kubuntu-users Digest, Vol 45, Issue 46

[tom bell]

>
> Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2008 21:29:09 +0200
> From: Knapp <magick.crow at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: 8.10b - first impression and questions
> To: "Kubuntu Help and User Discussions"
> 	<kubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com>
> Message-ID:
> 	<f495db580810081229l7d4f7c92i9084df17ce6caa38 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 3:57 PM, Derek Broughton <news at pointerstop.ca> wrote:
>   
>> > Knapp wrote:
>> >
>>     
>>> >> On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 11:55 AM, Eberhard Roloff <tuxebi at gmx.de> wrote:
>>>       
>> >
>>     
>>>> >>> I have yet to see perfect software. Even Linux does not offer it and
>>>> >>> imho nobody will ever be able to write a perfect solution.
>>>>         
>
> I took this to mean bug free and not that it would work when subjected
> to things it was not designed for. Perhaps a failure on my part to
> understand you.
>
>   
>>> >> Really there is a lot of perfect software, just not much for the home
>>> >> user because it costs to much to produce.
>>>       
>> >
>> > Really?  Anything more complex than "Hello World" is likely to have errors.
>> > Even mission-critical, lives-at-risk, software was found to have errors
>> > during the Y2K fiasco (not that it was likely that many of those errors
>> > would have broken anything - but the software was not perfect).
>>     
>
> There is a difference between perfect and bug free, I guess. Y2K bug
> existed because the first programmers never imagined than their
> software would still be being used in the year 2000. That is not a bug
> but a piece of software that is being used passed it's expiration
> date. If you want to look at this way then the qwerty keyboard is a
> very bad bug.  :-) 
>
>   
>>> >> What is not perfect on the
>>> >> home systems is often the hardware and other peoples software that it
>>> >> must interface with anyway. When you release a piece of software it
>>> >> must not work with just one type of hardware but 1000s! It is really
>>> >> impossible to test 1000s of possible hardware types that you might
>>> >> have your software run on and it is not cost effective ether. Zero
>>> >> fault software is the sort of stuff that NASA uses.
>>>       
>> >
>> > Like the lander software for Mars missions  :-) 
>>     
>
> Except that was not a programming bug but a data entry bug because the
> USA is so stupid that they can't teach their scientists metric. (I am
> from the USA btw and resent that I was not properly taught the
> international standard ether in any useful way.)
>
> Yes, even in zero tolerance environments mistakes do happen. It is all
> a matter of how hard you want to look for the bugs. If you pay 10
> people to look over every line and a 10 more to test every line, you
> should end up with a perfect program that cost you millions to
> produce.
>
> One way that MS beat the rest of the world was to stop looking for
> bugs so hard and thus make their programmers much more productive and
> their software much more feature rich. For some reason people excepted
> the bugs for a long time without much complaint as long as they go the
> cool features. MS got their software made cheaper and faster than the
> other companies and won. I will not get into all the idea stealing and
> buying that went on.
>
>   
Actually, M$ ran a deal, whereby, the OEMs got a large discount
on the OS if they offered Windows and ONLY Windows on their
machines.  They could not offer any other OS nor tell customers
there were other OSes out there available and they had to tell them
that if they used a different OS their warrantees would be void.
Since the profit margin was largely reliant on this discount, the OEM
readily agreed.  That is why M$ Windows is the most common,
not the most popular, OS. 8-)
> As for perfect software, I think the Linux kernel does a very good job
> at this. When was the last time you had a kernel crash on a Linux
> certified computer? Maybe not, "Perfect" but darn good.
>
> -- Douglas E Knapp http://sf-journey-creations.wikispot.org/Front_Page
You don't want to get me started on Windows' lousy memory
management. And Intel's decision to use segmented memory?
What a mess.
Keep in mind too that officially Windows does not have bugs, but
"undocumented features." ;-)

Tom Bell

“We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
-- Albert Einstein, Physicist (1879-1955)


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