What I was saying is if the spindle is vertical the bottom edge of it is going to be bearing all the weight, and thus getting a lot more wear. That is just a guess though, so it could be totally wrong.
But, from taking apart a lot of failed drives I can tell you that damage to the actual platters is extremely rare. The most common cause of drive failure was some sort of resistance to spinning up which caused it to draw more current than the power supply was willing to give. The most likely explanation is mechanical resistance from wear on the bearings, but we were just taking them apart for the magnets, not failure analysis.
I should probably point out that these were SCSI drives, and there is a difference in construction. In all of them the spindle was anchored on both ends. More often than not IDE drive spindles are only anchored on the motor end.
It's 4:2:2 MPEG-2, I-frame only (that's the uncompressed frame). But, don't make the mistake of thinking that equipment at that level is limited to that. Their raw video could easily be 10 bits per channel.
What's important is that the spindle is perpendicular to gravity. It's better to run them "on edge" as well, as they would be in an expensive RAID like you'd get from EMC or NEC. I believe the idea is that this way the wear is distributed more evenly across the bearings, which then reduces the chances of it siezing up.
This is according to an engineer at IBM, back when they made drives. Unfortunately I didn't get to talk to him myself, so I'm not totally certain about everything I've said here, but both my supervisor and manager at that job were very technical people, so I have no reason to believe the info went through any kind of pointy-haired filter or anything.
Yeah, but in three weeks if your system dies, you can completely recover with RAID
Not always, but yeah, most of the time. RAID-1 should be safe, but with any of the others you're looking at varying degrees of trade-off.
Quality hard drives are built to last. Especially if they sit around, not moving, in a static free environment.
What do you mean by "sit around, not moving"? A hard drive left sitting on a shelf will eventually sieze up. I'm not saying they don't fail while running, but then you'll at least have the opportunity to know it's happening and take appropriate action.
Realisticly, it's startup and shutdown that cause the most stress on the drive. A drive that's kept spinning will last a remarkably long time; even beyond the point where, if it stops, you won't be able to get it going again.
And yeah, most new SCSI drives are rated for an MTBF of 1.2 million hours (about 137 years, which makes me question their methodology).
FWIW, I used to stress test hard drives for a living.
I do think hard drives are a good option for this purpose. Tape is just too expensive for most people, and being a magnetic media also I don't believe it has any significant advantages over a hard drive for long term storage. And what if your tape drive fails? Will you be able to find another one? I think it'll be quite a while before working IDE controllers are hard to find. Tape mechanisms may be more reliable individually (I don't know), but hard drives have a massive installed base advantage.
BTW, if you plan on keeping a hard drive on a shelf, keep in mind that they're designed to sit "on edge". Any place that buys drives in bulk should have some nice packing material to hold them safely in the proper position, or you can make your own without too much trouble. I do recommend a static bag, though, unless you're absolutely sure you're dealing with anti-static materials.
In particular, the GPL... only allows non-commercial software to use your copyrighted/patented work,
Please stop spreading this lie. "Commercial", "proprietary", and "closed source" all have seperate, and distinct, meanings, and the GPL only prohibits the last two.
That doesn't change anything; it still violates the "meeting of the minds" requirement for a valid contract (that both parties know what they're agreeing to before they agree to it.)
AND, the EULA, when it is read and agreed to, violates the "consideration" requirement (both parties recieve something of value). The complete lack of consideration is the real problem with EULAs: they give absolutely nothing in exchange for what they take. There is absolutely no support in copyright law for a "license to use" a copyrighted work. A EULA "grants" you a right you already have (read: gives you nothing) in exchange for taking away several rights you do explicitely have under copyright law and First Sale doctrine (depending on the particular EULA).
My objections have a firm basis in contract law. I'd hardly call them "nitpicking".
I mean, you want it to output properly formatted HTML, right? Why not just use a WYSIWYG HTML editor? There are tons to choose from on whatever platform you care to use.
Code is only recognized as speech by those who understand it. Even by those who do it's obvious that programming languages arehighly specialized and, at best, secondary languages. Code simply doesn't have the same status as human language. That might change if an AI is ever legally recognized as a "person", or it might not.
OK, fine, as long as it is agreed to before the sale. That's my main beef with EULAs anyway, and why I don't believe they're legal contracts: they atempt to retroactively modify a transaction that has already occured.
Seriously. I used to work with a guy, at a typical desk job, who found his back problems went away if he just stood up. So, he set up his cubicle so he could do his job standing up, and has done so for years.
If you're looking for a career change, I think teaching is probably the best option I've seen here, but it seems like what you're really looking for is just a way to not spend so much time sitting down.
I've been quite happy with kpilot, but I'm not exactly a serious user. I bought mine as a toy when I happened to have a few bucks, and I basically just use it for jotting notes, playing a few games, and reading public domain ebooks. No integration with anything on my computer or anything like that.
I'm not disagreeing with (or even responding to) the parent, this just seemed as good a place as any to put in my $0.02, since he mentioned kpilot.
And you CANNOT say BNetD doesn't have significant, non-infringing uses, which SHOULD make the DMCA irrelevant in this case.
As for the rest of your post:
People were using it for tournaments and LAN parties, where the whole point is to have a game shared only among people in a single location, not the entire internet. Additionally, even if there was internet access, there almost certainly wasn't the bandwidth to support several players at once, and even if it did, adding the inherent latency involved in using a battlenet server was completely uncalled for. AND battlenet was unstable as hell, so even under ideal conditions it was still a deficient option.
BNetD's creation had absolutely nothing to do with piracy, and everything to do with Blizzard failing to understand their market. Blizzard failed to provide the experience the market wanted, and BNetD was the market's reaction. Rather than fix their mistake, Blizzard decided to litigate.
I think there are plenty of people who just click through them now that would be pissed if they suddenly had to sign a multipage contract, like they're buying a new car, for any and every piece of software they pick up at the store.
I also think it's funny how peopl who don't understand my sig get so indignant about it.
Boycotts are lifted once the target ceases to commit or makes amends for their offence. The whole point is to affect change through economic punishment, but it's main effectiveness comes from the implication that prosperity can be regained as a reward for proper behavior (positive reinforcement is always more effective than negative reinforcement).
Refusing to ever buy any of their products, regardless of anything they might do, is beyond that. It's the step from the desire for change to the desire for extinction.
I happen to think he's right and should get his way. And you know what? If people had to sign those things at the time of purchase I think it would turn into a PR nightmare for these software companies, as people are more likely to actually read something they're physically signing.
I think the retailers would hate it as well. I'm sure MS would hear from Staples about people like me who would insist on reading the whole EULA before signing it (and refusing to move from the couter, and subsequently holding up the line, and asking the clerk questions about every paragraph so as to make it at least as inconvenient for them as it is for me).
EULAs are BS, and if it takes anal, pedantic BS to beat them, so be it. Al Capone was busted for tax evasion, after all.
Kile is just a KDE-based frontend. Other frontends I know of are lyx (X11) and ts (Tcl/Tk). I don't use latex, though, so I can't say if they'll do what you're looking for or not, but you won't have to install any KDE stuff to use them.
That said, as many have already pointed out, you can use KDE apps under Gnome as long as you have the dependencies satisfied, which shouldn't be a big deal with apt-get.
I entered the tech job market at the worst possible time (early 2000), and once I signed up with an agency I was never out of work for more than a week or so, total, per year.
Yeah, I got a few really crap manual labor jobs, but I always showed up on time and did my best. Once I proved myself (and it didn't take long), the staff at the office I worked out of started going out of their way to find the kind of work I wanted. In fact, I even ended up with the exact job (same company and everything) that inspired me to study the topics I did, and eventually ended up with a permenant position there.
Anyway, IIRC if you know VB, SQL, and some web stuff there will be no end of work for you. The big thing I discovered in those first few years was that even though nobody was hiring, the work still needed to get done.
Don't let anyone tell you there's no work for you out there. There may not be permenant positions, with benefits, retirement, etc, but there is certainly enough work for you to earn a decent living.
Which is odd, because I played it a lot. I can only remember the music from Super Mario Bros and legend of Zedla (and Spy Hunter of course, but that wasn't origional).
Anyway, along the lines of the article: there's a Britany Spears song (Crazy?) that has a bass line that sounds a whole lot like the SMB castle music.
What I actually like better is the modern trend of remixing "real" songs for games. I'd pay money for the soundtrack to Need For Speed: Underground 2, for example (I especially like the remix of "Rocket Ride").
You're telling me that they don't have internal documentation anyway?
Yes, that is entirely possible. What, you think bad or missing documentation only exists in the software world?
I've worked for companies where I was expected to produce custom solutions from hardware modules I didn't even know existed, and once I found out about it, was lucky if I could find so much as a schematic.
I've worked for companies where every single thing we built was completely custom; where the designer, assembler, and machinist were the same guy; and when the customer decided they wanted 3 more of something, I got to travel to their location, take the thing apart, and make sketches of every single piece accurate to.0005".
I've worked for companies where Engineering tossed every bit of anything they had for a product as soon as it was no longer being manufactured, even though customer service guaranteed support for at least 7 years from the last shipment date.
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What I was saying is if the spindle is vertical the bottom edge of it is going to be bearing all the weight, and thus getting a lot more wear. That is just a guess though, so it could be totally wrong.
But, from taking apart a lot of failed drives I can tell you that damage to the actual platters is extremely rare. The most common cause of drive failure was some sort of resistance to spinning up which caused it to draw more current than the power supply was willing to give. The most likely explanation is mechanical resistance from wear on the bearings, but we were just taking them apart for the magnets, not failure analysis.
I should probably point out that these were SCSI drives, and there is a difference in construction. In all of them the spindle was anchored on both ends. More often than not IDE drive spindles are only anchored on the motor end.
It's 4:2:2 MPEG-2, I-frame only (that's the uncompressed frame). But, don't make the mistake of thinking that equipment at that level is limited to that. Their raw video could easily be 10 bits per channel.
I'm guessing you have some Profiles? I used to repair them.
What's important is that the spindle is perpendicular to gravity. It's better to run them "on edge" as well, as they would be in an expensive RAID like you'd get from EMC or NEC. I believe the idea is that this way the wear is distributed more evenly across the bearings, which then reduces the chances of it siezing up.
This is according to an engineer at IBM, back when they made drives. Unfortunately I didn't get to talk to him myself, so I'm not totally certain about everything I've said here, but both my supervisor and manager at that job were very technical people, so I have no reason to believe the info went through any kind of pointy-haired filter or anything.
Yeah, but in three weeks if your system dies, you can completely recover with RAID
Not always, but yeah, most of the time. RAID-1 should be safe, but with any of the others you're looking at varying degrees of trade-off.
Quality hard drives are built to last. Especially if they sit around, not moving, in a static free environment.
What do you mean by "sit around, not moving"? A hard drive left sitting on a shelf will eventually sieze up. I'm not saying they don't fail while running, but then you'll at least have the opportunity to know it's happening and take appropriate action.
Realisticly, it's startup and shutdown that cause the most stress on the drive. A drive that's kept spinning will last a remarkably long time; even beyond the point where, if it stops, you won't be able to get it going again.
And yeah, most new SCSI drives are rated for an MTBF of 1.2 million hours (about 137 years, which makes me question their methodology).
FWIW, I used to stress test hard drives for a living.
I do think hard drives are a good option for this purpose. Tape is just too expensive for most people, and being a magnetic media also I don't believe it has any significant advantages over a hard drive for long term storage. And what if your tape drive fails? Will you be able to find another one? I think it'll be quite a while before working IDE controllers are hard to find. Tape mechanisms may be more reliable individually (I don't know), but hard drives have a massive installed base advantage.
BTW, if you plan on keeping a hard drive on a shelf, keep in mind that they're designed to sit "on edge". Any place that buys drives in bulk should have some nice packing material to hold them safely in the proper position, or you can make your own without too much trouble. I do recommend a static bag, though, unless you're absolutely sure you're dealing with anti-static materials.
Few people are professional photographers or videographers. This whole article is about an exception to your rule.
"Proprietary" implies control (go ahead, look it up). The GPL, by it's very nature, prohibits most of the ways a bit of software can be controlled.
There are plenty of open source licenses that don't place any limits on that control, but then I never mentioned Open Source in my origional post.
In particular, the GPL ... only allows non-commercial software to use your copyrighted/patented work,
Please stop spreading this lie. "Commercial", "proprietary", and "closed source" all have seperate, and distinct, meanings, and the GPL only prohibits the last two.
Most states already have a website that does exactly the same thing already. Perhaps you've heard of Megan's Law? Google for it if you're unfamiliar.
That doesn't change anything; it still violates the "meeting of the minds" requirement for a valid contract (that both parties know what they're agreeing to before they agree to it.)
AND, the EULA, when it is read and agreed to, violates the "consideration" requirement (both parties recieve something of value). The complete lack of consideration is the real problem with EULAs: they give absolutely nothing in exchange for what they take. There is absolutely no support in copyright law for a "license to use" a copyrighted work. A EULA "grants" you a right you already have (read: gives you nothing) in exchange for taking away several rights you do explicitely have under copyright law and First Sale doctrine (depending on the particular EULA).
My objections have a firm basis in contract law. I'd hardly call them "nitpicking".
I mean, you want it to output properly formatted HTML, right? Why not just use a WYSIWYG HTML editor? There are tons to choose from on whatever platform you care to use.
Code is only recognized as speech by those who understand it. Even by those who do it's obvious that programming languages arehighly specialized and, at best, secondary languages. Code simply doesn't have the same status as human language. That might change if an AI is ever legally recognized as a "person", or it might not.
OK, fine, as long as it is agreed to before the sale. That's my main beef with EULAs anyway, and why I don't believe they're legal contracts: they atempt to retroactively modify a transaction that has already occured.
Seriously. I used to work with a guy, at a typical desk job, who found his back problems went away if he just stood up. So, he set up his cubicle so he could do his job standing up, and has done so for years.
If you're looking for a career change, I think teaching is probably the best option I've seen here, but it seems like what you're really looking for is just a way to not spend so much time sitting down.
I've been quite happy with kpilot, but I'm not exactly a serious user. I bought mine as a toy when I happened to have a few bucks, and I basically just use it for jotting notes, playing a few games, and reading public domain ebooks. No integration with anything on my computer or anything like that.
I'm not disagreeing with (or even responding to) the parent, this just seemed as good a place as any to put in my $0.02, since he mentioned kpilot.
Because your right to bear arms is protected in the constitution. Your right to get the experience you paid for in a product you purchased isn't.
I agree with your general point, but this is a stupid arguement.
you CANNOT say BNetD was not use for piracy.
And you CANNOT say BNetD doesn't have significant, non-infringing uses, which SHOULD make the DMCA irrelevant in this case.
As for the rest of your post:
People were using it for tournaments and LAN parties, where the whole point is to have a game shared only among people in a single location, not the entire internet. Additionally, even if there was internet access, there almost certainly wasn't the bandwidth to support several players at once, and even if it did, adding the inherent latency involved in using a battlenet server was completely uncalled for. AND battlenet was unstable as hell, so even under ideal conditions it was still a deficient option.
BNetD's creation had absolutely nothing to do with piracy, and everything to do with Blizzard failing to understand their market. Blizzard failed to provide the experience the market wanted, and BNetD was the market's reaction. Rather than fix their mistake, Blizzard decided to litigate.
I think there are plenty of people who just click through them now that would be pissed if they suddenly had to sign a multipage contract, like they're buying a new car, for any and every piece of software they pick up at the store.
I also think it's funny how peopl who don't understand my sig get so indignant about it.
Boycotts are lifted once the target ceases to commit or makes amends for their offence. The whole point is to affect change through economic punishment, but it's main effectiveness comes from the implication that prosperity can be regained as a reward for proper behavior (positive reinforcement is always more effective than negative reinforcement).
Refusing to ever buy any of their products, regardless of anything they might do, is beyond that. It's the step from the desire for change to the desire for extinction.
Full disclosure: I agree with the GP.
I happen to think he's right and should get his way. And you know what? If people had to sign those things at the time of purchase I think it would turn into a PR nightmare for these software companies, as people are more likely to actually read something they're physically signing.
I think the retailers would hate it as well. I'm sure MS would hear from Staples about people like me who would insist on reading the whole EULA before signing it (and refusing to move from the couter, and subsequently holding up the line, and asking the clerk questions about every paragraph so as to make it at least as inconvenient for them as it is for me).
EULAs are BS, and if it takes anal, pedantic BS to beat them, so be it. Al Capone was busted for tax evasion, after all.
Kile is just a KDE-based frontend. Other frontends I know of are lyx (X11) and ts (Tcl/Tk). I don't use latex, though, so I can't say if they'll do what you're looking for or not, but you won't have to install any KDE stuff to use them.
That said, as many have already pointed out, you can use KDE apps under Gnome as long as you have the dependencies satisfied, which shouldn't be a big deal with apt-get.
Seriously.
I entered the tech job market at the worst possible time (early 2000), and once I signed up with an agency I was never out of work for more than a week or so, total, per year.
Yeah, I got a few really crap manual labor jobs, but I always showed up on time and did my best. Once I proved myself (and it didn't take long), the staff at the office I worked out of started going out of their way to find the kind of work I wanted. In fact, I even ended up with the exact job (same company and everything) that inspired me to study the topics I did, and eventually ended up with a permenant position there.
Anyway, IIRC if you know VB, SQL, and some web stuff there will be no end of work for you. The big thing I discovered in those first few years was that even though nobody was hiring, the work still needed to get done.
Don't let anyone tell you there's no work for you out there. There may not be permenant positions, with benefits, retirement, etc, but there is certainly enough work for you to earn a decent living.
So, what you're saying is that the linux community isn't elitist enough for you?
Well, god speed then.
Which is odd, because I played it a lot. I can only remember the music from Super Mario Bros and legend of Zedla (and Spy Hunter of course, but that wasn't origional).
Anyway, along the lines of the article: there's a Britany Spears song (Crazy?) that has a bass line that sounds a whole lot like the SMB castle music.
What I actually like better is the modern trend of remixing "real" songs for games. I'd pay money for the soundtrack to Need For Speed: Underground 2, for example (I especially like the remix of "Rocket Ride").
You're telling me that they don't have internal documentation anyway?
.0005".
Yes, that is entirely possible. What, you think bad or missing documentation only exists in the software world?
I've worked for companies where I was expected to produce custom solutions from hardware modules I didn't even know existed, and once I found out about it, was lucky if I could find so much as a schematic.
I've worked for companies where every single thing we built was completely custom; where the designer, assembler, and machinist were the same guy; and when the customer decided they wanted 3 more of something, I got to travel to their location, take the thing apart, and make sketches of every single piece accurate to
I've worked for companies where Engineering tossed every bit of anything they had for a product as soon as it was no longer being manufactured, even though customer service guaranteed support for at least 7 years from the last shipment date.