Baslinux mailing list

[Karolis Lyvens <karolisl AT gmail.com>]

On Mon, Jan 08, 2007 at 04:25:51AM +0000, Lee Forrest wrote:

> Any rational person would choose this computer over every single
> computer Sindi owns. All of them together.
> 
> And even if her time is only worth the minimum wage, she spends a
> lot more than that a month on labor costs. Plus the cash she puts
> out. Which probably of itself averages out to more than 16.39/mo.

I think that you may find this definition
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem) highly apropos of your
behaviour sometimes. Why do you think that one who likes his/her work
and finds pleasure (Sindi, correct me if I'm wrong) in it necessarily
thinks of money? This statement about money/labour/wages/costs of
yours somehow reminds me of Bill Gates' Open letter to hobbyists
(http://www.blinkenlights.com/classiccmp/gateswhine.html). Particularly,
this phrase he said in that letter:

"Who can afford to do professional work for nothing?"

Why one has to think about potential profit and money (which could be
made during time one spends doing different things) when one enjoys what
he/she is doing?

> On the other hand, I don't know anywhere near as much about hardware
> as she does.

I think that I could be a candidate :)

Currently, I have about 10 computers around me. And a heck a lot more
in basement (so called "cave"). Maybe 40 or more. Ranging from an XT to
2.6GHz Athlon. Okay, they're not all exclusively mine (most of them are 
dad's), 
but still - using old computers can be a lot of fun: it is always
interesting to watch a piece of hardware that others call "ancient" (or
maybe "ancient" enough that they haven't seen anything like it at all)
perform tasks that it wasn't designed for, play with DOS era programs,
games, twiddle with configuration, drivers, achieve things that weren't
done with this hardware in it's era, etc.

It _is_ fun to tinker with old hardware.

> And recycling old computers _is_ good for the enviroment.

To environment, yes. But it does absolutely no harm to environment if
you still use them or, at least, store them inside. It actually
doesn't matter if you throw out a new computer or an old one - it still
has the same effect to environment. I don't think anyone would argue
that it's better to recycle non-working parts than to throw them out.
But when the computer still works and you can still use it, what's the
point of throwing it out / recycling it?..

Old computers are mostly as good as the day they were produced.  They can
be used to browse the web, email, for text editing... Mostly the same
tasks as a modern computer. Maybe they wouldn't be as fast as more recent
computers, but if you can balance the load (OS/applications etc) with
hardware's capabilities, you can have a comparative or better performance.
And, if *nothing* else, _any_ box can work flawlessly as a terminal to
a more powerful machine.

> People often throw away perfectly good computers because they've
> purchased a more 'powerful' one. The Latest Model. Selling them
> isn't worth the bother and once they've decided to discard it,
> they don't take care of it. One good thump can render a computer
> useless. Or damage critical components in subtle ways. Exposure
> to moisture can do a job on them.

Right, but too many of them (thrown out computers) are working. Here
where I live, in flea market pretty often you can see people selling
computers that were thrown out in Germany (or Sweden, etc). They range
from 386's (rare now, but still) to almost GHz. People throw them
out when they're perfectly good and working...

-snip-

> (When I'm away for any length of time, I have a cron job connect
> to the internet for a few minutes once an hour. If I login
> [telnet] the timeout is cancelled. A bash script runs instead of
> a shell, offering a Restricted Shell to the the person who logs
> in. If they create a file [with a name from a list that only I
> have, a different name for each hour] within 10 seconds, the shell
> becomes a regular login shell. If they don't, the Restricted Shell
> is killed and the connection to the internet is broken. Only one
> command can be run in the Restricted Shell: touch <filename>.)

Sounds pretty interesting. Could you show the source?

> Gateway makes good stuff. So good that they don't even have to
> advertise. I wouldn't hesitate to buy another computer from them.

To be fair: I have never bought a new computer from a store. Every
computer I have was either bought used or built at home.


Karolis