Posts by Gerlad Dreisewerd 38 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Oct 2008
Windoze refused to update my previous computer from 7 to 10; they didn't like nvidia onboard graphics. Now they refuse to update my three year old computer to 11; wrong processor you know. More recently Microsoft announced that they are taking over printer drivers; I've already had a taste of how THAT is going to work. If there's a carrot in here I don't see it.
I can only speak to my recent experience with Microsoft taking over the printer drivers for my HP 3830 printer. A Microsoft update took over the printer drivers for my up until that point reliable printer. I was never able to run my 3830 on Windows 10 again. On the other hand, it was quite easy to install my 3830 printer onto my Linux laptop. I could print and scan there.
After a few months using my Linux laptop as a printer server, I decided I needed to upgrade my printer. My new Epson runs a whole lot better than my admittedly aging 3830. This sucks for HP; I won't be buying printer cartridges for that printer anymore.
So now the Microsoft collective is taking over my Epson printer? Microsoft should remember that they need me as a customer. The converse is not necessarily true.
The answer is obvious. The government wants to monitor communications. So we give it to them. Lots of communications. Use AI to fill the monitoring channels with fiction and fantasy. Government has no imagination or creativity. Have you read Bruce Sterling's "Hacker Crackdown"? Take a look at the FIB attempting to decipher Peter Jackson Games. What a hoot.
Is when I go Microsoft free. Things is the third time in a decade that good old Microslob has refused to upgrade my desktop ostensibly due to some sort of claimed hardware deficiency. Enough.
I'm switching my Win 10 laptop to Linux Mint and figuring out how to run my Epson printer using Linux. By November 2025, I can wipe my desktop and install Linux.
As for Microslob, I believe the correct acronym is FOAD.
I ended up replacing my desktop machine because Micr$oft didn't like on-board video and refused to update my machine to 10. Now M$ doesn't want to upgrade the new computer to 11 because it doesn't like the processor. I'm no longer using the app I was using on 7. Maybe it's time to make a clean break and switch to Linux.
Oh they're quite intelligently pushing all their software to the Microsoft store where they hope to charge for previously free software.
Meanwhile intelligent computer users are learning Linux. M$ screwed up the drivers on my old HP 3830. The printer & scanner worked fine on Linux butI needed a printer on the M$ machine.
Google Maps does well enough in urban areas but using Google Maps in a rural setting is a real adventure. I joke about Maps using cow paths and deer trails but there are some locals one trusts Maps only if feeling suicidal. You really need to know where you are going and how to get there which obviate the functionality of Maps in the first place.
The business of Big Tech is data mining. Slurping your data to be bundled and sold to whoever has the cash. Data is only valuable so long as the buyer has some confidence that the data is at least 90% good. What is the value of data when it's only 50% good or 25% good? Is it worth a hacker's effort to hack into a site when 90% of the usernames & passwords are fictitious and can be used to track down the original hacker's? What use is location data when the phone is reporting that it's in Hell, Michigan USA? Will the targeted ad industry start sending ads for burn treatments, fire extinguishers & fire resistant clothing? Create accounts for dead relatives. Maybe they'll get ads for lawn care services. The idea is to create so much bogus data that it becomes difficult if not impossible for an outsider to discern what is real and what is garbage.
Maybe it's time to decarbonize government by reducing the size of government and reducing the amount of new regulations they're allowed to excrete annually. Maybe we need a requirement that two existing regulations must be voided to impose a new one.
As a teenager I built a Knight Kit shortwave receiver and discovered news reports from around the world. The one thing that impressed me was that the same news story would be reported from around the world in very different fashions. One soon learned to sort out propaganda from the actual story by locating where the event was happening and listening to their reporting. The modern Internet is no different. There is a cacophony of voices on anything and everything. One has to learn to apply the propaganda filter to whatever is found on the the Internet.
The PCR test has been problematic from the first. The test works by growing any organisms found on the sample swab. When set to a high number of replication cycles the test found high numbers of COVID-19 cases in asymptomatic people. Kary Mullis, the inventor of the PCR process, said the test was unsuitable for detecting COVID-19. Remember when Tanzania tried their COVID test kits on a goat and piece of fruit and the tests came back positive? Remember the stories where medical personnel submitted unused test swabs that then tested positive? Yet this didn't prevent the medical bureaucracies from seizing on the PCR test and identifying asymptomatic carriers far and wide. Here in the states, they are quietly turning down the number of replication cycles when testing vaccinated people then proclaiming the vaccines are working. I grew up on a farm and know that smell.
The search engines are already having issues. Many relevant bits of information are simply disappearing from the Internet. One of my favorites was a series of articles by a business consultant. His series was titled Big Organizations That Act Like Idiots (BOTALI). It's unclear if these have disappeared due to lack of interest or that they don't fit someone's narrative. I can name several other such articles and websites that have simply disappeared. Let me make this clear; knowledge may become outdated but it should never disappear.
In past times, auto makers often had two and even three companies supplying the same assembly. One hiccups. The other can pick up the slack. Unfortunately this means the automaker buys a set of tooling for each supplier. It's much cheaper to select a single supplier, often called putting all your eggs in one basket. This works until it doesn't.
If they're looking for evidence of planning the capital invasion on Parler they are certainly looking on the wrong site unless someone slipped something in at the last minute. Parler was a rather stuffy version of the book of faces. There were a number of media figures but not much for the average subscriber. It wouldn't surprise me to find that Parler was ban-bait for big tech. Just enough to get banned by wokerati. Now the lawyers appear to bayonet the survivors. I expect the commercials to soon appear, "Were you censoredby Amazon? You may be eligible for compensation."
!0 refused to update my desktop because it had, gasp, on-board video. It promised to update the netbook then never got around to it. One of my laptops made the transition from 8 to 10. One of the first things I saw on 10 was that damnable Candy Crush Saga. I installed Linux on the netbook and I'm still wondering why I didn't do the same for the laptop.
A friend running a startup machine shop ran into this as well. Got a CNC on a bargain but it required an obsolete CAD program to run. The CNC manufacturer could care less; they wanted to sell new machinery. Ditto for the owner of the CAD system. He finally asked me what to do. I hoisted the Jolly Roger and found a copy of the CAD system on a computer in the Middle East. All I can say to the CNC manufacturer and CAD publisher is that your support will be remembered when future purchases come along.
The Windows 10 Nagware has been an exercise in frustration.
My laptop upgraded without incident.
My netbook has been telling it is going to upgrade soon practically7 since the Windows 10 upgrade was announced. Hear that Bill? I'm waiting!
On my Win 7 machine, the nagware says I need to upgrade Windows 10 then informs me that my hardware will not support it and I need to upgrade the hardware to update. Any sensible company would then uninstall the nagware knowing that when I upgrade to my next desktop, it will have Windows 10 on it. Not Microsoft. I have to manually uninstall the nagware then hide the upgrade until Microsoft sneaks it onto my computer again. Is this an operating system or malware?
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