Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why I am not going to buy a computer (1987) [pdf]

thehangedman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 173 posts

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer (1987) [pdf]

#131

Post by codazoda »

mlyle wrote: post #47
horsawlarway wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Floppies were ubiquitous in the 90s, but try reading one now - it's not impossible, but you'll probably have to find some service to help you do that since it's not likely that you've had a floppy drive for close to 20 years. This is a bit rose-tinted. You can pick from a huge variety of floppy drive readers available on amazon, most for less than 20 bucks. Additionally - >As an example, I'd like to get an e-reader…

> This is a bit rose-tinted. You can pick from a huge variety of floppy drive readers available on amazon, most for less than 20 bucks. Back to 3.5" / 1440kb is not too bad. Though the new drives are kinda crap compared to old ones in reading many disks. But going back a little further-- reading Mac 800k disks, or 5.25" floppies, or things that are not DOS formatted--- gets harder and harder.

Just a little farther back, however, and things ease again to audio tape technology. I’m still able to use my TRS-80 CoCo today because it used audio. I’ve adapted a cable to my digital audio recorder.

It was built in about 1984 and it still works. It’s rather difficult to use compared to modern computers though.

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer (1987) [pdf]

#132

Post by pddpro »

totetsu wrote: post #100
pddpro wrote: post #42

People decry the energy wastage brought about by the Crypto Mining, rampant invasion of privacy & trust by mega corporations, ubiquitous presence of misinformation and vitriol in social media, mismanagement of e-waste, global climate change and the impending doom upon the entire human civilization, and a thousand things more, and yet find this article condescending. This is not to say that I agree entirely with it ei…

Our understanding of climate through global climate modelling would be nowhere without computing also.

True, but notice how I said personal computing and not computing in general. There's no denying that much of the scientific advances today would be impossible without computers in research facilities and/or universities.

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer (1987) [pdf]

#133

Post by danuker »

wheybags wrote: post #118
UncleOxidant wrote: post #6

> My wife types my work on a Royal standard typewriter bought new in 1956 and as good now as it was then. This was written in the late 80s, but I'd guess they're still using that typewriter over 60 years after it's purchase. Not saying I completely agree with his whole essay, but there's not a lot of computing equipment still in use (or considered usable) from that era. > But the cost would not be just mone- tary. It…

Tech moved incredibly fast for a while there, so a computer from 20 years ago is kinda useless. A computer from 10 years ago is not though. And if you think of a computer from the 90s in 2010, that would be useless. As the pace of development slows down, the useful lifecycle of computers will increase (I hope)

If you use Vim or Emacs on a small OS, you can code on some really old hardware.

What usually tests my patience is the lack of an SSD.

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer (1987) [pdf]

#134

Post by dredmorbius »

WWLink wrote: post #45
UncleOxidant wrote: post #6

> My wife types my work on a Royal standard typewriter bought new in 1956 and as good now as it was then. This was written in the late 80s, but I'd guess they're still using that typewriter over 60 years after it's purchase. Not saying I completely agree with his whole essay, but there's not a lot of computing equipment still in use (or considered usable) from that era. > But the cost would not be just mone- tary. It…

A laptop from 20 years ago would almost certainly have USB ports. The first computer I saw them on was a Sony VAIO in 1997. Compaq was also sporting them at the time, and of course Apple heavily adopted them in 1998. By 2000, practically every computer had them. Yes a USB stick should work with those. USB floppy drives can still be purchased, and will generally work with anything, including android phones lol. https:…

It would also have had an ethernet port, quite probably a modem port, and possibly parallel and/or serial ports. Perhaps a PCMCIA slot as well.

It's possible to establish file transfer and networking over any of these.

I bootstrapped one installation, on an early 1990s laptop, using a null-modem cable and at zmodem transfers by pasting DEB archives and tarballs into Minicom.

Once I had enough built up, I could set up first SLIP (at 57 kbps), and later PLIP networking, natted through my desktop.

That box served as a firewall for a few years until it finally fried.

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer (1987) [pdf]

#135

Post by UncleOxidant »

codazoda wrote: post #131
mlyle wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a bit rose-tinted. You can pick from a huge variety of floppy drive readers available on amazon, most for less than 20 bucks. Back to 3.5" / 1440kb is not too bad. Though the new drives are kinda crap compared to old ones in reading many disks. But going back a little further-- reading Mac 800k disks, or 5.25" floppies, or things that are not DOS formatted--- gets harder and harder.

Just a little farther back, however, and things ease again to audio tape technology. I’m still able to use my TRS-80 CoCo today because it used audio. I’ve adapted a cable to my digital audio recorder. It was built in about 1984 and it still works. It’s rather difficult to use compared to modern computers though.

Your 1984 self had nothing else to compare it to - your current self has had several computers since to compare it to to make the determination that "It’s rather difficult to use compared to modern computers though." This is part of Berry's argument as well: once you jump on the tech treadmill it's hard to get off.

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer (1987) [pdf]

#136

Post by akho »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #4

I don't own a computer. I have a pocket tablet that shows me the newspaper (and makes phonecalls). I have a screen on my desk that plays old Nintendo games. I have a typewriter which I use to write computer code. But I have no interest in owning a computer.

How do you compute things

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer (1987) [pdf]

#137

Post by forgotmypw17 »

_carbyau_ wrote: post #89
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you say that building wheelchair ramps is also a waste of time, because you can't please everyone all the time, and they're only a small percentage of the population?

You are arguing shades of grey. 1. You only have so much effort to spend. 2. You won't be able to please everyone with it. IE result. Sure, for any large enough building (significant effort anyway to spend!) expecting a reasonable chunk of the population through the door a wheelchair ramp(decent chunk of populace affected) should be du jour. Hell, it is a wheelchair ramp not rocket science, I'd be happy to see them i…

"The world" may keep changing, but "my applications" will continue to bend over backwards to accommodate every scenario I can imagine.

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer (1987) [pdf]

#138

Post by Izkata »

dredmorbius wrote: post #98

Berry's nine standards for technology are worth considering: 1. The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces. 2. It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces. 3. It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it replaces. 4. It should use less energy than the one it replaces. 5. If possible, it should use some form of solar energy, such as that of the body. 6. It s…

> 5. If possible, it should use some form of solar energy, such as that of the body.

Still working on making my skin glow, got any tips?

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer (1987) [pdf]

#139

Post by hourago »

dredmorbius wrote: post #127
hourago wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The list seems tech that is not "worth considering" but if a new technology fulfills all this criteria it would be immortal not to use it.

Immortal? Or the slightly lower bar of immoral ?

> Or the slightly lower bar of immoral?

Way better that way.

Re: Why I am not going to buy a computer (1987) [pdf]

#140

Post by UncleOxidant »

lisper wrote: post #21
UncleOxidant wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The assumption that the default mode of civilization is prosperity for all. First off, I'm not sure where you're getting that from reading this article, but maybe I'm missing something. Secondly, Berry is a Christian so of course he believes that there can be enough for all - this is (at least used to be) a central tenet of Christianity. Christ said: " 25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what yo…

> Berry is coming from the worldview that God created a world of great abundance and that if we share, there is enough for all. Sure, but he/they are simply wrong about that. The natural state of living systems is to propagate until they reach a natural limit imposed by some resource constraint or other. Our current technological civilization is an anomaly produced by the sudden release, over a period of a few hundre…

Berry has written extensively about environmental degradation. Notice the caveat above: "if we share". Human greed is the fly in the ointment. Again, he's written extensively on the impact of human greed on the environment. It's not inconsistent to think that there is enough for all and also to think that when we try to grab too much of that stuff for ourselves (more than what we need) that that mutual enough-ness (I hesitate to use the word "prosperity" here because it's accreted a lot of baggage in our hyper-capitalistic modern world) is threatened.
Post reply on HN