I've been running bios version f.22 (12/11/2006) on my intel HP dv2000, and it allows you to enable VT in bios. I had to reboot a few times, but it works correctly now. The download link for this bios ver is listed in TFA near the bottom. It's not an "offical" release from HP, probably an internal testing release, and it's not linked from HP's site.
It's nice to know that they're working on it, though, and they do have a preliminary solution for those of us who REALLY need it.
Indeed. But how come, Win2k and XP hibernation features work damn near perfect and Vista doesn't?
I'll assume you wanted an answer.
Hardware was designed with W2K and XP as their development test cases, and was specifically made to work with those OSes. XP is only an incremental update over W2K (ver 5.1 from 5.0), whereas Vista is a complete rewrite in many areas. So they code power management according to the spec, such that all ACPI-compliant devices will work, then they make tweaks and exceptions for all the non-compliant hardware later on.
I had the same problems you had in when I was running the the public Beta, but they went away in RC1. Hardware support is still under heavy development, and the January release will be significantly improved in that area over the official RTM.
When Google goes down, productivity probably goes up.
I have an office where, if you're on one access point instead of another on the same net, certain sites, Google in particular, are inaccessible. I have to do all my searching on MSN (pity me) instead when I'm in that area, and let me tell you with absolute certainty, productivity goes way down.
Until we find far greater stores of cheap clean energy and raw materials....
We have, but we're afraid to use it because the little waste it generates is highly-concentrated.
Coal plants produce more nuclear waste per watt than nuclear plants, but we're afraid of the waste from nuclear plants because it's concentrated into one large chunk and stuck into a container, whereas coal plants release radioactive waste into the atmosphere very slowly. Where did it go? I can't see it. It must be gone!
So, you say, how about "not coal" and "not nuclear"? Problem is, if you vote against nuclear power, you're voting FOR coal, because that's the only other option on the table, and you can't vote to have the world stop using electricity.
So, you say, how about wind power, wave power, solar power, geothermal power? Again, you're voting for coal. Wind, wave, solar, etc., are too weak. The output is too low to be able to compete economically. So we default back to coal. So, you say, how about we put more research into making these technologies more efficient! Yeah, we're already doing that. But in the mean time, we're still burning coal.
If you want to change the way the world powers its economy, you have to pick from the options that are on the table. There are three that can compete economically. Hydro-electric dams (which I didn't mention because they can't be widely deployed), burning stuff (coal, oil, etc.), and nuclear. You get to chose your poison, but you don't get to chose your options. When other options become economically viable, you'll be able to chose those as well, but not right now. Don't want to chose? Then SURPRISE, you just picked coal. Congratulations, you've just become part of the problem.
Given the 1+ million strong army north of the border, and the questionable sanity of the leader controlling it, that border must be defended.
Oddly enough, these weapons are of little benefit to South Korea, but hugely beneficial to North Korea. These sentry guns won't stop a real military mobilization--it's simply not enough firepower. What it will stop is single individuals who try to run across the DMZ. One of the most telling facts about the situation in North Korea is the fact that, while there are guards on either side of the DMZ, the American guards stand facing the North Korean guards, while the North Korean guards stand facing eachother. Each North Korean guard is instructed to shoot the other if he tries to defect. (saw it on the History Channel, so it must be true.)
"Among the provisions of the Police and Justice Bill 2006, which gained Royal Assent on Wednesday, is a clause that makes it an offense to impair the operation of any computer system.
This election, I voted on the on the candidates and propositions, but abstained (left them blank blank) on deciding whether to keep or oust the laundry-list of judges and other unrecognized names. My reasoning is that while I know enough to vote on the issues that matter, I know nothing (and care little) about the the head of the school board. It there's strong reason to vote either way, then I figure that those familiar with the issue will do so; I don't want to dilute the potency of their vote by casting an a vote at random.
In the previous vote, I had simply voted for "what sounded good" on the issues I'd never heard of, and as a result ended up voting the wrong way on some important issues because the wording on the ballot was severely deceptive (though that's a topic for another discussion).
You are mistaken. When it comes to elections - whether they are in Mexico or in the USofA, we are ALL Americans. Your decisions affect us. Our decisions affect you.
As do the decisions of citizens of Spain and France, but that doesn't make them Americans.
The purpose of language is to convey understanding; if your words are consistently misunderstood, then you're using the language incorrectly. If you use the word "American," people will almost invariably understand you to mean a citizen of the United States of America. If that's not your intention, then you should consider using a different word instead. That's not to argue the "correctness" of your statement, but rather point out that the message you're trying to convey will be lost in the confusion that you generate because of your ill-advised word choice.
The Bush administration will probably love this! This will just confirm their assertions that the Earth's climate can swign wildly on its own, therefore we have no influence on it, yeah right.
Politics aside, when you're looking at multi-million-year time scale, the Earth's climate does swing wildly on its own; and when compared to temperature changes of almost 200 deg F, anything we can possibly do will be negligible.
Is there a fix for this issue? I still have a Slackware 10 box that does this.
The common fix is to use a 64-bit counter to track uptime instead of the 32-bit one. It's included in some kernels and not others. As another poster pointed out, the resolution on that timer is configurable, and may be tweaked a bit depending on who built your kernel. 1/100 sec was the standard for a very long time, but a slower interrupt clock means lower power consumption; desirable for laptops.
This isn't that difficult. Let me give you some examples, I'm sure you could come up with more.
You could behave irrationally and dangerously while under the influence of that drug.
You could behave violently when addicted to that drug and looking for resources to get your next fix.
You could injure yourself through incorrect dosage, etc., and sue for damages.
Your use of the drug could encourage the development of more dangerous pathogens (which is why strong antibiotics are always perscription)
Your saying we should create laws based on a probability of propensity for harm? Then why aren't guns outlawed? Cars? Airplanes? Pointed sticks?
Guns are outlawed in most of the world, except in certain state-sanctioned professions. Here they're generally legal for historical and cultural reasons. As far as the rest, there's a risk-benefit analysis that is taken into consideration. You need a license to drive a car or fly a plane, specifically because of the risk involved. Because of the benefit that can be provided, you can operate this potentially dangerous equipment if you demonstrate to the appropriate authorities that you're capable and understand the laws involved (they give you a license).
Is it ok for me to drink?
*sigh* Only if you're over 21.
What about skydive.. i could land on you and squish you flat you know...
That's exactly why there are laws limiting where you can skydive. You can't, for example, over heavily populated areas specifically because you could hurt someone below.
Remember, risk/benefit. That's the key. If the risk (incl. risk to others) is high and the benefit is low, you can expect laws prohibiting that behavior. That includes letting you do recreational drugs. If the risk is high and the benefit is high, you can expect laws limiting that behavior based on need and/or proficiency. If the risk is low, then the government doesn't get involved.
As cool as it is to disagree with authority, the basic principles of government do make sense, and the underlying themes are surprisingly sensible.
You do know that Meth labs are a result of the legality of amphetamines right?
The government does make amphetamines available legally to the public, like ritalin as you mentioned. However, the government's purpose (whether it lives up to it or not) is to protect the society as a whole from the actions of its individuals, so when drugs are demonstrated to have a high probability of being used in a way that hurts others, that drug is restricted, and you are required to demonstrate a need (prescription) before you can purchase it.
How "dangerous" the drug is (or rather, how dangerous you are when you're addicted to it, and how likely it is to cause addiction) often determine how difficult it is to get a prescription. You can tell me that you're willing to accept the consequences of being addicted to Meth, but that doesn't mean that I'm willing to accept the consequences of allowing you to have it. Since your behavior affects me, I get to have some say as well.
Meth labs, by the way, are the result of economic factors. They exist despite the legality of the product, not because of it.
Has anyone found an effective way of cracking regular SSL?
No.
Is not the whole point of SSL to just slow down the decryption to a point where even if decrypted the data is old enough to be useless?
No.
I mean hell if SSL is weak encryption and we need stronger encryption should I not SUE verisign right now for providing a false sense of saftey?
No.
SSL (and TLS) aren't encryption algorithms, they're protocol standards. These protocols make use of existing encryption algorithms to secure data. Many of these algorithms have a variable level of complexity, depending on things like key size. Since security (including encyrption) is always a tradeoff of resources versus security, the goal is to tweak the configuration parameters (again, such as key length) to find a level of security such that an attack against the cipher is less profitable an option than the next best choice, such as kidnapping the document's author. Those who require greater security can use turn up the complexity at the expense of using more resources.
As computation capability increases, the complexity of encryption system is increased to compensate, usually by increasing key length. If a flaw is discovered in a given encryption algorithm making it too easy to break, or if the algorithm isn't capable of being expanded to account for better decryption technology (such as DES) then that algorithm is discarded in favor of some stronger replacement. SSL remains the same.
Verisign's "Extended Validation" program has nothing to do with cipher strength, key length, or encryption. Instead, it's indicative of the vetting process that the company had to undergo to get the certificate. To get a certificate for citibank.net, I have to verify that I own that domain. I don't, necessarily, have to verify that I represent Citibank [1]. Under this High Assurance program, Verisign will vouch, not only for the validity of the domain, but also for the validity of the organization owning that domain.
This is a Good Thing, since there currently is only one tier of validation. An SSL certificate is designed to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks, which it does well. What it doesn't protect against (though we act as if it does) is forged identity attacks. Certificates used for financial transactions, for example, should go through a stronger vetting process than certificates used for securing a blog.
[1] In reality, almost all CAs do extended verification when the other party sounds like a high-profile company or financial institution. Nonetheless, Mistakes do happen.
Re:Have they fixed this issue yet?
on
Fedora Core 6 Review
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· Score: 5, Informative
There is a nasty bug in Linux that makes the computer reboot every 49.7 days. The worst part is that this bug has been around for more than 10 years...
You're think about Windows 95 and NT, not Linux. Windows drivers used the number of milliseconds since boot as the primary timekeeping mechanism. When that wrapped around to zero, some drivers crashed. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/216641 for more information on this bug.
Even though all of Microsoft's own code now properly handles the 49-day boundary, third-party code is still a problem on Windows systems. Most programs still use GetTickCount() as their primary sub-second timer, which returns that 32-bit milliseconds since boot. In fact, it was this very thing that shut down the LA air traffic control center some months back.
This has never been a problem with Linux. Linux doesn't use milliseconds as any internal time representation. Instead, it uses either the timeval structure, or jiffies. Jiffies are 100ths of a second, whereas a timeval is a set of two numbers representing both seconds since 1970, and nanoseconds in the current second.
Note that jiffies (in 32-bits) wrap around after 497 days, which used to cause a benign bug where the uptime display would wrap around to zero after that time period. No crash, though.
What good is a million eyes looking at the code if they are attached to half a million idiots?
9. Amphetamines/Meth -- See #1 (doing crime to no one else).
If you think that Meth production does no harm to anyone else, then you have a grossly oversimplified view of the logistics and mechanics of the trade. Meth labs are like miniature Chernobyls, even long after they've been abandoned. The levels of toxicity of even the ambient air in these locations are so high that just a few minutes of exposure can do significant irreparable harm to passers-by.
Heaven help you if you're an officer that gets called out to respond to a domestic disturbance in such a place. These people can actually end up quarantined away from their friends and family. Just because of momentary exposure, they themselves become a health hazard to those around them.
So, tell me again that the government is overstepping its authority and bowing to corporate pressure by outlawing this trade. After all, it's my body and I can put into it whatever I want. Why should they care if I kill a few people in the process? No one matters but me, anyway.
Your views are an embarrassment to free thought. Please... just don't.
So would it be legal to upload a copy of these videos to YouTube or Google Video in order to take the load off the NewScientist server, and make the content accessible?
You'd have to assume it's copyrighted content (since everything is copyrighted unless otherwise stated), and therefore not allowed. But how is a cached copy of a video on Google Video any different than a cached copy of a web page on Google Cache or MirrorDot? The purpose would be the same.
I did get a copy of one of the videos before the servers went kaput that I could upload to a cache if it's allowed.
only to those whose "security" in reality consists of not much - or even nothing - more than obscurity.
With only a small handful of very rare exceptions, all security is implemented through obscurity. Passwords, keys, certificates, codes; even biometrics authentication can often be circumvented with the right knowledge.
The key to security is knowing what to use as your secret. A randomly-generated private key makes a better secret than an algorithm, especially when you publish an implementation of that algorithm. Nonetheless, publishing your secret, no matter what it is, will compromise the security of your system.
What is really funny is that you still cannot grasp what the GPL is. Let me explain this to you in simple terms...
Sorry, Grandparent is right; you're misinformed. (I'd blame your lack of reading comprehension skills, but that would probably be troll baiting, and troll baiting is wrong.)
The GPL is the heart of Stallman's concept of the "copyleft": a concept that uses existing copyright laws to undermine the copyright system altogether by requiring that derivative works not impose any copyright restrictions other than those in the GPL.
Stallman would prefer to remove all IP rights and restrictions altogether. Since that's not a possibility, he devised and implemented a system that, for GPL-affected works, effectively prohibits people from using the copyright system for anything other than prohibiting other people from using the copyright system. The GPL creates an island of copyright resistance.
In the absence of copyright restrictions, the GPL would be ineffectual but also unnecessary, since the overall experience would be the same with out with them.
I take issue with a few of the things you've said. Let me start at the beginning.
Actually, this is one of the only real ways to do serious amounts of survelliance. In Orwell's day, a 1984 dystopia would've been impossible; the technological resources required to watch everyone at the same time would've been impossible.
Having recently (3 days ago) read 1984, the details are still fresh on my mind. Orwell's "Telescreens" are, indeed, always-on surveilance devices, but were not constantly monitored. He makes mention early in the book that you never know when the ministry spies were "plugged in" to your telescreen, but you always had to act like you were being watched, just in case. That makes it less like data mining (which is notoriously easy to circumvent) and more like a panopticon instead, which is useful more for its control value than for finding deviants.
As for surveilance via computer, bear in mind that it's exceedingly easier to monitor someone's activity by watching, not a webcam, but rather their keystrokes, screenshots, and network traffic. Google's new development is not a step toward anything in particular. In fact, knowing Google's track record, the whole project will be a non-trivial-to-activate, opt-in, experimental, Google Labs component with a very explicit and unambiguous warning about the potential privacy implications. It will be lapped up by hundreds of thousands of early adopters excited to see the future of targetted ads, upon which some Symantec-like company will denounce the whole mess as spyware, and claim that only We can protect you.
The main cargo area on UPS jets has standard cabin pressure. The lower cargo areas on select planes are not pressurized.
Even the cabins of pressuized planes are at low pressure at cruising altitude. Pressurization systems maintain a pressure differential of up to n PSI; not a fixed cabin pressure. So as altitude increases, cabin pressure still decreases, just not at the same rate as outside.
Your average commercial jet is pressurized to about the equivalent of 8000 ft elevation when cruising at around FL 35.
That's one of the primary reasons why air travel makes you tired afterward (especially you people who are used to living at sea level), no matter what timezone changes you do or don't experience.
He was 19 years old. He told her, instead, that he was a high school senior. High school seniors are usually around 18 years old. So the 14-year-old girl went out with a guy she thought was around 18, but it turned out he was actually 19.
If only she had known ahead of time... Damn you MySpace! Damn you!
Arguing that you are right and common usage is wrong is like arguing that LASER, RADAR, and SCUBA should be written in all caps (they're acronyms, after all!), "e-mail" should be hyphenated, and a "computer" is a person who performs calculations by hand. The usage of these words, along with the phrase "begs the question", have changed, and it's time to accept that and move on. You might as well argue that we should all go back to speaking Old English -- it's simply not going to happen.
Well, I guess that settles it then. We're moving on. And since we're on the subject, "its" and "it's" are now interchangeable, "ur" is now a legitimate spelling of "your" (or "you're", since they're interchangeable as well), and "nucluler" is now a real word.
It must be correct because people use it, right? The rest of you fuddy-duddies are just hanging on to a dead language.
Joking aside, there has always been a correctness distinction between formal and informal language. If something is understandable, it is, for all intents and purposes (intensive purposes), correct for informal communication. Language is about being understood, and if you accomplish that goal, then you've correctly used the language.
However, in formal communication (that is, anywhere that it is important that you don't sound like a common dolt), a totally different set of rules apply. In this world, spelling, punctuation, capitalization (yes, even for words like SCUBA), and correct idiom usage matter. In this area, your goal is to not only communicate, but also sound intelligent.
Until your language feature has been codified by the academic institutions that be (e.g. makes its way into the OED), you're best off assuming that it is improper for formal communication. "Begging the question" has always been, and still remains, only properly used when referring to the politician's favorite fallacy. You can use it to mean whatever you want as long as you're understood. But if you want to sound intelligent, it's best to stick to the rules.
I just replaced 2 old servers, 1 running Windows 2000 server, and one running Linux. I had an IBM X31 Pentium M 1.3x ghz notebook laying around...
I must say, you must be doing something very different with your servers than I am with mine. The whole idea of replacing two servers with an old dusty laptop certainly gives the impression that your servers aren't exactly "serving" a whole lot. In fact, the primary reason, it seems, that you would use virtualization in the datacenter is because you're something like a shared hosting provider that needs to isloate accounts for security reasons.
Whenever I have process A running on a different machine than process B, it's because they're doing too much work for one computer to handle. What I'm really interested in is going the other way: adding more computers but making it behave as one. Imagine a beowulf cluster of those!
Slashdot Mirror
It's nice to know that they're working on it, though, and they do have a preliminary solution for those of us who REALLY need it.
I'll assume you wanted an answer.
Hardware was designed with W2K and XP as their development test cases, and was specifically made to work with those OSes. XP is only an incremental update over W2K (ver 5.1 from 5.0), whereas Vista is a complete rewrite in many areas. So they code power management according to the spec, such that all ACPI-compliant devices will work, then they make tweaks and exceptions for all the non-compliant hardware later on.
I had the same problems you had in when I was running the the public Beta, but they went away in RC1. Hardware support is still under heavy development, and the January release will be significantly improved in that area over the official RTM.
Fixed it for you. (I doubt I'm the only one here who has had trouble hibernating 6.10)
I have an office where, if you're on one access point instead of another on the same net, certain sites, Google in particular, are inaccessible. I have to do all my searching on MSN (pity me) instead when I'm in that area, and let me tell you with absolute certainty, productivity goes way down.
We have, but we're afraid to use it because the little waste it generates is highly-concentrated.
Coal plants produce more nuclear waste per watt than nuclear plants, but we're afraid of the waste from nuclear plants because it's concentrated into one large chunk and stuck into a container, whereas coal plants release radioactive waste into the atmosphere very slowly. Where did it go? I can't see it. It must be gone!
So, you say, how about "not coal" and "not nuclear"? Problem is, if you vote against nuclear power, you're voting FOR coal, because that's the only other option on the table, and you can't vote to have the world stop using electricity.
So, you say, how about wind power, wave power, solar power, geothermal power? Again, you're voting for coal. Wind, wave, solar, etc., are too weak. The output is too low to be able to compete economically. So we default back to coal. So, you say, how about we put more research into making these technologies more efficient! Yeah, we're already doing that. But in the mean time, we're still burning coal.
If you want to change the way the world powers its economy, you have to pick from the options that are on the table. There are three that can compete economically. Hydro-electric dams (which I didn't mention because they can't be widely deployed), burning stuff (coal, oil, etc.), and nuclear. You get to chose your poison, but you don't get to chose your options. When other options become economically viable, you'll be able to chose those as well, but not right now. Don't want to chose? Then SURPRISE, you just picked coal. Congratulations, you've just become part of the problem.
Oddly enough, these weapons are of little benefit to South Korea, but hugely beneficial to North Korea. These sentry guns won't stop a real military mobilization--it's simply not enough firepower. What it will stop is single individuals who try to run across the DMZ. One of the most telling facts about the situation in North Korea is the fact that, while there are guards on either side of the DMZ, the American guards stand facing the North Korean guards, while the North Korean guards stand facing eachother. Each North Korean guard is instructed to shoot the other if he tries to defect. (saw it on the History Channel, so it must be true.)
No more unplugging the microwave.
This election, I voted on the on the candidates and propositions, but abstained (left them blank blank) on deciding whether to keep or oust the laundry-list of judges and other unrecognized names. My reasoning is that while I know enough to vote on the issues that matter, I know nothing (and care little) about the the head of the school board. It there's strong reason to vote either way, then I figure that those familiar with the issue will do so; I don't want to dilute the potency of their vote by casting an a vote at random.
In the previous vote, I had simply voted for "what sounded good" on the issues I'd never heard of, and as a result ended up voting the wrong way on some important issues because the wording on the ballot was severely deceptive (though that's a topic for another discussion).
As do the decisions of citizens of Spain and France, but that doesn't make them Americans.
The purpose of language is to convey understanding; if your words are consistently misunderstood, then you're using the language incorrectly. If you use the word "American," people will almost invariably understand you to mean a citizen of the United States of America. If that's not your intention, then you should consider using a different word instead. That's not to argue the "correctness" of your statement, but rather point out that the message you're trying to convey will be lost in the confusion that you generate because of your ill-advised word choice.
Politics aside, when you're looking at multi-million-year time scale, the Earth's climate does swing wildly on its own; and when compared to temperature changes of almost 200 deg F, anything we can possibly do will be negligible.
The common fix is to use a 64-bit counter to track uptime instead of the 32-bit one. It's included in some kernels and not others. As another poster pointed out, the resolution on that timer is configurable, and may be tweaked a bit depending on who built your kernel. 1/100 sec was the standard for a very long time, but a slower interrupt clock means lower power consumption; desirable for laptops.
This isn't that difficult. Let me give you some examples, I'm sure you could come up with more.
Guns are outlawed in most of the world, except in certain state-sanctioned professions. Here they're generally legal for historical and cultural reasons. As far as the rest, there's a risk-benefit analysis that is taken into consideration. You need a license to drive a car or fly a plane, specifically because of the risk involved. Because of the benefit that can be provided, you can operate this potentially dangerous equipment if you demonstrate to the appropriate authorities that you're capable and understand the laws involved (they give you a license).
*sigh*
Only if you're over 21.
That's exactly why there are laws limiting where you can skydive. You can't, for example, over heavily populated areas specifically because you could hurt someone below.
Remember, risk/benefit. That's the key. If the risk (incl. risk to others) is high and the benefit is low, you can expect laws prohibiting that behavior. That includes letting you do recreational drugs. If the risk is high and the benefit is high, you can expect laws limiting that behavior based on need and/or proficiency. If the risk is low, then the government doesn't get involved.
As cool as it is to disagree with authority, the basic principles of government do make sense, and the underlying themes are surprisingly sensible.
The government does make amphetamines available legally to the public, like ritalin as you mentioned. However, the government's purpose (whether it lives up to it or not) is to protect the society as a whole from the actions of its individuals, so when drugs are demonstrated to have a high probability of being used in a way that hurts others, that drug is restricted, and you are required to demonstrate a need (prescription) before you can purchase it.
How "dangerous" the drug is (or rather, how dangerous you are when you're addicted to it, and how likely it is to cause addiction) often determine how difficult it is to get a prescription. You can tell me that you're willing to accept the consequences of being addicted to Meth, but that doesn't mean that I'm willing to accept the consequences of allowing you to have it. Since your behavior affects me, I get to have some say as well.
Meth labs, by the way, are the result of economic factors. They exist despite the legality of the product, not because of it.
No.
No.
No.
SSL (and TLS) aren't encryption algorithms, they're protocol standards. These protocols make use of existing encryption algorithms to secure data. Many of these algorithms have a variable level of complexity, depending on things like key size. Since security (including encyrption) is always a tradeoff of resources versus security, the goal is to tweak the configuration parameters (again, such as key length) to find a level of security such that an attack against the cipher is less profitable an option than the next best choice, such as kidnapping the document's author. Those who require greater security can use turn up the complexity at the expense of using more resources.
As computation capability increases, the complexity of encryption system is increased to compensate, usually by increasing key length. If a flaw is discovered in a given encryption algorithm making it too easy to break, or if the algorithm isn't capable of being expanded to account for better decryption technology (such as DES) then that algorithm is discarded in favor of some stronger replacement. SSL remains the same.
Verisign's "Extended Validation" program has nothing to do with cipher strength, key length, or encryption. Instead, it's indicative of the vetting process that the company had to undergo to get the certificate. To get a certificate for citibank.net, I have to verify that I own that domain. I don't, necessarily, have to verify that I represent Citibank [1]. Under this High Assurance program, Verisign will vouch, not only for the validity of the domain, but also for the validity of the organization owning that domain.
This is a Good Thing, since there currently is only one tier of validation. An SSL certificate is designed to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks, which it does well. What it doesn't protect against (though we act as if it does) is forged identity attacks. Certificates used for financial transactions, for example, should go through a stronger vetting process than certificates used for securing a blog.
[1] In reality, almost all CAs do extended verification when the other party sounds like a high-profile company or financial institution. Nonetheless, Mistakes do happen.
You're think about Windows 95 and NT, not Linux. Windows drivers used the number of milliseconds since boot as the primary timekeeping mechanism. When that wrapped around to zero, some drivers crashed. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/216641 for more information on this bug.
Even though all of Microsoft's own code now properly handles the 49-day boundary, third-party code is still a problem on Windows systems. Most programs still use GetTickCount() as their primary sub-second timer, which returns that 32-bit milliseconds since boot. In fact, it was this very thing that shut down the LA air traffic control center some months back.
This has never been a problem with Linux. Linux doesn't use milliseconds as any internal time representation. Instead, it uses either the timeval structure, or jiffies. Jiffies are 100ths of a second, whereas a timeval is a set of two numbers representing both seconds since 1970, and nanoseconds in the current second.
Note that jiffies (in 32-bits) wrap around after 497 days, which used to cause a benign bug where the uptime display would wrap around to zero after that time period. No crash, though.
I dare say they're not the idiots, here, sir.
If you think that Meth production does no harm to anyone else, then you have a grossly oversimplified view of the logistics and mechanics of the trade. Meth labs are like miniature Chernobyls, even long after they've been abandoned. The levels of toxicity of even the ambient air in these locations are so high that just a few minutes of exposure can do significant irreparable harm to passers-by.
Heaven help you if you're an officer that gets called out to respond to a domestic disturbance in such a place. These people can actually end up quarantined away from their friends and family. Just because of momentary exposure, they themselves become a health hazard to those around them.
So, tell me again that the government is overstepping its authority and bowing to corporate pressure by outlawing this trade. After all, it's my body and I can put into it whatever I want. Why should they care if I kill a few people in the process? No one matters but me, anyway.
Your views are an embarrassment to free thought. Please... just don't.
So would it be legal to upload a copy of these videos to YouTube or Google Video in order to take the load off the NewScientist server, and make the content accessible?
You'd have to assume it's copyrighted content (since everything is copyrighted unless otherwise stated), and therefore not allowed. But how is a cached copy of a video on Google Video any different than a cached copy of a web page on Google Cache or MirrorDot? The purpose would be the same.
I did get a copy of one of the videos before the servers went kaput that I could upload to a cache if it's allowed.
With only a small handful of very rare exceptions, all security is implemented through obscurity. Passwords, keys, certificates, codes; even biometrics authentication can often be circumvented with the right knowledge.
The key to security is knowing what to use as your secret. A randomly-generated private key makes a better secret than an algorithm, especially when you publish an implementation of that algorithm. Nonetheless, publishing your secret, no matter what it is, will compromise the security of your system.
Torrent for the rest of us?
Sorry, Grandparent is right; you're misinformed. (I'd blame your lack of reading comprehension skills, but that would probably be troll baiting, and troll baiting is wrong.)
The GPL is the heart of Stallman's concept of the "copyleft": a concept that uses existing copyright laws to undermine the copyright system altogether by requiring that derivative works not impose any copyright restrictions other than those in the GPL.
Stallman would prefer to remove all IP rights and restrictions altogether. Since that's not a possibility, he devised and implemented a system that, for GPL-affected works, effectively prohibits people from using the copyright system for anything other than prohibiting other people from using the copyright system. The GPL creates an island of copyright resistance.
In the absence of copyright restrictions, the GPL would be ineffectual but also unnecessary, since the overall experience would be the same with out with them.
I take issue with a few of the things you've said. Let me start at the beginning.
Actually, this is one of the only real ways to do serious amounts of survelliance. In Orwell's day, a 1984 dystopia would've been impossible; the technological resources required to watch everyone at the same time would've been impossible.
Having recently (3 days ago) read 1984, the details are still fresh on my mind. Orwell's "Telescreens" are, indeed, always-on surveilance devices, but were not constantly monitored. He makes mention early in the book that you never know when the ministry spies were "plugged in" to your telescreen, but you always had to act like you were being watched, just in case. That makes it less like data mining (which is notoriously easy to circumvent) and more like a panopticon instead, which is useful more for its control value than for finding deviants.
As for surveilance via computer, bear in mind that it's exceedingly easier to monitor someone's activity by watching, not a webcam, but rather their keystrokes, screenshots, and network traffic. Google's new development is not a step toward anything in particular. In fact, knowing Google's track record, the whole project will be a non-trivial-to-activate, opt-in, experimental, Google Labs component with a very explicit and unambiguous warning about the potential privacy implications. It will be lapped up by hundreds of thousands of early adopters excited to see the future of targetted ads, upon which some Symantec-like company will denounce the whole mess as spyware, and claim that only We can protect you.
The main cargo area on UPS jets has standard cabin pressure. The lower cargo areas on select planes are not pressurized.
Even the cabins of pressuized planes are at low pressure at cruising altitude. Pressurization systems maintain a pressure differential of up to n PSI; not a fixed cabin pressure. So as altitude increases, cabin pressure still decreases, just not at the same rate as outside.
Your average commercial jet is pressurized to about the equivalent of 8000 ft elevation when cruising at around FL 35.
That's one of the primary reasons why air travel makes you tired afterward (especially you people who are used to living at sea level), no matter what timezone changes you do or don't experience.
He was 19 years old. He told her, instead, that he was a high school senior. High school seniors are usually around 18 years old. So the 14-year-old girl went out with a guy she thought was around 18, but it turned out he was actually 19.
If only she had known ahead of time... Damn you MySpace! Damn you!
Well, I guess that settles it then. We're moving on. And since we're on the subject, "its" and "it's" are now interchangeable, "ur" is now a legitimate spelling of "your" (or "you're", since they're interchangeable as well), and "nucluler" is now a real word.
It must be correct because people use it, right? The rest of you fuddy-duddies are just hanging on to a dead language.
Joking aside, there has always been a correctness distinction between formal and informal language. If something is understandable, it is, for all intents and purposes (intensive purposes), correct for informal communication. Language is about being understood, and if you accomplish that goal, then you've correctly used the language.
However, in formal communication (that is, anywhere that it is important that you don't sound like a common dolt), a totally different set of rules apply. In this world, spelling, punctuation, capitalization (yes, even for words like SCUBA), and correct idiom usage matter. In this area, your goal is to not only communicate, but also sound intelligent.
Until your language feature has been codified by the academic institutions that be (e.g. makes its way into the OED), you're best off assuming that it is improper for formal communication. "Begging the question" has always been, and still remains, only properly used when referring to the politician's favorite fallacy. You can use it to mean whatever you want as long as you're understood. But if you want to sound intelligent, it's best to stick to the rules.
I just replaced 2 old servers, 1 running Windows 2000 server, and one running Linux. I had an IBM X31 Pentium M 1.3x ghz notebook laying around...
I must say, you must be doing something very different with your servers than I am with mine. The whole idea of replacing two servers with an old dusty laptop certainly gives the impression that your servers aren't exactly "serving" a whole lot. In fact, the primary reason, it seems, that you would use virtualization in the datacenter is because you're something like a shared hosting provider that needs to isloate accounts for security reasons.
Whenever I have process A running on a different machine than process B, it's because they're doing too much work for one computer to handle. What I'm really interested in is going the other way: adding more computers but making it behave as one. Imagine a beowulf cluster of those!