Given the lack of styrofoam or 0ther internal support in the boxes, I'd say it doesn't look intentional at all.
See waht happens when you put, say, 500 pounds of weight bearing down on the top of one of those boxes, with no internal support, and then the truck hits some bumps, bouncing the load... so you might get up to 1000 pounds of force on the box for a moment.. hypothetically.
Boxes with the sides split? That's just what happens when the box starts to collapse. In fact, all those pictures show what happens when a box starts to deform.. and boxes deform because they are not packed correctly.
Packed correctly doens't mean 'I added some bubblewrap' either.
I feel for you man.. but, if those pictures are at all accurate, the focus of your article should be 'how not to pack computers'.
Before you assume UPS beat your computers with a sledgehammer (which it looks like) consider what happens when a few thousand pounds of weight are put on a box while it's stacked with a bunch of other boxes, and said box is not packed correctly. The box quickly deforms; and those forces are concentrated on the contents of the box, ie: your computer.
Bubblewrap and paper, and a blanket wrap work fine to shield a computer from, say, a ride in the back of a pickup, or in the back seat of your car...
but for real shipping, you have to have that box packed such that forces are distributed evenly through the box.. AROUND what's in it. This means: custom fit styrofoam, like the way it's shipped to you... or packing peanuts. Or.. if it's blankets.. lots of them, wadded up into balls, and PACKED in. You should be able to stand on that box before shipping it out and not have anything bad happen.
Proper packing for shipment is about more than cushioning the contents from being knocked around, or keepin them from shifting... it's about distributing otherwise crushing forces in such a way that the contents are protected.
I'm sorry to say it... but what happened to your equipment really, truly looks like the result of improper packaging. It really DOES make that much of a difference.
There is still something called 'gross negligence'.
ie: It is fair to assume that UPS is not going to take a shotgun & 50lb sledgehammer to your equipment and smash it to bits. You can't say 'Sorry, not our fault'. It just means there is no third party insurance.
This looks like gross negligence to me. It's not like something just got a bit bent (like, say, a china plate being broken in half or something.. or a cracked pane of glass). This stuff is *destroyed*.
The DMCA doens't threaten 'the internet'. IT threatens people from using the internet to legally disseminate information. IT's not specific to the internet.
In the case of an actual copyright violation, parts of the DMCA make sense. It's just overly broad, with some bad sections. It's bad law, for sure.
But it doesn't threaten the internet.. it threatens the actions of individuals and businesses.
It's like making a press stop printing a certain book , or a store from selling that book, because the information inside it is stolen.
Unfortunately, they don't exist.
on
Clockless Chips
·
· Score: 2
Sure, in theory they are possible, and tests have been done on some types of circuit.. but to claim 'asynchronous chips are smaller, take less power, and are 3x faster' is kind of silly.. if this is the case, where are the chips?
Re:Already discussed stupid hd buses w/ ATA133 sto
on
Firewire and Linux?
·
· Score: 2
Wow. What a tirade.
FireWire is *fantastic* for storage. It's much like scsi.
Why do you not think it's suitable for hard drives?
What's 'not suitable' about cheap, easy to use, hot pluggable 80 gig drives you can just stack up for extra storage on your desk at work? or at home?
Oh. You mean desktops.
Not good for desktops. But for laptops. Or portable storage.
You've never traded DivX with others? Moved huge numbers of mp3? CD just doesn't cut it.. but a firewire drive.. ahh.. that's the ticket.
Latency would still be too high, I'm thinking.
Yes, you could take the hugest cluster in the world and do massive computations, really fast...
but the time between feeding the equation to the machine and getting the answer is what's at stake.
It may reduce a 100 year problem to 10 seconds.. but it can't reduce a 1 second problem to a hundredth of a second.
Part of the reason that modern 3d video cards get such performance is the high-speed bus between the video processors doing all the 3d work and the video ram itself.
It said , in big letters 'FUCK'.
Then, underneath, in smaller letters,
'If this shirt said 'murder', you wouldn't have a problem with it, would you...'
In principle, I think it makese sense: bandwidth as a public resource, an essential service.
My reservation is that, if it's government run, a few whiny idiots in the community can turn around and slap filters on it, and start using it to regulate what THEY don't like.
So.. as long as the charter that runs it is about being purely available... it's great.
Well...
The main factor in determining your q3 performance is not processor speed, but the bandwidth between the processor and video card (and the video card and the actual display buffer).
Even if you could thread quake through a cluster, it would make no difference.
As for threading.. these clusters are not hte same thing as a multirpocessor machine... unless they implement shared memory and such across the network.. which would be slow.
What a horrible purchase.
Oh sure.. I like my tiny little laptop.. but in hindsight.
1) Sony support sucks ass. They REFUSED To sell me a new keyboard, as it's not 'user-replacable' (but you have to take it out to replace the user-replacable ram.. hmm)
2) They said that I had to send it to LA to get the keyboard replaced, and that they would re-format the laptop and re-install from the recovery disks to test that it works. There was no way around this.
Luckily.. I fixed it myself.
Linux.. linux went in okay..but I have to say, having the BIOS only boot from Sony's CD Rom is a major pain in the ass when upgrading.
You want a week's battery life? not going to happen.
By the way, from the sounds of it, you aren't the 'typical linux user' by your requirements.
My advice, and no, I'm not a mac user...
Get a new mac iBook. yes. That's right.
Give OSX a shot while you are at it.. then install linux if you don't like it. IT's light, much better than average battery life, very nice display, rugged, and cheap.
Ack. My previous message was cut short when I whacked the submit button by accident.
This is the pain that I have found in doing systems admin. When it comes to windows... as the IT Dept... the ideal situation is one where you can delegate as little or as much control over resources to each user on a case by case basis. I want users to be able to try new software without bugging me, but I dont' want them to be able to screw up their workstation (because I have to fix it), etc.
In Windows, this is exceedingly hard to do (Even though MS will tell you otherwise. They'll show you active directory and all that jazz..). In unix, it's dead easy.
When I demo linux to a business.. I need to show them more than 'look you can open a word document'.
If you try to simply show them a desktop, you may lose.
I need to show them how one fairly cheap server can handle remote desktops with all the neat features using a bunch of crap PC's. I need to show them how it will be much LONGER before they need to upgrade their PCs to run new applications. I need to show them that, instead of upgrading all 20 pc's in their network in a few years, they will only have to add a new server (and even keep using the old one as well).
And I need them to actually SEE this working, because otherwise they don't buy it.
Then I show them how, oh, you have expansion plans? Well when you add 20 more staff, with this system, you don't NEED to spend a couple grand on each person for a computer.. you can buy terminals from so-and-so and just drop them in.. and they will simply work.
As for the common-man's desktop, at home.. linux isn't there yet. Common-man doesn't want to learn about administering unix.
For the workplace desktop... linux is actually there in my opinion. Not for every shop, certainly.. but it's there.
Largo is a great example. Yes, you need administrators who grok linux... but a couple of those and you end up wiht a HUGE, easy to maintain network of diskless workstations.
You say not everyone can afford a 60,000 gbp/year for a unix expert... please! show me where I can go work for 60k pounds a year!
The kind of person who can run such a network, let's say, 20 workstations and a 2 servers (for redundancy). does NOT have to make US$100,000 a year. This is not 'huge company head unix guy'.
Maybe he makes... $60k.
The costs you save on support and downtime can be staggering.
Microsoft sales are very, very good at showing you why the MS way is the cheaper way on paper. It's hard to refute. It just never works out that way in practice.
I'm looking at rolling out a new customer service center. Every clerk needs a computer.
Exactly.
Paypal is concerned about people, say, depositing money from credit card, paying an auction with it, then, because they feel they are getting scammed or something, cancelling the credit card charges (which they should NOT do, because, as far as the transaction with paypal goes, the charge was completely legit.)
All PP would have to show is that you deposited the money (as opposed to, say, your account being stolen and the card being abused). Period. Because if you did, regardless of what happened after, the transaction was legitimate.\
Visa, Mastercard, etc, are very specific and protective about what merchants can and cannot do, because they want to keep the card attractive.
If PayPal fraudulently charged your card, ie: double-billing you for a deposit, and you cancel it.. yes, paypal can refuse to do business with you again. But they cannot hold YOU responsible for any fees; the charge they made was illegal in the first place. Regardless of what a contract says.
Now.. if you were cancelling it for some OTHER reason, not related to paypals' actions, ie: you think you are getting ripped off by someone in an auction... yes, I can see paypal's point. They acted in good faith; the billing wasn't fraudulent, so why should you be able to cancel it?
Re:You should have called your credit company.
on
The PayPal Phenomenon
·
· Score: 2
Well.. what I was responding to said that paypal had 'double billed his credit card'
The DMCA does not specifically cover 'encryption' on 'copyrighted works'.
It covers COPYRIGHT PROTECTION MECHANISMS. You just assume those must be encrypted.
ie: Let's say a new CD format came out that just used a couple of bits to determine if a work is permitted to be copied (and requires a new player to play, etc). Someone who reveals a way to 'ignore' those bits, ie: by hotwiring the device is also violating the DMCA.
The linux kernel could very well have someone's copyrighted work on it, and giving someone the ability to obtain root access without authorization in order to copy that work could be constituted as a violation of the act. Yes, it's a stretch.. but not completely out to lunch. That's how broad the language of the DMCA is.
As for the 'sheer stupidity' of a British Citizen doing this... what about that Russian Citizen who was arrested for this very law?
If Alan wants to ever visit the US, say, to go to a conference, or the Superbowl, or whatever... he'll have to make sure he stears clear of US law, no?
Alan isn't a proponent of security through obscurity. He's a proponent of not getting arrested upon entering the United States.
Yes. I like the fact that ext3 is an addition to ext2 as well...
I don't expect that much development into ext3. Why? It has a clearly defined goal: Journalling. Once journalling works, and is optimized... that's it.
Reiserfs, and others, have many other features as well.
Slashdot Mirror
That's still not an excuse for improper packing.
Given the lack of styrofoam or 0ther internal support in the boxes, I'd say it doesn't look intentional at all.
See waht happens when you put, say, 500 pounds of weight bearing down on the top of one of those boxes, with no internal support, and then the truck hits some bumps, bouncing the load... so you might get up to 1000 pounds of force on the box for a moment.. hypothetically.
Boxes with the sides split? That's just what happens when the box starts to collapse. In fact, all those pictures show what happens when a box starts to deform.. and boxes deform because they are not packed correctly.
Packed correctly doens't mean 'I added some bubblewrap' either.
I feel for you man.. but, if those pictures are at all accurate, the focus of your article should be 'how not to pack computers'.
Before you assume UPS beat your computers with a sledgehammer (which it looks like) consider what happens when a few thousand pounds of weight are put on a box while it's stacked with a bunch of other boxes, and said box is not packed correctly. The box quickly deforms; and those forces are concentrated on the contents of the box, ie: your computer.
Bubblewrap and paper, and a blanket wrap work fine to shield a computer from, say, a ride in the back of a pickup, or in the back seat of your car...
but for real shipping, you have to have that box packed such that forces are distributed evenly through the box.. AROUND what's in it. This means: custom fit styrofoam, like the way it's shipped to you... or packing peanuts. Or.. if it's blankets.. lots of them, wadded up into balls, and PACKED in. You should be able to stand on that box before shipping it out and not have anything bad happen.
Proper packing for shipment is about more than cushioning the contents from being knocked around, or keepin them from shifting... it's about distributing otherwise crushing forces in such a way that the contents are protected.
I'm sorry to say it... but what happened to your equipment really, truly looks like the result of improper packaging. It really DOES make that much of a difference.
There is still something called 'gross negligence'.
ie: It is fair to assume that UPS is not going to take a shotgun & 50lb sledgehammer to your equipment and smash it to bits. You can't say 'Sorry, not our fault'. It just means there is no third party insurance.
This looks like gross negligence to me. It's not like something just got a bit bent (like, say, a china plate being broken in half or something.. or a cracked pane of glass). This stuff is *destroyed*.
The DMCA doens't threaten 'the internet'. IT threatens people from using the internet to legally disseminate information. IT's not specific to the internet.
In the case of an actual copyright violation, parts of the DMCA make sense. It's just overly broad, with some bad sections. It's bad law, for sure.
But it doesn't threaten the internet.. it threatens the actions of individuals and businesses.
It's like making a press stop printing a certain book , or a store from selling that book, because the information inside it is stolen.
Sure, in theory they are possible, and tests have been done on some types of circuit.. but to claim 'asynchronous chips are smaller, take less power, and are 3x faster' is kind of silly.. if this is the case, where are the chips?
Wow. What a tirade.
FireWire is *fantastic* for storage. It's much like scsi.
Why do you not think it's suitable for hard drives?
What's 'not suitable' about cheap, easy to use, hot pluggable 80 gig drives you can just stack up for extra storage on your desk at work? or at home?
Oh. You mean desktops.
Not good for desktops. But for laptops. Or portable storage.
You've never traded DivX with others? Moved huge numbers of mp3? CD just doesn't cut it.. but a firewire drive.. ahh.. that's the ticket.
Latency would still be too high, I'm thinking.
Yes, you could take the hugest cluster in the world and do massive computations, really fast...
but the time between feeding the equation to the machine and getting the answer is what's at stake.
It may reduce a 100 year problem to 10 seconds.. but it can't reduce a 1 second problem to a hundredth of a second.
Part of the reason that modern 3d video cards get such performance is the high-speed bus between the video processors doing all the 3d work and the video ram itself.
Yeah.. you aren't aware you can amplify a received signal as well?
It said , in big letters 'FUCK'.
Then, underneath, in smaller letters,
'If this shirt said 'murder', you wouldn't have a problem with it, would you...'
In principle, I think it makese sense: bandwidth as a public resource, an essential service.
My reservation is that, if it's government run, a few whiny idiots in the community can turn around and slap filters on it, and start using it to regulate what THEY don't like.
So.. as long as the charter that runs it is about being purely available... it's great.
Well...
The main factor in determining your q3 performance is not processor speed, but the bandwidth between the processor and video card (and the video card and the actual display buffer).
Even if you could thread quake through a cluster, it would make no difference.
As for threading.. these clusters are not hte same thing as a multirpocessor machine... unless they implement shared memory and such across the network.. which would be slow.
Yeah. I have a z505le....
What a horrible purchase.
Oh sure.. I like my tiny little laptop.. but in hindsight.
1) Sony support sucks ass. They REFUSED To sell me a new keyboard, as it's not 'user-replacable' (but you have to take it out to replace the user-replacable ram.. hmm)
2) They said that I had to send it to LA to get the keyboard replaced, and that they would re-format the laptop and re-install from the recovery disks to test that it works. There was no way around this.
Luckily.. I fixed it myself.
Linux.. linux went in okay..but I have to say, having the BIOS only boot from Sony's CD Rom is a major pain in the ass when upgrading.
I will never buy another sony again.
Bad idea. Not going to happen.
You want a week's battery life? not going to happen.
By the way, from the sounds of it, you aren't the 'typical linux user' by your requirements.
My advice, and no, I'm not a mac user...
Get a new mac iBook. yes. That's right.
Give OSX a shot while you are at it.. then install linux if you don't like it. IT's light, much better than average battery life, very nice display, rugged, and cheap.
I think when it comes to airsnort, it's Rx sensitivity that you really want.
Any card will do, just get an antennae more suited to the job.
Heck.. if you're driving around breaking into networks, why not break the law a little more and use some amplifiers?
Ack. My previous message was cut short when I whacked the submit button by accident.
This is the pain that I have found in doing systems admin. When it comes to windows... as the IT Dept... the ideal situation is one where you can delegate as little or as much control over resources to each user on a case by case basis. I want users to be able to try new software without bugging me, but I dont' want them to be able to screw up their workstation (because I have to fix it), etc.
In Windows, this is exceedingly hard to do (Even though MS will tell you otherwise. They'll show you active directory and all that jazz..). In unix, it's dead easy.
When I demo linux to a business.. I need to show them more than 'look you can open a word document'.
If you try to simply show them a desktop, you may lose.
I need to show them how one fairly cheap server can handle remote desktops with all the neat features using a bunch of crap PC's. I need to show them how it will be much LONGER before they need to upgrade their PCs to run new applications. I need to show them that, instead of upgrading all 20 pc's in their network in a few years, they will only have to add a new server (and even keep using the old one as well).
And I need them to actually SEE this working, because otherwise they don't buy it.
Then I show them how, oh, you have expansion plans? Well when you add 20 more staff, with this system, you don't NEED to spend a couple grand on each person for a computer.. you can buy terminals from so-and-so and just drop them in.. and they will simply work.
I think your picture is a bit too simplistic.
As for the common-man's desktop, at home.. linux isn't there yet. Common-man doesn't want to learn about administering unix.
For the workplace desktop... linux is actually there in my opinion. Not for every shop, certainly.. but it's there.
Largo is a great example. Yes, you need administrators who grok linux... but a couple of those and you end up wiht a HUGE, easy to maintain network of diskless workstations.
You say not everyone can afford a 60,000 gbp/year for a unix expert... please! show me where I can go work for 60k pounds a year!
The kind of person who can run such a network, let's say, 20 workstations and a 2 servers (for redundancy). does NOT have to make US$100,000 a year. This is not 'huge company head unix guy'.
Maybe he makes... $60k.
The costs you save on support and downtime can be staggering.
Microsoft sales are very, very good at showing you why the MS way is the cheaper way on paper. It's hard to refute. It just never works out that way in practice.
I'm looking at rolling out a new customer service center. Every clerk needs a computer.
Exactly.
Paypal is concerned about people, say, depositing money from credit card, paying an auction with it, then, because they feel they are getting scammed or something, cancelling the credit card charges (which they should NOT do, because, as far as the transaction with paypal goes, the charge was completely legit.)
All PP would have to show is that you deposited the money (as opposed to, say, your account being stolen and the card being abused). Period. Because if you did, regardless of what happened after, the transaction was legitimate.\
Visa, Mastercard, etc, are very specific and protective about what merchants can and cannot do, because they want to keep the card attractive.
If PayPal fraudulently charged your card, ie: double-billing you for a deposit, and you cancel it.. yes, paypal can refuse to do business with you again. But they cannot hold YOU responsible for any fees; the charge they made was illegal in the first place. Regardless of what a contract says.
Now.. if you were cancelling it for some OTHER reason, not related to paypals' actions, ie: you think you are getting ripped off by someone in an auction... yes, I can see paypal's point. They acted in good faith; the billing wasn't fraudulent, so why should you be able to cancel it?
Well.. what I was responding to said that paypal had 'double billed his credit card'
Right. Well.
If you think the US hasn't prosecuted people for things that happen outside the US, you better go back to your little bubble.
"The code was made available to Americans on the internet, therefore, he violated US law on US soil"
The DMCA isn't about encryption.
It's also not about flaws in tires, or bugs in software.
It's about technological systems that protect copyrighted works.
The DMCA does not specifically cover 'encryption' on 'copyrighted works'.
It covers COPYRIGHT PROTECTION MECHANISMS. You just assume those must be encrypted.
ie: Let's say a new CD format came out that just used a couple of bits to determine if a work is permitted to be copied (and requires a new player to play, etc). Someone who reveals a way to 'ignore' those bits, ie: by hotwiring the device is also violating the DMCA.
The linux kernel could very well have someone's copyrighted work on it, and giving someone the ability to obtain root access without authorization in order to copy that work could be constituted as a violation of the act. Yes, it's a stretch.. but not completely out to lunch. That's how broad the language of the DMCA is.
As for the 'sheer stupidity' of a British Citizen doing this... what about that Russian Citizen who was arrested for this very law?
If Alan wants to ever visit the US, say, to go to a conference, or the Superbowl, or whatever... he'll have to make sure he stears clear of US law, no?
Alan isn't a proponent of security through obscurity. He's a proponent of not getting arrested upon entering the United States.
Yes. I like the fact that ext3 is an addition to ext2 as well...
I don't expect that much development into ext3. Why? It has a clearly defined goal: Journalling. Once journalling works, and is optimized... that's it.
Reiserfs, and others, have many other features as well.