[time-nuts] For my whole life timezones have been weird

[Jim Lux]

On 11/3/12 8:50 AM, Chris Albertson wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 10:32 PM, Sarah White <kuzetsa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> So, at or around 1981 (the year I was born) there was a cool concept.
>> IBM was selling "personal computers" (IBM-PC compatible later became a
>> thing) and by the time I was old enough to operate a modem, I had one
>> myself. Life was good.
>>
>> Wonder if there is any sensible way to petition microsoft to fix this
>> stupid mistake dating back to the DOS era. Windows 8 / metro is out now,
>> and I can't bloody stand the changes.
>
>
> I always wonder why people continue to use MS Windows.  Perhaps thheir
> employers force them to.   But other than that why?

I don't know that it's "force"... At JPL we have an enormous variety of 
desktop OSes, and for the most part, nobody much cares which one you use 
as long as you can get your job done.


Perhaps because you have a (expensive to replace) tool that requires IE 
for access?
Perhaps because the large installed base means that design tools are 
written for Windows first and others later?
Perhaps because of the large installed base it's easier to find folks to 
write software for Windows than for other products.
Perhaps because for all its ills, Windows isn't that bad a desktop 
environment.  The kind of timekeeping thing we're discussing here is, 
when it gets right down to it, not going to affect the vast majority 
(99.99%?) of users.





>
> That is the root cause of all Window's problems.  The company was run be a
> "chief software architect" who technically very ignorant and lacked any
> formal education in the subject.  Windows still suffers because it tries to
> maintain backwards compatabilty


Hardly the "root" of all problems..  Yes, the conflation of kernel and 
UI  (most of Windows is really all about UI capabilities: heck it's the 
very name of the product).  The kernel of NT was based on the 
architecture of VAX/VMS, which was fairly nice.  Real multitasking, real 
pre-emption, real process isolation, real dynamic run time binding. 
(none of which DOS had)

You can say it suffers from needing backward compatibility.. overall, 
they've done a half way decent implementation of this these days (there 
were some real clunkers along the way).  But it's also important to 
allow people to use their significant investment in old software.  You 
may have the best idea in the world and a very cool OS that implements 
it, but who's going to pay for recoding all those billions of lines of 
software for your new OS?

And assuming that money falls from the sky to pay for it, where are you 
going to find all those software people to do the work, at any price? 
Sure, I've seen lots of people just dying for the opportunity to 
decipher some 20 year old enterprise application and convert it to a new OS.



>
> You have to remember that in 1980 we have computers that would allow 100
> people to simultainiously log in and do work from 100 different termmiansl.

Well before that actually.  More like late 60s.  TymShare corp, for 
instance.  Dartmouth BASIC for another.

ANd note that those timesharing systems provided an environment that 
essentially hid the OS (kernel wise) from the user.  You fired up your 
ASR33 and were in the BASIC environment from the get go.

This also is the environment that BillG started doing computing work in. 
  He didn't start sitting at a keypunch cranking out JCL cards to 
compile his COBOL or FORTRAN jobs and allocating DASD for the temporary 
files.

>   We have the Internet (called arpanet back then.  We had email and UNIX was
> alive and well.   We even had mice and track balls This was not the "dark
> ages" the only real difference was the price of hardware.  And in this age
> gates did NOT know the difference between an OS and a command shell and he
> was running Microsoft.
>

Don't make the mistake of confusing public statements with background 
and knowledge.  For all you know, Gates wanted to deliberately confuse 
the two for marketing reasons.



>
> Chris Albertson
> Redondo Beach, California
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