[spdrun]

I’m not so sure that education is so unaffordable if you do it right. Tuition at Rutgers (NJ state university) = about $13-14k/yr. You graduate with about $52-$56k of debt if you keep your nose to the grinder and live at home.

Starting salary for an enginerd of the appropriate persuasion is $60-$65k/yr, say $40k/yr or $3,300/mo after taxes. If you’re renting an apartment for a grand a month, spend $1,500/mo on expenses, you have $800/mo left over. Paid off in 5-6 years, by the time you’re 27.

[spdrun]

Maybe windows 8 isn’t playing nice with EFI + MBR hybrid

Did you check for driver updates/bugfixes?

[spdrun]

Yowza — I’ve never heard anyone get so excited about a new GAS STATION! I hope that Costco includes a Tesla fast-charge station in the new construction as well, though I do think it’s unlikely.

[spdrun]

I did a little experimentation and I’ve noticed starting with windows 8, after some use, I can’t mount the same partition when I’m booted into linux. And if I run the usual tools from linux to fix the NTFS file system, itcan’t… Then when I boot back into windows, it does attempts to do a disk recovery that ends up messing up the partition. That, or I’m going insane…

Are your two SSDs RAIDed or individual? Are you sure you’re not suffering garden-variety data corruption due to a bad SSD, controller, driver, or RAM?

Occam’s Razor — I’d test the hardware thoroughly before trusting the box again.

[spdrun]

^^^

This isn’t a question of perfection. This is a question of MS attempting to cram a (shiny! buzzword!) mobile interface down everyone’s gullets without regard for actual work patterns.

BTW, the irony is that their mobile/tablet interface could have allowed for custom resizing of apps and desktop-like functionality without much pain. Resize button at one corner of app.

Touch the button. Touch once for top left corner location. Touch once for bottom right. Sliding strip at the bottom of the screen showing icons for open apps, allowing fast switching. If apps overlap, you should also be able to touch the exposed part of any app to regain focus.

Desktop switching capability like many Linux windows managers to allow for tiling three or four screens with apps. I feel like that with Windows 8, Microsoft said “let’s copy what Apple/Google did” and showed little imagination compared to what they could have done, at least on larger tablets.

[spdrun]

The tiles do not make sense on a desktop at all — there should be a mechanism for starting software without taking over the entire screen real estate. It’s fine on a 8″ screen, not OK on a 24″ monitor at all. Fortunately, 3rd party start menu replacements exist.

Also, the lack of ability to run Modern/Metro apps in windows is horrible. You’re stuck with a Procrustean system where you can’t really choose app size. You should be able to run them in windows and mix them with desktop apps. Again, provided by 3rd party software like ModernMix, but should work out of the box.

What Windows 8 should have had is a touch mode AND a desktop mode, as well as the ability to limit the tiling to a portion of the screen. Actually, a fixed tile/sidebar area on a 24″ screen would have been AWESOME. Neither would have been difficult to implement — it’s a sign of MS’s ineptitude that 3rd party developers have to develop basic functionality.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve heard the shrinkobabble. People can’t really multitask, blah blah blah. All I know is that I often have a code editor, terminal window, photo editor, email client, documents, and web browser open all at once, and that they’re very easy to manage on a desktop where I can just click on a bottom bar for focus and resize however I want.

[spdrun]

..

[spdrun]

California is very litigious. I can only imagine the lawsuits if they drop slime from a helicopter, don’t clean it up adequately, and some innocent older lady slips and cracks her head the next morning.

As far as your example of a gang rape, if there’s a shooting gallery, you’d probably end up with a dead or wounded officer, maybe a dead person in the crowd, a lot of anger in the community, and the gang rape would probably still happen.

BTW- your armored car article is about Berkeley, not Oakland. The former isn’t exactly a hotbed of criminality, and I fully agree with them voting down a porkbarrel purchase like an armored car.

[spdrun]

Reinforcements? Hah. Not sure if Oakland has enough cops to support that. Slime and paintballs would likely result in 10 people shooting back with real guns or throwing bricks. Hate to say it, but they did the right thing in getting out unless they were patrolling in a Northern Ireland style armored car — they’re not Royal Ulster Constables and one is paying them enough to be martyrs…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Oakland,_California#Comparative_police_staffing_levels

[spdrun]

(1) is flu a developer?
(2) wouldn’t that depend what system(s) they develop for? not all firms are large enough to want to pay out the nose for all possible subscriptions.

[spdrun]

The other question is, what kind of computer is it? If it’s one of the major brands, it may have a hidden reinstallation partition on the drive that will allow for restoration of the original OS. On Dells, I think it’s accessed with F11 at boot time.

Also, if you Torrent the correct Windows 7 reinstall disk for a major brand, you often won’t need a product key to reinstall as the key (or a generic brand-specific key) is saved in the system’s firmware.

[spdrun]

^^^

You have to differentiate between hard-core crims (armed robbers, rapists, murderers) and people who are in jail for marijuana, being late with traffic fines, etc. The problem with Oakland isn’t that the violent thugs are in prison. It’s that not enough are in prison, or better yet, offered a decent education so they can make a life that doesn’t involve thuggery.

It’s inexcusable that this is happening a few miles from one of the wealthiest cities and tech centers of this country. What’s needed are programs that pick out the promising kids and offer them training in high-tech and software development, etc — imagine GTA XVI being coded by people who actually have experience in this 🙂

[spdrun]

^^^

Yep, that’s the solution. I’d probably do a memory test and a full error scan of the HDD or SSD before reinstalling to rule out any hardware causes of the OS taking a dump.

BTW, you can also piratebay the unmolested Win 7 install discs if you have the COA sticker. And unless I really needed it, I’d just stick with Win 7 and not upgrade, holding out for Win 9 Desktop Edition.

[spdrun]

MS sure made some bizarre UI decisions. For example, why is there no intuitive way to close a Modern/Metro(sexual) app?

http://winaero.com/blog/how-to-really-close-modern-apps-in-windows-8-1/

[spdrun]

I think Microsoft agrees — word on the street is that Windows 9 will be more desktop-centric again. What’s the issue you’re having, BTW? Can you go back to Windows 7?

BTW – I haven’t found it to be extremely unstable or anything. Just incompatible with some programs, as well as Procrustean in forcing users into a touch-centric interface on desktop devices.

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