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My Windows Vista Experience? 26 June 2009

Posted by Lao Tzu in computers, software engineering, systems engineering, technology.
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I just purchased a laptop with Windows Vista installed. The machine is 64 bit and has 4 GB of RAM. When I am not doing anything, the OS is using at least 30% of my memory. WOW! But I could live with that if I were getting some high speed performance as a trade off. Haven’t see it. But that is not the worst part. They have merely amplified everything that microsoft has been doing wrong in the OS business.
The file system (or at least how it is displayed) is insane. There is this folder on the desktop that is named after the computer login name – similar to that useless folder/directory called “My Documents” that has been on the last several versions of Windows. At least they got rid of the space in the name. However, this new desktop folder is very interesting. I am not sure where it “physically” resides on my hard drive. Of course by physically here I am merely referring to the next level of abstraction below this one. It looks like it is under C:/User/Owner/ when I browse from the C drive, but the path is different if I browse from the desktop. In fact, the computer appears as a subdirectory under the desktop. Huh? To make it worse, the actual directory names in the path are different????
In addition, not only did they not fix that eternal problem of having a directory named “Program Files” (it contains a space and the word Files is not necessary), they made it worse by making two of them. There is another directory called “Program Files(x86)”. Incredibly stupid. I always make a directory simply called “Programs” and install everything there.
Finally, there were all these “special” folders preinstalled, like Favorites, Documents, Photos, etc. This is like buying a house and someone else putting furniture in it you don’t like. So I deleted some of these, and that caused all sorts of problems. Now the browser cannot save my favorites, and I have no idea where files I download go to.
Vista is the worst OS I have ever worked with. I do give Microsoft credit for leading the Windows movement (if not inventing it). However, the pioneers must have left the company. They obviously traded sanity for useability here. Microsoft is in desparate need of a systems engineer for their OS.

Metro Tragedy & Economics 23 June 2009

Posted by Lao Tzu in business, economy, systems engineering.
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We recently had a tragic train wreck here in the DC area, yesterday, where 2 Metro trains collided. Unfortunately, over the 2 days prior to the accident, I had 2 separate conversations with people explaining how I predicted that there would be more plane crashes due to the economic crisis. Unfortunately, I was correct. I have not checked the stats, but it appears there were more crashes on the news recently, and the reasons are related to economic crisis (for the cases where we have a good estimate of the cause). The rationale is straightforward. Airlines are typically running in the red and sensitive to consumer spending trends. They have little room to cut expenses during economic low points. Hence, critical areas get cut – maintenance labor, part replacements, pilot rest periods, training, and selection criteria are lowered to those with failing test scores. It was reported today that the train that crashed was overdue for brake replacements and that the Metro could not afford to keep up with maintenance. Is the same phenomenon occuring here?

Bad Software Technology 13 July 2008

Posted by Lao Tzu in computers, software engineering, systems engineering, technology.
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The following are bad ideas that have been used extensively in software engineering, mainly because they are “shortcuts” – methods that are not proper or cogent, but are implemented for the sake of convenience or performance.  Sometimes they are implemented when the programmer has decided to have the application “think” for the user. From a Systems Engineering perspective, these are just wrong. As a coworker once stated, “Performance is the responsibility of the hardware, the software needs to be correct.” In addition, the situation where the computer thinks for the user rather than doing what the user tells it to do, should be limited to very few, well thought-out and critical situations, or quite possibly never.

  • Cache - Storing and presenting old data because it takes to long too present more accurate and reliable real time data.
  • Cookies – Saving personal data for a website on the computer, especially bad for public computers.
  • Remember Me on this Computer (saving passwords) – This violates the fundamental reason for passwords.  And the option is often checked by default on many sites (e.g., Hotmail).
  • Multitab Browsers - Because of session beans, these won’t work properly – your session information can get shared between multiple tabs.
  • Automatic Updates – Apparently people who still implement this have never had the experience of an application searching and installing updates while they were trying to use it.  Here’s an idea – I tell the software when to look for updates.
  • Auto Correction – Who’s driving here, I mean really?! That’s why there is a Spell Check button on many applications. I will spell check and approve when I want to. Thank you.  This is not to be confused with Auto-Completion, which I think is great (example of letting computer help).
  • Spaces in File or Directory Names – Although Windows allows it, it can still cause problems in several scenerios.  Ironically, even MS-DOS can’t handle it without quotes.
  • Registry – This is spaghetti code for operating systems.  If I were wrong, there wouldn’t be so many registry cleaners out there.  Maybe if it were humanly readable / editable, but that’s probably just asking for trouble.
  • Case Indecision - Case Sensitive is OK; Case Insensitive is OK, too;  Case Sensitive Sometimes is pure madness!