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User: CanadianMacFan

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Comments · 2,606

  1. Re:Make him run the Marathon on Police Capture Second Marathon Bombing Suspect in Watertown, Mass. · · Score: 1

    Well you certainly took your sweet time getting over there to help them when they needed it. Maybe if the US showed up at the start of the two world wars a lot of people might not have needed to die.

  2. Re:uh, this is common sense on Why It's So Hard To Make a Phone Call In Emergency Situations · · Score: 1

    I said to have the capacity to handle a large surge due to a random event at a random place. That would mean having to build the capacity anyplace where people might be expected to gather. Of course if you know of an event ahead of time you can upgrade the system.

  3. Re:Bullshit all Around on Rep. Mike Rogers Dismisses CISPA Opponents "14 Year Old Tweeter On the Internet" · · Score: 1

    While you keep voting the same type of people into office then I would yes you are going to keep having this song and dance every year.

  4. Re:uh, this is common sense on Why It's So Hard To Make a Phone Call In Emergency Situations · · Score: 1

    Well if you want the cell companies to be able to handle 100,000 people starting a phone conversation at once from any random place because of some random event then you better be prepared to pay a lot more for your service.

  5. Re:WTF? on New CFAA Could Subject Teens To Jail For Reading Online News · · Score: 1

    and only when it serves the interests of the powerful corporations.

    There, fixed that for you.

  6. The thing to do on WA State Bill Would Allow Bosses To Seek Facebook Passwords · · Score: 1

    What you do is give them your Facebook password and when your manager is away at a meeting and leaves the computer unlocked you sign into your account and post some hate speech or something else obscene. When the police or Facebook comes calling get them to find out what computer it came from. After all it was new behaviour and you just had to give your password away.

  7. Re:Sure on Nuclear Power Prevents More Deaths Than It Causes · · Score: 1

    Why do people insist on using only one technology for all situations? There are no silver bullets that will magically solve all of our energy problems. Solar power may work great in Spain or Northern Africa but it isn't going to be very effective in Iceland.

    Iceland is doing wonders with geothermal energy but not everywhere in the world is suited for it. Places near the equator that receive mostly sunny weather are great for solar with energy storage to provide power during the night. Put up wind towers where it's windy, use hydroelectric power, and other renewable sources. And if you can't meet the needs in an economic manner then find a way to reduce the demand and supplement with non-renewable sources of electricity as a last resort.

    Choose the appropriate tool for the job.

  8. Re:dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/lp0 on Happy World Backup Day · · Score: 1

    So, you did co-ordinate with other groups, run a trial to see what would happen when DFS gets shut down, don't verify that your backups actually work (instead you just check to see if any errors happen in the logs), and you aren't checking your hardware for errors (or at least your hardware group isn't if it's a different group). I really don't think you can say that can say that you have made sure that there are many good processes in place. I mean you didn't even realize your backups were failing because they were too large!
    At a minimum you want someone to try to restore a couple of random files from a weekly backup. Your monthly backup should be tested more thoroughly as in a full restore on a test machine.
    A backup that you can't restore from is NOT a backup!
    If this happened in my company not only would ass be kicked but jobs would be lost.

  9. Re:The First Three on Happy World Backup Day · · Score: 1

    1 - Backup often
    2 - Verify that you can restore from your backup often
    3 - See Rules 1 & 2, often


    Most people and businesses don't do Rule 2. Just because the the log didn't report any errors for the backup doesn't mean that you can restore from the backups.

  10. Wasted Energy on Internet's Energy Needs Growing Faster Than Efficiency Gains · · Score: 1

    I wonder how much of the energy being used in data centres is being wasted. And not just as in heat. I worked in one centre and we had one rack of blade servers that wasn't being used for anything but was constantly being left on. I would turn them off and next time I looked they would be turned on again. And they put out a lot of heat into the room. We had another two full racks of blades from another provider that were in constant use and they put out less heat than the one rack sitting idle.

    Hopefully that has been changed there but I'm sure that it isn't the only place in which there are unused servers sitting turned on and left to idle 24/7.

  11. The obvious solution... on When Your Data Absolutely, Positively has to be Destroyed (Video) · · Score: 1

    when it has to be destroyed is to drop it into a volcano. Works for rings.

  12. Re:I've been waiting for this... on Twitter Sued For $50M For Refusing To Identify Anti-Semitic Users · · Score: 2

    There is also the option that the Twitter could be responsible for handing over the records of tweets that originated from an IP address in France since the tweet would be committing a crime there. So if someone in the US made an anti-Semitic comment and the French courts wanted the user details then Twitter can tell them to get lost. But if the tweet was made in France then they should comply because the local law was broken.
    Now the article mentions that the French judge said that the French Internet users should be subject to tighter laws. So I don't know if this means French people sending tweets or French people seeing the tweets. Also Twitter is using the US First Amendment of free speech to refuse to comply with the French judicial system but removed the tweets anyways. If they were so bad that the tweets had to be taken down then why refuse to co-operate?

  13. Cluster Bombs on Possible Chemical Weapons Use In Syria · · Score: 1

    Any news on the use of cluster bombs by Syria other than that from Human Rights Watch? They came out with a report four or five days ago stating that Syria has used them 156 times in 119 locations but that seems to be the only news about it. How reputable is Human Rights Watch?

  14. Re:Yeah, pretty much. on West Virginia Won't Release Broadband Report Because It Is 'Embarrassing' · · Score: 1

    It's not the distance you are from the CO it's the length of the wire from your place to the CO. There's nothing to say that it takes a straight line.

  15. Just imagine.... on As US Cleans Its Energy Mix, It Ships Coal Problems Overseas · · Score: 1

    what the CO2 output of the US would have been if they had not of exported their manufacturing over to China.

  16. Re:Look at Germany or Denmark as 'Clean Leaders' on As US Cleans Its Energy Mix, It Ships Coal Problems Overseas · · Score: 1

    Yes, removing the whole tops of mountains is certainly a great way of getting coal out of the ground. /s

  17. City Politicians on Why Earth Hour Is a Waste of Time and Energy · · Score: 1

    The other year the city politicians were all happy to announce that they turned off all of the unnecessary lights for earth hour. I felt like calling them up and asking them why the heck were the lights on in the first place if it wasn't necessary for them to be on! I'm in Ontario so on Saturday night it's probably base load of nuclear or hydroelectric so there's no CO2 anyways. But from a taxpayer perspective I want those lights off every night no matter what the source of the electricity is.

  18. They are going to spend money to deploy an interception system that doesn't really work against missiles that have no chance of hitting the US (unless they were aimed at New Zealand) which can't possibly hold a nuclear warhead because they are too large. This coming from a country who has about half the politicians who want to invade a country that wants to develop nuclear power but when another country threatens to detonate a nuclear warhead in their capital city they impose sanctions on their banks. Yep, sounds like a typical government.

  19. What needs to be changed? on A New Version of MS Office Every 90 Days · · Score: 1

    Other than changing the interface and file formats (which don't need to be changed) what needs to be released on a quarterly schedule? It's office software. The majority of people type up memos, simple (as compared to what the software allows) documents, and PowerPoint presentations. Does Excel really need another mathematical function that only a person with a PhD in some obscure branch of mathematics has heard of? The cynic in me says that they will keep changing the file format in order to keep forcing people to upgrade and the subscription service is just to smooth out revenues instead of having very large sales every couple of years.

  20. Omnibus bill on Canadian Government Scrapping Internet Predators Act · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Probably everything will get thrown into the next budget omnibus bill which will pass and then we'll only find out six months later what was contained in it.

  21. Re:5-day service is not bad on US Postal Service Discontinuing Saturday Mail Delivery · · Score: 1

    Please this is the country that refuses to drop the penny, can't move to a dollar coin, and is still using the imperial system for measurement. Do you really think that they are easily going to switch to a 5 day a week mail delivery system? I can't wait to see some heads explode when someone brings up super mailboxes!

  22. Re:man, that is stupid. cyber think crime, no than on NYPD To Identify 'Deranged' Gunmen Through Internet Chatter · · Score: 2

    Yeah but if you provide health care to the people then you turn the country into a socialist state and nobody wants that.

  23. Why nationwide? on Nationwide Google Fiber Deployment Would Cost $140 Billion · · Score: 1

    Google wouldn't want to build a nationwide network. They are going to pick out the locations where there is a high demand for the service in small areas in order to get the most customers for the minimum installation costs. There's no way there are going to build fibre networks out in the country where the houses are kilometres apart. Their ideal clients right now are dense suburbs and apartment buildings in well off areas.

  24. Why not just go all the way... on New Jersey Residents Displaced By Storm Can Vote By Email · · Score: 1

    and allow voting by Twitter or Facebook likes.

  25. Getting diesel in an emergency isn't always easy on NYC Data Center Needs Focus On Fuel · · Score: 1

    I was working at a federal government department that was planning for a prolonged power outage and they were happy to have signed a contract with a diesel supplier should such a problem happen. This was happening shortly after the blackout in 2003. They were quiet proud of themselves for finding this solution to keep their "mission critical" web application up and running. This only lasted a couple of days until the city emergency planning committee came along and informed them that in such emergency the department would not be getting diesel supplies until emergency locations such as hospitals have been served.