Not just the Dock. It causes any app or system process that asks for a non-system font to freeze. This includes SystemUIServer and virtually any application that displays text.
You can fix the problem by 1) quitting FEX and 2) force-quitting and relaunching affected processes, including the Dock and SystemUIServer.
Used ThinkPad X31, if you can find one in good shape. Tiny and rugged as hell. Replace the hard drive with a new one (just to make sure it will last through your trip) and you should be good to go.
Bring a small external DVD burner to burn your DVDs. You can leave that behind with less fear than the whole laptop.
Don't buy a ThinkPad X4x -- they use the cheesy iPod-style 1.8" hard drives.
I've never yet come across blocked SSL ports. On the other hand, I've dropped two email providers because they either refused to provide SMTP-over-SSL support or b0rk3d it too badly to use.
Of course, any reasonable email provider (such as the one I'm using now) will have an SMTP server that will do SMTP-over-SSL on port 80, just to make sure there's never a problem in airports, etc.
No, a properly managed company would allow users to work when they want to the greatest extent possible. Don't assume that everyone prefers the same hours you do.
And for most positions, there's no need to make each physical box remotely accessible to allow people to work whenever and wherever they like, just a remote home directory for each user.
Back on topic, I think users can be given some input; the key is to make them think about the issue. Run a script that asks each user when his or her PC should shut off for the night. Then, if the PC has been idle for less than 5 minutes at that shutoff time, wait another half hour. This way, the guy who is most productive working from 2 p.m. until midnight can still save energy by having his computer turn off at 2 a.m.
It's not just Apple Mail. Many clients have had this ability for a long time. Nevertheless, smart mailboxes aren't quite equivalent to arbitrary tagging.
Nevertheless, I don't get the gmail religion either. The UI may be one of the best AJAX UIs out there, but it's still a web interface. Even a bad desktop client is more responsive and more pleasant to use given any sort of real-life internet connection (i.e. not the one a Google dev has at work).
Web interfaces are setting back usability by several years.
Yes, they should just have the don't do anything wrong rule. If you do something wrong, you get fined a variable amount, depending on the indiscretion. I don't know why this is so hard for people to get to grips with? They could extend this world to all law, not just business law. Seems simpe to me?
Thanks for the best laugh of my week. Sorry I have no mod points to mod you up.
It really is pretty pathetic watching geeks who know nothing about law or business trying to debate Sarbanes-Oxley with no information.
A. We can't afford another bill, no matter how "cheap" other people claim it to be.
My post was unclear. Sorry about that.
What I am saying is that you should replace your landline with a cell phone. Get rid of the landline bill altogether and replace it with a (probably lower, if you're not a heavy phone user) cell phone bill.
B. We're sick to death of overhearing half of loud inconsiderate conversations on the bus, waiting for the bus, on the streat, in line at the store, etc. and can't fathom being that willfully obtuse to our fellow man.
Why does carrying a cell phone imply that you'll engage in these behaviors? That's like saying that because I have a mouth I'm going to loudly belch in public.
There's a reason this growth has happened and will continue.
Developing countries are going straight to cell networks rather than bothering with landlines. The infrastructure is far cheaper (no last-mile problem) andthe technology is more convenient for users. That's a win-win if ever there was one.
As still-mostly-undeveloped areas in Africa, Asia, and South America continue making progress, so will this industry. Time to go buy some stock.
And for those Luddites proudly proclaiming their cellphone-free status: Your position is nonsense. The cell phone is cheaper than your landline (if you get the right plan). And it comes with the ability to carry it, if you like. Here's a hint: you don't have to carry it all the time, and you don't have to have the phone or the ringer on if you don't want to. I think you all are just being willfully obtuse because you don't like the kind of people you associate with cellphones.
I haven't had a landline in nine years, since I got rid of dialup. I just can't see the point.
Maybe I'm just environmentally irredeemable, but I'm not willing to go to that inconvenience to save ~2 watts (when, and only when, the computer is plugged in, which it often isn't). Being able to open my laptop and have it instantly ready for me is a major benefit, particularly when I'm going to classes or meetings.
I use my laptop a good portion of the time that I'm awake. It's my only personal computer right now, and it's vastly more capable than the systems in my office. When I'm not using it, it's on standby, whether on battery or AC power. My MacBook Pro lasts about 3-4 days on standby. That is a downgrade from my old PowerBook G4, which lasted over a week on standby. (The difference is probably explained by the presence of more (2GB) faster (667MHz) RAM.) In other words, standby is not using much power.
Memory hogging monsters they are, but Firefox and Word all this particular system is used for. I expect the majority of XP users out there, since XP is more dominant on the corporate desktop than anywhere else, need a web browser, Microsoft Office, and not much else. I've never used an XP system with 384MB (although, strangely enough, my main Mac had 384MB back in the early G3 days). It might be adequate for Word and Firefox, but based on the performance of a 512MB system, I'm not convinced.
I have a 256MB XP SP2 system, basically stock, in my office. Your definition of "acceptable" and mine are very different. Simply having Firefox and Word open, with a couple windows each, and swapping between the two causes pageouts and enormous delays.
XP is acceptable for basic use with 512MB. Not 256MB, IMHO.
Now Vista, on the other hand, doesn't even seem truly happy in 1GB. I have 1GB and 2GB Vista systems that I use, both with reasonable or better CPU power. The 1GB system is slow and prone to pauses. The 2GB system runs just fine; in 2GB I'm perfectly happy working in Vista, once it finishes its initial indexing operation. The security improvements are nice, and the interface is prettier and more effective than XP's godawful nightmare by a significant margin, but I really don't see enough improvement to justify 4x higher memory requirements. Of course, when 2GB of RAM costs under $150, I guess it doesn't matter that much.
... and my Macbook Pro will come out of standby in about 1 second (plus however long the wireless handshake takes). Plus, it's reliable enough that if I put it into standby I *know* it will come out. I basically never reboot or hibernate. No need to futz around and remove functionality just so I can open my laptop and be working more quickly.
Why haven't either Microsoft or the makers of any Linux distro been able to get standby right? Mac notebooks have been like this since OS X came out in 2001.
Wait until they have to get a job....
IMing "OMG - did u c Larry - teh gay!" will only get you fired.
Have you ever actually IMed at work? It can be very, very useful. More convenient than interrupting the workflow to use the phone, and many of us can type far faster than we can speak. You *can* use the protocol to say things professionally.
billl: are you turning in your tps report today?
peter: yes. give me 30 mins
billl: good. that's terrific, ok?
billl: oh, make sure to put a cover page
peter: ok
For most of what I do I expect an immediate response
This is why I feel ambivalent at best about supplanting email with IM/SMS/whatever else.
I don't think it's reasonable to expect everyone around me to respond immediately, and I don't appreciate it when other people expect that of me for no good reason. Email, as it has developed, is nice to use because the expected response time (usually within a few hours, unless there's clearly a reason it needs to be sooner) strikes a good balance between being able to get stuff done and allowing recipients a little bit of leeway over their schedules and priorities.
Is everything you need "for most of what you do," not just the occasional emergency, really so urgent that a response within a few hours is inadequate? If your answer is yes, I think either you are 1) planning badly, so you are too close to deadlines; 2) overestimating your own importance, or 3) an air or rail traffic controller.
Eh. They didn't suck then either, at least not compared to the alternatives (DOS, no Windows yet).
The time when they sucked relative to the competition was much later... the late '90s and early 2000s, from the introduction of Windows 98 until the introduction of OS X 10.2. During that time OS 8/9 were simply behind the competition and the early variants of OS X performed so poorly as to be virtually unusable (and had very little software available to boot).
Now we're back to 1986... Mac OS doesn't suck anymore. (Yeah, I know, every OS has strengths and weaknesses. But, broadly speaking, on the desktop it's competitive to superior, and in most server applications it's competitive.) And the trolls are still saying the same stuff they were then.
Wow. Our lovely tag trolls have been forced to go all the way back to 1986.
I remember the endless "macs sux"... "dos sux"... repeat ad nauseam flamefests on BBSes. Evidently nothing has changed since we were all 8 and had nothing better to do than keep our parents from using the phone.
Seriously, people, if you don't want to hear about Mac OS X, is it really that hard to turn off the Apple stories in your/. preferences?
But then the insecure nerds who think 1) anything pretty is automatically less capable and 2) that they are more developed because they refuse to spend even a cent on styling wouldn't have any way to feel superior.
Interesting you say that. My observation is based on the state of the older buildings, including all those ugly three-deckers. I've lived in a couple myself and have friends who live in quite a few more. We have all run into problems with failing structures and systems, to a much greater degree than I have in other places I've lived (Washington D.C., Virginia, Seattle, Portland, and a couple cities in Europe). Now I live in a converted prewar factory, which is the first place I've lived in Boston that didn't have extensive problems. (And even here, I've had wall water damage related to improper installation of a central air conditioning unit.)
And it's not just building construction. The T is a disaster compared with other subway systems all over the world. Yes, it's old, but so are others, and it's in worse shape than any of them. Drive in the brand-new Big Dig tunnels, or on any freshly redone Boston street, and then go drive in the relatively new I-90 tunnels in Seattle (to choose but one example). The workmanship is not even in the same league. My theory is that people in Boston just haven't been exposed to good workmanship and don't value it that highly.
TFA says MIT also sued Skanska, the GC. I'd be curious to know how much of the fault lies with Skanska and its subcontractors.
I live in Cambridge (actually about 4 blocks from the building in question). If there's one thing that's universally true in the Boston area, it's that the quality of construction is exceedingly shoddy. People don't know how to build things well here.
Usually, at levels this high, executives who misbehave are quietly asked to resign. The fact that his termination was this public and graceless tells me he did something pretty egregious, because Microsoft apparently wants to not just get rid of him but warn other corporations not to hire him. Misappropriation of corporate funds, in some way, seems the most likely candidate to me.
Please note I'm not informed at all, just speculating.
At least on a Mac, you can have iTunes import songs dropped into a folder by setting up a folder action to trigger an AppleScript. One of iTunes's strengths, on the Mac, is that it's quite scriptable.
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Not just the Dock. It causes any app or system process that asks for a non-system font to freeze. This includes SystemUIServer and virtually any application that displays text.
You can fix the problem by 1) quitting FEX and 2) force-quitting and relaunching affected processes, including the Dock and SystemUIServer.
Used ThinkPad X31, if you can find one in good shape. Tiny and rugged as hell. Replace the hard drive with a new one (just to make sure it will last through your trip) and you should be good to go.
Bring a small external DVD burner to burn your DVDs. You can leave that behind with less fear than the whole laptop.
Don't buy a ThinkPad X4x -- they use the cheesy iPod-style 1.8" hard drives.
Just freezes Safari/OmniWeb. No downloaded files or permanent damage. Too bad about those 26 tabs you had open, though.
I've never yet come across blocked SSL ports. On the other hand, I've dropped two email providers because they either refused to provide SMTP-over-SSL support or b0rk3d it too badly to use.
Of course, any reasonable email provider (such as the one I'm using now) will have an SMTP server that will do SMTP-over-SSL on port 80, just to make sure there's never a problem in airports, etc.
No, a properly managed company would allow users to work when they want to the greatest extent possible. Don't assume that everyone prefers the same hours you do.
And for most positions, there's no need to make each physical box remotely accessible to allow people to work whenever and wherever they like, just a remote home directory for each user.
Back on topic, I think users can be given some input; the key is to make them think about the issue. Run a script that asks each user when his or her PC should shut off for the night. Then, if the PC has been idle for less than 5 minutes at that shutoff time, wait another half hour. This way, the guy who is most productive working from 2 p.m. until midnight can still save energy by having his computer turn off at 2 a.m.
It's not just Apple Mail. Many clients have had this ability for a long time. Nevertheless, smart mailboxes aren't quite equivalent to arbitrary tagging.
Nevertheless, I don't get the gmail religion either. The UI may be one of the best AJAX UIs out there, but it's still a web interface. Even a bad desktop client is more responsive and more pleasant to use given any sort of real-life internet connection (i.e. not the one a Google dev has at work).
Web interfaces are setting back usability by several years.
Thanks for the best laugh of my week. Sorry I have no mod points to mod you up.
It really is pretty pathetic watching geeks who know nothing about law or business trying to debate Sarbanes-Oxley with no information.
My post was unclear. Sorry about that.
What I am saying is that you should replace your landline with a cell phone. Get rid of the landline bill altogether and replace it with a (probably lower, if you're not a heavy phone user) cell phone bill.
B. We're sick to death of overhearing half of loud inconsiderate conversations on the bus, waiting for the bus, on the streat, in line at the store, etc. and can't fathom being that willfully obtuse to our fellow man.Why does carrying a cell phone imply that you'll engage in these behaviors? That's like saying that because I have a mouth I'm going to loudly belch in public.
There's a reason this growth has happened and will continue.
Developing countries are going straight to cell networks rather than bothering with landlines. The infrastructure is far cheaper (no last-mile problem) andthe technology is more convenient for users. That's a win-win if ever there was one.
As still-mostly-undeveloped areas in Africa, Asia, and South America continue making progress, so will this industry. Time to go buy some stock.
And for those Luddites proudly proclaiming their cellphone-free status: Your position is nonsense. The cell phone is cheaper than your landline (if you get the right plan). And it comes with the ability to carry it, if you like. Here's a hint: you don't have to carry it all the time, and you don't have to have the phone or the ringer on if you don't want to. I think you all are just being willfully obtuse because you don't like the kind of people you associate with cellphones.
I haven't had a landline in nine years, since I got rid of dialup. I just can't see the point.
The age-old standby debate.
Maybe I'm just environmentally irredeemable, but I'm not willing to go to that inconvenience to save ~2 watts (when, and only when, the computer is plugged in, which it often isn't). Being able to open my laptop and have it instantly ready for me is a major benefit, particularly when I'm going to classes or meetings.
I use my laptop a good portion of the time that I'm awake. It's my only personal computer right now, and it's vastly more capable than the systems in my office. When I'm not using it, it's on standby, whether on battery or AC power. My MacBook Pro lasts about 3-4 days on standby. That is a downgrade from my old PowerBook G4, which lasted over a week on standby. (The difference is probably explained by the presence of more (2GB) faster (667MHz) RAM.) In other words, standby is not using much power.
Memory hogging monsters they are, but Firefox and Word all this particular system is used for. I expect the majority of XP users out there, since XP is more dominant on the corporate desktop than anywhere else, need a web browser, Microsoft Office, and not much else. I've never used an XP system with 384MB (although, strangely enough, my main Mac had 384MB back in the early G3 days). It might be adequate for Word and Firefox, but based on the performance of a 512MB system, I'm not convinced.
I have a 256MB XP SP2 system, basically stock, in my office. Your definition of "acceptable" and mine are very different. Simply having Firefox and Word open, with a couple windows each, and swapping between the two causes pageouts and enormous delays.
XP is acceptable for basic use with 512MB. Not 256MB, IMHO.
Now Vista, on the other hand, doesn't even seem truly happy in 1GB. I have 1GB and 2GB Vista systems that I use, both with reasonable or better CPU power. The 1GB system is slow and prone to pauses. The 2GB system runs just fine; in 2GB I'm perfectly happy working in Vista, once it finishes its initial indexing operation. The security improvements are nice, and the interface is prettier and more effective than XP's godawful nightmare by a significant margin, but I really don't see enough improvement to justify 4x higher memory requirements. Of course, when 2GB of RAM costs under $150, I guess it doesn't matter that much.
... and my Macbook Pro will come out of standby in about 1 second (plus however long the wireless handshake takes). Plus, it's reliable enough that if I put it into standby I *know* it will come out. I basically never reboot or hibernate. No need to futz around and remove functionality just so I can open my laptop and be working more quickly.
Why haven't either Microsoft or the makers of any Linux distro been able to get standby right? Mac notebooks have been like this since OS X came out in 2001.
IMing "OMG - did u c Larry - teh gay!" will only get you fired.
Have you ever actually IMed at work? It can be very, very useful. More convenient than interrupting the workflow to use the phone, and many of us can type far faster than we can speak. You *can* use the protocol to say things professionally.
billl: are you turning in your tps report today?
peter: yes. give me 30 mins
billl: good. that's terrific, ok?
billl: oh, make sure to put a cover page
peter: ok
This is why I feel ambivalent at best about supplanting email with IM/SMS/whatever else.
I don't think it's reasonable to expect everyone around me to respond immediately, and I don't appreciate it when other people expect that of me for no good reason. Email, as it has developed, is nice to use because the expected response time (usually within a few hours, unless there's clearly a reason it needs to be sooner) strikes a good balance between being able to get stuff done and allowing recipients a little bit of leeway over their schedules and priorities.
Is everything you need "for most of what you do," not just the occasional emergency, really so urgent that a response within a few hours is inadequate? If your answer is yes, I think either you are 1) planning badly, so you are too close to deadlines; 2) overestimating your own importance, or 3) an air or rail traffic controller.
Eh. They didn't suck then either, at least not compared to the alternatives (DOS, no Windows yet).
The time when they sucked relative to the competition was much later... the late '90s and early 2000s, from the introduction of Windows 98 until the introduction of OS X 10.2. During that time OS 8/9 were simply behind the competition and the early variants of OS X performed so poorly as to be virtually unusable (and had very little software available to boot).
Now we're back to 1986... Mac OS doesn't suck anymore. (Yeah, I know, every OS has strengths and weaknesses. But, broadly speaking, on the desktop it's competitive to superior, and in most server applications it's competitive.) And the trolls are still saying the same stuff they were then.
Wow. Our lovely tag trolls have been forced to go all the way back to 1986.
I remember the endless "macs sux" ... "dos sux" ... repeat ad nauseam flamefests on BBSes. Evidently nothing has changed since we were all 8 and had nothing better to do than keep our parents from using the phone.
Seriously, people, if you don't want to hear about Mac OS X, is it really that hard to turn off the Apple stories in your /. preferences?
Good question... sense wee no awl typos err cot bye spill chequers.
But then the insecure nerds who think 1) anything pretty is automatically less capable and 2) that they are more developed because they refuse to spend even a cent on styling wouldn't have any way to feel superior.
Mmm. That makes a lot of sense, since Toshiba, Microsoft, and a bunch of movie studios are *so* much more appealing than Sony.
Interesting you say that. My observation is based on the state of the older buildings, including all those ugly three-deckers. I've lived in a couple myself and have friends who live in quite a few more. We have all run into problems with failing structures and systems, to a much greater degree than I have in other places I've lived (Washington D.C., Virginia, Seattle, Portland, and a couple cities in Europe). Now I live in a converted prewar factory, which is the first place I've lived in Boston that didn't have extensive problems. (And even here, I've had wall water damage related to improper installation of a central air conditioning unit.)
And it's not just building construction. The T is a disaster compared with other subway systems all over the world. Yes, it's old, but so are others, and it's in worse shape than any of them. Drive in the brand-new Big Dig tunnels, or on any freshly redone Boston street, and then go drive in the relatively new I-90 tunnels in Seattle (to choose but one example). The workmanship is not even in the same league. My theory is that people in Boston just haven't been exposed to good workmanship and don't value it that highly.
TFA says MIT also sued Skanska, the GC. I'd be curious to know how much of the fault lies with Skanska and its subcontractors.
I live in Cambridge (actually about 4 blocks from the building in question). If there's one thing that's universally true in the Boston area, it's that the quality of construction is exceedingly shoddy. People don't know how to build things well here.
Usually, at levels this high, executives who misbehave are quietly asked to resign. The fact that his termination was this public and graceless tells me he did something pretty egregious, because Microsoft apparently wants to not just get rid of him but warn other corporations not to hire him. Misappropriation of corporate funds, in some way, seems the most likely candidate to me.
Please note I'm not informed at all, just speculating.
At least on a Mac, you can have iTunes import songs dropped into a folder by setting up a folder action to trigger an AppleScript. One of iTunes's strengths, on the Mac, is that it's quite scriptable.
Posted too soon. My last paragraph is a little too broad. It should read "...but anyone who doesn't have a backup of year-old data at this point..."