Termyn8or
Posts: 18681
Joined: 11/12/2005
Status: offline
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Thanks folks. Once I wemt to sun to get the Java it worked.
I agree on the new(er) PC, this one is quite old. It's only a 433Mhz, but it is at least a P3 class Celeron. Eventually I will get something and this drive will be a slave. It is not a good idea to run it like this. I got about ten gigs left of an 80 gig drive, and XP is installed at the end of all that. I changed the install directory because I had alot of stuff saved in desktop. I was going to clone it to a bigger drive, but now that will not be necessary, because XP won't migrate. I might clone it and then reinstall, but then I might just start with another drive.
XP seems to run fine on this old beast, even though I think the filters are going bad on this mobo. I can hear it in the speakers when I move the mouse or if there is heavy harddrive activity. I suspect this was what caused some of the problems in 98SE, XP seems to handle it better.
It is not anywhere near as slow as I thought it would be, in fact it doesn't seem to have slowed down at all. It almost seems like it boots faster, but I haven't actually timed it.
Now that this issue is behind us, I really miss the "Show Desktop" function. It used to be the first icon on the left in the toolbar. Many people never use it, delete it or whatever, but I use(d) it.
Picture this, you are in Collarchat, you decide to reply to a message, it opens a new window. You may also be in another window at a link in a post to which you are replying. Then you want to Google something for spelling or who knows what.
Show desktop would minimize all windows and you hit IE again. When you're done with that you can close it or not, but another click of the show destop icon will restore all of the previous windows in one fell swoop, layered the same way.
I swear I have seen it on XP before, but for the life on me I can't get it. I am not stupid, I can put anything that is an EXE there or in the sendto menu, and have, but this is more like a windows function. One day I'll probably find it buried in modem settings or some shit. Sometimes I just don't understand why they put certain things where they put them.
Well, at least figuring this out will not be as hard as Linux. When I get a new(er) PC this will probably become a Linux box. I know it'll run it. I am interested in learning it, but I am not ready to be stuck in it.
Of course being a troublemaker I now want to find out how to manually edit the registry. I did it in 98, And now, since this is a fresh install and I now know how to customize it to my liking, I can reinstall at any time in case shit happens. This is not a high priuority right now though. There is really nothing to change at the moment.
The only thing I disagree with is deleting temporary internet files. It will not do it, all it does is makes them inaccessible to you. They can be recovered until they are overwritten.
Ahhh, good ol 98, I remember people bringing me unbootable PCs and I would throw their drive in mine as a slave and tell them "Well the last time this thing was on the net was ......" and if the swapfile is still there "You pulled the plug huh ?". I wonder if I'll ever learn that shit about XP.
I was dragged into XP kicking and screaming so to speak, just like I was dragged into 3.11, 95 and 98. I remember installing AOL 1.5 on a 386 that didn't even have Windows. It had it's own GUI and mouse drivers, and it was all on a floppy disk !
My how things have changed. I was talking with one of my bosses yesterday about how we came from tubes to this, where I get paid to push buttons. This because more and more I have to do complex setups using of all things, a remote control. Kind of a guy thing.
Also yesterday a buddy of mine who I let piggyback my internet account said they were going to get a landline again and asked if I could come over and set it up. There is no setup I told him, it has all been done. Plug it in and it will work. He said "We won't have the same phone number" to which I replied "No but they do". Ahhhhh, an enlightenment. Since his area code did not change, do nothing, just click.
On a more philosophical note, I wonder what the next ten years will bring. I saw the Linux MCE demo someone posted in here, it was awesome. And I have ferretted out some technologies that exist now that they do not want known, but are not quite secret, just not widely publicized. My Father was involved in manufacturing for a long time and even though he knows little electronics he gets newsletters from companies pioneering in technological fields. He tells me that they can now make a transistor with one molecule, and they have a new liquid storage medium.
Just how are these innovations going to be used ? Seriously, by the time most people see technology it is ten years old. It has to go through a process of "elimination", that is elimination of cost. Otherwise a new TV would be a thousand dollars. When they have unlimited dollars like with military technology, they can do things that simply are not going to appear in the public domain for a long time.
So when you consider the question, consider this. Unless you work in R&D for a cutting edge technology firm, consider that we are about ten years ahead of what they make known, except in newsletters to members etc., or in limited publications.
And what are PCs going to be like ? A friend said he wanted a PC he could just tell what to do, well they had that ten years ago. I probably have the program somewhere. This voice recognition program was a pain, you had to train it, each user had to train it. It took hours for you to read screen upon screen of text into the microphone, but in the end you could actually set it up to execute Windows commands. If you trained it all the way (I never did, but it would run and the errors were hilarious at times) you could run a PC, and only touch the power button once. You could do your email, including responding, write something, defrag or whatever without touching the keyboard or the mouse, and then shut down the computer. Now that I think of it, this is over ten years old.
OK, I doubt you could do much in the way of graphics, but that may be simply asking too much.
And look at the setup they did for Stephen Hawkings, how long has he had that now ? 25 years ? More ? I mean the Man types with his eyeballs, and has been doing it for a long time.
I mean right now a blind person can use a PC. The voice recognition software has been around for quite some time, they could wear headphones and have someone read the training text to them and just speak it for analysis, then even easier is a reading program, one of which I know has been around for awhile, it sounds like Steven Hawkings actually.
Now they are talking neural interfaces for people with prostheses replacing severed limbs, how long until they are actually inside the brain with this, or are they already ? Are the people with the tinfoil hats actually right about this one ? Lifelog has already been introduced, but I am not sure if it has yet been implemented. Tracking implants are a foregone conclusion and IIRC are required for any dangerous animal kept as a pet in certain areas. There is talk of implanting sexual offenders. Then they are trackable night and day via GPS. Might cut down the recidivism (sp) at least the third time around.
And now, if you try, you can get a satellite photo of your own back yard, or anyone else's for that matter. Anyone feeling claustropobic ?
Really, with XP I wonder just how much microhard or whoever is slipping in and out my backdoor. Technology seems to be geared to survielance anymore, and some of us do not think it is a good thing.
T
PS, If you are down here you have read it, I guess I hijacked myself. Have at it.
T
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