Fatware

[wallace]

The problem with compressing media is that compression techniques are getting really complicated. I have no idea how the AAC format works, if I did I would use it in all my games. Jpegs are alright, but depending on what quality you use they can come out pretty bad. There hasn't been any real development in still image compression in a long time. How does H.264 compression work? Why can't that compression work for still images.

[LooseCaboose]

I've never had to use virtual memory

Err, if you are using a modern operating system (Windows, OS X, Linux, etc) then you are always using virtual memory, you cant address physical memory directly. The operating system takes care of all the dirty work for you like swapping and paging.

My beef is with: Apple Pages, MS Office

Don't know about Apple Pages but Office 2003 is only 228mb for the standard edition which includes: Word, Excel, Outlook and Powerpoint. All of the programs are very powerful, come with full documentation and are programmable using VB for applications. The more recent versions of Office also support groupware and connectivity. For example one of my supervisors has Outlooks calendar system synchronised with his cellphone. Like na_th_an said, you don't just get all this stuff for free.

and the worse one: .NET!

Yeah downloading 22.4mb in this day and age is just criminal ;-). If you mean the .NET SDK, then of course its big. It comes with hundreds of precompiled classes in the class libraries, full documentation, code samples, etc.

[DrV]

I agree that bloatware is bad, but there is still hope - take, for example, µTorrent. It's only a couple hundred kilobytes, yet it is a full-featured BitTorrent client. It's fast, responsive, and lightweight in RAM usage. It was written in C++. Contrast this with other clients, like Azureus (Java) or the official BitTorrent client (Python). This is not an attack on those languages; rather, I am trying to point out that it is still possible to write a modern application in a modern language while controlling bloat. You can have your cake and eat it too if you try hard enough.

[na_th_an]

What LooseCaboose said is just the message you have to understand. Functionality takes resources. Word Perfect 5.1, my main word processor circa 1994-1995 took 3 Mb of hard disk drive, needed 640K of RAM to work, a VGA card with 256K and worked in mega-fast text mode... But I do prefer Microsoft Office 2003 'cause I actually use many of the facilities it provides. I have like 400Gb of hard disk space, 1 Gb of RAM and a fast system overall. I mean, it's not that I have to save every byte of space I have - specially when those bytes are in fact put to good use.

Wallace, as for the image compression algorithms, I completely disagree with you. Compression techniques are getting so complicated 'cause it's needed if you want good compression ratio and good quality. There are new algos as well, only that they are not very accepted. We are still using GIFs when PNGs are better, so...

Video compresion doesn't work well for still images 'cause it is based on delta changes between frames (most of the time), and the fact that our eyes notice way more a change in luminance than in chrominance. That's completely unappliable on a still image, 'cause you can't fool the eye with that.

And virtual memory is a need in a multitasking operating system, de facto. I fail to understand how you managed not to use it using Windows or MacOS. If you do refer to the swap file, you can deactivate it, but that's not a very smart move if you want the system to be working nicely.

I'd advise you to research a bit before forming an opinion based on wrong information

[LooseCaboose]

There hasn't been any real development in still image compression in a long time.

Except for say the DTT/DCT transform compression research being done at my University. A friend of mine did his honours thesis on image compression two years ago and one of the honours students this year is currently furthering his work. Just because you are still using jpegs and pngs doesn't mean that research isn't being done. It takes time for new image formats to be accepted (think png support in Internet Explorer).

[Hard Rock]

Who cares about image compression anyway these days?

All i really want is pngs with 16 bit colour. That would say me 33% per file with minimal impact on the final colour quality.

In any case the really cool image is research is being done on image recognition, like Microsoft's photosynth.

I agree that bloatware is bad, but there is still hope - take, for example, µTorrent. It's only a couple hundred kilobytes, yet it is a full-featured BitTorrent client. It's fast, responsive, and lightweight in RAM usage. It was written in C++. Contrast this with other clients, like Azureus (Java) or the official BitTorrent client (Python). This is not an attack on those languages; rather, I am trying to point out that it is still possible to write a modern application in a modern language while controlling bloat. You can have your cake and eat it too if you try hard enough

C++ a modern langauge?
Um........ Java is pretty much a modern language (it is quite a few years old, but it gets overhauls very often eg 1.5, 1.6). C# is also modern, Ruby is modern, I suppose PHP as well.
C++ is old. C is ancient. Basic is a relic.

So i fail to see your point.

The reason for Azureus being so large has nothing to do with Java anyway. Azureus uses the SWT library to look like windows, and thus it needs to ship with its library. If they used swing they could easily drop the size in half, but then you people would complain that it doesnt look like your other apps.

[wallace]

C++ a modern langauge?
Um........ Java is pretty much a modern language (it is quite a few years old, but it gets overhauls very often eg 1.5, 1.6). C# is also modern, Ruby is modern, I suppose PHP as well.
C++ is old. C is ancient. Basic is a relic

Very few people are using java as a main language. Java is mainly used for plug-ins and such, right? Java can't make programs, it doesn't have a compiler (in most people's definition.) It has to run on it's own virtual machine, you can't make a .app or .exe file with it. C++ isn't that old, I think it was first used extensively to create the neXtSTEP programs.

You may have a huge harddrive, but most laptops don't. I have an external, so I'm not really concerned about space either, but my built-in HD is only 40GB. The problem is that I have 2 operating systems, each only have access to 20GB.

[marzecTM]

Very few people are using java as a main language. Java is mainly used for plug-ins and such, right? Java can't make programs, it doesn't have a compiler (in most people's definition.) It has to run on it's own virtual machine, you can't make a .app or .exe file with it. C++ isn't that old, I think it was first used extensively to create the neXtSTEP programs.

check out the java project section on sourceforge alone. java is pretty popular not only among oss devs but also in the industry ( see ibm etc. ). you can create exe files, there's even native compilers for java. granted those suck ( gjc ). c++ is pretty old compared to other current languages. however i'd rather say a language is modern based on it's features rather than on it's age.

[Hard Rock]

Very few people are using java as a main language. Java is mainly used for plug-ins and such, right? Java can't make programs, it doesn't have a compiler (in most people's definition.) It has to run on it's own virtual machine, you can't make a .app or .exe file with it. C++ isn't that old, I think it was first used extensively to create the neXtSTEP programs.

Java can't make programs? used for plugins? WTF are you talking about?

Java:





I'm sorry, did you say something stupid?


As for your compiler error you can get platform specific compilers for Java so yes you can make an .exe. Some people dont seem to know that. Though its also a given. Not to mention with the JRE you can just run native java apps exactly the same you would run an .exe (Azuerus cough). So why you would make an exe is beyond me... (I suppose code protection, obfuscators can only do so much).

C++ not that old? It's over 20. Yes the "standardization" is fairly recent, but they didnt add anything new, they just agreed how to implement it. the next C++0x will be more recent and have some cool stuff. However it's not out yet.


As for your laptop argument, I only have a laptop. I dont see your point. I also have it partioned for 2 hardrives (one for linux testing). I have plenty of space. Maybe delete your uneeded games and *videos* and you wont have an issue.

[thegrogen]

Original post by Hard Rock's sig
What's better, HTML or variables?

LOL