badmigraine
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Posts posted by badmigraine
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Boys, I think my computer heard all the complaining I did on this thread.
Today when I came back from lunch, there was a horizontal line running all the way across my screen about 5 cm from the top.
The right half of it is all black, the left half fades from tan to whitish-invisible. It's there even in BIOS and during boot-up.
Googling this problem appears to be a bad transistor in the LCD panel where the line is. If that's the case, nothing can fix it.
Other possibilities are a bad monitor cable, but I have little hope for that.
I never touch this damn monitor! I didn't break the damn thing.
What treachery!
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We're the Ghostbusters of computers!
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Now it seems Arnold has won, more people than ever are saying "only in America!"
After seeing Clint Eastwood become the mayor of Carmel, California; Jesse "The Body" Ventura become governor of Minnesota; Sonny Bono, Cher's ex-husband, become a Congressman (he died skiing without a helmet-should I move this topic to the Snow-Related" section?); and Ronald Reagan do what he did, it's easy to go into agreement.
But what other countries have seen celebs become politicians?
ITALY
Cicciolina (nee Ilona Staller), the porn actress, became a member of Italian parliament.
PAKISTAN
Famous cricket captain Imran Khan founded the successful PTI party.
JAPAN
Wasn't there a comedian who won a big election in Osaka a few years back?
DENMARK
A bit of a long read, but worth it:
* * *
Some People See Politicians As Jokers: This Guy Is One -- Jacob
Haugaard Was Elected To the Danish Parliament Promising Better
Weather
* * *
By Dana Milbank, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal.
AARHUS, Denmark -- Jacob Haugaard swears it was just a practical
joke.
He was only kidding when he launched the Party of Deliberate Work-Shy
Elements. He was merely lambooning politicians when he ran for
Parliament promising better weather, tail winds for Danish cyclists ,
and the right to be impotent. He was only having fun, he says, when
he spend campaign funds on beer and sausages for his voters.
Then, a funny thing happened. After six election defeats, the
42-year-old standup commedian actually was elected two weeks ago to
the Danish parliament. Tuesday, Mr. Haugaard took his place in the
nations first independent legislator in half a century.
Nobody finds this more amusing than Mr. Haugaard himself. In his
first act as an MP, a visit to the queen, he wore a loud tie and a
three-piece suit made from a burlap coffee sack. ``I dont know
anything about politics,'' he say. ``Now, I get an education in how
it works--with full salary.'' The job pays about $60.000 a year.
Mr. Haugaard, understandably, has become a celebrity. Weathermen talk
about the Haugaard factor in their forecasts. College students invoke
his name at protests. Haugaard T-shirts are available if not
fashionable, and the comic appears regularly on television and on the
front pages. ``He's more popular than the prime minister,'' says
Michael Meyerheim, the host of a Danish TV talk show.
Political Oddities
------------------
Exotic characters are in politics all over the world. Italy had La
Cicciolina, a former porn star, in its Parliament. And radio talker
Howard Star won (and then relinguished) the Liberian Party's
nomination for the governorship of New York this year.
But Mr. Haugaard could well be the first professional comic to win
election to a national legistature as a joke.
Some sober Danes don't think it's a laughing matter. ``How is it
imaginable that 20,000 people would vote for a clown like that?''
Conservative Party chief Torben Rechendorff demanded in the Aarhus
Stiftstidende, Mr. Haugaard's hometown paper. Steen Gade, socialist
MP, also thinks the election shows that Denmark is in a rotten state.
``It is sad that many voters have thought the work in the Parliament
so unimportant as to use their vote on him,'' he told the paper.
Lighten up, Mr. Haugaards backers reply. ``The politicians have been
in Parliament for many, many years and talked and talked and talked
and done nothing,'' says Jens Richard Pedersen, a graying Aarhus
buissnessman. Dansh voters are upset with incumbent politicians who
have failed to fix the countried double-digit unemployment and do
something about high taxes.
At the Cafe Jorden here in Aarhus, young Haugaard supporters recite
favourite Haugaard promises: more Nutella chocolate-spread for the
U.N. soldiers in Bosnia. Less sex in the teachers' room. Arming a
17th-century frigate for service in the Persian Gulf.
``I voted for him just to get a kick out of it,'' says Peter Borring,
a 25-year-old electronics salesman in Aarhus. ``Danish politics is
very boring.''
The same clearly cannot be said about Mr. Haugaard. His suburban home
has a dentist's chair and a huge water tower in the backyeard.
Several mornings after his election victory, he comes downstairs in
his underwear to greet a visitor. His rumbled coffee-sac suit (he
calles it the ``Yves Sack Laurent'') hangs on a chair. he instructs
his young daughter to ``light up the lady,'' a nightclub sculpture of
a woman with neon breasts.
Mr. Haugaard's political philosophy is a simple proof of politicians'
promises and evasions. ``If something good happens, I say it's me,''
he says. ``If it's bad, I blame it on the opposition.'' His promises
include more Renaissance furniture at Ikea (the Swedish warehouse
furniture stores), bigger Christmas presents, shorter supermarket
lines, carpeted sidewalks and a law giving disability payments to
humorless people.
His policy on employments: ``If work is so healthy, give it to the
sick.'' He also wowed a fight for the right to be ``ugly, lazy, rich
and stupid.''
On the Cheap
------------
One of his election posters features him with a cigar and a
Rolls-Roycs and the slogan: ``An Honest Man.'' In his campaign (for
which he spend all of $1,500) he was shown with his hand on a train's
emergency brake, saying ``It's now or never.''
The son of a carpenter, Mr. Haugaard did factory and janitorial work
before forming a bad called Sofamania in the 1970s. He plays a guitar
mad from a garden spade. Since his hippie days, Mr. Haugaard says, he
has given up all drugs -- even aspirin -- and is now a member of
Alchoholics Anonymous.
The band, the comedy routines, appearances in two movies and a
soft-drink commercial in his case added up to political liability. In
1979, he accepted the nomination of some Aarhus University students
to be their candidate for Parliament. He lost, then ran five more
loosing campaigns before pulling off his stunning victory this year.
Nobody -- not even Mr. Haugaard -- ever took his candidacy seriously.
Though Denmark's Parliament is elected nationally, an independent can
appear on the ballot in his or her home district by gathering 150
signatures, and all it takes to win a seat is 18,000-odd votes. On
Sept. 21, he got 23,253 votes and became one of the 179 members of
the exalted body.
Another `Aarhus Joke'
--------------------
To Ane Dybdahl, the newspaper reporter who followed Mr. Haugaard for
the Aarhus Stiftstidende, his victory is just another ``Aarhus
Joke.'' People in Copenhagen make fun of their cousins in Aarhus and
the rest of Denmark's Jutland-peninsula as slow-witted. One joke says
Aarhus people take the door off when they go to the bathroom so
nobody can peek through the keyhole. ``It's a special kind of Danish
humor,'' she says of Mr. Haugaard's style, ``a bit childish.''
What made her think that? Mr. Haugaard told her his goals in
Parliament would be to erect a giant statue of himself urinating on a
windmill, and to get his ``virtual-reality'' hat past the
parliamentary guards.
Pundits say that in Denmark's fragile coalition government, Mr.
Haugaard's vote could be a tiebreaker. But not to worry. The comedian
plans to use his position to jawbone his fellow politicians on causes
he actually cares about: alcoholism, diability, the problems of old
age. Mr. Haugaard, who won't sit on any comittees or propose any
laws, intends, uncharacteristically, to be a quiet and respectful
watchdog. ``In the beginning, I think I'll just take the cotton out
of my ears and put it in my mouth,'' he says.
He admits some of his political promises, such as affecting the
weather and assuring opportune tail winds, may be hard to keep. But
he appears to have connections in high places. ``All Denmark was
laughing the day after the election,'' Mr. Haugaard says. ``The
weather was buitiful, the sun was shining, and a tail wind was coming
from all directions.''
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From PC Magazine\'s 2003 survey results:
"And the users of Win XP machines are considerably happier with their desktops than respondents running other versions of Windows.
The higher satisfaction levels of Windows XP users may also be due to newer, more advanced hardware. But our readers agree that on machines two years old or younger, Win XP crashes less frequently than other Windows versions. 37 percent of Win XP users say their systems never crash. Among Windows 98 and Me users, only 7 percent make the same claim.
The stability of Linux and Mac OS may have also helped with the rise of overall user satisfaction. These OSs, our readers say, crash even less often than Windows XP. They aren't as prevalent as Win XP, though: Fewer than 1 percent of the desktop PCs in the survey are running Linux, and fewer than 2 percent are running Mac OS."
This is nice to know.
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Sis has frequent lockups and system crashes on her home systems, a desktop and a laptop Mac. On the desktop she's had to re-install or restore her system or whatever Mac-heads do, 2-3 times this past year. Her home use is limited to Web browsing, e-mailing, downloading songs and burning the occasional CD, not running heavy graphics programs or beta software. I can't detail her exact problems from memory, but they sound like the usual apps that gradually slow down or fail over a long session of use, the computer forgetting system settings or going back to defaults no matter how many times others are selected, locked up individual apps and occasional scary messages or symptoms suggesting hard disk errors that turn out not really to be there and so forth or that require the full restore, that PC users also know. She thinks some of these problems are just from Mac software, and other problems are legacy code and screwups thanks to third-party software written for the Macs. She's had years of experience using both platforms and always says she's noted no big difference between either in terms of robustness. At her graphic design company (admittedly not our home use profile), they have all sorts of regular problems of every kind imaginable with every Mac OS version they've owned so far, from weird speaker issues to OS X wiping out their entire font server. Their IT guys are as busy and as hated as any at our favorite Japanese automaker heh heh.
My architect friend has a PC and a Mac at his office. He uses both for work (word processing, spreadsheets, e-mail/Net and some kind of CAD programs I guess) and both crash often enough. He says he can't see system reliability as much of a real factor in deciding which platform to have. After several Macs, he's going with a PC at home now for unrelated reasons. Right now he's enjoying the hobby platform aspect of PCs, tweaking, adding new hardware components and customizing hardware and software. He says his home systems, whether PC or Mac, have never really crashed enough to make this an issue for him.
The Church of Mac vs. the Wintel PC Hobby Brigade has been done to death a thousand times, and I don't have anything new to add to it. After all these years everything is still smeared all across the board with no clear answers and no clear winner, and I'm not seeing any astoundingly different news about the reliability of either platform.
I see dollar signs, time and inconvenience. I think a brand-new XP or OSX system would be light years better than this steaming hunk of shite I use every day, and maybe that alone would be enough for me.
I'm ready for a change and like the idea of Macs as a tool that simply do what they are advertised to do. In some sense they are Idiot-proof and we are the Idiots. Some turn this into a complaint and say they are like the Time Magazine or Disneyworld of computers because they keep you on the glossy outside and don't let you go off the prescribed track...unlike PCs which are fully customizable with zillions of hardware and software tweaks, customizations, etc. that you can do if that turns you on.
It doesn't turn me on, I don't want a hobby platform to tweak, I just want a tool that does what it is supposed to do and Apple seems to have that.
One downside is having to buy again some of the basic software that I already own for PCs: Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and various bells and whistles. So add probably another $400 or $600 to the price of whatever Apple product I buy, and you are already more than doubling the cost of a Wintel system that would probably be good enough. Can you help me out with free copies of your application install CDs?
Might be time to start using some of those free office suites like Star Office etc. Are they capable of handling Japanese?
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I think any new computer would be better than this old turd.
Ocean, right about the laptops. I also have this Prius desktop which is a cobbled-together parts-bin exercise as I found out when I tried to reformat the HD and install US Win 2000. Even this computer's maker couldn't identify half the components or point me to the correct drivers for them ("we change suppliers monthly based on market factors" [ = we buy the cheapest parts available]). After a weekend of puzzling through, I just gave up and reinstalled the factory setup from scratch.
As for Linux or Unix on a home PC, forget it. That's impossible stuff for me. Unix requires a big manual and I won't be able to use my favorite software on it. Linux is still only a computer hobbyist's system and requires tons of tweaking--probably as much or more as my current system, and why would I throw away my decade of experience and knowledge to plunge into another hell? Visit a Linux site to see what you'd have to go through.
It's gotta be either WinXP or a Mac. Mogs, I'm leaning toward the Mac. You've always encouraged me and shown me the cool stuff they do. However, my sis, everyone I met at her company, and an architect friend of mine report all kinds of problems with those, too.
One thing's for sure. Nobody I've talked to has as many PC roblems as I do.
And to think I got this system to get away from all the problems I was having with my other one. Third time I've tried that ploy, heh.
I wonder what guarantee I have that it won't be the same next time around, too?
Maybe I should ask Mr. Grinch what he uses.
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A long post for you. Don't worry, not only did I paste most of this in from assorted e-mails, I also type 75 wpm. This all only took me 1/2 a cup of coffee.
I don't expect the world to go into agreement with me about my computer problems, because everyone's system and experience are different. I usually get reactions of disbelief, insinuations that I am doing something wrong, or that I should read the Help file or visit the MS site to get a solution. Oh, gee, thanks. That must be it...I didn't read the manual or visit the Microsoft website.
Well, my agenda is to minimize the time I lose to crashes and tweaking to avoid problems.
I notice in computer-related threads, be they on CNET, PC Magazine or here on SJG, that there's always a few happy people who say "I haven't crashed in a year" or "I solved all my problems by downloading the latest patch from MS..."
I used to think this was the norm to which I too could aspire. But no matter what system I had and what tech tips and tweaks I adopted to fix the many problems that I experienced, I could never get close to this pristine level of performance.
Next, I thought that maybe those people were the Lucky Ones, and normal people might expect a few more problems, but not as many as I was unnaturally experiencing. These positive expectations gave me motivation to continue striving for a more stable system.
Lord knows I've done more than my share in trying to rectify the buggy systems I've had to work with...but in the end, I am still crashing a lot and spending more time than ever trying to find solutions to the system problems I have.
I've had to become my own specialist IT staff, which is something they didn't put in the advertisement when they sold me my computer.
Now, I no longer believe the people who say they never crash. Maybe they really exist, and maybe they don't. But the reality is no longer relevant to me.
Rather, I now choose to believe that such people are very light users whose use profile involves minimal demands on the system, or who have short sessions and frequent reboots that wipe away the cobwebs that could lead to crashes. Or, they are victims of selective memory, too much in love with their new system to accuse it of treachery, and conveniently disregarding or not even noticing problems ascribable to "other software", "previous versions" or what have you. I do not criticize this blissful state of being. It is something to aspire to.
Well, let me give you a peek into my own world of computing. I am just one person and no longer know what is the norm. I only know my own experience and that of a few close friends whose home or office computer use I've actually witnessed for any length of time.
Here is my story.
I'm a heavy computer user but I mainly just browse, burn CDs, send e-mails and use Word..it's not like I'm pushing the limits of the technology or using beta versions of cutting-edge programs here.
Aside from IT workers, hackers and my big brother (who published a computer book), I've yet to meet a layperson who knows more about PCs than I've learned in all these years of struggling. Not like I'm bragging. I'm not saying I'm GOOD, just that you'd have a hard time showing me a problem that I haven't already had to struggle with or heard a lot about. I'm like your aged relative who rambles on and on about their health problems, knows the etiology and detail of every disease and disorder, and keeps up on the latest treatments. Nobody should have to do this. NOBODY.
I've been using computers since the 80's and have owned/done my daily work on many Windows systems over the years, including 3.1, 95, 98, ME, and 2000.
Not a single one of those has worked well for me, though 2000 was less unstable than the others... In any case, I always crashed several times a week, and frequently crashed several times per day. Through bitter experience, I obsessively save my work every 10 seconds or so and I backup frequently.
Yes, I've done all the things you are supposed to do to solve your problems. I put in more RAM, a lot more RAM. I got a faster system, I got the next version of Windows, I did a clean install instead of an upgrade. I ran defrag frequently. I ran msconfig and disabled unnecessary junk in the startup menu. I turned off the Active Desktop. I disabled power management even at the BIOS level. I updated all drivers, I cleaned the registry, I got the patches and latest versions of everything. I went to tech sites and implemented fixes when it seemed like a good idea. Leave aside that nobody should ever have to do all this crap, but I did it. I was a good boy.
Now the buzz is that XP is better and more stable than older Windows systems. This seems credible to me, but it's not saying much. I thought about looking into XP, and when my stepmom asked for help installing camera software on her new Vaio/XP system, I was happy to spend a couple days playing with it and seeing what it was like.
As usual, it seems MS has moved standard features around from one menu or program group to another, so you have to hunt them down. Some features like Windows Explorer have a slightly different layout that frustrates you until you figure it out. Not better, not worse, just different. "New"...I guess.
As expected, the XP system crashed regularly in several typical scenarios:
1. HEAVY WEB BROWSING (IS THERE ANY OTHER KIND?)
Heavy web browing eventually led to strange IE behavior--the browser buttons turned up blank or else appeared as numbers and martian characters...then a few screens later the computer locked up and I had to hold down the button and pull out the plug and battery to re-boot.
Time lost: several minutes for each lockup.
Frustration factor: medium to high.
2. DOES MS DO THIS STUFF TO AOL ON PURPOSE? I THINK SO. THEY DO IT TO NETSCAPE AND REAL PLAYER.
Attempting to connect with AOL caused bizarre problems including a never-before-seen error dialog box which went something like "Unauthorized NIC detected...XP will shut down this computer in 60 seconds...please save your work and exit..."
This is where the real fun began: in typical Windows fashion, no NIC was installed or in use (we were using the built-in dialup modem)...what a joke. Although the message said we had "sixty seconds" before automatic shutdown, the little countdown clock that appeared started at 35 seconds, not 60. In addition, there was no other program open containing work that we could possibly have saved, but if there had been, we would have been s*** out of luck because the keyboard and mouse were frozen--the system was in lockup. All we could do was sit there and watch it cycle through its own nightmare and shut down.
I thought the Mission Impossible-like message and countdown clock was kind of neat and funny, but one look at the expression of horror on my stepmom's face and I remembered how scary computers are to beginning users. For all she knew, her expensive new toy was about to become a $2000 paperweight.
Once we had it up and running again, I went to device manager to find out what was going on with the NIC ("network interface card") error message, and found that a phantom network device had been activated and a phantom dialup profile also created. I deactivated and deleted these and tried AOL again, with the same crash results. Upon re-booting, the phantom NIC and dialup profile were back again.
Eventually we uninstalled AOL and the problem went away. This was unacceptable, though, because my Dad and stepmom use AOL. So I tried installing progressively older versions of AOL and finally found that 6.0 worked. So now with their brand-new expensive XP system, they can use AOL from 1998. Good thing all they do is e-mail.
Time lost: over two hours of fiddling.
Frustration factor: high.
3. THIRD-PARTY SOFTWARE?! YOU MUST BE JOKING SIR.
Later, I tried to install some third-party software to XP, including a USB mass-storage device. The device, a tiny USB drive, is Plug-and-Play and should have installed automatically. Instead, XP asked us to install the drivers or point to them on the Net. The device didn't come with any drivers and I couldn't connect to the Net due to the problem mentioned above, so I had to go home to my own computer, locate the drivers online, put them on a disk and go back over there.
We installed the drivers, but guess what? The device wouldn't work. I re-installed the drivers and magically the device worked for the rest of the day. It was a great moment, and my stepmom was beginning to think that maybe I did know something about computers after all.
The next day, however, the device wouldn't work anymore. So I re-installed the drivers and it worked until I shut off the computer, but upon rebooting it wouldn't work anymore. I guess you have to re-install the drivers every time you want this device to work. The damn thing works fine on my 98 and ME systems. Why not on XP?
Time lost: about an hour.
Frustration factor: medium.
4. DIGITAL CAMERA SOFTWARE
This is getting tedious, so let me give you the condensed version. The software installed without difficulty, but kept appearing in the startup menu. I disabled it several times, but upon rebooting it would always be back in the startup menu. Then I took a closer look at the startup menu and saw a bunch of unnecessary crap was also smugly loading itself...AOL, RealMedia, QuickTime, various VAIO, Cybershot, multi-media gew-gaw and assorted MSN crap, etc. I unchecked it all in the startup menu and re-booted.
Guess what? It was all back again. I guess the startup menu is meant as a placebo or joke.
I called my brother to ask if he has the same problem with his XP startup menu. His response? "No, you must be doing something wrong. But have you noticed that no matter how you resize your IE window, it always goes back to some other default size the next time?" Actually, I hadn't had that one. "And my favorites won't alphabetize, even after trying all the usual fixes to get them in order..." No, I hadn't yet seen that problem in my stepmom's XP, though I've got it on my Win98 system and can fix it sometimes but then it goes back to non-alpha order.
Oh well. You see the issues. Everyone has their own labrynthine computer story, and thank you for reading mine.
Some have suggested using the MS error reports and auto-update feature.
Re error tracking and auto reports from your system to MS, even if this is enabled, nothing ever seems to happen from the user point of view. Maybe the next patch issued by MS months later, to fix your and a host of other bugs, contains something to fix the problem, but it's not like you can fix the problem yourself based on this feature.
Furthermore, if your problem is related to non-MS software, forget it. The MS site usually just tells you that this is a "known issue" and you can disable the offending program. No fix. Finally, my typical crash is the "blue screen of death". Nothing going into or out of the computer at that point, so no error report ever gets to MS. I have to hold down the power button for 5 seconds, reboot, cancel ScanDisk ("your computer was not shut down properly..." Uh thanks) or wait for it to complete, then I am up again. MS never knows about my 3-4 crashes every day.
Hyperlinks to MS knowledge base haven't worked well for me either. I can spend a long time searching around in there without finding my exact problem. Most often, my searches end up with: "The page to which you linked has been moved..." It doesn't say where it was moved to, of course.
I've had better luck just googling my problem, to find out fixes or workarounds.
Furthermore, MS patches and updates lead to system decay and poorer performance. This is something I noticed about my ME system, heard an IT guy at my company tell me about 2000, and here is PC Mag\'s current article about XP decay from MS patches.
You may be better off not using the patches and turning off auto-update.
As for my wish list item #2 in another post being scary, I assume people are referring to info being sent out of their own private computers and viewed/analysed by outside parties including MS?
Well, this already happens, particularly if you use XP. There are many benign and intrusively annoying (i.e., non-virus, non-hacker related) programs in addition to your XP OS that continually access (or try to access) the Internet to send information to someplace. Various event launchers, commercial trackers, push content devices, "web-bugs", programs that exploit port 135 (the foolishly-enabled Windows Messenger port) to send pop-ups, web browser header requests that leak personal information and tell a site which other sites you've come from...
Try a firewall product that flags you each and every time a program you didn't designate tries to access the Net. After one web session, you'll get tired of clicking "Don't permit access" and you'll set the default to "Don't notify me and don't permit access".
Not to mention that overall online privacy is a great myth that should be reversed, i.e., your assumption should be that nothing is private online unless you have taken active, proven steps to ensure that it IS private. For an eye-opener, visit one of the online checkup sites like ShieldsUP at Gibson Research\'s site to check your system vulnerabilities.
Well, this is one man's story. Thanks for reading this far. It's 11:55 a.m., and I haven't crashed yet. It's a good day in Walled Lake, Michigan.
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Yeah...when I think about how much of my knee cartilage the doc removed.
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Ta Ocean and Mogs.
Looks like the only thing I'm going to take away from this thread is that I need a new computer.
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I thought the topic was Snowbeds...sure it's not generally nice to trash a person on a public thread, but when the person is in business, puts his name on his place's Japanese and English website, advertises to the whole world on the Net with links on this site, and holds himself out to the public as the guy running the place, well, word-of-mouth seems fair game.
How else could people with personal experience of Snowbeds present their complaints about a person who significantly affected their experience there, for better or worse? "There is a person at Snowbeds who shall remain unnamed [at least for negative comments] but s/he is the owner and here's what I thought about it..." Oh please.
Just stick to the topic. I don't know anything about the place except what I've seen on the Snowbeds site and what I've read here.
Though you may be angry at some posters here or strongly disagree with them, attacking them here won't help them or Snowbeds. You're probably better better to just post your own experience of the place.
If you'd rather discuss message board etiquette, more power to you...why not start a different thread and make it somehow more interesting than this one is becoming.
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Sorry!
Actually, the first person to explain "seppo" to me was Mogski (from CC).
However, I've never heard him or his Kiwi mates actually use the term in conversation, so I assumed it was mainly an Oz thing and intentionally left out Kiwis in my amateurish explanation.
Apologies to all from NZ, one of the world's last good places.
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Just as good a read even the 2nd time around!
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DOES THAT MEAN I GOT IT RIGHT?!?!
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Incredible!! I want that!!Quote:I only reboot my entire system every month out of preference or when I load up a software fix for my many applications.
My sis and her whole company use OSX on great stonking Apple machines, and they crash all the time. But probably only during incredibly memory- and processor-intensive graphics rendering operations.
I can't see OS X or Windows XP crashing much when just used for e-mail, web browsing and the occasional Word document (mostly resumes and complaint letters). These are my main uses.
As reported elsewhere, my Win ME crashes 3-4 times every day, and has since I bought it.
Another thing: if my wife and I must have 2 computers, dammit, then let's do one PC and one Mac. Why the hell not. Anything is better than the steaming fecal broth we use right now.
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OK, that's more like it. A much better post.
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Right on, Ocean!Quote:Sorry, but in business, word of mouth is very important. There's no obligation whatsoever to confront anybody about bad service or whatever. The attitude that you display there doesn't do any credit to anybody either.
What is your interest in this anyway? Why should anybody discuss this with you? Who are you?
I know nothing about Snowbeds, but posts like Paizuri's don't seem to help them much. -
I believe Ocean had the definitive post on Cockney rhyming slang, but let me take a stab at it.
Some English speakers from a part of London known as the "East End" used a funny kind of slang, called "rhyming slang". They took it to Australia when they...erm...moved there long ago.
Instead of using a particular word, they'd use another word with a similar sound.
For example, Americans are sometimes called Yankees or Yanks, right?
Well, in rhyming slang:
"Yank" rhymes with "septic tank"...and "septic tank" can be shortened to "seppo".
Result:
A "seppo" is a bad word for Americans.
However, most Americans don't know this, so Australians love to use the word "seppo" in front of Americans...the Americans have no idea what the Australians are talking about.
Master Ocean, how did I do? My Dad grew up in Bethnal Green and my Mom in Chiswick BTW.
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Mogs, sleep and hibernate features on all my Windows systems have been really buggy. Some drivers fail to wake up, and things always seem to go wrong after a short time. In particular, audio- and image-intensive stuff never works on my IBM or Vaio after a sleep.
Which is not to say this isn't a great idea...just that its implementation has been bungled along with so many other things.
Does sleep/hibernate work perfectly on your Apples then?
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Yes, but they already are under the current state of affairs...dual boot system users don't usually have two separate keyboards, though I know a couple people in Tokyo who used to... Remember KanjiWord and those programs that let you input Japanese on a US-version computer? And the MS IME that came later and obviated them?
If it bugs you, you can re-map your keyboard. This feature already exists. Most people prefer to stick to one layout though, even if it is not the one that matches the language version they are using on-screen.
Hunt-and-peck typers excepted, of course.
I've used the Japan layout keyboard for so long, I actually prefer it to the US English layout now.
I'm running Japanese Windows ME, with a number of English MS apps installed: US English Word, Excel, Powerpoint. But my IE and Outlook Express are in Japanese.
I don't have any trouble with it anymore, because after 8 years of this crap I've gotten used to it. But when my family or friends stay over, I have to babysit them on my computer.
And don't get me started on trying to set up my router and home network using Japanese Win ME. I got so confused, I actually borrowed a friend's US-version ME to have a look at the exact same menus, in English.
Know what? I couldn't understand THEM, either.
It's then that I realize that there has to be a better way.
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Ocean, maybe I didn't explain it properly, because I couldn't understand your comment about multi-language systems.
I'm not talking about machine translation of content such as menus and on-screen items...that seems decades away, if the current state of machine or web-based auto-translators is any indication.
Instead, I'm just talking about collecting all of the currently-available language versions of MS menus, dialog boxes, help files, etc. (these already exist in each localized language version of Windows), and making them available to anyone who buys any language version of Windows, anywhere.
You open Control Panel, click on "system language preference", a list of all available Windows languages appears, then you can click on your favorite language...German, for example.
From then on, until you change it, your PC looks just like one bought in Berlin...you're effectively running German Windows XP.
When your Chinese pal visits from Shanghai, he can toggle your system to "Chinese" and be up and running in that language. When he goes to the bathroom, you can quickly toggle to English or Russian to screw him up.
They already have this feature on Windows 2000 Pro (only available to companies in licenses of 5 or more), but it required a re-boot and was still slightly buggy...MS had only succeeded in internationalizing 96% or so of the OS using Unicode.
Some guys at my company were using it. The company never offered it to me and I had to use Japanese Windows...not a problem on ordinary days, but let's say I suddenly wanted to use an advanced Word chart feature, or read the help file for some weird Excel thing...it would have been confusing enough in English, but in Japanese, I just couldn't do it. Meanwhile the guy in the next room could just toggle his system to English and be up and running.
Mogski showed me that Apple's OSX can do this, but that also required a re-boot and some stuff still showed up as martian characters. Maybe Apple has perfected that now?
My wish was that this feature would be bug-free, available to individual users (not just companies), and not require a re-boot.
If it were readily available, my Japanese wife and I could exist with only one computer in the house. She could use it in Japanese, I could use it in English.
Sure there are inconvenient and marginally acceptable workarounds for this...dual boot systems, installing different language versions of apps, etc. Or just having 2 computers. I and some others on this board, you included, probably know a lot about that arcane corner of never-perfected bilingual computing, because we've had to deal with it for years.
As to why this problem still persists, there are two answers.
First, it is actually quite a technical challenge to have a system that toggles 100% perfectly from one language to another.
Second (and most important), there is little incentive to do so when the many isolated, localized versions of windows in each language sell so well and clowns like us have to buy another version or another PC when we move...what computer software or hardware company would complain about THAT state of affairs? And having localized versions limits piracy, just like region coding of DVDs...in other words, if you could put on 1-2 CDs a version of XP that could be used anywhere in the world and toggled into any language, then the entire globe would be flooded with illegal copies of this single goldmine OS.
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I am in pain and feel the need for the following:
1. Instant On, Instant Off.
Get it? No boot-up time. Just like turning on a calculator or a TV. OK, maybe you wait 2-3 seconds, but not 2-3 minutes. A corollary of this would be not having to click 3-4 things (including the "Start" button!) to shut down. Another corollary would be that the "Off" function would work even in the worst of crashes, so I wouldn't have to hold down the button or unplug then remove the battery. I know you know what I am talking about.
2. Perfect Crash and Support Service
It would go like this: The computer would hardly ever crash...maybe once per month. In a crash situation, you'd get a pop-up box saying "We're sorry, but your computer system is about to fail. We have stopped all computer operations before the crash. Please click here to save all work and automatically fix the problem. Whether or not the automatic fix works, within 5 minutes you will receive an explanatory e-mail from [Microsoft/Apple] explaining in plain language the cause of this problem, how it is fixed, and what we are doing to guarantee that this problem never occurs again. In-depth technical explanations, should you wish them, are also available by a simple one-click request. Please accept our apologies for this inconvenience." Yeah. I would like that. And so would you.
3. Permanent Condom Feature.
With this unheard-of feature, a single click would render your system totally anonymous, totally virus-free, spyware-free, hack-free, etc. No exceptions. No backdoors. No excuses.
4. Anylanguage Menu Feature.
Why this wasn't done properly a decade ago is beyond me. Don't bother to tell me about single byte vs. double byte code etc. With this feature, there would only be one version of the OS distributed worldwide, and you could simply choose from a pull-down menu which language you wanted all system and software menus to appear in. No reboot required either. Like choosing the subtitle language on a DVD. It's incredibly frustrating to get puzzle-like menu items and error dialog boxes in YOUR OWN language, let alone a foreign language. But there they are. How much would it cost MS or Apple, for Pete's sake, to make a bit of room on the installation CD for this feature? Apple had this capability awhile ago, though it was hard to implement, and Win2000 Professional Edition (only available to companies--WHY, Bill, WHY?!--had it a couple years back. Not only would this be a boon to people like us who live in at least two linguistic worlds, but also think what a great language-learning tool it would be for kids all over the world to have fun toggling their system from English to Spanish, from Chinese to Japanese, from Polish to Russian, etc. What is the deal with this? Why? Why? Why can't we do this right now?!
Well, I can think of a lot more features that I am crippled without, but I want to make room for all the wish-list items that the rest of you SJG posters are clamoring to air in front of all the Internet.
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I sure would like a Powerbook or any Apple computer. That would be great.
But those crash and have various problems too. Nobody has yet come close to a crash-proof, trouble-free platform or OS for home computer users.
With Windows 2000 and XP (both are giant turds if you ask me), and what I've heard about OS X from heavy users like my sis, another local pal and a company full of graphic design pros, I would no longer make a decision between the PC and Apple platforms based on a factor like "OS reliability" or "robustness".
In fact, I never did decide based on those factors.
Maybe I should have, given my abolutely unacceptable ME and 98 problems.
But when computer shopping, it always seems to be about money and basic features...as much as I'd like to have the latest gleaming cool Apple product and do video editing at home.
Course I don't have a video camera yet either.
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Thanks, _freak!
Not only are you a genius, but you've saved me the trouble of finding a place that sells only the straps to Flows, AND ALSO guaranteed me a new set of the top-o-the-line BX Flows next season!
Now that is what I call good advice.
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I gots me the Pro FR-11's... Always wanted them, and finally Mogski made me buy them when we were hanging out in Utah last season...
THEY WERE ALL I'D DREAMED THEY'D BE AND MORE.
I'm looking to go even a bit stiffer, so I may try to get the BX strap for them, or maybe just live with them for another season then buy Flow's best stiffest binding.
Damn I love those things. I was getting pretty good at locking in on the fly, even beat my skier buds to the slope since they actually had to twiddle with pole straps or something every time.
My wife will be getting hers soon too, then it's all zooming downhill from there.
NOTE:
In order to fully enjoy the above post, you have to ignore my other posts on this board where I dream of a hardboot/plate setup, and where I say I'm getting back into skiing this season.
Things your Japanese teacher never told you. . . another language topic
in General off-topic discussions
Posted