Have you tried going into userprefs.js and adjusting the timeout? For example, to increase it to five minutes:
user_pref("network.http.connect.timeout", 300);
Or in Mozilla 1.7 (and probably Firefox), just load up the "about:config" page in a new tab and change the value there. Changing the prefs.js file directly requires that Mozilla/Firefox be completely unloaded from memory (including quick launch if used). Thirty seconds is pretty low for a default timeout (should probably submit a RFE to get them to use 60 seconds instead).
You may also want to change the following to true:
browser.xul.error_pages.enabled
Works similar to how IE gives you a "try again" screen.
Nah, when USRobotics released the Pilot (later to become the Palm Pilot) they knew that the handwriting recognition wouldn't work well, so they required you to learn the device's alphabet rather than allowing you to use your own.
Bingo. That's the key difference between the Newton and the Pilot/Palm.
Such a tiny shift in PoV, but it turned jotting notes from something horribly inaccurate (many comics had fun with the Newton's poor handwriting recognition) into something accurate enough to use for day-to-day use.
Of course, there was a dark side... once you learned how to write using graffiti, it was hellish to try and write on a whiteboard using "normal" letters. Takes a minute or two of mental gymnastics to switch gears and remember how normal folks write.
The reality is that you can only fool the public for so long. Just look at AOL, who did the same thing and thought that everyone would continue thinking 'oooh, they sent me a free CD! Now I want to use their heavily overpriced internet service' and that they'd one day become the ultimate ISP used by everyone around the world.
Bad analogy, but perhaps a good analogy as well.
AOL hit trouble because of widespread rollout of broadband service where they couldn't control the onramp. (Unlike dial-up service where everyone mostly has a level playing field.) In the dial-up days, you weren't attempting to compete against baby bells and the cable companies. But once broadband came around, the cable and telephone companies managed to get their fingers in the pot and gained control. Very few areas in the country have any broadband competition other then DSL vs cable modem, and that's if they're very lucky.
The second thing that killed AOL is the world wide web. Sure, there's the BYOI version of AOL, but why pay another $10 on top of your broadband charge just to get content that is probably available for free elsewhere on the web. Unlike the old AOL days, going to a competitor's website is as easy as going to AOL's website, there's zero hurdles involved in comparison shopping or permanently switching to a different information provider.
All that being said, there are still people who prefer AOL's simplicity and hand-holding. Just like there will always be people who trust Microsoft (or Apple).
Where your analogy possibly holds water is that the industry is currently undergoing a seismic shift from proprietary to open, and it's a question of whether or not Microsoft is going to be able to survive. Odds are, that like AOL, they're going to find that they no longer control the onramp and that the cost of switching to a competitor has gone *way* down.
Reality, as always, is probably somewhere in between.
Apple with a healthy 10% of the desktop market would be nice (or at least double their current market share since I'm not entirely sure what it it at the moment). Perhaps with a 1-2% slice of the server market. Both are probably doable as long as they can keep turning out products that are reasonably priced and easy to use/manage. (Perhaps more importantly, making sure their machines place nice with corporate networks... something the older versions didn't do so well.)
Windows on the desktop, I'd be surprised if it's lower then 80% in 2010. 85-90% is more likely, with the remainder pretty much evenly split as it is today among BSD, Linux, Unix, Mac. I highly doubt we'll see a mainstream linux distro on the desktop do better then Apple's OS X. (Apple pretty much does the desktop better then Linux.)
Still, to cut the Windows market share from 95% down to 80% would be no small feat in itself. That's probably enough to make non-Windows O/S's a viable business and force MS to at least make an attempt at adhering to public standards.
A lot of it depends on which way China / India / etc. end up moving. If they ditch Microsoft and go with Linux or their own unix distros then the crack in market share could come quicker (maybe only 75% of the market by 2015). OTOH, if MS keeps up predatory pricing and locks those countries in as well, they could manage to keep a 90+% share. Security issues could also kill it off, but only if there are multiple waves of destructive worms that destroy user data and make life hellish for the end-user.
MS has a big problem... Longhorn is a solution in search of a problem. It has to be backwards compatible (anything else is suicidal). A lot of stuff didn't run properly in Win2000, but every modern app runs just fine on WinXP as do most of the older ones from the Win9x days. WinXP was a big step up in stability when compared to Win9x and WinME. They can't sell Longhorn solely on security fixes/upgrades, because the market will have killed them by then (the backlash is starting 3 years before they expect Longhorn to be ready).
This is coming from someone who runs a single Windows box for gaming, 3 Linux boxes, and will be buying an Apple portable in a couple of weeks when the cash is available.
Personally, I plan on picking up an older iMac via EBay, beefing up the memory and loading up OS X.
Just to get my feet wet and to see how well everything fits together. Even an older 400-600Mhz system, but beefed up to 512MB or 768MB should work pretty well and only cost a few hundred.
If someone were to ask me today what to get, and they don't have MS-required software, I'd point them at a Mac as a good starter machine.
Seriously though, I'm generally an advocate of using IT to automate boring and repetitive tasks, but as far as elections are concerned I think it's a very bad idea.
There is a very old and known rule-of-thumb from at least a decade ago. Unfortunately, a lot of people refuse to learn it or choose not to believe it. Roughly paraphrased:
Adding technology to a process merely results in a more efficient process.
Adding technology into a broken process won't magically fix the issue, it merely allows you to make those mistakes faster and with less effort. Technology isn't a magic cure-all, unless you're a fast-talking salesmen/consultant with a commission to make.
Or, possibly, a technology company who's trying to rig an election... (kidding! I hope!).
If I'm posting to UseNet, I usually make up some alias to stick in front of @nowhere.com.
I sorta pity whoever owns @nowhere.com
(Actually, there is someone who owns @NoWhere.com, registered back in 1994 according to WhoIs. However, there are no NS, MX or SOA records so e-mail to that domain goes nowhere.)
On the Athlon XP, which runs Win2k, Mozilla 1.7 not only loads faster than IE (when using quick launch of course), the page loads are much faster as well.
Eh, the only time that Mozilla is not running on my machine is during bootup/shutdown. Which means that load time is pretty much moot and I'm not sure why I bothered to turn on QuickLaunch either.
Firefox is still a nicer browser then Mozilla. There's a lot of things in the Mozilla browser which leave me scratching my head when compared to Firefox. But since I need to always have Thunderbird / Firefox open anyway, it's less memory for me to use Mozilla which at least shares some memory spaces.
(OTOH, adding another 256MB of memory and switching back to Firefox/Thunderbird is very tempting.)
Contrast this to Slashdot, where navigating the comments threads can be very confusing. I wish Slashdot could be re-written to something similar to GG. Anyone know the correct address for submitting this kind of suggestion?
Oh gads, what a straight line... (which I'll ignore until the end).
Go to your user preferences page, flip to the Comments tab, and set "Comment Limit" to 100. Then browse in Nested mode, setting the threshold to whatever gives you less then 100 comments per thread. If you see something that looks interesting, open up the sub-thread in a new tab. Threading at least makes sense in Nested mode, just avoid thresholds which spill over more then a single page.
Slashdot has horrible, known and ignored bugs with how it paginates thread with over 100 responses for a given threshold. I've submitted at least two bug reports, with detailed information, and have never seen any action taken on them other then filing them in the circular bin. What will happen is that if the first thread on the page happens to have 400 responses at a given threshold, you'll see the same thread appear on pages 1-4, then on page 5 it picks up with the thread that's supposed to be on page 5. (You'll never see any of the comments from 101-400 unless you drop the threshold down and browse by sub-thread.)
But as long as the Ad-revenue keeps pouring in, they really don't care that SlashCode generates malformed HTML or that the user-interface has severe bugs and limitations. Limitations that turn it from being a discussion forum into barely being able to function in soapbox mode. IOW, we're all suckers around here.
Its a catch 22. Google knows everything as long as you ask with the right keywords (i.e jdbc, rmi, DCOM, etc.) If you have no idea what acronyms to include in your query then you are stuck. A good place to get a starting point on the acronyms is reading them from a book!!!
Or subscribe to a good technical rag, or skim the newsgroups or mail lists regularly.
As they like to say, "Knowing is half the battle"... yeah, simply knowing that something exists and what it might be called. I may not know anything about SYN floods today, other then they exist and are generally used as an attack mechanism. But that's plenty enough information to enable me to go read up on them in a few hours for when I really need that knowledge.
I can't know everything, but I make sure I know where to find out.
Got any idea where I can get a sub 300$ tape backup system?
EBay... 50GB native tape systems are down around $300-$400 for the drive. But you'll need a SCSI controller card and the media costs around $40-$60 per tape.
Personally, for home use, I use removable 5400rpm hard-drives. $50 for the StarTech DRW115 series bays, plus $100 for the 160GB 5400rpm drive. Great for daily backups with the right software (Second Copy 2000) that keeps copies of changed/deleted files. Pretty much zero-fuss until it's time to do the weekly switch-out of the removable drive (I use 3, one is off-site).
Combined with DVD-R with QuickPar PAR2 (recovery data) for historical snapshots/archives, and it's at least affordable.
Then there came the cheats. Through Quake there were cheats but it reached its peak in Quake 2 and extended into Counter Strike and other FPS titles. Left a sour taste in everyone's mouth.
Cheats are the primary reason why I've never bothered to fire up any multi-player FPS online. Especially since I'd be playing most of the time on public servers (no time/inclination to join a clan).
However, since the PunkBuster system seems to work fairly well, I've been trying out Call of Duty multi-player the past few weeks and have had a good time. Haven't seen any cheaters yet on PB-equipped servers so I'm satisfied. Might not be the best system, but I definitely won't buy any FPS multi-player that doesn't have it.
I think I'm more amazed/amused that PB was able to build a viable business around cheaters.
Just goes to show though, how little difference things like dual channel RAM make to those who just use their PCs for everyday gaming etc.
And on the AMD boards, it doesn't make much of a difference to performance. (Usual amount bandied about is only 5-10% better.)
Yeah, it's sexy, but at least with the first generation boards (A7N8X) it's more of a marketing point. I've tested with MemTest86 (which shows data rates while testing the memory), PCMark2002, and the data rates shown by QuickPar when creating a PAR2 file set.
But I've seen everything from "60c isn't bad" to "60c is one step below the entire computer bursting into flames".
Different CPUs are capable of different temperatures. (case in point: Intell Prescott chips being derided as "Pres*hot*" chips)
Internal case temp should be in the 30-45C range (assuming ambient air temp of around 25C). My AMD cases are running 41-46C at the moment, but the A/C is off and the ambient temp in here is 31C. CPU temps are generally in the 50s, depending on the case temp and the particular chip. I only use AMD, but I get nervous when the chip hits the high 50s. At which point, I investigate larger heatsinks or higher cfm fans.
Only solutions for lowering internal case temps are either:
- Remove heat-generating components
- Get components that produce less heat (5400rpm drives instead of 7200rpm drives, older video cards instead of the dual-heater top-of-the-line beast, use an older and cooler CPU)
- Adjust/add fans to move more air through the case per minute (air flow). Make sure the exhaust fans are properly oriented so that air flows through the case as designed.
- Simply buy a larger case so that the heat producing components are farther away from each other (Antec Sonata / p160 or a full-tower case)
- If the video card has a fan on it, make sure there is at least one empty slot between it and the closest PCI card
- 7200+ rpm drives generally require active cooling (Antec p160/Sonata cases have drive bays with a dedicated 120mm fan slot). Putting a 7200rpm drive in an external USB/firewire enclosure that doesn't have a fan is a good way to kill the drive (been there, done that, now only use 5400rpm drives in those enclosures).
I tend to be conservative with my cooling advice because my office has poor climate control. Like I said, it's 31C in here at the moment, which is warm enough to be uncomfortable even in shorts and a t-shirt. However, all of my machines work just fine since that they're in good cases with good airflow.
Usually when people want their heatsink to work better they polish the bottom (until it looks like a mirror)
Think that's "lapping"...
But you are correct about how much paste to use. Like the old commercial said, "a little dab 'll do you". The goal of the paste is to fill in any microscopic holes in the heatsink/CPU as it conducts heat better then air. Even the fancy "artic silver" pastes don't conduct heat as well as direct metal-to-chip contact.
The proper amount of paste is a thin sheen, usually by dabbing a tiny dot on the CPU and use a credit card edge to spread it.
Believe it or not, the prices weren't much higher than the online retailers. And as I said, many online retailers will sell you some foreign jobby like "AZUZ" instead of the true blue components.
Around here (on the east coast), it's exactly the opposite. Local dealers are stocked full with off-brand parts and it's difficult to find the good stuff. (Same with the local computer fairs / swap meets.)
But then, I only ship from reputable online stores where I've had good experiences in the past (MWave, TheNerds.net, Computers4Sure, CDW, ProVantage and NewEgg). They always send me the right part, they carry the good stuff, and it's never a mystery about whether I'm getting Asus or Azus. Some have better return policies then others, but since I do my homework ahead of time, it's rare that I have to do returns/RMAs.
Our rule is that if you work from home 4/5 days (which only applies to the people who don't live within driving distance of the main office anyways), the company will reimburse for a broadband connection and monthly cell phone (via expense accounts). In addition we provide a dedicated work PC/laptop and the software required to do your job.
All of which is common sense since these are full-time telecommuters. Liability for use of the connection still falls on the employee's shoulders (they're the ones with the name on the contract).
(I'm one of the lucky ones who gets to work from home full-time.)
"I won't have to buy a hard drive which at the best deal I can find is about $130 US"
Which is silly of the submitter because if you simply go and look at PriceScan.com and search for Notebook Hard Drives, 20GB notebook hard drives are only $70. Which is a far cry from $130 and a heck of a lot cheaper then any flash-based media is going to be.
Not to mention that the submitter is being lazy and not looking on Ebay or one of the online auction sites.
You'd ding someone because they're honest and straightforward with you?
There's a difference between say "wrong" (which is generally considered to be rude and flamebait) and indicating that the parent post is incorrect and explaining why.
So it's not unreasonable to mod down someone who posts a single line like "Wrong!". Sure, it's truthful, but it really isn't helpful to the rest of the readers.
Which means that unless you're adding recovery data (using QuickPar) or burning 2 copies, you will lose at least some data on the media within a few years. (Cheap media sometimes only lasts a few months if not stored in dark and climate controller conditions.)
QuickPar is nice because you can pick how much redundancy you want on the disc. I find that 5-10% is plenty for most uses and guards against all but catestrophic damage to the disc.
(The guideline for redundancy is based on how often you check the media vs how fast the media degrades or is damaged. If the media degrades at a rate of 1% per month and you only verify the disc annually, you'll want at least 12% redundancy but more like 18% redundancy.)
The problem is most of us have 8mm tapes sitting around from a previous time we did a backup of something important to tape, only to find that the tape-drive-vendor's long dead, and the tape device is long dead too.
Sounds trite, but EBay to the rescue.
I started with a single Exabyte 8mm backup drive and picked up 2 more on EBay for around $150. (This was a few years ago even and the original drive had been given to me with 50-60 used/new tapes.) Now that I have a DVD-burner, those drives don't do me much good (too small of capacity, and way too slow compared to DVD).
Rule of thumb for corporate / business use is that you always buy 2 or 3 of any mission-critical backup hardware. That way, if one of the units breaks, you still have the other to rely on while the first is either fixed or replaced.
Having identical backup hardware and software at another location is also a great idea.
Of course the friend filed suit but was constantly followed by a private investigator to make sure he wasnt doing anything that could be used against him in court.
Hate to burst your bubble, but that's standard operating procedure for almost every large company that employs manual labor. Anytime an employee goes out on long-term disability (more then a week), it's worth the expense to have someone (PI or someone from Loss Prevention) go out and check up on the employee. How often and how long the person is put under the microscope depends on their work history and their personal interactions with superiors.
Yeah, there are some excesses possible such as 24x7 observations or other harrassment - but since the company has to pay for the investigator's time there are built-in limits. Most of the time it's just done by from someone from LP who does a drive-by on their lunch break to see if the employee happens to be outside doing yard work.
However, backing up 1TB to paper is a little daunting/expensive/wasteful.
(Doing the math...)
Assuming 200dpi for each bit gives 40,000 bits per square inch, or 3.2 million bits on an 8" x 10" area. Adding some redundancy to the data would reduce usable storage to around 0.381MB per page. Redundant coding would reduce that to 0.300MB per page. A stack of 500 pages holds 150MB. Add in some more redundancy and push that down to 103MB per ream of paper. A box of copier paper holds 1024MB.
Thus, 1 TB could be backed up on to 1024 boxes of copy paper. Overally redundancy is around 86%. You could even print the source code required to read the data back in the margins or on a cover sheet.
300dpi doubles your space meaning you only need 500 boxes. 600dpi means you only need around 60-70 boxes. Much past 600dpi and you'd better switch to microfiche.
Heavy? You bet. Unreasonable? Definitely. Doing the data verification would be a real pain unless you have a super-efficient sheet-fed scanner.
Personally, I picture some poor graduate student being tasked with the job in the year 3030.
DVD is fine for long-term archival, especially if you add parity data to the disc. (I usually add 5-10% recovery data to allow for discs getting scratched or otherwise damaged.) I find CD/DVD (and back when floppies were realistic) to be too much of a hassle, which means that backups don't always get done.
For day-to-day backups I use 250-300GB 5400rpm drives in removable caddies (StarTech.com's DRW115 series). Base unit is $60 or you can buy the components separately: extra bays are $20-$30, extra caddies are $50-60. By rotating 3 or 4 of those drives, I have the convenience of tape without the cost of tape.
Combine that with software like Second Copy 2000 (sits in the system tray, plays nicely with the system, does backups in the background, doesn't use a proprietary storage format) and you have something that simply works. No muss, no fuss, and no procrastination.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you tried going into userprefs.js and adjusting the timeout? For example, to increase it to five minutes:
user_pref("network.http.connect.timeout", 300);
Or in Mozilla 1.7 (and probably Firefox), just load up the "about:config" page in a new tab and change the value there. Changing the prefs.js file directly requires that Mozilla/Firefox be completely unloaded from memory (including quick launch if used). Thirty seconds is pretty low for a default timeout (should probably submit a RFE to get them to use 60 seconds instead).
You may also want to change the following to true:
browser.xul.error_pages.enabled
Works similar to how IE gives you a "try again" screen.
Nah, when USRobotics released the Pilot (later to become the Palm Pilot) they knew that the handwriting recognition wouldn't work well, so they required you to learn the device's alphabet rather than allowing you to use your own.
Bingo. That's the key difference between the Newton and the Pilot/Palm.
Such a tiny shift in PoV, but it turned jotting notes from something horribly inaccurate (many comics had fun with the Newton's poor handwriting recognition) into something accurate enough to use for day-to-day use.
Of course, there was a dark side... once you learned how to write using graffiti, it was hellish to try and write on a whiteboard using "normal" letters. Takes a minute or two of mental gymnastics to switch gears and remember how normal folks write.
The reality is that you can only fool the public for so long. Just look at AOL, who did the same thing and thought that everyone would continue thinking 'oooh, they sent me a free CD! Now I want to use their heavily overpriced internet service' and that they'd one day become the ultimate ISP used by everyone around the world.
Bad analogy, but perhaps a good analogy as well.
AOL hit trouble because of widespread rollout of broadband service where they couldn't control the onramp. (Unlike dial-up service where everyone mostly has a level playing field.) In the dial-up days, you weren't attempting to compete against baby bells and the cable companies. But once broadband came around, the cable and telephone companies managed to get their fingers in the pot and gained control. Very few areas in the country have any broadband competition other then DSL vs cable modem, and that's if they're very lucky.
The second thing that killed AOL is the world wide web. Sure, there's the BYOI version of AOL, but why pay another $10 on top of your broadband charge just to get content that is probably available for free elsewhere on the web. Unlike the old AOL days, going to a competitor's website is as easy as going to AOL's website, there's zero hurdles involved in comparison shopping or permanently switching to a different information provider.
All that being said, there are still people who prefer AOL's simplicity and hand-holding. Just like there will always be people who trust Microsoft (or Apple).
Where your analogy possibly holds water is that the industry is currently undergoing a seismic shift from proprietary to open, and it's a question of whether or not Microsoft is going to be able to survive. Odds are, that like AOL, they're going to find that they no longer control the onramp and that the cost of switching to a competitor has gone *way* down.
Reality, as always, is probably somewhere in between.
Apple with a healthy 10% of the desktop market would be nice (or at least double their current market share since I'm not entirely sure what it it at the moment). Perhaps with a 1-2% slice of the server market. Both are probably doable as long as they can keep turning out products that are reasonably priced and easy to use/manage. (Perhaps more importantly, making sure their machines place nice with corporate networks... something the older versions didn't do so well.)
Windows on the desktop, I'd be surprised if it's lower then 80% in 2010. 85-90% is more likely, with the remainder pretty much evenly split as it is today among BSD, Linux, Unix, Mac. I highly doubt we'll see a mainstream linux distro on the desktop do better then Apple's OS X. (Apple pretty much does the desktop better then Linux.)
Still, to cut the Windows market share from 95% down to 80% would be no small feat in itself. That's probably enough to make non-Windows O/S's a viable business and force MS to at least make an attempt at adhering to public standards.
A lot of it depends on which way China / India / etc. end up moving. If they ditch Microsoft and go with Linux or their own unix distros then the crack in market share could come quicker (maybe only 75% of the market by 2015). OTOH, if MS keeps up predatory pricing and locks those countries in as well, they could manage to keep a 90+% share. Security issues could also kill it off, but only if there are multiple waves of destructive worms that destroy user data and make life hellish for the end-user.
MS has a big problem... Longhorn is a solution in search of a problem. It has to be backwards compatible (anything else is suicidal). A lot of stuff didn't run properly in Win2000, but every modern app runs just fine on WinXP as do most of the older ones from the Win9x days. WinXP was a big step up in stability when compared to Win9x and WinME. They can't sell Longhorn solely on security fixes/upgrades, because the market will have killed them by then (the backlash is starting 3 years before they expect Longhorn to be ready).
This is coming from someone who runs a single Windows box for gaming, 3 Linux boxes, and will be buying an Apple portable in a couple of weeks when the cash is available.
Personally, I plan on picking up an older iMac via EBay, beefing up the memory and loading up OS X.
Just to get my feet wet and to see how well everything fits together. Even an older 400-600Mhz system, but beefed up to 512MB or 768MB should work pretty well and only cost a few hundred.
If someone were to ask me today what to get, and they don't have MS-required software, I'd point them at a Mac as a good starter machine.
Seriously though, I'm generally an advocate of using IT to automate boring and repetitive tasks, but as far as elections are concerned I think it's a very bad idea.
There is a very old and known rule-of-thumb from at least a decade ago. Unfortunately, a lot of people refuse to learn it or choose not to believe it. Roughly paraphrased:
Adding technology to a process merely results in a more efficient process.
Adding technology into a broken process won't magically fix the issue, it merely allows you to make those mistakes faster and with less effort. Technology isn't a magic cure-all, unless you're a fast-talking salesmen/consultant with a commission to make.
Or, possibly, a technology company who's trying to rig an election... (kidding! I hope!).
If I'm posting to UseNet, I usually make up some alias to stick in front of @nowhere.com.
I sorta pity whoever owns @nowhere.com
(Actually, there is someone who owns @NoWhere.com, registered back in 1994 according to WhoIs. However, there are no NS, MX or SOA records so e-mail to that domain goes nowhere.)
On the Athlon XP, which runs Win2k, Mozilla 1.7 not only loads faster than IE (when using quick launch of course), the page loads are much faster as well.
Eh, the only time that Mozilla is not running on my machine is during bootup/shutdown. Which means that load time is pretty much moot and I'm not sure why I bothered to turn on QuickLaunch either.
Firefox is still a nicer browser then Mozilla. There's a lot of things in the Mozilla browser which leave me scratching my head when compared to Firefox. But since I need to always have Thunderbird / Firefox open anyway, it's less memory for me to use Mozilla which at least shares some memory spaces.
(OTOH, adding another 256MB of memory and switching back to Firefox/Thunderbird is very tempting.)
Contrast this to Slashdot, where navigating the comments threads can be very confusing. I wish Slashdot could be re-written to something similar to GG. Anyone know the correct address for submitting this kind of suggestion?
Oh gads, what a straight line... (which I'll ignore until the end).
Go to your user preferences page, flip to the Comments tab, and set "Comment Limit" to 100. Then browse in Nested mode, setting the threshold to whatever gives you less then 100 comments per thread. If you see something that looks interesting, open up the sub-thread in a new tab. Threading at least makes sense in Nested mode, just avoid thresholds which spill over more then a single page.
Slashdot has horrible, known and ignored bugs with how it paginates thread with over 100 responses for a given threshold. I've submitted at least two bug reports, with detailed information, and have never seen any action taken on them other then filing them in the circular bin. What will happen is that if the first thread on the page happens to have 400 responses at a given threshold, you'll see the same thread appear on pages 1-4, then on page 5 it picks up with the thread that's supposed to be on page 5. (You'll never see any of the comments from 101-400 unless you drop the threshold down and browse by sub-thread.)
But as long as the Ad-revenue keeps pouring in, they really don't care that SlashCode generates malformed HTML or that the user-interface has severe bugs and limitations. Limitations that turn it from being a discussion forum into barely being able to function in soapbox mode. IOW, we're all suckers around here.
Its a catch 22. Google knows everything as long as you ask with the right keywords (i.e jdbc, rmi, DCOM, etc.) If you have no idea what acronyms to include in your query then you are stuck. A good place to get a starting point on the acronyms is reading them from a book!!!
Or subscribe to a good technical rag, or skim the newsgroups or mail lists regularly.
As they like to say, "Knowing is half the battle"... yeah, simply knowing that something exists and what it might be called. I may not know anything about SYN floods today, other then they exist and are generally used as an attack mechanism. But that's plenty enough information to enable me to go read up on them in a few hours for when I really need that knowledge.
I can't know everything, but I make sure I know where to find out.
Got any idea where I can get a sub 300$ tape backup system?
EBay... 50GB native tape systems are down around $300-$400 for the drive. But you'll need a SCSI controller card and the media costs around $40-$60 per tape.
Personally, for home use, I use removable 5400rpm hard-drives. $50 for the StarTech DRW115 series bays, plus $100 for the 160GB 5400rpm drive. Great for daily backups with the right software (Second Copy 2000) that keeps copies of changed/deleted files. Pretty much zero-fuss until it's time to do the weekly switch-out of the removable drive (I use 3, one is off-site).
Combined with DVD-R with QuickPar PAR2 (recovery data) for historical snapshots/archives, and it's at least affordable.
Then there came the cheats. Through Quake there were cheats but it reached its peak in Quake 2 and extended into Counter Strike and other FPS titles. Left a sour taste in everyone's mouth.
Cheats are the primary reason why I've never bothered to fire up any multi-player FPS online. Especially since I'd be playing most of the time on public servers (no time/inclination to join a clan).
However, since the PunkBuster system seems to work fairly well, I've been trying out Call of Duty multi-player the past few weeks and have had a good time. Haven't seen any cheaters yet on PB-equipped servers so I'm satisfied. Might not be the best system, but I definitely won't buy any FPS multi-player that doesn't have it.
I think I'm more amazed/amused that PB was able to build a viable business around cheaters.
Just goes to show though, how little difference things like dual channel RAM make to those who just use their PCs for everyday gaming etc.
And on the AMD boards, it doesn't make much of a difference to performance. (Usual amount bandied about is only 5-10% better.)
Yeah, it's sexy, but at least with the first generation boards (A7N8X) it's more of a marketing point. I've tested with MemTest86 (which shows data rates while testing the memory), PCMark2002, and the data rates shown by QuickPar when creating a PAR2 file set.
But I've seen everything from "60c isn't bad" to "60c is one step below the entire computer bursting into flames".
Different CPUs are capable of different temperatures. (case in point: Intell Prescott chips being derided as "Pres*hot*" chips)
Internal case temp should be in the 30-45C range (assuming ambient air temp of around 25C). My AMD cases are running 41-46C at the moment, but the A/C is off and the ambient temp in here is 31C. CPU temps are generally in the 50s, depending on the case temp and the particular chip. I only use AMD, but I get nervous when the chip hits the high 50s. At which point, I investigate larger heatsinks or higher cfm fans.
Only solutions for lowering internal case temps are either:
- Remove heat-generating components
- Get components that produce less heat (5400rpm drives instead of 7200rpm drives, older video cards instead of the dual-heater top-of-the-line beast, use an older and cooler CPU)
- Adjust/add fans to move more air through the case per minute (air flow). Make sure the exhaust fans are properly oriented so that air flows through the case as designed.
- Simply buy a larger case so that the heat producing components are farther away from each other (Antec Sonata / p160 or a full-tower case)
- If the video card has a fan on it, make sure there is at least one empty slot between it and the closest PCI card
- 7200+ rpm drives generally require active cooling (Antec p160/Sonata cases have drive bays with a dedicated 120mm fan slot). Putting a 7200rpm drive in an external USB/firewire enclosure that doesn't have a fan is a good way to kill the drive (been there, done that, now only use 5400rpm drives in those enclosures).
I tend to be conservative with my cooling advice because my office has poor climate control. Like I said, it's 31C in here at the moment, which is warm enough to be uncomfortable even in shorts and a t-shirt. However, all of my machines work just fine since that they're in good cases with good airflow.
Usually when people want their heatsink to work better they polish the bottom (until it looks like a mirror)
Think that's "lapping"...
But you are correct about how much paste to use. Like the old commercial said, "a little dab 'll do you". The goal of the paste is to fill in any microscopic holes in the heatsink/CPU as it conducts heat better then air. Even the fancy "artic silver" pastes don't conduct heat as well as direct metal-to-chip contact.
The proper amount of paste is a thin sheen, usually by dabbing a tiny dot on the CPU and use a credit card edge to spread it.
Believe it or not, the prices weren't much higher than the online retailers. And as I said, many online retailers will sell you some foreign jobby like "AZUZ" instead of the true blue components.
Around here (on the east coast), it's exactly the opposite. Local dealers are stocked full with off-brand parts and it's difficult to find the good stuff. (Same with the local computer fairs / swap meets.)
But then, I only ship from reputable online stores where I've had good experiences in the past (MWave, TheNerds.net, Computers4Sure, CDW, ProVantage and NewEgg). They always send me the right part, they carry the good stuff, and it's never a mystery about whether I'm getting Asus or Azus. Some have better return policies then others, but since I do my homework ahead of time, it's rare that I have to do returns/RMAs.
Our rule is that if you work from home 4/5 days (which only applies to the people who don't live within driving distance of the main office anyways), the company will reimburse for a broadband connection and monthly cell phone (via expense accounts). In addition we provide a dedicated work PC/laptop and the software required to do your job.
All of which is common sense since these are full-time telecommuters. Liability for use of the connection still falls on the employee's shoulders (they're the ones with the name on the contract).
(I'm one of the lucky ones who gets to work from home full-time.)
Or 80 times the storage for $80.
(40GB drives are only about $10 more expensive then the $20GB notebook drives.)
"I won't have to buy a hard drive which at the best deal I can find is about $130 US"
Which is silly of the submitter because if you simply go and look at PriceScan.com and search for Notebook Hard Drives, 20GB notebook hard drives are only $70. Which is a far cry from $130 and a heck of a lot cheaper then any flash-based media is going to be.
Not to mention that the submitter is being lazy and not looking on Ebay or one of the online auction sites.
You'd ding someone because they're honest and straightforward with you?
There's a difference between say "wrong" (which is generally considered to be rude and flamebait) and indicating that the parent post is incorrect and explaining why.
So it's not unreasonable to mod down someone who posts a single line like "Wrong!". Sure, it's truthful, but it really isn't helpful to the rest of the readers.
First rule of archiving data on optical media:
It will get scratched and damaged.
Which means that unless you're adding recovery data (using QuickPar) or burning 2 copies, you will lose at least some data on the media within a few years. (Cheap media sometimes only lasts a few months if not stored in dark and climate controller conditions.)
QuickPar is nice because you can pick how much redundancy you want on the disc. I find that 5-10% is plenty for most uses and guards against all but catestrophic damage to the disc.
(The guideline for redundancy is based on how often you check the media vs how fast the media degrades or is damaged. If the media degrades at a rate of 1% per month and you only verify the disc annually, you'll want at least 12% redundancy but more like 18% redundancy.)
The problem is most of us have 8mm tapes sitting around from a previous time we did a backup of something important to tape, only to find that the tape-drive-vendor's long dead, and the tape device is long dead too.
Sounds trite, but EBay to the rescue.
I started with a single Exabyte 8mm backup drive and picked up 2 more on EBay for around $150. (This was a few years ago even and the original drive had been given to me with 50-60 used/new tapes.) Now that I have a DVD-burner, those drives don't do me much good (too small of capacity, and way too slow compared to DVD).
Rule of thumb for corporate / business use is that you always buy 2 or 3 of any mission-critical backup hardware. That way, if one of the units breaks, you still have the other to rely on while the first is either fixed or replaced.
Having identical backup hardware and software at another location is also a great idea.
Of course the friend filed suit but was constantly followed by a private investigator to make sure he wasnt doing anything that could be used against him in court.
Hate to burst your bubble, but that's standard operating procedure for almost every large company that employs manual labor. Anytime an employee goes out on long-term disability (more then a week), it's worth the expense to have someone (PI or someone from Loss Prevention) go out and check up on the employee. How often and how long the person is put under the microscope depends on their work history and their personal interactions with superiors.
Yeah, there are some excesses possible such as 24x7 observations or other harrassment - but since the company has to pay for the investigator's time there are built-in limits. Most of the time it's just done by from someone from LP who does a drive-by on their lunch break to see if the employee happens to be outside doing yard work.
However, backing up 1TB to paper is a little daunting/expensive/wasteful.
(Doing the math...)
Assuming 200dpi for each bit gives 40,000 bits per square inch, or 3.2 million bits on an 8" x 10" area. Adding some redundancy to the data would reduce usable storage to around 0.381MB per page. Redundant coding would reduce that to 0.300MB per page. A stack of 500 pages holds 150MB. Add in some more redundancy and push that down to 103MB per ream of paper. A box of copier paper holds 1024MB.
Thus, 1 TB could be backed up on to 1024 boxes of copy paper. Overally redundancy is around 86%. You could even print the source code required to read the data back in the margins or on a cover sheet.
300dpi doubles your space meaning you only need 500 boxes. 600dpi means you only need around 60-70 boxes. Much past 600dpi and you'd better switch to microfiche.
Heavy? You bet. Unreasonable? Definitely. Doing the data verification would be a real pain unless you have a super-efficient sheet-fed scanner.
Personally, I picture some poor graduate student being tasked with the job in the year 3030.
DVD is fine for long-term archival, especially if you add parity data to the disc. (I usually add 5-10% recovery data to allow for discs getting scratched or otherwise damaged.) I find CD/DVD (and back when floppies were realistic) to be too much of a hassle, which means that backups don't always get done.
For day-to-day backups I use 250-300GB 5400rpm drives in removable caddies (StarTech.com's DRW115 series). Base unit is $60 or you can buy the components separately: extra bays are $20-$30, extra caddies are $50-60. By rotating 3 or 4 of those drives, I have the convenience of tape without the cost of tape.
Combine that with software like Second Copy 2000 (sits in the system tray, plays nicely with the system, does backups in the background, doesn't use a proprietary storage format) and you have something that simply works. No muss, no fuss, and no procrastination.