Two packages sent on the same day, and under normal conditions expected to arrive on the same day
One would expect this...but I already know reality doesn't hold...because, how do you explain: Two netflix DVDs mailed on the same day. To netflix center located in same city where usps processes mail for the area.
One DVD is received by Netflix in 2 days. The other DVD is delayed one week.... happens consistently enough that I make sure to only return one DVD at time, even though I may have wanted all them on the weekend....
Though earlier this year the post office started leaving my packages at xx10 unit Bx, instead of xx30 unit Ax. But, supervisor swore that they know where I live and had been delivering packages to me at the address correctly for over 6 years, so the reason my packages were getting lost that they were leaving them at the wrong address was impossible. Except that I did find one of three 'lost' packages (that I know about, most kickstarter projects don't send out tracking numbers, when they ship...so its possible some of projects that I still haven't received anything from have succumbed to USPS) sitting outside of the vacant unit...
"just buy 3-4 cheap VCRs and set the time to record your shows. That would get you 18-20 hours of record time."
This is what my setup has been for several years now....4 VCRs....4x8 event slots (well, recently down to 31, because one only does 7). Give's me 32 hours of recording....and I do more because I often change 2-3 tapes during the week.
And, I can record 4 different shows at the same time. Which happens more often than it should.
4 VCRs is largely because I only have 4 A/V inputs to hook the VCRs to. The cable is split to just the VCRs, I use RCA cables and switch to feed my TV/Monitor (TV can only do 35 channels anyways).
I am considering getting a PVR to replace one or two of the VCRs though....but I'm still waiting for digital cable to come to where I live. (Time Warner is slated to take over on Feb. 1st....currently on Adelphia, which went backrupt during the rebuild of our area...all they had left to do was run fiber to the node).
Now if it was cheap enough....4 PVRs? Hmmm, the only reason I get the Sunday newspaper is the TV listings....would I still need one?
1) It would use more electricity
Does a single PVR really use a noticeable less amount of electricity than a single VCR? The voltage drop in my living room when I have everything on is quite significant....that I have gone to power line conditioners on everything, and a UPS on the VCRs (I hate losing all my programming after a short power outage, especially since thats 4 VCRs to reprogram).
Plus last summer I was having problems with the power dropping out for less than a second regularly....no interruption on my cable TV, but depending on the VCR, it resulted in a lost minute or stopped the recording.
2) You need to split the signal->degradation
I got a high quality signal splitter/amp....it actually costs more than what recent VCRs sell for.
There is still some loss, but only noticeable on the weaker stations....which on Adelphia includes Fox. The other is auto-time set doesn't work off of PBS on some VCRs. But, I finally had it with it, because I missed the final episode of Firefly because my VCR had auto set itself to the wrong time early Friday morning. It had been right for a month until this one day.
Of course, I suppose the mistake is trying to rely on something from a PBS network.
I see that some doctor in Ohio is arguing against the Segway on sidewalks.
I don't know why he's doing that...there are no sidewalks in Central Ohio....and even if there are, there is no requirement for them to be cleared when it snows.
I largely rely on my own two feet to get me around in Central Ohio (I haven't driven since I totaled my car 4.5 years ago). So, I know first hand about the lack of sidewalks and that they are useless during the winter. I have often wondered if a scooter would make my life easier...which is why I've been following the Segway HT story. But, around here, it would have to be approved for operation on the street (but hopefully in the same class as an bicycle -- or electrically assisted bicycle....)
Boy that list brought back memories....especially since there was an inaccurracy.
The list only shows the period when I was connected to Fidonet.
Lunatic Haven BBS started in 1987....it was an Empire online game system...later it became a Citadel system and eventually joined CitadelNet (had to get a modem that observed DTR).
Then in 1990 after I graduated, I moved to Medicine Hat to work for a defence contractor....I continued the BBS there....first I became a UUCP node and introduced the locals to Email and Newsgroups. At the peak of that I was spending $1500 a month on long distance alone. I lived in a rundown apartment where most of my neighbors were on welfare, etc....me I was too busy spending my paycheck on my BBS obsession to afford essentails like housing. Around 1992, I twinned the system to support the Praxis Society...and bought a house to accomodate my growing BBS. At one point I had 6 phone lines running into the house...among other things.
I had powercords snaking around from other parts of the house to supply power to my computer setup.
Also around 1992, I joined Fidonet/K12Net, and then a bunch of Othernets. I also found a cheaper feed for UUCP (when I started I was calling San Jose, CA....eventually UUNET.CA came online, and I called their POP in Edmonton....Calgary was closer, but Edmonton was more reliable...I'd call Toronto as fallback...of course this was still before the deregulation of the phone company...so long distance in Canada was the same whether it was in the same province or between provinces.)
Finally, I was laid off in 1997...and the system didn't survive the move back to Calgary....actually, I think turning off the harddrives is what killed it. Plus I was losing poeple with the competition of local ISPs. Since the bulk of my content could be accessed over the Internet and it was faster and better than what I could offer. Plus most of the locals were more interested in online games than participating in discussion boards.
My system was not without its controversial periods....in early 1990 when I was still in Calgary...infact an Eingeering student at the University of Calgary. I voluntarily pulled the plug on my system to scrub the message base and users, and temporarily imposed a policy of getting real names with the aliases. An unidentified user was arranging deals in illegal firearms...and using the University campus for the meets. The police were very sensitive (as was I) to this since it had only been a couple months since the Montreal Massacre.
Boy the memories.....to think I used to run a networked BBS only a 512K Amiga 1000 with two floppy drives. One floppy drive had Kickstart/Workbench and the core of the BBS...the other floppy drive was the message area. Depending on the quality of the floppy disk I was using, I was replacing the message area floppy every 2-3 weeks.
Check out a picture I took of my system in 1996.... http://www.lhaven.net/
Actually a Pentium/Linux box will out perform a Sun.
For my employer, I've been working on porting to Linux and we made some interesting discoveries in performance of Intel boxes compared to Sun.
My Pentium-II 300MHz Linux box does database create/updates faster than our Sun E250 (dual 300MHz) system. So, our P-III 600MHz box really flies.
Even tried Solaris/x86 on the P-II 300MHz box, and it was significantly slower than Linux. A test of write 2MB of data into a database file....12 seconds under Linux (300), 200 seconds on the E250 and about the same running Solaris/x86.
FWIW, comparing our Linux product with NT on the same dual P-III 667MHz system...the Linux version slightly edged out the NT...though our Linux version isn't shipping yet, so customers who are cost/performance sensitive are going for the NT version.
Only downside is that there has been little interest in the Linux version of our software. Of all the versions we have, Solaris is still the biggest seller.
And, its a good thing I installed it on my work machine instead of my home machine. I don't want to bother messing up my home system with it now.
First things:
It doesn't get along with Neoplanet...which I like having around because it starts quicker from the tray, and for those IE only websites. Otherwise, I use Netscape...especially for reading newsgroups.
Trying to launch the executable (as at the end of the setup, from the shortcut, or directly from the install directory) causes it to trigger Neoplanet). Netscape is the default browser on my machine.
Next the activiation crashed the first time, and later I couldn't use the buddy list. It offered me the same ID as my Netcenter ID....but I don't know what password it set, its not the same as my Netcenter ID. But, I deduced that its the same as AIM/CSIM, so I used my old CSIM id.
I tried installing a theme, this resulted in dialogs without okay/cancel buttons and missing navigation buttons. Fortunately the default action was 'accept' for switching back to the default theme....
Got a bunch of "unknown alert" messages while browsing through the preferences. And, the bottoms of some of the preference screens are chopped.
And, the newsgroups support is horrible. Looks like they changed the keys for navigating messages like then did between 3.x and 4.x Other glitz means you see less of the actually messages now. And, its slower....
Good thing it didn't replace 4.x....I've gone back to using 4.76. I wonder if I would ever want to upgrade to 6.x
I hope Netscape/AOL gets it together though....I work for a commercial (web-based) software company and we used to say "well it works with Netscape", when people had trouble using IE. Now, in some cases, its the otherway around....
I was a Multics user many moons ago as well. I pretty much grew up on the system before I discovered Unix. Actually I had met Unix before Multics, but as far as OSs go...it was my first love 8-)
The billing system sure could be a pain sometimes, I remember taking a class where we would only get $15 a week in CPU time. And, in one class we learned about MACSYMA, so I just had to see what PI to million places looked like. The job ran for a week in the background...got killed when it exceeded the absolute CPU limit, but not before it burned through $150+ of CPU time I didn't have. The prof couldn't understand why I couldn't log in even after advancing me all the credit for the course.
Later I had a textprocessing account where CPU time was unlimited, but we were charged based on output....different rates for different queues (printers/media, etc). Well, along the way, I was playing around with postscript and queued a job that crashed....got no output....but also consumed a large negative amount of cash. Suddenly meant I had unlimited printing funds 8-) That was nice being able to print huge manuals and/or sourcecode listings of software from the net for nothing.
I'll credit this event as having a significant influence on my programming background. Suddenly being able to print listings of large programs, gave me plenty of reading material to learn from....even when I didn't have access to a terminal, plus when I did have terminal access I spent most of my time reading forums or Usenet.
If I had known that Halifax was still running a Multics system, maybe I would've put in for a transfer to Halifax rather then getting downsized in Medicine Hat (ended up moving east anyways 8-) They had a Honeywell at DRES, but it wasn't Multics....that machine would die all the time, at least it did until they took it off of maintenance and waited for it to die before taking it out of service. Then it ran practically forever....
Of course, I probably would've never have gotten access to the Multics box in Halifax.
Hmmm, forums and chatting on Multics....I had forgotten how nice that was. Kind of interesting being that I work for a collaboration software company now.
>> I don't have to play ping pong with that indian guy from our european office that keeps kicking my ass!
> I find it ignorant of you to imply that Indian people are naturally better ping-pong players. I once worked at a company with a ping-pong table,
> and it was obvious that Chinese people are the true ping-pong geniuses.
Well, I'm not so good at ping-pong....and if I telecommuted, I wouldn't be stuck at the office getting angry that nobody ever lets me play ping pong or foosball.
Slashdot Mirror
Two packages sent on the same day, and under normal conditions expected to arrive on the same day
One would expect this...but I already know reality doesn't hold...because, how do you explain: Two netflix DVDs mailed on the same day. To netflix center located in same city where usps processes mail for the area.
One DVD is received by Netflix in 2 days. The other DVD is delayed one week.... happens consistently enough that I make sure to only return one DVD at time, even though I may have wanted all them on the weekend....
Though earlier this year the post office started leaving my packages at xx10 unit Bx, instead of xx30 unit Ax. But, supervisor swore that they know where I live and had been delivering packages to me at the address correctly for over 6 years, so the reason my packages were getting lost that they were leaving them at the wrong address was impossible. Except that I did find one of three 'lost' packages (that I know about, most kickstarter projects don't send out tracking numbers, when they ship...so its possible some of projects that I still haven't received anything from have succumbed to USPS) sitting outside of the vacant unit...
Actually it looks like the cost of a floppy drive is the same as the Sun Java Desktop software.
Because over here is basically the same machine with No OS and a Floppy Drive.
--
You may be a dreamer, but I'm The Dreamer, the definite article you might say!
"just buy 3-4 cheap VCRs and set the time to record your shows. That would get you 18-20 hours of record time."
This is what my setup has been for several years now....4 VCRs....4x8 event slots (well, recently down to 31, because one only does 7). Give's me 32 hours of recording....and I do more because I often change 2-3 tapes during the week.
And, I can record 4 different shows at the same time. Which happens more often than it should.
4 VCRs is largely because I only have 4 A/V inputs to hook the VCRs to. The cable is split to just the VCRs, I use RCA cables and switch to feed my TV/Monitor (TV can only do 35 channels anyways).
I am considering getting a PVR to replace one or two of the VCRs though....but I'm still waiting for digital cable to come to where I live. (Time Warner is slated to take over on Feb. 1st....currently on Adelphia, which went backrupt during the rebuild of our area...all they had left to do was run fiber to the node).
Now if it was cheap enough....4 PVRs? Hmmm, the only reason I get the Sunday newspaper is the TV listings....would I still need one?
1) It would use more electricity
Does a single PVR really use a noticeable less amount of electricity than a single VCR? The voltage drop in my living room when I have everything on is quite significant....that I have gone to power line conditioners on everything, and a UPS on the VCRs (I hate losing all my programming after a short power outage, especially since thats 4 VCRs to reprogram).
Plus last summer I was having problems with the power dropping out for less than a second regularly....no interruption on my cable TV, but depending on the VCR, it resulted in a lost minute or stopped the recording.
2) You need to split the signal->degradation
I got a high quality signal splitter/amp....it actually costs more than what recent VCRs sell for.
There is still some loss, but only noticeable on the weaker stations....which on Adelphia includes Fox. The other is auto-time set doesn't work off of PBS on some VCRs. But, I finally had it with it, because I missed the final episode of Firefly because my VCR had auto set itself to the wrong time early Friday morning. It had been right for a month until this one day.
Of course, I suppose the mistake is trying to rely on something from a PBS network.
The Dreamer.
I see that some doctor in Ohio is arguing against the Segway on sidewalks.
I don't know why he's doing that...there are no sidewalks in Central Ohio....and even if there are, there is no requirement for them to be cleared when it snows.
I largely rely on my own two feet to get me around in Central Ohio (I haven't driven since I totaled my car 4.5 years ago). So, I know first hand about the lack of sidewalks and that they are useless during the winter. I have often wondered if a scooter would make my life easier...which is why I've been following the Segway HT story. But, around here, it would have to be approved for operation on the street (but hopefully in the same class as an bicycle -- or electrically assisted bicycle....)
The Dreamer
Well, here's another keyboard that has it wrong.
The '6' is on the wrong side. Don't keyboard makers know how to type?
Boy that list brought back memories....especially since there was an inaccurracy.
The list only shows the period when I was connected to Fidonet.
Lunatic Haven BBS started in 1987....it was an Empire online game system...later it became a Citadel system and eventually joined CitadelNet (had to get a modem that observed DTR).
Then in 1990 after I graduated, I moved to Medicine Hat to work for a defence contractor....I continued the BBS there....first I became a UUCP node and introduced the locals to Email and Newsgroups. At the peak of that I was spending $1500 a month on long distance alone. I lived in a rundown apartment where most of my neighbors were on welfare, etc....me I was too busy spending my paycheck on my BBS obsession to afford essentails like housing. Around 1992, I twinned the system to support the Praxis Society...and bought a house to accomodate my growing BBS. At one point I had 6 phone lines running into the house...among other things.
I had powercords snaking around from other parts of the house to supply power to my computer setup.
Also around 1992, I joined Fidonet/K12Net, and then a bunch of Othernets. I also found a cheaper feed for UUCP (when I started I was calling San Jose, CA....eventually UUNET.CA came online, and I called their POP in Edmonton....Calgary was closer, but Edmonton was more reliable...I'd call Toronto as fallback...of course this was still before the deregulation of the phone company...so long distance in Canada was the same whether it was in the same province or between provinces.)
Finally, I was laid off in 1997...and the system didn't survive the move back to Calgary....actually, I think turning off the harddrives is what killed it. Plus I was losing poeple with the competition of local ISPs. Since the bulk of my content could be accessed over the Internet and it was faster and better than what I could offer. Plus most of the locals were more interested in online games than participating in discussion boards.
My system was not without its controversial periods....in early 1990 when I was still in Calgary...infact an Eingeering student at the University of Calgary. I voluntarily pulled the plug on my system to scrub the message base and users, and temporarily imposed a policy of getting real names with the aliases. An unidentified user was arranging deals in illegal firearms...and using the University campus for the meets. The police were very sensitive (as was I) to this since it had only been a couple months since the Montreal Massacre.
Boy the memories.....to think I used to run a networked BBS only a 512K Amiga 1000 with two floppy drives. One floppy drive had Kickstart/Workbench and the core of the BBS...the other floppy drive was the message area. Depending on the quality of the floppy disk I was using, I was replacing the message area floppy every 2-3 weeks.
Check out a picture I took of my system in 1996.... http://www.lhaven.net/
Actually a Pentium/Linux box will out perform a Sun.
For my employer, I've been working on porting to Linux and we made some interesting discoveries in performance of Intel boxes compared to Sun.
My Pentium-II 300MHz Linux box does database create/updates faster than our Sun E250 (dual 300MHz) system. So, our P-III 600MHz box really flies.
Even tried Solaris/x86 on the P-II 300MHz box, and it was significantly slower than Linux. A test of write 2MB of data into a database file....12 seconds under Linux (300), 200 seconds on the E250 and about the same running Solaris/x86.
FWIW, comparing our Linux product with NT on the same dual P-III 667MHz system...the Linux version slightly edged out the NT...though our Linux version isn't shipping yet, so customers who are cost/performance sensitive are going for the NT version.
Only downside is that there has been little interest in the Linux version of our software. Of all the versions we have, Solaris is still the biggest seller.
And, its a good thing I installed it on my work machine instead of my home machine. I don't want to bother messing up my home system with it now.
First things:
It doesn't get along with Neoplanet...which I like having around because it starts quicker from the tray, and for those IE only websites. Otherwise, I use Netscape...especially for reading newsgroups.
Trying to launch the executable (as at the end of the setup, from the shortcut, or directly from the install directory) causes it to trigger Neoplanet). Netscape is the default browser on my machine.
Next the activiation crashed the first time, and later I couldn't use the buddy list. It offered me the same ID as my Netcenter ID....but I don't know what password it set, its not the same as my Netcenter ID. But, I deduced that its the same as AIM/CSIM, so I used my old CSIM id.
I tried installing a theme, this resulted in dialogs without okay/cancel buttons and missing navigation buttons. Fortunately the default action was 'accept' for switching back to the default theme....
Got a bunch of "unknown alert" messages while browsing through the preferences. And, the bottoms of some of the preference screens are chopped.
And, the newsgroups support is horrible. Looks like they changed the keys for navigating messages like then did between 3.x and 4.x Other glitz means you see less of the actually messages now. And, its slower....
Good thing it didn't replace 4.x....I've gone back to using 4.76. I wonder if I would ever want to upgrade to 6.x
I hope Netscape/AOL gets it together though....I work for a commercial (web-based) software company and we used to say "well it works with Netscape", when people had trouble using IE. Now, in some cases, its the otherway around....
I was a Multics user many moons ago as well. I pretty much grew up on the system before I discovered Unix. Actually I had met Unix before Multics, but as far as OSs go...it was my first love 8-)
The billing system sure could be a pain sometimes, I remember taking a class where we would only get $15 a week in CPU time. And, in one class we learned about MACSYMA, so I just had to see what PI to million places looked like. The job ran for a week in the background...got killed when it exceeded the absolute CPU limit, but not before it burned through $150+ of CPU time I didn't have. The prof couldn't understand why I couldn't log in even after advancing me all the credit for the course.
Later I had a textprocessing account where CPU time was unlimited, but we were charged based on output....different rates for different queues (printers/media, etc). Well, along the way, I was playing around with postscript and queued a job that crashed....got no output....but also consumed a large negative amount of cash. Suddenly meant I had unlimited printing funds 8-) That was nice being able to print huge manuals and/or sourcecode listings of software from the net for nothing.
I'll credit this event as having a significant influence on my programming background. Suddenly being able to print listings of large programs, gave me plenty of reading material to learn from....even when I didn't have access to a terminal, plus when I did have terminal access I spent most of my time reading forums or Usenet.
If I had known that Halifax was still running a Multics system, maybe I would've put in for a transfer to Halifax rather then getting downsized in Medicine Hat (ended up moving east anyways 8-) They had a Honeywell at DRES, but it wasn't Multics....that machine would die all the time, at least it did until they took it off of maintenance and waited for it to die before taking it out of service. Then it ran practically forever....
Of course, I probably would've never have gotten access to the Multics box in Halifax.
Hmmm, forums and chatting on Multics....I had forgotten how nice that was. Kind of interesting being that I work for a collaboration software company now.
>> I don't have to play ping pong with that indian guy from our european office that keeps kicking my ass!
> I find it ignorant of you to imply that Indian people are naturally better ping-pong players. I once worked at a company with a ping-pong table,
> and it was obvious that Chinese people are the true ping-pong geniuses.
Well, I'm not so good at ping-pong....and if I telecommuted, I wouldn't be stuck at the office getting angry that nobody ever lets me play ping pong or foosball.