On stable hardware with a stable OS, NFS works just fine. One of the biggest production environments I know of (Human Genome Project, UK contribution) was 3 terabytes online storage, using NFS. It just worked. I know, I used to work there. I don't anymore, but apparently they've got closer to 100tb online now, and are still using NFS.
And it still just works. Down servers should never happen, but if they do you'll find that sane OS will either a) give you the option to force break the mount (Solaris and Irix iirc, possibly others - haven't looked), or b) time out trying to unmount cleanly, and break the mount anyway (Tru64, maybe others). Maybe you've fallen foul of processes with files open on the remote filesystem (which can screw up local volumes too, this is not an NFS specific issue).
Having said that, I'd have to give you this concession - certainly in the past (I haven't used it in Linux for some time), Linux NFS was atrocious, especially serving. I had a 300mhz Linux box with a 100mbit link get ***thrashed*** by an old 33mhz Indigo on a BNC connection, both serving to the same client. I think about the most stable NFS I've seen thus far would be either the HP-UX or Irix (!) variants. My home NFS server is an Irix machine..;-)
I have never had to reboot a machine to fix an NFS problem, you're doing something wrong dude.
Pricing the less well off motorists out of the city is just a quick hack solution to a more serious problem. The bulk of the traffic problem is in the morning, and evening, as people go to/from work. During working hours, while it's busy, it's not that often actually gridlocked, and most of the traffic seems to be buses and taxis, and delivery vans.
During the rush hours, guess what? The trains, buses, taxis, and the underground system are all full PAST CAPACITY.
There's a bigger problem here, and basically extorting a few more quid from car drivers for the public purse is not going to solve anything.
Unfortunately it seems typical of our current dictat^H^H^H^H^H^H^H government.
Hated RPM issues
on
Is RPM Doomed?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
rpm -i
Sorry, you need libpng x.y.z_e, but you have libpng x.y.z_c.
Above is not of course technically accurate, but many MANY times I end up annoyed with RPMs since theyre put in a requirement for a SPECIFIC named package and version (on the builders system) version of something. You can end up needlessly having to upgrade libraries when you already had an entirely adequate version for the package in question.
Solaris package management works. It can't really help us here though, since Solaris installations are generally very generic things - linux machines can be any one of thousands of combinations of package versions. Back to linux-land, and apt-get with debian mostly works, but a few times I've seen a debian machine decide to upgrade more or less the entire base dist for a trivial tool due to versions, and break in the process while replacing libc. Not fun.
The only workable solution I've seen thus far, is the freebsd ports system. Grabs the generic source and builds it in such a way that it only upgrades backup tools and libraries when it really needs to. I've NEVER had a serious issue in years of using this system. That's not to say it's perfect of course, still suffers the issue of you not being able to easily revert to your old setup if an installation breaks somethings, and of course it can be pretty slow.
Something does need to be done though. A Windows using friend of mine tried to install Mandrake recently, which he did all on his own without issues. He wanted an IRC client, I recommended x-chat. We tried using RPM and it failed, so we grabbed the source and then had to go about installing a set of development tools on his machine. It took a *long* time before the gcc package would install due to some idiot deciding headers should be split from main packages for the sake of a few kb of diskspace. Even then x-chat wouldnt build, due to things like the gettext rpm not having msgfmt (part of gettext), someone having decided it lived in an openwin tools rpm, which would no doubt have wanted lots of openwin rubbish installing. Eventually we ended up splatting source versions of common tools on top of the rpm installed ones to resolve several instances of missing header files and scripts. Finally, x-chat built...
It made *my* head hurt let alone his - and I've been working with *nix machines for years. It almost put him off trying to use linux any further straight away. Linux is never going to start making any non-techie inroads unless someone sorts out a decent packaging system, and fast.
One of the guys in our systems section has been assigned a project to investigate the viability of migrating some parts of the company to linux, probably the development team as first point of attack since they're naturally a bit more adept with computers (most of the software they develop, runs on suns). It's looking like it'll be KDE desktop time, with a very plain set of themes (nice as KDE3 is, Ive seen it collapse like a house of cards due to a theme application:( ).
Of course the.doc file "format" (see: moving target) is proving.. interesting, as usual. KWord isn't terribly good at importing.docs, KSpread not terribly good with some excel formula transitions. We'll probably end up using the Sun StarOffice as opposed to OpenOffice because once sun are receiving money for the product, they'll be more or less obligated to get the import and export filters down to a fine art;-) Lot's of people complained about Suns decision to start charging for it, but to be honest - I think it was quite a brave move that could pay off. Microsofts monopoly is currently a considerably greater evil than non-free software.
What some of the people posting don't seem to realise is, you can't simply sit still with Microsoft products. New versions depreciate old file formats, so you're forced into upgrading to the current office version, for example, because the rest of the world is now using Word 2002 Millenium Cashcow Edition, and your Office 97 can't open it. Of course Word 2002 M C E requires XP to run, so you're forced into upgrading the operating system too. And so on.
Now is a very important crunch time for the whole *nix on desktop / Windows battle - the new licensing costs from Microsoft, and their use of scare tactics to commit people to being further entangled now, or pay more later, has finally attracted the attention of the beancounters. This was needed, management types will never consider free software until they feel they are being actively ripped off. It's like herding cats, completely impossible unless you set one side of the room on fire. I think they're feeling it right about now, looks like the sharp shock we needed to broaden peoples horizons a bit has ironically come from Microsoft themselves.
I use Opera 5 for linux in under freebsd. Its very fast (freebsd linux emulation isn't *really* emulation, just x86 code execution..), and it's very stable.
Each time a new V6 beta comes out, I install it, then moments later revert to V5 because 6 appears to have a problem with multiple concurrent connections - try opening a gif heavy page and half the connections just hang forever.
Does anyone else have this problem with 6 betas on freebsd? Does the new one fix it?
Tell that to the FreeBSD servers that were in the opposite rack, running 24/7 flawlessly, on identical hardware - each doing exponentially more work than the cluster was designed to do as a whole.
I'm sure someone else has run MS cluster products happily enough, but my personal experience suggests its a pile of steaming dog turd.
Having seen first hand how poorly the following setup ran, I'd say steer clear of Microsoft until they admit that reboots are not normal:
2 x HP Netservers, both dual p2 Xeon, 1gb ram, and a small raid shelf with 8x 9gb disks. Both NT4 installs with the correct patchlevels.
One machine ran oracle, the other IIS, these were clustered so that one would take over the task of the other, should there be a problem.
Problems: 1) Crashing (daily at least) 2) Slow (astonishingly poor, disk defrags once a week helped this) 3) Sometimes one host would freeze, and the other wouldn't actually notice 4) Often a shutdown of one node would move the services across, but upon rejoining the cluster - the node with both services would refuse to give one back. 5) Often, IIS would stop talking, and neither node would actually realise.
The attempted solutions:
1) Replaced CPUs, memory, disks, eventually nodes 2) Reinstalled clustering software, eventually total clean installs of operating system and applications 3) Support from Microsoft, and Oracle, and HP who made the (certified) kit. Oracle+HP both pointed the finger at the OS, Microsoft simply failed to help, when we got any response from them at all. 4) (this helped) I used one of the spare HP9000 servers to monitor them remotely by trying test transactions - it alerted people when they fucked up.
I think the above says it all really. Standard software on correct hardware - it just didn't work properly. Microsoft can stick their clustering "technologies" where the sun don't shine.
Well, what I meant to say was 'censor', I do realise they aren't being censored at all, just blocked.
The point still stands though, Teleglobe shouldn't be using the RBL to block ALL traffic from a network when the spam people are trying to get rid of is email - doing port 25 would have been sufficient.
Don't Teleglobe realise that the RBL is actually intented for use on mail blocking? Using it to block all traffic from a listed network is extremely stupid, especially for a backbone provider.
I'm not sticking up for SafeSurf, I'm sick and tired of stupid censorware providers whining when someone censors them, and justifying everything 'for the sake of the children', but it appears to me, that Teleglobe, are dumb.;-)
When 2.4.0 release was made available, the MegaRAID driver didn't work, at all - due to an incorrectly placed (might have been missing) ! sign. It had worked previously in the 2.4.0 test series, but was broken entirely for the first few releases.
Given that linux is, among other things, a server OS is struck me as strange that nobody had bothered to test this whole family of RAID cards in 2.4.0.
I've since switched to freebsd, and all my package version, library version, and dist specific woes have been long since buried.
Deliberately degrading the audio on the CD is disgusting.. I have always been a supporter of people buying the CDs of things they downloaded/copied/etc because a few pounds/dollars going to the artist (if that) is better than nothing at all - and how a genre sells has a big impact on which new bands are signed.
However, if they want to now only sell degraded copies, I'll see no reason at all in future to buy them - I'm not paying for something intentionally mangled, and I'm not paying for something I can't make copies of to listen to in the car, and I'm more careful with my original CDs than to use them in a car/walkman/etc.
I wonder if this also affects making digital copies to minidisc?
Are Sony ready to kill the MD format entirely?
I remember being fairly young at the time (maybe 6-8 somewhere, certainly before 9 when I got a ZX81;-) ) when I got a cardboard box full of old Army Meccano from an older cousin. It was like normal Meccano but with green instead of yellow panels, plus a few premade truck cabs and some HUGE wheels. It certainly took my attention away from lego to the point where I went out into the back garden and build a big sturdy wooden box with magnetic hinged lid for it.
Parents looked half scared to death seeing me out there with large lengths of wood and power tools at that age;-)
Both have their definite merits, but I always found Meccano had an old fashioned bare components feel to it that clicked with me, and I liked building trucks that were almost indestructable (watch what happens when you give your lego car a really good push and it goes off course into a door frame...).
And of course - if you lived in Japan (or do the whole import thing) the best 2D gaming *ever* was to be had on the (failed everywhere else) Sega Saturn.
--
SUVs are a special case
on
Eco-Terrorism
·
· Score: 1
I'm sorry but can't SUVs be given a special case rating? About the only thing they're useful for IS burning, and then only just.
If you're going to be doing enough off road miles that a car can't cope, then you need an offroader, not an inefficient unstable waste of metal that tips at the first sight of a corner, let alone a small rock.
I used to go to arcades, but then all the fun games were replaced by SF2 clones and driving games that last for 90 seconds.
In the UK it is RIDICULOUSLY expensive - 1ukp for a quick blast on the latest daytona rubbish? How about being thrashed by a Tekken machine set on top difficulty to maximise the amount of money pumped in? Sorry, I really don't think so - give me a knackered old Robocop machine set at 10p a go anytime.
For anyone tracking the stable releases, the MIIBUS type driver for fxp cards is now in the source tree. 4.3-RELEASE doesn't have it, but grab the source to that and cvsup to the current stable tree and you get it.
I've done no real testing, but it builds, and appears to work.;-)
I started using computers around age 9/10 (a ZX81). Through the years I've progressed from machine to machine, and now it's my job - I'm a consultant. In the past few years I had been more careful about workstation setup (I helped do a workstation assesment at a 500 user site), but prior to this it was all sorts of fucked postures and ways of typing.
Until just over 3 months ago, I'd never had a single problem - not even so much as a twitch, no aches, weird pains, numbness - NOTHING. Then one night my right arm just felt 'tense'. By morning it was mostly unusable and I couldn't comfortably lift a can of coke. Typing for greater than about 60 seconds led to severe pins+needles and burning pain in my lower arms and wrist, lasting for hours, calming back down to its normal ache after. I had to stop driving the car, I couldn't carry groceries or do the dishes, turning the front door key in the lock hurt. The left arm followed a few days later. I had to leave the contract I was on and go into sick leave, after being given some very good advice by a friend who has been in recovery now for 2 years. He suffers from Carpel Tunnel, but mine appears to be a different kind of RSI (note - in the UK this has now been renamed to "Overuse Syndrome" - I can see insurance companies using this definition to avoid claims...).
3 months on, and I can do 'about' an hour a day (it varies), and have had to give up gaming more or less entirely - thankfully they do recover after about 20 minutes now. I can't write on paper either because it causes the same problems, even channel surfing for about the same time will cause it to fire up again. Slowly, they ARE getting better, but that's with physiotherapy sessions (ultrasound, laser, massage) twice weekly , flexing exercises, and lots and lots of time to reflect at home, while I'm bored out of my skull. I don't know when I'll be truly able to work full time again.
I'd like the above to be advice for all you non sufferers. It doesn't always build up over time with noticable symtoms, it can just attack all in one go and without warning. If you get ANY issues at all that 'feel' more serious than just a tired wrist, for god sake SEE A DOCTOR and stop doing whatever causes it IMMEDIATELY. You might just end up with a week or so to recover. You might like me have a recovery time of months (if ever in terms of intensive working), you might end up like my friend with your arms in plastercast and unable to work without speech recognition software for a few years, or you might never recover to a usable level at all. It's career threatening, and the *really* scary thing is you might not get a warning. If I'd known how serious and real forms of RSI can be - I'd have found something else to do.
I'm afraid I don't read/. very much now, so it's unlikely that I'll see any replies to this post - I just thought it might be useful to someone.
My DVD player is fairly strange (a LG 3200E). You can select the region with a remote hack, but strangely if you set it to region 1, region 1 AND region 2 discs will work fine - totally seperate from the multiregion 0 which some discs refuse to play under.
Quite how it believes and verifies seperately as both a region 1 and a region 2, without being multi is beyond me - and frankly I don't want to touch the menu while it's in this state;-)
I'm not too sure about this one. Despite what fans tell me, you can still tell the difference between compressed music and a CD, and I personally consider mp3 a personal portable format - great for walkmen or background sound off a computer, but if I wanted to actively listen to some music I think I'd go with a real hifi and a CD player. For $700 (or even the projected lower price), you could buy quite a nice high capacity CD jukebox unit.
If they make it cheap enough though, it could definitely score in the same way as my minidisc seperate does. I don't listen to it, but it's really useful for recording minidiscs for the walkman or car stereo - if they can get this unit to talk to the currently available portable mp3 players _without_ the use of a PC, that would be very useful. Oh well - best of luck to them - anything that popularises mp3 above microsofts new closed format is fine by me.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh come on, you're being ridiculous.
;-)
On stable hardware with a stable OS, NFS works just fine. One of the biggest production environments I know of (Human Genome Project, UK contribution) was 3 terabytes online storage, using NFS. It just worked. I know, I used to work there. I don't anymore, but apparently they've got closer to 100tb online now, and are still using NFS.
And it still just works. Down servers should never happen, but if they do you'll find that sane OS will either a) give you the option to force break the mount (Solaris and Irix iirc, possibly others - haven't looked), or b) time out trying to unmount cleanly, and break the mount anyway (Tru64, maybe others). Maybe you've fallen foul of processes with files open on the remote filesystem (which can screw up local volumes too, this is not an NFS specific issue).
Having said that, I'd have to give you this concession - certainly in the past (I haven't used it in Linux for some time), Linux NFS was atrocious, especially serving. I had a 300mhz Linux box with a 100mbit link get ***thrashed*** by an old 33mhz Indigo on a BNC connection, both serving to the same client. I think about the most stable NFS I've seen thus far would be either the HP-UX or Irix (!) variants. My home NFS server is an Irix machine..
I have never had to reboot a machine to fix an NFS problem, you're doing something wrong dude.
Yes, there's too much traffic in London.
Pricing the less well off motorists out of the city is just a quick hack solution to a more serious problem. The bulk of the traffic problem is in the morning, and evening, as people go to/from work. During working hours, while it's busy, it's not that often actually gridlocked, and most of the traffic seems to be buses and taxis, and delivery vans.
During the rush hours, guess what? The trains, buses, taxis, and the underground system are all full PAST CAPACITY.
There's a bigger problem here, and basically extorting a few more quid from car drivers for the public purse is not going to solve anything.
Unfortunately it seems typical of our current dictat^H^H^H^H^H^H^H government.
rpm -i
Sorry, you need libpng x.y.z_e, but you have libpng x.y.z_c.
Above is not of course technically accurate, but many MANY times I end up annoyed with RPMs since theyre put in a requirement for a SPECIFIC named package and version (on the builders system) version of something. You can end up needlessly having to upgrade libraries when you already had an entirely adequate version for the package in question.
Solaris package management works. It can't really help us here though, since Solaris installations are generally very generic things - linux machines can be any one of thousands of combinations of package versions. Back to linux-land, and apt-get with debian mostly works, but a few times I've seen a debian machine decide to upgrade more or less the entire base dist for a trivial tool due to versions, and break in the process while replacing libc. Not fun.
The only workable solution I've seen thus far, is the freebsd ports system. Grabs the generic source and builds it in such a way that it only upgrades backup tools and libraries when it really needs to. I've NEVER had a serious issue in years of using this system. That's not to say it's perfect of course, still suffers the issue of you not being able to easily revert to your old setup if an installation breaks somethings, and of course it can be pretty slow.
Something does need to be done though. A Windows using friend of mine tried to install Mandrake recently, which he did all on his own without issues. He wanted an IRC client, I recommended x-chat. We tried using RPM and it failed, so we grabbed the source and then had to go about installing a set of development tools on his machine. It took a *long* time before the gcc package would install due to some idiot deciding headers should be split from main packages for the sake of a few kb of diskspace. Even then x-chat wouldnt build, due to things like the gettext rpm not having msgfmt (part of gettext), someone having decided it lived in an openwin tools rpm, which would no doubt have wanted lots of openwin rubbish installing. Eventually we ended up splatting source versions of common tools on top of the rpm installed ones to resolve several instances of missing header files and scripts. Finally, x-chat built...
It made *my* head hurt let alone his - and I've been working with *nix machines for years. It almost put him off trying to use linux any further straight away. Linux is never going to start making any non-techie inroads unless someone sorts out a decent packaging system, and fast.
"You're going down, bitch. Join us or die."
One of the guys in our systems section has been assigned a project to investigate the viability of migrating some parts of the company to linux, probably the development team as first point of attack since they're naturally a bit more adept with computers (most of the software they develop, runs on suns). It's looking like it'll be KDE desktop time, with a very plain set of themes (nice as KDE3 is, Ive seen it collapse like a house of cards due to a theme application :( ).
.doc file "format" (see: moving target) is proving .. interesting, as usual. KWord isn't terribly good at importing .docs, KSpread not terribly good with some excel formula transitions. We'll probably end up using the Sun StarOffice as opposed to OpenOffice because once sun are receiving money for the product, they'll be more or less obligated to get the import and export filters down to a fine art ;-) Lot's of people complained about Suns decision to start charging for it, but to be honest - I think it was quite a brave move that could pay off. Microsofts monopoly is currently a considerably greater evil than non-free software.
Of course the
What some of the people posting don't seem to realise is, you can't simply sit still with Microsoft products. New versions depreciate old file formats, so you're forced into upgrading to the current office version, for example, because the rest of the world is now using Word 2002 Millenium Cashcow Edition, and your Office 97 can't open it. Of course Word 2002 M C E requires XP to run, so you're forced into upgrading the operating system too. And so on.
Now is a very important crunch time for the whole *nix on desktop / Windows battle - the new licensing costs from Microsoft, and their use of scare tactics to commit people to being further entangled now, or pay more later, has finally attracted the attention of the beancounters. This was needed, management types will never consider free software until they feel they are being actively ripped off. It's like herding cats, completely impossible unless you set one side of the room on fire. I think they're feeling it right about now, looks like the sharp shock we needed to broaden peoples horizons a bit has ironically come from Microsoft themselves.
I use Opera 5 for linux in under freebsd. Its very fast (freebsd linux emulation isn't *really* emulation, just x86 code execution..), and it's very stable.
Each time a new V6 beta comes out, I install it, then moments later revert to V5 because 6 appears to have a problem with multiple concurrent connections - try opening a gif heavy page and half the connections just hang forever.
Does anyone else have this problem with 6 betas on freebsd? Does the new one fix it?
Tell that to the FreeBSD servers that were in the opposite rack, running 24/7 flawlessly, on identical hardware - each doing exponentially more work than the cluster was designed to do as a whole.
I'm sure someone else has run MS cluster products happily enough, but my personal experience suggests its a pile of steaming dog turd.
Having seen first hand how poorly the following setup ran, I'd say steer clear of Microsoft until they admit that reboots are not normal:
2 x HP Netservers, both dual p2 Xeon, 1gb ram, and a small raid shelf with 8x 9gb disks. Both NT4 installs with the correct patchlevels.
One machine ran oracle, the other IIS, these were clustered so that one would take over the task of the other, should there be a problem.
Problems:
1) Crashing (daily at least)
2) Slow (astonishingly poor, disk defrags once a week helped this)
3) Sometimes one host would freeze, and the other wouldn't actually notice
4) Often a shutdown of one node would move the services across, but upon rejoining the cluster - the node with both services would refuse to give one back.
5) Often, IIS would stop talking, and neither node would actually realise.
The attempted solutions:
1) Replaced CPUs, memory, disks, eventually nodes
2) Reinstalled clustering software, eventually total clean installs of operating system and applications
3) Support from Microsoft, and Oracle, and HP who made the (certified) kit. Oracle+HP both pointed the finger at the OS, Microsoft simply failed to help, when we got any response from them at all.
4) (this helped) I used one of the spare HP9000 servers to monitor them remotely by trying test transactions - it alerted people when they fucked up.
I think the above says it all really. Standard software on correct hardware - it just didn't work properly. Microsoft can stick their clustering "technologies" where the sun don't shine.
Finally - no more waiting for web pages to load because they got hung up on attempts to contact doubleclick!
Well, what I meant to say was 'censor', I do realise they aren't being censored at all, just blocked.
The point still stands though, Teleglobe shouldn't be using the RBL to block ALL traffic from a network when the spam people are trying to get rid of is email - doing port 25 would have been sufficient.
Don't Teleglobe realise that the RBL is actually intented for use on mail blocking? Using it to block all traffic from a listed network is extremely stupid, especially for a backbone provider.
;-)
I'm not sticking up for SafeSurf, I'm sick and tired of stupid censorware providers whining when someone censors them, and justifying everything 'for the sake of the children', but it appears to me, that Teleglobe, are dumb.
When 2.4.0 release was made available, the MegaRAID driver didn't work, at all - due to an incorrectly placed (might have been missing) ! sign. It had worked previously in the 2.4.0 test series, but was broken entirely for the first few releases.
Given that linux is, among other things, a server OS is struck me as strange that nobody had bothered to test this whole family of RAID cards in 2.4.0.
I've since switched to freebsd, and all my package version, library version, and dist specific woes have been long since buried.
Deliberately degrading the audio on the CD is disgusting.. I have always been a supporter of people buying the CDs of things they downloaded/copied/etc because a few pounds/dollars going to the artist (if that) is better than nothing at all - and how a genre sells has a big impact on which new bands are signed.
However, if they want to now only sell degraded copies, I'll see no reason at all in future to buy them - I'm not paying for something intentionally mangled, and I'm not paying for something I can't make copies of to listen to in the car, and I'm more careful with my original CDs than to use them in a car/walkman/etc.
I wonder if this also affects making digital copies to minidisc? Are Sony ready to kill the MD format entirely?
--
I remember being fairly young at the time (maybe 6-8 somewhere, certainly before 9 when I got a ZX81 ;-) ) when I got a cardboard box full of old Army Meccano from an older cousin. It was like normal Meccano but with green instead of yellow panels, plus a few premade truck cabs and some HUGE wheels. It certainly took my attention away from lego to the point where I went out into the back garden and build a big sturdy wooden box with magnetic hinged lid for it.
;-)
Parents looked half scared to death seeing me out there with large lengths of wood and power tools at that age
Both have their definite merits, but I always found Meccano had an old fashioned bare components feel to it that clicked with me, and I liked building trucks that were almost indestructable (watch what happens when you give your lego car a really good push and it goes off course into a door frame...).
--
And of course - if you lived in Japan (or do the whole import thing) the best 2D gaming *ever* was to be had on the (failed everywhere else) Sega Saturn.
--
I'm sorry but can't SUVs be given a special case rating? About the only thing they're useful for IS burning, and then only just.
If you're going to be doing enough off road miles that a car can't cope, then you need an offroader, not an inefficient unstable waste of metal that tips at the first sight of a corner, let alone a small rock.
--
I used to go to arcades, but then all the fun games were replaced by SF2 clones and driving games that last for 90 seconds.
In the UK it is RIDICULOUSLY expensive - 1ukp for a quick blast on the latest daytona rubbish? How about being thrashed by a Tekken machine set on top difficulty to maximise the amount of money pumped in? Sorry, I really don't think so - give me a knackered old Robocop machine set at 10p a go anytime.
--
aviplay does (comes with the avifile library)
--
For anyone tracking the stable releases, the MIIBUS type driver for fxp cards is now in the source tree. 4.3-RELEASE doesn't have it, but grab the source to that and cvsup to the current stable tree and you get it.
;-)
I've done no real testing, but it builds, and appears to work.
--
I started using computers around age 9/10 (a ZX81). Through the years I've progressed from machine to machine, and now it's my job - I'm a consultant. In the past few years I had been more careful about workstation setup (I helped do a workstation assesment at a 500 user site), but prior to this it was all sorts of fucked postures and ways of typing.
/. very much now, so it's unlikely that I'll see any replies to this post - I just thought it might be useful to someone.
Until just over 3 months ago, I'd never had a single problem - not even so much as a twitch, no aches, weird pains, numbness - NOTHING. Then one night my right arm just felt 'tense'. By morning it was mostly unusable and I couldn't comfortably lift a can of coke. Typing for greater than about 60 seconds led to severe pins+needles and burning pain in my lower arms and wrist, lasting for hours, calming back down to its normal ache after. I had to stop driving the car, I couldn't carry groceries or do the dishes, turning the front door key in the lock hurt. The left arm followed a few days later. I had to leave the contract I was on and go into sick leave, after being given some very good advice by a friend who has been in recovery now for 2 years. He suffers from Carpel Tunnel, but mine appears to be a different kind of RSI (note - in the UK this has now been renamed to "Overuse Syndrome" - I can see insurance companies using this definition to avoid claims...).
3 months on, and I can do 'about' an hour a day (it varies), and have had to give up gaming more or less entirely - thankfully they do recover after about 20 minutes now. I can't write on paper either because it causes the same problems, even channel surfing for about the same time will cause it to fire up again. Slowly, they ARE getting better, but that's with physiotherapy sessions (ultrasound, laser, massage) twice weekly , flexing exercises, and lots and lots of time to reflect at home, while I'm bored out of my skull. I don't know when I'll be truly able to work full time again.
I'd like the above to be advice for all you non sufferers. It doesn't always build up over time with noticable symtoms, it can just attack all in one go and without warning. If you get ANY issues at all that 'feel' more serious than just a tired wrist, for god sake SEE A DOCTOR and stop doing whatever causes it IMMEDIATELY. You might just end up with a week or so to recover. You might like me have a recovery time of months (if ever in terms of intensive working), you might end up like my friend with your arms in plastercast and unable to work without speech recognition software for a few years, or you might never recover to a usable level at all. It's career threatening, and the *really* scary thing is you might not get a warning. If I'd known how serious and real forms of RSI can be - I'd have found something else to do.
I'm afraid I don't read
james
--
My DVD player is fairly strange (a LG 3200E). You can select the region with a remote hack, but strangely if you set it to region 1, region 1 AND region 2 discs will work fine - totally seperate from the multiregion 0 which some discs refuse to play under.
;-)
Quite how it believes and verifies seperately as both a region 1 and a region 2, without being multi is beyond me - and frankly I don't want to touch the menu while it's in this state
--
And amusingly, the low end pentium box couldn't emulate a C64 at full speed.
mhz does not purely a fast machine make..
--
Well that's the first thing that popped into my mind when I saw the picture of that poor dead Indigo case with a coffee machine in it.
--
I'm not too sure about this one. Despite what fans tell me, you can still tell the difference between compressed music and a CD, and I personally consider mp3 a personal portable format - great for walkmen or background sound off a computer, but if I wanted to actively listen to some music I think I'd go with a real hifi and a CD player. For $700 (or even the projected lower price), you could buy quite a nice high capacity CD jukebox unit.
If they make it cheap enough though, it could definitely score in the same way as my minidisc seperate does. I don't listen to it, but it's really useful for recording minidiscs for the walkman or car stereo - if they can get this unit to talk to the currently available portable mp3 players _without_ the use of a PC, that would be very useful. Oh well - best of luck to them - anything that popularises mp3 above microsofts new closed format is fine by me.
--
At one of my old employers (just over a year ago) we suffered a comms room fire and had a melted Alphaserver (which still worked) :-)
--