For those not in the know… PDF is a particular set of conventions for delivering peograms written in a programming language called “Postscript”, and like all programs they can be hijacked to trigger unexpected results, including the delivery of software viruses. And yes, while those programs run in “sandboxes” that are supposed to prevent propagation of harm, such environments can fall in that purpose due to creative triggering of imperfections in the sandbox code by the “contained” Postscript code.

Hence, quotes are used to convey lack of trust in the claim of safety.

… or the voice call feature will be deprecated due to the universal use of text messaging and advertisers will refuse to buy ads for a defunct technology.

Darwinism?

I never had my own AOL email account but I did throw away AOL signup disks and I sent email to AOL accounts… so I guess 20/20 assuming “phone bo” is a phone book.

As for not being long for this world… there are a lot of ways to go that don’t link with being old, so I guess that checks out anyway.

Personally I would have used a sarcasm escape: /s

This is why they invented emoticons and emoji. On the Internet, no-one can tell you are smirking unless you tell them

seeing this will almost certainly top whatever stress she thought she had before.

Just because you have OS install media and hardware does not mean the hardware functions. In fact, old hardware often fails MEMTST.

Like when someone sends you a 500MB Excel file and M365 (32bit) on your 64bit work computer (where all your other apps are 64bit) won’t open it and IT doesn’t want to upgrade M365 because some add-ins they haven’t made a list of won’t work if they do?

Sometimes I just can’t excel…

Vasectomy is like inflation… when it is zero the value we assume is described doesn’t go up or down.

whoosh!

Sorta. If you put a FAT32 disk or sd card into a Linux system and mount it, it will ignore case because of the way the filenames are stored in that filesystem. However, there are a lot of important features you lose working on filesystems like that, so really it should be reserved for sneakernet with other operating systems.

Isn’t it “any algorithm that would impress Dilbert’s Boss”? In the vein of “I don’t have to be faster than the bear… I just have to be faster than you”… /s

For the same reason I think software developers have the right to choose to release under copyleft, I think they have the right to release under SaaS or copyright. I don’t think it is fair to take those rights from them. (I may choose to avoid SaaS or other proprietary models where possible, but I am not pure about it… I just do so recognizing that proprietary tools are a band-aid and could become unusable when any upgrade or TOS changes.)

As one example, keep in mind that some governments may choose to punish a software developer for making “offensive” (by whatever their standards are) content, and rather than fighting a losing battle in one jurisdiction so you in some other jurisdiction can keep using that controversial software the developer may just choose to cut their losses and turn it off for everyone. If you force them to release it anyway then said punitive government may continue to hold the developer responsible for the existence of that software.

There are rights and responsibilities associated with a proprietary model… and IMO you (and your permissive government) should not be overriding those rights for your own short-sighted benefit.

A) this issue applies to all kinds of software.

B) procuring software is a two-way street … the producer assigns terms by which access is obtained, and you agree to those terms in exchange for that access. If the software is SaaS then if the producer chooses to shut down the service then you are SOL. If the software is provided with a long list of terms via Steam, then you are basically buying SaaS with local caching and execution. Maybe don’t reward producers by agreeing to one-sided deals like SaaS?

This kind of headache is what prompted Richard Stallman to come up with the idea for the GNU license. Maybe you think that is too radical… but maybe imposing your ideas of what licensing terms should look like on (only?) game developers is radical also.

Just a note: Windows software for controlling hardware is highly likely to assume a)direct access to the hardware (sometimes mediated thorough ancient APIs and assuming the existence of defunct expansion slots) and b) assume meatspace time can be counted using OS timing ticks (which get stretched out as modern VMs timeshare with other processes underneath the virtulized hardware). It is awfully tough to replace them sometimes.

Stick with Windows. Microft will deliver paradigm shifts and you will have no say in the matter. They are already removing options for disabling Copilot, and for all the promised backward compatibility they are letting go of features that lots of old Windows software depended on, as they introduce features similar to ones in Linux. I cannot really fault them for all of these changes, but the difference is actually one of choice and privacy, and not really the one you seem to think it is.

A policeman? is that unusual?

TIL. tho maybe TMI.

Maybe if enough people file feedback on the name change they will reconsider. At least they will have a glut of feedback to deal with.