I run a 16-port Gigabit HP ProCurve switch at home, because I was tired of the crappy quality of consumer-level, "disposable" switches. It's built like a tank and has throughput numbers far higher than consumer-level gear, plus I don't need to worry about either the switch failing after 1.5 years of 24/7 operation, like consumer gear. I have had failures from every major consumer brand of switch or router over the past 12 years or so, D-Link, Netgear, Linksys, etc. I expect my HP switch to last at least 10 years if not longer.
Unlike their computer division, HP's networking division still makes quality gear. Too bad they will get some bad press for this, although I can see how something like this can happen as it appears the virus is Windows-based and would not be detected during switch manufacturing, unless the switch was running embedded Windows. I would almost bet it's a supplier infection, where the CF cards were tested or programmed on an infected Windows machine and then shipped to HP.
That's because unlike in the movies, gasoline powered cars do not spontaneously burst into flames at the slightest bump. Batteries on the other hand, can suffer an internal short-circuit in a crash, and the resulting heat due to runaway current inside the pack can create a dangerous condition even hours after a crash.
Except that most European diesel cars get from low 40's to high 50's mpg. Kind of kills that idea... hell, even my 3-year old Golf with a super-efficient TSI supercharged and turbocharged *gas* engine gets mid-40's mpg quite easily and still hits 60 mph in 7.9 sec with a top speed of 143 mph. Unfortunately, you don't get that engine in the US, because Americans don't want a 1.4 liter engine, even if it has more power, torque and gets far better gas mileage than a run-of-the-mill 2.5 liter.
In America, it's still a numbers game with engine displacement, "bigger is better". 2.5 > 1.4 so the 2.5 must clearly be better. The end result is the most efficient and still powerful small European engines are kept out of the US market due to ignorance. At least it gives the European car manufacturers a place to dump large quantities of less-efficient 1990's-design gas engines. VW does this, almost every model sold in the US used the old, tired 2.5 liter engine design from the 90's as the base engine, while the same models here in Europe use one of several variants of the 1.4 liter TSI engine with far better gas mileage and power.
Back to the original topic, my belief is that hybrids are merely a stop-gap technology at the moment. Plug-in hybrids are a tiny evolution from normal hybrids if you consider them to be separate technology. To me, it's all marketing. They both have a gas engine and an electric motor. HOW the drive power reaches the wheels is irrelevant and purely semantics. I believe the future will be all-electric, once we can solve the problem of an efficient portable power source to provide electric current to the motor that does not need constant charging.
Well, for one thing, don't model your healthcare on the UK system. It's not exactly a pinnacle of socialized healthcare today. In fact there are a lot of problems with the UK system, not necessarily related to socialized healthcare as a whole. I would urge you to look to Scandinavian countries, such as Finland, Sweden and Denmark, for models on which a good healthcare system can be built. I live in Finland and can attest to both the good education system (do I have to mention that university education is *free*?) and a working socialized healthcare system where you don't end up in the poorhouse when you get ill. Prescriptions drugs cost a fraction of what they do in the US, and if you have a chronic illness that requires continuous medication, once you reach a very reasonable yearly cap, everything else above that is free.
As a sidenote, since you brought it up, the Finnish education system is not based on rote memorization and testing of students to gauge progress. It's based on the teacher actually teaching the students (wow, innovative concept!) and taking the needs of each student into account. Each student is allowed to learn at their own pace, it's not forcing the entire class to learn at one speed and fuck the ones who can't keep up. It's also more objective based and learning of problem-solving skills that will be useful in a real job.
I am very familiar with the US and Finnish systems, I'm an American living in Finland for 12 years. I bet you can guess which I prefer...
It's because large US-based corporations doing business in the EU tend to try and get away with anti-competitive practices that are allowed to pass for "business as usual" in the US, where there is a much more permissive the-market-will-regulate-itself attitude.
It makes headlines because we in the EU try to keep companies from pulling this shit over here, and largely it works.
SMART is nothing more and nothing less than a data logger for specific performance and failure metrics of a drive. It cannot predict when a drive becomes inoperable, but it can point you in the right direction when the drive is starting to have problems.
I don't believe SMART in and of itself is a bad implementation, the problem is there are not any good tools to analyze the data on a running system continuously and predict reliability based on SMART data. At least none that I have found. Although most motherboard BIOS's can check for SMART errors on boot, I have never seen this used in a helpful way. More than likely, it is a token feature, and not really designed to catch serious errors before they become data recovery problems. Not to mention, it is utterly useless if you rarely shutdown or reboot.
Case in point: I have a 4-drive NAS at home, three drives in a RAID 5 volume, and one drive as a hot spare. The NAS is configured to run a quick SMART self-test once a day on every drive and a full test once a week. After a bit more than 6 months, drive 0 (first drive of the RAID 5 volume) was reporting a few read errors during both SMART tests, but no other indications of a serious drive problem. The NAS did not report the drive as failed, only that read errors were detected during SMART testing. Read/write performance of the RAID volume was unaffected (yes, I tested it). Since I had a hot spare and all the drives were still well within the warranty period, I decided to leave it alone* and see if errors start to increase or normal operation becomes affected, which would obviously trigger a RAID failure and switchover to the hot spare. It never happened, and a couple months later, the previously suspect drive now passes all SMART tests and the NAS is still running perfectly. It has been 3-4 months since it became "clean".
My theory is the drive had a few bad sectors, which were remapped over time to new locations. But I have no hard data to back this up. The drives are still within warranty and if SMART errors appear again on the same drive, I will return it.
* The other major reason to leave the drive in-use rather than return it immediately... this all happened at an inopportune time, a month or so after the Thai floods. These 1.5 TB drives suddenly were no longer available due to supply shortages, or price spikes meant that the drives I paid less than 70€ for each when new, were now over 200€ replacement cost (yes, they roughly tripled in price where I live). Due to the supply shortage, even a warranty replacement would have taken time, as replacement drives were simply not in the channel anymore.
Yeah, I have to wonder if this was in America... it would be Apple pushing this hard so they can sell an iPad to every student for $500-600/pop and get them addicted to app store crack...
But, since this is Europe, I'm fairly sure it will be an open format that can be used on many different e-readers and tablets and not locked into a single vendor.
The handcuffs were necessary, citizen. And those bruises you got on your face and body... you really should learn to walk without bumping into walls, furniture, etc.
Repeat after me: Because it was NOT a fucking bomb or "terrorist" device. It was a harmless science experiment.
Now, if you want to bury your head in the sand every time you see something you don't understand, go right ahead. I prefer to "analyze", "think" and "understand". If it's not dangerous to the crew, passengers or aircraft, there is absolutely NO reason to disallow something like this on-board. If it looked anything like what was described, I'm sure it was thoroughly screened at the security checkpoint *before they got on the plane*! It was found safe, not a danger and allowed on-board.
This is pure, unfounded panic and TSA over-reaction, as usual.
As in 4th amendment of the Constitution? I thought that was ripped to shreds over the past 11 years...
Seriously though, if more US citizens really understood the Constitution and how much we've lost in the last 11 years since 9/11, there would be more outcry. Far too many people are willing to give up their rights granted in the Constitution and Bill of Rights in the name of "security" or "terrorism". Both are false reasons to lay down your rights and surrender all control to the government, in fact you should stand up even more for your rights. This does not preclude a strong government, proper checks and balances have to be in place. It's the checks and balances that have largely been ripped out in the name of security.
I hate to bring up a semi-rational argument here, but why in the hell do people continue supporting bands that can only produce one or two good songs on an entire freaking album? Sounds to me like you are listening to crap musicians/bands, if their "success" factor is roughly 10% (meaning one or two good tracks out of 10-12 on an album).
Sorry, no one-hit-wonders for me, I prefer to buy music from bands that can do a little better than that. Sure, on average there are usually one or two throwaways on an otherwise good album, but to manage only one or two good tracks on an album is a pathetic attempt by a lousy band.
Well, my only comment is that you are most likely listening to crap music if the artists are only in it for prestige, money and girls.
You know, some people actually DO love music, including many musicians and bands. Sure, there are the obvious ones that are in it for the money/girls/drugs/etc. Don't support these bands, unless you buy into cheap thrills with no lasting artistic value (I don't). Real music made by real musicians has lasting value and most are not in it for the prestige, money or "girls" as you put it. Music *is* the end.
I just love it, citizens of the US will stand up for trial by jury until their death, but jury service is something you always weasel out of with lame excuses.
Listen, you live in a democracy (well... it was at one time, not so much anymore), part of your obligation as a citizen of the US is jury service, to provide for fair trials of the accused.
Anyway, this is 100% correct. Apple has been skirting EU law for some time, and there have been various lawsuits in some EU member countries against Apple for pulling these stunts.
Correct, but if a game needs to phone home to launch, that's not going to work. Valve may tolerate letting their own single-player games run in offline mode, don't expect that games from other publishers will allow it even if they use the Steam platform for distribution.
Remember, Steam is really nothing more than a content delivery system. Individual game developers are free to add their own draconian DRM on top, and many have done so. I can't now recall which games, but one or two in recent history even needed Games for Windows Live installed, even though they were purchased and downloaded through Steam. Yes, GfWL is not technically DRM, but the fact that it provides a similar service to Steam shows that developers and publishers are free to tack on whatever they like even on Steam.
With this said, Steam is still in my mind a tolerable system. I have rarely had issues with it and I have been using it constantly since ~2004 or so. The worst thing that has happened to me was losing my progress in a casual game after a Steam cloud sync problem. Other than that, it's rare to see any problems and I like the idea that I can play my games anywhere I can access my Steam account.
You know... it's amazing that every time alternative energy opportunities come up in the US, there are always people standing in line with 1000 reasons why it CAN'T be done.
With this kind of attitude you will NEVER get weaned off fossil fuels and digging big holes in the ground. You must be able to accept compromises, there is no 100% perfect solution to the world's energy needs. A balanced and layered approach is what will do the job, yet these are all blocked for insane reasons.
Grow a pair, and build out the alternative energy infrastructure you desperately need. You can no longer rely on fossil fuels as your main energy source. You will need nuclear, wind, solar and water power generation to provide your energy. Yes, taken individually, each have their drawbacks. That is why you need a layered approach. Combined, there is no reason why they can't replace fossil fuels.
The surface and tidal marshes may be the most visible to us humans on land, but that's not the most critical part of our oceans and seas. The deep water is where the oceans and seas "live", and destroying this habitat will have far greater consequences for our race. Well over 90% of the ocean's species live in deeper water, well out of sight of humans. Sure, it's nice to have pretty beaches, but if we continue to destroy the living, deep seas, we are slitting our own throats. The oceans and seas are already showing signs of becoming imbalanced. Glacial fresh meltwater contaminating the saltwater, pesticide and agriculture chemical runoff into the coastal areas, general warming of the water due to global warming. All of these factors are having a detrimental affect on life in the seas.
Do not forget that the vast majority of oxygen we breath comes from plankton in the seas, not from trees on land as many people believe. When this plankton starts to die off, and there are already signs that it is in certain areas, we are truly screwed. Without plankton, already low fish stocks that feed on them will completely die off. The seas can and will die, if we do not take immediate steps to protect them and reverse the damage being done today. Once we pass the point of no return, and there are clear indications this can happen within the next 100 years, we better start looking for a new planet to inhabit.
Slashdot Mirror
I run a 16-port Gigabit HP ProCurve switch at home, because I was tired of the crappy quality of consumer-level, "disposable" switches. It's built like a tank and has throughput numbers far higher than consumer-level gear, plus I don't need to worry about either the switch failing after 1.5 years of 24/7 operation, like consumer gear. I have had failures from every major consumer brand of switch or router over the past 12 years or so, D-Link, Netgear, Linksys, etc. I expect my HP switch to last at least 10 years if not longer.
Unlike their computer division, HP's networking division still makes quality gear. Too bad they will get some bad press for this, although I can see how something like this can happen as it appears the virus is Windows-based and would not be detected during switch manufacturing, unless the switch was running embedded Windows. I would almost bet it's a supplier infection, where the CF cards were tested or programmed on an infected Windows machine and then shipped to HP.
Certainly not. I'd voluntarily put myself on this list if it were to exist.
Xenophobic, much?
That's because unlike in the movies, gasoline powered cars do not spontaneously burst into flames at the slightest bump. Batteries on the other hand, can suffer an internal short-circuit in a crash, and the resulting heat due to runaway current inside the pack can create a dangerous condition even hours after a crash.
Except that most European diesel cars get from low 40's to high 50's mpg. Kind of kills that idea... hell, even my 3-year old Golf with a super-efficient TSI supercharged and turbocharged *gas* engine gets mid-40's mpg quite easily and still hits 60 mph in 7.9 sec with a top speed of 143 mph. Unfortunately, you don't get that engine in the US, because Americans don't want a 1.4 liter engine, even if it has more power, torque and gets far better gas mileage than a run-of-the-mill 2.5 liter.
In America, it's still a numbers game with engine displacement, "bigger is better". 2.5 > 1.4 so the 2.5 must clearly be better. The end result is the most efficient and still powerful small European engines are kept out of the US market due to ignorance. At least it gives the European car manufacturers a place to dump large quantities of less-efficient 1990's-design gas engines. VW does this, almost every model sold in the US used the old, tired 2.5 liter engine design from the 90's as the base engine, while the same models here in Europe use one of several variants of the 1.4 liter TSI engine with far better gas mileage and power.
Back to the original topic, my belief is that hybrids are merely a stop-gap technology at the moment. Plug-in hybrids are a tiny evolution from normal hybrids if you consider them to be separate technology. To me, it's all marketing. They both have a gas engine and an electric motor. HOW the drive power reaches the wheels is irrelevant and purely semantics. I believe the future will be all-electric, once we can solve the problem of an efficient portable power source to provide electric current to the motor that does not need constant charging.
Well, for one thing, don't model your healthcare on the UK system. It's not exactly a pinnacle of socialized healthcare today. In fact there are a lot of problems with the UK system, not necessarily related to socialized healthcare as a whole. I would urge you to look to Scandinavian countries, such as Finland, Sweden and Denmark, for models on which a good healthcare system can be built. I live in Finland and can attest to both the good education system (do I have to mention that university education is *free*?) and a working socialized healthcare system where you don't end up in the poorhouse when you get ill. Prescriptions drugs cost a fraction of what they do in the US, and if you have a chronic illness that requires continuous medication, once you reach a very reasonable yearly cap, everything else above that is free.
As a sidenote, since you brought it up, the Finnish education system is not based on rote memorization and testing of students to gauge progress. It's based on the teacher actually teaching the students (wow, innovative concept!) and taking the needs of each student into account. Each student is allowed to learn at their own pace, it's not forcing the entire class to learn at one speed and fuck the ones who can't keep up. It's also more objective based and learning of problem-solving skills that will be useful in a real job.
I am very familiar with the US and Finnish systems, I'm an American living in Finland for 12 years. I bet you can guess which I prefer...
It's because large US-based corporations doing business in the EU tend to try and get away with anti-competitive practices that are allowed to pass for "business as usual" in the US, where there is a much more permissive the-market-will-regulate-itself attitude.
It makes headlines because we in the EU try to keep companies from pulling this shit over here, and largely it works.
SMART is nothing more and nothing less than a data logger for specific performance and failure metrics of a drive. It cannot predict when a drive becomes inoperable, but it can point you in the right direction when the drive is starting to have problems.
I don't believe SMART in and of itself is a bad implementation, the problem is there are not any good tools to analyze the data on a running system continuously and predict reliability based on SMART data. At least none that I have found. Although most motherboard BIOS's can check for SMART errors on boot, I have never seen this used in a helpful way. More than likely, it is a token feature, and not really designed to catch serious errors before they become data recovery problems. Not to mention, it is utterly useless if you rarely shutdown or reboot.
Case in point: I have a 4-drive NAS at home, three drives in a RAID 5 volume, and one drive as a hot spare. The NAS is configured to run a quick SMART self-test once a day on every drive and a full test once a week. After a bit more than 6 months, drive 0 (first drive of the RAID 5 volume) was reporting a few read errors during both SMART tests, but no other indications of a serious drive problem. The NAS did not report the drive as failed, only that read errors were detected during SMART testing. Read/write performance of the RAID volume was unaffected (yes, I tested it). Since I had a hot spare and all the drives were still well within the warranty period, I decided to leave it alone* and see if errors start to increase or normal operation becomes affected, which would obviously trigger a RAID failure and switchover to the hot spare. It never happened, and a couple months later, the previously suspect drive now passes all SMART tests and the NAS is still running perfectly. It has been 3-4 months since it became "clean".
My theory is the drive had a few bad sectors, which were remapped over time to new locations. But I have no hard data to back this up. The drives are still within warranty and if SMART errors appear again on the same drive, I will return it.
* The other major reason to leave the drive in-use rather than return it immediately... this all happened at an inopportune time, a month or so after the Thai floods. These 1.5 TB drives suddenly were no longer available due to supply shortages, or price spikes meant that the drives I paid less than 70€ for each when new, were now over 200€ replacement cost (yes, they roughly tripled in price where I live). Due to the supply shortage, even a warranty replacement would have taken time, as replacement drives were simply not in the channel anymore.
You make far too much rational sense to live on the same planet as I...
Yeah, I have to wonder if this was in America... it would be Apple pushing this hard so they can sell an iPad to every student for $500-600/pop and get them addicted to app store crack...
But, since this is Europe, I'm fairly sure it will be an open format that can be used on many different e-readers and tablets and not locked into a single vendor.
The handcuffs were necessary, citizen. And those bruises you got on your face and body... you really should learn to walk without bumping into walls, furniture, etc.
Carry on...
Repeat after me: Because it was NOT a fucking bomb or "terrorist" device. It was a harmless science experiment.
Now, if you want to bury your head in the sand every time you see something you don't understand, go right ahead. I prefer to "analyze", "think" and "understand". If it's not dangerous to the crew, passengers or aircraft, there is absolutely NO reason to disallow something like this on-board. If it looked anything like what was described, I'm sure it was thoroughly screened at the security checkpoint *before they got on the plane*! It was found safe, not a danger and allowed on-board.
This is pure, unfounded panic and TSA over-reaction, as usual.
... that has got to be one of the best sigs I've seen in a long time.
Correct. In Swedish "fullkorn" means literally whole-grain.
But then again, this is /., and everybody here knows US English is the only language that matters... /sarcasm
As in 4th amendment of the Constitution? I thought that was ripped to shreds over the past 11 years...
Seriously though, if more US citizens really understood the Constitution and how much we've lost in the last 11 years since 9/11, there would be more outcry. Far too many people are willing to give up their rights granted in the Constitution and Bill of Rights in the name of "security" or "terrorism". Both are false reasons to lay down your rights and surrender all control to the government, in fact you should stand up even more for your rights. This does not preclude a strong government, proper checks and balances have to be in place. It's the checks and balances that have largely been ripped out in the name of security.
I hate to bring up a semi-rational argument here, but why in the hell do people continue supporting bands that can only produce one or two good songs on an entire freaking album? Sounds to me like you are listening to crap musicians/bands, if their "success" factor is roughly 10% (meaning one or two good tracks out of 10-12 on an album).
Sorry, no one-hit-wonders for me, I prefer to buy music from bands that can do a little better than that. Sure, on average there are usually one or two throwaways on an otherwise good album, but to manage only one or two good tracks on an album is a pathetic attempt by a lousy band.
Well, my only comment is that you are most likely listening to crap music if the artists are only in it for prestige, money and girls.
You know, some people actually DO love music, including many musicians and bands. Sure, there are the obvious ones that are in it for the money/girls/drugs/etc. Don't support these bands, unless you buy into cheap thrills with no lasting artistic value (I don't). Real music made by real musicians has lasting value and most are not in it for the prestige, money or "girls" as you put it. Music *is* the end.
I just love it, citizens of the US will stand up for trial by jury until their death, but jury service is something you always weasel out of with lame excuses.
Listen, you live in a democracy (well... it was at one time, not so much anymore), part of your obligation as a citizen of the US is jury service, to provide for fair trials of the accused.
Where are my mod points. Oh wait... AC
Anyway, this is 100% correct. Apple has been skirting EU law for some time, and there have been various lawsuits in some EU member countries against Apple for pulling these stunts.
Now, there are teeth.
Correct, but if a game needs to phone home to launch, that's not going to work. Valve may tolerate letting their own single-player games run in offline mode, don't expect that games from other publishers will allow it even if they use the Steam platform for distribution.
Remember, Steam is really nothing more than a content delivery system. Individual game developers are free to add their own draconian DRM on top, and many have done so. I can't now recall which games, but one or two in recent history even needed Games for Windows Live installed, even though they were purchased and downloaded through Steam. Yes, GfWL is not technically DRM, but the fact that it provides a similar service to Steam shows that developers and publishers are free to tack on whatever they like even on Steam.
With this said, Steam is still in my mind a tolerable system. I have rarely had issues with it and I have been using it constantly since ~2004 or so. The worst thing that has happened to me was losing my progress in a casual game after a Steam cloud sync problem. Other than that, it's rare to see any problems and I like the idea that I can play my games anywhere I can access my Steam account.
You know... it's amazing that every time alternative energy opportunities come up in the US, there are always people standing in line with 1000 reasons why it CAN'T be done.
With this kind of attitude you will NEVER get weaned off fossil fuels and digging big holes in the ground. You must be able to accept compromises, there is no 100% perfect solution to the world's energy needs. A balanced and layered approach is what will do the job, yet these are all blocked for insane reasons.
Grow a pair, and build out the alternative energy infrastructure you desperately need. You can no longer rely on fossil fuels as your main energy source. You will need nuclear, wind, solar and water power generation to provide your energy. Yes, taken individually, each have their drawbacks. That is why you need a layered approach. Combined, there is no reason why they can't replace fossil fuels.
Stop whining and DO SOMETHING!
Sorry, you are absolutely wrong.
The surface and tidal marshes may be the most visible to us humans on land, but that's not the most critical part of our oceans and seas. The deep water is where the oceans and seas "live", and destroying this habitat will have far greater consequences for our race. Well over 90% of the ocean's species live in deeper water, well out of sight of humans. Sure, it's nice to have pretty beaches, but if we continue to destroy the living, deep seas, we are slitting our own throats. The oceans and seas are already showing signs of becoming imbalanced. Glacial fresh meltwater contaminating the saltwater, pesticide and agriculture chemical runoff into the coastal areas, general warming of the water due to global warming. All of these factors are having a detrimental affect on life in the seas.
Do not forget that the vast majority of oxygen we breath comes from plankton in the seas, not from trees on land as many people believe. When this plankton starts to die off, and there are already signs that it is in certain areas, we are truly screwed. Without plankton, already low fish stocks that feed on them will completely die off. The seas can and will die, if we do not take immediate steps to protect them and reverse the damage being done today. Once we pass the point of no return, and there are clear indications this can happen within the next 100 years, we better start looking for a new planet to inhabit.
Wow, if this is indeed true that cops walk around checking for locked cars; what a spectacular way to waste police resources.
If you are stupid enough to leave your car unlocked in this day and age, you deserve to have your stuff stolen.
Are you seriously implying that any entity operating "on foreign soil" is by definition doing something illegal?
I see the reality distortion field is still capable of reaching from beyond the grave...