I wouldn't be surprised if other carriers do that too.
Sprint was charging $0.15 per message, and then raised it to $0.20. That of course included every message sent or received. Since my friends were only increasing the volume of messages---despite my cease and desist notices---I opted out and now receive no text messages at all.
Incidentally, most of my friends don't think much of my argument that phones should be used for voice communication, and that only email and IM (and snail mail, I suppose, though who uses that anymore?) should be used for text communication.
There's really no way to condense waste heat, without expending more energy to do it than you get from the process.
There are plenty of things that are powered by heat - indirectly, at least, but probably directly, too. It's just not referred to as "waste" heat until it's left the device and thus can't be useful [to the device] anymore. Surely there's a way to contain some "waste" heat and put it to good use without adversely affecting the efficiency of the device that generated the "waste" heat in the first place.
What kind of moron would design something like that ?
This wasn't ever meant to be permanent; we did this because a long-term construction project kept us from putting it in any of several places that would have been better. We kept the space ventilated as much as possible, but it was still very warm by midday. Incidentally, though I called it a thru-wall unit, it was mounted in a window, not in a hole that was made specifically to receive an A/C.
</offtopic>
I was just trying to make a point: there's no reason the excess heat that an A/C (or anything else) generates can't be caught and put to good use. Just because this is a bad implementation doesn't mean the concept isn't sound.
Maybe it wouldn't work very well in the A/C, but I bet it could be used externally. For a while, my parents had a large thru-wall unit exhausting into an enclosed space, and that space got very warm.
Though I'm not the official sysadmin at my place of business, I spend more time than he does managing the updates on our domain, which consists entirely of Windows machines. When critical updates are available, they're downloaded immediately. For people who turn their computers off, the updates are installed during shutdown. For people who log off and leave their computers on, the updates are installed automatically overnight, and the computer is automatically rebooted if the updates call for it. For people who also stay logged on, the computer is not automatically rebooted; instead it pops up a dialog [that won't go away] insisting they need to save their work and reboot. At home, I always use my admin account (I know, shame on me), and every time updates are available, it tells me. I install them when I'm ready, and reboot if necessary. More than one friend of mine also use the "download but don't install" setting, and then leave their computer running for weeks or months without ever installing the updates. Funny thing, they've never automatically rebooted because of it...
In the context of automatic updates, I've never had a problem. I adjust the settings the way I want them, and it behaves. I do occasionally find that a computer has automatically rebooted itself while a user was logged in. Every time that happened, either there was a blue screen error, or a power outage, or the cleaning lady hit the power button, (or the power supply failed - which happens a lot around here for some unknown reason - but then the computer's still off the next morning). Sometimes, it coincides with an update release and some updates - the ones that didn't require a reboot - managed to be installed.
If automatic updates is causing you heartache, then disable the feature and get your updates manually from update.microsoft.com. Since they're released on a schedule, it's not as if you don't know when new updates are available.
XP Pro SP2, 2K3, and presumably Vista --- The control panel lets you specify that you don't want it to install until you're ready. No auto-install -> no auto-reboot. Group policy settings go beyond that and let you schedule the auto-reboot, among other things: Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows Update
Probably not - I had to finish the sentence before coming to a conclusion that may not be what they wanted to say.
...but I doubt that will make up for movie posters that make a song and dance whenever you glance their way. They seem to be comparing the potential annoyance factor of the different technologies.
...I like being able to look at one thing but have my mouse hovering over something else. For instance when the mouse cursor has to hover over the form/control you're typing in while you're looking at something else.
Well, I can't think of any technical reason for the requirement, and I actually can't find any indication of such a requirement on their website. It may well be that the rep was just trying to sell me on the phone + internet package they were offering. (Say it ain't so...) This conversation took place a couple years ago, so I don't remember it verbatim. I didn't have or want a cell phone at the time, so I didn't object. I've since moved to a new place and now have a cell phone and a cable modem, so the details of the local DSL offerings don't affect me very much.
<rant>I will say that I think the overall quality of the DSL service was better than my current cable service, but the maximum available bandwidth is higher with cable. (My roommate insisted on cable - guess what feature he was sold on.) The DSL service only suffered when the power was out (can't use much of anything electronic anyway) or when I was running torrents; for normal usage, it was great. The cable service suffers frequently for no apparent reason; some days it might take multiple minutes to load any and all web sites. The DSL modem had a built-in router; the cable modem does not. I initially had a laptop plugged into the cable modem. When I tried to attach a router, I found out that we could only acquire a public IP address with a device using the laptop's MAC address. No amount of unplugging and resetting fixed that. Somehow the router got fried and my roommate plugged his computer into the modem - and miraculously acquired a new public IP address...after unplugging the modem. (I don't know why unplugging it worked for him - I moved it to a new room when I unplugged it, and it didn't work!) The new router is now cloning his MAC address... I wonder how many complaints they get from people who replace their computer and then can't get online.</rant>
True, you can use a phone that's plugged into the unfiltered line. In my experience, there is noise and it is annoying. I put a filter on it, and the noise went away. We've already agreed that the DSL equipment doesn't need an external filter, but I bet it has an internal filter to eliminate "noise" from the voice frequencies. (Technically, it probably has a band-pass filter that only allows the frequencies it uses.)
Power lines carry AC operating at a single frequency (60Hz U.S., 50Hz Europe). Any electrical engineer should be able to tell you how to build a simple filter to eliminate interference caused by a single frequency. I can't speak for electric fences, but I suspect they use single-frequency AC as well. In any case, I think it's safe to say that most homes don't have an electric fence close enough to cause noticeable interference. Environmental interference from other electronic devices in the home or office are the real problem, because they might generate noise on a variety of frequencies. If you have such a problem, it's possible to build a filter that eliminates the interference, as long as it occurs at frequencies outside the normal range of the device receiving the interference. Otherwise, you'll just have to build tinfoil hats for you and all your devices.
The aforementioned wikipedia article confirms this:
In cases where it is possible to run new cables, it can be advantageous to split the telephone line after it enters the home, installing a single DSL filter on one leg and running it to every jack in the home where an analog device will be in use, and dedicating the other (unfiltered) leg to the DSL modem. Additionally, I was drawing on personal experience when I made my statement. I was involved in the wiring of one DSL user's home network, and despite having half a dozen or more phones, they need only two filters. The first is where the line enters the house. The unfiltered output from that filter actually feeds two wall jacks - on opposite sides of the same wall - so the phone they plugged into one side needs a filter. =P
At least one company in my area requires an active basic phone service before they'll turn on DSL. That's what the rep told me, anyway...
Yes, the voice and data services use different ranges of frequencies for communication - the reason dial-up is limited to such a relatively low speed is that it only has the voice bandwidth to work with (3KHz, I think). You also need to install a filter to eliminate noise on your phone. Ideally, you only need to install one filter, but for this to be practical you need to have dedicated wiring for your DSL modem or home network.
...exploting the wide execution unit by predicating both branches and calculating them both. So what happens when you have more possible branches than you have execution units?
Obviously it's not a required featuer, but perhaps it just wasn't deemed to be a useful feature.
The few times I've written multi-threaded programs, I had no reason to join completed threads at the earliest possible moment. One use I can think of would be to recycle threads to process a queue. In that case, wouldn't it be better to divide the recycling management and the processing into separate threads?
I agree - CFLs typically claim to use only 25%-33% of the energy required by an "equivalent" incandescent.
While I also agree that SUVs are collectively a bad thing, for some people, an SUV is actually more efficient than the alternatives. However, some SUVs are beyond excessive.
For example, if you see a file on a "Desktop" chances are you won't see it in c:/windows/desktop and even if you do a locate it sometimes still cannot be found.
On Windows XP, files, shortcuts, and directories appearing on your desktop will almost always be located in %userprofile%\Desktop and those appearing on all users' desktops will almost always be located in %allusersprofile%\Desktop. For most, %userprofile% expands to C:\Documents and Settings\username and %allusersprofile% expands to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users
The exceptions are the My Computer, Recycle Bin, My Documents, Internet Explorer, and My Network Places shortcuts. (maybe more?) Except for the Recycle Bin, those can be enabled/disabled on a per-user basis from the Display Properties control panel. Right-click the desktop and select properties, select the Desktop tab, and click the Customize Desktop... button. The Internet Explorer icon can also be enabled/disabled from the Internet Options control panel. There may be a hack to remove the Recycle Bin, but I don't know of one - try Google if you're interested.
On Windows 98, C:\Windows\Desktop is the desktop for the default user. If you're using an actual user account, you shouldn't expect to see your shortcuts, files, and folders there. Look in C:\Windows\Profiles\username
If you name a file "a.txt" then it can get saved as "A.TXT".
That's actually not a Windows problem; that's a problem with the particular program you're using. Because it's a problem with the program, you'll never see any change by upgrading to XP, or to Vista. There are plenty of programs that don't adjust your capitalization when you save a file (but maybe none that do what your program does).
Unfortunately, because Windows is not case-sensitive, if you want to change it manually, you need to change it to a completely different name first. I believe CKRename is one program that can change the capitalization for you.
the filesystem behaves unpredictably
Would you care to elaborate on that? I can't recall a situation I've had with FAT or NTFS volumes that I couldn't attribute to someone (myself, on occasion) just not understanding how things work.
Microsoft shouldn't make it a priority to contact anybody regarding these issues. Software vendors are responsible for whether or not their programs work properly. If they need Windows to have certain capabilities that it doesn't appear to, then they need to make contact with Microsoft. At that point, Microsoft should either explain how such a thing can be done, or explain why such a thing shouldn't be done, or make it possible.
Believe it or not, simply writing a thesis does not mean it automatically gets published. As a graduate CS student myself, I know plenty of people who have written theses, but have not been published. In our department, once your thesis is completed, you get six copies bound. One goes to the university library, one goes to the department head, three go to the student's committee (advisor, reader, observer), and you get to keep one. Being published involves a review by publishers and so-called peers; not every thesis makes it through the process.
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't be surprised if other carriers do that too.
Sprint was charging $0.15 per message, and then raised it to $0.20. That of course included every message sent or received. Since my friends were only increasing the volume of messages---despite my cease and desist notices---I opted out and now receive no text messages at all.
Incidentally, most of my friends don't think much of my argument that phones should be used for voice communication, and that only email and IM (and snail mail, I suppose, though who uses that anymore?) should be used for text communication.
There are plenty of things that are powered by heat - indirectly, at least, but probably directly, too. It's just not referred to as "waste" heat until it's left the device and thus can't be useful [to the device] anymore. Surely there's a way to contain some "waste" heat and put it to good use without adversely affecting the efficiency of the device that generated the "waste" heat in the first place.
<offtopic>
This wasn't ever meant to be permanent; we did this because a long-term construction project kept us from putting it in any of several places that would have been better. We kept the space ventilated as much as possible, but it was still very warm by midday. Incidentally, though I called it a thru-wall unit, it was mounted in a window, not in a hole that was made specifically to receive an A/C.
</offtopic>
I was just trying to make a point: there's no reason the excess heat that an A/C (or anything else) generates can't be caught and put to good use. Just because this is a bad implementation doesn't mean the concept isn't sound.
Maybe it wouldn't work very well in the A/C, but I bet it could be used externally. For a while, my parents had a large thru-wall unit exhausting into an enclosed space, and that space got very warm.
Though I'm not the official sysadmin at my place of business, I spend more time than he does managing the updates on our domain, which consists entirely of Windows machines. When critical updates are available, they're downloaded immediately. For people who turn their computers off, the updates are installed during shutdown. For people who log off and leave their computers on, the updates are installed automatically overnight, and the computer is automatically rebooted if the updates call for it. For people who also stay logged on, the computer is not automatically rebooted; instead it pops up a dialog [that won't go away] insisting they need to save their work and reboot. At home, I always use my admin account (I know, shame on me), and every time updates are available, it tells me. I install them when I'm ready, and reboot if necessary. More than one friend of mine also use the "download but don't install" setting, and then leave their computer running for weeks or months without ever installing the updates. Funny thing, they've never automatically rebooted because of it...
In the context of automatic updates, I've never had a problem. I adjust the settings the way I want them, and it behaves. I do occasionally find that a computer has automatically rebooted itself while a user was logged in. Every time that happened, either there was a blue screen error, or a power outage, or the cleaning lady hit the power button, (or the power supply failed - which happens a lot around here for some unknown reason - but then the computer's still off the next morning). Sometimes, it coincides with an update release and some updates - the ones that didn't require a reboot - managed to be installed.
If automatic updates is causing you heartache, then disable the feature and get your updates manually from update.microsoft.com. Since they're released on a schedule, it's not as if you don't know when new updates are available.
XP Pro SP2, 2K3, and presumably Vista --- The control panel lets you specify that you don't want it to install until you're ready. No auto-install -> no auto-reboot. Group policy settings go beyond that and let you schedule the auto-reboot, among other things: Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows Update
"Who's going to take us seriously if we don't have a laser pointer?"
...but I doubt that will make up for movie posters that make a song and dance whenever you glance their way. They seem to be comparing the potential annoyance factor of the different technologies.
...I like being able to look at one thing but have my mouse hovering over something else. For instance when the mouse cursor has to hover over the form/control you're typing in while you're looking at something else.So we could also refer to "quantum bits" as "quits," right?
Well, I can't think of any technical reason for the requirement, and I actually can't find any indication of such a requirement on their website. It may well be that the rep was just trying to sell me on the phone + internet package they were offering. (Say it ain't so...) This conversation took place a couple years ago, so I don't remember it verbatim. I didn't have or want a cell phone at the time, so I didn't object. I've since moved to a new place and now have a cell phone and a cable modem, so the details of the local DSL offerings don't affect me very much.
<rant>I will say that I think the overall quality of the DSL service was better than my current cable service, but the maximum available bandwidth is higher with cable. (My roommate insisted on cable - guess what feature he was sold on.) The DSL service only suffered when the power was out (can't use much of anything electronic anyway) or when I was running torrents; for normal usage, it was great. The cable service suffers frequently for no apparent reason; some days it might take multiple minutes to load any and all web sites. The DSL modem had a built-in router; the cable modem does not. I initially had a laptop plugged into the cable modem. When I tried to attach a router, I found out that we could only acquire a public IP address with a device using the laptop's MAC address. No amount of unplugging and resetting fixed that. Somehow the router got fried and my roommate plugged his computer into the modem - and miraculously acquired a new public IP address...after unplugging the modem. (I don't know why unplugging it worked for him - I moved it to a new room when I unplugged it, and it didn't work!) The new router is now cloning his MAC address... I wonder how many complaints they get from people who replace their computer and then can't get online.</rant>
True, you can use a phone that's plugged into the unfiltered line. In my experience, there is noise and it is annoying. I put a filter on it, and the noise went away. We've already agreed that the DSL equipment doesn't need an external filter, but I bet it has an internal filter to eliminate "noise" from the voice frequencies. (Technically, it probably has a band-pass filter that only allows the frequencies it uses.)
Power lines carry AC operating at a single frequency (60Hz U.S., 50Hz Europe). Any electrical engineer should be able to tell you how to build a simple filter to eliminate interference caused by a single frequency. I can't speak for electric fences, but I suspect they use single-frequency AC as well. In any case, I think it's safe to say that most homes don't have an electric fence close enough to cause noticeable interference. Environmental interference from other electronic devices in the home or office are the real problem, because they might generate noise on a variety of frequencies. If you have such a problem, it's possible to build a filter that eliminates the interference, as long as it occurs at frequencies outside the normal range of the device receiving the interference. Otherwise, you'll just have to build tinfoil hats for you and all your devices.
At least one company in my area requires an active basic phone service before they'll turn on DSL. That's what the rep told me, anyway...
Yes, the voice and data services use different ranges of frequencies for communication - the reason dial-up is limited to such a relatively low speed is that it only has the voice bandwidth to work with (3KHz, I think). You also need to install a filter to eliminate noise on your phone. Ideally, you only need to install one filter, but for this to be practical you need to have dedicated wiring for your DSL modem or home network.
...exploting the wide execution unit by predicating both branches and calculating them both. So what happens when you have more possible branches than you have execution units?
...because 1.4 only has one significant digit. 1.4 has two significant digits - 1 and 4.Don't knock it until you've tried it.
Obviously it's not a required featuer, but perhaps it just wasn't deemed to be a useful feature.
The few times I've written multi-threaded programs, I had no reason to join completed threads at the earliest possible moment. One use I can think of would be to recycle threads to process a queue. In that case, wouldn't it be better to divide the recycling management and the processing into separate threads?
I agree - CFLs typically claim to use only 25%-33% of the energy required by an "equivalent" incandescent. While I also agree that SUVs are collectively a bad thing, for some people, an SUV is actually more efficient than the alternatives. However, some SUVs are beyond excessive.
...but at not quite 0.91 TiB, I couldn't help feeling gypped if I bought one of these.
On Windows XP, files, shortcuts, and directories appearing on your desktop will almost always be located in %userprofile%\Desktop and those appearing on all users' desktops will almost always be located in %allusersprofile%\Desktop. For most, %userprofile% expands to C:\Documents and Settings\username and %allusersprofile% expands to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users
The exceptions are the My Computer, Recycle Bin, My Documents, Internet Explorer, and My Network Places shortcuts. (maybe more?) Except for the Recycle Bin, those can be enabled/disabled on a per-user basis from the Display Properties control panel. Right-click the desktop and select properties, select the Desktop tab, and click the Customize Desktop... button. The Internet Explorer icon can also be enabled/disabled from the Internet Options control panel. There may be a hack to remove the Recycle Bin, but I don't know of one - try Google if you're interested.
On Windows 98, C:\Windows\Desktop is the desktop for the default user. If you're using an actual user account, you shouldn't expect to see your shortcuts, files, and folders there. Look in C:\Windows\Profiles\username
That's actually not a Windows problem; that's a problem with the particular program you're using. Because it's a problem with the program, you'll never see any change by upgrading to XP, or to Vista. There are plenty of programs that don't adjust your capitalization when you save a file (but maybe none that do what your program does).
Unfortunately, because Windows is not case-sensitive, if you want to change it manually, you need to change it to a completely different name first. I believe CKRename is one program that can change the capitalization for you.
Would you care to elaborate on that? I can't recall a situation I've had with FAT or NTFS volumes that I couldn't attribute to someone (myself, on occasion) just not understanding how things work.
If only the redundant mod didn't have negative connotations...
Microsoft shouldn't make it a priority to contact anybody regarding these issues. Software vendors are responsible for whether or not their programs work properly. If they need Windows to have certain capabilities that it doesn't appear to, then they need to make contact with Microsoft. At that point, Microsoft should either explain how such a thing can be done, or explain why such a thing shouldn't be done, or make it possible.
Believe it or not, simply writing a thesis does not mean it automatically gets published. As a graduate CS student myself, I know plenty of people who have written theses, but have not been published. In our department, once your thesis is completed, you get six copies bound. One goes to the university library, one goes to the department head, three go to the student's committee (advisor, reader, observer), and you get to keep one. Being published involves a review by publishers and so-called peers; not every thesis makes it through the process.
Chuck Norris?