I mean, did the Elves make Glamdring and Sting and Orcrist and then FORGET what they just did?
History is replete with examples of technology being lost. Remember that Middle Earth is a feudal society; and in a feudal society, the techniques of a craftmaster were fiercely guarded secrets and never written down. If a master craftsman were to die before he was able to teach his successor his secrets, that knowledge would have been lost. Look at the knowledge that was lost when Rome fell: it took nearly 500 years for European engineers to re-discover the Roman's building techniques. The fall of Numenor (and corresponding loss of knowledge) and the Third Age of Middle-Earth is a direct parallel of the dark ages that followed the real-world collapse of the Roman empire.
There's an even more modern example of how seemingly essential military knowledge can be lost. Look at the Iowa-class battleships. This is 60-year old technology, but we would be very hard pressed to duplicate it today. Because the battleship was considered to be obsolete after the ascendence of the aircraft carrier, a huge amount of the specialized engineering and construction knowledge needed to build one was forgotten, locked in the heads of now-dead master shipbuilders. Because they weren't needed anymore, the specialized tools used to do things like work with 18" thick armor plate and build 15" gun barrels were scrapped.
I wouldn't use removable hard drives as a backup mechanism - they are too vulnerable to mechanical damage to be handled that much.
That being said, I think a large pile of IDE drives could be a good backup mechanism, when used as part of a dedicated backup machine. I would take a low-end PC, stick an IDE RAID card in it, and slap in 6 decent IDE drives in a RAID 0+1 configuration (striped mirror pairs). This gives you a large degree of redundancy, and you don't have to worry about interface problems because you are treating the whole system as a black box -- and I doubt ethernet is going away any time soon. A wake-on-lan ethernet card would be a good addition if you don't want to keep it energized 24x7. Stiction shouldn't be a problem since you'll be powering the machine up on a pretty regular basis.
You should be able to build a backup server like this for $1200 or less. Ideally, you'd have 2 of these beasties, one on-site and one off-site. Either swap them out manually or synch over the network, it really dosn't matter. I'd be a whole lot more comfortable moving around a single tower case than a bunch of IDE drive trays.
I would consider the NRA's possition extreme because they are unwilling to compromise
That's because there's nothing to compromise about. When the Constitution explicitly and absolutely forbids the Government from doing specific things in plain and unambiguous language (shall make no law, shall not be infringed, shall not be violated) there is no room for interpetation, no grounds for compromise, and no justification for weasling.
There are many parts of the Constitution which hold no middle ground: The government may not endorse or support any religion, no matter how popular; nor is any religion prohibited, no matter how reviled. No person may be tried twice for the same crime, no matter how repugnant the offense. And the right of an individual to possess and use firearms cannot be taken away without due process of law, period and end of story.
The two clauses of the second amendment are independent of one another, just as are the various clauses of the first amendment. The second amendment says two distinct things: A free state needs a well-equipped and trained militia, and that all of the people have an individual right to keep and bear arms. Who is in the militia? Basically, every able-bodied citizen:
Sec. 311. - Militia: composition and classes
(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia are -
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia
Saying that the Right to Keep and Bear Arms only applies to the militia is as silly as saying that the rights of free speech and the press only applies to religious material.
Clinging to such a dated and nowadays absurd idea that guns are still essential because they were essential in some long-irrelevant war, and, furthermore, that they are a RIGHT, not a PRIVILEGE, further promotes unneccessary and uncontrolled use of guns
Not a right? RTFBOR (read the frigging Bill of Rights).
A well-regulated milita, being necessary for the security of a free state, the RIGHT of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
The right to keep and bear arms is no less protected than the right to practice the religion of your choice, or the right to peacably assemble, or the right to petition the government for the redress of grievances. Don't like it? Too damn bad. It's the Constitution. The only way to make gun ownership a privilidge and not a right is to repeal the Second Amendment with another amendment
Sure, maybe Officer Bustem is getting a little out of hand with looking up data on his patrol car tablet
Which is why the system should be logging all of his searches, and why those logs should be reviewed by his superiors and/or an independent auditor. Law enforcement officers are placed in a position of special trust, but that trust should not be given blindly. A cop who misuses his special privilidges must be held personally responsible for his actions. If a public official does something which would land a member of the general public in jail, then they should suffer the same fate.
The whole idea rests on the (unproven) hypothesis that a particular reading on an MRI has a direct correlation to an ad's effectiveness. Ads can be effective in two ways: first, by causing an immediate decision to buy (Call now!), and second by building brand awareness (which hopefully influences future buying decisions and/or maintains customer loyalty).
It would seem to me that the first kind of ad would be easier to evaluate with this kind of technique: you either provoke an immediate favorable reaction or you don't. That works fine for products that can be purchased on impulse (EG: small appliance) or where you can generate an immediate sales lead for a major purchase (EG: Car Insurance, Mortgage Refinancing). But take something like a car purchase: virtually noone buys a car on impulse (even people who are actively car shopping), so ads like this have to focus on building positive brand awareness over time. That's probably not something you can measure immediately.
Great, I was looking for an opportunity to debug someone elses commercial software for free!
It's called "peer review" and a long standing tradition in the academic world. It's also a matter of trust. By releasing the source, they are saying, "look, nothing up my sleeve". It's proof that they are not selling you a crippled product. It doesn't matter if you ever read the source, because someone will. There are plenty of people who have the desire and the ability to do so.
For something important like this, where it's important to document when you sent someone a document, you have to use certified (snail) mail and have everything notarized.
Regardless of the wording of the click-through license, they would have a VERY hard time convincing a court that you were not acting in good faith if you can produce hard physical evidence that you did in fact notify them N days in advance of disclosing the bug publicly.
In short, there's no way to verify that the source code and the program are the same.
Nonesense. You download the source and compile it in a build enviornment that matches the one used to produce the official executable.
If the MD5 and SHA1 checksums of the code you compiled locally matches those of the distributed version, you have a very high degree of confidance that the distributed executable was indeed compiled from the published source code. If they don't match, tampering is a possibility.
In order to do this successfully, you need two things that seem to be lacking in this case: the makefile used to compile the official executable, and all the pertinent details about the build enviornment (compiler version, versions of statically-linked libraries, and so forth). If you can't exactly duplicate the build enviornment, it's probable that there will be differences in the executable code even if it was compiled from the same source code.
If you are going to quote a dictionary, at least quote a legal dictionary. Everyday English != Legalese.
The only definition of "theft" that matters in this context is how it is defined in the applicable statutes and case law. The formal legal definitions of words like "theft" are *extremely* narrow and refer to a very specific and well defined action.
I swear the open source community is often it's own worse enemy. Since (almost) noone is making money doing it, the primary form of compensation is ego gratification. If someone doesn't get their way, they throw a temper tantrum and go off on their own. The end result is forked code trees, huge amounts of duplicated effort, and projects that never go anywhere.
When some nosy salescritter asks for my address, I always give tell them it's 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC 20500. Sadly, 90% of the time they don't even get it.
The reason all the Linux desktop developers try to emulate Windows is that the ones who've tried to emulate MacOS have been sued into oblivion by Apple.
Piss off somebody rich and powerful who could call in heavyweight political favors and unleash the full might and fury of the US Government against them. The Block Family wants to send a message to everyone in the Toledo area: "We own you. Don't fuck with us, or else. Be a good little consumer and (maybe) we won't hurt you."
This is yet another example of how far out of control the FBI has become. This is an abuse of power as frightening as Ruby Ridge or Waco. More so - more so, even. At least in Ruby Ridge and Waco there was at least a pretense that the subjects were armed and potentially violent. These people were just ordinary people working in their homes. It's not like they were distributing child porn, or soliciting 13 year old girls to have sex, or stealing credit card information. They were, in effect, eating "too much" at what was advertised as an all-you-can-eat buffet. The FBI has no business whatsoever being involved here. At most, Buckeye should have sued these people in civil court for breach of contract. Unfortunately for all of us, the cable companies bought themselves laws which basically makes the police their contract enforcement agency.
Shit like this just reinforces my belief that our legal system is broken beyond repair.
Some things are (almost) universally recognized as being acceptable for children. Some things are equally recognized as being unacceptable for kids. However, there's a lot of grey area where even well-meaning, intelligent, and informed people disagree vehemently.
Is it appropriate for a young child to see a rendition of Michaelangelo's David? That's a matter of opinion: some would say yes - it's a classic piece of art and it's good for kids to be exposed to culture. Others would say no - his naughty bits are hanging out and it's bad for kids to see a naked human body. Some parents don't want their kids seeing Harry Potter but think it's perfectly fine for them to read fundamentalist Christian religous tracts, while others have the complete opposite view.
So who gets to say what can go in.kids.us and what can't? If the Jerry Fallwells of the world were in charge, chicktracts.kids.us would be perfectly fine, but witchvox.kids.us or harrypotter.kids.us wouldn't be. I'm not willing to allow anyone other than myself and my wife what is or is not appropriate for our children to see.
At least in most places, assuming another name is legal so long as the intent is not to defraud. I can call myself Princess Anastasia if I really want to; but if run up debts under that name, I'm still legally responsible to pay them -- I can't try and say that it wasn't me, it was that other person. I can call my self George W. Bush if I want to, but I can't walk into the bank and make a withdrawl from Curious George's bribe^H^H^H^H^Hcampaign contribution account
I have ALSO used cheap web hosting that had lots of disk space available and FTP'd files to their server. Probably not the most secure method, but could be cost-effective.
If security is important, encrypt your backups prior to uploading them. Of course, a cheap web host service probably has no guarantees about reliability / availability / accuracy / etc. Service level agreements drive the cost up significantly.
Looks like once again, M$ gets busted for lying through it's teeth. Of course, that's what all good marketing is. Not that any of this comes as a suprise for anyone who's administered both Windows and *nix boxen.
Unfortunately, while it doesn't generate emissions, damming rivers to produce hydroelectric power wreaks havoc with the ecosystem.
While it may not be politically correct to say so, in terms of total enviornmental impact per Megawatt of generated power, nuclear power is far cleaner than any other large-scale power generation technology currently in existance. Yes, Uranium mining is messy. Spent fuel is lethal. Lots of stuff in the plant gets contaminated. It's still a lot better than any of the alternatives: strip mining coal and pumping tons of toxic gasses into the atmosphere, or damming rivers and devistating entire ecosystems, or shipping billions of barrels of oil halfway around the planet in leaky supertankers.
Slashdot Mirror
There's an even more modern example of how seemingly essential military knowledge can be lost. Look at the Iowa-class battleships. This is 60-year old technology, but we would be very hard pressed to duplicate it today. Because the battleship was considered to be obsolete after the ascendence of the aircraft carrier, a huge amount of the specialized engineering and construction knowledge needed to build one was forgotten, locked in the heads of now-dead master shipbuilders. Because they weren't needed anymore, the specialized tools used to do things like work with 18" thick armor plate and build 15" gun barrels were scrapped.
That being said, I think a large pile of IDE drives could be a good backup mechanism, when used as part of a dedicated backup machine. I would take a low-end PC, stick an IDE RAID card in it, and slap in 6 decent IDE drives in a RAID 0+1 configuration (striped mirror pairs). This gives you a large degree of redundancy, and you don't have to worry about interface problems because you are treating the whole system as a black box -- and I doubt ethernet is going away any time soon. A wake-on-lan ethernet card would be a good addition if you don't want to keep it energized 24x7. Stiction shouldn't be a problem since you'll be powering the machine up on a pretty regular basis.
You should be able to build a backup server like this for $1200 or less. Ideally, you'd have 2 of these beasties, one on-site and one off-site. Either swap them out manually or synch over the network, it really dosn't matter. I'd be a whole lot more comfortable moving around a single tower case than a bunch of IDE drive trays.
There are many parts of the Constitution which hold no middle ground: The government may not endorse or support any religion, no matter how popular; nor is any religion prohibited, no matter how reviled. No person may be tried twice for the same crime, no matter how repugnant the offense. And the right of an individual to possess and use firearms cannot be taken away without due process of law, period and end of story.
Saying that the Right to Keep and Bear Arms only applies to the militia is as silly as saying that the rights of free speech and the press only applies to religious material.
It would seem to me that the first kind of ad would be easier to evaluate with this kind of technique: you either provoke an immediate favorable reaction or you don't. That works fine for products that can be purchased on impulse (EG: small appliance) or where you can generate an immediate sales lead for a major purchase (EG: Car Insurance, Mortgage Refinancing). But take something like a car purchase: virtually noone buys a car on impulse (even people who are actively car shopping), so ads like this have to focus on building positive brand awareness over time. That's probably not something you can measure immediately.
Regardless of the wording of the click-through license, they would have a VERY hard time convincing a court that you were not acting in good faith if you can produce hard physical evidence that you did in fact notify them N days in advance of disclosing the bug publicly.
If the MD5 and SHA1 checksums of the code you compiled locally matches those of the distributed version, you have a very high degree of confidance that the distributed executable was indeed compiled from the published source code. If they don't match, tampering is a possibility.
In order to do this successfully, you need two things that seem to be lacking in this case: the makefile used to compile the official executable, and all the pertinent details about the build enviornment (compiler version, versions of statically-linked libraries, and so forth). If you can't exactly duplicate the build enviornment, it's probable that there will be differences in the executable code even if it was compiled from the same source code.
The only definition of "theft" that matters in this context is how it is defined in the applicable statutes and case law. The formal legal definitions of words like "theft" are *extremely* narrow and refer to a very specific and well defined action.
I swear the open source community is often it's own worse enemy. Since (almost) noone is making money doing it, the primary form of compensation is ego gratification. If someone doesn't get their way, they throw a temper tantrum and go off on their own. The end result is forked code trees, huge amounts of duplicated effort, and projects that never go anywhere.
The main cost in a cable is the fancy connectors at the ends. The wire is pretty cheap by comparison.
When some nosy salescritter asks for my address, I always give tell them it's 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC 20500. Sadly, 90% of the time they don't even get it.
Apparantly, the PDQ8 doesn't withstand the /. effect very well.
And of course, obBeowulf.
The reason all the Linux desktop developers try to emulate Windows is that the ones who've tried to emulate MacOS have been sued into oblivion by Apple.
This is yet another example of how far out of control the FBI has become. This is an abuse of power as frightening as Ruby Ridge or Waco. More so - more so, even. At least in Ruby Ridge and Waco there was at least a pretense that the subjects were armed and potentially violent. These people were just ordinary people working in their homes. It's not like they were distributing child porn, or soliciting 13 year old girls to have sex, or stealing credit card information. They were, in effect, eating "too much" at what was advertised as an all-you-can-eat buffet. The FBI has no business whatsoever being involved here. At most, Buckeye should have sued these people in civil court for breach of contract. Unfortunately for all of us, the cable companies bought themselves laws which basically makes the police their contract enforcement agency.
Shit like this just reinforces my belief that our legal system is broken beyond repair.
Is it appropriate for a young child to see a rendition of Michaelangelo's David? That's a matter of opinion: some would say yes - it's a classic piece of art and it's good for kids to be exposed to culture. Others would say no - his naughty bits are hanging out and it's bad for kids to see a naked human body. Some parents don't want their kids seeing Harry Potter but think it's perfectly fine for them to read fundamentalist Christian religous tracts, while others have the complete opposite view.
So who gets to say what can go in .kids.us and what can't? If the Jerry Fallwells of the world were in charge, chicktracts.kids.us would be perfectly fine, but witchvox.kids.us or harrypotter.kids.us wouldn't be. I'm not willing to allow anyone other than myself and my wife what is or is not appropriate for our children to see.
Someone mod this up as funny.
At least in most places, assuming another name is legal so long as the intent is not to defraud. I can call myself Princess Anastasia if I really want to; but if run up debts under that name, I'm still legally responsible to pay them -- I can't try and say that it wasn't me, it was that other person. I can call my self George W. Bush if I want to, but I can't walk into the bank and make a withdrawl from Curious George's bribe^H^H^H^H^Hcampaign contribution account
Ha, Ha
</simpsons>
Looks like once again, M$ gets busted for lying through it's teeth. Of course, that's what all good marketing is. Not that any of this comes as a suprise for anyone who's administered both Windows and *nix boxen.
While it may not be politically correct to say so, in terms of total enviornmental impact per Megawatt of generated power, nuclear power is far cleaner than any other large-scale power generation technology currently in existance. Yes, Uranium mining is messy. Spent fuel is lethal. Lots of stuff in the plant gets contaminated. It's still a lot better than any of the alternatives: strip mining coal and pumping tons of toxic gasses into the atmosphere, or damming rivers and devistating entire ecosystems, or shipping billions of barrels of oil halfway around the planet in leaky supertankers.
while ( sins() > 0 ) {
int i,x;
i = confess(sins());
for ( x = 0; x <= i; x++ )
say_hail_mary();
}
Forget that... I don't want my computer flying off in a jealous rage when I surf over to Dell to check out the specs on a new laptop :-)