Comment On An Old COOT

This is an Old Comment !

It's time to upgrade.

Why is running out of system resources a WTF?

Captcha = Immitto = Something that only happens once in a while.

Fab:

This is an Old Comment !

It's time to upgrade.

Can we seriously please stop these thoughtless derivative comments that occur every article?

RBoy:

Why is running out of system resources a WTF?

It's not. As long as the system clearly tells you "I'm running out of disk space" and how to fix it. Going all blank and wonky is pretty lame, although, if you use a pretty lame OS I suppose you're used to it.

(If it is running out of memory instead of disk space, it should try this trick they invented back in oh about 1965 or so: swap something to disk.)

Note to self: Don't use advertising agencies that think radio is a visual media... It only ends in tears (or appearing on DailyWTF).

captain obvious:

Fab:

This is an Old Comment !

It's time to upgrade.

Can we seriously please stop these thoughtless derivative comments that occur every article?

No. It's not allowed. In fact, to save time, I think the system should automatically enter 3 posts to every new article:
1) "Frist" or a variation
2) "First suckers! Edit: Oh wait, second"
3) "In soviet Russia <article subject> <article verb> you"

captain obvious:

Fab:

This is an Old Comment !

It's time to upgrade.

Can we seriously please stop these thoughtless derivative comments that occur every article?

Need to use the same thoughtless derivative comments on your forums or website? Maybe a mime performance. Call now for licence information.

The Real WTF probably is requiring 65 GB before the setup even bothers to try installation.

captain obvious:

Fab:

This is an Old Comment !

It's time to upgrade.

Can we seriously please stop these thoughtless derivative comments that occur every article?

01001110 01101111

If only that dialog box did represent what automatic changes Excel made to text as you type....

monkeyPushButton:

captain obvious:

Fab:

This is an Old Comment !

It's time to upgrade.

Can we seriously please stop these thoughtless derivative comments that occur every article?

Need to use the same thoughtless derivative comments on your forums or website? Maybe a mime performance. Call now for licence information.

We have a winner.

tin:

captain obvious:

Fab:

This is an Old Comment !

It's time to upgrade.

Can we seriously please stop these thoughtless derivative comments that occur every article?

No. It's not allowed. In fact, to save time, I think the system should automatically enter 3 posts to every new article:
1) "Frist" or a variation
2) "First suckers! Edit: Oh wait, second"
3) "In soviet Russia <article subject> <article verb> you"

Obviously, we've been meta-trolled by "Captain Obvious"

Anonymous:

The Real WTF probably is requiring 65 GB before the setup even bothers to try installation.

Nowdays every system I buy I just get a TB disk right away and I'm done worrying about disk space. A TB ought to be enough for anyone.

Big Disk:

Nowdays every system I buy I just get a TB disk right away and I'm done worrying about disk space. A TB ought to be enough for anyone.

Is that a wooden TB?

Wow - lower case and all!

It's just that it couldn't do proper math anymore, that's why 65 GB suddenly were less than 65 GB.
Just like it's going to take 606MB / 16.3MB/s = 35minutes to copy my files.

captain obvious:

Fab:

This is an Old Comment !

It's time to upgrade.

Can we seriously please stop these thoughtless derivative comments that occur every article?

Why? What's the big deal?

tin:

Note to self: Don't use advertising agencies that think radio is a visual media... It only ends in tears...

You mean in ears?

Mr. Buzz Killington:

captain obvious:

Fab:

This is an Old Comment !

It's time to upgrade.

Can we seriously please stop these thoughtless derivative comments that occur every article?

01001110 01101111

Wow - lower case and all!

[erm. sorry. forgot the quote.]

Pardon me? I though this automation has been implemented months ago...

tin:

captain obvious:

Fab:

This is an Old Comment !

It's time to upgrade.

Can we seriously please stop these thoughtless derivative comments that occur every article?

No. It's not allowed. In fact, to save time, I think the system should automatically enter 3 posts to every new article:
1) "Frist" or a variation
2) "First suckers! Edit: Oh wait, second"
3) "In soviet Russia <article subject> <article verb> you"

Pardon me? I thought this automation has been implemented here months ago.

Big Disk:

RBoy:

Why is running out of system resources a WTF?

It's not. As long as the system clearly tells you "I'm running out of disk space" and how to fix it. Going all blank and wonky is pretty lame, although, if you use a pretty lame OS I suppose you're used to it.

(If it is running out of memory instead of disk space, it should try this trick they invented back in oh about 1965 or so: swap something to disk.)

It would normally be "running out of window handles", which somewhat prevents showing an "out of handles" messagebox window...

Big Disk:

Nowdays every system I buy I just get a TB disk right away and I'm done worrying about disk space. A TB ought to be enough for anyone.

That's exactly what I thought when I bought my first 1 GB disk 10 or 15 years ago. Nowadays I'm 64 GB short....

Big Disk:

Anonymous:

The Real WTF probably is requiring 65 GB before the setup even bothers to try installation.

Nowdays every system I buy I just get a TB disk right away and I'm done worrying about disk space. A TB ought to be enough for anyone.

TB? There is a shot for that....

I read the Daily WTF for the captcha jokes. Please keep them coming.

captcha: Iamanidiot

No. It's not allowed. In fact, to save time, I think the system should automatically enter 3 posts to every new article:
1) "Frist" or a variation
2) "First suckers! Edit: Oh wait, second"
3) "In soviet Russia <article subject> <article verb> you"

I LIKE this. Can we get an RFC going for this, please?

Don't forget the ob captcha joke -- this can just be randomly attached to one of the first three comments.

Captcha: Appellatio
Sex in the mountains?

Thief^:

Big Disk:

RBoy:

Why is running out of system resources a WTF?

It's not. As long as the system clearly tells you "I'm running out of disk space" and how to fix it. Going all blank and wonky is pretty lame, although, if you use a pretty lame OS I suppose you're used to it.

(If it is running out of memory instead of disk space, it should try this trick they invented back in oh about 1965 or so: swap something to disk.)

It would normally be "running out of window handles", which somewhat prevents showing an "out of handles" messagebox window...

And what is it that these dreadfully important "window handles" consume, anyway? Memory? Disk? Photon torpedoes? Or did some hopelessly stupid needs to be fired and then shot programmer decide to set an arbitrary limit of, say, 512 "window handles" and then you're dead?

Oh, and there's no way to tell you're running low until suddenly hot damn fook me I'm outta handles?

1) "Frist" or a variation
2) "First suckers! Edit: Oh wait, second"
3) "In soviet Russia <article subject> <article verb> you"
4) Thoughtless derivative comments
5) The Real WTF is <unrelated bashing>
6) 01001110 01101111
7) captcha: Iamanidiot
8) ????
9) PROFIT

captain obvious:

Fab:

This is an Old Comment !

It's time to upgrade.

Can we seriously please stop these thoughtless derivative comments that occur every article?

Thank you for trying. However, your comment was not an upgrade to the Old Comment.

Big Disk:

Thief^:

Big Disk:

RBoy:

Why is running out of system resources a WTF?

It's not. As long as the system clearly tells you "I'm running out of disk space" and how to fix it. Going all blank and wonky is pretty lame, although, if you use a pretty lame OS I suppose you're used to it.

(If it is running out of memory instead of disk space, it should try this trick they invented back in oh about 1965 or so: swap something to disk.)

It would normally be "running out of window handles", which somewhat prevents showing an "out of handles" messagebox window...

And what is it that these dreadfully important "window handles" consume, anyway? Memory? Disk? Photon torpedoes? Or did some hopelessly stupid needs to be fired and then shot programmer decide to set an arbitrary limit of, say, 512 "window handles" and then you're dead?

Oh, and there's no way to tell you're running low until suddenly hot damn fook me I'm outta handles?

Nah, I think we should display a big message saying "Warning: Windows is low on handles!"

Then we can all laugh at the clueless (l)users who call the helpdesk and say "I cut all the handles off my luggage and put them in my floppy drive, what's wrong with my computer?"

I'm going to guess the denied installation is a roundoff problem--the drive having a tiny bit less space than the installer demands.

Big Disk:

And what is it that these dreadfully important "window handles" consume, anyway? Memory? Disk? Photon torpedoes? Or did some hopelessly stupid needs to be fired and then shot programmer decide to set an arbitrary limit of, say, 512 "window handles" and then you're dead?

Memory. And not just any memory, but a special form of memory, so merely adding extra RAM has no effect whatsoever.

Back in the days of Windows 3.0, there was a memory limit of 64K. And it wasn't per application, oh noes!, it was the entire system. If your application used too many windows, fonts, bitmaps, icons and so on, then the entire system showed the problem, being unable to create any more.

I think Windows 95 doubled this pool size to 128K. I don't know what limits may be in force under, say, XP.

Big Disk:

Oh, and there's no way to tell you're running low until suddenly hot damn fook me I'm outta handles?

You got it. Welcome to Windows: you'll never look back now.

Bellinghman:

Big Disk:

And what is it that these dreadfully important "window handles" consume, anyway? Memory? Disk? Photon torpedoes? Or did some hopelessly stupid needs to be fired and then shot programmer decide to set an arbitrary limit of, say, 512 "window handles" and then you're dead?

Memory. And not just any memory, but a special form of memory, so merely adding extra RAM has no effect whatsoever.

Back in the days of Windows 3.0, there was a memory limit of 64K. And it wasn't per application, oh noes!, it was the entire system. If your application used too many windows, fonts, bitmaps, icons and so on, then the entire system showed the problem, being unable to create any more.

I think Windows 95 doubled this pool size to 128K. I don't know what limits may be in force under, say, XP.

As always it is more complex than that... Win 3.x had a number of heaps (3 IIRC) at 64K each. Window handles were a sort of index into one of these, pointing at a data structure that could in extreme cases be several hundred bytes long. Win9x added two more, and allowed these to be up to 2MB. A bunch of stuff was moved into the two big ones, which reduced the pressure on the small ones. No, I don't remember what went where.

The NT-based Windowses (NT, 2K, XP, Vista) didn't do this, although I have heard rumours of a 16384-handle limit on the number of some kinds of resource.

Bellinghman:

I think Windows 95 doubled this pool size to 128K. I don't know what limits may be in force under, say, XP.

I heard that it's still 64K, even in Win7, for backward compatibility reasons. The person i talked to argued that's a lot and running out of them meand that some application is badly designed. While I agree, a workaround would be nice. Also, every standard control takes at least one handle, and often more than one, so a dialog may easily consume a hundred or so of handles...

Steve the Cynic:

As always it is more complex than that... Win 3.x had a number of heaps (3 IIRC) at 64K each. Window handles were a sort of index into one of these, pointing at a data structure that could in extreme cases be several hundred bytes long. Win9x added two more, and allowed these to be up to 2MB. A bunch of stuff was moved into the two big ones, which reduced the pressure on the small ones. No, I don't remember what went where.

Ahh yeah, the "System resources" "User resources" and "GDI resources" stuff... Never knew what went where.

Steve the Cynic:

The NT-based Windowses (NT, 2K, XP, Vista) didn't do this, although I have heard rumours of a 16384-handle limit on the number of some kinds of resource.

File handles in non-server versions? Dunno. Window handles in NT are still 16-bit indexes into a global array.

Since hard drive manufacturers mislabel their products, the 65 GB hard drive probably only has 58 GB, so the error is correct.

If that were the case, TRWTF would be the software using the term GB when it means GiB.

The Old Coot dialog is old; I recognize what library they're using and (approximately) what version of it too. Time for them to upgrade, especially on Macs or Windows...

qbe:

1) "Frist" or a variation
2) "First suckers! Edit: Oh wait, second"
3) "In soviet Russia <article subject> <article verb> you"
4) Thoughtless derivative comments
5) The Real WTF is <unrelated bashing>
6) 01001110 01101111
7) captcha: Iamanidiot
8) ????
9) PROFIT

We are still missing the ob "Why is <insert subject> a WTF?" comment. Please fix this by including the updated comment on a wooden table with a picture of Irish Girl.

Thank you.

Famous last words...

captain obvious:

Fab:

This is an Old Comment !

It's time to upgrade.

Can we seriously please stop these thoughtless derivative comments that occur every article?

This is an old complaint.

It's time to upgrade!

Steve the Cynic:

As always it is more complex than that... Win 3.x had a number of heaps (3 IIRC) at 64K each. Window handles were a sort of index into one of these, pointing at a data structure that could in extreme cases be several hundred bytes long. Win9x added two more, and allowed these to be up to 2MB. A bunch of stuff was moved into the two big ones, which reduced the pressure on the small ones. No, I don't remember what went where.

The NT-based Windowses (NT, 2K, XP, Vista) didn't do this, although I have heard rumours of a 16384-handle limit on the number of some kinds of resource.

To clear all misunderstanding:

The maximum number of window handles per *desktop* (see CreateDesktop()) is about 32K. There is also an arbitrary limit of number of handles per process which is 10000 by default, but can be changed by a registry setting.

There is limit on number of GDI handles, which depends on session heap usage (separate per terminal session).

There is no explicit limit on number of file handles or other kernel handles (synchronization objects, etc), other than non-paged pool exaustion. Pre-Vista/2008, NP pool size was limited at 256 MB for x86 flavor. There is no explicit NP pool size limit now, other than physical memory size (1/4 of it) and 2GB of kernel space in x86 OS.

RBoy:

captain obvious:

Fab:

This is an Old Comment !

It's time to upgrade.

Can we seriously please stop these thoughtless derivative comments that occur every article?

This is an old complaint.

It's time to upgrade!

Nice!

Picture = 1000 words

x = words per minute

1000/x = cost per minute for 1 picture

alegr:

To clear all misunderstanding:

The maximum number of window handles per *desktop* (see CreateDesktop()) is about 32K. There is also an arbitrary limit of number of handles per process which is 10000 by default, but can be changed by a registry setting.

There is limit on number of GDI handles, which depends on session heap usage (separate per terminal session).

There is no explicit limit on number of file handles or other kernel handles (synchronization objects, etc), other than non-paged pool exaustion. Pre-Vista/2008, NP pool size was limited at 256 MB for x86 flavor. There is no explicit NP pool size limit now, other than physical memory size (1/4 of it) and 2GB of kernel space in x86 OS.

*takes notes* Thanks for the info.

...wait... did I just learned something on TDWTF?

Big Disk:

RBoy:

Why is running out of system resources a WTF?

It's not. As long as the system clearly tells you "I'm running out of disk space" and how to fix it. Going all blank and wonky is pretty lame, although, if you use a pretty lame OS I suppose you're used to it.

(If it is running out of memory instead of disk space, it should try this trick they invented back in oh about 1965 or so: swap something to disk.)

He said "system resources". What it is running out of are, unsurprisingly, system resources. (More formally, GDI and USER objects) Specifically, Windows has a limited number of slots for data structures of things to be drawn on the screen.

When this is exceeded, there's no more room to even show an error message.

@RBoy, I think the question is how is it not a WTF.

Big Disk:

And what is it that these dreadfully important "window handles" consume, anyway? Memory? Disk? Photon torpedoes? Or did some hopelessly stupid needs to be fired and then shot programmer decide to set an arbitrary limit of, say, 512 "window handles" and then you're dead?

There has to be _some_ limit - you can't do runaway dynamic allocation for this, since when it eventually does run out of kernel address space it'll crash the kernel. The limit is configurable in the registry.

Oh, and there's no way to tell you're running low until suddenly hot damn fook me I'm outta handles?

Microsoft thought it would no longer be a problem in the 32-bit OS (because, see, the limit is so much bigger than the 16K it used to be, so now it should be enough for anyone), so they didn't include a function to check it in the win32 API, and they broke win16 API function that checks it.

Big Disk:

And what is it that these dreadfully important "window handles" consume, anyway? Memory? Disk? Photon torpedoes? Or did some hopelessly stupid needs to be fired and then shot programmer decide to set an arbitrary limit of, say, 512 "window handles" and then you're dead?

Oh, and there's no way to tell you're running low until suddenly hot damn fook me I'm outta handles?

Not knowing much about the guts of Windows, my first guess would be that the window handles consume numbers, though some of the explanations above would seem to indicate that I'm wrong. The reasoning for my initial guess is that to me the problem looks similar to what happens on Unix-like systems with processes. Process identifiers are N-bit integers (on my Linux box, it looks like N=16, though there's probably no theoretical reason that you couldn't have N=32 or N=64), and when you run out of available numbers, you can't even start a root shell to kill any processes.

Yes, I accidentally wrote a fork bomb while working on an assignment for my operating systems class in college. Yes, I did have to press the reset button on the case of my Linux box.