[arachne] Re: Arachne 1.87 crashes when reaching the end of the 'sent mail' list

Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!

I've been major sickly so pretty much DWR the list, but something told me to read this ... and I have to admit I am grinning.

I find it almost too humorous for words that someone thinks that Arachne is failing in the "user friendly" arena.

Anyone wanting an example of "under UNfriendly" need only play with this XP system of mine. Because of weather and limited mobility, I have a tendency to enjoy playing video games that require pattern recognition and/or logic. I can't afford to buy any, but found about 3 over on the MSN site that I can enjoy playing. That is the only time, other than when forced to by Update, that I use IE ...

Well, I downloaded a trial on one of those games the other day so I could see how different it was from the online tiny-icons-hard-to-see version. It was a great improvement, but I'd soon worn out the demo restriction and it was time to uninstall it. As part of a 'doze uninstall, one needs to do a bunch of stuff by hand ... like emptying directories that aren't empty, and deleting said directories once they are. As I set about to start *that* final phase of the uninstall, low and behold I found a program folder (i.e. directory) for something that made no sense ... I went to the yechhhy control panel to see if there was anything officially installed by that name. There wasn't. Oh, it was installed alright, but not so that control panel could remove it.

Since it was some sort of proprietary setup for MSN Gaming, I decided that a lot of the stuff in there -- for games I don't, or won't play on line -- needed to be cleaned out. I started deleting and was told I wasn't allowed to because "other application(s) are using the files" ... NOT!! So down to CLI I went, located the directory, did a del *.* on the files, and cd .. up to rd. I couldn't rd cuz directory wasn't empty! HUH????? Went back into directory and damned if every file wasn't back there again! WTF?!?!? Tried again a couple of times and it was a wash ... couldn't delete snit.

Fun and games ... yeah, kiss my grits MSN!! Back to desktop and grab the Norton Commander equivalent for 'doze, go in using it and delete all the files, go up a level to delete the directory and it is 'not empty.' All the deleted files are back.

OK, be that way ... I'll beat you yet! uh huh ... Went to My Computer, went to the directory, hit Edit, Select All, DEL ... all the files disappeared. And then less than 5 seconds later all the files were BACK!! Something somewhere is pulling the deleted files out of trash and putting them back ... that was obvious. So I set out to defeat that, since I run Norton with its protected trash can, I can delete everything in the 'recycle bin' if I'm quick enough, thus removing the files beyond the reach of the malevolent hidden "neeener neener program" which insists I am to have no control over my own computer when it comes to MSN games. So I once again Select All, once again DEL all, and quickly empty the recycle bin so the files are not there to be retrieved. Finally, I've beaten M$N at its crooked game .... NOT!!!!!!!!!! mutter mutter muttter curse cuss fume

Nowhere did I see anything on MSN terms of use which said I'd be forced to keep their software on my HDD. Today/tonight I will look again, and read everything VERY carefully. If it's not there, this invasion and removal of user control will be blogged and flogged as far across the nets as I can manage. And if any of you know an attorney with the tech knowledge to fight this type of "system invasion and takeover" case, please write me private to let me know ... OK?

And now you might have some idea of why I damn near laughed out loud to see someone bitching about Arachne not being user friendly.

l.d.

Arachne at FreeLists
-- Arachne, The Web Browser/Suite for DOS and Linux --

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