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Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

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Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#331

Post by Multicomp »

geogra4 wrote: post #283
rayiner wrote: post #263

Computers jumped the shark in 1998. I remember dual-booting NT4 and BeOS on a PII 300 MHz with 64MB of RAM. Connected to a 256 kbps SDSL modem, it’s the best computing experience I’ve ever had. You could do everything you can on a modern machine. Indeed, even more, because the modern versions of software like OneNote and Word are neutered compared to the ‘97 versions. It feels like all of this effort has been spent m…

Yes, that late 90s/early 2000s nirvana. I could perfectly browse the web and write documents and send emails on a PowerMac G3 without too much fuss. Only things like photo/video/audio manipulation were really lacking from machines at the time compared to today.

I don't know if it's the baby duck syndrome, rose tinted glasses, or 'back-in-my-day-ism', but I agree with you wholeheartedly.

Computing for me peaked in about 2002-2005 (I'm young, sorry), coasted okay until about 2010, then began gaining weight until today where I have a sense that computing latency is like a type 2 diabetic man having his midlife crisis. Either he loses some weight, or he has a heart attack and dies.

I agree on your point re: number crunching for rendering videos, manipulating photos, audio DSP etc.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#332

Post by jdofaz »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #133
wolfgke wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The central reason is that modern video codecs use I-frames and P-frames (sometimes also B-frames; even though as far as I am aware, these are not used for TV broadcasts); see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Video_compression... I-frames are only sent, say, once or twice a second. When a channel is switched, the TV has to wait for the next I-frame, since P-frames (and B-frames) only encode the difference t…

I remember when a family member first got satellite - the tuner would change instantly, and the show would "pepper in" over a second or so until the next full frame. There's no technical reason the change can't be displayed immediately - it might not be pretty, but whether that's preferable is subjective.

If my memory is correct that was the first directv/ussb system. I think I remember reading they were using something like a pre-finalized version of mpeg2.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#333

Post by efdee »

mtm7 wrote: post #315

Related: I was bored last Sunday, so I decided to install Sublime Text. I'm normally a VS Code user, but VS Code is built on Electron and it felt a little sluggish for certain files, so I wanted to give something else a try. I've been using Sublime all week and it feels like an engineering masterpiece. Everything is instantly responsive. It jumps between files without skipping a beat. My battery lasts longer. (I don'…

Weird to compare an IDE and a text editor, though.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#334

Post by coldtea »

mypalmike wrote: post #250
coldtea wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Everything was blindingly fast in the 80s!" - Yes you fuckwad, it was the 80s and the vast majority of content was local to your machine, or your machine was really just a terminal wired to a nearby mainframe. Do I need to link the "latencies every programmer should know?" article yet again? No, fuckwad, that's not it. Totally local UIs are much slower too, as often are local actions of remote UIs (e.g. typing, be…

This is a discussion about the perception of computer speeds. Why be uncivil?

I didn't intent to begin with.

Check the PS, it's meant to mirror the parent's tone (and exact words) as an anti-example.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#335

Post by maemilius »

stevelosh wrote: post #299
sangnoir wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The process you WANT: pick your start and end. now start searching for places in between. Your start and end are saved. When you find someplace interesting, add it to your list. Keep doing that, keep searching and adding Am I missing something - this use-case is already supported! You choose start & endpoints, then your start the trip (which "saves" them) - you can now search and add as many waypoints as you desire

I just recorded a two minute video me of me trying to do this. Maybe it will help you understand why people like Gravis (and myself) are frustrated. The video is at http://paste.stevelosh.com/1983.webm but it's a little blurry, so I'll narrate it. (There's a less blurry mkv at http://paste.stevelosh.com/1983.mkv for those that want it.) I go to `maps.google.com`. The page loads a search box, with my cursor focused in…

You know, the back button works in Google Maps and does exactly what you might think it does: take you back to the state you were just in.

After you accidentally lost your route, you could have just used a built in feature of your browser to get yourself back to where you were.

EDIT: The rest of your post was entirely accurate. Google Maps is a slow, stuttery mess on literally every platform I've ever used it on recently. At least the back button works...

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#336

Post by winfred »

diamondo25 wrote: post #304
the8472 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporate windows installations are unnecessarily slow because they run antivirus and all kinds of domain membership stuff in the boot and logon path. A clean install with fast boot and without that gunk takes seconds. A headless linux can come up in seconds (UEFI fast boot + EFI stub) or even less than a second if you're in a VM and don't have to deal with the firmware startup. Booting to a lightweight window manage…

If your host machine is a real server (eg poweredge), itll do a selftest. This already takes tens of seconds. If you want fast bootup times, you need to be the BIOS. The example in the top post is stuff that either loads data off a flash chip (like a bios works) or a disk (requires some bootstrapping).

Newer Dells like the R640 take minutes to boot, not seconds.

Here's a random video of a guy booting a R740, it takes 1:51 just to get into the bios: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSJNTdKdTJI

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#337

Post by bmn__ »

sudosysgen wrote: post #217
the8472 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporate windows installations are unnecessarily slow because they run antivirus and all kinds of domain membership stuff in the boot and logon path. A clean install with fast boot and without that gunk takes seconds. A headless linux can come up in seconds (UEFI fast boot + EFI stub) or even less than a second if you're in a VM and don't have to deal with the firmware startup. Booting to a lightweight window manage…

I'm actually relatively confident that you could get it down to 8-9 seconds to the basic X environment with an NVMe SSD and maybe even less if you were to cache some application states.

Things are possible if one puts one's mind to it.

five seconds, year 2008: https://lwn.net/Articles/299483/

two seconds, year 2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUUtZjd6UA4&t=17

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#338

Post by arpa »

glitchc wrote: post #307
arpa wrote: post #199

So you hate the mouse. Mouse is an benevolent dictator. It tries to help. You want to know who Stalin is? Fucking touchscreens. You're blind? Fuck you. You have Parkinsons? Off to the death camp you go. You want to type in your pocket while paying zero attention to the poison screen which is taken up by half by an idiotic keyboard on which you will continuously mistype and be moronically autocorrected to a point wher…

Do you need a hug?

Actually, honestly, yes.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#339

Post by marcosdumay »

duxup wrote: post #49
wolco wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should have turned images off.

I wonder if there was a "images are ruining the internet" panic like the the modern day "Look my blog is just html, why can't everything be that way?" rants?

The web, not the internet.

Yes, there was. For email too.

Re: Almost everything on computers is perceptually slower than it was in 1983 (2017)

#340

Post by pmarin »

efdee wrote: post #333
mtm7 wrote: post #315

Related: I was bored last Sunday, so I decided to install Sublime Text. I'm normally a VS Code user, but VS Code is built on Electron and it felt a little sluggish for certain files, so I wanted to give something else a try. I've been using Sublime all week and it feels like an engineering masterpiece. Everything is instantly responsive. It jumps between files without skipping a beat. My battery lasts longer. (I don'…

Weird to compare an IDE and a text editor, though.

VS CODE [1] is a text editor. Visual Studio [2] is the IDE.

[1] https://code.visualstudio.com/

[2] https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/

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