Slashdot comments have made me aware of how little Americans know about
the activities of their own government. Yet surprisingly those with little
awareness often have extremely strong and angry opinions.
Michael Moore's information about the involvement of Saudis with the
Bush family came from this book:
The Iron Triangle: Inside the secret world of The Carlyle Group
by Dan Briody, Wiley, 2003, Hoboken, New Jersey, USA. Reviews:
Powell'sBarnes
& NobleAmazon
With what don't you agree concerning this book? Do you doubt that both
the rich Saudis and the Bush family have investments in oil and weapons
companies? Michael Moore's movie showed network footage of George W. Bush and
a Saudi holding hands. Do you doubt that Bush holds hands with Saudis? Then
read these articles from The Christian Science
Monitor and CBS
News. The Bush family calls one of the Saudis "Bandar Bush", and believes
that he is their friend; that's completely untrue of course. Fifteen of the 18
attackers of the 9/11 bombings were Saudis, and some rich Saudis have
supported al Qaeda.
Unocal, and many other oil companies, want to build a pipeline across
Afghanistan, because that is the shortest route from rich oil fields to
Pakistan and the ocean, with the exception of through unsafe Iran. Do you doubt this?
Notice: The links to the book are tied to my accounts with the
booksellers. If you buy the book and don't want me to have a commission, do a
search for the book to get a link that is not connected with me. After a year,
I have made exactly $0.00 from these arrangements. I spent months reading the
books and writing short reviews of them for my article Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
The executive gets high pay for poor performance. He or she escapes responsibility for the poor performance, because it is arranged that the poor performance won't be noticed until the executive has had a chance to get a job elsewhere.
Since it may not be obvious to those who are reading fast, the quote above, "The crippling loss of nearly one-third of their staff have left our courts unable to hear criminal cases such as car theft, shoplifting, prostitution, fraud and identity theft" contains an (obvious) lie. The courts represented that losing one-third of their staff caused them not to be able to handle the "less-important" cases. In reality, all court business was degraded, and court employees at all levels, including the Oregon Supreme Court, often complained of not being able to do a sufficient job.
Note that outsourcing is the same kind of corruption as is thoroughly
discussed in the book about corporate corruption mentioned above. Programmers
in India can produce good work, that's not the issue.
The issue is that the corrupt corporate manager wants to put a
distance between himself and managing programming. Managing programming is
time-consuming and requires serious concern and considerable technical
knowledge and teamwork. If the programming department remains inside the
company, the corrupt manager will be responsible. If the programming is
outsourced, a level of deniability is introduced.
That extra level of bureaucracy and distance has four results:
Any serious project will be at least a partial failure, because no project
plan defines everything. In serious progamming projects, there is a need for
additional research and creative decision-making every few hours, and usually
much more frequently.
The corrupt manager can avoid responsibility, and can easily find a job at
a new company by the time the low quality of the software becomes generally
known.
The contracting company has assured that they will have an Indian
competitor (if the outsourcing is to India), because the outsourcing defines
for another company what is needed for that particular application.
It's all part of a wider corruption. Large corrupters spend huge amounts
to get lazy judges elected, and work for the defeat of judges who do a good
job.
Part of the way corruption of the courts is accomplished by not giving
the courts enough money to operate. A 2003-06-24 op-ed article by Charles
Williamson, then president of the Oregon State Bar, in The Oregonian, the
Northwest's largest newspaper, said, "The crippling loss of nearly
one-third of their staff have left our courts unable to hear criminal cases
such as car theft, shoplifting, prostitution, fraud and identity theft."
The corruption of the patent office is part of the same thing. Large
corrupt corporations want stupid patents because they can scare others away
from coming close to their technology. They don't care if they lose a few
court cases. Taking something to court is so expensive that they win just
because of the threat.
Someone who is outside the U.S. a lot does not want a U.S. monthly plan. T-Mobile seems to be the best "Pay As You Go" plan for a person with that requirement.
I wonder if it would be possible to get T-Mobile to sell a V188 with pay-as-you-go?
Important: It costs only $15 to get a phone unlocked, so no need to pay a lot more for an unlocked phone, provided there are no other difficulties, such as legality. My understanding is that it is not illegal to unlock a phone.
"Are there any World-Compatible GSM cellular telephones that don't offer much beyond calling and an address book?""
Choose a quad band phone like the Motorola V330 and have it unlocked, so that it can be used with other carriers. When you arrive in another country, choose a local GSM provider, and install their proprietary module in your phone; it's easy, you can do it yourself or have the phone provider employee do it. The Motorola V330 can operate on these bands: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz. That gives you the maximum opportunity in any city in the world.
It's best not to worry about minimal features. You can't fight the crazy marketing plans.
I suggest you try the T-Mobile Pay-As-You-Go Plan if you don't use a lot of minutes.
You definitely want GSM, the service is better. You definitely want a new phone, the sound quality is far better.
Ask around for someone in your city who will unlock your phone. Locking a phone without your knowledge should be illegal, companies don't warn customers that they are buying locked equipment.
This is strong criticism from an AC, but not based on fact.
I talk to Intel employees because I meet them socially. I've discussed the issues mentioned extensively with them over the years. You would have a difficult time convincing them they don't live here.
I buy from AMD generally.
I wasn't "shopping online" with Intel. I was visiting a web site for resellers of Intel products.
The article is just what is called public relations. Someone is paid to put a dishonest view into the news. One of the most recent I've seen is a story supposedly discussing scientific research which said that drinking fruit juices will prevent Alzheimer's disease. Immediately fruit juice sales will increase.
The Intel processor development groups are half in Portland and half in the bay area, an Intel employee told me. Intel's experimental fab group is in Portland, apparently.
I reformatted the parent comment so that I could read it, with slight editing:
"Remember, too, though, that while AMD may have superior products in certain, specific areas, since it shares manufacturing/fabrication capability with IBM, it has run into many of the same manufacturing and supply problems as IBM. Superior products are fine - if you can actually ship them. Intel, while you can cherry-pick instances of supply problems, has proven itself to be a stable and consistent supplier."
Please, see product releases over the last few years and see who has had more delayed product releases? 1GHz, what 1GHz Pentium 3 (Vapor ware), Merced (Vapor Ware), Xean X64 (vapor ware),... dude... get a clue, AMD has kicked Intel's a$$ on launches.
AMD does not share manufacturing FAB capacity with IBM, AMD uses IBM Fab technology i.e. SOI (Silicon on insulator) and IBM's copper interconnect technology.
AMD has it's own FABS, in fact, AMD has one of the largest FABS in the world in Fab 30 at Dresdan, Germany. This whole inability to provide chips is #1 a fallacy and FUD Intel has been using for sometime, the only chip delay of significance that AMD has had in the last decade was the AMD K5, back in 1995, by the way it performed better than the pentium too bad AMD at that point didn't have Fabs 30 and Fab 25, or atleast Fab 25 finished in time.
As for stability, I believe AMD has never introduced a chip that can not divide properly, but Intel has done it twice in the last Decade. All that said, apple is the #12 PC manufacturer, AMD would easily meet Apple demand and have room to spare considering it supplies chips volumes much larger than Apple can demand.
I think that's what fustrates people so much with the Intel / AMD saga is how off many are with their facts. If anything I hope this lawsuit brings to light how erroneous some people are in their fact finding, as no one in their right mind would make a statement that Intel has been more consistent to delivery and produced better quality products in comparison to AMD within the last decade, and especially not in the last 5 years.
Intel began self-destructing several years ago. For
example, in my opinion, the Intel consumer products division released lame,
unfinished products. Eventually Intel reacted to the poor sales by closing the
division.
Like really, really scary horror stories? Here's one more scary than
you've ever seen in film. Intel marketing has become detached from reality.
Intel marketing people go to work every day, but they just pretend to have
meaningful jobs and pretend to be doing something positive for Intel. They are
zombies, and most of them don't appear intelligent enough to know that they
are zombies. If you think this is an exaggeration, read this sentence from a
recent email message from Intel Marketing (I'm talking here about Intel
marketing, not Intel's advertising agency.):
"Pass any three of the four tests before July 26, 2005 and your
company will get a certificate of completion - plus you'll receive an Intel
BunnyPeople Character." Here's an explanation with photo: Intel Bunny People.
Intel has been giving those dolls away for 7 1/2
years. Maybe someone bought a huge number of them?
How many technically-oriented people are motivated by the idea of
receiving a doll? It goes like this: 1) Give Intel marketing your company's
address and phone number and email address, so that they can spam you in the
future. 2) Sit through boring marketing-speak, written by people who don't
know or care about Intel products, or any technical product. 3) Take a test.
4) Get a doll?
Intel management appears to have spun out of control. Apparently it is
now all stock options and company politics, and nothing about actually doing
well. The people in charge don't actually know what they are doing, and
apparently care more about having their executive positions than making good
products.
Intel is known in Portland, Oregon, where it is based, for being
abusive toward its employees. I'm guessing that the present problems really
began about 12 or 15 years ago, when the Intel management, just before an
enormous increase in profits, pleaded broke and reduced the pay of employees
by 10%. Intel is known for over-working its employees, and pressing them to
work very long hours.
Once about 2 years ago, I decided to ask Intel marketing people to fix
a problem with the motherboard web site. Intel's ordering model number, used
when you place an order with a distributor, was nowhere connected on the web
site with the marketing model number, like 845BGL. I asked them to fix that. I
talked to several marketing employees, all of whom clearly did not intend to
do any real work.
I could tell many, many stories about Intel's sink into depression,
but that's enough for now. I will have to say, however, that Microsoft's
marketing people are worse.
The attraction of making more bomb-making materials is that the Bush family and friends have long had investments in weapons makers. Largely secret production like this allows for very high profits that can be hidden from those who pay: the taxpayers.
My experience is that Symantec managers do not know how to run a technical company. I've had so many problems with Symantec products that I no longer have any involvement with them.
Whenever I've had to call Symantec for customer service or technical support, I've found them to be extremely aggressive and abusive and also close to worthless.
My experience is that Symantec has a long history of serious problems with new releases. Apparently the company managers are unwilling to hire enough technical staff.
"If you're only interested in deep coding and you want to remain in your cubicle all day, there are a shrinking number of jobs for you," said Diane Morello, Gartner vice president of research.
My guess is that Diane Morello knows nothing whatsoever about programming, or even about the problems encountered during programming.
Want a command language for Windows? Try the free, open source AutoIt, which is amazingly
complete and well-developed. AutoIt comes with an autocompletion
IDE that automatically displays function usage information. The version
that includes the IDE installs easily. AutoIt also has a compiler, which is
also free. See AutoIt on Sourceforge.
Want Hotkey macros? Try the related free program, AutoHotKey.
After all these years, Slashdot is still quite buggy. It posted my comment under the wrong parent, so I posting it again here, where it will make sense. My comment:
I agree, Microsoft's command-line interface will be like IE. The first
release version of a Microsoft program is, in my opinion, more like a
pre-pre-alpha than a version that should be released.
Internet Explorer is following this pattern exactly. By version 7, IE
will be renamed to make it sound completely new, perhaps, and will actually be
Microsoft's first relatively bug-free browser. Version 7.0 of Microsoft
Internet Explorer should actually be called version 1.0.
Perhaps 2 years ago I was talking with some top-level Microsoft
technical support representatives. I gave them a list of 12 ways Microsoft's
command line interface (which everyone calls DOS) did not fully support a
32-bit OS. They agreed and seemed embarrassed.
I also sent a message to a group inside Microsoft about this. I said
that the Linux and BSD command-line processors were relatively bug-free, and
had far more features. Surprisingly, I got a response indicating that they too
thought that Windows should not have a primitive toy command-line interface
like DOS.
Apparently having a toy command-line interface has been causing
some discomfort inside Microsoft.
Expect Microsoft's new command-line interface to follow the same
pattern. It will be very, very buggy. Maybe the U.S. government's spy agencies
will direct Microsoft to include security vulnerabilities. In any case, if
history is any guide, the new command-line interface will be quite usable
about 3 years after release, and by about version 7 will be fairly bug-free
and feature-complete.
(Of course, Microsoft Word has not followed this pattern.
Even after many versions, it is still extremely quirky. My
understanding is that the code in Word is such an extreme mess that there
is no corporate will to fix it.)
Want an example of DOS not fully supporting a 32-bit OS? Try this:
SUBST R: C:\
This assigns the drive letter R: to the root folder of the C: drive. This kind
of substitution is often very valuable in taking some of the drudgery out of
corporate operations.
However, that command also destroys the operation of the Recycle bin.
It seems to be reversible, however, so there appears to be no harm in trying
it, which I have done on several computers with no ill effects that I was able
to detect.
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot comments have made me aware of how little Americans know about the activities of their own government. Yet surprisingly those with little awareness often have extremely strong and angry opinions.
Michael Moore's information about the involvement of Saudis with the Bush family came from this book:
The Iron Triangle: Inside the secret world of The Carlyle Group by Dan Briody, Wiley, 2003, Hoboken, New Jersey, USA. Reviews: Powell's Barnes & Noble Amazon
With what don't you agree concerning this book? Do you doubt that both the rich Saudis and the Bush family have investments in oil and weapons companies? Michael Moore's movie showed network footage of George W. Bush and a Saudi holding hands. Do you doubt that Bush holds hands with Saudis? Then read these articles from The Christian Science Monitor and CBS News. The Bush family calls one of the Saudis "Bandar Bush", and believes that he is their friend; that's completely untrue of course. Fifteen of the 18 attackers of the 9/11 bombings were Saudis, and some rich Saudis have supported al Qaeda.
Unocal, and many other oil companies, want to build a pipeline across Afghanistan, because that is the shortest route from rich oil fields to Pakistan and the ocean, with the exception of through unsafe Iran. Do you doubt this?
Notice: The links to the book are tied to my accounts with the booksellers. If you buy the book and don't want me to have a commission, do a search for the book to get a link that is not connected with me. After a year, I have made exactly $0.00 from these arrangements. I spent months reading the books and writing short reviews of them for my article Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
The executive gets high pay for poor performance. He or she escapes responsibility for the poor performance, because it is arranged that the poor performance won't be noticed until the executive has had a chance to get a job elsewhere.
Since it may not be obvious to those who are reading fast, the quote above, "The crippling loss of nearly one-third of their staff have left our courts unable to hear criminal cases such as car theft, shoplifting, prostitution, fraud and identity theft" contains an (obvious) lie. The courts represented that losing one-third of their staff caused them not to be able to handle the "less-important" cases. In reality, all court business was degraded, and court employees at all levels, including the Oregon Supreme Court, often complained of not being able to do a sufficient job.
Here is a better link to the book about corporate corruption, Other People's Money. At Powell's: Other People's Money.
Additional comment:
Note that outsourcing is the same kind of corruption as is thoroughly discussed in the book about corporate corruption mentioned above. Programmers in India can produce good work, that's not the issue.
The issue is that the corrupt corporate manager wants to put a distance between himself and managing programming. Managing programming is time-consuming and requires serious concern and considerable technical knowledge and teamwork. If the programming department remains inside the company, the corrupt manager will be responsible. If the programming is outsourced, a level of deniability is introduced.
That extra level of bureaucracy and distance has four results:
It's all part of a wider corruption. Large corrupters spend huge amounts to get lazy judges elected, and work for the defeat of judges who do a good job.
Part of the way corruption of the courts is accomplished by not giving the courts enough money to operate. A 2003-06-24 op-ed article by Charles Williamson, then president of the Oregon State Bar, in The Oregonian, the Northwest's largest newspaper, said, "The crippling loss of nearly one-third of their staff have left our courts unable to hear criminal cases such as car theft, shoplifting, prostitution, fraud and identity theft."
The corruption of the patent office is part of the same thing. Large corrupt corporations want stupid patents because they can scare others away from coming close to their technology. They don't care if they lose a few court cases. Taking something to court is so expensive that they win just because of the threat.
The book Other People's Money discusses corporate corruption. It's excellent.
35 Books and 3 movies say the Bush administration is the most corrupt the U.S. has ever had: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
Many Americans don't want to know that their government has become corrupt, so you can expect hostile comments if you try to talk about corruption.
Thanks for the response. However, the Motorola V188 is not available with the T-Mobile Pay As You Go wireless service.
Someone who is outside the U.S. a lot does not want a U.S. monthly plan. T-Mobile seems to be the best "Pay As You Go" plan for a person with that requirement.
I wonder if it would be possible to get T-Mobile to sell a V188 with pay-as-you-go?
Important: It costs only $15 to get a phone unlocked, so no need to pay a lot more for an unlocked phone, provided there are no other difficulties, such as legality. My understanding is that it is not illegal to unlock a phone.
Yes, but he wants a "World-Compatible GSM cellular telephone". I agree, I don't want a camera. But I had to accept one to get a 4-band phone.
"Are there any World-Compatible GSM cellular telephones that don't offer much beyond calling and an address book?""
Choose a quad band phone like the Motorola V330 and have it unlocked, so that it can be used with other carriers. When you arrive in another country, choose a local GSM provider, and install their proprietary module in your phone; it's easy, you can do it yourself or have the phone provider employee do it. The Motorola V330 can operate on these bands: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz. That gives you the maximum opportunity in any city in the world.
It's best not to worry about minimal features. You can't fight the crazy marketing plans.
I suggest you try the T-Mobile Pay-As-You-Go Plan if you don't use a lot of minutes.
You definitely want GSM, the service is better. You definitely want a new phone, the sound quality is far better.
Ask around for someone in your city who will unlock your phone. Locking a phone without your knowledge should be illegal, companies don't warn customers that they are buying locked equipment.
This is strong criticism from an AC, but not based on fact.
I talk to Intel employees because I meet them socially. I've discussed the issues mentioned extensively with them over the years. You would have a difficult time convincing them they don't live here.
I buy from AMD generally.
I wasn't "shopping online" with Intel. I was visiting a web site for resellers of Intel products.
The article is just what is called public relations. Someone is paid to put a dishonest view into the news. One of the most recent I've seen is a story supposedly discussing scientific research which said that drinking fruit juices will prevent Alzheimer's disease. Immediately fruit juice sales will increase.
The Intel processor development groups are half in Portland and half in the bay area, an Intel employee told me. Intel's experimental fab group is in Portland, apparently.
I reformatted the parent comment so that I could read it, with slight editing:
"Remember, too, though, that while AMD may have superior products in certain, specific areas, since it shares manufacturing/fabrication capability with IBM, it has run into many of the same manufacturing and supply problems as IBM. Superior products are fine - if you can actually ship them. Intel, while you can cherry-pick instances of supply problems, has proven itself to be a stable and consistent supplier."
Please, see product releases over the last few years and see who has had more delayed product releases? 1GHz, what 1GHz Pentium 3 (Vapor ware), Merced (Vapor Ware), Xean X64 (vapor ware),
AMD does not share manufacturing FAB capacity with IBM, AMD uses IBM Fab technology i.e. SOI (Silicon on insulator) and IBM's copper interconnect technology.
AMD has it's own FABS, in fact, AMD has one of the largest FABS in the world in Fab 30 at Dresdan, Germany. This whole inability to provide chips is #1 a fallacy and FUD Intel has been using for sometime, the only chip delay of significance that AMD has had in the last decade was the AMD K5, back in 1995, by the way it performed better than the pentium too bad AMD at that point didn't have Fabs 30 and Fab 25, or atleast Fab 25 finished in time.
As for stability, I believe AMD has never introduced a chip that can not divide properly, but Intel has done it twice in the last Decade. All that said, apple is the #12 PC manufacturer, AMD would easily meet Apple demand and have room to spare considering it supplies chips volumes much larger than Apple can demand.
I think that's what fustrates people so much with the Intel / AMD saga is how off many are with their facts. If anything I hope this lawsuit brings to light how erroneous some people are in their fact finding, as no one in their right mind would make a statement that Intel has been more consistent to delivery and produced better quality products in comparison to AMD within the last decade, and especially not in the last 5 years.
MOD PARENT UP. Excellent comment.
Intel began self-destructing several years ago. For example, in my opinion, the Intel consumer products division released lame, unfinished products. Eventually Intel reacted to the poor sales by closing the division.
Like really, really scary horror stories? Here's one more scary than you've ever seen in film. Intel marketing has become detached from reality. Intel marketing people go to work every day, but they just pretend to have meaningful jobs and pretend to be doing something positive for Intel. They are zombies, and most of them don't appear intelligent enough to know that they are zombies. If you think this is an exaggeration, read this sentence from a recent email message from Intel Marketing (I'm talking here about Intel marketing, not Intel's advertising agency.):
"Pass any three of the four tests before July 26, 2005 and your company will get a certificate of completion - plus you'll receive an Intel BunnyPeople Character." Here's an explanation with photo: Intel Bunny People.
Intel has been giving those dolls away for 7 1/2 years. Maybe someone bought a huge number of them?
How many technically-oriented people are motivated by the idea of receiving a doll? It goes like this: 1) Give Intel marketing your company's address and phone number and email address, so that they can spam you in the future. 2) Sit through boring marketing-speak, written by people who don't know or care about Intel products, or any technical product. 3) Take a test. 4) Get a doll?
Intel management appears to have spun out of control. Apparently it is now all stock options and company politics, and nothing about actually doing well. The people in charge don't actually know what they are doing, and apparently care more about having their executive positions than making good products.
Intel is known in Portland, Oregon, where it is based, for being abusive toward its employees. I'm guessing that the present problems really began about 12 or 15 years ago, when the Intel management, just before an enormous increase in profits, pleaded broke and reduced the pay of employees by 10%. Intel is known for over-working its employees, and pressing them to work very long hours.
Once about 2 years ago, I decided to ask Intel marketing people to fix a problem with the motherboard web site. Intel's ordering model number, used when you place an order with a distributor, was nowhere connected on the web site with the marketing model number, like 845BGL. I asked them to fix that. I talked to several marketing employees, all of whom clearly did not intend to do any real work.
I could tell many, many stories about Intel's sink into depression, but that's enough for now. I will have to say, however, that Microsoft's marketing people are worse.
The attraction of making more bomb-making materials is that the Bush family and friends have long had investments in weapons makers. Largely secret production like this allows for very high profits that can be hidden from those who pay: the taxpayers.
If you really were worried about Dubya's trigger finger, you would ask that he be impeached.
On topic: How do we all get on the do-not-spam list? We're all under 14 here, right?
Seriously, won't everyone in the world claim that they are children?
DVD life studies: "DVD Rot" / DVD Longevity and Reliability (9/2003).
Keep those drives cool! Mount a fan next to them, using plastic straps for flexibility so as not to vibrate the drive.
I like WD, but now Seagate has 5-year warranties.
My experience is that Symantec managers do not know how to run a technical company. I've had so many problems with Symantec products that I no longer have any involvement with them.
Whenever I've had to call Symantec for customer service or technical support, I've found them to be extremely aggressive and abusive and also close to worthless.
In my experience, stories like this one from Slashdot yesterday are typical: Symantec's AntiVirus 10 Deployment Woes?
My experience is that Symantec has a long history of serious problems with new releases. Apparently the company managers are unwilling to hire enough technical staff.
Brilliant. MOD PARENT UP!
Exactly. Why, then, do "suits" have any power at all? How can someone with no knowledge of technology run a technological company?
"If you're only interested in deep coding and you want to remain in your cubicle all day, there are a shrinking number of jobs for you," said Diane Morello, Gartner vice president of research.
My guess is that Diane Morello knows nothing whatsoever about programming, or even about the problems encountered during programming.
Gartner is known for its dubious research.
Want a command language for Windows? Try the free, open source AutoIt, which is amazingly complete and well-developed. AutoIt comes with an autocompletion IDE that automatically displays function usage information. The version that includes the IDE installs easily. AutoIt also has a compiler, which is also free. See AutoIt on Sourceforge.
Want Hotkey macros? Try the related free program, AutoHotKey.
Both are excellent.
They both are here now, with no Microsoft grief.
It's weird. It jumped around. It was in a different position before.
After all these years, Slashdot is still quite buggy. It posted my comment under the wrong parent, so I posting it again here, where it will make sense. My comment:
I agree, Microsoft's command-line interface will be like IE. The first release version of a Microsoft program is, in my opinion, more like a pre-pre-alpha than a version that should be released.
Internet Explorer is following this pattern exactly. By version 7, IE will be renamed to make it sound completely new, perhaps, and will actually be Microsoft's first relatively bug-free browser. Version 7.0 of Microsoft Internet Explorer should actually be called version 1.0.
Perhaps 2 years ago I was talking with some top-level Microsoft technical support representatives. I gave them a list of 12 ways Microsoft's command line interface (which everyone calls DOS) did not fully support a 32-bit OS. They agreed and seemed embarrassed.
I also sent a message to a group inside Microsoft about this. I said that the Linux and BSD command-line processors were relatively bug-free, and had far more features. Surprisingly, I got a response indicating that they too thought that Windows should not have a primitive toy command-line interface like DOS.
Apparently having a toy command-line interface has been causing some discomfort inside Microsoft.
Expect Microsoft's new command-line interface to follow the same pattern. It will be very, very buggy. Maybe the U.S. government's spy agencies will direct Microsoft to include security vulnerabilities. In any case, if history is any guide, the new command-line interface will be quite usable about 3 years after release, and by about version 7 will be fairly bug-free and feature-complete.
(Of course, Microsoft Word has not followed this pattern. Even after many versions, it is still extremely quirky. My understanding is that the code in Word is such an extreme mess that there is no corporate will to fix it.)
Want an example of DOS not fully supporting a 32-bit OS? Try this:
SUBST R: C:\
This assigns the drive letter R: to the root folder of the C: drive. This kind of substitution is often very valuable in taking some of the drudgery out of corporate operations.
However, that command also destroys the operation of the Recycle bin. It seems to be reversible, however, so there appears to be no harm in trying it, which I have done on several computers with no ill effects that I was able to detect.
To undo the command, enter:
SUBST R: