Bill gates found a bottle in his garden.
He decided to rub it thrice (whyever) and a geany surged.

Bill gates: h.. He.. Hello?
Geany : hi, im willing to give you one wish as you saved me
Bill gates: I WANT WORLD PEACE, HERE IS THE MAP WITH ALL THE WARS ON THE WORLD!!
Geany: thats impossible. Other wishes?
Bill gates: fix every bug in windows vista!
Geany: gimme that world map

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Assembler Chicken: First, it builds the road ......

C Chicken: It crosses the road without looking both ways.

C++ Chicken: The chicken wouldn't have to cross the road, you' d simply refer to him on the other side.

COBOL Chicken: 0001-CHICKEN-CROSSING.
IF NO-MORE-VEHICLES
THEN PERFORM 0010-CROSS-THE-ROAD
VARYING STEPS FROM 1 BY 1 UNTIL
ON-THE-OTHER-SIDE
ELSE
GO TO 0001-CHICKEN-CROSSING

Cray Chicken: Crosses faster than any other chicken, but if you don't dip it in liquid nitrogen first, it arrives on the other side frazzled.

Delphi Chicken: The chicken is dragged across the road and dropped on the other side.

Gopher Chicken: Tried to run but got beaten by the Web chicken.

Intel Pentium Chicken: The chicken crossed 4.9999978 times.

Iomega Chicken: The chicken should have ' backed up' before crossing.

Java Chicken: If your road needs to be crossed by a chicken, then the server will download one to the other side. (Of course, those are chicklets.) See also WMI Monitor.

Linux Chicken: Don't you *dare* try to cross the road the same way we do!

Mac Chicken: No reasonable chicken owner would want a chicken to cross the road, so there's no way to tell it how to cross the road.

Newton Chicken: Can't cluck, can't fly, and can't lay eggs, but you can carry it across the road in your pocket.

OOP Chicken: It doesn't need to cross the road, it just sends a message.

OS/2 Chicken: It crossed the road in style years ago, but it was so quiet that nobody noticed.

Microsoft's Chicken: It's already on both sides of the road. What's more its just bought the road.

Windows 95 Chicken: You see different coloured feathers while it crosses, but when you cook it still tastes like........ chicken.

Quantum Logic Chicken: The chicken is distributed probabilistically on all sides of the road until you observe it on the side of your choice.

VB Chicken: USHighways! <TheRoad.cross> (aChicken)

XP Chicken Jumps out onto the road, turns right, and just keeps on running.

The Longhorn Chicken had an identity crisis and is now calling itself Vista.

The Vista Chicken dazzled itself with its own graphics.

Hacking/attack experiences...
I'm, for obvious reasons, only going to talk about the attacks I went through and the *legal* ones I did 😅 😜

Let's first get some things clear/funny facts:
I've been doing offensive security since I was 14-15. Defensive since the age of 16-17. I'm getting close to 23 now, for the record.

First system ever hacked (metasploit exploit): Windows XP.
(To be clear, at home through a pentesting environment, all legal)
Easiest system ever hacked: Windows XP yet again.

Time it took me to crack/hack into today's OS's (remote + local exploits, don't remember which ones I used by the way):
Windows: XP - five seconds (damn, those metasploit exploits are powerful)
Windows Vista: Few minutes.
Windows 7: Few minutes.
Windows 10: Few minutes.
OSX (in general): 1 Hour (finding a good exploit took some time, got to root level easily aftewards. No, I do not remember how/what exactly, it's years and years ago)
Linux (Ubuntu): A month approx. Ended up using a Java applet through Firefox when that was still a thing. Literally had to click it manually xD
Linux: (RHEL based systems): Still not exploited, SELinux is powerful, motherfucker.

Keep in mind that I had a great pentesting setup back then 😊. I don't have nor do that anymore since I love defensive security more nowadays and simply don't have the time anymore.

Dealing with attacks and getting hacked.

Keep in mind that I manage around 20 servers (including vps's and dedi's) so I get the usual amount of ssh brute force attacks (thanks for keeping me safe, CSF!) which is about 40-50K every hour. Those ip's automatically get blocked after three failed attempts within 5 minutes. No root login allowed + rsa key login with freaking strong passwords/passphrases.

linu.xxx/much-security.nl - All kinds of attacks, application attacks, brute force, DDoS sometimes but that is also mostly mitigated at provider level, to name a few. So, except for my own tests and a few ddos's on both those domains, nothing really threatening. (as in, nothing seems to have fucked anything up yet)

How did I discover that two of my servers were hacked through brute forcers while no brute force protection was in place yet? installed a barebones ubuntu server onto both. They only come with system-default applications. Tried installing Nginx next day, port 80 was already in use. I always run 'pidof apache2' to make sure it isn't running and thought I'd run that for fun while I knew I didn't install it and it didn't come with the distro. It was actually running. Checked the auth logs and saw succesful root logins - fuck me - reinstalled the servers and installed Fail2Ban. It bans any ip address which had three failed ssh logins within 5 minutes:
Enabled Fail2Ban -> checked iptables (iptables -L) literally two seconds later: 100+ banned ip addresses - holy fuck, no wonder I got hacked!

One other kind/type of attack I get regularly but if it doesn't get much worse, I'll deal with that :)

Dealing with different kinds of attacks:

Web app attacks: extensively testing everything for security vulns before releasing it into the open.
Network attacks: Nginx rate limiting/CSF rate limiting against SYN DDoS attacks for example.
System attacks: Anti brute force software (Fail2Ban or CSF), anti rootkit software, AppArmor or (which I prefer) SELinux which actually catches quite some web app attacks as well and REGULARLY UPDATING THE SERVERS/SOFTWARE.

So yah, hereby :P

Windows Vista supports real multitasking - it can boot and crash simultaneously. 

Gavin: "Christina, so how bad is this? Be honest. Is this windows Vista bad? It is not iPhone 4 bad, is it? Fuck, don't tell me this is Zune bad."

Christina: "Sorry Gavin. It is Apple Maps bad."

Source_code of Windows Vista -

Mean while BDSM clubs use Windows Vista

Those who used windows vista will understand!

The box said ‘Requires Windows Vista or better’. So I installed LINUX.
😜🤘

I've recently red a blog post stating 'Google leaves x Million Android devices vulnerable to a new Exploit'
I don't really sympathize with Google, but it's simply the wrong message... It should be more like FUCK VENDORS, WHO WON'T SUPPLY UPDATES TO DEVICES OLDER THAN 1.5 YEARS
Seriously, it's them who make you stuck on outdated OS versions... Just imagine you could only install Windows Vista on your 2014 Lenovo ThinkPad, because it's considered outdated...
FUCK VENDORS (again, just in case)

Requires windows 10 anniversary or later... So let use photo's that show it installing on vista...

Well done Adobe.

"Thank you for choosing Microsoft!"

No Microsoft, I really didn't choose you. This crappy hardware made you the inevitable, not a choice.

And like hell do I want to run your crappy shit OS. I tried to reset my PC, got all my programs removed (because that's obviously where the errors are, not the OS, right? Certified motherfuckers). Yet the shit still didn't get resolved even after a reset. Installing Windows freshly again, because "I chose this".

Give me a break, Microshaft. If it wasn't for your crappy OS, I would've gone to sleep hours ago. Yet me disabling your shitty telemetry brought this shit upon me, by disabling me to get Insider updates just because I added a registry key and disabled a service. Just how much are you going to force data collection out of your "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" users, Microsoft?

Honestly, at this point I think that Microsoft under Ballmer might've been better. Because while Linux was apparently cancer back then, at least this shitty data collection for "a free OS" wasn't yet a thing back then.

My mother still runs Vista, an OS that has since a few months ago reached EOL. Last time she visited me I recommended her to switch to Windows 7, because it looks the same but is better in terms of performance and is still supported. She refused, because it might damage her configurations. Granted, that's probably full of malware but at this point I'm glad she did.

Even Windows 7 has telemetry forcibly enabled at this point. Vista may be unsupported, but at least it didn't fall victim to the current status quo - data mining on every Microshaft OS that's still supported.

Microsoft may have been shady ever since they pursued manufacturers into defaulting to their OS, and GPU manufacturers will probably also have been lobbied into supporting Windows exclusively. But this data mining shit? Not even the Ballmer era was as horrible as this. My mother may not realize it, but she unknowingly avoided it.

Allright, I'm pissed.

Warning: more than 4k characters written by a non native english speaker ahead.

Legend:
Storytelling
> Short summary of the current situation
> "Something being said"
> (Something being thought)
* Actions *

-- Background --
In an attempt to reorganize my desktop I accidentally deleted a folder I called "development". In there I stored links to all my IDEs (Not sure how you call these in english), but also some workspaces like unity (Not much stuff there, processing (just some hobby stuff) AND Eclipse (FUCKING EVERYTHING RELATED TO SCHOOL WEB DEVELOPMENT). Now 3 days have passed and I realized this important folder was missing. Cleared that windows trash the instant I deleted the trash on my desktop.

> Shit, Regret

Install a file restore programm. Do every possible search. Nothing found.

> Big shit

Deadline was in like 3 days. Week was fucking rough so:
> "Screw this, the teacher nevet corrects the assignments and also fuck JSP"

Fast forward 2 months to last week. Teacher starts checking assignments.

> Fuck

* Sees pattern: Only students with missing or bad marks are checked. *

* Feels save *

Teacher approaching me while working on current projects.
* Doesn't feel save anymore *
> "Well, I'ld like to see your THAT programm"
> Well fuck
* Tells the truth *
> "Well that's unfortunate, but I must write a mark. Do you really have nothing to show?"
* Remember that I worked on the school pcs when I started *
> (Better than nothing. Gotta try it)
* Teacher checks programm, not pleased *

> (Fuck me, but at least it's over...)

> Nope

* Teacher calls me over *
> "With the mark I had to write today you can't reach that good mark even with a good examination, what are we gonna do about this?"

> "Well, there were other assignments that were never checked. Could we replace that mark with one of those?"

* Teacher agrees *
> (Srly bless this guy for that support)

My best choice was an Android app we had to develop during December in pairs. I did the front end (90% of the whole work) and my partner the backend (10 %). I also did 30 % of these 10 %, because I had to review the shit he wasn't able to debug himself.

> brainlogic.exe provided by windows vista

This distribution was partly my fault since I overestimated the work needed for the backend, but also the fault of that fucker. I mean, he didn't tell me the professor already provided 90 % of the backend...

Rest of the week was really busy (always 1 or 2 things to study for each day, workout and family stuff).

Yesterday (It's past 12 already) I arrived at ~9 pm in the dorm I could finally start reviewing my code.
Internet gets shut down at 10 pm.
Gotta hurry.

* Opens project *
* Sees half a year old code *
* Fights urge to puke *
> (Alright I gotta do this. For the mark!)
* waits for gradle to index files *
* Remembers the fact that I haven't opened Android Studio in the last 2 months *

For those who don't develop with android studio: This is an equivalent to ~10k windows updates waiting to be installed

> (Well, gotta work with this kinda old version)

"gradle sync failed"
> ( Ok, just restart it. You're fine )
* Android Studio doesn't react anymore and/or renders *
* Waits 5 min *
* Restarts laptop *
* Android Studio is reacting again*
"gradle is synching"
9:45 pm: gradle is done and I can finally compile my app

> FML

* Sees App launched on phone *
* Almost pukes again *

> (This was the assigment for the UX chapter, so design doesn't matter)

UX is decent. Proceeds with testing stuff. Save paths work, but some bugs can be caused by going of it

* fixes as much as possible *

* Takes quick look at backend *

Date date = new Date (GregorianCalender.getInstance().getTimeInMillis());

C'mon, I asked you to be the backend. You got 90% of the methods already written by the teacher and had 2 months to write the interfaces to my Front end AND you come up with shits like that.

Note: this example is a minor example of brainlogic.exe

I did what I could to make improve my situation. Hopefully he doesn't discover the bugs. And If it's a backend bug then I could't care less, since that was not my job!

Wish me luck for today!

Goodbye Windows Vista hello Ubuntu 😂

A memorial for my favorite rant of all time "Why did the chicken cross the road?"

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Assembler Chicken: First, it builds the road ......

C Chicken: It crosses the road without looking both ways.

C++ Chicken: The chicken wouldn't have to cross the road, you' d simply refer to him on the other side.

COBOL Chicken: 0001-CHICKEN-CROSSING.
IF NO-MORE-VEHICLES
THEN PERFORM 0010-CROSS-THE-ROAD
VARYING STEPS FROM 1 BY 1 UNTIL
ON-THE-OTHER-SIDE
ELSE
GO TO 0001-CHICKEN-CROSSING

Cray Chicken: Crosses faster than any other chicken, but if you don't dip it in liquid nitrogen first, it arrives on the other side frazzled.

Delphi Chicken: The chicken is dragged across the road and dropped on the other side.

Gopher Chicken: Tried to run but got beaten by the Web chicken.

Intel Pentium Chicken: The chicken crossed 4.9999978 times.

Iomega Chicken: The chicken should have ' backed up' before crossing.

Java Chicken: If your road needs to be crossed by a chicken, then the server will download one to the other side. (Of course, those are chicklets.) See also WMI Monitor.

Linux Chicken: Don't you *dare* try to cross the road the same way we do!

Mac Chicken: No reasonable chicken owner would want a chicken to cross the road, so there's no way to tell it how to cross the road.

Newton Chicken: Can't cluck, can't fly, and can't lay eggs, but you can carry it across the road in your pocket.

OOP Chicken: It doesn't need to cross the road, it just sends a message.

OS/2 Chicken: It crossed the road in style years ago, but it was so quiet that nobody noticed.

Microsoft's Chicken: It's already on both sides of the road. What's more its just bought the road.

Windows 95 Chicken: You see different coloured feathers while it crosses, but when you cook it still tastes like........ chicken.

Quantum Logic Chicken: The chicken is distributed probabilistically on all sides of the road until you observe it on the side of your choice.

VB Chicken: USHighways! <TheRoad.cross> (aChicken)

XP Chicken Jumps out onto the road, turns right, and just keeps on running.

The Longhorn Chicken had an identity crisis and is now calling itself Vista.

The Vista Chicken dazzled itself with its own graphics.

I thought I try to install windows XP and go thru the upgrades in a virtual machine. I will install every update for that version of Windows and then proceed to upgrade to the next version.

XP => Vista => 7 => 8 => 8.1 => 10

I'll was going to do the very first windows but, I had an XP install disk, so I am starting with that.

The Windows 11 keynote was such a load of bullshit. All the emo yadda yadda. You know, when I work on Windows, what I feel is irritation, anger, and despise for the amateur shitshow that Microsoft delivers.

In particular, but not limited to the fucking update reboots where Windows sits there uselessly and shells fucking prawns in its own ass!

Oh we now have semi-transparent shit. That's progress! It's so great! Only that it's not because already Windows Vista had Aero Glass, and Windows 8 removed it.

But we we have fucking rounded corners now! Crazy shit, some intern at Microsoft discovered border-radius, or did they dig out some fucking Windows XP copy? That also had rounded corners way before Apple even invented them!

To top it off, Microsoft even failed to deliver the livestream seamlessly and recommended watching it at Twitter. Yeah, that's the fucking "Windows experience" as we know it, you clowns!

My favourite BS quote from Nadella himself: "the web itself was born and grew up on Windows." That guy is so full of shit that an unmaintained latrine in rural India would be envious!

Can someone tell who the fuck lets morons with absolutely 0 knowledge of how the industry works go on and write articles concerning "what programming languages to learn" clickbait articles?

Look, I never looked into them. Not even when starting, I knew (out of spite) that the people that built Windows Vista were developers and then I went ahead to look what a software engineer was. I went down the rabbit hole from that and my next step at the time (I was on the local library) was to go ahead and look for programming books, C++ and Java caught my eye, so I got them two books and went down. Later on I found about JS and Python and similar shit like that and I just continued to learn. I seldom bothered to learn from internet articles because to my opinion if I needed to read documentation then I might as well fucking read it from the people that designed X technology.

some were good, some were shit, etc etc, but I never bothered to look for "what programming languages to learn" articles because I could give close to two shits about some other dickhead telling me what to learn, I have always been rather hesitant to take other people's opinion into consideration when it comes to my own learning.

BUT today I clicked on one of those articles out of curiosity.....

"Many DEVELOPER (notice the lack of proper grammar) choose to leave Visual Basic in favor of more modern frameworks like C#, Java or .NET"

Ok, so, for whatever the fuck reason Java is mentioned along C# and a fucking framework (.NET) rather than just C# for microsoft shit, is this moron talking about VB.NET at all? is he going about VB6? what? what is going on here?

Obj C is not relevant at all and should be immediately replaced by Swift since it is a modern, and stable language (never mind that each release has breaking changes on entire code bases, yeah, fuck it, just jump alltogether and ignore Obj C and the decades of stable code it has)

"Coffeescript has been replaced by the newer features of Java" <--- ok fam, you lost me here, give me your "ITPro" card please and then kick yourself repeatedly in the groin since I won't be bothered touching you, i might get some stOOpid on me.

Fuck, these articles are all over the place, from idiots like the one above, to the moron raving about pharo smalltalk shitting on every tech you use.

Just.....please bring back shit like byte magazine and shit.....please? or Linux Format, make Linux Format more popular across the board, where people who know their shit think twice before spewing their bullshit to the masses? Some fucking kid there might want to know where to start and these fucking idiots are out there just ruining shit for everything.

They want me to be a speaker at this event , I wrote them this

Regarding this statement on the speaker form “Presentation rooms are set up theatre style with a lectern, lectern mic, screen, laptop with Windows XP Office

2007/Vista XP and a projector.” – is it just an old form?

I do have one question what does this mean exactly?  Are you actually using windows xp? it’s not supported by Microsoft anymore, so it’s quite dangerous to have unless it’s not attached to the internet what so ever and never has been. Vista… is not much better. Windows 7 is 2008 you should at least be using that I would of thought? I mainly ask because if I am going to speak about technology and computers I can’t exactly say I’m an expert when I’m using tech as old as that. I mean I’m 20 I was 7 when xp came out, I know how to use it but it’s ancient, in computer terms It’s as old as Aztec times and I’d rather not be sacrificed to a sun god (seriously if anyone who knows tech at all sees me I’ll be embarrassed and taken the piss out of majorly).

Could I just use my laptop? If needs be?

Sorry to be a pain

Describe the most hellish development environment you can imagine for yourself:

Me:

Workstation OS: Windows Vista with network boot, no hard disk and can't save local files

Server OS: Closed physical appliance of Windows Server 2000 with no possibility of installing extra software

Languages: Visual Basic, Perl, Php, assembly, ABAP

IDE: None, just echoing code lines to files

Web technologies: IIS, Sharepoint, Java applets, asp

Network: No internet access, internal company network only

Web browser: IE 6

Graphical design software: msPaint

Version control: Emails

Team communication: Emails

Software distribution vector: Emails

Boss: some 40 year old guy who knows nothing about computers

Not kidding most of these stuff were actually real in my previous workplace.

I've always had a fetish for progress bars.

My favourite one? The green glowing one from Windows Vista.

rant || !rant
My father-in-law wants me to buy a new computer for him. He's currently using an old Acer minitower running more malware than real software on shitty Windows Vista. He only uses Email (Outlook 2003), Facebook and Youtube. I'm gonna get him a MSI Cubi Intel N3700/4GB/120GB SSD with Linux Mint and problem solved. No more malware/virus calls from him. I'm installing Mint on Vbox right now and I'm loving it from second 0.

So i started using atom text editor like a month ago. After finding out i can install packages and going on a spree.... I may have broke it. You know you are in for a pickle if the editor starts with more errors than windows vista.

I swear macOS Sierra is worse than Windows Vista, I need to type my password like 10 times to install and launch XCode...

Genie, my first wish is that you double the amount of JavaScript frameworks, every day.

Genie, my second wish is that you make PHP even more of a mess. Huh, not possible? Alright, my second wish is that my browser history is cleared when I die.

Genie, my third and final wish is that Linux will be owned by Microsoft and released as a DLC to Windows Vista.

Happy developing!

Actually I'm pleasantly surprised about Windows' stability nowadays. It's capable for running for up to a week with no stability issues, whereas systemd on the other hand.. let's just say that my Arch containers could do better right now.

Data mining aside, damn man.. Microsoft is improving for once! Is this the so-many'th unusable/somewhat stable switch? I mean, it's not like we haven't seen that happen yet! Windows 98, shit! Windows 2000, kinda alright! Windows Me, shit! Windows XP, kinda alright! Windows Vista, oh don't even get me started on that pile of garbage! Windows 7, again kinda okay! Windows 8, WHERE THE FUCK DID THAT START MENU GO YOU MOTHERFUCKERS?!!! Windows 10, well at least that Start menu got fixed. Then it got into some severe QA issues, which now seem to have gotten somewhat fixed again.

I'm starting to see a pattern here! 🤔

Haha! Sorry but this new cyber attack that's hit the NHS and other company's around the globe, just makes me laugh 😂

These company's just will not spend money on IT, keeping everything update and backed up! 💾

Some of these machines will still running on Windows Vista or XP 😱

I know it's not trending anymore but talking about poor products - the Pokemon GO app! I mean, that shit is the Windows Vista of apps. Never before have I seen a product that crashes on the simplest gui tasks.

And after a month they finally roll an update which consists of.. "Minor text fixes"! $#%!

While messing around with the Windows WM_NCPAINT message, I forced the WindowProc to return without calling DefWindowProc.

This resulted in interesting effects when pressing mouse buttons down on the right hand side of the title bar. This is on Windows 10.

Bottom part of the image is when I clicked on things and is Windows 9x-XP style. Top part of the image is when the window was deactivated and is Vista/Windows 7 style. Once they appear, the buttons behave as they did (visually - e.g. highlighting) as they did on those versions of Windows.

Just found it funny to see older bits of the Windows UI still hanging around behind the scenes!

If you ever think you have failed in something, remember: Microsoft had Vista.

Just threw away 5 copies of Windows Vista I got for $15 a piece when CompUsa closed their store here. Only ever opened 1 of them.

Wow I really need to clean my office more often.

Got my first laptop while I was overseas.

It was a windows hp laptop with Vista.

It was an absolute piece of shit.

Decided to find the people responsible of it.

Got to what a software engineer was.

Boss told me to look in the library to see if i find some books on the subject. Got a Java and C++ book.

Shit was hard af cuz I had no clue what I was doing, but I liked it. Decided to look more into an application wise platform of study rather than doing basic CLI shit. Got into web development with Java. Got a hold of more JS. Liked JS more cuz shit was easy, found about server side JS with classic ASP, did VBScript as well.

Eventually found Python, fell in love but hated the whitespace ussage for block level code etc. Found Ruby, to this day the most beautiful language according to me. Read about why's poignant intro to Ruby.

Dug it, but wanted some other things. Found out about the study of data structures ans algorithms, then harvard's free cs50 course, then mit courseware, rice's python class. Took all of them. CS50 introduced php, liked it, sounded like a drug, was easy to use, for whatever fucking reaskn my ass decided to use version 4 even though 5 was already out. Learned to appreciate advancements in programming language even more

Hipster phase, while studying php got more into JS and web design with more css concepts, wanted my shit to be pretty. Somehow landed with Common Lisp. Mind fucking blown.

Continued with php. Got into uni, math made sense through programming, ok so I am stupid, but not that stupid, python is the best calculator ever.

bring it bitches.

Graduated.

Still don't know what I am doing.

- I’m tired of being caught in this political bullshit and thinking about how to withdraw my money from the bank ASAP because govt can block my account to prevent me from leaving, how to let my salary make its way from Europe to me without making me a criminal for even having foreign currency, even though I pay taxes, being left without my meds because the country I was born in decided to deny the existance of my illness. At my age, I should be thinking about where do I want to go for vacation and what hair color should my next sex party fuck partner have.
- I’m tired of fighting this never-ending uphill battle with guilt upon guilt upon guilt that cripples my thinking and renders me helpless by the face of it, the constant sense of dread over me failing to even put into words what’s bothering me.
- I’m tired of seeing literally any thing associated with my childhood and having flashbacks of violence and gruesome things done to me as a child. Today, I had a full breakdown over seeing default Windows Vista wallpaper.

My anxiety always hits hard, but how hard should I hit the wall with my head next time to beat this shit out of it? sometimes I hear little bubbles inside. I left my country, but how hard should I vomit next time I eat two jars of nutella as a self-harm session for my country to leave me? I already have my eyes all red and messed up because of doing this. I can’t see straight. is it within my body? can I pull it out?

You'll be surprised, but it's Microsoft for me.
When I started out, windows(95, yes I'm old, thanks for noticing) was the shit for me and I was quite a fanboy of it.
However, when a friend of mine introduced me to Linux, I quickly changed my mind because so many small things were way better. Then, when Vista came out, I switched completely.
That, on its own, was an adventure, but that's another rant for another time(Me and my pal were the only Linux users in the town we lived in, so without online shopping, perusing the local hardware vendors was like meeting a Neolithic tribe. It's definitely rantworthy on its own, if only for nostalgia).
The more I learned about Free Software and what Corporations could do with their power, the more I came to despise the companies I used to advocate for.
Now, it's 2018 and people bitch about what Facebook, Microsoft and their equally evil buddies do. Yet, 2013, when PRISM hit the fan, they once again ran to their arms instead of fixing the problem properly. That's about when I lost the last bit of respect for people.
And now I'm sitting here playing the world's tiniest open source violin, singing "won't get fooled again" by The Who.

Half Life, Portal and Halo as well as a hate over windows vista.

I don't shit on things I can't comprehend. So when I bought my laptop with vista and hated how shitty it was I decided to find out the culprits. Turned out they were software engineers, but I was not about to shit on engineers without knowing what they go through. Down the rabbit hole.

Portal and Half life are what inspired to focus on Comp Sci afterwards and Glados and Cortana fascinated me. The fact that good money follows in the field played a big part as well.

Also, and more importantly, mom wanted me to be a programmer since she wanted to be one, she always thought this was the future. She won't read this, but I always thank her for pointing me on this path, she is my biggest fan.

My thoughts on Windows:
Xp: fairly decently stable
Vista: OK wtf
7: what vista should have been. (The best one imo)
8: trash
8.1: an attempt to fix trash
10: slightly less trash with more stupidifying

Founder of world two most hated companies/product ( Apple/iPhone, microsoft/windows vista/windows8/windows10/lumia/ ) are amongst richest person in the world.

Meanwhile creator of worlds most loved/less hated products are hardly know to people (Android/Andy, linux/Trovalds)

long rant;

How did I got into CS?

When I first got my laptop, I put on a password and forgot it. Nobody knew those things at that time around me (most of them, still don't) so I had to pay ₹350 (~$5) for formatting (OS reinstallation).
After a week, I again forgot the password and had no guts to ask more money from my family, because of the fear of getting scolded.

So, I took out the manuals that had shipped with the laptop, read them all. Found nothing.
But, on a very small page, a single line was written, "Insert the disc. Press F12 after pressing the power button".
I intuitively tried it and it worked (I had the OS DVD and no internet).

And I spent the next year experimenting with the windows OS (Vista).
Then tried all the other OSs.

Those were some times..2008..I guess.
Learnt OS without the internet. Nowadays people can't do it even with it.

What's your story?

I do not usually shit on operating systems or participate on hate discussions about tech and what not.

But boy, Windows 11 does fucking suck and it is giving me Vista vibes regarding how much I fucking hate it. And no, unfortunately I cannot change this PC to Linux (as I have before with other work computers) since I need Windows for it.

The Windows vista laptop running in the driving school with unpaid Kaspersky Security, offline 24/7, not updated since ever. Windows Update won't even open.

I've always liked Windows more than MacOS, but known deep in my heart that MacOS is more polished. More shiny, attractive, makes more sense, is easier to use, etc. Windows was never that far behind (however, they were probably furthest behind in Vista and 8), but they were always behind.

Looking at the new MacOS, I genuinely think that Microsoft offers a better experience now. While Android and iOS are still firmly battling, Windows just beats the living shit out of MacOS.

Windows is an OS built for either touch or mouse. If you use touch controls, the OS automatically adapts to it (larger context menus if you press and hold, smaller ones if you right click). You can enter tablet mode. The start menu has a good interface for both touch and mouse.

MacOS is an operating system designed for touch input on a device which famously has none.

It has fallen victim to a very common design error: too much fucking spacing. Every little thing, even items in a list, has a ton of pixels between them, and they all have rounded corners. Again, this is common for touch displays where you don't wanna fat finger stuff. But they don't offer a touch screen Mac and have expressed no interest in ever doing so.

Now they're going ARM on custom silicon. This is a good move in the long run, but it's going to be a rough couple of years. Apple admits two. You can probably reliably double that.

Is Apple killing the Mac on purpose or by accident?

My grandmother recently died and me and my brother were wondering what was to happen to her 10+ year PC (Dell optiplex 760). I could find a use for the monitor and my brother wanted to use it as a server. We asked around at the family and everyone seemed ok with that except for one guy..

Apparently the PC is still in "prime condition" running Windows 7 after an upgrade from Vista. It has 'a graphics chip or something like that' and is better than any laptop on the market right now. (I actually had my HP zBook 15 g3 with me). He claimed it wasn't some old worthless piece of junk and most family members would probably be interested in this machine.

I didn't try to argue because I realized he was not at all knowledgeable about technology and I didn't want to be disrespectful.

So I just stumbled upon a comment on an old rant after 2 hours of looking through devrant and I just have to post this ... like DUDE ARE YOU FOR REAL?!?!?! Vista !?!?! FUCKING WINDOWS VISTA!?!?! IMHO it was the worst windows ever, even WinME was not that shitty...

A whole morning running around the offices updating every PC manually as no PC in the company is managed remotely/centrally #yey

Somebody ranted about his teacher showing windows presentation and teaching nothing. I wanted to comment that post but i have enough material to make the whole rant out of it.

Well at least you have those presentations! In my school we have 2 IT classrooms one with win xp, 1ghz cpu, 0,5gb ram computers and one with win vista, 2 core 2ghz cpu and 2gb of ram PCs.

Guess what room our teacher is using... of course the worse one! The second one is fine, few years ago another theacher had been using it!

I tried to convince him to change rooms but he is coming up with silly exciuses! (like "server is not working here!", well i fixed it with my friend but why are you even talking about it when you are not using yours in old class!)

PS. That server is useless anyway, every pc is connected to router that is connected to internet so supervisor pc is not mandatory, only acces restriction is enforced by win accounts.

I heard from students from my class (that picked that optional IT course) (i'm in high school) that gimp is not working because pc's are so bad!
Sometimes even notepad frezzes.🤔

Not only class is shite but teacher clearly has no idea what is he doing. (in order to pass the final from IT you need to learn simple C++, up to simple foo objects) and of course he isn not even talking about that! On one lesson about sorting algorithms he gave everybody 10 small pieces of paper with numbers on them and told everybody to sort them manualy, because he didnt know how to do it himself! So there is no doubt they wont be able code it.

I need to mention that i volontered to "clean, fix" that classroom (in order to convince teacher to move). And in that class i saw programms written in c++ on every computer! That means somebody was teaching propely before! 😣

I feel sorry for those guys, they are just waisting time. I would fall for it as well but i decided i can learn coding in home ;).
Well, results are shocking, after 1 month of coding i learned C# and i can basicly make any algorithm i ever wish. I learned about computer operation so well that i can nearly teach computer science. (i helped my friend in usa that is a electronic student with that and i'm very proud of it 😁) and it class still can't even use all 3 loops correctly... 😥 Ok i must admit i have been coding for a looooong while so i had time to learn basic c,c++ and pc operations before, but point still stands.

Why the hell are you wasting life of those studends? Why are you giving them a choice to learn coding WHEN YOU CANT EVEN USE PC YOURSELF?! (that it course is optional so you can apply if you want so)

I dont regret not bothering about it.

Year 2000. I was 6.
One day my parents bought an assembled PC with Windows 95.
That day changed my life, a new passion has born.
I had internet for the first time only 6 years later, in 2006.

Until today I've also had Windows 98, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 and now 10.

I was inspired to be a programmer when I was 7 yrs old.
I started out using my dad's old Macintosh, it was pretty good at the time when I was 7. I played a game called "On The Run" at miniclip. I thought that one day I want to become a programmer who can do more than this or any other game.
Later when I was 9, my father bought a laptop but then he gave it to me. So I started and learn how computers work. It was a Acer 4376G I think, Windows Vista. (I didnt know vista was bad) I started with how to mod Java on a game called Need for Madness. That was when I learned about all sorts of jargon when looking up stuffs. I was able to somehow understand code but not write it. It was 9 years later, when at the end of 2015, I found khan academy and codecademy thru howtogeek. That was when I understand the most basic function that led me to build my entire knowledge or else I can only write

I never used Windows 7 or 8, and I forget I am not playing Xbox each time I use Windows 10.

Compared to Vista, I am very impressed with Windows 7! It can still run VS 2017. I know, I'm a little late to the party.

Err I think not!!!

The box said ‘Requires Windows Vista or better’. So I installed LINUX

Received this from a magazine in the mail today and i don't even know where to begin with this so much fail...OK Vista that's where I'll begin...Windows Vista...

It started with 30min max per week on spieleaffe (child game site) on our oldish slow HP windows vista machine.

We also had an even older pc at elementary school.

A year or two later I got that family Pc when we got a new laptop for our family.

The following years I had two laptop generations.

Windows vista was not that bad.

I swear, I started yesterday windows once for some guilty gaming. ONCE
Tried to connect Bluetooth headset
-> BSOD on the first try. Fuckn os can't handle shit
Works second time.
*Execute guilty_gaming.exe*
*Finish gaming business*
Want to shut down windows
"oh, I can only shutdown if I install your fucking update? Well fuck me pls no delet pingu partition

Next day. Pingu is alive. Wanna connect headphones.
* Connection: yes
* error.Failed
* Connection: yes
Fuckn ok, does it still work in windows?
Spoiler: fucking no! Very cool. I didn't there would be a better waste of time than gaming, but windows always fund a way to fuck you shit up.

Windows vista was less of a pain, windows 7 a nice memory and this is just an abortion fucking kept alive for the proving god that human can create a better hell for people than lucifer could ever imagine.

Way to go windows, I appreciate MacOS now

client asks me why the computer is so slow, turns on computer ..... turns out they have windows vista installed .. 😂

Windows vista.

Doesn’t need any explanation.

Seriously, css is the worst thing to ever happen to computers. That's with full acknowledgement of the existence of windows vista as well as IE.

Every other Windows 10 update cripples my USB Wi-Fi modem and I have to manually install the Vista drivers to get above 10mbps again. #softwaregore

Anything made by asus is a fucking garbage.

My first asus laptop was eee pc 701. It had only 2 gigabytes “ssd” which was just a flash drive using usb 2.0 inside. Doing this instead of using a proper sata ssd is like using bunch of rats glued to a frisbee instead of roomba vacuum. It displayed “intel 800mhz processor” in settings but this was only the processor’s name string, in fact it was only 640mhz single core. I still managed to install totally stripped version of windows xp to it and play some old games but overall it was horrible. It also heated up as hell.

My second asus laptop was infamous z99h. It had windows vista and was slow as hell right out of the box. Also BOTH hinges broke in just like six months. It was horrible as well. The screen itself broke in a year.

I also used asus rt-series router and it required a restart every day just to deliver some wifi. Don’t you dare tell me to “uPdATe fIrMwArE”, I pay money for the product and I expect it to work right outside the box.

Asus smartphones was also garbage.

So why have asus laptop if you can have a real laptop like MacBook or thinkpad? Why have asus phone if you can have a real smartphone like iPhone or pixel? Why have asus router if you can have ubiquiti?

Asus drivers suck, and all of asus software is just bloatware.

New machine...super fast 😂😂😂😂😂

Just received an email from a high maintenance client - this is verbatim what I've just read:

"If I could pull out my Windows vista and then plug in a newer windows system without any stress I'd go for this. Do you do this service? I could pay you for an hour to come my business, Unplug, Plug in and sort this out etc etc. It sounds like a quick job to me."

Note I'm a software developer, nothing to do with day to day IT support stuff. The client's business property is a 45 min drive from my own.

So basically, according to my client I can charge a single hour (£85.00 +vat) for a 90 minutes round trip, to migrate their PC to a newer operating system and move all their data and apps over and then setup the new OS. All for £85.00 +vat. All excluding the fact I

What the literal heck. I'm face palming all over the place.

Why is it so hard to find a way to make nice frontend on Visual Prolog. I trully hate interfaces that looks like Windows vista.

I once was working on my family's business during summer and was doing something on the laptop that was there (according to the owner, it was in a "good shape" - oh my god that laptop nearly gave me cancer: an old Toshiba, running W10, with half the F keys not working - specially F5. I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT F5 OH MY GOD -, and also the ➡ key (arrow keys). It was bought in a flea market and some IT guy, a friend of the owner, repaired it a bit and installed the OS because a laptop that old ran WinXP or Win Vista for sure) when suddenly it died on me.
I rebooted the thing and right before the time it should be showing the windows logo, the screen froze (on a black screen with some text) and it started to beep. Loudly. A loud continuous beep. I turned it off and on some times after that, seeing if turning it off and on did something (as it seems to work LoL) and it continued with the beeping. After a quick search I found out that that was a common problem with Toshibas that old, and that I needed to press F2 (that key worked thank god) when the black screen with the text showed up (I don't remember what was written there, it were some booting instructions, I think).
It worked. Great. Now the N key doesn't work when I press it. Greeeeeeeaaaaaat. Also it seemed that, when I opened the start menu, it would automatically write "nnnnnnnn(...)" without me pressing any key (pressing any key would make it stop though, maybe it was stuck).
Then I told the owner not to turn it off, because the laptop would start beeping and such (and I know he'd panic about it).
From then on I think it went off for good and now he's been using his own Toshiba, that runs Vista and is slow as all hell.
Moral of the story: he should have been used his crappy PC from the beginning, at least all its keys work

(Note: watching him type hurts my soul. When one is used to use both hands to type, and is fast-ish on the keyboard and uses tabs to change fields, watching someone type with only one hand every 2" or so and using the mouse to change fields hurts. So much time wasted 😭)

What are some iconic Windows Vista-era laptops? I need one for my collection.

Tux paint on MS windows vista

Windows Vista was the first OS I had on my PC... Will the society accept me?

Spent all afternoon and night, trying to get Windows reinstalled on my old college laptop because my dad needed another pc since I'll be using his personal laptop to wfh.

1. DVD Drive is faulty, slow/faulty reads
2. I don't have product keys (they're all stores on a USB disk, I should make a backup... that I didn't bring back to their place) except for Vista and Win 8 but Win 8 key already used by another PC. I have a burned Win 7 disc
3. Apparently it had a virus which was never removed, fresh reinstall never done. It hides the DVD drives and kills the internet and makes the installers think there's only 400MB.
4. I followed some wiki that said to Mark the C drive as Active... Which fixed the issue but then I decided to do the full install from boot... Except on reboot, apparently this fcked up the MBR
5. Tried googling how to fix the MBR, eventually found some USB app that supposedly fixes it. Create a USB boot disk, not recognized
6. Finally try the DVDs and release it recognize them somewhat when booting... Win 7 one kept hanging on the load screen
7. Somehow Vista got thru and actually installed...

Now IE and Chrome both complain about HTTPS issues and how they don't support Vista...

But at least my dad now had a laptop he can use to do non-work stuff while he uses his company laptop to do work.

Dunno if anyone else has ever used it or if most people just the browser, but the Twitch smart TV app is hot garbage. It takes several seconds to process every remote control input, even just navigating the menus.
It’s the only app on my TV that performs so badly. YouTube/Netflix/Prime all work perfectly, but for some reason Twitch acts like its running on a Windows Vista toaster

I don't, I just started doing it out of spite. The first pc i ever had for myself was a windows vista hp laptop. It ran like absolute shit. Yes I had used many computers before that, but this was the first one i got for myself and i was honestly sad I could not get it with xp.

Because it ran like shit, I decided to investigate as to why, i wanted to understand the people that did the system before I was to blame and talk shit about them.

Down the rabbit hole. Thank you vista, had you not been shit on MY computer I would have never gotten here. Also my mom always wanted me to be an engineer so there's that.

❤️

!rant

I have a 7yo laptop which, for the last 4 years, has been a Ubuntu single boot.

It was previously on Windows Vista, as it's shipped with it. Worth nothing to say, after a couple of years, terrible performances, so I never thought twice to reinstall Windows.

Now, that I'm in need to write C# along with CUDA in VS (2013 Express is the last version that supports CUDA 6.5, last version for my old GT330M), I installed Windows 10.

I have to admit, it's going pretty well. For being a VS machine, it's coming along very well :)

When I was 7, I got my hands on an Amstrad CPC-464. This was my first exposure to code, copying examples out of the handbook. Shortly after that my school got their first IT suite, with thirty machines running Windows 98. I remember lunchtimes spent playing ZipZaps, a game that shamelessly capitalised on the first Fast and Furious films. I learned how to create macros in Office, and after getting a machine at home with Windows 3.1 I also learned some basic DOS. When I was 12 we got our first XP machine, which I spent hours on with MSN messenger and mucking around with scripts. That machine eventually succumbed to my brother repeatedly powering it on/off, something I still kind of hold against my mother to this day.

After going into care, I bought an old XP laptop from a friend, a machine that I used extensively. I mined my first bitcoin on that machine, bitcoin that could have made me a rich man today if I had only taken backups seriously.

My next machine came with Vista, which was upgraded to 7 shortly afterwards. This is when I got a bit more seriously into code, contributing to a game written in C++ (Armagetron Advanced, if you're interested). I also learned a great deal about automation using this machine, and when I got my second desktop machine at 18 (which at the time was still extremely out of date), I built my first working web server with IIS. I've been through four desktops since then, one of which just about survived a house fire.

Now I run a company of my own, doing development work at a lower cost for social enterprises, and developing a SaaS platform that will eventually make me a living all on its own. This year I hope to finally stop having to worry about debt, income, where I'm getting my next meal from and when I can finally be self sufficient, almost seven years since the care system spit me out after conveniently forgetting to tell me I could have stayed there until after Uni.

I am proud, though, of coming so far with no college or university degree. I'm by no means an expert, but I'd call myself proficient enough in a couple of languages to be capable of making a career of it.

I have double-digit IQ. I’m like Apollo 11 computer — 4kb RAM, but I’m a legend. You’re like a windows vista laptop — technically smarter but no one gives a fuck.

Windows Vista.