The devolution of computing

I have been reflecting a lot lately about the state of computing today.  The state of both the development and the users, along with what drives the majority of people from both groups.  For myself, and anyone who prefers to compute from the drivers seat, the state of things is bad on almost all fronts; at least in terms of mainstream computing.

Computing at a high level in the 70's, 80's, and even the early 90's was much better, because any other users around you were at a high level also.  Almost everyone had real capability to compute far beyond pointing and clicking.  Before the GUI existed you literally had to know command lines, and have a catalog of them in your head at your disposal whenever needed.  There were no guides on websites to copy/paste commands from, which is the peak of text computing skills these days for the pointy clicky imprisoned types.  Even with how far the GUI has come, there are still many capabilities that even the most robust OS's UI would lack.  I have mentioned before that only about 60-70% of the full OS X capability is found in its GUI.  Everything else is accessed from the command line.  It is based on BSD after all.  Text/terminal use is the actual human language of computing, not pointy clicky.  A GUI can only do what it gives you options to click on.  A GUI is essentially just an OS hand holder.  All you need is basic hand-eye coordination, and all it's doing is typing the commands for you while you click away.

The user friendly obsession of MS and Apple software over the last couple decades has truly dumbed down the average user a great deal.  The sad truth is that most people only have the capability to point a mouse, and type in whatever language(s) they're literate in.  The even sadder truth is that some actually mistake this for having computer skills.  Some even go as far as to think such skills qualify them to "help" someone else by sharing their "experience".  Experience based on nothing.  When you can only compute at the level of a person that many would consider computer illiterate, then you have no experience to give. 

I'm sorry, but moving a pointing device around, and being literate in your language, is no type of computer "skill".  People who compute at that level need to keep their devolved computing culture to themselves, and focus on learning new ability, rather than trying to spread devolution.

The devolved ones are on some insane mission to spread their 'newer/faster hardware is always better' illogic, and follow Apple or MS blindly.  No one needs help to do such things, because all it requires is no thought.  Anyone can do that.  Give people true technical insight, not what they can get from a wikipedia or google visit.  If that is where you're getting your "experience" from, then you've turned yourself into a fake, and a redundant fake at that.  Pretty shameful.  I assume the goal was never to be a double negative, but that is the end result for some of you.

The people who spread such things know who they are and they need to stop.  Your blind follower no skill thinking is a cancer to anything that resembles good information.  Stop it please.


Lastly

I am sorry if some of this sounds mean, but every word I have written here is nothing but true.  The truth shall set you free, as the saying goes, is as apt with computing as it is with anything else.

Anyone who feels the desire to help others, needs to first do it with something they can help with.  Something you have legitimate experience, knowledge and insight with.  Not something you wish to, but don't yet have, those qualities with.

Don't pretend or devolve.  Learn.

Stop letting billionaires control how you compute, and keeping most of you in a limited and fearful of evolving type of state.  The very reason most of you don't want to evolve your computing skills is that you've been conditioned to think that computing and real brain work don't go together.  Essentially a mainstream/self-induced computer user lobotomy.  That is the true end result of decades of user friendly obsession by the mainstream.

We're still alive!

It has been over two weeks since our last post, and I wanted to mention what has been going on.

Dr. Dave hurt his back a couple weeks ago, so that has put him out of commission for the time being.  Please join me in wishing him well and hopes for a quick recovery.  I am sure he will be feeling better soon enough.

I myself have been more busy than normal with the OpenBSD project in it's last phase of development.  The last phase (for me at least) is dealing with every bug so this has left my life with zero free time.  In the next week to 10 days I will be 100% done the project and I already have a couple things in mind to write about.

OS X: Disable your v-sync

This post falls under the heading of "maybe not the single greatest idea in the world, but perhaps not the worst either." As we all know, Apple, in its infinite wisdom put some (ok, lots of) extra eye candy into OS X when it leaped from 10.4 to 10.5, and as a result you and all your loved ones took a graphics hit moving from Tiger to Leopard. Many argue the hit is minimal, and Leopard has so much more software and hardware compatibility that is more than worth it, a sentiment to which I firmly adhere. I do miss Classic, but otherwise Leopard...rocks. On x86 Linux I got used to doing all kinds of tweaks to get better video performance out of older machines, and one of the main ways was to set the v-sync to blank. Usually this was achieved by clicking a box deep within the bowels of compiz or editing a metacity preference file in nano. I'm no expert, but on LCD monitors I've read the benefits afforded by v-sync are pretty much a non issue. Lets face it, not many people are sitting in front of CRT's in 2013. If I've just deeply insulted Al in Syracuse, who is still in love with his 21inch ViewSonic purchased for $1500 (no, for real) from MacMall back in 1997, I apologize.

Honestly I never knew this tweak was possible in OS X. I thought Apple just locked all of that graphics stuff down tight to keep it away from those pesky end users. Then I stumbled upon a youtube video from a fellow PowerPC enthusiast, which sadly now seems to have been taken down or I'd post a link to it for reference. He had a bunch of good tips for improving graphics performance, most of which are well known, like using a 2-D instead of a 3-D dock, etc, etc. I was just about to stop watching when he showed viewers how to disable v-sync, and that caught my attention.

In order to perform this maneuver safely you'll need to have Xcode installed. If you don't have it its a free download from Apple, you will have to register as a developer and then sign over your first born child for ritual sacrifice, but once that's done its just a 300 MB download. You'll need an older version of Xcode, 3.3.1, as the newer ones are naturally Intel only. It is possible to do this in Text Edit, but personally I lack the intestinal fortitude to do so, see..I once hosed a Panther install fiddling around with a preference file in Text Edit. Xcode makes this simple, and for reasons probably only in my head it feels much safer.

What you want to do is go to your Hard Drive and open up the Library folder, then the Preferences folder. What you are looking for is com.apple.windowserver.plist, right click on that file, if you have Xcode you'll have the Property List Editor as an option, and open it with that. Now under Compositor look for "deferred updates" and set that to zero. Congratulations, you have just set your v-sync to blank on 10.5. There are some other settings which some turn off in there relating to Quartz Extreme and OpenGL but personally, I left those well enough alone.

Now anytime one fools around with system files, especially com.apple.plist's, bad things can happen. So, readers beware, and exercise all due caution. I followed the above steps and nothing bad happened, and, upon reboot I noted some definite improvements in overall window snappiness (such a technical term). Dock minimizations, even the hated "genie" effect were now lightning quick. The vicious tear I had passing my cursor over the dock in 3-D mode was also gone. Personally I use the 2-D dock so it wasn't a huge win for me, but overall this was a satisfying tweak.

On PowerPC OS X in 2013 its all about them little victories.