We'll miss the young Bobby Fischer and always be a little confused about what happened to make him cross that fine line between ingenuity and insanity.
Bobby Fisher was somewhat deranged, but he was mostly egotistical and self-centered. There's a huge difference. Both halves of his life are defined by arrogance, egotism, and a belief that the world revolved around him. I think "autism" is trotted out far too often as a free hall-pass for people who just happen to be very good at something, and because of that, have a massive superiority complex.
Even more unfortunate that he never came around to apologize and promote chess in schools and everywhere.
Bobby Fisher didn't play chess because he loved the game. He played it because he was good at the game. Why do you think he stopped showing his face when he realized he wasn't the best? Why do you think that the requirements for matches were absolutely insane? (answer: so that he could abandon the game, or blame conditions for his losing.)
His comments regarding the world trade center attacks were pretty insane (as is his psychotic hatred of everything Jewish)
I agree with you on his hatred of everything Jewish, but let's not throw the (admittedly very small) baby out with the bathwater; he's not alone in believing that the United States' unfaltering support of Israel was (and still is) the primary motivation and recruitment tool for Islamic terrorists.
To be fair to Dell this happened on my PowerBook and not so much on my MacBook Pro... But sometime I do get a tingle, in the right condition.
I have owned a Powerbook 17" and a Macbook Pro since they came out, used two different ones for work, and set up dozens of them for other people. Never felt this, heard of it from a user, or read about it. Plug your system in using the 3-prong grounded cord, and if the problem continues, you're imagining things or your building is not wired properly- and YES, the power brick is grounded on many (not all) of the square powerbook G4 power adapters, and all of the Magsafe ones; see the big chrome "button" that the power plug snaps into place using? Now look at the three prong cord- see how there's a metal bit in that slot? That grounds the adapter, and the computer.
Seriously: there are probably more Macbook Pros and Powerbooks than any other single design of laptop out there. They change very little from revision to revision, and god knows, Apple people make any sort of problem with their Apple gear very loudly heard.
What you may feel is the case pinching a hair or something- the front edge on some of them has a slight gap, and that gap can close when you put your palms down on the top, for example. The case screws also tend to loosen over time. You can also get pinched by the gap across the top between the plastic edge and the top deck piece of aluminum.
If you see a gap between the case halves up front- remove the battery, and loosen the two screws by the lid latch (use a proper screwdriver size- if it pops out easily from the screw, you have the wrong screwdriver.) Now squeeze the top of the case down and while doing so, tighten the screws. Do the same for each screw on the sides.
If it's not that- it's either a medical condition you have where you feel shocks/pain and you need to get that checked out, or it's simple static electricity. Another possibility is that the plugs in your house/workplace are not wired properly, and you should have a qualified, licensed electrician check.
Sorry, but the market apparently agrees with me. Combo units don't sell well here in America. This isn't Japan we're talking about here.
"We"? *You* said "it's a stupid idea, like those combo TV/VCRs!"
I said "no, it's not- those combo TV/VCRs were designed for and sold well in Japan and Asia, and here's why, and the fact that they are a commercial success there means it's not a stupid idea, it's just catering to the market there."
My comments were fully qualified, and you made a universal statement that a particular device was "a stupid idea", not "it's a stupid idea for America."
And again, all the products you've declared "stupid" are commercially successful...
God, why am I wasting time arguing with an imbecile?
This is just a stupid idea, just like the old TVs combined with VCRs which became obsolete when DVDs came out.
Unless you live in a country where space is insanely expensive, people live in VERY small apartments/houses, and live in a culture that appreciates aesthetics in their living spaces. After all, look at what Americans do- they try to dress up the TV, VCR, DVD player etc in a big "media center" so the cables are hidden and you have a place to actually put the damn thing. The Japanese just say "eh, let's just make an all-in-one."
You know all those old Mac-plus style form-factor macs? The Japanese went absolutely nuts for those, and in fact there was a market in keeping 'em going. Why do you think the Japanese also love those ultra-small laptops?
It's much better to just buy a standalone TV/monitor, and separate DVD player, TiVo, etc. and connect them together.
Um....what does your DVD player need to do besides play DVDs on the TV? That's the whole reason TV/VCR combos were popular. It's not like a separate DVD player lets you make bread. It's not like DVD players become obsolete very often, so you don't need to replace them.
Irregardless, you're arguing against the market, chief. If they're right in asserting that TVs with DVRs builtin are popular, they're popular whether *you* like the concept or not, and just because they sell them does not mean they're trying to capture the entire market of TVs or DVD players. Repeat after me: "just because an item is not intended for me, does not mean the product 'sucks' or there is no market."
That's not insightful. You need to convince the citizens that the outcome is legitimate or there will be rioting in the streets. Tampering with ballots preserves the illusion of legitimacy. Buying electoral college votes puts the fraud right out in the open, it's basically a big "fuck you!" to the American people.
You forgot that when you're caught committing fraud (or caught for being completely incompetent), you haul the court system into it. Then, no matter how pissed people are, you can blow them off by saying, "sorry, the courts say *I* won."
Forget the "skew", there was clear evidence of fraud in certain towns where they reported zero votes for Ron Paul, and a couple of supporters who lived in that town came forward and said "uh, I don't think so, I KNOW I voted for him, as did several friends"?
The town did a re-count and magically those votes re-appeared. This wasn't a case of "oops, we were off by a few"- every single vote for a particular candidate was GONE. What's fascinating is that all of the news stories I've read about the NH primary concerns have neglected to mention this, and far as I can tell, nobody has done jack shit to figure out why it happened.
Furthermore, if they lost ALL of the Ron Paul votes- how many other votes did they lose?
Ever eaten a double-yolk egg? You've eaten a cloned animal. Same if you've ever eaten the twin sibling of any animal. And don't think you veggiesaurs are exempt. Have you ever eaten anything grown from a clipping of a plant? That's a clone.
You're missing the point; we're not talking about single isolated cases of cloning. We're talking about ten years from now, having virtually every head of cattle genetically identical to the one next to it.
Think it through: why would the industry want to clone? Because they want to develop a "perfect" cow, steer, chicken, turkey. Then patent it. Then sell or "license" it to farmers.
Now, it's not very convenient for your product to be capable of replication, so they'd probably be sterile. Joe Farmer is now dependent on CloneCow Corp for his animals. And maybe it turns out that they're not QUITE 100% sterile, so the artificial population starts to mix into the natural gene pool? Think it couldn't happen? Wrong, because both have happened with GMO grains.
To top it off, there's no genetic diversity, so the entire population is identically vulnerable in terms of disease susceptibility, or defective in terms of their bodies.
Imagine that ten-year-off scenario. What if one day it's discovered that they're vulnerable to some strain of a particular virus that is rapidly spreading? And by "they", I mean ALL of them?
groups opposed to cloning in the food chain will now concentrate their efforts on convincing more suppliers to boycott the business of cloning
If GMO grain and hormone-loaded-milk are any example, the industry is concentrating on keeping the FDA from requiring industry mark which meat is from cloned animals. *And* aggressively going after businesses that market food as NOT being cloned/GMO/hormone-loaded.
It's absolutely hilarious to listen to the logic: "If we labeled it, people wouldn't buy it." Ho, really? No kidding, sherlock! That's how capitalism works. And guess what? 1/3rd of America doesn't want anything to do with you.
I'm so tired of farmers and businessmen that are the first to yack about "freedom" but keep begging for the government to save them / prop them up. As more and more people start demanding organic foods, the non-organic foods will drop in price because demand drops. I'll bet anything that the non-organic agribusinesses will go running to Congress begging for larger handouts...
This argument is often trotted out for the iPod, etc. It's specious. First, it's not expensive to install a new one -- it's free as part of your AppleCare.
Bullshit. The warranty specifically excludes reduced battery consumption as a result of use/age, both under the standard warranty and the Applecare extended warranty. At least they're (more) upfront about it now than they used to be...they now mention that Lithium Ion batteries degrade with time and use, etc.
Aside from jokes about the prototype 5300 that caught fire because Sony fibbed about its specs (leading to a recall of a few dozen machines that had shipped- few hit customer hands, no "incidents"), Apple has a less than glorious reputation when it comes to power adapters.
I was on a business trip once when the black, pencil-case power supply for my G3 Lombard suddenly made a crackling noise and I smelled smoke. Turned out that the 2-prong AC connector (the one that kinda looks like an oval, used to be referred to as a "shaver" style connector) didn't have proper strain relief, so the solder on the PCB broke and the high resistance cooked the circuit board; there was a big charred section of the PCB. Apple veeeeery quietly offered up replacement "discus" power adapters to Lombard and Pismo owners (the discus adapters were great, aside from the huge "KRACK!" they made when they were plugged in. I hate cheap-ass power supplies that do that...)
Fast forward to about a year ago with my first-gen Macbook Pro. I smelled heated/burning plastic smell, reached down and burned my finger on the magsafe connector, or more specifically, the first quarter inch of cable coming out of it.
The "Genius" at the store tried to claim I had abused the adapter. I asked him how it was possible to "abuse" a magsafe connector given that they pop off so easily, and he had no real response, and rather peacefully gave me a replacement adapter. Gee, what a shocker- the cable strain relief on both ends looked nice and durable. Hmm, I wonder if there was a problem with their design...
So, kids- if your magsafe adapter shows any sign of wear and tear at the connectors (for example, the cable jacket or strain relief showing any damage), get it replaced ASAP. These adapters are increasingly powerful and can easily start a fire.
Schneier is reporting that Arizona State University's Paul Torrens has been developing a computer simulation to model urban panic.
Just come to Boston when it snows heavily mid-day on a workday. Last time it snowed:
Employers/employees freaked out, and people started going home around 1PM
Plows couldn't get around because of the traffic, so snow started to build up.
Collisions started happening because of the snow depth, people are fucking morons and can't drive in the snow, have shitty tires. Even more people got stuck.
Traffic got even more fucked up.
Plows got completely stuck, so the snow kept getting deeper
Stuck in traffic, people started to run out of gas or abandoned their cars, further clogging the roads.
The city pointed the finger at the state, while the state calmly said "we didn't have any problems except in Boston, hmmmmmmm, wonder why THAT could be?" I knew people that tried to get from Cambridge to West Roxbury and it took them NINE HOURS. Everyone who could take the subway or the green line routes that weren't blocked by traffic had zero problems.
Despite this, they still want to put a Biosafety Level 4 (ebola etc) lab smack in the middle of south boston; BU has been ramming it down our throats because their researchers are too damn lazy to drive out into the woods to do their potential-doomsday shit.
You're mistaken. ZFS RAID-Z is definitely "raid" -- in fact it's RAID without the RAID-5 write hole on non-specialized (no NVRAM in the controller) hardware
I sat through the entire presentation by the guy who headed the ZFS team. I know all about it, thank-you-very-fucking-much. My point was that it is not valid to compare Linux's md to ZFS and declare "linux md sucks, it can't do any of this!", because ZFS is not [just] a RAID system...AND because md can do things ZFS can't.
I hate nit-picky little twerps like you who think you're so fucking smart because you stomp all over someone for not choosing their wording perfectly.
Then, use mdadm to add another drive as a spare, and grow the raid device out (ie using -n to change the number of devices along with the grow command.)
One last note: I accidentally 'added' a drive straight to the array without changing the number of drives. It seemed to just mirror the array onto the third drive. I believe the important bit is to add it as a spare, and then grow with a new #-of-devices param (-n). You might be able to do the add & change-# at the same time, and I just forgot to give the -n option.
One good way to test all this: loopback devices:-) Just do it with a filesystem on that fake raid set, and a file on the filesystem for which you've calculated the checksum, etc.
Can you point me at an article that would provide more information on this? It'd definitely be a lot easier then having to back up the entire contents of the array.
I don't have any links handy and it's bedtime, but...from what I recall, you stop the existing array and then use mdadm to "create" a raid 5 array with those two drives. It'll bitch and say there's an array there already, but ignore the warning and force the operation. Apparently, md lays out data identical to a mirror if you create a 2-disk RAID5 array. Odd...
Then, use mdadm to add another drive as a spare, and grow the raid device out (ie using -n to change the number of devices along with the grow command.)
I really, really wouldn't try this without a backup, and I would make sure I was running a fairly recent 2.6 kernel, as the RAID expansion stuff was introduced in the 'teen releases and probably saw a number of bugfixes. I'd also try googling for stuff like "md raid migration" or somethin'. There were a few blog posts out there where people did exactly what you're looking for.
If the total device size is small enough, buy an external drive from somewhere and return it a few days later (after zeroing out the drive, of course.) Check for restocking fees etc...though even 15% on ~$350 (which is what you can get a 1TB hitachi external drive from BB for) ain't bad if you think of it as a 1-2 week "rental" and/or insurance...
then you need to mkfs, and if you run out of space you're screwed because you can't easily grow.
All of Linux's md raid modes are grow-able.
LVM2, XFS, and ext3 are all capable of not just expansion, but *online* expansion. With xfs, it's one command- xfs_grow -d. It automatically senses the new block device size and presto, you've got a larger file system.
BTDT two weeks ago when I added a drive to my RAID5 array, expanded the LVM2 physical volume, grew the logical volume, and then grew the XFS volume (I make the choice to run LVM2 on top of the array- I could have just as easily put XFS directly on the array device itself.) The only caveat is that you won't see the extra space until the resilvering is done.
I'm not saying it's equal to ZFS, but Linux's filesystems and volume management are a lot more capable than you're claiming, and everyone needs to calm down and realize that RAID is not ZFS, ZFS is not RAID, etc.
It wasn't that easy to set up a RAID in Linux the last time I tried (admittedly long ago), but even in comparison, setting up a RAID-Z in ZFS is just a single line: "zpool create mypool raidz disk4s2 disk5s2 disk6s2"
If you like living dangerously, you don't need to do anything else except put LVM2 on it and add an fstab entry; md automatically goes hunting for raid partitions when it is loaded, and the md superblock info contains all the info needed to assemble and array, no config needed. However, if you set up mdadm with information about the raid array, it'll behave more intelligently when things go wrong.
That said, ZFS is not "raid", and md is not a file system and volume manager. ZFS offers a lot you won't find anywhere else, but the basic lack of standard features found in ZFS compared to a large number of RAID and/or volume management systems means that ZFS has a ways to go: ZFS does not support increasing the number of drives in a pool, and you CANNOT migrate between any of the various vdevs. You cannot go from a single drive to a pair of mirrored drives, or from a single drive or mirror to RAIDZ. You cannot increase the number of drives in a RAIDZ set. Instead, they force you to add entire redundant vdevs to the pool. All of the aforementioned resilvering is stuff Linux RAID has been able to do for years (well, okay, the RAID 5 expansion stuff is a little new.)
I migrated a single drive to a mirrored array a couple months ago. Then I migrated that to 3-drive RAID5. Then I migrated that to a four-drive array. None of that would have been doable with ZFS.
However, from what I understand, Sun is working on the expansion stuff...and a defragment tool (thank god that, like SGI, they don't subscribe to the bullshit myth that modern filesystems don't get fragmented. It's not true with NTFS, it's not true with HFS+, and it sure as hell isn't true with ext2/3 OR reiserfs...I wish people would stop perpetuating that bullshit myth!)
The OLPC News website in the past months has build up a reputation for sharply criticizing the $100 laptop project headed up by Nicholas Negroponte.
Please, please, please stop calling it "the $100 laptop." With the current prices for anything less than a million units roughly twice that figure, it's hideously inaccurate.
When they get it down to $100 and stop charging wildly different prices based on order quantity (a scam since all the tooling is done, and they won't be placing individual orders with their manufacturers), you can call it the $100 laptop.
Those had a 56001 DSP along their motorola main CPU for extra mathematical oomph, and impressive realtime visual or sound effects.
The Quadra 660AV and 840AV had an AT&T DSP in it that handled all of the sound and video functions. It could also do voice recognition of any menu item, button, or a universal command set within a decent amount of time. It also had a telephone interface box which let it mimic a fax machine or data modem (and I say mimic, because it was horribly unreliable at the latter; fax transmissions were short enough that your chances were better), or behave as an answering machine.
There was also exactly ONE application that I remember for the DSP aside from what Apple used the DSP for: one could use the DSP to do fractals in a fraction of the time the 68040 processor could, though the DSP ran at about twice the clock speed (25mhz vs. 55mhz I believe.) In short: utterly useless, and it was discontinued after a year or two. It did have a clever feature or two, one of which was that it could load the ROM (for those of you who don't remember, all the system toolbox commands were in ROM, not on-disk) into RAM, which would suck several precious MB- but would dramatically and noticeably speed up the system. The functionality came via a third-party hack.
The best "feature", however, was its crashes. Given this was an old System-7/8/9 machine and 68040 based, it suffered from the usual stability problems, only multiplied by about ten-fold because of all the shit that was needed to handle the funky DSP graphics/sound/etc. The best part: the main CPU and the DSP would get out of sync during these crashes, and would feed garbage to each other. Kind of like catting/dev/random to the input of a 10-foot-tall milling machine, you have no idea what you're going to get, but it'll be impressive to watch.
Ask any 660AV/840AV owner. It was kind of like watching a dozen first-grader buggy logo scripts running, accompanied by the sound of a dozen Amigas crashing into a dozen Commodores whilest each was running a 'tracker' playing a corrupted MOD file, with pushy solos by a bored 6 year old Recorder player.
1. Clients (laptops) default installed wifi software (hint: Steve Jobs are you reading???) need a scanning
mode which does not waste my time telling me about all the password or mac-address locked wifi
basestations, and only advises me about open ones.
Leopard shows padlock icons next to locked networks. For at least two prior major OS revisions, you have the option to be told about open networks, and/or join them automatically.
Do you have any idea how much of a problem this is for IT people dealing with laptop-equipped employees, both from a security standpoint and a troubleshooting standpoint? (BTDT. User could not send mail half the time. Turns out his laptop was alternating between his network and his neighbor's. The neighbor's blocked outgoing SMTP.)
3. (Brain software/mindset change.) Americans need to stop reflexively calling sharing 'stealing'.
You've been trained into this terminology by those who have already stolen everything and don't
want you to get it back.
No, nerds need to stop reflexively assuming that common law doesn't apply to them. I remember 10 years ago listening to people justify [running exploits against / breaking into] computers they don't own, in ways eerily similar to how people justify using access points that do not belong to them that are connected to private networks that don't belong to them, which are connected to the internet via connections paid by someone other than them.
If I hand you the key to my car, that's "sharing". If I tell you "the key is on top of the left front tire, feel free to borrow it tomorrow", that's "sharing."
If I leave it in my driveway with the key in the ignition and the doors unlocked, that is stealing. And if you walk in my front door, your ass is still going to jail.
"I want to pick the licence that makes the most sense for what I want to do. And at this point in time, Version 2 matches what I think we want to do much, much better than Version 3,"
"I", or "we", Linus?
In the words of the great Tonto, "What do you mean WE, white man?"
Linux creator Linus Torvalds has used an interview being made public by the Linux Foundation
Superbanana has used a posting being made by Slashdot to complain about the lack of editorial skills on the Slashdot staff...yeesh.
You know what the FAA does when it has a situation that it knows will eventually result in a disaster costing hundreds of lives? They try to fix it. That's part of their job.
Actually, the FAA historically made a cost-benefit analysis before mandating anything, where cost is determined by how many people would be killed, and they have a $ figure for how much each death is worth; for some reasons, $30k is popping to mind, but I can't find a way to verify that claim.
They figure out a cost:potential-passengers-killed ratio when deciding whether or not to force airlines to do something. $20BN divided among even the number of people on an Airbus is far too high. Keep in mind that in the 1980's, the FAA seriously debated whether or not to mandate smoke detectors and fire extinguishers in aircraft. Yeah. You heard me right. Luckily, it was something like $30M saved vs. $10M spent...
The same calculations take place any time they think there's a part that might fail on a particular plane. If by their calculations the cost vs. lives saved ratio is too high, they don't do it.
Slashdot will ban you for doing exactly the same thing Scoble (well, the social network/whatever they called it) did. Go on, try using wget to crawl a story's comment thread, or hit the feeds more than once every two hours.
Hell, Slashdot bans you if you get modded down too much in too short a period of time, even if you get modded back up...that was cute.
So congratulations - your funny story saved you from sex!
You've got that backwards- it saved her from sex with him.
The wonderful thing about finding out someone is an asshole- is that you found out when you did- and not later. You know, like...after relationships, proposals, wedding bells, children.
If both genders were better at asshole detection, the divorce rate would plummet.
Slashdot Mirror
We'll miss the young Bobby Fischer and always be a little confused about what happened to make him cross that fine line between ingenuity and insanity.
Bobby Fisher was somewhat deranged, but he was mostly egotistical and self-centered. There's a huge difference. Both halves of his life are defined by arrogance, egotism, and a belief that the world revolved around him. I think "autism" is trotted out far too often as a free hall-pass for people who just happen to be very good at something, and because of that, have a massive superiority complex.
Even more unfortunate that he never came around to apologize and promote chess in schools and everywhere.
Bobby Fisher didn't play chess because he loved the game. He played it because he was good at the game. Why do you think he stopped showing his face when he realized he wasn't the best? Why do you think that the requirements for matches were absolutely insane? (answer: so that he could abandon the game, or blame conditions for his losing.)
His comments regarding the world trade center attacks were pretty insane (as is his psychotic hatred of everything Jewish)
I agree with you on his hatred of everything Jewish, but let's not throw the (admittedly very small) baby out with the bathwater; he's not alone in believing that the United States' unfaltering support of Israel was (and still is) the primary motivation and recruitment tool for Islamic terrorists.
To be fair to Dell this happened on my PowerBook and not so much on my MacBook Pro... But sometime I do get a tingle, in the right condition.
I have owned a Powerbook 17" and a Macbook Pro since they came out, used two different ones for work, and set up dozens of them for other people. Never felt this, heard of it from a user, or read about it. Plug your system in using the 3-prong grounded cord, and if the problem continues, you're imagining things or your building is not wired properly- and YES, the power brick is grounded on many (not all) of the square powerbook G4 power adapters, and all of the Magsafe ones; see the big chrome "button" that the power plug snaps into place using? Now look at the three prong cord- see how there's a metal bit in that slot? That grounds the adapter, and the computer.
Seriously: there are probably more Macbook Pros and Powerbooks than any other single design of laptop out there. They change very little from revision to revision, and god knows, Apple people make any sort of problem with their Apple gear very loudly heard.
What you may feel is the case pinching a hair or something- the front edge on some of them has a slight gap, and that gap can close when you put your palms down on the top, for example. The case screws also tend to loosen over time. You can also get pinched by the gap across the top between the plastic edge and the top deck piece of aluminum.
If you see a gap between the case halves up front- remove the battery, and loosen the two screws by the lid latch (use a proper screwdriver size- if it pops out easily from the screw, you have the wrong screwdriver.) Now squeeze the top of the case down and while doing so, tighten the screws. Do the same for each screw on the sides.
If it's not that- it's either a medical condition you have where you feel shocks/pain and you need to get that checked out, or it's simple static electricity. Another possibility is that the plugs in your house/workplace are not wired properly, and you should have a qualified, licensed electrician check.
Sorry, but the market apparently agrees with me. Combo units don't sell well here in America. This isn't Japan we're talking about here.
"We"? *You* said "it's a stupid idea, like those combo TV/VCRs!"
I said "no, it's not- those combo TV/VCRs were designed for and sold well in Japan and Asia, and here's why, and the fact that they are a commercial success there means it's not a stupid idea, it's just catering to the market there."
My comments were fully qualified, and you made a universal statement that a particular device was "a stupid idea", not "it's a stupid idea for America."
And again, all the products you've declared "stupid" are commercially successful...
God, why am I wasting time arguing with an imbecile?
This is just a stupid idea, just like the old TVs combined with VCRs which became obsolete when DVDs came out.
Unless you live in a country where space is insanely expensive, people live in VERY small apartments/houses, and live in a culture that appreciates aesthetics in their living spaces. After all, look at what Americans do- they try to dress up the TV, VCR, DVD player etc in a big "media center" so the cables are hidden and you have a place to actually put the damn thing. The Japanese just say "eh, let's just make an all-in-one."
You know all those old Mac-plus style form-factor macs? The Japanese went absolutely nuts for those, and in fact there was a market in keeping 'em going. Why do you think the Japanese also love those ultra-small laptops?
It's much better to just buy a standalone TV/monitor, and separate DVD player, TiVo, etc. and connect them together.
Um....what does your DVD player need to do besides play DVDs on the TV? That's the whole reason TV/VCR combos were popular. It's not like a separate DVD player lets you make bread. It's not like DVD players become obsolete very often, so you don't need to replace them.
Irregardless, you're arguing against the market, chief. If they're right in asserting that TVs with DVRs builtin are popular, they're popular whether *you* like the concept or not, and just because they sell them does not mean they're trying to capture the entire market of TVs or DVD players. Repeat after me: "just because an item is not intended for me, does not mean the product 'sucks' or there is no market."
That's not insightful. You need to convince the citizens that the outcome is legitimate or there will be rioting in the streets. Tampering with ballots preserves the illusion of legitimacy. Buying electoral college votes puts the fraud right out in the open, it's basically a big "fuck you!" to the American people.
You forgot that when you're caught committing fraud (or caught for being completely incompetent), you haul the court system into it. Then, no matter how pissed people are, you can blow them off by saying, "sorry, the courts say *I* won."
Forget the "skew", there was clear evidence of fraud in certain towns where they reported zero votes for Ron Paul, and a couple of supporters who lived in that town came forward and said "uh, I don't think so, I KNOW I voted for him, as did several friends"?
The town did a re-count and magically those votes re-appeared. This wasn't a case of "oops, we were off by a few"- every single vote for a particular candidate was GONE. What's fascinating is that all of the news stories I've read about the NH primary concerns have neglected to mention this, and far as I can tell, nobody has done jack shit to figure out why it happened.
Furthermore, if they lost ALL of the Ron Paul votes- how many other votes did they lose?
Ever eaten a double-yolk egg? You've eaten a cloned animal. Same if you've ever eaten the twin sibling of any animal. And don't think you veggiesaurs are exempt. Have you ever eaten anything grown from a clipping of a plant? That's a clone.
You're missing the point; we're not talking about single isolated cases of cloning. We're talking about ten years from now, having virtually every head of cattle genetically identical to the one next to it.
Think it through: why would the industry want to clone? Because they want to develop a "perfect" cow, steer, chicken, turkey. Then patent it. Then sell or "license" it to farmers.
Now, it's not very convenient for your product to be capable of replication, so they'd probably be sterile. Joe Farmer is now dependent on CloneCow Corp for his animals. And maybe it turns out that they're not QUITE 100% sterile, so the artificial population starts to mix into the natural gene pool? Think it couldn't happen? Wrong, because both have happened with GMO grains.
To top it off, there's no genetic diversity, so the entire population is identically vulnerable in terms of disease susceptibility, or defective in terms of their bodies.
Imagine that ten-year-off scenario. What if one day it's discovered that they're vulnerable to some strain of a particular virus that is rapidly spreading? And by "they", I mean ALL of them?
groups opposed to cloning in the food chain will now concentrate their efforts on convincing more suppliers to boycott the business of cloning
If GMO grain and hormone-loaded-milk are any example, the industry is concentrating on keeping the FDA from requiring industry mark which meat is from cloned animals. *And* aggressively going after businesses that market food as NOT being cloned/GMO/hormone-loaded.
It's absolutely hilarious to listen to the logic: "If we labeled it, people wouldn't buy it." Ho, really? No kidding, sherlock! That's how capitalism works. And guess what? 1/3rd of America doesn't want anything to do with you.
I'm so tired of farmers and businessmen that are the first to yack about "freedom" but keep begging for the government to save them / prop them up. As more and more people start demanding organic foods, the non-organic foods will drop in price because demand drops. I'll bet anything that the non-organic agribusinesses will go running to Congress begging for larger handouts...
This argument is often trotted out for the iPod, etc. It's specious. First, it's not expensive to install a new one -- it's free as part of your AppleCare.
Bullshit. The warranty specifically excludes reduced battery consumption as a result of use/age, both under the standard warranty and the Applecare extended warranty. At least they're (more) upfront about it now than they used to be...they now mention that Lithium Ion batteries degrade with time and use, etc.
I'm a Mac. And I'm a Oh my God, I'm burning!
Aside from jokes about the prototype 5300 that caught fire because Sony fibbed about its specs (leading to a recall of a few dozen machines that had shipped- few hit customer hands, no "incidents"), Apple has a less than glorious reputation when it comes to power adapters.
I was on a business trip once when the black, pencil-case power supply for my G3 Lombard suddenly made a crackling noise and I smelled smoke. Turned out that the 2-prong AC connector (the one that kinda looks like an oval, used to be referred to as a "shaver" style connector) didn't have proper strain relief, so the solder on the PCB broke and the high resistance cooked the circuit board; there was a big charred section of the PCB. Apple veeeeery quietly offered up replacement "discus" power adapters to Lombard and Pismo owners (the discus adapters were great, aside from the huge "KRACK!" they made when they were plugged in. I hate cheap-ass power supplies that do that...)
Fast forward to about a year ago with my first-gen Macbook Pro. I smelled heated/burning plastic smell, reached down and burned my finger on the magsafe connector, or more specifically, the first quarter inch of cable coming out of it.
The "Genius" at the store tried to claim I had abused the adapter. I asked him how it was possible to "abuse" a magsafe connector given that they pop off so easily, and he had no real response, and rather peacefully gave me a replacement adapter. Gee, what a shocker- the cable strain relief on both ends looked nice and durable. Hmm, I wonder if there was a problem with their design...
So, kids- if your magsafe adapter shows any sign of wear and tear at the connectors (for example, the cable jacket or strain relief showing any damage), get it replaced ASAP. These adapters are increasingly powerful and can easily start a fire.
Schneier is reporting that Arizona State University's Paul Torrens has been developing a computer simulation to model urban panic.
Just come to Boston when it snows heavily mid-day on a workday. Last time it snowed:
The city pointed the finger at the state, while the state calmly said "we didn't have any problems except in Boston, hmmmmmmm, wonder why THAT could be?" I knew people that tried to get from Cambridge to West Roxbury and it took them NINE HOURS. Everyone who could take the subway or the green line routes that weren't blocked by traffic had zero problems.
Despite this, they still want to put a Biosafety Level 4 (ebola etc) lab smack in the middle of south boston; BU has been ramming it down our throats because their researchers are too damn lazy to drive out into the woods to do their potential-doomsday shit.
You're mistaken. ZFS RAID-Z is definitely "raid" -- in fact it's RAID without the RAID-5 write hole on non-specialized (no NVRAM in the controller) hardware
I sat through the entire presentation by the guy who headed the ZFS team. I know all about it, thank-you-very-fucking-much. My point was that it is not valid to compare Linux's md to ZFS and declare "linux md sucks, it can't do any of this!", because ZFS is not [just] a RAID system...AND because md can do things ZFS can't.
I hate nit-picky little twerps like you who think you're so fucking smart because you stomp all over someone for not choosing their wording perfectly.
Then, use mdadm to add another drive as a spare, and grow the raid device out (ie using -n to change the number of devices along with the grow command.)
One last note: I accidentally 'added' a drive straight to the array without changing the number of drives. It seemed to just mirror the array onto the third drive. I believe the important bit is to add it as a spare, and then grow with a new #-of-devices param (-n). You might be able to do the add & change-# at the same time, and I just forgot to give the -n option.
One good way to test all this: loopback devices :-) Just do it with a filesystem on that fake raid set, and a file on the filesystem for which you've calculated the checksum, etc.
Can you point me at an article that would provide more information on this? It'd definitely be a lot easier then having to back up the entire contents of the array.
I don't have any links handy and it's bedtime, but...from what I recall, you stop the existing array and then use mdadm to "create" a raid 5 array with those two drives. It'll bitch and say there's an array there already, but ignore the warning and force the operation. Apparently, md lays out data identical to a mirror if you create a 2-disk RAID5 array. Odd...
Then, use mdadm to add another drive as a spare, and grow the raid device out (ie using -n to change the number of devices along with the grow command.)
I really, really wouldn't try this without a backup, and I would make sure I was running a fairly recent 2.6 kernel, as the RAID expansion stuff was introduced in the 'teen releases and probably saw a number of bugfixes. I'd also try googling for stuff like "md raid migration" or somethin'. There were a few blog posts out there where people did exactly what you're looking for.
If the total device size is small enough, buy an external drive from somewhere and return it a few days later (after zeroing out the drive, of course.) Check for restocking fees etc...though even 15% on ~$350 (which is what you can get a 1TB hitachi external drive from BB for) ain't bad if you think of it as a 1-2 week "rental" and/or insurance...
then you need to mkfs, and if you run out of space you're screwed because you can't easily grow.
All of Linux's md raid modes are grow-able.
LVM2, XFS, and ext3 are all capable of not just expansion, but *online* expansion. With xfs, it's one command- xfs_grow -d. It automatically senses the new block device size and presto, you've got a larger file system.
BTDT two weeks ago when I added a drive to my RAID5 array, expanded the LVM2 physical volume, grew the logical volume, and then grew the XFS volume (I make the choice to run LVM2 on top of the array- I could have just as easily put XFS directly on the array device itself.) The only caveat is that you won't see the extra space until the resilvering is done.
I'm not saying it's equal to ZFS, but Linux's filesystems and volume management are a lot more capable than you're claiming, and everyone needs to calm down and realize that RAID is not ZFS, ZFS is not RAID, etc.
It wasn't that easy to set up a RAID in Linux the last time I tried (admittedly long ago), but even in comparison, setting up a RAID-Z in ZFS is just a single line: "zpool create mypool raidz disk4s2 disk5s2 disk6s2"
mdadm create -l 5 -n 4 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1 /dev/sde1
If you like living dangerously, you don't need to do anything else except put LVM2 on it and add an fstab entry; md automatically goes hunting for raid partitions when it is loaded, and the md superblock info contains all the info needed to assemble and array, no config needed. However, if you set up mdadm with information about the raid array, it'll behave more intelligently when things go wrong.
That said, ZFS is not "raid", and md is not a file system and volume manager. ZFS offers a lot you won't find anywhere else, but the basic lack of standard features found in ZFS compared to a large number of RAID and/or volume management systems means that ZFS has a ways to go: ZFS does not support increasing the number of drives in a pool, and you CANNOT migrate between any of the various vdevs. You cannot go from a single drive to a pair of mirrored drives, or from a single drive or mirror to RAIDZ. You cannot increase the number of drives in a RAIDZ set. Instead, they force you to add entire redundant vdevs to the pool. All of the aforementioned resilvering is stuff Linux RAID has been able to do for years (well, okay, the RAID 5 expansion stuff is a little new.)
I migrated a single drive to a mirrored array a couple months ago. Then I migrated that to 3-drive RAID5. Then I migrated that to a four-drive array. None of that would have been doable with ZFS.
However, from what I understand, Sun is working on the expansion stuff...and a defragment tool (thank god that, like SGI, they don't subscribe to the bullshit myth that modern filesystems don't get fragmented. It's not true with NTFS, it's not true with HFS+, and it sure as hell isn't true with ext2/3 OR reiserfs...I wish people would stop perpetuating that bullshit myth!)
The OLPC News website in the past months has build up a reputation for sharply criticizing the $100 laptop project headed up by Nicholas Negroponte.
Please, please, please stop calling it "the $100 laptop." With the current prices for anything less than a million units roughly twice that figure, it's hideously inaccurate.
When they get it down to $100 and stop charging wildly different prices based on order quantity (a scam since all the tooling is done, and they won't be placing individual orders with their manufacturers), you can call it the $100 laptop.
Those had a 56001 DSP along their motorola main CPU for extra mathematical oomph, and impressive realtime visual or sound effects.
The Quadra 660AV and 840AV had an AT&T DSP in it that handled all of the sound and video functions. It could also do voice recognition of any menu item, button, or a universal command set within a decent amount of time. It also had a telephone interface box which let it mimic a fax machine or data modem (and I say mimic, because it was horribly unreliable at the latter; fax transmissions were short enough that your chances were better), or behave as an answering machine.
There was also exactly ONE application that I remember for the DSP aside from what Apple used the DSP for: one could use the DSP to do fractals in a fraction of the time the 68040 processor could, though the DSP ran at about twice the clock speed (25mhz vs. 55mhz I believe.) In short: utterly useless, and it was discontinued after a year or two. It did have a clever feature or two, one of which was that it could load the ROM (for those of you who don't remember, all the system toolbox commands were in ROM, not on-disk) into RAM, which would suck several precious MB- but would dramatically and noticeably speed up the system. The functionality came via a third-party hack.
The best "feature", however, was its crashes. Given this was an old System-7/8/9 machine and 68040 based, it suffered from the usual stability problems, only multiplied by about ten-fold because of all the shit that was needed to handle the funky DSP graphics/sound/etc. The best part: the main CPU and the DSP would get out of sync during these crashes, and would feed garbage to each other. Kind of like catting /dev/random to the input of a 10-foot-tall milling machine, you have no idea what you're going to get, but it'll be impressive to watch.
Ask any 660AV/840AV owner. It was kind of like watching a dozen first-grader buggy logo scripts running, accompanied by the sound of a dozen Amigas crashing into a dozen Commodores whilest each was running a 'tracker' playing a corrupted MOD file, with pushy solos by a bored 6 year old Recorder player.
1. Clients (laptops) default installed wifi software (hint: Steve Jobs are you reading???) need a scanning mode which does not waste my time telling me about all the password or mac-address locked wifi basestations, and only advises me about open ones.
Leopard shows padlock icons next to locked networks. For at least two prior major OS revisions, you have the option to be told about open networks, and/or join them automatically.
Do you have any idea how much of a problem this is for IT people dealing with laptop-equipped employees, both from a security standpoint and a troubleshooting standpoint? (BTDT. User could not send mail half the time. Turns out his laptop was alternating between his network and his neighbor's. The neighbor's blocked outgoing SMTP.)
3. (Brain software/mindset change.) Americans need to stop reflexively calling sharing 'stealing'. You've been trained into this terminology by those who have already stolen everything and don't want you to get it back.
No, nerds need to stop reflexively assuming that common law doesn't apply to them. I remember 10 years ago listening to people justify [running exploits against / breaking into] computers they don't own, in ways eerily similar to how people justify using access points that do not belong to them that are connected to private networks that don't belong to them, which are connected to the internet via connections paid by someone other than them.
If I hand you the key to my car, that's "sharing". If I tell you "the key is on top of the left front tire, feel free to borrow it tomorrow", that's "sharing."
If I leave it in my driveway with the key in the ignition and the doors unlocked, that is stealing. And if you walk in my front door, your ass is still going to jail.
"I want to pick the licence that makes the most sense for what I want to do. And at this point in time, Version 2 matches what I think we want to do much, much better than Version 3,"
"I", or "we", Linus?
In the words of the great Tonto, "What do you mean WE, white man?"
Linux creator Linus Torvalds has used an interview being made public by the Linux Foundation
Superbanana has used a posting being made by Slashdot to complain about the lack of editorial skills on the Slashdot staff...yeesh.
You know what the FAA does when it has a situation that it knows will eventually result in a disaster costing hundreds of lives? They try to fix it. That's part of their job.
Actually, the FAA historically made a cost-benefit analysis before mandating anything, where cost is determined by how many people would be killed, and they have a $ figure for how much each death is worth; for some reasons, $30k is popping to mind, but I can't find a way to verify that claim.
They figure out a cost:potential-passengers-killed ratio when deciding whether or not to force airlines to do something. $20BN divided among even the number of people on an Airbus is far too high. Keep in mind that in the 1980's, the FAA seriously debated whether or not to mandate smoke detectors and fire extinguishers in aircraft. Yeah. You heard me right. Luckily, it was something like $30M saved vs. $10M spent...
The same calculations take place any time they think there's a part that might fail on a particular plane. If by their calculations the cost vs. lives saved ratio is too high, they don't do it.
Slashdot will ban you for doing exactly the same thing Scoble (well, the social network/whatever they called it) did. Go on, try using wget to crawl a story's comment thread, or hit the feeds more than once every two hours.
Hell, Slashdot bans you if you get modded down too much in too short a period of time, even if you get modded back up...that was cute.
Several of the world's most important tech companies, and lots of talented people, work for free at cost on the OLPC.
Huh? It's either one or the other- free, or at cost. "At cost" isn't "free". Which is it?
To improve your marriage, find a new activity you and your spouse both enjoy such as taking a pottery class
Gee, now where on earth did that spooky tip come from *cough*Ghost*cough*
Yeesh...where do they dig up these 'experts'?
So congratulations - your funny story saved you from sex!
You've got that backwards- it saved her from sex with him.
The wonderful thing about finding out someone is an asshole- is that you found out when you did- and not later. You know, like...after relationships, proposals, wedding bells, children.
If both genders were better at asshole detection, the divorce rate would plummet.