T
thanatoid
Why? If he did, you could throw a Molotov cocktail - or at least
a stinkbomb - through his open window once in a while.
(Yes, I know, I wasn't invited. Sorry.)
a stinkbomb - through his open window once in a while.
(Yes, I know, I wasn't invited. Sorry.)
T
thanatoid
Actually, I totally agree, 1,000%. My first laser printer
cartridge lasted 8 years, and I even printed several entire
manuals during that time! When I "print a directory's contents",
it is always to a file. I have many directories and LOTS of
partitions (I used to have 16 at one time, on a 40GB drive). I
often work with the contents to get things /totally/ organized.
(Partitions help organize things but there can never be enough
organization ;-)
The argument is that Windows provides a lot of absolutely
useless crap the sole purpose for the existence of which seems
keeping Far Eastern computer manufacturing economy in good
shape, does not provide, or removes, useful things (cardfile
being one example, and when I played with Vista for a few hours,
I could NOT find a way of removing a desktop icon once created -
maybe there is a way, but it certainly is NOT easier than in the
previous versions), and does not allow for some rather basic
things.
IMO, "printing" a directory, either to a file (which is what I
usually do) or on paper, is a fairly basic function which can
come in handy, especially since what MS claims is a file
manager, WE, does not allow you to do /anything/, AFAIAC. If you
look at Total Commander (in which, as I mentioned, printing a
directory's contents is a simple menu item, and a new directory
can be created and a bunch of files moved there with about 4 key
presses) and other similar products (which allow you to do
things which either can not be done in WE at all, or with a LOT
of trouble, you realize that Windows is really crippled. Whether
by stupidity, or ignorance, I have not been able to figure out.
Having heard all the great things about Win7, I started visiting
this group, and I am discovering a lot of unhappiness with the
"miracle version". Disappointing, but not /really/ surprising. I
guess deep down I remain rather naive.
G
Gene E. Bloch
Mostly, I was riffing on your thanaroid
It was the best I could do with the brain available to me.
The stumbling thing relates to a major hobby of mine, international folk
dancing, coupled with my Americanized pronunciation of Bloch, of course.
The fumbling? Who knows...
T
thanatoid
NEEDLESS TO SAY, THIS:
So I have it on the left, it takes up hardly any space, and it
is NOT set to autohide because I don't want to wait for it to
show up when it feels like it. It is simply invisible unless I
WANT to see it - manually.
So, again, the taskbar is on the left, "always on top" and
"autohide" UNchecked, and whatever I am doing covers it up.
Simple. If I need to see the taskbar, INSTANTLY, I press Ctl.
(Although that may very well no longer work either. It WAS
useful, after all.)
SHOULD SAY:
(...) If I need to see the taskbar, INSTANTLY, I press the
Windows key. (...)
WEASELLY EXCUSE
I have been doing it for so long and I don't look at the keys,
and I'm getting older and stupider.
Of course, pressing Ctl does nothing.
ADDITIONAL DISCLAIMER
Not that anyone appears to have bothered to read this post,
especially the part addressing the OP's problem.
So I have it on the left, it takes up hardly any space, and it
is NOT set to autohide because I don't want to wait for it to
show up when it feels like it. It is simply invisible unless I
WANT to see it - manually.
So, again, the taskbar is on the left, "always on top" and
"autohide" UNchecked, and whatever I am doing covers it up.
Simple. If I need to see the taskbar, INSTANTLY, I press Ctl.
(Although that may very well no longer work either. It WAS
useful, after all.)
SHOULD SAY:
(...) If I need to see the taskbar, INSTANTLY, I press the
Windows key. (...)
WEASELLY EXCUSE
I have been doing it for so long and I don't look at the keys,
and I'm getting older and stupider.
Of course, pressing Ctl does nothing.
ADDITIONAL DISCLAIMER
Not that anyone appears to have bothered to read this post,
especially the part addressing the OP's problem.
T
Twayne
In
though since there are very few new machines available anywhere that still
offers XP.
HTH,
Twayne`
I think a lot of people agree with you on wn7 though. It's worth learningthanatoid said:
though since there are very few new machines available anywhere that still
offers XP.
HTH,
Twayne`
B
Bob I
Seems the same thing was said a couple years after XP came out, about
Win98SE <wink>
D
DanS
So, you're completely willing to use TransText, a *third-
party* utility tha has to run at startup, and always stay
running, just to get transparent background behind the text on
the desktop icons, but are bitching and moaning about not
being able to print a dir listing w/o using a third-party
utility?
Here's a hint......you can use the same method that provides
the 'Command Prompt Here' context menu entry to create a
'Print Directory Listing' or 'Create Directory Listing File'
so in Explorer, when you right-click a 'Folder', the context
menu will have this option, and it could simply run a batch
file that runs: dir > dir.txt in that right-clicked current
directory.
It's certainly not anything "3rd party", nor a program of any
kind that needs to be running all the time.
It also certainly isn't rocket surgery.
It does however, assume you know what a batch file is.
E
Ed Cryer
Have you ever got entangled with someone in real life who just loves
confrontation? Paranoid personalities who seem to latch onto
muck-slinging with great joy?
There are people like that. I've come across a few. I've come to
recognise the type, and take early avoiding action. They are obviously
deeply scarred and traumatised; probably by some unresolved conflict in
an early personal relationship with mum or dad. And this infects their
whole psyche; and demands to be played out time after time after time.
Well, the Net with its anonymity must be a God-send for such types. They
can play it out to their heart's content; try, try and try again to work
it through and resolve it; try and try to kill or annul the offending
trauma.
When you've encountered a few of them you get a bit too wary. And that's
what happened with you. You just turned up with a name that suggests
some dreary film by a Scandinavian film-maker from the mid 20th century,
lambasted Win7 in a Win7 forum, and seeemed to delight in the opposition.
I'm not quite sure just how I came to see you differently. There's
something of high intelligence that came through, but I can't say just
what. After all there are deeply scarred people with extremely high IQs.
Perhaps you can tell me. I find life supremely interesting; that's what
gives me my taste for it all and keeps me going.
Ed
D
DanS
<SNIP>
I have just a couple points to make after reading most of your
posts in this thread......
1) Why would *anyone*, *need* to spend $3000 with every
Windows release to upgrade their computer? I don't know where
you shop, but it cetainly isn't anywhere I've been. Yes, you
*could* spend that amount of money, to got the fastest &
newest & biggest of everything, but......I just upgraded my
sons PC, and got a dual-core AMD 3Ghz processor w/fan, MB, and
2 gigs of RAM for $150, to go into his existing case and using
his existing drives.
2) You are nothing but a big cry-baby. I'm sorry it took you
*years* to figure out how to tweak Windows98 to be useable "to
your liking", but sadly (too you) Windows98 is gone. Dead. I
use a Win98 machine, at work, in a utility-only roll using it
only as a RS232 terminal and printing text files from it. And
yes, I installed TransText, and also the free version of
WindowBlinds too that runs on 98.
3) Since you admittedly haven't even used Windows7 at all, and
haven't used XP for more than 10 minutes, do you think you
have enough knowledge to be able to state *ANY* *valid*
opinion about them....at all ? I think not. Your opinions of
what you have virtually no experience with are meaningless to
anyone that does have that knowledge, and they, I, will, have
dismiss(ed) you as a crackpot.
I just got into it in a Linux newsgroup a few weeks ago when
one DLU started going off about how bad Windows is, all
versions, up to and including 7, yet he then admitted to not
using anything past 98 either, at all.
4) You, once again, had spent years learning to tweak 9x,
using 100(s) of 'tweaks' available from various sources, and
what, XP, Vista, and 7 have no tweaks available ?
Well, here's a single page w/....I'll say over 600 tweaks, for
Windows XP.... http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm
for which I use(d) about 30 every time I installed XP for
someone. I'm not familiar with a single page that has such an
extensive tweaks d/l for Vista or 7, however, but that's a
moot point anyway......
........since you seem to be afraid of change....of any kind.
Again, don't even reply if you're going to start telling me
whats wrong with all the versions of Windows you've never used
and have no experience with, because, as I've told you, not
having that knowledge, your opinion is worth less than what I
just saw my dog drop on the lawn that I'll have to pick up
before cutting the lawn.
G
Gene E. Bloch
A very positive approach...
Now I have to think about my reactions to thanatoid
If you don't know the meaning of thanatos (I can't tell from what you
wrote), look up thanatopsis in a decent dictionary - or maybe online
T
thanatoid
That's not what I use, but I know there are several.
Yes, taking up 348 bytes of RAM. How the machine doesn't
crash all the time is a mystery. And it took me a few weeks to
figure it out, but I finally managed to get it in the startup
group.
I have NO PROBLEM with third-party software. In fact, if not
for third-party software, ALL versions of Windows would be
completely useless to anyone except idiots who are happy with
what they get out of the box and believe that whatever home page
IE is preset to is where you
HAVE to start your internet, excuse me, "web" session, that a
song or a drawing is a "document", etc., and who /like/ being
asked whether they are sure they want to press a key. There is
not a /single/ piece of MS software on any of my computers
besides the OS. Whether the OS itself is software or not is
up to your definition of it.
I'm an aesthete. I'm sorry if that offends you. The blocks of
color (which you couldn't even choose since they are related
to the current color scheme) are butt-ugly. If I'm going to
look at something for up to ten hours a day, I want it to
look nice.
I don't know about "bitching and moaning". It is the one
fairly basic thing which I use for an example (almost
everyone understand what "printing" is, while not everyone
understands what "printing to a file" is, but that's minor)
when I try to convince people of MS's lousy attitude to its
products and its customers. There are many more, but I have
had all those problems solved (mostly with third party
freeware) for so many years I can't even remember just HOW
crippled Windows is "as it comes".
OK, here's another one. Renaming files. If you only have one or
five
files to rename, it's not the end of the world. What if you
are a pro photographer, and have thousands of
photographs with nice descriptive names like "P00274365.jpg"?
What if out of those 183, 20 are of one subject, 19 of
another, 50 of another, and the rest individual unrelated
shots of various stuff. Say you /somehow/ (let's pretend
you're cursed) end up with a group of 127 files in which 2 of
the 25 letters of the root name are wrong (like "Lake Platid
6 S.M. Oct. 2007 001.jpg". How much time would it take you to
get the name of the lake and the A.M. corrected using Windows
Explorer? Or to rename the same 127 files with a combination
of a root name and an ascending alpha-numeric number, like
"Stupid-ass sunrise over a dumb lake which my GF dragged me
out of my nice warm bed to watch on a damp freezing autumn
morning 001.jpg" Be honest, would you even ATTEMPT that in
Windows Explorer? Are you aware there are MANY computer users
who do not even know what Ctl-C, Ctl-V, and Ctl-X /do/, let
alone something like Win-M?
I am sure you could come up with a fun way to spend 20
minutes (or 200 minutes) renaming these files using the
command line, but I prefer using a freeware utility which has
been available since the mid 90's (my version is 3.11 and
it's from 1998). Here, FYI are its options, copied from the
tooltip.txt file:
Preview of ALL changes
Real Time Preview
Directory tree of current drive
List of files from current directory
Number of selected files
Change current drive
File filtering options
File sorting methods
Check here if you are making changes to file's prefix
Check here if you are making changes to file's extension
Check here to insert characters to filenames
Check here to replace characters in filenames
Show files of this type
Randomly select multiple files
Select large blocks of files
Append this to file's prefix (can be left empty)
Append this to file's extension (can be left empty)
Convert file's prefix to UPPER case
Convert file's prefix to lower case
Convert file's extension to UPPER case
Convert file's extension to lower case
Search and apply changes only to file's prefix
Search and apply changes only to file's extension
Search and apply changes to entire filename
Search string within filename backward
Case sensitive search
Add a counter to file's prefix
Add a counter to file's extension
Use alphabets for counter
Counter's starting value (numerical or alphabetical value)
Counter's increment (numerical value only)
Insert this string to filename (can be empty)
Insert selected string at position #
Insert selected string before the searched string
Insert selected string after the searched string
String to search for in filename
String to search in filename for replacement
Replace with string (can be empty)
Replace filename in boundary starting at...
Replace filename in boundary ending at...
Of course, the author is as demented as I am, and NO
file-renaming is ever necessary as long as you use Windows as
it is out of the box and keep the file extensions turned off.
("What's an /extension/, dad?")
The above list is just one of hundreds if not thousands of
reasons I wrote this sentence which I occasionally insert
into posts about Microsoft and their "software". I am certain
you will just love it, so I am including it here:
Windows Explorer is NOT a file manager. It is a torture
device whose primary function is to prevent a new computer
user from understanding the basic principles of file and
directory organization, to keep him/her as ignorant as
possible, and to allow only the most basic of functions, the
execution of which is designed to be as troublesome as
possible.
Anyway - back to transparent text/colors. Yes, because
transparent (you forgot /any color/ - "transparent", AFA
MS understand that term, has been available since XP, IF
you are willing to live with white text with a black shadow)
text is a nice option, but it is not as
essential as printing a directory's contents can be, whether
on paper or to a file.
Personally, I find the "shadow behind text" style as
unpleasant as I found frames (fortunately now out of fashion,
although I remember days when a "web-designer's" skills were
measured by how many frames s/he could stuff into a single
page) and as I now find the tons of javascript which take
longer to DL than the actual content of many pages.
I prefer an actual file manager, so I haven't ever run WE under
XP (and run it about once a year
in 98SEL) so I have to plead a certain amount of ignorance
here, but I am not at all sure ANY user could do it. I am
pretty sure adding "print file list in ascending/descending
alpha order" to right-click functionality is not a
three-mouse-clicks operation. (It IS, however, a matter of
pressing a few keys in Total Commander.) I don't think I
would know how to do it, but I'd have to reboot into XP and
check.
(...)
OK. done. I don't have the 'Command Prompt Here' context menu
entry in XP and I wouldn't know how to create it. I am an end
user, not a programmer, and had I started with computers 10
instead of 20 years ago, I probably would not know what a batch
file is, either. Something tells me that people who have never
touched a keyboard until they got their Win7 laptop wouldn't
know this stuff either. Win7 (like all the others before it, but
that's another story) is supposed to be "user-friendly" or as
some say, "idiot-proof".
Anyway, I appreciate you providing me with this info, but my
file manager, Total Commander. prints any directory's contents
with a 2-key shortcut, and if I need a
customized listing which includes options of file info,
asc./desc. sorting by 6 options, etc., I use a $20
third-party utility.
No one runs a directory printing or a file renaming program
all the time (although if they were included with Windows,
they would take 20 MB of RAM, and they WOULD run all the time
- not unlike about one third of bloated processes of highly
questionable value which we have had to suffer with since XP
came out - except those use so much RAM everyone just had to
get new computers). And even if you DID run them all the time,
the 2 exes (combined) are under 500KB and use 4 MB of RAM.
How much RAM does "Aero" use, and how crucial do you find it
vs. being able to rename files or print file lists?
And the transparent icon text program is a 20K exe which uses
348 bytes of RAM. You wouldn't even know it was running on a
486 with 16MB of RAM!
It /could/ be considered brain science, though.
Sigh. I know what a batch file is, and have a couple of
simple ones I wrote which I use every day, but I am not a
programmer, so why should I reinvent the wheel when others
already built better ones? And, as I mentioned to someone
else, ask a young person who just got their first laptop from
his/her parents what a command line or a batch file is, and
get back to me.
T
thanatoid
<snip>
I agree with some parts of what you say and disagree with
others. I feel I /should/ mention that I really don't take
internet contact seriously and basically do it because I like to
hear myself type (literally, I have an old clicky keyboard with
actual switches under the keys) and I am too lazy to do anything
more worthwhile.
AFA finding life interesting, I wish I could say the same. I
have a terrible memory, a short attention span, and find reading
books far more interesting than talking to people, unless they
happen to be beautiful charming women, but none of those will
talk to me any more unless I pay them.
There are a few things I am curious about, but they mostly
belong to the category of "none of your business, citizen", and
even if any of the truth /ever/ comes out, it will probably be
after I am dead. Most of the things that /really/ bugged me I
have finally found out the answers to (like why Walkman
batteries in the 80s lasted 2-5 hrs while a small transistor
radio with a SPEAKER would run for weeks, sometimes months).
I really don't know what keeps me going, since I am totally
useless to everyone except my cat and very tired and bored of my
life. Well, I don't really /have/ a life - if I did, I wouldn't
argue about stupid things with unknown entities on Usenet.
I don't have the time and patience it would require to reply to
your actual and implied questions, but if you really want to
find out about me, do a gg search for the nym. Mainly
24hoursupport.helpdesk, a few years ago news.software.readers
and alt.suicide.holiday. (At this stage, I find talking about
depression and ways of dealing with it totally pointless, so I
don't visit there anymore, while the regulars in n.s.r. are
rather uninteresting and quite demented.)
May I add that there are FAR more interesting things to research
than my pathetic life, although I suppose it depends on who you
are and what you are really after.
I agree with some parts of what you say and disagree with
others. I feel I /should/ mention that I really don't take
internet contact seriously and basically do it because I like to
hear myself type (literally, I have an old clicky keyboard with
actual switches under the keys) and I am too lazy to do anything
more worthwhile.
AFA finding life interesting, I wish I could say the same. I
have a terrible memory, a short attention span, and find reading
books far more interesting than talking to people, unless they
happen to be beautiful charming women, but none of those will
talk to me any more unless I pay them.
There are a few things I am curious about, but they mostly
belong to the category of "none of your business, citizen", and
even if any of the truth /ever/ comes out, it will probably be
after I am dead. Most of the things that /really/ bugged me I
have finally found out the answers to (like why Walkman
batteries in the 80s lasted 2-5 hrs while a small transistor
radio with a SPEAKER would run for weeks, sometimes months).
I really don't know what keeps me going, since I am totally
useless to everyone except my cat and very tired and bored of my
life. Well, I don't really /have/ a life - if I did, I wouldn't
argue about stupid things with unknown entities on Usenet.
I don't have the time and patience it would require to reply to
your actual and implied questions, but if you really want to
find out about me, do a gg search for the nym. Mainly
24hoursupport.helpdesk, a few years ago news.software.readers
and alt.suicide.holiday. (At this stage, I find talking about
depression and ways of dealing with it totally pointless, so I
don't visit there anymore, while the regulars in n.s.r. are
rather uninteresting and quite demented.)
May I add that there are FAR more interesting things to research
than my pathetic life, although I suppose it depends on who you
are and what you are really after.
T
thanatoid
All that nick means is that I am somewhat obsessed with death,
especially my own, since I hate myself and my life.
T
thanatoid
I admit I tend to exaggerate, but quite a few people DO spend a
LOT. I still use a 1997 computer with 95B on it for certain
things like scanning, writing, and image editing, and I am quite
happy with it. I /do/ use a 6 yr. old 2GHz machine for internet
access, but only for about the last 3 years - before that I was
happily using the 33.6 modem on the 1997 unit and only used the
2GHz machine for music conversion, since even I got tired of
waiting 6 hrs for a 5 min. wav to be converted to another
format.
But that is exactly what all salesmen and many people want - or
are brainwashed to think it is necessary.
Very commendable. The computer industry hates people like you.
I've been called MANY things on the Usenet, but this is a first.
Thank you.
Hmmm. Every single word of what I wrote and you have read was
done in 98SEL. Dead? Looks just fine to me. Of course, I am not
Steve Ballmer.
The reason it took years is because once you get something to
work the way it should, it brings the possibility of making
something related work better than it does - if it even works to
begin with. I still find a useful utility every few weeks. It's
a never-ending process.
WindowBlinds is the most ridiculous piece of totally useless
software I have ever tried. It's one thing to dye your hair
blue, and quite another to insist every strand be a slightly
different shade.
No, I believe I said I have not used it for more than about 100
hours, and that after 10 minutes I feel like smashing the
computer with a hammer. I only installed XP because of an analog
video capture card which has no pre-XP (or non-Windows) drivers.
(Needless to say, I have yet to make any use of it. The tapes
will probably be goo before I get around to it. But no one
cares, not even I.)
Like everyone else, I have both an asshole, and an opinion about
most things.
I have no problem with that.
If I was more mathematically inclined, and considered computers
the equivalent of what muscle cars (and customizing them) was in
the good old days, I would have undoubtedly gone Linux or BeOS
years ago. Alas, I am not that smart and care more about what I
actually do with the computer than what language it talks to
itself in.
From what I have read in this group just in the few weeks I have
been visiting, there appear to be things which simply can not be
done which were possible on earlier versions of Windows (don't
ask for specifics, I have a terrible memory, you can check the
threads yourself).
The 100 hours or so, which I have largely spent trying to tweak
XP to some level of usability, have proven to me that XP was
designed to be totally incomprehensible and largely untweakable.
Even TweakUI, the MOST basic tool without which, IMHO, a Windows
computer is almost unusable, does VERY little to deal with the
hundreds of annoyances XP brought us.
How dramatic. BTW, I am not afraid of change if it is for the
better.
I am aware of Kelly's and many other tweak pages, but none of
them told me how to eliminate all the useless user accounts. No
one else ever touches this computer, and while I can handle
/having/ to have more than one user account, I can NOT deal with
the idiotic and absurdly redundant structure of "documents and
settings", and the fact programs install themselves wherever
they want (including in one or another of the "documents and
settings" directories instead of in "program files") and only a
few ask whether you "want to install this program just for
yourself or for every user". This makes creating a usable start
menu totally impossible, and finding things /almost/ impossible,
certainly extremely time-consuming. And I thought "My Documents"
was bad.
If YOU can tell me how to consolidate all that garbage into ONE
user account and how to make a usable start menu, I will be
externally grateful. I know my 98SEL machine will not last
forever (although my 95B machine IS almost 15 yrs old. (Maybe
almost 14. I told you I was lousy at math.)
I won't because I already said what I have to say. I can't say
more, because, as you so sagely pointed out, I have no
experience with them.
There are people that enjoy eating dogshit. Ever seen "Pink
Flamingos"?
B
BillW50
That pretty much explains your view on computers and software are much
different than most people. As if you hate yourself, you aren't going to
like others nor computers either.
E
Ed Cryer
If you want an even better reference look up the opening scene ofA very positive approach...
Now I have to think about my reactions to thanatoid
If you don't know the meaning of thanatos (I can't tell from what you
wrote), look up thanatopsis in a decent dictionary - or maybe online
Euripides' "Alcestis". Thanatos himself turns up and speaks.
Ed
E
Ed Cryer
You interest me because you're ready to look at life. That's my first
test for "interesting person"; someone who won't back off from aspects
of it, nor just sweep them under the carpet.
I read too; I read in many languages, including ancient ones; and I
follow cosmology and physics as closely as I can.
Have you seen the film "Agora"? About Hypatia, the last philosopher of
old Alexandria. That's me; open enquiry versus the philistine ignorance
of the mob.
Ed
T
Twayne
In
opinionated miisdirection, did you? After your third misinfo I just hit
CTRL-END.
You didn't seriously think anyone was going to read that amount ofthanatoid said:
opinionated miisdirection, did you? After your third misinfo I just hit
CTRL-END.
T
Twayne
In
Then you're in the wrong place to find either sympathy or empathy.thanatoid said:
T
thanatoid
How much did your mail-order psych degree cost you?
That I can't argue with, hatred of oneself does color one's
perception of reality in general.
Carry on, happy shiny. Things are going WELL in the world!