Moderate use of computer resources and good net citizenship both are issues which are close to my heart. I recently started to worry that, quite inevitably, I have become one among the culprits. At the time of writing, I use about 30 Pentium 4′s, some of which will run computer vision experiments for 24 hours. This is done due to urgency (a near deadline), but my general advice is to always set the priority of your tasks as low as possible so that the scheduler prioritises other users.

I typically connect to remote computers via SSH. I have made my ‘hogging’ scripts public in case somebody is interested in modifying them for personal purposes.

Remote sessions, shaded on the left monitor (click to enlarge)

Bill Gates arrested in his younger days (photo in public domain)

A popular article from Joel on Software explains about the way Microsoft-owned sites exploit/misuse cookies.

…One day, Expedia could start offering higher fares to customers who have more than a million dollars in their Investor stock portfolio. There’s not really anything technically impossible about this, and it’s probably legal, too…
 
…The scary thing is that if you use Internet Explorer, Microsoft controls your web browser…

Some might recall the dysphoric feeling when Sony left the PDA scene in most of the world. They have now halted their sales in Japan as well, thereby saying farewell to the world of miniature computing.

Jeffrey Kaplan from comp.sys.palmtops.pilot commented on the news:

It was only a matter of time until they dropped completely out of the Palm PDA market. Japan was their last market, they pulled out of the rest of the world last Summer. Expect their next entry to be either a Symbian or MS Smartphone due to their cellphone partnership with Ericsson.

It was rumored last year that Sony had bid to purchase what became PalmSource from Palm Inc. It is my opinion that failure to complete that bid is what made them decide to drop the PalmOS specifically, not the more general drop in sales after they flooded the market.

Cited by: PalmAddict

Certain design bugs are so common that we have become too blind to spot them. An essay titled Ten Most Persistent Design Bugs makes some excellent observations.

• If the computer loses power for more than a few thousandths of a second, it throws everything away.
• Designers offer no way for users to discover why a given menu or option has been dimmed (grayed out), nor how to turn it back on.
• 15 Dec 2008 sorts as being before 2 Jan 1900

Web applications are a trend which perpetuates as Web technologies expand and standards are enforced. One particular problem with such technologies is that they rely on powerful browsers. It is only a matter of time until working natively equates to working on-line. The browser will then become a factor more substantial than the operating system. Make sure you follow the link for this point to be practically illustrated.

Will desktops ever become merely a gateway to applications which run on the browser?

A lot of time can be spent re-iterating the same simple task: take a cup, take instant coffee, take sugar, add sugar to cup, add instant to cup and fill the cup with hot water. Following a programmer’s way of thinking, why not just work once at the start? Get a large bottle or jar, add sugar, add coffee (at the right coffee/sugar ratio), add a small amount of hot water (enough to get it homogeneously mixed) and store away. You now have your ‘customised’ coffee concentrate. Just add hot water and coffee’s ready. This one-time effort serves me about 50 cups of coffee.

More eccentric efficiency tips

Filters and forwarding make management of a large amount of E-mail easier. Based on sender/s or subject line/s, one can create and populate many separate boxes. Each box is then checked at different intervals depending on its importance.

Remember:

• A sophisticated network of filters is like having your own secretary.
• Manage many different E-mail addresses. Messages are best discriminated by the actual account.

Separating boxes is the key