Back around, oh, 1997ish, I ran Lotus Notes on a Netware server (I think it was a v3 server). Because of the way that the Notes full-text indexing system works (it creates a *lot* of really *tiny* files), I blew out the file allocation tables on the server because all of those small files were being left behind instead of being tossed. Eventually I think I flagged the entire tree so that those tiny files weren't left behind.
Learned a lot more about the NW file system then I really wanted to know at the time.
I've had a 3 megapix digital for about 2.5 years now. 2x or 3x optical zoom, point-n-shoot that writes to a mini-CD. Now that the 6 megapix SLRs are out, I *really* want to upgrade. And not so much for the resolution but for the advantages of real zoom and wide-angle lenses. I miss my old film SLR's ability to let me see "through the lens", looking at the LCD to frame/compose just hasn't tickled my artistic itch as well.
Prior to the 3 megapixel camera, I used to get all of my 35mm film turned into Kodak Photo CDs at 6 megapixel range. I do miss that resolution. The 3Mpix Sony has been a good camera for general work (house hunting, playing tourist) but I'll be happy to get back into the 6Mpix range again.
The new 6mpix SLRs are quite well priced, especially if you happen to already own compatible lenses. I'm probably going to wait until next summer when the next generation comes out and the price drops again.
One of the growing problems is the large base of broadband-connected (cable, DSL) users that ISPs insist on putting on dynamic IP address pools. We all know that there is no technical advantage to the dynamic IP addresses, since practically everyone is connected 24/7 (this is not the same situation with dial-in modem pools, where dynamic IPs are the best way to go).
It has more to do with the costs of providing that service. Giving your customers static IPs involves support costs unlike DHCP's plug-n-go. A rough guess would be that for every customer you'll end up spending 5 minutes of support time if you use static IPs. And that's just support call time.
Now add in churn of 10% (very rough guess) per month for a few thousand customers and the administration costs of keeping track of a static IP system start to factor in. Stuff like handing out new addresses, releasing addresses for accounts that have been canceled - some of which can be automated if you pay $$$ for the capability.
OTOH, configuring a DHCP server is pretty much a once and done deal. Scales nicely, requires little-to-no end-user knowledge, and is a lot cheaper.
Unless it gets to the point where going the DHCP route becomes more expensive then administering static IP addresses, you're not going to see a change in the way ISPs do business.
TNT started that nonsense a few years ago. They take a 100 minute movie, schedule it for a 3 hour block. The first part of the movie will play non-stop for 20 minutes to get you hooked, but by the end of the movie it gets down to short 5 minute segments like you saw.
Needless to say, we rarely watched moview on TNT unless there was adequate reading material at hand.
Gee, that's almost exactly the same lesson that (most) businesses learned in the 90s.
Computerizing an inefficient process just means that you can be inefficient faster. You have to redesign the process to take advantage of the computer's strengths if you want to see some sort of ROI.
Worse, designers that assume that you'll always be maximizing your browser window.
Then there are the designers who assume that nobody is going to be using monitors bigger then 800x600 so they hard code the font sizes. Which makes stuff *really* tiny on a 1600x1200 monitor.
Web page designs need to be flexible in the horizontal space, with room for things to stretch and shrink without breaking the page. That pretty much means you have to design for 600pix wide up to 1200pix wide.
Adaptive menus are an interesting thing, probably the biggest complaint that I would have is that their memory of what to show is too short. I would estimate that around 1/3 of the time, I'm having to tell it to show me the rest of the commands on the menu. Whereas I would prefer that to be only 1/10th or 1/20th of the time.
A bigger beef that I have with Windows 2000/XP interface-style is that they've removed underlines from menus and dialogs (unless you hold down the Alt key). That makes it more difficult to learn the short-cut keys on the fly without having to sit down and force yourself to explore and memorize.
But if all of your friends listen to Genre X exclusively, it's very difficult to find out that you like Genre Y music instead. The file-sharing apps allow you to sample music that you would otherwise not hear through local play or word-of-mouth.
The specific instance in my case is that none of my friends go clubbing and I'm too introverted to go clubbing on my own. Yet in the past few years, I've discovered that I really enjoy long-play dance tracks as good music to work to. Especially Pete Tong's weekly Essential Mix. Definitely music that I would not have found out otherwise.
Nah... since I'm on good terms with the landlord, I just had them run 3 new circuits to my office (it's an old building) when they re-wired the main panel.
Otherwise, I think I'd be focusing on Mini-ITX gear and laptops.
Same here, so instead we had "Rook" cards (again, 4 suits or colors, rook cards instead of jokers, and no J/Q/K/A cards but instead I think the cards were simply numbered 1 to 13).
Grandparents had pinocchle(?) sets which were considered to be okay because you can't play poker with them.
Personally, I've only ever played poker once, and instead of cash we dug out a box of baseball cards and handed them around to use for chips. That was nice because no money changed hands.
Worse... given the fact that there are large swatches of flat-color, a JPEG is one of the worst formats that you can save an image like that in (even if you kick the quality way up).
That image needed to be cropped and saved out as a GIF, PNG or TIFF (e.g. a compression format that is lossless). It would have resulted in sharper edges with no blotchiness.
It bans forged headers (which is huge for me, as I get bombed by hundreds of returns every day from some moron forging my domain, plus retaliations from the idiots who know enough to be a nuisance but don't know that headers can be forged).
Hmmm, so the people who are currently using forged headers are suddenly going to start behaving and obey a new law? Why? What benefit do they gain by no longer forging headers? This does nothing to fix the issue of forged headers other then to merely say "it's a bad thing". Spammers don't care about some silly laws.
It bans address harvesting, meaning a potential end to obfuscating addresses, a huge PITA.
Again, the people doing address harvesting are not the most upstanding citizens in the first place. Might have some effect, but only on the 1% of spammers who thought that spam was a legitimate way to market a product and who actually care to follow laws.
It provides a national opt-out list!
You mean an international opt-in list? Because that's exactly what the list will be treated like outside of US borders. The only reason that the telephone opt-out list works is because (a) the sender pays for the call and (b) the phone system keeps records of every phone call. E-mail has no centrally controlling authority.
It requires a real opt-out mechanism, instead of the situation today where we're afraid to use them.
Rather naive to think that suddenly all of those spammers who are using the current opt-out links to verify addresses are suddenly going to give up that tactic.
This bill is nothing more then a placebo pill so that the masses think that congress did something. The actual effect is going to be zero-zilch because spammers already don't play by the rules.
The Tecra 9100 that I use full-time has a close to full-size keyboard (around 99% of the IBM desktop keyboard on my desk). Make the machine a bit of a beast that barely fits in my laptop bag as a result at 12.25" W x 10.25" D.
Touch-typing is pretty easy on the larger laptops. Plus with the little nubby mouse in the middle of the keyboard, I rarely take my hands off the home row. (I do have an external USB mouse, but find it rare that I need to resort to it.)
Heck, having the little nubby pointer available at your fingertips makes using a regular keyboard/mouse almost a throwback. Especially in a GUI environment where the developers failed to provide consistent keyboard navigation and you have to reach for the mouse to get something done. One of the reasons I miss the OS/2 v2/v3 user-interface where they spent a good amount of time making sure everything was "keyboardable".
1) Pocket-style manilla folders which expand accordian style. They come in various widths with the 3/4" depth being common. Since they have sides (unlike regular folders), small receipts don't tend to fall out of the sides.
2) 6x9 envelopes. Advantage is that you can seal them up once you've finished out a month, scribble the month/year on them and toss them in a drawer or storage bin. You'll have to fold letter sized paper in half. Still makes a decent way to keep your monthly expense account receipts organized.
3) 9x11.5" envelopes. Same ease of use as the 6x9s, except you don't have to fold letter sized paper in half. You can probably get 6 months to a year into a single envelope. Although I have 3 envelopes per year (expense account receipts, tax-related receipts and then one for general receipts). Again, you can seal the envelope and just toss it in a drawer / file / storage bin / safe deposit box.
Monthly statements get scanned at 300dpi B&W, stored on a PGP disk and the originals get shredded.
That's pretty much what I do (seperate phone line for business, which I forward to the cell as needed)... but it took me at least a few months to learn those tricks and another 6-months to a year to get everyone else in the groove. Fortunately, since I've telecommuted from day 1 at this job I've been able to write the rules as I went along.
I'll have to take a look at BigBrother, we've been using ServersAlive and I've been dissatisfied enough over the past few years to consider writing my own package. (There's also IPCheck from Paessler that I'm looking into.)
Yes, I use a seperate phone number for business (and forward it to a cell as needed). It took close to 2 years though to convince the rest of the office that I'm pretty much not available after 6pm.
Nowadays, I might get an after-hours phone call about once a quarter, everything else manages to get done during regular business hours.
My old car had a Radio/Cassette deck, into which I had plugged one of those CD-Tape adapters. After a few years, I could no longer eject the adapter and was (gasp) forced to only listen to CDs.
In the past 5 years, the only radio station that I've listened to is NPR. My new car has an MP3 CD player, so with the 10 CDs stuck in the visor and the other 20 in a carrying case, I have around 300 hours of music to listen to.
Eh, telecommuting has it's days... (I've been telecommuting full-time for almost 4 years now, the main office is a 5 hour drive away).
On the upside, I rarely get interrupted by walk-ups, most communication is via chat/e-mail (which is good because I have poor aural memory). I can listen to the music that I want, or work without and I don't have to listen to the person 3 cubes down talking about their marital problems.
The bigger benefit is that I don't have to commute 90 min/day. My 2-year old car only has 9500 miles on it. I get paid a salary that would be under-average if I worked/lived at the main office but is above-average for the area where I live.
Flexible schedule: It's near-trivial to schedule doctor appointments, etc.
Now, the downsides...
Even us anti-social hermits need some amount of face-to-face interaction. Back when I was traveling up to the main office on a monthly basis, I'd say I was a little happier. (The recession has cut trip frequency to twice per year.) I don't pick up on the undercurrents as easily (I have to specifically ask about situation X).
The self-discipline is tough... have to keep a solid routine (rise at 7am, bed at 11pm) or you'll find it difficult to meet your goals. The job needs to be something with measurable (and multitudes of) mileposts. Very easy to spend a few hours in unproductive web surfing or/.'ing.
Self-reliance helps, because unlike the office environment, it's more difficult to get an answer to a minor question (rather then just asking your cubemate).
Another issue is that there's no "decompression time" built into your schedule. A commute of 10-15 minutes is a good thing if you work a high-stress job because that's just long enough to set the stress aside before you get home. (Your family will thank you for that.)
The last problem is that I'm never "off-duty". When you work in a formal office environment, people are very hesitant to call if you're not in the office. (There's a social barrier.) When you're telecommuting and they always interact with you over the phone, they can't tell that you're trying to be off-duty. Learning to say "no" helps a lot though.
Re:I dunno but...
on
DVD-Rs go 8x
·
· Score: 2, Informative
DVDs seem too new to trust my data to.
The current crop of DVD+/-R(W) drives are indeed about as mature as the first bunch of CD-R(W) drives were at this point. They're a bit sensitive as to which media you use and the planets have to be aligned properly. For DVD media, I only buy the major brands (Imation sells a 25-disc spindle at around $50) and I've had *mostly* good luck. Lately the drive was failing (lots of coasters even at 1x) but then I rebuilt the box and the drive suddenly became reliable again.
As to the data integrity issue... I usually burn around 3.0-3.5 Gb of data onto the DVD and fill the rest with parity data using QuickPar. Gives me an easy way to check the disc for errors that are more then the underlying RS encoding can handle and lets me possibly still recover the files.
Usually because I'm doing research on multiple topics at once...
Window 1 is my work-related browser window and between all of the different intranet apps that I access periodically through the day, it usually has around a dozen tabs open.
When googling for something, I start a new window and then open each result that looks interesting in a new tab. That means I don't lose my place back on the google search page. I also don't spend time waiting for any one tab to load because I'm loading them in the background while I continue browsing the results list.
Another window is usually open to reference pages (e.g. MySQL documentation). Keep the first tab on the index/ToC and open additional tabs for every topic that I'm looking at.
Some Web BBS software does a poor job of keeping track of which threads that you've read in a given session. Sometimes, if you take too long to work your way through a topic list in a forum, it decides that your session has timed out and tags everything as read. So, in the case where I want to read a few dozen threads, it's quicker/easier to open each thread in a new tab, and then go through the tabs once I've finished browsing the topic list.
/. is the same way... upon browsing the home page, I might see a topic that, while interesting, I know that I'm not going to want to read until a few hours have past and there are more comments. So I dedicate a window to/., and open up articles in new tabs. Sort of a "lightweight" method of bookmarking something for a few hours. Later in the day, I'll go to the tab, refresh it and then read the responses.
Mmmm, I have a yahoo! address (My Yahoo actually makes a decent home page with good customization features)... used to get a spam every 3 days or so. But since late October, the amount of spam that I get has increased 10-fold (mostly porno spam).
On the plus side, only 1 of those has slipped past the spam filters in the past month... unfortunately, they also treat e-mail from Newslinx as spam (I'm constantly rescuing those e-mails from the bulk folder).
Slashdot Mirror
Back around, oh, 1997ish, I ran Lotus Notes on a Netware server (I think it was a v3 server). Because of the way that the Notes full-text indexing system works (it creates a *lot* of really *tiny* files), I blew out the file allocation tables on the server because all of those small files were being left behind instead of being tossed. Eventually I think I flagged the entire tree so that those tiny files weren't left behind.
Learned a lot more about the NW file system then I really wanted to know at the time.
I've had a 3 megapix digital for about 2.5 years now. 2x or 3x optical zoom, point-n-shoot that writes to a mini-CD. Now that the 6 megapix SLRs are out, I *really* want to upgrade. And not so much for the resolution but for the advantages of real zoom and wide-angle lenses. I miss my old film SLR's ability to let me see "through the lens", looking at the LCD to frame/compose just hasn't tickled my artistic itch as well.
Prior to the 3 megapixel camera, I used to get all of my 35mm film turned into Kodak Photo CDs at 6 megapixel range. I do miss that resolution. The 3Mpix Sony has been a good camera for general work (house hunting, playing tourist) but I'll be happy to get back into the 6Mpix range again.
The new 6mpix SLRs are quite well priced, especially if you happen to already own compatible lenses. I'm probably going to wait until next summer when the next generation comes out and the price drops again.
I have a 10 minute HDTV clip that is 1.3Gb (1440x1080). That's 7.8 GiB/hr so it must be well compressed.
Not sure what format it's encoded in... DV is 25 megabits/sec (or 3.6 MiB/sec) and that's about a quarter the resolution of HDTV.
One of the growing problems is the large base of broadband-connected (cable, DSL) users that ISPs insist on putting on dynamic IP address pools. We all know that there is no technical advantage to the dynamic IP addresses, since practically everyone is connected 24/7 (this is not the same situation with dial-in modem pools, where dynamic IPs are the best way to go).
It has more to do with the costs of providing that service. Giving your customers static IPs involves support costs unlike DHCP's plug-n-go. A rough guess would be that for every customer you'll end up spending 5 minutes of support time if you use static IPs. And that's just support call time.
Now add in churn of 10% (very rough guess) per month for a few thousand customers and the administration costs of keeping track of a static IP system start to factor in. Stuff like handing out new addresses, releasing addresses for accounts that have been canceled - some of which can be automated if you pay $$$ for the capability.
OTOH, configuring a DHCP server is pretty much a once and done deal. Scales nicely, requires little-to-no end-user knowledge, and is a lot cheaper.
Unless it gets to the point where going the DHCP route becomes more expensive then administering static IP addresses, you're not going to see a change in the way ISPs do business.
TNT started that nonsense a few years ago. They take a 100 minute movie, schedule it for a 3 hour block. The first part of the movie will play non-stop for 20 minutes to get you hooked, but by the end of the movie it gets down to short 5 minute segments like you saw.
Needless to say, we rarely watched moview on TNT unless there was adequate reading material at hand.
Gee, that's almost exactly the same lesson that (most) businesses learned in the 90s.
Computerizing an inefficient process just means that you can be inefficient faster. You have to redesign the process to take advantage of the computer's strengths if you want to see some sort of ROI.
Worse, designers that assume that you'll always be maximizing your browser window.
Then there are the designers who assume that nobody is going to be using monitors bigger then 800x600 so they hard code the font sizes. Which makes stuff *really* tiny on a 1600x1200 monitor.
Web page designs need to be flexible in the horizontal space, with room for things to stretch and shrink without breaking the page. That pretty much means you have to design for 600pix wide up to 1200pix wide.
It doesn't re-order the menu options BTW.
Adaptive menus are an interesting thing, probably the biggest complaint that I would have is that their memory of what to show is too short. I would estimate that around 1/3 of the time, I'm having to tell it to show me the rest of the commands on the menu. Whereas I would prefer that to be only 1/10th or 1/20th of the time.
A bigger beef that I have with Windows 2000/XP interface-style is that they've removed underlines from menus and dialogs (unless you hold down the Alt key). That makes it more difficult to learn the short-cut keys on the fly without having to sit down and force yourself to explore and memorize.
Not really lazy, no
But if all of your friends listen to Genre X exclusively, it's very difficult to find out that you like Genre Y music instead. The file-sharing apps allow you to sample music that you would otherwise not hear through local play or word-of-mouth.
The specific instance in my case is that none of my friends go clubbing and I'm too introverted to go clubbing on my own. Yet in the past few years, I've discovered that I really enjoy long-play dance tracks as good music to work to. Especially Pete Tong's weekly Essential Mix. Definitely music that I would not have found out otherwise.
Nah... since I'm on good terms with the landlord, I just had them run 3 new circuits to my office (it's an old building) when they re-wired the main panel.
Otherwise, I think I'd be focusing on Mini-ITX gear and laptops.
Same here, so instead we had "Rook" cards (again, 4 suits or colors, rook cards instead of jokers, and no J/Q/K/A cards but instead I think the cards were simply numbered 1 to 13).
Grandparents had pinocchle(?) sets which were considered to be okay because you can't play poker with them.
Personally, I've only ever played poker once, and instead of cash we dug out a box of baseball cards and handed them around to use for chips. That was nice because no money changed hands.
Worse... given the fact that there are large swatches of flat-color, a JPEG is one of the worst formats that you can save an image like that in (even if you kick the quality way up).
That image needed to be cropped and saved out as a GIF, PNG or TIFF (e.g. a compression format that is lossless). It would have resulted in sharper edges with no blotchiness.
It bans forged headers (which is huge for me, as I get bombed by hundreds of returns every day from some moron forging my domain, plus retaliations from the idiots who know enough to be a nuisance but don't know that headers can be forged).
Hmmm, so the people who are currently using forged headers are suddenly going to start behaving and obey a new law? Why? What benefit do they gain by no longer forging headers? This does nothing to fix the issue of forged headers other then to merely say "it's a bad thing". Spammers don't care about some silly laws.
It bans address harvesting, meaning a potential end to obfuscating addresses, a huge PITA.
Again, the people doing address harvesting are not the most upstanding citizens in the first place. Might have some effect, but only on the 1% of spammers who thought that spam was a legitimate way to market a product and who actually care to follow laws.
It provides a national opt-out list!
You mean an international opt-in list? Because that's exactly what the list will be treated like outside of US borders. The only reason that the telephone opt-out list works is because (a) the sender pays for the call and (b) the phone system keeps records of every phone call. E-mail has no centrally controlling authority.
It requires a real opt-out mechanism, instead of the situation today where we're afraid to use them.
Rather naive to think that suddenly all of those spammers who are using the current opt-out links to verify addresses are suddenly going to give up that tactic.
This bill is nothing more then a placebo pill so that the masses think that congress did something. The actual effect is going to be zero-zilch because spammers already don't play by the rules.
Indeed, and the reason why I enjoy Penn and Teller is because of the service they render (humor, personality) rather then for the tricks that they do.
A bit like the open-source vs closed-source business environment, ne? One makes money on service, the other relies on secrecy.
That all depends on what laptop you buy.
The Tecra 9100 that I use full-time has a close to full-size keyboard (around 99% of the IBM desktop keyboard on my desk). Make the machine a bit of a beast that barely fits in my laptop bag as a result at 12.25" W x 10.25" D.
Touch-typing is pretty easy on the larger laptops. Plus with the little nubby mouse in the middle of the keyboard, I rarely take my hands off the home row. (I do have an external USB mouse, but find it rare that I need to resort to it.)
Heck, having the little nubby pointer available at your fingertips makes using a regular keyboard/mouse almost a throwback. Especially in a GUI environment where the developers failed to provide consistent keyboard navigation and you have to reach for the mouse to get something done. One of the reasons I miss the OS/2 v2/v3 user-interface where they spent a good amount of time making sure everything was "keyboardable".
A few options for receipts...
1) Pocket-style manilla folders which expand accordian style. They come in various widths with the 3/4" depth being common. Since they have sides (unlike regular folders), small receipts don't tend to fall out of the sides.
2) 6x9 envelopes. Advantage is that you can seal them up once you've finished out a month, scribble the month/year on them and toss them in a drawer or storage bin. You'll have to fold letter sized paper in half. Still makes a decent way to keep your monthly expense account receipts organized.
3) 9x11.5" envelopes. Same ease of use as the 6x9s, except you don't have to fold letter sized paper in half. You can probably get 6 months to a year into a single envelope. Although I have 3 envelopes per year (expense account receipts, tax-related receipts and then one for general receipts). Again, you can seal the envelope and just toss it in a drawer / file / storage bin / safe deposit box.
Monthly statements get scanned at 300dpi B&W, stored on a PGP disk and the originals get shredded.
That's pretty much what I do (seperate phone line for business, which I forward to the cell as needed)... but it took me at least a few months to learn those tricks and another 6-months to a year to get everyone else in the groove. Fortunately, since I've telecommuted from day 1 at this job I've been able to write the rules as I went along.
I'll have to take a look at BigBrother, we've been using ServersAlive and I've been dissatisfied enough over the past few years to consider writing my own package. (There's also IPCheck from Paessler that I'm looking into.)
Yes, I use a seperate phone number for business (and forward it to a cell as needed). It took close to 2 years though to convince the rest of the office that I'm pretty much not available after 6pm.
Nowadays, I might get an after-hours phone call about once a quarter, everything else manages to get done during regular business hours.
Car Radio? What's that?
My old car had a Radio/Cassette deck, into which I had plugged one of those CD-Tape adapters. After a few years, I could no longer eject the adapter and was (gasp) forced to only listen to CDs.
In the past 5 years, the only radio station that I've listened to is NPR. My new car has an MP3 CD player, so with the 10 CDs stuck in the visor and the other 20 in a carrying case, I have around 300 hours of music to listen to.
This song is just six words long
...
This song is just six words long
This song is just six words long
This song is just six words long
This song is just six words long
Couldn't think of any lyrics
No I never wrote the lyrics
So I'll just sing any old lyric
s That come to mind, child
Eh, telecommuting has it's days... (I've been telecommuting full-time for almost 4 years now, the main office is a 5 hour drive away).
/.'ing.
On the upside, I rarely get interrupted by walk-ups, most communication is via chat/e-mail (which is good because I have poor aural memory). I can listen to the music that I want, or work without and I don't have to listen to the person 3 cubes down talking about their marital problems.
The bigger benefit is that I don't have to commute 90 min/day. My 2-year old car only has 9500 miles on it. I get paid a salary that would be under-average if I worked/lived at the main office but is above-average for the area where I live.
Flexible schedule: It's near-trivial to schedule doctor appointments, etc.
Now, the downsides...
Even us anti-social hermits need some amount of face-to-face interaction. Back when I was traveling up to the main office on a monthly basis, I'd say I was a little happier. (The recession has cut trip frequency to twice per year.) I don't pick up on the undercurrents as easily (I have to specifically ask about situation X).
The self-discipline is tough... have to keep a solid routine (rise at 7am, bed at 11pm) or you'll find it difficult to meet your goals. The job needs to be something with measurable (and multitudes of) mileposts. Very easy to spend a few hours in unproductive web surfing or
Self-reliance helps, because unlike the office environment, it's more difficult to get an answer to a minor question (rather then just asking your cubemate).
Another issue is that there's no "decompression time" built into your schedule. A commute of 10-15 minutes is a good thing if you work a high-stress job because that's just long enough to set the stress aside before you get home. (Your family will thank you for that.)
The last problem is that I'm never "off-duty". When you work in a formal office environment, people are very hesitant to call if you're not in the office. (There's a social barrier.) When you're telecommuting and they always interact with you over the phone, they can't tell that you're trying to be off-duty. Learning to say "no" helps a lot though.
DVDs seem too new to trust my data to.
The current crop of DVD+/-R(W) drives are indeed about as mature as the first bunch of CD-R(W) drives were at this point. They're a bit sensitive as to which media you use and the planets have to be aligned properly. For DVD media, I only buy the major brands (Imation sells a 25-disc spindle at around $50) and I've had *mostly* good luck. Lately the drive was failing (lots of coasters even at 1x) but then I rebuilt the box and the drive suddenly became reliable again.
As to the data integrity issue... I usually burn around 3.0-3.5 Gb of data onto the DVD and fill the rest with parity data using QuickPar. Gives me an easy way to check the disc for errors that are more then the underlying RS encoding can handle and lets me possibly still recover the files.
Usually because I'm doing research on multiple topics at once...
/. is the same way... upon browsing the home page, I might see a topic that, while interesting, I know that I'm not going to want to read until a few hours have past and there are more comments. So I dedicate a window to /., and open up articles in new tabs. Sort of a "lightweight" method of bookmarking something for a few hours. Later in the day, I'll go to the tab, refresh it and then read the responses.
Window 1 is my work-related browser window and between all of the different intranet apps that I access periodically through the day, it usually has around a dozen tabs open.
When googling for something, I start a new window and then open each result that looks interesting in a new tab. That means I don't lose my place back on the google search page. I also don't spend time waiting for any one tab to load because I'm loading them in the background while I continue browsing the results list.
Another window is usually open to reference pages (e.g. MySQL documentation). Keep the first tab on the index/ToC and open additional tabs for every topic that I'm looking at.
Some Web BBS software does a poor job of keeping track of which threads that you've read in a given session. Sometimes, if you take too long to work your way through a topic list in a forum, it decides that your session has timed out and tags everything as read. So, in the case where I want to read a few dozen threads, it's quicker/easier to open each thread in a new tab, and then go through the tabs once I've finished browsing the topic list.
It's not hard to have 50-tabs open...
Hell, I posted a bug on sourceforge back in August 2003 about this (and it's a bug that's been around for far longer).
Strange pagination issues with comments
The bug got marked as closed but the problem still exists... (one wonders WTH the bug was closed).
Mmmm, I have a yahoo! address (My Yahoo actually makes a decent home page with good customization features)... used to get a spam every 3 days or so. But since late October, the amount of spam that I get has increased 10-fold (mostly porno spam).
On the plus side, only 1 of those has slipped past the spam filters in the past month... unfortunately, they also treat e-mail from Newslinx as spam (I'm constantly rescuing those e-mails from the bulk folder).