Well, technically an external SCSI drive can be hot swapped (I've done it), but having the bus idle while swapping is important. It's just not a good idea to yank out a drive when the bus is active.
To be pedantic, "technically" an external SCSI drive cannot be hot-swapped -- the standard doesn't support it. It just happens to work most of the time, when, as you mentioned, the bus is idle. It works great, until it doesn't work (when you fry your SCSI interface).
Try not running that as root -- doesn't work too well. And people complain that Windows requires everyone to run as Administrator.
This is my current biggest annoyance with Linux -- the fact that it wants to put everything in/usr. It's only a matter of time before someone puts a significant trojan into an RPM...
Just being able to copy directories around in MacOSX is wonderful! Put things where you want, rather than where the distribution thinks they should go...
He also didn't include a jab at Red Hat's filesystem layout when they are fully LSB and FHS compliant.
Well, I think that's open to interpretation. The FHS specifies that "/usr" is for everything that is part of the "base OS install" (or something like that). I'm skeptical that "tux" can be considered as part of the base OS.
Regardless of whether they are right or wrong, I despise having thousands of files in/usr. Is there any distribution who thinks that there may be a better way? I'm getting tired of having to recompile gnome and KDE to be more sane (especially when RedHat's source RPMs often make it difficult to target anything other than/usr).
I laugh when people mention Windows' "DLL hell", when most Linux distributions do the equivalent of putting everything into C:\WINDOWS.
From what I heard there were just too many cases of people:
a) driving away with the pump hose still in the car's gas inlet, tearing off the hose and spilling gas all over
b) accidents involving smokers filling up. 'Nuff said.
No, I live in Oregon, and it is a fact that there are too many people who are too damned lazy to fill their own gas.
(I think that is a more plausible explanation than that Oregonians are stupider than the people in the other 48 states who are allowed to pump their own gas.)
It may be bullshit, but there is nothing which prohibits copyright holders from limiting use of the material.
You misunderstand the concept of "fair use".
There has never been any requirement that the copyright holders allow us to implement fair use (timeshifting, etc.). They were vehemently against being able to record programs onto VCRs, for instance. However, it was ruled legal for us to use VCRs as such. In fact, in the analog domain, it is even legal for us to bypass the copy protections that the copyright holders try to implement (macrovision).
This is all changed in the digital domain, however, as it is now illegal for us to access material that we have purchased, even if such use would have previously fallen under "fair use".
And I think that few people would argue that my being able to view my own purchased recordings on a DVD player in Australia does not qualify as "fair use".
What people should consider in the TiVo vs. PC debate is some of the modifications that can be made to a TiVo.
In addition to being able to upgrade the hard disks, which I think most people know about, you can buy an ethernet card for TiVos that allows you to upgrade your (first generation TiVo or DirectTivo):
Acquire guide data over broadband, rather than over the phone line
Allow most of the user interface, including scheduling of programs, to be run via a web interface that runs on the box.
Allow the MPEG data to be transfered directly from the hard drive. With some tweaks, you can direct the TiVo to record 720x480 video, which is directly DVD compatible! (See the forums). In the case of a DirecTiVo, the MPEG data is that which was stored directly off of the satellite...).
Note that all but the last are supported (or at least not discouraged) by TiVo corp. The latest version of the software (3.0) even includes the required ethernet drivers.
Well, as the Supreme Court judged soon after our country was founded ("US vs. the state of Maryland", if I recall correctly), "the power to tax is the power to destroy".
Imagine that the government imposed a tax (outrageous or not) on every news story that was published. This would be rightly ruled as a violation of the First Amendment (though with this court, who knows if they would make the same judgement...).
You have no money "invested" in Social Security. There is no account with your name on it (nor is there any "trust fund"), and you have no legal claim to any benefits whatsoever.
then:
Every plan for reforming Social Security that I've seen has been voluntary. If you don't think you have the ability to manage your own money, you would be free to continue to fling it into the current Ponzi scheme. But those of us who do understand basic concepts of math and economics shouldn't have to suffer because of your fears.
So, which is it? Do I have my own money in Social Security that I should be able to invest in the stock market, or do I not?
It's a known fact in the US that you can get away with absolutely ANY crime as long as you can afford it. Some examples:
O.J. Simpson -- Killed his wife and her 'friend' in cold blood.
President Bill Clinton: Received a hummer from an intern. Lied in court (perjury).
Senator Condit: Had an affair with Chandra Levy. Made her 'disappear'.
Okay, kids. Time to play a game. Which one of these isn't like the others???
Geez, have some perspective. A married man getting a BJ is bad judgement; lying under oath can be a felony, but rarely is convicted (and arguably isn't a crime for the president for whom separation of powers would argue that impeachment is the only recourse), but it's nothing like the others you listed (and nothing like selling weapons to our enemies, traffiking in drugs, or aiding in a multi-billion dollar energy fraud)...
I've always maintained that automobile companies should have to publish a "repair index" -- the cost (or ratio, or whatever) of replacing every single part in the car. This might attract attention to the unreasonable parts costs that the companies charge...
I'm not surprised that the studio is trying a DVD release without MacroVision. Before DVD's came out, I owned a number of laserdiscs. I also rented a bunch when they started to become rare. I would video tape the ones I rented, even though they had MacroVision protection. My stereo head unit has an option to "enhance video" that basically eliminates MacroVision. I never had a problem taping these discs.
Laserdiscs were incapable of macrovision. The medium (analog composite video) didn't support it , and, unlike DVD players, no players would inject it. Besides the video quality, this was one of the (slight) advantages that laserdiscs had in their day...
However installing an (illegal) mod chip into a device that already plays DVDs to get DivX compatibility is almost certainly an act that will be accompanies by piracy. There might be three people out there who are going to hack their X-Box to make a family movie or one of the other few legal uses, but by and large, this is for people who download the matrix and want to see it on their TV.
Actually, I'm interested in the prospect of being able to encode HDTV movies (that I capture and transcode myself from my own off-air antenna), to be played on the XBOX...
Some user suggested using find . -print | xargs rm
I see a lot of tips here that use "find" with "xargs". However, most of these (including the quoted one), won't handle filenames with spaces properly. I know that most Unix people don't have filename with spaces in them, but you don't want your careful "cleanup" script to remove the wrong file because some Macintosh user has (maliciously or not) saved such a file.
Anyway, the proper way, on a modern unix, is to use:
And without GIANT METEOR involvement the dinosaurs would still be alive, too fucking bad. Species go extinct all the time, it's not a big deal. These little buggers apparently didn't occupy any critical niche in the ecosystem since the system hasn't collapsed without them. There is no reason to bring them back for any reason other than study.
So, if the meteor wants to bring back the dinosaurs, he should, since he destroyed them...
My favorite out of that list HAS to be #if 0. I never never never never ever use that. Why? Im lazy. It will never get put back in correctly. I would ask a better question when you use #if 0. Why in THE HELL are you checking in code that does not work?
I typically use it for code that is correct, but which was taken out by "forces beyond my control" (such as marketing deciding that they didn't want that feature. If I think there is a chance they will want it back, and I don't want to lose the code, I'll fence it out...
Of course, for most artists, "going to a concert" means dealing with TicketBastards, which is a whole 'nother exercise in futility and lack of regard for the customer...
If the software performs according to its specifications (which I assume this software did), then it's not a "software bug", it's an error in the requirements.
Now, isn't the point of encapsulation and abstraction that you don't need to care about the underlying implementation? Having a library where you need to (for all non-trivial applications) just defeats the purpose of all that complexity in the first place.
No, the first level of optimization should always be to optimize the *algorithm* used, before you try to do more "micro-optimizations". If you're inserting elements into the middle of an array (vector), then your performance is going to suck. On the other hand, if you're jumping around through a linked list, the performance will likewise be poor.
The beauty if STL is that you can change your underlying data structure, to change the characteristics of your code, without having to go through and rewrite the code. So, if you want to write a data structure that has good performance for both insertion and random access, you can do so, without having to alter the code that uses the data structure.
Actualy[sic] the USA was founded on NOT obaying the law.
The USA Rebeled against its lawfull masters the British.
And, more specifically, the colonists rebelled against having to follows laws that they felt were passed without any representation by them -- many Americans feel the same way about the current situation in Congress.
In 1996 [dot.gov], speeding was a contributing factor in 30 percent of all fatal crashes, and 12,998 lives were lost in speeding-related crashes.
Does this mean that not speeding was the contributing factor in the other 70%? Given the statistics of most of the studies that I've read, the answer is "YES".
You see, most studies define a "speed-related" collision as a collision that occurred when one of the participants was exceeding the speed limit. They make no judgement call on whether speeding was a cause. The interesting part is that, even given this bias, the rate is always less than 50%.
The actual cause of most accidents (see the NMA website) is speed differential. The driver going twenty miles under the prevailing speed of traffic is as much of a hazard as the one going twenty over. (In my opinion, the slower car is more of a danger, as he requires everyone to try to get around him, while the faster driver can just slow down if he can't go at that speed anymore; if he is a "lane weaver", then he is a hazard, but that is because of the unsafe lane changes, not because of the speed!).
Check out rec.autos.driving for some spirited discussion of this topic...
I was just recently hassled by somebody who asked for my driver's license for a credit card transaction. This time, I was in a hurry, so, for a change, I just showed the license. She looked at the license, and handed back my credit card. I then signed the receipt. Note that, at no time did she check the signature against the credit card (which is what she is suppoesd/i. to do)! The last time that I refused to show my license, the clerk similarly didn't check the signature. Completing the transaction required summoning the manager, who then asked the clerk why he felt he needed additional authorization. The clerk just stated that "it's just something that I always do".
That is the basis for my complaint, and the reason that credit card companies dont' like this practive. The "experience" of buying with a credit card should be the same everywhere: (1) check the signature against the credit card, and (2) use the machine to get an authorization code, which can check to see whether the card was cancelled. Once they have done this, the merchant's ass is covered.
On the other hand, if every store were allowed to make their own policies, some might require driver's licenses, others could require two forms of ID, some other fascist clerk would ask for a birth certificate. This is what the credit card companies are trying to avoid.
I know that the requirements for authorization are stated in the Merchant Agreement. What I don't know is whether there are any punitive measures for a merchant who violates this aspect of the terms of the agreement...
Must carry-must pay says that the local cable company is legally required to carry any and all local broadcasters AND it has to pay or otherwise compensate those broadcasters for the "privilege" of re-transmitting that signal.
This isn't the way it works.
A station has the right to insist that the local cable company carry its station. If it does so, then the cable company must do so, but doesn't have to pay to do so. This is must-carry.
If the station (such as most, if not all, of the affiliates of the four broadcast networks) doesn't insist that it be carried, and the cable company wants to carry it anyway, then the cable company must pay the affiliate. This is must-pay.
Our local CBS affiliate (KOIN) in Portland, OR. is one of only two (the other is a station in Florida that shares the same owner) stations that has asked to be carried on DirecTV, but declined, stating that they weren't being paid enough. This I don't understand, since their advertising rates should be able to be somewhat higher with the increased viewers. I'm planning to get a list of the local advertisers that advertise on KOIN, and remind them gently that I can't see their advertisements, but could if they would advertise on any of the other local channels...
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To be pedantic, "technically" an external SCSI drive cannot be hot-swapped -- the standard doesn't support it. It just happens to work most of the time, when, as you mentioned, the bus is idle. It works great, until it doesn't work (when you fry your SCSI interface).
Try not running that as root -- doesn't work too well. And people complain that Windows requires everyone to run as Administrator.
This is my current biggest annoyance with Linux -- the fact that it wants to put everything in
Just being able to copy directories around in MacOSX is wonderful! Put things where you want, rather than where the distribution thinks they should go...
Well, I think that's open to interpretation. The FHS specifies that "/usr" is for everything that is part of the "base OS install" (or something like that). I'm skeptical that "tux" can be considered as part of the base OS.
Regardless of whether they are right or wrong, I despise having thousands of files in
I laugh when people mention Windows' "DLL hell", when most Linux distributions do the equivalent of putting everything into C:\WINDOWS.
Except that all of those latte-drinking yuppies would scream if their Canon-in-D-playing cellphones were to lose access...
No, I live in Oregon, and it is a fact that there are too many people who are too damned lazy to fill their own gas.
(I think that is a more plausible explanation than that Oregonians are stupider than the people in the other 48 states who are allowed to pump their own gas.)
There has never been any requirement that the copyright holders allow us to implement fair use (timeshifting, etc.). They were vehemently against being able to record programs onto VCRs, for instance. However, it was ruled legal for us to use VCRs as such. In fact, in the analog domain, it is even legal for us to bypass the copy protections that the copyright holders try to implement (macrovision).
This is all changed in the digital domain, however, as it is now illegal for us to access material that we have purchased, even if such use would have previously fallen under "fair use".
And I think that few people would argue that my being able to view my own purchased recordings on a DVD player in Australia does not qualify as "fair use".
In addition to being able to upgrade the hard disks, which I think most people know about, you can buy an ethernet card for TiVos that allows you to upgrade your (first generation TiVo or DirectTivo):
- Acquire guide data over broadband, rather than over the phone line
- Allow most of the user interface, including scheduling of programs, to be run via a web interface that runs on the box.
- Allow the MPEG data to be transfered directly from the hard drive. With some tweaks, you can direct the TiVo to record 720x480 video, which is directly DVD compatible! (See the forums). In the case of a DirecTiVo, the MPEG data is that which was stored directly off of the satellite...).
Note that all but the last are supported (or at least not discouraged) by TiVo corp. The latest version of the software (3.0) even includes the required ethernet drivers.Well, as the Supreme Court judged soon after our country was founded ("US vs. the state of Maryland", if I recall correctly), "the power to tax is the power to destroy".
Imagine that the government imposed a tax (outrageous or not) on every news story that was published. This would be rightly ruled as a violation of the First Amendment (though with this court, who knows if they would make the same judgement...).
then:
So, which is it? Do I have my own money in Social Security that I should be able to invest in the stock market, or do I not?
Okay, kids. Time to play a game. Which one of these isn't like the others???
Geez, have some perspective. A married man getting a BJ is bad judgement; lying under oath can be a felony, but rarely is convicted (and arguably isn't a crime for the president for whom separation of powers would argue that impeachment is the only recourse), but it's nothing like the others you listed (and nothing like selling weapons to our enemies, traffiking in drugs, or aiding in a multi-billion dollar energy fraud)...
I've always maintained that automobile companies should have to publish a "repair index" -- the cost (or ratio, or whatever) of replacing every single part in the car. This might attract attention to the unreasonable parts costs that the companies charge...
Laserdiscs were incapable of macrovision. The medium (analog composite video) didn't support it , and, unlike DVD players, no players would inject it. Besides the video quality, this was one of the (slight) advantages that laserdiscs had in their day...
Actually, I'm interested in the prospect of being able to encode HDTV movies (that I capture and transcode myself from my own off-air antenna), to be played on the XBOX...
FWIW...
Some user suggested using find . -print | xargs rm
I see a lot of tips here that use "find" with "xargs". However, most of these (including the quoted one), won't handle filenames with spaces properly. I know that most Unix people don't have filename with spaces in them, but you don't want your careful "cleanup" script to remove the wrong file because some Macintosh user has (maliciously or not) saved such a file.
Anyway, the proper way, on a modern unix, is to use:
find . -print0 | xargs -0 rm
So, if the meteor wants to bring back the dinosaurs, he should, since he destroyed them...
I typically use it for code that is correct, but which was taken out by "forces beyond my control" (such as marketing deciding that they didn't want that feature. If I think there is a chance they will want it back, and I don't want to lose the code, I'll fence it out...
Of course, for most artists, "going to a concert" means dealing with TicketBastards, which is a whole 'nother exercise in futility and lack of regard for the customer...
And the string of betas (tirelessly reported on Slashdot) over the last month didn't give you a hint that there was a new version coming out?
If the software performs according to its specifications (which I assume this software did), then it's not a "software bug", it's an error in the requirements.
This is actually good practice. You shouldn't use constants directly in your code, as you never know when the value of "TWO" might change!
The beauty if STL is that you can change your underlying data structure, to change the characteristics of your code, without having to go through and rewrite the code. So, if you want to write a data structure that has good performance for both insertion and random access, you can do so, without having to alter the code that uses the data structure.
You see, most studies define a "speed-related" collision as a collision that occurred when one of the participants was exceeding the speed limit. They make no judgement call on whether speeding was a cause. The interesting part is that, even given this bias, the rate is always less than 50%.
The actual cause of most accidents (see the NMA website) is speed differential. The driver going twenty miles under the prevailing speed of traffic is as much of a hazard as the one going twenty over. (In my opinion, the slower car is more of a danger, as he requires everyone to try to get around him, while the faster driver can just slow down if he can't go at that speed anymore; if he is a "lane weaver", then he is a hazard, but that is because of the unsafe lane changes, not because of the speed!).
Check out rec.autos.driving for some spirited discussion of this topic...
I was just recently hassled by somebody who asked for my driver's license for a credit card transaction. This time, I was in a hurry, so, for a change, I just showed the license. She looked at the license, and handed back my credit card. I then signed the receipt. Note that, at no time did she check the signature against the credit card (which is what she is suppoesd/i. to do)! The last time that I refused to show my license, the clerk similarly didn't check the signature. Completing the transaction required summoning the manager, who then asked the clerk why he felt he needed additional authorization. The clerk just stated that "it's just something that I always do".
That is the basis for my complaint, and the reason that credit card companies dont' like this practive. The "experience" of buying with a credit card should be the same everywhere: (1) check the signature against the credit card, and (2) use the machine to get an authorization code, which can check to see whether the card was cancelled. Once they have done this, the merchant's ass is covered.
On the other hand, if every store were allowed to make their own policies, some might require driver's licenses, others could require two forms of ID, some other fascist clerk would ask for a birth certificate. This is what the credit card companies are trying to avoid.
I know that the requirements for authorization are stated in the Merchant Agreement. What I don't know is whether there are any punitive measures for a merchant who violates this aspect of the terms of the agreement...
This isn't the way it works.
A station has the right to insist that the local cable company carry its station. If it does so, then the cable company must do so, but doesn't have to pay to do so. This is must-carry.
If the station (such as most, if not all, of the affiliates of the four broadcast networks) doesn't insist that it be carried, and the cable company wants to carry it anyway, then the cable company must pay the affiliate. This is must-pay.
Our local CBS affiliate (KOIN) in Portland, OR. is one of only two (the other is a station in Florida that shares the same owner) stations that has asked to be carried on DirecTV, but declined, stating that they weren't being paid enough. This I don't understand, since their advertising rates should be able to be somewhat higher with the increased viewers. I'm planning to get a list of the local advertisers that advertise on KOIN, and remind them gently that I can't see their advertisements, but could if they would advertise on any of the other local channels...