As others have said, the "Linux crash" is probably hardware failure.
The most common cause of serious failure, if the software has been installed
correctly and tested, is bad contacts. To fix the problem, just loosen the
screws that hold the adapter cards, pull the cards out about 1 millimeter or
1/32 of an inch, push the cards back in fully, and re-tighten the screws.
Also, pull all connectors off a similar amount, and push them back on. Do the
same with the memory modules. That's all.
The scraping caused by moving the contact points a tiny amount is actually
very violent on a micro scale. The scraping removes oxide that causes a
contact to lose electrical conduction.
This is reliable information. I've been selling and occasionally repairing
PCs since before IBM sold PCs, back in the days when personal computers cost
$2300, had two diskette drives and no hard drive, and ran the CP/M operating
system.
My guess is that, if you had a penny for every real crash of a stable
distribution of Linux, after a few years you might still have to borrow money
from your little brother to buy a piece of bubble gum.
I'm skeptical about this. First, there are microwaves everywhere, all the time. Microwaves are part of heat.
A physicist friend of mine and I did the numbers. There is so much energy available everywhere at room temperature that a little bit more has no effect, as the article says.
The chemical processes of the body are not fragile. We couldn't see any way that a little bit of outside energy could couple to a chemical process and make a difference.
He was definitely more than a kook, as the parent post says. Two more views of Edward Teller:
Passion, patriotism marked Teller (He was important, but single-minded about nuclear weapons.) Quote: "He had these sort of blinders where he couldn't see the costs, he could only see the benefits of nuclear weapons," Gusterson said. "He was sort of a one-eyed genius in that way."
My own opinion: I met Dr. Teller... (He influenced the world to be more violent.)
It seems that some people who read Slashdot don't like the parent story, since it was immediately modded as flamebait, when it is clearly not that. For those who think Dr. Teller should be respected, consider this:
TELLER MEMORIES
Letters of condolence: Lawrence Livermore Laboratory is accepting
letters of condolence on behalf of Teller's family. Letters may be sent
to Teller Family, c/o Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, P.O. Box 808, L-1,
Livermore, CA 94551. Faxes can be sent to 925-422-8554 or e-mail to houghton3@llnl.gov
Memorial gifts: Edward Teller's family has asked that in lieu of
flowers, tax-deductible donations be made to the Fannie and John Hertz
Foundation. Further information on the foundation is available by
contacting Barbara Nichols at 925-373-1642 or barb@hertzfoundation.org or John Holzrichter at jfh@hertzfoundation.org.
Hey moderators: Flamebait is not for when you disagree, or don't like what is said. Flamebait is for when you believe that someone is only trying to cause trouble.
I met Dr. Teller when he came into the Physics laboratory where I was working. The laboratory head described the work we were doing. We said a few inconsequential words to each other and shook hands. I think this was in 1972, or somewhere near that year.
Dr. Teller was the most frightening person I have ever met in my life. He
certainly did nothing that was threatening; he was somewhat bored with the lab
tour; he was very polite.
But, there was something about the lines on his face and his manner that was
extremely unpleasant. Judging from his appearance, his inner conflict was
fierce. When angry people act out their inner conflict, that makes them
angrier. Unknowingly, I am sure, Dr. Teller had found a way to act out his
anger, and, apparently, the destruction and unhappiness he brought to the world caused him unbelievable pain.
My reaction to Dr. Teller was completely spontaneous. No one had told me that Dr.
Teller would be coming into my laboratory, although I knew he would be visiting some labs. It was obviously him, I had seen photos, but the photos showed very little of the true intensity of his existence. I had been working on resolving my own inner conflict, and I was very aware of how inner conflict twists people's bodies. Immediately when I saw him my consciousness was flooded with information that
indicated a man was in pain.
Dr. Teller helped make the U.S. government what it is today. The U.S. government is, by
some measures, the most violent government that has ever existed. The U.S.
government has bombed more countries than any other, 24 since the end of the
Second World War. The U.S. government has imprisoned a percentage of its
citizens six times higher than other European nations or other nations of
European background. The U.S. government maintains prisons of an extremely inhumane design, called SuperMax. (By other measures, other governments have been far more violent.)
The U.S. government killed about 2,000,000 Vietnamese in the Vietnam war; I
was in the Air Force in Thailand; even pilots bombing Hanoi questioned why the
U.S. government was there. Even pilots who believed that killing was a way to
end violence questioned the Vietnam war. Colonel Broughton, if you are reading
this, help me out here.
I know there are many people who read Slashdot for whom violence is
entertainment. It is obvious that it is not pleasant to be told that when
someone enjoys violence it means that person has an anger problem. But that is
what I'm saying. Violence is motivated by inner conflict; inner conflict is always sickness.
Violence is never the answer to violence, it only increases violence.
Someone named Jesus Christ said something like that 2,000 years ago; you may
have heard of him. I'm not a religious person; I came to that understanding by
investigating human inner conflict. I became interested in studying inner conflict because I wanted to resolve my own.
The terrorists were 100% wrong to bomb the United States. However, for years, the U.S.
government has been giving more than $900 per person per year for every man,
woman, and child in Israel to be used to kill Arabs. The 9/11 bombing killed
3,016 people. I don't have the figures for how many Arabs and Muslims have been killed by
U.S. government policy toward Israel and Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, but I'm
guessing the total was a lot more than 3,016 before 9/11/2001, maybe even far more than 10 times 3,016.
Many U.S.
citizens act as though they think that the violence of the U.S. government is
acceptable because the U.S. is somehow superior. Does it surprise anyone that
the Arabs and Muslims don't like being killed? Does it surprise anyone that Arabs and
Muslims don't always think they are inferior? Does it surprise anyone that,
when Arabs see that the U.S. government thinks that violence is "justified",
that reinforces in some of them their long history of belief in violence as a way to solve social problems?
What's a "whitepaper"? I clicked on the link and got HTML, with a white background, and no "paper".
The article is excellent, but what is gained by calling it a "whitepaper"? I've been wondering about this for a long time. Is there "blackpaper"? If I send someone a real paper document, can I call it "whiteHMTL"?
Is "whitepaper" just a string of nonsense syllables? If so, I propose a symbolic variable name for all nonsense syllables, so they are not confused with actually trying to communicate. I propose "fnork".
An author could say "fnork, fnork, fnork", and everyone would know he wasn't trying to communicate, but just wanted to make noise.
Thought: I think it is unfortunate that this issue was not addressed before
the story appeared on Slashdot. All the slow Java programs are destructive to
the acceptance of Java, for example.
Customers have experience with their computers responding instantaneously when
they work with a program on their hard drives. They want no less service from
other technology. I find that it would be politically impossible to deliver an
application that took any time to respond. Customers do not expect that the
function finish immediately, just that the menu respond immediately. Perhaps
this demonstration of poker should have been on my intranet, rather than from
Texas.
Even when software is free, there is a marketing component. We want as much
support as possible for good technology, and that support can only be gained
through skilled communication. The skills required are identical to the skills
required to design marketing.
I would certainly like to find a workable solution such as this. However, the video poker is so slow as to be useless. People don't like waiting for a computer to respond. They want the computer to serve them, and wait for them.
Is there any way to speed the response? I'm using Mozilla 1.4.
That is the least sophisticated way of relating to other people. No money for
fixing things, or making things better in advance, and billions for violence.
For all those in the U.S. who wanted a war: Was killing Arabs as satisfying as
you thought it would be? Are you happy with the cost? Is $1,000 per
second and $4 billion per month okay with you? Did you have no other plans
for the money that comes out of your pocket?
The U.S. has a long history of aggression in the Middle East. But when Arabs
also decide that aggression is a way to solve problems, is that totally
different? Should Arabs be happy to be killed by such superior people as
Americans? Should they be grateful that the Americans, who believe they know
what is right for the world, are forcing them to learn American political
convictions?
A government that uses closed-source, proprietary software is not an independent government. Who was expoiting all those security vulnerabilities in Microsoft products before they were discovered by someone willing to make them public? Maybe not just script kiddies. May one of the secret agencies of the U.S. government, such as the NSA, CIA, or FBI, or one of the others whose names are not well known.
A government that uses proprietary software is subject to hidden control.
Yes, a government should not compete with industry. But the issue is an extreme crisis that requires a change in the way things operate. Once the change is made, industry can support open source software.
Cisco's products have a curious quality: They die! And you can't even read the death web page unless you pay Cisco money. This has been a VERY high total cost of ownership product. And now Cisco wants users to buy something else.
Why buy a product from a company that kills its products? Why buy a closed-source product? Frankly, I think there will come a time when there are no closed-source products.
I may not be able to defend myself now from aggressive business practices like those of Microsoft and Cisco, but I will remember. If there are enough people like me, the Ciscos and Microsofts will eventually go out of business.
Ciscos's 675 modem/firewall comes with the DSL in this area. Cisco publishes security vulnerabilities frequently, but will only give updates if you have a Cisco contract, for more than $200. So, vulnerabilities go unpatched. Cisco says the telephone company is its customer, not the user. The telephone company has often been cited by the Oregon state government for bad service. The telephone company certainly will not support another company's products.
To patch the security vulnerabilities in Microsoft Word, you have to 1) download the patch, 2) find the original Word CD and put it in the CD drive, 3) run the patch, 4) wait while a lot of processing is done with the CD, and 5) put the CD away again. It seems to me that, since this was a patch for a severe security vulnerability, Microsoft could have skipped the time-consuming 2, 4, and 5 steps. Think how many total hours will be lost throughout the world by users or computer professionals whose time is extremely valuable. The TCO just went up.
What's even funnier is that, after being influenced by my post, they modded it as flamebait. So you went up, and I went down. That's the result of bored moderators visiting stories in which they have no interest because they can't comment and mod at the same time.
Java is a good example of the low quality in the development tools we have compared to what is possible. It could be a fine language, but the people who make decisions about it don't love themselves and others enough to finish the job.
You are right: Choosing any language or environment is a bet-the-company decision.
Slashdot Mirror
As others have said, the "Linux crash" is probably hardware failure.
The most common cause of serious failure, if the software has been installed correctly and tested, is bad contacts. To fix the problem, just loosen the screws that hold the adapter cards, pull the cards out about 1 millimeter or 1/32 of an inch, push the cards back in fully, and re-tighten the screws. Also, pull all connectors off a similar amount, and push them back on. Do the same with the memory modules. That's all.
The scraping caused by moving the contact points a tiny amount is actually very violent on a micro scale. The scraping removes oxide that causes a contact to lose electrical conduction.
This is reliable information. I've been selling and occasionally repairing PCs since before IBM sold PCs, back in the days when personal computers cost $2300, had two diskette drives and no hard drive, and ran the CP/M operating system.
My guess is that, if you had a penny for every real crash of a stable distribution of Linux, after a few years you might still have to borrow money from your little brother to buy a piece of bubble gum.
I'm skeptical about this. First, there are microwaves everywhere, all the time. Microwaves are part of heat.
A physicist friend of mine and I did the numbers. There is so much energy available everywhere at room temperature that a little bit more has no effect, as the article says.
The chemical processes of the body are not fragile. We couldn't see any way that a little bit of outside energy could couple to a chemical process and make a difference.
A government that uses proprietary software is not an independent government.
Who do you think was using the many, many security vulnerabilities in Microsoft software before they were made public?
He was definitely more than a kook, as the parent post says. Two more views of Edward Teller:
Passion, patriotism marked Teller
(He was important, but single-minded about nuclear weapons.)
Quote: "He had these sort of blinders where he couldn't see the costs, he could only see the benefits of nuclear weapons," Gusterson said. "He was sort of a one-eyed genius in that way."
My own opinion: I met Dr. Teller...
(He influenced the world to be more violent.)
It seems that some people who read Slashdot don't like the parent story, since it was immediately modded as flamebait, when it is clearly not that. For those who think Dr. Teller should be respected, consider this:
TELLER MEMORIES
Letters of condolence: Lawrence Livermore Laboratory is accepting letters of condolence on behalf of Teller's family. Letters may be sent to Teller Family, c/o Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, P.O. Box 808, L-1, Livermore, CA 94551. Faxes can be sent to 925-422-8554 or e-mail to houghton3@llnl.gov
Memorial gifts: Edward Teller's family has asked that in lieu of flowers, tax-deductible donations be made to the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation. Further information on the foundation is available by contacting Barbara Nichols at 925-373-1642 or barb@hertzfoundation.org or John Holzrichter at jfh@hertzfoundation.org.
Memorial services: Plans are not yet finalized.
For more information: visit Edward Teller Memorial Information.
I met him once, also. Your description sounds like the person I met.
Hey moderators: Flamebait is not for when you disagree, or don't like what is said. Flamebait is for when you believe that someone is only trying to cause trouble.
I met Dr. Teller when he came into the Physics laboratory where I was working. The laboratory head described the work we were doing. We said a few inconsequential words to each other and shook hands. I think this was in 1972, or somewhere near that year.
Dr. Teller was the most frightening person I have ever met in my life. He certainly did nothing that was threatening; he was somewhat bored with the lab tour; he was very polite.
But, there was something about the lines on his face and his manner that was extremely unpleasant. Judging from his appearance, his inner conflict was fierce. When angry people act out their inner conflict, that makes them angrier. Unknowingly, I am sure, Dr. Teller had found a way to act out his anger, and, apparently, the destruction and unhappiness he brought to the world caused him unbelievable pain.
My reaction to Dr. Teller was completely spontaneous. No one had told me that Dr. Teller would be coming into my laboratory, although I knew he would be visiting some labs. It was obviously him, I had seen photos, but the photos showed very little of the true intensity of his existence. I had been working on resolving my own inner conflict, and I was very aware of how inner conflict twists people's bodies. Immediately when I saw him my consciousness was flooded with information that indicated a man was in pain.
Dr. Teller helped make the U.S. government what it is today. The U.S. government is, by some measures, the most violent government that has ever existed. The U.S. government has bombed more countries than any other, 24 since the end of the Second World War. The U.S. government has imprisoned a percentage of its citizens six times higher than other European nations or other nations of European background. The U.S. government maintains prisons of an extremely inhumane design, called SuperMax. (By other measures, other governments have been far more violent.)
The U.S. government killed about 2,000,000 Vietnamese in the Vietnam war; I was in the Air Force in Thailand; even pilots bombing Hanoi questioned why the U.S. government was there. Even pilots who believed that killing was a way to end violence questioned the Vietnam war. Colonel Broughton, if you are reading this, help me out here.
I know there are many people who read Slashdot for whom violence is entertainment. It is obvious that it is not pleasant to be told that when someone enjoys violence it means that person has an anger problem. But that is what I'm saying. Violence is motivated by inner conflict; inner conflict is always sickness.
Violence is never the answer to violence, it only increases violence. Someone named Jesus Christ said something like that 2,000 years ago; you may have heard of him. I'm not a religious person; I came to that understanding by investigating human inner conflict. I became interested in studying inner conflict because I wanted to resolve my own.
The terrorists were 100% wrong to bomb the United States. However, for years, the U.S. government has been giving more than $900 per person per year for every man, woman, and child in Israel to be used to kill Arabs. The 9/11 bombing killed 3,016 people. I don't have the figures for how many Arabs and Muslims have been killed by U.S. government policy toward Israel and Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, but I'm guessing the total was a lot more than 3,016 before 9/11/2001, maybe even far more than 10 times 3,016.
Many U.S. citizens act as though they think that the violence of the U.S. government is acceptable because the U.S. is somehow superior. Does it surprise anyone that the Arabs and Muslims don't like being killed? Does it surprise anyone that Arabs and Muslims don't always think they are inferior? Does it surprise anyone that, when Arabs see that the U.S. government thinks that violence is "justified", that reinforces in some of them their long history of belief in violence as a way to solve social problems?
Those relatively rich people wh
What's a "whitepaper"? I clicked on the link and got HTML, with a white background, and no "paper".
The article is excellent, but what is gained by calling it a "whitepaper"? I've been wondering about this for a long time. Is there "blackpaper"? If I send someone a real paper document, can I call it "whiteHMTL"?
Is "whitepaper" just a string of nonsense syllables? If so, I propose a symbolic variable name for all nonsense syllables, so they are not confused with actually trying to communicate. I propose "fnork".
An author could say "fnork, fnork, fnork", and everyone would know he wasn't trying to communicate, but just wanted to make noise.
Tod,
Thanks for the reply. I will check into this.
Thought: I think it is unfortunate that this issue was not addressed before the story appeared on Slashdot. All the slow Java programs are destructive to the acceptance of Java, for example.
Customers have experience with their computers responding instantaneously when they work with a program on their hard drives. They want no less service from other technology. I find that it would be politically impossible to deliver an application that took any time to respond. Customers do not expect that the function finish immediately, just that the menu respond immediately. Perhaps this demonstration of poker should have been on my intranet, rather than from Texas.
Even when software is free, there is a marketing component. We want as much support as possible for good technology, and that support can only be gained through skilled communication. The skills required are identical to the skills required to design marketing.
I would certainly like to find a workable solution such as this. However, the video poker is so slow as to be useless. People don't like waiting for a computer to respond. They want the computer to serve them, and wait for them.
Is there any way to speed the response? I'm using Mozilla 1.4.
"If you don't like their politics, kill them."
That is the least sophisticated way of relating to other people. No money for fixing things, or making things better in advance, and billions for violence.
For all those in the U.S. who wanted a war: Was killing Arabs as satisfying as you thought it would be? Are you happy with the cost? Is $1,000 per second and $4 billion per month okay with you? Did you have no other plans for the money that comes out of your pocket?
The U.S. has a long history of aggression in the Middle East. But when Arabs also decide that aggression is a way to solve problems, is that totally different? Should Arabs be happy to be killed by such superior people as Americans? Should they be grateful that the Americans, who believe they know what is right for the world, are forcing them to learn American political convictions?
Mod parent up to +10!
Great story.
How is the parent post a troll? It provided useful answers, and was funny, too.
I had often thought someone should write about "Slashdot trolling phenomena". I didn't realize someone already had.
What are the best web sites that give information about Google?
What toolbars and other tools do you use with Google?
What OTHER search engine do you still use, and why?
A government that uses closed-source, proprietary software is not an independent government. Who was expoiting all those security vulnerabilities in Microsoft products before they were discovered by someone willing to make them public? Maybe not just script kiddies. May one of the secret agencies of the U.S. government, such as the NSA, CIA, or FBI, or one of the others whose names are not well known.
A government that uses proprietary software is subject to hidden control.
Yes, a government should not compete with industry. But the issue is an extreme crisis that requires a change in the way things operate. Once the change is made, industry can support open source software.
Mod parent up!!! Great advice.
Cisco's products have a curious quality: They die! And you can't even read the death web page unless you pay Cisco money. This has been a VERY high total cost of ownership product. And now Cisco wants users to buy something else.
Why buy a product from a company that kills its products? Why buy a closed-source product? Frankly, I think there will come a time when there are no closed-source products.
I may not be able to defend myself now from aggressive business practices like those of Microsoft and Cisco, but I will remember. If there are enough people like me, the Ciscos and Microsofts will eventually go out of business.
Ciscos's 675 modem/firewall comes with the DSL in this area. Cisco publishes security vulnerabilities frequently, but will only give updates if you have a Cisco contract, for more than $200. So, vulnerabilities go unpatched. Cisco says the telephone company is its customer, not the user. The telephone company has often been cited by the Oregon state government for bad service. The telephone company certainly will not support another company's products.
To patch the security vulnerabilities in Microsoft Word, you have to 1) download the patch, 2) find the original Word CD and put it in the CD drive, 3) run the patch, 4) wait while a lot of processing is done with the CD, and 5) put the CD away again. It seems to me that, since this was a patch for a severe security vulnerability, Microsoft could have skipped the time-consuming 2, 4, and 5 steps. Think how many total hours will be lost throughout the world by users or computer professionals whose time is extremely valuable. The TCO just went up.
Disabling Auto IP-address generation
What's even funnier is that, after being influenced by my post, they modded it as flamebait. So you went up, and I went down. That's the result of bored moderators visiting stories in which they have no interest because they can't comment and mod at the same time.
Java is a good example of the low quality in the development tools we have compared to what is possible. It could be a fine language, but the people who make decisions about it don't love themselves and others enough to finish the job.
You are right: Choosing any language or environment is a bet-the-company decision.