Software Archives - The Silicon Underground

Adobe’s subscription model

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 06 May 2026 11:00:24 +0000

Before May 2013 there was always question about whether you actually owned software after you paid for it. But before May 6, 2013, you certainly had more control. That was the day Adobe switched to a subscription-only model for its

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What happened to Procomm Plus

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 11:00:15 +0000

Procomm Plus was the ultimate terminal emulator of the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was a product of Datastorm, a small software company based in Columbia, Mo., a college town about halfway between St. Louis and Kansas City. Obsolete

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Google Chrome launched September 2, 2008

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 11:00:53 +0000

On Sep 2, 2008, Google launched its first beta version of the Chrome Web browser. For better and for worse, this was transformational both for Google and the web. While this was the browser that finally freed us from the

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Does finished software really exist?

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 17 Jan 2024 12:00:27 +0000

A blog post titled “The beauty of finished software” went viral a week or two ago, and it puzzled me a bit. The blog post wasn’t terribly long. It was just a few paragraphs extolling the virtue of something it

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What network drivers are

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 12:00:27 +0000

What are network drivers? What is a network driver? It’s a valid question, no one’s born knowing this stuff. In this blog post, I’ll explain network drivers, why they’re important, and where to find them. What are network drivers? Network

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What does legacy mean in software

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 13:03:52 +0000

In computer software and general IT circles, you will sometimes hear the phrase legacy thrown around. And you may hear some conflicting information about what legacy means. So let’s talk about what legacy means and software, and computers in general.

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Make PDFs searchable in Windows

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 14:03:02 +0000

PDF, or portable document format, is a somewhat problematic but very useful file format, especially for people who conduct a lot of historical research. But the problem with having megabytes or gigabytes of historical data on your computer is finding

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Fix a black screen in Firefox

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 14:03:29 +0000

Occasionally when using Firefox, it will interrupt you by blanking the screen momentarily, and then The screen returns, and it may or may not show the same window it was showing before the screen blanked. Here’s how I fixed my

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Rebuild an XLSX file in Python

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 30 Nov 2022 14:03:01 +0000

I ran into a compatibility issue with the formatting in an Excel file. When I tried to open the file in a Python program using Pandas, as one does, I got the following error: ValueError: Colors must be aRGB hex

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Twitter vs Mastodon

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 21 Nov 2022 14:03:31 +0000

Twitter’s instability over the course of 2022 caused an unprecedented number of people to seek alternatives. The alternative that appears to be the most viable is Mastodon, an open source social network with some clear similarities, but also notable differences.

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