Categories: Top ::

Windows: A perfect summary for Windows
Wed, 11 Apr 2007

It is difficult to sum up everything that is MS Windows in one word or phrase. "Damn" would be one way, but "Mostly Harmless" would be another. Today I choose to describe it with a simple scenario that happens to me every couple weeks -- frequently enough that I can say its bit me dozens of times, but not so frequent that I've bothered to hack the OS to not do it.

Imagine you're working away with a dozen applications open in one form or another. You head downstairs to make lunch, or head out to the doctor, or go buy a coffee, or whatever. Upon return, you find a nicely rebooted machine. The reason is simple -- MS offered an update, and you wisely had the machine set to auto-download. Further, rather than be pestered every day, you set it to auto-install updates. For, being a Windows box, you bloody well need the patches. So "yes" I'd like auto-downloads, "yes" I'd like auto-installs if they're passive. No, I do not want "auto reboot" .. wtf genius defaults to the worst possible option? Its akin to highlighting the "Yes" button by default, in the "do you wish to format your hard disk and destroy all data" type box.

Really, its the whole mentality summed up -- when MS wants you to reboot they pop up a dialog that out of the blue starts capturing all your inputs mid-typing, and defaults to rebooting your machine in a few seconds if you're not there looking for it. Thats the MS way -- not to think it through whatsoever.

So today, I went down to check on the baby, and a few mins later.. yep, no more open applications. Thanks again Bill, for the lost data!

Aside; a friend brings up the interesting question -- if they're remaking every movie from the 60s and 70s.. when are they going to remake Star Wars? Obviously, Lucas mucks with it every year anyway, so thats a moot point. But, he asks.. when will they dare to remake The Godfather. Scary times, is when.

[ Category: / technology / windows ] [link] [Comments]

Rant: Say no to crappy usage licenses (re: Windows Vista et al)
Tue, 31 Oct 2006

I've probably ranted many times on how when you buy a car, you can open the hood (so far..) and mess with it, or buy a muffler can to put on the back to make it sound grumblier, or attach goofy blue lights to the bottom should you like to drive a UFO around. You have choices. You bought it, its your car, and you can do whatever you like to it provided it follows the guidelines required of you by law (safety, etc.) Well and good. We're all very wary for when they (the man, OS vendors) start requiring micropayments to operate an OS (can't wait to pay 10 cents to turn on the PC for the day!) but we all know that will come too. And we all know (don't we?) that various versions of Windows in the past required you to re-buy them after updating your machine (Windows XP Home Edition IIRC only lets you upgrade your PC 2 or 3 times). But where will it stop? Not with Vista, thats for sure.

See more ...

[ Category: / technology / windows ] [link] [Comments]

Tech: On things a-changin', and getting older (not old, just older, to steal a line from Bon Jovi of all people)
Thu, 29 Sep 2005

This entry was written almost entirely on my phone - it has an alphanumeric keypad so it was almost workable. Back around 1995 I had this anxiety about the software industry - a lot of information was coming out about Windows 95 (specifically OLE, databases as disk filesystems, layered security and other 'voodoo'.) The concern I had was that we (the user and the developer) would be kept at arms length from what was really going to be going on in the machine. That we might never know or be able to find out what was to be going on under the good, in the bits and bytes. How the data would be stored and represented, left with a very zoomed out view.. a limited viewport.

Well, 1995 called and it wants its ideas back. Sure, theres a lot of anxiety in the industry (me too) about outsourcing and where things are going, but thats normal.. and heck, the auto-industry has survived 20 years of it, so we'll haul through too.

See more ...

[ Category: / technology / windows ] [link] [Comments]

Geekery: Need some disk space? Look no further...
Thu, 26 May 2005

Really, theres a point to this, and it might even be remotely useful to someone. No, really.

I've got this very old laptop (and computer years are somewhere about 5 times faster than dog years) that I absolutely adore and use for pretty much everything. Sure I'd really like to pick up a nice new Apple kit, but I'm the sort of fellow who drives a car until it absolutely falls into sub-atomic dust, and who uses a laptop until it burns a hole through its own display, ductapes a replacement display in and burns that one out too.

See more ...

[ Category: / technology / windows ] [link] [Comments]