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Keith Barrow wrote: Now it's all 555 timers and 8088 microprocessors!
and 90% of it not needed / useless  
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Nelek wrote: 90% of it not needed / useless
But ... but ... what would you do if your toaster couldn't connect to the internet? 
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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The Object-Oriented Toaster
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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What do you mean by "useless" - it is not useless giving me an income!
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Do you really program toasters?
Or are you one of those spammers that use gadgets to create spam bot nets and get money with not so ethical processes?
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Actually, I do not know if I program toasters. Well, I certainly do not program the toaster application, but the core software for the embedded processor. I know that some of our customers embed our processors in rice cookers and even forks(!). Using them in toasters as well seems like a small step. If that is the case: Yes, I am responsible for some of the toaster software.
A few years ago, over the luch table my project group was discussing "the meaning of life", or specifically: Our working day life. The general agreement was that the world really doesn't "need" any of the products using our chips. They are just gadgets, toys, for enjoyment. In some cases they make life "simpler": You don't have to raise up to turn on the light switch, you can turn it on from your recliner using your smartphone. But that isn't a "need", it is just a convenience matter.
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Quote: You don't have to raise up to turn on the light switch, you can turn it on from your recliner using your smartphone. But that isn't a "need", it is just a convenience matter.
Don't rush to judgement, the person you are referring to could be physically disabled by a lack of legs or motivation to get up and do it himself.
On a serious note, if you ever really go into the "Necessities of Life" discussion again, you should really start to consider each and everything that you utilize or consume, I think you will find that apart from a very limited and short stack (not even sure it would even make into a stack) there is nothing that you really need, but either provides comfort or is a means to comfort.
To use your example
Quote: You don't have to raise up to turn on the light switch
You could also consider the light switch it self a comfort, since it comforts you by making you believe you will not get shocked by electricity and also succeeds in its purpose. Talking about that light bulb now, do you really need it? Or can you make do without one? I believe the answer is you can do without it, it will decrease your night productivity but also has the potential to increase your day's productivity. Now that you've eliminated light bulb you can eliminate electricity and go on to eliminate many of the other necessities of modern time.
Don't get me wrong I'm not against technology, heck my field is software development, I may just be more a philosopher than I am Programmer.
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OK, so tha's why we make all these "smarthome" things! Not to make a shitload of money on it, but from true, altruistic ideals: We want those poor, low income, physically challenged users to inves in a USD 1000 iPhone so that they don't have to roll their wheelchair over to the wall switch but can remain seated where they are sitting, using their iPhone without making any physical effort whatsovever...
OK, I do see some altruistic value in that approach too. In my view it is marginal. Just a way to try to excuse what yuu are doing.
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It's funny how you managed to mention IPhone and not Android Phone to an Android Developer, a Windows Phone lover and IPhone hater.
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CodeWraith wrote: The parts list for the modem includes lumber and a tennis ball.
Well, what else are you going to use for the acoustic coupler? 
And let's see just how much of Netflix you can watch using that modem!
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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40 years ago (or 30 in my case) we did more - we did hardware and software and all in-between...
Since then we got specialized...
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge". Stephen Hawking, 1942- 2018
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Hmm that robot (or Driod?) I think I have seen him without arms...
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Surface mount killed kitchen table electronics while enabling what you're using to post on CP right now.
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You make me want to go down in my basement to dig up all my old BYTE issues from the late 1970s - I never got my collection complete from Isusse #1, but it is close.
One of the 70's DYI projects that I remeber well was a computer controlled wood stove. This guy had build a container for finely cut wood (it wasn't pellets, but roughly that size, I believe) with a funnel into his stove, so the wood could fall down by gravitation. This must have been a few years before the IBM PC; the computer may have been an Altair or Imsai, controlling the motor opening the hatch allowing more wood to fall down, and the motor opening/closing the air vent. What I don't remember is how he read the inputs - you couldn't simply buy a USB thermometer in those days...
When the magazines are ten years old, everybody ask "Why don't you throw that old sh*t out?" If you stubbornly cling to the magazines until they are fourty, everybody gasps: "What a treasure!"
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I had a huge number of magazines for quite a while including Byte, PC, and a bunch of IEEE and ACM journals. Sadly, I had to get rid of them a few moves ago. I managed to keep about two boxes of what I thought were outstanding issues though.
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My favorite mag (back then), mainly for circuit cellar....
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Because this was the heyday of the hobbyist. Then we shot ourselves in the foot by getting jobs, thinking we could get paid to do this fun stuff. It was still fun for a while. Then eventually it became a job. 
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I made the right choice regarding music:
In my youth, I seriously considered taking a music education, becoming a professional in the field of classical music. Except for the small problem that I was far from good enough: When I now look upon those musicians who have managed to get safe jobs in a symphony orchestra - what a boring life! Every week yet another symphony. Maybe accompanying some soloist in a small concerto. Next week, another symphony, another concerto. Every Christmas audiences demanding that we play all the same boring music that we have played dozens of times before...
Today I am so happy that I never got close to my old dream of making classical music for a living: I still love music! And I have (and use) the freedom to go on to other musical styles, decided by my personal preferences this year, without worrying about my income.
Rather, progamming went from being fun to being a chore, just for earning money. Yet I am happy that I ruined the joy of programming and kept the joy of music, rather than the other way around.
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You're looking for fun in the wrong places today. Sites like Hackaday cover doing low level in the weeds electronics projects now.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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The more options you have, the more stressed you become (about picking / not picking the "right" ones).
"(I) am amazed to see myself here rather than there ... now rather than then".
― Blaise Pascal
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Oddly, I believe it is the artist within each person. I was a scientist, a mathematician. Artists were that odd lot that lived in the eclectic dorm. I have never had any talent: musical or artistic, and no desire to perform in front of an audience. Nonetheless, the "fun", I think, is the creative element of any endeavor.
Architecting a building is fun; engineering the stress requirements is tedious. Developing an operational budget is engaging; accounting for individual line-items sucks. Developing a novel is captivating; cranking out formula romance novels is dreary.
"Art" is a part of software development. Every developer I know spends 90% of his time "painting the screen": what color to use, where should that button be located, etc. Sadly, that means he then has to find and cobble together the "boring" pieces, in his remaining 10% of time, that actually do the work.
Forty years ago, we created "masterpieces" of coding that today would repulse us. Today, we have "experts" who have analyzed, homogenized and pasteurized every aspect of software development. We have developed repeatable processes and reportable performance metrics. We read this expertise and adopt it, or have it foisted upon us, so that we, too, can be "respectable". Throughout history, art has NEVER been respectable. So, we are creating conflict within our very selves.
In short, we turned the process into a business rather than an art, and that has drained the fun from it.
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I was working back then. It wasn't more fun.
It was the same grind that it is today. Just different and more primitive.
I worked at a bank and the computer was a Burroughs 400. It took up a 600+ square foot room, it had 4K of ram, multiple tape drives and the program had to be loaded from Punch Cards. Once. one of my co-workers dropped a box of several hundred cards, while carrying it to the card reader to load a program. It took an extra 40 minutes or so to resort them into proper order again, so we could run the program.  
Nostalgia isn't that great if you had to live through those "good old days". One good thing about those days, we didn't have to put up with social media, "robo-calls", Uber, etc.
The more things change, the more they stay the same....
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See it this way: Due to the not-so-integrated circuits back then, tinkering was pretty much the mainstream norm. Heck, I remember CRT TVs coming with a maintenance manual telling you which capacitator to change in what case.
Nowdays, it's all integrated and mainstream tech isn't tinkerable (mostly, that dude who got an integrated headphone jack into his iPhone is a hero). Still, if you want to tinker, there's loads of fun to be had. It's just not mainstream anymore. But if you want, you can order an 8 bit computer self-assembly kit with programming instructions, for example. Or order the schematics and buy the parts yourself. Or understand the schematics and overclock it. I recently backed a Kickstarter which recreates the Altair on a ruler, meaning that if it's fun to program in REAL machine language (assembly in text files which get translated into machine language is one step further away from the tech running the code), then I'll do it.
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Kirill Illenseer wrote: But if you want, you can order an 8 bit computer self-assembly kit with programming instructions, for example.
I did that 40 years ago. I still have it and I was looking through the old magazines to find relevant articles. 
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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