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.

Help the Children Learn

Today someone, probably well under the age of 15, excitedly sent this Doctor a Youtube link to a recently posted video which they claimed showed a user how to install Flash 11.5 on a PowerPC Mac. It was of course no such thing, just a redo of the old "Facebook" hack which tricks some websites into offering up Flash video to your tired, unsupported, enough security holes to drive a (pun intended) Mack truck through 10.1 Flash plugin. I will not bother to repost the video or link here, as I do not like to spread bad or misleading information around the interwebs. But this does bring up a very important point. PowerPC macs are now so cheap they are an easy entry point for young mac enthusiasts eager to test out the OS X and Linux waters. I think that's great, but as with all things, kids need to be educated. So if you know one of these young PowerPC mac enthusiasts, don't be embarrassed, sit them down and give them the talk. Not that talk, this talk:

"Now young man (or woman), you need to know Adobe Flash was never a great piece of software on PowerPC. It was poorly written and never optimized for your machine. Today its old, and such a crap-tastic performer that will bring your otherwise excellent system to a screeching halt. It should be avoided on OS X PowerPC, at all costs. On PowerPC Linux this is a non issue, as there never was nor will there ever be Flash Player or Plugin. In this here year of 2013 you are far, far better using Flash workarounds. Here are few you can try..

Mactubes. Its been often said that this is an awesome piece of kit that keeps PowerPC Macs alive and well in the age of youtube. Make sure to set your player to Quicktime for best results, and have Perian installed as well. This makes many larger format flash files available for download and playback. The version of Quicktime that works with Mactubes well is 7.6.4.

Youview. This software pretty much does what Mactubes does, but unlike Mactubes you have to pay for certain features, like downloading. But it's handy to have in reserve.

Viewtube. This is a Greasemonkey script for Tenfourfox, it can be made to work with Safari as well by installing SIMBL and Greasekit. First go to Add-ons under tools and install Greasemonkey. You'll have to stick with Tenfourfox 17.X.X, as anything newer has plugins disabled and it just won't work. It works with some other sites besides youtube too, and the developer is a decent guy who is constantly improving and updating the script. It'll also use the Quicktime plugin, but right in the browser.

ClicktoFlash and ClicktoPlugin these work great with Safari (and Leopard webkit). By installing both you can do the same thing your trying to do with the Flash hack, that is, trick the website into believing you have the latest Flash installed. Many websites will then offer you up video. You'll have to click on the "QT Player" logo, and it will launch a standalone Quicktime player.

There are some other methods too, they're a little trickier, so try these ones out first. And remember... on PowerPC the only good Flash is no Flash. Tell all your mac loving friends."

It's a tired old cliche, but the kids really are the future, especially it seems when it comes to PowerPC macs...

Uber Lightweight Linux Browser Smackdown

So by now you've installed a lightweight Linux operating system on your aging but still mighty Powermac, and since its a low end system (like, say a 500mhz, G4 upgraded Blue and White G3) you're gonna want to install some lightweight apps. Top of that list should be a lightweight web browser, since browsers are arguably the most important, most used and most vulnerable of any software on your system. Firefox is the default browser on Lubuntu 12.04, and gives a user tremendous flexibility with its megaload of extensions. It may take awhile to launch, but after that I find you can still use it to its fullest potential, even at 500mhz. Sometimes though, there is simply no substitute for speed, and just because your machine is older doesn't mean it can't be as fast as the day it was made. Or the day it was upgraded.

Almost all of the browsers I'll be looking at here today are webkit based, since pretty much nothing with a Gecko rendering engine can be considered lightweight in 2013. It should also be noted that most of these are either not available or have no equivalent on OS X, or you’d have to port the bastard yourself. These can all be installed from synaptic package manager, or, from the commandline if you like that sort of thing.



Midori

Midori is a German developed webkit browser, and is the default browser on many lightweight x86 Linux distros, such as Bodhi and some Puppy flavors. While being lightweight and fast it also has many of the features you'd expect with a modern browser such as a sparkling GUI, tabs, extensions, some adblocking, etc. I've used, liked and recommended Midori to others in the past, but really can't do so today, at least not on PowerPC Linux. In a few weeks of using it on Lubuntu 12.04 it has been utterly crash-tastic. Like, once a session out of the blue it will lock up and go down for the count. Purging and reinstalling the app garners no improvement, and the error logs are confusing at best. The version in the PowerPC repositories is 0.4.3, which is now a full six version revisions behind the current 0.4.9 release, which may have something to do with these issues. Hopefully a newer version will become available soon, in which case I may try to love it again. Until then, the Doctor says: Avoid.

Surf

Surf is a commandline based browser that is pretty much the definition of lightweight. Running a browser from the commandline is probably not for everyone but in return you get hellacious speed with virtually no overhead. On x86 distros with ancient hardware and low RAM it became my browser of choice last year. A Surf session takes less than 10 MB of RAM to launch a window, and that folks, is extremely impressive. It's available in the PowerPC repos, however, I was (despite quite a lot of effort) unable to get it to run stable on Lubuntu 12.04. Windows will launch, then close almost instantly. This may also be a version issue, as the version in the repos is 0.4.3, while the current release is 0.6. I love it on x86 so much that I tried to compile it for PowerPC, but was missing a ton of dependencies, so I gave up on it for now. I left Surf in the review in the hopes someone with better programming chops could get it running and report back on how he or she achieved it.

Links2

Links2 is a text/graphical browser which may be familiar to some as its based on the old text only Links browser. Fair warning, it is not for the lovers of eyecandy, and only supports HTML 1.0 so using it is kinda like what the Internet was in 1995. For us old fogeys (like the Dr.) who used Netscape 1.0 (honestly, that was my first web browser, and I BOUGHT it, kids) this is not such a bad thing. Over a number of hours of testing it seems very stable on Lubuntu PowerPC, and having inline images makes it seem almost mo-dern. Text field entries will appear as single lines, and searches and the like can be entered simply by clicking on the line.

Navigation is dirt simple, typing "g"(for go) brings up a url address window, "z" gets you back from whence you came. If you forget the commands they are all accessible in hidden submenus found just to the right of the very small back arrow found in the upper left hand browser window. Pass your cursor over them and all shall be revealed. If all you want to do is READ the web, but still have a pretty picture or two, Links2 could be your new best friend. Plus, all your friends will wonder what on earth you are doing on Netscape 1, which is, as Miley Cyrus might say, pretty cool.

XXXTerm/Xombrero

So what is the image that the name XXXterm brings up in your mind? I seriously thought it was some kind of terminal based porn downloader, and I don't think I'm alone. Well, actually XXXterm is just another uber lightweight webkit browser, first brought to my attention as its the default browser in ConnochaetOS, the successor to Deli Linux. ConnochaetOS is designed to work on REALLY old x86 hardware, like, umm Pentium I 100mhz old, so a lightweight browser on hardware that ancient is critical. The developer seems to have finally gotten the word that his choice of name is a tad….ummm, confusing, and has renamed XXXterm "Xombrero" in its most current release. XXXterm is what's available in the PowerPC repos and it seems largely the same as Xombrero on x86 to these eyes.

The main benefit of using this browser, besides speed, is tight cookie managment. The world and his (Big) brother now tracks your movements on the world wide internets, and XXXterm gives the user tight control over what cookies will end up on your hard drive. I could go into far greater detail, but you are best off just reading the wiki. In terms of speed it seems almost as zippy as the other lightweight browsers, but you still get tabbed browsing, a url address bar, back buttons and a search bar where you expect them, though the search window does not appear to be working at the moment. Everything is else you’d expect in a modern browser is available via keyboard commands. Stability on Lubuntu 12.04 PowerPC is good to excellent, and besides, any application that has the Fight Club bar of soap as its icon has to be worth its salt. Definitely Doctor recommended.

Luakit

Ok, I'll say it again. I just love this piece of software. Its just...bloody incredible. While perhaps not quite as lightweight as surf or Links2, it more than makes up for that with blazing speed and stability. I can't recall it ever crashing on me, either on the stormtrooper or any other machine I've installed it on. It's configurable, extensible (sort of), and gives a user almost total keyboard based control of their browsing, so much so that it's possible to barely even touch the mouse while browsing. Being webkit based its fully mo-dern, and even on “slow” hardware it renders pages fast. Do not pass go, do not get out of jail, download luakit today. Thou shall not be disappointed. Note: Be very careful when you are entering text into a field however, make sure you are actually in it, or a simple keyboard command like "d" could delete your tab, or even end your session. And that's annoying.

This here Linux PowerPC browser smackdown is by no means complete, and as with most things, your mileage may vary. I would love to hear about other lightweight Linux browsers you've used, and what your experiences have been. Netsurf and Dillo, for instance didn’t quite make the cut for this review, but you can surely download and try them out on your own if you are curious.

On lowend hardware its all about finding the right software for the job at hand, and hopefully one of these browsers will hit the sweet spot for you.

Roccat 3.0

There are many great mysteries on planet earth, but none greater in 2013 than the Harlem Shake youtube phenomena. Millions, no tens of millions of people, myself included, have wasted a portion of the little time they have on planet earth watching groups of people do a ridiculous “dance”, which in reality is little more than a uncoordinated spasm. In my defense, I only watched one Harlem Shake video as there was a Brooklyn indie rock band, now defunct, that went by almost the same name that I quite liked back in the year of 2009. Turns out they named themselves after the original Harlem Shake dance, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the nonsense on youtube today. 

The good news for  OS X 10.5 PowerPC users is that if you so desire, you have yet another supported, lightweight browser you can watch the real Harlem Shake videos on, Roccat. While Roccat is not new, version 3.0 is, and I’ve been using it for a couple days now. It’s definitely worth the bandwidth to download. Why? Well, for one, Roccat is fast, in fact its one of the faster browsers on OS X, and the developer has stated he intends to support PowerPC for as long as he possibly can. Not many people say that sort of thing these days, and I for one intend to support any developer who says they’ll support PowerPC.

Roccat is yet another of the army of webkit browsers out in the wild, but the only one with built in Facebook and Twitter integration. Now, this Dr. is utterly convinced Facebook is evil and Twitter is for the birds, but if you use either social media service, you will probably enjoy the ease of integration Roccat provides. Pulling down the Facebook login caused me nothing but headaches and a restart of Roccat, so fair warning, your mileage may vary. Another nice feature of Roccat is a built in user agent switcher for spoofing your bank into thinking your one of the 54% of people dumb enough to actually use Internet Explorer. There’s also an “undercover” private browsing option for the one PowerPC OS X user in Iran. If there is another use for private browsing, I have no idea what that could be…

Best of all, Greasekit and Viewtube now work in Roccat 3.0, which was not the case with prior versions. In fact, on my ibook G4, prior versions of Roccat would crash on launch if Greasekit was present. For the uninitiated, Greasekit is a way of making Greasemonkey scripts work on most webkit browsers. Firstly, you will need to download and install SIMBL, and then Greasekit, from here. In Roccat, Safari or Leopardwebkit you can then use the Greasekit menu that now appears to manage which webkit applications Greasekit will work for. Fair warning: Greasekit is OLD not all Greasemonkey scripts will work with Greasekit, and as always with anything javascript you need to be cautious about what you install. But this enables you to head over to userscripts dot org and install viewtube, a greasemonkey script that nicely swaps the hated FLASH for Quicktime, allowing for very decent embedded video playback on youtube and quite a few other sites. I am pleased to say playback is MOST EXCELLENT in Roccat 3.0, though I do have a slightly annoying bug where I have to scroll down then back up to get the video playing to be visible. This however may be a pecularilty of my system and no one elses.

Please give Roccat a try, and if you like it, tell the developer, and make sure he knows you are on a PowerPC mac, or as we used to say back in the old world days, a Power Macintosh.