asciilifeform: i did get a number of people playing with fpga (the closest thing to 'freedom' in this context, that i know of) who perhaps wouldn't have otherwise.

asciilifeform: diametric: this is sort of why i bring up my long-term research only when asked about it. and at other times, work with whatever materials are available in the jungle i inhabit, in a way that mostly makes sense to people.

asciilifeform: i've long ago given up on convincing any serious number of people of this point through rhetoric - it'll have to be by physical demonstration. but first i gotta live long enough.

asciilifeform: jurov: the way i understand it, you see 'architectural purity' as an optional frill, like the 'non-conflict zone minerals' folks, or enviro-whiners. i do not.

asciilifeform: jurov: microshaft can do many things that i cannot.

asciilifeform: kickstarter works - when it works - for 'i want to make a bicycle drive shaft from hastalloy.' and other well-defined engineering problems.

asciilifeform: re: kickstarter: lol. suggested experiment: open a kickstart, with the headline 'pay my living expense for 20 years. in the end, you might get a useful gizmo if i live that long.'

asciilifeform: i've had this discussion with more people than i can count. and the only ones who 'grokked' the basic idea, were the ones who woke up to the realization that much of what we consider to be the 'inevitable' brokenness of computing infrastructure (ubiquitous bugs, e.g. buffer overflows, irreducible complexity of os, compilers) is anything but.

asciilifeform: 'I remember someone saying that if it hadn't been for automatic switches in the telephone network, the entire population of planet earth would have had to be telephone operators to handle the load of telephone usage in 1993 or thereabout. I get the eerie feeling that because modern computer systems are so incredibly braindamaged in their design and in the tools used to program them, the entire population of pla

asciilifeform: i often ask people to read about edison's dc current idiocy, and contemplate what would have happened if he had 'won'

asciilifeform: ^ typical reaction of programmers when i try to explain all of this.

asciilifeform: it is possible - and has been done - to build cpu which executes high-level language more or less directly. but, given as i have an entire blog about this, i will omit the details here.

asciilifeform: it is important to understand what a proper repl consists of. i.e. a bash loop that repeatedly calls a compiler is not a genuine repl.

asciilifeform: mike_c: it wouldn't be too far off the mark to say that i like common lisp because 'slime' is possible for it, rather than vice-versa.

asciilifeform: nubbins`: obligatory: http://everything2.com/title/I+knew+I+couldn%2527t+build+a+cat

asciilifeform: jurov: 'online' ups was costly last i priced it (for 1kW+. the tiny things are worthless in my setup) and rather inefficient (~60%)

asciilifeform: jurov: the 200ms figure was taken from actual measurement of an ancient ups i owned several years ago. i can easily believe 4ms with solid-state relays, in modern unit. still does nothing against small transients.