Help with question about web page access

From: Gordon JC Pearce <gordon_at_gjcp.net>
Date: Tue Aug 17 04:07:00 2004

Jerome H. Fine said:
> I realize that the 2 questions I have are NOT within the 10 year
> rule, but I really could use some help!
>
> While I have been using computers for over 40 years, I
> have stayed with very old systems as far as programming
> and writing programs is concerned. Thus, under Windows 98
> SE and Netsacpe 4.78 (which is what I am using to access
> the internet and this news group), I am ONLY able to use
> the operating system and the application; I am NOT able to
> make any modifications which is how I usually proceed when
> I encounter any problems.

Windows 98 is now six years old, and is really just a facelifted version
of Windows 95 - very nearly 10 years old. Win 98 is no longer supported
by Microsoft, so good luck patching for any vulnerabilities. You could
try using Windows 2000 - pretty much anything better than a PII-350 will
run it, if you've got enough memory (anything less than 256M is a waste of
time). As far as the browser is concerned, I thoroughly recommend
switching to Mozilla Firefox. Netscape 4.78 is possibly the most broken
web browser known to exist.

Have you thought about switching to Linux? One of the advantages of that,
is that you can specify nearly anything about your system to be just how
you want it. You can use the latest-and-greatest kernel, built with
support for your machine, nothing more and nothing less, thus saving a
fair bit of memory. You can choose an extremely shiny GUI if you've got
cycles to spare (antialiased text is pretty, but it fair hoovers up MIPs),
a really stripped down GUI (hey, you can make FVWM look really nice if you
work at it), or no GUI at all (I hardly ever start X on one of my
laptops).

Without wishing to seem disrespectful or unpleasant, you are basically
complaining that your 1957 Morris Minor can't keep up with modern motorway
traffic.

> Because I ALWAYS run Netscape with cookies turned OFF,
> except when I am required to have cookies enabled to access the
> 2 web pages that I normally use, I often encountered the error
> page which listed Netscape 4.x as one of the required browsers.

Why? I've never understood this obsession with cookies. I mean, *why*?
So an advert banner site knows that the same computer visited it twice.
Big wow. Do you stop answering the doorbell in case it's a door-to-door
salesman? Well, you might, but it would break more things than it would
fix.

Gordon JC Pearce.
Received on Tue Aug 17 2004 - 04:07:00 BST