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Eero Ahonen <aer### [at] removethis zbxtnetinvalid> wrote:
> Orchid XP v7 wrote:
> >
> > And I find this extremely annoying. But apparently I am entirely alone
> > in this opinion, so...
> Wrong. I share the annoynment.
The solution is rather simple: Just use the old software. What's
stopping you?
--
- Warp
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On Sat, 08 Mar 2008 21:09:08 +0000, Orchid XP v7 wrote:
> Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>
>> He means a *current* Word on a *current* computer is as slow as the old
>> Word on an old computer. Software gets slower at around the same rate
>> as computers get faster.
>
> And I find this extremely annoying. But apparently I am entirely alone
> in this opinion, so...
Nope, that's something that's pissed me off about the computing industry
for many, many years.
If anything, it takes longer now to do things on a computer than it did
10 years ago, because the machines are doing so much more in the OS and
with other apps, everything slows down significantly.
So while the number of transistors on a chip doubles every 'x' amount of
time, the amount of time it takes to actually do a task generally has
increased by a proportional amount.
Some tasks, obviously, this doesn't apply to. Rendering anything in POV-
Ray on a V20 processor was painful - but something I did often in the
early 90's. Now it's nice and fast.
But as tools have gotten more complex, people's ability to use then
effectively has been reduced significantly.
Jim
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On 8 Mar 2008 15:45:50 -0500, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>
> Defining what is the "first computer game ever created" is a bit more
>difficult than one might thing.
The first one I played was a golf game in 1972 the first text game was Kingdom
in about 1975.
Regards
Stephen
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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> If anything, it takes longer now to do things on a computer than it did
> 10 years ago
I believe this to be just a false memory in most cases. Do you have any
concrete examples?
> But as tools have gotten more complex, people's ability to use then
> effectively has been reduced significantly.
Really? I have noticed the exact opposite trend. Just in the Windows
side of the world, for example updating software is easier than ever:
In many cases the software updates itself automatically without you
having to do anything about it. Even if you have to start the updating
manually, it's usually pretty automated.
This update doesn't require all your computer resources, but you can
nowadays actually do something else while it's updating, and you won't
even notice.
If I want to open a gigantic image in basically any software, it takes
but a split second, while over a decade ago it could take a long time.
Making modidications to the image is extremely fast, while over a decade
ago it could take minutes.
Want to edit the image at 1600x1200 resolution to get a larger editing
area? No problem. Over a decade ago you were lucky if you got a 1024x768
resolution, and that at an acceptable speed.
Want to attach the image to an email (yeah, bad thing to do, but it is
something people do)? Kaboom -> Split second and there it is. Not waiting
for tens of seconds for it to do it.
Want to watch some mpeg4-encoded video? It launches almost immediately
and playing it takes something like 20% of your CPU. If you like, you
can do other things while watching the video. Over a decade ago you
couldn't even play that kind of video because the computer was not
powerful enough. Even playing an mp3 could take most of the CPU time.
And let's not talk about 3D modeling software and real-time previews
(just imagine using a software like Poser 15 years ago.)
Video editing? You could just dream of it 15 years ago.
Sound editing? Yes, perfectly possible 15 years ago, if you had the
time to wait. Today, a breeze.
Browsing the internet with a web browser? Fast and efficient nowadays,
sluggish 15 years ago.
Maybe it's just me.
--
- Warp
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Warp wrote:
> That would be a 486, yes. It worked in a 386, but 486 was recommended.
Actually, I'm kind of amused. I realized the files in the boot partition
for my Linux are bigger than you could put on the biggest hard drive
available for the IBM AT.
Then again, I can comfortably fit a memory chip with several orders of
magnitude more storage than the IBM AT could handle up my nose.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
"That's pretty. Where's that?"
"It's the Age of Channelwood."
"We should go there on vacation some time."
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> > That would be a 486, yes. It worked in a 386, but 486 was recommended.
> Actually, I'm kind of amused. I realized the files in the boot partition
> for my Linux are bigger than you could put on the biggest hard drive
> available for the IBM AT.
I'm not exactly sure what you are trying to say.
(Are you expecting linux to do the same things it's doing now but only
use a tiny amount of disk space? How do you expect it to do that miracle?)
--
- Warp
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Warp escribió:
> Really? I have noticed the exact opposite trend. Just in the Windows
> side of the world, for example updating software is easier than ever:
> In many cases the software updates itself automatically without you
> having to do anything about it. Even if you have to start the updating
> manually, it's usually pretty automated.
Yep, updates without you even noticing, then annoys you to death to
reboot. With a countdown. Want to reboot now, or want me to annoy you
again in 10 minutes? If you don't click anything in 5 minutes, I'll
reboot anyway.
The only thing that popup is missing is Clippy.
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Warp escribió:
> Not true. Software *does more* at the same rate as computing power
> allows it.
But if you want to do the same simple thing you did before (ie. you
don't want it to "do more") with modern software, it's still slower.
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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>>> That would be a 486, yes. It worked in a 386, but 486 was recommended.
>
>> Actually, I'm kind of amused. I realized the files in the boot partition
>> for my Linux are bigger than you could put on the biggest hard drive
>> available for the IBM AT.
>
> I'm not exactly sure what you are trying to say.
Nothing except that I'm amazed at how fast disk sizes grow. It wasn't a
cut on Linux. I just don't have any idea how big the "boot partition"
on a Windows machine would need to be. (Unless you only count NTLDR et
al.) I was merely making an observation.
People complain about "software bloat", and it always seemed like a
silly complaint. I have a five-year-old machine, and I can't even buy a
disk drive as small as twice as big as what's in there now.
It used to be 32 meg was as huge as it got on a desktop machine. Now
that won't even be enough RAM to boot a modern desktop OS, let alone a
enough disk space.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
"That's pretty. Where's that?"
"It's the Age of Channelwood."
"We should go there on vacation some time."
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message de news: 47d31bb8$1@news.povray.org...
>> Not true. Software *does more* at the same rate as computing power
>> allows it.
>
> But if you want to do the same simple thing you did before (ie. you don't
> want it to "do more") with modern software, it's still slower.
Like Warp, I'd like to see hard data about that. I've been using computers
for engineering and office work since 1983 (I even punched cards, just to
show you how old I am) and the "modern software is bloated" meme goes
completely contrary to my experience. If anything, I keep being amazed at
the things I'm able to do now, particularly when I look at my archives and
at the things I did back then that seemed to me, at the time, difficult and
slow. I mean, lots of the stuff that people take for granted nowadays, like
printing stuff, could be just painful then.
And I *** have *** metrics: for instance, I've been running on a regular
basis a large and complex set of calculations and queries from a big
database that I've been developing since 1989 (one year before you were
born!). When I started, these processes took one entire day (often I let it
run during the week-end). Sometimes I realised that I had done a mistake so
I had to rerun it (or parts of it). Now this set of processes, expanded to
much more complex ones, runs in less than two hours, even though the
database is 10 times larger. In fact, I gradually increased the complexity
of the queries over the years to take advantage of speed, RAM, disc space
and software abilities. And that's just an example: most of the stuff I do
routinely now would have been extremely difficult 10 years ago, and pure
science-fiction (on a desktop at least) 20 years ago.
G.
--
**********************
http://www.oyonale.com
**********************
- Graphic experiments
- POV-Ray, Cinema 4D and Poser computer art
- Posters
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