There are loads of systems where every button and encoder has many functions, with modal or paged interfaces. But I'm trying to stick to a model of no hidden or ephemeral state with my modular, just for fun, I guess. Mostly analogue, so no non-volatile memory to store settings, the positions of the patches and knobs set everything, and the test is that if I power it down and back up it must come back doing what it was doing when the power went out (very long cycle lfos notwithstanding!)
When a laptop can simulate anything, the physicality of the interface is most of the attraction, so might as well go all the way...
I remember in the very early days as a hobbyist working with cgi perl scripts for forums or guest books where the script just edited the "static" content in place.
The script would write new html files for new posts and do "fun" (I mean, terrifying) string manipulation on the main index to insert links to posts etc. Sometimes they used comments with metadata to help "parse" pages which would see edits.
These both were, and definitely were not, "the days" :D
Catches me every time too. And it's so quick. You can go in to a shop to pick up a packet of crisps thinking it's daytime, but actually is quarter past 6, so you come back out and it's full dark!
I'm in the southern UK, and I'd take our late-May/early-August "it's light while I'm awake and dark while I (should be) asleep" all year round if I could get it.
Oh, then today I learned! I didn't realise they were different. Just looked it up in a "plain English dictionary of law" and the distinction seems subtle but important. Rather than "with the intention of depriving the owner", the US one says "with the intention of converting it to their use", which seems broad enough to cover exploiting a copy, rather than the original (or only, in the physical realm...)
It is actually true, in the UK at least the legal definition of theft includes the deprivation of the owner of the property in question.
The copyright lobby hedge the term as "copyright theft" (i.e. not actual theft) in order to shift the societal understanding. Whish appears to have worked.
This is not a value judgement on copyright infringement. Just that technically it doesn't meet the legal definition of theft.
cf. The rather amusing satire of the "you wouldn't steal a handbag" campaign in the UK, which ran "you wouldn't download a bear!"
This is often exacerbated horribly by the fact that the 50 or 60 FPS output doesn't divide well by the 24 FPS source material. It was smoother in the cinema, when it was projected at 24 FPS...
When a laptop can simulate anything, the physicality of the interface is most of the attraction, so might as well go all the way...