Not being able to install and run malware should not be because it's inconvenient to install and run any software.
That's sort of thing is fine for servers, but for there to be a Desktop Linux, you'd need this. Otherwise it's too hard for normal users.
A good design would make it hard for any software to screw up your system beyond easy recovery, and easy for a user to do things that way.
A DRM design would make it hard for you to install nonapproved software.
There are tons of people writing stuff for MS Windows, and it is usually easy to get their stuff to work on the various versions of MS Windows.
Whereas on Linux it's hard for people to distribute a single set of binaries that runs on different distros, or even just different versions of a distro. Compile from source? Yeah right, as if Aunt May would do that. Even if you make compiling etc a one click installer, compiling from source takes a fair bit of time and requires more dependencies (which take time to load and build even automatically, and bring in issues of their own).
So much so that it seems many people delegate to their chosen distro the task of repackaging 3rd party software so that they can install and use it without the risk of breaking other stuff, or just not working. So any software that is not supported/listed by the distro is not installed.
While this situation is not as bad as DRM, it is not that dissimilar is it? Only an "elite" group can install nondistro software, ends up quite similar to only an elite group can install non-DRM-approved software (which will be the case with DRM stuff).
In contrast with Windows (preDRM), you can usually try to execute a binary and it WILL run, even if it was made years ago in the days of dos or win 3.1.
Sure that backward compatibility makes it easy for the malware authors. But that also makes it easy in other ways.
It's still false. You need decent experienced brains. Otherwise you might as well just get insects to audit code.
The cathedral vs bazaar thing is a fallacy, and so is this "many eyes" thing.
The linux kernel is a "Cathedral". Same with most OSS projects (Apache, Squid).
Re:Hard to admit, but that is quite clever
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Sober Code Cracked
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· Score: 1
While it's cleverer than the normal stuff, I'm not really that impressed.
I guess the next step would be a trojan/worm that used search engines to search for instructions.
There are a fair number of search engines it can use;).
It could even use google groups;). Then some "random spam" in a mailing list could tell it what to do.
Do it in perl and/or some other scripting language and it'll be interesting to see how AV engines can keep up with the many possible versions (perl, python, ruby, lisp etc do run on windows). It could be fairly innocuous code, that just did: eval "downloaded stuff here" in some situations;
And that could remove the old version (that would be vulnerable to AV stuff).
I figure that one can rapidly create very many different versions in perl that do different things (spread via newly discovered security problems). Or even do the same thing. After all perl = "There's more than one way to do it".
While the AV software has significant performance considerations for real time detection- it has to detect the many different perl, python, ruby etc versions that could automatically spring into existence, without too many false positives.
In contrast each individual malware copy doesn't have as difficult limitations.
In fact, one could create an experiment in "genetic algorithms". Parasites that burden the host too much would not survive.
The only issue is how do you infect a user. But there appears to be tons of ways to do that, including stupid people;).
Also Microsoft and Sony have already "helped a lot". I believe Microsoft has in fact signed at least one insecure activex control, so all you need to do is get targets to download that _signed_ control and exploit it. Sony? Need I say more?
If that happens, you might really need multicore CPUs to get stuff done.
First get strong management backing. If not just back off and forget the whole thing.
Then: Option A: Fascist All outbound nonSSL web traffic (80-83, 8000-8999) goes through transparent proxy. All outbound SSL webtraffic must be via nontransparent proxy. All users get their own PCs and IP addresses. All users don't share PCs where possible. No other outbound or inbound traffic allowed to client networks. DNS, mail via the corporate servers. Then go through the web logs and get the top 10 users and the top 10 sites visited.
Option B: Give people enough rope to hang themselves Announce that statistics of all internet usage will be kept. Make sure the clueless know what that really means, especially the powerful clueless ones... Allow whatever traffic the users want with some safety in mind. Produce a list of the top 10 users and the top 10 sites.
Careful though - often you'd find the bosses are the top culprits (that's why you need strong support from management). But even if that's the case, unless you are unlucky or do things badly, they'd just get more bandwidth for everyone overall... Just so they can listen to internet radio the whole day long...
If I were boss, I'd just make a _public_ list of the top 10 users and their top 10 sites every month. After a while I'd know a bit more about my staff;).
Trouble is the _competence_ part. Do show me where to get competent programmers... So far there don't seem to be that many about.
In fact hardworking incompetent programmers are pretty dangerous. (they're not as dangerous as hardworking incompetent military leaders of course).
Actually for programmers, I won't really care about the 20% vs 85% effort. As long as the genius guy uses his genius when doing his work.
I suggest that a programmer might be required to be fairly smart in order to be competent.
After all when it comes to _programming_, the _computer_ is supposed to do the work that doesn't require much intelligence.
Believe me, I've seen code by stupid programmers, and designs by stupid designers (I'm not a great programmer or designer, but some things are just so obviously stupid). The genius guy can replace some of these stupid but hardworking programmer with a script or two. If you could see some of the code I've seen... It's amazing how bad stuff can get and still "kinda work" (which can be very _dangerous_ if you think about it).
Everything else remaining the same (assume normal to above average trustworthiness and loyalty), I'd take the lazy genius guy anytime even if he only spends 20% of his office time working.
You won't have to throw 80-100% of his work away AND spend more time and resources fixing the resulting mess - corrupted data, pissed off people.
Voice communications is typically rather slow. Worse if it's some ignorant person at the other end who doesn't know their stuff.
Dell offer basic configs too AND they allow you to customize them AND they allow you to pick up a phone and call.
I prefer to customize stuff online, especially if the customizing UI is quick (Dell has screwed things up and made their UI _slow_, but they seem to be the only big vendor that allows significant online customization).
How much would it cost Sun to just get a decent web app up, vs requiring lots more people to listen to phones? I thought they had all those software dev tools?
It would also be good if they allow you to view the inside and outside of a server, and provide a virtual ruler so you have a good guess whether something will fit or not.
In event of a war, why wouldn't the enemy bomb those highways as well as the real airstrips?
I doubt it'll be much more difficult once you are already "there". A fighter bomber travelling at 300 knots wouldn't take long to fly across Singapore.
If you ask me coming up with an AI is not an advance at all.
After all if people come up with an AI and they can't reproduce it or understand how it was done, then that would be kinda pointless.
Because if you wanted nonhuman intelligence, just go to your local pet store!
If you want something as smart as humans, that's not aiming very high;).
If you want something much smarter than humans and don't have any other specs, then obviously you aren't very smart yourself.
The way to go is to _augment_ human intelligence. Our brains are good at something. Computers are good at something else. Just need a bit of system integration...
Yeah, for most affected people it causes them to bleed for a few days every month or so, and experience some of the following: headaches, mood swings, fatigue, insomnia, irritability, anxiety, depression, trouble thinking straight, bad memory, uncontrolled binge eating, joint or muscle pains, cramps or pains elsewhere.
"Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it."
I believe the importance of that commandment is not in what name you call your sabbath day.
I mean, you could choose the 7th day to be Monday or Vendredi or Rabu and how would that break the commandment? After all what is a week, what is a day, and what is a year? Once the current moment passes, we won't experience it again. Imagine the earth spinning and orbiting the Sun. Even just sitting down on your chair, you'll never be in the same spot again.
They are symbols and concepts, albeit useful ones.
I'm a Christian, and my church holds its main services on Sunday. But Saturday's more like my day of rest, coz I usually have to do a fair bit of stuff for the church on Sunday;).
Maybe we should add Friday as a non secular work day too... hehe.
Anyway, back to the main point. Nowadays very many people serve Money, and so they don't have a day of rest, nor do they regard requiring their employees or servants to have a day of rest as "sacred".
I believe there is great wisdom in having a day of rest after 6 days, AND treating it as the "sabbath of God".
One reason I think is, without it you might be forced to work every day, and at the end of it, you die, and then you go, was that it? I must have missed something somewhere, I made my Master/boss/shareholders rich, but it was just a continuous treadmill of work work work. And the Master, even though he relaxes because his slaves spend all their lives working, has no sense of something higher, and thinks nothing of it.
Go look up the Jubilee law too. I think it's an interesting law nowadays, given all the new "modern" laws that help the powerful become more powerful.
That's irrelevant to: "Suggestions for Slowly Failing Hard Drive?".
The whole point is getting a copy of your data on another drive that isn't going to fail soon.
You claimed dd didn't work if the drives weren't identical.
Even if the O/S/application locks itself to particular drive (see "Windows activation" etc ), it gives you more options.
You still have a backup of your entire drive (assuming your drive is still readable as a whole- just grumbling a lot about having to retry reads etc, if your drive isn't that readable you may need to use professional data recovery services).
What you do with that drive image is up to you. You could make another copy, mount it readonly (with Knoppix or on another O/S) and figure out which files to copy out at your _leisure_, without worrying that the drive may fail at anytime whilst you are doing so.
In fact, since you have a drive image, you might even be able to recover deleted files. Or reconstruct data from corrupted files.
On most live systems, the data on a drive is more valuable than the drive it is on.
I think nowadays it's impractical for "kings" to lead their troops into battle, right at the frontline, as in the old days.
Anyway I doubt my proposal will ever become a law. I still think it's quite a good idea (I'm biased of course).
I'm no soldier, and never ever want to be one, but I figure most soldiers would be more willing to risk their lives for a particular war if they knew their leaders were willing to risk their lives too (and most of the country were in favour of the war).
Anyway, I've been trying to spread this idea further. I'm far from influential though;).
If pubs and clubs are the only choices there are, that's quite limited. I'd get bored pretty soon.
I find it quite strange since I'm sure teens in the west do have a fair bit of spending power. Are the youth there really too ill-behaved for most businesses to want to attract? I find that hard to believe.
Over here in Malaysia in most cities there are numerous food places which are "youth friendly", many of which are open for 24 hours. There are the muslim indian food places (mamak), the hong kong/taiwan style places, and open-air food courts.
Many young people hang out at these places with their friends, drinking tea/coffee or various expensive fruit/dessert concoctions (smoothies, bubble tea, etc), eating all sorts of food/snacks.
Of course over here there's no winter, so some of these places typically put out plastic tables and chairs by the road and even in front of other shops (which are closed by then), and so expand their business area (somewhat illegally), while paying the rent for only one shoplot.
Then there are cybercafes where the youth can play computer games with each other.
I hear such businesses are typically quite profitable.
An example evening would be dinner (with friends/family), play games with friends at cybercafe, supper/snacks (at mentioned places), back home before parents get upset and ground them. Alternatively they could go watch a movie, or just hang out at those places for hours talking about whatever...
Something is wrong with a society if its common for its youth to hang out in front of stores and scream obscenities at random people. Aren't there far more fun things to do as a teenager? Where are their parents and what are they doing?
What I meant by "defensive" is when a nation is directly attacked and under _immediate_ threat, there would be no time to hold referendums and all that.
Shooting planes attempting a 9/11 = defensive. The attack on Afghanistan = offensive.
Shooting nukes that are launched at you while within foreign soil before they reach your country = defensive.
One may wish to come up with a clause dealing with nuking countries that launch nukes at you. It's not very defensive. It's more a "revenge" thing. The threat of revenge is the defense I guess.
However, if a country uses my proposal, I believe far fewer nations would ever view that country as a military threat - what would be the point of nuking that country? You'd destroy most assets you'd want to take.
The "sleeping giant" thing is still compatible with my proposal, in fact it may be complementary.
If there is a war between two such countries, they can proceed to _really_ wipe each other out totally. If you think wiping out the 33% minority who weren't for the war is bad, then go adjust the ratio.
It's still better than many wars where far far more didn't want war but were dragged into it. Most people don't want war. Often politicians/leaders may want a war for their own selfish reasons.
My proposal will help make it clear whether people actually want war or not - after all who pays the most for the war - in blood, money, life?
Typically it's not the leaders. I wish that to change.
Old men debating whilst young boys die? Well how about this:
If political leaders wish to send troops to battle for _offensive_ (not defensive[1]) purposes, they have to put their own lives at risk as well.
This could be done in the following manner: A referendum is held. If there is an insufficient majority, the proposers' lives are forfeit. They are put on deathrow.
If there is actually a majority, there could be a "redemption" referendum, and their lives depend on the results.
A similar referendum is also held if at any time it is found that a politician caused the public to be deceived/misinformed (even unknowingly) and "justify" a war or similar military action.
If a leader's life is not successfully redeemed, but later it is found the war was justified, the leader will get the equivalent of a "purple heart".
The idea is that even leaders who have no qualms about lying about "caring about the lives of soldiers" would then actually think twice about sending soldiers to risk their lives. Even amoral people without a conscience would be inclined to take things a bit more seriously when it's not just a matter of losing the next election, or going to jail for a few years.
After all if a leader thinks it is worth risking the lives of soldiers and civilians, that leader should also be willing to risk his/her life. That's only fair right?
Also, if >= 66% of Nation A thinks it's worth attacking Nation B, then it might be easier for people in Nation B to decide whether to kill people in Nation A or not.
I recommend copying critical files to somewhere else first. Then only do the drive to drive copy.
When you boot on the cloned drive, you should probably start in safe mode first and let windows rerecognize the hardware etc - because the hard drive will likely have a different model number/id.
If it's Windows XP or some other similar version you might have problems with windows activation etc.
If you had a bad guy who could control Superman's mind, that'll be interesting. Of course the bad guy wouldn't be so stupid as to do that at the start.
Think of someone like Professor Xavier in X-Men, but just gone bad. You'd become very powerful politically and financially fairly quickly. If you're smart enough you would hide the fact that you have psionic powers.
But then again, from the movies Superman arguably has psionic powers - after all he wiped Lois Lane's memory or something like that. Superman having psionic powers would also help explain why people can't figure out he's Clark Kent - even though its just a silly pair of glasses as a "disguise";).
Actually if he did have psionic powers he'd probably keep them secret too. You can have lots of brute force etc, and people don't mind that as much, but when you can see what people are thinking, and even change their thoughts, then people will feel a fair bit more threatened, even if you are the "good guy".
Thing is, even if you can regenerate entire limbs I wonder whether they'll match the rest of the body. My guess is it won't for quite some time (after they figure out basic regeneration)
Because if the regeneration ends up like lizards and amphibians (or even crustaceans), then it won't. They typically end up with a slightly smaller appendage, or sometimes even _two_. e.g. if a lizard's tail gets notched instead of totally chopped off, sometimes it ends up with two tails.
Having a nonmatching limb or extra limbs might be just as undesirable as having a missing limb.
A "freaky" limb could be perceived as "bad genes", whereas having a missing limb might not be (then again it could be a sign of genes for stupidity/carelessness though;) ).
Maybe the really rich would be able to go about their lives while getting a regen-lab to keep growing replacement limbs/organs for them under controlled conditions till they get one that matches well enough. But the poor will end up with mismatched stuff or resorting to prosthetics...
Hmm, add some rogue neurons growing in a replacement limb and you might end up with a nice B grade movie...
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Not being able to install and run malware should not be because it's inconvenient to install and run any software.
That's sort of thing is fine for servers, but for there to be a Desktop Linux, you'd need this. Otherwise it's too hard for normal users.
A good design would make it hard for any software to screw up your system beyond easy recovery, and easy for a user to do things that way.
A DRM design would make it hard for you to install nonapproved software.
There are tons of people writing stuff for MS Windows, and it is usually easy to get their stuff to work on the various versions of MS Windows.
Whereas on Linux it's hard for people to distribute a single set of binaries that runs on different distros, or even just different versions of a distro. Compile from source? Yeah right, as if Aunt May would do that. Even if you make compiling etc a one click installer, compiling from source takes a fair bit of time and requires more dependencies (which take time to load and build even automatically, and bring in issues of their own).
So much so that it seems many people delegate to their chosen distro the task of repackaging 3rd party software so that they can install and use it without the risk of breaking other stuff, or just not working. So any software that is not supported/listed by the distro is not installed.
While this situation is not as bad as DRM, it is not that dissimilar is it? Only an "elite" group can install nondistro software, ends up quite similar to only an elite group can install non-DRM-approved software (which will be the case with DRM stuff).
In contrast with Windows (preDRM), you can usually try to execute a binary and it WILL run, even if it was made years ago in the days of dos or win 3.1.
Sure that backward compatibility makes it easy for the malware authors. But that also makes it easy in other ways.
It's still false. You need decent experienced brains. Otherwise you might as well just get insects to audit code.
The cathedral vs bazaar thing is a fallacy, and so is this "many eyes" thing.
The linux kernel is a "Cathedral". Same with most OSS projects (Apache, Squid).
While it's cleverer than the normal stuff, I'm not really that impressed.
;).
;). Then some "random spam" in a mailing list could tell it what to do.
;).
I guess the next step would be a trojan/worm that used search engines to search for instructions.
There are a fair number of search engines it can use
It could even use google groups
Do it in perl and/or some other scripting language and it'll be interesting to see how AV engines can keep up with the many possible versions (perl, python, ruby, lisp etc do run on windows). It could be fairly innocuous code, that just did: eval "downloaded stuff here" in some situations;
And that could remove the old version (that would be vulnerable to AV stuff).
I figure that one can rapidly create very many different versions in perl that do different things (spread via newly discovered security problems). Or even do the same thing. After all perl = "There's more than one way to do it".
While the AV software has significant performance considerations for real time detection- it has to detect the many different perl, python, ruby etc versions that could automatically spring into existence, without too many false positives.
In contrast each individual malware copy doesn't have as difficult limitations.
In fact, one could create an experiment in "genetic algorithms". Parasites that burden the host too much would not survive.
The only issue is how do you infect a user. But there appears to be tons of ways to do that, including stupid people
Also Microsoft and Sony have already "helped a lot". I believe Microsoft has in fact signed at least one insecure activex control, so all you need to do is get targets to download that _signed_ control and exploit it. Sony? Need I say more?
If that happens, you might really need multicore CPUs to get stuff done.
First get strong management backing. If not just back off and forget the whole thing.
;).
Then:
Option A: Fascist
All outbound nonSSL web traffic (80-83, 8000-8999) goes through transparent proxy.
All outbound SSL webtraffic must be via nontransparent proxy.
All users get their own PCs and IP addresses.
All users don't share PCs where possible.
No other outbound or inbound traffic allowed to client networks.
DNS, mail via the corporate servers.
Then go through the web logs and get the top 10 users and the top 10 sites visited.
Option B: Give people enough rope to hang themselves
Announce that statistics of all internet usage will be kept.
Make sure the clueless know what that really means, especially the powerful clueless ones...
Allow whatever traffic the users want with some safety in mind.
Produce a list of the top 10 users and the top 10 sites.
Careful though - often you'd find the bosses are the top culprits (that's why you need strong support from management). But even if that's the case, unless you are unlucky or do things badly, they'd just get more bandwidth for everyone overall... Just so they can listen to internet radio the whole day long...
If I were boss, I'd just make a _public_ list of the top 10 users and their top 10 sites every month. After a while I'd know a bit more about my staff
Just because you throw infinity at something doesn't mean you'll eventually get the value you want.
;).
Some X-Y functions just have Y approach a particular value (say K) as X goes to infinity, but you never get Y=K.
Proving that an infinite number of monkeys will _definitely_ produce the works of Shakespeare is not that simple.
Especially your statement that they can do it on their first key press.
After all there's a chance that they could all just press the spacebar for their first keypress
Trouble is the _competence_ part. Do show me where to get competent programmers... So far there don't seem to be that many about.
In fact hardworking incompetent programmers are pretty dangerous. (they're not as dangerous as hardworking incompetent military leaders of course).
Actually for programmers, I won't really care about the 20% vs 85% effort. As long as the genius guy uses his genius when doing his work.
I suggest that a programmer might be required to be fairly smart in order to be competent.
After all when it comes to _programming_, the _computer_ is supposed to do the work that doesn't require much intelligence.
Believe me, I've seen code by stupid programmers, and designs by stupid designers (I'm not a great programmer or designer, but some things are just so obviously stupid). The genius guy can replace some of these stupid but hardworking programmer with a script or two. If you could see some of the code I've seen... It's amazing how bad stuff can get and still "kinda work" (which can be very _dangerous_ if you think about it).
Everything else remaining the same (assume normal to above average trustworthiness and loyalty), I'd take the lazy genius guy anytime even if he only spends 20% of his office time working.
You won't have to throw 80-100% of his work away AND spend more time and resources fixing the resulting mess - corrupted data, pissed off people.
Hey, yeah that does look like it! Definitely closer than the other breeds I looked at anyway.
:).
Thanks!
Hmm ears not erect is listed as a fault. I think they'd look fine without erect ears, especially if the ears are still symmetrical
Voice communications is typically rather slow. Worse if it's some ignorant person at the other end who doesn't know their stuff.
Dell offer basic configs too AND they allow you to customize them AND they allow you to pick up a phone and call.
I prefer to customize stuff online, especially if the customizing UI is quick (Dell has screwed things up and made their UI _slow_, but they seem to be the only big vendor that allows significant online customization).
How much would it cost Sun to just get a decent web app up, vs requiring lots more people to listen to phones? I thought they had all those software dev tools?
It would also be good if they allow you to view the inside and outside of a server, and provide a virtual ruler so you have a good guess whether something will fit or not.
In event of a war, why wouldn't the enemy bomb those highways as well as the real airstrips?
I doubt it'll be much more difficult once you are already "there". A fighter bomber travelling at 300 knots wouldn't take long to fly across Singapore.
Trained miniature horses might be better. They live longer than dogs. 40 years?
Not sure whether their sense of smell would be good enough though.
OK here's a non-tripod link to the picture I mentioned earlier.
Just curious, do you know whether the puppy in this pic is a real dog and if it is, what breed it is?
puppy.
Thanks!
If you ask me coming up with an AI is not an advance at all.
;).
After all if people come up with an AI and they can't reproduce it or understand how it was done, then that would be kinda pointless.
Because if you wanted nonhuman intelligence, just go to your local pet store!
If you want something as smart as humans, that's not aiming very high
If you want something much smarter than humans and don't have any other specs, then obviously you aren't very smart yourself.
The way to go is to _augment_ human intelligence. Our brains are good at something. Computers are good at something else. Just need a bit of system integration...
Yeah, for most affected people it causes them to bleed for a few days every month or so, and experience some of the following:
headaches, mood swings, fatigue, insomnia, irritability, anxiety, depression, trouble thinking straight, bad memory, uncontrolled binge eating, joint or muscle pains, cramps or pains elsewhere.
"Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it."
;).
I believe the importance of that commandment is not in what name you call your sabbath day.
I mean, you could choose the 7th day to be Monday or Vendredi or Rabu and how would that break the commandment? After all what is a week, what is a day, and what is a year? Once the current moment passes, we won't experience it again. Imagine the earth spinning and orbiting the Sun. Even just sitting down on your chair, you'll never be in the same spot again.
They are symbols and concepts, albeit useful ones.
I'm a Christian, and my church holds its main services on Sunday. But Saturday's more like my day of rest, coz I usually have to do a fair bit of stuff for the church on Sunday
Maybe we should add Friday as a non secular work day too... hehe.
Anyway, back to the main point. Nowadays very many people serve Money, and so they don't have a day of rest, nor do they regard requiring their employees or servants to have a day of rest as "sacred".
I believe there is great wisdom in having a day of rest after 6 days, AND treating it as the "sabbath of God".
One reason I think is, without it you might be forced to work every day, and at the end of it, you die, and then you go, was that it? I must have missed something somewhere, I made my Master/boss/shareholders rich, but it was just a continuous treadmill of work work work. And the Master, even though he relaxes because his slaves spend all their lives working, has no sense of something higher, and thinks nothing of it.
Go look up the Jubilee law too. I think it's an interesting law nowadays, given all the new "modern" laws that help the powerful become more powerful.
That's irrelevant to: "Suggestions for Slowly Failing Hard Drive?".
The whole point is getting a copy of your data on another drive that isn't going to fail soon.
You claimed dd didn't work if the drives weren't identical.
Even if the O/S/application locks itself to particular drive (see "Windows activation" etc ), it gives you more options.
You still have a backup of your entire drive (assuming your drive is still readable as a whole- just grumbling a lot about having to retry reads etc, if your drive isn't that readable you may need to use professional data recovery services).
What you do with that drive image is up to you. You could make another copy, mount it readonly (with Knoppix or on another O/S) and figure out which files to copy out at your _leisure_, without worrying that the drive may fail at anytime whilst you are doing so.
In fact, since you have a drive image, you might even be able to recover deleted files. Or reconstruct data from corrupted files.
On most live systems, the data on a drive is more valuable than the drive it is on.
I think nowadays it's impractical for "kings" to lead their troops into battle, right at the frontline, as in the old days.
;).
Anyway I doubt my proposal will ever become a law. I still think it's quite a good idea (I'm biased of course).
I'm no soldier, and never ever want to be one, but I figure most soldiers would be more willing to risk their lives for a particular war if they knew their leaders were willing to risk their lives too (and most of the country were in favour of the war).
Anyway, I've been trying to spread this idea further. I'm far from influential though
If pubs and clubs are the only choices there are, that's quite limited. I'd get bored pretty soon.
I find it quite strange since I'm sure teens in the west do have a fair bit of spending power. Are the youth there really too ill-behaved for most businesses to want to attract? I find that hard to believe.
Over here in Malaysia in most cities there are numerous food places which are "youth friendly", many of which are open for 24 hours. There are the muslim indian food places (mamak), the hong kong/taiwan style places, and open-air food courts.
Many young people hang out at these places with their friends, drinking tea/coffee or various expensive fruit/dessert concoctions (smoothies, bubble tea, etc), eating all sorts of food/snacks.
Of course over here there's no winter, so some of these places typically put out plastic tables and chairs by the road and even in front of other shops (which are closed by then), and so expand their business area (somewhat illegally), while paying the rent for only one shoplot.
Then there are cybercafes where the youth can play computer games with each other.
I hear such businesses are typically quite profitable.
An example evening would be dinner (with friends/family), play games with friends at cybercafe, supper/snacks (at mentioned places), back home before parents get upset and ground them. Alternatively they could go watch a movie, or just hang out at those places for hours talking about whatever...
Something is wrong with a society if its common for its youth to hang out in front of stores and scream obscenities at random people. Aren't there far more fun things to do as a teenager? Where are their parents and what are they doing?
Why not? As long as the destination drive is bigger you can do it with dd.
I've done it MANY times. You just end up with a unused, unpartitioned space on the destination drive. You can partition that and use the space.
I believe an advantage of Ghost is you can do it when the dest drive is _smaller_, given some other constraints (disk usage etc).
What I meant by "defensive" is when a nation is directly attacked and under _immediate_ threat, there would be no time to hold referendums and all that.
Shooting planes attempting a 9/11 = defensive. The attack on Afghanistan = offensive.
Shooting nukes that are launched at you while within foreign soil before they reach your country = defensive.
One may wish to come up with a clause dealing with nuking countries that launch nukes at you. It's not very defensive. It's more a "revenge" thing. The threat of revenge is the defense I guess.
However, if a country uses my proposal, I believe far fewer nations would ever view that country as a military threat - what would be the point of nuking that country? You'd destroy most assets you'd want to take.
The "sleeping giant" thing is still compatible with my proposal, in fact it may be complementary.
If there is a war between two such countries, they can proceed to _really_ wipe each other out totally. If you think wiping out the 33% minority who weren't for the war is bad, then go adjust the ratio.
It's still better than many wars where far far more didn't want war but were dragged into it. Most people don't want war. Often politicians/leaders may want a war for their own selfish reasons.
My proposal will help make it clear whether people actually want war or not - after all who pays the most for the war - in blood, money, life?
Typically it's not the leaders. I wish that to change.
If they've made a version of the linux kernel, how would we get a version of it?
Old men debating whilst young boys die? Well how about this:
If political leaders wish to send troops to battle for _offensive_ (not defensive[1]) purposes, they have to put their own lives at risk as well.
This could be done in the following manner:
A referendum is held. If there is an insufficient majority, the proposers' lives are forfeit. They are put on deathrow.
If there is actually a majority, there could be a "redemption" referendum, and their lives depend on the results.
A similar referendum is also held if at any time it is found that a politician caused the public to be deceived/misinformed (even unknowingly) and "justify" a war or similar military action.
If a leader's life is not successfully redeemed, but later it is found the war was justified, the leader will get the equivalent of a "purple heart".
The idea is that even leaders who have no qualms about lying about "caring about the lives of soldiers" would then actually think twice about sending soldiers to risk their lives. Even amoral people without a conscience would be inclined to take things a bit more seriously when it's not just a matter of losing the next election, or going to jail for a few years.
After all if a leader thinks it is worth risking the lives of soldiers and civilians, that leader should also be willing to risk his/her life. That's only fair right?
Also, if >= 66% of Nation A thinks it's worth attacking Nation B, then it might be easier for people in Nation B to decide whether to kill people in Nation A or not.
[1] Defensive wars are different of course.
Or use knoppix and dd.
But you better know what you are doing.
I recommend copying critical files to somewhere else first. Then only do the drive to drive copy.
When you boot on the cloned drive, you should probably start in safe mode first and let windows rerecognize the hardware etc - because the hard drive will likely have a different model number/id.
If it's Windows XP or some other similar version you might have problems with windows activation etc.
Windows 2K should be ok.
Power is not just about brute force.
;).
If you had a bad guy who could control Superman's mind, that'll be interesting. Of course the bad guy wouldn't be so stupid as to do that at the start.
Think of someone like Professor Xavier in X-Men, but just gone bad. You'd become very powerful politically and financially fairly quickly. If you're smart enough you would hide the fact that you have psionic powers.
But then again, from the movies Superman arguably has psionic powers - after all he wiped Lois Lane's memory or something like that. Superman having psionic powers would also help explain why people can't figure out he's Clark Kent - even though its just a silly pair of glasses as a "disguise"
Actually if he did have psionic powers he'd probably keep them secret too. You can have lots of brute force etc, and people don't mind that as much, but when you can see what people are thinking, and even change their thoughts, then people will feel a fair bit more threatened, even if you are the "good guy".
Thing is, even if you can regenerate entire limbs I wonder whether they'll match the rest of the body. My guess is it won't for quite some time (after they figure out basic regeneration)
;) ).
Because if the regeneration ends up like lizards and amphibians (or even crustaceans), then it won't. They typically end up with a slightly smaller appendage, or sometimes even _two_. e.g. if a lizard's tail gets notched instead of totally chopped off, sometimes it ends up with two tails.
Having a nonmatching limb or extra limbs might be just as undesirable as having a missing limb.
A "freaky" limb could be perceived as "bad genes", whereas having a missing limb might not be (then again it could be a sign of genes for stupidity/carelessness though
Maybe the really rich would be able to go about their lives while getting a regen-lab to keep growing replacement limbs/organs for them under controlled conditions till they get one that matches well enough. But the poor will end up with mismatched stuff or resorting to prosthetics...
Hmm, add some rogue neurons growing in a replacement limb and you might end up with a nice B grade movie...