Recovery Position.

Wednesday 02 July, 2008

Apple has built in disk duplication and Time Machine. Microsoft has msbackup and absolutely no built in disk duplication.

In Apple’s world, you can use the original OS disc and Time Machine to fully restore a broken situation. Apple have gone to the extreme of producing a one-touch backup solution. Set that bad-boy up, once, then you’re good to go. In Microsoft’s world, you’re on your own skippy. It’s a dog-eat-cat world world out there.. to hell with ensuring the OS can be restored.

At this point you may well be thinking “what about System Restore? fucking noob”. System Restore is a wonderful drain on disk space (with the ever logical usage level set to 10% by default) — it even works, sometimes. It’s also a haven for net-nasties of nearly every flavour.

And it’s always a case of Russian Roulette as to whether it will heal an install. Or deep-six it. That’s assuming you can actually boot into your system to begin with. Logically one has to assume that’s just not possible if the install actually implodes.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I have backups. Mountains of data and cruft and bloat. And stuff that I might actually need at some point too. But the problem frequently comes down to a central location. And what, exactly, do I actually need to make sure I have? Microsoft have taught us that the average user shouldn’t see large portions of the drive and yet will somehow be armed with a keen knowledge of the right things to store in a safe place.

That’s a plan that will always work, right?

Now, having bled in Microsoft’s world for nearly as long as Windows has existed (at all) I’ve got the art of finding hidden-shit-I-really-need down pat. But the average user? Now you know why an entire Microsoft-centric industry of highly-trained individuals exists, to do just one thing. Recover your stuff.

And yet Microsoft, to this very day, still don’t understand they are responsible for enabling us. We can push the fucking button if needs be.. sure, but after decades of building operating systems, you’d think they would — being the pants wearer in the relationship — have got a fucking grip and built an OS that can be successfully recovered from reliable backups.

No. No they have not. Instead, one must frequently erase a system that had a working install — ensuring the pre-requisite multiple-hour forensics mission was successful — re-install the operating system. Find drivers for core hardware — like network cards — potentially without internet connectivity. Then re-install at least one service pack. Then all the security updates. Then the applications.

Only then, once Microsoft feel that the operating system is somehow magically complete again — and one is as certain as one can be that all the applications are back — can one even consider locating the aforementioned forensic data and then return it from whence it came.

In the same period of time it takes me to get back to a running OS, an Apple Mac user has already gotten their life back on track, as though nothing. ever. happened. Who was the ass-hat at Microsoft that allowed this to continue? Windows 7 is around the corner and, yet again, there is absolutely nothing slated to revolutionise data retention.

Do you know what is most damming about the whole situation? It’s such a common issue in the Microsoft world that it doesn’t sound at all odd that folks will re-install their operating system every few months for what appears to be absolutely no functional reason whatsoever. And that should be an entirely ridiculous notion, not the norm.

I’ve spent 2 days attempting to breathe life into the rapidly-decaying corpse that was once my operating system. In the end I have had to — like a great many frustrated users before me — accept defeat, destroy the operating system volume and start all over again.

And again I am reminded of how inadequate and boneheaded the entire situation really is. Nearly every other popular operating system has this nailed down. It’s (very) early on a Thursday morning, do you know where your data is?

Grindhouse Revival. ∗

Wednesday 28 May, 2008

Something that started off as being a bit of a stress diversion has become a monthly event I entirely look forward to. And it has resulted in a realisation that viewing movies will never quite be the same again.

It all started with the realisation that a “night at the movies” just doesn’t thrill me the same as it used to. The anticipation has faded, jaded by the reality that the modern cinema has been reduced to a cash generating machine, more intent in churning over screenings and jamming souls into rooms seldom larger or less generic than public transport.

Gone are the old style theatres, with truly massive screens, luxurious curved bucket seats and the unique odour that always permeated the dimly lit, cathedral-like atmosphere. Gone is the intermission at the most inopportune moment, where our dashing hero, or busty bimbo is about to do something really. fucking. cool. And gone is the “life” it all seemed to imbue to the entire experience.

So what does one do, when recreating that experience means attending a gold class like establishment with all the stresses and effort required? And it’s not quite the same, is it? Oh it’s quite exclusive, you can consume alcohol, recline in comfort and have food delivered on demand, but it’s still just that little bit fake. And if a night-out is on the cards, why not spend it at a nice eatery instead?

The surroundings might be agreeable, but that life, that atmosphere, that excitement is still missing — the very thing that made going to the movies, well, special, has gone. And that is where my partner and I found ourselves at then end of yet another tiring week a month or so ago. Getting all dressed up to go out, to then relax seemed somewhat counter intuitive.

We could have gone out, spent up on the credit card and tried to pretend we weren’t actually being strip-mined by yet another faceless corporate cashing in on the “old movie” experience. But we decided to do something different.

We put various beers in the fridge to reach that perfect frosty chill. Wine was cooled to near-perfection. My wonderful partner whipped up a batch of some of the singularly best tasting Nachos I’ve ever experienced (why nachos? Why not?!). We turned off the lights and fired up Grindhouse — the Tarantino and Rodriguez collaboration and experiment into re-creating the 70’s style B-Grade epics.

And it was heaven. Cold beer, comfortable surroundings, pleasant company with no pimply faced thirteen-year-old angst-ridden teens throwing food, cellular phones or each other around the theatre. No oh-my-fucking-god-you-have-a-HUGE-head idiots all clumped together in the middle row. No half-drunk projectionist pissing away his last deciding to fuck with the focus every quarter-hour just to make everyone as miserable as he was.

We had a genuine, honest-to-god intermission. With yet more beer being opened, more wine poured. We had the experience that a night at the movies should always be and that is no more. We watched Death Proof and Planet Terror the way it was meant to be seen. And it was, frankly, fucking magic.

Sure, it wasn’t “on the big screen” but what the hell does that actually mean anymore? We don’t go for the experience any more. We only go to see the big effects, or to be bruised any battered by the seventy-billion forty-thousand-watt speakers.

And when you realise that going to the movies is now really just going through the motions of seeing something on the big screen — out of some crazed belief that that is the way everything must be seen — that you realise you’ve just been conned by the motion pictures industry. Because if it’s “good enough” you’re just going to buy the same damned thing on DVD, or Blue-Ray disc regardless.

They’ve conned us all into believing we somehow owe them and by God we must attend, or else! Why? With modern surround-sound systems being a dime-a-dozen and large screen TV’s almost the norm, what in the hell do we get out of our ticket anymore, when one can almost replicate the very thing that we use to justify going in the first instance?

It can’t be “for the experience” because that last shred died when George Lucas proved beyond shadow of doubt that it’s entirely possible to fuck over one of the last truly cinema-worthy epics. There’s just nothing enticing about spending money to sit in someone else’s over-grown lounge to see yet another remake that should have been taken out the back, along with it’s director and shot.

It’s grind-house-time at our place this weekend. Saturday night we’ll have two shows on. One has been decided , the other is still pending. The random assortment of beer will be cold, the wine on ice and the Nachos piping hot. That’s my idea of a good night at the movies. It’s a revival and we will sully ourselves in 70’s style b-grade. The more eccentric, eclectic or horrific, the better. Eurovision is all of these things and so much more, yet it will be just one of the two glorious indulgences.

Who knows quite what we’ll see after intermission. And that is just how movie nights should always be.