

An Epic Bill Gates Email Rant - goronbjorn
http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2008/06/24/full-text-an-epic-bill-gates-e-mail-rant/

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alayne
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=227045>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3905618>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1660096>

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toomuchcoffee
That's not a rant. It's a perfectly normal, human reaction to what Windows
does to the human brain.

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jiggy2011
One thing I've wondered about Windows is why it needs to be rebooted so often?

I can understand for stuff like Service Pack updates or patches to the kernel
but it seems whenever I boot Windows 7 it wants to do a bunch of updates that
inevitably require a full restart, sometimes this also triggers more updates
so a further restart is required.

I've even installed stuff which seems like simple userspace software and have
it demand a full power cycle upon completing the install.

Is there an actual intelligent reason for this, or is it just a throwback to
earlier versions of Windows and hasn't been fixed yet?

~~~
mhurron
> seems like simple userspace software

It probably isn't.

~~~
jiggy2011
An example would be Windows Media Player. Every single update I've ever done
to that program has required a restart. I can't fathom why that would be
required.

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sp332
The media player is what renders all the little movie thumbnails in Explorer.
So it's got hooks in the OS. (Not to mention all the DRM cruft, that's
probably down at the driver level.)

~~~
AjithAntony
Actually this may not be the case. I was doing some testing recently where I
happened to have 32-bit codecs for a video format I was using, but did not
have 64-bit codecs. Media player could play the file, but explorer could not
thumbnail them. Media player is 32-bit, whereas explorer is 64-bit. After
installing 64-bit codecs, the explorer thumbnails worked.

This would suggest that the thumbnailing is not done by media player.

~~~
alter8
Explorer works like an alternative player when creating the thumbnails, so it
can use the same codecs as media player. You could have only the codecs and
remove media player, and thumbnails still should work.

There is a 64-bit media player, it's just not the default, maybe due to lack
of 3rd-party 64-bit codecs at the time. To make it default:
[http://answers.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/forum/windows_7-w...](http://answers.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/forum/windows_7-windows_programs/making-windows-media-
player-64-bit-default/bd4872b3-75e8-4d81-ae8a-df50798d5113)

------
realize
It was constant experiences like this that made me try Mac in 2010, and I've
never looked back since. Kind of weird that Bill Gates just sends an email
about it rather than actually restructuring his business to fix it.

~~~
angrow
It's easier to turn a rowboat than an aircraft carrier.

~~~
realize
True, but if the aircraft carrier is heading in a direction that makes its
presence a bit pointless then it needs to be turned, and the captain is
probably the one to set that in motion.

