XP is garbage

[Ted Edwards]

Roger Johansson wrote:

Rich Grise wrote:
Somebody needs to teach your friend about drive partitions. I try to
repartition such that there's one of the minimum possible size for the
OS, and NEVER store anything but the OS itself on that partition - put
ALL of your data on a second or third partition. That way, when the
OS crashes and you have to reformat/reinstall, you only lose the OS,
and not all of your data.

I have been running OS/2, now eCS, for the last eight years. I keep
none of my data or code on the boot drive. Usually when something
crashes the worst that happens is a need to reboot to get rid of the
hung app. Only once in those eight years did the OS get clobbered badly
enough that a reboot wasn't good enough. I formatted the partition and
un-ZIP'd my backup to it and was back up.

Well said. I use a 4GB partition for the OS, and it should have a size
of maximum 8GB.
Install windows there, and the programs which have to be installed to
work, that is the programs which will stop working when windows breaks.

Use a partition saving program, like norton ghost, to save an image of

DFSee will do this as well as saving the partition tables. It is cross
platform and, if you register, can create a bootable floppy and a
bootable CD.

http://www.fsys.nl/dfsee.htm

Ted

 

[Ted Edwards]

Keith Williams wrote:

OS/2 was *much* cleaner. Simply install all the programs on another
is
disk and drag them to where they're wanted. Backup? Drag it to the
backup device.

All my data is on the e: partition, for the stated reasons.

I have W2K on C: (occasional use only), D: is eCS (OS/2), E: is app
software, F: is data. G: is FAT32 which can be read and written by both
OSs. The odd exception creeps in but not many.

Ted

 

[Ted Edwards]

learning@learning.com wrote:

In <MPG.1cca5074c49fda159899da@news.individual.net>, on 04/15/05
at 11:28 PM, Keith Williams <krw@att.bizzzz> said:


OS/2 was *much* cleaner.

Actually, it still is

There will never be anything quite like the OO WPS. Linux needs it, M$
isn't wise enough to consider it, or smart enough to write it, and it
cannot be 'added on' anyway.

I am looking forward to getting back to it one day. Real drag and drop,
what a concept! I could leave co-workers with their jaws hanging open by
just dragging an app from one drive to another, and showing how it was all
still connected, and functional.

Backups? Shoot, ..... xcopy *.* /h/o/t/s/e/r/v to another drive. All
done.... Windows? Just a sad little joke in comparison.

The only exception I take to that is I ZIP the drives and write to
CD/DVD. Handy and saves space.

Ted

 

In <L2d8e.35035$vt1.5280@edtnps90>, on 04/16/05
at 06:44 PM, Ted Edwards <Ted_Espamless@telus.net> said:

Backups? Shoot, ..... xcopy *.* /h/o/t/s/e/r/v to another drive. All
done.... Windows? Just a sad little joke in comparison.

The only exception I take to that is I ZIP the drives and write to
CD/DVD. Handy and saves space.

I do that as well. Didn't want to get into details tho What I do is
xcopy or drag the entire partition to another location, and zip up that
'backup' to store it on a CD/DVD. That way I have a copy of everything I
need without having to get it off the CD. Sometimes I get to messing
around and screw something up, so I just copy it back from the other
drive. So far, I have never needed the stuff off the CD, but its there if
I do.

The OS/2 base system on my machine was installed in 1998 and has never
been reinstalled since. I have moved it from machine to machine with
backups, or just swapping in the hard drive, and fix packs were easily
installed. Anyone out there still using their windows install from 1998?


Overall, no matter how each OS/2 user does it, the process is drop dead
simple, and makes windows look like a tinker toy with all its
"registry/dll/drop it all over the drive and use shortcuts" baloney.
Fixing an OS/2 system problem is a piece of cake. I don't even bother
trying to fix friend's windows machines. I just tell them to reinstall.
Life is too short so they better have their data on another parition. They
learn pretty quickly. <g>

I have installed windows apps that don't bother with the registry or
anything, and they will run from anyplace, but the way M$ demands it to be
done is silly, and not necessary. Its all about control, and lazy
programming, no matter how you view it. When someone argues that the
registry and path control is necessary, I just show em OS/2 and ask why it
can't be done that way instead. Fact is, it could have been, but bill
clung to his sad little DOS stuff for way too long.


JB

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Ted Edwards
<Ted_Espamless@telus.net> wrote (in <Xxc8e.54025$7Q4.7695@clgrps13&gt
about 'XP is garbage', on Sat, 16 Apr 2005:

See, we were using Alladin lamps (kerosene, mantle) because we enjoyed
the atmosphere.

Brings back memories of WW2. Atmosphere 10% carbon dioxide, 50% water
vapour and 2% sundry light hydrocarbons. Fabulous.(;-)
--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
There are two sides to every question, except
'What is a Moebius strip?'
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

 

In <Inf8e.5637$t85.5470@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com>, on 04/16/05
at 09:23 PM, Joerg <notthisjoergsch@removethispacbell.net> said:

APL was a powerful language. My father used to love it. I just wonder
why IBM drops the ball on a lot of this stuff. APL is gone, OS/2 is
almost gone, their PC biz was sold to China...

I used to think it was poor management, but management keeps turning over,
all the way to the top, and it continues, so I think the best answer is
that they do whatever makes the most money for the shareholders, this
quarter, and then react however necessary when the next quarter comes
around.

IBM long ago lost any desire to be a technology leader. They are now
content to just ride the coat tails of M$ and others and make the officers
and owners filty rich for the short term. One day soon, they will be
completely irrelevant. Its their choice, but if they had the mentality
today, that they had forty years ago, we would be bitching about flaws in
OS/2, and Microsoft would be playing catchup.

JB

 

[keith]

On Sat, 16 Apr 2005 18:24:24 +0000, Ted Edwards wrote:

Keith Williams wrote:
When I was teaching, I'd use nothing other than white (or black - the
college didn't spend much on education boards. I tried teaching from
prepared materials, but it put the students to sleep. Using the board
made it easier to gauge the pace of the students and to veer off into a
ditch when necessary.

We had an early one of those things that could be set on an overhead
projector and connected to a laptop. When I was teaching introduction
to programming, I would typically spend the first quarter to half the
period introducing something new. I would then state a problem and
enter the code the class suggested and try to run it. When it didn't
work, we would go through looking for the problem.

Well, I was teaching (indeed most of what I taught was intro to
programming) a decade-and-a-half before laptops and projectors were
available. ;-)

I can see how this would work and I'd try it if I were in that position
again. As it was, I let them try on their own in a "lab" setting. I'd
then walk around and observe/help.

This whole thing went over very well because it was _their_ program not
mine and they got to see what doesn't work as well as what does.

Sure. If it's yours, xenocryptophobia quickly sets in.

--
Keith

 

[DaveC]

On Fri, 15 Apr 2005 10:00:50 -0700, John Larkin wrote
(in article <2psv511jt60i0h3ionjibico1j6n26p3l5@4ax.com&gt:

Sorry, I have no idea what any of that means.

XP, being a touchy, sore topic with many WinTel users, is almost a flammable
topic. It's bound to get a huge response. One might almost call you a troll!

(Just kidding on that last one... )
--
Please, no "Go Google this" replies. I wouldn't
ask a question here if I hadn't done that already.

DaveC
me@privacy.net
This is an invalid return address
Please reply in the news group

 

[keith]

On Sat, 16 Apr 2005 16:09:37 -0600, learning wrote:

In <Inf8e.5637$t85.5470@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com>, on 04/16/05
at 09:23 PM, Joerg <notthisjoergsch@removethispacbell.net> said:


APL was a powerful language. My father used to love it. I just wonder
why IBM drops the ball on a lot of this stuff. APL is gone, OS/2 is
almost gone, their PC biz was sold to China...

APL requres someone who thinks a matrix is life. Given that it's a
wonderful write-only language. It's not a general purpose language.

I used to think it was poor management, but management keeps turning over,
all the way to the top, and it continues, so I think the best answer is
that they do whatever makes the most money for the shareholders, this
quarter, and then react however necessary when the next quarter comes
around.

Well... That *is* their job.

IBM long ago lost any desire to be a technology leader.

This isn't a fair statement at all. Who else has a *research* division?

They are now
content to just ride the coat tails of M$ and others and make the officers
and owners filty rich for the short term.

Really? If you think IBM is all about M$, I suggest that you have a
*very* narrow of the world.

One day soon, they will be completely irrelevant. Its their choice, but
if they had the mentality today, that they had forty years ago, we would
be bitching about flaws in OS/2, and Microsoft would be playing catchup.

You really don't get out much, eh?

--
Keith

 

[Ted Edwards]

Joerg wrote:

It ran APL. ...

APL was a powerful language. My father used to love it. I just wonder
why IBM drops the ball on a lot of this stuff. APL is gone, OS/2 is
almost gone, their PC biz was sold to China...

As Mark Twain said, "The rumours of my demise have been greatly
exagerated." Both APL and OS/2 are alive and kicking. IBM has pretty
well, but not completely, deserted OS/2 however it has been picked up by
Serenity Systems in Europe and is being sold and developped as eCS. See
http://os2.mensys.nl/indexuk.html

APL is also still around. Personally, I use IBM's APL2 for OS/2 which
is no longer supported by IBM - they have gone to 'doze and Linux with
their new one. Fortunately the last APL2 for OS/2 was a well
developped, reliable product. I haven't run into any bugs for quite
some time and I am a _very_ heavy user of it.

Ted

 

[Ted Edwards]

keith wrote:

APL requres someone who thinks a matrix is life. Given that it's a
wonderful write-only language. It's not a general purpose language.

I gather that you've had minimal, if any, exposure to it. I have been
using it since 1967 and still do. As I have migrated from system to
system over the years I have frequently enhanced or re-written functions
to advantage of advancements in both the language and the
implementations. I don't know where you got your misinformation but I
have written a library full of mathematical routines, a couple of data
bases, a graph plotter, a word processor (before the term was coined - I
called it a text editor) and am currently developing a reliable
incremental backup setup for my hard drive.

What language would you call "general purpose" other than assembler?

Ted

 

[Ted Edwards]

keith wrote:

Well, I was teaching (indeed most of what I taught was intro to
programming) a decade-and-a-half before laptops and projectors were
available. ;-)

When was that? I've had a laptop since 1973. Of course you wouldn't
have liked that one as it ran APL.

I can see how this would work and I'd try it if I were in that position
again. As it was, I let them try on their own in a "lab" setting. I'd
then walk around and observe/help.

We did both. We had lecture and lab so the students got plenty of
oportunity to work on their own.

BTW, the presentation software was written in APL.

Sure. If it's yours, xenocryptophobia quickly sets in.

Precisely. When I posted solutions to assignments, I always had across
the top in bold red print, "Here is _A_ solution to assignment #__".

Ted

 

[Ted Edwards]

learning@learning.com wrote:

drive. So far, I have never needed the stuff off the CD, but its there if
I do.

I have once. Installing what turns out to have been a defective piece
of software, I managed to clobber my OS/2 installation. No sweat.
Format D:, unzip backup to drive and CAD. Back up.

The OS/2 base system on my machine was installed in 1998 and has never
been reinstalled since.

I can't claim quite that since I have always enjoyed having a laptop as
my only machine. Each upgrade required some different drivers but that
was no big deal every few years since 1997. I'm now using eCS.

Ted

 

[Keith Williams]

In article <q7S8e.37528$vt1.19315@edtnps90>, Ted_Espamless@telus.net
says...

keith wrote:
APL requres someone who thinks a matrix is life. Given that it's a
wonderful write-only language. It's not a general purpose language.

I gather that you've had minimal, if any, exposure to it. I have been
using it since 1967 and still do. As I have migrated from system to
system over the years I have frequently enhanced or re-written functions
to advantage of advancements in both the language and the
implementations. I don't know where you got your misinformation but I
have written a library full of mathematical routines, a couple of data
bases, a graph plotter, a word processor (before the term was coined - I
called it a text editor) and am currently developing a reliable
incremental backup setup for my hard drive.

I used APL extensively in the 70s and very early 80s. I thought it was
WO then, and I still think so. I've seen process tracking tools
written in APL that weren't supportable and were left in place because
no one had a clue how they worked. No documentation (and please don't
tell me APL is self-documenting) and no comments (not easy in APL).
They were finally replaced wholesale, though I don't remember by what.

What language would you call "general purpose" other than assembler?

PL/I.

--
Keith

 

[John Larkin]

On Sun, 17 Apr 2005 22:04:21 GMT, DaveC <me@privacy.net> wrote:

On Fri, 15 Apr 2005 10:00:50 -0700, John Larkin wrote
(in article <2psv511jt60i0h3ionjibico1j6n26p3l5@4ax.com&gt:

Sorry, I have no idea what any of that means.

XP, being a touchy, sore topic with many WinTel users, is almost a flammable
topic. It's bound to get a huge response. One might almost call you a troll!

Well, then introducing any topic of conversation is a troll. The more
interesting the topic, the troll-ier.

Anybody want Mo's recipe for Paprika Chicken? It's awfully good. It
looks a lot like Genome's chicken thing, only orange.

John

 

[Spehro Pefhany]

On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 12:56:26 -0700, the renowned John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Sun, 17 Apr 2005 22:04:21 GMT, DaveC <me@privacy.net> wrote:

On Fri, 15 Apr 2005 10:00:50 -0700, John Larkin wrote
(in article <2psv511jt60i0h3ionjibico1j6n26p3l5@4ax.com&gt:

Sorry, I have no idea what any of that means.

XP, being a touchy, sore topic with many WinTel users, is almost a flammable
topic. It's bound to get a huge response. One might almost call you a troll!


Well, then introducing any topic of conversation is a troll. The more
interesting the topic, the troll-ier.

Anybody want Mo's recipe for Paprika Chicken? It's awfully good. It
looks a lot like Genome's chicken thing, only orange.

John

Is it like Chicken Paprikash? Good with those little German dumplings
(Spaetzle).


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
--
"it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 19:11:32 -0400, Spehro Pefhany
<speffSNIP@interlogDOTyou.knowwhat> wrote:

On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 12:56:26 -0700, the renowned John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Sun, 17 Apr 2005 22:04:21 GMT, DaveC <me@privacy.net> wrote:

On Fri, 15 Apr 2005 10:00:50 -0700, John Larkin wrote
(in article <2psv511jt60i0h3ionjibico1j6n26p3l5@4ax.com&gt:

Sorry, I have no idea what any of that means.

XP, being a touchy, sore topic with many WinTel users, is almost a flammable
topic. It's bound to get a huge response. One might almost call you a troll!


Well, then introducing any topic of conversation is a troll. The more
interesting the topic, the troll-ier.

Anybody want Mo's recipe for Paprika Chicken? It's awfully good. It
looks a lot like Genome's chicken thing, only orange.

John

Is it like Chicken Paprikash? Good with those little German dumplings
(Spaetzle).

Dunno. What with Mo being half Italian, we serve it over pasta. But
the dumplings thing sure sounds good, too.

Will post.

John

 

[keith]

On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 17:44:48 +0000, Ted Edwards wrote:

learning@learning.com wrote:
drive. So far, I have never needed the stuff off the CD, but its there if
I do.

I have once. Installing what turns out to have been a defective piece
of software, I managed to clobber my OS/2 installation. No sweat.
Format D:, unzip backup to drive and CAD. Back up.

I had an OS/2 installation (my first V2.0) that suffered serious bit-rot.
It was fine for a couple of months and then slowly went tits up. Restore
and it was fine again. Turns out it was an IDE controller issue (RZ1000,
IIRC). The controller would drop two bytes if the two channels were
multi-tasking and the timing was just wrong. WinBlows didn't have any
problem, sinc e didn't have a concept of multi-tasking. OS/2's fix was to
disable multi-tasking on that chipset.

The OS/2 base system on my machine was installed in 1998 and has never
been reinstalled since.

I can't claim quite that since I have always enjoyed having a laptop as
my only machine. Each upgrade required some different drivers but that
was no big deal every few years since 1997. I'm now using eCS.

--
Keith

 

[Keith Williams]

In article <42648eee$1$woehfu$mr2ice@news.aros.net>,
learning@learning.com says...

In <pan.2005.04.19.01.50.15.494221@att.bizzzz>, on 04/18/05
at 09:50 PM, keith <krw@att.bizzzz> said:


I had an OS/2 installation (my first V2.0) that suffered serious bit-rot.
It was fine for a couple of months and then slowly went tits up.
Restore and it was fine again. Turns out it was an IDE controller issue
(RZ1000, IIRC). The controller would drop two bytes if the two channels
were multi-tasking and the timing was just wrong. WinBlows didn't have
any problem, sinc e didn't have a concept of multi-tasking. OS/2's fix
was to disable multi-tasking on that chipset.

Yea, right around the time OS/2 v2.0 was rounding into form, I also had
some issues with windows 3.0 not working quite right either. Microsoft
never was able to fix the problems with windows/dos to make it a useful
system> I read where they ended up throwing it all away and hitching their
wagon to a shiny new kernel, NT, which was closely related to OS/2.
shrug

Actually, NT has nothing to do with OS/2. It was *supposed* to be OS/2
V3.0, but that never came to be.

--
Keith

 

In <MPG.1ccec2fd836640b09899e4@news.individual.net>, on 04/19/05
at 08:26 AM, Keith Williams <krw@att.bizzzz> said:

Actually, NT has nothing to do with OS/2. It was *supposed* to be OS/2
V3.0, but that never came to be.

Not quite. NT/2000 uses code taken from the early versions of OS/2 back
when billy and IBM parted ways. Until it was bastardized into XP, OS/2
text mode apps ran quite well in it. Why, it even creates OS/2 directories
during the install, which I am sure galled mr bill no end. The man never
created anything. He's just one of the best resellers on the market <g>

JB