The thing I did just before looking at your comment was to read this message I just received by email:
"The biggest reason why I'm reluctant to working more on my C++ skills is that Visual C++ is a terrible tool. When setting up a project, one has to spend a considerable time in a non-resizable small modal window and enter lists of space-separated file paths. And that's only in the first few minutes of the use of the program."
I really, really want to like Microsoft's programming tools. If I could like them, it would simplify my life enormously. However, since the original Microsoft Basic, the languages have been sloppy. Another example: Everyone used Borland Assembler because Microsoft Assembler (MASM) would in many cases emit bad binary. The MASM manual was printed on a dot-matrix printer.
LJ: What do you think about the.NET-platform and its child, the
C# language?
BS: I still know too little about.Net to be comfortable writing about it.
LJ: Can C# be a universal
language for everything?
BS: No. It's too high level for
many kinds of systems programming,
too specialized to Windows for many other kinds of programming and
proprietary. That, of course, doesn't mean it cannot be a good tool
for the middle-of-the-road Windows applications it is designed for.
LJ: But.NET is a platform that
can be designed for various OSes. For
example, there are some steps available from Microsoft to make that platform
for FreeBSD. Do you still think that it's too specialized to Windows?
BS: Let's wait and see how things
develop. Currently.Net is a Microsoft
proprietary platform for Windows, and I don't expect to see significant
use of it elsewhere anytime soon.
For me, the major point is that if I develop with.NET, I am going down a road
from which there is no easy return, because of the lock-in associated with
proprietary ways of doing things. If I like everything about that road, fine.
But, if I find significant disadvantages, such as.NET slowly locking me into
using Microsoft operating systems, that's frightening.
Choosing.NET is a bet-the-company decision for many developers.
If you look at the evolution of.NET, it clearly is going in directions that
will make it difficult to work with any other development tools provider, or
any operating system other than Microsoft Windows.
So many people find it difficult to look 5 years ahead. But, after watching
the fortunes of Novell and PowerSoft, to name just two, I find it easy. If.NET were completely successful, that would be the end of Linux. Look at the
talk about.NET having "hooks into the operating system" in the future. It
would be very easy to leave Mono behind.
Those who don't worry about decompilation of byte-code programs probably don't
have much experience with it. It's easy, partly because.NET programs are just
calls to pre-written routines. Read the SD Times article. Here is a quote:
"With.NET we are saying, 'Don't write the code. Connect two things with an
object, and hit a button.' It's a big change."
Programs that are truly compiled are far more difficult to reverse engineer.
The only thing that can save you from inappropriate control by one company are
truly world-wide standards.
This EULA from Microsoft's web site limits free speech: "5.9 Benchmark
Testing. You may not disclose the results of any benchmark test of the.NET
Framework component of the Product to any third party without Microsoft's
prior written approval."
The point is not that this particular clause causes you difficulty. The point
is that it illustrates that Microsoft believes it continues to have enormous
power over its products after you have paid for them.
I've read about overly restrictive Microsoft EULAs, but this is all I can find
now.
Runtime
Runaround. (You can't use a program you wrote in the Microsoft FoxPro
language under Linux.)
Remember this about EULAs: They bind you now. However, maybe the most scary
thing about EULAs is that the vendor can change what they say in the future,
after you have heavily invested in your tools, and cannot easily change.
Basically, you can be held to a contract to which you didn't agree and which
did not exist at the time you first made your decision to use a particular
tool. Yes, you can always use the old tool under the old EULA, but the
computing industry changes fast and you may need an update. If you need the
update, then you either agree to the new EULA or spend the huge amount of time
and money necessary to change tools. Moral: Choose your business partners
carefully. They have serious control over your future. It's like getting
married. You want someone you can trust with your life. When you pick a tool
vendor, you want someone you can trust with your corporate life.
In the first comment to the story linked above, there is mention of a
Microsoft EULA prohibiting benchmarks.
You are prohibited from using VNC, an excellent free program for remotely interacting with a desktop,
with Microsoft Windows XP. See the bottom of this article by Brian Livingston:
"Except as otherwise permitted by the NetMeeting, Remote Assistance, and
Remote Desktop features described below, you
may not use the Product to permit any Device to use, access, display,
or run other executable software residing on the Workstation Computer, nor may
you permit any Device to use, access, display, or run the Product or Product's
user interface, unless the Device has a separate license for the Product."
These are just notes about what Microsoft feels it has a right to do.
"The articles you linked to are simply irrelevant to the.NET discussion."
Your tools provider is a business partner. You should definitely worry about the reputation of your business partners. They will not treat you better than they treat everyone else.
Microsoft doesn't use it for its own products. If.NET is so good, why? If someone said, "I would never eat this, but here is some for you", would you take what was offered?
Programs written in.NET are more easily decompiled. If you discover and
implement an especially good algorithm, others may be able to see what you did. Maybe
that is the reason for number 1, above.
All the tools are proprietary. The programmer and his employer become like dogs on a leash. Their fortunes are tied to the management decisions of the proprietary vendor. Computer company managements often make sink-the-company decisions; consider the.com self-destruction, for example. When your company uses proprietary tools, your company is dependent on the lifestyle of the proprietary vendor's management, the vendor's ability to hire and keep good people, the vendor's financial decisions, and the vendor's estimation of whether they want to invest more in the tools you are using.
My understanding is that the license agreement for.NET prevents a company from using.NET to compete with Microsoft in some areas. But how does a company know if software it develops will eventually compete with Microsoft?
Here are three of last week's articles about Microsoft:
(PDF file): The
Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) urges the Department
of Homeland Security to stop using insecure (Microsoft) products.
The computer industry attempts to educate those in government about the
insecurity of Microsoft software.
So here's the question: Do you want your company to be tied to the fortunes of
Microsoft? If you trust Microsoft to do the right thing for you and your
company, then use Microsoft's proprietary tools.
But remember, Microsoft's products regularly die. Not only do they die, but
they die on schedule. It's assisted suicide:
Windows Desktop Product Life Cycle Support and Availability Policies for
Businesses. Bill Gates is the Dr. Jack Kevorkian of
the software world. Mr. Gates has, for example, decreed the death of Windows 98, which is used by more than
100,000,000 people throughout the world. It's a little like Dr. Kevorkian expecting to do his work with Jennifer Lopez. Hey Dr. Gates, a lot of people think the patient is still very much alive!
The fact that Google is doing something that everyone needs, and doing it very
well, tends to make it impossible for others to compete. An Indian company
would find it difficult or impossible to compete with Google. So, there is an
issue for Indians that they are being held to U.S. law.
Petroleum, for example, is supplied by profit-making companies, but there is
consideration in the U.S. government to define petroleum as a public service,
so that Petroleum companies will be required to give more information about
how they are operating. (That's because we have $2.00 now, with no explanation
about why the price increased, even though the additional Iraqi oil has
entered the market.)
This Google thing is a trivial example, because the facts are that Google, in
cooperation with the Kazaa law firm, are advertising Kazaa Lite, not
suppressing it. Because of them we are now getting something more, not less.
We are getting Kazaa's understanding of the best places to get Kazaa Lite.
Another issue of this same nature, that is not trivial, is that Microsoft has
made an operating system that has become the only operating system used by
most people. An Indian company, or a company from any country, would find it
very, very difficult to compete with Microsoft. So Indians are being bound to
Microsoft's low quality. Indians who use Microsoft Windows are vulnerable to
all the many, many security holes, and departments of the U.S. government are
known to exploit those holes. This is particularly severe for the Indian
government, that may not want to be under hidden control by the U.S.
government. That's why Linux is so extremely important.
We are living in a connected world, and we cannot pretend that we are not
responsible for all the effects of our actions.
The problem is that Google is a public service utility, partly for Indians. An excellent utility like Google tends to exclude others from offering the same service. So, Indians are effectively held to U.S. law.
Oh, you mean that little thing about killing Arabs? Oh, don't worry about that. I'm sure the families of the people killed know that Americans are superior beings who should be able to decide who lives and who dies. Some people think that killing is violence, but it isn't if the U.S. government does it.
It is interesting to note that the version of Google for India also carries a DMCA notice for Kazaa Lite. Does the U.S. government make worldwide law now? The DMCA is just a local law affecting less than 5% of the people in the world.
MSN, like AOL, is not part of the internet. It is a closed and
proprietary network.
Wouldn't it be great if we had a government that cared about standards?
Wouldn't it be great if we had a government that had anti-trust and business
anti-aggression laws and enforced them? Wouldn't it be great if we had a
government that cared about us?
"I know you'll say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."
Not only are MSN and AOL proprietary networks, but they are proprietary
networks that sometimes try to mis-use a public utility to make a profit. If
AOL did not offer access to the Internet public utility, the company would
have long ago gone out of business.
If Microsoft can charge the public to use its private network, can a
government charge Microsoft to use the public utility?
The only reason MSN chat could be profitable is that someone else pays for the
most of the network. The only reason selling tobacco is profitable is that
someone else pays for the health care costs. Licensing MSN chat is,
effectively, a way of diverting public funds to private pockets.
And, as others have said, this is as anti-trust as trying to run Netscape out
of business. Microsoft was convicted of that, but the U.S. government said
that there would be no penalty. No one would use MSN chat if Microsoft didn't
bundle it with its operating system. That should be illegal tying of one
business to another to accomplish monopoly aggression.
If you murder, it's against the law. If you are a big enough murderer, it's
war, and everyone who helps you is a "hero".
When Microsoft abuses us, we begin fighting with each other, instead of taking
serious steps to end the abuse.
One reason people don't like to patch MS software is that the patches or
other changes often change unrelated settings without warning. So, Microsoft
products have insecurity on a psychological level, too. You never know what
new software problem will sneak into your life.
Maybe MS software is not only fundamentally insecure, but also fundamentally
sloppy, and gets part of its insecurity through sloppiness.
The CCIA letter implies that there was intelligence behind the insecurity,
that Microsoft was seeking higher profits: "Unfortunately, there is ample
evidence that for many years economic, marketing, and even anticompetitive
goals were far more important considerations than security for Microsoft's
software developers, and these broader objectives were often achieved at the
cost of adequate security."
However, more and more it appears to me that a lot of the problems with
Microsoft software occur because the programmers have not been allowed to
finish their work. The product is shipped and the programmer re-assigned
rather than clean up the first draft.
I don't think that outsourcing is actually working. Many top managers
don't really understand what they are doing.
American software companies are paying Indians to develop software, but while
the Indians are doing that they are developing re-usable basic routines and
getting basic understanding of particular industries. The first version will
be delivered to the American software company, and the out-of-touch top
managers will say how smart they are. The second version will be delivered to
the American software company, and the out-of-touch top managers will buy new
houses. The third version will be a product that the Indian company made using
the experience paid for by the American software company. And that will be the
end of the American software company. I've seen fabulously successful software
companies die in six months because of mismanagement.
Many outsourced jobs are to do things that would not be required at all if the
company were more efficient. I wouldn't call for technical support if the
product worked.
Microsoft is outsourcing its Partners Newsgroups to China. The Chinese are
answering maybe 15% of the questions with erroneous replies. Maybe 20% of the
questions are given answers that pretend to be answers, but aren't really.
Maybe another 25% of the answers are incomplete, and merely send Microsoft's
customer off to do a research project.
Outsourcing is an extraordinary dangerous practice for Microsoft, because it
further isolates Microsoft top management from reality. I wouldn't be asking
questions of Microsoft technical support if Microsoft products were properly
designed and if there was proper documentation.
Microsoft may look to some people like a rich, successful company, but the
facts are that Microsoft's success is based on having a monopoly. Without a
monopoly, Microsoft is not well-managed enough to survive. Every day Microsoft
gets closer and closer to the day when it will collapse.
Remember, it has happened before that abusive companies have collapsed. At one
time IBM had 100% of the PC market. Then Compaq computers became available.
They were equivalent in operation and cheaper and Compaq was at that time less
abusive to its customers. That was the beginning of the end of IBM's PC
business. In a few years, IBM had 8% of the PC market.
Maybe I can shed some light on why some people have trouble with K7S5A motherboards, and some don't. An ECS salesman told me that it was better to use them with Athlon 1800 XP processors, and not much faster. He may have been talking about earlier revisions. The revisions currently at Fry's are version 5.
I didn't know that the Promise controller is a "semi-software" RAID card. What is the shortcoming of using such cards? What extra value do the 3ware cards provide? Why are software dynamic drives better?
Promise controllers provide a way to make a working backup copy of a Windows XP boot drive. Since Microsoft provides NO way to do that, some method must be found, and Promise controllers provide one of the methods.
When data is "striped" it is spread across more than one drive. If you remove
one drive, the information on it is completely useless because only part of
the information is on each drive. Striped is RAID 0.
When data is "mirrored", any data copied to one drive is copied identically to
the other. Mirrored is RAID 1. If you remove one drive of a mirrored set made
by a Promise controller, both drives have identical information. It is
necessary to configure the one drive as a one-drive set, but after you have
done that (from the BIOS setup of the controller card, before booting the
computer), you can boot from and use either of the one drives normally.
It is possible to put four drives in a set that is both mirrored and striped.
That is RAID 0,1. If you remove two of the drives that are one-half of the
striped mirror, you can use each half of the mirror separately.
RAID 5 is 5 drives striped. Four are used for data, and the 5th is used for
recovery information. If one of the drives fails, the system can continue
without interruption. When the failed drive is replaced, the information on
the other 4 drives is enough to replace the lost data and continue again.
When a mirrored set is read, the controller gets the data from the drive that
has a head closest to the data. Reading is faster. When a mirrored set is
written, the controller writes simultaneously to both drives. There is no
change in write speed.
When a striped set is read or written, the controller positions the heads of
both drives for fastest operation. Reading and writing is faster.
So, mirrored is safer, and faster on reads. Striped gives no data protection,
but faster reads and writes. RAID 5 has both safety and speed. Since there are
5 drives, with 5 independent heads, reading randomly placed data is much
faster.
RAID is "Redundant Array of Independent Drives", or "Redundant Array of
Inexpensive Drives"
If you have other questions, post them as a reply to this message. Probably
lots of people have the same questions.
3Ware controllers are expensive, I note. The cheapest: About $130.
You said, "My only disappointment with the 3ware controller is that one cannot make take a single disk with data on it, add a second disk and tell the controller to mirror the first disk to the second. With the 3ware, you will lose the data on both disks when making a mirror. (So says 3ware tech support.)"
That's a BIG disappointment. The on-board ECS Promise controllers, as well as the adapter cards have that.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting. That is believable to me.
The thing I did just before looking at your comment was to read this message I just received by email:
"The biggest reason why I'm reluctant to working more on my C++ skills is that Visual C++ is a terrible tool. When setting up a project, one has to spend a considerable time in a non-resizable small modal window and enter lists of space-separated file paths. And that's only in the first few minutes of the use of the program."
I really, really want to like Microsoft's programming tools. If I could like them, it would simplify my life enormously. However, since the original Microsoft Basic, the languages have been sloppy. Another example: Everyone used Borland Assembler because Microsoft Assembler (MASM) would in many cases emit bad binary. The MASM manual was printed on a dot-matrix printer.
I just don't see the quality. I wish I did.
Somewhere else, that I can't find now, Mr. Stroustrup made much stronger statements about
From Linux Journal, Interview with Bjarne Stroustrup:
LJ: What do you think about the
BS: I still know too little about .Net to be comfortable writing about it.
LJ: Can C# be a universal language for everything?
BS: No. It's too high level for many kinds of systems programming, too specialized to Windows for many other kinds of programming and proprietary. That, of course, doesn't mean it cannot be a good tool for the middle-of-the-road Windows applications it is designed for.
LJ: But .NET is a platform that
can be designed for various OSes. For
example, there are some steps available from Microsoft to make that platform
for FreeBSD. Do you still think that it's too specialized to Windows?
BS: Let's wait and see how things develop. Currently .Net is a Microsoft
proprietary platform for Windows, and I don't expect to see significant
use of it elsewhere anytime soon.
If I had been thinking more clearly, I would have let Bjarne Stroustrup do the talking, instead of me: What do you think of C#?
Somewhere he has given an opinion about
For me, the major point is that if I develop with
Choosing
If you look at the evolution of
So many people find it difficult to look 5 years ahead. But, after watching the fortunes of Novell and PowerSoft, to name just two, I find it easy. If
Those who don't worry about decompilation of byte-code programs probably don't have much experience with it. It's easy, partly because
Programs that are truly compiled are far more difficult to reverse engineer.
The only thing that can save you from inappropriate control by one company are truly world-wide standards.
Even more info:
This EULA from Microsoft's web site limits free speech: "5.9 Benchmark Testing. You may not disclose the results of any benchmark test of the
The point is not that this particular clause causes you difficulty. The point is that it illustrates that Microsoft believes it continues to have enormous power over its products after you have paid for them.
More information to add to the above:
I've read about overly restrictive Microsoft EULAs, but this is all I can find now.
Runtime Runaround. (You can't use a program you wrote in the Microsoft FoxPro language under Linux.)
Remember this about EULAs: They bind you now. However, maybe the most scary thing about EULAs is that the vendor can change what they say in the future, after you have heavily invested in your tools, and cannot easily change. Basically, you can be held to a contract to which you didn't agree and which did not exist at the time you first made your decision to use a particular tool. Yes, you can always use the old tool under the old EULA, but the computing industry changes fast and you may need an update. If you need the update, then you either agree to the new EULA or spend the huge amount of time and money necessary to change tools. Moral: Choose your business partners carefully. They have serious control over your future. It's like getting married. You want someone you can trust with your life. When you pick a tool vendor, you want someone you can trust with your corporate life.
In the first comment to the story linked above, there is mention of a Microsoft EULA prohibiting benchmarks.
You are prohibited from using VNC, an excellent free program for remotely interacting with a desktop, with Microsoft Windows XP. See the bottom of this article by Brian Livingston: "Except as otherwise permitted by the NetMeeting, Remote Assistance, and Remote Desktop features described below, you may not use the Product to permit any Device to use, access, display, or run other executable software residing on the Workstation Computer, nor may you permit any Device to use, access, display, or run the Product or Product's user interface, unless the Device has a separate license for the Product."
These are just notes about what Microsoft feels it has a right to do.
"The articles you linked to are simply irrelevant to the
Your tools provider is a business partner. You should definitely worry about the reputation of your business partners. They will not treat you better than they treat everyone else.
Great, but look at this line on the Mono page to which you linked:
"Aug 14th, 2003: Mono 0.26 has been released"
Mono is a project, it is not yet an open source method to which you can ally your business.
These seem to be major issues about
- Microsoft doesn't use it for its own products. If
.NET is so good, why? If someone said, "I would never eat this, but here is some for you", would you take what was offered? - Programs written in
.NET are more easily decompiled. If you discover and
implement an especially good algorithm, others may be able to see what you did. Maybe
that is the reason for number 1, above. - All the tools are proprietary. The programmer and his employer become like dogs on a leash. Their fortunes are tied to the management decisions of the proprietary vendor. Computer company managements often make sink-the-company decisions; consider the
.com self-destruction, for example. When your company uses proprietary tools, your company is dependent on the lifestyle of the proprietary vendor's management, the vendor's ability to hire and keep good people, the vendor's financial decisions, and the vendor's estimation of whether they want to invest more in the tools you are using. - My understanding is that the license agreement for
.NET prevents a company from using .NET to compete with Microsoft in some areas. But how does a company know if software it develops will eventually compete with Microsoft?
Here are three of last week's articles about Microsoft:- Microsoft Windows: Insecure by Design
- (PDF file): The
Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) urges the Department
of Homeland Security to stop using insecure (Microsoft) products.
-
Stupid
Microsoft Tricks -- Why the Richest Company on Earth Feels it Needs to
Cheat
So here's the question: Do you want your company to be tied to the fortunes of Microsoft? If you trust Microsoft to do the right thing for you and your company, then use Microsoft's proprietary tools.The mainstream media is starting to realize that Microsoft products are especially insecure.
The computer industry attempts to educate those in government about the insecurity of Microsoft software.
A famous industry columnist exposes an example of Microsoft's apparent dishonesty. When ordered by a court to produce all its email records concerning a company that alleges theft by Microsoft, there was a 35-week gap.
But remember, Microsoft's products regularly die. Not only do they die, but they die on schedule. It's assisted suicide: Windows Desktop Product Life Cycle Support and Availability Policies for Businesses. Bill Gates is the Dr. Jack Kevorkian of the software world. Mr. Gates has, for example, decreed the death of Windows 98, which is used by more than 100,000,000 people throughout the world. It's a little like Dr. Kevorkian expecting to do his work with Jennifer Lopez. Hey Dr. Gates, a lot of people think the patient is still very much alive!
Open source means never having to bark.
Whoever marked this as Flamebait??? It is clearly humor.
Using a proprietary compiler is like being a dog on a leash. Anytime they yank your chain, you go along.
Until they can build in compatibility with Microsoft vulnerabilities, you are welcome to use the Linux virus. It works on the honor system:
The fact that Google is doing something that everyone needs, and doing it very well, tends to make it impossible for others to compete. An Indian company would find it difficult or impossible to compete with Google. So, there is an issue for Indians that they are being held to U.S. law.
Petroleum, for example, is supplied by profit-making companies, but there is consideration in the U.S. government to define petroleum as a public service, so that Petroleum companies will be required to give more information about how they are operating. (That's because we have $2.00 now, with no explanation about why the price increased, even though the additional Iraqi oil has entered the market.)
This Google thing is a trivial example, because the facts are that Google, in cooperation with the Kazaa law firm, are advertising Kazaa Lite, not suppressing it. Because of them we are now getting something more, not less. We are getting Kazaa's understanding of the best places to get Kazaa Lite.
Another issue of this same nature, that is not trivial, is that Microsoft has made an operating system that has become the only operating system used by most people. An Indian company, or a company from any country, would find it very, very difficult to compete with Microsoft. So Indians are being bound to Microsoft's low quality. Indians who use Microsoft Windows are vulnerable to all the many, many security holes, and departments of the U.S. government are known to exploit those holes. This is particularly severe for the Indian government, that may not want to be under hidden control by the U.S. government. That's why Linux is so extremely important.
We are living in a connected world, and we cannot pretend that we are not responsible for all the effects of our actions.
The problem is that Google is a public service utility, partly for Indians. An excellent utility like Google tends to exclude others from offering the same service. So, Indians are effectively held to U.S. law.
"Where have you been for the past two years?"
Oh, you mean that little thing about killing Arabs? Oh, don't worry about that. I'm sure the families of the people killed know that Americans are superior beings who should be able to decide who lives and who dies. Some people think that killing is violence, but it isn't if the U.S. government does it.
Yes, but Indians might object to being held to U.S. laws.
I'm sure there are many people who think that it was nice of the law firm to identify the best sites to download Kazaa Lite.
It is interesting to note that the version of Google for India also carries a DMCA notice for Kazaa Lite. Does the U.S. government make worldwide law now? The DMCA is just a local law affecting less than 5% of the people in the world.
MOD PARENT UP!!!!
MSN, like AOL, is not part of the internet. It is a closed and proprietary network.
Wouldn't it be great if we had a government that cared about standards? Wouldn't it be great if we had a government that had anti-trust and business anti-aggression laws and enforced them? Wouldn't it be great if we had a government that cared about us?
"I know you'll say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."
Not only are MSN and AOL proprietary networks, but they are proprietary networks that sometimes try to mis-use a public utility to make a profit. If AOL did not offer access to the Internet public utility, the company would have long ago gone out of business.
If Microsoft can charge the public to use its private network, can a government charge Microsoft to use the public utility?
The only reason MSN chat could be profitable is that someone else pays for the most of the network. The only reason selling tobacco is profitable is that someone else pays for the health care costs. Licensing MSN chat is, effectively, a way of diverting public funds to private pockets.
And, as others have said, this is as anti-trust as trying to run Netscape out of business. Microsoft was convicted of that, but the U.S. government said that there would be no penalty. No one would use MSN chat if Microsoft didn't bundle it with its operating system. That should be illegal tying of one business to another to accomplish monopoly aggression.
If you murder, it's against the law. If you are a big enough murderer, it's war, and everyone who helps you is a "hero".
When Microsoft abuses us, we begin fighting with each other, instead of taking serious steps to end the abuse.
One reason people don't like to patch MS software is that the patches or other changes often change unrelated settings without warning. So, Microsoft products have insecurity on a psychological level, too. You never know what new software problem will sneak into your life.
Maybe MS software is not only fundamentally insecure, but also fundamentally sloppy, and gets part of its insecurity through sloppiness.
The CCIA letter implies that there was intelligence behind the insecurity, that Microsoft was seeking higher profits: "Unfortunately, there is ample evidence that for many years economic, marketing, and even anticompetitive goals were far more important considerations than security for Microsoft's software developers, and these broader objectives were often achieved at the cost of adequate security."
However, more and more it appears to me that a lot of the problems with Microsoft software occur because the programmers have not been allowed to finish their work. The product is shipped and the programmer re-assigned rather than clean up the first draft.
I don't think that outsourcing is actually working. Many top managers don't really understand what they are doing.
American software companies are paying Indians to develop software, but while the Indians are doing that they are developing re-usable basic routines and getting basic understanding of particular industries. The first version will be delivered to the American software company, and the out-of-touch top managers will say how smart they are. The second version will be delivered to the American software company, and the out-of-touch top managers will buy new houses. The third version will be a product that the Indian company made using the experience paid for by the American software company. And that will be the end of the American software company. I've seen fabulously successful software companies die in six months because of mismanagement.
Many outsourced jobs are to do things that would not be required at all if the company were more efficient. I wouldn't call for technical support if the product worked.
Microsoft is outsourcing its Partners Newsgroups to China. The Chinese are answering maybe 15% of the questions with erroneous replies. Maybe 20% of the questions are given answers that pretend to be answers, but aren't really. Maybe another 25% of the answers are incomplete, and merely send Microsoft's customer off to do a research project.
Outsourcing is an extraordinary dangerous practice for Microsoft, because it further isolates Microsoft top management from reality. I wouldn't be asking questions of Microsoft technical support if Microsoft products were properly designed and if there was proper documentation.
Microsoft may look to some people like a rich, successful company, but the facts are that Microsoft's success is based on having a monopoly. Without a monopoly, Microsoft is not well-managed enough to survive. Every day Microsoft gets closer and closer to the day when it will collapse.
Remember, it has happened before that abusive companies have collapsed. At one time IBM had 100% of the PC market. Then Compaq computers became available. They were equivalent in operation and cheaper and Compaq was at that time less abusive to its customers. That was the beginning of the end of IBM's PC business. In a few years, IBM had 8% of the PC market.
Maybe I can shed some light on why some people have trouble with K7S5A motherboards, and some don't. An ECS salesman told me that it was better to use them with Athlon 1800 XP processors, and not much faster. He may have been talking about earlier revisions. The revisions currently at Fry's are version 5.
I didn't know that the Promise controller is a "semi-software" RAID card. What is the shortcoming of using such cards? What extra value do the 3ware cards provide? Why are software dynamic drives better?
Promise controllers provide a way to make a working backup copy of a Windows XP boot drive. Since Microsoft provides NO way to do that, some method must be found, and Promise controllers provide one of the methods.
Jeff,
Here is some info:
When data is "striped" it is spread across more than one drive. If you remove one drive, the information on it is completely useless because only part of the information is on each drive. Striped is RAID 0.
When data is "mirrored", any data copied to one drive is copied identically to the other. Mirrored is RAID 1. If you remove one drive of a mirrored set made by a Promise controller, both drives have identical information. It is necessary to configure the one drive as a one-drive set, but after you have done that (from the BIOS setup of the controller card, before booting the computer), you can boot from and use either of the one drives normally.
It is possible to put four drives in a set that is both mirrored and striped. That is RAID 0,1. If you remove two of the drives that are one-half of the striped mirror, you can use each half of the mirror separately.
RAID 5 is 5 drives striped. Four are used for data, and the 5th is used for recovery information. If one of the drives fails, the system can continue without interruption. When the failed drive is replaced, the information on the other 4 drives is enough to replace the lost data and continue again.
When a mirrored set is read, the controller gets the data from the drive that has a head closest to the data. Reading is faster. When a mirrored set is written, the controller writes simultaneously to both drives. There is no change in write speed.
When a striped set is read or written, the controller positions the heads of both drives for fastest operation. Reading and writing is faster.
So, mirrored is safer, and faster on reads. Striped gives no data protection, but faster reads and writes. RAID 5 has both safety and speed. Since there are 5 drives, with 5 independent heads, reading randomly placed data is much faster.
RAID is "Redundant Array of Independent Drives", or "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives"
If you have other questions, post them as a reply to this message. Probably lots of people have the same questions.
Michael
Thanks for the input. I've been struggling with these issues.
3Ware controllers are expensive, I note. The cheapest: About $130.
You said, "My only disappointment with the 3ware controller is that one cannot make take a single disk with data on it, add a second disk and tell the controller to mirror the first disk to the second. With the 3ware, you will lose the data on both disks when making a mirror. (So says 3ware tech support.)"
That's a BIG disappointment. The on-board ECS Promise controllers, as well as the adapter cards have that.