Re: Where's APL going?

Doug White wrote:

> Keywords:
> In article <dibd820fa6@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "J. Clarke"
> <jclarke.usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>>Funny, a few minutes ago I hit a Web site by accident (miskeyed the
>>address)
>>and my non M$ box ground to a halt. On the other hand Internet Explorer
>>digested it just fine.
>>
>>If you're getting "a steady stream of errors from various programs" and
>>your computer "grinds to a halt several times a day" then you need to find
>>out why and fix it, not just accept that that's the way it is with
>>Microsoft. As for patches, you'd be happier if they just sent you a
>>recompiled Linux
>>kernel that required you to reboot? But that brings the question of why
>>they aren't using the remote management capabilities to reboot the machine
>>for you in the wee hours.
>>
>>Sorry, but it seems to me that your real gripe is with your IT department
>>that is not doing its job and not with Microsoft.
>
> M$ can't support their own code. I know, I've used their "support" in
> the past. Their idea of "fixing" a problem is to have you wipe your disk
> & re-install all od your apps.

Which excuses the IT department from proper regression testing and
controlled release of updates how?

>>> M$ has
>>> crippled the DOS support in the newer Windows
>>
>>Actually, they have removed DOS completely. And it is not "in the newer
>>Windows", it is in the NT family--the same limitations have been there
>>since the early '90s and if you have applications that do not work on NT
>>that's the fault of the developers of those applications--Microsoft told
>>them it was coming, repeatedly, and yet the software developers continued
>>to develop for a moribund platform.
>
> Actually, the DOS support (yes, I know it isn't truly "DOS") in NT worked
> fine.

Ever try to run APL*PLUS 386 under NT?

> W2K and XP broke several things, and they can't be bothered to fix
> them. They fully admit in their Knowledge Base that the stuff is broken,
> and has been for years.
>
>>> , and now several legacy
>>> programs I used to rely on (written in APL) don't work as well as they
>>> used to.
>>
>>This is one of the costs of progress--it's not possible to have complete
>>MS-DOS compatibility in a multiuser multitasking operating system with
>>protected storage and memory and controlled access to privileged
>>instructions.
>
> If it worked fine in NT, there is no excuse for breaking it in W2K and
> XP. They are both supposedly built on NT. They are so busy paying
> people to come up with talking paperclips that they can't fix real
> problems that they've created.

What, specifically, is broken on your system?

>>Funny how the same people who complain most bitterly about how Microsoft's
>>systems are not secure and reliable are also the first ones to complain
>>bitterly when tightened security aimed at increasing reliability breaks
>>one of their applications.
>
> As I have said, this is not the issue. I've actually been pleasantly
> surprised at XP's stability, but not the fact that you have to join the
> patch-of-the-week-club to keep its much vaunted security entact.

If Unix was as popular it would need just as many patches.

> However, if you run M$ apps, you are in for trouble. I run non-M$ stuff
> at home, and my system is MUCH more stable, and the apps are much faster.

I don't notice that my Microsoft systems running Microsoft apps are any more
or any less stable than my Linux systems running Linux apps. And the XP
boxen seem more responsive.
>
> Doug White
>
> Doug White

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)
.

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