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Re: NadaNet 3.1 Released
mdj wrote:
On Jun 2, 2:27 pm, "Michael J. Mahon" <mjma...@aol.com> wrote:
I hasten to point out that I don't see any justification (for me)
for anything "higher end" than the Toshiba, whether PC or Mac, so I
may be blind to features that "high-enders" consider wonderful. ;-)
I do like big disks, but I find that $80 will get me a 500GB notebook
SATA/300 drive at Fry's, so I don't expect to pay much for it. ;-)
I see what you mean. As a long time Unix user, I found the Mac
compelling as a laptop since it offered me the best of both worlds -
a high degree of out-of-box Unix compatibility + MS Office and Adobe.
Prior to 2008 I never bothered owning a laptop, preferring my
computing 'tethered', but the 4-5 year lifespan made the cost equation
pretty compelling, even when considering the Mac price difference.
$1500 over 4 years is cheap enough for me, and the machine will
probably have resale value to boot.
I understand that Apple always marks up their hardware by a goodly
factor, and that it supports their R&D--which is a good thing.
But I still resist paying such a premium for essentially comparable
hardware. (I can always just sent Apple a contribution if I want to
support their R&D. ;-)
I'm a bit overdue for a new desktop system (my main machine is still
a 3GHz Pentium 4 ;-), and I lean toward building a quad core machine
in the $700 range, which I expect will hold me for another 5 years.
Likewise. Mine's a little newer (a dual core AMD) but it'll probably
get the rebuild treatment as I want to consolidate desktop computing
to a single host - DVI and USB over ethernet means I can have a 'head'
at my desk, and at the TV for media, and bury the box in the cupboard
with the network kit.
Nice. As someone once said, "Hell is having more than one computer."
;-)
I have five to take care of, counting my wife's, so I can really
appreciate the simplicity of your solution.
So far, network backups and syncs, combined with more procedural
discipline than I enjoy, is keeping me sane (but busy ;-).
Given how many people use computers for just the small list of
utilitarian tasks you mention, it will be interesting to see how
successful the iPad is at capturing that market. It certainly closes
the cost gap, and the "closed + less flexible" perspective can also be
a "simpler + more reliable" perspective. My mother for instance barely
touches her laptop, but is literally drooling over the iPad. Her
eyesight is failing her and the "pinch zoom scroll" touch interface
for reading books is a *huge* drawcard.
I was reading my Kindle on a train recently, and a woman sitting next
to me asked about *exactly* that feature! Enlarged type clearly meets
a real user need.
My prediction is that iPad-alike devices will destroy the market for
cheap generic laptops over time and if Apple capture even 1/4" of that
market, they'll be a lot better positioned than they are now.
Well, my laptop is my "desktop replacement" for months at a time,
including video encoding, so I doubt that an iPad will be more than
an "access device" to more computing horsepower. Still, I'm looking
forward to the next version. (One of "Mahon's Laws" is: Never get
version 1.x or version n.0 of anything. ;-) (I should really credit
Pope: "Be not the first by which the new is tried/nor yet the last
to lay the old aside.")
:-) My setup is similar, except I travel less often at the moment. I
suspect a next generation iPad to breed a few more ARM cores and make
encoding bearable, then power them all off afterward.
I'm ready for that! Until then, I can use the iPad to orchestrate my
growing "server farm" to do the heavy lifting. ;-)
...
If concurrency is implemented by message passing, then queue depth
makes a bottleneck quite obvious.
Absolutely. It's my favourite way of implementing parallelism for
exactly that reason, and it's proven itself over time to be scalable
as long as you find the right intercept point for the queue :-)
It certainly makes it clear where faster or more servers are useful.
Yes, and in professional development being able to scale out
horizontally at the queue points is a boon; boxes are cheaper than
programmers.
And with AppleCrate's, too. ;-)
...
Many developers of interactive tools simply take the brute-force
approach afforded by large memories and fast processors, and just
recompile the whole unit after each edit! It's much trickier to
try to do the least amount of work. ;-)
This is why I still love the Apple II. Even with 1mb of RAM and 4Mhz
of speed in my IIe, it does not permit me to 'cheat' ;-)
I love that, too. Resource-constrained programming doesn't allow for
much sloppiness, or "merely pretty" abstractions that take their toll
in instructions executed.
Especially when you consider most high level languages are "merely
pretty" abstractions ;-)
;-)
...
I generally prefer doing the 10% of the work that gets 90% of the
benefit--like the current File Server. ;-)
In my career, I live and die by the 80/20 rule. I consider 90/10 a
'bonus' for both sides when it happens ;-)
Performance or functionality problems that reveal themselves further
down the road, in the context of a real problem, can then be addressed
with real data to drive the design.
Which is why "premature optimisation is the root of all evil" ;-)
Amen!
-michael
NadaNet and AppleCrate II: parallel computing for Apple II computers!
Home page: http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon
"The wastebasket is our most important design
tool--and it's seriously underused."