> The overriding problem is that it is in the profitable interest of
> computer hardware and software producers to try to convince everybody that
> these fundamental differences do not exist, and that everybody has to buy
> new stuff every 12-to-18 months for everything.
>
Which vendors are that? Most Apple users I know keep their machines for 5
years or more.
I have no problem with tl;dr. I am the guy who invented it. *L* What else
do I have to do on a Saturday morning? There was a recent Dilbert in the
paper, something about balancing having no life by doing no work. It was
perfect.
Yeah. I'm exaggerating a bit. But some phone vendors push something new
once a year or so, and I know plenty of people who think you're an idiot if
you don't immediately get a new phone as soon as one is available. The
marketing is very effective.
Perhaps you need to find new vendors. Ubuntu and Red Hat make long-term
versions with stable support for 3 and 5 years, iirc. Perl, Python, PHP and
Ruby have much longer version ramp-up times. Linux on the desktop is a not
a pretty story, but you can get by.
Perhaps you need to find a vendor whose values are more aligned with yours.
I have no choice in the matter. My not-for-profit agency operates under
various contracts with the state of New York. They all require us to
produce and consume MS Office documents. As in what used to be called "MS
Office 2007 documents", or .docx, .xlsx, .pptx documents.
We were okay with, believe it or not, Office 97 on XP. The MS conversion
pack works with that configuration. I can use .docx or .xlsx in Office 97
on XP. But they broke the conversion pack for later OSes and Office 2003.
It won't work on them.
But I can't keep using XP. Not because MS won't "support" it in the
"help-desk" sense of "support" anymore. But because other software vendors
won't "support" it, in the "ensure that it works on it" sense of "support".
We use the Firefox browser for everything that it will work with, and they
are famous for introducing new versions every other month or so, and they
will be, I predict, the first ubiquitous piece of my puzzle that won't work
on XP in, say, about 9 months from now. I can probably push it another 6
months before some serious security hole appears in Firefox that must be
patched. Then I'll be hosed. Other similar problems will follow.
Please don't suggest Google Chrome. I have to use Google for searching
because it's the only search engine that really works. But I won't install
a browser that collects information for Google, and I am really trying very
hard to avoid doing businesses with corporations that help autocratic
governments oppress their citizens for a fee.
Anyway, because of the "x" problem, we started converting to Office 2010.
As a not-for-profit, I can use TechSoup to get Office for a reasonable
price--but only a max of 50 licenses every 2 years. I need more than twice
that number. So I have to pony up around $350 per license for the rest. I
don't have that kind of money in my budget. So I do a few at a time, and
now I run into the problem of not being able to find 2010 any more; it's
all Office 360 or 2013. 2013 has objectionable features. 360--I am NEVER
going to risk my business on something that only exists in the cloud.
Open Office will open these later MS Office documents, but only correctly
handles very simple examples. It cannot handle even slightly complex
formatting, and we have to consume some VERY complex Word and Excel docs.
Also, the last version of OO I tried still won't save docs in .docx and
.xlsx format, nor can it originate documents in those formats. No option there.
So I have to use MS Office and an OS that will run it.
Meanwhile, one of our biggest contracts requires us to use a
state-developed web-based document management/workflow system that only
works on IE, and only on IE versions 7, 8, and 9. Now I'm scrambling. I
have to tell my new-computer vendor to please please please use your old
setups so I can have IE 9--or I have to uninstall back to 9 when I set the
machines up. I can still get Win 7 so I'm safe for now. but you can't get
IE 9 on Win 8, and although there's an alleged IE 9 "emulation" option on
later versions, it hasn't been tested with this website. The state IT
people are very aware that this is idiocy, that their system should run on
other browsers, and on newer versions of IE, but it's out of their hands.
They have no budget to do the upgrades or port it out to other browsers.
Hell, last I heard, MS, which makes the underlying software used to develop
this website, hadn't even yet updated it to work properly with other
potential MS software dependencies, such as Office 360. So when I'm forced
to start buying Win 8, I will be screwed.
Then there's Acrobat Reader, whose version XI is full of extremely
dangerous cloud-based crap. Yes, there are other PDF readers out there, but
they don't work well with the complex, forms-based PDF documents that our
contracts force us to consume.
So no, these little disasters don't happen every 12-to-18 months. Yet. It's
more like every 3 years. But the vendors would love to do it to me more
often, if they could.
Welcome to my world.
Many of you folks are US taxpayers, and some of you are very conservative.
My agency is supported by taxes. Do you like it when we have to waste your
tax dollars to buy software we already have, merely to ensure that it
continues to work?
> Why shouldn't software that uses 4-bit ints work just as well on an 8-bit,
> 16-bit, 32-bit, or 64-bit OS, without any messing around with "adapters" or
> "VMs" or anything else?
>
Apps written to interact with the underlying OS via a 16-bit interface need
to have that interface supported. YOUR choice of vendor made Win32s a
work-around for a short period, but it is not in THEIR business interest to
have you run old apps. Other vendors have compilers that support a lot of
older software. However, when the vendor changes platforms (as Apple did in
the PowerPC to Intel migration), all bets are off.
My choice of vendor? Can you run a 16-bit app on 64-bit linux natively or
do you have to mess around with baling wire and duct tape? I don't really
know, I'm asking.
As for Windows: The 16-bit and 32-bit APIs already exist. Nobody's asking
MS to update them, just preserve them. It shouldn't take any work at all to
include them in the OS with the newfangled stuff. Therefore 16-bit and
32-bit software should be able to talk to those APIs natively, and do what
they've always done, without any effort at all on the part of MS. But yes,
you're right, it's not in their interest to do it. Just like it's not in an
auto mechanic's interest to let you drive off without buying something if
he can punch a hole in your muffler with a screwdriver and get you to spend
a few hundred dollars to "fix" it instead. The difference is, it's illegal
for the mechanic to do that. When MS does it, everybody says it's just
business.
Why shouldn't OS designers assume that 20 years from now everybody will
> want a 512-bit-wide pipe, and build it into the OS RIGHT NOW, so people
> don't have to "upgrade" when the 512-bit software arrives?
>
There are several good reasons. First, there are lots of visions of the
future, but few of them come true, or we'd have flying cards and food
replicators by now (I was really counting on that one, "Earl Grey, hot.")
Second, the whole arbitrary 8-bit, 16, 32, 64, 128 bit thing is based on
real physical limitations of the current crops of chips. Increasing these
means a lot of cost in hardware manufacture as well as software. It's
easier to amortize that cost over time than make the leap all at once.
Making current hardware work with 512-bitness would mean, roughly, making
current applications 8 times slower, larger and less efficient, for no
apparent gain. It just doesn't make business sense.
I'm only asking for the OS to be able to address memory outside the 64-bit
range. I don't think it takes any real huge effort to do that. Then when
processors and software need more memory and bigger variables, they'll be
able to plug into the existing OS.
Third, it's not clear that "bitness" is going to continue to climb, as
there are some strong pressures to go in other directions. The Internet of
Things make it likely that we are going to be integrating more
ultra-low-power sensors, like FitBits and Bluetooth devices and Google
Glass and Nest thermostats, in small device orchestration. Databases can
already manage petabytes with 64-bits, and that's too much information for
me, thankyouverymuch.
Okay, that's interesting, and news to me.
Finally, there is always going to be change, and change inevitably leads to
frictions and incompatibilities. There will always be a need for us
technies who can glom together disparate parts to make a whole.
People can still buy new parts for cars that are 50-60 years old, and they
will still work. Can we say that about computer hardware or software for
stuff that's even 15 years old?
So, to summarize a much TL;DR response: Some vendors are just in it for the
bucks and don't care about customer satisfaction; choose the vendors who
support your values; Open Source wins, at a cost.
Believe me, if the Open Office people cared about real integration with the
rest of the world, I would be the first one to flush every copy of MS
Office I've got. But they don't. I've spoken to some of them. They have a
huge attitude about the issue.
So do the Mozilla people. Remember the Seinfeld "soup Nazi"? They are
"browser Nazis". I've spoken with some of them too. They really, really,
really don't care what the "little people" think about their constant
churn. They are quite certain that they know best and are determined to
make it as difficult as possible for users to buck them.
Lots of Open Source people just shrug and say, if you don't like what we
do, do it yourself. Fine. But here in the real world, those of us who have
to use software and don't have the ability to build it, or the time to
build it even if we had the ability, are getting screwed constantly. This
is why I keep saying: It's illegal for a mechanic to deliberately break
your car in order to sell you a new one, and it should be illegal for
software and OS manufacturers to do the same.
Ken Dibble
www.stic-cil.org
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