The Tech Random Crap Thread

GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
I accidentally installed XP SP2 instead of SP3 on the media PC. Sooooo pretty much nothing after 2010 will run on it, including any version of VLC that can deal with H.x265 :p Oopsie. Guess I better dig up my SP3 CD... ooooorrrrr maybe this is a good chance to play around with a linux install... or maybe kodi (formerly XBMC).
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

GasBandit said:
I accidentally installed XP SP2 instead of SP3 on the media PC. Sooooo pretty much nothing after 2010 will run on it, including any version of VLC that can deal with H.x265 :p Oopsie. Guess I better dig up my SP3 CD... ooooorrrrr maybe this is a good chance to play around with a linux install... or maybe kodi (formerly XBMC).
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If you want it to Just Work, any of the flavors of Ubuntu will do. If you want to build your Linux chops a bit more, Arch is very nice. And the rolling release policy means that as long as it's updated, you need never do a full install again. If you are on the masochistic side and don't mind starting an install in the evening and having it wrap up during your morning coffee, there's always Gentoo.

(I poop you not. If something like Chrome or Firefox had an update on my Gentoo machine, I'd start it before bed and let it compile overnight. Even on an i5, it could take hours.)
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
DarkAudit said:
If you want it to Just Work, any of the flavors of Ubuntu will do. If you want to build your Linux chops a bit more, Arch is very nice. And the rolling release policy means that as long as it's updated, you need never do a full install again. If you are on the masochistic side and don't mind starting an install in the evening and having it wrap up during your morning coffee, there's always Gentoo.

(I poop you not. If something like Chrome or Firefox had an update on my Gentoo machine, I'd start it before bed and let it compile overnight. Even on an i5, it could take hours.)
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I'll probably go with Ubuntu, if I can't find my SP3 cd within a couple minutes of searching. I'm not looking for another project that will eat into my RimWorld time :p
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

GasBandit said:
I'll probably go with Ubuntu, if I can't find my SP3 cd within a couple minutes of searching. I'm not looking for another project that will eat into my RimWorld time :p
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Then yeah, Ubuntu, Kubunto (KDE), or Xubuntu (XFCE) is the way to go. Gentoo would swallow your RimWorld time whole. :p
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

I use a Mac as my daily driver.
And also a WinX PC.
And an iPad and iPhone.
Yes, all of them, daily.

And @GasBandit, if you can't find your SP3 CD, I can always try to send you the package somehow.

--Patrick
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

stienman said:
google "windows xp sp3 iso"
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The ISO is also still available directly from Microsoft...IF you know where to look. That's how I found it, but don't ask me the link, I didn't find it until after who knows how many wrong turns, dead links, redirects, etc., but once you finally find the deep link, the ISO is still at the other end of it.

--Patrick
 
Sara_2814

Sara_2814

DarkAudit said:
I was thinking more along the lines of a Mac as the weapon of choice for most recreational computing. I've got Deluge and VLC for my torrenting and video watching, but I haven't found an equal to Irfanview for my image viewer or Newsbin for USENET yet.
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I use a Mac every day.

What do you use Irfanview for? If you just need to open images, Mac OS comes with Preview (supported file types). If you need to do image editing/converting, I recommend GraphicConverter. It's $40, but it's money well spent. I used it for years, and only stopped using it because I got Photoshop.

I haven't used Usenet in 20+ years, so can't give a direct recommendation, but you're sure to find something in the App Store.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Hah Irfanview... that takes me back.[DOUBLEPOST=1499710583,1499710527][/DOUBLEPOST]
stienman said:
google "windows xp sp3 iso"
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PatrThom said:
The ISO is also still available directly from Microsoft...IF you know where to look. That's how I found it, but don't ask me the link, I didn't find it until after who knows how many wrong turns, dead links, redirects, etc., but once you finally find the deep link, the ISO is still at the other end of it.

--Patrick
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Installing/updating XP is a lot more "interesting" a process than it used to be, given that the registration/validation servers no longer respond to query. I've gotten around it for now by registry-editing WGA's timer keys.
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

I use Irfanview just for image viewing. Unless I missed a setting, Preview doesn't resize from one image to the next, especially when enlarging to fit. So far I'm playing around with Sequential and Xee.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Sara_2814 said:
If you need to do image editing/converting, I recommend GraphicConverter. It's $40, but it's money well spent. I used it for years, and only stopped using it because I got Photoshop.
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I started with Photoshop 5 (not CS5, just 5), moved to GIMP when the OS support ran out, moved to Pixelmator, but lately I've been really impressed with Affiinity Photo.
GasBandit said:
Installing/updating XP is a lot more "interesting" a process than it used to be, given that the registration/validation servers no longer respond to query. I've gotten around it for now by registry-editing WGA's timer keys.
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Yeah, getting the latest update engine to install is a royal pain. You have to install Microsoft Update because Windows Update is no longer supported...it acts like the page has actually been set up to refuse connections from browsers older than Win7.

--Patrick
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

Argh. Dropbox. ICloud Drive. OneDrive. So many different storage methods all winding up on my systems more or less by default.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
Argh. Dropbox. ICloud Drive. OneDrive. So many different storage methods all winding up on my systems more or less by default.
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You know that scene in BttF2 in the "diner" where Regan and Khomeini Headroom are fighting for Marty's attention? That's what it feels like between all the different cloud storage, cloud music, cloud syncing, etc.
That said, I gotta say I'm less likely to recommend OneDrive these days. For reasons.

--Patrick
 
Eriol

Eriol

This is awesome: Microsoft’s default font is at the center of a government corruption case
Accused of illegally profiting from his position since the 1990s, Sharif is now under investigation by the Joint Investigative Team -- a collective of Pakistani police, military, and financial regulators -- after a treasure trove of evidence surfaced with 2016's release of The Panama Papers. In a report obtained by Al Jazeera, investigators recommended a case be filed in the National Accountability Court after concluding there were "significant gap" in Sharif's ability to account for his familial assets. [...] Sharif contends that neither he, nor his family, profited from his position of power, a denial that came under scrutiny today after his daughter and political heir apparent, Maryam Nawaz, produced documents from 2006 that prove her father's innocence. Unfortunately for the Nawaz family, type experts today confirmed the documents were written in Calibri, a font that wasn't available until 2007.
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(Summary pulled from Slashdot) (Bold mine)
No malfeasance from Microsoft here, but amusing how central fonts can be to things.
 
fade

fade

Staff member
GasBandit said:
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Pbbt. Inheritance is awesome if you don't use it for things you shouldn't use it for. That's where people get in trouble. Plus, you can technically do inheritance in C anyway. Just set up a struct full of function pointers and connect them up in your derived struct. It's not enforcable, but that's C for you.
 
strawman

strawman

Wow, those are interesting processors. 2 dies in the chip, 4094 pins (It's a big chip), up to 1TB of memory supported (though good luck getting the eight 128GB memory modules needed).

Hopefully the box is big because it includes the necessary 200W+ cooling solution.

I'll gladly do an unboxing if someone sends me one. It's only $1,000 (list), which is a bargain at $63 per core!

 
PatrThom

PatrThom

It's essentially 2 Ryzen chips bolted together. I'm interested to see how it will perform in real-world usage.
If you're going $ per core, AMD is still the best value, so even if they don't have the best single-thread performance (for things like games), being able to put 32 cores in one socket for only $1k is better than Intel's least expensive 16-core offering, the Xeon Gold 6130, which costs almost $2k and yes, that's the least expensive. The most expensive one (the 6142M) is $6k. AMD is very likely going to be getting a lot of customers.

--Patrick
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
That'd make for a sweet-as-hell video producing rig, or space engineers dedicated server tho (now that it actually, allegedly, supports multithreading/multicore processing)/
 
strawman

strawman

I just learned about it a day ago. My family sorely needs a plex server, a file server, and I'd tinker with a few other things if I had a server I could just deploy systems to as needed. I'm used to Windows Server, but that's certainly out of range, especially if you want to do clusters and high availability.

The fact that you can get all that with open source software now is pretty amazing.
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

When all you end up doing is running Chrome, Deluge, SABnzbd, and VLC, in the end what does it matter what OS you run it on?
 
Eriol

Eriol

Denbrought said:
It would matter a whole lot if you managed to run those on TempleOS.
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DarkAudit said:
Find me one person not connected to the author who runs that unironically. Just one. :p

"Holy C"? You have got to be fucking kidding me. :facepalm:
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I didn't "get" it from Denbrought's original comment. Then Dark's comment reminded me that I had heard of it before... probably in some type of satirical list.

Well played Den.
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

Eriol said:
I didn't "get" it from Denbrought's original comment. Then Dark's comment reminded me that I had heard of it before... probably in some type of satirical list.

Well played Den.
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I hadn't heard of it until today. Apparently the author has serious mental issues, but is also brilliant at the same time.
 
Denbrought

Denbrought

DarkAudit said:
Find me one person not connected to the author who runs that unironically. Just one. :p
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Alec Murphy, for one, uses (and writes software/drivers) for it as a hobby.

There's others scattered around, mostly the kind of people who like unusual programming environments or have a (non-malign) appreciation for its strangeness.
 
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