18 Jun
2007
18 Jun
'07
2:24 p.m.
-----------------Original Message:
Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2007 13:50:40 -0400 (EDT)
From: der Mouse <mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
Subject: Re: What are the really unusual or weird computers?
It is too bad Windows and the PC group didn't
continue the
OpenFirmware concept. [...] It was a bad move that has cost
millions if not billions of dollars worth of lost productive time.
I think having an OS that crashes weekly - daily, or worse, in many
cases - and needs a complete ground-up reinstall at least annually has
cost their customers far more.
/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
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X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca
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------------------Reply:
I usually ignore the MS- and WIN-bashing that is apparently a basic
requirement for anyone wishing to be taken seriously in the computing
field, but just for the record:
My main system has been running Win98SE more or less 24/7 since it
was released and although the hardware has been upgraded several
times it has never had a ground-up reinstall (although I will do one
Real Soon Now). Yes, although a BSOD is a very rare event, it does
misbehave occasionally but that's not surprising considering all the
obscure software that has been installed on it over the years. I have
never lost any data (except as a result of my own carelessness) and
except for a couple of virus incidents all that's required when it does
misbehave is a reboot while I get a cup of coffee.
My clients' systems with much more stable software environments
are even more reliable and any problems are almost always hardware
or operator related; even monthly crashes would not be tolerated for
long.
If your system crashes daily or even weekly, I'd recommend that you
find a qualified computer professional to fix it for you...
mike
24 Jun
24 Jun
3:32 a.m.
M H Stein wrote:
If your system crashes daily or even weekly, I'd
recommend that you
find a qualified computer professional to fix it for you...
If you write *any* code at all on Windows, you can expect to crash the
OS fairly regularly. I've written *Java* code that ran *in the VM* that
crashed the OS. And don't tell me not to write buggy code, everyone has
a bug or two in their initial revision.
I've never crashed a UNIXy OS with anything short of a hardware problem.
Peace... Sridhar
7:49 a.m.
Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
I've never crashed a UNIXy OS with anything short of a hardware problem.
heh. you haven't tried hard enough :-)
I remember fooling around with sockets on a vax 780 running BSD4.2
(MORE BSD) and running a little program and hearing everyone yell
from their offices, "hey! what just
happened?"
that's when I first learned about kernel panics.
The Mt. Xinu guys told me "the only things that have really been tested
are the parts Joy needed". Makes sense. (Joy = Bill Joy)
Anyone have a source tape for Mt. Xinu MORE/BSD for vax?
[having said that, linux these days is extremely robust]
-brad
25 Jun
25 Jun
12:56 p.m.
On 24/06/07, Brad Parker <brad at heeltoe.com> wrote:
heh. you haven't tried hard enough :-)
I remember fooling around with sockets on a vax 780 running BSD4.2
(MORE BSD) and running a little program and hearing everyone yell
from their offices, "hey! what just happened?"
that's when I first learned about kernel panics.
Wow! What did that "little program" *do*?
I learned to program Fortran on VAXes; I ran one for some years when I
worked in the City of London. I have never ever seen a VAX crash.
--
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24 Jun
24 Jun
12:10 p.m.
On Sunday 24 June 2007 03:32, Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
M H Stein wrote:
Writing your own kernel driver (or using bad 3rd party ones), or doing
stupid things as root can do it pretty well too.
Pat
--
Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/
The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org
If your system crashes daily or even weekly,
I'd recommend that you
find a qualified computer professional to fix it for you...
If you write *any* code at all on Windows, you can expect to crash
the OS fairly regularly. I've written *Java* code that ran *in the
VM* that crashed the OS. And don't tell me not to write buggy code,
everyone has a bug or two in their initial revision.
I've never crashed a UNIXy OS with anything short of a hardware
problem. 
12:44 p.m.
Patrick Finnegan wrote:
Writing your own kernel driver (or using bad 3rd party
ones), or doing
stupid things as root can do it pretty well too.
That can be expected.
With windows XP here -- upgrading the latest hardware update for
my sound card works great, if I want NO sound at all.
Pat
But thinking about it, the only really
unusual computers
are experimental ones. How many commercial trinary computers
do you know of? Even decimal machines are almost forgotton
about.
2:05 p.m.
Patrick Finnegan wrote:
On Sunday 24 June 2007 03:32, Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
I *rarely* login as root. I learned that lesson the hard way.
And yes, I've crashed a system while testing kernel code, but I've
managed to crash Windows as a non-privileged user on many, many occasions.
Peace... Sridhar
M H Stein wrote:
Writing your own kernel driver (or using bad 3rd party ones), or doing
stupid things as root can do it pretty well too. If your system crashes daily or even weekly,
I'd recommend that you
find a qualified computer professional to fix it for you...
If you write *any*
code at all on Windows, you can expect to crash
the OS fairly regularly. I've written *Java* code that ran *in the
VM* that crashed the OS. And don't tell me not to write buggy code,
everyone has a bug or two in their initial revision.
I've never crashed a UNIXy OS with anything short of a hardware
problem. 
4:02 p.m.
Sridhar Ayengar writes:
If you write *any* code at all on Windows, you can
expect to crash the OS
fairly regularly. I've written *Java* code that ran *in the VM* that
crashed the OS. And don't tell me not to write buggy code, everyone has a
bug or two in their initial revision.
I beg to differ. I've developed code primarily on NT-based Windows for over
ten years now in a variety of languages for a variety of purposes and not
ONCE have I managed to write userland code that was capable of causing a
hard-stop (BSOD, freezing).
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the ONLY crashes I've gotten over the
last ten years have been due to terrible 3rd party drivers (Creative's
drivers for the SBLive were notoriously bad, and for awhile around the win2k
timeframe, nVidia's drivers were TERRIBLE on multiproc systems). This is
unfortunate, but these problems have since been resolved and these days I
can't even recall the last BSOD I've gotten.
If you're honestly crashing the OS fairly regularly (esp. w/Java code) then
I'd definitely suggest investigating the STOP code you're getting, and
checking your hardware out for faults. And update your drivers. Either
that or stop running Windows 95 :).
I realize it's par for the course on a list like this to bash anything
Microsoft, but I think the "it crashes ALL THE TIME" argument is no longer
valid. It's not like there aren't plenty of other complaints to make :).
- Josh
4:12 p.m.
In article <467E1E2B.6030404 at gmail.com>,
Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at gmail.com> writes:
If you write *any* code at all on Windows, you can
expect to crash the
OS fairly regularly.
I've written code on a Windows box since 1996-ish and have only
crashed my machine once due to my code and that was because I fed
bogus data to a beta 3D driver. I second what Mike Stein said: if
your Windows computer is crashing on you regularly, stop fucking
it up and get a professional to come in and fix it for you.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
4:41 p.m.
On 24 Jun 2007 at 14:12, Richard wrote:
I've written code on a Windows box since 1996-ish
and have only
crashed my machine once due to my code and that was because I fed
bogus data to a beta 3D driver. I second what Mike Stein said: if
your Windows computer is crashing on you regularly, stop fucking
it up and get a professional to come in and fix it for you.
Hmmm. I write code for kernel-mode device drivers and I can proudly
claim to have crashed Windows (any version) in less time than it
takes to boot same. :) Repeatedly. Ad nauseum. A dozen times an
hour.
This is where I'm thankful for the "Checked build" versions.
Cheers,
Chuck
25 Jun
25 Jun
9:14 a.m.
Richard wrote:
In article <467E1E2B.6030404 at gmail.com>,
Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at gmail.com> writes:
Yes. When a professional has problems, hire a professional to fix the damned thing.
Sometimes it's just better to take the thing out back of the barn and put it out
of your misery.
And as for me, life is so much better now that I no longer have to deal with any
windoze system. Can't pay me enough to even look at one, anymore.
==
jd
A watched proton never decays.
If you write *any* code at all on Windows, you
can expect to crash the
OS fairly regularly.
I've written code on a Windows box since 1996-ish and have only
crashed my machine once due to my code and that was because I fed
bogus data to a beta 3D driver. I second what Mike Stein said: if
your Windows computer is crashing on you regularly, stop ****ing
it up and get a professional to come in and fix it for you. 
28 Jun
28 Jun
8:37 p.m.
It was thus said that the Great Sridhar Ayengar once stated:
M H Stein wrote:
I have. And someone I know has also done that.
My crash: Linux 2.0.39. A CGI based program I wrote (in C) had a show
stopping bug that would cause the system to lock up tight. I did fix the
bugs, then added some system calls to limit the amount of RAM and CPU to use
to that script. I think the limiting code works, as I haven't had that
problem in the three or four years since.
The other person's crash: IRIX 4.0.5 on a Personal IRIS 4D-35. The
sequence of events go like this: run screen, then under that, run an IRC
client set to log a particular channel (in this case, an X-Files channel
[1]), then detach from screen and log out. Instant kernel panic.
Repeatable even.
-spc (I also found an SGI C compiler bug under IRIX 4.0.5 ... )
[1] I am *not* making this up (cue spooky music).
If your system crashes daily or even weekly,
I'd recommend that you
find a qualified computer professional to fix it for you...
If you write *any* code at all on Windows, you can expect to crash the
OS fairly regularly. I've written *Java* code that ran *in the VM* that
crashed the OS. And don't tell me not to write buggy code, everyone has
a bug or two in their initial revision.
I've never crashed a UNIXy OS with anything short of a hardware problem. 
24 Jun
24 Jun
1:24 p.m.
If your system crashes daily or even weekly, I'd
recommend that you
find a qualified computer professional to fix it for you...
If that phrase means what it means over here, then I doubt you could find
anyone on this list who knew _less_ about computing that a 'qualified
computer professional' ;-)
-tony
5:12 p.m.
If your system
crashes daily or even weekly, I'd recommend that you
find a qualified computer professional to fix it for you...
If that phrase means what it means over here, then I doubt you could find
anyone on this list who knew _less_ about computing that a 'qualified
computer professional' ;-)
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