One year ago today: June 20, 2013, I didn't buy it.
Five years ago today: June 20, 2009, great crabby day.
Ten years ago today: June 20, 2004, Saturn.
Get ready for a day or two of no pictures while we fix Vista. Running an ordinary anti-virus (SpyHunter) knocked out the drive access. Hold it, I just thought of a way I can use two computers to fake the process. If you see any pictures here, then I was successful. Fred finally agrees with my contention that Vista is the worst operating system MicroSoft has put out this century.
The Florida semi-tropical summer downpour. Bad? No, about what you’d expect. But it went from 9:45 AM to 4:20 PM. Thus, I was caught away from home most of the day. Returning home from Fred’s, I pulled into the old “Buddy’s Place” and essentially sat there with nothing else to do until ten minutes ago. Fortunately, I had a book to read or I would have been stuck there with ten bikers hitting on the barmaid. Plus five Wallace-types talking prostitution like they invented it and nobody else knows where the best deals are. But they all agree the “best” whorehouses are out west near casinos.
Don’t worry about forgetting the name of the brothels. Just mention Reno or Vegas within 1500 feet of Wallace, and he’ll instantly tell you absolutely everything he knows about prostitution. In fact, he will meticulously walk you through every step of the sex-for-hire process, like for instance how the prettier hookers charge more. He always includes that specific in case anyone misses it on their own. And Wallace will gladly repeat the entire speech anytime you or anybody else wants. Or even if nobody wants. All day long.
Fred handed me a package, which upon inspection turned out to be the most amazing collection of expensive Arduino components on my wish list. Somebody gave up on robots and Fred donated the lot to me. Around $400 worth of gear, including an ATmega (super-Arduino), two sonar sensors, voice command packages, card reader, and an Internet connector. It was clear somebody bought these thinking it would be his big break into the robot field and gave up when he found it required brainwork. I can even see where he accidentally burned his TX/RX pins with his soldering iron just before he gave up.
Here’s something from “Now I Know”. An employee, a programmer, was caught outsourcing his code to China. He sat as his desk watching cat videos on-line and collected approximate four times as much in pay as he paid to have the work done overseas. Apparently he was fired instead of promoted. That’s gambling casino logic. If someone beats the system, you ban them instead of hire them. Or how about hiring prisoners to answer call desk phones? The same source says it happens all the time under a government program to bring jobs back to America. The prisoners are paid $8 per day, which other than preparing them for what’s available when they get out, is beneath contempt.
Who is Seth Rosenblatt? He’s the senior editor of CNET, but he is also the guy who labels Win XP fans (like myself) “The Phalanx of the Walking Dead”. Nice guy. You see, MicroSoft has Seth eating out of their hand. MicroSoft's found themselves the uberdork, educated beyond his brain size and embracing the concept that new must be better.
And if it is new from MicroSoft, it is not only better, it is the best. Seth roots for IE (Internet Explorer) 11, despite its flaws and the fact it uses an android interface geared toward the lowest mentalities out there. So stupid you can't spell? So dumb you can't use a pointing device sharper than your finger? Android to the rescue!
Seth appears ignorant of the fact that MicroSoft is releasing software at an ever increasing rate without any real improvement. He ignores the expense to industry to make constant, avoidable changeovers. And he ignores the increasing intrusiveness of the products. It’s not like the consumer can opt out of the more sordid features like Outlook. And Seth doesn’t appear to grasp that the products are not backward compatible with versions that didn’t include snoopware, forcing consumers to "upgrade".
For the record Seth, I prefer Win XP precisely for the reasons you gloss over. It was the last release that was geared toward intellectual activity rather than random web-surfing for mindless idiots. We know MicroSoft doesn't like XP because it will network without going through Google servers. But don’t worry about Seth. One day he’ll realize there is more to life than being the first to buy a new toy. I call Seth-types the “Vanguard of the MicroSoft Lemmings”.
ADDENDUM
During the afternoon rain, I also read through the MicroSoft rules for Hotmail, now enforced to become Outlook (you will eventually be required to switch to Outlook). The essential change in the system is they are moving toward learning the identity of at least one person who uses each computer. The goal is to make or hold that person legally responsible for everything that occurs with that computer whether or not that person actually uses the computer. For this, they are collaborating with Google and Facebook, calling them advertising partners. They make it clear the main vector used to identify you will be your e-mail.
Essentially, they claim the right to ask anybody to whom you sent an e-mail to identify you or risk their own e-mail account suspended. While I doubt they would dare do it, the right to do so is cleverly worded in there. The priority will be to identify those e-mail accounts for whom they currently do not have a name and home address. What gets me is these are not the law or the authorities and they have no right to demand your identity. Something will give. Some say what’s the harm if they do? Because it is morally wrong. Man was not put on the Earth to keep tabs on other men. When they do, it is called communism and it doesn't work.
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