What exactly was the point of me manually turning off my user account control so I would no longer get spammed with questions every time I tried to install software if your security system was just going to spam me with notifications that MY USER ACCOUNT CONTROLS HAVE BEEN TURNED OFF?
I have spent the last three hours trying to fix something and am ready to scream.
*** Update ***
I will cut the first person to start crowing about the superiority of Apple. I have both an Apple and a Vista machine. They are good for different things.
*** Update #2 ***
Speaking of technology, this from Marc Ambinder made me laugh out loud:
I’ve been critical of the White House New Media office before, but I think they deserve kudos today for instigating and executing the President’s first online town hall meeting. (Macon Phillips, the new media director, and Jesse Lee, the online programs director, spent a long time putting this together.) One — the White House says that Obama wasn’t briefed about the questions in advance. Two — several questions weren’t softballs. Three — the White House web servers had enough bandwith to accomodate the demand. (To test them, I pulled it up simultaneously on several computers without a program.)
Yes, Marc, that sure was a rigorous stress test of the system you did there. Good thing the White House was pushing enough bandwidth to accommodate millions of citizens AND those three extra computers in your office. I hope the banking industry stress tests are a touch more rigorous- “To test the banks out, I had everyone in my family simultaneously withdraw twenty dollars from an atm, and things seemed ok!”
Rainy
Yeah! The other problem is that they renamed a lot of stuff in Vista, so it’s hard to find out how change anything. Instead of Add/Remove Programs. It’s called Programs and Features. It took me a bit to figure that out.
I just got a comp with Windows Vista 64 bit. I love the free Zonealarm Firewall, but they discontinued their 64 bit Vista firewall because it has too many bugs. So now I have to use the Windows Firewall and Windows Defender until I find a good firewall. Works pretty good, but the alerts are annoying.
Unabogie
ATTN: John
Ever try Ubuntu?
TenguPhule
Ah Vista.
Can’t live with it, can’t break Bill Gate’s kneecaps with a testy laptop.
cleek
when you learn to ignore that popup, you will have achieved Enlightenment.
luckily, it will close itself after a few seconds.
Billy K (D-TX)
ahem.
Adrienne
Whoa. I did NOT know you grew up in the hood. You gonna cut a bitch now? Oh snizzap. You just got all e-gangsta on that azz son! LOL
Zifnab
Yeah, I stick with XP at all costs. Microsoft is really only good for every other release. You know their product is worth buying when they discontinue support on it.
Still better than Apple by miles.
Keith
I seriously recommend to anyone running Vista that they ditch it for the Windows 7 beta. Vista is that bad, and Win7 is that good. Yes, I know it’s beta software, but it is rock solid and very fast.
On your spamming issue, have you tried clicking the alert to see if there is an option to disable future alerts of the same message?
Comrade Dread
I gave up trying to fight Vista and have settled into a nice state of repressed anger.
It feels like burning.
someone
ahem.
Linux != Apple
Comrade Darkness
On the upside my windows 7 beta install looks interesting and actually seems to want to be useful.
(Probably doesn’t hurt that it looks just like mac os x.)
Not clear why they need another year to release it. They need time to add in the annoying stuff, perhaps.
JenJen
Why, I believe this is a crow eating an…
KLG
OK, I give up. What is the Vista machine good for that the Apple can’t do?
comrade scott's agenda of rage
John: I hope you see this. It’s a freebie plug in that allows UAC to work if you’re logged in as the administrator (which you most likely are) but not prompt you endlessly about installing shit:
find.pcworld.com/61960
It’s called TweakUAC. Works like a charm. Before you use it, make sure you turn UAC back on. Reboot for the hell of it. Then run this.
Quaker in a Basement
@unabogie:
I was thinking of posting something similar, but Ubuntu is just as bad about nagging you when you’re trying to make system changes.
TheHatOnMyCat
Heh. You just paraphrased my job description.
Yes, and I am buying a copy of XP to turn that laptop into something useful. Ubuntu is not ready for prime time. It is an easy and cheap way to get a wounded machine online in a few mins, but other than that, I can’t see that it is useful for any real purpose.
To quote Demi, wait until you have a wireless networking problem with it. Unless you are an irrecoverable geek, you might as well throw your machine away.
I can write my own OS in less time than it takes to research, get and figure out how to deploy fixes to common problems with Ubuntu.
Analogy:
Q: Dear board, my car made a funny noise when I made a left turn, what should I do?
Answer: Did you try the series 6.0.0023 brakepads? These work more quietly if you are running the aftermarket rotors. Otherwise see if you can get the 6.0.0012 brakepads.
Q: Uh, I wasn’t using the brakes when the noise occurred.
Answer: You have to put the whole front wheel assembly in compliance with the bulletin before you can address the noise.
etc ad infinitum
( sound of laptop hitting bottom of dumpster )
TheFountainHead
It’s just a different school of thought. OS X tells you nothing. When it works, it works as it should and doesn’t get in your way. When it stops working your only option is to get your geek propeller moving at liftoff speeds or to nuke’n’pave (my personal choice). Vista wants to be your best friend and tell you everything and ask you questions. When it works, it’s annoying but highly functional. When it doesn’t work, it’s enraging and a drop from more than 30ft is your only rational option.
The Other Steve
I’m a bit at a loss, after I turned off UAC I got no more prompts.
I’ve moved on from Vista to Windows 7 beta for now. Gotta admit, while Vista x64 on my machine with 8 gigs of RAM was pretty smooth, certainly stable… Windows 7 is bloody fast.
SKapusniak
The ‘Change the way Security Centre alerts me’ link in the right hand side of the security centre doesn’t do what you want?
Admittedly the option does seem to be to turn it off for absolutely everything, but I’ve since never had that thing nag me anytime *except* for when I’d deliberately turned something off, that may or may not be a problem.
Disclaimer: I’m a loon who runs with UAC on so there might be subtlties I’m unaware of.
Zifnab
@KLG:
Running applications?
Comrade Darkness
@TheFountainHead: "OS X tells you nothing."
uh, /var/log is your friend. Combined with lsof I’ve never not figured out what the computer is doing….
BDeevDad
Until you said this
I was about to argue. Then again, I’m an irrecoverable geek.
Dennis-SGMM
My new video card didn’t have drivers for Win2K. That seemed to me to be the writing on the wall for 2K so I went OS shopping. I bought a copy of XP even though I could have bought Vista for less. Ubuntu is nice and so is Mandriva, both show just how far Linux has come from the old days. I have some Windows-only apps so it was Windows. XP is okay, I wouldn’t touch Vista with a ten foot pole.
JenJen
@John Cole, top:
LOL at Update #2. What happened to Ambinder? He really was one of my go-to favorites during the entire election year, but in covering the Administration, he writes some really dopey stuff as of late.
Scott de B.
That’s quite true. I bet the Vista machine makes a nice footrest while you work on your Mac.
boomshanka
Try this:
1. Open Windows Security Center
2. In the left hand column, click "Change the way Windows Security Center Alerts Me."
3. Click "Don’t notify me and don’t display the icon (not recommended.)"
Rainy
The White House did have a lot of bandwidth. I was able to watch the online townhall without it buffering once. It was great. I also have a new comp, so that helped, too.
The Moar You Know
John:
Here’s how to turn off the notifications.
You’re welcome.
PS: I run Vista. I like it, once you turn UAC and the notifications off.
Server 2008 is the best damn OS ever made by anybody, however.
bago
Without a program? Was he manually changing the voltage in the wire? Typing binary by hand?
MIT
@KLG, Zifnab
Many great older win applications are also available on OSX… for a fee.
OSX is great if you have bottomless pockets and use the same software at least 1,000 other people use.
see. e.g., OSX Fetch FTP client.
debit
My operating system history: DOS, Win 95, Win 98, XP. I seem to have skipped all the troublesome releases. I guess this means 7 will be a keeper.
cleek
evs.
i like Vista and have had no problems at all – none, zero – with it.
camchuck
@JenJen:
Agree and same for Chuck Todd. They seem to have decided to apply for full Villager status.
bago
Also, UAC can be annoying with a new machine, but I think I’d prefer to know when an app is installing or changing my system.
Comrade Darkness
@debit:
You must have waited and gotten revision b of 95 first go, cuz revision a was a disaster of random crashing and incompatible everything.
Foxhunter
H: Honey, can you follow me to the interstate in your car? Make sure the kids follow us in their cars, too.
S: What for, dumbass husband?
H: I’m doing a bandwidth test of Interstate 75. Don’t ask stupid questions.
Calouste
@Comrade Darkness:
It won’t be another year. But that is about as much as I can tell you.
Matt
I busted out laughing in my office reading this. Thanks.
John Cole
@JenJen: A lot of really smart people, or people who are reasonably smart at what they know well, are simply clueless about how a lot of things work. It can lead to funny stuff.
gwangung
But isn’t he used to dealing with Republican tech wizardry?
jibeaux
Well, *I* have a six year old piece of crap Toshiba laptop that is slower than dog’s balls and the keys stick and the DVD drive doesn’t work and it ignores me all the time and it makes me lose my will to live, and replacing it is now second on the list because I learned that going without a dishwasher in a family of four is even worse and I can’t afford either right now and it sucks to give up your credit cards so any one of you who has a semi-functioning machine of any variety where the most you have to worry about is a few popups can just lick me, and I want my own paypal donation link. Also too.
Dirk
I endorse the W7 recommendations; it’s fast, stable and less obtrusive than Vista, which itself is a big improvement on XP.
Tonal Crow
UAC notifications are not "spam". When you install anything — and especially when you install it using, or for use by, an administrator account — you are trusting it not to spy on you or to corrupt your data. Determining whether that trust is merited can be a challenge, especially if you have real security needs (e.g., you’re a lawyer). Too many people willy-nilly download stuff of unknown provenance from the ‘net, through an insecure browser, put it where it can easily be tampered with, don’t bother to check for a valid digital signature, install it in (and for use by) an administrator account, then wonder why their ISP has banned them for mass-mailing spam.
Computer security is serious stuff, man.
Jon H
To be fair, if Ambinder tried to do an actual ‘stress test’ he’d essentially be performing a Denial of Service attack on the White House during a high-profile event.
Which would accomplish little but would probably earn him attention he doesn’t want.
Ambinder’s tiny test did serve to the extent of showing that people probably wouldn’t be having bandwidth trouble with the site.
Back in the bad old days of Balloon Juice, one wouldn’t need to spawn ten thousand browser requests to determine if the site was having problems.
DougJ
Ha.
Just Some Fuckhead
lmfao
Comrade Darkness
@jibeaux: Hey, don’t gripe at me. I’m on a 7 year old laptop that got a new hard drive to eek it along a while longer. Detaching the keyboard and giving it a good cleaning with q-tips and rubbing alcohol is really worth your while, btw. If you have cats, packing tape works wonders too for snagging those hairs that making the keys intermittent.
And I’m currently planting the potatoes that sprouted under the sink over the winter for food this summer.
So there.
btw, I had an old toshiba, eons ago, replacing the drives was literally plug and play (even with linux). have you checked ebay for a dirt cheap, but working replacement?
debit
@ Comrade Darkness
Yep. They had to pry DOS 6.something from my hands with a crowbar. Man, that makes me feel old. I still remember when a 40 MB drive seemed too huge to ever fill.
D-Chance.
OK, enough with this silliness…
One—the White House says that Obama wasn’t briefed about the questions in advance.
Does anyone really believe that? If so, I’ve got some nuculer material that I scarfed from Iraq that I’ll sell ya real cheap…
Two—several questions weren’t softballs.
Well, if you’re foolish enough to believe "One-", the "Two-" may be plausible.
But, c’mon. The questions are screened, Obamamerica knows what they were in advance, and as a result the answers are all ready to go from teleprompter to your home computer.
Dennis-SGMM
@Dirk:
AFAIK, MS has stopped offering downloads of the Win7 Beta. They will be offering free downloads of the Release Candidate in May.
MNPundit
Now be fair, maybe he had those computer operate DNS-attack style constantly pinging.
Punchy
Move to a Commadore64. Or perhaps a Apple IIc. I hear they’re bulletproof.
Ella in NM
@jibeaux:
Awwww, that’s so pitiful–REALLY!
I have SOOOOO been there. We nearly went tits up after I lost my job 6 years ago–only we had 4 kids and no dishwasher and credit card debt up the ying yang to pay off. It sucks while it lasts, but I promise, it will pass. :-)
Chin up–it can only get better from here! (and later on, while the rest of the world is crashing, I am so damn glad I learned to live on less and was debt free to boot!)
Comrade Darkness
@Calouste: "It won’t be another year. But that is about as much as I can tell you."
Take your time. It doesn’t matter to me, other than needing to do validation on yet another browser. On that note, can you please force-delete all remaining copies of IE6 and save the economy a few billion $ a year in wasted human hours and suffering? The last two major web projects I’ve been a sub on . . . that sucker has upped the final cost of the project front end by no less than 50%. With 18% of market share, the client cannot be convince to let the requirement drop, no matter how much spaghetti code ends up clogging up a nice new system to support that CSS-standard ignoring piece of dung.
jibeaux
@Comrade Darkness:
No, because I hate this laptop with every fiber of my being and every month I think maybe I’ll be able to get a new one but it is never going to happen. Eventually I will probably have to put some effort into upgrades, but I was really really interested in furthering our disposable consumer culture on this one. I wash and re-use Ziploc bags, but I want this computer out of my life. The keys sticking is not really accurate, it is more that you press them and they do not type the letter. When it comes to passwords, you pretty much have to type the thing elsewhere, where you can laboriously type it in and confirm that it’s right, then cut and paste it into the password field.
I’m doing tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, a bunch of herbs, salad greens, but I admit that potatoes seem like too much work for what potatoes cost (I’ve never planted anything in a mound so there’d be a learning curve to boot), but ain’t nuthin’ wrong with planting old ones that have sprouted. I’m planning on trying to save the seeds of anything I get this summer that is successful.
Jon H
"OSX is great if you have bottomless pockets and use the same software at least 1,000 other people use.
see. e.g., OSX Fetch FTP client."
Whereas on Windows you can use a crappy app that nobody uses… because it’s crappy!
There are often free equivalents on the Mac. Cyberduck instead of Fetch, for instance. (Yes, it’s a stupid name. I assume it’s based on the old Apple OpenDoc internet tool thingy called CyberDog, which was also a stupid name.)
@TheFountainHead: "OS X tells you nothing."
/Applications/Utilities/Console is your friend.
xyzzy
To be fair, the hardware makes a world of difference. Vista — like most Microsoft OSes — is designed to be run on a large variety of heterogeneous platforms, with differing components. It’s okay with some, but not with others, especially if said hardware isn’t fairly new. So one person’s experience isn’t really any way to judge the system.
jibeaux
@Ella in NM:
You’re sweet. I’m very lucky, employed, husband employed, lots of folks would trade places with us in a heartbeat and no doubt succeed much better at saving money. We’re fine. I just don’t know how people do it, and I’m not an extravagant spender by any means. It’s just literally always something, a busted pipe or a cracked engine block or time for summer camps! and at some point you spend all your money trying to maintain the standard western comforts and the things that allow you to earn that money, which really kind of makes me want to re-explore goat herding or hunter-gathering as a new career option, but then I’d miss you guys.
Jon H
@xyzzy: "Vista—like most Microsoft OSes—is designed to be run on a large variety of heterogeneous platforms, with differing components. It’s okay with some, but not with others, especially if said hardware isn’t fairly new."
This is self-contradictory.
If Vista is designed to run on a large variety of heterogeneous platforms, with differing components, then it should actually *run* on hardware that isn’t fairly new.
That it has such problems suggests that the variety and heterogeneity it was designed for weren’t all that large.
(Though to some extent, of course, the problems are due to third parties not producing drivers, rather than mistakes from Microsoft.)
AhabTRuler
You really should try using a filing cabinet.
Dennis-SGMM
@debit:
That would be DOS6.2. Ah, the good old days. What blew, for me, was when MS followed Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (Look ma, TCP-IP and 32 bit file access!) with Win95.
Wonder how much – if any – WINNT 4.0/Win2K code still lurks under the hood of Win7>
Comrade Darkness
@jibeaux. Or our local electronics recycler gets in working equipment. I chatted up ours and the very nice guy there was happy to watch for particular models coming through. He still want’s $$ but much less than a used computer shop would, or ebay.
Honestly though. We never had a dishwasher when I was a kid. Or, let me rephrase. We kids WERE the dishwashers.
Jason
@zifnab:
Funny…I have lots of choices on OS X application-wise. Most of them better than their Windows equivalents. I also have the option of running Windows in vmware for those apps I just can’t get.
What class of application are you running on Windows that you can’t run on the Mac?
Andre
I turned UAC off as the first thing I did when I upgraded from XP, and never had a problem afterwards.
I’ve been very happy with Vista-it’s smooth, stable, user friendly and faster than XP (although given that I have a gaming rig it was already pretty fast.) I’ve had maybe one bluescreen in six months, and that was the result of the same Creative Labs drivers that gave me grief in XP and Kubuntu.
DX10 alone was worth the price of the upgrade.
John S.
I’ve only taken to planting a small vegetable garden in my atrium and a lovely herb garden on my front porch. It doesn’t save me a ton of money, but my family (especially my son) really enjoy the experience and you get a definite sense of pride in having grown something yourself. And, the stuff tastes a hell of a lot better if you do a good job. Also, at least I know where my food is coming from and that it isn’t laden with pesticides and bizarre fertilizers.
I don’t think I can go that route with livestock. I used to work summers on my brother’s beef/veal farm in upstate New York, and that was more than enough for me.
xyzzy
I suspect the issues with older hardware (which are real) are the result of the well known phenomenon of bit rot. Additionally, MS appears to remove support over time for some devices, perhaps believing that maintaining the drivers (i.e., preventing the rot) is not cost effective. And of course, there are the issues you mentioned with third parties, too, Jon H.
At any rate, my point was that disparate hardware platforms seem to be a major part of the reason why one person has OS issues with Microsoft, but another one doesn’t. (In my admittedly limited experience supporting myself in grad school as a sysadmin.)
MNPundit
@Unabogie: My girlfriend has used Ubuntu for about 16 months now and all I have seen convinces me to run far away from linux. It’s interface is bizarre, it can’t play my favorite PC games, and she has to struggle mightily to update it and she is a fricking tech person. If the learning curve is that extreme on Ubuntu and I can’t even play the latest Total War on it, Ubuntu is almost as useless to me as apple.
jibeaux
@Comrade Darkness:
I know, I’m a whiner, but it’s taking like an hour to an hour and a half to get the day’s dishes done and dried and put up and it’s making me irritable. I only have one kid who could feasibly wash dishes without causing an even bigger mess, and I have him tasked to a number of other things, and when you get home about 5:45 and have to check homework and practice piano and occasionally bathe, etc. you kind of want to give the kid a little down time too. He’s not spoiled, though, the last time he wanted a gumball from the machine I told him no one was getting anything they wanted until mommy got a dishwasher.
jibeaux
@John S.:
Oh, yeah, I’m doing the veggie garden & herbs, too, like I told my comrade. Even though my tomato seedlings are pitiful and may actually be deceased at this point, my dad is going to give me more.
Keith
So if he ran those 3 machines and got slowdown on any of them, the assumption would have been that it’s the White House’ lack of bandwidth instead of, say, his pipe to the ISP?
Dennis-SGMM
@Keith:
It would have been proof that the Obama administration has the IP addresses of its critics and is slowly choking off their access to the intertrons.
Calouste
@Keith:
Yes, in the same way Ambinder thinks that if an ATM is out of service it means that the bank has gone under.
Max
I use Avisynth a lot. As far as I know there is nothing equivalent for Mac. Supposedly version 3 will be available for both Windows and Mac, but that’s been the promise for years, and in the meantime it’s Windows only.
By the way, I highly recommend a website called Gizmo’s Freeware Reviews to all Windows users. It’s a great resource for finding free software, much of which is actually quite useful.
MikeJ
That was what McCain meant when he said the fundamentals of our economy were strong.
xyzzy
IIRC, Ubuntu is a spin-off from Debian, so as such the updates shouldn’t be anymore difficult than "sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get upgrade". That being said, Linux on the desktop is definitely not feasible for most people. (But it’s great as a free development platform.)
Personally, I use MacOS on the desktop with a Parallels window on it running XP for the few Windows things I need, and Debian on the all the research/rack machines. They all have their own uses.
Hob
@Jon H:
Vista is only "designed to run on a large variety of heterogeneous platforms, with differing components" in the sense that if you adjust all those platforms and components to fit Microsoft’s new specs, it will run. It’s very deliberately designed NOT to be fully backward-compatible with old hardware, because old hardware doesn’t support the crazy micromanagement that Vista requires — mostly for the sake of DVD copy-protection and the like.
As I understand it, new hardware doesn’t really support it either, because MS is trying to guarantee things that cannot really be guaranteed on a multi-purpose computer; but if MS can get all the manufacturers and driver-writers to dance to their tune, then their business strategy is successful regardless of its technical merits. See also this.
passerby
@Comrade Darkness:
nice one-upmanship there Comrade. still chuckling.
To add: And I thought Jibeaux’s slice-of-life would be hard to beat but you did it in fewer words.
John S.
@jibeaux:
So far, all my stuff is going really well, but it’s easy to grow most things here in South Florida. The only trouble I’ve had of late was a whitefly attack on my sweet basil and an aphid attack on my dill and cilantro. I found this great stuff called Organicide at Home Depot, which is totally safe to use on edibles (it’s pretty much a mix of sesame oil, fish oil, and lecithin as an emulsifier), and it has been working really well.
It just smells awful – as you would imagine.
Catsy
I got Vista 64 Ultimate for the sole reason of building a combination HTPC/DX10 gaming box. Vista’s resource overhead is so hideous that if I had any other choice, I’d ditch it in a second.
Unfortunately Nvidia’s XP 8800 GTX drivers are incapable of properly compensating for overscan, and Nvidia doesn’t seem to care–I’ve been an Nvidia loyalist for about five years, and this was pretty much single-handedly responsible for getting me to buy a Radeon 4850 for the next generation of my HTPC box.
Oh, and fuck UAC.
Tonal Crow
This is good news for John McCain, no?
WereBear
Since I unavoidably run both, I must say the Freeware/Shareware situation on Apple is much more pleasant. I can find wonderful options that really are free, or have well handled tryout periods.
Whereas on PC’s, it is much harder to find any freeware alternative at all. And when you do find it, having it actually run seems to be extra.
Ella in NM
@jibeaux:
Hey, you’re not a whiner! You’re human. It’s just fucking hard out there, there are only so many hours in a day and you can be working your ass off, both of you, and still be overwhelmed. You obviously have a sense of gratitude and priority and that’s what’s gonna get you through.
Except for those days you just need to smash something. I have found that shooting broken appliances with a shotgun in the desert was a wonderful way to get the stress out.
Just to validate. :-)
Comrade Stuck
OT
If anyone is interested, the Senate Markup on the Obama budget is live on cspan 1. Judd Gregg has informed us that we are so broke, we couldn’t even get into the EU. Gregg is all wingnut and Conrad is not having it.
bvac
I’m not going to read through this thread to see if its been said already, but the way to turn off UAC notifications is to go to Control Panel -> Security Center, click "Change the way Security Center alerts me" and "Don’t notify me and don’t display icon"
Hail Vista!
Comrade Darkness
@Punchy, my first two computers: a vic20 and a c64, made it really really hard to accept DOS. I could not get over a) not having the prompt pop up instantly out of ROM, and 2) not having a BASIC interpreter right there.
Sigh. Those were the days.
(meaning, I guess, those were the days when the computer was just for hacking amusement, rather than a necessary tool for work/ life overlord)
kay
@Comrade Stuck:
I’ll watch. Gregg is my new favorite Republican. Biggest political blunder Obama has made, as far as I’m concerned, giving this sanctimonious fraud a cable news platform. Funneling earmarks to the Gregg family coffers while lecturing me on fiscal responsibility. Jerk.
dmsilev
@Jason:
I haven’t found any really good 3D CAD programs for the Mac. Fortunately, I found an acceptable workaround: For people with .edu addresses, Autodesk will give you a free license for AutoCAD or Inventor, and Inventor at least runs quite happily in a virtual XP machine under Parallels.
-dms
jibeaux
@John S.:
Ooh, I’ll look for that. Sounds promising. Things do pretty well once I can get them outside and if I stay on top of them. It’s still a tad early for tomatoes here, so the aforementioned suicidal ones are indoor starters, and it’s been cloudy and rainy for, oh, a month, so they’re not really thriving.
@Ella in NM:
Are you familiar with the Office Space scene involving the fax machine and baseball bats? This is the scene I want to re-enact on my laptop. I don’t really have anything against the dishwasher, it was old and didn’t work that great anyway.
cleek
xkcd likes Win7.
Comrade Darkness
@John S., dear god, lecithin?? f*ck. f*ck. f*ck. I am allergic to soy and you have just probably nailed down my previous two completely untraceable food reactions.
jebesus holy christ on a hoe. now I have to wonder what some farmer sprayed on my food in the field? and worse yet, stop shopping for organic vegetables that aren’t peeled.
there is no god.
Laura W
@Comrade Stuck: Thanks. Just when I thought I could not even bear to scan comments on another hardware/software/freeware/shareware/carebear/whocares thread. Something of interest!
Edit: Also: Ahab @#60. HA!
The Other Steve
I used Linux from around 1992-1997 or so, as I started with MCC interim, then SLS, then yggdrasil and later Redhat.
What is interesting is that Linux adoption has not changed signifigantly since 1997.
I expect in 20 years there will still be kids telling me how cool Linux is, and I’m just an idiot for not using it. It’s the pain that just won’t die.
And it still will have insignifigant market share.
jibeaux
@Comrade Darkness:
Well, at least you’ll have your potatoes. I read in an exhibit on the potato famine once that the average Irish working adult male ate 17 pounds of potatoes a day, pre-famine. That sure seemed like a lot.
Just filling in for BoB, don’t mind me.
AhabTRuler
I once had a ‘vette that I felt the same way about. Never worked right, always needed fixin’, and I wanted to introduce to the bottom of a ravine.
Ok. It was a Chevette, but still.
Zuzu's Petals
@John Cole:
You’re right.
For instance, a lot of people don’t realize that, in addition to cleaning the outside of your monitor screen, you need to clean the inside as well.
(Safe link, I promise.)
John S.
@Comrade Darkness:
Yeah, it even has a Soy warning on the label. It only accounts for 3% of the formula, but that’s more than enough to trigger a reaction. Unfortunately, you need a good strong emulsifier to make the fish oil and sesame oil play nicely together, and lecithin is used as such in an awful lot of products.
Glad I could be of service.
AhabTRuler
Thank you, Thank you! I am here all week, and, please, try the
vealsoywaterair, ahhh, fuck it, we’re done for.Comrade Darkness
@The Other Steve, linux is indispensable for some things. That eight-year old dell that no longer will run even win 95. It makes a screaming fast file server for the basement with linux on it. That other old tower some friend dumped on your porch cuz you’re one of those people who will take old computers, that makes a great mythtv box. Commerical hosting is cheaper because of linux, even windows hosting because it has to compete.
I used SUSE as a second desktop OS from 1993~2000. It was always clunky and everyone said, "it’s getting better," but really it was just getting different and getting more like windows, which is probably fine for some people, but it doesn’t mesh with the way I model the computer’s functionality and makes me psychotic as a result. X11 was fine because I had used it a lot as an undergrad and my expectations were appropriately low. Interfaces are hard to get right, and the open source model for all its successes does not have the right skills or org structure to produce a real, serious, my mom as enduser interface.
Great server s/w, not so much a desktop tool, so I think you are right that it’s probably plateaued for desktop userbase numbers. Based on the last four apachecons I’ve been to over the last six years I’m not the only one who’s decided interface matters and moved on. The hackathon there looks like a macworld convention.
gex
@Comrade Darkness: For the ubergeeks, Google Raymond Chen. His blog has some real insider tales of the Win 95 development process. Really detailed, and very interesting history lessons too.
Frank
Linux. Always works. Doesn’t nag.
No, I’m not a fan of Ubuntu, but I do have it on my netbook and it does the job.
JL
This is OT but Ms. Sarah gave a speech to the Alaskan GOP party and I thought that this quote was interesting
Refresh my memory but Sarah went on stage and decided not to answer the questions asked anyway. God speaks in mysterious ways.
John Cole
Christ. Four hours trying to fix things and it turns out it was a hardware problem.
I need a new video card.
Just Some Fuckhead
@jibeaux:
Sounds like someone has been reading the premiere potato industry magazine, Spudman.
Robert Sneddon
3D Studio Max is Windows-only, and it was DOS-only before that. It’s a killer app for 3-D modelling and visualisation in part because it integrates with AutoCAD, the king of CAD programs which is also Windows-only.
There are Mac and Linux programs that will do a lot of what AutoCAD and 3D Studio will do but they won’t do them as well or as completely and they’re not industry-standard the way those two are.
Other programs I use which are Windows-only (and freeware too, with long-term structured support) include the IrfanView graphics viewer and the CCCP video player suite.
Comrade Darkness
@jibeaux: I’ve been eating more potatoes. I can see what’s on a french fry.
@John S., yeah thanks, truly. I’m still recovering this week from a bad 2 weeks of mystery. I’ve been eating salads only with no dressing when I’m travelling thinking that had to be safe. I even emailed the poor beer company asking if "mud bock" could possibly have soy in it. It doesn’t. (They were very polite and quick with my request, so kudos to them.)
You know. I think I shall just have to live on beer. Otherwise I think I’m going to cry.
stickler
Good grief, when it comes to appliances, now’s the time to buy. Hell, Sears has been offering one year – no payments – 0% interest for a while now. Go crazy, buy a dishwasher! By next year the economy will have recovered or we’ll all be in re-education camps anyway.
bvac
@dmsilev: Try Turbo3d (http://turbo3d.free.fr/francais/Pages/vX/install.htm) or ViaCAD (http://www.punchcad.com/products/viacad2d3dV6.htm)
Haven’t used either but I’ve heard things…
Jonathan Lundell
Charles Murray says that American needs to suffer to be great. Strive, too, IIRC. Transcendently. Without the help of the state, through heroic acts of self-reliance.
Good to know that Microsoft is on the case.
JL
@Comrade Darkness: Allergies suck. Several years back I had an allergic reaction to shellfish. (just hives and minor swelling) Since it did not interfere with my breathing, I just doubled up on benadryl. When I looked like homer simpson, I decided that the benadryl was no longer working. Believe my that Anjelina’s lips were a tenth the size of mine.
Jim
To those of you who are using Windows 7: Have you had any problems connecting with peripherals? That was a major headache when Vista came out and something I want to avoid.
AhabTRuler
Oh, yes, and:
Bwaahh-ha-ha!
jibeaux
Very impt. correction re: potatoes. I kept thinking how could someone eat 17 lbs. Slate says it was 13 lbs. Which is still right much.
Comrade Darkness
@JL: I technically have an protein intolerance, which is both better and worse than an anaphylaxis thing like you have. Better in that it can’t kill me (except slowly due to leaching blood and nutrients out of my body), but worse because the delay makes it really hard to pinpoint the trouble. I have never in my life thought of my body as the enemy until this last year. I’m starting to understand, in a weird twisted way, how fashionable woman could declare war on their physical selves. If you hate your body for some reason, it doesn’t matter what what you do to it. It’s war. I hate my intestines. But they hated on me first.
Be careful with that shell fish thing. Maybe consider carrying an epipen…
les
@Tonal Crow:
Geeze, that’s me. You say that like it’s a bad thing.
Tonal Crow
@jibeaux:
Not much, I expect, if you ferment them and distill the mash, then drink that.
D-Chance.
More pig fun.
So you’re in a hospital parking lot. A relative is inside, dying. And you can’t get to her side because some white jerk sees a black guy and wants to use his badge to have a laugh or two and prove his manhood by putting a brother in his proper societal place.
and if this doesn’t send a chill…
Officer Robert Powell also drew his gun…
“I can screw you over,” he said at one point in the videotaped incident.
dmsilev
@bvac:
Thanks, I’ll give them a look. Though firing up XP in a VM to run the Autodesk stuff works acceptably well for the simple designs I need, so I probably won’t switch.
-dms
Disable the nag balloon
This makes the obnoxiousness stop.
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/163857-security-center-specific-alert-notification.html
Matthew
I haven’t read through the entire comment stack, so this may be redundant, but . . .
From the sounds of it you are getting the warning messages from the Windows Vista Security Center, which is probably showing up as a red shield icon in the lower right? If so, open up the security center, and on of the options on the right of the box that opens should be "change the way security center notifies me", or something close to that. Click on it, and turn off the notifications.
I have yet to have any ill effects from doing this. Vista, like any other microsoft product, is loaded with a bunch of automated crap designed to drive any half-way knowledgeable user bonkers.
That said, I’ll still take Vista over that god-awful Linux crap that seems to be designed with an unhealthy helping of programmer snobbishness (sit back, wait for firestorm of protest).
Matthew
PS
The problem’s not Vista, it’s Microsoft. I recently installed the latest Office for Mac, and I actually do not know if I have registered it or not — probably not because something kept hanging up the screen until I gave up (several times). I thought the update worked fine until I discovered it would not let me open Word documents in older (like 5.x) file formats by double-clicking; I have to do it from the File menu. Huh? That’s MY files, not something downloaded. I have Word documents from the Pleistocene, and I keep them because I actually use the information occasionally. That’s my vent …