Top posting is not easy to understand unless both: A) You've been involved in the conversation from the start B) The reply is short enough to not need any direct context
But haven't you ever been included in later replies where everything is top posted? You then have to read backwards through the whole thread to figure out what is going on. In the same way, if you're trying to re-read an only thread top posting requires reading bottom to top -- you say it's linear, and it is, but it's also anti-chronological.
And even you admit that when you want to use the original email for direct context top-posting is not useful.
It's not clear to me how top posting makes *anything* easier, other than it's what Outlook users expect. What am I missing?
The brits didn't do it at all. They weigh people in stones and speeds in MPH. They sell beer in 1/2 pints. The EU is forcing them to label many goods in SI units, but they're not really happy about that, and most products are still sized with imperial units, they're just labeled differently.
Base-12 units divide easily by 12, 6, 4, 3, and 2. Base-10 units divide easily by 10, 5, and 2. In addition the simplified fabrication of scales (which is not an issue anymore given precision machines) there are many circumstances where it is easier to use base-12 units.
More importantly, there's an unavoidable transition where, no matter what kind of magic you use to convince people to switch the units they use to talk about things (which is no small feat in itself), you'll still have to deal with a world full of physical objects that were constructed with nice round measurements under the old system, and really nasty measurements under the new system. I don't know about you, but I'm guessing the average person would not find it easier to work with the length "14.2875 mm" as opposed to "9/16 inches". And let's not even get into the plane crashes and whatnot caused by previous transitions in measurement systems.
NAT doesn't have any special ingress-filtering properties. Any connection-tracking firewall could provide exactly the same protection with exactly the same amount of setup (none).
I'm also not sure about your reasoning on residential IP address allocations. If you've ever bought a more expensive Internet connection, you'd know that IP address quickly approach "free" once you've spent enough on the connection -- given that I'm inclined to believe that a lower cost per address would encourage low-cost ISPs to provide more addresses to their customers. You're probably at least partly right -- there are certainly ISPs that would ration out a single IPv6 address to each subscriber -- but I think you'd see more ISPs willing to hand out more addresses.
It's not just full-on mergers that cause problems -- there are cases of simple interoperation that require unified address spaces between companies. For example, I have several clients that need a VPN up to transfer HIPAA-covered data between hosts that do not support encryption (like printers). It's simply not feasible to coordinate the private address space of several companies with different IT providers -- we *must* use globally routable addresses.
What features does NAT provide to users who don't know much about networking, other than the ability/hinderance of hiding more than one host behind a single address (which by the way, does not require any change in physical connectivity).
Zero-configuration connection blocking only requires a connection-tracking firewall, not address translation. Network auto-configuration only requires DHCP (or with IPv6, not even DHCP), not address translation.
Sure, there may be hosts that you don't want to accept incoming connections. Luckily we've invented this technology call the "firewall". A standard connection-tracking firewall provides exactly the same protections as NAT, and is available in IPv4 and IPv6 flavors in any OS you'd reasonably consider as the basis for a router. There's no more configuration required than with a standard NAT router, plus the non-NAT system is faster and breaks less things, because it's not mucking with data in-flight.
If you're really trying to isolate your hosts from the world -- trying to keep them from talking outside the network entirely -- you still have the option to use link-local or site-local addresses that would prevent communication with the outside world.
Other than connection blocking -- which is easily handled by non-NAT means -- why do you care whether your machines have globally routable addresses? Do you really care that your outbound packets have more than one source address?
You're probably just trolling, but I'm in the mood for an Internet argument, so I'll bit anyway.
Microwaves aren't new. There's a good deal of microwaves floating around the universe (including at ground level on Earth) from natural sources. And there have been both mobile and fixed location broadcast microwaves in use for decades, at much higher power levels than WiFi installations. Not to mention all the nuisance sources of microwaves like, you know, microwave ovens. A typical household microwave puts out almost 1 kW -- even if you assume 99% of that is contained in the appliance, it's still 10 times more power <I>leaking</i> than a 6dbi omnidirectional WiFi transmitter (legally) intentionally emits.
Moreover, we actually <i>have</I> studied the interaction of microwaves with the human body. First, there's about a 10 dB reflection loss at the human-air boundary at WiFi frequencies, and attenuation inside the body is about 2 dB/cm. Therefore there is very little interaction beyond the first couple of centimeters, assuming the signal is strong enough to overcome the reflection losses in the first place. And guess what those microwaves do when you interact with them -- I know it's tricky, because science hasn't caught up with the human body -- but studies suggest that a typical interaction involves energy transfer via polarization in molecules with a strong dipole moment. Which, you know, is a lot like what happens to the flesh-like materials you might try to heat with a microwave oven.
So in summary, you can sense microwave fields. If they are sufficiently strong, you should be able to detect them by the heat generated when you absorb the EM energy. Not that you'd be able to distinguish microwaves from infrared radiation, or from simple conduction, but you could detect the presence of an energy source.
Also you example of "in the past, some people didn't believe new, poorly understood science, but most people believe what is now well-established science" doesn't really support the idea you're trying to defend -- that the totally invented beliefs of hippies might be true in spite of science. It's possible for totally invented beliefs to be true -- even a broken clock is right twice a day -- but the "in spite of science" part makes it hard to take them (or you) seriously.
First, modern pork is leaner that it's ever been. Roasted pork tenderloin, for example, is significantly less fatty than roasted mutton (about 22% fat by caloric content, vs. 42% for mutton). I use mutton as an example because it's not outlawed by any (non-vegetarian) dogma, and is a typical foodstuff in places where pork is not allowed. Even ham is comparable in fat content to mutton.
Second, it doesn't require refrigeration to cure pork into ham. Traditionally preservation is the reason for curing meat in the first place. The fact that it can also be used to change or enhance flavor is a secondary usage, at least before refrigeration.
Third, in places where people don't have access to refrigeration, extra dietary fat is probably not a bad thing. It's not like dietary fat is fundamentally bad -- you need a good deal of it to be healthy -- like most things it's only bad in excess. And I can virtually guarantee that people who live without ready access to refrigeration don't eat enough meat to be worried about too much dietary fat intake.
First, you're assuming that the dogma was created for an originally valid reason. It may have been -- your theory is not totally unreasonable. But by and large the world did not understand communicable or food-borne diseases until very recently, and while your reasoning is logical given modern knowledge it's a stretch to say some ancient politician reached the same conclusions without that knowledge. Even the ancient reasoning was similar to what you describe -- if someone observed better health in populations that avoided pigs -- it is extremely unlikely that anyone studied enough populations to collect anything other than an anecdote or two, and therefore the decision was no more based on science than modern hippie dogma. And without any particular evidence relating to the reasoning behind the law it's entirely possible that pigs are verboten simply because some ancient politician wanted to put his pig-owning business competitors out-of-business.
Second, modern Jews and Muslims both have access to modern science, modern food preparation and butchering techniques, and most have access to refrigeration. If "hippies have access to modern science" is enough reason to call hippie dogma dumb then "Jews have access to modern science" is enough reason to call Jewish dogma dumb. But by definition dogma operates in opposition to science -- dogma is not to be questioned -- so you can't expect scientific reasoning to be used to overturn dogma.
Third, I'd argue that a typical person <i>does not</i> have access to modern science. Certainly society as a whole has a whole has the requisite knowledge to make an informed decision, and certain individuals may as well, but the average person has a very poor understanding of "modern science" and treats most of the "science" they do know as nothing more than modern cultural dogma.
If someone sent you a paper bill that you wanted in the future would you expect them to re-send it on demand, as opposed to just filing the copy they already gave you? Why should the rules be any different just because the original copy was electronic?
Here's a handy rule of thumb -- if you can see it in your browser, you can save it to your disk. Even if they don't provide a handy PDF format -- which many companies do -- you could generate a PDF locally, or even just save the HTML source. Heck, even if there was some funky DRMed format (which seems unlikely for bills) you could save a screen shot. Once you save a copy locally you'll have it forever (or at least for as long as your personal document retention policy and backup strategy permit), no matter what document retention or access policies the company has, or how long they are in business or offering electronic billing.
The whole premise of the article is that you don't get used to it, and that even when you feel acclimated you're still operating less efficiently than you would if the stress was removed.
Plus if you removed a city-dweller from the city they'd just spend 20% of their time whining about how "In <city> you can..."
Any reasonably competent hobbyist could cobble together a nuclear generator and not even need a battery array (or the huge amounts of nasty chemicals related thereto) if he were allowed to do so. You can buy all the components for a windmill without any hassle, and just bolt them together -- if we allowed the sale of all the components for a nuclear generator I'm sure someone could bolt it together too. Very few "hobbyist" windmill operators do all their own parts fabrication, and there's no reason to assume the nuclear hobbyist would either.
But hobbyist generation from any power source is not the answer. Small-scale generation -- be it wind, nuclear, or otherwise -- is terribly inefficient. There might be some benefit to scaling down below the current "huge regional generators" that we use, but there's no way that "hobbyist" level generation will ever be an efficient option for most users of electricity.
Solar panels are very fragile and cannot be buried -- they'll need guarding against much less organized/dedicated/well-funded threats to prevent vandalism and even unintentional damage.
As for decommissioning small nuclear plants -- you pull the nuclear material and ship it to a consolidated storage facility that could hold tens of thousands of such batches of nuclear material and re-bury it. It's easy to guard and safe for (at least) hundreds of years with little or no maintenance. I agree that eventually we'll have to come up with some other plan for the nuclear material, but if global warming (or whatever your favorite energy-related issue is) is a problem right now, isn't "fixed for the next several hundred years" a good compromise until we come up with a more permanent solution? Even for the interim (several hundred years) solution, there is no exposure to nasty chemical anyplace, which is a step up from your in one place, let alone the everywhere scenario that you imagine.
FYI: If you're going to say the solar plants are basically "sand" then I'm going to say that nuclear plants are basically "concrete", which itself is largely "sand" and therefore easy to recycle -- if you get to ignore all the complications in the disposal of your favorite technology then so do I.
Couldn't we just have a huge bounty for independent safety inspectors? Require all nuclear facilities to be inspected by two different independent inspectors every year. They pay nothing for these inspections, but if the inspectors find any violations they get to charge $X million for each instance, and the facility is required by law to make prompt payment AND repair the issue. And if the inspection firm finds violations that the previous inspection should have revealed they get to collect $X*2 from the previous inspection firm AND $X from the facility (in an effort to prevent collusion between inspectors and the facilities under inspection).
Obviously there's still some oversight needed in licensing inspectors and defining relevant safety standards, but I think there's an easy opportunity to make both safety compliance and inspections economically sound, thus minimizing reliance on the government.
You're speaking as though red tape is some sort of cure for bad management. But red tape is, by definition, bad management in and of itself. Relevant safety standards and enforcement are a good idea; red tape doesn't provide any such thing, except maybe by accident.
TMI was contained in spite of what was essentially a complete loss of cooling without any significant local or global environmental contamination. Works as designed; operates safely even when primary components of the system have failed.
Now, it would have been cheaper if we had avoided that situation. The cleanup is expensive, and we lost the use of a very expensive power generator. But it's almost silly to talk about TMI like it was some sort of failure, and it's downright absurd to talk about TMI as a demonstration of how nuclear power is dangerous.
News flash: You get what you measure. Be sure you understand what you're measuring.
There's no problem with reducing risk to a single number. You just have to be aware of what that number represents -- it's not the absolute chance of risk in all scenarios, it's the predicted risk assuming everything works according to your model.
The problem here has nothing in particular to do with risk analysis, it's the same problem people have with statistics and measurements in general -- they aren't willing to take the time to understand what the numbers mean.
If your thresholds are set tight enough to catch someone sending an "unusually large" attachment you'd be getting hundreds of alerts a day. It's not that "unusual" behavior can't be detected, it's that it can't be easily classified without a lot more knowledge than the typical automated detection system has (or could practically have). Some of the better solutions take a sample of what you consider to be "private" data and look for that in data flows, so you can hit on specific bits of data moving in ways you don't expect. But even those systems are only effective at stopping material you've already identified as private -- if the new CC numbers get processed into the detection system every day at 1 AM I could send out today's new CC numbers at midnight without being detected.
It's really probably not. Most of the basic calendar functions in libc (or glibc or dietlibc or uLibc) were written for 8 MHz machines running with 1 MB of system memory -- they'd do just fine on your embedded system.
Since when? If I buy patent rights I'm certainly entitled to re-sell (or even license it) those rights as I please. Likewise with copyright, and other forms of intangible personal property.
You're probably trying to say something about how they're not giving away a copy of the song, but only a license to use a copy of the song. That may or may not be true, depending on what agreement(s) were entered into before downloading the song. Even if it is true, they may or may not be able to enforce a contract that says you can't transfer the license you've been granted.
You could probably rig a disk to be read-once -- to that the physical act of reading from the disk simultaneously scrambled the data so it could not be re-read.
More to the point though, you could easily open a file, unlink the inode, read the file through out to the network, then close the file. The data would still exist on disk if you looked for it, but the file would be sufficiently deleted for copyright purposes. And if they hold that it's not I hold that all audio CD players with a no-skip buffer are devices designed to circumvent copyright.
I'm not perfect, but I can remember to turn off and/or unplug my generator before returning to grid power. Just like I can remember to turn off my circuit breaker before working on wiring, to turn off my water feed before working on plumbing, to set the parking brake before leaving my car, or turn off the oven when I'm done cooking.
Seriously, if you're so stupid you can't handle basic serial safety operations I'll bet you could find some way to kill linemen even with your precious $500 switch.
You're also discounting the fact the linemen short lines believed to be dead before working on them -- even without generators it would be silly to assume that no power might be feed into the lines from some natural, manmade, or grid-related source) and that the poster said he wasn't switching back to the grid until after power was back on (and therefore linemen are no longer working on presumed dead lines).
Right. Because I couldn't possible determine whether the generator is on or off when I'm throwing the switch. Or have unplugged it from my home wiring before going down to the panel.
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Top posting is not easy to understand unless both:
A) You've been involved in the conversation from the start
B) The reply is short enough to not need any direct context
But haven't you ever been included in later replies where everything is top posted? You then have to read backwards through the whole thread to figure out what is going on. In the same way, if you're trying to re-read an only thread top posting requires reading bottom to top -- you say it's linear, and it is, but it's also anti-chronological.
And even you admit that when you want to use the original email for direct context top-posting is not useful.
It's not clear to me how top posting makes *anything* easier, other than it's what Outlook users expect. What am I missing?
The brits didn't do it at all. They weigh people in stones and speeds in MPH. They sell beer in 1/2 pints. The EU is forcing them to label many goods in SI units, but they're not really happy about that, and most products are still sized with imperial units, they're just labeled differently.
Base-12 units divide easily by 12, 6, 4, 3, and 2. Base-10 units divide easily by 10, 5, and 2. In addition the simplified fabrication of scales (which is not an issue anymore given precision machines) there are many circumstances where it is easier to use base-12 units.
More importantly, there's an unavoidable transition where, no matter what kind of magic you use to convince people to switch the units they use to talk about things (which is no small feat in itself), you'll still have to deal with a world full of physical objects that were constructed with nice round measurements under the old system, and really nasty measurements under the new system. I don't know about you, but I'm guessing the average person would not find it easier to work with the length "14.2875 mm" as opposed to "9/16 inches". And let's not even get into the plane crashes and whatnot caused by previous transitions in measurement systems.
NAT doesn't have any special ingress-filtering properties. Any connection-tracking firewall could provide exactly the same protection with exactly the same amount of setup (none).
I'm also not sure about your reasoning on residential IP address allocations. If you've ever bought a more expensive Internet connection, you'd know that IP address quickly approach "free" once you've spent enough on the connection -- given that I'm inclined to believe that a lower cost per address would encourage low-cost ISPs to provide more addresses to their customers. You're probably at least partly right -- there are certainly ISPs that would ration out a single IPv6 address to each subscriber -- but I think you'd see more ISPs willing to hand out more addresses.
It's not just full-on mergers that cause problems -- there are cases of simple interoperation that require unified address spaces between companies. For example, I have several clients that need a VPN up to transfer HIPAA-covered data between hosts that do not support encryption (like printers). It's simply not feasible to coordinate the private address space of several companies with different IT providers -- we *must* use globally routable addresses.
What features does NAT provide to users who don't know much about networking, other than the ability/hinderance of hiding more than one host behind a single address (which by the way, does not require any change in physical connectivity).
Zero-configuration connection blocking only requires a connection-tracking firewall, not address translation. Network auto-configuration only requires DHCP (or with IPv6, not even DHCP), not address translation.
Why not? What will it hurt?
Sure, there may be hosts that you don't want to accept incoming connections. Luckily we've invented this technology call the "firewall". A standard connection-tracking firewall provides exactly the same protections as NAT, and is available in IPv4 and IPv6 flavors in any OS you'd reasonably consider as the basis for a router. There's no more configuration required than with a standard NAT router, plus the non-NAT system is faster and breaks less things, because it's not mucking with data in-flight.
If you're really trying to isolate your hosts from the world -- trying to keep them from talking outside the network entirely -- you still have the option to use link-local or site-local addresses that would prevent communication with the outside world.
Other than connection blocking -- which is easily handled by non-NAT means -- why do you care whether your machines have globally routable addresses? Do you really care that your outbound packets have more than one source address?
You're probably just trolling, but I'm in the mood for an Internet argument, so I'll bit anyway.
Microwaves aren't new. There's a good deal of microwaves floating around the universe (including at ground level on Earth) from natural sources. And there have been both mobile and fixed location broadcast microwaves in use for decades, at much higher power levels than WiFi installations. Not to mention all the nuisance sources of microwaves like, you know, microwave ovens. A typical household microwave puts out almost 1 kW -- even if you assume 99% of that is contained in the appliance, it's still 10 times more power <I>leaking</i> than a 6dbi omnidirectional WiFi transmitter (legally) intentionally emits.
Moreover, we actually <i>have</I> studied the interaction of microwaves with the human body. First, there's about a 10 dB reflection loss at the human-air boundary at WiFi frequencies, and attenuation inside the body is about 2 dB/cm. Therefore there is very little interaction beyond the first couple of centimeters, assuming the signal is strong enough to overcome the reflection losses in the first place. And guess what those microwaves do when you interact with them -- I know it's tricky, because science hasn't caught up with the human body -- but studies suggest that a typical interaction involves energy transfer via polarization in molecules with a strong dipole moment. Which, you know, is a lot like what happens to the flesh-like materials you might try to heat with a microwave oven.
So in summary, you can sense microwave fields. If they are sufficiently strong, you should be able to detect them by the heat generated when you absorb the EM energy. Not that you'd be able to distinguish microwaves from infrared radiation, or from simple conduction, but you could detect the presence of an energy source.
Also you example of "in the past, some people didn't believe new, poorly understood science, but most people believe what is now well-established science" doesn't really support the idea you're trying to defend -- that the totally invented beliefs of hippies might be true in spite of science. It's possible for totally invented beliefs to be true -- even a broken clock is right twice a day -- but the "in spite of science" part makes it hard to take them (or you) seriously.
First, modern pork is leaner that it's ever been. Roasted pork tenderloin, for example, is significantly less fatty than roasted mutton (about 22% fat by caloric content, vs. 42% for mutton). I use mutton as an example because it's not outlawed by any (non-vegetarian) dogma, and is a typical foodstuff in places where pork is not allowed. Even ham is comparable in fat content to mutton.
Second, it doesn't require refrigeration to cure pork into ham. Traditionally preservation is the reason for curing meat in the first place. The fact that it can also be used to change or enhance flavor is a secondary usage, at least before refrigeration.
Third, in places where people don't have access to refrigeration, extra dietary fat is probably not a bad thing. It's not like dietary fat is fundamentally bad -- you need a good deal of it to be healthy -- like most things it's only bad in excess. And I can virtually guarantee that people who live without ready access to refrigeration don't eat enough meat to be worried about too much dietary fat intake.
First, you're assuming that the dogma was created for an originally valid reason. It may have been -- your theory is not totally unreasonable. But by and large the world did not understand communicable or food-borne diseases until very recently, and while your reasoning is logical given modern knowledge it's a stretch to say some ancient politician reached the same conclusions without that knowledge. Even the ancient reasoning was similar to what you describe -- if someone observed better health in populations that avoided pigs -- it is extremely unlikely that anyone studied enough populations to collect anything other than an anecdote or two, and therefore the decision was no more based on science than modern hippie dogma. And without any particular evidence relating to the reasoning behind the law it's entirely possible that pigs are verboten simply because some ancient politician wanted to put his pig-owning business competitors out-of-business.
Second, modern Jews and Muslims both have access to modern science, modern food preparation and butchering techniques, and most have access to refrigeration. If "hippies have access to modern science" is enough reason to call hippie dogma dumb then "Jews have access to modern science" is enough reason to call Jewish dogma dumb. But by definition dogma operates in opposition to science -- dogma is not to be questioned -- so you can't expect scientific reasoning to be used to overturn dogma.
Third, I'd argue that a typical person <i>does not</i> have access to modern science. Certainly society as a whole has a whole has the requisite knowledge to make an informed decision, and certain individuals may as well, but the average person has a very poor understanding of "modern science" and treats most of the "science" they do know as nothing more than modern cultural dogma.
If someone sent you a paper bill that you wanted in the future would you expect them to re-send it on demand, as opposed to just filing the copy they already gave you? Why should the rules be any different just because the original copy was electronic?
Here's a handy rule of thumb -- if you can see it in your browser, you can save it to your disk. Even if they don't provide a handy PDF format -- which many companies do -- you could generate a PDF locally, or even just save the HTML source. Heck, even if there was some funky DRMed format (which seems unlikely for bills) you could save a screen shot. Once you save a copy locally you'll have it forever (or at least for as long as your personal document retention policy and backup strategy permit), no matter what document retention or access policies the company has, or how long they are in business or offering electronic billing.
The whole premise of the article is that you don't get used to it, and that even when you feel acclimated you're still operating less efficiently than you would if the stress was removed.
Plus if you removed a city-dweller from the city they'd just spend 20% of their time whining about how "In <city> you can..."
Any reasonably competent hobbyist could cobble together a nuclear generator and not even need a battery array (or the huge amounts of nasty chemicals related thereto) if he were allowed to do so. You can buy all the components for a windmill without any hassle, and just bolt them together -- if we allowed the sale of all the components for a nuclear generator I'm sure someone could bolt it together too. Very few "hobbyist" windmill operators do all their own parts fabrication, and there's no reason to assume the nuclear hobbyist would either.
But hobbyist generation from any power source is not the answer. Small-scale generation -- be it wind, nuclear, or otherwise -- is terribly inefficient. There might be some benefit to scaling down below the current "huge regional generators" that we use, but there's no way that "hobbyist" level generation will ever be an efficient option for most users of electricity.
Solar panels are very fragile and cannot be buried -- they'll need guarding against much less organized/dedicated/well-funded threats to prevent vandalism and even unintentional damage.
As for decommissioning small nuclear plants -- you pull the nuclear material and ship it to a consolidated storage facility that could hold tens of thousands of such batches of nuclear material and re-bury it. It's easy to guard and safe for (at least) hundreds of years with little or no maintenance. I agree that eventually we'll have to come up with some other plan for the nuclear material, but if global warming (or whatever your favorite energy-related issue is) is a problem right now, isn't "fixed for the next several hundred years" a good compromise until we come up with a more permanent solution? Even for the interim (several hundred years) solution, there is no exposure to nasty chemical anyplace, which is a step up from your in one place, let alone the everywhere scenario that you imagine.
FYI: If you're going to say the solar plants are basically "sand" then I'm going to say that nuclear plants are basically "concrete", which itself is largely "sand" and therefore easy to recycle -- if you get to ignore all the complications in the disposal of your favorite technology then so do I.
Couldn't we just have a huge bounty for independent safety inspectors? Require all nuclear facilities to be inspected by two different independent inspectors every year. They pay nothing for these inspections, but if the inspectors find any violations they get to charge $X million for each instance, and the facility is required by law to make prompt payment AND repair the issue. And if the inspection firm finds violations that the previous inspection should have revealed they get to collect $X*2 from the previous inspection firm AND $X from the facility (in an effort to prevent collusion between inspectors and the facilities under inspection).
Obviously there's still some oversight needed in licensing inspectors and defining relevant safety standards, but I think there's an easy opportunity to make both safety compliance and inspections economically sound, thus minimizing reliance on the government.
You're speaking as though red tape is some sort of cure for bad management. But red tape is, by definition, bad management in and of itself. Relevant safety standards and enforcement are a good idea; red tape doesn't provide any such thing, except maybe by accident.
TMI was contained in spite of what was essentially a complete loss of cooling without any significant local or global environmental contamination. Works as designed; operates safely even when primary components of the system have failed.
Now, it would have been cheaper if we had avoided that situation. The cleanup is expensive, and we lost the use of a very expensive power generator. But it's almost silly to talk about TMI like it was some sort of failure, and it's downright absurd to talk about TMI as a demonstration of how nuclear power is dangerous.
News flash: You get what you measure. Be sure you understand what you're measuring.
There's no problem with reducing risk to a single number. You just have to be aware of what that number represents -- it's not the absolute chance of risk in all scenarios, it's the predicted risk assuming everything works according to your model.
The problem here has nothing in particular to do with risk analysis, it's the same problem people have with statistics and measurements in general -- they aren't willing to take the time to understand what the numbers mean.
If your thresholds are set tight enough to catch someone sending an "unusually large" attachment you'd be getting hundreds of alerts a day. It's not that "unusual" behavior can't be detected, it's that it can't be easily classified without a lot more knowledge than the typical automated detection system has (or could practically have). Some of the better solutions take a sample of what you consider to be "private" data and look for that in data flows, so you can hit on specific bits of data moving in ways you don't expect. But even those systems are only effective at stopping material you've already identified as private -- if the new CC numbers get processed into the detection system every day at 1 AM I could send out today's new CC numbers at midnight without being detected.
It's really probably not. Most of the basic calendar functions in libc (or glibc or dietlibc or uLibc) were written for 8 MHz machines running with 1 MB of system memory -- they'd do just fine on your embedded system.
Since when? If I buy patent rights I'm certainly entitled to re-sell (or even license it) those rights as I please. Likewise with copyright, and other forms of intangible personal property.
You're probably trying to say something about how they're not giving away a copy of the song, but only a license to use a copy of the song. That may or may not be true, depending on what agreement(s) were entered into before downloading the song. Even if it is true, they may or may not be able to enforce a contract that says you can't transfer the license you've been granted.
You could probably rig a disk to be read-once -- to that the physical act of reading from the disk simultaneously scrambled the data so it could not be re-read.
More to the point though, you could easily open a file, unlink the inode, read the file through out to the network, then close the file. The data would still exist on disk if you looked for it, but the file would be sufficiently deleted for copyright purposes. And if they hold that it's not I hold that all audio CD players with a no-skip buffer are devices designed to circumvent copyright.
Or use OS X, where that behavior is the default.
I'm not perfect, but I can remember to turn off and/or unplug my generator before returning to grid power. Just like I can remember to turn off my circuit breaker before working on wiring, to turn off my water feed before working on plumbing, to set the parking brake before leaving my car, or turn off the oven when I'm done cooking.
Seriously, if you're so stupid you can't handle basic serial safety operations I'll bet you could find some way to kill linemen even with your precious $500 switch.
You're also discounting the fact the linemen short lines believed to be dead before working on them -- even without generators it would be silly to assume that no power might be feed into the lines from some natural, manmade, or grid-related source) and that the poster said he wasn't switching back to the grid until after power was back on (and therefore linemen are no longer working on presumed dead lines).
Right. Because I couldn't possible determine whether the generator is on or off when I'm throwing the switch. Or have unplugged it from my home wiring before going down to the panel.