One of the ways in which software is not part of the real world is that it is far more malleable—as you've just discovered. Although you can use a screw as a nail by driving it with a hammer, you would be hard pressed to use a plate as a fork. Our ability to take software and transmogrify it into shapes that were definitely not intended by the original author is both a blessing and a curse. -- George V. Neville-Neil, in ACM Queue vol. 10, no. 12, Kode Vicious: One programmer's extension is another programmer's abuse. Ease of use may be invisible but its absence sure isn't. -- IBM In business, the customer is always right. In banking, the customer is always the customer. In computer support, the customer is always an idiot. -- unknown The problem is that passwords are, in general, a pretty poor way of achieving "security" for the simple reason that their safe use is just much too inconvenient -- and convenience will win over any security concerns any time. -- https://www.netmeister.org/blog/asswords.html Simply put, spreadsheets are good for quick and dirty work, but they are not designed for serious and reliable work. -- http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2014/05/23/you-shouldnt-use-a-spreadsheet-for-important-work-i-mean-it/ A very cozy industry has resulted. Real change is slow, creative destruction slower still. Artificial network effects arise, in which employers want people experienced with the currently perceived “winning” technology and job-seekers want to list the currently perceived “winning” technology among their experience. Whether that technology is actually superior or even appropriate to the task at hand is at most an afterthought. Vendors line up behind whatever technology or company the hype wheel of fortune has landed on that year. Products are built with obvious and easily corrected shortcomings that exist to preserve “partnerships” with other vendors whose products exist solely to remedy them. -- http://dtrace.org/blogs/wesolows/2014/12/29/fin/ There is no real interest anywhere in alternatives to the PC, even though the basic architecture was developed for use cases that look nothing like the ones that are most relevant today. [This fits with s/PC/Web/ as well.] -- http://dtrace.org/blogs/wesolows/2014/12/29/fin/ There’s a better way to do this, but my central observation is that the solutions that would be better for everyone else are not those that would be best for the vendors: AMI, Microsoft, and Intel are quite happy with their cozy little proprietary royalty machine and have no incentive to engineer, or even enable others to engineer, anything better. -- http://dtrace.org/blogs/wesolows/2014/12/29/fin/ Unsurprisingly, Plan9 is a colossal failure, [...]. -- http://dtrace.org/blogs/wesolows/2014/12/29/fin/ Microsoft, to its credit, has found a cash cow and clearly intends to milk it dry. There’s no shame in that, but it hardly advances the state of the art; their OS is actually well-suited to its niche on corporate desktops and doesn’t need to advance. -- http://dtrace.org/blogs/wesolows/2014/12/29/fin/ GNU/Linux is a trash fire, but it’s the de facto standard trash fire, just like Microsoft was in the 90s and IBM in the 70s. If you choose it and your project fails, it must have been the application developers’ fault; if you choose illumos and your project fails, it must be the OS’s — and thus YOUR — fault. -- http://dtrace.org/blogs/wesolows/2014/12/29/fin/ [...] I’m disappointed that we never really went down that road. I’d like to imagine that someone will, but I’ve seen no evidence for it. -- http://dtrace.org/blogs/wesolows/2014/12/29/fin/ Es geht aber auch um Qualitätsansprüche im Softwarebereich. Da werden teilweise Produkte angeboten, die bei physischen Gütern sofort zu Mängel- und Minderzahlungen führen würden, in der digitalen Welt aber einfach so akzeptiert werden. Ob schon mal jemand eine Vergütung dafür bekommen hat, wenn durch einen Programmabsturz wichtige Dinge eben mal verloren gegangen sind, wage ich zu bezweifeln. -- http://irights.info/artikel/wir-muessen-bei-jeder-regelung-mit-bedenken-ob-sie-auch-im-digitalen-raum-passt/23367 The methodology we followed to complete the 386BSD NET/2 kernel was critical to our success. We began with an examination of the documentation that described how each of these missing facilities managed to function, and then reviewed the interface structure within the NET/2 kernel. From this information, we created a model of semantics for each of the missing facilities. Among the references we found useful were Maurice Bach's The Design of the UNIX Operating System, Tanenbaum's MINIX series, the BSD book, the UNIX System V Programmers Reference Manual, Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming, as well as selected readings from USENIX Technical Proceedings over the years. Comparing these references is interesting because they all contain different perspectives which "color" the puzzle piece slightly differently. -- https://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/porting-unix-to-the-386-missing-pieces-p/184408764 To me, a big problem with what I'll call domain-specific programmers is that they get involved in standards and specifications and aren't trained in how to abstract. So standards are produced that result in enlarged, more complex domains. -- Jon Steinhart (TUHS, 2022-02-06) Part of this comes from the fact that the Linux kernel, C library, and core utilities are all shipped separately. The BSDs have often criticized this, claiming that shipping all of the OS in a single source control system makes it easier to rollout new features. There is no doubt upsides from having a single source tree; but one of the advantages of keeping things separate is that definition of the kernel <-> userspace interface is much more explicit. -- Ted Ts'o (TUHS, 2022-06-05) Ich benutze nur die ausgereiften HighEnd-Qualitätsbetriebssysteme des Weltmarktführers. Diese kosten zwar ein bisschen mehr, überzeugen aber durch einen schnellen Return on Investment durch vorbildliche Sicherheit, Stabilität, Kompatibilität, Performance, Usability, Skalierbarkeit, und Kontinuität in der Produktpolitik. Und das ist es schliesslich, worauf es Experten wie mir im harten Tagesgeschäft des internationalen Wettbewerbs ankommt. Ideologisch motiviertes Bastelwerk - halbherzig durch weltfremde Langzeitstudenten mit Taxischein zusammengeschustert und gefrickelt - hat keinerlei Chance, will man sich tagtäglich aufs Neue den Herausforderungen der Globalisierung und sonstigen Herausforderungen erfolgreich stellen. Da können einfach nur Lösungen von Profis für Profis zum Einsatz kommen, die hervorragend durch das Portfolio der Redmonder Software-Spezialisten abgedeckt werden. -- Klassischer Trollkommentar zu allen Linux-Meldungen im Heise-Forum And since there are product managers involved, often features and time to market often trump issues like technical debt. -- Ted Ts'o