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Ahh Fudge MS is becoming the new Crapintosh

Krille said:
Works for me.
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I stand corrected. It still does not work for me through IE but I just tried CuteFTP and it is working. Hmmm... I wonder if I screwed up IE or was it MS? :)

One thing that I have noticed is that less and less companies are offering FTP access. One that comes to mind is JPSoft. They no longer allow anonymous access. Was there a new threat directed at FTP sites?
 
Scali said:
Not anymore. There are already PCs on the market that only have UEFI, no legacy BIOS.
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Then pedantically they are not "PCs" any more. Dunno what they should be called "Windows" machines?, "Microsoft" computers? Telescreens? In the mean time I'll just call them "lobotomized shit". And anything that refuses to boot any other OS needs to be piled up, covered in gasoline, and burned in front of the DOJ's offices.
 
The world is full of both dishonest and careless people. You're not going to get rid of bank vaults, police and handrails by education.

The same thing holds for software. The hope is that the bad software will eventually die off and be replaced by good--but that may be a vain aspiration.

However, it is possible to construct a house or a road or a lawnmower that's safer to use than the competition. We have numerous devices to prevent people from doing hare-brained or dangerous stuff. Thinking of a piece of software as a bit of ephemeral script that can do no real physical harm is misguided. In particular I remember the Therac-25 incident. If you're going to have a multi-gigabyte OS, at least you can attempt to make it bulletproof, both through the OS itself and the tools used with it.
 
SomeGuy said:
Then pedantically they are not "PCs" any more.
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That's quite arbitrary.
In my opinion, there have not been many PC-compatibles at all, if any. Take 8088 MPH for example. So far only a handful of clones can run it properly, and so far they all needed a real IBM CGA card.
To me, "PC" doesn't mean "compatible with IBM PC", but rather a "Personal computer".
 
Chuck(G) said:
If you're going to have a multi-gigabyte OS, at least you can attempt to make it bulletproof, both through the OS itself and the tools used with it.
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Exactly, which means the OS and its tools are in a constant evolution towards being more bulletproof.
 
Scali said:
That's quite arbitrary.
In my opinion, there have not been many PC-compatibles at all, if any. Take 8088 MPH for example. So far only a handful of clones can run it properly, and so far they all needed a real IBM CGA card.
To me, "PC" doesn't mean "compatible with IBM PC", but rather a "Personal computer".
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I would argue that your definition is arbitrary. While you are technically correct historically it has been understood that a PC is a machine that is compatible with the original IBM PC. As such you never see Macs referred to as PCs (i.e. Apple PC 9600). I think SomeGuy makes an excellent point that WinTel (is there still such a thing?) machines are no longer PCs.

As far as 8088 MPH goes I would never consider that a test for PC compatibility. You have admitted your self you are making use of bugs, nuances, and peculiarities of the HW to make it work (and it is a fabulous piece of work) but to try and use it to decided if something is PC compatible would not be accurate. Something can be PC compatible and not have a bug or HW peculiarity e.g. The 5170 IBM AT. I don't think you can argue that the 5170 is not PC compatible however it will fail to run 8088 MPH, correct?
 
Scali said:
That's quite arbitrary.
In my opinion, there have not been many PC-compatibles at all, if any. Take 8088 MPH for example. So far only a handful of clones can run it properly.
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Sort of, sure. I've never seen any sort of "official" test suite to determine compatibility. Even if one were to go only by a minimum of IBM's officially documented specs, things changed as they moved to the IBM AT, PS/2, etc.
But during the 80s and 90s there was a generally accepted definition of "IBM PC Compatible", in which one could reasonably assume PC-DOS and their business software would run as-is if their vendor advertised as such. If it didn't, then there was something wrong with the hardware. If anything deviated too much - including some of IBM's hardware - the market would respond negatively.

When Apple moved to the x86 platform, it shared many features of common "PCs", yet they removed enough compatibility that no one really argued they were now officially "PCs".

Which is really the same point as the OP. There is NOTHING IBM PC-ish about these newer computers. They removed ISA, PS/2 mouse ports, floppy controllers, serial ports, lpt ports (everything useful), and most CPUs spend their time running in a foreign 64-bit mode. The last holdout was BIOS compatiblity, mainly needed for some special kinds of boot CDs and perhaps some PCI devices.

Furthermore, if they lock down their Secure[from competition]Boot so no one can even try to boot others OSes, then it no longer even deserves the general title of "Personal Computer".
 
SomeGuy said:
Then pedantically they are not "PCs" any more. Dunno what they should be called "Windows" machines?, "Microsoft" computers? Telescreens? In the mean time I'll just call them "lobotomized shit". And anything that refuses to boot any other OS needs to be piled up, covered in gasoline, and burned in front of the DOJ's offices.
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At this point "PC" is just a legacy term, such as how starting your car is still referred to as "cranking the engine" even though most cars haven't had an actual crank handle since the 1920s. A modern PC need not be compatible with the original IBM PC any more than a modern Mac is compatible with the original Macintosh 128K.

Which is really the same point as the OP. There is NOTHING IBM PC-ish about these newer computers. They removed ISA, PS/2 mouse ports, floppy controllers, serial ports, lpt ports (everything useful), and most CPUs spend their time running in a foreign 64-bit mode. The last holdout was BIOS compatiblity, mainly needed for some special kinds of boot CDs and perhaps some PCI devices.
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But the expansion slot brackets are still the same size and spacing as the IBM XT from 1983.
 
Shadow Lord said:
While you are technically correct historically it has been understood that a PC is a machine that is compatible with the original IBM PC.
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I think you missed my point.
I never disputed that people mean "PC-compatible" when they say "PC".
I merely pointed out that PC clones have stopped being compatible with PCs long before now.

Shadow Lord said:
As far as 8088 MPH goes I would never consider that a test for PC compatibility. You have admitted your self you are making use of bugs, nuances, and peculiarities of the HW to make it work (and it is a fabulous piece of work) but to try and use it to decided if something is PC compatible would not be accurate.
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Compatible means compatible, quirks, bugs and all. Somehow the PC-world has been rather liberal with the concept of compatibility. These low standards have led to the current state of PC emulators, which is laughably poor, compared to emulators for other systems, where the aim is full emulation of every aspect of the hardware, as it should be.
The same goes for Windows, by the way. I suggest you read some of Raymond Chen's blog: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/
He discusses how various quirks in software and hardware are kept purely for compatibility reasons.

Shadow Lord said:
Something can be PC compatible and not have a bug or HW peculiarity e.g. The 5170 IBM AT. I don't think you can argue that the 5170 is not PC compatible however it will fail to run 8088 MPH, correct?
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To me, it will not qualify as 100% PC-compatible. And mentioning "PC-compatible" without any quantification of compatibility would imply 100% compatibility. The AT does not qualify. There are many more things than just 8088 MPH that will not work the same on an AT as on a PC or XT. Or just take EGA/VGA... They are not 100% compatible with CGA, and afaik IBM never advertised them as such. They specifically locked out certain registers by default, because of these incompatibilities.
 
Scali said:
Compatible means compatible, quirks, bugs and all.
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Not at all. Compatible means that the two will function equivalently as per specification. So if a CGA compatible card will work as IBM has specified then it is compatible. Now just because the IBM CGA card has a quirk that can be exploited, when IBM never intended it to be used in that manner, has nothing to do with compatibility. What you describe is cloning - as in making an exact duplicate in which case then you are not compatible any more but exactly the same thing.
 
Shadow Lord said:
Not at all. Compatible means that the two will function equivalently as per specification.
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No, it does not.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/compatible
Compatible means that one is a substitute for the other. Hence, a "PC-compatible" machine should be able to run ALL PC software, without modification.
Quirks, bugs and all.
What IBM did or did not specify, or what IBM did or did not intend to be the use of an IBM PC is irrelevant.

Sure, in practice most software works on systems that aren't 100% compatible, but that's hardly proof that compatibility has to be less than 100% by definition.

Besides, the IBM CGA documentation clearly specifies various registers, which do not work the same on EGA/VGA. So your argument doesn't even hold in the first place.
IBM implemented a 'protect' bit on VGA to prevent CRTC writes meant for legacy hardware from damaging your monitor: http://www.osdever.net/FreeVGA/vga/crtcreg.htm#11
 
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Scali said:
No, it does not.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/compatible
Compatible means that one is a substitute for the other.
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I think you just proved my point - it is a substitute not an EXACT clone. I can substitute an ATI CGA card and have it run any program that follows IBM's guideline for programming the CGA card. If a program decides to get creative (e.g. 8088 MPH) then it is the program that is no longer compatible.

And of course what IBM specified is all that matters - they defined the standard which then sets the bar for compatibility. That's like saying the IEEE standards are not important then why the heck define/have a standard?

Edit: In regards to emulators - emulators strive to be exact clones not "compatible" hence the need for bugs, quirks, etc.
 
Shadow Lord said:
I think you just proved my point - it is a substitute not an EXACT clone.
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Erm no.
If B is a substitute for A, then B must support all functionality and behaviour of A. This does not preclude that B is a superset of A, and as such is not an EXACT clone.

Shadow Lord said:
I can substitute an ATI CGA card and have it run any program that follows IBM's guideline for programming the CGA card. If a program decides to get creative (e.g. 8088 MPH) then it is the program that is no longer compatible.
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Nonsense. 8088 MPH doesn't do anything that is not in the IBM CGA docs and/or the Motorola 6845 docs.
 
Shadow Lord said:
Again you prove my point - EGA/VGA are compatible in that they run most CGA software. This makes them partially or mostly compatible. However, they are not exact clones hence some things break.
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How is that *your* point?
That is *my* point. PC 'compatibles' are not 100% compatible, but 'mostly compatible'.
Aside from what I said above, that is: a 100% compatible piece of hardware does not have to be an exact clone, but can be a superset.
 
PC-compatible does not mean an exact clone of the IBM 5150. Otherwise nothing without a cassette interface could be "PC-compatible."
 
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