What it says on the tin.
(If anyone is feeling positive, we could do vice versa also.)
Any torrent client starts out great and ends up a hideous adware monster.
#37 Paper tape was fine, too!
On the PDP-11's that had a fanfold paper tape reader, paper tape was amazing.
The tape would be folded, in opposite directions, at about 6" length, to form a tight zigzag stack.
Secure with a couple of rubber bands, and it's far safer than a reel.
And the reader was clever.
Stand the stack upright on one side (without rubber bands of course), feed the lead into the reading head, trigger the read and stand back.
The clever part is that as it unfolded the tape and read it, it re-folded and re-stacked it in the output hopper, so you lifted it out in exactly the same state it went in.
None of all the tedious rewinding and spooling and messing about. And in a storage drawer, you could mange the tapes far better than spooled tape.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l--OHNxXFeE
The video shows how it worked - but not how WELL - their example is reading from the tape and printing to a slow matrix printer, waiting for each printed character.
For loading a tape to memory, you would not BELIEVE how fast those suckers would shove the tape from side to side.
You could have more fun with the reels of paper tape, though.
Oh god yes Adobe Acrobat. Did a free trial of the pro version, I could barely get it to work and my laptop ground to a halt. Was the quickest free trial ever.
Scratching marks on clay tablets was all you need
Am not a technie but for a pain in the arse example; try stopping cookies from the various sites I use, Fb, Google etc and it does become such a pain in the neck that am now not surprised that users let cookies in left right and centre; I have blocked cookies - apart from essential ones (which one wonders about) and ever since everytime I open the Ff/Linux browser I have to go though a rigmarole of pages saying this and that and the other. Now why the fuck do they want to know everything? a[part from tailored adverts which I have no interest on?
Google Music was great, (free) YouTube music is quite deliberately shite, in an effort to get you to shell out for the paid version
Microsoft 'updates'.
We're going to:
Close down your laptop for an hour just when you need it!
Ensure that it takes longer to boot up...
...and everything runs more slowly!
We've removed some functionality you found useful...
...and added some utter mince you'll never use.
IF YOU HAVE ANY DIFFICULTIES - tough. And I'm the richest man in the world: MWAHAHAHA!
Close down your laptop for an hour just when you need it!
This
I thought Win 10 allowed you to control when it installed stuff.
I do try to delay updates but sometimes it just seems to go ahead and do it.
Resistance, as the yanks in CPST say, is fyootle.
This was a major problem in Universities at the beginning of this academic year - colleagues returning to campus after 12 months working online, switching on their office PCs to prepare for first classes, and Updates rising like the Zombie Army of the Dead to wreak havoc.
The problem with Windows updates on laptops happening just as people are trying to do something is that most people don't have the laptop on unless they're wanting to do something.
If you go into Settings->Windows Updates->Advanced Options there's a option 'Restart this device as soon as possible when a restart is required to apply an update'. Set this to 'off'.
You'll have to do it eventually, but it'll be next time you restart. MS took away some control from users regarding when to apply updates, because many didn't apply them at all, leading to millions of unpatched machines worldwide with security vulnerabilities (or just so out of date that other things wouldn't work).
Look the bright side: it reduces the chances of a repeat of that time you had to clean a virus off your aunt's machine when it had Windows XP Service Pack 1 and IE6.
Is there a way to get rid of the the bloody ribbon and go back to toolbars and drop down options?
Nope.
You can go old, old, old school with this:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/windows-file-manager/9p7vbbbc49rb?activetab=pivot:overviewtab
Have not tried it myself though