Just another voice yelling in the void.

I’ve probably protested for your rights. I’m definitely on at least one list.

I believe firmly that everyone should have a fair shake and as much freedom as they can be afforded - so long as it does not encroach on the freedoms of others.

Occasionally a wordy cunt who will type a book when a sentence or two will suffice.

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 7th, 2023

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  • I’ve had this discussion quite a bit, and it’s tough to break the 77 cents on the dollar and whatnot rhetoric, because those people are convinced that a man and a woman doing the same job with equal experience, the woman just automatically makes on average 23% less than a man. And it’s easy to prove that wrong, and entirely misses the point.

    With the pervasiveness of social media, outrage culture, and, frankly, the steadily increasing difficulty to finding credible sources of information… it’s just far too easy to just revert to our baser “tribalistic” tendencies and blame someone and get mad. Toss into the mix the fact that a lot of these topics are sensitive issues and boy howdy EVERYTHING is a powderkeg and ONLY black and white despite evidence to the contrary.

    […] Now, I imagine a lot has changed in 23 years, so maybe that mentality has changed, but if all else is fixed and there is a “pay gap” based on choice like that… that’s not a problem that needs to be solved.

    Agreed on this point. Different strokes for different folks.

    So to recap, we need to stop talking about cents on the dollar and start talking about making rejoining the workforce more available and appealing after having babies, and giving dads more time with their kids to let their wives work.

    I’d really like to see a world where it’d be possible for both parents to get leave, be able to work part time while not being put in a financially dire situation, and still have access to crucial things like affordable healthcare and insurance. A pipedream - without question… but one can hope.



  • As I recall there have been a number of studies done on this… and they fall into the “technically true” if you looked specifically at gender within a given work pool and discounted all other factors then this is the answer you arrive at.

    Unfortunately, every single one of these that I have personally read … all suffered from the fact that other factors play a part in that somewhat disingenuous number. If roles are factored in - these numbers begin to fall apart. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread: women have maternity leave… and following that can look to exit the workforce or move to part time. Compensation can be different between these categories. Continuing down this path: in a household that is dual income - it has been traditional to see the woman leave the workforce for child rearing opposed to the man. So looking at a given workforce, specifically at a given role in that group may still have a disparity in experience and time in the position (and thus compensation.) Lastly there is the bane of all - starting compensation negotiations. It is my understanding that generally men are more aggressive / assertive during this phase in the hiring process.

    In short: this is stupidly difficult to generate fair and correct numbers for this type of metric and RARELY does it behoove the party running that inquiry to get the details right. The more accurate the results: the less sensational the number. Now to be clear: I do believe that there are cases where there are unfair practices taking place - but they are the exception… not the rule.

    At the end of the day - if we made it commonplace to be acceptable to discuss compensation… And put some more workers rights laws into place… We’d have a system where everyone could have a fair shake in a job, equally.

    I’d be happy to be proven wrong with some numbers that have actually factored in these variables. With regard to OPs statement: that number looks strikingly familiar to one horrifyingly old and incorrectly run survey.


  • They’re still around and the various configuration technologies tap into them.

    I noted this in a dismissive way… Yes they exist; but as mentioned - depreciation and outright ignoring settings has become a thing Microsoft has willingly done if they feel “they know better.” (Reboots and update times are an excellent example of this.)

    Yep, configuring Microsoft has sucked incredibly hard compared to free OSs. Managing plain text configuration files in /etc & ~/.config is refreshingly nice compared to the bolt-on weirdness hidden behind various interfaces in Windows. It’s cute getting an error to contact your administrator when you’re the administrator.

    Locking some things out makes sense. This exists in all OSs… what is maddening is Microsoft almost aggressively working against admins. Want local accounts? No sir. Not allowed. Not unless you remove the network card, face the PC east at precisely 2:30 am, and type a 40 character rolling code into the terminal that appears… twice.

    Attention in that area is extremely late & overdue, so I was happy to see something like configuration.dsc.yaml.

    While I agree - the point I was stressing was that many admins had perfectly workable scripts and methods that used the existing tooling as it was intended… and it’s mostly been fine. With their recent push into spyware inside ™ … ahem engagement … they seem to be actively punching holes in this to force management to their cloud resources which surely will not ever have problems …

    I see AI mostly as an assistant whose work I review […] AI won’t fix broken foundations.

    Agreed. It does have the means to save some time - but it’s just not “cooked enough” for me to use it on any meaningful level. Personally speaking.

    I try to avoid Windows altogether if I can & confine it to less serious work.

    Sadly some things I work with just don’t play with wine just yet otherwise I’d abandon it entirely. I’d personally love to, though.

    What really bothers me is late in the patching cycle windows 2000 was borderline amazing and could be tuned to an absolutely minute footprint. If it was fully updated for x64 it would have been just about perfect. Nothing got in your way: very minimal UI with “just enough” modern features. Getting to almost any administrative interface was at its lowest “clicks to access” of any (subsequent) windows version. NT dna.

    I may just have rose tinted glasses but from basically that point on it was all just bolted on UI garbage that got between you, your resources, and most importantly what you wanted to be doing. And when it comes down to it - regardless of what os were talking about - something has gone horribly wrong if that is the reality.



  • Shit you know … I feel like Microsoft has done that with the registry and gpedit… a real shame they seem to disregard those controls when it suits their new advertising model… erm… bing engagement system.

    We’ve had config files and scripts for ages. Most of us are pissed that all of those methods half work or are depreciating away for no reason other than some UIx twat couldn’t be bothered to hook something properly so they just reskin an element and misplaced half the functions. Bonus points if they did so while wasting more system resources, breaking their own search pointers, and infuriating sysadmins and users alike.

    Now I’ll give you that new methods can absolutely be implemented and replace (effectively even) old, longstanding methods… but Microsoft has utterly missed the boat on this. Repeatedly.

    To your ai statement: Look I won’t comment on where AI may or may not end up in 5 years but I know that getting a black box to hallucinate 40% less has got to be infinitely harder than indexing a filesystem, a series of .lnk files, and maybe… maybe some control names. Considering they had most of that working (even if you had the index disabled!) in windows 2000 / 9x / XP it blows my mind why this has not been resolved when it’s basically a meme at this point.

    No other OS has this basic problem. Why are we building onto something when the foundation is shit? I’m certain there’s developers at Microsoft that have skills - but I’ll be damned if I see any of them taking a step forward without two back.

    Block kernel level driver access to shit. Maybe improve resource usage on existing processes. Fix the goddamn search. Don’t bury a setting behind ANOTHER useless dialog. Fix something - don’t jam more useless shit down our throats. We don’t need new: we need working.

    At the rate we’re going the next windows version (maybe even 11) will intersect with Linux (pick a flavor) in terms of compatibility, usability, and stability with Linux doing literally nothing but existing. To be fair every other version is hot garbage. I’m sure we can ride out 11 on 10 … right?


  • Now hear me out on this, maybe, just maybe if we didn’t move the same settings 1-2 layers deeper behind some UI bullshit we wouldn’t have to look for it. And- get this- let’s say we needed to search for these settings… (calm down y’all. I know you know. 🤣) What if we made the search work?! INSANITY.

    As a dev - legitimately what the fuck are these morons doing. The os gets worse every iteration - it uses more resources, to do less, shittier. I’m sorry: you don’t get to kill off another os version because you can’t entice the user base into a worse situation. (internal screaming)