XP is garbage

An open letter to the internet from Trolls United Against Defamation:

First an introduction - what I'd like to talk about are "Trolls" - we've been much maligned over the years but we've decided to come out from under our 'bridges' and once again take our rightful place in society.

Many of you older readers may remember the friendly little man who lived under the courthouse steps in your home town, he was a well-liked and respected member of the community, your parents approved of his occupation and understood that "it was a tough job, but someone had to do it". In small town America in the '50s no one questioned the valuable place your local trolls played in society.

Readers who grew up in the '60s may remember being distraught by Oppie's special friend Max's sudden disappearance from Mayberry after the actor who played him was blacklisted following the McCarthy hearings.

Let me try and explain the whole sordid story as briefly as possible. It all started with what we trolls commonly refer to as "that goat incident". Back in the spring of 1964 there were wild press reports from Eastern Europe about a poor hungry troll eating some goats who woke him up while sleeping under a bridge - naturally the press blew it way out of proportion, someone noticed that not only were there trolls behind the iron curtain, but here in the US too - Joe McCarthy (a lawyer!) came out of retirement and started up 'HURT' the 'House Unamerican Reaction to Trolls' - Trolls were subpoenaed, question, publicly vilified and driven from their occupations all across the country, in the south trolls were driven from town by the KKK on horseback. Those trolls whom survived moved to the wilder parts of the country to hide out, some even moved north to Canada.

At the time our knowledge of ecology and ecosystems was not great enough for anybody to predict the horrible results this would cause. As the Soviets were finding out by the '60s if you take away it's usual prey a predator will turn elsewhere. They banned lawyers in most communist countries, which of course explains the plight of that poor hungry troll under that bridge that started this whole mess.

After banning Trolls the US is now suffering from a most horrible scourge. Just like removing the wolves from Yellowstone resulted in Elk herds that multiplied out of control and devastated the grazing for all other species, taking your local troll out from his usual place below the courthouse steps has resulted in lawyers multiplying completely out of control with dire consequences to all parts of society.

We intend to once again become the respected useful members of society our parents and grandparents were. And after much soul-searching we realized that we would need good legal council. As you might imagine this was hard to come by, so we decided that we needed to train some of our own people in the law. I, and my colleagues, worked our way through law school, it was hard, we suffered under much discrimination from the faculty, we spent long nights suffering working through the law books, and days resisting temptation in class. In the end we graduated top of our class - in fact in that year we were the only ones who surv^H^H^H^Hgraduated. We moved into private practice as "Troll, Troll, Troll and Bandicoot" mostly doing civil rights law for other trolls. Recently you may have heard of the very substantial out of court settlement we received from the Tolkien estate in our libel case. We intend to use this money to fund future legal work for our clients.

Which brings me to the main purpose of this letter .... it has come to our attention that some people on the internet have been using the name 'troll' in a negative, derogatory manner. This must stop immediately. Along with our co-litigants the Spam Industry Council we are today serving a class action suit, on behalf of all trolls everywhere, on all people who have participated in the practice of 'trolling'.

We were lucky that the law firm of Canter&Siegel after some initial reluctance were yum^H^H^H able to help us in searching the Usenet archives to discover the perpetrators and to electronically serve all those who were found responsible.

I hope that this will be the end of this matter.

Thank you for your attention

Timothy T. Troll Attorney at Law Troll, Troll, Troll, and Bandicoot

--------------------------------------------------------------------- Trolls United will never be defeated - take a lawyer to lunch

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Source:

Well yeah, it's not "reboot reboot reboot".... you really don't have to reboot that much at all compared to before, but it is still format format format, but in that respect I really doubt it would matter if it was optimized or configured at all.

I know people like that, one is now a licensed mechanic and non the wiser. Others, probably like you or I, will go buy a book and sweat it out. It may not work right the first ten times but damnit it's going to..

Depends :)

No, I expect them to be happy using the 286 I'd get for them at a yard sale. I know, still dead right?? Nobody touches my baby :)

Tinkerer= baby hacker? gotta start somewhere.

Yeah I don't modify code or anything such thing, I don't consider turning off junk options enabled by default modifying internals.. it's all extra s*it that it doesnt' need to run and only hinders it.

I find just those few simple steps I'd mentioned which I'm sure most already know are all it takes to make XP a speed demon. I've heard alot of people say they don't like XP because it's too slow and prefer

Only the ones carting their bike to the shop in a box. Some people just have to pay someone else to do it.

Nah I'm not that hardcore, I just ensure it has a decent chance at performing without falling on its face, inevitably it does eventually, takes about a year before it slows to a crawl and starts to act like

This is kind of my point as well, I don't like sitting around waiting for animated menu's when I want something to happen _now_.

Thing is with a monopoly you can pretty well tell the customers to go f*ck themselves and....so what.

Yeah I hate it too.

Totally agree. I have one.

Yeah, I still haven't slept but, I see where you're comming from now. I think we share different philosophies though, and that's alright, but I understand where you're at.

My view is, that extra bit of work, which admittedly I loath doing, is necessary so that I can "enjoy" working on my computer instead of hating every moment of it like I did when "working" with 9X. If it so much as stutters the 9X flashbacks, cold sweats and nightmares just start rolling in. My first computer = win98, in college. Can you imagine the torment it put me through? Tech support was never any help, after awhile I made a game of calling them to ask them questions I knew they wouldnt' be able to answer. It was soooo bad, within one year I was downloading slackware on a 56k winmodem that could only do

What I used to do, before throwing whatever amount of RAM and MIPS it takes on embedded Linux'en was to *always* use an RTOS on the assumption that most of the "wheels" one needs (timers, locks, threads, messaging) are already invented by people more clever than I - people familiar with the how the compiler works on the hardware - and have gone through the hands of many more people;

So by using an RTOS I can reduce the amount of my code in there, thus raising quality ;-)

Having said that, it is always a good idea to allocate things statically in embedded things - much more predictable that way.

Luddite ;-)

I only noticed the deviancy of the toaster because a button fell off and there was a micro-switch underneath;

It is *hard* to buy anything without software these days - my USD 29,95 Braun hand mixer has a CPU in it - discovered when dropped on hard floor. As far as I can tell it handles the speed control in such a way that the noise level is reduced. It is *very* quiet.

It's a plain keyboard; no special buttons. For Pete's sake, Microsoft hasn't fixed the c-drive.lnk bug, after 8 years! They managed to transport a bug from '98 to XP!

That's the universal answer to Windows problems: reinstall the OS.

To whom? Microsoft will send me to Dell, and Dell will send me to Microsoft.

You seem to blame everybody else - app programmers, OEMs, users - for the miserable design and coding of Windows.

John

My brand-new Dell/Xp systems came with two partitions on c: One is FAT32, one is NTFS. Anybody know why?

John

message

Errr. No!

But the experience point becomes void when you try something, break it and then whine about how broken it is? In simpler times, taking the gearbox apart on motorbikes would be the thing to do, maybe "improve" engine performance a bit;.

Well, sometimes some people would have to push the bike and the disasembled gear box in a plastic bag to the bike shop and have them put it back together again.

But that did not mean that the Bike was Crap, did it?

You expect common sense from Wife & Three Teenagers - you are soo dead.

The hacker knows what he does and is responsible for it, the tinkerer just mess around, gets his knickers in a twist and then blame someone else.

Besides, contrary to what you might think, I do not care enough for windows to do anything to it's "internals"; it runs Python, It runs Games and it Runs the Applications I use. Fine, that is what I wanted it for.

It's infrastructure, I do not have any share in it so why should I expend energy on it?

I can earn the money for a faster box in less time than it would take me to find out why this particular instance of XP+Fixpack+Tons-o-S**te is "too slow".

What they tend to learn is: dont f*ck with it, it is working.

After re-format and re-install three times. Oh - What Backup? And Where did we rip the apps from?

Linux solves this - but Sims 2 does not run on Linux, so Teens do not use it!

Sure - but who's fault it is does not help you get the work done, does it?

Many times, enough to stay well away from Microsoft API's which are subject to change about the same time as your application is ready; Like Java BTW.

If you want to use windows with a minimum of fuss, you have to use it the way it is intended to be used.

If you want to debug windows for no benefit at all - except maybe that Microsoft might save a few testers - then you can do that too.

I think I would rather do something productive and uplifting rather than adding fat to my arteries over a product I do not even Own despite paying for it. Sailing perhaps.

He sold enough to get there; meaning the the products does not have to be better, they fulfill the inteded purpose which is tranferring money from users to his account.

If you think business is aaallll about solving customers problems then you are missing some really important concepts: Business is - first and always - about solving *your problems*, customers are one of the *means* to that, and the *customers problem* is tangential to that - hell, if everything fails, Marketing is Invoked to invent problems people did not have in the first place (but we happen to have a solution for).

Agree with the snipped bit - *if* one really likes the work. I don't.

And I would get a Hardware Firewall too, before putting windows on the internet - especially if you do not patch it. Which, BTW, means that you cannot run WLAN with encryption on XP - which is fixed by one of the patches, the third I think!

Backwards compatibility. You can still run multiple versions of windows. The non-NT ones won't read an NTFS. However, nobody should really run anything except the NT kernel unless they need some wierd dos application.

If you *know* there might be a problem, *why* go there?

"Who's problem it is" does not complete the work you intended to do with Adobe; it's a distraction, empty work, noise, chaff ....

You assume entirely too much ...

software fixes are bug-driven, and bug reports are thresholded and filtered through many layers of "support", so if you want any hope of your particular bug being fixed, you have to be aligned with the crowd.

Else you will be ignored. Nobody cares about one fault in a consumer product.

provides.

My Point Is:

Do you *really want* to volunteer as the latest unpaid tester of new and interesting configurations or do you want to spend as little time as you possibly can working on something you do not even own, concentrating on what you *do* own?

Fixing Microsoft Apps is a bit like putting a new bathroom and kitchen in your rented appartment - yeah it's nice but do you think the Landlord will reward you for that?

Nah, he will yank those nice things straight out and put the standard fittings in place for the next tenant.

What I said - it *can* get the job done, that's what it is for.

It's not a Tamagochi - but some people apparently use it for that.

My presentations are schematics and simulation results (for ASIC's).

I can make an Adobe Acrobat file that allows descending/ascending into/out-of a schematic hierarchy just beautiful. Makes jumping around as the client asks questions a piece-a-cake ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Yea. I have been on board with Odin for a long time. I just wish that new versions wouldn't break the older ones, but its still a heck of an effort by some hard working people. Its a kick to see those particular apps come up to the splash screen, and .... almost... work :-) I think some apps are just too dependent on Windows internals to ever have a chance. That's life I guess.

Svista might be an option if I had the cash, and the PC horsepower, and I am keeping an eye on the groups to see how its going.

Odin would benefit from an influx of cash reserves to get more people on board full time, but we know that story, so I won't wait up. :-)

Thanks Ted,

JB

I read in sci.electronics.design that Guy Macon wrote (in ) about 'XP is great', on Thu, 14 Apr 2005:

This is obviously a troll. How could any real troll write at length on troll history and civil rights without mentioning Terry Pratchett, who has done so much for interspecies understanding and tolerance, especially between trolls, humans and dwarves.

Just admit it :)

You installed Office away from drive 'C:'. On a second disk/partition maybe, the Heresy of thinking that keeping the OS away from the users and the apps would be Good for Stability?

You See, It does not break instantly but a few Office Updates down, oh, it will!

Sure this is Bad, of Course it is Unreasonable - the point I am trying to make is:

Would you not just rather be down at the Pub than dealing with some OS/Application issues that nobody within the layers of Microsoft "support" will care about because you, alone, will not log enough error reports to go above the filter threshold? "They" do not care about you, so why do *you* care about "them"?

I have learned, the hard way, that MS products have embedded within them a certain oppinion of how the world works and the easy road is the one that agrees with that; "There is only One Disk, it's name is 'C:', there can be only one partition, all your eggs shall be in that one basket" .. ..

It's either "Gates Way or No Way"!

Is this insultingly stupid, sure, but so are many things: Why not spend the mental energy on other things, things that really matter to you?

If it matters enough, throw away XP and use Linux - but beware: Linux has

And its hardly much of an answer anymore, since we don't buy XP, we rent it, so a lot of computers don't even come with a real copy of it anymore, just an image to put it all back on C: like it was originally. My son didn't even get those image disks, only a handful of blank CDs, and a software utility that he had to run to make the images. :-)

The fun part is wondering if the image creation worked, because he can't test it, and the utility happily informed him that it would run only once, and, true to its word, it deleted itself after running that one time.....

JB

I think that Pratchettism is pretty much assumed when talking of Trolls. Sort of like the way we post in sci.electronics.design without mentioning the goat... :)

I like to make my presentations by hand on a whiteboard, or project sketches that were hand-drawn on grid paper. Both get a lot more attention than PP cartoons.

John

Slightly - as one of those "improvements" that can be safely Ignored?

Yes. But It's almost easier to get a new box - if one auctions the old one off on the Saturday Auctions frequented by consumers, the price fetched can often pay for the new box.

I just like to jump over where someone already removed the fence to get to the Farm Shop to buy the vegetables, I set out to buy. Some people obviously like to seek out the more impressive tall bit of the fence, where that pile of junked farm machinery, broken bottles and rusty barbed wire was dumped by the farmer ... a matter of taste and style, i guess ;-)

To abuse the analogy: Is that the problem of the driver or the copper trying to overtake?

Yup -

"People like Me" are also responsible for Global Warming and The Palæstinian Problem; Oh and I did not worry much about World Peace, must be the reason for Iraq .... gawd, I feel soooo guilty. S*it, The Pobe died too. Must be that Burrito, I ate.

Bahhh:

"People" tend to keep themselves in whatever trouble they like to be in.

Sigh:

The fixing has No Value to "Them" - The Value was in exchanging the license with your money, getting you into that first commitment, what value now remains is your potential purchase of more software and support, which you would not do UNLESS unhappy with what you have got already (but not so unhappy that you give up altogether - i.e. you must be fed Hope in the form of updates ...).

So? It's a Consumer OS, a Means to an End, something to be discarded at some point in favour of something else, not something to get involved with or philosophize about.

If one expends mental energy on it, one ends up married to it and deeply concerned over it's state of health at all times - as I can see many people are. Works in the Stock market and Nigerian Scams too.

I read in sci.electronics.design that Guy Macon wrote (in ) about 'XP is great', on Thu, 14 Apr 2005:

You mustn't even THINK about the goat.

I read in sci.electronics.design that snipped-for-privacy@learning.com wrote (in ) about 'XP is great, Guy Macon is a moron', on Thu, 14 Apr 2005:

Yeah, and his law firm isn't even headed up by a vampire. Pathetic.