Something weird happened - after 15 years of OS twiddling, I got sick of it and decided life is too short. My limited time is better spent playing with my kids or studying science or backpacking, not peculiarities of the latest minor revision of some software package. But unfortunately I am still addicted to the power and control of highly configurable software:/
Unless you're installing radically different release levels of the individual
tools, the configuration files should all be the same thing even if they are
in different locations.
They should, which is why I said, "copying/etc/ files rarely works like one would hope." IIRC, imapd was compiled with different security options; for exim I had installed optional modules having to do with spam filtering; and lirc had changed so much, the version in Ubuntu didn't even use the same number of config files I had been running. GDM crapped its pants when I selected the face browser option and I never got it to work again.
The rise of GUI config tools has definitely harmed the stability and interchangeability of/etc files in linux. Many GUI tools read and write only a subset of the full syntax of the file, and are thus riddled with "do not touch!" sections. Touching an/etc file can easily break the config GUI, which can have unforeseen future consequences when everything is so tightly intertwined, as in a modern gnome install.
IMHO the big fallacy here is assuming there is some fundamental distinction between living and nonliving things. It is all chemical processes, a swirling eddy in a larger flow of physical process that is the universe. Humans are for now the gold standard for "alive," a dog is "rather alive," fish are "somewhat alive," plants are "slightly alive," and fire is "arguably a little bit alive." The immorality of killing has to depend on how much life was snuffed out.
I cheat, though, by living in a farming and ranching region where you don't have to look any farther than the local butcher shop to find steaks from a cow that spent its life in the same county as you live in. I wish everyone could and would do that.
You must realize this is a population density issue. I mention overpopulation to some people and they say, "there's plenty of room left, I fly over it all the time," apparently not realizing that for every city-dweller, there must be acres of farmland, pasture, and landfill somewhere, used up in their name.
I am not "anti-people." But what's the rush? Everybody will get their turn on earth eventually if we just take it easy.
But the question is, would the high-IQ slackers have turned out any better had them been challenged earlier in life with more special education? Remember, we are going on the premise of genetic determinism here - if IQ is genetic, why not motivation? If we are singling out students for high potential and discarding the rest, the test must include not just IQ, but leadership potential, curiosity, ambition, and grit.
If nothing else, you need to realize that these people don't despise themselves as much as you do. They will not be flushed down your toilet without a fight (and I don't blame them). Bipartite societies are not stable, and social instability causes problems for everybody.
Just last night I saw a long commercial with 3 women sitting around a couch watching a birth control commercial and having an in depth discussion about birth control options. Of course, my wife says that's total bullshit and no one she knows does that, but hey - it's on TV so it must be true.
In what way is it not realistic? I know my wife does discuss birth control with her friends, and from hearing about it secondhand I pretty well know what guys I know have had vasectomies etc. Granted, you wouldn't have a tupperware-style get-together just to discuss it, but it does come up when women are gabbing.
As for this Microsoft marketing tactic, it seems kind of lame, but it won't hurt anything. Sadly I think society has moved on from appreciating how cool and amazing personal computers really are, but then excitement never did have very long shelf life.
Gentoo jokes are hardly funny anymore, since it seems most users have taken its issues to heart and moved on to Ubuntu. I tried to migrate my home "everything" server and gave up somewhere - gdm, lirc, imapd, exim, I don't remember, none of them worked the same. Due to different versions of things and distro-specific configuration, copying/etc/ files rarely works like one would hope. But don't get me wrong, a plain-vanilla fresh install of Ubuntu is incredibly simple, if you are reasonably lucky.
You have a good point about increased writes due to the cache being smaller. I guess I am skeptical about the whole issue being a problem, since most of the concern is from MTBF-type projections rather than real-world problems, and perhaps I am just taking for granted that the clever engineers will somehow manage to raise the limit over time as necessary. And maybe I am biased because I enjoy the speed and silence of SSD so much, for me it effectively closed the gap between desktops and laptops.
This is essentially a cache, which means it's going to get a lot of reads and writes.
No it doesn't mean that. It's a disk cache, not a memory cache. Meaning, only file operations will hit it. The number of writes will be just the same as on SSD drives which millions of people already have.
It won't replace SSD drives anyways. Bigger cache dosn't help much at all after a point, and RAM is getting so cheap most systems have plenty of file caching. What the SSD drive gives you is near-instant access to anything on your drive, and a cache can't do that. There will always be enough unpredictable reads that the mechanical drive would still have to be there, clattering away. I'm not going back, not on a laptop anyways.
Also, he actually has it running X, not just the CLI, despite the screenshot of xterm which gives the wrong impression. (It doesn't look like he has a window manager going though, and I'm pretty sure the Kindle screen is not touch-sensitive... though I recall there used to be some hack to control the mouse cursor with arrow keys)
In other words, you have a general attitude towards the EU which you are eager to promulgate in this case, whether or not it is particularly relevant (you didn't even mention Sun or Oracle). I think that's just how the OP feels too. But tell me, what French monopoly would be protected by delaying the merger of Sun and Oracle? And how do we separate the decline of Sun caused by the EU, from the decline of Sun triggered by the merger itself, from the garden variety decline of Sun that's been continuing unabated since 2001?
Yeah, they clearly meant to include only clearly uniformed spies and saboteurs, preferrably with name tags.
Besides, the person you replied to already anticipated and rebutted this rhetorical ploy: "spies and saboteurs (or in American newspeak "illegal enemy combatants"). "
The summary places a lot of blame on regulators. But in fact, the article quotes IBM claiming the announcement of the acquisition is what drove people to IBM; that obviously has nothing to do with subsequent delays. As for talent leaving, the article provides one example of 3 employees who left because they were unsure of Oracle's commitment to their work. However, there is no reason to assume the EU or DOJ have anything to do with this. Oracle could have reassured them at any time, if they knew, and cared, which isn't a very realistic expectation for a small team in a big merger. What is motivating the story submitter to put so much unwarranted blame at the feet of the EU and DOJ?
"[Conspicuous] gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while engaged in an action against any enemy of the United States." Absolutely there is a required element of danger. You won't get the medal of honor for inventing an improved flak jacket, no matter how many dozens or hundreds of lives it saves.
Poppycock. If it takes $10,000 to extend somebody's life by 50 years vs. $50,000 to extend somebody else's life by 3 weeks, there is no comparison. To say they are equal is actually gross favoritism in favor of the latter.
The first astronauts to go to the moon knew very well it might be a one way trip.
There is a vast difference, at least in perception, between high risk and certain death. You can't win the Medal of Honor without doing something that was likely to kill you, yet we scorn kamikaze tactics entirely. Not sure how rational that is, but there you go.
There's no delusions of extended survival mentioned. That doesn't take away what they would be doing for humanity though.
If there is any nation willing to do this, it certainly won't be the US. We can't even let terminal patients die without wasting vast sums to slightly prolong their misery.
So if it happens, some other country will do it. But I guess that's good for us - we don't have to be jealous of their success if we can spin the whole thing as an inhumane travesty.
RTA, it matters because the govt. is subsidizing "Broadband" to stimulate the economy. (Whether they should be doing that, and whether it will work, are entirely other discussions, but the definition does matter to ISPs!)
Well, that's exactly the service I have now - 768/128 (maybe 256 up)? It's Comcast's bottom level of service. Only difference is I doubt it has any CIR at all.
But (and this is pertinent to this story), 768 kbit down isn't so bad! I cut local phone service and have relied on vonage for years, and it works fine. We watch youtube, and Netflix on Demand. But it's close; you can't talk on the phone while somebody watches youtube.
However, per the article, Comcast and AT&T are now seeking to lower the definition of Broadband from 768, which it is now, to 256 kbit. (Verizon, on the other hand, wants to keep 768). The definition matters because it affects the govt. stimulus program for broadband.
As somebody who lives on that boundary, I say 768 is a good and reasonable minimum. Streaming video is the great divide. Anything less than 768 won't really do streaming video, and that's a huge threshold in user experience. Please, FCC, stick to your guns for once.
Depends on how it works. Hopefully (or ideally) it's more like the google approach - build it to maintain data redundancy, initially with X% overcapacity. As disks fail, what do you do then? Nothing. When it gets down to 80% or so of original capacity (or however much redundancy you designed in), you chuck it and buy a new one. By then the tech is outdated anyways.
So much for handing your email over to Google because it's more reliable than hosting locally...
Ah, you must be one of those guys I heard about, who drives instead of flying because you've noticed more news coverage of airline wrecks than car crashes.
Slashdot Mirror
What do all the other $50K sedans have over it? It sure looks like a $50K sedan.
Something weird happened - after 15 years of OS twiddling, I got sick of it and decided life is too short. My limited time is better spent playing with my kids or studying science or backpacking, not peculiarities of the latest minor revision of some software package. But unfortunately I am still addicted to the power and control of highly configurable software :/
They should, which is why I said, "copying /etc/ files rarely works like one would hope." IIRC, imapd was compiled with different security options; for exim I had installed optional modules having to do with spam filtering; and lirc had changed so much, the version in Ubuntu didn't even use the same number of config files I had been running. GDM crapped its pants when I selected the face browser option and I never got it to work again.
The rise of GUI config tools has definitely harmed the stability and interchangeability of /etc files in linux. Many GUI tools read and write only a subset of the full syntax of the file, and are thus riddled with "do not touch!" sections. Touching an /etc file can easily break the config GUI, which can have unforeseen future consequences when everything is so tightly intertwined, as in a modern gnome install.
IMHO the big fallacy here is assuming there is some fundamental distinction between living and nonliving things. It is all chemical processes, a swirling eddy in a larger flow of physical process that is the universe. Humans are for now the gold standard for "alive," a dog is "rather alive," fish are "somewhat alive," plants are "slightly alive," and fire is "arguably a little bit alive." The immorality of killing has to depend on how much life was snuffed out.
You must realize this is a population density issue. I mention overpopulation to some people and they say, "there's plenty of room left, I fly over it all the time," apparently not realizing that for every city-dweller, there must be acres of farmland, pasture, and landfill somewhere, used up in their name.
I am not "anti-people." But what's the rush? Everybody will get their turn on earth eventually if we just take it easy.
But the question is, would the high-IQ slackers have turned out any better had them been challenged earlier in life with more special education? Remember, we are going on the premise of genetic determinism here - if IQ is genetic, why not motivation? If we are singling out students for high potential and discarding the rest, the test must include not just IQ, but leadership potential, curiosity, ambition, and grit.
If nothing else, you need to realize that these people don't despise themselves as much as you do. They will not be flushed down your toilet without a fight (and I don't blame them). Bipartite societies are not stable, and social instability causes problems for everybody.
In what way is it not realistic? I know my wife does discuss birth control with her friends, and from hearing about it secondhand I pretty well know what guys I know have had vasectomies etc. Granted, you wouldn't have a tupperware-style get-together just to discuss it, but it does come up when women are gabbing.
As for this Microsoft marketing tactic, it seems kind of lame, but it won't hurt anything. Sadly I think society has moved on from appreciating how cool and amazing personal computers really are, but then excitement never did have very long shelf life.
Gentoo jokes are hardly funny anymore, since it seems most users have taken its issues to heart and moved on to Ubuntu. I tried to migrate my home "everything" server and gave up somewhere - gdm, lirc, imapd, exim, I don't remember, none of them worked the same. Due to different versions of things and distro-specific configuration, copying /etc/ files rarely works like one would hope. But don't get me wrong, a plain-vanilla fresh install of Ubuntu is incredibly simple, if you are reasonably lucky.
You have a good point about increased writes due to the cache being smaller. I guess I am skeptical about the whole issue being a problem, since most of the concern is from MTBF-type projections rather than real-world problems, and perhaps I am just taking for granted that the clever engineers will somehow manage to raise the limit over time as necessary. And maybe I am biased because I enjoy the speed and silence of SSD so much, for me it effectively closed the gap between desktops and laptops.
No it doesn't mean that. It's a disk cache, not a memory cache. Meaning, only file operations will hit it. The number of writes will be just the same as on SSD drives which millions of people already have.
It won't replace SSD drives anyways. Bigger cache dosn't help much at all after a point, and RAM is getting so cheap most systems have plenty of file caching. What the SSD drive gives you is near-instant access to anything on your drive, and a cache can't do that. There will always be enough unpredictable reads that the mechanical drive would still have to be there, clattering away. I'm not going back, not on a laptop anyways.
Also, he actually has it running X, not just the CLI, despite the screenshot of xterm which gives the wrong impression. (It doesn't look like he has a window manager going though, and I'm pretty sure the Kindle screen is not touch-sensitive... though I recall there used to be some hack to control the mouse cursor with arrow keys)
In other words, you have a general attitude towards the EU which you are eager to promulgate in this case, whether or not it is particularly relevant (you didn't even mention Sun or Oracle). I think that's just how the OP feels too. But tell me, what French monopoly would be protected by delaying the merger of Sun and Oracle? And how do we separate the decline of Sun caused by the EU, from the decline of Sun triggered by the merger itself, from the garden variety decline of Sun that's been continuing unabated since 2001?
Besides, the person you replied to already anticipated and rebutted this rhetorical ploy: "spies and saboteurs (or in American newspeak "illegal enemy combatants"). "
The summary places a lot of blame on regulators. But in fact, the article quotes IBM claiming the announcement of the acquisition is what drove people to IBM; that obviously has nothing to do with subsequent delays. As for talent leaving, the article provides one example of 3 employees who left because they were unsure of Oracle's commitment to their work. However, there is no reason to assume the EU or DOJ have anything to do with this. Oracle could have reassured them at any time, if they knew, and cared, which isn't a very realistic expectation for a small team in a big merger. What is motivating the story submitter to put so much unwarranted blame at the feet of the EU and DOJ?
For grins I just saved off the CNN Homepage using firefox "web page, complete". It's 1.2 MB. So, $24 to load the CNN homepage. Wow.
"[Conspicuous] gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while engaged in an action against any enemy of the United States." Absolutely there is a required element of danger. You won't get the medal of honor for inventing an improved flak jacket, no matter how many dozens or hundreds of lives it saves.
Poppycock. If it takes $10,000 to extend somebody's life by 50 years vs. $50,000 to extend somebody else's life by 3 weeks, there is no comparison. To say they are equal is actually gross favoritism in favor of the latter.
There is a vast difference, at least in perception, between high risk and certain death. You can't win the Medal of Honor without doing something that was likely to kill you, yet we scorn kamikaze tactics entirely. Not sure how rational that is, but there you go.
If there is any nation willing to do this, it certainly won't be the US. We can't even let terminal patients die without wasting vast sums to slightly prolong their misery.
So if it happens, some other country will do it. But I guess that's good for us - we don't have to be jealous of their success if we can spin the whole thing as an inhumane travesty.
Comedians are introverts.
RTA, it matters because the govt. is subsidizing "Broadband" to stimulate the economy. (Whether they should be doing that, and whether it will work, are entirely other discussions, but the definition does matter to ISPs!)
But (and this is pertinent to this story), 768 kbit down isn't so bad! I cut local phone service and have relied on vonage for years, and it works fine. We watch youtube, and Netflix on Demand. But it's close; you can't talk on the phone while somebody watches youtube.
However, per the article, Comcast and AT&T are now seeking to lower the definition of Broadband from 768, which it is now, to 256 kbit. (Verizon, on the other hand, wants to keep 768). The definition matters because it affects the govt. stimulus program for broadband.
As somebody who lives on that boundary, I say 768 is a good and reasonable minimum. Streaming video is the great divide. Anything less than 768 won't really do streaming video, and that's a huge threshold in user experience. Please, FCC, stick to your guns for once.
Depends on how it works. Hopefully (or ideally) it's more like the google approach - build it to maintain data redundancy, initially with X% overcapacity. As disks fail, what do you do then? Nothing. When it gets down to 80% or so of original capacity (or however much redundancy you designed in), you chuck it and buy a new one. By then the tech is outdated anyways.
Ah, you must be one of those guys I heard about, who drives instead of flying because you've noticed more news coverage of airline wrecks than car crashes.