I used to develop an application for a mini-computer. It ran in an 8K program space with about triple that for the OS. We did a lot. We really did. But we were obviously running out of steam after about 6 years and after about 10 years the system got retired. People just didn't want to buy 24x80 glass CRTs when the competition was giving the color graphics. We had letter writing where you embedded the format codes, the competition had DOS then Windows WordPerfect. Word didn't really get rolling until later.
And to be h> >> >>> I don't run a virus checker; I do run a software firewall, and my 5
I run some networks for some small businesses and I have my own mail server in my home office. I get to see a lot. Plus I have some friends who work on computer security at the NSA level. Every IP address on the planet is under attack. Period. End of discussion. So any computer not connected to the net via a NAT router is asking for trouble when just sitting there. If you have to be exposed as in a dial up situation or as a server had better have protection running all the time.
And even a NAT router doesn't stop web surfing injected things or viruses in emails.
My new local pool president doesn't understand technology but he uses his computer a lot. He doesn't see the point of mailing lists so he emails the entire pool membership and doesn't BCC the list most of the time. I got a real spike in virus infected emails just after his first email like this and it continues 6 months later. Plus my mail server got a spike in attacks on the domains in my email addresses. Just because you don't see the attacks, doesn't mean they are not happening. Your ISP is killing off most of them for you and trying to figure out how to do it and stay in business.
Yes but the bad guys are walking down the street at night throwing bricks through windows. And now walking up your driveway. But on the computer they aren't leaving piles of broken glass as a indication of some thing's up.
My wife likes her automatic door locks, power windows, fuel injection, cruise control, etc ... So do I, I just think I could live without them easier. My grandfather's generation thought 2nd gear on a 3 speed manual transmission was a foolish waste of money. :)
As someone who's written code for small memory foot prints, there becomes a point where spending an extra 2 years to elegantly code something to cut the memory usage in half will put you out of business. At one point during a major update to our package we got blunt with management. And they realized it was cheaper to give away some hardware than to try and write perfect code to fit into the same foot print we were using for the previous 5 years.
Steve Job's is credited with saving Apple. But in many ways he caused the problem. The early culture at Apple and Mac was to be insanely great and not throw equipment at issues when a prefect piece of software could do the job with less. The problem was that no software is anywhere near perfect and to plan for it to be so was a disaster. Inadequate networking, disk speeds, sound ports, etc... all were very limiting for the 1/2 of the Macs life. Now those issues are mostly gone and Macs are selling much better than in a long time. But you need to have a 100 gig disk drive and a gig or more of ram to make them sing. Literally. :)
None of this excuses the crude that people accept from MS. I don't blame MS. It's the strategy that won the platform wars for them. The gave people what they wanted. Lots of buggy features, lots of revisions, etc ... Now they and we are paying the price.