The last update to Windows 10 irrevocably broke my computer. I was about to roll back to the previous version when I saw a link to Microsoft Support. Was with them for an extended time, and there's no solution to my memory management BSOD except to do what I was about to do and roll it back to the previous version.
Soooo... the computer is frozen in time, no more updates, with the cure appearing to be a new computer, or at least a new motherboard using different hardware that hopefully doesn't have the same characteristics that cause my current one to crash.
Considering Linux, but still want to be able to use the same software, including the games, that I'm currently using. Finding different ways that all have the same bottom line, that this or that sort of program, such as games, don't work well because of one thing or another. Games don't work because this VM has limited video emulation, or so forth.
So... the bottom line appears to be that, for being able to continue with the same familiar software as always, then every last OS on the planet sucks doggie dicks. There is no solution.
So... the cheapest thing to do that also doesn't involve 100's of hours of learning a new OS and simply trading one set of problems for another is to keep on with my frozen-in-time computer until it no longer works in a modern environment, or explodes from the stress like a 155 mm artillery shell and kills me outright. Love computers, love to hate computers, sometimes wish they'd never have been invented, but not really.
Upgrading the computer to avoid being hosed by the updated OS is going to be expensive. This computer cost me about $4K to build. Next one will probably be store-bought, since I can get the equivalent for about the same money, and have an additional level of support besides going directly to Microsoft to find out there's no solution to the problem. And if I get it from a company and it does BSOD from this latest update, I can send it back to said company. Since I built this one, there's nobody to send it back to.
But... overall... computers are wonderful and computers suck all at the same time. Kinda makes you want to be stranded on that S. Pacific island... no computer, no need for a computer...
...how to build ocean-spanning bridges, and give up flying as an ultimately bad idea.
Vehicles can be powered by electricity by loading them onto rail transport. Friction on rails is much less. A vacuum tube for the train to travel in would also cut down on drag, while providing a "pumped hydro" approach to energy storage by generating a current from the difference in cubic miles of space within the tubes of maybe 0.1 PSI. Use wind and solar to evacuate the tubes when the wind and solar is available, and allow the atmosphere to rush in when it is not available and turn turbines to generate electricity while the tube goes from 0.1 PSI to 0.2 PSI. Something like that. No need for airplanes, no need for ships. Just run everything thru the tubes at high speed and little drag and no fossil fuels.
So how do we build a bridge when the supporting base is under 10,000 feet of water?
I'll have both the crippled computer & the new linux computer simultaneously. If I can get the new linux computer to do what I want, I'll likely convert the old one to linux too, except it'd likely be several years of learning and experimentation to get the windows software to cooperate so the old computer might really be obsolete by then anyway. Anyway, I'd find a way to sell it as parts... 850 watt PS, 32Gb ram, core i7, blue ray burner, etc.
The client software absolutely has to do Winmore and Ardop, and you can see that the only one that does is the Windows software.
Then of course there is the other Windows-only stuff like my Nikon camera utilities, Photoshop Elements, Office 365 (did they make it Linux yet? Maybe... don't want to lose VBA), and so forth.
Since I have a mortally wounded computer from the last Windows update, it's tempting to build a new one an make Linux the base OS and attempt to make everything work through VMs for Windows, (see if I can get Call of Duty and Quake III (yeah, its ancient, but have been playing it about 20 years and have over 200,000 dead bots behind me), and so forth. I just really don't want to end up scripting a shell and wondering why the m-fing regular expression isn't doing what I want it to. Damn, I hated that when I had to do it for work, and it made me appreciate Windows so much more...
Reinstall? I think it would probably take me months to re-install all my programs, fight with the companies that have "activation" while attempting to explain why I need to re-active the old program, maybe $100's or $1000's to re-purchase the software where I was unsuccessful at fighting with the companies that have the "activation" nonsense, re-install stuff, and just generally get my computer back to the way it was. I have LOTS of stuff on my computer - my backup file is around 800 Gb, and it doesn't even back up some directory structures that are already backed up and never change. Reinstall? I'd rather buy a whole new computer and start from scratch, and that's saying something since this one is high-end and cost near $4K to build 3 years ago.
Of course since the latest Windows 10 update broke my computer, forced a call to Microsoft help to fix it, required rolling back to the previous version, and locking out further updates lest they re-install the "upgrade" and I once again start getting memory management BSOD's, I'm probably looking at replacing this computer in a couple years as it is frozen in time, receiving no further updates, and will, I expect, probably become obsolete. But Microsoft has to keep dicking around and "upgrading" the damned thing until they make some change that's incompatible with some driver which can't be determined which it is, and for which there may be no update to fix it anyway, and... instant obsolescence. Would rather they just "upgrade" by coming out with Windows 10, 11, 12, etc and so if these don't work, then I can revert to the previous version which will at least be maintained for a while.
If it weren't for Linux being compatible with nothing I'm interested in (there's no Linux solution for a ham radio program I use called "Winlink", I understand) (No, I DON'T want to run it in some damned emulator and add another level of complexity to the question of why it doesn't work, I just want it to work...) I'd abandon Windows. But either way, stay with Windows or jump ship to Linux, it all looks like an incredible hassle.
that MoviePass can arrive at something sustainable. I bought the yearly subscription because I saw this stuff coming, the original business model appearing unworkable to me. I "knew" that they would have to start doing stuff like this and wanted the "pay up front" model so's it would be a contract violation for them to start changing extra for the features.
Before Moviepass, my admission expenditures were $85 for the month of January (lots of great movies come out in January) and $65 in February (not so many movies coming out in February.) In case you haven't figured it out, I see almost everything, the moviegoing experience - popcorn, sit in the dark and let the world go by (escape from reality) for a couple hours, having someone else make the popcorn and clean up afterward fits my lifestyle! The movies are not more than 50% of the reason I go. That's a good thing because movies are faaar less entertaining than they used to be. Lots of movies don't even make sense any more - "A Quiet Place" is totally unbelievable since it depicts a post-apocalyptic world, but they have grid electricity, and they are plagued by animals but it seems nobody has the gumption to carry firearms and dispatch said animals. Makes no sense at all, and lots of movies are like that. Lots of the "SciFi" has little or no "Sci" and violates scientific principles from start to finish. That's hard to take for some of us with the study of science in our backgrounds. But the moviegoing experience is the thing that makes it pleasant, and sometimes the film must be endured rather than enjoyed.
Except my nearest AMC is 50 miles each way, an extra 30 miles from my most-visited city, Fredericksburg, Va. The AMC is up the road at exit 156 of I-95, while F'burg is at Exit 130. 26 miles plus a little more to get to the theater. OK, the theater is maybe 48 miles each way. But the extra 52 miles is about 2 gallons extra for the new Jeep at $2.60 a gallon or $5.20 per movie. Extra. And of course that's not considering depreciation of the extra miles, or tire wear, or more frequent oil changes, etc. So 12 movies a month (yes, I would see every one - I see almost everything) would be $62.40 on top of their $20 for $82.40. Hmmm....
I'll continue to use my Movie Pass at the theaters in Fredericksburg for the $105.35 / yr I paid earlier and got the money back in about 5 weeks of seeing "almost everything", at least for as long as the Movie Pass is viable. If Movie Pass have some real geniuses at the top, they MIGHT be able to keep from going bankrupt. They changed the rules so that you can only see each movie just once, which is OK, and always had the rule that they don't do IMAX and 3D, and hope that is enough, but I'm really expecting it to turn into Cinderella's Pumpkin in a few months. Until then, I'll keep using it.
AMC just might not go bankrupt with their scheme, I dunno. Hope its successful.
I had trouble with just 2 aspects of The Next Generation. I got tired of the lack of action - they were cruising all over the known universe in the most advanced battlewagon built by man, and worrying about Wesley Crusher's identity crisis. That sucked. And then there was the fact that they kept bouncing the broadcast times for it around unpredictably. I'd set of my VCR (remember those?) to record it, and instead I'd get a baseball game or somesuch. Got tired of chasing it for that, and for the lack of action.
There just isn't anything as great as the original series.
Yeah, they _finally_ made a movie out of "Ender's Game." Waited decades for that. Now, if they would just do it for Footfall - they can do great pachyderm aliens with the CGI capabilities that the movie makers have now, and Archangel Michael at the end would be a very satisfying conclusion to the conflict. But yeah, there's great stories all over the place. I imagine, tho, that building a blockbuster from scratch, so's it makes several hundred million dollars to offset the production costs of the CGI and stuff is much harder than doing it for something with a familiar storyline. Now, Disney is totally f-ing up the Star Wars story line so they may be killing or may have killed that goose that was laying those golden eggs. I did like "Solo" tho, but I may be easy to please. Just don't like the overwhelming number of women in the main storyline now. And I can see how it might negatively impact the interest of boys in the series - I mean, the video game is advertised as, "Start Rhea's Journey..." As a boy, who would want to do that?
I don't believe there are women that can do combat as well as _any_ man. Their exceptionals can do combat as well as an average man, but when you talk Rangers / Seals, or someone built like Rambo... nope, I don't think I've ever seen any. I've seen pix of the body builders, and the guys are _always_ bigger than the gals. In hand-to-hand fighting, size matters.
If they can get it on my cable TV somehow, the cable I'm already paying big $$$$ for, then maybe I'll set the DVR. Oh, and despite the sexy graphics of the Discovery show, I stopped at the 1st episode where the female captain goes one-on-one with a Klingon and doesn't die. Female-lead combat command also ruined The Force Awakens for me, as it is seriously unrealistic in that, although women could probably do these things, you don't find many aspiring to such roles. Getting them "all over the place" in the flick... fantasy. Kirk could barely go 1-on-1 with Klingons, so its preposterous for a female sans Marvel Universe super-powers to be doing it. Wonder Woman yes, any other woman, no... Just gimmie a break, make it available without extra $$$, and don't do silly-s-stuff like women-lead combat units and then maybe...
Residential batteries are nice, but think of backing up a 6000 acre solar farm like the one they're proposing to build about 15 miles south of me in Virginia. Those sorts of batteries for overnight and maybe some cloudy days are what we need. We don't have 'em. We may never have 'em. Have to cross fingers, but for now wind and solar can't be relied upon, we still need coal, gas, nuclear, hydro, etc.
You're saying that they have the $$$ to pay for it up front, that they don't get loans from banks and pay them off over a decade or two as the solar farm generates $$$ to pay them with? Color me skeptical...
I'll start getting excited when I can buy one for a price I can afford and it doesn't take up the remainder of my 1 acre that the house and garage are not occupying, and endures the extremes of temperature in Virginia and, of course, stores enough solar electric that I can reliably disconnect from the power grid.
There's armies of people working on "magic batteries" such that there's a "breakthru" announcement every 2 - 4 weeks. First one I remember was in December 2007 IEEE Spectrum involving the nanowire battery that was supposed to increase lithium battery capacity 10X. Well, the nanowires were only figured out for the cathode, I believe it was, which made the battery actually 3X Lithium and even that disappeared after a while and the nanowire battery still cannot be bought at Walmart, Batteries Plus, or anywhere else. They are working furiously on this, but not getting "magic" results. More promising is supercapacitors, but those still aren't anything more than vaporware, too.
"The infrastructure" is the solar farm itself. That will be difficult to pay for when supply-and-demand forces the wholesale price of electricity for those hours that the sun shines to a penny or two per KwH.
Saw article in IEEE Spectrum urging the building of the global high voltage DC grid. Fine, but do you want to rely on power generated in Libya if we have to bomb them again? Foreign electricity is too-easily interrupted to hang the well-being of the whole country's power source onto.
Between the hours of maybe 9 AM and 5:30 - 6:00 PM, solar electricity will be so plentiful that it will sell for a very few cents per KwH, causing it to be difficult to pay for the infrastruction.
At other times, the traditional sources of electricity will prevail. Electricity prices will be what the always were.
At least until someone invents the magic battery that can spread the peak sun-gathering times out across the 24 hours the rest of us have to deal with.
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The last update to Windows 10 irrevocably broke my computer. I was about to roll back to the previous version when I saw a link to Microsoft Support. Was with them for an extended time, and there's no solution to my memory management BSOD except to do what I was about to do and roll it back to the previous version.
Soooo... the computer is frozen in time, no more updates, with the cure appearing to be a new computer, or at least a new motherboard using different hardware that hopefully doesn't have the same characteristics that cause my current one to crash.
Considering Linux, but still want to be able to use the same software, including the games, that I'm currently using. Finding different ways that all have the same bottom line, that this or that sort of program, such as games, don't work well because of one thing or another. Games don't work because this VM has limited video emulation, or so forth.
So... the bottom line appears to be that, for being able to continue with the same familiar software as always, then every last OS on the planet sucks doggie dicks. There is no solution.
So... the cheapest thing to do that also doesn't involve 100's of hours of learning a new OS and simply trading one set of problems for another is to keep on with my frozen-in-time computer until it no longer works in a modern environment, or explodes from the stress like a 155 mm artillery shell and kills me outright. Love computers, love to hate computers, sometimes wish they'd never have been invented, but not really.
Upgrading the computer to avoid being hosed by the updated OS is going to be expensive. This computer cost me about $4K to build. Next one will probably be store-bought, since I can get the equivalent for about the same money, and have an additional level of support besides going directly to Microsoft to find out there's no solution to the problem. And if I get it from a company and it does BSOD from this latest update, I can send it back to said company. Since I built this one, there's nobody to send it back to.
But... overall... computers are wonderful and computers suck all at the same time. Kinda makes you want to be stranded on that S. Pacific island... no computer, no need for a computer...
...how to build ocean-spanning bridges, and give up flying as an ultimately bad idea.
Vehicles can be powered by electricity by loading them onto rail transport. Friction on rails is much less. A vacuum tube for the train to travel in would also cut down on drag, while providing a "pumped hydro" approach to energy storage by generating a current from the difference in cubic miles of space within the tubes of maybe 0.1 PSI. Use wind and solar to evacuate the tubes when the wind and solar is available, and allow the atmosphere to rush in when it is not available and turn turbines to generate electricity while the tube goes from 0.1 PSI to 0.2 PSI. Something like that. No need for airplanes, no need for ships. Just run everything thru the tubes at high speed and little drag and no fossil fuels.
So how do we build a bridge when the supporting base is under 10,000 feet of water?
Archangel Michael from the book, "Footfall."
I'll have both the crippled computer & the new linux computer simultaneously. If I can get the new linux computer to do what I want, I'll likely convert the old one to linux too, except it'd likely be several years of learning and experimentation to get the windows software to cooperate so the old computer might really be obsolete by then anyway. Anyway, I'd find a way to sell it as parts... 850 watt PS, 32Gb ram, core i7, blue ray burner, etc.
No, not that one, that's gateway software. I need client software. These are the available clients:
https://www.winlink.org/Client...
The client software absolutely has to do Winmore and Ardop, and you can see that the only one that does is the Windows software.
Then of course there is the other Windows-only stuff like my Nikon camera utilities, Photoshop Elements, Office 365 (did they make it Linux yet? Maybe... don't want to lose VBA), and so forth.
Since I have a mortally wounded computer from the last Windows update, it's tempting to build a new one an make Linux the base OS and attempt to make everything work through VMs for Windows, (see if I can get Call of Duty and Quake III (yeah, its ancient, but have been playing it about 20 years and have over 200,000 dead bots behind me), and so forth. I just really don't want to end up scripting a shell and wondering why the m-fing regular expression isn't doing what I want it to. Damn, I hated that when I had to do it for work, and it made me appreciate Windows so much more...
Reinstall? I think it would probably take me months to re-install all my programs, fight with the companies that have "activation" while attempting to explain why I need to re-active the old program, maybe $100's or $1000's to re-purchase the software where I was unsuccessful at fighting with the companies that have the "activation" nonsense, re-install stuff, and just generally get my computer back to the way it was. I have LOTS of stuff on my computer - my backup file is around 800 Gb, and it doesn't even back up some directory structures that are already backed up and never change. Reinstall? I'd rather buy a whole new computer and start from scratch, and that's saying something since this one is high-end and cost near $4K to build 3 years ago.
Of course since the latest Windows 10 update broke my computer, forced a call to Microsoft help to fix it, required rolling back to the previous version, and locking out further updates lest they re-install the "upgrade" and I once again start getting memory management BSOD's, I'm probably looking at replacing this computer in a couple years as it is frozen in time, receiving no further updates, and will, I expect, probably become obsolete. But Microsoft has to keep dicking around and "upgrading" the damned thing until they make some change that's incompatible with some driver which can't be determined which it is, and for which there may be no update to fix it anyway, and... instant obsolescence. Would rather they just "upgrade" by coming out with Windows 10, 11, 12, etc and so if these don't work, then I can revert to the previous version which will at least be maintained for a while.
If it weren't for Linux being compatible with nothing I'm interested in (there's no Linux solution for a ham radio program I use called "Winlink", I understand) (No, I DON'T want to run it in some damned emulator and add another level of complexity to the question of why it doesn't work, I just want it to work...) I'd abandon Windows. But either way, stay with Windows or jump ship to Linux, it all looks like an incredible hassle.
...as is most any news that helps keep the gov't the H out of yet another corner of our lives. That gov't is best that governs least...
It would be a horror. Millions dead. You wouldn't enjoy it. We are doing everything we can to avoid it.
When the time is right.
A generalized gun confiscation would probably make it happen. A coup against the elected gov't might, too.
... in a country that has collected up virtually all their guns?
Retired
that MoviePass can arrive at something sustainable. I bought the yearly subscription because I saw this stuff coming, the original business model appearing unworkable to me. I "knew" that they would have to start doing stuff like this and wanted the "pay up front" model so's it would be a contract violation for them to start changing extra for the features.
Before Moviepass, my admission expenditures were $85 for the month of January (lots of great movies come out in January) and $65 in February (not so many movies coming out in February.) In case you haven't figured it out, I see almost everything, the moviegoing experience - popcorn, sit in the dark and let the world go by (escape from reality) for a couple hours, having someone else make the popcorn and clean up afterward fits my lifestyle! The movies are not more than 50% of the reason I go. That's a good thing because movies are faaar less entertaining than they used to be. Lots of movies don't even make sense any more - "A Quiet Place" is totally unbelievable since it depicts a post-apocalyptic world, but they have grid electricity, and they are plagued by animals but it seems nobody has the gumption to carry firearms and dispatch said animals. Makes no sense at all, and lots of movies are like that. Lots of the "SciFi" has little or no "Sci" and violates scientific principles from start to finish. That's hard to take for some of us with the study of science in our backgrounds. But the moviegoing experience is the thing that makes it pleasant, and sometimes the film must be endured rather than enjoyed.
Except my nearest AMC is 50 miles each way, an extra 30 miles from my most-visited city, Fredericksburg, Va. The AMC is up the road at exit 156 of I-95, while F'burg is at Exit 130. 26 miles plus a little more to get to the theater. OK, the theater is maybe 48 miles each way. But the extra 52 miles is about 2 gallons extra for the new Jeep at $2.60 a gallon or $5.20 per movie. Extra. And of course that's not considering depreciation of the extra miles, or tire wear, or more frequent oil changes, etc. So 12 movies a month (yes, I would see every one - I see almost everything) would be $62.40 on top of their $20 for $82.40. Hmmm....
I'll continue to use my Movie Pass at the theaters in Fredericksburg for the $105.35 / yr I paid earlier and got the money back in about 5 weeks of seeing "almost everything", at least for as long as the Movie Pass is viable. If Movie Pass have some real geniuses at the top, they MIGHT be able to keep from going bankrupt. They changed the rules so that you can only see each movie just once, which is OK, and always had the rule that they don't do IMAX and 3D, and hope that is enough, but I'm really expecting it to turn into Cinderella's Pumpkin in a few months. Until then, I'll keep using it.
AMC just might not go bankrupt with their scheme, I dunno. Hope its successful.
I had trouble with just 2 aspects of The Next Generation. I got tired of the lack of action - they were cruising all over the known universe in the most advanced battlewagon built by man, and worrying about Wesley Crusher's identity crisis. That sucked. And then there was the fact that they kept bouncing the broadcast times for it around unpredictably. I'd set of my VCR (remember those?) to record it, and instead I'd get a baseball game or somesuch. Got tired of chasing it for that, and for the lack of action.
There just isn't anything as great as the original series.
Yeah, they _finally_ made a movie out of "Ender's Game." Waited decades for that. Now, if they would just do it for Footfall - they can do great pachyderm aliens with the CGI capabilities that the movie makers have now, and Archangel Michael at the end would be a very satisfying conclusion to the conflict. But yeah, there's great stories all over the place. I imagine, tho, that building a blockbuster from scratch, so's it makes several hundred million dollars to offset the production costs of the CGI and stuff is much harder than doing it for something with a familiar storyline. Now, Disney is totally f-ing up the Star Wars story line so they may be killing or may have killed that goose that was laying those golden eggs. I did like "Solo" tho, but I may be easy to please. Just don't like the overwhelming number of women in the main storyline now. And I can see how it might negatively impact the interest of boys in the series - I mean, the video game is advertised as, "Start Rhea's Journey..." As a boy, who would want to do that?
I don't believe there are women that can do combat as well as _any_ man. Their exceptionals can do combat as well as an average man, but when you talk Rangers / Seals, or someone built like Rambo... nope, I don't think I've ever seen any. I've seen pix of the body builders, and the guys are _always_ bigger than the gals. In hand-to-hand fighting, size matters.
If they can get it on my cable TV somehow, the cable I'm already paying big $$$$ for, then maybe I'll set the DVR. Oh, and despite the sexy graphics of the Discovery show, I stopped at the 1st episode where the female captain goes one-on-one with a Klingon and doesn't die. Female-lead combat command also ruined The Force Awakens for me, as it is seriously unrealistic in that, although women could probably do these things, you don't find many aspiring to such roles. Getting them "all over the place" in the flick... fantasy. Kirk could barely go 1-on-1 with Klingons, so its preposterous for a female sans Marvel Universe super-powers to be doing it. Wonder Woman yes, any other woman, no... Just gimmie a break, make it available without extra $$$, and don't do silly-s-stuff like women-lead combat units and then maybe...
Residential batteries are nice, but think of backing up a 6000 acre solar farm like the one they're proposing to build about 15 miles south of me in Virginia. Those sorts of batteries for overnight and maybe some cloudy days are what we need. We don't have 'em. We may never have 'em. Have to cross fingers, but for now wind and solar can't be relied upon, we still need coal, gas, nuclear, hydro, etc.
You're saying that they have the $$$ to pay for it up front, that they don't get loans from banks and pay them off over a decade or two as the solar farm generates $$$ to pay them with? Color me skeptical...
I'll start getting excited when I can buy one for a price I can afford and it doesn't take up the remainder of my 1 acre that the house and garage are not occupying, and endures the extremes of temperature in Virginia and, of course, stores enough solar electric that I can reliably disconnect from the power grid.
There's armies of people working on "magic batteries" such that there's a "breakthru" announcement every 2 - 4 weeks. First one I remember was in December 2007 IEEE Spectrum involving the nanowire battery that was supposed to increase lithium battery capacity 10X. Well, the nanowires were only figured out for the cathode, I believe it was, which made the battery actually 3X Lithium and even that disappeared after a while and the nanowire battery still cannot be bought at Walmart, Batteries Plus, or anywhere else. They are working furiously on this, but not getting "magic" results. More promising is supercapacitors, but those still aren't anything more than vaporware, too.
"The infrastructure" is the solar farm itself. That will be difficult to pay for when supply-and-demand forces the wholesale price of electricity for those hours that the sun shines to a penny or two per KwH.
Talking solar, not wind. Solar is being installed everywhere, almost. But it all goes away when the sun sets in California.
Saw article in IEEE Spectrum urging the building of the global high voltage DC grid. Fine, but do you want to rely on power generated in Libya if we have to bomb them again? Foreign electricity is too-easily interrupted to hang the well-being of the whole country's power source onto.
Between the hours of maybe 9 AM and 5:30 - 6:00 PM, solar electricity will be so plentiful that it will sell for a very few cents per KwH, causing it to be difficult to pay for the infrastruction.
At other times, the traditional sources of electricity will prevail. Electricity prices will be what the always were.
At least until someone invents the magic battery that can spread the peak sun-gathering times out across the 24 hours the rest of us have to deal with.