Some preventative advice (thanks Acronis)

From Poptech on May 15, 2013 at 10:47 pm:

The point again was that you never heard of “THE geek website” <- your quote.

If you had actually paid attention to what I wrote instead of aggressively searching for confirmation of your bias, you might have noticed that I was aware of Slashdot way back then. I had heard of slashdotting, went to look at the site.
I was not impressed. Sorry. I got my hot tech and science news elsewhere. I could spend hours at El Reg, just wandering and absorbing, for example. And believe it or not, I did have other interests than just tech.
So I knew of Slashdot way back then. And didn’t find it to be worth my time way back then, and still don’t.
Thus you have been ranting for days about my not knowing of Slashdot which was proof I must be technically incompetent, when it wasn’t at all true.
Which was sorta fun to watch. You’re not technically proficient if you don’t know about Slashdot, you’re financially incompetent if you don’t know about Barron’s… Same elitist bias, different packaging.
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kadaka (KD Knoebel) says: This is a common misunderstanding,

No it is not a misunderstanding are you REALLY this computer illiterate?
formatting (defined) “to prepare (a disk) for writing and reading.”
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/formatting?s=t
This includes partitioning. What you are referring to is called high-level formatting.
high-level formatting (defined) “the format for the root directory and the file allocation tables and other basic configurations”
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/high-level+formatting?r=66
I am at loss for how far you are willing to bury yourself in your own hole.

you might have noticed that I was aware of Slashdot way back then.

Oh come on, you really must be embarrassed to try and pull this one,
“kadaka (KD Knoebel) May 10, 2013 at 3:04 pm says: I only bothered to check two. That one, which showed you were wrong. And the stupid thing about Linux’ “questionable legality”, which is crap, of which your link went to some message board whining about mpeg codec licensing fee or some such nonsense, which is crap.”
You said it not me. Anyone that has heard of Slashdot would – 1. Refer to it by name, 2. Knows it is not a message board.

You’re not technically proficient if you don’t know about Slashdot, you’re financially incompetent if you don’t know about Barron’s

What competent financial planner does not know about Barron’s?
None of this has to do with Elitism, it is about technical knowledge – something you do not have and are not desperately trying to Google for.

Wow PopTech, you’re still down here fighting with kadaka?
Anyone who thinks Win95 after OSR2 was 32 bit doesn’t really understand the concept, someone who actually believes the “GUI over DOS” myth, and someone who can’t tell the difference between low-level formatting, high-level formatting and partitioning certainly shouldn’t try to copy and paste tech information for actual tech people to read.
However, for the record, I never really liked slashdot either and tended to avoid it…
Norton’s stuff was essential in the DOS days, in the early-mid 80s, but like almost every other utility or add-on for Windows it was bloated, obstructive, and ultimately either useless or worse than nothing.

From CodeTech on May 16, 2013 at 4:53 am:

Anyone who thinks Win95 after OSR2 was 32 bit doesn’t really understand the concept, someone who actually believes the “GUI over DOS” myth, and someone who can’t tell the difference between low-level formatting, high-level formatting and partitioning certainly shouldn’t try to copy and paste tech information for actual tech people to read.

Then can you enlighten me about OSR2? It’s been a long time, I remember going to 95B then 95C on about the same day, had just downloaded both upgrades. And I had a hard drive broken up into smaller partitions that I then wanted to consolidate.
“GUI over DOS” was 3.1, as I linked to above Win95 was made to look like it was over DOS. Although back then I still booted to DOS for some serious work. When I had to remove those System Restore points that WinME refused to, no matter what Poptech and MS claim, I went to DOS and an earlier version.
Also, up to and including WinME was DOS loading first, then Windows.
Yes, I knew the difference between low-level formatting, as done to a blank drive, and high-level formatting, which set up a partition for a particular file system. But it hasn’t been part of my computing experience for awhile.
And after a quick search, I’m not sure either you or Poptech are using those terms correctly. Disk formatting:

While it is generally impossible to perform a complete LLF on most modern hard drives (since the mid-1990s) outside the factory,[14] the term “low-level format” is still used for what could be called the reinitialization of a hard drive to its factory configuration (and even these terms may be misunderstood).
The present ambiguity in the term low-level format seems to be due to both inconsistent documentation on web sites and the belief by many users that any process below a high-level (file system) format must be called a low-level format. Since much of the low level formatting process can today only be performed at the factory, various drive manufacturers describe reinitialization software as LLF utilities on their web sites. Since users generally have no way to determine the difference between a complete LLF and reinitialization (they simply observe running the software results in a hard disk that must be high-level formatted), both the misinformed user and mixed signals from various drive manufacturers have perpetuated this error. Note: Whatever possible misuse of such terms may exist (search hard drive manufacturers’ web sites for all these terms), many sites do make such reinitialization utilities available (possibly as bootable floppy diskette or CD image files), to both overwrite every byte and check for damaged sectors on the hard disk.

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Okay kadaka, I was scrolling through the comments and I thought you were stating that win95 OSR2 was 32 bit Windows. Now I see you were referring to the introduction of FAT32. Sorry.
And, Poptech, sorry to say but ME was released with some serious problems, and in my opinion they wanted it that way to make NT based systems look awesome in comparison. Win2K was such a step up it was worth trashing the stuff that didn’t work on it. ME was always junk. As I said above, I was a beta tester and got booted out of the program for not signing off on it. One example is the shutdown problem.
kadaka, forget whatever simplified explanation you’re getting confused by wrt formatting.
Low level formatting is now done at the factory, and most people never need to worry about it. With low level, each and every sector is written, which rewrites all of the sector dividers that are required for a drive to be readable and writeable. The ways drives work now this is rarely something an end user would need to do. Performing a low level format is the closest you’ll get to “bare metal”, which as Poptech pointed out is not really possible. In fact, doing this on a modern drive might actually reduce the reliability of that drive.
High level formatting checks readability of critical sectors and only writes high level information like boot sectors, FAT tables, etc. In high level formatting only the essential indices are written, previous data is considered trash and is ignored.
Partitioning is a process between the two. Once your low level format is complete (or with a new drive, or when you’re redoing a drive) the partition table maps out where each logical volume begins and ends on the physical drive. After the partitions are set you need to high-level format them.
Shredding a drive is writing a strictly defined pattern of bits on each sector, then another pattern, and sometimes several more to ensure that no background data can be recovered. This is because even after writing over a sector there are ways to pull the old data out, detecting the residual magnetism for each bit.
(heh, at this point I read what you quoted above… pretty close)
Anyway, there are several different types of techies, and you two are two different types. I also have been involved in multi-thousand machine rollouts, been stuck upgrading thousands of machines, even converted an entire corporate 3270 network with Token Ring (33 floors worth!), spec’d corporate machines, built and installed machines, supported newbie users, “power users”, executives, etc. And etc. I’ve done this with full time employment AND contracts, and I’ve done so since I was 15 in 1979 (granted I started at Radio Shack with TRS-80s! But we connected realtors to the mainframes at the local real estate board when nobody else was even thinking about it)
The most important thing is always that it works. The second most important thing is that it works “properly”. I realize that flies in the face of strict logic, but… it’s there. My last employment situation I was working for an “IT manager” that had no formal training and was still living in 1992. In fact, some of the computers I was supporting were still from the 90s, and I’d LOVE to be exaggerating but I’m not. He ran that IT department on a shoestring budget, and they skipped XP and Vista, while I was in the process of getting Win7 rolled out when our arrangement was terminated.
Consider trying to support a Win2000 infrastructure, with 3 Win2k servers and 34 local Win2k clients, plus several in remote locations on dedicated DSL lines, running SQL Server 2000, VBA under Office 98 for several million lines of custom code, a database with over 100 million records running on that stuff, and a company owner that doesn’t understand a word of it. Now consider the “manager” who is responsible for all of this, taking home 3 times what they’re paying me, buying a bar and spending all his time and income keeping the bar running… leaving me to keep that mess going.
There’s my rant. Poptech, it’s GOOD to have everything working “properly” and understanding every aspect of what’s going on… but in the real world it’s not really necessary. What counts at the end of the day is that it works, and kadaka has demonstrated that even if he didn’t always understand everything, following rules of thumb and doing research keeps it working. Nothing wrong with that.

From Poptech on May 17, 2013 at 4:50 am:

He was following nonsense advice and did not know how to do the research. So he wound up wasting his time.

Well excuse me for being in that lowly subclass of near-humans who couldn’t afford the FREAKING services of your FINE company and made do with what we could get and did our own work. I’m so sorry that our helping out each other, sharing solutions, searching for and trying whatever kept our systems going, wasn’t up to your standards of prettiness.
Good news, you’ve won! You knocked me down, stuck it in, smacked me down again anytime I complained. You even brought your buddies over to show off your dominance, “Ha, look at the little piggy, he’s trying to squeal! Watch me make this piggy squeal! C’mon piggy, squeal for daddy!”
Now you’re done, you got in the celebratory wiping off of your superiority complex on my cheeks, the “Ah c’mon, you deserved what you got ’cause I’m (smarter/richer/stronger) than you!” I’ve had to deal with your kind all my life, you’re better so I gotta bend over and take it, you’ll beat me down until I do. News flash, you’re certainly not the first, probably won’t be the last.
Hope you like what you got off of it. I’m a generous guy, people have taken advantage of that for years, but it’s better than being the person I’d be if I wasn’t.
But if I found you bleeding to death on the side of the road, and knew who you were, I’d have to watch you die. I wouldn’t give you a chance to complain about my obviously inadequate medical knowledge. Heck, someone like you, you’d sue me after I saved your life for daring to do so without being a board-certified trauma surgeon.
Now go off and find whatever Circle is reserved for arrogant unhelpful know-it-alls who get off shoving their superiority at anyone they find inferior, you deserve it.
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