I have been quite happy for the last 5 or so years with register4less. They are cheap, have been very reliable with notifications, have nice privacy options for whois data, keep a domain on hold for a while after it expired (and let you renew it without additional fees) and you can use their DNS servers as well as your own (without extra fees in either case).
I just renewed 2 domains, and found I also had 2 expired domains that I no longer use. They were still on hold and register4less was waiting for the hold to expire or for me to tell them they can drop the hold.
For whatever reason, over the last 10 years, I have seen more power failures being caused by a UPS then being handled properly by one.
The idea seems to be good and usefull, but so far reality tells me that those devices do not have the kind of reliability that is needed.
One of my customers has their entire computer room wired up to a HUGE UPS, and has a few smaller ones in place for very important servers. The big UPS is supposed to keep them running for as long as power lasts, the small ones are to allow those servers to properly shutdown when power runs out on the main UPS.
In the last month, they had 2 major failures of the main UPS, resulting in a substantial amount of downtime. They cannot remember the last failure of mains power (I do, and it is a few years ago now)
My own company used to have a very nice IBM AS/400 with UPS (one made specifically for this machine), which failed during the one power failure we have had in the last couple of years here, not to mention it deciding to just switch off a few times over the years.
Another one of my customers runs a bunch of servers with redundant power supplies where each power supply has its own UPS. That setup sees to work a lot better already.
To me the story seems pretty simple:
Make sure your software infrastructure can deal well with the consequences of a power failure. Determine what would be an acceptable recovery time in case things go wrong and make sure you have the procedures in place to do such a recovery, and that it is well tested (and retested every so often). There is no amount of hardware redundancy that will be as effective for dealing with the consequences of power failures as this bit of software related efford.
Make sure you have redundant power supplies with a seperate UPS for each.
Consider a UPS as a means to be able to save your work and properly shutdown your machines. It is not something for actually keeping your machines running during a power failure, if that is really what you need, consider a generator instead.
Even when being half serious, one can be insightfull I would say.
And regardless, what grantparent post said points at a problem that is real and very serious, and that a substantial part of the US population is refusing/unable to see. Should I just conclude from your post that you are among that group?
Interestingly enough, FreeBSD 6.0 runs perfectly fine on my Dell Inspirion (3800, not a very recent machine, true) including power management, suspend, wireless (with wpa etc), I'd expect a modern Linux to not have much trouble with that either.
and the current generation of pdas look pretty horrible for trying to actually read a book.
The lower resolution is not a problem, and the screenwidth is actually very good for reading a lot.
That said, current generation of PDAs are not practical for this kind of use, which is a bit ironic.
I have used my old Palm III as a bookreader for quite a bit. Very low power consumption and easily replaced batteries made that quite viable, and it is a rather sturdy device (it still lives, my girlfriend uses it now) so its easy to take everywhere. My current zire uses way too much power for this kind of usage, and I can't replace the internal battery either, so that means carrying a chargepack or something like that with me, its just impractical.
Also, there's the matter of professionalism. The decision makers are going to look at the fact that the writers were juvenile enough to call the program THE GIMP
Its funny that you bring that up.. judging something on what it is named instead of on its functionality and quality really sounds very professional.
For as far as medical insurance goes, starting 1 jan 2006, medical insurance companies here are not allowed to refuse people (and are limited in what they can charge). This is already true for people below the income line for mandatory social health insurance now, and will apply to everyone after that date.
Other insurances might be a different issue however.
Heh, yeah, the baptist press is extremely likely to write a nice unbiassed article about this kind of thing...
I do understand that people can be against all cases of euthanasia because of religion (just be consistent with the 'thou shall not kill part' and apply it everywhere), no issue with that.
I do also understand the argument about euthanasia on people who are not able to make a well considered decision themselves, and the need to guard against that.
I do however suggest that before you judge the euthanasia related law in the Netherlands, you go inform yourself a lot better then reading a few articles from predominantly religious papers, or just decide that you don't like it based on belief. Bringing in arguments when you are as little informed as you are is just going to make you look very silly.
Let me start out by saying I don't like this database linking and red flag idea..
Instead, more effort may be put into making the existing institutions work more efficiently with less bureaucratic administration.
Which is exactly what is happening here. Existing information is used, but an addition is made to remove quite a bit of burocracy that prevented different organisations from informing eachother about potential problems.
That being said, if it weren't for this system you have now,
It is a one day old proposal. If it is actually implemented is another question, and past experience with such things tells us that that can take years and lots of discussion if at all. (ie, introducing a national ID card and requiring people by law to indentify themselves in specific cases has taken some 2 decades of discussion)
I honestly wouldn't mind living in your country either, but I am certain there would be quite an anti-American buzz in the community that I moved into,
You would be wrong there. There is a substantial amout of disagreement with US foreign policy in the Netherlands, but I have yet to see people hold that against individuals from American origin and I happen to know quite a few of them living here)
You have a valid point that Linux is lackign some applications for music production, but the situation is not as bad as you seem to think, not by far.
The problem is more that if it isn't Cubase, many people don't recognize it as a midi recorder/editor/sequencer. There are alternatives, that may not be as extended as Cubase is, but are quite suitable for most projects. The first that comes to mind is ROsegarden.
With regards to multitrack recording/editing, take a look at Audacity, it seems to do really well, and offers more features then many will need.
Maybe I am a bit old fashioned, I actually use a real mixer and a stack of effect equipment for recording (all physical equipment, not virtualized).. This may make the mentioned software a bit more acceptable.
But the problem remains. People do not look for the specific functionality they need and try to find a solution that matches it well, instead they look for the program they know, or by lack thereof, something extremely similar.
Assuming here are humans livign there, nope. Noone is expecting it to be perfect either. Many people hoiwever expect the USA to have grown up enough to understand that critisism can be valid and should be considered instead of being dismissed beforehand.
but putting this on the shoulders of the US solely is ridiculous. Gee, it might have something to do with the USSR, the weakened but evolving position of China at the time, the Korean people itself, it's proximity to Japan?
The 'Korean crisis' had lots to do with all those things indeed, and don't forget another important ingredient, Japan's behavior during the second world war.
The outcome and current stalemate however have a lot to do with US policies at the time, specifically the refusal to stop at the agreed (and recognized by the USA) border between North and South.
We had justified concerns about communism, much which did play out (yes, did)
Saying it did does not make it such. Tell me, which concerns were actually justified?
and we went overboard hunting down pink commies, but that is not to say that our ineptness also absolves everyone else for their wrongs.
Yes, the USA completely and utterly overreacted to the situation.
Communist satellite nations were far more involved than any ally of the US in the same time period, and just because the USSR is presently down a little, doesn't mean they washed their hands clean of their involvement either.
We were not talkign about the USSR and its allies, we were talkign about the USA and its actions. Stop using others to divert attention away from the mistakes the USA made. That others made mistakes as well does not change anything.
Really, good lord. Read some history. This is why some people call folks liberals, leftist, and un-America in the same breath, because you just lay EVERYTHING as the US's fault.
No, it is because there is a substantial group of people in the USA who cannot or do not want to understand the difference between crritisism and blame, and feel an urge to defend their country and its leaders regardless of the situation.
I have stated this before, thinking differetly, having an opinion that is not in line with the government, those are things that coem with this great concept called Freedom, somethign the USA is supposedly very involved with. The first ones you should be calling un-American are those that deny people this kind of Freedom.
I know it's in style for you maybe to be anti-US, but when we are asked for help, people bitch when we did nothing (e.g. Yugoslovia's war in its early years, Holocaust early years, Africa today, Iraq before the current war, Vietnam before the war, our initial response to Mao in China); then they bitch when we DO do something and things go badly.
Lets see...
Yugoslavia? Europe should have interfered there and could not decide on it. Noone is blaming the USA for unjustified intervention there (there is soem arguing about bombing the Chinese ambasy, but that is another story)
Holocaust? Uhm.. From what I gather, the American school system teaches that if the USA had interfered earlier there that a lot of problems could have been prevented. I think you will find that many Europeans disagree. I also think you may want to consider that popular support in the USA back then would have made this a rather difficult and probably pointless undertaking.
Africa today? Imho Africa needs to help itself draw some proper borders, and indeed needs some help from outside to get things done. No blame on the USA there really. Wha I do blame US companies for, is trying to proffit inmensely from the poverty of people in Africa, but that is another story.
Iraq? Most of the world would rather have wanted the USA to stay out there. WHat is more, many believe that the invasion is a breach of international law. It went wrong way before the invasion.
more specifically; they can hit Seoul with chemical weapons loaded in artillery shells. By all scenarios, in a war that involves North Korea, everyone in Seoul dies. Throw in nukes, they can hit Japan too.
That is just rubbish.
Of course they could, with their current technology even, cause major havoc in Seoul and indeed in Japan. They do not even need nukes for it.
But what is there in it for North Korea to go that way? Keeping Seoul around instead of wiping it out makes that they actually have 1. something to gain, and 2. something to put pressure with on the rest of the world (don't interfer or we'll wipe it out.. not that that is going to work well, but they'll try)
In other words, it makes perfect sense to threaten with such things, but it makes very little sense to actually do such things.
If the US knew that North Korea was going to hit South Korea or Japan with their massive stockpile of WMDs, I personally would hope that the US would do everything in its power to wipe North Korea off the face of the planet. Even if the terrible cost in lives those free societies would pay in an attack by North Korea is not enough to move you, the economic damage to the world economy (and thus the US economy) should.
Hmm.. what to be more afraid of.. The potential damage North Korea could cause in case it ewould attack South Korea and/or Japan? Or the USA changuing a country and part of those around it into radioactive rubble because 'they might have WMDs and maight even use them against someone'. I know whiuch one has the potentially biggest consequences, and recent hostory would suggest that the later is a lot more likely to happen then the first.
You state it quite well however, "If the US knew". Matter of fact is that 'knowing' plays an extremely small role in the actions of at least the current US government. I am pretty sure they know shit about what goes on in North Korea and what its plans are (not that I pretend to know)
That said, I think everyone is blowing this out of proportion. The only thing the new policy does is state what we ambiguously have suggested since we got nukes. Namely, the US won't blink at glassing over a nation if it truly feels threatened. This is just a deterrent to keep other nations from thinking that they US will stand by and take a first strike. Any sane president will merrily start pushing big red buttons before letting another nation slip in a nuclear first strike.
'We will always respond with overwhelming force on an attack on ourselves' will do perfectly fine for that, there is no need for talk about 'preemtive' strikes at all.
And heh, I think we may just disagree about what makes a sane president, it won't be a surprise to you if I say I believe the current one is not eh?
What is being blown out of proportion, and what I was responding to, is the threat posed by North Korea. That is not saying that they are no threat at all, they are, their southern neighbors have some experience with that. What current US policies there are most likely to do however is encourage the current leaders of NK to go on with what they are doing. Bad attention is still attention, and they don't get any of that otherwise.
I called them war loving people, not conservative nuts or whatever other names. The 'war loving' part you mean? well, that describes their behavior, I don't see any name calling there really.
Go read up about a certain mister McArthur and his involvement in the Korea crisis, and the consequences of his actions.
The conflict was indeed a 'UN police action', but that does not change anything.
It's also worth noting that while North Korea may or may not possess the ability to land a nuclear strike on the west coast of the continental US, China most certainly does, and we all know that China and N. Korea are essentially allies.
Which is utterly irrelevant to the discussion because China cannot survive such a thing itself. Sending in a few milion soldiers? sure, they have plenty of it. Assure their own destruction? right. Not to mention that China seems to have some other activities recently anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
I have been quite happy for the last 5 or so years with register4less. They are cheap, have been very reliable with notifications, have nice privacy options for whois data, keep a domain on hold for a while after it expired (and let you renew it without additional fees) and you can use their DNS servers as well as your own (without extra fees in either case).
I just renewed 2 domains, and found I also had 2 expired domains that I no longer use. They were still on hold and register4less was waiting for the hold to expire or for me to tell them they can drop the hold.
For whatever reason, over the last 10 years, I have seen more power failures being caused by a UPS then being handled properly by one.
The idea seems to be good and usefull, but so far reality tells me that those devices do not have the kind of reliability that is needed.
One of my customers has their entire computer room wired up to a HUGE UPS, and has a few smaller ones in place for very important servers. The big UPS is supposed to keep them running for as long as power lasts, the small ones are to allow those servers to properly shutdown when power runs out on the main UPS.
In the last month, they had 2 major failures of the main UPS, resulting in a substantial amount of downtime. They cannot remember the last failure of mains power (I do, and it is a few years ago now)
My own company used to have a very nice IBM AS/400 with UPS (one made specifically for this machine), which failed during the one power failure we have had in the last couple of years here, not to mention it deciding to just switch off a few times over the years.
Another one of my customers runs a bunch of servers with redundant power supplies where each power supply has its own UPS. That setup sees to work a lot better already.
To me the story seems pretty simple:
Even when being half serious, one can be insightfull I would say.
And regardless, what grantparent post said points at a problem that is real and very serious, and that a substantial part of the US population is refusing/unable to see. Should I just conclude from your post that you are among that group?
Probably because quite some of the people involved with snort run FreeBSD..
Security is not (just) a process Not that I disagree with what you are saying, but I disagree with the 'security is a process' statement.
SDK's are essentially free anyway and they work well; whether they are open source or closed source is totally irrelevant.
That is true only when you look at the initial cost and ignore anything after it.
Interestingly enough, FreeBSD 6.0 runs perfectly fine on my Dell Inspirion (3800, not a very recent machine, true) including power management, suspend, wireless (with wpa etc), I'd expect a modern Linux to not have much trouble with that either.
and the current generation of pdas look pretty horrible for trying to actually read a book.
The lower resolution is not a problem, and the screenwidth is actually very good for reading a lot.
That said, current generation of PDAs are not practical for this kind of use, which is a bit ironic.
I have used my old Palm III as a bookreader for quite a bit. Very low power consumption and easily replaced batteries made that quite viable, and it is a rather sturdy device (it still lives, my girlfriend uses it now) so its easy to take everywhere. My current zire uses way too much power for this kind of usage, and I can't replace the internal battery either, so that means carrying a chargepack or something like that with me, its just impractical.
Also, there's the matter of professionalism. The decision makers are going to look at the fact that the writers were juvenile enough to call the program THE GIMP
Its funny that you bring that up.. judging something on what it is named instead of on its functionality and quality really sounds very professional.
I am going to troll the fuck out of slashdot.
That's fine, I just hope you are not feeling very special because of it, trolling is the rule here.
Interestingly enough, the UK is also one of the few western countries that did not get affected by economic trouble in recent years.
For as far as medical insurance goes, starting 1 jan 2006, medical insurance companies here are not allowed to refuse people (and are limited in what they can charge). This is already true for people below the income line for mandatory social health insurance now, and will apply to everyone after that date.
Other insurances might be a different issue however.
Heh, yeah, the baptist press is extremely likely to write a nice unbiassed article about this kind of thing...
I do understand that people can be against all cases of euthanasia because of religion (just be consistent with the 'thou shall not kill part' and apply it everywhere), no issue with that.
I do also understand the argument about euthanasia on people who are not able to make a well considered decision themselves, and the need to guard against that.
I do however suggest that before you judge the euthanasia related law in the Netherlands, you go inform yourself a lot better then reading a few articles from predominantly religious papers, or just decide that you don't like it based on belief. Bringing in arguments when you are as little informed as you are is just going to make you look very silly.
Let me start out by saying I don't like this database linking and red flag idea..
Instead, more effort may be put into making the existing institutions work more efficiently with less bureaucratic administration.
Which is exactly what is happening here. Existing information is used, but an addition is made to remove quite a bit of burocracy that prevented different organisations from informing eachother about potential problems.
Hmm. sounds like a good plan :)
That being said, if it weren't for this system you have now,
It is a one day old proposal. If it is actually implemented is another question, and past experience with such things tells us that that can take years and lots of discussion if at all. (ie, introducing a national ID card and requiring people by law to indentify themselves in specific cases has taken some 2 decades of discussion)
I honestly wouldn't mind living in your country either, but I am certain there would be quite an anti-American buzz in the community that I moved into,
You would be wrong there. There is a substantial amout of disagreement with US foreign policy in the Netherlands, but I have yet to see people hold that against individuals from American origin and I happen to know quite a few of them living here)
I don not think our fundamental disagreement is about the state of the country or its leadership, but in how to deal with an insane person.
go deaf early or go insane listening to your coworkers chatter."
How about getting somewhat interested in human interaction instead of closing it off...
You have a valid point that Linux is lackign some applications for music production, but the situation is not as bad as you seem to think, not by far.
The problem is more that if it isn't Cubase, many people don't recognize it as a midi recorder/editor/sequencer. There are alternatives, that may not be as extended as Cubase is, but are quite suitable for most projects. The first that comes to mind is ROsegarden.
With regards to multitrack recording/editing, take a look at Audacity, it seems to do really well, and offers more features then many will need.
Maybe I am a bit old fashioned, I actually use a real mixer and a stack of effect equipment for recording (all physical equipment, not virtualized).. This may make the mentioned software a bit more acceptable.
But the problem remains. People do not look for the specific functionality they need and try to find a solution that matches it well, instead they look for the program they know, or by lack thereof, something extremely similar.
The US isn't perfect,
Assuming here are humans livign there, nope. Noone is expecting it to be perfect either. Many people hoiwever expect the USA to have grown up enough to understand that critisism can be valid and should be considered instead of being dismissed beforehand.
but putting this on the shoulders of the US solely is ridiculous. Gee, it might have something to do with the USSR, the weakened but evolving position of China at the time, the Korean people itself, it's proximity to Japan?
The 'Korean crisis' had lots to do with all those things indeed, and don't forget another important ingredient, Japan's behavior during the second world war.
The outcome and current stalemate however have a lot to do with US policies at the time, specifically the refusal to stop at the agreed (and recognized by the USA) border between North and South.
We had justified concerns about communism, much which did play out (yes, did)
Saying it did does not make it such. Tell me, which concerns were actually justified?
and we went overboard hunting down pink commies, but that is not to say that our ineptness also absolves everyone else for their wrongs.
Yes, the USA completely and utterly overreacted to the situation.
Communist satellite nations were far more involved than any ally of the US in the same time period, and just because the USSR is presently down a little, doesn't mean they washed their hands clean of their involvement either.
We were not talkign about the USSR and its allies, we were talkign about the USA and its actions. Stop using others to divert attention away from the mistakes the USA made. That others made mistakes as well does not change anything.
Really, good lord. Read some history. This is why some people call folks liberals, leftist, and un-America in the same breath, because you just lay EVERYTHING as the US's fault.
No, it is because there is a substantial group of people in the USA who cannot or do not want to understand the difference between crritisism and blame, and feel an urge to defend their country and its leaders regardless of the situation.
I have stated this before, thinking differetly, having an opinion that is not in line with the government, those are things that coem with this great concept called Freedom, somethign the USA is supposedly very involved with. The first ones you should be calling un-American are those that deny people this kind of Freedom.
I know it's in style for you maybe to be anti-US, but when we are asked for help, people bitch when we did nothing (e.g. Yugoslovia's war in its early years, Holocaust early years, Africa today, Iraq before the current war, Vietnam before the war, our initial response to Mao in China); then they bitch when we DO do something and things go badly.
Lets see...
Yugoslavia? Europe should have interfered there and could not decide on it. Noone is blaming the USA for unjustified intervention there (there is soem arguing about bombing the Chinese ambasy, but that is another story)
Holocaust? Uhm.. From what I gather, the American school system teaches that if the USA had interfered earlier there that a lot of problems could have been prevented. I think you will find that many Europeans disagree. I also think you may want to consider that popular support in the USA back then would have made this a rather difficult and probably pointless undertaking.
Africa today? Imho Africa needs to help itself draw some proper borders, and indeed needs some help from outside to get things done. No blame on the USA there really. Wha I do blame US companies for, is trying to proffit inmensely from the poverty of people in Africa, but that is another story.
Iraq? Most of the world would rather have wanted the USA to stay out there. WHat is more, many believe that the invasion is a breach of international law. It went wrong way before the invasion.
You see, you are not too well informe
more specifically; they can hit Seoul with chemical weapons loaded in artillery shells. By all scenarios, in a war that involves North Korea, everyone in Seoul dies. Throw in nukes, they can hit Japan too.
That is just rubbish.
Of course they could, with their current technology even, cause major havoc in Seoul and indeed in Japan. They do not even need nukes for it.
But what is there in it for North Korea to go that way? Keeping Seoul around instead of wiping it out makes that they actually have 1. something to gain, and 2. something to put pressure with on the rest of the world (don't interfer or we'll wipe it out.. not that that is going to work well, but they'll try)
In other words, it makes perfect sense to threaten with such things, but it makes very little sense to actually do such things.
If the US knew that North Korea was going to hit South Korea or Japan with their massive stockpile of WMDs, I personally would hope that the US would do everything in its power to wipe North Korea off the face of the planet. Even if the terrible cost in lives those free societies would pay in an attack by North Korea is not enough to move you, the economic damage to the world economy (and thus the US economy) should.
Hmm.. what to be more afraid of.. The potential damage North Korea could cause in case it ewould attack South Korea and/or Japan? Or the USA changuing a country and part of those around it into radioactive rubble because 'they might have WMDs and maight even use them against someone'.
I know whiuch one has the potentially biggest consequences, and recent hostory would suggest that the later is a lot more likely to happen then the first.
You state it quite well however, "If the US knew".
Matter of fact is that 'knowing' plays an extremely small role in the actions of at least the current US government. I am pretty sure they know shit about what goes on in North Korea and what its plans are (not that I pretend to know)
That said, I think everyone is blowing this out of proportion. The only thing the new policy does is state what we ambiguously have suggested since we got nukes. Namely, the US won't blink at glassing over a nation if it truly feels threatened. This is just a deterrent to keep other nations from thinking that they US will stand by and take a first strike. Any sane president will merrily start pushing big red buttons before letting another nation slip in a nuclear first strike.
'We will always respond with overwhelming force on an attack on ourselves' will do perfectly fine for that, there is no need for talk about 'preemtive' strikes at all.
And heh, I think we may just disagree about what makes a sane president, it won't be a surprise to you if I say I believe the current one is not eh?
What is being blown out of proportion, and what I was responding to, is the threat posed by North Korea. That is not saying that they are no threat at all, they are, their southern neighbors have some experience with that. What current US policies there are most likely to do however is encourage the current leaders of NK to go on with what they are doing. Bad attention is still attention, and they don't get any of that otherwise.
Think *embassies*. They are in foreign lands but they are sovereign territory.
Yes I know...
Is it really like you don't get what I am trying to say here?
Sure, they can attack Japan, comes nowhere near MAD, or even a hit against the USA itself now does it?
Oh you mean they can hit a friend and that the USA is going to feel upset about that? thats another story alltogether.
I called them war loving people, not conservative nuts or whatever other names. The 'war loving' part you mean? well, that describes their behavior, I don't see any name calling there really.
ah yes, North Korea was a product of the good ole US of A.
No, the current situation between it and the USA is a consequence of past behavior of the USA.
I believe you will find that the Korean war was a UNITED NATIONS conflict (police action). the US alone is not to blame
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War
Go read up about a certain mister McArthur and his involvement in the Korea crisis, and the consequences of his actions.
The conflict was indeed a 'UN police action', but that does not change anything.
It's also worth noting that while North Korea may or may not possess the ability to land a nuclear strike on the west coast of the continental US, China most certainly does, and we all know that China and N. Korea are essentially allies.
Which is utterly irrelevant to the discussion because China cannot survive such a thing itself. Sending in a few milion soldiers? sure, they have plenty of it. Assure their own destruction? right.
Not to mention that China seems to have some other activities recently anyway.