jaclaz

There are some very interesting pieces of data in that article: If you divide 4.000.000 by 1.500.000.000 you obtain 0,0026666666666666666666666666666667. The raw numbers are impressive the percentage not so much . If you consider how (likely) the very limited user base that took part to the insider program is also not qualified for *anything* (and anyway all comments/reports/bugs have been basically ignored when not perfectly aligned to the pre-made agenda or "vision" for the new os ), and that the participants have not been selected as a "random sample" of population, it is easy to see how failed are both the "democratic" and the "statistical" approach. THe good news is that now we have, from the mouth of the wolf some valid numbers. A minor flaw in the update system affecting only 0.1% of users means more than 1 million people with botched systems. jaclaz

Well, of course in a perfect world you would not need fences or guard rails, the issue here is however more like road bumps. Since everyone sped too much in an urban area, the municipality disseminated everywhere a lot of road bumps to force citizens to drive slower. The net effect is usually that of having a much higher shock absorber and brakes replacement rate and a lot of people with back aches, whilst the average speed (and the number of incidents involving bikers and pedestrians) remain substantially stable. A guardrail or fence prevents you from doing something (like jumping over the cliff) without a lot of effort or accidentally, i.e. it is a rather effective safety measure, highlighting a border you should not cross for your own safety, you don't normally need to cross it, while a road bump only makes your driving less comfortable and it is right in the middle of your daily path to work or home. As a side note (OT) musical roads are nicer and funnier: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_road but people living nearby do complain, you can't have everyone happy . jaclaz

@bhplt From experience, and once said that I find, like the board skin, the possibility for the final user to change the shell to one of his/her liking a basic freedom, a line needs to be drawn. I do understand how there is the need for company PC's to have a "same" shell so that as an example workers that use the same machine on subsequent shifts or that move from one workstation to another find themselves in a "same" graphical environment. Unlike most people that don't like the NCI and that wish the return of the "classic" UI, I find that the NCI, notwithstanding it being an abomination of ugliness and lost functionalities is well within the fair choices of the MS (demented) designers for the new OS's, of course I wish they had made it more easily swappable with something else, but this possibility of changing the shell should be available only to final "single" users or - alternatively - company wide. What I consider a form of perversion is the sheer idea of a third party of proposing to apply a NCI like interface over an actually good, working and tested one, but much more than that this snippet: http://www.iobit.com/en/iobit-winmetro.php send shivers down my spine as all these years I managed to be fairly productive using an accessory called "window" to look outside and see what the weather is, another one called casually wall calendar to see what day it is (even during a blackout) and had no §@ç#ing news and stocks on the desktop to distract me from work. The app in itself is ok, the message IMHO much less so, something like: would have been more truthful . jaclaz

Maybe it depends on the amount of info in such an introduction post. Just as an example is "Hi" constructive or non-constructive? http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/160712-hi/?p=1023471 This seems like a lot better: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/173940-reintroduction/ Still there is nothing actually introducing you, it consists of a truism (you are a long time member that rarely posted), and of some (good BTW ) propositions for the future. Seemingly (since you have a post count of 15 right now) and I can find only 4 posts of yours, including the 2 you made in this thread and the mentioned ones in the "introduce yourself", the board must have eaten some 13 posts . So you could all in all say that each of the two posts in "Introduce yourself" awarded you 6.5 points and call it a day. jaclaz

It has been a looong journey : http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/170810-ok-ok-well-support-it-lol/page-5#entry1083642 http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/171952-windows-embedded-posready-2009/ http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/173015-ie-8-with-posready-2009-updates/ happy you found your destination . jaclaz

Well that thing is a (Metro) app, so, no, it won't run "as is" on Windows 7 , though there are probably ways: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/542316/Run-Windows-Store-Apps-From-Desktop Generically speaking (probably because apps suck so much ) there is seemingly not much interest in having them run in Windows 7 and earlier. OT though of course every form of perversion - within limits - is a form of freedom, the good guys at iobit have a queer bi-polar attitude: http://www.iobit.com/en/iobit-winmetro.php http://www.iobit.com/en/iobitstartmenu8.php jaclaz

Fact #1: They are ugly. Hypothesis #1 (sparkles): They are ugly because they were designed NOT by a designer but by a programmer that can use Photoshop. Hypothesis #2 (jaclaz): They are ugly because the people that make decisions at MS (that have been submitted several alternative designs, some created by designers, some created by programmers) have poor taste (or don't care or both) and chose poorly. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097576/quotes?item=qt0357928 jaclaz

I have "Power Users" group fine in XP. so you should have that group as well: https://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/windows_security_default_settings.mspx?mfr=true My personal definition of Windows XP as "a Windows 2000 with some added bells and whistles" still stands, XP is fundamentally 2000, one year later. jaclaz

Yep, though they also say on that same page: It seems like Windows 7 is either too new or too old depending on which side you look at it.... jaclaz

No, it didn't. Very possibly, I read your incipit: as "Abandon hope all ye who enter here" and thus I read the following as the usual consumerist advice, my bad . Sure . Does that "US" mean that you want to join the club? I wonder if you are old and grumpy enough (or miss any of the other requisites ) to be eligible for membership.... jaclaz

Well, those people are usually cheap (and old, and grumpy, but this is irrelevant in this case) bastards , the good thing is that they do not spew as much negativity and have a lot of fun in doing their little experiments in their limited and "cobbled together environments".... It is queer that such a not-so-veiled critique comes from someone that continuously makes exactly the same kind of experiments, only on latest-latest version of the OS and on recent, powerful hardware, if you think a bit about it, we use our "cobbled together environments" to recreate (re-using available resources from the past) *something* that actually works whilst your own "cobbled together environments" are aimed to create (from current, new resources) *something* that actually works. There are not that much differences... ...anyway Pointertovoid just gave us at least 343 good, additional reasons why we (the cheap, old, grumpy ones) should continue on our path .... jaclaz

Well, you might have missed how both andrewwiggins20 and jessicawalton are both parts of a rather common SPAM scheme. a new user at his/her first post asks (in a "vague" manner) a question soon after another new user at his/her first post replies (also in a "vague" manner) adding a link to a Commercial tool or service or site promoting the service/site.Usually this SPAM scheme is promptly detected and both posts are removed, but sometimes the Admin/Mods leave them (usually making the link non-active) and we can have some fun on the matter. Another common scheme is that of a new user posting a "normal" post and afterwards edit it to add a link to promote some company/service. Which opens of course the question, since there were no links in your original post and you just added one, whether you are a legitimate user very thankful to the good guys that helped you with your boutique site or you are also a spammer jaclaz

Well I was referring to the note about the 1990-94 dates, it should mean that it should run in Windows 3.x. Then it will probably have it's own GUI. For obvious reasons on a same (low powered/slow) machine Windows 3.x run circles around any Windows 9x, particularly it should load initially much faster. The Minibox project is just a way to create a very minimal Windows 3.x from EITHER original Windows 3.x files or from the "minisetup" used for the 9x installation (and present on any 9x CD in the mini.cab) + some freely available files. All in all in the intended use the scope should be that of providing the bare minimal resources needed to the Oxford-Hachette dictionary to run, in practice the "final result" should be an OS that runs one and only one application or, if you prefer, wrap around the program a very vertical scoped OS. A very minimal 9x might do as well, if this is the case you may have a look at the Winimize project: http://reboot.pro/forum/53-winimize/ jaclaz

You are basically trying to self delete an executable file? I doubt it will work that way. You probably want to read this: http://www.catch22.net/tuts/self-deleting-executables jaclaz

Well, nothing can beat plain ASCII/ANSI (non-unicode), it is the first time I hear that UTF-8 is common (I mean among TEXT used in Windows .iso's in files like .mof .css .inf . ini .sif, while it is very common in the web), open one of those text files in a hex editor/viewer. If it's plain ASCII/ANSI, you will see exactly what you can see in (say) Notepad. If it's unicode (UTF-16) it's first two bytes will be "ÿþ" or FFFE and you will see all letters separated by a dot. If it's UTF-8 it's first three bytes will be "" or EFBBBF. You CANNOT change the text encoding of files like .inf, .ini or .sif as simply the Windows Setup would not be able to read them, you have to keep the SAME text encoding as the original file. ASCII/ANSI is an 8 bit FIXED text encoding, each character will take exactly one byte. UTF-8 and UTF-16 are VARIABLE length text encoding, each character will take AT LEAST respectively 8 bits (1 byte) or 16 bits (2 bytes), and extended/regional symbols will take more. UTF-32 is a FIXED format (just like ASCII/ANSI), but each character will need 32 bits (or 4 bytes) instead of 8 bits (or 1 byte). So, if your scope (even if it were possible, i.e. all the tools/programs involved could actually read indifferently any of those encodings, which is NOT he case ) is to reduce size of the files, you are doing it wrong plain ASCII/ANSI and UTF-8 would be roughly the same size, the UTF-16will be AT LEAST double that size and UTF-32 will be 4 times that size. jaclaz

I guess you mean that your wife/partner had one, while you contributed to it, the main Author should be her . Congratulations! jaclaz

Hi, Terry , does your online boutique site provide free bananas, potatoes or lambada dancers? I have lately found that while I use extensively the chat features of my banana and potatoes dealers sites, I never use the same facility on the lambada dancers ones, so I would say that the usefulness of live chat may depend on the specific kind of goods or services on the site... jaclaz

Just in case (ahh, the good ol' times ), only if you want to have some fun recreating a minimal environment: http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=16754 http://reboot.pro/topic/623-minibox-rides-again/ jaclaz

It would probably be faster to re-write the file, but it depends on the characters used, using batch and FOR /F "tokens= delims=", if all the lines are like that (essentially your example looks like a .ini or .inf file). I am not too sure to understand the need to convert (from what?) to "UTF 8 or 32". If it is plain ASCII, I would probably use gsar: http://home.online.no/~tjaberg/ See if this seemingly unrelated thread: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/151785-how-to-merge-two-text-files/ gives you some inspiration, the object there was to split and selectively merge, nicely formatted, a whole lot of .inf, but the basic approach should be the same or similar. jaclaz

Well, we also have a much longer (several centuries) experience than you in the US about abuses by Kings and Governments, maybe that's the difference. Now whether this will actually bring people to a "revolution" is another matter, all in all it is more likely that the people will do nothing about it, but at least the actual detection of BS is something automatic and spontaneous. jaclaz

Well, but actually it is as well not fashionable to have non working apparata, so while it is entirely possible that the masses of people will just replace the devices, I believe they will then buy *something else*, and this in the end will produce an even worse level of failure. The whole point that I completely fail understanding is what actual advantage do the good MS guys expect from the "continuous updated" model when compared to the "classical" Patch Tuesday . As a side note, and probably not particularly relevant in terms of "large numbers" the (BTW IMHO stupid) new approach about BYOD: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/163387-byod-ideas-opinions-whatever/ may make the division between "business" and "the rest" more thin than expected. jaclaz

Well, I wouldn't confuse superficiality with stupidity. The masses may well be not fully aware of the workings of an OS, but in relatively recent times the very same paradigm shift that made the PC (or however a computer) change from a working tool into an entertainment apparatus[1] has also moved the focus from "let me fix it" to "it should just work". So the second or third time people will wake up in the morning to find their beloved tablet/whatever botched overnight by a MS update (botched in itself or conflicting with some other piece of software) will actually become vocal. Consider also how little by little people won't have anymore cabled connections (everything being Wi-Fi) and won't probably have anymore a "real PC" (with a more "sane" OS) to use in emergency. I hope that this never happens, but in a household with (say) three devices all running the new Windows 10 and set with "automatic updates" a "buggy" update would equate to cutting their main communication lines. jaclaz [1] or if you prefer as a "primary utility", not entirely unlike (say) a TV, a fridge or electricity/running water, i.e. something that you expect to have working 24/7 without any intervention

Well, it all depends on the privileges in which the *whatever* is run. To give you an example, see here: https://securelist.com/blog/incidents/57784/shamoon-the-wiper-further-details-part-ii/ basically the malware, in order to be able to install/use a proprietary driver, sets the date to one compatible with the "time restricted" authentication code/serial that the Author of the driver provides as "trial period". jaclaz

It is entirely possible that changing that would workaround or solve the issue, though that would mean that *something* *somehow* raised that setting from Low to Medium-Low two months ago (but then the old .vhd should have worked) Maybe you have to check the Registry directly: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/182569 jaclaz

Well, if that thing ran in Windows 3.x, easier would be running it in DOSBOX: http://www.dosbox.com/ or even in a Qemu VM, a minimal Windows 3.1 is almost instantly booting. jaclaz