161–170 of 276 posts
50-100MB seems like a miniscule amount of space to warrant something like this. My WinSxS folder alone is almost 10GB. If they wanted to save space, even a modest improvement in managing updates would yield space saving results orders of magnitude greater than this.
I had to powershell candycrush off the drive for god's sake.
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>> it's a great pity software developers misused and screwed it up so badly So the Registry is a great idea and great software design, but developers are "holding the phone wrong"? I think applications should be standalone and not tied into some giant central spaghetti shared knot of chewing gum. The beauty of Linux/Unix is that stuff is configured by text files. Windows was on that path i the early days when everyth…
"Holding the phone wrong" referred to people using something as they'd expect, but it not working at all. The registry turned to trash by people using it wrongly, because people don't write software very well. When ordinary users needed admin rights because developers stored per-user settings in the system-wide config, that's developers misusing the registry. When tools register themselves as file-format-handlers in…
I thought it meant blaming the user for the flawed design.
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That sounds like something was seriously wrong with your install. I am on a desktop running windows 10 since its release on which I use daily and install a lot of software - and the windows folder is sitting at 12 GB.
> the windows folder is sitting at 12 GB I don't think the Windows folder is a particular good indication of Windows space usage. A while ago Microsoft put a tablet killer design out there: 11 Screen, 4GB RAM, Touch Screen and 32GB SSD. Man+dog shipped them. Then man+dog found the machines died because Windows ran out of disk space on patch Tuesday. So regardless of what is in the windows directory 32GB is not enough…
It's not related to the actual article but the footnote about advertisment is what strike me the most : > Advertising revenue is falling fast across the Internet, and independently-run sites like Ghacks are hit hardest by it. The advertising model in its current form is coming to an end, and we have to find other ways to continue operating this site. It's no wonder Google is pushing to remove (partially) the ability…
But that fundamentally breaks the absolute fraud and house of cards of the entire web ad industry and make layers of ad people obsolete so it won't happen.
It feels a lot like cable companies: "Our model is absolute shit but we don't need to change, you do." It's why I'm completely unsympathetic to the pending death of the cable and ad industries. They both were in a Sears position to dominate whatever paradigms come next.
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I wonder if it's related to the trend in recent years of manufacturers marketing ultra low-budget Windows 10 laptops (and to a lesser extent tablets) with critically small amounts of non-upgradeable storage? An install of Windows 10 typically takes up ~26GB and there's already a problem with consumers discovering that their 32GB soldered eMMC machines are unable to perform any OS updates without jumping through extra…
Those machines are already mostly unusable under Windows because MS only requires 2GiB minimum so it's an instant swapfest to eMMC. Put Linux on them and they're quite nice.
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It’s a skin on a skin on a skin on a skin. Its always been this way. By clicking on “advanced” buttons you can easily end up with four different eras of UI on the screen, including different system fonts and different font rendering algorithms! I can tell you first-hand from trying to get some of that fixed years ago, there’s just so much STUFF in Windows that is hardly ever seen, or should only be seen by “IT profes…
Microsoft is a big company and Windows is a big product. Is fully remaking the Control Panel really such a monumental task? The Control Panel isn't that deep. It's not as though Microsoft needs to create a UI for every advanced Group Policy setting. The new Settings app was introduced with Windows 8 in 2013. That means Microsoft has had six years to complete the transition.
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That sounds like it was the intent. But I got into old menus simply by trying to change the clock time. Definitely not an IT professionals who don't care kind of action.
Sure it is. What home user even realizes they can change the clock time any more? Consider: can you change the clock time on your phone? I've never even considered doing so, personally. Seems like it'd screw up the GPS, if it was possible. Anyone whose first computer was a smartphone isn't going to think of changing their computer's clock time. To them, the time is a network feature, not a local feature.
Indeed. Even if you have the temerity to go and change the clock, the iPhone is secretly maintaining the true time internally and can use it or revert to it at will. I'm making a bold claim, so here are the steps to reproduce:
- Go to Settings -> General -> Date & Time -> Set Automatically -> disable
- set an incorrect time
- Go to Settings -> {Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Cellular} -> Off
- Go to Settings -> Airplane Mode -> enable
- go someplace without any wifi or change the wifi password on your access point or disconnect/power-off your access point
- remove the SIM card from the iPhone
- Now go back to Settings -> General -> Date & Time -> Set Automatically -> enable
- Surprise surprise! The date and time revert back to the correct value even though you have no possible network connection. How did it know the correct time?
Implementation thoughts: If the true time is 6:00pm and you change it to 9:00pm, the iPhone could calculate the offset as 3 hours and 0 minutes, and show you the time as 6:00pm + 3h = 9:00pm, but knows that the true time is really 6:00pm. The same effect could also be achieved by having two internal real time clocks (aka time of day clocks), one for the true time and one for the time you set.
My theory is that they'd prefer users not messing with the clock, but they provide a UI for setting your own time (such as for people who like setting their clocks 5 minutes ahead to never be late for meetings). However, they keep the true time for other purposes (perhaps for logging, syncing, or something else?).
It's not related to the actual article but the footnote about advertisment is what strike me the most : > Advertising revenue is falling fast across the Internet, and independently-run sites like Ghacks are hit hardest by it. The advertising model in its current form is coming to an end, and we have to find other ways to continue operating this site. It's no wonder Google is pushing to remove (partially) the ability…
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The registry is a fantastic idea - it's a great pity software developers misused and screwed it up so badly, and a shame other OSs haven't copied it and built on it. Instead of every tool making its own incompatible, undocumented, non-standard config file/database/format/tools.
I think Apple solved this problem well with the .app application files. All application files and resources are self-contained. Drag the .app file to the Trash to completely remove it. Some apps are non-conforming, and store data elsewhere, but as a general model I think it works very well.
Early macOS used the installer system, which still exists but is increasingly rare. You'll notice it because the installer has the .pkg extension. The installer writes "receipts" to a special folder, which contains all the files it created, which in principle should help you unininstall. In practice, this doesn't work well, either, because apps litter the file system with files after they're installed.
Apple encourages the use of sandboxing for new apps. You'll find that apps each get a root under ~/Library/Containers. This means you can wipe all of an app's data in one go; as I understand it, sandboxed apps have to explicitly request access to any files they need to access outside of their container.
With APFS they could go even further and give each app their own volume, I suspect.
But most apps aren't yet sandboxed, so we still have file systems polluted with stuff.
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Those machines are already mostly unusable under Windows because MS only requires 2GiB minimum so it's an instant swapfest to eMMC. Put Linux on them and they're quite nice.
I disagree - I have one with a quad core atom, 1GB of ram(!!!) And latest windows 10 1903 edition runs very nicely on it if you stick to the built-in apps. I usually have it next to my main PC as an additional monitor with the wireless projector functionality .