Understood. However, I also understand that everyday, people are told by conglomerates that their systems are incapable, and need to be 'upgraded' or 'replaced'. I understand that they are only doing their part to ensure that new technologies are accepted, and therefore, lower priced in the future. However, the truth is, unless you want to agree that your first computer, the computer you own today, and the computer you will own 30 years from now are ALL CRAP, then you're going to have to accept that your first computer was GREAT (for it's time), your modern computer is GREAT (for it's time), and the computer you will own 30 years from now will also be GREAT (for it's time).
What I would like people to realize, is that 'it's time' spans a greater amount of time than people think. If you buy a Commodore64 off of Ebay, you'll find that, YES, There are Commodores out there that still work. They will still run those old games (assuming the floppies or tapes aren't too awfully corrupted). And they will also run "Demos", which are programs that make the seemingly impossible *possible*, and you can get such demos from POUET.NET. Likewise, the computer you will own 30 years from now _might_ be capable of playing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.kkreiger without lag. Take a minute to read over http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-waste ... And then tell me that it's not a problem. If you plug an ISA 10BASE-T ethernet card into your 386, what's to stop it from communicating over IPX or TCP with your 10/100 network? Thankfully, people use VirtualPCs so much that such DOS network drivers have remained someone mainstream, or at least, they haven't faded into obscurity, and can be recovered with a quick google. To dispel another urban legend; Adding more RAM to your computer won't always make it faster. If you have a low amount, perhaps 16mb, then maybe you'll notice a significant increase in speed if you're trying to use Photoshop to draw pictures, or Firefox to browse the internet. Beyond that, the problem lies with the Operating System, and Memory Management. What Microsoft fails to tell you is that your Virtual Memory does most of the fragmentation and slowdown of your system. (MyComputer> Properties> Advanced> Performance> Settings> Advanced> VirtualMemory> Change) If you click 'Custom' and set the values to the same number (512 works for me) then fragmentation all but stops (assuming you only download or install one file at a time), and if you actually HAVE more than 512 MB RAM, you can turn off your paging file entirely, and things will likely speed up dramatically. In fact, if you use an operating system like BeOS, where they got the Virtual Memory Management right, the first time, you won't have to worry about such things at all, as they're all done for you, by smart programmers. Try BeOS or Haiku out sometime. On that old dusty 100 Mhz machine that you stashed away in your closet for a rainy day... All I'm saying is; If we're going to support such downscaled features on cellphones, it would be great if we didn't limit those features from the x86-release, if people really want to use them. Not everyone has a 2ghz machine. But everyone should be invited to play/interact/communicate with VOS, whether or not they have a cellphone. Right? -Steve On 1/24/07, Peter Amstutz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I'm less concerned about scaling down to old hardware platforms, since > there's a reason why that hardware was replaced to begin with. However, > scaling down to embedded and mobile devices is important. I think that > bandwidth requirements are probably the biggest restriction on what a > mobile device can do, embedded CPUs are getting faster and memory is > getting bigger, but in terms of data most cellular connections are like > sipping through a straw. > > The critical ability here is to negotiate with the server to determine > bandwidth requirements, and be able to streamline the exchange so that > the lightweight client can directly access the data it wants and not > have to wade through kilobytes and megabytes of useless crap. For > example, the problem cell phones suck at viewing web pages is partly > because they might have to download 50k of HTML before it can boil it > down to a format suitable for the small screen. _______________________________________________ vos-d mailing list vos-d@interreality.org http://www.interreality.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/vos-d
