Binning old PCs is a load of rubbish

Grok Headline matches for Binning old PCs is a load of rubbish

What a load of rubbish... internet firms
face battle of the bulge

What a load of rubbish... internet firms
face battle of the bulge 06/26/2004 08:29 PM
Independent Jun 26 2004 11:47PM GMT

Web Load Testing Tool Launched Very few
website monitoring companies offer load
testing tools

Web Load Testing Tool Launched Very few
website monitoring companies offer load
testing tools 08/12/2004 02:51 AM
Dotcom-Monitor has just added an external web site load stress testing tool to its suite of executive class website and network monitoring services. [PRWEB Aug 12, 2004]

Cleaner bins rubbish bag artwork

Cleaner bins rubbish bag artwork 08/27/2004 01:34 PM
A bag of rubbish that was part of a Tate Britain work of art is accidentally thrown away by a cleaner.

UK Parliament slammed for rubbish web
presence

UK Parliament slammed for rubbish web
presence 06/06/2005 12:07 AM

IT vendors talk rubbish: official

IT vendors talk rubbish: official 04/14/2004 09:13 AM
UK SMEs confounded by jargon

Man sued after finding cash in rubbish
(Reuters)

Man sued after finding cash in rubbish
(Reuters) 06/04/2004 05:56 AM
Reuters - A jobless Argentine who found $50,000 935,000 pounds) buried in rubbish and promptly bought a house, two cars and a corner shop is now being sued by a woman claiming her maid mistakenly had thrown out the cash.

Linux firms rubbish Microsoft's customer
win

Linux firms rubbish Microsoft's customer
win 03/22/2005 03:33 PM
Microsoft’s latest customer win has failed to impress members of the open source community, who insist that it doesn't prove that Windows is superior to Linux.
On Monday Microsoft announced that the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) had replaced its Linux Web server with a Windows alternative to save costs and improve its Web offering. "RICS's decision to migrate to Windows will see reduced costs, improved content management and integrated back-office systems with its Web portal," claimed Microsoft.

Cleaner thinks modern art is rubbish
(Reuters)

Cleaner thinks modern art is rubbish
(Reuters) 08/27/2004 01:59 PM
Reuters - A cleaner at London's Tate Britain modern art gallery threw out a bag of rubbish which formed part of an artwork because it was thought to be trash, newspapers have reported.

"BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Arts |
Cleaner bins rubbish bag ar..."

"BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Arts |
Cleaner bins rubbish bag ar..." 08/30/2004 02:34 AM

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Arts |
Cleaner bins rubbish bag artwork

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Arts |
Cleaner bins rubbish bag artwork 08/28/2004 05:10 PM
BBC News Entertainment Arts Cleaner bins rubbish bag artwork .. Bin it

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/3604278.stm
track this site | 3 links

load-0.14

load-0.14 12/28/2003 11:44 PM

load-0.13

load-0.13 11/12/2003 11:25 PM

Get a load of this

Get a load of this 12/30/2003 07:26 AM
The New York Times .. factual basis

nytimes.com/2003/12/29/international/middleeast/29CONT.html?hp =&pagewanted=all&position=
track this site | 5 links

"Get a load of this"

"Get a load of this" 12/30/2003 02:53 PM

But where is the software??? From where
to down load it?????

But where is the software??? From where
to down load it????? 09/18/2004 05:43 AM
TechTree Sep 18 2004 8:50AM GMT

Load XML into Gecko

Load XML into Gecko 09/20/2004 12:46 AM
CNET Sep 20 2004 4:10AM GMT

Schedule-Load-3.003

Schedule-Load-3.003 01/27/2004 06:21 PM

Tank.. load us up

Tank.. load us up 04/09/2005 09:44 AM

Load Monitor 1.0b

Load Monitor 1.0b 09/21/2004 05:07 PM
A system resource monitor.

can you load me up some flight sim on
that?

can you load me up some flight sim on
that? 09/25/2004 03:25 AM
The Visualization Portal's default description page starts off kind of slow and ho-hum, with some pretty basic and dated looking graphics. And even a little weird, artsy. The actual main news page is better. The Visualization Portal is nearly a Heinlein-esque 3D 3D visualization tank. These pics of past events are cool. You can visit the portal at UCLA for free.

Module-Load-0.10

Module-Load-0.10 06/02/2004 04:47 PM

Load XML in Gecko browsers

Load XML in Gecko browsers 07/15/2004 05:32 AM
CNET Jul 15 2004 10:13AM GMT

Load Testing Gmail

Load Testing Gmail 07/27/2004 02:43 AM

Appears you can fill Gmail's 1 gig of storage quite quickly if you ask people to send you 5 meg attachments on national TV. Interesting results to the request. [Ke vin Rose]

Distributor load balancer 0.3

Distributor load balancer 0.3 03/14/2003 03:38 PM
A software TCP load balancer.

Half-Life 2 pre-pre-(pre?)-load

Half-Life 2 pre-pre-(pre?)-load 08/30/2004 05:41 PM
Gamers got a shot of excitement late last week when it was announced that the much awaited Half-Life 2 was "pre-loading" to users of Valve's controversial Steam client.

Google's Load Of Options

Google's Load Of Options 08/08/2004 05:44 AM
Sfgate.com - Sun Aug 8, 02:42 am GMT

Firefox won't load anymore

Firefox won't load anymore 06/18/2004 01:53 AM
For some reason, Firefox stopped loading on my Windows XP notebook today. It just shuts down "unexpectedly." I upgraded to Firefox 0.9 a day or two ago. At first, it worked fine. Now, zip. I tried reinstalling -- no luck....

A load of music that won't weigh on you

A load of music that won't weigh on you 01/26/2004 03:31 AM
Boston Globe Jan 26 2004 7:34AM GMT

AppleScript Helps You Take A Load Off

AppleScript Helps You Take A Load Off 02/10/2004 02:43 AM
You tell the computer what to do every step of the way, usually with a keyboard or mouse movement. Wouldn't it be nice if your computer could handle some of that stuff while you turn your attention to something, well, more interesting? By Gene Steinberg (USA Today via MyAppleMenu)

Current Server Load

Current Server Load 02/10/2004 02:42 AM
We're seeing more and more traffic on the MacInTouch website, peaking on weekdays from about 10:30 to noon Eastern U.S. Time (and during special Apple news events). This special page displays the current instantaneous load. Values above about "50" indicate potential for delays.

AppleScript helps you take a load off
(USATODAY.com)

AppleScript helps you take a load off
(USATODAY.com) 02/10/2004 02:52 AM
USATODAY.com - Think about it: We have all these oh-so-powerful computers. Those Power Macs with G5 CPUs are said to be the fastest on the planet. Even PC boxes can crunch positively huge numbers per second. Yet most of you no doubt still perform many of your regular computing tasks manually. You tell the computer what to do every step of the way, usually with a keyboard or mouse movement.

Half-Life 2 Pre-load Starts 8/1?

Half-Life 2 Pre-load Starts 8/1? 08/11/2004 08:01 AM

Executing JavaScript on page load

Executing JavaScript on page load 05/26/2004 01:27 AM

Peter-Paul Koch recently wrote:

In my opinion, recent advances in JavaScript theory call for the removal of the event handlers that some Web developers-and all WYSIWYG editors-deploy in large masses in their XHTML files, where they don’t belong.

PPK is talking about inline event attributes such as the infamous onclick="" and onmouseover="" which have infested our HTML ever since Netscape introduced JavaScript back in version 2.0 of their browser. The alternative to these handlers is to add event handlers to elements after the document has loaded. PPK has detailed coverage of the various ways of doing this on his QuirksMode site.

In my work with unobtrusive JavaScript, I've found that by far the most common action I take is "registering" a script to be executed once the page has finished loading. There are a number of ways of doing this, which I described in my article E nhancing Structural Markup with JavaScript. Unfortunately, none of them are perfect if you wish to write truly reusable scripts.

For a script (such as my blockquote citations script discussed in the article) to be properly reusable, it needs to behave nicely in the presence of other scripts. This means that assigning a callback function directly to the window.onload handler is out of the question as doing so will over-ride previously assigned callbacks from other scripts. The correct way of adding a handler to an event without over-riding other handlers is to use modern event attachment method, which sadly differ between IE/Windows and other browsers. Scott Andrew's addEvent function handles the differences for you but comes with one major and rarely discussed drawback: it fails silently in IE5/Mac. If you care about the many Mac users still on OS9, you need to support that browser.

Anyway, I believe I've found a solution. Check this out:

function addLoadEvent(func) {
  var oldonload = window.onload;
  if (typeof window.onload != 'function') {
    window.onload = func;
  } else {
    window.onload = function() {
      oldonload();
      func();
    }
  }
}

addLoadEvent(nameOfSomeFunctionToRunOnPageLoad);
addLoadEvent(function() {
  /* more code to run on page load */ 
});

The addLoadEvent function takes as an argument another function which should be executed once the page has loaded. Unlike assigning directly to window.onload, the function adds the event in such a way that any previously added onload functions will be executed first.

The way this works is relatively simple: if window.onload has not already been assigned a function, the function passed to addLoadEvent is simply assigned to window.onload. If window.onload has already been set, a brand new function is created which first calls the original onload handler, then calls the new handler afterwards.

addLoadEvent has one very important property: it will work even if something has previously been assigned to window.onload without using addLoadEvent itself. This makes it ideal for use in scripts that may be executing along side other scripts that have already been registered to execute once the page has loaded.

I've tested the above code successfully on IE 5, 5.5 and 6 for Windows; IE 5 and Safari for Mac; Opera 7.5 and FireFox on Mac (which should mean it works with those browsers on Windows as well). Opera 6 for Mac failed the test but has poor JavaScript support anyway and is hopefully becoming more and more rare now that Opera 7 has matured.

I've created a test page for the function. I'd be interested to here any bug reports from browsers I haven't covered.

I'm still considering ways in which this technique could be extended to work for generic events rather than just page loads. The challenge there would be to ensure that information about the event itself was passed to the event handlers in a consistent manner. For page load events this isn't an issue as the event object does not contain any valuable information.

Update: I've written the new technique up on my SitePoint blog and incorporated an explanation of closures and how they are used to preserve any previously assigned onload handlers.

Testing Page Load Speed

Testing Page Load Speed 05/16/2004 05:46 PM

One of the most problematic tasks when working on a Web browser is getting an accurate measurement of how long you're taking to load Web pages. In order to understand why this is tricky, we'll need to understand what exactly browsers do when you ask them to load a URL.

So what happens when you go to a URL like cnn.com? Well, the first step is to start fetching the data from the network. This is typically done on a thread other than the main UI thread.

As the data for the page comes in, it is fed to an HTML tokenizer. It's the tokenizer's job to take the data stream and figure out what the individual tokens are, e.g., a start tag, an attribute name, an attribute value, an end tag, etc. The tokenizer then feeds the individual tokens to an HTML parser.

The parser's job is to build up the DOM tree for a document. Some DOM elements also represent subresources like stylesheets, scripts, and images, and those loads need to be kicked off when those DOM nodes are encountered.

In addition to building up a DOM tree, modern CSS2-compliant browsers also build up separate rendering trees that represent what is actually shown on your screen when painting. It's important to note two things about the rendering tree vs. the DOM tree.

(1) If stylesheets are still loading, it is wasteful to construct the rendering tree, since you don't want to paint anything at all until all stylesheets have been loaded and parsed. Otherwise you'll run into a problem called FOUC (the flash of unstyled content problem), where you show content before it's ready.

(2) Image loads should be kicked off as soon as possible, and that means they need to happen from the DOM tree rather then the rendering tree. You don't want to have to wait for a CSS file to load just to kick off the loads of images.

There are two options for how to deal with delayed construction of the render tree because of stylesheet loads. You can either block the parser until the stylesheets have loaded, which has the disadvantage of keeping you from parallelizing resource loads, or you can allow parsing to continue but simply prevent the construction of the render tree. Safari does the latter.

External scripts must block the parser by default (because they can document.write). An exception is when defer is specified for scripts, in which case the browser knows it can delay the execution of the script and keep parsing.

What are some of the relevant milestones in the life of a loading page as far as figuring out when you can actually reliably display content?

(1) All stylesheets have loaded.
(2) All data for the HTML page has been received.
(3) All data for the HTML page has been parsed.
(4) All subresources have loaded (the onload handler time).

Benchmarks of page load speed tend to have one critical flaw, which is that all they typically test is (4). Take, for example, the aforementioned cnn.com. Frequently cnn.com is capable of displaying virtually all of its content at about the 350ms mark, but because it can't finish parsing until an external script that wants to load an advertisement has completed, the onload handler typically doesn't fire until the 2-3 second mark!

A browser could clearly optimize for only overall page load speed and show nothing until 2-3 seconds have gone by, thus enabling a single layout and paint. That browser will likely load the overall page faster, but feel literally 10 times slower than the browser that showed most of the page at the 300 ms mark, but then did a little more work as the remaining content came in.

Furthermore benchmarks have to be very careful if they measure only for onload, because there's no rule that browsers have to have done any layout or painting by the time onload fires. Sure, they have to have parsed the whole page in order to find all the subresources, and they have to have loaded all of those subresources, but they may have yet to lay out the objects in the rendering tree.

It's also wise to wait for the onload handler to execute before laying out anyway, because the onload handler could redirect you to another page, in which case you don't really need to lay out or paint the original page at all, or it could alter the DOM of the page (and if you'd done a layout before the onload, you'd then see the changes that the onload handler made happen in the page, such as flashy DHTML menu initialization).

Benchmarks that test only for onload are thus fundamentally flawed in two ways, since they don't measure how quickly a page is initially displayed and they rely on an event (onload) that can fire before layout and painting have occurred, thus causing those operations to be omitted from the benchmark.

i-bench 4 suffers from this problem. i-bench 5 actually corrected the problem by setting minimal timeouts to scroll the page to the offsetTop of a counter element on the page. In order to compute offsetTop browsers must necessarily do a layout, and by setting minimal timers, all browsers paint as well. This means i-bench 5 is doing an excellent job of providing an accurate assessment of overall page load time.

Because tests like i-bench only measure overall page load time, there is a tension between performing well on these sorts of tests and real-world perception, which typically involves showing a page as soon as possible.

A naive approach might be to simply remove all delays and show the page as soon as you get the first chunk of data. However, there are drawbacks to showing a page immediately. Sure, you could try to switch to a new page immediately, but if you don't have anything meaningful to show, you'll end up with a "flashy" feeling, as the old page disappears and is replaced by a blank white canvas, and only later does the real page content come in. Ideally transitions between pages should be smooth, with one page not being replaced by another until you can know reliably that the new page will be reasonably far along in its life cycle.

In Safari 1.2 and in Mozilla-based browsers, the heuristic for this is quite simple. Both browsers use a time delay, and are unwilling to switch to the new page until that time threshold has been exceeded. This setting is configurable in both browsers (in the former using WebKit preferences and in the latter using about:config).

When I implemented this algorithm (called "paint suppression" in Mozilla parlance) in Mozilla I originally used a delay of 1 second, but this led to the perception that Mozilla was slow, since you frequently didnt see a page until it was completely finished. Imagine for example that a page is completely done except for images at the 50ms mark, but that because you're a modem user or DSL user, the images aren't finished until the 1 second mark. Despite the fact that all the readable content could have been shown at the 50ms mark, this delay of 1 second in Mozilla caused you to wait 950 more ms before showing anything at all.

One of the first things I did when working on Chimera (now Camino) was lower this delay in Gecko to 250ms. When I worked on Firefox I made the same change. Although this negatively impacts page load time, it makes the browser feel substantially faster, since the user clicks a link and sees the browser react within 250ms (which to most users is within a threshold of immediacy, i.e., it makes them feel like the browser reacted more or less instantly to their command).

Firefox and Camino still use this heuristic in their latest releases. Safari actually uses a delay of one second like older Mozilla builds used to, and so although it is typically faster than Mozilla-based browsers on overall page load, it will typically feel much slower than Firefox or Camino on network connections like cable modem/modem/DSL.

However, there is also a problem with the straight-up time heuristic. Suppose that you hit the 250ms mark but all the stylesheets haven't loaded or you haven't even received all the data for a page. Right now Firefox and Camino don't care and will happily show you what they have so far anyway. This leads to the "white flash" problem, where the browser gets flashy as it shows you a blank white canvas (because it doesn't yet know what the real background color for the page is going to be, it just fills in with white).

So what I wanted to achieve in Safari was to replicate the rapid response feel of Firefox/Camino, but to temper that rapid response when it would lead to gratuitous flashing. Here's what I did.

(1) Create two constants, cMinimumLayoutThreshold and cTimedLayoutDelay. At the moment the settings for these constants are 250ms and 1000ms respectively.

(2) Don't allow layouts/paints at all if the stylesheets haven't loaded and if you're not over the minimum layout threshold (250ms).

(3) When all data is received for the main document, immediately try to parse as much as possible. When you have consumed all the data, you will either have finished parsing or you'll be stuck in a blocked mode waiting on an external script.

If you've finished parsing or if you at least have the body element ready and if all the stylesheets have loaded, immediately lay out and schedule a paint for as soon as possible, but only if you're over the minimum threshold (250ms).

(4) If stylesheets load after all data has been received, then they should schedule a layout for as soon as possible (if you're below the minimum layout threshold, then schedule the timer to fire at the threshold).

(5) If you haven't received all the data for the document, then whenever a layout is scheduled, you set it to the nearest multiple of the timed layout delay time (so 1000ms, 2000ms, etc.).

(6) When the onload fires, perform a layout immediately after the onload executes.

This algorithm completely transforms the feel of Safari over DSL and modem connections. Page content usually comes screaming in at the 250ms mark, and if the page isn't quite ready at the 250ms, it's usually ready shortly after (at the 300-500ms mark). In the rare cases where you have nothing to display, you wait until the 1 second mark still. This algorithm makes "white flashing" quite rare (you'll typically only see it on a very slow site that is taking a long time to give you data), and it makes Safari feel orders of magnitude faster on slower network connections.

Because Safari waits for a minimum threshold (and waits to schedule until the threshold is exceeded, benchmarks won't be adversely affected as long as you typically beat the minimum threshold. Otherwise the overall page load speed will degrade slightly in real-world usage, but I believe that to be well-worth the decrease in the time required to show displayable content.

HotFix Watch: Couldn't load DLL
ScanHlpr.dll

HotFix Watch: Couldn't load DLL
ScanHlpr.dll 05/02/2004 10:05 AM

Five tips for load test planning

Five tips for load test planning 08/09/2002 11:09 PM
CNET Aug 9 2002 10:08PM ET

Comment spam load issue

Comment spam load issue 12/17/2004 06:37 PM
Hi everyone, my name is Jay Allen and I am the Product Manager for Movable Type. I'm writing today to...

It's lock 'n' load at U.S. Fish and
Wildlife

It's lock 'n' load at U.S. Fish and
Wildlife 04/05/2005 02:06 PM
Is it really the best idea for the Bush administration to appoint a former trophy-hunting advocate as acting director of the department?

Fade Text In on Page Load

Fade Text In on Page Load 01/23/2004 12:10 AM

I learned a neat little HTML/Javascript trick on the about page of the newly launched Orkut from Google.

Here is the trick (be fast, or reload the page):

This text will fade in on page load. But this text won't (It's displayed in-line as the page is built).

It's accomplished with code that looks like this:


<html>
<head>
<script language="javascript">
col=255;
function fade() { document.getElementById("fade").style.color="rgb(" + col + "," + col + "," + col + ")"; col-=5; if(col>0) setTimeout('fade()', 10); }
</script>
</head>

<body onLoad="fade()">

<p>
<span id="fade">This text will fade in.</span> But this text won't.
</p>

</body></html>


Pretty cool huh?

(If it doesn't seem to work for you, it's probably because this page loads pretty slowly... see the individual archive page for it to look more natural.)

Grok Description matches for Binning old PCs is a load of rubbish
GrokA matches for Binning old PCs is a load of rubbish

Binning old PCs is a load of rubbish

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