MadPole
Computers + Web
This part of
my correspondence
with the insane philosopher MadPole,
is purely for geeks. If you don't happen to
have a computer/web fetish, dear traveller,
then stay well away! Or read on and rage
against the evil Micro$oft...
MadPole
quote:
"With M$ Windows the
whole world witnessed for the first time the
introduction of the "human" operating system
- ie. an operating system based on chance rather
than science or logic."
Eadon
quote:
"The modem went bananas
and blew up the answering
machine"
eadon:
Have you located the drivers on the web yet?
MadPole:
It's been an interesting "Web" experiment...
searching through Web Sites, "meeting" kind
people who want to help for nothing... One guy
spent ALL evening looking for them as well.....
And I have volunteered to become Polish/Russian/Czech
translator in DriverZone! Maybe that's what
so nice about Web - if You have a problem people
will help You or not but nobody will come to
You and say "I can sort you out for £100"! Searches
like that bring back faith in humanity and human
nature. Suddenly one realises that THERE ARE
people out there who are willing to help out
of kindness!
So another amazing and wonderful journey it
was! It is not over yet because the seeds have
been planted. I have left various messages in
newsgroups and this guy did as well. And drivers?
Who cares about drivers? I have been talking
to somebody who really knows his stuff and he
suspects that those "drivers" are part of the
Novell operating system! That would explain
why they are so difficult to find! I have been
actually told not to worry about it. But it
is a challenge now! Find the bloody bastards!
They have to be somewhere! I could not stop!
I told this guy to stop. But he could not either!
It became a challenge for Internet - can such
obscure, old files be found on Internet? So
we will see....Internet people don't like if
they can't find something, even if it is obsolete,
because the purpose of Internet is to be global
and for EVERYTHING! ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING! It
is a challenge Internet cannot resist. This
is global consciousness in action. Global consciousness
being proud of itself.
And it is so wonderful, encouraging and...many
many other things which will no doubt formulate
themselves in my brain in the next few days!
I never forget reading this article (few years
ago) about somebody who had terminal disease.
This person was searching through Internet as
well. And sometime, somehow, got in touch with
another person on the opposite side of the world.
The result was....not only they found a cure
(they WERE NOT "medical" people AT ALL) - but
this cure is being commercially manufactured
now! This is the power of Internet, of global
consciousness. THE TOTALITY OF POSSIBILITIES
increases....infinitely !
You're part of global consciousness now.
eadon:
If the Internet IS consciousness then consciousness
can be digital, 1's and 0's! Ironic is it not.
The reason that the Internet is so good is that
you have to be educated or have a modicum of
intelligence and money to get on it. Your average
thug or moron need not apply. The web has an
in built cretin filter. Even the scum of the
earth spammers are criminals with the intelligence
to spam, or get someone else to do it for them.
There is a lot of good will on the web. This
is down to natural human behaviour in non-threatening
environments methinks. The people you help on
the web are probably not your natural competitors.
And are total strangers. And yet you feel you
want to help! That is odd behaviour but has
evolved for a reason presumably. Even if it
evolved to solve a different problem to the
Internet
MadPole:
Early bird catches the warm! Excitement builds
up and I have problem with coping with it at
the moment. I can say no more at the moment.
It is global consciousness and it is not digital.
Web is just a link, a media between different
minds. Nothing to do with digital. Just many
many minds linked together, an assembly of minds
on global scale. And as You rightly pointed
out - people who do have something similar -
they have money, willingness and knowledge how
to connect to it. The Internet is an assembly
of brave, open-minded minds at the moment. Average
John Bloggs is still scared of the Web and does
not use it in a fear of humiliation.
Sadly - I can more and more junk Emails from
the States particularly. Can't be helped - Web
is becoming a mirror of all aspects of our everyday
life. Or in other words all aspects of our everyday
life are moving into Web....
It's a lovely day but know I not about temperature
outside! I am still inside.
MadPole:
The problem is that we don't know anymore how
to communicate with.....ourselves - so we have
to use other people in order to exchange communications
between our consciousness and subconsciousness.
A bit like copying files from one network directory
to the other over the modem on NT - despite
the fact that the directories are on the same
drive all the data has to go via modem.
eadon:
Word is shite. I cut from an outlook email into
word and you can't change the font. Or you can
but the outlook text looks exactly the same.
And trying to get 1 of X to work properly is
an absolute nightmare.
MadPole:
Did You try to use Samples from new wonderful
MSDN ? You can copy and paste the problem is
that text formatting is not compatible - so
after pasting you have to spend have an hour
breaking and joining the lines in correct places!
Another improvement from M$
[Microsoft]
- it seems that they are so arrogant that they
actually never bother to test USABILITY of their
products!
eadon:
Word keeps crashing on me. I try to print -
crash. Draw a picture - hello Dr Watson message.
F**k!
[It later turned
out that the normal.dot file had managed to
get corrupted.]
MadPole:
Same here - lucky without crash! Black and white
picture in Word took about half an hour of spooling
obviously totally stuffing the whole machine....background
printing it is called. I have a feeling that
pictures in Word are one of the worst resource
drainage I have ever met! Convert the whole
bloody thing to HTML and jpg and then print!
Use the full functionality of the Office SUITE
of programs! You just want to use one! That's
cheating that is!
eadon:
I read that once Micro$soft tried to implement
its graphics using OLE technology, so every
bit of graphic is a component. Nice idea but
it didn't work. It was so slow even M$ canned
it and wrote what we have now. Win CE isn't
taking off because it is slow and shit at serial
communications.
Yet for a while, because of it's big, slow software,
M$ was benefiting the silicon industry into
advancing technology much faster than it otherwise
would. Having said that, computer games and
graphics are replacing this role. So even that
excuse for M$'s existence is fading. Basically
they don't innovate, they kill useful competition,
make every body's life a misery and there is
not one good reason for their software to exist.
We should set up an anti-M$ website and fill
it with our vitriolic emails!
eadon:
I got a new PC and it took me ten days to f*ck
it up beyond all repair. Windows 98 crashed
and refused to restart. After all else failed,
I tried reformatting the hard drive and put
in the boot disk. The bloody boot disk failed.
It can't talk to the CD with win98 in it despite
trying everything in and out of the instructions.
F**king win98.
As I said, Micro$oft is a parasite, but I thought
it just fed off other companies. I now realise
that it also thrives by sucking the spirit out
of its users. I have been screwed by M$ and
now am too knackered to rebel. If it wasn't
for games it would be Linux all the way. I don't
blame you for going Linux. I was going to wait
for it to mature. But I am tempted to do it
now. Very tempted. Indeed. I feel even more
bitter towards M$ than ever before. M$ are the
worst thing to happen to computers.
That's it! I am going LINUX! I am very tempted
by Linux. For one reason: programming! Programming
in windows is an absolute nightmare. You end
up with huge files and horrendous collections
of dev files. For my simple fractal programs
I do not want 10 MB of MFC files per program
making a two page program into bloatware. This
is where you are mistaken about evolution. Not
all evolution is progressive. M$ Quick C (early
90's) was perfect for little fractal programs
where as M$ Dev Studio is a bloody nightmare.
Big style.
And then with windows programming all the DLL's
get out of date and as for active X controls
- aaaaaaaaagggggghhhhhh! What a f**king mess.
Your program will never work after a few weeks.
And if you want to export it you need some installer
wizard program which will never install your
program properly on another machine because
that system's system DLL's will not be complete
or compatible. Active X is a mess. Windows is
screwed because it uses them. No one has the
same set. Nothing will work properly from one
machine to another unless you have identical
systems. And over time this will get worse with
new service packs and windows versions.
MadPole:
I rang your answer machine on Saturday but it
wasn't there! Or if it was it couldn't be bothered
to pick up my call!
eadon:
You know those problems I had with the new PC?
One of the side effects was that the modem went
bananas and
blew up
the answering machine. Computers
are expensive. I've got to buy another answering
machine now.
So blame Win 98 for crashing irreversibly. M$
are powerful when they can prevent us from having
a conversation on a telephone - even without
a bloody Window in sight. Parasites should never
be underestimated.
MadPole:
Oh ! Modem blew up answer machine! Never heard
that one before! Yes....blowing one's answer
machine by using Windows operating system...
The power of Bill Gates.....
Why do Americans spend so much money of those
bleedingly expensive Cruise missiles - wouldn't
be cheaper to equip Serbs with "state of the
art" technology ?! Imagine Army Control Centre
running on Win 95 with field troops equipped
with palm computers running Windows CE! They
wouldn't last 2 weeks!
eadon:
The US army is dependant on Win NT. The navy
kited out their ships with entrance level cheap
PCs and NT and then the system crashed paralysing
a war boat for 3 embarrassing days, or something.
Big fuss about it. The bug was a divide by zero
error apparently. My calculator handles divide
by 0 and costs a fiver. NT cost billions and
brings down a naval vessel.
MadPole:
Bill Gates is worth billions and billions. But
what the hell does this mean? Can he go to the
bank and say: "I would like to withdraw all
my money - could you load it into my lorry please?".
How much money does HE actually OWNS. How much
money is HIS? Could HE really buy another country?
eadon:
Gates couldn't get his hands on all his cash
straight away. Again this shows just how nebulous
the concept of money has become. To get his
money he would have to sell all his shares in
M$. This would probably cause M$ to devalue
at light speed, meaning his shares would be
worth less. So he wouldn't be able to get as
many dollars. If he sold his shares slowly he
would get more money than if he sold them quickly.
So we have a concept of velocity. He is worth
one thing if given a day but a much larger figure
if given ten years or a lifetime.
MadPole:
Perhaps the biggest effect Micro$oft had on
the world has got very little to do with computers
at all! Micro$oft increased the tempo of economics
and every single business, whether they used
computers or not, had to follow.
eadon:
I must pitch in. As I see it the speed of the
economy is due to speed of communications networks
in general and Internet/commercial computer
systems in particular. M$ is crap at all of
these. It is shit at comms. It didn't understand
the web and tried to kill it. It is still not
improving the web. Others are doing that. And
it has little presence in enterprise computing.
That is the domain of IBM Oracle and EDS amongst
others. M$ is actually extremely slow. It has
invented bugger all and its products are always
late. Look at win2000: still 32 bit and not
in sight.
MadPole:
Yes I agree but strongly disagree! You understood
me and You understood me not. Microsoft is responsible
for speed. But I agree - not in the computer
world. In business world. And business world
dictated the rest. Business was before computers.
But it is "hen or egg" discussion.
Murdoch is the best example - he is doing EXACTLY
the same .. blah blah blah... And he HAS defined
the future very clearly as well: he stops transmitting
analogue in 2003. Government intends to transmit
analogue for the next 15 years. Will they? I
can bet money that they won't! If Murdoch has
got his way with free decoders nobody will even
know what word "analogue" means in 2005. One
man changing the future. Today. This very moment.
And that's guaranteed!
eadon:
Business being fast is not due to M$. The opposite
is true. Speed owes more to companies like IBM,
3Com, Web companies etc. M$ are a slow operation.
They are effective because they have grown big.
They are a slow but massive steam roller. They
crush superior vehicles like Ferraris because
the are bigger and have illegally pinched the
engine to use in more steam rollers. Murdoch
got influential by dumbing everything down.
But he went digital which is far sighted, unlike our clueless governments.
MadPole:
Micro$oft's is a truly open minded and intuitive
software - like a woman - when she says "yes"
she in fact means "no", but only on occasions
when she does not mean "yes". Intuition is THE
ONLY key to understand a woman. And Micro$oft's
software of course.
eadon:
Intuitive means yes when says no! Good one!
Flash of brilliance! You were a bit too intuitive
about M$ software products.
MadPole:
Computers are useless in maths - which is quite
a shock considering that that is what they were
invented for!
MadPole:
With introduction of M$ Windows the whole world
witnessed for the first time introduction of
the "human" operating system - ie. operating
system based on chance rather than science or
logic. Below You will find M$'s instructions
on how to build VB DLLs. This is not a joke.
Check for yourself on: MSDN -> VB Documentation
-> Index -> DLLs -> Base Address box:
Setting the Base Address The default value is
&H11000000 (285,212,672).
If you neglect to change this value, your component
will conflict with every other in-process component
compiled using the default. Staying well away
from this address is recommended.
How?
Use a Good Random Number Generator Because there
is no way to know what base addresses might
be chosen by other in-process components your
users might employ, the best practice is to
........ choose an address at random! So the
secret is out! All this time wasted for testing,
debugging, analysing, rebooting and reformatting
- when good Random Number Generator would solve
all those problems!
Got any
rants on any subject you wish? Please send
them to Jim.
Thanks.
The dialogue
on this page took place May to Novermber 1999.
Add your comment to this page
 | | | | |
| From: |
Jim | Subject: | 2002-12-08 18:40:03 |
| | | | |
| From: |
MadPole | Subject: | 2004-04-15 15:00:38 |
| | | | |
| From: |
MadPole | Subject: | 2004-04-15 15:18:11 |
| | | | |
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