When Tom said you could open a Word file from 30 years ago I thought to myself "Wait, they had Word in the '70s?" But no, 30 years ago it was the '90s.
In 2018, after finalizing my thesis, I thought of naming the three individual files that I would send to my groupmates "CON", "GRAT", and "ULATIONS". We didn't have a file format or anything since we had to physically print and hardbound the manuscript, so I wanted the names to be lighthearted. CON.pdf wouldn't work and I got sucked into a rabbit hole of why files can't be named "CON". Ended up naming the files "CONG", "RAT", and "ULATIONS". This video reminded me of that time!
Hes wrong. You actually CAN name a directory "CON". From command line type "mkdir \\?\C:\CON" . This will create at folder 📂 at the root of the C:\ drive called CON.
I was actually wondering before, because I somehow found out I cannot save certain filenames and folder names ("con" being one of them), I was actually trying to save those files as an abbreviation to something (I believe "con" was staying for "contact" or "connect" or something similar). It is possible to create those files (or folders) somewhere inside your file tree, but those objects cannot be accessed, nor can you save anything to these files, folders, you cannot remove them and cannot access them. That also means that access denied will deny also removal (it is possible to remove those bugged files and folders, but not with conventional methods). Reason is simple. System thinks you are trying to access a device port that no longer works (or method of access doesn't support that device or simply that device isn't installed), instead of accessing the newly created object. To remove that file or folder (or rename them or otherwise access them), you have to use another operating system (preferably Unix based). Windows/DOS based systems won't be able to interact with these files/folders. A bug in Windows (still present to this day) allows with a special way to create those sort of objects, with no seemable way to interact with them (not even for removal). Linux of course allows creation of those files (heck it allows for creating othwerise conflicting names because unlike Windows/DOS where all files and folders were originally only alphanumerical capital letters based names, the Linux file systems support case sensitive naming (so a file called "Larry" is different than file called "larry"). It is worth noting that it won't work on Windows based file systems (FAT32, NTFS). However, Linux won't check for the reserved file names so it will still allow you to create a file or folder named "con" and such.
I gotta say, that kind of backwards compatability is what makes much of my corporate work even feasible. Sometimes you need the one specific way of accessing a file that people stopped using a decade ago because its worse than the rest in 90% of cases but makes a workaround for the current situation possible.
Backwards compatibility is what allows younger generations access and explore what someone 20, 40 or so years ago worked on and gain knowledge from it. At an infrastructure level systems that were put in place to manage telecom or power networks can be so dated that you need that backwards compatibility just to create new and up to date documentation and even then you keep the originals as reference material.
lots of French people probably noticed you can't name a folder "con", because it's an insult in French some people tried to use that as folder names. Me at least.
Please enlighten me as to what "con" means in english. Is it an untranslatable but generally insulting word, or is it directly comparable to something?
Hes wrong. You actually CAN name a directory "CON". From command line type "mkdir \\?\C:\CON" . This will create at folder 📂 at the root of the C:\ drive called CON.
Chris Stoble That sounds like a "bug" in the ported version or mkdir. Nice find. What happens if you try to use the folder? Rename/move/copy might break?
The thing is - a company would have a program created to perform a function. Once that program was in use - as long as it performed the function it was designed for - and didn't need to have modifications to it made - they could just keep right on running that program. If they changed anything - they might mess it up - so they just kept everything running just the way it always had. One problem here - is that the tools that were used to create the program and in fact the source code for that program might be archived on media that they were no longer able to access - as they no longer had a system that could read it. Where a company can no longer access their archived programs and data, there are companies whose business is accessing older media - for a price. .
This is the exact reason why I always use some version of windows and have never switched to mac, even though I love the workflow that my friend has setup on her mac when producing audio and doing art projects. I am constantly hooking up old junk and using super old audio devices with very old cables, and its nice to be able to still hook up old things to run within the new software i use. Plus when I'm bored I start pulling out all my old computers, audio mixers, synthesizers, drum machines, and all manner of random junk in my computer room, just to play with it all and mess around. It's also awesome that I can still run DOS in windows ten to play old ass video games ^^
VMware hell of a drug, always used to have a hardware device for "off book" work kinda thing.. but it has to be plugged in to access something doors swing both ways etc.. makes security take much longer than we all expected, heh good thing we have genius coders out there, much appreciate them It is awesome they added Linux on Windows you can actually create a very low risk env now
ah now i remember why i started commenting and reading at the same time check out NDC conferences if you like smart people WOW they taught me so much just by putting their videos online. LESSONS FROM APOLLO and ARE THERE ANY QUESTIONS are soooooooo good
Same. And even though it's clunky, I still like my old video recorders with the tapes. I bought boxes of tapes. It's good to be able to still download all that stuff.
I also run obsolete stuff quite frequently, most often games. Windows is excellent for that. I still have a 32-bit OS here 😅 I couldn't even set up Mac System 7, too confusing. Meanwhile, I can usually sort out compatibility problems on Windows. As for audio software, I once wanted to run ancient versions of Ableton Live 🤭
The word "con" can be used as an insult in English, too. It means one who lies or scams you. As in, "Some call President Trump a con because his statements so rarely match what fact-checkers say."
@@prebenjaeger I can't believe someone made a mistake ! Clearly we should just execute them... I'm shaking, quaking even... such actions against humanity shouldn't got unpunished !
Hes wrong. You actually CAN name a directory "CON". From command line type "mkdir \\?\C:\CON" . This will create at folder 📂 at the root of the C:\ drive called CON.
"Someone, somewhere, MIGHT need to open a 30+yr old windows file." Like the US Government/Military. We still run essential programs on MS-DOS and Windows 95. 😂
@Noah hard to update critical systems, if it ain't broke - don't fix it. there are other methods for security, but someday they will have to update, but it requires a seamless transition which is hard/impossible in some infrastructures
@Noah yes and no. It's secure because it's not connected to the internet but it's mainly because so much military tech was made to run on that operating system so everything will work with it.
@Noah no because they would rather spend the money on a tank or something powerful like that because to update everything would cost probably +10 million
Ironic that Windows is so cautious in making any changes that could affect the backwards compatibility of important documents, yet they seem to break my PC with almost every update they put out with pleasure.
Microsoft: “Wait! Don’t change that code! What if someone needs to open their 30 year old word excel sheets!” Meanwhile at Apple: “Lmao who even uses opengl anymore?”
@Caltrop Most games CAN run on OpenGL. Most of them can run DX or Vulkan maybe. Like all Unity games, for example, can be switched from using OpenGL to render to using dx11 by launching them with the "-force-d3d11" argument.
I don't understand, why not make such compatibility optional so you could choose to install a library to open a specific old file instead of creating a dependency hell that would certainly hit them in the future? We use DOSBox for older files after all.
This was honestly an amazing way to talk about a story, the script or talking points or whatever it is was just so good in my opinion. I love how you wrapped everything up and got everything related to each other at the end, just amazing 🤩
@@sonyxperiasmk the latest Samsung ones... Some of the Chinese brands as well... A lot of android manufacturers have adopted the no headphone design philosophy.
It is worth noting that a lack of backwards compatibility is why their products tend to run smoother and more organized than the alternatives. It's a trade-off to support and rely on very old software.
Spot on and thank you for pointing this out for people. This is why I love Windows so much. The backwards compatibility is remarkable. My mother still manages her finances in a 2003 XP version of Microsoft Money that still runs on her latest build Windows 10 PC in 2021. I'd like to see a Mac user run an app from even the previous OS version, or worse yet, from a different architecture (M1 vs Intel vs PPC, SMH).
Rosetta let PPC OSX software run on Intel Macs, and Rosetta 2 lets Intel OSX software run on M1 Macs. At a performance cost for the translation processing, but it does work.
Speaking of PPC, it's hella fun that I can run most modern Linux programs on an old PPC Mac (given you have a way to install PPC Linux). I used Emacs on my iMac G3 to write a few school assignments.
I'm not saying that Apple is as good at backwards compatibility as windows, but you seem to not know that Apple have built in emulation (called rosetta) for X86 applications so they can run on their new ARM processors, and it does it incredibly well.
@@badlydrawncars6460 Can still use? The most important interface still relies on emulating TTYs. Every single terminal window opened creates a pty device, a pseudoterminal or pseudoTTY, and all user interaction is mediated through software that emulates a common subset of terminal capabilities. True, linux GUIs have improved in recent years, but "getting stuff done" still relies heavily on a terminal. The GUI is just frosting, however. The expectation is that a user will be able to work with their system via a TTY, physical or virtual, and just uses a GUI out of preference.
I like how Tom shows all the great examples of Microsoft backwards compatibility as I sit at my desk looking at a Zune, which has nearly no compatibility with newer versions of windows.
You also can't name it "aux", which we found out the hard way, when I named a folder "aux", submitted it to our git repository and made all the windows people unable to update their local copies. Oops
Oh, that's so great...it sucks when you are using a full blown OS but you have to do stupid things so your stuff compatible with the bug pile that is Windows.
@@ChristopherHailey :'D haha I prefer Linux aswell, but you didn't have to suck off Linus Torvall like that. If you like the taste, I don't descriminate.
Also, UNIX filenames are case-sensitive and can contain almost any symbol (including :"\|?*). Also, in text files you don't have to use a newline AND a carriage return character for a line break, as if your monitor was a _particularly stupid_ typewriter. Also, it's a real™ operating system. POSIX or GTFO! :^)
I discovered this 20 years ago when I was trying to create a folder called "Con" for my converted mp3 files. Didin't know why it didn't work until now! Thanks :)
Wow, you really did your research! As a Microsoft engineer, one of the big tasks for us to tackle this winter was leap year readiness where we scan through all of our code for potential leap year bugs. Sure enough, in our readiness documentation, we use the Excel bug as a prime example of how simple mistakes in combination with poor design decisions can lead to very costly and disastrous results.
Hey mate. I have an odd yet timely question for you. What's the rumor like in your work circles atm in regards to this bogus conspiracy concerning Mr gates? Surely that nonsence is somewhat water cooler talk / email worthy banter at the moment haha.
I’m glad someone is on the case. I’ve used Windows and some other MS software for years until W,8 8.1 and then 10 destroyed it for me. Compatibility was excellent and PnP had really come on since the W95 days. Nowadays, the only bits I do in Windows are the ones there is no equivalent for in other platforms. P.S. let’s not get all salty and lockdown on the firmware against rival OSs like Apple does.
@@davidenwah3413 you said it yourself, "conspiracy" if you are stupid enough to believe it then i think you are to stupid to work at microsoft, then again it's probably talk of the water cooler in any of their call centers with the uneducated staff.
And those old obsolete systems are usually the ones propping up healthcare, banking, finance, industry, critical data and other vital resources. Like modern fighter jets using 20 year old hardware because that is what was specified.
Isn't that the reason why the USA military is buying F-35's (relatively expensive) instead of F-22's (relatively cheap) because of old software development when the raptor was being designed?
Sometimes has advantages mind. The UK banking system used IBM's OS2 long after people had even heard of it which in some ways made it *more* secure. This was around the time that US ATMs where on Windows XP. Which would you rather hack into?
Hoi Kay Li I’m still so upset they did that. the only game I can play in my steam library is Garrys Mod and even that is wonky because I have to change the resolutions smh
@@vista9434 *Funny enough, it is opposite with Apple and older mobile hardware.* They support iPhones, iPads and iPod touches from four-five (!) years ago, while everybody else typically for a year or two at best.
Actually the 29/2/1900 bug comes from QDOS which is what IBMDOS/MSDOS was based on. The internal calendar QDOS used treated every fourth year as a leap year and Lotus which ran on MSDOS calculated dates using the MSDOS calendar.
Back in the 90s a friend in school wrote a program to replace "AUX" by "BUX" in memory, so we could hide games in an AUX folder which the admin was never able to enter or remove.
This is something I was fascinated by back in the 90s when I started using Linux. In Unix-like systems, the device files are all stored in the /dev/ directory, so instead of LPT1, you'd redirect to /dev/lp0.
And goes back to Unix, from the 70s. As usual, Microsoft took something already invented and working great, did it badly, and somehow got all the credit.
@@Dani0x1B To be fair, Gates and co. sitting in his garage trying to get a working OS together for a business presentation in a few weeks certainly didn't anticipate that their quick and dirty "get it to work so we can show the customer something" decisions they made 45 years ago were going to still be haunting them today. They have broken a lot of stuff over the years as they wean themselves off of older technologies, especially when security is involved (if that wasn't the case there wouldn't be such a thing as DOSBox, or "Run in Windows Legacy Mode"), they just decided this particular one wasn't worth breaking because it isn't a security issue and it must still be getting used widely enough that it would be painful to pull out.
There are fundamental differences though. Device files in linux have types that identify them as such. Also, the reserved device names (like /dev/null) aren't global - I can have a file called null in /home/dev if I want to. EDIT: I guess the fundamental point is that linux device files are real files with a location, which is what allows them to be placed. Windows device files can't be placed because they aren't real files. As far as I'm aware, placing device files in /dev is no more than a convention.
Yes, it is a far nicer system of actually putting them out of the way. And Windows Subsytem for Linux emulates this, it also has mount points for accessing drives from within it automatically mapped as /mnt/ and one can create con, and lpt1 files that way.
My favorite story is that Microsoft specifically reintroduced a DOS bug in Windows 95 after having fixed it, just so that SimCity that relied on the bug would continue to work.
@@Belioyt This isn't a research paper. It would be kinda weird to cite sources on a TH-cam comment, and if you want to find a story you can search it for yourself.
I used to work for Microsoft, on Visual Studio. At one point, I had to put in, by my accounting, 112 hours over 11 straight days running a high-pressure last minute test pass to make sure we weren't about to break XP targeting (as in, could you write and build software that ran on XP?) with our next update. This was something like 2 years after the Windows division had themselves stopped supporting XP. So sometimes THE SAME company has very different definitions of "within reason."
I didn't realise that the term "directory" was considered old-fashioned. I mean I know they're also called folders, but I use the two terms interchangeably. I guess that makes me... old.
I don't think it makes you old, but certainly it was the earlier name for it. I've never heard someone refer to a directory as a "folder" when talking about Linux at least. Seems to be more of a mainstream user thing to call it a "folder" (ie. Windows folders). I'm 23 and switch between directory and folder depending on the context
i mean if you code just a little bit directory is a regular word. i know barely nothing about programming aside from some python and "pip install _" and directory is still a word used everywhere
It's more to do with what sort of software you interact with. UNIX, BSD, and Linux (GNU or Busybox) users are a lot more likely to call them directories if they use the command-line because all the commands for handling them refer to them that way. However, someone who's focused on graphical user interfaces will likely still call them file folders since that's how they refer to them. Directory isn't old-fashioned, it's just that someone's choice of term shows what field they're in. Now, for a truly old-fashioned term, there's a catalog.
For me it depends on the GUI, so visual elements make me use either folder or directory, depending on what I see or the image in my head. Tricky to explain and weird, but that's more or less how it works for me. (I'm 22)
Yip, I remember we had an old system that was set up to use two dot matrix printers, one to spit out invoices and another for shipping labels on pre-printed, continuous paper. The issue was you had to remember to flip the switch on the rotary printer switch and if you didn't, well chaos would ensue. It had been that way for years. I came along and a little code change here along with the addition of a second printer port in the computer, and the printer switch and its mass of cables was history.
I'm a mechanical engineer, and graduated high school in 1977. I learned Fortran 77 in my freshman year of college, using punch cards and stacks of punch cards called "decks." Fast forward to 2020. I am running specialized structural analysis software that has a long history. Although today it has a fancy GUI and amazing features it did not have in the past, the underlying code is still written in Fortran 77. To this day, we structural analysts still refer to each line of code as a "card," and each collection of lines of code as a "deck."
@Hotline: Finn Not everyone in the world is vaccinated. There are countries well behind the US for various reasons. Some countries are still in terrible spots.
It honestly depressed me a little when I heard about that and learned what COBOL is. You'd think they would at the very least have a cold/warm site somewhere to continue while upgrading to a much better system, right? These are state governments too!!
Eh otherwise they're gonna be stuck with it forever. they did it with PowerPC and survived so they know they can do it again... also it's not hard to recompile and update especially if it's on the App Store... which is also what they want :/ There are pros and cons to either approach but it could've been way worse ...
Microsoft jumped from Windows 8 to Windows 10 because in some older programs the version checking looked for "Windows 9*" to catch 95 and 97. That's how dedicated they are to not breaking stuff.
killfalcon chances are that 1 It was to distance it from windows 8 Or 2 In japan 9 is an extremely unlucky number and windows is ofcourse quite large in japan as it is every where else so they skipped it But we can never actually know because they’ve never said , it could also just be because 10 sounds better
Not only that, but some old windows APIs identified their functions using "WIN_9X", or something similar, to show that they were compatible between Windows 95 and 98.
Ah, and some compilers still use old Macros to identify for which version of Windows they are creating code for. And, of course, one of these Macros check for "WIN_9X".
LPT stands for Line Printer, they were rotating cylinders with almost the complete character set and the number characters even twice around the circumference in 132 places along the the cylinder with 132 hammers that smacked all the characters required one complete line at a time, if only numbers needed to be printed it would be two lines per revolution, I cant́ remember how fast the cylinder rotated but it crazy spewed out up to four copies using three carbon paper layers in continuous form. The office girls were then asked to strip ... meaning to seperate the copies and carbon paper on a rewinder one layer at a time, good old days.
"iPhones shouldn't be able to read punch cards" I see this as a challenge to some TH-camr. Just the other day I saw someone making a Linux terminal on a typewriter.
I’m still pissed at Marc for that one, I’ve been thinking about doing that for the better part of a decade, but I was never able to find a teletype local enough to me to have it shipped... :)
I ran into this a few years ago. We had a project and the abbreviation for a part was Con. Our code broke when it tried to create a directory called CON. I remembered DOS reserved words, looked it up... and was furious.
have you ever wondered why you primary hard drive is C instead of A? the simple solution is backwards compatability. both A and B are reserved for floppy discs. dialup modems are still supported too. Microsoft just really dont like discarding old features. although, dialup compatability makes sense, there are still those in the world without broadband internet.
@@Gigachad-mc5qz As a kid I got a giggle with using the dialer on a computer to call a friend's home phone. It'd ring, they'd pick up and it was just eerily quiet for them. Think it even confused the caller id back then.
@@Gigachad-mc5qz There are loads of places in the rural USA alone where you have to use dial-up because the infrastructure for broadband just isn't there - and if it is, it's too expensive. I understand it's quite common for instance on cattle ranches out West.
@@WyvernYT Cassette tapes have still been in use for backing up data. I've worked in an IT company for over a decade and I remember only the past few years seeing our clients moving away from tapes as a backup media.
Or a lot of cad and engineering software. There was actually a lot of software that windows 10 refused to run and couldn't be modified because the creators/companies no longer worked on it.
I dont get why people hate on Vista so much, other than the fact that was extremely instable, it was an aweasome os Win 7 is basicly just a optimized Vista
@@ocea7995 simply put, vista was actually *too advanced* for it's time. Because of the newer technology the OS was using for it's user interface and the overall rough optimization because well, it was new tech so they didn't really had time to optimize it for workspace computers, laptops, or even more higher end PC'S. And due to the hardware limitation during the time of vista's launch, it flopped because it was draining everyone's PC of available RAM space, causing horrible latency issues, constant stuttering, and hell even occasional screen tears. It wasn't until service pack 2 that almost all of these problems were fixed but at that point vista was already dead in the water.
@@ocea7995 the instability was too bad for most people to handle, so they dropped it harder than world trade tower 1 within a couple of months since launch
Also i'm just gonna say this right now, what windows 8 tried to do with combining the UI of a PC with a tablet is not what people want from a *desktop UI.* why try to do both when you can not make it unnecessarily complex?
One of the reasons I love Gnu/Linux. Userland never breaks. If your app uses the forward facing APIs, it will probably* never break. * not for a long time, if not never
If you create a folder named "CON", "PRN", etc. on a different OS, put it on a flash drive. Windows can't open the folder, nor it can delete it. So you would have to delete those files on a non-Windows OS. :P
You can create or delete such a file but you have to use a really strange syntax. \\?\ escapes the path and hands it directly to the file system driver. del \\?\c:\foo\con.c
Well you can actually use WSL to create such folders or files. Interestingly enough you can also rename folder to CON with WSL and make it inaccessible from Windows but it'll still contain all the previous files which will be inaccessible as long as the folder has this name.
Drivers are written by manufacturers, and sometimes they get things wrong. You generally see Microsoft doing great when they control everything, like the Office suite, but not so great when there’s a lot of different actors (just think about how many companies manufacturer Ethernet driver chips, as well as how many more integrate them into motherboards and NICs). This is also why Apple have it a lot easier, they only need to support devices made by themselves, which they have full insight and control over, while Microsoft basically have zero control (they can mandate how drivers should be written, but when something goes wrong, it’s rarely the hardware vendors fault in the eyes of the consumer).
Don’t I know it! I put my system together, so I am well versed in the issues of compatibility between manufacturers. Many curses have been uttered! I definitely don’t think I could do better, just being a smartass 😃 Stay healthy, amigo!
bruh imagine working at the centre for computing history and tom scott calls you like "hey can i get an 8 minute long static camera shot of the room that I usually film in?"
@@JpegTheKpeg 365.25 is from adding a day every 4 years 365.24 is from not adding a day every 100 years when you would otherwise because of the 4 year rule 365.2425 is from adding a day every 400 years when you wouldn't otherwise because of the 100 year exception to the 4 year rule
@@AlexK-jp9nc Hmm - not so much fun for a whole stack... But I could see that being done now, entirely frivolously using an RPi, a Camera and a bunch of motors. The hard parts might be finding an interesting stack of cards to read, and making sure only one goes in at a time.
I mean, with the right adapter... Android, being a Linux, still has floppy drivers. You can plug a 3.5" drive into a phone with the right cable and have it read just fine.
The idea that fixing a date bug from nearly four decades ago could wreck a major company's operations (even temporarily) definitely falls into the existentially terrifying side of the tech industry
@@graphite7898 I think the point they're making is that things didn't go crazy because people put in a lot of work. It wasn't going to be like, computers taking over the world, but a lot of software used for fundamental things like bank transactions was going to break if they didn't update the software to interpret dates better.
Yes, I've had a really tough time copying old prerelease screenshots of the game "Command & Conquer" off an old CD because the creators of the disc had shortened them to "COM" plus a number, heh.
This feature caused me no end of headaches. I was writing files for part entities using a folder structure based on attributes, which was failing for the Condenser system (abbreviation: CON).
Ah memories of playing with DOS back in the day. 'Copy con lpt1', plus a dot matrix printer, turned your computer into a typewriter :D Instead of copying a text file to the printer, like you talked about, you're copying the console (i.e. whatever you're typing on the keyboard) to the printer. And since dot matrix printers (in their text mode) print out each character as it's received, rather than waiting for a whole line or page to be sent, that command will have it happily printing out each character that you type, as you type it.
@@ArcardyArcardus Laser printers need to print a full page at a time; so normally they'll buffer anything received over the LPT port until it either fills an entire page or you instruct it (possibly by a special command, possibly by buttons on the printer) to prints its current partial buffer. So best guess is nothing will happen until you type in a whole lot and then the printer will fire up and print the entire page full of your typing.
![[MV] A leap of faith...ความเชื่อใจครั้งสุดท้าย (From "Petrichor the series")](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/U1piZH2CNXA/mqdefault.jpg)
*Windows*
Pro: You can name a file *PRO*
Con: You can't name a file *CON*
Godamn it why did I laugh at this..
The same Joke like the top comment, but worse
NICE
This comment is underestimated 😂
@@Arterexius That's not what estimated means...
When Tom said you could open a Word file from 30 years ago I thought to myself "Wait, they had Word in the '70s?" But no, 30 years ago it was the '90s.
This comment made me make dad noises.
MS-DOS came out in 1981, so you could be opening almost 40 year old text files.
My thought was “what computer has a spot for a floppy disc?”
80's. And how old are you?
Office 2010+ cannot open Word 2.0 documents. :(. It can still open Word 97 docs though.
You've basically made everyone try name a file CON, good job
Easily done.
The biggest con.
@@rossharper1983 You aren't running Windows, right?
And everyone else feel like they're superior because they either use OS X or Linux.
I think it's the french autocensor
In 2018, after finalizing my thesis, I thought of naming the three individual files that I would send to my groupmates "CON", "GRAT", and "ULATIONS". We didn't have a file format or anything since we had to physically print and hardbound the manuscript, so I wanted the names to be lighthearted.
CON.pdf wouldn't work and I got sucked into a rabbit hole of why files can't be named "CON". Ended up naming the files "CONG", "RAT", and "ULATIONS". This video reminded me of that time!
imagine someone seeing the file 'rat' anf then opening it to expect a rat image
@@cat1554 RAT
RAT.pdf
RAT
cong rat
It's not the computing museum without that static noise your ears can't pick anymore.
It's there tho. Can't you hear it?
The ping pang of the dial up. The sound of real connection.
* *Laughs in tinnitus ear ringing* *
@@GorilieVR mood
@Domen Bremec
Every. Waking. Moment.
I'd totally buy Tom Scott Remastered 2020.
Someone needs to make this a thing
It's rigged, the loot boxes always have red shirts in them.
I have hundreds of hours in the original Tom Scott and love the game to death, but I can't deny that the controls are VERY outdated
@@zeppie_ I came to the comments only to say this!
Casimir Paul totally
Tom Scott: Have you ever wondered about why [obscure fact I've never wondered about]?
Me: Well, I sure do now
spoilt milk that’s how it is indeed
Thats tom scott for you
Hes wrong. You actually CAN name a directory "CON". From command line type "mkdir \\?\C:\CON" . This will create at folder 📂 at the root of the C:\ drive called CON.
I was like, whaaaaaat, let me try it
I was actually wondering before, because I somehow found out I cannot save certain filenames and folder names ("con" being one of them), I was actually trying to save those files as an abbreviation to something (I believe "con" was staying for "contact" or "connect" or something similar). It is possible to create those files (or folders) somewhere inside your file tree, but those objects cannot be accessed, nor can you save anything to these files, folders, you cannot remove them and cannot access them. That also means that access denied will deny also removal (it is possible to remove those bugged files and folders, but not with conventional methods). Reason is simple. System thinks you are trying to access a device port that no longer works (or method of access doesn't support that device or simply that device isn't installed), instead of accessing the newly created object. To remove that file or folder (or rename them or otherwise access them), you have to use another operating system (preferably Unix based). Windows/DOS based systems won't be able to interact with these files/folders. A bug in Windows (still present to this day) allows with a special way to create those sort of objects, with no seemable way to interact with them (not even for removal). Linux of course allows creation of those files (heck it allows for creating othwerise conflicting names because unlike Windows/DOS where all files and folders were originally only alphanumerical capital letters based names, the Linux file systems support case sensitive naming (so a file called "Larry" is different than file called "larry"). It is worth noting that it won't work on Windows based file systems (FAT32, NTFS). However, Linux won't check for the reserved file names so it will still allow you to create a file or folder named "con" and such.
I gotta say, that kind of backwards compatability is what makes much of my corporate work even feasible. Sometimes you need the one specific way of accessing a file that people stopped using a decade ago because its worse than the rest in 90% of cases but makes a workaround for the current situation possible.
Backwards compatibility is what allows younger generations access and explore what someone 20, 40 or so years ago worked on and gain knowledge from it.
At an infrastructure level systems that were put in place to manage telecom or power networks can be so dated that you need that backwards compatibility just to create new and up to date documentation and even then you keep the originals as reference material.
Workarounds are bad though. That’s what causes crap like this to persist because someone didn’t want to actually just fix the problem.
Yea, it really sucks when it’s your name. The account user name couldn’t be Con either. Until I started using it as Kon.
Oh so I guess you don't have rainbow in a full 😂😂😡😂😂😡😡😂😡😡😡😡😠😂😉
@@kingvent5005 what?
Literally dozens.
Kingvent tf this guy on
@@kingvent5005 bruh?
"People don't like change"
I swear if Tom ever wears a blue shirt, I'm not watching ever again
Tom should absolutely wear a blue shirt on April fools Day and just say nothing about it
@@petermarsella6537 It would become the new most disliked video on TH-cam.
Whats brackin
You would love asmongold then
*Sorts Tom’s videos by oldest*
4:51 is the kind of slick editing you don't expect people to notice when you're actually creating it.
its so smooth
You sir have a speacial eyes, i cant believe u noticed that, congrats!
What did you see ? I didn't notice anything, now I'm curious...
@@vaclavholinka6301 An edited-on disc appears in his hand and slides into the Playstation.
I *swore* that was intentional. The fact that it came together that smoothly is just marvelous.
Naming folders CON on my linux machine to assert dominance.
lots of French people probably noticed you can't name a folder "con", because it's an insult in French some people tried to use that as folder names. Me at least.
I was searching for the french person that said this before me xD
@@kyoyeou5899 many French people pointed that out not only him
Vachement mes cons 😂👍
Please enlighten me as to what "con" means in english. Is it an untranslatable but generally insulting word, or is it directly comparable to something?
@@metroplexprime9901 it's "imbecile" but in way harder
The block is obviously there to stop con artists from saving their stuff on computers. ;-)
Now we know why Hunter used a Mac.
🤯
…
"Bill Gates unleashes new update for Windows. Con artists hate him."
lmao this cracked me up, ty
I'm almost impressed that Tom didn't use the word "legacy" even once in this video.
Also, as always, great work.
That's because Tom's not old enough. :-)
Hes wrong. You actually CAN name a directory "CON". From command line type "mkdir \\?\C:\CON" . This will create at folder 📂 at the root of the C:\ drive called CON.
Chris Stoble That sounds like a "bug" in the ported version or mkdir. Nice find. What happens if you try to use the folder? Rename/move/copy might break?
Tom, you are correct. Some major financial institutions in the UK and US still need to use OS/2 for their computing needs.
I know its super crazy. I have a loan through a place that still uses some crazy old windows dos system.
@@Riverrockphotos What does the version of windows look like? Does it have a minus button on the left side of the titlebar?
Bank of America still uses Windows NT 3.51
The thing is - a company would have a program created to perform a function.
Once that program was in use - as long as it performed the function it was designed for - and didn't need to have modifications to it made - they could just keep right on running that program.
If they changed anything - they might mess it up - so they just kept everything running just the way it always had.
One problem here - is that the tools that were used to create the program and in fact the source code for that program might be archived on media that they were no longer able to access - as they no longer had a system that could read it.
Where a company can no longer access their archived programs and data, there are companies whose business is accessing older media - for a price.
.
@@Riverrockphotos it shows that you need old tech to have money to lend and the latest tech will have you looking for money from the old tech owners 😂
"no ones expecting your Iphone to read punchcards"
Well, there's an app idea for someone.
Apple probably already has a patent for it...
What'd be more impressive is an app that lets your phone print punchcards
Well a punch card isn't that different to a very low tech QR code, so would definitely be possible.
dammit. you beat me to the -wait for it- punch! 😂
an app that decodes a punchcard with the camera is definitely doable
I find the Tom Scott 2020 Remaster edition to have duller reds.
I found the handling to be a little slippery
So you're saying the new game is un-fair?
"You might even realize that my trademark red shirt is, in fact, light pink"
....
"One take!"
its to give it a grittier aesthetic
i see the appeal of the remaster but that doesnt change that i cant play it for more than about 10 minutes :(
This is the exact reason why I always use some version of windows and have never switched to mac, even though I love the workflow that my friend has setup on her mac when producing audio and doing art projects. I am constantly hooking up old junk and using super old audio devices with very old cables, and its nice to be able to still hook up old things to run within the new software i use. Plus when I'm bored I start pulling out all my old computers, audio mixers, synthesizers, drum machines, and all manner of random junk in my computer room, just to play with it all and mess around. It's also awesome that I can still run DOS in windows ten to play old ass video games ^^
VMware hell of a drug, always used to have a hardware device for "off book" work kinda thing.. but it has to be plugged in to access something
doors swing both ways etc.. makes security take much longer than we all expected, heh
good thing we have genius coders out there, much appreciate them
It is awesome they added Linux on Windows you can actually create a very low risk env now
ah now i remember why i started commenting and reading at the same time
check out NDC conferences if you like smart people WOW they taught me so much just by putting their videos online. LESSONS FROM APOLLO and ARE THERE ANY QUESTIONS are soooooooo good
Agreed. But now I have a house full of old Macs because I need them and old Windows PC's because they are cool... I swear I'm not a hoarder.
Same. And even though it's clunky, I still like my old video recorders with the tapes. I bought boxes of tapes. It's good to be able to still download all that stuff.
I also run obsolete stuff quite frequently, most often games. Windows is excellent for that. I still have a 32-bit OS here 😅
I couldn't even set up Mac System 7, too confusing. Meanwhile, I can usually sort out compatibility problems on Windows.
As for audio software, I once wanted to run ancient versions of Ableton Live 🤭
Fun fact: "Con" is the french word for "dumbass"
I always thought it was for censoring those names that we couldn't name a file "con".
User who don't know french needing to name the photo of a convention
Windows: *Censored*
More like a "Sad fact". How did you reach that idiotic conclusion?
The word "con" can be used as an insult in English, too. It means one who lies or scams you.
As in, "Some call President Trump a con because his statements so rarely match what fact-checkers say."
@@prebenjaeger .
@@prebenjaeger I can't believe someone made a mistake ! Clearly we should just execute them... I'm shaking, quaking even... such actions against humanity shouldn't got unpunished !
"if you're using a windows computer, try this" ok. dammit. hes right.
Hes wrong. You actually CAN name a directory "CON". From command line type "mkdir \\?\C:\CON" . This will create at folder 📂 at the root of the C:\ drive called CON.
@Chris Stoble
I posted something similar, except for files rather than directories.
@@plogoo1 That method creates an unusable root folder in the system. Doesn't count dude!
@@mozzjones6943 totally count. I didn't say it was smart thing to do. Only that he's incorrect that it can't be done!
"Someone, somewhere, MIGHT need to open a 30+yr old windows file."
Like the US Government/Military. We still run essential programs on MS-DOS and Windows 95. 😂
Caleb Shonk wrong they are actually using XP
@Noah hard to update critical systems, if it ain't broke - don't fix it. there are other methods for security, but someday they will have to update, but it requires a seamless transition which is hard/impossible in some infrastructures
@Noah yes and no. It's secure because it's not connected to the internet but it's mainly because so much military tech was made to run on that operating system so everything will work with it.
@Noah no because they would rather spend the money on a tank or something powerful like that because to update everything would cost probably +10 million
"You have the conn."
*Windows for Warships has stopped working and needs to be restarted.*
Ironic that Windows is so cautious in making any changes that could affect the backwards compatibility of important documents, yet they seem to break my PC with almost every update they put out with pleasure.
There is a way to fix that, and it generally involves switching to an operating system that allows you to name files "CON".
Microsoft: “Wait! Don’t change that code! What if someone needs to open their 30 year old word excel sheets!” Meanwhile at Apple: “Lmao who even uses opengl anymore?”
DoriNori" lmao who uses 32 bit apps"
@Богдан Кондратов apple isn't one of them.
@Caltrop Most games CAN run on OpenGL. Most of them can run DX or Vulkan maybe. Like all Unity games, for example, can be switched from using OpenGL to render to using dx11 by launching them with the "-force-d3d11" argument.
I don't understand, why not make such compatibility optional so you could choose to install a library to open a specific old file instead of creating a dependency hell that would certainly hit them in the future? We use DOSBox for older files after all.
@@sacwingedbatsatadbitsad4346 except that not every game is made in unity...
Someone who puts a TLDR: in their description is someone who deserves praise! I'm still watching this though.
Ok
Yes ma’am!
Wouldn't it be TLDW - Too Long Didn't Watch instead?
@@yeetwchybaban I agree.
TLDR;
User: Can I name my folder CON?
Windows: No.
You're telling me Cornelius and Conrad made it in the obscure name list before me? Outrage I tell you, Outrage!
Don't worry, Con. We still appreciate you, brother!
I personally have known more than 6 or 7 connors in my life
Don’t forget Bort.
beware of walking robots
How is Cornelius an obscure name, has everyone forgot Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus
This was honestly an amazing way to talk about a story, the script or talking points or whatever it is was just so good in my opinion. I love how you wrapped everything up and got everything related to each other at the end, just amazing 🤩
In French « con » means “moron”, so we just thought that Windows was a bit susceptible.
I've been scrolling through all the comments for this x)
I believed it, and thought it was dumb because way more offensive french swears were allowed.
Damn! I just wrote a comment saying the same thing 🤣👍
Using the proper quotation marks for each language huh? Neat 👌🏼
@@mrjohnbrush - Me too fck
“Headphone jacks get removed”
I’m still upset about this, even years after it’s become “normal”
The headphone jack is still a make or break for me... I vehemently avoid any phone/laptop that doesn't have it.
Same here
@@sonyxperiasmk the latest Samsung ones... Some of the Chinese brands as well... A lot of android manufacturers have adopted the no headphone design philosophy.
Oh, boo boo! Let me play a sad song for you on the world's smallest violin.
@@DDbenkoDD did u just insult your ownself?
Backwards compatibilty: Exists
Apple: We’re just going to ignore that.
It is worth noting that a lack of backwards compatibility is why their products tend to run smoother and more organized than the alternatives. It's a trade-off to support and rely on very old software.
@Windows Xienna OMG? What?! Now that will make me reconsider bout upgrading my G4
Tell that to the old ass iPods still supported even now lmao
i miss the cinamon taost crunch app
what?
Spot on and thank you for pointing this out for people. This is why I love Windows so much. The backwards compatibility is remarkable. My mother still manages her finances in a 2003 XP version of Microsoft Money that still runs on her latest build Windows 10 PC in 2021. I'd like to see a Mac user run an app from even the previous OS version, or worse yet, from a different architecture (M1 vs Intel vs PPC, SMH).
Rosetta let PPC OSX software run on Intel Macs, and Rosetta 2 lets Intel OSX software run on M1 Macs. At a performance cost for the translation processing, but it does work.
Speaking of PPC, it's hella fun that I can run most modern Linux programs on an old PPC Mac (given you have a way to install PPC Linux). I used Emacs on my iMac G3 to write a few school assignments.
My Abacus from 6000 years ago still calculating, now that's backwards compatibility 😎
I use software that was written in about 1996 on my modern Windows 7 computer
I'm not saying that Apple is as good at backwards compatibility as windows, but you seem to not know that Apple have built in emulation (called rosetta) for X86 applications so they can run on their new ARM processors, and it does it incredibly well.
"World's Best Cornelius."
The humor in your attention to detail is amazing.
Timmy P Pornelius Hubert
Sadly not Kornelius :(
This video should be in a world record, where 1M+ people have tried naming a folder CON.
Which also happens to mean idiot or twat in French, so bilingual bonus?
I havnt
Simon WoodburyForget ‘CON’ is different than ‘con’ for a computer.
@@SimonWoodburyForget Let me guess... linux?
@@junaidfarooqui1993 not for windows
It's amazing how much terminology in computers is actual still a reference to typewriters/teletypes.
A lot of electrical terms used today trace back to telegraphs
"Relay", "Contactor","Ground","Baud rate" and "Static" are examples.
yup. and in the telecom industry, it's even more apparent how ancient all the systems (and the systems built on those systems) are.
tty on linux stands for teletypewriter
You can still use a teletype/terminal on linux.
@@badlydrawncars6460 Can still use? The most important interface still relies on emulating TTYs. Every single terminal window opened creates a pty device, a pseudoterminal or pseudoTTY, and all user interaction is mediated through software that emulates a common subset of terminal capabilities.
True, linux GUIs have improved in recent years, but "getting stuff done" still relies heavily on a terminal. The GUI is just frosting, however. The expectation is that a user will be able to work with their system via a TTY, physical or virtual, and just uses a GUI out of preference.
I like how Tom shows all the great examples of Microsoft backwards compatibility as I sit at my desk looking at a Zune, which has nearly no compatibility with newer versions of windows.
if you name a Minecraft world "con" it will re-name it "_con_"
Makes sense.
Really.
I wonder if Notch had to put that in...
Magic
*printer starts making cutout origami blocks
@@evangreavu9621 My guess is not. But I might be completely wrong here.
You also can't name it "aux", which we found out the hard way, when I named a folder "aux", submitted it to our git repository and made all the windows people unable to update their local copies.
Oops
Not your fault.
:'D haha good job.
Haha this is a great prank
Oh, that's so great...it sucks when you are using a full blown OS but you have to do stupid things so your stuff compatible with the bug pile that is Windows.
@@ChristopherHailey :'D haha I prefer Linux aswell, but you didn't have to suck off Linus Torvall like that. If you like the taste, I don't descriminate.
Glad to know when I tried to save all my comic con photos under "CON" and my laptop yelled at me that is wasn't a virus.
Thoroughly enjoyed this. I have noticed many legacy control panels in Windows 10, but I didn’t know some went all the way back to 3.1!
I actually ran into this-"CON" is the abbreviation for a school club I was a part of
club of nerds? :P
club of nincompoops? ....
Club of nonce? :o
Club of necrophilia
club of nuttingonhotgrandmasonyourarea
Ok.. I used the node.js fs-api and created a file "con.txt"
now Windows does not let me delete it anymore...
Create the file:
fs.writeFileSync('con.txt', 'hello con!', { encoding: 'utf8' });
------
But you can delete it like this:
fs.unlinkSync('con.txt');
Your fault for using nodejs, I pity you
@@f1refly1337 people enjoy different things
@@f1refly1337 F's in the chat for the JavaScript boys
Don’t toy with the gods
"So why should I use Linux?"
"You can name your file 'con'."
You can name it in windows too
Actually all UNIX-like systems like Linux use device files for almost everything. But they are in the /dev directory
"You also don't have to rely on a corporation for a critical service but meh, who really cares about that these days."
UNIX > micros*ft
Also, UNIX filenames are case-sensitive and can contain almost any symbol (including :"\|?*).
Also, in text files you don't have to use a newline AND a carriage return character for a line break, as if your monitor was a _particularly stupid_ typewriter.
Also, it's a real™ operating system. POSIX or GTFO! :^)
I discovered this 20 years ago when I was trying to create a folder called "Con" for my converted mp3 files. Didin't know why it didn't work until now! Thanks :)
I recommend the game Hypnospace Outlaw if you're feeling nostalgic about that time :)
Wow, you really did your research! As a Microsoft engineer, one of the big tasks for us to tackle this winter was leap year readiness where we scan through all of our code for potential leap year bugs. Sure enough, in our readiness documentation, we use the Excel bug as a prime example of how simple mistakes in combination with poor design decisions can lead to very costly and disastrous results.
Hey mate. I have an odd yet timely question for you. What's the rumor like in your work circles atm in regards to this bogus conspiracy concerning Mr gates? Surely that nonsence is somewhat water cooler talk / email worthy banter at the moment haha.
I’m glad someone is on the case. I’ve used Windows and some other MS software for years until W,8 8.1 and then 10 destroyed it for me. Compatibility was excellent and PnP had really come on since the W95 days.
Nowadays, the only bits I do in Windows are the ones there is no equivalent for in other platforms.
P.S. let’s not get all salty and lockdown on the firmware against rival OSs like Apple does.
@@davidenwah3413 you said it yourself, "conspiracy" if you are stupid enough to believe it then i think you are to stupid to work at microsoft, then again it's probably talk of the water cooler in any of their call centers with the uneducated staff.
Davide Nwah which conspiracy theories?
@@davidenwah3413 what conspiracy?
And those old obsolete systems are usually the ones propping up healthcare, banking, finance, industry, critical data and other vital resources. Like modern fighter jets using 20 year old hardware because that is what was specified.
Or the USA's ICBM launch facilities using floppy disks - the old, large, ACTUALLY FLOPPY type - until very recently because the system "just worked".
Isn't that the reason why the USA military is buying F-35's (relatively expensive) instead of F-22's (relatively cheap) because of old software development when the raptor was being designed?
Sometimes has advantages mind. The UK banking system used IBM's OS2 long after people had even heard of it which in some ways made it *more* secure. This was around the time that US ATMs where on Windows XP. Which would you rather hack into?
@@CalvinsWorldNews most atm's still are on xp XD
@@FreeManFreeThought and dont forget. the BSOD on ATMs
“People like just the right combination of novelty and familiarity.” Those are powerful words
I can confirm. That line cured my case of corona.
"Why People Cheat vol. 69"
Nothing new really, that's why virtual boy was a flop.
Tom Scott, master of backwards compatibility. Play his videos in random order, always familiar, always comforting.
Everyone right now: *Trying to name a file CON*
Everyone: *Gets Surprised*
Exactly what happened to me
me: tries on chrome os
@@Trippik try mkdir \\.\C:\con\
it'll work
@@v1perys that's a folder, though, not a file.
I don't know why, but I did
Microsoft: “We support old systems.”
Adobe: “What does that mean?”
Apple: "Who needs backwards compatibility?" *Rips out 32 Bit program support in macOS Catalina*
Hoi Kay Li I’m still so upset they did that. the only game I can play in my steam library is Garrys Mod and even that is wonky because I have to change the resolutions smh
Windows: “All our operating systems are built on top of the graveyards of the old versions so there’s so many bugs and exploits”
@@jacquesca Microsoft can fix bugs when they appear. I don't see Apple re-adding 32bit support.
@@vista9434 *Funny enough, it is opposite with Apple and older mobile hardware.* They support iPhones, iPads and iPod touches from four-five (!) years ago, while everybody else typically for a year or two at best.
That's a darker red t-shirt. I hope you aren't planning on shifting to other color
It's probably to do with him using a screen screen and having to edit the video to look better compared to the background
@@fannyslam Ah yes. The famous screen screen.
That's the version of Tom Scott that's remastered for 2020.
I love my screen screen, always there when I need it
He's becoming Edgy
Actually the 29/2/1900 bug comes from QDOS which is what IBMDOS/MSDOS was based on. The internal calendar QDOS used treated every fourth year as a leap year and Lotus which ran on MSDOS calculated dates using the MSDOS calendar.
Tom, if you could explain everything about computers to my mom, that would be great.
Justin did you just quote that line of office space on purpose?
Back in the 90s a friend in school wrote a program to replace "AUX" by "BUX" in memory, so we could hide games in an AUX folder which the admin was never able to enter or remove.
That's actually a really cool way to exploit this
Based.
Was he the hacker 4chan?
Could you give us the program?
This is something I was fascinated by back in the 90s when I started using Linux. In Unix-like systems, the device files are all stored in the /dev/ directory, so instead of LPT1, you'd redirect to /dev/lp0.
And goes back to Unix, from the 70s. As usual, Microsoft took something already invented and working great, did it badly, and somehow got all the credit.
@@Dani0x1B To be fair, Gates and co. sitting in his garage trying to get a working OS together for a business presentation in a few weeks certainly didn't anticipate that their quick and dirty "get it to work so we can show the customer something" decisions they made 45 years ago were going to still be haunting them today. They have broken a lot of stuff over the years as they wean themselves off of older technologies, especially when security is involved (if that wasn't the case there wouldn't be such a thing as DOSBox, or "Run in Windows Legacy Mode"), they just decided this particular one wasn't worth breaking because it isn't a security issue and it must still be getting used widely enough that it would be painful to pull out.
There are fundamental differences though. Device files in linux have types that identify them as such. Also, the reserved device names (like /dev/null) aren't global - I can have a file called null in /home/dev if I want to.
EDIT: I guess the fundamental point is that linux device files are real files with a location, which is what allows them to be placed. Windows device files can't be placed because they aren't real files. As far as I'm aware, placing device files in /dev is no more than a convention.
Yes, it is a far nicer system of actually putting them out of the way. And Windows Subsytem for Linux emulates this, it also has mount points for accessing drives from within it automatically mapped as /mnt/ and one can create con, and lpt1 files that way.
@@jeremystanger1711 actually 2 types, character or block :D
I love how I’ve never asked this question my entire life but still watched it.
You got conned.
My favorite story is that Microsoft specifically reintroduced a DOS bug in Windows 95 after having fixed it, just so that SimCity that relied on the bug would continue to work.
what bug
Eben, kindly link to the story or cite your sources please
not trying to be rude but that was a simple google search
I googled, "simcity windows bug"
@@Belioyt This isn't a research paper. It would be kinda weird to cite sources on a TH-cam comment, and if you want to find a story you can search it for yourself.
I used to work for Microsoft, on Visual Studio. At one point, I had to put in, by my accounting, 112 hours over 11 straight days running a high-pressure last minute test pass to make sure we weren't about to break XP targeting (as in, could you write and build software that ran on XP?) with our next update.
This was something like 2 years after the Windows division had themselves stopped supporting XP.
So sometimes THE SAME company has very different definitions of "within reason."
Did you get overtime tho?
is this some kind of Microsoft trick
Well. As an end user, this is one of those rare times where I should say, it was kind of nice of Microsoft.
wow
@@theendofthestart8179 salary doesn't get overtime
I didn't realise that the term "directory" was considered old-fashioned. I mean I know they're also called folders, but I use the two terms interchangeably. I guess that makes me... old.
I don't think it makes you old, but certainly it was the earlier name for it. I've never heard someone refer to a directory as a "folder" when talking about Linux at least. Seems to be more of a mainstream user thing to call it a "folder" (ie. Windows folders). I'm 23 and switch between directory and folder depending on the context
Then 21 is old as well.
i mean if you code just a little bit directory is a regular word. i know barely nothing about programming aside from some python and "pip install _" and directory is still a word used everywhere
It's more to do with what sort of software you interact with. UNIX, BSD, and Linux (GNU or Busybox) users are a lot more likely to call them directories if they use the command-line because all the commands for handling them refer to them that way. However, someone who's focused on graphical user interfaces will likely still call them file folders since that's how they refer to them. Directory isn't old-fashioned, it's just that someone's choice of term shows what field they're in.
Now, for a truly old-fashioned term, there's a catalog.
For me it depends on the GUI, so visual elements make me use either folder or directory, depending on what I see or the image in my head. Tricky to explain and weird, but that's more or less how it works for me. (I'm 22)
Yip, I remember we had an old system that was set up to use two dot matrix printers, one to spit out invoices and another for shipping labels on pre-printed, continuous paper. The issue was you had to remember to flip the switch on the rotary printer switch and if you didn't, well chaos would ensue. It had been that way for years.
I came along and a little code change here along with the addition of a second printer port in the computer, and the printer switch and its mass of cables was history.
"And if you didn't, chaos would ensue" could be the title of any programmer's biography.
I'm a mechanical engineer, and graduated high school in 1977. I learned Fortran 77 in my freshman year of college, using punch cards and stacks of punch cards called "decks." Fast forward to 2020. I am running specialized structural analysis software that has a long history. Although today it has a fancy GUI and amazing features it did not have in the past, the underlying code is still written in Fortran 77. To this day, we structural analysts still refer to each line of code as a "card," and each collection of lines of code as a "deck."
me : looks at my yugioh deck
@@DragonProtector What decks are you running? I only have my Cyber Dragons lmao
@@f1r3hunt3rz5 dragunity and lightsworn
That’s really cool 😊
thats simple but clever as hell
I accidentally found out that you can't name a folder "prn". Don't ask how.
Why?
@@josephmarx4695 why do you think big guy
I think that is the most common one
*no you didnt*
prn is a spreadsheet file of the pre-internet days.
“Unfortunately it’s April 2020” me: starts crying because it’s past April 2021 and it’s just even worse
what is even worse?
@@ky314 **cough cough**
Did you get your answer?
@Hotline: Finn Not everyone in the world is vaccinated. There are countries well behind the US for various reasons. Some countries are still in terrible spots.
@@VladiMatt that and it’s been over a year of COVID existing at this point; it wears you down
@@Bee-kv5tx Nope
I tried it right away. 25 years in IT. Didn't know this. Kudo's to you!.
The pros and ___'s of windows
Alexey Grosman hehe
Goose
porn
@Богдан Кондратов Yes. It runs all the games.
@@lonestarr1490 and practically all software. If it hasn't been ported it is either unimportant or extremely niche.
"Con is short for Konstantinos" Well I guess I am illegal then.
I thought it was Istanos, not Konstantinos
GET 'EM, BOYS
konstantinos reporting in, lets defend
Or, I guess you could say... “illegal instruction”!!
@Tsakeboya hello there, fellow greek.
Old systems do become outdated
2020: we need COBOL developers
Dolphins have returned to Italy
Meanwhile in a remote meeting: "Our team has been informed that users are increasingly using IE6 to access our sites".
Truth
It honestly depressed me a little when I heard about that and learned what COBOL is. You'd think they would at the very least have a cold/warm site somewhere to continue while upgrading to a much better system, right? These are state governments too!!
that is depressing
@@tyisafk Dont be depressed, they are upgrading, they just didn't expect a pandemic before they are complete (2022-2024)
I don’t see any signs of you using a teleprompter of any kind, that’s an incredible level of presentation skills, hats off to you sir!
"New stuff should also support the old stuff"
-Apple has left the chat
Indeed, Apple’s systems are saddled with less technical debt. That’s what makes them better than windows.
Ah, so that’s why they support their iOS devices for 6 years whereas most Android phones only get 2 years of feature updates. Oh wait...
JakeExpertGames I think they might be talking about the catalina updates, or when the iphone dropped all 32-bit apps a few years ago
@@yosoyysoyyo macos dropped 32bit too. dumb asf esp. when 99% of programs are still 32bjt
Eh otherwise they're gonna be stuck with it forever. they did it with PowerPC and survived so they know they can do it again... also it's not hard to recompile and update especially if it's on the App Store... which is also what they want :/ There are pros and cons to either approach but it could've been way worse ...
I can't name my folder PRN?
Well, gonna have to go with "Homework" then...
Really underrated comment.
@@TheValkyrie9001 Cap
@@TheValkyrie9001 Don't act like you have never watched PRN in your life.
@@erikhendrych190 what even is prn
@@Harlow. a religion
Microsoft jumped from Windows 8 to Windows 10 because in some older programs the version checking looked for "Windows 9*" to catch 95 and 97.
That's how dedicated they are to not breaking stuff.
killfalcon chances are that
1
It was to distance it from windows 8
Or 2
In japan 9 is an extremely unlucky number and windows is ofcourse quite large in japan as it is every where else so they skipped it
But we can never actually know because they’ve never said , it could also just be because 10 sounds better
@@MrGameManIsCool Sadly, killfalcon's reason is correct, even the Java installer has that Windows 9* bug.
And how stupid some third-party developers are.
Not only that, but some old windows APIs identified their functions using "WIN_9X", or something similar, to show that they were compatible between Windows 95 and 98.
Ah, and some compilers still use old Macros to identify for which version of Windows they are creating code for. And, of course, one of these Macros check for "WIN_9X".
LPT stands for Line Printer, they were rotating cylinders with almost the complete character set and the number characters even twice around the circumference in 132 places along the the cylinder with 132 hammers that smacked all the characters required one complete line at a time, if only numbers needed to be printed it would be two lines per revolution, I cant́ remember how fast the cylinder rotated but it crazy spewed out up to four copies using three carbon paper layers in continuous form. The office girls were then asked to strip ... meaning to seperate the copies and carbon paper on a rewinder one layer at a time, good old days.
"iPhones shouldn't be able to read punch cards"
I see this as a challenge to some TH-camr. Just the other day I saw someone making a Linux terminal on a typewriter.
@Kevin Counihan my friend sent this exact video to me yesterday
I’m still pissed at Marc for that one, I’ve been thinking about doing that for the better part of a decade, but I was never able to find a teletype local enough to me to have it shipped... :)
iPhones can read punch cards easily, just make a program to read the image of the card and thats it
Douglas Martins but that’s the easy way of doing it
(Edit) also I saw that video too
@@lucasthompson6405 But building a Bluetooth or USB punch card reader is going a bit far in the other direction.
My grandfather goes by Con, and when I tried to save a picture of him, I couldn’t and got really confused. Well now I know.
Boitheboi were you... confused?
*CONfusion*
Fused with what?
@@008abdullah double Con fusion
*I am confusion*
7:04 "If you change nothing, people will get bored, and move on to something else"
Sports video game players: Allow us to introduce ourselves
Fifa and cod lmao
@@zriraum no, Fifa and Madden. At least cod changes things, and that's a war game.
@@ARandomInternetUser08 CoD keeps changing, but for the worse.
To be fair, sports games do kinda sorta change things. Graphics get slightly better, player stats are updated, and that is it.
Fifa:
I ran into this a few years ago. We had a project and the abbreviation for a part was Con. Our code broke when it tried to create a directory called CON. I remembered DOS reserved words, looked it up... and was furious.
have you ever wondered why you primary hard drive is C instead of A? the simple solution is backwards compatability. both A and B are reserved for floppy discs.
dialup modems are still supported too. Microsoft just really dont like discarding old features. although, dialup compatability makes sense, there are still those in the world without broadband internet.
Who would use dial up modem? Except nintendo online servers of course
@@Gigachad-mc5qz As a kid I got a giggle with using the dialer on a computer to call a friend's home phone. It'd ring, they'd pick up and it was just eerily quiet for them. Think it even confused the caller id back then.
@@Gigachad-mc5qz There are loads of places in the rural USA alone where you have to use dial-up because the infrastructure for broadband just isn't there - and if it is, it's too expensive. I understand it's quite common for instance on cattle ranches out West.
For a long time Windows still supported the cassette port protocols, years after computers stopped saving data as audio on cassette tapes.
@@WyvernYT Cassette tapes have still been in use for backing up data. I've worked in an IT company for over a decade and I remember only the past few years seeing our clients moving away from tapes as a backup media.
"Remember, Microsoft, backwards compatability within reason."
"Backwards compatabality forever, for everything. Got it."
Except for device drivers, unfortunately. Old printers, sound cards, video cards, etc.. are very frequently left behind!
I love running old programs on Windows 10 and seeing how they somewhat work sometimes.
Except for Windows XP software.*
Or a lot of cad and engineering software. There was actually a lot of software that windows 10 refused to run and couldn't be modified because the creators/companies no longer worked on it.
@@LeonMatthews That's not due to Microsoft but the companies that produced those products. They make their own drivers.
"People like a mixture of novelty and familiarity" Thats the whole reason of the windows vista and windows 8 failure
plz don't bring back these horrible memories. I have Vista PTSD
I dont get why people hate on Vista so much, other than the fact that was extremely instable, it was an aweasome os
Win 7 is basicly just a optimized Vista
@@ocea7995 simply put, vista was actually *too advanced* for it's time. Because of the newer technology the OS was using for it's user interface and the overall rough optimization because well, it was new tech so they didn't really had time to optimize it for workspace computers, laptops, or even more higher end PC'S. And due to the hardware limitation during the time of vista's launch, it flopped because it was draining everyone's PC of available RAM space, causing horrible latency issues, constant stuttering, and hell even occasional screen tears. It wasn't until service pack 2 that almost all of these problems were fixed but at that point vista was already dead in the water.
@@ocea7995 the instability was too bad for most people to handle, so they dropped it harder than world trade tower 1 within a couple of months since launch
Also i'm just gonna say this right now, what windows 8 tried to do with combining the UI of a PC with a tablet is not what people want from a *desktop UI.* why try to do both when you can not make it unnecessarily complex?
One of the reasons I love Gnu/Linux. Userland never breaks. If your app uses the forward facing APIs, it will probably* never break.
* not for a long time, if not never
"No one's expecting your iPhone to read punch cards."
Annnnnd cue the development of an app that will read punch cards via the camera.
You'll have to pay 9.99 for it
*EA* : *ITS* *IN* *THE* *CAMERA*
QR codes are basically a modern version of punch cards in functionality terms
@@phildman132 I've been looking for someone to point that out. Thank you. Have a nice day.
Pc hmm cbvsfffrvsdt5
If you create a folder named "CON", "PRN", etc. on a different OS, put it on a flash drive. Windows can't open the folder, nor it can delete it. So you would have to delete those files on a non-Windows OS. :P
Cool tip, definitely gonna use it to obfuscate sensitive paths.
You can create or delete such a file but you have to use a really strange syntax. \\?\ escapes the path and hands it directly to the file system driver.
del \\?\c:\foo\con.c
Does it still display the file/folder in a file manager or command line?
Well you can actually use WSL to create such folders or files. Interestingly enough you can also rename folder to CON with WSL and make it inaccessible from Windows but it'll still contain all the previous files which will be inaccessible as long as the folder has this name.
Imagine if someone dual-booted their pc with linux and then created a folder named ''con'' at the root of the c drive
Its a bit hard to hear Microsoft caring about not breaking a spreadsheet when I’ve had updates delete my ethernet driver...
Awesome video, as always!
Drivers are written by manufacturers, and sometimes they get things wrong. You generally see Microsoft doing great when they control everything, like the Office suite, but not so great when there’s a lot of different actors (just think about how many companies manufacturer Ethernet driver chips, as well as how many more integrate them into motherboards and NICs). This is also why Apple have it a lot easier, they only need to support devices made by themselves, which they have full insight and control over, while Microsoft basically have zero control (they can mandate how drivers should be written, but when something goes wrong, it’s rarely the hardware vendors fault in the eyes of the consumer).
Don’t I know it! I put my system together, so I am well versed in the issues of compatibility between manufacturers. Many curses have been uttered! I definitely don’t think I could do better, just being a smartass 😃
Stay healthy, amigo!
@@sstorholm > and sometimes^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Husually they get things wrong.
FTFY.
It's super cool that backwards compatibility is this important and that Windows has taken notice of it!
"You can't name a file con"
Spanish speakers: "Con qué?"
Con ventanas
@@calebf3655 Con el Micro Suave Ventanas, de Guillermo Portones 😂
Alvaro S. *Memo Portones
@@calebf3655 😂
JAJAJAKAJKAJSKAJSKAJDKISDJSjj
Sometimes I really wish Tom did audiobooks
same
That's what I thought when I heard him read an excerpt of the Hobbit in one of the language file videos.
@@duskmallow glad I'm not the only one
I couldn't think of anything worse for humanity than him reading audio books, seriously he's the worst
bruh imagine working at the centre for computing history and tom scott calls you like "hey can i get an 8 minute long static camera shot of the room that I usually film in?"
or a 3 sec gif😂
Or, you'know, a picture.
@@thrawnnoconnection6931 he's not using a picture tho. and I think a GIF wouldn't be of such a high res.
two pictures
@@Vallam23 look at the displays on the right, theres a blue line scrolling through the screen so more than two frames👌
As someone with the initials LPT, i'm surprised this hasn't broken some school database or something yet.
Listen, printer, you're not fooling anyone.
At least you're not called Bobby Tables
@@Kanbei11short for Robert’); DROP TABLE Students;
Him: *Talks about 1900 not being a leap year*
Me: *immediately forgets about the rest of the video*
Something something 365.25 day year, vs 365.2425 day year, meaning some years which would intuitively be a leap year aren't leap years
@@JpegTheKpeg 365.25 is from adding a day every 4 years
365.24 is from not adding a day every 100 years when you would otherwise because of the 4 year rule
365.2425 is from adding a day every 400 years when you wouldn't otherwise because of the 100 year exception to the 4 year rule
"No one expects their iPhone to read punch-cards..."
That was an amusing visual.
I figure you can set up a camera app to scan it like a QR code
There will be an app that reads punch cards through the camera on the app store by the time I finish typing this comment.
@@AlexK-jp9nc Hmm - not so much fun for a whole stack... But I could see that being done now, entirely frivolously using an RPi, a Camera and a bunch of motors. The hard parts might be finding an interesting stack of cards to read, and making sure only one goes in at a time.
**shoves punch-card into US- i mean, lightning port**
I mean, with the right adapter...
Android, being a Linux, still has floppy drivers. You can plug a 3.5" drive into a phone with the right cable and have it read just fine.
The idea that fixing a date bug from nearly four decades ago could wreck a major company's operations (even temporarily) definitely falls into the existentially terrifying side of the tech industry
its why internet explorer still exists someone a lot of companies actually have stuffed based on it
You didn't live through 2000 and the effort put into making sure the world didn't fall over when we went from 1999 99 to 2000 00.
@@adrienneclarke3953 All the supposed chaos when 2000 hit was greatly exaggerated
@@graphite7898 I think the point they're making is that things didn't go crazy because people put in a lot of work. It wasn't going to be like, computers taking over the world, but a lot of software used for fundamental things like bank transactions was going to break if they didn't update the software to interpret dates better.
@@graphite7898 I worked in banking and we had so many old system, we started planning 2 years out. We couldn't afford to have transactions fall over.
Tom: "why you can't name a fi- "
everyone: ok i i'm gonna fricking do it
Con
I just had to try before i clicked on the video.
It's the same in server 2008, 2012, and 2016. I'm guessing it's the same on 2019, too.
@@sandwich2473 Where have you been? It's 2020.
@@PhantomationTV microsoft doesnt release a new server OS every single year, the most recent version is windows server 2019
Yes, I've had a really tough time copying old prerelease screenshots of the game "Command & Conquer" off an old CD because the creators of the disc had shortened them to "COM" plus a number, heh.
When deciding which OS to use, remember that not being able to name a file Con is a huge con to consider
Microsoft: you can have a little backwards compatibility, as a treat.
next up: why you can’t add FaZe in front of your babies name
Or add the word Clan to it
That reminds me how I still see kids putting faze in their clan tags or in front of their names in games.
That reminds me how I still see kids putting faze in their clan tags or in front of their names in games.
That reminds me how I still see kids putting faze in their clan tags or in front of their names in games.
You can add xXx_ though and 69x420
This feature caused me no end of headaches. I was writing files for part entities using a folder structure based on attributes, which was failing for the Condenser system (abbreviation: CON).
Khan: What’s the one file name you cannot use?
Captain Kirk: CON
Good one! 🤣
Khan and CON sound the same to me when spoken in an American accent, but in a British accent they are different.
mericet39 Shatner is Canadian, so to Captain Kirk they sound about the same.
Con: *makes folder for his documents*
Windows: I’m not having that.
what happens when your user account is called Con
suddenly pitying those named Con
@瑞安卡特里尔 ty
Ah memories of playing with DOS back in the day.
'Copy con lpt1', plus a dot matrix printer, turned your computer into a typewriter :D
Instead of copying a text file to the printer, like you talked about, you're copying the console (i.e. whatever you're typing on the keyboard) to the printer. And since dot matrix printers (in their text mode) print out each character as it's received, rather than waiting for a whole line or page to be sent, that command will have it happily printing out each character that you type, as you type it.
Fun :D
Yea, i still use this because com0 to 9 are still used for serial ports
Rad, I need to keep and eye out for an old printer so I can try this out.
I have a Windows 10 PC with a LPT Port. I have connected a laser printer to that port. What will happen if I type in your command? 😀
@@ArcardyArcardus Laser printers need to print a full page at a time; so normally they'll buffer anything received over the LPT port until it either fills an entire page or you instruct it (possibly by a special command, possibly by buttons on the printer) to prints its current partial buffer.
So best guess is nothing will happen until you type in a whole lot and then the printer will fire up and print the entire page full of your typing.
I love your story telling, dude!