The point, as someone else has mentioned here, is that these bacteria are resistant to antibiotics. Given that we don't normally treat wild birds with antibiotics, this is actually kind of troublesome.
This is probably due to the widespread prophylactic use of antibiotics in the feed given to farm animals, a practice that needs to be stopped (or at least sharply curtailed). Some antibiotics should be reserved only for use in humans, and then limited to cases where other antibiotics have proven ineffective.
The problem is that the drug companies make so much money off of selling the antibiotics to the feed suppliers, they're not exactly eager to stop doing it. So every time they develop a new "miracle" antibiotic, at the same time that your doctor is prescribing it for an ear infection, a lot full or cows, chickens or pigs somewhere a few miles away is also eating that antibiotic in its feed.
Um, actually, he's wrong. See my link above, or do a web search, or better yet, go talk to a bankruptcy attorney.
*Government* debts -- taxes, student loans, etc -- can't be dismissed in a Chapter 7, and this would include *government* judgments (for example, the IRS sued you and won a judgment). But civil judgments most surely CAN be dismissed.
It's a shame, but realistically, Tennebaum will probably just file for bankruptcy. The RIAA will get virtually nothing, Tennebaum's credit will be hosed for a few years, and that'll be the end of it.
But knowing that bankruptcy is available to the defendant illustrates just how vindictive the RIAA and MPAA really are. They have to KNOW that people can get away from the fines with a chapter 7, so that makes me believe that they seek these ridiculous awards thinking that they'll discourage others.
> They might be scared to complain. Or they may feel that complaining will get them nowhere at the least.
Or maybe they need to fly and don't want to miss their plane. If you're going to raise a stink in the security line, you can plan on not flying that day.
> Other parts of the world depend on the Sahara...
Yep. I've got hurricanes on the mind lately, so here's just one example that might not immediately occur to more normal people (I'm definitely abnormal): sometimes, you'll have a storm brewing in the Atlantic, but intensity will be inhibited by dry Saharan air mixing into the core. If you remove that dry air, we might have stronger hurricanes.
Of course, then someone will decide to blow lasers or set off nukes in the storm to compensate. What could POSSIBLY go wrong then?:)
> There's a difference between measured winds and sustained winds
They were sustained winds. As I mention elsewhere, an official at the Cedar Island Ferry terminal measured a *sustained* wind of 90 MPH.
Master's blog mentions that no buoys indicated hurricane force winds, but then explains that there was ample evidence to classify it as a hurricane -- primarily, the hurricane hunters, who take a multitude of careful measurements. They don't just fly in, check a couple of things, and then leave.
Mod this up. I have a link below to Jeff Master's blog, too, in which he clearly states that winds of 90 MPH were measured at the Cedar Island Ferry terminal (NC Outer Banks). If you want the actual blog entry:
Masters used to fly with the Hurricane Hunters, and his blog is one of the best. Go back and look over his assessment of the storm. Jeff was *never* that worried about the wind, and he explains what apparently has the news media baffled: Irene began an eyewall replacement cycle just before hitting NC, and never recovered.
When an eyewall replacement begins, the storm typically expands. In this case, it meant that Irene had a *HUGE* field of tropical storm-force winds, but only a small pocket of hurricane-force winds on the east side of the storm. Yes, it was a hurricane; just because dood can't find any buoys that support that doesn't mean that it isn't so. The hurricane hunters measured winds > 74 MPH, so it was a hurricane. The fact that winds > 74 MPH weren't recorded as having much land impact has nothing to do with the classification of the storm.
Now, I think the NHC kept the "hurricane" classification a bit longer than was justified, but they possibly did that because they KNOW that most people (especially the news media) focus on winds, instead of the REAL danger from a hurricane: flooding. Even if Irene had completely dissipated to little more than a weak tropical depression by the time it hit New Jersey, you'd still have major damage, power outages and loss of life just from the flooding.
The news media has NEVER understood that. They will invariably put some moron out in the wind with a camera, hoping to get an image of the guy being blown all over the beach. But the primary danger from Irene was flooding, as Masters points out repeatedly in his blog.
New Orleans wasn't the only thing damaged by Katrina. Yes, New Orleans seemed to have survived the initial storm pretty well, but there were other areas around it -- up to and included the Gulf Coast of Mississippi -- that were nearly wiped out. The first day after the storm, in fact, the News Vultures had most of their cameras and Yakking Heads in outlying areas, and were planning to leave. It was only after the levees broke that they hauled back into N'Awlins.
Sure. There are freak effects that are impossible to predict. Like I said, the little tornado that hit our neighborhood was dissipating (the official NWS track actually shows it dying out approximately 1/4-1/2 mile before hitting our street), but we had considerable damage -- mostly roofs. But a freak wind must have hit my neighbor's house. Another neighbor said he saw a little funnel whip right into the house, knock it back about 10 feet, then head over the railroad tracks behind it, shattering a bunch of little pine trees. After that, it truly dissipated and went away. No further damage.
The only safe place to be when an F4 or F5 hits is somewhere else.:) Second best is a deep, strong shelter
Wrong. The NHC badly needs to come up with a tiered rating system for severe weather. The simple, cut-and-dried Category 1-5 scale doesn't cut it and desperately needs to be changed.
In real life, the size of a storm (Irene is HUGE), how fast it's moving (wildcard, we're not sure yet) and the tide levels at the time of landfall (good chance that they'll be at high tide) are all key factors. Even if Irene has dropped to tropical depression status by the time it hits Long Island, NY, it could still cause major destruction and loss of life, because it's going to piss megatons of rain, hour after hour, on an area that's not used to that kind of precipitation.
A large tropical storm, especially if it hits an unprepared area, can cause more chaos than a major hurricane that hits an area that's used to it.
Yes, the news media needs to quit being so sensational, and there's no doubt that they overhyped Irene. But speaking as someone who's made it through several hurricanes, they're no fun. At all. When I was living in NC, Fran followed I-95 up through Raleigh. We had hurricane-force gusts where I lived (to the west of Fayetteville/Ft. Bragg), but we still lost power for about a week, and there was significant damage all over the area. One of my friends was very nearly killed when he was blown dozens of feet through his back yard.
And remember, all of this was well away from the "center" or "eye" of the hurricane.
Today's joke: I moved to Alabama, in part, to get away from hurricanes. Not only have I -- thus far -- had to endure Ivan and Katrina, the big fun here is tornadoes, as witness the horrible storms of April 27th. And this makes the point, too, about focusing on intensities, instead of all conditions... the tornado that hit our neighborhood the morning of April 27th was "only" a little F1 or F2, and in fact, was dissipating by the time it passed over us. It still ripped my neighbor's house, two doors up, off the foundation. It was a total loss. Thank God, no one in our little neighborhood was hurt (the neighbors in question were on vacation at the time), but trust me, there's nothing quite like waking up to the sound of a freight train and the whole house shaking.:)
Yes, the news media sensationalizes these things. Yes, they focus entirely too much on simple category numbers. And yes, governments tend to overreact, too, but part of that is "CYA" (or "CTA," I guess). Strong storms are unpredictable, and even when they're dissipating, you can get terrible effects in localized areas. There's no way to predict precisely where these effects will occur. Safer just to tell people to get out of town for a few days.
But don't dismiss Irene just because she's "only" a category 1 or a strong tropical storm as she moves up the East coast. Unless she stays well off shore, you're going to be surprised at the damage. Speaking from experience.
Even "call before dig" doesn't always work, though. When we were building our new studios, the plumbing contractor called a locator to make sure he missed the gas main. The locator was off by about 10 feet. My assistants and I were on the roof of the building, lining up the 2' dish for a microwave data link when we started smelling the gas. Needless to say, we cleared out.
The telcos themselves don't always get it right. I can't tell you how many times ATT's *own*contractors* have cut the T1 line at one of our 100,000 watt FMs. We went for a couple of weeks with a temporary line literally thrown across the ground, about 1/4 mile up the dirt road to the tower site. They figured it wasn't worth repairing until the contractors were finally done.:)
Considering that my radio stations have been getting hammered for weeks now by this horrible weather in the Southern United States, my sympathies are with them.
I don't care how much protection you put on your system (and when you have giant lightning rods that are hundreds of feet tall, like we do, you DO try to protect things), an occasional strike is going to slip through. When it does it can get... messy.:)
Excellent point. A byte at the front or a byte marking the end, same thing either way.
Great points in this whole thread, as far as I'm concerned. I'm more of a hardware guy, I guess, but I love C because it's light, fast and fun to use. When I need OOP, I use C++. And speaking as more of a hardware guy, the article also completely and utterly misses the most glaringly obvious point -- namely, that the worst mistake of all time was standardizing on the 80x86 series of processors. The fact that the latest incarnations of the 80x86 family have trouble with end-marked memory segments is more a function of the processor, not the programming language.
To quote Andy Schulman from memory (who in turn, I believe, was quoting someone else): "no other processor has so arcane a protection mechanism."
And to quote one of the creators of BASIC (again, from memory): "only time will tell how thoroughly unfortunate it was that the 80x86 series was chosen for the PC family." (And remember, BASIC uses length info for strings.)
The bitwise alignment that the article refers to is the result of the 80x86 family growing over the years, adding features, while needing to maintain reverse compatibility with older code. C is by no means the only language affected by it, and the article bemoaning the fact that a C string must be "scanned" in order to determine its length is silly. Every language/processor combination has limitations (try compiling for a little embedded processor some time!). There will always be tradeoffs.
Let me give you two true examples. Tell me whether loser pay would have helped in these cases.
1 - my wife and I rent a an older property. Nice location, decent house, but the carpet is old, the walls need work and there are other problems. When we move out, the landlord takes us to small claims court for the damage, KNOWING that we didn't actually do it. In a word: he's a crook. He let drop to a friend of mine that he was going to get us to spruce up his house for him. (Said friend was then so ticked off he ended up testifying for us.) We go to court, of course I win. But I'm out $1000 for attorney's and other fees.
2. Better example (also 100% true): a friend of mine gets a dreaded audit letter from the IRS. The IRS has actually bent its own guidelines and rules in this case; they're asking for mileage records from several years ago, even though their own guidelines say that you don't need to keep the records for more than a few years. They refuse to budge. My friend will have to go to court against the IRS, and doing that without an attorney is complete and utter suicide. So: he can either chose to work out a deal with them, or go to court and eat the attorney's fees. I'm convinced that he's innocent of any wrongdoing.
(And by the way, off topic, but if you're ever in this situation, don't waste your time on an "offer in compromise." The IRS accepts less than 15% of these. They have the upper hand and they know it. And if you sign ANY agreement with them without an attorney involved, you're going to get screwed royally. Another case that I'm aware of involved an agreement that a couple made with them years ago, and the IRS recently came back and said, "the agent who made that agreement didn't have the authority to do it. You owe us $1.1 MILLION dollars with penalties and interest.")
(Another true story, by the way.)
At present, the courts DO award attorney's fees if they think a suit is frivolous; that's not the issue. The issue is examples like I've stated above, and I could give dozens more. The worst are the "ideological" cases, where some advocacy group sues you just because they disagree with you about something. The way they look at it, if they win, they get to establish some precedent in law. If they lose, oh, well, they can still wail on the news about how the courts were wrong, and in either case, they'll bankrupt you and remove you from the board. Happens all the time, on ALL sides of the ideological spectrum. And that's wrong, too. Loser pay would stop that nonsense.
It doesn't work that way elsewhere. One of the strongest arguments for loser pay is the fact that most nations have it. The United States is somewhat unique in that respect. Did you know that?
Apparently, a whole bunch of other nations don't feel that it "cuts out the little guy." They think it's basic fairness.
It means that you can go into a lawyer's office with some hope that he/she will take your case, IF you have a good case, even if you don't have the money. It helps people like the OP here against the BSA, it helps grandma sue the landlord when he won't fix the air conditioner, it helps the guy who gets that stupid letter from the RIAA.
Don't take my word for it. Look into it. The ONLY people who are opposed to it the USA are those with a vested interest in keeping the system the way it is. This includes lazy lawyers who, just like the BSA, send a letter knowing that the recipient will probably try to haggle and settle, rather than go through the expense of a court trial, precisely BECAUSE that "little guy" doesn't have the time or resources to fight the suit.
A far more common scenario is the the Big Guy will take on the Little Guy. Little Guy scrapes together the money to fight the case for a while, but all Big Guy has to do is wait him out. Eventually, Little Guy runs out of money and has to take the best settlement he can afford.
If you don't realize that this happens every day, everywhere in the United States, and that "little guys" are in fact getting TRAMPLED in the current system, well... again, you need to actually look into it, instead of just reflexively opposing it because of some ideological predisposition.
And I can't miss this opportunity to point out that THIS is a perfect example -- PERFECT -- of why everyone, liberal or conservative, should support loser-pay legislation. Or better yet, a rock-solid amendment to the US Constitution guaranteeing that "the party prevailing in any dispute, public or private, shall be entitled to reasonable compensation for expenses incurred."
To the original poster: as others here have said, you'd better dig in the sofa for change and scrape up the money to hire a lawyer, then hope for the best. But if the United States ever gets solid "loser pays" legislation, things like this won't be the terrifying things that they are. (Or for that matter, getting that dread "letter" from the RIAA or MPAA.) There are entirely too many stories of people who've finally prevailed in court, but who were bankrupted by the experience. That's just WRONG.
And one other thing, for any of you hobbyists out there who plan to try this.
Heat generally rises, but remember that many computers are designed so that the cooling fans force the air *horizontally* across the components. Case in point: my Dell Poweredges. They have a bank of fans near the front that force air "sideways" across the CPU, RAM and other heat-producing parts.
Unless you put in some sort of coolant pump to circulate that oil (or water, or whatever you plan to use), or *replace* the heatsinks with sealed, carefully-designed systems that pull out the heat and throw it elsewhere, you will probably destroy your computer in the long run.
In a word: if you try something like this, be careful. Use an infrared thermometer to confirm that you don't have hot spots.
> I don't fancy the messy job of making hardware changes though.
THIS. If it's made by man, it will eventually fail and will require service or replacement.
The cost in labor (and cleanup!!!) (and replacement oil!) (and trips to the emergency room for employees who slipped and fell in the oil on the floor!) (not to mention the lawsuits) make this a supremely dumb idea. Now add in the cost of the hermetically-sealed rack(s) and it would be difficult to imagine a dumber idea.
Google is pretty innovative about stuff like this. They use their own in-house version of Linux on commodity hardware, thousands upon thousands of PCs in each data center. But they still use air cooling and air conditioning because, at the end of the day, it's the best bang for the buck. You would save more money by using more efficient equipment, I think -- as you replace each unit, just try to find one that's a little "greener." Or, consolidate servers and use virtualization. Be creative. But DON'T seal the danged thing in a rack filled with oil!
Now, if someone would design a liquid-cooled rack mount computer with coolant connections, you might could make an argument for that. Run hoses and put the radiators and fans on the side of the building in the shade, maybe. But I still don't see how it would be cost-effective, and the square footage required for the hoses and radiators (or whatever else you plan to use) will hardly improve the expense.
Not that I'm opposed to liquid cooling, per se. Continental makes a liquid-cooled 30KW FM tube transmitter and it's nice and quiet. My big transmitters still use big tubes and require huge blowers. They're so loud you can't use the phone in the building, and if I'm doing PM and have both the main and auxiliary transmitters on at the same time, it's so loud you can hardly think. As the prices on high-powered solid-state transmitters continue to drop, we're replacing the older tube units. Now THAT'S cost-effective.
Just my opinion, but if the boss ever told me to fill our racks with mineral oil, I'd take him out to dinner and have a LONG talk with him. (Not that he'd ever propose something so foolish. We have enough trouble with leakage on our hermetically-sealed, oil-filled dummy loads.)
> you do know Blackberry's work, right?... "cloud" in Canada...
No, I DIDN'T know that. Sigh. I shouldn't have been so naive, though.
All I want is a handy-dandy little PDA/phone with some apps that I use in my work. I text, I like to browse the Web and do a few other things. I'm not the least interested in video or even in music (no time to listen to it). Why do the companies make this so hard?:)
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The point, as someone else has mentioned here, is that these bacteria are resistant to antibiotics. Given that we don't normally treat wild birds with antibiotics, this is actually kind of troublesome.
This is probably due to the widespread prophylactic use of antibiotics in the feed given to farm animals, a practice that needs to be stopped (or at least sharply curtailed). Some antibiotics should be reserved only for use in humans, and then limited to cases where other antibiotics have proven ineffective.
The problem is that the drug companies make so much money off of selling the antibiotics to the feed suppliers, they're not exactly eager to stop doing it. So every time they develop a new "miracle" antibiotic, at the same time that your doctor is prescribing it for an ear infection, a lot full or cows, chickens or pigs somewhere a few miles away is also eating that antibiotic in its feed.
Um, actually, he's wrong. See my link above, or do a web search, or better yet, go talk to a bankruptcy attorney.
*Government* debts -- taxes, student loans, etc -- can't be dismissed in a Chapter 7, and this would include *government* judgments (for example, the IRS sued you and won a judgment). But civil judgments most surely CAN be dismissed.
I know this thread has already died by now, but just for the record:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110117211823AANKiB8
Court judgments CAN be included in a bankruptcy. Student loans and certain other government debts are excluded, but court judgments can be dismissed.
It's a shame, but realistically, Tennebaum will probably just file for bankruptcy. The RIAA will get virtually nothing, Tennebaum's credit will be hosed for a few years, and that'll be the end of it.
But knowing that bankruptcy is available to the defendant illustrates just how vindictive the RIAA and MPAA really are. They have to KNOW that people can get away from the fines with a chapter 7, so that makes me believe that they seek these ridiculous awards thinking that they'll discourage others.
> They might be scared to complain. Or they may feel that complaining will get them nowhere at the least.
Or maybe they need to fly and don't want to miss their plane. If you're going to raise a stink in the security line, you can plan on not flying that day.
> Other parts of the world depend on the Sahara ...
Yep. I've got hurricanes on the mind lately, so here's just one example that might not immediately occur to more normal people (I'm definitely abnormal): sometimes, you'll have a storm brewing in the Atlantic, but intensity will be inhibited by dry Saharan air mixing into the core. If you remove that dry air, we might have stronger hurricanes.
Of course, then someone will decide to blow lasers or set off nukes in the storm to compensate. What could POSSIBLY go wrong then? :)
Having gone without power because of storms myself, my thoughts are with you.
Maybe you can amuse yourself by keeping a count of how many times you walk into a room and flip the light switch without even thinking about it. :)
(No, it doesn't help a lot, but it helps take your mind of things at least a little bit.)
> There's a difference between measured winds and sustained winds
They were sustained winds. As I mention elsewhere, an official at the Cedar Island Ferry terminal measured a *sustained* wind of 90 MPH.
Master's blog mentions that no buoys indicated hurricane force winds, but then explains that there was ample evidence to classify it as a hurricane -- primarily, the hurricane hunters, who take a multitude of careful measurements. They don't just fly in, check a couple of things, and then leave.
Mod this up. I have a link below to Jeff Master's blog, too, in which he clearly states that winds of 90 MPH were measured at the Cedar Island Ferry terminal (NC Outer Banks). If you want the actual blog entry:
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1906
If this Cliff Mass guy is incapable of doing basic research, perhaps his opinions shouldn't be taken very seriously.
One link that I read religiously when there's a storm: http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/show.html
Masters used to fly with the Hurricane Hunters, and his blog is one of the best. Go back and look over his assessment of the storm. Jeff was *never* that worried about the wind, and he explains what apparently has the news media baffled: Irene began an eyewall replacement cycle just before hitting NC, and never recovered.
When an eyewall replacement begins, the storm typically expands. In this case, it meant that Irene had a *HUGE* field of tropical storm-force winds, but only a small pocket of hurricane-force winds on the east side of the storm. Yes, it was a hurricane; just because dood can't find any buoys that support that doesn't mean that it isn't so. The hurricane hunters measured winds > 74 MPH, so it was a hurricane. The fact that winds > 74 MPH weren't recorded as having much land impact has nothing to do with the classification of the storm.
Now, I think the NHC kept the "hurricane" classification a bit longer than was justified, but they possibly did that because they KNOW that most people (especially the news media) focus on winds, instead of the REAL danger from a hurricane: flooding. Even if Irene had completely dissipated to little more than a weak tropical depression by the time it hit New Jersey, you'd still have major damage, power outages and loss of life just from the flooding.
The news media has NEVER understood that. They will invariably put some moron out in the wind with a camera, hoping to get an image of the guy being blown all over the beach. But the primary danger from Irene was flooding, as Masters points out repeatedly in his blog.
New Orleans wasn't the only thing damaged by Katrina. Yes, New Orleans seemed to have survived the initial storm pretty well, but there were other areas around it -- up to and included the Gulf Coast of Mississippi -- that were nearly wiped out. The first day after the storm, in fact, the News Vultures had most of their cameras and Yakking Heads in outlying areas, and were planning to leave. It was only after the levees broke that they hauled back into N'Awlins.
Sure. There are freak effects that are impossible to predict. Like I said, the little tornado that hit our neighborhood was dissipating (the official NWS track actually shows it dying out approximately 1/4-1/2 mile before hitting our street), but we had considerable damage -- mostly roofs. But a freak wind must have hit my neighbor's house. Another neighbor said he saw a little funnel whip right into the house, knock it back about 10 feet, then head over the railroad tracks behind it, shattering a bunch of little pine trees. After that, it truly dissipated and went away. No further damage.
The only safe place to be when an F4 or F5 hits is somewhere else. :) Second best is a deep, strong shelter
Wrong. The NHC badly needs to come up with a tiered rating system for severe weather. The simple, cut-and-dried Category 1-5 scale doesn't cut it and desperately needs to be changed.
In real life, the size of a storm (Irene is HUGE), how fast it's moving (wildcard, we're not sure yet) and the tide levels at the time of landfall (good chance that they'll be at high tide) are all key factors. Even if Irene has dropped to tropical depression status by the time it hits Long Island, NY, it could still cause major destruction and loss of life, because it's going to piss megatons of rain, hour after hour, on an area that's not used to that kind of precipitation.
A large tropical storm, especially if it hits an unprepared area, can cause more chaos than a major hurricane that hits an area that's used to it.
Yes, the news media needs to quit being so sensational, and there's no doubt that they overhyped Irene. But speaking as someone who's made it through several hurricanes, they're no fun. At all. When I was living in NC, Fran followed I-95 up through Raleigh. We had hurricane-force gusts where I lived (to the west of Fayetteville/Ft. Bragg), but we still lost power for about a week, and there was significant damage all over the area. One of my friends was very nearly killed when he was blown dozens of feet through his back yard.
And remember, all of this was well away from the "center" or "eye" of the hurricane.
Today's joke: I moved to Alabama, in part, to get away from hurricanes. Not only have I -- thus far -- had to endure Ivan and Katrina, the big fun here is tornadoes, as witness the horrible storms of April 27th. And this makes the point, too, about focusing on intensities, instead of all conditions ... the tornado that hit our neighborhood the morning of April 27th was "only" a little F1 or F2, and in fact, was dissipating by the time it passed over us. It still ripped my neighbor's house, two doors up, off the foundation. It was a total loss. Thank God, no one in our little neighborhood was hurt (the neighbors in question were on vacation at the time), but trust me, there's nothing quite like waking up to the sound of a freight train and the whole house shaking. :)
Yes, the news media sensationalizes these things. Yes, they focus entirely too much on simple category numbers. And yes, governments tend to overreact, too, but part of that is "CYA" (or "CTA," I guess). Strong storms are unpredictable, and even when they're dissipating, you can get terrible effects in localized areas. There's no way to predict precisely where these effects will occur. Safer just to tell people to get out of town for a few days.
But don't dismiss Irene just because she's "only" a category 1 or a strong tropical storm as she moves up the East coast. Unless she stays well off shore, you're going to be surprised at the damage. Speaking from experience.
I'm glad to hear that, because 4.0 truly sent me to Gnome. I don't really like Gnome, but the first few KDE 4 releases were almost unusable for me.
Even "call before dig" doesn't always work, though. When we were building our new studios, the plumbing contractor called a locator to make sure he missed the gas main. The locator was off by about 10 feet. My assistants and I were on the roof of the building, lining up the 2' dish for a microwave data link when we started smelling the gas. Needless to say, we cleared out.
The telcos themselves don't always get it right. I can't tell you how many times ATT's *own*contractors* have cut the T1 line at one of our 100,000 watt FMs. We went for a couple of weeks with a temporary line literally thrown across the ground, about 1/4 mile up the dirt road to the tower site. They figured it wasn't worth repairing until the contractors were finally done. :)
Considering that my radio stations have been getting hammered for weeks now by this horrible weather in the Southern United States, my sympathies are with them.
I don't care how much protection you put on your system (and when you have giant lightning rods that are hundreds of feet tall, like we do, you DO try to protect things), an occasional strike is going to slip through. When it does it can get ... messy. :)
"Not to mention the argument ... is specious ..."
Excellent point. A byte at the front or a byte marking the end, same thing either way.
Great points in this whole thread, as far as I'm concerned. I'm more of a hardware guy, I guess, but I love C because it's light, fast and fun to use. When I need OOP, I use C++. And speaking as more of a hardware guy, the article also completely and utterly misses the most glaringly obvious point -- namely, that the worst mistake of all time was standardizing on the 80x86 series of processors. The fact that the latest incarnations of the 80x86 family have trouble with end-marked memory segments is more a function of the processor, not the programming language.
To quote Andy Schulman from memory (who in turn, I believe, was quoting someone else): "no other processor has so arcane a protection mechanism."
And to quote one of the creators of BASIC (again, from memory): "only time will tell how thoroughly unfortunate it was that the 80x86 series was chosen for the PC family." (And remember, BASIC uses length info for strings.)
The bitwise alignment that the article refers to is the result of the 80x86 family growing over the years, adding features, while needing to maintain reverse compatibility with older code. C is by no means the only language affected by it, and the article bemoaning the fact that a C string must be "scanned" in order to determine its length is silly. Every language/processor combination has limitations (try compiling for a little embedded processor some time!). There will always be tradeoffs.
Let me give you two true examples. Tell me whether loser pay would have helped in these cases.
1 - my wife and I rent a an older property. Nice location, decent house, but the carpet is old, the walls need work and there are other problems. When we move out, the landlord takes us to small claims court for the damage, KNOWING that we didn't actually do it. In a word: he's a crook. He let drop to a friend of mine that he was going to get us to spruce up his house for him. (Said friend was then so ticked off he ended up testifying for us.) We go to court, of course I win. But I'm out $1000 for attorney's and other fees.
2. Better example (also 100% true): a friend of mine gets a dreaded audit letter from the IRS. The IRS has actually bent its own guidelines and rules in this case; they're asking for mileage records from several years ago, even though their own guidelines say that you don't need to keep the records for more than a few years. They refuse to budge. My friend will have to go to court against the IRS, and doing that without an attorney is complete and utter suicide. So: he can either chose to work out a deal with them, or go to court and eat the attorney's fees. I'm convinced that he's innocent of any wrongdoing.
(And by the way, off topic, but if you're ever in this situation, don't waste your time on an "offer in compromise." The IRS accepts less than 15% of these. They have the upper hand and they know it. And if you sign ANY agreement with them without an attorney involved, you're going to get screwed royally. Another case that I'm aware of involved an agreement that a couple made with them years ago, and the IRS recently came back and said, "the agent who made that agreement didn't have the authority to do it. You owe us $1.1 MILLION dollars with penalties and interest.")
(Another true story, by the way.)
At present, the courts DO award attorney's fees if they think a suit is frivolous; that's not the issue. The issue is examples like I've stated above, and I could give dozens more. The worst are the "ideological" cases, where some advocacy group sues you just because they disagree with you about something. The way they look at it, if they win, they get to establish some precedent in law. If they lose, oh, well, they can still wail on the news about how the courts were wrong, and in either case, they'll bankrupt you and remove you from the board. Happens all the time, on ALL sides of the ideological spectrum. And that's wrong, too. Loser pay would stop that nonsense.
It doesn't work that way elsewhere. One of the strongest arguments for loser pay is the fact that most nations have it. The United States is somewhat unique in that respect. Did you know that?
Apparently, a whole bunch of other nations don't feel that it "cuts out the little guy." They think it's basic fairness.
It means that you can go into a lawyer's office with some hope that he/she will take your case, IF you have a good case, even if you don't have the money. It helps people like the OP here against the BSA, it helps grandma sue the landlord when he won't fix the air conditioner, it helps the guy who gets that stupid letter from the RIAA.
Don't take my word for it. Look into it. The ONLY people who are opposed to it the USA are those with a vested interest in keeping the system the way it is. This includes lazy lawyers who, just like the BSA, send a letter knowing that the recipient will probably try to haggle and settle, rather than go through the expense of a court trial, precisely BECAUSE that "little guy" doesn't have the time or resources to fight the suit.
A far more common scenario is the the Big Guy will take on the Little Guy. Little Guy scrapes together the money to fight the case for a while, but all Big Guy has to do is wait him out. Eventually, Little Guy runs out of money and has to take the best settlement he can afford.
If you don't realize that this happens every day, everywhere in the United States, and that "little guys" are in fact getting TRAMPLED in the current system, well ... again, you need to actually look into it, instead of just reflexively opposing it because of some ideological predisposition.
And I can't miss this opportunity to point out that THIS is a perfect example -- PERFECT -- of why everyone, liberal or conservative, should support loser-pay legislation. Or better yet, a rock-solid amendment to the US Constitution guaranteeing that "the party prevailing in any dispute, public or private, shall be entitled to reasonable compensation for expenses incurred."
To the original poster: as others here have said, you'd better dig in the sofa for change and scrape up the money to hire a lawyer, then hope for the best. But if the United States ever gets solid "loser pays" legislation, things like this won't be the terrifying things that they are. (Or for that matter, getting that dread "letter" from the RIAA or MPAA.) There are entirely too many stories of people who've finally prevailed in court, but who were bankrupted by the experience. That's just WRONG.
And one other thing, for any of you hobbyists out there who plan to try this.
Heat generally rises, but remember that many computers are designed so that the cooling fans force the air *horizontally* across the components. Case in point: my Dell Poweredges. They have a bank of fans near the front that force air "sideways" across the CPU, RAM and other heat-producing parts.
Unless you put in some sort of coolant pump to circulate that oil (or water, or whatever you plan to use), or *replace* the heatsinks with sealed, carefully-designed systems that pull out the heat and throw it elsewhere, you will probably destroy your computer in the long run.
In a word: if you try something like this, be careful. Use an infrared thermometer to confirm that you don't have hot spots.
I honestly wonder if it's an April Fool's joke.
> I don't fancy the messy job of making hardware changes though.
THIS. If it's made by man, it will eventually fail and will require service or replacement.
The cost in labor (and cleanup!!!) (and replacement oil!) (and trips to the emergency room for employees who slipped and fell in the oil on the floor!) (not to mention the lawsuits) make this a supremely dumb idea. Now add in the cost of the hermetically-sealed rack(s) and it would be difficult to imagine a dumber idea.
Google is pretty innovative about stuff like this. They use their own in-house version of Linux on commodity hardware, thousands upon thousands of PCs in each data center. But they still use air cooling and air conditioning because, at the end of the day, it's the best bang for the buck. You would save more money by using more efficient equipment, I think -- as you replace each unit, just try to find one that's a little "greener." Or, consolidate servers and use virtualization. Be creative. But DON'T seal the danged thing in a rack filled with oil!
Now, if someone would design a liquid-cooled rack mount computer with coolant connections, you might could make an argument for that. Run hoses and put the radiators and fans on the side of the building in the shade, maybe. But I still don't see how it would be cost-effective, and the square footage required for the hoses and radiators (or whatever else you plan to use) will hardly improve the expense.
Not that I'm opposed to liquid cooling, per se. Continental makes a liquid-cooled 30KW FM tube transmitter and it's nice and quiet. My big transmitters still use big tubes and require huge blowers. They're so loud you can't use the phone in the building, and if I'm doing PM and have both the main and auxiliary transmitters on at the same time, it's so loud you can hardly think. As the prices on high-powered solid-state transmitters continue to drop, we're replacing the older tube units. Now THAT'S cost-effective.
Just my opinion, but if the boss ever told me to fill our racks with mineral oil, I'd take him out to dinner and have a LONG talk with him. (Not that he'd ever propose something so foolish. We have enough trouble with leakage on our hermetically-sealed, oil-filled dummy loads.)
Too bad there's not an "Insightful + Funny" mod, because if anyone has ever deserved it, you do. :)
> you do know Blackberry's work, right? ... "cloud" in Canada ...
No, I DIDN'T know that. Sigh. I shouldn't have been so naive, though.
All I want is a handy-dandy little PDA/phone with some apps that I use in my work. I text, I like to browse the Web and do a few other things. I'm not the least interested in video or even in music (no time to listen to it). Why do the companies make this so hard? :)