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Today, our computers are always on, never restarted, always connected. This is a bad thing, not a good thing. My personal machines and devices are not high

Today, our computers are always on, never restarted, always connected. This is a bad thing, not a good thing. My personal machines and devices are not high-availability servers, and don't need to be powered on all the time. I close my browser windows, and power off my machines frequently, and deliberately. I generally don't gain very much from the practice of leaving the room for an hour, with my machine powered on. I'd like to dissent from this echo chamber of constantly advocating promiscuous systems, that tend to do things for us without asking us first, and promote biased decisions in favor of permissiveness. I pretty much hate that you can't remove the battery from an iPhone. That said, there was an time when client/server computing delivered a lot of the kind of functionality, via a fragmented industry of proprietary "enterprise" applications, that has, lately, been re-cast as the broad ecosystem of "mobile apps" (which are essentially the same thing, only smaller and portable). Also, since HTTP is a stateless protocol, "rich web applications" (aka: HTML5+ & JS), have been able to fill in a lot of gaps in web browser behavior with asynchronous requests. I tend to think that JavaScript will become the open version of the once proprietary non-interoperable model of native binaries and client/server computing.

spolu 13y ago
Well, it's not powered all the time, your computer probably go to sleep while you're not in the room for a period of time, but the state of the computer is kept in memory. So it definitely feels like it never stopped. Having that state kept around is hardly a bad thing IMO.
- negativity 13y ago
  Nope. Total power down. Not standby or hibernate. And, that rotten "Reopen windows when logging back in" checkbox on Macs really grinds my gears. (...maybe I'm just a control freak)
  - spolu 13y ago
    Agreed that this checkbox sucks!
  - __david__ 13y ago
    "Hibernate" is a total power down (from the machine perspective).
  - vxNsr 13y ago
    I'm surprised you're not a linux dude, from the way you feel about control
    - dandellion 13y ago
      I think he is, maybe he doesn't know it yet.
    - vezzy-fnord 13y ago
      I believe that classification would be more suited for a *BSD user or someone concerned with integrating the Plan 9 userspace into their workstation. Linux has a pretty low entry point nowadays. Plenty of people I know surf the web, use Skype and check their email like any other user but do it on Ubuntu.
      - vxNsr 13y ago
        I would switch over too, but I'm so used to all the windows shortcuts, and also Office(!) that I'm just too lazy to switch.
        dredmorbius 13y ago
        There are some WMs which either emulate look-and-feel of the Windows environment, or let you map hotkeys, that this isn't too much of a hurdle. My preference happens to be WindowMaker, which allows extensive hotkey mappings.
  - wahnfrieden 13y ago
    Cool, you have a personal preference :)
  - hexley 13y ago
    So uncheck it? Have I done something weird to my Mac? 10.7.5 Lion here, when I press the power button it comes up unchecked by default. "Edit: since 10.7.4, the "Reopen windows when logging back in" checkbox has stayed unchecked if you uncheck it once, so the hacks below are not needed anymore." Update your Mac.
__david__ 13y ago
> This is a bad thing, not a good thing. For you, perhaps. I use my open browser tabs as a current "state" of my mind. My todo list, if you will. You might use a different method for keeping track of what you have to do. Maybe you have a good memory. At least the browser tabs come back after the browser quits. My main reason I never reboot is my terminal tabs. Each one is cd-ed to a project directory and each has command line history and scrollback history that are potentially important reminders of where I am on that particular project. I go for weeks without rebooting (even in the face of OS updates) because I don't want to lose my terminal tabs. Powering off machines is a detail. They should go into low power mode and switch themselves off when they are not being used. Why should I have to remember to do it? They are machines, they're built to remember things like that. As long as they save their state, it doesn't matter. State is good. I like state.
- negativity 13y ago
  Yeah, a lot of this is about personal preferences, and preserving them across time and space. It's not always a bad thing. There's always a trade-off between convenience, automation, predictability and security. Another good point spolu brings up: The chrome/ subdirectory of the chromium project (all that makes up the Google Chrome experience: tabs, settings, sync, omnibox) is made up of 5,343 C++ implementation files, adding up to 1,449,451 lines of C++ code (as of 2013/09/11). It's hardly tractable by one person, and hints to the fact that it's probably impossible for a one guy to modify it alone to come up with a profoundly different experience. This detail doesn't get a lot of discussion, but I think it's sometimes an essential fallacy of the very premise of the open source concept, that having the ability to audit source code, doesn't necessarily make it a realistic option. Lots of modern contraptions are simply too complex for any individual to ever claim a hope of gaining an honest understanding of their inner workings, nevermind an unskilled layman. At least, not without living like a cleric, cloistered away in the library of some convent or monastery for most of one's life. Sometimes I feel that the real hazard is that we gloss over the idea that we're trying to exert control over a massive arrangement of billions of transistors, however small they may be. If we were confronted with an elaborate array of ordinary light switches, and told to conquer the same tasks, I think it'd be easier to realize the true scale of some of the things we fiddle with on an everyday basis.
sliverstorm 13y ago
I like "sleep" mode. My work machine doesn't boot in 2 seconds like some of the modern marvels, and the power cost of "sleep" is low. I do reboot occasionally to let it do startup/shutdown cleanup, but it's mostly sleep.
dysoco 13y ago
Same here, I power off my PC at night (way too noisy) and when Ieave for more than a couple hours. I guess I'm stuck in the past, never put it on sleep or hibernate. Should I?
- vacri 13y ago
  I do with my home computer, but my work computer has ssh sessions all over the place and other stateful things, so it stays on.
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    I think there are some stateless SSH / terminal options you can use. screen, certainly (I rarely ssh to a host without starting screen), though tmux is what the cool kids are using these days. I regularly suspend my laptop. Almost as good as leaving it powered. The main hassle is if you've got multiple SSH sessions to the same host, and you need to sort out which is what.
nsmartt 13y ago
> I'd like to dissent from this echo chamber of constantly advocating promiscuous systems, that tend to do things for us without asking us first, and promote biased decisions in favor of permissiveness. This is a decent argument (partially) in favor of the ideas discussed in the OP. I'd love to see a world where browsers are akin to libraries, and hackers roll their own. > I pretty much hate that you can't remove the battery from an iPhone. This is why I don't own one. I encourage you to vote with your wallet.
jamesrcole 13y ago
> This is a bad thing, not a good thing You explain why it's not necessary for you, but you don't explain why you think it's a bad thing. Why is it bad that our computers are always on, never restarted, always connected?
- contingencies 13y ago
  Power consumption for starters.
  - vacri 13y ago
    As long as your monitors power off and you're not leaving the system doing much CPU work, modern computers don't use a lot of power when quiescent. Sure, they use more than being turned off, but they're not exactly IR hotspots.
    - fulafel 13y ago
      The average is around 50 watts for desktops (https://secure.www.upenn.edu/computing/resources/category/hardware/article/computer-power-usage https://secure.www.upenn.edu/computing/resources/category/ha...) which adds up to a lot. 440 kWh/year per desktop. For comparison, as much as your washing machine, dishwasher and all your 10 (cfl) ceiling lights together (from http://www.carbonfootprint.com/energyconsumption.html http://www.carbonfootprint.com/energyconsumption.html). Or as much as a low efficiency fridge-freezer. Multiply by 2 if you run air conditioning. Multiply by number of employees for an office. Etc.
      - vacri 13y ago
        Your numbers seem off. 7-year-old desktops with monitors off rate 50-70 watts. More recent desktops in that link are 30-40 watts, so you're looking at numbers a little bit more than 20% smaller. I'm also not sure about your office, but in my office the lights are on for much more than the four hours per day in your other link. And similarly, we're talking about when I'm not using my computer for work, so it's not 440 kWh/year (24x50x365). Given I work about 9 hours a day, the portion of a year that I'm not at my workstation (including weekends) is about 250 full days - so the number is actually more like 240 kWh/year (24x40x250) for leaving it on overnight.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
ericflo 13y ago
You chose an appropriate username.

spolu 13y ago

Well, it's not powered all the time, your computer probably go to sleep while you're not in the room for a period of time, but the state of the computer is kept in memory. So it definitely feels like it never stopped. Having that state kept around is hardly a bad thing IMO.

negativity 13y ago
Nope. Total power down. Not standby or hibernate. And, that rotten "Reopen windows when logging back in" checkbox on Macs really grinds my gears. (...maybe I'm just a control freak)
- spolu 13y ago
  Agreed that this checkbox sucks!
- __david__ 13y ago
  "Hibernate" is a total power down (from the machine perspective).
- vxNsr 13y ago
  I'm surprised you're not a linux dude, from the way you feel about control
  - dandellion 13y ago
    I think he is, maybe he doesn't know it yet.
  - vezzy-fnord 13y ago
    I believe that classification would be more suited for a *BSD user or someone concerned with integrating the Plan 9 userspace into their workstation. Linux has a pretty low entry point nowadays. Plenty of people I know surf the web, use Skype and check their email like any other user but do it on Ubuntu.
    - vxNsr 13y ago
      I would switch over too, but I'm so used to all the windows shortcuts, and also Office(!) that I'm just too lazy to switch.
      - dredmorbius 13y ago
        There are some WMs which either emulate look-and-feel of the Windows environment, or let you map hotkeys, that this isn't too much of a hurdle. My preference happens to be WindowMaker, which allows extensive hotkey mappings.
- wahnfrieden 13y ago
  Cool, you have a personal preference :)
- hexley 13y ago
  So uncheck it? Have I done something weird to my Mac? 10.7.5 Lion here, when I press the power button it comes up unchecked by default. "Edit: since 10.7.4, the "Reopen windows when logging back in" checkbox has stayed unchecked if you uncheck it once, so the hacks below are not needed anymore." Update your Mac.

__david__ 13y ago

> This is a bad thing, not a good thing. For you, perhaps. I use my open browser tabs as a current "state" of my mind. My todo list, if you will. You might use a different method for keeping track of what you have to do. Maybe you have a good memory. At least the browser tabs come back after the browser quits. My main reason I never reboot is my terminal tabs. Each one is cd-ed to a project directory and each has command line history and scrollback history that are potentially important reminders of where I am on that particular project. I go for weeks without rebooting (even in the face of OS updates) because I don't want to lose my terminal tabs. Powering off machines is a detail. They should go into low power mode and switch themselves off when they are not being used. Why should I have to remember to do it? They are machines, they're built to remember things like that. As long as they save their state, it doesn't matter. State is good. I like state.

negativity 13y ago
Yeah, a lot of this is about personal preferences, and preserving them across time and space. It's not always a bad thing. There's always a trade-off between convenience, automation, predictability and security. Another good point spolu brings up: The chrome/ subdirectory of the chromium project (all that makes up the Google Chrome experience: tabs, settings, sync, omnibox) is made up of 5,343 C++ implementation files, adding up to 1,449,451 lines of C++ code (as of 2013/09/11). It's hardly tractable by one person, and hints to the fact that it's probably impossible for a one guy to modify it alone to come up with a profoundly different experience. This detail doesn't get a lot of discussion, but I think it's sometimes an essential fallacy of the very premise of the open source concept, that having the ability to audit source code, doesn't necessarily make it a realistic option. Lots of modern contraptions are simply too complex for any individual to ever claim a hope of gaining an honest understanding of their inner workings, nevermind an unskilled layman. At least, not without living like a cleric, cloistered away in the library of some convent or monastery for most of one's life. Sometimes I feel that the real hazard is that we gloss over the idea that we're trying to exert control over a massive arrangement of billions of transistors, however small they may be. If we were confronted with an elaborate array of ordinary light switches, and told to conquer the same tasks, I think it'd be easier to realize the true scale of some of the things we fiddle with on an everyday basis.

sliverstorm 13y ago

I like "sleep" mode. My work machine doesn't boot in 2 seconds like some of the modern marvels, and the power cost of "sleep" is low. I do reboot occasionally to let it do startup/shutdown cleanup, but it's mostly sleep.

dysoco 13y ago

Same here, I power off my PC at night (way too noisy) and when Ieave for more than a couple hours. I guess I'm stuck in the past, never put it on sleep or hibernate. Should I?

vacri 13y ago
I do with my home computer, but my work computer has ssh sessions all over the place and other stateful things, so it stays on.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  I think there are some stateless SSH / terminal options you can use. screen, certainly (I rarely ssh to a host without starting screen), though tmux is what the cool kids are using these days. I regularly suspend my laptop. Almost as good as leaving it powered. The main hassle is if you've got multiple SSH sessions to the same host, and you need to sort out which is what.

nsmartt 13y ago

> I'd like to dissent from this echo chamber of constantly advocating promiscuous systems, that tend to do things for us without asking us first, and promote biased decisions in favor of permissiveness. This is a decent argument (partially) in favor of the ideas discussed in the OP. I'd love to see a world where browsers are akin to libraries, and hackers roll their own. > I pretty much hate that you can't remove the battery from an iPhone. This is why I don't own one. I encourage you to vote with your wallet.

jamesrcole 13y ago

> This is a bad thing, not a good thing You explain why it's not necessary for you, but you don't explain why you think it's a bad thing. Why is it bad that our computers are always on, never restarted, always connected?

contingencies 13y ago
Power consumption for starters.
- vacri 13y ago
  As long as your monitors power off and you're not leaving the system doing much CPU work, modern computers don't use a lot of power when quiescent. Sure, they use more than being turned off, but they're not exactly IR hotspots.
  - fulafel 13y ago
    The average is around 50 watts for desktops (https://secure.www.upenn.edu/computing/resources/category/hardware/article/computer-power-usage https://secure.www.upenn.edu/computing/resources/category/ha...) which adds up to a lot. 440 kWh/year per desktop. For comparison, as much as your washing machine, dishwasher and all your 10 (cfl) ceiling lights together (from http://www.carbonfootprint.com/energyconsumption.html http://www.carbonfootprint.com/energyconsumption.html). Or as much as a low efficiency fridge-freezer. Multiply by 2 if you run air conditioning. Multiply by number of employees for an office. Etc.
    - vacri 13y ago
      Your numbers seem off. 7-year-old desktops with monitors off rate 50-70 watts. More recent desktops in that link are 30-40 watts, so you're looking at numbers a little bit more than 20% smaller. I'm also not sure about your office, but in my office the lights are on for much more than the four hours per day in your other link. And similarly, we're talking about when I'm not using my computer for work, so it's not 440 kWh/year (24x50x365). Given I work about 9 hours a day, the portion of a year that I'm not at my workstation (including weekends) is about 250 full days - so the number is actually more like 240 kWh/year (24x40x250) for leaving it on overnight.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

ericflo 13y ago

You chose an appropriate username.