The Best Way of Doing Things: Accelerated Graphics in Browsers and Other GUIs

Quite a while back, I wanted to write an article called "The Best Way of Doing Things". As this is a huge topic, I've decided to break it down into specific things.

Some summery first. I think my idea of this concept has changed a bit from when I first came up with it, but it is roughly the following. There are often several different ways to do something, with one being the clear winner. I am not talking about a few different ways that come up close or are a clear tradeoff, but something that is clearly better. Specifically, it's when the "Best" way is not only superior, but easy / natural to do and has little cost (personal, monetary or whatever), and the other way is clearly inferior.

As an opening example, I'll talk about hardware acceleration for GUIs. Firefox just released version 4, which has this feature. Also, Windows has had this in the form of Aero for some time.

Maybe a decade ago, I probably leaned more in the direction of "what a bunch of overkill BS". But today, that's not the case. A decent computer has more than enough resources to handle this, and those that don't won't be any worse off. Just set it up so that it isn't required / can be turned off. If the computer can do it, why not support it?

I believe that the acceleration makes things, specifically animation and scaling, look a whole lot better. Many people scoffed at Aero, proclaiming it to be pointless. Do you REALLY need your moving window animations to look all slicklike? No, not at all. But it looks a whole lot better when they do. Its the reason fancy smartphones look so slick - when you scroll, you get a perfect, smooth sliding action. That's available on the desktop now. The code is there, the hardware is there, you gain nothing by disabling it. By having it on, there is no *real* advantage, but it looks better.

One of the reasons I might have turned my nose up at this in the past is that I can just imagine MS putting more pointless flashy animations in, and stupid Bob inspired "helpers". Making it look either cutesy, gaudy, or a combination. But they actually toned it down and made it look more professional. This is probably why a lot of people were put off by the idea, they thought it would be a pointless thing that makes for a smoother jumping dog animation when you search. However, you don't see anyone making similar rejections when they see, or better, play with, a fancy smartphone.

Deficit

The deficit in the US is out of control. Not just a little, semi uncomfortable "heh wow that's alot" amount. We are on the fast track to bankruptcy. If this doesn't change, I sincerely believe the USA will cease to exist in the next 20 years.

Every year, besides a few years of the Clinton era, we have outspent what we have taken in. Think about this. Is this sustainable? Is it possible to do this every year and not eventually run into problems?

Every year that this comes up, I think that overall, congress and the citizenry get convinced that deficit spending is something that sounds bad on paper, but is a necessary evil to get important things done. This is really coming to a head. It is SOMETHING YOU CAN'T DO FOREVER.

As bad as the debt has built up to be in the past, the last few years under obama have stepped the defect game up. I was listening to talk radio today, and heard something interesting that I was unable to find online (I'll post it if I do). Basically, the dude took several EXPENSIVE government expenditures of the past, corrected for inflation, and added them on up. I do not remember all of what he added -- here are the ones that stuck. These are the ones I remember with the approximate costs (also as I remember them):
The projects with costs, corrected for inflation, were approximately the following:
Manhattan Project: $180B (4 years)
Korean War: $550B (3-4 years)
Vietnam: $650B (5 years?)
NASA (everything they have ever done): $850B (40 years)
Iraq: $500B (?) (~8 years)
New Deal: ~$500B (8 years?)
Again, going off memory here. I think these are reasonable ballpark, and a few others were mentioned.
But the total: 3.2 Trillion. A big number for some of our biggest expenditures in history, some of the most well known *expensive* things we have done. And remember, this is corrected for inflation and many are over the course of many years. The New Deal was about a decade, and NASA was 4 decades.
Since taking office (so, you know, like 2+ years), the government under obama has gone over budget by something like $3.4 trillion. Let that sink in, and tell me we aren't in deep shit.