Of course there are things that my old SPARCstation wouldn't be
able to do, and those are two good examples. They also happen to be
things that weren't on my list, and things that I've NEVER done, on
any computer, and don't see any desire to. I view HD movies on my A/
V system in my living room, and I've never had a need to encode my
own video.
Please read my list.
-Dave
On Feb 9, 2010, at 6:10 PM, geoffrey oltmans wrote:
You don't have any problems viewing HD movies on
your 40MHz SPARC?
How about encoding video, how long does that take?
________________________________
From: Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com>
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tue, February 9, 2010 5:06:30 PM
Subject: Re: Algol vs Fortran was RE: VHDL vs Verilog
Yes, the same things. Here, quoted from the message that you
trimmed:
"Playing music, playing video files, telnetting, sshing, editing,
compiling, browsing the web, etc etc etc."
I'll add "viewing PDF files and generating documentation" since
they came to mind since I sent that. About the only thing I do on
my system now that I didn't back then was run CPU emulators and
edit pictures.
Yes, the GUI is prettier, and it supports drag-and-drop (which I
almost never use), but other than that, there's not much
difference. The OS *supports* the apps. I spend most of my time
in the apps.
-Dave
On Feb 9, 2010, at 6:00 PM, geoffrey oltmans wrote:
The same things? Doubtful. How fancy a GUI does
your SPARCstation
run compared to your more modern PPC?
________________________________
From: Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com>
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tue, February 9, 2010 4:46:33 PM
Subject: Re: Algol vs Fortran was RE: VHDL vs Verilog
Feelings? No, experience. Big difference. Experience with and
knowledge of the past. There is NO RATIONAL REASON why a GUI-
based OS should need more than a billion bytes of memory and a
billion-plus clock cycles per second just to boot. You and I (and
many others on this list) have plenty of examples of machines that
do the same thing with a tiny fraction of those resources.
Windows, OS X, and Linux (but only with Gnome or KDE) are fat,
bloated, slow, lumbering pigs, and it's due to sloppy programming
and misapplication of tools. That is my assertion. My proof is
that I use my dual 1.8GHz PPC with 4GB of RAM for the EXACT SAME
STUFF every day that I used my 40MHz SPARC with 32MB of RAM to do
every day, and I bump up against the performance limitations of
both to essentially the same degree.
--Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL