But on the other hand, if you have an asteroid body witih much debris around it, the debris could damange the craft long before main body were deflected. In this case, your rocket is toast and little to nothing has been done to alter the course of the path of the meteor's main body.
Blowing the meteor to smithereens seems like a stupid idea to me, but I can't see why an explosive device couldn't be used to deflect it in the exact same manner. IANAAstrophysicist, but I'd think that If you detonate it from a known distance and angle, you can reasonably predict the direction it will go in afterward and safely direct it into the sun.
Yes, but ext2 is probably the best choice if you're going to access the file system from Windows. I'm not sure about the maturity of ext4 tools and I'm pretty sure that fs-driver ignores the journal. On supported systems, I see no reason not to use ext4. I have no experience with XFS, so i can't recommend it.
And yes, all file systems fragment to an inconsequential degree when the drive is mostly empty, and to a serious degree if they get too full.
Thank You, I was (obviously) not aware that's what was done on EXT2. Is that also done with any of the other Linux filesystems?
I believe so. In fact, the article doesn't explicitly state that's what ext2 does specifically, and I'm not very intimate with the file system myself to know for sure, but I'm pretty sure that all reasonably developed Linux filesystems would do the same. I'd recommend ext2 regardless, as it seems to have the most developer mindshare and install base. Maybe you could ask more in a UNIX IRC channel or forum to learn more about what specific filesystems do.
If you're interested, there's also a number of solutions for reading ext2 from Windows. Here are two system modules that you can install for read/write access: http://www.ext2fsd.com/?page_id=2 http://www.fs-driver.org/ - I've used this one briefly and it worked well.
Additionally, there are userspace applications for reading it, but they are a bit slower as they operate in userspace.
Revisiting the original post demonstrates the exact opposite of your claim:
This young man was not in the best frame of mind, and it sounds like he really thought he was trying to do something right.
The post states he was not in a good frame of mind (with which I still disagree, and you have made no attempt to address), and he was faced with a situation where he was uncertain of what was the right thing to do.
You took it out of context, poorly, for an excuse to state your mind. You got called on it. Suck it up and move on.
I would argue the opposite, as you introduced irrelevant information into the discussion (namely, that of his gender orientation, and that it played a role in his decision-making process). I find nothing convincing, revelant or even remotely logical in your arguments. What you suggested previously is the fact that orientation issues and the military's policy have any significance on the moral issue of following amoral orders vs. seeking a higher moral authority, and there is no logical connect. You have made no effort to address this, and I see no reason to continue until you do.
This discussion is based on whether it is the right state of mind to follow the military's orders (the Nuremberg defense, in this case, would be to cover up the incident) or to take steps against authority towards the retribution of a humanitarian crime. The gender identity of the person in question is irrelevant in the moral issue.
WRT Manning: I feel a bit bad for him. I absolutely understand that there's a need for secrecy in war-fighting, and I appreciate that the military has the ability to enforce that secrecy with punishment. I still feel bad for him. This young man was not in the best frame of mind, and it sounds like he really thought he was trying to do something right.
It is absurd and disturbing to believe that someone is in a bad frame of mind for believing that there should be justice and accountability for the deaths of innocent civilians. I would argue instead that his frame of mind is above that of anybody else, as he has demonstrated the morality and the courage to fight for awareness and justice in a situation where nobody has supported him.
I don't buy music CDs or movies as doing so would support fundamentally evil organizations which seek to strangle the progress of humankind under the influence of their own greed. I feel guilty even listening to that stuff even if I didn't pay for it, as I feel a better approach would be to support independent artists in the unlikely effort of breaking the cartel. But I do support independent artists, given the opportunity. Magnatune, Jamendo, and Band Camp are great ways to accomplish this.
Greed doesn't drive you to build better products - it drives you to make more money. And the two can often have minimal correlation. That's why you see companies form monopolies which make billions off crappy products because greed didn't drive them to make better products, it just drove them to dominate the marketplace and stamp out all competitors. I'm looking straight at you, Microsoft. Or alternatively, to make the barriers so high that no one has a shot in hell of making it into the ring.
The free market is a total failure. The common pathology is for wealth to accumulate into few parties, then for these few parties to collude and raise prices (oil industry, internet service providers), or better yet, merge together (think telecommunications). So in short, greed doesn't work.
Given MS's strategy of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, it's obvious Sony made the right choice.
In all honesty, why would any hardware vendor want to tie themselves to a platform over which they have no control? Look at how MS throws around their desktop hardware partners, dictating to them which minimum and maximum hardware requirements the system can have. No doubt they would try to pull the same shenanigans with Sony. And then look at how MS blames its hardware partners for crappy Win8 sales when it's really fault for designing the OS in ways that no consumer ever wanted? And then there's the atrocity that's Windows RT, and how nothing runs on it!! I'm guessing that there isn't a single hardware vendor on the planet that wouldn't love to never have to deal with MS again, were it not for their desktop monopoly... probably even MS itself!
It's not unreasonable that Sony executives made the simple observation: companies that entangle with MS never do well. Seriously - for each and every company that MS has partnered with that's doing decently, you can name 5 that are in the gutter or dead altogether.
At least MS did a better job with the Xbox than they did with WinMo. That's not saying much, but hey, when you're Microsoft, that's really all you've got...
Lots of people run their computers with an open case. I was testing for bad memory modules a couple of years ago, and left them running with the cases open for a few days. Easy to see how accidents could occur.
If it becomes very popular, and the community version didn't, there's a reason for that. Take OSX and BSD Unix. OSX is more popular because it's far more useful to people. And that's a good thing.
You are once again missing the point. Once a dominant party takes control, they are free to manipulate users however they like, imposing terms that only benefit themselves at the expense of users. If MS didn't have total control over the computer industry, they wouldn't be able to charge users and OEMs hundreds of dollars for their operating system or office suite. And if Apple didn't have complete, vertically integrated control over their mobile platform, they wouldn't be able to kick programs off their app store at the executives' whims. Domination hurts users, regardless of whether it works out just for you.
It's an open source reimplementation of a commercial product. It died because no one was interested - the commercial original is on it's way out.
The project died because there was no way to verify compatibility with the standard implentation, and it was more or less futile to move forward without this. If Sun/Oracle didn't have exclusive control over this, we might well see a different future both for Harmony and the Oracle implementation. And I have no idea why you're bringing up the current state of the language. You are missing the point once again for, if I may say so, the sake of vindicating your personal prejudices.
That wasn't what he said, he was merely speaking in terms of an analogy. And it's a fair point. If you give people absolute freedom to do what they want, it'll lead to someone amassing all the power and taking control.
Example: I develop a project and share it with the community to use and develop. Then a rogue group steals the source and starts shipping a version that becomes very popular, but breaks compatibility with the community version. As more and more people cease using the community version, compatibility breaks more and more until it is impossible to keep up, and the community project is dead. So, effectively, in an environment where there are no rules, it simply makes it possible for one group to write all the rules.
This is of course a hypothetical situation, and doesn't seem to happen to many copyleft projects with BSD-style licenses, but it's very possible that it could. I would say that this is sort of what killed Apache Harmony - since they weren't able to verify compatibility, the project essentially collapsed. And now look at where that got us, with new Java vulnerabilities popping up every day.
But no, no one is saying that unlicensed source code is leading to despotism - that is a misinterpretation.
To be fair, the windows folks have left the traditional interface there, so you can have windows spread out in the traditional desktop if you want. But I think folks are right that this is ultimately destined to be a "second-class" interface. What gnome-shell did, where they totally killed the traditional gnome, was more intellectually honest.
Yes, but the way MS has presented Windows 8, it seems that they treat the traditional desktop as the second-class interface, not the other way around. Let's not forget, the traditional desktop was what literally created the computer industry, and has been carrying it strong since the 90s. While tablets could possibly do the same (I certainly hope that they don't), all these new interfaces are clearly change for the sake of changeon top of something that already works great. And yes, there's always the pushing-the-envelope risk/reward style of finding something new, but you don't put all your eggs in one basket, and that's essentially what MS has done, at least for this round.
Well, the traditional interface *does* cause harm. The main complaint I (and many others) had about traditional Windows was that it was constantly interrupting you. Something would flash on the panel, or a window would pop-up with a complaint (from a website, from an OS update, from an IM, what have you). The whole thing seemed designed to constantly remove you from control.
These are defects of the said Windows components. If you don't want a panel that enables flashing items, they panel should provide a means to disable that. Ditto for pop-ups. Compiz and KWin for example provide focus-stealing customization settings (which I don't often use, but I imagine they serve the task you seek). But nevertheless, there are good reasons for alerts and notifications. If a window needs to alert you that the self-destruct button has been pressed, then there should be a means for doing that. Of course application programmers abuse these utilities, but again, when they become too intrusive, there should be ways for dealing with them.
And as another point, I've noticed that my Android phone also has the same sorts of notifications. If you get an SMS, the notification bar at the top tells you. When alarms go off, you get a notification (and I believe it takes over as the main activity). In other words, the same features are there (perhaps they are less intrusive) on both interfaces, but just in different styles.
What I think both gnome-shell and the metro interface attempt to do is put the task you're involved in at the center of the experience.
This is fine if it's appropriate for the task and the hardware, but I don't believe computers fit that bill. And I don't think you should have to jump through hoops to access it in the way that MS has forced. The fact that MS hasn't provided a means to disable Metro as the user's option indicates beyond any doubt that they're putting their efforts in pushing their UI over the users' preferences.
I won't make any claim that it's a step up or that it will succeed in the corporate world. But you have to recognize that there are trade-offs, and that you do gain something by moving away from the traditional DE to the new "Metro" one.
Perhaps we will have to agree to disagree here, but I'm of the opinion that the Metro UI is entirely a more limited subset of the traditional desktop interface, and that any of the benefits that the tablet UIs might provide could also be accomplished in the desktop paradigm, and in a more fuctional manner. And as a general comment, I would also argue that UI providers should provide a set of defaults that are reasonable for all users, but they should also provide a means to adapt it to their needs and preferences.
But what you're suggesting is just a bunch of one-size-fits-all solutions that are inevitably gonna alienate many users because the available options are so limited.... What about if I need a third window open? Or a fourth? Say I need to browse documentation, or crunch numbers on a calculator, or to keep my Pidgin windows open? And I honestly hate having to switch windows, mind you. It consumes mental resources, takes time, disrupts workflow, etc - even flicking my eyeballs to another portion of the screen bothers me, but that's about as fast and undisruptive as you can get, so that's what I do. I keep everything visible and I want to be able to arrange it the way I like, not how the UI developers deem is appropriate for a profitable-enough ~75% of users.
I for one am never gonna stray from my traditional panel + windowed DE. It works because its powerful enough to allow any user to adapt it however he/she wishes, no matter their competency level. What tablet-style interfaces have accomplished is a limited subset, creating a far less powerful and userful interface. One or two running applications may be sufficient for some number of users (and I use the same interface myself at times), but why would you take away a paradigm that does so much more and doesn't cause any harm on top?
Slashdot Mirror
But on the other hand, if you have an asteroid body witih much debris around it, the debris could damange the craft long before main body were deflected. In this case, your rocket is toast and little to nothing has been done to alter the course of the path of the meteor's main body.
But earlier is harder to detect.
Blowing the meteor to smithereens seems like a stupid idea to me, but I can't see why an explosive device couldn't be used to deflect it in the exact same manner. IANAAstrophysicist, but I'd think that If you detonate it from a known distance and angle, you can reasonably predict the direction it will go in afterward and safely direct it into the sun.
Yes, but ext2 is probably the best choice if you're going to access the file system from Windows. I'm not sure about the maturity of ext4 tools and I'm pretty sure that fs-driver ignores the journal. On supported systems, I see no reason not to use ext4. I have no experience with XFS, so i can't recommend it.
And yes, all file systems fragment to an inconsequential degree when the drive is mostly empty, and to a serious degree if they get too full.
Very true - thanks for correcting me
Thank You, I was (obviously) not aware that's what was done on EXT2. Is that also done with any of the other Linux filesystems?
I believe so. In fact, the article doesn't explicitly state that's what ext2 does specifically, and I'm not very intimate with the file system myself to know for sure, but I'm pretty sure that all reasonably developed Linux filesystems would do the same. I'd recommend ext2 regardless, as it seems to have the most developer mindshare and install base. Maybe you could ask more in a UNIX IRC channel or forum to learn more about what specific filesystems do.
If you're interested, there's also a number of solutions for reading ext2 from Windows. Here are two system modules that you can install for read/write access:
http://www.ext2fsd.com/?page_id=2
http://www.fs-driver.org/ - I've used this one briefly and it worked well.
Additionally, there are userspace applications for reading it, but they are a bit slower as they operate in userspace.
Hope this helps you
That is exactly how the ext2 filesystem works, my friend. Here is a good reference (from 2006) that explains the exact same idea: http://geekblog.oneandoneis2.org/index.php/2006/08/17/why_doesn_t_linux_need_defragmenting. The more advanced behaviour you suggest, I imagine would have to be taken care of at the application level.
Of course, as soon as any hard disk reaches capacity, it becomes fragmented no matter what.
I believe you forgot "DEVELOPERS!"
Revisiting the original post demonstrates the exact opposite of your claim:
This young man was not in the best frame of mind, and it sounds like he really thought he was trying to do something right.
The post states he was not in a good frame of mind (with which I still disagree, and you have made no attempt to address), and he was faced with a situation where he was uncertain of what was the right thing to do.
You took it out of context, poorly, for an excuse to state your mind. You got called on it. Suck it up and move on.
I would argue the opposite, as you introduced irrelevant information into the discussion (namely, that of his gender orientation, and that it played a role in his decision-making process). I find nothing convincing, revelant or even remotely logical in your arguments. What you suggested previously is the fact that orientation issues and the military's policy have any significance on the moral issue of following amoral orders vs. seeking a higher moral authority, and there is no logical connect. You have made no effort to address this, and I see no reason to continue until you do.
This discussion is based on whether it is the right state of mind to follow the military's orders (the Nuremberg defense, in this case, would be to cover up the incident) or to take steps against authority towards the retribution of a humanitarian crime. The gender identity of the person in question is irrelevant in the moral issue.
WRT Manning: I feel a bit bad for him. I absolutely understand that there's a need for secrecy in war-fighting, and I appreciate that the military has the ability to enforce that secrecy with punishment. I still feel bad for him. This young man was not in the best frame of mind, and it sounds like he really thought he was trying to do something right.
It is absurd and disturbing to believe that someone is in a bad frame of mind for believing that there should be justice and accountability for the deaths of innocent civilians. I would argue instead that his frame of mind is above that of anybody else, as he has demonstrated the morality and the courage to fight for awareness and justice in a situation where nobody has supported him.
I don't buy music CDs or movies as doing so would support fundamentally evil organizations which seek to strangle the progress of humankind under the influence of their own greed. I feel guilty even listening to that stuff even if I didn't pay for it, as I feel a better approach would be to support independent artists in the unlikely effort of breaking the cartel. But I do support independent artists, given the opportunity. Magnatune, Jamendo, and Band Camp are great ways to accomplish this.
Greed doesn't drive you to build better products - it drives you to make more money. And the two can often have minimal correlation. That's why you see companies form monopolies which make billions off crappy products because greed didn't drive them to make better products, it just drove them to dominate the marketplace and stamp out all competitors. I'm looking straight at you, Microsoft. Or alternatively, to make the barriers so high that no one has a shot in hell of making it into the ring.
The free market is a total failure. The common pathology is for wealth to accumulate into few parties, then for these few parties to collude and raise prices (oil industry, internet service providers), or better yet, merge together (think telecommunications). So in short, greed doesn't work.
I believe Android 4.2 uses MTP by default and the reason is likely so that they can get away from FAT.
You don't seem to understand. What makes you think the RIAA has to obey the same laws as people?
When you have legalized bribery in your federal government, these are the results you get.
Even worse, that's what gives them power over everyone else in the world too.
Rest of the world?? What the hell is that supposed to be?
Indeed, they could call it The Car that Couldn't Slow Down...
Solitaire?
Given MS's strategy of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, it's obvious Sony made the right choice.
In all honesty, why would any hardware vendor want to tie themselves to a platform over which they have no control? Look at how MS throws around their desktop hardware partners, dictating to them which minimum and maximum hardware requirements the system can have. No doubt they would try to pull the same shenanigans with Sony. And then look at how MS blames its hardware partners for crappy Win8 sales when it's really fault for designing the OS in ways that no consumer ever wanted? And then there's the atrocity that's Windows RT, and how nothing runs on it!! I'm guessing that there isn't a single hardware vendor on the planet that wouldn't love to never have to deal with MS again, were it not for their desktop monopoly... probably even MS itself!
It's not unreasonable that Sony executives made the simple observation: companies that entangle with MS never do well. Seriously - for each and every company that MS has partnered with that's doing decently, you can name 5 that are in the gutter or dead altogether.
At least MS did a better job with the Xbox than they did with WinMo. That's not saying much, but hey, when you're Microsoft, that's really all you've got...
I believe it's using Qt and that they're working closely with the KDE Plasma team, however, I'm pretty sure they are not using KDE or Plasma. However, if you are interesed in a KDE tablet, I believe you can find more information here: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/01/new-kde-tablet-to-liberate-linux-enthusiasts-from-walled-garden/
Lots of people run their computers with an open case. I was testing for bad memory modules a couple of years ago, and left them running with the cases open for a few days. Easy to see how accidents could occur.
Wait, did the TSA start operating in Europe too???
If it becomes very popular, and the community version didn't, there's a reason for that. Take OSX and BSD Unix. OSX is more popular because it's far more useful to people. And that's a good thing.
You are once again missing the point. Once a dominant party takes control, they are free to manipulate users however they like, imposing terms that only benefit themselves at the expense of users. If MS didn't have total control over the computer industry, they wouldn't be able to charge users and OEMs hundreds of dollars for their operating system or office suite. And if Apple didn't have complete, vertically integrated control over their mobile platform, they wouldn't be able to kick programs off their app store at the executives' whims. Domination hurts users, regardless of whether it works out just for you.
It's an open source reimplementation of a commercial product. It died because no one was interested - the commercial original is on it's way out.
The project died because there was no way to verify compatibility with the standard implentation, and it was more or less futile to move forward without this. If Sun/Oracle didn't have exclusive control over this, we might well see a different future both for Harmony and the Oracle implementation. And I have no idea why you're bringing up the current state of the language. You are missing the point once again for, if I may say so, the sake of vindicating your personal prejudices.
That wasn't what he said, he was merely speaking in terms of an analogy. And it's a fair point. If you give people absolute freedom to do what they want, it'll lead to someone amassing all the power and taking control.
Example: I develop a project and share it with the community to use and develop. Then a rogue group steals the source and starts shipping a version that becomes very popular, but breaks compatibility with the community version. As more and more people cease using the community version, compatibility breaks more and more until it is impossible to keep up, and the community project is dead. So, effectively, in an environment where there are no rules, it simply makes it possible for one group to write all the rules.
This is of course a hypothetical situation, and doesn't seem to happen to many copyleft projects with BSD-style licenses, but it's very possible that it could. I would say that this is sort of what killed Apache Harmony - since they weren't able to verify compatibility, the project essentially collapsed. And now look at where that got us, with new Java vulnerabilities popping up every day.
But no, no one is saying that unlicensed source code is leading to despotism - that is a misinterpretation.
To be fair, the windows folks have left the traditional interface there, so you can have windows spread out in the traditional desktop if you want. But I think folks are right that this is ultimately destined to be a "second-class" interface. What gnome-shell did, where they totally killed the traditional gnome, was more intellectually honest.
Yes, but the way MS has presented Windows 8, it seems that they treat the traditional desktop as the second-class interface, not the other way around. Let's not forget, the traditional desktop was what literally created the computer industry, and has been carrying it strong since the 90s. While tablets could possibly do the same (I certainly hope that they don't), all these new interfaces are clearly change for the sake of changeon top of something that already works great. And yes, there's always the pushing-the-envelope risk/reward style of finding something new, but you don't put all your eggs in one basket, and that's essentially what MS has done, at least for this round.
Well, the traditional interface *does* cause harm. The main complaint I (and many others) had about traditional Windows was that it was constantly interrupting you. Something would flash on the panel, or a window would pop-up with a complaint (from a website, from an OS update, from an IM, what have you). The whole thing seemed designed to constantly remove you from control.
These are defects of the said Windows components. If you don't want a panel that enables flashing items, they panel should provide a means to disable that. Ditto for pop-ups. Compiz and KWin for example provide focus-stealing customization settings (which I don't often use, but I imagine they serve the task you seek). But nevertheless, there are good reasons for alerts and notifications. If a window needs to alert you that the self-destruct button has been pressed, then there should be a means for doing that. Of course application programmers abuse these utilities, but again, when they become too intrusive, there should be ways for dealing with them.
And as another point, I've noticed that my Android phone also has the same sorts of notifications. If you get an SMS, the notification bar at the top tells you. When alarms go off, you get a notification (and I believe it takes over as the main activity). In other words, the same features are there (perhaps they are less intrusive) on both interfaces, but just in different styles.
What I think both gnome-shell and the metro interface attempt to do is put the task you're involved in at the center of the experience.
This is fine if it's appropriate for the task and the hardware, but I don't believe computers fit that bill. And I don't think you should have to jump through hoops to access it in the way that MS has forced. The fact that MS hasn't provided a means to disable Metro as the user's option indicates beyond any doubt that they're putting their efforts in pushing their UI over the users' preferences.
I won't make any claim that it's a step up or that it will succeed in the corporate world. But you have to recognize that there are trade-offs, and that you do gain something by moving away from the traditional DE to the new "Metro" one.
Perhaps we will have to agree to disagree here, but I'm of the opinion that the Metro UI is entirely a more limited subset of the traditional desktop interface, and that any of the benefits that the tablet UIs might provide could also be accomplished in the desktop paradigm, and in a more fuctional manner. And as a general comment, I would also argue that UI providers should provide a set of defaults that are reasonable for all users, but they should also provide a means to adapt it to their needs and preferences.
But what you're suggesting is just a bunch of one-size-fits-all solutions that are inevitably gonna alienate many users because the available options are so limited.... What about if I need a third window open? Or a fourth? Say I need to browse documentation, or crunch numbers on a calculator, or to keep my Pidgin windows open? And I honestly hate having to switch windows, mind you. It consumes mental resources, takes time, disrupts workflow, etc - even flicking my eyeballs to another portion of the screen bothers me, but that's about as fast and undisruptive as you can get, so that's what I do. I keep everything visible and I want to be able to arrange it the way I like, not how the UI developers deem is appropriate for a profitable-enough ~75% of users.
I for one am never gonna stray from my traditional panel + windowed DE. It works because its powerful enough to allow any user to adapt it however he/she wishes, no matter their competency level. What tablet-style interfaces have accomplished is a limited subset, creating a far less powerful and userful interface. One or two running applications may be sufficient for some number of users (and I use the same interface myself at times), but why would you take away a paradigm that does so much more and doesn't cause any harm on top?