I think there's a qualifier that needs to be added here. A C++ program is safe if you use standard C++ coding methods, the classes that you are using are safe and don't have to write your own classes. Having the STL classes helps a lot here but there may be situations where one might want an alternative data storage class which might require the coder to do memory management.
Roland has generally improved but then doesn't bother to explain why these molecules shouldn't be used, maybe the word is "couldn't", but the explaination was not there.
I still don't like his work out of principle though.
Your goals are mostly contradictory, to resolve it, you either have to make choices or wait several years. Seek time increases power consumption. Lower power consumption costs more and reduces seek time.
A hard drive isn't getting any simpler to make, but they aren't really getting any more complex. There's only so low you can get on the labor and manufacturing costs. As you can get a useful hard drive for $50 now, why complain about the price? Reducing capacity doesn't really save much.
Desktop hard drive power consumption might average 10 watts. A notebook hard drive takes about two watts. A notebook hard drive is slower, smaller and more expensive though.
I just bought a dedicated 750GB hard drive for my PVR uses. I have my Mac record over-the-air HDTV. A single HD movie might take 10-20GB.
It's probably more than I really need, and I've gotten into the practice of culling stuff that I'll never watch again, but I like to keep plenty around. I also store video editing work, and that eats hard drive space quicker, 13GB an hour just for the source media, then there's the renders and ancillary files.
In all, I have just over 2GB in my computer right now. I'd really like to up it to 3+GB but I'm waiting for the drive prices to come down.
I don't think it should be a problem if you follow sensible precautions. Keep copies of the newest software that supports your operating system. I usually keep the installer files around anyway. Don't let Microsoft's software to access the Internet where ever possible, or with very heavy restrictions if absolutely necessary.
The real problem once those precautions are accounted for, is that if a new piece of desirable software doesn't support W2k, then it would take annoying hacking to disable or correct its installer's checker, or just upgrading to Windows XP / Vista.
Even if it may be ill-advised, last I heard is that Windows 98 still has 70 million users, I might have misheard it, but it's several tens of millions. If that many people are happy with 98, I can imagine that Windows 2000/XP will have even more hold-outs because it's quite a bit better.
My understanding is that Premiere has a bigger installed base than FCP, from what I heard from Adobe reps, about three quarter of a million, vs. half a million that Apple was tooting this year at NAB2006.
After Effects is harder to learn, but it's a more sophisticated program. I know a guy that makes his money using After Effects + FCP and I've seen numerous hints that he's not alone in this either.
But this isn't a rental model. Unless the rentals are like $2, it's not going to compete very well against the local rental store unless the renter accepts that they will have to let it download for a while first. I don't think studios would allow renters to burn to DVD because that's not really renting. As far as renting is concerned, I just don't expect many people to plug in a computer or media extender to their TV. Microsoft does have the XBox video rental service, but that's a console that's assumed to be already connected to a TV, and was meant to be there.
When I was in a jury selection pool being coached on civil lawsuits, the terms used were compensatory and punitive damages. The first was to compensate for actual losses, the second is just plain punishment. I've never been chosen for actual jury duty so I've never seen the deliberation process.
Conclusion: how possibly can anyone claim 0.70 USD for a lossy formatted track where you can't even choose exactly how you want it?
Let's be honest here, the only people that truly cares about these particular details are the nerd-types, and while we are at it, let's be honest enough to say that we are a minority. I would bet that if you approached ten people that you normally wouldn't associate with (or they wouldn't normally associate with you) and ask them what a "lossless" or "lossy" format is, nine or ten of them will say "huh?". In short, most people don't really care about that.
NT for Alpha went as far as a beta for Windows 2000, some people are still using that beta on their Alphas. PPC and MIPS made it to the NT 4.0 CD but support was dropped pretty quickly, I don't remember if any service packs made it out.
But neither company could put out a competitive chip. A G5 Power Book wasn't happening, and Apple needed it two years ago. G4 was OK at the start, but at the end, it was lagging, at half or quarter the cache and a quarter the FSB as Intel's mobile chip. IBM did announce a single core G5 that would work in a mobile, but six months later, Intel had dual core units that were faster and cooler.
Frankly, hard drives fail so rarely that it's not really a problem in my opinion. I really don't think flash "drive" is as fast as a hard drive of the same price, there's really no point. The problem with flash is that for each bit, you have to architect tiny wires, with a drive, it's just a two-state point in a magnetic medium, for the near term, cost effectiveness, speed and density of hard drives simply win out. If you are so worried about reliability, for $500 you can RAID-mirror two 200GB drives in a notebook and have 6x more storage than this flash drive.
But the track record is very good. Much better than through any CC merchant account, I believe, and I've seen some horror stories with those, I know some merchants that were seriously ripped through their merchant accounts. In contrast, I'm not convinced that the anti-PayPal stuff is anything but FUD.
I feel for you. I think it's because of the tangential comment on moderator points and slashdot. Generally lines that don't directly discuss the main topic get either funny or offtopic points, I think it depends on what a given moderator happens to focus on in a post. It's kind of a risk that one takes.
I think this is all a misplacement of money and engineering work.
I generally don't hear my notebook's fans, unless I put my ears up to it, and maybe a little bit if I have it maxed out. Said notebook, with fans set to run at 2000RPM, is for my intents, close enough to silent that I wouldn't argue about it. It is also cool enough to use on my lap for long periods of time.
Even my workstation's cooling is sufficiently quiet for me, much quieter than most consumer desktops. Just spend a little bit of time and possibly a little bit better spec'd cooling systems, use non-junk fans (which might cost slightly more) and the current methods of cooling are fine without resorting to exotic and extremely expensive tricks.
It's not just C though, Apple generally uses Objective-C, which is an object-oriented extention of C. If the programmers did the responsible thing and called libraries for their objects, then it shouldn't be a problem, fix your libraries. They shouldn't be calling for memory using C if they can avoid it. I don't think it's anywhere nearly so simple though.
I've seen several instances where Apple was aware of a bug but waited months to fix it. Heck, the Quicktime bug that permitted the MySpace virus still runs free according to the last security thread at AppleInsider.
I think you have many excellent points. The Russian economy is very depressed and they can launch cheaply by the fact that their engineers and other labor is very cheap, IIRC, fairly dissapointing wages at that. I thought it was the US legislatures that cancelled Apollo. That program didn't seem very rooted in science though, and given that the cost was $1B a trip in 1970 dollars, it was too expensive to justify for less than a week's stay. I hope that the private ventures find a cheap way to moon & Mars because NASA's way is just too expensive. To me, the biggest initial problem is cost to orbit, the amount of energy needed to loft a kilogram just into orbit is a major expense and there doesn't seem to be an easy solution to that problem.
The Buran / Energia combination was very similar to the US STS but it did have interesting twists on the idea, for example, IIRC, it was flown completely unmanned and I don't remember the US system having that capability.
Personally, I think NASA's strong point is unmanned exploration, though maybe it's mostly JPL's doing. Pioneer, Voyager, Spirit, Opportunity, Deep Space One exemplify this. The fact that NEAR was able to land on an asteroid despite not having been designed for that feat is astounding. Cassini-Huygens is another example. Even Galileo did well despite the setbacks. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is a fascinating project too, being good enough to see the rovers, their tracks and the shado its mast casts.
I thought Aero runs on 1GB, 1Gz and a DX9 video card. I have a couple four year old computers that comply with that, and several more that are cheaply upgradeable to that or beyond.
But in general, that may be beside the point, I don't think it's the software upgraders that will get that. It often takes the hardware upgraders that will be the ones that upgrade to new software. I think most people are either cheap or lazy when it comes to their computers, leading to my previous conclusion. Software won't get upgraded even if it did not require a hardware upgrade, any money that doesn't need to be spent won't be because in my opinion, most people don't really care much about their computer other than that it works and doesn't cost too much for what they get.
On an unrelated note, I've tried using CFLs in my house for about four years. I still can't find a model where the color doesn't make me want to vomit.
The GEs I get from Sam's Club are pretty good. I personally don't see enough of a difference against incandescents to complain about it, and I'm the kind of person that's fussy when a monitor isn't displaying a calibrated 6500K white point.
The overscan can be adjusted on many TV sets. Sometimes you have to go into service mode. Instructions on how to get there are on the Internet for many TV brands. I had tweaked my TV out when I first bought it to minimize the picture distortions too. Sometimes the brightness is too high anyway, you may just need to turn it down a bit.
I've never seen diagonal lines because of the return scan on any TV. Maybe you got a lemon?
I'm just giving pointers based on my experience. I'm preferring LCD at the moment anyway.
Meanwhile Wal-mart now refuses to carry any games with too extreme of a rating, effectively brow-beating the game authors into self-censorship if they want to have any hope of enough sales to recoup their investment.
Or take it another way, a retailer choosing what they want on their shelves. This isn't government censorship, it is strictly market forces now. Wal*Mart can only carry so many games anyway, there is no entitlement to game developers to have their products on those shelves. I'm not saying that Wal*Mart doesn't abuse their market dominance, but I'm not seeing this as something that justifies rolling out the Sherman act.
I don't see a video game law passing muster. Those are clearly a waste of money.
True. I don't mind the leak, but I do mind that I've had FF crash or stall out on occasion and this is with only two extensions running, Flashblock and Adblock. The Mac version can't show the contents of folders on bookmark toolbars when the program is on the secondary screen. If FF is on the secondary screen, the pull-down menu shows up on the primary screen.
I gave up and am gradually replacing my CRTs with LCD. For one, weight, power and geometry are CRT weak points, major ones at that. I think with plasma and CRT, you have to have about double the diagonal / four times the area for them to approach the power needs of a CRT.
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I think there's a qualifier that needs to be added here. A C++ program is safe if you use standard C++ coding methods, the classes that you are using are safe and don't have to write your own classes. Having the STL classes helps a lot here but there may be situations where one might want an alternative data storage class which might require the coder to do memory management.
Roland has generally improved but then doesn't bother to explain why these molecules shouldn't be used, maybe the word is "couldn't", but the explaination was not there.
I still don't like his work out of principle though.
Your goals are mostly contradictory, to resolve it, you either have to make choices or wait several years. Seek time increases power consumption. Lower power consumption costs more and reduces seek time.
A hard drive isn't getting any simpler to make, but they aren't really getting any more complex. There's only so low you can get on the labor and manufacturing costs. As you can get a useful hard drive for $50 now, why complain about the price? Reducing capacity doesn't really save much.
Desktop hard drive power consumption might average 10 watts. A notebook hard drive takes about two watts. A notebook hard drive is slower, smaller and more expensive though.
I just bought a dedicated 750GB hard drive for my PVR uses. I have my Mac record over-the-air HDTV. A single HD movie might take 10-20GB.
It's probably more than I really need, and I've gotten into the practice of culling stuff that I'll never watch again, but I like to keep plenty around. I also store video editing work, and that eats hard drive space quicker, 13GB an hour just for the source media, then there's the renders and ancillary files.
In all, I have just over 2GB in my computer right now. I'd really like to up it to 3+GB but I'm waiting for the drive prices to come down.
I don't think it should be a problem if you follow sensible precautions. Keep copies of the newest software that supports your operating system. I usually keep the installer files around anyway. Don't let Microsoft's software to access the Internet where ever possible, or with very heavy restrictions if absolutely necessary.
The real problem once those precautions are accounted for, is that if a new piece of desirable software doesn't support W2k, then it would take annoying hacking to disable or correct its installer's checker, or just upgrading to Windows XP / Vista.
Even if it may be ill-advised, last I heard is that Windows 98 still has 70 million users, I might have misheard it, but it's several tens of millions. If that many people are happy with 98, I can imagine that Windows 2000/XP will have even more hold-outs because it's quite a bit better.
My understanding is that Premiere has a bigger installed base than FCP, from what I heard from Adobe reps, about three quarter of a million, vs. half a million that Apple was tooting this year at NAB2006.
After Effects is harder to learn, but it's a more sophisticated program. I know a guy that makes his money using After Effects + FCP and I've seen numerous hints that he's not alone in this either.
But this isn't a rental model. Unless the rentals are like $2, it's not going to compete very well against the local rental store unless the renter accepts that they will have to let it download for a while first. I don't think studios would allow renters to burn to DVD because that's not really renting. As far as renting is concerned, I just don't expect many people to plug in a computer or media extender to their TV. Microsoft does have the XBox video rental service, but that's a console that's assumed to be already connected to a TV, and was meant to be there.
When I was in a jury selection pool being coached on civil lawsuits, the terms used were compensatory and punitive damages. The first was to compensate for actual losses, the second is just plain punishment. I've never been chosen for actual jury duty so I've never seen the deliberation process.
Conclusion: how possibly can anyone claim 0.70 USD for a lossy formatted track where you can't even choose exactly how you want it?
Let's be honest here, the only people that truly cares about these particular details are the nerd-types, and while we are at it, let's be honest enough to say that we are a minority. I would bet that if you approached ten people that you normally wouldn't associate with (or they wouldn't normally associate with you) and ask them what a "lossless" or "lossy" format is, nine or ten of them will say "huh?". In short, most people don't really care about that.
NT for Alpha went as far as a beta for Windows 2000, some people are still using that beta on their Alphas. PPC and MIPS made it to the NT 4.0 CD but support was dropped pretty quickly, I don't remember if any service packs made it out.
But neither company could put out a competitive chip. A G5 Power Book wasn't happening, and Apple needed it two years ago. G4 was OK at the start, but at the end, it was lagging, at half or quarter the cache and a quarter the FSB as Intel's mobile chip. IBM did announce a single core G5 that would work in a mobile, but six months later, Intel had dual core units that were faster and cooler.
Frankly, hard drives fail so rarely that it's not really a problem in my opinion. I really don't think flash "drive" is as fast as a hard drive of the same price, there's really no point. The problem with flash is that for each bit, you have to architect tiny wires, with a drive, it's just a two-state point in a magnetic medium, for the near term, cost effectiveness, speed and density of hard drives simply win out. If you are so worried about reliability, for $500 you can RAID-mirror two 200GB drives in a notebook and have 6x more storage than this flash drive.
Maybe next year.
But the track record is very good. Much better than through any CC merchant account, I believe, and I've seen some horror stories with those, I know some merchants that were seriously ripped through their merchant accounts. In contrast, I'm not convinced that the anti-PayPal stuff is anything but FUD.
I feel for you. I think it's because of the tangential comment on moderator points and slashdot. Generally lines that don't directly discuss the main topic get either funny or offtopic points, I think it depends on what a given moderator happens to focus on in a post. It's kind of a risk that one takes.
I think this is all a misplacement of money and engineering work.
I generally don't hear my notebook's fans, unless I put my ears up to it, and maybe a little bit if I have it maxed out. Said notebook, with fans set to run at 2000RPM, is for my intents, close enough to silent that I wouldn't argue about it. It is also cool enough to use on my lap for long periods of time.
Even my workstation's cooling is sufficiently quiet for me, much quieter than most consumer desktops. Just spend a little bit of time and possibly a little bit better spec'd cooling systems, use non-junk fans (which might cost slightly more) and the current methods of cooling are fine without resorting to exotic and extremely expensive tricks.
It's not just C though, Apple generally uses Objective-C, which is an object-oriented extention of C. If the programmers did the responsible thing and called libraries for their objects, then it shouldn't be a problem, fix your libraries. They shouldn't be calling for memory using C if they can avoid it. I don't think it's anywhere nearly so simple though.
I've seen several instances where Apple was aware of a bug but waited months to fix it. Heck, the Quicktime bug that permitted the MySpace virus still runs free according to the last security thread at AppleInsider.
I think you have many excellent points. The Russian economy is very depressed and they can launch cheaply by the fact that their engineers and other labor is very cheap, IIRC, fairly dissapointing wages at that. I thought it was the US legislatures that cancelled Apollo. That program didn't seem very rooted in science though, and given that the cost was $1B a trip in 1970 dollars, it was too expensive to justify for less than a week's stay. I hope that the private ventures find a cheap way to moon & Mars because NASA's way is just too expensive. To me, the biggest initial problem is cost to orbit, the amount of energy needed to loft a kilogram just into orbit is a major expense and there doesn't seem to be an easy solution to that problem.
The Buran / Energia combination was very similar to the US STS but it did have interesting twists on the idea, for example, IIRC, it was flown completely unmanned and I don't remember the US system having that capability.
Personally, I think NASA's strong point is unmanned exploration, though maybe it's mostly JPL's doing. Pioneer, Voyager, Spirit, Opportunity, Deep Space One exemplify this. The fact that NEAR was able to land on an asteroid despite not having been designed for that feat is astounding. Cassini-Huygens is another example. Even Galileo did well despite the setbacks. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is a fascinating project too, being good enough to see the rovers, their tracks and the shado its mast casts.
I thought Aero runs on 1GB, 1Gz and a DX9 video card. I have a couple four year old computers that comply with that, and several more that are cheaply upgradeable to that or beyond.
But in general, that may be beside the point, I don't think it's the software upgraders that will get that. It often takes the hardware upgraders that will be the ones that upgrade to new software. I think most people are either cheap or lazy when it comes to their computers, leading to my previous conclusion. Software won't get upgraded even if it did not require a hardware upgrade, any money that doesn't need to be spent won't be because in my opinion, most people don't really care much about their computer other than that it works and doesn't cost too much for what they get.
On an unrelated note, I've tried using CFLs in my house for about four years. I still can't find a model where the color doesn't make me want to vomit.
The GEs I get from Sam's Club are pretty good. I personally don't see enough of a difference against incandescents to complain about it, and I'm the kind of person that's fussy when a monitor isn't displaying a calibrated 6500K white point.
The overscan can be adjusted on many TV sets. Sometimes you have to go into service mode. Instructions on how to get there are on the Internet for many TV brands. I had tweaked my TV out when I first bought it to minimize the picture distortions too. Sometimes the brightness is too high anyway, you may just need to turn it down a bit.
I've never seen diagonal lines because of the return scan on any TV. Maybe you got a lemon?
I'm just giving pointers based on my experience. I'm preferring LCD at the moment anyway.
Meanwhile Wal-mart now refuses to carry any games with too extreme of a rating, effectively brow-beating the game authors into self-censorship if they want to have any hope of enough sales to recoup their investment.
Or take it another way, a retailer choosing what they want on their shelves. This isn't government censorship, it is strictly market forces now. Wal*Mart can only carry so many games anyway, there is no entitlement to game developers to have their products on those shelves. I'm not saying that Wal*Mart doesn't abuse their market dominance, but I'm not seeing this as something that justifies rolling out the Sherman act.
I don't see a video game law passing muster. Those are clearly a waste of money.
Steep? As in 1GB RAM, 1GHz and a DX9 card? I have a four year old system that complies with that.
True. I don't mind the leak, but I do mind that I've had FF crash or stall out on occasion and this is with only two extensions running, Flashblock and Adblock. The Mac version can't show the contents of folders on bookmark toolbars when the program is on the secondary screen. If FF is on the secondary screen, the pull-down menu shows up on the primary screen.
I gave up and am gradually replacing my CRTs with LCD. For one, weight, power and geometry are CRT weak points, major ones at that. I think with plasma and CRT, you have to have about double the diagonal / four times the area for them to approach the power needs of a CRT.