8 ms·

I was going to chime in with my own ideas about solving this -- you can play this game all day long and I'm sure inciting that kind of discussion that was the i

I was going to chime in with my own ideas about solving this -- you can play this game all day long and I'm sure inciting that kind of discussion that was the intent of the author -- but this story about one particular request accidentally illuminates a key problem with Windows: too many developers and programs competing for one set of user eyeballs. You'd think that would be a good thing, but far from it. What happens is that every little developer writing any kind of tiny little app 1) wants money, and 2) wants to remind you how cool they and their app is by annoying you in various ways. Sadly, the annoying part is usually done without any unkind intent on the developer's part at all. I have no problem with the money thing, aside from it being annoying to pay for code that was just copied from MSDN and stuck in a wrapper, but the blinky-beepy-gotta-be-on-top thing is driving me nuts. The author uses an example of one guy who "knows" he wants the screen all the time, but the real underlying architectural problem is much more subtle (and worse) than that. Every program wants to tell the user something, maybe only once a month or so. That'd be fine, if there weren't dozens if not hundreds of programs running on the average setup. I've been using Ubnutu for the last couple months, mainly because Windows has become more like a video game, an XBox, than a serious operating system to me. When I started my windows O/S up the other day to do some multimedia chore after only two weeks without running it, every program I ran had updates and notices for me to attend to, including Windows itself. That made a 5 minute job take 2 hours, including the 15-minute boot time which was drug out because once I bought a Sprint modem, Sprint in its infinite wisdom wants to intercept and rework my network stack so they can "help me" use my computer better. This involves Sprint needing updates, resetting my wifi preferences every time it runs, forcing itself to run every time on boot, rewriting my access screens, and doing something with memory, thread, and priority allocation during boot that takes 5 minutes and can only be described from the user's standpoint as evil. And for all of my invective, I know they didn't mean it that way! As far as I know, they are honestly trying to provide assistance (assistance with lots of branding and subtle control over user behavior. Sigh) This is crazy. Windows has become like the web, only with one web page with everything you might ever want to do on it crammed in there and you can't navigate away. Somebody at Microsoft had better get on the ball and get rid of atomic updates, garbage collection, and vendor/programmer-induced interruptive bullshit. (Yes, there are ways to eliminate GC and the nightly install crapfest, but that's a longer story) If they don't, Google is going to eat their lunch. I'm afraid you can't have one O/S that is both extremely complex and consistent across millions of different use-cases. At least not structured like this.

recoiledsnake 16y ago
Hint: Don't install software you think is crap. If it annoys you, uninstall it immediately, maybe drop the author a note why you did so. That includes Windows. Return that modem to Sprint, let them know their software sucks.You don't really have to use it. I don't seem to have the problems that you're encountering, because I pick and choose software. No Quicktime, iTunes, RealPlayer or other annoying BS. Blaming Windows for your troubles is folly, those automatic updates you get keep your PC and others around secure and prevent them from becoming spambots, which will affect you even if you use Linux. >..Vendor/programmer-induced interruptive bullshit. The minute Microsoft even contemplates that, there will be long posts on here about how MS is screwing with developers and controlling users freedom with their monopoly. And what's GC got to do with your point?
- DanielBMarkham 16y ago
  GC is relevant because it's indicative of the problem: lots of little things add up to a big thing. It's not annoying, per se, that Norton pops up once a month to remind me that it did a scan, even though it always tries to overplay exactly how useful it's been ("Found a set of tracking cookies and disabled them! Time for virus updates! Etc.") but you do that 50 times with various programs, you got problems. GC is a very real hit in performance when the heap has become fragmented. Like I said, not a problem if you're only running a few programs, but if you're running a bunch -- especially if they are memory intensive or just poorly coded -- and every other program suffers. More to the point, the user suffers. Going to "Programs and Features" on my Win7 box, I have over 250 programs installed. Yes, a very small number of them I don't need or want. How the heck did the "Ask Toolbar" get in there? Or MS LifeChat? But most of these programs were things I needed to have because either I purchased a piece of hardware that insisted on installing code (and usually a TSR app), I needed a utility that required an install (and might need it again), or wanted some completely other thing and it's install insisted on installing something else (Bonjour anybody?) And if I'm not mistaken, everybody with a little service or a tray icon wants to tell me something at some point in time. And most of the time that's why I'm trying to do something else. Maybe it's just me, but 99% of the time the thing I am doing is more important than the thing they want me to know. It's easy to say that the user is somehow at fault, and I guess (?) I should vigorously spend a lot of time filtering through all my applications to make sure I always have the bare minimum? But that doesn't make much sense from a user's standpoint, does it? I don't think of this as a freedom/monopoly thing. This is a display/gui/responsiveness architectural issue. There are simply things you can do now on Windows that you can't do on the web, and while that once was a benefit, it is now becoming a drawback. Windows needs to give the user more control and restrict the types of interactions developers can have with the user if it wants to solve this problem. Web developers have been living with these guidelines for a long time. It's nothing new or onerous. After all, if we're not in this for the users, what the heck are we doing? Perhaps the question could be rephrased: is Windows positioned as a tool for users, or as a tool for developers? Because it's not the same thing. EDIT: Another anecdote: I bought a Sony Vaio notebook for a family member who doesn't know anything about computers and set it up for them. When you first start up the Vaio, it insists on asking you to register. Now I don't feel like registering, so I just dismissed it. But it keeps asking, and after an half hour of poking around the registry it beats the heck out of me where it's getting a hook to pop up the registration screen on boot. It is probably embedded in some of the proprietary vendor drivers. So it keeps popping up on boot, and he keeps closing the window. Every time. I guess I could spend some time with a low-level debugger and track down and "fix" it, but that's just crazy. He doesn't want to register. Go away already. Can you imagine what it's going to be like if every driver maker starts doing this? And what's going to stop them? (Please don't say windows driver certification. If you make widget X, you're going to own the drivers for it, no matter what kind of little logo you have or don't have on the side of a box somewhere)

recoiledsnake 16y ago

Hint: Don't install software you think is crap. If it annoys you, uninstall it immediately, maybe drop the author a note why you did so. That includes Windows. Return that modem to Sprint, let them know their software sucks.You don't really have to use it. I don't seem to have the problems that you're encountering, because I pick and choose software. No Quicktime, iTunes, RealPlayer or other annoying BS. Blaming Windows for your troubles is folly, those automatic updates you get keep your PC and others around secure and prevent them from becoming spambots, which will affect you even if you use Linux. >..Vendor/programmer-induced interruptive bullshit. The minute Microsoft even contemplates that, there will be long posts on here about how MS is screwing with developers and controlling users freedom with their monopoly. And what's GC got to do with your point?

DanielBMarkham 16y ago
GC is relevant because it's indicative of the problem: lots of little things add up to a big thing. It's not annoying, per se, that Norton pops up once a month to remind me that it did a scan, even though it always tries to overplay exactly how useful it's been ("Found a set of tracking cookies and disabled them! Time for virus updates! Etc.") but you do that 50 times with various programs, you got problems. GC is a very real hit in performance when the heap has become fragmented. Like I said, not a problem if you're only running a few programs, but if you're running a bunch -- especially if they are memory intensive or just poorly coded -- and every other program suffers. More to the point, the user suffers. Going to "Programs and Features" on my Win7 box, I have over 250 programs installed. Yes, a very small number of them I don't need or want. How the heck did the "Ask Toolbar" get in there? Or MS LifeChat? But most of these programs were things I needed to have because either I purchased a piece of hardware that insisted on installing code (and usually a TSR app), I needed a utility that required an install (and might need it again), or wanted some completely other thing and it's install insisted on installing something else (Bonjour anybody?) And if I'm not mistaken, everybody with a little service or a tray icon wants to tell me something at some point in time. And most of the time that's why I'm trying to do something else. Maybe it's just me, but 99% of the time the thing I am doing is more important than the thing they want me to know. It's easy to say that the user is somehow at fault, and I guess (?) I should vigorously spend a lot of time filtering through all my applications to make sure I always have the bare minimum? But that doesn't make much sense from a user's standpoint, does it? I don't think of this as a freedom/monopoly thing. This is a display/gui/responsiveness architectural issue. There are simply things you can do now on Windows that you can't do on the web, and while that once was a benefit, it is now becoming a drawback. Windows needs to give the user more control and restrict the types of interactions developers can have with the user if it wants to solve this problem. Web developers have been living with these guidelines for a long time. It's nothing new or onerous. After all, if we're not in this for the users, what the heck are we doing? Perhaps the question could be rephrased: is Windows positioned as a tool for users, or as a tool for developers? Because it's not the same thing. EDIT: Another anecdote: I bought a Sony Vaio notebook for a family member who doesn't know anything about computers and set it up for them. When you first start up the Vaio, it insists on asking you to register. Now I don't feel like registering, so I just dismissed it. But it keeps asking, and after an half hour of poking around the registry it beats the heck out of me where it's getting a hook to pop up the registration screen on boot. It is probably embedded in some of the proprietary vendor drivers. So it keeps popping up on boot, and he keeps closing the window. Every time. I guess I could spend some time with a low-level debugger and track down and "fix" it, but that's just crazy. He doesn't want to register. Go away already. Can you imagine what it's going to be like if every driver maker starts doing this? And what's going to stop them? (Please don't say windows driver certification. If you make widget X, you're going to own the drivers for it, no matter what kind of little logo you have or don't have on the side of a box somewhere)