We already have several "mini-pandemic" exercises every year.... they are called "Holidays".
For the whole day millions of people stay at home and have the potential to play games over the Internet etc. (while feeling a whole lot better than if they had H1N1)
From what I have seen.... the Internet seems to be coping pretty good when millions of people take off from work all at the same time...
I just changed my programming font over from Courier New to Consolas, and I have to completely agree, it rocks! It almost makes me feel like I can read and understand the text faster.
After using the Ribbon interface, I think the analogy is more like moving the steering wheel from the shifter position to right in front of you (there are a lot of things that were messed up but at least with the new interface they got it right), and the brake pedal from the glove compartment to the shifter position (they got things 'better' but there is still room for improvement and the interface is not 'perfect' yet).
If a car company made those improvements, would you get the new version? Yes, you would have to re-learn where 'everything' is, but it still operates the same way it always did, and chances are, you will like the new placement of everything much better.
I had to restart FF, after using it for the beginning of the day (basic e-mail and slashdot surfing), now I have 5 tabs open and FF is taking up 159 MB. For me (because I open many (12+) tabs usually), it is rare for me to see FF under 100Mb
I will have to see what the memory usages for that same kind of scenario is in IE 7 I believe it should be around 80Mb.
Well I too am annoyed by this 'bug'/memory leak, and I have needed to close my browser and re-start at least once a day.
The problem with closing the browser for some people is that they may have lots of pages open in tabs at a time (one of the reasons for switching to FF in the first place). Now, you are going to argue that there is such-a-such extension that saves your tabs when you close the browser, but that is less practical when you have more than 10 tabs open at a time. I personally have around a dozen to 40 tabs open at a time every day (I do a lot of surfing), and having it force me to restart my browser is at least a 5-10 minute affair due to the number of tabs that I have open.
Essentially it should not come down to it being the user's responsability for what *I* consider a programming flaw.
On a side note: I consider this to be a serious problem. When you write a computer program that uses the malloc() command, what is the first thing that any Computer Science student learns in their programming course? Immediately use free() to free up the memory when you are done and are not using it (i.e. when you close a tab, free up the memory (yes you can close all your tabs and the memory is still being used)) otherwise you create a memory leak, which is not good. This is basic memory allocation 101. If you write a program that does have these major problems, you did not design the program correctly. Now, (this will probably start some discussion if modded high enough) I will venture that part of this problem was because the program is an open source program. (for sake of discussion) If FireFox was created by Microsoft, we would not have *any* memory problems at all because they plan and design things, and they do stringint testing to ensure that there are no memory leaks or other problems. AND to prove that it would not have any memory problems, they would have built FireFox on top of.NET, which alone, will eliminate all memory problems.
Actually I found IE 7 Beta 2 to be faster that Firefox fom most pages that I visit.
But the thing I like the best is that it isn't a memory grabbing hog like Firefox (I can use it for a bit and have 2 pages open, and it eats up 150Mb of memory. Haven't they heard of free()?).
Try the ACID test with Firefox sometime and you'll see that MS aren't the only ones with problems in this area.
I've tried the ACID test with all of the browsers and they all fail horribly. For example all of the lines are wavy and each one completely messes up the color scheme, and replaces it with pulsating psychedelic colors.
...oh... you weren't meaning the *on* ACID test....
At work I started out with a regular run of the mill mouse, and I was having a lot of pain and tingling in my sholders and arms, but when I went home and used my ergonomic Logitech MX 500, the pain would go away and I would be able to use the computer a lot more. After some fancy negotiation, I managed to get a MX 500 mouse at work, and a good chunk of the pain disappeared.
From my experience, I am never ever getting a run of the mill sub $20 unergonomic mouse again.
My ideal watch would just have an analog display showing the time. It would be powered by sunlight or some other green, non-interactive source. Its time would be set automatically, including the determination of which timezone it's in. It would have no buttons. The display would be black on white even in the dark.
I have just the watch to do that, its called a sundial. It's powered by the sun, the time is set automatically and dynamically adjusts to what timezone you are in (sun rises). It doesn't have any buttons, comes in granite grey or marble white, and best of all it comes with a 100 year guarantee.
Actually, the secret to their success is mostly the consistant interface
In my opinion, that is one of the single biggest reasons why Open Source software has not been able to capture the market. Even though the software *may* be superior (it still is up for debate), if I have to re-learn where everything is *every* single time I go somewhere else, then usually it isn't worth my time (which is more important than money), to utilize the few reasons why it *may* be superior, and so I will stick with Windows for now. For example, the most frustrating thing I have ever experienced was with the icons in Open Office. I started out with OOo 1.0, and I had to re-learn what all the icons were (because they are different from MS Office). Then I decided to upgrade to OOo 1.1 and then they changed the icons to something slightly different, and I had to re-learn everything. And then I upgraded to OOo 2.0 and they changed the icons again! and I had to re-learn everything. Consistency is key.
Opera 8.02 opened up the window, and then Mcafee antivirus caught two viruses "JS/Exploit-BO.gen", and dealt with them, but other than that, Opera continues to work fine.
could similar balloons provide cellular phone coverage and replace cell towers?
well that got me thinking... well not only could they be used for phone coverage, but who needs to have a separate chunk of hardware just to support cell communication... what about Voice Over IP for your cell coverage?....
Let's make the Nuclear control system Open Source! Just look at the advantages: anyone in the world can download it, and help out fixing bugs and making things better... unless of course you are from North Korea... or India... or Pakistan.... or.....
Oh, and I hope you don't mind having to re-compile your kernel once a week to make things work... most people won't even notice the flicker of the lights.......
Many, many times, I've used FF a ton (20+ tabs at a time), and I get FF using up to 150Mb of memory, then I start closing tabs, but FF still retains that memory (even if I close all my tabs). This is a case where there are definetly memory leaks, and where garbage collection definitely can help.
I've had both a MS Intellimouse Optical with big buttons on both sides, and a MX500, with the smaller buttons above your thumb, and I think that the MX500 is much better because I hated it when I grabbed the mouse, and acidentally caused it to click, and mess up what I was doing. By relocating the button 1/4" higher, it prevents you from acidentally clicking the buttons, but IMHO at the same time, it doesn't make it harder to click.
Slashdot Mirror
We already have several "mini-pandemic" exercises every year.... they are called "Holidays".
For the whole day millions of people stay at home and have the potential to play games over the Internet etc. (while feeling a whole lot better than if they had H1N1)
From what I have seen.... the Internet seems to be coping pretty good when millions of people take off from work all at the same time...
I just changed my programming font over from Courier New to Consolas, and I have to completely agree, it rocks! It almost makes me feel like I can read and understand the text faster.
Amen!
... So you are saying that instead of formatting as FAT32, it should be formatted as NTFS...?
After using the Ribbon interface, I think the analogy is more like moving the steering wheel from the shifter position to right in front of you (there are a lot of things that were messed up but at least with the new interface they got it right), and the brake pedal from the glove compartment to the shifter position (they got things 'better' but there is still room for improvement and the interface is not 'perfect' yet).
If a car company made those improvements, would you get the new version? Yes, you would have to re-learn where 'everything' is, but it still operates the same way it always did, and chances are, you will like the new placement of everything much better.
I had to restart FF, after using it for the beginning of the day (basic e-mail and slashdot surfing), now I have 5 tabs open and FF is taking up 159 MB. For me (because I open many (12+) tabs usually), it is rare for me to see FF under 100Mb
I will have to see what the memory usages for that same kind of scenario is in IE 7 I believe it should be around 80Mb.
Well I too am annoyed by this 'bug'/memory leak, and I have needed to close my browser and re-start at least once a day.
.NET, which alone, will eliminate all memory problems.
The problem with closing the browser for some people is that they may have lots of pages open in tabs at a time (one of the reasons for switching to FF in the first place). Now, you are going to argue that there is such-a-such extension that saves your tabs when you close the browser, but that is less practical when you have more than 10 tabs open at a time. I personally have around a dozen to 40 tabs open at a time every day (I do a lot of surfing), and having it force me to restart my browser is at least a 5-10 minute affair due to the number of tabs that I have open.
Essentially it should not come down to it being the user's responsability for what *I* consider a programming flaw.
On a side note: I consider this to be a serious problem. When you write a computer program that uses the malloc() command, what is the first thing that any Computer Science student learns in their programming course? Immediately use free() to free up the memory when you are done and are not using it (i.e. when you close a tab, free up the memory (yes you can close all your tabs and the memory is still being used)) otherwise you create a memory leak, which is not good. This is basic memory allocation 101. If you write a program that does have these major problems, you did not design the program correctly. Now, (this will probably start some discussion if modded high enough) I will venture that part of this problem was because the program is an open source program. (for sake of discussion) If FireFox was created by Microsoft, we would not have *any* memory problems at all because they plan and design things, and they do stringint testing to ensure that there are no memory leaks or other problems. AND to prove that it would not have any memory problems, they would have built FireFox on top of
Actually I found IE 7 Beta 2 to be faster that Firefox fom most pages that I visit.
But the thing I like the best is that it isn't a memory grabbing hog like Firefox (I can use it for a bit and have 2 pages open, and it eats up 150Mb of memory. Haven't they heard of free()?).
I've tried the ACID test with all of the browsers and they all fail horribly. For example all of the lines are wavy and each one completely messes up the color scheme, and replaces it with pulsating psychedelic colors.
I am downloading from work a day later, and I am getting 1073KB/sec ... it's only going to take me an hour to finish...
At work I started out with a regular run of the mill mouse, and I was having a lot of pain and tingling in my sholders and arms, but when I went home and used my ergonomic Logitech MX 500, the pain would go away and I would be able to use the computer a lot more. After some fancy negotiation, I managed to get a MX 500 mouse at work, and a good chunk of the pain disappeared.
From my experience, I am never ever getting a run of the mill sub $20 unergonomic mouse again.
I have just the watch to do that, its called a sundial. It's powered by the sun, the time is set automatically and dynamically adjusts to what timezone you are in (sun rises). It doesn't have any buttons, comes in granite grey or marble white, and best of all it comes with a 100 year guarantee.
Here is a sample log: /Default.htm - 200 Mozilla/4.0+(compatible) Referrer - slashdot.org /Default.htm - 200 Mozilla/4.0+(compatible) Referrer - slashdot.org /Default.htm - 200 Mozilla/4.0+(compatible) Referrer - slashdot.org /Default.htm - 200 Mozilla/4.0+(compatible) Referrer - slashdot.org /Default.htm - 200 Mozilla/4.0+(compatible) Referrer - slashdot.org /Default.htm - 200 Mozilla/4.0+(compatible) Referrer - 72.33.255.254 pawn yo! /Default.htm - 200 Mozilla/4.0+(compatible) Referrer - slashdot.org /Default.htm - 200 Mozilla/4.0+(compatible) Referrer - slashdot.org /Default.htm - 200 Mozilla/4.0+(compatible) Referrer - slashdot.org /Default.htm - 200 Mozilla/4.0+(compatible) Referrer - slashdot.org
....
2006-03-07 08:21:24 66.35.250.150 - 72.33.255.254 80 GET
2006-03-07 08:21:25 66.35.250.150 - 72.33.255.254 80 GET
2006-03-07 08:21:26 66.35.250.150 - 72.33.255.254 80 GET
2006-03-07 08:21:27 66.35.250.150 - 72.33.255.254 80 GET
2006-03-07 08:21:27 66.35.250.150 - 72.33.255.254 80 GET
2006-03-07 08:21:27 66.35.250.150 - 72.33.255.254 80 GET
2006-03-07 08:21:28 66.35.250.150 - 72.33.255.254 80 GET
2006-03-07 08:21:29 66.35.250.150 - 72.33.255.254 80 GET
2006-03-07 08:21:30 66.35.250.150 - 72.33.255.254 80 GET
2006-03-07 08:21:31 66.35.250.150 - 72.33.255.254 80 GET
First it was altavista then yahoo and google. Lets see who is next :)
Microsoft!!
(Ducks and hides from the inevitable comments being thrown at him)
And it took less than 50 milliseconds after the article was posted for the webserver to get slashdotted.
"Atheism is a non-prophet organization"
In my opinion, that is one of the single biggest reasons why Open Source software has not been able to capture the market. Even though the software *may* be superior (it still is up for debate), if I have to re-learn where everything is *every* single time I go somewhere else, then usually it isn't worth my time (which is more important than money), to utilize the few reasons why it *may* be superior, and so I will stick with Windows for now. For example, the most frustrating thing I have ever experienced was with the icons in Open Office. I started out with OOo 1.0, and I had to re-learn what all the icons were (because they are different from MS Office). Then I decided to upgrade to OOo 1.1 and then they changed the icons to something slightly different, and I had to re-learn everything. And then I upgraded to OOo 2.0 and they changed the icons again! and I had to re-learn everything. Consistency is key.
Unless of course it's a Sony CD....
... but you won't be able to see it anyways...
Opera 8.02 opened up the window, and then Mcafee antivirus caught two viruses "JS/Exploit-BO.gen", and dealt with them, but other than that, Opera continues to work fine.
could similar balloons provide cellular phone coverage and replace cell towers?
well that got me thinking... well not only could they be used for phone coverage, but who needs to have a separate chunk of hardware just to support cell communication... what about Voice Over IP for your cell coverage?....
Let's make the Nuclear control system Open Source! Just look at the advantages: anyone in the world can download it, and help out fixing bugs and making things better... unless of course you are from North Korea... or India... or Pakistan.... or.....
Oh, and I hope you don't mind having to re-compile your kernel once a week to make things work... most people won't even notice the flicker of the lights.......
Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD)... which is what a LOT of people will be feeling after it's implementation.....
Many, many times, I've used FF a ton (20+ tabs at a time), and I get FF using up to 150Mb of memory, then I start closing tabs, but FF still retains that memory (even if I close all my tabs). This is a case where there are definetly memory leaks, and where garbage collection definitely can help.
I've had both a MS Intellimouse Optical with big buttons on both sides, and a MX500, with the smaller buttons above your thumb, and I think that the MX500 is much better because I hated it when I grabbed the mouse, and acidentally caused it to click, and mess up what I was doing. By relocating the button 1/4" higher, it prevents you from acidentally clicking the buttons, but IMHO at the same time, it doesn't make it harder to click.