Date   : Tue, 15 Feb 2011 19:36:40
From   : heyrick.beebsoc@... (Rick Murray)
Subject: [BeebSoc] *Compact on ADFS 1.3x

On 15/02/2011 08:41, Rob wrote:

> It's not in memory at all, so doesn't affect anything.

<phew!>


> It's generated by the 6845 automatically

;-)


Reminds me of the VIDC's hardware pointer. It was amusing to show PC owners.

My program did something stupid. Computer crashed.
But the pointer still works.
I trampled all over important stuff, bad memory alloc.
But the pointer still works.

As opposed to:
Oh look, your pointer hiccups when accessing the disc.
Or loading a program.
Or sometimes it just randomly pauses.

God I hated how laggy Windows95 was, compared to RISC OS. Even on a 
processor clocking way faster. I mean, you could feel the power when a 
zip operation completes in a matter of seconds (as opposed to lethargic 
minutes under RISC OS), but the whole interface just seemed slow.

The one that gets me now is that XP has stuff handled by servers (as in 
service, not httpd). So up pops a message on-screen, and just a fraction 
of a second before you've clicked to dismiss the message, after your 
neurons have fired a command for your finger to poke the mouse button, 
you hear "ding!". And you're like "oh crap, was there another message?".

Then you realise it is a near 2GHz processor with loads of memory and an 
operating system that claims to be pretty "with it". Yet while it can 
play DVDs and pull HD video from Matroska files and blat it to the 
screen with subtitles overlaid AND allow you to take random screenshots 
and pump out 5.1 surround sound........... it can't *quite* manage to 
get a notification on screen with its associated "ding!" at the same 
time. Not until it has done it already. ;-)



Best wishes,

Rick.