Worker's comp picked up the tab because THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GET INJURED AT WORK.
What country do you live in?
I used to work as a receptionist at a Chiropractic clinic, in BC, Canada. I assure you worker's comp did a lot to avoid paying anything. Some people had to struggle for 6-18 months to get ANYTHING back. Until then it all came out of their pocket. Some people never got their injuries covered, under technical clauses like "you got rear-ended in the parking lot outside your place of employment, before signing in for the day, so it isn't work related, and we aren't covering you. Go after ICBC". Of course, ICBC doesn't want to pay anything, because the accident was "on the work premises at your place of employment" - and they recommend you go after WCB.
So at the end of the day, the little guy gets screwed.
The best bet for him is to collect info on alternative treatments for his problem, then present the costs to the insurance companies. If they can see they'll save thousands, they may go for it.
Off course, I don't need to use it, ever, because my operating system works.
Good for you. When my HDD died, I was left wondering how to restore the backup I had made.
After several hours of UbuntuForums.org and IRC (Strange how they tell you how to make the backup, but never tell you how to restore it?), I just did a fresh install onto a new drive, and extracted the few settings files I wanted. Overall it was a lot of hassle. Now I do this:
These days if I want to save the state of a computer that is working well I simply image the disk.
I always disable it for XP and back. I leave it enabled for Windows 7.
Out of the half-dozen Win7 machines I fixed this month for friends/neighbours, 100% of the issues were caused by faulty Windows updates, and had to be corrected by either System Restore or (failing that) repairing from DVD.
It's a bit surprising that viruses aren't the enemy now - but rather updates are. It's a bit like Ubuntu, except Microsoft wants $120+ for the privilege.
Once your system has booted you don't really need older restore points
This is completely untrue. If the OS was perfect, you'd be correct, but Win7 is flawed. Just a few weeks ago I fixed an issue where an update had completely broken DNS for someone.
I had to roll back almost 2 months for the customer. I guess that's how long it took for DNS entries to expire, and them to get around to bringing it to me?
If you approach it from the angle that Windows 7 is flawed, and any part could break at any moment(from installing an update, a new program, a driver, etc.), then clearly deleting old restore points is not the way to go.
Netbooks lack a DVD drive, and have a different class of CPU. (weaker) They're usually quieter than compact notebooks, which shove a lot of functionality into a small space, generating more heat.
Dim the screen a bit, and make sure your power options are configured properly, so the HDD turns off. Then you'll easily get the advertised battery life - for a few months.
Mobile CPUs consume remarkably little power compared to HDDs, LCDs, etc.
Often running a CPU at 100% (or 200% if possible) will save energy spent on other components.
What good is it for your CPU to consume 2 watts if it takes 2 minutes to complete a task? It might as well consume 10 watts and get it done in 30 seconds - then save energy on the HDD and LCD.
The perfect compromise is a CPU like the Atom, but with 4-8 cores, and AMD-style power management. (When all cores are idle, the difference between Phenom II X2, X4, and X6 is about 2-4 watts)
I have one of the early EeePCs - I think it's the 900A - with a 4GB SSD and a 9 inch screen. It runs for at least 5 hours, and depending on the pants I wear it can fit into a cargo pocket. *That's* a netbook.
Asus has dual-core ones that last 8+ hours. Some of their new single-core ones can go 12 hours for blog/web-browsing. That's with slightly dimmed 10.1/11.6 inch screens.
Can't wait for ARM netbooks. Some of those ARM cellphones last 16-20 hours with batteries 1/6th to 1/10th the capacity.
I've never tried Blu-Ray media on my system. I have a 3Ghz Pentium D on my machine, that is about equivalent to a 1.8Ghz Core2Duo. I've thought about upgrading, I really have, but every time I think about it I realize that for my particular situation I would gain very little for the cash. OpenOffice would just spend a bajillion wasted CPU cycles instead of a million between my key presses;)
If you leave your system on 24/7, you'd probably save $250/yr on your power bill.
Might be worth picking one of these up to see how much your system is guzzling down.
When I had the choice of an Athlon XP NAS or VIA C7 NAS a few years back, I went for the brand new C7 NAS. At 8 cents per kwh, I've already saved close to $200.
Pentium D's are power guzzlers by comparison, so you might save enough to pay for a complete upgrade in just 1-2 years.
Some very good points - but you could remedy a few of those by building your own.
I just picked up a barebones laptop chassis, T5250 CPU (ebay), 4GB of RAM (ebay), and 500GB 2.5" 7200RPM HDD for $280 CAD taxed and shipped.
The cheapest laptop I saw with a 7200RPM HDD was $700 from Dell.
Battery life? Old Merom CPU? Who cares - it's still way faster than a netbook, and costs less too! The best part - it has a 12 inch screen, and decent size keyboard - oh, and a DVD drive.
Unfortunately, it's bright pink, so it's going to another family member.
For now, I shall stick with desktop beasts. I wouldn't be happy without my quad-core CPU and WD Black HDDs.
Only if you can access that hardware based encryption - which means drivers and kernel support.
But if that's the route you're leaning, there are Nano systems available. Here's one. It was going for $199 pre-order a couple days ago. Just like a Sheevaplug, you can connect a bunch of external HDDs.
I'm inclined to just go for a full size tower like this. 8 drive bays loaded up with Green drives... tons of space, and very little power consumption. If you use 2 drives, an energy efficient motherboard and energy efficient PSU, you're looking at around 25 watts consumption. Add in 6 more drives and that barely increases to ~40 watts. (Unless they're all active at once)
I'm wondering how well an ARM multi-core CPU would do just serving up files off a RAID array? x86 quad-core CPUs are probably total overkill for that - and perhaps not worth it because of the power consumption.
Actually it wouldn't because with the file systems suddenly going RO there was no tmp file storage anywhere and one side effect of that was that I couldn't open any new windows - I just got an empty frame and that was it... but I admit gmail didn't cross my mind:)
That's awful!
I've noticed the same thing with Firefox - it saves your session constantly in case it crashes. I had a Seagate drive that kept locking up for 60 seconds (I RMA'd it), and Firefox would freeze right along with it, even though disk cache was off. Apparently you can turn session store off, but it still requires disk access for other stuff - maybe extensions.
Chrome to the rescue?;)
The interesting thing about the freezing fiasco was Steam games usually wouldn't crash - just freeze for a little while. (about 75 seconds, and then there's massive input lag for a while)
while I was running and editing something important. Even inserting a thumb drive to try and save the work resulted in it coming up RO.
Gmail saves the day. Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V
but because turning off SMART monitoring without making damn sure the user knows the health of his disks aren't being monitored anymore is assinine.
I agree.
I've been wondering why things were malfunctioning on my NAS. It turns out Ubuntu uses notifications boxes that vanish after about 5 seconds. I just happened to be VNC'd in when something popped up. I didn't realize an update had enabled them.
Flash is not currently suitable for OS upgrades. You want to replace a $0.05 DVD with a $15 flash drive? Are you nuts?
DVDs also beat external HDDs for some scenarios. For one thing, they're cheap and immune to shock.
I use all the technology at my disposal. I have reburnable DVDs for OS installs, Flash drives for transferring files, and a NAS with huge HDDs for backup and storage.
If I had more upstream bandwidth, I'd probably send more files over the internet - but currently 16GB flash drives are pretty cheap and efficient.
I still be using Floppy Disks and use them to store sound effects for Video Editing. As the effects are short files they are ideal media for this and are reliable. USB Keys could be used but usually are of to big of a storage and are not as easy to be stored. I still hope that they will be made till someone comes up with a system that works as well as Floppys and do not use more space. Using CDs or DVDs are not really a replacement as if one goes wrong I loose the lot as for a Floppy I just loose one sound effect but usually have two, so I have at least one back up and would make straight away a new backup. Bernhard Koster, Poole / Dorset
Wow.
I started moving away from floppies ~8 years ago. I find a 4TB NAS works far better for maintaining copies of everything. I've had multiple drive failures, and haven't lost anything to date. Can't say the same about old floppies.
Can you imagine how much money this guy spends on floppies? I spent less than $500 on my NAS. Per megabyte, I'm waaaaay ahead.
And in any case, if you use a codec set to use few keyframes, you'll get poor seek performance in *any* container format - it's quite likely the issues you saw had everything to do with the encoding choices made and little with the (deprecated) ogm container.
That's quite possible. I'm just having trouble finding settings that let it be seekable, without torpedoing the quality.
Tons of keyframes does work, but the bitrate required goes up quite a bit.
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Worker's comp picked up the tab because THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GET INJURED AT WORK.
What country do you live in?
I used to work as a receptionist at a Chiropractic clinic, in BC, Canada. I assure you worker's comp did a lot to avoid paying anything. Some people had to struggle for 6-18 months to get ANYTHING back. Until then it all came out of their pocket. Some people never got their injuries covered, under technical clauses like "you got rear-ended in the parking lot outside your place of employment, before signing in for the day, so it isn't work related, and we aren't covering you. Go after ICBC". Of course, ICBC doesn't want to pay anything, because the accident was "on the work premises at your place of employment" - and they recommend you go after WCB.
So at the end of the day, the little guy gets screwed.
The best bet for him is to collect info on alternative treatments for his problem, then present the costs to the insurance companies. If they can see they'll save thousands, they may go for it.
Woohoo!... we've got some Microsoft shills in the house. I went from +4 to Troll in a few hours.
Mod as you will - it doesn't change the facts. Silently deleting restore points is a bad idea.
tar zcvf `date '+%Y%m%d'`_configs.tgz /etc
Great backup plan! I did the same thing.
Off course, I don't need to use it, ever, because my operating system works.
Good for you. When my HDD died, I was left wondering how to restore the backup I had made.
After several hours of UbuntuForums.org and IRC (Strange how they tell you how to make the backup, but never tell you how to restore it?), I just did a fresh install onto a new drive, and extracted the few settings files I wanted. Overall it was a lot of hassle. Now I do this:
These days if I want to save the state of a computer that is working well I simply image the disk.
Trust me - it works way better.
I always disable it for XP and back. I leave it enabled for Windows 7.
Out of the half-dozen Win7 machines I fixed this month for friends/neighbours, 100% of the issues were caused by faulty Windows updates, and had to be corrected by either System Restore or (failing that) repairing from DVD.
It's a bit surprising that viruses aren't the enemy now - but rather updates are. It's a bit like Ubuntu, except Microsoft wants $120+ for the privilege.
Once your system has booted you don't really need older restore points
This is completely untrue. If the OS was perfect, you'd be correct, but Win7 is flawed. Just a few weeks ago I fixed an issue where an update had completely broken DNS for someone.
I had to roll back almost 2 months for the customer. I guess that's how long it took for DNS entries to expire, and them to get around to bringing it to me?
If you approach it from the angle that Windows 7 is flawed, and any part could break at any moment(from installing an update, a new program, a driver, etc.), then clearly deleting old restore points is not the way to go.
Netbooks lack a DVD drive, and have a different class of CPU. (weaker) They're usually quieter than compact notebooks, which shove a lot of functionality into a small space, generating more heat.
then why can't they put a man-sized battery in a netbook and have it last 12+ hours
http://ncix.com/products/?sku=49311&vpn=1005PE-PU17-BK&manufacture=ASUS
Dim the screen a bit, and make sure your power options are configured properly, so the HDD turns off. Then you'll easily get the advertised battery life - for a few months.
Mobile CPUs consume remarkably little power compared to HDDs, LCDs, etc.
Often running a CPU at 100% (or 200% if possible) will save energy spent on other components.
What good is it for your CPU to consume 2 watts if it takes 2 minutes to complete a task? It might as well consume 10 watts and get it done in 30 seconds - then save energy on the HDD and LCD.
The perfect compromise is a CPU like the Atom, but with 4-8 cores, and AMD-style power management. (When all cores are idle, the difference between Phenom II X2, X4, and X6 is about 2-4 watts)
I have one of the early EeePCs - I think it's the 900A - with a 4GB SSD and a 9 inch screen. It runs for at least 5 hours, and depending on the pants I wear it can fit into a cargo pocket. *That's* a netbook.
Asus has dual-core ones that last 8+ hours. Some of their new single-core ones can go 12 hours for blog/web-browsing. That's with slightly dimmed 10.1/11.6 inch screens.
Can't wait for ARM netbooks. Some of those ARM cellphones last 16-20 hours with batteries 1/6th to 1/10th the capacity.
I've never tried Blu-Ray media on my system. I have a 3Ghz Pentium D on my machine, that is about equivalent to a 1.8Ghz Core2Duo. I've thought about upgrading, I really have, but every time I think about it I realize that for my particular situation I would gain very little for the cash. OpenOffice would just spend a bajillion wasted CPU cycles instead of a million between my key presses ;)
If you leave your system on 24/7, you'd probably save $250/yr on your power bill.
Might be worth picking one of these up to see how much your system is guzzling down.
When I had the choice of an Athlon XP NAS or VIA C7 NAS a few years back, I went for the brand new C7 NAS. At 8 cents per kwh, I've already saved close to $200.
Pentium D's are power guzzlers by comparison, so you might save enough to pay for a complete upgrade in just 1-2 years.
Some very good points - but you could remedy a few of those by building your own.
I just picked up a barebones laptop chassis, T5250 CPU (ebay), 4GB of RAM (ebay), and 500GB 2.5" 7200RPM HDD for $280 CAD taxed and shipped.
The cheapest laptop I saw with a 7200RPM HDD was $700 from Dell.
Battery life? Old Merom CPU? Who cares - it's still way faster than a netbook, and costs less too! The best part - it has a 12 inch screen, and decent size keyboard - oh, and a DVD drive.
Unfortunately, it's bright pink, so it's going to another family member.
For now, I shall stick with desktop beasts. I wouldn't be happy without my quad-core CPU and WD Black HDDs.
Only if you can access that hardware based encryption - which means drivers and kernel support.
But if that's the route you're leaning, there are Nano systems available. Here's one. It was going for $199 pre-order a couple days ago. Just like a Sheevaplug, you can connect a bunch of external HDDs.
I'm inclined to just go for a full size tower like this. 8 drive bays loaded up with Green drives... tons of space, and very little power consumption. If you use 2 drives, an energy efficient motherboard and energy efficient PSU, you're looking at around 25 watts consumption. Add in 6 more drives and that barely increases to ~40 watts. (Unless they're all active at once)
That's pretty good for up to 16TB of space.
x86 CPUs are beasts.
I'm wondering how well an ARM multi-core CPU would do just serving up files off a RAID array? x86 quad-core CPUs are probably total overkill for that - and perhaps not worth it because of the power consumption.
Yep, there's a market for ARM.
Actually it wouldn't because with the file systems suddenly going RO there was no tmp file storage anywhere and one side effect of that was that I couldn't open any new windows - I just got an empty frame and that was it... but I admit gmail didn't cross my mind :)
That's awful!
I've noticed the same thing with Firefox - it saves your session constantly in case it crashes. I had a Seagate drive that kept locking up for 60 seconds (I RMA'd it), and Firefox would freeze right along with it, even though disk cache was off. Apparently you can turn session store off, but it still requires disk access for other stuff - maybe extensions.
Chrome to the rescue? ;)
The interesting thing about the freezing fiasco was Steam games usually wouldn't crash - just freeze for a little while. (about 75 seconds, and then there's massive input lag for a while)
To be fair, being called an idiot instead of a reasonable reply is pretty much inherent to the entire IT community.
Yeah, but with Windows it's so easy that you can get help from regular guys instead of IT.
Specifically, though I had no trouble upgrading from 9.04 final to 9.10 final
I upgraded from 8.10 to 9.04, but 9.04 to 9.10 didn't go so well. I'll probably install 10.04 clean on a separate drive just to verify it works.
while I was running and editing something important. Even inserting a thumb drive to try and save the work resulted in it coming up RO.
Gmail saves the day. Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V
but because turning off SMART monitoring without making damn sure the user knows the health of his disks aren't being monitored anymore is assinine.
I agree.
I've been wondering why things were malfunctioning on my NAS. It turns out Ubuntu uses notifications boxes that vanish after about 5 seconds. I just happened to be VNC'd in when something popped up. I didn't realize an update had enabled them.
Lucky you. 9.10 only detects my DVD drive (on my desktop) in the textmode portion. As soon as the LiveCD boots, it spits out read errors and halts.
I'd have to use the alternate install DVD, and then I wouldn't have a DVD drive. I hope it's fixed in 10.04. (or is that 10.05 now?)
such as when helping a friend at his house
You're lucky. Most of my friends don't have motherboards that can boot from USB flashdrive.
I would take it if it were an option, for the read speeds alone - but usually it isn't.
Imagine if filesystems has 30+ year lifetimes ;p
FAT32 and NTFS are getting there...
Flash is not currently suitable for OS upgrades. You want to replace a $0.05 DVD with a $15 flash drive? Are you nuts?
DVDs also beat external HDDs for some scenarios. For one thing, they're cheap and immune to shock.
I use all the technology at my disposal. I have reburnable DVDs for OS installs, Flash drives for transferring files, and a NAS with huge HDDs for backup and storage.
If I had more upstream bandwidth, I'd probably send more files over the internet - but currently 16GB flash drives are pretty cheap and efficient.
nLite is pretty easy... unpack SATA drivers from installer, then integrate with nLite. (textmode)
Took me almost 20 minutes to figure out, the first time. That's less than hunting down and hooking up a floppy drive.
Embedded linux. Tweak the kernel to your hearts content.
Something like uClinux might fit the bill, depending on what you're doing.
I still be using Floppy Disks and use them to store sound effects for Video Editing. As the effects are short files they are ideal media for this and are reliable. USB Keys could be used but usually are of to big of a storage and are not as easy to be stored. I still hope that they will be made till someone comes up with a system that works as well as Floppys and do not use more space. Using CDs or DVDs are not really a replacement as if one goes wrong I loose the lot as for a Floppy I just loose one sound effect but usually have two, so I have at least one back up and would make straight away a new backup.
Bernhard Koster, Poole / Dorset
Wow.
I started moving away from floppies ~8 years ago. I find a 4TB NAS works far better for maintaining copies of everything. I've had multiple drive failures, and haven't lost anything to date. Can't say the same about old floppies.
Can you imagine how much money this guy spends on floppies? I spent less than $500 on my NAS. Per megabyte, I'm waaaaay ahead.
And in any case, if you use a codec set to use few keyframes, you'll get poor seek performance in *any* container format - it's quite likely the issues you saw had everything to do with the encoding choices made and little with the (deprecated) ogm container.
That's quite possible. I'm just having trouble finding settings that let it be seekable, without torpedoing the quality.
Tons of keyframes does work, but the bitrate required goes up quite a bit.