Is there really a light at the end of the journey...?


ClockworkCoder said:
The definition of 'obsolete' is something that is either no longer used, or no longer useful.

The Commodore 64 may not be current, but it's certainly still used (and may be considered useful to a few people). Archaic? Perhaps, but not obsolete.

So the Pyra certainly won't be obsolete by any stretch of the definition.
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I don't agree for two reasons:

1/ Obsolete originates from Latin obsoletus meaning "grown old, worn-out", and obviously Cortex-A15 is obsolete today (I don't know companies using it in modern hard for ICT world), the same that our loved Commodore 64. And when I say "no one" I mean nearly no people. There is a few people using Commodore 64 for recreational purposes, and we using Cortex-A15 in Pyra (the year it reach us, of course :D ), but they are obsolete because near no people or no companies (in modern hardware) use it.

I think the meaning "fall into disuse" (for obsolete) is a consequence of original significance.

My mother language (as a lot of people here) is not English, but a Romance language, and in it "obsolete" means "grown out" (and, contrary to English language, in my mother language, as on some other Western Romance languages, there is an official institution studying and defining the language), so when I use "obsolete" I mean the original meaning.

Sorry for confusion, but English is not my mother language, and here there is a lot of people here speaking mostly other European languages, that like me can not be totally correct in English language.

2/ Our loved Commodore 64 is obsolete, even "fall into disuse", time ago, although a few people like us still use and love it.When most people doesn't use it, it is into disuse.

Cortex-A15 is obsolete, even "fall into disuse", for new hardware in ICT world (no new hard I know use it from time ago), although some "crazy" people, like us, still wait for a niche product with that outdated CPU after a lot of years of delay. We have it in Pyra because Pyra has accumulated years of delay, and we well get Pyra with an obsolete CPU for ICT actual standards.

We can use Cortex-A15 for a lot of task, even older hard, but it is outdated for ICT standards in personal computers (of course ARM v7 and other 32 bit ARM ISAs will be used in IoT and other not personal computers). And I can't run 64 bit soft in it, when today 64 bit is standard in near all personal computers (even Raspberry Pi, not Zero or compute module, from 2016 uses 64 but hard).

Finally, I don't want discussion about language/significance, nor for Cortex-A15 obsolescence , a 32 bit ARM v7 ISA CPU, (for me it is very clear it is outdated and in disuse for new hard for personal computers) so for me this matter is finished :)

If Pyra CPU were not upgradeable, I would not buy it. I value CPU upgrade option, and I hope we will get an upgrade CPU some time in future.
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EvilDragon said:
Well, the Win 2 is quite a bit larger than the Pyra and is missing the largest components of the Pyra: The SD Card slots and the LTE modem (which is bigger than one SD Card slot, and that's without the huge antenna)

Of course there's more space for a bigger battery and active cooling solution :)

We tried to cramp as much as possible in as little space as possible :)

Sent from my Moto Z using Tapatalk
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And even GPD Win 2 doesn't have backlight keyboard. For me it is a must in a pocket/mobile computer, because, like with a smartphone, you will want to use it in places where there is no good light to see buttons/symbols in a hard keyboard.

For me GPD is NOT an option for its size and not having backlight keyboard.
 
oskda said:
And even GPD Win 2 doesn't have backlight keyboard. For me it is a must in a pocket/mobile computer, because, like with a smartphone, you will want to use it in places where there is no good light to see buttons/symbols in a hard keyboard.

For me GPD is NOT an option for its size and not having backlight keyboard.
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Really? You are naturally entitled to your own opinion, but to me if it is worth typing on then it is worth typing on it blind. I even used to type blind on my calculator, and with ten fingers too.

Perhaps this is why I hate touchscreens so much, you don't feel a thing and blind typing becomes impossible. Even those damned coffee machines at work come with touchscreens these days. It frustrates me tremendously.
 
Caine said:
Really? You are naturally entitled to your own opinion, but to me if it is worth typing on then it is worth typing on it blind. I even used to type blind on my calculator, and with ten fingers too.

Perhaps this is why I hate touchscreens so much, you don't feel a thing and blind typing becomes impossible. Even those damned coffee machines at work come with touchscreens these days. It frustrates me tremendously.
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Blind touch typing works somewhat on the Planet Computers Gemini - but definitely compromised. But, your fingers can each have a designated domain that your brain will help translate into coordinated keystrokes.

Win, Win2, Pandora, Pyra - none of these are designed for blind touch typing. They are all 'thumb keyboards' and count on you seeing the relative positions of two thumbs as they scurry around on the keyboard. Each thumb, having a domain of dozens of keys, needs more brain-digit coordination, which will benefit from the visual stimulus of a backlit keyboard.
 
Grench said:
Blind touch typing works somewhat on the Planet Computers Gemini - but definitely compromised. But, your fingers can each have a designated domain that your brain will help translate into coordinated keystrokes.
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I specifically avoided the word touch typing because it assumes and/or suggests a very specific finger position. I used to type blind on my calculator, I type blind on my Pandora (both with 10 fingers and with only my thumbs), and I have a super cheap crappy Bluetooth keyboard/pad (about the size of a hand) that I control my media centre with. I thumb-type blind on that thing as well.

I have no difficulty striking keys blindly without looking at the keyboard. Perhaps my years of practice on the piano have given me a very good sense of relative key distances and/or absolute key placement and perhaps I have an exceptionally strong memory for keyboard layouts, but somehow I doubt all of these to be true. It just takes practice.

I am not saying that the keyboard should not have a backlight, but I do not understand that not having one completely disqualifies a device. Do you non-blind typers use computers in the dark so often?
 
Caine said:
I am not saying that the keyboard should not have a backlight, but I do not understand that not having one completely disqualifies a device. Do you non-blind typers use computers in the dark so often?
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Yes. I use my Gemini as my primary phone/device. When it buzzes in the middle of the night, I check messages with the screen brightness way down, generally need to turn on a light or tilt the screen forward to see where any symbol on the Fn layer is at that I might need for a reply.

The backlight isn't critical for me to be able to touch type on the letters/numbers. The lack of backlight is highly annoying, though, when I have to type anything that isn't on the top layer or less common while in the dark.

Is a backlight a critical need? No.
Is it a huge bonus feature? Hell yes.
 
Grench said:
When it buzzes in the middle of the night, I check messages with the screen brightness way down, generally need to turn on a light or tilt the screen forward to see where any symbol on the Fn layer is at that I might need for a reply.
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Ah, like that. I suppose that makes sense. I would still practice to be able to do that blindly.

Personally, if I had a (mobile) phone then I would turn it off at night. Nights are for sleeping.
If it was a real emergency I would need to get up anyway, no sense not turning on the light. If it is not an emergency then answers can wait. Waking up and staring at a screen in the middle of the night is terrible for sleep hygiene.

It is funny to see how mobile phone users experience the world so much differently. Sometimes the world feels really weird to me these days. Before you ask, yes I am aware that I am the eccentric odd-one-out.
 
oskda said:
I mean the original meaning
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Yesn't, meanings shift over time. And English has been mutating faster than the other languages I know. Maybe because it also serves as a lingua franca, thus having imposed the need for simplification. (search for "Anglish" on youtube for some trivia)
Also: Don't remember the article, but a unique word count on recent novels reveals less diversity, but that was an overall trent on many other languages.
From Dutch: "stout" means naughty. The english "stout" means firm.
The Dutch "braaf" (brave) has been stripped from the "bravado" and is now "well behaved". Dutch had to re-import the Italian "bravo" to re-introduce the cheer. While Spanish "Bravo" now means something to beware of because it will attack.

I wonder if the French get milk with their televisions? "au lait" and "oled"?
 
If etymology had any relevance to the actual meaning of a word your windows wouldn't be sealed by glass and you'd use snake oil to successfully treat joint pain.
 
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Letalis Sonus said:
If etymology had any relevance to the actual meaning of a word your windows wouldn't be sealed by glass and you'd use snake oil to successfully treat joint pain.
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Success has many parents, while failure has only one.
Dark Pulse said:
HYDROOOOOO THUNDERRRRRRRRR!!!
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Sounds so epic I Had to look it up... it was more epic in words than in sound.
 
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