Posts by Pink

Homer Simpson 'nuclear waste spill' panic at nuke sub base!

RE: Water and watches are not the same

I wasn't aware they used washing powder in watch face construction (the other definitions I'm aware of all being either fictional substances or units of measurement, apart from application in quantum theory and even that's talking about a hypothetical particle).

I'd always thought it was Radium used in watches, and even that had been deprecated in favour of other methods of luminosity. Still I guess if it's got a granite face it might be giving off small amounts of radon gas.

This would have no noticeable effect on me of course, coming from Cornwall, where I must have through my child hood eaten the equivalent rads of several thousand luminous watch faces in granite dust covered worms whilst sitting at the bottom of the garden in my den surrounded by hills of granite. Not to mention camping and orienteering over Bodmin moor (also made mostly of granite, actually come to think of it so is all of Cornwall's landscape) .... Help I'm a radioactive mutant..

Windows 7 'upgrade' doesn't mark XP spot

re: linux

Windows has never provided an effective upgrade path and I don't have a problem with that. That's simply their choice and as has been said a niche market for other companies to fill. They lie to you about how seamless the upgrade is, and well once shame on them, twice shame on you. This time, less lies. Can only be a good thing, but still lies. Maybe next time they will recommend a third party solution or even go as far as to bundle one.

I shifted camps, though work still means I have one foot firmly in MS land so I have daily experience and just laugh nowadays at Vista (in the insane kinda way). I can only continue to hold out hope that Win 7 fixes enough of my daily issues to make my working life a little more enjoyable again.

As for my home computing life well

It went from this. (thanks @ryan)

a) the windows way:

1 - Locate software and download or go to shop and buy, or buy online and wait for delivery.

2 - Enter credit card details somewhere along the line.

3 - Attempt to install.

4 - Turn off anti-virus software to stop it blocking installation.

5 - Spend 3 hours locating a compatible version of software (patch, update).

6 - Spend 2 more hours finding downloads of obscure tools on Microsoft Downloads site to allow installation (MSXML6, VB6 runtime, VC runtime, MSI installer 3.x, Direct X 9.0c).

7 - Install software

8 - Reboot

9 - Spend 1 hour hacking the registry to change back or remove settings the installing software overwrote.

10 - Discover that it doesn't really run on my hardware anyway because I don't quite have the right drivers to support the right version of directx and I can't find the information anyway to tell me exactly what should be the right version so randomly install as many items as I can possibly find in the vain hope that one of them might work and hope the wrong ones uninstall if actually given any kind of option to do so.

11 - Find updated drivers to support hardware.

12 - Update anti virus and anti spyware tools to stop them false positiving on the newly installed software.

13 - Convince windows defender I know what I am doing and this is actually software I want to run.

14 - Go and make dinner and come back to it tomorrow after work.

To this

b) the *nix way:

1 - Open package manager running as normal privilege user

2 - Enter root password

3 - Select software package

4 - Accept dependencies automatically chosen.

5 - Wait for it to download from a trusted source with PGP signing and install.

6 - Enjoy.

:)

This of course does not apply if you have some specialist software requirements and that software is only supplied on a particular platform. Whether you are a corporate or home user is irrelevant. You're stuck to what is known as vendor tie-in in that case and good luck with that. I hope you find a better supplier.

Microsoft SKUs Windows 7 clarity

They're back again?

From what I have seen of Windows 7 there's not much to separate it from Vista. To some this will be a good thing, to others a bad thing. I was amused by Microsoft's very tempting offer to 'Upgrade' my Vista business edition to Vista Home Basic for a mere $29 as I clicked through the interface discovering the wonderful new 'Experience' wizards and ended up on their Vista marketplace mini site. I'm sure windows 7 will, despite it's new and shiny and simpler market breakdown, still give me such options.

I moved to OpenSUSE 64bit after trying Vista for three months. Never looked back. Upgraded from 10.3 x86, to 11.0 x86, to 11.0 x64, to 11.1 x64 and surprisingly the only disk I've used was the original 10.3 network install CD I downloaded to check it out. Admittedly going from 32bit to 64bit in place is a heavily technical operation that left me in a state that could not be described as stable for a while, but I've sorted it all now. I challenge anyone to try starting out with XP 32bit, then upgrade to XP 64bit and then upgrade to Vista x64 and fair any better (If that is even a possible upgrade path).

I still get the daily Joy of Vista on my work machine and all that tells me is how glad I am to have got out and found something else workable at home.

Okay I'll be honest, I miss the constant nagging of my OS for petty things such as cleaning up my desktop, cleaning up my hard drive, defragging my hard drive, installing VITAL updates to fix holes in a 'secure' OS on an almost weekly basis that also manage to reset various user chosen settings. I miss having to run with administrator mode constantly to do my job. I miss activesync/WMDC refusing to sync using Microsoft drivers, Microsoft synchronisation software and a Microsoft OS on both ends of the connection and telling me that the hardware is at fault [unknown device] (despite the fact that the same hardware running under a different OS has no knowledge of the USB connection problems that Windows ultimately claims is the problem) I miss paying Microsoft for upgrades that give me no more functionality than third party software I've already paid for or is free and that forces me to upgrade said third party tools and install anew anyway and then compete with the built in version I can't remove. I miss constantly keeping my AV software and spyware/adware/malware protection (from multiple providers to make sure I've got fairly good coverage in place) up to date and not conflicting with either the OS or each other. I miss the constant search for software and drivers to support the hardware I've bought that says it is certified but the first thing I find out is I have to upgrade the firmware, and then the drivers and then the user space software and that it only has 32bit support despite 64 bit being pretty much the norm for the last 2-3 years. I miss re-installing every six months to get a clean stable OS again and then having to apply literally hundreds of updates and having to re-install and reconfigure everything. I miss hacking the registry to set some setting that used to be in the OS and I now can't find despite Allah alone knows how many years in the industry, making the registry the easiest way to affect the change. Most of all I miss the annoying bugs and years that pass before they get fixed (if ever) despite a commercial testing regime from one of the world's leading software development companies. (and people claim *nix/*BSD are hassle)

Actually no I don't miss it at all, I still have to put up with all this on my work machine.

The only thing I really miss is the games I used to play, but then the games I used to play more often than not do not work on Vista anyway and so presumably are going to fair no better under Windows 7 no matter what UltimateSuperCaliFragilistic-2012-V8.1-SP5.NET-SVR-10 edition I choose. YMMV.

Windows 7 you say... How's it doing now? Glad you're enjoying it. Give them my regards.

Regards

I'm an Amigan who didn't "upgrade" to Windows till Win98SE, Vista made me jump ship again.

RE: Maybe by self-competition

Michael H.F. Wilkinson

"(I have debian at work and openSUSE at home so I can take two sides in those debates ;-) )"

Only two pah, have you not heard of VMWare? Run EVERY OS and then you can just pick the currently winning side.

I would have suggested VirtualPC but I've not had much luck getting it to run in WINE.

:)