Jim Henderson wrote:
> I've tried using System Restore in the past; nice idea, but I could never 
> get it to work properly.

I have occasionally had it fail. When everything's been going for a 
while and I'm about ready to do a full backup, I usually turn it off and 
turn it back on again, to get rid of all the intermediate incrementals.

> My solution is to use VMware and take a snapshot before doing something 
> potentially bad.  No fuss, no muss.

That's how I work it with Linux.  Drop down to single-user and tar the 
whole thing up. :-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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On Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:38:43 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> I've tried using System Restore in the past; nice idea, but I could
>> never get it to work properly.
> 
> I have occasionally had it fail. When everything's been going for a
> while and I'm about ready to do a full backup, I usually turn it off and
> turn it back on again, to get rid of all the intermediate incrementals.
> 
>> My solution is to use VMware and take a snapshot before doing something
>> potentially bad.  No fuss, no muss.
> 
> That's how I work it with Linux.  Drop down to single-user and tar the
> whole thing up. :-)

I do that as well when I really need to.

Jim

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On Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:14:34 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> It's not a question of "so many features *I* don't need to use", but
>> "so many features that *most* users don't need to use".
> 
> A lot of the bloat comes from features you use without knowing it.

Well, I used to do OS management, so I do know about features like domain 
services etc - networking was/is my livelihood. :-)

> A lot of the bloat in Windows, for example, comes from domain services,
> remote management, and so on. None of that gets used by the home user.

True.  Then there's other things like MSN Messenger, which until 
relatively recently was installed, started, and you had to really mess 
around to get rid of.

> A lot of the bloat in Excel, for example, is including the ability to
> write macros in any .NET language and link them into the spreadsheet,
> and talking to a SQL server from your spreadsheet. Do you do that? No.
> Does the accounting department of a 10,000 person company use that? Sure
> thing.

Well, maybe, maybe not.  It depends on the company.  Thing is, when I'm 
operating with a database, I'll use a database program, not a 
spreadsheet.  I do a fair bit of that sort of data manipulation, but I 
find it easier to use Rekall or oobase as a SQL client to get what I'm 
looking for.

>> I don't know that 1-2-3 would be completely useless by modern standards
>> - I think a lot of tasks that people use Excel for these days aren't
>> much beyond what 1-2-3 was capable of.
> 
> 99% of *my* use is exiting CSV files. I'm hardly typical either, tho.

exiting? ;-)

Jim

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On Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:45:47 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Warp wrote:
>>   The main point is whether you were able to run X with it or not.
>> To simply use the console you could use a microwave oven. ;)
> 
> I worked on a diskless solaris machine with 4M of RAM at one point,
> swapping over the ethernet. It ran.  It took about 10 minutes to switch
> focus on the windows, but it ran. ;-)

At the university I went to, we had some of these Sun SLC workstations, a 
few 1+s, a 2, and a big rack-mounted system (I forget the model number).  
The rack-mounted system hosted the disk for the diskless stations.

We went through a phase of playing around with the DikuMUD source code, 
and ran a MUD on the Sparc 2 (which was also running Ingres, which is 
relevant because we coded a character in the MUD called 'Ingres' that was 
impervious to attacks.  You could kill it by typing "Look at ingres", and 
that was it - because our experience was so bad with the product, we had 
to take it out on someone.  Nothing like being a god character, creating 
an Ingres character instance, and then looking at it just to watch it 
die....<g>).

We only had about two dozen machines in total, and they were used for 
teaching Ada, MODSIM II, and I think FORTRAN.  We had so many students 
who loved playing the MUD that often times we couldn't free machines up 
for students who had actual homework to do.

I wrote the following program to deal with the problem:

--- snip ---

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

main()
{
	int bignum = 100000;
	while (malloc(bignum));
}

--- snip ---

(As I recall, the actual code included logic to divide bignum by two when 
it fails and try again - but this will suffice)

We could always tell when it had been run on one of the diskless 
stations, because the rack-mounted system's disks would start thrashing 
like mad.

The really neat thing about malloc'ing all the memory under SunOS 4.2 
(and probably other UNIX OSes) is that if the OS can't allocate memory to 
even open a file handle, the system just sits there - you can't find out 
what happened.  The only way out with those machines was a Stop-A restart.

Ah, the good old days....<g>

Jim

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Jim Henderson wrote:
>> 99% of *my* use is exiting CSV files. I'm hardly typical either, tho.
> exiting? ;-)

Editing.

Actually, today I told the boss "if you're going to send me a spread 
sheet with a table of file names, do *not* start the file names with 
digits."

I had a whole host of files like
  75/75-px-Fred.gif

It was, shall we say, unhappy to learn they weren't *supposed* to be 
formulas.

Speaking of which, oocalc is the most insanely frustrating UI experience 
I can remember.  *Way* pain in the butt.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Darren New wrote:

> I worked on a diskless solaris machine with 4M of RAM at one point, 
> swapping over the ethernet. It ran.  It took about 10 minutes to switch 
> focus on the windows, but it ran. ;-)

Pfft. I ran on a diskless machine with 2 MB of RAM and *no* virtual 
memory at all. It took milliseconds to switch window focus. :-P

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Speaking of which, oocalc is the most insanely frustrating UI experience 
> I can remember.  *Way* pain in the butt.

  You should demand your money back.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:

>   You should demand your money back.

If I know Sun, they'll probably honour that request. (Although possibly 
after a small admin fee...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Tue, 11 Mar 2008 20:04:44 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> 99% of *my* use is exiting CSV files. I'm hardly typical either, tho.
>> exiting? ;-)
> 
> Editing.

Couldn't resist. ;-)

> Actually, today I told the boss "if you're going to send me a spread
> sheet with a table of file names, do *not* start the file names with
> digits."
> 
> I had a whole host of files like
>   75/75-px-Fred.gif
> 
> It was, shall we say, unhappy to learn they weren't *supposed* to be
> formulas.

Ouch.

> Speaking of which, oocalc is the most insanely frustrating UI experience
> I can remember.  *Way* pain in the butt.

Huh, that's not been my experience.  What version are you looking at?

Jim

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Speaking of which, oocalc is the most insanely frustrating UI experience 
>> I can remember.  *Way* pain in the butt.
> 
>   You should demand your money back.

You're so cute sometimes.  <pat pat>

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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