper is Da Man! I absolutely love "About Face : The Essentials of User Interface Design", but his new book "The Inmates Are Running the Asylum : Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How To Restore The Sanity" just seems to rehash his old material. Check out his company's web site: www.cooper.com
We have nothing to fear from Microsoft's threats about a single, unified Windows source base.
... Microsoft has its hands full maintaining app compatibility across multiple code bases. Microsoft has been preaching for years that Windows 2000 will be the convergence of Windows and NT for servers, workstations, and home computers. This is a lie! Microsoft continues to develop Windows 9x (under the codename Millenium) for home users. This product will probably be called something like "Windows 2000" (but without the "Professional" or "Server" suffix, just to confuse things more: same product name, different code base!) Microsoft has forked the Windows 2000 code slightly for Win2K Professional, Server, Advanced Server, and Datacenter. Microsoft has already forked the Windows 2000 code for Win64 because the Win32 code is not 64-bit friendly. Microsoft has forked the Windows 2000 code yet again for Neptune, the codename for "NT Consumer" product that is to ship after Millenium (Windows 9x cum "Windows 2000 Consumer").
Everyone knows that the current Windows family is not based on a single source code base. From Windows 3.1, 95, OSR2, 98, NT, Embedded NT ("NT for Toasters"), Embedded CE, 2000, Millenium, Neptune,
The Windows source code is a brittle stack of cards. For more Windows 2000 ramblings, see Nicholas Petreley's article Will Windows NT develop into a super-OS or an unmanageable disaster?.
Microsoft encircles AOL, crushing them entirely in the media and possibly even in the courts, depending on the trap they've set.
I bet you are right. I'm just curious to hear people's theories about what kind of trap Microsoft has set. Microsoft is a very deliberate company. Their retreat is probably a pseudo-defeat to look weak for the DOJ trial. Plus, Microsoft recognizes the Internet train is leaving without BillG. They want to own the Internet, or at least its users, at any cost. Linux and Apache are far more popular on the Internet than Windows NT and IIS. I've read some recent articles pointing out how Microsoft is retargeting at corporate intranets with Windows 2000 and the ActiveDirectory, trying to win the Internet war from the "inside out". Maybe Microsoft is working on an IM strategy or product that involves intranet or business features. B2B is a bigger, richer market than B2C (or C2C?).
Microsoft is so focused on rushing Windows 2000 out the door, how could they have time/people to test "every" NT application on new NT4 service packs? Remember how crappy SP4 was? SP5 was OK because it was much smaller, but I'm not surprised SP6 is crappy. The press is turning up the heat as Microsoft continues to slip the Windows 2000 ship date. If you were Microsoft what would you do, focus on NT4 SPs or Windows 2000? From a financial perspective, Microsoft will make big cash money with Windows 2000, while NT4 SP development time/people/equipment is just a cash sinkhole.
Windows NT is a huge house of cards. Microsoft can't touch the code without a few cards falling. Here is a great article by Nicholas Petreley from the now defunct magazine "NC World": Will Windows NT develop into a super-OS or an unmanageable disaster?
Also, to quote Microsoft's own Jim McCarthy in Dynamics of Software Development (an insightful but "fluffy" book, BTW): "Shipping a product is like watching a large-sized serving of quivering Jell-O. Gradually, the Jell-O slows its vibrations. But then you fix a bunch of bugs, and it starts quivering again. Then slowly, ever so slowly, the quivering subsides. You wait, focused and primed, for the instant the Jell-O stops shaking. Then... you ship it! And then it starts shaking again."
Maybe the libc maintainers should remove unsafe functions like strcpy() and gets() from the standard C library. Force developers to use safer versions like strncpy(). Am I overlooking something here? Isn't strcpy() the most common buffer overflow problem?
.so library! Backwards compatibility is important, but sometimes safety requires a little extra work.
This would be a painful libc upgrade, but maybe it would be worthwhile. A possible upgrade path could be to leave strcpy() and friends in "libc7", but remove it from the headers. This would allow binary compatibility, but not source compatibility. Then in "libc8", remove the code for strcpy() and friends from the actual
It's called WOW (Windows On Windows). All Win16 apps run in the same address space (WOWEXEC) because many Win16 apps were designed to share data between processes. IPC was super-easy on Win16 because there is no boundary between processes. A Win16 app can simply send a pointer address (maybe via a Windows message) to another app. The other Win16 app can simply deference the pointer. cheap IPC.
Building daily just means the the production/stable source tree builds correctly. It does not mean that all checked out source code compiles or must be checked in daily. Groups that do daily builds often have two source trees: production/stable and dev/current. When code is solid, it can be moved from the dev/current tree to the production/stable. This method is as old as the sun. Check out Fred Brook's Mythical Man-Month . Published in 1975, he describes using a production source tree and a "developer sandbox". The point of daily builds is to have recent, but stable, software builds for internal "dogfooding".
The most recent Linux 2.3.25 kernel does not have ext3. ext3 is still way alpha. Linux 2.3 is already under feature freeze. If Linus plans to release Linux 2.4 by 2000 Q1, I doubt ext3 will be part of it.
;-)
I read some comment from web guru Philip Greenspun that claimed Yahoo Stores' backend code was written in Common Lisp. Just a fun bit of trivia. :-)
I live in Seattle and I too live "too far" from the US West DSL hubs. Then I found out that Covad does support my area. My roommates and I immediately signed up for 784kbps DSL. Unfortunately, Covad's customer service has been horrendous. We signed up two months ago and still don't have DSL. Covad has postponed our installation date twice due to "facility problems". Currently, we're hanging in the wind with no planned installation date.
:-)
And where is Covad's network? Apparently, they get the "last mile" network from US West, the same US West that didn't want to give us DSL service but will give DSL network support to Covad for the same area!?
(sorry for venting, they're holding my bandwidth hostage
As someone else mentioned, Microsoft Research is not "product-focused". They have a 5-10 year outlook. Some of their technology, though, has been incorporated in real Microsoft products. I believe the Office grammar checker, Office paper clip help (not necessarily the paper clip icon, but the "smart" help), and the Microsoft Chat avatars.