Please tell me why losing all the documents/files/data you personally created is better then reinstalling an OS/apps, which are available on CDs and the net?
Because I would not lose anything if my $HOME or the 'My Documents' directories were deleted. I only use them for transient data. Since 1983 my files have persisted on multiple platforms and OS's. I have my own method of filing data, and it is spread across multiple partitions and folders. Source code in one place, banking data in another etc. The only way I could lose anything would be from a Trojan (my fault) or hardware failure.
Most users don't have the discipline to define where thier files get stored. They just accept the defaults the application or OS offers them.
I agree with everything you said, but remember this.
Any Mozilla/Firebird vulnerability will not ruin my system. It will not cause me to reformat and re-install linux. It will not cause suspect programs to be installed on my computer without my knowledge. I might lose my $HOME, but not the use of my computer or applications.
Think about how IE is different in this manner. Enjoy,
Having a child changes everyones outlook on life. By you asking about being a Dad from Slashdot shows that your really imature or just plain socially inept (Something I excel at).
Your worried about monitoring equipment when you should be concerned about the quality of the sitter. Why would you have someone you don't trust watch your baby? Why mess up your time watching a sitter you don't trust?
With a child, your going to have to make sacrifices with your social and work life. Spend some more time with your wife at home, shes going to need it. Yes, your gonna get up at 11pm, 2am and 4am for feedings. Yes, your gonna have to learn how to change diapers. No, you will never forget the first time the child looks you in the eyes and smiles.
I lived through it with two kids, I'm sure you will as well. Use a little common sense.
Software automated mouth (SAM), available for C64's and Apple]['s back in the mid-80's. Worked really well for an 8-bit program using cheap internal speaker. Soundblaster shipped a DOS Based voice synth with the first PC card they shipped. OS/2 Warp 4 had voice commands and speech recognition back in 1996. And yes, we could route voice commands over the network to different machines.
No, I haven't read the article. Sounds like a rant though. I've done three Linux installs this week. Two SuSE 9.1, and one Gentoo.
One USB scanner problem (SuSE 9.1). All Dual-Boot except for the Gentoo one (He has so many trojans/viri XP is useless on his six month old Dell Laptop). All are using KDE 3x.
So far, everyone is happy/content. Linux not ready for the desktop my ass.
You should also add the HOW-TO on keeping your servers safe from government (any western government) seizure once an AC has posted a kiddie porn Pic and/or link to your web site. With no proof, your going down to federal "Pound Me in the Ass" prison.
Logging has other non-nefarious uses. Its called Cover your Ass . Clear the logs after content/statements have been posted and validated against your web sites policies.
Oh really? Do you have some citation for us? How was this "secret" API call discovered since people don't have the source code to SQL Server. You don't need the source with an adequate disassembler and knowledge of x86 programming.
And what exactly does this secret API perform? It must be some sort of duplication of some existing API in order for it to be "faster to code for" and execute faster at runtime, right? Yes, exactly. This isn't a secret API, just an undocumented one. Everyone else has to code for the Win32 API, whereas Microsoft can call the kernel32 functions directly (Much faster) in their own programs. Third parties can't do this because there is some export/ordinal/relocation address magic going on.
Where is this "secret" API located? Kernel32.dll Which library is it linked in to? kernel32.dll.
If you want to know more, just google "Win32 Kernel32 undocumented".
Are you a professional developer or are you just a artist? While not bad, I think your the latter. There is a very well known issue with C++ speed in Linux. The overhead for the use of Objects is too high, and there is the object prelink project and other work to find a general solution.
Have you ever tested your C++ code on a system with less than 32meg of Ram? On Linux? Under Win32? No you haven't. You just by default blame linux. Object prelinks is not a feature of C++ or the O/S. Have you ever asked yourself why KDE has to tunnel through thirty different frames just to get the mouse button state? If you don't know what a frame is, then your my poster child for my article on ddj on why OSS programmers are ametuers. Blame the Linux kernel if you must, but KDE would be slow on any platform using c++.
One of the main focuses in the latest KDE version has been speed, and it really shows. KDE used to be several times slower to load than GNOME. Now they are comparable. Moreover, if you have lots of memory, after your first login, lots of things will stay on cache, and following logins are much faster. Yes, Gnome 2.x sucks for speed and memory. KDE 3.x drags my 1300+ atholon to its knees. Is it necessary? Has anyone on the KDE/Gnome team looked at the Amiga, OS/2 PM or Windows 98 Program Manger for inspiration? If your going to mimic windows, all three did it with less memory and a better UI.
One of my favorite golden rules for software development is: first make it work, then optimize. NEVER optimize your first shot.One of my favorite golden rules for software development is: first make it work, then optimize. NEVER optimize your first shot. How about designing the program first?
The Microsoft way would be: first make it pretty and somehow useable, release it, then we see about bugs et al. I'm no Microsoft fan, but give credit where it's due. Cut/Copy/Paste works and you don't have to recompile/release for every new version. My orignal QTK programs can't.
No flame intended. Enjoy,
BTW: My wife uses KDE, and I appreciate the KDE team efforts.
It would help to know if your program was coded in c# or c++. VS.Net lets you compile bytecode for several differenct languages. Does your program work under Win9x? If so, its C/C++ and you won't have such a big porting chore to do.
USB is the driver interface to the device your trying to read from. It could be Serial RS232, it could be Ethernet TCP/IP. Any decent programmer would have abstracted the user interface from the device data to begin with. Anyway, in the 2.4 and beyond Linux kernels, USB access is trivial, even from user space.
Code portability has been the Holy Grail of computers since I've been coding. It wasn't found in the 70's, 80's and 90's. It's not going to found now by using Mono or C#. Stick with the ANSI (not ECMA) supported languages. If Borland comes out with a Mono derivative, then by all means use it.
Please note that I am not dissing the ECMA, I just respect the ANSI review process more.
My only complaint about bieng online with Linux, my ISP doesn't support Linux. So after 45 minutes online, active or not, I get knocked off which has never happened under Windows.
Curious. I would run tcpdump at +40 minutes online and see what it displays. Are you sure it's not an APM issue?
From a cross-platform C/C++ programmer who is probably not as good as Joel, a couple of issues.
1) It's not ANSI VB or ANSI Win32. If you settle on a programming environment controlled by one vendor, then they can change the language specifications at will. I wrote my System/UI specific wrapper functions over a decade ago. Why didn't Joel?
2) Joel compares C/C++ memory management to automatic vs manual transmissions. I would associate memory management in C/C++ to doctors who know once they make an incision, they have to close it back up when done. Either you know the procedure (or launguage) or you don't. The article seems to want to apologize for all the Comp Sci grads who don't have a clue when it concerns system level programming (I found one in my office this week).
3) VB is a layer on top of Win32. So is MFC. From the object dumps I've run on MSIL applications, so is.net. It still calls down to the Win32 layer. Why would I not still call the Win32 API directly? Apps still work under 9x and Ntx based systems. I really don't see MS scrapping kernel32 or user32 in the near future.
4) The Win32 API is feature rich. Give credit where it is due. The Win32 API evolved from the OS/2 API developed in the late 80's in conjuction with IBM.
5) The reason Raymond Chen had to make the effort to be backwards compatible was that some published API calls were always different than the implementation (say API bug). Remember the DOS bug/feature that allowed TSR's? Remember when DDE turned into netDDE which turned into COM? This brain-dead logic has carried MS through until modern day XP. As an API/Library developer for my companies products, I've had to tell third parties I made a bad design decision (2) and you need to re-compile with the new library/API header. All of them appreciate and understand my mistake. Why can't Microsoft do this?
Great article, just some food for thought from a old time beer drinking hippie programmer. Gotta go, playing network freecraft with my ten year old.
Marketing/Gates killed it. If you recall, MS stated Win95 didn't rely on DOS (Remember DrDos?). DOS was dead and therefore no reason to have a DOS based anti-virus scanner. This was the justification for selling Win95 at $80 vs $40 for Win3x. Microsoft did everything in it's power to distance Win9x from DOS.
I'm not sure why you got moderated as insightful, but I have a couple of issues with your post (not a flamefest).
If you're in a country where the labor is more or less expensive, and moreover if your employees are not support people but software engineers, then the financial outlook is questionable. Support for programs cost more than the initial development if the programs weren't designed right to begin with. Programmers should solve problems, not introduce new ones or work-arounds.
The government should care little about the source. Governments should maximize the ROI of taxpayers money. Whether its OSS or proprietary.
For people and companies not wanting to move into cheap support, but stay in higher-paid research and software development going into open source does not make a whole lot of sense.
Ask Hans Reiser or any other kernel developer if going open source makes sense. Whould Hans, Linus, or myself be allowed to experiment with the internals of Win32/OS2/AIX etc? I think not. I can dick around with the internals of BSD and Linux.
I don't get the parent posters rant either. As a person who admires well designed products, the AS400 ranks high in my book.
Everything on the system is an object. Devices, files, users, etc. The design goals of the AS400 were met, the glue between Mainframes, Midrange and PCs. To have it run Linux in a VM speaks volumes on the extensibility of the system.
IBM's loyalty to the system is also admirable. I once placed an 'Intel Inside' sticker on the front of ours (leased) and the technician dragged my boss into the computer room and explained to him that I had basically defiled a work of art and IBM wouldn't put up with it:)
The only flaw in the design is my hatred towards RPG, but thats a different topic:)
You have to remember, most distribution reviews these days are done by people who weren't interested in Linux back in 1994 (my first distribution (trans-Ameritech)). None of these people ever compiled Linux on a 386/486. None of the reviewers know what OpenLook is.
I guess the broader question is what sets distros apart? After numerous installs, the only one that gets my hardware right is SuSE (YaST). I don't have the time anymore to dick around with hardware settings. In other words, build your own Linux box if you want too. Use SuSE if you want it to work out of the box (I'm sure other readers will disagree). Out of the box solutions still suck. SuSE still allows me to select XFCE for the desktop or WindowMaker for my older laptop.
I don't think that's true. We're getting closer to the day when the only content we can manipulate is that generated by ourselves or those with whom we cooperate.
You mean returning to the day. Hell people were doing this before the internet. They were called Lan Parties, BBS Picnics, etc. I for one miss those days.
Do what I did. Use Dia (http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia/) to create the chart/UML/diagrams etc. Save it as a PNG. Import it into your OOo document.
I could always buy for myself a white box PC from a local Mom and Pop store (Naked PC in Microsoft terms) without an O/S. But at the coporate level we could never buy brand names in quantity (Dell, IBM, Compaq, HP etc) without windows, even if we asked for it. Hell, we were an IBM shop and couldn't get OS/2 PC's in 1996 because it would violate the contract they had with Microsoft to distribute Win95.
It's not that IBM wanted to ship Win95, but when your OS/2 customer base is at 20-30% and your Windows base is at 60%, which OS do you need to ship with your PC's?
A Typical IT response at the Bank I worked for was What do you mean we have to re-image 50 machines to OS/2! :)
No there wasn't even if you wanted to. Don't you remember the Licensing restrictions Microsoft made the PC Makers sign in order to get attractive windows pricing?
Consumer: I want a computer with OS/2 on it. Dell: We only ship with Windows. Consumer: Then I want a computer with Dr. DOS on it. Dell: We only ship with Windows Consumer: Can I have a computer without an OS for $100 less? Dell: No, we only ship with Windows
Slashdot Mirror
Please tell me why losing all the documents/files/data you personally created is better then reinstalling an OS/apps, which are available on CDs and the net?
Because I would not lose anything if my $HOME or the 'My Documents' directories were deleted. I only use them for transient data. Since 1983 my files have persisted on multiple platforms and OS's. I have my own method of filing data, and it is spread across multiple partitions and folders. Source code in one place, banking data in another etc. The only way I could lose anything would be from a Trojan (my fault) or hardware failure.
Most users don't have the discipline to define where thier files get stored. They just accept the defaults the application or OS offers them.
Enjoy,
I agree with everything you said, but remember this.
Any Mozilla/Firebird vulnerability will not ruin my system. It will not cause me to reformat and re-install linux. It will not cause suspect programs to be installed on my computer without my knowledge. I might lose my $HOME, but not the use of my computer or applications.
Think about how IE is different in this manner.
Enjoy,
Look,
Having a child changes everyones outlook on life. By you asking about being a Dad from Slashdot shows that your really imature or just plain socially inept (Something I excel at).
Your worried about monitoring equipment when you should be concerned about the quality of the sitter. Why would you have someone you don't trust watch your baby? Why mess up your time watching a sitter you don't trust?
With a child, your going to have to make sacrifices with your social and work life. Spend some more time with your wife at home, shes going to need it. Yes, your gonna get up at 11pm, 2am and 4am for feedings. Yes, your gonna have to learn how to change diapers. No, you will never forget the first time the child looks you in the eyes and smiles.
I lived through it with two kids, I'm sure you will as well. Use a little common sense.
Enjoy,
Not to dampen your discovery.
:)
Software automated mouth (SAM), available for C64's and Apple]['s back in the mid-80's. Worked really well for an 8-bit program using cheap internal speaker. Soundblaster shipped a DOS Based voice synth with the first PC card they shipped. OS/2 Warp 4 had voice commands and speech recognition back in 1996. And yes, we could route voice commands over the network to different machines.
XP Innovative? To be sure
Enjoy,
No, I haven't read the article. Sounds like a rant though. I've done three Linux installs this week. Two SuSE 9.1, and one Gentoo.
One USB scanner problem (SuSE 9.1). All Dual-Boot except for the Gentoo one (He has so many trojans/viri XP is useless on his six month old Dell Laptop). All are using KDE 3x.
So far, everyone is happy/content. Linux not ready for the desktop my ass.
Enjoy,
A language that FORCES you to indent properly is GREAT!
Then you need to look at RPG.
The more things change, the more they stay the same:)
Enjoy,
You should also add the HOW-TO on keeping your servers safe from government (any western government) seizure once an AC has posted a kiddie porn Pic and/or link to your web site. With no proof, your going down to federal "Pound Me in the Ass" prison.
Logging has other non-nefarious uses. Its called Cover your Ass . Clear the logs after content/statements have been posted and validated against your web sites policies.
Enjoy,
A feature that solves no problem.
It solved Microsofts and Hollywoods DRM problem nicely. Other than that, I completly agree with you.
Enjoy,
Oh really? Do you have some citation for us? How was this "secret" API call discovered since people don't have the source code to SQL Server. You don't need the source with an adequate disassembler and knowledge of x86 programming.
And what exactly does this secret API perform? It must be some sort of duplication of some existing API in order for it to be "faster to code for" and execute faster at runtime, right? Yes, exactly. This isn't a secret API, just an undocumented one. Everyone else has to code for the Win32 API, whereas Microsoft can call the kernel32 functions directly (Much faster) in their own programs. Third parties can't do this because there is some export/ordinal/relocation address magic going on.
Where is this "secret" API located? Kernel32.dll
Which library is it linked in to? kernel32.dll.
If you want to know more, just google "Win32 Kernel32 undocumented".
Enjoy,
Are you a professional developer or are you just a artist? While not bad, I think your the latter.
There is a very well known issue with C++ speed in Linux. The overhead for the use of Objects is too high, and there is the object prelink project and other work to find a general solution.
Have you ever tested your C++ code on a system with less than 32meg of Ram? On Linux? Under Win32? No you haven't. You just by default blame linux. Object prelinks is not a feature of C++ or the O/S. Have you ever asked yourself why KDE has to tunnel through thirty different frames just to get the mouse button state? If you don't know what a frame is, then your my poster child for my article on ddj on why OSS programmers are ametuers. Blame the Linux kernel if you must, but KDE would be slow on any platform using c++.
One of the main focuses in the latest KDE version has been speed, and it really shows. KDE used to be several times slower to load than GNOME. Now they are comparable. Moreover, if you have lots of memory, after your first login, lots of things will stay on cache, and following logins are much faster.
Yes, Gnome 2.x sucks for speed and memory. KDE 3.x drags my 1300+ atholon to its knees. Is it necessary? Has anyone on the KDE/Gnome team looked at the Amiga, OS/2 PM or Windows 98 Program Manger for inspiration? If your going to mimic windows, all three did it with less memory and a better UI.
One of my favorite golden rules for software development is: first make it work, then optimize. NEVER optimize your first shot.One of my favorite golden rules for software development is: first make it work, then optimize. NEVER optimize your first shot.
How about designing the program first?
The Microsoft way would be: first make it pretty and somehow useable, release it, then we see about bugs et al.
I'm no Microsoft fan, but give credit where it's due. Cut/Copy/Paste works and you don't have to recompile/release for every new version. My orignal QTK programs can't.
No flame intended.
Enjoy,
BTW: My wife uses KDE, and I appreciate the KDE team efforts.
No sane question is stupid.
It would help to know if your program was coded in c# or c++. VS.Net lets you compile bytecode for several differenct languages. Does your program work under Win9x? If so, its C/C++ and you won't have such a big porting chore to do.
USB is the driver interface to the device your trying to read from. It could be Serial RS232, it could be Ethernet TCP/IP. Any decent programmer would have abstracted the user interface from the device data to begin with. Anyway, in the 2.4 and beyond Linux kernels, USB access is trivial, even from user space.
Code portability has been the Holy Grail of computers since I've been coding. It wasn't found in the 70's, 80's and 90's. It's not going to found now by using Mono or C#. Stick with the ANSI (not ECMA) supported languages. If Borland comes out with a Mono derivative, then by all means use it.
Please note that I am not dissing the ECMA, I just respect the ANSI review process more.
My 2 bits, Enjoy.
My only complaint about bieng online with Linux, my ISP doesn't support Linux. So after 45 minutes online, active or not, I get knocked off which has never happened under Windows.
Curious. I would run tcpdump at +40 minutes online and see what it displays. Are you sure it's not an APM issue?
Enjoy,
From a cross-platform C/C++ programmer who is probably not as good as Joel, a couple of issues.
.net. It still calls down to the Win32 layer. Why would I not still call the Win32 API directly? Apps still work under 9x and Ntx based systems. I really don't see MS scrapping kernel32 or user32 in the near future.
1) It's not ANSI VB or ANSI Win32. If you settle on a programming environment controlled by one vendor, then they can change the language specifications at will. I wrote my System/UI specific wrapper functions over a decade ago. Why didn't Joel?
2) Joel compares C/C++ memory management to automatic vs manual transmissions. I would associate memory management in C/C++ to doctors who know once they make an incision, they have to close it back up when done. Either you know the procedure (or launguage) or you don't. The article seems to want to apologize for all the Comp Sci grads who don't have a clue when it concerns system level programming (I found one in my office this week).
3) VB is a layer on top of Win32. So is MFC. From the object dumps I've run on MSIL applications, so is
4) The Win32 API is feature rich. Give credit where it is due. The Win32 API evolved from the OS/2 API developed in the late 80's in conjuction with IBM.
5) The reason Raymond Chen had to make the effort to be backwards compatible was that some published API calls were always different than the implementation (say API bug). Remember the DOS bug/feature that allowed TSR's? Remember when DDE turned into netDDE which turned into COM? This brain-dead logic has carried MS through until modern day XP. As an API/Library developer for my companies products, I've had to tell third parties I made a bad design decision (2) and you need to re-compile with the new library/API header. All of them appreciate and understand my mistake. Why can't Microsoft do this?
Great article, just some food for thought from a old time beer drinking hippie programmer. Gotta go, playing network freecraft with my ten year old.
Enjoy,
Marketing/Gates killed it. If you recall, MS stated Win95 didn't rely on DOS (Remember DrDos?). DOS was dead and therefore no reason to have a DOS based anti-virus scanner. This was the justification for selling Win95 at $80 vs $40 for Win3x. Microsoft did everything in it's power to distance Win9x from DOS.
Enjoy,
*Sigh*
Moderators,
Parent isn't a troll. UK weather is notorious for being cloudy.
Enjoy,
I tab/shift-tab all the time. Check out Anjuta.
http://anjuta.sourceforge.net/
Enjoy,
Wow. You are the Zen Master of logic and programming. I stand humbled and corrected.
Enjoy,
I'm not sure why you got moderated as insightful, but I have a couple of issues with your post (not a flamefest).
If you're in a country where the labor is more or less expensive, and moreover if your employees are not support people but software engineers, then the financial outlook is questionable. Support for programs cost more than the initial development if the programs weren't designed right to begin with. Programmers should solve problems, not introduce new ones or work-arounds.
The government should care little about the source. Governments should maximize the ROI of taxpayers money. Whether its OSS or proprietary.
For people and companies not wanting to move into cheap support, but stay in higher-paid research and software development going into open source does not make a whole lot of sense.
Ask Hans Reiser or any other kernel developer if going open source makes sense. Whould Hans, Linus, or myself be allowed to experiment with the internals of Win32/OS2/AIX etc? I think not. I can dick around with the internals of BSD and Linux.
Anyway Enjoy,
I don't get the parent posters rant either. As a person who admires well designed products, the AS400 ranks high in my book.
:)
:)
Everything on the system is an object. Devices, files, users, etc. The design goals of the AS400 were met, the glue between Mainframes, Midrange and PCs. To have it run Linux in a VM speaks volumes on the extensibility of the system.
IBM's loyalty to the system is also admirable. I once placed an 'Intel Inside' sticker on the front of ours (leased) and the technician dragged my boss into the computer room and explained to him that I had basically defiled a work of art and IBM wouldn't put up with it
The only flaw in the design is my hatred towards RPG, but thats a different topic
Enjoy,
You have to remember, most distribution reviews these days are done by people who weren't interested in Linux back in 1994 (my first distribution (trans-Ameritech)). None of these people ever compiled Linux on a 386/486. None of the reviewers know what OpenLook is.
I guess the broader question is what sets distros apart?
After numerous installs, the only one that gets my hardware right is SuSE (YaST). I don't have the time anymore to dick around with hardware settings. In other words, build your own Linux box if you want too. Use SuSE if you want it to work out of the box (I'm sure other readers will disagree). Out of the box solutions still suck. SuSE still allows me to select XFCE for the desktop or WindowMaker for my older laptop.
Enjoy,
I don't think that's true. We're getting closer to the day when the only content we can manipulate is that generated by ourselves or those with whom we cooperate.
You mean returning to the day. Hell people were doing this before the internet. They were called Lan Parties, BBS Picnics, etc. I for one miss those days.
Enjoy,
Do what I did. Use Dia (http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia/) to create the chart/UML/diagrams etc. Save it as a PNG. Import it into your OOo document.
Dia's not as polished as Visio, but it suffices.
Enjoy,
Believe what you want to believe. If you do some research, you might find your statements to be false. Which means what? You can't undo your post.
Enjoy,
I could always buy for myself a white box PC from a local Mom and Pop store (Naked PC in Microsoft terms) without an O/S. But at the coporate level we could never buy brand names in quantity (Dell, IBM, Compaq, HP etc) without windows, even if we asked for it. Hell, we were an IBM shop and couldn't get OS/2 PC's in 1996 because it would violate the contract they had with Microsoft to distribute Win95.
:)
It's not that IBM wanted to ship Win95, but when your OS/2 customer base is at 20-30% and your Windows base is at 60%, which OS do you need to ship with your PC's?
A Typical IT response at the Bank I worked for was What do you mean we have to re-image 50 machines to OS/2!
Enjoy,
Hmm,
No there wasn't even if you wanted to. Don't you remember the Licensing restrictions Microsoft made the PC Makers sign in order to get attractive windows pricing?
Typical consumer call to Dell (or IBM, Compaq, Acer, Gateway, etc).
Consumer: I want a computer with OS/2 on it.
Dell: We only ship with Windows.
Consumer: Then I want a computer with Dr. DOS on it.
Dell: We only ship with Windows
Consumer: Can I have a computer without an OS for $100 less?
Dell: No, we only ship with Windows
Enjoy,