When writing finite bits to the disk sector, there is a finite probability that the resultant string of randomised bits MAY in fact generate something incriminating.
For example: (regardless of how unlikely this may seem), any string of random characters may well create a brand new wordfile on the computer by pure chance.. which contains legible words, which string together to form sentences which may in turn connect the previous owner of the hard disk with Al-Qaida, the Mafia, insider trading, un-patriotic activites, Linux 'development', or any manner of unsavory activities.
The larger the hard disk being randomly 'wiped' in this fashion, the greater the probability that some new and undesirable content would be created by chance.
I for one would NOT place my trust in such a tool, risking a lifetime of torment in Guantanimo Bay in exchange for the 'security' of having my hard disk cleaned prior to resale.
The solution ? One should purchase a new copy of the Windows 8 for the said hard disk, and install this on the disk. This would effectively wipe clean the disk of any previous content. The disk could then be disposed of cleanly, with a note that the new owner must purchase another legal copy of the Windows 8 before installing the disk.
"the idea of a device that can dispense death from the skies with total impunity seems rather bleak"
"Maybe I am too grumpy this morning."
Just consider that 40 years ago that we would have been dropping napalm from Thuds and BUFs and before that, carpet bombing with incendiaries - Dresden, Tokyo...
I think living in the middle east or in any muslim country tends to put you in their crosshairs. Can't you just shoot down the drowns with anti-aircraft guns or a shoulder fired missile?
No, because:
1. They fly awfully high. 2. Shoulder fired missiles like the Stinger are "heat seeking." The exhaust of drones are thermally attenuated through various means because of this.. 3. You have to actually see them - either on radar or visually. Since AlQ doesn't have radar, they rely on sight only. The paint schemes on these drones make them really difficult to see visually. 4. If you can't see them visually or on radar, can you hear them? At the heights they fly at and the low noise engine...that's a big-fat No.
We're supposed to be afraid of these douchebags? We're supposed to fear their engineering "prowess"? Is that what this is supposed to mean?
They make underpants bombs that won't even work under the best of circumstances. I grew up in the Cold War. I feared Russian engineering, because they actually could lob a *nuclear* tipped missile over the North Pole or from a submarine (they never solved the "launch from under water" thing, though). And the both the Bush and Obama administrations were calling these underpants bombs "sophisticated." Bullshit. Complete, utter bullshit. You know what's sophisticated? Over-the-horizon radar. ICBMs. Nuclear submarines. Tsar Bomba even if it was impractical.
What is not sophisticated: IEDs. ANFO bombs. Flying planes into buildings. These are not sophisticated. These can be pulled off by people of average intelligence and just enough insanity to believe in their bullshit cause.
"But they have a world-wide network of engineers!!!1111ONE@#$@#$R"
What a lot of crap. All the engineering in the world isn't going to help you if you can't implement your "master plan" and the only logistics that they seem capable of is ground fightin' and IEDs. Bring down drones? There are governments that have been throwing money at this problem and Iran got just *one* drone to show for all their work, and it's even disputable that they got it by jamming GPS (which is possible if you've got a loud enough transmitter and a crappy enough receiver). That's not much of a return on investment.
When all you have is a bunch of mentally-ill (because this kind of religious devotion is mental illness) engineers and suicidal foot-soldiers, you really don't have a lot of bright people. You have dolts. Dedicated, but not too bright. Because if they were bright... well... I'll leave you with this apropos quote:
"Daniel Dravot: You are going to become soldiers. A soldier does not think. He only obeys. Do you really think that if a soldier thought twice he'd give his life for queen and country? Not bloody likely."
Terrorism is the excuse. The 9/11 truthers have it wrong with regards to the "conspiracy". (saying that it's a conspiracy implies the PNAC/FPI is a secret group - it's not, they published and are proud of what they do) 9/11 was an actual terrorist attack, but the PNAC guys needed their "Pearl Harbor." Without that, none of this shit would have worked. It was just a bad coincidence that it happened while these guys were running the executive branch (the PNAC members list looks like the Bush administration simply lacking their patsy - Bush). Notice how things quickly progressed with gathering up power in the executive branch shortly after. The policy papers were already written ahead of time just in case (think tanks do this all the time, nothing surprising).
Am I one of those people who think our government bombed our own people like the 9/11 truthers say? Nope, they're nuts. Do I think the PNAC/FPI group grabbed the brass ring when it came around on the carousel? Yup.
If you read some of my earlier posts about the Romney campaign, they found another patsy in Mittens. While Mittens didn't win, Washington is an incestuous town when it comes to politics, and you can bet that some of Obama's advisers have real good friends on the the PNAC/FPI side.
You really don't have to dig deep to figure this out, they publish their own stuff and put it all on their web pages. No third party "analysts" needed.
Empire building. Totally ignoring what happened to all the unsupportable empires of the Great Game.
As if the US is any different.
Go read the About Us on the FPI site and the Mission Statement on the PNAC site. Somehow the US is going to be astride the entire planet, according to them.
>no assumptions that the situation will ever change except that Tesla will use more batteries:
FTFS "That assumes no other growth, no next gen model, nada."
Increased demand will make it profitable for economies of scale in manufacturing to take place, and to make Li cells cheaper, as has happened since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. And we'll have more of them.
FTFA:
The carmaker's rapid production scale-up has prompted Panasonic to expand capacity, by reopening previously idled plants, while simultaneously committing to build entirely new production lines.
Well, duh!
It's not like we're going to run out of Lithium, either. It's recyclable, first and foremost, and it's plentiful.
Clicking through to the article, it's not at all as sensationalist as the summary even though the article itself contains some BS. The summary says that we're going to suddenly run out because of the demand. No such thing is mentioned in the article itself.
Invest in battery manufacturers. That's the real take-away from this article. And the summary writer is a douchebag.
Ackshully, every single one of the Windows interfaces has been inferior to Workplace Shell.
Having used such in the past, I can tell you that there are definitely things you could do in WPS easily, but are impossible to do in Windows. Going from WPS to Win95 and above (even including everything post-vista) the Windows interfaces seem klunky in comparison.
Heck, even the command line terminal in Windows is inferior to everything out there. And don't give me any of that "but PowerShell" crap. OS/2 had Rexx.
Kubuntu to be sponsored by Blue Systems [Distributions] Posted Apr 10, 2012 17:33 UTC (Tue) by corbet
The Kubuntu project recently lost its sponsorship from Canonical, which is pursuing its fortunes in other areas. The project has now announced that it will be sponsored by Blue Systems instead. "Blue Systems sponsors a number of KDE projects and will encourage Kubuntu to follow the same successful formula as it has always had - community led, KDE focused, Ubuntu flavour." The actual extent of this sponsorship is not clear at this time.
But they really were caught off guard this weekend. He didn't follow the script like his advisors thought he should. Whether this really matters remains to be seen.
Even during Mitt Romney's candidacy Mittens had a fucking wb page *titled* "new american century* with much of the above philosophy basically cut-and-pasted. Which shouldn't be surprising since his foreign policy "brain trust" consisted of FPI bastards. Up to and including Dan Senor (FPI and PNAC alum) on Meet The Press saying that we should bomb Iran back then.
Read. It's not conspiracy theory when it's from their own mouths.
I wouldn't put it past these bastards to hire someone to detonate a sarin bomb in Damascus to gin up an excuse for an invasion. And now they're wondering what the fuck to do now that the President just said "Well, we should have Congress' input on this."
Fuck these guys for wanting to get us involved in another war where there is no winning, just more death.
But the "it was pot growers" idiocy on Fox was just sheer lunacy. If it really was, the other news outlets would have repeated it. But they didn't. Because the article wasn't actual news, but wild-ass speculation with weasel wording right in the title.
I couldn't figure out whether Ethanol Fueled's "anonymous" reply post was troll or not until I clicked the link. Ethanol Fueled's post needs more points and visibility.
Slashdot Mirror
I got modded up because it's a JerryLeeCooper.
That's why.
--
BMO
When writing finite bits to the disk sector, there is a finite probability that the resultant string of randomised bits MAY in fact generate something incriminating.
For example: (regardless of how unlikely this may seem), any string of random characters may well create a brand new wordfile on the computer by pure chance .. which contains legible words, which string together to form sentences which may in turn connect the previous owner of the hard disk with Al-Qaida, the Mafia, insider trading, un-patriotic activites, Linux 'development', or any manner of unsavory activities.
The larger the hard disk being randomly 'wiped' in this fashion, the greater the probability that some new and undesirable content would be created by chance.
I for one would NOT place my trust in such a tool, risking a lifetime of torment in Guantanimo Bay in exchange for the 'security' of having my hard disk cleaned prior to resale.
The solution ? One should purchase a new copy of the Windows 8 for the said hard disk, and install this on the disk. This would effectively wipe clean the disk of any previous content. The disk could then be disposed of cleanly, with a note that the new owner must purchase another legal copy of the Windows 8 before installing the disk.
In this situation - everyone wins.
--
BMO
"the idea of a device that can dispense death from the skies with total impunity seems rather bleak"
"Maybe I am too grumpy this morning."
Just consider that 40 years ago that we would have been dropping napalm from Thuds and BUFs and before that, carpet bombing with incendiaries - Dresden, Tokyo...
--
BMO
I think living in the middle east or in any muslim country tends to put you in their crosshairs. Can't you just shoot down the drowns with anti-aircraft guns or a shoulder fired missile?
No, because:
1. They fly awfully high.
2. Shoulder fired missiles like the Stinger are "heat seeking." The exhaust of drones are thermally attenuated through various means because of this..
3. You have to actually see them - either on radar or visually. Since AlQ doesn't have radar, they rely on sight only. The paint schemes on these drones make them really difficult to see visually.
4. If you can't see them visually or on radar, can you hear them? At the heights they fly at and the low noise engine...that's a big-fat No.
Drones aren't your dad's model aircraft.
--
BMO
We're supposed to be afraid of these douchebags? We're supposed to fear their engineering "prowess"? Is that what this is supposed to mean?
They make underpants bombs that won't even work under the best of circumstances. I grew up in the Cold War. I feared Russian engineering, because they actually could lob a *nuclear* tipped missile over the North Pole or from a submarine (they never solved the "launch from under water" thing, though). And the both the Bush and Obama administrations were calling these underpants bombs "sophisticated." Bullshit. Complete, utter bullshit. You know what's sophisticated? Over-the-horizon radar. ICBMs. Nuclear submarines. Tsar Bomba even if it was impractical.
What is not sophisticated: IEDs. ANFO bombs. Flying planes into buildings. These are not sophisticated. These can be pulled off by people of average intelligence and just enough insanity to believe in their bullshit cause.
"But they have a world-wide network of engineers!!!1111ONE@#$@#$R"
What a lot of crap. All the engineering in the world isn't going to help you if you can't implement your "master plan" and the only logistics that they seem capable of is ground fightin' and IEDs. Bring down drones? There are governments that have been throwing money at this problem and Iran got just *one* drone to show for all their work, and it's even disputable that they got it by jamming GPS (which is possible if you've got a loud enough transmitter and a crappy enough receiver). That's not much of a return on investment.
When all you have is a bunch of mentally-ill (because this kind of religious devotion is mental illness) engineers and suicidal foot-soldiers, you really don't have a lot of bright people. You have dolts. Dedicated, but not too bright. Because if they were bright... well... I'll leave you with this apropos quote:
--
BMO
No, say it isn't so!
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1996-01-23/
To update it to today, "So you're pitting your intelligence against the collective sex drive of everyone?"
--
BMO
Gmail interface? What's that?
IMAP FTW.
--
BMO
"One poster writes 'Yahoo has effectively destroyed the groups, completely, themselves.'"
No, they did that back in 2006, along with that stupid avatar stuff.
The 2006 diaspora was huge.
But it sure did reduce their traffic costs.
--
BMO
>So, it really was about terrorists in a way?
Terrorism is the excuse. The 9/11 truthers have it wrong with regards to the "conspiracy". (saying that it's a conspiracy implies the PNAC/FPI is a secret group - it's not, they published and are proud of what they do) 9/11 was an actual terrorist attack, but the PNAC guys needed their "Pearl Harbor." Without that, none of this shit would have worked. It was just a bad coincidence that it happened while these guys were running the executive branch (the PNAC members list looks like the Bush administration simply lacking their patsy - Bush). Notice how things quickly progressed with gathering up power in the executive branch shortly after. The policy papers were already written ahead of time just in case (think tanks do this all the time, nothing surprising).
Am I one of those people who think our government bombed our own people like the 9/11 truthers say? Nope, they're nuts. Do I think the PNAC/FPI group grabbed the brass ring when it came around on the carousel? Yup.
If you read some of my earlier posts about the Romney campaign, they found another patsy in Mittens. While Mittens didn't win, Washington is an incestuous town when it comes to politics, and you can bet that some of Obama's advisers have real good friends on the the PNAC/FPI side.
You really don't have to dig deep to figure this out, they publish their own stuff and put it all on their web pages. No third party "analysts" needed.
--
BMO
Those 3 laborers can also dead-head, apply fertilizer, identify disease, fix the sprinkler system, and harvest without damaging the product.
Among other things.
How much would a robot, that does all those things, cost now?
--
BMO
>why
Empire building. Totally ignoring what happened to all the unsupportable empires of the Great Game.
As if the US is any different.
Go read the About Us on the FPI site and the Mission Statement on the PNAC site. Somehow the US is going to be astride the entire planet, according to them.
They're nuts. And they have actual power.
--
BMO
Summary sez that...
>no assumptions that the situation will ever change except that Tesla will use more batteries:
FTFS "That assumes no other growth, no next gen model, nada."
Increased demand will make it profitable for economies of scale in manufacturing to take place, and to make Li cells cheaper, as has happened since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. And we'll have more of them.
FTFA:
Well, duh!
It's not like we're going to run out of Lithium, either. It's recyclable, first and foremost, and it's plentiful.
Clicking through to the article, it's not at all as sensationalist as the summary even though the article itself contains some BS. The summary says that we're going to suddenly run out because of the demand. No such thing is mentioned in the article itself.
Invest in battery manufacturers. That's the real take-away from this article. And the summary writer is a douchebag.
--
BMO
Rebecca Black Linux
http://sourceforge.net/projects/rebeccablackos/
Hannah Montana Linux...
http://hannahmontana.sourceforge.net/
My Little Pony Gnome theme...
http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/?content=144562
Unfortunately, Mattel is serious about its trademarks, so Barbie Linux doesn't exist (yet)(at least publicly)
Be afraid. Very afraid.
--
BMO
Actually, that will only install the default KDE with none of the Kubuntu defaults. Whether you want that or not is up to the user.
apt-get install kde-full kubuntu-desktop
installs the whole magilla.
--
BMO
>Dissing OS/2
Ackshully, every single one of the Windows interfaces has been inferior to Workplace Shell.
Having used such in the past, I can tell you that there are definitely things you could do in WPS easily, but are impossible to do in Windows. Going from WPS to Win95 and above (even including everything post-vista) the Windows interfaces seem klunky in comparison.
Heck, even the command line terminal in Windows is inferior to everything out there. And don't give me any of that "but PowerShell" crap. OS/2 had Rexx.
--
BMO
Ubuntu stopped giving money to Kubuntu, but Kubuntu is alive and well.
http://lwn.net/Articles/491498/rss
For those unwilling to click through:
Kubuntu to be sponsored by Blue Systems
[Distributions] Posted Apr 10, 2012 17:33 UTC (Tue) by corbet
The Kubuntu project recently lost its sponsorship from Canonical, which is pursuing its fortunes in other areas. The project has now announced that it will be sponsored by Blue Systems instead. "Blue Systems sponsors a number of KDE projects and will encourage Kubuntu to follow the same successful formula as it has always had - community led, KDE focused, Ubuntu flavour." The actual extent of this sponsorship is not clear at this time.
--
BMO
Oh hey, it's a meme from 10 years ago.
You can make KDE look like whatever you want, guy. I've had people ask me "what's that gtk theme" I was using.
But then you're probably one of those people still with the teletubby wallpaper and fisher-price theme on your XP machine.
--
BMO
" it is simply the standard way of communicating."
No, no it isn't.
--
BMO
Indeed.
But they really were caught off guard this weekend. He didn't follow the script like his advisors thought he should. Whether this really matters remains to be seen.
--
BMO
Look at who signed this.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/experts-obama-here-what-do-syria_751267.html
The same old bunch of neocon bastards that lied us into Iraq as far back as the "Open Letter to Bill Clinton back in 1998.
http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm
http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm
And really, read the rest of the PNAC site.
PNAC morphed into the Foreign Policy Initiative
http://www.foreignpolicyi.org/about/staff
http://www.foreignpolicyi.org/about
Even during Mitt Romney's candidacy Mittens had a fucking wb page *titled* "new american century* with much of the above philosophy basically cut-and-pasted. Which shouldn't be surprising since his foreign policy "brain trust" consisted of FPI bastards. Up to and including Dan Senor (FPI and PNAC alum) on Meet The Press saying that we should bomb Iran back then.
Read. It's not conspiracy theory when it's from their own mouths.
I wouldn't put it past these bastards to hire someone to detonate a sarin bomb in Damascus to gin up an excuse for an invasion. And now they're wondering what the fuck to do now that the President just said "Well, we should have Congress' input on this."
Fuck these guys for wanting to get us involved in another war where there is no winning, just more death.
--
BMO
Oh hay, an actual intelligent reply.
I totally agree with your second paragraph.
But the "it was pot growers" idiocy on Fox was just sheer lunacy. If it really was, the other news outlets would have repeated it. But they didn't. Because the article wasn't actual news, but wild-ass speculation with weasel wording right in the title.
--
BMO
Sarcasm and parody is not troll.
It's +1 insightful or +1 funny.
--
BMO
And you and the previous guy need your sarcasm meters recalibrated and then go read EF's post again.
--
BMO
Fox "News" is bad for your brain. Honest to shit.
I couldn't figure out whether Ethanol Fueled's "anonymous" reply post was troll or not until I clicked the link. Ethanol Fueled's post needs more points and visibility.
Forehead.picard.gif
--
BMO
This is marked troll, but consider that Skype has been taken from a distributed system to a system with a central server farm in Redmond.
Totally more inefficient for users (relaying makes Skype suck more), but much more efficient for TLAs.
And considering recent events (and events over the past 20 years, really) it's common sense.
--
BMO