...we can have a dialog and elect to send stuff to MS when a problem happens.
I have almost all of the diagnostic and troubleshoooting stuff turned off in Windows7, and every time I go into disk cleanup, it still shows dozens of megabytes of automatically collected problem logs and error reports. *I* don't get informed of any problems with my PC, so where exactly are all these problems coming from?
This has been going on for a while. During the N64/Gamecube era, Nintendo had an impeccable reputation for build quality. You could literally throw a Gamecube out of a building window and it would survive. Then the Wii came out, and the system was suffering from flimsy construction, major overheating problems, and disc read errors (despite being built on conservative tech). At some point, they bowed to investor pressure and decided to stop making decent hardware, resulting in many QA issues despite not pushing any envelopes.
Even if the Switch puts Nintendo back on the map, they aren't what they used to be, which is a real shame.
The real problem here is the idea that save files are copyrighted to the developers, so you don't actually own your saves. Thus, you have no right to backup your data.
Also, take a look at this: Nintendo EULA Forced Update. If your console knows an system update is available, it will lock you out of the system until you perform the update (which is different than other consoles that will simply lock you out of new content until you update). Given how many people in the comments don't think it's a big deal the company holds a gun to your head, is it any surprise that they can get away with this?
Yeah, they do. I know I might be rarer on Slashdot than others around here, but I'm a blue-collar slob who spent 10 years working in a warehouse. I've seen it first hand every day.
Sure, there's people who drive beaters and have roommates, but ultimately they do find ways to get what they think is important. Having the latest smartphone and big LCD TV is more important than financial stability and retirement. Among people who live paycheck to paycheck, if an emergency arises, they always manage to get money together "somehow".
The truth is that overall the major media outlets (sorry, MSM is a conspiracy community term) do a pretty good job.
I agree. The real problem is not fake news, but the lack of news at all. Turn on the evening news, and it's about 10 minutes of genuine facts followed by 50 minutes of guest speakers, expert analysis, and personal opinions (usually involving more than one person talking at once).
When phone stores, Steam, and other "indie" channels came around, everybody stopped making games for free. This is why you see very few games made in HTML5, as well, and almost everything you get from places like Itch.io are made in Unity or is a native executable.
I actually miss Flash. Despite all the hate, the reason why it was around for so damn long is because it was actually good at what it did. The only reason HTML5 killed it is because almost everyone was using it for video. For animation and games, even today, nothing even comes close to Flash and wrapping everything into a single, tidy SWF file.
When an OS doesn't force the user to update, its a security risk. When an OS does force the user to update, its an affront to freedom and choice.
"Force" != "Default choice"
I'm fine with Microsoft forcing its more "basic" users to update
The problem here is that even the "basic" users are starting to have way too many problems with the updates, because the updates suck. The solution is to stop fucking up updates, not ramming them down peoples' throats by locking them out of the group policy editor.
Users aren't stupid. They're not rejecting updates because they want their computer to suck. They're rejecting updates because the very process, results, and frequency of updates is completely out of hand. It's the same thing that drove people to Macs back when every PC vendor showed 20 self-congratulatory splash screens every time you switched on the power.
Well, I've had to deal with multiple situations where an upgrade or repair created a new user and made the previous user account invisible. Windows doesn't just create a new account, it actually changes access permissions of the old user account folder so it can't be accessed even by the administrator account. To the layman, the "Documents and Settings" or "Home" folders just disappear without a trace. It can take some screwing around with filesystem permissions (via a Windows PE boot disk) to get access to the old user folder and recover the data.
No, the data isn't destroyed, but even a seasoned tech many not understand exactly how to recover the data since Windows really does try its hardest to lock everyone, even the admin account, out of those folders. It's probably the same reason why if I create a file on my desktop and immediately try to delete it, Windows throws a UAC prompt and won't let me delete my own file. Wait 5 minutes, and then you can. Windows does some stupid and even downright creepy things when it comes to file permissions and locking you out of your own data.
Fuck Windows. Nothing is as simple as it seems, no matter what the documentation or "/?" says.
Sounds like the same logic that killed game demos. They can't show off how bad their games are, now can they?
At least Let's Plays are still legal, so I can see a game before I buy it. If not for YouTube, I would have far, far less than 100+ games in my Steam library.
Right now its "I need H1Bs because there are to few qualified Americans"
Right now it's "I need H1Bs because US law demands US citizens receive benefits, and qualified Americans cost more than foreigners."
Corporations are pretty much pioneers of isolationism. They put up with community only if they have to, which is why they had that layoff right before yet another profitable Christmas.
Because a lot of people get confused by too much information and too many options.
This is precisely why UI designers exist -- to make a clean UI that makes sense of the zillions of options. That's pretty much the whole reason why menus were invented.
UX people don't get this. Since making a good UI is hard, their philosophy is to just reduce everything to one, big button.
I am so sick and FUCKING TIRED of all the constant updates from every fucking piece of software. Fuck computers.
Most insightful response in the thread, because this is what ORDINARY people are thinking every day, not just the Slashdot crowd.
I've breathed computers since the C64 days and love technology in general, but since smart phones showed up, it's been one massive disappointment after another. I gave up on web development as a career for a reason.
There are a huge number of tax avoidance schemes that I could use to reduce my tax burden...
The real problem is that they are complicated, not worth your time, and can be very risky if you make a mistake, such as applying for them without being certain that you qualify. Even when I was a teenager and had a single W-2, filling out my taxes took most of a day, because I was worried sick that I'd forget to report something correctly. Filing taxes was a nightmare not because I had to pay my share, but because every time I entered a deduction, that I would somehow be punished for it.
Corporations can afford lawyers, and their salaries are worth it. If hiring a lawyer to reduce my taxes "properly" was economical, I'd sure as hell let them do it.
I just gave this thing a try on a Win7 x64 box on a Core i5 3770K @ 3.4 GHz, and the results are... interesting, but not in a good way.
First, I tried to explicitly use a quality level of 78% to test it against some low-quality images, and the program immediately yelled at me that if I want to use a setting below 84%, I need to modify the source code and recompile. WTF? Do we really need idiot-proofing of command-line utilities, too? Second, I found out that setting a quality of 88% actually sets the quality much higher than 90%, resulting in huge, HQ files. I have no idea how they determine the quality from the command-line flags as I haven't looked at the source, but apparently this program is pretty buggy. Unsurprisingly, like most programs these days, Guetzli only utilizes one CPU core, so it will be slow, but at least it won't lock up your machine while it works.
Anyway, compared to the default Photoshop "save for web" feature, this program makes files about the same filesize, but takes about 200-300x as long (roughly 1.5 minutes for Guetzli compared to less than a second for Photoshop). All my test images were between 0.5 to 1.0 megapixel, and consisted of gradient shaded cartoons and a few shaded pencil drawings, which normally show horrible artifacts and are difficult to compress well. For the images I used at 90% quality, there's apparently no real advantage. I couldn't get the quality settings in Guetzli to work correctly, so I did the runs with Google's tool first, then made comparable images with Photoshop to match the quality. File size differences were less than 10%. I did find that that Guetzli prioritizes chroma over luminance, so strong colors have fewer artifacts, but base colors and B&W patches have more artifacts and are blurrier. The net quality is about the same overall, so this tool is disappointing. If you're going to use this utility, it's best reserved for highly saturated pictures, but overall I didn't see any gains in compression.
If you're looking for serious gains in compression, you're better off using PNGOut by Ken Silverman to crush PNG files. It's usually not worth trying to get more compression out of JPEG files over a utility like Photoshop, Irfanview, or ImageMagick. Even JPEGTran never gave me any significant gains over Photoshop's JPEG routines.
This is a novel setup and fun to read, but it does highlight just how easy it is for a very small number of people to cause a huge amount of chaos should they decide our cushy, social honor system doesn't suit their lifestyle.
Modern terrorists don't need to blow up an airplane. If they want to cause REAL damage, they need only place a few interesting phone calls.
Just because Microsoft pulls support doesn't mean the OS suddenly stops working.
Speak for yourself. Twice I had to call MS to re-activate my license for XP because I swapped some parts on my box. I learned my lesson, and am deathly afraid to touch any part of my current Win7 PC just in case MS decides I "might be the victim of piracy".
I wish I could stitch to Linux now, but I've been trying to do that for 12+ years, and always hit way too many potholes. When Win7 completely dies (probably due to hardware failure), I'll have to make the switch since there's no way I'm using any newer version of Windows.
There is only 1 name for people who run Windows 10.
Idiots.
Way to get people to feel comfortable with the Linux community (one of its greatest stumbling blocks). Pretty much by definition, only half the population consists of idiots, and Microsoft has 90%+ of the desktop market. You do the math.
What next? More banter about Democrats calling Republicans racist? I'm sure that will help.
Slashdot Mirror
...we can have a dialog and elect to send stuff to MS when a problem happens.
I have almost all of the diagnostic and troubleshoooting stuff turned off in Windows7, and every time I go into disk cleanup, it still shows dozens of megabytes of automatically collected problem logs and error reports. *I* don't get informed of any problems with my PC, so where exactly are all these problems coming from?
This has been going on for a while. During the N64/Gamecube era, Nintendo had an impeccable reputation for build quality. You could literally throw a Gamecube out of a building window and it would survive. Then the Wii came out, and the system was suffering from flimsy construction, major overheating problems, and disc read errors (despite being built on conservative tech). At some point, they bowed to investor pressure and decided to stop making decent hardware, resulting in many QA issues despite not pushing any envelopes.
Even if the Switch puts Nintendo back on the map, they aren't what they used to be, which is a real shame.
You're missing the backside that as productivity increases, so does supply which reduces costs.
To a point. People love to assume this graph is a straight line.
The real problem here is the idea that save files are copyrighted to the developers, so you don't actually own your saves. Thus, you have no right to backup your data.
Also, take a look at this: Nintendo EULA Forced Update. If your console knows an system update is available, it will lock you out of the system until you perform the update (which is different than other consoles that will simply lock you out of new content until you update). Given how many people in the comments don't think it's a big deal the company holds a gun to your head, is it any surprise that they can get away with this?
Yeah, they do. I know I might be rarer on Slashdot than others around here, but I'm a blue-collar slob who spent 10 years working in a warehouse. I've seen it first hand every day.
Sure, there's people who drive beaters and have roommates, but ultimately they do find ways to get what they think is important. Having the latest smartphone and big LCD TV is more important than financial stability and retirement. Among people who live paycheck to paycheck, if an emergency arises, they always manage to get money together "somehow".
The truth is that overall the major media outlets (sorry, MSM is a conspiracy community term) do a pretty good job.
I agree. The real problem is not fake news, but the lack of news at all. Turn on the evening news, and it's about 10 minutes of genuine facts followed by 50 minutes of guest speakers, expert analysis, and personal opinions (usually involving more than one person talking at once).
When phone stores, Steam, and other "indie" channels came around, everybody stopped making games for free. This is why you see very few games made in HTML5, as well, and almost everything you get from places like Itch.io are made in Unity or is a native executable.
I actually miss Flash. Despite all the hate, the reason why it was around for so damn long is because it was actually good at what it did. The only reason HTML5 killed it is because almost everyone was using it for video. For animation and games, even today, nothing even comes close to Flash and wrapping everything into a single, tidy SWF file.
How many updates NEVER gave _any_ details on _exactly_ what they were doing other then some bullshit generic "Security updates" message.
Almost none.
What they really tell you is that the update "resolves a problem". Whether that problem is related to security is another story.
When an OS doesn't force the user to update, its a security risk. When an OS does force the user to update, its an affront to freedom and choice.
"Force" != "Default choice"
I'm fine with Microsoft forcing its more "basic" users to update
The problem here is that even the "basic" users are starting to have way too many problems with the updates, because the updates suck. The solution is to stop fucking up updates, not ramming them down peoples' throats by locking them out of the group policy editor.
Users aren't stupid. They're not rejecting updates because they want their computer to suck. They're rejecting updates because the very process, results, and frequency of updates is completely out of hand. It's the same thing that drove people to Macs back when every PC vendor showed 20 self-congratulatory splash screens every time you switched on the power.
If a filesystem is crap, I think I'll still blame the filesystem, thank you.
It took them this long to adopt "safe saving?"
Well, I've had to deal with multiple situations where an upgrade or repair created a new user and made the previous user account invisible. Windows doesn't just create a new account, it actually changes access permissions of the old user account folder so it can't be accessed even by the administrator account. To the layman, the "Documents and Settings" or "Home" folders just disappear without a trace. It can take some screwing around with filesystem permissions (via a Windows PE boot disk) to get access to the old user folder and recover the data.
No, the data isn't destroyed, but even a seasoned tech many not understand exactly how to recover the data since Windows really does try its hardest to lock everyone, even the admin account, out of those folders. It's probably the same reason why if I create a file on my desktop and immediately try to delete it, Windows throws a UAC prompt and won't let me delete my own file. Wait 5 minutes, and then you can. Windows does some stupid and even downright creepy things when it comes to file permissions and locking you out of your own data.
Fuck Windows. Nothing is as simple as it seems, no matter what the documentation or "/?" says.
Sounds like the same logic that killed game demos. They can't show off how bad their games are, now can they?
At least Let's Plays are still legal, so I can see a game before I buy it. If not for YouTube, I would have far, far less than 100+ games in my Steam library.
Isn't it nice that their entire business model revolves around perfectly matching ad content with viewers? Look at what all that telemetry gets you!
Now try to match up the advertisers with the content. Piece of cake! It's job #1!
Right now its "I need H1Bs because there are to few qualified Americans"
Right now it's "I need H1Bs because US law demands US citizens receive benefits, and qualified Americans cost more than foreigners."
Corporations are pretty much pioneers of isolationism. They put up with community only if they have to, which is why they had that layoff right before yet another profitable Christmas.
But according to leading entrepreneurs, tax breaks and subsidies will do a better job of creating jobs.
Because a lot of people get confused by too much information and too many options.
This is precisely why UI designers exist -- to make a clean UI that makes sense of the zillions of options. That's pretty much the whole reason why menus were invented.
UX people don't get this. Since making a good UI is hard, their philosophy is to just reduce everything to one, big button.
Now we're stuck with sore loser Donald Trump
You mean a sore winner. I've never seen anyone so butthurt over a victory.
I am so sick and FUCKING TIRED of all the constant updates from every fucking piece of software. Fuck computers.
Most insightful response in the thread, because this is what ORDINARY people are thinking every day, not just the Slashdot crowd.
I've breathed computers since the C64 days and love technology in general, but since smart phones showed up, it's been one massive disappointment after another. I gave up on web development as a career for a reason.
There are a huge number of tax avoidance schemes that I could use to reduce my tax burden...
The real problem is that they are complicated, not worth your time, and can be very risky if you make a mistake, such as applying for them without being certain that you qualify. Even when I was a teenager and had a single W-2, filling out my taxes took most of a day, because I was worried sick that I'd forget to report something correctly. Filing taxes was a nightmare not because I had to pay my share, but because every time I entered a deduction, that I would somehow be punished for it.
Corporations can afford lawyers, and their salaries are worth it. If hiring a lawyer to reduce my taxes "properly" was economical, I'd sure as hell let them do it.
I just gave this thing a try on a Win7 x64 box on a Core i5 3770K @ 3.4 GHz, and the results are... interesting, but not in a good way.
First, I tried to explicitly use a quality level of 78% to test it against some low-quality images, and the program immediately yelled at me that if I want to use a setting below 84%, I need to modify the source code and recompile. WTF? Do we really need idiot-proofing of command-line utilities, too? Second, I found out that setting a quality of 88% actually sets the quality much higher than 90%, resulting in huge, HQ files. I have no idea how they determine the quality from the command-line flags as I haven't looked at the source, but apparently this program is pretty buggy. Unsurprisingly, like most programs these days, Guetzli only utilizes one CPU core, so it will be slow, but at least it won't lock up your machine while it works.
Anyway, compared to the default Photoshop "save for web" feature, this program makes files about the same filesize, but takes about 200-300x as long (roughly 1.5 minutes for Guetzli compared to less than a second for Photoshop). All my test images were between 0.5 to 1.0 megapixel, and consisted of gradient shaded cartoons and a few shaded pencil drawings, which normally show horrible artifacts and are difficult to compress well. For the images I used at 90% quality, there's apparently no real advantage. I couldn't get the quality settings in Guetzli to work correctly, so I did the runs with Google's tool first, then made comparable images with Photoshop to match the quality. File size differences were less than 10%. I did find that that Guetzli prioritizes chroma over luminance, so strong colors have fewer artifacts, but base colors and B&W patches have more artifacts and are blurrier. The net quality is about the same overall, so this tool is disappointing. If you're going to use this utility, it's best reserved for highly saturated pictures, but overall I didn't see any gains in compression.
If you're looking for serious gains in compression, you're better off using PNGOut by Ken Silverman to crush PNG files. It's usually not worth trying to get more compression out of JPEG files over a utility like Photoshop, Irfanview, or ImageMagick. Even JPEGTran never gave me any significant gains over Photoshop's JPEG routines.
This is a novel setup and fun to read, but it does highlight just how easy it is for a very small number of people to cause a huge amount of chaos should they decide our cushy, social honor system doesn't suit their lifestyle.
Modern terrorists don't need to blow up an airplane. If they want to cause REAL damage, they need only place a few interesting phone calls.
What kind of time dilation effects are we talking?
Just because Microsoft pulls support doesn't mean the OS suddenly stops working.
Speak for yourself. Twice I had to call MS to re-activate my license for XP because I swapped some parts on my box. I learned my lesson, and am deathly afraid to touch any part of my current Win7 PC just in case MS decides I "might be the victim of piracy".
I wish I could stitch to Linux now, but I've been trying to do that for 12+ years, and always hit way too many potholes. When Win7 completely dies (probably due to hardware failure), I'll have to make the switch since there's no way I'm using any newer version of Windows.
There is only 1 name for people who run Windows 10.
Idiots.
Way to get people to feel comfortable with the Linux community (one of its greatest stumbling blocks). Pretty much by definition, only half the population consists of idiots, and Microsoft has 90%+ of the desktop market. You do the math.
What next? More banter about Democrats calling Republicans racist? I'm sure that will help.