So, as a matter of fact, I occasionally buy some computer games. Also I also occasionally buy new computers. Eventually it becomes hard to use an old computer if the computer is not able to operate the newest software available.
If I get bored, I might even try to install old games in a new computer. I tried this a couple of weeks ago when I was not feeling up to doing work and I was on Holiday.
As it naturally happens, the old software does not run in the new computer. Operating systems change, and as they change, the graphic engines and old routines stop working properly: they become obsolete.
The video game was just the tip of the iceberg. I was also trying to run some other obsolete software to update my class website and that also didn’t run anymore in the new operating system (I was trying to be a cheapskate with woeful effects). Thus, I had to try and install new software, and then I found out the new software didn’t work on the old computer with a new system either: someone decided that the software could only work if the format of the drive couldn’t distinguish uppercase letters from lower case letters in the file system. This sounds prehistoric to me, but there you have it. After 14 hours of backing up, reformatting hard-drives and rebuilding the system, the new software finally installed and now it works.
I feel with sadness the inexorable fading into obsolescence of my computer equipment. The announced death of my equipment seems to be a life too short by whatever measure (It makes me think about the Blade Runner replicants begging for postponing their genetically encoded death). Although I understand that this is a marketing ploy to keep the economy running and the profits coming, it seems rather wasteful to me. I’m looking forward to the day when a computer will last 25 years. I would even be happy with 10 right now.
Hi David,
when the new technology gets qualitatively more powerful than the old one, one can run the old software easily, by emulators.
So I am sometimes using WinVICE, the perfect Commodore 64 emulator, and DOSbox 0.72, which runs pretty much everything that used to run in MS-DOS.
The more recent programs may often be run in the “Compatibility mode” on Vista (right click the EXE file, Properties).
Otherwise, I am not understanding your comment that case insensitives file name are the history. The cutting-edge operating systems, namely the versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7, can create case-sensitive file names and directory names, but they always identify them in the case-insensitive way.
I agree that in some cases, the IT industry (and other industries) deliberately want things to become obsolete soon. And I think it is often a good thing. It gives them funding and drives progress because when something has to be renewed, it has the potential to become better, after some natural selection.
No updates might be convenient for someone but the progress would be much more limited.
Best wishes
Lubos
HI Lubos:
For some other systems than Windows, backwards compatibility is not enforced (this is actually a good thing as it prevents the system from bloating). The issue of formatting of files in the OS can also be a choice. If I choose wrong, ( and I did), I get all the extra work. This was not really a complaint but a lament for things lost. Unfortunately, that is not how it reads.
Hi David (if I may)
What kind of computer games do you enjoy?
Hi Per:
I tend to prefer strategy games (where I can leave the computer and make my move twenty minutes later or in the far future if I decide the game is interesting enough), but a lot depends on my mood. If I only have 5 minutes, I prefer some of the free flash games that are available out there. I still have fond memories of playing Moria and other text based games with no fancy graphics. They are not needed.
I was trying to install Europa Universalis II, but there are some issues with graphics cards, etc. Ah, the cost of progress.
I’ve also got the strategy game thing. Civilization and all that. Funny thing, my brother and sister are also adicts. She’s a professor of English lit. My brother also has nothing to do with math or physics.
As far as combined strategy / tactical games go, the Warcraft series are superior to Civilization in that they include the tactical elements of unit control. Sometimes I play those. But they are scenario based games that get dull fairly quickly.
The one I play right now is Civilization Alpha Centauri on a 10 year-old desktop. Colonization and Railroad are nice strategy games. Railroad is more or less pure economic warfare so you can play without putting your female friends off their feed, while Colonization combines economic warfare with armies and navies.
However, I consider playing these things to be a high waste of time. Part of my solution is to make it as boring as possible. So I don’t play against human players, and I keep playing the same game over and over. I’ve got 5-year-old games sitting around untried, but I’ve promised that I’m going to crack one of them as soon as I get a paper out on hadron excitations.
It was only when I read it again that I realized that the last meaning in the cheapskate reference did not say “stringy creep”…