commit 446b3c4801c9dc35cf550c0b1ebe374851e4bb57
parent 5ee04d9e348f15f1b48751be67bb8b705c3076a3
Author: Ville-Matias Heikkila <viznut@low.fi>
Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2022 15:56:21 +0300
Merge branch 'master' of bleu255.com:/var/www/git.bleu255.com/repos/permacomputing
Diffstat:
16 files changed, 23 insertions(+), 16 deletions(-)
diff --git a/Assessments.mdwn b/Assessments.mdwn
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-Permacomputing is also learning to deal with existing technologies, often trying to find the least evil among bad alternatives. In [[hardware]] we can't afford being too picky because we'll want to lengthen the lifespans of already existing even pieces of hardware, but in [[software]] we usually have more choice.
+Permacomputing is also learning to deal with existing technologies, often trying to find the least evil among bad alternatives. In [[hardware]] we can't afford being too picky because we'll want to lengthen the lifespans of already existing pieces of hardware (even bad ones), but in [[software]] we usually have more choice.
When assessing software and hardware, we'll want to focus on technicalities such as resource use (especially [[energy use]]), [[dependencies|dependency]] and [[documentation]] – mostly because many pieces of today's technology fail miserably in these areas.
diff --git a/Chifir.mdwn b/Chifir.mdwn
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-This Chifir computer is the definition of a universal [[virtual machine]] designed to host and archive projects. The example project to be hosted on the vm was [[Smalltalk]]-72, but its design did not reflect how this was to be done, and the lack of I/O made it unclear that it would even be a viable target for the system.
+The **Chifir** computer is the definition of a universal [[virtual machine]] designed to host and archive projects. The example project to be hosted on the vm was [[Smalltalk]]-72, but its design did not reflect how this was to be done, and the lack of I/O made it unclear that it would even be a viable target for the system.
## Relevance to permacomputing
diff --git a/Chip8.mdwn b/Chip8.mdwn
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-CHIP-8 was created by RCA engineer Joe Weisbecker in 1977 for the COSMAC VIP microcomputer. The Chip-8 language is capable of accessing up to 4KB(4096 bytes) of RAM, from location 0x000 to 0xFFF(0-4095). The first 512 bytes, from 0x000 to 0x1FF, are where the original interpreter was located, and should not be used by programs.
+**CHIP-8** is a [[virtual machine]] created by RCA engineer Joe Weisbecker in 1977 for the COSMAC VIP microcomputer. The Chip-8 language is capable of accessing up to 4KB(4096 bytes) of RAM, from location 0x000 to 0xFFF(0-4095). The first 512 bytes, from 0x000 to 0x1FF, are where the original interpreter was located, and should not be used by programs.
The original implementation of the Chip-8 language includes 36 different instructions, including math, graphics, and flow control functions.
diff --git a/DOS.mdwn b/DOS.mdwn
@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ emulator for running DOS-based IBM PC programs in modern operating systems.
DOS is designed to only run one program at a time with minimal external
dependencies. It is thus quite immune to many problems of more modern OSes,
-such as [[software rot]]. It may well used as a [[bedrock platform]] or as a
+such as [[software rot]]. It may well be used as a [[bedrock platform]] or as a
"bare-bones" system that may work for basic tasks even when everything else
fails. The main compatibility issue in DOS is that a lot of hardware is
commonly used by "banging the bare metal", which makes e.g. old sound
diff --git a/Design_for_disassembly.mdwn b/Design_for_disassembly.mdwn
@@ -1,3 +1,3 @@
-Designing for Disassembly ensures that all elements of a product can be disassembled for repair and for [[end of life]]. This allows for and encourages repairs, with the result that a product's life cycle is prolonged; and it allows for a product to be taken apart at the end of its life so that each component can be reclaimed. Among other shifts in thinking and making, this means minimizing materials, using simple mechanical fasteners instead of adhesives, clearly labeling components with their material type, and ensuring components can be disassembled with everyday tools.
+**Design for Disassembly** ensures that all elements of a product can be disassembled for repair and for [[end of life]]. This allows for and encourages repairs, with the result that a product's life cycle is prolonged; and it allows for a product to be taken apart at the end of its life so that each component can be reclaimed. Among other shifts in thinking and making, this means minimizing materials, using simple mechanical fasteners instead of adhesives, clearly labeling components with their material type, and ensuring components can be disassembled with everyday tools.
Unlike the nebulous goal of designing a sustainable product, designing a product for disassembly is a more concrete, quantifiable approach to ecologically sound making and to consumption.
diff --git a/Feminist_server.mdwn b/Feminist_server.mdwn
@@ -1,7 +1,8 @@
##Feminist Server
+TODO: Insufficient introduction/context, please expand
- A situated technology. It has a sense of context and sees itself as part of an ecology of practices
+A situated technology. It has a sense of context and sees itself as part of an ecology of practices.
See also:
diff --git a/Principles.mdwn b/Principles.mdwn
@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ Small systems are more likely to have small hardware and energy requirements, as
* **Accumulate wisdom and experience rather than codebase**.
* **Low complexity is beautiful**. This is also relevant to e.g. visual media where "high quality" is often thought to stem from high resolutions and large bitrates.
* [[Human-scale]]: a reasonable level of complexity for a computing system is that it can be entirely understood by a single person (from the low-level hardware details to the application-level quirks).
-* [[Scalability]] (upwards) is essential only if there is an actual and justifiable need to scale up; down-scalability may often be more elevant.
+* [[Scalability]] (upwards) is essential only if there is an actual and justifiable need to scale up; down-scalability may often be more relevant.
* **Abundance thinking**. If the computing capacity feels too limited for anything, you can rethink it from the point of view of abundance (e.g. by taking yourself fifty years back in time): tens of kilobytes of memory, thousands of operations per second – think about all the possibilities!
## Hope for the best, prepare for the worst
diff --git a/bloat.mdwn b/bloat.mdwn
@@ -1,3 +1,3 @@
-**Bloat** refers to the presence of program code that is perceived as unnecessarily long, slow, or otherwise wasteful of resources.
+**Bloat** refers to something wastefully and unnecessarily large. In software, it may refer to the presence of program code that is perceived as unnecessarily long, slow, or otherwise wasteful of resources, but a considerable amount of bloat originates from external [[dependencies|dependency]].
One formulation of bloat is [[Wirth's law]], a variant of [[Jevons paradox]]: software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware is getting faster.
diff --git a/cornucopianism.mdwn b/cornucopianism.mdwn
@@ -1 +1 @@
-Cornucopianism is the idea that continued progress and provision of material items for mankind can be met by similarly continued advances in technology. A cornucopian is someone who posits that there are few intractable natural [[limits to growth]] and believes the world can provide a practically limitless abundance of natural resources.
+**Cornucopianism** refers to **cornucopia**, "the horn of plenty". A cornucopian is someone who posits that there are few intractable natural [[limits to growth]] and believes the world can provide a practically limitless abundance of natural resources.
diff --git a/design_for_descent.mdwn b/design_for_descent.mdwn
@@ -1 +1 @@
-**Designing for Descent** ensures that a system is resilient to intermittent energy supply and network connectivity. [[Collapse informatics]] prioritizes community needs and aims to contribute to a knowledge [[commons]] in order to be able to succeed in case of [[infrastructure collapse]].
+**Designing for Descent** ensures that a system is resilient to intermittent energy supply and network connectivity. [[Collapse informatics|collapse computing]] prioritizes community needs and aims to contribute to a knowledge [[commons]] in order to be able to succeed in case of [[infrastructure collapse]].
diff --git a/digital_preservation.mdwn b/digital_preservation.mdwn
@@ -1,3 +1,5 @@
+TODO: This page lacks an introduction to the topic
+
## Techniques
[[Migration]]: Periodically convert data to the next-generation formats.
diff --git a/emotionally_durable_design.mdwn b/emotionally_durable_design.mdwn
@@ -1,6 +1,4 @@
-# Emotionally Durable Design
-
-edd is a framework brought forward by Jonathan Chapman. It proposes attributes that should be considered in designing things. The aim is to enable us humans to form stronger bonds with the designed things.
+**Emotionally Durable Design** is a framework brought forward by Jonathan Chapman. It proposes attributes that should be considered in designing things. The aim is to enable us humans to form stronger bonds with the designed things.
The attributes brought forward in the Design-Nine paper are:
diff --git a/emulation.mdwn b/emulation.mdwn
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-Emulation is a [[digital preservation]] technique involving mimicking the behavior of older hardware with software, tricking old programs into thinking they are running on their original platforms.
+**Emulation** is a [[digital preservation]] technique involving mimicking the behavior of older hardware with software, tricking old programs into thinking they are running on their original platforms.
See also:
diff --git a/file_collection.mdwn b/file_collection.mdwn
@@ -1,13 +1,13 @@
File collection
===============
-A **file collection** is a set of computer files deliberately maintained by someone. In today's computing, most non-personal files can be considered temporary: they have been downloaded from somewhere and can always be redownloaded if needed again. The practice of actual file collection is becoming ever more marginal, but it has a place in permacomputing for increasing resilience and reducing network [[dependency]].
+A **file collection** is a set of computer files that is deliberately maintained by someone. In today's computing, most non-personal files can be considered temporary: they have been downloaded from somewhere and can always be redownloaded if needed again. The practice of actual file collection is becoming ever more marginal, but it has a place in permacomputing for increasing resilience and reducing network [[dependency]].
Before the ubiquity of the broadband Internet, users of personal computers usually had files of all the software they used (and usually a lot of software they never used), often on physical floppies or CDs. These collections were cared for, and even the decision to delete a rarely played PD game could be painful. While people had their private file collections, there were also public file collections, such as [[BBS]]es, which often served as repositories of commonly needed PD software and much more.
While broadband networking is probably the most important reason for the marginalization of file collection, another reason may be "[[obsolescence]] thinking" that assumes files to [[get bad|software rot]] if they are not constantly "updated". Keeping a computer offline for a long period of time often brings up large batches of automatic updates; experiences like this may contribute to the illusion of "file rot".
-Today, many people have small personal servers or websites, but they are rarely used to share any files other than those directly related to the maintainer. However, they could also easily serve larger collections of files, including copies of all kinds of online resources the maintainer considers important. A lot of resources are released on licences that allow unlimited redistribution, but this right to redistribution seems to be quite underused.
+Today, many people have small personal servers or websites, but they are rarely used to share any files other than those directly related to the maintainer. However, they could also easily serve larger collections of files, including copies of all kinds of online resources the maintainer considers important. A lot of resources are available with licences that allow unlimited redistribution, but this right to redistribution seems to be quite underused.
In a file collection culture, nothing that is published is supposed to only stay in one place. A resource stays in one place only if it is too obscure or uninteresting to anyone else, maybe even the author. Even the kind of files that in the [[WWW]] culture could be called blog posts or social-media posts get spread to multiple places if they are considered of any interest at all. From the permacomputing point of view, a file that is only available on one server has a hard [[dependency]] on that server, and hard dependencies are supposed to be avoided.
diff --git a/media_minimization.mdwn b/media_minimization.mdwn
@@ -29,5 +29,6 @@ careful artisan work and look better than the original.
See also:
+ * [[Aesthetics]]
* [[Demoscene]]
* [[Small File Media Festival]]
diff --git a/minimization.mdwn b/minimization.mdwn
@@ -1 +1,6 @@
**Minimization** is used here to mean the limiting of the use of artificial energy for data storage and transfer. [[Compression]] is a form of minimization, but minimization does not necessarily means the optimization of data size through compression.
+
+See also:
+
+ * [[Bandwidth minimization]]
+ * [[Media minimization]]
