From: mutazilah@gmail.com   
      
   So Google Groups is showing this message now:   
      
   Effective February 15, 2024, Google Groups will no longer support new   
   Usenet content. Posting and subscribing will be disallowed, and new   
   content from Usenet peers will not appear. Viewing and searching of   
   historical data will still be supported as it is done today.   
      
      
   And I had already made an effort to move   
   to my own newsreader as you have seen from   
   my most recent posts. So I was half-safe.   
   The half is because it is very laborious   
   to read messages with my primitive software.   
      
   However, today an unrelated change happened.   
      
   A day or two ago I got PDPCLIB producing   
   OS/2 1.x NE executables, with a view to   
   switching PDOS/86 to NE - as MSDOS 4.0   
   (European, multitasking) had support for   
   (although I've never used it so I don't   
   know the details).   
      
   And then I managed to get PDOS-generic to   
   work for 16-bit NE.   
      
   And then I realized I could use the OS   
   gender-bender facility proven with UEFI   
   doing Win64 with a little bit of "glue",   
   by getting OS/2 2.0 programs to run   
   under Win32.   
      
   Then I realized what I really wanted to do   
   was get Win32 programs running under OS/2 2.0+   
   (as competition for Microsoft - and I know   
   that Odin32 exists, but it appears to be both   
   unsupported and broken for my purposes).   
      
   And that nominally required ArcaOS. Which I   
   had already purchased back in July.   
      
   And when I went to install ArcaOS I noticed that   
   it mentioned Thunderbird newsgroups. I hadn't   
   heard of (or at least - remembered) Thunderbird,   
   but I knew what newsgroups were.   
      
   So I took a look and after some hassle (I needed   
   to click authenticate and then shut down and then   
   refresh the newsgroup list - not the "new groups"),   
   I managed to get into this group.   
      
   However I still had a problem - I clicked on reply   
   to the previous message I posted, and was wondering   
   why it wasn't being sent. I haven't configured email   
   because I'm not trying to send email from here at   
   this stage.   
      
   After trying to find a way to force the message to   
   be sent I realized that it was sending an email,   
   not a newsgroup message. So I went back and tried   
   follow-up this time.   
      
   I always copy and paste stuff I type before hitting   
   send etc, so it was still in the clipboard.   
      
   So I did a followup this time, and then a paste, and   
   the message looked fine.   
      
   However, I failed to notice that previously I had   
   pasted just the new text (which I had written yesterday   
   to James but hadn't organized to send).   
      
   So I ended up having two copies of the replied-to text   
   which I only noticed when it arrived ("immediately")   
   on Google Groups.   
      
   So now I've bought time.   
      
   My plan is to have the newsgroups feed into Fidonet   
   technology. But that requires more development. Also   
   I want it to work on the mainframe too, and currently   
   I don't even have rudimentary capability because both   
   mvssupa.asm (PDPCLIB) and z/PDOS and Hercules/380 all   
   require more work to make it happen.   
      
   So sorry about the extra quoted material, and I should   
   be fine now.   
      
   So it looks like I am transitioning from Windows 2000   
   to ArcaOS now. I run both under Virtualbox under Kylin   
   Linux on a Zhaoxin processor.   
      
   BFN. Paul.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)