-NOTHING- "transcends the laws of nature." Period. It may be -- and is demonstrably true -- that we do not yet understand all the laws of nature (else we'd already have a Grand Unified Theory), but the laws of nature -are-. It is merely our understanding of them that is lacking.
I'd thought I had every Bloom County book out there -- and I _KNOW_ I've never seen the strips that ran today. Do you recall where you saw the interview? I'd be -very- interested in reading it...
"Have his works in paper format..." Well, no, you don't: you have *some* of his works in paper format. I, for example, can quote virtually all the anthologies: I'm that much of a fan. The six strips I saw today were _NEW_ to me, and, I promise, were never in Loose Tails.
As for "I would pay the 10 bucks if it included a week of new strips, including Sunday", what do you mean? Every two days, it publishes "a week of new strips, including Sunday." Specifically, on a given day, it publishes the dailies (Mon - Sat), and on the next day, it does the Sunday.
Granted, if you Just Don't Care, that's one thing, but this is stuff that, unless you read from Day One in the Washington Post, you've likely never seen... 'cause it ain't been anywhere else. Granted, the stuff we've seen in the books will also be putting in an appearance, and I'll enjoy them, too, but DAMN, I'd been hoping for this for years.
It might have to do with the fact that these were strips that have never been reproduced for mass consumption before. I'm guessing -- guessing -- that once we get to the "previously released in anthologies" stuff, we'll see better quality.
As the postee, I apologize for getting Academia Waltz wrong. Not my fault, however: that was taken verbatim from their site; I'd actually double-checked, since I'd thought it -was- "Academia". C'est la vie. As for Berke's humor, I guess it's one of those "you like him, or you hate him" deals. I like him. I don't like Larson. Go figger.
I'd pay -- through the nose -- to see original strips like Blondie (back when it was a social mores shattering strip), Krazy Kat, etc. Comics back in the 30's, during the heyday, etc. These things can be found, piecemeal, in various anthologies. To have 'em all in one place for reference, well... not only would it be a terrific glimpse into Americana, it would be great fun to read, too!
Where do they say 15 years of comics? After all, there were... lessee... two years of Academic Waltz, and... '83 - '89, so 6 years of Bloom County. That's eight in my book. Hell, let's say they also throw in Outland, that'd be at a rate of a week a day, since they were only Sundays... (And, lastly, you can apparently pay on a monthly basis.)
One thing I didn't put in the article -- 'cause I didn't know until today -- was that they are posting _EVERYTHING_. In other words, today is the first time I've seen a new Bloom County strip in 14 years. Phrased yet another way, in case you never noticed, the anthologies were incomplete. This re-posting -is- complete. For example, in the first book, notice that there were no Sunday strips? I'm dying to see my first new Sunday strip tomorrow...
To the best of my knowledge, only Mountainview Data and NetApp have NetApp-like snapshots. I know that (stock) Windows does -not- have it. Unfortunately, I think that there's a lot of confusion between Netapp-like (file-at-a-time) snapshots, and LVM-like (disk-image-at-a-time) snapshots. The former, with all due respect to the hard-working LVM folk, is much cooler than the latter. It's my impression that it's correspondingly more difficult to code.
MountainView Data released alpha code for "SnapFS", which was a Netapp-like Snapshot feature for ext-2 and XFS. Alas, they almost immediately took their code "back", though the alpha-rev. stuff can still be found on Sourceforge. I would _KILL_ to have snapshots under Linux, but this code is alpha, and old (2.2 rev. kernel). Unless someone wants to put in a lot of work, ReiserFS is probably the best hope.
Color me confused. Granted, Salon is in trouble, and they own the WELL, but they aren't gone yet -- and I've had my dialup account there since April of '88. Methinks someone's confused.
While I grant your point from a literalist standpoint, the terms "altruistic" and "selfish" in these scenarios generally relate not to the aggregate, but to the individual. Any given individual acting "selfishly" WRT routing will win out vs. all acting altruistically for the benefit of the whole.
Or, to quote Spock, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few [but that doesn't make my dying selfish].";-)
I seem to recall reading something about the current release over at http://kt.zork.net; IIRC, it lacks some features that the older version had that allowed easier use with "any" OS; OTOH, it also seemed to be a -much- simpler codebase with vastly less "code for exception" stuff. I'll be interested to see how it works performance-wise, as it's always fun to have machines under machines under machines... especially if it means I can finally stop VNC'ing to Windows boxen to run my Oracle client.;-)
Newsgroups, FAQs, and on-line docs in general.
on
Managing RAID on Linux
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
While I'm certainly a proponent of "dead-tree" documentation, I have to take a moment to disagree with one of the statements made -- I'm sorry, but newsgroups, while perhaps containing out-of-date info, are (if it's a good newsgroup) capable of letting you know the current state-of-affairs. This is substantially -less- true with books. Case-in-point is Samba: it's *DARN* hard to know, from the Amazon description (or wherever) which Samba books describe the current state (2.4 and above) of Samba, whereas the FAQs, newsgroups, etc., are fairly obvious on it. Bottom line? I'll take a good book any day, but when in doubt, I'll go with current info gleaned off the newsgroups and other on-line resources.
For one, just 'cause I'm gramatically anal, it's "jibe," note "jive." As for the $20/mo., it *is* important. Granted, there's more to the digital divide than merely having a computer and Internet connectivity -- but I don't care *HOW* much savvy you have, if you -don't- have connectivity, you're on the wrong side of the divide, period. And, yes, there are cheaper solutions, but as you pointed out, they can be substantially less satisfactory -- especially as broadband becomes more de-facto and necessary. In other words, there are a handful of barriers:
- know-how - up-front cost - month-to-month cost
Know-how is something that is hard to come by, but, frankly, this is pretty true regardless of how much money you have -- I've seen the poor and the rich become equally frustrated with computers. Instead, it's more a matter of perseverence... that, and the fact that kids pick up on it like crazy if it's around them from the get-go.
Up-front cost used to be a major consideration, but when things start hitting $200, it's less so. It's still a chunk o' change, but for a one-time outlay, it's probably a bunch less than the rent, even for cheap apartments.
Month-to-month cost, then, becomes the biggie: there has to be enough in the bank account after paying rent, the credit card, etc., to pay for this. If it isn't, it's likely to be the first to go. If really good service is offered for a reasonable price, guess what? It might be worth the monthly outlay.
Does this mean that I have solutions for homeless? No -- as much as I feel for them, it becomes a whole lot harder when you don't have a stable place to hang your hat. I'm afraid they have other issues that will have to be confronted long before connectivity. However, that's an discussion far outside the scope of this commentary.
The "digital divide," right now, largely consists of people who aren't on-line. Let's face it: a dirt-cheap Linux PC can be had for ~$200 at Wal-Mart; it's the $20/mo that keep people from being on-line. ($40/mo for broadband.) That, and the whole problem with rural areas, too. Through the wonders of electrification, we could now also have "digification." This could be a huge boon for those who might otherwise be left behind...
Look -- I hate the RIAA and MPAA as much as anyone. I think they leave trails of slime wherever they go. But grow up: losers though they may be, if someone is illegally distributing copyrighted works, guess what? It's (*gasp*) illegal. This gives you the right to make them stop.
Does this mean I agree with the recent Supreme Court ruling re: the damn Sonny (couldn't he have hit that tree just a -little- bit earlier) Bono Act? Hell, no. But legitimate copyright is legitimate. Just because the corporation enforcing it is scum doesn't, alas, change that salient fact.
I don't for a moment think that P2P is "bad" because it can be used to share copyrighted files, no more than I think my spiffy butcher knife is "bad" because I could use it to kill someone. That doesn't mean that the -illegal- distribution of legitimately copyrighted materials, no matter how pervasive, is suddenly morally defensible.
Do I wish that, when I bought an album, the money went to the artist, and not the RIAA? Damn straight. But, until such time as record labels die off or learn right, it's the only legal, moral way to obtain your music. (NOTE: I have no qualms about downloading music for CDs I've lost, or vinyl I never upgraded -- I paid once, I see no need to pay again.)
1) The military wanted to see what exploding a nuclear bomb was like. 2) Exploding one in the middle of nowhere would have shown the "typcial" [sic] fission cloud, thus letting our enemies know we had the means. 3) Therefore, we killed three hundred people to prove it.
Okay. I'll take number one as a given. Number two: if no fission bombs had previously been exploded, how would anyone know what was "typical"?!?! That's just freakin' stuuuupid. Furthermore (for both two and three) what? The middle of (say) the Atlantic isn't far enough away? The middle of Nevada? It's not like they had spy satallites, guys. I don't see -any- reason why we "needed" to kill a whole big ol bunch of folks, and blow up a bunch of add'l munitions that would no doubt muddy any results the military might have inteded to get in the first place. Hello?! Just because something -might- be feasible doesn't mean it -had- to occur. Especially, might I add, if the rationale is just plain dumb.
Okay, granted, the data could absolutely be used in ways that invade privacy. However, unlike (say) getting access to your video records, this doesn't really detail much about *you*. However, as an aggregate, it could tell a great deal about what mistaken assumptions car manufacturers are making regarding collisions. Furthermore, this wouldn't just be data against you -- it could also *support* you. "That bozo Michael was doing 70, officer! I swear! I couldn't avoid the collision!" "Well, dip, his car's recorder shows him doing 45. I'm sure your insurance company will be interested in hearing this."
Being that I was born in September of '66, that makes it just over two years old. How can I be sure? Because I remembered when someone recited "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" while circling the moon. For years, I thought I'd made it up; then I read that, indeed, someone -did- do it, and it was on Christmas day. I also remember things that I believe were from around then, but the Christmas one is the only one I have a definitive timestamp for.
Carl Sagan said it first, and I agree. I -want- to believe in extra-terrestrial life forms; I fully support and believe in SETI.
However, until I see -proof-, not silly "the government is out to get us" conspiracy theory stuff, I ain't buyin. Show me a radio signal from a remote star! Please! That's something that would be both very hard to fake, -and- something very hard to hide. Barring something along those lines, or equivilently hard to forge, and easy to prove, I ain't buyin.
MS-DOS was meant to supplant the ever-growing CP/M (and MP/M) hordes. IBM was afraid of 'em -- DOS, after all, was _IBM_'s choice, so to speak, not MS's. And Xenix _did_ get finished, just not by MS: it's called SCO.
Not, mind you, that I would have shed tears to see DOS be supplanted by a *nix, even one as dain-bramaged as SCO.
In his book 3001, the main character (whose name I won't give away for those who haven't read it) is introduced to an implant with, roughly, a petabyte of memory -- it acts as the "everything that's happened in your life" repository. Frankly, given the fact that it was supposedly occuring 999 years in the future, I think it wasn't nearly miniaturized enough -- hasn't he heard of Moore's Law?
I happen to have seen Free Enterprise somewhat by chance -- and loved it! It was both a spoof and yet a well-done comedy/drama, with believable, and enjoyable -- if somewhat neurotic -- characters.
Sadly, it appears not to have done too well at the box office. Do you feel the movie was what it should have been? Were you disappointed by its overall reception?
I wrote to all of my representatives about the RIAA vs. webcasters issue. I used e-mail, but I wrote a nice, in-depth letter, and presented my opinions thoughtfully. All except Senator Smith (who lost re-election) replied -- including John Sununu, who replaced him. I suppose it may depend on which congressional district you're in as to how much e-mail your representatives get, but some -- the good ones, at least -- are listening, and reply. John Sununu's reply was even in-depth, and included a copy of a Wall St. Journal article with which he (and I) agreed.
Bottom line: write your reps, however you do it. Just use good English, present your case well, and DON'T FLAME -- you'll just get tossed.
Oh -- one last thing: _do_ include your snail mail address. That way they can a) get back to you with dead-tree stuff, and b) know that you _are_ one of their constituents.
Slashdot Mirror
-NOTHING- "transcends the laws of nature." Period. It may be -- and is demonstrably true -- that we do not yet understand all the laws of nature (else we'd already have a Grand Unified Theory), but the laws of nature -are-. It is merely our understanding of them that is lacking.
I'd thought I had every Bloom County book out there -- and I _KNOW_ I've never seen the strips that ran today. Do you recall where you saw the interview? I'd be -very- interested in reading it...
"Have his works in paper format..." Well, no, you don't: you have *some* of his works in paper format. I, for example, can quote virtually all the anthologies: I'm that much of a fan. The six strips I saw today were _NEW_ to me, and, I promise, were never in Loose Tails.
As for "I would pay the 10 bucks if it included a week of new strips, including Sunday", what do you mean? Every two days, it publishes "a week of new strips, including Sunday." Specifically, on a given day, it publishes the dailies (Mon - Sat), and on the next day, it does the Sunday.
Granted, if you Just Don't Care, that's one thing, but this is stuff that, unless you read from Day One in the Washington Post, you've likely never seen... 'cause it ain't been anywhere else. Granted, the stuff we've seen in the books will also be putting in an appearance, and I'll enjoy them, too, but DAMN, I'd been hoping for this for years.
It might have to do with the fact that these were strips that have never been reproduced for mass consumption before. I'm guessing -- guessing -- that once we get to the "previously released in anthologies" stuff, we'll see better quality.
As the postee, I apologize for getting Academia Waltz wrong. Not my fault, however: that was taken verbatim from their site; I'd actually double-checked, since I'd thought it -was- "Academia". C'est la vie. As for Berke's humor, I guess it's one of those "you like him, or you hate him" deals. I like him. I don't like Larson. Go figger.
I'd pay -- through the nose -- to see original strips like Blondie (back when it was a social mores shattering strip), Krazy Kat, etc. Comics back in the 30's, during the heyday, etc. These things can be found, piecemeal, in various anthologies. To have 'em all in one place for reference, well... not only would it be a terrific glimpse into Americana, it would be great fun to read, too!
Where do they say 15 years of comics? After all, there were... lessee... two years of Academic Waltz, and... '83 - '89, so 6 years of Bloom County. That's eight in my book. Hell, let's say they also throw in Outland, that'd be at a rate of a week a day, since they were only Sundays... (And, lastly, you can apparently pay on a monthly basis.)
One thing I didn't put in the article -- 'cause I didn't know until today -- was that they are posting _EVERYTHING_. In other words, today is the first time I've seen a new Bloom County strip in 14 years. Phrased yet another way, in case you never noticed, the anthologies were incomplete. This re-posting -is- complete. For example, in the first book, notice that there were no Sunday strips? I'm dying to see my first new Sunday strip tomorrow...
To the best of my knowledge, only Mountainview Data and NetApp have NetApp-like snapshots. I know that (stock) Windows does -not- have it. Unfortunately, I think that there's a lot of confusion between Netapp-like (file-at-a-time) snapshots, and LVM-like (disk-image-at-a-time) snapshots. The former, with all due respect to the hard-working LVM folk, is much cooler than the latter. It's my impression that it's correspondingly more difficult to code.
MountainView Data released alpha code for "SnapFS", which was a Netapp-like Snapshot feature for ext-2 and XFS. Alas, they almost immediately took their code "back", though the alpha-rev. stuff can still be found on Sourceforge. I would _KILL_ to have snapshots under Linux, but this code is alpha, and old (2.2 rev. kernel). Unless someone wants to put in a lot of work, ReiserFS is probably the best hope.
Color me confused. Granted, Salon is in trouble, and they own the WELL, but they aren't gone yet -- and I've had my dialup account there since April of '88. Methinks someone's confused.
While I grant your point from a literalist standpoint, the terms "altruistic" and "selfish" in these scenarios generally relate not to the aggregate, but to the individual. Any given individual acting "selfishly" WRT routing will win out vs. all acting altruistically for the benefit of the whole.
;-)
Or, to quote Spock, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few [but that doesn't make my dying selfish]."
I seem to recall reading something about the current release over at http://kt.zork.net; IIRC, it lacks some features that the older version had that allowed easier use with "any" OS; OTOH, it also seemed to be a -much- simpler codebase with vastly less "code for exception" stuff. I'll be interested to see how it works performance-wise, as it's always fun to have machines under machines under machines... especially if it means I can finally stop VNC'ing to Windows boxen to run my Oracle client. ;-)
While I'm certainly a proponent of "dead-tree" documentation, I have to take a moment to disagree with one of the statements made -- I'm sorry, but newsgroups, while perhaps containing out-of-date info, are (if it's a good newsgroup) capable of letting you know the current state-of-affairs. This is substantially -less- true with books. Case-in-point is Samba: it's *DARN* hard to know, from the Amazon description (or wherever) which Samba books describe the current state (2.4 and above) of Samba, whereas the FAQs, newsgroups, etc., are fairly obvious on it. Bottom line? I'll take a good book any day, but when in doubt, I'll go with current info gleaned off the newsgroups and other on-line resources.
For one, just 'cause I'm gramatically anal, it's "jibe," note "jive." As for the $20/mo., it *is* important. Granted, there's more to the digital divide than merely having a computer and Internet connectivity -- but I don't care *HOW* much savvy you have, if you -don't- have connectivity, you're on the wrong side of the divide, period. And, yes, there are cheaper solutions, but as you pointed out, they can be substantially less satisfactory -- especially as broadband becomes more de-facto and necessary. In other words, there are a handful of barriers:
- know-how
- up-front cost
- month-to-month cost
Know-how is something that is hard to come by, but, frankly, this is pretty true regardless of how much money you have -- I've seen the poor and the rich become equally frustrated with computers. Instead, it's more a matter of perseverence... that, and the fact that kids pick up on it like crazy if it's around them from the get-go.
Up-front cost used to be a major consideration, but when things start hitting $200, it's less so. It's still a chunk o' change, but for a one-time outlay, it's probably a bunch less than the rent, even for cheap apartments.
Month-to-month cost, then, becomes the biggie: there has to be enough in the bank account after paying rent, the credit card, etc., to pay for this. If it isn't, it's likely to be the first to go. If really good service is offered for a reasonable price, guess what? It might be worth the monthly outlay.
Does this mean that I have solutions for homeless? No -- as much as I feel for them, it becomes a whole lot harder when you don't have a stable place to hang your hat. I'm afraid they have other issues that will have to be confronted long before connectivity. However, that's an discussion far outside the scope of this commentary.
$.02...
The "digital divide," right now, largely consists of people who aren't on-line. Let's face it: a dirt-cheap Linux PC can be had for ~$200 at Wal-Mart; it's the $20/mo that keep people from being on-line. ($40/mo for broadband.) That, and the whole problem with rural areas, too. Through the wonders of electrification, we could now also have "digification." This could be a huge boon for those who might otherwise be left behind...
Look -- I hate the RIAA and MPAA as much as anyone. I think they leave trails of slime wherever they go. But grow up: losers though they may be, if someone is illegally distributing copyrighted works, guess what? It's (*gasp*) illegal. This gives you the right to make them stop.
Does this mean I agree with the recent Supreme Court ruling re: the damn Sonny (couldn't he have hit that tree just a -little- bit earlier) Bono Act? Hell, no. But legitimate copyright is legitimate. Just because the corporation enforcing it is scum doesn't, alas, change that salient fact.
I don't for a moment think that P2P is "bad" because it can be used to share copyrighted files, no more than I think my spiffy butcher knife is "bad" because I could use it to kill someone. That doesn't mean that the -illegal- distribution of legitimately copyrighted materials, no matter how pervasive, is suddenly morally defensible.
Do I wish that, when I bought an album, the money went to the artist, and not the RIAA? Damn straight. But, until such time as record labels die off or learn right, it's the only legal, moral way to obtain your music. (NOTE: I have no qualms about downloading music for CDs I've lost, or vinyl I never upgraded -- I paid once, I see no need to pay again.)
His entire premise is summed up thusly:
1) The military wanted to see what exploding a nuclear bomb was like.
2) Exploding one in the middle of nowhere would have shown the "typcial" [sic] fission cloud, thus letting our enemies know we had the means.
3) Therefore, we killed three hundred people to prove it.
Okay. I'll take number one as a given.
Number two: if no fission bombs had previously been exploded, how would anyone know what was "typical"?!?! That's just freakin' stuuuupid.
Furthermore (for both two and three) what? The middle of (say) the Atlantic isn't far enough away? The middle of Nevada? It's not like they had spy satallites, guys. I don't see -any- reason why we "needed" to kill a whole big ol bunch of folks, and blow up a bunch of add'l munitions that would no doubt muddy any results the military might have inteded to get in the first place. Hello?! Just because something -might- be feasible doesn't mean it -had- to occur. Especially, might I add, if the rationale is just plain dumb.
That's my two cents.
Okay, granted, the data could absolutely be used in ways that invade privacy. However, unlike (say) getting access to your video records, this doesn't really detail much about *you*. However, as an aggregate, it could tell a great deal about what mistaken assumptions car manufacturers are making regarding collisions. Furthermore, this wouldn't just be data against you -- it could also *support* you. "That bozo Michael was doing 70, officer! I swear! I couldn't avoid the collision!" "Well, dip, his car's recorder shows him doing 45. I'm sure your insurance company will be interested in hearing this."
Being that I was born in September of '66, that makes it just over two years old. How can I be sure? Because I remembered when someone recited "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" while circling the moon. For years, I thought I'd made it up; then I read that, indeed, someone -did- do it, and it was on Christmas day. I also remember things that I believe were from around then, but the Christmas one is the only one I have a definitive timestamp for.
Carl Sagan said it first, and I agree. I -want- to believe in extra-terrestrial life forms; I fully support and believe in SETI.
However, until I see -proof-, not silly "the government is out to get us" conspiracy theory stuff, I ain't buyin. Show me a radio signal from a remote star! Please! That's something that would be both very hard to fake, -and- something very hard to hide. Barring something along those lines, or equivilently hard to forge, and easy to prove, I ain't buyin.
MS-DOS was meant to supplant the ever-growing CP/M (and MP/M) hordes. IBM was afraid of 'em -- DOS, after all, was _IBM_'s choice, so to speak, not MS's. And Xenix _did_ get finished, just not by MS: it's called SCO.
Not, mind you, that I would have shed tears to see DOS be supplanted by a *nix, even one as dain-bramaged as SCO.
In his book 3001, the main character (whose name I won't give away for those who haven't read it) is introduced to an implant with, roughly, a petabyte of memory -- it acts as the "everything that's happened in your life" repository. Frankly, given the fact that it was supposedly occuring 999 years in the future, I think it wasn't nearly miniaturized enough -- hasn't he heard of Moore's Law?
I happen to have seen Free Enterprise somewhat by chance -- and loved it! It was both a spoof and yet a well-done comedy/drama, with believable, and enjoyable -- if somewhat neurotic -- characters.
Sadly, it appears not to have done too well at the box office. Do you feel the movie was what it should have been? Were you disappointed by its overall reception?
I wrote to all of my representatives about the RIAA vs. webcasters issue. I used e-mail, but I wrote a nice, in-depth letter, and presented my opinions thoughtfully. All except Senator Smith (who lost re-election) replied -- including John Sununu, who replaced him. I suppose it may depend on which congressional district you're in as to how much e-mail your representatives get, but some -- the good ones, at least -- are listening, and reply. John Sununu's reply was even in-depth, and included a copy of a Wall St. Journal article with which he (and I) agreed.
Bottom line: write your reps, however you do it. Just use good English, present your case well, and DON'T FLAME -- you'll just get tossed.
Oh -- one last thing: _do_ include your snail mail address. That way they can
a) get back to you with dead-tree stuff, and
b) know that you _are_ one of their constituents.