The filesystem acutally knows nothing about the physical state of the disk, only the layout of its files. The filesystem doesn't control things like platter spinning, seeking, moving the drive head, etc. That's all controlled by the operating system and the hardware.
Sure, hard drives are slow, but that's not my main problem with them. They *are* a bottleneck, but since most applications get the hard disk access "out of the way" at the very beginning and load everything they need into RAM, I could deal with slow hard drive technology for the rest of the forseeable future, if only...
... they were reliable. Hard drives are the only PC components that have ever died on me. Actually, that's not quite true - I had a CD-rom die once, and a few fans here and there; what do all these have in common? Mechanical parts. And when it comes down to it, what do most users value most in their computers? The files on their hard drives. Spinning death traps is what they are. Spinning, clicking, grinding death traps.
I don't know much about flash memory technology or the reliability associated with it. I don't give a hoot how fast it is. If it's solid state (no moving parts) and can guarantee me it won't one day decide to utterly destroy itself, I'm sold.
Sure, portability is great and all, but a lot of portable code really doesn't feel that nice to use. Ever used Ethereal?. It's powerful. It's cross-platform. But the GUI is terrible, especially if you are used to the "solid" feel of most Windows applications. It's easy enough to use and understand, but it just doesn't "feel" right. And like it or not, feel is a pretty important component of the end-user experience.
Another case in point: don't you just cringe when you load up a big application that was written in Java? Sure, you can run it anywhere, but it feels like silly putty.
If Microsoft and other large developers spent all their time worrying about making code cross-platform, I think we'd get a lot more apps that look like this. Cool, but not very pleasant to use.
Y'know, this is probably off topic, but SERIOUSLY: how can anybody take an application seriously when its name is "pork"? Pork, the most comical of all meats.
Yeah, I think you're right here - I think the problem is that most techies read this book and roll their eyes and say "yeah, tell me something I DON'T know". However, I think it would be a quite valuable read for a non-techie boss-type who wants to successfully "manage" a software project
They should make this book required reading in all MBA programs, in other words:)
A year ago, I was in a software engineering class where the professor made us read this book.
The only thing about this experience that sticks out in my mind is that the professor always referred to the book at the "Man Mythical Month". It was kind of hard to take any of the in-class discussions seriously with this going on. He knew his stuff, too; he clearly understood the concept of the "man month" and the mysticism surrounding it, yet he continued to hilariously butcher the title day in and day out.
The book itself was halfway interesting, but it didn't say anything that anybody with a couple years of software engineering experience didn't already know.
This survey really means nothing to me unless I can at least see a list of the companies that they surveyed. Pay is different in different areas of the country, and for good reason.
Anecdotally, the results look quite high to me. Maybe they surveyed companies where the cost of living is really high (silicon valley, etc.) I'm from the midwest, so I don't really expect to see numbers like this around here, and I don't.
Maybe I don't need "half a frame" (whatever that is supposed to mean) in games, but I do "need" the world's best gaming soundcard. Thief 3 is the perfect example. I couldn't IMAGINE playing that game without being able to tell WHERE the gurads are just by listening. I'd much rather run the game in 800x600 or 640x480 than have to endure useless non-positional audio.
You're not going to get that with your onboard sound chip. Sure, your XVIDS and MP3s will "sound fine", but they'd also "sound fine" on a Soundblaster AWE32, I'd warrant.
errr... I don't think this is true. Pretty certain Doom didn't have 3D audio. It used *midis*, for crying out loud. Half the games released TODAY don't even support 3d audio correctly.
You should check out the review. It seems pretty obvious that most of RAID-work on these chipsets is done in hardware. He compares CPU-utilization numbers, which is a pretty boring section - since most of the numbers are around.5 - 1% for the various RAID modes.
True, these RAID solutions aren't as "robust" as true enterprise RAID solutions... but you're making it sound worse than it really is.
Damn it, even before navigating to the comment thrad, I KNEW there were going to be an assload of posts similar to "oh, well, MYYY system only cost me $n" where n is some hilariously low number.
Turns out I only had to read 2 posts to be correct. Why are computer nerds like this?
Nah, you're not in any trouble - that's why the RIAA comes to the ISP with the offending IP and the time of the offense - then the ISP can determine who was using that IP when the song was available for download...
As far as I know, the people who get caught are not the people who merely download the songs, but the ones that "share" the songs and make them available for download. If the RIAA can hop on the network and download the file from you, guess what? You're guilty.
I don't think they've tried to catch people in the act of downloading yet... that might require actual effort.
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Geez... it takes 10 1/2 hours to install Linux these days? Have all distributions gone the way of Gentoo?
Obviously. But doesn't it annoy you that we *have* to keep backups?
The filesystem acutally knows nothing about the physical state of the disk, only the layout of its files. The filesystem doesn't control things like platter spinning, seeking, moving the drive head, etc. That's all controlled by the operating system and the hardware.
Sure, hard drives are slow, but that's not my main problem with them. They *are* a bottleneck, but since most applications get the hard disk access "out of the way" at the very beginning and load everything they need into RAM, I could deal with slow hard drive technology for the rest of the forseeable future, if only...
... they were reliable. Hard drives are the only PC components that have ever died on me. Actually, that's not quite true - I had a CD-rom die once, and a few fans here and there; what do all these have in common? Mechanical parts. And when it comes down to it, what do most users value most in their computers? The files on their hard drives. Spinning death traps is what they are. Spinning, clicking, grinding death traps.
I don't know much about flash memory technology or the reliability associated with it. I don't give a hoot how fast it is. If it's solid state (no moving parts) and can guarantee me it won't one day decide to utterly destroy itself, I'm sold.
Games are starting to tax 1 gb of memory. Far Cry does. And Doom 3 will.
What? The first time? Man, how can you compete in a deathmatch tournament without first mastering the art of the bunny hop?
So does this mean that Doom 3 will ACTUALLY be out in time for an August tournament?
A TEN disc Matrix box set. The geeks really HAVE inherited the earth.
I agree, too.
Sure, portability is great and all, but a lot of portable code really doesn't feel that nice to use. Ever used Ethereal?. It's powerful. It's cross-platform. But the GUI is terrible, especially if you are used to the "solid" feel of most Windows applications. It's easy enough to use and understand, but it just doesn't "feel" right. And like it or not, feel is a pretty important component of the end-user experience.
Another case in point: don't you just cringe when you load up a big application that was written in Java? Sure, you can run it anywhere, but it feels like silly putty.
If Microsoft and other large developers spent all their time worrying about making code cross-platform, I think we'd get a lot more apps that look like this. Cool, but not very pleasant to use.
Y'know, this is probably off topic, but SERIOUSLY: how can anybody take an application seriously when its name is "pork"? Pork, the most comical of all meats.
The world's premier pr0n-leeching tool.
To be fair, I'm not sure how much development is happening with this tool. How can you improve perfection?
Because there IS no better way to show that you care than by using a batch file to flood "net send" messages.
Yeah, I think you're right here - I think the problem is that most techies read this book and roll their eyes and say "yeah, tell me something I DON'T know". However, I think it would be a quite valuable read for a non-techie boss-type who wants to successfully "manage" a software project
:)
They should make this book required reading in all MBA programs, in other words
A year ago, I was in a software engineering class where the professor made us read this book.
The only thing about this experience that sticks out in my mind is that the professor always referred to the book at the "Man Mythical Month". It was kind of hard to take any of the in-class discussions seriously with this going on. He knew his stuff, too; he clearly understood the concept of the "man month" and the mysticism surrounding it, yet he continued to hilariously butcher the title day in and day out.
The book itself was halfway interesting, but it didn't say anything that anybody with a couple years of software engineering experience didn't already know.
hey, I'm rich! ... so why am I still eating ramen noodles?
This survey really means nothing to me unless I can at least see a list of the companies that they surveyed. Pay is different in different areas of the country, and for good reason.
Anecdotally, the results look quite high to me. Maybe they surveyed companies where the cost of living is really high (silicon valley, etc.) I'm from the midwest, so I don't really expect to see numbers like this around here, and I don't.
Maybe I don't need "half a frame" (whatever that is supposed to mean) in games, but I do "need" the world's best gaming soundcard. Thief 3 is the perfect example. I couldn't IMAGINE playing that game without being able to tell WHERE the gurads are just by listening. I'd much rather run the game in 800x600 or 640x480 than have to endure useless non-positional audio. You're not going to get that with your onboard sound chip. Sure, your XVIDS and MP3s will "sound fine", but they'd also "sound fine" on a Soundblaster AWE32, I'd warrant.
errr... I don't think this is true. Pretty certain Doom didn't have 3D audio. It used *midis*, for crying out loud. Half the games released TODAY don't even support 3d audio correctly.
You should check out the review. It seems pretty obvious that most of RAID-work on these chipsets is done in hardware. He compares CPU-utilization numbers, which is a pretty boring section - since most of the numbers are around .5 - 1% for the various RAID modes.
True, these RAID solutions aren't as "robust" as true enterprise RAID solutions... but you're making it sound worse than it really is.
Damn it, even before navigating to the comment thrad, I KNEW there were going to be an assload of posts similar to "oh, well, MYYY system only cost me $n" where n is some hilariously low number.
Turns out I only had to read 2 posts to be correct. Why are computer nerds like this?
Nah, you're not in any trouble - that's why the RIAA comes to the ISP with the offending IP and the time of the offense - then the ISP can determine who was using that IP when the song was available for download...
Well, yes ... according to the parent,
"As far as I know, stealing implies that the one that has been stolen has been derived of something."
They're not going to sue you unless you share the songs and make them available for download. And if you do that, you ARE doing something illegal.
I doubt there's too many people reading these boards who are STILL dumb enough to share songs on Kazaa or Limewire...
... oh wait...
As far as I know, the people who get caught are not the people who merely download the songs, but the ones that "share" the songs and make them available for download. If the RIAA can hop on the network and download the file from you, guess what? You're guilty.
... that might require actual effort.
I don't think they've tried to catch people in the act of downloading yet