Win98, XP-SP1 broken, MS says

And we’re talking about irretrievably, as in vulnerable to MS06-015 forever kind of broken.

/ME is delighted to note that the regular, reliable updates continue to arrive regularly for the forest of applications which my Linux systems are still running.

On top of this, updating them doesn’t involve a licence foo-foraw, either, when it eventually becomes likely.

I wonder if coping with irreversible breakage is factored into any of the shills’ budgets for MS’ systems’ operating costs and/or system uptimes?

Betcha ’t ain’t!

They don’t even touch the VOTW (Virus Of The Week) style of damage.

However, I have Linux systems which have been installed and running for eight years (ie, longer than Win98’s existed) continuously, all of which are still fully updated, virus-free — and will be upgraded painlessly to a new version when their time comes.

Comments

Leon RJ Brooks said…

Yeah, well "Windows is broken" was hardly a great surprise, but to see it officially admitted was impressive.

The note about "this post [...] confers no rights" ain't quite true. I have the right to laugh, and am using it. (-: Think: reliability and cost-of-ownership reports. :-)

11 June, 2006 18:34

new life for an old (FTX) PSU, improved life for one human

the LEDs on this 5m strip happen to emit light centred on a red that does unexpectedly helpful things to (and surprisingly deeply within) a human routinely exposed to it. it has been soldered to a Molex connector, plugged into a TFX power supply from a (retired: the MoBo is cactus) Small Form Factor PC, the assorted PSU connectors (and loose end from the strip) have been taped over. the LED strip cost $10.24 including postage, the rest cost $0, the PSU is running at 12½% of capacity, consumes less power than a laptop plug-pack despite running a fan. trial runs begin today.

boundaries

pushing the actual boundaries of the physical (not extremes, the boundaries themselves) can often remove barriers not otherwise perceived. one can then often resolve an issue itself, rather than merely stonewalling at the physical consequences of the issue.

every-application-is-part-of-a-toolkit at work

I have a LibreOffice Impress slideshow that I wish to turn into a narrated video. 1. export the slideshow as PNG images (if that is partially broken — as at now — at higher resolutions, Export Directly as PDF then use ‘pdftoppm’ (from the poppler-utils package) to do the same). 2. write a small C program (63 lines including comments) to display those images one at a time, writing a config file entry for Imagination (default transition: ‘cross fade’) based on when the image-viewer application (‘display,’ from the GraphicsMagick suite) is closed on each one; run that, read each image aloud, then close each image in turn. 3. run ‘Imagination’ over the config file to produce a silent MP4 video with the correct timings. 4. run ‘Audacity’ to record speech while using ‘SMPlayer’ to display the silent video, then export that recording as a WAV file. 4a. optionally, use ‘TiMIDIty’ to convert a non-copyright-encumbered MIDI tune to WAV, then import that and blend it with the speech (as a quiet b

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