App

[Steve Hayes]

I'm not running my scanner from a "smart" phone, I'm running it from my
desktop computer. The software it uses is referred to correctly as an
"application".

Microsoft confused and conflated the terminology. Programs and
applications meant the same thing (Win32 programs), so application was
often abbreviated to "app". Then Microsoft came out with UWP (Universal
Windows Platform) apps. They didn't call them applications, or UWPs, or
newapps, but just apps. This confused the new UWP apps with the old
Win32 apps. So, now "app" means a UWP application, and application or
program means a Win32 application. Which terminology you lean towards
depends on how long you've been using PCs.

In my understanding and usage "app" is short for "application program"
and is distingushed from other programs by what it is used for. There
are programs like "utilities" that are for maintaining the computer's
running, or system programs that are not apps.

[Anton Shepelev]

Post by Steve Hayes
In my understanding and usage "app" is short for
"application program" and is distingushed from other
programs by what it is used for. There are programs like
"utilities" that are for maintaining the computer's
running, or system programs that are not apps.

You are correct. I find `app' exceedingly vulgar, and
prefer the normal terms `program' and `application'.

[Bertel Lund Hansen]

Post by Anton Shepelev

Post by Steve Hayes
In my understanding and usage "app" is short for
"application program" and is distingushed from other
programs by what it is used for. There are programs like
"utilities" that are for maintaining the computer's
running, or system programs that are not apps.

You are correct. I find `app' exceedingly vulgar, and
prefer the normal terms `program' and `application'.

To me they are all programs. I only use "app" about programs on my
mobile when talking with other people.

[J. J. Lodder]

Post by Steve Hayes

I'm not running my scanner from a "smart" phone, I'm running it from my
desktop computer. The software it uses is referred to correctly as an
"application".

Microsoft confused and conflated the terminology. Programs and
applications meant the same thing (Win32 programs), so application was
often abbreviated to "app". Then Microsoft came out with UWP (Universal
Windows Platform) apps. They didn't call them applications, or UWPs, or
newapps, but just apps. This confused the new UWP apps with the old
Win32 apps. So, now "app" means a UWP application, and application or
program means a Win32 application. Which terminology you lean towards
depends on how long you've been using PCs.

In my understanding and usage "app" is short for "application program"
and is distingushed from other programs by what it is used for. There
are programs like "utilities" that are for maintaining the computer's
running, or system programs that are not apps.

It is anything with the extension .app

Jan
(avoiding the Evil Empire)

[Bertel Lund Hansen]

Post by J. J. Lodder

Post by Steve Hayes
In my understanding and usage "app" is short for "application program"
and is distingushed from other programs by what it is used for. There
are programs like "utilities" that are for maintaining the computer's
running, or system programs that are not apps.

It is anything with the extension .app

A text file?

[Newyana2]

Post by Steve Hayes
In my understanding and usage "app" is short for "application program"
and is distingushed from other programs by what it is used for. There
are programs like "utilities" that are for maintaining the computer's
running, or system programs that are not apps.

Whether we like it or not, I think V's explanation is entirely
accurate. App started with Steve Jobs and became a word
that meant cellphone applet. It was typical of Apple, creating
a cutesy, child-like environment that would placate and
entertain people afraid of tech, with icons that look like
they're designed by a 12 year old girl who dots her i's with
little hearts.

On Windows it's always been "programs". Only some
programmers say "application". (It could be worse. For
awhile people were talking about their programming
projects as "solutions".)

Having established that app means cellphone applet, MS
have made things more clear. They've gone from Metro to
RT to UWP to name essentially the same crippled, interpreted
applet software. Who knows those terms? No one outside of
Windows programming. With the Start Menu separating Programs
from Apps it becomes still more clear. These Metro applets are,
and are meant to be, more like cellphone applets than Windows
software. They're a completely different animal, closer to
dyanmic webpages than to complied executables. (Though,
frankly, I've never found a clear explanation of exactly how
they work. I've seen lists of restricted APIs. I've seen lists
of all the ways one can write a Metro applet -- from HTML to
C++. But I've never seen a technical explanation of exactly how
they operate and get interpreted.)

I often call them Metro apps because that's the first name
MS came up with and it's the only name with flavor. RT and UWP
are terms only geeks can like. Metro carries a connotation of
urban fashion. As though Bill Gates had decided to buy an iPhone,
get a haircut that costs more than $10, and invite some intelligentsia
over for winetasting. MS probably hoped that the flat, ugly,
borderless monotone of Metro apps, with the Apple-style slide
controls, would seem hip and artfully sparse.

That's an interesting pattern with fashions. For example, with
the use of color, rare and intense colors were prized for millennia.
Then we came up with "day-glo" fluorescent colors. All colors were
possible and cheap. So what were gourmands to do? Subtle variations
of beige became all the rage. Computers have been similar. We had
3-D. We had walnut burl windows. We had boombox windows. With
Win7 we had clever translucency and grass growing on window
frames. Garish and complicated had reached their limit. Where was
there to go? Hues of beige. That's basically what the Metro theme is.
The fashion sophisticate now goes for minimalist, ever since excess
became effortless. Though I'm not sure how much of the computing
public gets that particular joke.

[John C.]

Post by Steve Hayes
In my understanding and usage "app" is short for "application program"
and is distingushed from other programs by what it is used for. There
are programs like "utilities" that are for maintaining the computer's
running, or system programs that are not apps.

  Whether we like it or not, I think V's explanation is entirely
accurate. App started with Steve Jobs and became a word
that meant cellphone applet. It was typical of Apple, creating
a cutesy, child-like environment that would placate and
entertain people afraid of tech, with icons that look like
they're designed by a 12 year old girl who dots her i's with
little hearts.
   On Windows it's always been "programs". Only some
programmers say "application". (It could be worse. For
awhile people were talking about their programming
projects as "solutions".)

Yes, that wouldn't have been a good thing.

   Having established that app means cellphone applet, MS
have made things more clear. They've gone from Metro to
RT to UWP to name essentially the same crippled, interpreted
applet software. Who knows those terms? No one outside of
Windows programming. With the Start Menu separating Programs
from Apps it becomes still more clear. These Metro applets are,
and are meant to be, more like cellphone applets than Windows
software. They're a completely different animal, closer to
dyanmic webpages than to complied executables. (Though,
frankly, I've never found a clear explanation of exactly how
they work. I've seen lists of restricted APIs. I've seen lists
of all the ways one can write a Metro applet -- from HTML to
C++. But I've never seen a technical explanation of exactly how
they operate and get interpreted.)

My understanding of them is that they're more or less like a portable
app that uses callouts to modules which are standard in every Windows
version since W8. The "apps" are hidden in a folder named "C:/Program
Files/WindowsApps". You may think you can "uninstall" them, but all that
does is to (usually) turn them off if they normally run in the
background AND to eliminate access to them. The program files actually
remain in the WindowsApps folder. Steps to access to that folder are
easily found on the internet so that you can delete the program files,
but doing so can be risky if the files you delete are for "apps" that
come by default with Windows.

  I often call them Metro apps because that's the first name
MS came up with and it's the only name with flavor. RT and UWP
are terms only geeks can like. Metro carries a connotation of
urban fashion. As though Bill Gates had decided to buy an iPhone,
get a haircut that costs more than $10, and invite some intelligentsia
over for winetasting. MS probably hoped that the flat, ugly,
borderless monotone of Metro apps, with the Apple-style slide
controls, would seem hip and artfully sparse.

It made me gag.

  That's an interesting pattern with fashions. For example, with
the use of color, rare and intense colors were prized for millennia.
Then we came up with "day-glo" fluorescent colors. All colors were
possible and cheap. So what were gourmands to do? Subtle variations
of beige became all the rage. Computers have been similar. We had
3-D. We had walnut burl windows. We had boombox windows. With
Win7 we had clever translucency and grass growing on window
frames. Garish and complicated had reached their limit. Where was
there to go? Hues of beige. That's basically what the Metro theme is.
The fashion sophisticate now goes for minimalist, ever since excess
became effortless. Though I'm not sure how much of the computing
public gets that particular joke.

For me, one of the most frustrating things about W10 is the massively
reduced UI configurability.

[Newyana2]

Post by John C.

Post by Steve Hayes
In my understanding and usage "app" is short for "application program"
and is distingushed from other programs by what it is used for. There
are programs like "utilities" that are for maintaining the computer's
running, or system programs that are not apps.

  Whether we like it or not, I think V's explanation is entirely
accurate. App started with Steve Jobs and became a word
that meant cellphone applet. It was typical of Apple, creating
a cutesy, child-like environment that would placate and
entertain people afraid of tech, with icons that look like
they're designed by a 12 year old girl who dots her i's with
little hearts.
   On Windows it's always been "programs". Only some
programmers say "application". (It could be worse. For
awhile people were talking about their programming
projects as "solutions".)

Yes, that wouldn't have been a good thing.

   Having established that app means cellphone applet, MS
have made things more clear. They've gone from Metro to
RT to UWP to name essentially the same crippled, interpreted
applet software. Who knows those terms? No one outside of
Windows programming. With the Start Menu separating Programs
from Apps it becomes still more clear. These Metro applets are,
and are meant to be, more like cellphone applets than Windows
software. They're a completely different animal, closer to
dyanmic webpages than to complied executables. (Though,
frankly, I've never found a clear explanation of exactly how
they work. I've seen lists of restricted APIs. I've seen lists
of all the ways one can write a Metro applet -- from HTML to
C++. But I've never seen a technical explanation of exactly how
they operate and get interpreted.)

My understanding of them is that they're more or less like a portable
app that uses callouts to modules which are standard in every Windows
version since W8. The "apps" are hidden in a folder named "C:/Program
Files/WindowsApps". You may think you can "uninstall" them, but all that
does is to (usually) turn them off if they normally run in the
background AND to eliminate access to them. The program files actually
remain in the WindowsApps folder. Steps to access to that folder are
easily found on the internet so that you can delete the program files,
but doing so can be risky if the files you delete are for "apps" that
come by default with Windows.

They can be uninnstalled to some extent, but it's a tedious
process involving PowerShell, designed to make sure that virtually
no one tries it. Microsoft are clearly trying to force this crap
on people, getting everyone used to thinking of Windows as
a giant Metro cellphone, with plenty of ads and no control.

https://www.askvg.com/guide-how-to-remove-all-built-in-apps-in-windows-10/

I've uninstalled pretty much everything on my system. When I
set it up I wanted to get to a base starting point of max-clean,
min-size, no junk.

The WindowsApps
folder mostly just has .Net runtimes in it. I also left applets for display,
sounds and sound recorder. The rest is gone. The SystemApps folder
is similar. It seems to only have basic OS functionality. I tried to
remove SearchApp but id didn't work. I was able to shut it off, though,
by renaming the folder with a bat file.

Crazy nonsense. When I look at Sound Recorder I find a lot of crap
that looks like redundant config files, and an EXE that seems to be
a normal, compiled PE file.

Post by John C.
For me, one of the most frustrating things about W10 is the massively
reduced UI configurability.

Yes. Odd, isn't it? I've found that with Classic Shell and
WinAero Tweaker I can get back some control. But it turned
out that I can't get window frames without Aero. And there's
no going back to a menu from the "ribbon". Fortunately I
don't use that very much. I've got it looking pretty much
like XP/7 with Classic style, for the most part. And actually,
some things are better. For example, I was able to change
most icons without too much trouble. I now have my own folder
icons and was aable to bring my red oak wasttebasket over
from XP. (Though Win10 often doesn't update the display
when I empty it.)

One annoyance still unsolved is folder windows. I tried runing
a Win7 script to make all windows the same size. It seems to
have worked. But then if I do something like maximize one window,
Win10 starts maxing all of them and I have to retrain it. That's
especially irritating because it's been broken since Win98.

On XP, every folder was set to remember its size and type, but
it didn't work because Explorer had a bug that made it record the
specs wrong. It was fixable with a Registry edit, but rather involved.

With Vista/7 MS broke the system again, swapping around the
Registry settings as though to deliberately thwart any effort to
make it work properly. Win7 has a way to remove all settings and then
create one setting for all folders, which is fine with me. I'm still not
certain whether it still works on Win10.

It involves deleting the keys
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Classes\Local
Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\BagMRU and Bags, which store
settings for each opened folder
but are undependable.

Then those two keys are recreated and the desired settings are
created in Bags\AllFolders\Shell ...It's not a project for the faint of
heart. :)

[Peter Moylan]

One annoyance still unsolved is folder windows. I tried runing a Win7
script to make all windows the same size. It seems to have worked.
But then if I do something like maximize one window, Win10 starts
maxing all of them and I have to retrain it. That's especially
irritating because it's been broken since Win98.

I dislike the Windows implementation of folder windows for several
reasons, but a major one is that they take up massive amounts of screen
real estate. Why do they have to be so big, and filled with a lot of
useless detail?

On my desktop (I run OS/2), each folder has separately specified display
attributes, such as whether in icon view the icons are located as
placed, or put in multiple columns, etc. (There's also a tree view and a
details view, and the details view does take a lot of space.) In the
case of a folder whose files are all of the same kind, e.g. all source
files, I usually choose to display only the names (no icons shown) in a
simple multi-column list, so that the folder window is very small. That
matters to me. During program development, in particular, I'll have a
number of folder windows open and a number of other windows (e.g.
command shells) open. I want to be able to get at those easily. Windows
seems to have been designed for people who only run one program at a time.

[Paul]

Post by Peter Moylan

One annoyance still unsolved is folder windows. I tried runing a Win7
script to make all windows the same size. It seems to have worked.
But then if I do something like maximize one window, Win10 starts
maxing all of them and I have to retrain it. That's especially
irritating because it's been broken since Win98.

I dislike the Windows implementation of folder windows for several
reasons, but a major one is that they take up massive amounts of screen
real estate. Why do they have to be so big, and filled with a lot of
useless detail?
On my desktop (I run OS/2), each folder has separately specified display
attributes, such as whether in icon view the icons are located as
placed, or put in multiple columns, etc. (There's also a tree view and a
details view, and the details view does take a lot of space.) In the
case of a folder whose files are all of the same kind, e.g. all source
files, I usually choose to display only the names (no icons shown) in a
simple multi-column list, so that the folder window is very small. That
matters to me. During program development, in particular, I'll have a
number of folder windows open and a number of other windows (e.g.
command shells) open. I want to be able to get at those easily. Windows
seems to have been designed for people who only run one program at a time.

You can adjust the columns, de-select some of them, and put whatever
information you want in the window. Just because the default sucks,
don't give up.

[Picture] [The scale was doubled, to make it easier to read]

Loading Image...

If the built-in is not good enough, third party tools also exist.

Paul

[Peter Moylan]

Post by Paul

Post by Peter Moylan
I dislike the Windows implementation of folder windows for several
reasons, but a major one is that they take up massive amounts of
screen real estate. Why do they have to be so big, and filled with
a lot of useless detail?

[...]

Post by Paul
You can adjust the columns, de-select some of them, and put whatever
information you want in the window. Just because the default sucks,
don't give up.
[Picture] [The scale was doubled, to make it easier to read]
https://i.postimg.cc/K4XGLY9b/folder-W11.gif
If the built-in is not good enough, third party tools also exist.

True, it's possible to do that much, but notice how much of your window
is taken up with things that aren't file names.

Here's a similar example on my computer
Loading Image...
(This is full-size, but even if doubled it wouldn't look large.) The
overhead (things that aren't file names) in this example consists of the
title bar, the menu bar, the scroll bar, and a summary at the bottom.
The decision not to display icons means that the titles are closer
together. If I do display icons, I can choose between normal icons and
small icons.

I could have made this smaller, by turning off the options to view the
menu bar and the status bar, but I usually leave those visible.

Microsoft could have chosen to do a similar thing, but they chose to
focus on bells and whistles.

Here's another view of the same folder, showing all details.
Loading Image...
(So more comparable to the Windows default view.) The window is now a
lot larger, of course, but you could still fit plenty of other things on
the screen. And in practice it wouldn't be as wide because I don't
normally choose to display three separate timestamps for each file.

[Peter Moylan]

Post by Peter Moylan
Here's another view of the same folder, showing all details.
http://www.pmoylan.org/ftp/DetailsView.png (So more comparable to the
Windows default view.) The window is now a lot larger, of course, but
you could still fit plenty of other things on the screen. And in
practice it wouldn't be as wide because I don't normally choose to
display three separate timestamps for each file.

Admission: the folder windows might get bigger in future. As my eyesight
weakens, I might end up using a larger font size for my most-used folders.

[Newyana2]

Post by Peter Moylan
True, it's possible to do that much, but notice how much of your window
is taken up with things that aren't file names.
Here's a similar example on my computer
      http://www.pmoylan.org/ftp/FolderView.png

That's something I hadn't thought of. I dislike the ribbon bar
as unnecessary rejumbling of defaults. But it's also, as you say,
a massive space waster. It's basically spreading each submenu
out under the menu bar, without being able to close them.

You can, of course, remove what they call the Navigation Pane,
what used to be called the Explorer Bar or Explorer Treeview.
Though I use that. In XP I had made my own Explorer Bar with
links to commonly accessed folders and expanded file previews,
but I wrote it in VB6, which is 32-bit only, so I can't use it in
Win10-64 because it's an in-process shell extension. Bitness has
to match.

It's a big missed opportunity that MS don't provide some kind
of building block kit for people to arrange folders in whatever way
is most useful, without need for technical expertise. Though in my
most recent explorations of Linux, that seems to be even less flexible.
You can choose from all sorts of "window managers". Most are ugly
and minimal. KDE is a beautiful piece of work, but focused mainly
on looks, not functionality.

In the meantime I find that I've collected a row of folder shortcuts
on my Win10 Desktop, to make up for the convenience of my old Explorer
Bar. AppData, System32, Coding folder, etc. The original inspiration
for those links was actually Active Desktop. It wasn't my idea. It
was MS's idea to make all folder windows into webpages in IE. The
file view was a listbox on a webpage. So anything one could do with a
webpage could be done with folder windows. It was great. And any folder
could be custom, as well. But MS never made that functionality useful.
They only made Active Desktop to show that they were "webby", to
introduce ads on the Desktop, and to "cut off Netscape's air supply".
So they had this brilliant invention and only plopped a half-assed
image-preview control onto the left side.

I suppose part of the problem has always been the issue of architects
vs engineers. The architect designs a liveable space but is unconcerned
with technical issues like holding up the roof. The engineer designs
roof support, but ignores aesthetics. We have computer UIs designed
primarily by engineers. Those engineers assume that anyone not techy
is simpleminded, so they confuse usability with childishness, creating
silly icons and "my" everything. Apple takes that to an extreme. The
screen appearance looks like a daycare center, while access to control
and customization is almost entirely cut off... Never trust a techie who
gives you Looney Tunes for a GUI. :)

[Newyana2]

Post by Peter Moylan
On my desktop (I run OS/2), each folder has separately specified display
attributes, such as whether in icon view the icons are located as
placed, or put in multiple columns, etc.

That's what Windows is supposed to do, dating back to Win9x.
It's been broken with every rendition. Yet the settings are still
there -- thousands of keys in the Registry meant to spec the size
and orientation of each individual window. It's like building a
skyscraper and neglecting to put stairs... for 30 years... How do
they do that? Maybe it's an interesting story.

[Bertel Lund Hansen]

Post by Newyana2
That's what Windows is supposed to do, dating back to Win9x.
It's been broken with every rendition. Yet the settings are still
there -- thousands of keys in the Registry meant to spec the size
and orientation of each individual window. It's like building a
skyscraper and neglecting to put stairs... for 30 years... How do
they do that? Maybe it's an interesting story.

Thanks. That explains what I wondered about for a long time. Up till XP
the windows had individual settings. Suddenly with version 7 that was
gone.

[Newyana2]

Post by Bertel Lund Hansen

Post by Newyana2
That's what Windows is supposed to do, dating back to Win9x.
It's been broken with every rendition. Yet the settings are still
there -- thousands of keys in the Registry meant to spec the size
and orientation of each individual window. It's like building a
skyscraper and neglecting to put stairs... for 30 years... How do
they do that? Maybe it's an interesting story.

Thanks. That explains what I wondered about for a long time. Up till XP
the windows had individual settings. Suddenly with version 7 that was
gone.

XP had them, but they often didn't take. If you look at
HKCU\SOFTWARE\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\
Windows\Shell\Bags
in Win10 you'll see that the settings are still there. But still,
Windows seems to be not saving them properly and thus forgets
them. On Win7 I found that I could fix it by properly configuring
Bags\AllFolders\Shell and deleting the rest of the Bags subkeys.
I'm still not sure whether that works on Win10. It seems that a
sample Shell key once again lacks the necessary settings.

It's complicated because this is all undocumented and MS
switch it up frivolously with every release. But there is a system.
Explorer is supposed to record the specs when a window closes.
If you look in those keys you may see values with names drawn
from Shell API parameters for displaying windows. WFlags specs
min/max/normal size. FFlags, ShowCmd, Vid (which specs display
options, not as 1-5 but as GUIDs!), etc.

Windows size and position are specced like so:
"WinPos" is followed by screen dimensions and API-style specs.
For example, I have WinPos1920x1080x96(1).top, with corresponding
bottom, left and right. All of these have to be redone if screen
resolution is changed. But Win10 Explorer is not propagating those
specs to Bags keys, so it doesn't know how a window should appear.
And of course, Win10 adds a few new values, willy nilly, which may
or may not actually be relevant... And a new wrinkle has been added
since Win7: The broken folder settings are now saved to a further
subkey -- Bags\[number]\Shell\{5C4F28B5-F869-4E84-8E60-F11DB97C5CC7}

That GUID signifies a generic folder type. Ther Softies just
can't seem to resist throwing in GUIDs to make things look
more official. Now there are folder types. 20-30 of them. (Generic,
communications, library....)

Sometimes I think half the time of MS developers must be spent
in the lunch room, competing to have the best secret decode ring
from some video game box.

[Bertel Lund Hansen]

Post by Peter Moylan
case of a folder whose files are all of the same kind, e.g. all source
files, I usually choose to display only the names (no icons shown) in a
simple multi-column list, so that the folder window is very small. That
matters to me. During program development, in particular, I'll have a
number of folder windows open and a number of other windows (e.g.
command shells) open. I want to be able to get at those easily. Windows
seems to have been designed for people who only run one program at a time.

I've always chosen a minimal display of the folders. Now with Linux I
have pretty much the same view as I had with Windows up to 10 (first
version). I have a small icon and the file name for each file in a
flowing display. In Linux (Mint) there is a one click access to the
detailed view where also the size, the time and the file time are
displayed. This choice is remembered though I'd prefer if it weren't.

[Bertel Lund Hansen]

Post by Bertel Lund Hansen
detailed view where also the size, the time and the file time are

Second item should be "type".

[Steve Hayes]

Post by John C.

   On Windows it's always been "programs". Only some
programmers say "application". (It could be worse. For
awhile people were talking about their programming
projects as "solutions".)

Yes, that wouldn't have been a good thing.

I have seen advertisements for "solutions", but they never tell you
what problem they are claiming to be able to solve.

Yes, they're all programs, but some are applications, like word
processors, spreadsheets, databases etc.

But I have a program called "Glary Utilities", which is not an
application. It just helps the computer to run better. Likewise, the
operating system is a program, but not an application.

[Paul]

Post by Steve Hayes

Post by John C.

   On Windows it's always been "programs". Only some
programmers say "application". (It could be worse. For
awhile people were talking about their programming
projects as "solutions".)

Yes, that wouldn't have been a good thing.

I have seen advertisements for "solutions", but they never tell you
what problem they are claiming to be able to solve.
Yes, they're all programs, but some are applications, like word
processors, spreadsheets, databases etc.
But I have a program called "Glary Utilities", which is not an
application. It just helps the computer to run better. Likewise, the
operating system is a program, but not an application.

The operating system is not a program. It is an executive.

It loads applications in Ring3.

There is a scheduler giving "execution time slices" to the application.

In Ring 0, lives a kernel and hardware drivers. Applications are
not allowed to access hardware directly, and go through kernel calls.

There is a task scheduler, that allows items to be loaded/executed at
fixed time points. That's similar to CRON in Linux or Unix.

And to further complicate matters, even though the OS is an executive,
it is virtualized via an inverted hypervisor. The diagram of how
an executive works, no longer looks the same as it did in Windows XP.
Windows 10 would be the root partition. The Linux partition would
really exist, if you had installed WSL plus the Linux distro of your
choice. If you had VirtualBox, it would have a position in this diagram
too (not shown of course). VirtualBox is not nested, that I can detect.
Nested has never worked on my computers here. I tried.

https://web.archive.org/web/20111205072921/https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc768520%28v=bts.10%29.aspx

Task Manager was not modified in any way, to make details about this
apparent to the machine operator. This is why I use a *Power Meter*
on the AC line cord, to detect foreign activity (even if it is windows
doing it, and does not show in the list). In Task Manager for example,
try and find "Memory Compressor". Now, use Process Explorer, you will
find Memory Compressor is listed as a process.

[What Task Manager should have been - percent CPU with two digits after decimal, nice!!! ]

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer

One of the observations you can make, is via the "ruggedness" of Task Manager.
The modern Task Manager can freeze. In an emergency, it is the patron
saint of "Useless". Can't do a thing with it. You will notice the Task
Manager in Windows XP was not like that. Via statically provided resources,
it always seemed to have resources, and when the OS had gone to hell in
a hand basket, you could still "attempt to do stuff" in Task Manager.
That's all changed. In WinXP you could alt-tab, even when the OS was in
serious trouble. W10/W11 just die instantly, when even a tiny bit of
smothering is applied :-) One of my favorite examples, was using
ImageMagick one day, and OpenMP happened to be enabled (use multiple
cores to open an image for display on the screen). OS froze... instantly.
As instantly as you can envisage "instantly" means. One frame time. Dead.
Oh, the electrons are flying around in there, but "nobody is home".
It's not a crash. It's a deadlock, a form of software deadly embrace.

When an OS has no observational capability, we can only dream as
sheep dream, about what is the matter. Gone are the days of having
dual CRT tubes with critical information recorded on the screen.
In uni, when one of the students did a DOS attack on the mainframe,
he stood by the window and watched the "free disk" counter decrement
over a matter of 30 seconds or so, killing the mainframe. On a timeshare
system, jobs are rotated in and out via that particular disk. Our student
had used a primitive fork bomb, and the system operator (a "stable genius")
had forgotten to enable a policy to prevent that :-) It was kinda a
splash of cold water for the gentleman, to discover he had competition.
The operator used to play chess on one of those CRTs.

Loading Image...

The power meter on my computer, is the last vestige of observability.
I may not know what is going on, but I know "something, is inside the machine".

Paul

[John Hall]

In message <v14jj8$12jqr$***@dont-email.me>, Paul <***@needed.invalid>
writes
<big snip>

Post by Paul
The operating system is not a program. It is an executive.

That brings back memories. The computer I used back in the 1970s, an ICL
1900, actually called the core part of its OS "Executive" with a capital
E.

[Paul]

Post by John Hall
<big snip>

Post by Paul
The operating system is not a program. It is an executive.

That brings back memories. The computer I used back in the 1970s,
an ICL 1900, actually called the core part of its OS "Executive" with a capital E.

There are some differences.

Mainframes were "ball jugglers". They could support 500 users at once,
by keeping 490 sessions "asleep". A limited number of users would be
in "near orbit" and have access to CPU cycles. Perhaps one drive, or
even, an entire Storage Director, took care of paging of jobs.

This was managed with disk drives (and occasionally, if you were lucky,
with a drum storage device).

The difference on a personal computer, is there is no juggling of processes
in the same way. The processes are stored in memory, and are "ready to run".
The scheduler gives them slices. Some of the things in Task Manager, use
zero cycles, they use nothing at all. They are "mostly silent". Only a few
of the SVCHOSTs are busy little beavers. Some things related to security,
might always have a busy stance.

Modern Windows has taken to "suspending" some items, but it's unclear whether
that ever pans out (actually helps a user). Some of the same states as were
always there, are still present. The "zombie" state for example. A "zombie"
is a process that did not get harvested properly, and might disappear on a reboot.

And while early Windows had pagefile.sys for paging out of virtual memory,
that's hardly ever used on machines potentially using SSD drives for storage.
We really are reliant now, on gobs of main memory, embarrassing excess,
for how the machine works. That's how my browser a few minutes ago, could
be using 7GB of memory, while a web site recorded every line I read on a
web page. They measured my "interest" in each article, my dwell time,
whether I saw the adverts or not. They even interfere with my scroll
bar, until I get annoyed and close the session.

Paul

[Frank Slootweg]

Post by John Hall
writes
<big snip>

Post by Paul
The operating system is not a program. It is an executive.

That brings back memories. The computer I used back in the 1970s, an ICL
1900, actually called the core part of its OS "Executive" with a capital
E.

Yep, in the early 70s, I was using/supporting HP's 'mini' computers,
running RTE, Real Time Executive.

Later, the business side of HP had MPE, Multi Programming Excecutive.

[Steve Hayes]

Post by Paul

Post by Steve Hayes
Yes, they're all programs, but some are applications, like word
processors, spreadsheets, databases etc.
But I have a program called "Glary Utilities", which is not an
application. It just helps the computer to run better. Likewise, the
operating system is a program, but not an application.

The operating system is not a program. It is an executive.

In MyEnglish the definition of a program is "a set of instructions to
operate a computer". Is this "Executive" not that?

My first computer had an OS in ROM, with built-in BASIC, with which
you could write other programs and save them and their data on tape,
but all were programs. With a couple of add-ons you could have a DOS
(CP/M), and save stuff on floppy disks, but that by-passed the BASIC
in ROM, so you had to get programming languages that ran under CP/M,
but whether they loaded from ROM, tape or disks, all there sets of
instructions tomake the computer do different things.

[Paul]

Post by Steve Hayes

Post by Paul

Post by Steve Hayes
Yes, they're all programs, but some are applications, like word
processors, spreadsheets, databases etc.
But I have a program called "Glary Utilities", which is not an
application. It just helps the computer to run better. Likewise, the
operating system is a program, but not an application.

The operating system is not a program. It is an executive.

In MyEnglish the definition of a program is "a set of instructions to
operate a computer". Is this "Executive" not that?
My first computer had an OS in ROM, with built-in BASIC, with which
you could write other programs and save them and their data on tape,
but all were programs. With a couple of add-ons you could have a DOS
(CP/M), and save stuff on floppy disks, but that by-passed the BASIC
in ROM, so you had to get programming languages that ran under CP/M,
but whether they loaded from ROM, tape or disks, all there sets of
instructions tomake the computer do different things.

If you boot a memtest floppy, that is a single program that
runs 100% of the time. Nobody tells it to do anything.
It is the boss. All machine resources are available.

If it wanted to erase your hard drive, nothing would stop it.

The frame buffer for the graphics are at a fixed address. It
takes fixed font pixmaps of characters and writes them to the
frame buffer. That makes the character display.

The memory is linear mapped. The virtual address equals the physical address.
It could be using "Giant Pages", a 1GB mapping, as you might notice the
program has a fixation with 1GB and 2GB chunks as it runs. Loading the
mapper, is an executive-type function.

You can see then, that it is running the restaurant all by itself.
It's taking the orders (from the keyboard), it's running into the
back of the restaurant to the kitchen, it is putting steaks and
veggies on the table and cooking the steak, it's doing all the jobs.
That means, when the guy wrote the program, he had to "think of
all the details", not just "some of the details". Well, that's what
happens when you have No Executive.

*******

When a program runs in an OS, a lot of details have been worked out.
The program "just sits down and eats". It worries not about the
grill, about the dish washer person, about the staff to carry the
orders to the tables and so on. The memory mapper is set defensively
by the executive, to prevent "shenanigans" (self-modifying code is
not allowed, and has not been allowed for a lot of years). This
means the code segment is read only, and after the loader has
loaded it (written to it), the mapping the program sees for its
code is read-only.

Paul

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

Post by Paul
If you boot a memtest floppy, that is a single program that
runs 100% of the time. Nobody tells it to do anything.
It is the boss. All machine resources are available.
If it wanted to erase your hard drive, nothing would stop it.

There would be something if you had a real write-protect switch (not one
of those lying ones that software can just ignore).

[snip]

[Peter Moylan]

Post by Steve Hayes

Post by Paul

Post by Steve Hayes
Yes, they're all programs, but some are applications, like word
processors, spreadsheets, databases etc.
But I have a program called "Glary Utilities", which is not an
application. It just helps the computer to run better. Likewise,
the operating system is a program, but not an application.

The operating system is not a program. It is an executive.

In MyEnglish the definition of a program is "a set of instructions to
operate a computer". Is this "Executive" not that?

It's all software, of course, but a person writing operating systems
code has to be aware of hardware features that the average applications
programmer never comes into contact with. For certain functions, e.g.
thread switching, it might be necessary to descend into assembly language.

There's another distinction that occurs to me. An application program
has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It does it job and then
terminates. The operating system never terminates until the whole
computer is shut down.

The distinction is becoming fuzzier now that some operating systems are
built in layers. The bottom-level operating system is probably small and
does only some basic things. (Typically thread switching and memory
management.) Then another operating system is built on top of that. And
maybe even another on top of that.

[Steve Hayes]

On Sun, 5 May 2024 13:59:57 +1000, Peter Moylan

Post by Peter Moylan

Post by Steve Hayes

Post by Paul

Post by Steve Hayes
Yes, they're all programs, but some are applications, like word
processors, spreadsheets, databases etc.
But I have a program called "Glary Utilities", which is not an
application. It just helps the computer to run better. Likewise,
the operating system is a program, but not an application.

The operating system is not a program. It is an executive.

In MyEnglish the definition of a program is "a set of instructions to
operate a computer". Is this "Executive" not that?

It's all software, of course, but a person writing operating systems
code has to be aware of hardware features that the average applications
programmer never comes into contact with. For certain functions, e.g.
thread switching, it might be necessary to descend into assembly language.
There's another distinction that occurs to me. An application program
has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It does it job and then
terminates. The operating system never terminates until the whole
computer is shut down.
The distinction is becoming fuzzier now that some operating systems are
built in layers. The bottom-level operating system is probably small and
does only some basic things. (Typically thread switching and memory
management.) Then another operating system is built on top of that. And
maybe even another on top of that.

Yes, that supports the distinction I am trying to make: an operating
system, whether it is built on top of another one or not, and an app
are both programs, but not all programs are apps. And yes, both are
software as well.

US English is somewhat at a disadvantage here, be cause they use
"program" in a wider sense, so they often have to add "software" to
it, to distinguish a "software program" from other kinds of what the
rest of us would call "programmes", like TV programmes, sports events
programmes etc.

[Bertel Lund Hansen]

Post by Steve Hayes
US English is somewhat at a disadvantage here, be cause they use
"program" in a wider sense, so they often have to add "software" to
it, to distinguish a "software program" from other kinds of what the
rest of us would call "programmes", like TV programmes, sports events
programmes etc.

Danish has the exact same 'problem' - which isn't really a problem since
context usually makes the meaning clear.

[Ken Blake]

On Mon, 06 May 2024 05:56:10 +0200, Steve Hayes

Post by Steve Hayes
US English is somewhat at a disadvantage here, be cause they use
"program" in a wider sense, so they often have to add "software" to
it, to distinguish a "software program" from other kinds of what the
rest of us would call "programmes", like TV programmes, sports events
programmes etc.

That used to be true, but not so much anymore. It was in 1962, when I
was out of work, and I answered an ad for "Programmer Trainee --
College Graduate, Any Major" for a higher salary than I had ever had.
I didn't know what a programmer was, but I thought it referred to TV
or Radio programming.

I didn't get the job, but I soon started a computer programming course
and got a programming job soon afterward.

[lar3ryca]

Post by Steve Hayes

Post by Paul

Post by Steve Hayes
Yes, they're all programs, but some are applications, like word
processors, spreadsheets, databases etc.
But I have a program called "Glary Utilities", which is not an
application. It just helps the computer to run better. Likewise, the
operating system is a program, but not an application.

The operating system is not a program. It is an executive.

In MyEnglish the definition of a program is "a set of instructions to
operate a computer". Is this "Executive" not that?

I agree with you on that one, Steve.

Post by Steve Hayes
My first computer had an OS in ROM, with built-in BASIC, with which
you could write other programs and save them and their data on tape,
but all were programs.

The first computer I worked on, though it was not called a computer, but
rather an 'Electronic Accounting Machine'. I 'wrote' programs on it by
plugging wires into a board that made contact with relays.

It was definitely a computer, though, stepping through programs, doing
math, branching on tested conditions, and reading and writing to and
from I/O devices.

I worked on that for about two years, at which time I started working on
a different set of machines, and found out that a program could actually
be stored in a memory.

Post by Steve Hayes
With a couple of add-ons you could have a DOS
(CP/M), and save stuff on floppy disks, but that by-passed the BASIC
in ROM, so you had to get programming languages that ran under CP/M,
but whether they loaded from ROM, tape or disks, all there sets of
instructions tomake the computer do different things.

[Peter Moylan]

Post by lar3ryca
The first computer I worked on, though it was not called a computer,
but rather an 'Electronic Accounting Machine'. I 'wrote' programs on
it by plugging wires into a board that made contact with relays.
It was definitely a computer, though, stepping through programs,
doing math, branching on tested conditions, and reading and writing
to and from I/O devices.
I worked on that for about two years, at which time I started
working on a different set of machines, and found out that a program
could actually be stored in a memory.

We take memory for granted now, but it took a while to get it right.
Looking back, the ideas of having main memory on a rotating drum or in
columns of mercury sound incredible crude.

To make computer memory practical, the electronics people had to learn
how to put transistors on semiconductor chips. You can also build
flip-flops with vacuum tubes, but vacuum tubes already become awkward
once you have a few hundred of them.

In my student days, and for some time afterwards, I used the plugboard
approach, but that was with analogue computers. Those were very good at
solving differential equations, but they died out through not being
sufficiently scalable.

[lar3ryca]

Post by Peter Moylan

Post by lar3ryca
The first computer I worked on, though it was not called a computer,
but rather an 'Electronic Accounting Machine'. I 'wrote' programs on
it by plugging wires into a board that made contact with relays.
It was definitely a computer, though, stepping through programs,
doing math, branching on tested conditions, and reading and writing
to and from I/O devices.
I worked on that for about two years, at which time I started
working on a different set of machines, and found out that a program
could actually be stored in a memory.

We take memory for granted now, but it took a while to get it right.
Looking back, the ideas of having main memory on a rotating drum or in
columns of mercury sound incredible crude.

How about memory on acoustic delay lines?
When I worked for CDC, I sometimes got called to Allstate (the insurance
folks), to repair the terminals.

The memory on those consisted of modules containing spirals of what
might best be described as 'piano wire'. Bits were input by giving the
wire a quick twist (twist, then reset back to idle). That generated
something like a shock wave that travelled around the spiral to a
transducer on the other end, I can't remember if it twisted one
direction for a '1' and the other direction for a '0', or if it only
used one direction of twist, relying on framing pulses and time between
bit to differentiate between them.

Nor do I remember the amount of data it could hold, probably in the
order of a few hundred bytes.

Of course, once the data got to the end and was read, it had to be
re-sent again, unless that particular packet had to be changed, at which
time it was not re-sent, and a new packet was sent in its place.

Post by Peter Moylan
To make computer memory practical, the electronics people had to learn
how to put transistors on semiconductor chips. You can also build
flip-flops with vacuum tubes, but vacuum tubes already become awkward
once you have a few hundred of them.
In my student days, and for some time afterwards, I used the plugboard
approach, but that was with analogue computers. Those were very good at
solving differential equations, but they died out through not being
sufficiently scalable.

The plugboards I spoke of were for programming a digital computer, When
a plugboard was mounted, pressing "Start" sent a 48V pulse out of the
'start hub', and into a 'program step' hub (almost always 'program step
1'. This would pick up a relay, which would cause voltage to be applied
to hubs called 'operation, 'in word 1', 'inword 2', and 'out word'.

That would, in turn, call on the electronics (SMS cards) to perform the
operation.

As for analog computers, my step-brother and I bought one, but it was
pretty simple, consisting og circuits to do math, input via dials
(potentiometers), and output on a voltmeter.


When a step was active,

[J. J. Lodder]

Post by lar3ryca

Post by Peter Moylan

Post by lar3ryca
The first computer I worked on, though it was not called a computer,
but rather an 'Electronic Accounting Machine'. I 'wrote' programs on
it by plugging wires into a board that made contact with relays.
It was definitely a computer, though, stepping through programs,
doing math, branching on tested conditions, and reading and writing
to and from I/O devices.
I worked on that for about two years, at which time I started
working on a different set of machines, and found out that a program
could actually be stored in a memory.

We take memory for granted now, but it took a while to get it right.
Looking back, the ideas of having main memory on a rotating drum or in
columns of mercury sound incredible crude.

How about memory on acoustic delay lines?
When I worked for CDC, I sometimes got called to Allstate (the insurance
folks), to repair the terminals.
The memory on those consisted of modules containing spirals of what
might best be described as 'piano wire'. Bits were input by giving the
wire a quick twist (twist, then reset back to idle). That generated
something like a shock wave that travelled around the spiral to a
transducer on the other end, I can't remember if it twisted one
direction for a '1' and the other direction for a '0', or if it only
used one direction of twist, relying on framing pulses and time between
bit to differentiate between them.

That's a bit primitive.
One of the first bulk computer memories,
used by Alan Turing himself, was a mercury delay line.
Bits were stored as sound pulses in a column of mercury.

Just as with a hard drive the computer had to wait
for the right part of the bit string to pass by.
I would have to look up how long its bit string could be,

Jan

[Paul]

Post by J. J. Lodder

Post by lar3ryca

Post by Peter Moylan

Post by lar3ryca
The first computer I worked on, though it was not called a computer,
but rather an 'Electronic Accounting Machine'. I 'wrote' programs on
it by plugging wires into a board that made contact with relays.
It was definitely a computer, though, stepping through programs,
doing math, branching on tested conditions, and reading and writing
to and from I/O devices.
I worked on that for about two years, at which time I started
working on a different set of machines, and found out that a program
could actually be stored in a memory.

We take memory for granted now, but it took a while to get it right.
Looking back, the ideas of having main memory on a rotating drum or in
columns of mercury sound incredible crude.

How about memory on acoustic delay lines?
When I worked for CDC, I sometimes got called to Allstate (the insurance
folks), to repair the terminals.
The memory on those consisted of modules containing spirals of what
might best be described as 'piano wire'. Bits were input by giving the
wire a quick twist (twist, then reset back to idle). That generated
something like a shock wave that travelled around the spiral to a
transducer on the other end, I can't remember if it twisted one
direction for a '1' and the other direction for a '0', or if it only
used one direction of twist, relying on framing pulses and time between
bit to differentiate between them.

That's a bit primitive.
One of the first bulk computer memories,
used by Alan Turing himself, was a mercury delay line.
Bits were stored as sound pulses in a column of mercury.
Just as with a hard drive the computer had to wait
for the right part of the bit string to pass by.
I would have to look up how long its bit string could be,
Jan

https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095708310

"quartz crystals were used as transducers and the ultrasonic pulses were
passed along a tube of mercury about 5 feet (1.5 meters) in length.
The delay was approximately 1 millisecond but it enabled nearly 1000 pulses
to be stored. Later acoustic memory used magnetostrictive transducers and
nickel-iron wire, with the electrical signals converted into stress waves."

A thousand bits, isn't a lot.

Some of the first SRAM (suitable for home computer projects)
were 256x4 bits and 1024x1 bit static RAM running at 5 volts.
"Beautiful stuff". Compared to the dreadful DRAM of the day.
And just one of those chips, stores the same stuff as a delay
line, and also offers "random" access, so is a lot faster.

My breadboarded home computer used (4) 256x4 chips. As a 256x16 array (16 bit CPU).

Paul

[Peter Moylan]

Some of the first SRAM (suitable for home computer projects) were
256x4 bits and 1024x1 bit static RAM running at 5 volts. "Beautiful
stuff". Compared to the dreadful DRAM of the day. And just one of
those chips, stores the same stuff as a delay line, and also offers
"random" access, so is a lot faster.
My breadboarded home computer used (4) 256x4 chips. As a 256x16 array (16 bit CPU).

My first computer had an 8080A processor (very new at the time) and 1k
bytes of RAM. The "motherboard" was a whole lot of wire-wrap sockets,
which took ages to wire up. I was very proud of the metal chassis that I
built as well, with eight switches for input[1] and eight LED lights, plus
a couple of pushbuttons. The switches were mainly for loading a program
into memory, although I later wrote a loader that took the data from an
audio cassette tape. Then, with the aid of a few resistors, I turned the
front panel leds into a D/A converter. With the analogue output
connected to an amplifier, I got the computer to play 3-part music.

[1] Or possibly 24 switches. I've now forgotten whether I had separate
address and data switches.

The front panel bore the logo "IDSFA-80". If anyone asked what IDSFA
stood for, I could tell them it doesn't stand for anything.

[Char Jackson]

Post by Peter Moylan
My first computer had an 8080A processor (very new at the time) and 1k
bytes of RAM.

<snip>

Post by Peter Moylan
The front panel bore the logo "IDSFA-80". If anyone asked what IDSFA
stood for, I could tell them it doesn't stand for anything.

Nice. I see what you did there, although it took a second.

[lar3ryca]

Post by Char Jackson

Post by Peter Moylan
My first computer had an 8080A processor (very new at the time) and 1k
bytes of RAM.

<snip>

Post by Peter Moylan
The front panel bore the logo "IDSFA-80". If anyone asked what IDSFA
stood for, I could tell them it doesn't stand for anything.

Nice. I see what you did there, although it took a second.

Many years ago, the company I worked for played a softball game. For the
occasion, the manager bought us all T-shirts with the company name on
them. We all had the choice of what name to put on the back.

I chose 'ITYNA'.

About halfway through the game, one of the players on the opponents team
approached me and asked "Isn't your name 'Phillips'?"
I answered "Yes", and she asked "So why does your shirt have "ITYNA" on
it (she pronounced it out, "Iteena"), and I said "I thought You'd Never
Ask".

After a few rounds of "But I am asking", and " I thought you'd never
ask", she suddenly got it.

[lar3ryca]

Post by Paul

Post by J. J. Lodder

Post by lar3ryca

Post by Peter Moylan

Post by lar3ryca
The first computer I worked on, though it was not called a computer,
but rather an 'Electronic Accounting Machine'. I 'wrote' programs on
it by plugging wires into a board that made contact with relays.
It was definitely a computer, though, stepping through programs,
doing math, branching on tested conditions, and reading and writing
to and from I/O devices.
I worked on that for about two years, at which time I started
working on a different set of machines, and found out that a program
could actually be stored in a memory.

We take memory for granted now, but it took a while to get it right.
Looking back, the ideas of having main memory on a rotating drum or in
columns of mercury sound incredible crude.

How about memory on acoustic delay lines?
When I worked for CDC, I sometimes got called to Allstate (the insurance
folks), to repair the terminals.
The memory on those consisted of modules containing spirals of what
might best be described as 'piano wire'. Bits were input by giving the
wire a quick twist (twist, then reset back to idle). That generated
something like a shock wave that travelled around the spiral to a
transducer on the other end, I can't remember if it twisted one
direction for a '1' and the other direction for a '0', or if it only
used one direction of twist, relying on framing pulses and time between
bit to differentiate between them.

That's a bit primitive.
One of the first bulk computer memories,
used by Alan Turing himself, was a mercury delay line.
Bits were stored as sound pulses in a column of mercury.
Just as with a hard drive the computer had to wait
for the right part of the bit string to pass by.
I would have to look up how long its bit string could be,
Jan

https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095708310
"quartz crystals were used as transducers and the ultrasonic pulses were
passed along a tube of mercury about 5 feet (1.5 meters) in length.
The delay was approximately 1 millisecond but it enabled nearly 1000 pulses
to be stored. Later acoustic memory used magnetostrictive transducers and
nickel-iron wire, with the electrical signals converted into stress waves."
A thousand bits, isn't a lot.
Some of the first SRAM (suitable for home computer projects)
were 256x4 bits and 1024x1 bit static RAM running at 5 volts.
"Beautiful stuff". Compared to the dreadful DRAM of the day.
And just one of those chips, stores the same stuff as a delay
line, and also offers "random" access, so is a lot faster.
My breadboarded home computer used (4) 256x4 chips. As a 256x16 array (16 bit CPU).

And my breadboard computer used 8 1024x1 chips (2501?), and that was
also my first computer. The memory cost me $85.00 CAD at the time, about
1975 if I remember correctly).

[Paul]

Post by Paul

Post by J. J. Lodder

Post by lar3ryca

Post by Peter Moylan

Post by lar3ryca
The first computer I worked on, though it was not called a computer,
but rather an 'Electronic Accounting Machine'. I 'wrote' programs on
it by plugging wires into a board that made contact with relays.
It was definitely a computer, though, stepping through programs,
doing math, branching on tested conditions, and reading and writing
to and from I/O devices.
I worked on that for about two years, at which time I started
working on a different set of machines, and found out that a program
could actually be stored in a memory.

We take memory for granted now, but it took a while to get it right.
Looking back, the ideas of having main memory on a rotating drum or in
columns of mercury sound incredible crude.

How about memory on acoustic delay lines?
When I worked for CDC, I sometimes got called to Allstate (the insurance
folks), to repair the terminals.
The memory on those consisted of modules containing spirals of what
might best be described as 'piano wire'. Bits were input by giving the
wire a quick twist (twist, then reset back to idle). That generated
something like a shock wave that travelled around the spiral to a
transducer on the other end, I can't remember if it twisted one
direction for a '1' and the other direction for a '0', or if it only
used one direction of twist, relying on framing pulses and time between
bit to differentiate between them.

That's a bit primitive.
One of the first bulk computer memories,
used by Alan Turing himself, was a mercury delay line.
Bits were stored as sound pulses in a column of mercury.
Just as with a hard drive the computer had to wait
for the right part of the bit string to pass by.
I would have to look up how long its bit string could be,
Jan

https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095708310
    "quartz crystals were used as transducers and the ultrasonic pulses were
     passed along a tube of mercury about 5 feet (1.5 meters) in length.
     The delay was approximately 1 millisecond but it enabled nearly 1000 pulses
     to be stored. Later acoustic memory used magnetostrictive transducers and
     nickel-iron wire, with the electrical signals converted into stress waves."
A thousand bits, isn't a lot.
Some of the first SRAM (suitable for home computer projects)
were 256x4 bits and 1024x1 bit static RAM running at 5 volts.
"Beautiful stuff". Compared to the dreadful DRAM of the day.
And just one of those chips, stores the same stuff as a delay
line, and also offers "random" access, so is a lot faster.
My breadboarded home computer used (4) 256x4 chips. As a 256x16 array (16 bit CPU).

And my breadboard computer used 8 1024x1 chips (2501?), and that was also my first computer. The memory cost me $85.00 CAD at the time, about 1975 if I remember correctly).

That stuff was a lot easier to work with, than the DRAM of the day.
The little SRAM chips meant that anybody could build a computer. You
didn't need Einstein on the team, to do the DRAM. I think my SRAM were
between $2 and $3, but when you had 64 of those on a memory card,
the money adds up quickly. I only needed a few of the chips to get the
prototype running.

Paul

[J. J. Lodder]

[-]

Post by Paul

Post by J. J. Lodder

Post by lar3ryca

Post by Peter Moylan
We take memory for granted now, but it took a while to get it right.
Looking back, the ideas of having main memory on a rotating drum or in
columns of mercury sound incredible crude.

How about memory on acoustic delay lines?
When I worked for CDC, I sometimes got called to Allstate (the insurance
folks), to repair the terminals.
The memory on those consisted of modules containing spirals of what
might best be described as 'piano wire'. Bits were input by giving the
wire a quick twist (twist, then reset back to idle). That generated
something like a shock wave that travelled around the spiral to a
transducer on the other end, I can't remember if it twisted one
direction for a '1' and the other direction for a '0', or if it only
used one direction of twist, relying on framing pulses and time between
bit to differentiate between them.

That's a bit primitive.
One of the first bulk computer memories,
used by Alan Turing himself, was a mercury delay line.
Bits were stored as sound pulses in a column of mercury.
Just as with a hard drive the computer had to wait
for the right part of the bit string to pass by.
I would have to look up how long its bit string could be,
Jan

https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095708310
"quartz crystals were used as transducers and the ultrasonic pulses were
passed along a tube of mercury about 5 feet (1.5 meters) in length.
The delay was approximately 1 millisecond but it enabled nearly 1000
pulses to be stored. Later acoustic memory used magnetostrictive
transducers and nickel-iron wire, with the electrical signals
converted into stress waves."
A thousand bits, isn't a lot.

Maybe it was, in 1949. [1]
Trivia: I happened to remember this particular tidbit of information
from the witty chapter title in Hodges' biography of Alan Turing:
"Mercury Delayed,

Jan

[1] Mercury delay lines had the great advantage
that they were already available, from radar applications

[Bertel Lund Hansen]

Post by Steve Hayes
In MyEnglish the definition of a program is "a set of instructions to
operate a computer". Is this "Executive" not that?

It's mine too. If you operate with a class called "executives" (or
OS's), it's just a subset of the programs.

[Steve Hayes]

On Sun, 5 May 2024 11:28:19 +0200, Bertel Lund Hansen

Post by Bertel Lund Hansen

Post by Steve Hayes
In MyEnglish the definition of a program is "a set of instructions to
operate a computer". Is this "Executive" not that?

It's mine too. If you operate with a class called "executives" (or
OS's), it's just a subset of the programs.

And all programs execute instructions (and then, of course, there are
the executioners in another thread on aue).

In low-level operating systems, the instructions are given by the
programmer, rather than the user. From the point of view of the user,
the most common instruction given by a user to the OS is to run an
app, and to exit the app when the user has finished with it.

[Peter Moylan]

Post by Newyana2

Post by Steve Hayes
In my understanding and usage "app" is short for "application
program" and is distingushed from other programs by what it is used
for. There are programs like "utilities" that are for maintaining
the computer's running, or system programs that are not apps.

Whether we like it or not, I think V's explanation is entirely
accurate. App started with Steve Jobs and became a word that meant
cellphone applet. It was typical of Apple, creating a cutesy,
child-like environment that would placate and entertain people afraid
of tech, with icons that look like they're designed by a 12 year old
girl who dots her i's with little hearts.

It's for that reason that my definition of "app" is "like a program, but
not as well written".

[Phil Carmody]

Post by Newyana2
On Windows it's always been "programs". Only some
programmers say "application". (It could be worse. For
awhile people were talking about their programming
projects as "solutions".)

So Windows 3.0 never had UAEs - Unexpected Application Errors? (And of
course, none of the ".exe" files were ever called "executables" either?)
"Apps" is quite well established in Windows, the oft derided "Hungarian
Notation" had an "Apps Hungarian" flavour used in the Apps Division,
in contrast to "System Hungarian" used in the Systems Division.

Phil

[Paul]

Post by Steve Hayes

I'm not running my scanner from a "smart" phone, I'm running it from my
desktop computer. The software it uses is referred to correctly as an
"application".

Microsoft confused and conflated the terminology. Programs and
applications meant the same thing (Win32 programs), so application was
often abbreviated to "app". Then Microsoft came out with UWP (Universal
Windows Platform) apps. They didn't call them applications, or UWPs, or
newapps, but just apps. This confused the new UWP apps with the old
Win32 apps. So, now "app" means a UWP application, and application or
program means a Win32 application. Which terminology you lean towards
depends on how long you've been using PCs.

In my understanding and usage "app" is short for "application program"
and is distingushed from other programs by what it is used for. There
are programs like "utilities" that are for maintaining the computer's
running, or system programs that are not apps.

On Windows, a Metro.App is not command line. It does not
"launch" in an ordinary way. No attempt was made to
integrate it into the Win32 infrastructure. You can't
chain Metro.App together in a script and "make something useful".

There is even trouble making "shortcuts". A shortcut, you cannot
pass parameters to a Metro.App via the shortcut.

It is purposefully "in-sensate" design.

"Apps" are different, and a special place in hell is reserved for their characteristic.

More than one ecosystem right now, is headed towards a "non-technical" "un-debuggable"
state. You have been warned.

Always keep tools so you can write your own applications. A day may come,
where you are the developer -- that will be because of how bad the
environment has become.

Ubuntu for example, is trying to replace everything with Snaps, which is
a way of dumbing down how Linux works. There is nothing "noteworthy"
about this commercial activity, except that it is "headed in the wrong direction".
The multiple packaging activities (Snap, Flatpak, AppImage) on Linux, have
no technical merit, but they're great for splitting customers into groups,
for harvest.

"Apps", unfortunately, are not a joke. They're a serious matter.

Here is a picture of the Groove Music Player (Groove.App).
Now, what is noteworthy about this ? It's licensed content. You
could click it and... it could stop playing and it would no
longer start. In other words, while it has a Manifest, and while
it will download a fresh copy if the files are adulterated, it
is also centrally controlled, and can be removed from your
desktop in the blink of an eye.

https://filestore.community.support.microsoft.com/api/images/cc39e98c-fef7-4404-bedd-aa8a3d4aa624?upload=true

Windows Media Player, is an item in transition. Only older versions
are fairly benign.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Media_Player

Whereas something like WinAmp, has an entirely different history.
This is not an App. Will they ruin it ? No. Not if they
want $10 a copy.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/audio/a23797304/winamp-is-coming-back-in-2019/

Paul

[Bertel Lund Hansen]

Post by Paul
Windows Media Player, is an item in transition. Only older versions
are fairly benign.

Thanks for VLC which I used under Windows and use now under Linux.