Posts by MidiMagic

Good for china! The federal government should do that too. It costs us taxpayers money when the government is forced by a monopoly company to upgrade.

I was hit 5 times by Y2K:

• 2 years before Y2K, in 1998, my mortgage company changed its software to be Y2K compliant. They ran the new software, and it promptly took a second mortgage payment out of ny bank account, that the old software had already taken out 3 days before. This was the only time I ever bounced checks - there wasn't enough left in the account to cover other checks once the extra payment was wrongly taken.

• The night of Y2K, a phone call I was on was cut off right at midnight. Both of us got dial tones. But I was immediately able to dial and reconnect.

• The local hospital's computer assigned my friend's great aunt, born in 1898, to an inpatient room in the pediatrics wing.

• I received an email from the IT people at my work. It stated that all computers in the company had been tested and found to be functioning correctly for all Y2K issues. The email was dated 1/5/0100.

• Billions of chowderheads believed that the new millenmnium began on 1/1/2000. Nobody seemed to notice when it really began on 1/1/2001. It can't begin on 1/1/2000 because there was no year 0. This happened because Roman numerals were in use when the calendar was set up. There is no 0 in Roman numerals.

Actually, the …

The reboot makes the RAM image match the disk files. The changes are on the disk, but are not active in the running copy in the RAM until you reboot.

The only time I ever lost a hard drive is when some stupid DOS "anti-piracy" program on a CD rom wrote back to drive D to make sure the software (a flight simulator) was really on a CD-ROM. Unfortunately, the CD drive was drive E on that machine. It removed the entire root directory on the new larger hard disk in that machine. No software was lost (it was on the C drive), just data, and all of that had been backed up. So the only real loss was the time and trouble of formatting the drive and replacing the directory tree and all of the files.

I sent the CD to the company that made it, broken in half, along with a nasty letter telling them the damage their sleazy idea caused.

Here is the real truth about real-time hardware and operating systems:

A. The company that makes real-time hardware (real-time data collection, process control, or media capture/editing devices) needs the following to be able to produce and sell such a system:

1. Enough installed base of an operating system to be able to sell enough units to make development possible and worthwhile (This is why few products are developed for Linux).

2. Enough time to develop, perfect, and market such a system before that operating system is taken off the market (This is why no products exist for Vista or 8).

3. The OS must also support the other applications the customer needs to analyze or process the data the special device provides. Many times this includes Microsoft Excel using special procedures published in journals for the purpose.

This is why most real-time hardware was developed for DOS 5 and 6, Windows 3, and Windows XP. They stayed around long enough for the development cycle to complete and products to appear on the market.

B. The consumer does not understand that a change in the operating system causes most real-time hardware to malfunction:

1. Any change in the frequency the operating system can access the special hardware is a disaster for the design of the real-time hardware. Often it makes the hardware unusable or greatly reduces its performance (devices made for DOS 5 and 6 with 1/1000 second resolution were downgraded to a 1/9 second resolution under Windows 3.X and 95).

2. The manufacturer of …

I guess MS is trying to take themselves out of the competition by building OS's nobody wants to build software for because in a few years their software won't work on the update.

thus my argument: "if my software doesn't work on your OS, then you need a better OS"

MS changed their software so it works on stupid phones.

I want a desktop OS.

They made one of those multipurpose tools that can't do any one thing well. It goes "clank" no matter which tool you are using.

XP died in April but you can can still get unofficial packs that were newly made by other people other than microsoft

XP didn't die. It was murdered for profit.

Using more than one anti-malware program makes them spend most of the computer's time checking each other;.

at least the cars today aren't downgrades

Oh? I would rather have a new 1957 Chevrolet.

All of the things the government requires to be added to cars are downgrades.

Microsoft thinks their downgrades are upgrades. Reality:

XP to Vista - big downgrade
XP to 7 - medium downgrade
XP to 8 - humongous downgrade
Vista to 7 - medium upgrade
Vista to 8 - big downgrade
7 to 8 - humongous downgrade

What is downgraded most is ease of use.

Guess what? The IRS is still using XP, because the development time for a new system is longer than the Windows versions have stayed around.

It should be illegal to discontinue system software just for the purpose of avoiding all of the wasted tax dollars caused by these constant upgrade demands by Microsoft.

It works. Problem solved.

I used to have this player on one of my work computers, but I just had the icon, no name.

Aero is another "feature" I hate in the newer versions.

The IRS is using XP because it will take years to develop replacement software - longer than Microsoft keeps an operating system.

VLC is also blocked as spyware.

Why does every media player download have spyware?

I had the Yahoo Real Player until Yahoo discontinued it. The player continued to work, but was not updated.

The problem is that the computer it was installed on died. The replacement computer has XP on it, but not Real Player.

I tried to get a new version of Real Player, ontly to have it blocked by my antivirus software as spyware. I googled this, and found that the current Real Player does use spyware. The software will not install with the spyware removed.

I tyried Real Alternative. It says the install files are corrupted.

I need this (or a way to convert the files) because I was a member of Garageband before it ended. We exchanged Real Player music and video files of each other's works as rewards of doing reviews. I have hundreds of these files.

I now have no way to play these files.

How can I play Real Player files without Real Player?

Well that's it. The motherboard was damaged. The computer is officially dead.

I found someone who could port the software over to another computer without needing the original websites.

I am sadly marking this solved.

Demanding that XP be maintained until everyone is ready to stop using it would be like demanding that Ford motors install airbags in all of their antique vehicles.

It's more like they replaced the road with railroad track, so the old equipment can't use it.

All of that point-of sale equipment was built with a minimal 32 bit on-board dedicated computer that can run XP, but is too small for Vista, 7, 8, or 10. It might even be made with the OS in ROM, as some older equipment was made.

---

Another problem is that the normal development time for hardware and software for equipment run by a computer is longer than the time between successive Windows releases.

I have some software designed for Windows 3 (and a computer saved to run just this one piece of software). I actually got a letter from the company telling me why they were going out of business and why there would be no more updates and bug fixes.

They said that they were still developing the release to run on Windows 95 when Microsoft announced Windows 98 (then called Windows 97). The Windows 3 software would not run on Windows 95, and neither version would run on Windows 97. They each required entirely different hardware and software to work at the speed needed to make the application actually work in real time.

They said that they could not possibly develop updates to the hardware and software at the speed …

I really do not care whose products I get, as long as I can get something that I can keep using for the length of a 20-year study.

We did not choose Microsoft because of its properties. We chose the system the lab equipment was originally designed to work with. In 1990, MS-DOS was quite compatible with the equipment, and they sold us computers to use with the equipment.

At that time, computing was not on its mad rush to changing everything every three years. And the company actually sold the equipment with the promise that it could be used for a 20-year study. The company that sold the equipment had no reason to expect that similar computers would not be available as replacements.

The lab equipment we bought in 1990 still works quite well when manually controlled and visually read, but none of the computers it was designed to work with are still available. All of the computers that were originally bought for the purpose failed within 10 years, including the spares bought to ensure a 20 year study. The 20-year study the equipment was purchased for was ended after 10 years because no replacement computers could be found to do the job of operating the equipment.

What happened to that 20-year promise the vendor made? When Microsoft started changing the operating system every 3 years, the company could not keep up. It went out of business.

Now the real question is, how can anyone doing any long-term science …

I replaced the battery and it started working (after I reconfigured the BIOS 3 times).

The reason I had no keyboard control of the BIOS was that it was expecting a PS2 keyboard. I plugged one in and got control of the Bios.

Now, three months later, we had another power failure, and it quit working again. It now also won't start windows from the installation disk.

That blue screen came up again. This time, it stayed put (when I had tried to start from the installation disk).

I finally got the code at the bottom of the blue screen. The rest of it had suggestions of things to try (most of which are not available on my bios).

The code is:

STOP:0XOOOOOO7E(0XC0000005,0C8019E988,0XF7C7A5D8,0XF7C7A2D2)

The laboratory hardware was very expensive, and was originally designed for DOS. The problem is trying to use it today. The equipment still works when isolated from a computer, but there is NOTHING available to run it on today for sequenced experiment control.

Because Microsoft has to change things all the time, several hundred thousand dollars worth of equipment can't be used properly.

More incompatibilities surfacing in computing. I am sick of everything costantly changing. I just used a feature I used to use in this post editor, and it destroyed what I had already typed. You changed how it worked. And the Home and End keys do the wrong things now. Oh, and I can't use the buttons and links at the top of this posting editor because it scrolls under the header.

I just found out that the W3C has again changed the HTML standards to make old web pages again incompatible with new ones. New pages don't have a DTD, meaning that a lot of the features of older pages are gone:

A. They took away the ability to use character names for special characters (e.g. ×). The only ones that work are the ones that are required to make scripts with. You have to use the numeric code instead (e.g. ×).

This is represensible. Who can remember these numeric codes? I use the   code more than any other, to keep dates and titleds together on a line. Now that is gone.

B. I have over 100 uses of the <acronym> tag, and now they want to get rid of that. The replacement is a horrific combination of three tags.

It's time to deprecate the W3C.

And many companies don't let you email them any more. They want the hated identity theft barons facebook or twitter instead. But I don't trust them enough to use them.

There should be …

We tried a linux system. It had the same trouble, because the operating system gets its own timeslice (during which nothing else can happen).

In addition, linux prioritizes the I/O according to the speed and periodic needs of the I/O devices. We had the problem that linux changed the order of our I/O requests. It collected the data first (skipping some data points), then it sent out the correction values, and only after it completed that did it release the signal to start the experimental process. While I was researching how to prevent this from happening, they killed the project because it seemed to the administrator to be a dead end.

What we really need is a very rudimentary operating system that shuts totally down when it is not needed to operate a disk drive, serial port, or a printer, plus commands in the programming language to directly access I/O ports.

Another incompatibility issue between old and new computers just surfaced monday.

One of my clients was having trouble with a home WiFi system. This is in a rental district of town, and the problem is that there are too many home WiFi systems in the area. There are often 3 or more in each house.

The problem was the user turning on his WiFi tablet and not being able to print to his WiFi printer. The cause was that one or the other had connected to a neighbor's WiFi system instead of his own. They then could not communicate through the router as they would normally.

I suggested that he use an Ethernet cable to make the connections to the modem/router/switch (it has four sockets on the back), so there would be no mistake. But neither the computer nor the printer have Ethernet connectors. Everything was designed to work with nothing but WiFi.

Manufacturers are heading in the direction of stupidity. I do not even want any wireless equipment in my house, to avoid eavesdropping. Am I now denied the choice?

Any study that relies on the same computer hardware/software being available continuously for 20 years is likely doomed to fail before it even starts.

So how are you supposed to predict what will be available during the entire 20 year period? Do you have a future-seeing crystal ball?

We started two 20-year studies in 1990. At that time MS-Dos had been a stable operating platform for 8 years, with only minor changes. 10 years later, when the first computer failed, we could not buy anything that would replace it. Nobody expected either Windows or its changed I/O operations. Then we contacted the lab instrument company for an upgrade, only to find out that nothing they made in 1990 would work under Windows, and they can't find a way to make new products that can do the same job.

Creating an experiment/study that relies on hardware that depends on specific bus timing is extremely bad design. I'm having trouble conceiving of an experiment that would have to conform to the restrictions you list.

I know of two, because these were the things we could no longer do once DOS disappeared:

• A system where we continuously monitor incoming data from an electromyograph sensor at 1KHz. Once an onset of motion is detected, a resistive force must be released within 5 ms.

• A system monitoring a chemical reaction through ph, temperature, and released CO2 concentration. When certain combinations of these values exsist, certain corrective actions must be taken, again, …

My older son did his PhD in computational biophysics. If he had to run his computer models on 20-year old machines he would be pushing through one simulation a week rather than several dozen per day. Science depends on computers becoming faster and more powerful rather than on them remaining static tools.

But was your son doing a 20-year study? Was he using real-time laboratory hardware? If he wasn't doing these, using new equipment is fine.

The problem is that the people who ARE doing 20-year studies must not change to new equipment in the middle of that 20-year study, or it may invalidate the entire study. The scientific method requires that there be no changes in the equipment or methods during the study.

Changing to a new computer probably will change much of the following:

• The program probably will not run.

• The adaptor cards won't fit the motherboard.

• The old dedicated equipment will not work, because the new computer uses different bus timing, changing the timing ot the equipment.

• If the program does operate the equipment, proving that the operation was totally unchanged and that results were not adversely affected would require yet another study.

If the computer is replaced and the old lab equipment will not work properly with it, the entire study so far is turned into to garbage. All of the work done so far is wasted. The entire 20-year study must be started over.

I saw a report recently that showed …

This is not a matter of how well the software is written or how well the hardware is designed.

It is a matter that Microsoft does not care that its changes to the OS will cause this equipment to malfunction. Microsoft does what Microsoft wants to do.

Often these problems have to do with changes in the timing of the operating system. When DOS was replaced by Windows, almost all of the old real-time hardware was rendered obsolete. Microsoft changed how the OS used the 55ms jiffy timer:

Under MS-DOS, the OS used maybe one millisecond of computer time, and then immediately handed the processor back to the one user application in use. This was the ideal for hardware data acquisition and control (the only better case was the one operating system I know that completely shut down while the application was running - it had no jiffy counter).

Under Windows 3, the OS took an entire 55ms time slice for its own use. This made all of the hardware designed for MS-DOS obsolete, because such hardware expected the application to have control most of the time. The hardware could be accessed only once every 110 ms under Windows, ruining its usefulness.

The developers of Windows told us to use hardware that puts time stamps on the data, recording in the data packet the exact time the event occurred, so it can be sorted out later. But how do you put a time stamp on an outgoing signal telling the …

I wish the software companies would consider the needs of science, media production, the military, and government, instead of trying to grub as much money as they can by making businesses replace their stuff as often as they can get away with it.

• Science needs as little change as is possible. They really need to be able to use the same types of computers and the same software (including the operating system) for 20 years or longer. The only change they should have to endure is the replacement of failed equipment with identical equipment. This is the only way to make sure that a 20-year study has no discontinuities.

• Owners of scientific laboratories often find that an upgrade to the operating system requires replacing all of the real-time scientific equipment controlled by the computer. This greatly increases the cost of running a laboratory, and it also reduces the availability of computer-controlled equipment (because the companies go out of business trying to keep up with the OS changes).

• Those in media production (music, video, and games) often find that they have to replace all of their computer interface equipment when the OS changes, because the new OS can't work the old equipment. Likewise, companies that make hardware and software to control musical or video equipment often go out of business because they can't keep up with the OS changes. They are still developing products for one OS when Microself comes out with another one.

• The military needs long-term consistancy. The Space …

Any time you buy a piece of computer controlled hardware, you are usually frozen to using the operating system it was designed for. An OS upgrade usually causes the hardware to malfunction.

This includes cash registers, laboratory equipment, home control systems, and music studio equipment.

It is time to permanently end this mad rush to upgrade. The only way to do this is to require support for all OS versions for at least 20 years (the length of time of long-term scientific studies).

Then don't make a new version! Keep the old version or update it. The whole problem is new versions leaving users of the old version high and dry.

It's the same thing. Windows 8 could have been release only as an upgrade. Then the company can say "we only support updated versions".

Selfish shelfish selfish!

That's on the company, and that is the problem with vendor lock in. I'm not saying the company isn't at fault. I'm saying that changing the law to "unsupported software is no longer protected by the law" is a bad way to fix it.

It is the ONLY way to fix it: make a penalty for not supporting old software. Products should not be deprecated. People PAID for them, and then suddeny they lose what they paid. That is FRAUD!!! Microsoft should be prosecuted for fraud for deprecating XP and 7.

No, that's not the way it should be. We only have a limited number of resources, and maintaining old software just to keep a copyright isn't helpful because it takes away from software that should be the focus of development.

Then DON'T CHANGE IT!!!!!

Leave it alone, so the old users can keep using it. WE DO NOT NEED OR WANT THIS HUGE RUSH OF CHANGE!!! We want things to remain the same for long periods of time, so we can keep doing what we have been doing without the expense of a complete change over …

So what do you do when that computer dies and must be replaced? I still have the licence, and I will be using it on only one computer, but not THAT computer.

They have to write their own drivers because the Windows I/O system is not fast enough. Windows does I/O only once every 55 ms. I need 1 ms resolution. I had 1 ms resolution with MS-DOS, and with XP. But Microsoft will not leave the system timing alone, so the drivers they wrote for XP don't work with Vista, 7, or 8.

I am not going to Windows 8 for another reason: I totally hate cell phone type interfaces.

I am sick of people telling me what I can't do. And I am especially sick of copy-protection software telling me I can't do something to keep what I have.

What happens if you're part of a small software company, and you only support the latest version because you don't have the resources to support older versions?

Then don't make a new version! Keep the old version or update it. The whole problem is new versions leaving users of the old version high and dry.

If ending support means that the older version suddently becomes free game - well clearly it's not going to end well.

It ends well to those who still need the old version when the idiot software company refuses to sell it. Stop thinking of only the company that makes the software. Think of those who need it and suddenly can't get it.

Another example might be the linux kernal. Imagine if unsupported versions of Linux were no longer protected with "copyleft" (which is using copyright laws to protect so called "free software"). That means you could grab an old version of the kernal, upgrade it, and use it in a closed source project.

To keep your copyright, don't discontinue it. Thats the way it should be.

Having the same system, bus, and I/O timing is crucial for these real-time applications. I already tried running them on Windows 7 (started from an install disk), and they produce wrong results.

It is the usual case that, when you upgrade to a new version of the operating system, you have to get new software for almost all real-time applications. The problem is that I can't get an upgrade, because (as has happened all too frequently with real-time applications) the company didn't have the Vista version ready when Vista was supplanted by Windows 7. They went out of business because they can't keep up with the Microsoft upgrade schecdule.

Most real-time software that has been written was released for MS-DOS, Windows 3, and Windows XP. There was time to develop and test the software before Microsoft changed the OS again. And most of the companies that made this kind of software were driven out of business when Microsoft again started releasing new systems in rapid succession.

It's not fixed yet. I strongly suspect the battery, but until I actually have a new one in it, it is just the best theory I have.

But I need it for XP too.

What's with the Daniweb system? I used the BACK button to return to the page I had come from after posting and editing the post, and I got a message asking iof I wanted to leave a page with an unsaved post. I clicked no, and then clicked save, and it gave me a second copy of the unedited version of the post.

Don't you support "tree" browsing anymore? I always use the BACK to go back to where I came from before moving ahead again. Are you expecting me to use the "bull-ahead" method (where I go to a new copy of the menu when I finish a task, ande continue from there)?

This is the post that was the duplicate. I had to put something in it.

Also, your header and footer cover the text box at times. Why doesn't the scrolling exclucde the header and footer, instead of scrolling text under it?

I figured it out. The CMOS battery is dying. That is the only thing that can explain the time delay. What fooled me was that it worked when I tested it right after I made each change. But then it quit working later.

I didn't think of this because the "brain" who sold me the computer 8 years ago thought that they weren't putting batteries into desktops anymore.

There is a place in the service manual (which I just got on line - it was not included with the computer) on how to change the battery. So I should have this fixed by tomorrow (when the store I get my batteries from is open). There is nothing about the battery in the tiny book I got with the computer - I guess they expected it to be obsolete before the battery would need to be changed.

----

Replacing the keyboard did provide a an additional benefit. I had rubbed most of the letters off the keys of old one. Why can't they mold the letters into the plastic, instead of just sticking on decals? They used to.

This is the 4th keyboard I have had for this computer. But the failure on each one always involved the cable where it enters the keyboard (probably because I move the keyboard to the side when I need desk space for writing). Of course, the one I just replaced had not failed.

I have a Dell Optiplex PC with a legal copy of Windows XP. But the Dell hardware seems to be failing. The problem is that the XP distribution CD I got with the computer is a Dell distribution disk, possibly with files specific to Dell (It says both Dell and Microsoft).

If I can't fix the hardware, I need to find a way to transfer my hard drive or the OS and software to another computer. How much different is a Dell Optiplex from a newer HP computer I have (with Linux installed)?

I used a standard Microsoft XP installation CD to install a similar HP computer for my wife (and I know I can't use that CD again because of copyright greed). But I don't have another CD except the Dell. I also want to preserve the installations of two pieces of software that can't be installed again because the companies (and their licensing websites) have gone out of business. So here are my real questions?

I need XP because I have legacy software I made hundreds of files in. I must not lose these files.

1. What would happen if I took the still working hard disk out of the Dell and put it in the HP in place of (or in addition to) the disk that is in it? Are there any serious incompatibilities (like there was between the DOS for Compaq computers and the other versions of DOS)?

2. Is there a way to place a disk image …

It should be legal, to punish Microsoft for discontinuing it.

I believe the copyright should end as soon as the product is no longer manufactured.

Let's say it DID start normally with the PS2 keyboard. I shut it off because I had something else I had to do for about an hour. When I got back to it, it was back to the original behavior again, except that I don't have to unplug anything - just turn it off, wait 15 seconds, and turn it on again.

So there is some kind of delay. I wonder if this is a weird form of power supply failure. That brings up another problem, which gets a separate topic.

It does start correctly with the PS2 keyboard. The BIOS and Windows start normally, and I have instant keyboard control on the USB keyboard through the HVM.

But now the other computer will not start at all without the PS2 keyboard. I get the old oxymoronic error message:

"No keyboard found. You may have to replace your keyboard. Press F1 to boot."

So now my task is to find another PS2 keyboard. It's a kludge, but it works.

I have some more testing to do. I still do not understand why it worked after that strange startup sequence of unplugging the keyboard.

This is getting wackier and wackier:

I noticed that the HVM is a Trendnet device, not a Trenonet (as posted earlier). The D looks like an O. I have an LED lantern in here now to work on the system.

• I took off the HVM and added a 4-port PCI card, plugging the mouse into it. The computer did the same thing. I discovered that I could unplug the mouse and plug it back in, and the computer could find the mouse. But the keyboard still did the same thing (plugged into the original USB port).

• I determined that the original USB port is not providing power properly. So I plugged the keyboard into the new USB card. The BIOS can't find it, and reports a keyboard error. Windows starts, and I then get control over both.

But I need the HVM. I reconnected it. It works with the other computer, but now it won't initialize the keyboard on this computer unless the other computer is on and I switch the console to the other computer and back.

To get the other computer to work with the HVM, I had to plug an extra PS2 keyboard into the PS2 port on that computer. The computer boots with the PS2 keyboard (the BIOS uses it) and then automatically finds the HVM and switches over. But it does not find the HVM without the PS2 Keyboard being connected.

I am going to move the PS2 keyboard to this computer and try …

Replacing the keyboard did not cure it. It does exactly the same thing with a new keyboard.

My computer stopped booting normally 3 days ago. Here are the particulars:

• The computer is a Dell Optiplex 840 with 1 MB RAN and 40 GB hard drive.

• I have Windows XP because I have legacy software that can't be upgraded.

• I have a USB keyboard and mouse and a Trenonet USB HVM switch (for using another computer).

• We had a thunderstorm the night before. I heard a click from the speakers. But the computer kept working.

• Now when I start it, I see the following in sequence:

--- The Dell startup page
--- The Windows XP startup page
--- The mouse and keyboard lights come on
--- A blue screen with a long error message on it, but it lasts for less than one second, so I can't read it. All I can catch is "Windows failed to start because"
--- The mouse and keyboard lights go off.
--- The Windows Failed to Start recovery page appears. I have no control to change the settings.
--- The Dell startup page reappears. The cycle repeats. I have no control to cause boot from CD.

Here is the weird part: I can get it to boot normally with the following procedure:

1. Unplug the keyboard from the HVM switch while the above is going on.
2. Let the Dell startup page report a keyboard failure. It stays there.
3. Turn off the computer.
4. Plug the keyboard back in.
5. Turn on the computer after waiting 15 seconds.
   …

Microsoft just announced that support for Windows 7 will be discontinued next year.

Everyone I know hates Windows 8. It is very hard to use, because it gets in the way of getting your work done. Since Microsoft is not selling enough copies of 8, it is going to force people to buy 8 by making it the only supported OS.

"Under new mismanagement" describes Microsoft perfectly.

It is fixed for one display size. Computers with other monitor resolutions may not display it properly.

Everyone kept telling us to make table-less columns. I researched why. It is because readers for the blind give the table row and column coordinates.

The problem with using div tags for columns is that it falls apart when the screen resolution changes enough that the content is wider than the screen, or way narrower than the screen. With monitors ranging from widescreen high-res ones to the early LCD ones with 640 X 480 resolution.

There are two ways to get around this:

1. Go ahead. Use tables. The w3c didn't provide a reliable replacement for the table for this purpose. Their main call for not using tables was the use of tables to make margins and borders. They did provide reliable replacements for the table for that purpose.

2. Use the div tag with the display styles table-row and table-cell. It works in many (but not all) cases. But it does not work on some old browsers, and some reader programs call them tables.

I was just thinking how much of the work I did in my lifetime no longer exists, or exists in an unusuable form, thanks to Microsoft.

I have been a software and software-hardware interface developer for most of my life.

The first software I wrote was for an IBM 1130. Who even has one of those anymore.

Then I wrote a lot of analysis programs for a CDC 6600. Again, nobody uses those anymore. I still have some of the source code, but finding a Minnesota Fortran compiler would be fun.

Next I wrote many real-time data collection programs for the Tandy Color Computer. When those were discontinued, we switched to the IBM PC (with a loss in performance due to the interrupt-driven I/O).

Actually, the IBM PC with MS-DOS was one of the two most stable periods in computing, lasting from 1984 to 1996. We were actually able to use the same programs for most of that period.

Then Microsoft added Windows, with a whole new set of incompatibilities. The old MS-DOS programs still worked on the Windows 3.1 computers, provided you didn't start Windows. Once you had started Windows, none of the real-time software worked until you rebooted the computer.

With the introduction of Windows 95, compatibility ended. Microsoft changed the system timing enough that the MS-Dos programs wouldn't work in real time anymore. Neither would most of the Windows 3.1 programs.

We next tried Windows NT, which made nothing but a horrible mess of any real time …

Do you think you can still get parts to repair your old 8-track cassette deck? Or any cassette deck?

If I bought an 8-track tape and no newer verion of that recording is available, I want the ability to still hear that album. I paid for the royalty right to hear those songs in perpetuity when I bought the album. You want to take that album away from me.

And if I spent thousands of dollars on expensive lab or studio equipment that can easily last 20 or 30 years, it should not be prematurely lost because Microsoft wants to make money by changing the operating system all the time.

How long do you expect car manufacturers to keep supporting old vehicles? Do you expect to go into a parts store and get a carburator for a '59 ford sedan? Would you expect to find seatbelts and airbags on a 50 year old vintage auto? Or anti-lock brakes?

But what Microsoft is doing is changing the road so nobody can drive the old vehicle. They have effectively replaced the road with railroad tracks.

The old vehicle is the equivalent of the scientific or music studio equipment, not the computer.

Like it or not, Windows XP just does not support the advanced security that is built into modern operating systems and it is unreasonable to expect Microsoft to waste any more effort on shoehorning in patch after patch to try to keep Windows XP secure.

The problem is that Microsoft wants all of the upgrade revenue, exspecially by forcing governments to pay for new versions all of the time. It's greed.

At least Microsoft released a fix for this bug in IE 8.

But Microsoft doesn't care that it is forcing premature obsolescence of expensive scientific and recording studio equipment that will not work on newer computers:

• The equipment needs XP. The newer operating systems change the system timing enough that the equipment does not work properly.

• The equipment needs an older computer, because the accessory card will not fit the new bus slots.

• The new operating systems need more RAM than the old computers with the correct accessory slots can hold.

All Microsoft is thinking of is its bottom line.

And they want to force cell phone interfaces on all of us.

"but yea, MS redid the kernal entirely with Vista, and forwarded the improved upon failures to 7 with a new shell."

This means that any real-time software (software that controls and reads external equipment in real time) will NOT work. Every time the OS kernel is changed, the real-time part of the software must be rewritten to work with the new kernel.

I have worked with real-time software for over 30 years, amnd have had the same problem every time Microsoft changed the operating system.

• I was actually able to use the same software during all of the DOS years. It bypassed the operating system and accessed the ports directly. But you can't do that with a time-sharing OS.

• Every time MS changed Windows, the system timing changed enough that the software vendor had to issue a new version so we could continue using the same hardware. We had to buy the new version each time. There was no9 "update" because the main system of the software had to be totally redone.

• Now the new computers will not take the hardware we have.

Most real-time vendors do not offer versions that work with any kind of Unix-based OS, because there are not enough customers to justify writing yet another version for that.

Several vendors of real-time software have gone out of business because they could not keep up with Microsoft's changes.

Why is the Edit Post icon taking me to the top of the page instead of editing the post?