Posting a quick TL;DW. A minute into the video Chuck Moore says that Windows updates (on 11 and 10) have caused colorForth to crash, with Chuck thinking it's a graphical problem. I may comment more, but I wanted to post this because I don't see it mentioned as a youtube comment.
Did Microsoft seriously deprecate BitBlt and 2D draw calls?
If so, it seems as if Windows is undergoing a Waylandization. "Yeah, we went ahead and removed those because they're legacy. Modern rendering pipelines don't work that way anymore." I don't WANT a rendering pipeline! I want a surface, and to make calls to scribble on it! That's it!
> Did Microsoft seriously deprecate BitBlt and 2D draw calls?
Very unlikely. Far too many applications depend on those things. It's more likely that they accidentally changed something subtle that happened to break colorForth.
> If so, it seems as if Windows is undergoing a Waylandization. "Yeah, we went ahead and
The Wayland idea looks very similar to a Microsoft brain extract: "trust us, it will be the best when it is ready", "your program doesn't work ? update to latest version", "we have updates: we disabled some things which worked before".
It wouldn't surprise me to find that Windows is now flagging and quarantining unsigned, unfamiliar executables that it catches making these draw calls or really any direct Win32 calls. Microsoft, and in particular Windows Defender which you can't really turn off anymore, has gotten pretty aggressive about blocking software for "security purposes".
Totally! At 87 that's gutsy! My very first paid programming work was in Forth on a 6502 platform in the '60s, building a networked accounting and flow management program for a water company, but I'm now 81 and very glad to be retired.
My dad is in his mid 60's, and I'm pretty convinced he's going to be like that. He's not a software engineer, mostly a mechanical engineer, but it's pretty rare that I talk to him and he's not hacking on something mechanical.
I'm not talking just woodshop stuff; he is actually doing math and calculations for little things that he's building. He is an engineer by blood that happened to make a career out of it.
From the website;
Optimizations for windowed games improves gaming on your PC by using a new presentation model for DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 games that appear in a window or in a borderless window.
When these optimizations are used, games that originally use the legacy blt-model presentation can use the newer flip-model presentation instead (if the game is compatible). This results in lower frame latency and lets you use other newer gaming features; for example, Auto HDR, and variable refresh rate (for displays that support it).
I wonder sometimes if there's an earlier level of technology that society could basically "checkpoint" at and freeze, and then build off of. Capitalism today feels like it's hit the Red Queen Paradox - it goes around and around to keep the money flowing, but with very little actual progress. Indeed, most people seem to feel like the world is getting worse for all that work, and that many of the innovations of the last ~10-15 years are "fixing" things that weren't problems to begin with while creating new problems. And yet because all the substrate is shifting around, even if you don't break something someone else will. Could we go back to a world of redundant interchangeable parts where if somebody breaks something, you just cut them off and use a substitute that works just as well?
Or maybe that's well and truly gone and we're just fated to another dark age. I'm reminded of the Smarter Scrubber documentary that found that basically the whole supply chain was gone and it was impossible to make something useful in America.
Thanks for the mention. The philosophy behind Dusk is also eerily relevant to Chuck's problem at the moment. To quote my own manifest[1]:
When you operate a system, there is no problem that can arise that will make you powerless. Sure, you can have a hardware failure that hopelessly breaks your system, but at least you'll be able to identify that failure and know for sure that there is no software solution or workaround. That's control.
In this situation, of course Windows is to blame. But it could also happen with Linux, even if it's to a much much lesser degree.
If an update breaks your software in a way that is obscure enough to break only your software, then nobody else will fix your problem, and the system as a whole is too complex for you to dive in, making you powerless.
Using your scale? ↑7 or ↑8. That seemed to be the sweet spot in capabilities to me, without getting to the point where engagement eats everything else including productivity and future maintenance.
Using semiconductor process nodes? 45-65nm. That was around the point that Moore's Law broke down. At that point, you could do most of the functionality that we depend upon computers for (eg. GUIs, 3D rendering, networking, basic machine-learning, some speech recognition and text synthesis). It also roughly corresponds to ↑7 or ↑8 on your scale, so it's self-consistent.
Conceptually? I'd like to have multiple checkpoints, so that if the ecosystem gets borked you can roll back further.
Technology is cultural. People invent what they invent according of the culture that they live in and that orients their needs. Lot of cultures are not producing technology and those culture are not less advanced, just different. There is no going back, because there is no back or ahead. Change the culture, change the kind of technology people will create.
Why is your premise that this state of society is intrinsically caused by technological progress? The issues you describe seem to me a product of general economic trends.
It is sad to see. I understand where he is coming from though. He is 87 and doesn't think recoding a super niche' software tool is the best use of what very well may be his last few years of life. He still seems super sharp though and is a major inspiration.
What would be the best use of his last few years? Sitting in an easy chair by the pool?
Using your last few years to exercise your brain and ward off cognitive decline might be the best way to ensure those last few years are fulfilling and not just marking time before the end.
Perhaps he has chosen the best use of his last few years to his own satisfaction, and doesn't feel the need to share every last detail about himself on the internet.
Isn't that part of the Forth mantra though, to be written to the lowest level possible, eschewing portability, interoperability, hard coding fonts, etc., to achieve the simplest, most minimal implementation possible?
Forth is generally all about minimalism as I understand it, but that has nothing to do with what I wrote. I was just saying the man obviously wants to focus on something else at this stage of his life and that is perfectly okay. I think he might port to Raspberry Pi if he was a few years younger, but he pointed out that he didn't think it was worth it at this point.
>>He is 87 and doesn't think recoding a super niche' software tool is the best use of what very well may be his last few years of life.
Know quite a few elderly men, were moving mountains until retirement, then at one age they wanted to simply step back and relax. It was a cognitive downhill from there on. Also there is something strange about men sitting at home doing nothing. For some reasons families start hating as little as a sentence from them. You have to sit quiet for most of your life. Which honestly speaking is nothing short of a punishment, because you are actually expected to behave like furniture, or at best like a vegetable.
Even other wise I do see men who retired early not having all that a great time sitting at home and doing nothing.
Without a purpose, you won't enjoy living life much.
Yep, in China there was a research that says retirement is a major killer for certain elder people (forgot the details but most likely just statistics of the number of years between retirement and death). I don’t know. I’d like to find a calling and die working on it.
My attitude about software is that it expresses ideas that cannot be owned. Attempting to assert ownership is undesirable and impossible.
So, although colorForth is infinitely valuable, I place it in the Public Domain to make it freely available to anyone for any purpose. There is plenty of money to be made by porting code, programming applications and teaching.
I am having a fine time using colorForth. I won't spend much time promoting it. This site is my attempt to gauge the market. I will rigidly control the version I use."
But when you go to the downloads you see this:
"Download
You can download colorForth thanks to UltraTechnology.
Downloads are still available. But note that COLOR.COM can only run under DOS - not Windows. As you can see above, it's 9 years old and I no longer know how to run it. The current version is available at GreenArrays
This is the exact version I'm using, limited only in the amount of source code provided. It's a 63KB .COM program. You're welcome to use it as you please. But it's a powerful tool, so please be careful."
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If so, it seems as if Windows is undergoing a Waylandization. "Yeah, we went ahead and removed those because they're legacy. Modern rendering pipelines don't work that way anymore." I don't WANT a rendering pipeline! I want a surface, and to make calls to scribble on it! That's it!
Very unlikely. Far too many applications depend on those things. It's more likely that they accidentally changed something subtle that happened to break colorForth.
The Wayland idea looks very similar to a Microsoft brain extract: "trust us, it will be the best when it is ready", "your program doesn't work ? update to latest version", "we have updates: we disabled some things which worked before".
I'm not talking just woodshop stuff; he is actually doing math and calculations for little things that he's building. He is an engineer by blood that happened to make a career out of it.
From the website; Optimizations for windowed games improves gaming on your PC by using a new presentation model for DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 games that appear in a window or in a borderless window.
When these optimizations are used, games that originally use the legacy blt-model presentation can use the newer flip-model presentation instead (if the game is compatible). This results in lower frame latency and lets you use other newer gaming features; for example, Auto HDR, and variable refresh rate (for displays that support it).
It is checked by default. Hope it helps.
Or maybe that's well and truly gone and we're just fated to another dark age. I'm reminded of the Smarter Scrubber documentary that found that basically the whole supply chain was gone and it was impossible to make something useful in America.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY
If an update breaks your software in a way that is obscure enough to break only your software, then nobody else will fix your problem, and the system as a whole is too complex for you to dive in, making you powerless.
[1]: https://duskos.org/who.html
Using semiconductor process nodes? 45-65nm. That was around the point that Moore's Law broke down. At that point, you could do most of the functionality that we depend upon computers for (eg. GUIs, 3D rendering, networking, basic machine-learning, some speech recognition and text synthesis). It also roughly corresponds to ↑7 or ↑8 on your scale, so it's self-consistent.
Conceptually? I'd like to have multiple checkpoints, so that if the ecosystem gets borked you can roll back further.
Using your last few years to exercise your brain and ward off cognitive decline might be the best way to ensure those last few years are fulfilling and not just marking time before the end.
That's completely up to him, and if that's what he wants to do, then that's the best use. No one can say what is best for anyone else.
https://www.ultratechnology.com/forth.htm
Know quite a few elderly men, were moving mountains until retirement, then at one age they wanted to simply step back and relax. It was a cognitive downhill from there on. Also there is something strange about men sitting at home doing nothing. For some reasons families start hating as little as a sentence from them. You have to sit quiet for most of your life. Which honestly speaking is nothing short of a punishment, because you are actually expected to behave like furniture, or at best like a vegetable.
Even other wise I do see men who retired early not having all that a great time sitting at home and doing nothing.
Without a purpose, you won't enjoy living life much.
" Updated 2002 September Philosophy
My attitude about software is that it expresses ideas that cannot be owned. Attempting to assert ownership is undesirable and impossible.
So, although colorForth is infinitely valuable, I place it in the Public Domain to make it freely available to anyone for any purpose. There is plenty of money to be made by porting code, programming applications and teaching.
I am having a fine time using colorForth. I won't spend much time promoting it. This site is my attempt to gauge the market. I will rigidly control the version I use."
But when you go to the downloads you see this:
"Download You can download colorForth thanks to UltraTechnology.
Downloads are still available. But note that COLOR.COM can only run under DOS - not Windows. As you can see above, it's 9 years old and I no longer know how to run it. The current version is available at GreenArrays
This is the exact version I'm using, limited only in the amount of source code provided. It's a 63KB .COM program. You're welcome to use it as you please. But it's a powerful tool, so please be careful."See https://colorforth.github.io/
Microsoft: not even once.