Tonight I found my Locals session timed out, and when I got kicked out, I wound up on a page on lunduke.com saying: "Make Computers Fun Again". That made my night. Cuz yeah, computers should be fun. They used to be, and that's coming from someone who missed what some would claim to be all the best years (the 8-bit era thru the mid-90s).
Well for me... DOS is kinda winning me over, maybe even taking that top spot of my favorite retro computer. Of course I love all the 8-bits I've used, and my TheVIC20 still has its place of honor under my gaming TV. But DOS... I mean man, even without graphics mode, that OS is pretty flippin' cool! Tonight I copied Vim over to my tablet and spent an hour or so writing. Vim, Edit, and of course MS Word 5.5, make DOS a great tool for writers (to say nothing of Windows software like Notepad, which is also super nice). And DOS has a few different #Forth interpreters and a C compiler, so I'm enjoying learning to code on it too. Of course, its assembly language is kinda crazy, and learning to do certain things has led to many a long learning session with AI, covering "real mode" and "protected mode" and "far pointers" and "segment registers" and all kinds of weird... but when something works, you want to keep going! Not to mention, if I ever do decide to play with building a boot sector game or something, knowing 16-bit real mode assembly is probably helpful (lol). And as for games, I've really only just scratched the surface of what's out there. I have NHL '94, and of course Minesweeper and Solitaire on Windows 3.1, and of course I've played Doom. But I've read that a lot of Sega and SNES games had DOS ports, and of course people are still making games for it today.. Of course it's not perfect - it takes present-day magnifier software to make the text big enough to be readable, for one thing - but I could see myself spending a lot more of my not-work time on DOS. As much as I love my Commodore stuff, there's just no comparison. Like the NES vs. the SNES, unfair. But the Commodore stuff will still be there when I want it, and I think I've found my next way to "Make Computers Fun Again" - though I suppose "keep finding ways to have fun with computers" is what I'm doing more than anything. :-)
In a recent post to Blogs.GNOME.org, a prominent contributor to the Linux Desktop Environment made this statement as a way of proving they are not "Right Wing".
"Privacy Preserving Attribution", first deployed in Firefox, is designed to make it easy for a browser vendor to collect large amounts data from users. Now the World Wide Web Consortium wants it to be everywhere.
Ads are filling the entirety of the Web -- websites, podcasts, YouTube videos, etc. -- at an increasing rate. Prices for those ad placements are plummeting. Consumers are desperate to use ad-blockers to make the web palatable. Google (and others) are desperate to break and block ad-blockers. All of which results in... more ads and lower pay for creators.
It's a fascinatingly annoying cycle. And there's only one viable way out of it.
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Those in power with openSUSE make it clear they will not allow me anywhere near anything related to the openSUSE project. Ever. For any reason.
Well, that settles that, then! Guess I won't be contributing to openSUSE! 🤣
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The April Lunduke Journal Pledge drive has ended! Thank you to everyone who pitched in to help The Lunduke Journal continue to provide ad-free, Big Tech Free journalism!
The Lunduke Journal would not be possible without your support.
Seriously. Thank you.
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The corrupt Tech Foundations of the world — WikiMedia, The Linux Foundation, Mozilla, and the rest — have received hundreds of Millions of dollars in donations. The Big Tech giants bring in Billions and Billions ever year.
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