Rants!
1/12/18
I have pointed this out before in my review
of Windows 8.0, but I need to point out again exactly how evil the
new "open with" dialog is is Windows 10.
win10openwithdialog.png
Instead of just listing applications that are installed on your computer, the first and only entry is to redirect you to their stupid "store". According to advertising executive Staya Nadella, installed applications must be secondary, and they don't want you to search the web for a free tool.
But even more annoyingly, WHERE IS THE CANCEL BUTTON?!?!!
The ONLY option is "OK". No, it is NOT OK! I don't want to do that. How do I get out of this? Oh, well, it seems clicking the mouse outside of the window makes it go away...... WHEN THE FUCK HAS THAT BEEN A STANDARD UI PRACTICE? Right, NEVER! And there is no window management, that normally would also have a Close button. "No, we are Microsoft and we want you going to our store and giving us your money, fuck you".
For the kids who do not remember, here is how a useful, non abusive,
"open with" dialog looks:
win95openwithdialog.png
8/26/17
Microsoft finally got slapped by the German government for their
obnoxious and invasive pushing of Windows 10. Too little and too late,
but it is good to see at least the Germans have a bit of common sense left.
I doubt the US government will ever do anything about that.
5/4/17
Microsoft is releasing a new flavor of Windows 10 named "Windows
10 S" that is crippled so that it only can install applications from Microsoft's
Windows Store. Releasing an entire version of Windows for this seems a
bit silly since normal Windows 10 already has this as an optional setting
that administrators may set.
Still, once again people forget what made Personal Computing so great - the ability to write and run your own programs without having to bow down to some big company.
11/25/16
Reportedly Microsoft is now selling the telemetry data it collects
from you to third parties. What did you expect? What, did you think that
was for debugging or UI design purposes?
Expect more targeted advertising on your desktop, and automatic phone calls to law enforcement when you do anything they don't like.
Fuck, I can't even say stuff like that and sound sarcastic anymore.
7/5/16
And Microsoft has stepped it up another notch again in one last
attempt to assimilate users before "ending" the update with a full screen
nag:
fullwin10nag.png
Seriously, screw you Staya.
5/19/16
Microsoft has gone a step further and changed the Windows 10 upgrade
nag screen from an opt-in to an opt-OUT.
The previous one just asked if you wanted to upgrade and you would just click NO or cancel. The new one automatically "schedules" an update, and you must go through extra steps to cancel it. If you ignore it, you will get Windows 10. Up the butt. And you must be happy about it.
5/15/16
Microsoft reeeeaaallly won't shut up about Windows 10: Install
Windows 10.jpg
2/23/16
Apparently Microsoft's "Office 365" service was down for a day in
Europe. It blows my mind that anyone would even want such a service. The
whole point of the personal computer revolution was to get out from under
the centralized control of big corporations. They might as well be using
green-screen dumb terminals connected to a Microsoft mainframe. And yet
somehow people think this is OK.
2/12/16
I am so sick of Windows 10. At least most other people are too.
The Windows 10 spyware mis-features are getting a lot of attention, but still not as much as they should. The thing is, until someone openly examines the source code and publishes details about what Microsoft is collecting, and then Microsoft is held accountable for any changes, WE JUST CAN'T KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING! So until that happens, we should all assume they send back your bank account information and may plant CP on your computer.
They are still really trying to push Windows 10 over Windows 8 and 7. They pushed out that popup to all (non enterprise) Windows 7 users and you can't get rid of that without hacking around in the registry. Why isn't Satya Nadella shot in front of a firing squad?
Also, it looks like youtube finally gave up working with SeaMonkey 1.1.x/Flash 7. The embedded player still seems to work, but a script on their site pages is crapping out causing everything to stop. Of couese, the site layout has been broken for ages.
6/22/15
There has been a lot of chatter about Microsoft giving away "free"
copies of Windows 9. I mean 10. Of course, creating such chatter is exactly
what they want. Really, Windows 10 is more or less just a service pack
for 8.x.
But the real news is they are offering it to Windows 7 users, to try and cut in to the number of those stubborn folks who want to use an OS/GUI that actually works. And they are doing this by installing a retarded popup thing *advertising* this on all Windows 7 machines. How is that even legal? Anyway, NO THANKS!
Oh, and these so called "free" copies require use of a Microsoft online account that is tied to your local Windows account. So they spy on you and advertise more to you, and who knows what. That is not what I call free.
They are also supposedly offering "free" copies to people who beta test Windows for them, because Microsoft fired all their QA staff. That really inspires confidence.
Supposedly Windows 10 is going to be released soon but they are not in "feature freeze"? W... T... F...?
3/20/15
And now, Microsoft is giving OEMs the option to lock Secure Boot
on. In unrelated news, Microsoft is giving OEMs the option to have their
legs broken or not.
3/17/15
It seems that Microsoft wants to kill off the "Internet Explorer"
brand name, and add a second, distinctly different, browser in addition
to IE.
I've mentioned previously that the only real way to keep up with insane internet standards-of-the-minute is for them to add a second browser or rendering engine that is not "integrated" with the OS. That is, applications that programmatically call the browser get one rendering engine, and regular user browsing gets another.
What is Microsoft supposed to do when only a year after a new OS release, some new internet fad comes out that changes everything? Long gone are the days when Microsoft could dictate their standards, and calmly wait to add the changes in the next OS release cycle. If they add random crap to their "integrated" IE, then they risk breaking shitty designed applications.
So, the solution is simple. Add a second web browser. That is what most people do anyway, but Microsoft would rather that it not be Firefox or Google Chrome.
But the whole idea of changing the branding seems like an overkill. From a user's perspective it would make more sense for Microsoft to keep "Internet Explorer" and seamlessly have different browsing compatibility modes. To some extent, they had already done that in other versions.
But then again, we are talking about the same drooling retards who thought getting rid of the Start menu was a good idea.
At the rate they are going they will successfully eliminate the "Microsoft" brand. YAY!
10/28/14
Well just in time for Halloween, Windows 7 OEM sales end on friday.
So that leaves regular consumers with just that crappy Windows 8 unless
you want to dig around and buy a used laptop.
10/3/14
Duuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrr. The execs at Microsoft obviously didn't
learn to count in kindergarten. Like some kind of lame April fools joke,
they announced that the next version of Windows is going to be called "Windows
10". Never mind that there was no Windows 9. Now they are pulling some
lame excuse out of their butts that it preserves compatibility. Like a
new release has never broken a crappy program before.
Now, search engines getting confused between "Windows 9" and "Windows 9x" would at least be a valid argument.
Funny thing about search engine results is that I get a LOT of hits on my site for people searching for "Windows 8 service pack 1" since they decided to randomly jump to 8.1 instead of 8.0 SP1 and not make it a truly free download (you can only get it from their retarded "store" instead of just normally downloading it).
Other names they considered:
- Windows Ten-ish
- Windows Can't Count Edition
- Windows We Lost Count Edition
- Windows 9.9999897853 Pentium FDIV Bug Edition.
3/12/14
With the end-of-support date for Windows XP coming up, a lot more
people are beginning to feel the sting from the foul odor of Windows 8.
If you know where to look (in business class machines), there are still
a good choice of Windows 7 machines. I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't pulled
the plug on Windows 7 sales yet. Perhaps someone there still wants to stay
in business?
Certainly not Balmer. He's out of there, and besides, he loves those cell phones so much, he should just marry them.
Imagine it: A retired Steve Balmer happily driving around his new cell phone wife in his smoke belching vintage late 1980's bright green astroturf-mobile.
8/23/13
According to the news, Steve Balmer announced his plan to retire....
And STAY OUT!!
And don't let the chair hit you on the ass on the way out.
7/03/13
It's kind of disturbing how many of these backwards Windows 8 machines
are out there now. I'm surprised there hasn't been more of a backlash.
The average person is just going to put up with it, but reports are PC
sales have significantly dropped.
It is hilarious how Microsoft keeps pointing their finger and blaming
tablets as the single cause of low PC sales. Everyone knows the real reason
PC sales are dropping are:
1: Nobody wants Windows 8
2: Old desktop computers are good enough
3: You can, indeed, look at pictures of cats on a tablet or "phone"
without Windows.
But people have forgotten why personal computing came about in the first place. Go back and look at the software that made companies buy IBM PCs in the first place. These were spread sheets, word processors, databases, financial programs and such. Those needs may seem mundane today but they are not magically going away, and they are just as critical to businesses as they were then. And those are not the sort of things you can easily do on a toy phone or tablet.
If all you do is look at pictures of cats and clips of Family Guy, then by all means get a tablet. I don't care. But don't try and shove your dumbed down user interfaces on desktops where they don't belong.
The really crazy thing is how each time a Windows 8 story comes up, comments are usually filled with obvious Microsoft shill posts saying things along the lines of "Windows 8 works great for me! It is so much better! And there is something wrong with you if you can't get used to it and like it". And never a single drop of detail backing up what they claim to be "better".
And Microsoft shills are already flapping their heads about "Windows 8.1", trying to make it sound like a complete 180. All Microsoft has done is touch up a couple of things that shouldn't have been messed up in the first place. "They listened" my ass. Brought back the Start button? What a joke. I think this Penny Arcade comic sums up the situation quite nicely: http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/06/28
BTW, Google sure knows its user base well! Using clips of Family Guy in their Chrome advertisements... Damn that show is so retarded.
10/10/2012
Some of the first Windows 8 advertisements have surfaced. Just as
I thought, all of them are just hypnotic scrolling similar to many recent
cell phone advertisements. "Oh it scrolls, it scrolls! Duuuuhhhhh". Most
of the ads show Windows 8 running on a tablet, not a normal PC. They obviously
did that to show off touch screens because they know damn well that is
useless on a normal PC. They also show off various "apps" like a cookbook
and stuff. It reminds me sooooooooo much of the mindless crapps that they
used to bundle with "multimedia" computers back in the early 90s.
Really, touch screens like failed early 1980s machines, full screen applications just like the old DOS days, "tiled" applications like back in Windows 1.01, memorizing commands just like the old command line, useless crap apps like back in the early days of multimedia, yes Windows 8 is so, so new.
7/29/2012
Well, it is beginning to sound like Windows 8/RT (whatever they
are calling it this week) for ARM is already dead. Apparently Microsoft
wants to produce their own tablet hardware, and HP says they aren't going
to try and compete with Microsoft by also making a Win 8 tablet.
Back in the 90s, it seemed like Microsoft really wanted to make their own desktop PC hardware like Apple. But Microsoft grew up as a software company licensing it's software to numerous third parties. If they had decided to produce their own PCs at all, that would have thrown a major monkey wrench in their relationships with other PC vendors. Images of Apple forcibly shutting down clone makers comes to mind. - nobody wants to be in that position with mobile devices today.
5/31/2012
Well, this is brilliant. If you want your Linux distro to be able
to use UEFI SecureBoot, its bootloader will have to be signed.... BY MICROSOFT.
Making Microsoft the gatekeper of everything that runs on the upcoming
generation of PCs. Sure, sure, supposedly it should be possible to turn
off SecureBoot, but how long will that last?
And on top of that Microsoft's new EULAs prohibits class action lawsuits. (If people were actually in charge of things instead of large corporations, this would be illegal!)
5/12/2012
I was really hoping that Windows 8 for the ARM would be a full,
direct port, identical other than lacking x86 compatibility - similar to
the old days of NT 4 on Alpha/Mips/PPC. The idea being that one could just
take an existing Win32 application and recompile it for ARM with minimal
changes.
But it seems somehow that Microsoft is not going to permit that.
From what I have read, any non-Microsoft applications will be forced to use the "Metro" UI and the "Windows RT" runtime, while IE and MS Office will enjoy the privilege of using a standard desktop mode and presumably standard Win APIs.
This differs so much from regular Windows it is looking more and like Windows CE. And why would anyone want another locked down OS? Did Microsoft forget they are also competing with Android?
Also Internet Explorer coming to XBOX? I wonder how much like "IE" for windows that really is? XBOX runs a custom closer-to-the-hardware OS that is simply NOT Windows. I'm guessing this port of IE will get the same treatment as IE 5 for MacOS.
Still, it's interesting - and a little worrisome - that after all this time of being Windows/x86 only, they are now once again trying to get more coverage on different platforms.
And on top of all that, they are shooting out IE advertisements all over the TV. I wish they would SHUT UP!
All the pieces are coming in place - all they have to do is start their underhanded business tactics again and brutally murder their competitors.
They must be busy with something, they forgot their regular rounds of leg-breaking at Inland where they somehow defied Microsoft and managed to produce this keyboard without the Microsoft (TM) logo on the "start" key. I haven't seen any run-of-the-mill keyboards like this since 1995. (Currently on sale at Microcenter! Get them while they last!)
I feel a storm brewing.
1/11/2012
If you want to get off of Mozilla's version number roller coaster,
download Firefox
10 ESR
12/17/2011
Reportedly, Microsoft is going to start "forcing" IE upgrades to
XP/Vista/Win7 users of IE 6/7/8. For existing stuff, not really that big
of a deal. IE has been pushed out via Windows Update for ages, except users
could opt out - and if they did then this new update still will not update
them. And of course, companies usually use their own update methods.
So this will mainly affect new installs.
I think the interesting part will be going forward to see how Microsoft handles future upgrades (say from IE 9 to 10). If Microsoft forces people to move instantly on the upgrade treadmill this could cause problems for developers who need to maintain compatibilty.
11/2/2011
There has been some talk about the new "Secure Boot" that Microsoft
is requiring OEMs to put in their motherboards. Basically it will technologically
block the ability of a PC to boot anything other than Microsoft(TM) brand
Windows unless this feature can be disabled or set with a custom key.
It sound like initially most vendors may provide this as an option. But it will make booting other OSes on random computers harder as one must disable the option in BIOS first. And there exist the very real and likely possibility that vendors may eventually omit the ability to disable or customize this feature.
Microsoft apologists are quick to point out that this new Secure Boot requirement does not state in any way that OEMs must lock out other OSes. However this quite reminds me of how Microsoft required OEMs to install Internet Explorer and not remove the IE icon. Sure they were free to continue bundling Netscape in addition, but how many really did that?
9/29/2011
Firefox's market share is plummeting. Not surprised. Every single
story on Slashdot is filled with hundreds of negative comments about the
direction Mozilla has taken. Not a single positive comment either. Users
are complaining about broken buggy stuff because Mozilla has turned their
entire user base in to beta testers. And while Mozilla is adding flashy
new useless features the competition is excelling in simple things like
a UI that doesn't randomly freeze solid.
I have a theory that what happened was that Mozilla based this rapid release idea on the feedback they got from the feedback tool they included with the Firefox 4 betas. Unfortunately the only people using it at the time happened to be the "bleeding edge" enthusiast kids who, of course, all said stuff like "you should have more frequent releases!11!11!! I love new features and I wants them nows!!!". Meanwhile the people that really mattered (developers, corporate, etc.) were all still running stable 3.6 and probably didn't even know about this feedback tool.
Please stop the madness.
8/14/2011
I hate to say it, but Firefox has officially screwed the pooch.
This version number bumping nonsense is causing very serious, very real
problems for people and Mozilla.org is doing little to address the issues.
I was hoping by now they would announce some kind of alternate long term
support plan or something for those who need it, but no such luck. What
end users may not see is that the companies and their developers require
stable long term support from Mozilla in order for them to in turn provide
support to their users. This version number bumping destroys all of that.
After all of these years of slowly building mind share and getting people to accept Firefox as a viable alternative to IE, Mozilla has taken the entire thing and flushed it down the toilet. );
I really hope I am wrong, and things work out better than it looks, but this looks bad.
Is that Bill Gates laughing right now?
5/12/2011
The penalties, what few there were, from the antitrust case against
Microsoft are at an end. It will be interesting to see if they return to
their blatant anti-competitive ways, although they never really stopped
- they were just infinitely more subtle and tactful about it. Since then,
Linux has become a bit more of a competitor on the PC desktop, but most
other alternatives OSes have disappeared or remained in extreme niche markets
(MacOS X is still only licensed for use on Apple hardware). On the brighter
side, despite their best efforts the diversity of web browsers has flourished,
with Firefox, Opera, Safari, and even the newcomer Chrome all being popular
and inter operable on the modern internet.
4/16/2011
Turns out the future IE 10 might not run on Windows Vista. Well,
boo-hoo for Vista, but for those that want to develop with browsers as
part of an application platform this further fragments the environments
they can target. Although I would hope more people are targeting Firefox
as their primary client platform.
The recent announcement, however, that Firefox will start pumping out new versions that bump the version number every few months, suggests version fragmentation among Firefox users may increase. Actually, with some of the unpopular UI changes in Firefox 4, some people are sticking with 3.6. I'd really rather not rant about Firefox, but come on Mozilla, you already had the ability to hide the status bar, you could have just shipped it with the default set to "hidden" instead of removing it entirely!!!
3/22/2011
Firefox 4 was released, and IE 9 was released the other day too.
Still blows my mind that IE 9 won't run on XP, especially when XP is still
very widely used. This does make me think about how Windows XP's "end of
support" date is slowly creeping up. It will be VERY interesting to see
if Microsoft permits any new installation or re-installation of XP after
that date. Thanks to their product activation, if Microsoft dropped off
the face of the planet consumers would suddenly not be able to install
or re-install Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7.
9/16/2010
It looks like there is an IE 9 preview out. Whoop-de-freaking-doo.
It looks like the IE 9 user interface has been stripped down to be similar
to browsers on mobile devices. It has just basic navigation, the URL bar,
and tabs all on one line. You know, some people NEED those extra menus
and other things. I'm kind of disappointed that Firefox 4 also wants to
follow in this trend. I wonder if Safari is going to try that next :P
Oh, well the IE 7/8 UI kind of sucked. I never did understand that "new tab" button that looked nothing like a clickable button until you hovered the mouse over it.
It will be interesting to see who actually adopts this version. IE 9 doesn't run on Windows XP any more, which might cause some issues for corporate types that still require Windows XP. Although they are probably still stuck on IE 6. Well, Firefox 4 to the rescue! The latest Firefox 4 beta still runs under Windows 2000! (And unofficially it looks like it will even run under Windows 98 using KernelEx)
8/7/2010
It keeps popping up in the news that various companies are still
stuck on IE 6.
It's always the same story: they have intranet sites that only work in IE 6. They can't run IE 7 or 8 alongside IE 6 (at least not in a supported manor), and IE 6 doesn't run under Vista or Windows 7 (again, at least not in a supported manor). And migrating to Firefox, Chrome, Opera, etc is out of the question because some version of IE is always installed on Windows, which to those in charge means "supporting" two applications that do the exact same thing.
What bothers me the most is that companies don't seem to keep sufficient knowledgeable people on staff to update these applications. (I'm guessing many of these are in-house, but this can also apply to application vendors). Keeping your business locked in to a specific version of a specific tool is an insanely huge risk.
7/31/2010
It seems like Windows 8 is already slowly getting subtly hyped.
Not as much as Longhorn or some of the other alpha/betas, but I would be
surprised if it doesn't increase.
Kind of surprised people would buy in to it these days. The days when a new release meant revolutionary new features that average users would care about are long gone. Underneath the hood it is not incredibly different from the original Windows NT 3.x. Vista and Windows 7 really seemed to more or less just rearranged stuff based on the fashions of the day. Of course I have no doubt whenever it is released there will some things that can be called worthwhile technical improvements, but as always it bugs me that a product that is not even anywhere vaguely near release can generate such undeserved hype.
I can already hear people doing the Windows 8 FFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU-in disappointment when they realize it is the same old same old.
Of course if you want to talk about hype I could talk about the iPhone and how everybody is so eager to get themselves locked in to a non-user programmable computing device (well these things aren't just a simple phone any more), and locked in to one cell provider. I honestly think Steve Jobs would have loved to have had the original 1984 Macintosh just as locked down.
3/30/2010
No, this isn't a joke, you aren't seeing things, I actually updated
the site a bit. I pruned some of the content that is no longer meaningful
while hopefully leaving the more humorous pages. The new "IE is Evil: the
story" combines the more important parts of some of the dropped pages in
to what is hopefully a rational, informative explanation of why Internet
Explorer is Evil exists.
Also, now that Geocitties has closed... well the IQ of the web suddenly went up. So time to drop those stupid embedded midis. I always felt they added a certain "ambiance" to the pages that better conveyed the feeling. But time to go. Well, I did come across this midi (yes already, it is from Portal) the other day and just fit so well on the new Story page, I'll leave it there for a few days to celebrate I guess, but then I will zap it.
3/19/2010
That "browser ballot" has been making its way around Europe. I hear
lots of complaints about it, because it is essentially a forced advertisement.
It is silly, but absolutely necessary because Microsoft does have an unfair
advantage in the market place.
Personally, I would have rather seen the Windows 7E solution rolled out. That would have been the more technically correct thing to do and might have encouraged Microsoft and others to slowly start removing IE as an unnecessary dependency from its OS and applications.
8/4/2009
I should have seen this one coming. At the last minute Microsoft
decided it would be in Europe's best interest if Microsoft kept shoving
IE up Europe's butt - so no more Windows 7 E. Instead everybody gets the
regular IE infested version now.
From what I have read companies were bitching about how Win7e could not be installed as an upgrade over XP/Vista. Why the hell not? It's not THAT complicated.
In retrospect this kind of reminds me how MS threatened to stop selling Windows 95 to Compaq unless Compaq put the IE icon, which they had removed, back on their pre-loaded desktops.
In this case MS threatened to stop selling a feature (a seamless upgrade), people panicked and gave in to Microsoft continuing to bundle IE.
Shit. Looks like I'll have to stick with Windows 95.
6/11/2009
According to Slashdot the version of Windows 7 sold in Europe, named
"Windows 7 E" by Microsoft, will not include IE!
What I want to know is why they don't sell this everywhere!? How does Europe get off so easy but the rest of the world still has to be tortured?!
Hell, I'm tempted to buy a copy. Perhaps this means, because of my personal ban on IE, I can finally upgrade my system from Windows 95?
3/20/2009
And IE 8 has been released. Yaaaawn.... *cough* *cough* *ack!* P-U!
Someone get a shovel!
Once again, it's nothing special. See the comparison of IE 7 to
IE 6 below to see how I would compare IE 8 to IE 7. They have changed things
around in their rendering engine a bit - enough so that they have to have
a "compatibility mode" button to tell IE to render it more like IE 6/7
did. Apparently they even report which mode is in use in the User Agent
string.
Anyway, now that IE 6 users are *two* versions behind now, perhaps they will finally upgrade. With any luck, to Firefox.
3/4/2009
Well, well, well. A "leaked" version of a Windows 7 beta has made
it out and reportedly it appears to let users "uninstall" Internet Explorer.
All it does is remove the IEXPLORE.EXE stub, but after more than 10 years
of firmly refusing budge on the matter this is more than significant.
Perhaps I should change the background of this page to ice blue? :)
1/20/2009
Opera has been in the news lately trying to get the European Commission
to force MS to remove Internet Explorer from Windows, similar to how they
were forced to remove Media Player in a special version of Windows called
"Windows N".
I hope Opera can pull this off. Of course MS would just try to create another "special" version of Windows with a bunch of DLLs indiscriminately yanked out again.
Since people don't seem to "get it", what specifically needs to happen is that Microsoft needs to make IE a fully add/removable program. This would exist in the standard distribution of Windows.
Unchecked, there is absolutely no IE installed. Of course, MS would need to unretardify most of their other apps to do this. Other apps would get a nice fat error saying something like "this program stupidly embedded IE, get a corrected copy from your vendor". And it's not like this would be the first time MS has removed stuff that other apps depended on.
Checked, IE is present, Windows is exactly the same as before, and all of your crappy IE-loving applications will run. And those who really can't figure out any other way to obtain Firefox can still download it with IE. Duh.
Some of the negative reactions I have seen to what Opera is trying to do just blows my mind. Apparently there are still more MS and IE lovers out there than I thought.
Oh, and just because KDE/Gnome/MacOSX have all copied MS and "integrated" a web browser doesn't make such integration right. And it doesn't justify Microsoft bundling IE because MS still has monopoly power.
6/1/2008
Well, Bill gates is finally retiring from Microsoft. Good riddance!
Now if they could just get rid of that chair throwing ape Balmer. Perhaps
I will have to make a "Steve Balmer Sucks" page now.
Oh, and around a year and a half later since Vista was released and people are still hating it. I know one "joe blow" type person who is looking for a new laptop and is insisting on Windows XP. Good luck! Microsoft isn't selling XP any more and OEMs aren't likely to sell it (although some do) because MS doesn't want them to. And after so long you won't be able to "activate" any old copies of XP.
9/3/2007
Reportedly Microsoft's XP/Vista WGA "Activation" servers borked
up and around 12000 legitimate systems started complaining they were pirated.
On XP/Vista that means it will stop working after so many days of being
unable to properly authenticate. On Vista that means various OS functionality
is also disabled.
I have been telling people that this shit is retarded an unacceptable since Windows XP first came out, but people go and buy that shit anyway. And I'm sure people are going to sit back and just go "Well, there's nothing I can do". (Uh, yes idiots there IS stuff you CAN do. Doesn't mean you have to do it, we all have to choose our battles, but don't bullshit yourself! Oh, and get a Mac!)
Welcome to the Windows Genuine disAdvantage!
I would continue to rant, but WGA just shut me down! (Wait, my Windows
95 doesn't have that WGA virus. Windows 95 is superior!)
8/12/2007
"People Ready Business" - That is the slogan for a recent new advertising
campaign from Microsoft. What a load. More like "Ready to to rape people
raw because it's our business"
Oh, and those crappy proprietary new DOCX and XLSX office 2007 file formats are becoming a serious pain in the ass! This, I think, is throwing a major monkey wrench in to any OpenOffice adoption. Of course, that is what Bill intended. But what surprises me is that there are no really good converters after all this time. There is one from Novell but it requires Mono on Suse Linux, and the .Net runtime on Windows. So nowhere near universal.
5/13/2007
Oh, man Office 2007 is a turd. Moving from Office XP to Office 2003
was a pain but at least all of the BS could be turned off. Microsoft completely
changed around the user interface!! They replaced the menu bars with "ribbon"
toolbars.
They have been pushing that out at where I work and I have been watching people use it... well, it might as well have been the Japanese version! Nobody can find anything they actually need. The first thing people started doing was adding their own custom icons to the tool bars! (You can add your own custom buttons the same as previous versions) Highly undesirable as having users with custom menus/toolbars is a NIGHTMARE to provide remote assistance to.
Now, it seems that once someone is familiar with the new "ribbon" toolbars it is fairly efficient, but Pulldown menus have been around for ages, and this is what people are familiar with. This is the "language" that people "speak" and have "spoken" for more than 20 years.
How about in Office 2009 Microsoft do away with all those pesky other languages and make everybody learn Esperanto? (That is an invented spoken language) Hell, it might actually be more efficient, but people will still want to do things their own way. Heck English is the "standard" language around here but if I listen I hear plenty of Spanish, Chinese, and all kinds of other languages. Hmmm, I shouldn't be giving Microsoft ideas. The scary thing is they have enough power they could do that if they wanted to.
And isn't it nice how they completely changed the Word and Excel document format? Now we have .DOCX files flying around in e-mail - and the typical response when a person can't open them is "just get Office 2007". And now there are many non-MS applications out there that read MS-Word documents, but now have to be "upgraded", if possible, to read this new proprietary format! (Yea XML yada yada yada, it's just all just a memory dump between brackets) Oh, and since DOCX is the default, users don't think twice - or even once - about saving and sending documents in this format.
3/18/2007
I.... hate... this early... daylight savings time. And energy savings
my ASS, our wonderful corporate owned government is forcing us to get up
earlier just to give business an extra hour of daylight money making. And
of course consumers now have to throw out all their old non DST07 compliant
clocks, VCRs, DVD players, computers, and cough up money for new ones.
Personally I think the companies/government has too much power when they
can just pass a law to force us all get up earlier.
And just by passing a law they created their own mini-Y2K type problem. And for whatever reason Microsoft dragged their feet getting an update out for Windows XP/2003 or something. Last week lots of computers still had the wrong time on them and couldn't just be reset because on corporate networks they usually get reset (using "universal" time) by a central server.
1/28/2007
Ug. It looks like Microsoft Windoze Fista... errr Vista is finally
finding it's way to store shelves. So I came across this web site called
"Windows
Vista - Show Us Your Wow" and I'm thinking to myself "is this another joke/parody
web site like SpreadInternetExplorer.com?" Because it looks kind of like
the Firefox Testimonial thing from a while back. But right now it has an
actual video of Bill on the front page preaching about stuff. So it looks
like they want the public to show them their "wow" moments with Vista.....
Like "WOW Windows fucked up again!" "WOW! This is the same old shit, only
slower", or "WOW my old DRMed music won't play now!", or "WOW, I just gave
Bill a whole wad of cash for this heaping pile of dung." or "WOW! I needed
a newer version of Flash than my 95 machine will handle so I am viewing
this site on my Mac!"
Oh, and now that Vista is out, let's see how soon MS decides to stop activating/reactivating Windows XP. I warned about the dangers of activation before when XP first came out. People see now how easily it can get "deactivated" by changing hardware or getting clobbered in various other ways. 10 or 20 years from now, if not sooner, that 2006 machine will not be an antique... it will be a DOORSTOP! Bookmark my words, it will happen.
10/21/2006
Well, Microsoft finally got around to releasing IE 7. Much in the
same way one releases a bowl movement.
So here is my extensive technical comparison of IE 6 vs IE
7:
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And for comparison, this would be Firefox...
2/5/06
IE 7, IE 7, IE 7, IE 7. Why is everybody so obsessed with IE 7?!
Well, in all fairness it may have to do with the fact that MS has not released
a new version since 2001 while all other browser vendors have been producing
new versions like hotcakes - with actual improvements!!!! It actually would
be nice if Microsoft would bring their rendering engine in to this century,
but as I have explained before they cannot and will not do that because
it would "break" all of the older content that relies on IE's fucked up
behavior. I'm talking about content not just on the web but IE-only content
on CDs and hard drives, often embedded in applications as well as huge
corporate intranet applications that were programed buy a bunch of drooling
retards.
At any rate the IE 7 beta is crap, and it will not be any better when it is released. Goofing up the GUI to make everyone go "ooohhhh, it's different!" doesn't change the fact that it is evil crap and always will be evil crap.
11/4/05
Well, Firefox has around 10% of the browser share now and some idiots
think that is **STILL** not enough to warrant correcting their shitty sites
to work in anything other than obsolete Idiot Explorer!
And I'm not talking about some backwater geoshittys web site that has gotten all of 104 hits since 1998, Im talking about major banking sites, on-line stores, business web sites, and popular entertainment sites! Those entertainment web sites are really annoying and all of them seem to also want Windows Media Player on Windows 2000 or XP so they can use there Digitial Restrictions Management in an imaginary attempt to keep people from copying there oh-so-precious videos (like they are worth copying or something) But the others are loosing customers! Would they turn away 10 out of 100 people at a brick and mortar store? How about 20 out of 100 or 50 out of 100? I can't wait until the day NO ONE can access their site and they go out of business because they are too stupid to survive.
Oh, and most likely those people who use Firefox *CHOSE* Firefox, are more sophisticated, and are more likely to be offended when you tell them you don't want to do business with them.
10/22/05
After all these years I would have thought that people would be
tired of bundling IE with their shit. Especially since most software these
days requires Windows XP or 2000 anyway which all have IE already
(regardless if you want it or not). It also boggles my mind why people
feel the need to put software on video DVDs. It is bad enough that this
software is always only for Windows but they also bundle IE! Ug.
5/20/05
Well, AOL finally went and did it. Netscape now requires Internet
Explorer - and renders with it to! What the is the point? Idiots who have
sites that don't work in Gecko based browsers need to fix their sites or
get the hell off of the Internet. But instead AOL has perverted the Netscape
brand name and made Netscape 8.0 just another IE shell.
1/30/05
Well, it's official, and Netcraft confirms it too: Internet Explorer
is dying! Soon the only place you will see IE in use is in large corporations
because of badly designed internal web "apps" that depend on IE's broken
HTMLor use obsolete technology such as ActiveX, and of course they are
always too lazy and/or stupid to fix them.
In the mean time, please download a superior browser such as Mozilla / Firefox, Netscape, Opera, Safari, or Konqueror.
(Older rants pruned because they were way out of context these days)
