I think that many people feel that the law should NOT protect someone for being gay. Just like the law does not protect someone for being a "murderer". And in many people's minds, those two things are equally morally reprehensible.
I think that's an unhelpful comparison. Perhaps a better comparison would be adultery or fornication. Both of those are morally reprehensible to many, and are perfecly legal reasons to discriminated against people in some states, but for the most part laws prohibiting them aren't enforced (like most sodomy laws).
That's definately a good policy. Not only does it help with this particular problem, but it also makes backup easier. But people who are REALLY paranoid about security, might still be concerned about pagefiles and temporary files that get written to the hard drive that might still contain confidential information.
And then you still have the original issue when server drives need replacing.. especially if you use RAID1!
Right now the gain is in the summer where there are more hours of light in the evening. In June, with DST, twighlight is ~9 PM.. so people spend more time outside or with natural light indoors (theoretically at least).
If they extend daylight savings time, it will get dark in March at around 7 instead of 6, and in November at 6 instead of 5. Again, the theory is that people will use less electricity during those times.. I tend to think the gain isn't so great those times, since people don't spend as much time outdoors due to the temperature.. although I guess that's not so much of a factor in the warmer climates.
Although people do seem to spend far less time outdoors now then during the 40s and 50s.. so perhaps daylight savings gains are much less now than in those days.
The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use.
Geez, I've heard enough slamming on this statement. It is, actually, an interesting phenominon, and not at all a dumb thing to state. He's demonstrating that the natural changes in daylight throughout the year has a direct impact on the amount of electricity we use (presumably adjusting for the high air conditioning use in the summer). And why would that be? The theory is because energy usage isn't evenly distributed around the clock -- people tend to wake up at roughly the same time year-round, and thus when there is more natural light available in the evening, use less electricity.
So if we used the same amount of electricity no matter how much daylight there was, then day light savings time would be pointless. Thus the statement "The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use" is valid and important. (If true.)
Where the heck do you live? Here in PA the kids all get picked up right at the end of their driveway by a hydrocarbon belching old school bus.
Actually, the bigger problem is kids walking to school.. in some places around here, kids are still supposed to walk if they live within 1-2 miles of their school, depending on the district. Sure, some (most?) parents drive their kids in, but that isn't an option for everyone. Requiring those kids to walk to school in the pitch dark is not particularly safe.
Funny this question should come up now.. Just 10 minutes ago I finished reading an article in Health Data Managment about hardware maintenance. In the paper version they had a special sidebar about leasing vs buying. In the electronic version, it's at the bottom.
In short, they found that if you want to turn over your computers frequently and on schedule, and were good at asset managment, leasing was generally favorable. But if you decide you want to turn them over ahead of schedule, make changes to the systems during their use (like add memory), or aren't amazing at tracking assets, then the administrative burden could be really heavy.
They also had a neat description of a procurement system that facilitated the vendor bidding process.
Overall, the article is a nice balanced look at the topic.
They should really put their energy into something more solid (ie less movement). Reliability is most important. I don't care if I have 30TB of space if I have to replace drives every week.
While I generally agree that reliability is very important, significantly increasing the size of each disk with slightly less reliable drives could actually improve the overall reliability. If instead of using 200 150GB drives you switch to 30 1TB drives.. say 5% of your 150 GB drives die in a given year (that's 10 drives), versus 20% of the 1TB drives (that's still only 6 drives). So you could see some fairly significant overall reliability increases if all you're concerned about is replacing failed drives.
What I see as a possible barrier to adoption in servers (unless their cost is used as an incentive) is their speed, since there is a significant speed advantage to having multiple spindles for a big storage server... On the flip side, though, it would certainly simplify the setup of a server if you only needed a few TB; getting a 20 drive enclosure is often out of reach for many SMBs.. but sticking 3 or 4 1TB drives in a regular server is much more manageable.
From the article, I thought it was interesting to see that they appeared to be targeting the consumer market.. iPods, microdrives, and so forth. Seems they're focusing this technology on implementations where size is the real constraining factor.
What's actually ironic is that you're using a.org domain to host commercial business, since.org was originally for non-commercial organizations. Unless, that is, suso.org is a non-profit company; your About information was a little vague on that point. Technically I think a.net domain would be more appropriate for your current business offerings.
Your business mission is worthwhile, I don't mean to knock that, but it is still ironic considering your usage statements.
Back in the old days when I ran a Mac with OS 7.5.1 I used to create a RAM Disk -- the opposite of virtual memory; it uses RAM and treats it like a hard disk. Then I'd put a minimal OS in the RAM disk and boot from it. Wow, those were some FAST boot times! Of course if you power off your computer instead of just rebooting it, you lose what's in the RAM disk...
Microsoft are using their windows monopoly to stop users of Office on Wine from getting updates.
Actually, according to the article, such users should be able to download Office updates just fine:
The spokesperson said users who are not running Windows XP or Windows 2000 natively can still download updates for Microsoft Office from the Office Update Web site.
Really all they're saying in this interview is that they consider update components of their OS to be part of the OS.. and they're trying to restrict the distribution of those copyrighted components to only validly licensed versions of their OS.
I don't see anything particularly wrong with that stance.
Wow, your definition of "rural" and mine are way different.
I never thought much about it, but apparently agreeing on a definition for "rural" is actually quite difficult. See here. But generally speaking, it isn't just the number of people in your town that matters, but also the population density and its proximity to a larger city.
I also doubt you're required to keep it on in the shower, that's medically inadvisable and expensive to engineer.
I'm not sure how they do it, but from this article it sounds like at least in some places, they're not allowed to remove the anklet at all. Granted that is New Zealand.. Other sites I read talk about rivets and tampering countermeasures, which also both sound like you don't get to take them off to shower.
Then guys started going to jail for driving by the house to get a glimpse of their kids. Now, insyead of going to jail, they'll be fitted with collars...
Point taken, but isn't it better to have to wear a collar (or anklet) then go to jail??
Uhh.. Massachusetts already has an online searchable sex offender registry. I think it is perfectly appropriate for people convicted of certain crimes that have a high recidivism rate (and a high potential for a repeat offense having a severe impact on others) to be required to meet certain conditions after their release.
Note that people are only allowed out on probation if it is reasonably believed that they will not break the law again. [snip] This is the same tired old fundamental problem. All these sorts of ideas fail in the same way: they forget that criminals do not obey the law, by definition. Anything which relies on criminals obeying the law is idiotic.
While that's generally true, convicts already have to meet some (often) strict requirements, including meeting with a probation officer. It wouldn't be difficult to make the devices so that once detached they couldn't be reattached.. then require them to regularly check in with probation officers who check the status of the anklet. The anklet could also be configured to send an alert if it is being tampered with.
While the economy gained from the new spending, it lost from the lack of the default spending.
I heard this bit on NPR; in the third part (last night) they essentially discussed your comment, and said that indeed, if it had meerly been a "fix the bug" job, it would have been a net loss in that work would be done that didn't produce anything. But infact what happened was that companies decided that since they had to invest all this money in reworking code, they might as well get something out of it, so they upgraded ancient systems, reworked bad code, etc. so that they were able to reap benefits from improved productivity after the work was done. Essentially, they were arguing that some of this "jobless recovery" of the US economy is experiencing is due to the substantial productivity gains of the Y2K work.
The other major point they make is that it also lead to the outsourcing of whitecollar jobs (programming) to India because not only was India english-speaking, but they also used a lot of old systems to learn on so they tended to have people very competent in the programming languages that aren't so popular stateside. And because Indian companies were able to establish a good track record programming FORTRAN, etc., they were able to convince companies to continue contracting with them on more advanced systems.
So the argument made was that the longest lasting legacy of Y2K is outsourcing.
So what am I missing? Why would I want to be secure? (Answer 1: my personal data goes over the network unencrypted. Ok, how do I solve that yet give the world open access to by Internet connection.)
This is a common confusion with wireless networks. There's a difference between encryption and authentication. WEP and WPA are examples of wireless encryption technologies. They (try to) keep people from sniffing the contents of transmissions. But they don't control who can and can't get on your network. MAC filtering, not broadcasting SSIDs, EAP, and RADIUS-based authentication are examples of technology people use to make sure only trusted hosts can get on their wireless networks.
So you can just have an encrypted open network. This would allow anyone to get on, but would protect them from eavesdropping while they're connected.
Of course this means that anyone who hops on your wireless network can attack other devices on your network.. so it would be wise to keep up to date with patches and such.
What's the advantage over running a wireless detection app on my laptop or PDA? Why spend $50 on something when I already have a tool that works?
Well.. if you already have a wireless PDA that you carry around all the time, perhaps it wouldn't be too useful to you. But it is useful for people who are looking for a wireless signal for their laptop. Instead of lugging the laptop around open and powered up, they can walk (or drive) around with this little gadget and check for signals. Not only is it less cumbersome, it is also safer while driving, and probably even more important it doesn't use up the laptop battery before finding a connection.
Or, for something like looking for rogue access points or checking network signal strength, one might ask "why pay $250 for a wireless PDA or even more for a laptop when I can get a $50 tool to that works just fine?"
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I think that many people feel that the law should NOT protect someone for being gay. Just like the law does not protect someone for being a "murderer". And in many people's minds, those two things are equally morally reprehensible.
I think that's an unhelpful comparison. Perhaps a better comparison would be adultery or fornication. Both of those are morally reprehensible to many, and are perfecly legal reasons to discriminated against people in some states, but for the most part laws prohibiting them aren't enforced (like most sodomy laws).
That's definately a good policy. Not only does it help with this particular problem, but it also makes backup easier. But people who are REALLY paranoid about security, might still be concerned about pagefiles and temporary files that get written to the hard drive that might still contain confidential information.
And then you still have the original issue when server drives need replacing.. especially if you use RAID1!
Nothing puts executives on edge like the word CHAOS in big, bold letters :p
Reminds me of when I installed SATAN on my network; boy did I got some strange looks from my boss that day.
Right now the gain is in the summer where there are more hours of light in the evening. In June, with DST, twighlight is ~9 PM.. so people spend more time outside or with natural light indoors (theoretically at least).
If they extend daylight savings time, it will get dark in March at around 7 instead of 6, and in November at 6 instead of 5. Again, the theory is that people will use less electricity during those times.. I tend to think the gain isn't so great those times, since people don't spend as much time outdoors due to the temperature.. although I guess that's not so much of a factor in the warmer climates.
Although people do seem to spend far less time outdoors now then during the 40s and 50s.. so perhaps daylight savings gains are much less now than in those days.
For reference, I'm using this calculator.
The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use.
Geez, I've heard enough slamming on this statement. It is, actually, an interesting phenominon, and not at all a dumb thing to state. He's demonstrating that the natural changes in daylight throughout the year has a direct impact on the amount of electricity we use (presumably adjusting for the high air conditioning use in the summer). And why would that be? The theory is because energy usage isn't evenly distributed around the clock -- people tend to wake up at roughly the same time year-round, and thus when there is more natural light available in the evening, use less electricity.
So if we used the same amount of electricity no matter how much daylight there was, then day light savings time would be pointless. Thus the statement "The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use" is valid and important. (If true.)
Where the heck do you live? Here in PA the kids all get picked up right at the end of their driveway by a hydrocarbon belching old school bus.
Actually, the bigger problem is kids walking to school.. in some places around here, kids are still supposed to walk if they live within 1-2 miles of their school, depending on the district. Sure, some (most?) parents drive their kids in, but that isn't an option for everyone. Requiring those kids to walk to school in the pitch dark is not particularly safe.
I bet a phalanx could target one of these MAVs. They specialize on targeting small, relatively close in stuff like this.
Funny this question should come up now.. Just 10 minutes ago I finished reading an article in Health Data Managment about hardware maintenance. In the paper version they had a special sidebar about leasing vs buying. In the electronic version, it's at the bottom.
In short, they found that if you want to turn over your computers frequently and on schedule, and were good at asset managment, leasing was generally favorable. But if you decide you want to turn them over ahead of schedule, make changes to the systems during their use (like add memory), or aren't amazing at tracking assets, then the administrative burden could be really heavy.
They also had a neat description of a procurement system that facilitated the vendor bidding process.
Overall, the article is a nice balanced look at the topic.
They should really put their energy into something more solid (ie less movement). Reliability is most important. I don't care if I have 30TB of space if I have to replace drives every week.
While I generally agree that reliability is very important, significantly increasing the size of each disk with slightly less reliable drives could actually improve the overall reliability. If instead of using 200 150GB drives you switch to 30 1TB drives.. say 5% of your 150 GB drives die in a given year (that's 10 drives), versus 20% of the 1TB drives (that's still only 6 drives). So you could see some fairly significant overall reliability increases if all you're concerned about is replacing failed drives.
What I see as a possible barrier to adoption in servers (unless their cost is used as an incentive) is their speed, since there is a significant speed advantage to having multiple spindles for a big storage server... On the flip side, though, it would certainly simplify the setup of a server if you only needed a few TB; getting a 20 drive enclosure is often out of reach for many SMBs.. but sticking 3 or 4 1TB drives in a regular server is much more manageable.
From the article, I thought it was interesting to see that they appeared to be targeting the consumer market.. iPods, microdrives, and so forth. Seems they're focusing this technology on implementations where size is the real constraining factor.
What's actually ironic is that you're using a .org domain to host commercial business, since .org was originally for non-commercial organizations. Unless, that is, suso.org is a non-profit company; your About information was a little vague on that point. Technically I think a .net domain would be more appropriate for your current business offerings.
Your business mission is worthwhile, I don't mean to knock that, but it is still ironic considering your usage statements.
Back in the old days when I ran a Mac with OS 7.5.1 I used to create a RAM Disk -- the opposite of virtual memory; it uses RAM and treats it like a hard disk. Then I'd put a minimal OS in the RAM disk and boot from it. Wow, those were some FAST boot times! Of course if you power off your computer instead of just rebooting it, you lose what's in the RAM disk...
Get ready to pay $250 for telephone tech support!
No, you're not. Check the EULA for Office. If you don't run it under Windows, you're not licensed to use it.
Huh, where'd you get that from?
I just read the EULA for Office 2003 from here; it didn't say anything about having to run it on Windows.
Actually, according to the article, such users should be able to download Office updates just fine:
Really all they're saying in this interview is that they consider update components of their OS to be part of the OS.. and they're trying to restrict the distribution of those copyrighted components to only validly licensed versions of their OS.
I don't see anything particularly wrong with that stance.
Wow, your definition of "rural" and mine are way different.
I never thought much about it, but apparently agreeing on a definition for "rural" is actually quite difficult. See here. But generally speaking, it isn't just the number of people in your town that matters, but also the population density and its proximity to a larger city.
Yah, don't forget ELF and ALF.
I also doubt you're required to keep it on in the shower, that's medically inadvisable and expensive to engineer.
I'm not sure how they do it, but from this article it sounds like at least in some places, they're not allowed to remove the anklet at all. Granted that is New Zealand.. Other sites I read talk about rivets and tampering countermeasures, which also both sound like you don't get to take them off to shower.
With low-jack and onstar, the victim has to give the permision for low-jack and onstar to tell the police where the car is.
Or they could just get a court order..
Then guys started going to jail for driving by the house to get a glimpse of their kids. Now, insyead of going to jail, they'll be fitted with collars...
Point taken, but isn't it better to have to wear a collar (or anklet) then go to jail??
Uhh.. Massachusetts already has an online searchable sex offender registry. I think it is perfectly appropriate for people convicted of certain crimes that have a high recidivism rate (and a high potential for a repeat offense having a severe impact on others) to be required to meet certain conditions after their release.
Note that people are only allowed out on probation if it is reasonably believed that they will not break the law again. [snip] This is the same tired old fundamental problem. All these sorts of ideas fail in the same way: they forget that criminals do not obey the law, by definition. Anything which relies on criminals obeying the law is idiotic.
While that's generally true, convicts already have to meet some (often) strict requirements, including meeting with a probation officer. It wouldn't be difficult to make the devices so that once detached they couldn't be reattached.. then require them to regularly check in with probation officers who check the status of the anklet. The anklet could also be configured to send an alert if it is being tampered with.
While the economy gained from the new spending, it lost from the lack of the default spending.
I heard this bit on NPR; in the third part (last night) they essentially discussed your comment, and said that indeed, if it had meerly been a "fix the bug" job, it would have been a net loss in that work would be done that didn't produce anything. But infact what happened was that companies decided that since they had to invest all this money in reworking code, they might as well get something out of it, so they upgraded ancient systems, reworked bad code, etc. so that they were able to reap benefits from improved productivity after the work was done. Essentially, they were arguing that some of this "jobless recovery" of the US economy is experiencing is due to the substantial productivity gains of the Y2K work.
The other major point they make is that it also lead to the outsourcing of whitecollar jobs (programming) to India because not only was India english-speaking, but they also used a lot of old systems to learn on so they tended to have people very competent in the programming languages that aren't so popular stateside. And because Indian companies were able to establish a good track record programming FORTRAN, etc., they were able to convince companies to continue contracting with them on more advanced systems.
So the argument made was that the longest lasting legacy of Y2K is outsourcing.
Wrong. WEP, by encrypting traffic, works in both these dimensions. I have 128-bit shared-key WEP on my network.
Right. But if you used open-key WEP (instead of shared key), anyone could connect and be encrypted.
So what am I missing? Why would I want to be secure? (Answer 1: my personal data goes over the network unencrypted. Ok, how do I solve that yet give the world open access to by Internet connection.)
This is a common confusion with wireless networks. There's a difference between encryption and authentication. WEP and WPA are examples of wireless encryption technologies. They (try to) keep people from sniffing the contents of transmissions. But they don't control who can and can't get on your network. MAC filtering, not broadcasting SSIDs, EAP, and RADIUS-based authentication are examples of technology people use to make sure only trusted hosts can get on their wireless networks.
So you can just have an encrypted open network. This would allow anyone to get on, but would protect them from eavesdropping while they're connected.
Of course this means that anyone who hops on your wireless network can attack other devices on your network.. so it would be wise to keep up to date with patches and such.
What's the advantage over running a wireless detection app on my laptop or PDA? Why spend $50 on something when I already have a tool that works?
Well.. if you already have a wireless PDA that you carry around all the time, perhaps it wouldn't be too useful to you. But it is useful for people who are looking for a wireless signal for their laptop. Instead of lugging the laptop around open and powered up, they can walk (or drive) around with this little gadget and check for signals. Not only is it less cumbersome, it is also safer while driving, and probably even more important it doesn't use up the laptop battery before finding a connection.
Or, for something like looking for rogue access points or checking network signal strength, one might ask "why pay $250 for a wireless PDA or even more for a laptop when I can get a $50 tool to that works just fine?"