I'll 'fess up. Before I rode one, I thought, yeah, they're dorky. (Though, secretly, I was also slightly envious.) Then I rode one... and they're still dorky -- but w-a-y more fun than I'd thought it would be.
I asked when it would be usable for "people who backed up their data" about a year ago -- which is about how long I've been using it -- and the answer was, "No firm date." If you load up a 2.6.31 kernel, the commits have reached the point where not only shouldn't you see significant on-disk format changes, but that the bulk of non-RAID tweaking to occur is probably performance related. (RAID is coming, but it's only just started.) Grub still doesn't know about btrfs, and that's semi-back-burnered functionality, so in order to get it to boot, you need a/boot partition on something Grub does know about.
That this is a "service" provided by LWN so that non-subscribers can read premium content; this story would be free for all come Thursday, but apparently "diegocgteleline.es" didn't feel compelled to mention that, that LWN's weekly page is premium content, and that premium content subscribers help LWN stay afloat -- when it's almost gone under a couple times.
You implement the idea -- and *how* it's implemented, but not the implementation, itself. For example, patent applications do not generally contain more than superficial pseudo-code; they certainly don't contain a full implementation of the code -- that's where copyright comes in. Tom Clancy's description was lengthy enough that I think it certainly meets the criteria by which (say) waterbeds were unable to be patented because of Heinlein's description.
Tom Clancy beat this drum -- almost tiresomely -- in several of his books back in the 90's. Our Fearless Protagonist, Jack Ryan, even came up with the algorithm, the name of which currently escapes me. Granted, the algorithm is never actually explained, but its output is identical to what this patent proposes, so methinks this probably isn't worthy of a patent.
It's overhead. In other words, while it's true that malware affects closed-source far more frequently than OSS, that's just because CSS is far more commonly-used, and, therefore, makes a more tempting target. Make no mistake: if Linux were as widely used as Windows, there would be bugs galore to be a-cleaning in Linux land. I love Linux (heck, "I'm rinsing in it now!"), and have used it as my primary desktop and server platform since '94, but bulletproof it ain't.
Jeeze, dude! Get a life, get a clue. You just installed software that BY DEFINITION isn't supposed to work. That's why it's called "Alpha". If after all these years, you're going to gripe about a pre-pre-pre-pre-releases stability, it might be time to consider alternate forms of employ.
But, somehow, putting it on the level of 3K+ innocents' lives seems -- call me crazy! -- perhaps a wee bit over the top. For the sake of my sanity, I'll just assume she was succumbing to Alzheimer's.
As for me, I was on a cruise. And it was actually the lead story on the in-house cable. Surprised, I was.
First and foremost, it's great that you read -- and retained -- 1984. That being said, whether you like it or not, "Big Brother" has entered the vernacular as "overly-controlled and/or observed." Things like this happen frequently -- you should probably roll with it. Next, the book is making a general point with anecdotes; without reading it, I can't state whether or not this is being abused -- but the mere fact that anecdotes are being used is not a reason to condemn, which you clearly think it is. I mean, sure, it's great that murders have been solved with CCTV. Terrific, even. But that's kind of the whole *point*: where's the balance between police state and privacy? You seem to fail to grasp that privacy should be considered a basic, fundamental right. Otherwise, it should be all cameras, all the time. Instead, we have to try to find the balance -- and there are no clear lines drawn. Sometimes it's obvious when a line is crossed; the example of the camera in a women's locker room some years ago comes to mind. And sometimes more -- or better-placed -- cameras could be wished for. But to just give in to one side or the other, without consideration for the middle ground, is simply foolish.
Lastly, your editing has improved *dramatically*. Thank you ever so much. A few mistakes were made, but by no means enough to impair the flow of the story. Much appreciated.
As an NH resident, well... wrong, sir, you're wrong!
That being said, while I do care about this -- even deeply (and probably in the "Nay" camp), I can't, for the life of me, figure out why it's on Slashdot.
If it were a corrupted FAT, then I wouldn't be pulling SCSI errors, and I *would* be able to fdisk. So, sadly, wrong... though I wish you were right.;-)
He'd taken it out of his camera, tried to put it back in, and nothin'. Slapped it into my Linux box. It "saw" that there was a device there, but wasn't real happy about it: [ 5555.618324] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Add. Sense: No additional sense information [ 5558.777567] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : No Sense [current]
"It's dead, Jim."
I'm tempted to try the old hard-drive swaparoo: get the exact same SD card, unsolder the flash chips, and put the bad one's flash on the new one's circuitry. See if it's the circuitry that's bad, or the flash, itself. If anyone has any bright ideas on how to determine definitively which it is without me going through that exercise, I'm all ears.
Absolutely. Phrase it as nicely as you can -- but it's clear that the company isn't taking the legal situation seriously, and only presenting the facts -- again, as non-threateningly as possible -- will make them sit up and listen. I mean, it's lose-lose (thus my options 1 and 5), but *he's* safe legally so long as he's directed by an officer. (And, honestly, if he got fired, he'd be able to get one whopping big severance settlement AND an SPA bonus in the deal, if he felt so inclined.) But unless someone wakes up, the company is working themselves into big trouble some day. Hell -- convert everyone to Linux and Open Office! But something needs to happen, and it's clear that without a bitch-slap, the status quo will remain unchanged.
I've been doing system administration for over a quarter-century. And when I've had to tell management bad news, I've done it. Haven't always been happy about it; even tendered my resignation once (it was declined). But do you want to be known as the sysadmin who was in-place during an SPA bust that bankrupted the company?
1) Start looking for a new job. 2) Go to the CFO. Explain that while you, yourself, have no intention whatsoever of blowing the whistle, there are actual *rewards* put out by the SPA for unhappy employees to take advantage of by being whistle blowers. 3) Explain that, if he's really lucky, as an officer of the company, he could face criminal charges. 4) You don't want ANY of this to happen. So, at the very least, a concerted effort going forward -- with backing from management -- should be made to start getting valid licenses in-place. 5) See #1.
I mean, really. Git's good -- git's even really good -- but what does it matter if Perl 6.x is gonna take longer than Duke Nukem Forever to come out? It's the clear and obvious winner of the OSS vaporware award. [And, yeah, I'm aware that there are beta releases -- or, at least, pre-releases -- but "where's the beef" already?] I'm not a big fan of ESR, but I have to admit "release early and release often" is something I happen to agree with.
For the love of God, please: learn to use punctuation and better sentence structure. I tried making it through your review -- I really did. But this review, as well as your "New York News Radio: The voice of bad science" are so rife with incorrect usage that the message becomes blurred and incoherent. Just one example of many:
"Contrary to what common sense and basic science, in homeopathy, a solution that is more diluted is considered stronger and as having a higher potency."
What? Oh! I just realized: if I remove "what", the sentence suddenly makes sense. (No, I'm not being sarcastic or ironic.) Perhaps a careful proofreading is what you require, though your utter lack of possessive apostrophes implies that is probably not the case.
Bottom line: you've got good stuff to say. Please learn how to better say it.
Okay, the truth of the matter is that I've forgotten some of the XFree86 nomenclature; I, too, hand-edited the/etc/X/XF86Config (?) file with emacs the first time I used it, to set it up to run on my 16 MHz 386SX, 8 MB of RAM (I fully populated that MO(B|F)O) with my Hercules mono card (I had an amber monitor: neener. No greenscreen here, baby.), and my two 20 MB drives -- 40 MB of storage!
It's nice to know that some things just don't change. Niagara Falls keeps falling, the New England Atlantic is always just a bit too cold to really enjoy swimming in, and my first Linux distro keeps on going.
Kudos, Patrick! Long may you release! (And, since I just found out about 20 seconds ago that he's a month younger than me, I look forward to seeing Slack releases into my nursing home years. "Why, when I was your age, youngster, we used xf86cfg to set up X; none of this X.org junk! You kids have it so easy!")
I don't know why this story's flagged "endofdays"
on
Python 3.0 Released
·
· Score: 4, Funny
I saw a LeCroy we have -- about $10K -- that was freaking amazing. Plugs into a network, has USB, can store waveforms, zoom, virtually unlimited capture, freaking AUTOMATICALLY figured out which serial standard was being used to generate the waveform (the first -- and perhaps only -- time that "autoconfigure" really did the job), etc. They're good. Unless Agilent and Tektronix have come a looong way, LeCroy is going to be the one to beat.
1) Get you some high-grade isopropyl alcohol (not the wussy 70% stuff -- the 97% stuff they use in cleanrooms) 2) Put it in a tub 3) Rinse your electronics in it -- vigorously, but briefly 4) Let dry for a couple of days (to play it safe)
And, voila! It should all just work. Maybe. DO NOTE: this stuff is flammable like nobody's business. Don't do this in an enclosed area, and don't do it if there's any chance of sparks.
P.S. If rust has set in, ain't much that's gonna fix that. P.P.S. YMMV, etc.
And, that being said, I forgot to mention the whole "light not penetrating solid objects" comment. Funny -- I kinda thought that's what, say, windows, windshields, glass bricks, bottles (glass and plastic), quartz, diamond (the solidest [sic] object out there), etc. do with grace and elan. And mind, that's only *visible* light; at what point do you stop calling certain parts of the electromagnetic spectrum "light?" 'Cause, if your definition is flexible enough, you can have parts of it pass through all *sorts* of "solid objects," including those very, very opaque to visible light (e.g., far infrared -- almost certainly in the vast majority of people's definitions of "light" -- does that for many things).
1) "Infrared-colored"?? Ummm, no. How about "infrared-emitting." 2) That being said, IT AIN'T THE INFRARED THAT MATTERS. Read for content: it said wireless. Wireless, in this context, almost certainly means bluetooth. And that ain't infrared, no matter how you slice it (barring, say, relativistic affects when the jet goes mach 100000).
Slashdot Mirror
I'll 'fess up. Before I rode one, I thought, yeah, they're dorky. (Though, secretly, I was also slightly envious.) Then I rode one... and they're still dorky -- but w-a-y more fun than I'd thought it would be.
Enough that I am, indeed, planning on buying one.
I asked when it would be usable for "people who backed up their data" about a year ago -- which is about how long I've been using it -- and the answer was, "No firm date." If you load up a 2.6.31 kernel, the commits have reached the point where not only shouldn't you see significant on-disk format changes, but that the bulk of non-RAID tweaking to occur is probably performance related. (RAID is coming, but it's only just started.) Grub still doesn't know about btrfs, and that's semi-back-burnered functionality, so in order to get it to boot, you need a /boot partition on something Grub does know about.
That this is a "service" provided by LWN so that non-subscribers can read premium content; this story would be free for all come Thursday, but apparently "diegocgteleline.es" didn't feel compelled to mention that, that LWN's weekly page is premium content, and that premium content subscribers help LWN stay afloat -- when it's almost gone under a couple times.
You implement the idea -- and *how* it's implemented, but not the implementation, itself. For example, patent applications do not generally contain more than superficial pseudo-code; they certainly don't contain a full implementation of the code -- that's where copyright comes in. Tom Clancy's description was lengthy enough that I think it certainly meets the criteria by which (say) waterbeds were unable to be patented because of Heinlein's description.
Tom Clancy beat this drum -- almost tiresomely -- in several of his books back in the 90's. Our Fearless Protagonist, Jack Ryan, even came up with the algorithm, the name of which currently escapes me. Granted, the algorithm is never actually explained, but its output is identical to what this patent proposes, so methinks this probably isn't worthy of a patent.
Just my two cents, of course.
-Slarty
It's overhead. In other words, while it's true that malware affects closed-source far more frequently than OSS, that's just because CSS is far more commonly-used, and, therefore, makes a more tempting target. Make no mistake: if Linux were as widely used as Windows, there would be bugs galore to be a-cleaning in Linux land. I love Linux (heck, "I'm rinsing in it now!"), and have used it as my primary desktop and server platform since '94, but bulletproof it ain't.
Jeeze, dude! Get a life, get a clue. You just installed software that BY DEFINITION isn't supposed to work. That's why it's called "Alpha". If after all these years, you're going to gripe about a pre-pre-pre-pre-releases stability, it might be time to consider alternate forms of employ.
Sheesh.
He'd be all set.
Sadly, neither irony nor sarcasm were used in the making of this post.
But, somehow, putting it on the level of 3K+ innocents' lives seems -- call me crazy! -- perhaps a wee bit over the top. For the sake of my sanity, I'll just assume she was succumbing to Alzheimer's.
As for me, I was on a cruise. And it was actually the lead story on the in-house cable. Surprised, I was.
First and foremost, it's great that you read -- and retained -- 1984. That being said, whether you like it or not, "Big Brother" has entered the vernacular as "overly-controlled and/or observed." Things like this happen frequently -- you should probably roll with it. Next, the book is making a general point with anecdotes; without reading it, I can't state whether or not this is being abused -- but the mere fact that anecdotes are being used is not a reason to condemn, which you clearly think it is. I mean, sure, it's great that murders have been solved with CCTV. Terrific, even. But that's kind of the whole *point*: where's the balance between police state and privacy? You seem to fail to grasp that privacy should be considered a basic, fundamental right. Otherwise, it should be all cameras, all the time. Instead, we have to try to find the balance -- and there are no clear lines drawn. Sometimes it's obvious when a line is crossed; the example of the camera in a women's locker room some years ago comes to mind. And sometimes more -- or better-placed -- cameras could be wished for. But to just give in to one side or the other, without consideration for the middle ground, is simply foolish.
Lastly, your editing has improved *dramatically*. Thank you ever so much. A few mistakes were made, but by no means enough to impair the flow of the story. Much appreciated.
As an NH resident, well... wrong, sir, you're wrong!
That being said, while I do care about this -- even deeply (and probably in the "Nay" camp), I can't, for the life of me, figure out why it's on Slashdot.
If it were a corrupted FAT, then I wouldn't be pulling SCSI errors, and I *would* be able to fdisk. So, sadly, wrong... though I wish you were right. ;-)
He'd taken it out of his camera, tried to put it back in, and nothin'. Slapped it into my Linux box. It "saw" that there was a device there, but wasn't real happy about it:
[ 5555.618324] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Add. Sense: No additional sense information
[ 5558.777567] sd 4:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : No Sense [current]
"It's dead, Jim."
I'm tempted to try the old hard-drive swaparoo: get the exact same SD card, unsolder the flash chips, and put the bad one's flash on the new one's circuitry. See if it's the circuitry that's bad, or the flash, itself. If anyone has any bright ideas on how to determine definitively which it is without me going through that exercise, I'm all ears.
Now my LCD panel's monitor stand is a Sparc IPC. I carry arround an AUI-10BaseT converter in my jacket pocket for luck.
The times, they are a-changing.
Absolutely. Phrase it as nicely as you can -- but it's clear that the company isn't taking the legal situation seriously, and only presenting the facts -- again, as non-threateningly as possible -- will make them sit up and listen. I mean, it's lose-lose (thus my options 1 and 5), but *he's* safe legally so long as he's directed by an officer. (And, honestly, if he got fired, he'd be able to get one whopping big severance settlement AND an SPA bonus in the deal, if he felt so inclined.) But unless someone wakes up, the company is working themselves into big trouble some day. Hell -- convert everyone to Linux and Open Office! But something needs to happen, and it's clear that without a bitch-slap, the status quo will remain unchanged.
I've been doing system administration for over a quarter-century. And when I've had to tell management bad news, I've done it. Haven't always been happy about it; even tendered my resignation once (it was declined). But do you want to be known as the sysadmin who was in-place during an SPA bust that bankrupted the company?
"The answer is easy if you take it logically..."
1) Start looking for a new job.
2) Go to the CFO. Explain that while you, yourself, have no intention whatsoever of blowing the whistle, there are actual *rewards* put out by the SPA for unhappy employees to take advantage of by being whistle blowers.
3) Explain that, if he's really lucky, as an officer of the company, he could face criminal charges.
4) You don't want ANY of this to happen. So, at the very least, a concerted effort going forward -- with backing from management -- should be made to start getting valid licenses in-place.
5) See #1.
I mean, really. Git's good -- git's even really good -- but what does it matter if Perl 6.x is gonna take longer than Duke Nukem Forever to come out? It's the clear and obvious winner of the OSS vaporware award. [And, yeah, I'm aware that there are beta releases -- or, at least, pre-releases -- but "where's the beef" already?] I'm not a big fan of ESR, but I have to admit "release early and release often" is something I happen to agree with.
$.02
For the love of God, please: learn to use punctuation and better sentence structure. I tried making it through your review -- I really did. But this review, as well as your "New York News Radio: The voice of bad science" are so rife with incorrect usage that the message becomes blurred and incoherent. Just one example of many:
"Contrary to what common sense and basic science, in homeopathy, a solution that is more diluted is considered stronger and as having a higher potency."
What? Oh! I just realized: if I remove "what", the sentence suddenly makes sense. (No, I'm not being sarcastic or ironic.) Perhaps a careful proofreading is what you require, though your utter lack of possessive apostrophes implies that is probably not the case.
Bottom line: you've got good stuff to say. Please learn how to better say it.
Thanks.
Okay, the truth of the matter is that I've forgotten some of the XFree86 nomenclature; I, too, hand-edited the /etc/X/XF86Config (?) file with emacs the first time I used it, to set it up to run on my 16 MHz 386SX, 8 MB of RAM (I fully populated that MO(B|F)O) with my Hercules mono card (I had an amber monitor: neener. No greenscreen here, baby.), and my two 20 MB drives -- 40 MB of storage!
Man, did that machine rock.
It's nice to know that some things just don't change. Niagara Falls keeps falling, the New England Atlantic is always just a bit too cold to really enjoy swimming in, and my first Linux distro keeps on going.
Kudos, Patrick! Long may you release! (And, since I just found out about 20 seconds ago that he's a month younger than me, I look forward to seeing Slack releases into my nursing home years. "Why, when I was your age, youngster, we used xf86cfg to set up X; none of this X.org junk! You kids have it so easy!")
That'll be when Perl 6.0 ships.
I saw a LeCroy we have -- about $10K -- that was freaking amazing. Plugs into a network, has USB, can store waveforms, zoom, virtually unlimited capture, freaking AUTOMATICALLY figured out which serial standard was being used to generate the waveform (the first -- and perhaps only -- time that "autoconfigure" really did the job), etc. They're good. Unless Agilent and Tektronix have come a looong way, LeCroy is going to be the one to beat.
$.02
1) Get you some high-grade isopropyl alcohol (not the wussy 70% stuff -- the 97% stuff they use in cleanrooms)
2) Put it in a tub
3) Rinse your electronics in it -- vigorously, but briefly
4) Let dry for a couple of days (to play it safe)
And, voila! It should all just work. Maybe. DO NOTE: this stuff is flammable like nobody's business. Don't do this in an enclosed area, and don't do it if there's any chance of sparks.
P.S. If rust has set in, ain't much that's gonna fix that.
P.P.S. YMMV, etc.
And, that being said, I forgot to mention the whole "light not penetrating solid objects" comment. Funny -- I kinda thought that's what, say, windows, windshields, glass bricks, bottles (glass and plastic), quartz, diamond (the solidest [sic] object out there), etc. do with grace and elan. And mind, that's only *visible* light; at what point do you stop calling certain parts of the electromagnetic spectrum "light?" 'Cause, if your definition is flexible enough, you can have parts of it pass through all *sorts* of "solid objects," including those very, very opaque to visible light (e.g., far infrared -- almost certainly in the vast majority of people's definitions of "light" -- does that for many things).
Just another two cents' worth...
1) "Infrared-colored"?? Ummm, no. How about "infrared-emitting."
2) That being said, IT AIN'T THE INFRARED THAT MATTERS. Read for content: it said wireless. Wireless, in this context, almost certainly means bluetooth. And that ain't infrared, no matter how you slice it (barring, say, relativistic affects when the jet goes mach 100000).