the art of writing is discovering what you believe
I never thought about this, since Classic is pretty unobtrusive (you never see it as an application, just as a framing environment for Classic apps). I rebooted this OS X box today, and when I logged in, I stopped the Classic environment from starting (usually I load it at login time). Now as you can see, the load average is quite low on the graph.
So an Xserve might not come with a performance penalty after all.
I thought Classic was supposed to “sleep” when it wasn’t in use.
It turns out someone is generating RSS feeds for various sections of CNN.com content, as well as a host of other sites. Now, on the one hand, the folks at CNN don’t have to host or manage this stuff, but I would think they would want to know how popular or useful a feature like this is, and they can’t know that unless they run it themselves.
<update> Feeds are in development: take a look at this page.
As another datapoint on OS X and Aqua resource usage, I noticed that having Zoe running consistently kept load average around 1 or slightly above. Now that I have shutdown my login session, it won’t run at all. I get these errors:
kCGErrorIllegalArgument : initCGDisplayState: cannot map display interlocks.
kCGErrorIllegalArgument : CGSNewConnection cannot get connection port
kCGErrorIllegalArgument : CGSNewConnection cannot get connection port
kCGErrorInvalidConnection : CGSGetEventPort: Invalid connection
I don’t know why I have connection failures. I didn’t think you could display an Aqua session over a network connection (like you can with X).
Google found this tantalizing clue:
This is what you typically get when you try to start a quartz gui
application while logged in via ssh. So your configure script starts a
gui application which it certainly is not supposed to do.
So Zoe is evidently calling on some elements of the Quartz UI and failing. This removes a potentially useful application for Zoe: I could envision Zoe running on a group mailserver, allowing a group of users to view their mail in Zoe instead of in the old linear clients. It seems silly to think you need to run the Quartz stuff on a potentially headless system, especially if it chews up 25% of your CPU.
Update: I discovered it was Classic, not Aqua, that was churning away. So leaving an Aqua session logged in, annoying and non-secure as that as that may be, won’t be a resource drain.
Quite, at least in 10.1.5. I have been meaning to test this for awhile. I logged out of my OS X machine about 2:30 this afternoon and kept an eye on the load graph. Without Aqua running, utilization drops to UNIX-like levels (ie, 0.0).
Even with the monitor off and no one sitting at the machine, it uses 20 – 30% of the CPU just being. As it is now, I still have network services (I have an NFS volume mounted from it on my laptop), and I can quite happily run interactive processes on it.
Seems like a good argument in favor of logging out at the end of the day.
Update: I discovered it was Classic, not Aqua, that was churning away. So leaving an Aqua session logged in, annoying and non-secure as that as that may be, won’t be a resource drain.
PS: that long load spike from 4 AM to almost 6 AM is a fink update I have in root’s crontab.
source /sw/bin/init.csh; /sw/bin/fink selfupdate-cvs && /sw/bin/fink update-all -y
It will update fink itself from CVS, then update any installed packages from the latest CVS checkins.
PPS: I keep this graphs here.
Version traduite de la page /movabletype/archives/000014.html (BETA)
I noticed some queries coming from Google’s French site, so I followed one, and asked for a translation. Even I can see where it misses stuff, but one hopes everyone understands it’s as much for amusement as for practical use (the translation, I mean, not this insightful, trenchant website).
The Seattle Times: The Rowling myth and the missing Potter book
Where have you gone, Harry Potter? The nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
Make that the world.
Interesting article about the even-further-delayed HP book. Hope JK Rowling doesn’t burn up all her karma on this one: delays on the last two could make fans angry.
Spoiler alert: these could be the plots of the last 3 books.
Slashdot | BT Loses Case Over Hyperlink Patent
. . . . British Telecom has lost their patent suit against Prodigy over an old patent that BT hoped would cover the use of hyperlinks on the modern WWW.
Read the judge’s decision here.
I’m struck by the similarity of how BT designed their hypertext system with the reminiscences of HyperCard: both came close to predicting or co-evolving with the world wide web but just missed. In HyperCard’s case, it was derived from a box-centric mindset where the network was secondary: the stack, as a complete artifact, made sense, as opposed to the page as Berners-Lee decided.
BT’s system of links referenced the physical data store, down to the sector, rather than just a file reference, as an href does. The reliance on a “central computer” stems directly from a telco mindset: see any article about the ongoing war between the netheads and bellheads for details.
Perhaps that’s the real test of a new idea: if there are several similar versions, the itch they seek to scratch is real. Whether any of them succeed remains to be seen. It may take another wave of innovation to finally get there.
On my list of recent/current reads are some of the Swallows and Amazons series, by Arthur Ransome. I have been reading these with my five year old and enjoy them so much, I’m getting them for myself now.
The books have a few core values or themes, like self-reliance, courage, resourcefulness, and looking out for each other. The central characters are the Walker children, John, Susan, Titty, and Roger. They will be joined later by Bridget who at this, the seventh book, is still too young to take part in their adventures. They are joined by Nancy and Peggy Blackett, the Amazon Pirates, who live in a house on the short of Coniston Water in the English Lake District which serves as a kind of hub for the series.
The children grow with each book in the series, but so far only Roger’s age has been mentioned: he is seven in the first book. I assume the others are spaced two years apart.
I like the stories for the simplicity of the lives everyone leads. In the 1930s schoolage children would travel unaccompanied by train, or camp in the moors or on an island with no adults. The adults in general are a useful device to provide food and carry messages, but they are rarely needed for the action. I like the children’s skill and determination at solving the problems they are beset with, from weathering false accusations to making a blast furnace, from a launching late night rescue to recover their comrades feared lost in a blizzard to being carried off to sea in a gale when their anchor drags.
The Walker children have the skills and discipline they learned from their father, a Commander in the Royal Navy, and the even temper and unflappability of their mother, born on an Australian sheep station and now mother to these fearless five while their father is on duty. In fact, his return to England is part of the story in the seventh book: so far, I haven’t seen him. The Blackett girls, raised by a sensible but overmatched mother and their indulgent uncle, are another matter. They lack the skills but make up for it in spirit and are often relied on to plan the adventures that John and Susan’s abilities will make real.
The Walkers are the most clearly defined. John is the captain of their ship, the Swallow, and commander of the expeditions. Susan is the mate and takes the mother role with the younger ones, enforcing bedtimes, arranging provisions, and building fireplaces. Titty hasn’t the same duties as her older siblings, so she finds other outlets. She is a bit of a mystic, fashioning a voodoo image in one book to help rid the Amazons of their overbearing great-aunt, and successfully dowsing for water in the midst of a drought in another book. Roger, as ship’s boy in the early books, is a boy through and through. He finds the gold mine in one book, he spends the night in a charcoal-burners’ wigwam after spraining his ankle in another: he has his own adventures that parallel the group’s.
If you’re interested, you can read up on the books and their author at the links Google will return.
I don’t know about you, but I will henceforth always refer to the media conglomerates as “the industry of the disc.” And I if anyone ever crosses me, I swear I’ll “return the impossible life to them!”
The English: A Portrait of a People
This is an interesting read, partly because the author felt it necessary to write it. But recent history and current politics — the devolution of Britain, as Scotland and Wales exercise their autonomy, and the general malaise about the future — make the notion of England and the English a basis for discussion.
Recommended for Anglophiles as well as the English and British. I’ve not finished it yet, but have enjoyed it so far, debunkings and all.