You can fit all of your games this year plus the OS on the 80 GB, and it's only another $50 to store everything that doesn't need to be fast. What I'm saying is that if you can afford the $200 SSD and $50 per game, you can probably part with another $50 for a "slow" hard drive.
Starcraft 2 is 12 GB. Portal is close to 10 IIRC; all of the Orange Box is probably close to 20. Mass Effect 2 is 15 GB. Even Windows 7 is in the 10-15 GB range, somehow.
Wow, I guess that's a good point. I don't usually play games like that but if I did I would actually want them on an SSD (would help load times / area change lag). I recently started playing World of Warcraft and that's in the 20 GB range, but I assumed MMOs took more space than normal games. It's probably another case of "if you're spending $50 per game on that many games, you can probably afford a different drive to store them on" though.
And I'm still amazed at how huge Windows is. I can fit everything I use including an office suite and all of my programming tools in less space than the default install of just Windows:\
Even so, if SSDs were cheap enough to be comparable, an 80 GB hard drive would be sufficient for most people.
80 GB is plenty. 10-15 GB for the OS and programs leaves 65-70 GB for/home. That's enough space for a very large music collection and lots of photos. You may not be able to store that many movies on it, but most people don't have any movies on their computers, and if you can afford an SSD and that many movies, you can afford the $40 for an extra hard drive.
I can think of two things: - It was probably cheaper. Real WoW is $15/month, if they were offering it for significantly less that might attract people. - Leveling is usually much faster on private servers.
I'm not sure how they convinced so many people that theirs was better than all of the free ones though.
Why not just get rid of patents? I've never seen any evidence that they actually help with innovation, they just help big companies stop other people from innovating.
Facebook is a special case for websites for two reasons:
- They're so big that the last 1% is still hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of servers (at least)
- They do all kinds of magic with caching and their fancy database (http://cassandra.apache.org/) so the actual script execution time is probably a higher percentage.
Most websites are small and use a relational database, so this kind of optimization wouldn't be worthwhile at any point.
If static languages are better, why is the bulk of web development done with dynamic languages?
Static languages tend to produce languages that run faster and use less memory at the expense of taking longer to write. Whether that's better depends on the situation. The reason I use dynamic languages with web development is that the execution speed generally doesn't matter at all.
For example, I made a website using PHP and MySQL when I first started programming, and a couple years later I decided to benchmark it because it was pretty horrible and I figured I could find some places to make it faster. I quickly gave up after realizing that 99% of the execution time was waiting for responses from MySQL. Sure, I could probably cut out 0.9% by switching from PHP to C++, but why bother?
It's worth noting that you have no chance of this actually happening, because all the police have to do is say you looked drunk to them and you go to jail.
Or we could do it even easier, just stop giving ISPs money and legal monopolies. But then things would sort themselves out and the government wouldn't have as many excuses to give our money away.
So what will happen in the long term? Will this be the revolution that brings prosperity for all or will it be like the industrial revolution where people were forced to send all of their children to work in the coal mines just to survive?
Or people will generally ignore it because of the low pay (like they are now).
All subjects have the "boring basics". The key is the instructor; a good instructor can make the basics of a field really interesting. Unfortunately, being a good programming instructor is hard, and at the K-12 level it is really hard.
The basics don't have to be boring. To give you an example, I've never liked or paid any attention to English or typing classes. Today, I can type faster than any of my typing teachers in Junior High or High School, and have nearly-perfect spelling. Did I learn them as "boring basics"? Of course not. I played video games, used instant messengers and joined some forums. My typing also got a lot better after learning to program.
The moral of the story? You'll learn the basics if you actually need them. They're only boring because you're learning how to do something you don't need to do.
But is it actually cheaper than just using boats, trains and trucks? While using three different kinds of transportation may not sound as nice to you, those are the cheapest methods of transporting large amounts of stuff.
No no no, you don't understand patriotism at all. It's OK if we do it. If they do it, they're evil terrorist scum and should die (preferably after being tortured).
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The 40 GB SSD is $100, and the 80 GB is $200: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100006692%2050001157&IsNodeId=1&name=Intel
Combine that with another 500 GB of spinning drive for $50: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007603%20600003274&IsNodeId=1&name=400GB%20-%20800GB
You can fit all of your games this year plus the OS on the 80 GB, and it's only another $50 to store everything that doesn't need to be fast. What I'm saying is that if you can afford the $200 SSD and $50 per game, you can probably part with another $50 for a "slow" hard drive.
Starcraft 2 is 12 GB. Portal is close to 10 IIRC; all of the Orange Box is probably close to 20. Mass Effect 2 is 15 GB. Even Windows 7 is in the 10-15 GB range, somehow.
Wow, I guess that's a good point. I don't usually play games like that but if I did I would actually want them on an SSD (would help load times / area change lag). I recently started playing World of Warcraft and that's in the 20 GB range, but I assumed MMOs took more space than normal games. It's probably another case of "if you're spending $50 per game on that many games, you can probably afford a different drive to store them on" though.
And I'm still amazed at how huge Windows is. I can fit everything I use including an office suite and all of my programming tools in less space than the default install of just Windows :\
Even so, if SSDs were cheap enough to be comparable, an 80 GB hard drive would be sufficient for most people.
80 GB is plenty. 10-15 GB for the OS and programs leaves 65-70 GB for /home. That's enough space for a very large music collection and lots of photos. You may not be able to store that many movies on it, but most people don't have any movies on their computers, and if you can afford an SSD and that many movies, you can afford the $40 for an extra hard drive.
I can think of two things:
- It was probably cheaper. Real WoW is $15/month, if they were offering it for significantly less that might attract people.
- Leveling is usually much faster on private servers.
I'm not sure how they convinced so many people that theirs was better than all of the free ones though.
Why not just get rid of patents? I've never seen any evidence that they actually help with innovation, they just help big companies stop other people from innovating.
Facebook is a special case for websites for two reasons: - They're so big that the last 1% is still hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of servers (at least) - They do all kinds of magic with caching and their fancy database (http://cassandra.apache.org/) so the actual script execution time is probably a higher percentage. Most websites are small and use a relational database, so this kind of optimization wouldn't be worthwhile at any point.
If static languages are better, why is the bulk of web development done with dynamic languages?
Static languages tend to produce languages that run faster and use less memory at the expense of taking longer to write. Whether that's better depends on the situation. The reason I use dynamic languages with web development is that the execution speed generally doesn't matter at all.
For example, I made a website using PHP and MySQL when I first started programming, and a couple years later I decided to benchmark it because it was pretty horrible and I figured I could find some places to make it faster. I quickly gave up after realizing that 99% of the execution time was waiting for responses from MySQL. Sure, I could probably cut out 0.9% by switching from PHP to C++, but why bother?
It's worth noting that you have no chance of this actually happening, because all the police have to do is say you looked drunk to them and you go to jail.
Or because the alternative, "United States of Americans" sounds too pretentious.
They sell bears in vending machines these days? I feel old.
Or we could do it even easier, just stop giving ISPs money and legal monopolies. But then things would sort themselves out and the government wouldn't have as many excuses to give our money away.
The troops are always just an excuse. "You don't support the war in [some country with people who don't look like us]? DON'T YOU SUPPORT THE TROOPS!?"
Sure, if you feel okay with the idea of being a single damaged cell away from rapid uncontrollable tissue growth... :P
You mean like the Hulk right? That would be awesome.
Easy, because there's a computer involved in some way!
So what will happen in the long term? Will this be the revolution that brings prosperity for all or will it be like the industrial revolution where people were forced to send all of their children to work in the coal mines just to survive?
Or people will generally ignore it because of the low pay (like they are now).
Just like Math classes!
I think the point is that no one gets to leave in the event of a disaster, which is why we shouldn't all be here.
Same reason everyone uses *zilla to describe something big. Its part of modern culture.
Seems more like reporters are just lazy and can't think of new terms.
What's interesting is that 5 Ghz isn't all that impressive a number anymore. People have gotten i5's to 5 Ghz on air.
In K-12 that's pretty much it. Also grammar, which is even more useless.
All subjects have the "boring basics". The key is the instructor; a good instructor can make the basics of a field really interesting. Unfortunately, being a good programming instructor is hard, and at the K-12 level it is really hard.
The basics don't have to be boring. To give you an example, I've never liked or paid any attention to English or typing classes. Today, I can type faster than any of my typing teachers in Junior High or High School, and have nearly-perfect spelling. Did I learn them as "boring basics"? Of course not. I played video games, used instant messengers and joined some forums. My typing also got a lot better after learning to program.
The moral of the story? You'll learn the basics if you actually need them. They're only boring because you're learning how to do something you don't need to do.
But is it actually cheaper than just using boats, trains and trucks? While using three different kinds of transportation may not sound as nice to you, those are the cheapest methods of transporting large amounts of stuff.
No no no, you don't understand patriotism at all. It's OK if we do it. If they do it, they're evil terrorist scum and should die (preferably after being tortured).
They probably have Slashdot set to "HTML Formatted", so any whitespace is converted to one space. Example: Look at the source for this post.
Not just books. Americans copied pretty much anything they could get their hands on (technology).