7 Nov
2006
7 Nov
'06
3:48 p.m.
In article <45508F8D.4604.11FBBD2 at cclist.sydex.com>,
"Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> writes:
And while it seems to be a rule of thumb that doing
the same task
requires ever-increasing amounts of hardware resources, [...]
I'll dispute that rule of thumb. We are *not* doing the same task we
used to do at all. With increased processing power came increased
expectations. There isn't a single user these days that would put up
with what we called a "user interface" in 1979 -- scrolling text,
interview style.
Step back and think about it for awhile--put yourself
back 20 years
to 1986 and consider what you could have done with a gig of disk
space and 32 megs of RAM.
...and no virtual memory, no GPU, no windowing system, not even 256
color graphics much less 24-bit per-pixel graphics. Hell, in 1986
you'd be lucky to have floating-point in hardware.
So, bloat is everywhere.
The biggest bloat is in expectations, not the hardware or software
designed and built to meet those expectations. Just as it should be.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>