I thought it was usually worthwhile to run the CPU at full speed if there's work to do: it uses more power, but computations go faster, too. Conversely, a low clock works with a lower voltage, but will take much longer. I guess it depends on how power usage scales with computational speed. On the one there certainly is a lot of power overhead when running a CPU at low speed vs having it sleeping. On the other hand I dimly remember that the required voltage raises quadratically with the CPU clock. Come to think of it, the whole thing might also depend on whether a process is CPU limited or IO limited.
netbooks were a playing field where both windows and linux had to compete from start, without any external forces.
No external forces? Are you talking about netbooks on Mars or something? Because here on Earth there sure as hell were a lot of external forces. In Germany, a number of netbooks -- the majority, I think -- were never available with Linux to start with. The Dell Mini and others were available with Linux and even marginally cheaper (though obviously not by the retail price of Windows), but came with a crippled hardware configuration which made it much more sensible to just buy the Windows version and kill the OS.
The remainder of your post is really just a vanilla Linux rant, sprinkled with an anecdote, sprinkled with an anecdote. Not that you're necessarily wrong, but there's no need to have the same discussion 10 times a week. I will say that the point about Windows (of all products!) having a consistent GUI made me laugh. With Windows 7, I think KDE 4 has a more consistent GUI now.
The Toshiba Qosmio is a far better buy than the Adamo as well.
Wow, that has got to be the ugliest laptop I have ever seen. "New eye-popping design" -- it popped my eyes, I'll give em that, now how do I stop the bleeding?
Are you kidding? Those are some "particularly egregious" examples of things going wrong on Wikipedia? A debate about an entry of an episode for some sci-fi show and one about a Pokemon character? Duuurrr. If that's the worst you can come up with I think Wikipedia will do fine.
Hm? Is there anything special KDE4 is doing with composite? I use Gnome+Compiz all the time, and it's far, far more than pretty effects -- the window management is just much better than before. (E.g.: You can efficiently manage windows on two large widescreen displays using just the keyboard.) When I'm at work where we use KDE3, that is what I miss, not the graphics.
That's not exactly what "Gefahr im Verzug" means, which apparently translates to exigant circumstance, btw. Anyway, police can do a search without warrant if they claim that the suspect is destroying evidence, because waiting for a judge to sign a warrant would result in the loss of significant evidence in that case. (Source: German Wikipedia, IANAL.) Apparently they did claim it in this case, which seems absurd even if what he did was illegal. All of this if very fucked up and at the same time totally in line with what's been going on for a while now. And there's absolutely no sign of improvement in sight.
I'm sure there are still a fair enough people who don't care about audio settings per app because most important apps include their own volume bar.
That's true enough, a good solution would be for current applications to simply control the PA per-app setting. Future apps wouldn't need to spend time on developing an internal volume setting -- unless they intend to work with other sound servers, of course. I still want a widget within the app to control the sound level, though, using the PA per-app volume control to adjust volume in Smplayer is really awkward.
Err... it is? I had the impression that laptops have their own internal UPS.
The only way to unexpectedly remove the power (apart from software problems) would be to physically remove the battery, so, uh, don't do that. Of course the battery could run down, but that's the opposite of unexpected -- I agree that you should reduce the commit delay if the battery is below a certain threshold (say, 10%).
Afford the risk? Upgrading Firefox is not like upgrading the entire operating system including stuff like filesystem drivers etc. If Firefox 3 doesn't work out, you uninstall it and reinstall Firefox 2. The chances of Firefox 3 failing in a way that's spectacular enough to cause you more than 5 minutes of work are slim to none even during the beta. In fact, I've been running Firefox 3.1 alpha/beta for a while, and the 3.0 version just sits there and will happily run along 3.1 -- I could switch in a heartbeat, total risk is zero.
Unless you're running a laptop, in which case it might save non-trivial amounts of power.... And of course, non-flushed buffers aren't even the issue with the Launchpad bug reports, it's really more the fact that the cache wasn't commited to disk while at the same time the truncate operations WERE commited, but whatever.
The rename system call guarantees that at any point in time the name will refer to either the old or the new file. I'm not sure you really need the sync step. I haven't read the spec in that kind of detail, but if that sync step is really necessary I'd call that a design flaw. The file system may delay the write of the file as well as the rename, but it shouldn't perform the rename until the file has actually been written.
As I understand it, that is EXACTLY what happens. The move/relinking is commited, but the data isn't. If true, a real case of WTF. The relinking should only be executed AFTER the data has been commited to the drive.
Syncing a machine via NTP isn't rocket science, you know. Since ISPs already keep logs for a number of purposes requiring accurate timestamps, they probably have figured that one out. Or you just disregard notices which occur close to either end of a DHCP "session" -- leaving room for clocks which are a couple of minutes off.
This is not what makes this kind of policy so fucked up.
The Update Manager is accessed via the starburst at the top right-hand top of the screen. Click it, but be prepared -- you're about to be confronted with literally hundreds of potential updates with incomprehensible names and unenlightening descriptions... By default, every update has a check next to it in the Update Manager. Uncheck the boxes next to those you don't want to update -- I recommend updating only software that you recognize.
That's terrible advice.
He might have a point about the huge number of updates on an initial boot confusing users -- doesn't Ubuntu pull updates as part of the install process? If not, it really should.
Sigh. The Slashdot story was about HMNB Clyde. NB as in Naval Base. Naval Base as in port for very expensive submarines the GP was referring to. Full of Trident missiles -- which coincidentally is the missile this Slashdot is about -- on loan from the US.
That said I'm not up to speed on the British nuclear capabilities, I'd wager they have alternate ways of spreading the joy. The idea of the UK or France responding to a terrorist attack via nukes is still preposterous, even if Sarkozy's macho posturing says otherwise.
Overall, the number of rockets fired had been decreasing, and had come to an extremely low rate in the months preceeding the invasion. The number you quote, if correct, is at least misleading. Furthermore, Hamas itself had not fired any rockets at Israel for months before the Israeli invasion. This isn't mentioned very often, but it's not disputed, either, even the Israeli government conceeds it. Of course, Hamas hasn't stopped the rockets, either -- because they did not want to stop them, or because they did not have the means to stop them.
Oh and as for the last leveling of city blocks happening in WW2 Germany? You have to be kidding. For one thing, Germany was defeated before the two nukes were detonated in Japan -- I'm pretty sure that leveled a couple of blocks. But there are many post-WW2 wars were city blocks were essentially reduced to nothing -- most of them involving either the Russian or the American armies. More bombs were detonated over Vietnam than in the whole WW2. And what about the Soviet war in Afghanistan or the Russian war in Chechnya. And city blocks were - as good as - leveled in many of the engagements in the Middle East, though maybe not during this most recent war.
If your response is more dramatic and harsh than the first attack the chances of a new attack drop significantly.
Your post is ludicrous on many levels. That you start out with this delusional proposition without ever arguing why it would be true is just the start. It all does sound very manly, though!
Bangladesh is the most densely populated country aside from city/micro states like Singapore, Monaco or Bahrain. However, I was only referring to developed countries: Bangladesh's public transportation system can't really be compared to one in the EU etc... I still got my numbers wrong, though, since I missed South Korea on the list, so NL is actually #3 and Japan #5 (again, among developed countries). (Source is Wikipedia, of course.)
Aiming directly between the eyes at 10 feet would usually miss by a mile.
So, uhh, Fallout 3 is an awful game because... you did not use VATS? It's a turn-based RPG -- just like Fallout 1 and 2. Using the real time combat was mostly useful for dealing with inferior enemies. There are no inferior enemies in the beginning of the game.
Don't you people have a train schedule that is repeated? You make up a new one every week?
It's timetable copy protection! DRM if you will. You can copy yesterdays schedule but it won't do you any good because we have completely randomised all schedules in the morning! Hah! Clearly there is no downside to doing this!
Actually, a significant statistical sampling of actual train arrival times might be more useful than the timetable from the world of ideals. I mean, if the rush hour train is always late by at least two minutes, chances are it will be late today, as well.
Okay, to be honest, when I was commuting via train every day I pretty much had such a sampling, and I knew the train would be late, and I would still try to arrive on time just in case (it seems whenever you go to a public transportation terminal, you hurry, because who knows, maybe you can catch the previous train/bus running late). But at the very least data like that could be interesting to analyse.
Actually, in that particular situation (no more trains due to late hour) Deutsche Bahn has to pay for either a hotel or a taxi as well. In parts of Germany, you are can take a taxi if there's no available train within an hour or so although the refund for the taxi fare is capped at a fairly low amount (15 or 30 EUR, apparently, which doesn't get you very far; sharing a cab with other passengers gets you further, though).
Unfortunately I'm pretty sure you have to jump through significant hoops to get that refund, which is outrageous, it should happen without any intervention on the part of the customer; ie. the taxi service should bill it to the transit authority directly.
Coincidentally, Japan and the Netherlands are also among the most densely populated developed countries in the world (rank 4 and 2, respectively). Not sure if/why Taiwan's (#1) and Belgium's (#3) train system is used less.;)
Slashdot Mirror
I thought it was usually worthwhile to run the CPU at full speed if there's work to do: it uses more power, but computations go faster, too. Conversely, a low clock works with a lower voltage, but will take much longer. I guess it depends on how power usage scales with computational speed. On the one there certainly is a lot of power overhead when running a CPU at low speed vs having it sleeping. On the other hand I dimly remember that the required voltage raises quadratically with the CPU clock. Come to think of it, the whole thing might also depend on whether a process is CPU limited or IO limited.
netbooks were a playing field where both windows and linux had to compete from start, without any external forces.
No external forces? Are you talking about netbooks on Mars or something? Because here on Earth there sure as hell were a lot of external forces. In Germany, a number of netbooks -- the majority, I think -- were never available with Linux to start with. The Dell Mini and others were available with Linux and even marginally cheaper (though obviously not by the retail price of Windows), but came with a crippled hardware configuration which made it much more sensible to just buy the Windows version and kill the OS.
The remainder of your post is really just a vanilla Linux rant, sprinkled with an anecdote, sprinkled with an anecdote. Not that you're necessarily wrong, but there's no need to have the same discussion 10 times a week. I will say that the point about Windows (of all products!) having a consistent GUI made me laugh. With Windows 7, I think KDE 4 has a more consistent GUI now.
The Toshiba Qosmio is a far better buy than the Adamo as well.
Wow, that has got to be the ugliest laptop I have ever seen. "New eye-popping design" -- it popped my eyes, I'll give em that, now how do I stop the bleeding?
I doubt he's that old. He's probably from a European country after the Second World War.
Ah, I see. That's pretty much exactly what Compiz does. I'm sure each does a couple of things better than the other, as usual. The Compiz version of Exposé is called Scale, incidently. ;)
Are you kidding? Those are some "particularly egregious" examples of things going wrong on Wikipedia? A debate about an entry of an episode for some sci-fi show and one about a Pokemon character? Duuurrr. If that's the worst you can come up with I think Wikipedia will do fine.
Hm? Is there anything special KDE4 is doing with composite? I use Gnome+Compiz all the time, and it's far, far more than pretty effects -- the window management is just much better than before. (E.g.: You can efficiently manage windows on two large widescreen displays using just the keyboard.) When I'm at work where we use KDE3, that is what I miss, not the graphics.
That's not exactly what "Gefahr im Verzug" means, which apparently translates to exigant circumstance, btw. Anyway, police can do a search without warrant if they claim that the suspect is destroying evidence, because waiting for a judge to sign a warrant would result in the loss of significant evidence in that case. (Source: German Wikipedia, IANAL.) Apparently they did claim it in this case, which seems absurd even if what he did was illegal. All of this if very fucked up and at the same time totally in line with what's been going on for a while now. And there's absolutely no sign of improvement in sight.
I'm sure there are still a fair enough people who don't care about audio settings per app because most important apps include their own volume bar.
That's true enough, a good solution would be for current applications to simply control the PA per-app setting. Future apps wouldn't need to spend time on developing an internal volume setting -- unless they intend to work with other sound servers, of course. I still want a widget within the app to control the sound level, though, using the PA per-app volume control to adjust volume in Smplayer is really awkward.
Err... it is? I had the impression that laptops have their own internal UPS.
The only way to unexpectedly remove the power (apart from software problems) would be to physically remove the battery, so, uh, don't do that. Of course the battery could run down, but that's the opposite of unexpected -- I agree that you should reduce the commit delay if the battery is below a certain threshold (say, 10%).
Hey, it crashed on me on mail.google.com - I think I see a trend there.
Afford the risk? Upgrading Firefox is not like upgrading the entire operating system including stuff like filesystem drivers etc. If Firefox 3 doesn't work out, you uninstall it and reinstall Firefox 2. The chances of Firefox 3 failing in a way that's spectacular enough to cause you more than 5 minutes of work are slim to none even during the beta. In fact, I've been running Firefox 3.1 alpha/beta for a while, and the 3.0 version just sits there and will happily run along 3.1 -- I could switch in a heartbeat, total risk is zero.
Unless you're running a laptop, in which case it might save non-trivial amounts of power. ... And of course, non-flushed buffers aren't even the issue with the Launchpad bug reports, it's really more the fact that the cache wasn't commited to disk while at the same time the truncate operations WERE commited, but whatever.
The rename system call guarantees that at any point in time the name will refer to either the old or the new file. I'm not sure you really need the sync step. I haven't read the spec in that kind of detail, but if that sync step is really necessary I'd call that a design flaw. The file system may delay the write of the file as well as the rename, but it shouldn't perform the rename until the file has actually been written.
As I understand it, that is EXACTLY what happens. The move/relinking is commited, but the data isn't. If true, a real case of WTF. The relinking should only be executed AFTER the data has been commited to the drive.
Syncing a machine via NTP isn't rocket science, you know. Since ISPs already keep logs for a number of purposes requiring accurate timestamps, they probably have figured that one out. Or you just disregard notices which occur close to either end of a DHCP "session" -- leaving room for clocks which are a couple of minutes off.
This is not what makes this kind of policy so fucked up.
Choice quote:
The Update Manager is accessed via the starburst at the top right-hand top of the screen. Click it, but be prepared -- you're about to be confronted with literally hundreds of potential updates with incomprehensible names and unenlightening descriptions ...
By default, every update has a check next to it in the Update Manager. Uncheck the boxes next to those you don't want to update -- I recommend updating only software that you recognize.
That's terrible advice.
He might have a point about the huge number of updates on an initial boot confusing users -- doesn't Ubuntu pull updates as part of the install process? If not, it really should.
Sigh. The Slashdot story was about HMNB Clyde. NB as in Naval Base. Naval Base as in port for very expensive submarines the GP was referring to. Full of Trident missiles -- which coincidentally is the missile this Slashdot is about -- on loan from the US.
That said I'm not up to speed on the British nuclear capabilities, I'd wager they have alternate ways of spreading the joy. The idea of the UK or France responding to a terrorist attack via nukes is still preposterous, even if Sarkozy's macho posturing says otherwise.
Overall, the number of rockets fired had been decreasing, and had come to an extremely low rate in the months preceeding the invasion. The number you quote, if correct, is at least misleading. Furthermore, Hamas itself had not fired any rockets at Israel for months before the Israeli invasion. This isn't mentioned very often, but it's not disputed, either, even the Israeli government conceeds it. Of course, Hamas hasn't stopped the rockets, either -- because they did not want to stop them, or because they did not have the means to stop them.
Oh and as for the last leveling of city blocks happening in WW2 Germany? You have to be kidding. For one thing, Germany was defeated before the two nukes were detonated in Japan -- I'm pretty sure that leveled a couple of blocks. But there are many post-WW2 wars were city blocks were essentially reduced to nothing -- most of them involving either the Russian or the American armies. More bombs were detonated over Vietnam than in the whole WW2. And what about the Soviet war in Afghanistan or the Russian war in Chechnya. And city blocks were - as good as - leveled in many of the engagements in the Middle East, though maybe not during this most recent war.
If your response is more dramatic and harsh than the first attack the chances of a new attack drop significantly.
Your post is ludicrous on many levels. That you start out with this delusional proposition without ever arguing why it would be true is just the start. It all does sound very manly, though!
Bangladesh is the most densely populated country aside from city/micro states like Singapore, Monaco or Bahrain. However, I was only referring to developed countries: Bangladesh's public transportation system can't really be compared to one in the EU etc... I still got my numbers wrong, though, since I missed South Korea on the list, so NL is actually #3 and Japan #5 (again, among developed countries). (Source is Wikipedia, of course.)
Aiming directly between the eyes at 10 feet would usually miss by a mile.
So, uhh, Fallout 3 is an awful game because ... you did not use VATS? It's a turn-based RPG -- just like Fallout 1 and 2. Using the real time combat was mostly useful for dealing with inferior enemies. There are no inferior enemies in the beginning of the game.
Don't you people have a train schedule that is repeated? You make up a new one every week?
It's timetable copy protection! DRM if you will. You can copy yesterdays schedule but it won't do you any good because we have completely randomised all schedules in the morning! Hah! Clearly there is no downside to doing this!
Actually, a significant statistical sampling of actual train arrival times might be more useful than the timetable from the world of ideals. I mean, if the rush hour train is always late by at least two minutes, chances are it will be late today, as well.
Okay, to be honest, when I was commuting via train every day I pretty much had such a sampling, and I knew the train would be late, and I would still try to arrive on time just in case (it seems whenever you go to a public transportation terminal, you hurry, because who knows, maybe you can catch the previous train/bus running late). But at the very least data like that could be interesting to analyse.
Actually, in that particular situation (no more trains due to late hour) Deutsche Bahn has to pay for either a hotel or a taxi as well. In parts of Germany, you are can take a taxi if there's no available train within an hour or so although the refund for the taxi fare is capped at a fairly low amount (15 or 30 EUR, apparently, which doesn't get you very far; sharing a cab with other passengers gets you further, though).
Unfortunately I'm pretty sure you have to jump through significant hoops to get that refund, which is outrageous, it should happen without any intervention on the part of the customer; ie. the taxi service should bill it to the transit authority directly.
Coincidentally, Japan and the Netherlands are also among the most densely populated developed countries in the world (rank 4 and 2, respectively). Not sure if/why Taiwan's (#1) and Belgium's (#3) train system is used less. ;)