CBC market place (a consumer-affairs type TV program) had an interesting show on just this topic a while back. Their conclusion was that extended warranties are great if you're selling them, but are a waste of time and money for the actual consumer. You'd be much better off putting the money you'd spend on them in a high-interest savings account as your "fix-it/replace-it" fund.
Here's the link to the web site. The page also has a link to the video, but alas, it's in Quicktime format.
Not to mention the health benefits of leading a much more active lifestyle, having fun meeting new people through a roadie club, and developing new fetishes for exotic materials like titanium and carbon fiber!;)
Re:The only once inside the GNOME-community
on
Has GNOME Become LAME?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
And what about code-size? Every progam it's own parser. Shudder. Ease of programming?
I'm intentionally taking this slightly out of context, but I think this is one of the biggest overlooked benefits of XML.
Sure, there might be slightly better data formats out there for specific cases in terms of speed or file size, but as far as development time goes, XML parsers can't be beat. You should basically be able to take a parser, wrap it with a few calls or a class to deal with your specific file, and you're done.
You don't have to re-implement and fully test your own parsing engine; you're using a parser that's pretty much optimized and tested to completion. This lets you develop more robust software in a shorter amount of time, and also lets you focus on coding the things you actually *want* to be coding.
Unless anyone you're someone that actually gets off on writing parsers (people like that are out there; I've met them...), I think there are very few reasons NOT to use XML.
At my work, that's the rule for *all* checkins. Whenever you want to check something in, it must be reviewed by someone else. Doesn't matter if it's a one-line change or the addition of a whole new subsystem. Each checkin also has to have a description with it outlining the change, its tracking number, which files, and who it's reviewed by.
Things that break builds or functionality can still get through, but having an established process (yes, I know how much fear that word strikes in the hearts of some developers) can make life a lot easier.
While most highways within cities are probably not safe for biking (too many on/off ramps and vehicles merging), pretty much every highway I've seen has a very wide shoulder giving a cyclist a safe distance from the traffic. Most off-ramps in this area even have signs for cyclists telling them to "Cross here when safe" or indicating a safer alternate route to get across for busier places.
As far as cycling on city streets, there are roads I'd avoid because the traffic is just too much. I don't feel absolutely safe in a car on these roads either though. For my commute to work (on a bike, of course), I tend to stick to stick to designated bike routes. These are normal roads running parallel to the major arterials, with bike + pedestrian operated lights where they cross the bigger streets.
In all honesty though, I have to agree with what you're saying. Buying a crap bike (new or used) will leave you unhappy in the long run, and can leave you with a long walk when something breaks that can't be fixed on the road.
I've bought both new and used bikes, and in either case it helps to do your research beforehand, and to bring someone knowledgable along if you don't know bikes well.
Another option similar to this would be to burn all of your data onto a CD on a weekly basis, and send it to yourself by registered mail. Don't open the packages and store them in a safety-deposit box. Since you know what is on each CD, you can keep the mail sealed, and if needed, it would probably work as fairly convincing evidence.
It would probably help to discuss all of this with a lawyer before deciding on anything.
Microsoft has no reason to open *anything* up. They're big enough that in most situations they can do whatever they want without worrying about interoperability with any third party.
This (unfortunately) makes sense from a business perspective; they're much larger than the "critical mass" needed for them to set their own standards. Any extensive form of interoperability would make it much easier for people to install a mixed network instead of moving to all-Microsoft, or even moving away from MS technologies for certain machines.
This doesn't imply a monopoly situation, but rather it's their way of trying to force us to build homogenous networks instead of making it easier to sneak in a few other machines.
And a lot of people want to use only C code. Writing IMAP server with any other language would quite likely have gotten only a couple of users.
Sorry, but I don't understand how this can really be true, unless you really meant developers instead of users.
When looking for a piece of software, I'd really only consider questions such as "Does it run on my target platform?", "Does it have the set of features I need?", "Is it stable?", and "How much will it cost me (in time and money)?". Performance is, of course, another issue I'd be interested in (I'd probably group this in with features).
While the choice of language can influence all of these in one way or another, I seriously doubt most users are interested in *how* their criteria are met as long as they are.
A description of loss of 1000 books doesn't always convey what a picture of those books layed out in the front lawn in front of the burned house does.
Unfortunately that won't help you if the fire was bad enough. The best way to deal with an insurance company is to have all of your belongings photographed and cataloged *before* anything happens. Take your digital camera (or borrow one) and take a weekend phtographing every single thing. Also make an itemized list (database, spreadsheet, flat text file, etc.) with all of the serial numbers, etc. Burn (bad pun, I know...) everything to CDs and put it in a safety deposit box. Repeat every six months.
There are lots of items that insurance can NEVER replace, but arguing with an insurance company is really the last thing you want to do while standing on the porch of your wrecked life.
I've got a similar box here. Installed RedHat 7.x (7.1 or 2 I think) on it with no problems.
The best way to approach this is to do a minimal text-mode install, and then slowly add the files you need to make it useable. Yes, you will end up installing some packages you don't need (or can't use!) such as Mesa, but they won't slow you down. If harddrive space is an issue, start paring down such things as documentation: Install a minimal set of man pages and rm -r/usr/doc (or wherever it is all located now).
Next, make sure you can get X up and running with a light window manager. That rules out KDE, Gnome, and pretty much everything that's been "new" in the past 5 years. When set up right, FVWM can be both fast and functional. Personally, I found Windowmaker a bit too slow for a low-end 486.
If you can get some more RAM, get it! If not, tweak carefully. Cut everywhere you can to turn off EVERY service that you don't really need. I know, lots will end up getting swapped out, but not all (you don't really need cron, do you?)...
Also, make the services and programs that you *do* need as light-weight as possible. Limit your fonts and pixmaps in X, use a lightweight terminal (rxvt) instead of xterm, etc. Top (man top) sorting by memory usage is your friend. For software you just can't run on that machine and don't have a viable replacement for, don't forget that you can run them on another machine. Just ssh to it and fire up Mozilla there!
What you shouldn't waste your time on is custom builds of things. It's not worth it. I've tried. If you know what you're doing, you will save 15k of RAM by custom-building your kernel. It won't be noticably faster, and you'll just be dissapointed. Of course, it is a great learning experience!;)
Greater Vancouver: Issued 5.00 AM pst Friday 15 November 2002 Today..Cloudy with 60 percent chance of rain. Rain developing this afternoon. High 11. Tonight..Periods of rain. Windy near the water. Low 8. Saturday..Rain heavy at times. Wind southeast 30 to 50 km/h near the water. High 12. Sunday..Periods of rain. Low 7. High 12. Monday..Rain. Windy. Low 9. High 12. Tuesday..Rain. Windy. Low 8. High 11. Normals for the period..Low 3. High 9.
Looks about par for the course. Maybe some of you can post some nice pictures of the Leonids for me somewhere.:(
Just the other day I was looking through the bookmarks I have saved in Lynx on an old shell account. The search engines I'd bookmarked were Lycos as lycos.cs.cmu.edu and Altavista as altavista.digital.com. Neither of them had a www at the start, and both still resolve today.
Unfortunately the same can't be said for some of the gopher:// links I had in there too.:( We've come a long way in a very short time...
Etched glass looks much nicer for table/desktops than clear glass, IMO. And it's much better for hiding fingerprints and other crud. Not that they'd ever install anything like that for us here at work...:(
I figured this one out a few years ago by accident. I was playing with a video camera that had an IR remote control which I was using to start and stop recording. Since I was recording myself, the remote would be recorded at the start and stop of each segment. Whenever I was pushing a button, it looked (on tape) like there was a pulsating white light coming from the remote's "business end".
Sitting inches in front of my Apple's 15" LCD provided what I thought was the best DVD viewing experience. Alone.
You're single, aren't you?
IMO, the "best DVD viewing experiences" I've had have been on a comfortable couch, watching a movie I'm not particularly interested in, with someone I'm very interested in sitting beside me.
...even just javac Vehicles.java && java Vehicles takes at least 1 minute...
The reason this is slow is not because Java is slow while it is running, but because there is a fairly heavy overhead associated with starting up the JVM. This is actually happening twice here; running javac actually requires the JVM to run. Once running, compiled java code runs at a speed in about the same ballpark as C or C++.
Where java is dog-slow, however, is in its GUI libraries, especially Swing. I haven't had a chance to try this yet, but supposedly there were some improvements in Sun's recent 1.4 release. Other GUI libraries such as the one from IBM whose name just escaped me also are supposed to address these issues.
Btw, anybody doing lots of compiles of java code and consistently swearing at the slowness of javac should try jikes. It's an open-source java compiler that runs as a native binary. Much faster than javac!
My only complaint is that every time a new app is launched, an icon is displayed at the bottom of the screen.
To deal with this, I use the clip. In the clip options, set it to "Collapsed" and "Autoattract Icons". Any new app icons will just get sucked in there and not be seen. You do have to set this individually for each desktop though.
What I like best about Windowmaker are the various dock apps and being able to minimize a window to an actual icon (aka miniwindow) instead of an actual task bar. Personal preference, I know, but having started on fvwm that's just the right behaviour in my mind.
If you are going to be playing with hdparm, take my advice and make a backup first! Some interfaces aren't fully supported by the kernel yet, and trying to run drives off of them in certain modes could break in a bad way. In my experience, this then means massive filesystem corruption and a complete reinstall.
Of course I'm not saying *don't* play with hdparm; just be sensible and only try it on a system you have backed up and can afford to lose for a little while as you're rebuilding it.
Slashdot Mirror
CBC market place (a consumer-affairs type TV program) had an interesting show on just this topic a while back. Their conclusion was that extended warranties are great if you're selling them, but are a waste of time and money for the actual consumer. You'd be much better off putting the money you'd spend on them in a high-interest savings account as your "fix-it/replace-it" fund.
Here's the link to the web site. The page also has a link to the video, but alas, it's in Quicktime format.
Not to mention the health benefits of leading a much more active lifestyle, having fun meeting new people through a roadie club, and developing new fetishes for exotic materials like titanium and carbon fiber! ;)
And what about code-size? Every progam it's own parser. Shudder.
Ease of programming?
I'm intentionally taking this slightly out of context, but I think this is one of the biggest overlooked benefits of XML.
Sure, there might be slightly better data formats out there for specific cases in terms of speed or file size, but as far as development time goes, XML parsers can't be beat. You should basically be able to take a parser, wrap it with a few calls or a class to deal with your specific file, and you're done.
You don't have to re-implement and fully test your own parsing engine; you're using a parser that's pretty much optimized and tested to completion. This lets you develop more robust software in a shorter amount of time, and also lets you focus on coding the things you actually *want* to be coding.
Unless anyone you're someone that actually gets off on writing parsers (people like that are out there; I've met them...), I think there are very few reasons NOT to use XML.
At my work, that's the rule for *all* checkins. Whenever you want to check something in, it must be reviewed by someone else. Doesn't matter if it's a one-line change or the addition of a whole new subsystem. Each checkin also has to have a description with it outlining the change, its tracking number, which files, and who it's reviewed by.
Things that break builds or functionality can still get through, but having an established process (yes, I know how much fear that word strikes in the hearts of some developers) can make life a lot easier.
Actually, yes, within certain reasonable bounds.
While most highways within cities are probably not safe for biking (too many on/off ramps and vehicles merging), pretty much every highway I've seen has a very wide shoulder giving a cyclist a safe distance from the traffic. Most off-ramps in this area even have signs for cyclists telling them to "Cross here when safe" or indicating a safer alternate route to get across for busier places.
As far as cycling on city streets, there are roads I'd avoid because the traffic is just too much. I don't feel absolutely safe in a car on these roads either though. For my commute to work (on a bike, of course), I tend to stick to stick to designated bike routes. These are normal roads running parallel to the major arterials, with bike + pedestrian operated lights where they cross the bigger streets.
The guy's a fool if he thinks the weight of the unit will deter anyone from stealing it.
Perhaps there is some truth to all of the threads in here claiming that Segways make people weak, fat, and lazy...
Are you seriously suggesting that there's no place for powered transporation?
I believe they already have these places. They're called "roads".
Cheapest I've ever found a new bicycle is $250.
;)
And who ever said that you had to buy new?
In all honesty though, I have to agree with what you're saying. Buying a crap bike (new or used) will leave you unhappy in the long run, and can leave you with a long walk when something breaks that can't be fixed on the road.
I've bought both new and used bikes, and in either case it helps to do your research beforehand, and to bring someone knowledgable along if you don't know bikes well.
Another option similar to this would be to burn all of your data onto a CD on a weekly basis, and send it to yourself by registered mail. Don't open the packages and store them in a safety-deposit box. Since you know what is on each CD, you can keep the mail sealed, and if needed, it would probably work as fairly convincing evidence.
It would probably help to discuss all of this with a lawyer before deciding on anything.
Microsoft has no reason to open *anything* up. They're big enough that in most situations they can do whatever they want without worrying about interoperability with any third party.
This (unfortunately) makes sense from a business perspective; they're much larger than the "critical mass" needed for them to set their own standards. Any extensive form of interoperability would make it much easier for people to install a mixed network instead of moving to all-Microsoft, or even moving away from MS technologies for certain machines.
This doesn't imply a monopoly situation, but rather it's their way of trying to force us to build homogenous networks instead of making it easier to sneak in a few other machines.
And a lot of people want to use only C code. Writing IMAP server with any other language would quite likely have gotten only a couple of users.
Sorry, but I don't understand how this can really be true, unless you really meant developers instead of users.
When looking for a piece of software, I'd really only consider questions such as "Does it run on my target platform?", "Does it have the set of features I need?", "Is it stable?", and "How much will it cost me (in time and money)?". Performance is, of course, another issue I'd be interested in (I'd probably group this in with features).
While the choice of language can influence all of these in one way or another, I seriously doubt most users are interested in *how* their criteria are met as long as they are.
A description of loss of 1000 books doesn't always convey what a picture of those books layed out in the front lawn in front of the burned house does.
Unfortunately that won't help you if the fire was bad enough. The best way to deal with an insurance company is to have all of your belongings photographed and cataloged *before* anything happens. Take your digital camera (or borrow one) and take a weekend phtographing every single thing. Also make an itemized list (database, spreadsheet, flat text file, etc.) with all of the serial numbers, etc. Burn (bad pun, I know...) everything to CDs and put it in a safety deposit box. Repeat every six months.
There are lots of items that insurance can NEVER replace, but arguing with an insurance company is really the last thing you want to do while standing on the porch of your wrecked life.
Been there, done that.
I've got a similar box here. Installed RedHat 7.x (7.1 or 2 I think) on it with no problems.
/usr/doc (or wherever it is all located now).
;)
The best way to approach this is to do a minimal text-mode install, and then slowly add the files you need to make it useable. Yes, you will end up installing some packages you don't need (or can't use!) such as Mesa, but they won't slow you down. If harddrive space is an issue, start paring down such things as documentation: Install a minimal set of man pages and rm -r
Next, make sure you can get X up and running with a light window manager. That rules out KDE, Gnome, and pretty much everything that's been "new" in the past 5 years. When set up right, FVWM can be both fast and functional. Personally, I found Windowmaker a bit too slow for a low-end 486.
If you can get some more RAM, get it! If not, tweak carefully. Cut everywhere you can to turn off EVERY service that you don't really need. I know, lots will end up getting swapped out, but not all (you don't really need cron, do you?)...
Also, make the services and programs that you *do* need as light-weight as possible. Limit your fonts and pixmaps in X, use a lightweight terminal (rxvt) instead of xterm, etc. Top (man top) sorting by memory usage is your friend. For software you just can't run on that machine and don't have a viable replacement for, don't forget that you can run them on another machine. Just ssh to it and fire up Mozilla there!
What you shouldn't waste your time on is custom builds of things. It's not worth it. I've tried. If you know what you're doing, you will save 15k of RAM by custom-building your kernel. It won't be noticably faster, and you'll just be dissapointed. Of course, it is a great learning experience!
I think I'm going to skip this one...
:(
My local weather forecast:
Greater Vancouver: Issued 5.00 AM pst Friday 15 November 2002
Today..Cloudy with 60 percent chance of rain. Rain developing this afternoon. High 11.
Tonight..Periods of rain. Windy near the water. Low 8.
Saturday..Rain heavy at times. Wind southeast 30 to 50 km/h near the water. High 12.
Sunday..Periods of rain. Low 7. High 12.
Monday..Rain. Windy. Low 9. High 12.
Tuesday..Rain. Windy. Low 8. High 11.
Normals for the period..Low 3. High 9.
Looks about par for the course. Maybe some of you can post some nice pictures of the Leonids for me somewhere.
Wow.
:(
Just the other day I was looking through the bookmarks I have saved in Lynx on an old shell account. The search engines I'd bookmarked were Lycos as lycos.cs.cmu.edu and Altavista as altavista.digital.com. Neither of them had a www at the start, and both still resolve today.
Unfortunately the same can't be said for some of the gopher:// links I had in there too.
We've come a long way in a very short time...
Etched glass looks much nicer for table/desktops than clear glass, IMO. And it's much better for hiding fingerprints and other crud. Not that they'd ever install anything like that for us here at work... :(
I figured this one out a few years ago by accident. I was playing with a video camera that had an IR remote control which I was using to start and stop recording. Since I was recording myself, the remote would be recorded at the start and stop of each segment. Whenever I was pushing a button, it looked (on tape) like there was a pulsating white light coming from the remote's "business end".
Sitting inches in front of my Apple's 15" LCD provided what I thought was the best DVD viewing experience. Alone.
You're single, aren't you?
IMO, the "best DVD viewing experiences" I've had have been on a comfortable couch, watching a movie I'm not particularly interested in, with someone I'm very interested in sitting beside me.
I really like seeing a question asked when it's something that I'm in the process of figuring out for myself at that exact moment! ;)
Rolodap looks very promising. I'm probably going to put it up this weekend if I get time.
...even just javac Vehicles.java && java Vehicles takes at least 1 minute...
The reason this is slow is not because Java is slow while it is running, but because there is a fairly heavy overhead associated with starting up the JVM. This is actually happening twice here; running javac actually requires the JVM to run. Once running, compiled java code runs at a speed in about the same ballpark as C or C++.
Where java is dog-slow, however, is in its GUI libraries, especially Swing. I haven't had a chance to try this yet, but supposedly there were some improvements in Sun's recent 1.4 release. Other GUI libraries such as the one from IBM whose name just escaped me also are supposed to address these issues.
Btw, anybody doing lots of compiles of java code and consistently swearing at the slowness of javac should try jikes. It's an open-source java compiler that runs as a native binary. Much faster than javac!
Sure, the zlib stuff has been fixed in *whatever the release will be called*.
;) This is only slashdot; if you tell us we can keep a secret!
You're really getting annoyed by all of the version number questions, aren't you?
In all seriousness, though, your presence here and the answers you provide are really appreciated by myself and probably many others. Thank you!
My only complaint is that every time a new app is launched, an icon is displayed at the bottom of the screen.
To deal with this, I use the clip. In the clip options, set it to "Collapsed" and "Autoattract Icons". Any new app icons will just get sucked in there and not be seen. You do have to set this individually for each desktop though.
What I like best about Windowmaker are the various dock apps and being able to minimize a window to an actual icon (aka miniwindow) instead of an actual task bar. Personal preference, I know, but having started on fvwm that's just the right behaviour in my mind.
Does the flickering go away when you stop eating crunchy foods? If so, then I've got an idea what might be causing this...
Dude, it's springtime! This happens every year, remember?
Err... It broke of of Antarctica. Southern Hemisphere. Seasons reversed.
If you are going to be playing with hdparm, take my advice and make a backup first! Some interfaces aren't fully supported by the kernel yet, and trying to run drives off of them in certain modes could break in a bad way. In my experience, this then means massive filesystem corruption and a complete reinstall.
Of course I'm not saying *don't* play with hdparm; just be sensible and only try it on a system you have backed up and can afford to lose for a little while as you're rebuilding it.