However, after seeing this ad, I was going to go out and buy some pork. But then I saw the stupid C&D and have now decided to boycott all pork. And I'm sure my Jewish and Muslim friends will join in.
... that there are now THREE kinds of white meat. So the NPB's use of "The Other White Meat" now constitutes fraud and falsification of the facts. Maybe they should retire that term.
... and that lawyers always get easily confused (like confusing the word "new" with the word "other"). Numerous surveys have been conducted and found that less than 2% of the public gets these two words confused, while 44% of those on drugs, and 73% of lawyers, will get these two words confused.
The moral of the story is that lawyers always get confused, so you have to always write all text in legalese.
When I was in school, there were a few kids whose parents could not afford even pencils (yeah, we had those back then). The school always managed to find a way to get them equipped with what they needed. Yes, it was a case of spending SOME tax money on just a subset of kids whose parents were the drags on society (e.g. the Robin Hood operation).
If UEFI could be made smart enough to load a kernel and its starter data, maybe all the bloat it will be bringing could be worth it. Still, there is no reason for this bloat. All you need is a basic loader that can, in a friendly usable way, load an OS kernel... the whole thing all at once, plus any data it needs. Add to that a firmware management tool, and you have all you need.
The associated partition table format supports 128 partitions. Who needs all that? Still, we can use that by simply putting these kernels with the data in a partition. Then the boot menu can simply let us pick the kernel to load based on which partition it's in. We could designated the first 4K of the partition to be an information page about the system to be loaded (name, version, build date, memory address to load into, start address, etc), followed by the actual image. It just sweeps up all those pages after the info page, into the designated location, and jumps to the start address (like any good boot loader). With kernel images in partitions, all the info is now easy, and there is plenty of space for several choices to be stored.
Let's not have bloat for the sake of bloat. Let's get something of value out of it.
... to my web browsing. I frequently have as many as 20 different web sites up in various desktops and windows. One bad flash site and POOFFF!!!... all my browser windows go bye-bye. And bad flash sites are numerous. Bad Java sites that cause this scale of problem are very rare compared to flash. So it's actually not been a problem to leave Java enabled (only one Java related crash this year, so far). So I just won't run flash because it is just too dangerous. And it's not much of a loss because most flash content isn't useful (maybe pretty, but not with information). Compare that to PDF. That's another crappy format. But there's a huge amount of useful information in PDF format that makes it too hard to avoid. To be safe I don't install it in the browser and just download PDF files and read them offline. Do that for flash and I MIGHT reconsider.
Any language can be abused. GCC does that a lot with C already and it is widely known (GLIBC is worse, BTW). The issue might well just be that with this fact known, they want to avoid having that problem just get worse with C++.
... is always let all disabled accounts access the help forum, unless and until those accounts specifically abuse the help forum. There should not be a need to create alternate accounts to do this.
They (and lots of other companies) should also tell people what specific term of service was violated (e.g. spamming vs. posting kiddie porn vs. uploading movies with someone else's copyright, etc, whatever the case may be). If it is necessary to kill all the lawyers to get this done, then that would be a good start.
"low level" just has a different meaning for drive-emulating flash devices, than it does for spinning metal platter hard drives. Obviously, a lot of posts on this article are from people that don't understand the difference. In your case, you're not acknowledging that there is this layer of emulation, which manages the wear leveling and presents a (supposed to be) more reliable set of data blocks stored in flash chips that can have some cell failures. Maybe the OP's problem can be cured for the time being by resetting this emulation layer (erasing all low level blocks, testing for bad blocks, and re-initializing the wear leveling state with those bad blocks omitted). But it is clear he's got defective hardware, probably due to cheap manufacturing.
So where is a Linux program to do this special erase command that exists in the standard... perhaps doing the erase over the entire drive and/or specified blocks?
Yes you can low level format flash drives. There is a layer between the real physical flash memory and the presented hard drive, which does things like level out the wear applied to the flash cells by rotating a pool of blocks (why the drive is always a little smaller than the power of two the flash chips can store). A low level format would clear the flash chips themselves and reset the drive emulation layer to initial state (most likely zero assigned blocks and a full pool of unassigned in the canonical order). But the low level formatter would require low level access to do this, and the computer interface (SD slot pins, USB, etc) may not have a way to do this.
The formatter on the SD Association site, however, appears to be nothing more than a specialized filesystem formatter. Maybe it formats the filesystem and adds some extra stuff afterwards. There is zero indication that it is a low level formatter.
That said, the OPs problem may be more of a case of defective flash chips and/or defective drive emulation and/or defective interface to the computer via the SD pins. It may be defective only at high speed or it may be defective at all speeds (if the speed can be forced lower). This may be a case of the manufacturer doing overclocking with some higher percentage of manufactured devices that just can't make it at that increased speed. Imagine your computer manufacturer taking 1 GHz CPUs, overclocking them at 3.333 GHz, verifying that the units boot the test utility on the assembly floor, and shipping them to consumers with the OS raw sectored onto the hard drive by never actually booted to see if it can run on a CPU that gets an undetected one-bit error every second.
Comcast tried to pull that on me when I was getting it installed. I just told them "all I have is wireless so there is no way I can connect direct". Then they said "then you'll need to get a wireless router". I said "done". I didn't tell them the router ran Linux.
But what about laws in some other country like USA telling you, a Belgian, what you can or cannot do, or judicial orders telling you what you must do, in your own country, especially if you have never even been in USA?
I feel the wrongness in one country's laws being applied to someone in another country. If I rob a bank here in the USA, I would expect to be subject to the laws of the USA (if I get caught). What would make no sense would be for Canada to charge me with murder and conduct the trial in Canada. But that's a criminal matter, too. The cause this story is about is a civil matter. Imagine being sued by someone in Canada, in a Canadian court, even though you have never set foot in Canada... and perhaps for something that is not a tort in the USA but is so in Canada (or for a criminal matter, is legal in the USA but illegal in Canada). Extradition is supposed to be for things like committing a murder in the USA and running off to Canada to avoid prosecution by USA. The extradition is to take you back to the USA. And this story is about an injunctive court order... basically telling someone what to do... in another country. I don't want the precedent to be set that would allow some judge in some other country to be able to issue orders and expect me to obey them.
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However, after seeing this ad, I was going to go out and buy some pork. But then I saw the stupid C&D and have now decided to boycott all pork. And I'm sure my Jewish and Muslim friends will join in.
... that there are now THREE kinds of white meat. So the NPB's use of "The Other White Meat" now constitutes fraud and falsification of the facts. Maybe they should retire that term.
... and that lawyers always get easily confused (like confusing the word "new" with the word "other"). Numerous surveys have been conducted and found that less than 2% of the public gets these two words confused, while 44% of those on drugs, and 73% of lawyers, will get these two words confused.
The moral of the story is that lawyers always get confused, so you have to always write all text in legalese.
I stole a nickname from there and they haven't bothered to try to get it back.
When I was in school, there were a few kids whose parents could not afford even pencils (yeah, we had those back then). The school always managed to find a way to get them equipped with what they needed. Yes, it was a case of spending SOME tax money on just a subset of kids whose parents were the drags on society (e.g. the Robin Hood operation).
If UEFI could be made smart enough to load a kernel and its starter data, maybe all the bloat it will be bringing could be worth it. Still, there is no reason for this bloat. All you need is a basic loader that can, in a friendly usable way, load an OS kernel ... the whole thing all at once, plus any data it needs. Add to that a firmware management tool, and you have all you need.
The associated partition table format supports 128 partitions. Who needs all that? Still, we can use that by simply putting these kernels with the data in a partition. Then the boot menu can simply let us pick the kernel to load based on which partition it's in. We could designated the first 4K of the partition to be an information page about the system to be loaded (name, version, build date, memory address to load into, start address, etc), followed by the actual image. It just sweeps up all those pages after the info page, into the designated location, and jumps to the start address (like any good boot loader). With kernel images in partitions, all the info is now easy, and there is plenty of space for several choices to be stored.
Let's not have bloat for the sake of bloat. Let's get something of value out of it.
With as many comments AC posts on /. everyone should know him well :-)
Nice! You just exposed the longest existing prior art in history ... based on how services are acquired in the oldest profession.
... you didn't need a camera to convince people the cops were abusing the people. Sadly, in Nazi America, you do.
Do you have anything non-flash that can demo what that site has?
... to my web browsing. I frequently have as many as 20 different web sites up in various desktops and windows. One bad flash site and POOFFF!!! ... all my browser windows go bye-bye. And bad flash sites are numerous. Bad Java sites that cause this scale of problem are very rare compared to flash. So it's actually not been a problem to leave Java enabled (only one Java related crash this year, so far). So I just won't run flash because it is just too dangerous. And it's not much of a loss because most flash content isn't useful (maybe pretty, but not with information). Compare that to PDF. That's another crappy format. But there's a huge amount of useful information in PDF format that makes it too hard to avoid. To be safe I don't install it in the browser and just download PDF files and read them offline. Do that for flash and I MIGHT reconsider.
Any language can be abused. GCC does that a lot with C already and it is widely known (GLIBC is worse, BTW). The issue might well just be that with this fact known, they want to avoid having that problem just get worse with C++.
That would require Google to pay someone money to take the calls. That would eat into their profit and stock valuation. They would never allow that.
... is always let all disabled accounts access the help forum, unless and until those accounts specifically abuse the help forum. There should not be a need to create alternate accounts to do this.
They (and lots of other companies) should also tell people what specific term of service was violated (e.g. spamming vs. posting kiddie porn vs. uploading movies with someone else's copyright, etc, whatever the case may be). If it is necessary to kill all the lawyers to get this done, then that would be a good start.
"low level" just has a different meaning for drive-emulating flash devices, than it does for spinning metal platter hard drives. Obviously, a lot of posts on this article are from people that don't understand the difference. In your case, you're not acknowledging that there is this layer of emulation, which manages the wear leveling and presents a (supposed to be) more reliable set of data blocks stored in flash chips that can have some cell failures. Maybe the OP's problem can be cured for the time being by resetting this emulation layer (erasing all low level blocks, testing for bad blocks, and re-initializing the wear leveling state with those bad blocks omitted). But it is clear he's got defective hardware, probably due to cheap manufacturing.
So where is a Linux program to do this special erase command that exists in the standard ... perhaps doing the erase over the entire drive and/or specified blocks?
Yes you can low level format flash drives. There is a layer between the real physical flash memory and the presented hard drive, which does things like level out the wear applied to the flash cells by rotating a pool of blocks (why the drive is always a little smaller than the power of two the flash chips can store). A low level format would clear the flash chips themselves and reset the drive emulation layer to initial state (most likely zero assigned blocks and a full pool of unassigned in the canonical order). But the low level formatter would require low level access to do this, and the computer interface (SD slot pins, USB, etc) may not have a way to do this.
The formatter on the SD Association site, however, appears to be nothing more than a specialized filesystem formatter. Maybe it formats the filesystem and adds some extra stuff afterwards. There is zero indication that it is a low level formatter.
That said, the OPs problem may be more of a case of defective flash chips and/or defective drive emulation and/or defective interface to the computer via the SD pins. It may be defective only at high speed or it may be defective at all speeds (if the speed can be forced lower). This may be a case of the manufacturer doing overclocking with some higher percentage of manufactured devices that just can't make it at that increased speed. Imagine your computer manufacturer taking 1 GHz CPUs, overclocking them at 3.333 GHz, verifying that the units boot the test utility on the assembly floor, and shipping them to consumers with the OS raw sectored onto the hard drive by never actually booted to see if it can run on a CPU that gets an undetected one-bit error every second.
So how to do this with the full DVD worth of stuff?
Somehow, as I was reading it, that title seemed to have the word "exterminate" in it. But maybe not.
But not at the other end point of your overseas encrypted tunnel.
From the sounds of it, Conroy is aiming for the Victorian era, somewhere around the latter 1800's.
Comcast tried to pull that on me when I was getting it installed. I just told them "all I have is wireless so there is no way I can connect direct". Then they said "then you'll need to get a wireless router". I said "done". I didn't tell them the router ran Linux.
But what about laws in some other country like USA telling you, a Belgian, what you can or cannot do, or judicial orders telling you what you must do, in your own country, especially if you have never even been in USA?
Actually, it is not intermittent. It is systematic. I think you will be able to figure it out.
I feel the wrongness in one country's laws being applied to someone in another country. If I rob a bank here in the USA, I would expect to be subject to the laws of the USA (if I get caught). What would make no sense would be for Canada to charge me with murder and conduct the trial in Canada. But that's a criminal matter, too. The cause this story is about is a civil matter. Imagine being sued by someone in Canada, in a Canadian court, even though you have never set foot in Canada ... and perhaps for something that is not a tort in the USA but is so in Canada (or for a criminal matter, is legal in the USA but illegal in Canada). Extradition is supposed to be for things like committing a murder in the USA and running off to Canada to avoid prosecution by USA. The extradition is to take you back to the USA. And this story is about an injunctive court order ... basically telling someone what to do ... in another country. I don't want the precedent to be set that would allow some judge in some other country to be able to issue orders and expect me to obey them.