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The art of endless upgrading

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Re: The art of endless upgrading

#3

Post by wladimir »

geekzgalore wrote: post #2

Excellent read!

Right. The world of software is much more biological than people dare to admit. Change is a fact of life and every piece of software needs to continuously adapt (both at the side of platform interfaces and the side of user requirements), or die.

Re: The art of endless upgrading

#4

Post by auxbuss »

Great read. This is something you come to assimilate as you get older -- unless you are very wise, very young. Or perhaps it's cultural. But it something you are aware of from very early on. And so, so many folk fight it.

To put a geek twist on it, this behaviour always reminds me of kipple; the concept coined by Philip K Dick. I remember first reading about it -- in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? -- and being quite struck by the idea.

There's the First Law of Kipple... 'Kipple drives out nonkipple.'

http://www.43folders.com/2007/12/12/dick-kipple

Re: The art of endless upgrading

#6

Post by sivers »

There's a wonderful Linux distribution called Arch Linux - http://www.archlinux.org/

The best thing about it is its "rolling release" release cycle - constantly updating - every day. See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ArchLinux:About#Release...

Part of my daily boot-up of my laptop is to run `pacman -Syu`, which updates anything that updated in the world. It's so easy! Only tiny changes. Never a big new release. Just constant little updates. Feels like nothing. You don't procrastinate because there's nothing to it.

There's gotta be a good metaphor for the real world, there.

Re: The art of endless upgrading

#7

Post by robertk »

auxbuss wrote: post #4

Great read. This is something you come to assimilate as you get older -- unless you are very wise, very young. Or perhaps it's cultural. But it something you are aware of from very early on. And so, so many folk fight it. To put a geek twist on it, this behaviour always reminds me of kipple; the concept coined by Philip K Dick. I remember first reading about it -- in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? -- and being…

What makes me weary is the idea of kipple in my brain. If the Singularity comes, would uploading my consciousness be the equivalent of saving an old, cluttered hard drive? Won't a fresh install always be superior?

Re: The art of endless upgrading

#8

Post by zyfo »

sivers wrote: post #6

There's a wonderful Linux distribution called Arch Linux - http://www.archlinux.org/ The best thing about it is its "rolling release" release cycle - constantly updating - every day. See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ArchLinux:About#Release... Part of my daily boot-up of my laptop is to run `pacman -Syu`, which updates anything that updated in the world. It's so easy! Only tiny changes. Never a big new release…

Among these "tiny changes" there are also plenty of Big Things. Kernel updates and python3 migration to name two. Not to mention the sometimes conflicting packages as a result of staying on the bleeding edge.

Don't get me wrong, I've used Arch Linux as my primary distro for the last two years and I like their model a lot, but it's more than "nothing to it".

EDIT: Sorry about the somewhat gloomy reply. I agree with your comment in spirit and think the model is, despite its inevitable problems, a great one.

Re: The art of endless upgrading

#10

Post by delinka »

robertk wrote: post #7
auxbuss wrote: post #4

Great read. This is something you come to assimilate as you get older -- unless you are very wise, very young. Or perhaps it's cultural. But it something you are aware of from very early on. And so, so many folk fight it. To put a geek twist on it, this behaviour always reminds me of kipple; the concept coined by Philip K Dick. I remember first reading about it -- in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? -- and being…

What makes me weary is the idea of kipple in my brain. If the Singularity comes, would uploading my consciousness be the equivalent of saving an old, cluttered hard drive? Won't a fresh install always be superior?

Define 'superior' in this context.

Also, how do you have a 'fresh install' of what's in your brain and yet maintain the experiences that make you who you are? You are kipple.

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