It is interesting to note, by the way, that cigarettes cost approximately $10 a pack up in Alberta, Canada. That means that a pack-a-day smoker is consuming $300 of cigarettes in a month. That's more than twice what I spend on water, heat, power, cable t.v., and Internet access combined.
You are right, VSS doesn't corrupt itself randomly. However, you forgot to mention one instance under which VSS will corrupt itself. If during a checkin, the client machine crashes, your VSS database will become corrupt. Alternatively, if during a checkin, the client machine is power-cycled, the database will become corrupt.
At one company I worked for, we were supporting roughly twenty developers. The VSS database became corrupt about once a month even after following the other suggestions you list. The admins ended up setting up a backup job to run once an hour because VSS was so unstable.
The next company I worked for used cvs. CVS can be a pain particularly when it comes to renaming files. And we were supporting fewer developers (around ten). However, CVS just worked. We stored binaries in the database. We never touched the CVS server. And it ran without problems for well over two years (cvs was set up before I arrived).
Well, you are probably right. I wanted 802.11g because it offered:
802.11b compatibility
Approximately 5 times faster transfers than 802.11b
For those reasons, I figured it wouldn't be a big deal to buy 802.11g preliminary hardware now as it would at least be 802.11b-compatible and even if it ended up not being compatible with 11g when that finally gets ratified, would still run at that speed in my apartment using my hardware.
Any guesses on whether, when 11g finally is ratified, any company will actually support Linux?
I took a look at the Cisco Aironet 350 pcmcia card and unfortunately, you seem to be incorrect. While it may support Linux, it does NOT support 802.11g, only 802.11b. Bummer about that.
This is a serious question, not a flame. Are you running Linux (and, if so, which kernel) or are you running Windows (and, if so, which version)?
I ask because on MY system, disk access is very slow in Windows XP but very snappy in Linux. In both cases, I have DMA enabled and so I am not quite sure what is going on.
I've been looking for reliable 802.11g hardware for my Linux laptop. I realise 802.11g is still in its preliminary phases but there is a fair amount of hardware out there already.
However, no company I've been able to contact (several emails to sales@wherever simply bounced) has committed to Linux support. The FAQ at http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/FAQ.php shows that no company has yet released Linux drivers as far as he knows and a google search didn't turn up anything promising.
So, is any slashdotter aware of a company that sells 802.11g hardware that works with Linux? Ideally, it should have Windows XP drivers as well but my home computers primarily run Linux these days.
If you fill in the registration using false information, anyone has a right to claim ownership over your domain and there is nothing you can do to prevent it.
I don't buy extended warranties as a rule. On my $500 (Canadian) purchase of a Radeon 9700, the extended warranty would have been something like $60 and it ALREADY COMES WITH A MANUFACTURER'S WARRANTY good for three years.
However, one product I will buy extended warranties on is laptops. However, the price mentioned here is terrible. Dell will sell me a Complete warranty for three years for about $350 Canadian and that DOES cover abuse. Paying more than that (you list $250 U.S.) and not getting covered if I drop my laptop, that's just a scam. I mean, laptops simply don't break often enough to justify that kind of price unless it also covers abuse.
No, I feel actually quite insulted, generally, when offered an extended warranty. Particularly after seeing the complete incompetance of the technicians at Future Shop (the only place here in Canada that routinely offers to sell me the warranties).
I cannot speak for the ReplayTV but the Rio500 didn't hold up anywhere near as well as I had hoped. If I shake my Rio500 a little, it loses an internal connection and reboots. Furthermore, the customer service for the Rio500 is god-awful. I went looking for drivers one day after I reformatted my machine. That day, they had 'temporarily disabled' access to the drivers, not even posting the old ones on their site. They didn't correct this for almost a week, during which my Rio was useless.
Also, there was always a hassle getting the Rio Audio Manager (the _worst_ designed user-interface for managing large collections of MP3s I have ever seen) to reenable the MP3-ripping functionality I should have had. In the end, I went out and bought a copy of another piece of software to rip MP3s and to transfer to the Rio (I forget its name at the moment, it's the popular Windows one).
Still, I suppose I still use my Rio500. I use it to listen to audible.com audio content and it does a great job of that. For my MP3s, though, I have since upgraded to the Creative Nomad Jukebox 3. I cannot get it to hook up to Linux yet but apart from that, it is great.
I ended up providing tech support to pretty much all of my family. And that's fine, it is a skill I have that I am happy to share.
But supporting hardware makes me frustrated. I am a computer programmer at heart and I can't stand working with hardware, though I am good at it.
So I have a strict policy. I will fix at most one hardware problem a day. That's it. If I already did some hardware work on my computer, you are out of luck for the day. You have two hardware problems? Well, pick which one you want fixed.
It works remarkably well. I can keep my sanity when fixing other people's hardware. I don't get angry. I don't spend entire days working on the stuff (because it never takes _that_ long to fix a single problem). And most of my family's hardware problems get resolved quickly.
One thing I've espoused for quite some time is to standardise on a technology, not an implementation. For example, rather than using MS Exchange, standardise on SMTP and IMAP. Rather than standardising on Mozilla, make sure all of your web apps produce valid HTML. This allows you to easily swap out one server package for another if you need to and allows people to choose their own clients (though you could always enforce specific clients for support reasons).
Now, certainly this is not always possible in all cases. There isn't, afaik, a standard for spreadsheet documents for example.
It seems to me that if more companies took this approach, they'd be better off. Email server overloaded? Add an additional server or swap it out for other software that scales better. The end-users don't even need to know.
I'm not quite sure why you should be supporting the lit edu major who can't transfer their powerpoint presentation between their laptop and the computers in the lab. Is that really a service the helpdesk is meant to provide? Sure, if you charge the student for the service I could understand it but otherwise...
I mean, I wouldn't expect the helpdesk to help me install the new video card I bought either...
If the best way to teach how to solve the problem is to use Microsoft products, the university should use Microsoft products.
Of course, 'best' here means a large number of things. Cost. Loss of $2.4 million donation (plus $800K per year). Best tool for the job.
It may be that Microsoft's tools are the 'best' when it comes to solving the specific problem but that viable alternatives exist, in which case the university should look at these alternatives and see if they (and the donation) make up for the promise not to use Microsoft.
I can think of no reason, for example, to require Microsoft software in computing science labs, nor can I think of a reason to require Microsoft software for general-access labs where students can browse the web, do word processing, etc. However, it is very likely that some departments have specific tools already that only work on Windows.
Universities (i.e. locations where you get Bachelor degrees, not sure if they are called that in the U.S.) do not exist to teach you specific tools. If you want to learn MS Word or Visual Studio, you should take a local adult education class or take some courses at your tech school. These things shouldn't be taught at a university.
Now, before everyone gets all huffy, I'm not saying a university must not have Microsoft tools. You want to teach programming using Visual Studio? Go ahead. My point is simply that universities shouldn't be concerned with teaching Microsoft tools, rather they should be concerned with teaching how to solve the problems.
Okay. In that case, perhaps you can tell me how to get Windows XP functioning nice and quickly while there's disk access. I certainly haven't been able to.
Alternatively, perhaps I can help you with your installation of KDE. Which version of KDE do you have? Do you have the prelink trick installed? Which kernel are you using?
I am curious... which GUI do you use in Linux? What speed processor and how much RAM do you have? Which distribution (or kernel) of Linux do you use?
I ask because it has been my experience that Linux is already considerably more responsive (in terms of GUI performance) than Windows. I use KDE 3.1 with Linux 2.4.20 and I have 512 megs of RAM and a 1.46 Ghz processor.
Now, least people accuse me of trolling (or of pandering to the Linux crowd), I should point out that I am not sure why Windows is so unresponsive. It seems to have something to do with hard drive access. It seems to me that Windows XP is acting like I'd expect it to if I didn't have DMA enabled for my hard drives. Basically, whenever I access the hard drive, the GUI becomes almost completely unresponsive, sometimes taking almost a minute to fire up even a browser. I have checked, though, and I do have DMA enabled.
So I truly do not know what is going on with Windows, but in Linux I just don't have these problems. Under heavy disk access, it may take a few seconds to fire up a browser in Linux, but that's it. MP3s keep playing, my apps are still responsive, etc. etc.
Please note: I have been able to resolve my problems. I changed to using the system cursor instead of the highcolour cursor. I have so far found no problems running MoO3 in Linux. That said, I have not tried the multiplayer.
Did you remove the copy protection? WineX is notoriously bad with copy protection. Apart from that, no. Nothing special whatsoever. I use gentoo linux and installed winex straight from transgaming.com. I have access to the paid version, of course, but I didn't do anything special.
Note: Moo3 does not currently work for me with the latest version of WineX. Early on in the game, it seems to forget that I have a keyboard attached and also stops registering mouse clicks, though I can still move the mouse cursor around. I strongly suspect this will be an easy fix but at the moment, Master of Orion 3 does not work in Linux for me.
Okay, let us say that Microsoft does sign a version of Linux that'll run on the XBox. Great. What does that get us? Not very much. One version of Linux will run on the XBox. No other version would, unless that version too was signed. That's a heck of a waste of money in my opinion, though it might be worth it for a guarantee that they'd sign all the kernels.
I noticed about a week ago that more than 90% of my incoming spam was originating with rackspace.com customers. That was more than enough to grab my interest. I complained using spamcop.net, as always, but that didn't do anything. So I personally emailed the appropriate people at rackspace.com. They ignored this. Eventually, I found a 'live chat' function on rackspace's web site and used that to talk to someone. They claimed they'd 'look into it' but my deluge of spam continued. I complained over the next several days and eventually, just blocked all IPs controlled by rackspace.com. I understand it was only a couple of their customers but seeing as they were providing access to known spammers and they simply couldn't be bothered to help me out even a little bit, I didn't feel bad banning all their IP addresses.
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Hey, wasn't I the one who came up with that quote?
It is interesting to note, by the way, that cigarettes cost approximately $10 a pack up in Alberta, Canada. That means that a pack-a-day smoker is consuming $300 of cigarettes in a month. That's more than twice what I spend on water, heat, power, cable t.v., and Internet access combined.
You are right, VSS doesn't corrupt itself randomly. However, you forgot to mention one instance under which VSS will corrupt itself. If during a checkin, the client machine crashes, your VSS database will become corrupt. Alternatively, if during a checkin, the client machine is power-cycled, the database will become corrupt.
At one company I worked for, we were supporting roughly twenty developers. The VSS database became corrupt about once a month even after following the other suggestions you list. The admins ended up setting up a backup job to run once an hour because VSS was so unstable.
The next company I worked for used cvs. CVS can be a pain particularly when it comes to renaming files. And we were supporting fewer developers (around ten). However, CVS just worked. We stored binaries in the database. We never touched the CVS server. And it ran without problems for well over two years (cvs was set up before I arrived).
Well, you are probably right. I wanted 802.11g because it offered:
For those reasons, I figured it wouldn't be a big deal to buy 802.11g preliminary hardware now as it would at least be 802.11b-compatible and even if it ended up not being compatible with 11g when that finally gets ratified, would still run at that speed in my apartment using my hardware.
Any guesses on whether, when 11g finally is ratified, any company will actually support Linux?
I took a look at the Cisco Aironet 350 pcmcia card and unfortunately, you seem to be incorrect. While it may support Linux, it does NOT support 802.11g, only 802.11b. Bummer about that.
This is a serious question, not a flame. Are you running Linux (and, if so, which kernel) or are you running Windows (and, if so, which version)?
I ask because on MY system, disk access is very slow in Windows XP but very snappy in Linux. In both cases, I have DMA enabled and so I am not quite sure what is going on.
Surely, though, the WPC11 card is 802.11b only, not 802.11g? And the 54G router just plugs into the network and therefore doesn't need Linux support.
Or perhaps I am missing something here. Do the wlan-ng drivers actually support 802.11g after all?
I've been looking for reliable 802.11g hardware for my Linux laptop. I realise 802.11g is still in its preliminary phases but there is a fair amount of hardware out there already.
However, no company I've been able to contact (several emails to sales@wherever simply bounced) has committed to Linux support. The FAQ at http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/FAQ.php shows that no company has yet released Linux drivers as far as he knows and a google search didn't turn up anything promising.
So, is any slashdotter aware of a company that sells 802.11g hardware that works with Linux? Ideally, it should have Windows XP drivers as well but my home computers primarily run Linux these days.
If you fill in the registration using false information, anyone has a right to claim ownership over your domain and there is nothing you can do to prevent it.
I don't buy extended warranties as a rule. On my $500 (Canadian) purchase of a Radeon 9700, the extended warranty would have been something like $60 and it ALREADY COMES WITH A MANUFACTURER'S WARRANTY good for three years.
However, one product I will buy extended warranties on is laptops. However, the price mentioned here is terrible. Dell will sell me a Complete warranty for three years for about $350 Canadian and that DOES cover abuse. Paying more than that (you list $250 U.S.) and not getting covered if I drop my laptop, that's just a scam. I mean, laptops simply don't break often enough to justify that kind of price unless it also covers abuse.
No, I feel actually quite insulted, generally, when offered an extended warranty. Particularly after seeing the complete incompetance of the technicians at Future Shop (the only place here in Canada that routinely offers to sell me the warranties).
I cannot speak for the ReplayTV but the Rio500 didn't hold up anywhere near as well as I had hoped. If I shake my Rio500 a little, it loses an internal connection and reboots. Furthermore, the customer service for the Rio500 is god-awful. I went looking for drivers one day after I reformatted my machine. That day, they had 'temporarily disabled' access to the drivers, not even posting the old ones on their site. They didn't correct this for almost a week, during which my Rio was useless.
Also, there was always a hassle getting the Rio Audio Manager (the _worst_ designed user-interface for managing large collections of MP3s I have ever seen) to reenable the MP3-ripping functionality I should have had. In the end, I went out and bought a copy of another piece of software to rip MP3s and to transfer to the Rio (I forget its name at the moment, it's the popular Windows one).
Still, I suppose I still use my Rio500. I use it to listen to audible.com audio content and it does a great job of that. For my MP3s, though, I have since upgraded to the Creative Nomad Jukebox 3. I cannot get it to hook up to Linux yet but apart from that, it is great.
I've never heard the second one. Where does it come from?
I ended up providing tech support to pretty much all of my family. And that's fine, it is a skill I have that I am happy to share.
But supporting hardware makes me frustrated. I am a computer programmer at heart and I can't stand working with hardware, though I am good at it.
So I have a strict policy. I will fix at most one hardware problem a day. That's it. If I already did some hardware work on my computer, you are out of luck for the day. You have two hardware problems? Well, pick which one you want fixed.
It works remarkably well. I can keep my sanity when fixing other people's hardware. I don't get angry. I don't spend entire days working on the stuff (because it never takes _that_ long to fix a single problem). And most of my family's hardware problems get resolved quickly.
One thing I've espoused for quite some time is to standardise on a technology, not an implementation. For example, rather than using MS Exchange, standardise on SMTP and IMAP. Rather than standardising on Mozilla, make sure all of your web apps produce valid HTML. This allows you to easily swap out one server package for another if you need to and allows people to choose their own clients (though you could always enforce specific clients for support reasons).
Now, certainly this is not always possible in all cases. There isn't, afaik, a standard for spreadsheet documents for example.
It seems to me that if more companies took this approach, they'd be better off. Email server overloaded? Add an additional server or swap it out for other software that scales better. The end-users don't even need to know.
I'm not quite sure why you should be supporting the lit edu major who can't transfer their powerpoint presentation between their laptop and the computers in the lab. Is that really a service the helpdesk is meant to provide? Sure, if you charge the student for the service I could understand it but otherwise...
I mean, I wouldn't expect the helpdesk to help me install the new video card I bought either...
If the best way to teach how to solve the problem is to use Microsoft products, the university should use Microsoft products.
Of course, 'best' here means a large number of things. Cost. Loss of $2.4 million donation (plus $800K per year). Best tool for the job.
It may be that Microsoft's tools are the 'best' when it comes to solving the specific problem but that viable alternatives exist, in which case the university should look at these alternatives and see if they (and the donation) make up for the promise not to use Microsoft.
I can think of no reason, for example, to require Microsoft software in computing science labs, nor can I think of a reason to require Microsoft software for general-access labs where students can browse the web, do word processing, etc. However, it is very likely that some departments have specific tools already that only work on Windows.
Universities (i.e. locations where you get Bachelor degrees, not sure if they are called that in the U.S.) do not exist to teach you specific tools. If you want to learn MS Word or Visual Studio, you should take a local adult education class or take some courses at your tech school. These things shouldn't be taught at a university.
Now, before everyone gets all huffy, I'm not saying a university must not have Microsoft tools. You want to teach programming using Visual Studio? Go ahead. My point is simply that universities shouldn't be concerned with teaching Microsoft tools, rather they should be concerned with teaching how to solve the problems.
Okay. In that case, perhaps you can tell me how to get Windows XP functioning nice and quickly while there's disk access. I certainly haven't been able to.
Alternatively, perhaps I can help you with your installation of KDE. Which version of KDE do you have? Do you have the prelink trick installed? Which kernel are you using?
I am curious... which GUI do you use in Linux? What speed processor and how much RAM do you have? Which distribution (or kernel) of Linux do you use?
I ask because it has been my experience that Linux is already considerably more responsive (in terms of GUI performance) than Windows. I use KDE 3.1 with Linux 2.4.20 and I have 512 megs of RAM and a 1.46 Ghz processor.
Now, least people accuse me of trolling (or of pandering to the Linux crowd), I should point out that I am not sure why Windows is so unresponsive. It seems to have something to do with hard drive access. It seems to me that Windows XP is acting like I'd expect it to if I didn't have DMA enabled for my hard drives. Basically, whenever I access the hard drive, the GUI becomes almost completely unresponsive, sometimes taking almost a minute to fire up even a browser. I have checked, though, and I do have DMA enabled.
So I truly do not know what is going on with Windows, but in Linux I just don't have these problems. Under heavy disk access, it may take a few seconds to fire up a browser in Linux, but that's it. MP3s keep playing, my apps are still responsive, etc. etc.
I think if you modify your Moo3Prefs.ini file and set cursor=0, that will do it.
Please note: I have been able to resolve my problems. I changed to using the system cursor instead of the highcolour cursor. I have so far found no problems running MoO3 in Linux. That said, I have not tried the multiplayer.
Did you remove the copy protection? WineX is notoriously bad with copy protection. Apart from that, no. Nothing special whatsoever. I use gentoo linux and installed winex straight from transgaming.com. I have access to the paid version, of course, but I didn't do anything special.
Note: Moo3 does not currently work for me with the latest version of WineX. Early on in the game, it seems to forget that I have a keyboard attached and also stops registering mouse clicks, though I can still move the mouse cursor around. I strongly suspect this will be an easy fix but at the moment, Master of Orion 3 does not work in Linux for me.
Okay, let us say that Microsoft does sign a version of Linux that'll run on the XBox. Great. What does that get us? Not very much. One version of Linux will run on the XBox. No other version would, unless that version too was signed. That's a heck of a waste of money in my opinion, though it might be worth it for a guarantee that they'd sign all the kernels.
I noticed about a week ago that more than 90% of my incoming spam was originating with rackspace.com customers. That was more than enough to grab my interest. I complained using spamcop.net, as always, but that didn't do anything. So I personally emailed the appropriate people at rackspace.com. They ignored this. Eventually, I found a 'live chat' function on rackspace's web site and used that to talk to someone. They claimed they'd 'look into it' but my deluge of spam continued. I complained over the next several days and eventually, just blocked all IPs controlled by rackspace.com. I understand it was only a couple of their customers but seeing as they were providing access to known spammers and they simply couldn't be bothered to help me out even a little bit, I didn't feel bad banning all their IP addresses.