Personal Computing in the Apocalypse

As if having a computer would matter when all Hell is breaking loose…

So I claim to be a prophet of God, but that does not guarantee I can answer your questions about tomorrow. God only tells me what He wants to me to say, and most of that has to do with notifying folks of things they should already know about His requirements. You want a predictive prophecy? Here goes: If we go to war in the lands of Ancient Persia (currently “Iran”), the Lord Himself will scatter the dead bodies of our troops across the landscape. So numerous and dense will they be, the Iranians will beg us to send folks to gather, or at least bury in place, their remains. Now, keep in mind: Hebrew Scripture was more about impressions than clinical descriptions. The intent was to make you aware of God’s wishes regarding a particular choice, so I counsel you to understand the point here is we got no business sending US troops to war in Iran. Naturally, that goes for just about all the other places we got troops, but I think God would say Iran is the last straw, so to speak.

So it’s not a matter of prophetic insight when I suggest we are heading for something which will taste like the Apocalypse. If you didn’t already know our economy is headed for a major crash, you wouldn’t be the kind of person who would read my blog. So when it comes to timing and specifics, or even broad hyperbole, about the fall of the United States, all I can do is affirm we deserve it because the Bible says so. Okay, one minor qualification: It is a word from God when I tell you political resistance to the current drift of US government into naked tyranny is pointless. That is, we are getting the government we deserve, and it is frankly a coup d’état from what we once had. The take-over is God’s wrath at work on our national sins. You should resist in the sense of doing what’s right regardless of what any government demands, but preparing to fight via political resistance of any sort — whether armed revolt, pacifist marches, or monkey-wrenching and sabotage — is not favored by God. So we are headed for tough times, and the saints of God will tribulate.

Given I spend so much time with computers, mine and other folks’ computers, what am I going to do? God hasn’t told me anything specific about that. I should think that indicates it’s really not important in His plans for me. But I do have some general expectations and plans which are derived from the things I know God does require of me.

Linux for me is a failure when it comes to the graphical interface. Over the past few years, the drivers have gotten steadily worse for the particular set of things I do with a computer. Given I read so very much about Linux in particular, and computer technology in general, and the vast number of different operating systems I have tested on a very wide array of hardware, I find I am in a position to decide it’s utterly pointless. Whatever it is the developers are planning, it’s not going to help me at all. I realized long ago there was nothing I could to make it better, and the developers could care less what I want. So for as long as I have use for a graphical interface, on my current hardware that means Windows.

It may come to the point graphical computing is pointless itself. For example, there may be some sort of doomsday virus, or some other general vulnerability which makes it entirely too risky to use Windows. Right now, I’m not aware of such an issue. But I would hardly be surprised if it reared its ugly head any day now.

When it happens, that will signal a radical change in my computing needs. From that moment, for as long as computers are still useful to me, I won’t be using Windows. But I won’t be using the Linux GUI, either. When things get that ugly, I’ll be needing the very most basic computer functions, and a GUI won’t matter. So I’ll most likely go back to something like Squeeze on the console. Yes, you can still watch your videos by using something like Mplayer compiled without the X dependencies. I have used it to watch Youtube videos, after downloading them with Cclive. Of course, should such a dramatic change come to the computing landscape, I have to wonder if there will be a Youtube when things get that crazy. I suspect the window of opportunity for using a computer for much of anything will be short, and the Internet as we know it will be long gone at that point.

So it’s not as if I hate Linux, just the X server and all that goes with it. Whatever good it may offer, it amounts to nothing for me, and it’s only getting worse. Nor do I love Windows, and certainly not Mac. I regard Apple as even more anti-consumer than Microsoft. There are literally hundreds of other fine projects out there, and I still think highly of Haiku-OS (formerly, BeOS) and Syllable. There’s always ReactOS, doing Windows right. But I doubt any of them will be really ready for general computer use before the Computer Apocalypse arrives. No, not a prophetic insight, just my current guess.

Come on; you needed something stupid to make you laugh today, right?