Reading the number of platters that each drive has got me to wondering: could you implement a simple RAID scheme within one drive? For example, 9 platters with the first 8 storing 1 bit of each byte and the last platter for parity? I guess technically it would be a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Platters, but that probably wouldn't be the best name from a PR standpoint. I can immediately think of one drawback, in that a bad area on one platter would prevent the use of the corresponding areas on the other 8 platters. Other than that though, if one of the heads were to crash and leave a big skid mark on one of the platters, the drive could still serve data and issue a warning to the OS. I realize that if this were a really feasible idea it probably would be done already, so I'm curious about the reasons why it isn't.
wait a month (or whatever), then do a low level format of all local disks on a Sunday at 4 in the morning
Aargh! What is it about computer viruses and malicious intent? It seems that they are inseparable. This is exactly the opposite of what I'm talking about. Format somebody's disk and you'll have the antivirus software after you before long. I'm wondering how long and how well a virus could survive and spread if those were its only goals. And especially if there were some mechanism for communication between different instances of the virus, you might see some very interesting results.
Most (computer) viruses today are created with malicious intent. When you are infected, you know it. I was thinking the other day that if a virus were to arise "organically", i.e. not designed (or alternatively, mutated from a designed virus), that its best chance at survival is the exact opposite of what most viruses do. The best strategy would be to lie low, staying as much out of sight as possible, and continue reproducing when possible. Has a virus like this been seen? If so, then I wonder how many more have not been seen?
According to the article, Razorfish did not meet several conditions of the contract:
It alleges that some of those breaches include building a site that could not be accessed with version 4.0 of AOL's software, despite promising a site that could be so accessed; missing almost all delivery deadlines; and creating an interface for IAM's buy-side tool that was "unusable."
If these allegations are true, then I'd say there definitely was a breach of contract and that IAM.com has every right to sue.
I would tend to think that in at least some ways, flying the helicopter would be less difficult than controlling the rover. As long as you are able to maintain attitude and altitude control, you aren't going to run into anything. Ditches, boulders, sand slopes, etc cease to be an issue.
I'll answer this on the assumption that you're really serious about your question. Animals and plants are entirely different organisms. Depending on the animal you're looking at, it has behavior, volition, and expresses feelings like contentment, fear, and pain. There is (barely, IMHO) room for debate about whether the animals actually (whatever that turns out to mean) feel the emotions that they seem to be expressing. The same argument can be made about other people though, if you are sufficiently skeptical. But an animal who is subjected to conditions that would cause pain to a human, generally will act like a human in pain would. It therefore seems (again, IMO) that it is quite reasonable to conclude that animals can feel some of the things that humans feel. That they have a conscious experience of what is happening to them.
Plants, on the other hand, display almost no behavior or signs of consciousness whatsoever. There is no compelling reason to suspect that animals have any experience of what is happening to them.
The distinction is not in "cuteness" (I don't eat shrimp either). The distinction is in what sort of experience my prospective meal has of the process of becoming my meal. I'll never know for sure what a fish or a cucumber may experience, but the same holds true for other people too, so I just have to go on what I can see, and the most reasonable conclusion IMO is that animals feel and that plants do not, and I have amended my diet accordingly.
(1) and (3) I have no argument for. They do taste good. And you certainly have the power to eat them, and thus contribute to the entire process that brings their body parts to your dinner plate. (2) is a bit misleading though. Yes meat does provide you with nutrients. Also with saturated fat and cholesterol, which are rare and nonexistant, respectively, in plants. It certainly does not provide you with nutrients that you wouldn't have otherwise. So don't use that as a reason; it's compeletly bogus. At least be honest about your motivations, even if it is a bit uncomfortable.
Killing animals for pure enjoyment of the kill is hardly the same as killing for food.
I've said it before and I'll say it again here: No one in America kills animals for food. We have plenty of food without killing animals. Animals are killed because people want to eat a certain type of food. We are killing these animals purely for enjoyment: the enjoyment we get from eating a steak as opposed to something without meat.
Seriously, I don't think that this piece of editorial tripe belongs in this story. Sure, animal suffering is a bad thing, but if you want to highlight the plight of animals, don't be sneaky about it...stand up and write an editorial and give it its own title!
Now the issue of whether the editorial was related to the title, is very much open. But your points are just plain wrong. May I recommend that you know what the post says, before presuming to tell me to read it again?
Animals are not killed for food. They are killed for taste. We have food. Nobody is going to starve (quite the opposite in fact) if we suddenly stop slaughtering cows, pigs, chickens, etc. I agree that killing animals for food is not unethical, because without food I will die, and I am comfortable making the animal vs. me choice. But I've never had to make that choice and I'll bet you haven't, either.
So you say animal suffering is bad, and in the same post say that you eat them every day. If your actions disagree with your beliefs so blatantly, why should anyone listen to anything you have to say? Or perhaps I shouldn't assume that "Don't do things that are bad" is part of your belief system. That makes me wonder though, what does "bad" mean?
...this game was banned for minors in Canada, not the US, so I'm not sure how much of a case for government hypocrisy you can make there, given that Canada is pretty strict about guns.
...is the 12-disc changer in my car be able to read MP3's off CD-R's. That would be like a thousand songs at my command. Can you imagine a beow-...never mind.
MIAMI, FLORIDA: Almost eight years after Hurricane Andrew swept through the city of Miami, causing billions of dollars of damage, most of those whose homes or businesses were destroyed have completed the rebuilding process. In the vast majority of cases, the rebuilt homes and offices are better-constructed and more modern than the buildings they replaced. "Hurricane Andrew is the best thing that ever happened to this town" said one city council member.
Since the "operating system" for the XBox (an extremely pared-down version of the NT kernel) has no purpose or capabilities other than to run on the XBox hardware, I think it should go with the Non-OS part of Microsoft. It's not as if the XBox OS is going to be in competition with any other OS; it only competes with other consoles. Therefore I think it ought to be treated for this purpose as part of the hardware system and not as an OS.
That's true, if you happen to have the skills to jump ship at any time. Most don't. You and I are lucky enough to be largely exempted from the situation I described. Most aren't. The economy is more than tech workers (thank god). Be thankful for what you have and realize that most don't have it. Remember it's not just tech workers who are tied to their jobs with these little technological marvels like pagers and cell phones.
I did quit my job and get one with fewer hours. It's less money too, but I can't tell you what a difference it's made for me in terms of my quality of life. Not everyone has the luxuries that you have attributed to the tech caste though. As tech people, we do enjoy a very privileged spot in the economic system that currently is in place. Don't think that very many others in the workforce share our good fortune. Katz wasn't (only) talking about tech people in his article. It's people in all areas who are now tied even more tightly to their jobs by their cell phones, pagers, and PDAs. And most of them don't possess job skills that enable them to jump ship at will. Katz's point remains: what benefits have individuals gained from the "digital revolution", in terms of leisure time and quality of life?
...of the way society has been moving for a long time. It's not built for the benefit of individuals any longer, but for the benefit of corporations. Think about (in the US) the processes of government and economic participation, and ask yourself where the balance of power lies between individuals and corporations. Is it any surprise then that the benefits from technological advance have gone almost exclusively to the corporations rather than the individual workers themselves? I predict that unless and until some kind of revolution takes place, workers will continue to see thier leisure time eroded and their freedom dimished. Until that time, it will not get any better in terms of true quality and meaning of life.
Slashdot Mirror
The only HDD I've ever had crash was a Maxtor. All I did was drop it in the driveway.
Reading the number of platters that each drive has got me to wondering: could you implement a simple RAID scheme within one drive? For example, 9 platters with the first 8 storing 1 bit of each byte and the last platter for parity? I guess technically it would be a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Platters, but that probably wouldn't be the best name from a PR standpoint. I can immediately think of one drawback, in that a bad area on one platter would prevent the use of the corresponding areas on the other 8 platters. Other than that though, if one of the heads were to crash and leave a big skid mark on one of the platters, the drive could still serve data and issue a warning to the OS. I realize that if this were a really feasible idea it probably would be done already, so I'm curious about the reasons why it isn't.
That may be true, but endangering someone's business model is not a good basis for setting legal precedents.
Could it be that it's only a matter of time until what you describe happens?
Exactly what I'm getting at. Fascinating prospect, isn't it?
wait a month (or whatever), then do a low level format of all local disks on a Sunday at 4 in the morning
Aargh! What is it about computer viruses and malicious intent? It seems that they are inseparable. This is exactly the opposite of what I'm talking about. Format somebody's disk and you'll have the antivirus software after you before long. I'm wondering how long and how well a virus could survive and spread if those were its only goals. And especially if there were some mechanism for communication between different instances of the virus, you might see some very interesting results.
Most (computer) viruses today are created with malicious intent. When you are infected, you know it. I was thinking the other day that if a virus were to arise "organically", i.e. not designed (or alternatively, mutated from a designed virus), that its best chance at survival is the exact opposite of what most viruses do. The best strategy would be to lie low, staying as much out of sight as possible, and continue reproducing when possible. Has a virus like this been seen? If so, then I wonder how many more have not been seen?
I think IAS ought to sue Hemos for causing their innocent-bystander website to be slashdotted.
According to the article, Razorfish did not meet several conditions of the contract:
It alleges that some of those breaches include building a site that could not be accessed with version 4.0 of AOL's software, despite promising a site that could be so accessed; missing almost all delivery deadlines; and creating an interface for IAM's buy-side tool that was "unusable."
If these allegations are true, then I'd say there definitely was a breach of contract and that IAM.com has every right to sue.
I would tend to think that in at least some ways, flying the helicopter would be less difficult than controlling the rover. As long as you are able to maintain attitude and altitude control, you aren't going to run into anything. Ditches, boulders, sand slopes, etc cease to be an issue.
I wonder why if pigs can be killed so instantly, painlessly, and reliably, we have so many horrific fuck-ups with the electric chair in Florida?
I'll answer this on the assumption that you're really serious about your question. Animals and plants are entirely different organisms. Depending on the animal you're looking at, it has behavior, volition, and expresses feelings like contentment, fear, and pain. There is (barely, IMHO) room for debate about whether the animals actually (whatever that turns out to mean) feel the emotions that they seem to be expressing. The same argument can be made about other people though, if you are sufficiently skeptical. But an animal who is subjected to conditions that would cause pain to a human, generally will act like a human in pain would. It therefore seems (again, IMO) that it is quite reasonable to conclude that animals can feel some of the things that humans feel. That they have a conscious experience of what is happening to them.
Plants, on the other hand, display almost no behavior or signs of consciousness whatsoever. There is no compelling reason to suspect that animals have any experience of what is happening to them.
The distinction is not in "cuteness" (I don't eat shrimp either). The distinction is in what sort of experience my prospective meal has of the process of becoming my meal. I'll never know for sure what a fish or a cucumber may experience, but the same holds true for other people too, so I just have to go on what I can see, and the most reasonable conclusion IMO is that animals feel and that plants do not, and I have amended my diet accordingly.
(1) and (3) I have no argument for. They do taste good. And you certainly have the power to eat them, and thus contribute to the entire process that brings their body parts to your dinner plate. (2) is a bit misleading though. Yes meat does provide you with nutrients. Also with saturated fat and cholesterol, which are rare and nonexistant, respectively, in plants. It certainly does not provide you with nutrients that you wouldn't have otherwise. So don't use that as a reason; it's compeletly bogus. At least be honest about your motivations, even if it is a bit uncomfortable.
Killing animals for pure enjoyment of the kill is hardly the same as killing for food.
I've said it before and I'll say it again here: No one in America kills animals for food. We have plenty of food without killing animals. Animals are killed because people want to eat a certain type of food. We are killing these animals purely for enjoyment: the enjoyment we get from eating a steak as opposed to something without meat.
Um. Check out Hardcase's thrid paragraph:
Seriously, I don't think that this piece of editorial tripe belongs in this story. Sure, animal suffering is a bad thing, but if you want to highlight the plight of animals, don't be sneaky about it...stand up and write an editorial and give it its own title!
Now the issue of whether the editorial was related to the title, is very much open. But your points are just plain wrong. May I recommend that you know what the post says, before presuming to tell me to read it again?
Animals are not killed for food. They are killed for taste. We have food. Nobody is going to starve (quite the opposite in fact) if we suddenly stop slaughtering cows, pigs, chickens, etc. I agree that killing animals for food is not unethical, because without food I will die, and I am comfortable making the animal vs. me choice. But I've never had to make that choice and I'll bet you haven't, either.
So you say animal suffering is bad, and in the same post say that you eat them every day. If your actions disagree with your beliefs so blatantly, why should anyone listen to anything you have to say? Or perhaps I shouldn't assume that "Don't do things that are bad" is part of your belief system. That makes me wonder though, what does "bad" mean?
...this game was banned for minors in Canada, not the US, so I'm not sure how much of a case for government hypocrisy you can make there, given that Canada is pretty strict about guns.
...is the 12-disc changer in my car be able to read MP3's off CD-R's. That would be like a thousand songs at my command. Can you imagine a beow-...never mind.
MIAMI, FLORIDA: Almost eight years after Hurricane Andrew swept through the city of Miami, causing billions of dollars of damage, most of those whose homes or businesses were destroyed have completed the rebuilding process. In the vast majority of cases, the rebuilt homes and offices are better-constructed and more modern than the buildings they replaced. "Hurricane Andrew is the best thing that ever happened to this town" said one city council member.
Since the "operating system" for the XBox (an extremely pared-down version of the NT kernel) has no purpose or capabilities other than to run on the XBox hardware, I think it should go with the Non-OS part of Microsoft. It's not as if the XBox OS is going to be in competition with any other OS; it only competes with other consoles. Therefore I think it ought to be treated for this purpose as part of the hardware system and not as an OS.
...has some good thinking on the reality of jobs in America.
CLAWS: Creating Livable Alternatives to Wage Slavery
That's true, if you happen to have the skills to jump ship at any time. Most don't. You and I are lucky enough to be largely exempted from the situation I described. Most aren't. The economy is more than tech workers (thank god). Be thankful for what you have and realize that most don't have it. Remember it's not just tech workers who are tied to their jobs with these little technological marvels like pagers and cell phones.
I did quit my job and get one with fewer hours. It's less money too, but I can't tell you what a difference it's made for me in terms of my quality of life. Not everyone has the luxuries that you have attributed to the tech caste though. As tech people, we do enjoy a very privileged spot in the economic system that currently is in place. Don't think that very many others in the workforce share our good fortune. Katz wasn't (only) talking about tech people in his article. It's people in all areas who are now tied even more tightly to their jobs by their cell phones, pagers, and PDAs. And most of them don't possess job skills that enable them to jump ship at will. Katz's point remains: what benefits have individuals gained from the "digital revolution", in terms of leisure time and quality of life?
...of the way society has been moving for a long time. It's not built for the benefit of individuals any longer, but for the benefit of corporations. Think about (in the US) the processes of government and economic participation, and ask yourself where the balance of power lies between individuals and corporations. Is it any surprise then that the benefits from technological advance have gone almost exclusively to the corporations rather than the individual workers themselves? I predict that unless and until some kind of revolution takes place, workers will continue to see thier leisure time eroded and their freedom dimished. Until that time, it will not get any better in terms of true quality and meaning of life.