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In these AI days ...
One reason why James P. Hogan: The Two Faces of Tomorrow (1979) still holds up fairly well may be related to the Acknowledgement prefacing the novel, where he thanks the help and advice received from Prof. Marvin Minsky, Artificial Intelligence Unit, MIT. (If "Marvin Minsky" is unknown to you, look it up in Wikipedia!)
Having experts review your manuscript is absolutely essential, for verifying anything that is not your own field of expertise.
You might run into problems with an expert completely rejecting something you wrote, "It couldn't possibly have been like that, you have to completely rewrite that part of the story", the expert tearing down major part of your plot. I have read a few books like that. One author of 25 mystery novels, translated to 40 languages (according to Wikipedia) makes such grave mistakes, basing his plots on impossible assumptions, that I have come to reject his books completely. Fair enough: Some novels are declared to be counterfactual, but that is different from counterfactual physics and the workings of engineered mechanisms that in all ways are presented as factual.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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5teveH wrote: and I still have two more chapters to go!
Probably time for a sequel.
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Well, I came here for a MS rant but found I'm at the back of the queue...
So I run Win10 on a laptop. I very rarely reboot (because when I start the PC up, it's cos I want to use it, not have it sit there for 4 hours doing a reboot). So I just "sleep" by closing the lid.
Until a few days ago, I "woke up" by opening the lid, waiting about 5 seconds, and hitting any key (or clicking the mouse) would give me the login prompt for my password. Then one day it didn't. Just the standard windows background. I hit various keys, gave the mouse a good workout, waited... and waited. Eventually I gave up and hit Ctrl-Alt-Del in case; and that brought up the login screen. Since then, I've had to hit Ctrl-Alt-Del every time. And, as far as I'm aware, there's been no updates applied.
This is particularly galling as, due to a dodgy keyboard on the laptop, I usually have the numeric keypad in "numeric" mode (as the zero on my main keyboard rarely works). But as there's no "NumLock" light (thanks, Dell!) I have to try twice a lot of the time. And I can't do it single-handed (I often have a cup of coffee in the other hand).
I wonder, has anyone actually told MS that their software is a pile of doo-doo?
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DerekT-P wrote: Well, I came here for a MS rant
No, this is "abuse". You want 12A[^], next door. 
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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I have Win11 & Win10 machines and use them both for different things, I also use(d) Office XP (with an update to open docx & xlsx). I got into the habit of using them (also my Mum, not very technical!) could use it fine. One day Win11 updates and bang splat it stops working, it will open and you can view the document touch any key, click any mouse button and it closes. Why? So I have to conned into an Orfice365 subscription (I did try OpenOffice but had issues).
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At first I thought you were describing exactly the scenario my neighbor had come across, but not quite it.
In his case, one morning, his Windows 10 lock screen randomly decided he needed to swipe from bottom to top before the login textbox would show up, which is a thing MS introduced, I believe, starting with Windows 8.
Worse, his laptop didn't have a touch screen, so I had to teach him how to do the swipe motion by dragging the mouse, with the left button depressed, from the bottom up.
He had never seen this before, nor has he ever since.
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switch to linux and (if you really need it) install winblows in a vm
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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yes sir, what he said, he is quite correct.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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But doesn't that mean you go from Win11 quirks to Win11 + VM manager quirks + Ubuntu quirks?
No OS is perfect (...waits until the clamour dies down) so I'm always a fan of minimising your Quirk Surface Area.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Exactly what I did a few months after Windows 8.0 was introduced. Linux for all my general computing needs and a Windows VM for games that won't work under Linux and the occasional photo editing session (I really dislike Gimp!!).
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In two long periods (6+ months each), I have had a machine sitting there with Linux read for use, with replacements for my essential Windows tools installed. But every time I tried to use the Linux tools, I was getting frustrated like h*ll. These "free and open" tools are made by people who never worked with them.
They have no idea about how you work when editing music; they have just worked their way down a checklist of functions they must implement to claim that nothing is missing in their tool. Except real usability.
Same with CD/DVD authoring (which was relevant at the time I tried to go Linux): The number of moves to do the familiar operations were much higher, and did not "feel right". But it had all the check marks in the list.
Document editing also had all the check marks. But it didn't have the operations where they felt natural. The help function was a (poor) joke. And it was more insistent on it being The Right Answer than Microsoft Edge is about being The Right Browser. (Well, that applies to the entire Linux crowd, although with varying intensity.)
At work, I have been required to use Linux based development environments. Coming home to VS has been felt as a relief.
All my major tools have much better implementations on the Windows side. With two machines side by side for long periods of time, I never "voluntarily" chose the Linux alternative. (I had to learn the Linux tools to judge them against the Windows ones; that does not count as "voluntary".) The Linux machine did have some tools that were not available on the Windows machine (to a large degree, today they are), so there were things I would have to do on Linux - if I had to do them at all. I did not.
I will give Linux a third opportunity the day that I find myself in need of some tool that is not available on Windows. Experience has taught me not to hold my breath. My guess is that I will be getting an ARM-based Windows machine before I get a Linux machine. At the time, there are no ARM alternatives suiting my needs, but lots will happen in that market in the next year or two.
Maybe, the day I get myself a desktop Windows ARM, I will also set up a file server common to my old machine and the new ARM. Chances are that the file server would be running Linux, which is perfectly fine. Linux is great for lots of backend server uses. As long as I can use tools on the Windows front ends created by people who have (at least) as much expertise in the application domain as in the latest C++ extensions.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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yes MS kind of sucks.
What Jsop said.
Has anyone ever been able to get thru and talk to MS? I mean in all seriousness.
Other comments in queue. For those that use Linux and find LibreOffice missing some things. Try WPS office. It solved many of the issues that I had with some microsoft integration for excel spreadsheets. WPS worked better than excel.
Seriously though. Linux is the way to go. If you are slight scared linux mint just works and seems like Windows alot.
Last point. IF you are going to run windows. You have to reboot your computer at least once a week or soo. Just has to be done.
To err is human to really elephant it up you need a computer
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rnbergren wrote: Has anyone ever been able to get thru and talk to MS? I mean in all seriousness
Sometime in the late 80's I talked to someone that said he used to call up Microsoft to try to convince them to give him a copy of their Basic Compiler.
Sometimes (always?) he would talk to Bill Gates.
Does that count?
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Windows having all kinds of bugs and Microsoft not caring about them because too busy researching new ways to annoy users with ads - I can live with.
But Dell not installing lights for the NumLock and CapsLock keys is a crime against humanity.
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Happens a lot lately with our work laptops. They want to talk to the AD long before the VPN is available. Putting it into airplane mode before sleeping helps us.
Is there any nice security sw installed, like Trend Micro suite?
Never happens with my private W10Pro or W11Pro.
Swipe to unlock is there since ages. Swipe, double click or press a key.
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Microsoft doesn't really exist. They stopped being a cohesive company decades ago. This is why the Office team can come up with a "feature" and compromise the entire operating system with a security hole. Based on what I have seen of Windows 11, about 50% of the company simply lies about features. They do not give a flip about complaints.
Microsoft will not change until they are held liable. When that happens - hell will freeze over, pigs will be flying everywhere, and I have a few other things to say but I don't want to say them 
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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This is the most entitled thing I have read in a long time.
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Got off that boat 4 years ago... Never looked back.
(except when using client's hardware)
Christian Lavigne
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I suggest you fix the problem by accidentally spilling the coffee on the keyboard. You will then buy a new laptop with Windows 11 pre-installed~ 
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So, it's microsoft's fault that you use a flaky old laptop with a bad keyboard and never reboot or update your software? Those bas+ards!
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Why SHOULD I "update" my software? It work(ed) well with the hardware and I paid for it in full. My needs have not changed. Sure, make new versions available with additional features or "trendy" UI changes. If your system is vulnerable to attack, let me know there are non-breaking fixes available. Don't force changes - especially ones that require new hardware - on me. And in this instance, don't create software that arbitrarily changes its behaviour in an undocumented way even without an explicit update having been applied. Is that really so unreasonable??
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It isn't even clear to me that you are experiencing a software problem, but rather a cheap old flaky laptop pushed past its expected lifetime problem. You acknowledge that your hardware is failing, but blame the software.
The very first version of Windows you ran probably needed periodically to be rebooted. It's magical thinking to believe that this is no longer the case.
Try reinstalling Windows and the newest drivers for your geriatric laptop. Betcha your "software" problem clears right up. You have standing to complain if you fix your hardware and reinstall the software (to fix possible hard drive problems) and Windows is still borken.
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If it's not clear to you, then maybe re-read what I wrote.
There are reasons that I won't go into here (too boring) why a couple of keys are unreliable. No idea why you make the assumption it was cheap, nor that it's "geriatric" as you say.
The first version of Windows I ran was Win 3.11 and no, it didn't need periodic rebooting. I and my colleagues regularly left the machines running without reboot for weeks on end. And when we did do a shutdown/restart, we could be confident that the system that was running when we shut it down would be the same system that booted back up. There is NO underlying intrinsic reason why a computer system should periodically need restarting.
Likewise, if your "solution" is to reinstall Windows then that is not, and should never be, an acceptable resolution for a software "glitch". I am reluctant to reboot simply because past experience has proven to me that at that point Windows will often run "silent" updates, many of which have in the past broken Windows, or applications (including Microsoft's own) or 3rd-party drivers.
What IS a possibility is that somewhere there is some system setting that controls whether pressing any key displays the password field. It's news to me that "swiping up" would do so (as others have noted in this thread), and indeed on my machine it doesn't. If there is such a setting it's deeply buried in Microsoft's confusing, duplicated and inconsistent set of dialogs for system management.
Your mileage may vary, and if your system is reliable and works as you wish, good for you.
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