Its already tipping as defaults are at an all time high but thanks to the changes Bush passed in 06 you can't even get out of debt with bankruptcy and that REALLY needs to change
This is always something that has really bugged me. Why exactly is it someone's right to borrow money and then not pay it back? If you borrowed it, you should have to pay it back. It doesn't make any sense to allow people out from under their debts that they made the conscious decision to borrow. If you don't understand the total costs, how the lending and repayment processes work, or if you don't have any solid plans for living with that debt, you shouldn't be borrowing it. Period. I don't care if it's a mortgage, a car loan, a school loan, or even your neighbor's tools. Your borrowing choices and the repayments from those choices should always be your own responsibility.
Happens in Chicago all the time. One correction though is that it's not once every 5 seconds. It's a nearly constant stream much of the time. If you try to leave the correct distance in front of you, you will spend more time on the brakes than anything else.
Also, the concern at red lights is not generally that I'm too close to the car in front of me, it's that the car behind me is too close. I can, to at least a small extent, control the distance in front, but I can't do a damn thing about the distance in back.
Is this supposed to surprise anyone? And, more importantly, does anyone out there actually believe that the US isn't doing the same thing toward [insert long list of nations here]? I, for one, certainly believe they are.
Is anyone outside of the teenage girl crowd even paying attention to Facebook announcements anymore? I'm legitimately asking. I have a Facebook account that I log into maybe once or twice a year. And most of the circles I spend time in don't really use it much anymore either. Am I the only one that sees Facebook announcements and just shrugs with indifference?
After the Patriot Act, you need a physical address for most things now. For instance, you can't legally open a bank account or apply for a credit card with just a PO box. You can add a PO box as a mailing address, but that won't be sufficient by itself anymore. I'm not sure if this extends to a drivers license, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me.
Rsync does not delete on the target end by default. You have to specify the --delete option, or else it just adds and updates files. So just leave that out and an rsync script should do the trick just fine.
I never implied that the private sector doesn't accept incompetence. I stated that the government allows it in mass quantities. I do work in the private sector and see incompetence routinely. However, there's a huge difference between what happens in a private company and what happens in government. When incompetence is allowed in a private company, the company suffers. Sometimes, depending on the type of incompetence, the customers suffer by having to pay higher prices for inferior products (see things like the content holders and providers like Comcast). When incompetence is allowed in the government, however, it comes with the business end of a gun, so to speak. It can, and often does, result in a loss of basic freedoms, jail time, or worse. There's a huge, huge difference there.
Also, don't forget that many, if not most, of the problems you see in the private world are the result of government actions. For instance, going back to the content industry, a lack of competition and other factors created by FCC regulations (among many, many other laws) are a large reason prices are so high and options are so few. I can't say with certainty that the industry would be perfect without government involvement, but I have yet to find anyone who thinks that it'd be anywhere near this bad if the industry was left to its own devices.
Sadly, no. I know that there are regular grammatical mistakes, but it doesn't mean that I can't hope that someday/. will actually start proofreading article posts.
*sits in a corner and silently weeps for humanity...*
This. I had to read the summary a couple times to get past the awkwardness of the wording. A simple proofread of one sentence before posting a submission shouldn't be too much for/.
What you described related to the UK's DPA makes it a legal issue, not an ethical one. My best guess is that they're concerned with sensitive information being exposed to unauthorized people. So his security and ethics claims would really be one in the same. The ethics problem has nothing to do with laws though. Laws don't make something unethical. Legislators often make laws surrounding ethical issues, but they were ethical issues before the laws ever appeared.
My point wasn't that the capacity has anything to do with performance. The capacity is generally something that users want considering the amount of data many people are storing on computers now. My point was mostly that you get more capacity for your money if you go with a hard drive, and most users do not need to pay a huge premium to get performance they'll rarely, if ever, really need. A standard 7200 RPM HDD will perform fine for most, and if the user really wants something faster he can get a 10,000 RPM drive instead. He'd still save a lot of money over an SSD with even half the capacity. (Newegg shows the cheapest 80 GB SSD at $249 while a 10,000 RPM 150 GB Velociraptor is $160.)
Also, for the record, that 80 GB SSD would, in fact, be too small for my game installations. My OS and programs are all on one drive, and there is currently more than 80 GB used. I use a secondary drive for storing all non-program-related files too, so I can't cut down any more without moving programs themselves to a secondary drive. So yes, if you're playing several games, 80 GB is way too small.
The only exception that I'd point out to what you said is to watch very closely for RAM compatibility. Just getting the cheapest without really researching it more can land you with a very unstable computer (I know this from personal experience, so I spend a lot of time researching that before new builds). Newegg conveniently links to the manufacturer's product pages usually, so you can check there for RAM compatibility charts. Aside from that, I'd agree. If you're looking for a standard gaming rig, you don't need high-end parts. You don't need to overclock. You definitely don't need to spend a fortune. A case with PSU included is fine and will save you money. Any graphics card in the latest series from ATI or nVidia, even the low end of those series, will be more than enough. You'll get a good computer for a great price.
Also, +1 for recommending Newegg. I'll shop there over everywhere else even if it costs me more. The service is second to none (and I'm not using that as a cliche, I actually mean it), the prices are great, and the selection is huge.
I can name one: An Intel Postville 80GB SSD for ~180 Euro....
But seriously, get an SSD.
He said "must have." You don't need an SSD by any stretch. SSDs are still far too expensive per-GB for the vast majority of users to bother with. A person can get a hard drive with many times the capacity for well under $100. And if the person doesn't know which CPU is which, he's not going to ever miss the performance difference.
This is really cool until you find yourself trying to log in from the same access point where somebody with a virus was attached earlier in the day. Better to just use crypto (key-based authentication only) and rate-limiting.
That depends on how you have Fail2Ban set up. If you have it set to block for a very long period of time, then yes, this would be a problem. But I have it set to just block for 10 minutes. Even if I manage to lock myself out accidentally, I only have to wait 10 minutes. That short 10 minute block is usually more than enough to make bots move on. I've had a few of them continue to hammer away after the 10 minutes are up, but in a couple years it's been a very small percentage.
And to the guy who suggested using DenyHosts in addition to Fail2Ban, you're wasting your time. Fail2Ban performs the exact same thing as DenyHosts, but Fail2Ban does it for more services besides SSH. They're both good tools, but using them together is just unnecessary.
So then I assume you also would say that if I have nothing to hide, I shouldn't mind the police tearing my house apart looking for something that may or may not be there? If I have nothing to hide, I shouldn't mind being searched every time I enter or leave a building? I shouldn't mind being spied on at all times during my daily life? That's all ridiculous. Just because I don't want the Feds to know where I am every waking second doesn't mean I'm doing anything wrong. I just like my privacy, and they're interfering with that. It's not like it's anything new in this country (USA), but it's still wrong. Plain and simple.
What you're obviously not realizing is that the only reason identity theft exists in the first place is that there's a national ID number. Your SSN is a de facto national ID, and it makes it really, really easy to perform identity theft. If you create an even more formal national ID system, you actually make identity theft even easier since it's just a single document or number you have to steal.
And, I'm sorry, I couldn't care less about catching criminals with a system like this. If you have even 1 false positive, you've got too many. False positives are absolutely unacceptable under any circumstances, and our current judicial system is way past unacceptable at this point. I want no part of giving my DNA or fingerprints or anything else to the FBI for their databases, and I want no part of a system that can "accidentally" throw me in prison for something I never did.
Not really. The market always has an effect. Regardless of your skills and knowledge, if there is no demand for those skills, you won't have employment. Once you have a job, your job security *should* be based on your skills and knowledge. (I say should because there are other factors out of your control, some of which are artificial due to government regulation) But the market always has an influence on your employment, regardless of what you know.
You are correct that RAID is not the same as backing up, but the rest of your post doesn't make much sense. There is no performance boost from mirroring drives, which is what the main post said he wanted to use. Striping is a performance boost as the data gets written in half the time, but mirroring writes the full amount of data on each drive. So at best the performance is identical to no RAID at all, and with the added overhead it's probably a little slower actually. And to think that it's no additional complexity is just plain wrong. It's more to set up initially, and when something goes wrong (which happens ALL THE TIME with RAID), it's a huge pain to fix. This additional complexity is why I avoid RAID, actually. I don't need any performance boosts, I do backups for data redundancy, and adding the additional points of failure is just a waste of my time.
I posted earlier before I got to yours, but it was October 2008 for the patch and November 2008 for Conficker. You are correct though, that the patch was out before the malware. Had they patched on time, or even a month later, they'd have been fine. This is an example of a very poor IT model, not poor security in Windows. Therefore it is not a good example for the TCO of using MS products. If you show me a company/organization that patches on time, has a good IT model, good network design, etc., and the cost is still significantly higher than FOSS, then I'll listen. Until then, quit bashing on MS for the fun of it.
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Its already tipping as defaults are at an all time high but thanks to the changes Bush passed in 06 you can't even get out of debt with bankruptcy and that REALLY needs to change
This is always something that has really bugged me. Why exactly is it someone's right to borrow money and then not pay it back? If you borrowed it, you should have to pay it back. It doesn't make any sense to allow people out from under their debts that they made the conscious decision to borrow. If you don't understand the total costs, how the lending and repayment processes work, or if you don't have any solid plans for living with that debt, you shouldn't be borrowing it. Period. I don't care if it's a mortgage, a car loan, a school loan, or even your neighbor's tools. Your borrowing choices and the repayments from those choices should always be your own responsibility.
Sure. How do I buy bitcoins without using Visa or MasterCard (or Paypal)?
Use Discover.
Happens in Chicago all the time. One correction though is that it's not once every 5 seconds. It's a nearly constant stream much of the time. If you try to leave the correct distance in front of you, you will spend more time on the brakes than anything else.
Also, the concern at red lights is not generally that I'm too close to the car in front of me, it's that the car behind me is too close. I can, to at least a small extent, control the distance in front, but I can't do a damn thing about the distance in back.
True, true. My mistake. The article was about politics though, so that seemed the most relevant at the time.
The Chicago Tribune
This message brought to you by the hometown newspaper for what is usually considered one of the more politically corrupt cities in the country.
Is this supposed to surprise anyone? And, more importantly, does anyone out there actually believe that the US isn't doing the same thing toward [insert long list of nations here]? I, for one, certainly believe they are.
Is anyone outside of the teenage girl crowd even paying attention to Facebook announcements anymore? I'm legitimately asking. I have a Facebook account that I log into maybe once or twice a year. And most of the circles I spend time in don't really use it much anymore either. Am I the only one that sees Facebook announcements and just shrugs with indifference?
Also all you need for an address is a PO box.
After the Patriot Act, you need a physical address for most things now. For instance, you can't legally open a bank account or apply for a credit card with just a PO box. You can add a PO box as a mailing address, but that won't be sufficient by itself anymore. I'm not sure if this extends to a drivers license, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me.
Rsync does not delete on the target end by default. You have to specify the --delete option, or else it just adds and updates files. So just leave that out and an rsync script should do the trick just fine.
Ahh, beat me to it. That was the very first thought that popped into my head when I read the summary.
I never implied that the private sector doesn't accept incompetence. I stated that the government allows it in mass quantities. I do work in the private sector and see incompetence routinely. However, there's a huge difference between what happens in a private company and what happens in government. When incompetence is allowed in a private company, the company suffers. Sometimes, depending on the type of incompetence, the customers suffer by having to pay higher prices for inferior products (see things like the content holders and providers like Comcast). When incompetence is allowed in the government, however, it comes with the business end of a gun, so to speak. It can, and often does, result in a loss of basic freedoms, jail time, or worse. There's a huge, huge difference there.
Also, don't forget that many, if not most, of the problems you see in the private world are the result of government actions. For instance, going back to the content industry, a lack of competition and other factors created by FCC regulations (among many, many other laws) are a large reason prices are so high and options are so few. I can't say with certainty that the industry would be perfect without government involvement, but I have yet to find anyone who thinks that it'd be anywhere near this bad if the industry was left to its own devices.
Because they work for the government? I wish there was a better explanation, but that's pretty much it.
Sadly, no. I know that there are regular grammatical mistakes, but it doesn't mean that I can't hope that someday /. will actually start proofreading article posts.
*sits in a corner and silently weeps for humanity...*
This. I had to read the summary a couple times to get past the awkwardness of the wording. A simple proofread of one sentence before posting a submission shouldn't be too much for /.
What you described related to the UK's DPA makes it a legal issue, not an ethical one. My best guess is that they're concerned with sensitive information being exposed to unauthorized people. So his security and ethics claims would really be one in the same. The ethics problem has nothing to do with laws though. Laws don't make something unethical. Legislators often make laws surrounding ethical issues, but they were ethical issues before the laws ever appeared.
You obviously don't pay much attention to how the economy works in this country.
My point wasn't that the capacity has anything to do with performance. The capacity is generally something that users want considering the amount of data many people are storing on computers now. My point was mostly that you get more capacity for your money if you go with a hard drive, and most users do not need to pay a huge premium to get performance they'll rarely, if ever, really need. A standard 7200 RPM HDD will perform fine for most, and if the user really wants something faster he can get a 10,000 RPM drive instead. He'd still save a lot of money over an SSD with even half the capacity. (Newegg shows the cheapest 80 GB SSD at $249 while a 10,000 RPM 150 GB Velociraptor is $160.)
Also, for the record, that 80 GB SSD would, in fact, be too small for my game installations. My OS and programs are all on one drive, and there is currently more than 80 GB used. I use a secondary drive for storing all non-program-related files too, so I can't cut down any more without moving programs themselves to a secondary drive. So yes, if you're playing several games, 80 GB is way too small.
The only exception that I'd point out to what you said is to watch very closely for RAM compatibility. Just getting the cheapest without really researching it more can land you with a very unstable computer (I know this from personal experience, so I spend a lot of time researching that before new builds). Newegg conveniently links to the manufacturer's product pages usually, so you can check there for RAM compatibility charts. Aside from that, I'd agree. If you're looking for a standard gaming rig, you don't need high-end parts. You don't need to overclock. You definitely don't need to spend a fortune. A case with PSU included is fine and will save you money. Any graphics card in the latest series from ATI or nVidia, even the low end of those series, will be more than enough. You'll get a good computer for a great price.
Also, +1 for recommending Newegg. I'll shop there over everywhere else even if it costs me more. The service is second to none (and I'm not using that as a cliche, I actually mean it), the prices are great, and the selection is huge.
I can name one: An Intel Postville 80GB SSD for ~180 Euro. ...
But seriously, get an SSD.
He said "must have." You don't need an SSD by any stretch. SSDs are still far too expensive per-GB for the vast majority of users to bother with. A person can get a hard drive with many times the capacity for well under $100. And if the person doesn't know which CPU is which, he's not going to ever miss the performance difference.
This is really cool until you find yourself trying to log in from the same access point where somebody with a virus was attached earlier in the day. Better to just use crypto (key-based authentication only) and rate-limiting.
That depends on how you have Fail2Ban set up. If you have it set to block for a very long period of time, then yes, this would be a problem. But I have it set to just block for 10 minutes. Even if I manage to lock myself out accidentally, I only have to wait 10 minutes. That short 10 minute block is usually more than enough to make bots move on. I've had a few of them continue to hammer away after the 10 minutes are up, but in a couple years it's been a very small percentage.
And to the guy who suggested using DenyHosts in addition to Fail2Ban, you're wasting your time. Fail2Ban performs the exact same thing as DenyHosts, but Fail2Ban does it for more services besides SSH. They're both good tools, but using them together is just unnecessary.
So then I assume you also would say that if I have nothing to hide, I shouldn't mind the police tearing my house apart looking for something that may or may not be there? If I have nothing to hide, I shouldn't mind being searched every time I enter or leave a building? I shouldn't mind being spied on at all times during my daily life? That's all ridiculous. Just because I don't want the Feds to know where I am every waking second doesn't mean I'm doing anything wrong. I just like my privacy, and they're interfering with that. It's not like it's anything new in this country (USA), but it's still wrong. Plain and simple.
What you're obviously not realizing is that the only reason identity theft exists in the first place is that there's a national ID number. Your SSN is a de facto national ID, and it makes it really, really easy to perform identity theft. If you create an even more formal national ID system, you actually make identity theft even easier since it's just a single document or number you have to steal.
And, I'm sorry, I couldn't care less about catching criminals with a system like this. If you have even 1 false positive, you've got too many. False positives are absolutely unacceptable under any circumstances, and our current judicial system is way past unacceptable at this point. I want no part of giving my DNA or fingerprints or anything else to the FBI for their databases, and I want no part of a system that can "accidentally" throw me in prison for something I never did.
Not really. The market always has an effect. Regardless of your skills and knowledge, if there is no demand for those skills, you won't have employment. Once you have a job, your job security *should* be based on your skills and knowledge. (I say should because there are other factors out of your control, some of which are artificial due to government regulation) But the market always has an influence on your employment, regardless of what you know.
You are correct that RAID is not the same as backing up, but the rest of your post doesn't make much sense. There is no performance boost from mirroring drives, which is what the main post said he wanted to use. Striping is a performance boost as the data gets written in half the time, but mirroring writes the full amount of data on each drive. So at best the performance is identical to no RAID at all, and with the added overhead it's probably a little slower actually. And to think that it's no additional complexity is just plain wrong. It's more to set up initially, and when something goes wrong (which happens ALL THE TIME with RAID), it's a huge pain to fix. This additional complexity is why I avoid RAID, actually. I don't need any performance boosts, I do backups for data redundancy, and adding the additional points of failure is just a waste of my time.
I posted earlier before I got to yours, but it was October 2008 for the patch and November 2008 for Conficker. You are correct though, that the patch was out before the malware. Had they patched on time, or even a month later, they'd have been fine. This is an example of a very poor IT model, not poor security in Windows. Therefore it is not a good example for the TCO of using MS products. If you show me a company/organization that patches on time, has a good IT model, good network design, etc., and the cost is still significantly higher than FOSS, then I'll listen. Until then, quit bashing on MS for the fun of it.