Disclaimer: I don't know anything more about XFree86 and Y than what I just read in Mark Thomas's thesis PDF, which is linked to in the article.
I think I understood his single largest improvement - correct me if I am wrong. First, Y takes advantage of the large amount of memory in modern computers to buffer windows. Moving a window around, resizing it, removing another window that had hidden some of it, or minimizing it and maximizing it, would result in redraws from the memory buffer but not communication with the client. He said X does redraws in all of those cases because it was first designed when user terminals didn't have the memory to handle that kind of buffering, and it is a huge bottleneck for performance with X now.
If he's right, that looks like a not insubstantial mark in Y Window's favor.
Re:Magnusson Moss Warranty Act
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If you like a particular car, there's nothing wrong with juicing up the engine output to match it. If you're feeling crazy and have a ton of money to burn, GM has a 572 ci crate engine that's rated for 620 horsepower and torque. You'll need to gas it up every 25 miles, but she'll be a real beast.
Oh, and I hear you about quickness vs. top speed. I don't care if I never go faster than 70 mph, I would still love to drive a car that can get there quickly.
My father-in-law has a tricked out '89 Mustang with a hair under 500 horsepower at the crank, really low custom gearing in the transmission, and a 4.10 final drive ratio. The car's not that attractive, but on the road he popped it into 3rd at 35 mph and stomped on the gas. We hit 75 mph so fast that my neck hurt for the rest of the day. Now that's fun - He claims he can pace a Ferrari Enzo until he hits the rev limiter at around 115 mph, and I believe him.
I'd try that in a hearbeat... are you buying?:) I sure as hell can't afford it. Next gen is supposed to have near 500 horsepower, or so I hear.
Re:impossible to do honest work
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Most new businesses fail. It's hard to get started in any industry - that's not a poor reflection on your father, that's just how it works.
Maybe your father wasn't charging enough for his fair work. If business was good, then obviously he was getting a lot of customers that would have gone elsewhere. It's possible they were all coming to him because he was undercharging.
Re:Magnusson Moss Warranty Act
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The new Durago weighs what, in the neighborhood of 5000 pounds? That's like 160-200 horsepower in a family sedan, nice but nothing to shout about.
Now put 340 horsepower into a 3000 pound family car, and you've got my attention.
I've got nothing against trucks and big SUVs, but I'd rather have a 250 horsepower sedan than a 400 horsepower truck or SUV. The sedan will be faster, better handling, better braking, cheaper to buy and insure, and give better gas mileage.
Re:Magnusson Moss Warranty Act
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Thanks for the info on a used Viper, I appreciate it. Still, I'd probably get myself killed by accident. I've heard it takes a lot of patience to get used to driving it - you can probably smoke the tires in fourth gear at launch, right?
You're right about the GT40 - and you're almost certainly right about the C6 Z06.
Re:Magnusson Moss Warranty Act
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"You have to step up to something like a $275K Ferrari 575 before you'll find anything that a Viper won't eat alive"
Until Ford comes out with the GT40... and the '06 Corvette Z06 may come close to the Viper in horsepower output, although of course it's all rumors now.
Don't get me wrong, I'd take a Viper in a heartbeat if I could afford one.
Re:Or, this can IMPROVE your car
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Just to be complete, you can also see horsepower gains from: 1. Using lighter components in the valvetrain to reduce mechanical losses. This is the idea behind aluminum block engines. Only drawback is that heavy loads are more likely to wreck the engine than when using a cast (or even better, forged) iron block. I think (?) that racing engines use special alloys for this. 2. Adding a heat resistant coating, usually ceramic, inside the combustion chamber and the exhaust in order to reduce wasted heat energy. This idea is catching on, but it is relatively pricey and only gives a few percent gain. 3. Reducing oil to the minimal recommended level reduces power lost to churning the crank through the oil pan. This adds a few horsepower back into the system, but if you let your oil level drop below the minimum you're in for a world of hurt in a hurry.
You can also see increased performance by reducing the vehicle weight or changing your transmission gearing ratios. The former improves your power to weight ratio, while the latter will put more torque to the ground at the cost of fuel economy.
Adding tires with better grip (and if your vehicle doesn't already have it adding a limited slip differential) will provide for better traction when accelerating, which can also make a big difference.
If you ever reply to this - is there any book/website with information on what to look for when you're trying to decide whether to turbocharge an engine? I love turbos, but I'm deathly afraid of blowing it up so I don't want to take any risks.
I think some sort of social evolution is utter bullocks...
But the people at the top of the economic scale who arrived there because of inheritance are the exception, not the norm. Most movie stars were not born rich. Many CEOs and other top executives worked their way up the ranks.
I know two guys that are living in efficiency apartments and driving 1980s cars while over 60% of their take home pay goes into a massive investment portfolio. Both intend to retire by 50 as multi-millionaires. It's not the life most people choose to live - but it could be, if wealth was that important to them.
You're fooling yourself. Steroids are the most famous performance enhancing drugs, but there are others. You can increase strength, stamina, adrenaline, and pain tolerance to levels no natural trainee could match.
You don't have to redline the engine, it's just an option. Call it homoerotic if you want, but occasionally it's fun to push your car a little.
An automatic transmission loses approximately 5% of its power through the torque converter. A manual transmission doesn't use a torque converter, so it's like a 5% power gain for free with no change to gas mileage.
My father-in-law had one with a big V8 and upgraded suspension, brakes, tires, etc... It was the penultimate muscle car - didn't handle so well, but in a straight line it was 0-60 mph in a little over 3 seconds and the quarter mile in about 10 and a half.
I still hate the styling, but it was definitely a lightning fast pocket rocket.
Oh, it's old tech... but they squeeze a lot out of it. The 'Vette Z06 has 400 horsepower and gets 27 mpg highway with premium gas. There are very few sports car you can buy with specs like that.
Redlined at 3500? I find that hard to believe. Almost all gasoline engine cars today redline above 5000 RPMs, and some hit 7000 or more.
With a manual transmission, you could do 3500 RPMs in first gear (probably less than 25 mph for a family car) or second gear (probably less than 40 mph for a family car). That's well within the legal limit in the US. With an automatic, the car will upshift for you before you hit those limits, so you could probably only hit 3500 RPMs if you have the gas floored in your highest gear. That would be above the speed limit.
It depends upon what you want. A 200 horsepower 4 cylinder still needs a decent amount of revving to get the juice flowing. Not as much as the S2000, but a lot more than a Mustang GT or something similar.
Mazda Miata, Toyota MR2, and Honda RSX drivers must prefer that kind of driving, where you have to work to stay in the powerband. If nothing else, I'm sure it offers better gas mileage in normal driving and the opportunity to push the car a little without going way past the legal speed limits.
I'd still prefer a decent inline 6 or V8 myself - or a properly tuned super or turbocharged 4.
Big Three reliability has improved substantially recently. They aren't on par with Toyota yet, but GM is coming close.
That doesn't mean you should automatically buy a GM car - buy what's best and let competition drive the market. I'm just saying that some of the newer models from the US manufacturers are a lot better than the older ones.
The problem isn't the lost muscle - you can gain that back.
The problem is, as you say in a roundabout way, by crash dieting you never learn to eat like a healthy person. Living on 600 calories a day for a few weeks or months doesn't teach you anything useful about keeping the fat off once you lost it.
You said it. Electronic cars, alternative fuel vehicles, people trying to break into the automotive market with their own auto brands, and even new advances in steam car technology are all hampered significantly by all the red tape they have to climb through to be certified road-worthy.
They started with the best intention, protecting John Q Public, but it really hinders competition and new entrants to the market.
I have something like "The Idiot's Guide to Personal Finance" (can't remember the exact title).
The guy is up front that the most effective way to build wealth is to run your own successful business. He's also up front that 95% of all business startups fold within the first 5 years.
It takes courage to do something like that. Congrats on getting 8 years out of it.
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That's right, there's a national conspiracy by us Hummer owners to eliminate the US poor by getting them killed in foreign countries.
I confess, you figured us out.
Is there a brand available in the US you can recommend, whether a coffee shop chain or just something you can buy in a grocery store?
I liked iced coffee with lots of cream and sugar, but by any reasonable standard that isn't coffee. All the regular coffee I have tried is awful.
Thanks for the info. Like I said in the parent post, I was just going on what I read because I really don't know too much about X.
That's the best defense of MUDs I have ever read..
Care to name a few you like? I'm just curious.
Disclaimer: I don't know anything more about XFree86 and Y than what I just read in Mark Thomas's thesis PDF, which is linked to in the article.
I think I understood his single largest improvement - correct me if I am wrong. First, Y takes advantage of the large amount of memory in modern computers to buffer windows. Moving a window around, resizing it, removing another window that had hidden some of it, or minimizing it and maximizing it, would result in redraws from the memory buffer but not communication with the client. He said X does redraws in all of those cases because it was first designed when user terminals didn't have the memory to handle that kind of buffering, and it is a huge bottleneck for performance with X now.
If he's right, that looks like a not insubstantial mark in Y Window's favor.
If you like a particular car, there's nothing wrong with juicing up the engine output to match it. If you're feeling crazy and have a ton of money to burn, GM has a 572 ci crate engine that's rated for 620 horsepower and torque. You'll need to gas it up every 25 miles, but she'll be a real beast.
Oh, and I hear you about quickness vs. top speed. I don't care if I never go faster than 70 mph, I would still love to drive a car that can get there quickly.
My father-in-law has a tricked out '89 Mustang with a hair under 500 horsepower at the crank, really low custom gearing in the transmission, and a 4.10 final drive ratio. The car's not that attractive, but on the road he popped it into 3rd at 35 mph and stomped on the gas. We hit 75 mph so fast that my neck hurt for the rest of the day. Now that's fun - He claims he can pace a Ferrari Enzo until he hits the rev limiter at around 115 mph, and I believe him.
The BMW M5?
:) I sure as hell can't afford it. Next gen is supposed to have near 500 horsepower, or so I hear.
I'd try that in a hearbeat... are you buying?
Most new businesses fail. It's hard to get started in any industry - that's not a poor reflection on your father, that's just how it works.
Maybe your father wasn't charging enough for his fair work. If business was good, then obviously he was getting a lot of customers that would have gone elsewhere. It's possible they were all coming to him because he was undercharging.
The new Durago weighs what, in the neighborhood of 5000 pounds? That's like 160-200 horsepower in a family sedan, nice but nothing to shout about.
Now put 340 horsepower into a 3000 pound family car, and you've got my attention.
I've got nothing against trucks and big SUVs, but I'd rather have a 250 horsepower sedan than a 400 horsepower truck or SUV. The sedan will be faster, better handling, better braking, cheaper to buy and insure, and give better gas mileage.
Thanks for the info on a used Viper, I appreciate it. Still, I'd probably get myself killed by accident. I've heard it takes a lot of patience to get used to driving it - you can probably smoke the tires in fourth gear at launch, right?
You're right about the GT40 - and you're almost certainly right about the C6 Z06.
"You have to step up to something like a $275K Ferrari 575 before you'll find anything that a Viper won't eat alive"
Until Ford comes out with the GT40... and the '06 Corvette Z06 may come close to the Viper in horsepower output, although of course it's all rumors now.
Don't get me wrong, I'd take a Viper in a heartbeat if I could afford one.
Just to be complete, you can also see horsepower gains from:
1. Using lighter components in the valvetrain to reduce mechanical losses. This is the idea behind aluminum block engines. Only drawback is that heavy loads are more likely to wreck the engine than when using a cast (or even better, forged) iron block. I think (?) that racing engines use special alloys for this.
2. Adding a heat resistant coating, usually ceramic, inside the combustion chamber and the exhaust in order to reduce wasted heat energy. This idea is catching on, but it is relatively pricey and only gives a few percent gain.
3. Reducing oil to the minimal recommended level reduces power lost to churning the crank through the oil pan. This adds a few horsepower back into the system, but if you let your oil level drop below the minimum you're in for a world of hurt in a hurry.
You can also see increased performance by reducing the vehicle weight or changing your transmission gearing ratios. The former improves your power to weight ratio, while the latter will put more torque to the ground at the cost of fuel economy.
Adding tires with better grip (and if your vehicle doesn't already have it adding a limited slip differential) will provide for better traction when accelerating, which can also make a big difference.
If you ever reply to this - is there any book/website with information on what to look for when you're trying to decide whether to turbocharge an engine? I love turbos, but I'm deathly afraid of blowing it up so I don't want to take any risks.
I think some sort of social evolution is utter bullocks...
But the people at the top of the economic scale who arrived there because of inheritance are the exception, not the norm. Most movie stars were not born rich. Many CEOs and other top executives worked their way up the ranks.
I know two guys that are living in efficiency apartments and driving 1980s cars while over 60% of their take home pay goes into a massive investment portfolio. Both intend to retire by 50 as multi-millionaires. It's not the life most people choose to live - but it could be, if wealth was that important to them.
You're fooling yourself. Steroids are the most famous performance enhancing drugs, but there are others. You can increase strength, stamina, adrenaline, and pain tolerance to levels no natural trainee could match.
You don't have to redline the engine, it's just an option. Call it homoerotic if you want, but occasionally it's fun to push your car a little.
An automatic transmission loses approximately 5% of its power through the torque converter. A manual transmission doesn't use a torque converter, so it's like a 5% power gain for free with no change to gas mileage.
My father-in-law had one with a big V8 and upgraded suspension, brakes, tires, etc... It was the penultimate muscle car - didn't handle so well, but in a straight line it was 0-60 mph in a little over 3 seconds and the quarter mile in about 10 and a half. I still hate the styling, but it was definitely a lightning fast pocket rocket.
Oh, it's old tech... but they squeeze a lot out of it. The 'Vette Z06 has 400 horsepower and gets 27 mpg highway with premium gas. There are very few sports car you can buy with specs like that.
Redlined at 3500? I find that hard to believe. Almost all gasoline engine cars today redline above 5000 RPMs, and some hit 7000 or more. With a manual transmission, you could do 3500 RPMs in first gear (probably less than 25 mph for a family car) or second gear (probably less than 40 mph for a family car). That's well within the legal limit in the US. With an automatic, the car will upshift for you before you hit those limits, so you could probably only hit 3500 RPMs if you have the gas floored in your highest gear. That would be above the speed limit.
It depends upon what you want. A 200 horsepower 4 cylinder still needs a decent amount of revving to get the juice flowing. Not as much as the S2000, but a lot more than a Mustang GT or something similar. Mazda Miata, Toyota MR2, and Honda RSX drivers must prefer that kind of driving, where you have to work to stay in the powerband. If nothing else, I'm sure it offers better gas mileage in normal driving and the opportunity to push the car a little without going way past the legal speed limits. I'd still prefer a decent inline 6 or V8 myself - or a properly tuned super or turbocharged 4.
Big Three reliability has improved substantially recently. They aren't on par with Toyota yet, but GM is coming close.
That doesn't mean you should automatically buy a GM car - buy what's best and let competition drive the market. I'm just saying that some of the newer models from the US manufacturers are a lot better than the older ones.
The problem isn't the lost muscle - you can gain that back. The problem is, as you say in a roundabout way, by crash dieting you never learn to eat like a healthy person. Living on 600 calories a day for a few weeks or months doesn't teach you anything useful about keeping the fat off once you lost it.
Double Jeopardy is the second round, with the 400/800/1200/1600/2000 values. I don't know why the other post'er listed the first round values.
He lies a lot in it? I'm not surprised, considering the other stuff he has done - but I didn't know. Maybe I'll look it up some time. Thanks.
You said it. Electronic cars, alternative fuel vehicles, people trying to break into the automotive market with their own auto brands, and even new advances in steam car technology are all hampered significantly by all the red tape they have to climb through to be certified road-worthy.
They started with the best intention, protecting John Q Public, but it really hinders competition and new entrants to the market.
I have something like "The Idiot's Guide to Personal Finance" (can't remember the exact title). The guy is up front that the most effective way to build wealth is to run your own successful business. He's also up front that 95% of all business startups fold within the first 5 years. It takes courage to do something like that. Congrats on getting 8 years out of it.