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General discussionDoes anyone else think the golden age of personal computing is over?(87 posts)(87 posts)
(87 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted August 21, 2015
No!
Post edited August 21, 2015 by KiNgBrAdLeY7
Posted August 23, 2015
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DivisionByZero.620: The last few years have seen an unprecedented increase in digital abuse against the average person.
-Government intrusion/snooping/"e-spying" is on the rise, both in Western and non-Western nations.
-Corporate snooping and collaboration with government snooping is also on the rise.
Corporate authoritarianism and government compliance with the later has been on the rise for at least 3 decades.

The internet is no more immune to it than other facets of your daily lives.
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DivisionByZero.620: -Every year there are an increasing number of vulnerabilities found in various operating systems and even network-enabled devices that people wouldn't normally think of as computers. For example, about a month ago there was a news article about a flaw in a vehicle's software that allowed some types of dangerous remote control.

Even if you're tech savvy and your computers/network never get compromised, there's always the chance of losing privacy if a web site that collects any data about you gets compromised.

Usually, companies only rush to deploy software patches to close highly publicized or particularly dangerous flaws.
The vast majority of software flaws tend to be slowly patched or even swept under the rug.
For web sites, companies truly are irresponsible with user info.

They collect more info than they need and fail to discard it when they no longer need it.

Again, I find it's yet another syndrome of corporate authoritarianism. Laws are lax when corporations are concerned and thus, corporations are no longer accountable.

For security overall, the sad truth is that most people are not that security savvy and they don't care.

While they won't go with software that they know is compromised, they will accept uncertainty for a discount. You give them a piece of software that went through rigorous security testing at 150% the price and they'll opt for the less secure version.

Also, the pace of technology is crazy. New things keep coming in all the time which makes current software perpetually immature and prone to security flaws that get ironed out over the years.
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DivisionByZero.620: A lot of software companies prioritize implementation features and functionality with rewards. All too often, quality checking and testing go underappreciated, earning fewer rewards, promotion, and recognition.

Conventional wisdom in the industry says that you have to reward innovation in features and functionality to keep competitive. The result: Massive amounts of flawed/low-quality software that gets patched whenever any of these occurs:
(A) enough people demand that the problems be fixed
(B) the developers get around to it
(C) delaying a patch would damage profits too much
(D) the government orders the company to deploy a patch ASAP
Part of it is corporate greed, but as said above, part of it is that end users don't really want to pay for security and that current technologies are perpetually immature.
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DivisionByZero.620: Another modern software development paradigm: Computers and programming tools keep getting better. While it's a convenience for everyone, it has the side effect of enabling people who really shouldn't be programming to program.
A lot of programmers are incredibly selfish. They don't spend the time to document their code and they generally don't code with the idea of a newcomer looking at their code from the outside.

Part of it is competence, but part of it is that software developers don't really care about what happens to their current employer once they move on to another place.

Believe me, I've worked with enough "It's my code. *I* know what it means. I don't give a shit about you." code to know.
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DivisionByZero.620: With modern hardware and software, programmers can afford to write incredibly shoddy software with no problems visible to the end-user. Often, it's easier for companies to hire lousy programmers for cheap and "throw hardware at the problem" than to pay big bucks for really good software engineers.

The hidden problem: ****ty low-quality programmers tend to write ****ty low-quality programs, which may be riddled with structural problems and/or dangerous defects.
You know, I can live with software that is not optimised to pump all the juice out of the hardware if the usual hardware the software will run on is more than enough.

If you're gonna spend an extra week to get an extra 5%-10% performance, it's probably not worth is for most real world use cases.

What really pisses me off is: code that is not maintainable, code that is incorrect or code that is insecure.
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DivisionByZero.620: And guess who gets to use the ****ty low quality programs?... The customer.
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#3. A lot of people demand free software no matter what the hidden price is

There's a lot of crappy "free" software out there that really isn't free. For example, on Android, there are way too many apps that are "free" but they snoop on the user, spawn advertisement popups, etc.

Another problem: There's no incentive for a developer to maintain a free program.
Yes there is. There is no incentive for a developper to maintain a free end-user full fledged application.

For lower level code (databases, OSes, libraries, etc) that see lots of re-use across multiple projects, you see many vibrant communities working on those mostly for free.
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DivisionByZero.620: Oh, and it gets even worse. There have been plenty of reports of similar crap in Windows 10 (advertised as a "free upgrade" for some Windows 7/8/8.1 users).
-Some built in programs having microtransactions. I found an article about Solitaire in Windows 10 having advertisements until you pay a fee, and the default DVD reader software being paywalled.
-An extensive laundry list of data collection (read: snooping) features that are enabled by default. It takes a well-informed or tech savvy user to find them all and disable them.
Ditch Windows, go with Linux.
Post edited August 23, 2015 by Magnitus
Posted August 25, 2015
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ET3D: To prove that programming doesn't teach logic?
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rtcvb32: Well the logic one was further in involving calculations...

An introductory programming student once asked me to look at his program and figure out why it was always churning out zeroes as the result of a simple computation. I looked at the program, and it was pretty obvious:

[code] begin
readln("Number of Apples", apples);
readln("Number of Carrots", carrots);
readln("Price for 1 Apple", a_price);
readln("Price for 1 Carrot", c_price);
writeln("Total for Apples", a_total);
writeln("Total for Carrots", c_total);
writeln("Total", total);
total := a_total + c_total;
a_total := apples * a_price;
c_total := carrots + c_price;
end; [/code]

Me: "Well, your program can't print correct results before they're computed."
Him: "Huh? It's logical what the right solution is, and the computer should reorder the instructions the right way."
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rtcvb32: Logic isn't necessarily something that can be taught...

...
cool story. your student has evolved pass the limited human perception of time/space!!! mucho metaphysical.
Posted August 25, 2015
I always felt computers are rather unpersonal, so no.
Posted August 25, 2015
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rtcvb32: But most of the Technology improvements don't give us more, just "improved" versions of what we have.
Fixed that for you.
Posted August 25, 2015
Good times might be over, but the age will never end.
Posted August 25, 2015
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rtcvb32: But most of the Technology improvements don't give us more, just "improved" versions of what we have.
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Firebrand9: Fixed that for you.
:P

Just watching some videos of an old cabin that was made in the 30's or 50's, has no electronics (or minimal) and everything still works as it did 50+ years ago... while today you'd be lucky if half the stuff worked for a few years.
Posted August 25, 2015
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rtcvb32: Just watching some videos of an old cabin that was made in the 30's or 50's, has no electronics (or minimal) and everything still works as it did 50+ years ago... while today you'd be lucky if half the stuff worked for a few years.
Things aren't built to last like they used to be. Tech moves too quickly. It only needs to last until the next wave comes along.

I own an IBM 8088 from sometime in the early 80's. Still works like a champ. Any computer I've owned in the past 15 years, maybe I get 7 years out of it on average. Granted, there's a lot more to go wrong and manufacturing pride is a thing of the past, but still...
Post edited August 25, 2015 by Firebrand9
Posted August 25, 2015
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DivisionByZero.620: What do you think?
I think or I thought this topic would be about the magic of personal computing in 80s and 90s, but it turned out complaining about privacy. Honestly I think these complaints are made by paranoic people. First of all noone forces anyone to put their personal lives online. So google 'spies' on everyone collecting their search queries, so what? Where is danger in that? In this age of information anyone can learn anything about anyone and if you are scared of that you have to go live on mars without electronics but even then NASA will spy on you lol
Posted August 25, 2015
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DivisionByZero.620: ...There are plenty of Linux variants out there that are very usable for mundane office and home use. Linux is also free and open source. The main problems with Linux are:
-Lack of support. If everything works fine, well and good. Otherwise, be prepared to spend at least a few hours fixing the stupidest of issues.
-"Dependency hell" - software incompatibilities, some tools supporting certain Linux distros only, being unable to install a program because it depends on another program that you can't install
-Having to build a lot of programs yourself. In the Windows and Mac worlds, you can just download installers or archives with programs in them and (most of the time) expect the programs to work. Different Linux distros can have variances in operating system specifics, and all too often a program might only have a prebuilt version for a specific distro - any other distro gets a "build it yourself" source code package....
Actually build it yourself is not so bad. Most of the times this can be automatized and just takes a bit longer but only once.

I'm not an experienced Linux user but I learned to use "sudo apt-get" and it was enough for 95% of all software I wanted to have.

Example:

Python installing and upgrading NumPy or SciPy or PyGame is simple on Linux and much more difficult on Windows.

Regarding the discussion: I don't think the golden age is over. In a way I can do more now on a PC than ever before. So we are on a rising edge rather. However PC will move towards cloud computing and different eco systems will take market shares away. Not sure how much freedom and control users will have in the future about their computing system.
Posted August 25, 2015
The golden age of HUMANITY is over. Fixed that for ya.
Posted August 25, 2015
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DivisionByZero.620: There are plenty of Linux variants out there that are very usable for mundane office and home use. Linux is also free and open source. The main problems with Linux are:
-Lack of support. If everything works fine, well and good. Otherwise, be prepared to spend at least a few hours fixing the stupidest of issues.
This i would say is wrong. There's lots of people who are willing to try and help on the forums for simple or complex problems, be it for software they made, or the system in general...

However if you are using it in a business, you could always purchase a copy instead of downloading it for free. RedHat for one made support it's main line and reason you'd buy the distro, they'd step you through and help you troubleshoot if you had problems. You're not paying for the OS, you're paying for support... Still, going to be much cheaper than contacting Microsoft.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionDoes anyone else think the golden age of personal computing is over?(87 posts)(87 posts)
(87 posts)