Windows 11 upgrade is shit and other PC-related trivia

1. My PC had been bombarding me with messages for several weeks, starting with "Upgrade to Windows 11 - it's really great!" which I ignored. The messages got progressively more threatening until they ended up with something like "If you don't upgrade then we shut down your PC", so against my better judgment, I caved in yesterday.

The inevitable result was that it took me over half an hour to turn it on this morning, and another quarter of an hour to open, update and save a simple spreadsheet and then send one email. Why do they bother? It was working fine.

2. Last year, I bemoaned the dearth of USB ports on modern PCs.

I had a good clean of my desk yesterday, including removing everything from on and under the desk, scrubbing everything down and plugging it all back in with less cable tangle. Oops! There on the back of the monitor (it's a Lenovo all-in-one job) are another three USB ports for my permanent stuff (keyboard, mouse, external hard drive), leaving me with two at the side for occasional stuff (CD writer, USB stick, charge cables for iPod and phone).

3. When we were kids, our Dad taught us the rudiments of typing on a proper old fashioned typewriter. We bashed away happily for a bit and then asked how you do capital letters. Our Dad explained you press down the shift key, and illustrated by pressing down the left hand shift key. So for the whole of my life I used the left hand shift key and never realised the right hand one existed.

My daughter asked me recently why I never use the other one and told me where it was. Well bugger me! There it is, right in front of me, twice as large as the left hand one with the same upwards arrow on it. How did I never notice?

I still can't bring myself to use it though. I always keep my left hand little finger resting on the left hand one, and it requires a conscious effort to use the other one, i.e. if I need to type a capital P or 'close parantheses' single handed.

Bill Gates has rare honest moment

From CNBC:

Gates admitted his “greatest mistake ever” was allowing Google to develop Android — one of Apple’s biggest smartphone competitors — before Microsoft could develop a competing mobile operating system, he told Eventbrite co-founder and CEO Julia Hartz Thursday at a Village Global event.

“That was a natural thing for Microsoft to win,” he said. Gates said he blames his own poor “mismanagement,” since he didn’t guide his team to jump on the opportunity. He also partially blames Microsoft’s antitrust problems in the early 2000′s for allowing Google to get ahead.

Google moved on mobile shortly after Apple did, when it acquired Android in 2005. Google later released it first Android device in September 2008, a little more than a year after Apple released its first iPhone on June 29, 2007.

“These are winner-takes-all markets. So the greatest mistake ever is whatever mismanagement I engaged in that caused Microsoft not to be what Android is,” he said. Gates added that there is now only room for one “non-Apple” operating system, and that market is worth $400 billion.

He added that if Microsoft would have “got that one right,” Microsoft would be the top technology company in the game right now. “We would be the company. But oh well, ” he said.

Yup. These things are natural monopolies, it's easiest if everybody uses the same platform-system-language, whether it's perfect or not (and nothing is).

He got this one right with Windows, and IBM has been kicking itself ever since for buying in Microsoft software for its PCs, rather than just developing its own; hiring Bill Gates; or snapping up Microsoft for cheap forty years ago, in the same way that Google snapped up Android in 2005. Once IBM used it, other PC manufacturers used it etc.

What goes around, comes around, but key to this is the tacit admission that Microsoft also holds a natural monopoly, and most of its income is simply unearned rent. However rubbish its updates are, it knows it can sell a billion new licences every year with a marginal cost of 0.001c.

Microsoft Office and Walker's Crisps

We all know that Walker's got it the wrong way round by making salt and vinegar crisps green and cheese and onion blue. We will have to live with that, even though half of use will never get used to it (I did a Fun Online Poll on this six years ago which is no longer accessible).

Microsoft used to use the same colours:
Excel = salt and vinegar = green.
Word = cheese and onion = blue
Powerpoint = ready salted = red
Outlook = roast chicken = yellow.

One of the millions of really shit things about Windows 10 is that they kept the colours for Excel and Word, but Outlook is now blue and white and Powerpoint is a sickly orange-red colour.

The most popular search term on bing.com

Predictably enough

"Microsoft is to start building its own self-crashing cars"

From the BBC:

Microsoft is to start building its own self-crashing cars, rather than modifying vehicles built by its rival Google. The car will have a stop-go button but no controls, steering wheel or pedals.

Co-founder Paul Allen revealed the plans at a conference in California.

"We're really excited about this vehicle - it's something that will infuriate its users by suddenly stopping for no apparent reason," said Allen, director of the company's self-crashing project.

He added that after punching the 'stop-go' button for several minutes, users' will have the ability to "tear out the power cable in a fit of rage, slam the doors and then return after five minutes once they have simmered down - it should normally work fine again after that".

But some researchers working in this field are investigating potential downsides to self-crashing car technology. They believe they could make road rage worse, as people gathered round their inexplicably stationary vehicles while in a filthy mood might start turning on each other.

"Ok, we give in" say Microsoft "mandatory 'time outs' to go check out porn sites aren't as popular as we expected,

and so we are abandoning the 'you've spent long enough on your X-Box, so time to go search the internet for porn' feature on the new X-Box" announces Don Mattrick, the President of Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft, "but it does mean we will have to now have some design compromises which will mean that 'wherever we go my games are always with me' won't be the case, unless of course you already carry them around with you, say in a case, when you want to take your games with you and carry on doing that or buy a case and start carrying it around with you when you want to take your games with you; in which case they will".

Criticism against the Xbox One for its original restrictions on game sharing and its need to connect to the internet came not only from the public and the press, but also from Microsoft’s rivals. The unveiling of the PS4 by Sony at E3 even included a 22-second spoof video entitled 'Official PlayStation Used Games Instructional Video' showing two Sony employees simply handing a game from one to the other.

Marc Whitten – the vice president of Xbox Live also confirmed another change, abolishing the Xbox One’s proposed region locking: "You could buy a console in any country and use it any country," said Whitte. "You can use any disc in that console."

Whitten also clarified the future for Xbox One’s digital policy in an interview with gaming website Polygon, saying that "While we are adding in the ability to use physical discs, we still believe in the power of a digital and cloud-powered future played out at launch and rolled out over time. You are going to see us invest a ton in all of the ways digital builds experiences."

"You've spent long enough on your X-Box, so time to go search the internet for Porn" feature of new X-Box

expected to really appeal to teenage boys 

Microsoft have said  ...... period checks will be enforced, and that although users will be allowed to “game offline for up to 24 hours” after this time “offline gaming is not possible.”

Other "features" may not be so enthusiastically welcomed however:-

Selling used games will be decided by publishers and only allowed through 'participating retailers'     “We designed Xbox One so game publishers can enable you to trade in your games at participating retailers,” says Microsoft. This will also mean that individuals will not be able to sell games personally – through eBay for example – but will have to go through a Microsoft-approved vendor.

When it comes to just giving your game to someone there are more restrictions. “There are two requirements,” says the statement: “you can only give them to people who have been on your friends list for at least 30 days and each game can only be given once.”

Yeah! Apple rocks!

The solution to all yesterday's "issues" came to me as I lay awake fretting last night, namely buy an external CD/DVD reader/writer, which I snapped up for a very reasonable £39.99 at Curry's-PC World (I'm not going to spend another penny in an Apple Store, not ever again, ever). It's USB powered so you don't need to faff about with yet another power cable.

The system graciously allowed me to re-load Office for Mac (version 2008) and will allow me to make MP3's from audio CD's using iTunes. All I need to do now is install Neo-Office (which I have used to create lots of charts and stuff) and I'm back where I was four days ago.
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UPDATE: now I set it all up nice and new, I've a nasty feeling that there was nothing wrong with the old Mac Mini, it was just the monitor that was on the blink (I must have been using it for seven years or so, maybe longer?), as it keeps shutting down again (it was fine earlier on). I'll throw another £70 into the bottomless pit of Curry's-PC World tomorrow and see what happens.

The onslaught resumes

Now that the new lot have their feet firmly under the table, the onslaught of government sponsored advertising on the telly appears to have started again.

I've been watching Channel 4 and ITV for the past couple of hours and saw one for Barnardo's and one to remind you to renew your Tax Credits. And one for a state-owned bank, Halifax, in which a woman drops a cup of coffee, an idea which they might have pinched from the Microsoft advertisement, in which a woman knocks over a cup of coffee.

All links to TellyAds.com, who don't appear to have the up-to-date Tax Credits propaganda - so I linked to the more repulsive of the two available. Thanks to Pavlov's Cat for alerting us to this most useful resource.

While I'm on the topic, here's my favourite ad of recent months: Am I dead? No, you're in Frinton-on-Sea.

More PC publicity shot tomfoolery

It appears that even the mighty Microsoft is no match for the humble News Shopper.

UPDATE: the BBC have published both versions of the picture.

Pork barrel spending proposal of the day

Microsoft tells Obama to spend cash on broadband