Mr Pogson, this point is troubling me, too. So according to your own narrations, you worked for years as a Windows administrator but never bothered to actually learn about Windows administration ?

More to the point, it simply didn’t know about AD (which was developed after Win98) and thus couldn’t use it. But it could connect to server OSes like NT or Netware using their security mechanisms. But IIRC Win2000/2003 server had a backwards-compatible mode so Win98 should have been able to access it as if it was an NT server.

However, you wrote first: “XP/2003 could not tolerate Lose ’98 on the network.” What exactly did you mean by “could not tolerate” ?

So what do you want Active Directory to do? Make Windows 98 understands ACE and Group Policy even though it has no means to do so? Are you going to complain as well because you can’t run Linux kernel modules on NT?

That’s just ludicrous.

One could print from Lose ’98 (directly to the printer not the server) or browse the web without logging into the network.

Unless you have set up the network incorrectly, no you can’t.

Now, a few questions:

1) Why was the client in the same IP subnet/physical network as the printer (assuming that it’s network capable) if you did’t want the client to have direct access to it?

2) If the printer was not network capable (i.e. it’s a printer share from a machine), then with what royal mess-up did you even manage in the first place to make it print without a login name and password?

3) Again, if you don’t want people to access the Internet unauthenticated, then where on earth is the proxy server?

Look – the more you arm-wave about Windows, the more it is apparent that you don’t even know the basics of setting up a network properly – let alone the nitty-gritty stuff of installing an AD and so forth. Don’t you have no shame?

IIRC it could – but of course Win9x doesn’t know the first thing about AD domains. “

It was nothing about inActiveDirectory. Lose ’98 had no security and could bypass anything inActiveDirectory told the network. One could print from Lose ’98 (directly to the printer not the server) or browse the web without logging into the network. I used that feature to download my .isos for installing GNU/Linux in that school. I took a Lose ’98 machine out of storage and hooked it up to the network. Of course, my employer could have controlled the router to block that access but they had not at the time. The Lose ’98 machines had been ripped out by a contractor over the summer and I was in school before opening so I did what was necessary to survive before the system was fully configured. I had GNU/Linux available to me and my students on Day One. By the time I learned there was a policy against running Lose ’98, I had already installed GNU/Linux on the old machines and used them as thin clients giving my students superior performance for $0 cost to my employer.

I’m sorry, but that sounds awefully close to “If FLOSS adds features, that’s good, but when MS adds features, that’s bloat.”

“XP/2003 could not tolerate Lose ’98 on the network.”

IIRC it could – but of course Win9x doesn’t know the first thing about AD domains. (Yes, I know: AD is bloat as well – says the man who claimed to be a Windows admin but didn’t bother to learn how to use AD.)

““7″ could not share with XP. etc.”

Oh, but they can – you only need to tell the newer versions to be less strict about security. Yes, that’s right: 7/2008 introduced a safer method for logging in. But I guess that a new safety feature in Windows is bloat, too?

I just fired up – okay, strictly speaking it was more like “start and wait” than “firing up” – LO 3.4.2 in a VM. The File menu alone has over 70 options! With Edit and View, it’s already way over 100. Insert and Format yield another 100. Please note that it’s about menus and sub-menus.

“LibreOffice has fully editable menu bars so the tasks frequently done can be accessed in a single click, far superior to “the ribbon”.”

Please stop talking about something you don’t know to someone who actually knows (and uses) it, it’s like a blind person lecturing you about the color of your shirt. With the ribbon, I can attach whatever I want to the top of the ribbon as a shortcut. What’s more, the most-used commands are right there in your Start ribbon – one click away. Accessing something on a different ribbon requires exactly two clicks: One to activate that ribbon, the other on whatever you want done. How many clicks does it require to select any menu option? Right, the same two clicks.

There is a difference between adding necessary features and increasing performance/reliability and making the product different so that old products become obsolete faster. I have not seen much in FLOSS that renders previous versions obsolete due to changes in file-formats or protocols. XP/2003 could not tolerate Lose ’98 on the network. “7″ could not share with XP. etc. LibreOffice has actually been stripping useless code lately.

There could be another fork if LibreOffice pushes “the ribbon”. I don’t know anyone who likes it. There has to be some good reason to make such a drastic change and I have not seen it.

“It’s your choice what to work on, and we’ll design for pretty much anything. The changes have to be incremental, though, so no Ribbon.”
see http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Meetings/2012-06-30

That’s a funny assertion. Then why isn’t FLOSS standing still? They don’t need to sell something, yet new versions of software are released constantly, with many a change pissing users off. And isn’t LibreOffice planning a grand Ribbon-like redesign?

Things are so because Mr. Pogson says so.

Don’t you ever forget that!

You’re still living in the last century. Since 1997, the only change in MSO file formats was the move to an XML-based format in 2007.