... if you plan for it. I bought an iPhone for my wife (I kept my trusty Treo 650) and we went to Germany about two weeks later. Of course, I did call AT&T to discuss International rates and set us up on an appropriate plan for while we were there. I put us on a $6.95/month plan that dropped our per-minute fees by over 60%. I canceled it when we returned. Was still it expensive? Of course - our bill was a couple of hundred bucks when we got back - but that's no worse than with any other phone. We did know what we were getting into, though, and had planned accordingly. And more importantly, we could both send and receive calls while we were there - we both own our own companies and people have to get ahold of us. Ironically, her phone worked perfectly while my Treo had all sorts of problems (but to be fair, I'm pretty sure it's because of some frigtarded AT&T setup issues).
If you really need to cut costs when you travel internationally, buy a disposable phone or rent one or use the old phone you've got lying around when you're in the country you're traveling to. Otherwise, remember the Law of the Seven P's - Proper Previous Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance (not to mention sky-high phone bills).
I cannot both respond and moderate your post a -1 wrong, but you can buy firearms online and nothing would restrict this as long as it is a private transaction as these are http://www.shootersexchange.com/
Ummm... Wrong. And it only took a few seconds of looking at the shootersexchange website to figure it out. They are in an awkward position because they are not lawyers and cannot give specific legal advice, but they do point the buyers and sellers to places that specify the relevant federal and state laws.
While you can enter into a contract to purchase a gun over the Internet, an FFL (Federal Firearms License) Holder (someone who's licensed to sell guns) must make the physical transfer of the weapon to the purchaser. So you can't just have the gun shipped to you - it has to be shipped to an FFL, and then they physically verify who you are (and follow any other local laws regarding the transfer) and hand you the package. It's up to the buyer, seller, and FFL to make sure the applicable state and federal laws are followed, but that's still the case with a traditional "brick & mortar" purchase so there's no real difference.
Right here in the US. In fact, nearly all countries have a nationally issued, highly standardized ID that's used in all sorts of high-security situations, banking transactions,etc. It's called a passport. Everyone should have one anyway. Easy solution, and doesn't require one single new thing (and yes, I know, there's presently a backlog on US passport applications but This Too Will Pass).
Also, as has been mentioned earlier, the ACLU trying to spin this as a rejection of RealID is stupid beyond belief (this got posted as a story how???). The right hates is because there's too much amnesty, the left hates it because there's not enough amnesty, and most of the people in the middle hate it because it took a reasonably good idea and turned it into an unprincipled pork-fest as senators were bought and sold with pet projects in their districts. In other words, politics as usual.
This used to be true, but nearly every smartphone has at least a 200MHz processor, with a MMU. Some of them are based on PowerPC, some on ARM, etc etc.
I have no idea what they're using but even if memory management is present, it may be too expensive to use for performance reasons. And software memory management, while theoretically possible, is just silly in this application.
That is not what this is about. This is about control. It might not even be Apple's idea (could be the cell providers) but it's still what's going on.
That's a pretty speculative theory for such a declarative statement.
If you love software freedom, then you will spend your money on an open phone based on Linux, not on anything from Apple.
I like software freedom. I need functionality and reliability. Sometimes I use FOSS, sometimes I use commercial - whatever works best. I reserve love for my wife and my pet lizards. If you hate Apple that's perfectly OK, but most of us don't get emotional about the little bits of metal, plastic, and software that we buy (well, most of us in the general population, not necessarily on Slashdot:-) ).
There's a reasonably good reason, and don't hold your breath waiting for the answer to change.
Whether or not the phone is "really" running OSX is debatable, but keep in mind that many of the CPUs used in embedded devices like phones don't have nearly (or sometimes any of) the memory protection offered on a desktop or laptop CPU. You're also dealing with a much lower-MHz device (for battery consumption reasons) and chances are 100% of the code on the phone runs in Ring 0 (assuming other rings exist) for performance reasons.
So for them to allow third parties to run binary apps would pretty much allow unlimited circumvention of their DRM for the iPod portions (which would violate their agreements with record and movie companies), and as Jobs mentioned publicly would allow any poorly-written or malicious application to completely destabilize the phone or potentially interact with the cellular network in some disruptive or destructive manner (probably violating their agreement with AT&T). I have a Treo with PalmOS on it, and I can attest to the validity of at least the phone stability concern.
So there are a few very legitimate reasons to sandbox third-party code. That being said, there are features sorely lacking on the phone that won't fit in a sandbox - the first of which (for me and my customers) is a VPN client. The last thing I want is a phone running POP3 or IMAP "transparently" connecting over insecure WiFi infrastructure. I'd also like an SSH client, a Terminal Services client, an X Client, and a unicorn - so the iPhone probably won't be for me (dammit).
I would imagine that down the road they will find a better way to provide said sandbox (maybe a Java or Ruby or Python runtime environment?) but in the mean time I respect their desire to provide a phone that emphasizes reliability, even if it means it won't work for me (at least in the first iteration). The wife will probably get one, though.
And I wonder for how many years will those companies GUARANTEE 100% backwards compatibility?
The RAID configuration is almost always stored in the first sector or two of each drive. RAID is a pretty ancient field as far as the IT industry goes, and there simply isn't any point to being creative between product lines - most of which share a massive amount of code anyways. Forward and backward compatibility are much more difficult to displace than they are to maintain. It's like this to the point where on HP servers I can move RAID volumes that were created on controllers that are nearly 10 years old (Ahh... $2500 SmartArray IIs) onto the newer models. On this kind of hardware that behavior is just expected. In fact, it boggles my mind thinking about the frigtarded programmers the low-end RAID device manufacturers must use to screw things up.
Assuming Linux/BSD, the RAID software being open source will allow me to fix bugs (happens even in high-end RAID controllers) forward-port it to newer releases of the same operating system if they chose to drop compatibility. Or potentially porting to other similar operating systems, if necessary (yeah, unlikely).
At the risk of sounding snide, it's more likely that a mid- or high-end RAID controller manufacturer will be supporting older arrays than you'll have the free time and inclination to do RAID software porting. Not to mention the likelihood that you've upgraded your array in the mean time anyway - and with the good RAID controllers, you can upgrade all in sorts of fun ways (add drives, replace drives with larger ones, switch RAID types, etc) with zero downtime. Although Linux isn't always fond of online volume tweaking and can require some hacking of MBRs - but if you're talking about porting RAID stacks this shouldn't intimidate...:-)
But much more than that, the software to monitor the health of the array is open source, whereas even if the manufacturer provides a binary-only program for your current operating system, they may opt not to when the next version comes around, or perhaps just remain way behind the curve and force you to wait.
Areca is pretty nice about providing source for their utilities and drivers. In fact, their drivers are in the mainline Linux Kernel now (as are 3Ware's, Compaq/HPs, etc), and also available for FreeBSD and OpenBSD. Although HP does provide some enhanced Linux drivers that aren't in the kernel... to be honest I'm not entirely sure what the differences are, but the volumes are accessible with a vanilla build. Not to knock Linux (I use it a great deal on personal and production systems), but in general (not necessarily with RAID) I have far more compatibility issues between kernel versions than I do with mid- and high-end hardware RAID controllers (in fact, I've had zero issues there). As I said earlier, RAID just doesn't change that much.
I'll agree you should avoid cheap RAID controllers, but it doesn't follow that you should buy expensive ones. Software RAID is much cheaper, and has some pretty nice advantages. Even the performance of software RAID is faster than hardware controllers... (perhaps with the possible exception of large, battery backed on-controller caches.)
Umm... software is faster than the cheezetech RAID controllers, but having a separate ~500 MHz CPU with specialized RAID instructions manage your Disk IO doesn't exactly suck - and you can get this for less than $400. This leaves your main CPU free to do "useful" stuff. And don't forget the poor bastards that have to run Windows. My main desktop box has an Areca PCIe SATA controller with 4 WD 72GB Raptor drives in RAID5 (I don't need a second GPU and that extra x16 slot was just going to waste...) - we're talking seriously friggin' fast - and much easier to manage in a multi-boot Windows / Linux / OpenBSD configuration than software RAID.
As always, it comes down to performace vs. simplicity vs. cost - you can pick two. When cost is a concern, you go software RAID. When it isn't you should go mid- or high-end hardware.
That's great until you raid card dies in 4 years, and you can't get the exact same model with the exact same firmware, and now you lost all your data because you can't read the volume anymore. After being burned by this twice in the last 5 years, I will never use hardware raid again.
Only with the low-end hardware RAID cards. The better ones (Areca, 3Ware, anything enterprise like HP & IBM) will let you upgrade arrays across models / versions. Many of these cards will explicitly list that as a feature, along with the ability to perform on-line volume expansion, RAID-type shifting (eg, convert from RAID-1 to RAID 5 or RAID 6 while live), etc. I've been burned by low-end RAID cards before, and have decided it's worth the money for "the real thing".
The big donors to US political parties are not corporations. They are unions.
Oh, I wouldn't debate this at all. But you're assuming that Politicians sell out only to the highest bidder. As professional whores, they're much more skilled than that.
To borrow and then horribly mangle a line from Chris Rock: "We don't hate Democrats [or Replublicans], we hate politicians. We don't have time to go breaking them down into groups."
Well, that's what we get for letting hysteria and politics shout down environmental science. And many of the more strident environmental groups have no one but themselves to blame - they embraced the politics and hysteria because (in the short term) it furthered their agendas. Politicians and the corporations (including big agriculture) that bribe^H^H^H^H^H contribute heavily to their campaigns are far from stupid, however, and will twist things to their advantage. The corporations make money and "be green", and the politicians can sucker voters by "being green" and both laugh all the way to the bank. My favorite one was how DuPont got all green over Freon - because they owned the patents on non-CFC-based refrigerants that would replace it. Nice of "t3h world is going to end!!!1!!" crowd to get the government to force everyone to replace their patent-expired Freon with something much more profitable, never mind that this raised the cost of refrigeration and decreased the quality of food supplies in poorer countries.
In the long run, the most outspoken members cause the rest of the environmentalist community lose credibility (because the world doesn't end), and the politicians will just look for the next sucker cause to exploit. Too bad for the environment.
Debit cards suck. If there's a fraudulent or otherwise disputed transaction, the other party has your money. Getting it back is a major pain in the ass. My friends have had issues where it's taken them months to get something resolved and, in the mean time (it bears repeating), they have your money. Credit cards companies are generally much easier to deal with - the money is still in your pocket, so the burden is on the merchant to prove the transaction is valid. If (like me) you want to avoid credit card debt, use American Express charge cards (green, gold, platinum, or black). These basically work kind of like a net-30 account for your purchases. AmEx has always been great to me when there's a problem with a charge.
Seriously, I'm amazed that these parties would even be caught in the same room together. I've been to industry meetings (different industry) where many of the major players get together. All such meetings are preceeded by a highly-paid attorney telling us exactly what we can and cannot talk about. Even if we just heard the same lecture 2 hours ago.
A pricelessly funny example of that sort of thing was in the movie "Thank You for Smoking" where a US Senator is screaming at a subordinate about how the "cancer boy" they provided for a television talk show didn't look sufficiently hopeless. If you haven't seen the movie, it's highly recommended.
These days, 99.99% of the reporting is drowning in spin from some side or other because reporters now feel like they have to convey "truthiness" and "perspective" (or their version of it) rather than just hard facts. Some of this is because news organizations have to make money to exist, and if they pander to one side or the other it attacts eyeballs (Fox on the Right, NBC on the left are the extreme examples). Like politicians, they've figured out that they can "divide and conquor" - get people to take dogmatic positions on an issue and "join the team" so to speak. After all, it saves people the trouble of thinking for themselves and making up their own minds - a major hassle in today's busy world. Nearly all of the news media has come to justify this by saying it adds value and is some sort of public service, and they've begun to thoroughly buy their own bullshit. This is compounded by the laziness factor - a very significant amount of "reportage" out there just takes press releases and rewords them slightly (if that). If I want to get an article about my business printed in a local newspaper or magazine, I pretty much just write the article for them or it doesn't happen.
Kinda surprised you wrote this, because overall I consider you to be one of Slashdot's better commentators.
Scientific concensus does not mean truth. However, when a layperson who doesn't understand the issue needs to, it is by far their best bet to go with where the overwhelming majority of scientific viewpoints lie.
Yeah, that worked out so well for the flat-earth types. The problem is that human beings have difficulty with uncertainty. It's 2007 and we want our answers, dammit! We want to know The Truth (whether or not we can handle The Truth is another issue). People would rather know The World Is Going To End than have to wonder about it (check any history book and most religions for that matter). The problem is that we don't have all of the answers. Some we won't know for a few years, some we won't know in our lifetimes, and some we may not know ever. The problem is that in order to fulfill popular demand, Big Science is marketing things like consensus (not to mention some pretty half-baked research) as The Truth. And if The "Truth" happens to coincide with certain political interests... you generate some pretty impressive hot air (rimshot, please). Most of Science has sold out, and to every side of every debate. It's almost impossible to know who to trust... except when you go back to the good old Scientific Method and demand full disclosure and repeatable results.
I don't know if the Global Warming crowd is right. The problem is that they don't have The Truth yet (verifiable, repeatable experiments that generate verifiable predictions), and they're not only screaming at the top of their lungs that they do, they're visciously attacking anyone who disagrees with them. And that, my friend, is where they cross over from being the heirs of the Age of Enlightenment to the heirs of The Spanish Inquisition. The main difference being that they generally draw the line at character assasination these days.
The bottom line is that people need to learn to be ok with not knowing what we don't know. We need to be open to possibilities without the need to draw unwarranted conclusions - basically maintain the classical "liberal" mindset (before the word "liberal" became tainted with politics). We needs to discourage other from the siren song of clinging to certainties that might not be real. And we need to be respectful to those who have the strength to disagree with the status quo and strike out in new directions.
If stuff like this doesn't bother you, thats fine. It really should, as things like this tend to escilate further and further from reality untill you get companies nailing people on really obscure stuff, and trampling over your rights like they were never there.
The fact that they pulled something they dont own under some over-hyped copywright law, should piss you off. Damages or no, not everything is money. It doesn't cost me anything to speak my views on the street. If someone stops me from doing that, just because it didn't cost me anything, doesn't make doing so right.
Umm... where did I say it didn't bother me? It bothers me somewhat, but if the victims aren't going to do anything material about it (bitching on Slashdot doesn't count), then why should I?
And no, money's not everything, but the rules of the game are that's how we settle things with large douchebag corporations that don't care about anything else. It doesn't cost you anything to speak your views on the street - but it's a purely masterbatory experience that only serves to annoy the neighbors.
Only if you have the money to pursue those legal options. Limiting free speech only for those who can afford lawyers to fight to the end against a major corporation isn't exactly free speech.
Ummm... let's see... in my area, it costs about $105 and a day or so of your time (assuming you've never done it before and have to read up on a lot of things) for an individual to file a small claim of up to $7,500, and have the corporation served. And in small claims court, in most cases they can't send a lawyer - they have to send an actual representitive of the corporation that's authorized to argue on that corporation's behalf. This is specifically so that the "little guy" has an even chance. If they don't show up, you win by default.
I've done it once, and my case was settled (with exactly what I wanted) before we actually went to court - the winners and losers of court cases are public record, and the company didn't want a judgement against them. I actually sat in on a small claims session beforehand just to see what it was like. The judge (at least the one I saw) was a no-nonsense guy who read the briefs filed by both parties, listened to the arguments, took no bullshit from either side, and made fair decisions. It's not a difficult process if you do a little research and are well-prepared.
So please knock it off with the hippie-dippy bullshit of "I can't take on teh corporations they're just too big" - in the US, at least, we have special courts just for that. If your case is bigger than small claims allows, then you do need a lawyer and a good one. If your case is good, then you should be able to find a good lawyer who will take it on a contingency basis (meaning they cover all the expenses, but take 30 - 40% if you win).
It's possible that Viacom will see the slashdot story and will not send future takedowns for this video.
Yeah, and maybe Tara Conner will come over to my house and be my sex slave.
It's possible that readers of this story have also gotten videos taken down unfairly but only now realize they aren't isolated cases.
And? If there's only one person that's affected and they really care, they should still do something about it. Or maybe you think they should get together and form a class action that will net them each a $12 coupon off any Viacom DVD (and $2.5M for their lawyers).
It's possible readers will contribute money to legal defense funds for this case or others like it.
Legal defense against what? If there's legal action, they'd be the plaintiffs. If they want people to contribute to their legal offense fund... oops, they don't have one. Just a bunch of whining.
It's possible that in a free society that one method of redressing wrongs is to bring attention to those wrongs to a wider audience.
It's possible that the public image of Viacom will be so damaged that they will be more careful about takedown notices in the future.
And maybe Katie Rees will come over and help Tara Conner take care of my ballsack.
It's possible that in a society with a free press the government will move to restrain the actions of corporations that are being abusive, but only when the outcry has reached a sufficient level.
It's possible that "When buying and selling are controlled by legislatures, the first thing to be bought and sold are legislators" -- P.J. O'Rourke.
when buying and selling are controlled by legislatures, the first thing to be bought and sold are legislators.
It's possible that I'm the one pointing the useless whining without action to back it up, and it annoys useless douchebags like you that masturbate to drama.
Most people will be upset by my post subject, but it's a question that needs to be asked. What are the actual damages here? Viacom's not claiming ownership - they fucked up. If their fuck up causes damages, there is legal recourse for this. If this is the case, then the victim should seek those legal recourses. Or STFU.
Getting a few thousand Slashdotters all hot and bothered may feel good, but it's a purely masterbatory exercise. If the victims are that pissed off, they can sue. And don't give me that shit about "oh, how can poor tiny little us possibly prevail against the mighty Viacom?!??" IANAL, but it looks like it's a pretty open-and-shut case. The victi,s could do all of the legal work and filing themselves, and with a little extra work can probably find some lawyer to make it all nice and pretty pro bono. Unless the damages are significant, I'd be halfway surprised if Viacom even sends anyone to defend it. If the judge finds in the victim's favor they might try filing a complaint against the attorney that filed the DMCA takedown notice with the relevant bar association - Viacom's lawyers may have committed perjury. If the victims can find a prosecutor that thinks it's in their political interest to beat on Mighty Corporate Viacom vs. The Little Guy, then it's a nice high-publicity case for them.
Other than that, the rest of us feel badly for the victims and wish them the best (fuck Viacom and all that), but let's be real - it's not like we're going to stop watching South Park or anything.
I mean seriously, the discussion shouldn't be about "proper erasure techniques that 99.999% of the public couldn't understand if they tried", it should be about not being such a tight-ass cheap fuck that you have to sell your old drives (flash / hard / whatever) on E-Bay. I mean, seriously, do you need to spend that much effort to net yourself an extra $5 or $10?
I erase my old media with a sledgehammer. Try to recover that, bitch.
What if someone disposes of a CD... can I recover it (from the trash) and assume the rights, as the new owner, of the abandoned material ? Was there a license on the CD that prohibits the transfer ?
In otherwords, does anybody actually own a Kevin Federline CD?
Typical Slashdot parroting of horrible science reporting. One mildly interesting case does not do much to advance a theory - it may provide a starting point for further investigation, but that's about it.
I won't claim to be smart enough to solve the whole 'free will' debate, but personally I hope free will exists - it (in theory) allows us to help people improve themselves. Otherwise, as soon as someone is shown to have criminal tendencies you might as well just put a bullet in their head and dump them in a hole somewhere.
True enough, but at a practical level it's more difficult to sniff a message in transit (well, at least on the ends I control:-) ) than it is to attack the endpoint.
What really cracks me up is people that think services like Hushmail are secure. Heh heh heh. Poor bastards.
And a company thinking they can be fascist about everything risks losing their employees.
Geez, do you even know what the word "fascist" means? Hint: check Wikipedia, Dictionary.com or even Google. I'm pretty sure that a company wanting to protect its intellectual property and trade secrets hardly qualifies. As someone who has dealt with some corporate espionage cases, I can personally say that such policies are hardly paranoid or based on far-fetched situations. There are innumerable instances of employees taking product information, customer information, etc. to competitors when they switch jobs - or even outright working for a competitor before the switch. Keeping the e-mail in-house provides documentation of many such occurances. Yes, I know that it's easy to work around this. But the vast majority of the time, people are pretty stupid about such things. Sometimes it's worth prosecuting, but most of the time it just slides.
If employees want to have personal e-mail, they're perfectly free to do so - outside of the company network. Inside the company, the rule is that if it's created on our equipment and / or stored on our servers, we own it. There's plenty of legal precident for this (IANAL, do your own research / buy your own opinions).
In any case, if you're going to engage in name-calling, please do so intelligently. See George Orwell's rant on the subject here. It's getting to the point where the word "fascism" - a thoroughly vile and evil concept that has resulted in the deaths of tens (or possible hundreds) of millions of people over the last century has been watered down to the point where it's used to describe "something I don't like and lack the intelligence to properly rebuke, so I'll just engage in ridiculous hyperbole while demonstrating my massive ignorance."
Fuck, now everybody's going to call me a fascist:-)
Slashdot Mirror
... if you plan for it. I bought an iPhone for my wife (I kept my trusty Treo 650) and we went to Germany about two weeks later. Of course, I did call AT&T to discuss International rates and set us up on an appropriate plan for while we were there. I put us on a $6.95/month plan that dropped our per-minute fees by over 60%. I canceled it when we returned. Was still it expensive? Of course - our bill was a couple of hundred bucks when we got back - but that's no worse than with any other phone. We did know what we were getting into, though, and had planned accordingly. And more importantly, we could both send and receive calls while we were there - we both own our own companies and people have to get ahold of us. Ironically, her phone worked perfectly while my Treo had all sorts of problems (but to be fair, I'm pretty sure it's because of some frigtarded AT&T setup issues).
If you really need to cut costs when you travel internationally, buy a disposable phone or rent one or use the old phone you've got lying around when you're in the country you're traveling to. Otherwise, remember the Law of the Seven P's - Proper Previous Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance (not to mention sky-high phone bills).
Ummm... Wrong. And it only took a few seconds of looking at the shootersexchange website to figure it out. They are in an awkward position because they are not lawyers and cannot give specific legal advice, but they do point the buyers and sellers to places that specify the relevant federal and state laws.
While you can enter into a contract to purchase a gun over the Internet, an FFL (Federal Firearms License) Holder (someone who's licensed to sell guns) must make the physical transfer of the weapon to the purchaser. So you can't just have the gun shipped to you - it has to be shipped to an FFL, and then they physically verify who you are (and follow any other local laws regarding the transfer) and hand you the package. It's up to the buyer, seller, and FFL to make sure the applicable state and federal laws are followed, but that's still the case with a traditional "brick & mortar" purchase so there's no real difference.
Right here in the US. In fact, nearly all countries have a nationally issued, highly standardized ID that's used in all sorts of high-security situations, banking transactions,etc. It's called a passport. Everyone should have one anyway. Easy solution, and doesn't require one single new thing (and yes, I know, there's presently a backlog on US passport applications but This Too Will Pass).
Also, as has been mentioned earlier, the ACLU trying to spin this as a rejection of RealID is stupid beyond belief (this got posted as a story how???). The right hates is because there's too much amnesty, the left hates it because there's not enough amnesty, and most of the people in the middle hate it because it took a reasonably good idea and turned it into an unprincipled pork-fest as senators were bought and sold with pet projects in their districts. In other words, politics as usual.
There's a reasonably good reason, and don't hold your breath waiting for the answer to change.
Whether or not the phone is "really" running OSX is debatable, but keep in mind that many of the CPUs used in embedded devices like phones don't have nearly (or sometimes any of) the memory protection offered on a desktop or laptop CPU. You're also dealing with a much lower-MHz device (for battery consumption reasons) and chances are 100% of the code on the phone runs in Ring 0 (assuming other rings exist) for performance reasons.
So for them to allow third parties to run binary apps would pretty much allow unlimited circumvention of their DRM for the iPod portions (which would violate their agreements with record and movie companies), and as Jobs mentioned publicly would allow any poorly-written or malicious application to completely destabilize the phone or potentially interact with the cellular network in some disruptive or destructive manner (probably violating their agreement with AT&T). I have a Treo with PalmOS on it, and I can attest to the validity of at least the phone stability concern.
So there are a few very legitimate reasons to sandbox third-party code. That being said, there are features sorely lacking on the phone that won't fit in a sandbox - the first of which (for me and my customers) is a VPN client. The last thing I want is a phone running POP3 or IMAP "transparently" connecting over insecure WiFi infrastructure. I'd also like an SSH client, a Terminal Services client, an X Client, and a unicorn - so the iPhone probably won't be for me (dammit).
I would imagine that down the road they will find a better way to provide said sandbox (maybe a Java or Ruby or Python runtime environment?) but in the mean time I respect their desire to provide a phone that emphasizes reliability, even if it means it won't work for me (at least in the first iteration). The wife will probably get one, though.
Umm... software is faster than the cheezetech RAID controllers, but having a separate ~500 MHz CPU with specialized RAID instructions manage your Disk IO doesn't exactly suck - and you can get this for less than $400. This leaves your main CPU free to do "useful" stuff. And don't forget the poor bastards that have to run Windows. My main desktop box has an Areca PCIe SATA controller with 4 WD 72GB Raptor drives in RAID5 (I don't need a second GPU and that extra x16 slot was just going to waste...) - we're talking seriously friggin' fast - and much easier to manage in a multi-boot Windows / Linux / OpenBSD configuration than software RAID.
As always, it comes down to performace vs. simplicity vs. cost - you can pick two. When cost is a concern, you go software RAID. When it isn't you should go mid- or high-end hardware.
To borrow and then horribly mangle a line from Chris Rock: "We don't hate Democrats [or Replublicans], we hate politicians. We don't have time to go breaking them down into groups."
Well, that's what we get for letting hysteria and politics shout down environmental science. And many of the more strident environmental groups have no one but themselves to blame - they embraced the politics and hysteria because (in the short term) it furthered their agendas. Politicians and the corporations (including big agriculture) that bribe^H^H^H^H^H contribute heavily to their campaigns are far from stupid, however, and will twist things to their advantage. The corporations make money and "be green", and the politicians can sucker voters by "being green" and both laugh all the way to the bank. My favorite one was how DuPont got all green over Freon - because they owned the patents on non-CFC-based refrigerants that would replace it. Nice of "t3h world is going to end!!!1!!" crowd to get the government to force everyone to replace their patent-expired Freon with something much more profitable, never mind that this raised the cost of refrigeration and decreased the quality of food supplies in poorer countries.
In the long run, the most outspoken members cause the rest of the environmentalist community lose credibility (because the world doesn't end), and the politicians will just look for the next sucker cause to exploit. Too bad for the environment.
Debit cards suck. If there's a fraudulent or otherwise disputed transaction, the other party has your money. Getting it back is a major pain in the ass. My friends have had issues where it's taken them months to get something resolved and, in the mean time (it bears repeating), they have your money. Credit cards companies are generally much easier to deal with - the money is still in your pocket, so the burden is on the merchant to prove the transaction is valid. If (like me) you want to avoid credit card debt, use American Express charge cards (green, gold, platinum, or black). These basically work kind of like a net-30 account for your purchases. AmEx has always been great to me when there's a problem with a charge.
Seriously, I'm amazed that these parties would even be caught in the same room together. I've been to industry meetings (different industry) where many of the major players get together. All such meetings are preceeded by a highly-paid attorney telling us exactly what we can and cannot talk about. Even if we just heard the same lecture 2 hours ago.
A pricelessly funny example of that sort of thing was in the movie "Thank You for Smoking" where a US Senator is screaming at a subordinate about how the "cancer boy" they provided for a television talk show didn't look sufficiently hopeless. If you haven't seen the movie, it's highly recommended.
These days, 99.99% of the reporting is drowning in spin from some side or other because reporters now feel like they have to convey "truthiness" and "perspective" (or their version of it) rather than just hard facts. Some of this is because news organizations have to make money to exist, and if they pander to one side or the other it attacts eyeballs (Fox on the Right, NBC on the left are the extreme examples). Like politicians, they've figured out that they can "divide and conquor" - get people to take dogmatic positions on an issue and "join the team" so to speak. After all, it saves people the trouble of thinking for themselves and making up their own minds - a major hassle in today's busy world. Nearly all of the news media has come to justify this by saying it adds value and is some sort of public service, and they've begun to thoroughly buy their own bullshit. This is compounded by the laziness factor - a very significant amount of "reportage" out there just takes press releases and rewords them slightly (if that). If I want to get an article about my business printed in a local newspaper or magazine, I pretty much just write the article for them or it doesn't happen.
Yeah, that worked out so well for the flat-earth types. The problem is that human beings have difficulty with uncertainty. It's 2007 and we want our answers, dammit! We want to know The Truth (whether or not we can handle The Truth is another issue). People would rather know The World Is Going To End than have to wonder about it (check any history book and most religions for that matter). The problem is that we don't have all of the answers. Some we won't know for a few years, some we won't know in our lifetimes, and some we may not know ever. The problem is that in order to fulfill popular demand, Big Science is marketing things like consensus (not to mention some pretty half-baked research) as The Truth. And if The "Truth" happens to coincide with certain political interests... you generate some pretty impressive hot air (rimshot, please). Most of Science has sold out, and to every side of every debate. It's almost impossible to know who to trust
I don't know if the Global Warming crowd is right. The problem is that they don't have The Truth yet (verifiable, repeatable experiments that generate verifiable predictions), and they're not only screaming at the top of their lungs that they do, they're visciously attacking anyone who disagrees with them. And that, my friend, is where they cross over from being the heirs of the Age of Enlightenment to the heirs of The Spanish Inquisition. The main difference being that they generally draw the line at character assasination these days.
The bottom line is that people need to learn to be ok with not knowing what we don't know. We need to be open to possibilities without the need to draw unwarranted conclusions - basically maintain the classical "liberal" mindset (before the word "liberal" became tainted with politics). We needs to discourage other from the siren song of clinging to certainties that might not be real. And we need to be respectful to those who have the strength to disagree with the status quo and strike out in new directions.
And no, money's not everything, but the rules of the game are that's how we settle things with large douchebag corporations that don't care about anything else. It doesn't cost you anything to speak your views on the street - but it's a purely masterbatory experience that only serves to annoy the neighbors.
I've done it once, and my case was settled (with exactly what I wanted) before we actually went to court - the winners and losers of court cases are public record, and the company didn't want a judgement against them. I actually sat in on a small claims session beforehand just to see what it was like. The judge (at least the one I saw) was a no-nonsense guy who read the briefs filed by both parties, listened to the arguments, took no bullshit from either side, and made fair decisions. It's not a difficult process if you do a little research and are well-prepared.
So please knock it off with the hippie-dippy bullshit of "I can't take on teh corporations they're just too big" - in the US, at least, we have special courts just for that. If your case is bigger than small claims allows, then you do need a lawyer and a good one. If your case is good, then you should be able to find a good lawyer who will take it on a contingency basis (meaning they cover all the expenses, but take 30 - 40% if you win).
And? If there's only one person that's affected and they really care, they should still do something about it. Or maybe you think they should get together and form a class action that will net them each a $12 coupon off any Viacom DVD (and $2.5M for their lawyers).
Legal defense against what? If there's legal action, they'd be the plaintiffs. If they want people to contribute to their legal offense fund... oops, they don't have one. Just a bunch of whining.
That would look something like this.
And maybe Katie Rees will come over and help Tara Conner take care of my ballsack.
It's possible that "When buying and selling are controlled by legislatures, the first thing to be bought and sold are legislators" -- P.J. O'Rourke.
It's possible that I'm the one pointing the useless whining without action to back it up, and it annoys useless douchebags like you that masturbate to drama.
Most people will be upset by my post subject, but it's a question that needs to be asked. What are the actual damages here? Viacom's not claiming ownership - they fucked up. If their fuck up causes damages, there is legal recourse for this. If this is the case, then the victim should seek those legal recourses. Or STFU.
Getting a few thousand Slashdotters all hot and bothered may feel good, but it's a purely masterbatory exercise. If the victims are that pissed off, they can sue. And don't give me that shit about "oh, how can poor tiny little us possibly prevail against the mighty Viacom?!??" IANAL, but it looks like it's a pretty open-and-shut case. The victi,s could do all of the legal work and filing themselves, and with a little extra work can probably find some lawyer to make it all nice and pretty pro bono. Unless the damages are significant, I'd be halfway surprised if Viacom even sends anyone to defend it. If the judge finds in the victim's favor they might try filing a complaint against the attorney that filed the DMCA takedown notice with the relevant bar association - Viacom's lawyers may have committed perjury. If the victims can find a prosecutor that thinks it's in their political interest to beat on Mighty Corporate Viacom vs. The Little Guy, then it's a nice high-publicity case for them.
Other than that, the rest of us feel badly for the victims and wish them the best (fuck Viacom and all that), but let's be real - it's not like we're going to stop watching South Park or anything.
This idea may be a little shitty... We can't even just relax and clear our minds when we're layin' a brick?
That being said, IMHO the whole DST thing is stupid and obnoxious.
I mean seriously, the discussion shouldn't be about "proper erasure techniques that 99.999% of the public couldn't understand if they tried", it should be about not being such a tight-ass cheap fuck that you have to sell your old drives (flash / hard / whatever) on E-Bay. I mean, seriously, do you need to spend that much effort to net yourself an extra $5 or $10?
I erase my old media with a sledgehammer. Try to recover that, bitch.
Typical Slashdot parroting of horrible science reporting. One mildly interesting case does not do much to advance a theory - it may provide a starting point for further investigation, but that's about it.
I won't claim to be smart enough to solve the whole 'free will' debate, but personally I hope free will exists - it (in theory) allows us to help people improve themselves. Otherwise, as soon as someone is shown to have criminal tendencies you might as well just put a bullet in their head and dump them in a hole somewhere.
True enough, but at a practical level it's more difficult to sniff a message in transit (well, at least on the ends I control :-) ) than it is to attack the endpoint.
What really cracks me up is people that think services like Hushmail are secure. Heh heh heh. Poor bastards.
If employees want to have personal e-mail, they're perfectly free to do so - outside of the company network. Inside the company, the rule is that if it's created on our equipment and / or stored on our servers, we own it. There's plenty of legal precident for this (IANAL, do your own research / buy your own opinions).
In any case, if you're going to engage in name-calling, please do so intelligently. See George Orwell's rant on the subject here. It's getting to the point where the word "fascism" - a thoroughly vile and evil concept that has resulted in the deaths of tens (or possible hundreds) of millions of people over the last century has been watered down to the point where it's used to describe "something I don't like and lack the intelligence to properly rebuke, so I'll just engage in ridiculous hyperbole while demonstrating my massive ignorance."
Fuck, now everybody's going to call me a fascist