I used Powershell for a bit. Went back to Take Command! LOL Much better.
Before I left Apple (and one of the main reasons I did), was because we had to repair the new Intel Macbooks before they could even be sold! And Apple released 4 secret updates in a year (because if they had announced them, they would have had to replace all the notebooks the previous suckers bought!) The number of warranty claims were staggering! And all Svc. Managers were told to find any and every reason to void all warranty claims! The smallest scratch would do it! And don’t even get me started on how amazingly crappy the first 3 iPod versions were! We had over 60% warranty claims alone!
When I worked of Apple in 90-91 all that would have been inconceivable! And heads would definitely have rolled! Now, it’s the business model. And just FYI, I resigned because a student suicided after her new Macbook died and she couldn’t get it repaired under warranty because it had a few scratches and she’d put stickers on it! She’d saved and her mom paid half to get it! She couldn’t afford to get another one! Her school was one of the biggest Mac user’s in the State! After the suicide, I had a frank discussion with the principal, and the next year they changed to PC’s! So that policy cost Apple Aus. bigtime! And I am very glad! I’d do it again!
So, don’t expect me to like the company just because some people get lucky with the products they sell. I am sure they are better now than they were when I was there from 05-07, but I wouldn’t have one as a gift!
Funny how THAT works, eh?!
]]>I could do that with Linux too, of course. But I can’t run Linux on a laptop. There are three reasons I can’t run Linux on a laptop:
1) Linux doesn’t support any WiFi adapters on modern laptops.
2) Linux doesn’t support any Bluetooth adapters on modern laptops.
3) Linux doesn’t support any of the graphics systems on modern laptops.
There are work-arounds for all that, generally requiring running drivers from other operating systems in some weird emulation mode, but I don’t have time for that kind of nonsense. I have things to do. I have novels and songs to write, Jeep expeditions to historical sites to participate in, I have musical instruments yet unlearned, I have, in short, too much to do and too little time to do it. Mortality is showing its ugly snout and life’s too short to waste on hacks that barely work at best. If it doesn’t Just Work, I don’t want it.
As for Windows, I’ve written PowerShell scripts under Windows. It reminds me of some weird amalgamation of Perl and REXX (gosh, remember REXX from IBM mainframe days? How demented!). But it does allow scripting a lot of things inside the Windows internals. In some ways WMI is more advanced than anything available on Linux. But then, on Linux you generally frob some text file with awk and sed, restart a daemon, and there you go. But anyhow, I had a fairly well configured setup under Windows. It kept breaking though, mostly because of registry pollution. Not to mention that Windows laptops are crap. They are. They’re junk built to a price point, designed to fall apart at the end of warranty. Lenovo used to make good laptops, but even they’ve fallen prey to that syndrome with their latest. Meanwhile this 2011 model Macbook Pro that I’m using works just fine, it outlasted the HP I bought to replace it in 2013. Funny how that works, eh?
]]>Pew Pew Promo! Have a very shooty weekend, everyone.
LOL I just decided to buy “Incoming + Incoming Forces” for $2.39, because… you know… some mindless mayhem can be a good thing when one just wants to switch off and not think for awhile! LOL
Did you see? They have discount Movies now also! π
]]>Hmmmm. I have heard that steam have fixed the licensing DRM issues over the past couple years. The last time I tried was 2010 when I bought DG. I could only install and run from one PC (I had 2 then). I got nowhere with them, and found the hacked version which fixed the problem. π
Yeah, i like my CLI/shell too much to give it up. I was explaining to a much younger person why I prefer Linux, and too her credit, she wanted to try it. So I pointed her to Linux Mint and instructions on how to dual-boot on her notebook. π She’s studying graphics/web Design, so I told her it was an advantage to learn Linux and why. Apparently, everything on her Uni course is Win/Mac. And they don’t even use PhotoShop (which, as much as I despise Adobe, is the defacto standard for the web), they use CorelPaint! What a bunch of cheap bastards! And they charge a fortune in tuition!
I have hundreds of scripts I’ve written or found over the years. I used 4DOS & 4 NT since DOS & Win NT, now I use Take Command. I can do more with a script in a couple min’s than anyone can do with a GUI in 10 or more! LOL I even have a bash shell that was ported to win with all the GNU and other tools. Helps if I need to do a quick edit for my hosted CentOS server and don’t want to boot linux to do it. π
]]>This all boils down to whether a particular OS does what you want. Apple’s not only don’t meet my needs which are primarily character-based, and don’t offer an easy way of making them work for for me.
Linux/BSD/etc. are more suited to my environment than any GUI because graphics are not critical and multi-media non-existent in what I primarily deal with. The entire purpose of the iPad is to run a video phone app with some family members. The choice was theirs, and I went along with it. Now that I have a Logitech keyboard for the beast it is somewhat more functional for me, but the writing tools suck.
If I break down and get a smartphone it will be an Android based on price, and the fact that Samsung has a model with a slide out keyboard. I won’t be using it for any interaction on the ‘Net that isn’t over WiFi, I’m too cheap.
If it works for you, it is the best system available. We can discuss it forever, but that fact won’t change.
]]>I store nothing in the cloud that I care about. I’ve seen cloud vendors come, I’ve seen cloud vendors go. If it’s something I care a lot about, it’s on my MBP being backed up redundantly. If it’s something I don’t care that much about, it’s on my big 12-disk rack-mount storage server, which serves CIFS, AFS, NFS, and iSCSI (needed for the surveillance server, surveillance software does *not* like writing to CIFS file shares). I don’t care if my large collection of kitty pron gets wiped out, the world has too many cat videos anyhow. I do care if the only photographs I have of my grandmother’s funeral get wiped out…
Regarding Steam, I am baffled. I can run the same program any one of my computers at any given time. I log into Steam on Windows, it logs it out on the Mac. No big deal there, I can’t play games on two computers at a time. Are you trying to play a game on three computers at a time? Regarding the DRM, Steam gets it “right” in my opinion. I don’t have to worry about keeping track of physical disks, if I have to re-install my computer or buy a new computer it Just Works on the new install or new computer, etc. All Steam cares about is that I’m only playing games on one computer at a time, which is fine as far as I’m concerned, because that’s all I’m physically capable of doing. Yes, it uses the Internet as a substitute for the CD or DVD “key disk” that programs used to use. But the convenience is that I don’t need those things. (And BTW, some Steam games actually don’t use the Steam DRM, and can be played directly as vs via the Steam application, Europa Universalis IV is one such game).
]]>As for win, as I said, the installation system sux! Always has, probably always will! Since I went 3rd party, no problems. π
I have tried several online or Cloud backup sites. the only two I trust are Mediafire and SpiderOak. Bust even so, there is no way in hell I would EVER store anything even remotely sensitive or important there! π I had lenghthy chat’s (either via IM, phone and/or email) with many vendors. They all made grand promises, but when I told them to put up… *crickets*! Except for Medifire & SpiderOak (and Filefactory, who are Aus., so can’t be trusted with any privacy thanks to Gov reg’s). Never had a problem with MF and I have about 140 GB stored there (but nothing not on my NAS & LTO tape), encrypted and some plain like pic’s I share etc. I have 2 TB storage space, and their desktop & mobile app’s work well and unobtrusively to sync files that I want synced. It’s also one of the cheapest solutions out there. π
SpiderOak is a bit different. Their model is ‘zero knowledge’ (what they call “Our βZero-Knowledgeβ Privacy Promise”) and have very high encryption and robust storage. I only have the free 2GB account to play with for now. But so far, I’m impressed (and THAT doesn’t happen often!) LOL They have several options, up to full Enterprise private clouds (for a price! Though reasonable actually.) π π
I get all my games from GOG now. I have about 68 I think. π I like my old faves! LOL And They have some great modern ones also (I like the Witcher series 1-3, Disciples 2 Gold and Torchlight 1 & 2. I also like the 5 games in the Myst series, which I have on my Mac too actually, well Myst & Riven). π The great thing is, they often have specials and freebies. I doubt I’ve paid more than $100 for 68 games! π
I only have one steam game that I like “Defense Grid: The Awakening” with all the DLC’s. I hate Steam actually! Had a lot of problems with their stupid licensing & DRM (try playing a game on one of three machines! You need 3 licenses! Screw that!) I actually own it and paid for it, but I got a hacked non-stem version to play! Especially since I don’t like my gaming/media system connected to the ‘net when I play/work. I haven’t decided if I’ll get a hacked DG 2 when released ‘any day now’. We’ll see. I have the beta ’cause I donated $150 to development, thought not really a *donation* more a pre-product buy + a bunch of extra’s only available to ‘doners’. *shrug*
Meahh. π
]]>I usually had to re-install Windows from scratch every six months or so because installing / uninstalling some software package or another managed to get it into a weird state. Towards the end, there were software packages I couldn’t install at all when logged in as myself, I had to log in as Administrator to install them, because Microsoft’s .msi interpreter didn’t like something in my normal login environment. Given that one of my duties was creating (and testing) .msi packages for my employer’s software, that was a PITA of the first class!
I still have Windows 2008R2 running on a server on my network because of some video surveillance software that only runs under Windows (and prefers Server 2008R2), but that’s an install-and-forget kind of thing. Now I just use virtual machines on my Macbook Pro to run Windows on the few occasions I need it for work related things. That way I can just snapshot the entire virtual machine state from outside of Windows before I install or uninstall software, and roll back the snapshot at a level Windows can’t f**k up if something goes wrong… not to mention being able to make full-state backups by simply shutting down the VM and copying the VM directory to an external hard drive. The only reason I would run Windows on physical hardware nowadays is to play games, and now that Steam is on MacOS, and my favorite games run on Steam, that’s not very compelling anymore.
]]>I just updated BitDefender Total Security from 2014 to 2015. If not for my install manager, it would have been bad! I upgraded from 13 to 14 with no problems, no so with the u/g to 15! It’s an installer that d/l the parts of the app via the Internet. Supposed to save all settings from a previous install. The 15 installer did the backup, removed 14, than said I had no internet connection and aborted! And nothing i could do would change it’s tiny mind! π But, it took me 2 mins to have 14 back, than a WTF email to support! Been using BD a decade, first problem ever. *shrug* They are all going for *cute* rather than functional! Apple started all that, then M$ had to follow of course, and everyone else follows whatever M$ does! Morons!
I still have my G4 Powerbook (DLSD/High-Res 17″, 1.67 GHz, 2GB RAM, 180 GB HDD, DL Superdrive) that Apple gave me when I began as Svc Manager ’05. Was a pre-production model, and the best Powerbook Apple made), and see no reason to get anything newer. I don’t even use that, unless I get nostalgic for some reason! LOL
There are ways to make any OS work the way one wants and needs. Some easier than others. It shouldn’t be necessary, but it is! Unfortunately, having worked for them, I trust Apple less than M$! And that’s saying something! π
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