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Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment

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Re: Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment

#151

Post by illys »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #64
twelvechairs wrote: post #23

Replace 'computers' with 'open source software' and you are something closer to an uncomfortable truth. Open source has been critical to the advancement of our world but people who go out of their way to use and encourage open source past the basics (even fdroid or Firefox not even getting to hardware and full software stacks) are treated as oddballs even by the tech community.

Please enumerate the demonstrable advancements of society attributable to open source software. Edit: lots of downvotes, no credible responses. Guess y'all are stewing in your own cognitive dissonance?

I am confortably working on hardware 10 to 15 years old. So do all the people of my family and the non-technical friends I help. This is possible with Linux and software resulting from the free and open source communities.

With proprietary OS, all this hardware would be trashed. It would go in waste dumps or poor countries to be dismantled at high health and environment expense. And I would buy new hardware requiring more nature destruction with mining of rare materials. Finally this additional investment would decrease my financial capacity to do other things.

So to make a long story short, the many (millions?) people preserving their hardware investment with open source software are saving environment, health and money to a large extend.

And last but not least, they weaken software company monopolies, which can only be good for society as well.

Re: Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment

#152

Post by johncalvinyoung »

yamazakiwi wrote: post #55
Syonyk wrote: post #33

> Solid-state computer components, on the other hand, have no mechanical decay, so they are practically eternal. I wish. Electrolytic capacitors seem to have a functional lifespan of about 10-20 years, transistors do wear out, electromigration is a problem in chips in the "hundreds of years" span discussed, and there are all sorts of other interesting failure modes of "solid state" electronics that mean they're not g…

I recently had to replace an SSD that was only 3 years old; it's dead-dead, as in, slowed down one day and then wouldn't boot. I've never had an HDD die this fast in my life. I know this is only one example but I'm curious if anyone else has a similar experience.

Had a brand new Seagate 2.5" hard drive fail after ~60 days of laptop use, back in 2010. I was a reasonably heavy desktop user, but scarcely a stress-tester, and I didn't have any memorable drop incident or accident that'd explain the failure, either (I was pretty careful with my machines). Retailer or manufacturer, I can't recall, replaced the drive (with a refurb) and I was able to recover some of the most important new data off the old drive as it failed, but it left me pretty unhappy.

still have a few mis-named files deep in my personal directories, 2 PCs and 3 Mac migrations later.

Re: Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment

#153

Post by aj7 »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #78
aj7 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think much “computing” is done, in our sense of the word, on tablets and phones. Personally, I’ve found that almost any slightly complex, has-to-be-done-once-and p-right, action is better performed on an actual computer. And that’s not even considering writing new programs.

This hasn't been my experience. I'm able to be surprisingly effective on my smartphone. I've constructed trip itineraries, balanced outing budgets, shared shopping lists, designed room layouts, computed food and drink recipe ratios, built DJ sets, laid out wood pieces, and read books using my smartphone. Coding is probably the only thing that I find unparalleled with a keyboard and a seated position than my smartphon…

While certainly a cpu is working, I don’t classify any of that as computing. To me, computing is any app where your output is files for later use. So for instance, Apple Notes is borderline computing, and virtually anything using a browser isn’t, with the exception of running your own files.

Re: Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment

#154

Post by aj7 »

eropple wrote: post #93
2fast4you wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really agree. Programming and gaming are the only things I use my laptop for. I have my iPad for CAD and art, everything else I do on my phone. All my trip planning is done on there, all my finances, everything on the phone.

What CAD tools work well on an iPad? I'd love to try it. Fusion 360 is okay on Windows, but it's pretty bad on a Mac.

None. Trust me, you need a mouse.

Re: Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment

#155

Post by eropple »

aj7 wrote: post #154
eropple wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What CAD tools work well on an iPad? I'd love to try it. Fusion 360 is okay on Windows, but it's pretty bad on a Mac.

None. Trust me, you need a mouse.

I tend to agree, but I feel like there should be a way to come up with a good Pencil interface.

Re: Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment

#156

Post by Karrot_Kream »

aj7 wrote: post #153
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This hasn't been my experience. I'm able to be surprisingly effective on my smartphone. I've constructed trip itineraries, balanced outing budgets, shared shopping lists, designed room layouts, computed food and drink recipe ratios, built DJ sets, laid out wood pieces, and read books using my smartphone. Coding is probably the only thing that I find unparalleled with a keyboard and a seated position than my smartphon…

While certainly a cpu is working, I don’t classify any of that as computing. To me, computing is any app where your output is files for later use. So for instance, Apple Notes is borderline computing, and virtually anything using a browser isn’t, with the exception of running your own files.

That seems highly reductive a definition because then a filesystem is a requirement for computation. A lot of early computing worked only in memory and results were printed out on tape or via TTY. Moreover it seems like your definition of computing only makes sense as input into another computer program.

Regardless many of the examples I provided do produce files. When I do finances I create spreadsheets, when I share shopping lists I'm making formatted text documents.

Re: Inverted computer culture: A thought experiment

#157

Post by throw10920 »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #94
forgetfreeman wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claiming the internet is a net advance for society is a pretty hard sell in the face of the dissolution of critical institutions, proliferation of mental heath issues, and hyper-concentration of wealth it has made possible.

These critical institutions you speak of, they were not here since the beginning of time nor will they be here till the end of time. Blaming “the internet” for their dissolution is implicit assuming that they should have continued in their current form (just to begin listing the claims that are hard to sell). Further, hyper-concentration of wealth is not something “made possible” by the internet. These problems exist…

> Further, hyper-concentration of wealth is not something “made possible” by the internet

It should be pretty obvious that, even if the internet did not create concentration of wealth, it has certainly enabled it to a far greater extent than was possible before, which was the point. It would be petty semantics to argue over whether this means that it enabled "hyper"-concentration.

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