And yes, I've tried the "Network and Sharing Center" too. Seems to let me do everything except fix a connection that's not working. Honestly, I don't think Windows 7 is easier to deal with than XP WRT networking.
The "troubleshooting" features in Windows, which first appeared in Windows 95 have yet to give me any meaningful help or information. I'm not kidding. I'd long ago given up on even using it, and when I finally broke down and tried it with Windows 7, sure enough, it didn't do anything useful or tell me anything.
In 17 years, I have _never_ seen Windows troubleshooting actually solve a problem.
I have to say, I didn't realize they were still selling East German war surplus software from the 40s, but they must be repackaging up those ancient, grotty old bits and labelling them "Lotus Notes". At least Outlook is crap that was actually written in the last 30 years.
Just because the government overreaches in some ways doesn't mean it's always bad. Why is it that people like you think it has to be one extreme or the other? There are points along the spectrum between totalitarianism and anarchy, dontcha know?
You'd better turn off your incandescent lights. They get really hot and could set your straw men on fire.
The first CFLs I ever bought in the early 90s were very expensive but lasted for years and years. Nowadays, some of them practically come pre-burned-out for your convenience, especially the globe kind. You would think the extra layer of glass, if anything, would protect the bulb better (but maybe they get too hot?), but I've seen the new globe CFLs burn out in a few weeks and they definitely have a tiny fraction of the lifetime of the regular kind... to the point where I'm gradually shifting back to incandescents to save money. The regular CFL bulbs still seem to last long, but not as long as they used to.
The whole idea of making things an order of magnitude less expensive by making them so cheap they practically break on sight is becoming ridiculous.
I'll guess I'll wait until LED light bulbs are $3 a piece, and hope they last longer than a month.
The only thing that would hinder Windows 8 in this aspect, is if it is buggy as hell, massively more resource hungry, or incompatible with Windows 7 hardware drivers.
I started using Linux around the same time. My Linux server was so stable and reliable (providing IPMasq because Windows Internet connection sharing was awful) I literally forgot it was there.
The only thing that made me shift to Windows 95 from Windows 3 was the increasing amount of software I couldn't run. 6 months later I abandoned Windows 95 for NT 3.51 and never looked back.
I have to say, the ribbon interface is about the only thing I _don't_ hate about Office, but I only use it when I really have to. Ribbon or not, you couldn't pay me to compose a document in Word. Excel is OK, as long as you don't use it too hard or do any scripting, at which point you will be made aware how remarkably fragile and bug-ridden it is. Access should have been taken out back and killed before it was ever shipped. Outlook has all the disadvantages of bloated Enterprise software, but none of the advantages. I can't even get it to consistently remind me about events in my calendar.
The main reason why no company is walloping Microsoft up one side and down the other on Office software is that people will only accept alternatives that are as horrendously bloated and overcomplicated with features as the Office apps are. As far as I'm concerned, Microsoft didn't ruin Word, they literally ruined _word processing_ as a concept.
Now you've heard two people complaining about it. I still prefer Windows XP to Windows 7. It is not the case, as was with Vista, where I disliked it so much I purchased an XP license so I could go back, but I find few things about 7 that are better than XP, and those are minor, and nothing that makes me prefer it to XP. For instance, Explorer, which was always a big mess, has taken a distinct turn for the worse on 7, especially when using it to manage files on network shares.
Right-clicking on my wireless network icon and clicking "Repair" has been replaced with... nothing. I have to reboot Windows 7 to fix wireless much more than I ever had to on XP, and this is based on multiple machines with OEM Windows 7 installations, not because I used the wrong drivers or something. Copying files over the network is still slower than XP, and with numerous unexplainable delays of several or up to tens of seconds, something I only rarely saw on XP over the same network. This is not worth the few UI improvements that I actually care about. Other than that, the most compelling reason to upgrade Windows remains, and always will be: the old version of Windows doesn't support new hardware.
I would argue that Microsoft Office is the biggest factor that keeps people on Windows who could otherwise use a different OS. The fact that something as archaic, hard-to-use and unstable as the Office applications still exist in 2012 is the best proof of Microsoft's monopoly in 30 years.
Microsoft played nice by the books by documenting their format, but of course, the format is so complex that no one, certainly not MS themselves, can fully support it. I think Office has a firmer grip on Microsoft users than Windows has, and this has probably been true for years.
People don't do word processing or spreadsheets on their phones and tablets, and on those platforms, Microsoft is all but irrelevant. Once you get past what Office does (however poorly) everything else done by 95% of users basically boils down to the web browser and games. The best web browsers work an lots of operating systems and I'm sure people are buying far more games for Android and iOS than for any Microsoft platform.
How many times have you heard people who say (like I do) that the only reason they still run Windows is for games? If it weren't for compatibility with games, and a very small number of other apps I could live without if I had to, I would have abandoned Windows completely at least 5 years ago.
Well, to be fair, I would consider "not being annihilated by our enemies" to be "instant profit", just not the money kind.
I think the example you are looking for is the American space program in the 60s and 70s. Yes, there was a geopolitical angle to the space race, but it was also largely an exercise in pure research for its own sake. I mean, really, reaching the moon was a laudable goal in terms of exploration and science, but it was not something that was expected to yield short term profits, nor did it. But the resulting technological gains were immense.
I'd much rather play a game with so-so graphics and awesome gameplay (and replayability) than something super flashy that I can beat in 8 hours and never touch again. Unfortunately, that's not the trend.
That's why GOG.com exists. I've easily bought more games from them in the last 2 years than in the previous 10 years. First, you can't beat the price and the lack of DRM. Second, these are games from the era when most of the best games ever were made. And knowing the games will run correctly without fuss on modern versions of Windows (and often on Linux, too, via Wine) means it's often even worth it to repurchase games I already own.
Sure, there were plenty of duds in the 80s and 90s too, but at the price GOG offers them for, you can afford to take a risk. I discovered a lot of classics I missed the first time around.
Ob Disclaimer: Not associated with them, just a happy customer.
What about Ur-quan Masters (a remake of Star Control II)? I was never crazy about the video game aspect of combat, but it was a game with a similar scope.
Depends on the game. I could play Gravitar for a good hour on a single credit. I really can't see how that game ever made money... and it's not that I was particularly good at most games. I might get 10 minutes on a Defender or Spy Hunter machine on a good day, but on most games I really wasn't so good.
I bought at least a couple of these games (Dungeon Master and Faery Tale Adventure for the Amiga) at "Diskcovery" in Falls Church, Virginia. There also used to be one at Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax. Definitely my favorite brick-and-mortar software store... back when malls actually had stores worth visiting.
I still have my A500, but I haven't booted it up in a while.
"Canticle" is a brilliant book indeed. Miller takes the idea of a post-apocalyptic world and explores very thoroughly the re-establishment of civilization, questions of the value of scientific progress, the value of human life, and whether man can really avoid destroying himself.
There was also a nicely-made radio dramatization done in 15 half-hour segments that's available from the Internet Archive here. While no dramatization can capture all the depths of a good novel, this one is well-acted, I especially liked the narrator, and captures the spirit of the book well.
This would never work. You'd be accused of every kind of prejudice and bigotry under the sun.
But, yeah, it's a good idea. Reminds me of the Zogby poll in 2008 that talked to Obama supporters. Specifically, they looked for Obama supporters that were college-educated because they wanted to find people who had demonstrated at least some degree of intellectual competence. Anyhow, they then proceeded to ask them some basic questions, extremely basic questions about the various candidates and found that the people were extremely ignorant of Obama and his background and politics, as well as those of Biden, McCain and Palin. Many couldn't even identify which party controlled Congress. Or attributed statements by Obama to Palin or other mistakes that even the most superficial knowledge would prevent. In some cases, fewer than 25% of responders correctly answered a 4-choice multiple choice question meaning they did worse than random chance.
Too many voters are ignorant, even ones you would expect not to be, and who think they aren't.
Fair enough, but given how all the models err in the same direction, it looks very suspicious, to say the least.
Maybe the models will end up being correct, but the best you can say about them is that there is likely something going on that they have not accounted for. In fact, that's the best you can say about every theory that predicts CAGW, and that's the problem. They called "case closed" before most of the witnesses had been called to the stand, and most of the evidence had been shown, then proceeded to act like it it was an open-and-shut case, which as we see on a monthly basis could not be further from the truth.
Maybe they are right. I currently doubt it, but that's an educated guess. I'm not a scientist, but I'm pretty knowledgeable and follow blogs and read papers on both sides of the issue. If things change and evidence starts looking differently, I'm open to changing my mind. But given that so many of the proponents act like thugs and constantly engage in demagoguery and sometimes outright deception, to me they have greatly undermined their case. If the science were really as settled as they claim, the divide would not still be split 99.9% along ideological lines, because there are both conservatives and liberals, many of them I hope, who will accept truths that don't fit into a political template.
As a simple example, I will take any CAGW proponent much more seriously if he or she is willing to admit that nuclear power is a really good compromise for cutting carbon emissions, but since almost none of them will admit that their old shibboleth could possibly help combat their new one, and that dealing with nuclear waste and heat pollution has to be nowhere near as bad as total climatic apocalypse, I'll wait for someone less hypocritical to come along. And the less said about the voodoo carbon economics of "cap and trade", the better.
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And yes, I've tried the "Network and Sharing Center" too. Seems to let me do everything except fix a connection that's not working. Honestly, I don't think Windows 7 is easier to deal with than XP WRT networking.
The "troubleshooting" features in Windows, which first appeared in Windows 95 have yet to give me any meaningful help or information. I'm not kidding. I'd long ago given up on even using it, and when I finally broke down and tried it with Windows 7, sure enough, it didn't do anything useful or tell me anything.
In 17 years, I have _never_ seen Windows troubleshooting actually solve a problem.
I have to say, I didn't realize they were still selling East German war surplus software from the 40s, but they must be repackaging up those ancient, grotty old bits and labelling them "Lotus Notes". At least Outlook is crap that was actually written in the last 30 years.
HA HA HA HA!
Oh, wait, you're serious.
Just because the government overreaches in some ways doesn't mean it's always bad. Why is it that people like you think it has to be one extreme or the other? There are points along the spectrum between totalitarianism and anarchy, dontcha know?
You'd better turn off your incandescent lights. They get really hot and could set your straw men on fire.
The first CFLs I ever bought in the early 90s were very expensive but lasted for years and years. Nowadays, some of them practically come pre-burned-out for your convenience, especially the globe kind. You would think the extra layer of glass, if anything, would protect the bulb better (but maybe they get too hot?), but I've seen the new globe CFLs burn out in a few weeks and they definitely have a tiny fraction of the lifetime of the regular kind... to the point where I'm gradually shifting back to incandescents to save money. The regular CFL bulbs still seem to last long, but not as long as they used to.
The whole idea of making things an order of magnitude less expensive by making them so cheap they practically break on sight is becoming ridiculous.
I'll guess I'll wait until LED light bulbs are $3 a piece, and hope they last longer than a month.
NT 3.51 had your "old" Windows 3.1 interface. After suffering with Windows 95 for a few months that's where I went.
The only thing that would hinder Windows 8 in this aspect, is if it is buggy as hell, massively more resource hungry, or incompatible with Windows 7 hardware drivers.
So, in other words, if it's another Vista...
I started using Linux around the same time. My Linux server was so stable and reliable (providing IPMasq because Windows Internet connection sharing was awful) I literally forgot it was there.
Not sure what you're being sarcastic about.
The only thing that made me shift to Windows 95 from Windows 3 was the increasing amount of software I couldn't run. 6 months later I abandoned Windows 95 for NT 3.51 and never looked back.
I have to say, the ribbon interface is about the only thing I _don't_ hate about Office, but I only use it when I really have to. Ribbon or not, you couldn't pay me to compose a document in Word. Excel is OK, as long as you don't use it too hard or do any scripting, at which point you will be made aware how remarkably fragile and bug-ridden it is. Access should have been taken out back and killed before it was ever shipped. Outlook has all the disadvantages of bloated Enterprise software, but none of the advantages. I can't even get it to consistently remind me about events in my calendar.
The main reason why no company is walloping Microsoft up one side and down the other on Office software is that people will only accept alternatives that are as horrendously bloated and overcomplicated with features as the Office apps are. As far as I'm concerned, Microsoft didn't ruin Word, they literally ruined _word processing_ as a concept.
Now you've heard two people complaining about it. I still prefer Windows XP to Windows 7. It is not the case, as was with Vista, where I disliked it so much I purchased an XP license so I could go back, but I find few things about 7 that are better than XP, and those are minor, and nothing that makes me prefer it to XP. For instance, Explorer, which was always a big mess, has taken a distinct turn for the worse on 7, especially when using it to manage files on network shares.
Right-clicking on my wireless network icon and clicking "Repair" has been replaced with... nothing. I have to reboot Windows 7 to fix wireless much more than I ever had to on XP, and this is based on multiple machines with OEM Windows 7 installations, not because I used the wrong drivers or something. Copying files over the network is still slower than XP, and with numerous unexplainable delays of several or up to tens of seconds, something I only rarely saw on XP over the same network. This is not worth the few UI improvements that I actually care about. Other than that, the most compelling reason to upgrade Windows remains, and always will be: the old version of Windows doesn't support new hardware.
I would argue that Microsoft Office is the biggest factor that keeps people on Windows who could otherwise use a different OS. The fact that something as archaic, hard-to-use and unstable as the Office applications still exist in 2012 is the best proof of Microsoft's monopoly in 30 years.
Microsoft played nice by the books by documenting their format, but of course, the format is so complex that no one, certainly not MS themselves, can fully support it. I think Office has a firmer grip on Microsoft users than Windows has, and this has probably been true for years.
People don't do word processing or spreadsheets on their phones and tablets, and on those platforms, Microsoft is all but irrelevant. Once you get past what Office does (however poorly) everything else done by 95% of users basically boils down to the web browser and games. The best web browsers work an lots of operating systems and I'm sure people are buying far more games for Android and iOS than for any Microsoft platform.
How many times have you heard people who say (like I do) that the only reason they still run Windows is for games? If it weren't for compatibility with games, and a very small number of other apps I could live without if I had to, I would have abandoned Windows completely at least 5 years ago.
Almost nobody did change until they upgraded their hardware and it came with Vista or Windows 7.
Well, to be fair, I would consider "not being annihilated by our enemies" to be "instant profit", just not the money kind.
I think the example you are looking for is the American space program in the 60s and 70s. Yes, there was a geopolitical angle to the space race, but it was also largely an exercise in pure research for its own sake. I mean, really, reaching the moon was a laudable goal in terms of exploration and science, but it was not something that was expected to yield short term profits, nor did it. But the resulting technological gains were immense.
Check your sarcasm meter. I think you need to replace the batteries.
I'd much rather play a game with so-so graphics and awesome gameplay (and replayability) than something super flashy that I can beat in 8 hours and never touch again. Unfortunately, that's not the trend.
That's why GOG.com exists. I've easily bought more games from them in the last 2 years than in the previous 10 years. First, you can't beat the price and the lack of DRM. Second, these are games from the era when most of the best games ever were made. And knowing the games will run correctly without fuss on modern versions of Windows (and often on Linux, too, via Wine) means it's often even worth it to repurchase games I already own.
Sure, there were plenty of duds in the 80s and 90s too, but at the price GOG offers them for, you can afford to take a risk. I discovered a lot of classics I missed the first time around.
Ob Disclaimer: Not associated with them, just a happy customer.
What about Ur-quan Masters (a remake of Star Control II)? I was never crazy about the video game aspect of combat, but it was a game with a similar scope.
Depends on the game. I could play Gravitar for a good hour on a single credit. I really can't see how that game ever made money... and it's not that I was particularly good at most games. I might get 10 minutes on a Defender or Spy Hunter machine on a good day, but on most games I really wasn't so good.
I bought at least a couple of these games (Dungeon Master and Faery Tale Adventure for the Amiga) at "Diskcovery" in Falls Church, Virginia. There also used to be one at Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax. Definitely my favorite brick-and-mortar software store... back when malls actually had stores worth visiting.
I still have my A500, but I haven't booted it up in a while.
"The Night Land" is available from Gutenburg. Greg Bear cited it as the inspiration for his recent book "The City at the End of Time".
"Canticle" is a brilliant book indeed. Miller takes the idea of a post-apocalyptic world and explores very thoroughly the re-establishment of civilization, questions of the value of scientific progress, the value of human life, and whether man can really avoid destroying himself.
There was also a nicely-made radio dramatization done in 15 half-hour segments that's available from the Internet Archive here. While no dramatization can capture all the depths of a good novel, this one is well-acted, I especially liked the narrator, and captures the spirit of the book well.
This would never work. You'd be accused of every kind of prejudice and bigotry under the sun.
But, yeah, it's a good idea. Reminds me of the Zogby poll in 2008 that talked to Obama supporters. Specifically, they looked for Obama supporters that were college-educated because they wanted to find people who had demonstrated at least some degree of intellectual competence. Anyhow, they then proceeded to ask them some basic questions, extremely basic questions about the various candidates and found that the people were extremely ignorant of Obama and his background and politics, as well as those of Biden, McCain and Palin. Many couldn't even identify which party controlled Congress. Or attributed statements by Obama to Palin or other mistakes that even the most superficial knowledge would prevent. In some cases, fewer than 25% of responders correctly answered a 4-choice multiple choice question meaning they did worse than random chance.
Too many voters are ignorant, even ones you would expect not to be, and who think they aren't.
Fair enough, but given how all the models err in the same direction, it looks very suspicious, to say the least.
Maybe the models will end up being correct, but the best you can say about them is that there is likely something going on that they have not accounted for. In fact, that's the best you can say about every theory that predicts CAGW, and that's the problem. They called "case closed" before most of the witnesses had been called to the stand, and most of the evidence had been shown, then proceeded to act like it it was an open-and-shut case, which as we see on a monthly basis could not be further from the truth.
Maybe they are right. I currently doubt it, but that's an educated guess. I'm not a scientist, but I'm pretty knowledgeable and follow blogs and read papers on both sides of the issue. If things change and evidence starts looking differently, I'm open to changing my mind. But given that so many of the proponents act like thugs and constantly engage in demagoguery and sometimes outright deception, to me they have greatly undermined their case. If the science were really as settled as they claim, the divide would not still be split 99.9% along ideological lines, because there are both conservatives and liberals, many of them I hope, who will accept truths that don't fit into a political template.
As a simple example, I will take any CAGW proponent much more seriously if he or she is willing to admit that nuclear power is a really good compromise for cutting carbon emissions, but since almost none of them will admit that their old shibboleth could possibly help combat their new one, and that dealing with nuclear waste and heat pollution has to be nowhere near as bad as total climatic apocalypse, I'll wait for someone less hypocritical to come along. And the less said about the voodoo carbon economics of "cap and trade", the better.
Well I think 10 years is too short for them to be proved right or wrong...
It is. But it's pretty suspicious-looking, to say the least. If the error is all in one direction, I have a hard time believing the models are valid.
Yeah, but resources aren't dwindling.