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From: Clifford Heath on 14 Jul 2010 06:12 Jan Panteltje wrote: > Well I do not know what that is either, and am happy that way :-) It's the guts of their component software model, COM. There's nothing wrong with component software as an idea, but MS' implementation relies on reference counting for garbage collection, which is why Windoze software is so flakey - a missed Release causes leaks, an extra Release causes crashes due to stale references. The software is full of both, with predictable results.
From: Jon Kirwan on 13 Jul 2010 20:22 On Tue, 13 Jul 2010 22:13:10 GMT, Jan Panteltje <pNaonStpealmtje(a)yahoo.com> wrote: >On a sunny day (Tue, 13 Jul 2010 10:56:57 -0700) it happened Jon Kirwan ><jonk(a)infinitefactors.org> wrote in ><c2ap36dqcvcsjg9r633kt7fjkki5p4jckm(a)4ax.com>: > >>On Mon, 12 Jul 2010 21:24:02 GMT, Jan Panteltje >><pNaonStpealmtje(a)yahoo.com> wrote: >> >>>No clue what 'OLE' is >> >>You've missed out on Microsoft culture! > >True, I burned my xp disk :-) Oh, this predates XP! I think I first saw OLE as a term buried within some source code for Microsoft's MFC (Microsoft Framework Classes) code. A LONG TIME ago. >>It is "Object >>Linking and Embedded" and is related to the IOleObject >>interface. >> >>Jon > >Well I do not know what that is either, and am happy that way :-) Hehe. Well, if you ever have nothing better to do than read through tens of thousands of pages of Microsoft dump-ware documentation, OLE is a good way to fiddle away a few months of your excess time. Just imagine. You could invest years of your life learning about arcane rules and methods that Microsoft creates and which have NO other value than Microsoft products, which will become obsolete every 10 years anyway allowing you the great boon of having to relearn the 'next new thing' and restuff your memory with yet another set of arcane rules (YASAR) found in random locations on dozens of DVDs so that you don't get bored with life. Being a Microsoft acolyte is a commitment to a treadmill you can never leave and where nothing you learn today will be of any use to you in a decade. What's not to like? ;) Jon
From: Joel Koltner on 13 Jul 2010 20:58 "Jon Kirwan" <jonk(a)infinitefactors.org> wrote in message news:g50q36199dlol90a3am6drjvooh7t53og1(a)4ax.com... > Just imagine. You could invest years of your life learning > about arcane rules and methods that Microsoft creates and > which have NO other value than Microsoft products, which will > become obsolete every 10 years anyway allowing you the great > boon of having to relearn the 'next new thing' and restuff > your memory with yet another set of arcane rules (YASAR) > found in random locations on dozens of DVDs so that you don't > get bored with life. There's something to this, but Microsoft has largely just been "evolving" their interfaces for at least the past decade or so now... OLE kinda morphed into ActiveX and COM over time, so someone who learned about OLE early on will still have a lot of background for the later technologies there. While I'm not a huge Microsoft fan, COM really does strike me as one technology that has no equal in the *NIX world in the sense that it's a single standard that *all* major applications use. With *NIX, many programs support a named pipe but the exact syntax and calling methodologies varies from one program to the next; there's not just a simple "function call"-like wrapper that has ever gained universal support in the *NIX world. In Windows it's trivial to embed, e.g., a MathCAD document into a Word document -- and the MathCAD document "comes to life" and plots, computes, etc. when clicked on -- whereas in, e.g., OpenOffice Write there simply is no generic interface to do that kind of thing. > Being a Microsoft acolyte is a commitment to a treadmill you > can never leave and where nothing you learn today will be of > any use to you in a decade. I think Microsoft tends to activity speed up that treadmill, but the entire IT industry has that sort of treadmill anyway regardless of the OS you're using. After all, 20 years ago no *NIX guru anywhere had yet been exposed to Apache, and today it's the most dominant web server on the planet. ---Joel
From: Jon Kirwan on 13 Jul 2010 21:54 On Tue, 13 Jul 2010 17:58:33 -0700, "Joel Koltner" <zapwireDASHgroups(a)yahoo.com> wrote: >"Jon Kirwan" <jonk(a)infinitefactors.org> wrote in message >news:g50q36199dlol90a3am6drjvooh7t53og1(a)4ax.com... >> Just imagine. You could invest years of your life learning >> about arcane rules and methods that Microsoft creates and >> which have NO other value than Microsoft products, which will >> become obsolete every 10 years anyway allowing you the great >> boon of having to relearn the 'next new thing' and restuff >> your memory with yet another set of arcane rules (YASAR) >> found in random locations on dozens of DVDs so that you don't >> get bored with life. > >There's something to this, but Microsoft has largely just been "evolving" >their interfaces for at least the past decade or so now... OLE kinda morphed >into ActiveX and COM over time, so someone who learned about OLE early on will >still have a lot of background for the later technologies there. I'm speaking from a perspective that comes from starting with Windows 1 and eventually finding a barely usable system with Win286 and Win386, then a reasonable Win 3.0, and forward. I've seen a great deal over that time. There is good here, too. I don't mean to diminish that. >While I'm not a huge Microsoft fan, COM really does strike me as one >technology that has no equal in the *NIX world in the sense that it's a single >standard that *all* major applications use. With *NIX, many programs support >a named pipe but the exact syntax and calling methodologies varies from one >program to the next; there's not just a simple "function call"-like wrapper >that has ever gained universal support in the *NIX world. In Windows it's >trivial to embed, e.g., a MathCAD document into a Word document -- and the >MathCAD document "comes to life" and plots, computes, etc. when clicked on -- >whereas in, e.g., OpenOffice Write there simply is no generic interface to do >that kind of thing. This isn't the group to delve into a deeper argument on these points. Most things are two-edged swords and COM is like that, as well. There is a price being paid as well as a benefit gained. Individual circumstances decide whether that is to your good or not. Since I maintain some old systems around here and can make comparisons with very similar work being performed on widely varying machines and operating systems, it's harder for me to avoid seeing some of the downsides along with the upsides. >> Being a Microsoft acolyte is a commitment to a treadmill you >> can never leave and where nothing you learn today will be of >> any use to you in a decade. > >I think Microsoft tends to activity speed up that treadmill, but the entire IT >industry has that sort of treadmill anyway regardless of the OS you're using. >After all, 20 years ago no *NIX guru anywhere had yet been exposed to Apache, >and today it's the most dominant web server on the planet. Yes, I'll take that point. But there is a bit of a "different pace," too, even there. An example of a two-edged sword, not entirely unlike this discussion, is the modern technical media today. Over my lifetime there has been all manner of new styles of delivering news and doing it more quickly. New infrastructures make that possible. But there was a huge advantage to getting your news via snail mail and monthly periodicals, too. There was time to allow the dust to settle and for a more thorough investigation of the facts before laying out a story. And that, I do think, aided the public in some ways I miss, today. But would we really want to _force_ news to be delayed? I doubt it. But that doesn't mean there isn't a price being paid, too. There is. And sometimes I don't know which is better. I have mixed feelings about Windows. Deeply mixed. (I come from having worked on operating systems and concurrent programming since the early 1970's, working first on HP2000F timesharing system, then on Unix v6 kernel and RSX-11M and RSTS in the 1970s, to VAX VMS kernel, and so on. I also have worked on chipset debugging for P2. I've seen a few things and I've seen much that used to be known well and applied very well become lost knowledge and very poorly implemented today, when there is no doubt in my mind that had they been well educated they would never have made those mistakes. Sadly, we are saddled with some of them.) Jon
From: John Larkin on 13 Jul 2010 23:32
On Tue, 13 Jul 2010 10:56:57 -0700, Jon Kirwan <jonk(a)infinitefactors.org> wrote: >On Mon, 12 Jul 2010 21:24:02 GMT, Jan Panteltje ><pNaonStpealmtje(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > >>No clue what 'OLE' is > >You've missed out on Microsoft culture! It is "Object >Linking and Embedded" and is related to the IOleObject >interface. > >Jon PADS uses OLE to dynamically connect their schematic and a PCB layout programs. Make a change on one and it's instantly made on the other. Enabling OLE is guaranteed to corrupt the schematic, the layout, or both. One of my layout guys who liked to use the PADS OLE gave me a schematic to check. In the middle of sheet 9 was a color picture of his girlfriend. I didn't know that PADS-Logic could even incorporate photos. I tried to delete and it wouldn't. Turns out it was 12 copies deep, and if you kept at it, it would eventually go away. I can't imagine how she would have appeared on a netlist. John |