Windows 10: What You Need to Know

[l02turner]

Hello, I have Win10 64bit Home vers. It appears the downloadable SH4 is a 32bit vers. With this affect the game starting and running? Is there anything I need to do?
Thanks,
Larry

[l02turner]

Read the thread about the MS abuse of privacy issues with interest. I resisted W10 as long as I could. I had to buy another laptop because the old one died and all I could find were machines with W10 loaded. I figured no problem, if need be I can load a copy of w8 I have the discs for. The problem I could not get around was that W8 would not recognize the drivers for the newer hard drives. And unfortunately W10 is such a monster it requires a large HDD just for W10. In frustration I gave up and lived with w10. but with all of these horror stories about the privacy issues I am sorry i did. Thanks for the education. When MS installed a major update without my permission I realized what a monster they are. Time for me to see if the SteamOS or Linux will help with my situation...

[Skybird]

l02tuner,

cant tell for sure on the 32Bit download of yours, but regarding your Windows 8 anmd laptop, you can improve your situation:

If your hardware allows, buy a second HD or SSD and put it in.

If not possible, take the one HD yo have, decrease the partition with Windows and games to what you need, make sure oyu have some reserves, then free the remaining space and form a second partition on it.

On this separate partition install Linux. You then have a dual boot system.

Use Linux for all your surfing, emailing, photoediting, twittering, text-writing, whatever it is. Use your Windows for just launching your games, nothing else.

Might need you to get yourself some educaiton on Linux, but trust me, it is not as bad as it sounds. i did that myself two years ago, with Linux Mint, two HDs in my tower. There are some possible traps, but properly prepared you should be able to avoid them. Linux is not as difficult as n on-Linux users think it is. However, it also is njot as pewrfect as Linux fans claim. Have reasonable expectations, then you cannot go wrong - and have reserves for getting positively surprised most likely.

If Windows wants to steal your data and privacy and wan ts to overweatch ever keystroke you make, then do not make data available to it and do not type texts and weblinks under Windows. That way they can only read your savegames, and your Steam account, and what games you play.

If you want to do multiplayer and live voice connection, yiu most accept some more compormise, but still: if you do not surf or work under Windows - not much they can learn aboout you.

You can be hit by bad Windows updates however. And there are many of these, you are no customerl but a beta tester. You pay them for this honour. Thats the deal. Delay updates, avpoiding them you cannot. But I think in W10 Home you canot delay updates without metering your connection.

Dual boot or two separate systems is the way to go now. IMO the only reasonable way. Or to skip gaming alltogether (or going consoles), and so leave Windows behind completely.

[Rockin Robbins]

Linux Desktop Nearly Doubles Market Share in 3 Months

One of the metrics for how well a dominant operating system is doing is looking at the competition's market share. Well, Linux went from 1.99% in May to 3.37% in August, nearly doubling its market share, according to Net Market Share.

The raw numbers don't look impressive, 3.37%, but when the competition doubles its market share in four months and you are the dominant player in the market, chances are you are doing something, or SEVERAL things, severely wrong. Microsoft is screwing the pooch here and as usual (example: Terraserver) don't care and don't connect the success of their new core businesses with the health of their operating system.

To quote the article above "It is worthy to note that Linux distros dominate the market in servers and embedded devices. Not to forget that Linux simply rules super-computers with almost all of the top 500 supercomputers running on Linux." Microsoft is nearing the tipping point. When it happens calamity will happen suddenly and irreparably.

[Skybird]

What needs to be pointed out is that it seems the above link seems to take Chrome OS as a Linux distro, which techically is correcet, but privacy with Chrome and Google is a joke. Thats why I would not throw Chrome and Linux into one pot together, I differ between Google (Chrome), Linux, Windows and Mac OS. I recall that Linux was not that much able to benefit from Windows fall in the past two years, in fact has lost marketshares in that timeframe. So I conclude that the raise reported in that article, is due to a raise in the selling of Chromebooks. I would not be surprised one bit to learn that Linux itself, without Chrome, has stayed were it was, more or less.

Sorry, I must disagree, Robbins: no revolution here. Only Google playing its cards well.

And privacy-wise, Google is even worse than Microsoft. The difference is that their hardware stuff works better than Microsoft's tablet junkware.

[Rockin Robbins]

No,this guy has admitted he's only speculating. "However, this is my speculation and it may happen..." Chrome computers User Agent says it's Chrome on Android Mobile, Chrome on Android Tablet, Chrome on Mac, Chrome on Ubuntu, Chrome on Windows or Chrome on iPhone.

Linux User Agent says [Browser Name] on [Distro Name], like Firefox on Ubuntu, or Chomium on Fedora, or Konqueror on Mint.

There is no confusion between Linux and Chrome with browser user agents and it wouldn't be responsible for them being lumped together. The author didn't know that and was baselessly speculating. Chrome OS user share is a lot higher than 4% anyway. The author should have known that when he was speculating. Just look at my user share graph from a couple weeks ago and you'll see that Chrome is not mixed in with Linux.

[Skybird]

https://www.netmarketshare.com/opera...10&qpcustomd=0

What OS is missing in this list? Its Chrome and Chromium. They hardly have been forgotten . So they must be included in any of the listed entries. Do they get listed under any of the Windows versions? Or have they been added to Mac OS versions? Hardly. The most likely candidate must be - Linux.

The reasons the author of the text you linked to gave as an explanation for his guess, are indeed reasonable.

In the two years of Windows 10, Linux indeed has lost shares aq bit, I read numbers earliert this year that said soemthing of a drop down to 1.4 or 1.5%. The migrants that turned away from Windows, turned not towards Lkinux, but mostly Chrome, and then Apple. But Google was the great winner of this movement. Linux is a prominent player int he server and partly in professional IT environment, but it is ntoi alone, regarding servers, there still pla Microsoft, and of course Novell still is around as well. In the oriuvate realm, the environment of private end users and gamers, Linux has not grown in popularity, user leaving Windows turned for Chromebooks in huge numbers, and the article once again reminds of that. Many people who just want to play or want to do ordinary household computing, are beign asked too much of dealign with the incompoatability issues with drivers and hardware you have to deal with under Linux.

You do not want to tell me that the user base has doubled despite these still present difficulties in just 8 or 9 moinths, do you? I find no numbers on a raise with hardware where Linux is preinstalled. But we see a huge climb in sales with Chromebooks.

Lets keep Chrome and Linux separate. Chances are the stats you linked up in that article, throw both into the same category. And that makes no sense to me, it is too much a raise in too short a time.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...-of-windows-7/
See the entry to the far right, for July 2017. Linux 1.4%, Chrome 0.45%. Wndoiws 85%, Mac OS 11%.

These statistics always vary a bit, dpeending on your source and the amrket analysis models used by the source. But even if I look others via search engine, I cannot see that Linux has climbed from one and a half percent to more than dozuble as much within just a few months, that is totally unreasoable an assumption.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...-of-windows-7/

Chromebooks have left behind Apple as main provider of computer to schools, but in Spring this year alreeady 58% of delivered systems, were Chromebooks.

While Linux cannot by itself explain a more than doubling of its market share, the rise in sales of Chromebooks probably can explain that very well if you count Chrome and Lionux as one combined category.

Anyway, this is a merely academic discussion. We can throw market numbers at each other that we find via Google, until the day is ending. One of the very few specialised mail shops in Germany that I know to deliver Linux systems, has shut down, I learned early last week, btw. And there are not that many. Shutting down means they shift to another adress, and now plan to sell - Chrome-based systems, and Apples. Linux has been dropped.

[Reece]

Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say. - E. Snowden

But you do have the right to your own opinion!

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Reece

But you do have the right to your own opinion!

Not in Germany. Voice a politically not correct, not EU- and Euro-conformal, not mass-migration-friendly opinion, and you get publicly character-assassinated by morally boosted, bigmouthed pillars of society, by media, by politicians of all parties, and you face unions that internally publish manuals for union members and union leaders how to mob, flame, defame and get fired any coworkers and employees in companies who do not howl with the collective wolf chorus but voiced the wrong views and opinions, even if by the letter of the law they cannot be fired and they did not fail anywhere in work and do a perfect job and follow the rules and laws. That you get called a Nazi and right winger and populist and mentally deranged phobic and non-solidaric egoist if not swimming wit the mainstream, comes natural in Germany anyway. It wouldn't be Germany without that. In principle, democracy, pluralism and diversity, and debate between different opinions have been brought to an end in the past one and a half decade, Merkel bearing a major share of responsibility for that, she has the plltical self-underdtanding of a SED Staatsratsvorsitzende. Its more GDR than FRG in modern Germany. In principle we are a one-party-state.

Goethe once said he prefers law and order to lack of order even if order comes at the price of utmost injustice, even tyranny. So much for hunger for freedom in Germans, Goethe's views are shared by many. We live in a time when the government itself breaks its own rules as it wants, breaks treaties, violates the constitution. Anything goes. Nothing is an agreed standard anymore. No rules apply anymore. No values mean anything anymore. Everything, every definition of something, gets relativized right to death and non-existence. Terms, names and labels are stripped of all their meanings. Definitions get rearranged opportunistically as it fits best one's pown agenda. Really, anything goes. Overregulated, plundered to the max by tax robbery, and deeply servile by heart, Germans nevertheless face a lack of law and order that is breathtaking. We have had such times in the past, and we are close to seeing them coming back. A strong bringer of law and order again, people will follow him just to get some law and order again. No matter which kind of law and order, just as long as it is some law and order.

Mark my words, within the next 30 years, one generation. The writings are already on the wall, like in the early twenties of the past century. It happens again. And the EU, claiming it wants to prevent right such things, indeed serves as an accelerating catalyst.

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Skybird

https://www.netmarketshare.com/opera...10&qpcustomd=0

What OS is missing in this list? Its Chrome and Chromium. They hardly have been forgotten . So they must be included in any of the listed entries. Do they get listed under any of the Windows versions? Or have they been added to Mac OS versions? Hardly. The most likely candidate must be - Linux.

The reasons the author of the text you linked to gave as an explanation for his guess, are indeed reasonable.

In the two years of Windows 10, Linux indeed has lost shares aq bit, I read numbers earliert this year that said soemthing of a drop down to 1.4 or 1.5%. The migrants that turned away from Windows, turned not towards Lkinux, but mostly Chrome, and then Apple. But Google was the great winner of this movement. Linux is a prominent player int he server and partly in professional IT environment, but it is ntoi alone, regarding servers, there still pla Microsoft, and of course Novell still is around as well. In the oriuvate realm, the environment of private end users and gamers, Linux has not grown in popularity, user leaving Windows turned for Chromebooks in huge numbers, and the article once again reminds of that. Many people who just want to play or want to do ordinary household computing, are beign asked too much of dealign with the incompoatability issues with drivers and hardware you have to deal with under Linux.

You do not want to tell me that the user base has doubled despite these still present difficulties in just 8 or 9 moinths, do you? I find no numbers on a raise with hardware where Linux is preinstalled. But we see a huge climb in sales with Chromebooks.

Lets keep Chrome and Linux separate. Chances are the stats you linked up in that article, throw both into the same category. And that makes no sense to me, it is too much a raise in too short a time.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...-of-windows-7/
See the entry to the far right, for July 2017. Linux 1.4%, Chrome 0.45%. Wndoiws 85%, Mac OS 11%.

These statistics always vary a bit, dpeending on your source and the amrket analysis models used by the source. But even if I look others via search engine, I cannot see that Linux has climbed from one and a half percent to more than dozuble as much within just a few months, that is totally unreasoable an assumption.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...-of-windows-7/

Chromebooks have left behind Apple as main provider of computer to schools, but in Spring this year alreeady 58% of delivered systems, were Chromebooks.

While Linux cannot by itself explain a more than doubling of its market share, the rise in sales of Chromebooks probably can explain that very well if you count Chrome and Lionux as one combined category.

Anyway, this is a merely academic discussion. We can throw market numbers at each other that we find via Google, until the day is ending. One of the very few specialised mail shops in Germany that I know to deliver Linux systems, has shut down, I learned early last week, btw. And there are not that many. Shutting down means they shift to another adress, and now plan to sell - Chrome-based systems, and Apples. Linux has been dropped.

As people leave Windows all other operating systems will gain share. Corporations have nowhere to go in the Microsoft universe after Windows 7 is torpedoed. They can't migrate to Windows 10 because it is not secure. These corporations have billions of dollars worth of proprietary secrets, employee performance and discipline information, formulas, business strategies and other information they can't allow to be collected by the Microsoft data sucker and sent to Microsoft servers twice a day.

Functionality is optional. Security is essential. Companies will migrate from Windows 7 to a secure operating system, even if they don't like it. They aren't going to Chrome OS. That leaves Apple, Linux or Unix. All three will benefit greatly.

[Rockin Robbins]

Outlook security patches intentionally break custom forms

Microsoft has realized the obvious. The simplest way to make a system safe is to render it inoperative. The latest Outlook security patch makes any Visual Basic script printing routines cease working. Sounds reasonable to me, saving paper is a most noble goal and Microsoft is making that possible.

However, it strikes me that some people might WANT the form to print when you push the print button. As a matter of fact I'll be a large plurality of people expect to be able to print things.

Those of you who have installed any of this month’s Outlook security patches:

Outlook 2007 KB 4011086
Outlook 2010 KB 4011089
Outlook 2013 KB 4011090
Outlook 2016 KB 4011091
will have to dive into the Registry if you want to enable any custom form scripts, including the VBScript printing capability. It’s complicated, and the method varies, depending on which version of Office you’re using and the bittedness of Windows and Office. Diane Poremsky has detailed instructions on her Slipstick Systems site.

I can't make this stuff up, folks. My imagination has no capacity to keep up with Microsoft's ability to do stupid things.

Imagine. The free competition is good enough that the vast majority of people don't care whether they use Outlook or Thunderbird. If you prefer Outlook it is probably because you like to customize the way it works with Visual Basic scripts. So Microsoft's smooth move is to render your precious scripts inoperative.

Sounds like it comes from the marketing department to me!

[Rockin Robbins]

Trick or Treat September Updates for Windows 10

This month's updates for Windows 10, especially for Creators' Update 1703, are somewhat nasty, some easy to bypass, some will kill your dog. Too much to cover here, none of them are deadly but I heartily recommend spending some time with the linked article in Computer World above.

Microsoft IS NOT learning how to get updates right. And Halloween is supposed to come in October...

[Rockin Robbins]

Apps Vanishing After Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, Here Is The Temporary Fix

October doesn't look any better than September. Microsoft has fired too many capable people, decimated too many capable programming teams, the Worm Ouroboros is no longer just eating its own tail. As companies run by bean counters always do, the worm is now eating its own vital organs. It is voting to die.

Icons for necessary programs have vanished from the Start Menu. You cannot run them from Cortana. "Microsoft has addressed the issue and offered a temporary fix until the company figures out something permanent." Yuppers.

And, Skybird, guess what the temporary fix is in this "operating system where all functions are accessible from the GUI and therefore superior to Linux?" Yes, you guesses it, after steps 1 and 2 fail, the fix is a PowerShell script.

In the Powershell window type the following commands. These steps may take a few minutes to complete.

• reg delete “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\TileDataModel\Migration\TileStor e” /va /f
• get-appxpackage -packageType bundle |% {add-appxpackage -register -disabledevelopmentmode ($_.installlocation + “\appxmetadata\appxbundlemanifest.xml”)}
• $bundlefamilies = (get-appxpackage -packagetype Bundle).packagefamilyname
• get-appxpackage -packagetype main |? {-not ($bundlefamilies -contains $_.packagefamilyname)} |% {add-appxpackage -register -disabledevelopmentmode ($_.installlocation + “\appxmanifest.xml”)}

Once the PowerShell commands are completed, the apps should appear in the app list, and can be pinned to the Start Menu.

Powershell is executed from within a CMD window, by the way. DOS anyone?

Better not get used to it. Already announced are plans to soon completely eliminate the CMD and PowerShell from Windows. It's not a pretty picture to contemplate in light of October's vanishing apps surprise.

Hey Microsoft! Would you like to actually have a legacy for people to remember? Open source Windows and let it survive! Remove all the adware and spyware! Quit being evil! Hey Google! You too.

The Soviet Union vanished in a day. Microsoft can join them. At least if they open sourced Windows they would leave something of value to remember them by.

[Skybird]

I read feedback about the "update" in past days, and all I read is ####. Broken drivers, hardware being ignored, stutterings in game mode, work files not accessible, Oculus working erratic... The list is long.

I will in the forseeable future get a taste of it myself. Thankfully I do not need to expose work files, passwords, privacy stuff and the like, it only is gaming. In principle, a console. The worst that can happen is that racing doe snot work for a day. Or days.

My playstation has been reactivated and prepared early in the recent week. Just in case. Its my fall-back line. LOL. It got copies of Assetto Corsa, and Gran Turismo for the easy evenings. AC I usually do on PC, of course.

I'm waiting for the i7 8700k becoming available in my shop and wanted setup over here. Once it is, order will go out.Possible will that I will then ask some questions on W10, although I prepared a list with to-do's and some links. I will do my best to become very creative in inventing new curses the world has never heard before, no doubt.