opposite, it's hard to define opposites, but if you were to focus only on one things for hours or even days at a time, what might that be called?
Maybe obsessive-compulsive. If you tune out the world around you and focus on your inner reality, then it's more akin to => autism/asperger's syndrome, or tunnel vision.
However -- would you really want phone support if it meant you had to talk to someone in German? with email, they can run it though the computer equivalent of babelfish (Sytran). Their comprehension and some of their answers indicate that the xlation SW isn't that perfected yet...
But I agree...this is especially a pain when Germany is in another friggin' day for the most part. I'm in California -- and even the UK is 7-8 hours ahead of me -- meaning that unless I can manage to get out of bed *and* _be_ _awake_ _enough_ (that's the challenge) at 7am-8am my time, I'm likely going to get a 'closed' please all back during normal business hours -- or maybe an answering services.
But even with email, we're talking, usually 24 hour turn-around -- not ideal for debugging or anything requiring interactivity. Reminds me of Dell's phone message telling me that I can get faster service by submitting my question via email -- and that the longest hold time is
But the price is the price -- we're patsies^WAmericans -- don't we just pay what we are told to pay and not question service? Qeustioning price and/or service? We, obviously need some more voodoo economics training on spending cash we don't have...and how that'll solve our cash flow probems.
-l
p.s. -- $600? Ouch! Sort steep for a new/untested/unproven product.
I thought it was Urban Myth, but someone on some TV show made reference to cell-phones being trackable even if turned off. I thought it was bogus sci-fi.
Now I don't know. What I have noticed is that on my Motorola StarTac, if I leave a battery in the phone but leave the phone turned off, the battery will still be dead by the next day. *But*... I've gotten into the habit of carrying a spare with me...and well, you'd think wow -- if the battery drains itself dry in 1 day while the phone is off, carrying a spare isn't worth alot --- except that I noticed that 'spares' always showed a full charge either in charger or in phone -- even if they'd been sitting in my purse a week or more.
I rotate batteries on a regular basis. In fact, I'll take the spare put it in the phone, the day's battery in the spare charger, and the fresh one that was in the charger becomes the new spare.
At first I thought I was just being forgetful, but then I paid attention to the battery life. And sure enough -- no matter which battery I left in my cell phone, it had only a day maybe two of life with the cell phone turned *OFF*. But spares appeared to suffer no drain.
So....even when off, something in my phone is eating current. Perhaps it's a fault phone/model, etc, It's a non-color backlit-LCD -- but if it's off, there are no lights or blinks for service indication (turned those off).
Anyone else notice this weird draining symptom? I have a Moto StarTac Tri-mode w/digital and analog.
-l --- Why can't we meta-moderate decisions on initial story submissions?
Have to say one thing about online classes -- there wouldn't be as much "peer fear" -- of asking the stupid question infront of that cute classmate and looking dumb. No worryabout about what to wear or whether or not you are up on the latest fashions or took a bath or washed your hair that morning.
Yeah, alot of guys may not care about some of these things, but it might make various types of learning less threatening.
Also people who freeze and might not raise their hand from shyness or afraid of being put on the spot with a counter-question would also benefit.
But there is a great loss of facial expressions and body language that can communicate to a teacher, student understanding and communicate to a student, teacher interest.
It's also a benefit for those that take different pacing to cover material. I got totally lost in a french class because I couldn't keep up with what i needed to do to learn the weekly increasing vocabulary -- I mean #words/ week increased in addition to having to remember earlier words -- and once you started to fall behind -- *ouch*, downward slide became exponential.
I was lucky to escape with a "C" and wouldn't go onto 2nd semester class without a repeat of the first. First time I'd gotten anything less than an "A" in a class in a *long* time.
On the flip side, though, if you are there in person, you might meet study partners -- or, like me, might be in a minority age group (where most of the community college students were early 20ish.
Depends on the course, the school, the teacher....no one answer.
a different vision of Matrix: Soul Rider Series
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A Good Summer Read?
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· Score: 1
by Jack Chalker. Starts out appearing to be fantasy, moves into sci fi as we find there is tech behind the fantasy. Those with high match scills seemed to also be the best wizards. Turns out the entire world they live in is digitized, converted to energy then back to matter @ around 60-200 Hz. Those with best match skills most easily could visualize the strings and formulae that made up 'spell' to alter reality and perform wizardry. Five book set.
Also surprised no one mentioned -- depending on your hobbies and interests, the first several books of the Gor series...:-) Not hacker culture though.
Interesting movie "Thirteenth floor", I believe -- more pre-matrix foder.
You've heard about the crippled DVD's that self-destruct after some number of years -- it's worse....I've gotten "new" DVD's that have had the same trouble -- it's almost always visible on the DVD when I've seen it. Normal DVD's -- you see the fine lines all the way around all looks fine. But decaying DVD's have what appear to be interference patterns that look sorta like what you might see if you put pressure on an LCD display or some of those old mood pad -- almost like a very fine geographical topology map -- except that the topology lines shift in the light -- the run at odd angles and maybe look like a sinewave pattern or like someone spilled a liquid inside the DVD and and dried.
I ordered 2 CD sets, a 2nd season Buffy and a 1st copy Terminator both 'new' but from independents off of amazon. The 2nd season buffy was most obvious -- it was only some of the CD's that had the patterns and it was those CD's that were unreadable or would lock up and/or skip large segments. Both the sellers said send the sets back at my expense and they'd replace...I keep thinking I'll get to it...but it's been more than 30 days with both...its not even the sellers fault -- they are faulty CD's and should be replaced by the manufacturer -- they aren't scratched. They just have these..."Moire" patterns on the CD's. Now one might think they could be something to do with dual layer, but when you have multiple CD's of a 12 CD set and only 2 of them have the problem and they are the only two with noticable moire patterns, you begin to suspect a problem.
Was talking to an "artist" who honestly felt that your media should decay and not last and you should be forced to repay the artist to buy new media every once in a while. Good thing Michelangelo didn't feel that way about the Sistine Chapel...among others...this mixed with the MS subscription model where you can listen to music, but you lose access to all your downloaded music if you don't stay current on your subscription fees....it all points to trying to eliminate the ability of average peons (us) to own 'capital' goods that are worth anything while increasing the value of the 'capital' goods that the media conglomerates own (or will own forever given current copyright extension trends)....
I'd be real real wary of thinking a technology that is having problems in it's first decade of life with random decay being able to reliably provide any long term storage solution. Perhaps 1 layer CD's burned into non-oxidizing metal...but plastics? Have you ever looked at the plastics around all the cheap florescent light replacements? brittle and yellow in under a year. Would seem to indicate high UV or ozone damage or both!....(likely UV) --- I'm guessing many of the cheap florescents on the market these days are putting out a substantial amount of UV light to cause the plastic to decay that quickly. The higher the wattage, the worse the decay. I had 1 300Watt equivalent UV destroy the plastic separators between the cylinders in under a month of use.
Anyay....long term storage...maybe print technology on acid free paper with future OCR tech....?
The core of the problem was delineated in the book "Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation". It it he makes the main point -- that those people who are most creative are the people who don't do things the "normal way". They are the 'loners' -- the 'slow adopters of company culture'. They aren't the team players and they are slow to be programmed with the company way of doing things. As a result, they see problems differently than those that have been trained in the "correct way" to do things.
Those who spend time going to lunch, drinking beer together, palling around together -- they begin to think alike -- they develop synergy -- but they also develop a closed system. The ones who don't pal around come up with the completely off-the-wall ways of doing things because they haven't been indoctrinated into the 'normal way' of doing things. Quite often these ideas are shot down because of their eccentricity. But Steve Job's personal computer idea he presented to HP -- shot down by corportate culture was a brilliant success. He gives countless examples of the most brilliant people generally not being very good with "people skills".
A correllary of this is that those who push for perfection far past the 'norm' are going to be unpopular outsiders -- they are the nit-pickers, the one's who aren't team players. Again, they might be the ones that would nit pick the code to perfection, given the chance, but the larger group says "enough" -- it's "good enough, it boots, let's ship it".
In both instances the people most likely to increase quality in software are those that have the least political clout and are often least liked by their peers. Their peers often feel like the 'nitpicker' has a prideful, superiority complex -- overly prideful and sometimes go out of their way to sabotage work that might otherwise have turned the company around and saved millions.
I specifically was involved in a group who had to choose between 2 vendors of Microsoft compatible software. I became the lone supporter of company B. I was adamantly opposed to "A" for reasons I coudn't articulate at the time -- my gut told me "A" was untrustworthy but I couldn't tell why. I was overruled and 4-5 months into the project "A" sued MS for non-cooperation effectively killing our project. It was too late to go with company "B" who's price had doubled now that they were the only game in town. It turns out "A" had been having trouble with MS all through the negotiations with us, but no one picked up on it. Reminding anyone of the decision made me decidedly unpopular. But it was precisely because I hadn't gone out and been wined and dined by "A" and hadn't formed a "Good 'ol boy" relationship with them that I could see something was amiss. It was precisely the fact that I wasn't a hobbnobber/ polical animal that I caught the 'off' vibes. Those who were "good team employees" went along with the majority decision and the 'friendly team "A" who came onsite to woo us. Its the same principle at work.
Those who make the world work -- are also those most likely to compromise and most likely to compromise quality. It's because of their willingness to compromise that they are liked by many but it's the same compromise that resultes in compromised code -- both in terms of bugs and security.
I sure as heck don't know the answer. Successful combinations are highlighted in the book mentioned above where one person knows the almost anti-personal nature of the 'idea' person, and handles the media and external interactions, but the it's rare to find groups that work well like that.
It has often been said that the best software doesn't come out of committee but out of 1 or a few people -- while companies like to think that 9 women can have a baby in 1 month, it ends up more often that the 9 women argue over who
When I was in college in Computer Science (how many programmers today have a formal degree in Computers, vs. say, a liberal arts degree?), Sophmore year, University of Midwest - CS201 - required for Computer Science majors -- beginning assembly language in Compass (CDC assembler).
The price of perfection is taught early -- an early lesson was when for a final project we were to work with 2-3 other people to make a final program. The deadline was approaching and our program still wasn't running. Turning it in late was a letter grade drop/day. Two of us felt we were close and didn't want to turn in a non-running program. The third wanted to turn it in. They also felt that they'd done their part and there were no problems in it.
The third turned in the project with his name on it. My partner and I spent another day cleaning up his code to get it to work and turned it in. We got a a "C" on the project, with a downgrade for bad coding practice in his section of the code and being a day late. He got a "B" even though it didn't work. In the final grade both he and my partner got "D"s while I got a "C", which sorta sucked for my major -- but it turns out that 60% of the class got "D"s and "E"s. Made a big stink about the course material being too difficult and the teacher made a public 'booboo' comment "It was the same material he'd taught before, it was just an exceptionally dumb class." Major ire of parents.
Anyone who got a "D" or "E" had it stricken from their academic record. It as the only "C" I got in my comp-sci curriculum (str8 A's in 300 level and above classes). But on that project, I learned that deadlines were more important than code quality.
Spin forward 15 years -- at small startup before Xmas. Deadline for demo approaching and I and other team member had parties to go to that evening. He was programming a DSP chip (he was a PhD wizard), and I was handling the drivers on the 286 DOS box. I checked my code backwards and forwards and he swore it couldn't be his stuff. Finally, I displayed output he was sending and it was 'wrong'. Unfortunately, my party had been out of town and I'd already missed the deadline for getting there because it was emphasized to me how important the project was to complete before leaving. When the problem was discovered in his code -- guess what -- he could't stay to fix it (I didn't know anything about the DSP chip he was using) because, the VP told me, he was married and his wife was gonna leave him if he missed the party (I don't think he was serious, but maybe). I had no such excuse -- only a partner who went to the party alone.
Again -- what do I learn? Personal relationships take presidence over product and code quality, so far we have code quality below deadlines and below personal relationships (though that has more disappeared in the modern world).
As someone said before -- no product liability -- you have to pay money just to report a bug...
Training of Software Engineers. With point and click interfaces you have people with an average reading ability of a 5th grader writing code. Even hinting that someone wasn't a good writer of code was considered "unprofessional" at some workplaces (i.e. -- you are not a 'team player').
Capitalism -- it's not cost effective to fix bugs until a customer finds them. Even in code for Secure OS's under Common Criteria CAPP/LSPP, vendors aren't required to fix bugs that are not discovered by the independant evaluator or the customer. So even if the product manager knows of bugs in the OS that is intended for 'high security' government projects, there is no law saying he has to list them or fix them (unless they are found by a 3rd party or the customer). Spending time fixing bugs that are NOT found by the customer is not only not cost-effective, it is considered not working on "assigned priorities" and can be grounds for lower reviews.
This isn't pessimism -- it's reality. Quality doesn't pay when you can sell customers faulty products then charge the customers to fix the faulty product you sold them in the first place -- one might argue that it pays to have more bugs in the code -- you can charge more for service contracts and rack up more incidents that you then charge the customer, per incident, to handle.
Anyone found anything effective against gophers? Here in CA, they eat the root of just about anything -- even posts in the ground if you water the posts!
I have 4 beagles and a cat -- cat is quite effective against mice/rats, but just leaves the snakes inside for me. So far in 5 years, and maybe 100 holes dug in ground by dogs (we don't need no stinkin' yard), I've only seen 1 gopher -- got by the eldest beagle (didn't actually see beagle get it, but it as fresh killed -- could have been cat that got it, but the dogs spend alot more energy digging. Even though beagles are normally effective hunters, the gophers are about the size of large rats, and I can' think of any dogs small enough to go down a gopher hole.
I wonder about ferrets...illegal to own in California though...too afraid that they'll escape into the wild and breed (even sterilized).
I think the local garden shops buy the gophers from out of state and release batches of them in areas around town every spring just to keep their sales up.:-/
Every year, they seem to get worse...and most seem to have a direct tunnel to my yard. I want to remove some of the gopher baskets from some of the trees -- had a 20 foot peppermint eucalyptus fall over this last winter -- tipped right in the basket -- like none of the roots had gone through the basket at all. I have a feeling that the baskets are having a Bonsai effect on their growth -- and for fruit trees -- none of the citrus are high enough off the ground to keep the fruit from the dogs...not good.
But I almost just KNOW that as soon as I remove a basket (providing I could figure out how to do that with the tree in the ground) the tree will be gone. Had a 10 year old passion vine die in a few weeks when gophers got too hungry and went for it. Insane!
They have dimmable florescent torches, now, ya know.
Also, if you want to optimize your lighting -- go for white, semi-gloss or similar paint. White ceilings -> less wattage light needed. Same for walls and furniture, but everything pure white is hard to keep clean and can be pretty boring, but no reason why not to have, maybe, white perlescent ceilings in every room...we went from 'acoustic white' (an off white) to pure white -- made a noticable difference in light levels.
Good idea if you have a wet environment -- but So. Cal isn't known for it's swamplands nor excess water. Water prices are climbing and [pick one: realists/alarmists] claim water crises are not far away. Large underground aquifers like in LA that store water in wet seasons and are tapped in dry seasons, are *shrinking* in size -- because they are being overly tapped in dry seasons as population increases and the porous rock that holds the water is slowly compressing each season. On one hand, you have population increasing, and on the other, you have the ability to store less and less each year. Pundits claim when a long dry spell happens, the doubled effect of decreasing supply and increasing demand will magnify any shortcoming considerably -- such that we might not just be "a little short", but it might be a big shortfall.
I'm amazed at the amount of water that is pumped from No. Cal to So. Cal -- so much so that the energy to run the pumps makes up a sizable percentage of energy consumed -- such that turning off the pumps in the last energy crisis was the difference between the grid falling or not.
We really should be spending more money on researching cheap ways to do water desalination -- in areas like SoCal, with the natural heat for evaporation, it might be feasible, but last I heard, water would cost about 10x the current prices.
I always wondered why someone hasn't come up with a way of changing the roof colors according to the season -- black in winter and white in summer.
I guess a mechanical means like slats would just cost to much to be worth it -- maybe paints that change color based on temp or by running a current through them? -- like the IBM electronic paper -- cover the roof and erase the paper in summer -- make it all white, and all black in winter.
So many of our current designs don't take into account energy consumption because energy has traditionally been so cheap/plentiful, but with some customers having electric bills near the size of their rent, change might come.
While tons of us know of prior art on things like this, I've seen (to my surprise) some patents dating back 10-15 years. Things I think that are obviouos ideas -- well someone else thought of it 15 years ago. I didn't read through every word of the articles, but just because the company is new doesn't mean they didn't buy the patent from someone who filed it ages ago.
The interesting question comes up is how this relatest to SBC's phone number blocking technology, distinctive ring technology and additional password technology (or going through 'voice mail') to reach the recipients voice mail box.
I.e. -- How about a voicemail type maze for emailers -- please return your message with option #1 selected if you want more info on my mental condition, please select option #2 if you want the P.O. Box to send free money to, please select option #3 to leave a message for my dog or select option #4 to route your message to me.
Now you have an automated email-response exactly like many voice mail systems (well, many voice mail systems are worse). But wasn't there a ruling that simpoly taking a real-world process and using it on the computer wasn't sufficiently unique to qualify for a patent?
We've got to contact our congress critters and let them know that software patents are just plain 99% abused.
Monsanto should have to pay the farmer for damages because their genetically modified cra^hop has contaminated his land. Now he can't grow a normal crop that isn't tainted with their seed and who knows what effect their genetics could have even on other crops. Could their canola pollen cross pollinate with other species? I've seen flowers in my garden a dark rose single layer petal rose and a light pink multi layer rose cross pollinate over a year through no effort of myself and the next year I had a black multi-petal rose.
I was utterly fascinated how easy it was for them to cross pollinate. Now if a company comes along and has artificially genetically altered crops that contaminate mine -- that have _tresspassed_ on my land, Monsanto should be paying full damages.
If Monsanto wants the crop destroyed, I could live with that, but I also say that they have to pay the farmer full price for what the farmer's land would have produced and give the farmer non-contaminated seeds to restart their crop. I could see Monsanto being liable for potentially years of lost profits if they want to force the farmer to destroy his crop.
I don't like the idea of forced destruction --- but if that's the decision, monsanto should pay full restitution until the farm is back to normal production. They can't have it both ways.
How is it that there is so much injustice in the world?
Re:Poor Dell, but they are really rich!
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DRAM Price Fixing
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· Score: 1
Yeah...Dell regularly charges about 2-3 times the going rate for memory. Now they are designing some new machines (see Inspiron 8500) where only 1 slot is customer accessible, meaning the other slot has to have factory installed memory in it. Which ties you to them for at least half your memory. I priced it out on the 8200 and the machine would have been about 25% cheaper if I bought minimal memory and added it after market.
I think Dell is on the edge of a cliff -- their service level is declining, their technology isn't state of the art anymore and their prices are becoming as high as the other big players.
I think they pulled an SGI with their 8500 -- it may be where they market will go, but they did it too soon. Businesses will have a rough time using the 8500 with a docking station and trying to find an external monitor for it.
Seems like the tech bubble has burst -- what little $$'s are there are going to security which is becoming more like the life insurance industry all the time.
So many scammers in the security sector -- and of course, no product liability or product fault disclosure required....(at least not until it's been recorded in bugtraq....)
I very much agree with you...in general...but in the issue of IP, there has to be some middle ground. You don't want smart people to be eaten alive by copycatters from wherever -- that was(is) a complaint of many industries over time. They produce something, then some (usually) foreign company finds a way to make the product where people are paid 4$ a day. They come in and undercut the inventor, who is quickly driven out of business.
You see, copying is easy. Once you know how something works, it isn't hard to find ways to cheapen the production process, or use slightly less quality parts (that the masses won't care about -- only the small group of aficionados (of whatever the product is). The inventor quickly loses nearly all sales and goes to broke. Then he can invent another product, but the act of 'creation' is not something highly valued in our society. Think of most recording artists and how much they get off the end product.
One problem is that entities buy the exclusive rights to a product. Then it's not the inventor that can continue to benefit... What..how much did Bill Gates pay the original author for MS-DOS? And where is Bill Gates today, and where is the original author now?
One solution to that might be that creator's rights can't be sold. They solely belong to the person(s). There are alot of details that would need to be worked out with employers, but if you work from the premise that the *creator* cannot give up their creation -- limited time licensing, perhaps, that would stop some of the abuse.
The second problem... well it comes out of the first problem -- that owning entities can also be corporations. I think Corporations were given fairly equal status to persons in the early 1900's? Before that it was people who had rights and priviledges, but Corporations, given person-hood....imagine a person who could be in 10,000 places at once and could have a working lifespan of decades and never retires (unless they don't survive -- but even then there is the term "corporate welfare" that is bandied about:-)). But a 10,000 or 100,000 person "corporation" is capable of wielding much more power than any single individual. They can bind together with other corporations and become powerful industries with powerful "lobbying" groups to disproportionately influence politics.
Democracy becomes a 'name-only' affair -- with the bulk of the power going to those who wield the most money to buy the most influence and votes, either directly, or by propaganda campaigns to disinform the masses.
Now the original intent of copyright and patents -- to benefit the creator, has been subsumbed by the larger interests of the corporations. I'm not a constitutional law expert, but I would tend to argue that the patent and copyright offices are exceeding their original charter with the effect that it _hinders_ innovation and such licensing no longer benefits the people, but more lines the pockets of the wealthiest few who can buy the most patents/works from low-paid creators.
The problem is worse in the computer industry where internet time and generations move along at 2-5x the rate of regular time. Computer machines and software processes are often obsolete in 2-5 years time, unlike things like, say, elevators -- for which a longer patent term is appropriate.
So I'd like to suggest considerably shortening any patent/copyright time periods with relevance to computer/internet processes / technologies; suggest that real world copyright be returned to time standards proposed when copyrights/patent awards were proposed -- and no rights to renewal after the creator's death; and that "common sense" can't be patented/copyrighted -- like the previous writer said -- if its already a process in the real world, putting it on a computer doesn't qualify for a patent.
It wasn't something so mindless as an elevator that can only go one direction...They had a concept of "zones".
The theory is you divide up the disk into cylinders or groups of cylinders (depending on your cylinder size). When you write files out to disk, the directory and the files for the directory were all aimed at the same zone or a closest adjacent/available zone.
The idea was to use people's logical mapping as a guideline in physical layout on the disk. That way seeking is minimized within some small number of cylinders.
You, maybe, have to hold off on writes to allow them to group to be efficient, or worst case writes involve much seeking if different processes are writing single blocks to different directories with each write, but reads go much faster...
Maybe you would wait around after a read at the same area of the disk while the process that was just 'awakened' by the finishing of the disk I/O finishes it's timeslice. If it doesn't get scheduled next or isn't likely to within "X" time, or if one accumulates other read requests that are more than "Y" time old, then you services the other processes.
Values of "X" and "Y" depend, on disk seek times/latency, timeslice length, process priority, number of disk-blocked processes...etc. They'd have to be dynamically altered based on load.
But that's what...circa 1989 tech? Good thing we've come so much farther than those primitive algorithms.:-(
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
It's amazing how, even now, many "modern" security concepts are being "discovered" that were already known back in the 60-70's.
Maybe it's the tendancy in the industry to discard experienced programmers for cheaper-meat so generational knowledge that can be passed on over a generation (~20-30 years?) is lost as the "generation" time is shorted to 10-15 years. Dunno. Maybe modern programmers don't have time to read books on what's already been done because they know that whatever has been done in the past, they can do better (i.e. Egoism ignorance)?
So there you had Californians paying pennies on every dollar the state of California expended for energy
Ever check the prices for electricity around the nation?
Before the energy shortage?
California had the highest rates in the nation. Texas, at the time,
had one of the lowest rates. Enron gives away cheap energy to texas
to support bush, Bush grabs presidency, Enron tries to bail itself
out by gouging Californians -- Bush's enemy, Enron goes bankrupt
after California government steps in and negotiates contracts that
remove carpet from under enron feet.
So californians, paying pennies on the dollar? You're right.
During the energy crisis instead of 1-4 cents/kwh rest of nation
pays, we were being charged 20-70+c/kwh...so your damn right
we paid pennies on Texas's dollar...and your point?
Seems like the budget problems have gone hand in hand with the
recession -- or hasn't anyone noticed that? Why doesn't the State
do what every other company does in tight times?
*cut back*...
Noooo....government is a one way affair...just keeps growing and growing...takes on a life of its own...supposed to be of the people
by the people and for the people.... guess last presidential election proves that isn't true anymore...
you mumbled:
> Sure every little bit helps, but it's still kind of a losing battle
===
Well, which is it? Does it help or is the battle lost? Should
we just toss our passwords and encryption and throw away all car
and house locks? Fighting a moving target isn't the same as a
fighting a losing battle.
On the other hand, anyone that expects a "silver bullet" will
find that it works for a while. Then the "foe" adapts. They adapt.
You can either believe resistance is futile, or you can believe
that resistance is not futile.
What you believe will ultimately define your reality and if you get suckered into believing what losers believe, you'll be a loser yourself. If you are fortunate enough to have positive minded friends that don't make excuses, you'll find yourself more successful.
Ultimately, you'll get what you believe you'll get. People who
believe the worst are more likely to make it come true (since failure
and tearing things (or people) down is easier than success and building things up).
You can say locks no front doors are 'no silver bullet' since
the windows are so easily broken, and locks are expensive and a pain,
and we like not having to carry keys...and I'm so forgetful I don't
know how to find my keys all the time anyway...so locks on front
doors are bad! Seems like same logic goes along with non-executable
stacks.
Sorta like the power of a snowflake...but you put enough of them together and a avalanche has alot of power.
The idea of a "piece of software" sending a response to the supposed
'sender' and requiring a unique response before actuallying allowing
the sender's message to go through.
Hello. How long has majordomo been around?
More patently absurd patents...
So along comes someone with the complete DNA map to your body. Guess what? Now all your medical insurance is voided -- why? You've got the bloody source, now go support yourself!
They said I could call and ask for credit every time it happened -- just like I can call and ask for 1 minute of credit everytime a call is dropped -- usually only takes 15-20 minutes on hold to get your 20 cent credit....great company, Verizon! Unfortunately they are the best of a bad lot in coverage in my home area. Yeah, I cancelled my
text messaging. To fix the drop call problem, I haven't taken the
step of cancelling my service...yet.
Even 4 years ago, their 7500 Inspirons had a clunk of metal with
heat pipes going off it and to the back of the laptop where they
were joined to paper thin fins with the variable speed fans behind
them. I always thought they were filled with an evaporative coolant
to pump heat back much like any standard heat pump. I think I was
told later that the tubes were solid. But that someone would get a
patent on this idea? Sounds too obvious. I'm surprised no one
has come up with peltzier coolers for laptops...maybe they draw too
much power though.
If only we could turn the heat back into electrical...yeah, maybe
a little gas turbine sitting on top of the CPU running a generator
that feeds back into the battery.:-)
-lpq
Slashdot Mirror
opposite, it's hard to define opposites, but if you were to focus only
on one things for hours or even days at a time, what might that be called?
Maybe obsessive-compulsive. If you tune out the world around you and
focus on your inner reality, then it's more akin to => autism/asperger's syndrome, or tunnel vision.
Or so I would think, I'm far from an expert.
-l
However -- would you really want phone support if it meant you had to talk to someone in German? with email, they can run it though the computer equivalent of babelfish (Sytran). Their comprehension and some of their answers indicate that the xlation SW isn't that perfected yet...
But I agree...this is especially a pain when Germany is in another friggin' day for the most part. I'm in California -- and even the UK is 7-8 hours ahead of me -- meaning that unless I can manage to get out of bed *and* _be_ _awake_ _enough_ (that's the challenge) at 7am-8am my time, I'm likely going to get a 'closed' please all back during normal business hours -- or maybe an answering services.
But even with email, we're talking, usually 24 hour turn-around -- not ideal for debugging or anything requiring interactivity. Reminds me of Dell's
phone message telling me that I can get faster service by submitting my question via email -- and that the longest hold time is
But the price is the price -- we're patsies^WAmericans -- don't we just pay what we are told to pay and not question service? Qeustioning price and/or service? We, obviously need some more voodoo economics training on spending cash we don't have...and how that'll solve our cash flow probems.
-l
p.s. -- $600? Ouch! Sort steep for a new/untested/unproven product.
I thought it was Urban Myth, but someone on some TV show made reference to cell-phones being trackable even if turned off. I thought it was bogus sci-fi.
Now I don't know. What I have noticed is that on my Motorola StarTac, if I leave a battery in the phone but leave the phone turned off, the battery will still be dead by the next day. *But*... I've gotten into the habit of carrying a spare with me...and well, you'd think wow -- if the battery drains itself dry in 1 day while the phone is off, carrying a spare isn't worth alot --- except that I noticed that 'spares' always showed a full charge either in charger or in phone -- even if they'd been sitting in my purse a week or more.
I rotate batteries on a regular basis. In fact, I'll take the spare put it in the phone, the day's battery in the spare charger, and the fresh one that was in the charger becomes the new spare.
At first I thought I was just being forgetful, but then I paid attention to the battery life. And sure enough -- no matter which battery I left in my cell phone, it had only a day maybe two of life with the cell phone turned *OFF*. But spares appeared to suffer no drain.
So....even when off, something in my phone is eating current. Perhaps it's a fault phone/model, etc, It's a non-color backlit-LCD -- but if it's off, there are no lights or blinks for service indication (turned those off).
Anyone else notice this weird draining symptom? I have a Moto StarTac Tri-mode w/digital and analog.
-l
---
Why can't we meta-moderate decisions on initial story submissions?
Have to say one thing about online classes -- there wouldn't be as much
"peer fear" -- of asking the stupid question infront of that cute classmate
and looking dumb. No worryabout about what to wear or whether or not you
are up on the latest fashions or took a bath or washed your hair that morning.
Yeah, alot of guys may not care about some of these things, but it might make
various types of learning less threatening.
Also people who freeze and might not raise their hand from shyness or
afraid of being put on the spot with a counter-question would also benefit.
But there is a great loss of facial expressions and body language that
can communicate to a teacher, student understanding and communicate to
a student, teacher interest.
It's also a benefit for those that take different pacing to cover material.
I got totally lost in a french class because I couldn't keep up with what
i needed to do to learn the weekly increasing vocabulary -- I mean #words/
week increased in addition to having to remember earlier words -- and once
you started to fall behind -- *ouch*, downward slide became exponential.
I was lucky to escape with a "C" and wouldn't go onto 2nd semester class
without a repeat of the first. First time I'd gotten anything less than
an "A" in a class in a *long* time.
On the flip side, though, if you are there in person, you might meet study
partners -- or, like me, might be in a minority age group (where most
of the community college students were early 20ish.
Depends on the course, the school, the teacher....no one answer.
by Jack Chalker. Starts out appearing to be fantasy, moves into sci fi as
we find there is tech behind the fantasy. Those with high match scills seemed
to also be the best wizards. Turns out the entire world they live in is
digitized, converted to energy then back to matter @ around 60-200 Hz. Those
with best match skills most easily could visualize the strings and formulae
that made up 'spell' to alter reality and perform wizardry. Five book set.
Also surprised no one mentioned -- depending on your hobbies and interests,
the first several books of the Gor series...:-) Not hacker culture though.
Interesting movie "Thirteenth floor", I believe -- more pre-matrix foder.
-l
How long have DVD's been around?
..."Moire" patterns on the CD's. Now one might think they could
You've heard about the crippled DVD's that self-destruct after
some number of years -- it's worse....I've gotten "new" DVD's
that have had the same trouble -- it's almost always visible
on the DVD when I've seen it. Normal DVD's -- you see the fine
lines all the way around all looks fine. But decaying DVD's have
what appear to be interference patterns that look sorta like what
you might see if you put pressure on an LCD display or some of
those old mood pad -- almost like a very fine geographical
topology map -- except that the topology lines shift in the light --
the run at odd angles and maybe look like a sinewave pattern or
like someone spilled a liquid inside the DVD and and dried.
I ordered 2 CD sets, a 2nd season Buffy and a 1st copy Terminator
both 'new' but from independents off of amazon. The 2nd
season buffy was most obvious -- it was only some of the CD's that
had the patterns and it was those CD's that were unreadable or
would lock up and/or skip large segments. Both the sellers said
send the sets back at my expense and they'd replace...I keep thinking
I'll get to it...but it's been more than 30 days with both...its
not even the sellers fault -- they are faulty CD's and should be
replaced by the manufacturer -- they aren't scratched. They just have
these
be something to do with dual layer, but when you have multiple
CD's of a 12 CD set and only 2 of them have the problem and they are
the only two with noticable moire patterns, you begin to suspect
a problem.
Was talking to an "artist" who honestly felt that your media should
decay and not last and you should be forced to repay the artist to
buy new media every once in a while. Good thing Michelangelo didn't
feel that way about the Sistine Chapel...among others...this mixed
with the MS subscription model where you can listen to music, but
you lose access to all your downloaded music if you don't stay
current on your subscription fees....it all points to trying to
eliminate the ability of average peons (us) to own 'capital' goods that
are worth anything while increasing the value of the 'capital'
goods that the media conglomerates own (or will own forever given
current copyright extension trends)....
I'd be real real wary of thinking a technology that is having problems
in it's first decade of life with random decay being able to reliably
provide any long term storage solution. Perhaps 1 layer CD's burned
into non-oxidizing metal...but plastics? Have you ever looked at the
plastics around all the cheap florescent light replacements? brittle
and yellow in under a year. Would seem to indicate high UV or ozone
damage or both!....(likely UV) --- I'm guessing many of the cheap
florescents on the market these days are putting out a substantial
amount of UV light to cause the plastic to decay that quickly. The
higher the wattage, the worse the decay. I had 1 300Watt equivalent
UV destroy the plastic separators between the cylinders in under
a month of use.
Anyay....long term storage...maybe print technology on acid free
paper with future OCR tech....?
-l
The core of the problem was delineated in the book "Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation". It it he makes the main point -- that those people who are most creative are the people who don't do things the "normal way". They are the 'loners' -- the 'slow adopters of company culture'. They aren't the team players and they are slow to be programmed with the company way of doing things. As a result, they see problems differently than those that have been trained in the "correct way" to do things.
Those who spend time going to lunch, drinking beer together, palling around together -- they begin to think alike -- they develop synergy -- but they also develop a closed system. The ones who don't pal around come up with the completely off-the-wall ways of doing things because they haven't been indoctrinated into the 'normal way' of doing things. Quite often these ideas are shot down because of their eccentricity. But Steve Job's personal computer idea he presented to HP -- shot down by corportate culture was a brilliant success. He gives countless examples of the most brilliant people generally not being very good with "people skills".
A correllary of this is that those who push for perfection far past the 'norm' are going to be unpopular outsiders -- they are the nit-pickers, the one's who aren't team players. Again, they might be the ones that would nit pick the code to perfection, given the chance, but the larger group says "enough" -- it's "good enough, it boots, let's ship it".
In both instances the people most likely to increase quality in software are those that have the least political clout and are often least liked by their peers. Their peers often feel like the 'nitpicker' has a prideful, superiority complex -- overly prideful and sometimes go out of their way to sabotage work that might otherwise have turned the company around and saved millions.
I specifically was involved in a group who had to choose between 2 vendors of Microsoft compatible software. I became the lone supporter of company B. I was adamantly opposed to "A" for reasons I coudn't articulate at the time -- my gut told me "A" was untrustworthy but I couldn't tell why. I was overruled and 4-5 months into the project "A" sued MS for non-cooperation effectively killing our project. It was too late to go with company "B" who's price had doubled now that they were the only game in town. It turns out "A" had been having trouble with MS all through the negotiations with us, but no one picked up on it. Reminding anyone of the decision made me decidedly unpopular. But it was precisely because I hadn't gone out and been wined and dined by "A" and hadn't formed a "Good 'ol boy" relationship with them that I could see something was amiss. It was precisely the fact that I wasn't a hobbnobber/ polical animal that I caught the 'off' vibes. Those who were "good team employees" went along with the majority decision and the 'friendly team "A" who came onsite to woo us. Its the same principle at work.
Those who make the world work -- are also those most likely to compromise and most likely to compromise quality. It's because of their willingness to compromise that they are liked by many but it's the same compromise that resultes in compromised code -- both in terms of bugs and security.
I sure as heck don't know the answer. Successful combinations are highlighted in the book mentioned above where one person knows the almost anti-personal nature of the 'idea' person, and handles the media and external interactions, but the it's rare to find groups that work well like that.
It has often been said that the best software doesn't come out of committee but out of 1 or a few people -- while companies like to think that 9 women can have a baby in 1 month, it ends up more often that the 9 women argue over who
When I was in college in Computer Science (how many programmers today have a formal degree in Computers, vs. say, a liberal arts degree?), Sophmore year, University of Midwest - CS201 - required for Computer Science majors -- beginning assembly language in Compass (CDC assembler).
The price of perfection is taught early -- an early lesson was when for a final project we were to work with 2-3 other people to make a final program. The deadline was approaching and our program still wasn't running. Turning it in late was a letter grade drop/day. Two of us felt we were close and didn't want to turn in a non-running program. The third wanted to turn it in. They also felt that they'd done their part and there were no problems in it.
The third turned in the project with his name on it. My partner and I spent another day cleaning up his code to get it to work and turned it in. We got a a "C" on the project, with a downgrade for bad coding practice in his section of the code and being a day late. He got a "B" even though it didn't work. In the final grade both he and my partner got "D"s while I got a "C", which sorta sucked for my major -- but it turns out that 60% of the class got "D"s and "E"s. Made a big stink about the course material being too difficult and the teacher made a public 'booboo' comment "It was the same material he'd taught before, it was just an exceptionally dumb class." Major ire of parents.
Anyone who got a "D" or "E" had it stricken from their academic record. It as the only "C" I got in my comp-sci curriculum (str8 A's in 300 level and above classes). But on that project, I learned that deadlines were more important than code quality.
Spin forward 15 years -- at small startup before Xmas. Deadline for demo approaching and I and other team member had parties to go to that evening. He was programming a DSP chip (he was a PhD wizard), and I was handling the drivers on the 286 DOS box. I checked my code backwards and forwards and he swore it couldn't be his stuff. Finally, I displayed output he was sending and it was 'wrong'. Unfortunately, my party had been out of town and I'd already missed the deadline for getting there because it was emphasized to me how important the project was to complete before leaving. When the problem was discovered in his code -- guess what -- he could't stay to fix it (I didn't
know anything about the DSP chip he was using) because, the VP told me, he was married and his wife was gonna leave him if he missed the party (I don't think he was serious, but maybe). I had no such excuse -- only a partner who went to the party alone.
Again -- what do I learn? Personal relationships take presidence over
product and code quality, so far we have code quality below deadlines and below personal relationships (though that has more disappeared in the modern
world).
more later...
-l
As someone said before -- no product liability -- you have to pay money just to report a bug ...
Training of Software Engineers. With point and click interfaces you have people with an average reading ability of a 5th grader writing code. Even hinting that someone wasn't a good writer of code was considered "unprofessional" at some workplaces (i.e. -- you are not a 'team player').
Capitalism -- it's not cost effective to fix bugs until a customer finds them.
Even in code for Secure OS's under Common Criteria CAPP/LSPP, vendors aren't required to fix bugs that are not discovered by the independant evaluator or the customer. So even if the product manager knows of bugs in the OS that is intended for 'high security' government projects, there is no law saying he has to list them or fix them (unless they are found by a 3rd party or the customer). Spending time fixing bugs that are NOT found by the customer is not only not cost-effective, it is considered not working on "assigned priorities" and can be grounds for lower reviews.
This isn't pessimism -- it's reality. Quality doesn't pay when you can sell customers faulty products then charge the customers to fix the faulty product you sold them in the first place -- one might argue that it pays to have more bugs in the code -- you can charge more for service contracts and rack up more incidents that you then charge the customer, per incident, to handle.
Anyone found anything effective against gophers? Here in CA, they eat the root of just about anything -- even posts in the ground if you water the posts!
:-/
I have 4 beagles and a cat -- cat is quite effective against mice/rats, but just leaves the snakes inside for me. So far in 5 years, and maybe 100 holes dug in ground by dogs (we don't need no stinkin' yard), I've only seen 1 gopher -- got by the eldest beagle (didn't actually see beagle get it, but it as fresh killed -- could have been cat that got it, but the dogs spend alot more energy digging. Even though beagles are normally effective hunters, the gophers are about the size of large rats, and I can' think of any dogs small enough to go down a gopher hole.
I wonder about ferrets...illegal to own in California though...too afraid that they'll escape into the wild and breed (even sterilized).
I think the local garden shops buy the gophers from out of state and release batches of them in areas around town every spring just to keep their sales up.
Every year, they seem to get worse...and most seem to have a direct tunnel to my yard. I want to remove some of the gopher baskets from some of the trees -- had a 20 foot peppermint eucalyptus fall over this last winter -- tipped right in the basket -- like none of the roots had gone through the basket at all. I have a feeling that the baskets are having a Bonsai effect on their growth -- and for fruit trees -- none of the citrus are high enough off the ground to keep the fruit from the dogs...not good.
But I almost just KNOW that as soon as I remove a basket (providing I could figure out how to do that with the tree in the ground) the tree will be gone. Had a 10 year old passion vine die in a few weeks when gophers got too hungry and went for it. Insane!
> The halogen torches stay off all summer.
---
They have dimmable florescent torches, now, ya know.
Also, if you want to optimize your lighting -- go for white, semi-gloss or similar paint. White ceilings -> less wattage light needed. Same for walls and furniture, but everything pure white is hard to keep clean and can be pretty boring, but no reason why not to have, maybe, white perlescent ceilings in every room...we went from 'acoustic white' (an off white) to pure white -- made a noticable difference in light levels.
Good idea if you have a wet environment -- but So. Cal isn't known for it's swamplands nor excess water. Water prices are climbing and [pick one: realists/alarmists] claim water crises are not far away. Large underground aquifers like in LA that store water in wet seasons and are tapped in dry seasons, are *shrinking* in size -- because they are being overly tapped in dry seasons as population increases and the porous rock that holds the water is slowly compressing each season. On one hand, you have population increasing, and on the other, you have the ability to store less and less each year. Pundits claim when a long dry spell happens, the doubled effect of decreasing supply and increasing demand will magnify any shortcoming considerably -- such that we might not just be "a little short", but it might be a big shortfall.
I'm amazed at the amount of water that is pumped from No. Cal to So. Cal -- so much so that the energy to run the pumps makes up a sizable percentage of energy consumed -- such that turning off the pumps in the last energy crisis was the difference between the grid falling or not.
We really should be spending more money on researching cheap ways to do water desalination -- in areas like SoCal, with the natural heat for evaporation, it might be feasible, but last I heard, water would cost about 10x the current prices.
I always wondered why someone hasn't come up with a way of changing the roof colors according to the season -- black in winter and white in summer.
I guess a mechanical means like slats would just cost to much to be worth it -- maybe paints that change color based on temp or by running a current through them? -- like the IBM electronic paper -- cover the roof and erase the paper in summer -- make it all white, and all black in winter.
So many of our current designs don't take into account energy consumption because energy has traditionally been so cheap/plentiful, but with some customers having electric bills near the size of their rent, change might come.
While tons of us know of prior art on things like this, I've seen (to my surprise) some patents dating back 10-15 years. Things I think that are obviouos ideas -- well someone else thought of it 15 years ago. I didn't read through every word of the articles, but just because the company is new doesn't mean they didn't buy the patent from someone who filed it ages ago.
The interesting question comes up is how this relatest to SBC's phone number blocking technology, distinctive ring technology and additional password technology (or going through 'voice mail') to reach the recipients voice mail box.
I.e. -- How about a voicemail type maze for emailers -- please return your message with option #1 selected if you want more info on my mental condition,
please select option #2 if you want the P.O. Box to send free money to, please select option #3 to leave a message for my dog or select option #4 to route your message to me.
Now you have an automated email-response exactly like many voice mail systems (well, many voice mail systems are worse). But wasn't there a ruling that simpoly taking a real-world process and using it on the computer wasn't sufficiently unique to qualify for a patent?
We've got to contact our congress critters and let them know that software patents are just plain 99% abused.
Sigh...
-l
Does this mean breast implants will be more affordable now (not to mention implants of various other parts...) ? :-|
-l
Monsanto should have to pay the farmer for damages because their genetically modified cra^hop has contaminated his land. Now he can't grow a normal crop that isn't tainted with their seed and who knows what effect their genetics could have even on other crops. Could their canola pollen cross pollinate with other species? I've seen flowers in my garden a dark rose single layer
petal rose and a light pink multi layer rose cross pollinate over a year through no effort of myself and the next year I had a black multi-petal rose.
I was utterly fascinated how easy it was for them to cross pollinate. Now if a company comes along and has artificially genetically altered crops that contaminate mine -- that have _tresspassed_ on my land, Monsanto should be paying full damages.
If Monsanto wants the crop destroyed, I could live with that, but I also say that they have to pay the farmer full price for what the farmer's land would have produced and give the farmer non-contaminated seeds to restart their crop. I could see Monsanto being liable for potentially years of lost profits if they want to force the farmer to destroy his crop.
I don't like the idea of forced destruction --- but if that's the decision, monsanto should pay full restitution until the farm is back to normal production. They can't have it both ways.
How is it that there is so much injustice in the world?
Yeah...Dell regularly charges about 2-3 times the going rate for
memory. Now they are designing some new machines (see Inspiron 8500)
where only 1 slot is customer accessible, meaning the other slot has to
have factory installed memory in it. Which ties you to them for
at least half your memory. I priced it out on the 8200 and the machine
would have been about 25% cheaper if I bought minimal memory and
added it after market.
I think Dell is on the edge of a cliff -- their service level is
declining, their technology isn't state of the art anymore and their
prices are becoming as high as the other big players.
I think they pulled an SGI with their 8500 -- it may be where they market
will go, but they did it too soon. Businesses will have a rough time
using the 8500 with a docking station and trying to find an external
monitor for it.
Seems like the tech bubble has burst -- what little $$'s are there are
going to security which is becoming more like the life insurance industry
all the time.
So many scammers in the security sector -- and of course, no product
liability or product fault disclosure required....(at least not until it's
been recorded in bugtraq....)
-l
I very much agree with you...in general...but in the issue of IP, there has to be some middle ground. You don't want smart people to be eaten alive by copycatters from wherever -- that was(is) a complaint of many industries over time. They produce something, then some (usually) foreign company finds a way to make the product where people are paid 4$ a day. They come in and undercut the inventor, who
... well it comes out of the first problem -- that owning entities can also be corporations. I think Corporations were given fairly equal status to persons in the early 1900's? Before that it was people who had rights and priviledges, but Corporations, given person-hood....imagine a person who could be in 10,000 places at once and could have a working lifespan of decades and never retires (unless they don't survive -- but even then there is the term "corporate welfare" that is bandied about :-)). But a 10,000 or 100,000 person "corporation" is capable of wielding much more power than any single individual. They can bind together with other corporations and become powerful industries with powerful "lobbying" groups to disproportionately influence politics.
is quickly driven out of business.
You see, copying is easy. Once you know how something works, it isn't hard to find ways to cheapen the production process, or use slightly less quality parts (that the masses won't care about -- only the small group of aficionados (of whatever the product is). The inventor quickly loses nearly all sales and goes to broke. Then he can invent another product, but the act of 'creation' is not something highly valued in our society. Think of most recording artists and how much they get off the end product.
One problem is that entities buy the exclusive rights to a product. Then it's not the inventor that can continue to benefit... What..how much did Bill Gates pay the original author for MS-DOS? And where is Bill Gates today, and where is the original author now?
One solution to that might be that creator's rights can't be sold. They solely belong to the person(s). There are alot of details that would need to be worked out with employers, but if you work from the premise that the *creator* cannot give up their creation -- limited time licensing, perhaps, that would stop some of the abuse.
The second problem
Democracy becomes a 'name-only' affair -- with the bulk of the power going to those who wield the most money to buy the most influence and votes, either directly, or by propaganda campaigns to disinform the masses.
Now the original intent of copyright and patents -- to benefit the creator, has been subsumbed by the larger interests of the corporations. I'm not a constitutional law expert, but I would tend to argue that the patent and copyright offices are exceeding their original charter with the effect that it _hinders_ innovation and such licensing no longer benefits the people, but more lines the pockets of the wealthiest few who can buy the most patents/works from low-paid creators.
The problem is worse in the computer industry where internet time and generations move along at 2-5x the rate of regular time. Computer machines and software processes are often obsolete in 2-5 years time, unlike things like, say, elevators -- for which a longer patent term is appropriate.
So I'd like to suggest considerably shortening any patent/copyright time periods with relevance to computer/internet processes / technologies; suggest that real world copyright be returned to time standards proposed when copyrights/patent awards were proposed -- and no rights to renewal after the creator's death; and that "common sense" can't be patented/copyrighted -- like the previous writer said -- if its already a process in the real world, putting it on a computer doesn't qualify for a patent.
Just my long-winded views....
It wasn't something so mindless as an elevator that can only go one direction...They had a concept of "zones".
:-(
The theory is you divide up the disk into cylinders or groups of cylinders (depending on your cylinder size). When you write files out to disk, the directory and the files for the directory were all aimed at the same zone or a closest adjacent/available zone.
The idea was to use people's logical mapping as a guideline in physical layout on the disk. That way seeking is minimized within some small number of cylinders.
You, maybe, have to hold off on writes to allow them to group to be efficient, or worst case writes involve much seeking if different processes are writing single blocks to different directories with each write, but reads go much faster...
Maybe you would wait around after a read at the same area of the disk while the process that was just 'awakened' by the finishing of the disk I/O finishes it's timeslice. If it doesn't get scheduled next or isn't likely to within "X" time, or if one accumulates other read requests that are more than "Y" time old, then you services the other processes.
Values of "X" and "Y" depend, on disk seek times/latency, timeslice length, process priority, number of disk-blocked processes...etc. They'd have to be dynamically altered based on load.
But that's what...circa 1989 tech? Good thing we've come so much farther than those primitive algorithms.
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
It's amazing how, even now, many "modern" security concepts are being "discovered" that were already known back in the 60-70's.
Maybe it's the tendancy in the industry to discard experienced programmers for cheaper-meat so generational knowledge that can be passed on over a generation (~20-30 years?) is lost as the "generation" time is shorted to 10-15 years. Dunno. Maybe modern programmers don't have time to read books on what's already been done because they know that whatever has been done in the past, they can do better (i.e. Egoism ignorance)?
hmmm
So there you had Californians paying pennies on every dollar the state of California expended for energy
... guess last presidential election proves that isn't true anymore...
Ever check the prices for electricity around the nation?
Before the energy shortage?
California had the highest rates in the nation. Texas, at the time, had one of the lowest rates. Enron gives away cheap energy to texas to support bush, Bush grabs presidency, Enron tries to bail itself out by gouging Californians -- Bush's enemy, Enron goes bankrupt after California government steps in and negotiates contracts that remove carpet from under enron feet.
So californians, paying pennies on the dollar? You're right. During the energy crisis instead of 1-4 cents/kwh rest of nation pays, we were being charged 20-70+c/kwh...so your damn right we paid pennies on Texas's dollar...and your point?
Seems like the budget problems have gone hand in hand with the recession -- or hasn't anyone noticed that? Why doesn't the State do what every other company does in tight times?
*cut back*...
Noooo....government is a one way affair...just keeps growing and growing...takes on a life of its own...supposed to be of the people by the people and for the people.
you mumbled:
> Sure every little bit helps, but it's still kind of a losing battle
===
Well, which is it? Does it help or is the battle lost? Should we just toss our passwords and encryption and throw away all car and house locks? Fighting a moving target isn't the same as a fighting a losing battle.
On the other hand, anyone that expects a "silver bullet" will find that it works for a while. Then the "foe" adapts. They adapt. You can either believe resistance is futile, or you can believe that resistance is not futile.
What you believe will ultimately define your reality and if you get suckered into believing what losers believe, you'll be a loser yourself. If you are fortunate enough to have positive minded friends that don't make excuses, you'll find yourself more successful.
Ultimately, you'll get what you believe you'll get. People who believe the worst are more likely to make it come true (since failure and tearing things (or people) down is easier than success and building things up).
You can say locks no front doors are 'no silver bullet' since the windows are so easily broken, and locks are expensive and a pain, and we like not having to carry keys...and I'm so forgetful I don't know how to find my keys all the time anyway...so locks on front doors are bad! Seems like same logic goes along with non-executable stacks.
Sorta like the power of a snowflake...but you put enough of them together and a avalanche has alot of power.
-l
The idea of a "piece of software" sending a response to the supposed 'sender' and requiring a unique response before actuallying allowing the sender's message to go through. Hello. How long has majordomo been around? More patently absurd patents...
So along comes someone with the complete DNA map to your body. Guess what? Now all your medical insurance is voided -- why? You've got the bloody source, now go support yourself!
:-)
Pay-back's a bitch, huh?
They said I could call and ask for credit every time it happened -- just like I can call and ask for 1 minute of credit everytime a call is dropped -- usually only takes 15-20 minutes on hold to get your 20 cent credit....great company, Verizon! Unfortunately they are the best of a bad lot in coverage in my home area. Yeah, I cancelled my text messaging. To fix the drop call problem, I haven't taken the step of cancelling my service...yet.
Even 4 years ago, their 7500 Inspirons had a clunk of metal with heat pipes going off it and to the back of the laptop where they were joined to paper thin fins with the variable speed fans behind them. I always thought they were filled with an evaporative coolant to pump heat back much like any standard heat pump. I think I was told later that the tubes were solid. But that someone would get a patent on this idea? Sounds too obvious. I'm surprised no one has come up with peltzier coolers for laptops...maybe they draw too much power though. If only we could turn the heat back into electrical...yeah, maybe a little gas turbine sitting on top of the CPU running a generator that feeds back into the battery. :-)
-lpq