I'm really much more interested in what the two browsers do when you have 25+ tabs open at one time. That's the case that's likely to have consequences for system-wide memory usage. Even more than that, I'm interested in the case where you've had the browser open for 8 days and have opened and closed hundreds of tabs and thousands of pages.
Having separate processes buys the ability to eventually close a process (when all the tabs/pages associated with it are closed) and reclaim all the resources. This is handy if there are memory leaks (with proper programming, there shouldn't be, but there *certainly* have been in Firefox -- a browser is a pretty complex piece of software). It also seems like it would be helpful for memory fragmentation: if you keep the entire browser state separated into N buckets (processes' memory spaces), then when you free one bucket, you can free every single page in it. You never find yourself in a situation where you can't free a page because some unrelated thing (that happened to call the same allocator you did) has 100 bytes of data still occupying that page.
You're right that it could lower the consequences for sloppy programming, but I don't care that much. Anti-lock brakes on my car lower the consequences for sloppy driving, but I still want them.
I agree 100% that more muscle mass leads to a higher resting metabolic rate.
However, please also consider this question: is strength training the only way to build (or maintain) muscle mass? I say that it isn't. If you do regular, intense aerobic exercise, that will have a significant effect on muscle mass as well.
If you disagree, try doing several 5 mile runs a week, so that you're completing 5 miles in around 45 minutes, and so that you're hitting 20+ miles/week. From personal experience, you are going to have some muscle mass in your legs if you do that.
And as a bonus, a good rule of thumb is that you burn about 100 calories per mile that you run. If you run 20 miles in a week, that's 2000 calories a week, which means you're losing 0.5 lb of weight every week compared to not running at all, just on the pure calories burnt while actually running.
Hmm, I agree that "Democrat Party" is not the correct terminology. And I agree that there are right-wing people who are hostile to left-wing people (just as the reverse is true as well).
But I see this allegation that it's meant as a "veiled insult", and I've heard similar stuff before, and I don't get why "Democrat Party" is more insulting than "Democratic Party". It just seems like a grammar error, like someone might have said "weightlifter class" when they should've said "weightlifting class".
Even if the client's testimony can only hurt the defense, the lawyer must allow the client to testify if the client so insists. To do otherwise would be unethical and impair the client's rights.
Not only that, but if I'm a defendant and the lawyer
doesn't want to let me testify, I can always fire
the lawyer. The lawyer, ultimately, has no power
over me. (The jury, on the other hand...)
(Of course, the best car to sleep (or fsck) in were the old Ramblers, where you folded down the front couch, and it lined up with the rear seat to become a double bed.)
Dare I say it? Reiser doesn't need to worry about fscking.
Dell already outsources just about all their manufacturing. All that will happen here is that now they can streamline the supply pipeline because they only ship x different configs instead of 100x.
They do a lot of in-house assembly still. They
don't make the individual components (video cards,
motherboards, power supplies, speakers, etc.),
but they do put them together, test them, and
then box them up. I know because I live not
far from some of the buildings where they do
a lot of it. (Specifically, the buildings
I'm thinking of are the ones on both sides
of Parmer.)
I suppose it's possible they could streamline
this away, but from what I understand, they've
already regionalized it (i.e. final assembly
in different parts of the country depending
on where it'll be shipped) specifically to
save on shipping costs and shipping time. So
it seems like it's to their advantage to do
some of this stuff nearer the spot where
they're going to ship stuff to, although I
suppose they could theoretically change their
final assembly points into distribution centers
instead of factories.
Ubuntu is just another disk image like windows xp, or vista.
Heck, if you reduce the number of hardware
customization options, you might reduce the
number of device drivers needed and the number
of different possible configurations, and it
might actually become easier to
support alternate OSes well.
I've worked with telemarketers, and the stuff people do to them is rather crazy. It's not the grunts you want to bitch at, complain to the heads of the company.
Sure I do. Not because I mean them ill-will, but because the more
miserable I can make the job, (a) the higher turnover will be
(thus causing problems for the management because of the effort
required to hire new people and the lost productivity due to
training and ramp-up time) and (b) the more money people demand in
order to do it (thus causing problems for management).
Of course, I prefer not to make anyone's life miserable if at all
possible, which is why the do-not-call list is a great thing.
And naturally this only applies when I have no realistic means of
contacting the management directly and have to make do with
providing negative reinforcement in other ways.
How often are you going to be moving a completely different 1TB onto the drive?
Whenever you do a backup. At least, whenever you do a full backup. (You can do incremental backups, but it's best to do a full one every now and then.)
Others have offered reasons why Apple didn't bother with Java (such as
wanting to maintain control or not liking its performance), but I think
there's a much simpler reason: Apple's products succeed because they
are polished. The graphic artists make sure everything looks nice, the
UI designers spend time on special touches, and there is a lot of
effort that goes into consistency and uniformity.
So, I think Apple didn't bother with Java simply because it didn't
fit in with this. They have their own UI, and Java apps either
won't look the same or will require a lot of effort to get there.
That alone is enough to make Apple say "why bother?" when
it already has one language that does the job.
Maybe not, but there's something your highway authority can do about it: Adopt German rules. Passing on the right gets you a ticket; driving on the left without passing gets you a ticket.
We already have those rules. At least in Texas, we do. There are big signs
on the highways that say "LEFT LANE FOR PASSING ONLY". People ignore them.
Also, it is illegal to pass on the right. But people do it all the
time because the people illegally camped out in the left lane make
it impractical not to.
Though I've never been to Germany, I've heard they take the enforcement
much more seriously over there. Perhaps that's what we need here.
It seems very clear to me why Sony thinks a race to the bottom is bad. They argue that by forcing manufacturers, who already have thin margins to cut their margins even further by creating cheaper and cheaper commodity hardware, it will limit the likelihood of manufacturers investing in high-margin, high-value, cutting edge hardware
Or maybe they just know that, because of differences in their economies, Korea and China can
manufacture things for cheaper than Japan can. Obviously, a Japanese company can move
their manufacturing to China, but they probably don't want to. (On the other hand, maybe
I'm behind the times and they already have to some extent?)
If Obama is elected - "I haven't had enough time in four years to change anything, so elect me again".
This could happen. God knows, stuff like it has happened over and over
and over again in the past. But I'm optimistic for 3 reasons:
We have a Democratic majority in the House, and a slight Democratic
majority in the Senate. It could stay that way while Obama is in
office (if he wins).
Even if not, Obama seems pretty good at finding a way to do something
constructive and work with people who have differing viewpoints.
This really helps when you're trying to get things done.
Obama seems to get it. He has already stated explicitly on multiple
occasions that he is opposed to warrantless wiretaps. And he said
this in his appearance at Google's HQ: "Part of my job as the next
President is to break the fever of fear that has been exploited
by this Administration." (Emphasis mine.)
So, there are no guarantees, of course, but on the other hand, I'm
not going to get too cynical about it, because, for once,
I could actually see things in politics/government taking a turn
for the better. Which is really damned surprising to me, but I'll
take it, for sure.
If you had been handed a copy of the Patriot Act when the bill was introduced, would you have had time to read it cover to cover before it was voted on?
Yes, I would like to think I would have made time, because the
Patriot Act is goddamned important. It was obviously a
landmark act, and it is obviously controversial. If there's a short
list of acts you should take the time to read, it'd be near
the top of the that list.
I'm reminded of the chapter from
"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" about when the school
district (or state?) textbook committee thought they needed
to bolster science education, so they invited Dr. Feynman to be
part of the textbook selection process. He shocked them all
by having several shelf-feet of proposed textbooks delivered
to his house, and then actually reading them! Who else but
a great physicist could have thought of such a landmark
method of reviewing books?
Obama is naive, compassionate, charismatic, and idealistic - just
the kind of change in leadership this country needs.
The crazy thing about Obama is that I have this notion (which
feels fairly ridiculous but may not be entirely crazy) that if
he gets elected, it could play out a little bit like a
real-life version of
Mr. Smith
Goes to Washington. The guy wants to open stuff up
and put as much as possible on C-SPAN and on the Internet.
And check out these words from his
visit to Google. He was asked about Guantanamo, and
he said:
Guantanamo, that's easy.
Close down Guantanamo, restore habeus corpus, say 'no' to
renditions, 'no' to [warrantless] wiretaps. Part of
my job as the next
president is to break the fever of fear that has been
exploited by this administration that... we're told that
we should be afraid of terrorists, and immigrants, and each
other, and it becomes the means by which our civil liberties
are subverted, our values are distorted; we start hearing our
attorney general nominee not being certain as to whether
simulated drownings are torture. That's not who we are, as
Americans.
He's exactly right about fear. People say "sex sells", and,
sure, that's true, but I say people give short shrift to fear
by not including it too, because fear sells just as well.
Listen to a radio commercial for an automotive brake repair
shop sometime to see how fear is used to try to get you to
part with your money. I'm not that cynical about Bush, and
I think he may not be using fear to intentionally manipulate
the public, but what I believe is worse: I believe
that Bush has actually lost perspective and bought into the
fear himself. And so has much of the rest of the nation. So
I think Obama's imagery is excellent: fear is an illness, and
it has been long enough that it's time for the fever to
break, and for us as a nation to get better.
rewriteability. You don't have to erase a block to change a single byte. It's more like RAM or hard disks in that respect.
While I don't disagree with your point overall, isn't that exactly unlike a hard disk? On a hard disk, you
must rewrite an entire sector to change a byte, and not only that,
you must wait until the platter spins around to the right spot
again in order to do it.
here's a story about 2 very non-geek things apparently in
conflict with each other. weird.
I know you're not really being serious, but I'm still having hard time
understanding how you'd even have the perception that sports and religion
are in conflict. Growing up going to church, sports analogies were a
regular part of sermons, and then of course there are church baseball
leagues and organizations like FCA
and Kamp Kanakuk, and even the
YMCA (the "C" stands for
"Christian"). And there was the
John 3:16 guy at football games and
other sporting events, and half of the guys that score touchdowns in
the NFL do the little kneeling-in-prayer celebration in the end-zone.
Is there any sphere of public life that's more friendly to
Christianity than sports, or any leisure activity that Christianity
encourages more than sports?
From a business perspective, I think Microsoft has to fuck with Yahoo. The company's profit margins have been falling hand over fist for the last couple of years, and they've got way to much bloat, as evidenced by the fact that they will have to lay off 1000 people this year.
From a business perspective, I think somebody has to "fuck with Yahoo", but I don't think Microsoft is necessarily qualified to do it right. Microsoft and Yahoo compete directly in the same market (online search/portal), and Microsoft has more resources to put behind their efforts, but Yahoo has double the market share of Microsoft. Translation: Yahoo is doing kinda badly, but Microsoft is doing worse. Yahoo does not necessarily have a winning strategy, but Microsoft doesn't either. Change is probably necessary, but there is little evidence to point to the idea that Yahoo would be better off with Microsoft in control than some other alternative.
So, if they steal a document then it's identity theft, but if they create a false document using accurate information, then it's not identity theft?
IMHO, the phrase "identity theft" is not very meaningful. I'd say that if they steal a document and use it to take some money from you, then they've stolen a document and committed fraud. But if they create a false document using accurate information they got legally, and use the false document to take some money from you, then it's just fraud.
The only security you have, is that it's difficult to complete these kinds of transactions anonymously. Bank fraud is a big deal if you are caught.
This is the big difference between what I call the old and new approaches
to security.
In the old days, there were no computers, and virtually all
transactions were performed manually by a human being.
There was therefore usually a way to make sure only trusted
people were performing the transactions, and in any case,
even if the person was not trusted, there were usually two
parties involved, which meant if someone person did something
wrong during a transaction, there was usually an automatic
eyewitness (the other person involved in the transition).
With such assumptions, strong penalties (jail time, etc.)
as a deterrent were an effective means to achieve the
desired security.
Fast forward to the present time, and transactions are done
automatically. Usually, there is nobody to witness them.
They are invisible. Bad things are still just as illegal,
but transactions don't require the physical presence of
two people in the same place (and there are zillions more
transactions taking place), so the old means of providing
security no longer works. But we keep trying to apply it
anyway, because people don't like to re-think how things
have been done for centuries.
The new way of providing security, often used on computers,
is to shift from making bad things feasible but very
undesirable
(as in the case where you can physically pull off the fraud
but you'll likely get caught) to making them not feasible.
This latter approach is the approach usually used in computer
security, and it's what we need to shift to if we are to protect
our identities (and other personal, private information).
Slashdot Mirror
I'm really much more interested in what the two browsers do when you have 25+ tabs open at one time. That's the case that's likely to have consequences for system-wide memory usage. Even more than that, I'm interested in the case where you've had the browser open for 8 days and have opened and closed hundreds of tabs and thousands of pages.
Having separate processes buys the ability to eventually close a process (when all the tabs/pages associated with it are closed) and reclaim all the resources. This is handy if there are memory leaks (with proper programming, there shouldn't be, but there *certainly* have been in Firefox -- a browser is a pretty complex piece of software). It also seems like it would be helpful for memory fragmentation: if you keep the entire browser state separated into N buckets (processes' memory spaces), then when you free one bucket, you can free every single page in it. You never find yourself in a situation where you can't free a page because some unrelated thing (that happened to call the same allocator you did) has 100 bytes of data still occupying that page.
You're right that it could lower the consequences for sloppy programming, but I don't care that much. Anti-lock brakes on my car lower the consequences for sloppy driving, but I still want them.
I agree 100% that more muscle mass leads to a higher resting metabolic rate.
However, please also consider this question: is strength training the only way to build (or maintain) muscle mass? I say that it isn't. If you do regular, intense aerobic exercise, that will have a significant effect on muscle mass as well.
If you disagree, try doing several 5 mile runs a week, so that you're completing 5 miles in around 45 minutes, and so that you're hitting 20+ miles/week. From personal experience, you are going to have some muscle mass in your legs if you do that.
And as a bonus, a good rule of thumb is that you burn about 100 calories per mile that you run. If you run 20 miles in a week, that's 2000 calories a week, which means you're losing 0.5 lb of weight every week compared to not running at all, just on the pure calories burnt while actually running.
Hmm, I agree that "Democrat Party" is not the correct terminology. And I agree that there are right-wing people who are hostile to left-wing people (just as the reverse is true as well).
But I see this allegation that it's meant as a "veiled insult", and I've heard similar stuff before, and I don't get why "Democrat Party" is more insulting than "Democratic Party". It just seems like a grammar error, like someone might have said "weightlifter class" when they should've said "weightlifting class".
Not only that, but if I'm a defendant and the lawyer doesn't want to let me testify, I can always fire the lawyer. The lawyer, ultimately, has no power over me. (The jury, on the other hand...)
Dare I say it? Reiser doesn't need to worry about fscking.
They do a lot of in-house assembly still. They don't make the individual components (video cards, motherboards, power supplies, speakers, etc.), but they do put them together, test them, and then box them up. I know because I live not far from some of the buildings where they do a lot of it. (Specifically, the buildings I'm thinking of are the ones on both sides of Parmer.)
I suppose it's possible they could streamline this away, but from what I understand, they've already regionalized it (i.e. final assembly in different parts of the country depending on where it'll be shipped) specifically to save on shipping costs and shipping time. So it seems like it's to their advantage to do some of this stuff nearer the spot where they're going to ship stuff to, although I suppose they could theoretically change their final assembly points into distribution centers instead of factories.
Heck, if you reduce the number of hardware customization options, you might reduce the number of device drivers needed and the number of different possible configurations, and it might actually become easier to support alternate OSes well.
Huh?
Sure I do. Not because I mean them ill-will, but because the more miserable I can make the job, (a) the higher turnover will be (thus causing problems for the management because of the effort required to hire new people and the lost productivity due to training and ramp-up time) and (b) the more money people demand in order to do it (thus causing problems for management).
Of course, I prefer not to make anyone's life miserable if at all possible, which is why the do-not-call list is a great thing. And naturally this only applies when I have no realistic means of contacting the management directly and have to make do with providing negative reinforcement in other ways.
Whenever you do a backup. At least, whenever you do a full backup. (You can do incremental backups, but it's best to do a full one every now and then.)
Well, Emacs does have one of the original multitouch interfaces...
(Doesn't it stand for "Escape Meta Alt Control Shift"?)
Others have offered reasons why Apple didn't bother with Java (such as wanting to maintain control or not liking its performance), but I think there's a much simpler reason: Apple's products succeed because they are polished. The graphic artists make sure everything looks nice, the UI designers spend time on special touches, and there is a lot of effort that goes into consistency and uniformity.
So, I think Apple didn't bother with Java simply because it didn't fit in with this. They have their own UI, and Java apps either won't look the same or will require a lot of effort to get there. That alone is enough to make Apple say "why bother?" when it already has one language that does the job.
We already have those rules. At least in Texas, we do. There are big signs on the highways that say "LEFT LANE FOR PASSING ONLY". People ignore them. Also, it is illegal to pass on the right. But people do it all the time because the people illegally camped out in the left lane make it impractical not to.
Though I've never been to Germany, I've heard they take the enforcement much more seriously over there. Perhaps that's what we need here.
Or maybe they just know that, because of differences in their economies, Korea and China can manufacture things for cheaper than Japan can. Obviously, a Japanese company can move their manufacturing to China, but they probably don't want to. (On the other hand, maybe I'm behind the times and they already have to some extent?)
A couple more you could ask about: (1) the release process, and (2) if the company uses its own software, the configuration management process.
This could happen. God knows, stuff like it has happened over and over and over again in the past. But I'm optimistic for 3 reasons:
So, there are no guarantees, of course, but on the other hand, I'm not going to get too cynical about it, because, for once, I could actually see things in politics/government taking a turn for the better. Which is really damned surprising to me, but I'll take it, for sure.
Luckily, UT has its own power plant.
Um, isn't a watt a joule per second?
Yes, I would like to think I would have made time, because the Patriot Act is goddamned important. It was obviously a landmark act, and it is obviously controversial. If there's a short list of acts you should take the time to read, it'd be near the top of the that list.
I'm reminded of the chapter from "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" about when the school district (or state?) textbook committee thought they needed to bolster science education, so they invited Dr. Feynman to be part of the textbook selection process. He shocked them all by having several shelf-feet of proposed textbooks delivered to his house, and then actually reading them! Who else but a great physicist could have thought of such a landmark method of reviewing books?
The crazy thing about Obama is that I have this notion (which feels fairly ridiculous but may not be entirely crazy) that if he gets elected, it could play out a little bit like a real-life version of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. The guy wants to open stuff up and put as much as possible on C-SPAN and on the Internet. And check out these words from his visit to Google. He was asked about Guantanamo, and he said:
He's exactly right about fear. People say "sex sells", and, sure, that's true, but I say people give short shrift to fear by not including it too, because fear sells just as well. Listen to a radio commercial for an automotive brake repair shop sometime to see how fear is used to try to get you to part with your money. I'm not that cynical about Bush, and I think he may not be using fear to intentionally manipulate the public, but what I believe is worse: I believe that Bush has actually lost perspective and bought into the fear himself. And so has much of the rest of the nation. So I think Obama's imagery is excellent: fear is an illness, and it has been long enough that it's time for the fever to break, and for us as a nation to get better.
While I don't disagree with your point overall, isn't that exactly unlike a hard disk? On a hard disk, you must rewrite an entire sector to change a byte, and not only that, you must wait until the platter spins around to the right spot again in order to do it.
I know you're not really being serious, but I'm still having hard time understanding how you'd even have the perception that sports and religion are in conflict. Growing up going to church, sports analogies were a regular part of sermons, and then of course there are church baseball leagues and organizations like FCA and Kamp Kanakuk, and even the YMCA (the "C" stands for "Christian"). And there was the John 3:16 guy at football games and other sporting events, and half of the guys that score touchdowns in the NFL do the little kneeling-in-prayer celebration in the end-zone. Is there any sphere of public life that's more friendly to Christianity than sports, or any leisure activity that Christianity encourages more than sports?
From a business perspective, I think somebody has to "fuck with Yahoo", but I don't think Microsoft is necessarily qualified to do it right. Microsoft and Yahoo compete directly in the same market (online search/portal), and Microsoft has more resources to put behind their efforts, but Yahoo has double the market share of Microsoft. Translation: Yahoo is doing kinda badly, but Microsoft is doing worse. Yahoo does not necessarily have a winning strategy, but Microsoft doesn't either. Change is probably necessary, but there is little evidence to point to the idea that Yahoo would be better off with Microsoft in control than some other alternative.
IMHO, the phrase "identity theft" is not very meaningful. I'd say that if they steal a document and use it to take some money from you, then they've stolen a document and committed fraud. But if they create a false document using accurate information they got legally, and use the false document to take some money from you, then it's just fraud.
This is the big difference between what I call the old and new approaches to security.
In the old days, there were no computers, and virtually all transactions were performed manually by a human being. There was therefore usually a way to make sure only trusted people were performing the transactions, and in any case, even if the person was not trusted, there were usually two parties involved, which meant if someone person did something wrong during a transaction, there was usually an automatic eyewitness (the other person involved in the transition). With such assumptions, strong penalties (jail time, etc.) as a deterrent were an effective means to achieve the desired security.
Fast forward to the present time, and transactions are done automatically. Usually, there is nobody to witness them. They are invisible. Bad things are still just as illegal, but transactions don't require the physical presence of two people in the same place (and there are zillions more transactions taking place), so the old means of providing security no longer works. But we keep trying to apply it anyway, because people don't like to re-think how things have been done for centuries.
The new way of providing security, often used on computers, is to shift from making bad things feasible but very undesirable (as in the case where you can physically pull off the fraud but you'll likely get caught) to making them not feasible. This latter approach is the approach usually used in computer security, and it's what we need to shift to if we are to protect our identities (and other personal, private information).