Regular poster and all-round computer genius largenfirm posted the following in comments to a WIndows 7 post. I respect bro-large’s technical advice and would advise anyone reading this to take his experiences and views very seriously.

Let’s see, installation problems (had to unplug everything before installing), didn’t recognize PS2 keyboard (!), hung several times during install, then bluescreened while updating over the innertubes.

Started with a clean install, incidentally. The machine started life as a Dell box running Windows XP. Pentium 4, 4GB RAM, 250GB hard drive. Nvidia 7600GT video card. About as vanilla as they come.

Four hours to install. Please, Microsoft, my time is not free.

Then, after all that settled out, Win7 was constantly yakking about memory problems, even when I swapped out the whole 4GB of DDR2. Finally found a technote that cleared that one up. It was a configuration problem with the older memory controller and the particular memory brand, had to upgrade the BIOS, not strictly MS’s fault, though they could have worked around it - XP did, as did Linux.

Another three hours, gone. Hello, Microsoft? Seven hours into this upgrade, and I’m not happy.

So, after it was installed, and running “properly” it was slower than XP on the same hardware, and significantly slower than OpenSuse 11.1 32-bit (which it had been running prior to the OS change).

Painful to browse with, painful to email with, painful to edit business documents with (using MS Office 2007), and, as expected, MS tech support was worse than useless:

“Yes, I have reinstalled the OS. Yes, I have power cycled the machine. Yes, I have run the vendor diagnostics. Yes, I would like to speak with your supervisor. No, I am not happy with either your product or the support you have provided.”

Said machine, without change, is now quite happily running Intrepid Ibex (Ubuntu), and is a joy to surf with, to edit documents, and to read email. Fifteen minutes to install, after booting off of a liveUSB pen. No licensing fees. No hassle. No qualms about throwing good money after bad.

It is now handling some mundane IT activities on my home business network.

Microsoft, how can you screw this up so badly? Do you really expect people to buy new machines every three years? Do you expect that to fly when Linux runs happily (and snappily) on 5 to 10 year old machines?

Sure, you got your license fee, but you also confirmed my long-running experience with each new generation of MS operating systems. Namely, wait until SP2.

No more. I’ll run all MS operating systems, if I have to, in VMs from now on - your direct access to the hardware is *permanently revoked*, Microsoft!

And I will continue to counsel others to avoid MS products.

It looks like I will be forced into Win7 soon as my current game project has a reported bug that is Win7 specific. I can’t say that I am looking forward to it, yet another Microsoft OS headache.

It looks like I would be much better off just buying a new system instead of repurposing one of the many systems I have laying about Casa Sins. I suppose thats the point though, M$ software always assumes that it will be installed on new systems and the “upgrade path” is given the short end of the stick. I bet the M$ profit margin is higher when sold to OEMs versus the retail box.

Maybe it wont be so bad, I’ll just buy the cheapest Win7 system available and use it ONLY to test stuff. I have an XP system and a Vista System at Casa Sins that is used solely to test stuff (I play Lineage II on the Vista System and compile products on the XP system), so what trouble is yet another system dedicated to Micro$oft’s OS nightmare?

BTW: This was posted from my Mac.

Son, people will always try and fuck you. Don’t waste your life planning for a fucking, just be alert when your pants are down.

Today’s must read is Betsy McCaughey on wsj.com.

If you like your insurance, you can keep it:

Sec. 202 (p. 91-92) of the bill requires you to enroll in a “qualified plan.” If you get your insurance at work, your employer will have a “grace period” to switch you to a “qualified plan,” meaning a plan designed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. If you buy your own insurance, there’s no grace period. You’ll have to enroll in a qualified plan as soon as any term in your contract changes, such as the co-pay, deductible or benefit.

Sounds like I’m going to be forced to the “qualified plan”, who really believes that any current plan is a “qualified plan”?

It isn’t going to cost you more:

An individual earning $44,000 before taxes who purchases his own insurance will have to pay a $5,300 premium and an estimated $2,000 in out-of-pocket expenses, for a total of $7,300 a year, which is 17% of his pre-tax income.

This is pretty close to me. I currently pay around $2500/year in premiums and $1000/year out of pocket. This for a plan that certainly isn’t a “qualified plan”, as it provides access to Brain Surgery.

What about those Illegals?

Sec. 59b (pp. 297-299) says that when you file your taxes, you must include proof that you are in a qualified plan. If not, you will be fined thousands of dollars. Illegal immigrants are exempt from this requirement.

Figures, you go to jail the person here Illegally isn’t. The Illegal is probably getting better healthcare than you as well.

Go read the whole thing for more…

You have seen this on Insty, but here it is again:

At the end they ask the question: “If Obama Care passes, could this story be yours?”

NO!

No, it couldn’t be my story and I’ll tell you why.

Because I am an American, and I wouldn’t have anywhere to go. The ONLY reason the Canadian System can exist is because Canadians (like the woman in the video) can escape the system by crossing the border to the south and get care that is denied them in Canada. If we get ObamaCare™, where would we Americans go for the care that will be denied? Where will the current flow of Canadians go?

NOWHERE, THAT’S WHERE!

Well.. that’s not entirely true… We would go to our beds (or Lay-Z-Boys) and wait for our family to get our painkillers until the pain and boredom finally send us to our (early) graves.

I guess that’s the point, isn’t it?

of my deathbed… to post …

Teh Shat…

When I get there, We’ll have lunch again, just like old times.

Man, this was so much fun!

But I don’t remember doing the redneck accent thing they got going in the video. Must have missed out on that…

Some fun from Slashdot:

I get the impression that the Windows 7 launch is a lot like seeing an old girlfriend suddenly show up on your doorstep wanting to get back together. She’s had some work done, apparently: stomach stapling to take off some of the weight, breast augmentation, and a radical nosejob to make her look as much like your current girlfriend as medical science will allow.

I’m not going to Windows 7. I’m down to 1 Windows system, the Vista system that is used exclusively for Lineage II. It doesn’t so much run Vista, but Lineage II as the OS and it runs well enough that I don’t feel the need to mess with it.

In the last installment of “WTF: Snow Leopard and Wireless“, I gave up on getting it to work since I generally work with my MacBook in my office where I can just plug a cable in for net access.

I had a meeting in a local coffee shop recently and when I opened my MacBook it found the shop’s wireless and connected straight away. This got me interested in getting this to work again. It is kinda nice when I can leave the office and take the MacBook with me and work from my big comfy chair…

I did some more searching and found my provider’s troubleshooting page. I almost moved on when I read stuff like “Unplug the router and count to 10″ and “make sure the AirPort is turned ON”, but pressed on and found that the examples of the setup pages in the tutorial were very different from the setup pages that my router was showing me. A little more poking around turns up a firmware update for the router (Actiontec 701-WG).

Let me say here that I am not very fond of flashing BIOS and updating firmware. I know, I know… Its generally safe and people do it all the time but to risk bricking something that works so you can get wiz-bang new UI isn’t something I support. In this case I went ahead and downloaded the update and flashed the firmware.

It worked right off, the flashing program even remembered all the settings and replaced them after the flash.

Now, you might say that I owe Apple an apology for this but I disagree. The MacBook worked just fine with the old router firmware and failed only after installing 10.6/Snow Leopard. My iPod and Vista [spit] Notebook worked fine with the old firmware as well. The only thing that failed was the Snow Leopard AirPort connection, so I still contend that Apple was the cause of the problem, even if flashing the firmware “solved” it.

Anyway…

Now my MacBook is finally fully functional under Snow Leopard and I am happy with it. It would be nice if Apple would have been able to fix the problem, but at least there is a workaround.

Ever wonder why my generation is so messed up? Wonder no more…

A rather large package was delivered to my home recently from the US Census Bureau along with a postcard stating that I will be receiving said package and that I am REQUIRED BY LAW to fill it out and return it in short order.

I can’t believe the shear volume of information “my” Government wants from me at gunpoint.

Why does the Government want to know how many toilets I have in my house? I understand the need for the Census and that it is Constitutionally mandated, but really…

Shouldn’t it be a postcard asking me how many people live at this address? (fills in 1 blank with “3″… DONE!)

What is the minimum I can fill in to avoid the $5000 fine for non-compliance?

Oh my!

One gay man, two lesbians, a three-legged cat and a poisoned curry plot.

This will be purchased in large quantities for “Crazy Town”.

Why was I not informed?????

For those of you that have tried to understand why I went from a complete Battlestar Galactica fanboi and writing/speaking of it often to someone that would catch the show if it were on in front of me but not worth the TiVo space, here is Jonah Goldberg:

The extent of the show’s political and ideological corruption is best exemplified by the fact that one of the central pillars of the series had to be yanked: the notion that the Cylons had a grand, complex, conspiratorial plan involving their human doppelgängers that was unfolding inexorably over the course of the show’s run, one that humans needed to uncover in order to secure a victory in the war for the survival of their species. Indeed, every episode of the first three seasons began with an opening sequence in which the viewer is explicitly told that the Cylons “have a plan.”

I think he has it right on the head there. The Cylons “had a plan”… we were finding out interesting bits of it… then the plan changed and the whole thing blew up.

Of course the lame ending didn’t really help much, but I had already stopped watching it well before that. The question I asked myself was: Why did I TiVo the last 2 episodes? That was a total waste of electrons.

I dislike hippies.

Whos the private dick who’s a hit with all the chicks?

Darn, its not “Sinner”…

“You know what’s good about you [Sinner]? You compartmentalize your curmudgeonly-ness very well.”

Guilty of RAPE consensual sex.

So you’re a young man, say about 20 years old. On the night of September 14th, the police arrest you and three of your friends. It seems an 18-year-old woman has accused the four of you and another man or raping her that night. She’s a student at Hofstra University.

You’re handcuffed, taken to jail, booked and tossed into a cell. You’re facing up to a 25-year stretch in the penitentiary if you’re found guilty.

The lesson to learn from this? Make sure you have someone film all your sexual encounters with a cell phone.

But luckily, one of your friends had a cell phone and he photographed the whole scene. There was no rope and no screaming, just consensual sex.

The “young lady” recants quickly (2 days!)

So young man, you ought to feel OK. You only spent two days inside and the DA has dropped the charges, so everything’s back to normal. Just forget all about your picture in all those papers, right under that word. After all, everyone else will. Won’t they?

Best of all… The names of the men in the case are published along with their mug shots, the name of the woman isn’t released even after admitting to the crime of false reporting.