No, the most immediate consequence was they had not only the remainder of the Legions, but every bandit group, petty authority figure, AND the conquerors of Rome pointing swords at them demanding tribute.
Hell, if they taxed the production and sale at the Fed level, there would be no deficit anymore (seriously, do you know anyone but older folks who WOULDN'T be at the local hash bar if this happened?), as we could also become an exporting nation like Mexico, Brazil, Canada, or Thailand.
I am in favor of legalize, but regulate and tax, like they do for tobacco or alcohol. Hell, this would give those prison work-farms down in Louisiana and Alabama a whole new profitable enterprise.
Final comment: My sister has a Factor III disorder, and my brother and I have Factor IV/V disorders, so I literally, feel your pain when it comes to your Factor IX (Hemophilia B) issue - even if I have issues with poor circulation and too much coagulation and yours is faster circulation and poor coagulation, both cause stupid amounts of pain at times for some strange reason I don't understand. I do know it's tied into your chronic nerve pain, as it is in mine, as well as my arthritis, but for reasons unknown to me because I am not a doctor of internal medicine nor do I understand the terminology.
The problem with Win8...is that Win7 is already good enough for the vast majority of consumers (business and home), and is rapidly filling the vacancy left by WinXP.
Why would anyone want to swap to Win8 on desktops when it's obviously meant for tablets/phones? We won't even get into the nastiness that is Win8 and PC gaming - gamers are truly fucked with Win8, unless all they want to play is stupid shit like Angry Birds.
The rest of us began our suffering with the developer preview of Win8. It's going to be a security and functional nightmare. I can already foresee all of the malware being written to exploit the side-load "feature". Fake, malware-infested Metro tiles, anyone?
Google allowed them to mess with the graphics engine? OMFG, we'll end up with tablet devices that run 1990's era graphics tech. One thing that Intel sucks hard at, is their graphics hardware and software. Letting them touch anything related to that in Android and Android devices is a freaking mistake.
I do, since I refuse to carry around my own modern equivalent of the prisoner's ball and chain. I keep an emergency phone in my wife's glovebox for trips (with the battery removed), but outside of that...
I'll pass on being tracked everywhere I go and having all of my personal calls monitored and recorded, thanks. That kind of thing can be mostly avoided using a landline (tons of hardware available for sale still to encrypt/scramble/etc landline calls). I also refuse to be at others beck and call. I don't want a text message every 10 seconds, pushed ads, or incoming calls interrupting my activities.
Jarring enough when I'm eating dinner and hear my wife's cell phone (yes, she has one, but she also is not a government contractor and leaves it off and w/out battery...mostly when we are driving) going off during the middle of Vivaldi's Four Seasons.
It's still cheaper with my phone company to make local, long distance and international calls with my landline vs any cell phone plan legally available in my state. Added bonus of being able to use that line for more than just voice data, without the price gouging that comes with the average cell plan.
Fun times: Gluing epoxy into the memory card slots on mobile phones (I never get phones that have mini/micro-USB) after I've installed a high capacity card. Lots of luck to nosey police if they attempt to plug their copiers into my devices.
People complain about non-standardized charging interfaces, but let me tell you - those things can mean the difference between the TSA getting everything on your phone, or the TSA getting nothing but a headache, what with so many devices now using the charging interface to also transmit hardline data to and from the phone.
Their recording device works OOTB with Samsung, HTC, Apple, Sony-Ericsson, certain Motorola and Nokia phones. Some models from Samsung, HTC, Motorola and Nokia though don't use standardized connector types (mini/micro USB). What really gets them is those proprietary L-shaped connectors, the ones with the square lumps that can be at either end. Let's just say, that if you want to keep the private data on your phone out of their hands, don't own an iPhone, most Samsungs or Sony-Ericssons.
1) Patents and Copyrights have a fixed term of 50 years. After this term expires, there may be no extensions, and no resurrections. The length of the fixed term may not be amended retroactively or otherwise. Permission to distribute or otherwise publish during this period remains solely at the creator's discretion.
2) Patents and Copyrights may not be transferred at any point away from the creator. If the creator ceases to exist, then the Patent or Copyright immediately and irrevocably enter the Public Domain. This includes when corporate entities cease to exist due to being purchased and their assets absorbed by another corporate entity.
For example: Creator's Copyright or Patent rights do not pass down as an inheritance.
Patents or Copyrights created by employees of a company remain with the company, and the company is registered as the "creator".
Companies may not claim ownership of Patents or Copyrights for works created by their employees outside of their normal working hours. Companies may not at any time claim that employees are always on duty. Employees likewise may not bring home works that may qualify as Patents or Copyrights from their place of employment and attempt to claim them as their own when filed outside of the workplace.
For example: The company may not claim ownership on a Patent or Copyright filed by the employee while the employee is on vacation, or at home after their workday, for the purposes of attempting to avoid the restrictions of Part 2, as long as those Patents or Copyrights in question were not brought from the workplace of the employee to begin with.
3) The creator of a Patent or Copyright MUST license their product to anyone who wishes to license it in a non-discriminatory manner, and for a reasonable fee if the creator decides to impose a fee and or royalty. Length of the license term to be negotiated between the creator and the licensee. Rights of publication and distribution remain with the creator, and may or may not be included with the license to use the Patent or Copyright in question.
Third-parties may not in any way, shape, or form, interfere with or otherwise unduly influence the terms.
For example: Trade organizations would not be allowed to set the fee, add a fee (royalty or otherwise), set the length of the license, or set any other restrictions. The right to do this remains solely within the purview of the creator.
Those are some easy fixes to this mess right off the top of my head. Finer points could be added or debated, but it's 8am and I've only had one cup of coffee.
He didn't so much get paid to think it, he and some others in Congress bought into the line back in the mid 80's to early 90's that the future of the US economy was going to be "the information superhighway", the "paperless office", and "services and information".
Some of which is partially true, except nobody could have foreseen all of the consequences of what these things actually would lead to, or even meant.
On the downside, we end up with copyright laws pushed to the extreme, and corporate and financial entities that essentially get away with murder, literally and figuratively.
On the upside, even Chinese citizens have access to more information than Chairman Mao would have ever allowed, and the "Arab Spring (Cleaning)" speaks for itself.
The fact that it isn't a second-rate, sloppy, desktop operating system like any random version of "Linux" out there. Linux- good on servers and embedded systems, relatively good on security, shitty as hell on anything your average home user or student wants to own and operate.
Abysmal documentation, abysmal support (Go to a mailing list where more often than not you get ignored or told to RTFM, where TFM is a one or two-line abstract about an obtuse executable buried somewhere deep in the file/folder structure that is only accessible on the command line? Right, I should have to actually use a mailing list in this day and age.), abysmal drivers, abysmal user software in general (it never quite gets there, does it, with the exception of a few 3rd-party gems here and there, like VLC or LibreOffice).
Then you have the retarded behavior of the OS itself, like when video drivers or the network fails, for no apparent reason, and instead of trying to do something sensible like self-restart or give you a proper error message, the daemons just sit there dead and silent or dump you out to a command line...or cause a kernel panic/core dump.
Tell me again why there is apparently several different audio/print/video subsystems, but the OS apparently goes full-on retard when choosing the right one to work with your hardware? Or installing versions of the software to run those subsystems that are incompatible with the versions of the software already installed for say, the network subsystem?
Standardize on one for each critical system like that, make it work well, establish it as baseline for the entire ecosystem, THEN worry about alternatives. What's the fucking point of having so many when all you end up with is a bunch that sometimes work, sometimes not, yes this way with that other, but not this way with that other? It's a sloppy mess.
OSX is slightly better than Windows overall, but still loses because I can't install it on the hardware I choose without violating license terms. Face it, the internals of Apple PC hardware are second-rate COTS at best, often outdated within the first month of being available for sale, and the lack of timely hardware refreshes is disturbing. Way too often Apple waits until the tail-end of a particular piece of hardware's lifespan before they even integrate it into their current line of product. Video cards in particular.
They've done plenty right though, including the way they integrate some things quite seamlessly throughout their entire software/hardware ecosystem, and their support and documentation is great.
I actually like Apple laptops for instance, for many of things mentioned on Slashdot and elsewhere.
People may not like my reasons or opinions, but they are my reasons and opinions.
Say that giving more power to corporations is less evil to the people who had their doors kicked in and their vehicle trunks opened by the RIAA thugs a few years back. Say it to the people who have lost their homes due to fraudulent foreclosure paperwork by mortgage companies. I wonder which one would punch you in the nuts first.
There's every indication that they would charge less for their own services. Their services will come either with the "Turbo" built-in automatically (More than likely it will say Turbo-Enabled or something, while in the background the bandwidth will always have been there and given the highest priority in QoS to begin with), or it will be "free" for their services and the services of "favored" partners, aka, the ones who they've managed to extract a hefty fee from.
Everyone else will have to pay for artificially reduced service and then pay again per-use to have it brought back up to par of the service level they already signed up for.
This is just an end-run around and a nose-thumb at any NN rules and another money-grab that is pretty typical of Verizon Wireless. They kill several birds with this stone (artificially create bandwidth scarcity, increase revenues/profits based upon that artificial bandwidth scarcity, reduce infrastructure roll-outs, avoid any pesky FCC rules until the FCC gets enough complaints that they finally do something).
Sweet lord, that was commercial software? Sounds as bad as malware found on Windows systems, in fact, it sounds WORSE than what your average malware will do on a Windows system.
Of course, I don't think that stuff even approaches the incredibly crazy things that programs like Norton or McAffee do to a Windows OS...worst behaving commercial software packages I've ever had the mispleasure of dealing with, even the Enterprise versions are atrocious.
Actually, yes. Cheques from US-based institutions, etc have all been blocked, just like the credit processors.
This is part of the reason that Assange and crew have multiple lawsuits pending in the US, EU, etc over this.
The US Government has forbidden financial institutions (the ones that have any US presence or license to operate in the US) from honoring any payments to Wikileaks or its known associates.
It's not just that, the radio beacon will pulse on some sort of software or hardware-based (controlled by firmware) timer to locate the nearest cell radio node. It does this even if you have it turned "off".
They could easily hit those numbers with all of the cell phone/tablet devices just doing an "are you alive and where am I" connection to the nearest nodes.
Couple that with the built-in GPS in today's devices, and you'll have even more connections, even if you aren't actively using them.
That is no longer true, the new visual effects they added for Cataclysm require no less than a DX10 stand-alone card to run properly (Mobility cards are right out). The new water and lighting effects come to mind.
It's a simple issue of the admin being lazy: They have to re-run the process from the MMC panel to simply create an updated PTR. This requires a few mouseclicks, so it's understandable how it might just be too much effort for someone used to munching on Cheetos and Mt Dew.
The aforementioned Windows guy who hates it, is probably doing something dumb, like attempting to manually edit the PTR records instead of allowing the built-in tools do it for him.
Steve Jobs hasn't done anything relevant since NeXT either, and that was almost 20 years ago too. Technologically relevant that is.
iTunes: Not his - bought from someone else and had an "OSX" gui slapped onto it.
iPod: Again, not his, the tech (including patents) was bought from another company and put into an Apple case.
Repeat ad naseum for basically everything since he returned to Apple.
The man was a genius marketer, period. He was excellent at marketing these products as the talking head of Apple. This is why Apple survived though, because he was smart enough to see where there was consumer demand and a lack of "premium" status products to fill that demand.
At the time, we had relatively crappy MP3 players using AA batteries and small storage space, we had to rely on Sony for the high-end laptop market (UGH), and we had our choice of Windows, Windows, or...Windows (no, Linux was not a choice, it was essentially worthless on the desktop at the time).
The Witcher has the same issue, has to be Run as Admin or else it can cause audio subsystem issues (the DRM and oddly enough, network throttling built into Windows Audio is the culprit) and also bring the entire OS to a screeching halt as it tries to access parts for caching, etc that are now "protected" by the OS that were not protected in WinXP.
It's one of the things some programs still have an issue with if they are programmed with full backwards XP compatibility instead of the "new" way of doing things that are even a bit different between Vista and 7.
Part of this reasoning was a sly way to prevent certain bishops, cardinals, and popes from creating familial dynasties within the church. There was more than one pope or bishop who attempted to also set themselves up as "king" before this went into effect.
Fancy pants...mine was BLUE text on gray backgrounds.
In fact, most of the MUDs I connected to back then used the same thing - blue on gray. Those systems were mostly old IBM PC clones - Tandys and whatnot in my local computer lab (my local colleges were a bit progressive for the time, they let non-students/staff get time on the computers for a monthly membership technology fee provided you were a local resident, aka "townie").
Slashdot Mirror
No, the most immediate consequence was they had not only the remainder of the Legions, but every bandit group, petty authority figure, AND the conquerors of Rome pointing swords at them demanding tribute.
Hell, if they taxed the production and sale at the Fed level, there would be no deficit anymore (seriously, do you know anyone but older folks who WOULDN'T be at the local hash bar if this happened?), as we could also become an exporting nation like Mexico, Brazil, Canada, or Thailand.
I am in favor of legalize, but regulate and tax, like they do for tobacco or alcohol. Hell, this would give those prison work-farms down in Louisiana and Alabama a whole new profitable enterprise.
Final comment: My sister has a Factor III disorder, and my brother and I have Factor IV/V disorders, so I literally, feel your pain when it comes to your Factor IX (Hemophilia B) issue - even if I have issues with poor circulation and too much coagulation and yours is faster circulation and poor coagulation, both cause stupid amounts of pain at times for some strange reason I don't understand. I do know it's tied into your chronic nerve pain, as it is in mine, as well as my arthritis, but for reasons unknown to me because I am not a doctor of internal medicine nor do I understand the terminology.
Autodesk decision maybe? I don't know, as I ignore what EULAs say to start with. Once it's on my machine, I do what the hell I want with it.
Money. Lots and lots of money.
The problem with Win8...is that Win7 is already good enough for the vast majority of consumers (business and home), and is rapidly filling the vacancy left by WinXP.
Why would anyone want to swap to Win8 on desktops when it's obviously meant for tablets/phones? We won't even get into the nastiness that is Win8 and PC gaming - gamers are truly fucked with Win8, unless all they want to play is stupid shit like Angry Birds.
The rest of us began our suffering with the developer preview of Win8. It's going to be a security and functional nightmare. I can already foresee all of the malware being written to exploit the side-load "feature". Fake, malware-infested Metro tiles, anyone?
Google allowed them to mess with the graphics engine? OMFG, we'll end up with tablet devices that run 1990's era graphics tech. One thing that Intel sucks hard at, is their graphics hardware and software. Letting them touch anything related to that in Android and Android devices is a freaking mistake.
I do, since I refuse to carry around my own modern equivalent of the prisoner's ball and chain. I keep an emergency phone in my wife's glovebox for trips (with the battery removed), but outside of that...
I'll pass on being tracked everywhere I go and having all of my personal calls monitored and recorded, thanks. That kind of thing can be mostly avoided using a landline (tons of hardware available for sale still to encrypt/scramble/etc landline calls). I also refuse to be at others beck and call. I don't want a text message every 10 seconds, pushed ads, or incoming calls interrupting my activities.
Jarring enough when I'm eating dinner and hear my wife's cell phone (yes, she has one, but she also is not a government contractor and leaves it off and w/out battery...mostly when we are driving) going off during the middle of Vivaldi's Four Seasons.
It's still cheaper with my phone company to make local, long distance and international calls with my landline vs any cell phone plan legally available in my state. Added bonus of being able to use that line for more than just voice data, without the price gouging that comes with the average cell plan.
Fun times: Gluing epoxy into the memory card slots on mobile phones (I never get phones that have mini/micro-USB) after I've installed a high capacity card. Lots of luck to nosey police if they attempt to plug their copiers into my devices.
People complain about non-standardized charging interfaces, but let me tell you - those things can mean the difference between the TSA getting everything on your phone, or the TSA getting nothing but a headache, what with so many devices now using the charging interface to also transmit hardline data to and from the phone.
Their recording device works OOTB with Samsung, HTC, Apple, Sony-Ericsson, certain Motorola and Nokia phones. Some models from Samsung, HTC, Motorola and Nokia though don't use standardized connector types (mini/micro USB). What really gets them is those proprietary L-shaped connectors, the ones with the square lumps that can be at either end. Let's just say, that if you want to keep the private data on your phone out of their hands, don't own an iPhone, most Samsungs or Sony-Ericssons.
Fixes:
1) Patents and Copyrights have a fixed term of 50 years. After this term expires, there may be no extensions, and no resurrections. The length of the fixed term may not be amended retroactively or otherwise. Permission to distribute or otherwise publish during this period remains solely at the creator's discretion.
2) Patents and Copyrights may not be transferred at any point away from the creator. If the creator ceases to exist, then the Patent or Copyright immediately and irrevocably enter the Public Domain. This includes when corporate entities cease to exist due to being purchased and their assets absorbed by another corporate entity.
For example: Creator's Copyright or Patent rights do not pass down as an inheritance.
Patents or Copyrights created by employees of a company remain with the company, and the company is registered as the "creator".
Companies may not claim ownership of Patents or Copyrights for works created by their employees outside of their normal working hours. Companies may not at any time claim that employees are always on duty. Employees likewise may not bring home works that may qualify as Patents or Copyrights from their place of employment and attempt to claim them as their own when filed outside of the workplace.
For example: The company may not claim ownership on a Patent or Copyright filed by the employee while the employee is on vacation, or at home after their workday, for the purposes of attempting to avoid the restrictions of Part 2, as long as those Patents or Copyrights in question were not brought from the workplace of the employee to begin with.
3) The creator of a Patent or Copyright MUST license their product to anyone who wishes to license it in a non-discriminatory manner, and for a reasonable fee if the creator decides to impose a fee and or royalty. Length of the license term to be negotiated between the creator and the licensee. Rights of publication and distribution remain with the creator, and may or may not be included with the license to use the Patent or Copyright in question.
Third-parties may not in any way, shape, or form, interfere with or otherwise unduly influence the terms.
For example: Trade organizations would not be allowed to set the fee, add a fee (royalty or otherwise), set the length of the license, or set any other restrictions. The right to do this remains solely within the purview of the creator.
Those are some easy fixes to this mess right off the top of my head. Finer points could be added or debated, but it's 8am and I've only had one cup of coffee.
He didn't so much get paid to think it, he and some others in Congress bought into the line back in the mid 80's to early 90's that the future of the US economy was going to be "the information superhighway", the "paperless office", and "services and information".
Some of which is partially true, except nobody could have foreseen all of the consequences of what these things actually would lead to, or even meant.
On the downside, we end up with copyright laws pushed to the extreme, and corporate and financial entities that essentially get away with murder, literally and figuratively.
On the upside, even Chinese citizens have access to more information than Chairman Mao would have ever allowed, and the "Arab Spring (Cleaning)" speaks for itself.
What's keeping me on Windows?
The fact that it isn't a second-rate, sloppy, desktop operating system like any random version of "Linux" out there. Linux- good on servers and embedded systems, relatively good on security, shitty as hell on anything your average home user or student wants to own and operate.
Abysmal documentation, abysmal support (Go to a mailing list where more often than not you get ignored or told to RTFM, where TFM is a one or two-line abstract about an obtuse executable buried somewhere deep in the file/folder structure that is only accessible on the command line? Right, I should have to actually use a mailing list in this day and age.), abysmal drivers, abysmal user software in general (it never quite gets there, does it, with the exception of a few 3rd-party gems here and there, like VLC or LibreOffice).
Then you have the retarded behavior of the OS itself, like when video drivers or the network fails, for no apparent reason, and instead of trying to do something sensible like self-restart or give you a proper error message, the daemons just sit there dead and silent or dump you out to a command line...or cause a kernel panic/core dump.
Tell me again why there is apparently several different audio/print/video subsystems, but the OS apparently goes full-on retard when choosing the right one to work with your hardware? Or installing versions of the software to run those subsystems that are incompatible with the versions of the software already installed for say, the network subsystem?
Standardize on one for each critical system like that, make it work well, establish it as baseline for the entire ecosystem, THEN worry about alternatives. What's the fucking point of having so many when all you end up with is a bunch that sometimes work, sometimes not, yes this way with that other, but not this way with that other? It's a sloppy mess.
OSX is slightly better than Windows overall, but still loses because I can't install it on the hardware I choose without violating license terms. Face it, the internals of Apple PC hardware are second-rate COTS at best, often outdated within the first month of being available for sale, and the lack of timely hardware refreshes is disturbing. Way too often Apple waits until the tail-end of a particular piece of hardware's lifespan before they even integrate it into their current line of product. Video cards in particular.
They've done plenty right though, including the way they integrate some things quite seamlessly throughout their entire software/hardware ecosystem, and their support and documentation is great.
I actually like Apple laptops for instance, for many of things mentioned on Slashdot and elsewhere.
People may not like my reasons or opinions, but they are my reasons and opinions.
Example: The Democratic Republic of Congo. Makes my head spin, that.
Say that giving more power to corporations is less evil to the people who had their doors kicked in and their vehicle trunks opened by the RIAA thugs a few years back. Say it to the people who have lost their homes due to fraudulent foreclosure paperwork by mortgage companies. I wonder which one would punch you in the nuts first.
Not so false when reality smacks in you the nuts.
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Changing%20fonts%20and%20colors
Read that page.
There's every indication that they would charge less for their own services. Their services will come either with the "Turbo" built-in automatically (More than likely it will say Turbo-Enabled or something, while in the background the bandwidth will always have been there and given the highest priority in QoS to begin with), or it will be "free" for their services and the services of "favored" partners, aka, the ones who they've managed to extract a hefty fee from.
Everyone else will have to pay for artificially reduced service and then pay again per-use to have it brought back up to par of the service level they already signed up for.
This is just an end-run around and a nose-thumb at any NN rules and another money-grab that is pretty typical of Verizon Wireless. They kill several birds with this stone (artificially create bandwidth scarcity, increase revenues/profits based upon that artificial bandwidth scarcity, reduce infrastructure roll-outs, avoid any pesky FCC rules until the FCC gets enough complaints that they finally do something).
Sweet lord, that was commercial software? Sounds as bad as malware found on Windows systems, in fact, it sounds WORSE than what your average malware will do on a Windows system.
Of course, I don't think that stuff even approaches the incredibly crazy things that programs like Norton or McAffee do to a Windows OS...worst behaving commercial software packages I've ever had the mispleasure of dealing with, even the Enterprise versions are atrocious.
I live someplace that has...one Redbox machine and...one Blockbuster machine....for approximately 30 miles in any direction.
Actually, yes. Cheques from US-based institutions, etc have all been blocked, just like the credit processors.
This is part of the reason that Assange and crew have multiple lawsuits pending in the US, EU, etc over this.
The US Government has forbidden financial institutions (the ones that have any US presence or license to operate in the US) from honoring any payments to Wikileaks or its known associates.
It's not just that, the radio beacon will pulse on some sort of software or hardware-based (controlled by firmware) timer to locate the nearest cell radio node. It does this even if you have it turned "off".
They could easily hit those numbers with all of the cell phone/tablet devices just doing an "are you alive and where am I" connection to the nearest nodes.
Couple that with the built-in GPS in today's devices, and you'll have even more connections, even if you aren't actively using them.
That is no longer true, the new visual effects they added for Cataclysm require no less than a DX10 stand-alone card to run properly (Mobility cards are right out). The new water and lighting effects come to mind.
It's a simple issue of the admin being lazy: They have to re-run the process from the MMC panel to simply create an updated PTR. This requires a few mouseclicks, so it's understandable how it might just be too much effort for someone used to munching on Cheetos and Mt Dew.
The aforementioned Windows guy who hates it, is probably doing something dumb, like attempting to manually edit the PTR records instead of allowing the built-in tools do it for him.
Pre-nerf AQ40 and pre-nerf Kharazan come to mind.
WoW has become a MMO Slot Machine. Pull the handle and gear comes out.
Steve Jobs hasn't done anything relevant since NeXT either, and that was almost 20 years ago too. Technologically relevant that is.
iTunes: Not his - bought from someone else and had an "OSX" gui slapped onto it.
iPod: Again, not his, the tech (including patents) was bought from another company and put into an Apple case.
Repeat ad naseum for basically everything since he returned to Apple.
The man was a genius marketer, period. He was excellent at marketing these products as the talking head of Apple. This is why Apple survived though, because he was smart enough to see where there was consumer demand and a lack of "premium" status products to fill that demand.
At the time, we had relatively crappy MP3 players using AA batteries and small storage space, we had to rely on Sony for the high-end laptop market (UGH), and we had our choice of Windows, Windows, or...Windows (no, Linux was not a choice, it was essentially worthless on the desktop at the time).
The Witcher has the same issue, has to be Run as Admin or else it can cause audio subsystem issues (the DRM and oddly enough, network throttling built into Windows Audio is the culprit) and also bring the entire OS to a screeching halt as it tries to access parts for caching, etc that are now "protected" by the OS that were not protected in WinXP.
It's one of the things some programs still have an issue with if they are programmed with full backwards XP compatibility instead of the "new" way of doing things that are even a bit different between Vista and 7.
Part of this reasoning was a sly way to prevent certain bishops, cardinals, and popes from creating familial dynasties within the church. There was more than one pope or bishop who attempted to also set themselves up as "king" before this went into effect.
Fancy pants...mine was BLUE text on gray backgrounds.
In fact, most of the MUDs I connected to back then used the same thing - blue on gray. Those systems were mostly old IBM PC clones - Tandys and whatnot in my local computer lab (my local colleges were a bit progressive for the time, they let non-students/staff get time on the computers for a monthly membership technology fee provided you were a local resident, aka "townie").