Today is not anything like the economic system that existed during the last Great Depression. Completely different world. It is almost unhelpful to draw too many parallels between then and now.
Today's economic system is much more global than it was back then.
Chaos Theory and Complex System Dynamics needs to be applied to the global picture we have today. For any number of reasons. And I have yet to hear any ecomonist speaking of today's world in such terms.
The principle of Self-Organized Criticality is definitely apropos here. The market organized itself to a critical state, where nearly any shout in the mountains from anyone would bring the whole thing down.
I have my own variation of this principle -- let's call it the Evolutionary Humpty-Dumpty Principle. A Complex Dynamical System (CDS), if of the right character, has a tendency to organize itself to a critical state such that your typical control points will simply fail to function. The Feds always attempt to control the market through interest rates and the supply of money; other major governments around the world employ similar controls, and others as well. The details, after a fashion, are not all that important so much as the fact that the market will "build up a tolerance" for such artificial control artifices. Hell, our own bodies do it with drugs constantly taken all the time. Why not the global market?
There are many aspects of this economic system that is predicated on the fallacy of "infinite resources, infinite growth". Yet any 7-year-old can tell you that the system is NOT infinite. So what do we have? Many free-running Ponzi schemes, like Social Security and the Stock Market. Yes, boys and girls, those gaining money out of those systems do so at the expense of others.
When you wrap your mind around all of this -- and more -- you will begin to understand how truly frelled we really are. Where you should focus your view is not on what the "talking heads" babble to you every day, but on the flow of money and the structure of the system, noting where assumptions are made without basis. Noting the points where the lack of transparency exists. Noting all the zero-sum instruments in finance that is billed as something other than what it really is. Noting that when governments print money, the actual value of the overall picture has a tendency to stay constant. Printing money is a panic reaction to a situation that our leaders have no understanding of. Printing money will only buy a short-term advantage, with a much bigger drop later.
Look for the lie in anything you hear over the major media outlets with regards to the market. They are most likely not telling you the truth so much as they are trying to influence and manage your behavioral dynamics in hopes they can stitch Humpty back together again.
Take what I state here with a grain of salt if you wish. Or do your own research and come up with the same conclusions that I have. And doing the research will not be easy because many of the players in the financial world actually believe the lies they spout on a daily basis. You must reach behind them to see the circuit boards for yourself, and follow the actual layout, not what they tell you what it is.
And most of all, embrace complexity, because the world is far from simple!
I pay $160 for a monthly pass on the local commuter rail line (VRE in northern Virginia). They're increasing fares by 7% next month, and they're still heavily subsidized by both the state and federal governments.
The population distribution in most of the US is simply not geared toward passenger rail except possibly at the local level (i.e., subway/light rail). This isn't Europe, and you can't necessarily repeat the same things that work in Europe and expect them to work here also.
That's only because the current US landscape has been shaped by the government building lots of highways that only encourage the use of the auto over the train, and thus lead to the sprawl we have today.
You have the cart before the horse. Customers define the market, not the business.
Not entirely true. Big Businesses have notorious records for shaping the market to limit consumer's choices or to mislead them. Yes, the Big 3 did do something to cut back on public transportation to boost their market. I forget the details, however. IBM, I am told, used to send in agents to impersonate their competitors and "sell" them faulty equipment that would break down, only to come in again as themselves with the "better" IBM solution.
And if you are not aware of what Microsoft has been doing over the decades to limit consumer choices, you must be living in a cave somewhere!
As far as the auto industry is concerned, I'd say let them crash and burn. Labor unions have raped this country of jobs and quality in the name of "protecting the worker". Now the results of their many decades of effort has come home to roost, and they need to be broken already. Likewise, the big 3 have operated inefficiently and tell me why we should keep such failures around? LET THEM CRASH AND BURN.
Besides, you didn't see any inclination of the government to come along and "rescue" the tech busts 8 or 9 years ago. Why should the auto industry get any better treatment?
Building a SCSI interface is something easily within the reach of the electronics hobbyist, as is an IDE interface (in fact, an IDE interface is trivially easy to make for anyone with some practical digital electronics experience). There are USB FIFO chips on the market that should make it relatively straightforward to make a USB - SCSI adapter for old drives. While 8 inch disc drives are as common as rocking horse shit, 5.25 and 3.5 inch disc drives were made in huge numbers so there's no real shortage of those. (My 25 year old 5.25 inch discs all read perfectly), and 5.25 inch drives aren't difficult to repair. Floppy disc controllers are still pretty easy to get hold of - any self respecting electronics junk shop should have some WD177x types in stock still, and they come up on eBay quite frequently. Even when they get hard to find, it would be perfectly possible to roll-your-own disc controller with a CPLD and a handful of discrete components.
While you are totally correct and it would be possible to build some bridge controllers or snag something on eBay, these days my time to do such things is gone. It's all about priorities. The time it would take me to throw something together and read the old stuff, sift through the old stuff, and perhaps have a few "nostalgic moments" (I actually WROTE that horrible code way back when??!!!) I could also be focusing on creating new stuff that would be more meaningful to many -- and make a few $$$$ in return!
The Internet has completely ruined me. Now, I am constantly seeking ways to capitalize on it for any number of reasons, including financial and political, and the time to reminisce in the old days of yore is just not there anymore. Wah!
You mean capitalism is falling apart and we need to go to some remote island to create an encyclopedia of everything? *damn you Wikipedia for ruining in this reference*
I liken Wikipedia to what was going on in the Fertile Crescent 1000 years ago or so -- except on a grander scale. Knowledge from around the world being gathered into one place for all to benefit.
Let's hope the Christians and the Cossacks don't ruin it for us a second time.:-)
Yes, like the Library at Alexandria, and others along the way, probably many we don't even know about today. At least that's one good thing about the global network, in general (and through large-scale copyright infringement in particular) information is being replicated around the planet on a scale never seen before. If our current civilization falls, hopeful there will be enough information in different places to shorten the next Dark Ages by a few centuries.
I would go so far as to say that because we have so much information available to so many in such a highly distributed fashion, the fall of civilization a la the "Dark Ages" would be next to impossible sans a major nuclear exchange.
Of course, governments may come and go -- and there are certain ones I would just love to see go away -- but alas, I fear that, for the same reasons, many of these major annoying governments will also have resilience.
For the people are sheep, still, even in the midst of this technological knowledge and information revolution, and now government has highly effective ways to keep the sheep brains of the world asleep.
But then, there are always possibilities. Governments themselves are stupid, too, you see...
So if you can't be bothered to find them to preserve them (and presumably index a little better), would you ever do it even if they had eternal shelf life? Or is it just some nice-to-have that you think should be left for your descendants and posterity, as if they're going to dig through hundreds of hours of boring stuff looking for the gold? We lose some information, big deal. With all due respect to anthropologists, we don't need 24/7 records of the boring everyday life of everyone.
You may think me totally insane, but...
Wouldn't it be cool if we COULD have 24/7 info on the lives of everybody since the dawn of time? Think of how it would change our view of history! Anthropologists would definitely have a wet dream, but more importantly, "history" gets written by the victors, by those who are in a position of power and authority, and they of course write from their own perspectives.
Meanwhile, many things that happen among the "commoners" are completely lost to time. And yet quite a few of them may have played major roles in the development of history. We'll never know, of course.
Of course, the practical aspect of having such level of details is another thing. Hence, you see "no need", not so much because the information is completely useless, but because much of it would represent "noise" that would need sifting through at great effort. It would be impractical for us to have that much detail on every bloke on the planet since Man descended from the trees.
But if we had a way to deal with that volume of information; if we could sic a major set of computers and databases on the Ulitmate Quest of culling out the important stuff...
Ah, but I veer into the realm of sheer speculation. Hence, my insanity.
...Up until the last time I went to the U.S.A. I hated crossing into Canada more. But now, the U.S. wins the 'onerous prize'.
Yes, indeed. The last time I came back from Canada, the US ding dongs gave me a very hard time, and was deliberately trying to work up my ire. It's as if these guys have nothing better to do other than to harass border crossers.
To which I say, what's the point? What is gained by bad-assing people crossing the border? It's really takes from the whole idea of a "good getaway" if you are always being steamed at the border.
For me, it's a 3-4 hour drive to the border, and it's not something I look forward to. I suppose neither country sees any point in making it a pleasant experience for the tourist dollar. Gee, Canada, I am coming to your country to spend MY money there! Holy smokes. Maybe I'll just keep my money on this side of the border or save it for a more welcoming country.
...
Like you said, though, you have to stay on top of it. It's all too easy to find yourself suddenly unable to read your old media. I understand that NASA is losing enormous quantities of 9-track tape data from the sixties because they can't find equipment to read them, and the tapes are reaching the end of their lifespan. Not good.
Really sad about NASA -- that information should be preserved and made publically available. The longer we wait, the more expensive it will be to recover it. We've lost all the details on building the Saturn V rocket, and we lost that a long time ago. Lots of technical hurdles had to be overcome, and it would also be good to have that information preserved for future rocket engineers.
Then again, the history of mankind on this planet is puncuated with massive loss of information throughout the ages. Libraries are allowed to fall into decay or are destroyed by conquering nations, languages are lost to time, and the like.
But if there's one thing us humans love doing is creating volumes and volumes of information -- just visit any library.
And now we have the totality of the Internet, with who knows how many websites, blogs, and what not. Torrents of stuff that comes and goes. More stuff than any one person could read in a million lifetimes -- nor probably would not want to.
Ahh, humans. A fascinating species, if I may say so myself. It will be fun to watch its progress over the next few decades.
Hmmm...
This conversation makes me wonder what the storage capacity of a VHS tape is. An hour's worth of video is a non-trivial amount of data.
On the other hand, VHS used a very low resolution.
There was a time where the VHS format was used as a "poor man's" data backup, as was done at one place I worked at back in the 80's. Damned unreliable and always have drop-outs. I forget how much data was storable in that format, but it was dinky compared to what we can do today.
Then again, there was also a time casette tapes (remember those?) were used for data backup. But now I am really dating myself.:-)
This speaks to the larger problem, in general, of keeping our media formats current. Even with data, anything we may have on floppy will probably not be readable by anything current today. And I had a lot of cool stuff I worked on years ago on the 8" floppies -- remember those? I couldn't find any 8" floppy drives by the mid 80's, and the ones I had broke down, and the manufacturer had no interest in repairing them.
Now with Blu Ray out and getting cheaper and cheaper, we will probably see the gradual dissaparence of the old CD format. Already I have no access to the many backups I've made on 90's tape drives -- Travan, I think it was called.
Much data will simply be lost to the sea change. Thumb drives have displaced the floppy, Blu Ray will eventually displace DVDs, and even IDE drives are beginning to slip into obscurity. I still have stuff on old 40-megabyte SCSI drives (yes, I said MEGA-byte!) back from my Amiga days but forget about SCSI controllers to read them now.
I did manage to snag a high-end VHS machine from a friend who used to do video productions. It is the only machine I have that can read the stacks and stacks of VHS tapes I've accumulated over the years. But much of that stuff is probably not worth digitizing, and the few things that are are litterally buried in the midst of many, many 6-hour VHS tapes that I would have to spend hundreds of hours looking for. Doesn't seem to really worth the time.
In my State, you have to give your picture for ID, but you can instruct the State NOT to keep said picture on record.I kinda like that. One of the many reasons I love New Hampshire.
Paranoia in the US reigns supreme. Apparently, it somewhat does as well in Canada. But I am not sure that the annoyance going on with crossing from the US into Canada is not just 'tit for tat' of the nonsense that happens with Canadians attempt to cross into the US, or if Canada has taken on some paranoia of its own.
The last time I tried to cross the Canadian border was so annoying I have not bothered going back to Canada in a long time. Every since 9/11, paranoia has been reigning supreme.
Of course, tracking fingerprints and pictures will not make anyone more secure, since (a) the probability of dying from a terrorist attack is tiny in comparasion to many other daily dangers we embrace everyday without a second thought, like driving, for instance, and (b) the would-be terrorist organizations, if they are really all that inclined, need only find fresh recruits who have not been fingered by the FBI or Homeland Insecurity yet.
41,000 people die on US highways every year. How many people die in the US from terrorism every year? The attention to the so-called threat does not mesh with the actual facts and the real risk factors.
So I am not impressed in the least about any of this crap. Just another excuse for the government to stir up fear to create its own "need".
Is that actually the case? Honest question here as I am not an SSD engineer. Lacking seek or rotational latency any given block of SSD storage should take equal time to read/write. But does that assure that non-contiguous sequential IO (the thing defragging is intended to eliminate) is exactly as efficient as the contiguous case? (Please forgive my elevation of "shouldn't need that" to the "exactly as efficient" standard.)
It would seem that non-contiguous operations would still involve more IO commands between the host and the controller, and perhaps also more bus operations internally (between the controller and the physical storage.)
The very nature of SSD would seem to indicate that you would NOT want to defrag, as this would wind up using some blocks more than others, aging the SSD prematurely. Seems to me you'd want the exact opposite -- a random distribution of the blocks across the SSD so that they are all used evenly and extending the overall life of the device.
Linux is not a "very major OS". I know it is on slashdot, but not in the rest of the world. Any OS that has less than a few percent of the desktop market can not be very major, by definition.
It didn't specify "Desktop OS", but just "OS". Linux powers half or more of the web servers serving content to those pesky little desktops!!!!
Linux, a very major OS, is not even included in their tests.
A proper test would not have ANYTHING running in the background.
Issues such as how much read and write caching the OS does will affect performance.
Article does not list a performance table or chart -- but perhaps I missed that.
The actual File System used is really at issue here, but the article did not mention anything about File Systems from what I could tell.
Defragging a SSD? Shouldn't need that. And obviously defragging schemes which were written for magnetic hard drives will probably be less than optimal for the SSD anyway.
Article, as far as I could tell, did not cite the benchmarking methodology used.
Overall, I would state that this article is useless beyond "cocktail gossip." And really, SSD should have a specific FS written to its peculiarities, which would, of course, render the "OS" questions moot.
Yet another useless missle defense system. Everybody forgets that such things are easy to fake out with decoys.
The real pain of a lesson is that in most cases, expensive high-tech systems can be easily thwarted by simple, cheap, low-tech means. Yes, the defense contractors will make a killing at tax-payer's expense to deliver something that will give the war-mongors a false sense of security.
Hell, all the missle defense techology is useless against a properly-trained suicide bomber, anyway. But then, that only proves my point.
WIN THE PEACE, NOT THE WAR.
Perhaps the poor man's warfare strategy is to get the rich man's efforts to bankrupt himself. Hmmmm...
I'm a bit turned off by what the crowd likes going for, if for no other reason that many -- including those in India and China -- will compete for the same set of jobs requiring those languages/platforms.
One argument is that "that's what employers are looking for". If there is a glut in the supply market for that skill, you can guarantee that
Pay rates will be lower.
You will face fierce competition.
So paradoxicially, it may not be the best choice to be to heavily invested in the "mainstream" choices.
I disagree with your post here, sir. Readability, more than anything, is critical in modern programming--you don't know how good the next guy who'll have to bash at the code will be. Python seems to encourage terseness and the whitespace requirements help to make it uncomfortable to read.
Compared to Java or C# (C# especially, though that's mostly thanks to the fairly hard-nosed Visual Studio editor defaults that almost everybody sticks to), Python feels extremely difficult to just sit down and read.
I would have to disagree on the last point. Python is quite easy to read. Perl, on the other hand, can get quite terse in ways that can make your brain explode. Python's terse constructs -- like list comprehension -- is quite easy to read once you get accustomed to it.
As one who has used just about every major language under the sun at one point or another, I will state that the language you choose depends on what your goals are, what the project demands, and in many cases what your employer wants.
Many opinions abound about languages, but here's my take:
Perl -- great scripting language whose strengths lie in text processing. Lousy support for OOP programming, but doable after a fashion, as long as you bless your routines.
PHP -- While very popular for Web programming, has a poor implementation of OOP and lacks name spaces. PHP 5 is much better than PHP 4, but still needs a way to go.
C -- great for writing drivers and other kernel-level stuff for Linux. Great for pure performance real-time applications. A pain to debug and very easy to hang yourself. You must remember to explicitly free any memory or other resources you use, which can be a pain in the butt. No language-level support for exception handling and OOP. But then, that's what C++ is for.
C++ -- cool language for OOP, performance, and the like, but too complex in my view. Like C, you must remember to free your resources; however you can create constructs to do this for you after a fashion. Or you can use the STL. Pain in the butt to debug, and it's very strongly typed.
Java -- Has language constructs similar to C++, but is in a completely different universe. C and C++ are compiled; Java is interpreted, even though with the JIT technology it can approach C++ speeds. Java has a rich set of libraries and strong support for threaded programming, but I think the learning curve for all those class libraries is steep and Java Threads encourage abuse of threaded programming in the same way Basic encourages abuse of GOTO. Java used to be used client-side for web programming, but today it's use client side has fallen out of favor, though it is used very heavily server-side in many shops.
Python -- very cool OOP scripting language used quite a bit for web programming, batch programming, lots of utilities and applications in Linux. I would say this language is a "must know" if you plan to do applications, tools, and web development on Linux. Python, like many other languages, have evolved over time in the OOP department, but has done so in a MUCH nicer fashion than PHP. However, one of Python's bugaboos is it's dual object model; holding on to the earlier brain-damaged one to support legacy code, though the old model is going away soon.
Ruby -- A true delight of a OOP scripting language. It takes the best from Lisp, Python, Java, C++, and others, and give you a very slick, flexible, extensible language paradigm to sink your teeth into. Rails has done wonders for Ruby's popularity for Web programming, but in my view Ruby is not the best choice for high-performance sites. Python or even PHP would make better choices in that department. Where Ruby shines is in its concise syntax and its ability to allow you to do rapid application development. Ruby allows you to leverage various levels of abstraction, do functional programming, use iterators, and other nice modern programing paradigms are supported by Ruby.
Lisp -- If you are doing AI work, Lisp represents the traditional approach. It's a sweetly simple language that has a lot of inherent power; yet currently has poor support on the Linux platform. I would not recommend it for anything outside of academe.
All this huey over hi-def vs. standard def. Actually, what I want to see is improvement in the overall quality of *content*
Even though I am a big technology buff, I have not bothered with HDTV yet. Why? Content still stinks. Untill there is something on worth watching, I'll just stick to grabbing those few gems worthy of my time off the Internet.
Slashdot Mirror
When you wrap your mind around all of this -- and more -- you will begin to understand how truly frelled we really are. Where you should focus your view is not on what the "talking heads" babble to you every day, but on the flow of money and the structure of the system, noting where assumptions are made without basis. Noting the points where the lack of transparency exists. Noting all the zero-sum instruments in finance that is billed as something other than what it really is. Noting that when governments print money, the actual value of the overall picture has a tendency to stay constant. Printing money is a panic reaction to a situation that our leaders have no understanding of. Printing money will only buy a short-term advantage, with a much bigger drop later.
Look for the lie in anything you hear over the major media outlets with regards to the market. They are most likely not telling you the truth so much as they are trying to influence and manage your behavioral dynamics in hopes they can stitch Humpty back together again.
Take what I state here with a grain of salt if you wish. Or do your own research and come up with the same conclusions that I have. And doing the research will not be easy because many of the players in the financial world actually believe the lies they spout on a daily basis. You must reach behind them to see the circuit boards for yourself, and follow the actual layout, not what they tell you what it is.
And most of all, embrace complexity, because the world is far from simple!
I pay $160 for a monthly pass on the local commuter rail line (VRE in northern Virginia). They're increasing fares by 7% next month, and they're still heavily subsidized by both the state and federal governments.
The population distribution in most of the US is simply not geared toward passenger rail except possibly at the local level (i.e., subway/light rail). This isn't Europe, and you can't necessarily repeat the same things that work in Europe and expect them to work here also.
That's only because the current US landscape has been shaped by the government building lots of highways that only encourage the use of the auto over the train, and thus lead to the sprawl we have today.
You have the cart before the horse. Customers define the market, not the business.
Not entirely true. Big Businesses have notorious records for shaping the market to limit consumer's choices or to mislead them. Yes, the Big 3 did do something to cut back on public transportation to boost their market. I forget the details, however. IBM, I am told, used to send in agents to impersonate their competitors and "sell" them faulty equipment that would break down, only to come in again as themselves with the "better" IBM solution.
And if you are not aware of what Microsoft has been doing over the decades to limit consumer choices, you must be living in a cave somewhere!
As far as the auto industry is concerned, I'd say let them crash and burn. Labor unions have raped this country of jobs and quality in the name of "protecting the worker". Now the results of their many decades of effort has come home to roost, and they need to be broken already. Likewise, the big 3 have operated inefficiently and tell me why we should keep such failures around? LET THEM CRASH AND BURN.
Besides, you didn't see any inclination of the government to come along and "rescue" the tech busts 8 or 9 years ago. Why should the auto industry get any better treatment?
Let evolution take its course already.
Building a SCSI interface is something easily within the reach of the electronics hobbyist, as is an IDE interface (in fact, an IDE interface is trivially easy to make for anyone with some practical digital electronics experience). There are USB FIFO chips on the market that should make it relatively straightforward to make a USB - SCSI adapter for old drives. While 8 inch disc drives are as common as rocking horse shit, 5.25 and 3.5 inch disc drives were made in huge numbers so there's no real shortage of those. (My 25 year old 5.25 inch discs all read perfectly), and 5.25 inch drives aren't difficult to repair. Floppy disc controllers are still pretty easy to get hold of - any self respecting electronics junk shop should have some WD177x types in stock still, and they come up on eBay quite frequently. Even when they get hard to find, it would be perfectly possible to roll-your-own disc controller with a CPLD and a handful of discrete components.
While you are totally correct and it would be possible to build some bridge controllers or snag something on eBay, these days my time to do such things is gone. It's all about priorities. The time it would take me to throw something together and read the old stuff, sift through the old stuff, and perhaps have a few "nostalgic moments" (I actually WROTE that horrible code way back when??!!!) I could also be focusing on creating new stuff that would be more meaningful to many -- and make a few $$$$ in return!
The Internet has completely ruined me. Now, I am constantly seeking ways to capitalize on it for any number of reasons, including financial and political, and the time to reminisce in the old days of yore is just not there anymore. Wah!
You mean capitalism is falling apart and we need to go to some remote island to create an encyclopedia of everything? *damn you Wikipedia for ruining in this reference*
I liken Wikipedia to what was going on in the Fertile Crescent 1000 years ago or so -- except on a grander scale. Knowledge from around the world being gathered into one place for all to benefit.
Let's hope the Christians and the Cossacks don't ruin it for us a second time. :-)
Yes, like the Library at Alexandria, and others along the way, probably many we don't even know about today. At least that's one good thing about the global network, in general (and through large-scale copyright infringement in particular) information is being replicated around the planet on a scale never seen before. If our current civilization falls, hopeful there will be enough information in different places to shorten the next Dark Ages by a few centuries.
I would go so far as to say that because we have so much information available to so many in such a highly distributed fashion, the fall of civilization a la the "Dark Ages" would be next to impossible sans a major nuclear exchange.
Of course, governments may come and go -- and there are certain ones I would just love to see go away -- but alas, I fear that, for the same reasons, many of these major annoying governments will also have resilience.
For the people are sheep, still, even in the midst of this technological knowledge and information revolution, and now government has highly effective ways to keep the sheep brains of the world asleep.
But then, there are always possibilities. Governments themselves are stupid, too, you see...
Shutting up now before they kick my doors in.
...
So if you can't be bothered to find them to preserve them (and presumably index a little better), would you ever do it even if they had eternal shelf life? Or is it just some nice-to-have that you think should be left for your descendants and posterity, as if they're going to dig through hundreds of hours of boring stuff looking for the gold? We lose some information, big deal. With all due respect to anthropologists, we don't need 24/7 records of the boring everyday life of everyone.
You may think me totally insane, but...
Wouldn't it be cool if we COULD have 24/7 info on the lives of everybody since the dawn of time? Think of how it would change our view of history! Anthropologists would definitely have a wet dream, but more importantly, "history" gets written by the victors, by those who are in a position of power and authority, and they of course write from their own perspectives.
Meanwhile, many things that happen among the "commoners" are completely lost to time. And yet quite a few of them may have played major roles in the development of history. We'll never know, of course.
Of course, the practical aspect of having such level of details is another thing. Hence, you see "no need", not so much because the information is completely useless, but because much of it would represent "noise" that would need sifting through at great effort. It would be impractical for us to have that much detail on every bloke on the planet since Man descended from the trees.
But if we had a way to deal with that volume of information; if we could sic a major set of computers and databases on the Ulitmate Quest of culling out the important stuff...
Ah, but I veer into the realm of sheer speculation. Hence, my insanity.
...Up until the last time I went to the U.S.A. I hated crossing into Canada more. But now, the U.S. wins the 'onerous prize'.
Yes, indeed. The last time I came back from Canada, the US ding dongs gave me a very hard time, and was deliberately trying to work up my ire. It's as if these guys have nothing better to do other than to harass border crossers.
To which I say, what's the point? What is gained by bad-assing people crossing the border? It's really takes from the whole idea of a "good getaway" if you are always being steamed at the border.
For me, it's a 3-4 hour drive to the border, and it's not something I look forward to. I suppose neither country sees any point in making it a pleasant experience for the tourist dollar. Gee, Canada, I am coming to your country to spend MY money there! Holy smokes. Maybe I'll just keep my money on this side of the border or save it for a more welcoming country.
... Like you said, though, you have to stay on top of it. It's all too easy to find yourself suddenly unable to read your old media. I understand that NASA is losing enormous quantities of 9-track tape data from the sixties because they can't find equipment to read them, and the tapes are reaching the end of their lifespan. Not good.
Really sad about NASA -- that information should be preserved and made publically available. The longer we wait, the more expensive it will be to recover it. We've lost all the details on building the Saturn V rocket, and we lost that a long time ago. Lots of technical hurdles had to be overcome, and it would also be good to have that information preserved for future rocket engineers.
Then again, the history of mankind on this planet is puncuated with massive loss of information throughout the ages. Libraries are allowed to fall into decay or are destroyed by conquering nations, languages are lost to time, and the like.
But if there's one thing us humans love doing is creating volumes and volumes of information -- just visit any library.
And now we have the totality of the Internet, with who knows how many websites, blogs, and what not. Torrents of stuff that comes and goes. More stuff than any one person could read in a million lifetimes -- nor probably would not want to.
Ahh, humans. A fascinating species, if I may say so myself. It will be fun to watch its progress over the next few decades.
...the same supplier is providing video tape transfers to DVD for free.
That way we don't have to buy dvd copies of movies of already paid for.
But the quality -- the quality will sucketh big time.
Hmmm... This conversation makes me wonder what the storage capacity of a VHS tape is. An hour's worth of video is a non-trivial amount of data. On the other hand, VHS used a very low resolution.
There was a time where the VHS format was used as a "poor man's" data backup, as was done at one place I worked at back in the 80's. Damned unreliable and always have drop-outs. I forget how much data was storable in that format, but it was dinky compared to what we can do today.
Then again, there was also a time casette tapes (remember those?) were used for data backup. But now I am really dating myself. :-)
Now with Blu Ray out and getting cheaper and cheaper, we will probably see the gradual dissaparence of the old CD format. Already I have no access to the many backups I've made on 90's tape drives -- Travan, I think it was called.
Much data will simply be lost to the sea change. Thumb drives have displaced the floppy, Blu Ray will eventually displace DVDs, and even IDE drives are beginning to slip into obscurity. I still have stuff on old 40-megabyte SCSI drives (yes, I said MEGA-byte!) back from my Amiga days but forget about SCSI controllers to read them now.
I did manage to snag a high-end VHS machine from a friend who used to do video productions. It is the only machine I have that can read the stacks and stacks of VHS tapes I've accumulated over the years. But much of that stuff is probably not worth digitizing, and the few things that are are litterally buried in the midst of many, many 6-hour VHS tapes that I would have to spend hundreds of hours looking for. Doesn't seem to really worth the time.
In my State, you have to give your picture for ID, but you can instruct the State NOT to keep said picture on record.I kinda like that. One of the many reasons I love New Hampshire.
The last time I tried to cross the Canadian border was so annoying I have not bothered going back to Canada in a long time. Every since 9/11, paranoia has been reigning supreme.
Of course, tracking fingerprints and pictures will not make anyone more secure, since (a) the probability of dying from a terrorist attack is tiny in comparasion to many other daily dangers we embrace everyday without a second thought, like driving, for instance, and (b) the would-be terrorist organizations, if they are really all that inclined, need only find fresh recruits who have not been fingered by the FBI or Homeland Insecurity yet.
41,000 people die on US highways every year. How many people die in the US from terrorism every year? The attention to the so-called threat does not mesh with the actual facts and the real risk factors.
So I am not impressed in the least about any of this crap. Just another excuse for the government to stir up fear to create its own "need".
Not that we "need" it, but that the overall system dynamics evolved it that way.
Defragging a SSD? Shouldn't need that.
Is that actually the case? Honest question here as I am not an SSD engineer. Lacking seek or rotational latency any given block of SSD storage should take equal time to read/write. But does that assure that non-contiguous sequential IO (the thing defragging is intended to eliminate) is exactly as efficient as the contiguous case? (Please forgive my elevation of "shouldn't need that" to the "exactly as efficient" standard.)
It would seem that non-contiguous operations would still involve more IO commands between the host and the controller, and perhaps also more bus operations internally (between the controller and the physical storage.)
The very nature of SSD would seem to indicate that you would NOT want to defrag, as this would wind up using some blocks more than others, aging the SSD prematurely. Seems to me you'd want the exact opposite -- a random distribution of the blocks across the SSD so that they are all used evenly and extending the overall life of the device.
linux is only a major os in your mind. stop being such a fanboi.
Tell me, how many web servers are running Linux vs. Windows?
Linux is not a "very major OS". I know it is on slashdot, but not in the rest of the world. Any OS that has less than a few percent of the desktop market can not be very major, by definition.
It didn't specify "Desktop OS", but just "OS". Linux powers half or more of the web servers serving content to those pesky little desktops!!!!
Overall, I would state that this article is useless beyond "cocktail gossip." And really, SSD should have a specific FS written to its peculiarities, which would, of course, render the "OS" questions moot.
The real pain of a lesson is that in most cases, expensive high-tech systems can be easily thwarted by simple, cheap, low-tech means. Yes, the defense contractors will make a killing at tax-payer's expense to deliver something that will give the war-mongors a false sense of security.
Hell, all the missle defense techology is useless against a properly-trained suicide bomber, anyway. But then, that only proves my point.
WIN THE PEACE, NOT THE WAR.
Perhaps the poor man's warfare strategy is to get the rich man's efforts to bankrupt himself. Hmmmm...
One argument is that "that's what employers are looking for". If there is a glut in the supply market for that skill, you can guarantee that
So paradoxicially, it may not be the best choice to be to heavily invested in the "mainstream" choices.
I too grow tired of hearing this complaint about Python year in and year out.
Then again, many years ago I also used to hear bitches about Lisp's parentheses. Or Forth's RPN syntax. Or...
I disagree with your post here, sir. Readability, more than anything, is critical in modern programming--you don't know how good the next guy who'll have to bash at the code will be. Python seems to encourage terseness and the whitespace requirements help to make it uncomfortable to read.
Compared to Java or C# (C# especially, though that's mostly thanks to the fairly hard-nosed Visual Studio editor defaults that almost everybody sticks to), Python feels extremely difficult to just sit down and read.
I would have to disagree on the last point. Python is quite easy to read. Perl, on the other hand, can get quite terse in ways that can make your brain explode. Python's terse constructs -- like list comprehension -- is quite easy to read once you get accustomed to it.
Many opinions abound about languages, but here's my take:
Even though I am a big technology buff, I have not bothered with HDTV yet. Why? Content still stinks. Untill there is something on worth watching, I'll just stick to grabbing those few gems worthy of my time off the Internet.