Please wait...
I'm sure the kids are happy ... Melinda (or her body double -- she clearly shape-shifted at some point) probably walked away with billions and she'll leave far more to the kids than Bill was planning to.
Doesn't matter; they're both scumbags.
So a 2nd windows 'upgrade'.. kicked off after lunch. reboots. no asking, and really no warning either. just "hahahah we are rebooting you".
I know its partially the poor management from our OS team to make this happen during the day , right after a previous 'upgrade' but still, a real OS does not need to reboot every time you blink. "you upgraded an app, reboot!' no... idiots.
Been wondering for years: Is there any way to make Windows windows behave in a civilized fashion? And I don't mean a tiling window manager, I mean something very simple that I first noticed and loved in Openbox and still rely on in XFCE and every other environment worth a damn: I am able to grab and move windows by clicking them ANYWHERE AT ALL while holding the Alt key, and resize them by doing that near a corner or side and dragging to contract or expand. Having this feature in a GUI makes it a slightly less sucktastic pile of crap.
MGR for the win.
( used it on vSTA and later linux.. )
Wed Jun 28 2023 04:24:27 PM EDT from IGnatius T FoobarThe universe is punishing us for not universally adopting the Amiga's window system.
Thought for the day.
Micro$oft is finally killing off Cortana [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lN-lu-6L1g&t=205s ].
Things that make you go hmmm:
Cortana is a rebranded Clippy, which in turn was a rebranded Microsoft Bob.
Microsoft Bob was the pet project of one Melinda French, who ended up becoming the wife of Bill Hitler Hitler Hitler Hitler Hitler Gates.
Now that the Gateses are divorced (and hopefully very unhappy) ... Microsoft has finally discontinued CortanaClippyBob.
Coincidence?
This may surprise you but i was ok with the concept of Bob. Making the thing more user friendly and not 'computer geek like'. Sort of like apple tried to do with the newton.
The implementation sucked but i think the intent behind it was good.
Clippy, well, he sucked no matter what. ( and i have said this before I am sure... but i replaced Clippy with Japaneses characters s at least they were fun to look at. That was back when i worked for a Japanese company, and discovered they had different ones than us. A school teacher, a dolphin... and another i honestly cant remember row. Having the dolphin spit out characters was ok, but Clippy, kill it with fire.
The final death of Cortana had a lot to do with the fact that she was terrible at everything, but part of it was due to a few sensible people on the Windows team continuing to wake up to the fact that Windows runs on desktop computers, with an upright screen, a keyboard, and a mouse. That's why the "make your computer work like a smartphone" stuff they forced down everyone's throats in Windows 8 started to go away in Windows 10, and moreso in Windows 11.
But, that doesn't mean that Micro$oft's habit of force-feeding things to Windows users is over. Just like the "you WILL use our phone interface" in Windows 8, and the "you WILL use our browser" in Windows 98, they're now working on making it impossible to use Windows 12 without interacting with their AI engine.
There's never been a better time to stop using Windows. That was true on 1985-nov-20 and it has become more true every day since.
For those of us who are unwillingly tied to a Windows machine at work ... if you haven't tried WSL2 lately, give it a go. It keeps getting more usable.
(Yes I know, some of you can't install it due to policy or lack of admin rights. Sorry.)
(Long ramble about how IG had to try something other than VirtualBox because it called home and snitched, network problems yada yada yada etc.)
The good:
* Graphics and sound work now. You can even run video players. Everything "just works".
* It runs cleanly in Windows Terminal. It isn't tied to the old crappy console host.
The bad:
* IPv6 doesn't work yet. I'm doing a lot with IPv6 right now and this is a bit problematic. As a workaround, you can run Windows programs from the Linux command line. So for example if you run "ssh.exe" instead of "ssh" it runs the Windows version of SSH, and that means it's using the host's network stack.
The ugly:
* You're still using Windows.
Our office VPN kills network for VMs. "sorry, not supported, you want that, you have to come into the office and get on the wire". Dev guy at work recently was stuck with learning docker ( they are moving local apps to AWS via docker, the contractors we have in to do the moves dont even know how to setup a container and now its his job.. wtf.... ) . Could not get docker or wsl to talk to the network after he connected via vpn. Told him its the vpn client on the host and hes hosed. Didn't believe me until the network people told him the same thing.
I do understand why they changed it years ago, but they should allow some exceptions. But no. no exceptions.
Fun fact: the "interface-less" NAT implementation is based on SLiRP, an old hack that allowed you to run SLIP or PPP from a remote shell account. It basically implemented an IP endpoint and NAPT in userspace, so your client computer thought it was talking to a real router. That use case is obsolete, but the code was adopted by QEMU and later by VirtualBox to provide NAT networking to virtual guests and containers without requiring a "real" interface on the host.
I used to as well, until they f-ed with the VPN connection. Then it quit. Now if the host was just on internet, i could have a single guest do VPN ( which is what i do ). One connection only. If you had a 2nd device ( even a phone ) connect it would drop the first. They also have geo-locking, so if you are not where you are supposed to be ( basically in state ), it locks you out too until you call and complain. So if you go on vacation in FLA or something you need to plan ahead. ( and if you are out of the country, forget it , you cant even get to our public websites )
Sat Jul 22 2023 03:38:49 PM EDT from IGnatius T FoobarThat's *exactly* why I was using VirtualBox. The back end of its NAT implementation looks like a userspace application, not a network interface, to the operating system. It wasn't until we changed VPN vendors that I was able to do anything else.
Fun fact: the "interface-less" NAT implementation is based on SLiRP, an old hack that allowed you to run SLIP or PPP from a remote shell account. It basically implemented an IP endpoint and NAPT in userspace, so your client computer thought it was talking to a real router. That use case is obsolete, but the code was adopted by QEMU and later by VirtualBox to provide NAT networking to virtual guests and containers without requiring a "real" interface on the host.
I wish there was a trick to get it to work properly with client VPNs. When I'm at home on VPN into work, WSL2 can't talk to anything - not the local network, not the internet, not stuff on the other side of the tunnel. It's rather irritating. My solution to the problem involves a second machine running Debian, but that is far from ideal.
The client VPN in question is Cisco AnyConnect. I wonder if, rather than launching AnyConnect on the 'doze side, what would happen if I connected via openconnect inside WSL2? I will have to give that a try tomorrow.
Speaking of which, openconnect >>>> AnyConnect. Was just reading yesterday that it also supports F5 ("Big-IP"), Forti, GlobalProtect (which my largest client is moving to) in addition to Cisco. As much of a shitshow as the GlobalProtect client is, I'll be using openconnect, even on Windoze if I can manage it.
OpenConnect client works well, unless the server is using SAML authentication.
I was very happy with OpenConnect until our server went to SAML, then at that point it just said "this mode isn't supported blah blah blah" and I had to go back to the Cisco client. (As a side note, OpenConnect *server* is pretty damn good, and I'm using it in a project right now.)
Same here, i was using that on Linux to get into the office. ( VPN was on my host then. 90% of what i did was Linux friendly, the other 10 % id use the VM for, and just did a NAT on it to get to the office )
At the same time the multi-route stopped working and i had to switch to an 'official blessed client' ( which surprisingly they added a Linux version ). I assume it worked, but i never tried as i just switched over to the guest having the VPN instead and just lived with the single connection restriction there.
Related, had to fight to get them to open up VDI access to Linux hosts when that started to become a thing. ( the client reported back what OS, and promptly failed "not allowed, f-off " ) If i had boot up windows anyway, why bother?
Mon Jul 24 2023 09:14:52 AM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar
OpenConnect client works well, unless the server is using SAML authentication.
I was very happy with OpenConnect until our server went to SAML, then at that point it just said "this mode isn't supported blah blah blah" and I had to go back to the Cisco client. (As a side note, OpenConnect *server* is pretty damn good, and I'm using it in a project right now.)
The client VPN in question is Cisco AnyConnect. I wonder if, rather
than launching AnyConnect on the 'doze side, what would happen if I
connected via openconnect inside WSL2? I will have to give that a try
tomorrow.
If you can get OpenConnect to work at all -- which it will if you're just using username/password authentication, not so lucky if you have SAML authentication -- you can just run the OpenConnect client on another machine, even a virtual machine, and use that as a router. I had that arrangement in place at home for a couple of years and it worked great.
Subject: Creeps Love Bud Light: Bill Gates Buys 1.7 Million Shares of Anheuser-Busch Valued at $95 Million
[ https://tinyurl.com/2882cdsj ]
Bill Gates is literally the worst person in the history of the entire universe.
Worse than Mao, Hitler, Obama, Stalin, and all the others combined. And now he's buying stock in the Woke Beer Company.
I expect his next move will be to release mosquitoes tainted with Bud Light to bite everyone.
Subject: Re: Creeps Love Bud Light: Bill Gates Buys 1.7 Million Shares of Anheuser-Busch Valued at $95 Million
2023-09-06 13:56 from IGnatius T FoobarValued at $95 Million
Subject: Creeps Love Bud Light: Bill Gates Buys 1.7 Million Shares of Anheuser-Busch
[ https://tinyurl.com/2882cdsj ]
Bill Gates is literally the worst person in the history of the entire
universe.
Worse than Mao, Hitler, Obama, Stalin, and all the others combined.
And now he's buying stock in the Woke Beer Company.
I expect his next move will be to release mosquitoes tainted with Bud
Light to bite everyone.
After the woke fiasco nobody should be buying their beer anyway.
Start up 'edge' this morning ( i know.. i know.. but its required for work stuff ) Full screen tab " this is why chrome sucks " ( well paraphrased, slightly, but same idea ).
So over them. Ill be so glad when i can either retire edge ( and windows! ) next year, or retire myself and flip the industry the bird as i exit.