Posts by Mage

Re: I'm Enthusiastic

You've read too much Iain M. Banks. It's fiction, not a blueprint. You also listening, Mr. Musk?

Re: Corona beer, it seems there are those who link it with the Plague

I heard the local murder of rooks are urging the Corvids Association to sue the WHO.

Corvids Press may not be amused. https://www.corvidspress.com/fiction/otherworld-series/

Re: Basically all UI changes could be rolled back..

I used NT 3.51 with the Explorer Shell Preview. That's what every NT since should have been like. A win9x desktop, no graphics or print drivers in the Kernel.

Also install of programs written by people clueless about NT security should have been blocked. Programs that needed you to be logged in as an Administrator. Part of the reason was because Win9x was really no more a real 32 bit OS than Windows for Workgroups with Win32s, 32 bit MS TCP/IP (option on both) and all the 32 bit disc & media stuff wrapped up. So no named pipes on Win9x or Wim3.1. No local security or concept of Administrator on Win9x or Win3.x, the log on was only for network resources.

Win9x essentially broke NT 4.0, Win2K and XP installations resulting in the later UAC kludge by making it hard for IT to setup NT users without Admin rights for programs like accounts and payroll.

Me should never have happened. A broken version of Win98 SE

Win9x should never ever have been sold to businesses. It was designed with porting DOS games in mind, so originally no OpenGL. It NEVER had any security features. It ran DOS and Win16 programs natively (NT used NTVDM and Win16-32 ApI Thunk) so killed the Pentium Pro.

The marketing, install base and win applications with no security programming crippled NT. They blocked release of NT4.0 USB drivers to boost NT 5.0 = Win2000 sales.

XP was really the finished version of Win2K (NT 5.1).

Then they totally lost the plot with Vista design. It got so big and complex that the "unseen" design improvements got scrapped in favour of Eye Candy. But at least you could turn off junk on Win2K, XP, 2003 and Vista and have a Win9x/Win2K GUI.

Since FOREVER (NT 3.1 to Win10) they by default have too many services running instead of install time silent admin options and a suitable wizard for manual install.

Also too easy to end up with USA keyboard, Letter Size paper etc. No suggestion based on Timezone?

So the Win9x success sowed the seeds of NT destruction and "artistic" people and marketing and stupid arrogance (Ribbon, menu item hiding, unified GUI for phones, tablets and Desktop) ignored the usability research from 70s to 90s, though there wasn't that much GUI change from 1970s Xerox, 1980s GEM, Amiga, Risc-OS, Apple Lisa and Mac to the Win9x.

Win10 is the worst GUI since 1993. Win 11 sounds worse. But Amazon Kindle, Kobo, Android are all going backwards on GUI.

WinCE was stupid in the opposite direction, a Win9x GUI on as little as 320 x 200 in many cases.

Even Win7 had some really stupid changes in Explorer, even though it should have been free to Vista Users as it's really a Vista SP.

Win8 was only suitable as WinCE replacement for phones (and tablets with no keyboard or mouse).

Re: Office Ribbon

Ribbon so terrible I found a Classic Menu plugin for Office 2007 (works on Excel and Office at least. There are far better tools than Access and Powerpoint). Makes it about as usuable as Office XP or Office 2003. Still available recently.

Re: Razer went full evil back in about 2013 or so

I buy a Trust mouse (Dutch brand, but made in China) for about €10 in the local shops. When the left click wears out you can't be waiting for the online order. I don't go to a local computer (or related) shop.

Re: Windows at fault?

The underlying issue since USB was added to Win95 AFTER initial release is USB HID.

Some years ago someone added a CPU and Flash to a stock mouse and proved plugging in a USB mouse could silently install a trojan.

Probably a €10 Trust brand USB mouse from a random local shop is safer than a gift delivered by post/courier.

Re: text version of Star Trek

Maybe EGA Trek for DOS works on DOSbox? It kept us amused though that's a later era.

Re: RM 380Z

I hated repairing those. Or adding the wire so the parallel port IC 8th bit got to the connector so you could print graphics and extended ASCII on an Epson MX-80.

Terrible design. A metal "shoe box" with the bus along the top of the cards as a ribbon cable. It can't have saved much money compared with a proper but simple motherboard bus in the bottom of the case. Also why when the port I/O used an octal chip anyway did they only wire 7 bits to the parallel port?

Re: No one will remember.....the list is far too long......

Mullard was Dutch owned from 1928.

Ferranti & Plessey relied too much on UK gov funded stuff and abandoned consumer electronics in the 1950s.

Yes, Inmos was deliberately sold off by Thatcher.

Acorn computers were doomed because not IBMs, but they became ARM. Only recently bought up.

UK Consumer Electronics was dying in the 1960s, largely due to poor quality.

The UK Competition authority partially killed Ever Ready by blocking their take over of Mallory (later Duracell), but real damage was refusal to modernise and too late adoption of Alkaline. Asset stripped by Hanson Trust and sold eventually to USA Eveready (Energiser) by then themselves owned by a pet food company.

UK has NEVER had an Industrial strategy. The only money making strategy is to use City of London to funnel money to UK Overseas and Crown dependencies (IoM, Channel Is, Cayman, Bermuda, BVI), as offshore havens. That's why Brexit. The tighter EU laws implemented in 2019 and 2020 and adopted even by Switzerland were agreed in 2016. UK has refused to implement them for Overseas and Crown territories.

Re: Jasc's Paint Shop Pro v7.x

Last decent version. Corel bought it?

Daughter moved to The GIMP on Win7 as PSP7 wouldn't go.

I moved from XP -> Linux and then The Gimp. I have the old laptop & PSP7 on a VM for the odd native layered image I didn't Save As in Photoshop format for The GIMP, There is a PSP plug-in for the GIMP, but doesn't work for my PSP files.