Fidcal

Yes, if you stop Cortana in Task Manager then it restarts within seconds. Shutup10 I couldn't understand the settings but StopUpdates10 is working fine! It's running in the background constantly monitoring Windows. In Settings - Windows Update the status shows as 'Your device is up to date. Last checked 07/02/2019 16:07. But it's definitely not true. If I run the StopUpdates10 control program in the start menu it shows Windows Update is blocked with below it a big button: 'Restore Windows Updates' so I can permit Windows to update if I wish then block it again - or leave it to never update. It's been no problem. In my Firewall, I've also refused permission to everything of M$oft's except: svchost (set to local only) and system (local only.) That alone blocked updates but Windows still tried. Now it doesn't even try because it thinks it's up to date. Forever. StopUpdates10 is really simple because there are no settings except Stop or Restore Updates.

This is my concept of an ideal OS user interface set up to serve the user and not the provider. I call it The Void but it would be delivered with a default UI similar to Windows 10 for the sake of familiarity with most users who just want to click and go. More knowledgeable users could quickly reconfigure the UI how they want it, and this is what they'd get when they do so: No desktop. The concept of a desktop as a launchpad was always a bad idea. Let me illustrate with a short story. A factory owner grew tired of chasing assistants to carry out tasks so he called in a few workmen from the factory floor to build him a new desk with loads of buttons on top. One button would summon his secretary, another his vice-president, and so on. They made and installed his new desk but once it was cluttered with his in-tray and out-tray, his blotting pad, keyboard, monitor, desk tidy, and so on, he had trouble getting at the buttons. He had his workmen bring up a couple of the bots from the factory so now when he wanted to find a button on his desk he first pressed a button on the side of his desk and the bot arms swung into action to move the clutter away to a side table - restoring the clutter afterwards. You see how foolish the above notion would be. But that's what we have with Windows. The Void begins with a swirling black cloud of nothing. It's not a desktop but a creation space. You can right click it anywhere and a menu lets you create any pane (panel, rectangle, window, box - choose the word you prefer but they are the same thing) or choose defaults. A pane is just a blank rectangle but you can right click it and configure it to be a menu or button holder or a mixture. Each item in a pane is simply a link to an app, a doc, a service, whatever. There are defaults so you might add all installed apps to a menu in one go but also remove or hide what you don't and add individual stuff if you want. You can configure the pane and everything in it to be any colour, any font, any size, any type, any transparency any border, any anything - you design the style - either to your preferred defaults or individually. When I say 'any' I really mean 'ANY' - not a range defined by someone else. You can resize or move any pane anywhere and optionally dock it with any other pane on any side. You can lock it or make it hide and appear - you set all the rules how it would do that. EVERYTHING is optional. Anything you object to can be fixed. Too much like hard work? Right click the void, select say, 'defaults - similar to - Win 7' and you're good to go, plus you can tweak it any which way. All help is at the relevant point of use by right clicking. You won't normally have to use a separate search or scour the internet like now. Example: a couple of days ago I wanted to change a drive letter. I knew it had to be done through Disk Management but couldn't remember the route to it. I entered Disk Management in the Win 10 search. It suggested formatting partitions (which was the correct route to the task but not very helpful if you didn't already know) or search the web. A more useful OS would link to anything drive-related by right clicking the drive in a file manager where you'd naturally first look. Most commonly there might be six main panes: a full screen picture as background, a service menu launcher, a start menu launcher, a running tasks manager, a task launcher, and a system tray - but there's is nothing special about each pane because you decide what goes where. If you like desktop icons then you could make the picture pane sit always at the back and permit it to accept shortcuts just like a conventional desktop. Or you can just use the task launcher pane. The user is never restricted to some style or plan enforced by the provider. Not mass surveillance. Not bloatware pre-installed. Not updates. Not Users. Not logins. Not invisible passwords. YOU choose. You want multiple users? Fine, you add that property. Keep passwords visible? YOU decide to include what you love and exclude what you hate. Why should M$oft decide for you? Then change the style in each successive Windows or update? A default is fine, but give us freedom over everything. Help can always be reached by right clicking at the point of use. Ultimately leading as a last resort to every conceivable keyword that might enter your head so you can find what you want. People now think it's normal to spend hours doing searches for the simplest task. I say, right click and follow the bread crumbs and virtually always find the info you need in 20 seconds or less. It IS possible! It needs resources, imagination, intelligence, creativity, integrity, and a desire to serve instead of making your customers serve you. Clearly M$oft don't have any of those qualities except the first: DOLLARS, but they're keeping those.

Yes, this is why I said previously in this thread that before Linux can become really popular it needs a new Messiah for the Common Man who can speak plain English and provide a distribution that is EASY and FLEXIBLE with help always right at the point of use. Then it might really take off - well given enough software of course, that's the other deal breaker. I appreciate the current developers have limited resources and are working for free (I applaud that ethic) but I'm just describing the results of that situation and why Linux is not as mainstream as it could be. I just figured out why my old Linux dvds wouldn't boot - the security in the BIOS. (would have been nice if the Ubuntu people had mentioned that on the download page.) Anyway, I fixed that and downloaded the latest Ubuntu to remind myself. Pretty much how I recall - very limited configuration. I managed to get the dock bar to the bottom of my right monitor and made the icons as large as they allowed but it's fixed. The dock does not hide unless a Window is moved over it and the bar at the top of the main screen seems to be permanently visible and permanently bolted to the top of the screen. It seems there are many distros each configured how the developers like instead of letting the user set it how they like. This reminds me of the difference between an off-the-peg suit and one that is tailored to fit: chose the one that most nearly fits you but is never ideal. Am I wrong to aspire after an ideal OS? I think maybe I will post my notes... <evil laugh>

Mmm... that's not my memory of it, although I think it was more configurable than others. I tried half a dozen distributions last year and I think I narrowed it down to Xubuntu. I just dug out my dvds of them but the Ubuntu disc gave two errors and stopped during bootup while the Xubuntu was completely ignored. Both those discs worked last year on my previous PC. If I go to the boot menu Ubuntu is listed (with a weird name) but not Xubuntu. Anyway, I'm just downloading the latest Ubuntu image to give it another look. Likely my idea of configurability is different to yours Orb. I had some fantasy notes somewhere of what my ideal OS UI might look like. Maybe I'll dig it out and bore everybody with it... Not that I'm measuring Ubuntu against it but I never understand why providers put their own arbitary limits in.

Looking back at the current poll results, I can't help but feel more and more strongly that if a few knowledgeable enthusiasts produced a more configurable, and more easily configured version with a really idiot's step-by-step guide to setting up, downloading, and installing software, and possibly also how to easily configure a dual boot system that many, many more might take up Linux as their main system and just boot up Windows for some games that won't run under Linux. A step-by-step guide is what I started with the Dark Mod guide on the Wiki - less theory and more do, show, and give examples. I learnt that lesson years ago when I studied a low-level programming book of theory for months before giving up having learned almost nothing but binary, operators, registry operations and so on. Fast forward six months and two simple pages in a monthly computer magazine opened up a whole new world for me with step-by-step examples that a child could follow. It grieves me that there is so much potential wasted.

If you're happily running Win 7 then no need to abandon it just because M$oft no longer support it - that just means you don't get updates or help from them and probably won't be able to download a recovery image. I'm still running XP on an old PC in my back room as a standby. It saved my arse when my main PC crashed out; I could still go online, get email, and order a new PC with Win 10

Yeah, now you mention it, I see there's only one of my restore points still there a few days old. There are two others but they were made covertly by M$oft before an uninstall and before a new install. No doubt they will disappear soon. Even so, all three are 'hidden' from a casual view. M$oft don't even have any direct link that I can see to restore; you have to pretend you're going to Create a Restore Point and that's where it offers to restore. But it still hides everything but the last restore point until you look further down for a link to others. Even then (!) you only see the last restore point! You have to then click again to 'show others'. Finally you see the few there are (if there are any.) Clearly they don't want you to know any of this but simply click and leave it to M$oft. Problem is, they cater for the blundering masses who don't know what they are doing, and for the most expert who do. Slightly knowledgeable thinkers like myself in the middle struggle. We neither want to blunder blindly, but neither can we easily find what we need.

What Linux needs is a new, intelligent Messiah. She'll create a new more flexible distro (snigger) which the user can configure how he likes, but more importantly, she will bestow upon her disciples a new Linux Bible to guide us on the path. And yeah, there shalt be no weeping nor wailing nor fucking head scratching, but joy shalt fill the land and her users shalt prosper verily. On the first day shalt thou install, by the second all is happily configured, by the sixth thou shalt have downloaded and have up and running all the essentials, and by the seventh day thou shalt rest from this great work, put up your feet, and enjoy.

Erm... which means in English? That's what I was talking about. Linux users use Linux-speak full of distros and *buntus and DEs. And stick to XFCE and MATE distros as if they are a special kind of group that includes others but I don't know what that is. In other words, Linux users talk as if one is already a knowledgeable Linux user rather than a beginner. Probably because they've been laughed at when they started so they have to use the lingo. Yes, I'd do the same with Windows with regular Windows users, but if a friend who'd only ever used a mobile phone was thinking of getting his first PC, then I'd try to speak more simply about Windows.

I've tried 5 or 6 of the free demo download discs and I'd like to switch to Linux BUT... None of the ones I tried gave quite enough configurability - they were better than Windows but, like M$oft, they still assume they know what's best for you and set limits. Once I got one of them tolerably configured then I tried searching the net and installing. I failed. Over and over. It was a mystery and there's just not enough non-geeky help that I could find. I also recall trying to find a list of software that runs under Wine. At that time I found the only way was to register with Wine. I resent having to join something as the only way to find out if I want it so I said to myself FU! If you're so secretive you don't even have a shop window then I can't be bothered either (Yeah, hassle makes me irritable because it's so bloody unnecessary! Anyway, that was a year or two back. In the last few months I did find a public list.) Anyway it came down to this: Windows is a pain in the arse hassle but there is help out there if you can endure having to search for every damn little thing instead of M$oft making the knowledge available at the point of use. Linux is a pain in the arse hassle for the new user to set up because there is not enough plain-English guidance (that I found before my motivation petered away.) Instruction is a very great skill that very few of us have. It's not enough to know your subject; you need to communicate well. M$oft are notoriously useless but there is (mostly) enough info out on the net. I recall the old days of win 95, 98, XP with a proper indexed guide on your local pc. Even that wasn't enough because you need more keywords not just the keywords that M$oft use. I do recall back in the DOS days using QBasic and then Quick Basic. I wanted to pause a program to wait for a keypress or something. 'Pause' wasn't in the index. 'Wait' referred to listening to ports. 'Halt' was something else I think. Weeks passed... zzz... Somehow I stumbled across 'Sleep'. How the hell can you look up 'Sleep' in an index if you don't know the word? But anyway, a keyword indexed search list is a good method if you enter every possible term you can think of PLUS features that are not even in the software so the user can at least find an entry that says: 'not available'! Now this Cortana thing is not a bad idea but I stamped on that without even trying after hearing how M$oft use it to gather info about you. The search feature almost always ended with it offering to search the net! Hang on, I'm ranting. Back on track. Linux: yes, if there were a good reliable guide and, ideally, more configuration. My ideal OS would be a void where you can set up any number of panels/bars/rectangles to be any size shape or menu or button panel, any font or font size or icon size, any colour, transparency, gradation, shading, imagery etc, and put them where you want, and set the rules you want for how they behave and popup or not (all with a default setup of course.)

At first sight Shutup10 looks comprehensive but confusing. BUTTON OFF - Sharing of handwriting disabled The above appears to be OFF but the 'disabled' shows as part of the descriptive text, as if you need to turn it ON to activate the function of being disabled. In other words, the mode of being disabled is OFF. Yet further down we see... BUTTON ON - App access to user account info disabled The above is the REVERSE of the first one! It appears you have to set it ON to make it disabled. So now I wonder if all those button settings are not yet activated at all but simply recommended? Or has it read in the current settings from the system and is showing them? Or has it already changed anything without asking? (don't think so.) I'll need to give this more thought another time and do a test on one thing at a time - something not too important. I like the idea of what it's doing but I like absolute clarity over something so important. It also indicates it can create restore points. These are good short term but do they know that M$oft delete old restore points without telling you? (Did last time I looked in Win 7 Pro. I set a restore point right from first install of Windows and named it so. Over the next week or so as I installed new stuff I did more restore points. Eventually, M$oft deleted some of the earlier ones without asking.)

Hear, Hear! Capitalism has had thousands of years to evolve from tribesmen trading with each other and other tribes up to the polished, computer-sophisticated methods we have today. It's the best system mankind has at the moment. But just because some other systems get lacklustre results from brief trials does not mean they can't be made to work eventually - for the good of all.

Yeah, definitely interested. Thanks. Downloading...

Some good clips here. It's a while since I saw the Bourne movies but my memory of the first movie - that fight in the Paris hotel room where the other guy ends up going out the window was very good with clear action but the later movies not so good. Why that guy thinks those techniques were better or even good I don't know. He seemed to contradict himself when he said some things were confusing at first until you reviewed them - but that's not how you're supposed to watch movies! Another really good clear fight scene was at the school reunion in Gross Point Blank in the corridor. Very convincing to me (not that I'm an expert but I could see what was happening, and the results of each action made sense.) I think that was done in silence too as I recall, apart from the action noise of course and probably distant sound of music in the main hall.

Okay, thanks for that detailed overview of the current VR scene. I think you hit the nail on the head using the term 'cost' in terms of the downside inconvenience and so on. I've had mild nausea in a couple of normal games (head bobbing in that stealth Alien game set on a space station and temporarily in horse riding in Kingdom Come - which I think I've adjusted to. Red Dead 2 horse riding was OK for me) I get car sick too so clearly I'd be a candidate for nausea in VR - as well as those other problems like eye adjustment, headset discomfort, and so on. I'll keep watch year by year and see what improvements unfold. I hope they all get it to work or it'll get shelved for future decades - bit like 3D movies.

Just wondered if this is a known annoyance - or is it just me. Movie action scenes where all you see are disjointed, out-of-context, jerky flashes of movement: one second, two seconds, half a second, several separate 1/4ths of a second strung together. In a fight scene you don't see any real fight, you see an elbow flash for a tenth of a second, a fist, there's an explosion, metalwork flings across the screen, a face distorted with fear, a car skids. I'm just watching Eagle Eye and it's full of that. Not a great movie but a decent movie spoiled by action on the cheap. Almost anyone could string together this stuff. No need for an expert fight choreographer, just shoot an arm lashing out, a dark figure in a gloomy room running, a gun at someone's head - it's all in the editing. Maybe by replaying the same scene over and over you can figure what actually happened - or just skip over it and see who's left standing. Is there a name for this cheapskate rubbish? I can't search the net for something I can't name or describe. All I get is list of movies that are confusing for other reasons: plot or whatever. Maybe the producer and director think these flashes of disjointed action are clever? Exciting? Or do they know and are short of funds to do the job properly? Okay, I'm cooling off as I type this. Think I'll just delete it. No I won't.

This is not the industrial revolution. This is wonderful movies and games and tv productions being produced almost entirely without humans being involved except to gloat over the profits. Books and scripts and kitchen recipes written by machines. This is accountancy without human accountants; marketing without salesmen; services without supervisors; logging without lumberjacks; hospitals without human medical staff; trains and boats and planes and every kind of craft and vehicle without human drivers; newsfeeds without human writers or editors; building construction without bricklayers, plumbers, electricians, or even architects; restaurants and hotels and shops without staff, chefs, or waiters or any personnel at all. The only thing it has in common with the industrial revolution is that IT - CANNOT - BE - STOPPED. The only choices will be: share the wealth via UBI (or some other system) or bloody revolution. There's a storm coming in the next few decades; best be ready for it. [EDIT. And yes, the machines WILL build and maintain themselves. Those ideas are already being developed.]

This is PC only, right? Does the VR set negate the need for a gaming PC? Or does the VR feed of a high end graphics card in the PC? Let's see, I've got... Processor AMD A4-7210 APU with AMD Radeon R3 Graphics, 1800 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s) Only 4GB RAM I use PS4 for gaming so never intended this pc for gaming.

Thanks for all that detail. First time I found this thread. I had no special expectations but this looks very promising for the future. Just wondering if one can calibrate things like crouching. So maybe stand in front of a chair then sit down to simulate crouching. I crouch a lot in stealth games so it would be really tiring for me to physically crouch for an hour or two of gameplay. I kind of wish that player had faced the other way or appeared in a boxed off area of the video as it split the two sides of my brain to watch him and/or else focus on the scene. Overall, I was interested enough to tolerate him. I didn't worry too much about the horrible lighting because I assumed one could adjust that when actually playing? And I hate total black without ambient light so I'd even prefer wonky blue light. Simplistic gameplay yes, but overall I was impressed that someone had produced such a Thief-like environment in VR. Needs more options for armchair players like myself though.

I think UBI is only very likely. What is absolutely certain is increasing inefficiency in production with less and less employees. No way to stop that. Left without new controls, commerce will profit more and more until it reaches a tipping point where the mass unemployed public don't have any money to buy their goods. UBI would reverse that. Funding for UBI would have to be by spreading that wealth through changes in taxation. The laziest people who settle back with UBI and never work again we already have with us anyway - it's not too difficult to remain on so-called job seeker's allowance indefinitely. Meanwhile, those who wish to work will have more incentive because they won't lose the UBI. Many will work without any additional pay to UBI. What sort of work will there be if most manufacturing and service industries are run primarily by smart devices? All sorts of creative work, much of which will profit society. Wikipedia is an example of people working without pay. So is Dark Mod. Society has benefited from Dark Mod providing free games. Society is richer for it, better for it. All those who have worked on Dark Mod deserve to be paid by UBI at least. Same with fiction and fan fiction which I write. I've had thousands of readers reading my free fiction and raving about it. I do it because I love it just as I loved working on Dark Mod.Some people love to invent stuff even if they can't make any money from it. They'd give their ideas to automatic manufacturing plants to produce and sell. What a great world it would be if everybody just worked on what they love to do anyway and live on UBI paid for by an entirely robotic industry. But I suspect UBI might be just a step towards no currency whatsoever.Who'd need it when production is so efficient the goods could be virtually given away once the fat cats no longer cream off the nation's wealth.

Sounds like ransomware or a protection racket. "Pay for an upgrade or else!" Mind you, I wouldn't mind paying someone else to seize control of Win 10. That's no different to buying a shotgun if you keep getting burgled. That tip for setting as metered is a good one. I did that a couple of days ago. Apparently they don't download so much junk (if I ever allow an update.) Technically I am metered I guess. I get 200GB a month plus half of what's left over from the previous month. It's far more than I need but why should M$oft be allowed to steal from that? My firewall has lots of blockers for stealthy attempts by M$oft and Acer to access the net. Not one of them asked my permission or explained wtf they were doing using my phone and I would never have known without the firewall stopping them.

Well, StopUpdates10 seems to be working. My update page says my Windows is uptodate! And I've seen no more nags! haha! In your face M$oft! I have taken back control! And I can reverse it if I change my mind. I can't say I've totally tamed Win 10 but I've got a border theme similar to earlier Windows, a taskbar that remain hidden and NEVER pops up or down until I press a button, and my own task launcher which is infinitely better and clearer and simpler and infinitely configurable how I want, and NO desktop icons whatsoever except temporarily after an install. Clean, minimal, yet everything at hand. It's taken about six pieces of freeware to achieve it but it's tolerable.

So, the fight begins. I've been blocking updates with my firewall (I think! Can't be certain M$oft have not been sneaking through. Been finding my hdmi tv monitor on sometimes in the morning (pc off) and felt sure I'd turned it off.) Anyway, now I'm getting even more agressive M$oft warnings every hour 'Let's get back on track.... blah blah' with the only options to 'remind me again in an hour' or 'restart and update now'. So I've put it off for an hour. Quick search of the web found freeware StopUpdates10 from greatis (I found it through Windows Club.) Both those website have their own agressive misleading deceiving adverts designed to trick you into thinking you're downloading the freeware you want so that didn't encourage me. Anyway, I downloaded and installed it and set it ON. Now, I wait to see what happens. If all goes well I can click its button to enable downloads WHEN I WANT NOT WHEN M$OFT WANT! Or I can not update at all. That's the theory. Anyone tried this. With what results? Does it work? Are greatis to be trusted?

Thanks. I rechecked my quests but nothing else was enable so I decided to have one more walk up to the castle to search around. On my way, guess who passed me on the road? Sir Hanish! So, back on track with that quest!.

Finally made a little progress with lockpicking. Until today I'd had 16 sessions with 20 lockpicks (that's 320 attempts) with only ONE success! (and that was probably a bit lucky with a last minute lunge.) That was on 'Easy'. So I did more net searching and it's clear a great many players suffered with the near-impossibility of this. Turns out the PC version is far easier using a key and mouse. On the PSP4 you turn the pick with the right joystick and they sync. That means if you push the right stick to 3 o'oclock then the sphere moves to 3 o'clock although wobbling horribly. But the left stick that turns the lock itself does not sync. Say you start at 3 o'clock then by the time the sweet spot is at 12 then the left stick is at maybe 9 or 8. By the time the sweet spot is turning left to 11, the left stick is probably moving right through 6! The wobbling intensifies and the controller has a heavy vibration that increases as does the wobbling (if you even get that far.) The solution is to ignore the Miller Peschek's so-called tutorial which is nonsense, ignore the so-called 'Easy' chest and find some 'Very easy' locks. The best place I've found so far is in lower Sasau. The main street runs SW to NE. At the top is a U-yard with a Very Easy, in the middle left of the street is another U-yard, and lower down the street is a chest inside a home (but when I returned at night to do the dirty, the outer door was hard-locked so I couldn't get in but maybe there's a way, dunno.) Turn off the controller vibes for this in PS4 Settings - devices so it's less distracting. Nearby are a couple of gamesave beds in a tiny alley with wooden doors and iron grids that make them look a bit like dungeon doors but I guess they are workers' beds. Nobody there at night when I tried though. So save the game (or use Schnapps to save) then you can practise. I had 30 lockpicks but my first success came in only about only 7 tries (though I heard cries of 'who's there!' each time I broke a pick. I entered the house. Two people asleep. I accidentally woke one so decided to reload. But I think each lock success increases your level so in future I'll creep away and resave after every success and see if I can boost up my skill perk. If I understand it correctly, that should make locks easier and easier and perhaps eventually I can tackle the actual quest of Peschek with the 'Easy' chest. Meanwhile I'd adanced the main mission but got stuck. I need to find either: the uzits Bailif, Radzig, or Hanish. Can't find any of them and there's no quest guide. Sick of searching so gave up. Lots of good stuff in this game but badly spoiled by these difficulties.