Well, I bet someone just wrote their last public release for that company....
Who advertises transfer rates in bytes/sec??? After all, it would be much more impressive to state their drive transfers 200 megabits/sec... They could even ambigiously just write "mb' to further stun readers...
And I wonder if "mega" here means 2^20 or 10^6. The latter is an often-used cheap way of increasing statistics by 5%....
Yeah, I too remember the days of running Paintbrush on a CGA monitor, in dos...
The WinXP incarnation of M$Paint was the first one that didn't use glorified screen-capture per the old DOS method of saving images (that's why Save in M$Paint had always truncated any part of the image that wasn't visible in the window), and that knew more than one file format (tho the conversion to 8bit must use some really horrible dither method).
I don't have this problem in M$Paint in Win2k... Perhaps the one for Win 3.1 had this problem... I don't think userland apps would be able to directly access video memory in NT,2k,XP...
What to know something really disturbing? Microsoft has all of its "Knowledge Base" stuff online. including THIS vintage article
Even more disturbing, the above states "Last Review : August 16, 2005"
Well, now I understand why cooperations have lay-offs...
This sounds just like a crank shaft on a regular engine. How can that be patented?
Oh, you must be new to Slashdot....
Recently I was in a restaurant. As I removed the paper ring holding my napkin & utensils together, I noticed a little inscription:
"Patent No. xxxxxx" [with a real number].
WTF!?!?!? Sure enough, someone patented napkin rings. I don't have the patent doc in front of me, but they made the description very general -- it covers much more than just napkins [but I think it mentioned food/utensils]. I understand the USPTO getting fooled by software patents... But most people understand the concept of napkin rings... even those without a college education. Heck, I would have thought the patent examiner would have remembered seeing them in their childhood/daily lives...
So yes, I bet the "Wobble Yoke" will get patented....
If you perform small crimes a number of times with no consequences, you tend to think that it's an effective way of making money. You still know it's "wrong" but you don't believe you'll ever have to face the consequences.
You mean like the car companies? <sarcasm> Of Course Not. </sarcasm>
LOL. They screwed up a CRASH test? Did it fly off-course and make a successful landing?
I didn't think purposely crashing experimental was "proper" behaviour. It sounds so objectionable, so unpardonable. Surely this course of action only comes from those ill-mannered individuals with poor upbringing.
2D games are fun because of the game play itself, not the fancy graphics... (Look at the popularity of Super Mario Bros, Tetris, etc).
Personally, I think the 3D Mario for the N64 just plain sucked.
50 years ago, they managed to make decent movies in black-and-white, and sometimes even without sound. They needed good camerawork and careful plot design. Now, many Hollywood movies only seem to focus on spectacular explosions, sex scenes, and no plot.
I've always wondered about running Windows from within VMware on a Windows [same one] host.
Although technically they are both on the same computer, the hardware that each sees would be completely different. It is likely that there is no way for any program to realize that both are the same computer.
So when you go to "Windows Update", it probably raises a little flag to indicate that two entirely differnet computers (different MAC addr, hardware, etc) are using the same license key.
They could look at the "Document Properties" on your Word file and see that it was authored by you.
I wound up failing one of the classes ... I was using a variable-width font, about 10 point to be exact.
Dude, you deserved to fail for doing this. Everyone else knows that "14pt Courier-New" (monospaced) is the magic problem solver. It can discretely turn a 5 page report into a 10 page report. It's not the length that counts, it's how you format it!
If you have to re-issue a read or write command (well, the filesystem would do this) for each 512-byte block, that means that you will spend 8 times more energy (give or take a bit) to read or write the same 4k block of data.
Well sorry, but that's the way it is.
Hard drives generally have the ability to read/write multiple sectors with a single command. (Go read the ATA standards). And DMA is usually used [ program I/O just plain sucks].
I don't see how changing the sector size is going to save power... Either way they have to increase the size of the buffers for the read/write multiple operations. So these could just be increased while keeping 512-byte sectors and the same benefit would result.
I think the main problem today is that many programmers still wet behind the ears, developing on the latest and greatest machine, combined with ineptitude/inexperience...
For example, they can write code that unnecesarily makes lots of copies of arrays (no lazy evaluation, using pass-by-value ), [unnecessarily] evaluate the same function/expression a huge number of times, badly misuse things like linked-lists, or even just use stupid implementations [bubblesort, etc]...
And they will never realize how slow these things are because they are trying small datasets for their testing/debugging. Routine "X" may seem fast because it executes in 20ms (practically instant), but perhaps a more skilled person could write it using lower-order complexity algorithms and it would only need 10ms... The disturbed reader may ask what's the point... Well, if you are on a computer that is 3X slower and using real-world input data that is 5X bigger, you WILL notice a huge difference in the two implementations!!!!
And if you are like most of the public, you will blame the slowness on your own computer being out-of-date ---- and you will go and buy a new one.
Plus, "time-to-market" pressures mean that companies probably tend toward releasing poorly designed & inefficient code, all in the name of the almighty buck. Fscking "Moore" created a self-fufilling prophesy that made things more cost efficient [for software development] to buy a better computer than to write a more efficient program.
When computers stop getting faster, software will start getting a whole lot better...
It is always the same. "The average user doesn't need to go up to the next $CURRENT_GREAT_CPU because they're able to do their average things OK now". Of course they're able to do their average things now, that's why they're stuck doing average things.
In the days of the 386, what were the main things people did with their computers?
Type documents/do spreadsheets with word/excel. Word was just a few megs then.
Play solitare.
Perhaps: Send/Receive an occasional fax with a dialup modem.
10-15 years later, what do they do?
Type documents/do spreadsheets with word/excel. MS Office ~1GB
Make/give powerpoint presentations
Play solitare
Read email with Outlook
Browse the internet, possibly including flash games.
Listen to music.
Now this is not meant to be a comprehensive list, but I feel it describes an extremely high percentage of the home/office workload for a fairly high percentage of users. Some home users might view/browse photos, etc...
So why do these people need faster machines? Why do they need dual CPU machines? They shouldn't. I believe application software has actually decreased in quality due to increasing levels of complexity and decreasing levels of programmer skill [from the period of irrational exuberance]. For example, a few years ago, I tested a commercial MP3 player progam. They must have used a dumb O(n^2) bubble-sort type sorting algorthm for their playlists. It took several minutes to load, versus a few seconds for WinAmp. Only an incompetent programmer would do such a thing. And the fact that new software is still plagued by buffer overflow attacks [which easily highly preventable] only reinforces my point. I bet many widely-used applications contain parts that are highly inefficient but used on small data sets... Which means the end result is that it is still "fast" but only on a 2ghz machine versus a 200mhz machine.
I don't think most (non-technical) users realize the computational burden involved with all the latest types of "eye candy" in GUIs... Although pleasing, they probably would also be interested in having slower, cheaper computers with less special effects.
The two above paragraphs illustrate potential causes for that anonying little delay that is perceived as sluggishness by the user... Its those few extra milliseconds that make us realize that our computer is not a fast as the neighbor's brand new latest & greatest one. For many man years, computers have been far more powerful than needed for all tasks above...
For economic reasons, it is probably not worthwhile to spend extra time writing/optimizing software to be more efficient, especially in a time when "time to market" is of crucial importance.
For home users, only gamers, artists, and people recording/processing video are going to really **need** the ${CURRENT_GREAT_CPU}. The rest will just be duped by marketing and fooled by inefficient software.
But the illusion won't last much longer... Moore's "lucky guess" is starting to slow down. Unless marketing finds a way to keep the public buying new machines all the time, people will wake up one day and realize their 5yr old computer still does everything they do quite fine.
And when that happens, there will be a surge in the number of plumbers in the US....
I bet most lawyer's websites are not designed for the blind either...
And by doing so, the blind are not able to access legal info/services at the same level as those with sight... Thus, they are being disadvantaged because the lawyer was negligent in hiring a good webmaster. It would be like a law office without a wheelchair ramp for the handicapped....
They have other money / stashed stuff not accounted for [off-shore, relatives, etc]
They accumulated much more, and then spent most of it.
Clinton not even a millionaire??? Yes, Arkansas is a poor state, but come on, he was Governor for how long? I would think his private residence (if any) would be worth ~$1 million [e.g. an old southern large home]. Something is really fishy here... [Unless Hillary owns all the property, LOL].
And I question Bush,Sr's worth... I would think being Director of the CIA would be a very high paid job... Either he is poor at managing his finances or he has a lot, lot, lot more somewhere...
To me, it also looks like the car dealership lured the customer back by increasing the price...
A few years ago, I looked at Toyota Camrys.... The standard dealer markup for the lower models was about $2k... But for the XLE model, which only cost 1k-2k more, the markup was $5k. I can only guess that they felt they could inflate the price to make people *think* they were getting something good.
Then again, most car salesmen would probably try to sell ice to Eskimos, with an extended warranty, free ice trays, and taste protection...
I read the review a bit quickly, but NOWHERE, i repeat NOWHERE did they even mention what CPU it had or how fast it was... (Athough they seemed awfully concerned about the exact height of the heatsink to the millimeter)
I wonder who took the photos....and wrote the article....
Well, yes they are. But does it really matter? If the encryption is too difficult to break, then much easier ways exist [viruses, con artists, phishing, etc].. After all, nobody today downloads ringtones or plays games on their cell phone...
Besides, I remember hearing that the encryption was blatantly crippled with digital cell phones when they first came out. Not sure if anything was improved or not.
For transfering contacts, see if your phone as a USB port. My motorola V180 has one. It shows up as a modem/serial port in Linux and there is a generic driver for Win2k.
There are somewhat standardized "AT" commands (from the old modem days) for reading/writing the phone book on GSM phones. On the V180, I can access both contacts stored in the internal memory as well as those on the SIM card. (I think the internal memory is the first 500 entries and the sim card is the remaining ones, something like that).
I prefer to use the internal memory because the V180 doesn't support many features on the sim card (photos/categories/ring tones, or something like that).
T-Mobile, Cingular, and ATT branded phones are basically interchangeable
Well yes and no. Although the phones are technically compatable, many carriers "lock" the phones to only operate with certain carriers. So if you switch from carrier X to Y and use phone from X on Y, it won't directly work (although it should). The carriers do this in order to sell more phones... [Isn't this a violation of anti-competitive laws????]
Slashdot Mirror
Plus it was only $300 at an auction.
Damn! What auction was that??? State surplus?
and left a message on HIS machine that informed him that the police were now involved
I think that would definitely have an impact -- with consequences far beyond a change in the phone calls...
Well, I bet someone just wrote their last public release for that company....
Who advertises transfer rates in bytes/sec??? After all, it would be much more impressive to state their drive transfers 200 megabits/sec... They could even ambigiously just write "mb' to further stun readers...
And I wonder if "mega" here means 2^20 or 10^6. The latter is an often-used cheap way of increasing statistics by 5%....
Yeah, I too remember the days of running Paintbrush on a CGA monitor, in dos...
The WinXP incarnation of M$Paint was the first one that didn't use glorified screen-capture per the old DOS method of saving images (that's why Save in M$Paint had always truncated any part of the image that wasn't visible in the window), and that knew more than one file format (tho the conversion to 8bit must use some really horrible dither method).
I don't have this problem in M$Paint in Win2k... Perhaps the one for Win 3.1 had this problem... I don't think userland apps would be able to directly access video memory in NT,2k,XP...
What to know something really disturbing? Microsoft has all of its "Knowledge Base" stuff online.
including THIS vintage article
Even more disturbing, the above states "Last Review : August 16, 2005"
Well, now I understand why cooperations have lay-offs...
This sounds just like a crank shaft on a regular engine. How can that be patented?
Oh, you must be new to Slashdot....
Recently I was in a restaurant. As I removed the paper ring holding my napkin & utensils together, I noticed a little inscription:
"Patent No. xxxxxx" [with a real number].
WTF!?!?!? Sure enough, someone patented napkin rings. I don't have the patent doc in front of me, but they made the description very general -- it covers much more than just napkins [but I think it mentioned food/utensils]. I understand the USPTO getting fooled by software patents... But most people understand the concept of napkin rings... even those without a college education. Heck, I would have thought the patent examiner would have remembered seeing them in their childhood/daily lives...
So yes, I bet the "Wobble Yoke" will get patented....
What's that? They released a new Paint?
Now I have no choice but to upgrade...
If you perform small crimes a number of times with no consequences, you tend to think that it's an effective way of making money. You still know it's "wrong" but you don't believe you'll ever have to face the consequences.
You mean like the car companies? <sarcasm> Of Course Not. </sarcasm>
The summary mentions a Michael "Kabbash".
What is he trying to put himself on?????
Its very readable though, kind of like business-porn for startup types.
Ah...yeah....riggggghhhhhht...
I don't have a problem with porn, but something about your description just plain disturbs me...
And I am reminded how thankful I am that I went into engineering...where we don't have 'engineering-porn'.
LOL. They screwed up a CRASH test? Did it fly off-course and make a successful landing?
I didn't think purposely crashing experimental was "proper" behaviour. It sounds so objectionable, so unpardonable. Surely this course of action only comes from those ill-mannered individuals with poor upbringing.
2D games are fun because of the game play itself, not the fancy graphics... (Look at the popularity of Super Mario Bros, Tetris, etc).
Personally, I think the 3D Mario for the N64 just plain sucked.
50 years ago, they managed to make decent movies in black-and-white, and sometimes even without sound. They needed good camerawork and careful plot design. Now, many Hollywood movies only seem to focus on spectacular explosions, sex scenes, and no plot.
I've always wondered about running Windows from within VMware on a Windows [same one] host.
Although technically they are both on the same computer, the hardware that each sees would be completely different. It is likely that there is no way for any program to realize that both are the same computer.
So when you go to "Windows Update", it probably raises a little flag to indicate that two entirely differnet computers (different MAC addr, hardware, etc) are using the same license key.
How could I prove my notes were my own otherwise?
... I was using a variable-width font, about 10 point to be exact.
They could look at the "Document Properties" on your Word file and see that it was authored by you.
I wound up failing one of the classes
Dude, you deserved to fail for doing this. Everyone else knows that "14pt Courier-New" (monospaced) is the magic problem solver. It can discretely turn a 5 page report into a 10 page report. It's not the length that counts, it's how you format it!
If you have to re-issue a read or write command (well, the filesystem would do this) for each 512-byte block, that means that you will spend 8 times more energy (give or take a bit) to read or write the same 4k block of data.
Well sorry, but that's the way it is.
Hard drives generally have the ability to read/write multiple sectors with a single command. (Go read the ATA standards). And DMA is usually used [ program I/O just plain sucks].
I don't see how changing the sector size is going to save power... Either way they have to increase the size of the buffers for the read/write multiple operations. So these could just be increased while keeping 512-byte sectors and the same benefit would result.
I think the main problem today is that many programmers still wet behind the ears, developing on the latest and greatest machine, combined with ineptitude/inexperience...
For example, they can write code that unnecesarily makes lots of copies of arrays (no lazy evaluation, using pass-by-value ), [unnecessarily] evaluate the same function/expression a huge number of times, badly misuse things like linked-lists, or even just use stupid implementations [bubblesort, etc]...
And they will never realize how slow these things are because they are trying small datasets for their testing/debugging. Routine "X" may seem fast because it executes in 20ms (practically instant), but perhaps a more skilled person could write it using lower-order complexity algorithms and it would only need 10ms... The disturbed reader may ask what's the point... Well, if you are on a computer that is 3X slower and using real-world input data that is 5X bigger, you WILL notice a huge difference in the two implementations!!!!
And if you are like most of the public, you will blame the slowness on your own computer being out-of-date ---- and you will go and buy a new one.
Plus, "time-to-market" pressures mean that companies probably tend toward releasing poorly designed & inefficient code, all in the name of the almighty buck. Fscking "Moore" created a self-fufilling prophesy that made things more cost efficient [for software development] to buy a better computer than to write a more efficient program.
When computers stop getting faster, software will start getting a whole lot better...
In the days of the 386, what were the main things people did with their computers?
10-15 years later, what do they do?
Now this is not meant to be a comprehensive list, but I feel it describes an extremely high percentage of the home/office workload for a fairly high percentage of users. Some home users might view/browse photos, etc...
So why do these people need faster machines? Why do they need dual CPU machines? They shouldn't. I believe application software has actually decreased in quality due to increasing levels of complexity and decreasing levels of programmer skill [from the period of irrational exuberance]. For example, a few years ago, I tested a commercial MP3 player progam. They must have used a dumb O(n^2) bubble-sort type sorting algorthm for their playlists. It took several minutes to load, versus a few seconds for WinAmp. Only an incompetent programmer would do such a thing. And the fact that new software is still plagued by buffer overflow attacks [which easily highly preventable] only reinforces my point. I bet many widely-used applications contain parts that are highly inefficient but used on small data sets... Which means the end result is that it is still "fast" but only on a 2ghz machine versus a 200mhz machine.
I don't think most (non-technical) users realize the computational burden involved with all the latest types of "eye candy" in GUIs... Although pleasing, they probably would also be interested in having slower, cheaper computers with less special effects.
The two above paragraphs illustrate potential causes for that anonying little delay that is perceived as sluggishness by the user... Its those few extra milliseconds that make us realize that our computer is not a fast as the neighbor's brand new latest & greatest one. For many man years, computers have been far more powerful than needed for all tasks above...
For economic reasons, it is probably not worthwhile to spend extra time writing/optimizing software to be more efficient, especially in a time when "time to market" is of crucial importance.
For home users, only gamers, artists, and people recording/processing video are going to really **need** the ${CURRENT_GREAT_CPU}. The rest will just be duped by marketing and fooled by inefficient software.
But the illusion won't last much longer... Moore's "lucky guess" is starting to slow down. Unless marketing finds a way to keep the public buying new machines all the time, people will wake up one day and realize their 5yr old computer still does everything they do quite fine.
And when that happens, there will be a surge in the number of plumbers in the US....
I've been put on hold at least 50-60% of the time I've called.
I'm not sure which is more disturbing -- that you were put on hold or that you have called enough times to be able to establish these percentages...
I bet most lawyer's websites are not designed for the blind either...
And by doing so, the blind are not able to access legal info/services at the same level as those with sight... Thus, they are being disadvantaged because the lawyer was negligent in hiring a good webmaster. It would be like a law office without a wheelchair ramp for the handicapped....
A few possible explanations:
Clinton not even a millionaire??? Yes, Arkansas is a poor state, but come on, he was Governor for how long? I would think his private residence (if any) would be worth ~$1 million [e.g. an old southern large home]. Something is really fishy here... [Unless Hillary owns all the property, LOL].
And I question Bush,Sr's worth... I would think being Director of the CIA would be a very high paid job... Either he is poor at managing his finances or he has a lot, lot, lot more somewhere...
Do these people know how to use a computer???
Directions for How to Use a Bar Code Scanner:
Tips/Warnings
No problem - now it's 10% over cost.
To me, it also looks like the car dealership lured the customer back by increasing the price...
A few years ago, I looked at Toyota Camrys.... The standard dealer markup for the lower models was about $2k... But for the XLE model, which only cost 1k-2k more, the markup was $5k. I can only guess that they felt they could inflate the price to make people *think* they were getting something good.
Then again, most car salesmen would probably try to sell ice to Eskimos, with an extended warranty, free ice trays, and taste protection...
I read the review a bit quickly, but NOWHERE, i repeat NOWHERE did they even mention what CPU it had or how fast it was... (Athough they seemed awfully concerned about the exact height of the heatsink to the millimeter)
I wonder who took the photos....and wrote the article....
Microsoft must have used its $$$$ to send an EVEN HOTTER chick to the CEO of GoDady.com -- an offer he couldn't refuse...
As soon as she invites all her "friends", GoDaddy will be 100% M$ hosted.
Well, yes they are. But does it really matter? If the encryption is too difficult to break, then much easier ways exist [viruses, con artists, phishing, etc].. After all, nobody today downloads ringtones or plays games on their cell phone...
Besides, I remember hearing that the encryption was blatantly crippled with digital cell phones when they first came out. Not sure if anything was improved or not.
For transfering contacts, see if your phone as a USB port. My motorola V180 has one. It shows up as a modem/serial port in Linux and there is a generic driver for Win2k.
There are somewhat standardized "AT" commands (from the old modem days) for reading/writing the phone book on GSM phones. On the V180, I can access both contacts stored in the internal memory as well as those on the SIM card. (I think the internal memory is the first 500 entries and the sim card is the remaining ones, something like that).
I prefer to use the internal memory because the V180 doesn't support many features on the sim card (photos/categories/ring tones, or something like that).
T-Mobile, Cingular, and ATT branded phones are basically interchangeable
Well yes and no. Although the phones are technically compatable, many carriers "lock" the phones to only operate with certain carriers. So if you switch from carrier X to Y and use phone from X on Y, it won't directly work (although it should). The carriers do this in order to sell more phones... [Isn't this a violation of anti-competitive laws????]