While what you say may be true, consider that there are also a lot of alternatives to your binary options presented. Instead of "download music" I could also:
1) Listen to music on lastfm 2) Listen to other free online service 3) Listen to FM radio (which, IMO, has gotten better over the years - less commercials, better music)
In the 1990s, I ripped a lot of CDs and listened to those MP3s. I was a teen in the late 1990s. But I've not bought many (maybe 2 or 3) albums since. I've also not downloaded MP3s (or any format equivalent) or used iTunes or the like (and have no idea what that would entail - is some music free on iTunes, allowing me to listen for free)?
Maybe people are tired of "pay to play" when there is so damn much music to pick from (much of it very similar).
There are more than you think. Old home computers are quickly becoming Linux computers.
There are a lot of independent techs out there who service the lion's share of home computers. Yes, Best Buy and the like get a lot, too. But they can't compete on quality service with the little guy (due to overhead), so they have to keep themselves going through quantity.
I know a handful "home computer techs" - people who work out of their house or have a small one-room office somewhere. They're making ends meet and keeping their families going by doing this while at the same time putting linux on computers that are only mildly useful for anything beyond XP (and sometimes even XP, eg. 256Mb RAM).
More often than not, the system is in need of a reinstall anyway due to some combination of users messing them up and malware. It's like scoring a 3-pointer at the buzzer, in terms of removing an infection vector.
I'm one such person, while I'm unemployed. I'd say maybe one out of 5 of the computers that come to me leave with Linux installed. Those satisfied customers then refer their friends and family. Not much repeat service, but quite a few referrals. It would also appear that people are oddly appreciative for preventing them from installing all that crap as well - "it just works nice and fast and there are no pop-ups".
Not only that, but when someone upgrades their computer (and they've got the proclivity to tinker) they'll do something with the old one. Linux has picked up a lot of mindshare, and I know many of the so called "tech savvy" types (who still need someone who knows what they're doing on occasion when they can't recover or get stuck) are doing this.
She must've not been seeing terribly competent doctors. Maybe her parents didn't care to get the good ones.
I don't know about others' experiences, but Crohn's isn't exactly an "unknown" disorder. I've known several people with it. Yes, it appears vastly misunderstood (both by laymen as well as by physicians). But I'd think they'd at least look there. Sadly, I suspected Crohn's was her diagnosis as soon as I got half way through the symptom list. There aren't that many things which fit the description, and of the common ones, I'd suspect Crohn's to be near the top.
Let's see: * ulcer * stress * IBS + ? * Crohn's
How could they miss that with a description like "vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pain, fever"? That screams Crohn's.
You realize, don't you, that the 1918 Spanish Flu had a relatively mild dispersal the spring of the year, followed by the full-blown bodies-burned-in-the-streets lethality that fall, right?
First, you're potentially dealing with more than one problem here you're trying to solve: slowness, and naming convention. I'm guessing they're somewhat related (large directory listings due to lack of organization), but there might be a deeper infrastructure issue that needs to be dealt with, too.
As for organizing files, You need a naming convention for your project files, first and foremost. Throwing a bunch of disparate files at a CMS is going to do nothing but complicate things more (from a sane-management perspective).
Data categorization is key. You need to figure out a way to organize it in a fashion which is both contextual to how people use it as well as how it relates to the other data (in, say, a project).
For instance, you will want (at a minimum) the equivalent of user-level and group-level data shares. This would, in all likelihood, get kind of tricky with shifting working groups. For this there are multiple ways to use ACLs (as opposed to just user/group/all permissions) within Samba (with or without shackling the machine to a Windows domain/authentication server). ext3 and XFS both have the ability to use ACLs (XFS natively), last I checked. Ultimately, this would probably be better than just using user/group, as it would be more extensible.
As for a Solution...
Something to look into specific to samba, is the "veto files" directive for smb.conf. It is per-share. I am uncertain whether it supports regex (it didn't in early 2005 when I last used it), if it did it could be very useful for enforcing a specific namespace (going forward).
I would recommend "enforcing" namespace. While this is likely a self-created problem (ie you or your predecessor did not set things up properly in the first place), you really need to push to your users the importance of this. You need to tell them "organize your files, it'll make things faster" if there's any bitching.
There was an article in LinuxMagazine a while ago about determining the age of data. Utilizing this in some sort of auto-sort script to move "old" data to a "pre$date" directory within the original messy directory might speed things up. Also, archiving (or at least moving it to an "old shit" directory) past, unused data is important. It eases the "human element" of data organization.
Projects should all have a reference number (because there is, in all certainty, hard paper associated with the projects, and sometimes you need to cross reference). Keeping this consistent is important. Use what works, keep it short/demarked so users don't avoid using them. I like each project folder to have the project number to relate to contract/etc. start (short) date (eg. 080112 for Jan 12th, '08) followed by a 2-3 digit number (depending on how many projects are started per day) followed by major revision. End result: something like "080112.01.a Jennings Construction" Or organize by client ID. Or something.
Requiring and/or encouraging project naming conventions through the managers (at the bequest of your manager/CIO/whomever, or just pleading) might also be worth a try. One department out of 5 doing it would be better than none.
IMO, once you've reached this step, you can consider putting it in a CMS to help perpetuate/encourage the organization. But remember that a CMS is not a panacea, and might even complicate things further (ie, instead of navigating to a file, -everyone- just searches the whole index, slowing things down further).
That's not the half of it. The kernel devs appear to break things - intentionally - and leave them that way.
Case in point, PCMCIA was/is supposedly being rewritten. It broke around kernel 2.6.27 for me (I think) on several systems with ricoh integrated chipsets: I'm unable to use my cardbus or CF slot unless I boot with the device in the slot (and not remove it). Supposedly (according to mailing list info I found) this is due to a 'rewrite' of the pcmcia architecture code. I guess they didn't want to leave it well enough alone until they got it right.
Likewise, I have a USB card reader (recognized as "Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0bda:0151 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. Mass Stroage Device") which does not work with the current Ubuntu 9.04 stock kernel. It's recognized, but no devices plugged in work. It worked under 8.10 just fine.
Maybe it's Ubuntu breaking things, but since it appears to be a cross-distro problem (in both cases), I'm betting it's just the kernel devs doing "business as usual" and "letting the distros sort it out".
From my observation, community colleges are easier than public high schools. My father taught at a community college - engineering mathematics - for two semesters and got asked to resign because he was making it too difficult. He shared the textbook with me at the time (I was in 7th or 8th grade, but home schooled) and it was stuff I'd already covered (or could figure out w/o too much effort).
I attended three different colleges myself - a private college, a state school, and a private university (which might be considered a community college by some). In terms of difficulty, the private college was the most intense, and the private uni was the least. Much of the private uni work was, in my assessment, high school equivalence for "non-traditional" students (thankfully I didn't take any of that and opted for the more difficult courses) and ended up tutoring for mathematics/English/CS. On a whole, the private university I attended was significantly more challenging than the community college my father taught at, however.
Really, it depends on the school, I think. And it seems likely that whatever degree this kid got, it's being significantly hyped by the media, the school, and/or his parents. As another poster mentioned, a degree in astrophysics (or even physics) isn't even offered by the school.
[quote]Brilliant little kid, I must say. And I am very glad that he is given the recognition he deserves.[/quote]
The kid is only 11.
I'm not saying he isn't smart, particularly gifted, or even a genius. But at 11, a child is still very, very impressionable. Something like "intelligence" or "genius" can be easily "faked" through any number of other abilities (alone or in combination) such as:
photographic memory
very good at memorization
very impressionable
In short, this kid could simply be repeating what he's being told and/or what he's reading. It is a community college, after all: they tend to coddle their students, repeat things, and cover everything which will be on the exam in class. If he's an auditory savant of some sort (ie remembers everything he hears), as would be suggested by parent-parrot statements like "I like to study just because knowledge goes to wisdom and only by wisdom can we help the world"), then I'd say there's a good chance he just remembers stuff.
This is true particularly when you've got parents who push your potential and try to also instill their worldview on you. I've known a couple people who are absolutely incredible when it comes to remembering things - but they're only so-so on the logic and thought side of things. Vice versa also applies (smart, can't remember shit) and various combinations thereof.
Sure, they're smart. Genius? No, probably not. Geniuses are, in my experience, somewhat socially dysfunctional. I know a girl who could (so she claimed) read by age 2 or so from the dictionary, can speak 4 languages, and scored a mere 27 (IIRC) on the ACT college entrance exam. Her brother, on the other hand, comes across as a bumbling simpleton, but aced the exam. Socially and intellectually, I suspect she could've gotten a college degree at 11 from a community college. He probably couldn't, simply on the personal-relation side of things.
And when he finally comes around to the reality of the world - that there ARE worthless, stupid people - he will be just as disillusioned as the person who was told that they were indeed special, unique, and superior when they find out that it's not so.
It's been a while since I've looked at Windows licensing, and they do tend to change things from version to version, but I seem to recall that MS offers two client/connection licensing models (which are mixable): per-server or per-client. At the least, Windows Server only tracks licenses by concurrent connections to the server in per-user licensing. They might also offer a per-domain model.
AHA! That was it. Pure water wasn't what I was thinking of; it was salt. Salt water, or more accurately, when salt is put on water, causes the melting temperature to be higher. Or something like that.
After all, if they can't ship Linux, how can they ship a viable ARM based system?
I thiink you've got that backwards. They can't ship ARM systems because they have to ship Windows (say, at 50% total systems shipped, or w/e the deal is). They can't afford to do two entirely different architectures, and the product diversification would confuse consumers, so they don't.
The filesystem of choice - both in vmware as well as on the host server - makes a huge difference in the disk i/o performance (in Linux). The long and the short of it is that ext3 has become a pretty atrocious mess wrt disk IO, and you'd be better served with something like XFS. I'd wager a guess that in substituting 'xfs' for 'ext3' in ext3 -> kernel -> vmware -> ext3 -> kernel you'd shave at least 30% off the time required to do things.
That's a good idea; I hadn't thought of submerging the drive in water, but I'll likely try it when the opportunity imposes itself.
Slight (possible) nitpick: while the freezing point of water is 32F, I seem to recall reading at one point that the temperature of melting ice is slightly higher, say 35F (the number I remember) during the physical process due to the heat necessary to catalyze the process being absorbed. Not sure about that, though - I can't find a reference to it online.
I had a disk that'd do that - start throwing errors shortly after 10-15 minutes of use. It was LOUD (likely dried out silicon lube). I put it in a ziplock in the freezer for fifteen minutes, gave it a whack with the back of a screwdriver, and kept a cold pack (wrapped in a washcloth to prevent moisture from accumulating) on it while I recovered. It was fun. Sometimes tech work is like trying to balance a car on a needle, but when you're able to make it work, man is it satisfying.
I've had a fairly godo success rate of recovering files from flash media (SD, CF, etc.) in the event of user error. It's happened a couple times where they mistakenly format the card or delete files accidentally. photorec (part of the 'testdisk' package) works wonders; I've only -not- recovered one image file using it (and that was because it was partially overwritten, so I got 2/3 the file).
Pretty much anything beyond that, though, is a straight suggestion to have it shipped off to a proper data recovery firm without any further tampering. If you've got to muck with the hardware, chances are you need a cleanroom environment. Not much doin' there for even your uber geek variety.
Anything short of a physical failure of the drive should be recoverable with a tool like FreeUndelete or NTFS Undelete. I've used both to success, though I've not had to deal with any serious corruption or overt disk failure. Usually, those are a lost cause.
Seriously, did we bother to STFW? They're the first couple hits for "NTFS undelete" or similar.
I've also had some luck with photorec, part of the 'testdisk' package on Debian (and Ubuntu) recovering files from memory cards (though it should find lost files, to some degree, in any filesystem type - it's a diverse tool). It sure beats the hell out of manually digging for the file header and trying to reassemble!
[quote]You don't have to be nice. You don't have to share. And these people need to learn that they need to depend on themselves and be competent on such self-reliance. When they do that, they become better people. [/quote]
Their mentality is that yes, you've got to share - and be nice while doing so. It's part of their whole entitlement mentality. Being dependent on themselves means they've got to take responsibility for their actions. That's dangerous for someone in that situation: they might start to realize the folly of their political views and start to get angry at people like their (previous) selves.
Install Linux or a Unix and use a window manager like ratpoison, ion, awm, dwm, or (my preference) awesome. It'll be user-unfriendly, and nobody will want to touch it.
Switch to dvorak or some other key layout nobody can use.
With either approach, they'll stop asking when they find out your computer is unusable to them.
Alternatively, just say no. When they get indignant, tell them your checkbook isn't their personal socialist clearinghouse for gadgets and that if they want something, they should buy one themselves. Which is (in reality) more rude: asking to use someone's stuff, or turning them down? I mean, seriously. Of all the pretension.
I don't know what you're talking about. Compared to OS 9.x, 10.1 was downright evil fast and responsive. Compared to XP on similar hardware (disk, RAM, CPU clock), it was faster and more responsive, as well. Hell, it was close to 2K's responsiveness on the same hardware.
No, I'm not an Apple fanboy, but it was pretty decent none the less. Point being, it wasn't the kludged behemoth you're making it out to be.
Sure, any one application, and operating systems, might become faster. But the principle to the premise holds true (and I don't think his statement was accurately stated). Quite simply, the software stack (as a whole) does get more bloated.
It's not so much speed - clock utilization - that takes a hit over time, it's the memory utilization. Yes, Firefox has improved significantly in speed - but it's also gotten a lot more bloated.
Likewise, compare W7 to Vista or XP. Faster than Vista, about as fast as XP (so the speed has improved since the last release) but memory use has increased significantly since XP, and marginally since Vista.
Look at vim. It uses ~7M on a fresh start. That's a bit much for a CLI editor, don't you think? Emacs is worse. Sure, the systems can handle it just fine these days, but it's not insignificant.
When software systems use more of the available resources, it inhibits innovative software from being developed which would be able to effectively utilize that hardware. Have a ground-breaking product (let's say it's some sort of audio/video package) but it requires 3Gb of RAM to run effectively? Too bad it can't run on a 3Gb system, because the underlying OS is using 2Gb of RAM.
You're correct. It's really not surprising, though, given all the Marxist Utopian rhetoric he spews. Who me, work? That's for the ruling class we're going to overthrow and provide me with all my free stuff! If I work, I'm no better than they are!
The homeless in this town kind of go about things backwards. Or maybe we just have unsavory homeless people. They will occasionally throw themselves in front of a moving vehicle in the downtown area for the free painkillers and/or suing the person (often a nice vehicle). And a couple of the ones I've offered to share food with upon a request for money get pissed off - most likely because they want the money for drugs/smokes/alcohol, not for food.
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While what you say may be true, consider that there are also a lot of alternatives to your binary options presented. Instead of "download music" I could also:
1) Listen to music on lastfm
2) Listen to other free online service
3) Listen to FM radio (which, IMO, has gotten better over the years - less commercials, better music)
In the 1990s, I ripped a lot of CDs and listened to those MP3s. I was a teen in the late 1990s. But I've not bought many (maybe 2 or 3) albums since. I've also not downloaded MP3s (or any format equivalent) or used iTunes or the like (and have no idea what that would entail - is some music free on iTunes, allowing me to listen for free)?
Maybe people are tired of "pay to play" when there is so damn much music to pick from (much of it very similar).
There are more than you think. Old home computers are quickly becoming Linux computers.
There are a lot of independent techs out there who service the lion's share of home computers. Yes, Best Buy and the like get a lot, too. But they can't compete on quality service with the little guy (due to overhead), so they have to keep themselves going through quantity.
I know a handful "home computer techs" - people who work out of their house or have a small one-room office somewhere. They're making ends meet and keeping their families going by doing this while at the same time putting linux on computers that are only mildly useful for anything beyond XP (and sometimes even XP, eg. 256Mb RAM).
More often than not, the system is in need of a reinstall anyway due to some combination of users messing them up and malware. It's like scoring a 3-pointer at the buzzer, in terms of removing an infection vector.
I'm one such person, while I'm unemployed. I'd say maybe one out of 5 of the computers that come to me leave with Linux installed. Those satisfied customers then refer their friends and family. Not much repeat service, but quite a few referrals. It would also appear that people are oddly appreciative for preventing them from installing all that crap as well - "it just works nice and fast and there are no pop-ups".
Not only that, but when someone upgrades their computer (and they've got the proclivity to tinker) they'll do something with the old one. Linux has picked up a lot of mindshare, and I know many of the so called "tech savvy" types (who still need someone who knows what they're doing on occasion when they can't recover or get stuck) are doing this.
She must've not been seeing terribly competent doctors. Maybe her parents didn't care to get the good ones.
I don't know about others' experiences, but Crohn's isn't exactly an "unknown" disorder. I've known several people with it. Yes, it appears vastly misunderstood (both by laymen as well as by physicians). But I'd think they'd at least look there. Sadly, I suspected Crohn's was her diagnosis as soon as I got half way through the symptom list. There aren't that many things which fit the description, and of the common ones, I'd suspect Crohn's to be near the top.
Let's see:
* ulcer
* stress
* IBS + ?
* Crohn's
How could they miss that with a description like "vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pain, fever"? That screams Crohn's.
You realize, don't you, that the 1918 Spanish Flu had a relatively mild dispersal the spring of the year, followed by the full-blown bodies-burned-in-the-streets lethality that fall, right?
It COULD get bad this fall.
First, you're potentially dealing with more than one problem here you're trying to solve: slowness, and naming convention. I'm guessing they're somewhat related (large directory listings due to lack of organization), but there might be a deeper infrastructure issue that needs to be dealt with, too.
As for organizing files, You need a naming convention for your project files, first and foremost. Throwing a bunch of disparate files at a CMS is going to do nothing but complicate things more (from a sane-management perspective).
Data categorization is key. You need to figure out a way to organize it in a fashion which is both contextual to how people use it as well as how it relates to the other data (in, say, a project).
For instance, you will want (at a minimum) the equivalent of user-level and group-level data shares. This would, in all likelihood, get kind of tricky with shifting working groups. For this there are multiple ways to use ACLs (as opposed to just user/group/all permissions) within Samba (with or without shackling the machine to a Windows domain/authentication server). ext3 and XFS both have the ability to use ACLs (XFS natively), last I checked. Ultimately, this would probably be better than just using user/group, as it would be more extensible.
As for a Solution...
Something to look into specific to samba, is the "veto files" directive for smb.conf. It is per-share. I am uncertain whether it supports regex (it didn't in early 2005 when I last used it), if it did it could be very useful for enforcing a specific namespace (going forward).
I would recommend "enforcing" namespace. While this is likely a self-created problem (ie you or your predecessor did not set things up properly in the first place), you really need to push to your users the importance of this. You need to tell them "organize your files, it'll make things faster" if there's any bitching.
There was an article in LinuxMagazine a while ago about determining the age of data. Utilizing this in some sort of auto-sort script to move "old" data to a "pre$date" directory within the original messy directory might speed things up. Also, archiving (or at least moving it to an "old shit" directory) past, unused data is important. It eases the "human element" of data organization.
Projects should all have a reference number (because there is, in all certainty, hard paper associated with the projects, and sometimes you need to cross reference). Keeping this consistent is important. Use what works, keep it short/demarked so users don't avoid using them. I like each project folder to have the project number to relate to contract/etc. start (short) date (eg. 080112 for Jan 12th, '08) followed by a 2-3 digit number (depending on how many projects are started per day) followed by major revision. End result: something like "080112.01.a Jennings Construction" Or organize by client ID. Or something.
Requiring and/or encouraging project naming conventions through the managers (at the bequest of your manager/CIO/whomever, or just pleading) might also be worth a try. One department out of 5 doing it would be better than none.
IMO, once you've reached this step, you can consider putting it in a CMS to help perpetuate/encourage the organization. But remember that a CMS is not a panacea, and might even complicate things further (ie, instead of navigating to a file, -everyone- just searches the whole index, slowing things down further).
That's not the half of it. The kernel devs appear to break things - intentionally - and leave them that way.
Case in point, PCMCIA was/is supposedly being rewritten. It broke around kernel 2.6.27 for me (I think) on several systems with ricoh integrated chipsets: I'm unable to use my cardbus or CF slot unless I boot with the device in the slot (and not remove it). Supposedly (according to mailing list info I found) this is due to a 'rewrite' of the pcmcia architecture code. I guess they didn't want to leave it well enough alone until they got it right.
Likewise, I have a USB card reader (recognized as "Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0bda:0151 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. Mass Stroage Device") which does not work with the current Ubuntu 9.04 stock kernel. It's recognized, but no devices plugged in work. It worked under 8.10 just fine.
Maybe it's Ubuntu breaking things, but since it appears to be a cross-distro problem (in both cases), I'm betting it's just the kernel devs doing "business as usual" and "letting the distros sort it out".
From my observation, community colleges are easier than public high schools. My father taught at a community college - engineering mathematics - for two semesters and got asked to resign because he was making it too difficult. He shared the textbook with me at the time (I was in 7th or 8th grade, but home schooled) and it was stuff I'd already covered (or could figure out w/o too much effort).
I attended three different colleges myself - a private college, a state school, and a private university (which might be considered a community college by some). In terms of difficulty, the private college was the most intense, and the private uni was the least. Much of the private uni work was, in my assessment, high school equivalence for "non-traditional" students (thankfully I didn't take any of that and opted for the more difficult courses) and ended up tutoring for mathematics/English/CS. On a whole, the private university I attended was significantly more challenging than the community college my father taught at, however.
Really, it depends on the school, I think. And it seems likely that whatever degree this kid got, it's being significantly hyped by the media, the school, and/or his parents. As another poster mentioned, a degree in astrophysics (or even physics) isn't even offered by the school.
[quote]Brilliant little kid, I must say. And I am very glad that he is given the recognition he deserves.[/quote]
The kid is only 11.
I'm not saying he isn't smart, particularly gifted, or even a genius. But at 11, a child is still very, very impressionable. Something like "intelligence" or "genius" can be easily "faked" through any number of other abilities (alone or in combination) such as:
photographic memory
very good at memorization
very impressionable
In short, this kid could simply be repeating what he's being told and/or what he's reading. It is a community college, after all: they tend to coddle their students, repeat things, and cover everything which will be on the exam in class. If he's an auditory savant of some sort (ie remembers everything he hears), as would be suggested by parent-parrot statements like "I like to study just because knowledge goes to wisdom and only by wisdom can we help the world"), then I'd say there's a good chance he just remembers stuff.
This is true particularly when you've got parents who push your potential and try to also instill their worldview on you. I've known a couple people who are absolutely incredible when it comes to remembering things - but they're only so-so on the logic and thought side of things. Vice versa also applies (smart, can't remember shit) and various combinations thereof.
Sure, they're smart. Genius? No, probably not. Geniuses are, in my experience, somewhat socially dysfunctional. I know a girl who could (so she claimed) read by age 2 or so from the dictionary, can speak 4 languages, and scored a mere 27 (IIRC) on the ACT college entrance exam. Her brother, on the other hand, comes across as a bumbling simpleton, but aced the exam. Socially and intellectually, I suspect she could've gotten a college degree at 11 from a community college. He probably couldn't, simply on the personal-relation side of things.
And when he finally comes around to the reality of the world - that there ARE worthless, stupid people - he will be just as disillusioned as the person who was told that they were indeed special, unique, and superior when they find out that it's not so.
It's been a while since I've looked at Windows licensing, and they do tend to change things from version to version, but I seem to recall that MS offers two client/connection licensing models (which are mixable): per-server or per-client. At the least, Windows Server only tracks licenses by concurrent connections to the server in per-user licensing. They might also offer a per-domain model.
It's all pretty convoluted, I'll give you that.
POTS phones don't work in an outage if the phone provider has switched to VOIP. Power goes out at the house, so does service.
AHA! That was it. Pure water wasn't what I was thinking of; it was salt. Salt water, or more accurately, when salt is put on water, causes the melting temperature to be higher. Or something like that.
After all, if they can't ship Linux, how can they ship a viable ARM based system?
I thiink you've got that backwards. They can't ship ARM systems because they have to ship Windows (say, at 50% total systems shipped, or w/e the deal is). They can't afford to do two entirely different architectures, and the product diversification would confuse consumers, so they don't.
The filesystem of choice - both in vmware as well as on the host server - makes a huge difference in the disk i/o performance (in Linux). The long and the short of it is that ext3 has become a pretty atrocious mess wrt disk IO, and you'd be better served with something like XFS. I'd wager a guess that in substituting 'xfs' for 'ext3' in ext3 -> kernel -> vmware -> ext3 -> kernel you'd shave at least 30% off the time required to do things.
That's a good idea; I hadn't thought of submerging the drive in water, but I'll likely try it when the opportunity imposes itself.
Slight (possible) nitpick: while the freezing point of water is 32F, I seem to recall reading at one point that the temperature of melting ice is slightly higher, say 35F (the number I remember) during the physical process due to the heat necessary to catalyze the process being absorbed. Not sure about that, though - I can't find a reference to it online.
I had a disk that'd do that - start throwing errors shortly after 10-15 minutes of use. It was LOUD (likely dried out silicon lube). I put it in a ziplock in the freezer for fifteen minutes, gave it a whack with the back of a screwdriver, and kept a cold pack (wrapped in a washcloth to prevent moisture from accumulating) on it while I recovered. It was fun. Sometimes tech work is like trying to balance a car on a needle, but when you're able to make it work, man is it satisfying.
I've always thought of SpinRite as a useless gimmick. What does it do, exactly, that you've been able to utilize to save your bum?
I've had a fairly godo success rate of recovering files from flash media (SD, CF, etc.) in the event of user error. It's happened a couple times where they mistakenly format the card or delete files accidentally. photorec (part of the 'testdisk' package) works wonders; I've only -not- recovered one image file using it (and that was because it was partially overwritten, so I got 2/3 the file).
Pretty much anything beyond that, though, is a straight suggestion to have it shipped off to a proper data recovery firm without any further tampering. If you've got to muck with the hardware, chances are you need a cleanroom environment. Not much doin' there for even your uber geek variety.
Anything short of a physical failure of the drive should be recoverable with a tool like FreeUndelete or NTFS Undelete. I've used both to success, though I've not had to deal with any serious corruption or overt disk failure. Usually, those are a lost cause.
Seriously, did we bother to STFW? They're the first couple hits for "NTFS undelete" or similar.
I've also had some luck with photorec, part of the 'testdisk' package on Debian (and Ubuntu) recovering files from memory cards (though it should find lost files, to some degree, in any filesystem type - it's a diverse tool). It sure beats the hell out of manually digging for the file header and trying to reassemble!
[quote]You don't have to be nice. You don't have to share. And these people need to learn that they need to depend on themselves and be competent on such self-reliance. When they do that, they become better people. [/quote]
Their mentality is that yes, you've got to share - and be nice while doing so. It's part of their whole entitlement mentality. Being dependent on themselves means they've got to take responsibility for their actions. That's dangerous for someone in that situation: they might start to realize the folly of their political views and start to get angry at people like their (previous) selves.
Install Linux or a Unix and use a window manager like ratpoison, ion, awm, dwm, or (my preference) awesome. It'll be user-unfriendly, and nobody will want to touch it.
Switch to dvorak or some other key layout nobody can use.
With either approach, they'll stop asking when they find out your computer is unusable to them.
Alternatively, just say no. When they get indignant, tell them your checkbook isn't their personal socialist clearinghouse for gadgets and that if they want something, they should buy one themselves. Which is (in reality) more rude: asking to use someone's stuff, or turning them down? I mean, seriously. Of all the pretension.
I don't know what you're talking about. Compared to OS 9.x, 10.1 was downright evil fast and responsive. Compared to XP on similar hardware (disk, RAM, CPU clock), it was faster and more responsive, as well. Hell, it was close to 2K's responsiveness on the same hardware.
No, I'm not an Apple fanboy, but it was pretty decent none the less. Point being, it wasn't the kludged behemoth you're making it out to be.
I'd have to (partially) disagree.
Sure, any one application, and operating systems, might become faster. But the principle to the premise holds true (and I don't think his statement was accurately stated). Quite simply, the software stack (as a whole) does get more bloated.
It's not so much speed - clock utilization - that takes a hit over time, it's the memory utilization. Yes, Firefox has improved significantly in speed - but it's also gotten a lot more bloated.
Likewise, compare W7 to Vista or XP. Faster than Vista, about as fast as XP (so the speed has improved since the last release) but memory use has increased significantly since XP, and marginally since Vista.
Look at vim. It uses ~7M on a fresh start. That's a bit much for a CLI editor, don't you think? Emacs is worse. Sure, the systems can handle it just fine these days, but it's not insignificant.
When software systems use more of the available resources, it inhibits innovative software from being developed which would be able to effectively utilize that hardware. Have a ground-breaking product (let's say it's some sort of audio/video package) but it requires 3Gb of RAM to run effectively? Too bad it can't run on a 3Gb system, because the underlying OS is using 2Gb of RAM.
You're correct. It's really not surprising, though, given all the Marxist Utopian rhetoric he spews. Who me, work? That's for the ruling class we're going to overthrow and provide me with all my free stuff! If I work, I'm no better than they are!
The homeless in this town kind of go about things backwards. Or maybe we just have unsavory homeless people. They will occasionally throw themselves in front of a moving vehicle in the downtown area for the free painkillers and/or suing the person (often a nice vehicle). And a couple of the ones I've offered to share food with upon a request for money get pissed off - most likely because they want the money for drugs/smokes/alcohol, not for food.
Oh well.