Amen to that. I work with a couple of people that are "programmers" in title only. I look at some of their code when they get into tough spots (I stick to C/Java/Perl, myself - they code in VB and ASP) and have to shudder at some of the things they do. I'm not a VB programmer, but I do know programming in general and some of the things they do would get them drummed out of a CS program.
The article mentions that the optics make the picture appear similar to a 60" screen viewed at 10' distance. Personally, I think that sucks. My 60" screen (well, ok, it's only a 52") has a whole lot more pixels than 640x480, for sure. For video's and such, it wouldn't be that bad, but running a computer display on it would bite. When was the last time you ran your desktop in 640x480? 1989?
Ahem.. I was thinking more along the lines of Everquest2 raids than surfing the net for.. well.. you know. I have a vivid enough imagination that doesn't need much external stimulation.
While the actual flash technology might be capable of that kind of speed, the entire stack isn't. Compare the MB/s throughput of several hard drives here with the throughput of several USB flash drives here (both benchmarks done with SiSoft's Sandra).
Bottom line: The USB drives are topping out at an average of 8 MB/s, the hard drives are in the 60 MB/s range. That alone puts hard drives an average of 7.5 times faster.
Flash drives have great single block seek times because they don't have to move a head, but most benchmarks show that their ability to move large quantities of data quickly sucks.
Don't forget your keyboard, mouse, flash devices, external hard drives (driven by a 12 volt car battery, I'd guess), scanners, cable and dsl modems, et al.
I had a wireless keyboard and mouse for a while. After a while, I figured it was easier to put up with a cord on the desk than having to dig through a drawer at 2 AM only to find out you're out of batteries. Granted, they don't need batteries often, but when they do, you're stuck if you don't have spares.
Maybe if they resurrected Tesla's research and came up with a breakthrough, then we'd be truly wireless
Could you imagine your favorite OS installed on something as fast or faster then today's RAM?
They didn't say this technology is as fast or faster than RAM, they said it was 500 times faster than current flash memory. Current flash memory is 6 to 10 times slower than current hard drive technology and a hard drive is roughly 100 to 200 times slower than RAM, so you're looking at flash being 600 to 2000 times slower than regular memory. Granted, something that's 500 times faster than flash puts it well above a hard drive on the speed scale.
What would be interesting would be to treat current memory technology (DRAM, RDRAM, etc) as a kind of CPU level 3 cache and make this new technology take on a kind of like a hybrid hard drive/main memory status. You'd still have a volume of high speed memory closer to the CPU and the "Memory Drive"(tm) would serve as the volume storage device at a higher speed than current hard drive technology. You could even throw a rotating hard drive in there to act as the volume backup device.
With that, all the technologies below the one from TFA just got bumped down a notch on the scale.
Yes.. I know it's not complete yet, but it is being developed. Yes, I know the guy that's writing it works for Novell. Yes, I know about the MS-Novell deal. But, this was being developed long before that and is still open source, last time I checked.
Um.. You're comparing apples to oranges. According to Wikipedia (see the prices on PS3 and Xbox360) the premium PS3 retails for $599 and the Xbox360 (not the Core, the other one) retails for $399.99 and the HD-DVD addon costs $199.99. Some math reveals that the roughly equivalent PS3 and Xbox360 are 599 and 599.98, respectfully. That's only a 2 cent difference in retail price.
Notable differences in this rought "equivalent" pricing - PS3 Premium has a 60G HD and HDMI output, XB360 is only 20G HD and component only.
An even better comparison might be to compare the PS3 Basic (which still comes with a 20G HD as does the 360 non-Core model) then the prices become $499 for the PS3 and still 599.98 for the XB360+HD-DVD. Now we've got a PS3 (Blu-Ray player, game console, 20G HD) for $200 less than the equivalently featured 360 (HD-DVD player, game console, 20G HD). This is probably a better apples to apples comparison based on the feature set of each console (360 still lacks HDMI, which even the base PS3 includes).
Once you've GOT a 360, you've already shelled out 400 bucks, and once you've got the HD-DVD addon, now you've got something that takes up twice the shelf space of the PS3.
Dead on the money. I remember when DVD's were all the rage. Players cost 500 bucks and when you went to the movie rental store, they had maybe a shelf or two of DVD's you could rent - the world still revolved around VHS. Now when you go into a rental place, it's filled with DVD's and hardly a VHS tape to be found.
I think the sweet spot for me was when they would release new movies to DVD and VHS simultaneously in the video stores. My first player cost about 350 bucks (but it was a 5 disk changer, too).
Give it time. Prices will drop. A 900 dollar player today in a year will be half that, or less.
Personally, I'm crossing my fingers for Blu-Ray. I don't particularly care one way or the other for Sony, but I definitely don't like Microsoft and their tactics. I mean, really, Microsoft went with HD-DVD why? Because Blu-Ray supported Java? Blu-Ray has the potential to be a friendlier (DRM aside) medium both for video and as a PC drive from what I read. Either Microsoft has it's head up its rear (again) or sombody's in bed with the big media conglomerates up to their eyeballs.
From TFA, "the newest version of its Office file formats". Actually the previous format (the OLE container format) has varied slightly from Office version to Office version.
The other interesting point is from TFA:
Van den Beld of ECMA International said the standard recognized reality. "The vast amount of data in the world is in Microsoft format," he said.
The vast amount of data in the world is in the OLD format. I doubt very seriously there is very much content in the world in the NEW format in comparison to the old.
Admittedly, it's a poor analogy, but it was from the article and I'm sure they are trying to talk to the masses, not folks that actually understand the technology. I almost considered writing that in the first response, but figured it was unnecessary. Oops.
The thing is (from TFA's VHS analogy) that every time you read a DVD that was burned (i.e not pressed) the reading process uses the same wavelength of light that was used to burn it in the first place and degrades it slightly. Over time, and many many reads, it could (or most likely will) degrade the data placed on the disk such that it's no longer readable.
Much higher density and multiple layers. TFA mentions 33 x-y planes (layers) of information. With that many planes, the density of each layer is comparable with a single side of a Blu-Ray disc. Can't remember if Blu-Ray is multi-layer or not.
Actually, I think they are the second greatest marketer. If they were number one, it'd be Steve with the Borg jewelry on this post instead of the happy Apple symbol.
I have noticed this in a lot of Windows apps as well and it dumbfounds me that, after all these years, Microsoft programmers still haven't got threaded programming into their heads.
I mean, why does Access requesting data from a network database freeze up the entire machine (or at least the whole TCP/IP stack)? And nothing frustrates me more than Outlook. When you're typing an email message and Outlook "requests data from server" in the background, freezes your input into the current window. Damn, guys.. do that crap in a background thread and stop interrupting the UI for something not related to what I'm doing at the moment.
The other thing that kills me is the fact that the window is a part of the application and not a part of the desktop. I mean, when something freezes, you can't easily iconize, resize, or do pretty much anything with the window the app is contained in. IMHO, the UNIX window environments did that right - the window is owned by the window manager and tells the application how big it should be or if it got resized, not the other way around.
I use Linux at home, but have to use Windows in the corporate world (and yes, we're sprinting like mad towards a Vista roll-out on 40,000 some odd desktops in '07). I haven't heard if Vista fixes any of my pet peeves, but I'm hoping, at least as far as sanity at work goes, that it does.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah.. True. Let me rephrase.
I'm not a VB programmer, but I do know programming in general and some of the things they do would get them cat'ted to /dev/null.
Amen to that. I work with a couple of people that are "programmers" in title only. I look at some of their code when they get into tough spots (I stick to C/Java/Perl, myself - they code in VB and ASP) and have to shudder at some of the things they do. I'm not a VB programmer, but I do know programming in general and some of the things they do would get them drummed out of a CS program.
How many old farts like me got that joke? I think parent should be Funny, though.. not Insightful.
They didn't say it wouldn't run on older hardware, they said it wouldn't run on older versions of some operating systems. Big difference.
The article mentions that the optics make the picture appear similar to a 60" screen viewed at 10' distance. Personally, I think that sucks. My 60" screen (well, ok, it's only a 52") has a whole lot more pixels than 640x480, for sure. For video's and such, it wouldn't be that bad, but running a computer display on it would bite. When was the last time you ran your desktop in 640x480? 1989?
Ahem.. I was thinking more along the lines of Everquest2 raids than surfing the net for.. well.. you know. I have a vivid enough imagination that doesn't need much external stimulation.
While the actual flash technology might be capable of that kind of speed, the entire stack isn't. Compare the MB/s throughput of several hard drives here with the throughput of several USB flash drives here (both benchmarks done with SiSoft's Sandra).
Bottom line: The USB drives are topping out at an average of 8 MB/s, the hard drives are in the 60 MB/s range. That alone puts hard drives an average of 7.5 times faster.
Flash drives have great single block seek times because they don't have to move a head, but most benchmarks show that their ability to move large quantities of data quickly sucks.
Don't forget your keyboard, mouse, flash devices, external hard drives (driven by a 12 volt car battery, I'd guess), scanners, cable and dsl modems, et al.
I had a wireless keyboard and mouse for a while. After a while, I figured it was easier to put up with a cord on the desk than having to dig through a drawer at 2 AM only to find out you're out of batteries. Granted, they don't need batteries often, but when they do, you're stuck if you don't have spares.
Maybe if they resurrected Tesla's research and came up with a breakthrough, then we'd be truly wireless
They didn't say this technology is as fast or faster than RAM, they said it was 500 times faster than current flash memory. Current flash memory is 6 to 10 times slower than current hard drive technology and a hard drive is roughly 100 to 200 times slower than RAM, so you're looking at flash being 600 to 2000 times slower than regular memory. Granted, something that's 500 times faster than flash puts it well above a hard drive on the speed scale.
What would be interesting would be to treat current memory technology (DRAM, RDRAM, etc) as a kind of CPU level 3 cache and make this new technology take on a kind of like a hybrid hard drive/main memory status. You'd still have a volume of high speed memory closer to the CPU and the "Memory Drive"(tm) would serve as the volume storage device at a higher speed than current hard drive technology. You could even throw a rotating hard drive in there to act as the volume backup device.
With that, all the technologies below the one from TFA just got bumped down a notch on the scale.
Well, maybe he still cares about it a little bit and is only on step 8 or 9 of the 12 step process. Cut him some slack.
Ahem..
OO VBA support
Yes.. I know it's not complete yet, but it is being developed. Yes, I know the guy that's writing it works for Novell. Yes, I know about the MS-Novell deal. But, this was being developed long before that and is still open source, last time I checked.
The second amendment actually says:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.It specifically mentions "the right of the people...", not "the right of the militia...".
Oops.. I meant 92 cents. (j/k)
Um.. You're comparing apples to oranges. According to Wikipedia (see the prices on PS3 and Xbox360) the premium PS3 retails for $599 and the Xbox360 (not the Core, the other one) retails for $399.99 and the HD-DVD addon costs $199.99. Some math reveals that the roughly equivalent PS3 and Xbox360 are 599 and 599.98, respectfully. That's only a 2 cent difference in retail price.
Notable differences in this rought "equivalent" pricing - PS3 Premium has a 60G HD and HDMI output, XB360 is only 20G HD and component only.
An even better comparison might be to compare the PS3 Basic (which still comes with a 20G HD as does the 360 non-Core model) then the prices become $499 for the PS3 and still 599.98 for the XB360+HD-DVD. Now we've got a PS3 (Blu-Ray player, game console, 20G HD) for $200 less than the equivalently featured 360 (HD-DVD player, game console, 20G HD). This is probably a better apples to apples comparison based on the feature set of each console (360 still lacks HDMI, which even the base PS3 includes).
Once you've GOT a 360, you've already shelled out 400 bucks, and once you've got the HD-DVD addon, now you've got something that takes up twice the shelf space of the PS3.
Kind of a crappy first shot in the format war when the drive that comes with the XB360 is a regular DVD drive, don't you think?
Dead on the money. I remember when DVD's were all the rage. Players cost 500 bucks and when you went to the movie rental store, they had maybe a shelf or two of DVD's you could rent - the world still revolved around VHS. Now when you go into a rental place, it's filled with DVD's and hardly a VHS tape to be found.
I think the sweet spot for me was when they would release new movies to DVD and VHS simultaneously in the video stores. My first player cost about 350 bucks (but it was a 5 disk changer, too).
Give it time. Prices will drop. A 900 dollar player today in a year will be half that, or less.
Personally, I'm crossing my fingers for Blu-Ray. I don't particularly care one way or the other for Sony, but I definitely don't like Microsoft and their tactics. I mean, really, Microsoft went with HD-DVD why? Because Blu-Ray supported Java? Blu-Ray has the potential to be a friendlier (DRM aside) medium both for video and as a PC drive from what I read. Either Microsoft has it's head up its rear (again) or sombody's in bed with the big media conglomerates up to their eyeballs.
From TFA, "the newest version of its Office file formats". Actually the previous format (the OLE container format) has varied slightly from Office version to Office version.
The other interesting point is from TFA:
Van den Beld of ECMA International said the standard recognized reality. "The vast amount of data in the world is in Microsoft format," he said.The vast amount of data in the world is in the OLD format. I doubt very seriously there is very much content in the world in the NEW format in comparison to the old.
Admittedly, it's a poor analogy, but it was from the article and I'm sure they are trying to talk to the masses, not folks that actually understand the technology. I almost considered writing that in the first response, but figured it was unnecessary. Oops.
The thing is (from TFA's VHS analogy) that every time you read a DVD that was burned (i.e not pressed) the reading process uses the same wavelength of light that was used to burn it in the first place and degrades it slightly. Over time, and many many reads, it could (or most likely will) degrade the data placed on the disk such that it's no longer readable.
I'd rather have the blu-teraBYTE-DVD mentioned in TFA than a blu-terabit-DVD...
Much higher density and multiple layers. TFA mentions 33 x-y planes (layers) of information. With that many planes, the density of each layer is comparable with a single side of a Blu-Ray disc. Can't remember if Blu-Ray is multi-layer or not.
Plasmaware? Vaporware that's so diffuse, it's basic structure breaks down into a cloud of subatomic particles...
Actually, I think they are the second greatest marketer. If they were number one, it'd be Steve with the Borg jewelry on this post instead of the happy Apple symbol.
Marketing literature:
New battery technology! Offers slightly less power, but now 93% less likely to explode!
I have noticed this in a lot of Windows apps as well and it dumbfounds me that, after all these years, Microsoft programmers still haven't got threaded programming into their heads.
I mean, why does Access requesting data from a network database freeze up the entire machine (or at least the whole TCP/IP stack)? And nothing frustrates me more than Outlook. When you're typing an email message and Outlook "requests data from server" in the background, freezes your input into the current window. Damn, guys.. do that crap in a background thread and stop interrupting the UI for something not related to what I'm doing at the moment.
The other thing that kills me is the fact that the window is a part of the application and not a part of the desktop. I mean, when something freezes, you can't easily iconize, resize, or do pretty much anything with the window the app is contained in. IMHO, the UNIX window environments did that right - the window is owned by the window manager and tells the application how big it should be or if it got resized, not the other way around.
I use Linux at home, but have to use Windows in the corporate world (and yes, we're sprinting like mad towards a Vista roll-out on 40,000 some odd desktops in '07). I haven't heard if Vista fixes any of my pet peeves, but I'm hoping, at least as far as sanity at work goes, that it does.