Thoughts on what cards I should target next
I am trying to decide which cards I should target next. My goal is building up a point balance for a trip to Japan or maybe Brazil. I have four new accounts from Jan which are over six months old now and a prestige card that I picked up two months ago. I can do personal or business cards. Where should be my main focus if I am looking for premium redemptions. RIght now I have about 90k TY points coming in so I was looking into maybe workijng towards signapore airlines, because I can use TY points and amex MRs with their program and redeem for a suite. Normally I would look for AA redemptions but I only have like 14k AA miles in my account and don't think I will be able to build the account back up that quickly. I have abut 44k amex MRs saved up at moment. Some thoughts on what I might do. I am considering going for the citi premier card for the signup offer since I already have the prestige and I could use that card for travel bonus spend (if I did this then I would have 140k TY points to use). I could pick up the chase co-branded marriott card to redeem for some marriott stays, although I want to go for the ink plus when they have a good signup offer so I'm trying to avoid more chase apps. For amex I was looking at maybe a personal plat or a business plat/prg. None of the signups at the moment look super appealing and I am not getting the great signup offer via cardmatch for the plat. I have a number of URs saved up already but I am trying to save those for hyatt redemptions vs using them on airfare. Which card offers would you suggest I target and which cards should I focus my spend on? I was thinkg about going hard on the Everyday card to try to get my MR account up. . I currently have venture, cs, citi aa plat, citi prestige, amex everyday, amex spg, ink bold, arrival+, citi hilton, chase hyatt, freedomI got rid of or downgraded the following: csp, amex prg, Citi AA exec
JustMe3 wrote:
red259 wrote:
On second thought it looks like getting the Ink Plus may be harder than I thought. I got notified today that they are changing the bold card over to a revolver basically. They said there will be a set limit and I have option to pay over time with interest. This seems like it will make it very difficult for me to convince chase that I need the ink plus when I already have the bold.Well not necessarily, I'm sure there are others out there that have 2 Chase business cards and didn't have to do any convincing (although I could be wrong). Maybe you should just try for the Ink Plus now if that's the card you really want?Because they have had much higher signup offers in the past. Don't want to app for a 50k offer when I have seen 70k offers in the past and sometimes the higher offers occur around the end of summer. No way to predict for sure, but being its that time of year makes it worth waiting a month or two.
Similar Messages
-
Now my iphone had the screen with : Your Iphone could not be activated because the activation server is temporarily unavailable. Try connecting your Iphone to the itunes to activate it, or try again in a couple of minute. What i should do with my phone ????
Would you rather upgrade to windows 8, BlackBerry or Android phones? Do you honestly think those don't have problems?
You waited a lot and chose to buy an early production model. Mistakes happen all the time a factory retools and workers relearn new skills necessary to keep US happy.
Exercise your rights.... Send it back for a new one.
In any case, I feel your frustration. Btw, I love Apple but use a Blackberry -
What cards for the g5 are compatible with the A1038 display?
The Genius Bar people believe the video card (ATI Radeon 9600 Pro) in my G5 is gone. Is there a compatibility chart somewhere to figure out what card I should
buy to replace it? It needs to drive a 20in three-legged cinema display (A1038)
which has an ADC connector (the kind that also powers the display).
Thank you,
AndrasHi-
There are a few ADC equipped cards available at We Love Macs:
http://www.welovemacs.com/agpg5vica.html
The above page is as close to a compatibility chart as you'll get.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86504 -
My computer is shutting down before fully booting up. I am running the disk utilities program and have this message: Error: Disk Utility can't repair this disk . . . disk, and restore your backed-up files. Can anyone suggest what I should do next?
So, you can't Install OSX to the external?
Or you can't boot from it when you do?
You're not the only one wondering... I'm reminded of the Goose that laid the Golden Egg story. -
Where can I purchase an upgraded GPU for my PM G5? What card should I get?
I don't know much about Macs but I need to purchase an upgraded video card for somebody in our graphic design department.
Can I purchase an upgraded video card directly through Apple or is there another preferred vendor somebody here can recommend?
I read that the ATI 4870 is likely the best video card available for the Mac at this point in time, can somebody confirm this or tell me what else I should opt for?
Thanks in advance!
P.S. I don't see anywhere on the Apple website where I can actually purchase a GPU...can somebody please provide a link?
P.P.S. He has the Mac Pro 1,1 model:
Mac Pro "Quad Core" 2.66 (Original) 2.66 GHz D. Core Xeon 5150 x2
Intro. Date: August 7, 2006* Disc. Date: January 8, 2008
Subfamily: Mac Pro Model No: MA356LL/A
Std. RAM: 1.0 GB Std. VRAM: 256 MB
Std. HD: 250 GB (7200 RPM) Std. Optical: 6X DL "SuperDrive"Hello again, The hatter.
Although OP does specifically mention ATI 4870, and although Apple sells ATI 4870, it seems to me that the Apple 4870 product page
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB999ZM/A
does NOT assure OP of compatibility with his Mac Pro "Quad Core" 2.66 (Original) from August 2006.
http://support.apple.com/kb/SP30
I am not knowledgeable in these specifics. Perhaps you know the answer to these questions.
(1) Can the ATI 4870 work with OP's August 2006 QuadCore MacPro, or does he need some different upgrade-video card?
(2) Should OP be looking for a ATI Radeon X1900 XT or NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 (or equivalents) rather than ATI 4870 to upgrade his August 2006 QuadCore MacPro's video card?
TIA,
EZ Jim
Mac Pro Quad Core (Early 2009) 2.93Ghz w/Mac OS X (10.6.1)
MacBook Pro (13 inch, Mid 2009) 2.26GHz (10.6.1) LED Cinema Display
G4 PowerBook 1.67GHz (10.4.11) External iSight iBookSE 366MHz (10.3.9) -
I downloaded the latest iTunes version and now get the following error message: "This copy of iTunes is corrupted or is not installed correctly. Please re-install iTunes." Can anyone provide suggestions on what I should do next?
Let's try a repair install of iTunes first.
Restart the PC. If you're using Vista or 7, now head into your Uninstall a program control panel, select "iTunes" and then click "Repair". If you're using XP, head into your Add or Remove Programs control panel, select "iTunes", click "Change" and then click "Repair".
Can you launch your iTunes now? -
Wondering what Hard Drive I should get next.
Which 80GB Hard Drive do you think I should get next,
Maxtor, Western Digital, IBM?
I can afford any one.Quote
Originally posted by Bergmania
Quote
Shaved 10 secs off boot time alone.
I don't expect that to happen on my system.. as it boots on 26 sec anyways.. after some bootvis tweaking..
Depends on what drive(s) a JB replaces. In my case, it replaced IBM 75/60GXP models. Boot time with them was ~40 seconds because of RAID-1 plus a ton of HP camera/scanner and other garb in the tray. 10 secs is quite a chunk off of that. -
After installing Mavericks on my 2008 Mac Pro (10GBRAM, several HDs, 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon) Software updater says there is an update available. iMovie Apple Version 10.0 Released Oct 22, 2013.
So I click the UPDATE button
Software Updater puts up a dialog that says "Your computer’s video card does not meet the minimum system requirements".
I have ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256 MB. What card SHOULD I have?
Thanks.It is a easy fix to this problem.
I have this video card
iMac 24 inch, early 2008.
Graphics card: ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro 256 MB .
This is what you do.
1. open app store.
2.go to the update tab.
Yuo will see the imovie icon waiting to install.
3.clic the sub menu tab and select "try apdate in an hour" option from the sub menu.
4.leave the app store window open and came back in an 1hr .
Like magic you will see the imovie app being upgrade it in the lunch pad .
enjoy it. -
What every developer should know about bitmaps
This isn't everything, but it is a good place to start if you are about to use bitmaps in your program. Original article (with bitmaps & nicer formatting) at Moderator edit: link removed
Virtually every developer will use bitmaps at times in their programming. Or if not in their programming, then in a website, blog, or family photos. Yet many of us don't know the trade-offs between a GIF, JPEG, or PNG file – and there are some major differences there. This is a short post on the basics which will be sufficient for most, and a good start for the rest. Most of this I learned as a game developer (inc. Enemy Nations) where you do need a deep understanding of graphics.
Bitmaps fundamentally store the color of each pixel. But there are three key components to this:
1.Storing the color value itself. Most of us are familiar with RGB where it stores the Red, Green, & Blue component of each color. This is actually the least effective method as the human eye can see subtle differences on some parts of the color spectrum more than others. It's also inefficient for many common operations on a color such as brightening it. But it is the simplest for the most common programming tasks and so has become the standard.
2.The transparency of each pixel. This is critical for the edge of non-rectangular images. A diagonal line, to render best, will be a combination of the color from the line and the color of the underlying pixel. Each pixel needs to have its level of transparency (or actually opacity) set from 0% (show the underlying pixel) to 100% (show just the pixel from the image).
3.The bitmap metadata. This is informat about the image which can range from color tables and resolution to the owner of the image.
Compression
Bitmaps take a lot of data. Or to be more exact, they can take up a lot of bytes. Compression has been the main driver of new bitmap formats over the years. Compression comes in three flavors, palette reduction, lossy & lossless.
In the early days palette reduction was the most common approach. Some programs used bitmaps that were black & white, so 1 bit per pixel. Now that's squeezing it out. And into the days of Windows 3.1 16 color images (4 bits/pixel) were still in widespread use. But the major use was the case of 8-bits/256 colors for a bitmap. These 256 colors would map to a palette that was part of the bitmap and that palette held a 24-bit color for each entry. This let a program select the 256 colors out of the full spectrum that best displayed the picture.
This approach was pretty good and mostly failed for flat surfaces that had a very slow transition across the surface. It also hit a major problem early on with the web and windowed operating systems – because the video cards were also 8-bit systems with a single palette for the entire screen. That was fine for a game that owned the entire screen, but not for when images from different sources shared the screen. The solution to this is a standard web palette was created and most browsers, etc. used that palette if there was palette contention.
Finally, there were some intermediate solutions such as 16-bits/pixel which did provide the entire spectrum, but with a coarse level of granularity where the human eye could see jumps in shade changes. This found little usage because memory prices dropped and video cards jumped quickly from 8-bit to 24-bit in a year.
Next is lossy compression. Compression is finding patterns that repeat in a file and then in the second case just point back to the first run. What if you have a run of 20 pixels where the only difference in the second run is two of the pixels are redder by a value of 1? The human eye can't see that difference. So you change the second run to match the first and voila, you can compress it. Most lossy compression schemes let you set the level of lossiness.
This approach does have one serious problem when you use a single color to designate transparency. If that color is shifted by a single bit, it is no longer transparent. This is why lossy formats were used almost exclusively for pictures and never in games.
Finally comes lossless. This is where the program compresses the snot out of the image with no loss of information. I'm not going to dive into what/how of this except to bring up the point that compressing the images takes substantially more time than decompressing them. So displaying compressed images – fast. Compressing images – not so fast. This can lead to situations where for performance reasons you do not want to store in a lossless format on the fly.
Transparency
Transparency comes in three flavors. (If you know an artist who creates web content – have them read this section. It's amazing the number who are clueless on this issue.) The first flavor is none – the bitmap is a rectangle and will obscure every pixel below it.
The second is a bitmap where a designated color value (most use magenta but it can be any color) means transparent. So other colors are drawn and the magenta pixels are not drawn so the underlying pixel is displayed. This requires rendering the image on a selected background color and the edge pixels that should be partially the image and partially the background pixel then are partially the background color. You see this in practice with 256 color icons where they have perfect edges on a white background yet have a weird white halo effect on their edges on a black background.
The third flavor is 8 bits of transparency (i.e. 256 values from 0 – 100%) for each pixel. This is what is meant by a 32-bit bitmap, it is 24-bits of color and 8 bits of transparency. This provides an image that has finer graduations than the human eye can discern. One word of warning when talking to artists – they can all produce "32-bit bitmaps." But 95% of them produce ones where every pixel is set to 100% opacity and are clueless about the entire process and the need for transparency. (Game artists are a notable exception – they have been doing this forever.) For a good example of how to do this right take a look at Icon Experience – I think their bitmaps are superb (we use them in AutoTag).
Resolution
Many formats have a resolution, normally described as DPI (Dots Per Inch). When viewing a photograph this generally is not an issue. But take the example of a chart rendered as a bitmap. You want the text in the chart to be readable, and you may want it to print cleanly on a 600 DPI printer, but on the screen you want the 600 dots that take up an inch to display using just 96 pixels. The resolution provides this ability. The DPI does not exist in some formats and is optional in others (note: it is not required in any format, but it is unusual for it to be missing in PNG).
The important issue of DPI is that when rendering a bitmap the user may want the ability to zoom in on and/or to print at the printer's resolution but display at a lower resolution – you need to provide the ability for the calling program to set the DPI. There's a very powerful charting program that is useless except for standard viewing on a monitor – because it renders at 96 DPI and that's it. Don't limit your uses.
File formats
Ok, so what file formats should you use? Let's go from most to least useful.
PNG – 32-bit (or less), lossless compression, small file sizes – what's not to like. Older versions of some browsers (like Internet Explorer) would display the transparent pixels with an off-white color but the newer versions handle it properly. Use this (in 32-bit mode using 8 bits for transparency) for everything.
ICO – This is the icon file used to represent applications on the desktop, etc. It is a collection of bitmaps which can each be of any resolution and bit depth. For these build it using just 32-bit png files from 16x16 up to 256x256. If your O/S or an application needs a lesser bit depth, it will reduce on the fly – and keep the 8 bits of transparency.
JPEG – 24-bit only (i.e. no transparency), lossy, small file sizes. There is no reason to use this format unless you have significant numbers of people using old browsers. It's not a bad format, but it is inferior to PNG with no advantages.
GIF – 8-bit, lossy, very small file sizes. GIF has two unique features. First, you can place multiple GIF bitmaps in a single file with a delay set between each. It will then play through those giving you an animated bitmap. This works on every browser back to the 0.9 versions and it's a smaller file size than a flash file. On the flip side it is only 8 bits and in today's world that tends to look poor (although some artists can do amazing things with just 8 bits). It also has a set color as transparent so it natively supports transparency (of the on/off variety). This is useful if you want animated bitmaps without the overhead of flash or if bandwidth is a major issue.
BMP (also called DIB) – from 1 up to 32-bit, lossless, large file sizes. There is one case to use this – when speed is the paramount issue. Many 2-D game programs, especially before the graphics cards available today, would store all bitmaps as a BMP/DIB because no decompression was required and that time saving is critical when you are trying to display 60 frames/second for a game.
TIFF – 32-bit (or less), lossless compression, small file sizes – and no better than PNG. Basically the government and some large companies decided they needed a "standard" so that software in the future could still read these old files. This whole argument makes no sense as PNG fits the bill. But for some customers (like the federal government), it's TIFF instead of PNG. Use this when the customer requests it (but otherwise use PNG).
Everything Else – Obsolete. If you are creating a bitmap editor then by all means support reading/writing every format around. But for other uses – stick to the 2+4 formats above.
Edited by: 418479 on Dec 3, 2010 9:54 AM
Edited by: Darryl Burke -- irrelevant blog link removedI don't think the comment about jpeg being inferior to png and having no advantages is fair. The advantage is precisely the smaller file sizes because of lossy compression. Saving an image at 80-90% quality is virtually indistinguishable from a corresponding png image and can be significantly smaller in file size. Case in point, the rocket picture in that blog post is a jpeg, as is the picture of the blogger.
The statements about the TIFF format is slightly wrong. TIFF is sort of an all encompassing format that's not actually associated with any specific compression. It can be lossless, lossy, or raw. You can have jpeg, jpeg2000, lzw, packbits, or deflate (png) compressed tiff files. There's also a few compressions that specialize in binary images (used alot for faxes). In fact, the tiff format has a mechanism that allows you to use your own undefined compression. This flexibility comes at a price: not all image viewers can open a tiff file, and those that do may not be able to open all tiff files.
Ultimately though, the main reason people use TIFF is because of its multipage support (like a pdf file), because of those binary compressions (for faxes), and because of its ability include virtually any metadata about the image you want (ex: geographical information in a "GeoTIFF"). -
What every developer should know about character encoding
This was originally posted (with better formatting) at Moderator edit: link removed/what-every-developer-should-know-about-character-encoding.html. I'm posting because lots of people trip over this.
If you write code that touches a text file, you probably need this.
Lets start off with two key items
1.Unicode does not solve this issue for us (yet).
2.Every text file is encoded. There is no such thing as an unencoded file or a "general" encoding.
And lets add a codacil to this – most Americans can get by without having to take this in to account – most of the time. Because the characters for the first 127 bytes in the vast majority of encoding schemes map to the same set of characters (more accurately called glyphs). And because we only use A-Z without any other characters, accents, etc. – we're good to go. But the second you use those same assumptions in an HTML or XML file that has characters outside the first 127 – then the trouble starts.
The computer industry started with diskspace and memory at a premium. Anyone who suggested using 2 bytes for each character instead of one would have been laughed at. In fact we're lucky that the byte worked best as 8 bits or we might have had fewer than 256 bits for each character. There of course were numerous charactersets (or codepages) developed early on. But we ended up with most everyone using a standard set of codepages where the first 127 bytes were identical on all and the second were unique to each set. There were sets for America/Western Europe, Central Europe, Russia, etc.
And then for Asia, because 256 characters were not enough, some of the range 128 – 255 had what was called DBCS (double byte character sets). For each value of a first byte (in these higher ranges), the second byte then identified one of 256 characters. This gave a total of 128 * 256 additional characters. It was a hack, but it kept memory use to a minimum. Chinese, Japanese, and Korean each have their own DBCS codepage.
And for awhile this worked well. Operating systems, applications, etc. mostly were set to use a specified code page. But then the internet came along. A website in America using an XML file from Greece to display data to a user browsing in Russia, where each is entering data based on their country – that broke the paradigm.
Fast forward to today. The two file formats where we can explain this the best, and where everyone trips over it, is HTML and XML. Every HTML and XML file can optionally have the character encoding set in it's header metadata. If it's not set, then most programs assume it is UTF-8, but that is not a standard and not universally followed. If the encoding is not specified and the program reading the file guess wrong – the file will be misread.
Point 1 – Never treat specifying the encoding as optional when writing a file. Always write it to the file. Always. Even if you are willing to swear that the file will never have characters out of the range 1 – 127.
Now lets' look at UTF-8 because as the standard and the way it works, it gets people into a lot of trouble. UTF-8 was popular for two reasons. First it matched the standard codepages for the first 127 characters and so most existing HTML and XML would match it. Second, it was designed to use as few bytes as possible which mattered a lot back when it was designed and many people were still using dial-up modems.
UTF-8 borrowed from the DBCS designs from the Asian codepages. The first 128 bytes are all single byte representations of characters. Then for the next most common set, it uses a block in the second 128 bytes to be a double byte sequence giving us more characters. But wait, there's more. For the less common there's a first byte which leads to a sersies of second bytes. Those then each lead to a third byte and those three bytes define the character. This goes up to 6 byte sequences. Using the MBCS (multi-byte character set) you can write the equivilent of every unicode character. And assuming what you are writing is not a list of seldom used Chinese characters, do it in fewer bytes.
But here is what everyone trips over – they have an HTML or XML file, it works fine, and they open it up in a text editor. They then add a character that in their text editor, using the codepage for their region, insert a character like ß and save the file. Of course it must be correct – their text editor shows it correctly. But feed it to any program that reads according to the encoding and that is now the first character fo a 2 byte sequence. You either get a different character or if the second byte is not a legal value for that first byte – an error.
Point 2 – Always create HTML and XML in a program that writes it out correctly using the encode. If you must create with a text editor, then view the final file in a browser.
Now, what about when the code you are writing will read or write a file? We are not talking binary/data files where you write it out in your own format, but files that are considered text files. Java, .NET, etc all have character encoders. The purpose of these encoders is to translate between a sequence of bytes (the file) and the characters they represent. Lets take what is actually a very difficlut example – your source code, be it C#, Java, etc. These are still by and large "plain old text files" with no encoding hints. So how do programs handle them? Many assume they use the local code page. Many others assume that all characters will be in the range 0 – 127 and will choke on anything else.
Here's a key point about these text files – every program is still using an encoding. It may not be setting it in code, but by definition an encoding is being used.
Point 3 – Always set the encoding when you read and write text files. Not just for HTML & XML, but even for files like source code. It's fine if you set it to use the default codepage, but set the encoding.
Point 4 – Use the most complete encoder possible. You can write your own XML as a text file encoded for UTF-8. But if you write it using an XML encoder, then it will include the encoding in the meta data and you can't get it wrong. (it also adds the endian preamble to the file.)
Ok, you're reading & writing files correctly but what about inside your code. What there? This is where it's easy – unicode. That's what those encoders created in the Java & .NET runtime are designed to do. You read in and get unicode. You write unicode and get an encoded file. That's why the char type is 16 bits and is a unique core type that is for characters. This you probably have right because languages today don't give you much choice in the matter.
Point 5 – (For developers on languages that have been around awhile) – Always use unicode internally. In C++ this is called wide chars (or something similar). Don't get clever to save a couple of bytes, memory is cheap and you have more important things to do.
Wrapping it up
I think there are two key items to keep in mind here. First, make sure you are taking the encoding in to account on text files. Second, this is actually all very easy and straightforward. People rarely screw up how to use an encoding, it's when they ignore the issue that they get in to trouble.
Edited by: Darryl Burke -- link removedDavidThi808 wrote:
This was originally posted (with better formatting) at Moderator edit: link removed/what-every-developer-should-know-about-character-encoding.html. I'm posting because lots of people trip over this.
If you write code that touches a text file, you probably need this.
Lets start off with two key items
1.Unicode does not solve this issue for us (yet).
2.Every text file is encoded. There is no such thing as an unencoded file or a "general" encoding.
And lets add a codacil to this – most Americans can get by without having to take this in to account – most of the time. Because the characters for the first 127 bytes in the vast majority of encoding schemes map to the same set of characters (more accurately called glyphs). And because we only use A-Z without any other characters, accents, etc. – we're good to go. But the second you use those same assumptions in an HTML or XML file that has characters outside the first 127 – then the trouble starts. Pretty sure most Americans do not use character sets that only have a range of 0-127. I don't think I have every used a desktop OS that did. I might have used some big iron boxes before that but at that time I wasn't even aware that character sets existed.
They might only use that range but that is a different issue, especially since that range is exactly the same as the UTF8 character set anyways.
>
The computer industry started with diskspace and memory at a premium. Anyone who suggested using 2 bytes for each character instead of one would have been laughed at. In fact we're lucky that the byte worked best as 8 bits or we might have had fewer than 256 bits for each character. There of course were numerous charactersets (or codepages) developed early on. But we ended up with most everyone using a standard set of codepages where the first 127 bytes were identical on all and the second were unique to each set. There were sets for America/Western Europe, Central Europe, Russia, etc.
And then for Asia, because 256 characters were not enough, some of the range 128 – 255 had what was called DBCS (double byte character sets). For each value of a first byte (in these higher ranges), the second byte then identified one of 256 characters. This gave a total of 128 * 256 additional characters. It was a hack, but it kept memory use to a minimum. Chinese, Japanese, and Korean each have their own DBCS codepage.
And for awhile this worked well. Operating systems, applications, etc. mostly were set to use a specified code page. But then the internet came along. A website in America using an XML file from Greece to display data to a user browsing in Russia, where each is entering data based on their country – that broke the paradigm.
The above is only true for small volume sets. If I am targeting a processing rate of 2000 txns/sec with a requirement to hold data active for seven years then a column with a size of 8 bytes is significantly different than one with 16 bytes.
Fast forward to today. The two file formats where we can explain this the best, and where everyone trips over it, is HTML and XML. Every HTML and XML file can optionally have the character encoding set in it's header metadata. If it's not set, then most programs assume it is UTF-8, but that is not a standard and not universally followed. If the encoding is not specified and the program reading the file guess wrong – the file will be misread.
The above is out of place. It would be best to address this as part of Point 1.
Point 1 – Never treat specifying the encoding as optional when writing a file. Always write it to the file. Always. Even if you are willing to swear that the file will never have characters out of the range 1 – 127.
Now lets' look at UTF-8 because as the standard and the way it works, it gets people into a lot of trouble. UTF-8 was popular for two reasons. First it matched the standard codepages for the first 127 characters and so most existing HTML and XML would match it. Second, it was designed to use as few bytes as possible which mattered a lot back when it was designed and many people were still using dial-up modems.
UTF-8 borrowed from the DBCS designs from the Asian codepages. The first 128 bytes are all single byte representations of characters. Then for the next most common set, it uses a block in the second 128 bytes to be a double byte sequence giving us more characters. But wait, there's more. For the less common there's a first byte which leads to a sersies of second bytes. Those then each lead to a third byte and those three bytes define the character. This goes up to 6 byte sequences. Using the MBCS (multi-byte character set) you can write the equivilent of every unicode character. And assuming what you are writing is not a list of seldom used Chinese characters, do it in fewer bytes.
The first part of that paragraph is odd. The first 128 characters of unicode, all unicode, is based on ASCII. The representational format of UTF8 is required to implement unicode, thus it must represent those characters. It uses the idiom supported by variable width encodings to do that.
But here is what everyone trips over – they have an HTML or XML file, it works fine, and they open it up in a text editor. They then add a character that in their text editor, using the codepage for their region, insert a character like ß and save the file. Of course it must be correct – their text editor shows it correctly. But feed it to any program that reads according to the encoding and that is now the first character fo a 2 byte sequence. You either get a different character or if the second byte is not a legal value for that first byte – an error.
Not sure what you are saying here. If a file is supposed to be in one encoding and you insert invalid characters into it then it invalid. End of story. It has nothing to do with html/xml.
Point 2 – Always create HTML and XML in a program that writes it out correctly using the encode. If you must create with a text editor, then view the final file in a browser.
The browser still needs to support the encoding.
Now, what about when the code you are writing will read or write a file? We are not talking binary/data files where you write it out in your own format, but files that are considered text files. Java, .NET, etc all have character encoders. The purpose of these encoders is to translate between a sequence of bytes (the file) and the characters they represent. Lets take what is actually a very difficlut example – your source code, be it C#, Java, etc. These are still by and large "plain old text files" with no encoding hints. So how do programs handle them? Many assume they use the local code page. Many others assume that all characters will be in the range 0 – 127 and will choke on anything else.
I know java files have a default encoding - the specification defines it. And I am certain C# does as well.
Point 3 – Always set the encoding when you read and write text files. Not just for HTML & XML, but even for files like source code. It's fine if you set it to use the default codepage, but set the encoding.
It is important to define it. Whether you set it is another matter.
Point 4 – Use the most complete encoder possible. You can write your own XML as a text file encoded for UTF-8. But if you write it using an XML encoder, then it will include the encoding in the meta data and you can't get it wrong. (it also adds the endian preamble to the file.)
Ok, you're reading & writing files correctly but what about inside your code. What there? This is where it's easy – unicode. That's what those encoders created in the Java & .NET runtime are designed to do. You read in and get unicode. You write unicode and get an encoded file. That's why the char type is 16 bits and is a unique core type that is for characters. This you probably have right because languages today don't give you much choice in the matter.
Unicode character escapes are replaced prior to actual code compilation. Thus it is possible to create strings in java with escaped unicode characters which will fail to compile.
Point 5 – (For developers on languages that have been around awhile) – Always use unicode internally. In C++ this is called wide chars (or something similar). Don't get clever to save a couple of bytes, memory is cheap and you have more important things to do.
No. A developer should understand the problem domain represented by the requirements and the business and create solutions that appropriate to that. Thus there is absolutely no point for someone that is creating an inventory system for a stand alone store to craft a solution that supports multiple languages.
And another example is with high volume systems moving/storing bytes is relevant. As such one must carefully consider each text element as to whether it is customer consumable or internally consumable. Saving bytes in such cases will impact the total load of the system. In such systems incremental savings impact operating costs and marketing advantage with speed. -
2006/2007 MacPro 2.66GH Intel Xeon. What version EFI should it have?
I have a 2006/2006 2.66GH Intel Zeon MacPro. This version MacPro came with a 32 bit EFI firmware. After having a new video card iunstalled at the Apple Store I found that my MacPro would no longer recognize bootable FW800 external drives or my eSATA external drives during an OPTION boot. This function had worked perfectly before I had the video card switched out. My FW800 drive DO show up on the desktop after boot and are accesssable... I just can no longer boot up my bootable SuperDuper backups as I had been able to prior to the video card switch.
My thinking is that the technician thought he was doing me a favor and upgraded my machine to the latest 64 bit EFI ... While the machine works fine my bootable backups are useless.
What version EFI SHOULD this machine have and how do I check the version to see if I am correct? If this IS the case how can I restore the original firmware?
Thanks....Here is some information for you.
You don't even say what video card. And the EFI in your sysem 1,1 or 2,1 isn't going to change into UEFI 2.x instead of 1.1 (which was developed in 2005, and doesn't have room to be flased to, nor would the motherboard be happy).
The rest, if you bought a card from Apple like ATI 5770 is not from having a new card.
That card requjres 10.6.4-1/2 or later, meaning you won't have a 10.6.5 DVD to boot from and can't use older DVDs. Or clones. You need to find a way to update your backups.
In the past I could run a combo update against clones while booted from another drive. Last time I tried that, seems 10.6.x made that impossible, and harder to apply and test.
Only 2008 Mac Pro and later have the EFI64/UEFI (2.x) - that supports things like Nvidia GTX 285. There were two versions of Nvidia 8800GT (1st gen EFI32, and 2008+). ATI cards work in all Mac Pro models - as long as the OS has the proper minimum build.. -
X200 What is the empty hole next to the closing clip ?
Hello!
I have a question about the empty hole next to the clip where i clips the screen when you close it. To my guess is a 5-1 reader because i also have a modem port . My question is , is it normal that there is an empty hole with no casing inside? I mean there isn't a casing like for sd card or something , just an empty hole . What can i use it for since there is no casing for sd card? This is a picture i found from google , it looks like this
http://www.notebookreview.com/picture/?f=46844
Cheers
shak
Solved!
Go to Solution.No need of removing anything. Just insert the SD card in the slot, (SD card brand should be on top) Insert it until you hear a "click".
Press it again to get it out.
Check the first 10 seconds of this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG4OsFRZr5Q
/L40SX/240/240X/2*340CSE/360PE/365XD/380D/380E/380XD/380Z/390/560E/560X/2*570/2*600/600E/750Cs/755C/760CD/760EL/760XD/770E/A20p/A22p
A31/i1600/G40/R50p/R61i/S30/SL510/2*T22/4*T4x/11*T6x/6*T4x0x/6*T5x0/3*W5x0/W700/3*X2x/4*X3x/3*X4x/5*X6x/3*X6xT/10*X2xx/2*X200T/4*X30x/Z60m/3*Z61x
Comunidad en Español English Community Deutsche Community Русскоязычное Сообщество -
Satellite Pro A100 PSAA3E: What WLan driver should I use?
What wireless software should i download to make my built in wireless work.
I have downloaded almost all of them but they install and i see no wireless there :S
Help please?Hi
The Satellite Pro A100 were equipped with the different WLan cards; two different Wlan cards are possible; Intel and Atheros.
All necessary WLan drivers can be found either on the Toshiba European driver page or on the Toshiba WLan portal.
http://aps.toshiba-tro.de/wlan/
Check both drivers. One of them will work for sure!
Regards -
I have two iMac's one running 10.6.8 and the other 10.8.2 What Apeture program should I purchase?
I have two iMac's one running 10.6.8 and the other 10.8.2 What Apeture program should I purchase?
You can currently only buy the current version Aperture 3.4.3 at the AppStore, and that version requires MacOS X 10.7.5. at least, see the release notes: Aperture 3.4.3
So you will not be able to install this version on your Snow leopard machine. Maybe you can buy a boxed retail version of an earlier release, compatible with Snow Leopard, but the newer version is faster and compatible with iCloud.
Do your iMacs both have the same processors and memory? You will wan to use your fastest mac with the best graphics card and the most RAM to run Aperture, also a large screen would be desirable.
Regards
Léonie -
I have a macbook pro what virus protection should i install?
I have a macbook pro, what virus protection should I install?
1. This comment applies to malicious software ("malware") that's installed unwittingly by the victim of a network attack. It does not apply to software, such as keystroke loggers, that may be installed deliberately by an intruder who has hands-on access to the victim's computer. That threat is in a different category, and there's no easy way to defend against it. If you have reason to suspect that you're the target of such an attack, you need expert help.
OS X now implements three layers of built-in protection specifically against malware, not counting runtime protections such as execute disable, sandboxing, system library randomization, and address space layout randomization that may also guard against other kinds of exploits.
2. All versions of OS X since 10.6.7 have been able to detect known Mac malware in downloaded files, and to block insecure web plugins. This feature is transparent to the user, but internally Apple calls it "XProtect." The malware recognition database is automatically checked for updates once a day; however, you shouldn't rely on it, because the attackers are always at least a day ahead of the defenders.
The following caveats apply to XProtect:
It can be bypassed by some third-party networking software, such as BitTorrent clients and Java applets.
It only applies to software downloaded from the network. Software installed from a CD or other media is not checked.
3. Starting with OS X 10.7.5, there has been a second layer of built-in malware protection, designated "Gatekeeper" by Apple. By default, applications and Installer packages downloaded from the network will only run if they're digitally signed by a developer with a certificate issued by Apple. Software certified in this way hasn't actually been tested by Apple (unless it comes from the Mac App Store), but you can be reasonably sure that it hasn't been modified by anyone other than the developer. His identity is known to Apple, so he could be held legally responsible if he distributed malware. For most practical purposes, applications recognized by Gatekeeper as signed can be considered safe.
Gatekeeper doesn't depend on a database of known malware. It has, however, the same limitations as XProtect, and in addition the following:
It can easily be disabled or overridden by the user.
A malware attacker could get control of a code-signing certificate under false pretenses, or could find some other way to evade Apple's controls.
4. Starting with OS X 10.8.3, a third layer of protection has been added: a "Malware Removal Tool" (MRT). MRT runs automatically in the background when you update the OS. It checks for, and removes, malware that may have evaded the other protections via a Java exploit (see below.) MRT also runs when you install or update the Apple-supplied Java runtime (but not the Oracle runtime.) Like XProtect, MRT is presumably effective against known attacks, but maybe not against unknown attacks. It notifies you if it finds malware, but otherwise there's no user interface to MRT.
5. Beyond XProtect, Gatekeeper, and MRT, there’s no evidence of any benefit from other automated protection against malware. The first and best line of defense is always your own intelligence. With the possible exception of Java exploits, all known malware circulating on the Internet that affects a fully-updated installation of OS X 10.6 or later takes the form of so-called "trojan horses," which can only have an effect if the victim is duped into running them. The threat therefore amounts to a battle of wits between you and the malware attacker. If you're smarter than he thinks you are, you'll win.
That means, in practice, that you never use software that comes from an untrustworthy source. How do you know whether a source is trustworthy?
Any website that prompts you to install a “codec,” “plug-in,” "player," "extractor," or “certificate” that comes from that same site, or an unknown one, is untrustworthy.
A web operator who tells you that you have a “virus,” or that anything else is wrong with your computer, or that you have won a prize in a contest you never entered, is trying to commit a crime with you as the victim. (Some reputable websites did legitimately warn visitors who were infected with the "DNSChanger" malware. That exception to this rule no longer applies.)
Pirated copies or "cracks" of commercial software, no matter where they come from, are unsafe.
Software of any kind downloaded from a BitTorrent or from a Usenet binary newsgroup is unsafe.
Software with a corporate brand, such as Adobe Flash Player, must be downloaded directly from the developer’s website. If it comes from any other source, it's unsafe.
6. Java on the Web (not to be confused with JavaScript, to which it's not related, despite the similarity of the names) is a weak point in the security of any system. Java is, among other things, a platform for running complex applications in a web page, on the client. That was always a bad idea, and Java's developers have proven themselves incapable of implementing it without also creating a portal for malware to enter. Past Java exploits are the closest thing there has ever been to a Windows-style virus affecting OS X. Merely loading a page with malicious Java content could be harmful.
Fortunately, client-side Java on the Web is obsolete and mostly extinct. Only a few outmoded sites still use it. Try to hasten the process of extinction by avoiding those sites, if you have a choice. Forget about playing games or other non-essential uses of Java.
Java is not included in OS X 10.7 and later. Discrete Java installers are distributed by Apple and by Oracle (the developer of Java.) Don't use either one unless you need it. Most people don't. If Java is installed, disable it — not JavaScript — in your browsers.
Regardless of version, experience has shown that Java on the Web can't be trusted. If you must use a Java applet for a task on a specific site, enable Java only for that site in Safari. Never enable Java for a public website that carries third-party advertising. Use it only on well-known, login-protected, secure websites without ads. In Safari 6 or later, you'll see a lock icon in the address bar with the abbreviation "https" when visiting a secure site.
Follow the above guidelines, and you’ll be as safe from malware as you can practically be. The rest of this comment concerns what you should not do to protect yourself from malware.
7. Never install any commercial "anti-virus" or "Internet security" products for the Mac, as they all do more harm than good, if they do any good at all. If you need to be able to detect Windows malware in your files, use the free software ClamXav — nothing else.
Why shouldn't you use commercial "anti-virus" products?
Their design is predicated on the nonexistent threat that malware may be injected at any time, anywhere in the file system. Malware is downloaded from the network; it doesn't materialize from nowhere.
In order to meet that nonexistent threat, the software modifies or duplicates low-level functions of the operating system, which is a waste of resources and a common cause of instability, bugs, and poor performance.
By modifying the operating system, the software itself may create weaknesses that could be exploited by malware attackers.
8. ClamXav doesn't have these drawbacks. That doesn't mean it's entirely safe. It may report email messages that have "phishing" links in the body, or Windows malware in attachments, as infected files, and offer to delete or move them. Doing so will corrupt the Mail database. The messages should be deleted from within the Mail application.
ClamXav is not needed, and should not be relied upon, for protection against OS X malware. It's useful only for detecting Windows malware. Windows malware can't harm you directly (unless, of course, you use Windows.) Just don't pass it on to anyone else.
A Windows malware attachment in email is usually easy to recognize. The file name will often be targeted at people who aren't very bright; for example:
♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥!!!!!!!H0TBABEZ4U!!!!!!!.AVI♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.exe
ClamXav may be able to tell you which particular virus or trojan it is, but do you care? In practice, there's seldom a reason to use ClamXav unless a network administrator requires you to run an anti-virus application.
9. The greatest harm done by security software, in my opinion, is in its effect on human behavior. It does little or nothing to protect people from emerging threats, but if they get a false sense of security from it, they may feel free to do things that expose them to higher risk. Nothing can lessen the need for safe computing practices.
10. It seems to be a common belief that the built-in Application Firewall acts as a barrier to infection, or prevents malware from functioning. It does neither. It blocks inbound connections to certain network services you're running, such as file sharing. It's disabled by default and you should leave it that way if you're behind a router on a private home or office network. Activate it only when you're on an untrusted network, for instance a public Wi-Fi hotspot, where you don't want to provide services. Disable any services you don't use in the Sharing preference pane. All are disabled by default.
Maybe you are looking for
-
Intermittent Bug - htmldb_Get clobbers DOM body element - Apex4
Hello, We recently started the process of upgrading to Apex4 and have had an issue with a call to htmldb_Get clobbering the DOM such that the body tag is emptied and thus nothing is rendered in the browser. But before jumping in too deep let me say t
-
I select a bookmark and it will not open in new tab even though i have that option selected
I have selected the option to open bookmark in new tab but it doesnt do that
-
I am trying to update my ipad from 5.0 to 5.1 version. It gets intrupted while updating. Tried many times with no sucess
-
Component Monitor - Item not found /runtime
Dear all, When i try to open the component monitor via System Administration -> System configuration -> Knowledge management, i get the following error: Item not found /runtime The item you are trying to access is not available. Try to check.... This
-
Out XML element values extract
hi their How can I out XML element the values extract and in a loop in variable and/or in an array store? Example: [loop] <SA>'MS','GYM'</SA> Values 'MS' and 'GYM' should be in variables e.g var1='MS' and var2='GYM' [end loop] Please, help me!!!! Urg