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Comment: Re:beta tester now? (Score 1) 201

by SDF-7 (#46824347) Attached to: You Can Now Run Beta Versions of OS X&mdash;For Free

Well, for the last month I've had my Mini which just sits there as an iTunes server run out of memory. Never happened before.

Trying to watch a bit with Activity Monitor, the kernel_task balloons up over 4Gb, Finder shows as non-responsive, the File Cache is only around 1Gb -- and "Compressed" is huge. Free memory the last time I caught it was about 16Mb out of 16Gb.

Given its role, I expect the File Cache to grow -- but either it isn't or Activity Monitor isn't reporting it as such, as it only shows a few Gb in normal operation and doesn't show at all when the problem state is hit. And even if it did eat all the RAM for caching -- if it can't shrink it down without hanging all the user processes then that's certainly a bug.

Otherwise, my assumption is that something is leaking in the kernel over time so the system can't find it to clean it up, everything else gets shrunk/compressed as it can and the reclamation hogs the processor in the worst case. Again, haven't seen this before Mavericks and based on some support threads, I don't think I'm alone.

Comment: Re:Doesn't matter in the end (Score 2, Informative) 472

by SDF-7 (#41260971) Attached to: Comments On Code Comments?

Yeah, that sounds much more efficient. Nothing like letting the developer work through the (bad) optimization design, code it... get the test failure and then waste more time debugging it instead of just warning them off up front.

Belts and suspenders -- test your corner cases, but document the pitfalls.

Comment: Re:If $3000 is the societal cost to you not (Score 2) 2416

by SDF-7 (#40482653) Attached to: Supreme Court: Affordable Care Act Is Constitutional

Because the government is the servant of the people, not the determinator of "societal costs" or the enforcer of "how some bunch of elitists think the rest of us should live". Most especially, the Federal Government is supposed to have limits (that pesky 10th Amendment which is clear to anyone with basic reading comprehension but just gets ignored for folks who want to use the Fed to push *their* agendas, whatever those are).

If the government can tax/fine/penalize [read: FORCE by however they name it] you to do this by virtue of merely existing because of a hypothetical future cost to society, then they can similarly "save society money" by enforcing what you eat, how much you exercise, where you live, if you have children and how many... pretty much every decision you make as an adult citizen. While I know that's a dream for some (the California Air Resources Board and Mayor Bloomberg's Health Board off the top of my head), that is directly antithetical to the concept of a free citizen of a country.

We are not the children of the government, we are not the serfs of the feudal lords of Washington DC. Micromanaging our lives by wrapping it up in arbitrary taxes is still taking away our freedom of choice.

Comment: What a strange article (Score 5, Interesting) 658

by SDF-7 (#39059613) Attached to: An Early Look At Mac OS X 10.8

The opening paragraph has to be the most rabid bit of product love I can recall, especially compared with the actual content.

"upend the video games market"... Really? Just because the screen (if you have a laptop [aka can use the computer anywhere near your sofa] and the AppleTV box) can be wirelessly mirrored to the TV? And using hypothetical controllers that don't exist? Uh-huh.

"For the consumer market ... may be the most significant OS release since Windows 95". A fairly bold statement, given there's nothing in the article that even tries to back that up. Is the new security model supposed to be that big of a paradigm shift (for users, not for vendor lock-in)? Is it the "ooh... you can post to a blog quicker!" stuff? It pretty clearly looks like a point-release to an existing OS that is mildly interesting, but hardly redefining the consumer space.

Comment: Re:Why do I have a hard time believing this ? (Score 2) 116

by SDF-7 (#38748290) Attached to: US Finally Backs International Space "Code of Conduct"

Why anti-grav? I would think a reasonably heavily armored (which a lot of it has to be anyway) Orion drive craft would suffice. Yeah, you'd get whining about the emissions in the atmosphere on the way up -- but balanced against all space programs shut down and presumably loss of the existing satellite capabilities, you could credibly believe that at least one country would get over it and just do it.

Comment: Re:Wow (Score 1) 373

by SDF-7 (#36364668) Attached to: Checkpoint of the Future Coming Soon To Airports

Ok... now I'm really curious. What coasts are you referring to, and if they're the US Atlantic and Pacific coasts (not Gulf Coast to Atlantic or something silly) -- just what train did you find that only takes 2 days?

I'm seriously asking - since every one I looked at ended up going through LA then up to Chicago and back down (to Atlanta -- maybe Chicago to NY is somehow faster). If you have a link to a 2 day train which is reasonably priced (say $1k per person tops), I'd love to consider that for our next trip.

Comment: Re:Wow (Score 1) 373

by SDF-7 (#36364612) Attached to: Checkpoint of the Future Coming Soon To Airports

Depends on the number of people, really.

Sample annual trip just made (CA to GA): 2438 miles.

Airline cost per-person, cattle-class [not adding in taxes, fees and per-bag costs or whatnot they stick you with now] started at $450 per person round-trip.

The 2005 Impala got between 29 to 30 US mpg on the highway, call it 29 to be generous (to your claim).

Similarly, gas ranged from $3.459 to $4.759 per US gallon, but generously use $5 assuming rising prices. That's $420.35 one way, $840.70 round trip.

Since this was 2 adults and one child (not young enough to fly free -- and even if it was possible, who would take a 4+ hour flight in cattle class with a squirming/upset infant on their lap... assuming they had any confidence in said infant not taking a tumble in turbulence), that $450 starts at $1350.

Car has to tack on hotels (depends on how aggressively you push it -- 2 days is possible with 5 hour sleep breaks or so), airline has to tack on transport to/from airport [either mass transit or rental car or long term parking], etc.

The big wins for me are having the trunk of the Impala available at no additional charge, no hassle with rental cars -- and most importantly, no getting handled as if I'd created a felony. The last point frankly would keep me driving even at a 2x cost factor, but you can't claim that "you're paying more for gas by driving" as that simply isn't true outside of lousy SUVs and driving solo.

And before someone brings it up -- the trains were *more expensive* than the car, and took a week to get there by routing through Chicago. Get Amtrack to get a reasonable continental train going somewhere between airline and car prices but taking 2-3 days tops and I suspect a lot more folks would choose it.

Long computations which yield zero are probably all for naught.