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One of Microsoft's most hated operating systems (Windows ME is difficult to beat on that front) is destined to die in less than a month.
Windows Vista, launched to a less-than-stellar reception on January 30, 2007, saw most of its support stopped back in 2012. On April 11 this year the hammer finally falls. Microsoft warned Vista users that their systems could be compromised by an attacker in the future, especially as Security Essentials support has also now ended for the operating system.
"Windows Vista customers will no longer receive new security updates, non-security hotfixes, free or paid assisted support options, or online technical content updates from Microsoft," Redmond said.
"Microsoft has provided support for Windows Vista for the past 10 years, but the time has come for us, along with our hardware and software partners, to invest our resources towards more recent technologies so that we can continue to deliver great new experiences."
My heart does ache for our brethren, the poor, huddled Windows masses.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday March 20 2017, @12:27PM
Its even worse in that in public "computer gaming" or "video gaming" is exclusively the "FPS sequel of the month". Absolutely nothing but FPS is gaming and gaming is nothing but FPS.
Reality is weirder. I have no problems with dwarf fortress and heavily modified minecraft (playing the latest DW20 FTB pack right now on a private server so its 24x7). I haven't played DF in awhile but I get a good half hour of minecraft in per day as kind of a warm up. Works fine on windows, linux, freebsd anything with java pretty much. At least as of a year ago my SiL was still playing that online farm game which presumably requires a modern web browser and nothing else. There is some cheat-y DF add on for windows only that patches the binary game itself or something, obviously windows only, but I don't play with that.
Lately for real gaming I've broken out my board games as I sometimes do around this time of year and I've always been a board gamer war gamer type "grognard" or whatever and last weekend I broke out my copy of Andean Abyss from the archives and had a blast. That experience doesn't translate well to computer gaming because something more than 5 to 10 years old is going to have software issues with running yet be too recent to get away with virtualization and isn't popular enough to get special treatment (there's probably only, what, maybe 10K copies of AA out there?) I recall AA had balance issues and FARC always ends up crushing everyone and the cartel ends up crushed so its always the AUC (the good guys, as I see it) and the government vs FARC and the cartel just trying to make a buck here and there. And the dynamics of the game are strained because when AUC strikes, they smash FARC but lower govt support so its a balancing act. COIN games always end up kinda metastable for like 3 hours and then someone gets lucky and its over. Whatever anyway my large card table at 600+ professionally printed DPI means its graphics are better than any monitor under 5 feet and sixty thousand pixels across anyway, so I'm not likely to ditch my paper games and go online anytime soon. There's just something epic about setting up a full sheet of plywood on some sawhorses and playing a game like steel wolves for a long weekend, perhaps. You can enjoy both freebsd and gaming quite separately, in fact they're almost better experienced separately, is kind of my main point. I'm debating breaking out Caverna next weekend. Or play powergrid, perhaps. There's no point in having kids if you can't force them to be crewmen when you're playing space cadets dice duel, now that is an interesting party type game.
I will occasionally boot my copy of windows just to play steam games like lunar lander or spintyres. spintyres is like the second hour of that old strange 70s movie sorcerer which I assure you is not about DnD. Now I feel like shutting all this computer stuff off and watching Sorcerer today instead of stacking billable hours. Sorcerer is a strange movie thanks to the Overton window it was kinda blue pilled in the 70s and its extreme red pilled by 2010s standards, but I suppose many movies are like that. Star wars series is kinda like that, star wars has always been racist, look at how the white male is treated in the original movie where all the good guys are white males vs more recent where all the bad guys are exclusively white males like every other hollywood production.