I'd add that if your system is critical enough that planned downtime will hurt you, you'd better invest on some hight availability setup. And if you have a hight availability setup, rebooting your servers is no big deal.
A computer may fail to start-up for several reasons...
Failed hardware. Your root array simply goes away, and you didn't notice because everything is already on RAM, and you didn't set proper notification, for example. Or an array controller (yep, I've seen that), or some completely unneeded hardware, that the BIOS complains and asks you to press F1 before proceeding.
Corrupted data. Due to something weard (maybe even a cosmic ray) the configuration script (or maybe even boot information) of your business application changed.
Software bugs. It started ok at 1999, but who knows if the startup procedure will work at year 2001?
Untested changes. The normal reason, you just change one little setting and have no time to test it now (taking the computer offline is hard). Then, you change another little thing, that also can't be tested now... And when you see it, some file that should be 700 is 600, and nothing works anymore.
Of course, the above list is not exaustive, and of course it doesn't mean that you should reboot your servers every mount. But it hurts very little to test the startup once in a while (maybe after you change anything, for example).
It is not rebooting first. Normaly people that manage Windows machines do scheduled reboots. Last time I was at IT, we did weekely reboot of our Windows servers, but the frequency vary (altought it is never so low as once a mount, for example - it could have be on older systems, but newer vesrions of Windows Server are less stable).
If you don't do the scheduled reboots, weard things start to happen, and you have no guarantee that the timing will be good.
A scientist would say 1e-1m or 1e2m (insert a period followed by some zeros at will). The prefixes that people use vary by what they are measuring. Squared hectometer, for instance is quite common.
But, anyway, the GP was just an uninformed anti-SI troll.
Some people tried replacing environmentalism with sustenaible development. But, since the expression is a contradiction, convincing people that we can do that only hurted the unsusntainable (that means all) initiatives.
It's not that nobody sane would make a positive comment about a Microsoft product. The problem is that/. has a hight level of insane positive comments about MS products (and Apple too, but sometimes it seems that insanity is a requirement for buying Apple).
"when people realized these companies were not earning any money, and quickly fled the stock, leaving to the Clinton-era downward tumble."
People knew those companies weren't making any money from the begining. Everybody brought their stocks anyway, that was because they expected somebody else to pay a highter price for the stocks later. And it worked, for 2 or 3 years, then the money run out. It seems that if you start inflating a price on an exponential rate, it soon becomes so expensive that nobody else has enough money to buy it anymore, and then, you can't sell. If you can't sell, you reduce the price, but now the price is falling, so the only thing that made people buy those stocks (expecting prices to go higter) isn't true anymore, so nobody wants to buy.
Hum, no. On average our schools aren't better than yours (we are sligtly worse). We (Brazil) are a poor country after all. But jail time for kids that don't go to shcool is simply wrong, and there are (several) countries where it doesn't exists and the population is still better educated than yours.
"At least staying on earth they remain free to choose to do what they want on Earth, and go where they want on Earth."
There, fixed it for you. And what if Earth ends up sucking big time? Also, why do you assume that a generational space ship has only a few hudred meters of diameter? Even Project Orion proposed something bigger.
How do you know you weren't born at the era of human expansion into the galaxy? Wouldn't you wish to be born at the expansion into the Local Cluster if you were born at the expansion into the galaxy? How do you know there will be human (or any species) expansion into the galaxy?
As opsed to what? Do you really think you won't be interfering with the life of your offspring if you choosed to stay on Earth? Anything you do has consequences, some of them appear only on big timeframes. I'd say "get over of it", but no, you shouldn't, you should simply be aware of it.
My conclusion was that we are stuked at Earth untill we invent nano-assemblers*, and at the Sun untill we invent a way to make nuclear fission portable**. None of those seem impossible, and they are as near that we can not only conceive them, but already gave them names.
* Or any other kind of cheap manufacturing. The old idea of robotic explorers would do, but it seems that the one cheap manufacturing that can work (reliably and early) is nanotechnology.
** There are some ideas on how to make stars portable. Ok, that may be a bit too far, but "portable" doesn't mean "small" at space.
Just because we are restricted to move 1 light year on a year, it does not mean that we must take a year to reach a place that is one light year away. Reference frames are everything here, and the faster you move, the shorter the distance seems to you. When you are moving at light speed, the size of the Universe shrinks to zero.
Just remember to never make that trip back. Some serious time will have passed here on Earth during a short trip.
A parent can impose that his children go to school (as he can inpose lots of other things). A school must be available for him, and nobody can stop him from going to school. But if both the child and the parents don't care, sure, nobody will do anything with them.
Well, I also didn't want to go to school lots of times when I was a kid; those times, my parents forced me. That is what happens with nearly all of the kids.
"tell me why censoring the Internet is the FIRST step taken by authoritarian governments when protests arise?"
That is because when protests start the government is already censoring TV, radio and every big printed media available. And, of course, that isn't in disagreement with what you said, I just wanted to answer the question...
Slashdot Mirror
I'd add that if your system is critical enough that planned downtime will hurt you, you'd better invest on some hight availability setup. And if you have a hight availability setup, rebooting your servers is no big deal.
A computer may fail to start-up for several reasons...
Of course, the above list is not exaustive, and of course it doesn't mean that you should reboot your servers every mount. But it hurts very little to test the startup once in a while (maybe after you change anything, for example).
It is not rebooting first. Normaly people that manage Windows machines do scheduled reboots. Last time I was at IT, we did weekely reboot of our Windows servers, but the frequency vary (altought it is never so low as once a mount, for example - it could have be on older systems, but newer vesrions of Windows Server are less stable).
If you don't do the scheduled reboots, weard things start to happen, and you have no guarantee that the timing will be good.
And that is why Gnu is Not Unix.
Why would Osama have any concern? He got rapid political change after all, and was quite sucessfull in destryoing his opponents up to now.
Hey, my cold fusion machine could make use of some of that muonic atoms you have...
A scientist would say 1e-1m or 1e2m (insert a period followed by some zeros at will). The prefixes that people use vary by what they are measuring. Squared hectometer, for instance is quite common.
But, anyway, the GP was just an uninformed anti-SI troll.
Some people tried replacing environmentalism with sustenaible development. But, since the expression is a contradiction, convincing people that we can do that only hurted the unsusntainable (that means all) initiatives.
One of your examples fails to be an iron first dictatorship. The other one fails to be a desktop environment.
It's not that nobody sane would make a positive comment about a Microsoft product. The problem is that /. has a hight level of insane positive comments about MS products (and Apple too, but sometimes it seems that insanity is a requirement for buying Apple).
Well, the oil price has just become ridiculous again.
People knew those companies weren't making any money from the begining. Everybody brought their stocks anyway, that was because they expected somebody else to pay a highter price for the stocks later. And it worked, for 2 or 3 years, then the money run out. It seems that if you start inflating a price on an exponential rate, it soon becomes so expensive that nobody else has enough money to buy it anymore, and then, you can't sell. If you can't sell, you reduce the price, but now the price is falling, so the only thing that made people buy those stocks (expecting prices to go higter) isn't true anymore, so nobody wants to buy.
Hum, no. On average our schools aren't better than yours (we are sligtly worse). We (Brazil) are a poor country after all. But jail time for kids that don't go to shcool is simply wrong, and there are (several) countries where it doesn't exists and the population is still better educated than yours.
There, fixed it for you. And what if Earth ends up sucking big time? Also, why do you assume that a generational space ship has only a few hudred meters of diameter? Even Project Orion proposed something bigger.
How do you know you weren't born at the era of human expansion into the galaxy? Wouldn't you wish to be born at the expansion into the Local Cluster if you were born at the expansion into the galaxy? How do you know there will be human (or any species) expansion into the galaxy?
I disagree. They are not a lot. Put them in the Drake equation; yeah, it is bad, but will give you an idea on how many planets are we talking about.
As opsed to what? Do you really think you won't be interfering with the life of your offspring if you choosed to stay on Earth? Anything you do has consequences, some of them appear only on big timeframes. I'd say "get over of it", but no, you shouldn't, you should simply be aware of it.
Well, someone must come first. And it may be that nobody can come second...
The magnetic field does not sound like something improbable. Ok, it does reduce the count of planets, but realy, by how much.
Unless you used it to state that life must evolve fast. On that I agree if technological life needs a magnetic field, it has less time to evolve.
My conclusion was that we are stuked at Earth untill we invent nano-assemblers*, and at the Sun untill we invent a way to make nuclear fission portable**. None of those seem impossible, and they are as near that we can not only conceive them, but already gave them names.
* Or any other kind of cheap manufacturing. The old idea of robotic explorers would do, but it seems that the one cheap manufacturing that can work (reliably and early) is nanotechnology.
** There are some ideas on how to make stars portable. Ok, that may be a bit too far, but "portable" doesn't mean "small" at space.
Even cold cofee is an energy source. What do you drink? Decafeinnated?
Just because we are restricted to move 1 light year on a year, it does not mean that we must take a year to reach a place that is one light year away. Reference frames are everything here, and the faster you move, the shorter the distance seems to you. When you are moving at light speed, the size of the Universe shrinks to zero.
Just remember to never make that trip back. Some serious time will have passed here on Earth during a short trip.
What anwarranted extrapolation? Just move the clock by 24 hours. Who needs to extrapolate that?
A parent can impose that his children go to school (as he can inpose lots of other things). A school must be available for him, and nobody can stop him from going to school. But if both the child and the parents don't care, sure, nobody will do anything with them.
Well, I also didn't want to go to school lots of times when I was a kid; those times, my parents forced me. That is what happens with nearly all of the kids.
That is because when protests start the government is already censoring TV, radio and every big printed media available. And, of course, that isn't in disagreement with what you said, I just wanted to answer the question...