I've lost count the number of times the analysis done by application vendors / developers about the root cause of a performance problem under *NIX boxes is totally off base (not enough RAM for a process when they have stupidly mounted their log files under NFS etc) - as they aren't actually getting enough data to come to a correct conclusion.
Probably the case here. I'd be very surprised if Microsoft didn't spot such a glaring problem in Win7.
If the RAM is filled with a lot of crap, such that the OS must keep loading of the HDD to get information, that slooooows system performance not speed it up.
Actually in modern operating systems RAM can be used as a disk cache is such a way as it can be "freed" at little to no cost when needed by programs. This in effect means you get quick access to often used programs as they are already cached in RAM.
The only situation in which "RAM is filled with crap and the OS goes to disk" (paraphrased) is when RAM is full - with programs. In this situation yes, it has to go to disk.
My understanding was that memory used for disk caching doesn't show up in task manager as "used".
It's been a while since I booted win7 though, so I might be mistaken.
Certainly under linux ram used as disk cache is marked "free".
It wouldn't surprise me that win7 has a heavier memory footprint though - as more applications move to.net and web browsers use lots of flash / silverlight etc - all of these things have a RAM cost.
Ah ok fair enough (to both of you who replied - thanks).
I must confess to being pro-nuclear - but that's my techno-uptopian leanings really, not based on real insight into the options.
What is interesting is that predictions say we have about 200 years of reactor fuel at current consumption rates too, so it's a bit of a toss up between the two for countries with a supply of both (The U.S. is the middle east of nuclear fuel).
And what people seem to not understand is that Americans bring unique skills to technology.
Whilst I'm sure America has great education and a skilled native workforce - this kind of superiority complex isn't really doing you any favours.
I do agree with you that Governments are vaguely accountable for distoring the workforce markets at the behest of large corporations - unfortunately there isn't an easy fix for that as the deck is rather stacked against the private individual in most western economies.
I understand where you are coming from - I just think it's a shame that people think that about it when inside the service there's a whole spectrum of talent levels and people there who are definitely doing it for the fun, not just exclusively the captain fast pants racers:-)
Unfortunately like you mention there are currently only a few cars and tracks (since the scanning and digitising process is heavy) when compared with the console style racers like Forza and GT5. I'm guessing this is where the major turn off is (plus the cost, of course).
Yeah fair enough. iRacing does have a bit of the "serious business" about it - but I guess in a way that's also it's appeal.
I went the whole hog and built a cockpit out of an old wardrobe (not pretty, but very race-able with bucket seat and hanging down pedals:-).
I stuck a couple of projectors side by side and race with an image in-front of the cockpit about 3 metres wide and.7 metres high. Actually gives me a bit of motion sickness on some tracks with large elevation changes and fast corners (Infineon for example).
For reference, iRacing are in the process of getting some Aussie V8's in the service and I think Oran Park / Phillip Island Raceway are planned for scanning too. (Bathhurst is currently in an exclusive EA contract, so no love on that front yet.)
"This has redefined the realistic racing-sim genre."
Whilst I agree that they are getting better - both Forza and the coming GT5 are not really what I would call "sims" - and certainly not redefining realism.
They are still video games.
Why would I say this? Well there are closer "simulations" on the market that:
* Laser scan tracks * Laser scan cars * Measure, weigh and produce physically correct structural models of the cars * Correctly model the "setup" of the car such as toe, camber caster bump rebound etc * Properly capture handling as a result of the above
If you've looked into the racing sim genre, you already know I'm talking about iRacing.
I'm a racer there and I can say after trying all the various other things on the market, they are the current leader and in a different class to something like Forza or GT5.
They don't even charge for IE, so how can it be a monopoly issue?
It's a common tactic when you are very powerful in a particular market to reduce prices to amounts that your competitors are unable to match. This drives them out of business and gifts you the market.
In competition law, this is called product dumping.
Re:Android WILL take over.
on
Less Than Free
·
· Score: 0
I agree with you 100%.
I think Apple are getting themselves into the same Spot that SGI held for a while building luxury products for high spenders. And we all know how the SGI story unfolded. As soon as the products become "commoditised" (3D workstations for SGI, smartphones / PDA for Apple), the luxury producers time is up.
I think Apple have made some nice products, but their lock-in and high prices plus exclusivity are the screws in the lid of the coffin. Apple just hasn't fallen into it yet.
My gut feeling is that doing it the way they do it (vertically) they only have to account for stress and strain in their models in one direction, in a relatively predictable setup.
Having to rotate the thing in-situ after assembly would introduce huge differences in where braces and stress / strain could occur.
I understand where you are coming from, but will try to get you to dream a little further on than todays flat touch tables or limited surface screens (we are still in the first generation of these technologies, after all).
Imagine we can have a touch sensitive surface (ergonomics would require a curved thing, perhaps) that can change mode to allow haptic feedback when in some kind of keyboard mode. Use it with a custom tiling window manager with gestures and some kind of "virtual desktop".
Bye bye mouse, bye bye keyboard. With a large input and rendering surface that kind of device would rock!
Only drawback would be that the keyboard would be a re-learning experience for touch typists.
Yeah but most things require some pain to experience a benefit:-)
Your other points are related to hand-helds - which isn't where this multi-touch implementation is aimed - ten fingers on a hand-held has lots of other problems you have neatly side-stepped.
However, you and I (and others like us...) have not really fixed the issue as it's one within the design of the current paradigm and will eventually show it's ugly head even with our individual workarounds.
If here by issue you mean:
the problem with management of a multiplicity of work areas on a display surface
efficiently navigate and move between them using a multi-touch interface
Then yeah, I agree:-) As you say, I'd need to get one of these in my cold sweaty palms and do some hacking on one of the tiling window managers which would seem a good place to start.
Strangely enough - the approach they demonstrate for linear application stacking / navigating smells like it would be perfect for navigation between "virtual desktops" or whatever.
Yeah it's an interesting take on a multi-touch interface - but I'm not sure I like a couple of things:
* Why isn't the touchpad also the keyboard - I don't want to reach over the touchpad and have an non-ergonomic posture for typing
* their session management / windowing approach isn't right - I run with a dual screen system here that gets rid of the problem they are trying to solve - a cluttered badly organised desktop.
The good idea is having the multi-touch surface at that height and orientation. But didn't Dillinger already have this in Tron?.-)
Seems to me they could solve most of the problems by "just making everything larger" - the multi-touch interface could have tiny little bumps to help locate where the keys should be whilst the window management issues go away with a big enough rendering surface.
You're welcome - your post was interesting to me as I'm in my thirties and like you am unhappy with current cinema 3d:-)
I've personally experimented with LCD shutter glasses on a CRT, shutter glasses with a projector and polarised lenses with a dual projector setup.
The polarised dual projector setup is about as good as it gets until the resolution of the head mounted displays gets decent but still suffers from the micro head movement problem I mentioned before.
I'm personally waiting for a 1280x1024 head mounted display that has a decent FOV (field of view) - couple that with some decent head tracking and I won't just buy a model, I'll invest in the company.
Yeah current 3D tech isn't really current at all - but the old 3D tech with some new shoes. The liquid crystal glasses with an external screen are the root cause of most of the issues - the off to on speed is rapid, but it still lets some light through and the 3D effect is only as good as the constraints as your distance and orientation to the screen.
Most of the problems go away once you put two separate images in the glasses themselves.
1) I can see ghosting. Put a light character in front of a dark background (like a cave opening) and I can see ghosted copies of it. Up had this problem as well. Instantly takes me out of the movie.
2) I'm no longer convinced by the 3-D effect. I can see stuff that goes into the screen, but my mind isn't convinced anymore that people/objects "pop out" of the screen.
3) Colours feel dull. Looking at the shots of the balloons lifting the house in Up, I thought back to the trailer and how much more vivid the colours felt without the glasses on my face.
(1) Yep, as I mention, the LC glasses and/or polarised lenses don't really give two separate images per eye - there's no way to completely eliminate the image bleeding between eyes with them.
(2) The screen is static to your micro head movements - everyone has micro movements of their head while sitting and a fixed screen some distance away doesn't actually reflect these micro movements and you get bad parallax feedback - giving the brain a hint that the 3D isn't "real". Getting older makes us more sensitive to these parallax cues thanks to experience:-)
(3) Due to the tech problems (LC / polarised light).
Roll on decent 3D glasses where the screen is in the glasses - the ultimate of course would be to put the image directly on the retina but I haven't heard anything about this for quite some time now.
Go the the "meant to be seen" 3d site - there's a lot of enthusiasts currently playing with the tec and there are a number of head mounted displays on the market that put the images directly infront of the eyes. The resolution currently sucks and it's mostly limited to 3D gaming for the moment, but it's coming:-)
BTW - for anyone who thinks that the "no glasses" thing is a necessity for decent 3D - well due to (2) above - you will never quite "get" immersive 3D.
Slashdot Mirror
You are absolutely correct of course.
I've lost count the number of times the analysis done by application vendors / developers about the root cause of a performance problem under *NIX boxes is totally off base (not enough RAM for a process when they have stupidly mounted their log files under NFS etc) - as they aren't actually getting enough data to come to a correct conclusion.
Probably the case here. I'd be very surprised if Microsoft didn't spot such a glaring problem in Win7.
Actually in modern operating systems RAM can be used as a disk cache is such a way as it can be "freed" at little to no cost when needed by programs. This in effect means you get quick access to often used programs as they are already cached in RAM.
The only situation in which "RAM is filled with crap and the OS goes to disk" (paraphrased) is when RAM is full - with programs. In this situation yes, it has to go to disk.
Ahh fair enough. "Colour me learned something today". :-)
My understanding was that memory used for disk caching doesn't show up in task manager as "used".
It's been a while since I booted win7 though, so I might be mistaken.
Certainly under linux ram used as disk cache is marked "free".
It wouldn't surprise me that win7 has a heavier memory footprint though - as more applications move to .net and web browsers use lots of flash / silverlight etc - all of these things have a RAM cost.
Yep this isn't about removing vulnerabilities or improving quality - this is about making someone accountable.
Having a countract where the developer is made liable? This is management blame-storming at it's finest.
Ah ok fair enough (to both of you who replied - thanks).
I must confess to being pro-nuclear - but that's my techno-uptopian leanings really, not based on real insight into the options.
What is interesting is that predictions say we have about 200 years of reactor fuel at current consumption rates too, so it's a bit of a toss up between the two for countries with a supply of both (The U.S. is the middle east of nuclear fuel).
Given the things you listed above - how come the French seem to make it work for them?
Does the U.S. have native coal and oil supplies that make these other sources more viable?
I'm just curious as to what the big difference is that allows one country to produce almost 75% of it's energy needs but elsewhere it's not possible?
Shh, next you'll be claiming people actually change gears themselves.
And every American knows - that's just insane.
And what people seem to not understand is that Americans bring unique skills to technology.
Whilst I'm sure America has great education and a skilled native workforce - this kind of superiority complex isn't really doing you any favours.
I do agree with you that Governments are vaguely accountable for distoring the workforce markets at the behest of large corporations - unfortunately there isn't an easy fix for that as the deck is rather stacked against the private individual in most western economies.
I understand where you are coming from - I just think it's a shame that people think that about it when inside the service there's a whole spectrum of talent levels and people there who are definitely doing it for the fun, not just exclusively the captain fast pants racers :-)
Unfortunately like you mention there are currently only a few cars and tracks (since the scanning and digitising process is heavy) when compared with the console style racers like Forza and GT5. I'm guessing this is where the major turn off is (plus the cost, of course).
Yeah fair enough. iRacing does have a bit of the "serious business" about it - but I guess in a way that's also it's appeal.
I went the whole hog and built a cockpit out of an old wardrobe (not pretty, but very race-able with bucket seat and hanging down pedals :-).
I stuck a couple of projectors side by side and race with an image in-front of the cockpit about 3 metres wide and .7 metres high. Actually gives me a bit of motion sickness on some tracks with large elevation changes and fast corners (Infineon for example).
For reference, iRacing are in the process of getting some Aussie V8's in the service and I think Oran Park / Phillip Island Raceway are planned for scanning too. (Bathhurst is currently in an exclusive EA contract, so no love on that front yet.)
Have a good one!
You seem like a chap who likes his racing games. Can I ask if you have considered or tried iRacing?.
There is such a lot of casual racers out there that might enjoy iRacing but they don't seem to cross over.
Is it the cost?
The need to setup a proper wheel / cockpit?
Don't want to lose the "casual" aspect of pick up racing?
I'm genuinely curious as of course I'd love to have more people in the service .-)
(I don't work for iRacing, I'm just a racer there and love it.)
"This has redefined the realistic racing-sim genre."
Whilst I agree that they are getting better - both Forza and the coming GT5 are not really what I would call "sims" - and certainly not redefining realism.
They are still video games.
Why would I say this? Well there are closer "simulations" on the market that:
* Laser scan tracks
* Laser scan cars
* Measure, weigh and produce physically correct structural models of the cars
* Correctly model the "setup" of the car such as toe, camber caster bump rebound etc
* Properly capture handling as a result of the above
If you've looked into the racing sim genre, you already know I'm talking about iRacing.
I'm a racer there and I can say after trying all the various other things on the market, they are the current leader and in a different class to something like Forza or GT5.
Mr Thinly Sliced
Couldn't the allergic individual just wear a face mask while they were serving?
In addition to the allergy you want them to put on a stewardess costume and hand out the snacks?
You have no heart sir, no heart.
Thanks Microsoft, and some congratulations should also go to America for supporting them!
(Look at the browser share stats for example).
Personally, I blame it all on the Marketing people.
Ah, say the marketing people, he's going for that "anti-microsoft" dollar. Big dollar, big market, very smart of him to go for that.
(Props to Bill Hicks. How we miss thee, Bill)
They don't even charge for IE, so how can it be a monopoly issue?
It's a common tactic when you are very powerful in a particular market to reduce prices to amounts that your competitors are unable to match. This drives them out of business and gifts you the market.
In competition law, this is called product dumping.
I agree with you 100%.
I think Apple are getting themselves into the same Spot that SGI held for a while building luxury products for high spenders. And we all know how the SGI story unfolded. As soon as the products become "commoditised" (3D workstations for SGI, smartphones / PDA for Apple), the luxury producers time is up.
I think Apple have made some nice products, but their lock-in and high prices plus exclusivity are the screws in the lid of the coffin. Apple just hasn't fallen into it yet.
Yeah that was the dead give away it was a joke. Can't believe how many fell for it.
My gut feeling is that doing it the way they do it (vertically) they only have to account for stress and strain in their models in one direction, in a relatively predictable setup.
Having to rotate the thing in-situ after assembly would introduce huge differences in where braces and stress / strain could occur.
Interesting - thanks for the link to the proxy service. Ex-pat in Belgium here who will have a play with that.
I understand where you are coming from, but will try to get you to dream a little further on than todays flat touch tables or limited surface screens (we are still in the first generation of these technologies, after all).
Imagine we can have a touch sensitive surface (ergonomics would require a curved thing, perhaps) that can change mode to allow haptic feedback when in some kind of keyboard mode. Use it with a custom tiling window manager with gestures and some kind of "virtual desktop".
Bye bye mouse, bye bye keyboard. With a large input and rendering surface that kind of device would rock!
Only drawback would be that the keyboard would be a re-learning experience for touch typists.
Yeah but most things require some pain to experience a benefit :-)
Your other points are related to hand-helds - which isn't where this multi-touch implementation is aimed - ten fingers on a hand-held has lots of other problems you have neatly side-stepped.
However, you and I (and others like us...) have not really fixed the issue as it's one within the design of the current paradigm and will eventually show it's ugly head even with our individual workarounds.
If here by issue you mean:
Then yeah, I agree :-) As you say, I'd need to get one of these in my cold sweaty palms and do some hacking on one of the tiling window managers which would seem a good place to start.
Strangely enough - the approach they demonstrate for linear application stacking / navigating smells like it would be perfect for navigation between "virtual desktops" or whatever.
Well, we'll have to wait and see I guess.
Yeah it's an interesting take on a multi-touch interface - but I'm not sure I like a couple of things:
* Why isn't the touchpad also the keyboard - I don't want to reach over the touchpad and have an non-ergonomic posture for typing
* their session management / windowing approach isn't right - I run with a dual screen system here that gets rid of the problem they are trying to solve - a cluttered badly organised desktop.
The good idea is having the multi-touch surface at that height and orientation. But didn't Dillinger already have this in Tron? .-)
Seems to me they could solve most of the problems by "just making everything larger" - the multi-touch interface could have tiny little bumps to help locate where the keys should be whilst the window management issues go away with a big enough rendering surface.
You're welcome - your post was interesting to me as I'm in my thirties and like you am unhappy with current cinema 3d :-)
I've personally experimented with LCD shutter glasses on a CRT, shutter glasses with a projector and polarised lenses with a dual projector setup.
The polarised dual projector setup is about as good as it gets until the resolution of the head mounted displays gets decent but still suffers from the micro head movement problem I mentioned before.
I'm personally waiting for a 1280x1024 head mounted display that has a decent FOV (field of view) - couple that with some decent head tracking and I won't just buy a model, I'll invest in the company.
Yeah current 3D tech isn't really current at all - but the old 3D tech with some new shoes. The liquid crystal glasses with an external screen are the root cause of most of the issues - the off to on speed is rapid, but it still lets some light through and the 3D effect is only as good as the constraints as your distance and orientation to the screen.
Most of the problems go away once you put two separate images in the glasses themselves.
(1) Yep, as I mention, the LC glasses and/or polarised lenses don't really give two separate images per eye - there's no way to completely eliminate the image bleeding between eyes with them.
(2) The screen is static to your micro head movements - everyone has micro movements of their head while sitting and a fixed screen some distance away doesn't actually reflect these micro movements and you get bad parallax feedback - giving the brain a hint that the 3D isn't "real". Getting older makes us more sensitive to these parallax cues thanks to experience :-)
(3) Due to the tech problems (LC / polarised light).
Roll on decent 3D glasses where the screen is in the glasses - the ultimate of course would be to put the image directly on the retina but I haven't heard anything about this for quite some time now.
Go the the "meant to be seen" 3d site - there's a lot of enthusiasts currently playing with the tec and there are a number of head mounted displays on the market that put the images directly infront of the eyes. The resolution currently sucks and it's mostly limited to 3D gaming for the moment, but it's coming :-)
BTW - for anyone who thinks that the "no glasses" thing is a necessity for decent 3D - well due to (2) above - you will never quite "get" immersive 3D.