For some reason, Microsoft thinks it is a good marketing strategy to employ third party software to violate your computer, change your default search engine to Bing, and install Microsoft toolbar viruses in your web browser.
All this does is piss me off, and push me towards other operating systems.
Better to be pissed off than pissed on 😉
If MS knew of a way to make money from that you can be sure they’d already have done it. 🙂
Linux. Any flavor you like. I use Ubuntu, but any flavor you like is OK.
The list of things MSFT does to tick me off is long. But Bing is more likely to tell you the truth than Google.
No doubt.
Been using FreeBSD since sometime around here: http://www.freebsd.org/releases/4.0R/announce.html
The fact that non-technical people can just log on to th’ Innernet & post their mindless bullshit is why everything sucks & we can’t have nice things.
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings.
Unfortunately they all do it. Google, Yahoo, ASK (whatever the hell they ever did good). As an IT professional, I can tell you that NO (none, nada, zip, zilch) toolbar is good. I have fixed more problems by uninstalling tool bars than I can count.,
Every time you run one of the innumerous Adobe updates, if you don’t remember to uncheck the boxes that are always checked by default, Google Chrome with Google toolbar is installed as your default browser. It’s little better from the days when, Windows Media Player, Apple QuickTime, and RealPlayer would all constantly try to make themselves your new default player for all media file extensions, overwriting all previous preferences, regardless of whether the player could play them or not. Media files are still one of the worst sources of registry corruption.
Has this got anything to do with the fact that for a while, your pages seemed to be coming up with “InPrivate” browsing as default and were taking a long time to load?
It seems to have gone back to normal now.
I was a professional computer jock for 30+ years. In my day, we had a saying, “Computers don’t do what you want them to do, they do what you tell them to do.”
Microsoft, et al, have decided that they can decide what you really want, and do that, instead of what you tell them to do. DRIVES ME NUTS!
Plus their browsers are corrupted to give responses they favor, not what you asked for. Even when I put a search string in quotes, I get other word permutations of what I asked for.
You do have to be attentive to all the “free” extras that come along with “free” download software. A major fraction of the so called “free” software comes with automatic capture methods over your files and search engines. Simply pay attention to and decline to download or install such crap wear. If you make a mistake, make sure you know how to correct it.
The next thing you can do is delete any search engine you don’t wish to use. Simply pull down the list of search engines and delete to your hearts content. Then install one of the anonymous search engines and use it exclusively via the search field on your browser. I use Startpage and found it quite effective at hiding my searches from the wannabe rulers of my computer. There are others reputed to be as good or better. I have not tried them
Finally, don’t use Internet Explorer. By default all your typos in the address field will be turned into Bing searches. I use IE only for monthly updates from Microsoft only because I must. Otherwise I refuse to use it.
I use FireFox as my browser. With careful setup, it works just fine. There are others: Safari, Opera, Chrome, as well as specialized browsers that can be serviceable. The downside of Chrome is that it is from Google – the internet company that once had their motto as “Do no evil”. Now they seem to have a hard time doing anything but evil. The best I can say about them is there stuff works but, if you use Google for any purpose, all your data is used as if it is their property. They say otherwise but I don’t trust them to keep their word. Use them at your own risk.
There is no substitute for knowing what you are doing and making sure that what is happening is what you want to happen. The internet is a lawless jungle and only you can protect yourself from the predators out there. The predators see you as lunch and see no reason for it to be otherwise unless you can and do say an effective NO to their stealthy slime ball attacks.
I think I used windows on a PC for a few months back in 1995 or 1996, concurrently with Linux. After the third crash with data loss, I gave up on this low quality turd, and never looked back.
To this day, windows is banned from my home network. If a visitor comes and stays over, he’d better have his private data link to access the internet.
I was able to use Windows 3.1 (win16) for a real time process control with output of data to an excel spread sheet and provided the quality control for a major cement plant. It was reliable. First, because I knew how to program Windows correctly. Second, because I did not permit just any random untested software to be run on it. The system was unreliable because most of the software people tried to run on it was crappier than the OS. Ditto for Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP SP3, and Windows 7. They were solid systems and rather easy to use correctly – if you knew what you were doing. On the other hand, Windows Millennium, Vista, and Windows 8 all were piles of warmed over crap and were their own worst enemy. They could still be made to work but it wasn’t worth the effort for what you could make them do.
As I said in an earlier post: “There is no substitute for knowing what you are doing and making sure that what is happening is what you want to happen.” You cannot expect to do just anything any old way and expect things to work. This is true for any tool.
For the most part, the major problem with computers and OS’s is the person sitting in front of the screen typing on the keyboard. They don’t bother to learn their tools to sufficient depth to know how to do things right and are surprised when their computer misbehaves. The interesting thing is that it assures a continuing work load for those of us who know how to make things work. Now if we could only figure out to get paid for the work, we would be rich beyond our wildest dreams.
The basic rule is that computers don’t work the way you want them to work. They work only the way they work and what you want is totally irrelevant to them. Learn your tool and use it according to what it is. I know. It can be frustrating at times but so can users who try to use their system the way they imagine it should be used rather than the way it was designed to work.
Weren’t you playing with a Linux OS Steve? I was looking forward to that product.
Anyways it should trivial for you to abandon MS. If you really need MS for work software you can just run a VM.
I have MS only on one work computer, but we are moving to an open source ILS this fall and I won’t need MS any longer!
I do my work on Linux, but some of the tools I use blogging are better on Windows.
Don’t worry. According to Le Figaro, Steve Ballmer (MS CEO) has been ‘pushed towards the exit’ for having … ‘accumulated a large number of errors that have caused substantial losses for the group’ …
Things may change.
Ubuntu is becoming a PIG!!! Try Puppy!!!!
Aurora Savant,
“I think I used windows on a PC for a few months back in 1995 or 1996, concurrently with Linux. After the third crash with data loss, I gave up on this low quality turd, and never looked back.”
Been working with computers since 1971. You just told me you are incompetent!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA