The Vent and Rant Thread

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

When I was in Grad School, there was a really obnoxious class mate who always wanted to copy other peoples' lecture notes, and annoyed the snot out of everyone. When she announced her engagement and upcoming bridal shower, a group of us sent the prospective groom a Sympathy Card.

Perfect!!!

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Blossom

I have two of those. Best $10 spent. We get all the locals which is about 20 channels or so.

Sent from my XT1528

Talked to another TV engineer today.
Reason I don't get his channel is distance. Though I learned quite a bit.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Or at least the big 4 can't. They have to do OTA in case of an emergency or disaster.

Now that you're talking about that; I don't know if it has changed or not, but the three channels that are largely funded by the state (NL1, NL2 and NL3), had to have an OTA signal, at least a few years ago. They are also in HD, and are not encrypted, so you can receive them in HD quality with any HD TV and no decoder.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Now that you're talking about that; I don't know if it has changed or not, but the three channels that are largely funded by the state (NL1, NL2 and NL3), had to have an OTA signal, at least a few years ago. They are also in HD, and are not encrypted, so you can receive them in HD quality with any HD TV and no decoder.

Same here except not high definition but just digital. The only time you need a decoder is if you have an analog tv. The digital tvs never needed a decoder.
Our government mandated several years ago that all broadcast channels go digital.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

When I was in Grad School, there was a really obnoxious class mate who always wanted to copy other peoples' lecture notes, and annoyed the snot out of everyone. When she announced her engagement and upcoming bridal shower, a group of us sent the prospective groom a Sympathy Card.

Oh! That's cold! Didn't know you had it in you, pb_nc!

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

When I was in Grad School, there was a really obnoxious class mate who always wanted to copy other peoples' lecture notes, and annoyed the snot out of everyone. When she announced her engagement and upcoming bridal shower, a group of us sent the prospective groom a Sympathy Card.

Who probably immediately assumed it was a hilarious joke. Too bad. Do you know, perchance, (schools being hotbeds of gossip) if they managed to stay married?

Hitch

[poohbear_nc]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Who probably immediately assumed it was a hilarious joke. Too bad. Do you know, perchance, (schools being hotbeds of gossip) if they managed to stay married?

Hitch

He did marry her .... but I/we dropped her as quickly as possible after graduation ....

It's some indication of her awfulness that I can still vividly remember her to this day ....

[Katsunami]

This is becoming ridiculous. I install an application on Windows 10, and it doesn't appear in the Start Menu search. Thinking it's possibly caused by the latest Windows Update (again), I do a system restore to a few days ago.

That broke Windows Defender. It wouldn't start.

Then I tried to repair the installation with sfc and DISM... only to find out (and having it confirmed by Googling) that DISM doesn't work with the ISO files downloaded from Microsoft themselves as a repair source. (Why the frack not?!)

Last resort: "Upgrade" Windows, by installing a freshly downloaded version right on top of itself as if it was the 1607 to 1703 uprade, hoping that it will keep all applications and just fix/replace files.

It worked, but after using a computer for 20 years (Windows NT, 1996, right through to Windows 7, up until last year) with nary a problem, this feels like fracking 1995, when I tried Windows 95 for a few weeks and then, screaming, ran back to OS/2 Warp 3 (which could actually run Windows 3.11 within its DOS virtual machine, called Win-OS/2).

It's completely idiotic to have stuff break left and right because the system is constantly changing features, operation, and GUI. How are companies going to implement this stuff? You *could* end up with a new Windows version on monday morning....

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

<snip>

It worked, but after using a computer for 20 years (Windows NT, 1996, right through to Windows 7, up until last year) with nary a problem, this feels like fracking 1995, when I tried Windows 95 for a few weeks and then, screaming, ran back to OS/2 Warp 3 (which could actually run Windows 3.11 within its DOS virtual machine, called Win-OS/2).

Oh, OS/2. How I miss thee....such a shame that it fell by the wayside.

It's completely idiotic to have stuff break left and right because the system is constantly changing features, operation, and GUI. How are companies going to implement this stuff? You *could* end up with a new Windows version on monday morning....

It's got me yanking my hair out right now, with some endless BS that is giving me the yips on "printing" font exemplars for clients. Doesn't seem to matter which font manager I use (telling that I have more than a few, eh?); when I try to "print to" Adobe PDF, I either get bizarre Distiller error messages, or I get garbled fonts. Aggravating as sh*t, dam*it.

Hitch

[Freeshadow]

Amen on OS/2. Was nice stuff.
As for the rest (the current misdevelopments on computers)
It's worth an extra discussion. I'll start one when my 2nd cataract removal effects heal off. Lacking proper glasses royally SUCKS.
Btw Katsunami - actually it is even worse than 20 years back.

[Katsunami]

Back in the days, everybody was complaining:

"But you have to *know* so much stuff to get a computer to run, and using the software is so difficult."

But back then, under DOS/Win3.x or OS/2/Win-OS/2, *you* set up your computer, by installing and configuring the operating system, the drivers, and the application. If you then just *worked* with the system, it *never* changed and *never* broke.

Windows 95 interweaved DOS and "Windows 4.0", which was just stupid because stuff started clashing. That's why I switched to Windows NT4. Yes, it was difficult to handle, but same as before, if you set it up, it never broke, and service packs only fixed problems. Same for Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and 7. Never had a problem, except for the occasional third party driver or application.

Skipped Windows 8.x. Hate its GUI.

Then went to Windows 10, but the only thing I see is that MS is removing customization features, and that the system has become as slippery as an eel, as it's constantly morphing from this into that, the GUI changes, options move, disappear, or get added, and on top of it, it's as venomous as a snake as well. If you don't go in and disable a lot of stuff, it backstabs you by sending data around the world and then *show you ads... in your fracking operating system*.

As I've been saying, Linux looks enticing, but it still has the same problems after 15 years...

- X.org is old. Very old.
- I will still require Windows for some software/games; no viable alternatives exist.
- New hardware takes AGES to get supported properly. (Yes, I know. 'My 20 year old scanner works under Linux, but not Windows. And my Pentium III runs fine as well!' However, I don't use 20 year old hardware.)
- Every distro is different. Stuff that works on X, might not work on Y. Configurations can be different.
- A lot of information on the internet is outdated. What was true in 2012, might not be true today.

Spoiler:

NT4 is actually a descendant from OS/2. Microsoft used the Windows 3.0 GUI for OS/2 2.x as well, and after IBM and MS split up, OS/2 2.x split up into Windows NT 3.1 and OS/2 3. They could actually run each other's programs in the beginning.

[Toxaris]

OS/2 Warp. That was fun. One of my instructors at the time said that is was so stable, it just wouldn't crash. I made it crash within a minute...

[Katsunami]

I've been able to crash every system I ever sat in front of. Still, OS/2 Warp was very good for it's time; maybe even too good. You needed a 486 DX/33 and 8 MB RAM at a minimum to run it decently. (Yeah, I know, the box said something like a 386 DX/25 and 4MB...) If you wanted to run Windows within OS/2 as well, you could do so with 8 MB (I did, in the beginning), but 12 or 16 MB was highly recommended. Oh, and a 486 DX2/66 or DX4/100, if you could swing it.

OS/2 Warp in 1994 needed a top-range 486 machine. The Pentium 60 had just been released in Europe at the beginning of that year, but only people with too much cache bought that.

[PeterT]

See https://www.arcanoae.com/ for updated OS/2

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Oh, OS/2. How I miss thee....such a shame that it fell by the wayside.

Back when, Intel released the 80286 CPU, with a Protected mode that gave access to more (16MB per process) memory. Everyone was waiting for the next generation OS that could make use of the new capabilities. Meanwhile, AT systems were simply used as faster DOS machines.

OS/2 was a collaboration between IBM and Microsoft that was supposed to be that new OS. The problem was that MS wanted to bypass the 80286, and develop for the new 80386 CPU. IBM said "No, we promised support for the 286". Microsoft was already developing Windows, and decided to end the partnership. OS/2 Warp was the last release of OS/2, and the nail in the coffin was when IBM declined to add support for 32 bit Windows applications. People use machines to run software, and if it won't run the software they, they don't use it.

You can probably still find some OS/2 in "kiosk" operations. (At one point, the Amtrak ticket machines in Penn Station in NYC were running it.) I had an OS/2 box in my computer room at a former employer, as a front end to a specialized telephony machine. It was rock solid and just ran. If it had a problem, reboot, and it was back where it started.

It's got me yanking my hair out right now, with some endless BS that is giving me the yips on "printing" font exemplars for clients. Doesn't seem to matter which font manager I use (telling that I have more than a few, eh?); when I try to "print to" Adobe PDF, I either get bizarre Distiller error messages, or I get garbled fonts. Aggravating as sh*t, dam*it.

Where are the Distiller messages coming from? What are you attempting to print to PDF from?

What I use here is an open source application that creates a printer in Windows. Send a job to that printer, and the result is a PDF file. (You can control where the PDF is created.)
______
Dennis