Recent Comments

I think it could be done better. There is nothing inherently bad about CLI for things like regedit. But it would have to be done better than the gui itself, which is also pretty terrible.

Well, I think its a little strange, but some Dos commands do work in cygwin like:

dir
ipconfig
regsvr32

others like ver do not work. Maybe some of those are built in and not separate executables?

I did at one point rely on Cygwin being able to create bash shell scripts that worked with windows executables, but that was years ago.

Yeah the search quality is poor and far too censored by default. Startpage is much, much better (because it uses Google of course).

Agreed that the new Startpage interface is godforsaken and there is STILL no replacement mobile interface, which is insane.

This redesign death spiral seems to be the way with every last web site, even useful and technically sound and aware ones like Lifehacker or, well, Slashdot. :)

Speaking of which, I don't visit there much any more but the overall quality seems to have gotten MUCH worse. Clearly the hordes haven't come here. Did all the decent people (present company excluded) just stop posting on the Internet?

Is USB still crippled in the GPL version? I'm guessing yes.

No it is not. They raised the price for new subscribers.

That's just one more area where Microsoft is acting schizophrenic. Even while edit was going away, they added a command-line registry editor, exchange management console, among other utilities.
http://www.thewindowsclub.com/how-to-edit-the-windows-registry-without-opening-regedit-exe

If you think editing the registry by command-line sounds miserable, you're underestimating. Imagine editing the world's largest text file with "ex", and you're in the ballpark.

of course i went to try this - and was surprised to find that 'edit' was only for 16 & 32 bit systems. microsoft's professional recommendation is to use notepad; i guess that probably sums up the state of affairs in microsoft's "give a s***" dept. 'Why CLI when you can GUI?' :/

Unfortunately, nobody has really ported any *nix shell to Windows for use there, so there's no comparison. Before anybody mentions Cygwin, go start bash and run "edit", ftp, or any other interactive Windows CLI command... Doesn't work, does it?

I don't think Microsoft intended Powershell to be a *nix equivalent.
Having learned to use several of its commands prior to retirement, and writing a utility around them to help my former coworkers after I left, I found PS to be clunky and, in my opinion, not well-designed.
It also appeared, to me, that many of the Window 7 interface components were built around, or in, PS.
I had to use Win 7 at work as the company is about 90-percent a Microsoft shop.
At home I use Linux Mint 17.1 (currently) and a couple of Macs running OS X 10.7.

I've used Xen and Vmware, and they are both leaps and bounds better than Virtualbox, but mostly in the world where running hundreds of VMs is the norm. For my laptop and desktop computers, Virtualbox still wins out for ease of use over the competition (libvirt, et al.) IMHO...or maybe I'm just used to it. Nevertheless, I'm happy it isn't completely abandoned, even if development and markedly slowd.

Good news folks. 100% of downloaded rips will be playable on your new 4k TV even if the assholes in Hollywood secrete their foulest turd in every HDCP 2.2 compatible device.

Filing this under DGAF because it just doesn't matter.

Can anything save powershell from the debarcle it is right now v4? Powershell does not compare to the nix shell (of any flavour).

These guys outlined exactly why the F-35 is such a poor design, why the Marines' requirement for short-takeoff vertical landing in the F-35 is responsible for most of the jet's design flaws.

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/fd-how-the-u-s-and-its-allies-got-stuck-with-the-worlds-worst-new-warplane-5c95d45f86a5

Indeed: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-u-s-air-force-promised-the-f-4-would-never-dogfight-3e1a66da4e73

You're commenting on the submission pipe (where nobody will ever see it), rather than on the published story and discussion page. That's over here: https://pipedot.org/story/DNR0

The "never to return" part will be true for me when the quality of results comes anywhere near that of google. DDG is nice and yields good stuff sometimes (and their image search is way better), but you just can't find some stuff.

The F-35 was not "beaten". In a test about aircraft behavior in the current settings at high AoA, the aircraft flew 17 engagements with a F-16. The test pilot wrote a number of recommendations to undo a couple of current settings, which came apparent in this test. It reads that the F-35 is in a disadvantage in circumstances with a high Angle of Attack. Nowhere the report said it was beaten. A disadvantage is not the same as beaten. Also this was a flight is a series of tests to see if the flight envelope can be expanded.

A pilot with over a thousand hours in a F-16 beat a pilot with a handful of hours in a F-35. Not exactly a fair fight.

Now just imagine if he'd gone up against a 70 year old in an F-4 Phantom 2. That guy would have tens of thousands of hours against someone with just a few. He'd clearly win!

Or doesn't it work like that?

but now we have popcorn and lasers!

That's what they said before Vietnam.

A pilot with over a thousand hours in a F-16 beat a pilot with a handful of hours in a F-35. Not exactly a fair fight.

But even if it was, it doesn't matter. Dogfights are an outdated thing now. Fights are now decided when they are miles away from each other.

Pics or it didn't happen.

They single-handedly took the internet out of the cesspool, where searching for articles on Rhinos turned up porn and warez sites at the top of the list...

So true. I remember when to get anything useful out of Altavista you had to iterate your search multiple times, each time adding more Boolean exclusions like -xxx -warez -"top 50".

there are good reasons google handles 90% of search engine requests.

Bing+Yahoo has about 30%, while Google is staying under 65%. These guys do well because they have brand recognition, and because they pay-out huge sums of money to get their search engines used by default in browsers, phones, apps, etc., where people can't or just don't choose to change them. Obviously the smaller guys are at a huge disadvantage to attract eyeballs.

Meanwhile, the smaller guys actually return better search results, and have innovative ideas that are quite useful. Years ago, I switched to Clusty because the automatic categories listed in the sidebar made it extremely easy to narrow down searches with a click. DDG does a watered-down version of that, but also has often-useful instant answers at the top, so you don't have to click-through to anything at all. Clusty got worse, and got bought-out by some religious-right group. DDG continues to returns better search results, in part because it more aggressively filters out spammy sites that flood Google.

I will be eternally grateful to Google for massively improving on the worthless mess that was search engines. They single-handedly took the internet out of the cesspool, where searching for articles on Rhinos turned up porn and warez sites at the top of the list... But Google has been going in the wrong direction since then, and others have taken-up the torch and run with it.

while it's good there are alternatives, there are good reasons google handles 90% of search engine requests.

The !bang feature is one of the things I have grown to love. With a simple !, letter combo, and search phrase, I can be where I want to be, looking up what I want to look up. Sure, I may want to use Google occasionally, but I don't have to open up Google to do it. !g and I am searching Google directly. There are hundreds of the things (but I only use 8 or 9 of them). !am pops you into Amazon with the search terms selected. !alpha gives you Wolfram|Alpha. On and on, it's quick and easy and versatile.

The privacy aspects are a (not unimportant) bonus.

Ads are complete shite. I'm not paying for a computer, electricity, internet access and bandwidth to have some moron yelling at me about some crap I'm not interested in.

If I wanted this sort of rubbish I'd buy a TV and kill off a few brain cells.

...the fact that IXQuick/Startpage fucked with their interface, making it unusable without javascript, and by the time they fixed it, no doubt many others like myself had migrated to DDG, never to return.

$40 is the minimum around here. Cable provider isn't offering anything cheaper/slower anymore, and DSL is no longer an option. FIOS is available, but starts at $55/mo (without 2-year contract) plus $10/mo for the router they really force you to rent as well (you have to jump through hoops to get rid of it, later). You can game the FIOS system a bit, if you've got the patience... Wait (months) until you can get a cheap (no-contract) deal, then quit it as soon as you can (wait for all your bill credits), and switch to another internet service for a year. After that, FIOS will be cheaper, since your location is now marked as pre-wired for FIOS, and they'll typically give you ~$10/mo off the regular price.

As for cell, it depends how happy you are with poor coverage... T-Mobile and Sprint MVNOs are reasonably cheap, but coverage ranges from poor to horrific. And with LTE, you can burn through 1.5GB in minutes!

File it under Games? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Crossing

What constitutes minimum price in your locale? Around here it is $40 for DSL although $50 is more realistic. $60 a month for "unlimited". For mobile $30 a month can get a decent plan with 1.5 GB data.

There's a world of difference between no internet at all, and any internet, even if slow.

It amazes me how jaded people have become about internet speeds. Only highdef real-time streaming video really requires significant bandwidth, and DSL speeds can support slightly-lower-definition streaming perfectly fine. Personally, the cheapest internet plans I can find are always much faster than I really need; I'd rather have a lower monthly payment, particularly since I pay it twice, for home and cellular, while companies keep removing their lower-tiers, which raises the minimum price.

Not long ago, cell phones were limited to modest 3G speeds, well below what DSL can do. Heck, the first iPhone, way back in 2007, was even 2G... Were you chafing under the restriction of 3G? How much money are you spending on your cell-phone bill for LTE data usage every month? If you need the speed, you must be using it...

That definition was changed earlier this year. It's now 25/3, so it should at least be usable speeds.

If they were smart they would be serving me ads from local IT shops for hard drives, ram, a new server, etc. But oh no. I see ads about.. damn.. now I can't remember exactly what kinds of things are in google ads

Given the lowball definition of "broadband" in the states and taking into account the crappy state of isp services shouldn't this effectively be for subsidising dialup, albeit with dsl hardware

Looked like an upper stage fired early. I hope they were insured.

If all your competition also associates with annoying ad networks you don't have to worry that much about brand damage, so it becomes pick the ad network with the biggest payoff. Pop ups click throughs, auto playing ads, etc. all get more eyes (and are thus worth more) than unobtrusive ads on the side of the page.

Pretty much same here. I don't mind useful, unobtrusive ads. I don't mind occasional brand-recogntion ads. I do mind being punched repeatedly in the eyeball by the same damn ad everywhere I look. Yeah, I'll remember that brand, all right -- as one to avoid.

I don't bother with AdBlock. Between HOSTS, Prefbar, and NoScript, and occasionally "block images from this server", 99% of the obnoxious stuff fails to penetrate my desktop, and what's left doesn't amount to much.

nuttin but a g thang ba-bay!

I find some small amount of advertising useful. Some new products are genuinely useful, and if you avoid advertising, you'll be the last one to hear about them. And how do you find out about new TV shows and movies you may want to watch? DVR users were the first to find that, if you skip all advertisements, your world just keeps getting smaller.

I can't say I've found myself being manipulated by ads. Instead I'm consistently disappointed when no amount of useful information about the product is presented... They aggressively go for name recognition, and fail miserably to give anyone a reason to care about their product, versus a competitor's. I mostly buy cheaper generic/store brand food & drinks. I only buy cars used, and then only after my current one has proven unreliable. Even more, I simply don't spend much money, and save most of what I earn.

Mostly I'm annoyed with them. Even if they had good information, after about the 3rd time, I'm done, and yet will typically have the same damn ad pushed down my throat 10 times a day for weeks on-end.

For me, mostly word of mouth. If something really is that good, people will be talking about it. Marketing is really only necessary to get you that first batch of fans to seed natural spread.

Of course, advertisers will never tell you that you've had enough. I wonder if there will soon be a time where execs realize it may not be worth the money they pour in.

Very good point

Reasons I use an ad-blocker:

a) Ads are obtrusive: although we are (largely) past the days of "punch-the-monkey" and other in-your-face advertising pop-ups, they still are far too pushy and obtrusive. Unless I am going to Amazon.com, I am not surfing the web looking to buy something; I am usually looking for a particular piece of information. Ads get in the way of that.

b) Ads are manipulative: Ads don't just present their product and its features and then let you make a decision about its merits; rather, they try to trick you into wanting it. I know we all assure ourselves that - while the common "sheeple" may influenced by ads, we ourselves are immune. But that's bullshit and we all know it. Advertisements worm their way into your subconscious, subtly influencing us in ways of which we are rarely aware.

c) Adverts use up bandwidth: Some of us are on slow link-ups. Others have data-caps. And regardless of anything else, most of us have better use for our internet connection than downloading ads. Advertisers subsidize their business by making the viewers pay for the privilege of fetching their product.

d) Advertisements are a security risk: Not a month goes by that there isn't another news story about how an advertising network got subverted and served out malware. Worse, because these networks are so ubiquitous, it is not as if you can try to avoid them by only going to the "safe" parts of the web. Even the most innocuous and best-intentioned website can accidentally infect its users if it is partnered with an advertising network.

e) Advertisers harvest personal information: Adverts wouldn't be half as bad if all they did was promote the products, but no; these days they do everything they can to track your movements and likes across the Internet so that they may compile a detailed dossier about your likes and dislikes. Not only do they then use this info to tailor more effective adverts for you (see complaint "b") but they then re-sell this information to their partners. Oh, and you can be sure they aren't putting security first either.

f) Advertisements influence content: Oh sure, the website INSISTS that their editorial content is free from any influence from advertisers, but when there's money involved, everyone is going to check their own words if it risks slowing that precious income. It might not always be obvious, but its there.

So boo-hoo if Google supposedly lost umpty-trillion dollars (as calculated by an advertising company; it smacks of MPAA/RIAA accounting techniques) to ad-blockers. Not using ad-blockers costs me too, and not all of it counted in money.

How about those of us on limited bandwidth? We lose money every damned time an ad plays. My phone has 500 megabytes per month, that's all I get. Every time an ad loads, it has an impact on what I get.

No, I can't get a better package until my boss stops stealing from me.

I know it's bad form to reply to myself, but I want to rant a little bit :)

I can't understand how people pay to have their brand associated with this kind of Add Networks! I mean, who want buy something with a name/brand they associate with annoying spam?

Equi

In the bad old days, before Firebird ( now Firefox ), that stopped site's stupid never-ending chain of window.open, I was already cutting back on my web usage. I can assure your, if there were no ad blockers, most of the web would be unusable by now, and I would spend more time in the "great blue room" (outside).

OpenNIC claiming to be awesome just isn't much of a story. However... Cisco buying OpenDNS sounds like it's a story, and OpenNIC can certainly be a footnote in there, as a non-corporate alternative.

The price paid for being on the bleeding edge. They expect the pain and in some cases probably enjoy it

An excuse to update, isn't much of a problem as a reason to celebrate. For rational people, your advice makes sense.

Isn't Netflix streaming still $7.99 a month? Plus plenty of inexpensive ARM powered player boxes to choose from.