OT: cosmo, HTML GUi editors, graphics, games, computers, etc. (was Re: More on fP 6.0 features)

[Fairlight]

On Tue, Oct 26, 2004 at 07:56:39PM -0400, Bill Vermillion may or may not have
proven themselves an utter git by pronouncing:
> 
> You just haven't had the pleasure of working with a good
> HTML/web editor/construction tool then.

Apparently.

> For about a year or so I was using Cosmo.  It shipped included
> in the SGI Indys.  But when you pay $7K to $15K for a workstation
> you expect a bit more for your money.  The $15K version we had
> there was capable of real-time video editing and could also read
> and write audio DAT files.
> 
> Not much bloat at all but productivity was truly amazing.

That's a -bit- more than your typical HTML layout package was delivering
when I last looked.  That's an understatement, btw.

> Cosmo was great for quick development and it was excellent for
> bringing in graphics and reszing them as you went.

Sweet.  Almost all the graphics work I need to do though, I've done before
the actual page design, in separate programs.  So that would be of little
use to me, as most of what I did wouldn't rescale--at least the 3D doesn't
usually fare well.  POVray is what I used to use for 3D raytracing (and
probably will again, despite having bought Ray Dream 3D Studio, which is
good--But I just can't peg the camera the way I could on POVray...more
like the difference between free-held and a tripod in "feel"), or Painter
5.5 Web for 2D stuff, lighting, etc.  Photoshop is good, but has always
been overpriced for my needs.  At any rate, 3D raytracing doesn't resize
well.  It gets artifacts and jaggies.  Better off rerendering it smaller,
honestly.  No resizing (not even using a fractal algorithm like they use
on logos to resize them in both directions) will be as good as a newly
rendered raytrace at the proper resolution, IMHO.

I'm of a very small school these days as far a web design goes.  I like
sparse pages with few graphics.  Content is key.  I'm not saying design
doesn't matter.  Quite the opposite.  I'm just saying I don't go for
bogging down a page or site with tonnes of graphics for the hell of it.
99% of the stuff out there is flash and bang that isn't necessary and only
serves to add cost and/or time to site development.  And I'd like to
(virtually) strangle site designers that believe sites that -only- work in
Flash are acceptable.  Maybe that will tone down now that cell phone
browsing is getting better penetration?  I can hope.

I like things neat, orderly, but fairly spartan.  That's a concept on which
few commercial sites seem to have any grasp these days.

> I can beleive that - but for intricate graphics the Cosmo was
> really nice.  And with the MIPS chips [RISC processor] it was fast.
> [You should be able to infer that from the real-time video editing
> I mentioned above].

I don't get it.  I have a Nintendo 64.  The thing was -supposed- to perform
like mad, but it always ran slower than it should.  Every single last
person I've talked to over the years said that it was because the MIPS chip
they used wasn't up to the challenge.  I thought MIPS were really to be
avoided ever since.  Maybe they overtaxed it in some games, but I'm talking
-first- generation games here--and usually you don't start stressing the
console's limitations until about the fourth year and generation of games.

I definitely had gotten the impression that MIPS...well, sucked.  If you
say that's not the case, or that it was possibly misused, I'm perfectly
willing to listen to reason.  I've only had one data point to date.  I just
know that my wife or myself could make that console -crawl- the way we
played Tetrisphere--it would literally slow down by 80% at times.  Maybe
they just picked the wrong MPU for the system that go around...

> Now you can do that on PCs that are running 2-3 GHz - but in those
> days PCs were consdiered fast when they had 200Mhz Pentiums.

Heh...I remember when I got my 486/33.  It was sad--it outperformed the
Unisys 7000/40 that was a considered a super-mini, in almost every way.
I can't remember if it was the 486/33 or 486/120 that I had that
outperformed the NeXT black cubes and slabs with the 68040 (top of the
line), but they did.  Hardware started advancing so fast after that, that
after P166's weren't enough, I stopped PC gaming and moved to consoles
because I couldn't afford to upgrade every other month.  It was a real fast
progression from P200 through 1GHz, it seems to me, from memory.  Every
time I'd check system reqs for a game, the numbers had damn near doubled
for every requirement.

The funny thing about that Unisys 7000--they had bad microcode.  So the
university, having received numerous fixes that...well, didn't, went for a
new Convex C220 eventually.  They had a stipulation in their contract with
the vendor that they wouldn't pay on the machine until it was up for 30
days without crashing.  I don't believe they paid on that machine for at
least a year, from what I heard...quite possibly several.

You know, one almost misses the ambient atmosphere of clean-rooms.  There
was something just...undefinably nifty about them.  Then, quite suddenly,
you could sit and smoke like a chimney in front of a computer and not
really cause it any grief.  Not that I've had a smoke in about 7 years now.
But I kind of miss seeing clean-rooms.  There was something cool about 'em,
complete with raised flooring with miles of cable underneath.  :)

> That was one of the few tools I missed from the SGI's

I suspect SGI's were nice to use for design, multimedia, and the like.  The
only experience I have with them personally is trying to compile things on
them for an acquaintance at a university whose cluster was running IRIX.
Oh, ye gods, I'd rather port to SCO, thanks.  IRIX had to be -the- least
friendly platform for which you could port that I'd seen at that time.  I'm
hard-pressed to recall another experience as bad as that.

But the way they were designed, and the way you've described them before, I
get the distinct idea that the target market was the type that was never
really supposed to get under the UI unless they were writing the
applications -for- the UI.  Wasn't even the fsck graphical?  I seem to
remember you mentioning that a few years back.

I do know that IRIX was rated one of the two worst platforms you could put
on the net unfirewalled.  Funny thing is that one old acquaintance of mine
originally from here in Louisville worked at a competing ISP that had dual
Challenge's for their servers.  I have to wonder about them.  :)

Anyway...some useless trivia and a little banter, sorry.  Been a long day.

mark->
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