Reasons to be miserable give my brain a pain

[venta]

A secon technical appeal. Apologies to those who don't give a toss about these things.

(I've tried a very brief google on this, but to no avail. I'm just asking in case anyone knows off-hand, otherwise I'll go back to ransacking the dustier corners of the web.)

Yetersday, I tried to open a non-existent file in emacs. This isn't usually a problem, it creates the file, and away you go (so long as the directory it's in exists).

However, I got an error message telling me that the directory ("My Documents") was read-only. Strange, I thought. My Documents, Properties, well so it was. Uncheck the box, apply, save, try again.

Nope, still read-only. My Documents, Properties, yup, it's read-only again.

How can I ask Windows XP to actually believe me that yes, I'd really like to create documents in that folder from time to time ? (I can create documents by clicking in the directory, and saying New -> Text document.) I'm fairly sure Windows XP let me create documents by opening them in emacs pre-Service Pack 2. Win 2K doesn't seem to have a problem with me doing it, either.

Comments

[wimble.livejournal.com]

But that's a symptom of the big problem I have with Windows, not just XP.

(Or, alternatively: "yes, you can control this. Just change this registry setting, which is only documented on some vary hard to find Microsoft Knowledge Base page.")

[mejoff.livejournal.com]

Very true, but I find XP to be by far the worst offender.
Plus, big red start button. unforgivable, and I know this is something that it lets you change, but all the same, you'll always know it was there.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Actually, since I'm by no means an 'advanced' Windows user, I don't particularly mind the hand-holding and find it useful occasionally.

big red start button

Eh ? I don't believe I have one of those, and I don't remember having ever had.

[mejoff.livejournal.com]

or is it green?, i dunno! Whatever, fisher-Price is right!

[wimble.livejournal.com]

There's the small red button on the Start Menu. Labelled "Shutdown". Which was always a pretty dumb combination of instructions.