"Cost Plus" contracts may have been great in the 50's for jets and stuff, but we're reaching the point with computer systems and software where we're proving that Design Up Front does not work for large projects.
The reason such demos take so much processor time is that they are most likely doing some kind of polling.
Some pallete tricks for text-mode VGA require programs to synch with the vertical trace of the card and quickly change palette RGB values. One effect that is achieved like this is a smooth gradient background in text-mode (only for VGA and MCGA though).
The card does not ping you anytime the ray starts tracing a new horizontal line across the CRT, so you need to loop like crazy and read port 0x03DA (if memory serves me right, I haven't done such things in years).
It is actually a great achievement to manage to synch such an effect with sound, because OPL2 and OPL3 compatible cards used to require a certain delay before some of their registers were written to (that's FM synthesised music for you), and that delay is usually close enough to the time it takes the ray to scan a single line.
Of course, I have no clue which demo you are referring to, so I might be very, very wrong.
I wonder whether non-volatile storage makes sense on the nodes at all- isn't it the memory and CPU of each node that is abused by large computations? The way I read this (from the press release), this is a solution for number crunching, not for data warehousing, and the nodes boot off the network anyway.
I mean, my father getsextremely violent when I interrupt his play. He even refusedto shell out for a Matrox G400 because it did not increase his Tetris gaming pleasure.
Tetris is a dangerous product and as such, I believe it should be kept away from the children!
Well, I'd rather use Coherent on anything as ancient as the machines that ran Xenix 286. Price ratio (Coherent : Xenix) 1:20; Performance 3:1; Number of manuals 1:6; Size of a single manual 1:5
I think that says it. But unfortunately, Coherent is nowhere to be found. So is Xenix 286
Templates in C++ are not OO approach. It's generic programming, which is NOT the same as object-oriented. So VB can be perfectly OO without having ANY way of resembling templates. Go check out a good book on C++ that will actually explain it.
It doesn't sound lame, everybody has started programming in something. I started with BASIC and asm for 6502 on Apple II clones and now I'm happy with C and even happier with Icon. Anyway, just wanted to point out that VB's code completion started out as CodeInsight in Delphi, and the idea was quickly copied by MS. BTW, I'd love to see Delphi on Linux even though I'd never switch back to Object Pascal.
Well, I am truly surprised at Jeff's answer after the verbal whipping he got online, especially on/. It almost seems too good to be true, a company that wants tocut down on its own priviledges. Maybe it's another popularity trick- of course the online community will cheer up when a "high-profile" company proposes easing the situation of software patents.
Last, The 3-5 years proposal is still a proposal on HAVING software patents. I think trademarks are generally reasonable in the computer industry, but software patents (same for business models) does not seem right.
Right on! I perfectly agree on the Borland IDE statement. There I can simply TYPE, no need to lift my hands off the keyboard to "point and click". I think the idea that moving a rodent-like device over some surface so you can point to icons that are supposed to convey something is definately not "intuitive" when you are typing. No user can sit infront of a computer for the very first time and do anything, regardless of whether it's a CLI or a GUI infornt. Everybody has to learn, so make it a SINGLE thing to learn, or make it possible to apply waht you've learnt everywhere- like having everything use the same keybindings or, better said, make it possible to use the preferred bindings everywhere. I think most OSS projects are a lot better on this side than Windows apps, and the only problem that I think is that some (popular) apps do not suppose that the user has specific META-keys.
Well, enough said, went off on a tangent somehow:) Turbo * IDE rules!
Just wandering what you thought about Nanosaur? It seemed to be a really crappy game to me, one that takes some lines of OpenGL and a lot of drawing for the textures + some pain at creating the 3D objects. But anyway, the game far from being a marvel of technology, did anybody find it interesting? I think it sucks compared to "Moon Patrol" on the old Apple IIs:)
I think I saw something about a Cassiopeia running Maple V on Casio's page. The price didn't look really BAD, but I don't know what you need. It's portable for sure and looks like a killer. The price includes Maple as far as I remember, so it was like getting Maple for almost free.
Sorry, no memories of the wherabouts of Casio's main page. Chek under calculators or PDAs. Maybe this would be better for you, though it costs.
I think the only point you got wrong is that of REXX being crappy/unusable/etc. The language (with the notable exception of ObjectREXX) is a really good general-purpouse programming language that happens to have some more power in strings and sending OS requests down the line. I happen to be somewhat touchy on articles that claim a language to be "bad/ugly". If we forget about APL, it's all just different languages that work fine for different tasks. And for the clustering vs mainframe discussion: How do you chop a pound of beef? A. You hire 1000 chinese to do it B. You run it through the meat chopper
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"Cost Plus" contracts may have been great in the 50's for jets and stuff, but we're reaching the point with computer systems and software where we're proving that Design Up Front does not work for large projects.
Amen
Some pallete tricks for text-mode VGA require programs to synch with the vertical trace of the card and quickly change palette RGB values. One effect that is achieved like this is a smooth gradient background in text-mode (only for VGA and MCGA though).
The card does not ping you anytime the ray starts tracing a new horizontal line across the CRT, so you need to loop like crazy and read port 0x03DA (if memory serves me right, I haven't done such things in years).
It is actually a great achievement to manage to synch such an effect with sound, because OPL2 and OPL3 compatible cards used to require a certain delay before some of their registers were written to (that's FM synthesised music for you), and that delay is usually close enough to the time it takes the ray to scan a single line.
Of course, I have no clue which demo you are referring to, so I might be very, very wrong.
I wonder whether non-volatile storage makes sense on the nodes at all- isn't it the memory and CPU of each node that is abused by large computations? The way I read this (from the press release), this is a solution for number crunching, not for data warehousing, and the nodes boot off the network anyway.
Tetris is a dangerous product and as such, I believe it should be kept away from the children!
Well, I'd rather use Coherent on anything as ancient as the machines that ran Xenix 286. Price ratio (Coherent : Xenix) 1:20; Performance 3:1; Number of manuals 1:6; Size of a single manual 1:5
I think that says it. But unfortunately, Coherent is nowhere to be found. So is Xenix 286
Templates in C++ are not OO approach. It's generic programming, which is NOT the same as object-oriented. So VB can be perfectly OO without having ANY way of resembling templates. Go check out a good book on C++ that will actually explain it.
It doesn't sound lame, everybody has started programming in something. I started with BASIC and asm for 6502 on Apple II clones and now I'm happy with C and even happier with Icon.
Anyway, just wanted to point out that VB's code completion started out as CodeInsight in Delphi, and the idea was quickly copied by MS.
BTW, I'd love to see Delphi on Linux even though I'd never switch back to Object Pascal.
Well, I am truly surprised at Jeff's answer after the verbal whipping he got online, especially on /. It almost seems too good to be true, a company that wants tocut down on its own priviledges.
Maybe it's another popularity trick- of course the online community will cheer up when a "high-profile" company proposes easing the situation of software patents.
Last, The 3-5 years proposal is still a proposal on HAVING software patents. I think trademarks are generally reasonable in the computer industry, but software patents (same for business models) does not seem right.
Right on! I perfectly agree on the Borland IDE statement. There I can simply TYPE, no need to lift my hands off the keyboard to "point and click". I think the idea that moving a rodent-like device over some surface so you can point to icons that are supposed to convey something is definately not "intuitive" when you are typing.
:)
No user can sit infront of a computer for the very first time and do anything, regardless of whether it's a CLI or a GUI infornt. Everybody has to learn, so make it a SINGLE thing to learn, or make it possible to apply waht you've learnt everywhere- like having everything use the same keybindings or, better said, make it possible to use the preferred bindings everywhere. I think most OSS projects are a lot better on this side than Windows apps, and the only problem that I think is that some (popular) apps do not suppose that the user has specific META-keys.
Well, enough said, went off on a tangent somehow
Turbo * IDE rules!
Just wandering what you thought about Nanosaur? It seemed to be a really crappy game to me, one that takes some lines of OpenGL and a lot of drawing for the textures + some pain at creating the 3D objects. But anyway, the game far from being a marvel of technology, did anybody find it interesting? I think it sucks compared to "Moon Patrol" on the old Apple IIs :)
Just to stir up the conversation and to get offtopic:
Does anybody know of a decent REXX shell? I kinda miss this...
My Phys book claims E in e=mc^2 is in [ergs], and of course fails to say anything more. But it's not joules.
I'd agree with you on that. I'd love them to anounce as early as possible, but maybe they don't want their server to take all the traffic.
I think I saw something about a Cassiopeia running Maple V on Casio's page. The price didn't look really BAD, but I don't know what you need. It's portable for sure and looks like a killer. The price includes Maple as far as I remember, so it was like getting Maple for almost free.
Sorry, no memories of the wherabouts of Casio's main page. Chek under calculators or PDAs. Maybe this would be better for you, though it costs.
I think the only point you got wrong is that of REXX being crappy/unusable/etc. The language (with the notable exception of ObjectREXX) is a really good general-purpouse programming language that happens to have some more power in strings and sending OS requests down the line.
I happen to be somewhat touchy on articles that claim a language to be "bad/ugly". If we forget about APL, it's all just different languages that work fine for different tasks.
And for the clustering vs mainframe discussion:
How do you chop a pound of beef?
A. You hire 1000 chinese to do it B. You run it through the meat chopper