Just somebody's Vista rant
But boy, am I glad I DO NOT use Vista. I may just keep XP on my PC game box in perpituity. Here's the blog quote that I found amusing:I got a completely new PC with Vista let me list some of the problems
- It won't let you have permission to give yourself permission. Nice, huh?
- You click to run a program and it pops up with a box 'you have just clicked to run this program, please confirm you want to run the program'
- Takes 10 minutes to load a program
- High RAM usage takes up about half my RAM just to load Vista
- Windows Defender, identical to windows XP security but it moves my icons about??
- I find it easier to access my computer across the internet than from my actual computer itself
Need I go on?? This is with a new computer so I got Vista with it after 3 weeks it got wiped and I put XP on it and it works amazing, I prefer actual functionality over nice graphical enhancements on an OS any day.
Of course almost all of these are the result of Microsoft's draconian attempts to make sure they have more control over your computer than you do. The more they try to assert their dominance over what types of activities are "Microsoft-approved" the more they ensure I will never use any Microsoft product EVER. And then there's this ..
After weeks of gruelling troubleshooting, I've finally had it confirmed by Microsoft Australia and USA -- something as small as swapping the video card or updating a device driver can trigger a total Vista deactivation.
Put simply, your copy of Windows will stop working with very little notice (three days) and your PC will go into "reduced functionality" mode, where you can't do anything but use the web browser for half an hour.
You'll then need to reapply to Microsoft to get a new activation code.
How can this crazy situation occur? Read on for the sorry tale.
No thanks! It's amazing to me that people will actually tolerate this in their operating system! I sure as hell don't.
Unfortunately my own platform of choice has been annoying me more and more lately. Since upgrading to the MacBook Pro line, which is built around the Intel chipset, my Mac has been crashing a lot more often. And not the friendly single-application-only crash .. I'm talking the computer needs to be hard-booted. That kind of thing was supposed to be rendered virtually nonexistant with the debut of OSX, since each app was supposed to run in a protected memory space .. but when my computer freezes up, it freezes entirely .. nothing short of a hard-boot gets it to respond. This kind of total system failure almost NEVER happened on my Powerbook G4, but happens with rather maddening frequency on my Intel-based MacBook Pro.
posted by Craig J. at 3:06 PM
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So the thesis defense was yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately, one of the committee members couldn't be there because of a family crisis. That means I won't get her feedback until later in the week. But the other committee members were very pleased with the thesis. Stephen Kopcha, whose feedback was of particular value to me as I specifically wanted him personally on the committee (even though he isn't "graduate faculty" and the grad school had to make me jump though hoops to allow him to participate), had a lot of positive things to say about it, particularly that it was well-written, easy to read, and that the quotes I'd pulled from the interview transcripts were just the right ones. He was happy that I'd provided transcripts of all of the interviews in the appendices, which he said were interesting to read (he read them!) and showed that the sampled quotes provided in the body of the document were appropriate and not out-of-context. 
