NovaPenguin

4 ms·

1.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
This could be a good location, at least personally I think so. My time on here is maybe 15-20 minutes a time. Usually once or twice a week although the last week has been a bit more frequent. ;)
2.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
Something that I always admired about Apple (at least in the past) was that they were willing to make old stuff obsolete even when it was wildly successful. iPhone killing iPod is a great example of this.
3.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
That and just having a software base that was different from everyone else. It was funny, back when MS announced the change, here I was, a big Free/Libre software guy defending Microsofts proprietary browser with a journalist from Busi
4.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
Always reminded that Nokia had one of the largest R&D budgets for mobile technology and got blind sided by iPhone and subsequent smart phones. Doesn't matter how ahead of the curve on paper you are if you cannot implement it into s
5.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
I hadn't realized this was something that was happening. My Oppo A53 (?) still has FM radio via head phones. Same with the Nokia 2710 flip. Being someone that usually lives in the low end, I have never had a phone without FM.
6.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
There are some hacky ways of getting a little distance on modern OS's, like using terminal based browsers. I'm thinking Links/Elinks but that will only get you so far and so long as the security certificates are available.
7.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
I cut my initial programming teeth on an 8Mhz (Maybe?) 8086 with 512KB RAM. Had the luxury of a 20MB HDD. At the time it felt like an ocean of storage. Nowadays it can be transferred around the world in less than a second.
8.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
I guess nowadays it is a choice, back then it was all we had! :D But good to know that we can still 'Hyper-mile' our OS.
9.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
I did not know that! There was about a 6-7 year gap between 1997-2004 where I didn't really do much with Mac's. But your timeline seems spot on, it was 10.3 when they introduced Expose into the system. A great demonstration of the
10.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
Yeah, that is unfortunately a big part of it. Via NoScript I generally run the web very lean but there is only so much one can do.
11.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
Oh yeah, I consider them some of the peak of case design. As much as it is cool to run these as a G5, keeping the case is a neat homage to what they were.
12.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
"How much computing power do I really need on a day to day basis?" I guess this is a kind of Computational Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Basic needs can be covered by the vast majority of computer hardware. But once you get to
13.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
It is kind of neat just how little power some of these older systems used. A big part was it was cheaper to make processors that used non-ceramic caps on them - but it limited the amount of power they could use due to thermal dissipation li
14.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
It is an interesting question. Apple hyper-optimized the OS for PPC when it was still relevant. Even modern PPC OS's with a good 20 years of additional compiler optimizations don't run those things anywhere near as well.
15.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
These are always handy to have around. The first day with one is like the first day with a label maker. You test everything! Some figures from around my house. Lenovo Tkinkpad T400 - 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo Laptop idles at about 10 Watts and peak
16.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
My White Whale... the Dual 2Ghz PowerMac G5 I bought for $50. Sure it took months until I finally figured out how to get the OS to install properly. Having to delve into the patch work of information on Open Firmware and even then I am not
17.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
This is why I argue that one of the best things that the Free/Libre software developer community can start doing is optimizing for lower spec machines. Microsoft and Apple are either too closely nit or drectly provide hardware to be pr
18.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
I think I first saw it running on a Geforce with 64MB of RAM. Even then it was smooth as butter. Now that I think about it, Mac OSX was doing GPU compositing back in 2000/2001 and those machine usually only had about 16MB of VRAM. I re
19.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
My go to on this was I remember running Debian on a Pentium 166 with 32MB of RAM back in 98/99. It would boot to the desktop only using 6MB. It wasn't flash but it could handle the basics. Heck Windows XP would boot to Desktop usi
20.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
It seems like this is something that happens in every high school. Our School was a Quake 1 map however.
21.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
I completely forgot about the open USB/SD card stuff even though I use it all the time. Yeah that is pretty cool. I am more projecting onto a potential of things like Linux Phones. Once they get the stability issues resolved, they have
22.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
While I post occasionally here, in terms of long term writing projects it is fascinating seeing how my own works have progressed over the decades. I must have initially written about 10 incomplete (80,000 word+) books - only to get into the
23.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
Teams is one of those things that feels like we should have solved this like 10 years ago. Same thing with online payment systems - how is it that we didn't have that stuff completely solved like 20 years ago? I mean I know the answer
24.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
It is true. If it wasn't for the side loading of Apps and app stores on Android - I would give it a hard miss!
25.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
Frank Zappa said that when he first heard Bob Dylans "The times they are a changin" on the radio, Frank believed that he didn't need to get into the music industry because the change in the world was already on its way. Frank
26.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
Bingo. I am not saying "Hey look at me, I am counter culture!" I am just being me. But usually, I am online only about once or twice a week nowadays and even then it is only for about 10-20 minutes at a time. I suspect like folks
27.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
It is funny seeing Laying flat/Tang Ping in action. People for decades have said "the revolution is coming!". It always has their own specific flavor or manner of mass action - typically in the form of something big and bomba
28.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
I think it is just a part of slightly yearning for the heady days of youth. A few times I have come across younger people who are sort of upset that they missed the earlier years of computing. I mean I get it, but they are so lucky to be in
29.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
In a way it has stripped out a little of the fun of it, but that is a very VERY minor thing by comparison to systems that now just work! As for Desktop environments, it is very rare that I have had any game breaking events on these for a ve
30.
by NovaPenguin 4y ago
Walking or cycling in that part of WA, especially in the summer sounds like a death sentence.

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