Drugwash

I, for one, do not intend to leave Windows98SE. It's my main system and has been for the last 16 years or so. I control it - it doesn't control me. I don't need any store, I don't need anything that would make me a slave of the machine. Dunno about the others. Thing is, Microsoft are going down a completely different path. Most people have no idea whatsoever about what's in store (pun intended!) for them. Institutions are somehow either tricked or forced into adopting W10. Incompatibilities will soon arise due to standards incompatibilties. Regular users will have to comply, in time. And there's no going back. My 98SE machine does what I want it to do currently. If I will ever face the choice, I will give up Internet rather than my freedom. (where did those typos come from…)

The priceless question would be: do we really have a choice whatsoever? Additional question, value it as you like: do we really need Microsoft anymore?

How do you connect the LG tablet to the printer? Maybe you need to specifically enable networking and/or wi-fi on the tablet. It may also be a fault of the app, if no other similar devices can actually print using the same app. I'm not sure if there's any special permissions needed network-wise. You may try an USB-to-Ethernet adapter for the tablet, see if a wired connection would allow you to print. That may offer a hint as to whose fault is for the current printing inability. Slightly off-topic: you'd be better off with a network printer that could be connected to the router via ethernet or wi-fi to avoid the necessity of powering on/off your laptop in order to print from other devices.

There's a topic around here on the subject. The actual patch is in the repository in my signature (make sure your HOSTS file doesn't block my.cloudme.com): ShutdownPatcher

No. People are getting downright stupid period. Because all the knowledge is being transferred to devices that are supposed to control the humans 24/7. Because robots never lie, robots are never late, robots are never emotional about anything, robots never fail. Well, until they're plugged out. And then humanity will die because they'll be too stupid to survive. Game over.

It's about the protocol handshake, not the computer date/time. Even if protocol version could be faked on the client side the handshake would fail because they will modify it on their servers.

I got the warning too today in Miranda IM 0.10.24.0. Maybe the newer Miranda NG could work but I simply don't care - if they push me they don't get obedience, they get the finger.

Yes, this system should be used mainly (only?) for testing purposes, that is for accurate reports of what works and what doesn't and in which configuration. Otherwise it could easily get out of hand.

Unless some application overrides the default library search path, one could place a copy of the troublesome library (i.e. msvcrt.dll as in DougB's situation) in application's folder where main executable resides and then set the appropriate compatibility mode. This should theoretically override the global library by loading the local copy instead. This may however introduce complications and one may tend to forget about the local copy, later on trying to work on the global one without success.

VLC is a stupid player because it will not display subtitles on the overlay. This has been its plague for years and they do not intend to fix it. It's plain stupid to watch a 16:9 movie on a 4:3 display and have the subtitles occupy the active video instead of the darn black space below. I'm using GOMPlayer with ffdshow and a few other codecs manually installed. I don't need or want any HD. This is all madness, it has to be stopped!

I now understand why such registry change didn't "take" some time ago when I performed some tests. Is there a way to (programmatically or not) have KernelEx acknowledge the registry settings changes for one or more files and update the property sheets accordingly? That is, the exact reverse of the current/normal behavior. FYI, currently I have no 9x test machine so can't be of any use here other than maybe some ideas.

Well this is a very interesting question. ProductVersion says 5.00.0910.1900 and ProductName says 'Microsoft® Windows ® 2000 Operating System'. However, the file timestamp is 1999.04.23, which means it's the original file that shipped with 98SE. And indeed, checking with the CD it is the original file. I now wonder, how come an official 98SE file delivered in '99 appears as belonging to Windows 2000… Anyway, I've already performed some limited tests and all above-mentioned APIs except for SetSuspendState() do work correctly. I haven't tried the latter because I don't like my hard drive to be stopped unnecessarily.

In my humble opinion both Windows and Linux have been effed up deliberately. The choice - our choice - inevitably has to be between dumb and dumber. Someone decided so. What are we gonna do?

Has anyone tested SetSuspendState() in powrprof.dll? I have a Win2000 version of the library on my main 98SE system. Unfortunately no guinea pig-machine to test on, at the moment. There are a few other useful APIs such as IsPwrHibernateAllowed(), IsPwrSuspendAllowed(), IsPwrShutdownAllowed() that could report whether a certain state can be induced or not, as well as the more complex GetPwrCapabilities() that returns a structure full of power-related information. I assume IsPwrHibernateAllowed() and IsPwrSuspendAllowed() would eliminate the frustration of not being able to set a certain power state.

Mr. R. Loew on this board may have an experimental (?) patch for 512MB videocards. Please contact him for full details.

Try the unofficial v82.69 driver at mdgx.com.

It's stones falling from high above that kill innocent bystanders, not the small rocks one can kick along the dirt road.

The archive site may be serving a newer, crippled version of the package. While the text on the old archived page may indeed mention Win9/ME, the package itself may only suport XP (and later). Hence the confusion.

Maybe that software is… postcardware.

it's a 36-episode series of videos, the one above just got somehow stuck when I copied the link (I'm no friend of Google's "children"). Do watch them all from the beginning, it'll be an amazing(ly frightening, at some point) experience.

Things you never knew existed: That toilet thing (or something similar) appears in one of the videos in the series. Some of the gadgets are stupid or useless. Very few of them are actually useful and/or nice to have. Most of them are scary when thought of in depth. And yeah: smartphone-controlled. We're living in a giant microwave oven.

You got the scaling problem, that's why I mentioned it. If you don't have any options similar to NVIDIA's drivers and you can't add custom resolution then I don't think there's any other solution. Anybody else disagreeing, please speak out.

You'd probably have to add a custom resolution, if at all possible. I believe this issue has already been discussed here somewhere for both NVIDIA and ATI. With NVIDIA it's relatively simple but no idea about ATI, personally I could never stand them, can't remember why - maybe because of the bloated Control Center, maybe because it wouldn't install or do what I wanted it to. Here's the scaling options in the NVIDIA control panel; if there's similar capabilities in the ATI control panel you may be able to work around the issue:

LCD/TFT monitors have the bad habit of displaying distorted images at resolutions other than the native one. CRT monitors may be bulky, heavy, with foggy or multiple images if too old or slightly defective, but they would still display images better than LCDs at a wide range of resolutions. Depending on how old the games are, some may start at 320x240px and some relatively newer ones may go up to 1280x960 but old ones usually cap at 800x600 which is a non-standard resolution and even CRT monitors sometimes have a hard time centering the image at that resolution. I'd say most if not all old games would only recognize a 4:3 aspect ratio so even on a 5:4 monitor they will still look a bit distorted, not to mention a 16:9 or 16:10 aspect ratio. Problem is, modern monitors may simply error out on such low resolution as 320x240 or even 640x480 and if they do display something the images would be ugly because they have to be approximated. If you can temporarily perform a test, find a really old game that can only do 320x240 or 640x480, use a videocard/driver capable of clone view with only analog outputs and connect a CRT and an LCD monitor to the video outputs, then start the game and observe the displays. Switch games or game settings, try other resolutions, observe the differences. Then draw the conclusion yourself.

If you upload the file on Vimeo it will be automatically converted to H264 in an MP4 container. You may use the same format for local storage/playback to avoid any possible DRM/playback issues with the WMV format. I used to have MediaCoder installed too and tried to use it a few times but it was way too complicated and also had a habit to crash every once in a while at startup so I uninstalled it. It does however have a lot of features, it can display details about the files to be converted and offers a large array of formats, codecs, tools for the output.