Could we please stop trying to control everything from the network? Heating, it makes sense, as long as you do it well (my flatmate works in building where the heating is controlled remotely. By a remote thermostat. So if it's cold 30-odd miles away, the heating goes on. Pure genius that one). In the case of Toronto airport (example from the first article), I can see lighting being a good idea too.
However... where I work, we recently moved into a new building, with motion sensor controlled lights. These work great in the public areas; if people are moving through, they come on, and go off after they leave. They are however less useful in the offices.
The come on when you enter. Doesn't matter if it's bright sunshine outside, they come on. Not sure how that's meant to be energy saving (most frequently quoted reason for having these things), but nevermind. So you get ready to work, sit down, and 20 minutes later you're submerged in darkness. You then move around a bit, the lights come back on, and it all repeats 20 minutes later.
Okay, that's not strictly true, you do have to sit quite still, but still. Then there's the meeting rooms. These are equipped with projectors, and actual dimmer switches. However, should you use the dimmer switch to turn the lights down to off (to get good visibility of the projection), the second anyone moves, it picks up that movement and turns the lights back on for you.
We're currently taking bets on which of the higher-ups snaps first and has a light switch installed in their office. We're also not entirely sure how you change a lightbulb in this place, but it may involve cutting all power to lights in that part of the building!
Anyway, yes, I had a point; while these systems do have their places, they need to be thought about very very carefully, and manual overrides are very very much your friend!
I have an e-mail address that ends in.ac.uk (UK academic), and still most of my spam is for offers that only apply to the US (pills from Canadian pharmacies being the most popular at the moment, it seems). That, and a lot of offers of a degree, which I really wouldn't expect if these were targetted (nearly everyone with a.ac.uk address either has a degree, or is working on getting a real degree).
As such, I find it very hard to believe they're avoiding spamming Canadians.
Okay, and how is building the projector into the console going to help? Sure, you get to skip the connectivity parts of the projector, but they're still really, REALLY expensive. You're basically looking at adding the cost of a projector to the console, and unless you're having portability issues, it really wouldn't help.
Then we can start on what if you have more than one console, or plenty of TVs already...
Exactly. The whole recordable DVD thing was enough of a mess (sufficiently so that I still haven't bought a DVD writer, although probably soon now that dual format drives are out). I want HDTV content, which means buying my movies/TV series on one of these disk types, and discovering a few years down the line I picked the one that sunk is my idea of hell...
This was for working at GCHQ (loosely the British equivalent of the NSA), and I think they were looking to clear them up to "Top Secret". This also meant full background checks, including interviews with people that know you, accounting for where you'd been in the last 10 or so years, that sort of thing.
However, death by skin cancer is still death by skin cancer, irrespective of whether it's our fault or not. In fact, if all those CFCs aren't the real problem, we've got bigger problems to solve, as we may have to find a way of replenishing the ozone layer faster (given that stopping solar flares is probably not an option)...
In particular, for a processor whose architecture isn't even particularly similar to anything else out there, it's even less meaningful than it might be otherwise!
On top of which, maybe my house isn't on fire, but if my neighbour's house is on fire, I'm really glad there's someone there to stop it spreading to my house. Actually, anywhere even close to where I live, I'm glad there's someone there to contain the blaze.
I'd like to second this. In particular, there is plenty of cheap Internet access around (exactly how much does dialup cost these days? It's been so long...). Wireless Internet access is only useful to people who have laptops and wireless cards, both of which are luxury items. If you can afford both, surely you can pay for your own Internet access rather than having the government supply it for you?
I took Slashdotter advice from yesterday's article about the Mini and hardware upgrades and went with 512MB
It was at this point that I realised that I am in so very much trouble if I'm wrong:) Seriously though, 512MB is what I have in my Powerbook, and it's what I'm going to have in my Mac Mini, and it should be just great for whatever you're doing.
Ok, I'm a geek and I love to have the Internet wherever I am but why in the kitchen?
Exactly. Not to mention how much I'm thrilled by the idea of expensive electronics and food/water in close proximity. Also, if I wanted a complete second system with its own keyboard, mouse & display, I'd buy a G5 iMac!
I can see why people like having TVs in the kitchen, as it gives them something to watch when they're cooking, but if I'm in the kitchen, I am cooking. Anything that takes long enough to prepare, to make this worthwhile, is going to be messy enough that I'd have to wash and dry my hands everytime I wanted to use the keyboard/mouse.
I can see this having a marginal use for pulling up recipes from the Internet, but really a printer seems the better solution here...
I seem to remember someone saying they were actually going to put a Mac Mini in their kitchen, I'd love to hear opinions from anyone doing this, particularly on why? Is it a dining kitchen, so it will be off to one side, where you can eat & surf? Or do you just find the kitchen a comfortable place to be?:)
Re:In defense of...
on
Firefox In Print
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
We've started not working around every little IE glitch. For example, we brought in wonderful new icons in PNG format, then realised IE kinda made a mess out of them. In the end, we left it, as:
1. They were still _usable_ under IE. 2. It's blatantly an IE bug, so if the users complain, we can tell that Firefox/Mozilla/Opera/Safari/Konqueror render them fine, must be their browser.
We're also lucky to have a userbase that likes Firefox (we're at about 40% of hits coming from Firefox, currently)...
That was probably more to do with disk contention. Which is why it kinda sucks they put a notebook drive in the Mac Mini. Or at least, I'm going to use this as a poorly validated excuse to complain that they used a notebook drive, because I haven't replied to most of the responses I go, and I feel someone at least should get a reply!
This is a bloody good point, BTW. While there's also the experience of myself and my other flatmate outside of graphics work, 3 people do not a trend make./. would be a better place if more people (myself included, dang I feel dumb) remembered that.
Do you actually run a couple of browsers, or just different windows? There are good reasons to run multiple windows (web application testing, for one), I'm just kinda curious. On the subject of which, isn't that two seperate IDEs, BTW?
Together though, is an absolute memory hog (we ditched it locally, for Eclipse, due to this). I'll happily agree that if you're going to run it, you'll need that gig of RAM...
Have to admit, my idea of a development environment is running ant from the command line, which probably really really helps...
Okay, fed up with everyone saying "1GB of RAM is sooooo expensive". Yes, it is. Bad Apple.
However, why do you want 1GB of RAM? I use a PowerBook with a 1.5Ghz CPU and 512MB as my desktop replacement at work, and have no problems. I've currently got Thunderbird, Adium (IM), iTunes, Firefox, Azureus and X11 open, with no noticable slowdown or disk swapping.
Unless you're going to be doing something you know is memory intensive (Photoshop), you probably won't use anything more than 512MB. If you're that worried, and live anywhere near an Apple store, see if you can try one of these out, open half a dozen applications and see what performance you get.
I've said this before, but I have to disagree. I've worked with Macs with 256MB of RAM, and they were fine. I wouldn't want to run Photoshop with 256MB RAM, but I wouldn't want to run Photoshop on one of these anyway! Yes, 512MB is nice, but it's hardly a necessity.
As to the people saying you need 1GB, what for? I've got a flatmate that does graphical work on a PowerMac with 512MB, and it's fine for everything except Photoshop. Everyone seems too used to Windows XP's memory usage, and is assuming OS X is similar...
Assuming linear scaling, that would mean porting our 85k line Java project to 8.5k lines, and taking around 3 weeks. I'll skip thanks.
Although we do have a "mere" 13k line project that's up for rewriting anyway, and has always seemed like it should be doable in less, which I may take a stab at when I have more time.
While I don't think it would fit most of the stuff we do, well enough that I'd want to rewrite it (to start with, we'd have to redesign the database...), reading some of this makes me want to do other things that I've always written off as not worth the time it would take.
Slashdot Mirror
Am I genuinely the only person that types the pin with one hand, and hides what they're typing with the other?
Could we please stop trying to control everything from the network? Heating, it makes sense, as long as you do it well (my flatmate works in building where the heating is controlled remotely. By a remote thermostat. So if it's cold 30-odd miles away, the heating goes on. Pure genius that one). In the case of Toronto airport (example from the first article), I can see lighting being a good idea too.
However... where I work, we recently moved into a new building, with motion sensor controlled lights. These work great in the public areas; if people are moving through, they come on, and go off after they leave. They are however less useful in the offices.
The come on when you enter. Doesn't matter if it's bright sunshine outside, they come on. Not sure how that's meant to be energy saving (most frequently quoted reason for having these things), but nevermind. So you get ready to work, sit down, and 20 minutes later you're submerged in darkness. You then move around a bit, the lights come back on, and it all repeats 20 minutes later.
Okay, that's not strictly true, you do have to sit quite still, but still. Then there's the meeting rooms. These are equipped with projectors, and actual dimmer switches. However, should you use the dimmer switch to turn the lights down to off (to get good visibility of the projection), the second anyone moves, it picks up that movement and turns the lights back on for you.
We're currently taking bets on which of the higher-ups snaps first and has a light switch installed in their office. We're also not entirely sure how you change a lightbulb in this place, but it may involve cutting all power to lights in that part of the building!
Anyway, yes, I had a point; while these systems do have their places, they need to be thought about very very carefully, and manual overrides are very very much your friend!
And if you are administrating a true multi-user old-style-Unix type server, you should know enough to stop people fork bombing you (i.e. quotas).
:)
*shuffles nervously* So, out of curiousity, for my.. . err... desktop... how do I stop this exactly?
...if it's been encoded with Dirac :)
I have an e-mail address that ends in .ac.uk (UK academic), and still most of my spam is for offers that only apply to the US (pills from Canadian pharmacies being the most popular at the moment, it seems). That, and a lot of offers of a degree, which I really wouldn't expect if these were targetted (nearly everyone with a .ac.uk address either has a degree, or is working on getting a real degree).
As such, I find it very hard to believe they're avoiding spamming Canadians.
Okay, and how is building the projector into the console going to help? Sure, you get to skip the connectivity parts of the projector, but they're still really, REALLY expensive. You're basically looking at adding the cost of a projector to the console, and unless you're having portability issues, it really wouldn't help.
Then we can start on what if you have more than one console, or plenty of TVs already...
Exactly. The whole recordable DVD thing was enough of a mess (sufficiently so that I still haven't bought a DVD writer, although probably soon now that dual format drives are out). I want HDTV content, which means buying my movies/TV series on one of these disk types, and discovering a few years down the line I picked the one that sunk is my idea of hell...
This was for working at GCHQ (loosely the British equivalent of the NSA), and I think they were looking to clear them up to "Top Secret". This also meant full background checks, including interviews with people that know you, accounting for where you'd been in the last 10 or so years, that sort of thing.
Last time I heard of anyone applying for a high clearance job, part of the interview process was talking to a psychiatrist...
However, death by skin cancer is still death by skin cancer, irrespective of whether it's our fault or not. In fact, if all those CFCs aren't the real problem, we've got bigger problems to solve, as we may have to find a way of replenishing the ozone layer faster (given that stopping solar flares is probably not an option)...
I'll join you. Between us, by the end of Monday people will pay others to take MS shares from them...
In particular, for a processor whose architecture isn't even particularly similar to anything else out there, it's even less meaningful than it might be otherwise!
On top of which, maybe my house isn't on fire, but if my neighbour's house is on fire, I'm really glad there's someone there to stop it spreading to my house. Actually, anywhere even close to where I live, I'm glad there's someone there to contain the blaze.
I'd like to second this. In particular, there is plenty of cheap Internet access around (exactly how much does dialup cost these days? It's been so long...). Wireless Internet access is only useful to people who have laptops and wireless cards, both of which are luxury items. If you can afford both, surely you can pay for your own Internet access rather than having the government supply it for you?
I for one welcome our new printed sushi overlords?
I took Slashdotter advice from yesterday's article about the Mini and hardware upgrades and went with 512MB
:) Seriously though, 512MB is what I have in my Powerbook, and it's what I'm going to have in my Mac Mini, and it should be just great for whatever you're doing.
:)
It was at this point that I realised that I am in so very much trouble if I'm wrong
Ok, I'm a geek and I love to have the Internet wherever I am but why in the kitchen?
Exactly. Not to mention how much I'm thrilled by the idea of expensive electronics and food/water in close proximity. Also, if I wanted a complete second system with its own keyboard, mouse & display, I'd buy a G5 iMac!
I can see why people like having TVs in the kitchen, as it gives them something to watch when they're cooking, but if I'm in the kitchen, I am cooking. Anything that takes long enough to prepare, to make this worthwhile, is going to be messy enough that I'd have to wash and dry my hands everytime I wanted to use the keyboard/mouse.
I can see this having a marginal use for pulling up recipes from the Internet, but really a printer seems the better solution here...
I seem to remember someone saying they were actually going to put a Mac Mini in their kitchen, I'd love to hear opinions from anyone doing this, particularly on why? Is it a dining kitchen, so it will be off to one side, where you can eat & surf? Or do you just find the kitchen a comfortable place to be?
We've started not working around every little IE glitch. For example, we brought in wonderful new icons in PNG format, then realised IE kinda made a mess out of them. In the end, we left it, as:
1. They were still _usable_ under IE.
2. It's blatantly an IE bug, so if the users complain, we can tell that Firefox/Mozilla/Opera/Safari/Konqueror render them fine, must be their browser.
We're also lucky to have a userbase that likes Firefox (we're at about 40% of hits coming from Firefox, currently)...
That was probably more to do with disk contention. Which is why it kinda sucks they put a notebook drive in the Mac Mini. Or at least, I'm going to use this as a poorly validated excuse to complain that they used a notebook drive, because I haven't replied to most of the responses I go, and I feel someone at least should get a reply!
This is a bloody good point, BTW. While there's also the experience of myself and my other flatmate outside of graphics work, 3 people do not a trend make. /. would be a better place if more people (myself included, dang I feel dumb) remembered that.
Do you actually run a couple of browsers, or just different windows? There are good reasons to run multiple windows (web application testing, for one), I'm just kinda curious. On the subject of which, isn't that two seperate IDEs, BTW?
Together though, is an absolute memory hog (we ditched it locally, for Eclipse, due to this). I'll happily agree that if you're going to run it, you'll need that gig of RAM...
Have to admit, my idea of a development environment is running ant from the command line, which probably really really helps...
Okay, fed up with everyone saying "1GB of RAM is sooooo expensive". Yes, it is. Bad Apple.
However, why do you want 1GB of RAM? I use a PowerBook with a 1.5Ghz CPU and 512MB as my desktop replacement at work, and have no problems. I've currently got Thunderbird, Adium (IM), iTunes, Firefox, Azureus and X11 open, with no noticable slowdown or disk swapping.
Unless you're going to be doing something you know is memory intensive (Photoshop), you probably won't use anything more than 512MB. If you're that worried, and live anywhere near an Apple store, see if you can try one of these out, open half a dozen applications and see what performance you get.
I've said this before, but I have to disagree. I've worked with Macs with 256MB of RAM, and they were fine. I wouldn't want to run Photoshop with 256MB RAM, but I wouldn't want to run Photoshop on one of these anyway! Yes, 512MB is nice, but it's hardly a necessity.
As to the people saying you need 1GB, what for? I've got a flatmate that does graphical work on a PowerMac with 512MB, and it's fine for everything except Photoshop. Everyone seems too used to Windows XP's memory usage, and is assuming OS X is similar...
Assuming linear scaling, that would mean porting our 85k line Java project to 8.5k lines, and taking around 3 weeks. I'll skip thanks.
Although we do have a "mere" 13k line project that's up for rewriting anyway, and has always seemed like it should be doable in less, which I may take a stab at when I have more time.
While I don't think it would fit most of the stuff we do, well enough that I'd want to rewrite it (to start with, we'd have to redesign the database...), reading some of this makes me want to do other things that I've always written off as not worth the time it would take.
Which is kinda scary.
Are there any complex, open source, examples? Just, I'd love to see how doing these things with Rails affected the amount of code needed...