12/12/2010 [PF #148] - Medium for That?

[Inumo]

The fact that this tactic is regularly done is surprising. Silly capitalist companies!

Also, in reference to panel 7, Action Dorcan, go!

[Tapewolf]

Also, in reference to panel 7, Action Dorcan, go!

http://project-future.org/stuff/things/pf148_p7-orig.png


EDIT:

The fact that this tactic is regularly done is surprising. Silly capitalist companies!

Post by: Tapewolf on October 17, 2007, 06:01:22 PM
> Quote from: Gabi on October 17, 2007, 05:49:40 PM
> That was evil. But it looks like the company's accustomed to that treatment.

It seemed a natural consequence of technology companies mostly being Beings, while having Creature clients.  If your Creature client gets angry they could kill you with relatively little repercussion, so you're likely to move mountains in order to keep them happy.

The problem then is that you'll get people using this technique spuriously, and eventually you're likely to have such an escalation that you'll only be able to get high-priority support by threatening to kill everyone.

Note that Jakob remains the voice of reason - they're actually doing something very close to a 'good cop, bad cop' routine, although how much of Ashley's rage is an act is not clear, even to me.

If you've ever tried to develop for Symbian, or use Microsoft's broken mobile development tools, or the Blackberry's broken, incompatible version of Java which doesn't work, or work around bugs in Windows CE, let me tell you there are times I'd love to be able to do this myself.

[joshofspam]

Firing Dorcon missiles!

I must admit it isn't a good idea to mess with people like a cubi in business. Having a family the size of possibly a small nation makes for quite an interesting discussions on tech assistance. Then again you probably have to compete with other creatures that aren't trying to bluff, but mean what they say.

All I can say about their main problem at the head office is "Never get between a Cubi and their internet fix".

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Seems silly to me. You'd be far better off to actually make good software. Microsoft isn't a good software company, it's an unmatched software _sales_ company. There are so many, many places that make better software.

And yet, this detail slides past a number of people - including people who sell software. Go figure.


Having sidled down that side-street, going back to the strip itself - I do like that it's only medium priority. You'd think that kidnapping the CEO was fairly unusual....

[Inumo]

Jack's apparently not the CEO, just the head of the embedded systems division. Source: http://project-future.org/strip.php?strip=146

<tangent>
What company would be good to get software from/for, then?

[Tapewolf]

What company would be good to get software from/for, then?

[Must not go on about DRDOS, winsock, "strncpy is deprecated", AD, MS Java, the Netware PSP bug, Bookcase or any of the other shit they've pulled, must not go on about the shit they've pulled...]

Well, Ashley wanted to use VMS, but most other people who understood it have died of old age.  He was hoping to have it running Linux, though.  (See P140)

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Well, Ashley wanted to use VMS, but most other people who understood it have died of old age.

This differs from now, how? ;-]

[hapless]

Well, Ashley wanted to use VMS, but most other people who understood it have died of old age.

This differs from now, how? ;-]

They're trying to make some HP India engineers learn VMS. As of now, V8.4 is a disaster. After all the random trouble, crashes, and incompatibilites discovered during RC testing with customers, they broken DIR command in the release version. >.<
I am scared to think what it might look like after few years (assuming HP won't pull the plug.)

Stick to 7.3-2, Ashley... and seems you'll have to maintain it yourself.

(PS. QNX or LynxOS might be worth looking into. They're from a different boat, tho.)

[Tapewolf]

(PS. QNX or LynxOS might be worth looking into. They're from a different boat, tho.)

Realistically, yes.  You'd use QNX since that's the one that really is certified for mission-critical stuff.  (Is waiting for RIM to release the native developer kit for the Playbook and praying that RIM don't do something idiotic and break the OS by messing with it)

[joshofspam]

Seems silly to me. You'd be far better off to actually make good software. Microsoft isn't a good software company, it's an unmatched software _sales_ company. There are so many, many places that make better software.

And yet, this detail slides past a number of people - including people who sell software. Go figure.


Having sidled down that side-street, going back to the strip itself - I do like that it's only medium priority. You'd think that kidnapping the CEO was fairly unusual....

Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. How can the others compete with a commercial which has a little kid that makes a video skit that has bunny's and pony. With such endorsements that rot your brain with so much cute that you can't make a rational decision?

Way to hit under the belt Microsoft. I'll never be able to look at cute the same way again.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

(PS. QNX or LynxOS might be worth looking into. They're from a different boat, tho.)

Realistically, yes.  You'd use QNX since that's the one that really is certified for mission-critical stuff.  (Is waiting for RIM to release the native developer kit for the Playbook and praying that RIM don't do something idiotic and break the OS by messing with it)

Is it, really? Wow.

I had a brief look at QNX a while ago, but never got it to actually boot. I think I never got so far as putting the floppy disk into something and turning it on, since I got busy, which is probably a prerequisite...

[joshofspam]

You know now that I think of it, people I hear about complaining about windows sound like their people that have high end requirements for use of their computers.

If M is much like Microsoft why would Jacob work with a program that was known to have a reputation for not cutting the mustard when running specialty programs?

Maybe I'm missing something.

[VAE]

Because what he uses is more like Windows NT  - specialty stuff for powerful machines
it might even have been embedded stuff in the hardware, like a spiffy spectrometer they had where i was working in the summer (i ran tests on water meter chips with it and a test bed)

[Sofox]

Just wanted to say I've been finding the last few comics hilarious.

The whole "This is how we get tech support!" and going the whole hog with the kidnapping, interrogation and wardrobe selections. Works brilliantly.

[Naldru]

[Must not go on about DRDOS, winsock, "strncpy is deprecated", AD, MS Java, the Netware PSP bug, Bookcase or any of the other shit they've pulled, must not go on about the shit they've pulled...]

Well, Ashley wanted to use VMS, but most other people who understood it have died of old age.  He was hoping to have it running Linux, though.  (See P140)

If we all listed the problems we've had with the mighty M, we might have the first thread that exceeded the available disk space on the server.

And if Sabrina was online, I'm sure that she would suggest AmigaDOS.

[ChaosMageX]

Since we're all discussing operating systems here, this is a personal maxim of mine:

All Operating Systems Are Evil

The all have their one quirks, shortcomings, limitations, and above all else, bugs.  It's just a matter of choosing the lesser of those evils.

I hate play devil's advocate here, but for me, the lesser of all those evils has always been Windows.

Despite their deprecation of strncpy and other fundamental C/C++ functions, my preferred Integrated Development Environment will always be Microsoft Visual Studio.  Even though they left out the intellisense feature for unmanaged C/C++ in their 2010 edition, I'm patient and I'm willing to wait and continue to use the 2008 edition until they add it.  Besides, I mostly code in C# anyway.

I mean, I the reason I love Microsoft is because they made it easy for me to learn how to program in the first place.  I started with the oversimplified Visual Basic .NET, which opened the door for me to learn C/C++, Java, FORTRAN, and C#.  I started with Windows Forms and that opened the door for my to learn Win32 GUI programming and the wonders of GDI/GDI+, the WndProc function, and .rc files.

I'm glad I started with Windows.  When it comes to operating systems like Linux, you already have to practically have a degree in Software Engineering in order to so much as install programs, let alone write and compile custom ones.  I've only just started learning about things like CMake that make putting programs on Linux bearable.  I would have quit programming out of frustration long ago if I had to start learning on something other than Windows.

And if you want to write GUI programs, you have to either choose between GTK, QT, or another one of the many many systems that exist depending on what specific operating you choose, which is why I always code for Windows first, other operating systems later.

And I don't know any of the skills to make mission critical applications that would be more efficient on non-Windows operating systems anyway, such as how to write hardware drivers or even so much as access, process, and send data to a computer's USB ports.

Whenever I want to learn a new skill in programming or how to do something new in programming, such as voice recognition and synthesis, or image processing, or something else, I always first look for a C# solution that I can look over in Red Gate's .NET Reflector and easily use in Microsoft Visual Studio.  If I can't find one, then I look for a C/C++ solution with Microsoft Visual Studio project files or CMake files to create those project files, and only if I can't find either do I start resorting to solutions for Linux, and then I try to get to them to work in Cygwin, because I don't have a computer with Linux on it.

If there's one thing that I will always love about Microsoft, its that it is an ideal environment for learning computer science and software engineering, and I'm still a student.  Maybe someday, when I feel I'm finally savvy enough with computers, I might try looking into other operating systems.

[Tapewolf]

All Operating Systems Are Evil

The all have their one quirks, shortcomings, limitations, and above all else, bugs.  It's just a matter of choosing the lesser of those evils.

That is one of my maxims as well.  I just have a different decision as to which one is the lesser evil.  And that at the end of the day comes down to what you're trying to achieve.

Despite their deprecation of strncpy and other fundamental C/C++ functions, my preferred Integrated Development Environment will always be Microsoft Visual Studio.  Even though they left out the intellisense feature for unmanaged C/C++ in their 2010 edition, I'm patient and I'm willing to wait and continue to use the 2008 edition until they add it.  Besides, I mostly code in C# anyway.

I mean, I the reason I love Microsoft is because they made it easy for me to learn how to program in the first place.

Yes, they've got better at it, but for a long time they actually made it harder.  Back in the day, all computers shipped with BASIC in the ROM.  The PC didn't, but it did ship with QBASIC instead as part of the OS.  Then Microsoft removed it.  The closest equivalent was Visual Basic, which cost more that Windows did.

The free 'Express' versions are a godsend.  The problem is that while VS is without doubt one of the best IDEs going at the moment, the underlying Windows API teaches you very bad habits.
I had to spend ages fixing the brain-damage caused by someone who did everything the winsock way, in order to get our code to work on Android and basically, everything else in the world.
Afterwards the same code worked on winsock as well - but it if had been written against sockets instead of microsoft's incompatible variant, none of it would have been necessary in the first place.

(Also I'm less than thrilled that the same code compiled in VS6 comes out double the size in VS2008, but that's another story)

The main things that annoy me about windows basically come down to the following things:

1. They arbitrarily make things incompatible for no good reason.  They don't support common standards and re-invent their own instead.  Often this is deliberate to increase lock-in.

2. They don't support several basic features that everything else has had since the 1980s, specifically the ability to mount a file as if it was a disk, and symlink support.  Windows 7 and Vista finally added symlinks, but you can't actually use them in practice because only an admin can create the things.
I really hate not having symlinks, it's like bashing your head against a wall.

3. Notepad.

And if you want to write GUI programs, you have to either choose between GTK, QT, or another one of the many many systems that exist depending on what specific operating you choose, which is why I always code for Windows first, other operating systems later.

Heh, you should have heard me curse and scream about how I had to implement every tiny widget myself in Windows, and figure out how to make everything scroll into the bargain.  The text has to be reminded what colour it is each time the screen is redrawn.  The whole experience was a gigantic horror, and if you had told me then that Windows GUI programming was easier than GTK, I really would have punched you in the face

I think a lot of this could have been spared by using MFC instead of programming directly for Windows, but MFC didn't exist for Windows CE at the time and .NET was about 3 years away from working on it.  VB for CE did exist, but was abandoned about 2 years later with no replacement and a lot of very sad faces from the people who used it.

FWIW, a key advantage of QT and wxWidgets is that the same program will also recompile for Windows, and GTK to a lesser extent.  I haven't done much QT myself, but I will certainly agree that it isn't straightforward for a beginnner.

Whenever I want to learn a new skill in programming or how to do something new in programming, such as voice recognition and synthesis, or image processing, or something else, I always first look for a C# solution that I can look over in Red Gate's .NET Reflector and easily use in Microsoft Visual Studio.  If I can't find one, then I look for a C/C++ solution with Microsoft Visual Studio project files or CMake files to create those project files, and only if I can't find either do I start resorting to solutions for Linux, and then I try to get to them to work in Cygwin, because I don't have a computer with Linux on it.

Yeah, I was exactly like this.  The thing is, the OS I knew inside out at the time was DOS, which went out of fashion very soon after I had approached any kind of mastery of it.

The main lesson I took home from that was that you do not want to learn how to do something in a single environment only.  Understand the basic principles instead, and take the extra time to make the code cross-platform.  Avoid closed source toolkits if possible because they will become obsolete.

The editor toolkit at work was made by people who ignored my pleas to do it properly.  The result is a hunk of rotting, unmaintainable code written for a dead Microsoft-only language that they (MS) dumped for something shinier.

Simply put, you should always try to have an escape route.  The thing is, Microsoft try their damnest to prevent people from being able to escape and at the end of the day, that is what frustrates me.

Anyway, that's my 2p.  Ultimately I kind of would prefer this thread to be more oriented on the comic and less about personal OS preferences, because that is like arguing over text editors and things - you're never, ever going to come to a universal agreement

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Yeurgh.

While I'll fight to the death for your right to hold your opinion, ChaosMageX, I'm going to have to agree to disagree with you. While .NET and C# and Visual Studio do, indeed, go very well together...

... they don't scale. For anything over and above a single machine, they really don't work. For many things involving a single machine, they cause more pain and struggle to make them work than they resolve.

Of course, as a developer, they work very very well. For the developer.

For the sysadmin, who is tasked with scaling the developer's code out to something production level, it's nothing but heartache and excess work.


... although I'll admit that's not limited to windows developers, there.


Anyway. Going back to Naldru's comment - if you can exhaust the server's space with plain text entries on here (I'll limit it to ones you've typed, if I may. No copy-pasting entire encyclopaedias into here, thankyou) then I will eat my hat.

... And not the straw one. I mean the leather one that set me back fifty quid.


I would guess that we've got something on the order of a couple hundred gig free. I'm betting that even if the partition we're on is limited to 50 or so, the admins will get bored and lock the thread way before you get that far. I'll even be nice and refuse to lock it myself. Or ask someone else to.

... I can't promise Tapewolf won't lock it as soon as he sees this, though. ;-]

[joshofspam]

So all things said about Creatures and M tech support, is this profession more dangers and better payed for hazards?

I mean have they taken any steps to keep the cubicle's filled?

I wouldn't be surprised if some even keep a techy they kidnapped just to keep the computer running or a rampage either.

[RobbieThe1st]

All Operating Systems Are Evil

The all have their one quirks, shortcomings, limitations, and above all else, bugs.  It's just a matter of choosing the lesser of those evils.

That is one of my maxims as well.  I just have a different decision as to which one is the lesser evil.  And that at the end of the day comes down to what you're trying to achieve.

I.e. Windows is the best for Gaming, Linux for power users, and Chrome OS for people-who-think-they-are-power-users-but-don't-know-a-AV-from-a-firewall.

I mean, I the reason I love Microsoft is because they made it easy for me to learn how to program in the first place.

When I first decided to program, I did it because I wanted a "custom client" for a game called Runescape(essentially a browser frame, URL-lookup table and selector). I had a guide for VS6, and after trying to find a free copy, I learned that I needed to buy a copy off Ebay. So, bought what I thought was a full copy - I get it home, and after working with it for a while following my tutorial, I learn that it's a student/limited version, and didn't have the "web control" bit that I needed. I was quite upset after that - I ended up finding out how to do it in Javascript, which took -half- the coding of the VS6 version, and vowed never to mess with Microsoft's screwy programming systems again.
I learned how to do an amazing amount with PHP, JS, HTML and CSS due to that... Now, I'll probably use Python with QT as my main development language, as it's supported on all systems I have, including my phone!

1. They arbitrarily make things incompatible for no good reason.  They don't support common standards and re-invent their own instead.  Often this is deliberate to increase lock-in.

SVG is an excellent example of this - Supported by *every* other browser for years, and now we -might- get some basic support in IE9. If we'd had this a few years ago, Flash wouldn't be as big a deal.

2. They don't support several basic features that everything else has had since the 1980s, specifically the ability to mount a file as if it was a disk, and symlink support.  Windows 7 and Vista finally added symlinks, but you can't actually use them in practice because only an admin can create the things.
I really hate not having symlinks, it's like bashing your head against a wall.

Amen.

I haven't done much QT myself, but I will certainly agree that it isn't straightforward for a beginnner.

I don't know - I started messing with it and found that it wasn't -that- hard, though I would be -far- happier if they had documentation like PHP has(explaining each function, how to use it and giving examples too).

Anyway, that's my 2p.  Ultimately I kind of would prefer this thread to be more oriented on the comic and less about personal OS preferences, because that is like arguing over text editors and things - you're never, ever going to come to a universal agreement

Bah! You'll never get that!

P.S. vim FTW.

----------------------------
Comic wise, I was slightly skeptical at first  - Threatening someone is one thing, threatening their family however... Sort of a Bad Thing. This latest comic, though, puts it into perspective and lets the reader know that it's all bluff.

[Naldru]

I have run some calculations and doubt that I could fill more than 10 megabytes with typed comments about problems with Microsoft, even if I tossed in Oracle, Adobe, IBM, Apple (before OSX) and Sun (before acquisition by Oracle).  Given that there are only twenty to fifty forumites here who have experienced the pain, I agree that that would limit it to a few gigabytes.  (Oh, the pain, as Dr. Smith would say.)

On the other hand, I just experienced a new problem yesterday from Oracle.  Apparently, OpenOffice 3.2 rejects Apple's latest JRE's (Java Runtime Environment) as "defective" because of the contents of some of the character strings.  One has to wonder if that was done to prevent the use of OpenJDK, an open source JRE alternative.  This could explain some of the statements Apple made a few months ago about the possible deprecation of Java.

I think that what really makes daydreams about taking such actions against certain manufacturers enjoyable is living in the constant fear of another shoe falling on our head at any time.  Not to mention the fear of the central IT organization making some change that will stop everything from working.  (My most recent was a misconfiguration of the SMTP servers.)

The real reason that OpenSource projects are more reliable is that the developers actually feel bad when errors are found in their code.  Several of the companies that charge big bucks for their software actually seem to feel that it is the end users fault for finding the bug.

I actually had a case where a Microsoft help desk person told me that he knew of no cases where releases of updates had caused software to fail.

*** *** ***
Edit: 

On the Lost Lake page, Amber declared a thread to be NerdsX2.  How do you think Amber would classify this one:  Crisis of Infinite Nerds - The search for quality software?

[Tapewolf]

Okay, comic's up.  Actually a few minutes early for once.