[XCSSA] The Tyrrany of Redmond

[xcssa@xcssa.org]

On Thursday 15 November 2007 20:57, xcssa-admin@xcssa.org wrote:
> Instead of ASCII, you should have asked for ISO 8859 Latin-1 ;-).
>
> http://kb.iu.edu/data/ahfr.html
>
> I can appreciate her problem, though.  Even on my mac, when I try to
> save a PDF it doesn't give me a plain text option.  I do get a bunch
> of graphical options like TIFF and PNG.
>
> Speaking of IEEE, I did join just after the last meeting (starring
> Tweeks).  Good way to spend a lot of money.  Their website is about
> the worst example of overcomplicated programming I've ever come
> across.  After a couple of failed attempts, I'm not going to bother
> to fill out the personal information stuff.
>
> My biggest gripe about Windows XP is how bad it is about shutting
> down.  It takes many minutes, if it works at all.  First you wait and
> wait, and then it asks if you want to terminate non-responding task
> such-and-such.  You say YES and then wait a few more minutes, and
> then it asks if you want to terminate some other non-responding task
> (or maybe the same one).  Finally, it will sometimes actually shut
> down, and other times it will simply leave your desktop in an
> inoperable state which gives you no choice but to hit the hardware
> reset button.  Then, of course, it complains that YOU did not shut
> down properly.  I have to go through this ritual weekly because of
> security updates, or whenever something else messes up the system.
>
> I've finally tracked down some of this trouble to Norton AntiVirus
> (ccapp.exe).  

> But still, I think the OS shouldn't be so easily 
> sidetracked.  When I say shut down I mean SHUT DOWN NOW. 

Yes.. but you still want daemons to gracefully close things like database 
connections, client sessions, etc.. before doing the final synch no?


> Because of 
> the frequently needed updates, they should make shut down and reboot
> work as quickly as possible rather than getting worse and worse with
> each new version, despite massive improvements in CPU speed.

Sounds like what you are really looking for here Charles is a stateless 
machine.  Something that is pretty unique and separate from mainstream OS 
development:
	http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/StatelessLinux

a hot topic in security, pocket appliances and some vitalization circles...


> Also, I think filesystems should handle unexpected shutdowns nicely,
> only losing the last data if it hadn't been completely written yet.

That's what journaling filesystems are all about Charles (well.. but on a 
software level instead of hardware as a disk cache uses).


> The disk cache should always sync to disk completely whenever there
> is idle time. 

Yes.. but if a file is sent to disk.. and the disk replies "written" before 
cache is dumped to disk, then the disk cache will need to be non-volatile 
(either SRAM + battery or some new NV solution such as FeRAM).

This is why "nice" RAID cards come with a couple sticks of DRAM and a LiIon 
cell to power the memory.. So that if the system does down hard in the middle 
of a disk array write.. when the system is powered up, it can pick up where 
it left up and get the valid data to the disk array.  Not new technology.. 
but needed if you want a fast AND high availability system (from the hardware 
perspective anyway).


> On AmigaDOS, for example, the write cache synced 
> almost immediately after every operation, and you could pretty much
> do a hard reboot with impunity.  Of course, that was usually because
> you had no choice, but that's not different from Windows.

But you're talking about software.. not hardware there..


> Also, XP didn't make it easy to find the things I find most
> essential, like the terminal (cmd.exe) and scandisk:

Later.. windows (with Win2k and newer) became more "resilient" to crashes due 
to advances of and the stability of NTFS (as did Linux with ext2, Reiser, 
JFS, and XFS).

Tweeks


> http://www.duxcw.com/faq/win/xp/scandisk.htm

Scandisk is just the windows equiv to fsck for UN*X.  It's a read/scan/repair 
system that can sometimes create more damage than it cures.

Tweeks