Microsoft
Vista == Mac--?
...
Well come-on, Owen! ... I claimed I would relent
on Microsoft but then they tried my herculean patience: I
bought a
cheapo Vista system,
and I must say my initial
and lingering impression is Vista really
sucks. ... You
understand, in a few weeks we’ll all figure-out what it’s trying
to do,
if we just give it the chance. ... But
it has the same
if not a worse
incomprehensible
random rearrangement
of everything, in the style which we all remember so fondly from the
Windows
98 to XP
transition, so we’ll
be
significantly confused and annoyed — but, in addition,
get nothing in exchange! ... I mean, W98-to-XP
was
a distinct improvement; heck, XP often
shuts down when instructed! ... Well, at least if you linger a while
and help when the OS wonders if it should shut down
 real
player’s messaging
system or whatever, or, perhaps, leave it
running until the end of time if you’re not there to help it make
this
difficult decision. ... But I don’t get any noticeable improvements
like
that with Vista; I got noticeably crummier performance, presumably
Vista
laboriously implementing the super security which boils down to
a very
stupid robot constantly
interfering
in what I
want
to do with my
machine!
Vista
Versus Mac
One
of the most pitiful symptoms is Vista’s so-eager
attempt to imitate the Macintosh, most obviously in the “disclosure
triangles”1
and
the strange
unmanly color
schemes. ... But the Microsoft schemers still missed one of the Mac’s
most significant competitive advantages, its seeming
simplicity. ... Not only doesn’t Vista seem
simple, it appears to embody and celebrate
a decades-long corporate goal of Microsoft to be as completely
unintelligible as anyone can possibly make a system for storing and
using information on a disk drive. ... I really don’t understand
why
they do this....
... If you want a computer, and you must use a Microsoft
program
unavailable on the Mac, or perhaps connect to an existing Windows
network
which as far as I can tell
the Mac still isn’t
all that good at — you’ll get Vista, although I gather you
can
still get XP systems if you try.
... And, also, if you’re a cheapskate like me — no Mac for
you! — PCs are still much cheaper than Macs. ... But if you expect
to pay $1200 or so, and just need word-processing2
and
email — I think the Mac is better, even if you’re a life-long
Windows user!
... I’ve been introduced to both the Mac and Vista recently, and
it
is
my official conclusion the Vista learning curve is worse
than the Mac — coming
from Windows.
... That’s the bottom line. (Apple checks can be made out
to “j.g.owen”)
 Vista:
A
Failure of Marketing?
People
say the Mac is a “triumph of marketing” — or the iPod
for
that matter —
because it provides what people want and manages to effectively
“market” — advertise — that desirable attribute.
... For such a scheme to
work well, the product has to in some way correspond to the
advertising. ... The more common American approach, as we all know, is
to perceive what potential customers want/dislike and then advertise
heavily, claiming to have it / gotten rid of it. ... But not, of
course, taking the trouble to in any way alter the product....
I
imagine — but at this point wouldn’t bet money — Microsoft
spent much
time and effort in making Vista “more secure” and “easier
to use”,
which are apparently the buzz points the company wants to satisfy. I’ve
already ranted on the
“easier to use”
bogus disclosure triangles. ... The UAC
threatening robot is apparently a major “more secure” feature
— which,
it turns-out, can be turned-off fairly easily.3
... But I’m
afraid the
real point of the UAC was to appear
secure; I can see
the product managers and marketing droids watching the demo around the
conference table, and agreeing “that’ll convince ’em!”
—
without a
clue as to the technical ramifications, but arrogantly certain the
doltish consumers would “understand” the screen dimming and
the
robot’s
threats. ... It’s animated gardol....
(And be sure to see my
thoughtful sentiments on Vista’s Update
Failures
below.)
—
the speaking-truth-to-power-and-potential-employers programmer
Thursday,
August 30, 2007 5:39 pm
Owen’s
Handy
Vista Networking Hints
If you, like me, want to expose the data
and directories of your new Vista machine to the unspeakable menace of
your very own local area network — well, by default Vista is designed
to not do
that. ... Microsoft would probably prefer you buy a nice Microsoft
server
with its attendant IT
drones whose salaries
you will happily pay, and maybe I’d even get some work someday too.
...
But sadly I suspect many of you are not
drinking the koolaid and are instead buying NAS
gadgets, which’ll probably work also — most likely better....
...
But I am my own IT drone, and can’t stand that sort of pussyfooting
anyway, so I figured-out how to do what I wanted more-or-less with
frenetic
random activity including at least some of the
following steps. ...
- RESTORE
POINT:
I HIGHLY
RECOMMEND
creating a restore point first. My notes: right-click “my
computer” — might have to find it in start — select “properties”,
from
the task panes on the left select “system protection”, checkmark
a
disk, click the “create” button, type a name describing what
you think you’re
doing, and then click “create” again....
- ELEVATED
PRIVILEGE:
You
can get hold of an elevated privilege level in Vista by going to the
start menu, typing “cmd” in that “search”
thing at the bottom,
and then pressing CONTROL+SHIFT+ENTER,
which will place you at the beloved command-prompt with a special
secret-decoder ring privilege level (after of course that wretched
robot interrogates you). ... For which info I am indebted to this
probably ephemeral link. (And also maybe see start++
below.)
- FIX
ROOT GOOD: On
the directories I wanted to see on my network,
even including the root, I used my “fixcacls.bat”
batch file,
the business end of which is “cacls \ /E /G Everyone:C”
— which would wreck your root. ... I have no idea what it means —
although I must’ve known a little once — but you can type
“cacls”
without an argument and guess along with me. ... (If I had taken my own
advice, I’d’ve noticed cacls is “deprecated” and
we’re
supposed to use
“Icacls”. ... Feel free.....)
- SHARE
& ETC.:
I
could run
explorer and other dangerous
programs from
this command-line, and they appeared to have elevated privilege too —
nope, scratch that. ... Or who knows. ... I was able to share the
drives
I had fixed, by right-clicking
the directory in explorer, properties, share, and then, I think,
“advanced share” or something. ... But then again, apparently
I can do
that without advanced privileges. ... And then again, to be really
sure, I’d have to restore the machine
to the manufacturing state and try again; the directories I was
tormenting were special,
like
“Program Files” and of course the root, and even if I went
through
perilous procedures to revert them to the state I thought they were in
before — if I knew — that still wouldn’t prove etc....
...
I guess it’s obvious
this is NOT
a step-by-step; your
guess is probably as good — very likely better
— than mine. ... And when I got through I still couldn’t mutilate
files in
the root (at least not without that elevated privilege) — but I could
see
them from the network! ... But still not their contents, sniff sniff;
maybe I should fixcacl them!4
... But anyway, that’s what I did; as well as the root, I
did it
to “\Program files” and then my “owenshow”
subdirectory and all the files within it (“fixcacls
*” etc.), and now I can edit,
from another XP machine, “\\vista1
\c\
program
files\
owenshow\os.ini”!
... So I can see and even manipulate the wretched Vista machine on my
ricky-ticky attic network — but not, of course, from Windows 98
machines (password mumbo-jumbo etc.)5.
... But I can
see and manipulate the Windows 98 machines from
the Vista machine, oddly....
Start++
And
then there’s this helpful program package start++ available at http://
brandontools.com/ content/ StartPlusPlus.aspx which, among
many features I haven’t investigated, provides “sudo”
so
I can go
“sudo cmd” when I’m already on a non-privileged command
line. Many
pilgrims will find that worse than useless, but in my mad bad OwenShow-oriented
world,
it’s just what the doctor ordered! ... And it’s free free free
although he
would like you to donate to his efforts to help-out the folks in Uganda
(seriously) — and I did!
A
Purple
Place
OK it isn’t all
awful. ... I liked the Purple
Place
children’s game: you make a cake. ... Most of us will be seized by
ennui after the first cake, but it’s probably great for getting the
miniature form up to speed with mice etc....
No
Help
In
my pathological spitefulness, I see I’ve forgotten another important
feature of Vista. You may have an old program you’re fond-of —
you
know, the kind that’ll run real fast these days, maybe even in Vista?
... Well it’s entirely possible it won’t
work in Vista:
-
Programs
by default are not allowed to modify data in “Program Files”
directories. If your program is old-enough, it might not install there,
so that’s cool; or you could try the dubious tactics described above.
Or of course maybe you can get it to install somewhere else.
-
Help
may not work anymore. Microsoft feels winhlp32.exe is a bad bad thing,
so they don’t distribute it anymore; and specifically
forbids third-parties from doing so!
Microsoft of course
didn’t adopt these tactics so that you’d
be
forced
to buy new copies of Word or something oh how you could you think
such a thing?
Wait
Wait ... A Good
Word! ...
?
Yes
I’ve assigned the Vista system the important Owen attic duties of
playing the internet radio! ... Which it does very well! ... I
understand Vista was specially tweaked to provide glitch-free
performance in this area, even unto slowing-down network traffic if
necessary, although I doubt that’ll be an issue here. ...
Yes I
was miffed at first
because Windows
Media Player wouldn’t let the screen saver run — but that’s
obviously
because I was supposed to run the player full screen, to entertain me
with its wild audio-based fantasies! ... ’30s music never was so
psychedelic. ... But then after a season (@ Tuesday, October 28, 2008)
and random updates, I switched to superior ~2003 XP technology. ...
Vista, like a premature geezer, kept “forgetting” the internet;
it
couldn’t connect, even ’though the little wireless graphic
was
green.
... A reboot or fiddling with the wireless debris has always brought it
back so far — but it was becoming quite routine: play a few hours,
stop, reboot, etc. ... I mean, it could be the wretched wireless gadget
in a continually bad mood — but I have a few others of the same gadget;
which, of course, I haven’t adequately tested under comparable load.
... But the poor thing also intentionally
reboots on a random basis because I have to leave automatic
updates enabled. ... So it just doesn’t work. ... Even to
play
the radio....
Vista:
Moore’s Law’s Last Gasp?
Vista would’ve been a
successful
and prosperous product — if only Moore’s law hadn’t taken
a turn for the worse. ... As noted above,
it wasn’t
really any worse than the Windows 98/XP transition — which, what
with UAC,
would’ve been enough to put me off. ... But for the great wandering
herds of computer users, Vista was the Next Operating System designed
to work on the typically-faster
next
generation of PCs. ... Only problem: the
PCs weren’t faster.
By
now, it is well-known — although even-still never admitted-to even
on
the web by the slavish techie acolytes — that XP performance with
a gigabyte of RAM is as good as (better than?) Vista with 2 gigs.
... Microsoft, in their usual innocent way, spent a gigabyte of
programming space making all those beautiful graphics and increased
security — which, I suspect, can also be spelled “copy protection”.
...
And, as usual, Microsoft and the hardware manufacturers, acting in
their traditional restraint-of-trade fashion, are restricting new
hardware to Vista, casting-off XP to the darkness, and, if things had
gone as they usually did, the user population would’ve seen a
faster computer with more features. And everybody in the wonderful
world of computer bizness would’ve been happy happy happy!
But,
sadly, it was not to be. Computers didn’t get enough faster
fast-enough.
... Sic transit etc....
—
the obviously-cranky programmer
Monday, July 14, 2008 10:23 am
1.
TRIANGLES:
As far as I can determine, Microsoft screwed-up the triangles. ... On
the mac they sensibly show subdirectories and
files (see a lovely picture);
apparently
that was too easy for Redmond, so they only show subdirectories
in Vista. ... Although I could easily
be wrong. ... No no wait now
I
understand! ... It’s so
Microsoft! ... They perceived a Mac competitive threat, but they were
so busy re-arranging the shrdlus on the etaoins or something they
couldn’t be bothered with actually improving
the user interface — so they replaced the “+”s in the
Windows
directory display with triangles
— so it’d look
like
the Mac! ...
You know, there were
supposedly
200 million programming man hours (OwenLab approximation) expended on
Vista....
2.
MAC
TEXT
EDITING: The Mac comes with Textedit, which
is quite accomplished — I created
my beautiful IPW help
files with it —
and for that matter OpenOffice.org is available for free
for both
Mac and Windows, and
as a long-time Word user — well, Word95 — it works OK as far
as I can tell — or, to be sure, care....
3.
UAC
CONTROL
is easy to turn-off (“control panel / user accounts” or something
— at
least on my Vista) but maybe you shouldn’t. ... My careful
exhaustive tests of minutes’ duration suggest with the stupid thing
turned-off you always
have
administrative access! ... Oh I think I get it. ... See
with the Mac and Linux, installing a program and such-like — the
usual
UAC robot provacation — is often
done with only user privileges. ... On the other hand, the Windows
tradition
deliberately
made program installation
a big megillah aka copy
protection!
... Everyone knows you can’t just copy
Microsoft Excel or WordPerfect
(so few remember) from one computer to another, because they’re so
wrapped-up in the
works and everything — aka they’re copy-protected.
... So as usual
the root of all evil is — well let me introduce myself
I hope you guessed my name ... yup, hello
digital rights management! ... aka copy
protection. ... It’s all so obvious! ... So it’s hard
to say whether to disable UAC or no; the LOL
has been running for weeks without it and no problems. ... But I’m
probably going to keep it enabled....
...
Reflecting in tranquility on the above, I feel I have not ranted
enough. ... A continuing motivation for these idiotic privilege levels
is undoubtedly copy protection, but there’s also a historic
raison d’etre — the imprinting of the computer
mogul/geek by the primitive time-sharing multi-user Real Operating
Systems
of the formative
years. ... They were so deeply impressed, they just naturally wanted
that in their
own operating systems
— even ’though
it makes little or no sense for personal
computers almost always used by a single
person!
Then again your might try the excellent elevate
so you too can wreck your machine at leisure from the command-line.
4.
ROOT
ACCESS:
Actually, forbidding access to the root is one of the few Vista changes
I’m more-or-less copacetic with, and with some difficulty I modified
a
few of my traditional utilities so they’d behave themselves. Amusingly,
one of these was my venerable pushdir/popdir, where I rediscovered that
Win32 won’t let me change directories progammatically — but
good ol’
1988 unincremented 16-bit Turbo C worked great!
5.
Actually, I discovered a Windows 98 Toshiba laptop can see
some of the Vista machine’s files, but it’s probably just confused;
I can’t actually copy
any of the files, it fails with some mumbo-jumbo error. ... But
obviously the mysterious powers didn’t pass the word that it should
demand a password....
6.
It occurs to me, in a transient moment of rationality, that some of my
update failures might be attributable to my serious abuse
of permissions whilst I made my snooty Vista machine
accessible on
my network. ... Whatever; the stupid thing should either tell
me that — or work anyway....
†
A-H
I-P Q-Z:
Well it probably would’ve helped to hit myself in the head with a
brick, but
now I understand: the “CD Drive” begins with the letter “C”
(tinkle
tinkle) and of course belongs in the A to H group. ... See? ... And
then I did something bad I don’t know what and the clever useless
headings went away and won’t come back. ... So sad. ... I
would guess the µsofties were
really proud of this general-purpose organizational feature and hence
made it the default view of many things including My Computer’s drive
display. ... Then again, maybe they thought it made sense. ... Oh! Oh!
I got it back! ... I clicked the little check thing to
the right of the “Name” header, and on the top line of the
little
box that appears,
clicked “group” — and they came back, wagging their pointless
categories above them!...
*
Tuesday, June 2, 2009 2:06 pm. It turned-out the exciting “code 5”
display was due to my own harmless
little utility which, along with providing a time/alarm function would,
every second, try to hide the task bar if appropriate; because,
usually, for some reason. Windows didn’t feel like it. ... But,
apparently, Vista doesn’t
like that —
if you are engaged in a privilege-elevation
dialog. ... Vista, of course, like XP has those senior moments when it
just can’t keep that task bar hidden, no matter how it tries! —
which
is why I had my “hiding” feature turned-on. ... So as long
as
the
elevation-dialog process would go on — and that can
be a long time, again, when Vista feels like it — every second another
of these merry little error messages would appear, cascading down the
screen! ... So when I disabled
the task bar feature in my program’s INI file — the cascading
error
messages
stopped! ... At least today! ... For the last few minutes, anyway. ..
Perhaps you can sense how much I’ve been using vista....
|
1.
“Server Settings” is, apparently, the “receive mail”
settings. ... The
things I had to do to make it work were the SSL and “Use secure
authentication” check boxes. ... Oh I see my beautiful illustrations
have obscured the at&t suffix which is “worldnet.att.net”
or at
least that’s what worked for me.
2. The “Outgoing Server
(SMTP)”
might look something like this when I “Edit”ed it. ... Again,
I had to check “SSL”....
3.
Then I added another account, specifying a newsgroup, so I could use
the at&t news server, and this is how that looks. ... Again,
check
the SSL box! Of course SSL always defaults to off. ... (That’s
“inetnews.worldnet.att.net”.) But note at&t 
4.
Finally, we get to the raison d’etre of the whole exercise: I added
another newsgroup-style account for the wonderful “eagle” 
Well, there, it says it
installed 9 updates, 3 failed; I