When the time it takes to type in the login and password is a significant portion of the total bootup time, we will finally have made some progress.
Personally, I can't imagine any reasonable person would think that "boot up time" is something less than the time it takes from dead stop to when I can start work. Else, we start to play games like "wait to start all these system processes until after he's logged in" and my recent personal favorite, "let's go through the entire boot up process and build a suspend image while he's waiting for his laptop to shut down after the meeting".
Mind you, our Mac G4 is about 1/3 the clock speed of my Winders box, and the Mac is always up and usable first in a horse race from cold start. It's not a hardware issue, it's a software issue. It can't be solved by changing the definitions of "boot" and "up".
Well, like most things, it depends. When the filmmaker is also doing the presentation, the format (s)he chooses is the most practical under the circumstances, not necessarily the most popular.
If you don't know any amateur filmmakers, for instance, you're less likely to find examples.
Mind you, I'd include ripping disks to display HD content on other devices.... buuuuut I don't see how that's practical. "HD content" and "other devices" is a silly combination in most cases. You won't notice on a PSP or netbook whether the content is HD or not.
Speaking as a Palm user, I've been extremely frustrated with Palm's products these last five years. I was determined to hang onto my 650 until something better came along. I tried a 750, returned it. When my 650 finally quit, I acquired a used 680 and grimly hung on waiting for something... anything...
This new phone solves every issue I had with Palm -- decent camera, Bluetooth 2.0, WiFi, and an updated OS that's not Windows Mobile. It looks like finally someone at Palm realized what their core strengths used to be and has attempted to revive same.
For me it's too late. The 680 gave up the ghost last week and I have a Blackberry Bold on order. But I wish Palm the best of luck and hope they survive as a company.
> The problem is the layman has no idea where their credits are coming from.
Exactly. How possibly could they? We're talking people with real lives, not (and I sincerely mean this in the most positive sense) eco-geeks. When you ask even intelligent, well-educated people to make decisions out of their area of expertise, you often get pandemonium. And that's what we're getting here.
> You're right in the sense that you're not purely neutral, and you're right in the sense that it may never be truly neutral, but a swimming pool is disconnected from the ocean, whereas all the air is connected.
Well, not really. For instance, Ozone up really high, good. Ozone down really low, not good.
Ok, I admit it, I didn't sleep well last night and my internet connection is down this morning (sitting here waiting for the repairman) and I'm typing this on an agonizingly slow cell card. So my comment is probably more crabby than usual. To wit:
It occurs to me that the QA department noticed the bug the moment it happened, and very quickly provided a detailed analysis of the bug, as is customary with Microsoft products. Think about it. Consumers responded within hours (sometimes minutes) of the bug surfacing, technical blogs had detailed reports the same day, a conscientious developer leaked the code, and independent analysts had detailed technical analysis of the bug within days including suggested fixes. Microsoft's next step is to present a press release on the unpaid work of others. The system works as designed. Microsoft very cleverly gets the benefits of open source without, you know, that nasty open part.
That might be true in isolated cases. More likely, customers will acquire superior anonymity on their own. Keep in mind that during all this time the RIAA has won one (1) case (which I believe is under appeal) and meanwhile a million geeks at a million terminals have had all that time to code and test the means to make detection and prevention more difficult. In technical issues, geeks tend to win over suits in the long run, and it seems to me that the suits are lagging far behind this time.
Firstly, family commitment trumps personal contentment, so no matter how much you dislike your current position, you have an obligation to hang onto it until you have a clear cut opportunity.
I've had poor experiences contracting for an agency. They charged 300% of my rate, which would be ok (I guess) if they provide commiserate value. But at that time I was finding my own work (the agency didn't know how to sell my services) and the only benefit I was getting from the agency was withholding and insurance. (Contract to hire is different -- I don't mind being represented by an agency during the contract portion.)
Finally I got fed up and created an LLC (it's cheap to do in my state) and handled all the paperwork myself, since I was doing most of it anyway. I could split the difference between my former rate and the rate the agency was charging, and still significantly undercut the competition.
If you go this route, you have to be willing to aggressively go after new contracts -- you can't usually wait for work to come to you. But it's a good step towards owning your own small company, if that's the direction you want to go.
> Have you ever tried reading the label? Most CFL are not rated for enclosed fixture, this has been the case for a very long time for most models.
That's not the issue. All fixtures in the house are open except the one in the stairwell (17 years and counting) and the outside lights 5 years and counting). Not only have I not noticed any shortening of lifespan in an enclosed fixture (actually the opposite), none of the fixtures where I'm seeing a shortened lifespan (including the bathroom) are enclosed.
I agree completely. Similarly (although I can't back this up) I strongly suspect it's the electronic ballast or some other cheaply-made component in the base of the CFL that's failing, not the actual tube.
The first units (in both cases) probably did approach expectation, but now that they're mass produced, shortcuts are made. And so we get extended-life, money-saving products that are neither. Disappointing.
Have you done it recently? The CFLs I bought in the nineties are still working. The ones I bought last year aren't measurably any longer lasting than the few incandescents I still use. I suspect that now everyone has jumped on the bandwagon, there are a lot of crappy cut-rate CFLs being made. And I'm pretty sure that this isn't being taken into account in figuring overall real-world environmental impact.
Contributing to this, as Fred and Ethyl Mertz buy eight-packs of CFLs at Costco, they're certainly using them in situations where they don't work well -- like areas where the lights go on and off frequently. (I made this mistake initially -- couldn't figure out why CFLs were lasting months rather than years in the bathroom.) Which, as you point out, really is doing it wrong. CFLs work well in narrowly-defined environments -- they're not a replacement for every bulb in the house. The general public doesn't appear to realize this, and the retailers are in no hurry to correct their misunderstanding.
I really want to switch to LEDs. I've become disillusioned with CFLs in recent years. The very first two CFLs we ever purchased, in the mid-nineties, -- my wife's reading lamp and the hard-to-reach light in the stairwell -- are still working. But in recent years (since maybe 2002) I've had a remarkable number of failures, often in the first month of use, and I rarely see more than a couple years of service. Oddly enough, I get longer service from the outside lights, which should be the harshest environment. The indoor CFL overhead lights (except for that stairwell light) last about a year. The worst service is from the CFL globe lights over the mirrors in the two bathrooms. I lose about one a month, and recently I've started replacing them with incandescents as they burn out.
I think part of this is due to putting CFLs in environments where they do not thrive -- anywhere you have heavy on/off duty cycles like a bathroom or occasionally used overhead. But I wonder also if CFLs in general haven't become (at least in part) victim to "value engineering", IE, making them as cheap as possible.
But anyway, what worries me about LEDs is that although they *should* give longer life, (50K hours vs 15K for CFL and 1K for incandescents) they apparently don't, judging by the LED array stoplights that have been put in all around the city. It's difficult to find one that doesn't have large parts of the array completely out or blinking madly. Around Christmas I noticed that some of them had been replaced with conventional bulbs. Looking at the technology, LEDs should do better, but it's all about implementation.
I remember when Oregon put in the seatbelt law, and they swore, I say, I say, they SWORE that it would only be invoked in the context of another infraction. IE, they would stop you for an illegal turn or somesuch, and then write you an additional ticket if you weren't wearing a seatbelt. That lasted about 10 minutes.
Given Oregon's past record, I'd expect tracking of location and speed within months, regardless of what they're saying now.
The thing is, technical problems tend to breed technical solutions, and GPS is a well known quantity amongst the geek community. It'll be interesting what happens if this gets implemented. The first thing I'd expect is a hard hack like the recently reported duplicate license plate gimmick.
Slashdot Mirror
Or, at least, use a stronger box.
I'm trying to think of a religion that teaches respawning.
When the time it takes to type in the login and password is a significant portion of the total bootup time, we will finally have made some progress.
Personally, I can't imagine any reasonable person would think that "boot up time" is something less than the time it takes from dead stop to when I can start work. Else, we start to play games like "wait to start all these system processes until after he's logged in" and my recent personal favorite, "let's go through the entire boot up process and build a suspend image while he's waiting for his laptop to shut down after the meeting".
Mind you, our Mac G4 is about 1/3 the clock speed of my Winders box, and the Mac is always up and usable first in a horse race from cold start. It's not a hardware issue, it's a software issue. It can't be solved by changing the definitions of "boot" and "up".
Well, like most things, it depends. When the filmmaker is also doing the presentation, the format (s)he chooses is the most practical under the circumstances, not necessarily the most popular.
Of course, that depends on where you look.
If you don't know any amateur filmmakers, for instance, you're less likely to find examples.
Mind you, I'd include ripping disks to display HD content on other devices.... buuuuut I don't see how that's practical. "HD content" and "other devices" is a silly combination in most cases. You won't notice on a PSP or netbook whether the content is HD or not.
That makes me want to have a game console at home.
If you could break into that process, you could rule the world.
Speaking as a Palm user, I've been extremely frustrated with Palm's products these last five years. I was determined to hang onto my 650 until something better came along. I tried a 750, returned it. When my 650 finally quit, I acquired a used 680 and grimly hung on waiting for something... anything...
This new phone solves every issue I had with Palm -- decent camera, Bluetooth 2.0, WiFi, and an updated OS that's not Windows Mobile. It looks like finally someone at Palm realized what their core strengths used to be and has attempted to revive same.
For me it's too late. The 680 gave up the ghost last week and I have a Blackberry Bold on order. But I wish Palm the best of luck and hope they survive as a company.
Really? Then what do the trees breathe?
> The problem is the layman has no idea where their credits are coming from.
Exactly. How possibly could they? We're talking people with real lives, not (and I sincerely mean this in the most positive sense) eco-geeks. When you ask even intelligent, well-educated people to make decisions out of their area of expertise, you often get pandemonium. And that's what we're getting here.
And that's assuming your carbon offset money is actually going towards real carbon offsets.
> You're right in the sense that you're not purely neutral, and you're right in the sense that it may never be truly neutral, but a swimming pool is disconnected from the ocean, whereas all the air is connected.
Well, not really. For instance, Ozone up really high, good. Ozone down really low, not good.
Gold? Just out in the open?
Where was this again?
> Besides, if you get caught you can always just start encrypting your traffic or such.
What? You aren't encrypting your traffic already?
Ok, I admit it, I didn't sleep well last night and my internet connection is down this morning (sitting here waiting for the repairman) and I'm typing this on an agonizingly slow cell card. So my comment is probably more crabby than usual. To wit:
It occurs to me that the QA department noticed the bug the moment it happened, and very quickly provided a detailed analysis of the bug, as is customary with Microsoft products. Think about it. Consumers responded within hours (sometimes minutes) of the bug surfacing, technical blogs had detailed reports the same day, a conscientious developer leaked the code, and independent analysts had detailed technical analysis of the bug within days including suggested fixes. Microsoft's next step is to present a press release on the unpaid work of others. The system works as designed. Microsoft very cleverly gets the benefits of open source without, you know, that nasty open part.
That might be true in isolated cases. More likely, customers will acquire superior anonymity on their own. Keep in mind that during all this time the RIAA has won one (1) case (which I believe is under appeal) and meanwhile a million geeks at a million terminals have had all that time to code and test the means to make detection and prevention more difficult. In technical issues, geeks tend to win over suits in the long run, and it seems to me that the suits are lagging far behind this time.
Firstly, family commitment trumps personal contentment, so no matter how much you dislike your current position, you have an obligation to hang onto it until you have a clear cut opportunity.
I've had poor experiences contracting for an agency. They charged 300% of my rate, which would be ok (I guess) if they provide commiserate value. But at that time I was finding my own work (the agency didn't know how to sell my services) and the only benefit I was getting from the agency was withholding and insurance. (Contract to hire is different -- I don't mind being represented by an agency during the contract portion.)
Finally I got fed up and created an LLC (it's cheap to do in my state) and handled all the paperwork myself, since I was doing most of it anyway. I could split the difference between my former rate and the rate the agency was charging, and still significantly undercut the competition.
If you go this route, you have to be willing to aggressively go after new contracts -- you can't usually wait for work to come to you. But it's a good step towards owning your own small company, if that's the direction you want to go.
See Old Faithful while you can...
> Have you ever tried reading the label? Most CFL are not rated for enclosed fixture, this has been the case for a very long time for most models.
That's not the issue. All fixtures in the house are open except the one in the stairwell (17 years and counting) and the outside lights 5 years and counting). Not only have I not noticed any shortening of lifespan in an enclosed fixture (actually the opposite), none of the fixtures where I'm seeing a shortened lifespan (including the bathroom) are enclosed.
> But this is what happens people, you want more and more technology in your pocket? In your car? in your phone?
Definitely not my car. Nothing makes my hair stand up like the "powered by Microsoft" sticker on the dashboard.
> It seems the only thing M$ doesn't do to hit you up for more cash is rent Windows by the hour.
Wow, funny you should mention that.
I agree completely. Similarly (although I can't back this up) I strongly suspect it's the electronic ballast or some other cheaply-made component in the base of the CFL that's failing, not the actual tube.
The first units (in both cases) probably did approach expectation, but now that they're mass produced, shortcuts are made. And so we get extended-life, money-saving products that are neither. Disappointing.
Have you done it recently? The CFLs I bought in the nineties are still working. The ones I bought last year aren't measurably any longer lasting than the few incandescents I still use. I suspect that now everyone has jumped on the bandwagon, there are a lot of crappy cut-rate CFLs being made. And I'm pretty sure that this isn't being taken into account in figuring overall real-world environmental impact.
Contributing to this, as Fred and Ethyl Mertz buy eight-packs of CFLs at Costco, they're certainly using them in situations where they don't work well -- like areas where the lights go on and off frequently. (I made this mistake initially -- couldn't figure out why CFLs were lasting months rather than years in the bathroom.) Which, as you point out, really is doing it wrong. CFLs work well in narrowly-defined environments -- they're not a replacement for every bulb in the house. The general public doesn't appear to realize this, and the retailers are in no hurry to correct their misunderstanding.
I really want to switch to LEDs. I've become disillusioned with CFLs in recent years. The very first two CFLs we ever purchased, in the mid-nineties, -- my wife's reading lamp and the hard-to-reach light in the stairwell -- are still working. But in recent years (since maybe 2002) I've had a remarkable number of failures, often in the first month of use, and I rarely see more than a couple years of service. Oddly enough, I get longer service from the outside lights, which should be the harshest environment. The indoor CFL overhead lights (except for that stairwell light) last about a year. The worst service is from the CFL globe lights over the mirrors in the two bathrooms. I lose about one a month, and recently I've started replacing them with incandescents as they burn out.
I think part of this is due to putting CFLs in environments where they do not thrive -- anywhere you have heavy on/off duty cycles like a bathroom or occasionally used overhead. But I wonder also if CFLs in general haven't become (at least in part) victim to "value engineering", IE, making them as cheap as possible.
But anyway, what worries me about LEDs is that although they *should* give longer life, (50K hours vs 15K for CFL and 1K for incandescents) they apparently don't, judging by the LED array stoplights that have been put in all around the city. It's difficult to find one that doesn't have large parts of the array completely out or blinking madly. Around Christmas I noticed that some of them had been replaced with conventional bulbs. Looking at the technology, LEDs should do better, but it's all about implementation.
I remember when Oregon put in the seatbelt law, and they swore, I say, I say, they SWORE that it would only be invoked in the context of another infraction. IE, they would stop you for an illegal turn or somesuch, and then write you an additional ticket if you weren't wearing a seatbelt. That lasted about 10 minutes.
Given Oregon's past record, I'd expect tracking of location and speed within months, regardless of what they're saying now.
The thing is, technical problems tend to breed technical solutions, and GPS is a well known quantity amongst the geek community. It'll be interesting what happens if this gets implemented. The first thing I'd expect is a hard hack like the recently reported duplicate license plate gimmick.