In this case I’m not confused. Fungi isn’t foundational the way this meme implies. Monera and protista existed before fungi and would go on even if all fungi were to vanish. In fact were monera and plantae to vanish nearly all fungi would parish. It’s pretty simple to tell which kingdom is more foundational. ¯*(ツ)*/¯
Perhaps it could be like copyrights and patents? If you don’t defend them, you lose them, and in some cases they expire after a set amount of time and then they can be used by others
This happens in the world of CNC machines too. I used to run a two million dollar Mazak 300 Fabrigear that was made in 2008. When I started the machine up, Windows 98 booted up before starting the FANUC control program that actually ran the machine.
My friend’s dad has a CNC machine that requires floppy disks to load the design patterns. He’s worried that a mechanical failure of the disk drive will eventually be the end of it, rather than the machine itself being obsolete. It’s been going strong for almost 40 years now.
It might be possible to buy an old floppy drive off ebay and switch out the broken one of that happens, as long as there are no proprietary connectors and such…
Ah yes, Compaq, the company that used non standard power supplies but with the standard wire coloring and connectors. I had several customers blow up their motherboards after buying standard replacement power supplies.
It’s reverse: you get a board that has a floppy interface on one side and a USB socket on the other. You plug in a USB drive and the board uses a file on the drive as the floppy disk, pretending to be a floppy Drive connected to the interface. It’s a little less convenient because you have to deal with disk images but it works without moving parts.
As long as it’s not connected to a network and is actually maintained, there’s nothing specifically wrong with Windows 98. Also just make sure the USB ports are shut.
It’s amazing even for the cheaper CnC machines in other industries running on Dos or Win95, 98, XP. I use to have to maintain the hardware of these older PCs as the initial outlay to replace the machines was fairly high compared to stress and much lower cost of finding old hardware.
In the end with the modem equivalent CnC machines on the lower end we would only see minimal upgrades to the functions of the machines, versus the updates to the software. Let’s me honest that would become obsolete yet again within a few years.
Capitalism will always capitalism. “Oh, we have to provide a healthy option? Okay, it’ll be the expensive option.” “Oh, we have to support software? Okay, subscription models only” “Oh, we have to pay our workers minimum wage? Okay, we’ll pay them not a penny more and raise our prices”
It’s an endless fight… Yet, we can’t stop fighting it, because attrition of our values and apathy in our actions are weapons the system uses against us.
Even books have the same. IIRC the ‘corrected’ version of Bilbo receiving the ring came into the Hobbit because the publisher wanted Tolkien to make a revised version to keep the copyright going.
(I presume the corrected version of that chapter was just taking advantage of the opportunity, but still…)
This post is so true. I work in local government in a state that has TONS of money, yet our systems to control the information for agents to determine if you keep your kids or not is still based on MS-DOS. it’s insane to see in 2023
Using something like DOS is neither preferred nor more safe. Last time MS DOS received a security patch was 23 years ago. It’s open to pretty much any security vulnerability you can think of. In case you depend on a DOS app it’s preferable to run it on a modern OS that is DOS compatible, windows 10 32bit for example (I believe Win11 still has support). Or even better sandboxed in an emulator like DOSBox on a more secure OS.
I really don’t want to rely on security through obscurity… MS-DOS was written back when every programmer trusted everything that ran on the computer, security wasn’t even an afterthought, and encryption was the sole domain of math nerds, conspiracy theorists, and the nerd equivalent of doomsday preppers because it was “too computationally expensive.” Its sole saving grace in terms of security is that it doesn’t support multitasking so malware can’t run in the background, but you can just target whatever software it’s running, instead.
I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say “look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree.
Then he says “I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing,” and I think that he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is … I can appreciate the beauty of a flower.
At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes.
The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.
God, back when I was a kid my father used to be against me playing video games so I’d have to find some free way to game and I just lived on abandonware games. I downloaded games that were either kind of old and came out around the mid-90’s or even earlier, or had just been abandoned; that and a ton of gaming on emulators.
So many fun old games, sooooo many fun old games. Also lots and lots of ASCII rpg games, lots and lots of ASCII rpg games.
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