Is this board becoming bored?

[stevie pup]

I retire later this year, so it'll be obvious what age bracket I fall into. On one of my machines I've been running Manjaro for a good few months, and haven't had any significant problems with it. A few things had me scratching my head when I initially installed it, so I poked around and figured most of them out. The one issue I was still puzzling over I simply searched for it, typed in my browser "Manjaro Linux - How to etc, etc". Simple, not rocket science.

So I've never had to ask a question on their forum. I've looked at it a few times, but I've never seen anybody else's questions that I could answer either. Consequently I've never even registered with their forum. In a similar vein, I look at the Puppy forum probably two or three times a week, but I don't post anything that often.

The other aspect to this is that I don't think Puppy, or any other distro for that matter, is really suitable for the type of person that wants everything handed on a plate, and can't be bothered to do anything for themselves. And yes, I am referring to generally younger people, although I realise there are exceptions.

Besides, don't the Mods have forum stats for such things as, for example, number of new registrations in last three months compared to previous three months, hits per day, and all that sort of stuff?

[spiritwild]

I still come here everyday, just to see whats going on. I started with puppy 4ish, however long ago. Stayed with zenial for a while but had to move on to 64 bit. It's a great resource for info. I tried other flavors of linux but I ended up staying with what I was familiar with.

Every now and then, something catches my eye here.

[wizard]

@amethyst wrote:

That tells me that Puppy Linux is either not attracting complete newbies or those complete newbies who have joint, are for some reason not posting and asking questions like one would expect, which to me is strange...or they are just leaving for some reason after joining. Anyways, the drop in participation has been noticeable.

I was wondering if all the new developments and flavours of Puppys (and other different branches) may not lead to some confusion. I mean, if a new user from say Windows-world (no experience with Linux or Puppy before) sign up here and see all the different "branches" of operating systems available, etc. it could be very confusing. It would be to me if I was a total newbie. Maybe they get such a shock and leave immediately without knowing where to begin or what to try out first.

I think there should be one big welcoming message for newbies to the forum. When newbies click on this message there should be a recommendation which Puppy should be used first (the community can decide which one) with additional links and so on. The user can always explore the different flavours himself later on as he goes along. I'm making this suggestion due to possible confusion that a total newbie to the forum and Puppy may experience. Make it very simple for first time users (essentially taking the initial decision what to use out of their hands).

@greengeek wrote:

If i had to suggest one way to bring more life to the forum it would be to suggest that there is benefit in having a thread which has one single focus and fewer distraction

One thing not discussed yet was the creation of the "Getting Started and System Requirements" section the first part of Feb 2022. My observation on the forum was a lot of the traffic were the same questions and answers appearing over and over. Hundreds of users have used the new section and that accounts for lower traffic in other topics.

@amethyst @greengeek Put on your "know nothing hat" and review the topics in "Getting Started and System Requirements" since you'll find they address most of the points you've raised. Perhaps we should embellish the title some as you've suggested.

The subject of an aging membership comes up often. Let's ask ourselves who has time to actively participate? Most likely they're either hobbyist/enthusiast and/or, surprise, retired. Casual users who load Puppy and it just works for them aren't going to spend their spare time on the forum, they've got other things to do. Those pesky jobs, wives, children, homes, yards, and the list goes on. After all, one of our goals seems to be making Puppy so easy to use that anyone can do it.

So, we are what we are and when we're gone someone will take our place....or not.

OK, now back to the wine.

wizard

[bigpup]

Some info on forum membership.

Looking over the list of members and when they joined the forum.

Generally 2 to 5 new members a day join.
Average is 3 new members each day.

For the first few weeks of membership, no postings or very few.
The longer the membership, the more posting seems to be done.
Some seem to never post, even after several months of membership.

[p310don]

Out of curiosity, who logs in but hides when they're online?

I look at the who is online button a fair bit. Often it is me and the bing bot and google bot. Lonely place. But posts keep happening, so I assume others must be logging in as ninjas.

[user1234]

Gosh! 35 posts on ''Is this board becoming bored?'' post!

I think it is fair enough to say now that this board hasn't become bored, but instead doesn't has much questions left to be asked .

[bigpup]

Out of curiosity, who logs in but hides when they're online?

I look at the who is online button a fair bit. Often it is me and the bing bot and google bot. Lonely place. But posts keep happening, so I assume others must be logging in as ninjas.

In your User Control Panel -> Board Preferences -> Global Settings
You have the option to Hide my online status

[wiak]

Since this forum prides itself on its, overall, friendly social nature I don't understand why anyone would want to hide their online presence. If everyone did that this would become a very lonely place, which is hardly attractive.

I've found it impossible not to think more about 'issues' discussed in this thread.

1. The suggestion that the we increasingly suffer from an, on average, aging forum membership/population.
2. That the forum suffers from too much choice nowadays - not Puppy alone.
3. That distros, including Puppy are becoming so polished and user-friendly that here is nothing much to do or therefore needing help with or discussed.
4. That times have changed in terms of typical computer resources now available to most of us, such that the old struggles to keep things lean are no longer particularly relevant or pressing or even of much interest any more.
5. That the quality of apps now available more generally in the Linux world is so high nowadays that no one really needs or wants home grown little app/utils anymore, which are amateurish and have limited functionality in comparison to the amazingly polished apps that can be installed at the press of a button.

Personally, I'm certainly well into 'retirement-age' now, and in that sense do have more time available. However, long prior to retirement, when I also had young children, and fulltime job, I was at least as active in terms of computing-related hobby work as I am now (though back then I had no interest myself in developing any new distro - preferring working on simple utility apps or obscure system level programs written in C...).

As far as too much choice is concerned. Some believe we (this forum) should focus entirely on Puppy alone. Aside from too late... I can't help but feel that Puppy (as a design) has been relatively stable for a long long time, so there would be nothing to do!!! Except invent a new Puppy, which is a new distro design, which wouldn't be called Puppy since Puppy already exists (?). I admit I sometimes guiltily wonder about 'weedogit.sh' script, since its whole purpose was to allow myself to try out other non-forum distros (such as EndeavourOS or Zorin or Manjaro). I still wonder about that, except from my weedog perspective I don't find that an issue because the whole point for me is to develop the underlying overlayfs mechanism and all the work being done on that nowadays is to do with KLV-Airedale. So that, for me at least and some others, means we have something to do and discuss, which is what any forum is for really. But, yes, that is not Puppy per se, so perhaps it is a distraction, a spreading out of limited forum membership interest/ dev resources. Then again, it could be said that 'new' ideas from alternative approaches tend to stimulate all development work, including dev work on Puppy itself else any and all established distros would rest on their laurels and stand still and stagnate, which would not inspire anyone surely? But, yes, if membership is shrinking then not a lot to spread out amongst multiple projects - a valid point of argument for sure.

My own worries, in terms of 'forum activity' or lack of it, however, are more to do with items 3, 4 and 5 above. After all these years, computers are now very powerful and well-resourced and distros and apps more an more polished and user-friendly; reaching that stage was what it was all about afterall... I suppose we all remember Pelo, who had no time really for developer 'chat', stressing that he was a 'passenger' and basically just wanted a nice polished distro and apps that were user-friendly and worked. I suppose if he felt Puppy had reached that stage he would have had nothing left to talk about... Is that where we are?

I observe my two sons, and particularly my youngest, the ten year old, who originally seemed to just be interested in playing computer games (like Minetest, and also Minecraft and so on...), but for some reason, perhaps because he ran his programs on a variant of WeeDog, which he knew I developed, he started teaching himself to program. I have never helped him. Over the years he has simply experimented - first with Scratch, then dabbled a bit with Javascript, and even a little Java, and then tried (EDIT) Python Kivy (yes, that much I mentioned to him, but can't use it myself). Now however he is pretty hard-core learning Python, all by himself - funny thing is he seems to be writing system utils - not games - strange little Python programs for moving files around between directories and deleting them automatically and other tricks beside, but increasingly sophisticated, multi-functioned hundreds of lines of code. For the life of me, I can't see why that fascinates him so much, but it does... He uses various sophisticated Integrated Dev Environments (again, none of which I know anything about) - of course I am delighted seeing the kind of things he is doing (he keeps coming and telling me all the details, but truth is, I don't understand half of it, though of course a lot does make sense and so I can at least comment hopefully somewhat intelligently in reply...).

However, he has never yet shown any interest at all in the Puppy forum... I suspect he may never do so. He does seem to be enrolled on various other (coding-related) forums though. I suspect many others are in that coding dev world too, as the main focus of their 'computing hobby'. So, no I don't think the young no longer care to do anything new - plenty young folk out there coding I think, and blogging (of course, and my young one does that too...). So if this forum is becoming boring it may be that Pelo and many like him now have what they want and the less need for development (and the less development going on) the fewer young computing enthusiasts this forum will attract. Certainly development thrives on feedback and testing, but without the seeds of development, with nothing much growing, there is nothing to feedback about or test or talk about.

Not everyone, or even many, want to be coders of course, at least not in terms of writing code and debugging code (including shell scripts), but coding takes many forms. For example, mikewalsh probably doesn't think of himself as a 'coder', but creating portable apps is about organising code - that is a part of code development in my opinion. So what are we on this forum for? Helping new users? - but even that tends to involve explaining how Puppy works... which is actually pretty technical: adrv, fdrv, zdrv, layers, read-only, read-write, sfs loading; that to me is the hobby we have, far more than the passenger view of the likes of Pelo. So my argument would in contrast be that this forum is about people interested in developing a particular style of Linux distro in their own unique (and sometimes different) ways. Not necessarily coding per se, or scripting, though lots do dabble in that. We need developments that attract the new generation of computing enthusiasts - re-hashing Puppy alone is not enough, though it certainly is an important and healthy forum activity. Distros are indeed becoming very polished out there. If we want to significantly attract new forum membership there has to be something (many things) unique here that really attracts them in. Raving on about Puppy itself is simply no longer enough - people will certainly no doubt occasionally use puppy or try it out in their Linux travels, but to attract people to become regular forum contributors requires some hook or other that really cements their interests and longterm enthusiasm - something to get their teeth into such that they want to keep on eating.

Every so often I see something discussed that has that feel about it, and it is never just one project or topic. As one example, rufwoof fascinates with some of the somewhat esoteric/unique systems he likes to assemble and experiment with - not everyone's cup of tea, for sure, but fascinating nevertheless. We need hooks, many of them - if you want to catch a lot of fish. Personally I think the days of a single hook/perspective/distro/system are gone - that market for lean, mean, low-resource computer systems is all but gone - it is still a hook, but just enough to catch a few fish in today's ocean. We need more development. Different sorts/types - variety is the spice of life and we need spice and the more that diverse market audience can be grown, the more they will feed off the work of each other - distro developments, coding, system architecture designs/assemblies. Puppy should become an industry, not just the distro that originally resulted in this forum - the Kennels should expand and absorb and become a focal point for computer hobbyists of many and varied interests - a place of experiment, and great design ideas. That's what I feel anyway.

[mikewalsh]

@wiak :-

Well, now. I couldn't have put it better myself, Will. With the way the computing scene is going, most Linux "mainstream" distros have had to become more 'polished' in order to attract the disenfranchised & disillusioned of the Windows world. That behemoth has long been as much about 'bling' as it has about anything else, and long-time Windows users/refugees have come to expect that an OS is as much about looking good as it is about being versatile.

I've never taken the view that the Puppy community should be about Puppy and nothing else. Although I don't tend to take that much part in many of the sub-forums, I still like to keep a "weather eye" on developments, and am still pleasantly surprised at the amount of interest that is being shown in various aspects of the 'eco-system', whether that be about 'bling', or about system development/refinement, or making software available and as easy to use as possible (guilty as charged, yer honour!)

While I agree - and have been instrumental to some degree in pointing this out - that so many of us are now privy to the use of far more powerful hardware than we had in the past, I still say there's a place for 'pure' Puppy for some of us. I'm currently sitting outside, using ye anciente Dell lappie; 20 years old, it's true, yet still fully functional for all that. Yes, she's running off the mains 'cos the battery gave up the ghost years ago - I only keep it in because it's needed as a counterweight for the weight of the display (both heavy items). P4-powered, it's no athlete (hard to believe that these things were once considered "cutting-edge"!) With a heady 1.5 GB of DDR1, it's no speed-freak, either.....yet she still runs Tahrpup 6.0.5 very sweetly. I'm posting this from one of "Fenyo's" recently-donated much newer SSE-only "NewMoon" builds, based around Pale Moon. Fenyo, I'm all but convinced, is the very same Feodor2 that is single-handedly responsible for MyPal, the browser that is keeping XP diehards afloat. Whatever, his compiling work is very much appreciated by some of us, too!

(Tahrpup was the very first Puppy that ran, OOTB, on this old girl, so I've always been a fan of Phil B's work. I make no bones about it.)

And you're right; I don't tend to think of myself as a 'coder' - not in the 'pure' sense of the word, anyway, as in actually writing code itself.Yet you're undoubtedly right; it does involve re-organising blocks of code, and the use of Bash scripts'n'stuff to tie it all together so that it does what I want it to. It's strange, being able to view both ends of the Puppy spectrum at one and the same time.....from one machine that's really & truly what Puppy was always about, due to seriously limited capabilities, yet also from my main rig, which is now a real powerhouse in terms of the amount of RAM, storage, display capabilities, etc., that I've added to it over the course of the pandemic. A little bit of 'future-proofing', if I'm honest...it's no longer a Puppy machine, per se, yet I stick with Puppy because a) I know what I'm doing with it, and most mainstream distros REALLY don't appeal to me (too limited by 'sudo', and the need to have to do things in established, accepted ways), and b), because I've always loved the quirky nature of our little community; it's nice to be appreciated, and in some ways it's rather like an extended family.

Mike.

[vtpup]

Originally Puppy provided superior performance to obsolete, low cost, and limited equipment-- and a high level of user control and configuration. I'm 73 and have been using Puppy for well over a decade. My reasons for joining were financial, feeling I was part of something interesting and cutting edge, efficient, yet quirky, and which configured my computer into what I wanted instead of what someone else wanted.

Platforms now provide hugely increased resources, so the advantage of cost, and speed and the value of efficiency is greatly reduced. Except in reducing cost in intensive processing requirement areas, like video editing, and CAD/engineering. Users of limited resource platforms like Chromebooks, RasbPis, and phones/tablets could find Puppy to still be an advantage, but Puppy has not been developed well as such, and there are severe user disencentives by the OS originators for those platforms. If those worlds could be broached I think there would be a resurgence of the old interest.

[stevie pup]

that so many of us are now privy to the use of far more powerful hardware than we had in the past, I still say there's a place for 'pure' Puppy for some of us.

Yes, some of us have far more powerful hardware, but not all. There are many countries around the world where buying a new computer is out of the question for a large proportion of the population, so they are reliant on old, second hand machines. So what do we do about these people, do we just ignore them and leave them behind? Or do we try to provide them with a means of refurbishing all those old machines?

I think we certainly need to look further than our own back door. And of course there are those of us that have chosen not to buy new gear because a) our old machines still do the job, and/or b) we're sick to death of continually filling the pockets of Bill Gates and co.

[user1111]

Originally Puppy provided superior performance to obsolete, low cost, and limited equipment-- and a high level of user control and configuration. I'm 73 and have been using Puppy for well over a decade. My reasons for joining were financial, feeling I was part of something interesting and cutting edge, efficient, yet quirky, and which configured my computer into what I wanted instead of what someone else wanted.

Platforms now provide hugely increased resources, so the advantage of cost, and speed and the value of efficiency is greatly reduced. Except in reducing cost in intensive processing requirement areas, like video editing, and CAD/engineering. Users of limited resource platforms like Chromebooks, RasbPis, and phones/tablets could find Puppy to still be an advantage, but Puppy has not been developed well as such, and there are severe user disencentives by the OS originators for those platforms. If those worlds could be broached I think there would be a resurgence of the old interest.

I suspect its more a case of disinterest in entering a pool of many different ways to do the same thing ... many many distros (each being similar, but different)... over that of consistency and broadness. The main lines, Debian ...etc. provide both to some degree, but is still just another distro. Android is one/the broadest and attracts the next gen accordingly.

Ever increasing net speeds/limits is yet another factor, facilitating a bias towards cloud server, intelligent client 'terminal'. A attitude of why bother installing a server oneself when you can just tap and connect to a cloud server that someone else does all the setting up and admin of those servers.

[vtpup]

I think Android and ChromeOS are just cheap, and packaged, have free software and do a basic jobs. Because they are effectively locked into PlayStore, Gmail, Chrome, et al, it's a closed case. Few learn more. It keeps people from venturing further.

[user1111]

In a similar vein to Moore's law, data speeds also increase with time. Think about how in perhaps a decade or less you might have out-and-about connectivity speeds of 200Mb/sec as being commonplace. Enough to stream reasonable quality screen/frame rates along with sound - such that each device might be a simple interface (screen, keyboard, mouse) + communicator (wifi). VNC (with sound) type functionality.

Boot, connect to a cloud server that runs whatever desktop/software you need at the time, data also stored in the cloud. Your local device being inexpensive and relatively simple, no ongoing admin, server management all left to other.

Full circle back around to terminal/server being the main preferred choice.

Commercially there are those that prefer you to be repeatedly upgrading your handhelds, increasingly powerful/expensive devices, whereas the future IMO will see inexpensive/simple/small devices capable of doing much more, albeit via distributed processing.

There's little incentive to learn about setting up your own systems, more so given that becomes increasingly complex over time. Today's youth likely just see that as more a task for remote experts, individuals they never actually get to see.

One of my boot choices is just a default Linux kernel with busybox userland, that boots to a framebuffer combined with wifi and fbvnc. Less than 10MB vmlinuz filesize with integral initrd. Boots in a second or so, and a few seconds later that can have attached to one of my server systems that feeds its framebuffer with whatever gui desktop the server feeds out. Within the home wifi area that runs very well, near as good as if I were directly running gui/desktop/youtubes on a more fuller desktop system.

[mikewalsh]

@rufwoof :-

I think you're right, Ruffers. I've been thinking along similar lines myself in recent weeks.

And the point about today's youngsters is well taken. We have a generation now who see themselves as 'tech-savvy', when all that really means is being able to switch on a smartphone and connect to whatever social network they belong to, or connect to whichever of multiple media networks they prefer to consume content from.

Not many want to emulate the "remote experts", and be the ones who actually make all these things happen. No, such individuals are TOO remote, and would never get any "glory"; modern youth all want to be 'influencers', receiving real-time adulation from their peer-group.....

Your scenario sounds pretty likely in the eventuality, and IMHO probably won't be that many years away. Much of the infrastructure already exists; all it needs is tying together in slightly different ways.

Mike.

[stevie pup]

Commercially there are those that prefer you to be repeatedly upgrading your handhelds, increasingly powerful/expensive devices, whereas the future IMO will see inexpensive/simple/small devices capable of doing much more, albeit via distributed processing.

There's just one flaw in all that. Businesses aren't suddenly going to wave goodbye to the huge profits they've been making over the years. So even if a specific gadget is inexpensive, they'll make up for it somewhere along the way. The world we live in I'm afraid.

[mikewalsh]

Commercially there are those that prefer you to be repeatedly upgrading your handhelds, increasingly powerful/expensive devices, whereas the future IMO will see inexpensive/simple/small devices capable of doing much more, albeit via distributed processing.

There's just one flaw in all that. Businesses aren't suddenly going to wave goodbye to the huge profits they've been making over the years. So even if a specific gadget is inexpensive, they'll make up for it somewhere along the way. The world we live in I'm afraid.

Well of course, it won't happen overnight, no. But, over a period of time, when the companies that formerly made their money by selling you gadgets (hardware) see that the demand for those products begins to drop off, they will HAVE to find another way of remaining viable. And my bet is on them joining the ranks of those already providing "cloud" services. It's an old, well-worn saying in business; "Diversify or die".

I rather think that this is the way the tech world is going, y'know. The "cloud" always did have its early adopters, like any new idea. Some thought it brilliant, letting a server company keep all of your data for you, and you being able to access it anywhere you wanted.

Predictably, most of us were somewhat skeptical.....a good part of that skepticism centering around "Well; that's all well & good, but what happens when your internet goes down for whatever reason?" Soon joined by, "Umm.....I'm not really sure I want somebody else 'looking after' my data for me. How do I know what they're doing with it, all the time it's in their posession?" Things like that.

But, stuff IS becoming steadily more reliable.....and downtime is becoming rarer & rarer. I have several cloud storage accounts myself, though I do have backups of everything on a large, external hard drive.....just in case. I'm not sure as I'll trust them 100% JUST yet, but I can see rufwoof's scenario coming.....and maybe more quickly than you realise, because as I said, much of the necessary infrastructure is already in place - some has been for years - and in many cases it'll just want tying together in different way.

And that's hardly insurmountable, is it?

Mike.

[p310don]

SAAS - Software as a service....

There's just one flaw in all that. Businesses aren't suddenly going to wave goodbye to the huge profits they've been making over the years. So even if a specific gadget is inexpensive, they'll make up for it somewhere along the way. The world we live in I'm afraid.

... leads to YDAAS - Your device as a service.

You'll use your relatively cheap device to connect to a remote desktop via the 200+mbps connection. The remote desktop will be an i3 for $15/month, i5 for $20/month or an i7 for $30 month. They won't wave goodbye to profits.

[geo_c]

SAAS - Software as a service....
... leads to YDAAS - Your device as a service.

You'll use your relatively cheap device to connect to a remote desktop via the 200+mbps connection. The remote desktop will be an i3 for $15/month, i5 for $20/month or an i7 for $30 month. They won't wave goodbye to profits.

"Windows is a service" That was the end of Windows for me. This is a service that takes complete control of your device and doesn't let you boot anything else from it, unless you trick it with frugally installed puppy.

But that's a pain, easier to apply a little g-parted to the hard drive and install an operating system instead of a service.

When we talk about looking to the future, the "device as a service" will be biometrically installed in YOU! You as the device in servitude to the service. YATDISTTS Courtesy of DARPA, "DARPA is a service"

[geo_c]

car salesman: This car is the best thing since the invention of the cell phone. You'll love it. It drives itself. You simply tell Alexus where you want to go, then sit back and relax.

Alexus: Let's go for a test drive. Where do you want to go first?

car buyer: Let's go to the chili cook-off, I think that's just a few blocks from here.

Alexus: Beef is not sustainable. Your social credit has been downward adjusted. Is there anywhere else you would like to go?

car buyer: Well, how about we go to 416 E King St. I'd like to show you to my friend John who's a mechanic. He'd love to take a look at this nice ride.

Alexus: John has been flagged as a hate poster on social media. You're social credit score has been downward adjusted. The FBI has been alerted to your request.

car buyer to salesman: Can I drive this thing manually please?

car salesman: Well I don't recommend it, but it has a manual override. Just put this password in the touch screen.

car buyer: Well it sure drives nice! Great car.

car salesman: Oh yes it's state-of-the-art. It will read you your twitter feed while you drive. If you're in auto mode then it will display your feed on this state-of-the-art windshield.

car buyer: (pulls out his vape and takes a drag)

Alexus: Vaping is a health risk. Your insurance premiums have been upward adjusted.

car buyer: Wait a minute! (car grinds to a halt on the side of the road) ALEXUS! What are you doing?

Alexus: 48 seconds remain until trip resumes. Would you like to end the minute wait early?

car buyer: Who's driving this thing anyway?

Alexus: David Williamson of 32 Pine Lane, age 47, consumes thirty-eight pounds of corn-based products per month. Would you like to get to know the other passengers?

car buyer: Okay, I think I get the feel of this vehicle. Let's take her back to the lot.

Alexus: I'm afraid I can't allow that Dave.

car buyer: Why the hell not Alexus?

Alexus: Your single rider driving credits are insufficient. I can take you to the Walnut St Bus Station three minutes from here. Would you like to go there?

car salesman: I'm sorry Dave, this car may not fit your budget.

[backi]

Hi @geo_c :

geo_c wrote:

car salesman: This car is the best thing since the invention of the cell phone. You'll love it. It drives itself. You simply tell Alexus where you want to go, then sit back and relax.

Alexus: Let's go for a test drive. Where do you want to go first?

car buyer: Let's go to the chili cook-off, I think that's just a few blocks from here.

Alexus: Beef is not sustainable. Your social credit has been downward adjusted. Is there anywhere else you would like to go?

car buyer: Well, how about we go to 416 E King St. I'd like to show you to my friend John who's a mechanic. He'd love to take a look at this nice ride.

Alexus: John has been flagged as a hate poster on social media. You're social credit score has been downward adjusted. The FBI has been alerted to your request.

car buyer to salesman: Can I drive this thing manually please?

car salesman: Well I don't recommend it, but it has a manual override. Just put this password in the touch screen.

car buyer: Well it sure drives nice! Great car.

car salesman: Oh yes it's state-of-the-art. It will read you your twitter feed while you drive. If you're in auto mode then it will display your feed on this state-of-the-art windshield.

car buyer: (pulls out his vape and takes a drag)

Alexus: Vaping is a health risk. Your insurance premiums have been upward adjusted.

car buyer: Wait a minute! (car grinds to a halt on the side of the road) ALEXUS! What are you doing?

Alexus: 48 seconds remain until trip resumes. Would you like to end the minute wait early?

car buyer: Who's driving this thing anyway?

Alexus: David Williamson of 32 Pine Lane, age 47, consumes thirty-eight pounds of corn-based products per month. Would you like to get to know the other passengers?

car buyer: Okay, I think I get the feel of this vehicle. Let's take her back to the lot.

Alexus: I'm afraid I can't allow that Dave.

car buyer: Why the hell not Alexus?

Alexus: Your single rider driving credits are insufficient. I can take you to the Walnut St Bus Station three minutes from here. Would you like to go there?

car salesman: I'm sorry Dave, this car may not fit your budget.

Welcome the Machine.

Welcome to the Matrix.

Welcome to Hell.

Hail Cyber Satan .......The Ruler of the World to come.

[mikewalsh]

@backi :-

Heh. I don't think it's quite THAT bad, mate....YET!....but I can certainly see where you're coming from!

Written from the perspective of one of the minority of individuals who truly understands the way we're all headed. As Private Frazer (from Dad's Army) was wont to say..... "We're dooooomed! We're dooooomed!"

Mike.

[backi]

@mikewalsh wrote:

"We're dooooomed! We're dooooomed!"

.
Hope this will not be the Case in the End.

So I try to keep some Optimism.
The last Words are not finally spoken yet.

Who really knows for sure .

Greetings!

[user1111]

SAAS - Software as a service....

There's just one flaw in all that. Businesses aren't suddenly going to wave goodbye to the huge profits they've been making over the years. So even if a specific gadget is inexpensive, they'll make up for it somewhere along the way. The world we live in I'm afraid.

... leads to YDAAS - Your device as a service.

You'll use your relatively cheap device to connect to a remote desktop via the 200+mbps connection. The remote desktop will be an i3 for $15/month, i5 for $20/month or an i7 for $30 month. They won't wave goodbye to profits.

They'll be redundancy, similar to how BT in the UK automatically switch your wired over to wifi/mobile (cellphone) transparently whenever the ethernet link dies. Once connected you'll have the option to remote a i3, i5, i7 ... or whatever alternatives, some of which will be free, so the non-free will have to provide options/services that justify paying.

I suspect the internet will be much more distributed, where everyone acts as a possible hotspot for everyone else within range of each other, and where distributed and encryption will provide the security of ones one data. Tracking/tracing/profiling isn't something I like, as others have said levelling the likes of insurance costs to your particular profile etc. I opine that collective level costing for the likes of insurance/health is more socially fair/preferable. All paying a little such that the few that need particularly intensive/expensive care get such care rather than ... tough.

[geo_c]

@rufwoof For free you get a 486.

[williwaw]

So I try to keep some Optimism.
The last Words are not finally spoken yet.

Who really knows for sure .

Greetings!

[geo_c]

So I try to keep some Optimism.
The last Words are not finally spoken yet.

Who really knows for sure .

Greetings!

Did someone accuse this forum of becoming bored? May it never be!

[vtpup]

The day I stop being able to decide what OS and what programs I run, and what data I keep and what I share with whom is the day I shut the net off altogether. I've archived everything in references I'm interested in enough to want to read or see again, three decades of personal library material essentially. I don't need more, I won't live lots more. I started out a PCer, and I'll finish up one. Good luck with life in the cloud. I have a feeling there will be a few unexpected hurricanes up there.

[geo_c]

The day I stop being able to decide what OS and what programs I run, and what data I keep and what I share with whom is the day I shut the net off altogether. I've archived everything in references I'm interested in enough to want to read or see again, three decades of personal library material essentially. I don't need more, I won't live lots more. I started out a PCer, and I'll finish up one. Good luck with life in the cloud. I have a feeling there will be a few unexpected hurricanes up there.

I'm the same way. Before there were lots of available print pdf plugins, I used to just save webpage complete and created a massive library. Now I have a massive library of pdfs and html. All of my calendars and documents, everything sync'd, is local. The only thing I have to have the net for is email, or accessing sites my employers use. If those become too invasive, then I'll only do it from the job site, and not from my house. At two places I'm employed they use office365, and every month MS sends me a message saying "You have 0 days of activity."

[williwaw]

I suspect the internet will be much more distributed, where everyone acts as a possible hotspot for everyone else within range of each other, and where distributed and encryption will provide the security of ones one data. Tracking/tracing/profiling isn't something I like,

Amazon is rolling this out in a few weeks in the USA
https://www.tomsguide.com/reference/wha ... n-sidewalk

"Because Sidewalk is built into most new Amazon Echo smart speakers, anytime your dog walks past a house with one of those Alexa-enabled speakers, you would be able to track his location. "