Re: FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil
Re: FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil @jaybird got your email; will deal with it soon. Deluged at the mo. And I agree with your stance; as a rule, cutting yourself off doesn't help any if you have the means to drop the DRM. Although of course I wish Audible wouldn't use it to start with.Our libraries offer books from Overdrive, which uses MP3, or on unprotected USB DAISy sticks. I think it's a shame that they screw you up like that in the US, but I suppose the players you need are already specialised, so it's less bad. Of course, it's not good, either, and I'm fairly sure I'd feel the pain sooner or later if I were over there. Then again, my government pays me to get my own technology, so there are less perverse incentives forcing me into one format over another, or one player over another, and there is likely to be a much better case for supporting multiple players and therefore DRM would be a whole lot less useful. As it stands I can listen to the RNIB's talking books o n an off-the-shelf MP3 player, which cost me almost nothing. Fabulous. This is a sad story, made worse by the writer's choice to avoid iOS intentionally.iTunes DRM is only present on movies. Their audiobooks come from Audible, so buy from Audible direct. Music is unprotected.If you email me, I'll send you links to inAudible. At the moment I'd struggle to post it to a server outside the US which would make it vulnerable to the wankers that be, so we'll have to keep it secret until such time as I can host it at home.@Figment: I wouldn't say I was negative, I just think DRM is unjust. I've experienced too many cases of it failing to do what it claims, and of course this is particularly the case for blind people because DRM schemes aren't designed with us in mind. Would I choose to throw everyone under a bus for a DRM scheme that actually worked and was the only way to get access to stuff? Yeah, probably. But it would be a shame, because it would still be unjust. I don't want to live in a Brave New World under the shelter of materialist consumerism if I can possibly help it. A gram is better than a damn, and all that. If you are in the US, then this comment by the FSF to the Library of Congress wants your signature. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=250814#p250814 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil
Re: FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil OK, found two links bound for New Zealand (mega.co.nz). Requires Chrome or Flash for download. Hope you can handle that.For Windows (1.71).For Mac (0.09).The Windows version is probably the superior because it performs batch conversions. But as I explained above, it's no hardship to a Mac user with skill at the command line either; if you need help, feel free to follow up. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=250817#p250817 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil
Re: FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil OK, found two links bound for New Zealand (mega.co.nz). Requires Chrome or Flash for download. Hope you can handle that.For Windows (1.71).For Mac (0.09).The Windows version is probably the superior because it performs batch conversions. But as I explained above, it's no hardship to a Mac user with skill at the command line either; if you need help, feel free to follow up. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=250817#p250817 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil
Re: FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil @jaybird got your email; will deal with it soon. Deluged at the mo. And I agree with your stance; as a rule, cutting yourself off doesn't help any if you have the means to drop the DRM. Although of course I wish Audible wouldn't use it to start with.Our libraries offer books from Overdrive, which uses MP3, or on unprotected USB DAISy sticks. I think it's a shame that they screw you up like that in the US, but I suppose the players you need are already specialised, so it's less bad. Of course, it's not good, either, and I'm fairly sure I'd feel the pain sooner or later if I were over there. Then again, my government pays me to get my own technology, so there are less perverse incentives forcing me into one format over another, or one player over another, and there is likely to be a much better case for supporting multiple players and therefore DRM would be a whole lot less useful. As it stands I can listen to the RNIB's talking books o n an off-the-shelf MP3 player, which cost me almost nothing. Fabulous. This is a sad story, made worse by the writer's choice to avoid iOS intentionally.iTunes DRM is only present on movies. Their audiobooks come from Audible, so buy from Audible direct. Music is unprotected.If you email me, I'll send you links to inAudible. At the moment I'd struggle to post it to a server outside the US which would make it vulnerable to the wankers that be, so we'll have to keep it secret until such time as I can host it at home.@Figment: I wouldn't say I was negative, I just think DRM is unjust. I've experienced too many cases of it failing to do what it claims, and of course this is particularly the case for blind people because DRM schemes aren't designed with us in mind. Would I choose to throw everyone under a bus for a DRM scheme that actually worked and was the only way to get access to stuff? Yeah, probably. But it would be a shame, because it would still be unjust. I don't want to live in a Brave New World under the shelter of materialist consumerism if I can possibly help it. A gram is better than a damn, and all that. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=250814#p250814 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil
Re: FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil I think I understand you. There's something psychological going on.DRM makes premium bits feel more premium. I'm sure I've experienced that. Heck, I'm sure Audible was responsible for that, to some extent. It's such a wonderful, vertical, well-staged delivery.The bits are protected, therefore the content must be of high quality and you're privy to it. Yeah. I understand. But of course, it's an illusion. The only difference is the decryption.To see how this works, you need only enjoy content you ripped from a CD or DVD that you know is of studio quality. The content continues to be awesome, it just doesn't have the DRM on it. So why does content without DRM feel less valuable? Because it once had DRM, or because the DRM was unwarranted to begin with?I get a bit of both. Sometimes DRM content is just made worse by the DRM. Sometimes I'm glad the DRM is there because I truly value the content. An ABX test would, of course, fail utterly to reliably have me identify DRM-free from DRM content, because the DRM adds nothing perceivable. It's just the sense you get from the content owner's own self-assessment of the value of their content.So let's do away with the DRM, and have stern copyright notices instead. I could live with that. Or watermarking. The critical point is that we understand the value of this stuff, which I most certainly do. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=250729#p250729 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil
Re: FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil I think DRM is evil because it takes control away from the user; that's it's function, and it wouldn't be very useful DRM without it. It is a software adversary, that protects its masters from its users, and presumes guilt over innocence. And unlike say a gun, which has legitimate uses (all of which, incidentally, involve hurting people), DRM has no legitimate uses, because every potential justifiable use of DRM is more than counteracted by the significant harm. It would be like saying that arming people with explosives wasn't a problem because they can be used for legitimate self-defence, despite the fact that they cause serious structural damage to nearby property if used as intended. It only works in an ideal world where every copy is piracy and not a legitimate copy, and where the owner of the content is the only entity who can make informed choices about those copies. DRM cannot judge intent the way a person can, so that means DRM will fail where a person will not, sooner or later, as this case illustrates; if the DRM were working correctly, it would not prevent my brother from using his files--a technical impossibility for DRM to be useful.More interesting, unless you have law to require DRM servers to run forever, there will come a point where DRM actually harms a company's interests rather than help it. I'm not exactly sure what Amazon intend to do; I guess they're hoping that people will have had a good enough run with their content by the time they shut down the servers, but I guess we won't know until it happens; we don't even know when, because anything might happen to cause it, not just a company bankruptcy or merger, but it's not like we haven't seen other examples of people losing everything to DRM before. I for one won't be caught out by that when it happens. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=250725#p250725 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil
Re: FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil @Figment: Yes. I completely understand that a retailer has the right to refuse business for any reason, and that indeed, returns can mean losses that, if unchecked, would not provide any incentive for the customer to moderate their spending. Clearly, the benchmark is quite high enough that many customers can return items just fine and not be affected. I'm fairly sure Amazon could have handled it better (for instance by putting a human, rather than a machine, in charge) and there are legitimate cases, particularly third-party sellers, where Amazon is clearly in the wrong, but nevertheless it's completely reasonable for a retailer to close an account for excess returns. The UK consumer-rights group Watchdog actually featured a documentary about this situation, although they didn't look at the effects on digital content so much, just on the fact that a surprising minority were hitting the returns limit. But my real problem is with the completely one-sided approach to d igital purchases. Paying for a revocable license with irrevocable cash is stupid, yet it is what these corporations are happy to trick people into doing. That's clearly ethically bankrupt. I'm happy to make it harder for them to get away with that. Hopefully now you can too.As for DRM in the big picture, I personally believe we will eventually be rid of it. People will realise what a mistake it is to give control of this sort to content holders, for example publishers will suddenly find that they can no longer do deals with competing resellers, consumers will be locked in to platforms, etc. So yeah, DRM will die, eventually, but only once all the pain and suffering and mistakes of a generation of greed and stupidity has run its course. Piracy was never the reason, of course--not when there are so many other, better ways of obtaining pirated content, none of which involve breaking DRM, and all of which are better experiences for the "Customer" than the real deal. This is because the good of open formats for the customers significantly outweighs the bad, in the end, which is why DRM proponents don't want to lose control over any other kind of media besides music. Compare the CD to the DVD, to take one example. You can rip CDs. You can't rip DVDs--at least, not well, and not as well as any CD. So now we have the absurd situation that it is still preferable to buy a DVD so you can rip it poorly and avoid the DRM of the online download (typically of worse quality), whereas the CD--the format that wasn't protected by DRM--is now dead, and everyone is buying from online music stores just to avoid the inconvenience of physical media. It's crazy. Obviously, it's not piracy, but control. DRM makes it possible to control how and when you use your content, and to enforce in technology that which copyright law will not enforce for the rights holders. The reason it's so hard to shake it off is that nobody could reason ably disagree with protecting copyright. It's a perfect camouflage. I know I'm not a pirate--well, not much, anyway. Yet my only market response is to buy even more of this DRM-encumbered shit, not because I want it, but because the content distributors really are the only ones with a say in how its produced and distributed and this is the only choice in town. Ugh! Just avoid it as best you can, and break it when you learn how, I guess, until the laws catch up, and copyright gets fixed so it can't be abused in ways that are socially damaging. I daresay DRM and harbouring out-of-print material both qualify for that.As for multiple accounts at Amazon: no, Amazon explicitly go out of their way to link up billing and address details, so you can't do that, alas. In fact, they openly prevent you from touching your account once it's frozen, for that very reason. Nice idea, though. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=250721#p250721 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil
Re: FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil @enes: files received, thanks! I wish I'd checked my PMs sooner; I already had them, but through Mega, which on any browser besides Chrome requires Adobe bloody Flash to obtain. Ugh! Ended up using Chrome on XP, which supports the APIs required. Wasn't going to install it on my Mac. Your download links would've helped me avoid all that.And thanks to everybody else who got in touch to help me find Inaudible. I will explain in detail the DRM at the end of the post, so people living in restricted countries can tune out and avoid the thought police, but you all played your part in helping me understand how it worked.My brother got his account back. For whatever reason, his pleading with Amazon got his account reopened. Maybe it was that he mentioned that he was blind. The memo went all the way up to the head of sales in the UK, which might have meant that the RNIB got involved after all. Whatever the reason, he can now log in to his account, make and retur n purchases and access his Audible content on any device once again. Cheers all round. Well, except for the disappointment that is DRM, of course. I'll never be grateful for that. We've all learned an important lesson. As soon as my brother gets the gumption together, and now that he has the time, I'm going to help him download all his books and strip out the DRM. That way this can't happen to him again.For myself, I have already completely stripped the DRM from my Audible books collection, with no loss of quality whatsoever, and maintaining the original format and encoding. I was too late to return my Audible credits, but I would have, if I could have; Amazon didn't notify me, in December, when the renewal happened, and you only get 14 days to cancel your membership. Dirty trick, that. Still, with these credits on hand, I might as well stock up on books that I've already paid for. The removal of the DRM means, quite simply, that Audible has a gr eat deal more value to me than it otherwise would have. I can buy timeless books I will actually value for eternity because they don't have DRM to make them rot, I can get access to Audible exclusives, and I can use my USB MP3 player to play the books in the other room, which ironically probably means I'll have more time for listening. Naturally, though, I don't reward bad behaviour when I can possibly help it, so I'm going to try and avoid them for new purchases, just as I promised to. These bastards can only hurt people because we let them, so I'm going to try the various alternatives that have been suggested, particularly Downpour. Oh, and no, piracy isn't an option I'm happy with, no matter the provocation; at best it's something to be resorted to if there are no other options for obtaining the content and there is a specific, compelling reason to have it.Now, what follows is a discussion of the DRM itself. If you're living in an uncivilised nation where corporations write the rules (i.e. the US), then you can stop reading now and avoid a visit from the thought police.The tool of choice is called Inaudible. It is somewhat hard to find, but happily, the news is spreading, if you know where to look, and as always, especially among Open Sourcerers who don't mind getting their hands dirty. It can perform lossless decryption of Audible book files. The latest format, Audible Enhanced (file extension .aax) is an MPEG4 container with chapter markings in the metadata atoms, encrypted with a per-subscriber key. On Windows, Inaudible is pretty much a point-and-click affair, and can be automated entirely. On OS X, Inaudible includes the tools required, but not the shell scripting knowledge to do bulk conversions, and its UI seems to be limited specifically to converting one book at a time, although it is still useful for discovering keys and testing the tools.The basic idea of breaking the DRM is f irst to find your four-byte "Activation secret" and then to convert the audible file into a regular MPEG4 container using that secret. The secret is the golden key with which your files are encrypted for all of a subscriber's files. There are three ways to find it: from your existing player, from Audible's own activation server, and by brute-force. Inaudible seems to be using the third method, and has rainbow tables with precomputed keys and a custom implementation for the Audible algorithm for the open-source rcrack tool. It seems to work well, even without access to iTunes or Audible Manager, as was apparently required in the past. I suppose we should be glad that DRM purveyors are stupid as well as malicious; the key is 64 bits and is usually found in seconds. However, for a fully networked solution, there is the "Audible activator" from the same open-source inaudible-ng project--basically a tool for sending the username and password query to Audible 's server for activation, just as your client would.Now you have your secret, store it away in a safe place. This is
Re: getting a new iPhone, some help needed, please
Re: getting a new iPhone, some help needed, please Do you mean a media player or an ID3 killer? Afraid I don't know of many ID3 killers; id3kill was the one I know about, but that works only on MP3 files of course, and is now quite old.There are lots and lots of media players and virtual disk drives for iOS though. Just Google, you'll find lots, and reviews of them. I used FileExplorer, and that one has a way to connect to SMB servers so you can put all your stuff on a server and access it that way. Last time I tried it it was reasonably accessible, though it could have been better. I know there are others though, and people on here may have tried them. Or check AppleVis. You want to be able to see lists of files you either copy to the server, or connect it to a server to access the files. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=250495#p250495 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil
Re: FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil Conversion between lossy formats is a problem, etc. I could probably manage, but really, I'd much rather just get the actual, decrypted, compressed data. Anyway, this was back in the days of the Audible codec for Windows Media Player (DirectShow), which no longer exists. That codec meant that you could use GoldWave and others to get your content out. That's not an option anymore, so we're back to using the CD method (or Inaudible, which I'm being shown the way to). URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=250487#p250487 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: getting a new iPhone, some help needed, please
Re: getting a new iPhone, some help needed, please @afrim: I think you need another app like VLC if you're playing from the cloud automatically. There are also other apps that can simulate network drives, which play music, and you should look into those. The only way to make use of the Music app in iOS is, as you've noticed, to go through iTunes.For your tag-killing exercise, you could do worse than to try something like these. Once the files are in iTunes they assume the names of their tags, so you want to kill the tags before importing them. Of course, you also have the option of telling iTunes not to automatically add to library anything you point iTunes at (option in Advanced preferences, don't copy files into music library or some such), which keeps the filenames exactly as they are (because the files were not moved out of wherever you pointed iTunes at), but then using iTunes itself to edit metadata (Get Info) so it's correct. That 9;s a better long-term strategy IMO, since it makes it easier for you to sync and/or match as much of your content as you want in future and get correct metadata showing in iOS for any number of "Albums" and "Artists". Still, for the quick-'n'-dirty solution you're going with now, tag-killing and playlists should be all that you need. And yeah, it's a shame iTunes does not support this kind of folder-based operation, but at least you can show a complete list of "Songs" for now. Perhaps tell Apple you'd like it, and if enough people feel the same way, it might happen.@Dark: at the risk of bringing this old argument back again, which probably won't change either of our views on the matter, my point is that Apple is giving people the one choice they actually want. And by "People" I mean the 95% who use Apple products, oblivious to the technology or the way that it's potentially limiting them. I use Apple stuff because I can (largely) live with these restrictions, and the alternatives are just horrible, not because I agree with all of Apple's anti-consumer practises, or accept as gospel the one true Apple way. In the case of iTunes, I'd say that a lot of the hatred is unfounded, but that's mostly because I can live with iTunes and don't see any meaningful restrictions inherent to it. You can avoid or replace anything you take issue with (protected content, mostly) and iTunes runs on both Windows and Mac. I never need to transfer from my devices, because I maintain all my content and never store precious files in the cloud, and I appreciate all of the organisational benefits iTunes offers and the fact that it processes file tags. Now, I can see that in your case all this is not true, but (at the risk of sounding mean, which I most certainly am not intending) that's not the norm, and most people at least tolerate iTunes for the few things it's needed for, or simply use alternative cloud-based (or at least network-based) services (including Apple's own) that don't require iTunes at all. And in any case, now that you have your Victor Reader Stream I'd say your dislike of iTunes has reached its logical and inevitable conclusion. For mass storage, and the ability to organise with file names, you paid a price for an awesome player that does exactly what you want. I for one am happy for you. For audiobooks, what I do is set track and disc numbers on the tracks, and then iTunes plays them in the right order. Means you need the tag editor however, if you don't already have working tags. Oh yes, and they go in the Music section and not the Audiobooks section. I don't know then what you'll do for email. Mac Mail is quite simple, but it's certainly more complex than iOS Mail. Apple have been gradually whittling the features away though, so you might like it. It's certainly very efficient for VoiceOver users, even compared to TB on Windows.I don't use file-based cloud services. You're right; it's mostly about documents, although content creators need the space for videos and other things like that. However while iTunes on a desktop is running, you should be able to open the context menu while a song is selected and choose "Show in Finder" (or Explorer, on Doze). In this way you can find the files you need to keep, organised by default into Artist\Album structure, with the disc and track numbers at the starts of file names so they sort lexicographically. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=250486#p250486 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: MacBook Pro (Mid 2014) For Sale in the UK
Re: MacBook Pro (Mid 2014) For Sale in the UK FYI, the MacBook was sold. Sale closed ( but not the topic ). URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=250438#p250438 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil
Re: FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil Yeah I know. I really don't like wandering off the straight and narrow. I guess if you purchase audiobooks then you appreciate that, especially when you have devices (iPhone, Stream) and software (iTunes) that support Audible so perfectly and frictionlessly. Of course the cunning here is in just that deception; really, it's only working because those combinations have been bought by Audible. Guess it's time to go back to ripping back into flac, or if I get it working, lossless m4b conversions with Inaudible (which I also don't have). URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=250428#p250428 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil
Re: FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil Well, legal options would certainly be very interesting, given that these are digital purchases. Or rather, licenses ...It's certainly an idea though. We're just trawling for info at this point. And it doesn't look as if it's a particularly new problem, although it's usually Kindle people discover to be off-limits. Amazon has made statements in the past that they don't restrict purchases, and yet my brother has no access at all.But obviously, the death of DRM, worldwide, is the real solution. It's the only way; we simply have to make DRM illegal. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=250421#p250421 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil
Re: FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil @enes Thanks, I responded in a PM. Probably, because PMs don't generate email notifies, it's simpler just to email (I have a direct address, although forum mail works too). URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=250417#p250417 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil
Re: FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil Thanks guys.You can be sure I'm looking, but it seems that Inaudible is now being chased by Audible (surprise!) because it decrypts the material losslessly. It is now on a private tracker somewhere. Anyone know where and how? I can save myself, even if it's too late for my brother (the only approved device is his smartphone app, of course). Amazon got some consumer watchdog attention for closing accounts, but this aspect of it--the loss of Audible and Kindle purchases--seems to be unexplored. And Audible, especially, has been resistant to breakage. Perhaps it's not too late for us to kick up a fuss ... URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=250410#p250410 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil
FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil Amazon have closed my brother's account because he was returning too many articles to them. He'd apparently crossed some sacred threshold or other--presumably one calculated to be the least profitable to Amazon--with the result that he can no longer log in to his account.And you'll never guess what that means for his very handsome collection of Audible books.Go on, take a guess. You'll probably get it first time ...The DRM on Audible content requires that any device obtain a key from Amazon, after logging in to an account. Any device already possessing that key can of course continue to download and play any content, but without logging in, a new device cannot obtain the key. Amazon have made it very clear to my brother that they have no intention of allowing him further access to his account. So Amazon has put an effective end-of-life date on all of my brother's Audible "Purchases"; as soon as he resets the devices, sells an d replaces them, etc, his Audible collection will be no more.I'd just like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that DRM is thoroughly and fundamentally evil. It's wicked. It's corrupt. It's iniquitous. And it's not about piracy at all, it's about control. You don't own the things you "buy" if the content is locked with a key you don't have and can't get. The true owner is simply parting you from your money with the vague promise of letting you use the key, which they endeavour to keep you from discovering, lest you use it in ways not approved by the owner--for instance by unlocking your digital content permanently and thus freeing yourself from the owner's grip--but which they will make available to you while using software that they trust to protect their, and not your, interests. And of course, the owner always has the option of not letting you use your key at all, by telling the server not to give it to th e software. While your decryption key is in their hands, anything might happen to your content, at any time, even if the owner promises to the contrary.This racket is only possible because we give these content distributors the money to enable it--to write the software that keeps the keys safe from discovery while in your hands, to write laws that prohibit people from breaking the software to access the content without use of that software, and to criminalise perfectly legitimate uses of content that are inconvenient for the bottom line, but that are recognised by copyright and common sense as being reasonable and fair. I sincerely hope you take something from this incident, as I surely do, with something like this so close to home happening, and I hope you'll be willing to think carefully about whose business practices you'll be willing to support if you have the choice. I understand that we don't all have the choice to exercise all the time, and that it' s easy to make up excuses and pray that it never happens to us. I'd say that this was particularly true for blind people and those with other reading challenges, because the selection of material is already very limited. Audible makes a fantastic, sometimes exclusive collection of audiobooks available.But they, and any other DRM pedaler, simply cannot be trusted. I have made it a habit never to value any protected content too highly, and I'm gratified to see the truth in it, sad as I am for my brother's plight. For your own sake, wherever possible, you should make arrangements to avoid DRM. Try not to purchase anything you wouldn't keep from a DRM merchant. You never know, it could be you this happens to, and you might be the next person to own a handsome collection of strongly encrypted, utterly useless files that you have no hope of playing, and who will be out of pocket for the amount you "Bought" them for. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=250398#p250398 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil
FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil Amazon have closed my brother's account because he was returning too many articles to them. He'd apparently crossed some sacred threshold or other--presumably one calculated to be the least profitable to Amazon--with the result that he can no longer log in to his account.And you'll never guess what that means for his very handsome collection of Audible books.Go on, take a guess. You'll probably get it first time ...The DRM on Audible content requires that any device obtain a key from Amazon, after logging in to an account. Any device already possessing that key can of course continue to download and play any content, but without logging in, a new device cannot obtain the key. Amazon have made it very clear to my brother that they have no intention of allowing him further access to his account. So Amazon has put an effective end-of-life date on all of my brother's Audible "Purchases"; as soon as he resets the devices, sells an d replaces them, etc, his Audible collection will be no more.I'd just like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that DRM is thoroughly and fundamentally evil. It's wicked. It's corrupt. It's iniquitous. And it's not about piracy at all, it's about control. You don't own the things you "buy" if the content is locked with a key you don't have and can't get. The true owner is simply parting you from your money with the vague promise of letting you use the key, which they endeavour to keep you from discovering, lest you use it in ways not approved by the owner--for instance by unlocking your digital content permanently and thus freeing yourself from the owner's grip--but which they will make available to you while using software that they trust to protect their, and not your, interests. And of course, the owner always has the option of not letting you use your key at all, by telling the server not to give it to th e software. While your decryption key is in their hands, anything might happen to your content, at any time, even if the owner promises to the contrary.This racket is only possible because we give these content distributors the money to enable it--to write the software that keeps the keys safe from discovery while in your hands, to write laws that prohibit people from breaking the software to access the content without use of that software, and to criminalise perfectly legitimate uses of content that are inconvenient for the bottom line, but that are recognised by copyright and common sense as being reasonable and fair. I sincerely hope you take something from this incident, as I surely do, with something like this so close to home happening, and I hope you'll be willing to think carefully about whose business practices you'll be willing to support if you have the choice. I understand that we don't all have the choice to exercise all the time, and that it' s easy to make up excuses and pray that it never happens to us. I'd say that this was particularly true for blind people and those with other reading challenges, because the selection of material is already very limited. Audible makes a fantastic, sometimes exclusive collection of audiobooks available.But they, and any other DRM pedaler, simply cannot be trusted. I have made it a habit never to value any protected content too highly, and I'm gratified to see the truth in it, sad as I am for my brother's plight. For your own sake, wherever possible, you should make arrangements to avoid DRM. Try not to purchase anything you wouldn't keep from a DRM merchant. You never know, it could be you this happens to, and you might be the next person to own a handsome collection of strongly encrypted, utterly useless files that you have no hope of playing, and out of pocket for the amount you "Bought" them for. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=250398#p250398 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil
FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil Amazon have closed my brother's account because he was returning too many articles to them. He'd apparently crossed some sacred threshold or other--presumably one calculated to be the least profitable to Amazon--with the result that he can no longer log in to his account.And you'll never guess what that means for his very handsome collection of Audible books.Go on, take a guess. You'll probably get it first time ...The DRM on Audible content requires that any device obtain a key from Amazon, after logging in to an account. Any device already possessing that key can of course continue to download and play any content, but without logging in, a new device cannot obtain the key. Amazon have made it very clear to my brother that they have no intention of allowing him further access to his account. So Amazon has put an effective end-of-life date on all of my brother's Audible "Purchases"; as soon as he resets the devices, sells an d replaces them, etc, his Audible collection will be no more.I'd just like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that DRM is thoroughly and fundamentally evil. It's wicked. It's corrupt. It's iniquitous. And it's not about piracy at all, it's about control. You don't own the things you "buy" if the content is locked with a key you don't have and can't get. The true owner is simply parting you from your money with the vague promise of letting you use the key, which they endeavour to keep you from discovering, lest you use it in ways not approved by the owner--for instance by unlocking your digital content permanently and thus freeing yourself from the owner's grip--but which they will make available to you while using software that they trust to protect their, and not your, interests. And of course, the owner always has the option of not letting you use your key at all, by telling the server not to give it to th e software. While your decryption key is in their hands, anything might happen to your content, at any time, even if the owner promises to the contrary.This racket is only possible because we give these content distributors the money to enable it--to write the software that keeps the keys safe from discovery while in your hands, to write laws that prohibit people from breaking the software to access the content without use of that software, and to criminalise perfectly legitimate uses of content that are inconvenient for the bottom line, but that are recognised by Copyright and common sense as being reasonable and fair. I sincerely hope you take something from this incident, as I surely do, with something like this so close to home happening, and I hope you'll be willing to think carefully about whose business practices you'll be willing to support if you have the choice. I understand that we don't all have the choice to exercise all the time, and that it' s easy to make up excuses and pray that it never happens to you. I'd say that this was particularly true for blind people and those with other reading challenges, because the selection of material is already very limited. Audible makes a fantastic, sometimes exclusive collection of audiobooks available. But they, and any other DRM pedaler, simply cannot be trusted. I have made it a habit never to value any protected content too highly, and I'm gratified to see the truth in it, sad as I am for my brother's plight. For your own sakes, wherever possible, you should make arrangements to avoid DRM. Try not to purchase anything you wouldn't keep from a DRM merchant; you never know, it could be you this happens to, and you might be the next person to own a handsome collection of strongly encrypted, utterly useless files that you have no hope of playing. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=250398#p250398 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil
FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil Amazon have closed my brother's account because he was returning too many articles to them. He'd apparently crossed some sacred threshold or other--presumably one calculated to be the least profitable to Amazon--with the result that my brother can no longer log in to his account.And you'll never guess what that means for his very handsome collection of Audible books.Go on, take a guess. You'll probably get it first time ...The DRM on Audible content requires that any device obtain a key from Amazon, after logging in to his account. Any device already possessing that key can of course continue to download and play any content, but without logging in, a new device cannot obtain the key. Amazon have made it very clear to my brother that they have no intention of allowing him further access to his account. So Amazon has put an effective end-of-life date on all of my brother's Audible "Purchases"; as soon as he resets the devices, sells and replaces them, etc, his Audible collection will be no more.I'd just like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that DRM is thoroughly and fundamentally evil. It's wicked. It's corrupt. It's iniquitous. And it's not about piracy at all, it's about control. You don't own the things you "buy" if the content is locked with a key you don't have and can't get. The true owner is simply parting you from your money with the vague promise of letting you use the key, which they endeavour to keep you from discovering, lest you use it in ways not approved by the owner--for instance by unlocking your digital content permanently and thus freeing yourself from the owner's grip--but which they will make available to you while using software that they trust to protect their, and not your, interests. And of course, the owner always has the option of not letting you use your key at all, by telling the server not to give it to the software. While your decryption key is in their hands, anything might happen to your content, at any time, even if the owner promises to the contrary.This racket is only possible because we give these content distributors the money to enable it--to write the software that keeps the keys safe while in your hands, to write laws that prohibit people from breaking the software to access the content without use of that software, and to criminalise perfectly legitimate uses of content that are inconvenient for the bottom line, but that are recognised by Copyright and common sense as being reasonable and fair. I sincerely hope you take something from this incident, as I surely do, with something like this so close to home happening, and I hope you'll be willing to think carefully about whose business practices you'll be willing to support if you have the choice. I understand that we don't all have the choice to exercise all the time, and that it's easy to make up excuses and pray that it never happens to you. I'd say that this was particularly true for blind people and those with other reading challenges, because the selection of material is already very limited. Audible makes a fantastic, sometimes exclusive collection of audiobooks available. But they, and any other DRM pedaler, simply cannot be trusted. I have made it a habit never to value any protected content too highly, and I'm gratified to see the truth in it, sad as I am for my brother's plight. For your own sakes, wherever possible, you should make arrangements to avoid DRM. Try not to purchase anything you wouldn't keep from a DRM merchant; you never know, it could be you this happens to, and you might be the next person to own a handsome collection of strongly encrypted, utterly useless files that you have no hope of playing. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=250398#p250398 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: getting a new iPhone, some help needed, please
Re: getting a new iPhone, some help needed, please Outlook Express an efficient, bloat-free client? Ugh! Never! Outlook Express was essentially a web browser masquerading as an email program--"Client" is too generous a term here, since its only real connection to email is that it (poorly, of course) implemented the email protocols used for sending and receiving messages.Having said that, if you want an Outlook Express that doesn't suck, you could do worse than to try Thunderbird. It's competent, has a very similar feel, and is extensible so you can turn it from its fairly simple out-of-the-box state into a pretty awesome power-user mailer. I daresay your lady could learn it pretty easily, if that's what you need.Outlook is a crappy email client, but it makes up for that (to some, small extent) by being a general-purpose personal information manager that also knows how to deal in contacts and calendars and all that. iCloud integration is provided by iCloud for Windows. Set up iCloud on the iPhone first, or you won't be able to sign in on Doze. Requires Win7 or better.Re file management, as of iOS 9 it's better than it's ever been, and probably it's as good as we're going to get. You can store any type of file, in any directory structure you want. And yes, Apple's own productivity stuff now uses this mechanism. To see what your iCloud Drive looks like, go to Settings, iCloud, iCloud Drive, and turn on the "Show on Home Screen" option. Now, use the app that just magically appeared on your home screen to look at your iCloud Drive file storage. Any other cloud storage provider can hook the exact same pickers in applications, as I said; for Dropbox, for local servers, for privately-managed servers, etc, there will be an app that shows you your stuff and a document provider that exposes that stuff to apps that want to "Browse" it. It's pretty nifty, and really, I think it addresses the worst aspects of the older "Document storage" which was stupidly limited and didn't provide the "File system" that people were clambering for in apps like Dropbox (and especially Dropbox, it seems to me).Now, if you specifically want to extract audio files from iTunes you’ll have to use iTunes itself to get the files, by syncing them over from your device, or by downloading them from the store. iTunes is what Apple calls a “Shoebox” app, i.e. the data of the app is containerised. So yes, the media folder on a computer is the only way to get the media out. But once you have the media out, you can dump it in your cloud storage drive of choice, as I said, and avoid using iTunes (and the Music app on iPhone) to play them back.The point of iTunes Match is to allow you to put all your music (that you already own) up in the cloud, so you can get to it from anywhere, so you aren't limited by device storage, so you have Apple’s high-quality rips (if you have inferior-quality alternatives), and so you don't need to sync. If you want my personal opinion, iTunes Match would be made less attractive, even pointless, if iTunes allowed you to download songs to your devices locally from your own home computers on your own network, instead of requiring that they be uploaded to the cloud first before they can be accessed (even offline) from your devices, or else requiring that a sync be manually started from your device to get just the music you want, which you know full well is painful. The flip side though is that with iTunes Match, any number of libraries can be accessed as one--a use case I don't care for--and that Apple is giving you high-quality song files for you to keep as replacements for the crappy ones you may already have. I think iTunes Match is pure profit when you consider that Apple has a strong interest in not providing iTunes users the server capability to download locally--indeed, the capability they do offer, called "Home Sharing", only allows you to stream (but not download) content from your own home computers from iOS devices. Coincidence? Of course not! But it’s the only option there is, so I suggest people with the patience to tag do it. And yeah, most people don’t know how to manage their own home storage equipment or diddle with file and folder structures, and probably don’t keep lossless tracks as I do when they have the chance. It’s hard to argue that Apple isn’t providing what people want (again), just as its competitors are doing. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=250364#p250364 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: getting a new iPhone, some help needed, please
Re: getting a new iPhone, some help needed, please Outlook Express an efficient, bloat-free client? Ugh! Never! Outlook Express was essentially a web browser masquerading as an email program--"Client" is too generous a term here, since its only real connection to email is that it (poorly, of course) implemented the email protocols used for sending and receiving messages.Having said that, if you want an Outlook Express that doesn't suck, you could do worse than to try Thunderbird. It's competent, has a very similar feel, and is extensible so you can turn it from its fairly simple out-of-the-box state into a pretty awesome power-user mailer. I daresay your lady could learn it pretty easily, if that's what you need.Outlook is a crappy email client, but it makes up for that (to some, small extent) by being a general-purpose personal information manager that also knows how to deal in contacts and calendars and all that. iCloud integration is provided by iCloud for Windows. Set up iCloud on the iPhone first, or you won't be able to sign in on Doze. Requires Win7 or better.Re file management, as of iOS 9 it's better than it's ever been, and probably it's as good as we're going to get. You can store any type of file, in any directory structure you want. And yes, Apple's own productivity stuff now uses this mechanism. To see what your iCloud Drive looks like, go to Settings, iCloud, iCloud Drive, and turn on the "Show on Home Screen" option. Now, use the app that just magically appeared on your home screen to look at your iCloud Drive file storage. Any other cloud storage provider can hook the exact same pickers in applications, as I said; for Dropbox, for local servers, for privately-managed servers, etc, there will be an app that shows you your stuff and a document provider that exposes that stuff to apps that want to "Browse" it. It's pretty nifty, and really, I think it addresses the worst aspects of the older "Document storage" which was stupidly limited and didn't provide the "File system" that people were clambering for in apps like Dropbox (and especially Dropbox, it seems to me).Now, if you specifically want to extract audio files from iTunes you’ll have to use iTunes itself to get the files, by syncing them over from your device, or by downloading them from the store. iTunes is what Apple calls a “Shoebox” app, i.e. the data of the app is containerised. So yes, the media folder on a computer is the only way to get the media out. But once you have the media out, you can dump it in your cloud storage drive of choice, as I said, and avoid iTunes (and the Music app on iPhone) to play them back.The point of iTunes Match is to allow you to put all your music (that you already own) up in the cloud, so you can get to it from anywhere, so you aren't limited by device storage, so you have Apple’s high-quality rips (if you have inferior-quality alternatives), and so you don't need to sync. If you want my personal opinion, iTunes Match would be made less attractive, even pointless, if iTunes allowed you to download songs to your devices locally from your own home computers on your own network, instead of requiring that they be uploaded to the cloud first before they can be accessed (even offline) from your devices, or else requiring that a sync be manually started from your device to get just the music you want, which you know full well is painful. The flip side though is that with iTunes Match, any number of libraries can be accessed as one--a use case I don't care for--and that Apple is giving you high-quality song files for you to keep as replacements for the crappy ones you may already have. I think iTunes Match is pure profit when you consider that Apple has a strong interest in not providing iTunes users the server capability to download locally--indeed, the capability they do offer, called "Home Sharing", only allows you to stream (but not download) content from your own home computers from iOS devices. Coincidence? Of course not! But it’s the only option there is, so I suggest people with the patience to tag do it. And yeah, most people don’t know how to manage their own home storage equipment or diddle with file and folder structures, and probably don’t keep lossless tracks as I do when they have the chance. It’s hard to argue that Apple isn’t providing what people want (again), just as its competitors are doing. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=250364#p250364 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: getting a new iPhone, some help needed, please
Re: getting a new iPhone, some help needed, please Can you use iCloud to transfer music? Good question! I think the answer is that you can, but that you will need a third-party app to actually play the media files (like VLC, for example). Dropbox probably has the edge here because it has some internal viewers of its own, and many apps already know how to get to Dropbox directly (because of Apple's early refusal to be cool, like Dropbox, with the result that everybody just used Dropbox as the virtual file system of choice). Now any app that has the iCloud entitlement can act as the bearer for remotely-stored content, not only iCloud itself, through what are known as "Document providers". Hence cloud services are now quite equal.But that leads nicely to the second question: how much storage? 5 GB, for free, to be shared among all your iCloud uses. That is how much space you would have for such purposes. It might actually be worthwhile paying for more storage, from either iCloud or Dropbox, if you need space for file storage. Also notable, Apple has a service (called iTunes Match) that lets you upload your music specifically, sort of like Google Music, and that's a flat-rate product with the added bonus that it'll upgrade any songs you already have to Apple's music catalog rips, i.e. 256 Kb AAC. Major downside, for those it may concern: requires iTunes for the upload.One more thing: Dropbox operates online by default, that is you specifically mark things as offline if you want them. iCloud is the reverse, everything syncs by default, exactly like the Dropbox desktop client does (and, in fact, iCloud on Windows and Mac too). URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=250317#p250317 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: getting a new iPhone, some help needed, please
Re: getting a new iPhone, some help needed, please Yes. Or the blind gal who couldn't talk to his bank over the phone because the mindless gorp at the other end heard a second person--presumably a sighted person--reading out the account's card details to her, for relay to the bank.The essential lesson from all these stories of woe is that, sadly, "Security" is theatre, more often than not. Pretty crappy theatre, too. Authentication is the only criteria. If the mechanism used for authentication is inadequate, then the "Security" is completely and utterly fscking meaningless. Unfortunately the reality is that people are too eager to share their card numbers/PINs/passwords/whatever which leads to all this bollocks and, as with so many things, those willing to actually invest real effort into securing themselves (and their independence) are the ones most hurt by it. Truly sad. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=250263#p250263 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: getting a new iPhone, some help needed, please
Re: getting a new iPhone, some help needed, please Yes. Or the blind gal who couldn't talk to her bank over the phone because the mindless gorp at the other end heard a second person--presumably a sighted person--reading out the account's card details to her, for relay to the bank.The essential lesson from all these stories of woe is that, sadly, "Security" is theatre, more often than not. Pretty crappy theatre, too. Authentication is the only criteria. If the mechanism used for authentication is inadequate, then the "Security" is completely and utterly fscking meaningless. Unfortunately the reality is that people are too eager to share their card numbers/PINs/passwords/whatever which leads to all this bollocks and, as with so many things, those willing to actually invest real effort into securing themselves (and their independence) are the ones most hurt by it. Truly sad. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=250263#p250263 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: getting a new iPhone, some help needed, please
Re: getting a new iPhone, some help needed, please Yes. Or the blind gal who couldn't talk to her bank over the phone because the mindless gorp at the other end heard a second person--presumably a sighted person--reading out the account's card details to her, for relay to the bank.The essential lesson from all these stories of woe is that, sadly, "Security" is theatre, more often than not. Pretty crappy theatre, too. Authentication is the only criteria. If the mechanism used for authentication is inadequate, then the "Security" is completely and utterly fscking meaningless. Unfortunately the reality is that people are too eager to share or forget their card numbers/PINs/passwords/whatever which leads to all this bollocks and, as with so many things, those willing to actually invest real effort into securing themselves (and their independence) are the ones most hurt by it. Truly sad. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=250263#p250263 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: getting a new iPhone, some help needed, please
Re: getting a new iPhone, some help needed, please Well, I think both human and automated checks are good, but that because security concerns mean that automated checks are frequently inadequate, humans often need be involved--humans with precious little intelligence. The solution is either more intelligent humans or more secure authentication processes (shared secrets, text-message and email-based verification,, etc) that are much more foolproof against misappropriation of confidential information. So yeah, I'd love to see automation, if it resulted in actual improvements in security that didn't involve inept people, but I also want to see fewer inept people. Tricky.@Dark: if you go to Settings, iCloud on your device, you'll see what iCloud can do for you. iCloud Drive is Apple's answer to Dropbox. Mail is just an email service; you can configure any email client (including recent versions of Outlook and Thunderbird) to work with it. The settings are published on Apple's site, but they are imap.mai l.me.com port 993 and smtp.mail.me.com port 587. Log in with username and password of your iCloud account. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=250277#p250277 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: getting a new iPhone, some help needed, please
Re: getting a new iPhone, some help needed, please Great thread and some nice opening suggestions for apps here. Think I've got everything now. The number of things I do on my desktop gets smaller and smaller over time, and I just seriously wonder whether desktops are even cool anymore. I think it's fair to say that iTunes is like marmite: you either love it or you hate it. Although perhaps it's also fair to say that the proportion of those who love it will be more on the Mac side, and those who hate it on the Windows side, for the usual reasons. @Dark: if you don't have an email address for the lady, you can always create an iCloud.com email address during creation of the Apple ID. If you do this, that email address becomes the Apple ID. You can still add alternative email addresses and they will be reco gnised as the Apple ID, but after that point, you can never disassociate the iCloud address, which will always be active and receiving mail even if you are no longer using it. So think carefully before committing to that course of action. If you now plan not to use iCloud for any reason, don't use iCloud Mail to sign up. Of course, as the forum's resident Apple salesman, I am here to tell you that iCloud Mail is very easy to set up on any Apple device (obviously) and allows access using IMAP and SMTP from other clients, so you aren't locked in, if that should be the concern, and it is an otherwise very convenient choice for iThings. The accounts support server-side filtering (needs webmail access on desktop), knows how to autoreply and forward, does limited spam filtering, and gives you three additional "Aliases" which are addresses that come back to your primary account.Yeah! I really hate those stupid security questions. Just make stuff up and forge t it; it's a stupid countermeasure. iCloud supports the use of secondary email accounts for recovery, so use it. Or better yet, set up "Two-step verification" (i.e. two-factor authentication) and thereby avoid all this bollocks. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=250243#p250243 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini Mmm, doesn't sound too healthy, but no matter, I have clean images if it should come to that.And yeah, there's really no downside to actually having optical media. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=249870#p249870 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini Ditto, XP for me too (at least in a VM running on my Mac).Yes. Just write the XP ISO (which I hope is an official full ISO, either retail or OEM, for which you have a key) to the disc. You could probably have spared some of the cost with CD-Rs rather than DVD-RWs, but oh well, it should still work just the same I think. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=249843#p249843 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini Ditto, XP for me too (at least in a VM running on my Mac).Yes. Just write the XP ISO (which I hope is an official full ISO, either retail or OEM, for which you have a key) to the disc. You could probably have spared some of the cost with CD-Rs rather than DVD-RWs, but oh well, it should still work just the same I think. In Snow Leopard you have the choice to use Disk Utility and, I think, Finder too. You want to write directly to the disc, and not to create a burn folder and have the file itself appear on the disc. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=249843#p249843 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini The drivers you want will certainly be on that image, as long as the DVD is newer than the Mac. Indeed, the drivers downloaded by BootCamp Assistant are intended for Windows 7 and up, at least on contemporary versions of OS X, which probably explains why you're having trouble using BCA on Snow Leopard for this purpose. You'll be fine, really. And yeah, concur re Mac vs Windows. If I were in your shoes I'd probably do the same. And, oh look! I did. It's just that I haven't succeeded in doing the install using an SP3 disc, and haven't yet got together the gumption to do it with an SP2 disc that I might (or might not) have.Good luck. PS where do you run Mac OS X nowadays then, if not on that Mini? URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=249807#p249807 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini Well played. I didn't know you had a Windows VM, but that is indeed what you are after.That stuff on the DVD is mostly from the bad old days when the MacBook Air used networked optical drives to boot and install OS X. It's all now irrelevant, except the Windows server side of the optical drive sharing, which can still be used by optical-less Macs. MacBook Air now uses external optical drives just like everything else, come supplied with recovery partitions (it used to be install sticks that emulated DVD drives) and no longer support the "Remote Install Mac OS X" feature.Yes, you want the drivers. Those drivers should go on a FAT32-formatted USB key. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=249755#p249755 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini Try to follow the instructions on this thread.If this doesn't work, I can just send you the drivers, as I know I have recent ones for XP.Good luck ... URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=249704#p249704 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
MacBook Pro (Mid 2014) For Sale
MacBook Pro (Mid 2014) For Sale I have a fairly recent Retina MacBook Pro, mid 2014, 2.8 GHz quad-core I7 Haswell, 16 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, in excellent condition, that I am no longer using, for sale to anyone within the UK. I'd like £900 plus postage for it. I bought the MacBook Pro for a specific purpose, which it has now served. It's working flawlessly and would probably make a very enviable starting Mac for anybody who needs one.If you're interested, or want to share any private details, please mail me, to avoid getting the board implicated in anything. Otherwise, it's not my intention to spam, so feel free to ask general questions about the computer on the thread for everyone's benefit, or just to discuss Macs or MacBooks generally.Cheers. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=249529#p249529 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: MacBook Pro (Mid 2014) For Sale in the UK
Re: MacBook Pro (Mid 2014) For Sale in the UK Hey Arq. No problem about the hijacking: I like talking about Macs. And you reminded me of another point which I'll mention. But first ...Nah, I doubt you'd experience any difference worth talking about while just doing everyday things. In fact, if stamina is the primary objective, then the lower power consumption of a MacBook Air is decidedly favourable. Really the MacBook Pro comes into its own while doing virtualisation, or when running multithreaded or multiprocess applications like encoders. And of course, more memory and CPU cores helps when you are doing more things in parallel, which would now include Safari plug-ins. But nah, really, you'll know when you need a quad-core processor on a Mac.And I will now add what I should have said at the top: this MacBook Pro is the last model that will run Windows 7, for those that really, really care to keep u sing that OS until 2020. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=249539#p249539 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini Yes, you ought to be able to extract the BootCamp drivers from your Snow Leopard image, using a tool like TheUnarchiver. If you're having any trouble, just let me know and I'll MailDrop them to you.Buy those DVD-RW discs. Or go cheaper and buy DVD-R, it hardly matters if you're going to chuck most of them anyway (bad for the environment ...).Apple sells the latest Snow Leopard disc (10.6.3). It does not work on all machines that run Snow Leopard, but it will work just fine on yours. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=249502#p249502 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: REquesting Window eyes assistance
Re: REquesting Window eyes assistance Hi Dark.As you know, I'm not often in Windows nowadays, so I apologise if any of this turns out to be wrong, but here is what I remember from my glorious past as a Window-Eyes advocate. Control-Shift-W reads the entire window.The WE cursor is an invisible cursor. The mouse cursor moves the mouse. Use the numpad to move the respective cursors once selected: 8 is up, 2 is down, 4 is left, 6 is right. I think I also remember that numpad slash is left-click, and numpad star is right.This should be adequate to get you navigating about. Press Control-backslash to open up Window-Eyes itself. There the Help menu takes you to the important documentation for the rest of the system (which is, FWIW, quite considerable). It's not unreasonable to say that Window-Eyes is a highly manual screen reader, compared to its rivals.I hope this is sufficient to ge t you going and I'm glad you're doing well. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=249522#p249522 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Dear Windows, lets just be friends.
Re: Dear Windows, lets just be friends. As with Aaron, I say, very well put and remarked upon by all.I hope I don't qualify as too elitist an Apple fanboy. I think of Windows sometimes too. Steam works better on OS X from what I hear, however the games available are far more limited. Gaming is, it is not unreasonable to say, still in the realm of Windows. A Windows VM, naturally. I am just wondering whether or not I should grab the latest MacBook Pro (after flogging this one) because it will probably be the latest one to support Windows 8 until its end-of-life date; the next line-up will probably all be Skylake. Hmm. Questions, questions ... URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=249387#p249387 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Dear Windows, lets just be friends.
Re: Dear Windows, lets just be friends. As with Aaron, I say, very well put and remarked upon by all.I hope I don't qualify as too elitist an Apple fanboy. I think of Windows sometimes too. Steam works better on OS X from what I hear, however the games available are far more limited. Gaming is, it is not unreasonable to say, still in the realm of Windows. A Windows VM, naturally. I am just wondering whether or not I should grab the latest MacBook Pro (after flogging this one) because it will probably be the latest one to support Windows 8 until its end-of-life date; the next line-up will probably all be Skylake. Hmm. Questions, questions ...The Mac Mini's power button is at the top right corner. With its circular panel facing down and its ports at the back, the button is round. Press it whe n you're ready. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=249387#p249387 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Dear Windows, lets just be friends.
Re: Dear Windows, lets just be friends. As with Aaron, I say, very well put and remarked upon by all.I hope I don't qualify as too elitist an Apple fanboy. I think of Windows sometimes too. Steam works better on OS X from what I hear, however the games available are far more limited. Gaming is, it is not unreasonable to say, still in the realm of Windows. A Windows VM, naturally. I am just wondering whether or not I should grab the latest MacBook Pro (after flogging this one) because it will probably be the latest one to support Windows 8 until its end-of-life date; the next line-up will probably all be Skylake. Hmm. Questions, questions ...The Mac Mini's power button is at the top right corner. With the Mini's circular panel facing down and its ports at the back, the button is round. Press it when you're ready. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=249387#p249387 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order They didn't remove the tiles, and no they won't learn. You can configure it IIRC, but I'm not going to install it to find out. Classic Shell does work, though--that is when MS aren't disabling it. I think M$ simply don't like apologising or admitting they're wrong. Then again, Apple don't either ... URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=249358#p249358 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order What about the new Start menu? Is that any less broken than it was? It used to be slow, too. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=249271#p249271 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini It's not that the idea is bad (I already covered it on this thread, in fact) but that, somehow, you need to be able to provide a bootable environment without using any optical media, and only using the tools in OS X. So for instance, you could get the MBR from an XP system, and write it into place on your disk. Then you could resize your partitions, resulting in a hybrid MBR/GPT system, on which you copy the XP installation files and a minimal DOS environment. Finally you boot into DOS, use fdisk and format to set up a second primary partition onto which to install XP, run winnt.exe, and do your install. It would require sighted help, of course, unless you first wrote a custom script for it, which would need to take account of your new partition layout.All perfectly doable--at least, I hope so. But tell me, don't you think it'd be easier to just grab some blank optical media, dump the drivers on a USB key, and follow the BootCamp procedure (or do a complete w ipe and reinstall from XP Setup)? URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=249113#p249113 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order If you absolutely insist on upgrading, for whatever reason, then at least take a backup. Your personal files, at minimum, but a full system image is even better. It is known that the rollback process sometimes isn't available for the full, advertised thirty days, and it is also known that it has a fairly good chance of failing to correctly revert some of your Windows settings. So back up, and proceed with caution. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=249130#p249130 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order @aaron: you should be all right. When the dialog comes up, just press "Later" or close the window (which is permanent). You can always download the media creation tool yourself if you wish, and use your existing Win7/8/8.1 key to do a fresh install. If you haven't yet downloaded the update itself, you can still uncheck it in Windows Update under "Recommended".Naturally, I do not endorse this course of action; this is merely for your information. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=249226#p249226 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Before the Mini: Using an Aire To Prepare
Re: Before the Mini: Using an Aire To Prepare +1 Chris.QT accessibility is improving, although not all apps (in particular VirtualBox) are accessible enough to be usable. TeamTalk, apparently, may now work. This is indeed the worst part of OS X: accessibility politics, and realising that vendor nepotism is a reality and that even Apple is guilty of it. Fortunately, despite the apparently perpetual concerns that we'll be left out, somehow, we never are, and Mac OS X provides all of the functionality you really need, especially for everyday tasks. On the few occasions it really doesn't, well, there's always virtualisation. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=249015#p249015 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order It's here. Windows 10 is now a "Recommended" update. We knew this was coming, of course. Watch out.@Chris: I don't know whether Windows Mobile spies like 10 does, although as you said, I'd not be surprised. I know that previous versions were excellent; better even than iOS (no details required to get a Microsoft account, just an email address). And carriers make it worthwhile for vendors to load their phones with crap with discount pricing, so the vendor gets more coverage by selling their users out. Yeah, real quality.In slightly related news, Apple announced their financials. iOS growth is now flat. All their other products have been going down for a while now. So, while I think Apple is more than its stock price, I hope they get their shit together fast. Not that any of this is really relevant to privacy, of course, except insofar as they're the only decent option other than Linux in that quarter. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=248998#p248998 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: When do you truly lose it all?
Re: When do you truly lose it all? @nocturnus: no shame at all in asking for help when you need it. You're just as important as everybody else.I sent you $100. I know it's only a tiny fraction of what you need. I hope others can pitch in. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=248870#p248870 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: When do you truly lose it all?
Re: When do you truly lose it all? "Bollocks" doesn't really begin to describe it. Nevertheless, I stand by what I said in post 3. Don't despair.I will see if I can't send you some money in the near future. It won't be much, but I trust that every bit helps. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=248852#p248852 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Accessible *BSD Effort
Re: The Accessible *BSD Effort @king gamer 222: it wasn't speech from the machine itself. It was an installation operated entirely over a serial line, from installation to usage. The "Client" was Windows, or Linux with Minicom or SSH. Ultimately I stopped using it because, while I loved NetBSD, this was clearly a very unsatisfactory way to use it. Perhaps, when I get a VMWare virtual machine accessible in the same method, only using Unix-domain sockets on the host instead of physical hardware and RS232 ports and a null modem cable, this can be both tolerable and desirable again.Meantime, if you want to use the console, you need screen and BRLTTY for braille, or something like YASR for a screen reader. This latter uses a pseudo-terminal device, and tries to interpret the screen content much as a software emulator would, which makes it portable but also somewhat less reliable. Neither approach will let you, for example, interact with the getty that runs to accept your login, so you will need to make some compromises. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=248725#p248725 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Before the Mini: Using an Aire To Prepare
Re: Before the Mini: Using an Aire To Prepare LOL, re the breathing. I'm now quite used to it, really. Well, OK, so when I first heard it I thought it was way cool. I guess if you need Macintalk but can't stand Alex, there is Fred. He's awful quiet, and IMO has his own problems (he is no Eloquence), but perhaps give it a try. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=248542#p248542 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Before the Mini: Using an Aire To Prepare
Re: Before the Mini: Using an Aire To Prepare Somebody mentioned the Dock.When you have the time on your own Mac, do a VO+Shift+M to get a context menu on any item that's described as a folder, and choose the option to view it as a list. Now it's an accessible menu, instead of a pretty much unusable stack. You can also add the Applications folder to your Dock and use it as a kind of Windows Start menu equivalent. Yeah sure, very clunky, and really just opening Applications in Finder is a lot easier (Command-Shift-A) but it's still quite cute to have a way to launch all apps from the Dock, even those you did not add in yourself. FWIW, LaunchPad does work, but I rarely if ever use it because meh, this is a Mac, not a flaming iPad. As always, the information you need is in VoiceOver help (VO-questionmark). Just search for Dock; it's the first hit for me. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=248520#p248520 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Accessible *BSD Effort
Re: The Accessible *BSD Effort ammericandad2005 wrote:if I remember correctly, bsd was the bastard cousin to linux.If you said that to a BSD devotee, to their faces, they'd have your guts for garters. @king gamer222: sure, what you got? I use OS X now, and have had experience in the past with NetBSD, but only over a serial line. The hard part is (for me, anyway) getting braille output in much the way that Linux does, with BRLTTY actually retrieving the data from the screen, instead of from the screen emulator called screen (which does not allow console access).But yes, I'd love to relish in the rosy past, with only the most beautiful things, on the command line ... URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=248522#p248522 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Before the Mini: Using an Aire To Prepare
Re: Before the Mini: Using an Aire To Prepare Somebody mentioned the Dock.When you have the time on your own Mac, do a VO+Shift+M to get a context menu on any item that's described as a folder, and choose the option to view it as a list. Now it's an accessible menu, instead of a pretty much unusable stack. You can also add the Applications folder to your Dock and use it as a kind of Windows Start menu equivalent. Yeah sure, very clunky, and really just opening Applications in Finder is a lot easier (Command-Shift-A) but it's still quite cute to have a way to launch all apps from the Dock, even those you did not add in yourself. FWIW, LaunchPad does work, but I rarely if ever use it because meh, this is a Mac, not a flaming iPad. As always, the information you need is in VoiceOver help (VO-questionmark). Just search for Dock; it's the first hit for me.And yeah, I'm quite an Alex fan to o. Sure, it's no eloquence, but it definitely gets the job done once you've learned its little quirks. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=248520#p248520 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order @Flyby Chow: I think you can do this (emphasis on "Think"). All these releases of Windows use the same VHD technology for image backups, so I don't see why an earlier version of Windows shouldn't be able to restore a later one unless the VHD image file format changes.Perhaps the easiest way to verify it is to just try mounting the VHD file of your backup on an older copy of Windows. If the mount succeeds, then probably the WinPE for that version of the operating system will restore it.Not very reassuring, I know. Sorry about that. I did try getting definite answers, but as with all things Microsoft, you can never quite be sure when they will next bite you in the arse, so do try and double-check it. If push comes to shove, you can use the Windows DVD for your version of the Windows image, which of course requires sighted help.Figment wrote:Since it is the goal of every operating system vendor to sell copies of their products, every one of them are guilty of some form of privacy invasion because they need the demographic information to streamline and improve the effectiveness of their marketing operations.Nearly. Nowadays, Apple doesn't sell software, it sells hardware, but even when it did sell its software it was significantly subsidised by the hardware it ran on. Perhaps that is why they explicitly ask their customers, when they first use their operating systems, whether or not they wish to volunteer data Apple can use. It won't be helping Apple until the customer next upgrades, and there Apple has more cunning plans. Regardless, there is a big difference between taking data without asking permission and providing a clear consent before any data is ever collected as Apple does.Figment wrote:So quit crying about how invasive Windows is, I'm certain that if you l ook hard enough you'll find that Apple is just as guilty as Microsoft, and that Google is no less guilty themselves.Apple are no saints, but I'm not seeing it. Could be that's because I'm just not looking, but it's most likely because Microsoft really have chosen the same disgusting path as Google, and you're totally OK with that because Microsoft good, Apple bad. So, quit defending Microsoft's unethical practices, and either learn to live with them or move elsewhere. And I'm ready for all your feeble excuses, because I just know you're ready with them. Figment wrote:Linux is probably your only real option if you want a minimaly invasive operating system for your computer.Correct, provided that you pick your poison very carefully (so, not Ubuntu, which partners with Amazon to capture your searches). Even source code availability is no guarantee if the program is then going to download bad code behind your back. But this is probably all well within the capability of Linux users and developers to understand and deal with, at least for now. This is, of course, also the reason why Linux isn't on the desktop. But yes, Linux is really the only safe refuge from the machinations of vendors with their own agendas--the only place where money is not the end goal. Must work on getting accessibility to Linux. Is very important.Figment wrote:And, unfortunately, no matter how much you cry about the sins of Microsoft, Windows is so well entrenched as the dominant operating system that it will be a very long time before any other operating system ever threatens to replace it, if ever.Only inside the Redmond Reality Distortion Field (RRDF) where every little thing MS does it a golden shower of capitalist wonder. Out here in the real world, Android is the biggest OS by volume, mobile is king, the web is the new cross-platform, and yes, horror of horrors, Macs are making it into more and more businesses, still command the best margins, and are growing all the time (but not, IMO, for the right reasons). If it were not for the huge deployed base of existing business logic which requires Windows or Microsoft's server products, and certain accessibility concerns we happen to have, Windows would be done by now. And Microsoft knows it. Why else do you think they're giving their OS away for free, and joining Google at a game of involuntary data gathering?Seriously, if M$ apologists just let go and looked around them, instead of clinging onto these damp straws, they'd probably realise there ar e options. But no, there is only ever one winner, and it's Microsoft. Oh, well, I guess the complete desolation of the Windows Mobile market should wake some of them up--nah, probably not, after all there is always a market for Windows desktops, I mean notebooks, I mean netbooks, I mean ultrabooks, I mean tablets, I mean convertibles, I mean ... ( I was seriously tempted to retort simply with "LOL" but realised that you might simply not know all this, so didn't. But yes, LOL! ) URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=248309#p248309 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order So, on VMWare.Time to file some bugs to Apple about being open to third-party toolkits. If we lose Fusion ... URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=248048#p248048 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order I've got a nice long list of bugs here in a text file. I'm reporting accessibility bugs on Fridays. Although, TBH, I'm wondering whether reporting on Fridays makes any difference at all if nobody else is doing it ...Send your gripes to accessibility at apple dot com, as usual. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=248074#p248074 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order @wanderer: you could do worse than to try using the "--enable-speech-dispatcher" switch, but IIUC that appears as an option in CV options if installed. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=248019#p248019 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order @wanderer: you could do worse than to try using the "--enable-speech-dispatcher" switch, but IIUC that appears as an option in CV options if installed.And the Google TTS patches are available from subversion somewhere; would need to dig up the instructions, but Google have published them. You need to build a ChromeOS version of Chrome, and may then use the speech patches from Google. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=248019#p248019 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: When do you truly lose it all?
Re: When do you truly lose it all? Of course, I can hardly comment on the gravity of your situation, Nocturnus, what with having not experienced it. So I'm not even going to bother trying to.What I can absolutely, definitely say is that you reacted admirably and sensibly. Think of all the foolish people who rush back into their burning or flooded houses to rescue some treasured possession, and burn to death or are trapped and then drown. There is simply nothing more valuable than life. You have lost nothing of value, even though I'm sure you feel great sorrow for what you have lost. Truly, I hope there is mercy enough in this world--there has to be--so that you can once again be happy and free in your own home. Meantime, you mustn't despair. I've no doubt all of us here wouldn't hesitate to give you their support and earnest hopes for your future, at what must be a particularly terrible time for you and your family.Best wishes. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=248016#p248016 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: When do you truly lose it all?
Re: When do you truly lose it all? LOL! Yes, can't deny to having the same thought; Apple are now going to guarantee your compliance, one way or the other. Either that or the Lord saw what was coming, and made the necessary arrangements for your next computer for when the time came for you to need one. And yeah, you're going to get the very best possible opportunity to learn it, inside out. But seriously, as with others, no computer is more important than your wellbeing, not even a Mac. And hey, why not start that conspiracy? According to the other thread, I've got it all wrong about Microsoft. Yes, I realise I'm probably just asking to read this stuff given my tastes in techn ology circles, but, oh look, I'm now reading an article about Google's and Facebook's ever-increasing reign of terror. But since the other thread already encapsulates all that I want to say about that, I'll refrain from hijacking this thread any further. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=248046#p248046 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order @nocturnus: re Cortana making you keep promises you send in email, it's certainly creepy and I'd certainly turn that off, but to MS's credit it's not actually a problem if the data doesn't leave your device. It's stuff like the forced "Basic" telemetry (see Flyby Chow's post for what that actually means) and the overzealous parental control features that really turn up the heat. Technological dystopia meets reality, phase 1.Concerning the topic's title: there is an element here of the jocular, but also of the morose. To the extent that I'm not entirely free of Windows, and to the extent that Windows represents an extremely bad _expression_ of the technology trend of completely involuntary (read: forced) user monetisation and platform parti sanship, it is an order. Obviously, though, you can avoid technology and the Internet, so it's all good. :-|@wanderer re Linux live CDs: last tried Fedora 23 about a week ago. Could not get sound output, and I'd heard that was particularly good with hardware. It'd clearly booted, as I could see it obtain a DHCP lease. And that was in a VMWare guest. I'll give arch a go, although I'd prefer a Debian-based distro (that isn't Ubuntu). TBH I don't like eSpeak compared to either Eloquence or Alex, and I already have braille and textmode and could probably bootstrap a GUI if I needed one, so I'm a little at a loss as to what I'd get out of it, but I'm more bothered that a blind person cannot simply choose a mainstream distro and install it without these contortions. So, if you're saying that booting a live CD actually works, I guess that gives me some hope.No Swamp on a Mac? Interesting, when it was free I didn't ha ve any trouble there, although like Nocturnus I'm not really interested in paying for it. This guide is practically all still relevant today. And yeah, VMs, USB headsets, tinkered audio latency parameters all still work. Game away, lose nothing. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247933#p247933 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order @nocturnus: re Cortana making you keep promises you send in email, it's certainly creepy and I'd certainly turn that off, but to MS's credit it's not actually a problem if the data doesn't leave your device. It's stuff like the forced "Basic" telemetry (see Flyby Chow's post for what that actually means) and the overzealous parental control features that really turn up the heat. Technological dystopia meets reality, phase 1.Concerning the topic's title: there is an element here of the jocular, but also of the morose. To the extent that I'm not entirely free of Windows, and to the extent that Windows represents an extremely bad _expression_ of the technology trend of completely involuntary (read: forced) user monetisation and platform parti sanship, it is an order. Obviously, though, you can avoid technology and the Internet, so it's all good. :-|@wanderer re Linux live CDs: last tried Fedora 23 about a week ago. Could not get sound output, and I'd heard that was particularly good with hardware. It'd clearly booted, as I could see it obtain a DHCP lease. And that was in a VMWare guest. I'll give arch a go, although I'd prefer a Debian-based distro (that isn't Ubuntu). TBH I don't like eSpeak compared to either Eloquence or Alex, and I already have braille and textmode and could probably bootstrap a GUI if I needed one, so I'm a little at a loss as to what I'd get out of it, but I'm more bothered that a blind person cannot simply choose a mainstream distro and install it without these contortions. So, if you're saying that booting a live CD actually works, I guess that gives me some hope.No Swamp on a Mac? Interesting, when it was free I didn't ha ve any trouble there, although like Nocturnus I'm not really interested in paying for it. This guide is practically all still relevant today. And yeah, VMs, USB headsets, tinkered audio latency parameters all still work. Game away, lose nothing. Reinstalling OS X can be done either from the system disk using the recovery partition, or, more thoroughly, by using a copy of that partition (or a complete installer) from an external drive that can be used to repartition the internal disk. The process isn't too involved and many people have learned how to do it, although it's not the usual route for most users, presumably because the "Recovery HD" works more often than not. When using a recovery image, either internal or external, you are asked to sign in to the Mac App Store, and the entire OS is downloaded then and there over the network. Even if the internal disk is blank and there is no Recovery HD on it, if the Mac is connected to a network, the recovery image is fetched by the firmware itself from Apple. It's pretty damned awesome. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247933#p247933 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order @Wanderer: yeah I'm pretty sure I've actually seen this work, I just need to get together the patience and the breath. ALSA certainly works; I can enable and use it in another, textmode guest that I have here, and it works just fine after I set the volume levels with amix. I'd no idea pulseaudio was affected by ALSA levels, though, so I'm going to have to find some way of increasing the volume after the live CD boots. I just tried it with a Debian live system, and that too didn't work; so obviously a symptomatic issue with virtual VMWare hardware. And I know the host sound works because I've seen that work just fine as well (Intel HD audio) and yes, the Mac volume control buttons have a support package which I know that, for instance, Ubuntu has.More work for me, dammit. I'm spoiled over here, you know. I forgot to mention the other opt ion: ChromeOS. It makes me a bit tired too, to be honest, but it's another option, if it's all right by you. Of course, if you care about privacy, you'll want to perform some attitude readjustment on that, too. And of course you know how Google does quality control. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247964#p247964 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order I'm keeping an eye (ear, whatever) on ChromeOS. ChromeVox is undergoing serious renovation. It's now quite Mac-like--more than usual--and supports the chrome outside Chrome, as it were, i.e. all of the menus and system apps. It's no longer a mere extension. Quite a good show, really. Or it would be if it weren't so damned frustrating. To be fair, it's currently in the ChromeOS beta. Then again, most Google products are beta all the time, so meh. I'll work it harder, later, when I have a little patience ...I can't remember, now, what hardware I successfully ran a live system on. I think it was Ubuntu, and I'm fairly sure it was a Mac. I have a spare Mac Mini not doing anything, so I'll give it a try on there. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247970#p247970 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order +1.My thoughts coming up. Get a barf bag handy. I have been trying to reconcile my apparent desire to use Windows, which I feel very strongly every now and again, with the reality, which is that I rarely do. Sometimes its the refinement of Windows screen readers, and the choice available. Sometimes its the principle of openness. Sometimes it's my love of the long-lost, rosy past, where everything was largely perfect, and the few rough spots could largely be worked around.But if I actually evaluate the facts today, and when accessibility is the benchmark, I'm not even sure Windows wins anymore. When accessibility is not the only benchmark--when privacy, simplicity, manageability and happiness are concerns, say--Windows is substantially the loser.I am reluctant to dismiss Windows, as any choice. I don't like harbouring scores just because I can . But the facts, at least for me, speak for themselves. I am a Mac user. I want to have the choice, but the question of whether a platform meets my needs comes after, and not before, the determination of its suitability is made.To take a recent example, independent installation of the operating system. I can't imagine going back to a world without that. The bar has been raised, and it isn't coming back down. If I am to go back to Windows, it must be possible to reinstall it independently. Maybe that could be regarded as optional by some hold-outs, in the interest of other virtues of Windows accessibility, but I could never let it go. And, in practice, it actually matters: OS X is always there when I mess up my Windows VM, to restore it to before I broke it. I wish I could say the same for Windows on bare metal, but it isn't happening.You can throw away your barf bags now. The approved VI Twitter client for OS X is Night Owl which you can get from the Mac App Store. But actually, if you are happy using the web app, that works perfectly too. I'm using it now, in fact, to follow a particular account for news, without being signed in. I'll get back into Twitter properly when I have more time to put into that particular sinkhole. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247810#p247810 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order @Chris: Linux is an option, although really the question of which Linux and desktop and how to get it installed is something of a maze. I prefer to bootstrap, which is not the easiest thing in the world to do, because I haven't found a live CD that can reliably provide audio at the desktop. So maybe Windows is still the better option. Perhaps somebody can talk you through installing a desktop, or there are the VI-specific ones like Vinux and Sonar.@nocturnus: cool beans. Remember to pick up one of these if you are going without a monitor. Apple trackpad is helpful but not required. Numpads on keyboard with numpads are also usable by VoiceOver (although I now use Apple's wireless keyboard without, it's down to taste really).@arq: not sure I like the idea of a Windows system without updates ... I understand though. Have you applied the registry changes MS offers to turn off the nagware? Or us ed GWX Control Panel? The telemetry is a bigger issue for me.@wanderer: yep, fair enough, Eloquence it must be, sometimes ... I have JAWS in my Windows VM for that; never gets old. Alex could be a lot worse though, and I'm now quite used to it.For browsing the web, this is a nice guide. I can also send you my VO preferences, if you'd like to avoid all that work setting it up to (for instance) say "link" after the link's name. In Safari Preferences under Advanced, turn on the use of the Tab key to navigate every element. On this board, and after you set that preference, I just use Option-Tab to find the jump button, press VO-Space, and you can choose a room to go to, except the one you are already in of course, or the default. Or from the main page, VO-H to find heading, interact with the group, make sure you're on the link and VO-space or enter--so yeah, not quite as efficient because the items in the headings constitute more than one element and are not flattened. Actually, I think the fact that VO-space, VO-L/Shift-L doesn't work on the outer heading could be considered a bug because the link actually has the focus, so I'll add that to my list. Happily, the Safari native keys still work; just press enter, and you'll navigate immediately without any interaction, because the room's name link is the focus as soon as you jump to the heading. Learn something new every day. Interesting, then why do you have a MacBook at college? And yes I realise work is more important than learning a new OS, but your dependence on what you're familiar with will probably mean you quit early and often before you really learn enough to get anything done at all. It certainly did for me, and I was using Vista. So, when you find the t ime, try a bit harder. flyby chow wrote:for the life of me, I am not sure why all of you are bashing windows7 since it is way more stable. and for me, out of a IT stand point functions much better. sure it is getting old in the teeth. and perhaps 8.1 is in my mind, the last, utter last, successor of windows that I can say, functions well.Win8 has many under-the-hood changes and policy controls that make it superior to Win7, IMO. But, I suppose, from the point of view of somebody dealing with users, I can understand why Win7 is probably the better option for a deployment.2020--that is when it ends for your organisation, and only if you don't have Skylake or newer. Win8.1 gets just three more years: in 2023. fly by chow wrote:as for those who complains of not being able to install windows, perhaps it is time to pull a sighted friend closer, let them teach you once how to do it, and memorize it.windows xp rite up to windows 10 can be installed by my self no assistance needed.so, I do proclaim, that it is indeed possible.I don't have a great memory, and would likely not remember, or would be inclined to dislike the fact that I couldn't be sure if it worked. Scripts or talking WinPE options seem to be the best hope for me. I really can't understand why M$ do not simply include audio support in WinPE. It's possible; they simply choose not to do it.flyby chow wrote:as for apple devices, I cannot see my self spending over 40 thousand rand to buy it, for that amount of money i can build my self a monster of a windows pc. dooing exactly what i wish it to do. and do it only that way. how ever that is only my opinion.i do how ever wish, I had the opportunity to understand and check out and work with a apple device, for that kind of money to understand why so many of you wishes to use it.If you read all of what you have written in your post, you will find that you have answered your own question, most eloquently too. You're right; Windows is turning very bad. That's why I use Macs. Sure, Apple are no saints, but by God, the Microsoft alternative is intolerable. Choice of hardware doesn't change that, even though, honestly, I love that Apple will take care of that for me, too. Macs make terrific Windows machines, contain no bloatware or spyware out of the box, and have excellent
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order @Chris: Linux is an option, although really the question of which Linux and desktop and how to get it installed is something of a maze. I prefer to bootstrap, which is not the easiest thing in the world to do, because I haven't found a live CD that can reliably provide audio at the desktop. So maybe Windows is still the better option. Perhaps somebody can talk you through installing a desktop, or there are the VI-specific ones like Vinux and Sonar.@nocturnus: cool beans. Remember to pick up one of these if you are going without a monitor. Apple trackpad is helpful but not required. Numpads on keyboard with numpads are also usable by VoiceOver (although I now use Apple's wireless keyboard without, it's down to taste really).@arq: not sure I like the idea of a Windows system without updates ... I understand though. Have you applied the registry changes MS offers to turn off the nagware? Or us ed GWX Control Panel? The telemetry is a bigger issue for me.@wanderer: yep, fair enough, Eloquence it must be, sometimes ... I have JAWS in my Windows VM for that; never gets old. Alex could be a lot worse though, and I'm now quite used to it.For browsing the web, this is a nice guide. I can also send you my VO preferences, if you'd like to avoid all that work setting it up to (for instance) say "link" after the link's name. In Safari Preferences under Advanced, turn on the use of the Tab key to navigate every element. On this board, and after you set that preference, I just use Option-Tab to find the jump button, press VO-Space, and you can choose a room to go to, except the one you are already in of course, or the default. Or from the main page, VO-H to find heading, interact with the group, make sure you're on the link and VO-space or enter--so yeah, not quite as efficient because the items in the headings constitute more than one element and are not flattened. Actually, I think the fact that VO-space, VO-L/Shift-L doesn't work on the outer heading could be considered a bug because the link actually has the focus, so I'll add that to my list. Happily, the Safari native keys still work; just press enter, and you'll navigate immediately without any interaction, because the room's name link is the focus as soon as you jump to the heading. Learn something new every day. Interesting, then why do you have a MacBook at college? And yes I realise work is more important than learning a new OS, but your dependence on what you're familiar with will probably mean you quit early and often before you really learn enough to get anything done at all. It certainly did for me, and I was using Vista. So, when you find the t ime, try a bit harder. flyby chow wrote:for the life of me, I am not sure why all of you are bashing windows7 since it is way more stable. and for me, out of a IT stand point functions much better. sure it is getting old in the teeth. and perhaps 8.1 is in my mind, the last, utter last, successor of windows that I can say, functions well.Win8 has many under-the-hood changes and policy controls that make it superior to Win7, IMO. But, I suppose, from the point of view of somebody dealing with users, I can understand why Win7 is probably the better option for a deployment.2020--that is when it ends for your organisation, and only if you don't have Skylake or newer. Win8.1 gets just three more years: in 2023. flyby chow wrote:as for those who complains of not being able to install windows, perhaps it is time to pull a sighted friend closer, let them teach you once how to do it, and memorize it.windows xp rite up to windows 10 can be installed by my self no assistance needed.so, I do proclaim, that it is indeed possible.I don't have a great memory, and would likely not remember, or would be inclined to dislike the fact that I couldn't be sure if it worked. Scripts or talking WinPE options seem to be the best hope for me. I really can't understand why M$ do not simply include audio support in WinPE. It's possible; they simply choose not to do it. Not everybody can easily get sighted help (I can't) so it's really important.flyby chow wrote:as for apple devices, I cannot see my self spending over 40 thousand r and to buy it, for that amount of money i can build my self a monster of a windows pc. dooing exactly what i wish it to do. and do it only that way. how ever that is only my opinion.i do how ever wish, I had the opportunity to understand and check out and work with a apple device, for that kind of money to understand why so many of you wishes to use it.If you read all of what you have written in your post, you will find that you have answered your own question, most eloquently too. You're right; Windows is turning very bad. That's why I use Macs. Sure, Apple are no saints, but by God, the Microsoft alternative is intolerable. Choice of hardware doesn't change that, even though, honestly, I love that Apple will take care of that for me, too. Macs make terrific Windows
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order @Chris: Linux is an option, although really the question of which Linux and desktop and how to get it installed is something of a maze. I prefer to bootstrap, which is not the easiest thing in the world to do, because I haven't found a live CD that can reliably provide audio at the desktop. So maybe Windows is still the better option. Perhaps somebody can talk you through installing a desktop, or there are the VI-specific ones like Vinux and Sonar.@nocturnus: cool beans. Remember to pick up one of these if you are going without a monitor. Apple trackpad is helpful but not required. Numpads on keyboard with numpads are also usable by VoiceOver (although I now use Apple's wireless keyboard without, it's down to taste really).@arq: not sure I like the idea of a Windows system without updates ... I understand though. Have you applied the registry changes MS offers to turn off the nagware? Or us ed GWX Control Panel? The telemetry is a bigger issue for me.@wanderer: yep, fair enough, Eloquence it must be, sometimes ... I have JAWS in my Windows VM for that; never gets old. Alex could be a lot worse though, and I'm not quite used to it.For browsing the web, this is a nice guide. I can also send you my VO preferences, if you'd like to avoid all that work setting it up to (for instance) say "link" after the link's name. In Safari Preferences under Advanced, turn on the use of the Tab key to navigate every element. On this board, and after you set that preference, I just use Option-Tab to find the jump button, press VO-Space, and you can choose a room to go to, except the one you are already in of course, or the default. Or from the main page, VO-H to find heading, interact with the group, make sure you're on the link and VO-space or enter--so yeah, not quite as efficient because the items in the headings constitute more than one element and are not flattened. Actually, I think the fact that VO-space, VO-L/Shift-L doesn't work on the outer heading could be considered a bug because the link actually has the focus, so I'll add that to my list. Happily, the Safari native keys still work; just press enter, and you'll navigate immediately without any interaction, because the room's name link is the focus as soon as you jump to the heading. Learn something new every day. Interesting, then why do you have a MacBook at college? And yes I realise work is more important than learning a new OS, but your dependence on what you're familiar with will probably mean you quit early and often before you really learn enough to get anything done at all. It certainly did for me, and I was using Vista. So, when you find the t ime, try a bit harder. flyby chow wrote:for the life of me, I am not sure why all of you are bashing windows7 since it is way more stable. and for me, out of a IT stand point functions much better. sure it is getting old in the teeth. and perhaps 8.1 is in my mind, the last, utter last, successor of windows that I can say, functions well.Win8 has many under-the-hood changes and policy controls that make it superior to Win7, IMO. But, I suppose, from the point of view of somebody dealing with users, I can understand why Win7 is probably the better option for a deployment.2020--that is when it ends for your organisation, and only if you don't have Skylake or newer. Win8.1 gets just three more years: in 2023. fly by chow wrote:as for those who complains of not being able to install windows, perhaps it is time to pull a sighted friend closer, let them teach you once how to do it, and memorize it.windows xp rite up to windows 10 can be installed by my self no assistance needed.so, I do proclaim, that it is indeed possible.I don't have a great memory, and would likely not remember, or would be inclined to dislike the fact that I couldn't be sure if it worked. Scripts or talking WinPE options seem to be the best hope for me. I really can't understand why M$ do not simply include audio support in WinPE. It's possible; they simply choose not to do it.flyby chow wrote:as for apple devices, I cannot see my self spending over 40 thousand rand to buy it, for that amount of money i can build my self a monster of a windows pc. dooing exactly what i wish it to do. and do it only that way. how ever that is only my opinion.i do how ever wish, I had the opportunity to understand and check out and work with a apple device, for that kind of money to understand why so many of you wishes to use it.If you read all of what you have written in your post, you will find that you have answered your own question, most eloquently too. You're right; Windows is turning very bad. That's why I use Macs. Sure, Apple are no saints, but by God, the Microsoft alternative is intolerable. Choice of hardware doesn't change that, even though, honestly, I love that Apple will take care of that for me, too. Macs make terrific Windows machines, contain no bloatware or spyware out of the box, and have excellent
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini Put the disc in the drive, then go to System Information and look under Disc Burning. You should be able to learn about the media that way. You can also try just erasing the disc in Disk Utility. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247795#p247795 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini Put the disc in the drive, then go to System Information and look under Disc Burning. You should be able to learn about the media that way. You can also try just erasing the disc in Disk Utility.To be a teensy-weensy bit fair to Apple, machines often had specific builds of the OS. So, although it's generally possible to install a version of OS X at or above the one that a machine came with, there will still be cases where that isn't true. No machine will run a version of OS X that is lower than the one it came with, of course. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247795#p247795 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order Well, of the Mac Mini and iMac, iMac gets you more at the higher price points. And as is generally advised where specs are concerned, more is usually always better. I generally always by the highest and most of everything when I can, simply for that reason. However, as Nocturnus says, it is really true that there's a point where it simply doesn't matter, because your workload won't actually require it. I think it's fair to say that, if you become habitually accustomed to heavier workloads, then the iMac will be a better choice, but a surprising number of things (including many light transcoding or virtualisation workloads) will do just fine with the smaller systems. The best way to illustrate this is that, typically, MacBook Air users running Windows will upgrade to MacBook Pros if they are heavy Windows users.Now, having said that, I couldn't say which of the machines is actually better; I have two Mac Minis and one iMac, all on the same desktop. T he iMac is my primary machine, for sheer power. The Minis are servers: the older system runs Linux, while the newer Mini runs as an OS X cache and iTunes renderer and hub. My old 2010 Mini with USB 2 and no Thunderbolt is next door and is for running older operating systems, and my MacBook Pro is for the outdoors.Also bear in mind that nowadays, for iMacs, RAM is explicitly user-upgradable; you could buy a top-end iMac, cut out a huge chunk of margin by not buying RAM from Apple, and top it off yourself (actually, you can get 64 GB into the current iMac for what Apple now charges for 32 GB, IIUC).And again remember, these things will run Windows and Linux. There is no danger of someday being kicked out of your investment because Apple goes on a technology spring-clean, as sometimes happens. Oh yeah, and you generally get great resale value when the time comes to move on to the next piece of hotness your geek heart desires.TL;DR: just splurge and enjoy yourself b uying whatever it is you really want; it pays off in the end. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247686#p247686 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order Well, of the Mac Mini and iMac, iMac gets you more at the higher price points. And as is generally advised where specs are concerned, more is usually always better. I generally always by the highest and most of everything when I can, simply for that reason. However, as Nocturnus says, it is really true that there's a point where it simply doesn't matter, because your workload won't actually require it. I think it's fair to say that, if you become habitually accustomed to heavier workloads, then the iMac will be a better choice, but a surprising number of things (including many light transcoding or virtualisation workloads) will do just fine with the smaller systems. The best way to illustrate this is that, typically, MacBook Air users running Windows will upgrade to MacBook Pros if they are heavy Windows users.Now, having said that, I couldn't say which of the machines is actually better; I have two Mac Minis and one iMac, all on the same desktop. T he iMac is my primary machine, for sheer power. The Minis are servers: the older system runs Linux, while the newer, newer Mini runs as an OS X cache and iTunes renderer and hub. My old 2010 Mini with USB 2 and no Thunderbolt is next door and is for running older operating systems, and my MacBook Pro is for the outdoors.Also bear in mind that nowadays, for iMacs, RAM is explicitly user-upgradable; you could buy a top-end iMac, cut out a huge chunk of margin by not buying RAM from Apple, and top it off yourself (actually, you can get 64 GB into the current iMac for what Apple now charges for 32 GB, IIUC).And again remember, these things will run Windows and Linux. There is no danger of someday being kicked out of your investment because Apple goes on a technology spring-clean, as sometimes happens. Oh yeah, and you generally get great resale value when the time comes to move on to the next piece of hotness your geek heart desires.TL;DR: just splurge and enjoy you rself buying whatever it is you really want; it pays off in the end. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247686#p247686 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini And as an aside, the bloke who sold you them clearly scammed you, since machine-specific discs should never be sold without the Macs they came with. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247779#p247779 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order +1. Narrator is improved, but impractical. It's almost like MS copy-pasted Apple's ideas (even the touch gestures!) but stopped short of actually making it a usable substitute for a commercial screen reader, sort of like a proof of concept that's only just good enough to meet the minimum requirements of functionality. It'll work all right on a Windows RT touch device, but only because you won't get anything done on those devices anyway ...Microsoft are quite plain about the fact that they do not want to compete, or that they don't imagine that the need of specialist "Assistive aids" will go away. I can commend their openness, but not their cowardice. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247572#p247572 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order Fix privacy on Ubuntu, on OS X and, last but definitely least, on Windoze. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247594#p247594 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order Fix privacy on Ubuntu, on OS X and, last and definitely not least, on Windoze. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247594#p247594 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order Blimey. Now, don't do anything hasty ...But you're right. I know I'm pissed, and Windows isn't my primary OS. Choose wisely, try the machines out, take full advantage of the refund policy, do the research on the net to learn how it's done, and seek help from the communities (this board, AppleVis, macvisionaries, etc). You could be the next successful convert. I'd love to hear how it goes. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247577#p247577 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order Blimey. Now, don't do anything hasty ...But you're right. I know I'm pissed, and Windows isn't my primary OS. Choose wisely, try the machines out, take full advantage of the refund policy, do the research on the net to learn how it's done, and seek help from the communities (this board, AppleVis, macvisionaries, etc), and you could be the next successful convert.I'd love to hear how it goes. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247577#p247577 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order @Theo yes, it means you're OK. Cool.@Nocturnus NP, and feel free to follow up in further OT posts/topics if your questions merit them, as usual. To answer the questions you have posed now and my general advice: as a rule bigger is better, and because these machines last you want to invest in them up front rather than find later on that they're inadequate, wherever possible. Especially important now they're integrated and your options for upgrading are limited after the purchase. Yes, generally speaking the desktops give you more power, although I think it's fair to say that there's a certain threshold beyond which it doesn't actually matter, and the really important consideration is core count, because the mobile CPUs are nearly identical. Having said this, the iMac uses USB peripherals, and the Mac Mini needs a monitor, but you can purchase one of these fit-headless devices that fake one, and this works fine and makes for an excellent starting computer. Of these, the Mini is more like the laptop; it's dual-core, where the iMac will take you to quad-core. Ditto the MacBook Air, which is light and sexy, against its Pro counterpart. Full specs and prices are available in the free iOS "Apple Store" app; you could configure your machines and see what effects your choices have on prices. If you're just starting out, though, and especially if you have other computers to fall back on (so no need for virtualisation of Windows), then I'd suggest either the MacBook Air or the Mac Mini. Heavier workloads are served by MacBook Pro or iMac. Mac Pro is just way too expensive unless you're a serious number-crunching professional and need pro-grade graphics and CPUs, which most people simply don't outside rendering applications. And, let's not forget, this is your first Mac and therefore your first experimental foray into new waters, from which you may or may not emerge triumphant. You should be aw are that these machines can run Windows, if it should come to it, so try not to underestimate the potential. In particular, the screen on the low-end iMac is the best bit: it comes with internal hard disk only. That would not be the best starting point when you could get a lower-clocked, but SSD-containing, Mac Mini or Air.Oops, that was quite rambly. I must be tired. Anyway, I hope this has given you some starting points. Don't forget to check out the intro pages on AppleVis; some excellent fodder on there.Good luck on your travels, and don't be afraid to ask your questions. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247603#p247603 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order That's the spirit! URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247665#p247665 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order @Arq: as per Safari preferences, Command-enter is equivalent to Command-click. So, if you use tabs and have tabs open instead of windows, Command-Enter will open the link in a new tab. You can close it with Command-W, whether it is a tab or a window. I do this all the time.@Wanderer: You already have the Mac; that's half the battle. The next part is to reduce your dependence on Windows for everyday stuff. IMO, Windows is just for fun, or for those very few rare (and also mostly fun) things, so stick it in a VM. XP will work fine. Arch can go either in a VM or on a partition, your choice, although I've found that in many ways, like Windows, Linux is more fun when it's virtual and all its hardware is compatible.For the very basics, I'd say that AppleVis, David Woodbridge's material, and Apple's own VoiceOver Getting Started Guide is as good as it gets. There's lots of use ful reference from within VO itself; start by exploring the menu that results from pressing VO-H to get help. Then of course all the communities out there are very helpful for solving your particular issue. It sounds like you'll be fine though. If you have trouble with the keyboard, don't forget your trackpad: VO+rotate-right to turn on TrackPad Commander and thus get a very iOS-like feel. Ditto QuickNav: left+right to toggle, and now you don't need both hands.As to your other geeky questions, I'll give them a shot here, but everything you could want is on t'interwebs, and especially Apple Developer. Basically though, Terminal is the ultimate get-out-of-jail card for most things (see the help included with that for some introductions). OS X is just a Mach+FreeBSD microkernel hybrid with lots of Unix userland on top, and a nice Apple GUI and frameworks that make it all lovely. As Unixes go, configuration is som ewhat different--a bit less hacker-friendly, but generally you can get what you need by Googling and/or installing a package manager. You will find that there is not much in-between: either you are in the GUI, or you are in Terminal. Having said this, the number of things one needs advanced knowledge for is pretty small, but it's nice to have it. This is not really that unlike Windows registry, although I think it's probably true that the UI is more user-focused than on Doze so you will probably find you are in Terminal for the resolution of more things (app uninstallation comes to mind as a particular example). Of course if you also use Linux then I fully expect you to pick up the thread pretty quickly, since there is similar exposure there. Generally what you want can be done, one way or the other.Web browsers: Chrome or Safari. I use Safari day-to-day, and Chrome for when speed and compatibility is key. Having said this Chrome is that little bit more rough around the edges, access-wise. You might find you get more benefit out of having ChromeVox as an option. Not Firefox. Alas, it's just not there. Ditto Thunderbird, I'm afraid. See also this.Torrent clients: both uTorrent and Transmission work for me. Both have pros and cons, but they both work.Media Management: VLC works; so does iTunes, of course. And I think you'll find iTunes a lot more useful on OS X, even though it's by no means perfect. The experience is much more amenable on OS X due to the UI exploration paradigm.File system: absolute paradise, compared to Windows. Actually makes bloody sense; no registry. The folders you need to oversee (but not much) for startup, in addition to System Preferences in your user account's login items, are /Library/Launch* and ~/Library/Launch*. Leave the stuff in /System alone; Ap ple knows best. Never again will (or should) you worry about startup of unneeded daemons; OS X generally always gets it right. Efficiency: yes, this is generally worse than Windows, because of the way Apple does keyboard shortcuts. You will get used to it, though, I'm sure--I have. You need to understand that Apple puts the visual UI above pragmatics--so you don't cut-and-paste a file, you, er, copy-and-option-paste it, because then the copy stays in place until you decide to atomically move it. Pretty stupid, eh? But you gets used to it pretty sharp.TTS: yes, I understand. Eloquence is nice (and no, I haven't tried it, but I hear that hack really isn't very reliable). eSpeak builds on OS X, but not as an OS X-recognised TTS, merely as a command-line engine. Somebody could do the work, if they were inclined to. Sadly I don't think my knowledge of C ++ and Apple's Objective-C speech platform framework is up to scratch to work on it, although I've often wondered whether I should make the effort someday; I've never liked C++ being the main reason. Meantime, perhaps look at the natural-sounding Acapela voices from InfoVox iVox, which are more responsive than Apple's MacinTalk. Myself, I stick with Alex, because for all his flaws, he is the best-spoken TTS on OS X IMO.Right. I think that's everything. Any more
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order QT apps: not so good. Once upon a time they were just about usable, but now it's completely hit or miss (and usually miss). Apparently Apple and Nokia got into a "It's all your fault!" argument and we lost. My understanding of Apple's APIs leads me to the definite feeling that they deserve most of the blame. Welcome to the dark side of switching to Mac; you get caught up in the politics.Happily, most people needing virtualisation have migrated over to VMWare Fusion (costs money), which is perfectly accessible. And, honestly, VMWare are not a bad partner to have, all things considered. Of course you could also resolve your virtualisation problem by using those other machines. Then you wouldn't need to virtualise anything or pay anyone. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247668#p247668 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order Yes, indeed. Least worst desktop OS, here we come. Now, we shall see just how well Apple can meet your needs. Good luck, have fun, enjoy yourself. Try not to give up and go back to Windows. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247662#p247662 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order That's the great thing about this thread: it exposes all the blatant MS fanboys. Of course, we must be very careful not to be elitist about this whole situation. It's just that we're right, that's all. Computing should be accessible to all, but *NOT* at the cost of the concerns of the few. That's no more right than expecting everybody (not in the power-user group) to understand how computers work. Obviously. And my understanding of business needs is far divergent from the fantasy that Microsoft is living out. Indeed, a lot of the business IT community is directing just as much hatred at MS for what they are doing, just for different reasons.So yes, commend the good. But the customer is always right, and right now M$ are failing to bloo dy well deliver. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247514#p247514 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order That's the great thing about this thread: it exposes all the blatant MS fanboys. Of course, we must be very careful not to be elitist about this whole situation. It's just that we're right, that's all. Computing should be accessible to all, but *NOT* at the cost of the concerns of the few. That's no more right than expecting everybody (not in the power-user group) to understand how computers work. Obviously. And my understanding of business needs is far divergent from the fantasy that Microsoft is living out. Indeed, a lot of the business IT community is directing just as much hatred at MS for what they are doing, just for different reasons. Telling users to edit the registry to turn off spyware is unacceptable. In business especially. MS have made some positive steps for accessibility, I'll grant you that. Unfortunately they are losing the technical crown to Apple, especially on mobile but also on desktop too. I have hope that they will wake up and realise this before it's too late, but right now Windows accessibility is worse than it's ever been. And yeah I'll be glad to tell M$ what I think of them just as soon as they provide a version of Windows with a usable screen reader that gives me the control I need.Summary: commend the good. But the customer is always right, and right now M$ are failing to bloody well deliver. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247514#p247514 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini Mmm, you still need a bootable Windows OS to get it going. That means a CD. Trust me, my 2011 iMac couldn't do MBR USB boot, either. Although I'm not exactly sure what might happen if you try to start the UEFI loader on the Mac from USB. Maybe, if you did, and it worked, and maybe if you could run diskpart and XP's winnt32, you might at least be able to put an XP Setup directory on the internal disk, if not entirely complete the install. Then the next time you rebooted the box, you'd be in XP Setup, which you could have unattended, or a complete install, which you could get going with USB audio.Or better! You could, if you have the CD and floppy drive, make the entire process unattended, from a blank internal drive.I have to admit, at this point I'd need to call on lots of esoteric knowledge that I might not have. Will have to look into it, but hopefully others on here have input.NVDA says "Press"? Where does it say that? Will the 32-bit Bryan Smart installer boot from DVD? Ah, the DVD again ... URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247530#p247530 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini @Chris: yes. Macs can boot from GPT-format USB media, but only the newest Macs (starting with MacBook Airs, I believe) know how to boot MBR, which is what you need for Windows. I wasn't wrong, I'm afraid. You'll need that ISO burned to a CD.To get the drive nice and formatted, use one of your Snow Leopard installs to either clone or install a bootable USB device. Boot into that device, and use Disk Utility. Set the scheme to be MBR, and the format to be "MS-DOS (FAT)". That will give you a Windows-recognised FAT partition which you will then reformat during Windows Setup. (You could try leaving it at FAT32 for a bit of extra speed and convenience, but it's probably not worth that.)Make sure that your XP CD and product key agree. If you have an OEM disc, you have to have an OEM key. Ditto for retail. There are reports, too, that doing an SP3 install directly (and not through an upgrade from a prior service pack) might result in a post-set up step failing. Be prepared for the remotest contingencies. The PE images can be burned, though yes you will need a disc. We could figure out the simplest route to installing XP from such an image, from a USB drive accessible from within that PE. You would only need one blank CD. But yeah, not from USB. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247470#p247470 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order Yep. Windows 3.0 for me. 95 good, 98 rotten, 98 SE good, Windows ME pretty awful, Win NT/2K double-plus good, XP initially awful but then got to pretty damned excellent at about SP1, really at SP2. Vista made me switch to OS X. 7 was just Vista with a lick of paint; not so good, really. 8/8.1 terrible until people figured out Classic Shell, then much better than 7. 10? Ugh!@hadi.gsf: I don't mind your blatant fanboyism at all, as long as you're being objective. You have a right to praise and a right to bitch, just as I do. And you will notice that I'm not above tearing Apple a new hole every now and again, either. I too run Linux only on servers. Clearly though, we do have different tolerances for what we're willing to put up with, and I'm afraid I just can't help thinking MS have got me into a darker corner than ever. Just as the Linux fanboys fail to understand the needs of practical desktop users, I'm having a lot of difficulty understanding why people would support MS's present-day practices.habi.gsf wrote:Well, define inaccepteble in today's world of control and domination. Microsoft is just following other big company's footprints specially now that It has the most desktop and laptop user base (what is that 98%?) So they could get more and more money. And I doubt that It's user Base is going to decrease soon unless Linux steps out in desktop features / or Apple scales down it's prices and gets video games developed for it. (which is not going to happen very soon). Well, That's true, Microsoft is that big evil corperation that steals data off computers, But I don't think It's the only one; If you think your ISP or other perpriotary software kindly respects your delicious data, You're deadly wrong. But at that point you gotta wear the tinfoil hat and hide somewhere in the dark. Microsoft is going to force windows 10 apon its users and the best way to stop them from tracking you and your friend's data is to spread the news about the scripts and things that you can do to close down those stuff.No, I think it's different. M$ are well aware how much control they now hold, on the desktop, entirely unlike those other companies that use different business models which rely on user data apart from in the normal course of operation (so your ISP really doesn't count, and anyway we have encryption if that's what you need), and are exploiting that to gain their userbase. So maybe you accept the loss of privacy. Fair enough. I don't. Do you remember Scroogled? Not only does MS fail to realise just how much trust they are burning with Win10, but also the claims they made, that consumers were being "Misled" by Google and Facebook, could not possibly apply more to M$ now if they tried! Your desktop uses its Internet connection to spy on you just because it can, and there's nothing you as an ordinary user can do about it. It is the purest form of hypocrisy. The greedy bastards even want your money at the end of the "Free"* one-year upgrade offer. It's so incredible, you almost have to imagine that M$ are teaming up with Apple and Google to cover the market: Google at the bottom, MickeySoft somewhere in the middle, and Apple at the "Premium" end. The mind just boggles that people can simply roll over and tolerate it.habi.gsf wrote:Sebby wrote:Summary: commend the good. But the customer is always right, and right now M$ are failing to bloody well deliver.Ok, I have to laugh at your statement here; I will tell you why. Just go and read the feedback of a general windows customer in the time of prerelease win10. I can give you some examples:User puts a feedback on accessibility section: "Please, I want the UI larger and brighter. and a bit more beautiful". "Hi, Why can't i snap the windows with one click instead of two clicks" "Hey, Can the icons be not like in 1970's? I want cool icons!" "This is terrible, make my screen more brighter" "The top bar looks childish, make it "Well, There you go, general customer. I hope you get the irony.Irony? If by "Irony" you mean the apparent disconnect between my insistence of users being right and asking for superficial features as opposed to privacy, then yes, maybe that could be considered ironic. But, since it is precisely these concerns that M$ are so good at ignoring, with the result that Windows never actually ends up being of any great use to anybody (remember Metro?), perhaps that "Irony" is better reserved for MS fanboys who keep revising their opinions depending on whatever M$ happens to think is a good-looking user interface at the time. Users may not be aware that their privacy is being invaded; that still doesn't make it any more right for M$ to do it, and if users were ever motivated to ask, they'd meet with just as much disdain in that regard as they would in regard of the right size and shape of icons. I hope you can see the irony in trying to make the case that users should be ignored in one respect, while they are also
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order @blindncool: which Linux?And re Ubuntu: not for much longer, happily. Dash's Amazon integration will soon be retired. Then Linux really will be the final refuge. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247554#p247554 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini If it shows up as a USB audio device in OS X, then the likelihood is good that it's fine for USB audio in Windows. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247542#p247542 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order I did really like XP. Sure, Classic Shell is half the battle, but modern Windows is still a very large sprawling mess. I mean look at the list in services.msc and Task Scheduler. It's appalling!Yes, it's modern. I do appreciate that. But XP works, it isn't spying on me, I know exactly what it's doing, and it runs just fine in my VM, fast and responsive. I desperately need a reason to use a modern version of Windows, on bare metal, without going totally insane trying to manage it. Skype on Cocoa is nice. Really nice. Not as keyboard-shortcut rich as the Windows client, but to see Windows users struggle with what Skype has become nowadays makes me a little bit sad for them (and for me, when I'm on Win8.1). But not too much, what with their using Windows and everything. Yep, the lacklustre accessibility of modern Windows blows. Why this is I'm not sure; I guess it's just an ongoing decline. And indeed: still can't do an independent install of the OS. Although, @Chris, see if one of the talking PE environments can help.@Colton: ah, the age-old, if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear. If you don't mind MS spying on you, fair enough, but it's not for me. See earlier in the thread for the reasons. And you can choose another OS if you want to. It might be inconvenient or difficult, might cost more, limit your choices, and might require you learn new stuff, but it can be done. If you don't like OS X or Linux, then I guess you already decided you don't want to do that. Mac works for me (no, running it in a VM is a really sucky way to use it, even on a Mac), and there are blind Linuxers out there. Every OS can run virtual machines of every other OS, except Mac which only runs VMs of itself (but not very well). There is also ChromeOS. Just give them a try, and decide which one gives you the best balance of happiness and functionality. You don't need to make excuses for Microsoft.But by and large, I'm with Nocturnus and Arqmeister. It's only lack of true and free choice where accessibility is concerned. I daresay that's how we all feel in some respects; after all, we chose our platforms based on our needs and requirements and are now stuck with them, even if that's the privacy-invasive Windows. But I'd truly prefer to have choices that aligned with my principles as well as my requirements. OS X feels to me like a midway point--a good start, but really, I wouldn't have created this topic if I didn't care about reaching the other side of the bridge. Certainly Apple has an agenda too, and while I'm happy living with the consequences now, I don't want to be stuck when the big hammer comes crashing down, as I 'm fairly sure it will someday. Their accessibility commitment is terrific, but OS X won't be a business priority forever. Linux and Windows will simply have to get better, somehow: Linux at actually being useful, and Windows at being a flaming operating system that works and provides usable accessibility without spying on everything. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247446#p247446 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order I did really like XP. Sure, Classic Shell is half the battle, but modern Windows is still a very large sprawling mess. I mean look at the list in services.msc and Task Scheduler. It's appalling!Yes, it's modern. I do appreciate that. But XP works, it isn't spying on me, I know exactly what it's doing, and it runs just fine in my VM, fast and responsive. I desperately need a reason to use a modern version of Windows, on bare metal, without going totally insane trying to manage it. Skype on Cocoa is nice. Really nice. Not as keyboard-shortcut rich as the Windows client, but to see Windows users struggle with what Skype has become nowadays makes me a little bit sad for them (and for me, when I'm on Win8.1). But not too much, what with their using Windows and everything. Yep, the lacklustre accessibility of modern Windows blows. Why this is I'm not sure; I guess it's just an ongoing decline. And indeed: still can't do an independent install of the OS. Although, @Chris, see if one of the talking PE environments can help.@Colton: ah, the age-old, if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear. If you don't mind MS spying on you, fair enough, but it's not for me. See earlier in the thread for the reasons. And you can choose another OS if you want to. It might be inconvenient or difficult, might cost more, limit your choices, and might require you learn new stuff, but it can be done. If you don't like OS X or Linux, then I guess you already decided you don't want to do that. Mac works for me (no, running it in a VM is a really sucky way to use it, even on a Mac), and there are blind Linuxers out there. Every OS can run virtual machines of every other OS, except Mac which is the only pl atform that runs VMs of itself (but not very well). There is also ChromeOS. Just give them a try, and decide which one gives you the best balance of happiness and functionality. You don't need to make excuses for Microsoft.But by and large, I'm with Nocturnus and Arqmeister. It's only lack of true and free choice where accessibility is concerned. I daresay that's how we all feel in some respects; after all, we chose our platforms based on our needs and requirements and are now stuck with them, even if that's the privacy-invasive Windows. But I'd truly prefer to have choices that aligned with my principles as well as my requirements. OS X feels to me like a midway point--a good start, but really, I wouldn't have created this topic if I didn't care about reaching the other side of the bridge. Certainly Apple has an agenda too, and while I'm happy living with the consequences now, I don't want to be stuck when the big hammer come s crashing down, as I'm fairly sure it will someday. Their accessibility commitment is terrific and the privacy commitment probably the best in the industry, but OS X won't be a business priority forever. Linux and Windows will simply have to get better, somehow: Linux at actually being useful, and Windows at being a flaming operating system that works and provides usable accessibility without spying on everything. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247446#p247446 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order Mmm, dunno. For all that MS don't want it to be the case, the truth is that their whole success is predicated on back-compatibility. And yeah, lazy they may be, but isn't it the right of the people to choose? Remember, we've been through worse: maintaining support for a compatible instruction set without breaking stuff is a lot easier than adding a driver infrastructure for USB3 or SATA.So yeah, I hear you, but ... URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247333#p247333 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Windows 7 and 8 Now Getting The Spyware Treatment
Re: Windows 7 and 8 Now Getting The Spyware Treatment It just gets better and better.This isn't actually about spyware or the Windows 10 nagware, but it's still relevant to this thread because it's another underhanded tactic for getting people onto Win10. So ...Microsoft is giving Windows 7 and 8.1 users using current sixth-generation Skylake chips eighteen months to upgrade to Windows 10. Beyond that, they will not receive support. The latest Kaby Lake chips, due out before 2017, will not even be supported on the older versions at all.Welcome, my Windows-using friends, to the Apple way. Don't you think it's time you got that Mac? URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247294#p247294 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Windows 7 and 8 Now Getting The Spyware Treatment
Re: Windows 7 and 8 Now Getting The Spyware Treatment It just gets better and better. This isn't actually about spyware or the Windows 10 nagware, but it's still relevant to this thread because it's another underhanded tactic for getting people onto Win10. So ...Microsoft is giving Windows 7 and 8.1 users using current sixth-generation Skylake chips eighteen months to upgrade to Windows 10. Beyond that, they will not receive support. The latest Skylake chips, due out before 2017, will not even be supported on the older versions at all.Welcome, my Windows-using friends, to the Apple way. Don't you think it's time you got that Mac. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247294#p247294 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini
Re: Bootcamping my Mac Mini Hi Chris.Yes, install Windows to save your Mac. And yes, good ol' XP is probably the best option. The BootCamp drivers are on your Snow Leopard disc, which I hope you have, although I can also find you some up-to-date ones I've rescued. You won't be USB-booting that old thing; it'll have to be optical, and it's quite likely you'll need sighted help as a result, although we could try our luck without it. Your machine is so old that it uses MBR and BIOS emulation; make sure you have the latest Snow Leopard on your box and have installed the very latest updates, especially firmware, to use CSM.Decide if you will use OS X and Windows, or Windows exclusively. If the latter, then do an install of Snow Leopard on an external USB device, so you can use it to repartition your internal drive as a blank MBR disk with a single FAT32 partition; el se, allow BootCamp Assistant to repartition and start up the Windows CD. You can manually perform the steps done by BootCamp Assistant in order to try your luck with the WinPE environment, but then you've got the somewhat tricky business of installing XP using the command-line as you can't run Setup directly. And yes USB sound hardware is supported.Good luck. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247299#p247299 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: talking windows pe four 64 bit installation of windows now available.
Re: talking windows pe four 64 bit installation of windows now available. The Mac allows programatic changing of the firmware NVRAM variables in OS X, which includes changing the boot device for both single-use and thereafter. Ditto for Linux, albeit that the support is more general-purpose. Is there really no way to achieve this under Doze? A command-line tool or such? URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247296#p247296 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order
Re: The Windows 10 New World Order Windows 8.1 plus Classic Shell works just fine for me too. No need of an upgrade, and no wish for it either. And yeah, Win7 was somewhat crappy, really; it's only that it was marginally better than Vista that people took to it at all, and to be honest even Vista was all right after the first couple of service packs.But as to privacy, I do think that is the real reason I dislike Win10. In earlier versions of Windows, and all Apple stuff, you at least have the option to choose. On Win10 it's our way or the highway. Funny; that's exactly what Windows users say is wrong with Apple's ecosystem. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=247315#p247315 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
