Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2001 10:23:15 +0100 From: "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com> To: "Brad Knowles" <brad.knowles@skynet.be> Cc: <freebsd-chat@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: A breath of fresh air.. Message-ID: <023a01c17fc9$f811e180$0a00000a@atkielski.com> References: <0112071641320B.01380@stinky.akitanet.co.uk><000b01c17f42$c23ab140$0a0 0000a@atkielski.com><3C110351.4748B559@duth.gr><005001c17f6c$e60c0ef0$ 0a00000a@atkielski.com><15377.17350.796336.801464@guru.mired.org><0069 01c17f70$19a2f820$0a00000a@atkielski.com><15377.18218.830731.410656@gu ru.mired.org><008101c17f9a$1a4a4290$0a00000a@atkielski.com><15377.3661 7.358466.76379@guru.mired.org><00ab01c17f9d$0bde8510$0a00000a@atkielsk i.com> <15377.37214.213789.306335@guru.mired.org> <00c901c17f9f$e80a95e0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <a05101009b83750a740f1@[10.0.1.16]> <013901c17fac$b23dc6a0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <a05101017b837621e58c4@[10.0.1.16]> <01b101c17fb7$e45bf8e0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <a05101025b83773d980a5@[10.0.1.16]>
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Brad writes: > Of course. The insane people always claim that > they're the sane ones -- it's always the rest > of the world that is insane. I've seen no evidence that people are generally insane, either. That seems even less plausible than widespread irrationality. > Certain Intel chips have had a built-in "NOOP" > cycle. IIRC, they "rest" for one out of five > cycles, which helps them run cooler. It also > means that they do not run at full speed. Do you have a reference for this? > Windows disables the cooling cycle, which makes > it run 20% faster on that hardware, but makes > the hardware less reliable. Really? Where in the code does it do this? I'd be very surprised if any version of Windows attempts to do anything that hardware-specific. I know that consumer versions of Windows apparently never bother to halt the processor; even when the system is idle, the processor is going full tilt in an endless loop. Windows NT/2000/XP, as well as UNIX, halt the processor when the system is idle. Halting the processor makes it run cooler, but not halting it does not reduce reliability, unless the processor is defective and/or the PC design is flawed (allowing the processor to overheat). > This one has been known for quite some time. Then perhaps you can point me to a Web site that discusses it in greater detail. > I mentioned that the OS was unreliable, in > addition to unrelated unreliability in the > software, and also in addition to the unrelated > frequent unreliability of the hardware. How do you quantify these, and why do you appear to assert a connection between the OS and the reliability of the hardware? > And I go by my own years of personal experience > on the Mac ... Those who have complained of Mac crashes to me had years of experience, too. My impression is that Mac users, like Windows users, simply get used to crashes, and never realize that these are not normal things for an operating system. > Really? Where? What were they doing? What > precise version of the OS was installed? At a company where I used to work. They were file servers and domain controllers, mostly, but also mail and web servers (I don't know if the mail and web servers had those uptimes). The usual OS was NT 4.0, although some machines obviously ran NT 3.x prior to that, and they are probably all running Windows 2000 now. > My personal experience with NT servers was a > while ago, and at that point each machine would > have a blue screen at least once a day, > sometimes several times a day. I've never seen any NT server that unstable. What was _running_ on these machines? > And then, of course, there's this bullshit about > having to reboot after installing any software or > making any configuration changes to the OS. It is very irritating. I'm very pleased to see that FreeBSD seems not to require this. In fact, FreeBSD has won the mini-contest I had running this week, to see how long either system could go without a boot. I managed to avoid booting NT by not making any configuration changes (even changing a network parameter requires a reboot in NT--it's amazing!), but a persistent bug in a driver somewhere that has haunted me since I installed ADSL in conjunction with my existing ISDN card finally crashed the system--it causes occasional BSODs, and I don't know why, and it is too risky to try to fix it. That left the FreeBSD system in charge, which has now been running for nine days. Before I had this mystery problem with the network driver, however, my NT system could stay up for weeks at a time--essentially it would stay up until I booted it (I never went more than two or three weeks without shutting it off or rebooting it for something, however). > By far the vast majority of Windows users that > I have spoken to over the years, most end up > rebooting their machine many times in a single day. I'd say that only 1 in 20 Windows users with whom I've spoken has had to do that, and the others don't have to reboot at all, or very rarely. As elsewhere in computerland, about 5% of all users experience 95% of all problems. In this particular context, the usual cause is unusual applications or drivers (the same problem I'm having myself with NT). > Well, without knowing your experience and how > you came to know the things you do, the only > thing we can judge you on is the kinds of > things you say on the mailing list. Exactly. I'd prefer that my statements stand or fall on their technical merits alone. My credentials are irrelevant; if the arguments are invalid, they remain so no matter what my credentials, and vice versa. Similarly, your own statements here stand or fall on their own merits, at least in my own objective interpretation, so citing your credentials accomplishes nothing. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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