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1. josef (jk@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 21-May-2022 05:03:03 UTC josef

   bored of free, open source software. i am now only interested in "win32 shareware and abandonware"

   - fast on modern computers
   - extremely large catalog, basically infinite
   - huge variations in quality, mysterious
   - usually just like 1 exe file
   - try it! dont like it? delete it!
   - consistent UI look-and-feel
   - when it's not visually consistent it's at least Visually Rad
   - no source code no cheating
   - modify functionality with game trainer Poke utility, resource editor, or cracked copy of IDA Pro

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   • cheese app mogul :astrokurt:🎏 (kurt@social.thiskurt.me)'s status on Saturday, 21-May-2022 05:05:08 UTC cheese app mogul :astrokurt:🎏

     in reply to

     @jk This unironically. If the only software I can find to do a certain job is something that hasn't been updated since 2006 and comes as a single .exe there's an 80% chance it's actually good from my experience, which are amazing odds.

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   • stn 🇺🇦 (shoeberto@straylight.expectnomore.net)'s status on Saturday, 21-May-2022 05:05:40 UTC stn 🇺🇦

     in reply to

     @jk remembering fondly the days of browsing download.com for shareware with titles like "Bob's Tiny Text Editor" which always started up with a nagging window asking for a $5 purchase by check or money order, featuring a grainy 16-bit pcx image of Bob's cat, and that feeling of building muscle memory to click the "Ok" button when it became enabled precisely 10s after launch

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   • Brion Vibber (brion@mastodon.technology)'s status on Saturday, 21-May-2022 05:07:08 UTC Brion Vibber

     in reply to

     • stn 🇺🇦

     @shoeberto @jk I actually wrote a program to make it easier to dismiss the WinZip registration nag dialog (which randomized the button positions to screw with your muscle memory)

     Would've been easier to send them the $15 but... ;)

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   • Santa Claes 🇸🇪🇭🇰🎅 (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Saturday, 21-May-2022 05:08:59 UTC Santa Claes 🇸🇪🇭🇰🎅

     in reply to

     • vulp
     @vulp @jk Not from 1994 though because 64-bit Windows doesn't run 16-bit programs ... but Wine does! =)
   • vulp@wetdry.world's status on Saturday, 21-May-2022 05:09:06 UTC vulp

     in reply to

     @jk I like Linux but the backwards compatibility of Windows is insane. I could download some program from 1999 off a professor's personal webpage, which is the only tool that can talk to one specific GPS chip or something, and it'd probably still work on modern Windows.

   • David F. Mendes (davidfm@mastodon.online)'s status on Saturday, 21-May-2022 14:54:59 UTC David F. Mendes

     in reply to

     @jk I would love to have a whole system running on abandonware. The operating system of course would be IBM OS2/Warp

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