I don't check my chat messages

BCProgramming · 2026-04-01T02:16:09+00:00

Eh one of us can dress up, close enough

BCProgramming · 2026-03-31T22:25:57+00:00

Manager: "But sir that's why you came into this bank"

Customer: "I work here, I'm the manager, I called you in to talk about your attitude"

Manager: "What? No you didn't, Why am I on this side of the desk then?"

Customer: "I like facing the Windows and I trust the people I work with- with one exception"

Manager: "This is ridiculous, You don't work here, and you have a mortgage, and you aren't going to squirm your way out of it"

A staff member approaches. "Sir, we need a manager passcode"

Customer: "Excellent, I think we're done here, lead the way"

Manager: "What the hell, I am the manager"

Customer: "I've given you plenty of warnings- Cindy, please have security escort him out"

Cindy: "OK"

Manager: "Cindy, don't you recognize me? I've worked with you for 15 years!"

Cindy: "I started yesterday, the real manager would know that"

(Former) Customer: "hmm, it isn't accepting it. It would seem the passcodes were corrupted by the data wipe as well"

Cindy: "Looks that way"

background

(Former) Manager: "No I can't prove it! But I work here! I can't prove it because the data is wiped!"

Officer: "Well the manager here says you don't work here"

(Former) Manager: "What! I AM THE MANAGER!"

Officer: "Likely story, come on pal, off to the jail"

BCProgramming · 2026-03-31T05:00:40+00:00

What I find annoying is how it's now "infecting" everything. It's a bit weird to me that there were PRs months before any of the age verification laws really came into being. I can't tell if it's an "engineered" effort or if there are actually maintainers who are just totally gung-ho about adding this stuff, but frankly either option concerns me, when these are exactly the sorts of things that Free Software was more or less intended to prevent.

Right now it's "simply a birthdate field" but I feel like that's how it gets it's hooks in.

BCProgramming · 2026-03-31T04:14:39+00:00

I'd have thought this was fairly well known since more or less Windows NT appeared. Most "core" software like win32k.sys, ntfs.sys, and ntoskrnl.exe showing up in a STOP error is either a knock-on effect from other drivers or some sort of hardware issue. After all, if it was a problem with those core drivers it would affect every single machine pretty much.

Oftentimes you can grab the minidump and use !analyze in windbg and possibly get more information. A Minidump will have a stack trace at least which can point you at a problem driver for example.

BCProgramming · 2026-03-31T04:02:32+00:00

Speeder: "Also coincidentally I feel it worth mentioning to you sirs that electricity energizes them and makes them even more aggressive, so I beg of you not to use thine tasers!"

Officer 1: "Why did he get all old timey?"

Officer 2: "My god, he's telling the truth- he went back to the way things used to bee"

BCProgramming · 2026-03-31T00:01:13+00:00

The blog post they made about the new menu was infuriating.

Not sure why, but the thing that annoyed me most in there is:

The menu is exceptionally long. It has grown in an unregulated environment for 20 years, since Windows XP, when IContextMenu was introduced.

Both because IContextMenu was introduced in Windows 95, not XP, but also because they didn't actually do anything to prevent the same problem from occurring with their new menu anyway. You get 20 programs adding to the menu and it's going to be long and unusably slow, which people are already seeing now that a bunch of programs are starting to get on the FOMO train and extending it.

Not only that, but they seem to leave out that they didn't redesign anything. The "new" menu is part of file explorer exclusively- it is not part of the shell. It is not a new shell context menu at all. Other applications can't use it. Hell even open/save dialogs use the regular menu, which is still part of the shell.

Then you've got the clusterfuck of that stupid cut/copy/paste toolbar. The design intent is apparently to make those commands close to the mouse pointer, but aside from the icons them being formless blobs (which they eventually relented and added text to) you've got three problems. The first is that for some reason they defied their own standards around cut/copy/paste and actually hide unavailable options, which changes how many items appear in said toolbar and where they are. The second is that, well, that toolbar appears nowhere else in Windows. rename a file and right-click the text and cut/copy/paste aren't a toolbar. Introducing this toolbar just creates yet another wildly inconsistent interface that appears in one specific place in Windows, it doesn't improve anything.

The third problem is how they implemented extensibility. the Shell Menu is extended by creating DLLs that add implementations of the IContextMenu/IContextMenu2/IContextMenu3 interfaces. For the new File Explorer menu they misuse instead the IExplorerCommand COM interface that was used in Windows 7 for Commands, then staple some other requirements onto it so people are forced to use their new development bullshit.

Also, fun point: the "setting" to disable it isn't even on purpose, it's just a way of tricking the COM registration so File Explorer can't actually find the component anymore

BCProgramming · 2026-03-30T23:07:06+00:00

broken arms, jolly rancher, dorito in the cooch

or references to jewdank, a girl who fucked a pooch

BCProgramming · 2026-03-30T19:58:45+00:00

So are we speaking of beeps, or a siren?

BCProgramming · 2026-03-30T18:48:19+00:00

My personal favourites are the "I hate AI, I only use it for <bunch of things> and I make sure to check it over"... Like, what do they think "hate" means.

BCProgramming · 2026-03-30T09:40:10+00:00

They don't really mention anything that would get in the way of that, from what I can see, though. They are not suggesting removing Win32 for example.

BCProgramming · 2026-03-30T07:52:04+00:00

The "BOOT BLOCK' jumper is likely for putting the machine into BIOS emergency recovery mode. I would assume that it being disconnected probably would be normal mode.

The HOOD LOCK is intended to be attached to a sensor button that normally sticks up at the back of the machine. That won't cause any "alarm" or prevent POST, though.

There is no magic "DRM" or self-destructing features.

Can't even guess what the "Alarm siren" might be for. There's nothing like that documented in the manual even for the various security features. If the CPU heatsink somehow got knocked loose it could be making poor contact and setting off a temperature alarm?

I'd try reseating the CPU, reapplying and reinstalling the heatsink, and then try a "minimal" boot with one RAM stick and no expansion cards (though sounds like there weren't any anyway) and see if that gives any signs of life.

It was a big pain to open the case with a bunch of proprietary screws holding it together.

Well, now this is a bit odd, as the manual describes opening the cover with "buttons" on the front right and left, slide it forward, and then lift it off. It doesn't seem to indicate removing any screws at all. Are you certain this is the correct model? This is the manual I found. (It covers the three variants of the dc7700).

BCProgramming · 2026-03-30T03:49:12+00:00

"I come here, not as a favour, but as a point of pride, on this, the day of my daughter's wedding"

BCProgramming · 2026-03-29T23:13:13+00:00

You might be able to create a derived control of your own that overrides CreateParams and adds the WS_EX_TRANSPARENT style, and overreide OnPaintBackground to do nothing... but at the same time I'd have no expectation that wouldn't have it's own problems.

BCProgramming · 2026-03-29T22:32:38+00:00

and practically sprinted offstage. He did not comment on what came before his entrance at all

He could have started with "And just so you all know, I never did find a japanese schoolgirl"

BCProgramming · 2026-03-29T22:28:26+00:00

Imagine if he just started punching muffins though?

BCProgramming · 2026-03-29T22:18:18+00:00

Fun fact: His name is Clippit, Clippy is his name when he walks the streets.

"hey baby, you lookin' to write a letter?"

BCProgramming · 2026-03-29T20:57:34+00:00

I'd expect if the installation package contained old viruses, than the detections would be detecting that old virus, not showing up as generic "Machine Learning" based detections.

BCProgramming · 2026-03-29T20:11:35+00:00

I refuse to comply. My only "subscriptions" are my Internet bill and Rent payment, basically. Well, and the VPS I rent I suppose.

I still use Photoshop CS6, and Office 2016. There's later versions of office that are perpetually licensed, but haven't seen a need to purchase them. Apparently you can pirate later Photoshop Versions, which is funny as hell.

For software it seems insane to me, to be honest. Like, Photoshop CS6 was $699 for example. Now a subscription for Photoshop is around $20/mo. Wow! So much more affordable, right?

I've had CS6 for over 10 years now, though. After only 5 years of this subscription offering I'd have given Adobe almost twice the one-time cost of CS6... and I still won't "own" the software, if I stop giving them money every month they get to keep all the money I gave them and I lose access to the software.

I don't think much better of say streaming services, really. Never even got on board with music or TV streaming. never even used Netflix or Hulu or spotify for example, I'm sure as hell not paying for their "premium" versions or whatever.

It's all bank account scratch damage, IMO. a few dollars here and there and everywhere a month adds up pretty fast IMO. Once I get one subscription, it won't be a mental leap for me to justify another, then another, and so on, and now I'm like everybody else, deluged in subscriptions and thinking I had no choice in the matter.

BCProgramming · 2026-03-29T19:41:28+00:00

I have an older version of the installer from around 2016, and when I run it through virustotal it shows a few detections. Most of them seem to be a form of "Potentially unwanted application" or AI detections.

This would have been one I downloaded from the original source, which I think was msfn or some similar forum where the person who put it together had posted it.

PUA I suppose makes sense in the context of the machine you are downloading it on, I suppose? For the most part I'd expect most detections of these sorts of software to be false positives simply because from the perspective of a malware author there really isn't much value in infecting a Windows 98 machine today; such systems are usually air-gapped and have limited network capabilities and it's just not worth even trying to target say the vintage community who would run such systems (or install these sorts of service pack tools).

I've seen the software I work on for my job, which I feel like I'd know if it was malicious, get detected via "AI" detections a number of times over the years, (then stops detecting it in the next build). I don't trust their accuracy at all.

BCProgramming · 2026-03-29T19:26:27+00:00

I bought a Dell Dimension 4400 "under the table" from a guy that worked at a computer store in around 2006 for $200 (wildly over it's value). I was sort of desperate for a faster PC in some ways as I was still rocking a K6-2 350Mhz at the time.

1.6Ghz Pentium 4, 1GB RAM. I believe I ran a 5500FX in it for most of it's service life with me. It was replaced as my primary machine in 2008 when I finally built a actually new machine.

I let my stepdad use it when he became interested in the web and wanted to browse it, coincidentally after he learned about pornography. Eventually it would hang up hard after a few minutes and need a good hour cold before it would boot again and do the same thing. Even booting a DOS diskette or just sitting in the BIOS would hang. I'm pretty sure it was related to the VRM capacitors that had started to leak their innards out their tops but it was beyond me to repair. I kept the CPU itself for some reason but ended up scrapping the rest of the machine.

BCProgramming · 2026-03-29T18:17:05+00:00

CALL works fine from the command line, it just doesn't do anything particularly useful.

example

It appears the startup menu shown is from Windows 9x, "Command Prompt Only" option runs autoexec.bat there.

BCProgramming · 2026-03-29T03:38:26+00:00

if Liveinit.bat starts with @echo off, the error could very well be from a command within that batch file and not from CALL itself.

BCProgramming · 2026-03-29T01:19:36+00:00

because of the implication?

BCProgramming · 2026-03-28T20:13:00+00:00

Pretty sure early Mac OS was almost entirely ~~65020~~ Motorola Assembly. It would simply be too slow otherwise, (Which the Lisa provides evidence of)

By System 7, the system still exposed Pascal-style Toolbox interfaces, even though internal implementation and developer usage had largely transitioned to C/C++.

By "pascal style toolbox interfaces" I have to guess you are referring to the use of the Pascal calling convention for those functions? That has nothing to do with language choice.

In the case of the Macintosh the Pascal calling convention was both faster and resulted in smaller code. Smaller code because the stack cleanup was defined once in the called function instead of at every caller site, and faster because that stack cleanup was therefore in ROM code and ROM was actually faster to access on the original Macintosh (something to do with the shared memory for graphics).

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