Flash supports DRM out of the box, and Silverlight has several features that make it better than Flash. Even its open-source implementation [mono-project.com] is better.
I develop in Flash Builder with Eclipse using AS3, and I can testify that is a very powerful tool set. Try creating a Photoshop replacement like
Aviary's Phoenix and related tools that runs in your browser of choice or a
full featured audio editor RIA with your platform. You won't find anything today that can touch these applications in Silverlight. [Disclosure - I worked on Myna].
I followed your link to take a look at Silverlight 3. As far as DRM goes, the site you link to states "Silverlight DRM, Powered by PlayReady Content Protection enables protected in-browser experiences using AES encryption or Windows Media DRM." I must admit though that Silverlight 3 is starting to look like a very capable platform. I am not going to dispute that with you. Obviously, if it is not there yet it will soon be, because it can leverage the world of Net development. However, I would ask why anyone would want to support Silverlight, which represents Microsoft's ambition to extend its dominance on the desktop to the internet. Haven't we all had quite enough of this company? They are not good corporate citizens. Being more like a mafia than a corporation, Microsoft has maintained a strangle hold on the market for many years, impeding a healthy ecosystem from flourishing. It is because of the Monoculture that the internet has become a murky virus infested swamp where vast botnets flourish. Why would you want to promote this company? Recently, I have returned to Java for a new project. Java is very powerful and very fast for the thing like audio and image processing, and I would like to see it continue to evolve. Promoting open standards via HTML 5 and future versions that would allow us to create rich internet applications with non-proprietary tools should be our goal.
Out of curiosity, I tried your experiment, though I don't think I followed your instructions exactly.
I installed the latest VLC and allowed it to have all the file extensions that would normally belong to Windows Media Player. Then I inserted a DVD, and up popped a window with two options - "Play with VLC", or "Play with Windows Media Player" - in that order. I chose Play with VLC, and VLC played it. At no point did Windows Media Player ever pop up. Now this was on Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit version.
I had an experience many years ago that made me never trust Windows Media Player ever since. This was way back in the days before Lame and FFMPG when everybody used the Fraunhoffer mp3 codec. It shipped with many different things, and once it was installed by some software you bought, that codec remained available to you for the use of other software ever after. Then for a time, you could buy the codec pretty cheap directly from the Fraunhoffer site for a couple of dollars. I think then everybody was using this codec, perhaps without even knowing it. It was ubiquitous. Then one fine day Microsoft bought the rights to that codec from Fraunhoffer, and created a special version that would only run under the control of Microsoft software. Now shortly after, when you got an automatic update for the Windows Media Player version that installed and used their new Fraunhoffer mp3 codec, it would uninstall your codec. Next time you went to run some software that depended on that, it simply would no longer be able to decode mp3. If you had an installer for your old Fraunhoffer codec, you could simply reinstall it, but every new update for the Windows Media Player would uninstall it again. There was no technical reason or justification for Windows Media Player needing to uninstall that codec. It was simply a grab by Microsoft to try to gain control over mp3. I don't know why they never got sanctioned or sued over that. They certainly had no business uninstalling a user's personal software. However, they never did succeed in gaining control over mp3.
It's easy to forget, but around five or so years ago there used to be a *very* fanboyish and indulgent attitude towards Google on Slashdot. That's very much changed now...
Google is a truly innovative company that have done great things for open source and standards, not to mention how useful they are becoming at keeping Microsoft in check. Their Android operating system and the upcoming Chrome OS will transform the landscape. Between Google and Apple, Microsoft is backed into a corner. Now with Symbian gone open source as the last straw, we may see Microsoft withdraw from the mobile market by year's end. I have not seen any change in attitudes towards Google. What I have seen is a concerted campaign by Microsoft shills on Slashdot and elsewhere to demonize Google. Microsoft has realized that it simply cannot keep up with Google in terms of innovation, since they are not innovators. Their search bling is only growing via buying clients. Their browser is dying. The only way Microsoft knows how to compete is via under-handed attacks on the competition.
I get: "Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 17,127 tested so far." Gee - sure glad they don't know my URL. Anyhow - that was using Chrome. Then tried the same test in Chrome's incognito mode, and the number of identifying bits went down by a whole point, to 1 in 9000 or so.
Even in a stationary state, Spirit continues scientific research...
The biggest experiment it is going to do now is seeing how fast it will die when the martian winter arrives without the northerly tilt it needs to fully illuminate its solar panels.
Bubble fusion, also known as sonofusion, is the non-technical name for a nuclear fusion reaction hypothesized to occur during a high-pressure version of sonoluminescence, an extreme form of acoustic cavitation. Officially, this reaction is termed acoustic inertial confinement fusion since the inertia of the collapsing bubble wall confines the energy, causing an extreme rise in temperature. The high temperatures that sonoluminescence can produce raise the possibility that it might be a means to achieve thermonuclear fusion.
No wonder the air is expelled at supersonic speeds.
What a droll thing to say! Would you mind sharing with us where exactly you heard that? The FA just ruled Adobe out on this occasion. What is your motivation for pointing the finger at Adobe? The FA says IE is to blame. Somehow you know more than Google about this? Your conclusion, "Keeping Acrobat Reader fully patched and keeping your users alert and well-trained would probably stop a lot of it, but not all." completely misses the point. The problem was IE. I would like to know what idiot modded you insightful. The most obvious conclusion we could draw is to stay away from IE - at least until it is fixed.
i think it's an indication that just having the code will not protect you. unless your in the business of developing software, having open source is utterly meaningless.
You are missing the other half of the equation there. The advantage of having the source isn't simply being able to see the code, it is everybody being able to see the code. This is the so called "1000 eyes" effect. Everybody being able to see the code gets bugs found and fixed sooner. Allowing the Chinese to see Windows code may very well have given them advantages for hacking into it, and may be the biggest mistake Microsoft made yet. Microsoft's eargerness to get into the Chinese market may have endangered us all (collectively speaking).
Sounds kind'a cruel to me. I mean - how would you like it if they did that to you? I suppose the scientists who poked the cells with the nano-wires used to tear the wings off of flies as children.
If you read TFA, it says "Now it appears that the patch is available on Microsoft's OEM Partner Center Website". If you go to the OEM Partner Center Website, you will find it is intended for system builders who preinstall the Office Ready image on new PCs and sell Office Ready PCs to customers.
There is nothing in the article to support the title, "First Super-Earths Discovered Orbiting Sun-Like Stars". First they say "These detections indicate that low-mass planets are quite common around nearby stars." and then later "The inner planet of the 61 Vir system is among the two or three lowest-amplitude planetary signals that have been identified with confidence". and finally, "The researchers said they cannot tell yet if HD 1461b is a scaled-up version of Earth, composed largely of rock and iron, or whether, like Uranus and Neptune, it is composed mostly of water."
I don't see anything in the article to justify calling these planets "Super-Earths", which is a stupid term anyhow, since there is only one planet Earth and we are on it.
I don't use an iPod when I am out and about. I like to maintain my full awareness of my surroundings. There is only one situation in which I use a portable music player, and that is for a visit to the dentist to get a filling or a root canal. In that case, I want a noise cancelling headset pumping hard rock at 120 dBs to drown out the sound of the drill. The rest of the time, my portable music player sits forgotten in the bottom of my desk drawer.
Neither the Chinese nor Russians are involved in these negotiations. I believe it is just modern democracies such as the USA. Europe, Canada, Australia, NZ, etc. There is no justification for this secrecy. No voter in any of the countries mentioned asked for this, not did any political leader in any of these countries campaign on a promise to implement a treaty on strengthening copyright enforcement. As somebody above put it, this is entirely lobbyist driven, and we need to put a stop to it somehow. Maybe these Iranian students can give us ideas?
You're expecting their government to be self-reflective and implement a turn-around?
Their current economic direction is unsustainable. There is no accountability for a huge chunk of the GDP. Either they address this or they will suffer social breakdown and revolution. In economic reports from a couple of years ago, when oil prices were at record highs, Iran was suffering 18% inflation and double digit unemployment. This at a time when they were raking in record revenues from their oil wealth. How do you suppose the situation there is now since the sudden and drastic drop in oil prices, continuing sanctions, and a world wide recession?
That would just be a bonus on their anti-invasion (aka sovereignty) strategy.
What are you talking about - "anti-invasion strategy"? Iran has an aggressive strategy to dominate the Middle East. With their partner Syria, they finance Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, forming a pincer movement around Israel whom they would like to wipe off the face of the map. Iran's nuclear "energy" program is just a cover to their nuclear weapons ambitions, to further their goals as stated. If they have a strategy, it would be more realistic to call it an "invasion strategy", based on the number of missiles they are shipping to Hezbollah and the development of long range missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
I get the feeling when I read some comments here that phrases have been lifted from left-wing anti-US propaganda. People who adopt such a point of view may have good reasons, but characterizing Iran's ambitions a merely a "sovereignty strategy" is naive. I think the point of minimizing the threat Iran poses to the region is to pre-empt a potential invasion by the US. I think if one would like to criticize US Foreign Policy, they should stick to criticizing the US, rather than minimize the threats posed by her enemies.
Iran's government seems to have an accurate grasp of the tactical situation. They must expand, and hope against hope this gives them access to more resources. Or they must die.
Iran, unlike the rest of the world it seems, is quite aware that it's oil will stop supporting the economy before another decade passes. And smart Iranians know that attacking Iran's nuclear facilities is all but ensuring the doom of Iran's people in the all to near future. And before you say it, no Iran's oilfields won't be dry in 10 years.
Respectfully, I think justification for Iran's nuclear program is a crock of shit. Iran has roughly 10% of the world's total proven petroleum reserves. Iran is the world's fourth largest oil producer and is OPEC's second-largest producer after Saudi Arabia. At 2006 rates of production, Iran's oil reserves would last 98 years if no new oil was found.
Their problem is that Iran has one of the most inefficient economies in the world. It has a large public sector, with an estimated 60% of the economy directly controlled and centrally planned by the state. The combined budgets of the religious foundations [Bonyads] are said to make up as much as half that of the central government. Combination of price controls and subsidies, particularly on food and energy, continues to weigh down the economy, and contraband, administrative controls, widespread corruption, and other rigidities undermine the potential for private sector-led growth. High oil prices in recent years have enabled Iran to amass nearly US$ 97 billion in foreign exchange reserves. Yet this increased revenue has not eased economic hardships, which include double-digit unemployment and inflation.
References [1][2]
I would suggest that Iran has every opportunity in the world of becoming a prosperous, modern nation if they simply reformed and diversified their economy over the next 50 years. Nuclear power is the last thing they need right now. Once they achieve a modern, diversified, efficient economy, energy technologies will have advanced to the point that there will be a number of options they will be able to take advantage of, such as enhanced oil recovery techniques. Even now, there may exist other options they don't appear to have considered, such a tidal/wave/thermalcline power from the Persian Gulf or perhaps geothermal, solar or wind energy production.
In my opinion this mad rush to develop nuclear technology makes no sense from an energy perspective, when their top priority should be economic reform. In just a few short years, if they went at that goal with the same determination that they pursue nuclear technology now, the Iranian people could enjoy prosperity and a bright future rather than the double-digit inflation they suffer now.
The bad thing is, the US can't do much about this.... They know that the US doesn't have the manpower or the technology for a sustained invasion of Iran in a conventional manner
Imagine 30,000 fresh troops soon to arrive on Iran's eastern boarder [Afghanistan], along with, say, 50,000 seasoned troops on Iran's western boarder [from Iraq]. That would be one US soldier for every 10 Iranians, supported by the combined might of the US and Israeli air forces and US Navy ships in the Persian Gulf. You think that might do the job?
OK - downloaded that project, simply made a release built without changing anything, and you are right - it was faster than the old MSVC 6 executable as it was!
Platform: i5 750, P7P55D Premium mobo w/8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ram
Old MSVC 6 build: 3 mins, 43 secs, 969 ms
New VS2008 build: 3 mins, 38 secs, 587 ms
Thanks to you and your colleague both for looking into this.
Why my first few attempts at building a project in VS 2008 went so terribly wrong we'll never know, but they resulted in slow executables. Just seemed I couldn't get anything to work until finally I read all the documentation and went step by tiny step. As mentioned previously, it was the result of the culture shock resulting from a big jump from Win XP, msvc 6, Pentium D to Win 7 64 bit, i5, VS 2008.
Anyhow, as a result of your efforts, I now have full confidence that VS 2008 will do the job for me, and soon enough MSVC 6 will just be a distant memory.
Went to check out the video but it is only available via Silverlight, and I don't have that on my platform. Anyhow, found all the information I needed in the comments. May I suggest that if you make your videos available in Flash as well, you will get a wider audience, since most people use this format.
Didn't realize that was your code. Will definitely check it out later.
Just tried you suggestion of using _fastcall instead of _cdecl and got another significant boost in speed. that's great! Thanks.
I got much better results this time following the suggestions of eulernet. With the optimizations he suggested the VS 2008 build was 4 seconds faster than the old MVSC build. Of course I had tried two of the most obvious optimizations before - Maximize Speed and Buffer Security Check: No, so it must be the other options that made the big difference.
Thanks so much for pointing me to the feature pack - I wasn't aware of it.
Yes - I need VS 2008 for work/business, but I should also have the latest. I will follow your suggest and try it out. Then I am sure I will run into issues running it along side VS 2008, but of course there will be documentation about that. Since I am still getting to know my new platform, and Windows 7 64 bit, I will hold off a few days so as not to get myself overwhelmed. I am finding it a big jump going from Win XP, MSVC 6, Pentium D, to Win 7, VS 2008, i5, with never having even seen Vista. Overall, I must say I am impressed with Windows 7 but it is going to take me a while yet to have the same degree of mastery over it I had with Win XP.
OK - Now I'm getting somewhere. I just made a release build under VS2008 following the optimizations you specified and it is running significantly faster than the release build created with the old MSVC 6. That makes me feel much better - thanks.
BTW, your prime generation algorithm is really slow...
Yea - see the note in the code. I just made it up out of my head on the spot, and as such, it is not too bad. Much more fun than copying and pasting code from somewhere, as any fool can do:-)
Anyhow, for the test under discussion it doesn't matter at all, since we are only interested in speed comparisons between different builds, rather than absolute speed.
Thank you for taking the time to respond to my original post.
Thank you so much for your response - and all the others including the ACs - I appreciate the interest and it is wonderful to hear from a Microsoft engineer. Since I began the day I have been simply trying to follow the suggestions of the first responder, and since I'm a n00b in VS2008, I have been all this time just learning my way around the environment this morning. I just discovered some key things and shortly will be trying a new batch of optimizations, but now is not the time for me to suddenly jump into VS2010. Being a n00b, I'd run into a thousand other issues before I have even learned the most basic things in VS2008. I provided the code and exe built under msvc 6 so that anybody can quickly compare a new release build in any compiler using the same code. Will post more shortly.
BTW: I open VS2008 as Administrator, and create a new project via
New Project->Win32->Win32 Console Application and look under Project->Properties->Common Properties->Framework and references I find...
Targeted Framework:.NET Framework 3.5
How to change this? I don't want to target any.NET Framework. Just want a simple executable like the one I created on the old platform under msvc 6. I think that may be why the exe runs so slow - it gets started up by the NET Framework who applies all kinds of unwanted run-time checks, slowing everything down.
Slashdot Mirror
I develop in Flash Builder with Eclipse using AS3, and I can testify that is a very powerful tool set. Try creating a Photoshop replacement like Aviary's Phoenix and related tools that runs in your browser of choice or a full featured audio editor RIA with your platform. You won't find anything today that can touch these applications in Silverlight. [Disclosure - I worked on Myna].
I followed your link to take a look at Silverlight 3. As far as DRM goes, the site you link to states "Silverlight DRM, Powered by PlayReady Content Protection enables protected in-browser experiences using AES encryption or Windows Media DRM." I must admit though that Silverlight 3 is starting to look like a very capable platform. I am not going to dispute that with you. Obviously, if it is not there yet it will soon be, because it can leverage the world of Net development. However, I would ask why anyone would want to support Silverlight, which represents Microsoft's ambition to extend its dominance on the desktop to the internet. Haven't we all had quite enough of this company? They are not good corporate citizens. Being more like a mafia than a corporation, Microsoft has maintained a strangle hold on the market for many years, impeding a healthy ecosystem from flourishing. It is because of the Monoculture that the internet has become a murky virus infested swamp where vast botnets flourish. Why would you want to promote this company? Recently, I have returned to Java for a new project. Java is very powerful and very fast for the thing like audio and image processing, and I would like to see it continue to evolve. Promoting open standards via HTML 5 and future versions that would allow us to create rich internet applications with non-proprietary tools should be our goal.
Out of curiosity, I tried your experiment, though I don't think I followed your instructions exactly. I installed the latest VLC and allowed it to have all the file extensions that would normally belong to Windows Media Player. Then I inserted a DVD, and up popped a window with two options - "Play with VLC", or "Play with Windows Media Player" - in that order. I chose Play with VLC, and VLC played it. At no point did Windows Media Player ever pop up. Now this was on Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit version.
I had an experience many years ago that made me never trust Windows Media Player ever since. This was way back in the days before Lame and FFMPG when everybody used the Fraunhoffer mp3 codec. It shipped with many different things, and once it was installed by some software you bought, that codec remained available to you for the use of other software ever after. Then for a time, you could buy the codec pretty cheap directly from the Fraunhoffer site for a couple of dollars. I think then everybody was using this codec, perhaps without even knowing it. It was ubiquitous. Then one fine day Microsoft bought the rights to that codec from Fraunhoffer, and created a special version that would only run under the control of Microsoft software. Now shortly after, when you got an automatic update for the Windows Media Player version that installed and used their new Fraunhoffer mp3 codec, it would uninstall your codec. Next time you went to run some software that depended on that, it simply would no longer be able to decode mp3. If you had an installer for your old Fraunhoffer codec, you could simply reinstall it, but every new update for the Windows Media Player would uninstall it again. There was no technical reason or justification for Windows Media Player needing to uninstall that codec. It was simply a grab by Microsoft to try to gain control over mp3. I don't know why they never got sanctioned or sued over that. They certainly had no business uninstalling a user's personal software. However, they never did succeed in gaining control over mp3.
Google is a truly innovative company that have done great things for open source and standards, not to mention how useful they are becoming at keeping Microsoft in check. Their Android operating system and the upcoming Chrome OS will transform the landscape. Between Google and Apple, Microsoft is backed into a corner. Now with Symbian gone open source as the last straw, we may see Microsoft withdraw from the mobile market by year's end. I have not seen any change in attitudes towards Google. What I have seen is a concerted campaign by Microsoft shills on Slashdot and elsewhere to demonize Google. Microsoft has realized that it simply cannot keep up with Google in terms of innovation, since they are not innovators. Their search bling is only growing via buying clients. Their browser is dying. The only way Microsoft knows how to compete is via under-handed attacks on the competition.
I get: "Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 17,127 tested so far." Gee - sure glad they don't know my URL. Anyhow - that was using Chrome. Then tried the same test in Chrome's incognito mode, and the number of identifying bits went down by a whole point, to 1 in 9000 or so.
The biggest experiment it is going to do now is seeing how fast it will die when the martian winter arrives without the northerly tilt it needs to fully illuminate its solar panels.
Collapsing bubbles are very powerful...
No wonder the air is expelled at supersonic speeds.
What a droll thing to say! Would you mind sharing with us where exactly you heard that? The FA just ruled Adobe out on this occasion. What is your motivation for pointing the finger at Adobe? The FA says IE is to blame. Somehow you know more than Google about this? Your conclusion, "Keeping Acrobat Reader fully patched and keeping your users alert and well-trained would probably stop a lot of it, but not all." completely misses the point. The problem was IE. I would like to know what idiot modded you insightful. The most obvious conclusion we could draw is to stay away from IE - at least until it is fixed.
You are missing the other half of the equation there. The advantage of having the source isn't simply being able to see the code, it is everybody being able to see the code. This is the so called "1000 eyes" effect. Everybody being able to see the code gets bugs found and fixed sooner. Allowing the Chinese to see Windows code may very well have given them advantages for hacking into it, and may be the biggest mistake Microsoft made yet. Microsoft's eargerness to get into the Chinese market may have endangered us all (collectively speaking).
Sounds kind'a cruel to me. I mean - how would you like it if they did that to you? I suppose the scientists who poked the cells with the nano-wires used to tear the wings off of flies as children.
Like - couldn't they just be given a gas mask or a hazmat suit, while the rest of us enjoy our peanuts?
If you read TFA, it says "Now it appears that the patch is available on Microsoft's OEM Partner Center Website". If you go to the OEM Partner Center Website, you will find it is intended for system builders who preinstall the Office Ready image on new PCs and sell Office Ready PCs to customers.
There is nothing in the article to support the title, "First Super-Earths Discovered Orbiting Sun-Like Stars". First they say "These detections indicate that low-mass planets are quite common around nearby stars." and then later "The inner planet of the 61 Vir system is among the two or three lowest-amplitude planetary signals that have been identified with confidence". and finally, "The researchers said they cannot tell yet if HD 1461b is a scaled-up version of Earth, composed largely of rock and iron, or whether, like Uranus and Neptune, it is composed mostly of water."
I don't see anything in the article to justify calling these planets "Super-Earths", which is a stupid term anyhow, since there is only one planet Earth and we are on it.
What in the hell is an "imeem"? Is it the feminine form of "imam"?
I don't use an iPod when I am out and about. I like to maintain my full awareness of my surroundings. There is only one situation in which I use a portable music player, and that is for a visit to the dentist to get a filling or a root canal. In that case, I want a noise cancelling headset pumping hard rock at 120 dBs to drown out the sound of the drill. The rest of the time, my portable music player sits forgotten in the bottom of my desk drawer.
Neither the Chinese nor Russians are involved in these negotiations. I believe it is just modern democracies such as the USA. Europe, Canada, Australia, NZ, etc. There is no justification for this secrecy. No voter in any of the countries mentioned asked for this, not did any political leader in any of these countries campaign on a promise to implement a treaty on strengthening copyright enforcement. As somebody above put it, this is entirely lobbyist driven, and we need to put a stop to it somehow. Maybe these Iranian students can give us ideas?
Their current economic direction is unsustainable. There is no accountability for a huge chunk of the GDP. Either they address this or they will suffer social breakdown and revolution. In economic reports from a couple of years ago, when oil prices were at record highs, Iran was suffering 18% inflation and double digit unemployment. This at a time when they were raking in record revenues from their oil wealth. How do you suppose the situation there is now since the sudden and drastic drop in oil prices, continuing sanctions, and a world wide recession?
What are you talking about - "anti-invasion strategy"? Iran has an aggressive strategy to dominate the Middle East. With their partner Syria, they finance Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, forming a pincer movement around Israel whom they would like to wipe off the face of the map. Iran's nuclear "energy" program is just a cover to their nuclear weapons ambitions, to further their goals as stated. If they have a strategy, it would be more realistic to call it an "invasion strategy", based on the number of missiles they are shipping to Hezbollah and the development of long range missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
I get the feeling when I read some comments here that phrases have been lifted from left-wing anti-US propaganda. People who adopt such a point of view may have good reasons, but characterizing Iran's ambitions a merely a "sovereignty strategy" is naive. I think the point of minimizing the threat Iran poses to the region is to pre-empt a potential invasion by the US. I think if one would like to criticize US Foreign Policy, they should stick to criticizing the US, rather than minimize the threats posed by her enemies.
Respectfully, I think justification for Iran's nuclear program is a crock of shit. Iran has roughly 10% of the world's total proven petroleum reserves. Iran is the world's fourth largest oil producer and is OPEC's second-largest producer after Saudi Arabia. At 2006 rates of production, Iran's oil reserves would last 98 years if no new oil was found.
Their problem is that Iran has one of the most inefficient economies in the world. It has a large public sector, with an estimated 60% of the economy directly controlled and centrally planned by the state. The combined budgets of the religious foundations [Bonyads] are said to make up as much as half that of the central government. Combination of price controls and subsidies, particularly on food and energy, continues to weigh down the economy, and contraband, administrative controls, widespread corruption, and other rigidities undermine the potential for private sector-led growth. High oil prices in recent years have enabled Iran to amass nearly US$ 97 billion in foreign exchange reserves. Yet this increased revenue has not eased economic hardships, which include double-digit unemployment and inflation. References [1] [2]
I would suggest that Iran has every opportunity in the world of becoming a prosperous, modern nation if they simply reformed and diversified their economy over the next 50 years. Nuclear power is the last thing they need right now. Once they achieve a modern, diversified, efficient economy, energy technologies will have advanced to the point that there will be a number of options they will be able to take advantage of, such as enhanced oil recovery techniques. Even now, there may exist other options they don't appear to have considered, such a tidal/wave/thermalcline power from the Persian Gulf or perhaps geothermal, solar or wind energy production.
In my opinion this mad rush to develop nuclear technology makes no sense from an energy perspective, when their top priority should be economic reform. In just a few short years, if they went at that goal with the same determination that they pursue nuclear technology now, the Iranian people could enjoy prosperity and a bright future rather than the double-digit inflation they suffer now.
That should have read "That would be one US soldier for every 1000 Iranian citizens".
Imagine 30,000 fresh troops soon to arrive on Iran's eastern boarder [Afghanistan], along with, say, 50,000 seasoned troops on Iran's western boarder [from Iraq]. That would be one US soldier for every 10 Iranians, supported by the combined might of the US and Israeli air forces and US Navy ships in the Persian Gulf. You think that might do the job?
OK - downloaded that project, simply made a release built without changing anything, and you are right - it was faster than the old MSVC 6 executable as it was!
Platform: i5 750, P7P55D Premium mobo w/8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ram
Old MSVC 6 build: 3 mins, 43 secs, 969 ms
New VS2008 build: 3 mins, 38 secs, 587 ms
Thanks to you and your colleague both for looking into this.
Why my first few attempts at building a project in VS 2008 went so terribly wrong we'll never know, but they resulted in slow executables. Just seemed I couldn't get anything to work until finally I read all the documentation and went step by tiny step. As mentioned previously, it was the result of the culture shock resulting from a big jump from Win XP, msvc 6, Pentium D to Win 7 64 bit, i5, VS 2008.
Anyhow, as a result of your efforts, I now have full confidence that VS 2008 will do the job for me, and soon enough MSVC 6 will just be a distant memory.
Went to check out the video but it is only available via Silverlight, and I don't have that on my platform. Anyhow, found all the information I needed in the comments. May I suggest that if you make your videos available in Flash as well, you will get a wider audience, since most people use this format.
Didn't realize that was your code. Will definitely check it out later. Just tried you suggestion of using _fastcall instead of _cdecl and got another significant boost in speed. that's great! Thanks.
I got much better results this time following the suggestions of eulernet. With the optimizations he suggested the VS 2008 build was 4 seconds faster than the old MVSC build. Of course I had tried two of the most obvious optimizations before - Maximize Speed and Buffer Security Check: No, so it must be the other options that made the big difference.
Thanks so much for pointing me to the feature pack - I wasn't aware of it.
Yes - I need VS 2008 for work/business, but I should also have the latest. I will follow your suggest and try it out. Then I am sure I will run into issues running it along side VS 2008, but of course there will be documentation about that. Since I am still getting to know my new platform, and Windows 7 64 bit, I will hold off a few days so as not to get myself overwhelmed. I am finding it a big jump going from Win XP, MSVC 6, Pentium D, to Win 7, VS 2008, i5, with never having even seen Vista. Overall, I must say I am impressed with Windows 7 but it is going to take me a while yet to have the same degree of mastery over it I had with Win XP.
OK - Now I'm getting somewhere. I just made a release build under VS2008 following the optimizations you specified and it is running significantly faster than the release build created with the old MSVC 6. That makes me feel much better - thanks.
Yea - see the note in the code. I just made it up out of my head on the spot, and as such, it is not too bad. Much more fun than copying and pasting code from somewhere, as any fool can do :-)
Anyhow, for the test under discussion it doesn't matter at all, since we are only interested in speed comparisons between different builds, rather than absolute speed.
Thank you for taking the time to respond to my original post.
Thank you so much for your response - and all the others including the ACs - I appreciate the interest and it is wonderful to hear from a Microsoft engineer. Since I began the day I have been simply trying to follow the suggestions of the first responder, and since I'm a n00b in VS2008, I have been all this time just learning my way around the environment this morning. I just discovered some key things and shortly will be trying a new batch of optimizations, but now is not the time for me to suddenly jump into VS2010. Being a n00b, I'd run into a thousand other issues before I have even learned the most basic things in VS2008. I provided the code and exe built under msvc 6 so that anybody can quickly compare a new release build in any compiler using the same code. Will post more shortly.
BTW: I open VS2008 as Administrator, and create a new project via New Project->Win32->Win32 Console Application and look under Project->Properties->Common Properties->Framework and references I find... .NET Framework 3.5 .NET Framework. Just want a simple executable like the one I created on the old platform under msvc 6. I think that may be why the exe runs so slow - it gets started up by the NET Framework who applies all kinds of unwanted run-time checks, slowing everything down.
Targeted Framework:
How to change this? I don't want to target any