[Novalug] Thoughts.

Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith@ieee.org
Wed Nov 18 13:52:38 EST 2009


[ God I gotta stop responding ... ]

From: "ethan@757.org" <ethan@757.org>
> A local friend works for Microsoft and runs a lot of UNIX. It's always fun 
> talking to him.

I had the benefit of being an intern at the largest installation of the
first native NT application.  So I've seen a lot of great Microsoft
architects and developers railroaded by non-sense and bad
practices that Microsoft won't shed.  I dislike Gates because many
core Microsoft architects disagreed with his decisions as well.

Like "Chicago" in 1994.

> A: Many people blame Microsoft for problems that are the result of them 
> running crap software that damages Windows.

Including software from Microsoft.

E.g., like the "Designed for Windows 95/NT" logo that required all software
to pass all of the NT DAC/MAC/RBAC layers, the "Designed for Windows Vista"
logo to pass various .NET/security details was "modified" so poorly written
applications from Microsoft itself could pass.

In other words Microsoft's own application developers and, worse yet, Visual
Studio tool developers are _never_ on-board.  In fact, I joked in the late '90s
that people should buy Digital Visual Fortran 5.0 so it replaces and "fixes" a
lot of the Visual Studio DLLs so they do NT correctly.

But probably my "worst experience" was watching some peer Microsoft
professionals being blamed by Microsoft for SQL Slammer in early 2003 by
"not staying current."  Only IDG had the guts to publish that Microsoft had two
latter patches that _uninstalled_ the fix what would have prevented SQL
Slammer, because of conflicts.

Without that article some of my colleagues would have been in serious trouble.

> B: Good hardware goes a long way. There are lots of server grade machines 
> running Windows in big production environments that run for years without 
> issue. Just like Linux.

And yet Microsoft is at _fault_ for upholding a "superstore hardware model"
based on software-based intelligence that is _not_ included in Windows,
licensed from 3rd party vendors, resulting in endless variants of the same
drivers from different vendors that _conflict_.

E.g., as much as people complain about lack of USB device support outside
of Windows, especially Linux, Linux's USB stack is much "cleaner" than the
one in Windows.  This is a result of time-limited, 3rd party licensed, "software"
intelligence that does _not_ have a standard subsystem.

Another example:  TWAIN v. SANE

> C: Life cycle on windows is long.

Not really.  Microsoft regularly breaks ABI/API in the middle of NT versions.
NT 5 was my favorite, as not only did NT 5.1 break, but the XP 2002 Edition,
and then SP2 after that, broke things, basically every 18 months.

Windows Server 2003 also botched several things as well, and it wasn't
until 2003R2 that many things were addressed well, although some other
things were still botched.  I still remember a security handshake that Windows
XP screwed up and 2003 blindly allowed in (bypassing security) while Samba
had a "bug" because it -- gasp -- stopped XP from bypassing the handshake.

> D: Crap software is crap software on any platform. I've been eager to play 
> with various open source apps and found they crashed and were buggy as 
> heck.

Depends on the app, the focus, etc...  I think the "expectations" are the issue.
Software Engineering 101 in many cases.

> I hate to say it, but Windows has a lot of good software on it. Lots of 
> stuff that makes computers useful.

So does community developed software.  In fact, a lot of the allegedly "cool"
apps and ideas on Windows (and even Apple) started out as open source.

> When in doubt, run it all. No excuse not to have a bunch of computers of 
> VMs with everything.

I don't find any reason to run Windows apps.  In fact, if it doesn't run on Linux,
many times it doesn't run on Vista either.  E.g., remote access solutions to some of
my clients.

Hence the whole reason for the "XP Mode" VM in Windows 7, which is still
a VM (and doesn't run games with hardware acceleration).



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