If you look at your life, the tremendous amount of effort you had to exert to overcome obstacles and get to where you are today speaks of the possibility of your spirit. But it also shows that nothing is a closed system. Nothing. To think otherwise is to limit something that is limitless. That is—you.Next time we run up against the limits of proprietary code, we might appreciate our strengths, and leverage our creativity to triumph over closed-mindedness. Not encouraging hacking here, just resourcefulness.
Showing posts with label operating system. Show all posts
Showing posts with label operating system. Show all posts
Monday, November 11, 2013
Nothing Is a Closed System
I find the intentions of "open systems" compared to "closed systems" fascinating. Proprietary Apple is airtight compared to Windows which is locked-down compared to free-ranging Linux and others. I was recently struck by an article by acting coach Anthony Meindl. It made me think of computer code from a fresh angle:
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Win98 Was Stable
Windows 98 was a stable and secure operating system.
It was stable because you could simply reinstall everything if it failed, or restore it from a tape backup. You’d have a tape backup because you assumed Win98 would crash.
Win98 was secure, at least during its heyday, because this was prior to the exponential growth of internet viruses.
A case for the robustness of Win98 (second edition) is hard to make from a technical standpoint. But in practice, I never had problems with it. Subsequent Windows operating systems increased in complexity and, in my opinion, were rushed to production (release “updates” have multiplied almost as quickly as viruses). I feel we now live in a very uncertain computing environment.
Disagree, please. I’m surely not accounting for the increased sophistication of today’s software. But how much of that sophistication do we need, and at what price? And not a dollar cost so much as a demand for more of our time.
If hardware and software are ends in themselves, then we live in the best of all possible worlds, and it only gets better. But to the extent computers are tools intended to accomplish real-world tasks, we need better mousetraps.
It was stable because you could simply reinstall everything if it failed, or restore it from a tape backup. You’d have a tape backup because you assumed Win98 would crash.
Win98 was secure, at least during its heyday, because this was prior to the exponential growth of internet viruses.
A case for the robustness of Win98 (second edition) is hard to make from a technical standpoint. But in practice, I never had problems with it. Subsequent Windows operating systems increased in complexity and, in my opinion, were rushed to production (release “updates” have multiplied almost as quickly as viruses). I feel we now live in a very uncertain computing environment.
Disagree, please. I’m surely not accounting for the increased sophistication of today’s software. But how much of that sophistication do we need, and at what price? And not a dollar cost so much as a demand for more of our time.
If hardware and software are ends in themselves, then we live in the best of all possible worlds, and it only gets better. But to the extent computers are tools intended to accomplish real-world tasks, we need better mousetraps.
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