Ranty McRant's thread of rantworthy things

[philip_hughes]

I think it's windows 7. It are loathe to install new versions until they ate absolutely sure it will be ok.

[Morkonan]

....How the hell can these people think that their update will always trump what you are working on? I think I'll take all the cars at Microsoft and get them serviced about half an hour before the employees are due to leave.

Look at the O.S. Look at what they have created.

Microsoft doesn't give a darn about you or what you want. Despite their latest update, which professes to give the user more control over their privacy, the truly worrying trend is that Microsoft only cares about how much they can monetize their O.S. and how much user-information they can get out of you and how well they can hide that information from you.

The cheap piece of garbage laptop (a temp replacement) I bought that is the only device that has Win10 on it in my house coughs up telemetry to Microsoft every 30 minutes. Every "Hello" boot screen spews out crap like "LOOK AT DIS PIC IDNT IT GREAT AND SINCE U LIVE IN ____ WE BET U LIKE @ GO TEHER CLICK IF U INTERTESTED" or some crap like that...

"Cortana" is like that girl you met at a bar once and that, somehow, got your phone number from her friend and just won't stop calling you. "I BET U LIKE CONVENINECE! CALL ME AND I WILL DO STUFFS 4 U NODOBY ELS CAN DUE!"

etc..

And, you have no recourse. You're using the O.S. That means that at sometime during the installation process, you gave Microsoft permission to do WHATEVER they want with your computer, your user session, your information, blah, blah. The last thing Microsoft wants is for the user to have full control over their own computer.

[CBJ]

To be fair to Microsoft, having over 1 billion customers, 99% of whom don't really know what they are doing despite many of them thinking that they do, individually breaking their PC setup in unique and innovative ways and then blaming you when your security updates don't always work, is an unsustainable business model. They've been trying to find a way out of this corner for years, and it seems they're finally getting some traction.

Just to be clear, I totally agree with you about the privacy situation, and the irritating persistence of that useless Cortana garbage, and about monetisation being the driver behind it. But as someone who has spent far more time than I would have liked providing technical support to friends and family who have messed up their PCs, I'm actually glad that Microsoft are gently weaning people off getting involved in being "in control" of their PCs in some of the ways that they used to be. It's just a shame the two aspects have become so deeply intertwined.

[Morkonan]

...It's just a shame the two aspects have become so deeply intertwined.

Microsoft's OS has/had been a loss-leader for years. They make their money from business solutions, cloud stuffs, etc, not their OS.

Windows 10 is their answer for that. They want to finally turn their Windows OS into an actually profitable product. I do understand that. I really do. But, there's a difference between wanting sustained profitability and "exploiting the ignorance of one's customers."

I don't know how many times I've had to step in and save someone from something they've done to their current OS. So, I can understand Micro$oft wanting to protect the reputation of their product quality by limiting the impact of user-error.

But, I also understand that plenty of manufacturers will be willing to tell their customer's it's raining while they're actually pissing on their customer's heads, too.

Every tyrant begins their reign by telling their constituents that they are going to protect them from something...

PS - Just giving a shout-out to my bros at Micro$oft, since they're logging this text, anyway, so they can, somehow, provide me with better product features, better ease-of-use and increased quality in my human-computer interface. But, srsly - Who in the heck would think that telemetrizing Mork's typing samples is going to increase the efficiency of anything?

[brucewarren]

Reposted this because I accidentally posted it in the wrong thread

I've become a little wary of automation these days, especially unnecessary automation. I realise that there are times when it's a good thing and there are times when it's an essential thing, but automation can magnify mistakes.

A long time ago I used to email from my Amiga. Since at that time things like Outlook only existed on the PC and I was a long way from such expensive machines I had to use a third party email program.

I applied for a job. I attached my CV, or so I thought. I got a reply. The guy was less than pleased with receiving the 72 copies that the mailer had sent out without bothering to tell me what it was doing.

Edit:

Then there's the washing machine. As you might expect it's an automatic washing machine. There's no doubt that this is a good thing. If I was faced with an old fashioned twin tub I'd be completely at sea, but the automatic washing machine knows its stuff. It knows about laundry so I don't have to.

The other day I closed the door and discovered I'd not put the most important item in. Open the door, right? Nope. Can't do that or it would slosh water all over the flat. Besides the door's locked. Need to wait for the end of the program. The obvious thing would be to cancel the program, but this particular machine didn't seem to have that option. I tried pressing buttons with cancel written on them. I tried turning it off for ten minutes. Nothing made any difference. It was a very determined machine. In the end I had to wait for close to two hours while it did its thing before I could wash the item I wanted to wash in the first place.

[Alan Phipps]

@ brucewarren: "Open the door, right? Nope."

Automatic Method: Switch the program to any program setting that starts off by pumping out the water, eg any spin, and then end that program as soon as the water is out.

Manual Method: Switch the machine program off and use the flexible outlet hose to syphon most of the water out of the machine and into say a bucket. Obviously this is easier if the outlet hose is just pushed into the waste downpipe rather than plumbed in.

Once the water level is low enough by whatever method and the machine is stopped and cooled down, the drum sensor should allow you to open the door and later restart everything correctly.

[brucewarren]

Thanks.

[Morkonan]

... In the end I had to wait for close to two hours while it did its thing before I could wash the item I wanted to wash in the first place.

?!

Never heard of such a thing. Well, at least not with a top-loading washing machine, that is. Side-loading machines are, perhaps, a bit more rare in the US.

I washed some things today, forgot a hand-towel, opened up the machine as it was washing, dropped the hand-towel in, machine washed everything without stopping.

THIS IS WHAT WASHING CLOTHES IN THE LAND OF FREEDOM FEELS LIKE!




/rant on

"Hi! Welcome to our website. In order to pay for all the great content we copy and past from other websites onto ours, we need to show you advertising. Please enable Javascript so we can show you advertising that attempts to infect your computer with a virus, since nobody monitors any of the ad-pushing companies and we felt it would be a good idea to use the services of "Boris's Nigerian Student Loan Free Credit Card Porn Host Web Marketing Agency and Disk-Drive Lubricant Co. Ltd. Inc. Partners" because we've never actually used our own website.

/rant off

[Chips]

Microsoft's OS has/had been a loss-leader for years. They make their money from business solutions, cloud stuffs, etc, not their OS.

Evidence? Didn't see anything to substantiate this claim in the real world.

[greypanther]

greypanther wrote: "Today our central heating boiler unexpectedly failed, as the gas fitter was replacing a part."

If it was working well (other than the part being replaced) before the repair then you should assert that it is up to the repair firm to take responsibility for the boiler's failure. Ask them to consider replacing the boiler at no greater than the cost of the part and labour for the repair that they undertook to do.

Also see if they have insurance or a professional federation accreditation to underwrite their work.

I get where you are coming from, but this is not the first part we have had to replace, but the second. We had already replaced the expansion vessel, which cost us £ 120 plus labour, ( only £25 for labour! ) last year. This time it was the pump that catastrophically failed, leaking all through the case. We phoned our regular Gas Safe man, he came out to us within the hour and slowed down the leakage. He did try to repair the pump, but it was not going to be resurrected. It was still working, even safely, but was leaking as it worked. We then applied a bucket to the constant dripping. Vaillant do not sell spare parts for the pump, you have to replace the whole thing, even if the fault is small.

That is the thing about him though, he is without doubt one of the good guys and we are lucky to have found him. He is now semi retired and only looks after the people he likes and family of course. He did warn us after replacing the expansion vessel last year, that in his in excess of four decades experience, once parts start to fail, others often fail and because of the price of parts, you can very quickly end up paying more for the parts, than a new boiler.

He repeated this advice as the pump failed this time. The part cost £180, and we went against his advice, ( cos we is poor, ) and got the part. He tried to fit it, but in the end he worked out after four hours work, that it was in fact the wrong part, even though Vaillant assured us several times that it was the right part! He phoned Vaillant again to see what they has to say and they put the phone down on him, then apparently blocked his phone! He was beginning to doubt himself regarding the fitting, considering he thought it would take an hour, after draining the system.

To a large part it was our own fault, especially after he told us that he thought the Pressure Relief Valve and Pressure Gauge had probably failed too, but he was not sure. They were £ 25 each. We took the risk because we had previously been quoted just over £ 2400, for a new boiler and labour, for my mother in laws house, which we could not afford really. She got a grant which paid for hers; we could not get a grant. It was a false economy and we have learned the lesson. Again.

After he had made the attempt, the other two parts failed, as did a third ( the PCB, another £180! ) as several gallons of water gushed over it! It was an ex boiler now.

It was time we stopped flogging the dead donkey! We asked him to find a new half decent boiler for us, which he has done. We were dreading a £ 2000 + bill, though he said he could probably get it cheaper. In the end, today he ordered the thing, which is going to cost us £ 1100, which includes a new flue and the labour to fit it! We are pleased with this, especially as it comes with a seven year warranty.

I may contact trading standards on Monday, though I am not sure we feel like the battle to get the £180 back. We will probably put it down to one of life's lessons.

The fitter is someone who I would like to consider a friend and has been a great help to us over the years we have known him. I suggest if you find a trades person such as he, treasure them. Other fitters we have known have been asking £75 an hour.

* WARNING: TRY TO AVOID FALSE ECONOMIES AND MAKE SURE ANY GAS FITTER YOU USE IS REGISTERED: HERE.

Edit: it seems that you need to buy support separately from Vaillant, I think yearly! I am not impressed. I suggest people avoid Vaillant. Support is free from the new boiler manufacturer.

[philip_hughes]

Thanks brucewarren. I had a good laugh.

My issue with all of these things is the fact that legitimate programs hijack stuff and make it unusable.

My phone is constantly telling me i have no storage space. Occasionally i sit down and clean things up, decide what programs and photos to delete etc and recover 500 megs or so.

The pitifully small number of apps on my phone see the oppertunity and instantaneously download updates. Within half an hour, my carefully won data space is squandered by greedy code.

Dropbox is a similar story. I linked that to my phone. My phone filled it with music and photos. Now i have no room in Dropbox and im playing the game of "do i really want to delete this? " im a natural hoarder and these kinds of decisions make me die a little inside.

Then there's windows at work- all i need it to be is a life support system for r. A program you can run from a raspberry pie. You need to install updates for what reason? So malicious code can't be introduced that will hijack your computer and lose your data. ... that's Microsofts job.

[Morkonan]

Microsoft's OS has/had been a loss-leader for years. They make their money from business solutions, cloud stuffs, etc, not their OS.

Evidence? Didn't see anything to substantiate this claim in the real world.

http://www.computerworld.com/article/30 ... ymore.html

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2875599/ ... mbles.html

(IIRC, I've linked other links/docs before, but good luck finding them with Ego's "search feature" or even Google's site-search. )

Perhaps "loss-leader" is the wrong phrase, but I was thinking about it more for its strategic marketing use as a lead-in for more profitable Microsoft products, like Office.

If you look around, you'll see that Microsoft's revenue doesn't revolve around Windows and it generates most of its income from other services and product lines. Windows has become an "also ran" for Microsoft. But, because of its widespread use and OS market share, Microsoft is attempting to leverage its OS like never before in order to increase its value and profitability. It is, certainly, a strategic asset, but it has never been able to be fully exploited by Microsoft beyond its "simple" use as a basic operating system. That sort of model depends almost entirely on new PC sales, tying potential profits directly to a market that fluctuates and is often beyond Microsoft's control. However, if they can turn this strategic asset into one that continues to generate revenue beyond the "new PC sales" licensing and profit model, they will not have to rely on new PC sales, new hardware advances, new video and CPU advances that spur new PC sales. And, this is why Windows 10 exists and why it has been declared "the last operating system you'll ever need" by Microsoft.

[Chips]

You seem to be confusing "revenue" and "profit". Would you like some dictionary links to clarify what these simple terms mean?

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/1 ... cial-sales

Perhaps "loss-leader" is the wrong phrase,

Perhaps you were just wrong? You probably do not know why though... eh?

[Morkonan]

You seem to be confusing "revenue" and "profit". Would you like some dictionary links to clarify what these simple terms mean?

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/1 ... cial-sales

An article that doesn't focus on Microsoft's relative product earnings and touts the Windows Phone as a success? An article that is older than the ones I linked, which rely on Microsoft's own tax/income statements rather than... marketing headlines.

Perhaps you were just wrong? You probably do not know why though... eh?

I knew it! I knew you were barking up my tree over that one-liner! LOL

It's all good, man. It's nothing personal, I just gave you that hipshot in response to your somewhat irate reply to that admittedly lengthy post. If you want to take it personally, that's fine, but it wasn't meant as anything more than a funny comment shrugging off an insult. That's it.

If you simply Google around, you'll see how Window's has been at the mercy of new PC sales since its inception and there are plenty of articles out there on that. There are also plenty of articles out there which compared Microsoft's core products and their compared sales returns within Microsoft's line-up. It's obvious that it has been... "forever" since Windows was a major profit center for Microsoft, compared to other products, and their business solutions side has long been a very strong player for their profit margin.

Windows 10 and all it's various inclusions and the like is an attempt to make it more profitable and to generate continuing income so that Windows is no longer a product that is no longer fully at the mercy of new PC sales/licensing as its only revenue-generating method. (Opinion that I think can be supported by some brief online searches, if you're willing to look around.)

[greypanther]

AGGGHHH! It is time to ban all two wheeled vehicles from the road! I nearly killed a teenage rider version today, ( push bike, ) well two in fact if you include the mate he was giving backy ( a ride ) to! Bloody idiot just shot across the road right in front of me as I was driving about 30 mph. Lucky for him, ( me too I guess, ) I had a hunch he was going to do something stupid, so just avoided him.

Nearly every accident I have been involved in, or almost been involved in has been caused by a two wheels! The roads are just too busy now a days! Never mind the arrogance and stupidity shown by too many riders. If not ban the buggers from the road, at least make them accountable and make them have a registration, so they can be identified via dash cam. Make them pay road tax too! I am almost shocked at myself too, because I used to cycle so much back in the day...

Funnily enough though, I think the mate he was giving a ride to, will not be having one any time soon, he looked like he quite literally shit himself!

[mrbadger]

The main problem is that our road system, unlike many in Europe, has not been designed to also accomodate two wheeled traffic.

Long before I became disabled I hung up by cycle shoes and sold my bike because the roads have just become too dangerous to cycle on in most towns now.

It's a shame. But the problem is not helped by irresponsible cyclists, of which there are many. Most of them are male, young, and they are oftem highly reckless.

Also, the number of cyclists who view lights as optional is disconcerting.

Several cyclist have been killed in my town over the last five years (all young, male, and innebriated at the time).

There are plenty of responsible cyclists, but you almost don't notice them, because they are behaving like normal road users. I didn't feel like the risk was worth it myself though.

[greypanther]

I couldn't agree more really, It has been years since I cycled anywhere, but I still kept my last bike. I will be getting rid of it this weekend, which kinda makes me sad.

Again the few spoil it for the many.

[red assassin]

I see plenty of dangerous idiots in every form of vehicle, and I find it deeply disingenuous, not to mention frightening, how much ire gets directed at cyclists in particular. The story a couple of posts ago sums up to "some idiot pulled out in front of me". Are you telling me that's a cyclist problem? Idiots in cars pull out in front of me all the time, and if they don't do that to you as well your roads are pretty different to ours, but that doesn't merit showing up to rant about how all car drivers are idiots and they should be banned from the road.

I spent about three years commuting on a bicycle, but it was mostly on cycle paths, so I had a grand total of about 500m on actual roads in each direction. In that time, I had three "this is where I die" moments, and two of them were drivers driving like they had more right to be on the road than I did. One was a van which, as I crossed a mini roundabout going straight, overtook me and went left directly in front of me. The second was another van which, approaching the same roundabout, attempted to overtake and discovered it didn't have space between me and the island and slammed on its brakes. Clearly that was my fault, so on the far side of the roundabout, he pulled up next to me, swore at me, and then tried to side-swipe me into the pavement. (The third incident, ironically enough, was somebody in a car who didn't look and pulled out in front of me.)

I have plenty of near-misses in a car as well (though I don't remember individual incidents as clearly, because two tonnes of metal armour rather mutes the "oh god I'm going to die" feeling). Few (but certainly not none!) of them involved cyclists.


I guess my point here is that the "cyclists are a problem" narrative feeds the "cyclists don't deserve to be on the road" attitude (see also "they should pay road tax!"), which in the hands of the idiots who inhabit the roads in every form of vehicle is downright dangerous. All road users are part of the problem, and that includes us. We all think we're better than average drivers, after all! I hate driving, hate cycling, and hate walking near roads. Bring on self-driving cars.

[greypanther]

So you are ranting, about me having a rant?
Whatever floats your boat I guess, though I am not sure you get the point about having a rant here...

Edit:

Bring on self-driving cars.

[red assassin]

So you are ranting, about me having a rant?
Whatever floats your boat I guess, though I am not sure you get the point about having a rant here...

Edit:

Bring on self-driving cars.

This is the rant thread, isn't it? It's not you in particular though, it just reminded me of a general attitude that makes me ranty.