Yggstyle

They’re still around and the various configuration technologies tap into them.

I noted this in a dismissive way… Yes they exist; but as mentioned - depreciation and outright ignoring settings has become a thing Microsoft has willingly done if they feel “they know better.” (Reboots and update times are an excellent example of this.)

Yep, configuring Microsoft has sucked incredibly hard compared to free OSs. Managing plain text configuration files in /etc & ~/.config is refreshingly nice compared to the bolt-on weirdness hidden behind various interfaces in Windows. It’s cute getting an error to contact your administrator when you’re the administrator.

Locking some things out makes sense. This exists in all OSs… what is maddening is Microsoft almost aggressively working against admins. Want local accounts? No sir. Not allowed. Not unless you remove the network card, face the PC east at precisely 2:30 am, and type a 40 character rolling code into the terminal that appears… twice.

Attention in that area is extremely late & overdue, so I was happy to see something like configuration.dsc.yaml.

While I agree - the point I was stressing was that many admins had perfectly workable scripts and methods that used the existing tooling as it was intended… and it’s mostly been fine. With their recent push into spyware inside ™ … ahem engagement … they seem to be actively punching holes in this to force management to their cloud resources which surely will not ever have problems …

I see AI mostly as an assistant whose work I review […] AI won’t fix broken foundations.

Agreed. It does have the means to save some time - but it’s just not “cooked enough” for me to use it on any meaningful level. Personally speaking.

I try to avoid Windows altogether if I can & confine it to less serious work.

Sadly some things I work with just don’t play with wine just yet otherwise I’d abandon it entirely. I’d personally love to, though.

What really bothers me is late in the patching cycle windows 2000 was borderline amazing and could be tuned to an absolutely minute footprint. If it was fully updated for x64 it would have been just about perfect. Nothing got in your way: very minimal UI with “just enough” modern features. Getting to almost any administrative interface was at its lowest “clicks to access” of any (subsequent) windows version. NT dna.

I may just have rose tinted glasses but from basically that point on it was all just bolted on UI garbage that got between you, your resources, and most importantly what you wanted to be doing. And when it comes down to it - regardless of what os were talking about - something has gone horribly wrong if that is the reality.

God help you if you want to assign multiple addresses to the same adapter. It’s like navigating a labyrinth.

But people in all these companies find the need to reorganize things to make it seem like they are accomplishing something.

Gotta put something on that LinkedIn profile. 🙄

Honestly it really feels like a race to the bottom with windows recently. It’s like taking a decent product and then just fucking with it to say you did. Nothing is gained and somehow, almost illogically, the action results in even more system resources burning up.

Shit you know … I feel like Microsoft has done that with the registry and gpedit… a real shame they seem to disregard those controls when it suits their new advertising model… erm… bing engagement system.

We’ve had config files and scripts for ages. Most of us are pissed that all of those methods half work or are depreciating away for no reason other than some UIx twat couldn’t be bothered to hook something properly so they just reskin an element and misplaced half the functions. Bonus points if they did so while wasting more system resources, breaking their own search pointers, and infuriating sysadmins and users alike.

Now I’ll give you that new methods can absolutely be implemented and replace (effectively even) old, longstanding methods… but Microsoft has utterly missed the boat on this. Repeatedly.

To your ai statement: Look I won’t comment on where AI may or may not end up in 5 years but I know that getting a black box to hallucinate 40% less has got to be infinitely harder than indexing a filesystem, a series of .lnk files, and maybe… maybe some control names. Considering they had most of that working (even if you had the index disabled!) in windows 2000 / 9x / XP it blows my mind why this has not been resolved when it’s basically a meme at this point.

No other OS has this basic problem. Why are we building onto something when the foundation is shit? I’m certain there’s developers at Microsoft that have skills - but I’ll be damned if I see any of them taking a step forward without two back.

Block kernel level driver access to shit. Maybe improve resource usage on existing processes. Fix the goddamn search. Don’t bury a setting behind ANOTHER useless dialog. Fix something - don’t jam more useless shit down our throats. We don’t need new: we need working.

At the rate we’re going the next windows version (maybe even 11) will intersect with Linux (pick a flavor) in terms of compatibility, usability, and stability with Linux doing literally nothing but existing. To be fair every other version is hot garbage. I’m sure we can ride out 11 on 10 … right?

Now hear me out on this, maybe, just maybe if we didn’t move the same settings 1-2 layers deeper behind some UI bullshit we wouldn’t have to look for it. And- get this- let’s say we needed to search for these settings… (calm down y’all. I know you know. 🤣) What if we made the search work?! INSANITY.

As a dev - legitimately what the fuck are these morons doing. The os gets worse every iteration - it uses more resources, to do less, shittier. I’m sorry: you don’t get to kill off another os version because you can’t entice the user base into a worse situation. (internal screaming)

I vaguely remember a dystopian book that described that exact thing as the protagonist thinking he was looking at an odd flag on the front of the truck until he realized what it was. Can’t remember what the book was though 😔

*** everyone but the lobbyists liked that ***

Gravy seals needed a part time job.

Take what you can … 🏴‍☠️

That’s some interesting insight - thanks 👍

I’ve done some sm work but as repairs and upgrades … it definitely was /easier/ to remove and replace: that was for sure. I’m unclear on if it ultimately had a higher real world failure rate though.

Personally I’m hopeful that their reasoning for this is increasing the quality of what does hit shelves even if there is a higher on line failure rate. They can’t always be the cheapest (and recently haven’t been) but if they can double down on “It just works” for a slightly higher price… I’m here for it and I imagine other makers likely will be as well.

So if I’m reading that right - higher failure rate on the line but those that passed I’d imagine have a higher rate of success?

Came in expecting league: was not disappointed. Welcome fam- Never a better time to join the club.

I dropped it for similar reasons… initially I got tired of fighting with devs over false flags on vm usage. Never lost a case but it seriously was just the stupidest hoop to jump through.

Hah. I should have refreshed. I just wrote a small novel theorizing you might have been making that exact point. Cheeky ;) I found it amusing - even if the point of it got buried (but made for another great example…)

Food for thought: as polarizing as this statement is - it’s not all that different from the cheap (generalizing) shot at OP for not having a broad enough statement.

I’m uncertain if that’s what @[email protected] was going for … but regardless: either by the statement itself or by the apparent downvote pummeling he got - demonstrates perfectly that nobody likes the feeling of getting singled out simply because of their grouping.

It’s almost always a dick move. Unless the group in question is a hate group or nazis… because fuck them. Topically - this behavior was (and is) championed by aforementioned groups.

Put simply: we can do better. Better than reddit at least, right?

It’s pedantic. At best because someone wants to virtue signal by tilting at windmills. At worst It’s a bad faith argument being made to isolate someone. In both cases it’s shite behavior:

An example would be assailing someone for not liking cookies when they simply said they enjoy cake. This tactic was originally used by trolls and hate groups to splinter larger social groups support structure and/or put people on the backfoot… It’s become so commonplace people will do it just because the opportunity presents itself. Because someone else will if they don’t, anyway. Might as well get the glory of taking someone down a peg.

It’s pathetic. Op made an affirmative statement about something they believed in and was promptly shit on by some cunt who brought nothing meaningful to the table themselves. What’s worse is the troll initially was getting nothing but positive reinforcement so they could go and do it again. Are we still enjoying all the polarizing “LOL [insert group] BAD!” It really brings the community together.

You don’t need to engage every person doing that shit… but for fucks sake stop upvoting it and reinforcing the behavior.

Keep calm and … what a magnificent shirt. I was always a fan of the taller of the Mario bros. The man not only is an entertainer - but clearly has inspired taste.

EA games with command and conquer and now this. The world surely is coming to an end.

Odd. In my experience I have seen many people refer to their home country in that way. Do you refer to your country differently? Perhaps instead of country if OP said here that would have left the pedants less triggered. I digress. Just because you view something as commonplace - does not automatically make it the rule… much less actually reality.

Agreed. Especially in times like these - having a free and open source of information is incredibly important.