Most of the warmth in the subways is caused by heat that has been absorbed by the roadbeds above radiating downward into the stations, to a lesser degree by the exhaust of the air conditioning on subway cars, and to a still smaller degree by steam tunnels that border some of the tunnels and run in parallel conduits. Not by braking trains.
About seven years ago I worked contract for a world-wide consulting firm (with 35 offices on six continents and a beautifully huge WAN) that used KeyServer for some software license management. You could check out a keyed version of, say, PowerPoint, for a specific period of time, use it, and then forget about it. It would expire when your time was up. You only had to be connected to the network in order to check it out, but the time key was stored on the computer, so it was great for laptops and one-time uses at client sites. Worked pretty well, and is cross-platform.
There's a lot of good advice here already, but I have a few additions.
First, I don't recommend buying directly from Apple, either in a store or online. Buy from a mail order dealer that does not operate in your state. Apple charges sales tax wherever you are; some mail order catalogs (depending on your location) do not. Call and ask. You'll save a nice chunk of change by not paying sales tax. When I bought a Titanium PowerBook in December, I spent the tax I saved on getting a gig of RAM. The sales tax would have been $247 here in New York City; minus shipping, that still put me about $200 in the clear. The RAM cost exactly $300. Plus, I sold the two 256MB chips it came with to a friend and came out better than even.
Second, while I do agree that your life will be more trouble-free in general when using a Mac for your work, the BSD layer is still BSD. Apple hasn't done much to simplify it, if anything, and they've certainly made a few changes that might take some getting used to. Be careful when installing the GNU ports for Darwin: they'll fuck you up if you're innattentive because they like to replace or move Apple-installed bits.
Third, I'd second the OroborOSX recommendation. Too sweet have it sitting there in the dock, running the GIMP and Xterm and Abiword and what all, with no extra window clutter of the other window managers and themes for XWindows. It's faster running in rootless mode, too, running strictly in XWindows.
And in the ordinary small buisness scenario, when you have that hard drive crash you'll discover the tape drive hasnt been cleaned in three years, half the tapes are corrupt, and nobody understood what the 'waiting for writable media' message on the backup server meant.
Tapes work when you can afford them, and you have a fulltime dedicated sysadmin who can deal with it. But if you dont, you're likely to end up with a non-functional backup system.
This is irrationally wrong. Tapes are changed every night by the receptionist. The cleaning tape is run once a week by me. Tapes are recycled every three weeks, replaced every six months, and due to the nature of backups, data is recovered off of one every couple of weeks, so I'm aware if the tapes are bad. Archives (very different from backups) are stored Ecrix VXA tapes, which have a 30-year life expectancy, and a lot of the archives duplicate what has been put on CD by users. Duplication, redudancy and over-compensation are the key words. It works perfectly.
I *always* recommend a tape drive to my small business clients. Now, this could be because my clients tend to be data-intensive. But it's also because there's no other physically small media with great reliability and a cheap per gigabyte cost.
What I'm guessing is that you make the same mistake that many people make: you don't store your data off-site, otherwise, you'd never be recommending hard drives as a backup media solution. That could be your downfall. I hope you never suffer for it, but all it's going to take is a theft, fire, water damage or similar at the office to make you realize the error of your ways.
You probably also make another common mistake: you back up only "working" files. When possible, I back up entire hard drives every night. Applications, system files, preferences, everything. Now, not all my clients can afford such a solution, but those who do get they ability (oft-used) to resuscitate a drive completely in a matter of a couple of hours or less. It's too, too sweet.
I'll back Retrospect as well. An easy-to-use, fast, efficient program that meets all the necessary criteria for a good backup system:
1. Must not require behavior change on the part of the users. 2. Must be invisible to the users. 3. Must support media that can be taken off-site. 4. Must work with many kinds of networks, hardware and software, including various generations, versions and platforms.
Any solution that involves users copying their own files to a server is a foolish one. The backup media *must* be able to be taken out of the company. For some of my clients, that means the receptionist takes home the backup tapes that are not currently in rotation. For others, the tapes are stored in a safe deposit box. Remember that crane that fell into a building and killed an old woman in Times Square a couple of years ago? Well, it also put several companies in jeopardy: they were not allowed to re-enter their businesses for weeks. So any server-based storage of backups were useless. Same for all those business affected by Sept. 11. Some weren't even allowed to go into their neighborhood, much less their building. I will say nothing about the business that were actually in the towers.
The reason backups must not rely upon users' behavior is because people are fallible. They think they know what's important, but they don't, really. They'll miss a good deal of the files they've saved in random places. And how many of your users can find where their email is stored on their hard drive? Damned few. Even a scripted solution that involves initiating standard file copying to shared drives is foolish: there's no central logging and reporting for a system like that. You've got to have the whole show in the hands of one or two people, who can be on top of the entire game. In addition, the users should never know the backup is taking place. One company I worked for used to do an invisible Retrospect backup of users who were about to be fired. Besides this advance information being an indication of a trusted IT department, it meant that we saved ourselves a lot of frustration later when we would be expected to full magical files out of our butts. These includes things like email address books and bookmark files. These can be important: the only way to get them all is with a completely automated solution.
Everything can, and is, used by criminals. Grocery carts, street signs, road maps, mailboxes, elevators, stairs, 411, electricity, tap water, pens, pencils, water colors, lawnmowers, yard rakes, credit cards, checks, cash, coins, incense, books, the Internet, public transportation, libraries, televisions, radios, walkie-talkies, handerkerchiefs, laundromats, diners, off-ramps, on-ramps, overpasses, optometrists, public education, gas stations, restaurants, liquor stores, scissors, glue and tape.
I am not a lawyer, but my father delivers subpoenas for a living to men who have not paid child support. I asked him in the past about people refusing to accept subpoenas when he hands them to them. He explained that telling the party of the subpoena is sufficient for the subpoena to be served, and all that is required is that he a) notify them of the subpoena, and b) make it available to them. Refusing to accept the subpoena, not reading it, dropping it, ripping it up, or even claiming you aren't the person the subpoena is supposed to go to, do *nothing* to cancel the fact that the process server has, in fact, found you and given you sufficient notice of the legal document. In fact, a process server can simply used the scattershot method: deliver subpoenas to your home, your work, your gym, your parents' home, your girlfriend's house, your past addresses, everywhere, and in most cases it is sufficient to shove it in the mail slot, leave it in the mailbox, put it inside the screen door, hand it to another family member or household resident, put it under a windshield wiper, etc. Such a subpoena is considered served. You have been given sufficient notice. The court would prefer you pay attention to that notice, but it's your loss if you don't. So claiming you didn't get or didn't read an email message which you did indeed receive is likely an insufficient argument in the eyes of the court, particularly if there's strong evidence that you do, in fact, use the email address in question.
I should add that contrary to what you might think, most of the people who are served subpoenas are apologetic and civil, even a little bashful about having to have someone official notify them of a legal matter related to their own mistakes.
I agree with the praise for Spamcop. We implemented a DNS check against bl.spamcop.net a couple of weeks ago. Since then, from four different spot checks of the server logs, these are the stats:
Totals:
Total time Covered: 52 hours 52 minutes
842 emails rejected as spam
1691 emails received
422 emails sent
There's finally and Ogg component for OS X QuickTime that seems to work pretty well for a beta. Another fruit of the BSD underpinnings, I believe. OS 9 version on the way. A second version of the QuickTime component apparently also exists, although I could not get the page to load.
Sorry to say, buddy, but you've got a shitty phone or a bad service provider. I suggest you switch one or the other, or both. My phone (a sweet little Nokia) works like a champ with Voicestream in places where my Ericsson with AT&T got zero signal bars. Hell, I can take calls in some of the shallower subway stations. But service in a subway train? That's only possible on the elevated trains: parts of the 7, F, N, 1-9, 4-5-6, J-M-Z and B, and probably on the LIRR and Metro North above aground, at least until we get leaky cell antennas in all the tunnels.
I'm using this hack. It seems to work well and appears to do no harm. I can see the difference on my slow PowerBook G3/300/192 just dragging windows around.
If you want to improve your Finder experience further, run the app ShadowKiller. It removes the window shadows which seem to take too much power to make on a slow, old Mac. Definite improvement. However, because OS X windows don't have a frame all the way around, you're gonna get weird white window on white window experiences; you'll get used to it.
Maybe he did mean a zero-button mouse. The fantastic oblong optical mice that Apple delivers with with its desktop units does not have a button, per se. The whole upper carapace of the mouse is spring-hinged underneath to provide the kung-fu clicking action.
Also, photos of the purple potatoes. Note that the article says that purple potatoes "have always been used" in the Andes Mountains. In other words, they are a natural variety, not one that is genetically engineered.
Potatoes of note. (Potatos or potatoes, either is acceptable. Just not potatoe).
Weblog with links to photos, video, personal tales
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More On Tragedy
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· Score: 3, Interesting
For the last 36 hours, I've been keeping a weblog of the events in New York and DC, largely from the perspective of amateur vidoe and still photographers, keeps of weblogs and journals.
Adolescents thundered onto the Net over a decade ago...
Maybe my memory is faulty, but in 1991 there were not that many adolescents on the Net. Not that many people at all, really. Lots of university students who might perhaps qualify under loose definitions of adolescent, but 15-year-olds? Not enough to write about, or talk about, or even worth mentioning. BBSing was still big back then, so maybe if you loosely include that and FIDO hookups...
In fact, being on the Internet in 1991 would mean that today you have been on the Internet longer than 97 percent of all current Internet users. That's stilly a tiny number of people.
Like seemingly every other sci-fi, game-based or techno-centered movie in the last decade, Final Fantasy takes place largely in a destroyed New York City. (Why is it always in a ruined Manhattan? The tall buildings?)
That temptation to destroy the familiar skyline of New York, whether with a bomb-loaded rental truck or a screenplay, proves the enduring legend of the city. Unfortunately, the legend is also why we no longer have a Great-White Way, but a Great White Sneaker Way, in which big-haired loud-mouthed tourists try to out-do what they think is the real New York--That's okay! It's New York--and then, unexpectedly finding kindness, interest and even love on the part of the supposedly hostile natives, send their amusing letters week after week to the Times's Metropolitan Diary. Ha ha! Zabar's! Cab drivers! Bus drivers! The subway! Those gruff but lovable beggars! So foreign! Ha ha!
You're usually only surfing one web site at a time, right?.
Umm, no. That would be tedious and unproductive. Even with a high-speed connection, I tend to open numerous bookmarks at a time, let them load in the background, wade through them one by one, opening almost all links from those pages in new windows, letting those windows load in the background as well. I'm done browsing when I hit the last open window. Turning off Javascript is not an option.
How do you prevent degradation of the DNA in space? What are the assembly instructions like? Is there a use for DNA, or is it even recognizable as biological instructions, outside of a cellular context? Wouldn't you need a biological container, or stem cells, or something?
Also, there's no need to apologize for one-size design. Against good reasoning, web design wonks have come to a consensus that controlled page widths are bad, but my opinion (against what is also only an opinion) is that a finite, specific page width allows for more rapid reading: items and columns will always be in the same place with the same width.
Width=100% tags in tables are, in my opinion, bad design as they inevitably lead to wide columns and paragraphs and thus to the visitor having to move her head from side to side to read each line of text, rather than just moving the eyes. In short, bad user interaction. Nothing quite as awful as a single column of text spread 800 pixels across the browser page.
Also, small columns are better, but they're difficult to regulate with a variable page size. Column widths should not be variable, even if your page widths are. Make your non-text items variable if you have to do it: space, padding, margins, etc.
This is all besides the fact that every frigging time you re-size a window in Netscape, the frigging thing reloads the page.
don't be shocked - a suprising number of USians have no idea where NZ is...
And a surprising number of pedantic imbeciles use crappy invented words like "USians." At least have a sense of utility and, well, elegance, instead of using some lop-sided moniker. If you don't like "Americans," try "US citizens" or "US residents" or "people who live in the United States of America."
Besides all that, "US" in any form could mean "United States of Mexico," couldn't it? So where does that leave your lame "USians"?
Slashdot Mirror
Most of the warmth in the subways is caused by heat that has been absorbed by the roadbeds above radiating downward into the stations, to a lesser degree by the exhaust of the air conditioning on subway cars, and to a still smaller degree by steam tunnels that border some of the tunnels and run in parallel conduits. Not by braking trains.
About seven years ago I worked contract for a world-wide consulting firm (with 35 offices on six continents and a beautifully huge WAN) that used KeyServer for some software license management. You could check out a keyed version of, say, PowerPoint, for a specific period of time, use it, and then forget about it. It would expire when your time was up. You only had to be connected to the network in order to check it out, but the time key was stored on the computer, so it was great for laptops and one-time uses at client sites. Worked pretty well, and is cross-platform.
There's a lot of good advice here already, but I have a few additions.
First, I don't recommend buying directly from Apple, either in a store or online. Buy from a mail order dealer that does not operate in your state. Apple charges sales tax wherever you are; some mail order catalogs (depending on your location) do not. Call and ask. You'll save a nice chunk of change by not paying sales tax. When I bought a Titanium PowerBook in December, I spent the tax I saved on getting a gig of RAM. The sales tax would have been $247 here in New York City; minus shipping, that still put me about $200 in the clear. The RAM cost exactly $300. Plus, I sold the two 256MB chips it came with to a friend and came out better than even.
Second, while I do agree that your life will be more trouble-free in general when using a Mac for your work, the BSD layer is still BSD. Apple hasn't done much to simplify it, if anything, and they've certainly made a few changes that might take some getting used to. Be careful when installing the GNU ports for Darwin: they'll fuck you up if you're innattentive because they like to replace or move Apple-installed bits.
Third, I'd second the OroborOSX recommendation. Too sweet have it sitting there in the dock, running the GIMP and Xterm and Abiword and what all, with no extra window clutter of the other window managers and themes for XWindows. It's faster running in rootless mode, too, running strictly in XWindows.
And in the ordinary small buisness scenario, when you have that hard drive crash you'll discover the tape drive hasnt been cleaned in three years, half the tapes are corrupt, and nobody understood what the 'waiting for writable media' message on the backup server meant.
Tapes work when you can afford them, and you have a fulltime dedicated sysadmin who can deal with it. But if you dont, you're likely to end up with a non-functional backup system.
This is irrationally wrong. Tapes are changed every night by the receptionist. The cleaning tape is run once a week by me. Tapes are recycled every three weeks, replaced every six months, and due to the nature of backups, data is recovered off of one every couple of weeks, so I'm aware if the tapes are bad. Archives (very different from backups) are stored Ecrix VXA tapes, which have a 30-year life expectancy, and a lot of the archives duplicate what has been put on CD by users. Duplication, redudancy and over-compensation are the key words. It works perfectly.
I *always* recommend a tape drive to my small business clients. Now, this could be because my clients tend to be data-intensive. But it's also because there's no other physically small media with great reliability and a cheap per gigabyte cost.
What I'm guessing is that you make the same mistake that many people make: you don't store your data off-site, otherwise, you'd never be recommending hard drives as a backup media solution. That could be your downfall. I hope you never suffer for it, but all it's going to take is a theft, fire, water damage or similar at the office to make you realize the error of your ways.
You probably also make another common mistake: you back up only "working" files. When possible, I back up entire hard drives every night. Applications, system files, preferences, everything. Now, not all my clients can afford such a solution, but those who do get they ability (oft-used) to resuscitate a drive completely in a matter of a couple of hours or less. It's too, too sweet.
I'll back Retrospect as well. An easy-to-use, fast, efficient program that meets all the necessary criteria for a good backup system:
1. Must not require behavior change on the part of the users.
2. Must be invisible to the users.
3. Must support media that can be taken off-site.
4. Must work with many kinds of networks, hardware and software, including various generations, versions and platforms.
Any solution that involves users copying their own files to a server is a foolish one. The backup media *must* be able to be taken out of the company. For some of my clients, that means the receptionist takes home the backup tapes that are not currently in rotation. For others, the tapes are stored in a safe deposit box. Remember that crane that fell into a building and killed an old woman in Times Square a couple of years ago? Well, it also put several companies in jeopardy: they were not allowed to re-enter their businesses for weeks. So any server-based storage of backups were useless. Same for all those business affected by Sept. 11. Some weren't even allowed to go into their neighborhood, much less their building. I will say nothing about the business that were actually in the towers.
The reason backups must not rely upon users' behavior is because people are fallible. They think they know what's important, but they don't, really. They'll miss a good deal of the files they've saved in random places. And how many of your users can find where their email is stored on their hard drive? Damned few. Even a scripted solution that involves initiating standard file copying to shared drives is foolish: there's no central logging and reporting for a system like that. You've got to have the whole show in the hands of one or two people, who can be on top of the entire game. In addition, the users should never know the backup is taking place. One company I worked for used to do an invisible Retrospect backup of users who were about to be fired. Besides this advance information being an indication of a trusted IT department, it meant that we saved ourselves a lot of frustration later when we would be expected to full magical files out of our butts. These includes things like email address books and bookmark files. These can be important: the only way to get them all is with a completely automated solution.
Everything can, and is, used by criminals. Grocery carts, street signs, road maps, mailboxes, elevators, stairs, 411, electricity, tap water, pens, pencils, water colors, lawnmowers, yard rakes, credit cards, checks, cash, coins, incense, books, the Internet, public transportation, libraries, televisions, radios, walkie-talkies, handerkerchiefs, laundromats, diners, off-ramps, on-ramps, overpasses, optometrists, public education, gas stations, restaurants, liquor stores, scissors, glue and tape.
You jackass.
I am not a lawyer, but my father delivers subpoenas for a living to men who have not paid child support. I asked him in the past about people refusing to accept subpoenas when he hands them to them. He explained that telling the party of the subpoena is sufficient for the subpoena to be served, and all that is required is that he a) notify them of the subpoena, and b) make it available to them. Refusing to accept the subpoena, not reading it, dropping it, ripping it up, or even claiming you aren't the person the subpoena is supposed to go to, do *nothing* to cancel the fact that the process server has, in fact, found you and given you sufficient notice of the legal document. In fact, a process server can simply used the scattershot method: deliver subpoenas to your home, your work, your gym, your parents' home, your girlfriend's house, your past addresses, everywhere, and in most cases it is sufficient to shove it in the mail slot, leave it in the mailbox, put it inside the screen door, hand it to another family member or household resident, put it under a windshield wiper, etc. Such a subpoena is considered served. You have been given sufficient notice. The court would prefer you pay attention to that notice, but it's your loss if you don't. So claiming you didn't get or didn't read an email message which you did indeed receive is likely an insufficient argument in the eyes of the court, particularly if there's strong evidence that you do, in fact, use the email address in question.
I should add that contrary to what you might think, most of the people who are served subpoenas are apologetic and civil, even a little bashful about having to have someone official notify them of a legal matter related to their own mistakes.
I agree with the praise for Spamcop. We implemented a DNS check against bl.spamcop.net a couple of weeks ago. Since then, from four different spot checks of the server logs, these are the stats:
Totals:
Total time Covered: 52 hours 52 minutes
842 emails rejected as spam
1691 emails received
422 emails sent
This is in a small office with about 50 users.
There's finally and Ogg component for OS X QuickTime that seems to work pretty well for a beta. Another fruit of the BSD underpinnings, I believe. OS 9 version on the way. A second version of the QuickTime component apparently also exists, although I could not get the page to load.
Sorry to say, buddy, but you've got a shitty phone or a bad service provider. I suggest you switch one or the other, or both. My phone (a sweet little Nokia) works like a champ with Voicestream in places where my Ericsson with AT&T got zero signal bars. Hell, I can take calls in some of the shallower subway stations. But service in a subway train? That's only possible on the elevated trains: parts of the 7, F, N, 1-9, 4-5-6, J-M-Z and B, and probably on the LIRR and Metro North above aground, at least until we get leaky cell antennas in all the tunnels.
Did you even look at your post? You're missing vital tags!2 ;
;
;
<BR>
<BR>The correct item to past is:
<BR>
<BR><key>BackingCompression</key
<BR>
<dict>
<BR>
<key>compressionScanTime</key>
<BR>
<real>5.000000000000000e+00</real>
<BR>
<key>minCompressableSize</key>
<BR>
<integer>8193</integer>
<BR>
<key>minCompressionRatio</key>
<BR>
<real>1.100000023841858e+00</real>
<BR>
</dict>
I'm using this hack. It seems to work well and appears to do no harm. I can see the difference on my slow PowerBook G3/300/192 just dragging windows around.
If you want to improve your Finder experience further, run the app ShadowKiller. It removes the window shadows which seem to take too much power to make on a slow, old Mac. Definite improvement. However, because OS X windows don't have a frame all the way around, you're gonna get weird white window on white window experiences; you'll get used to it.
Another good site with Mac OS X tips is Mac OS X Hints.
Oh wait. Did you mean a one-button mouse?
Maybe he did mean a zero-button mouse. The fantastic oblong optical mice that Apple delivers with with its desktop units does not have a button, per se. The whole upper carapace of the mouse is spring-hinged underneath to provide the kung-fu clicking action.
Wrong. Potatoes and potatos are both acceptable. It depends only upon which dictionary you consult.
Also, photos of the purple potatoes. Note that the article says that purple potatoes "have always been used" in the Andes Mountains. In other words, they are a natural variety, not one that is genetically engineered.
Potato Association of America Handbook: Potato Varieties.
Off-colour vegetables.
Who says watermelon must be red?
Potatoes of note. (Potatos or potatoes, either is acceptable. Just not potatoe).
For the last 36 hours, I've been keeping a weblog of the events in New York and DC, largely from the perspective of amateur vidoe and still photographers, keeps of weblogs and journals.
World New York.
Adolescents thundered onto the Net over a decade ago...
Maybe my memory is faulty, but in 1991 there were not that many adolescents on the Net. Not that many people at all, really. Lots of university students who might perhaps qualify under loose definitions of adolescent, but 15-year-olds? Not enough to write about, or talk about, or even worth mentioning. BBSing was still big back then, so maybe if you loosely include that and FIDO hookups...
In fact, being on the Internet in 1991 would mean that today you have been on the Internet longer than 97 percent of all current Internet users. That's stilly a tiny number of people.
Like seemingly every other sci-fi, game-based or techno-centered movie in the last decade, Final Fantasy takes place largely in a destroyed New York City. (Why is it always in a ruined Manhattan? The tall buildings?)
From here:
That temptation to destroy the familiar skyline of New York, whether with a bomb-loaded rental truck or a screenplay, proves the enduring legend of the city. Unfortunately, the legend is also why we no longer have a Great-White Way, but a Great White Sneaker Way, in which big-haired loud-mouthed tourists try to out-do what they think is the real New York--That's okay! It's New York--and then, unexpectedly finding kindness, interest and even love on the part of the supposedly hostile natives, send their amusing letters week after week to the Times's Metropolitan Diary. Ha ha! Zabar's! Cab drivers! Bus drivers! The subway! Those gruff but lovable beggars! So foreign! Ha ha!
You're usually only surfing one web site at a time, right?.
Umm, no. That would be tedious and unproductive. Even with a high-speed connection, I tend to open numerous bookmarks at a time, let them load in the background, wade through them one by one, opening almost all links from those pages in new windows, letting those windows load in the background as well. I'm done browsing when I hit the last open window. Turning off Javascript is not an option.
How do you prevent degradation of the DNA in space? What are the assembly instructions like? Is there a use for DNA, or is it even recognizable as biological instructions, outside of a cellular context? Wouldn't you need a biological container, or stem cells, or something?
Width=100% tags in tables are, in my opinion, bad design as they inevitably lead to wide columns and paragraphs and thus to the visitor having to move her head from side to side to read each line of text, rather than just moving the eyes. In short, bad user interaction. Nothing quite as awful as a single column of text spread 800 pixels across the browser page.
Also, small columns are better, but they're difficult to regulate with a variable page size. Column widths should not be variable, even if your page widths are. Make your non-text items variable if you have to do it: space, padding, margins, etc.
This is all besides the fact that every frigging time you re-size a window in Netscape, the frigging thing reloads the page.
don't be shocked - a suprising number of USians have no idea where NZ is...
And a surprising number of pedantic imbeciles use crappy invented words like "USians." At least have a sense of utility and, well, elegance, instead of using some lop-sided moniker. If you don't like "Americans," try "US citizens" or "US residents" or "people who live in the United States of America."
Besides all that, "US" in any form could mean "United States of Mexico," couldn't it? So where does that leave your lame "USians"?
Rep. Bob Barr, others challenge House bill to reduce junk e-mail.