This is indeed the eye of the beholder, it took me a while to figure it out even what the problem was. Apparently blacks are apes.
Ah. I didn't get that either.
In Denmark we have a law against racism, which quite frequently has some unpleasent side effects, as exemplified in recent local elections. Someone might accuse islam of being a supremacist religion. Then his opponents, instead of looking at the sources and coming up with counterarguments, simply report him to the police for racism. That creates an immediate public outcry, and the alledged offender plunges headlong into trouble. Most cases are dismissed as groundless after a few months of scrutiny, but the halo remains. And it's a completely free stunt for the accuser.
Interestingly, most of these cases could be avoided by going to the sources (the Qu'ran would do nicely here) and check the facts instead of just screaming 'Racist!' across town.
Government is supposed to exist for the benefit of the population, not the other way around.
Well, but... 'Supposed to' is the operative phrase here. Governments are, however, more motivated by what they believe is popular (next election is always 'soon'), or bending over to pressure from various other governments (it's proper to think 'US' here), or securing a place in the history books for overcoming vast opposition to some project. Or any other kind of confusion that leads them astray from the 'benefit of the population', long-term wisdom, 'true to basic principles' etc. etc.
Here in Europe most governments fear becoming unpopular more than anything else, and they'll bend over backwards to be politically correct rather than long-sighted. Lots of different pressures of dubious relevance get into the game as well (Condoleeza Rice forcing Turkey on the EU is a recent example), and lots of behind-the-scenes lobbying takes place.
This *might* be percieved as if the current democratic system is inherently broken and demotivate people from participating, but I think that's a broken conclusion. Much better for some genuine idealists to take part in the game and play along in whatever field they take interest. Idealists, unfortunately, are in short supply these days - but are frequently well received, though. You can do lobbying, press work, running for parliament etc - and even a *failed* attempt for parliament might generate useful results, like putting important issues on the agenda for the other parties. One of their strategies to protect themselves from newcomers is to steal the new ideas (we've seen green ideas 'stolen' - great!), which shows that even failed attempts can be quite effective.
I think it's cool that my friends 20 kilometers to the east are picking up the piracy issue like this. If they're being witty and do not want to harm the musicians, they could even influence the old school politicians into relaxing the current laws, or preventing DMCA-like measures from being adopted.
Errr... Last time I checked I was still getting about 50 spam messages a day.
I'm at 75, with no end in sight. Actually it's amazingly stable at that number, just the schemes are developing. The GMail spam filter is showing weakness at this time - looks like the spammers are adopting to it.
It's a FTC propaganda victory - and then quickly a change of subject. No, I'm not expecting effective action from that side:)
Best approach is to expose the schemes being offered. Currently the penny stock spams are the hot trend, and I've been digging a little into those companies being offered for sale. Of course they're complete crap, and it's important to point that out to people who might fall for that.
When noone reacts to spam (hopeful, yes:), it'll stop. Perhaps...
Given that low power and backup are the main purposes, I suggest you take a close look at the LinkSys NSLU2. It takes two external USB2 drives and provides Samba shares for them. It'll automatically pull backups from your network, then back up one of the drives to the other. If you use laptop (2½") drives with the unit, it can supply enough power to them, and the whole setup will use less than 10 watt total. Takes less space, too.
Having the backup done by normal file copying rather than RAID is not a problem in my view - after all, backup is the purpose, and that's done by the firmware. RAID ain't always ideal: A friend of mine had a nice RAID5 setup in his computer. Then the primary drive got corrupted - and that was immediately mirrored to the second drive! He lost all his data...
No mention of the NSLU2 is complete without noting that it's eminently hackable.:)
Instead of defragmentation, I suggest to make sure the hard drive has enough capacity and free space. NTFS is fairly fragmentation-resistant, so unless the hard drive is full to over the 90 % mark, defragmentation is not that important.
And it's dangerous. If the hard drive has a flaw, defragmenting it risks propagating the fault or even breaking the drive itself. An extreme case: Once I was called out to fix a machine with problems. The owner thought it'd be nice of him to defrag the drive before I arrived. When I came, it would not boot at all. The problem turned out to be defective ram, and defrag, combined with faulty memory, had destroyed the directory structure of the drive.
A better cure for slow HD performance is to get a bigger/faster drive to begin with. Big drives are inherently fast, and assuming the user doesn't just fill it up with junk, there'll always be enough space that fragmentation becomes a non-issue.
One program frequently found on covermount CD's is Acronis True Image (I know, 'cause I put it there:), which is much better than Ghost, even in the covermounted version. It understands Linux partitions, is very fast, and writes directly to CD/DVD's and network shares. The latest and biggest version ($49, IIRC) does incremental backups, quite cool. And it's fast. I've seen a fresh Windows install being backed up in just 17 seconds! (hard drive to hard drive).
I didn't scrutinize their license agreement WRT large numbers of computers, but do suggest you give it a good look.
""you mix up african and north-african (arabic) culture.""
They are from the African continent, are they not?
They are (mostly) from Africa at large, but there's quite a distinction between the north African coast, which was conquered by Arab tribes 13 centuries ago, and is basically Arabian in culture. In contrast with central Africa where the Arabs didn't quite conquer the countries, just pursued trade (slave trade extensively, BTW), but didn't go to dominate the population. Africa is a huge continent, and very different cultures do exist.
Here in Denmark we had similar (though smaller, fortunately) riots during the same weeks, just a few kilometers from where I live. This was done by young people with mainly Turkish background. That's quite a patchwork of different cultures. An intersting common factor here is that they're all from a muslim background, but I have no idea if this has been reported by Fox or CNN. Would like to know - can anyone tell me if Fox or CNN have covered this side of the story?
Anyway, they have been brought up in difficult circumstances where they don't see the advantages of living in France over their original countries, and they have all the challenges, like getting used to women having equal rights, participating and believing in democratic society, the long-term benefit of education and more. It's quite a stack of challenges, and if you're not born into a cultural context (family, that is) where these are natural, it is very, very hard to get to terms with. Not least when you see the French (or Danish) people doing significantly better than yourself and your neighbours.
I'm bracing for more trouble. There's a generation of frustrated immigrant children growing up, which we barely know how to help or how to deal with. Putting them on infinite welfare is not a viable long-term solution.
Forgot one thing: the terabytes. That rules out 2½" drives, and in turn increases power consumption quite a bit. Then each drive would have its own 'brick' for power, heating the room significantly.
Getting low-speed 3½" drives (5400 RPM) can be difficult. All manufacturers (and reviewers, dammit!) seem to focus on maximum data transfer speed, not the frequently relevant issues of noise and power consumption.
The LinkSys NSLU2 will do equally fine with 3½" drives, of course. They just can't supply enough power from the USB ports to spin the desktop-class drives.
Hi
Rather than building a complete computer to do it, how about getting a couple of the Linksys NSLU2 units (each can run RAID, IIRC) for file servers, connected by USB to 2½" laptop drives. The NSLU2 is highly hackable, for instance to set up streaming servers.
Then a similar unit (OvisLink has several, like the P-103N I have) for print server.
These are all very low power, no noise, takes minutes to set up (except if hacking them, of course:), Just Work.
Good luck!
-Henrik
No 'ancient historians' reported this, anyway
on
Archimedes Death Ray
·
· Score: 1
Hi
One thing not quoted yet is that unlike the other Archimedes invetions, the 'Death ray' was never mentioned by any of the ancient historians. It was (IIRC) a full 800 years later it first appeared. That was mentioned in the Mythbusters episode.
Mythbusters did use a pretty large array of mirrors, perhaps 10 meters across the wooden frame, which was quite unhandy:) They managed to melt the tar, but never got a temperature anywhere close to setting the ship on fire. On a sunny day, ship lying still in the water, and the crew handling the mirror well within an arrow's range.
Taking action to stop the voices advocating terrorism and killing is a Good Thing. Freedom of expression is still under responsibility, and advocating/supporting/organizing terrorism better be stopped.
Yes, it is a limitation to the abstract ideal of unlimited free speech. Great Britain also banned nazi propaganda during WWII - useful, pragmatic, sensible.
Furthermore, after reading large parts of the Qu'ran and bits of Hadith (Mohammeds life story - supposedt to be an example for all muslims - basically he lived a life of war from 622 to his death in 632), I sincerely believe we're only at the beginning of trouble. This abyss is dark and deep, but most people (very understandably) are not interested in discovering very unpleasent stuff.
Hang on, it's going to be a rollercoaster ride for freedoms of any kind.
I thought it was great. Until I actually listened to the files. The performances themselves are great, but in particular the last movement of the 9th symphony was a disaster with extensive clipping of the most intense passages. Incredible they let this pass - they should reprimand the technician. Also the bitrate was so low (128 MP3) that this in no way constitutes serious competition to a well done CD (or better, audio DVD).
I noticed a while ago that GMail had surpassed HotMail in the Netcraft ranking. People are already leaving HotMail for GMail - for the simple reason that GMail is better. Just about everyone on the Internet knows someone with GMail invites to share.
Now HotMail will start junking a bunch of legitimate email. My guess is that it'll be so expensive in market share that MS will drop the idea before it was to go live, when it notices that the world is not following through on their tactics.
"Aim at foot. Pull trigger. Blame someone else.":)
You nearly sent a thousand bucks to these guys:http://donwiss.com/pictures/BrooklynStores/h0101.h tm
*Shudder*
> That said, if you save $500 getting the RebelXT
> (still a great camera), spend it on a lens.
I just did:)
Got myself a Sigma 55-200 mm, am awaiting photo-compatible weather:)
Actually, the ergonomics of the RebelXT works out for me (my hands are average sized), and I just couldn't justify another $500 for the 20D.
Good luck!
-Henrik
Hi
I came across another way of ripping people off. Shopping for a Digital Rebel XT, I came across USA Photo Nation. They have it $300 cheaper than anyone else, but won't ship international.
I was trying to arrange for friends in the US to get it and forward it to me, when my brother found that on a scale from 0 to 10, they score 0.92 in credibility. That's right, less than 1! The stories are all the same - they let you order a super-cheap item, but won't actually ship it unless you buy a truckload of vastly overprice extras.
It's legal, probably even profitable, but stinks. I assume more scams like that can be found out there - careful about those super-low prices!
Does anyone out there have a reliable prediction for the amount of system shock we are facing when either Longhorn or 64-bit Linux comes out?
Now, 64 bit Linux has been here for a long time, and since most drivers are open source, the port is complete. There will be no shock, no pain. It's just that for optimal performance you'll want to recompile more applications than on 32 bit.
Windows is Not Quite There, though I have a 60 day trial on my desk. Here drivers are mostly closed source, which causes problems in that MS has to obtain fresh binaries from each hardware vendor - quite a daunting task - and recheck everything. They're 2 years later than Linux for the 64 bit x86 architecture, and still dragging their feet, will be at least late 2006 before they really get there. But then it should be a very easy transition.
And why?
Because we already did a lot of it anyway. Pentium/Athlon chips have been running 64 bit and more externally for ages. Internally, the problem was getting rid of the awful 286 architecture, which was the cause of much pain in the 286 time, and much pain in transition. That transition was comparable to moving from 68000 to Power on the Mac, and worse. (I still miss the clarity of the 68000 architecture - but 386+ has other advantages. And it's fast!)
The 386 architecture has remained with us for several chip generations, and 64 bit is just another extension of that rather than a complete overhaul - note for instance how Intel downplays the 64 bit (probably because they're late to the party anyway:)
Today, all the mass produced board are with a lot of integrated stuff. And that's a Good Thing:
It's cheap. Sub $100 for most everything you need.
It's less power consuming than a barebone with many expansion boards.
It's easier to mount. Motherboard, Gfx and you're done.
Fewer mechanical contacts mean fewer failure points.
Risks of IRQ conflicts and the like eliminated.
Now, integrated Gfx is only good for Excel:), but you can easily get a MB without that. Or take one with and use the integrated for a secondary display.
Integrated audio is also fine, unless you're an audiophile. In that case, disable it and plug in your desired audio card.
Personally, i switched from lotsof expansion boards to integrated in order to improve stability of USB2, primarily, which had been less stable than desirable. A nice side effect was lower power consumption and a cooler box.
Just take any nice MSI or ASUS board, and you're done.
Using Fedora 1 on my server, I'm waiting for a new version of MySQL to upgrade. I need at least 4.0 - preferable 4.1. Fedora 4, supposed to be adventurous and fresh, doesn't have 5.0. Nor does it have 4.1, or even 4.0, it's stuck with 3.23!!
I'm in a similar situation, and I've decided that I certainly do expect something in return. If it's a quick fix for something, a bit of wine or something is nice. If it's more, it depends a bit on how close my relationship is - when working for idealistic organisations, it's less - for a relation of my neighbour or someone similar remote, $20-40 an hour seems fine. It's still cheap, I know I'm worth that, and more.
I encourage charging people - any way you like. Your work is valuable, and it is good to be appreciated. Will also benefit you when negotiating wages next time if you're in that habit.
Finally, having people give you something reasonable in return is much better than just refusing to help them. The ones that don't appreciate your skills you can do without:) If too many ask still, you can enjoy being popular and raise your prices!
That's probably the way Musimi.dk runs - supposedly by a single person. It provides straight IP telephony to anyone with relevant hardware. Quality is great, international calls cheap, network breakdowns so far none.
(I'm not associated with Musimi, just a happy user.)
Havent used Gnumeric for a while last time (several yrs ago) its xls compatibility was a tad ropey - Im sure its improved by now though!
I used it a while ago and found it fine for my purposes. Later I noticed an announcement by the lead programmer that it was now a feature complete Excel clone.
Sure, it uses the Gnome libs, but you don't need to be actually running Gnome to use it.
Something easy that I can use to whip out my holiday movies in a few hours. Ulead MovieFactory comes to mind, or their DVD Workshop for more complex projects.
DVD authoring with OSS still takes a computer science degree and LOTS of time to get right.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah. I didn't get that either.
In Denmark we have a law against racism, which quite frequently has some unpleasent side effects, as exemplified in recent local elections. Someone might accuse islam of being a supremacist religion. Then his opponents, instead of looking at the sources and coming up with counterarguments, simply report him to the police for racism. That creates an immediate public outcry, and the alledged offender plunges headlong into trouble. Most cases are dismissed as groundless after a few months of scrutiny, but the halo remains. And it's a completely free stunt for the accuser.
Interestingly, most of these cases could be avoided by going to the sources (the Qu'ran would do nicely here) and check the facts instead of just screaming 'Racist!' across town.
Well, but... 'Supposed to' is the operative phrase here. Governments are, however, more motivated by what they believe is popular (next election is always 'soon'), or bending over to pressure from various other governments (it's proper to think 'US' here), or securing a place in the history books for overcoming vast opposition to some project. Or any other kind of confusion that leads them astray from the 'benefit of the population', long-term wisdom, 'true to basic principles' etc. etc.
Here in Europe most governments fear becoming unpopular more than anything else, and they'll bend over backwards to be politically correct rather than long-sighted. Lots of different pressures of dubious relevance get into the game as well (Condoleeza Rice forcing Turkey on the EU is a recent example), and lots of behind-the-scenes lobbying takes place.
This *might* be percieved as if the current democratic system is inherently broken and demotivate people from participating, but I think that's a broken conclusion. Much better for some genuine idealists to take part in the game and play along in whatever field they take interest. Idealists, unfortunately, are in short supply these days - but are frequently well received, though. You can do lobbying, press work, running for parliament etc - and even a *failed* attempt for parliament might generate useful results, like putting important issues on the agenda for the other parties. One of their strategies to protect themselves from newcomers is to steal the new ideas (we've seen green ideas 'stolen' - great!), which shows that even failed attempts can be quite effective.
I think it's cool that my friends 20 kilometers to the east are picking up the piracy issue like this. If they're being witty and do not want to harm the musicians, they could even influence the old school politicians into relaxing the current laws, or preventing DMCA-like measures from being adopted.
Wishing them fun & good luck :)
I'm at 75, with no end in sight. Actually it's amazingly stable at that number, just the schemes are developing. The GMail spam filter is showing weakness at this time - looks like the spammers are adopting to it.
It's a FTC propaganda victory - and then quickly a change of subject. No, I'm not expecting effective action from that side :)
Best approach is to expose the schemes being offered. Currently the penny stock spams are the hot trend, and I've been digging a little into those companies being offered for sale. Of course they're complete crap, and it's important to point that out to people who might fall for that.
When noone reacts to spam (hopeful, yes :), it'll stop. Perhaps...
Having the backup done by normal file copying rather than RAID is not a problem in my view - after all, backup is the purpose, and that's done by the firmware. RAID ain't always ideal: A friend of mine had a nice RAID5 setup in his computer. Then the primary drive got corrupted - and that was immediately mirrored to the second drive! He lost all his data...
No mention of the NSLU2 is complete without noting that it's eminently hackable. :)
And it's dangerous. If the hard drive has a flaw, defragmenting it risks propagating the fault or even breaking the drive itself. An extreme case: Once I was called out to fix a machine with problems. The owner thought it'd be nice of him to defrag the drive before I arrived. When I came, it would not boot at all. The problem turned out to be defective ram, and defrag, combined with faulty memory, had destroyed the directory structure of the drive.
A better cure for slow HD performance is to get a bigger/faster drive to begin with. Big drives are inherently fast, and assuming the user doesn't just fill it up with junk, there'll always be enough space that fragmentation becomes a non-issue.
I didn't scrutinize their license agreement WRT large numbers of computers, but do suggest you give it a good look.
They are from the African continent, are they not?
They are (mostly) from Africa at large, but there's quite a distinction between the north African coast, which was conquered by Arab tribes 13 centuries ago, and is basically Arabian in culture. In contrast with central Africa where the Arabs didn't quite conquer the countries, just pursued trade (slave trade extensively, BTW), but didn't go to dominate the population. Africa is a huge continent, and very different cultures do exist.
Here in Denmark we had similar (though smaller, fortunately) riots during the same weeks, just a few kilometers from where I live. This was done by young people with mainly Turkish background. That's quite a patchwork of different cultures. An intersting common factor here is that they're all from a muslim background, but I have no idea if this has been reported by Fox or CNN. Would like to know - can anyone tell me if Fox or CNN have covered this side of the story?
Anyway, they have been brought up in difficult circumstances where they don't see the advantages of living in France over their original countries, and they have all the challenges, like getting used to women having equal rights, participating and believing in democratic society, the long-term benefit of education and more. It's quite a stack of challenges, and if you're not born into a cultural context (family, that is) where these are natural, it is very, very hard to get to terms with. Not least when you see the French (or Danish) people doing significantly better than yourself and your neighbours.
I'm bracing for more trouble. There's a generation of frustrated immigrant children growing up, which we barely know how to help or how to deal with. Putting them on infinite welfare is not a viable long-term solution.
Best wishes!
Getting low-speed 3½" drives (5400 RPM) can be difficult. All manufacturers (and reviewers, dammit!) seem to focus on maximum data transfer speed, not the frequently relevant issues of noise and power consumption.
The LinkSys NSLU2 will do equally fine with 3½" drives, of course. They just can't supply enough power from the USB ports to spin the desktop-class drives.
These are all very low power, no noise, takes minutes to set up (except if hacking them, of course :), Just Work.
Good luck!
-Henrik
One thing not quoted yet is that unlike the other Archimedes invetions, the 'Death ray' was never mentioned by any of the ancient historians. It was (IIRC) a full 800 years later it first appeared. That was mentioned in the Mythbusters episode.
Mythbusters did use a pretty large array of mirrors, perhaps 10 meters across the wooden frame, which was quite unhandy :) They managed to melt the tar, but never got a temperature anywhere close to setting the ship on fire. On a sunny day, ship lying still in the water, and the crew handling the mirror well within an arrow's range.
I'd say that myth is *BUSTED* :)
-Henrik
I sure have - for two months I've tried to get my hands on one. Long-time backordered here in Europe :(
Thanks for the community link. Hacking it is one of my purposes :)
Yes, it is a limitation to the abstract ideal of unlimited free speech. Great Britain also banned nazi propaganda during WWII - useful, pragmatic, sensible.
Furthermore, after reading large parts of the Qu'ran and bits of Hadith (Mohammeds life story - supposedt to be an example for all muslims - basically he lived a life of war from 622 to his death in 632), I sincerely believe we're only at the beginning of trouble. This abyss is dark and deep, but most people (very understandably) are not interested in discovering very unpleasent stuff.
Hang on, it's going to be a rollercoaster ride for freedoms of any kind.
There's no case. How do I tell them..?
Now HotMail will start junking a bunch of legitimate email. My guess is that it'll be so expensive in market share that MS will drop the idea before it was to go live, when it notices that the world is not following through on their tactics.
"Aim at foot. Pull trigger. Blame someone else." :)
You nearly sent a thousand bucks to these guys: http://donwiss.com/pictures/BrooklynStores/h0101.h tm
*Shudder*
> That said, if you save $500 getting the RebelXT
> (still a great camera), spend it on a lens.
I just did :)
Got myself a Sigma 55-200 mm, am awaiting photo-compatible weather :)
Actually, the ergonomics of the RebelXT works out for me (my hands are average sized), and I just couldn't justify another $500 for the 20D.
Good luck!
-Henrik
I was trying to arrange for friends in the US to get it and forward it to me, when my brother found that on a scale from 0 to 10, they score 0.92 in credibility. That's right, less than 1! The stories are all the same - they let you order a super-cheap item, but won't actually ship it unless you buy a truckload of vastly overprice extras.
It's legal, probably even profitable, but stinks. I assume more scams like that can be found out there - careful about those super-low prices!
Have fun!
Now, 64 bit Linux has been here for a long time, and since most drivers are open source, the port is complete. There will be no shock, no pain. It's just that for optimal performance you'll want to recompile more applications than on 32 bit.
Windows is Not Quite There, though I have a 60 day trial on my desk. Here drivers are mostly closed source, which causes problems in that MS has to obtain fresh binaries from each hardware vendor - quite a daunting task - and recheck everything. They're 2 years later than Linux for the 64 bit x86 architecture, and still dragging their feet, will be at least late 2006 before they really get there. But then it should be a very easy transition.
And why?
Because we already did a lot of it anyway. Pentium/Athlon chips have been running 64 bit and more externally for ages. Internally, the problem was getting rid of the awful 286 architecture, which was the cause of much pain in the 286 time, and much pain in transition. That transition was comparable to moving from 68000 to Power on the Mac, and worse. (I still miss the clarity of the 68000 architecture - but 386+ has other advantages. And it's fast!)
The 386 architecture has remained with us for several chip generations, and 64 bit is just another extension of that rather than a complete overhaul - note for instance how Intel downplays the 64 bit (probably because they're late to the party anyway :)
No shock, hardly any pain, I thusly predict :)
- It's cheap. Sub $100 for most everything you need.
- It's less power consuming than a barebone with many expansion boards.
- It's easier to mount. Motherboard, Gfx and you're done.
- Fewer mechanical contacts mean fewer failure points.
- Risks of IRQ conflicts and the like eliminated.
Now, integrated Gfx is only good for ExcelIntegrated audio is also fine, unless you're an audiophile. In that case, disable it and plug in your desired audio card.
Personally, i switched from lotsof expansion boards to integrated in order to improve stability of USB2, primarily, which had been less stable than desirable. A nice side effect was lower power consumption and a cooler box.
Just take any nice MSI or ASUS board, and you're done.
They are obviously imitating Serious Sam! There you get toads en masse - best to kill before they explode in your face with greenish acid slime...
It's SuSE/Novell for me, they drive much harder :)
I encourage charging people - any way you like. Your work is valuable, and it is good to be appreciated. Will also benefit you when negotiating wages next time if you're in that habit.
Finally, having people give you something reasonable in return is much better than just refusing to help them. The ones that don't appreciate your skills you can do without :) If too many ask still, you can enjoy being popular and raise your prices!
Good luck in the marketplace :)
(I'm not associated with Musimi, just a happy user.)
Linus in Flame Mode
I used it a while ago and found it fine for my purposes. Later I noticed an announcement by the lead programmer that it was now a feature complete Excel clone.
Sure, it uses the Gnome libs, but you don't need to be actually running Gnome to use it.
DVD authoring with OSS still takes a computer science degree and LOTS of time to get right.