Many thanks for proving what I've suspected for a long time -- that Slashdot moderation is based more on the "good ol' boys" network than on actual substance, where those with mod points abuse their privilege by modding up their friends and modding down those who don't agree with their friends. Then when someone else not involved either way who is not part of the network has a post that is deserving of a positive mod, there are no more mod points to give out because they've been wasted.
Then again, why the hell am I even bothering to waste my time replying to someone who doesn't have the balls to post with his real name?
No, I'm sure we agree. We're just being a bit too detail oriented on the wording that was used.:)
You can never prevent the need for any kind of rebuild.
Actually, I am firmly of the belief that all Windows PCs should be rebuilt at least once per year due to the inherent problems with Windows and because of the need to clean up DLLs and so forth. That attitude has changed a bit since Windows 2000, which I think is the best Windows release (not that that's saying much), but when running Windows 9x I always wiped my system every six months just because... well... it's Windows. (Meanwhile, I have some Solaris builds that have been running from their original OS builds for over three years.)
Oh, my! The TripMater Monkey fans are out in force today! I make a post against TMM and I get slapped with an "overrated" even though what I said it 100% accurate!
Yes, June and the troll moderators with nothing better to do are busting out all over!
30 Second Hate? Are you referring to Fox News or TripMater Monkey's comments whenever the topics of Fox News or the Bush Adminsitration pop up?
And before you think I'm trolling, look throughout his posting history. He has a clear hatred for both of them. His posts when not merely sarcastic are almost purely venomous, regardless of how insightful the Slashdot groupthink thinks they are. If you want to see 30 seconds of hate, just read TMM's posts regarding Fox or Dubya.
stop the George Orwell Party before it's too late!
So... we have to stop either the Geroge Orwell Party or the We Hate Everything Military Or Capitalist party. Ack! Decisions, decisions. Sadly, none of the other options are truly viable.
Very nicely said and right on the mark. Rather than the +5 insightful that you deserve, you can expect to get smacked with some kind of negative mod because you went against a Slashdot favorite.
I do find it somewhat amusing, however, that every time there is a post made that has anything negative against TMM, someone comes up to defend him with (almost always) the "Jealous much?" cliché, which shows an arrogance that rivals TMM himself. Yet whenever a thread like this pops up, that are continual denials to any statement that he has so-called "fan boys".
Modern rootkits cannot be removed without booting from "known-good" media.
And that comes down to nothing more than installing software because a dialog box pops up. (I'm assuming that you're referring to Sony's recent blunder -- one of many.)
Once your system is owned, unless it is by a script kiddie du jour, you *have* to wipe and reformat.
Which is the perfect time to wise up and start being proactive instead of reactive.
Keep in mind that most of those results are corporate PCs, not home users.
And why? Because corporate IT people are not taking the proper precautions - for whatever reasons - to protect the PCs that they're responsible for. Whether it comes to stopping the ability for people to install software or forcing an automated anti-virus/anti-spyware program or installing web filters (which I know go over so-o-o-o well on Slashdot), the simple fact is that keeping a PC free from this crap is not difficult. It might be painful initially, and yes it might cost a lot of IT dollars to rebuild everyone's PC. But if a corporation is having such a problem with spyware, there are numerous actions that they can take, all be it drastic, to clean up the situation and prevent it from happening again. No, the users won't be happy, but last I checked their employement agreement did not include "You have the right to use a company-owned PC as you see fit."
In the computing world, where infections are rampant, preventative action should only be one tool in your arsenal.
And where did I say that prevention is to be the sole method of defense?
And of course I prove myself to be correct because my inital post got hit with the "Flamebait" mod because someone disagreed with what I had to say. Nothing like being anti-censorship -- unless you're censoring those with whom you don't agree. Welcome to Slashdot.
Although that might be a quick-and-clean way of restoring your system in the event of a catastrophic infection (yes, I admit that phrase sounds weird), it's absolutely ridiculous to say that the only way to insure safety is to make an image. Bullshit. It's called "preventative actions."
* After the system is installed, the first thing should be to install AdAware and Spybot, then immunize the system.
* Keep the AdAware and Spybot signatures up to date with regular scans. (No, it's not that difficult. It just takes discipline.)
* Don't install every f**king toolbar imaginable because you like cutesy features that you really don't need.
* If you have broadband, get a router even if you only have one PC although most broadband ISPs now include combination router/modems.
* Most ISPs also offer free or discounted anti-virus scanners with free or discounted subscriptions. For example, Comcast customers get McAfee anti-virus for free. The updates are free as well. There is absolutely no excuse (minus stupidity, ignorance, or both) for any Comcast broadband customer to not have McAfee AV on each PC. (Leave comments about stupid McAfee mistakes out of it, please.)
And those are only a few small things that can be done to prevent the need for any kind of rebuild. The "An ounce of prevention..." comes to mind.
knowing what they know, they must have known they were on a fool's errand...
Either that or they were vainly hoping to be able to clean it off and then spin it to make it seem as though Windows is not as vulnerable as others think it is. "See? We were able to clean it off! So, knock it off with the claims of Windows insecurity!"
Oh, by the way, editors, bulleted lists don't appear to be putting in the bullets, hence why I put in my own asterisks! (Running Firefox 1.5.0.4)
That's because millions of Americans have learned that they can't trust any of the other U.S. news services. The fraudulent CBS documents that became the bane of Dan Rather is but one of the recent incidents that show how much the U.S. news spins news to their political ideology, which of course is not favorable to the current administration. ABC reporters have actually admitted on the ABC News web site (most likely removed by now) that they looked for ways to spin news stories during the 2004 election to make a news story look bad for G.W., regardless of whether he already looked bad in it or not! So, why are they given more credibility than Fox?
News organizations are not unbiased and I don't think they ever have been. But for some reason major news outlets are clearly biased towards the left. Yet here comes Fox News, which shows a clear bias to the right, and suddenly it's not a viable news or opinion source. Why? Because it leans to the right? Suddenly it has no ability to point out what the other news outlets won't point out? Suddenly it's appalling that they put a right spin on news while the other outlets can get away with putting a left spin on news? One station out of how many cable news channels has a right-leaning bias and everyone in Slashdot is up in arms about it. Absolutely unbelievable.
Whether Fox is right or wrong is inconsequential, and frankly I don't watch Fox News because it's too much opinion, not enough news for my tastes. But the hypocrisy from the left and its venomous supporters like TripMaster Monkey with respect to Fox news is disgusting in its own right...no pun intended.
I know sit back and wait for the venomous replies from Slashdot's leftist majority as well as the negative mods from the Fox haters because I dared to go against the Slashdot groupthink.
Mod me down. I don't care. I'm sick and tired of seeing such ridiculous hypocrisy on Slashdot coming from a group of people that CONTINUALLY bitch about how "information needs to be free" (but only when it comes from a left-leaning source), how differing ideas need to be respected (unless the ideas come from a right-leaning point of view), and how censorship is evil (unless you're censoring right-leaning opinions).
Okay, fair enough. I don't dispute the data. I just don't believe that there is any way at this point to prove definitively what is causing it, like Al Gore and his fringe cronies are claiming they can do from less than 100 years of data. But I also don't necessarily see any harm in trying to reduce what damage we could be doing through everyday methods like recycling.
I think the point that he so ineloquently stated is that Al Gore and his followers are just as guilty of eco-extremism as Bush and his followers are as guilty of corporate-extremism. Just because Al Gore is blinded by his hatred for modern man and most Slashdotters are of his particular political party does not mean that he's absolutely correct. He's an extremist; but, at least I refuse to lump all environmentalists with his extremism.
On the opposite side, however, those of us who do NOT agree with Al Gore are automatically tagged as those who want to destroy the atmosphere in the name of the all-mighty dollar. It's completely hypocritical to despise when the right vilifies the extremist left but accept when the left vilifies the extremist right; yet that's what's most likely going to happen not only throughout this thread but also in this political cartoon contest.
Even though I'm a staunch, evil Republican, I'm also a staunch conservationist. I do not accept the extremist, global warming theories that Al Gore and the majority of Slashdotters take as gospel. Even so, I make sure to recycle everything from plastic to office paper, newspapers, and cardboard; I make sure to keep my car properly tuned and maintained to maximize my fuel efficiency; I complain to corporations who make products that can be recycled but aren't, such as the Brita water filters; but I guarantee that I will be lumped in with the anti-environmentalist crowd because of my political affiliation and because I think that Al Gore is a freakin' nutcase with too much time on his hands and too much exporsure to abuse.
That's the problem with Slashdot and topics that intermingle politics with science. Anyone with any inclination to doubt the extremist beliefs of people like Al Gore and TripMaster Monkey is automatically tagged as anti-environment, which is complete BS, just like anyone who says that we need to lower pollution and sign Kyoto (which I am fervently against because of the way it singles out the U.S.) is suddenly tagged as a tree hugger.
And to prove that even further, I guarantee that I'll be modded as troll or flamebait, even though there are thousands if not tens of thousands of posts in Slashdot's archive to prove this. After all, anyone who dares to challenge the Slashdot groupthink is vilified because that's an acceptable practice, although the opposite is not. So be it.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to take my over-flowing, recycling bin out for collection tomorrow and take several bags of shredded office paper down to my township's collection facility. Yessir, just another evil, Republican doing his part to further ruin the environment.
I agree with a poster above that this shouldn't be listed under "funny" as all of those mistakes cost well over 1,000 people their lives, if I remember the article correctly. But it seemed to focus on the fact that people's lives were lost in just about all of those. I would have placed a number of other engineering mistakes in that list just because of the nature of the mistake.
For example, the bridge (the name of which I can't remember) from the early part of the 20th century that bent and twisted under high wind until it finally just fell apart. Loss of life? I don't believe so, but it was a spectacular destruction.
The Johnstown Flood, perhaps? A lot of people were killed in that flood, and it was caused by engineering of a sort. The dam itself seemed to be stable until a lot of critical components, such as iron rods, were replaced with such highly stable components as dirt and manure, at least according to various web sites and documentaries. Sure, that wasn't a fault of the original design, but the "remodeling" is most likely a very important factor that resulted in the deaths of over 2,200 people.
I found it particularly interesting that the article mentioned how something happened 200 years before Titanic then failed to mention the Titanic itself. Based on the documentaries I've seen, the bolts that were used to hold the steel plates together were cheaply made and severely weakened under the frigid water of the north Atlantic. That was an engineering/design flaw from the beginning.
New Orleans. Oh, yeah! Let's design and build a city with an ocean on one side and a lake on the other and - here's the clincher - we'll make it below sea level! Yeah, baby! Party on! Enough said.
Seriously. I don't know what criteria this person used for the "worst" engineering mistakes, but it's clear to me at least that he really doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.
I have several points which shoot your statement down, at least with me:
A. I have absolutely no need for 750GB hard drives. I'm not into ripping movies to DIVX files nor am I looking to (for some odd reason) pirate every MP3 that's available on Usenet, like some Slashdotters something appear to like doing.
B. You're assuming that I would have need for all 750GB of storage to be backed up, which I don't. If I have need for that much storage that requires retension, I'll dump multiple copies them off to other media with parity files. If I ever did require that much storage, it would probably be for CDs or DVDs that I already own, so it would be no problem to fill up that much data again.
C. A DLT7000 drive backsup at about 10MB/sec. 750GB would take about 20 hours to backup locally, far less than my three-month retension time.
D. You're equating me with a Joe User. I'm careful about what I delete and I know what the "Recycle Bin" is for. It's been quite some time since I've deleted files accidentally that required a restore or rebuild. In fact... let me think... oh, I've *never* had to do a restore of my personal files!
E. I'd most likely purchase a second drive, enclose it in an external FireWire enclosure, and copy my new/modified data over to it once a month or so... in combination with tape backups.
I welcome you to come over here and see my Sun Blade 100 with both a DDS-4 and newly-added, DLT7000 drive attached to it that I use to back up my documents, photos, and other important files on a monthly basis with a three month retention. I guess these three boxes of DDS tapes and dozen DLT IV tapes are just an illusion.
Thou mayest go back to fornicating with thyself now.
Even a redundant RAID would be inexpensive enough for most people. Frankly, I question any corporate entitiy that uses IDE as an enterprise, data storage solution, but if it's the most feasible alternative, two drives in a mirrored configuration is still more acceptable than a drive by itself.
Then you shouldn't be buying such a large hard drive if you can't afford to lose the data that's on it without redundancy or archiving capabilities. That's like buying a luxury car when you can't afford insurance for it.
You've never heard of this thing called a "backup", I take it?
Seriously, there is no reason whatsoever for anyone to lose any data. Even if it means forking over the money for a tape backup and tapes, if you lose any data due to a drive failure you have no one to blame but yourself. If it's important, build a RAID. If its critical, build a RAID with some kind of tape or other backup.
Yeah, I know, this is "Well, no shit, Sherlock" territory, but it always irks me when someone talks about losing data because there's no real need for losing any data, particularly if it's important.
Of course, if getting that data back is a simple task of downloading (again) from alt.binaries.multimedia.erotica, that's a different situation.:)
You're forgetting the lawyers, though. Can you imagine what malpractice lawyers are going to think? Imagine them trying to sue a doctor who botched a remote surgery in a country with no kind of extradition treaty! I think that the trial lawyers of America would fight this more than the doctors if the goal is to "internationalize" medicine. Allowing remote surgeries will completely screw up many lawyer's ability to go for those higly lucrative malpractice lawsuits if the doctor is outside of the country's borders. But I'll bet that they would fight like crazy to allow it to be used domestically where the doctor and patient are both in the same country because of the ease of filing a lawsuit.
Personally, with the exception of minor, routine surgery, there is no frickin' way I'd want anyone but a real doctor and real nurses right there with me. Even the slightest possibility of a network dropout while the scalpel is cutting is terrifying to say the least. I don't care how much redundancy there is between me and the remote doctor. There is no way to 100% guarantee a solid connection at any given time, although I'm sure that a number of/.ers would like to try to convince me otherwise. At least with a doctor right there I can hear him say, "Oops!" instead of trusting some doctor who can mute his microphone from a thousand miles away -- and, damn it, they better guarantee <1 ms response time!:)
Honestly, I think that you asked the right question, but you asked it the wrong way.
Slashdot Mirror
Many thanks for proving what I've suspected for a long time -- that Slashdot moderation is based more on the "good ol' boys" network than on actual substance, where those with mod points abuse their privilege by modding up their friends and modding down those who don't agree with their friends. Then when someone else not involved either way who is not part of the network has a post that is deserving of a positive mod, there are no more mod points to give out because they've been wasted.
Then again, why the hell am I even bothering to waste my time replying to someone who doesn't have the balls to post with his real name?
Coming from he who didn't have the chutzpah to post with his real account. { rolling eyes }
I think, but am not sure, that we agree.
:)
... well ... it's Windows. (Meanwhile, I have some Solaris builds that have been running from their original OS builds for over three years.)
No, I'm sure we agree. We're just being a bit too detail oriented on the wording that was used.
You can never prevent the need for any kind of rebuild.
Actually, I am firmly of the belief that all Windows PCs should be rebuilt at least once per year due to the inherent problems with Windows and because of the need to clean up DLLs and so forth. That attitude has changed a bit since Windows 2000, which I think is the best Windows release (not that that's saying much), but when running Windows 9x I always wiped my system every six months just because
Oh, my! The TripMater Monkey fans are out in force today! I make a post against TMM and I get slapped with an "overrated" even though what I said it 100% accurate!
Yes, June and the troll moderators with nothing better to do are busting out all over!
30 Second Hate? Are you referring to Fox News or TripMater Monkey's comments whenever the topics of Fox News or the Bush Adminsitration pop up?
... we have to stop either the Geroge Orwell Party or the We Hate Everything Military Or Capitalist party. Ack! Decisions, decisions. Sadly, none of the other options are truly viable.
And before you think I'm trolling, look throughout his posting history. He has a clear hatred for both of them. His posts when not merely sarcastic are almost purely venomous, regardless of how insightful the Slashdot groupthink thinks they are. If you want to see 30 seconds of hate, just read TMM's posts regarding Fox or Dubya.
stop the George Orwell Party before it's too late!
So
Very nicely said and right on the mark. Rather than the +5 insightful that you deserve, you can expect to get smacked with some kind of negative mod because you went against a Slashdot favorite.
I do find it somewhat amusing, however, that every time there is a post made that has anything negative against TMM, someone comes up to defend him with (almost always) the "Jealous much?" cliché, which shows an arrogance that rivals TMM himself. Yet whenever a thread like this pops up, that are continual denials to any statement that he has so-called "fan boys".
Modern rootkits cannot be removed without booting from "known-good" media. And that comes down to nothing more than installing software because a dialog box pops up. (I'm assuming that you're referring to Sony's recent blunder -- one of many.)
Once your system is owned, unless it is by a script kiddie du jour, you *have* to wipe and reformat.
Which is the perfect time to wise up and start being proactive instead of reactive.
Keep in mind that most of those results are corporate PCs, not home users.
And why? Because corporate IT people are not taking the proper precautions - for whatever reasons - to protect the PCs that they're responsible for. Whether it comes to stopping the ability for people to install software or forcing an automated anti-virus/anti-spyware program or installing web filters (which I know go over so-o-o-o well on Slashdot), the simple fact is that keeping a PC free from this crap is not difficult. It might be painful initially, and yes it might cost a lot of IT dollars to rebuild everyone's PC. But if a corporation is having such a problem with spyware, there are numerous actions that they can take, all be it drastic, to clean up the situation and prevent it from happening again. No, the users won't be happy, but last I checked their employement agreement did not include "You have the right to use a company-owned PC as you see fit."
In the computing world, where infections are rampant, preventative action should only be one tool in your arsenal.
And where did I say that prevention is to be the sole method of defense?
And of course I prove myself to be correct because my inital post got hit with the "Flamebait" mod because someone disagreed with what I had to say. Nothing like being anti-censorship -- unless you're censoring those with whom you don't agree. Welcome to Slashdot.
You're new here, aren't you? His karma whoring is all but legendary in the pages of Slashdot history. :)
- * After the system is installed, the first thing should be to install AdAware and Spybot, then immunize the system.
- * Keep the AdAware and Spybot signatures up to date with regular scans. (No, it's not that difficult. It just takes discipline.)
- * Don't install every f**king toolbar imaginable because you like cutesy features that you really don't need.
- * If you have broadband, get a router even if you only have one PC although most broadband ISPs now include combination router/modems.
- * Most ISPs also offer free or discounted anti-virus scanners with free or discounted subscriptions. For example, Comcast customers get McAfee anti-virus for free. The updates are free as well. There is absolutely no excuse (minus stupidity, ignorance, or both) for any Comcast broadband customer to not have McAfee AV on each PC. (Leave comments about stupid McAfee mistakes out of it, please.)
And those are only a few small things that can be done to prevent the need for any kind of rebuild. The "An ounce of prevention..." comes to mind.knowing what they know, they must have known they were on a fool's errand...
Either that or they were vainly hoping to be able to clean it off and then spin it to make it seem as though Windows is not as vulnerable as others think it is. "See? We were able to clean it off! So, knock it off with the claims of Windows insecurity!"
Oh, by the way, editors, bulleted lists don't appear to be putting in the bullets, hence why I put in my own asterisks! (Running Firefox 1.5.0.4)
That's because millions of Americans have learned that they can't trust any of the other U.S. news services. The fraudulent CBS documents that became the bane of Dan Rather is but one of the recent incidents that show how much the U.S. news spins news to their political ideology, which of course is not favorable to the current administration. ABC reporters have actually admitted on the ABC News web site (most likely removed by now) that they looked for ways to spin news stories during the 2004 election to make a news story look bad for G.W., regardless of whether he already looked bad in it or not! So, why are they given more credibility than Fox?
News organizations are not unbiased and I don't think they ever have been. But for some reason major news outlets are clearly biased towards the left. Yet here comes Fox News, which shows a clear bias to the right, and suddenly it's not a viable news or opinion source. Why? Because it leans to the right? Suddenly it has no ability to point out what the other news outlets won't point out? Suddenly it's appalling that they put a right spin on news while the other outlets can get away with putting a left spin on news? One station out of how many cable news channels has a right-leaning bias and everyone in Slashdot is up in arms about it. Absolutely unbelievable.
Whether Fox is right or wrong is inconsequential, and frankly I don't watch Fox News because it's too much opinion, not enough news for my tastes. But the hypocrisy from the left and its venomous supporters like TripMaster Monkey with respect to Fox news is disgusting in its own right...no pun intended.
I know sit back and wait for the venomous replies from Slashdot's leftist majority as well as the negative mods from the Fox haters because I dared to go against the Slashdot groupthink.
Mod me down. I don't care. I'm sick and tired of seeing such ridiculous hypocrisy on Slashdot coming from a group of people that CONTINUALLY bitch about how "information needs to be free" (but only when it comes from a left-leaning source), how differing ideas need to be respected (unless the ideas come from a right-leaning point of view), and how censorship is evil (unless you're censoring right-leaning opinions).
Okay, fair enough. I don't dispute the data. I just don't believe that there is any way at this point to prove definitively what is causing it, like Al Gore and his fringe cronies are claiming they can do from less than 100 years of data. But I also don't necessarily see any harm in trying to reduce what damage we could be doing through everyday methods like recycling.
it is still hotly debated whether this is because of CO2 emissions, natural cycles, volcanoes, sunspots, or whatever
Oh, for crying out loud! You know very well that the blame game you state above is what I was referring to.
I think the point that he so ineloquently stated is that Al Gore and his followers are just as guilty of eco-extremism as Bush and his followers are as guilty of corporate-extremism. Just because Al Gore is blinded by his hatred for modern man and most Slashdotters are of his particular political party does not mean that he's absolutely correct. He's an extremist; but, at least I refuse to lump all environmentalists with his extremism.
On the opposite side, however, those of us who do NOT agree with Al Gore are automatically tagged as those who want to destroy the atmosphere in the name of the all-mighty dollar. It's completely hypocritical to despise when the right vilifies the extremist left but accept when the left vilifies the extremist right; yet that's what's most likely going to happen not only throughout this thread but also in this political cartoon contest.
Even though I'm a staunch, evil Republican, I'm also a staunch conservationist. I do not accept the extremist, global warming theories that Al Gore and the majority of Slashdotters take as gospel. Even so, I make sure to recycle everything from plastic to office paper, newspapers, and cardboard; I make sure to keep my car properly tuned and maintained to maximize my fuel efficiency; I complain to corporations who make products that can be recycled but aren't, such as the Brita water filters; but I guarantee that I will be lumped in with the anti-environmentalist crowd because of my political affiliation and because I think that Al Gore is a freakin' nutcase with too much time on his hands and too much exporsure to abuse.
That's the problem with Slashdot and topics that intermingle politics with science. Anyone with any inclination to doubt the extremist beliefs of people like Al Gore and TripMaster Monkey is automatically tagged as anti-environment, which is complete BS, just like anyone who says that we need to lower pollution and sign Kyoto (which I am fervently against because of the way it singles out the U.S.) is suddenly tagged as a tree hugger.
And to prove that even further, I guarantee that I'll be modded as troll or flamebait, even though there are thousands if not tens of thousands of posts in Slashdot's archive to prove this. After all, anyone who dares to challenge the Slashdot groupthink is vilified because that's an acceptable practice, although the opposite is not. So be it.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to take my over-flowing, recycling bin out for collection tomorrow and take several bags of shredded office paper down to my township's collection facility. Yessir, just another evil, Republican doing his part to further ruin the environment.
*sigh*
I think you missed the real cause -- the IWNHTM Syndrome.
It Will NeverHappen To Me
That's the one!
The reason why is irrelevant. The fact that someone still went ahead and did it as per a thought-out design still makes it an engineering mistake.
I agree with a poster above that this shouldn't be listed under "funny" as all of those mistakes cost well over 1,000 people their lives, if I remember the article correctly. But it seemed to focus on the fact that people's lives were lost in just about all of those. I would have placed a number of other engineering mistakes in that list just because of the nature of the mistake.
For example, the bridge (the name of which I can't remember) from the early part of the 20th century that bent and twisted under high wind until it finally just fell apart. Loss of life? I don't believe so, but it was a spectacular destruction.
The Johnstown Flood, perhaps? A lot of people were killed in that flood, and it was caused by engineering of a sort. The dam itself seemed to be stable until a lot of critical components, such as iron rods, were replaced with such highly stable components as dirt and manure, at least according to various web sites and documentaries. Sure, that wasn't a fault of the original design, but the "remodeling" is most likely a very important factor that resulted in the deaths of over 2,200 people.
I found it particularly interesting that the article mentioned how something happened 200 years before Titanic then failed to mention the Titanic itself. Based on the documentaries I've seen, the bolts that were used to hold the steel plates together were cheaply made and severely weakened under the frigid water of the north Atlantic. That was an engineering/design flaw from the beginning.
New Orleans. Oh, yeah! Let's design and build a city with an ocean on one side and a lake on the other and - here's the clincher - we'll make it below sea level! Yeah, baby! Party on! Enough said.
Seriously. I don't know what criteria this person used for the "worst" engineering mistakes, but it's clear to me at least that he really doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.
I have several points which shoot your statement down, at least with me:
... let me think ... oh, I've *never* had to do a restore of my personal files!
... in combination with tape backups.
A. I have absolutely no need for 750GB hard drives. I'm not into ripping movies to DIVX files nor am I looking to (for some odd reason) pirate every MP3 that's available on Usenet, like some Slashdotters something appear to like doing.
B. You're assuming that I would have need for all 750GB of storage to be backed up, which I don't. If I have need for that much storage that requires retension, I'll dump multiple copies them off to other media with parity files. If I ever did require that much storage, it would probably be for CDs or DVDs that I already own, so it would be no problem to fill up that much data again.
C. A DLT7000 drive backsup at about 10MB/sec. 750GB would take about 20 hours to backup locally, far less than my three-month retension time.
D. You're equating me with a Joe User. I'm careful about what I delete and I know what the "Recycle Bin" is for. It's been quite some time since I've deleted files accidentally that required a restore or rebuild. In fact
E. I'd most likely purchase a second drive, enclose it in an external FireWire enclosure, and copy my new/modified data over to it once a month or so
I welcome you to come over here and see my Sun Blade 100 with both a DDS-4 and newly-added, DLT7000 drive attached to it that I use to back up my documents, photos, and other important files on a monthly basis with a three month retention. I guess these three boxes of DDS tapes and dozen DLT IV tapes are just an illusion.
Thou mayest go back to fornicating with thyself now.
Even a redundant RAID would be inexpensive enough for most people. Frankly, I question any corporate entitiy that uses IDE as an enterprise, data storage solution, but if it's the most feasible alternative, two drives in a mirrored configuration is still more acceptable than a drive by itself.
Then you shouldn't be buying such a large hard drive if you can't afford to lose the data that's on it without redundancy or archiving capabilities. That's like buying a luxury car when you can't afford insurance for it.
You've never heard of this thing called a "backup", I take it?
:)
Seriously, there is no reason whatsoever for anyone to lose any data. Even if it means forking over the money for a tape backup and tapes, if you lose any data due to a drive failure you have no one to blame but yourself. If it's important, build a RAID. If its critical, build a RAID with some kind of tape or other backup.
Yeah, I know, this is "Well, no shit, Sherlock" territory, but it always irks me when someone talks about losing data because there's no real need for losing any data, particularly if it's important.
Of course, if getting that data back is a simple task of downloading (again) from alt.binaries.multimedia.erotica, that's a different situation.
Many surgeries can be done with local anesthetics. I never said that my desire to have a doctor right there was restriced to major surgeries!
You're forgetting the lawyers, though. Can you imagine what malpractice lawyers are going to think? Imagine them trying to sue a doctor who botched a remote surgery in a country with no kind of extradition treaty! I think that the trial lawyers of America would fight this more than the doctors if the goal is to "internationalize" medicine. Allowing remote surgeries will completely screw up many lawyer's ability to go for those higly lucrative malpractice lawsuits if the doctor is outside of the country's borders. But I'll bet that they would fight like crazy to allow it to be used domestically where the doctor and patient are both in the same country because of the ease of filing a lawsuit.
/.ers would like to try to convince me otherwise. At least with a doctor right there I can hear him say, "Oops!" instead of trusting some doctor who can mute his microphone from a thousand miles away -- and, damn it, they better guarantee <1 ms response time! :)
Personally, with the exception of minor, routine surgery, there is no frickin' way I'd want anyone but a real doctor and real nurses right there with me. Even the slightest possibility of a network dropout while the scalpel is cutting is terrifying to say the least. I don't care how much redundancy there is between me and the remote doctor. There is no way to 100% guarantee a solid connection at any given time, although I'm sure that a number of
Honestly, I think that you asked the right question, but you asked it the wrong way.