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Re: Microsoft end of support dates

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Joel <joelcrump@gmail.com>
news:bih8hfhiuqimpusvk391bc1hf9o41ca6ol@4ax.com Sun, 19 Jul 2020
13:31:54 GMT in alt.computer.workshop, wrote: 

> Diesel <nobody@haph.org> wrote:

[snip]

>>I don't care about an article you can't even provide a reference
>>to. I've seen the source code myself, I know what is and isn't the
>>same between the two, for an absolute fact. Windows Vista IS NOT a
>>total rewrite. Not only that, I provided two sources (one of which
>>is directly tied to MS and would certainly know if they actually
>>started over or not) which also agree with my independent
>>findings. It's not a total rewrite. That would take much too long
>>and be a considerable cost on MS that wouldn't be recouped for
>>years. And if you think Windows is still buggy now with some
>>hardware, try a from scratch rewrite and you'll see a huge
>>difference in 'bugs' and compatibility issues that aren't
>>resolved. As in, tons more, and waiting even longer for
>>appropriate fixes from MS. 
> 
> 
> I have pretty much been convinced of what you've said, at least as
> far as it not being a total rewrite.  But it's not hard to
> understand why I'd have believed it was, given that I'd read that
> it was and the quality of it before SP2.

I wasn't trying to convince you of anything, either. I was stating 
the facts and attempting to educate you, because you were providing 
false and otherwise inaccurate information concerning Windows Vista 
and it's history.
 
> 
>>>>> I'm not sure how my identity is relevant to a discussion of
>>>>> operating systems.
>>>>
>>>>Hmm. I know Snit has been trying hard to spin things as to my
>>>>having a reading comprehension problem here, but, I wasn't
>>>>referencing your identity in that comment. 
>>> 
>>> See the quoting at the beginning of this post.  You had brought
>>> up my identity in the section of the reply that turned into this
>>> among other sections.
>>
>>Again, I wasn't referencing your identity. What did I write 
>>specifically that makes you think otherwise?
> 
> 
> You brought up my claim that I'm one of the sons of God.

You might want to check the context in which I made that comment, 
Joel. I made the comment in reference to having clean hands, as you 
made an off handed remark concerning my mental abilities; which was, 
as I wrote, out of line, considering what you wrote previously about 
being a diety.

If I need to further explain exactly what I meant, just let me know 
and I'll try again.
 
> The HexChat fork is commonly used under Linux, but I find it
> clunky as hell.  The good Linux IRC clients are all console. 

So why don't you use BitchX? It's console, and it rocks. 

> Also, I have mIRC heavily customized with scripts and aliases,
> developed in the last 22 years by me.  It would be a lot of work
> to get a new client as customized.

Great, since you claim to know so much about mIRC, maybe you can 
explain to Snit how many bot scripts are available for it, many of 
which are far more complex than the bot he's demo'd on IRC. He 
doesn't seem to believe me when I tell him this.
 
>>If by did what they could, you mean stripped out some older
>>emulation support for some specific interrupts and tightened down
>>(more so) some of the extra credit hardware calls you could make,
>>then sure. Otherwise, it was an intentional effort on the part of
>>MS to further distance themselves from the legacy code they wanted
>>dead and buried. 
>>
>>Ever write a classic game engine yourself? A sideways scroller is 
>>usually the easiest one to do for beginners, if you're doing your
>>own thing and not borrowing from someone else. XP forced me to
>>spend hours re-writing my pixel generator for the background
>>effects, because it changed the way in which I was allowed to talk
>>to the video card vs the way I was able to do so under windows
>>2000, and the windows 9x family. Now, keep in mind, I'd already
>>had to rewrite that fucking routine once already due to hardware
>>call changes from windows 95 to windows 98. And once again,
>>damnit, for windows98 to windows98se. My code was fine, MS kept
>>playing hide the pickle on me with the video pages I needed. When
>>ME came out, My game had a 50/50 chance of loading and playing, or
>>croaking out as it initialized the welcome screen. Bastards.
>>
>>Yea, MS really cared about legacy code. <scoff>
> 
> 
> I see.

I asked you a question, Joel. Any particular reason you didn't answer 
it?
 
[snip]

> It would boot, yeah, but it wasn't as usable as XP remained until
> the 7 era.  When 7 came out, I quickly abandoned XP.

As I told you, that was due to the hardware issues brought upon the 
userbase due to MS major fucking around with various driver related 
code; all because they just had to go with the new GUI which looked 
like shit, imho. If you had hardware vista liked in vanilla version, 
your machine would run quite well on it, considering. If you were one 
of the others, which was by far greater in number, then you'd 
probably run into all kinds of problems with the vanilla version. 
Updated drivers and eventual service packs would clear up most of the 
issues.

[snip]

>>If your machine couldn't run it plain vanilla, you had hardware
>>vista didn't support fully/or at all just yet. Vista was, again,
>>rushed to soon. Despite the time they spent working on it, it was
>>introduced to market before it was really ready.
> 
> 
> So you acknowledge my basic point, that it wasn't really complete,
> I dare say until SP2 (and by then 7 was about to be publicly
> released anyway).

No, that's not what I wrote, either, Joel. An OS these days is never 
complete, that's why we're now on "Windows 10". It's not a total 
rewrite either. Awful though it is, still not a total rewrite. It's 
actually based on (gross, I know!) windows 8 codebase. And well, you 
know how great that one was, right? <G>
 
Your original point was that you thought it was a complete rewrite, 
and we've wasted countless bytes arguing that back and forth for 
sometime now; the only gain is that you finally understand it wasn't 
what you thought it was, but that was only after you were basically 
cornered by myself and another poster. I suspect if the other poster 
had continued to remain silent on the issue, you'd still try to 
defend your claim that it's a total rewrite.

I maintained from the getgo, it's not what you thought it was, and I 
explained why it had so many problems that sp's eventually for the 
most part, fixed, but that still depended some on hardware 
manufacturer support/cooperation. Not all was forthcoming, especially 
when Windows 7 was no longer considered vaporware.
 
>>I really enjoy arguing what's under the hood in software with
>>people who don't code. And have no real concept of what it takes
>>to write let alone support an OS used by so many people on so many
>>different hardware configurations. I really do. I bet it's like
>>the mechanic who has a customer that proceeds to tell them how the
>>engine works in their car, but for some silly reason, can't just
>>go ahead and do the repairs themselves. And no, said customer was
>>talking out of their ass concerning how the modern engine runs in
>>their car; aside from getting the fact it's still using a spark to
>>detonate fuel right. 
> 
> 
> I never disputed that Microsoft has a challenge in terms of
> supporting a lot of hardware.  That's pretty obvious, in fact.  I
> do have an understanding of software development, though.

software development from an application standpoint is nothing like 
that of OS development. And if you really understood what I was 
writing about, you wouldn't have claimed Vista was a total rewrite in 
the first place. It wouldn't have made any sense, for the reasons 
both parties in those articles I shared did, as well as myself. The 
three of us, and countless more no doubt, do understand what's 
involved in such an undertaking. You clearly, didn't.

You might now, and I hope you do, but you clearly didn't when you 
made your comments. 
 
>>Your comment reminds me of a rather funny tagline. Hopefully, I
>>don't totally destroy it paraphrasing. "Any sufficiently advanced 
>>technology appears to be like magic to those who've never seen it 
>>before and/or don't understand it."
> 
> 
> I've heard that expression, but I don't see its relevance to this.

Think on it, it'll come to you.
 
> 
>>It's easier to fool people who lack a solid coding background and 
>>don't have years of reverse engineering experience on the 
>>professional level. Those of us who do though, nah, not so easy to
>>fool us. Much less so when we have the source code to compare
>>with; we could do it without, but that saves alot of time. :)
> 
> 
> 2000 was perfectly usable from day one, and so was XP, and so was
> 7. Vista is unique in not being that.

That's why Windows 2000 had four service packs officially, and XP had 
three official ones. All three were perfectly usable from day one, so 
long as you had the friendly hardware for them out of the box. If you 
didn't, they didn't behave so well on your particular machine.

Vista wasn't that bad, again, so long as you had hardware it 
supported well in it's original release. That was no different than 
other OSes released between hardware technology changes. The GUI 
itself was fucking horrible, but it was still built on a solid 
codebase, that of XP. And had they not been so forceful with that 
damn gui change, they could have taken more time to properly hack the 
hell out of the driver code sections so it would have supported more 
hardware in it's vanilla release. 

MS put a lot of extra work on the manufacturers by changing the 
driver code sections as they did, and didn't really give them enough 
time to re-roll Vista specific drivers for all their peripherals. 
Especially considering that Windows 7 was already under construction, 
and various people in the hardware fields knew this. They also knew 
that some of the hardware was pre-vista days, so they didn't see much 
point in investing more funds to bring the older stuff upto snuff, 
when they could use the opportunity to say, sell you a new printer 
instead. 
 
>>It's not funny to me. I was there, I know the back story. I was in
>>the trenches at the time. heh. There usual schedule? When has MS 
>>released a stable OS on time?
> 
> 
> The usual period of time is about three years.  XP didn't take
> quite that long because it was a continuation of the work on 2000,
> but Vista took much longer than usual.

OMFG, Listen, when you're an OEM, MS insists you begin loading 
vanilla versions of the new flag ship OS a few months, or longer, 
before it becomes available to the retail channels. I've yet to see 
MS release a single OS that's modern which worked on all available 
hardware at the time, without issue, in it's vanilla version. And, 
I've seen thousands of machines, Joel. Well, hundreds of thousands by 
now, but that's besides the point.

OEMs would often use the several months or longer time to work out 
bugs with the systems due to the new OS. Usually having to do with 
drivers for various hardware components that Vista wasn't doing well 
with, 1st release to OEMS out of beta.
 
>>I realize you said you knew Windows pretty damn good, but, I bet
>>you, I know all kinds of things like what I shared above that you
>>probably know nothing about. And, I wouldn't expect you to know a
>>damn thing about the above; that's something you may  have picked
>>up as a field technician, though - If you got curious about the
>>iso's you kept on the file server for easier repair/reload
>>situations. 
> 
> 
> Actually, I was aware of how the ISOs are generated for the
> various editions, I didn't have a need to mess with them, but I
> did look at the files on the disk that distinguish what edition
> it's for. 

The files I spoke of don't have anything to with distinguishing an 
edition, except for an ini file; and that's for the retail/oem 
difference for product key entry. Re-read what I wrote. They have to 
do with OEM branding/product activation routines. All of the dvd/cds 
MS shipped with XP could load ANY of the versions of XP on your 
system, it depended on the product key you used, and a certain .ini 
file.

Since you claimed to already be aware of what I wrote about, if I 
were to ask you what the filenames were in question, and exactly how 
many there are, as well as their locations on the iso, you'd be able 
to tell me, right? Cause, well, I'm asking. I'm also asking which 
file(s) have to be changed (and how you change them) to convert from, 
say, XP Home to PRO, or XP Pro to XP Pro VLK (otherwise known as 
corporate edition - it's XP pro with the product activation routines 
completely disabled. It doesn't even trip if you do massive hardware 
changes; quite nice for XP actually). 

Well, Joel?


[snip]

> Is it supposed to matter?  I found your anecdote interesting, but
> it's not particularly relevant to me.

Sure, if you know a system as well as you claim to, I'd think you'd 
know (or want to) about a way for malware or any other type of 
software to be introduced, in a semi permanent manner with full admin 
rights on a clean install. That's not even the least bit interesting 
to know about?
 
>>>>The actual interface between windows98 if you turned
>>>>Activedesktop off and windows 2000 weren't that much
>>>>different... 
>>> 
>>> The basic GUI was about the same, yeah, but what about comparing
>>> the little toy box that popped up with Ctrl-Alt-Del under 98, to
>>> 2000's Task Manager?  That was a big upgrade for me.
>>
>>Entirely different things, too, despite the appearances. 
> 
> 
> Yeah, which is why I was more than ready for 2000 at the time. 
> I'd suffered enough with primitive OSes.

You didn't have to wait for 2000 for a native multithreaded 
multitasking OS, Os/2 warp had been available for years, and, well, 
Windows 2000 and prior owe a lot of their stability to os/2warp; it's 
forked code from it.
 



-- 
Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.

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Re: Microsoft end of support dates Diesel <nobody@haph.org> - 2020-07-20 05:54 +0000

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