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The Rant Thread!

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wraith808:
Was it a preinstalled windows 8, I take it?

SeraphimLabs:
Brand new Toshiba C55-B5202. Absolute crap laptop, but it was to replace another absolute crap laptop owned by a local nonprofit that happened to get run over by a truck.

Amazingly the hard drive survived the encounter- which is strangely fortunate because the only up to date copy of their financials is on said drive. I've already recovered that data without issue.

But Windows 8.2 is absolutely horrid, to the point where I could barely move around in it enough to even look for data to salvage. Although I was successful in housebreaking an 8.1 install for my wife to use, she's also fairly tech savvy from being around me so much and was able to find UI mods to make it look and act like Windows 7.

I didn't have time for that here, so it was better to just go nuclear on it and force it back to Windows 7. Which I seem to have done if I can get all the drivers to install.

Amazingly enough the run-over laptop isn't completely dead. While the LED plate is shattered and the upper housing crushed, the lower housing survived almost completely. I've managed to get it to boot Debian from a USB stick, and might turn the lidless remains into a decent SOHO Router- since it is still a working CPU in a relatively compact and energy-efficient package. Pair it up with a gigabit switch and wifi hotspot and it will do nicely.

TaoPhoenix:
Just got a taste of UEFI Secure Boot and the walled garden of Windows 8.

So far, this machine holds the record of how long a system has held out before being forced to load up a Linux LiveUSB and using dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M count=1024 to go nuclear on the partition table. It actually took almost 3 hours to get it to boot Debian.

It would boot Windows 8, and wanted nothing other than Windows 8. After some fudging I managed to get a Windows 7 install stick to boot, but even that would get partway up before going BSOD.

It honestly seems like not only did they make UEFI secure boot a thing just to control how you use the hardware you purchased, but they actually went out of their way to make it difficult to use anything other than what they provide for you to use.

However, I did win that battle. It is sitting on my desk right now at a Windows 7 desktop, and I managed to do it without physically yanking the drive to slave to one of my Debian boxes for forced-wiping.

Like, my god though. I knew they were aiming for a walled garden. But they certainly made it extremely tedious to get out of it. If the next version of Windows really is paid license like they are threatening to do, I am flat out not going to support it and will make everything I need run correctly in Linux.
-SeraphimLabs (June 24, 2014, 03:04 PM)
--- End quote ---

That's awful!

And you're really good, you run your hosting business and the stuff in your post, etc.

I would never even be able to get started doing anything like that. And it would frustrate me so much that I would just sink in despair.

Actually Seraphim you might have a biz opportunity doing that for other people.

I was really hoping that Win9 was going to be a turbocharged back to basics Son of Win7.

And on a new topic, I hadn't seen the news about Win 9 being a paid license (what does that even mean? That you have to renew it every year or it stops working?!). I think I will hate Microsoft! (Right now I don't, I just randomly like my life the way it is and can't afford to upgrade.)

TaoPhoenix:
P.S. Just posting here so people can see it, I found an epic topic for one of the political threads in the Basement.

Ren, you're gonna love it!

TaoPhoenix:
Okay a new one popped up.

I am reading Keith DeCandito's reviews on Star Trek TNG.

Pretty good all told, but he's putting in just a few too many full pic ads of his or friend's books in.

It's well known that 1 200X380 pic overpowers 2000 words of text.

So just as a lark, after trying to play fair, I nuked one of the pics with AdBlock.

The result was immense. I don't really mind texts calling out their products. It's when a big pic "bullies" the text to the side that I begin to get grumpy.

After all you wonder why WHY AREN'T YOU READING MY AD FOR NEW COKE??? when lil' ol text GETS PUSHED TO THE SIDE BY A HUGE PIC THAT ASKS YOU TO BUY SOMETHING can't be read coherently!?

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