The concept of obsolescence is almost obsolete

9 réponses [Dernière contribution]
commodore256
Hors ligne
A rejoint: 01/10/2013

https://invidious.fdn.fr/watch?v=zbsq4-KwnE4

What makes something obsolete is it doesn't do everything you need computer in a given current year. A while a go, just for the hell of it, I bought an old programming book and the author says he wrote it in Word for Windows 2.0, a program that is now 29 years old and George RR Martin still uses Wordstar 4.0 on DOS. I would say after 2007 with Word 2007's "export to PDF" feature was added, if you just use it for single person editing, instructions were just to export to PDF because in schools even with different versions of word, let alone having word import documents exported to word, there would be typesetting issues effecting a student's grade, so since 2007, teachers tell students to just export to PDF when they're done and making Microsoft Word not as relevant as it used to be and I would say Word 2019 just made it relevant in universities for LaTeX support and other than that there isn't much new features in non-free software setting the world on fire. The biggest thing that's coming out of Microsoft these days is DXR (DirectX Raytracing) and DirectStore. (DMA SSD access for GPUs) The newest patented technology I have interest in is the h266 codec and if h265 is any indication, that codec is 7 years old and still hasn't gained any traction. I mean, it's a cool codec and it's great for storing DVD rips at 768kbps and it is used in 4K blu rays, but Youtube and Twitch doesn't use it.

If you look at music, even after 40 years, the highest quality source is still a CD (well, depending on the mastering) and people will always collect them. The issue of proprietary ubiquity is a transitional issue and eventually stuff gets figured out and patents expire, no need to re-invent the wheel when the wheel is everywhere and the patents on the wheel have expired.

It would seem most people aren't locked into software these days unless they play games, what people are locked into these days is Javascript performance and internet centralization. I think we should go back to local data storage like the concept behind Microsoft Bookshelf, it was to replace books that would be on a shelf. I'm not saying go back to CDs, but we have more advanced methods to store data locally like telephone directories that were on CDs. The entire US telephone directory was just 5GB and English Wikipedia is just 15GB.

https://invidious.fdn.fr/watch?v=yBupNdYe08g

Once you have everything you need, it's not obsolete.

PsychicEcho
Hors ligne
A rejoint: 04/05/2020

Yeah, I now regret having done away with some of my old tech..

commodore256
Hors ligne
A rejoint: 01/10/2013

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, maybe one day we'll have a "PCB Way" of ICs. I hope one day the cost of IC production will tank by 95% compared to today's prices. Today, if you want a custom IC, you can only have up to 50,000 transistors and have to spend at least a million dollars before you can get one IC made.

Maybe that will change if we ever get decent garage fabs that I can get double digit minimal volumes of a 20 year old lithography node and spend $5,000 and get a sample of 100 chips.

lutes
Hors ligne
A rejoint: 09/04/2020

> I think we should go back to local data storage

Agreed. Ideally, a distributed storage tool between authenticated peers. Everybody knows who everybody else is and can trust them for backup or simply distributed bookshelf or CD-shelf access. One or several users might be hosting a server-like utility to default to in case dynamic IPs cause a peer to be disconnected.

This could eventually get federated, allowing peer discovery through the trusted network for those who wish to, though I am not sure of the security implications. Sometimes it is better to keep things walled than to open a door and to have to figure out how to secure it.

andyprough
Hors ligne
A rejoint: 02/12/2015

Like the old BBS days. That's "bulletin board service" for you youngsters. We used to dial into them with our modems before there was much www access. Whoever had the best local bulletin board service with the biggest library of good stuff got the most traffic. Had to keep it local for the most part, because back then anything outside your local area was an expensive long distance phone call.

lutes
Hors ligne
A rejoint: 09/04/2020

There was a time when I was the privileged user of an Atari 1040st, and was hearing some talk about BBS.

However, that machine remained a mystery for me since at the time I was focusing on Latin. I learned to play chess with it though ("yooloogooloomoo" it said, each and every time you would try an illegal move), and enhanced my basic level of English with the wonderful "Secret England" games. I can still remember some of its musical themes. Unfortunately, the Lemmings floppy disk we got had the extra levels only, which could not be played without the other floppy disk, which for unknown reasons never made it to our postal address. I had to play Lemmings for days on a DOS emulator a couple of decades later in order to make up for that early blatant injustice.

Sorry I got overwhelmed by memories. The point is, at the time we would mostly call each other on landline and visit each other's book shelves (wooden shelves on which hardcover and pocket books were both stored, displayed and shared). We would play vinyls, listen to radio and perhaps play some audio tape on the radio cassette player or on a small device with large headphones. If the radio cassette player was advanced enough, we could even duplicate the content of the tapes. No evil DRM and nobody died. And we lived quite a happy life with that.

Since I am already lost in memories, I now remember we got penfriends from the US at some point. That is how I learned what "soccer" means. The origin of the name is well known but at the time it felt really confusing that football could have any other name in English than football, and that something more similar to rugby could be called football. I did not know that the full name of rugby is Rugby football. Anyway, we would rather play table tennis.

andyprough
Hors ligne
A rejoint: 02/12/2015

> Unfortunately, the Lemmings floppy disk we got had the extra levels only, which could not be played without the other floppy disk, which for unknown reasons never made it to our postal address. I had to play Lemmings for days on a DOS emulator a couple of decades later in order to make up for that early blatant injustice.

Churchill revised:
We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France,
We shall fight on the seas and oceans,
We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, We shall defeat the DOS Lemmings game, whatever the cost may be

lutes
Hors ligne
A rejoint: 09/04/2020

I got trapped in a very local history maelstrom. I am sure it is because of Churchill, or the Lemmings, or more probably all of them.

I just found that a district of the town we were living that happy life has disappeared from online consciousness.

I did not dream it, I am sure we knew some people who lived there, and it is mentioned on the OSM database. But I found no reference at all, not one single tiny hint at its existence searching the clearnet. Strangely enough, a large and quite tall building (quite tall for that rather small place) stands nearby the point where the "original" name still appears.

It is such a forsaken place that nobody really cares about it, but still, it feels as if the Atlantis was only to be found on OSM and in no other living person's memory than some random folk looking for old-time names on a map. I need to inquire, I cannot believe OSM got the name from some automated data collection. It sounds more likely to be some tentative naming which did not endure but managed to find its way on the map. The map never lies, that much seems to be true.

andyprough
Hors ligne
A rejoint: 02/12/2015

The home of many of my ancestors, Flanders, was largely destroyed in back-to-back world wars. History is cruel in the way it relentlessly swallows up places.

lutes
Hors ligne
A rejoint: 09/04/2020

Right. As if time was not enough of a monster of oblivion, people need to add even more destruction.