The grumpy thread

[loserone]

46 minutes ago, GrumpiusMaximus said:

Connecting it to the Internet is like driving past a school at half three, with no brakes. 

Plenty of cheap and cheerful computers available which are usable and secure, if XP "works" then a Chromebook is probably ideal.

[GrumpiusMaximus]

Just now, loserone said:

Plenty of cheap and cheerful computers available which are usable and secure, if XP "works" then a Chromebook is probably ideal.

I'll correct myself.  Connecting it to the Internet is like driving past a school at half three, with no brakes, drunk, whilst also on fire.

+1 on the Chromebook.  Lady Grumpius had one issued from work recently and I'm quite impressed by it.

[PhilA]

I must've been dreaming about work or something because I was grinding my teeth in my sleep.

I've chipped one of my lower front teeth in two places and it hurts, and it's making me into a grumpy asshole.

 

That and it's cold and because Christmas repairs to the car gotta wait.

Humbug.

 

 

[eddyramrod]

Recommendations duly filed for further consideration, and thank you.

[wuvvum]

44 minutes ago, GrumpiusMaximus said:

XP is a fundamentally broken operating system.  It was when it launched and it is even more so now.

And then they went and replaced it with Vista...

[GrumpiusMaximus]

3 minutes ago, wuvvum said:

And then they went and replaced it with Vista...

We don't mention the 'V' word here.  Dirty.  Unclean.

[Rod/b]

On 12/11/2020 at 3:18 AM, rusty_vw_man said:

First (non-Boris) MOT on the modern Shit-tron C3. Moved house so new garage and tester. Checked over well, gave it a wash and clean and in it went. But what’s this I spy:

the near side wiper (only 3 months old) had a little piece of leaf stuck under it, so it smeared a little line over the screen. Major defect? Really? Then to make it worse when I got there he’d fitted a new wiper, rather than just removing the leaf. And he’d ‘disposed’ of the old one. And managed to add 50,000 miles to the test certificate. And had made zero concession to COVID, had to squeeze into his tiny unventilated office to pay....

The quest for a decent local tester continues - the vans in Tuesday to another promising looking place. 

 

Why did you have a test if it passed in June? 

[taranaki]

Well, that's the last Friday before Christmas done and f@ck them all, the f@cking F@CKFACED F@CKHEADS.

We make longrun steel roofing. The factory is 40m long the machine is 12m long.  We can make any one of up to 100 different products at a time, at a rate that would blow your mind. We can make it up to 18m long, anything longer will expand and contact according to the weather and tear itself off the roof. We can make enough custom product cut to length to build up to 15 different houses every day. We can make roofs faster than our roofer clients can fit them.

Back to Friday afternoons. Friday afternoons, we get an endless stream of DIY idiots. Their 25 year old roof  within sight of the sea in '90's fashionable Kermit Green has started leaking. They need a piece 2 meters long and 12  1990's-style roofing nails to fix it with. Why does our colour sample not match the sun-bleached , rust flecked sliver of paint that they have brought in to match? Why can we not drag a sheet of the shit out of the back of a dusty shed somewhere and just give it to them? How are they supposed to hammer in self-tapping high tensile roofing screws? Why does the roofer insist on putting up scaffolding?

We're ripping you off here the  18 year old shelf filler at  [-equivalent to B &Q-] said it would be easy.

 

[Borsuq]

I'm finding having time off work more stressful than just going to work. The situation is dire due to another wave of COVID hitting our hospital and I have to solve the same problems as if I was working, except now I have to do it from home and without proper tools (as I'm not allowed remote access to my work computer). I fucking hate it.

[rusty_vw_man]

3 hours ago, Rod/b said:

Why did you have a test if it passed in June? 

That wasn’t a proper pass, it was a Boris pass, so only valid for 6 months. 

[Rod/b]

Oh right, i didn’t know they had done that. 

[rusty_vw_man]

41 minutes ago, Rod/b said:

Oh right, i didn’t know they had done that. 

If you had a valid MOT the date got shunted on 6 months - this one didn’t have an mot as less than three years old, hence a pass was registered as there was no extension to grant. The fascinating* world of the DVLA!!

[BorniteIdentity]

Managed to get an Xbox Series S on Amazon. 

Well, I managed to get one into my basket. In the intervening 25 seconds to check out - they sold out. 

I thought all retailers gave you a grace period in which to pay? 

Anyway, I hope it went to a little boy who deserves it more than me. More likely than not it’ll end up on Gumtree with a fat old mark up. 
 

[Remspoor]

17 hours ago, eddyramrod said:

No, I don't bank online, don't worry!

However I have to take issue with your principle as stated.  I drive a 25year old car and a 47year old car.  Today fighting my way round town I was wearing a coat I've had 12years.  By your principle I should have binned all the above and replaced them with brand new.  I don't and won't, for two very good reasons.  One, why throw stuff away just because some distant corporation says so?  And two, I don't have the money to keep changing everything!  

The PC works, the dongle is the problem.  (As far as I can tell anyway).

This failure to support earlier versions of tech is nothing more than a blatant conspiracy to make me (or indeed anyone) spend money we haven't got on a regular basis on stuff we don't actually need and certainly don't want.  NB, here I should mention that when I had my Scarlet Skateboard in... was it 2014 or 2015? ...I bought a lovely brand new laptop to replace the old one mentioned above.  It was running W10 and was virtually unusable.  I couldn't find stuff I needed to use, and if I did, the display would randomly resize itself with no warning whatsoever, making it impossible to use.  It also fell apart physically so I retired it and eventually took it to the tip.

So you see what I meant about nothing working!  The so-called improved stuff is at least as bad as what I already have.

I suppose you also use pound shillings and pence.

Not all old cars have freely available spare parts not even second hand ones then you may well have to scrap the car.

[eddyramrod]

Just now, Remspoor said:

Not all old cars have freely available spare parts not even second hand ones then you may well have to scrap the car.

Are you kidding?  Have you seen what my "old" car actually is?  All the freely available spare parts are 4000 miles away!  Well most of them.  Fortunately what it has needed, I've been able to get from Bradford, somewhat closer.  I've scrapped too many cars to let this one slip away easily...

[Tamworthbay]

22 hours ago, eddyramrod said:

No, I don't bank online, don't worry!

However I have to take issue with your principle as stated.  I drive a 25year old car and a 47year old car.  Today fighting my way round town I was wearing a coat I've had 12years.  By your principle I should have binned all the above and replaced them with brand new.  I don't and won't, for two very good reasons.  One, why throw stuff away just because some distant corporation says so?  And two, I don't have the money to keep changing everything!  

The PC works, the dongle is the problem.  (As far as I can tell anyway).

This failure to support earlier versions of tech is nothing more than a blatant conspiracy to make me (or indeed anyone) spend money we haven't got on a regular basis on stuff we don't actually need and certainly don't want.  NB, here I should mention that when I had my Scarlet Skateboard in... was it 2014 or 2015? ...I bought a lovely brand new laptop to replace the old one mentioned above.  It was running W10 and was virtually unusable.  I couldn't find stuff I needed to use, and if I did, the display would randomly resize itself with no warning whatsoever, making it impossible to use.  It also fell apart physically so I retired it and eventually took it to the tip.

So you see what I meant about nothing working!  The so-called improved stuff is at least as bad as what I already have.

It is built in obsolescence, the modern world demands that we consume whether we want to or not. So products have a limited lifespan and the landfills get another load. On a planet with finite resources it’s fucking ridiculous but will it be too late before a majority of people realise this? My 23 year old volvo, 30 year old pug and 37 year old ford may not be the cleanest but the main part of their emissions occurred when they were created, the next worst part will be when (IF, I hope) they are destroyed.

[Aston Martin]

Every radio station is playing the same fucking 10 songs, 24 hours a day. Apart from Mark Goodier who gives us a 12 second snippet.

[MikeR]

not unless you have a shitspade full of music on your phone to play back , no adverts and no xmas songs or DJ warbling

Spoiler

 

 

[Aston Martin]

8 minutes ago, MikeR said:

not unless you have a shitspade full of music on your phone to play back , no adverts and no xmas songs or DJ warbling

  Hide contents

 

 

 

I've listened to every song on Spotify today.

[MikeR]

thats the soooutthh gone tits up , how long till the lurgy  spreads northwards ?

[hairnet]

all you cocknee twats (kidding) and you @RobT

hopefully you have some time to yourself after what boris just did

which shoulda happened a month ago ffs

even the posh bits further north got shouted at

 

[RobT]

I'm an anti-social bastard who doesn't like mixing anyway, so makes no difference.  A Christmas at home with the cars, perfect!

[loserone]

21 hours ago, Tamworthbay said:

It is built in obsolescence, the modern world demands that we consume whether we want to or not.

I really don't think it is.  As soon as computers can connect to each other via the internet or otherwise, it is a constant effort to find new ways to compromise and new and better ways of avoiding it.  Want to play an offline games console like a Megadrive or NES? Fill your boots and have fun.

But if you want to connect it to a network with the rest of the world also connected to it, you now should have a responsibility to not allow it to be vulnerable, to detect compromise or infection, and not to allow it to be used maliciously against others.  And if you don't take basic steps to do that, I'd 100% support your ISP disconnecting you.

Sadly there have been manufacturers who haven't taken this seriously, but Microsoft can be admired for managing to provide support and updates for operating systems for a remarkable length of time.  Windows XP has NO SUPPORTED BROWSER.  There is literally no safe way to connect it to the internet.  Want to play Doom? Fine.  But keep it off any networks.

[SiC]

On 12/17/2020 at 10:17 PM, eddyramrod said:

but both my puters are running on XP

Christ, you're using XP on the internet in 2020?! Thats as risky as going bareback in Bangkok with a ladyboy, just you don't get the happy ending. Might have got away with it a decade and half ago but god knows what you might pick up in 2020. 

[robinmasters]

15 minutes ago, SiC said:

Christ, you're using XP on the internet in 2020?! Thats as risky as going bareback in Bangkok with a ladyboy, just you don't get the happy ending. Might have got away with it a decade and half ago but god knows what you might pick up in 2020. 

I don't find Windows operating systems attractive, they're just confusing.  [/partridge]

[strangeangel]

22 hours ago, Tamworthbay said:

It is built in obsolescence, the modern world demands that we consume whether we want to or not. So products have a limited lifespan and the landfills get another load. On a planet with finite resources it’s fucking ridiculous but will it be too late before a majority of people realise this? My 23 year old volvo, 30 year old pug and 37 year old ford may not be the cleanest but the main part of their emissions occurred when they were created, the next worst part will be when (IF, I hope) they are destroyed.

 

It's annoying when hardware manufacturers simply stop supporting  expensive peripherals. I have a Terratec soundcard that I use for digitisng vinyl and an expensive 35mm scanner for which no drivers exist post Windows XP.  Neither of these devices was more than five years old when they were effectively obsoleted. This is precisely why I have an old Dell desktop running XP in the house - not that I'd be letting it anywhere near the internet, mind!

 

Philips pulled a similar trick with their Streamium multi-room listening systems, turning off the server they went through for their internet radio, firmware upgrades and other online features when some of the devices weren't even eight years old. It seems to be the expectation that that's a decent lifespan for tech gear, but they were well expensive when new and mine are still working well (barring the aforementioned online stuff) at 15+ years old.

 

[Sham]

5 minutes ago, robinmasters said:

I don't find Windows operating systems attractive, they're just confusing.  [/partridge]

Seriously, 2 more versions of WIndows have gone out of support since XP. Theres no supported apps that are secure enough for online use for a really good reason. XP, Vista and even 7 to a degree are just not capable of running secure enough encryption standards.

When you can buy a Chromebook for less that £200 new, or about £50 secondhand - why on earth would you still use XP online?

[hairnet]

43 minutes ago, RobT said:

I'm an anti-social bastard who doesn't like mixing anyway, so makes no difference.  A Christmas at home with the cars, perfect!

dont pretend to stroke them and stroke yourself dont get excited

 

[Tamworthbay]

1 hour ago, loserone said:

I really don't think it is.  As soon as computers can connect to each other via the internet or otherwise, it is a constant effort to find new ways to compromise and new and better ways of avoiding it.  Want to play an offline games console like a Megadrive or NES? Fill your boots and have fun.

But if you want to connect it to a network with the rest of the world also connected to it, you now should have a responsibility to not allow it to be vulnerable, to detect compromise or infection, and not to allow it to be used maliciously against others.  And if you don't take basic steps to do that, I'd 100% support your ISP disconnecting you.

Sadly there have been manufacturers who haven't taken this seriously, but Microsoft can be admired for managing to provide support and updates for operating systems for a remarkable length of time.  Windows XP has NO SUPPORTED BROWSER.  There is literally no safe way to connect it to the internet.  Want to play Doom? Fine.  But keep it off any networks.

I don’t see the connection between that and obsolescence, there is no reason why they couldn’t keep producing updates/ patches. Very occasionally there may be a fundamental issue that cannot be solved but I simply don’t believe that is always the case. Just look at the examples from strangeangel above. It’s all about selling new stuff.

[loserone]

9 minutes ago, Tamworthbay said:

fundamental issue

I think that describes windows XP quite well, actually.