Shopsmith Forums

Hi Ed!:D
Once an App or program is open I don't worry about closing it. It just sits in the background and does nothing until I call it to the front again. I can press the "Windows button" and go back to any open program by touching or clicking on the desktop tile.

During this post I went to Time Warner Cable, then to weather, then to Free Cell, then back to this post.

From what I've seen so far there is no need to close apps. That happens when the computer is shut down. Interesting that they are there again when the computer is booted up.

I read that an update of Win8 will include the Start Menu we all miss.
I'm still Win7 and see no reason to upgrade.
Win8 and its Tiles seems clumsy to those of us used to the filing system of Windows, but evidently appeals to those who don't understand computers.
My Windows phone uses Tiles, but I only have them for most frequently accessed apps.
I've had a laptop and desktop for years, but my PC died a year ago, and I don't miss it - the 2 year old laptop does everything the PC did.
Fact is, PCs are going away and software is becoming cloud-based.
Outlook has been replaced by Outlook.com. I went from Outlook Express to Outlook to Hotmail (now Outlook.com). The only difference is that its web/cloud-based, and I can't refer to my email messages unless I go on-line. That's only a nuisance when traveling, when I may not have internet access for a day.

I still think in DOS file 'system' mode.

A 'folder' is what you place papers in to keep related things grouped together.

Dividers help one locate a particular folder when many are stored.

A 'cabinet' is what folders and dividers are stored in.



A directory/sub directory is where computer files are referenced.

A storage device is where computer files are stored.



To me an 'app' is a small(once upon a time!;)) computer program for use on portable devices that contain digital processors.


All this 'dumbing down' for computer illiterates to me is counter productive and adds unnecessary confusion. The alternate terminology is seldom a perfect analogy.


End rant!;)

When I started in computers every thing was cloud processing in a sense. You had huge main frames in computer rooms and you initially talked to them with punch cards and print outs. Then the terminal came along and every thing was inputted to the main frame where it was computed and returned either as print out or on your terminal.

Then came the PC, first it was standalone, but then things like PROFS and CICS started to appear on them and slowly the Net was birthed. Before long it was browsers and search sites instead of pre canned data. But it didn't stop there soon the cloud was invented and processing began to fall back to huge main frames (only now they are called servers) and PC are becoming more like smart terminals rather than stand alone computers. I'm guessing we will keep on this cycle until we reach the punch card paper print out only then it will be spoken word and a voice that answers.

Ed in Tampa wrote:When I started in computers every thing was cloud processing in a sense. You had huge main frames in computer rooms and you initially talked to them with punch cards and print outs. Then the terminal came along and every thing was inputted to the main frame where it was computed and returned either as print out or on your terminal.

Then came the PC, first it was standalone, but then things like PROFS and CICS started to appear on them and slowly the Net was birthed. Before long it was browsers and search sites instead of pre canned data. But it didn't stop there soon the cloud was invented and processing began to fall back to huge main frames (only now they are called servers) and PC are becoming more like smart terminals rather than stand alone computers. I'm guessing we will keep on this cycle until we reach the punch card paper print out only then it will be spoken word and a voice that answers.

I consider 'cloud' schemes an attempt by IT types to reclaim 'control'.

Dependency upon an internet link is fool hardy IMHO.

Talk about all yer eggs in one basket(and a basket in someone else's hands).

JPG40504 wrote:I consider 'cloud' schemes an attempt by IT types to reclaim 'control'.

Dependency upon an internet link is fool hardy IMHO.

Talk about all yer eggs in one basket(and a basket in someone else's hands).

For those of us who resist moving into the clouds, our internet experience may be coming to an end; our days remaining on the internet may be numbered.

My daughters both have businesses that depend on the internet and they have both converted to the cloud. They swear by it. Faster, easier, cheaper (they say) and far more reliable. For them, a hard disk failure is no longer a concern. All of their data is in the clouds". I guess memory systems and hard disks don't fail there.

Personally, that would not make me feel good but then I am an old foggy.

[quote="dusty"]For those of us who resist moving into the clouds, our internet experience may be coming to an end]
Yes it removes 'them' from the responsibility of backing up things.

It also makes them vulnerable to someone else's disaster.

Not to mention 'security'.

I just hope their 'sensitive' data does not rain on someone else.



A generation gap for sure. Us old fogeys believe in doin it our selves. Now adays dependency on others seems the 'norm'.











They have not yet acquired blisters!:rolleyes:

[quote="dusty"]For those of us who resist moving into the clouds, our internet experience may be coming to an end]

Oh hard disk and memory failures still occur on "cloud" machines they just ensure they have redundant machines and scheduled backups. When I shifted from hardware to software back in 1979 most major circuits in the main frames had at least 2 and many times 3 redundant path ways. And most customers either had redundant sites or was looking at commercial sites that offered redundancy.

Their insurance carriers required they had scheduled backups and that logs were kept showing each backup was done. Many insurance companies required the backup data to be stored off site and there was a lot of talk of a place out in Colo much like the Central Defense Command that is in tunnels in the mountains. This place I can't remember the name was claiming that any backup stored in their vault could withstand a direct nuclear hit, much less an event of nature.

I once totaled a disk that contained the companies customer master, billing master and parts inventory. The disk was bathed in 10 gallons of oil.

Wasn't my fault I installed a new actuator that had a casting flaw which caused a hydraulic oil leak, so all 10 gallons of oil that moved the head actuators blew out a pit in a sand casting and on to the heads and disk.

What a mess. I cleaned up and replaced the heads and we had to have the disk recovered. We bought a seat for the disk on next commercial flight to Calif. where they recovered the data and set it back on the next return flight to Ohio.

Company suffered less than an 8 hour delay in their processing.

However the manager of the company had me by the throat threatening to choke the life from my body if they didn't get their data back.

Today that data would be in at least 2 places and probably in one form or another on 30 different devices for immediate retrieval.

For those of us who have been involved with computers since the early 60's, one can trace repeated changes from "centralization" to "decentralization" over the years.

First there was a smart computer connected to a dumb terminal (teletype machine) and called "time-share."

Then there was a smart computer that wasn't connected at all to a central computer (first Apple and IBM computers) because it wasn't needed.

Then there was smart computers connected to an even smarter and larger central computer (called "networking").

Now we have a large, smarter, central computer that is broken up into many pieces scattered around the globe and all wired together like a brain and called "The Cloud" to which we connect "dumb" (comparatively) terminals once again.

Perhaps we will go around once again.

Ed in Tampa wrote:Then came the PC, first it was standalone, but then things like PROFS and CICS started to appear on them and slowly the Net was birthed. Before long it was browsers and search sites instead of pre canned data. But it didn't stop there soon the cloud was invented and processing began to fall back to huge main frames (only now they are called servers) and PC are becoming more like smart terminals rather than stand alone computers. I'm guessing we will keep on this cycle until we reach the punch card paper print out only then it will be spoken word and a voice that answers.

Ha! I was redesigning mainframe systems and reviewing code on CICS at the previous factory I worked at...still running it there too. And still printing greenbar!

BTW CICS preceded the PC by many years. Our particular implementation was 1976.