Posts by Pompous Git

Re: Windows 8, Windows 10......that's not the problem here....

One point I forgot to make, while MS do not "force" the purchase of their operating systems (the GWX fiasco is the closest I can recall), ever so many other computer companies have "forced" the purchase of their operating systems, yet seem to get a free pass while doing so. Amiga, Atari, and Apple come immediately to mind without getting past the first letter of the sodding alphabet! Never once have I ever heard the owner of a PDP-11 pissing and moaning about being "forced" to purchase it with a proprietary OS. A chap I invited to celebrate my 23,742th day on Earth has had his for nearly 50 years, so I might ask him why! FFS!

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Re: Don't blame users for the UI

Uhhh...just FYI but W7 DOES allow that, they are called libraries and you can make new libraries and pin as many folders in them as you want. Its as easy as "right click on folder > include in library > create new library". Its actually quite easy and once you have it in a library you'll find it right there on the right hand side of the start along with the other libraries.

And that makes the new library appear on your Taskbar? Doesn't on my machine. The moon's definitely not favouring me this moonth...

@ Bill Ashley

Didn't know that! Two new things learned in 24 hours. And they say you can't teach old dogs new tricks ;-)

Re: Lots of hate for a small loud group group

In simple terms does it work? yes. Can I do what i want on it? Yes.

In simple terms, you are a simpleton. Does the sign-cutter work under w10? No! Can my friend continue to earn money with his sign-cutter after downgrading to w10? No!

Re: Vote with your wallet

That is the efficient way guys: don't buy it, and you'll see, things will change!

Didn't have any choice, but to buy it. It's a "free" upgrade to w7 so I paid for w10 when I purchased my w7 licences.

Re: Windows 8, Windows 10......that's not the problem here....

Since 1991, I've bought fourteen PCs or laptops, and each time Microsoft has got (some say) $100 of my money.

Since 1986 or 7, I've purchased ~40 computers. Just 8 of those came with either MS DOS or Windows. Indeed, when I attempted to purchase DOS 3.2 for my second XT clone, MS told me that they didn't sell DOS at retail, so I purchased DR DOS 3.x instead. Of course I could have purchased System V Release 2 for $US43,000 with three months of support, but decided it was just a tad too expensive. IIRC I paid ~$AU65 for DR DOS and that would have been ~$US30 in those days.

Re: Windows 10...

Possibly the hardware is critical. For me W10 is wonderful. I started with windows 3.0 so I think I know what I am on about.

Hardware is definitely critical! If it won't run stable on standard hardware (Intel i5, ASUS MoBo, Intel chipset, ATI graphics) what fucking use is it?

First machine was an XT clone running DOS 2.1; no Windows in sight. Third machine ran Windows 286 in order to run PageMaker and CorelDRAW!

Re: Don't blame users for the UI

"MS first started pissing me off when they introduced the Ribbon UI."

It took you that long?

MS first pissed me off when I had to reinstall Windows 3.something (0? 1?) over 20 times. Started running linux in my office in 1993 and have never looked back.

There's a difference between annoyance (things could be better) and being pissed off (why have the fuckers done this stupid thing?).

My experience with Linux dates back to the 90s. Font-handling sucked big time. Couldn't share my (postscript) printer with SAMBA. The SAMBA devs told me they were using NT4 ws to share their printer. No driver for my (Adaptec) scsi adapter so no access to my CD burner. Apparently there were drivers for Yum Cha scsi adapters, just not Adaptec. Etc.

Never ran Vista. Was asked to fix a LeNovo notebook running Vista for a friend. Got thoroughly annoyed with UAC and had to admit defeat.

Happily running Cinnamon Mint now, though there are some annoyances. Example:

On the machine I use for playing music (2,500 titles, mostly FLACs), the volume control works in the most peculiar fashion. Hard left is sound off. A smidgeon (or perhaps tad) to the right is close to full volume. A little further right the signal overwhelms the input stage of my Rotel amplifier. Further to the right still, the volume decreases (WTF!). I haven't tried beyond the tick mark labelled 100%. Finding the sweet-spot required slowing down the mouse pointer speed to minimum. At least the control does something useful (Mint 17.3). The control in Mint 17.2 did nothing!

I'm still trying to find an equivalent player to Foobar 2000. No bling, just works. I hate bling. Creating a playlist in the Linux players I've tried so far is slow (no drag'n'dropping of folders) and presumes you are going to save it. That's something I very rarely do.

Re: Don't blame users for the UI

I wish I could think how to replicate your experience!

Fortunately I managed to replicate yours :-)

My problem occurred because I've always created shortcuts with a right drag'n'drop, choosing Create shortcut here. Good to learn something new even if it's too little too late. Thanks for your patience Joel.

Re: Where are the facts no one likes Win 10?

You are standing in a river in Egypt (in denile) mate.

As are you by perpetuating the utter bullshit that you can't purchase a computer without Windows. Here's how to purchase a Dell without Windows:

http://www.geek.com/chips/buying-a-dell-without-windows-is-not-easy-but-possible-1302452/

Re: Don't blame users for the UI

You make a desktop shortcut to explorer <folder> then drag it to the taskbar, then delete the desktop copy.

Tried that and nothing appears on the taskbar. Right drag'n'drop doesn't work either. One of the first things I tried to do when w7 first arrived. The dialog box that pops up says "pin to Explorer" rather than "pin to Taskbar". Maybe the phase of the moon's wrong...

Re: Don't blame users for the UI

I don't use the menu system either. My apps are on the. Task bar. For everything else I use the wondows key and search and double click to open.

That's OK for the progs you use 95% of the time, but fails when you can't remember the name of the program you haven't used for a long time. Something to do with a brain that's 23,728 days old I imagine. I do like being able to pin folders to the taskbar in Mint, something I wished w7 had allowed.

Re: @ AC: "It works scarily well..." @ paply

If it ain't broke don't fix it is a nice statement, but if we were to follow that Ford would only have model T's in their showrooms and sales figures would be disappointing. Often you only know its broken after it has been fixed.

You may not have noticed AC that not too long after the Model T, the motor car industry pretty much settled on a standard arrangement of accelerator, clutch, brake and gear shift. MS seems intent on shifting these around in a somewhat random fashion (for our "convenience"). Unsurprisingly, many resent this.

Fortunately, there was no Apple equivalent suing the pants off anybody who dared to use the same locations as their vehicles.

On what system does Windows 10 run faster than XP ?

On three w7 systems I have seen recently, svchost.exe was consuming anywhere up to 98% cpu, so virtually any OS would be faster. Last chap I upgraded to Cinnamon Mint as the best fix has thanked me several times since.

Re: Don't blame users for the UI

In other words, the bearded hipsters.

I resemble that remark ;-) But this "bearded hipster" turns 65 2 weeks from today. Been using MS operating systems since DOS 2. Cinnamon Mint since the middle of last year. Agree regarding "less clicking means more productivity". MS first started pissing me off when they introduced the Ribbon UI.

unbearably slow, was slower than XP at copying files from disk to disk

If you're still stuck with windows, robocopy is your friend. Even better is Beyond Compare and that's available on Mac and Linux, not just windows.

Re: Don't blame users for the UI

Some people couldn't even tell you which version of windows they are "using", they don't even care, or even need to care.

Back when I was training computer users (business) most clients thought MS Office was windows. I doubt that has changed.

Re: Windows 10 is not cause of down trending PC sales

Not sure why you think there is any dominant public opinion that Windows 10 isn't great, but I think you are mistaken in your solitary opinion.

Don't worry. You'll get to learn counting in your next year of primary school.

Re: So..

Snakes on a plane

The Git is rather fond of his trouser snake and always takes it with him on planes ;-)

Re: Bottom line

What do I *Need* Windows 10 for ?

1. Occupying disk space on the SSD of your w7 machine.

2. Consuming scarce Internet bandwidth requiring the purchase of more bandwidth and/or being shaped to 256 kB/s for weeks.

Re: Where are the facts no one likes Win 10?

there is seriously nothing that wrong with Windows 8.1 or 10 - the only thing wrong with 8.1 is the start screen. 10 is actually quite good. If you have used any version of Windows, then 10 isnt going to be a problem for you.

Are you sure about that? W10 has no driver for the sign-cutter and that's not a problem? Presumably if your car was upgraded but no longer had a gear box so you couldn't actually drive it anywhere you wouldn't have a problem with that.

Also, I get the feeling that a lot of the people complaining about Windows 10 have never actually used it for longer than 10 minutes....

Somewhat longer than 10 minutes in my case, but I did get sick and tired of error messages every 10 minutes.

Re: Not all Lesbians are feminsts.

"I went to see Paloma Faith last November"

Perhaps the name of the band she was in says it all: Paloma and the Penetrators. "She" bears a remarkable resemblance to a member of an all-male, cross-dressing troupe one of my friends performed in back in the 1970s.

Re: Well, now we know

The misogynists in this thread (specifically anyone who invoked the phrase "feminiazis") are disgusting,

I will happily live with the label "disgusting"; after all, Aqualung is my favourite Jethro Tull album :-) However, I cannot let your mischaracterisation of "mysogynist" pass.

Recently, one James Ritchie was elected unopposed to the position of Women's Officer on the UTas campus. Note that ~60% of students at UTas do not possess any Y chromosome(s).

The feminazis forced this young man, who was attempting to fight discrimination against women, to resign. Thus, there being no feminazis (or even normal women) sufficiently interested in the position, leaving no-one to represent women's interests on the SRC.

So, who are the misogynists? The feminazis or a young man who sincerely wanted to see more egalitarianism on campus. (Note my use of a non-sexist term here).

You further state:

Yes, a woman who joins a workforce has every right to be free of sexual harassment, to not be creeped upon or dismissed because of her gender; she has every right to expect equal pay and equal treatment, to expect that her fellow workers will not make inappropriate remarks about her or gossip about her or level expectations upon her that they would not level upon a coworker who is a man, simply because she is a woman.

Why should none of this apply equally to men? I'm continually amazed, not by the sexism expressed here, but by the apparent inability to see that it's sexist.

@ Steven Roper (was When I was at school ...)

High school in Victoria in the 60s was far more exciting. Winters were rather cold back then, so some of the girls took to wearing long knickers called "witches britches" and they were banned. It was rather exciting watching the senior mistress throw a girl to the floor and remove the offending knickers from one of the girls. It was my first sight of a girl's cunt.

Re: Fail on four counts (at least)

The 'fake/real' dichotomy you hold out is only relevant (i.e. problematic) when a party to sex-as-a-service exchanges professes fealty in a "real" relationship--or to the idea of such--by being in one.

You've done better than I Michael. I gave up trying to parse what a "fake" relationship might be.

@ DavCrav (was Sex is a marketing way to sell stuff? What a news!)

It may have escaped your attention, but all those chromosome combinations contain an X chromosome as I stated. Males are defined by the possession of a Y chromosome. Conversely possession of only X chromosomes defines the organism as female. I presume your XO is meant to distinguish Turner Syndrome females who possess but one X, rather than 10 year old brandy. While there are many combinations of X and Y chromosomes, there are still only two sexes as defined. At least that was the case when the Git studied genetics at university in 1969 and philosophy of biology in 2005. For there to be more than two sexes, there would have to be more than two sex chromosomes. I believe that is the case in some non-human organisms.

Examples:

Possession of XXY (Klinefelter syndrome) are males.

Possession of XXX (Trisomy X) are females.

Please note that I did not state that there were six sexes. My conclusion was that there could only be six euphemisms for sex based on the definitions of sex and gender in the English language.

While as you state I am "Just using a genotypic definition of sex" it's a workable one in that it determines who can, or cannot bear offspring. While a friend of mine in IT identifies as female, "she" is the biological father of two children and definitely not the mother. No amount of psychobabble can achieve that.

Monkey Dance

Be fair: it's hardly the first time MS has had inappropriate dancing at a public event.

There's no escape from our primate ancestry :-)

Re: Sex is a marketing way to sell stuff? What a news!

23 "genders"

Gender is used as a euphemism for sex. The word "sex" to indicate male and female is apparently far too offensive for polite use. Gender is also used to classify words. "His" is masculine, "hers" is feminine and "its" is neuter for example. Of course sex is determined by the possession (or not) of the Y chromosome, both sexes (sorry for the bluntness there) possessing X chromosomes. At best if we use gender to determine type of sex (and this is using gender in its earliest meaning), then we have feminine, masculine and neuter males; ditto for females. I count six all up. Twenty three? Somebody's being creative.

The use of euphemism instead of direct speech because you are too embarrassed to say what you actually mean has something of a history.

For example, death has many euphemisms as Monty Python amply illustrated in my youth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vuW6tQ0218

It is popularly supposed among feminists that removing gender-specific terms from the English will result in a more caring and dare I say egalitarian society. Instead of:

"Look at that poor woman; she has dropped her handbag!"

one would say:

"Look at that poor thing; it's dropped its handbag!"

Colour me dubious.

Many could install w10 several times a day, given that kind of encouragement.

Alas, not the Git who was jesting (of course). When you are rapidly approaching the age of 65 and you have Mrs Git... Well, 'nuf said :-)

Re: Depressing reading this comment section

The 1970's called and wants its attitudes back.

Having reached my twenties in the 70s, I can report it's when we (those of us in that age group) discovered that granting equality to women paid handsome dividends. In the period since there has come about a prevailing attitude that mirrors the misogyny of the generation preceding ours. And it's just as ugly.

Re: @Jon Arden Depressing reading this comment section

it surprises that the ratio is that balanced. Are you sure? Is your data personal/anecdotal, or from research by others?

https://www.superdataresearch.com/

In the US, women playing PC games outnumber men. Women play more RPGs than men, while men outnumber women in the FPS and MMO genres. Overall roughly 50/50.

But how relevant is this when as Jon Arden says, this is about devs, not players. While a dev plays games, a gamer doesn't necessarily have even the vaguest interest in development. They are not comparable.

Re: @ Jon Arden

which obscure country is that in then?

The USA of course ;-)

Computer Science and Engineering majors have stagnated at less than 10% of all degrees conferred in the U.S. for the past decade, while the demand for employees with programming and engineering skills continue to outpace the supply every year. Compare this to more woman-dominated majors such as Business and Health Professions, which comprise 1/3 of all college degrees in 2012 when combined.

Emphasis mine. Source:

http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelors-degrees-conferred-to-women-by-major-1970-2012/

Re: @ Jon Arden

I can't disagree with anything you said there.

Jon, I suspect that we have been arguing orthoganally rather than opposedly. Clearly I misunderstood the type of event. So, I passed the problem by a lady friend who also worked in IT. She suggests:

Definitely no male strippers. You need a homosexual piano player; whoever is in the line of descent from Liberace, through Peter Allen and Elton John. Definitely not Portishead or their ilk. (We both heard Portishead for the first time at a MS event).

Lots of pink. And definitely no computers. While some women look favourably on them, most women don't. They are a complete turnoff. Also, you are going to need to eliminate most of the blokes coming to the event. Too high a ratio and women won't attend. "New mathematical approaches to AI and GFX rendering techniques" are a definite turnoff for most women. They'd rather stick needles through their eyes than attend such an event.

If my lady friend is correct, and she's certainly a very insightful woman of almost fearsome intellect, you have a problem. Unless you can promise lots of unmarried millionaires in which case women will sacrifice an awful lot to get a crack at marrying one.

Re: @ Jon Arden

Also forgot to address your bewilderment regarding my People's paradise comment. In that peculiar place, it's frequently minority rules Example: My friend lived in an apartment block and the heating was set to appease the person who felt coldest. Therefore, the majority, being too hot otherwise, perforce had to open the windows to allow the "excess" heat energy escape. Of course this is an inversion of common sense, but then that's what happens when the minority is appeased.

You may want to watch The Fireman's Ball, Miloš Forman's last movie before moving to the USA. It was permanently banned in the USSR for its exposure of The People's Paradise. It's a hoot!

Re: @ Jon Arden

GDC used to be mainly about and to some extent still is about talks and presentations on new mathematical approaches to AI and GFX rendering techniques and women are represented 40/60 female to male on Mathematics degrees.

My first response to this seems to have gone into moderation, or dev null so I won't repeat what was in that post (comments from a lady friend). However, I forgot two things.

Have an upvote.

And it's a very great mistake to believe that if you have a 40/60 ratio for maths degrees, that doesn't necessarily translate to a similar ratio in regards to game development.

Re: Depressing reading this comment section

I would however be offended if there was a worldwide conference about the future direction of nursing and one of the mayor industry players hosted an event with male strippers.

How long have the young girls at this event suddenly become strippers? I rather thought "scantily clad" was stretching it a bit, given what I expect to see in the Hobart CBD come Monday lunchtime. Never mind the beach, or the swimming pool!

While you might be offended by male strippers, I might expect to be either bored, or amused. Mind you, I do recall a rather excellent film in which some Yorkshire miners stripped. And I cannot recall too many people who declared they were offended, though doubtless there were some viewers who were. It seems to be in the Nature of offendees to be offended.

Re: We need better e-mail software

Several years ago I broke the triquetrum in my left wrist. My GP sought advice from a colleague interstate as I discovered when discussing it with the landlord of the business I was working for. He, a plastic surgeon and renowned for his ability fixing wrists, had been the final recipient of the original query. He was unaware that I was the patient until we had our conversation. Security of patient information was assured by my GP having included none in her original email. How often does patient information have to accompany an electronic medical query?

@ DocJames (was Diagnosis)

It's really great to be better :-)

While the incidence of asthma might be reasonably constant between age groups, I believe the doctor's comment related to the sudden onset of asthma in later years. I believe I had a single asthma attack (brought on by stress) when I was in my mid 20s. As I relate, the chronic shortage of breath began in my mid 50s, was diagnosed as asthma and appears far more likely the beginning of my heart failure. The likelihood that it was not asthma is reinforced by the poor response to Ventolin.

An attack of acute bronchitis was also diagnosed as an asthma attack and very nearly led to my death. After being sent home from ER with a Ventolin puffer, I collapsed due to a shortage of oxygen. I thanked the paramedic who put me on oxygen and told him I had felt like I was dying. The paramedic said that was because I was dying. Needless to say* when I returned to the hospital the oxygen was taken away. Upon being called in for treatment 6-8 hours later, I asked for a wheelchair, but was told that I had to walk into the treatment area if I expected to receive treatment. I collapsed before getting that far.

I don't believe that I was demanding "doctors don't do any IT security", rather I was talking priorities. I would far rather be accurately diagnosed and treated correctly (and with a modicum of respect).

My walking exercise is conducted by walking around my rather large living room to the sound of music. I particularly enjoy the Cure ;-) After three months my weight has declined from 105 kg to 91.4. My initial goal of 90 kg is within reach!

* The Royal Hobart Hospital (RHH) is known locally as the Royal Hobart Habbatoir.

Re: Lost the plot

Simon, you have really lost the plot on this topic? Why?

Excellent piece of journalism I thought. Very informative. Thanks Simon. More please...