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I understand exactly what you're saying.
The problem is, we need someone to hit the Reset button and start with a whole new OS.
The problem with that is that it'd be expected to be compatible with everything else that already exists, else it's a non-starter. There's just so much baggage to worry about, such a project IMO would never get off the ground. So what do we do?
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I've been doing some sideline research on what it would take to hit the Reset button (I like the way you phrased that!).
I wonder if that's what Google, Apple, etc., did when they came out with things like Android. OS'es don't have to be as complex as Windows or as convoluted as Linux.
Both have good features but carry so much legacy garbage that they become virtually unusable. Both are based on 1970's technology and little has been done to start from scratch, probably because nobody has the deep pockets or the will power to do it.
Things that might be done differently, IMO, include a programming language that is less error prone and more readable than current languages like C++ and javascript; consistent, clear naming conventions for utilities like using "copy" instead of "cp", less emphasis on "themes", better version and dependency usage, less hardware variation thus avoiding driver issues...just to name a few.
Scrapping compatibility goes a long way towards solving a lot of the legacy issues. Scrapping the idea of "being all things to all people" takes it even further.
Then, getting management out the picture would help as well. (I can't tell you how many times I've heard a manager say something like "We need to do....because _____ (fill in his favorite competitor) is doing it."
Or, maybe Artificial Intelligence will bring some real intelligence to the issue.
Just my thoughts.
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rjmoses wrote: Scrapping compatibility goes a long way towards solving a lot of the legacy issues. Scrapping the idea of "being all things to all people" takes it even further.
When I read this I immediately thought "tablets".
They had a good run, companies made billions from them, but every market analyst is now saying sales have flatlined, if not declined altogether, for the past few years and there's no sign of that ever reversing course. Already.
They do a good job of "not being all things to all people", and for a lot of them this is all they need. But it's clear right now they're never going to be a complete replacement for what came before (and I'm not sure honestly if that was ever anyone's stated goal), and because of that, instead of simplifying things, they now add to the ecosystem complexity. I don't see how we can achieve a "full reset". Maybe a giant, planet-wide EM pulse like they like to do in the movies. 
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The general thinking is that if you have access to the console running the UI, then you also have access the the power button.
If your machine is genuinely multiuser, then there should be some system configuration to prevent a user from shutting down the system remotely.
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couple of weekends job replacing magnetic ballasts with electronic ones (some were in really bad shape).
anyway electrician had drawn the neutral and ground through each light (per breaker circuit) which is fine, well would have been fine as in some cases with nothing to tie the earth onto he just left the ground wires (loop-in, loop-out) dangling and not even connected to each other.
OK, in lights, it's sort-of ok to run them on 2 wires (L & N) - but if you're going to have the ground wire there it should be a valid - what's the point of providing that green/yellow wire connected to thin air? Why, well...
perhaps the same idiot, or an underling had LAZILY drawn the end of one of those light circuits down to a remote wall plug - already DEAD WRONG but without that ground connected literally deadly.
But of course it was wired a decade ago, too late to call that sparky out (sure blame long departed apprentices anyway even though he is responsible for ensuring wiring it to code).
People talk about programmers being reckless, well for mine a sparky's only got 3 wires - one of which can kill you, and yet they can be lazy/careless and stupid too.
Note: I'm no [trained] sparky but really this sh*t is so basic and yet the fully trained tradies still screw it up - once perhaps can claim as 'accidental', but repeated is pure stupidity and laziness.
not my first time, older warehouse I also re-wired some lighting (added some internal offices) back in Aus... half of the lighting circuits had L and N swapped sometimes more than once. (previous tennants wondered why the flouro's dimly glowed at night when switched off - I can forgive them for not knowing why as they were not electricians, but for sure not the idiot that did that wiring.)
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Lopatir wrote: perhaps the same idiot, or an underling had LAZILY drawn the end of one of those light circuits down to a remote wall plug - already DEAD WRONG but without that ground connected literally deadly.
Q. What's carbonized, and hangs from the ceiling?
…
Seriously,  ?!
That sort of thing would never pass here in Israel. The electricity company inspects any new building before they will connect the power, and yes, I have known them to fail buildings.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Here in the US... Well, that about sums up all I needed to say about wiring "standards" over here. I just had to replace a light fitting after a water leak destroyed the old one and found the three wires ready for me; a black one, a white one and another black one. One of them was ground/earth, statistically a higher chance of it being a black wire... or that might be the death wire! I got a sparky friend of mine to come in with his magical instruments - he swore at it for a few minutes and then figured out which was which and bound the appropriate wires with appropriately coloured tape for future reference. I worry a lot about the rest of the house.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Forogar wrote: I worry a lot about the rest of the house.
My advice: As much as can be avoided best not look, ignorance is bliss.
(And have to wonder if those extremists that shut off the mains at night when they sleep are not so crazy after all?)
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57. Me, I'm a little leprechaun (4)
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Self?
Socialism is the Axe Body Spray of political ideologies: It never does what it claims to do, but people too young to know better keep buying it anyway. (Glenn Reynolds)
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yup 
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S-ELF
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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ya
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So close!
Socialism is the Axe Body Spray of political ideologies: It never does what it claims to do, but people too young to know better keep buying it anyway. (Glenn Reynolds)
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I got a M.2 SSD enclosure, then bought a crucial SSD(240G).
try to use it to do some projects in travel.
anyone has other use for this type portable memory?
diligent hands rule....
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I've got a wobbly desk.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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As long as your machine can see it, it works well. Just don't lose it
I went through some serious hoop jumping trying to get an enclosure for my SSD, a Samsung SM961, PCIe 3.0x4. It's a bit faster than your generic SSDs, but it has some unique connector requirements and enclosures are pricey.
I have a friend who has gone to all virtual machines, and he just carries around a couple of USB 3.0 enclosures. Apparently the system works well for him.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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This is not a programming problem, even though it is a software thing - so kick me in the right direction, if the question doesn't belong here...
I've got quite a few boxes of old floppies that I want to go throught before throwing them away. I've got a USB floppy station.
In the old days when floppies were the standard, lots of floppy manufacturers sold "pre formatted" floppies ready to use. But they didn't write the format code (360K, 720K, 1.44M...) in the boot sector. Don't ask me why - it is true that Good Old DOS (GOD) didn't require it: If reading according to one format failed, another format was tried, and another, until reading succeeded. 16-bit Windows (i.e. up until W98) followed suit. With Win32, MS declared that "Enough is enough!". In XP and later versions, a floppy without a proper format code is considered "Not formatted".
I could fire up that old W98 wreck down in the basement to spin through all those old floppies. The machine is really old, so moving the rescued files over to my current machine today raises another set of problems. I'd rather find another solution.
So, my request is: Can anyone point me to some software letting a Win7 or Win10 machine read a floppy from a USB floppy drive, even when the floppy disk does not have a format code written into the boot sector as it should have?
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I have no experience but have you explored running win 98 in a virtual machine?
here's one tutorial for w95: https://medium.com/@johngreenfield/how-to-setup-and-install-windows-95-in-a-virtual-machine-326654b0f670
I dunno if it'll let you talk to the usb-floppy, but worth a try.
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95/98 might be overkill, if it's just to copy files from a floppy to another location (say, a virtual hard drive, formatted as FAT). I've had DOS install just fine on Hyper-V, but 95/98 have always failed for me (with Hyper-V, that is - thought I remember using it with VMware).
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The first thing Windows says is somehting like "This disk is not formattet - do you want to format it?" I have to get beyond that point to copy the files on the floppy to another location. And once I get beyond that, the problem is solved.
As long as any current Windows floppy driver is involved, I can't get access to the files on the floppy.
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So the host OS gets a crack at it before the VM? That's kinda messed up.
I've kept around old machines, but not that old. I have a USB floppy drive somewhere, and I know I have DOS install disks (or at least a bootable DOS disk), so maybe I wouldn't be completely stuck if I needed to do that. Although I have to seriously wonder if those floppies still work.
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I haven't actually checked out this combination. It depends on the virtualization. Usually, VMs do not have their own drivers for every single hardware device that is out there; it makes use of the host's device drivers, at a low level. Different VM technologies vary in how low level - drivers are structured in multiple layers. The term "driver" is a most ambiguous term.
If the VM software goes all the way down to the drivers for every piece of hardware, without any support from the host system, it really isn't a virtualization layer but an OS core that provides multiple isolated API environments, possibly of different types.
Where does the "OS provided device driver" end and the "host OS" begin? That is also a very ambiguous issue. The VM may use the host OS to provide control over the disk as cylinders and tracks, but manage the sector format itself. Or the OS may provide the disk as an unstructured stream of bytes. Or one of several in-between levels.
As the floppy disk format really describes the disk at the cylinder/track level, its interpretation belongs in the very low driver layers. I woudn't expect a VM anno 2019 to implement drivers for the Shugart 34-pin floppy interface - legacy demands on Windows are probably still strong enough that they keep it in there. What you suggest is that the VM implements the physical layer driver (if it is prepared to do that for arbitrary USB floppy formats, I would expect it to be available for a Shugart interface as well), but not take the responsibility for track and sectors. Or at least allow me to take control over stepper motor and disk rotation ... in a "virtual machine". To me, that isn't much of a virtualization
You may be right, but I doubt it. I would think that the majority of VM technologies that can handle floppies make use of host provided drivers at the bottom layers. If those drivers can't handle the sectors and tracks because there is no information available, I would expect the VM to be lost as well.
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That was my concern too, the host would say "ahh, this is a disk drive, so these are the parameters, here you go VM..."
OTOH I've had VM's talk to devices that the host didn't understand (custom sensors), perhaps disabling the USB-Floppy driver in the host might let it pass through as an "unknown device,"
... but then my next fear would be without custom drivers (as I had in my case) the win 95/98 probably may not know what an "unknown-?USB?-thing" is either.
But if no luck elsewhere I'd try VirtualBox, I've found it's generally best at passing through devices. It's free apart from a bit of you time invested to download and install/setup.
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Might also try Linux in a VM, that supports USB floppy. Gparted will show the format.
If you can keep your head while those about you are losing theirs, perhaps you don't understand the situation.
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