"Orchid XP v8" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:491c9a27$1@news.povray.org...
>>> Damn. Now I feel silly for paying £90 for a 200 GB drive a few months 
>>> ago...
>>>
>>
>> I do hope it was gold-plated.
>
> SATA-II. Does that count?

No. Mine's also a SATA 2.

Post a reply to this message

Gail wrote:

>> OK, that's pretty impressive. Does it have RAID capability in hardware?
> 
> No. It's still a notebook. Even my desktop doesn't have true hardware 
> RAID. The motherboard drivers support RAID, but I wouldn't call that 
> hardware.

OK, neither would I.

(FWIW... doesn't Windows support RAID without special drivers anyway? Or 
is that only in the server editions?)

>> Also, does it have hardware 3D acceleration? (I still can't believe 
>> you can get that in laptops now...)
> 
> Yup. It's got a GeForce 7600 built in.

Damn. My *desktop* only has a GeForce 7900GT. o_O

My graphics card cost me about £300. I don't even want to know what you 
paid for your laptop, do I?

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

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Well, you say all that, but if I do the same operation using the CLI
> instead, it's instantaneous. Clearly this is just another instance of
> Windows Explorer being retarded. (I know on many computers, Explorer
> uses more RAM than any other process. WTF?)

I don't know any other program that can load so many 3rd party DLLs (COM
objects to be precise).

Oh, maybe iexplore.exe.
http://www.realtamadwarek.org/friends-dont-let-friends-use-ie.jpg

Post a reply to this message

On 13-Nov-08 13:00, Invisible wrote:
>>> In fairness, as I understand it the guy is an SQL Server expert, not 
>>> an Oracle expert.
>>
>> No fairness.
>> SQL Server doesn't have the dump feature that he's proposing you use 
>> (well, you can do it, but it's non-trivial). SQL Server backups are 
>> full database backups and are online backups (can be done while DB is 
>> in use) and restore with the DB in exactly the state that it was at 
>> the time of the backup
> 
> ...so, rather like real Oracle backups then.
> 
> Presumably the guy did a little researching on Oracle and found *a* way 
> to make a copy of the data, and that's what we're using.
> 
> Using a logical backup rather than a physical backup does take up less 
> disk space. However, it takes more time to backup and restore (and these 
> operations are logged transactions, and triggers can fire, etc.) Myself 
> I'd prefer a real physical backup...
> 
How much diskspace are we talking about? Remember current price is about 
€100 for 1TB and you can expect that to halve next year.

Post a reply to this message

On 13-Nov-08 19:24, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Gail wrote:
> 
>> Personally I consider any database under 100GB small. Over about 700 
>> GB is large. Huge is over a couple TB.
> 
> Well, I guess Oracle is *designed* for big stuff.
> 
> So I guess to all you guys, the 1.2 GB database I'm responsible is 
> "microscopic" then? :-)
> 
I should learn to read the entire thread before replying :(
So this will allow me to finish the computation of the price of a full 
backup: about €0.12 or less than 10 pence. Who was trying to save some 
money by not doing a full backup?

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Well, you say all that, but if I do the same operation using the CLI 
> instead, it's instantaneous.

I don't know about NT-era OSes, but I remember that for a long time, the 
CLI used the DOS 1.0 interface for deleting files, because it let you 
specify wildcards. Hence, you had one kernel call that would delete all 
the files.

If you use a UNIX-like interface, you have to do "find file, delete 
file, find file, delete file, find file, delete file, ...." So on a 
directory with a half-million files, you scan the thing a quarter 
million times on average (on ext3, at least) or you at least wind up 
doing a whole bunch of kernel calls if you have a file system that's a 
little better organized about the file layout. To be fair, NTFS and 
other tree-based directory systems have to rework the tree when you 
delete the files, so this too will be disk I/O overhead.

> Clearly this is just another instance of 
> Windows Explorer being retarded. 

Nah. It's because there's a different API for DOS 2.0 and later than for 
DOS 1.0 and earlier.

> Dude... where do you even buy that much disk space??

Fry's. Best Buy. Circuit City. Any place that sells hard drives. Go down 
to the store, shell out $500, and pick up a couple terabytes.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> (I still can't believe you can get that in laptops now...)

You can get 7.1 surround sound, mpeg encoders and decoders, and hardware 
accelerated 3D in cell phones nowadays, dear. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Orchid XP v8 [mailto:voi### [at] devnull]
> Damn. Now I feel silly for paying £90 for a 200 GB drive a few months
> ago...

You* shouldn't be allowed to purchase computer equipment without first
checking here:
http://www.pricewatch.com/

On the page for 1 TB hdds:
http://www2.pricewatch.com/hard_removable_drives/sata_1tb.htm

3 of the top 5 state in their summary that international orders are OK,
so shipping to you shouldn't be a problem.  The other two might still do
it, they just don't state it.

*And I don't mean the generic "you," I mean specifically you, Andrew.
You've made comments like this in the past about other pieces of
equipment.  Really, you could save yourself a lot of money shopping
online.

...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

Post a reply to this message

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Darren New [mailto:dne### [at] sanrrcom]
> Oh, and for S&G purposes, AT&T before the breakup had 9 major
> databases,
> the biggest of which was 320 terabytes, the next biggest of which was
> something like 290 terabytes, etc. And something like 1800 full-time
> employees writing SQL code in >million stored procedures.

"before the breakup"...

Wasn't that, like, 25 years ago?!?!?

...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

Post a reply to this message

Chambers wrote:
> "before the breakup"...
> Wasn't that, like, 25 years ago?!?!?

Yeah?  1984 was the MFJ.  (The "Modified Final Judgement", modifying the 
"Final Judgement" of 1934 or so.  The "Final Judgement" said "AT&T can 
have a monoply".  The "modification" was to amend that to say "No, you 
can't, and indeed you have to help your competitors and stop doing 
anything they already compete with you." Sort of like an idempotent 
modification.)

Oh, you mean, back when a terabyte occupied a small room? Yes, that.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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"Orchid XP v8" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:491c9f6f$1@news.povray.org...
>
> Damn. My *desktop* only has a GeForce 7900GT. o_O

I've got an 8800 in my new one.

> My graphics card cost me about £300. I don't even want to know what you 
> paid for your laptop, do I?

It was about $1800 and that was just over a year ago.

Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz
2 GB memory
2x120 GB hard drives
1x HD drive/multi-format CD/DVD read/write
17" screen

Very nice notebook. Heavy though.

Post a reply to this message

>> ...so, rather like real Oracle backups then.
>>
>> Presumably the guy did a little researching on Oracle and found *a* 
>> way to make a copy of the data, and that's what we're using.
>>
>> Using a logical backup rather than a physical backup does take up less 
>> disk space. However, it takes more time to backup and restore (and 
>> these operations are logged transactions, and triggers can fire, etc.) 
>> Myself I'd prefer a real physical backup...
>>
> How much diskspace are we talking about? Remember current price is about 
> €100 for 1TB and you can expect that to halve next year.

I have no idea how large their database is. I only know how big my one is.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> Well, you say all that, but if I do the same operation using the CLI 
>> instead, it's instantaneous.
> 
> I don't know about NT-era OSes, but I remember that for a long time, the 
> CLI used the DOS 1.0 interface for deleting files, because it let you 
> specify wildcards. Hence, you had one kernel call that would delete all 
> the files.
> 
> If you use a UNIX-like interface, you have to do "find file, delete 
> file, find file, delete file, find file, delete file, ...." So on a 
> directory with a half-million files, you scan the thing a quarter 
> million times on average (on ext3, at least) or you at least wind up 
> doing a whole bunch of kernel calls if you have a file system that's a 
> little better organized about the file layout.

Seems like it's the same amount of work to me, whether the kernel does 
it or the application does it.

> To be fair, NTFS and 
> other tree-based directory systems have to rework the tree when you 
> delete the files, so this too will be disk I/O overhead.

Um... you don't cache directory blocks, no? (Especially given that 
they're usually non-contiguous and so take a lot of thrashing to access, 
and there often heavily accessed.)

>> Dude... where do you even buy that much disk space??
> 
> Fry's. Best Buy. Circuit City. Any place that sells hard drives. Go down 
> to the store, shell out $500, and pick up a couple terabytes.

$500 seems like a hell of a lot of money to me...

But then, 1 TB seems like a hell of a lot of space too. I have 0.3 TB 
that I've never come close to filling yet.

Post a reply to this message

>> My graphics card cost me about £300. I don't even want to know what 
>> you paid for your laptop, do I?
> 
> It was about $1800 and that was just over a year ago.
> 
> Very nice notebook. Heavy though.

Damn. For that price, it *should* be nice! o_O

Still... much cheaper than a Mac I guess...

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:

> You can get 7.1 surround sound, mpeg encoders and decoders, and hardware 
> accelerated 3D in cell phones nowadays, dear. :-)

What would be the point though?

Post a reply to this message

>> You can get 7.1 surround sound, mpeg encoders and decoders, and hardware 
>> accelerated 3D in cell phones nowadays, dear. :-)
>
> What would be the point though?

Not sure about the 7.1 sound, but being able to record and view movie clips 
is pretty useful.  The point of hardware 3D acceleration is the same as for 
desktop and laptop machines, it allows you to get higher quality visuals 
than is possible in software without an insanely clocked CPU.  Pick up one 
of the latest mobile phones, you'll see that a lot have some sort of 3D game 
coming as standard (mine has 3D rally or some sort).  The graphics look like 
it's running on a PC without a 3D accelerator (no texture filtering with 
very low detail models).  I'm sure that will improve.

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>>> You can get 7.1 surround sound, mpeg encoders and decoders, and 
>>> hardware accelerated 3D in cell phones nowadays, dear. :-)
>>
>> What would be the point though?
> 
> Not sure about the 7.1 sound, but being able to record and view movie 
> clips is pretty useful.  The point of hardware 3D acceleration is the 
> same as for desktop and laptop machines.

On a 40 mm screen? Why bother?

Post a reply to this message

> On a 40 mm screen? Why bother?

Becuase you usually hold it way closer to your eyes than a typical desktop 
monitor.

Have you seen an iPhone or the wave of similarly designed phones?  They have 
480x320 pixel displays or higher, which is not so far away from what full 
size computers were once upon a time.

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:

> Have you seen an iPhone or the wave of similarly designed phones?  They 
> have 480x320 pixel displays or higher, which is not so far away from 
> what full size computers were once upon a time.

iPhone?

That's not a phone - it's a hand-held computer with built-in GSM! :-P

Post a reply to this message

> iPhone?
>
> That's not a phone - it's a hand-held computer with built-in GSM! :-P

Did you look in a phone shop recently? Most phones have large high 
resolution displays and are capable of far more than just phone calls.

I just got a new handset because my old one was really scratched and falling 
apart.  It cost just over ?200 and has a large screen, it even has WLAN 
built in!  I did look at another one that had GPS (but no WLAN) but I 
decided the WLAN would be more actual use to me than GPS.  THe one with WLAN 
and GPS was quite a bit more expensive and I didn't like the look of it.

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> iPhone?
>>
>> That's not a phone - it's a hand-held computer with built-in GSM! :-P
> 
> Did you look in a phone shop recently?

I bought a new phone just a few months ago, remember?

> Most phones have large high 
> resolution displays and are capable of far more than just phone calls.

Not in the shop I went to...



Of course, that's just it. The only way a phone can have a large display 
(or large anything else) is if the phone itself is large - and then it 
won't fit in your pocket any more.

Post a reply to this message

>> Most phones have large high resolution displays and are capable of far 
>> more than just phone calls.
>
> Not in the shop I went to...

amazon.co.uk, best selling phones for between 100 and 200 pounds (not even 
counting the high-end phones), most of the ones I see on that page have a 
screen taking up at least half of the entire handset:

1,2 & 6) LG Viewty - 3 inch 400x240
3) SE W890i - 2 inch 320x240
4) SE K850i - 2.2 inch 320x240
5) SE K770i - 1.9 inch 320x240
7 & 8) SE W910i - 2.4 inch 320x240

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>>> Most phones have large high resolution displays and are capable of 
>>> far more than just phone calls.
>>
>> Not in the shop I went to...
> 
> amazon.co.uk, best selling phones for between 100 and 200 pounds (not 
> even counting the high-end phones), most of the ones I see on that page 
> have a screen taking up at least half of the entire handset:

That'll be it then.

My phone cost me £30.

(Seriously - would *you* put £200 of equipment in your pocket and walk 
around with it?)

Post a reply to this message

> That'll be it then.
>
> My phone cost me £30.

In the trade, we call that "low-end" :-)  Most phones are sold as part of 
contracts are often worth in excess of 10x the amount you paid, even the the 
owner didn't actually pay that in one lump sum.

> (Seriously - would *you* put £200 of equipment in your pocket and walk 
> around with it?)

Of course I do, as does a large proportion of the population.  Anyway, I 
suspect if someone wanted to mug me they would be *way* more interested in 
my car keys, or my wallet, or my watch etc.  I'm not about to leave all that 
at home the whole time, so why bother with just the phone?

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> That'll be it then.
>>
>> My phone cost me £30.
> 
> In the trade, we call that "low-end" :-)

Yeah, well... I only want it so I can make telephone calls. I already 
*have* a real camera and a real music player. :-P

> Most phones are sold as part 
> of contracts are often worth in excess of 10x the amount you paid, even 
> the the owner didn't actually pay that in one lump sum.

For somebody who spends about £20/year on calls, a contract that charges 
a monthly fee of even £5 with calls on top sounds rather expensive.

>> (Seriously - would *you* put £200 of equipment in your pocket and walk 
>> around with it?)
> 
> Of course I do, as does a large proportion of the population.  Anyway, I 
> suspect if someone wanted to mug me they would be *way* more interested 
> in my car keys, or my wallet, or my watch etc.  I'm not about to leave 
> all that at home the whole time, so why bother with just the phone?

Credit cards can be cancelled - at which point they become worthless. 
Cars can sometimes be found and recovered. But a phone? Once it's gone, 
you're basically never going to see it again.

But still, it's not as bad as the £7,000 necklace I saw in John Lewis. 
Where the hell would you wear that?? o_O

Post a reply to this message

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Invisible [mailto:voi### [at] devnull]
> (Seriously - would *you* put £200 of equipment in your pocket and walk
> around with it?)

Yes ;)

...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

Post a reply to this message

> For somebody who spends about £20/year on calls, a contract that charges a 
> monthly fee of even £5 with calls on top sounds rather expensive.

Indeed, although it seems a lot of people use their phone a lot more than 
you.  At the other end of the spectrum is my boss (who has a UK phone 
contract), he recently joined a several hour phone conference by calling 
Japan from his mobile phone - while in the US.  Let's just say his monthly 
phone bill is often in 4 digits!  Mine was 350 euro the other month when I 
used the 3G connection in France as a modem to download email onto my laptop 
:-O  Data tarifs abroad are quite pricey!

> Credit cards can be cancelled

Sure, but the thief can still buy something with it worth a lot more than 
your phone, which makes it more valuable to them.  Even if you don't 
actually lose anything.

> Cars can sometimes be found and recovered.

Here cars tend to just be "exported" to Eastern Europe and then sold, nobody 
holds out much hope if your car gets stolen.  If they have the key they're 
laughing, even if they sell it for half price because it's stolen and only 
got 1 key, they are going to get a hell of a lot more for it than a phone.

> But still, it's not as bad as the £7,000 necklace I saw in John Lewis. 
> Where the hell would you wear that?? o_O

I think the better question is "who" not "where".  And the answer is people 
who earn more money than you or I :-)  The same people who drive a car worth 
100K or live in a house worth a million or two, why would they even take a 
second look at some cheap necklace for "only" a few hundred pounds?

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> For somebody who spends about £20/year on calls, a contract that 
>> charges a monthly fee of even £5 with calls on top sounds rather 
>> expensive.
> 
> Indeed, although it seems a lot of people use their phone a lot more 
> than you.

This, presumably, is why contracts still exist? ;-)

> Data tarifs abroad are quite pricey!

And slower than cooling basult, presumably?

>> Cars can sometimes be found and recovered.
> 
> Here cars tend to just be "exported" to Eastern Europe and then sold, 
> nobody holds out much hope if your car gets stolen.

Really? When my moped was stolen, they didn't have much trouble finding 
it. (Not that there was much left of it.) I guess it depends on whether 
it's stolen by bored teenagers or professional criminals.

>> But still, it's not as bad as the £7,000 necklace I saw in John Lewis. 
>> Where the hell would you wear that?? o_O
> 
> I think the better question is "who" not "where".  And the answer is 
> people who earn more money than you or I :-)  The same people who drive 
> a car worth 100K or live in a house worth a million or two, why would 
> they even take a second look at some cheap necklace for "only" a few 
> hundred pounds?

Stop. You're really making me green. With ENVY! >_<

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> Seems like it's the same amount of work to me, whether the kernel does 
> it or the application does it.

First, you've eliminated all the overhead of two kernel calls per file, 
which is something like 30% of a typical process' costs of execution.

Second, you can maintain a pointer to the file in the directory being 
deleted. (Well, on things like FAT or ext3 you could - on a file system 
like NTFS that actually rearranges the directories as you delete files, 
it might be harder.) But, in other words, instead of
   look up a file, delete the file, look up a file, delete the file
you have
   delete, delete, delete, delete

So say you have a singly-linked unsorted list of integer values, and you 
want to free up the memory.  What is faster:
   Look up "1", and unlink it.
   Look up "2", and unlink it.
   Look up "3", and unlink it....
or
   Unlink the first. Unlink the first. Unlink the first...


>> To be fair, NTFS and other tree-based directory systems have to rework 
>> the tree when you delete the files, so this too will be disk I/O 
>> overhead.
> 
> Um... you don't cache directory blocks, no? (Especially given that 
> they're usually non-contiguous and so take a lot of thrashing to access, 
> and there often heavily accessed.)

Sure. When your directory is bigger than your RAM, that doesn't help a 
whole lot.

Not that it matters - you still wind up scanning thru the blocks. See 
the linked-list example above.

> $500 seems like a hell of a lot of money to me...

Not for a business.  It's a heck of a lot cheaper than paying me to 
figure out how to do without. The computer they plugged into was $3500.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Invisible wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
> 
>> You can get 7.1 surround sound, mpeg encoders and decoders, and 
>> hardware accelerated 3D in cell phones nowadays, dear. :-)
> 
> What would be the point though?

Have you seen some of the japanese and korean cell phones? Apparently, 
personal computers aren't real big over there. They use cell phones instead.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

On 14-Nov-08 11:10, Invisible wrote:
>>> ...so, rather like real Oracle backups then.
>>>
>>> Presumably the guy did a little researching on Oracle and found *a* 
>>> way to make a copy of the data, and that's what we're using.
>>>
>>> Using a logical backup rather than a physical backup does take up 
>>> less disk space. However, it takes more time to backup and restore 
>>> (and these operations are logged transactions, and triggers can fire, 
>>> etc.) Myself I'd prefer a real physical backup...
>>>
>> How much diskspace are we talking about? Remember current price is 
>> about €100 for 1TB and you can expect that to halve next year.
> 
> I have no idea how large their database is. I only know how big my one is.
yes, you have a ten pence database. ;) Tell that to your boss and see 
how happy that'll make him

Post a reply to this message

>> I have no idea how large their database is. I only know how big my one 
>> is.
> yes, you have a ten pence database. ;) Tell that to your boss and see 
> how happy that'll make him

Oh, he won't care.

1. I'm in an inferior country, so I don't count.

2. My database is due to be decommissioned shortly.

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

Post a reply to this message

Chambers wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Orchid XP v8 [mailto:voi### [at] devnull]
>> Damn. Now I feel silly for paying £90 for a 200 GB drive a few months
>> ago...
> 
> You* shouldn't be allowed to purchase computer equipment without first
> checking here:
> http://www.pricewatch.com/

Maplin isn't the cheapest place on earth, but they provide actual 
customer service. It's worth a few percent more for that.

(They're also a real-world shop, so you can walk in, purchase something, 
and have it in your hand the same day, rather than waiting 3 days for it 
to be delivered and then waiting until the weekend so you can go to the 
post office to collect the item during their brief opening hours...)

> On the page for 1 TB hdds:
> http://www2.pricewatch.com/hard_removable_drives/sata_1tb.htm
> 
> 3 of the top 5 state in their summary that international orders are OK,
> so shipping to you shouldn't be a problem.  The other two might still do
> it, they just don't state it.

Hmm. I wonder if that's changed significantly since March...

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

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> Seems like it's the same amount of work to me, whether the kernel does 
>> it or the application does it.
> 
> First, you've eliminated all the overhead of two kernel calls per file, 
> which is something like 30% of a typical process' costs of execution.

...are you serious??! o_O

You're telling me an I/O-bound process is slowed down by the mere act of 
changing CPU mode? I thought that stuff was more or less instant!

>>> To be fair, NTFS and other tree-based directory systems have to 
>>> rework the tree when you delete the files, so this too will be disk 
>>> I/O overhead.
>>
>> Um... you don't cache directory blocks, no? (Especially given that 
>> they're usually non-contiguous and so take a lot of thrashing to 
>> access, and there often heavily accessed.)
> 
> Sure. When your directory is bigger than your RAM, that doesn't help a 
> whole lot.

Well, true, but a directory entry is about 12 bytes, so you'd need to be 
deleting several *thousand million* files, not just 3,000.

>> $500 seems like a hell of a lot of money to me...
> 
> Not for a business.

Well, no... not if it's for something important anyway.

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

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Have you seen some of the japanese and korean cell phones? Apparently, 
> personal computers aren't real big over there.

I don't know if this is actually true, but I'm told that *everything* is 
quite small in Japan. Including the people...

(I hear claims of the opposite for the USA - but I'm pretty sure they're 
exaggerating.)

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

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> You're telling me an I/O-bound process is slowed down by the mere act of 
> changing CPU mode? I thought that stuff was more or less instant!

No. When you add up all the cache misses, the TLB flushing, the 
privilege mode changes, the checking of addresses, and all that, it 
comes out to about 30% of the CPU compute-power being spent on that, 
compared to running on bare metal with all that turned off. And you're 
still talking O(N^2) instead of O(N) behavior.

> Well, true, but a directory entry is about 12 bytes,

It wasn't even 12 bytes back in unix v7 of CP/M. :-) With more modern 
file systems, the files are hashed or sorted into the directories.

 > so you'd need to be
> deleting several *thousand million* files, not just 3,000.

Uh huh.  Takes about 2 hours on the machine I have at work to delete two 
months of audio chopped into 20-second chunks. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Uh huh.  Takes about 2 hours on the machine I have at work to delete two
> months of audio chopped into 20-second chunks. :-)

Huh?? You're clearly using the wrong filesystem!

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> Yeah, well... I only want it so I can make telephone calls. I already
> *have* a real camera and a real music player. :-P

I use my cellphone to send about 6 SMS messages a week. That's all the use I
give it, why would I want a fancy phone?

I have a cheap GSM phone because my provider "forced" me to. Otherwise I'd
still be on CDMA.

Post a reply to this message

Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Uh huh.  Takes about 2 hours on the machine I have at work to delete two
>> months of audio chopped into 20-second chunks. :-)
> 
> Huh?? You're clearly using the wrong filesystem!

I said that, yes.

"""
I think on Linux it was just a combination of me picking a file system 
not really optimized for bunches of little files, combined with a 
journaling mode that's designed for utter safety rather than efficiency, 
combined with a software RAID. I probably could have improved it a bunch 
if I had an incentive to learn my options before installing things.
"""

You understand I'm talking about quarter million 1.7-meg files, yes? 
That's 2000+ deletes a minute (36/second) on an IDE drive with RAID 
going on.

Yes, I'm using the wrong file system, but it's not *too* shabby.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Orchid XP v8 [mailto:voi### [at] devnull]
> 
> Maplin isn't the cheapest place on earth, but they provide actual
> customer service. It's worth a few percent more for that.

I'm not saying you *have* to shop online, just that you should check
prices first.

> and have it in your hand the same day, rather than waiting 3 days for
> it
> to be delivered and then waiting until the weekend so you can go to
the
> post office to collect the item during their brief opening hours...)

Your post office doesn't deliver to your house?!?!?

> Hmm. I wonder if that's changed significantly since March...

Probably, I check the prices when I posted yesterday (November).

...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Orchid XP v8 [mailto:voi### [at] devnull]
> I don't know if this is actually true, but I'm told that *everything*
> is
> quite small in Japan. Including the people...
> 
> (I hear claims of the opposite for the USA - but I'm pretty sure
> they're
> exaggerating.)

We're not.

;)

...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

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>> Maplin isn't the cheapest place on earth, but they provide actual
>> customer service. It's worth a few percent more for that.
> 
> I'm not saying you *have* to shop online, just that you should check
> prices first.

OK, fair enough.

I'm just saying that prices in a real shop will always be higher than 
online.

>> and have it in your hand the same day, rather than waiting 3 days for
>> it
>> to be delivered and then waiting until the weekend so you can go to
> the
>> post office to collect the item during their brief opening hours...)
> 
> Your post office doesn't deliver to your house?!?!?

Nope.

Or rather, "not unless it fits through the letterbox".

For some reason, the box they use to send you a stick of DDR is the same 
size as the box Zazzle uses to send you 3 coffee mugs.

>> Hmm. I wonder if that's changed significantly since March...
> 
> Probably, I check the prices when I posted yesterday (November).

Clearly. I'm just wondering how much these prices move over time. Some 
things get radically cheaper, some things don't change that much.

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

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"Gail" <gail (at) sql in the wild (dot) co [dot] za> wrote in message 
news:491c8393@news.povray.org...

>> How much disk space do you have??
>
> Haven't we been over that before?
>
> Desktop:
> 1x80GB (2 paritions, OS)
> 1x320GB (2 partitions, apps and data)
> 1x160GB (1 partition, games)
>
> Laptop:
> 2x120GB drives
>
> Server:
> 1x80GB (OS and apps)
> 4x160GB in a RAID 5 config. Results in 480GB of usable space
>

And you can add just over 1 TB to that.

Went out today and bought a 1TB external (on sale!) and a 4GB flash drive, 
then went to register at the conference centre and was given a 128 GB 
external as a 'thank you for presenting' gift.

I think I might have enough storage space for a while now....

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> (They're also a real-world shop, so you can walk in, purchase something, 
> and have it in your hand the same day, rather than waiting 3 days for it 
> to be delivered and then waiting until the weekend so you can go to the 
> post office to collect the item during their brief opening hours...)

I often use amazon next day service and ship it to my office rather than 
home.

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>> Data tarifs abroad are quite pricey!
>
> And slower than cooling basult, presumably?

Ermmm, have you ever used a recent 3G data connection?  Quite similar to a 
DSL line (I think mine says max 7.2mbit, but usally it's nearer 2mbit when 
actually using it).

> Really? When my moped was stolen, they didn't have much trouble finding 
> it. (Not that there was much left of it.) I guess it depends on whether 
> it's stolen by bored teenagers or professional criminals.

Yeh, I guess if someone who mugs you randomly gets your car keys (rather 
than mugging you for the sole purpose of getting your car key) they are not 
likely to really know what to do with it, so chances of finding it might be 
higher.  They'd probably just drive it around a bit and dump it somewhere. 
To steal modern cars (without having the key) you need a lot of skill and 
knowledge, both with exactly how to steal it in the first place (you can't 
just "hotwire" them), and then what to do with it afterwards to avoid 
getting caught and actually getting some money.

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> I don't know if this is actually true, but I'm told that *everything* is 
> quite small in Japan. Including the people...

Oh no, their cell phones are definitely bigger than ours, on the whole.  The 
Japanese market prefers bigger chunkier phones with huge displays (you try 
fitting more than 6 Japanese characters onto a small low-resolution 
display!) and many many features, some more useful than others.  Like this:

http://www.japancorp.net/Article.Asp?Art_ID=5793

> (I hear claims of the opposite for the USA - but I'm pretty sure they're 
> exaggerating.)

Their cars (and trucks and whatever else you call them) seemed way bigger to 
me.  That's what I noticed the most, when some guy got out of his 4x4, and 
only when I saw that the 4x4 was higher than him (he wasn't short) did I 
realise how huge his 4x4 was.  Or when someone parked a Range Rover next to 
a few American 4x4s, and it looked tiny!  And then I saw some old woman get 
out of what looked like a really old worn-out car, it was *huge*, like take 
a Ford Mondeo and double it in every dimension (but make the suspension 2x 
bouncier).  It also said 5.4L on the back, which I guess is needed to just 
move the thing :-)

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> Went out today and bought a 1TB external (on sale!)

They were advertising one of those for 99 euro here (I haven't checked yet 
if that's a good deal or not), so I thought about picking one up.  It woudl 
be useful for moving large files between different machines, and I could 
just plug it into my PS3 if I wanted to play some media in the living room.

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scott wrote:
>> (They're also a real-world shop, so you can walk in, purchase 
>> something, and have it in your hand the same day, rather than waiting 
>> 3 days for it to be delivered and then waiting until the weekend so 
>> you can go to the post office to collect the item during their brief 
>> opening hours...)
> 
> I often use amazon next day service and ship it to my office rather than 
> home.

Yeah, I guess I could do that, except that

1. I have to notify the office that I'm expecting a parcel, otherwise 
they will open it and file the invoice. (!)

2. I don't know the postal address of my place of work.

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

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scott wrote:
>>> Data tarifs abroad are quite pricey!
>>
>> And slower than cooling basult, presumably?
> 
> Ermmm, have you ever used a recent 3G data connection?

I don't even know what 3G *is*. :-P

> Quite similar to 
> a DSL line (I think mine says max 7.2mbit, but usally it's nearer 2mbit 
> when actually using it).

Mmm, OK. My mum's works laptop used to have GSM capabilities. It was 
several times slower than a 56K modem, depending on location.

>> Really? When my moped was stolen, they didn't have much trouble 
>> finding it. (Not that there was much left of it.) I guess it depends 
>> on whether it's stolen by bored teenagers or professional criminals.
> 
> Yeh, I guess if someone who mugs you randomly gets your car keys (rather 
> than mugging you for the sole purpose of getting your car key) they are 
> not likely to really know what to do with it, so chances of finding it 
> might be higher.  They'd probably just drive it around a bit and dump it 
> somewhere.

Pretty much, yeah.

> To steal modern cars (without having the key) you need a lot 
> of skill and knowledge, both with exactly how to steal it in the first 
> place (you can't just "hotwire" them), and then what to do with it 
> afterwards to avoid getting caught and actually getting some money.

Well, you'd hope so...

OTOH, presumably if you lose your keys, they have ways to fix this, so 
it can't be *that* secure.

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

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> Yeah, I guess I could do that, except that
>
> 1. I have to notify the office that I'm expecting a parcel, otherwise they 
> will open it and file the invoice. (!)

Ooh that's a bit scary :-) But so long as you don't order anything you don't 
want them to see, I don't see why it should be a problem.

> 2. I don't know the postal address of my place of work.

How did you know where to go the first day you went there?  Anyway, even if 
you don't know, just look on some letter or headed paper, or ask someone, or 
look on your job contract, or type the company name and town into Google, or 
...  Personally I have never met anyone who didn't know the address of where 
they work!

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