urgh ... morningness

[unixronin]

No sleep at all last night.  I just couldn't seem to find a comfortable position without something or other hurting.

Stupid California tricks:

blackcoat observes that the California state assembly has passed a bill requiring ammunition microstamping, in blissful ignorance — or perhaps denial is a better word — of all the expert testimony stating why it won't work and how trivially easily it can be defeated.  The bill has yet to pass the Senate or be signed by the Governor.  Advocates insist it's a crime control bill, not a gun control bill.  After all, al those other gun er, crime control bills passed in California have clearly worked SO well...

Well, I suppose there's this way to look at it.  Maryland has been the test case to prove conclusively beyond any shadow of doubt that ballistic fingerprinting is an utterly worthless waste of money that hasn't solved a single crime.  Now, California can be the test case to prove conclusively beyond any shadow of doubt that microstamping is an utterly worthless waste of money that won't solve a single crime.

Stupid Microsoft tricks:

This has been niggling at me for a while now.  It's minor, but points out the lack of thought.

The large computer monitors that have become widespread consume significant amounts of power.  (LCD monitors, granted, rather less so.)  For this reason, modern monitors have energy-saving features built in, the most significant of which is screen blanking — when the signal to the monitor hasn't changed in a certain period of time, the monitor shuts off its display to save power, and "wakes up" again as soon as the screen changes.  (This period is typically from five to fifteen minutes.  Sometimes it's configurable, but usually not.)

When you log out of a Windows box, the login screen switches after ten minutes or so to a screen saver that displays a Microsoft splash logo and keeps it constantly moving around the screen every few seconds, just to make sure you can't possibly forget that Microsoft Windows is running on the machine.

. . . Thus, of course, completely defeating the monitor's energy-saving mode.

Update:  Several people pointed out that I neglected to clearly distinguish between the hardware/firmware display timeout (which can sometimes but not always be adjusted) and the software display timeout (which can be configured through the Windows "Power Options" control panel).  Nevertheless, that panel, in my experience, defaults — for desktop machines — to disabling monitor power saving, which is a bad choice of default in probably 99% of cases.  (About the only cases I can think of offhand in which you'd want the monitor to never go into powersaving are security stations, nursing stations, and airport flight-information screens.)

Comments

Stupd Microsoft tricks

[bfudlmint.livejournal.com]

Problem exists between keyboard and chair.

I haven't played with Vista yet but on all previous version you can configure that. My power saving monitor shuts itself off after 20 minutes.

[radarrider.livejournal.com]

My understanding is that the monitor goes into power saving mode on a signal from the video card (or absence of signal). My computers at work are configured with the default screen saver and they all shut down the monitor at the designated time.

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

The Micro$oft behavior is just the default, it can be changed.

Unfortunately, the legislature behavior (uninformed stupidity) is also the default. It is much harder to change. I am beginning to believe that the sponsors of this type of legislation know it will be ineffective, they just want to drive up costs for manufacturers and users, as a means for limiting wider use.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

The Micro$oft behavior is just the default, it can be changed.

Mea culpa, I should have specified that this is the default behavior of the software, and I didn't distinguish between software and hardware (well, firmware) configurability.

It's still a stupid default.

[genuine-snark.livejournal.com]

I don't even know about default. My setups have always shut down the screen on cue. I've had a lot more problem getting *nix boxes to act consistently.

And, as others have pointed out, it has nothing to do with the actual image on the screen. Video power saving modes are done via explicit signal from the video card.

[databeast.livejournal.com]

the profile settings for the login/welcome screen are taken from the 'default user' profile

if you regedit that, you can fix it.

but yeah, that doesnt change the fact it should be smarter by default

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Useful tip. Thanks.

I'll have to poke around and create a .reg patch.