Posts by Mage 9878 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Nov 2007
The application also includes light and dark themes, customizable accent colours and an improved high-contrast mode.
Does that mean like broken GUI Viber (coded using QT), Chromium and Firefox etc, it ignores the system?
We don't all run Win10/11 or Mac OS. Some of us have sane GUI Linux Desktops.
I hate flat UI design. It's absolutely stupid.
Otherwise the new version seems good.
The three laws were nothing to do with Robotics (Asimov added a 4th later to justify explicitly mixing Robots & Foundation** threads after 1970s).
He wanted to write mysteries, but in an SF setting, so invented the fictional idea that the positrionic* brains inherently needed them to work at all. So the early Robot stories are the SF equivalent of a "locked room paradox". They can't do this, so why is it doing it?
In the 1980s he ret-conned the Foundation** stories to have human destiny controlled by robots, not Hari Seldon after all.
He also wrote Chemistry text books and mystery short stories.
[* He also knew about Positrons and simply liked the name!]
[** 1942–1950, and subsequently in three novels in 1951–1953, for nearly thirty years the series was widely known as The Foundation Trilogy: Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), and Second Foundation (1953). The publisher persuaded him to return to SF and for many the fat 1980s sequels to Foundation are inferior I think making the robot from "The Caves of Steel" control human destiny to man6y would seem like breaking the Zeroth law.]
I have all email provider spam filters off and now don't use gmail.
The providers have too many false positives. I use local clients, no web mail and remote content is blocked. Spam selling stuff seems to have really dropped off and been replaced by malicious emails pretending to be someone else to steal credentials. I check the actual real URL
I also ignore "legitimate" emails using 3rd party services for after purchase surveys.
I didn't find it hard to add Mate desktop and main favourite desktop programs I use on Linux Mint.
I don't care about power management, other than screen dimming to warn me I'm on battery. Been turning it off for 25 years so as to have reliability. I don't use suspend either. Shut down & reboot are fast enough on *inx (and on older Windows. Win10 is unreal!).
Textpad?
I switched to Notepad++ on XP very long ago, maybe 15+ years ago. Far better. I even ran it on WINE on Linux Mint for a while from 2016 till I discovered KATE (Mint with Mate Desktop).
I was using many programs on XP & Win7 that were also on Linux before final switch in 2017 (not an exhaustive list)::
Filezilla
Thunderbird
Open Office then Libre Office
Apache, MySQL, PHP etc
Firefox
PuTTY
wget
VLC
The GIMP
Java
Calibre
Ghostscript (PDF and Postscript viewing / export)
Eagle (I've moved to KiCAD, but do have Win Eagle on WINE & Linux Eagle)
Inkscape (I earlier used DesignWorks on Win3.x & XP in preference to Corel Draw).
What's needed is native ports to Linux of leading Windows software for small & larger business of:
Sage & other Accounts.
Payroll
Stock control
Maybe Visio, which MS bought in and has done little to.
Some Enterprise level programs.
Maybe in all less than 10 programs!
Not 2nd rate MS applications for movie editing or presentations.
There are only a few niche things in MS Office that some businesses need. Access is junk compared even to MS SQL. Powerpoint is inferior to many packaged that used to be on Win 3.x! No-one needs it. VBA in MS Office is madness.
Adobe PDF tools are not needed.
Stupid banking, 2FA and government services that are not optional and don't work on a web page.
They need to be only installed from Apple or Google store.
They won't even install on older still supported iOS or Android versions.
Many won't install on a tablet, or a phone, with no SIM /eSIM that has no working phone number.
Good luck finding USB/Thunderbolt adaptors for
Satellite with gotoXY motor
Traditional wired SCSI
Firewire
Floppy for arbitrary filesystems. USB floppy drives are very limited.
GPIO cards
GPIB for old but expensive to replace test gear.
Sometimes serial or parallel interfaced devices need a real I/O port on bus and not via USB.
I remember around 2006 or 2007 the PCMCIA slot was ditched on laptops, but stupidly the the replacement had also USB as well as some form of PCI. Almost nothing was migrated to the the new card format.so it was soon abandoned for USB only. The USB to PCMCIA adaptor only supported storage devices.
Also ethernet should be built in. I resent having more space used in the bag for adaptors than the laptop!
I've no objection to super slim laptops for people that only want WiFi, wireless mouse and one extra screen via USB-C DP Alt mode. Having no separate power port is too limiting. Most have too few USB ports now and need a USB 3.0 hub. Some have ports where the power can't be disabled and when off the battery is run flat by the HDMI or ethenet adaptor.
We need choice. Fatter laptops for engineers etc with HDMI, ethernet, three real audio ports (out, stereo in, and mic/headset switchable), a real parallel and serial port. Maybe even bring back PCMCIA.
We need PC cases & MoBos with PCI and PCIe slots, IDE, floppy and SATA ports.
Misleading to the point of lying.
Even if your are in the USA (or especially?) you are better off avoiding Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Oracle and Palantir. Maybe US aircraft makers and some USA chip makers too. Avoid them because even without the fact that even overseas subsidiaries are not just under USA Government control, but the too powerful unfettered President, many of the USA big tech companies have no morality or respect for law. Fines are regarded as and operating cost.
Yes, hence reversing 48 in 1948. It was about Authoritarianism in 1948.
Animal Farm was more directly about USSR version of Communism perverting socialism. The behaviour of Soviet backed groups in the Spanish Civil War caused a big shift in his outlook.
I prefer Mate, but I have XFCE, IceWm and Cinnamon also installed om most Mint. I also have Mate on the Distro on the RPi4b, which doesn't have Mint.
I use a very non-standard theme on Mate and screen sizes from a less than HD 11″ to a pair of 27″ 4K HDR with an optional 3rd HD o/p for a DVB-T modulator.
Applications which us QT badly (Viber) or do their own theme ignoring the system GUI entirely are annoying (Disks rather than GParted, or Mozilla anything, or any Web browser). There are a lot of arrogant idiots when it comes to GUIs.
BC, BD, BF = European (small signal, power and RF).
2N = USA
2S = Japan. Second letter, A, B.,C etc for kind of transistor
Diodes
BA = European
1N = USA
1S = Japan
Europe: A= Germanium, B = Silicon
Japan/USA : 1= diodes, 2 = Transiistors and 3 = dual gate
The BC10x parts were metal TO18. There are identical parts current in TO92 (plastic) and SOT (SMD), but typically BC3xx numbers.
Nuvistors were and are very expensive, though some work to UHF. Only used domestically in USA VHF/UHF mains equipment. The Russian Rod Pentodes were military use and an older design, larger but more efficient, they are good to VHF. Only one non-military set, a forestry radio used Rod pentodes, Used in Mig, Sputnik and other satellites and better than Germanium transistors except for audio power stages. Also 6V to 48V input HT power supplies used Germanium audio power transitors in some western 1950s valve car radios and in Russian Rod Pentode based gear.
The acorn valves were from late 1930s VHF and quickly obsolete in WWII as they were too difficult to make.
Ukraine has vast stocks of Russian Rod Pentode valves. Produced from early 1950s up till 1991. The 1j24b is cheap in bulk and very long life on a 1.2V filament supply. About 48V HT would work. Only 11mA per filament. Can be wired as triodes or pentodes. The 1N60 came out in 1946 and the modern version is still made and cheap. Use it instead of any diode valves, though a Rod Pentode can do that too.
Not for years. Trading on past reputation. Maybe the professional products are good.
Philips Audio & TV was split and now just labels on two Asian companies. Now they really only do lighting and grooming. Like before 1928. Semiconductors spun off.
Sony was once a big innovator 1956 to maybe 2006.
TCL are now better than Sony.
TCL have quite a few brands and maybe have always made Alcatel phones.
Sony now has little of interest other than the Playstation for years. They messed up on many technologies with stupid restrictions due to becoming a media company. Last Sony TV I had died in 3 months and insisted on encrypting entire HDD plugged in (only FTA). Unlike a €45 setbox which simply records TS files as-is on any FAT32 storage.
They crippled minidisc players, CD root "malware", proprietary memory cards, killed Linux on one of the Playstations.
So how big team of people does she manage?
No-one needs Outlook for email, that's only needed for corporate meetings scheduling and Exchange.
No-one needs One note.
Hardly anyone needs Word, unless they are sharing for edit the same doc with co-workers.
There are a few niche things Excel does that LO Calc doesn't have. Charts/graph creation & CSV import is better on LO Calc
All earlier versions of MS stuff with no AI are better, and even on Office 2002 and later the Office Assistant was an option install for Custom.
I don't care about the MS store, only running older Windows programs where there is no Linux alternative. Many of these don't work on ANY 64 bit Windows and many will never have updates, in some cases because the author is dead.
I always installed a 32 bit Wine first as I have no 64 bit Windows programs except what came with Windows 10. I have VMs for XP, Win7 & Win10, but Virtual box dropped Direct 3D on XP and the VM overhead is high compared to WINE. My 11" Linux "laptop" hasn't enough RAM for VMs and seems unwilling to run even an XP VM (which can run in much less RAM than Win7 & later). No Guest Utils for Win98.
So WINE is handy for a handful of old programs. I did get an Office 2003 & 2007 cheap to try on WINE, but for my needs even the last OO that ran on Wiin98 is better and current LO Office is fine. The VM XP is used occasionally, and Win7 VM only for iTunes (not since iPhone 6 given away) and an LED badge.
No-one should need this. All the so called AI stuff should be off by default (as should many things such as uPNP, telemetry, news, weather etc) with a single control panel for settings with a decent UI.
Windows settings and and GUI has gone downhill since Windows 2000. The System management console (XP and later?) has never worked properly. Win 10 settings are an abomination. I have a real firewall. Why does it ignore turning off notifications for disabling it and other stuff? Nag Nag Nag.
Windows NT 3.x was nothing like Window 3.x except in appearance.
Windows CE.
Windows Phone Edition
Unrelated versions to each other of Windows Embedded.
Windows on ARM originally didn't run Windows 86 programs.
Windows Millennium Edition (really a broken Windows 9x) is a completely different thing to Windows 2000 (Really NT 5.0)
Original Windows XP 64 bit was for Itanium. DIdn't run on x86-64 CPUs. Quite short lived,
All the stupid versions of Windows for desktop, when there should only be a Workstation and a Server edition. Don't buy a "Home" edition of anything by MS. Professional editions of MS Office have stuff no-one professional should use (MS Access and MS Powerpoint).
Windows 9x should only have been packaged with games console hardware, never sold to businesses. It killed the Pentium Pro.
Explorer as a desktop shell, a file Manager and also Internet Explorer. Stupid naming overload. Only the filemanager should have been called Explorer. Also on Win9x the IE6.0 integrates to File Explorer and "breaks" delete. Solution is to roll back to IE 5.5.
Intel naming went mad with Pentium & Celeron & Atom. Or i3, i5, i7 etc.
DELL repeating model names for unrelated models and then search is unable to return the stuff for older ones, such as Inspirion 7500
Lenovo and Samsung model names.
All copying the stupidity of car makers. See Escort, Cortina (Ford) or Golf, Polo (VW).
Everything should do this by default.
Some programs do and some don't on my Mate Desktop (Mint) which looks a bit Win2K to Server 2003 style.
Programs that ignore the system and do their own (usually stupid) style of scrollbars, tabs, checkboxes, menu etc are REALLY Annoying, like current Thunderbird, Firefox, "Disks" and Viber.
I have bars on three sides that autohide:
Top is menu, terminal, kill, System info/Windows list
Bottom is workspaces, shutdown, lock, logout, taskbar icons, time-date etc.
Left is "quick launch" of Local programs
Right isn't autohide, so as to not mess up a 2nd screen (because hide stupidly moves the places bar rather than collapsing it) and is quick launch of Remote stuff,, such as email, browsers, packages, filezilla, PuTTY, connect to Server etc.
You can't make your OS/Desktop be fully "spatial". Some programs are ill behaved.
WFW311 was easier to use than Win10. OK, no start menu or pinned icons and no right click context menu. Win32s even runs some 32 bit Windows programs. They deliberately added some APIs on Win95 for Office 95 to stop people running Office 95 on WFW/Win 3.1x. It made it fail on NT 3.5, so we got a free upgrade to NT 3.51. Not sure if everyone did. There was an Explorer Shell preview for NT 3.51 and you could run NT 32 bit FileManager on NT4.0 instead of using Explorer Shell File Explorer, which still is maddening.
It's MS destroying windows is the only thing. Then the companies that produce windows only business software doing Linux versions. Linux devs & promoters can't do anything, In reality Linux has been fine to replace Windows for 10 to 15 years. The issue is companies that develop Windows only programs for businesses, not anything about Linux, which has been better than Vista, Win 7, Win8, win 10 or 11, maybe since Vista.
A bit like Scottish Independence. That depends more on Westminster really annoying people in Scotland, not anything any politician in Scotland can do.
Capacitive touch had existed in the late 1980s. Data was expensive so smart phones (since 1998) were for business use. They deliberately chose stylus and resistive to get higher resolution so that signatures and notes would work. A tile GUI was trivial.
Apple iPhone succeeded due to cheap contract data tarriff and phone bundled together and for browsing, not information creation. Hence no copy/paste originally. I and others back then (from 2000 for me) paid per second connect time or per Mbyte data used. But the company paid. Hence it was a success for the public.
Especially true with the stupid UK scheme which means everyone "over age" loses privacy.
Privacy for everyone is the loss of most of these schemes. The Site owner, government and criminals will all get the personal info. A rise in impersonations, arrests and phising.
