UniversalMonk

Me too! In that article there is a cover of BYTE mag with the pirate ship on it, and I remember reading that in my best friend's basement while listening to the radio and drinking Pepsi out of a glass bottle! I shot him a text just now with the pic of that magazine.

Fuck those times were awesome!

My biggest regret tho, is that even tho I was fairly interested in computers then, I was more interested in girls. So I fucked around with girls all my teens and 20's instead of riding the tech wave and having it for a career. Got my gf pregnant at 17, and had to start working a factory job butchering turkeys and chickens. (Obviously I don't regret having my children, just saying I could have been smarter about it.)

Now I'm retired and making up for lost time by becoming the biggest tech nerd ever, and fucking embracing all of it all day: AI, Lemmy, PieFed, Mastadon, Linux, Racket, Python, Java, Lua, etc... LMAO

It's either that or pickelball all day! But fuck that noise, I wanna be an old computer punk pirate, shitposting and annoying the hell out of young Lemmys for the rest of my days. Considering the number of bans I have, all because I'm a socialist anarchist, my plan seems to be working! :)

From the article: "Personal computers functioned differently in the 1970s and 1980s. Unlike domestic computational technologies such as video game consoles or pocket calculators, the Apple II and many of its competitors were not designed as proprietary or closed systems. Indeed, the entire appeal of a personal computer was that it put computing power directly in the hands of users. It was essential that users be able not only to program on their machine but also to save and distribute the work they did."

It needs to be like this now!

I was in my early teens in the 1970's and 1980's. My family was way too poor to afford any of the computer. The only people in my hometown who had this stuff were wealthy. So I think this authors use of the term "relatively inexpensive" sorta downplays how much that shit cost in the day.

The first actual computer I ever saw or got to play with was a RadioShack TRS-80, that my then-gf's dad had. The 1977 cost for that was $599 USD. Adjusted for Inflation, that's around $3,000 USD in today's dollars.

In 1981, Robert Tripp, editor and publisher of MICRO: The 6502 Journal, likened the copying of software to the photocopying of a magazine and acknowledged that MICRO would have no livelihood if readers could simply get the content free or at minimal cost.

Thus began the drama of copy protection, an industrial loss prevention practice wherein companies used a combination of hardware and software techniques to scramble the data on software media formats, typically 5.25-inch floppy disks, so that copying the disk was no longer possible by conventional means. While the goal of this subtle bit of friction was to throttle piracy, it also prevented users from creating backup copies of software they legally owned, or otherwise accessing the code itself.

I'm a Mormon-Satanist, but for a long time before that, I was a Quaker--I'm still very much influenced by them. And this guy was one of my favorite Quaker socialists.

If they’re genuinly interested in winning the election, they would go after all 3 groups instead of just Democrats.

And I am sure they'd love that. Republican are more than welcome to vote for Green too. You seem to think that people don't know how to think for themselves and vote for whoever they want.

And if they’d have any genuine interest in their political goals, they’d be mindful of the spoiler effect.

There is no such thing as a spoiler effect. Firstly, even like I said earlier, even if every single person that voted third party in the last election, would have voted for Harris instead, she still wouldn't have won. That's how big the margin was that she lost by. lmao

Secondly, people should vote for who they want. So there is no spoiler, because if someone wanted to vote for Green then they would vote for Green and not Democrats. People get to vote for whoever they want. That's not spoiling. That's democracy.

You seem to think that people don't know how to think for themselves and shouldn't vote for whoever they want. How is it a spoiler effect when someone doesn't like your candidate so they choose to vote for a different candidate?!

Using your logic, I can say that Harris had a spoiler effect because people voted for her rather than my Socialist Party! lol

best thing that can be said about them is that they’re incompetent.

So if they are so incompetent, then ya shouldn't worried about them or bothered by them. Right? :)

The democrats deserved to lose to Trump because they bow down to corporate interests just like the Republicans do. Both parties are the same!

Thanks, friend!

Doesn't matter. You were implying that Greens only run in presidential elections. That's just not true.

Many Lemmys thought that Green Party in the last election was just for spoiler. That's not true either. Stein was running for pres long before Trump even entered the picture. Plus, even if every single person that voted for any third party, would have voted for Harris, she still would have lost the election.

The amount of non-voters added up to more than all of the third party voters combined.

Most green candidates run in local elections.

Green Party 2024 candidates: https://www.gp.org/2024_candidates

Green Party 2025 candidates: https://www.gp.org/2025_candidates

Green Party 2026 candidates: https://www.gp.org/2026_candidates

Does anybody on that list hold a position that actually matters?

You can say that about any smaller election in any city. Are you saying smaller local elections don't matter? That seems an odd thing for you to think, since your initial complaint was that "The American green party pretty much just comes out of the woods every 4 years to run for president."

And if you believe that they are so insignificant, then you shouldn't be upset or worried that Green Candidates are running. Because you think they are "Negligible like background radiation." So nothing to get worked up over, right?

Heck, the Green Party got more votes than the Socialist party I voted for. lol

It’s infuriating to watch a supposedly pro-labor Democrat like Polis torpedo a bill backed by unions and his own party.

Every time this happens, it’s another reminder that even “friendly” politicians will fold the second Big Capital asks them to.

And yes, BOTH major political parties suck. Vote Union, Vote Third Party.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The Vanguard Group and launched its organ, Vanguard: A Libertarian Communist Journal, partially to counteract anti-organizationalist and commune-building tendencies in anarchism. Clara Freidman, a founding member, explained, “Our purpose was to work out a positive program, to deal with anarchism in less amorphous and more concrete terms, to show it was a viable social philosophy.”

Very often, it’s treated as an identity, a mere individualistic lifestyle choice or just a mere aesthetic (I hate solarpunk for this especially) rather than an actual coherent movement that aims to change society.

Soooo much this. I thought the Lemmy solarpunk instance (slrpnk) would be different, but the admin there banned me from the entire instance. Out of nowhere, they said they were also deleting my socialist/anarachist communities.

All my posts were upvoted, so I asked why The admin replied, “Sorry, but we have to because you’re Universal Monk. You're reputation is too controversial.”

Apparently being a vocal socialist/anarchist who didn’t vote for capitalist candidates like Harris or Trump was too controversial for a solarpunk instance. LMAO.

Agreed! So much truth, brother.