Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> Darren New wrote:
>>> I had no problem moving my home directory to a different partition.
>>>
>> Home, yeah. But.. You don't want to do this "before" you install some 
>> things, or they break (and yeah, yeah, they don't follow spec, blah, 
>> blah.. But geeze...), and somehow I doubt that it moved "everything", 
>> not just the documents.
> 
> Um, no.  Zero problems with it.  Indeed, it's done *exactly* the same 
> way you do it in Linux.
> 
> Alternately, you can go and change your home directory setting in the 
> registry after you copy all the files over, and you're good again.
> 
> Since you haven't any idea how I moved things, I'm not sure what basis 
> you have for doubting it moved everything.
> 
> But OK, we get it, no amount of actual rational discussion will change 
> your mind about how evil Microsoft is or how sucky their products are.
> 
When I hear rational discussion that includes facts, instead of 
assertions, or facts not contradicted by other evidence, then, I would 
give it credence. Their products don't suck, they are just **not as good 
as they could be, given the amount of fracking time and money they have 
to fix them**, then they are no more evil that Apple for DRMing iPods, 
or Palm for insisting on keeping that insanely stupid DB based file 
system, all the way up into their line of phones, instead of replacing 
it with a) a real file system, and b) installing drivers for such a file 
system that could "use" HDSD cards, or just a bigger hard drive, in the 
last model of their true "PDA" lines. I am sure MS has all sorts of 
reasons for making choices I find totally incomprehensible and makes 
people's lives more annoying. I am sure the others did too. I am also 
sure that I can't fathom what it could be, short of either intentional 
sabotage (which MS **is** known for, and has been documented doing to 
protocols all the time in their own internal memos), or plain laziness.

I suspect its a mix of the two. On one hand, anything you can do to make 
it harder for someone else to replicate your work, keeps you alive a few 
more years, even if it drives tech-aware people completely mad, from the 
irrationality of it. On the other, there is no incentive to fix "minor" 
issues, if 90% of your user base either doesn't care, doesn't mind using 
some convoluted method to get around it, doesn't mind "changing" a 
setting after the fact, instead of being asked in the first place, and 
everyone figured you are going to relocate menu items, hide features, 
place useful settings in registry edit only keys, and/or just not bother 
to implement a way to do it, figuring someone else will "fill the niche".

I find it irritating. That isn't the same as thinking they are evil. 
That comes from actually reading about how they "came to" some of those 
choices. ;) lol

>> Main point is, must Linux allow you do do this when setting it up, 
> 
> So does Windows.   Not by default, but certainly if you use the more 
> advanced setting up options.
> 
Sigh.. Ok, where then? Because I couldn't find any, and that was 
googling on it, and even trying to find it on MS' online archives. Short 
of editing the registry, at least in XP, you can move some stuff, sort 
of, but doing so isn't 100% reliable. That this may be due to software 
in transition, which some times "assumed" that the directory location 
would always be the same, could also be true. But, the people whose 
programs broke "thought" they where following spec, which says something 
about the documentation itself, that it wasn't clear enough to keep them 
from making a mistake like that.

In any case, I don't fracking want things that install where "they" 
want, no matter who makes them, instead of where I want. And, I have 
found 1-2 other produces, "from" MS, that presume to install where they 
want, without asking where you want to put them too. Its a pain in the 
ass from the perspective of backups, organization and general common 
sense, in trying to keep "data", "applications" and "system" all in sane 
places, instead of all woven together in some huge ball of unmanageable wax.

> They don't optimize program access? It's been doing that since like Win 
> 3.1 or so. What's "the other" you're talking about?
> 
Well, MS' defrager didn't, and as far as I can tell, since it certainly 
doesn't show or tell you, it probably still doesn't. The first one that 
"ever" did it was from Norton, and it defragged "everything" that it 
could, and optimized based on usage. It was also "still" the #1 
defragmentation program for Windows, until at least 98, when decisions 
in how Norton packaged, designed, and made work, their newer versions, 
made them all but useless and laggy. I.e., it wasn't that MS built a 
better defragger, it was that Norton made theirs harder to get without 
high cost, tied it in with stuff that lagged the machine to hell, and 
took up space for a bunch of other "mandatory" software installs, with 
the defragger, to get one. It also costs a bit more processing time to 
do it, since it meant that the "watcher" for telling what got used the 
most had to run all the time, and not just to count how many times you 
"application" ran, but how often you opened specific documents, used 
specific folders, etc.

Now, its possible MS *could have* added it since they introduced, in 
like 98 or so?, the capacity of the OS to track "recently used" 
applications. But, I have seen no evidence of anything saying that this 
behavior was ever added.
>> No they don't. Or not visibly, and/or obviously. If anything, load 
>> times on some things have gotten "worse" since the last defrag I did...
> 
> You've actually measured this scientifically, then?
> 


-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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Eero Ahonen wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>>> Home, yeah. But.. You don't want to do this "before" you install some
>>> things, or they break (and yeah, yeah, they don't follow spec, blah,
>>> blah.. But geeze...), and somehow I doubt that it moved "everything",
>>> not just the documents.
> 
> Since 2k Windows has supported mounting partitions to directories. It
> doesn't come up on the normal installation, but wouldn't it be possible
> to just mount another partition to C:\Documents and settings or
> C:\Users? Of course using both styles makes it more complicated to
> think, but I don't see why it wouldn't work just like mounting another
> partition to /home in Linux.
> 
Well.. Windows XP and Vista basically mount a "directory" called "My 
Documents", which can be pretty much any place. In the "default" state 
its usually something like "C:\Documents and Settings\Patrick\My 
Documents". This "Can be" changed, but doing so is a bit... obscure, and 
it **won't** move the folder contents that are already there. Worse, 
just to make things sillier, when you "do" change it, unless you have 
"full" rights on the machine (or even if you do, if you are using some 
"other" application to copy things, not just the inbuilt stuff), you 
lose the rights to access the files, as soon as you move the location, 
so, you can't then fix it.

Basically, its way more complicated than it needed to be, and doesn't do 
some of the things you "might" presume makes some sort of sense, like 
taking "existing" documents, belonging to that user, and moving them 
too, not just the "mount point"...

Now, where this gets fun is if you have something that asked the OS 
where to "install" documents and settings, then stored that, but never 
double checks to see if its "still" the same place. I.e., its not a true 
mount, which would also move not just the symbolic lookup, but the 
"logical" location of the files, such that accessing "My Documents" 
would "still" give you the right thing, so.. unless it presents what 
"should be", based on what it "appears" to be doing, a redundant call to 
"what is Patrick's document folder", ever time it tries to access, it 
instead uses the "prior" location, which is no not only invalid, but 
unprivileged, which leads to all sorts of whining by the application 
that it can't open the files.

Of course, one of the odder "glitches" this presented was a case where 
save games where somehow marked as "temp" in the mess of the file 
system, under this design, such that, "clearing temporary files", also 
somehow wiped all the save games... I still haven't worked out how that 
happened..

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> Oh, and FSM forbid they "ever" patch anything that isn't the OS to 
>> something,
> 
> Huh?  You mean, like the way they don't patch Office, say?  Unless you 
> ask them to?
> 
Uh.. Sure, security patches, which kind of... falls under the "causes 
problems for a lot of people with companies.", clause.

>> unless the problem is so critical its crashing thousands of corporate 
>> networks, never mind "adding" anything useful to it,
> 
> Uh, sorry. They add lots of stuff over time to *my* machine. Maybe 
> you're looking at the wrong update site.
> 
This is.. Sorry, but, seriously, stuff like "drivers", they don't auto 
patch at all, even when it might make sense to, which.. kind of tends to 
effect OS and machine performance. So... Not so good there. Other 
patches.. There is only *one* update site, and the only thing ever 
"added" are new versions of the "malicious software removal drone", 
whose sole purpose seems to be to send my machine into frozen limbo for 
several minutes, while it hunts hundreds of gigs of files for 
"dangerous" stuff, which it never actually finds. Meanwhile, its like 
running update under 98. Go eat dinner, and maybe by then the damn 
machine will be usable again. My virus scanner's "all drives and files" 
scan runs faster that that thing does, and causes less processor lag.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> Why in the hell would I ever want something that is "finished", in any 
>> such sense.
> 
> I dunno. My TV, Microwave, and automobile are all "finished".
> 
>> updates without rebooting, (thought XP and Vista wasn't supposed to 
>> need that BS so much any more?), 
> 
> They don't.
> 
Really? Why is it that I have my machine on 24/7 now on broadband, so I 
get "every" update as it comes out, yet I can count on one hand the 
number of updates in the last year that didn't including "something" 
that had, "You may need to reboot the machine after this install.", 
followed by a reminder that would pop up every 5 minutes, if I told it 
"not now", when it asked if I wanted to do it? Doesn't seem to have 
"improved" one bit for me...

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> This "Can be" changed, but doing so is a bit... obscure, and
> it **won't** move the folder contents that are already there. 

That isn't what we're talking about. You're talking about changing the 
setting that says basically what the environment variables get set to. We're 
talking about mounting a partition as a directory, just like the "mount" 
command in Linux.  Same path, different drive.

> Basically, its way more complicated than it needed to be, and doesn't do 
> some of the things you "might" presume makes some sort of sense, like 
> taking "existing" documents, belonging to that user, and moving them 
> too, not just the "mount point"...

I was pretty sure it moved the directory if you went thru the normal GUI to 
do that, but maybe not.

> its not a true 
> mount, which would also move not just the symbolic lookup, but the 
> "logical" location of the files,

You're not talking about the same thing we are. And they fixed this in Vista 
anyway.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott wrote:
> When I hear rational discussion that includes facts, instead of 
> assertions, or facts not contradicted by other evidence, then, I would 
> give it credence.

That's not my experience, but OK.

 > Their products don't suck, they are just **not as good
> as they could be, given the amount of fracking time and money they have 
> to fix them**,

They don't have to be. Commerical software companies don't try to maximize 
quality per dollar. They try to maximize profit per dollar. As long as 
quality doesn't hurt their sales more than the amount they'd spend on 
improving the quality, they don't need to improve it.

Or, in other words, "We're number one, why try harder?"

> instead of being asked in the first place,

The sort of stuff you were talking about changing above, it *does* ask you 
in the first place, if you get the version of the installer that you use for 
things installed dozens of times instead of once. I.e., if you're actually 
working like you administer enough computers that changing them one at a 
time is problematic, you use the installer that asks you that stuff up front.

>>> Main point is, must Linux allow you do do this when setting it up, 
>>
>> So does Windows.   Not by default, but certainly if you use the more 
>> advanced setting up options.
>>
> Sigh.. Ok, where then? Because I couldn't find any, and that was 
> googling on it, and even trying to find it on MS' online archives.

In the bulk install sorts of programs that places like Gateway and HP use to 
install the software on their machines.  You don't think a place that has 
8000 employees is going to fiddle with switches one at a time, do you?

> programs broke "thought" they where following spec,

I think most people whose programs broke reverse engineered the spec. If 
they actually followed the spec (like invoking the proper APIs to read the 
system configuration instead of pulling it out of hidden files in the bowels 
of the OS) it would work.

> since it meant that the "watcher" for telling what got used the 
> most had to run all the time, and not just to count how many times you 
> "application" ran, but how often you opened specific documents, used 
> specific folders, etc.

System already does that.

> Now, its possible MS *could have* added it since they introduced, in 
> like 98 or so?, the capacity of the OS to track "recently used" 
> applications. But, I have seen no evidence of anything saying that this 
> behavior was ever added.

Errrr... \windows\prefetch is there? You didn't notice?  You never looked at 
the add/remove programs window and noticed it told you how often you used 
the program?

"I never noticed it" isn't the same as "it isn't there."

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>>> Oh, and FSM forbid they "ever" patch anything that isn't the OS to 
>>> something,
>>
>> Huh?  You mean, like the way they don't patch Office, say?  Unless you 
>> ask them to?
>>
> Uh.. Sure, security patches, which kind of... falls under the "causes 
> problems for a lot of people with companies.", clause.

I'm still not following what you think they don't patch.

> This is.. Sorry, but, seriously, stuff like "drivers", they don't auto 
> patch at all,

They most certainly do. Of course, the author of the driver has to submit it 
to be patched, but what do you expect?  I've gotten numerous updates for 
NICs, audio cards, and other stuff like that over the years on XP.

> There is only *one* update site, 

And you'd rather have lots of update sites? I'm not sure why you think this 
is a bad thing.

> and the only thing ever 
> "added" are new versions of the "malicious software removal drone", 

Then I guess your stuff is pretty stable. I get all kinds of updates for 
both Windows and Office.

> whose sole purpose seems to be to send my machine into frozen limbo for 
> several minutes, while it hunts hundreds of gigs of files for 
> "dangerous" stuff, which it never actually finds. 

I try not to be hard at work while installing updates to the operating 
system, myself.   Sounds like you don't have enough memory to me, because 
that runs in about 90 seconds once a month on my machines.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott wrote:
> "You may need to reboot the machine after this install.", 

Note the word "may".   If you're using the file it needs to update while the 
update runs, you'll need to reboot.  Otherwise, the system stops the 
service, installs the patches, and starts up the service again, etc.

> followed by a reminder that would pop up every 5 minutes, if I told it 
> "not now", when it asked if I wanted to do it? Doesn't seem to have 
> "improved" one bit for me...

Well, for one thing, you're still running XP, right? The OS *after* XP is 
already approaching the end of the period when MS sells it.

And again, confirmation bias. I've noticed a tremendous improvement in how 
long I can go without rebooting things.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott wrote:
>
> Well.. Windows XP and Vista basically mount a "directory" called "My
> Documents", which can be pretty much any place. In the "default" state
> its usually something like "C:\Documents and Settings\Patrick\My
> Documents". 

Yes - and it's ment for exactly what it says, your documents, which are
only a part of your profile.

> This "Can be" changed, but doing so is a bit... obscure, and

Yes, AFAIK for either one user at time or via AD. Or is there a
(official preferred) way to move all users's documents at once?

> it **won't** move the folder contents that are already there. Worse,
> just to make things sillier, when you "do" change it, unless you have
> "full" rights on the machine (or even if you do, if you are using some
> "other" application to copy things, not just the inbuilt stuff), you
> lose the rights to access the files, as soon as you move the location,
> so, you can't then fix it.

Might be, I've never tried. You still can take ownership as an
administrator and fix things around.

> Now, where this gets fun is if you have something that asked the OS
> where to "install" documents and settings, then stored that, but never
> double checks to see if its "still" the same place. I.e., its not a true
> mount, which would also move not just the symbolic lookup, but the
> "logical" location of the files, such that accessing "My Documents"
> would "still" give you the right thing, so.. unless it presents what
> "should be", based on what it "appears" to be doing, a redundant call to
> "what is Patrick's document folder", ever time it tries to access, it
> instead uses the "prior" location, which is no not only invalid, but
> unprivileged, which leads to all sorts of whining by the application
> that it can't open the files.

Stupid software, but if instead of assigning D: to your work-partition
you mount it to c:\documents and settings, it seems to be at original
place even for Windows, allthought it's on another partition than the
system. Even such software you described can't mess that up.

> Of course, one of the odder "glitches" this presented was a case where
> save games where somehow marked as "temp" in the mess of the file
> system, under this design, such that, "clearing temporary files", also
> somehow wiped all the save games... I still haven't worked out how that
> happened..

And you're still sure this happened because of relocated My documents?

-Aero

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Eero Ahonen wrote:
>> Of course, one of the odder "glitches" this presented was a case where
>> save games where somehow marked as "temp" in the mess of the file
>> system, under this design, such that, "clearing temporary files", also
>> somehow wiped all the save games... I still haven't worked out how that
>> happened..
> 
> And you're still sure this happened because of relocated My documents?
> 
> -Aero

No, but, it shouldn't have been possible. And, I think it was "before" 
moving it. Like I said, I really have no idea what happened, just that 
Windows was complaining about running out of room, asked if I would let 
it remove some stuff, and it did. Since then, I clean things up myself, 
so I know what gets taken out. lol

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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