Another argument PRO big-tech regulation considering Microsoft is willing to have two variants of Windows in parallel, the "user respecting" one in the EU, and the "fuck our users" everywhere else.
Of course, but there's nothing stopping other countries putting similar rules in place. Brasil also has copied a lot of GDPR. If you install Samsung magician it will ask you if you're from EU or Brasil :)
One simple but advanced approach is to take a new blank SSD, partition it with a "small" 64GB NTFS volume to begin with, then freshly install Windows 11 to that. There will be plenty of free space to install numerous additional software programs or apps later, as long as you install the software only to your resulting C: volume, while making sure you create well-organized folders on volumes other than C:, to safely store any and all valuable data that you or your software may handle or generate.
With ordinary multipartitioning you can have a number of different volumes like D:, E:, F:, G:, etc on the same or different hardware drives. People should be accustomed to that now that removable drives like USB have been common for so many years. Having a volume other than C: on a Windows PC is not supposed to be confusing like it was when users in the 1990's had to first adjust to the appearance of CDROM drives as D: containing their own separate folder set. It was widely thought, incorrectly for years, that D: would be assigned to a CDROM drive forever. Users already had to become familiar with C: being a HDD and having folders which could each hold more data than a single floppy, plus A: had been challenging enough for floppies to begin with, where most people had no experience ever using a B: floppy drive at all.
OTOH some of the wiser PC users did start out booting to DOS on their A: floppy and directing all valuable data to their B: floppy. Ejecting the B: floppies as they became filled, sometimes even filing the full floppies in physical filing cabinets, then inserting a freshly-formatted floppy into the B: drive to collect more data. A DOS version could then be upgraded by replacing the A: floppy with one that a newer version of DOS had been "installed" on.
So today you would use volumes other than C: to store ALL your valuable data, whether on the same SSD or external.
C: is so special, while also being the most subject to corruption, that it needs to be built and kept in condition to be almost "disposable", to where you can recover from a full backup image or re-install Windows and apps on a whim, as quickly and painlessly as possible. With all your irreplaceable data safely untouched because you make sure that particular type of data is always on some other volume besides C: to begin with. This is nothing new. Some people eventually do come to the conclusion that it does make more sense to have their huge movies taking up all that space in their own "filing cabinet" in their own F:\Videos folder, rather than further bloating their Windows volume deeply tucked away in C:\Users\mindless_user\Videos, or worse, which is where some of the apps are going to shuffle your data into storage in "parts unknown" on C: by default unless you take pre-emptive initiative.
So you don't really want a whole lot of gigabytes for C: when you think about it. Terabytes could really be something to wait through if it went into auto disk checking upon reboot one day.
But you DO want to always install additional software to the C: volume along with Windows, and the default location (usually in C:\Program Files\new_subfolder) is normally ideal for that. Installing Windows apps to other volumes than C: has been possible for decades, still not recommended for the faint at heart who might want to do an occasional backup or recovery.
And you first build C: by freshly installing Windows completely disconnected from the web, using a Local Administrative account only (going without a password can still be considered a secure choice at this point), then meticulously adjusting settings and disabling and removing some things like you would expect with a fresh Windows installation. You may also want to launch Edge so you can adjust its settings before going on the internet too. Even though things will probably update when you do eventually connect to the web, reverting some of your settings anyway, or adding new "features" havi...
I finally read it all. Funny enough, this is close to what I did for years and years due to having limited C: SSD capacity. Got large SSD, and last reinstall, decided I didn't want to mess with moving folders / backup to D: anymore. TBH it's a load off. Even have an image of relatively fresh windows install. That said, accumulated a lot of changes/tweaks since, some I knew I should have documented but didn't. Just a wierd feeling it's going to be PIA this time. It's just a chore. Thanks for the write up though.
Yes, although I would not call the EU variant of Windows to be "user respecting" at all. Rather "a little bit less fuck our users, but actually still fuck our users".
You owe it to yourself to use the built-in multibooting capability and have parallel Windows installations on your own PC if you're going to try and keep up.
I am in a country where consumer protections are being dismantled on a daily basis - the UK. Linux is still legal but remains to be seen for how long. The government will probably want us to install a backdoor to protect microsoft’s data flow. Pretty rough at the periphery of Europe.
Well in most places in the world the police can arrest / detain you for pretty much anything, or they can find/create a reason to arrest you. Question then becomes a) will the charges stick b) will you be able to seek redress afterwards.
Edit: not saying the UK doesn’t have some stupid laws on the books, or that politicians are not adding more stupid laws to the books, just that even in the US, the land of the free, a bad cop or a prosecutor looking for a promotion can make the next few months or even years hell for you if they wanted it.
Tbf the porn law was an attempt to standardize porn regulations so they applied to porn sold via the internet the same way they applied to porn sold via traditional formats (DVDs, magazines etc). But the parts of the existing regulations were archaic and horrendously out of date, such as not allowing "depictions of cunnilingus" and they tried to standardise first before updating. I'm sure there were some puritans involved, but for the most part it was a badly handled attempt to fix a loophole in regulations not an active campaign to 'Porn depicting cunnilingus is illegal'.
My point is that the current UK government is a messy bunch of profiteers who will support any possible law that benefits them or their corporate friends. In addition, they and their "technical advisors" both are extremely incompetent.
That's why some version of "Linux is illegal" doesn't belong strictly to the fantasy realm to me. As a matter of fact, if I see that story on the headlines, I wouldn't be surprised in the least.
We have a new law that requires mathematically impossible treatment of end to end encrypted data, which is an unenforceable clause. In a law that actually passed.
We have a lovely law called RIPA that makes non-disclosure of passwords or encryption keys punishable by 2 years in prison (or up to 5 years in certain cases). One of those special cases is "national security" reasons, which is about two steps away from becoming "because someone higher up wants that data".
Banning Linux, if not by malice then by incompetence/apathy, is not as unlikely as you think. Because they sure are, right now, very much incompetent and apathetic.
The new protest bill would be unthinkable in most Western countries that care about the freedom to protest and freedom of expression. That is a fact. And the trajectory, at least for now, is still in this direction.
Besides, with "Secure" Boot and the recent Google proposal with web attestation, we should be considering any moves towards limiting what runs on our devices (of which there are plenty these days), no matter how minor or limited in scope, as the mortal threat to freedom of computing that they are.
In the Tories' defense, they tried walking it back from the second it became clear that people would actually vote Leave. The UK tried to remain in the EEA, which would give them access to the single market (and presumably maintain some of the EU regulatory rules) but that was roundly rejected by the EU because well, beggars can't be choosers.
There is nothing in the defence of a party that uses lies and populism to gain power in the hopes of people not wanting to do the obviously wrong thing. You play stupid games, ...
Currently, it's the same shit everywhere, it's not "better" in the EU yet, till the new digital markets regulations kick in in 2024 which will make Windows better for the EU after that.
Is a 24 hour clock really that common in the EU? I can use both because it's not exactly hard to read 24 hour time, but I have noticed its kind of rare in the US. I didn't think it was common let alone the norm in Europe though.
24H is definitely the norm when the time is written down or displayed on a screen. But when spoken, people often/mostly say "at 4" rather than "at 16" (I think this varies somewhat from country to country).
In written and official setting yes, time is always specified in 24H.
But depending on culture and language, in speak most people use the 12H sistem because the AM/PM is implied to be obvious from the context and 24h one has too many syllables: "Let's meet tonight at seven" instead of "Let's meet tonight at nine-teen."
Where it matters it's 24 hours. You'll never see event schedules, train timetables, store opening hours etc as "6pm". Only "18:00".
In speech we use 12 hours. But then it's mostly clear from context.
Tbh I don't see how you can live with 12 hour clocks on appliances in the US. I bought a Cuisinart coffee filter and it has the 12 hour clock and an invisible dot that shows am or pm. It can also be set to start on its own at a certain hour. 60% of the time, when I change the settings i get it wrong because who the hell can see that dot?
In Poland in 90s people still used 12h clock slightly more often than 24h (but both were used interchangeably). Nowadays only really old people use 12h by default. Everything's in 24h. It's just much better.
People might still say "meet at 7" instead of 19 for a shortcut it it's obvious from the context, but they will write it as 19:00 and think of it as 19:00.
BTW we never did "am" vs "pm", we had "1..11 morning" -> "12 noon" -> "1..11 afternoon" -> "12 midnight". And for afternoon hours the "afternoon" was usually skipped. So no 12 am/pm confusion. I could never get used to the American am/pm.
Kinda weird now that you bring it up. We use 13 and say 1, 14 we call 2, 15 is 3, 16 is 4, 17 is 5, 18 is 6, 19 is 7, 20 is 8, 21 is 9, 22 is 10, 23 is 11 and last but not least 0 means 12.
in polish, there is no equivalent to "AM" and "PM" shortcuts (and am/pm itself is not used) - that should explain that 24h is the only time format we use in text. You can use 12h orally, as was explained earlier - in most situations it's obvious if it's AM/PM.
Spaniard here. We speak in terms of 1-12 hours but we know to parse 17:00 as 5PM in the spot. As they stated, we write down 17:00 but to speak it aloud to the rest of people we will just say 'five o'clock in the evening'.
> We speak in terms of 1-12 hours but we know to parse 17:00 as 5PM in the spot.
This is how it is for me as well, once you learn 24h time it's about as simple as can be, and I learned when I was a kid. I don't think I've ever lived anywhere where 24h time was the norm for writing/displaying though - or maybe I just didn't notice because I'm fine with it.
And adopt the metric system? hell no, I'd rather let Microsoft invade every inch of my house!
By the way, Royale with cheese is not actually a thing across all Europe, in Spain it's called "cuarto de libra" which is the actual translation for "Quarter-Pounder", this made the Spanish translation of that Pulp Fiction dialogue somehow nonsense and made most Spaniards realize where the name "cuarto de libra" came from, before that people usually assumed it was some commercial name without any particular meaning.
For me interest, that I remember Windows 95, special, pan-European edition, which was really better suited for usage in Europe, with right coding tables, with better fonts for European languages, with more possible keyboards.
It was possible to add many of these things into American edition, but sure, was convenient to just buy pan-European and have all things already done.
After that I switched to programming, and I don't hear much on localized versions (sough, exists versions, much more localized, with all interface and help non-English).
But now I feel some care from EU, as they pushed on standard interfaces (begins with micro-USB/USB-C for mobile chargers) and on exclude some programs from standard distribution, etc.
Admittedly, this EU activity is not always good, it has to be constantly monitored, but overall it looks like a more realistic way to slow down corporate lawlessness than through non-governmental organizations or through legal procedures.
51 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 131 ms ] threadMore like “fuck users to the extent permissible by law”. It doesn’t count as respect if you’re forced to do it.
With ordinary multipartitioning you can have a number of different volumes like D:, E:, F:, G:, etc on the same or different hardware drives. People should be accustomed to that now that removable drives like USB have been common for so many years. Having a volume other than C: on a Windows PC is not supposed to be confusing like it was when users in the 1990's had to first adjust to the appearance of CDROM drives as D: containing their own separate folder set. It was widely thought, incorrectly for years, that D: would be assigned to a CDROM drive forever. Users already had to become familiar with C: being a HDD and having folders which could each hold more data than a single floppy, plus A: had been challenging enough for floppies to begin with, where most people had no experience ever using a B: floppy drive at all.
OTOH some of the wiser PC users did start out booting to DOS on their A: floppy and directing all valuable data to their B: floppy. Ejecting the B: floppies as they became filled, sometimes even filing the full floppies in physical filing cabinets, then inserting a freshly-formatted floppy into the B: drive to collect more data. A DOS version could then be upgraded by replacing the A: floppy with one that a newer version of DOS had been "installed" on.
So today you would use volumes other than C: to store ALL your valuable data, whether on the same SSD or external.
C: is so special, while also being the most subject to corruption, that it needs to be built and kept in condition to be almost "disposable", to where you can recover from a full backup image or re-install Windows and apps on a whim, as quickly and painlessly as possible. With all your irreplaceable data safely untouched because you make sure that particular type of data is always on some other volume besides C: to begin with. This is nothing new. Some people eventually do come to the conclusion that it does make more sense to have their huge movies taking up all that space in their own "filing cabinet" in their own F:\Videos folder, rather than further bloating their Windows volume deeply tucked away in C:\Users\mindless_user\Videos, or worse, which is where some of the apps are going to shuffle your data into storage in "parts unknown" on C: by default unless you take pre-emptive initiative.
So you don't really want a whole lot of gigabytes for C: when you think about it. Terabytes could really be something to wait through if it went into auto disk checking upon reboot one day.
But you DO want to always install additional software to the C: volume along with Windows, and the default location (usually in C:\Program Files\new_subfolder) is normally ideal for that. Installing Windows apps to other volumes than C: has been possible for decades, still not recommended for the faint at heart who might want to do an occasional backup or recovery.
And you first build C: by freshly installing Windows completely disconnected from the web, using a Local Administrative account only (going without a password can still be considered a secure choice at this point), then meticulously adjusting settings and disabling and removing some things like you would expect with a fresh Windows installation. You may also want to launch Edge so you can adjust its settings before going on the internet too. Even though things will probably update when you do eventually connect to the web, reverting some of your settings anyway, or adding new "features" havi...
Someone’s been reading too much sci-fi.
- Wearing an orange shirt with a specific logo
- Walking on the street
- Singing a song
- Supporting adowntrodden nation publicly or in a protest
Then it's not so far fetched for that insane government to mandate citizens machines to install some backdoor so they can be constantly monitored.
I remember UK trying to pass bills like 'Porn depicting cunnilingus is illegal'.
If that kind of crap occupies politicians' time, Linux being illegal is most certainly not in the Scifi realm.
Edit: not saying the UK doesn’t have some stupid laws on the books, or that politicians are not adding more stupid laws to the books, just that even in the US, the land of the free, a bad cop or a prosecutor looking for a promotion can make the next few months or even years hell for you if they wanted it.
My point is that the current UK government is a messy bunch of profiteers who will support any possible law that benefits them or their corporate friends. In addition, they and their "technical advisors" both are extremely incompetent.
That's why some version of "Linux is illegal" doesn't belong strictly to the fantasy realm to me. As a matter of fact, if I see that story on the headlines, I wouldn't be surprised in the least.
Not allowed to publicize specific information and not allowed to say they are gagged.
Honestly the UK is one of the few places that treats speech like it matters enough to be kept private. A refreshing change in some ways.
We have a lovely law called RIPA that makes non-disclosure of passwords or encryption keys punishable by 2 years in prison (or up to 5 years in certain cases). One of those special cases is "national security" reasons, which is about two steps away from becoming "because someone higher up wants that data".
Banning Linux, if not by malice then by incompetence/apathy, is not as unlikely as you think. Because they sure are, right now, very much incompetent and apathetic.
The new protest bill would be unthinkable in most Western countries that care about the freedom to protest and freedom of expression. That is a fact. And the trajectory, at least for now, is still in this direction.
Besides, with "Secure" Boot and the recent Google proposal with web attestation, we should be considering any moves towards limiting what runs on our devices (of which there are plenty these days), no matter how minor or limited in scope, as the mortal threat to freedom of computing that they are.
That's what you get when you vote to be freed from the shackles of the biggest regulatory block in the world.
Currently, it's the same shit everywhere, it's not "better" in the EU yet, till the new digital markets regulations kick in in 2024 which will make Windows better for the EU after that.
Edit: Appreciate all the replies, thank you.
In written and official setting yes, time is always specified in 24H.
But depending on culture and language, in speak most people use the 12H sistem because the AM/PM is implied to be obvious from the context and 24h one has too many syllables: "Let's meet tonight at seven" instead of "Let's meet tonight at nine-teen."
In speech we use 12 hours. But then it's mostly clear from context.
Tbh I don't see how you can live with 12 hour clocks on appliances in the US. I bought a Cuisinart coffee filter and it has the 12 hour clock and an invisible dot that shows am or pm. It can also be set to start on its own at a certain hour. 60% of the time, when I change the settings i get it wrong because who the hell can see that dot?
People might still say "meet at 7" instead of 19 for a shortcut it it's obvious from the context, but they will write it as 19:00 and think of it as 19:00.
BTW we never did "am" vs "pm", we had "1..11 morning" -> "12 noon" -> "1..11 afternoon" -> "12 midnight". And for afternoon hours the "afternoon" was usually skipped. So no 12 am/pm confusion. I could never get used to the American am/pm.
It seems like a bad idea if I've ever seen 13.
This is how it is for me as well, once you learn 24h time it's about as simple as can be, and I learned when I was a kid. I don't think I've ever lived anywhere where 24h time was the norm for writing/displaying though - or maybe I just didn't notice because I'm fine with it.
By the way, Royale with cheese is not actually a thing across all Europe, in Spain it's called "cuarto de libra" which is the actual translation for "Quarter-Pounder", this made the Spanish translation of that Pulp Fiction dialogue somehow nonsense and made most Spaniards realize where the name "cuarto de libra" came from, before that people usually assumed it was some commercial name without any particular meaning.
It was possible to add many of these things into American edition, but sure, was convenient to just buy pan-European and have all things already done.
After that I switched to programming, and I don't hear much on localized versions (sough, exists versions, much more localized, with all interface and help non-English).
But now I feel some care from EU, as they pushed on standard interfaces (begins with micro-USB/USB-C for mobile chargers) and on exclude some programs from standard distribution, etc.
Admittedly, this EU activity is not always good, it has to be constantly monitored, but overall it looks like a more realistic way to slow down corporate lawlessness than through non-governmental organizations or through legal procedures.