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Re: Microsoft Quickbasic 4.5 for FREE!

Newsgroups alt.lang.basic
Date 2016-05-15 20:56 -0700
References <362407e6.0@207.71.36.3>#1/1>
Message-ID <0ec4ef7c-93cb-4683-9ca7-fd6f85b7f6ea@googlegroups.com> (permalink)
Subject Re: Microsoft Quickbasic 4.5 for FREE!
From bazzathedestructor@gmail.com

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16th may 2016; 201605161513hrs, standard superstardate. 
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dunno who I am talking to out here in the reeling world, 
but can anybody just please answer my question, in fact, it would be nice if everybody had a go at answering it, and actually, on second-thoughts, it's turned into two questions, or maybe three, or more... 
okay, I will think before typing. 
done. questions: 
(*)first: obviously downloading quickbasic, QB4.5 or similar for today's modern equipment is a risky thing, so the question is not so much "should I risk it" but what _exactly_, step-by-step, should I please do in order to fix everything when it DOES go wrong? <--I think it's inevitable, and programming experience teaches us when we get into random-file-accessing, using machine code, that we just should always have a "spare" computer to mutilate the poor mind of, and have an easy way to reset it quickly... for example, in the early days, an Apple][ just had a floppy drive, heaps of fun features (kept us amused 30 years ago) and if anything went "wrong" you just switched it off and back on again, because there were no "hard drives" around to store viruses/worms/Trojans/botnets/whatever's-next onto. The modern "computer" is a hard-drive, with an operating system, playing out through the peripherals, as opposed to the old stuff which was actually a giant super-calculator, with some amusing extra features like a speaker or 4 colour output (including BLACK!) 
---so, in light of this, sorry about the revision process above, but to restate the question: 
Q: What's the be-all-and-end-all way to be running this qb45 download in this real-stupid real-version of the real 21st century? 
I kind-of didn't _want_ windows 10, and I was rather used to windows 7, 
and somehow, everybody skipped a couple of version numbers on me, and, 
well, I'm glad they finally did away with that stupid 
"version point oh three five two seven gold professional five platinum" bulldust they started, but... 
now, I dunno if taking a break for six months will mean we have run out of windows version numbers, and have moved on into using the alphabet ... 
or the _greek_ alphabet. 
please. anybody? I can't just switch it off anymore and start with the equivalent of "C" on the calculator like I want. 
I am and always was a serious coder. Basic is English. I like English. C++ is Russian and Germanic grammar. I have to think like I'm trying to impersonate Yoda in order to get the words and numbers out in the right order, and I just never can remember all the unnecessary ";" when people reading my code expect a new line for every instruction anyhow. i.e: Why ";" all the time, if there's already a carriage-return and a line-feed? I hate that. And I went to tech college to learn C++ for gaming, so that screenmodes and soundcards would all work, after years of finally getting that stuff right in basic anyhow, so, after all that study, it turned out that our "student C++" package (for a GAME authoring course) had only TEXT-MODE available to it. I hated them for that, dropped it, real fast, complained a lot, will never be allowed to work with those people ever in this lifetime because of it... etc. and I just want to, today, write a simple short basic program on my uber-complicated new laptop, just like it was a fun thing to do thirty years ago, and make a loud pitch inaudible to humans out of the loudspeaker to 
SHUT THE NEIGHBOUR'S DOG UP IN THE MORNINGS!
I can write the code in my head, and I can't do it on my super new machine. 
or rather, I _can_, BUT Microsoft thinks it's THEIR "personal" computer.. 
I have only just bought this new computer, for a bargain $500 at the start of april (superstardate 2016040?XXXXhrs <--no joke, nearly april 1st, in the morning) and it set itself up in a really LOOOOOOOONG  half an hour, and I could play DVDs on it and everything... (nothing special there, right? I could play DVDs all the time on the windows 7 laptop I had) but after ONE MONTH, the antivirus ran out, wanted more MONEY (extortion) and well, I suppose I should be thankful that it TOLD me when it was ABOUT to run out... so, I, quickly, looked for the "factory reset" options, then found them (*whew* thought they might have tried to HIDE that option) ... then I reset the machine... but, NOW IT WON'T PLAY DVDs... (oh yeah, sure, it CAN, but I have to download new software - WHAT if I don't LIKE the internet? what if I just want a nice stable calculator with a speaker and 4 colours on it? Apparently I have to build the bugger myself... unless I know Scotty from startrek personally, right? maybe I do, but I don't think he'd like me telling everybody on the internet. I'd get to clean the warp core on Friday afternoons for that. ) 
so, maybe this is a long question... maybe this is a hard question, but I hope you can ENJOY it, but if you, yourself, reading this, are the racket of coders that MADE THINGS like this, stop taking credit for all the real-life comedy in our lives, and FIX the stupid rubbish.) ...and, now for question #2... whew. 
Q.#2: who _writes_ this shit? 
Q.#3: there's gotta be a switch or a jumper-pin that can fix the computer back to factory settings like it was brand new, surely... I may need a romulan screwdriver, I'd bet, but I'm also sure we can get those... I want the computer to play DVDs when I reformat and reinstall windows... but I also want to know I can mangle the mind of this computer and then flick one switch and have it back to as good as the day it was born. So, this is just the same old question as nearly everyone is asking, but developed into more clarity. 
I should not need to _care_ about the "risks" to my computer system if I download something suspicious... I should be able to recognise that it's ALL unsafe, sooner or later, and that I just backup things I want to keep on a regular basis, and be prepared to wipe anything and everything off the system and start from scratch at any time, in fact, EVERY time I go "online" ... 
...and... so... that said, I've been putting off getting FULLY back into BASIC programming for a long time now, and I really want to just get back to doing some original work and _sharing_ it, coz there's no money in it and that's precisely why they insist these days on wasting everybody's TIME... so I happen to have come up with THE most amusing software POSSIBLE, and I want to share that, because nobody likes time anyhow... unless they have something to do... which means they won't be reading this... unless they want to help fix this issue I brought up. 
So, in closing, I'd like to say thanks for reading this far, 
and thus I shall give you the benefit of a doubt; how much did you need? 
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RESPOND NOW, OR YOU WILL BE ELIMINATED, uh, from my problem-solutions-list. 
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peace. 




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Re: Microsoft Quickbasic 4.5 for FREE! bazzathedestructor@gmail.com - 2016-05-15 20:56 -0700
  Re: Microsoft Quickbasic 4.5 for FREE! "Auric__" <not.my.real@email.address> - 2016-05-16 07:20 +0000

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