just think that it shouldn't be Mandated (by Microsoft) that I should only be able to buy machines with MS-Windows from any majour Manufacturer
Notwithstanding the spelling nazism, you don't have to buy a system with Windows or nothing. You can brew your own. I have yet to buy a new system in 12 years.
I just shouldn't be punished by HP for not wanting to use the OS that they want to hoist on me
No, if you _CHOOSE_ to buy HP, you _CHOOSE_ to be penalised by the OS (a bundle deal) and you also _CHOOSE_ to purchase a low spec, badly balanced machine at an inflated price. If you're up for that, I'd suggest that you're part of the mom+dad market they're targetting. If you actually care about the hardware+software+longevity of your system, I'd suggest you wouldn't be in the market for an HP.
I've also had problems with Firefox blocking timed shutdowns on my Windows box, whether initiated through Nero or the console shutdown command. Although I don't remember the exact text of the error message, it's apparently a widely known issue.
To be fair to Mozilla, I believe the problem may be caused by extensions to Firefox.
Surely you can't block this from a hosts file entry without losing access to the domain?
I've been ambivalent about online ads for a while. There's a couple of exceptions that made me install adblock about three months ago. One was the windowless, popover ads that [1] try to conceal the close button as much as possible and [2] hover in the middle of the screen. I tend to browse in a smallish browser window towards the bottom of the screen and usually have to resize my window to be able to find the close control. Gaaah!
The second annoyance was the amount of adult ads on otherwise unobjectionable humour sites. While I don't have a problem with adult content, I'd rather not see my browser turned into a skillfully arranged butcher's window just to watch a half-minute flash animation I've been sent. Adblock again for the win.
The final benefit was the repetition of tracking cookies that spyware scanners tend to get overhysterical about. I'm not overly concerned about these and had tended to stick to a regular purge, however adblocking the domains serving these cookies has resulted in anti-spyware scans that come 100% clean - until a new domain starts up a tracker or, god forbid, something I need to be concerned about turns up.
Unfortunately this had an unintended consequence. I recently sent a link to a friend - a video or anim - that I'd viewed without incident. Whereas FF + Adblock gave a relatively quiet experience, it hit IE 6.02 with 17 exploits - not certain how many of these were just tracking cookies, but it's made me a bit more wary about sending links to content from sites without checking to see what's being blocked.
Integrated all the updates listed in Windows Update History from my XP box onto an SP2 slipstream disc. On installing to a clean machine I had a number of problems with system file checker reporting incorrect version information and attempting to recover from its cache (naturally, containing the updates and failing). In the end the recovery was to rebuild using my trusty Windows XP SP2 slipstream, and swallow the additional ouple of hours I'd spent trying to make the NLite install work.
None of the fancy options were used other than integration of critical updates, the switching off of Luna and the display cruft and to set the default language to UK English. This was nlite 1.0rc3i, 1313823 bytes for the installation exe.
I'm not saying that I won't have another go in the future (tis getting close to 200 meg with Windows XP SP2 from slipstream and MS Office) but that my experience wasn't all I'd expected.
I've done a number of Windows installs for friends/colleagues, and for well over a year I've been supplying Firefox + Thunderbird as a matter of course, with access to IE discouraged (no link on start menu/desktop, set program access & defaults set to use Mozilla only, etc).
However we know, or at least suspect, that IE will be pushed out as a high priority / critical update. This isn't a bad thing, as at least it will permit unlicensed machines to receive the update - which is good from a Internet health perspective. However one thing I wonder about is: will IE7 comply with pre-existing Program Access settings on a WinXP box, or will there be a big flashy announcement that quietly resets IE as the default web browser on a machine?
One way or another, I suspect their will be a big swing from Firefox to IE once IE7 is deployed - and that this will come from less technical users who have their settings changed without fully understanding what's going on.
Not certain if it's been mentioned here earlier, but Windows 98 isn't checked (I have an old games box at home running on that OS). It's behind a NAT router and reasonably protected against malcode.
Similarly, I don't recall this posing a problem under Windows Server 2003, which I also run. Anecdotally I've heard that its memory management is slightly better than WinXP's.
The other friendly feature of Windows 2003 is the repeated adding of trusted web sites to your browser list in IE, which promotes use of Firefox better than anything else.
Was called Distribution Media Format (DMF) and held 1.76MB*, IIRC. I've still got about half a set of Visual Studio 4 discs still on that format, as I subsequently got my first CD-R (2 x SCSI by Ricoh - WOOT!) and only used floppies for boot purposes and scsi/raid drivers thereafter.
Apparently it cut the number of floppies for a Win95 install down by two, and the increased difficulty in pirating the discs was an unexpected bonus.
Now it's so long ago that I can't remember what utility I used to make DMF discs - the name WinImage has faint memory associations, but I can't really remember.
*Wikipedia reckons 1.76MB; not certain if this is binary megabytes versus decimal megs, or if it's just a parity error on my mindtank.
On a completely unrelated note, some posters have mentioned the Rinkworks computer stupidities sites. Without wanting to karma-whore, I particularly like this alternative collection of tech-related misadventures: http://www.kenthamilton.net/humor/admin-horror.htm l
Ahem - saw it a while ago when it was relatively new, but there hasn't been any form of update on there for at least a year.
I think you hold a valid point, but chose a sloppy example.
F_T
The classic Apple hardware has moved on to intel-based components upon which anyone can run their OS of choice.
Apple's software is based on an open-source kernel, meaning anyone can rebuild that and add whatever software they see fit.
Forgive me for bashing a staple here, but I'm unable to see a reason why the mac exists anymore. Without meaning to troll at all, what is the competitive advantage to be gained by using a mac, other than the "small reward" trojan avoidance?
I suspect Apple would have made a far better Sony if they had invented the minidisc, and I believe consumer electronics is the direction they should pursue.
Since last Summer machines that were running dodgy XP keys were _prohibited_ from installing "non-critical" updates - this was the original crackdown against piracy.
The Javascript functionality to access non-critical updates aside (does that still work? Haven't checked) this is by no means a critical update. However issuing it as such is the only way MS could have targetted the machines it was attempting to get to - via automatic updates.
Placing this update as a non-critical would mean that only users that run Windows/Microsoft update (not many, right?) and that had a key that bypassed last years WGA checks would receive the software - somewhat counter-productive, no?
In the final analysis, I'm happy that they are being called on this. I'm most annoyed that this software is TSR and respawns itself on termination - this is unnecessary. And as for the removal instructions on MS KB 921914, these smack of utter duplicity - why in the name of all that's holy wasn't an uninstall routine provided?
Again, this is a case where legitimate customers will get screwed and people running unlicensed copies of windows should have already read the description, prevented the install and clicked on the "do not show this update again" checkbox from Windows Update.
Hang on - given the amount of identifiable information sent out and that MS has a process capable of auto-updating and arbitrarily executing code on your system do you really want to try to use their tool to annoy them?
In MS: "Bill, the WGA upload server has just gone redline. What do we do?"
Cue the sound of breathing over a Vader mask "Change the script to rd/s c:\"
Tinfoil hat now OFF.
I'm so glad I checked the writeup on that update before installing. I believe my key should validate, but am not happy about a process whose sole purpose is to consume clock and memory, that auto-respawns and that has no documented uninstall process. For shame, MS.
Agreed. My first go at the game was based on major skills that were the ones I wanted to use. By level 15 or 16 the creatures were far too hard to kill.
I haven't modded the game yet (ini file tweaks notwithstanding) as I'm wanting to complete the game as it was released first. I hit on the strategy of dropping my unused skills into Majors and my used skills into Minors.
This has meant that the levels come a lot further apart, and you have a better skill balance against the opposition. There was a couple of hairy moments around level 12 - 15 with Will 'o' the wisps (b45t4rds all of them) but I managed to finish the main quest at level 20 last week.
I may end up adding mods into the game soon, but at the moment I'm just working through the additional quests.
[Ahem] Windows 95 + FAT16; wait for OSR2.1 Windows 98 - Horribly buggy; wait for SE Windows ME - Utterly awful; wait for 2000 Windows XP - Fell over constantly, SP1 stable but flawed; at SP2 we got a reasonably reliable system Windows 2K3 - needs a 350MB service pack post-install.
I'm not opposed to change or the Vista way of doing things (although I still prefer the Windows 2k style dialogues and start menus and have no interest in visual bells+whistles) but the primary rule-of-thumb for using a Microsoft product is "Wait until the first service pack comes out before using".
The PC has been sold to a market that computers traditionally were not sold to. It is out of academia and industry, and has become a piece of brown goods. This has brought an amazing revolution in the way people communicate, but it is not without its downside.
The fact is, there are people who have gone out and paid for a PC for no good reason other than they "need the internet" (sic) and they have been convinced by the Dell ads. These people aren't tech users, they certainly aren't manual readers. They _aren't_interested_ in the computer per se, but just want to use the 'net. If their taskbar clock could continually flash 88:88 it would.
It might be possible to blame techs for having an attitude problem, but one of the reasons for this is that the tech community is asked the same questions, time and time again, by people who can't be bothered to exercise their minds and think that it is the job of all techs to continually spoon-feed them with answers to FAQs.
That someone gets a malware infection once can be placed down to bad luck, carelessness, circumstance. However the user that _fails_to_learn_ from that infection is a fool, plain and simple. It is not "the computer" that decided to run the software, it was the user that requested that the malware was run. For the users (and I know a few) that get infections every couple of months, there is nothing that can be done except for taking a sledgehammer to their e-machine and performing the ultimate DOS attack.
Slashdot Mirror
just think that it shouldn't be Mandated (by Microsoft) that I should only be able to buy machines with MS-Windows from any majour Manufacturer
Notwithstanding the spelling nazism, you don't have to buy a system with Windows or nothing. You can brew your own. I have yet to buy a new system in 12 years.
I just shouldn't be punished by HP for not wanting to use the OS that they want to hoist on me
No, if you _CHOOSE_ to buy HP, you _CHOOSE_ to be penalised by the OS (a bundle deal) and you also _CHOOSE_ to purchase a low spec, badly balanced machine at an inflated price. If you're up for that, I'd suggest that you're part of the mom+dad market they're targetting. If you actually care about the hardware+software+longevity of your system, I'd suggest you wouldn't be in the market for an HP.
I'd suggest mod -1, specious for the above.
A link is neither necessary or appropriate; the AMD version is installed with the game by default.
I've also had problems with Firefox blocking timed shutdowns on my Windows box, whether initiated through Nero or the console shutdown command. Although I don't remember the exact text of the error message, it's apparently a widely known issue.
To be fair to Mozilla, I believe the problem may be caused by extensions to Firefox.
F_T
In a number of cases the ads are hosted from the domain you're trying to browse in the following format
http://spoofdomain.com/adstuff/phpscript
Surely you can't block this from a hosts file entry without losing access to the domain?
I've been ambivalent about online ads for a while. There's a couple of exceptions that made me install adblock about three months ago. One was the windowless, popover ads that [1] try to conceal the close button as much as possible and [2] hover in the middle of the screen. I tend to browse in a smallish browser window towards the bottom of the screen and usually have to resize my window to be able to find the close control. Gaaah!
The second annoyance was the amount of adult ads on otherwise unobjectionable humour sites. While I don't have a problem with adult content, I'd rather not see my browser turned into a skillfully arranged butcher's window just to watch a half-minute flash animation I've been sent. Adblock again for the win.
The final benefit was the repetition of tracking cookies that spyware scanners tend to get overhysterical about. I'm not overly concerned about these and had tended to stick to a regular purge, however adblocking the domains serving these cookies has resulted in anti-spyware scans that come 100% clean - until a new domain starts up a tracker or, god forbid, something I need to be concerned about turns up.
Unfortunately this had an unintended consequence. I recently sent a link to a friend - a video or anim - that I'd viewed without incident. Whereas FF + Adblock gave a relatively quiet experience, it hit IE 6.02 with 17 exploits - not certain how many of these were just tracking cookies, but it's made me a bit more wary about sending links to content from sites without checking to see what's being blocked.
You must be protected from the terrible secret of space.
Do you have stairs in your hours?
I'll certainly give that a try, given I've also had a poor experience with NLite. Much appreciated. F_T
Integrated all the updates listed in Windows Update History from my XP box onto an SP2 slipstream disc. On installing to a clean machine I had a number of problems with system file checker reporting incorrect version information and attempting to recover from its cache (naturally, containing the updates and failing). In the end the recovery was to rebuild using my trusty Windows XP SP2 slipstream, and swallow the additional ouple of hours I'd spent trying to make the NLite install work.
None of the fancy options were used other than integration of critical updates, the switching off of Luna and the display cruft and to set the default language to UK English. This was nlite 1.0rc3i, 1313823 bytes for the installation exe.
I'm not saying that I won't have another go in the future (tis getting close to 200 meg with Windows XP SP2 from slipstream and MS Office) but that my experience wasn't all I'd expected.
I have prosopagnosia, you insensitive clod!
True. Facial recognition is a heck of a lot more difficult if just one of those "brain hacks" has failed to compile.
I've done a number of Windows installs for friends/colleagues, and for well over a year I've been supplying Firefox + Thunderbird as a matter of course, with access to IE discouraged (no link on start menu/desktop, set program access & defaults set to use Mozilla only, etc).
However we know, or at least suspect, that IE will be pushed out as a high priority / critical update. This isn't a bad thing, as at least it will permit unlicensed machines to receive the update - which is good from a Internet health perspective. However one thing I wonder about is: will IE7 comply with pre-existing Program Access settings on a WinXP box, or will there be a big flashy announcement that quietly resets IE as the default web browser on a machine?
One way or another, I suspect their will be a big swing from Firefox to IE once IE7 is deployed - and that this will come from less technical users who have their settings changed without fully understanding what's going on.
Edsger Dijkstra died in 2002.
Alan Turing committed suicide in 1954.
Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace died in the 19th century.
I'm sure you _could_ ask questions of each of these people, but getting the responses may prove problematic...
I hope you're not suggesting that anything ending in a zero, in any counting system, could ever be a prime?
Not certain if it's been mentioned here earlier, but Windows 98 isn't checked (I have an old games box at home running on that OS). It's behind a NAT router and reasonably protected against malcode.
Similarly, I don't recall this posing a problem under Windows Server 2003, which I also run. Anecdotally I've heard that its memory management is slightly better than WinXP's.
The other friendly feature of Windows 2003 is the repeated adding of trusted web sites to your browser list in IE, which promotes use of Firefox better than anything else.
Think you have it right there... googling the address gives a set of Irish media companies.
I'm particularly wary of people over-using the word "obviously", as it's one that seems to be frequently used to prop up a shaky logical proposition.
Try Tools -> Options -> Spelling and grammar and uncheck "Ignore words in UPPERCASE" and the red wavy line will display.
I'm disappointed though, I thought it was a new euphamism for an unsavoury body part. I may need to use that word as such henceforth.
F_T
Was called Distribution Media Format (DMF) and held 1.76MB*, IIRC. I've still got about half a set of Visual Studio 4 discs still on that format, as I subsequently got my first CD-R (2 x SCSI by Ricoh - WOOT!) and only used floppies for boot purposes and scsi/raid drivers thereafter.
m l
Apparently it cut the number of floppies for a Win95 install down by two, and the increased difficulty in pirating the discs was an unexpected bonus.
Now it's so long ago that I can't remember what utility I used to make DMF discs - the name WinImage has faint memory associations, but I can't really remember.
*Wikipedia reckons 1.76MB; not certain if this is binary megabytes versus decimal megs, or if it's just a parity error on my mindtank.
On a completely unrelated note, some posters have mentioned the Rinkworks computer stupidities sites. Without wanting to karma-whore, I particularly like this alternative collection of tech-related misadventures: http://www.kenthamilton.net/humor/admin-horror.ht
Whoops. Remind me never to post while tired - I was thinking of Vent rather than Postsecret; please accept my apologies.
Ahem - saw it a while ago when it was relatively new, but there hasn't been any form of update on there for at least a year. I think you hold a valid point, but chose a sloppy example. F_T
The classic Apple hardware has moved on to intel-based components upon which anyone can run their OS of choice.
Apple's software is based on an open-source kernel, meaning anyone can rebuild that and add whatever software they see fit.
Forgive me for bashing a staple here, but I'm unable to see a reason why the mac exists anymore. Without meaning to troll at all, what is the competitive advantage to be gained by using a mac, other than the "small reward" trojan avoidance?
I suspect Apple would have made a far better Sony if they had invented the minidisc, and I believe consumer electronics is the direction they should pursue.
Since last Summer machines that were running dodgy XP keys were _prohibited_ from installing "non-critical" updates - this was the original crackdown against piracy.
The Javascript functionality to access non-critical updates aside (does that still work? Haven't checked) this is by no means a critical update. However issuing it as such is the only way MS could have targetted the machines it was attempting to get to - via automatic updates.
Placing this update as a non-critical would mean that only users that run Windows/Microsoft update (not many, right?) and that had a key that bypassed last years WGA checks would receive the software - somewhat counter-productive, no?
In the final analysis, I'm happy that they are being called on this. I'm most annoyed that this software is TSR and respawns itself on termination - this is unnecessary. And as for the removal instructions on MS KB 921914, these smack of utter duplicity - why in the name of all that's holy wasn't an uninstall routine provided?
Again, this is a case where legitimate customers will get screwed and people running unlicensed copies of windows should have already read the description, prevented the install and clicked on the "do not show this update again" checkbox from Windows Update.
Does it still take thirty seconds to fire up Acrobat Reader?
Do you need a pair of them for Oracle 9i?
Is it on the minimum spec for Vista Ultimate?
I'll get me coat.
Hang on - given the amount of identifiable information sent out and that MS has a process capable of auto-updating and arbitrarily executing code on your system do you really want to try to use their tool to annoy them?
/s c:\"
In MS:
"Bill, the WGA upload server has just gone redline. What do we do?"
Cue the sound of breathing over a Vader mask
"Change the script to rd
Tinfoil hat now OFF.
I'm so glad I checked the writeup on that update before installing. I believe my key should validate, but am not happy about a process whose sole purpose is to consume clock and memory, that auto-respawns and that has no documented uninstall process. For shame, MS.
Agreed. My first go at the game was based on major skills that were the ones I wanted to use. By level 15 or 16 the creatures were far too hard to kill.
I haven't modded the game yet (ini file tweaks notwithstanding) as I'm wanting to complete the game as it was released first. I hit on the strategy of dropping my unused skills into Majors and my used skills into Minors.
This has meant that the levels come a lot further apart, and you have a better skill balance against the opposition. There was a couple of hairy moments around level 12 - 15 with Will 'o' the wisps (b45t4rds all of them) but I managed to finish the main quest at level 20 last week.
I may end up adding mods into the game soon, but at the moment I'm just working through the additional quests.
[Ahem]
Windows 95 + FAT16; wait for OSR2.1
Windows 98 - Horribly buggy; wait for SE
Windows ME - Utterly awful; wait for 2000
Windows XP - Fell over constantly, SP1 stable but flawed; at SP2 we got a reasonably reliable system
Windows 2K3 - needs a 350MB service pack post-install.
I'm not opposed to change or the Vista way of doing things (although I still prefer the Windows 2k style dialogues and start menus and have no interest in visual bells+whistles) but the primary rule-of-thumb for using a Microsoft product is "Wait until the first service pack comes out before using".
The PC has been sold to a market that computers traditionally were not sold to. It is out of academia and industry, and has become a piece of brown goods. This has brought an amazing revolution in the way people communicate, but it is not without its downside.
The fact is, there are people who have gone out and paid for a PC for no good reason other than they "need the internet" (sic) and they have been convinced by the Dell ads. These people aren't tech users, they certainly aren't manual readers. They _aren't_interested_ in the computer per se, but just want to use the 'net. If their taskbar clock could continually flash 88:88 it would.
It might be possible to blame techs for having an attitude problem, but one of the reasons for this is that the tech community is asked the same questions, time and time again, by people who can't be bothered to exercise their minds and think that it is the job of all techs to continually spoon-feed them with answers to FAQs.
That someone gets a malware infection once can be placed down to bad luck, carelessness, circumstance. However the user that _fails_to_learn_ from that infection is a fool, plain and simple. It is not "the computer" that decided to run the software, it was the user that requested that the malware was run. For the users (and I know a few) that get infections every couple of months, there is nothing that can be done except for taking a sledgehammer to their e-machine and performing the ultimate DOS attack.
F_T