Videochat September 2019

For people wondering what the difference between a Roland MT-32 and regular Adlib is, just watch this...

Ross, you would LOVE Marble Hornets. It's the webseries that created Slenderman and the production quality is really high compared to other horror webseries.

Regarding the topic of Windows 10 LTSC (Long-term servicing channel):

Windows 10 LTSC is simply Windows 10 Enterprise without UWP, without Cortana, without pre-installed bloatware or in-OS adds, and which doesn't receive feature updates (but receives security updates).

Literally, anything outside of UWP that you can do on Windows 10 Home, Pro, and Enterprise, you can do in LTSC. And UWP is a dead API now with Microsoft abandoning it because it sucked and was a downgrade from Win32 to begin with, and so it doesn't even matter that LTSC doesn't have UWP.

Further, you can do a lot more in LTSC than in either Home or Pro because there are no restrictions on the Group Policy editor. LTSC is also more stable and reliable than other editions of Windows 10 because it has received more testing and doesn't have unnecessary things installed.

Windows 10 LTSC also let's you turn off Microsoft's data-harvesting, or at least to the "security only" level (same as Enterprise). Microsoft's data-harvesting can be completely stopped by taking further steps:

Windows 10 LTSC is the equivalent of what Windows 7 Ultimate with SP1 was in 2011: It's the full OS without restrictions, and with WU that receives only security updates.

Basically, Windows 10 LTSC is the Windows 10 that everybody wanted. And in all honestly, Windows 10 LTSC is the only version of Windows 10 I'll consider installing. If LTSC wasn't available, then I'd install Enterprise and configure it to behave like LTSC does out of the box.

Thankfully, there's no need to pirate Windows 10 LTSC because people can legally buy a license for Windows 10 LTSC on eBay for $5 - 15 USD. After all, software licenses are the personal and private property of whoever purchases them, and whoever owns a software license may resell it per their sole discretion. eBay knows this, and that's why they cannot remove Windows 10 LTSC licenses from eBay regardless of what Microsoft would prefer.

Here are Windows 10 LTSC licenses for sale for just $3.69 USD:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Winsdows10-Enterprise-LTSC-2019-32-64-bit-lifetime-genuine-License-Key-INSTANT/383049397282

I'd rather pirate it myself.

8 hours ago, BTGBullseye said:

I'd rather pirate it myself.

I'd rather not use it to begin with.

Same, but that's not really an option for what I plan to use my PC for...

Oh, I should've mentioned in my previous post that even though LTSC doesn't come with any UWP programs (LTSC has Win32 versions for things like Calculator), UWP programs can be added to LTSC. But why would a person want to do that? Not having UWP in LTSC is one of its big attractions.

Here's a video showing how to add Microsoft Store to LTSC:

But, again, why would a person want to do that? I think that Microsoft Store only offers UWP programs.

And just as Microsoft has reinstated Win32 as an / their current official API of preference (Microsoft Office isn't even available as UWP), Microsoft have also pledged to release all of their upcoming PC games on 3rd-party platforms.

https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2019/05/30/microsoft-approach-to-pc-gaming/

So, UWP, which is a serious downgrade from Win32 in that it's much more restrictive and runs slower than Win 32, isn't needed for anything. UWP is pretty much just Microsoft's failed attempt at creating a walled garden ecosystem and I won't be surprised if it has completely disappeared five years from now.

On 9/4/2019 at 8:13 PM, Elfing said:

Ross, you would LOVE Marble Hornets. It's the webseries that created Slenderman and the production quality is really high compared to other horror webseries.

 

Slender Man, afaik, was created on the SomethingAwful forums. MarbleHornets uses an altered version of Slender Man that they call "The Operator". MH's verrsion of Slendy doesn't have the tentacles protruding from his back IIRC, nor does he specifically hunt children.

One of these days Pigeon Hunter will get the sequel it deserves.

I thought I was right that DosBox emulated the MT-32... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_MT-32#Emulation It's in both ScummVM and DosBox.