16 Apr
2011
16 Apr
'11
6 p.m.
On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 02:06:31PM -0700, Fred Cisin wrote:
Thank you!
On Mon, 11 Apr 2011, Ethan Dicks wrote:
Honestly, I haven't used a floppy on current (at the time) systems for
almost ten years now. I went through a _pile_ of them when my connection
to the university network was via sneakernet, but that was quite few
years ago. These days, it is CDs, DVDs, USB sticks/disks. But I still
keep the images of my old Novell DOS floppies - one never knows ;-)
On 4/11/11 3:29 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
> To be realistic here -
> How much do people like us really matter in today's IT environment?
On
Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 3:41 PM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
> ?Are you assuming that gainful employment in a technical field and
> involvement in classic computing preservation are somehow mutually
> exclusive? ?That's one of the more whacked-out arguments I've heard here.
> ?(and that's saying something!) While one could interpret it that way, I took it
to mean more of "our
needs (and wants) are such a minority view that they aren't above the
noise floor for consideration for how new products are designed or
implemented."
Thank you for clarifying what I was saying.
To a lesser extent, many "modern" employers would prefer to avoid hiring
people like us. Well, at least those of us, such as myself and Tony, who
are vocal about the existence of downsides to current "progress".
It's not that knowing what Kermit is and how
to use it makes you
unemployable, it's that nobody designing modern systems cares what
Kermit users want (e.g. vanishing serial ports on modern hardware
because a USB serial dongle works for "enough" people that it's the
only option now).
"Nobody needs more than two floppy ports"
"Nobody need more than one floppy port"
"Nobody needs a floppy port" "Nobody needs incandescents"
Depends. I'm running CFLs at home wherever I can: far more light for the
same heat budget (at lot of the typical lamp sockets round here are limited
to 60 W, which means darkness with incandescents or serious light with CFLs).
Besides, my machines already heat up the place well enough, I don't want to
add a few hundred watts of halogen lights to that.
"Nobody needs a parallel port"
Oddly enough, pretty much every machine/mainboard I've bought so far still
has a parallel port. Admittedly, for printers these days I prefer to talk
to them via the network, so I either get printers that can talk to the
networkor - for those who can't - connect them to the little print server
box sitting quietly blinking on the shelf.
"Nobody needs RS232"
For very limited values of nobody. I need serial to talk to the LOMs of my
SUNs and to the (only) consoles of my Alixes. Although good USB-to-serial
adapters work quite well these days.
"Nobody needs SCSI"
Well, the root disks in my current server (which also carry the important
filesystems, like /home and /var/spool/mail) are a mirrored set of SCSI
disks. Bulk storage (like my CD collection ripped to MP3 for convenience)
is SATA.
"Nobody needs a command line"
Again, depends. For the point-and-drool masses, sure, they neither need nor
want a commandline. But I'm a Unix sysadmin by trade, the commandline is
pretty much the most fundamental tool for my work. In fact, _my_ personal
definition of a GUI is "10 Firefox/Chrome windows and 40-50 xterms". I
really like X11, it is a nice, shiny terminal multiplexer ;-)
"Nobody programs in assembly language anymore,
nor ever will again." -(Clancy and Harvey, UC Berkeley Lower Division CS)
We've been through that and while it holds true for some fields (complex
application for one), it is utter nonsense as a general statement. One
should be careful with words like 'nobody', 'never' unless one likes the
taste of crow, for that matter ;-)
Kind regards,
Alex.
--
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison