The Gradual Disintegration of Windows?

Posted April 21, 2008, 11:04 p.m.

I do basically all of my computing these days (excluding time at work) on either Mac OS X or Ubuntu Linux. I also have high-hopes for the Haiku OS, even though it’s not ready for prime time just yet. I am not a fan of Windows, as any long-time reader will be well-aware, and only use the wayward Microsoft operating system on the computer provided by my employer and in a Parallels Desktop testing environment.

I just read a really interesting article by Peter Bright at Ars Technica that provides a great—albeit technical—background of Windows and Mac OS as they exist today from the perspective of a former software developer on the Windows platform who has left for the greener pastures of Mac OS.

All-in-all, I agree with Bright. Apple and Microsoft both had aging operating systems in the mid-to-late 1990s that were not well suited for modern applications or for the constant networking (and networking threats) brought by the Internet. Apple started over with Mac OS X, a ground-up redo of Mac OS based on the work of the UNIX community and NeXT. Microsoft, while leaping forward with the technically advanced NT Kernel (the ‘core’ that runs Windows NT, 2000, XP, and Vista) long before Mac OS X made it to market, failed to remove all the cruft that surrounds it and continues to hobble Windows today. Here’s hoping the next version of Windows goes back to the drawing board and brings us something great.

Scott Bradford has been putting his opinions on his website since 1995—before most people knew what a website was. He has been a professional web developer in the public- and private-sector for over twenty years. He is an independent constitutional conservative who believes in human rights and limited government, and a Catholic Christian whose beliefs are summarized in the Nicene Creed. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from George Mason University. He loves Pink Floyd and can play the bass guitar . . . sort-of. He’s a husband, pet lover, amateur radio operator, and classic AMC/Jeep enthusiast.

Quotes

Such is the nature of the understanding, that it cannot be compelled to the belief of anything by outward force. Confiscation of estate, imprisonment, torments, nothing of that nature can have any such efficacy as to make men change the inward judgment that they have framed of things.

Why can’t somebody give us a list of things that everybody thinks and nobody says, and another list of things that everybody says and nobody thinks?

Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got used to it.

One source of atmospheric pollution is the carbon dioxide that we all exhale. We could stop that very simply. But the cost would clearly exceed the gain.

Bad speech doesn’t require censorship, it requires good speech.

Do what you can do, not what you can’t. Then build on the momentum.

As a solid rock is not shaken by the wind, wise people falter not amidst blame and praise.

There can be only one true religion, because a thing cannot be false and true at the same time, and, therefore, all religions that contradict the teaching of the true Church must teach falsehood.

The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

The political correctness that inhibits cultural comparisons may be as great a danger as secret police in the long run, effectively silencing any defense of the West.

Why, you simple creatures, the weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire.

Although man has many points of resemblance with the brute creation, one characteristic is peculiar to himself—he improves. . . .

Even cowards can endure hardship; only the brave can endure suspense.

Be not intimidated . . . nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery, and cowardice.

Science consists largely in telling people things which they already know, in a language which they cannot understand.

‘After Auschwitz,’ said Theodor Adorno, student of authoritarianism, ‘there should be no poetry.’ He was wrong. But the poetry should be about Auschwitz.

In laying down a political system it is safer to rely on principles than upon precedents, because the former are fixed and immutable, while the latter vary with men, places, times and circumstances.

I think apologizing is a great thing, but you have to be wrong. I will absolutely apologize, sometime in the hopefully distant future, if I’m ever wrong.

I thought [being president] would be easier.

You cannot be half a saint, you must be a whole saint or no saint at all.