asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: (you mentioned wanting a traditional wm specifically for miniature computers, which i found odd)
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: re: your x11 wm post: the funny thing is, i originally grew fond of 'ratpoison' wm precisely because, years ago, as student, i used an uncommonly small laptop.
asciilifeform remembers one of the less-discussed reasons for vietnam war - the buggers had the temerity to build semiconductor plants
asciilifeform: 'can't get to the moon by piling up chairs'
asciilifeform: it may very well be possible to produce 'backyard cpu,' but refinement of traditional fabrication methods won't get you there
asciilifeform: state of the art in, e.g. steel production, hasn't changed in decades
asciilifeform: (reasoning being, were they to open the specs, anyone could cut open the libs and never pay the ransom)
asciilifeform: both of the major (well, only ones worth mentioning) fpga vendors make most of their profit from renting out license to use their libraries (ethernet controller, soft cpu cores, etc.) and not from hardware. hence the tightly closed architectures.
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: if it's a 'xilinx' or 'altera' - you're stuck with the vendor's closed turd.
asciilifeform: neither is particularly interesting, imho. both intend to run the same idiot stack forever.
asciilifeform: re: russian 'arm' cpu hype << same sad story as 'elbrus' company. the latter started out as a somewhat original superscalar design, ended up a cheap pentium clone. they succumbed to the temptation of the ussr starting in '70s - clone common cpu, run l33t w4r3z.
asciilifeform: moiety: most phones, even late '90s vintage, let you set ring tones by number
asciilifeform: moiety: null ringtone. works even on ancient phone.
asciilifeform: jurov: you must mean something other than the keyboard already found on that machine ?
asciilifeform: i've seen actual novelists confess to owning '80s laptops which... boot into 'wordstar.' but try using one away from mains current.
asciilifeform: i always found it interesting how much functionality one... loses by rolling a 'general purpose' computer into a product. not even concerning security and the like.
asciilifeform: 'I would dearly love a dedicated word processor... runs for months on one battery charge, never crashes, presents no distractions, and, shortly, isn’t a PC. Not being a PC (or, more specifically, not running a PC operating system) is a truly under-rated and beautiful feature in any gadget.'
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: 'operating systems' and 'compilers' (traditionally considered the gnarliest subjects in the department, outside of the required maths) were already optional and barely attended.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: '...bright young men that hadn’t gone though the compiler and complexity modules of their CS programme' << i actually watched the beginnings of this change at my uni. various things were made optional, and the audiences became 'pocket sized'
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: '...know better than to get involved with the armed retinue of a lord...' << see interesting example - the private army of gazprom (said to contain own tank corps, aviation, etc.) - nobody fucks with it, scarcely anyone even mentions it.
asciilifeform dreamt last night that he was to be hanged, but couldn't afford to pay for the roap and the grease - so was sent home to save up.
asciilifeform: (u.s. firms who get to churn inventory)
asciilifeform: it's +EV for the folks in charge of the show
