Posts by cynicist365

Doom Eternal: Reboot sequel is cluttered but we're only here for the rippin' and the tearin'

Fan-made remake is better

When I decided to go completely solid-state and low-powered in my systems at home, I reached a point where I knew that gaming had to change too and couldn’t run anything overly graphically intensive. So started about looking for doom mods that could provide something new within this spec.

What I found was Brutal Doom, specifically this version (https://www.moddb.com/mods/recurring-nightmare/downloads/brutal-doom-hell-on-earth-starter-pack).

If you consider the inclusion of a rifle with scope, grenades and flamethrower, plus blast-mode on the plasma rifle, there’s enough variety there to compare to the new offerings.

Sergeant Mark IV also added a few new bosses, kick-arse metal soundtrack and the original pace of the game with puzzles and intrigue.

If you want something of a mish-mash of old vs new, I fully recommend this mod, it will breathe new life into the originals, without changing too much.

A stranger's TV went on spending spree with my Amazon account – and web giant did nothing about it for months

Tie in all your services

One ring to rule them all,

One ring to find them,

One ring to bring them all,

And in the darkness, bind them.

NHS Wales flings £39m at Microsoft for Office 365 and Windows 10

Definition of Microsoft

For a definition of Microsoft, ask Bill Gates’ wife.

Atari finally launches its VCS console. Again.

Re: Quoteable

You’re more likely to find a few million of these devices right next to the ET cartridges. :P

How do you like dem Windows, Apple? July opening for Microsoft's first store in Blighty

Re: Say what?

Can’t agree with you more. Aside from being a dog-lover, I hate PUPs and unfortunately that’s all W10 is; a menagerie of some over-inflated tools coupled with lots of bloated garbage coding and ‘support’ apps, with a dish of chopped telemetry in every possible corner, nook and cranny. Compare the experience of opening the Windows 7 calculator and then the Windows 10 calculator, there’s a good example of bad/bloated coding.

Everything is so tightly wound to a series of dependancies not unlike SystemD in many regards. For instance, take that PoS regurgitated gender-bending pseudo-clippy assistant Cortana. Can you remove it without affecting multiple other services and functions? No.

You can try this: C:\Windows\SystemApps\....Cortana...’gibberish’ rename the folder name suffix from ....Cortana...’gibberish’ to ...Cortana...’PoS’. You have to first stop the Cortana service, have the folder rename ready to ‘Try Again’, make it quick and then it’s officially stopped and can’t start again.

You won’t notice at first, but after a restart, explorer.exe becomes even more buggy and less responsive as a result. You can make some augmentations like installing ‘Everything’ for a true indexed search manager, but the start menu simply, well... fails to start on the first click. The second click, yes. But the first click, no. It will be irritating to the point where you wondered why you stopped Cortana in the first place. So you re-enable the Cortana systemapp, and within a few minutes disable it again.

Can we have our cake and eat it too? Not on Windows 10.

The shell can be changed to something other than explorer.exe, like blackbox or bblean by changing a setting in the registry, but by this stage you start to really question why you bought that high-priced Windows 10 Pro laptop only to receive something similar to a ReactOS experience; i.e. something which is a cool concept, has a thriving community of developers, but one which is still classed as an unfinished product.

I moved to Linux for my work laptop, soon after my threshold for annoyance reached critical mass. There have been many challenges, like screen-res, high DPI and alignment, auto-low powered Bluetooth detection, but I am no longer frustrated to anywhere near the same level and I can apply updates within a few seconds and return to find no change to my carefully orchestrated sysadmin profile.

Only plebs use Office 2019 over Office 365, says Microsoft's weird new ad campaign

Without the hype, how the ad would really have gone...

User 1: Office 2019

User 2: Office 365

1. Fill out a spreadsheet with data about 50 states:

User 1: Google's list of US states in table format and pastes into spreadsheet, in under one minute. Gets back to work, meets clients, has lunch, goes home, work day done.

User 2: Goes to perform a dataset on list, oh no, Office 365 is offline. Tries to type by hand, but relying on Microsoft makes you unintelligent, thus lacking knowledge of all US states and abbreviations. Instead, waits for the cloud to resume. Hours pass into call after call. On phone to support, outage expected to last until the end of the day, no work done, boss pissed off, wife leaves due to lack of common-sense and reliance on Microsoft solutions.

2. Make a half-finished presentation perfect:

User 1: Outsources the design to their in-house design team because no business-minded individual has time to fuck around with graphics especially with amateurish output like that shit.

User 2: Whimsically continues to finish presentation file with hours of half-baked inexperienced pre-stamped (and repeated ad nauseum) template fluff that detracts attention from the purpose of the presentation. Response from presentation attendants result is employee getting the sack, due to lack of imagination and recommended employment outlook: a microsoft helpdesk.

3. Polish a resume and start a job search: Let's do this!

User 1: Retrieves template of resume from the web in raw text, uses style to define headings, subheadings etc, adjusts text, 10 minutes pass. Refines text making it personable and unique, 15 minutes pass. Document completed, spelling and grammar checked to remove 'z' from every other English spell checker outside of the US, so they don't look like a complete moron if reaching an interview, 20 minutes pass. "Hey, how are you going over there?" Reaches out to prospective employers via other social media, because no one in their right mind would use LinkedIn after the 2016 breach, receives replies from actual companies expressing actual interest and goes to interview. One hour passes. After interview, receives notification that accepted into role, because their resume isn't a stock-standard template they've seen before.

User 2: Starts to open the document but gets new message notification from LinkedIn about a new opportunity, 10 minutes pass. About to start on 'intelligent workflows', another message received on LinkedIn from old work colleague wanting immediate assistance with job application, 15 minutes pass. Opens Word and gets out pen, Word crashes due to bug, restarts computer, 17 minutes pass. Tries to login, but trust relationship broken between server and client, waits a few minutes while calling IT, 20 minutes pass. Just give me a fucking second will you? (slightly agitated) One hour passes, Office 365 resumed, 'works on intelligent workflow' is done in a few minutes. Looks up and says "Ha, beat you fuck…er…" Office is dark, User 1 has gone home, boss still there, looking on at the exchange. Sacked for incompetence.