XPost: alt.comp.os.windows-xp, alt.windows7.general, alt.comp.os.windows-10   
   From: nospam@needed.invalid   
      
   On Sun, 2/22/2026 2:12 PM, Mark Lloyd wrote:   
   > On Sun, 22 Feb 2026 19:01:34 +0000, Peter Johnson wrote:   
   >   
   > [snip]   
   >   
   >> Outlook Express had news access. It wasn't that good, although I   
   >> couldn't tell you why at this distance. I used it for a few weeks before   
   >> I discovered Agent.   
   >   
   > Some people had a problem when you're replying and it would start with the   
   > cursor at the top, leading to top-posting. That one never bothered me,   
   > since I knew to click before typing anything.   
   >   
   > There was also a problem with multi-part binaries, although I don't   
   > remember what.   
   >   
   > I stopped using OE (and IE) around the time that Firefox was first called   
   > Firefox (version .8).   
   >   
      
   There were things like OEQuoteFix.   
      
   And OE wasn't the only USENET client that had a third party   
   write code to make the behavior a bit more "normal".   
      
   The stunningly helpful ones, have been binary patches to   
   things. The email client I used to use, one day it stopped   
   functioning, and it was because the ISP email server had   
   adopted a strange new address. I discovered someone had done   
   a binary patch for commercial software, causing the new email   
   server name to be parsed properly and accepted. And it had been   
   done, the binary edit, six years before I needed it. People can   
   do this, for software which is not signed. SuperPI (originally   
   written by some people in Japan), the source was lost, and   
   it's a benchmark, and more than one person contributed binary   
   changes to it to keep it going and prevent cheating.   
      
   And another example, is the "games collection" that they keep   
   moving forward into newer versions of Windows. You can continue   
   to play WinXP Solitaire, because someone knows which four bytes   
   in the executable that control "OS version exclusivity". These   
   games rest in a 100MB ZIP file.   
      
      Paul   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)