Well, I bought a new computer. I say "bought" in the sense that I own it, but I can't run FASMW or anything else that I want to run, so it seems more like MicroSort owns my computer and I just paid a lot of money to sit in front of the computer and look stupid not doing anything.

I tried to run FASMW and this failed with an error message:
"For security and performance Windows 10 in S-mode runs MicroSoft verified apps."
I can't find any documentation that tells me how to get out of S-mode and run FASMW. I only got as far as a message that said:
"You may want to think twice about switching out of S mode. Especially if performance and peace of mind are your top priorities"
This is not grammatical --- the retards at MicroSoft can't write complete sentences.
Any ideas?

Another problem (not directly related to FASMW) is that my touchpad left-clicks at random times in random places. In the past I was able to fix this bug by turning off "tapping" as well as all of the other AI "features" that MicroSoft does because it supposedly knows more than I do about what I am trying to do. Now I can't find any way in the "settings" menu system to turn off tapping. Previously every time that Windows crashed I had to go back and fix this bug again. Now I can't seem to fix the bug at all.
Any ideas?

Windows has always sucked, but now it sucks beyond usability. WINDOWS REALLY SUCKS! Should I just give up and switch to another OS? I tried Linux several years ago, and it sucked too --- it was horribly slow --- all I wanted to do was write LaTeX files, but it was too slow and sucky.

I am currently writing my SIMPLE51 8051 assembler in FASM. Assembly-language is not too hard for me. I am making progress. I have no intention of releasing a Windows version, because it will certainly get blocked. I will just release a Menuet version --- Ville told me that he will allow this, and not block it --- the good thing about Menuet is that I just have to ask Ville if he hates me or not, and if he says "no" then I am good to go. Bill Gates is not so easy to get along with.

My laptop failed because first the keyboard stopped working and then the USB port stopped working so I couldn't work around the keyboard problem anymore by using an external keyboard. Windows pretty much worked though, other than the frequent crashes that involved an hour-long "update." Now my new computer is unusable, so I suppose I should try to find someone who can fix the keyboard on my old computer and get me back to where I was.

WalMart and Frys Electronics are out of laptop computers, except for the very expensive ones, due to Covid-19. Apparently everybody is buying laptops for remote-schooling because the schools are closed, and the laptop factories are shut down because of "pandemic" has caused them to fire their "non-essential workers." Frys appears to be on the verge of collapse, although the manager and all the employees tell me that Frys is going great guns --- the shelves are empty --- this reminds me of CompUSA just prior to their collapse.

Being a computer programmer these days really sucks!
I miss the good old days when my Commodore-64 just booted up in one second.
I like 8-bit assembly-language --- my new SIMPLE51 assembler is loosely based on the ISYS Forth assembler for the Apple-IIc, except for 8051 rather than 65c02 --- all of this 8-bit programming is obsolete now, though.

My prediction for the future is that we will just run MicroSoft Office and that is all --- everything else will be blocked --- the computer will be an "appliance" not a tool.
That would suck!

S-Mode is the Windows name for their walled garden. So you can only use official MS stuff for everything. And of course it is to "protect" you. Although they don't say who it is protecting you from. It certainly doesn't protect you from the spying by MS.

Anyhow, there are a number of tutorials and blogs around that explain how to switch off S-Mode.

Well, I will Google S-mode and find these tutorials and blogs that I need.
Ugh! Everything is too complicated! I'm not delving into this now --- I will deal with it later.

Assembly language programming is not my only vice. I also play Go on KGS.
I got the same block on their app --- it is written in Java --- I thought that Java was supposed to be secure, so it wouldn't get blocked.

Java isn't secure. It runs code so it can't be secured. Same with JS, Python, etc.

You should be able to leave the S mode. Example (possibly outdated).

Java was designed to be secure. I used the same ideas in my Safety Forth design.
Do you think my Safety Forth design is flawed?

BTW: I have changed my mind about making Simple51 open-source.
I don't want it to end up being sold in the MicroSoft store and/or to become part of Kolibri.

Java can't ever be secure, because it runs external unaudited code. Code can use all sorts of tricks that can't be defended against. This isn't because Java is necessarily flawed (although it might be), it is a fundamental limitation of running arbitrary code.

I haven't seen Safety Forth. Even if it is "perfect" it still won't be 100% secure. But that doesn't make it useless or unworthy. It just means users need to be aware of the inherent limitations and accept them.

Java was marketed to be secure. Avoiding pointers gives some sort of potential reliability at the cost of more complex access to low-level features but has very little to do with security (except for the buffer overflow attacks, but whether they’re avoided completely is yet another topic to discuss).

Security is an interesting topic --- I'll respond to this over in the thread about Safety Forth.

This thread is mostly about S-Mode in Windows that I never heard of before, but recently ran into with my new laptop. I will say here that I don't think S-Mode is about security --- I think S-Mode is about preventing programmers from distributing software --- the idea is that, in the future, all Windows software will come from the MicroSoft Store and MicroSoft will make money on it. This has been done before. The Super Nintendo, for example, was a closed system --- all software had to be purchased from Nintendo, and was written only by Nintendo-authorized programmers.

Similarly, I had a vehicle a couple of years ago that didn't pass the emissions test because it needed a catalytic converter. I was given a brochure stating that the government would pay up to $500 of my mechanic bill for me. Yay! Free money! The catch, of course, is that they have a short list of approved mechanics. I went to the Mexican mechanic I know and he did the job for a couple of hondo. If I had gone to an approved mechanic, I would have likely been hit with a bill for 8 or 9 hondo, so even with the 5 hondo government grant I would have still paid more.
This is fascism --- what Benito Mussolini called: "corporatism."