Beta archive inaccessible to me....
So I head over to BA to check a few things and all I get is this shit telling me that it needs to verify I'm "human". The message just sits there. It is in accessible to me on this computer now.
This cloudflair crap is everywhere, which means more web sites will likely become inaccessible to me. This nonsense is one of the reasons I wish BA had kept their FTP access.
Somehow I doubt BA is being hammered by AIs... there is nothing intelligent there. :P
Comments
rather circular...
But based on the replies here, it's not really worth checking out anyway. Heard some bad things about it to be honest and have for years...
"Security". What a joke. What a sick BS joke.
You humans should briefly see that message when you first connect to a site that is infected with this naziware.
I can't deal with this crap any more.
They claim to have 200 terabytes of software. They also claim poor and beg for donations. Yet they have the monies to pay for Cloudflare.
To gain access to that 200tb of softs, you MUST first upload a software they don't already have, and you MUST do it in accordance with their "guidelines" - which is a lengthy treatise that involves many, many "DO, OR SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES", requirements to use arcane software to make CD images, standards for product images - it goes on and on..
The 2nd means to gain access is to make a substantial money "donation".
AND: the high priest Mr. pjs and his lackey andie make it clear that EVEN IF you upload something nice and/or a money donation, it is not a guarantee you will be permitted access to their stash.
That means they have your hard labor and money, and you may get NOTHING.
Now, I have done both, and found out the hard way, that they are small minded, petty and petulant as any neutered animal one might encounter.
Oh, and before I forget, if you are one of the flying monkeys in good standing with the high priest, you can upload a mutilated set of files - a turd anywhere else - IF it's a sought after one, and get praises heaped on you.
I joined that site, specifically to find a particular build of Office 2000. I did not realize what a bunch of mutual admiration types inhabited it.
Since then, I found that particular version of Office 2000, then offered it to them as well as others. Mt. pjs said it was interesting, and would be interested, but then began preaching to me.
FUCK THAT.
Since then EVERYTHING goes to achive.org - which means the whole damn world has access, not fees, not groveling, just download and enjoy.
Here are 2 of the Office 2000 offers I presented:
https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=41995
https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=36434
This "check", is blocking access to a large number of sites for non-mainstream web browsers such as PaleMoon and NewMoon. These non mainstream browsers feature better user interfaces, extended OS compatibility, customization, and sometimes needed for accessibility.
They started attacking and intentionally crashing some of these browsers through this check. The browser maintainers have fixed that crash, but now the check is artificially "freezing". Apparently just changing the user agent in a "mainstream" browser will replicate this freeze.
The "check" seems to consist of obscure scripting attacks, that will fail if things are not EXACTLY like cloudflare thinks they should be. (Expect mainstream browsers to fail too when the wind is blowing from the wrong direction).
Cloudflare claims they are not specifically blocking browsers, but that is indeed what they are doing.
From what I have read, it sounds like cloudflare is going down the toilet, and anyone using them should abandon ship.
Just as with virustotal. To broaden the market, both dilute the product to gain sales from lower tier entities. To CYA their hinnies, they flag much more, then tell their clients "see what good lads we are" to the paying fools.
Anyway, Betaarchive is a different kind of archive and that is not entirely a bad thing. The submission requirement to gain access helps keep copyright trolls out as they would have to break their own rules to get access. Personally, I don't see BA's archival rules as hard to follow, although a few details are disagreeable. Their HTTP access would be better if it worked more like Internet Archive and combined files for download.
ditto. Would check in every once in awhile, but since nothing I uploaded met their purity standards, wasn't much to comment on.
And then when they went all cloudflare hoity toity - my account was disabled.
It's one toad's private collection. When he/she/it decides - it will all be gone. Not at all in the spirit of the vintage software community.
Meanwhile, the stuff I buy gets uploaded to vetusware or archive.org - where everyone can have access.
Even Mouser, who's website is still more or less properly "old-fashioned" now has this crap.
Oh, yea, eBay has also been doing that, but so far it mostly works as long as I am logged in.
You would think a damn business would WANT people to actually visit their site and buy stuff. And don't insult them by asking if they are human.
Then again, freaking Walmart has half of their crap locked up where I can't get it now.
> Oh, and before I forget, if you are one of the flying monkeys in good standing with the high priest, you can upload a mutilated set of files - a turd anywhere else - IF it's a sought after one, and get praises heaped on you.
The rules for what's acceptable are three-tiered - one set to actually obtain archive access, and two for uploads that do not serveto obtain archive access - a less strict tier for Beta's and a middle tier for everthing else. And mrpijey has repeatedly stated his intention to get rid of that middle tiere, leaving Beta's uploaded not for archive access the only exception, and that exception exists because of the site's origins on the Beta scene.
The reason why the requirements are so high (which is something I personally don't agree with but I still understand the *why* for) is because otherwise, kids would get FTP access by uploading literal excrement like "Windows 3.0 64-bit edition codename ShortHorn". I used to help processing the queue and you have no idea how much crap like that I saw there. Unfortunately, this is because the other Administrator, Andy (which everyne seems to forget about), has always favored the quantity of users over the quality, so mrpijey then has to "build a wall and make those users pay for it" in order to prevent those low-quality users from filling the archive with low-quality stuff as well.
As for CloudFlare, I absolutely agree!
And what's wrong with that?
It's the only part I found perplexing. And why should someone have to upload a qualifying or not software to begin with?
You don't have to upload ANYTHING here at WW. or Vetusware, or win3x.org or Internet Archive Old-DOS.ru (and I'm sure, more).
The whole point of each of the sites I listed, is to share, irrespective of ones need or contribution(s). Contrast that to BA, who operates as a semi-exclusive club.
BTW, if you are going to make this personal (which is what "kids" do), then adios.
They have the legal right to, to some extent (I explaned why they can't charge admission to the archive, for example). You have every right to disagree but they also have every right to not change anything. Such is life - not everyone can please everyone else.
> You don't have to upload ANYTHING here at WW. or Vetusware, or win3x.org or Internet Archive Old-DOS.ru (and I'm sure, more).
And that's fine. Every website has its own policies.
> The whole point of each of the sites I listed, is to share, irrespective of ones need or contribution(s). Contrast that to BA, who operates as a semi-exclusive club.
It's hardly semi-exclusive, there's a lot of stuff they don't have, they even accept modern stuff (which, however, doesn't become available for download until it has met their rules for abandonware, which is at least 10 years old and out of support), and eBay is full of stuff they don't have, often for cheap as well, especially if you search in languages other than English.
Comapre that to, say, Queen Fanthology, where you don't even get to see a list of what they have until you provide something in return, and it has to something that not only they do not yet have, but it has some rare unreleased Queen demo (or live bootleg) stuff as well, that is nigh impossible to find. BetaArchive is quite some ways from that level of semi-exclusivity.
And that's not even close to say, private torrent trackers where you can't even register freely - you have to be invited in just to even read posts, so you very much have to be lucky to be friends with someone who's already a member, because not even providing something in return (ie. seeding a torrent in addition to leeching) is enough. Those are fully exclusive communities.
Now, as I said, I do personally think they should relax their guidelines a bit, but to go fully open? They can not currently afford the kind of bandwidth that would entail, at least not with the kind of storage they need (they do, after all, have 200 TB of stuff). WinWorld has considerably fewer stuff, so it makes affordable servers for offloading easier to find, and even they have limits such as 25 or so downloads a day.
As for Vetusware - you're limited to 3 downloads a day (which you exhaust with a single multi-flopppy release) unless you've uploaded stuff, but when I did that under my old account, I got "rewarded" by getting daily negative karma points at such a large amount that I'd have to upload like, 20+ releases a day to make up for it. And when I e-mailed the administrators for an explanation of why that happened and how their karma system even worked, I got silence in return.
I do applaud the Internet Archive for their effort, I just wish stuff was organized better and they improved their search engine, and found a way to sort stuff by multiple criteria, so I could sort by upload date first and relevance second. So I agree with you on that site. And on Old-dos.ru as well. I have an account on both of these websites.
Edit: And I have an account on win3x.org as well, another nice forum, but they probably have the fewest release out of all the websites listed. BetaArchive happens to have the second most, with the Internet Archive being the first, but from what I understand, the Internet Archive is run by a non-profit organization which has much more money than BetaArchive.
And BetaArchive is by far not the worst. In 2006, after OSBetaArchive closed, grabberslasher briefly reopened it as Glenda Corps, which was entirely exclusive (much like those private torrent trackers), invite-only. As was The Beta Group, which I originally founded as the Euro-Asian Beta Group (EABG), and the new administrator then proceeded to make the requirement to get invited even stricted by adding the requirement to provide an unleaked build (my own idea was to invide mature, knowledgeable people, with any actual unleaked builds being a reward for quality discussion rather than the end goal, but clearly the other guy disagreed with me). Sure, both of those died, but BetaArchive is nowhere as hard to get into as these are.
I will also add that it used to have a much milder requirement of only 10 contributing posts (so no upload of any kind of required), inherited from OSBetaArchive, but the thing is, the archive wasn't growing that much back then. It's also ironic that the group of people who started this campaign about the new guidelines being unreasonable, are precisely the ones who pressured for their instatement since they kept complaining that 10 contributing posts were not enough because people were basically just spamming their way in (which was true, because the moderators, which I was myself back then as well, had to apply personal judgment as to what was considered contributing because there was no clearly defined standard, in fact, all the rules were very vague back then).
> BTW, if you are going to make this personal (which is what "kids" do), then adios.
I apologize for the tone of my personal post. I agree I should not have responded to you that way.
That's not the concern. It's that CloudFlare has rolled out that "Verify you're a human" crap to EVERY website that uses it.
Here's a great example of how bad it is. This is the Blender Developer Archives.
At first glance, you'd think your connection to the site is bad or their server is messing up or something.
Nope, just turns out that CloudFlare can't get their system right. You have to go to the homepage to complete the "verification" and then you can access the repos.
What? It is not fine, IMO, or I would not take exception to it.
"It's hardly semi-exclusive, there's a lot of stuff they don't have, they even accept modern stuff"
What? Yes it is, IMO, or I would not take exception to it. "semi-exclusive" in my context is "private club". It's as I stated already - pay to play. Not in cash perhaps, but if you don't bring to the feet of the gods something they WANT, you don't get any goodies. The other sites I mentioned have no such exclusivity.
This is a simple truth: at some point, whoever actually owns the servers will take the goodies, close and lock the door and if they are feeling generous, then say "see ya chumps."
Cloudflare sucks. BA has lost its community spirit. Once generous and vital, now run by grumpy old demi-gods with no tolerance for the blissful ignorance of "kids".