Computer Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread II - Page 162

Samson · May 08, 2012, 11:27 AM

Has anyone any experience of using cloud based computing resources for large computing tasks? I am thinking of something like Amazon EC2 Spot Instances, where my tasks would run when demand is low.

The task I have to run is basicly a few hundred thousand instances of an R function based on a roughly 10GB database. Each instance takes about 1.5 seconds on our 3 year old server single threaded, each instance is independent of every other one. I would want to run the whole thing (or a significant subset of it) every day. We have to choose between investing in a server for ourselves or doing it on the cloud.

_random_ · May 09, 2012, 07:26 PM

So I've had this Windows 7 Asus laptop for a while now. She's had some issues, but everything's been okay for the most part. Today she decided to inform me that my copy of Windows, which I purchased at Best Buy, is illegitmate. I've had this computer for months and this hasn't coincided with any updates like most situations I've read about online. It just kind of happened out of the blue. So what's next?

cardgame · May 10, 2012, 01:00 AM

Sounds like a virus to me.

Zelig · May 10, 2012, 06:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by _random_

So I've had this Windows 7 Asus laptop for a while now. She's had some issues, but everything's been okay for the most part. Today she decided to inform me that my copy of Windows, which I purchased at Best Buy, is illegitmate. I've had this computer for months and this hasn't coincided with any updates like most situations I've read about online. It just kind of happened out of the blue. So what's next?

Follow the instructions the computer gives you.

GoodGame · May 10, 2012, 06:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by _random_

So I've had this Windows 7 Asus laptop for a while now. She's had some issues, but everything's been okay for the most part. Today she decided to inform me that my copy of Windows, which I purchased at Best Buy, is illegitmate. I've had this computer for months and this hasn't coincided with any updates like most situations I've read about online. It just kind of happened out of the blue. So what's next?

You have the installation disks and registration code, right? It's not illegitimate then.
I'd notify Microsoft that they are in error, and try to get it resolved. Possibly, Best Buy resold registration code for accident, at which point they probably are bound to give you a new OS.

Cutlass · May 10, 2012, 08:29 AM

The scroll wheel on my mouse is sticking. Any way to make that work smoothly again?

shadowplay · May 10, 2012, 09:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cutlass

The scroll wheel on my mouse is sticking. Any way to make that work smoothly again?

Open the mouse up for a cleaning. There should be some little screws on the bottom of the mouse you can remove... though sometimes they're hidden. Looking at the two mice in front of me, for example, only one has screws visible on the bottom... the other mouse has them hidden (IIRC) on the inside underneath the batteries. Take a look...

Zelig · May 10, 2012, 05:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cutlass

The scroll wheel on my mouse is sticking. Any way to make that work smoothly again?

Probably get a new mouse. I just got a new mouse after the scroll wheel on my old one started acting up. This happens every couple years with my mouse on a pretty consistent basis.

shadowplay · May 10, 2012, 06:55 PM

What did you do in the days of mechanical mice? Buy a new mouse every time it got dirty? If you've had it for years and it's never been cleaned before there's going to be hair and finger oils and all kinds of gnarly stuff wrapped around the scroll wheel which could be interfering with it's performance. It's worth taking apart and cleaning before you spring for a new mouse.

Zelig · May 10, 2012, 08:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadowplay

What did you do in the days of mechanical mice? Buy a new mouse every time it got dirty? If you've had it for years and it's never been cleaned before there's going to be hair and finger oils and all kinds of gnarly stuff wrapped around the scroll wheel which could be interfering with it's performance. It's worth taking apart and cleaning before you spring for a new mouse.

I've taken them apart, it's not dirt problems, mouse wheels just fail after a while.

Cutlass · May 11, 2012, 07:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zelig

Probably get a new mouse. I just got a new mouse after the scroll wheel on my old one started acting up. This happens every couple years with my mouse on a pretty consistent basis.

That's what I ended up doing last time I had one fail. But I have a hard time finding mice I like.

aimeeandbeatles · May 11, 2012, 09:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cutlass

That's what I ended up doing last time I had one fail. But I have a hard time finding mice I like.

I recommend when you find a good one to buy a second one for when the first one gets worn out.

salty mud · May 11, 2012, 10:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by _random_

So I've had this Windows 7 Asus laptop for a while now. She's had some issues, but everything's been okay for the most part. Today she decided to inform me that my copy of Windows, which I purchased at Best Buy, is illegitmate. I've had this computer for months and this hasn't coincided with any updates like most situations I've read about online. It just kind of happened out of the blue. So what's next?

Sounds like something that happened to me a while back. Turned out to be a very well disguised virus. If it asks for personal information of any kind, alarm bells should be ringing very loudly.

cardgame · May 11, 2012, 02:44 PM

Some of the larger ones by Microsoft are nice, I find.

They fit my hand quite well. Good response of the scroll wheel and such.

Disgustipated · May 14, 2012, 06:05 AM

Funny you are talking about mice, I had a mouse question.

Is there any way to clean it (near the optic) without taking it apart? I just got done taking mine apart, but I'm lazy, and would like to avoid doing that in the future. I had been putting off taking my mouse apart for months. Even though it was affecting performance in my games (sometimes it wouldn't register when I moved the mouse, or it would be jerky movement). Can you spray air in there to clear it, or is it best just to take it apart?

Not only do I have to remove 4 screws to get the cover off, but I have to remove 2 more to remove the electronic board and the optic attached to it. Then I can clean underneath that optic. I cleaned the mouse wheel too. The only issues I had with that, were sometimes it would have unintended movements like a minute after I used it. I never understood why that happens. It's always did that as far as I remember.

Yeah I know it's not much work, but I'm a horrible procrastinator when it comes to work around the house.

Dreadnought · May 17, 2012, 08:06 PM

For all you java programmers out there, I have a question.

I've recently written a class involving a while(true) loop involving Thread.sleep. My emulator issued a heads-up to me, stating that I've used a Thread.sleep in a loop. Some googling has informed me that it may cause performance issues if I use a Thread.sleep during a loop. The program compiles and all; the emulator is merely introducing a tip to me that doesn't influence whether the program can run or not.

My question is: is it truly a problem if I use a Thread.sleep in a loop? Or can I reasonably ignore this warning?

Zelig · May 18, 2012, 09:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Disgustipated

Funny you are talking about mice, I had a mouse question.

Is there any way to clean it (near the optic) without taking it apart? I just got done taking mine apart, but I'm lazy, and would like to avoid doing that in the future. I had been putting off taking my mouse apart for months. Even though it was affecting performance in my games (sometimes it wouldn't register when I moved the mouse, or it would be jerky movement). Can you spray air in there to clear it, or is it best just to take it apart?

Not only do I have to remove 4 screws to get the cover off, but I have to remove 2 more to remove the electronic board and the optic attached to it. Then I can clean underneath that optic. I cleaned the mouse wheel too. The only issues I had with that, were sometimes it would have unintended movements like a minute after I used it. I never understood why that happens. It's always did that as far as I remember.

Yeah I know it's not much work, but I'm a horrible procrastinator when it comes to work around the house.

Just use a cotton swap to clean the mouse, and vacuum your house on a weekly basis so that your mouse doesn't accumulate much gunk.

I've honestly never had a problem with needing to clean the optic area of a mouse.

Quintillus · May 18, 2012, 11:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dreadnought

For all you java programmers out there, I have a question.

I've recently written a class involving a while(true) loop involving Thread.sleep. My emulator issued a heads-up to me, stating that I've used a Thread.sleep in a loop. Some googling has informed me that it may cause performance issues if I use a Thread.sleep during a loop. The program compiles and all; the emulator is merely introducing a tip to me that doesn't influence whether the program can run or not.

My question is: is it truly a problem if I use a Thread.sleep in a loop? Or can I reasonably ignore this warning?

As long as you have proper logic to make sure it doesn't loop forever if you don't want it to, it's not a problem. It just means you might have a good amount of idle time in the loop - which might actually be what you want. And, you might even want the loop with Thread.sleep to keep going forever.

As a non-made-up example, I use Thread.sleep within an infinite loop in the portion of my Civ3 editor that displays the map. Its purpose is to keep the CPU from being hammered by the infinite loop. I have the infinite loop to execute every 1/60th of a second. It displays the map if need be, and then sleeps for the remainder of the 60th of a second, instead of immediately seeing if it needs to draw the map again. My Java editor does give me a warning about it now that I check, but in this case, it's just what I want.

aimeeandbeatles · May 21, 2012, 02:29 AM

Question: I have a WMV video file. I making subtitles for the WMV video file. The subtitles are in the ASS (lol) format. I'd like to hardcode the subtitles in when they finished. Is there a way to do that (free software only) without transcoding the WMV to another format first?

aimeeandbeatles · May 21, 2012, 04:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aimeeandbeatles

Question: I have a WMV video file. I making subtitles for the WMV video file. The subtitles are in the ASS (lol) format. I'd like to hardcode the subtitles in when they finished. Is there a way to do that (free software only) without transcoding the WMV to another format first?

I got it. This freeware program'll do it. The 5.10 version. Didn't try beta. Its quite simple to use, too. A keeper.

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/XviD4PSP

May 08, 2012, 11:27 AM	#3221
Samson Deity Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Cambridge Posts: 2,301	Cloud based reasorces for high performance computing Has anyone any experience of using cloud based computing resources for large computing tasks? I am thinking of something like Amazon EC2 Spot Instances, where my tasks would run when demand is low. The task I have to run is basicly a few hundred thousand instances of an R function based on a roughly 10GB database. Each instance takes about 1.5 seconds on our 3 year old server single threaded, each instance is independent of every other one. I would want to run the whole thing (or a significant subset of it) every day. We have to choose between investing in a server for ourselves or doing it on the cloud. __________________ History has remembered Samson as a hero after he committed suicide by destroying a religious building during a civilian festival killing thousands of people including the leaders of a regime that had occupied his homeland.

May 09, 2012, 07:26 PM	#3222
_random_ The Original Party Worm Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Wormulon Posts: 5,742 Images: 1	So I've had this Windows 7 Asus laptop for a while now. She's had some issues, but everything's been okay for the most part. Today she decided to inform me that my copy of Windows, which I purchased at Best Buy, is illegitmate. I've had this computer for months and this hasn't coincided with any updates like most situations I've read about online. It just kind of happened out of the blue. So what's next? __________________ Come party in #fiftychat! [185311] <@Mars> I have never fondled a moose. [185314] <@Mars> I did not plan this well.

May 10, 2012, 01:00 AM	#3223
cardgame SOCIAL DEVIANT Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Ponyville Posts: 8,663 Images: 2	Sounds like a virus to me. __________________ And when we're done, that final day, what will they know about you? What will they say?

May 10, 2012, 08:29 AM	#3226
Cutlass Ideas are Like Stars Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: US of A Posts: 32,366 Images: 6	The scroll wheel on my mouse is sticking. Any way to make that work smoothly again? __________________ Ideas Are Like Stars. Come visit us again! Learn the Basics of Money HERE More Money has been Lost Because of Four Words than at the Point of a Gun. Those words are "This Time is Different." Taking from the poor and giving to the rich is Why Nations Fail In American we call that Reaganomics.

May 10, 2012, 06:55 PM	#3229
shadowplay your ad here Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: Blue Jay Way Posts: 2,674	What did you do in the days of mechanical mice? Buy a new mouse every time it got dirty? If you've had it for years and it's never been cleaned before there's going to be hair and finger oils and all kinds of gnarly stuff wrapped around the scroll wheel which could be interfering with it's performance. It's worth taking apart and cleaning before you spring for a new mouse. __________________ ..I've always been mad, I know I've been mad, like the most of us...very hard to explain why you're mad, even if you're not mad...

May 11, 2012, 02:44 PM	#3234
cardgame SOCIAL DEVIANT Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Ponyville Posts: 8,663 Images: 2	Some of the larger ones by Microsoft are nice, I find. They fit my hand quite well. Good response of the scroll wheel and such. __________________ And when we're done, that final day, what will they know about you? What will they say?

May 14, 2012, 06:05 AM	#3235
Disgustipated Deity Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Las Vegas Posts: 5,916	Funny you are talking about mice, I had a mouse question. Is there any way to clean it (near the optic) without taking it apart? I just got done taking mine apart, but I'm lazy, and would like to avoid doing that in the future. I had been putting off taking my mouse apart for months. Even though it was affecting performance in my games (sometimes it wouldn't register when I moved the mouse, or it would be jerky movement). Can you spray air in there to clear it, or is it best just to take it apart? Not only do I have to remove 4 screws to get the cover off, but I have to remove 2 more to remove the electronic board and the optic attached to it. Then I can clean underneath that optic. I cleaned the mouse wheel too. The only issues I had with that, were sometimes it would have unintended movements like a minute after I used it. I never understood why that happens. It's always did that as far as I remember. Yeah I know it's not much work, but I'm a horrible procrastinator when it comes to work around the house. __________________ The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.-Jefferson In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.

May 17, 2012, 08:06 PM	#3236
Dreadnought Deity Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: New Jersey, USA Posts: 6,060	For all you java programmers out there, I have a question. I've recently written a class involving a while(true) loop involving Thread.sleep. My emulator issued a heads-up to me, stating that I've used a Thread.sleep in a loop. Some googling has informed me that it may cause performance issues if I use a Thread.sleep during a loop. The program compiles and all; the emulator is merely introducing a tip to me that doesn't influence whether the program can run or not. My question is: is it truly a problem if I use a Thread.sleep in a loop? Or can I reasonably ignore this warning? __________________ 2013 Economic Left/Right: 8.25 -- Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 3.90 2012 Economic Left/Right: 6.75 -- Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 4.67 \| 2011 Economic Left/Right: 6.62 -- Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 3.79 The 2012 CFC Mafia/NOTW Awards: Winner of Best Large Game, Best Setting/Storyline, & Most Enjoyable Game; Nominated for Best Host.

May 21, 2012, 02:29 AM	#3239
aimeeandbeatles watermelon Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Aperture Science Laboratories Posts: 12,143 Images: 10	Question: I have a WMV video file. I making subtitles for the WMV video file. The subtitles are in the ASS (lol) format. I'd like to hardcode the subtitles in when they finished. Is there a way to do that (free software only) without transcoding the WMV to another format first? __________________ Note: I'm female. Don't forget that. \| The Petty Archives \| Let's Play: Portal 2 "When he goes to bed at night, Chuck Norris checks under his bed for aimeeandbeatles." -- choxorn

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
Modding Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread Question Thread	Flying Pig	Civ4 - Creation & Customization	4	Sep 06, 2010 12:55 PM
Computer Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread	aimeeandbeatles	Computer Talk	2097	Oct 07, 2009 10:49 AM
The questions-not-worth-their-own-thread question thread IV	Bllasae	Picture Threads Archive	1003	Mar 03, 2009 10:50 AM
The Questions-Not-Worth-Their-Own-Thread Question Thread II!	Trajan12	Picture Threads Archive	1013	Nov 13, 2008 01:28 PM

Powered by vBulletin® Copyright ©2000 - 2013, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd. This site is copyright © Civilization Fanatics' Center.
Support CFC: Amazon.com \| Amazon UK \| Amazon DE \| Amazon CA \| Amazon FR