Re: fuck netgear!
Not too far off... the nVidia Geforce Experience (installed by default with drivers) now requires login before you can use any of its features. Only one reason I can think of for that...
And then there's Samsung Magician, the SSD utility for use with Samsung drives, which has supposedly refused to update the firmware on one of their drives because the user didn't opt-in on being spied on.
And then there's Samsung (and other) smart TVs...
Wave of the future, everyone. The new normal is for everything...
Ascaris
Senior Member
Last Activity: 05-23-2022, 06:50 AM
Joined: 11-19-2015
Location: AZ
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Re: Upgrading from Vista to 10 for free.
So they say, but that may be the same as the free upgrade being over-- meaning it is the official story, but not really true.
I upgraded my laptop (then running Win 7) to 10 during the official upgrade period on a spare (too small to be of practical use but still working fine) HDD, then swapped back in its usual Win 7 drive for daily use.
Some time later, after the free upgrade was supposed to be over, I made some really ill-advised edits to the rom file and flashed it... and bricked my motherboard. None of...Leave a comment:
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Re: The 2017 Operating System Thread
Some of the good people here on this forum have said that Windows 8, properly modified with registry edits, aftermarket mods, etc., can be as good as, if not slightly better than, Windows 7 (modified or not, depending on what you want out of it).
I had to admit I was intrigued. I'd never used 8 or 8.1; I'd read the reviews, though, and certainly the unmodified versions were not something I'd want. I didn't want to depend so heavily on aftermarket programs to make my PC tolerable either... but then I realized I already was, even...Leave a comment:
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Re: The 2017 Operating System Thread
No, Microsoft did not "have" to do it.
I own my computer. It's for me to decide what runs on it. That's part of the deal with ownership. If MS would like to own my machine, they can certainly make me an offer to purchase it, and I will be happy to consider the offer and to approve or deny it... but short of that, it's mine, and I alone decide what gets installed on it.
Microsoft has already shown us they are willing to use the Windows Update system to distribute malware to their customers....Leave a comment:
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Re: Who Uses What OS in her/his Box?
Windows 7/Linux Mint Cinnamon 18 dual boot on both my main PCs now. Not touching Windows 10 with a ten foot pole.
I used to have 10 on my "test" PC to monitor 10 and see if it ever became usable. After watching it go in exactly the opposite direction, I gave up on it... I wiped 10 to reuse the SSD for something else. It's evident that MS is not interested in pleasing or accommodating former customers like me; rather than reversing course, they've repeatedly doubled down on everything that is wrong with 10 and the way MS...Leave a comment:
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Re: virus scanner
I agree that [I]usually[/I] watching what you do with your 'puter will prevent malware from getting on your system, but there are exceptions.
Years ago, I was browsing around looking for information on guitar strings or some other such thing. Apparently, the guitar site had been compromised, as it contained none of the content Google had cached, but instead redirected me to some site whose URL referenced pot, but served up only what appeared to be a blank page. Immediately, my security suite (Outpost Suite; firewall/hips/antimalware) software popped...Leave a comment:
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Re: What if Microsoft had done Windows 8 differently?
I saw a post on another site that pointed to a possibility I had not considered during this whole Windows 10 debacle: The idea that MS [I]is[/I], in fact, trying to kill off Windows. Maybe that which seemed to be an incredibly misguided, cynical, tone-deaf series of blunders that MS was making while trying to promote Windows was actually just what it seems at first glance. A lot of people (self included) did ask, rhetorically, if MS was trying to destroy Windows, but we never thought they actually were.
While 90%...Leave a comment:
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Re: Problems with trying Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
If the browser tearing is FF, it's not Linux's fault this time-- Mozilla disabled hardware acceleration on Linux for reasons that I do not remember (regardless of whether the "use hardware acceleration where available" box is checked). If you force enable it, it goes away (in my experience) and has zero ill effects.
I use Firefox a lot in Linux (Mint 18 Cinnamon), and it never tears anymore. It is at least as smooth as in Windows, if not a bit more so, and it seems to be better on memory. The tearing...Leave a comment:
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Re: Problems with trying Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
As the storied Windows franchise is set to come to an end in the coming years, after a greater than thirty year run, I've had to begin plans for where I will go also.
(Windows 10 is so far off the mark that it doesn't even exist as a possibility. Windows, thus, to me is set to end in 2020, or possibly 2023 if the guys here who say 8 can be made usable with Classic Shell and such are right).
I tried Kubuntu and Mint with KDE, MATE, and Cinnamon DEs, and I have arrived at Mint Cinnamon as my favorite. It's very familiar...Leave a comment:
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Re: Windows 10 benefits - Are there any?
I just had my puter count mine. 22,841.
The earliest entries I found date back to 2003. More than likely, some were earlier than that, as I had always imported my old bookmarks when I switched to a new version of Netscape (starting with 2.0), and I certainly would have done that when I went to Mozilla in 2002 and FF in 2003 (and I suspect that the imported entries received the date of import). I have tons and tons with the same date on them in 2003, so I was either really busy that day, or that was when I switched...Leave a comment:
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Re: Windows 10 benefits - Are there any?
I noticed that KB3035583 marked itself as "important" and was selected for installation on my Win 7 laptop the other day. My desktop, though, showed no important updates; KB3035583 was simply unhidden again, but still unchecked and listed as optional.
I think I found why they behaved differently.
I didn't realize it, but I'd apparently (at the time of installation last year) left Windows update set to "Give me recommended updates the same way I get important updates," and...Leave a comment:
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Re: Useless Microsoft and Windows 8.1 / 10 installation
Lenovo and HP are the ones that always get mentioned.
I had my HP/Compaq laptop try that with me years ago... talking about late in the single-core era here. Fixing it was as simple as using a hex editor to change the device ID from the old wireless card (makes it easy to find) to the new one. Worked perfectly.
Some people have said that newer firmwares are encrypted to prevent this sort of thing. It would never affect me with a desktop; all my desktops have motherboards that I...Leave a comment:
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Re: win10 deletes stuff
This, exactly this. People have managed to get Win 10 into a semi-usable state by unofficially uninstalling the garbage, but the next time one of Microsoft's mini-service-pack updates is pushed out, it just resets everything back to the way it was before you fixed it (sometimes including the privacy settings). I liked it better when Windows was a product and not a service. I'd really prefer not to be "serviced" in this way (in a way that makes me feel like I am servicing them).
Microsoft has pushed the "apps"...Leave a comment:
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Re: WinXP Sp 4?
The most meaningful thing you can do to secure XP is probably to do everything you can with a user account and use administrator accounts as little as you can.
I've still got XP on my 2005 Compaq (HP) M2000z laptop, which I had upgraded to a Turion ML-40 CPU (2.2Ghz; 1.6 ML-34 was the original) many years ago. I also had swapped the stock Broadcom wireless card for an Atheros; at the time, I had a Super-G router and I wanted the laptop to be able to use Super-G without an external wireless NIC. I had to edit the BIOS to get it to accept the new wireless...Leave a comment:
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Re: win10 again.
The ones saying the 10 upgrade went fine and that it is a fine OS appear to be an even smaller slice of that group. I also would not characterize people who followed Microsoft's advice and ended up with an unbootable PC as "whiners."
All I have is anecdotal evidence (which is mostly negative) and the 11.85% market share of 10 after 7 months of being given away (to non-enterprise licensees) and an unprecedented push to get people to upgrade. They haven't even managed to surpass the market share of Windows 8/8.1, and it was the...Last edited by Ascaris; 02-29-2016, 04:00 PM.Leave a comment:
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Re: win10 again.
I posted this yesterday, I think, but it's not showing up... I don't imagine a mod would have deleted it, so here it is again:
I never said it was "IT pros" doing the complaining. The complainers I mentioned are generally people who never would (or should) have attempted an in-place upgrade if Microsoft hadn't pushed them into it. When it goes south, as it often has, they're going to blame Windows 10-- and they are, which adds to the perception that 10 is bad news.
In reality, they should also be blaming the GWX...Leave a comment:
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Re: win10 again.
Keep the faith... Windows 10, after being out for more than 6 months and being free for many of us for all of that time, accompanied by an unprecedented effort on Microsoft's part to push us into it, has only [I]just[/I] managed to pass Windows XP in market share, according to Netmarketshare.com.
Perhaps even worse (for Microsoft) than that is that 10 still hasn't managed to exceed the market share of Windows 8 (including 8.1)-- the Windows version that was so bad, whose name was so toxic, that MS had to give away 10 in the first...Leave a comment:
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Re: New Skylake system for a customer, getting low memory problems (win7)
With the error in the original post, I think the devil may be in the details. Can you reproduce the error and post a screenshot?
RAMMap from Sysinternals (now part of Microsoft) is a great free tool to see what's going on with the memory. There was an informative video somewhere out there, with someone demonstrating the basics of how to use the program... specifically, he mentioned that it was one of the few real ways to know if you need more RAM. Use the system for a while (I don't think RAMMap...Last edited by Ascaris; 02-16-2016, 09:27 AM.Leave a comment:
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Re: New Skylake system for a customer, getting low memory problems (win7)
I initially made this one really long post, but I thought the memory stuff at the bottom would be TL;DR'd, so I am breaking it into two posts. So if anyone wonders why I am posting two replies back to back in the same thread, that's why!
I have a Samsung 840 Pro SSD (128GB) with the page file on it. I've had it a bit over two years, and I have been hitting it hard with the page file... my 8GB ram gets used up quickly with all the tabs I have open in 64-bit Firefox. Even so, I've...Leave a comment:
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Re: Windows 10 benefits - Are there any?
Oh, I am! Won't deny that.
Addons, mostly. Classic Theme Restorer colors the unread tabs differently, and I have Tab Mix Plus to make sure that daughter tabs are opened just to the right of the parent (current) tab, so I can see the new ones and know what order they were opened in.
As for the tabs that have been open longer, I use the All tabs list and the tab groups display (from which I can search the open tab titles).
I actually started to reply to this topic before, but I got...Leave a comment:
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