If you marginalize it so its no longer usable on the modern web to do all the things you need to do… Then yes, thats the same as effectively killing it.

Aside from, you know, not being able to access anything that looks for that OS okay, or worse…declaring people not on compliance in criminal violation of the law and mass arresting.

same thing in this context.

I wasnt a professional, Just the “computer guy”… and its been like 25+ years, but if I recall correctly they didnt hire me to reformat it specifically, I believe it was windows 98, and memory serves it hadnt been reformatted in years, and i think they slapped some new PCI cards into it without removing the software for the old ones? I dont remember the details, but basically told them that a clean start would have a 98% chance of fixing their system, and if it didnt… I’d still need the clean start to figure out what was wrong where.

They were over my shoulder the entire time, wouldnt have let me if i wanted to (Edit, and I wouldnt have wanted to, because I hate going through peoples stuff even with permission)… and quite frankly I just wanted to get out of there asap cause I didnt like the attitude i got for being there trying to help them.

I did run into them again at a later time, where they were sad to have lost their stuff, but said the computer was running faster than ever, not realizing how much the bullshit had been dragging them down.

I was once hired to fix a computer. I told them that the fix would just be a simple reformat, and asked if they wanted me to back up any files.

they said no, they had backed everything up already. I asked if they wanted to take one last look through the system to make sure. They got huffy and told me to just take care of it already.

So I did.

then they asked me to restore their files.

it was a CD-R of hundreds of desktop links to programs, and even photos. no actual data. just links.

They were not happy when I explained it to them.

i can totally believe the story in Op’s picture to be one that actually happened.

Sure Buddy.

Sure Pal.

Sure Pal.

Sure buddy.

No, I think you denying reality because of sunk cost fallacy has said enough.

Which is bull, because we’ve been playing games from our couches for like 40 years and there were beautiful, amazing, wonderful graphics long before the 4k propaganda.

i miss when GPUs just rendered the game, and that was all.

None of this upscaling, AI graphics altering bullshit that is there ultimately to distract from the impotent promises of 4k gaming, which is unnecessarily ridiculous to begin with.

Statistics: Right Wing extremism is responsible for 80% of all domestic acts of terrorism.

Republicans: 1 IN EVERY FIVE DEMOCRATS IS A TERRORIST.

yep, all of the mythos about having to baby delicate cast iron basically came from the era of lye soap. . soap isnt caustic anymore, so as long as you dry it when its done (or throw it in a warm oven to dry off) you’ll be fine.

I’m getting Desura flashbacks. Lucky I downloaded everything I had when I felt the signs of it going down, but I know others weren’t as lucky. Silver lining is they’re still playable, DRM-free is nice, but like I established we’ve already moved on from that into bigger fish like “the credits reference a consulting company I don’t like.”

with direct2drive it didnt matter if you downloaded the files, cause the installers still did a call home to direct2drive to decrypt, and that call home server died with the rest of d2d.

I warned from the moment that steam became a market place that the end of the road was us not having physical games anymore, and not owning our games anymore, and not being able to play our games should steam ever go under.

and my god the insults I received over the years about it.

Then other DD platforms popped up, and people bought games there (myself included, fuck you direct2drive), and lost all the games and all the money when the platform died.

“but steam lets you back up your games!” the inevitable response was.

Okay.

But steam backups still require steam to unpack and run. So that does fuckall.

and with how old steam is, and with how many people use things like humble monthly and shit, who the hell can afford to store local copies of 1500-3500 games? especially when a lot of modern games are 50-150gb in size each.

Also, at least on PC, we can relatively easily acquire our games via alternative methods. Which I have had to do a few times, for games that I owned and paid for, because of stupid bullshit DRM.

You aint doing that on modern consoles. If you wanted to play console games via alternative means you either have to 1)Luckout on a jailbreak and have the right firmware for a jailbreak or 2) wait years for an Emulator and a PC that can run it.

I’m so sick of this cyberpunk hellscape bullshit where you pay everything and own nothing.

All spots have particularly awful cops.

the only difference is some places have better PR/Coverup than others.

because they HAVE to have the latest shiny, because their self worth is so low and non existent the only measure of worth they have is owning the next shiny.

book in your car without having the cops hassle you.

is this a reference to that video of the guy waiting out the rain in a gas station parking lot by reading a book in his car and getting absolutely harassed by the cops who very obviously wanted to provoke a larger issue?

or is this a more common genre than i realize.

Looks like a Flintstones vitamin.

Which I wager trump has been in more childrens mouths than those vitamins ever were.