Dude, my biggest problem is keeping the damn LTO4 drives fed at MINIMUM write speeds for file server type small file workloads. 72x15k spindles isn't enough with only one volume being backed up, metadata retrieval makes it too slow, I need to have multiple volumes backing up simultaneously to keep the things from shoeshining.
I've never done tape backups, but isn't that an issue with your OS? Maybe it's trying to compress data/files to save space?
With a linux LiveCD, you could probably dump a partition onto tape as quickly as you could read it from the raw device. It doesn't need to read the files individually, or understand the filesystem at all - it's all just data being read sequentially off HDD and being stored sequentially on the tape.
Given that so many users use the Google search box as an address bar [readwriteweb.com], I'm amazed that they manage to get as far as opening up their browser without accidentally electrocuting themselves.
I'm guilty of that - but it's because the Mozilla devs never acted on my suggestion to prioritize manual focus events over automatic ones.
Google is my homepage, which opens with every new tab or window. It automatically grabs focus, so I can begin typing in a search term - but I don't actually have any control over that. Often I'll click the address bar and type Ctrl+V to paste, then Enter to go to that link - but between one of those actions, Google's search box takes back focus. I either search out the URL, or search out nothing.
My manual mouse click on the address bar should override that, but it doesn't.
And FYI, I suggested this back when Firefox was at v1.5...
That ugly search bar thing merely wastes screen space. I just type "g whatever" -- by default, the keyword is "google" but you can change it to just "g".
You look at the desktop a lot? I can barely even remember what my desktop background is. I see it for about 10 seconds after a very rare reboot, while I'm waiting for various maximized applications to start.
My desktop is blue. (The Win2k blue, to be precise)
I use it as a massive more-advanced start menu, thanks to tools like this and this.
To get to it to launch, find, or look at something, I use WinKey+D
Are you kidding me? Depending on where he's from, his plan might only cover 200MB. If his browser didn't cache it, it could eat up a huge chunk of that. And if he goes over, it might cost him $5/MB.
It was so poorly implemented that it couldn't be turned off. If you're going to force something like that on your users, you at least need to think of common situations that have real damages.
Mind you, Bing's market share is still tiny in comparison at about 11%, but it's the first time that an MS driven search engine has actually gained significant market share, helped by the fact that Bing is a really good search engine, whereas every other attempt they've ever done has been.. well, uhm.. Crap.
It's also helped by exclusive search deals that remove the option to use Google. [link]
And changing the default search from Google to Bing silently with some updates. [link]
I respect Google. They compete through innovation. Microsoft doesn't.
The page first loads the search box, and nothing else. Everything else is added via AJAX after the fact, and if you're fast enough you can type a search and submit it before the other decorations ever come down.
Not true! The way they implemented the backgrounds, they come in near instantly.
I really noticed it, because I was folding yesterday. It took almost 8 seconds for those bloody things to fade into view.
I'd be quite happy to never see the "Change background image" option again.
I just checked and Google.com still shows a "Change Background Image" link in the lower left corner, so it looks more like it's still an option, they just realized they confused people by defaulting it to on for a few hours.
And it still does nothing in my browser!
Anybody else remember back when we all switched to using Google *because* of the plain white background and simple layout?
Yes. It's a search engine. You type stuff in the search box, and get relevant results. Google, please don't screw it up!
My main issue (Firefox 3.6) was I couldn't get rid of the damn thing, or change images. Clicking "Change Background Image" did nothing. Clicking their main link which was supposed to tell me more about it, took me right back to the homepage. Useless.
It might've been okay if they had put a faded pillar in the center of the screen, so all the text didn't get washed out. Oh, and had options that did something.
From 5 feet away, I can see the layer of multi-colour grime that coats my LCD. From 3 feet away, I can see individual pixels on my 2048x1152 23" display. From ~2 feet away, I can see the lines running between the individual pixels.
And from half a block away, I can read street signs!
I talked with a programmer friend about this a while back. He said that to him, the difference between 2xQ AA and 4xAA was indistinguishable, and there was no improvement beyond that. Well, to me, they all still look blocky.:P
Because third part ad networks are notorious for sending on viruses?
Why doesn't Google allow 3rd party ad networks in their SERPs (search engine result pages)?
Because it's their search page and they can do what they want?
Google's great at crying and bitching but they're the absolute worst monopolist in ad space today.
Right. But none of these companies are in a single area. Apple has demonstrated far more monopolistic tendencies. If you let them, they'll go for #1 in ad space as well.
Considering how much they love to control things... I won't support that over Google.
From "updater" to "Google Chrome" with default settings, Google is always blamed (rightfully) for not respecting users privacy.
Could you cite an example? When I installed chrome, it had all the tickboxes to share info turned off by default.
Obviously when I use their search, I know that info is going to them.
What are these privacy violations?
Re:Back to the original subject...
on
Time To Dump XP?
·
· Score: 1
Meanwhile, while they're hunting for an application buried deep inside some terrible folder hierarchy that stretches across the whole screen, I tap the Windows key, type the first three letters of an Application name, hit enter, and I'm there.
Me too! I love XP SP3 so much!
Oh - no, I don't use the default Run box.
Meanwhile, my colleagues whine about the lack of an "Up" button while I just click the back button on my mouse or the folder name in the breadcrumb bar.
I find those thumb buttons annoying. I'm constantly hitting them by accident. I like the up button, because for some reason, my XP Save In box is glitched. Every time I click it, it takes 10 seconds to spin down the DVD drive, then spin it back up. ( @_@ ) This behaviour didn't exist before SP3... meh.
I call the classic start menus and such "I fear change" mode. Fitting, I think:D
I call the new features "implemented well, but not well enough for me to desire switching". Third party software is often A-grade, but Microsoft software is usually B+ at best. When I have a productivity issue, I solve it, so Microsoft's solutions are at best quirky alternatives to my own... quirky alternatives with far higher resource usage.
It's too bad XP's GPU support is locked in the past. That's the only reason for me to consider upgrading.
For one thing, you'll notice that the conspiracy nuts are, well, always wrong. They have an abysmal track record throughout history and in modern times.
That's because they aren't remembered as conspiracy nuts once they prove their case.
And the ones that are nutty get a whole lot more attention.
Meanwhile nVidia is desperately trying to get people locked into their CUDA API because their video cards just dont bang the performance drum like they used to.
We knew close to a year ago that nVidia was focusing on GPGPU rather than raw rendering performance.
Now we're in the situation where for GPGPU (like Folding@Home), nVidia cards are about 6x faster.
But surprise, surprise - they fell behind in raw rendering power.... just as it was predicted.
Intel is also leader in performance/watt, due to a complex power delivery architecture and better processor production facilities.
But AMD is the leader in idle power consumption!;)
Check the reviews. Even the ones where AMD's performance per watt gets curb-stomped show Intel's idle power consumption a good 30-40 watts higher. (~25-35%)
If you're idling at the desktop and leave your system on 24/7 (standby, fools!), then it's something to consider. It could save you $50+/yr. (but standby would save you more)
This is particularly important for home-built NAS's. Atom/VIA chips may not have the CPU power required for huge RAID arrays, but a 6-core AMD chip is power efficient while packing a whole lot of punch. With very efficient PSUs, I've seen 1055T systems consume as little as 50 watts idle (!) as measured on a Kill-A-Watt. That's astounding.
But some people have a lot of money to throw around, and don't care. I saw a build log of one guy - he made his own i7 980X NAS. It makes me cry a little... his NAS's CPU cost more than my main computer.;D
You're wrong. Radio spectrum is a finite resource; there's no more untapped frequencies.
Maybe if they stopped trying to sell us 5-15mbit 3G/4G, they'd have enough bandwidth available to serve everyone with low latencies.
If they capped their speeds to 1.5mbit, I bet the network would get a lot more responsive - so much so that small downloads and loading webpage would complete far faster, even with the reduced speed.
I have 3mbit ADSL at home, but my router caps each computer to ~2mbit. (and my torrent box even lower than that) That way no computer can choke the other ones completely. Before the caps were put in place, an HTTP download or picking up email would cause lag for someone playing a game. Torrenting was even worse, and would make webpages take dozens of seconds to connect, let alone download. QOS and fixed speed caps prevent that horrible latency.
Slashdot Mirror
Dude, my biggest problem is keeping the damn LTO4 drives fed at MINIMUM write speeds for file server type small file workloads. 72x15k spindles isn't enough with only one volume being backed up, metadata retrieval makes it too slow, I need to have multiple volumes backing up simultaneously to keep the things from shoeshining.
I've never done tape backups, but isn't that an issue with your OS? Maybe it's trying to compress data/files to save space?
With a linux LiveCD, you could probably dump a partition onto tape as quickly as you could read it from the raw device. It doesn't need to read the files individually, or understand the filesystem at all - it's all just data being read sequentially off HDD and being stored sequentially on the tape.
Tapes are small, disposable, cheap, reliable. Hard drives are maybe 2 of those.
They're at least 3. The first three.
If you price it out per GB, they're fairly competative. HDDs are about $100/2TB right now.
Given that so many users use the Google search box as an address bar [readwriteweb.com], I'm amazed that they manage to get as far as opening up their browser without accidentally electrocuting themselves.
I'm guilty of that - but it's because the Mozilla devs never acted on my suggestion to prioritize manual focus events over automatic ones.
Google is my homepage, which opens with every new tab or window. It automatically grabs focus, so I can begin typing in a search term - but I don't actually have any control over that. Often I'll click the address bar and type Ctrl+V to paste, then Enter to go to that link - but between one of those actions, Google's search box takes back focus. I either search out the URL, or search out nothing.
My manual mouse click on the address bar should override that, but it doesn't.
And FYI, I suggested this back when Firefox was at v1.5...
That ugly search bar thing merely wastes screen space. I just type "g whatever" -- by default, the keyword is "google" but you can change it to just "g".
I just type "whatever". I use the AwesomeBar.
You look at the desktop a lot? I can barely even remember what my desktop background is. I see it for about 10 seconds after a very rare reboot, while I'm waiting for various maximized applications to start.
My desktop is blue. (The Win2k blue, to be precise)
I use it as a massive more-advanced start menu, thanks to tools like this and this.
To get to it to launch, find, or look at something, I use WinKey+D
Are you kidding me? Depending on where he's from, his plan might only cover 200MB. If his browser didn't cache it, it could eat up a huge chunk of that. And if he goes over, it might cost him $5/MB.
It was so poorly implemented that it couldn't be turned off. If you're going to force something like that on your users, you at least need to think of common situations that have real damages.
Mind you, Bing's market share is still tiny in comparison at about 11%, but it's the first time that an MS driven search engine has actually gained significant market share, helped by the fact that Bing is a really good search engine, whereas every other attempt they've ever done has been.. well, uhm.. Crap.
It's also helped by exclusive search deals that remove the option to use Google. [link]
And changing the default search from Google to Bing silently with some updates. [link]
I respect Google. They compete through innovation. Microsoft doesn't.
That's why you setup one account for each, and tell them all to remember password & auto-login!
None of them linked - except by IP in Google's logs, and by cookie on your computer.
The page first loads the search box, and nothing else. Everything else is added via AJAX after the fact, and if you're fast enough you can type a search and submit it before the other decorations ever come down.
Not true! The way they implemented the backgrounds, they come in near instantly.
I really noticed it, because I was folding yesterday. It took almost 8 seconds for those bloody things to fade into view.
I'd be quite happy to never see the "Change background image" option again.
No I didn't. Sounds like at least a few people below had the same issue.
I like the suggestion to use Firefox Start.
Cleartype is turned off for him. He either has a CRT, or superior vision.
So when google does it, it's ok. And when Apple does it, it's wrong. Got it.
Google gains market share through innovation and interoperability.
Apple gains market share through innovation, slick marketing, and lockdown/control.
Pick your evil. :P
I just checked and Google.com still shows a "Change Background Image" link in the lower left corner, so it looks more like it's still an option, they just realized they confused people by defaulting it to on for a few hours.
And it still does nothing in my browser!
Anybody else remember back when we all switched to using Google *because* of the plain white background and simple layout?
Yes. It's a search engine. You type stuff in the search box, and get relevant results. Google, please don't screw it up!
The fadein is to present a simplistic uncluttered style. It happens when you move the mouse.
If you use Google as a homepage, opening a new Window/Tab and typing something in the box means you'll never encounter the fadein.
My main issue (Firefox 3.6) was I couldn't get rid of the damn thing, or change images. Clicking "Change Background Image" did nothing. Clicking their main link which was supposed to tell me more about it, took me right back to the homepage. Useless.
It might've been okay if they had put a faded pillar in the center of the screen, so all the text didn't get washed out. Oh, and had options that did something.
From 5 feet away, I can see the layer of multi-colour grime that coats my LCD.
From 3 feet away, I can see individual pixels on my 2048x1152 23" display.
From ~2 feet away, I can see the lines running between the individual pixels.
And from half a block away, I can read street signs!
I talked with a programmer friend about this a while back. He said that to him, the difference between 2xQ AA and 4xAA was indistinguishable, and there was no improvement beyond that. Well, to me, they all still look blocky. :P
Why doesn't Google allow 3rd party ad networks?
Because third part ad networks are notorious for sending on viruses?
Why doesn't Google allow 3rd party ad networks in their SERPs (search engine result pages)?
Because it's their search page and they can do what they want?
Google's great at crying and bitching but they're the absolute worst monopolist in ad space today.
Right. But none of these companies are in a single area. Apple has demonstrated far more monopolistic tendencies. If you let them, they'll go for #1 in ad space as well.
Considering how much they love to control things... I won't support that over Google.
From "updater" to "Google Chrome" with default settings, Google is always blamed (rightfully) for not respecting users privacy.
Could you cite an example? When I installed chrome, it had all the tickboxes to share info turned off by default.
Obviously when I use their search, I know that info is going to them.
What are these privacy violations?
Meanwhile, while they're hunting for an application buried deep inside some terrible folder hierarchy that stretches across the whole screen, I tap the Windows key, type the first three letters of an Application name, hit enter, and I'm there.
Me too! I love XP SP3 so much!
Oh - no, I don't use the default Run box.
Meanwhile, my colleagues whine about the lack of an "Up" button while I just click the back button on my mouse or the folder name in the breadcrumb bar.
I find those thumb buttons annoying. I'm constantly hitting them by accident. I like the up button, because for some reason, my XP Save In box is glitched. Every time I click it, it takes 10 seconds to spin down the DVD drive, then spin it back up. ( @_@ ) This behaviour didn't exist before SP3... meh.
I call the classic start menus and such "I fear change" mode. Fitting, I think :D
I call the new features "implemented well, but not well enough for me to desire switching". Third party software is often A-grade, but Microsoft software is usually B+ at best. When I have a productivity issue, I solve it, so Microsoft's solutions are at best quirky alternatives to my own... quirky alternatives with far higher resource usage.
It's too bad XP's GPU support is locked in the past. That's the only reason for me to consider upgrading.
Too bad Bing sucks. I would really appreciate and alternative to Google.
So basically, you admit they're the best, but you hate them?
Maybe it's not malice - it's just harder to do what you want than you think...
I played Dungeon Siege 1. It never compelled me to actually finish it.
Titan Quest, though... I had to finish that one.
For one thing, you'll notice that the conspiracy nuts are, well, always wrong. They have an abysmal track record throughout history and in modern times.
That's because they aren't remembered as conspiracy nuts once they prove their case.
And the ones that are nutty get a whole lot more attention.
Meanwhile nVidia is desperately trying to get people locked into their CUDA API because their video cards just dont bang the performance drum like they used to.
We knew close to a year ago that nVidia was focusing on GPGPU rather than raw rendering performance.
Now we're in the situation where for GPGPU (like Folding@Home), nVidia cards are about 6x faster.
But surprise, surprise - they fell behind in raw rendering power.... just as it was predicted.
Intel is also leader in performance/watt, due to a complex power delivery architecture and better processor production facilities.
But AMD is the leader in idle power consumption! ;)
Check the reviews. Even the ones where AMD's performance per watt gets curb-stomped show Intel's idle power consumption a good 30-40 watts higher. (~25-35%)
If you're idling at the desktop and leave your system on 24/7 (standby, fools!), then it's something to consider. It could save you $50+/yr. (but standby would save you more)
This is particularly important for home-built NAS's. Atom/VIA chips may not have the CPU power required for huge RAID arrays, but a 6-core AMD chip is power efficient while packing a whole lot of punch. With very efficient PSUs, I've seen 1055T systems consume as little as 50 watts idle (!) as measured on a Kill-A-Watt. That's astounding.
But some people have a lot of money to throw around, and don't care. I saw a build log of one guy - he made his own i7 980X NAS. It makes me cry a little... his NAS's CPU cost more than my main computer. ;D
You're wrong. Radio spectrum is a finite resource; there's no more untapped frequencies.
Maybe if they stopped trying to sell us 5-15mbit 3G/4G, they'd have enough bandwidth available to serve everyone with low latencies.
If they capped their speeds to 1.5mbit, I bet the network would get a lot more responsive - so much so that small downloads and loading webpage would complete far faster, even with the reduced speed.
I have 3mbit ADSL at home, but my router caps each computer to ~2mbit. (and my torrent box even lower than that) That way no computer can choke the other ones completely. Before the caps were put in place, an HTTP download or picking up email would cause lag for someone playing a game. Torrenting was even worse, and would make webpages take dozens of seconds to connect, let alone download. QOS and fixed speed caps prevent that horrible latency.