If we believed that your list was the only way nutrients entered the system, we'd have to believe that Earth had "soil" before life evolved.;)
That list is of the means that can supply agriculturally significant quantities of nutrients. i.e. agricultural replenishment. Sure there are other mechanisms that create natural topsoil, but they operate over timeframes that don't permit dedicated agriculture.
Basically, what this article is saying is that the oil from this weed removes so little nutrients that if you return the remains to the soil, whatever was lost is made up for by various means of natural replacement.
Yup. And that's a truly extraordinary statement. Not to completely shoot down the possibility that this wonder-weed can do everything claimed. But it would be the first primary crop plant that was actually self-fertilizing.
I'm just a skeptic. Not that I wouldn't be excited if this stuff was real, but the claims made by the proponents seem way beyond how all other plants work.
Nitrogen fixing plants use nitrogen fixing bacteria to do their "nitrogen fixing" thing. That was number (3) on my list as the only way to get enough nitrogen fixing bacteria into the soil is attached to the root systems of the plants that support them.
Except that hiding high-THC variants of Cannabis Sativa among low-THC variants means that you lose your high-THC seeds. The low-THC variants would dominate the pollination and your high-THC genetic strain is toast in one generation. One of the best arguments for growing hemp everywhere is that it would decimate the economics of marijuana agriculture.
In the coarsest terms, plants require both bioavailable carbon and bioavailable nitrogen along with a few other nutrients to grow. The atmosphere supplies bioavailable carbon to plants through CO2. But atmospheric nitrogen is not usable by plants. Bioavailable nitrogen must be supplied to plants through their roots, and it doesn't just appear in soil and water. Some nitrogen appears in topsoil, but agriculture will quickly deplete nutrient supplies. If they aren't replaced, you end up with productivity losses, loss of cropland, and in the worst case, desertification.
Means of nutrient replacement:
Tilling animal manure into the soil.
Tilling composted plant material into the soil.
Planting nitrogen fixing plants (peas, beans, etc.) and then tilling them into the soil.
Leaving the field fallow (without a crop) for several years (a slower version of (2)).
Adding fertilizer
So what this article is claiming is that the seedcake left over from oilpressing contains all of the nitrogen and other nutrients needed to restore the soil using just technique (2). That's an extraordinary claim. This plant is not a legume or one of the other nitrogen fixing plants, so by itself, cannot increase the amount of nitrogen in the soil. Some of the nitrogen will be unusable in the seedcake, some of the nitrogen needed to grow the plant will go into other parts of the plant that will have other economic uses or take too long to compost. A 100% cycle of nitrogen back into the soil would be great, but doesn't make any sense.
As for the sun and water, well, they can only do so much given that neither one is a supply of the nutrients needed to keep the soil healthy.
Here's another vote for NetApp. They're expensive, but they just work. Their support is excellent as well. We had multiple incidents over four years and they were simply on top of the situation, helping us resolve problems that almost always turned out to be because of things we'd done to the system.
Check out "policy routing", its been in Linux now maybe 7 years./sbin/ip route add table 10 0/0 via 10.0.0.1 dev eth0/sbin/ip rule add from 10.0.0.0/24 table 10 pri 10
Should be along the lines of always routing traffic from 10.0.0.0/24 via gateway 10.0.0.1 on device eth0.
Yeah. Hm. Sorry about not going into more depth about what was happening, but that's not it.
We did actually know enough to hire some network experts to help us debug the issue. The problem with your fix is that our web servers (upstream) and our database servers (downstream) are both on the other side of the same gateway. So all of the NIC's need to be able to route through that gateway. Which they do. Not the problem.
This problem isn't actually TCP code as your short sighted comment implies but I suppose you got the general networking area right in your thoughts so you aren't completely clueless.
<sarcasm> Wow. Thanks. I feel much better now. Thanks to your insights, we can just move our datacenter back to Linux because the problem wasn't solved by moving to Solaris. </sarcasm>
If you thought I was asking to be informed or for advice, my apologies. I've already spent more time than I care to admit figuring out what was going on. We already did the research, established that the bugs are present in the Linux TCP code and not present in the Solaris TCP code, then we moved our deployment to Solaris.
It's not recommended network practice to have two NICs in the same subnet (unless the NIC is designed for failover and is viewed as one from a MAC address perspective).
We're stuck. When we got to dictate network architecture for our deployment, we had completely separate networks for DMZ -> web servers, web servers -> app servers, app servers -> database, admin -> web/app/database servers, etc. After being acquired, we got told "we don't do that here" and were told to put everything internal on the internal network. I don't like it either. Our argument of "it's not industry best practices" and "it's causing significant problems" was answered with "we know better" and "just do what you're told".
In our old deployment, Linux worked great. In this new environment, not so much.
Do I blame Linux? A little, yeah. Do I blame the new network architecture policy? Yes, absolutely. Can I change the network policy? No. Can I fix Linux? No. (yet another policy against non-mainline and in-house patches on production machines). Can I substitute something else for Linux? Yes.
Done.
I do actually appreciate you believing that you could help us out and taking the time to offer some suggestions. The condescending tone, not so much.
One thing I find frustrating is that the number of members "as claimed by the Church of Scientology" is presented as fact, when it is nowhere close to reality. Do Catholic or Baptist churches claim as members those who attended years and years ago but have long since gone elsewhere? The Church of Scientology does.
In reality, the number of active members of the Church of Scientology is much lower. As in 100k-500k or 1-5% of the official number of ten million. So that number is 95-99% fabrication.
The TCP/IP implementation is not a part of the VM. The process scheduler is not a part of the VM. The filesystem is not a part of the VM.
Because of differences between TCP/IP implementations, we run our Java servers on OpenSolaris (used to be Solaris) and not on Linux. The third observation (filesystem) has a lot of common ground between Solaris and Linux, so doesn't differentiate. Which turns out to be critical since the corporate NAS only exposes an ext3-like interface that works on both Solaris and Linux.
Funny that you mention the TCP code. In my experience, the TCP stack is one of the places where Solaris (and presumably OpenSolaris) does things right and Linux has some significant problems.
We have some servers with multiple NIC's in the same subnet due to limitations of our hosting provider. On Linux, if a request comes in on NIC 1, the response may go out on NIC 1, 2, or 3. This causes no end of havoc as the server claims the response went fine, but any firewalls between the client and server will fail to correctly route the response from a different host. The client will usually barf as well.
On Solaris, the response always goes back out on NIC 1. It just works.
There are other issues with the Linux TCP stack as well, that just one of the ones that we've found most frustrating over the past three years which differentiates Solaris from Linux.
...or quite simply poorer than you are, and can't afford to save up for another half year to buy a replacement in cause of a fsckup.
What do you think the risk is of destroying the iPhone? The guy going in and desoldering/resoldeing components for his iPhone hack: high risk. Running a downloadable program: usually very low risk.
And I don't mean to pretend that I've got money to throw away. I spent $1500 on that motorcycle and I use it as my primary commuting vehicle largely because of the money I save on maintenance and gasoline (that, and I get to work in half the time). My wife also has a motorycle that cost less than $2000 that she uses for normal commuting for the same reasons. We're not poor, but we're not wealthy, either.
Oh well, maybe we shouldn't drop $600 on a gadget, and instead save the money for when the next medical bill hits the mailbox.
You aren't kidding. My wife and I are pretty healthy and essentially don't have medical bills. Recently, my wife needed outpatient surgery, and despite the fact that we spend plenty on PPO medical insurance, we've already paid out $1200 for one afternoon in the hospital, with more bills to come. That really put a dent in the budget.
Most of us are unwilling to buy a $600 phone and then hack it. PERIOD.
Respectfully, most of you are a complete and utter mystery to me. It's been years since I've bought something and haven't significantly modified it within days of purchase.
Small:
I bought a dragonfly flying toy. I immediately removed the foam body, replaced the lipo battery with a larger cell that I had lying around, and repositioned the battery to improve the flying balance.
Medium:
I bought some Carharrt blue jeans, but the only color I could find was a really deep indigo blue. Three washes and one liter of bleach later, they're the color I want.
I help friends and family set up secure WIFI in their homes. I buy Buffalo b/g base stations and upgrade them by installing OpenWRT firmware on them before I bring them over and set them up.
Bigger:
I bought a 12-gallon nanocube aquarium, but didn't think it had enough light and the filter approach was very old-school. I had a new top made with a 70W metal-halide bulb, cut a hole for a ventilation fan in the new top, tore out the filter section of the tank and replaced it with some acrylic panels to locate pumps where I wanted, bought a 2.5 gallon hang-on refugium, resized the refugium plumbing to improve flow and reduce noise, installed a heater and cooler in the refugium, created a temperature controller for the small heater and cooler, plugged it all in, and now enjoy a well-lit aquarium with 3x the live rock of the default filtration.
I bought some decent Cambridge Soundworks speakers, but after I got them home, determined that the crossover was not as high quality as the rest of the speaker. So I opened up the speaker and replaced the passive crossover with an active crossover made by a friend of mine with less phase alteration and more uniform impedance across the frequency range.
The only prebuilt computers I buy are laptops, but I normally max out the memory and replace the hard drive with a faster/quieter/bigger unit. I've also replaced the 802.11b cards in my laptops with 802.11abg cards ($20@ on eBay). This required a BIOS hack since the BIOS didn't want to play with the non-oem card.
Big:
I bought a motorcycle ('95 CB750 Nighthawk) and am in the process of putting the front end from a '97 CBR600F3 sportbike (because of dual disk brakes and the shocks are fully adjustable). I currently need two things: longer brake lines to account for the different handlebar location and a right-side mirror mount since the new master cylinder doesn't have one.
Pretty much nothing I can buy is good enough for my needs right out of the box. Often, however, there are only a few changes that are needed to get the utility where I need it. If I'm spending $600 for something, there is no way on this green earth that I'm going to accept someone else's idea of what I should do with it.
The rest of you, who buy a $600 item and are so afraid of breaking it that you barely dare touch it, are quite simply strange.
I (and i assume most people that buy a mobile phone) want a phone with a given feature set that just works (tm).
Well, sure. But if I'm spending $600 on a device, just being a mobile phone isn't going to be good enough. Not by a long shot. And if that's all AT&T wants me to do with it then either (1) I'm not buying one or (2) I'm going to ignore what AT&T thinks and wants.
The same could definitely be said about Linus and the Linux crowd as well. I seem to remember the Linux boosters getting very upset about a similar problem with code being taken improperly. As I recall, it was somewhat different, but I don't recall anybody at the time suggested that Linus and the boosters were mouthier than usual.
You don't remember that because the GPL copyright holders attempted to resolve the issue quietly and without huge dramatics (Linus didn't become involved until very late in the game).
And it is quite reasonable for them to complain that the BSD license was explicitly stripped from the source without permission.
Except that it's the author and copyright holder who did it, and he's allowed to do what he likes with his copyrighted works.
It's noteworthy that you compare mythological characters with someone who actually lived and performed thousands of miracles that were witnessed by as many people.
Sadly, it's not really noteworthy that you do not think critically about what you find written in the Bible.
In fact, Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian, was not a Christian but documented early Christianity and Jesus' miracles quite extensively.
In actual fact, Josephus's writings are far from conclusive. In 240AD, Origen stated that in 70AD, Josephus did not believe that Jesus was the Christ, while in 324AD, Eusebius quoted a transcription of Josephus in "The Antiquities" where Josephus is claimed to have stated that "Jesus was the Christ". Since none of Josephus's writings survive, but only multiply transcribed copies, it's likely that someone added Josephus's mention of Jesus's miracles and divinity well after the fact.
I'm guessing you mean to discover life's pleasures on your own, or something like that.
Pretty close. You can see my earlier response for a description of my joy in living.
God does not want us to look inwardly for answers, but to look to him.
On what basis do you believe that your God exists? Why do you deny the existence of all of the other possible mythical gods? Once you understand why you don't believe in any of the other religions, realize that all I have done is extended that disbelief to your religion as well.
Just because you've never experienced God's touch in your life, doesn't mean He doesn't exist.
Again, with the assumptions!:) When I was 16, I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior. This was a major positive event in my life, which helped me deal with some very difficult family issues at the time. Eight years later, when I was 24, after several years of unsatisfactory answers to my questions about evolution, sin, forgiveness, etc., I decided that although religion had been helpful to me, it wasn't the Jesus/salvation part of it that was useful (it was the presentation of a pragmatic moral system). So, I de-converted from Christianity. I had a "final prayer", where I observed that even Thomas got the proof he needed to believe, so I would wait for my proof. I also got to work on figuring out why I still believed in "right" and "wrong", even without God looking over my shoulder, which has turned out to be an extraordinarily interesting journey...
Please understand, I'm not trying to de-convert you. The world will be a better place because others know and understand things differently from me. But I do object strongly to the rise of Fundamentalist Christianity in the politics of the US. The founder's weren't especially religious people, and deliberately founded the US as a non-religious nation. The work of modern religious leaders to influence decision-making in Washington DC and around the country in States, Counties, and School Boards is an ongoing disaster that I will work against with every fiber of my being.
Organized religion, including Christianity, is currently the biggest impediment to moral progress on this planet. Medicine can now keep someone alive long after the "person" is gone. Should we keep them alive? Religions offer no help with this question. Only the reconciled knowledge of the communities around that person can actually answer the question. Medicine has now caused starvation by overpopulation to become the leading cause of death around the world. What does Christianity offer for guidance to solve the underlying issues? Nothing. Worse than nothing, Christianity interferes with efforts to education teens about sex and to provide effective birth control. Christians protest outside the doors of companies that distribute condoms in regions with high HIV and massive overpopulation. Even in this country, what's the best way to prevent teen pregnancy? Teaching abstinence or teaching the facts about sex and reproduction? The studies are in, abstinence teaching doesn't help, but Christian leaders still have their heads in the sand.
I have found exactly that joy in this life and the eternal hope by direct contact with the risen Lord Jesus. It is not just some philosophically theorized existential joy, but the very real joy of having fellowship right NOW with the eternal God of all. It is the joy of knowing that my sins are ALL forgiven.
How did you come to the conclusion that my joy is theoretical?
My joy is one of community with others, of having the opportunity to love my child, my wife, my family, etc. My joy is one of taking responsibility for my decisions, of helping others, of living in the moment, of taking the time to experience the wonders of the world within and around me.
My joy is very real, and further, does not require belief in invisible friend(s) in the sky. Am I happy every moment of every day? No. I have a normal life with sadnesses and sometimes unpleasant duties. But I have daily opportunities to wonder at the beauty of this world along with my role in it, and I take those opportunities. I wonder at it all. I revel in my existence. That is the existential joy I refer to.
There are three choices about Jesus.
1) Jesus was the worst and most dangerous liar the world has ever seen. 2) He was a crazy, self deluded lunatic. 3) He spoke the truth.
The choices you present are falsely limited because all three make the assumption that the documents selected to be in the Bible at the First Council of Nicea are historically accurate. However, just looking at the significant differences in the synoptic gospels, that assertion is nonsense. It's plausible that some of the events described in biblical texts are fairly decent descriptions of what actually happened, but that the whole thing is 100% accurate? Um, no.
Once we add the possibility that biblical authors had political agendas, were two or more generations removed from the actual events of Jesus life, and therefore only got some of the details right, there are additional options that you failed to mention:
4) A man named Jesus was born, participated in some sort of uprising, was prosecuted and killed for his crimes, and was posthumously turned into a prophet (and then deity) for the sake of a new religious movement. 5) Jesus never existed and the whole story was made from whole cloth. 6) ???
Personally, my money is on (4). There's corroborating evidence that someone named Jesus existed at about the time and was killed after trial. However, I don't accept the historical accuracy of the Bible, so I don't accept that Jesus said many of the things attributed to him. It seems much more likely that the most extraordinary statements attributed to Jesus were a part of the natural evolution of the myth that appeared and grew in the 50-100 years between Jesus's actual life and when the gospels were finally actually written.
Organized religion is a fraud built on the premise that there is power and money to be had by pretending to have the answer to unknowable questions. Near as we can tell, here are the actual answers:
Q: "Who or what created me?" A: "You are a speck of organized matter in a universe that allows for organized matter like you." Q: "Does the universe care about me?" A: "Nature is not an agent. Look to the human communities around you for support, caring and love." Q: "What happens after we die?" A: "After you go, you're gone. This is it, so seek joy while you've got the chance." Q: "What's the meaning of life?" A: "That's for you to answer for yourself."
There is room for deep and abiding joy in life with those answers, but because people want other answers, and still other people are willing to sell them the answers they want to hear (in exchange for fealty and wealth), we have organized religion.
If you have ever told a lie you are guilty and condemned.
Exactly the problem. Any being willing to condemn for a lie and unable to accept an apology and f
Founders of all other major faiths or philosophies lie in their graves. ONLY Jesus rose from the dead and gives that hope of a new life to those who believe in Him.
You do know that "the return from the land of the dead" is one of the common elements in nearly all hero-myths? Jesus is in good company with that plot-twist, but that story has been around as long as people have been telling stories. Some other examples of mythological gods that die and return include: Persephone, Osiris, Adonis, phoenix, Baldur, Odin, and Mithras.
Even Theseus's encounter with the Minotaur in the Labyrinth is a hero-myth where the Labyrinth is the underworld and Theseus is tasked with protecting the natural world from evil by descending and returning triumphant. Take a look at "Hero With a Thousand Faces" for more on this subject. Jesus was written into the history books after the fact.
This promise and hope is ONLY for those who BELIEVE in Jesus.
I've always thought that particular assertion to be very troubling. If this deity created humans flawed so that it was impossible for us to be worthy of him without further divine intervention, then it fucked up pretty badly. Badly enough that I'm not going to accept bald-faced assertions about it's intentions or plans without some evidence to back up the veracity of those assertions.
Human beings are capable of forgiving those who do us wrong. Your deity is unwilling to accept an apology for the occasional mistake. Instead, we have to devote our lives as one gigantic apology or otherwise, it's not good enough. Which is a rather astonishing facet of the all-loving deity you claim to believe in.
Basically, you're believing a pile of lies that you've been told since you were a child. I sincerely hope that you find your way through them and start living for joy in this life. You don't need to rely on a diety to have that (and actually, the diety gets in the way of the kind of existential joy I'm talking about).
No worries. You just happened to hit a sensitive topic for me. My dad is of the opinion that Constitutional rights aren't for citizens and we go around on that argument every once in a while.
Actually, it doesn't. What does require constant growth is highly leveraged investments. This should ring a bell (subprime loans).
Anything that requires constant growth to succeed is almost certainly a ponzi scheme of one sort or another. Only a small fraction of all the public companies operate this way and they're all incredibly high risk. It just so happens to be the most visible companies (which is another argument as to why investing in their stock is playing into a Ponzi scheme).
I guess that I can see how you might not vote because you don't like the candidates, but would hate to see that result in my first amendment rights being scaled back. I mean, they are guaranteed to all citizens, not voters.
Actually, they (Constitutional rights) are guaranteed to "the people" not to "citizens". Luckily for my interpretation of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the SCOTUS also interprets "the people" to mean more than just citizens of the US. Legal residents, visa holders, citizens, etc. are all entitled to First Amendment protection from interference by the US government in their free speech, free assembly, free press, etc.
These protections from interference by the US government even extend outside the physical boundaries of the US (the fact that Guantanamo is outside the territorial United States was quickly dropped as an argument by the Justice Department in it's presentation to the SCOTUS).
Limiting Constitutional rights to voters would basically eliminate the Constitution as it currently stands. It's difficult to say what the replacement might look like, as even the civilians in "Starship Troopers" had rights, just not voting rights.
That is like saying a truck can't be green because it has to have the power to haul large loads.
This is more insightful than you've been given credit for. Trucks can be quite green, when they're being used for the appropriate task.
It's when someone uses a truck inappropriately and wastefully that I get annoyed. I.e. a big heavy-duty pickup truck that's carrying one person to and from work each day is most definitely not green, and I resent the additional pollution that they're adding to the air because they "want to" and "can afford the gas".
I have owned a big pickup since 1994, but I commute on a motorcycle that gets three times the mileage (45mpg if I'm heavy on the throttle). The truck is used for hauling of building materials, projects, etc. (not groceries). As a result, I feel a little entitled to judge when I see one 90lb woman clearly commuting to or from the office in a 6000lb vehicle.
Next thing you know we'll be seeing diesel-electrics in big trucks such as semis.
Then it'll trickle down to pickups and SUVs.
Small cars actually make the least amount of sense to try to make into a hybrid
Well... looks like a commercial version of the small car is going to beat the semi to market. As in October 2010 (I give them 4 in 5 odds). The Chevy Volt will use exactly this powerplant design (electric vehicle with a liquid-fueled generator) and is currently slated for a release with the 2011 model year cars about three years from now.
Terrestrial reactors will use DT fusion. The time it takes for this reaction to happen is not worth talking about.
Actually, He3-He3 fusion (the last few steps in solar fusion) is substantially safer than DT fusion due to the minimal neutron flux. See wikipedia for more information (it's the last reaction in the proton cycle where 2 He3 -> He4 + 2 H- + 12.86MeV). Not quite as much energy as D + T -> He4 + N + 17.6MeV, but still a respectable amount of energy and much less neutron damage to the reactor walls over the lifetime of the reactor.
All we need to make it work are faster ways to obtain He3 than are used by the sun. Luckily, we know of a few ways to get He3. Since Tritium will beta decay into He3 with a half-life of 12 years, all we need is enough tritium and we'll have a steady supply of He3. Tritium appears from three relatively simple nuclear reactions:
1) N + D -> T + gamma 2) N + Li6 -> He + T + gamma 3) N + Li7 -> He + T + N + gamma
Given those equations, lithium deuteride becomes an extremely interesting substance. It's a salt where every atom in the salt will form a tritium atom when it absorbs a neutron. Wrap a big mass of lithium deuteride around a neutron source and you're breeding tritium faster than you can produce neutrons (since some of the conversions will re-emit another neutron and cascade into another tritium conversion). Store the produced tritium for a decade and you'll have converted 40% of the tritium into He3. A MUCH faster process than the sun uses.
There's also the possibility that there is economically available He3 in the lunar crust or in the upper atmosphere of gas giants, assuming we decide to develop the space-based industry to go after it.
Going and finding extra-terrestrial He3 sounds farther out than making it locally.
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I'm just a skeptic. Not that I wouldn't be excited if this stuff was real, but the claims made by the proponents seem way beyond how all other plants work.
Regards,
Ross
Nitrogen fixing plants use nitrogen fixing bacteria to do their "nitrogen fixing" thing. That was number (3) on my list as the only way to get enough nitrogen fixing bacteria into the soil is attached to the root systems of the plants that support them.
Regards,
Ross
Except that hiding high-THC variants of Cannabis Sativa among low-THC variants means that you lose your high-THC seeds. The low-THC variants would dominate the pollination and your high-THC genetic strain is toast in one generation. One of the best arguments for growing hemp everywhere is that it would decimate the economics of marijuana agriculture.
Regards,
Ross
Means of nutrient replacement:
- Tilling animal manure into the soil.
- Tilling composted plant material into the soil.
- Planting nitrogen fixing plants (peas, beans, etc.) and then tilling them into the soil.
- Leaving the field fallow (without a crop) for several years (a slower version of (2)).
- Adding fertilizer
So what this article is claiming is that the seedcake left over from oilpressing contains all of the nitrogen and other nutrients needed to restore the soil using just technique (2). That's an extraordinary claim. This plant is not a legume or one of the other nitrogen fixing plants, so by itself, cannot increase the amount of nitrogen in the soil. Some of the nitrogen will be unusable in the seedcake, some of the nitrogen needed to grow the plant will go into other parts of the plant that will have other economic uses or take too long to compost. A 100% cycle of nitrogen back into the soil would be great, but doesn't make any sense.As for the sun and water, well, they can only do so much given that neither one is a supply of the nutrients needed to keep the soil healthy.
Regards,
Ross
Me. *sigh*
Here's another vote for NetApp. They're expensive, but they just work. Their support is excellent as well. We had multiple incidents over four years and they were simply on top of the situation, helping us resolve problems that almost always turned out to be because of things we'd done to the system.
We did actually know enough to hire some network experts to help us debug the issue. The problem with your fix is that our web servers (upstream) and our database servers (downstream) are both on the other side of the same gateway. So all of the NIC's need to be able to route through that gateway. Which they do. Not the problem.<sarcasm> Wow. Thanks. I feel much better now. Thanks to your insights, we can just move our datacenter back to Linux because the problem wasn't solved by moving to Solaris. </sarcasm>
If you thought I was asking to be informed or for advice, my apologies. I've already spent more time than I care to admit figuring out what was going on. We already did the research, established that the bugs are present in the Linux TCP code and not present in the Solaris TCP code, then we moved our deployment to Solaris.We're stuck. When we got to dictate network architecture for our deployment, we had completely separate networks for DMZ -> web servers, web servers -> app servers, app servers -> database, admin -> web/app/database servers, etc. After being acquired, we got told "we don't do that here" and were told to put everything internal on the internal network. I don't like it either. Our argument of "it's not industry best practices" and "it's causing significant problems" was answered with "we know better" and "just do what you're told".
In our old deployment, Linux worked great. In this new environment, not so much.
Do I blame Linux? A little, yeah.
Do I blame the new network architecture policy? Yes, absolutely.
Can I change the network policy? No.
Can I fix Linux? No. (yet another policy against non-mainline and in-house patches on production machines).
Can I substitute something else for Linux? Yes.
Done.
I do actually appreciate you believing that you could help us out and taking the time to offer some suggestions. The condescending tone, not so much.
Regards,
Ross
One thing I find frustrating is that the number of members "as claimed by the Church of Scientology" is presented as fact, when it is nowhere close to reality. Do Catholic or Baptist churches claim as members those who attended years and years ago but have long since gone elsewhere? The Church of Scientology does.
In reality, the number of active members of the Church of Scientology is much lower. As in 100k-500k or 1-5% of the official number of ten million. So that number is 95-99% fabrication.
The TCP/IP implementation is not a part of the VM.
The process scheduler is not a part of the VM.
The filesystem is not a part of the VM.
Because of differences between TCP/IP implementations, we run our Java servers on OpenSolaris (used to be Solaris) and not on Linux. The third observation (filesystem) has a lot of common ground between Solaris and Linux, so doesn't differentiate. Which turns out to be critical since the corporate NAS only exposes an ext3-like interface that works on both Solaris and Linux.
Funny that you mention the TCP code. In my experience, the TCP stack is one of the places where Solaris (and presumably OpenSolaris) does things right and Linux has some significant problems.
We have some servers with multiple NIC's in the same subnet due to limitations of our hosting provider. On Linux, if a request comes in on NIC 1, the response may go out on NIC 1, 2, or 3. This causes no end of havoc as the server claims the response went fine, but any firewalls between the client and server will fail to correctly route the response from a different host. The client will usually barf as well.
On Solaris, the response always goes back out on NIC 1. It just works.
There are other issues with the Linux TCP stack as well, that just one of the ones that we've found most frustrating over the past three years which differentiates Solaris from Linux.
And I don't mean to pretend that I've got money to throw away. I spent $1500 on that motorcycle and I use it as my primary commuting vehicle largely because of the money I save on maintenance and gasoline (that, and I get to work in half the time). My wife also has a motorycle that cost less than $2000 that she uses for normal commuting for the same reasons. We're not poor, but we're not wealthy, either.You aren't kidding. My wife and I are pretty healthy and essentially don't have medical bills. Recently, my wife needed outpatient surgery, and despite the fact that we spend plenty on PPO medical insurance, we've already paid out $1200 for one afternoon in the hospital, with more bills to come. That really put a dent in the budget.
Regards,
Ross
Small:
Medium:
Bigger:
Big:
Pretty much nothing I can buy is good enough for my needs right out of the box. Often, however, there are only a few changes that are needed to get the utility where I need it. If I'm spending $600 for something, there is no way on this green earth that I'm going to accept someone else's idea of what I should do with it.
The rest of you, who buy a $600 item and are so afraid of breaking it that you barely dare touch it, are quite simply strange.Well, sure. But if I'm spending $600 on a device, just being a mobile phone isn't going to be good enough. Not by a long shot. And if that's all AT&T wants me to do with it then either (1) I'm not buying one or (2) I'm going to ignore what AT&T thinks and wants.
Regards,
Ross
Holy crap, that is an amazing discussion. Steinberger wiped the floor with Horowitz. I almost felt sorry for the poor, put-upon neocon :)
Please understand, I'm not trying to de-convert you. The world will be a better place because others know and understand things differently from me. But I do object strongly to the rise of Fundamentalist Christianity in the politics of the US. The founder's weren't especially religious people, and deliberately founded the US as a non-religious nation. The work of modern religious leaders to influence decision-making in Washington DC and around the country in States, Counties, and School Boards is an ongoing disaster that I will work against with every fiber of my being.
Organized religion, including Christianity, is currently the biggest impediment to moral progress on this planet. Medicine can now keep someone alive long after the "person" is gone. Should we keep them alive? Religions offer no help with this question. Only the reconciled knowledge of the communities around that person can actually answer the question. Medicine has now caused starvation by overpopulation to become the leading cause of death around the world. What does Christianity offer for guidance to solve the underlying issues? Nothing. Worse than nothing, Christianity interferes with efforts to education teens about sex and to provide effective birth control. Christians protest outside the doors of companies that distribute condoms in regions with high HIV and massive overpopulation. Even in this country, what's the best way to prevent teen pregnancy? Teaching abstinence or teaching the facts about sex and reproduction? The studies are in, abstinence teaching doesn't help, but Christian leaders still have their heads in the sand.
How did you come to the conclusion that my joy is theoretical?
My joy is one of community with others, of having the opportunity to love my child, my wife, my family, etc. My joy is one of taking responsibility for my decisions, of helping others, of living in the moment, of taking the time to experience the wonders of the world within and around me.
My joy is very real, and further, does not require belief in invisible friend(s) in the sky. Am I happy every moment of every day? No. I have a normal life with sadnesses and sometimes unpleasant duties. But I have daily opportunities to wonder at the beauty of this world along with my role in it, and I take those opportunities. I wonder at it all. I revel in my existence. That is the existential joy I refer to.
The choices you present are falsely limited because all three make the assumption that the documents selected to be in the Bible at the First Council of Nicea are historically accurate. However, just looking at the significant differences in the synoptic gospels, that assertion is nonsense. It's plausible that some of the events described in biblical texts are fairly decent descriptions of what actually happened, but that the whole thing is 100% accurate? Um, no.
Once we add the possibility that biblical authors had political agendas, were two or more generations removed from the actual events of Jesus life, and therefore only got some of the details right, there are additional options that you failed to mention:
4) A man named Jesus was born, participated in some sort of uprising, was prosecuted and killed for his crimes, and was posthumously turned into a prophet (and then deity) for the sake of a new religious movement.
5) Jesus never existed and the whole story was made from whole cloth.
6) ???
Personally, my money is on (4). There's corroborating evidence that someone named Jesus existed at about the time and was killed after trial. However, I don't accept the historical accuracy of the Bible, so I don't accept that Jesus said many of the things attributed to him. It seems much more likely that the most extraordinary statements attributed to Jesus were a part of the natural evolution of the myth that appeared and grew in the 50-100 years between Jesus's actual life and when the gospels were finally actually written.
Organized religion is a fraud built on the premise that there is power and money to be had by pretending to have the answer to unknowable questions. Near as we can tell, here are the actual answers:
Q: "Who or what created me?"
A: "You are a speck of organized matter in a universe that allows for organized matter like you."
Q: "Does the universe care about me?"
A: "Nature is not an agent. Look to the human communities around you for support, caring and love."
Q: "What happens after we die?"
A: "After you go, you're gone. This is it, so seek joy while you've got the chance."
Q: "What's the meaning of life?"
A: "That's for you to answer for yourself."
There is room for deep and abiding joy in life with those answers, but because people want other answers, and still other people are willing to sell them the answers they want to hear (in exchange for fealty and wealth), we have organized religion.
Exactly the problem. Any being willing to condemn for a lie and unable to accept an apology and f
Even Theseus's encounter with the Minotaur in the Labyrinth is a hero-myth where the Labyrinth is the underworld and Theseus is tasked with protecting the natural world from evil by descending and returning triumphant. Take a look at "Hero With a Thousand Faces" for more on this subject. Jesus was written into the history books after the fact.I've always thought that particular assertion to be very troubling. If this deity created humans flawed so that it was impossible for us to be worthy of him without further divine intervention, then it fucked up pretty badly. Badly enough that I'm not going to accept bald-faced assertions about it's intentions or plans without some evidence to back up the veracity of those assertions.
Human beings are capable of forgiving those who do us wrong. Your deity is unwilling to accept an apology for the occasional mistake. Instead, we have to devote our lives as one gigantic apology or otherwise, it's not good enough. Which is a rather astonishing facet of the all-loving deity you claim to believe in.
Basically, you're believing a pile of lies that you've been told since you were a child. I sincerely hope that you find your way through them and start living for joy in this life. You don't need to rely on a diety to have that (and actually, the diety gets in the way of the kind of existential joy I'm talking about).
Regards,
Ross
Aren't for NON-citizens. Ahem.
No worries. You just happened to hit a sensitive topic for me. My dad is of the opinion that Constitutional rights aren't for citizens and we go around on that argument every once in a while.
Anything that requires constant growth to succeed is almost certainly a ponzi scheme of one sort or another. Only a small fraction of all the public companies operate this way and they're all incredibly high risk. It just so happens to be the most visible companies (which is another argument as to why investing in their stock is playing into a Ponzi scheme).
Regards,
Ross
These protections from interference by the US government even extend outside the physical boundaries of the US (the fact that Guantanamo is outside the territorial United States was quickly dropped as an argument by the Justice Department in it's presentation to the SCOTUS).
Limiting Constitutional rights to voters would basically eliminate the Constitution as it currently stands. It's difficult to say what the replacement might look like, as even the civilians in "Starship Troopers" had rights, just not voting rights.
It's when someone uses a truck inappropriately and wastefully that I get annoyed. I.e. a big heavy-duty pickup truck that's carrying one person to and from work each day is most definitely not green, and I resent the additional pollution that they're adding to the air because they "want to" and "can afford the gas".
I have owned a big pickup since 1994, but I commute on a motorcycle that gets three times the mileage (45mpg if I'm heavy on the throttle). The truck is used for hauling of building materials, projects, etc. (not groceries). As a result, I feel a little entitled to judge when I see one 90lb woman clearly commuting to or from the office in a 6000lb vehicle.
All we need to make it work are faster ways to obtain He3 than are used by the sun. Luckily, we know of a few ways to get He3. Since Tritium will beta decay into He3 with a half-life of 12 years, all we need is enough tritium and we'll have a steady supply of He3. Tritium appears from three relatively simple nuclear reactions:
1) N + D -> T + gamma
2) N + Li6 -> He + T + gamma
3) N + Li7 -> He + T + N + gamma
Given those equations, lithium deuteride becomes an extremely interesting substance. It's a salt where every atom in the salt will form a tritium atom when it absorbs a neutron. Wrap a big mass of lithium deuteride around a neutron source and you're breeding tritium faster than you can produce neutrons (since some of the conversions will re-emit another neutron and cascade into another tritium conversion). Store the produced tritium for a decade and you'll have converted 40% of the tritium into He3. A MUCH faster process than the sun uses.
There's also the possibility that there is economically available He3 in the lunar crust or in the upper atmosphere of gas giants, assuming we decide to develop the space-based industry to go after it.
Going and finding extra-terrestrial He3 sounds farther out than making it locally.
Regards,
Ross