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I fired up my 10yrs old windows 7 PC for the first time in forever and was appalled at how snappy and quick the OS was compared to my same spec win10 PC. As a career primarily-microsoft-shop engineer I'm done with windows for personal use. I'll never forgive the for wasting everyones time with this garbage. Meanwhile I constantly find bugs from before 2002 that are still in windows10. Windows honestly made me slowly hate all computers.

The only piece of technology in my life that does exactly what it's supposed to do are my keyboards where I make the firmware. Everything else is pop up ridden dogshit


I was recently using an ancient Celeron laptop from like 2006 with Windows Vista, a HDD, and something like 256 MB of RAM, and was blown away by how reasonably performant it was compared to my expectations, especially considering it was a budget laptop in its time.

Windows 7 was peak windows

To me that was Windows 2000. One day in 1999, I was at the local bookstore going over computer magazines and one of them came with CD to preview Windows 2000. I was mostly a Windows 98/RedHat user at that point, so I decided to try it out.

It almost instantly won me over with the leap in stability due to the NT kernel, but the craziest thing was this feature called "Hibernate". This was the time when booting was painfully slow, and here was a feature that not just booted rapidly, but dropped me into the previous session with all apps open! It was pure magic. I switched over to Linux exclusively a few years after that, but this was the feature that prolonged that decision for a long time. I don't think Linux ever got a useable hibernate, but the feature became not as necessary due to the advent of SSDs.


Windows 2000 was the last version where Dave Cutler ran the whole show.

There are certainly features in later versions I wouldn't want to live without, but the decay began when he was moved to other products.


windows xp pre uac was a golden age ;)

win98 SE

Peak usability by being able to type a url in to the file manager or a local path in to your browser and have it open in the same window.

and also peak crashibility. con/con, anyone?

Have they fixed that sleep mode thing that doesn't work and drains your laptop battery?

"Modern Standby"? No, they haven't. Just make sure to unplug your laptop before you close the lid and it won't melt down.

This was ~2 years ago, but it didn't work on my side. Closing the lid would put the laptop to sleep then quickly wake it up, fan spinning at full speed even if unplugged. I think I used their diagnosing tool and one cause was some non-microsoft (installed by a driver I think, laptop as almost new) scheduled task, so not fully their fault, but forcing this kind of much weaker/unstable sleep without backup when S3 worked well is a bit crazy to me.

(by the way the laptop was a Framework 13 AMD, curious if others experienced the same. Maybe they fixed it now)


For a long time I had issues with my laptop's battery being dead, even when I put it away fully charged.

Until one day when I unpacked it and found that it was both hot and already running, and decided that this had to end.

I found that there was a process that was part of a printer driver which existed only to spam notifications about buying printer supplies, and that some fucking sadist at HP absolutely buried into Windows as a task that would wake the computer to do this even if it was unplugged.

Because that's what I need in my life: A laptop that wakes up to check the supplies on a printer that I don't even own.

(Thanks, HP.)


The Framework 16 had an issue where the closed lid would flex slightly in your backpack, and press keys on the keyboard, waking up the computer. Ten days ago (Nov 14th), Framework released a BIOS update for the 16 that would turn off the keyboard (and numeric pad) when the lid was closed. I installed that update immediately, and for the first time, when I pulled my laptop out of my backpack after leaving the office and going home (or the reverse), it was still suspended. Had nothing to do with Windows drivers (I run Linux on this laptop), was purely a physical issue.

I haven't checked if the Framework 13 got BIOS updates at the same time. But you could check if the keyboard is causing the wakeup (the Framework 13 has the same keyboard as the 16, but its smaller screen means less flexing in a backpack so it might not be suffering the same issue) by opening a Notepad window before putting the computer to sleep and closing the lid. If you find that random characters have been typed into Notepad while it's sleeping, then the issue was the same that the 16 was experiencing: the keyboard needs to be disabled while the lid is closed. If you don't see random typing with the lid closed, then it's a different issue.


> closed lid would flex slightly in your backpack, and press keys on the keyboard,

FYI: Over time, this repeated pressure + rubbing (especially with dust or grit in between) can leave permanent key-shaped marks or “ghosts” on the screen. Thin laptops and bags that are tightly packed or bulging make this a lot more likely, since there’s less rigidity and more pressure on the lid.


Still not? It's a feature everyone needs i'm assuming lots of people at microsoft own laptops. Mac probably figured it out around the same time as the declaration of independence was drafted.

That one is arguably Intel’s fault. The last few generations of intel macbooks did the same thing, and I had the same issues under Linux (except they were debuggable there, and clearly Intel’s problem).

Apple fixed it by switching to their own processors. MacOS is sliding fast too though. If I leave my MacBook plugged in overnight, it’s toasty in the morning at least half the time.

Not sure how many times it died because it was low at night and I forgot to plug it in, and how many were failed sleeps.

Power Nap or whatever it’s called is disabled.


I feel this even in the edutainment system of my car. It’s one year old. Actual 1-2 second delays per key just to type in an address in the map. wtf is wrong with the industry now.

Agreed 100%. "Enforcement" of the law has gotten so bleak that people can't imagine a world where we have to follow the laws as they are now.

Imagine a world where activity like this was fined, or where the police actually persecuted white collar criminals. A world where politicians and corporations were both afraid to engage in open corruption. Where companies got fined for uncompetitive practices and weren't able to pollute the environment or engage in union busting.

We wouldn't need any new laws to live in a world like that. We would just need the "enforcement" wing of the government to actually be effective and do thier jobs


Absolutely. With no regulations I could produce/sell it for super cheap. Because I would be cutting it with tap water, and using forced labor

Preventing forced labor is a feature of normal contract law and property rights, and has little to do with regulations.

Now, that's all just regulations. What are regulations but laws that restrict/govern the way to do commerce? Anti-slavery is part of that, just like every other concession we've had to pry from the hands of capitalists over the last 100 years, like no child labor, no locking workers into factories, PPE, etc...

You're free to call contract law and private property law "regulations", but recognize that these branches of law have very different properties, history, and functions than what we traditionally refer to by regulations. Traditionally, when people talk about regulations they are talking about legislation, i.e., rules and decrees created by a legislative body, voted into law by some parliamentary body or created by an executive agency to support decrees of a parliamentary or similar body with the power to declare law. You can think of this as legislation or declaratory law.

Contrast this with contract and property law. These laws were created primarily out of common law, a long evolutionary process arising out of series of decisions from a judiciary attempting to reconcile conflicts between the parties. This is judicial or conciliatory law.

Crucially, most if not all the advances and the rise of extreme productivity from capitalism that supports populations in excess of 8 billion as opposed to about 0.5 billion, have come from emphasis and pre-eminence on the latter kind of law and the smashing of the former kind of law, i.e., the destruction of the guild system of privileges, removing or minimizing protectionist laws, etc. And the former kind of law has either been nominal, merely codifying the advances caused by the latter law like in the case of child labor, or it has been reactionary and hampered the progress of the latter sort of law.


and you can throw away the metronome https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1xJoVzoIQg

Here's a fantastic quality recording of suite 3 from BBC 1974

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EKanXXMkz8

Amazing musicality, but the cellist never made it big cause she was a woman



That's a completely different piece, but also beautiful!

Lately lots of japanese players have been tearing it up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZFOhkGGr8A



This performance is also very great (No. 1 only, not the whole concerto): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcsfDxojdV8

Nah Bach shits on Mozart. Mozart make extremely catchy music like Justin Beiber. I seriously do love mozart, but he merely wrote music. Bach weaved math into his music more than anyone before or after. His music sounds dense and more multi dimensional than mozart or saint saens. It really doesn't sound like he was trying to write beautiful music ( even though it is ) , it sounds like he was solving an equation and just writing out the answers as a harmonic sequence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmsNH8t25ck - This guy is like 95 and still shredding on youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1xJoVzoIQg


> Mozart make extremely catchy music like Justin Beiber.

Mozart was the quintessential "Dark Forest" composer, hiding musical sentience in plain sight of light classical period textures.

Here he is with 2 measures of a simple major key "Justin Bieber" clarinet sequence interleaved with 2 measures from the strings that keep modulating to minor keys:

https://youtu.be/xdVo0MsJMOc?t=1074

Keep listening to the section marked "Tutti" in the score for a re-orchestration and reharmonization of that same clarinet sequence, but now in a surprisingly lush, chromatic style similar to Wagner or Brahms. It quickly disappears, too.

Similarly, Bach's own output is encoded inside Mozart's. E.g., the coda of the Rondo in A Minor doubles as a two-part invention, complete with invertible counterpoint between left- and right-hand.

He also built a nifty hash table that could be used to efficiently generate and stream music over the internet. (Unfortunately, he didn't live long enough to patent and sell it to Yahoo for 6 billion dollars.)


See, music isn’t just math, it’s feel. I guess that’s why I dislike him the way I do. It’s too robotic.

Truth is, they were ALL Justin Bieber. It’s all pop music of the time.


Ahh yes, so robotic

https://youtu.be/_1xJoVzoIQg?list=RD_1xJoVzoIQg

Also they were not all justin beiber. Bach was a working church musician when mozart was out touring europe getting drunk and shitting on women. Only one of them was in it for the fame. In fact you could say that mozart and liszt were 2 of the first "pop stars" because that archetype didn't exist before them. There was basically no "beatlesmania" over bach. He had a steady job, but he didn't die wealthy or famous.


Did not expect one of the most unhinged discussions on HN to start over classical music but aight.

I have to say, I enjoyed "Nah Bach shits on Mozart" much more than I should have.

Is that because there is some more depth to the joke, that Mozart did this for real "when mozart was out touring europe getting drunk and shitting on women" - "shit on women"? So Bach metaphorically shits on Mozart for being the greater composer who was in it for the music and now gets more fame?

Because I was rather appalled by that language, but maybe lack background context.


Mozart loved wild parties and had a feces obsession. He also was born 6 years after Bach died so no, Bach didn't shit on Mozart, only the Academics do. The only shits Bach cared for was getting paid and making good music. Mozart on the other hand was "paraded across europe" but as a child. By the time he was an adult, he had a job. By the time America decided it had had enough of the British, Mozart left for Vienna.

I really want that to be the case, so I'm just retconning it.

Its well-known that Mozart had a poop obsession.

https://www.thepiano.sg/piano/read/mozart-and-his-infamous-l...


Hm. Not convinced that this qualifies for a poop obsession. Rather sounds like using language for a shock effect(on 2 occasions), but thanks for the link.

Well, in their family, they had a good-night verse that went like this. Maybe not an obsession but definitely a healthy interest!

Gute Nacht (good night)

Scheiss ins Bett dass es kracht (shit into the bed so that it bangs)

Reck den Arsch zum Mund (stretch your ass towards your mouth)

und sei recht kugelrund (and be spherically round))

And Mozart wrote a canon from it

"Buona Nox - bist a rechter Ox" (and the end of the text is what I wrote above)


When someone gushes over Bach, I tend to go off. Glad that others are just as knowledgeable as I am in Baroque.

Don't give up on him. You may surprise yourself one day.

I’ve heard everything Bach and still choose to not accept him on the upper shelf.

mozart was truly the R kelly of his time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leck_mich_im_Arsch

Basically the first Disney Channel Child Star…

> Bach was a working church musician when mozart was out touring europe getting drunk and shitting on women

Bach died 6 years before Mozart was born.


He was still working!!

He was just decomposing instead of composing.

(Old sixth grade camp joke)



I'm sorry, I just can't listen to Bach piano pieces unless Glenn Gould is making strange sounds in the background that the sound engineer can't remove.

Pop music also existed back then you know.

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