# Grumpy old luddites around here
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grumpy-old-luddites-around-here/1016701
**Category:** The BBQ Pit
**Created:** [April 6, 2025, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grumpy-old-luddites-around-here/1016701 "2025-04-06T16:01:08Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 5
### Author:  [@The\_Librarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Librarian)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2025, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grumpy-old-luddites-around-here/1016701/81 "2025-04-08T06:23:15Z")
> [@Mangetout](#):
>
> but your argument seems way out there.
I’ll go out on a limb a say that his argument not made in good faith.
At this point he has doubled down on his bullshit so many times his posting is indistinguishable from trolling.
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### Author:  [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2025, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grumpy-old-luddites-around-here/1016701/82 "2025-04-08T06:27:38Z")
> [@Llama\_Llogophile](#):
>
> I think it’s fair to call this sort of behavior “rent seeking” in the sense that no value is added.
I believe the preferred term these days is “enshittification”.
> **[Enshittification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification)**
>
> Enshittification, also known as crapification and platform decay, is a pattern in which online products and services decline in quality over time. Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers, and finally degrade their services to users and business customers to maximize profits for shareholders.
> Writer Cory Doctorow coined the neologism enshittification in November 2022, though he was not the first to d...
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### Author:  [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2025, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grumpy-old-luddites-around-here/1016701/83 "2025-04-08T06:45:24Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#):
>
> If your security gets compromised, all your further user experiences mean jack shit anymore.
True, but while I endorse migrating to the latest supported OS if possible, everything else being equal, when it’s impractical for some period of time, then everything else is not equal and one has to consider the tradeoffs. My belief is that safe computing practices combined with first-rate anti-malware detection that is updated daily may well yield better results than a fully updated OS that isn’t well protected. Not all malware infections or other types of security compromises like revealing password information to bad actors are exploits of Windows vulnerabilities. Sometimes they’re simply exploits of user vulnerabilities, and Windows can’t protect you against yourself. And I can pretty much guarantee that the protections I have in place, based on their proven performance in enterprise environments, are significantly superior to Microsoft Defender.
> [@The\_Librarian](#):
>
> At this point he has doubled down on his bullshit so many times his posting is indistinguishable from trolling.
At this point your comprehension deficit disorder has been revealed as a permanent condition, immune to all explanations and clarifications – unless you’re just a willfully obtuse disingenuous asshole. Fortunately, it’s more funny than annoying.
> [@Smapti](#):
>
> > [@Llama\_Llogophile](#):
> >
> > I think it’s fair to call this sort of behavior “rent seeking” in the sense that no value is added.
>
> I believe the preferred term these days is “enshittification”.
This is a significant source of resistance to upgrading, but for clarity I’ll stress again that for many of us it’s not the **only** factor.
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2025, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grumpy-old-luddites-around-here/1016701/84 "2025-04-08T07:51:46Z")
> [@wolfpup](#):
>
> Sure, there have been security improvements, but this is largely Microsoft fixing problems of its own making
That seems like a cynical take on patching. All software has bugs and vulnerabilities - any decent development process needs to deal with them; it’s not shameful that a complex collection of software contains things that need fixing - it’s entirely normal.
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### Author:  [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2025, 7:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grumpy-old-luddites-around-here/1016701/85 "2025-04-08T07:56:48Z")
> [@Mangetout](#):
>
> All software has bugs and vulnerabilities - any decent development process needs to deal with them; it’s not shameful that a complex collection of software contains things that need fixing - it’s entirely normal.
I mean, I hate when my hardware autoinstalls a patch that changes things in a way I don’t like, but I guess it beats the old system of having to know there was a bug that needed fixing and then sending a self-addressed stamped envelope so you can get a floppy disk with a new file extension on it to manually paste into the program’s /data/local/username/0000~1 folder.
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2025, 8:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grumpy-old-luddites-around-here/1016701/86 "2025-04-08T08:00:22Z")
I think patching is possibly one of the most significant drivers of change; there comes a point where the need to continually patch a piece of software may be an indicator that a ground-up redesign is necessary - or that the end-user function should just be delivered by a completely different method - perhaps a good example of that was how Adobe Flash was discontinued, much to the chagrin of people who loved it, but it really needed to die because apparently no amount of patching was going to make it secure.
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2025, 8:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grumpy-old-luddites-around-here/1016701/87 "2025-04-08T08:08:16Z")
> [@wolfpup](#):
>
> My belief is that safe computing practices combined with first-rate anti-malware detection that is updated daily may well yield better results than a fully updated OS that isn’t well protected.
I think what perplexes me is that this belief seems to survive all those occasions when it doesn’t yield better results, and you complain that your stuff doesn’t work.
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### Author:  [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2025, 8:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grumpy-old-luddites-around-here/1016701/88 "2025-04-08T08:14:52Z")
> [@Mangetout](#):
>
> > [@wolfpup](#):
> >
> > Sure, there have been security improvements, but this is largely Microsoft fixing problems of its own making
>
> That seems like a cynical take on patching. All software has bugs and vulnerabilities - any decent development process needs to deal with them; it’s not shameful that a complex collection of software contains things that need fixing - it’s entirely normal.
What you say is not wrong, but let me offer some perspective. I once worked for many years for a large organization where the quality and reliability of their software products was absolutely paramount. They were pioneers in the formulation of rigorous software development, review, and testing methodologies, long before the idea of disciplined software development methodologies became fashionable and commonplace – and misunderstood and misapplied. And the results in terms of software reliability were extraordinary. Microsoft can only dream of having the kind of software reliability at RTM that we had in our early betas.
During this period I attended many seminars and conferences on software development and project management methodologies. A few of the seminars were actually given by Microsoft, and I found them to be hilarious.
So trust me when I say that I’m not being arbitrarily dismissive or unjustifiable cynical about Microsoft. I have firsthand experience with the fact that the Microsoft culture has never understood the concepts of software quality and reliability, that it likely never will, and that they don’t consider that it has much value in their marketplace anyway. WTF, let the users find the bugs, let the security researchers find the vulnerabilities, and maybe we’ll send 'em a fix.
> [@Mangetout](#):
>
> > [@wolfpup](#):
> >
> > My belief is that safe computing practices combined with first-rate anti-malware detection that is updated daily may well yield better results than a fully updated OS that isn’t well protected.
>
> I think what perplexes me is that this belief seems to survive all those occasions when it doesn’t yield better results, and you complain that your stuff doesn’t work.
I don’t understand this statement. When I complain about stuff not working, I’m referring to the direct and indirect side effects of Microsoft’s philosophy of planned obsolescence and its downstream effects on other application providers. I’m not referring to (arguably) better **security** results, of not being infected by malware.
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### Author:  [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2025, 8:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grumpy-old-luddites-around-here/1016701/89 "2025-04-08T08:19:18Z")
That’s unfortunate. My daily driver is a 2022 MacBook Pro, but I use a 2011 as my sound source via Logic when I play music out, and I have a 2009 I have dual booted with XP for when I’m feeling nostalgic. I’ve had two or three other ones fail on me (display or GPU issues) but they’ve lasted at least seven years. (And my desktops are all still working, of 2007 and 2013 vintage) Seems you’ve had some bad luck.
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2025, 8:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grumpy-old-luddites-around-here/1016701/90 "2025-04-08T08:23:22Z")
> [@wolfpup](#):
>
> I don’t understand this statement. When I complain about stuff not working, I’m referring to the direct and indirect side effects of Microsoft’s philosophy of planned obsolescence. I’m not referring to (arguably) better **security** results, of not being infected by malware.
I suppose we just don’t agree on the extent to which technological change is actually planned obsolescence, and the extent to which it represents or incorporates actual technical progress. I’m sure it’s some of both, but in my experience (both personal and a decades-long career in IT support), confidence about how it’s perfectly fine to continue running old software way past its end of life, is very consistently followed by anguish and complaint about how it’s suddenly _no longer perfectly fine_.
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### Author:  [@scudsucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scudsucker)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2025, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grumpy-old-luddites-around-here/1016701/91 "2025-04-08T12:27:45Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> Can you name a single other web app that uses the username as the global unique ID,
Very late to this conversation, but fucking jumping jimmy jesus, my bank did this. And my username was required to be an email address. They started spamming me.
So when I got irritated and changed my email to the format:
[spam-from-bank-name@mydomain.com](mailto:spam-from-bank-name@mydomain.com)
And promptly lost all access to my account (web, card, ATM). It took weeks to regain access. I’m a software engineer, specialising in web… you cannot believe how infuriated I was with this incompetence.
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### Author:  [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2025, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grumpy-old-luddites-around-here/1016701/92 "2025-04-08T14:15:15Z")
Argggh! Time for a new bank.
Whenever I mention things like this (though none as assholish as your example) to higher-ups at a bank, they’re utterly astounded at how their IT/web people are treating the public.
Just had another run-in where the president of the bank admitted that they have NO idea what their own credit card people and web-based departments are doing, and are aghast at how their customers are being treated outside the four walls of the physical bank.
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### Author:  [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2025, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grumpy-old-luddites-around-here/1016701/93 "2025-04-08T14:36:55Z")
This reminds me of the Linotype typesetting machine, perhaps the most intricate and complicated “gear and lever” machine ever made and used in great numbers. Invented in the 1880s, it let printers set type at the rate of 30 words a minute, 10 times faster than hand setting type. In widespread use until the 1970s, the Linotype got more and more elaborate, adding different functions to the basic framework, adapting to changes in technology, then poof! became obsolete practically overnight with computerized phototypesetting.
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### Author:  [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2025, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grumpy-old-luddites-around-here/1016701/94 "2025-04-08T15:41:54Z")
I remember reading a trade journal that had a printing advice column. Somebody asked what to do with their old Linotype machine and the columnist said the best deal he got for his was to pay somebody to take it to the dump.
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### Author:  [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2025, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grumpy-old-luddites-around-here/1016701/95 "2025-04-08T15:42:29Z")
> [@Knowed\_Out](#):
>
> people griping about AI image generation’s flaws are assuming it will stay that way and never improve. I’m a graphic designer, and Adobe has integrated AI image generation into its apps, and maintain Firefly on the web as well. It HAS improved, and gets more and more usable
My old fart complaints about Generative AI have nothing to do with the quality. I have spent my entire life listening to the corporate establishment (with the support of governments of all political stripes) pontificate about how IP infringement is THEFT and if you even think too hard about about violating copyright you should rot jail for life. Then all of sudden because the corporate establishment realizes they can stop paying all those pesky creative types, IP infringement is fine and dandy. “No, we aren’t stealing all this copyrighted work when we download them and encode them on our server, we are just ‘training’ our AI so it can be inspired to create new work”
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### Author:  [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2025, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grumpy-old-luddites-around-here/1016701/96 "2025-04-08T16:24:59Z")
Actually, Adobe takes great pains to avoid copyright issues in their algorithms. You can’t generate Albert Einstein’s face, for example. They also prohibit image generation for child porn, bloody and gory scenes, etc. For a time the Bitcoin symbol was copyrighted, and wasn’t available in their stock images or text-to-image. Then it went public domain and everything was copacetic.
Other websites like Night Cafe allow users to input terms like “Thomas Kinkaid style” (last I checked) but bots can sniff these things out. I did an image for a buddy’s website a few years ago that included Mother Teresa and he got a cease-and-desist order from her estate.
My biggest gripe is that Adobe’s GenStudio enables marketers to create ads and socials all by themselves, use text-to-image to generate backgrounds, change headlines on the fly, and resend ads to their customer lists all by themselves. That would eliminate my department and the social media team if our marketing department decided to use it. Luckily, they’re firmly invested in Google Analytics and don’t want the additional work.
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### Author:  [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2025, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grumpy-old-luddites-around-here/1016701/97 "2025-04-08T16:35:08Z")
> [@wolfpup](#):
>
> My belief is that safe computing practices combined with first-rate anti-malware detection that is updated daily may well yield better results than a fully updated OS that isn’t well protected.
So what first-rate anti-malware detection that is updated daily is available for Windows 7?
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### Author:  [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2025, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grumpy-old-luddites-around-here/1016701/98 "2025-04-08T16:46:27Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#):
>
> So what first-rate anti-malware detection that is updated daily is available for Windows 7?
I’m not going to discuss details. It’s enterprise-grade software that is not sold to consumers and that I have courtesy of a former employer. Runs fine under Windows 7. I just checked it. Latest malware protection signatures: today. Latest heuristics: yesterday.
On a more mundane level, I just checked Avast, a common free AV product, and the minimum requirement is Windows 7 SP1. So the above shouldn’t be all that surprising.
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### Author:  [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2025, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grumpy-old-luddites-around-here/1016701/99 "2025-04-08T17:07:04Z")
I think you’re imagining a straw man situation.
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### Author:  [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2025, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grumpy-old-luddites-around-here/1016701/100 "2025-04-08T17:19:08Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> IMO as the board has aged, and as the outer society has changed and new ways of spending time online have been invented, a lot of the better-off folks have wandered away. Leaving a large fraction of our posters being people who make ends meet. Barely. Until the car breaks down. Again. Part of the reason they preferentially stay here is the entertainment value/price ratio is so wonderful.
I have the sense that this is a big part of it.
When the OP says things like:
> [@bump](#):
>
> Moaning about $129 MS Office upgrades seems backward to me; that’s _CHEAP_ today; that’s what it cost 20 years ago IIRC.
> [@bump](#):
>
> Trying to keep a computer with Win 7 going because you don’t want to spend $150-200 on a Chromebook or something and undergo the _minor_ changes to use it is absurd.
…comes across as someone for whom an outlay of several hundred dollars is no big deal, and who may not be able to wrap his head around the idea that a fair number of his fellow Dopers are retirees on limited incomes, for whom an Office subscription, or a new computer, _is_ a seriously big deal, financially.
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