Tinsology

Today I noticed that my disk space usage on my web host was much higher than what it should have been. As soon as I opened my ftp program to browse through my files I found the problem. In my home directory there were tons of core.##### files (where # is some number). Each one was roughly 45MB and in total they were eating up about 2GB of space. I don’t know why they were generated, but I do know how. Core dumps occur when some program crashes. The core files are more or less an image of what was in memory at the time of the crash. These files are generated mostly for debugging purposes and (should be) safe to delete. If you are unsure of whether or not you can delete them, try renaming them and wait to see if anything explodes.

If these files are continuously being generated, its most likely a signal that something is crashing on a regular basis, but otherwise it may just be a rare occurrence. I’ve read that these files can be caused by WordPress and Drupal so if it becomes a problem you may want to look into that.

Prior to my absence (which was related to me being deathly ill for a week and then having midterms + projects for the subsequent weeks) I wrote about Microsoft’s latest EU troubles, this time relating to Internet Explorer.

In short the EU doesn’t like the fact that IE is the defualt browser on every installation of Windows. The complaint was initially submitted by Opera Software.

It seems now that the EU has decided that Microsoft must offer some other browsers along side IE as well as offer users a choice of which is to be the default. The decision isn’t final, as MS still has a chance for an appeal.

Personally I’m interested to see how Microsoft reacts to this. Ultimately the decision of which alternative browsers(s) to include may fall to the vendors, which may or may not be a good thing. All of the viable alternatives to IE are open source browsers so this decision as very strong implications or the open source community and the companies backing this software, at least for now. My only fear is that, in the case that the decision of which to incorporate falls to the vendors, is that in a few years time there will be a dozen new proprietary browsers generated by the vendors. There’s something unsettling to me about a Dell browsers pre-installed on thousands of computers.

Of course I’m in the US so I won’t be able to witness the effects of this first-hand.

Word is getting around the the EU anti-trust agency is once again taking a stance against Microsoft. This time the target is Internet Explorer. The EU claims that IE is protected from competition by being bundled with Windows.

BBC Coverage

My thoughts:

IE is by far the dominate browser when it comes to number of users. It is the definition ubiquitous. At this same time it is easily the most critisized browser, even with respect to its market share. It seems to me that these two things should not go together. Microsoft has maintained this lead not through the quality of its software but by the precident of its use.

Personally my browser of choice is Opera, the developers of which were the ones to file the initial complaint that triggered the EU’s response. I do, however, still have IE and occasionally use it when it is necessary. This is probably the case with the majority of us who prefer an alternative to IE. So many sites and apps are coded with IE in mind, that giving up on IE entirely is all but impossible. Instead of being coded to the standards these sites are designed to work with IE, even if that means the function poorly or not at all in other browsers. Does this mean that it is impossible to code an application that works in all of the major browsers? Not at all. You can’t blame Microsoft for lazy developers, but you can blame them for not complying with standards. You may be wondering “If Microsoft is to blame for their lack of standards compliance, and that lack of compliance makes it harder to code apps that work in all browsers, isn’t Microsoft to blame for the lack of apps that work in all browsers?”. In my opinion the answer is no. If developers don’t like having to tweak their code to work with IE then don’t. Just make sure it works in Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome, or whatever browser you crazy Linux people are using today, and then stick a link on your footer that says “Best viewed in ANYTHING BUT Internet Explorer” and goes to a list of alternative browsers. If this became common practice IE would be up to standards by now.

That beings said, what about the EU and their stance against Microsoft? Should Microsoft have to remove IE from their operating system? In my opinion the answer is it doesn’t matter. The first thing I do when I install a fresh copy of Windows is go to Opera.com, download the browser, and stop using IE from that point on. Clearly, however, this is not the case with the majority of users today. Why? Some of us might think its because people are sheep who don’t know any better and in that case need the EU’s protection. Others would say that it is because IE isn’t that bad and switching to an unfamiliar browser isn’t worth it. I think the answer is that it works. IE works. It works not because Microsoft makes it works. It works because we make it work. We being developers who are willing to bend over backward just so their site looks pristine in IE. For this reason, even if the EU forces Microsoft to offer a version of Windows not bundled with IE, the majority of users will opt to have the version with IE. Even those that don’t will at some point download it because they ran into a site that is coded to not allow users with alternative browsers to view their content.

My point is: Don’t count on the EU to fix all of the problems you have with IE. If you are a developer who is afraid to publish a site that is compliant  to the standards, looks good in all of the alternative browsers, but for whatever reason isn’t quite right in IE then you are to blame. Stop worrying about your adsense revenue (you don’t make that much anyways ) and realize that if you act like sheep then Microsoft has no problem herding you. Worse yet, if you are a developer who prevents users who are not using IE from view their site, or happily notifies its users that “this site is bested viewed in Internet Explorer” then you should know that you embody all that is wrong with the world today.

If you haven’t heard about Windows 7 yet it is time to take note. 7 is the next iteration of windows and it appears that, unlike vista, its going to be a worthy replacement for XP. Those of you who have had to down(up?)grade from vista to xp are probably skeptical, but personally, from what I’ve read I think its going to be the next XP (in the sense that it will be a success, not the sense that it will be around for a decade before something better comes along… I hope).

You don’t have to take my word for it though. So long as you sign up before January 24th (exactly 2,647 days since the release of XP) you can try out the beta of Microsoft’s next OS:

Windows 7 Beta Information and Download

Be Warned! You’ll read on the website that it is not such a great idea to install 7 on your primary machine. I brushed off this warning without much thought and happily decided to install 7 alongside XP. And so begins the (notso) epic tale of how my Windows 7 beta test failed to get off the ground…

Downloading the installation DVD took me just over an hour, which for me is not bad for 2-3.5 GB depending on which flavor of 7 you decide to download. As soon as the dvd was done burning I quickly made a roughly 40GB primary NTFS partition on my hard drive and launched the installer. Unlike XP, which requires you to install by booting from cd (ie furiously tapping F8), 7 is smart enough to begin the install from XP while you sit back and enjoy the progress bar. Law and Order happened to be on TV at the time (There’s a 23/24 chance of that occuring as you are aware if you have basic cable) so I left the room.

A while later my progress-bar-nearly-full sense kicked in and I sprinted into my room to check the install. I caught the computer in the middle of a reboot. After the (new and shiny) load screen every step except was complete except for the very vauge “Completing Install…” step. I sat and watched the trailing dots come and go (. .. … .) until yet another reboot. Thinking its competely done now I watched the boot manager flash by, displaying “Windows 7″ and “Earlier version of Windows”. It defaulted to windows 7 and the low res but still new and shiny background appeared. Distracted, it took me a moment to notice the text “Installation was not successful”.

After this I made my critical error. I rebooted into XP and formatted my testing partition, then rebooted to try another install. If you haven’t realized I missed a step you will soon. After the install (and more Law and Order) I recieve the same message. This is, however, not the problem. Another reboot reveals the options “Earlier version of Windows” , “Windows 7″ , and… “Windows 7″. Thinking Oops I try to boot back into XP (forgetting that Vista and 7 don’t use the boot.ini) to fix the problem. This usually takes about 45 seconds. Three minutes later the screen was still black and I was thinking about the warning on the download page:

“Don’t install the Beta on your primary home or work computer. Microsoft is not responsible for downtime stemming from the Windows 7 Beta.”

A full day of debugging later I managed to get back into XP (thank you bcdedit).

That’s my story. For those of you who still want to do a side by side install here’s a link to a guide on how to do it:
You’ve been warned.
My old laptop is most likely going to be my new test subject. I’ll write again when I have have some first hand experience to share.