[EricF]

I saw the.net announcement today too. It's going hand-in-hand with MS releasing the full Visual Studio package as a "freemium" package -- all VS features, not just the Express subset, with online/subscription tie-ins to come. Seems to be in line with Microsoft's push toward cloud and subscription services. Interesting for the future.

[atsf37l]

I hate that they are taking that direction. Just one more loss of control to a 'central power'.


Oooh, where'd that come from? :bigboss: ;)

[SVRy_Steve]

Cloud computing will just be wonderful with a limited and slow connection ;) :bigboss:

Adobe has gone that way with a rental model of Photoshop. CS5 will have to do for the next few years. I refuse to participate in a monthly rental plan.

Steve

[Mike B]

Kind of sideways to the discussion, I saw this today: https://sprint.ly/bl...ers-arent-slow/

Led me to wonder how many features ORTS really still needs for 1.0, and how much scope creep is happening. I'm sure that's a frequent discussion among the team itself. Perhaps the article might trigger a few more thoughts. Personally, I'm not sure ANY new features need to be undertaken for 1.0 - it's so close to MSTS compatible (for play, not for development of course) that fixing the features already there seems all that's needed - unless there's a different definition for 1.0 than just "MSTS done right"? Ponderings... :)

[Mike B]

SVRy_Steve, on 12 November 2014 - 06:12 PM, said:

Cloud computing will just be wonderful with a limited and slow connection :furious: :)

Adobe has gone that way with a rental model of Photoshop. CS5 will have to do for the next few years. I refuse to participate in a monthly rental plan.

Steve

Curmudgeonly :oldstry: I wonder how far "cloud" computing is from the timesharing systems I worked with early on. In a properly-run system, many "cloud" concepts were already there: virtual machines, ability to run arbitrary operating systems, availability of multiple system and application development languages, (terminal, at the time) display support libraries, (late in the period) client-server support to distribute processing between front and back ends, and sometimes (depended on the company and application) transparent distribution of work around a geographically dispersed set of data centers. Yes, I'm talking about systems like General Electric (GEISCO) in the mid-late 1970s and the Teale Data Center/Caltrans network in California in the 1980s-90s. Oh yes: mainframe software not developed in-house was ALWAYS rented, not purchased.

Sure, many things have improved. We don't use 300 bps modems and teletype or Decwriter terminals any more (or Teleray CRT terminals that we had to write our own termcap package for). Certainly, the displays have changed (http/javascript, big images, and windows/mouse/keyboard and/or touch now; line-by-line text then), and computers now are unbelievably (for those times) fast and capable. But we're still using many of the basic concepts that good programmers of the time did: separate interface from back end; use available libraries and databases if feasible rather than rolling our own; plan for asynchronous operations, structure, etc. Mainly, it's gotten more complicated because modern computers can do so much more, so we can try to take advantage of that (like ORTS, which wouldn't have been even thinkable 15-20 years ago). Most of us have on our desks or laps what would have been a supercomputer even in the 1990s.

Cheers! :dance3:

[Lindsayts]

Mike B, on 21 November 2014 - 05:07 PM, said:

Kind of sideways to the discussion, I saw this today: https://sprint.ly/bl...ers-arent-slow/

Led me to wonder how many features ORTS really still needs for 1.0, and how much scope creep is happening. I'm sure that's a frequent discussion among the team itself. Perhaps the article might trigger a few more thoughts. Personally, I'm not sure ANY new features need to be undertaken for 1.0 - it's so close to MSTS compatible (for play, not for development of course) that fixing the features already there seems all that's needed - unless there's a different definition for 1.0 than just "MSTS done right"? Ponderings... :)

Openrails is open source, Open source developers are not following the same rules as a dedicated paid team. Each developer is working on his own little section of the sim that he thinks should be the best. Open source projects are notorious for releasing late is each individual developer wish's for his section to work as perfectly as possible and such a developer will usually keep adding improvements. Important note THIS MEANS YOU...... The Open rail developers are all volunteers who have family and life responibilities to look after but these people are spending a significant percentage of time working on a program. Such people as volunteers usually cannot be ordered about. As users we must understand this and go with it.
While some of the above may appear negative look at the progress that has been and is being made, this is quite typical of an active open source project, the open rail developers are doing very well.

We will get v1.0 when all developers think its ready and it WILL be worth waiting for, patience is required. After all we can all get access to the latest version the developers are working on, an open source project can ask for little else.

Note: I personally think we past OR v1.0 quite some time back, we are up to at least v1.5 and well on the way to v2.0, going by the future planning docs.

Lindsay

[Lindsayts]

Mike B, on 21 November 2014 - 05:24 PM, said:

Curmudgeonly :) I wonder how far "cloud" computing is from the timesharing systems I worked with early on. In a properly-run system, many "cloud" concepts were already there: virtual machines, ability to run arbitrary operating systems, availability of multiple system and application development languages, (terminal, at the time) display support libraries, (late in the period) client-server support to distribute processing between front and back ends, and sometimes (depended on the company and application) transparent distribution of work around a geographically dispersed set of data centers. Yes, I'm talking about systems like General Electric (GEISCO) in the mid-late 1970s and the Teale Data Center/Caltrans network in California in the 1980s-90s. Oh yes: mainframe software not developed in-house was ALWAYS rented, not purchased.

Sure, many things have improved. We don't use 300 bps modems and teletype or Decwriter terminals any more (or Teleray CRT terminals that we had to write our own termcap package for). Certainly, the displays have changed (http/javascript, big images, and windows/mouse/keyboard and/or touch now; line-by-line text then), and computers now are unbelievably (for those times) fast and capable. But we're still using many of the basic concepts that good programmers of the time did: separate interface from back end; use available libraries and databases if feasible rather than rolling our own; plan for asynchronous operations, structure, etc. Mainly, it's gotten more complicated because modern computers can do so much more, so we can try to take advantage of that (like ORTS, which wouldn't have been even thinkable 15-20 years ago). Most of us have on our desks or laps what would have been a supercomputer even in the 1990s.

Cheers! :furious:

A thing that MUST be kept in mind here is that there is a reasonable percentage of the population that do NOT have decent internet access and simply CANNOT use web apps. One of the problems being is the cost of providing decent support to rural communities is VERY expensive as compared town and cities. I live 5 kilometres from a small town (around a population of 300), it has both ADSL and dedicated radio broadband neither of these are accessable from my location so I am stuck with VERY expensive 3G mobile broadband or a dial up line. Neith of these is suitable for a lot of on line activities.

Lindsay

[SVRy_Steve]

Lindsay,

Sounds just like my situation, 3G or satellite are my choices, 6Gb a month costs about $53. I have a very difficult time staying within those limits. If I go over and it costs $.05/Mb :ireful2: :wallbash: :jawdrop2: :sign_oops:

No videos, even short small youtube stuff, no big pictures and very limited time online can be quite frustrating! I download the latest build on the last day of the monthly cycle if I have enough bandwidth left. Otherwise, it's off to the local library computer for anything else.

Steve

[Lindsayts]

SVRy_Steve, on 22 November 2014 - 04:31 AM, said:

Lindsay,

Sounds just like my situation, 3G or satellite are my choices, 6Gb a month costs about $53. I have a very difficult time staying within those limits. If I go over and it costs $.05/Mb :ireful2: :wallbash: :jawdrop2: :sign_oops:

No videos, even short small youtube stuff, no big pictures and very limited time online can be quite frustrating! I download the latest build on the last day of the monthly cycle if I have enough bandwidth left. Otherwise, it's off to the local library computer for anything else.

Steve

Yes it does, At the moment for me its $99 Australian for 8gb (prepaid time unlimited) but I would normall get rid of it withing 2 months no problems. Any large downloads I do at an iternet cafe in my local large town 35 kilometres away. THey have 3 hours for $10 and one can easily get 4 to 5 gig an hour, a glimps of how most people see the net.

I am not really moanong, I choose to live where I live and are more than willing to put up with a lot of minor inconviences for the real quite life, nearest neibhors around 1.5 kilometes away. It does though REALLY annoy one sometimes when nearly everybody including the government assumes everyone has high speed access and therefore somehow poor access is the users fault

THe Australian governement does have a program called the NBN (National Badband Network) to bring high speed internt access to 95% or so of the population, Guess who is going to miss out on this (not that it realy bothers me, most net activities I do not do).

Posts like this are required to at least to remind some that there are net uses out there who for reasons outside there control do not have good net access.

Lindsay

[Mike B]

Lindsayts, on 22 November 2014 - 11:06 AM, said:

Yes it does, At the moment for me its $99 Australian for 8gb (prepaid time unlimited) but I would normall get rid of it withing 2 months no problems. Any large downloads I do at an iternet cafe in my local large town 35 kilometres away. THey have 3 hours for $10 and one can easily get 4 to 5 gig an hour, a glimps of how most people see the net.

I am not really moanong, I choose to live where I live and are more than willing to put up with a lot of minor inconviences for the real quite life, nearest neibhors around 1.5 kilometes away. It does though REALLY annoy one sometimes when nearly everybody including the government assumes everyone has high speed access and therefore somehow poor access is the users fault

THe Australian governement does have a program called the NBN (National Badband Network) to bring high speed internt access to 95% or so of the population, Guess who is going to miss out on this (not that it realy bothers me, most net activities I do not do).

Posts like this are required to at least to remind some that there are net uses out there who for reasons outside there control do not have good net access.

Lindsay

You might be surprised to find that much of the U.S. doesn't have especially great broadband service, either, at least compared to major cities in Europe, or Japan or Korea. And since most of us have a choice of only phone or cable as a provider (if we have a choice at all - many areas have only one broadband internet provider), the cost is often prohibitive (over $100/month US for good speed is common, plus phone if you use landline, and with TV ... $200+ "bundles" are almost universal now). Most urban and suburban areas have that, but even if you have both phone and cable available they don't compete on price. In rural areas, even with a fair population, there's often no wired internet service - so back to 3G or dial-up or, occasionally, some kind of mesh-network wifi.

If you live on a relatively fixed income like me, those packages are unaffordable - so I get 3mbps ADSL (barely meets the FCC "broadband" definition) and phone (need it for fax, mainly) for after-promotion price of about $100/month US (cable is faster, but costs more and the company controlling it is truly evil) and looking for a way to trim it (probably cutting phone to a minimum service since we use cell phone for most things). Antenna in the attic covers TV needs. At that speed, I'm not downloading movies or streaming HDTV from the internet or living on Facebook (ET maybe, but not Facebook), but it's good enough to download ORTS and MSTS products that don't have huge files (200 MB takes 90 minutes or so, with interruptions common, but usually works). I'm certainly not going to use Photoshop on-line (and don't need to - have alternatives that run well on my local computer). Yes, it's not dial-up, but even "broadband" at those speeds is becoming an anachronism that many write off as irrelevant. I guess those of us who can't or won't "keep up" are anachronisms... :sign_oops: