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Where is the Random Thread of Randomness stuff that doesn't belong in other threads thread?
- Thread starter Mirah
- Start date
Volpone
Zombie Hunter
...and that is the key to good leadership, particularly in combat: Do something insanely brave while managing to communicate to the people you're leading that you're scared silly--just like them.
Volpone
Zombie Hunter
The thing I've got to hand to Micro$oft is, the aren't just content to make a mediocre product that people have become familiar with. They put in the effort to find new ways to make ancient interfaces shitty and unusable.
This post brought to you by an attempt to make a basic photo edit using screencap and M$ Paint, the way I have for literally decades, and it being frustrating and completely unusable.
This post brought to you by an attempt to make a basic photo edit using screencap and M$ Paint, the way I have for literally decades, and it being frustrating and completely unusable.
Eggs Mayonnaise
All In With The Nuts
Try GIMP, a lovely open-source Photoshop knockoff...
Volpone
Zombie Hunter
Interesting Great Truth that has been rolling in my head a bit but only just clarified: Computer/tech companies used to make money indirectly by providing a great, useful product that made their customers' lives better, easier, and more enjoyable. Now computer/tech companies just make money directly off the consumer. And the only reason the haven't killed the goose that laid the golden egg (well the ones that haven't yet, anyway) is that they did it from such a dominant position that there is no less shitty alternative to continuing to use their product.
Eggs Mayonnaise
All In With The Nuts
You're right. Their whole business model changed in the course of a generation... their "products" (OS, devices) are no longer the biggest source of revenue. Now it's subscriptions, and data mining. The more they destroy the idea of consumer ownership, the more they can institutionalize their revenue streams. And somehow, they are being allowed to destroy individual privacy without consequences (at least in America -- Europe is catching up).
I hear the speeches Bill Gates is making now about how people's medical and personal data needs to be in one central source (out of their control), and I just want to vomit.
Colonel Kira's Left Tit
Bearded Belly of Bajor
I don't like the whole OS war thing at all, but Microsoft has been on this downward spiral probably since XP was released 25 years ago. 7 was actually pretty okay, but that's another story. Apple, alright, there's that but also the whole walled garden idea surrounding it. And I don't want to bang on the Linux drum either because all the distros have their own problems one way or another, but it seems to me that it's the only reasonable way forward.
Eggs Mayonnaise
All In With The Nuts
I haven't owned a car in 35 years, so I missed the complete computerization of cars. I've only experienced how dashboards became 757 cockpits from the passenger side.
I'm confident if I tried to learn to drive again now, I'd fail and give up.
I'm confident if I tried to learn to drive again now, I'd fail and give up.
Colonel Kira's Left Tit
Bearded Belly of Bajor
Cars kind of lost me when Dodge and probably others turned the automatic transmission selector into a knob on the dashboard.
Loktar
Internet God and Defender of Park Benches
The few days I used a 2025 Chevy Malibu rental car with push button start and back camera, made me appreciate my 2017 Hyundai Accent low tech POS even more.
Two years ago, my brother was cutting down a tree and tied off to his fancy fucking truck. I was to gently drive the truck away as the tree fell. Neither of us realized the truck would not drive with the door open. Fortunately the rope was long enough and the truck was already out of the reach of the falling tree. I don't like all the computer shit in the vehicles!
Volpone
Zombie Hunter
I say again, I got in a fender bender with my '09 Mustang in 2023. But my shitty then-insurance company valued her below the cut-off for totaling it and a week of driving the 2023 rental was enough to not only make me fight to get her fixed but to realize that I can never let her die because modern cars are so terrible.
Colonel Kira's Left Tit
Bearded Belly of Bajor
Just in case you feel like shutting that off or getting rid of it entirely, here ya go: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...onedrive-f32a17ce-3336-40fe-9c38-6efb09f944b0
I certainly did on day one, so freaking annoying.
Volpone
Zombie Hunter
At this point I've got mine dialed in so it functions more or less like a real OS--apart from hogging more resources than a computer 5 years ago would ever need just to run the OS and some of the simple basic free utility tools being so enshitified that they're practically useless. Coming back to the photo editing thing, sometimes I just want to have 2 pictures combined. A before and after. Or a replica and the actual item. I don't feel like firing up an actual photo editing program so in the past I'd just open up both images, put them side-by-side, get them to a size that works, Fn-PRTSCR, open Paint, CTRL-V, crop, save, and done. But now the photo viewer is a huge pain in the ass to use, they've added the completely unnecessary "Snipping Tool" (actually, I could maybe just use that in stead of Paint, but I digress), and made Paint...actually I think I gave up before I got to Paint.
As far as XP being the last decent OS (Win 7 notwithstanding), I remember when it came out. In fact I explicitly built my desktop when I did because you could still get Windows 2000. The initial release of XP wasn't loved. Particularly because of the "Registry Worm". It was the first OS that "tattled" on you. W2K and earlier, you installed it and entered the code from the sticker on the CD case to activate it. XP and later would log into a M$ server and if it thought your software was pirated or otherwise misused it wouldn't work. At the time people rightfully called it malware. But over a quarter century we've been trained to accept it.
As far as XP being the last decent OS (Win 7 notwithstanding), I remember when it came out. In fact I explicitly built my desktop when I did because you could still get Windows 2000. The initial release of XP wasn't loved. Particularly because of the "Registry Worm". It was the first OS that "tattled" on you. W2K and earlier, you installed it and entered the code from the sticker on the CD case to activate it. XP and later would log into a M$ server and if it thought your software was pirated or otherwise misused it wouldn't work. At the time people rightfully called it malware. But over a quarter century we've been trained to accept it.
Eggs Mayonnaise
All In With The Nuts
There are how-to videos all over YouTube with steps you can take to prevent (at least partially) MS from taking over. Worth a look.
Eggs Mayonnaise
All In With The Nuts
I never use Photos, Snipping, Edge, Movies & TV, or Paint, because they all feed into the AI. This is why I recommend using GIMP or some other free image editing app.
They got rid of Windows Photo Viewer with Win11, as well as Wordpad, but there are still ways of getting them back on your machine so you can do image/text work away from MS' claws. I made a previous post in some thread about how to do it... ah, here we go:
Colonel Kira's Left Tit
Bearded Belly of Bajor
Win2K is still, in my opinion anyway, the best version of Windows ever released. It might have taken 4 service packs to get there, but it got there.
Colonel Kira's Left Tit
Bearded Belly of Bajor
Also, can I just say screw Microsoft Office while I'm ranting? LibreOffice does more than I need it to on a personal PC level, it's free, and it just works. Toss Gnucash on the pile as well for free accounting software.