… they killed “al Libi” … really? … 😆
// Oliver
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Re: This is worse than I thought
So can we get rid of the “lock screen” (the one before we see the login prompt)? Turns out we can:
Run gpedit.msc as administrative user, then go to:
Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Control Panel -> Personalization in the left pane and from there double-click the setting “Do not display the lock screen” and set the policy to “Enabled”.
The description with screenshots can also be found here.
// Oliver
This is worse than I thought
Testing the Windows 8 RC now in order to find out whether it is usable with some programs I maintain. So far the impression I got months ago hasn’t really changed. With the only difference that this time I didn’t receive a blue screen during installation. Wow, well done! Way to go, Microsoft.
What are the biggest annoyances? Here’s a non-exhaustive list:
- Customization isn’t what it used to be, MS stripped functionality all over the place (proper start menu, proper Aero styles, even the basic/classic Windows style is gone)
- Everything is optimized for touch-screen, but not for using the mouse. Heck, I do not want to go from the middle of the screen to the bottom every single time I try to get rid of some item on that unspeakable “start screen”. Fortunately ClassicShell offers support for a proper start menu, where none is on board by default.
- The ugly colors (dirty green) some people may remember from Windows 3.11 and Windows NT 3.51 have a revival in this version.
- Another “optimized for touch-screen” issue is that during installation what would have been check boxes in any sane modern GUI have now become “switches” quite obviously aimed at a touch-interface.
- The oh-so-pretty flat window (frame and everywhere else) style makes it hard even without eye problems to find things. While byobu supports 256 colors on the terminal now, thanks to tmux, Microsoft seems to be of the opinion that removal of contrast and removal of distinguishing visual features make things easier. Well, they don’t.
- The Aero snap feature doesn’t visualize what’s going to happen the way it did in Windows 7. Screen-filling operations will (confusingly) show an empty frame around the screen edges, but once you release the mouse to finalize the operation the window will fill the screen.
- The ugly start screen allows one to get rid of all the crud, but it only allows to make the tiled items smaller, never bigger.
- It’s not obvious how I can start on my desktop without the horrible start screen in between.
- Wow, my desktop now has a “touch keyboard”, how useful.[/sarcasm]
- Most settings need a lot of work to become bearable.
- Restart is needed for every tiny thing … and yes, this has gotten worse than in Windows 7 from what I can tell.
- Need to click first in order to get to the login screen. Need to click again to get to the desktop from there. Have they even considered that people want to start working right away?
- The task bar has still not been fixed to accommodate also quick access to documentation (CHM files and similar) and the quick launch bar is gone by default, too. Fortunately the trick to bring it back from the dead from Windows 7 still works in Windows 8.
- Scrollbars look horrible everywhere. In fact I was unsure before hovering whether the darker or the lighter gray was the scroll bar handle. 🙄
- Of course there seems to be no built-in way to get my classic desktop with “(My) Computer” and “Network” icons back, although I can get rid of the Recycle Bin.
- Right-click has no meaning on the start screen. And yet again I need to repeat that I am unable to see the desktop right away without getting this horrible start screen.
I sincerely hope Microsoft is going to get whacked by the majority of customers for this abomination. I hope customers will vote with their wallets, though this can be doubted, given the many OEM-contracts Microsoft has with hardware manufacturers. They’ll probably still sell Windows 8 as a success to the public based on the numbers of preinstalled Windows systems. I hope they’ll come to their senses and realize that even if the fundamental parts of a touch-interfaced system and a desktop system can be the same, the user-interface should not impose one way on the other.
Windows 8 as I see it at the moment is Microsoft laughing at usability and telling us about improvements that are none (or marginal) from the user perspective.
Even if Windows 8 should not receive the extended support that many prophesy Microsoft will hopefully get the message. If not, Windows 7 is the last Windows on which I do most of my work and will get replaced by a Debian or Ubuntu installation with Windows banned into a virtual machine. It’s a shame because I have been using Windows relatively efficiently in all those years and even kept defending it against those blind bashings …
// Oliver
PS: Opera Next and SuRun work fine at least.
Symbolic links to remote locations …
Recently after migrating to Windows 7 on my work machine, I ran into a little issue. I created symbolic links pointing to a network share. Now this is all fine and dandy, but symbolic links can only be created by administrators with mklink and the resulting link seems to be limited to the administrative user even though the target location isn’t. After a bit of tinkering I found how to fix it:
icacls.exe D:\symlink /grant Oliver:(OI)(CI)(F) /l /c /q
// Oliver
Posted in Administration, EN, Software
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Nice recovery drink
My favorite after 1-2 hours of swimming.
- 500g Skyr (or Quark), unflavored
- 500ml multi-fruit juice (here in Iceland I use Floridana Heilsusafi)
- 2 bananas
- Throw in blender, blend and then enjoy the goodness *yummy*
I also like this one a lot:
Posted in EN, Fitness
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Looks like I may depart from Windows (after all)
Microsoft is planning to make the Windows 8 look overall flat just like the ugly Metro stuff. Bye bye Aero. Nothing learned from the feedback about Visual Studio 11 Beta, it seems.
This means one probably will need special glasses to be able to handle the GUI, not to mention endurance with the arms when having to use the touch screen 40 cm in front of you everyday and all day long. Windows 2000 was – for me – the ideal user experience. Whenever I installed Windows XP or Windows 2003, I changed all settings to be as close to the default Windows 2000 experience as possible.
Then came Vista. And while Aero was more pleasing on the eye than the bubblegum look of Windows XP’s default, the start menu became a pain. They had decided to remove backward compatibility and offer only something that was for the most practical purposes completely unusable. It took me ages and the unfortunate fact that my new hardware had no driver support for XP to be “convinced” to switch. Luckily I found ClassicShell, which mitigated the biggest shortcoming: the all-wrong start menu of Vista.
Then came Windows 7. The Quick Launch got (almost) dropped, the task bar got crippled and the start menu got slightly improved over Windows Vista, but hardly worth mentioning. And let’s not forget that the calculator in Windows 7 is a pain, too. Luckily it was still possible to replace the start menu with that from ClassicShell and even change other behavior in Windows Explorer (although I never did that, because I use an alternative file manager). The Quick Launch took quite some effort to come back, as pinning to the task bar is functionally only a subset of the Quick Launch. If you are a programmer, try pinning your documentation (MSDN etc) to the task bar. And yes, I can live with a visually pleasing Aero look, although it means bigger window frames.
The only true innovation that was usable to me was that one could sort stuff in the task bar notification area (TNA, often wrongly called “system tray”), because that meant one could hide unimportant stuff while being able to keep important stuff visible in the TNA.
And now comes Windows 8. If you have ever tried it on a desktop, you probably have some hairs less. I for one was pulling out my hair over the start screen. Does Microsoft have any decent GUI designers these days?
I’m working on a desktop for f**k’s sake! I don’t want the functionality that is inspired by and very clearly designed only for touch screens – or to be more precise: tablets. I get it, everyone is converging on certain assumptions about how “people” work, forgetting that “people” can be quite different in needs and habits. Frankly, I don’t want the Metro crud at all. I’d gladly take any option that offers me to leave it out and speed up my Windows in the process. It’s unlikely to happen, because you, Microsoft, need to have an app store to compete with Apple and Google.
Offer Windows 8 with the proper driver support, a task bar such as Windows 7 (plus a revived Quick Launch) and I’ll be happy for another few years. Continue on the path to the complete loss of usability and I’ll simply switch. Yes, none of the Linux distros can completely replace Windows and MacOS X is just a walled garden I won’t enter, but for all Windows needs I can still run a Windows banned into a VM. Hopefully VMware’s Unity will work this way, I need to test that. The only major thing that is missing in VMware for this are truly shared folders, the way one would expect them to behave.
// Oliver
PS: too true, that.
The General
Admiral General Aladeen on The Daily Show – want to watch the movie now. Nice PR … 😆
Posted in EN, Thoughts
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Another interesting site for me
unlicense.org with advice how to dedicate one’s own code to the public domain …
Posted in EN, Programming, Software
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Got pointed to this today
… nice: ask.libreoffice.org/question/
Posted in EN, Software
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Niedlich
Daß und ungefähr wie viel Geld die Bundesregierung in New York verwahrt hat, ist ein offenes Geheimnis. Daß die Bundesbank sich allerdings weigert eine Inventur davon zu machen, ist reichlich bizarr:
[…] Die Tatsache aber, dass sie offenbar noch nie die Goldbarren kontrolliert und gezählt hat und sich hartnäckig weigert, dies zu tun, ist Wasser auf die Mühlen derer, die bezweifeln, dass die Bundesbank tatsächlich über dieses Gold verfügen kann. […]
(Quelle: Handelsblatt)
// Oliver
Posted in DE, Gedanken
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Antidemokrat der Woche: Roman Herzog
Siehe hier – berichtet wurde schon am Samstag in den Abendnachrichten.
Bundespräsident a.D. Herzog meint also allen Ernstes, daß die Tatsache, daß noch mehr Meinungen aus der Volksvertretung herausfallen eine stärkere Vertretung bedeutet … 🙄
Mir scheint Wiglaf Droste hat mit seiner süffisanten Bemerkung, daß “ein Präsident aus den Worten präsenil und Kukident zusammengebacken wird” (Eulenspiegel 05/2012, Seite 16) auch bei diesem Altpräsidenten direkt ins Schwarze getroffen.
Irgendwie versucht die etablierte Machtelite mehr und mehr Emporkömmlinge wie die Piratenpartei mit immer transparenteren Methoden zu demontieren. Seine Äußerung ist so unpräsidial – gemessen an meiner Vorstellung des Amtes – wie sie nur sein könnte, und paßt dennoch genau ins Schema …
// Oliver
Cool
COPSSH, another SSH implementation on Windows. And it even seems to be convenient to use.
Posted in Administration, EN, IT Security, Software
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ZDF heute journal vom 10. Mai 2012
Die Sendung ist heute ungewöhnlich wortkarg und kurz 😆
Diese Sendung können wir aus rechtlichen Gründen leider nur unseren Zuschauern innerhalb Deutschlands anbieten.
Wir bitten um Ihr Verständnis.
Was hat Frau Slomka denn diesmal angestellt? Oder war’s Herr Kleber? 
Zuschauerredaktion hat geantwortet:
Sehr geehrter Herr Schneider,
vielen Dank für Ihre E-Mail an das ZDF.
Das „heute-journal“ vom 10. Mai ist in der Tat aus rechtlichen Gründen im Ausland nicht in der ZDFmediathek angeboten worden. Für einen Teil des gesendeten Bildmaterials, das unter anderem von ABC übernommen war und auch Ausschnitte des neuen Kinofilms über Bob Marley enthielt, hat das ZDF dabei keine über Deutschland hinausreichenden Onlinerechte erwerben können. Von solchen Ausnahmefällen abgesehen, wird es aber künftig weiterhin möglich sein, das „heute-journal“ per ZDFmediathek im Ausland zu sehen.
Wir bitten um Verständnis für die besondere Situation und freuen uns, wenn Sie auch weiterhin zu unseren interessierten Zuschauern gehören .
Mit freundlichen Grüßen
[Name]
I didn’t do it for science: bloody gravel (literally)
… but I think my findings could benefit others 😉
Gravel on cobblestone doesn’t provide the same grip as normal asphalt does when you try to take a sharp turn at high velocity with your bike. This somewhat surprising fact struck me when I decelerated from over 25 km/h to zero within two seconds as I hit the ground.
Also, gravel as a substitute to cereals is vastly overrated. I’ll still prefer oatmeal, despite the bland taste. Sure, gravel is crunchy and all, but somehow it doesn’t cut it for me.
What also came as a surprise was the fact that hitting the ground like that isn’t quite as painless as it looks on Youtube when you’re the one doing it 😆 … I was lucky though, that I didn’t wear gloves. If I look at the big slices of skin that were cut from my hand I can imagine how horrible the gloves would look now. They’d probably be wrecked.
Oh, and I know for a fact that a helmet makes sense when biking.
// Oliver
Posted in EN, Thoughts
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С днём Победы 2012 (Victory Day)
Classic! Today is Victory Day in many parts of the former Soviet Union. I’ve had some special Easter Eggs hidden on my website in past years, but never on my blog. Time to change this.
Listen to the song “День Победы” (Victory Day) here or activate the embedded Flash control below.
To be honest with you, I have a heard time to hold back tears with those lyrics 😥 … When watching, keep in mind that the Soviet Union was amongst the countries with the highest losses of human life 1.
// Oliver
- … some of which can be attributed to Stalin, though.[↩]
Not a convert
It’s a trap!
I’m more and more convinced that the GPL is just that – a trap. Richard Stallman, aka RMS, was visiting Iceland one year ago and I had the “pleasure” of listening to his talk at Fjölbrautaskólinn. While I agree with many, if not the majority, of his points, I also disagree fundamentally with a few others. Continue reading
NEIN!-Idee (die echte Wahlalternative heißt “Nein”)
Michael König stellt die NEIN!-Idee vor
Ich bette es sogar mal ein, aber falls mal wieder der Link ungültig werden sollte, hat’s dann wenigstens auch noch Suchbegriffe:
Das Video ist jetzt noch nicht so hundertprozentig professionell, aber macht schon was her und gibt vor allem der Partei ein Gesicht. Ich hoffe doch mal, daß die Presse dergleichen aufgreift, obwohl man da wohl nicht zu viel hoffen sollte.
// Oliver
Merkozy is dead …
… long live Merkollande?
We shall see. All in all it appears that one old saying becomes true: if elections would change anything they’d be banned. 😕
// Oliver
Posted in EN, Thoughts
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“Mutter ist das schönste Wort der Welt”
Folgende Email hatte ich heute in meinem E-Briefkasten:
Elisabeth musste schlucken, als sie die Hausaufgabe ihrer Lehrerin hörte: Zum Muttertag sollten alle Schüler einen Aufsatz zum Thema “Was eine Mutter bedeutet” schreiben. Für die 14-jährige Schülerin aus Aserbaidschan eine besondere Aufgabe: Ihre leibliche Mutter verließ die Familie, als sie noch ganz klein war. Für Elisabeth und ihre Geschwister begann eine Odyssee durch mehrere Heime – bis sie schließlich ins SOS-Kinderdorf Baku kamen.
Mit rührenden Worten erzählt Elisabeth ihre Geschichte und ihre ganz besondere Verbindung zu ihrer SOS-Kinderdorfmutter.
Unbedingt lesen!
Wenn man solche Geschichten liest, weiß man daß es Wert ist jeden Monat das Geld abbuchen zu lassen. Das mache ich seit knapp sieben Jahren und zusammen mit einer Sonderspende des kompletten Honorars welches ich (2006 war es glaub ich) von “The Delphi Magazine” für den “Native API”-Artikel zusammen mit Marcel van Brakel bekam, ergibt das schon eine stattliche Summe.
Übrigens, Muttertag ist kommende Woche am Sonntag. Also nicht vergessen 🙂
// Oliver
PS: … und wenn ihr mit den Grundsätzen von SOS-Kinderdorf übereinstimmt und ein paar Euros erübrigen könnt, spenden nicht vergessen 😉 … die haben auch immer wieder Sonderaktionen, bspw. zum Schulanfang.
PPS: Ach ja, SOS-Kinderdörfer gibt es weltweit – auch hier auf Island.