I've been working with Microsoft "Technologies" now for over 10 years, and the idea of moving over to Apple OS / Java has crossed my mind quite a few times. During those times I felt that if I managed to escape the Windows environment the Mac environment would be like breath of fresh air although I can imagine that the Mac OS also has it's fair share of problems.
Have you ever tried to uninstall Internet Explorer?? It's impossible.
This blog post is not about Microsoft's underhand marketing tactics, rather its about a few core concepts or architectural design bugs that are inherent in the Windows Operating System. You see, architecture concerns the initial design decisions you make when building a system, and these are decisions are never easily rectified.
There 3 architectural issues with the Windows Operating System concepts are:
1) The grand central station scenario.
The windows operating system has no control over CPU contention. There is no central process that regulates the CPU (or memory for that matter) as a resource to Windows Services and applications that run in the Windows environment. This results in massive over contention on load and shutdown of the OS causing severe delays. The consumption for memory by certain applications can get out of hand also, and there is nothing to tell the application that it is consuming more than it should be... until the Operating System crashes!!
The Windows Operating system is thus like grand central station. During peak times it's chaos, and there is always a danger that one single person could cause havoc.
2) The chalkboard scenario.
Microsoft created the registry. This would be a central repository for all components and services to "register" themselves on the system, or store general meta data required to personalize an application.
The only problem is most of this data is critical for some core applications to run successfully. Also anybody or any other application can just overwrite another applications registry section. The registry also happens to be a great spot for viruses to store personalized information to assist them to infiltrate your system over and over again.
The registry has become like a chalkboard at school. Everybody tried to write something meaningful on it but it's turned into an indecipherable, useless mess.
3) The hippy scenario.
Security. This has always been one of my favourite topics. Microsoft treats everything you download under your account which is normally has administrator privileges, unless you work at a company with a well controlled and moderated network. This means that whatever you are running under your account can do what it likes with your hard drive data, CPU and Memory.
Windows TRUSTS and treats your downloaded applications like a friend you have just invited to a happy hippy party and everybody is to wasted to give a damn. Happy hippy love just fills the air. Say good bye to your hard drive.
Signing out...
Another long awaited, highly anticipated blog post.
I realised something yesterday evening while I sat on the bicycle machine at gym preparing myself for the mental trauma of forcing myself through an hour and a half of mindless weight pushing ...
I realised that if I wanted to maintain consistency I had to :
1) Relieve myself of the psychological pressure I put myself under when I go to gym.
2) Avoid high expectations in terms of what I'm able to achieve within the hour and a half, from a cardiovascular and streangth perspective.
You see, it's not like I have a whole day to prepare myself for gym. I get home every evening at 20h00 after a long day at work so the REAL challenge is just getting myself into the gym. If I stop enjoying going to gym then my goal of achieving a decent physique is doomed.
Consistency is all about maintaining the right state of mind.