Vent: WTF is Wrong With Microsoft?

Discussion in 'Computer Science & Culture' started by Tiassa, Oct 10, 2013.

  1. Varda The Bug Lady Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,184
    Came in here to say boot linux from USB.

    Also, just in case your parents have an old piece of shit laptop in which they've installed all sorts of nonsense over the years except for the microsoft updates which pretty much keep the computer running, it's their fault.
     
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  3. madethesame Banned Banned

    Messages:
    411
    do you use linux ?
     
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  5. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    3,951
    I provided tech support to friends using Microsoft Windows for over 25 years. Not any more. Anyone who upgraded past Windows 7 are out of luck, and M$ already killed XP deader than a doorpost. The smart money would have sold off the rights to support XP to some other company, but do you think those innovative folks at M$ would ever do something like that? When Balmer's retired bald spot freezes off, maybe.

    More advice for Microsoft if you want to compete with Linux, Apple, or Android:

    Lose the registry. That's right. Don't need one. Never did. Refund the money you stole from customers to develop that piece of garbage. Picks up more junk from the internet than lint in a dryer screen. Who needed that, other than you?

    Lose the installer. Flakiest software ever. It would probably work much better without a registry, though.

    Make the next Windows open source, just like everyone already did.

    You owe an awful lot of consumers refunds or credit for Windows 8, in case someone forgot to mention.

    No one ever wanted "supercookies" but Microsoft and maybe the NSA. This was not done for the enhancement of your browser experience. Next time you get an urge to bone consumers like that without asking, shoot whomever suggested it so that we don't even have to get involved. I couldn't help but notice, other folks on this thread are a lot more upset than someone like me, who has used a Mac continuously since 1986.

    Consumers are in part responsible for what Microsoft became. Buy smarter. Don't buy anything from a company that wants to turn your present computer into a paperweight in two years. Read all of the fine print. No one wanted a version of Word you paid for by subscription. Damn few trust (or should trust) doing all their computing in the cloud, either. Social networking is even worse, so why do people keep making M. Zuckerberg richer?

    You want to do something consumers will like, Microsoft? Revoke all the valid Windows licenses in North Korea, and good luck with that.
     
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  7. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

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    13,105

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    While MS has it's faults, sometimes the paper-clip has a point (just not ever in relationship to the topic in hand)
     
  8. sculptor Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,466
    wow
    not a lot of microsoft fans in here:

    Curiously, 2 computers one with vista and one with 7 ceased functioning this past week-10 days.
    I was able to restore both to functionality by dumping everything and restoring the software to factory presets.
    The vista just began to refuse to display either on the main monitor, or the external monitor. fortunately I have an external hard drive and had saved most of my files there.
    The win 7 had issues when I connected an external monitor, and would only boot to command mode----so I dumped everything and restored to factory original---fortunately there was nothing on the win 7 that I would miss. It seems to be working fine now(I am keyboarding in this missive while looking at the new 24" monitor), but I've been resetting programs to my use patterns, and may yet fuck it up.

    The moral of this little rant is to praise the addition of an external hard drive, as you should expect microsoft to eventually need to be started all over again.
    Twice bitten = thrice cautious?

    Anyone remember the old joke/story about the house that gates built?
    I seem to remember that the way to make the third floor toilet finally flush, was to go downstairs and then outside, and lock then unlock the door(after trying myriad other fixes).
     
  9. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    17,455
    i wonder why.
    i lost faith in microsoft when i found out they DELIBERATELY designed backdoors into their OS's
    https://www.grc.com/unpnp/unpnp.htm.

    there are other things too, index,dat files.
    these files are hidden AND CANNOT BE DELETED.
    they track what you do with your machine.
    yes, they can be deleted at startup or shutdown but are recreated by windows as soon as the OS is running.
     
  10. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    13,105
    PNP isn't a backdoor. The entire nature of plug and play was suppose to be easy to use, self-configuring devices. The exploitations that existed back then weren't necessarily Microsoft's faults since PNP was in it's infancy. PNP is used a lot in regards to peoples home routers, it can be used to open ports through their firewall when there is a demand for the port to be opened. If anything using PNP allows you to know when a port is open and what program has opened it, if the ports were manually assigned then you'd have no way of knowing which ports are open if a rogue program was listening on one.

    This doesn't of course mean that PNP wasn't and isn't exploited, it's just as it grows with maturity so do attempted ways to make it less likely to misbehave.

    If you want higher security your better off turning off the WINS server setting on home PC's that aren't connected to a Windows Server network and disabling NetBIOS (which is used in windows networking for connecting computers and printers etc)

    The OS's were initially designed to have a certain amount of resource redundancy using files due to limited RAM etc. There is also the fact that anytime you do an update, some of the update might be replacing files that are currently loaded into the run environment, replacing them while they are running would cause a number of errors. This means that those file changes are queued to be handled when the system shuts down (or boots up)

    Some information from Internet explorer to my knowledge does find itself "tracked" however that's suppose to be for ease of use, only in the last decade has it been more about spying on people and undermining their liberties, but that's down to countries not companies.
     
  11. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    17,455
    stryder,
    the fact remains that microsoft KNEW about this vulnerability.
    it took warnings from the FBI for microsoft to do ANYTHING about it.

    also, there is no reason for your machine to store the URLs of the websites you visit.
    there is no reason for your machine to store the name of practically every file you looked at, opened, or ran.
    it's my guess, and it's a guess, that this is one of the reasons windows before XP was so unstable.
    these index.dat files somehow "got out of sync" with internet explorer.
     
  12. sculptor Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,466
    for anyone crazy enough to want to snoop through the rubbish on my computer i keyboard in
    allahu akbar
    You may indeed find something that tweaks your curiosity
    Insha'Allah

    Who here had trouble sleeping last night?
     
  13. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    22,087
    I find myself in the usually unenviable position of agreeing with Tiassa here: the constant revisions of OS in Windows are a nightmare. (And in case anyone thinks that makes me an Apple lover - no. It would be difficult to envision a system more counterintuitive, less functional from the standpoint of software and hardware and supporting fewer platforms intended for the professional classes than Apple. I keep precisely one Apple laptop around to run one software package that was developed by a pack of soi-dissant twats and which I normally avoid anyway.) Every two years. Every two years a new OS.

    No. No more. Solution: simple class-action lawsuit. Millions and millions of pissed-off users, tired of the Robertsonian fill-in of memory space on increasing powerful systems - by the fucking OS. Your Honour: surely Mr. Gates cannot have thought that was a reasonable realisation of his product? Hmm? Aaand settlement. In this one thing, the system could conceivably work for us.
     
  14. madethesame Banned Banned

    Messages:
    411
    windows cannot be fully enjoyed without viruses, back doors, blue screen of death etc.
     
  15. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635
    Sure there is - so you can return to them easily. I do that all the time. Also so cookies can be indexed to web pages.
     
  16. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    17,455
    doesn't fly.
    somehow, these files are linked to windows internet explorer because firefox doesn't use them.
    apparently, if you use IE then these files starts logging your computer usage.
    i use firefox and these files only contain 32 KB or less, apparently some kind of "overhead".
     
  17. billvon Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    21,635
    Right, the different browsers keep their history in different places.
    Sort of. It logs your use of explorer, which in Windows is also the application used to find files. Thus it keeps a record of both files and sites visited.
     
  18. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    17,455
    have any idea where firefox stores its history?
    added to that, what does using my DVD player have to do with the internet?
    what does looking at pictures of my grand children have to do with the internet?
    this stuff is logged if you use IE but isn't if you use firefox.
    on top of all of that, why do apps have access to the web when there is no reason?
    windows installer for example, this app has full access to the web unless you have a firewall that blocks it.
    speaking of firewalls, i have IE blocked from the net.
    here's the good part, i have to periodically check my applications list because i've found my settings for IE gets mysteriously disabled and i have to reenable the block.
    what's up with all of that?
    services controller is another app that exhibits the same thing.
    i can use my computer just fine without these apps having access to the web, so why are they reenabled and for what purpose?
    yay, rah, microsoft.
    dumb fucks.
     
  19. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    17,455
    define "explorer".
    windows explorer or internet explorer (IE).
    i use winexplorer regularly, and IE not at all, well as little as possible. (some websites require it).
    i have to admit though, this winXP is a robust OS.
    and get this, its SP1, OEM no less. (SP2 added after install)
    my machine has run nonstop for 2 weeks or better without a shutdown or restart.
    this may sound trite, but it isn't considering how i like to tweak things.
    my last OS, win me, i've reformatted my HDD more times than i like to admit.

    so, what's the bottom line here?
     
  20. billvon Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    21,635
    Same app (Explorer.)
    Updates, for one.
    They are the same; they use the same code. From the Wiki:

    "With the release of the Windows Desktop Update (packaged with Internet Explorer 4.0 as an optional component, and included in Windows 98), Windows Explorer became "integrated" with Internet Explorer, most notably with the addition of navigation arrows (back and forward) for moving between recently visited directories, as well as Internet Explorer’s Favorites menu. At the time these changes raised antitrust concerns about the incorporation of what was seen as an application feature, but this feature has since been emulated by most other file browsers."
     
  21. leopold Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    17,455
    you said firefox stores its history somewhere else other than index.dat.
    this appears to be a factual statement, so where is it stored?

    integrated?
    isn't doing microsoft any good as far as i'm concerned.
    i've got both of their apps blocked, IE and winexplorer.
     

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