4 ms·

If windows is so bad, we should by now have had a lot of missile disasters, airport disasters, missile guidance disasters, train station disasters, nuclear reac

by clef 13y ago

If windows is so bad, we should by now have had a lot of missile disasters, airport disasters, missile guidance disasters, train station disasters, nuclear reactors disasters, etc etc... I have had my share of sightings of crashed ATMs running windows, but I also seem to remember that sometimes the way things are coded crash the OS, and it's not only a windows issue is it?

tluyben2 13y ago
I'm not saying/did not say Windows is so bad (it was, from a stability standpoint, horrible, but that's a while ago; still people used it then for theses purposes as well...); I was wondering why it's so one-sided. There seem to be little tech reasons to choose one OS over the other currently, so like everyone says, it must be support. But that's moot now as well. The 'bad' thing now about Windows (and iOS, OS X) I can think of technically at this moment is that it is closed. I would not like to run my company on something closed, especially if there are nuclear reactors, missiles, airports, airplanes, medical crap involved. I want to be able to dive down to the line of code instead of having to ask a vendor why it does what it does. So again, from a tech point of view, I do not understand why any CTO would pick a closed solution over an open, especially when lives are at stake besides him/her covering his/her ass. And that's probably what it usually is; no balls to pick the best thing for humanity (...) even if it's an uphill battle.
- clef 13y ago
  I see your point. How many lives would you estimate are lost/saved because of what OS is being used? Wouldn't any vendor have a "military" version of whatever OS they would use anyway? Which would make it a lot safer to use.. The NSA probably cracks as many windows machines as they do Linux/Unix all over the world, I would think that it's all the same if you know where to go and what to do to get in.
  - zanny 13y ago
    > I would think that it's all the same if you know where to go and what to do to get in. It isn't. You have to find completely different loopholes in each implementation of networking stacks to exploit them. Anyone running outdated software is always vulnerable to newer exploits, but the thing with Linux is that is audited by thousands of businesses around the globe, whereas Windows probably has back doors for the NSA through some backdoor dealing with the US gov't and nobody can audit that.
    - clef 13y ago
      I see. I get it now, it does make a lot of sense.
- RogerL 13y ago
  You are criticizing 10-20 year old decisions on the basis on what is available today (I am referring to your "currently" phrase)? Most non-startup companies have a huge tech stack in place. That stack depends in many ways on the OS. If today you win/make a bid for a display in an airport, the first thing you should be asking is "how do I leverage my existing code base". The answer is almost never "by completely switching my OS". Especially in the scenerios being discussed in this sub-thread - lives at stake. I'm going to throw away my multidecade tested code for new code, and call that safer? No, never. Much (not all) of the code at the company I work at now is Windows based. I'd like to switch away, sort of, but for what? A nebulous "it's open" argument, vs converting man-centuries of work? It makes no sense. It has nothing to do with "balls", but a cost benefit equation, and a recognition that a 5-10 year old, battle tested OS is pretty darn safe compared to some kernel released in the last 3 months.
  - tluyben2 13y ago
    I didn't say one should throw out decades of work; for a new company or and old company writing new software it makes sense picking technologies which run everywhere so you have a choice. There is no problem running Win if your admins are Win and most of your code is Win only; that makes a lot of sense. What makes no sense IMHO is picking Win blindly for new software and I find the same goes if you substitute Win with OS X or Linux or whatever. Also; when you write software, now or in the 80s, late 70s (before that it was a bit harder unless it was Cobol/Fortran or something), you separate the frontend from the backend. I wrote a ton of 'Windows only' (meaning it had to only run on Windows) software for companies in the 90s and 90+% of that C++ or Delphi code compiles fine on Win + Mac + Linux. I will still say it's about balls in choosing your tech if it's not mainstream aka simply blabbering out: Oracle + MS, but more so now; now there isn't much excuse for picking lock-in tech for the most part. Not sure what the 3-month old kernel is about; those exist in MS/Apple/... as well; who runs prod on that? So what does that even mean?

by clef 13y ago

tluyben2 13y ago

I'm not saying/did not say Windows is so bad (it was, from a stability standpoint, horrible, but that's a while ago; still people used it then for theses purposes as well...); I was wondering why it's so one-sided. There seem to be little tech reasons to choose one OS over the other currently, so like everyone says, it must be support. But that's moot now as well. The 'bad' thing now about Windows (and iOS, OS X) I can think of technically at this moment is that it is closed. I would not like to run my company on something closed, especially if there are nuclear reactors, missiles, airports, airplanes, medical crap involved. I want to be able to dive down to the line of code instead of having to ask a vendor why it does what it does. So again, from a tech point of view, I do not understand why any CTO would pick a closed solution over an open, especially when lives are at stake besides him/her covering his/her ass. And that's probably what it usually is; no balls to pick the best thing for humanity (...) even if it's an uphill battle.

clef 13y ago
I see your point. How many lives would you estimate are lost/saved because of what OS is being used? Wouldn't any vendor have a "military" version of whatever OS they would use anyway? Which would make it a lot safer to use.. The NSA probably cracks as many windows machines as they do Linux/Unix all over the world, I would think that it's all the same if you know where to go and what to do to get in.
- zanny 13y ago
  > I would think that it's all the same if you know where to go and what to do to get in. It isn't. You have to find completely different loopholes in each implementation of networking stacks to exploit them. Anyone running outdated software is always vulnerable to newer exploits, but the thing with Linux is that is audited by thousands of businesses around the globe, whereas Windows probably has back doors for the NSA through some backdoor dealing with the US gov't and nobody can audit that.
  - clef 13y ago
    I see. I get it now, it does make a lot of sense.
RogerL 13y ago
You are criticizing 10-20 year old decisions on the basis on what is available today (I am referring to your "currently" phrase)? Most non-startup companies have a huge tech stack in place. That stack depends in many ways on the OS. If today you win/make a bid for a display in an airport, the first thing you should be asking is "how do I leverage my existing code base". The answer is almost never "by completely switching my OS". Especially in the scenerios being discussed in this sub-thread - lives at stake. I'm going to throw away my multidecade tested code for new code, and call that safer? No, never. Much (not all) of the code at the company I work at now is Windows based. I'd like to switch away, sort of, but for what? A nebulous "it's open" argument, vs converting man-centuries of work? It makes no sense. It has nothing to do with "balls", but a cost benefit equation, and a recognition that a 5-10 year old, battle tested OS is pretty darn safe compared to some kernel released in the last 3 months.
- tluyben2 13y ago
  I didn't say one should throw out decades of work; for a new company or and old company writing new software it makes sense picking technologies which run everywhere so you have a choice. There is no problem running Win if your admins are Win and most of your code is Win only; that makes a lot of sense. What makes no sense IMHO is picking Win blindly for new software and I find the same goes if you substitute Win with OS X or Linux or whatever. Also; when you write software, now or in the 80s, late 70s (before that it was a bit harder unless it was Cobol/Fortran or something), you separate the frontend from the backend. I wrote a ton of 'Windows only' (meaning it had to only run on Windows) software for companies in the 90s and 90+% of that C++ or Delphi code compiles fine on Win + Mac + Linux. I will still say it's about balls in choosing your tech if it's not mainstream aka simply blabbering out: Oracle + MS, but more so now; now there isn't much excuse for picking lock-in tech for the most part. Not sure what the 3-month old kernel is about; those exist in MS/Apple/... as well; who runs prod on that? So what does that even mean?