A Day Made Of Glass

[R-e-n-n-a-t]

Wooo! OS flame war!

[IATIA]

I'm a developer who uses Windows 7 on his laptop and dev machine predominantly. I have >10 years of experience with IT, >8 years in software development and >4 years network administration. I usually simply suspend and restore my system, instead of shutting it down. For my personal laptop, my last reboot was 9/18/2011 10:26:53 PM. The uptime before lasted a month.

My dev machine is rebooted every three days or so. Mostly due to the bloatware that was loaded into it (it's from Dell), whereas my personal laptop is a clean Win7 install, allowing it weeks to months of un-interrupted uptime.

I have over 25 years in the computer world, starting with the Radio Shack Color computer running OS9 level two which was a UNIX based system developed for the Motorola 6809 processor. No GUI.

I ended up in the MAC world because it used the 68000 processor and I was familiar with programming the 6809. When MAC switched to the PowerPC I had since lost interest in programming at the machine level. Teams were programming now and an individual could not compete at a commercial level.

I was forced into the windows world, due to company systems and started to get a taste of systems that will not stay up.

My mac-mini server has been up for running MAC OSX over three years and my 1998 PowerBook has been up running MAC OS9 for about two years before a hardware crash. It has now been up for about 8 months.

I'm a guy who enjoys the UNIX-like environments and find the half-arsed attempts at wrapping everything in a partially functional to hairbrained GUI to be inefficient, inflexible and insulting.

And yet I solved my coworkers Mac problem (he had installed an old version of Visor before it could be 'removed' easily) in no less than 5 minutes of Googling and one rename and kill -9 later, his year long problem was gone.

Using the same "non stop problems" typecasting like you've implied, I could make the argument that the over-reliance on the way Mac OSX presents things makes its users so stupid they're unable to do a proper Google search.

But that would neglect the context, an all very important context, which better paints my coworker as someone who has something better to do that develop the same amount of experience I have with IT to simply look at the problem, try a few choice search terms and use a few esoteric command line utilities to find what I needed.

The "Day of glass" systems will be GUI interfaces.

So I take up issue with your claims of Windows being unstable -- most of the common issues I've observed since and leading up to XP have disappeared since 7 came out.

I have not yet tried Windows 7.

However, you wouldn't be the first Mac user I've ran across, high off their own smugness.

In Windoze defense, however, as the MAC has transitioned to the INTEL processor, MAC OSX has become less 'user concerned'. That is, the system will process whatever before delivering output to the user. And that damn 'spinning beachball' from hell. The previous systems were completely 'user concerned', i.e., the user input preempted all but the absolutely necessary system processes.

Basically MAC OSX is more and more becoming what I dislike most about the Windoze environment.

Has Windoze 7 gone to a UNIX kernal?

[Autumnlicious]

The "Day of glass" systems will be GUI interfaces.

No doubt administrated by the command line. Kinda hard to wrap any form but the most garbagey, option infested GUI for the controls of a city.

I have not yet tried Windows 7.

Windows 7 was released on October 22, 2009. That is approaching ~2 years ago. For someone who is in technology, were you marooned on a South Pacific Island with a volleyball for a while or something?

In Windoze defense, however, as the MAC has transitioned to the INTEL processor, MAC OSX has become less 'user concerned'. That is, the system will process whatever before delivering output to the user. And that damn 'spinning beachball' from hell. The previous systems were completely 'user concerned', i.e., the user input preempted all but the absolutely necessary system processes.

That's a rather fuzzy, kind hearted memory of the pains of cooperative multitasking that predominated before OSX. You know, where a single application could freeze the entire computer?

Basically MAC OSX is more and more becoming what I dislike most about the Windoze environment.

Has Windoze 7 gone to a UNIX kernal?

Ok, now I'm starting to question your credibility, as you've asked if Microsoft has abandoned NT for a Unix kernel while bitching the OSX (which runs on Mach/FreeBSD (a unix kernel)) is becoming more like Windows.

Your complaints as well regarding the 'spinning beach ball' seems to ignore that were OSX to use cooperative multitasking like pre-OSX, your entire system would've froze.

Perhaps you're just unhappy with the complexity of modern operating systems. Period.

[IATIA]

Windows 7 was released on October 22, 2009. That is approaching ~2 years ago. For someone who is in technology, were you marooned on a South Pacific Island with a volleyball for a while or something?

As I stated,I am a MAC guy (for now), I only use windows in my work environment. The communications systems programs I use are not yet compatible with Vista or 7. My toughbook has three partitions, MSDOS, Win98 and XP. Yes, some software in my field still only runs in DOS and most of those cannot run in a DOS shell. So this even limits the machines I can use. No USB-serial, hard port only.

Ok, now I'm starting to question your credibility, as you've asked if Microsoft has abandoned NT for a Unix kernel while bitching the OSX (which runs on Mach/FreeBSD (a unix kernel)) is becoming more like Windows.

I was speaking of the user interface. If you had ever played with MAC OS9, you will remember that something as simple as opening a folder was 'right now' when the desktop displays after a startup or reboot.. The computers are getting faster but the overhead in the GUIs are outpacing them.

In the early days of computing, there were some really sharp programmers. Memory was small (my first computer had 4K of memory) and there were contests, one of which was writing any program, but "one line of basic". Some guy wrote a "Centipede" game and another "Pac Man". Albeit crude, they played impressively well.

[Autumnlicious]

As I stated,I am a MAC guy (for now), I only use windows in my work environment. The communications systems programs I use are not yet compatible with Vista or 7. My toughbook has three partitions, MSDOS, Win98 and XP. Yes, some software in my field still only runs in DOS and most of those cannot run in a DOS shell. So this even limits the machines I can use. No USB-serial, hard port only.

Have you considered using virtualization and USB dongles for legacy ports in conjunction with USB pass through to said VMs, Grandpa?

I was speaking of the user interface. If you had ever played with MAC OS9, you will remember that something as simple as opening a folder was 'right now' when the desktop displays after a startup or reboot.. The computers are getting faster but the overhead in the GUIs are outpacing them.

I remember locking up OS9 from time to time. Computers don't really seem much faster to me -- probably because with more resources comes more luxuries.

In the early days of computing, there were some really sharp programmers. Memory was small (my first computer had 4K of memory) and there were contests, one of which was writing any program, but "one line of basic". Some guy wrote a "Centipede" game and another "Pac Man". Albeit crude, they played impressively well.

"Get off my lawn" much?

[IATIA]

As I stated,I am a MAC guy (for now), I only use windows in my work environment. The communications systems programs I use are not yet compatible with Vista or 7. My toughbook has three partitions, MSDOS, Win98 and XP. Yes, some software in my field still only runs in DOS and most of those cannot run in a DOS shell. So this even limits the machines I can use. No USB-serial, hard port only.

Have you considered using virtualization and USB dongles for legacy ports in conjunction with USB pass through to said VMs, Grandpa?

Does not work. Motorola is the worst offender with hard coded port access and handshaking. Some of the older Kenwood programs, same thing. If the computer does not have a standard serial port these programs will not work. A couple written in assembly I was able to modify, but reverse engineering C is more trouble than it is worth. Hopefully these legacy programs will die out with their counterparts, but I expected that ten years ago.

"Get off my lawn" much?

What we need is a team of programmers like that to write the GUI for UNIX, then we would have a user-friendly, user-concentric multi-tasking system to be proud of and actually works.

[Autumnlicious]

Does not work. Motorola is the worst offender with hard coded port access and handshaking. Some of the older Kenwood programs, same thing. If the computer does not have a standard serial port these programs will not work. A couple written in assembly I was able to modify, but reverse engineering C is more trouble than it is worth. Hopefully these legacy programs will die out with their counterparts, but I expected that ten years ago.

Maybe I am missing something, but last I checked, forwarding serial ports from the hosts USB>Serial dongle will provide serial IO to the virtual machine as if it was a real serial port, which is what you want, right?

As long as DOS sees a real serial port (even if it is being transparently encapsulated to the USB dongle and then excised to be sent to the serial part of the usb->serial dongle), your programs should operate.

What we need is a team of programmers like that to write the GUI for UNIX, then we would have a user-friendly, user-concentric multi-tasking system to be proud of and actually works.

Talented programmers did write GUI's for UNIX -- the result was W, X, and NeWs. They weren't terribly successful, and the most successful piece, X, is widely reviled for it's "Everything-And-The-Kitchen-Sink" architecture.

You seem to be stuck in the past on the quality of coders -- I'd like to point out that back then, working close to the metal was common for a programmer. Nowadays, hardware and software is so complex that most people can only specialize in one, with the rare systems architect or PhD EECS usually skilled in both.