word processor history -- interesting article (Evan Koblentz)

[Swift Griggs]

On Thu, 7 Jul 2016, Mouse wrote:
> I see it in monitors.  I've been repeatedly annoyed by modern
> flatscreens that refuse to even try to do what CRTs from twenty years
> ago routinely did.

I'll pile on, too. I'm always grumbling about monitors that use some kind 
of super-crap algorithm to scale the bitmap (bicubic smear-a-polation). 
Lord have mercy, just give me the damn pixels on 1/3rd of the monitor and 
give me the *option* to scale it if I want. Why is it so hard to 
understand that nobody wants to run an LCD in it's "non-native" 
resolution. It always looks like crap! 

> "The most amazing achievement of the computer software industry is its 
> continuing cancellation of the steady and staggering gains made by the 
> computer hardware industry."  - credited to Henry Petroski by someone on 
> a mud I hang out on.

Well, there is a bright side to this, also. When you run older OSes or app 
software on new modern hardware, it's amazingly fast. I guess the key is 
to upgrade your hardware and just ignore most "advancements" in software. 
However, I'm sure most folks just head-nod at the normal pat-response: 
"But but but, you won't get security updates!" My response is that if a 
modern "IT guy" can't figure out how to put that system behind a firewall 
and properly take steps to version-lock the environment: fire him. He's a 
shill for the Evil Ones trying to sell us all tickets on the upgrade train 
with a free side of snake oil. Defense in depth means you *can* defend at 
multiple points, not just rely on the vendor to constantly give you blind 
binary patches for the OS and call that "good". Yet, when I talk about 
version locking as a set of procedures, people often don't even know what 
I'm getting at. They haven't even been introduced to the idea and only 
know the corporate refrain of hyper-upgrade-orthadoxy. It's a real 
accomplishment for the software industry, really. I can't think of any 
other instance where fat-cats are easily convinced to spend vulgar amounts 
of money on things that actually don't add squat to the bottom line. Is 
there that much peer pressure at the country club? Are the sales reps 
really *that* hot?

On a related note, even though I have an Amiga 3000, I often use UAE 
because it's just so damn fast. It's fun, sometimes to see The Last Ninja 
at 1000 FPS. :-P

-Swift