On Fri, 30 Jan 2009 19:36:18 +0000, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>>>> I'm guessing also that a lot of those pointless Flash games and
>>>>> similar only work well in IE.
>>>> Um, not if they're Flash games....Flash runs in Firefox....
>>> And how much do you want to bet that the entire site markup is only
>>> tested with IE?
>> 
>> Anyone who designs a website and doesn't run it through a W3C checker
>> is asking for trouble.
> 
> I agree. But we're also talking about the same kinds of sites that use
> ActiveX to silently install spyware on your PC while you're playing the
> new shiny game, so... ;-)

Yeah, well, it doesn't bother me that those ActiveX controls simply won't 
install on my systems. ;-)

Jim

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On Fri, 30 Jan 2009 19:40:42 +0000, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> For my sins, no. I just assumed that "Office Home Edition" would have
> the parts of Office that are useful to a home user, without the parts
> that only an office worker would want. I was wrong.

How many home users really have a need to create presentations?

Jim

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"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message 
news:498335df$1@news.povray.org...
> Invisible wrote:
>> unecessarily complicated,
>
> That kind of depends on whether you need the complicated bits, don't you 
> think? The opposite of "unnecessarily complicated" is "lacking features."

Its code isn't a sparkling paragon of elegant efficiency.  Shoulda used 
Haskell!

*wink*

-- 
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net
>
>> poorly documented,
>
> MS has some of the best documentation out there, and they teach classes in 
> using their stuff. Just because you never learned it doesn't mean it isn't 
> out there.
>
>> resource-inefficient,
>
> Somewhat, but what are you comparing it to?  How resource-efficient *you* 
> could make it if you didn't have any commercial constraints?
>
>> insecure,
>
> Somewhat. Much of that is due to people not installing patches or people 
> not using the system as designed.
>
>> Let's suppose that a particular Word document is corrupted. Why should 
>> that make Word crash? Shouldn't it just pop up a message saying "I can't 
>> read this file, it seems to be corrupted"? Isn't that what "graceful 
>> failure" is all about? But no, Word just crashes outright.
>
> Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. If it's corrupted in a way that's 
> hard to check, it crashes, because if it didn't, you'd be using up even 
> *more* resources to be doing the checking. See?
>
>> I opened the same file in OpenOffice, and it just opened up as if there 
>> was nothing wrong with it. I saved it again, and it has worked in Word 
>> ever since.
>
> It probably deleted whatever it was that was confusing Office.
>
>> Why is it that Word, a premium product designed and produced by the 
>> richest software company on earth, cannot do something that OpenOffice 
>> can?
>
> Why is it that OpenOffice can't do something that Word can?
>
> -- 
>   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

>>> Anyone who designs a website and doesn't run it through a W3C checker
>>> is asking for trouble.
>> I agree. But we're also talking about the same kinds of sites that use
>> ActiveX to silently install spyware on your PC while you're playing the
>> new shiny game, so... ;-)
> 
> Yeah, well, it doesn't bother me that those ActiveX controls simply won't 
> install on my systems. ;-)

Nor me - but then, I don't visit that kind of website in the first 
place! ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> unecessarily complicated, 
> 
> That kind of depends on whether you need the complicated bits, don't you 
> think? The opposite of "unnecessarily complicated" is "lacking features."

You know, I *was* going to construct a long and detailed reply carefully 
explaining why you're wrong and I'm right. But you know what? I've just 
got home from another exhilerating dance class, and I don't actually 
*care* any more. I know I'm right, and if you don't... well, right now, 
I'm not fussed. I'm going to go have a nice relaxing shower! :-D

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> and I don't actually *care* any more. I know I'm right, 

Excellent!  Glad to hear it. It's a stupid thing to argue about 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

On Fri, 30 Jan 2009 21:34:25 +0000, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>>> Anyone who designs a website and doesn't run it through a W3C checker
>>>> is asking for trouble.
>>> I agree. But we're also talking about the same kinds of sites that use
>>> ActiveX to silently install spyware on your PC while you're playing
>>> the new shiny game, so... ;-)
>> 
>> Yeah, well, it doesn't bother me that those ActiveX controls simply
>> won't install on my systems. ;-)
> 
> Nor me - but then, I don't visit that kind of website in the first
> place! ;-)

And if your users do, then surely you'd want them to be protected from 
the malware....so don't let them run ActiveX and that's one less risk. ;-)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> how M$ products in general tend to be unecessarily complicated, poorly 
>> documented, resource-inefficient, insecure, and so forth.
> 
> TBH I've found MS products to be really well documents, in fact I would 
> say better than any other software I've used.  Really, even if you have 
> a complicated thing you want to do in Excel, the documentation usually 
> has the answer.
> 
Seriously, in my experience, the programs, if it even ships with one, 
has a manual with nothing in it at all, and all the troubleshooting 
things are, "Are you a complete moron? Yes/No", variety. "Real" problems 
usually require going online and googling for fixes from forums, written 
by people that "use" the software, not the people that wrote it. The 
help files with the programs are... marginally better, but not by much, 
and their trouble shooting usually jumps from "Yes, I checked all that 
fracking stuff!", to, "Well, gosh, we don't have a clue what the problem 
is then!" If its something a decent user could figure out without it, or 
a simple command lookup, its great. If something goes wrong that isn't 
"simple" user error, or where you want even moderately non-default 
behavior, you are hosed. And.. There online documentation on the site is 
almost as bad, with pages referring to examples that don't explain 
anything different than the incoherent text did, examples that are 
missing, code that was removed 10 years earlier, because it was for 
something they no longer support, even though the same "problem" is one 
that you need to fix in the new stuff too. And.. in some cases you can't 
even find "current" documentation, even using the links in the software 
you are trying to find the documentations for, either due to it being 
moved, deleted, changes in some obscure way that makes their DB return 
the wrong thing, or just plain never being updated.

In other words, its as bad, in most cases, as other people's products, 
in that it doesn't account for the most common "unusual" problems, and 
"worse" than theirs, in that even when documented, you can't find the 
document explaining where to find the documents, never mind the document 
itself, some times. Which is, imho, worse than stating, "Sorry, we 
didn't bother writing one."

-- 
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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scott wrote:
>> Are you crazy?? Most of the software I see around me costs £20 - £40. 
>> £350 is seriously expensive!
> 
> 60 pounds for a pretty complex word processor, spreadsheet and 
> presentation package seems completely reasonable to me.
> 
> 290 extra pounds for an email client, desktop publisher and database 
> seems a bit extreme, but this is aimed at companies, not individuals, so 
> of course they make the price higher.
> 
> The alternative is to charge 100 pounds for the home edition, and 200 
> for the professional edition, but I suspect they would make vastly less 
> money that way.
> 
> 

Its not aimed at companies though. Companies "generally" don't go around 
installing single machines, but buy "bulk" licenses, which gives them 
"discounts" on installs. Sometimes they can even talk MS into handing 
them the stuff for free (though not the upgrades).

-- 
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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Eero Ahonen wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> MS... doesn't. Their goal is just to make things look impressive, and do
>> enough to sell the product. Its not until it becomes obvious that they
>>
> 
> Part of this has been disgussed here before - MS lives by selling
> software (and hardware) and most of computer users don't have a clue of
> what's happening under the bonnet, so they have to do (also) visual
> changes (which aren't always improvements) to make people see a
> difference to older system. Hence one goal automatically is to make
> things look impressive.
> 
> -Aero


And, if they where doing something more than just sticking the "shell" 
of this:

http://www.livescience.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?s=technology&c=news&l=on&pic=080324-aptera-car-02.jpg&cap=The+electric+hybrid+Aptera+(greek+for+%22wingless+flight%22)+is+a+3-wheeled+motorcycle+registered+with+DOT+and+the+California+DMV.+The+production+model+will+go+85+mph+and+get+300+mpg%2C+the+company+states.+Credit%3A+Aptera.com&title=

on this:

http://www.omnieye.com/mc/ad-pics/22140345.jpg

I might be a bit more impressed. ;) 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();
}

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

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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.

Main point is, must Linux allow you do do this when setting it up, you 
don't have to "manually" change it later on, when you have been using it 
for weeks, and realize you screwed up.

>> to defraggers that still, to this day, don't have the common sense to 
>> defrag the "unused" space, 
> 
> Sure they do. Have for ages.
> 
Just ran mine recently and watched. It may now crunch the unused space 
(badly though), but not the other.

>> or optimize program access (never mind all the third parties that 
>> figured that one out as far back as Win3.11), to.. an endless list.
> 
> They do that too, and have for ages.
> 
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...

-- 
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:
>> Seen the lists, seen the rebuttals. Still not impressed. Especially 
>> when some of them are things like "Added a mess of new features to 
>> DirectX", 
> 
> There's a bunch of internal stuff, as well as things like Media Center, 
> .NET, etc.
> 
>> unless it is something in the class of user interfaces, and those tend 
>> to be used to "hide" things you don't want people mucking with,
> 
> Sounds like One True Scotsman syndrome to me.  Because Microsoft doesn't 
> innovate, anything Microsoft does is, by definition, not innovation.
> 
>> FOSS has an excuse for this, they don't have thousands of developers 
>> working 24/7 on *one* project, trying to make it bloody work right. 
> 
> Actually, it's worse. FOSS actually discourages getting projects 
> "finished" and easy to use and reliable, unless it's infrastructure for 
> the people working on other projects. Apache and gcc work great, because 
> on top of *that* people can write code that you can sell without giving 
> it away (like google does, in other words). But if you actually turned 
> out a professional-quality piece of software that needed what it did and 
> it had to work well, you couldn't make money off of maintenance. Hence 
> the dearth of games, accounting software, user electronics, and so on.
> 
Why in the hell would I ever want something that is "finished", in any 
such sense. I want something where the stuff already "in it" is 
reliable, but people are still looking at how to improve it. MS stuff... 
The damn thing gets patched so often fixing things you never "see" that 
a month after you install it the entire OS must have been replaced with 
new binaries... Which means, most of it wasn't working quite right to 
start with, and probably still isn't, even after being patched 500 
times. By comparison, FOSS projects I use, usually, only send out 
"stable" patches, or ones with "significant" changes, unless they, on 
rare occasion, do have a serious bug, in which case it comes out, 
updates without rebooting, (thought XP and Vista wasn't supposed to need 
that BS so much any more?), remembers what it was doing before you did 
restart the program, if you even did, and the patch comes out the moment 
they have it, not a week later.

Either your argument is that FOSS is "just as bad" as MS stuff, because 
neither is ever "finished", or your arguing that MS stuff is, because 
they spend 5 years to come out with a whole new OS, instead of 2 months 
to come up with a patch that adds some features. Either way, I don't 
think its a winning argument.

-- 
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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scott wrote:
>> Seen the lists, seen the rebuttals. Still not impressed. Especially 
>> when some of them are things like "Added a mess of new features to 
>> DirectX",
> 
> Huh? How many programs have you written using DirectX9 and DirectX10?  
> Why do you think the improvements are a mess?
> 
Mess as in "a bunch of", not "disaster". Otherwise, I really don't care 
what "special" BS MS gets to use, but no one else does, because everyone 
added all the features to the cards/drivers, in a way that is unusable 
to anyone that doesn't want to spend $2,000+ upgrading everything from 
hardware and memory, to the OS, to run stuff it would be cheaper to buy 
an XBox 360 to play.. Yeah, I "prefer" the changeability you get from a 
PC platform, which is locked down on consoles, but not at the "cost" of 
doing it, especially when nearly every dang thing for PC now is using 
something like Steam, which defeats the whole fracking point of running 
without internet, if you need to, and I am stuck with an OS I don't need 
for "anything else" to do it.

-- 
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>

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott wrote:
> The damn thing gets patched so often fixing things you never "see" that 
> a month after you install it the entire OS must have been replaced with 
> new binaries...
Oh, and FSM forbid they "ever" patch anything that isn't the OS to 
something, unless the problem is so critical its crashing thousands of 
corporate networks, never mind "adding" anything useful to it, including 
fixing their documentation when its wrong.

-- 
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>

Post a reply to this message

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.

> 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.

>>> to defraggers that still, to this day, don't have the common sense to 
>>> defrag the "unused" space, 
>>
>> Sure they do. Have for ages.
>>
> Just ran mine recently and watched. It may now crunch the unused space 
> (badly though), but not the other.

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?

> 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?

-- 
   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:
> 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.

> Either way, I don't think its a winning argument.

Because you did not read what I actually wrote. That whole bit had NOTHING 
TO DO WITH microsoft. :-)  But your hatred runs strong in you, so I'll just 
drop it.

-- 
   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:
> 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?

> 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.

-- 
   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

Darren New wrote:
> 
> That kind of depends on whether you need the complicated bits, don't you
> think? The opposite of "unnecessarily complicated" is "lacking features."

Somehow they've managed to pretty far miss both with Excel - it can bend
to incredible counting pretty easily, but it's still easy to use for
just basic-level report creating etc. Word seems to "suck" more on the
easy part - sometimes it seems to miss a button that says "disable
automatics, forget styles etc, just let me do this damn 1-page document
quickly out of way).

> MS has some of the best documentation out there, and they teach classes
> in using their stuff. Just because you never learned it doesn't mean it
> isn't out there.

Excel is one of the very few graphical programs that I've actually had
help from the help system - because it's help documentation is freaking
good.

> Somewhat. Much of that is due to people not installing patches or people
> not using the system as designed.

And another much is just the users, which break the security of any
system :).

> 
> Why is it that OpenOffice can't do something that Word can?
> 

I think mostly because the developers haven't seen those features
necessary (at least yet) and not enough users have asked for them.

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott wrote:
> 
> And, if they where doing something more than just sticking the "shell"
> of this:
> 
>
http://www.livescience.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?s=technology&c=news&l=on&pic=080324-aptera-car-02.jpg&cap=The+electric+hybrid+Aptera+(greek+for+%22wingless+flight%22)+is+a+3-wheeled+motorcycle+registered+with+DOT+and+the+California+DMV.+The+production+model+will+go+85+mph+and+get+300+mpg%2C+the+company+states.+Credit%3A+Aptera.com&title=
> 
> 
> on this:
> 
> http://www.omnieye.com/mc/ad-pics/22140345.jpg
> 
> I might be a bit more impressed. ;) lol
> 

Yes, but that's you and me. Most people just take what comes with the
computer and those people mostly see the visual difference. IIRC OTOH
Darren has found some positive development from Vista comparing to XP.

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

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.

> 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?

Running defragger on Windows 3.1 sounds somewhat frightening.
Multitasking still sucked on Win3.1 (it existed, but it was veeeery slow
comparing to another implementations) and it certainly locked amount of
files while running. Running the defragger from DOS sounds more familiar
and sane.

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> 
> What, watching for changes without polling?  There have been multiple
> ways to do that sort of thing for years and years. I think Win95 had it,
> and more recently with NTFS you have the USN journal, so your program
> doesn't even need to be running to watch for changes.

No, snapshotting, which you answered on the another message.

>> I'll shout "Finally" rather than croon. One thing I've been missing on
>> Windows since the 90's.
> 
> Well, there's a bunch of add-on packages that do a decent job of it.
> 

I've found one (don't remember the name tho - that was 10 years ago),
but honestly I haven't checked in couple of years. It not so bothering
anymore, while I'm having almost enough desktop at work (2*24" LCD,
total being 2400x1920 pixels), but when running on laptop, it would ease
up a lot.

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> and I don't actually *care* any more. I know I'm right, 
> 
> Excellent!  Glad to hear it. It's a stupid thing to argue about anyway. :-)

Mmm, let's all go render spheres. 8-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
>> However we did pay 10 thousand pounds for some CAD software, and that 
>> crashes occasionally (which is infinitly more often than the OS!).
> 
> OK, that's pretty lame. I'd ask why you don't go use a better package 
> instead, but I suspect the answer is going to be some combination of
> 
> - There aren't any better products to choose from.
> - Our clients use this product and we need to be compatible.
> - We've bought it now so we can't get our money back anyway.

Scott's answer was on the nose, but there's another thing worth 
mentioning - if it's very high-end industrial software, the number of 
people using it is going to be relatively sparse. Maybe only a few 
thousand users. This means it will take longer to find the bugs in the 
first place - MS, by comparison, have a hundred million testers and an 
automatic bug-reporting system.

The upside to this sort of software is it's possible to have a much 
closer relationship with the developer - bugs can be acted upon faster 
and you might even get to suggest/influence new features.

Post a reply to this message

> Scott's answer was on the nose, but there's another thing worth 
> mentioning - if it's very high-end industrial software, the number of 
> people using it is going to be relatively sparse. Maybe only a few 
> thousand users. This means it will take longer to find the bugs in the 
> first place - MS, by comparison, have a hundred million testers and an 
> automatic bug-reporting system.
> 
> The upside to this sort of software is it's possible to have a much 
> closer relationship with the developer - bugs can be acted upon faster 
> and you might even get to suggest/influence new features.

IME, there are two kinds of high-end software:

- The software that costs the Earth and doesn't actually work very well, 
but the developers don't give a damn.

- The software that costs the Earth, but as you say, the people work on 
it take you seriously.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Mmm, let's all go render spheres. 8-)

I've been learning Blender, myself. Or at least going thru the noob 
tutorials trying to get a feel for it.

-- 
   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

Eero Ahonen wrote:
> Word seems to "suck" more on the easy part 

Yeah. It's gotten to the point where if your dashed-off note isn't justified 
with boldface headings, it's not acceptable. What ever happened to a plain 
old typed letter. Can you imagine giving someone a resume that looks like it 
came out of a typewriter?

Do kids doing grade-school book reports these days have to have all kinds of 
fancy fonts and styles to make it acceptable, I wonder?

> Excel is one of the very few graphical programs that I've actually had
> help from the help system - because it's help documentation is freaking
> good.

I never had something I needed to do with Lotus 1-2-3 that wasn't in the 
first page or two of documentation after asking for context-sensitive help. 
I'm convinced that's what killed Jazz more then Excel did - the help for 
Jazz was the generic useless "enter a formula here" instead of stuff telling 
you what formulas start with the two letters you just entered.

>> Somewhat. Much of that is due to people not installing patches or people
>> not using the system as designed.
> 
> And another much is just the users, which break the security of any
> system :).\

That would be the "people not using the system as designed."  Like, always 
being logged in as administrator.

> I think mostly because the developers haven't seen those features
> necessary (at least yet) and not enough users have asked for them.

I was being rhetorical 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

Eero Ahonen wrote:
> 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? 

It should, yes.

What I did is just copy the entire \users\public to my other drive, then 
told Vista that public's home directory was m:\public

I've had zero problems with that.

 > 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.

The only problems I can see are
1) making the change. I.e., you'd have to actually manage to delete \users 
before you could mount another partition as \users. However, Vista now has 
symlink-style reparse points, so you could probably use them.

2) if something tries to access \users in the boot process before it 
finishes mounting all the drives, you could have a problem.

> Running defragger on Windows 3.1 sounds somewhat frightening.

IIRC, defraggers for the 16-bit OSes all ran under DOS, not Windows. But 
some of them used the usage stats from Win95 to put common programs near the 
front of the drive, and the ones for Win3 would put files in the same 
directory next to each other if you told it to.

-- 
   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

Eero Ahonen wrote:
> I've found one (don't remember the name tho - that was 10 years ago),

"Shock 4 Way 3D" works nicely (at least under Vista) as does QTTaskbar. 
(QTTaskbar isn't, IIRC, a virtual desktop, but something else that gives 
nice window management.)

Did a bunch of research into it when I was first setting up Vista here, 
since it was easy to say "Gee, that piece of freeware hosed my whole 
machine, but no biggie." :-)  Avoid "Start++", as it doesn't uninstall 
completely if you don't want it, and thus continues to try to do automatic 
type-ahead completion and stuff then invokes code you've removed from the 
machine.  Bleh.

-- 
   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

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

Post a reply to this message

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();
}

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

Post a reply to this message

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>

Post a reply to this message

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();
}

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

Post a reply to this message

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

Post a reply to this message

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>

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Or, in other words, "We're number one, why try harder?"
> 
Yep. Which is why people get irritated.

>> 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.
> 
Uh.. Where would this installer be? Oh, right... probably on the 
"corporate" multi-license version that most of us don't have access to... ;)

 > 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."
 >

Still doesn't imply that the defragger is "aware" of that data and uses 
it. It didn't for a "long" time, much as Paint was "stuck" in 256 mode 
until XP, and not(e)pad was stuck with a 32k limit until the same. So, 
maybe they made them better in XP and Vista. Good for them, its about 
fracking time!! 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>

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
>> 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.
> 
You where implying that I was looking at the "wrong" one. I was a bit 
confused what one you thought I would be looking at...

>> 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.
> 
Ah, well. I don't use Office, so... Not a surprise there isn't a lot of 
that coming down the pipe. lol

>> 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.
> 
Uh.. I have... 2GB, and I am usually not running anything but Firefox 
while this is going on, so unless Firefox is eating up more than half of 
the memory... I just don't get it. It can take several minutes on mine, 
though, it "did" run faster before I tacked on an external drive. Hmm. 
Come to think of it, its probably hunting in the gigs of "backups" on 
that drive that get patched every few days too, which would mean its 
searching "two" copies of all the same data (well, mostly, since 
OneTouch's backup is lame enough to only backup the stuff "it" wants, 
not what you want. Need to find something to replace that with, one of 
these days... They ever get Windows Backup to do compressed incremental 
backups, or it still assuming you have an external removable that is at 
least as big as the "entire" data space you are backing up, like they 
did before? I haven't bothered to check, since it was nearly useless 
back when all I had to backup to was CDs, and it wouldn't do CDs. 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();
}

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

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Darren New wrote:
> 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.
> 
If its just "may", it wouldn't keep asking me to reboot, over and over 
again. Now, when it "doesn't" need to do it, its very very nice. Just 
wish that was more often, or it was, I don't know, nice enough to tell 
me which applications might "conflict" with the install, so I can shut 
them down *before*. I do keep some things running most of the time, 
including MySQL database software, a Yahoo gadget toolbar and 1-2 other 
things that "could" be causing it, and are.. not always trivial to 
restart manually (or worse, won't restart automatically, in some cases, 
if you "manually" shut them down before, due to how they save their 
"active" state between boots.) But, yeah. Its a "little" better, but not 
what everyone kept insisting, which was "almost never".

-- 
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:
> Uh.. Where would this installer be? Oh, right... probably on the 
> "corporate" multi-license version that most of us don't have access 
> to... ;)

Right. Because if you're only installing one or two machines, it's really 
not a problem to move stuff after the fact.

> Still doesn't imply that the defragger is "aware" of that data and uses 
> it. 

Actually, it probably doesn't need to any more, since the system does demand 
paging now. It really doesn't help to move directories on the disk relative 
to other directories just based on what they contain. Given things like 
superfetch, readyboost, and all that, the files don't get *read* 
sequentially, so having them particularly defragmented in a particular order 
probably doesn't make sense any more.

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

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>>> 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.
>>
> You where implying that I was looking at the "wrong" one. I was a bit 
> confused what one you thought I would be looking at...

Are you using "Windows Update" or are you using "Microsoft Update"? You're 
using the wrong update program if you're not getting updates to your Office 
software.

> Ah, well. I don't use Office, so... Not a surprise there isn't a lot of 
> that coming down the pipe. lol

What do you expect them to update?

> Come to think of it, its probably hunting in the gigs of "backups" on 
> that drive that get patched every few days too, which would mean its 

I wouldn't be surprised. I can do a full Defender scan of an entire drive 
here (including all software I've ever owned or downloaded on a separate 
partition) in about half an hour or so.

> They ever get Windows Backup to do compressed incremental backups, 

Yes. Unfortunately, MS screwed the pooch on this and only backs up what they 
think are important files. Otherwise, it would have been a really nice system.

> or it still assuming you have an external removable that is at 
> least as big as the "entire" data space you are backing up, like they 
> did before? I haven't bothered to check, since it was nearly useless 
> back when all I had to backup to was CDs, and it wouldn't do CDs. lol)

They improved that. You can now ghost the drive (full or incremental), or 
you can do incremental backups to compressed zip files, either onto an 
external HD or CD/DVDs, with a very nice mechanism for doing full and 
incremental restores as well.

-- 
   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:
> If its just "may", it wouldn't keep asking me to reboot, over and over 
> again. 

Right. So you're using the file it updated. Not much you can do about that.

> Now, when it "doesn't" need to do it, its very very nice. Just 
> wish that was more often, or it was, I don't know, nice enough to tell 
> me which applications might "conflict" with the install, so I can shut 
> them down *before*.

It often does. Sometimes it's hard to tell which application is using a 
particular file.

> things that "could" be causing it, and are.. not always trivial to 
> restart manually (or worse, won't restart automatically, in some cases, 
> if you "manually" shut them down before, due to how they save their 
> "active" state between boots.) 

And that's exactly why you get asked to reboot. :-)

> But, yeah. Its a "little" better, but not 
> what everyone kept insisting, which was "almost never".

It's almost never for me. Are you using XP or Vista?

IME, XP reboots far less than previous versions (which pretty much rebooted 
for every update), and Vista reboots "almost never".  I've not had any 
software install that asked for a reboot except .NET 3.5.

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

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> Its not aimed at companies though. Companies "generally" don't go around 
> installing single machines, but buy "bulk" licenses, which gives them 
> "discounts" on installs. Sometimes they can even talk MS into handing them 
> the stuff for free (though not the upgrades).

OK small companies then.  I don't know many people at home who need Outlook, 
Visio, Access etc, most just want Word.

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> 
> 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
> 

Well true, but if you didn't check it out, it can also be a bug or nasty
habit of the game itself, not necessarily Windows.

-Aero

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Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> Uh.. Where would this installer be? Oh, right... probably on the 
>> "corporate" multi-license version that most of us don't have access 
>> to... ;)
> 
> Right. Because if you're only installing one or two machines, it's 
> really not a problem to move stuff after the fact.
> 
>> Still doesn't imply that the defragger is "aware" of that data and 
>> uses it. 
> 
> Actually, it probably doesn't need to any more, since the system does 
> demand paging now. It really doesn't help to move directories on the 
> disk relative to other directories just based on what they contain. 
> Given things like superfetch, readyboost, and all that, the files don't 
> get *read* sequentially, so having them particularly defragmented in a 
> particular order probably doesn't make sense any more.
> 
Hmm. Possibly.. In fact, I suppose, in some cases, you could actually 
get "bad" results, like if a prefetch got file 50-56 on the disk, but 
the one you need next is like.. '2'. 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();
}

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

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
>> Ah, well. I don't use Office, so... Not a surprise there isn't a lot 
>> of that coming down the pipe. lol
> 
> What do you expect them to update?
> 
My point was that "update" in their world means, "We maybe patched some 
bugs, but this is damn unlikely, unless they where security bugs." You 
are "not" going to get say, "Would you like to install Word 10.0, since 
you currently only have 9.0. ;) Well, not unless its IE, and... I don't 
use that unless I have to anyway. lol But, its not just "major" changes, 
its incremental ones. Even virus scanners will "patch" until they hit 
some version limit, then require you buy the next one. In the case of 
something like Word, that may mean getting 9.2, 9.3, 9.4, etc., some 
with "new" features, but requiring a major upgrade to get the "full" 
10.0 version. Its just not in their business model to not screw you for 
"huge" amounts of money, for "major" patches, without anything in 
between, especially not even including the bug fixes that only make it 
into the next major release.

In other words, you may be forced to "wait" for that high price update, 
if you expect to see some things fixed at all, and that... just sucks, 
and is yet another reason to be "somewhat" less than impressed by them. 
That is, if a list of "patches" that are like 99% security, and don't 
ever address "any" real problem you are having, isn't enough, by itself. lol

>> They ever get Windows Backup to do compressed incremental backups, 
> 
> Yes. Unfortunately, MS screwed the pooch on this and only backs up what 
> they think are important files. Otherwise, it would have been a really 
> nice system.
> 
Ah, well.. I suppose that explains the One Touch 4 software... They 
probably wanted to make it "work like" MS', never mind that the damn 
thing now won't backup files it doesn't recognize, directories that 
"contain" your My Documents (this one just fracking doesn't make sense 
to me, somehow it "knows" that your user data is in a subdirectory of a 
folder on the drive, so it refuses to even "allow" selecting the folder 
to backup, since it would duplicate the one its already defaulted to 
backup in the first place... Suppose I should fix that one of these 
days...), and won't backup anything that looks like it contains 
"settings", including ini, reg, etc. In other words, they took what, in 
version 1-3, worked well, and hosed it, by making it do the same thing 
Windows Backup does, from your description. <--- bangs head on desk.

>> or it still assuming you have an external removable that is at least 
>> as big as the "entire" data space you are backing up, like they did 
>> before? I haven't bothered to check, since it was nearly useless back 
>> when all I had to backup to was CDs, and it wouldn't do CDs. lol)
> 
> They improved that. You can now ghost the drive (full or incremental), 
> or you can do incremental backups to compressed zip files, either onto 
> an external HD or CD/DVDs, with a very nice mechanism for doing full and 
> incremental restores as well.
> 


-- 
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>

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> It's almost never for me. Are you using XP or Vista?
> 
> IME, XP reboots far less than previous versions (which pretty much 
> rebooted for every update), and Vista reboots "almost never".  I've not 
> had any software install that asked for a reboot except .NET 3.5.
> 
Hmm. XP So, they are improving somethings, and hosing others, like the 
Backup only backing up what "it" wants... lol Typical. Its pretty bad 
when, under an OS that "attempts" to do everything for you, you are 
probably "still" better off writing a fracking script to do it instead. 
;) I mean, if I wasn't so completely lazy that I haven't bothered to 
work out the logic needed to use something like WinRAR and some Lua or 
Python to make my own backup system.. 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();
}

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

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> My point was that "update" in their world means, "We maybe patched some 
> bugs, but this is damn unlikely, unless they where security bugs." 

No it doesn't. I get all kinds of UI updates, new file systems, .NET, 
browser updates, media player updates, new codecs, new functionality on 
media center, new (admittedly lame) games in the games list, new examples 
and tutorials and libraries for their compilers, new block lists for junk 
mail, etc.  It's not limited just to upgrades.

> In other words, you may be forced to "wait" for that high price update, 
> if you expect to see some things fixed at all, and that... just sucks, 
> and is yet another reason to be "somewhat" less than impressed by them. 

Well, no. They don't give much software away for free. I think we're all 
aware of that.

> That is, if a list of "patches" that are like 99% security, and don't 
> ever address "any" real problem you are having, isn't enough, by itself. 

Well, I guess you bought the wrong product. That doesn't mean the product is 
wrong, it means it doesn't do everything you want. But that's like 
complaining your VW won't haul concrete.

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

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