21世纪平台系统的倒行逆施——Windows篇

Win7之家（ www.win7china.com）：21世纪平台系统的倒行逆施——Windows篇

文章来源：译言

　　It is an unfortunate truth that the glory days of platform trolling are behind us. Where once we had an enormous variety of targets with their many foibles—the legendary user-friendliness and rich capabilities of MS DOS, Apple"s infamous low prices, Windows NT"s svelte size and minimal hardware demands, IBM"s memorable and effective OS/2 marketing campaigns, BeOS"s rich selection of software, Linux"s top-notch hardware support—the computing world of today is so much more boring.

　　斯蒂夫乔布什被忍者绑架了！

　　你有坏到想去救他吗？

　　不得不说一个不幸的事实就是平台纷争的光辉岁月已经离我们远去。那时我们有无数的目标，虽然他们各自也有自己的瑕疵——传说中功能强大但对用户不友好的MS DOS，Apple声名狼藉的低价销售，Windows NT苗条的身材和超低的硬件要求 ，IBM记忆中高效的OS/2市场营销，BeOS丰富的可选软件，Linux的高端硬件支持——今日计算机的世界显得太过无趣。

　　Those features that were once so important to the platform wars—preemptive multitasking, protected memory, and multiuser security, to name a few—are now taken for granted. No mainstream operating system goes without.

　　那些特性曾在平台战争中起着直观重要的作用——抢先多任务处理，内存保护和多用户安全等特性——我们现在已经对他们习以为常。主流的操作系统没有一个缺少上述特性的。

　　Things really took a dive with Apple"s 2005 decision to make the switch to Intel processors. The company"s long history of claiming, in spite of all objective data, that its PowerPC-based systems were not just as fast as x86 machines but substantially OMG-faster came to an end. The glory days of Photoshop bake-offs, those exciting demonstrations where Steve Jobs would strut around on stage and run a specially chosen set of Photoshop filters to show that the hardware he was hawking wasn"t actually godawful, were at an end. After Thinking Different(ly) for so long, Macs were relegated to plain old PCs.

　　当苹果2005年决定转而使用Intel处理器时事情真的出现了直转而下。尽管一直都有非常客观的测试数据存在，但是苹果公司长期散布的自己基于PowerPC的系统不仅能和x86机器在速度上媲美，而且会快很多的言论最终走到了尽头。那些退让依靠Photoshop的光辉岁月——那时候，斯蒂夫乔布斯会趾高气昂的在演讲台上激动的展示他那些精心选择的Photoshop过滤器，来证明他所展示的硬件其实没那么糟糕，而现在这些都已经离我们远去。在长时间改变思维之后，Macs现在也已经委身下嫁给平庸的PC。

　　The combination of everyone getting operating systems that weren"t completely horrid and everyone using the same hardware has, therefore, taken a lot of the passion out of the traditional platform wars. Platform warriors have not gone away—they"ve just moved on to the greener pastures of bitching about other people"s smartphone choice: it"s just unthinkable that someone would even consider getting a phone that is and/or isn"t the latest iPhone/Android handset.

　　想让所有人联合在一起使用一种操作系统或许还不是那么恐怖，但是想让大家都用同一种硬件就有点耸人听闻了，因此，这也让传统的平台之战丧失了些许激情。（译者注：这里的意思大致是说由于用户所有的PC硬件千差万别，想要用一种操作系统去统一起所有的硬件太难了，所以比较打击想一统平台的人）平台之战的勇士们并没有走远——他们只是跑到了更绿的草地上对大众智能手机的选择喋喋不休。不可想象有人会想要买一个没有搭载最新iPhone或Android操作系统的手机。

　　This hasn"t stopped Microsoft or Apple from trying to stoke the fires of the platform wars. Apple"s recently ended Mac versus PC campaign went to lengths to paint PCs as buggy, insecure, and just plain dull—albeit harmless and likeable—while for some unfathomable reason choosing to portray Macs as, well, complete asshats. Smug, arrogant, hipster asshats. Honestly, did anyone like Mac? Didn"t you just want to slap him for being a jerk and give PC a great big hug? It was an interesting campaign choice.

　　但是这却没能阻止微软和苹果点燃平台之战的战火。苹果最近终结了Mac和PC之间的口水仗，苹果曾不惜一切代价的将PC描述为幼稚，不安全，平庸——虽然无害而且还蛮安全的——而同时出于一些高深莫测的原因将Mac刻画成完全的白痴用机。自命不凡，傲慢，时尚的白痴。老实说，有人喜欢Mac吗？你难道不想给它一巴掌狠狠摔掉然后给PC一个巨大的拥抱？这是一个有趣的战略选择。

　　Microsoft, meanwhile, has fought back with websites and Facebook pages dedicated to extolling the virtues of Windows PCs and denigrating the Mac OS X opposition, with a healthy mix of truth and BS.

　　而与此同时，微软通过网站和Facebook页面全力讴歌Windows PC的优势同时用真相和屁话的混合言论诋毁Mac OS X来进行回击。

　　So it"s against this backdrop that we felt it was time to get back to basics in the platform wars. The truth of the matter is, there"s plenty that sucks on both sides of the fence. For all you Ravens out there, we"re going to kick off with a guide to the things that continue to make the world of PCs irredeemably awful, leaving Macs as the only sensible choice. Tomorrow, we"ll tell you why Macs are wretched and overpriced, and Windows is the only realistic alternative if you want to get anything done.

　　出去对幕后黑幕的憎恶，我们认为是时候回到平台战争的基本重心去了。实际的情况是，两边阵营都有相当数量的问题。当果粉在的时候，我们会介绍那些让PC世界无可避免糟糕的原因，而Mac是唯一理性的选择。而明天，我们会告诉你Mac骨瘦如柴，价格高昂，如果你真的想做事的话Windows是你唯一实际的选择。

　　Backwards compatibility: a curse, not a blessing 向后兼容性：绝非上帝的祝福，而是诅咒。 When Windows NT hit the market in 1993, it was the first ever 32-bit Windows product. As a result, it didn"t have a whole lot of software available for it; new operating systems rarely do. To resolve this obvious problem, Microsoft made Windows NT compatible with the widely used 16-bit Windows, and 16-bit Windows" partner in crime, DOS.

　　当Windows NT于1993年面向市场的时候，它是第一个32位的Windows系列产品。因此，它没有足够的软件来支撑；新操作系统大多会碰到这样的问题。为了解决这个突出的问题，微软将Windows NT弄得和应用广泛的16位Windows，以及16位Windows的恶棍同伴 Dos兼容。

　　Of drive letters and DLLs 驱动字符和DLL This compatibility took two forms. Windows NT could directly run programs built for these other systems without having to install virtual machines or use dual booting or anything like that. More insidiously, Windows NT"s new, modern 32-bit API was heavily based on the 16-bit API of its spiritual predecessor. This was done so that developers would have an easy time porting existing 16-bit programs to the new platform—it meant that the number of code changes they had to make would be minimal.

　　这有两种形式的兼容方式。在不安装虚拟机或者使用双重启动等其他类似方式的前提下Windows NT可以支持运行为其他系统编译的程序。而更为隐晦的是，Windows NT的新先进32位API极大的依赖于它前任的16位API。这样做的好处是，16位程序能发者能更为轻松的转向这个新平台——这意味着他们需要更改的代码能达到最小化。

　　The repercussions of this were many and varied. Some, like the use of drive letters and backslashes, are quite superficial. We might argue that a nicer scheme could be developed for naming disks, and we would probably prefer Windows to use the same forward slashes that URLs do, but both choices work acceptably enough.

　　针对这一举措的反响强烈褒贬不一。其中一些，如驱动字符和反斜杠等则相当两个简单的例子。我们可能会说对磁盘的命名应该可以找到一种更好的方案，我们也可能希望Windows使用和URL中一样的正向斜杠，但是这两个方案最终都工作在人们可以接受的范围之内。

　　Other decisions are more unfortunate. The recent DLL loading flaw exists precisely because today"s Windows follows design decisions made over 20 years ago for 16-bit Windows. The DLL loading behavior made some amount of sense back then (or at least, it was essentially harmless). It"s an absolute liability today.

　　而其他的一些决策则相对不幸了。最近爆出的DLL的加载漏洞，追究其 原因还是因为这个20年前以前为16位Windows所作的决定。而DLL的加载在当时来说还是有一定的意义的（至少，它基本是无害的）。但是今天，它完全成了一个负担。

　　16-bit Windows had various limitations that made sense in the days of machines with 1MB RAM and floppy disks, but are thoroughly anachronistic on modern machines. For example, 16-bit Windows limited filenames—including the path and drive letter—to a total of 260 characters. Modern Windows doesn"t have that limitation—except in a few places where it does. Software is perfectly capable of creating longer names, up to a total of about 32,000 characters, and for the most part, these longer names will work fine, and are a supported, official capability of the system. Except they don"t work everywhere. The Windows command prompt can"t use them. Windows Explorer will give peculiar errors if an attempt is made to change into a directory with a long filename.

　　在计算机还只有1MB内存和软驱的年代，16位Windows的诸多限制还是有一定意义的，但是对今天的电脑来说，则是彻彻底底的历史遗留问题了。举例来说，16位的Windows限制了文件名长度——包括路径和驱动字符在内——一共不能超过260个字符。现代的Windows则没有这样的限制——当然也有几少数几个还有限制。软件层面上来说完全由能力支持更长的文件名，最多甚至可以到达32000个字符，对大部分地方来说，这些长名字工作正常，而且它还是官方公布的系统的固有功能。但是它却不是所有场合都能工作。在Windows的命令行中你就不能使用长名字。如果你尝试把一个目录更名为一个长文件名的话，Windows资源管理器则会给你一个特殊的错误提示。

　　Derp derp derp

　　A fatal flaw? No, probably not. A huge inconvenience when programs create such long names (even if accidentally)? Definitely. Acceptable in the year 2010? Not in the least bit.

　　这是一个致命错误吗？不，应该不是。当程序想要产生这一类长名字文件的时候会碰到很大的麻烦（即使是突发性情况也是）？在2010年这会有所改观吗？至少在现在的版本中还没有。