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The oldest Windows version I use regularly is
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| 55% | 325 votes |
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- Don't complain about lack of options. You've got to pick a few when you do multiple choice. Those are the breaks.
- Feel free to suggest poll ideas if you're feeling creative. I'd strongly suggest reading the past polls first.
- This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
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The oldest Windows version I use regularly is
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This is the first age that's paid much attention to the future, which is a
little ironic since we may not have one.
-- Arthur Clarke
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2024, @04:35AM (5 children)
I run Windows 11 regularly at work (as well as linux). At home it is Mac and linux.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2024, @09:07AM (1 child)
Really? For this site? Windoze? Micro$erf? Shame. Really, shame.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday January 10 2024, @03:22PM (2 children)
I run Windows 10 at work. Linux at home and at work.
This or next month I expect to get a hardware upgrade which will have Windows 11 Enterprise. Of course, everything will have changed. Not for the better. Designed for disruption.
When you GOTO a dark place, always PEEK before you POKE.
(Score: 5, Touché) by ikanreed on Wednesday January 10 2024, @04:04PM
Sure, windows 10 was supposed to be the last one, but how else was microsoft supposed to keep their trend of releasing completely unusable garbage every other iteration?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Damp_Cuttlefish on Thursday January 18 2024, @09:29AM
This happened to me a while ago at work. I found https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher [github.com] helpful for restoring some lost sanity to the UI.
If, that is, your corporate overlords permit such transgressions.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by pTamok on Monday January 08 2024, @05:26PM (11 children)
I don't use Microsoft Windows regularly, but sporadically, when forced to.
And it irritates me every time. I go through a learning curve, and I'm usually solving a problem that has defeated the owner of the PC. This usually requires doing an Internet search through the quagmire of well-intentioned but ultimately useless advice available online for any Windows problem. I have to deal with WiFi set-ups that refuse to acknowledge they have an Internet connection when the WiFi connection is 'full strength'.
Outlook 2019 is irretrievably buggy. Microsoft's implementation of IMAP just does not work properly.
The Word and PowerPoint UIs are sufficiently arcane to defeat the best efforts of intelligent people to use them. How do you embed a video into a PowerPoint presentation so that it is portable: that is, move the presentation to another computer and the video goes with it?
Linux and associated applications have their problems, but debugging information appears to be far more accessible, and failings are acknowledged, and not passively aggressively ignored.
There are some things that work well on the Windows platform. Inserting and manipulating images in Word documents works so much better than in LibreOffice. The Microsoft Office application suite is more 'snappy' than LibreOffice. But overall, I find the Microsoft Windows experience more frustrating than effective.
But I recognise the majority of the world is 'happy enough' with Microsoft Windows. I just wish they would acknowledge that some people find other choices more suitable for them and 'accommodate difference'.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 08 2024, @05:51PM (9 children)
I also don't use Microsoft Windows regularly, but sporadically, when forced to.
I don't find there's much of a learning curve, it's just as obscure and annoying as it ever was back when I used it primarily (1992 through about 2006). The ever shifting interfaces to accomplish the same old tasks are a feature of Windows, not just a usability bug. It's a way to perpetually challenge the workforce with new learning requirements, even when they're not doing anything new. You wouldn't want employees who are incapable of learning new things, "keeping up with technology" - would you? /s
Outlook's poor message tree handling is another one of those usability bugs that trains workers not to rely on Outlook as a useful repository of historical information, the way, oh say Gmail is. Our corporate IT takes that a step further by auto-purging all messages 24 months after receipt. After all: you should have a crystal ball and know that information in a particular e-mail is worth saving, the moment you first read it, then you should make special effort to save that information somewhere better than your e-mail repo, shouldn't you? As to which mega-corp is more evil and should be less trusted to handle your private communications: M$ or Googall... that remains as an exercise for the philosophers in the room.
There are some things that work well on the Windows platform. AutoCad being one - although they have a browser based version that is perfectly functional in Linux, they just hobble it enough to encourage sales of their Windows/OS-X desktop versions, thereby hobbling all Linux users in the process.
I answered Windows 10 in the poll - it's in the product we make, because our GUI developers are "more comfortable" in .NET and they wouldn't want to be forced to try something new. Ironic, since I'm still programming quite happily in Qt 5 on Linux - could be using Qt 4 as easily if 5 didn't have so many compelling improvements. Qt 6 has been out for years, but there's nothing in there compelling enough for me to abandon 5 and make the transition. On the other hand, our .NET crew can't wait to switch to version 8, even before it's officially released... not because it has any particular features they want, just because they know the pain of falling behind while running on the M$ treadmill.
>Inserting and manipulating images in Word documents works so much better than in LibreOffice.
Back in 2005 the opposite was true. I was putting together a report that included a couple dozen digital photographs, and Word just rolled over and died no matter how I tried to shoe-horn them in. LibreOffice didn't even blink, it "just worked". I think I was finally able to complete the document in LibreOffice then export it to a Word format which Word would open, display and print, but doG help you if you tried to edit anything touching those images.
In the 2008-2010 timeframe, the Qt Creator IDE was surpassing VisualStudio for ease of use in developing C++ code. The VisualStudio debugger still had a small edge on Creator, but the Creator debugging was improving rapidly with each release and the bulk of VisualStudio still sucked pretty bad by comparison up until 2012 or so...
I recognise the majority of the world is 'happy enough' with Microsoft Windows - and it's not worth my time or effort to change that.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Monday January 08 2024, @06:19PM (8 children)
The documents in question have, at most, 16 photographs. Word copes fine, has a 'reasonable' UI for making modifications (resizing and cropping) and useful options for altering the resolution to keep the filesize down. LibreOffice was very slow, and recommended that you edited the picture outside of the Writer application before importing it. It was considerably less polished for my purposes in this use. I'm generally a fan of LibreOffice Writer as it dealt with large text documents far better than Word did. I have not done a recent comparison of that aspect. In the past I used OpenOffice to rescue some large Word documents that Word refused to play with.
But I'm not a typical user. If I want to write text, I'll use a text editor. I rarely want to lay out using a word processor, or even a page-layout package. If push came to shove, I'd probably learn TeX - it's been too many years since I last used troff.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 08 2024, @06:46PM (6 children)
In 2005 I suspect the raw image resolution was quite a bit lower than what you're trying to do today.
The performance comparison you give is basically flipped on what I experienced in 2005, Word would bog and become unusable after about 6 full resolution photos were inserted in an approximately 10 page document. Lowering the image resolution to something barely acceptable helped a little, it would then bog after about 8 images inserted, frequently crashing and losing all edits in the document. LibreOffice just handled the image insertions with aplomb - no complaints, no sluggish (for the day) performance. I think I tried making two separate word documents with 5 images each and merging them, still bogged and crashed. Of course the corporate documentation server the document was destined to be archived in demanded a Word native format.
If your images are something crazy like 20MP from a fancy new phone-camera, resizing them before inserting them in documents destined to be printed in 300dpi resolution or less on A4 paper might not be all that irrational a thing to consider, but I agree - it's pretty lame that LibreOffice makes you jump the extra hoops. I wouldn't be surprised if Word is silently reducing the resolution on your imported images, I would be slightly more surprised if Microsoft has actually surpassed the open source world in terms of efficient handling of large amounts of data.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Monday January 08 2024, @08:16PM (5 children)
I had to give up on LibreOffice for this task: it was just too slow. Maybe the machine it was on wasn't powerful enough. Pictures were roughly 1-4 Megabyte jpgs.
It could be that Windows is moving a window around on the fully decompressed static jpg while LibreOffice was moving the decompressed jpg around behind a static window (programmers have done crazier things) - in the first case, you 'simply' remap the start-point, in the second you have some heavy bitmap moving routines in play. It felt like that, so in LibreOffice there was terrible lag.
No matter what, so long as we can find adequate tools to do the job, we're fine.
I am very familiar with Microsoft Word bogging down and crashing, sometimes rendering the document unreadable by Word. Which Is why I had OpenOffice around (before LibreOffice was born) to rescue the situation. Large corporate documents and deadlines, and a (technical) document production team existing on caffeine, cigarettes and adrenaline. Different days.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 08 2024, @09:55PM (4 children)
Yeah, that was called OpenOffice back in 2005 - they're both filed in the same bucket in my brain.
I had a fairly low pressure, plenty of time to get the document right situation, thus my screwing around with the various options.
If I had been under pressure and forced to use Word only, the document would have been a wall of text and the images would have been filed as attachments - but that's a really sucky way to communicate with future readers (if there ever were any...)
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday January 15 2024, @02:14PM (3 children)
Why not do up these docs in HTML, to be viewed in a browser? These days, browsers are good at handling web pages with lots of images.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 15 2024, @02:43PM
2005? The company had an official "document control system" - whatever you did had to be accessible through that system which tracked approval signatures, current and former versions, release and activation dates, etc.
It barely could handle Word and PDF viewing in the system, anything else was a binary attachment and generally frowned upon because that left it up to the person viewing the document to first download the attachment then figure out how to view it themselves. I believe the "required standard" document format was a word template, you know the drill: headers with page X-of-Y and the document number + title, some crap in the footers that made somebody feel important for getting it included in the company wide procedures, etc.
I've moved to a much bigger company with a much more widely used document control system now. It can't even do Word or PDF previews, you've gotta download whatever you want to see beyond the doc number and title, and not through the obvious download button, that one doesn't work, it's the special attachment option behind a secondary menu. But that's O.K. because we all have periodic documented training that tells us how to do that, and a million other things which we don't use in our particular job functions. I think the attachment download thing is about 40% of the way through the training document, not highlighted or emphasized in any particular way, just a brick in the great wall of training text.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2024, @07:51AM (1 child)
Well, obviously, that would not allow one to bash free and open software, as one's proprietary masters require! The mere fact that such a question even appears on SoylentNews raises the question of, who is getting paid? Hubie? Too new. Janrinok, probably. Chromas, the Windows Shill, Most Likely. SoylentNews is finished.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2024, @06:59AM
Free Software must be bashed, since it is in opposition to chromas, janrinok, k.hallow, and some other sellout dudes. This is what killed Slashdot, and now it is here.
(Score: 2) by Lester on Thursday February 01 2024, @03:28PM
I translate books and articles, I use AsciiDoc or markup + pandoc.
The main advantage is that I commit with git and I can track changes. Less important, but interesting points, are:
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday February 03 2024, @01:26AM
The sad thing is they are generally not happy with Windows. They are just used to it, and the thought of investing anything in a learning curve, no matter how slight, is an abhorrent idea. I would happily spend an hour learning something that saved me five minutes each time I had to do it, most users will only do so if what they are currently doing stops working at all.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 08 2024, @07:10PM (27 children)
So, Win7 has had no updates available for quite a long while. That wasn't a real problem, because everything my wife wanted to do, just worked. I put some effort into maintaining security, and called it good.
One by one, those apps that my wife insists must work have lost support for Win7. Something finally broke, we couldn't fix it, so she ordered a new computer with no OS installed. I guess she had a brainfart, because soon after, she ordered ANOTHER computer with Windows 11 home installed. So, two computers, one Home, the other Pro.
I spent a lot of time researching, and tweaking Win11 to be as useful as possible, and now there are TWO Win11 machines in the house.
Somehow, the Pro machine ended up sitting in my preferred vegetation spot, so I log into it more often than I would have expected. My Linux machine was banished from the living room, because it's visually unattractive. To log on to it, I have to go to - shall we call it the dog house? It's more remote from family activities, there's no sunshine on sunny days, and in fact, the room is cold most of the time.
Mehhh. I think I've been played here. I'm still a Linux guy, but I'm mostly logging in remotely.
On the plus side - it's a lot easier to log grandchildren onto the computer, so they can play games, get an education, email their other grandparents, etc etc. I mean, there are a zillion children's applications available on Windows, not so much Linux.
I've learned my lesson though. I'll be upgrading my Linux machine to look as sleek and beautiful as these new machines, at which point Win11 Pro will be banished to the doghouse.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 09 2024, @03:51AM (3 children)
Runaway, why is your sig attributing Shakespeare to Patton? Mistake, or ignorance, or are you making a point?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday January 09 2024, @04:18AM (2 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Through_a_Glass_Darkly [wikipedia.org]
A search of that page gives no results for 'Shakespeare'. Perhaps you can enlighten us? You're thinking of 'The Tempest'? But first, you might read that page, and make note of all the other people who have used the phrase, starting with
Patton's poem here https://www.johnccarleton.org/BLOGGER/2021/09/04/through-a-glass-darkly-poem-by-american-general-george-s-patton/ [johnccarleton.org]
Enjoy.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 11 2024, @01:36AM (1 child)
That is sometimes translated as "in a mirror, darkly" instead of "through a glass, darkly." Why do I know the phrase, in a mirror, darkly? It's the name of a two-part episode [fandom.com] in the fourth season of Enterprise. The episode was intended as a bit of nostalgia for fans, and it was originally intended to let William Shatner appear once more in Star Trek. The plans to bring Shatner back didn't work out, but it was still a fun story. Enterprise (mostly) wasn't nearly as bad as people think, and the last two seasons were pretty good.
Anyway, the KJV isn't a particularly good translation of the Bible. That phrase would also have made sense for this episode, especially since DS9 had a mirror universe episode titled Through the Looking Glass [fandom.com]. But "in a mirror, darkly" is probably a better translation of this phrase.
I'll accept my offtopic mod for discussing Bible translations and how your quote relates to Star Trek.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Friday January 19 2024, @01:42AM
Ahem.... the third season as a whole should have been a runner up for the "Spock's Brain Prize", although it really ought to have been called "And the Children Shall Lead Prize" given that that particular episode is even worse than Spock's Brain, and that's pretty hard to do! The fourth season was pretty good except for the series finale, which was the winner of the "Spock's Brain Prize" for the series, an episode as bad as the Star Trek V movie, an episode that should be forgotten, deleted, purged, expunged, and completely erased from human memory.
It depends upon what you mean by "good." If you mean "accurate", no, it is not given that it was based only upon the best ancient texts available at the time. Centuries of archaeology, papyrology, linguistics, and scholarship have given us much better texts for translators to work from. The fact that the KJV was also intentionally translated to give it an anti-Roman Catholic bent doesn't help its case. But if you mean "beautiful" or "well written" then the KJV doesn't get much better. It was intended from the beginning to be read in churches during services and as such possesses a certain poetic quality. And it was done at a time when the modern English language was really coming into its own and writers, including the committee of scholars who worked on it, were learning to flex their linguistic muscles. The influence Shakespeare's plays and the KJV had on the English language and literature are no accident: the KJV and Shakespeare's plays were written at around the same time.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2024, @08:50PM (22 children)
Now we know who wears the pants (and chooses OS's) in the Runaway1956 household! After the "hog-tie for vax" episode, not really surprising. Poor whipped Runaway!
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18 2024, @06:12AM (21 children)
I love how the truth about Runaway's domestic situation, intellectual ability, and educational achievements are moderated Spam. Nothing could be more spam-like, other than the truth about the fucking stupid conservatives of America. Trump? Not smart enough to spot the scam? Cannot see the diabolical janrinok strategy? Yes, volunteer for SN! Until janrinok runs you off, like he did Mightly Buzzard, Dalek, and now kolie. Soon, there will be none left, but the protected ignorant moron, Runaway1956, and the Minion, K hallow, bright and fluffy, yellow and round. I have warned of this. Now it has come to pass. NCommander, pull the plug. Coup de grace.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18 2024, @05:19PM (20 children)
Janrinok's oddly persistent defense of runaway is truly odd. Wish we could have all the bullshit, including ari's sock puppets, publicly known. Remember folks, lack of transparency is a near universal indicator of hidden malfeasance.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2024, @02:03AM (18 children)
Truth be told, ari never ran no sockpuppets, it was only the fear of conservatives, whom he reamed on a regular basis, that their opinions were not wildly popular, so it had to be fake downmods, and the moderation scheme was rigged, and ari had to be insurrected. All this sounds familiar, eh?
It is like how Windows is an operating system. Pure fabrication.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday January 19 2024, @09:11AM (17 children)
| 2645 | aristarchus | 2014-02-21 08:40:40 | ???????@yahoo.com | yes | banned |
| 17903 | SillyJanrinok | 2022-08-02 23:40:31 | ???????@yahoo.com | yes | banned | |
37009 | Neuvoaristarchus | 2023-10-26 10:08:35 | ???????@yahoo.com | yes | banned |
All created using the exact same email address. Keep digging, you are making my job so much easier.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2024, @10:49AM (11 children)
Not my email address, you arsehole of a Brit Nazi appeaser! Pipe down, there, janrinok. Go destroy a Gobernance Committee somewhere, objecting to loss of privacy, say, by an admin posting your alleged sacred email addies all over the fricking place!
aristarchus. The real one, not the other one. Can't be a sockpuppet of myself, after all!
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday January 19 2024, @12:03PM (10 children)
That is the email address that was used to create the original aristarchus account. It is the one that I used several months ago and you responded as aristarchus. You quoted contents of the email that I had sent to you and you alone.
Deny it all you want - you have alternative accounts but that is still the genuine aristarchus account.
FYI - yahoo.com is not an email address, it is simply a domain. Nobody has posted your 'alleged sacred email addies' anywhere.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2024, @07:15PM (4 children)
You are saying I am banned, THREE TIMES!???!!! Oh, the humanity. Now about your destruction of the governance committee, and the impending shutdown of SoylentNews, . . .
Eristarchus
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2024, @07:53AM
Runaway had carnal knowledge of my livestock. I am pressing charges. Janrinok knew this, and covered it up,
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 23 2024, @08:50AM (2 children)
Not my email, fool. Janrinok of La Mancha is fighting flocks of sheep, and windmills, and ancient Greeks. Time for a wellness check?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday January 23 2024, @10:34AM (1 child)
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 24 2024, @02:40AM
If it were a personal attack, you would already be dead. Perhaps, el Guapo, you are too much of a snowflake, and have thin skin? Could it be that it is only in your eyes that an attack has been launched? Of course, if you think khallow argues in good faith, or that Runaway is compis mentis, then not surprising that you can't see that.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2024, @07:06AM (4 children)
Oh, yes, quite right, my dear lying asshole of a janrinok! You know none of that is true, and you are only trying to create a false pretense for an action that you clearly realize is wrong, and illegal. SoylentNews along the lines of the East India Limited Liability and fliptop Corporation? This will not fly. Barely even float. Did you look at the photo? Texas Chainsaw Soylent Board? (Well, at least they are sawing boards. )
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday January 28 2024, @08:05AM (3 children)
Exactly the same email as the sock puppet (janredux (42173)) which you created on 27 Jan 2024.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2024, @07:29PM (2 children)
Wasn't me, janrinok, check the IP! In fact, that looks suspiciously like a handle that a janrinok sock puppet might use.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday January 28 2024, @08:25PM (1 child)
It came from your email address. I would check your security if, as you claim, it was not you. Somebody has access to your account, it seems.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2024, @10:25PM
I didn't say who I was. You are assuming, again. Would I have to reveal my true identity, to get an account, and be a member of the Triumvirate?
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2024, @08:09AM (3 children)
Notice that these IDs are post the banning of aristarchus, so, technically, they were not sockpuppets, since the originating account had be banned. janrinok does not seem to understand the subtlies of the legality of the non-existent situation.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday January 20 2024, @08:21AM (2 children)
That initial account still exists in the database. Therefore any additional accounts by that person are sock puppets unless they have been approved for a specific use by the staff e.g. bots which need access to the database etc.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2024, @09:40AM
Unless, they are not. Really, janrinok, as the tail end of a failed experiment, you are fighting a rearguard action against enemies that do not exist. I am aristarchus. Of course I am. Why would I not be? And, what difference does it make? You have doxxed anyone who dares opposes you. We have seen the corruption and Trump-like Imperial Staff moderations. Please, just let SN die a dignified death. It is not about you.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2024, @08:44PM
How could a non-functional account have a functional account as a sockpuppet? I mean, if THAT sockpuppet were to have a sockpuppet, and so on, then there might be a case that there is some over representation of the shadowy entity behind them. But the banned account is banned, so it is not an account in any real sense, and so there can be no reduplication of it by an actually functioning account.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2024, @06:54AM
I wonder, how many sockpuppets on SN are run by the Runaway wife? She does seem to rule at home, so not a stretch that she would take over Runaway's Ident. and fuck it up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 25 2024, @07:03PM
And this Guttfield guy [huffpost.com] seems to be where the Runaway gets his talking points.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday January 09 2024, @12:16PM (3 children)
... for video games. I know some have said Linux/proton work okay but that isn't my experience. Possibly because my linux box GPU is too old to run Direct X 11/12 AFAICT (using wine).
(Score: 2) by higuita on Monday January 15 2024, @07:04PM (1 child)
try protonup and get a newer proton version and try again... unless your card do not support vulkan or have it incomplete, it should work
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday January 16 2024, @07:18AM
In fact after a day on internet search I found a solution - steam was installed via flatpak, and flatpak had old gpu drivers. I had to do a flatpak update as well as the usual apt stuff. That's new to me, I assumed flatpak would follow apt or would use the system gpu drivers.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday January 18 2024, @09:36PM
Steam + Proton and WINE have come a very long way in a short period of time. It chock it up to Valve putting serious resources into Linux gaming. I certainly don't see anyone else pushing for it. Except perhaps GOG tangentially. That said, the last time I tried to just switch to Linux for gaming, I had significant issues with some games. Specifically Space Engineers, just didn't work right. As in, it ran, but I got no audio. That wasn't going to work for me as at the time, I was playing it quite a bit. It's certainly worth firing up an external SSD with a Linux install and giving it a try. I disconnected my windows SSD out of paranoia, just to ensure I didn't fat finger something.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday January 09 2024, @01:29PM (5 children)
I have two vintage PicoScope ADC-212 digital oscilloscope pods. It was made to run under WIN95. Seems I have to have FAT32 filesystem and a system parallel LPT port to run some DMA mode the PicoScope software needs.
They run on an old ThinkPad, and I am currently messing around with some vintage HP Compaq nc6120 to see if they will run WIN98. The 6120 has the bus mounted parallel port that supports the parallel DMA stuff, and runs a PATA hard disk. Albeit I have to watch my disk partition size...seems FAT32 chokes a bit over 30 GB, and I have a bunch of 160GB 2.5" PATA drives.
If I can get both the PicoScope and WiFi up on it, I can make a useful tool for collecting data and passing it on to my other tools for processing.
The availability of "xp_activate32.exe" has greatly qualmed my fears of involving a Microsoft product into building anything I intend to last.
Over my life, I have seen too many things come and go, and I do not want to build anything around short lived stuff. Too much like building sand castles at the beach. If I spend my time to build it, I intend it to last far beyond my lifetime, just like my grandpa did. If I set someone up, what I leave will outlive me. I am confident someone can keep an old XP box running far longer than a WIN11 box, given all the permissions and enforced obsolescence codes in the later softwares.
If I think it's just Microsoft, uh no....seems darned near every major car and appliance manufacturer has become dead set on manufacturing pretty-looking junk from the get-go.
https://theappliancecarecompany.com/blog/do-older-appliances-last-longer/ [theappliancecarecompany.com]
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 10 2024, @02:28AM (4 children)
Same with Windows 98 here. Similar reason as well, but in our case it is a couple of high-resolution electron microscopes. We have various other versions of long-retired operating systems to run other specialty equipment. Some would cost tens of millions of dollars to replace, so it is cheaper to pay for the man hours necessary to support everything and kludge various machines together to run the ancient software properly than buy replacement equipment.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Wednesday January 10 2024, @11:54AM (1 child)
Just as long as you don't ever connect to the internet, I believe you should be fine. Also, in WIN98, I believe you should be able to safely connect to your private intranet so you can interface to your WIN98 software via TCP/IP.
Borland made a lot of nice tools that run under WIN98. Delphi. Builder. Turbo Assembler.
You can do the heavy lifting on another system having today's technology, using the WIN98 box as a programmable interface to the Microscope, as I am doing with my PicoScope.
The elephant in the room is protecting that Microscope from being excommunicated by expireware. It puzzles me why anyone would consider embedding known expireware into critical company infrastructure.
Oh yes! I hear you very clearly about those high resolution electron microscopes and all that work that is dependent on a proprietary OS. Enforced obsolescence is my number one fear of implementing proprietary technologies into anything I build. Way too many times, I have been forced to redesign/rebuild perfectly operating infrastructure because of enforced obsolescence of an embedded component. I learned my lesson years ago on an early CAD system. When the company that built the proprietary CAD system went out of business, nearly ten years of my work went down the tubes with it.
Never again! I will go to nearly any length to use generic tools and hardware that can be maintained no matter who goes out of business.
Big companies can spend millions on stuff they can't maintain. I get most of what I need off eBay. A lot of those old computers, like old household appliances, were made from standardized parts and last near forever.
If I wasn't in my 70's, I'd be asking you if you guys had any job openings as it sounds like stuff like you describe is one of my passions...building hardware and software interfaces to older stuff. I haven't considered the newer stuff supportable since DRM became all the rage, software int3 (breakpoint) was removed, and my SoftICE and other debugging tools became crippled.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=software+int3+softice [duckduckgo.com]
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 11 2024, @12:15AM
Trust me, we are well familiar with the need to gap the interface computers from the Internet. The computers are not even on the local network. If they understand how to use a network at all, they are on own networks. Many of them don't understand TCP/IP anyway so being on the main IPv6 network would be a non-starter anyway. Instead, different machines have different ways of getting things off of them depending on the particular one we are talking about. A couple require physical media by burning CDs, or ZIP or floppy disks. Others use a network but use IPX/SPX, AppleTalk, or custom protocols. Depending on the particular piece of equipment, the esoteric networks are connected to multihomed computers that act as gateways or forwarders.
Thankfully, many of the machines don't actually require proprietary OSes. The real issue is that it is in many cases cheaper to just use the old OSes than the alternatives. Some machines have transitioned to equivalent OSes (FreeDOS or Linux). However, transitioning to a new operating system can require reverse-engineering hardware and software. Then you have to actually implement those efforts through custom network protocols, custom hardware protocols, custom drivers, custom interfaces, bespoke hardware, etc. By the time we get to that point for most of our equipment, you are starting to reach the end of their useful lifetime. But there are certain pieces of equipment that we have done that because they have been operating for over 50 years and may be useful for another 50.
The real problem is that as things got more complicated and full of purposeful obfuscation, it is getting harder to do. We've had to increase our warehousing as a result and cut back on purchasing from certain companies. Thankfully, so is everyone else so the companies are starting to respond to market pressures in terms of requiring proprietary dependencies they don't control. But, as you mentioned, there is always the chance that they go out of business before the EOL of their product.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday January 16 2024, @07:10PM (1 child)
Part of my day job is getting ancient software to work on modern versions of Windows. There are some things that can't be fixed, i.e. I have a CNC mill with an ISA controller card and that bus isn't supported on anything newer than Win2k. If you're interested in playing with this, the Windows ADK includes the Application Compatibility Toolkit and is one of the primary tools used for this. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/ask-the-performance-team/demystifying-shims-or-using-the-app-compat-toolkit-to-make-your/ba-p/374947 [microsoft.com]
If you want to play with it sometime, I'd love to help.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2024, @11:26PM
Thank you for your offer. However, we are already familiar with shimming in userspace and how to get ISA working in Windows 10 and above. On the few instances we get stuck, we already have a number of contacts at Microsoft as part of our contract with them.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 10 2024, @04:34AM (4 children)
crafoo is attacking persons in the enshittification comments. He should be spam-modded, post haste.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 12 2024, @04:03AM (3 children)
And, FrostyPist seems to be on the wrong website. Fanbois, begone!
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2024, @07:57AM (2 children)
No one corrects incorrect mods, or deletes really bad posts, anymore? Is anyone in charge here, anymore? What if I was to say, "Fuck the Queen!" Would no one do anything about it? Queen Charlie? Bonnie Queen Charlie? Jacobites by day, I swear.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2024, @09:45AM
Fucking Bloody Poms! God Damned Brits! English twats of no discernable gender! Anglo-Saxons Go Home!
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 24 2024, @07:31AM
Shirely you understand that Britannia Grosse only sticks with the Microsoft malware because of the Five (english speaking) Eyes, right? Got to keep an eye on those Australians who are violating copyright, being genetic criminals, right? Or could it be that the English aristarchusy is the real criminal in all this, exiling people who were just trying to get enough to eat. Not to mention the New Aristarchuses and the Maori Treaty. MauMau. Lies, deception, lizard people.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 10 2024, @06:27PM (1 child)
Unfortunately, I have to use Windows for my job. That's Windows 10. I also use Windows 10 for gaming purposes.
However, Windows is garbage. Microsoft is waving two middle fingers in everyone's faces with their arbitrary minimum hardware requirements. But other parts of Windows are also awful.
One of the Windows updates in the current cycle is for KB5034441 [microsoft.com], which addresses CVE-2024-20666 [microsoft.com]. From what I can tell, exploiting this vulnerability requires physical access, so there's no risk of this being used in remote attacks. The actual risk to most users is probably very low. Still, it allows security features to be bypassed, so it should be fixed.
The problem is that this update is failing for many users with error code 0x80070643 [reddit.com]. Microsoft claims that this is due to the recovery partition not being large enough on some systems, though the error code is cryptic and unhelpful. Here's what Microsoft said about that:
Windows isn't even telling users the correct error. Microsoft claims the update is failing on systems where the recovery partition isn't large enough. From my own experience, I have systems where I allowed the Windows installer to partition the drive automatically, meaning that Windows determined the size of the recovery partition. Windows 10 chose a size of 509 MB on my systems. For most users, this is probably set automatically by the installer or the computer manufacturer. That said, I've read a user comment that the update failed on a system with a 15 GB recovery partition, so I'm not certain that this can really be blamed on insufficient disk space.
Microsoft's advice to users is that they need to manually resize the recovery partition [microsoft.com]. The commands are not intuitive, and there's absolutely no reason that Microsoft should be expecting ordinary users to be doing this. Resizing partitions is a fairly high risk operation, one that carries a risk of data loss if not done properly.
This vulnerability probably just isn't a risk at all for most users, but that's not necessarily obvious. They just see the message that a security update failed with a cryptic error message. It's Microsoft's responsibility to ensure that security updates just work when they're being installed on a system in a reasonably standard configuration. If the Windows installer chose a recovery partition of 509 MB, then Microsoft needs to make their updates work with a recovery partition of that size, or they need to automatically resize the partition. Microsoft's response is a complete joke.
Windows is garbage, and this is yet another Microsoft dumpster fire. Windows might be necessary because a lot of businesses use it, but it's also a horrible experience for users.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mendax on Friday January 19 2024, @01:50AM
Fucking right, bro! I have to use it at work and it's simply awful. Half the time when I wake it up and log back in fucking Edge pops up displaying some shit. I use Google Sheets at work and we use Chrome for that since, after all, that's what it's designed to work with. I don't really have a choice in the matter. Google's office tools will work with other browsers and probably will work with Edge but why bother? Either way we're going to be spied upon by one huge evil company or another. At home, I use a Mac and Apple's macOS rightly does not thrust Safari upon me. It only pops up because I haven't set Firefox to be my default browser by choice. If I changed the default, I'd almost certainly would never see Safari again. I gladly pay the Apple tax to own a Mac (and yes I once did build a Hackintosh and found it wanting).
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 1) by Gertlex on Thursday January 11 2024, @04:38AM
I have a 10+ year old original Surface Pro that I still play Slay the Spire on sometimes (not technically regularly); it's running 8.1
Running bleeding edge 11 at home because I'm too lazy to reinstall and get off the developer previews.
(Score: 2) by gznork26 on Thursday January 11 2024, @06:12PM (1 child)
We've got Win7 installed along with Linux Mint on an old tower in the garage. The ONLY reason we need Win7 is to run an old machine embroidery editor which uses a dongle. The current version of that software is way too expensive to bother getting.
Khipu were Turing complete.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 12 2024, @12:25AM
Depending on how technical you are and exactly how that dongle works, there is a good chance you can actually get around its copy protection being restricted to Windows. The difficulty lies between adding an entry using regedit so WINE recognizes it to dumping the dongle and using a kernel-mode debugger to figure out where and what to crack the binary or how to fake the dongle interface.
(Score: 2) by ese002 on Saturday January 13 2024, @05:15AM
I have a 12 year old netbook that boot XP. The only reason I have to do that is to set my Garmin to use a new WIFI access point. The watch can't do it by itself. It requires a PC or Mac running Garmin Express. This time around didn't go so well. The XP box wasn't really compatible with the Comcast WiFi. And it turns out, the Garmin wasn't either. I ended up setting up a second WiFi using an older route that the Garmin would talk to and was already configured for.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2024, @09:25AM (1 child)
Speacking of Winders, seems janrinok is gonna blow a gasket over the guv'ners committee.
Ball be in kolie's court, unless the Kang of SoylentNews, the Mighty NCommander, cares to snap his fingers. khallow will be so, so, um, khallowed.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2024, @04:16AM
Jan Rinok is a Nazi. He is quitting the guv'nunce committee to protect his Nazi friends Khallow and Runaway full time. He should never have been given admin privileges again. Racist fucker.
Heil Jan Rinok.
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aristarchus
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2024, @06:22AM
Who would have thought it would be so easy to introduce an I/P topic into SoylentNews? Must be all the Neo-nazis who are ready and willing to give Runaway1956's takes on the issue.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by damnbunni on Wednesday January 17 2024, @08:46PM (3 children)
I regularly use Windows 3.1 at work on some old industrial equipment. The software will actually run on a newer Windows, but the hardware needs an ISA slot, so...
(Score: 2) by mendax on Friday January 19 2024, @01:52AM (1 child)
What kind of hardware are you running 3.1 on? If it's anything approaching new, its speed is going to blow any modern OS out of the water.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2) by damnbunni on Sunday January 28 2024, @01:09AM
It's a Pentium MMX. The application requires a specific ISA slot modem.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 24 2024, @08:10AM
I regularly use multiple versions of Windows to spam mod anyone who dares criticize Redmond, and our Lord and Savior Bill Gates, Pieces be upon Him. What always bothered me about Slashdot was this anti-proprietary software bias, like how somehow code written for profit, and designed to restrict and fuck over the user was somehow not as good as this hippy "free software" shit. About time SoylentNews respected its true master, and started banning all this linux shit. And the Mac shit, too. CoPilot demands it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2024, @06:12AM (1 child)
I keep an era-appropriate Windows 98 machine working primarily for playing 1990s Windows games (it does OK with a selection of DOS games too). I actually really enjoy using this system. I do a little bit of 32-bit DOS programming on it too (via DJGPP).
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 26 2024, @09:09AM
There never was a era where Windows was appropriate, you probably know that already. Some here on SoylentNes seem to pine for the old days, the earliest DOS, not knowing that PINE was a UNIX program that far out preformed anything Windows, in any era. Marketing can never compensate for a lack of engineering, or programming.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2024, @09:42AM
We really need to banish any and all purveyors of the Redmond slavers software. Just saying, most emphatically. Microsoft is evil, illegal, and not very good software. There, I said it. And, it is true.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 21 2024, @08:08PM (3 children)
Spam mods still being abused, what trash site management.
Maybe Soylent News is the real kakistocracy?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 21 2024, @10:49PM (2 children)
Madness is posting the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.
The madness will continue...
This playground has been pwned. Get over it.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 24 2024, @07:34AM (1 child)
Somebody, spam mod this post! Stat! To protect the King, and alt-right wacko opinion!
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 26 2024, @09:11AM
OK!!@ Now, somebody spam mod the grandparent post to this one, and then the parent, and then the progeny and offspring, the derivatives and tangentials. Spam mod them all to hell, the whole damn site! The whole damn thing! Just, like, do it! Spam mods to save free speech. Yeah, right.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 21 2024, @09:50PM (1 child)
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=24/01/19/1051214 [soylentnews.org]
Just VLM being a racist fuckwit, with runaway's dadadoofy sock puppet chiming in as well.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 21 2024, @11:08PM
Great thing about VLM and Runaway, they will be replaced.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Hartree on Sunday January 21 2024, @11:30PM
I have an old pentium thinkpad that I call my DOStop. I play with it enough that I could call it used regularly (I have to power it up to keep the old drives from sticking up. Fortunately if they do, a couple good sharp thumps still bring them out of it.)
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Sunday January 21 2024, @11:35PM
I daily use Windows 8.1 with Openshell installed on it to make it look like Win 7 and not be completely obnoxious. I tolerate Win 10 when I have to (also with Openshell) but don't like the enforced updates that seem to far too often lead to "attempt install, fail, reboot, revert back, install again, lather rinse repeat. Wait for MS to get around to fixing the update somewhen.".
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 22 2024, @07:42PM (1 child)
Runaway posts new journal entry, on guns. Oh, grate! Will not someone impeach the old bastard?
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 24 2024, @07:37AM
But at least he is looking at a post action report on a school shooting, and not using that information to plan his own school mass shooting, . . . are there any schools in Runaway's vicinity that we should be warning? Local sheriff red flag warning, with or without due process?
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 24 2024, @10:12PM (2 children)
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/crime-prevention-research-center/ [mediabiasfactcheck.com]
Certain users just can't help spreading propaganda that always includes some of their culture war hate agenda.
Janrinok's new form key errors increase is also pretty shitty. Looks like this is the (further) enshittification of SN.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 25 2024, @06:56AM
We cannot but hope to withstand the tsunami of stupidity that will spew forth from the Alt-right. Insane conspiracy theories, trickle down economics, khallow climate change denial. It is all too much. And, janrinok is complicit in all of this. Time to just say it, SoylentNews has failed and deserves to die. Dying time. NCommander, you know what you have to do. Do it now. We will all thank you in the Soylent Afterlife.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 25 2024, @08:21PM
Janrinok: "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?"
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 25 2024, @07:03AM
So the Nimrod has posted another ammosexual journal entry. Pathetic, coward, and potential mass shooter. Time to shut him down, send him to janrinok's house, since janrinok seems to feel safe defending crazed gun people in America, being allegedly defended by the European Union and the Atlantic Ocean. But just wait, until some MAGA realizes how much of an impact it would make, it the Editor Emeritus of SoylentNews, you know, had to face the consequences of his policies. Not wishing this on anyone, to be clear, but only wishing to make it clear what the consequences of defending homicidal Arkansasians are.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 25 2024, @08:25PM
Such a baby, allows racism and terrorism but comolaining about such content is too far!
What a bunch of loony fucking idiots. Good example of why Earth is in such dire straits right now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 25 2024, @08:28PM (1 child)
Maybe in this shrunken community some people [soylentnews.org] will realize how bad the propaganda truly poisoned the well.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 30 2024, @04:10AM
I read that as " a community of shrunken heads". A la Betelguise.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 26 2024, @02:42PM
Off SN IRC
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2024, @07:12AM
Only now, at the end, do you realize the true power of free speech. Your pathetic attempt to control dialogue have resulted in the termination of SoylentNews as a website, at all. We will all mourn SN, can curse janrinok daily. May we meet at the next home of free speech on the internets, the one without a Runaway or Khallow. Peace out, my fellow soylentils.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2024, @07:32AM
I want to call for a shutdown of SoylentNews, to prevent the hostile take-over by janrinok and his hallucinated community. There can be no transfer of anything until there is a community vote, and a vote that includes ACs. Otherwise, this is not going to go anywhere, especially after Ncommander's honeypot confession. Poor Runaway! Careful opening the door, khallow! Both hands clearly in sight!
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2024, @07:35PM (6 children)
After destroying the governance committee, janrinok is now assembling a band of merry alt-right men to commandeer the SoylentNews. Nota bene that the article is restricted, and disallows comment by AC's, and the call for volunteers also excludes AC's. It was the ban on AC's the prompted the downfall of SN. This strategy is doomed to fail. Goodbye, SoylentNews! It was good while it lasted. Now you're just a website that I used to know.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 29 2024, @06:07AM (4 children)
I call for a vote! A vote of no confidence in janrinok. It is clear that he is leading us to a fascist SoylentNews, and I think it is time for the community to put him in his place. Clearly he thinks he is the community, but I, and others, suspect he is wrong about this. Only way to tell if for a general plebiscite, prior to any formation of a Board, and the restoration of the legitimately constituted Governance Committee, as it was before janrinok disrupted it. Just my opinion as a community member. Not hopeful, however.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 29 2024, @06:46AM (3 children)
You know that janrinok is going to pick the bottom of the barrel, the conservatives that will volunteer, and then we will be Gab-lite, just like we ever were only Slashdot less. Really sad, actually, and a betrayal of what the site could have been, if only we had been able to attract a better class of editors. Just saying. Goodbye, SoylentNews!
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 29 2024, @06:13AM (1 child)
My nick name is aristarchus. Bow before me, you cretin of low standards? How dare you attempt to highjack SoylentNews for your own ends? I use my nickname only because I know it will throw fear into your heart. I am anonymous! I am Anonymous Coward, and I am legion! You have no chance against us. aristarchus. I said it again. Your first mistake, your last mistake, the fatal mistake, well, you know what it was.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Tuesday January 30 2024, @03:46AM
Windows 11 works for me (TPM 2.0 and RAM and SECUREBOOT can be bypassed by the usb utility rufus). The reason I say Windows 11, and choose it, is because I like to keep my software updated. I'm typing this on an Inspiron 11z 8GB RAM i3 330UM CPU (from 2010) and it runs Windows 11 perfectly fine. It's really not that difficult for me to do an exodus (backup reinstall).
As far as Windows 10 vs Windows 11 debates... meh. I've seen so many radical UI changes (I use VM's to experiences all OS's) it doesn't matter to me.
Of course, sometimes it is mandatory to run older OS's (unfortunately the drivers for Windows XP won't work in Windows 11 etc).
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 31 2024, @04:42AM
If you use a certain railroad in Germany, the answer is Windows 3.11 [tomshardware.com].
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2024, @08:15AM (11 children)
Comment deleted from journal in which it was posted. Reposting it here is not Spam, it is defense of free speech.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday February 03 2024, @08:19AM (10 children)
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 05 2024, @12:18AM (21 children)
The spam mod abuse was bad enough, now comments simply critical of liars has been censored cometely, no doubt on suspicion of being an aristarchus post.
No nazi flags, no doxxing or otherwise objectionable content. So once again we see that supporting political violence and posting racist commentary is protected speech on SN, but criticizing liars or the site itself is enough for actual censorship.
At least the milky scuzzard got one thing right, janrinok's leadership would lead to abuse. Not like scuzzy was much better, he had enough accusations of abuse.
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Monday February 05 2024, @06:53AM (20 children)
We have several ways of trying to identify AC posts. Two of them, which are currently relevant, are by using IP addresses and by content. Neither of them is foolproof. But you personally have told me on several occasions that I must NOT use the IP addresses. In your case they would have identified you but also shown your past posting history too. You object to that. The IP address data has not been used.
So in this case we had to revert to content. aristarchus has just spent several days spamming the site and doxxing another community member. He has already been banned for this behaviour. He has no rights to be on this site enshrined in law, nor can he demand that he be permitted to use our site to continue his activities. So it is most certainly not censorship. But looking at the comment that you state was yours, it was again critical of a particular person which is typical of many of the posts made by aristarchus. It is certainly off-topic: the poll under which it is made relates to the usage of Windows software. There is simply no connection. It is repetitive - indeed we had a series of similar posts in various places on this site. It looks like it was another such post. You object if anyone moderates such posts as Spam, and you are now objecting if we take any action to remove them. You simply want this site, as does aristarchus, to be run so that it pleases you personally and to hell with everyone else who is on the site.
You cannot have your cake and eat it too. You are anonymous - therefore all of the aristarchus comments and yours come from the same account. Most intelligent people have realised that creating an account - or using an existing account - alleviates these problems. It is your choice that you do not do so. If you had, however, you could moderate khallows comments as most other community members do. Having an account does not prevent you from posting anonymously, despite the incorrect claims frequently made by aristarchus.
I am NOT leading this site. I am simply one member of staff who has a specific role of making this site acceptable to all community members. If you want to have me removed from that post then follow the correct procedures and contact those who DO lead this site. Or send me an email. Or a private message on IRC. Whinging in off-topic comments repeatedly does not have any effect on me, as you have now discovered. But it does reflect badly upon yourself. Those that wish to emulate aristarchus will be treated as aristarchus. You have specifically prevented me from doing anything else.
This discussion in this poll is now closed.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 05 2024, @07:30PM (10 children)
So vague threats, never addressing your abuses, and continued lack of transparency. Sorry but you choose to be the PR person on staff and you have made the contradictory statements. It is claimed policy hadn't changed, then you say how it is updated. It is just sad at this point what the site has become, although the no racism rule which isn't even much enforced by staff has tempered some of the worst bits, and removing AC mostly has seemed to improve discussions.
I still will not create an account unless things get better, and your vague assertions about another account remind me how you condemned an account someone else created for spoofing another user, yet you did not disable it and even tried to pin the creation of it on myself. The creator chimed in one time about resetting the password, so we know you know who did it.
Your high road is in the mud, and the sheer amount of abuse you heap in the name of a doxxer makes it clear this is an ideological war for you. The malicious liars and abusers on this site have helped me become much more cynical of humanity, but maybe it is just all the lead you older folks grew up with. Here's hoping!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 05 2024, @10:35PM (9 children)
Look, Karen, you're contradicting yourself about as much as khallow does. You complain that the admins seem to tolerate racism, yet you're complaining that aristarchus' blatantly racist swastika ASCII art gets deleted. If the admins don't stop racism like Nazi ASCII art and accounts with racist slurs (like aristarchus' FYN accounts), you complain that they tolerate racism. If they do intervene, you complain that it's censorship. No matter what the admins do, it's an excuse for you to complain.
Why don't you and your crush, aristarchus, just get a room, go make love to each other like you clearly want to, and leave the rest of us alone? You'd be much happier that way, and the rest of us will appreciate the lack of spam.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2024, @07:16PM (5 children)
Hey moron ;^)
As usual your reading comprehension and memory suck all the buttholes. Lack of transparency and censorship of criticisms are the problem, not removing actual problem content. The naxi flag removal is fine, but they don't remove other racist garnage so the hypocrisy stands.
I really don't think you are this stupid so that means you are a lying troll that wants lefties gone. We all know dalek was a sock puppet btw.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2024, @08:37PM (4 children)
No, my reading comprehension and memory are just fine. You are the problem. Within the past week or two, I contacted the admins and sent them a set of proposed policies. You have been invited to do the same, but your comments strongly suggest that you haven't done so. You whine relentlessly, but you refuse to put your money where your mouth is.
I believe users should have a way to raise their concerns for discussion by the community. The policies I proposed included periodically posting meta articles that would be open to everyone (yes, including ACs), where those concerns are on-topic. My proposed policies also included bans on calling for illegal violence and use of racial slurs, with reasonable exceptions. For example, quoting a racist using slurs for the purpose of condemning their racism would be acceptable. All of these comments would be considered spam. Users who break these rules would be subject to bans of increasing duration.
I requested that my proposed policies be brought to the attention of the community, so they can discuss them. I believe that once a new non-profit is formed to replace the PBC, the staff and community volunteers will begin to update and amend the site policies. I've done what you refuse to do, which is to propose actual policy changes and try to get them implemented. When you and aristarchus spam the comments, you undermine anyone who is actually trying to improve the quality of comments.
Instead of spamming, why not grow some stones, volunteer to serve on the operational control committee mentioned in the most recent meta article, and actually try to get the policies changed?
(Score: 2) by ShovelOperator1 on Monday February 05 2024, @09:41PM
The last one was XP, I stopped when Vista was released, and it introduced the terrible UI, looking good in TV adverts, but really poor when it comes to productivity and ergonomics. Fortunately with XP support cycle I had much time to learn Linux, including the command line, and found a 20 years old GUI which was designed to be used, not advertised (it is called TDE). Although I use WINE for many applications, and there are problems with new versions of software (yes, Debian here), it has no unwanted telemetry.
However, there are some things that must go with Windows. There is a quite old (?Vista-era?) Windows server on a scientific computation machine which I share with a few people, as FEA software in Linux is at early 1970s level (especially when it comes to plasticity and forming).
I have a small computer with Windows 98SE only for supporting a handful of chip programmers and readers. It is connected to the network and uses the LAN share mounted thru FTP using a NetDrive program, so my ROM dumps directory is accessible from any other computer in the LAN. Similarly, when I really need a floppy drive (e.g. restoring an old, forgotten machine), I have it there, with disk imaging software.
This is the only problem which cannot be solved using Linux, because in 20 years Kernel devs failed to implement a working serial/parallel port driver... No, not this way. They broken already working (until about 2.6) driver to make it support only a few blessed protocols.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Tuesday February 06 2024, @04:45AM
I have several laptops that I still use (for things like VirtualDJ) that run Windows 2000.
The main machine at the car wash that has the three RS-485 cards that talk to the PLCs in the bays and give a status screen in the office, etc. still runs NT4. I recently had to swap out the motherboard on that machine due to bad caps, luckily I still had a spare P4P800VM or whatever it was in stock, new. I never even sold any machines with that board (I was pretty much exclusively AMD around that time, except for specific customer requests) but I happened to end up with a couple due to a shipping error.
The Micros 2.x and 3.x systems that I support for a couple of local bar/restaurants I do support for also still run NT4. The 4.x systems' servers run on 2000, and can also be fudged to run on XP. Since Oracle bought Micros, they don't support any of these old things anymore, not PCWS terminals (WIN 95 embedded), Eclipse terminals (2000) or even the UWS3/4 (Windows CE-based) ones. They consider them all obsolete, so people come to me for support. I have touchpanels, I have LCD bulbs, I have rebuilt Eclipse power supplies (usually just bad capacitors) in stock, ready to go.
I have plenty of hardware capable of running these OSs to keep them operational for decades to come, and there is no reason to change them to anything else, or even go through the effort to try to virtualize them onto newer hardware.
They work just fine as is.