OT Win7 updates

[RonNNN]

I guess I'm just not in that big of a rush to get the updates. In fact I usually have to tell my computer to postpone rebooting for an hour or so every Thursday morning! [g]

[trader_4]

Yes, I meant the data bus was 8 bits on the 8088.

IDK who all made them, but Olivetti was one. AT&T bought them and resold them as AT&T IBM compatible PCs. Then AT&T went one step further and came up with their own improved version, that used the

286. It still had the XT bus though, so it was a bastardized thing.

Those were extremely popular CPU for embedded designs, but AFAIK never used in any PC applications. They had on board DMA, timers, interrupt controller, etc, that made them very attractive for embedded applications. But the fact that those on board peripherals were different from the stand alone chips that provided that functionality in the PC made them incompatible, or at least not worth the trouble.

[rbowman]

Franklin and VTech were sued over an Apple II clone.

The InfoWorld article isn't specific but says Apple had brought criminal charges against companies around the world. I'm sure the Soviets, Chinese, Croats, and Bulgarians were trembling. Of that list, ITT may be the only one who actually had a license agreement. That lasted as long as it took Apple to develop a PAL interface, even though the ITT machines had a higher resolution.

Apple has a large and busy legal staff. I mean when you sue NYC, commonly known as 'The Big Apple' for using an apple in a logo, you're pushing the boundary of credibility. It's a wonder you can buy apples in the supermarket without paying a royalty.

[rbowman]

We still have a few bitmaps in the data structures. Then there are the shorts. Who would ever need more than 32767 objects? That was fun when we found out. Going to an unsigned short bought a little more breathing space. Then there are all the time_t variables. I don't plan on being around when that hits the fan.

It's been nibble along the way. Someone had the brilliant idea to look at the free disk space and exit if it looked too little. Life was grand until the first 4TB platter.

I get a chuckle when I see the real old stuff with variables declared 'register'. At least the compiler doesn't make snotty remarks when it finds them or K&R syntax.

[rbowman]

Time line:

Intel 8086 April 1978 Zilog Z8000 series early 1979 Motorola MC68000 September 1979 IBM PC August 1981 Intel 80286 February 1982 Intel 80386 October 1985

[rbowman]

Yes, they do. Get them right.

[Don Y]

These weren't specifically bit fields. Rather, more like unions of random types. I.e., when Foo was running, it might be an 8 bit int. When baz was running, it might be the most significant byte of a 24 bit float (!). When bar was running, it might be two three bit fields and two one bit fields -- used by bar and cosmo at the same time.

Each "declared byte" of RAM had a paragraph commentary that explained how the byte was used in different scenarios. With three of us working on the codebase at the same time (one set of expensive development tools), it took a fair bit of planning to ensure no two of us would appropriate a particular resource at the same execution time.

Until you realize that you were counting on "-1" to signal errors...

In my case, time is measured in nanoseconds (because some of my control loops operate in the microseconds time frame) so I can represent ~300 year intervals.

The harder problem is one of human expectations: It's 1830. If I say I have an appointment in 2 hours, how do I implement that "reminder"? Do I "do the math" and realize that it will be at 2030 and schedule an event for that time?

If so, what happens if something (me?) changes the current time of day so it now is 1820. My 2030 appointment is now 2:10 in the future!

Conversely, if I say I have an appointment at 2030, is it safe to set a 2 hour timer? If someone changes the current time, will I end up going to my appointment early/late?

Of course, you can make an implementation choice -- or even support both approaches! But, how do you come up with a language that allows the user to indicate which of these implementations (timer vs absolute time) a particular event schedule should use?

Exactly. How can people NOT foresee this stuff? It's like being surprised that XMAS falls on the 25th this year!

I designed my scripting language in large part to insulate the users from these sorts of issues. How do you explain overflow to a housewife? Or, cancellation to a plumber? They want to just deal with ideal operators and not have to worry about idiosyncrasies of an implementation!

(sort of like trying to explain why sqrt(3)*sqrt(3) != 3.000)

Yeah, I am frequently arguing with folks who think they can code smarter than the compiler's optimizer. Write what you want the code to *do*. Let the compiler figure out how to do it! Concentrate on finding good algorithms, not trying to outsmart the compiler!

(NatSemi's GNX tools were amazingly good, considering the time frame! The quality of the optimization was stunning. Of course, the 32K was a highly orthogonal device so it was a lot easier to design an optimizer that didn't have to "color" registers, etc.)

It's sad when you see folks employing cryptic syntax in the (mis)belief that it will somehow result in "faster" code! Esp when this greatly increases the chance that they'll write something that is NOT what they intended!

"Job security"?

[rbowman]

I did most of our Y2K fixes. iirc there was nothing fatal and most of it would have been display annoyances like

sprintf(year, "19%02d", tm.tm_year);

We had a crew in the office on New Year's Eve and I was on call. I went to the First Night festivities and when the Ed Norton Big Band broke into 'Auld Lang Syne' without the lights going out I figured I could go home and go to bed. I missed the free pizza.

The one hack that's still there is age calculations. Typically the dispatchers enter 052016 for DOB. If they put 052019 we assume they busted a real old fart. I can live with that. I was amused a couple of weeks ago when some 103 year old woman got a notice about pre-school registration and immediately knew what that bug was.

[rbowman]

That's a good idea. I often use an empty string as the default for parameters enabling optional functionality. If the string isn't set, the functionality is turned off. Being a programmer, I document it like

foo default : ""

So, a little after five on a Friday, one of our ops guys managed to catch me on the way out to tell me the program wasn't working right. I checked the configuration file and sure enough

foo = ""

So now I put

foo default : "" (empty string)

but I know its a matter of time before ops puts

foo = empty string

The sad thing is I'm not dealing with the general public, just our operations people.

[Terry Coombs]

Download and run a program called "GWX Control Panel" at

First thing O did when we got a Win7 laptop for the wife . It works . Also, as Don Y has said , check the KB description of EVERY update M$ shoves at you - the one that came out a couple of days ago had "optional" updates that all pointed towards forcing W10 on us . Ain't happenin' here if I can prevent it . Actually that's the only comp here at risk , all the rest are running XP . That one would be if I could find XP drivers for it ...

[Don Y]

In the media hype leading up to the "(non) event", I got calls from old clients wondering if they'd have any problems with the products I'd designed for them. It was amusing cuz they'd always bring it up really casually... as if they didn't want to seem panicked. My policy has always been that bugfixes are free so they knew any problems would come out of "my pocket".

Yet, all seemed stunned when I could confidently respond "No problems"... without even LOOKING through the code! In hindsight, I probably should have handled this more diplomatically: "Gee, Bob, let me get back to you on that! I'm pretty sure there's nothing to worry about -- but, let me dig through your sources and make sure that's the case..." Then, a day/week/month later, call them back and reassure them that there were, in fact, no problems!

I saw a device report the year as 19A0 (which gave me pause until I thought about how they'd obviously implemented it).

In my case, my code was in "devices". So, patching the code would easily cost a LOT of money. EPROMs, masked ROMs, MCU's, etc. It wasn't like I could just "download" an update to all of those devices.

And, at the same time, you had folks worrying that the mechanism on some 3 ton piece of equipment would suddenly sieze up and kill its operator. (really? why??)

I've seen similar screwups.

Once recived a nasty letter from my bank threatening to withhold 10% (?) of my interest (IRS) because they didn't have my SSN on file. Despite the fact that it was printed at the top of the form they mailed me!

A week or two ago, received some promotional material from Acura dealer suggesting we trade in our (fill in the blank) _2016 RDX_ for a new 2016 RDX!

Always fun to imagine how some dweeb made a stupid error of assumption!

[rbowman]

I had some quality time with one of those gotchas today. I'm doing a web service interface and wanted a quick and dirty test interface so I wrote a short C program to log what was coming over and threw it into the Apache cgi-bin on a Windows box. Worked like a champ.

I was working on my Linux box and wanted to do the same thing there for convenience. First, find out where apache lives so I can find out where it thinks cgi-bin is. Copy my little cgi executable in. No go. Cryptic error in the apache error.log. Play with permissions. Play with the log file path.

After a certain degree of frustration find out that on Kubuntu you're locked down tight enough what a process spawned by apache isn't going to write anything anywhere. (although it can create an empty file). Okay, that's not entirely accurate:

fprintf(stderr, "%s", "I'm losing my mind");

actually does write to the apache error log. And it even works on Windows...

Fortunately, reading a file is no problem so I could deliver a JSON payload for the GET.

[rbowman]

Hams were early Linux adopters because Linux was doing AX.25 back when you had to dig up a copy of Trumpet Winsock on a floppy if you expected your Windows box to talk to anything but itself.

[rbowman]

That's been my approach. I don't know if they've gotten better but Lexmark printers were much happier married to a Windows box. Hence I've got a Samsung laser printer that installed with no fuss. Back in the modem days, the WinModems used Windows to do the heavy lifting so I bought real modems. Brand X laptop doesn't do Linux; there are other fish in the sea. ATI drivers are iffy? Nvidia works for me.

I'm not a Stallman purist that shudders at the thought of proprietary drivers but I support the manufacturers that support Linux.

[rbowman]

No, they're too coy. It will say something like KB342324 with some nondescript verbiage. You have to know the KB numbers, uninstall them if you're already infected, and put them on the ignore list.

Last summer the 'we'll download this just in case you want 10' exceeded my data plan cap and cost me $20 for a couple of GB of stuff I didn't want. I removed the annoying KB's that put the button on the toolbar. They came back. So I turned off Windows Update completely. The laptop hums on.

A lot of patches are for that malware magnet IE which I never use -- except for Windows Update. Two birds one stone.

I'll see how it goes after the free cutoff. Supposedly M$ is rolling the Win7 patches into a cumulative patch for all those people that haven't update for a year or so.

YMMV.

[Muggles]

If I don't need to update anything ( I don't use IE any more ), I'll just leave off the updates indefinitely.

[Muggles]

That's a neat tool. thanks!

[Muggles]

My laptop is XP, and is fine thus far. No nagging about Win 10 on it.

[Don Y]

Yeah, like encountering: foo=none when you're trying to indicate that there is NO default or "nil"/null

People astonishingly overestimate their own abilities. EVERYONE thinks they are "above average" (really? then where are the offsetting souls that bring the average DOWN to where it is??)

I dislike spending (wasting?) time on maintaining equipment and tools. And, I have a pretty eclectic mix of them. So, I spend a fair bit of time researching the dark corners of many things.

Having sorted out those details, it would be foolish NOT to record them, someplace! And, having recorded them, foolish not to leverage that moving forward to new systems/updates.

E.g., disktab(5) and floppytab(5) are largely obsolete. And, have disappeared (or been seriously trimmed) in newer releases. But, they have a fair bit of information embodied in them -- that would be hard to accumulate independently. As a result, I harvest these and propagate them forward -- even if they aren't actively referenced in the system (software). I;m not keen on having to relearn some old bit of information that I already "knew".

[I have designed several devices that have built in modems -- so they can literally "phone home". To test these, I would use serial line protocols from a UN*X box through an external modem. After a year or more of NOT needing to do this, how long would it take me to rediscover the proper settings for the modem to get it to negotiate the connection properly?]

Below, the introduction to my bootptab(5) file -- the file I have to tweak next in bringing up this box. I think you'll be amused at how much it *says* and how little it *does*!

----8

[Don Y]

I'm not a zealot nor an evangelist. If it works for me (whatever "it" is), that's fine. If it works for you, that's great, too! If it doesn't, -- no skin off my back!

I figure people/companies are entitled to make money off their labors. I don't hear many folks advocating PC vendors GIVE AWAY PC's! Nor do I see accountants working for free, etc. (the same accountants who might be advocating for "free software")

Stallman is largely irrelevant. He can be replaced by an an automaton as his answers to all questions boil down to "use the source" or "make the source available".

Early on in the design of my automation system, I talked to a bunch of people about the privacy issues involved. Specifically, how to give the user some control over what information is disclosed -- intentionally or indirectly -- by the system in its normal operation.

[This is roughly equivalent to asking how to give cell phone owners some control over what information "apps" can disclose without their consent/knowledge -- each app is a black box to the user! Or, can "rationalize" why it needs access to some particular bit of information]

His answer was "give them the sources". WTF? How does having the source code for the system (or, an app on your cell phone!) help Grandma decide what information she wants to allow out? Does he really think everyone is a programmer? Or, that folks are going to rush out and HIRE programmers to "enforce their privacy constraints"??

Something about "hammer" and "nail" comes to mind...