Do you buy Christmas gifts for people? Or do you just give them cash?
Gift certificates at least show a little thought on your part. "Hey I heard you had an iPod, so now you can buy some tunes for it..."
killing loginwindow usually resolves GUI problems
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Mac OS X 10.3 vs. Linux
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· Score: 4, Informative
The majority of user-level processes are started by loginwindow or children of loginwindow, so killing it kills everything except the OS itself. This also returns you to the login window. In effect, this is the same as killing X11 when it locks up.
on iTunes for Windows to see some of the problems people have been seeing. Of course, keep in mind that you only hear the bad stuff on these boards. I'm a bit worried myself about iTunes truncating the filenames of my music.
As it is right now, when you hook up a computer on the 'net, it is less than 5 minutes before someone is trying to hack it/anonymously FTP from it/spread a virus to it.
Proving that a spammer took source addresses from WHOIS would be problematic.
It's darn easy if you use a unique email address such as that provided by sneakemail.
Re:If SOHO data is so critical...
on
SOHO Is Back
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· Score: 2, Informative
why are space weather forecasters [...] relying on a satellite [...] two years past its [...] lifespan?
SOHO was launched at the end of 1995 and arrived in its orbit in mid-1996. The mission was originally scheduled to end in 1998. So we are now 5 years past its originally planned mission.
But to answer your question -- there is currently no other spacecraft that could do SOHO's job. However, there are plans for a "Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)", part of the "Living with a Star" program. After it launches (maybe in 2006), then SOHO will no longer be a single point of failure. Hopefully, SOHO will last that long.
#standard disclaimer: I work for SOHO, but don't speak for NASA or my employer
Re:Deep Space Network
on
SOHO Is Back
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· Score: 1
[...]they've worked out an algorithm (uploaded to the SOHO)[...]
No software changes were necessary; it simply had not been tried before.
#standard disclaimer: I work for SOHO, but I don't speak for NASA or my employer.
Re:Long distance repairs
on
SOHO Is Back
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· Score: 2, Informative
Sats with dead gyroscopes have been reactivated using jury-rigged torquer bars which interact with Earth's magnetic field.
SOHO originally had 3 gyroscopes, but they all broke after the deep-freeze in 1998. With new software, we can use the reaction wheels as gyroscopes (albeit much less sensitive ones).
article correction...
on
SOHO Is Back
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· Score: 2, Informative
SOHO does not normally use the high-capability DSN.
This is incorrect. SOHO exclusively uses the DSN, but normally needs only 26-meter antennas. However, when downlinking using the "backup" low-gain antenna (which is omnidirectional), the 26-meter dish does not have enough gain to lock on telemetry. When using larger dishes, downlink is possible -- but the bit rate might be limited. For a 34-meter dish, SOHO can downlink at 56 kbps. For a 70-meter dish, SOHO can downlink at its normal rate, 256 kbps.
The problem is, time on the larger dishes is hard to come by. When SOHO can't get time on a larger dish during the "blackout" period, it can't downlink. There are only 3 70-meter dishes in the DSN; most of the time another mission further out in space is using them.
Re:Making Trouble
on
SOHO Is Back
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· Score: 2, Informative
Then, just to "test out" to see if they could get the motors to work, they moved the high gain antenna to its two extremes. Of course, the antenna got stuck near one of its extreme positions.
I don't know where you got that disinformation! It is currently near the center position.
The antenna CAN be moved (it is NOT stuck, as we found out during testing), but with a high risk that it could get stuck permanently. However, the antenna beam pattern needed to be tested, *in flight*, so that we could optimize its final position.
It is safer to "leave well enough alone", and that was the case here. But first we moved it to the optimum spot. There are no plans to move the antenna again.
Disclaimer: I work for the SOHO Flight Ops team, but I don't speak for NASA or my employer, yada yada yada
Now it turns out it did cause problems before and came within a whisker of losing Atlantis.
No, it did not cause problems before. Here are the relevant parts of the article: During liftoff, a 6-inch chunk of ice had smashed against the back edge of the right wing; so experts deemed it prudent to adjust Atlantis' flight to rapidly cool its wings...NASA blamed the Atlantis damage on improper installation of a seal between two protective panels on the shuttle's left wing[emphasis mine]
So ice had struck the right wing; the cooling maneuver was done to protect it. The defect (and subsequent breach) in the left wing wasn't known until after the landing.
Nowhere in the article does it say that foam caused damage to Atlantis. Even the ice strike was not the cause of the breach.
Edit xfers.cpp -- comment out the line with RemoveDirectory (place "//" in front of it) There's still a bunch of warnings, but "wastesrv" compiles and runs.
Oh, I see! So you are saying the screensaver just makes useless calculations for no apparent reason, is that it? And if I start doing something else, it won't try to do them anymore? I don't know where you get that idea!
If there was "nothing else for the machine to do" then the CPU would be idle, not chugging away on updating the screen. If I had been doing something else, the screensaver (and window manager) would get a portion of the CPU time, just like any other calculation-hungry process.
I'll admit that the CPU time doesn't increase much when moving a window around, but you can't tell me that the CPU time is not significant. I'd love to be able to run a screensaver on the desktop all the time -- but it just slows down the machine too much.
Failed to mention the blue screen issues
on
BitTorrent Guide
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· Score: 1
I just installed bittorrent, and after an hour or so it bluescreened my Win2k box. Yes, I have a linksys NIC, but I have the latest drivers for it -- guess that isn't the problem...
dhovis wrote: "You can use an OpenGL screensaver as your background with no significant CPU use"
I have to disagree with you there -- on my 466 MHz G4 with a Radeon 8500, the Flurry screensaver running on the desktop takes up about 8% of the CPU, and the Window Manager process goes to 20-30%.
Re:You can have filenames as long as you like
on
High Density CDs
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· Score: 1
Its a pain, but you can work around the issue by use an archiver; e.g. zip with 0 compression into "Ray Stevens.zip" and browse the zip file with your favorite utility.
The article says that only root can "Start and stop background processes". Any user can do that, but only root can start and stop processes belonging to other users. Perhaps that is what he meant?
Slashdot Mirror
Gift certificates at least show a little thought on your part. "Hey I heard you had an iPod, so now you can buy some tunes for it..."
The majority of user-level processes are started by loginwindow or children of loginwindow, so killing it kills everything except the OS itself. This also returns you to the login window. In effect, this is the same as killing X11 when it locks up.
I'm just wondering if using Expose is that much different...
Truncating is a loss of information. Why not use the whole name?
on iTunes for Windows to see some of the problems people have been seeing. Of course, keep in mind that you only hear the bad stuff on these boards. I'm a bit worried myself about iTunes truncating the filenames of my music.
As it is right now, when you hook up a computer on the 'net, it is less than 5 minutes before someone is trying to hack it/anonymously FTP from it/spread a virus to it.
Distance to moon = 384,000 km
time to moon = 15 months
And thanks to the amazing Google calculator, I didn't have to covert anything!
It's darn easy if you use a unique email address such as that provided by sneakemail.
SOHO was launched at the end of 1995 and arrived in its orbit in mid-1996. The mission was originally scheduled to end in 1998. So we are now 5 years past its originally planned mission.
But to answer your question -- there is currently no other spacecraft that could do SOHO's job. However, there are plans for a "Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)", part of the "Living with a Star" program. After it launches (maybe in 2006), then SOHO will no longer be a single point of failure. Hopefully, SOHO will last that long.
#standard disclaimer: I work for SOHO, but don't speak for NASA or my employer
No software changes were necessary; it simply had not been tried before.
#standard disclaimer: I work for SOHO, but I don't speak for NASA or my employer.
SOHO originally had 3 gyroscopes, but they all broke after the deep-freeze in 1998. With new software, we can use the reaction wheels as gyroscopes (albeit much less sensitive ones).
This is incorrect. SOHO exclusively uses the DSN, but normally needs only 26-meter antennas. However, when downlinking using the "backup" low-gain antenna (which is omnidirectional), the 26-meter dish does not have enough gain to lock on telemetry. When using larger dishes, downlink is possible -- but the bit rate might be limited. For a 34-meter dish, SOHO can downlink at 56 kbps. For a 70-meter dish, SOHO can downlink at its normal rate, 256 kbps.
The problem is, time on the larger dishes is hard to come by. When SOHO can't get time on a larger dish during the "blackout" period, it can't downlink. There are only 3 70-meter dishes in the DSN; most of the time another mission further out in space is using them.
I don't know where you got that disinformation! It is currently near the center position.
The antenna CAN be moved (it is NOT stuck, as we found out during testing), but with a high risk that it could get stuck permanently. However, the antenna beam pattern needed to be tested, *in flight*, so that we could optimize its final position.
It is safer to "leave well enough alone", and that was the case here. But first we moved it to the optimum spot. There are no plans to move the antenna again.
Disclaimer: I work for the SOHO Flight Ops team, but I don't speak for NASA or my employer, yada yada yada
No, it did not cause problems before. Here are the relevant parts of the article: ...NASA blamed the Atlantis damage on improper installation of a seal between two protective panels on the shuttle's left wing[emphasis mine]
During liftoff, a 6-inch chunk of ice had smashed against the back edge of the right wing; so experts deemed it prudent to adjust Atlantis' flight to rapidly cool its wings
So ice had struck the right wing; the cooling maneuver was done to protect it. The defect (and subsequent breach) in the left wing wasn't known until after the landing.
Nowhere in the article does it say that foam caused damage to Atlantis. Even the ice strike was not the cause of the breach.
Edit xfers.cpp -- comment out the line with RemoveDirectory (place "//" in front of it)
There's still a bunch of warnings, but "wastesrv" compiles and runs.
who downloaded it just to get screenshots of Trinity's ass?
If there was "nothing else for the machine to do" then the CPU would be idle, not chugging away on updating the screen. If I had been doing something else, the screensaver (and window manager) would get a portion of the CPU time, just like any other calculation-hungry process.
I'll admit that the CPU time doesn't increase much when moving a window around, but you can't tell me that the CPU time is not significant. I'd love to be able to run a screensaver on the desktop all the time -- but it just slows down the machine too much.
I just installed bittorrent, and after an hour or so it bluescreened my Win2k box. Yes, I have a linksys NIC, but I have the latest drivers for it -- guess that isn't the problem...
dhovis wrote: "You can use an OpenGL screensaver as your background with no significant CPU use"
I have to disagree with you there -- on my 466 MHz G4 with a Radeon 8500, the Flurry screensaver running on the desktop takes up about 8% of the CPU, and the Window Manager process goes to 20-30%.
Processes: 91 total, 2 running, 89 sleeping... 326 threads 22:25:34
Load Avg: 2.44, 1.97, 1.75 CPU usage: 62.7% user, 21.3% sys, 16.0% idl
SharedLibs: num = 70, resident = 22.5M code, 2.08M data, 6.78M LinkEdit
MemRegions: num = 13696, resident = 263M + 24.8M private, 242M shared
PhysMem: 96.3M wired, 454M active, 525M inactive, 1.05G used, 76.3M free
VM: 7.34G + 43.8M 89098(0) pageins, 30217(0) pageouts
PID COMMAND %CPU TIME #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT RSHRD RSIZE VSIZE
4052 Window Man 28.9% 88:27.41 3 495 1341 11.5M 102M 105M 287M
8877 OSXvnc-ser 23.6% 0:15.00 5 72 124 1.65M 6.84M 10.4M 109M
8894 top 14.1% 0:01.85 1 15 18 316K 380K 612K 13.6M
8891 ScreenSave 8.2% 0:03.45 3 72 178 2.24M 15.1M 14.7M+ 125M
[snip]
seems pretty significant to me...
Its a pain, but you can work around the issue by use an archiver; e.g. zip with 0 compression into "Ray Stevens.zip" and browse the zip file with your favorite utility.
Real-time imagery of the aliens cannot be denied! I mean, it is clear that this image shows two huge drumsticks aliens are using to play our sun.
It was just not linked from the main page -- one had to search the knowledge base to find it.
Read about it/download it here.
This update only applies to Mac OS X. There is no information on whether an OS 9.x client update will be released.
Can be found in this developer note.
The article says that only root can "Start and stop background processes". Any user can do that, but only root can start and stop processes belonging to other users. Perhaps that is what he meant?