yes they are, actually. Backwards compatibility is a huge thing in Windows, it's why you can't name files certain names such as CON, and why you can find things from 3.1 etc. still.

[–] Patches@sh.itjust.works 36 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Fun Fact: Every single Exe today still checks prior to running whether it is Barbie Riding Club (1998) or can it run normally?

Because when you update your OS and your game breaks - you don't blame Hasbro, you blame Windows every time. You can't just call up Sierra Games and ask them to update - they don't exist anymore and so you must carry everything forward - bugs included.

[–] SeventySeven@sh.itjust.works 21 points 10 months ago (2 children)

That fact does seem really fun and interesting. Why barbie? Got any links so I can read up on it?

[–] tweeks@feddit.nl 18 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I googled a bit, and perhaps this statement comes from this old Reddit thread here in the first comments.

There it's mainly used as a joke to describe how Windows is just very backwards compatible in general. The story might have stuck and warped a bit as like it really had a reference to that Barbie game.

[–] QuaternionsRock@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Well, I did find this.

[–] tweeks@feddit.nl 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I couldn't find a reference to Barbie in your link, or am I missing something?

[–] QuaternionsRock@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

No, I’m just saying that compatibility databases do seem to exist, and the existence of “custom” ones implies that there is a built-in one. It wouldn’t be surprising to find out that Barbie and about a million other widespread legacy executables are in there.

[–] drathvedro@lemm.ee 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I know there was an old hack for simcity but I've never heard about barbie. I've checked and the claim seems to come from (now removed) @pwnallthethings twitter account. What he refers to there is that Windows indeed maintains a compatibility database, which, unlike the normal compatibility menu, allows more compatibility tweaks and works entirely automatically. On my fresh win11 install, the compatibility administrator tool lists a few hundred compatibility shims and thousands of apps listed, with "Barbie Adventure Riding Club" indeed being one of them

[–] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 2 points 10 months ago

DesktopHorse/HorseHook.dll

Great find :)

I see PwnAllTheThings is on Mastodon:

PwnAllTheThings: Twitter was special. But it's time to leave

[–] CynicRaven@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I found the mind share that Apple enjoys makes this kind of inverted when things don't run right on OSX or iOS whereas android is more in the Windows boat.

[–] Gestrid@lemmy.ca 17 points 10 months ago (1 children)

it's why you can't name files certain names such as CON

To expand on this: The reason you can't name files CON, etc., is because of a program from the 1960s called Peripheral Interchange Program (PIP), a program used in Digital Equipment Corporation's computers. The overall OS that PIP was part of was called CP/M.

DOS, which came out in the 80s and was made for IBM computers, was modeled after CP/M, and it kept and expanded the capabilities of PIP.

Then Microsoft came along and created a modified version of DOS called MS-DOS which IBM started using.

Eventually, Microsoft created Windows 95, merging two initially separate products: MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. Microsoft left in the code for handling CON, etc., but they hadn't put in any limitations for filenames, which caused some bugs. So, from the next version of Windows onward, they disallowed the ability for anything to name a folder or file "CON", among other related things.

So the reason you can't name a file or folder "CON" is because of a 60-year-old file-copying program nobody uses anymore.

[–] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 4 points 10 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

which caused some bugs

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] tdawg@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago

That's what happens when your entire business model is promising to support [your business name here]'s favorite feature forever. It makes a lot of money, but boy does it make for a terrible product

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