It's time to Quit using Win98

wrote:
mostly due to that goddamn HTML5 and all the worthless
flash crap they stick on sites.

Wrong on both counts. Graceful degradation is part of the definition of
HTML5 and there has been total agreement for years that no active
elements must ever be required for basic function. A site may become
ugly and hard to use, but it has to keep fully functional with
everything in the browser turned off by the user. All that has been
elementary stuff for decades.

Non conforming sites are not modern but broken and what older browsers
miss is not features but bloated error correction. It is not my job as a
visitor and reader to correct incompetent web designers' mistakes.

My browser is Firefox 1.5.0.12 and the number of sites that are worth it
to me to be opened on another machine can be numbered on one hand with
several fingers left open.

Axel

Axel,

A site may become ugly and hard to use, but it has to keep
fully functional with everything in the browser turned off by
the user.

The problem is that the *specs* may say that, but there is noone who can/is
allowed to enforce it.

And as the consortium that is maintaining the HTML spec must be quite aware
of that, their choice to include active content as native they are directly
responsible for undermining that basic "must run" of theirs/yours.
Something stinks here, and it aint my socks ... :-)

My browser is Firefox 1.5.0.12 and the number of sites that are
worth it to me to be opened on another machine can be numbered
on one hand with several fingers left open.

Mostly true (FF 1.5.0.5 here). Than again, I make the consious choice to
just ignore any site which refuses to run when I, as most always, have JS
and ActiveX disabled. With the HTML5 spec (nativily supporting all kinds
of active content crap) I wonder how long it will be before that one hand of
yours will be the number of still viewable sites ....

I think I would like to see some of those youtube movies (some of them sound
as if they could be fun or educational), but I'll be damned if I will let
them send me whatever Flash-script they want.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser


-- Origional message:
Axel Berger schreef in berichtnieuws
...
wrote:
mostly due to that goddamn HTML5 and all the worthless
flash crap they stick on sites.

Wrong on both counts. Graceful degradation is part of the definition of
HTML5 and there has been total agreement for years that no active
elements must ever be required for basic function. A site may become
ugly and hard to use, but it has to keep fully functional with
everything in the browser turned off by the user. All that has been
elementary stuff for decades.

Non conforming sites are not modern but broken and what older browsers
miss is not features but bloated error correction. It is not my job as a
visitor and reader to correct incompetent web designers' mistakes.

My browser is Firefox 1.5.0.12 and the number of sites that are worth it
to me to be opened on another machine can be numbered on one hand with
several fingers left open.

Axel

On Sun, 12 Jan 2014 12:13:14 -0700, Bill in Co
wrote:

dadiOH wrote:
...snip...
Actually, there is.

My PC has WinXP; it looks and behaves just like it did when it had
Win98.
The main difference is that it never crashes.

+1



What?! My WinXP crashes more than the Win98.

Oh, I guess a screen that bails out and asks if you want to send a message
about some problem to MicroSoft is NOT a crash, just a nuisance.

Plus, and this is VERY important to me. It does NOT act at all like the
Win98. There is a LONG litany/list of differences that are irksome beyond
belief. Start with SLOWER! ending with I had to transfer the Win98
versions of PAINT and Notepad to prevent some MS idiot's ideas of enhanced
performance from dominating. I wish I could transfer Windows Explorer,
too, but doubt that's even possible. [For example, trying to use it to
perform a simple search and move. Open a folder and subfolder, find the
file. Then open another folder and subfolder to locate the desired
destination to put the file, only to find that WE in its stupid
benevolence of assuming what I was doing has closed up the display of
where the original file resides! ARRRRGGG!

Win98 let's you put a little row of most used apps along the bottom. WinXP
lets you 'stack' most used programs in a pop up menu display, but am I the
only one to notice that the most used appears at the top! of that list, so
you have to move mouse down, then ALL the way back up! idiots! Didn't
anybody look at the amount of extra mouse motion required?

Don't even get me started on 'stacking' open applications! Probably a way
to stop that, but by now I've lost interest in 'playing with the tool' I
just want to USE the tool - and WinXP thwarts that effort at every turn.

I'm still reeling at trying to answer the question MS Word, "Do you want
to revert to the original?" Who knows WHAT that means? Or, more
importantly, what are the consequences of answering yes or no, and not
provide any way to even back to how you got there so you don't have to be
presented with the quetion!

....temporary end of rant.

On Mon, 13 Jan 2014 02:43:12 -0000, 98 Guy com 98@guy. wrote:

Stanley Daniel de Liver wrote:

[you even snipped you're own attribution here!]

You don't start installing win-98 on a given machine until or
unless you have tracked down and obtained all available drivers
for the various hardware components (video, motherboard / chipset,
southbridge, audio, network, wifi, etc).

This will be tricky, I acknowledge, as the laptop was "designed for XP"
but runs like a dog (512M memory, hence my w98 install attempt.
)
[]
What's wrong with you?

[]

What - the win-98 versions of freecell, hearts, minesweeper or solitaire
are just so unique and compelling that they haven't been duplicated on
win-XP?

You have anger issues.
It might be time to move on and rename yourself "XP Guy".

--
It's a money /life balance.

RobertMacy wrote:
On Sun, 12 Jan 2014 12:13:14 -0700, Bill in Co
wrote:

dadiOH wrote:
...snip...
Actually, there is.

My PC has WinXP; it looks and behaves just like it did when it had
Win98.
The main difference is that it never crashes.

+1



What?! My WinXP crashes more than the Win98.

Oh, I guess a screen that bails out and asks if you want to send a message
about some problem to MicroSoft is NOT a crash, just a nuisance.

Sorry, haven't seen many of those over here. :-) But when I was running
W98 (but admitedly, I messed around with it a bit with various software
tweaks), I had a fair number of blue screens. But not so much now on XP.

Plus, and this is VERY important to me. It does NOT act at all like the
Win98. There is a LONG litany/list of differences that are irksome beyond
belief. Start with SLOWER!

Well yeah. Every succeeding version is a bit more resource intensive.
If you really want the fastest speed you could go back to Win 3.1 or DOS :-)

ending with I had to transfer the Win98
versions of PAINT and Notepad to prevent some MS idiot's ideas of
enchanced performance from dominating.

They got migrated over when I used PC Mover to move most of the Win98 setup
over to this computer. But I also use Paint Shop Pro, which beats Paint in
spades. And there are tons of Notepad replacements if you're so inclined.

I wish I could transfer Windows Explorer,
too, but doubt that's even possible. [For example, trying to use it to
perform a simple search and move. Open a folder and subfolder, find the
file. Then open another folder and subfolder to locate the desired
destination to put the file, only to find that WE in its stupid
benevolence of assuming what I was doing has closed up the display of
where the original file resides! ARRRRGGG!

I don't use the built-in Windows File Search function. I use freebie Agent
Ransack, and its big brother, FileLocator Pro. These are a LOT better.

And again, there are lots of Windows Explorer replacements that are even
better than the original. You know, stuff like XYplorer, or xplorer2, etc.
But in reality, I use the standard Windows Explorer most of the time.

Win98 let's you put a little row of most used apps along the bottom. WinXP
lets you 'stack' most used programs in a pop up menu display, but am I the
only one to notice that the most used appears at the top! of that list, so
you have to move mouse down, then ALL the way back up! idiots! Didn't
anybody look at the amount of extra mouse motion required?

I'm using the Start Menu Classic View, which is like Win98, and I have it
sorted alphabetically. For me, I don't care about "the most used apps".
:-).

Don't even get me started on 'stacking' open applications! Probably a way
to stop that, but by now I've lost interest in 'playing with the tool' I
just want to USE the tool - and WinXP thwarts that effort at every turn.

I'm still reeling at trying to answer the question MS Word, "Do you want
to revert to the original?" Who knows WHAT that means?

It means do you want to fall back to the original unsaved version you
opened, I expect. But that has nothing to do with the OS - that's the app
itself.

On Mon, 13 Jan 2014 11:55:03 +0100, Axel Berger
wrote:

98 Guy wrote:
anyone asking if linux can run win-98
software is probably not ready for linux?

That's simplistic. In my Win98 one of the most frequently used programs
is still an Atari ST database run in an emulator -- try as I can I have
still not managed to find an even half decent replacement. So if I were
to got to Linux, one of the first requirements would be a reliable Atari
emulator.

There are better alternatives for most Windows programs in Linux, but
not for everything. Niche programs for Linux would have to be written
for a niche squared[1], i.e. probably too few users to be worth it.

[1] Not always, nerds tend to cluster.

One of my most used programs is a Dos based data base. This contains my
entire life's worth of phone/address contacts. On top of that, I have
all of my business contacts for my own (self employed) business. If
that's not enough, I have contact lists for three different non-profit
volunteer organizations, two for which I am a member, one that is now
defunct, but still contains valuable lists of persons who like to
volunteer for events.

In the end, there are nearly 10,000 entries in this database. I began
using it in the database around 1989, the software was created in 1987.
This is not the old Dbase, but a highly advanced program for it's time,
and was used for professional businesses. I was originally introduced
to it by a friend who worked at a hospital, and that hospital used this
software to do all their records. This friend was a volunteer for one
of these non-profits, and he obtained a copy, and assigned me to
maintain the volunteer list for that org., which was quite extensive.
Eventually, I bought my own copy of it for personal use. I have used it
since.

It's still excellent, and still works well. I can boot directly to dos
and that program if I wish and not have to wait for Windows to load,
just to retrieve a phone number. The problem is that the data from this
program can not be transferred to any other database, aside from
retyping everything. I have never found any other database I liked as
well, or works as easily.

No matter what I do, I need some form of Dos. It will run on any
version of dos from Dos3 and up. (Maybe earlier versions too, but I
never tried it). Does Linux have any way to run Dos programs? I have
my doubts. Of course I know a Macintosh wont either. But I can take
any old computer, even a XT or 386 and run this dadtabase. The entire
program can be run from one floppy if needed, althought due to the large
amount of records I have, several floppies would be needed for the data.

I used to carry around a floppy with that entire DB and could access my
data on any dos (or early dos-based windows) computer. The bottom line
is that this program can not be replaced. If I have to switch to some
non-MS computer, all I can do is get some old laptop, install Dos, and
use that exclusively for my database.

wrote:
On Mon, 13 Jan 2014 11:55:03 +0100, Axel Berger
wrote:

98 Guy wrote:
anyone asking if linux can run win-98
software is probably not ready for linux?

That's simplistic. In my Win98 one of the most frequently used programs
is still an Atari ST database run in an emulator -- try as I can I have
still not managed to find an even half decent replacement. So if I were
to got to Linux, one of the first requirements would be a reliable Atari
emulator.

There are better alternatives for most Windows programs in Linux, but
not for everything. Niche programs for Linux would have to be written
for a niche squared[1], i.e. probably too few users to be worth it.

[1] Not always, nerds tend to cluster.

One of my most used programs is a Dos based data base. This contains my
entire life's worth of phone/address contacts. On top of that, I have
all of my business contacts for my own (self employed) business. If
that's not enough, I have contact lists for three different non-profit
volunteer organizations, two for which I am a member, one that is now
defunct, but still contains valuable lists of persons who like to
volunteer for events.

In the end, there are nearly 10,000 entries in this database. I began
using it in the database around 1989, the software was created in 1987.
This is not the old Dbase, but a highly advanced program for it's time,
and was used for professional businesses. I was originally introduced
to it by a friend who worked at a hospital, and that hospital used this
software to do all their records. This friend was a volunteer for one
of these non-profits, and he obtained a copy, and assigned me to
maintain the volunteer list for that org., which was quite extensive.
Eventually, I bought my own copy of it for personal use. I have used it
since.

It's still excellent, and still works well. I can boot directly to dos
and that program if I wish and not have to wait for Windows to load,
just to retrieve a phone number. The problem is that the data from this
program can not be transferred to any other database, aside from
retyping everything. I have never found any other database I liked as
well, or works as easily.

No matter what I do, I need some form of Dos. It will run on any
version of dos from Dos3 and up. (Maybe earlier versions too, but I
never tried it). Does Linux have any way to run Dos programs? I have
my doubts. Of course I know a Macintosh wont either. But I can take
any old computer, even a XT or 386 and run this dadtabase. The entire
program can be run from one floppy if needed, althought due to the large
amount of records I have, several floppies would be needed for the data.

I used to carry around a floppy with that entire DB and could access my
data on any dos (or early dos-based windows) computer. The bottom line
is that this program can not be replaced. If I have to switch to some
non-MS computer, all I can do is get some old laptop, install Dos, and
use that exclusively for my database.

You could also make a bootable DOS USB pen drive, and put all your DOS stuff
on there, and then it wouldn't matter what Windows OS you were using.

tangerine3 wrote:

One of my most used programs is a Dos based data base.
[snip]
The problem is that the data from this
program can not be transferred to any other database, aside from
retyping everything. I have never found any other database I liked as
well, or works as easily.

There are ways around almost any obstacle. What is the program called?

Does Linux have any way to run Dos programs?

Using emulation, yes. DOSBox:

http://www.dosbox.com/

....or DOSEMU:

http://www.dosemu.org/

....or any general-purpose PC emulator (with DOS installed in the emulated
PC). There are several free ones -- VMware Player, QEMU, VirtualBox, etc.

--
What did he really want us to do?
Into what actions was he manipulating us?

wrote:
The problem is that the data from this
program can not be transferred to any other database, aside from
retyping everything.

Not even to old standard CSV? The point about mine is its excellent out
programability. I can dial phone numbers, insert addresses and e.g.
customer numbers into letters and faxes, write a fully formated (no
limit on available formats) references section from my sources database,
get a list of birthdays from addresses.
When both were on the real Atari I could even "type" data into other
programs without any other import facility (aacount data for very old
wire transfer), doesn't work across platforms of course.
You should at least be able to "print" to the generic text-only printer.

Axel

Axel Berger wrote:
You should at least be able to "print" to the generic text-only printer.

And you ought to, if only for backup.

Axel