* Posts by Pompous Git

3087 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Sep 2014

Microsoft's equality and diversity: Skimpy schoolgirls dancing for nerds at an Xbox party

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Those that seek reasons to be offended

Indeed. I recall when Mrs Git and I first met. We took turns at driving until one day, a do-gooderess told me I was oppressing the woman I was about to commit the rest of my life to obeying. The ensuing discussion between us led to my discovering that SWMBO absolutely adored driving and she discovered that the Git rather loathed it. So, Mrs Git drives and the Git listens to music on the vehicle's CD player.

Needless to say, a do-gooderess declared the Git was oppressing SWMBO by allowing her to do all the driving while doing none himself. Whatever the Git does is automatically oppression from the mere fact that he is a male.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Depressing reading this comment section

Nice attempt to twist my words, but that's not what I said or implied.

The implication is there, nevertheless. And I didn't twist your words, I merely posited a situation opposite to the one you are moaning about. Personally, I have no problem with shows where there are no dancing girls. Nor do I have a problem with shows where there are dancing girls. I do believe that pretty young girls should be allowed to earn a living doing what they in all likelihood enjoy. I also object to do-gooderesses objecting to people doing what they wish when it causes no obvious harm to anybody.

I would also assume the organisers of these events have organised shows both with and without pretty young dancing girls and drawn the conclusion that the former are more effective. If not, then they would merely be a waste of money.

For some reason your attitude reminds me of the kind of situation a friend described in The People's Paradise when she lived there. Nobody was "alienated", but no-one was happy. Rather the opposite was true. Being miserable yourself gives you no inalienable right to inflict your misery on others.

Pompous Git Silver badge

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

Sildenafil? Try Viagra, it will make you like James Bond.

Presumably you also believe that ascorbic acid is really bad for you and we all need to ingest more vitamin C.

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

If I go to a lingerie convention I expect to get an eye full of a gyrating, scantily clad twenty-something. At a tech convention? Not so much.

Might have gone to a few more tech conventions and a few less lingerie conventions had I known about this.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Depressing reading this comment section

I'm stunned that people on this forum cannot see that alienating female developers and industry professionals of both sexes by clearly focussing on the *entertainment* of straight male attendees is both insulting and demeaning to both the Xbox brand and anyone working in the industry.

You are of course correct. They should have alienated the 90% to appease the 10% who likely wouldn't have turned up anyway.

[Why doesn't HTML have a sarc tag?]

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Just ban gender roles already!

I think that would put 80% of the shops on the High Street out of business and their employees (female) out of work. That's "gender equality" for you ;-)

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: "You just didn't like the entertainment"

On the other hand, the sort of people who view sexual exploitation as "entertainment" tend to be permanently single.

They were being sexually exploited by being paid to dance, fully clothed? Maybe if they earnt the money they need giving blowjobs in dark alleyways they wouldn't be sexually exploited. Was the Git being sexually exploited when the only job he could get in 1970 was undraped male model for an art class? Several of the girls were utterly fascinated by the Git's tackle as he was the first male model they had that didn't wear a jockstrap. Couldn't afford one.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Bloke's perspective

its not a strip club. Her skirts on and her tits are covered

For some reason I find that rather sad...

Pompous Git Silver badge

So when do the dancers show up at your door to induce you finally download and install Windows 10? Looking at the apparent desperation that MS is having with not just Windows 10 on PC's, what will be next?

I'd install w10 in return for a blowjob from a pretty young girl. Might be the only thing that would induce me to. Also I'd delete it ASAP afterward in favour of Mint, curmudgeon that I am :-)

Too Naked for the Nazis streaks to literary glory

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Re: Your bookshelf should also include

Might as well include "Baby's Revenge" by Nora Titoff for old times' sake then.

How Microsoft copied malware techniques to make Get Windows 10 the world's PC pest

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Re: Finally confirmed my belief...

Marvellous. Like dinosaurs were marvellous.

Dinosaurs are marvellous. I see dinosaurs out of my window every day; they flit and frolic above my head when I'm in the garden. Birds are modern dinosaurs, descendants of the long-dead animals that fill our museums. Everything we consider to be characteristic of birds was first a (non-avian) dinosaur characteristic and that includes feathers.

You might want to try a different analogy.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Korpo Nazis

The fascist VPs at MS have had a major boner for Apples land grab of gate keeping all software sales for their platform.

Dunno if it's still true, but not so long ago 95% of Mac users were running MSO, a much higher percentage than PC users.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Another way?

a lot of people had the rollback fail too, leaving the PC unbootable.

Mine wasn't unbootable, but it was certainly unusable with svchost consuming 95-98% of cpu.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: No sale

There's no point in paying for an operating system that I'd immediately replace with Linux Mint.

So why would you? The commonly accepted belief that you are forced to purchase windows with hardware is complete bullshit. You don't really believe that corporates purchase their hardware with windows and then also purchase a volume licence for the same do you? 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/

Hotel light control hack illuminates lamentable state of IoT security

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Re: el reg FUD machine in full gear

I often used WINS (Windows Internet Naming Service) for routing back in the 90s. It may have been "wrong", but it worked quite well. Out of curiosity, what did you use for NetBIOS name resolution?

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: el reg FUD machine in full gear

surely, unless you can demonstrate that they've got, say, multiple LAN's with routing to supply the "inter" and make it an internet?

Actually, I don't need to demonstrate anything. The training manual I had described the illustrated token ring network as "an internet", the inter part being the cabling between individual computers. Connecting different networks with bridges and gateways came later in the manual. Sadly I cannot recall the book's title and it was passed on to someone else at least 16-17 years ago. Clearly, Alan Brown recalls learning the same.

The Internet was a very different place in those days although changing because of the web. Sadly, in many ways not for the better. Mind you, I was pretty excited when being trained over the web for my w95 certification. Scholars.com had only just been founded and my tutor (the owner of the business) used to sit at the edge of the lake in Canada where he lived with his feet in the water and a laptop. Happier days...

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: el reg FUD machine in full gear

what are multiple connected internets called?

An internetwork.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: el reg FUD machine in full gear

Hint guys the I in IoT stands for "internet" which is that network you can download porn etc from outside of your own house and not the network you use to transfer porn to and from your NAS or whatever.

That's news to me. When I learnt my TCP/IP the hotel's network was referred to as an internet. The Internet (note the capital I) was the network we used gopher and FTP and other exciting things on. Email and newsgroups also come to mind.

Pompous Git Silver badge
Paris Hilton

If the android was called Anita and the tech was silky smooth rather than cutting edge, I might be very interested indeed :-)

Bloody Danes top world happiness league

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Re: @Lars

or we were run over by climate change skeptics.

The only running over the Git is likely to suffer from is people riding bicycles. There has been one pedestrian death in Tasmania already and the Git has had several close calls. It seems to me that these bicycle riders are not just very assiduously avoiding riding on the roads and in the exclusive-for-bicycle-rider lanes created on those roads, are also the very sort that "believe in climate change" (as if climate needed belief to exist).

The Köppen climate classification for Tasmania for example is maritime temperate, just the same as it was 100 years ago and 200 years ago. Believing that because a climate is the same as it was in the past is due to "unprecedented" change seems almost as irrational as the twats attempting to run me down on the footpath. Not to put too fine a point on this, I am using less embodied energy by walking than they are on their bicycles and frankly ludicrous lycra, testicle-emphasising, expensive cycling clothes.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: list of acceptable americans ...

And while we're talking of Hobart, can we add Brian Ritchie (from Violent Femmes) to the list of Yanks we like? Tho i think he might be an Aussie now.

Sorry I consigned him to et cetera. Yes, Brian is very much a local these days insofar as parochial a place as Hobart will allow ;-) He curates excellent music festivals which ever so many of us appreciate.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: @ Pompous Git

@ Glen Waverley

It's the drug that's eligible to be on the PBS and subsidised, not the consumer of the drug. Likely he would have had to pay the doctor the full quid and certainly wouldn't have been bulk billed.

The Septic (an apt term when in need of antibiotics) was accusing young Ashlee of "ripping him off" by dint what was in the box was not what the label said. Quite why making live-saving medicines affordable is evil escapes me. Communicable diseases strike down the rich and poor alike

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Bah, Happiness!

A collective action is fine, but be careful who you add to your collective.

Indeed. There seem to be two sorts of people: those who are obsessed by their Rights and those who, like Aristotle, believe we are born into a world with certain Obligations. What we see around us is the legacy of many preceding people's efforts. Therefore, if we are virtuous, will in turn endeavour to make our part of the world an even better place also.

An illustration of the former sort is a local woman who campaigned vigorously against forestry. The forest workers were continually harassed by greenies and prevented from earning their living when their machines were occupied by protesters. Finally the government colluded with the protesters and the forest workers were (nearly) all put out of business.

Local woman has built her house and planted a lovely orchard adjacent to the forest she claims to love. When informed it would all be for naught, she asked why.

Because when the February Dragon (bushfires) come, it will all be destroyed. She says: "I'll just call the fire brigade".

But she has put the fire brigade out of business because the forest workers and their machinery was the fire brigade. No amount of demanding her rights will create a fire brigade out of thin air. And the collective (population of the country) are now paying for the forest workers' dole, there being no suitable other employment for them. And of course small business suffers because the dole is ever so much less than the income they earned when usefully employed.

So it goes... Rights or Obligations?

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Bah, Happiness!

Does *anyone* have a sane wife?

Excellent question. Mrs Git is a very keen rower of skiffs and this week is away doing just that. She won a week's accommodation in a luxury apartment on the Queensland Gold Coast. It's a prize neither of us have the slightest interest in.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Bah, Happiness!

But having a sane wife definitely helps.

Not sure about the sanity. Mrs Git and I have been together since 1980 and I have often enough been asked for the secret to the success of our marriage. I always respond that all you need to do is find a woman who's worth obeying. Which is why Mrs Git is SWMBO.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: @Lars

Are the choices any better where you are?

It is often claimed that they are. Here in Australia, the politicians are supposedly betterer than in the US for example. To me it seems it's akin to claiming having a dose of gonorrhea is better than having syphilis.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Also, what's with all the anti-Americanism? It's petty and says more about you and your insecurities than it does about America or Americans.

No, there's a certain type of American who visits other parts of the planet seemingly for the sake of behaving like a complete arsehole. Live with it. If you don't like it, please shoot the fuckers before they leave.

FWIW Hobart is a port that has been visited by many ships of the USN and we have billeted a sailor from most such visiting ships. Usually young men from the the mid-west and they have been the exact opposite of the idiot I earlier described. My best friend was a Merkin until 1972 when he became an Australian citizen. At least he was my best friend until he died on me a few years ago. My youngest son's best friend is a US citizen. One of my nephews is married to delightfully eccentric girl from Des Moines. So no, not anti-American at all.

If these American arseholes dislike being away from America so much and have to yell at people who have no interest in living there, or sharing their rather odd beliefs, why the fuck don't they stay there? We like Bill Bryson, Richard Gilewitz, Amanda Palmer and ever so many other Americans who know how to behave in a civilised manner.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: @ Pompous Git

The fellow firmly believed that since it was so cheap the stuff wouldn't work and was likely after the 'good stuff', thus giving the pharmacist a hard time was a requirement.

As it happens, the doctor had prescribed the exact same brand he had been taking back in the US. When she tried to explain the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme to him, he just yelled at her.

Naproxen isn't available off the shelf here in Oz, it's prescription only. I pay $AU31.40 for 28 tablets.

Pompous Git Silver badge

The yanks aren’t happy. They're all just abusing benzodiazepine.

Merkins are just plain weird. They don't just abuse benzodiazepene. Went into my usual pharmacy recently and the delightfully pretty young pharmacist was being abused by a Merkin tourist because she was charging too little for the penicillin he was there to purchase. Quite why charging too little was "ripping him off" isn't clear to me unless you hold the peculiar belief that the more expensive a drug is, the more effective.

Posh frockers Lord & Taylor spanked after Instagram fillies shocker

Pompous Git Silver badge

if I buy the dress do I get the girl wearing it?

No. But I do suggest you don't let the missus catch you wearing it :-)

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Would this be illegal elsewhere?

You're supposed to know that if you buy that new car advertised with the two sexy ladies that the ladies are not included.

Please, tell me that's not true. What's the point of winning the lottery and buying a car that makes you look like an utter twat if you don't get to play with the accessories? Gutted I am...

Microsoft's done a terrible job with its Windows 10 nagware

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Re: The Terrible...

Yes, the majority of the market WANTS these rubbish "features".

Like MS pushing redundant copies of w10 onto their machines when only one copy is needed. Using up all of users' mobile data to do this requiring the purchase of more bandwidth. W10 destabilising/bricking users' machines. Etc.

Whatever it is you're smoking, don't Bogart that joint my friend. Pass it around.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: What users want ...

Just an example; try to get your local architect to draw the plans by hand,

ROFL! That's precisely what Real Architects do! The working drawings that builders use are executed by their lowly minions: draughtsmen. One once admiited that when he went owner-builder on his own home, he discovered that the design drawings for foundations he insisted upon were in fact impossible to execute. Builders of course are utterly aware of the failings of architects and the need to improvise. They have a term of art: k'narchitects. Architects are useful for pretty drawings, but not much beyond that.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: The Terrible...

Why? Why, exactly is Outlook horrible? Or, like many often do on here, are you remembering back to the likes of Outlook 97 which was pretty grim?

I'm with you on this TonyJ. One thing I miss using Linux is the ability to have my contacts and calendar sync automagically with my Android phone. Of course I can by giving all that information to Google, but why would I want to do that FFS? If it's simple to write your own software to do this, why has nobody in the Linux community done so?

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: What users want ...

If you have a problem with LibreOffice, then fix it - you have the source code and a license to use it. Personally, I use reportlab+python, but each to his own.

So where's this Outlook equivalent you've written then, smart-arse?

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Indeed

On the 'new' 7 box, after 2 days of updating, I had to re-hide KB3035583 at least once. yeah, it came back, like a turd that won't flush, after I hid it the first time.

The Git has a wart on his left thumb called Graham (after a cow-orker) and it has persisted through many, many rounds of freezing, burning with acid, gouging etc over the last ten years. Every time I think it's dead at last, it just comes back. KB3035583 is the Graham of computing. Every time you think you've knocked it on the head, zombie-like it reappears. Worse, it reappears in your dreams! MS has created a nightmare... God how they must hate us!

Microsoft adds 'non-security updates' to security patches

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Re: I'll jump in before everybody starts to state the obvious....

The difference between getting Android updates on Nexus or iOS updates on iPhone, and getting Windows 10 updates on your Windows 7 PC is that only Microsoft is trying to trick you to taking the upgrade and constantly pushing it in your face.

It's worse than that, DougS. Imagine your business is sign-cutting and there's no w10 driver for your sign-cutter. W10 could be the latest and greatest since sliced bread, but it's as useless as tits on a bull if it won't let you conduct your business. And for those ranting about the EULA, there's nowhere it states that MS have the right to put you out of business, or stop your TV from working for that matter.

Unscrupulous Microserfs are likely rubbing their hands with glee at this situation. Revert offending w10 install to w7 and wait for the inevitable. W7 becomes stuck at 95-98% cpu usage after new patch. Seen this three times now and I'm retired.

No Linux driver for the sign-cutter (nothing new there) so what's a scrupulous support dude to do?

Revert to WinXP for the sign-cutter and purchase a refurb machine from Dell to run Cinnamon Mint and access Internet etc. Cheaper than a new sign-cutter!

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: windows 7 has been updating regular since its release

windows 7 has been updating regular since its release so why all the fuss about updates to windows 10

1. MS pushing 7 redundant copies of w10 onto my machines when I only needed one copy.

2. Using up all of my mobile data to do this requiring me to purchase more bandwidth.

3. Pushing my fixed wireless over the limit so I was shaped to 256k for 3 weeks.

4. W10 destabilised the machine it was installed to so not suitable for purpose. I also didn't like interface changes.

5. Allowing w10 onto the machine I use as a TV tuner meant no Windows Media Centre so the TV would no longer work as a TV. The software that came with the tuner hardware didn't work on w7, so was unlikely to work under w10, never mind the hardware.

Now obviously Internet bandwidth is free in the land of MS. Not free in the Land of Under. Likewise TV tuners and software. Either that or "free" means "costs you money" in the Land of the Free.

And people wonder why we think Merkins are mad!

German lodges todger in 13 steel rings

Pompous Git Silver badge

There's a school of thought...

... believes he was trying to steel a YL's virginity. However, he was of the opinion that this didn't really matter since she would still have the box it came in. Or he came in or something...

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Hampton ????

Pity those who reside in the seaside town of Littlehampton.

I don't think them with little Hamptons would have the same problem.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Points for the image

I don't believe adding frostbite to said Precious would be conducive to an active sex life...

Can you get frostbite from methedrine these days? Whoda thunkit? Fifty years ago it just made you ejaculate without an erection and without an orgasm. Bit of a waste of money if you ask me...

US chap sharpens paradigm-busting scissors

Pompous Git Silver badge

Can you run with them?

You can, but best not tell Clippy; you might upset him. Or her. Or it.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Simpler solution - angle grinder

But I'll bet the missus'll be livid if you try that on her!

And there'd be rather a lot of blood. Not to mention some unwanted attention from the constabulary!

'Microsoft Office has been the bane of my life, while simultaneously keeping me employed'

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Excel

If your going to print your spreadsheet then most printers use A4

Unless you happen to be in the US. Odd thing here in Oz is the very high percentage of computers where Windows has been installed with Region Setting = USA, thus MSO uses American Letter for paper size and doesn't use the excellent Macquarie English Dictionary for spell checking.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Re: Normal.dot

It transpired that Normall.dot was corrupted

Hopefully attributed to a corrupt hdd or RAM and not MS Word. Despite Word's manifest faults, this is not something that I ever came across despite creating (and creation of) many thousands of Word documents over the last 25 years.

Pompous Git Silver badge
Pint

Re: I first realised MS were fsked when...

It's embarrassing that the MVP didn't know this, and I also hate the ribbon interface, but the feature wasn't dropped.

I was eventually shown this, but it was long after the horse had bolted. I didn't use any ribbonised Office applications until I discovered KUTools Classic Menus that gives you your menus back. Why MS didn't give the option of turning menus on or off is a bit of a mystery. Let's face it, Alt F, S is almost as fast as Ctrl S (for an example) and certainly faster than selecting the correct ribbon and button with the mouse.

I felt sorry for the MVP as he could hardly be expected to be fully familiar with an early beta and likely hated the Ribbon as much as I do.

Have a beer and an upvote.

Pompous Git Silver badge

I first realised MS were fsked when...

...I attended a MS Tech Briefing on SharePoint Services. After the main presentation, the MVP showed us what we were to look forward to in the next version of Office: The Ribbon. The application was Excel and the MVP explained we would be much happier with The Ribbon and not have to use menus. So I asked "how do I split a window if I cant't select Window, Split window from a menu?". After farting around for several minutes and becoming very red in the face the MVP said we probably didn't need to split windows any more so it was a feature that had been dropped. I can't for the life of me recall if he said it was "for your convenience", but there you go. I'm an old fart who couldn't imagine using a spreadsheet where I couldn't split the window.

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Re: I spent today...

Teaching a bunch of analysts how to use R

I can hear the sighs of relief all the way down here in the Land of Under: "Aaaaaaah..."

Austrian mayor spunks €40k on virgin-eating dragon

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Re: Maybe it's a chick thing

"Sick Promotions"????

ROFL! I'd better not say lest I be accused of ingratitude. Slick Promotions was a client when I was still working in IT.

Pompous Git Silver badge

Maybe it's a chick thing

Hobart (Tasmania) Mayor Sue Hickey is obsessed with changing the Council logo. The odds are 100:1 that the Hobart City Council will shortly be amalgamating with adjacent Glenorchy City Council, thus requiring a logo change.

On second thoughts Sue Hickey's business, Slick Promotions, sells tat with yourcorporatelogohere.