What happens when you play [insert fav video game here]? If the system actually works, it's not going to choose to run the game code on a machine in some other country... or on the space station, for that matter. It's going to run it on your machine. If your machine sucks, the game will suck, so buy a better one.
Hard drive technology is getting silly. 160GB? How many people can actually use that much space? How many people that have that much data actually put it on IDE drives? My machines have 20 and 13 GB drives and I don't have any space shortages.
What I do have is speed shortages. Same old worn out technology. Mechanical storage devices... moving parts... fragmentation headaches... ugh!!! We need *new* technology.
In the mean time, how about making 10KRPM IDE drives, or 15KRPM. I always wonder why SCSI drives are always faster internally, because I'm pretty damn sure it has nothing to do with them being SCSI. Why not just slap an IDE controller on that new Cheetah and see what happens?
"Optical mice had been popular about 20yrs ago, the only new thing MS added was the ability to work on most surfaces instead of special mousepads."
Hmm... Do you think that's not important? Who wants to be forced to use a special mouse pad? Besides, I don't remember ever seeing an optical mouse for sale at CompUSA or whatever, so no wonder nobody bought one. And the one I did use was choppy, didn't like it (10 years ago).
But I love this new MS one. I'll never user a mouse with balls again:-)
We also don't make very good slaves. We bitch and whine and require lots of food and constant attention to make sure we're doing the master's bidding. We're high-maintenance and inefficient. We're lazy. Which is why we were the ones to come up with enslavement in the first place. Oh, and also why we invented computers... hell, it's why technology exists at all.
An intelligent robot would make a much better slave than any human. If intelligent computers decide having slaves is a good way to go, why would they choose us? Why wouldn't they choose other computers?
We also wouldn't make good batteries (ala The Matrix). So what would we be good for? Nothing! We wouldn't be slaves, we'd be dead.
Enslavement, huh... Now how does giving a computer direct control over your intelligence provide less of a chance of enslavement than AI? You could be a slave and not even know it.
I like the idea of resolution independence. Really I do:-)
But, with current display technology I don't think it will ever look very good. Try zooming a graphic to 200%. Looks kinda blocky. Now try 168%. Ack!!! 73%... Ack!!!
It works on printers because the physical resolution is high enough that your eye can't pick out the pixels. But monitors do, what, roughly 75dpi? No where near enough.
Now, with true type or vector fonts, or something along those lines, text would look OK. Line drawn and filled components would look fine of course. But say goodbye to any bitmapped graphics looking good - icons, etc.
I think all that would happen is we'd wind up forcing the display to always run at 100% zoom, and control the resolution just like we do now.
With bitmapped images you have the basic problem of information loss. Zooming smaller is always fine as long as the physical resolution is high enough to hide the chop. But larger causes problems that start very early (150% maybe?). My thinking is that to make resolution independance really work, graphics would have to contain information for maybe 10 times the target resolution, to allow for some zooming without screwing up the image, so that at the target resolution its really being scaled at 10%, and displays that can do more like at least 300dpi. That's gonna take *huge* amounts of memory and storage and bandwidth.
Resolution independence is great... In the future, when displays can make it look decent and when we have the speed and storage to support it. In practical terms I think we're kinda stuck with pixel based coordinates (or emulating it) for a few more years.
QT doesn't use the Windows widgets tho. It uses the Windows API to do the same work it does under X: draw its own widgets in the style of Windows ones.
I'd like to see sound support embedded in the protocol and server. If you want to write a Berlin display server and be in full complience with the standard, you must support the sound protocol.
Sound logically belongs with the display server (whether its handled by the same process or a different one is irrelevent to me), just like input handling belongs with the display server.
This would also allow the display server to generate sounds if it wants to. For example if you can disable a window, the server could emit a beep or ding or something when you click on it, rather than sending those clicks over the network and letting the client side generate the sounds.
This should become part of the X protocol as well. Want to play a sound in your app?
XSoundPlayFile(mydisplay, "mysoundfile.wav"); or whatever.
All mixing can then be handled in the server, so that multiple clients can be playing sounds at the same time and they all get mixed and played.
This also becomes part of the theming engine - define a bunch of sounds for different common events (error, warning, etc.), configurable in the theme system, then apps do:
XSoundPlayStdSound(mydisplay, "SOUND_ERROR");
What that sounds like (if anything) is up to the user on a global basis.
In other words, Berlin takes the Mac approach of taking UI decisions away from app developers. Themes, schmemes, that's not real choice.
It is real choice, just not so much on the part of the developer. This approach takes the choice away from the developer and hands it to the user (in the form of theming). The user gets consistency and choice - isn't that who is supposed to be controlling his/her own desktop?
Personally, as a developer, I don't want the choice of look at feel. I want to choose an API and I want to design the data bindings to UI components, and a default layout for the UI. I want the user to worry about the rest; how the pretty widgets look, key bindings, even how the UI is layed out if he/she wishes to go that far. I don't want my apps to stand out as being visually different any more than needed. There is absolutely no logical reason for one button to look and behave differently from any other button.
No, not possible. The universe was written in C. Everybody knows Bill Gates would have tried to do it in BASIC, and it would have crashed within hours.
"...I walked across the room to place it on its cradle for the night. As I did so, a static electric charge shot across the closing gap between the serial/HotSync connector on my PalmVx to the complimentary connector on its cradle. This shock was big enough that I actually saw the bright-blue arc of electricity pass between the connectors. Although I had experienced small zaps before, this one was particularly big."
Can you say "negligent"?
He knew from past experience that static charges could discharge between the computer and the Palm, and he claims to understand the whole problem with static and computers... Why did he continue to hot-sync without doing something to avoid the static problem?
> Oh wait, you probably didn't think to
> read THAT before you posted.
THAT didn't say how it performed doing static content. THAT said how it performed doing a MIX of static and dynamic content.
Since Tux only does static content, and hands everything else off to a full blown web server, it is a reasonable question: just how fast is it for PURELY static content? And how fast is it for PURELY dynamic content?
One would naturaly expect a much bigger performance boost for pure static content, and probably slower performance for pure dynamic content. --
No, not that John Smith... A different one... The one that lives in New York City... You know, the Big Apple? Big city, in the United States of America... Um... On Earth... City... A place where lots of people get together and live and do business... Yeah, people... Um, the beings that dominate Earth... Um, yeah, the planet next to you... The little round shiny thing in the sky... Green and blue... Closer to the Sun than you are... Yeah, the Sun... Um, the big round bright thing? Yellow... The thing that supplies all your energy with lots of radiation... In the center of the solar system...
I always wanted to go to Mars, but I can't... Um, yeah, Mars... Your planet... Red planet... Like Earth, only smaller and further from the Sun...
"Intellectual property should be protected. That's the only way that a newspaper or a software company or record company or artist can get a fair return on their work."
And then he says...
"The only thing we have a problem with is when the government funds open-source work. Government funding should be for work that is available to everybody. Open source is not available to commercial companies."
Nice condradiction, Steve. It would appear that you think Microsoft should be compensated for their work, without having to compensate or even acknowledge the work done by independant developers who wrote a fair amount of the code incorperated into MS software. That isn't what you meant, was it steve?
Microsoft loves open source software... As long as they get to make money on it. --
Gee... That came right out of the blue, didn't it?
Next thing you know, Greenpeace will say something crazy like 'global warming is bad'... --
So big... I want a little one!!
on
Flywheel UPS
·
· Score: 1
Why are they so big and expensive? You should be able to produce a flywheel UPS for use with PC's within a small enclosure. Anyone have any good reasons? --
Slashdot Mirror
That's what you get for being on the cutting edge...
What happens when you play [insert fav video game here]? If the system actually works, it's not going to choose to run the game code on a machine in some other country... or on the space station, for that matter. It's going to run it on your machine. If your machine sucks, the game will suck, so buy a better one.
Hard drive technology is getting silly. 160GB? How many people can actually use that much space? How many people that have that much data actually put it on IDE drives? My machines have 20 and 13 GB drives and I don't have any space shortages.
What I do have is speed shortages. Same old worn out technology. Mechanical storage devices... moving parts... fragmentation headaches... ugh!!! We need *new* technology.
In the mean time, how about making 10KRPM IDE drives, or 15KRPM. I always wonder why SCSI drives are always faster internally, because I'm pretty damn sure it has nothing to do with them being SCSI. Why not just slap an IDE controller on that new Cheetah and see what happens?
But I love this new MS one. I'll never user a mouse with balls again :-)
We also don't make very good slaves. We bitch and whine and require lots of food and constant attention to make sure we're doing the master's bidding. We're high-maintenance and inefficient. We're lazy. Which is why we were the ones to come up with enslavement in the first place. Oh, and also why we invented computers... hell, it's why technology exists at all.
An intelligent robot would make a much better slave than any human. If intelligent computers decide having slaves is a good way to go, why would they choose us? Why wouldn't they choose other computers?
We also wouldn't make good batteries (ala The Matrix). So what would we be good for? Nothing! We wouldn't be slaves, we'd be dead.
...you have just corrupted the Borg.
Enslavement, huh... Now how does giving a computer direct control over your intelligence provide less of a chance of enslavement than AI? You could be a slave and not even know it.
I like the idea of resolution independence. Really I do :-)
But, with current display technology I don't think it will ever look very good. Try zooming a graphic to 200%. Looks kinda blocky. Now try 168%. Ack!!! 73%... Ack!!!
It works on printers because the physical resolution is high enough that your eye can't pick out the pixels. But monitors do, what, roughly 75dpi? No where near enough.
Now, with true type or vector fonts, or something along those lines, text would look OK. Line drawn and filled components would look fine of course. But say goodbye to any bitmapped graphics looking good - icons, etc.
I think all that would happen is we'd wind up forcing the display to always run at 100% zoom, and control the resolution just like we do now.
With bitmapped images you have the basic problem of information loss. Zooming smaller is always fine as long as the physical resolution is high enough to hide the chop. But larger causes problems that start very early (150% maybe?). My thinking is that to make resolution independance really work, graphics would have to contain information for maybe 10 times the target resolution, to allow for some zooming without screwing up the image, so that at the target resolution its really being scaled at 10%, and displays that can do more like at least 300dpi. That's gonna take *huge* amounts of memory and storage and bandwidth.
Resolution independence is great... In the future, when displays can make it look decent and when we have the speed and storage to support it. In practical terms I think we're kinda stuck with pixel based coordinates (or emulating it) for a few more years.
QT doesn't use the Windows widgets tho. It uses the Windows API to do the same work it does under X: draw its own widgets in the style of Windows ones.
I'd like to see sound support embedded in the protocol and server. If you want to write a Berlin display server and be in full complience with the standard, you must support the sound protocol.
Sound logically belongs with the display server (whether its handled by the same process or a different one is irrelevent to me), just like input handling belongs with the display server.
This would also allow the display server to generate sounds if it wants to. For example if you can disable a window, the server could emit a beep or ding or something when you click on it, rather than sending those clicks over the network and letting the client side generate the sounds.
This should become part of the X protocol as well. Want to play a sound in your app?
XSoundPlayFile(mydisplay, "mysoundfile.wav"); or whatever.
All mixing can then be handled in the server, so that multiple clients can be playing sounds at the same time and they all get mixed and played.
This also becomes part of the theming engine - define a bunch of sounds for different common events (error, warning, etc.), configurable in the theme system, then apps do:
XSoundPlayStdSound(mydisplay, "SOUND_ERROR");
What that sounds like (if anything) is up to the user on a global basis.
It is real choice, just not so much on the part of the developer. This approach takes the choice away from the developer and hands it to the user (in the form of theming). The user gets consistency and choice - isn't that who is supposed to be controlling his/her own desktop?
Personally, as a developer, I don't want the choice of look at feel. I want to choose an API and I want to design the data bindings to UI components, and a default layout for the UI. I want the user to worry about the rest; how the pretty widgets look, key bindings, even how the UI is layed out if he/she wishes to go that far. I don't want my apps to stand out as being visually different any more than needed. There is absolutely no logical reason for one button to look and behave differently from any other button.
No, not possible. The universe was written in C. Everybody knows Bill Gates would have tried to do it in BASIC, and it would have crashed within hours.
...he did discover a storage space shortage and did then execute this command: /home/bill_gates/.ego
rm -f
The command is still running...
a monopoly. That's right, AtheOS has an integrated web browser!! What will you do to maintain healthy competition and innovation in the OS market?
Gee, Apache doesn't seem effected by it...
"...I walked across the room to place it on its cradle for the night. As I did so, a static electric charge shot across the closing gap between the serial/HotSync connector on my PalmVx to the complimentary connector on its cradle. This shock was big enough that I actually saw the bright-blue arc of electricity pass between the connectors. Although I had experienced small zaps before, this one was particularly big."
Can you say "negligent"?
He knew from past experience that static charges could discharge between the computer and the Palm, and he claims to understand the whole problem with static and computers... Why did he continue to hot-sync without doing something to avoid the static problem?
Because it's called Redhat LINUX, not Redhat OS. Not the same thing at all.
--
> Oh wait, you probably didn't think to
> read THAT before you posted.
THAT didn't say how it performed doing static content. THAT said how it performed doing a MIX of static and dynamic content.
Since Tux only does static content, and hands everything else off to a full blown web server, it is a reasonable question: just how fast is it for PURELY static content? And how fast is it for PURELY dynamic content?
One would naturaly expect a much bigger performance boost for pure static content, and probably slower performance for pure dynamic content.
--
John Smith
I come in peace!!!
No, not that John Smith... A different one... The one that lives in New York City... You know, the Big Apple? Big city, in the United States of America... Um... On Earth... City... A place where lots of people get together and live and do business... Yeah, people... Um, the beings that dominate Earth... Um, yeah, the planet next to you... The little round shiny thing in the sky... Green and blue... Closer to the Sun than you are... Yeah, the Sun... Um, the big round bright thing? Yellow... The thing that supplies all your energy with lots of radiation... In the center of the solar system...
I always wanted to go to Mars, but I can't... Um, yeah, Mars... Your planet... Red planet... Like Earth, only smaller and further from the Sun...
Don't you even speak English???
--
So now I get to publish my name so a bunch of fossilized martian microbes (if any even exist) can spam me in 2 million years...
Sheesh!!!
Does anyone with an actual brain think this is cool?
--
Cancer \Can"cer\, n.
3. (Med.) Formerly, any malignant growth, esp. one attended with great pain and ulceration...
Well hell... that sounds more like Microsoft to me...
--
"Intellectual property should be protected. That's the only way that a newspaper or a software company or record company or artist can get a fair return on their work."
And then he says...
"The only thing we have a problem with is when the government funds open-source work. Government funding should be for work that is available to everybody. Open source is not available to commercial companies."
Nice condradiction, Steve. It would appear that you think Microsoft should be compensated for their work, without having to compensate or even acknowledge the work done by independant developers who wrote a fair amount of the code incorperated into MS software. That isn't what you meant, was it steve?
Microsoft loves open source software... As long as they get to make money on it.
--
3 I believe - red, green, and blue...
--
RMS says free software is good?
Gee... That came right out of the blue, didn't it?
Next thing you know, Greenpeace will say something crazy like 'global warming is bad'...
--
Why are they so big and expensive? You should be able to produce a flywheel UPS for use with PC's within a small enclosure. Anyone have any good reasons?
--
If free market compitition works, Hogan will get into space for only $10 million :-)
--