Posts by LenG 170 posts • joined 19 Feb 2018
I still use Foxit reader. I don't have any of the phantomPDF suite although if I open the reader from the start menu/icon it does remind me that I can have a 14 free trial. In the simpler case of clicking on a .pdf it still just runs as a standalone reader. There is a security update available for this also so I assume it is simply the reader module from PhantomPDF in standalone guise.
I am not a windows insider. In fact, I am still running 1909 thanks to the ability of windows Pro to defer upgrades. However, I did take a cumulative patch recently and when I rebooted yesterday a blue screen popped up which sounds suspiciously like the OOBE. Mind, most of the things it was pushing at me would probably have failed anyway because I don't have a microsoft account.
Smallpox and polio vaccines confer permanent immunity. So does catching the disease and recovering from it, but that is a somewhat risky way of immunizing people.
Virus's like those for flu and similar infections convey only short term immunity. Currently it is not clear how long the immunity lasts after exposure to Corvid19 but there is anecdotal evidence that some people have had it twice. Given that has only been active for less than a year this is not good news.
When I replaced the 9" B&W monitor on my Apple IIe with a flash new 12" amber screen it stopped booting, To cut a long story short there was a magnetic field from one side of the monitor which disabled the left hand (boot) drive. I could boot from the RH drive (after swapping the cables) but then I still couldn't use the LH drive. I eventually had to stack the disk drives to the side of the system unit.
I no longer write windows code (thank <deity-of-choice>) but I still use windows (unfortunately). So my major gripe is not that there are two different APIs but that each creates a window which is significantly different to the other. The result on screen is simply a mess. The choice of final appearance should be in the hands of the end user. Up until Win 7 there was enough customization possible to maintain a pretty good emulation of Win2000 - which was a simple, clean interface. This was swept away with the catastropy which was Win 8 and initially in Win 10 user customisation and choice was more or less non-existant. You couldn't even change the colour of the title bar and, from memory, the initial release didn't even significantly emphasise the focus window. With add-ons and hacks this is partially resolved but you still can do nothing about the old-style v. new-style (ie control panel v. settings). This gets particularly irksome when one style bounces you into the other (control panel and settings once again being a good example).
Windows really needs to look at the linux concept of a desktop. You can install any one of a number of different desktops with quite different look'n'feel.
I suspect the internals of Win 10 are superior to Win 7 ... except in the 6 months or so it takes them to settle down after each (6 monthly) update. The UI is a disaster without 3rd party add-ons and even they are limited by the extent to which M$ restricted customisation. UI is very much a matter of personal taste and many people prefer to stick to what they know. Win XP could be made to look like Win2000. Win 7 had a Win XP-lookalike mode where you could get back to the Win2000 look and feel. With a bit of help from Classic Shell I used the same UI from 1997-ish thru to the forced upgrade to Win 10. I now run a heavily customised version of Win 10 pro (which allows me to avoid that 6-month bugfest) but it is basically a gaming system. Almost all my serious computing is done on a small Linux Mint-powered NUC. I don't use any M$ software except the OS itself, I don't have an M$ account and I cannot see that situation changing in the forseeable future.
So the main advantage of windows is that it is easy to run linux on? Surely it is even easier to start with linux and cut out the middle man.
I still run windows on my most powerful computer because I do a certain amount of gaming. However, I use the Pro version so that I can defer updates for a year and protect myself from disasters like a friend who updated to the latest build which promptly rendered his system unbootable even into safe mode. The bulk of my non-gaming needs are more than adequately catered for by an aging NUC running Mint.
I would like to see some proper data on how this affects the performance of the drives in their intended use The only drives in the Red range affected are between 2 and 6 TB. WD have done themselves no favours PR wise but provided the actual RL performance is up to par I really don't care what is under the hood. As an aside I see the WD website now specifies the recording technology used in their drives.
I would also like to see what "harm and damage" clients have experienced. I have a feeling this is mainly driven by lawyers looking to make a buck.
Google/Apple (a scary partnership) got together and produced a working framework for a distributed app which would be much more satisfactory than the cludge put together by the NHS programmers. They can do this because they can do things a normal app can't. I believe there are several countries using this framework. Its major advantages are no central database of identifiable information and clean iOS/android interaction.
So the question is who do you trust most?
There is also the minor point that you have some (small) chance of recourse through the courts if G/A cheat on their promises. You have no such recourse against the NHS app as they have admitted up front that they will do what they want with the data (assuming the app works well enough to collect any).
Personally I will not download this app in its present form, even if it means I have to stay in lockdown longer than I might otherwise.
"After all, it would never do to unleash the Windows 10 May 2020 Update in June now, would it?"
Nope, July sounds much more inviting. Or possibly October.
Not that I care too much as I have updates deferred by 12 months. Mind, I may change my mind if they announce a fix to the issue which keeps causing it to change the sound output device.
I had the luck and privilege to attend lectures by Conway while an undergraduate at Cambridge. He had the ability to make even a mundane first-year analysis course an inspirational adventure, to the extent that the lecture room was always overfilled with people sitting on windowsills and floors. A great man and a great loss.
I'm working from memory here, so please correct me if I am wrong, but the original idea for the solid fuel boosters (themselves spec'd as they were cheaper than more controllable liquid fuel devices) envisaged a one piece construction with the boosters delivered by barge. Unfortunately the contract was awarded to Morton Thiokol and you can't barge something from Utah so the design was changed to allow air freight. How far back do you really want to trace this accident?
I had an Apple IIe which stopped reading the left-hand floppy (I had two, sitting side by side on the top of the case) after I bought a new monitor. To cut a long story short it turned out that the monitor generated a magnetic lobe from the LH corner sufficient to screw up the less-than-robust Apple disk drive. Stacking the drives away from the monitor fixed the problem but was a pain with my less than ample desk space.
Maybe I'm the odd one out, but I hate the phone-style icons. They are not actually even icons (by definition an icon is supposed to represent something which reminds you of the underlying functions) but actually glyphs - intrinsically meaningless squiggles which you have to learn to associate with the underlying function - and they tend to appear in different places with different applications. At least the old menus generally had the same function with the same label in much the same place.
I liked the winXP interface. Or at least I did after I used the classic view option to make it look like Win2000. With the aid of add ons I could make Win 7 behave enough like XP so that I could still get back to Win2000. M$ screwed up years of familiar usage with the mess that was win 8 and then carried much of it over into Win 10 while removing most of the configuration options which would allow people like me make the thing look and feel familiar. I would like to meet some of the UI designers of that time ... preferrably in a dark alley while equipped with a chain saw.
I'm running windows 10 pro (1803) and have updates defered for 365 days to allow other people to find the bugs for me. I actually moved up to this level on 10/7/19.
The Windows Update page declares
"Your version of Windows has reached end of service. We recommend you update to the most recent version of Windows 10 to get the latest features and security improvements."
and but also tells me that I recently got the latest Win 10 Update with new features and important security updates. To my surprise I am still getting security updates (last on 28/1/20).
I'm not sure why it is not upgrading now I am past the 365 day period for the next upgrade unless it is counting from 10/7/19.
All I can say is that in this case the crap M$ upgrade system seems to be working in my favour as I have no desire to actually upgrade from where I am as long as I get the security fixes!
I got fed up with having about 8 power bars daisychained under my desk, so I mounted 15 double sockets on a chipboard shelf and mounted it on the wall above the desk with the sockets facing forward. The board hides the wiring and means I don't have to make holes in the walls. I have a switch at one end which cuts power to 10 doubles while the other five stay live, so I can leave routers and ethernet switches powered on while turning all the chargers etc off at once. A spur from the 30amp ring main goes to a 20amp RCD protectng the whole setup. Despite running 2 computers, several NAS devices and assorted USB accessories and chargers I've never had the 20amp breaker drop. And nowadays I no longer have to untangle the cats from the nest of power leads.
Personally I can understand a sysadmin having a test machine running the latest pre-release but I am at a complete loss as to why any normal user would be on the "fast road to hell" or whatever the preview release system is called this month. Are there really desirable functional upgrades rolling out at 6 month intervals? I can't say I have noticed anything new that I actually wanted since I moved to Win 10, a decision made only because of driver availability fears.
The system more or less forced me to upgrade to 1803 in July. Can't say it had anything I wanted nor is there anything new in the November refresh that I can't do without. I shall happily remain 18 months or so behind the crowd and let the poor saps with Windoze Home find the bugs.
The chances of a driver being alert enough or quick enough to take over if the automatic system gets into trouble are remote. This is already a problem on aircraft where the autopilot does most of the flying and the readiness/experience levels of the human pilots is deteriorating over time.
The Win98 machine may work but you may find that the bits have fallen off the floppies.
As for Win 7, you do know that neither Intel not AMD support it on their more recent CPUs? From what I have read, installing in on a new AMD Ryzen system is a real pain due to the USB support.
Remove all comments.
All variables to be 6 character randomly generated strings. (No vowels to avoid unintentional word formation).
All error messages to be replaced by "Something went wrong" in 10 languages randomly selected from all the languages into which the phrase can be meaningfully translated.
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