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[#] Tue Jun 30 2020 15:23:18 EDT from Ragnar Danneskjold

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x86 is moving internally towards a RISC type instruction set anyway. The compliers recommend avoiding CISC operations where they can. I also think that a lot of the ARM processors have shown themselves underperforming due to power concerns, which will become less important in larger systems.

Funny though that we're moving back to a world we saw back in the Windows 3.5, where we have PowerPC, x86, MIPS and Alpha working......

[#] Fri Jul 03 2020 19:09:34 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

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I'll believe that when I see it. Microsoft's habit of overstuffing things into the wrong layer is legendary. (See also: putting everything into Win16 and later Win32 instead of making DOS work properly (or better yet, swapping it for Xenix), and putting everything into Win32 and later Win64 instead of into the microkernel that runs (ran?) Windows NT.)

[#] Wed Jul 08 2020 12:26:09 EDT from Ragnar Danneskjold

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You mean like print drivers running in ring 0?!?

[#] Wed Jul 08 2020 16:23:01 EDT from LoanShark

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2020-07-08 12:26 from Ragnar Danneskjold
You mean like print drivers running in ring 0?!?

What could possibly go wrong?

[#] Wed Jul 08 2020 16:38:04 EDT from LoanShark

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On that subject...

I've got a Windows 10 installation that's been carried forward across multiple motherboards for god-knows-how-long since the last clean reinstall. It's currently running on a Haswell motherboard. Previously it was running on a first- or second-gen Nehalem board. So it's been upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10. I think I might have skipped over 8/8.1.

Anyway, the drivers that ship with this motherboard were originally written for Windows 8/8.1. If you actually install the vendor-provided stuff, you will in several cases be downgrading to older drivers than what is currently included in Windows 10.

A few weeks ago I went on a rampage and purged all the old stuff I possibly could. I've lost some functionality which I wasn't using, like older Cyberlink products which I've replaced with an actual UHD Blu-Ray set-top box (since it's impossible to play UHD Blu-Ray content from a PC that has a discrete graphics card.) This has the benefit of allowing the use of Microsoft's newer "Memory Integrity" feature, which uses Hyper-V to isolate critical parts of the kernel from the rest of the system. This is supposed to have really big implications for the security model of the system, adding important layers of defense against rootkits and BIOS-based rootkits, but it conflicts with older drivers.

[#] Wed Jul 08 2020 17:19:49 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

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You mean like print drivers running in ring 0?!?

Sure, or how about the fact that the Win32 layer ran in Ring 0 at all? What was the point of using a microkernel if they didn't take advantage of the benefits microkernels were supposed to bring?

[#] Wed Jul 29 2020 15:53:42 EDT from ParanoidDelusions

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My daughter went away to college, and they required a Mac, so I bought a used one so I could help with remote support. A 2012 i5 with 4gb of ram and 500gb mechanical hard drive. $450. Which felt outrageous for a 2012 i5. Upgraded it to 16gb of memory and a 500gb SSD so it would be fast enough for a newer OS. 

Thing died. I was able to get it running again by doing some 4 finger salute, open apple, alt, whatever, whatever while holding the power button down at just the right time. Someone said, "Bios issue." It worked for a while, and is dead again. 

Thing powers up, but no chime, no video, and the fan just starts spinning faster and faster. A search for the issue shows it happens a lot. 

Anyone here actually have an Apple and have any tips on how I might revive it again? I might hassle Apple care - got an extended warranty, because I don't trust Apple - so I can probably salvage the cost... but that is a hassle. Looking more and more like that is what I'm going to have to do, though. 

Apples do suck. 

 



[#] Wed Jul 29 2020 15:55:27 EDT from ParanoidDelusions

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In related news, the 3 35 year old Amiga 500's I recently purchased were all able to brought into a fully functional state. 



[#] Mon Aug 03 2020 10:13:16 EDT from Ragnar Danneskjold

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Apples do suck. 


So an 8 year old laptop dies and Apple sucks?

I've got a HP laptop. It loses connection to the SSD frequently crashing the machine. The keys are wearing in a year (the letters A and S are unrecognizable).
The top row of the keyboard will stop working at times and the only thing that brings it back is a reboot.

Overall, it's one of the worst laptops I've ever used.

But I think laptops like other consumer electronics are becoming poorer made in general.

[#] Mon Aug 03 2020 16:04:30 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

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crashing the machine. The keys are wearing in a year (the letters A
and S are unrecognizable).

Well, you *do* call so many people asses all the time, so a bit of overwear on those keys is understandable.

I don't care about laptop build quality anymore because I get issued a new one every three years and it sits in the dock (or now, whatever the Thunderbolt thingie is called) with the lid closed 99% of the time. My personal rig is a desktop.

However, I am fascinated by Apple's transition to ARM and will be following it closely. If they build a cheapie version I might consider one as an alternative to a tablet. I just could never get used to tablets. I've got one of those iPad keyboard folios up on my shelf that someone discarded; maybe someday I'll get an iPad to go with it since it would then have a keyboard.

I like keyboards.

[#] Mon Aug 03 2020 16:42:36 EDT from ParanoidDelusions

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Mon Aug 03 2020 10:13:16 EDT from Ragnar Danneskjold @ Uncensored

Apples do suck. 


So an 8 year old laptop dies and Apple sucks?

I've got a HP laptop. It loses connection to the SSD frequently crashing the machine. The keys are wearing in a year (the letters A and S are unrecognizable).
The top row of the keyboard will stop working at times and the only thing that brings it back is a reboot.

Overall, it's one of the worst laptops I've ever used.

But I think laptops like other consumer electronics are becoming poorer made in general.

Apples suck for a variety of reasons. I elaborated on a *bit* of my latest anecdotal experience reaffirming why I believe this. Got some time? 

I collect retro computers. I've got dozens of 30 year old machines that are still operating great. 8 bits, Intel architecture PCs... EVERY classic Mac I have has died - and they're notorious for it among retro-platform collectors. Apple devices do not have long term longevity - and it goes all the way back to when they were a 68xxx platform. The irony is that they're sold as *higher quality* machines. 

Saying that Apple sucks doesn't say that HP *doesn't* suck, by the way - but I've got a HP Core Duo Centrino 17" gaming laptop from the early 2000s that is still running great, personally. I can't really bear to part with it because I bought it new, it was expensive, and I never actually really used it very much. 

I do have a G4 Quicksilver PPC that is still going strong every time I turn it on. I suppose they had to get ONE system right at some point. Oh, and a PPC 8500. But the Classic Macs, 68000 and PPC both - have terrible cases. They become super brittle with age - they're just awful. 

It is fine if you like Apple for whatever reason you like them. But if you think they're "higher quality" hardware than anyone else's - you're on crack. They're substantially more fragile. 

 

 

 

 



[#] Mon Aug 03 2020 17:07:15 EDT from ParanoidDelusions

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I also hate the dishonesty of the entire Apple thing. 

The Power Mac 8500 was not the first COMPUTER to have audio/video import/export capabilities. That would be the Amiga - which is why Amiga dominated the cable TV industry so early on. The Amiga established video titling and effects on inexpensive home PC quality computing devices - and those pioneers migrated to Apple because of the common 68k architecture, and from there to the PPC. 

There are SO many lies like this that so much of the Apple community believes. 

Apple/Mac is the Democrats of the evolution of personal computing. There is a huge reality distortion field around the entire company and all of its loyal users seem to drink the koolaid right from the company fountain. 

 



[#] Mon Aug 03 2020 17:36:35 EDT from Ragnar Danneskjold

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IG can tell you I have a pretty extensive classic computer collection. I've got everything from a PDP-11/73, a Commodor KIM-1 (I have almost every computer Commodore made with the exception of the B-128 and few other oddballs, but I do have a SuperPET.) I agree older hardware tends to hold up well, but that I believe is a function of simplicity more than anything. They weren't built with crazy-dense multi-layered boards, etc.

But I have to say that I've been running Macs since the early days of the transition to OSX, and the machines have been rock solid with the exception of my last laptop. It up and died after two years pretty hard. Otherwise, all good.

I've run som Dells, HP's, ASUS, etc.

The Dell's have been surprisingly reliable.

I haven't really run a desktop machine in a few years. Not much of a need any more.

[#] Wed Aug 05 2020 14:26:43 EDT from ParanoidDelusions

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Mon Aug 03 2020 17:36:35 EDT from Ragnar Danneskjold @ Uncensored
IG can tell you I have a pretty extensive classic computer collection. I've got everything from a PDP-11/73, a Commodor KIM-1 (I have almost every computer Commodore made with the exception of the B-128 and few other oddballs, but I do have a SuperPET.) I agree older hardware tends to hold up well, but that I believe is a function of simplicity more than anything. They weren't built with crazy-dense multi-layered boards, etc.

But I have to say that I've been running Macs since the early days of the transition to OSX, and the machines have been rock solid with the exception of my last laptop. It up and died after two years pretty hard. Otherwise, all good.

I've run som Dells, HP's, ASUS, etc.

The Dell's have been surprisingly reliable.

I haven't really run a desktop machine in a few years. Not much of a need any more.

I will accept that brand loyalty tends to be pretty much a subject on anecdotal, subjective experience. The 68k and PPC Macs seem to suffer from battery damage and cheaply sourced capacitors. The battery damage is really a user error thing. If you pull the battery before you put it into storage, it won't be a problem. The capacitors though - are cutting corners - and other issues, like cold solder joints at right angles between the logic board and other boards on the Classic Mac 128 style machines is just bad design - or maybe *overacheiving* design. A lot of times it seems like Macs make IMPRACTICAL choices for the sake of aesthetics or other design considerations - and while they LOOK cool at the time, they create legacy issues. 

I've had two modern Intel Macs, a Centrino Duo Mini and a Macbook Pro Mid 2012. Both of them died. I feel like Macs are kind of like HP printers too - if you put your own memory, your own SSD in them - if you CAN - you're asking for issues. Again - this could be that they're so precisely engineered to be ONE thing - that new memory or SSD may exceed the tight tolerances the PSU can deliver, or create heat that super quiet fan can't dissipate quickly enough. 

I suppose if you buy a new Mac specced *exactly* like you want it and never do any upgrades with it - and buy all the accessories and peripherals designed for THAT Mac, with that version of OS X - not straying from the walled garden and paying the premium all around - those seem like the Mac users who are totally content with Apple products. 

My daughter is going to SAIC, the Science and Art Institute of Chicago. She is a digital artist, learned on PC. Her Wacom tablet doesn't work right with her i7 Macbook Pro that she bought last semester. She complains that it works smoother on her Surface Pro i5 from 2014. She has tried drivers, talked to tech support labs and Apple geniuses... she was at wits end. I have an older Wacom from around the same time as my own Macbook Pro 2012, so I uninstalled all the drivers and installed her drivers. It totally hosed my OS, (Mojave, on 16gb of RAM and a 500gb SSD) - so badly that finally I just recovered by imaging the original hard drive back over onto the SSD and rebuilding the upgrade processes from High Sierra to Mojave. She felt terrible - but I haven't had a device driver totally hose a Windows install since... Windows Vista, maybe? 

But the 2012 MacBook Pro intermittently started just not booting shortly before that. If I did the right 4 finger salute at just the right time while holding the power button down for just long enough (but not too long,) I think it was resetting the PRAM but maybe it was NVRAM or... there are so many secret combos to the Mac... it would eventually boot. But that finally stopped working - and now it has been sent in for a warranty claim (you're damn right I bought a Square Trade Warranty with a 2012 Mac. An 8 year old Mac i5 that cost twice as much as a regular Intel PC that old... smart money spent...) 

Mac users are ALWAYS talking about how COMPLICATED Windows is - the 3 finger salute, the blue screen of death. But I've heard enough Start Chimes of Disharmony, seen enough Sad Macs, researched enough weird key combinations during boot that would challenge Eddie Van Halen to complete correctly - been told, "Oh, you can do that on a Mac, you just need to hold down Alt, Command, Open Apple, Roshambo Key, and signal out SOS on the power key, but do it at the correct naval timing interval, or it will fry your logic board" that I honestly think that most Mac users spend so much, then realize they've been duped, but they'll never ADMIT it or go back to Windows - because they know everyone else will make fun of them. 

Now, I'm an IT pro who has worked with MCI, Legato/EMC2, Intel in senior IT roles... and been the manager of a medium sized healthcare data-center, and an avid technology hobbyist since I was 14. I've blown up SCSI devices with improper termination, and then brought them back by replacing the fried logic card on the drive, I've blown out OSes doing stupid things, I've fat fingered delete commands... I know the description of her issue isn't very detailed above - but it isn't my first rodeo with device drivers, extension conflicts, troubleshooting weird issues that have no rhyme or reason. 

Constantly I run into things in the OS X world where I go, "How can they still DO it this way? How can they decide to go in THAT direction? Why did they make THIS choice when clearly it was going to lead to THIS problem?!?" Linux may be difficult to learn and master - and I can't think of any specific examples at the moment - but at least they do things in ways that make reasonable sense. A lot of times, it seems like Apple makes decisions that are in APPLE'S best interest as a company, not in the best interests of the user experience of their end users. 

I hate Dell laptops. The healthcare place, the first thing I did when I took over was replaced all the user Latitudes with Thinkpads, and support calls for laptop users dropped 80% overnight. 

But this is all my opinion - I could be wrong. 














[#] Wed Aug 05 2020 14:30:06 EDT from ParanoidDelusions

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By the way, I bought that MacBook Pro back in January. It wasn't a road warrior, it wasn't a daily driver. It lasted about 7 months. I'm glad I got the failure and warranty claim out of the way early. Hopefully now it'll be trouble free for another 8 years. I wouldn't be surprised though if the HP Core Duo Centrino is still going strong 8 years from now, but this Macbook went to the e-Waste dump 4 years earlier. 

 

 



[#] Sun Aug 09 2020 03:18:30 EDT from LoanShark

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However, I am fascinated by Apple's transition to ARM and will be
following it closely. If they build a cheapie version I might consider


It is kind of intresting because... could be a compatible dev environmnent to compile for cloud-hosted ARM containers? Kinda better than a raspi for that purpose.

[#] Sun Aug 09 2020 03:21:02 EDT from LoanShark

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I hate Dell laptops. The healthcare place, the first thing I did when

I took over was replaced all the user Latitudes with Thinkpads, and
support calls for laptop users dropped 80% overnight. 

Lenovo quality varies. My X1 Carbon really sucked, all kinds of hardware issues. Their other model, the T series, is probably better, more pro-grade.



I replaced my Lenovo with a Dell. Yep. So far so good.

[#] Sun Aug 09 2020 15:29:36 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

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It is kind of intresting because... could be a compatible dev
environmnent to compile for cloud-hosted ARM containers? Kinda better


It might be. What does the virtualization scene look like on ARM? Does it have full hardware-assisted system virtualization, or only containers?
Somehow I doubt that cloud-hosted containers are going to be hosted on Mac OS, so you would need to either run Linux on your ARM-Mac or run it in virtualization.

I've got a first-gen Pi and I can't even finish a large compile on it without the thing locking up.

[#] Sun Aug 09 2020 15:48:17 EDT from LoanShark

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Pretty sure it's got virtualization. As you say, cloud vendors need it. Moreover, I was reading about how Microsoft pushed some of the vendors to implement the security*performance improvements they wanted for Windows on HyperV on ARM--I think. MBEC, that sort of thing.

[#] Fri Aug 21 2020 15:46:10 EDT from ParanoidDelusions

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Sun Aug 09 2020 03:21:02 EDT from LoanShark @ Uncensored
Lenovo quality varies. My X1 Carbon really sucked, all kinds of hardware issues. Their other model, the T series, is probably better, more pro-grade.



I replaced my Lenovo with a Dell. Yep. So far so good.

I think the challenge for Lenovo, especially with ThinkPads - is that the pro business consumers do not want radical departures from what they know. They want their cheese to be in the same place from iteration to iteration - but that causes slowing sales, so they try and "innovate," and people find their cheese has moved. They also probably want to compete in the mid-tier with products and price points that Dell sells at - and the truth is, generally, you're getting what you pay for in electronics. A Note 10+ is $1000 because it has a lot more high quality packed into it than a $300 entry level Android phone. 

Apple has run into this over the last 5 years or so with the Macbook Pro line... that butterfly keyboard, falling behind on GPUs - and still charging a hefty premium. The complacency of being a luxury brand can be a threat, too. 

So, yeah, I'm not up to date on the current state of Lenovo business class laptops - but... it would take a LOT to convince me to every put my own money in Dell's bank accounts for a Latitude of any sort. :) 

 



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