The new computer itself is quite nice. A Gigabyte Z86A-D3-B3 motherboard with a nice Intel multi-core i5 CPU, GTX570 Graphics card with 1.2 GB of RAM, 8 GB of main memory, 120 GB solid state drive, Blu-Ray combo drive, a SATA drive hot swap caddy and the other usual bits and pieces. I also went for a 27” monitor. Windows 7 Professional 64 bit as the operating system. I was advised not to go for the i7 due to some hyper-threading issues.
Setting up the computer was not difficult. I loaded Office, Vipre Anti-Virus, SQLServer 2008 R2, AvyDVD and WinRAR. Apart from the normal computer work I do it will be used to backup my HD-DVD collection so having a nice graphics card will help. There is also HDMI out so I can play Blu-ray disks to my TV. I will load in some other software later of course. Note to those installing SQLServer 2008 R2 when the connection request appears use localhost as the target if you did a default setup.
The real work and time came after that as I started to move data files from my hard drives to another to be used as my permanent data drive. It is amazing how much stuff you collect over time. Some of the collection is from older computers. My first data drive is a 1.5 TB unit and there is nearly 1TB of collected information that I have and still need to move before I turn my old computer off.
The sheer time it takes to move lots of data, with lots of small files, from one place to another can take a lot longer than you might expect. Block out a lot of time. As I type this files are still being shuttled around. The biggest job is deciding what to take and what is no longer useful. As a general rule of thumb you do not need any old system files or any of the old system folders.
I must admit that the boot and reboot time when using a SSD as the primary OS and Apps drive is very nice. There are some issues with solid state drives but they will always be faster than the current mechanical alternatives. Make sure you leave 10-20 GB of empty space for temp files, more if you plan to rip a HD video disk.
As usual I will or should not look at a computer pricing catalogue for at least 3 months. My new machine does not have Sandybridge 2 or any other new technology that will magically appear in the next week. One of the great banes of the computer world is that the change and updates are constant and these days fairly rapid. This means that you can be sure a new CPU, less expensive hard drive or even a completely new technology will be announced just after you buy you new computer.
In the latter category enter the latest PCIe 4.0 interconnect specification. In this case the new transfer rate is 16 gigatransfers per second. While this is no surprise it was announced almost immediately after I took delivery of my new computer hence supporting my point above. 16 GT/s was chosen because it is still possible using copper. There were those that suggested that 8 GT/s under PCIe 3.0 is plenty fast for normal humans, ever. These luddites have of course forgotten the first rule of computing, well mine at least, “it is never fast enough.”
The new news for those considering buying a computer is that the latest spec will not hit a computer near you into about 2014 or 2015 so spend away. PCIe 4 will backwards compatible with earlier architectures and can be built using existing technology. The power requirements will be compatible with PCIe 3.0 as well which should keep the Church of Global Warming alarmists happy as well.
Industry News
Electronic Art's Battlefield 3 has been outlawed in Iran to the point where police are arresting shop owners that secretly stock the game. The ban is not that surprising since the latest iteration involves a US invasion of Tehran. Countries ban games all the time, just ask Australia for example that has banned a Mortal Combat game on the PS3, including for imported online sales.
The real story here is that EA issues the following statement "In that Battlefield 3 is not available for purchase in Iran, we can only hope the ban will help prevent pirated copies reaching consumers there." There are two parts to this and once you pick yourself off the floor from laughter they are quite evident. First of all banning a game is guaranteed to promote piracy. In the case of Iran given that shopkeepers were selling them then those who don’t have one in Iran will only be able to get one by piracy. It is a supply and demand issue, no supply with demand means alternative supply channels. The naiveté of the digital providers never ceases to amaze me, you’d think I’d be use to it by now.
If you were to ask a Web developer what media content they go for, the majority would respond Flash, those not of the Apple persuasion at least. It is hard to open a Web site these days and not see at least a small Flash example. With HTML 5, the broader specification not the language, this appears to be changing. Apple and Microsoft are moving to HTML 5 and there is a movement away from Flash.
Flash started in 1993 as SmartSketch. Animation elements soon followed. By May of 1996 Netscape had an API plug-in called FutureSplash Animator that Adobe was not interested in. Microsoft and Disney were early adopters prompting Macromedia to buy FutureWave in December 1996. They changed the name to Macromedia Flash 1.0 soon after. So started the Flash wave with nearly all web users having Flash installed by the end of 2000. Due to speed issues, primarily of the delivery bandwidth, Flash was not popular with all the most, including myself, were quick to click on the Skip the Intro link on home pages.
Flash it appeared was here to stay with Flash apps soon following. The problem for the average developer was the development tools, they were not so friendly and so Flex was born in 2004. This tool allowed the coding of web sites using XML and ActionScript the Flash scripting language. This was also the time where Microsoft was playing for Web dominance and brought out XAML and the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). This was also the time where HTML floundered under Internet Explorer, deliberately, and it looked like the Web would become a proprietary platform.
Video Flash was also popular and was introduced in 2002 with Flash 6. At the time it was the most reliable alternative and was the reason for the early success of YouTube that arrived in Feb 2005. Adobe bought Flash with the purchase of Macromedia at the end of 2005 and immediately began to incorporate it in moat of the development tools. These days you can embed Flash in a PDF for example. The cloud-based Acrobat.com features a Flash-driven online word processor, spreadsheet and presentation editor.
By 2005 Flash was king. With HTML stalling it filled in many gaps in issuing technologies. Still bent on world dominance Microsoft introduced Silverlight in Mar 2006. OK to be technically correct they introduced WPF/Everywhere, a cross-platform and browser-hosted WPF that was renamed Silverlight. This prodded Adobe to update Flash to HD and by December 2007 had full 3D support and other nice features. With Adobe AIR and the 2008 Open Screen Project Silverlight faded into computer history.
This month however it all changed. Adobe announced that they were no longer developing on Flash for mobile devices, that they were moving to HTML 5, and were cutting back on the LiveCycle platform. Why?
Mobile Flash was effectively killed off by Steve Jobs and the Apple iOS that will not support it. This had an impact on mobile advertising, fine as Flash on the PC but without a universal platform for the mobile market. Another reason is that HTML finally started to get going again after 2005. The standards bodies woke up from their self induced sleep, browser makers have also pushed the graphics capabilities forward using tools like those from the WebKit project. All in all Flash is becoming less relevant particularly because Gen Y is the mobile generation.
So is this the end of Flash? No, not really because there are workarounds even for Apple’s iOS e.g. using AIR to compile Flash into a native code format. HTML 5 looks like it will be the future of Enterprise Apps though. As usual time will tell, hence the history lesson above.
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