Gravity on Mars is only 38% of the Earth's and has no magnetic field to absorb/reflect radiation form the sun so even if you created an atmosphere it would not be anywhere as thick as what humans are use to. Living on Mars is possible but it would not be that much different than if we colonized our moon since we would still have to live in shielded shelters and wear protective gear when going outside.
That said I am not against space exploration and even colonization of space but lets build on science facts and not some SiFi pipe dream. I think the main attraction, although that is subjective of using nuclear weapons is that they make a big bang and do have a wow factor.
Err! I think you mean 8Mb/sec or Eight Mega bits per second although I somehow doubt you actually meant 8Gb/sec since very few people would have access to those speeds. The "8000 mb/s" you wrote really translates to Eight bits per second which is kind of slow, even Morse Code over 100 years ago is faster then that. This is a technical forum and not using the correct terminology or forgetting to use the "Shift" key is asking for it.:-)
You are quite right that some people are allergic to certain things such as nuts and even milk to name two. Once diagnosed that they have an allergic reaction to something or an allergy it really is up to the sufferer to to be aware of their condition and how to manage it. In the case of a very young sufferer they either don't attend a normal school or stay at home and have tutoring there although that can be a abused, hence the need for two or more medical examiners.
As for someone being allergic to WiFi either they are either lying or have some other problem, usually psychosomatic but if this type of allergy is true then they are destined for a very short life since WiFi is pretty much everywhere in most cities around the world and I can't see it being removed for one or two people.
As an aside I wonder if the child's parents have a WiFi router at home or do they have smart phones.?
Good grief it won't be long before we have litigation on the dangers of mobile phone usage and how dangerous it is to be speaking on one when you are filling you car with fuel... Oh Wait!
At least Lenovo gives you a GUI with Windows 8. On EVIL COMMAND LINE LINUX you're stuck with bad evil hard-to-use command lines.
You should be thankful that Lenovo gives you this extra software as a bonus instead of forcing you to use an EVIL command line!
The troll is strong with this one or is this sarcasm.
Personally I have found dual booting is pointless since unless you really steel yourself you end up predominately using the Microsoft OS which for avid gamers this is still the best OS (debatable) to use since "Games for Windows" are designed to be run on a Microsoft OS. Of course you could use Wine but that is debatable as well.
If you require a Microsoft OS for your work the assuming the PC is belongs to your work then you have no choice although you may be able to run a Linux distribution in a virtual machine. For home use the best choice would be to run a Microsoft OS and run Linux in a virtual machine or you could do it the other way around. For me I run Linux only on my PC's and never run a Microsoft OS since I am not a PC gamer although I do like gaming and I can pretty much find, normally free applications that are at least on par with most applications that run under a Microsoft OS.
I have two HP laptops and except for changing the thermal paste on my gaming laptop I have never had any problems. I don't even get adds or annoying popups but then again I have never ran a Microsoft OS on them. My oldest laptop is over six years and still runs the latest version of Fedora (22) without any issues.
One policy I have always set is to turn off auto updates. So while I do see that updates are available I only manually update (GUI or command line although personally I prefer the command line) when it suits me. As for rebooting I only do that after a new kernel is installed and again at my convenience. Updating at least for me is only a minor thing since it does not interfere with what I am doing and I know what I actually am installing or updating.
I do use Chrome as my main browser although I also have Firefox as well as Konqueror and if I feel like it (which I don't). There are other browsers except for Microsoft IE (I am so heart broken - NOT!) that I can also install in minutes. I do run Ghostery which at the moment show's seven trackers at this site being blocked although at some sites I have visited I have seen up to thirty trackers being blocked.
Anytime you make a cross-platform app, you end up with suckage everywhere. Go native or go home.
-jcr
That is rubbish. You can develop for multiple platforms and OS's if you have good management and Q & A. Unfortunately many developers that target their applications for multiple platforms don't seem to know how to cross develop properly and that is mainly due to poor management.
Yeah except for the whole fact that almost no developers use Linux or BSD, so all the trade offs made to support those crappy development platforms will hurt the people who use it on real OS's.
Ah the troll is strong with this one.
Well considering well over a billion people on this planet actually use Android (Linux kernel) and IOS (BSD derived) and the number of apps for both platforms is well over a million (including Microsoft ones) I suppose developers have given up and gone to real OS's.
Just on interest what do you consider as a real OS and why?
1) Make sure users, especially Windows users, are well educated enough to not run things or accept things that pop up in the browser or is sent in an email.
You do realise that trying to educate most MS Windows users is like trying to drain a lake with a colander.
2) Make sure that all users have Adblockers, No-Script etc installed by default. It is more trouble initially, but it gives you a chance to stop and think, and after a while you will have trained yourself and your browser to allow you to do your work with a minimum of pain.
Well I suppose if you are the System Admin but that would be a really thankless job.
3) Always run Windows in a VM under Linux - and make regular, dated backups of the Windows disk images (the VM disk images!). If shit happens, you can quickly go back to a version that works.
Honestly lets be real here. How many MS Windows users would even know how to install a Linux distribution much less run a virtual machine with MS Windows running in it and as for making backups of the virtual images - err lets not go down that path. In fact how many people actually know how to install MS Widows from scratch even though like Linux it is very easy although IMHO Linux is much more logical.
I think the only thing you can do is shake your head and slowly back away but definitely make sure your family and possibly your friends are educated enough not to be caught out by stammers. Diplomacy, patience and a small amount of constructive education are essential here.
BTW. Please don't take this badly, what you have said is quite valid, however we are talking abut the average MS Windows user who may be quite smart in many areas but dumb as a post when it come to basic IT management and security.
You think "most people" need CAD, Adobe apps, MS Office, financial software, medical software or supply chain software?
Most people need a web browser.
Most of the people who spend the most on PCs actually do need CAD,Office etc. and they are who drive the market.
And since Businesses spend a shit ton more money on PCs than your average punter, whoever owns that space will control the market.
No they don't. Most home users only need a web browser, file explorer and possibly a video player and Linux distributions have those as well.
If you need CAD then I assume you mean AutoCAD, you can get a commercial equivalent although like AutoCAD you have to pay for it. With a Linux distribution you can get some fairly sophisticated free versions such as LibreCAD which took me about 2 minutes to download and install and is now part of the LibreOffice suite of software.
As for an Office suite there is LibreOffice which is functionally equivalent to Microsoft Office. If you use Photoshop which you have to pay for there is always the GIMP which is almost as good and it is free. As to which is better, my answer is "the one you feel comfortable in using" and for me that is the GIMP.
When you say "etc" in the majority of cased you can either find a commercial equivalent which you pay for or a free one which is normally just good enough. Of coarse the old "It does not look like and function like [inset software here]", then the only thing people like me can say is that you have locked yourself into the Microsoft ecosystem and it's not my problem.
"Can You Disable Windows 10's Privacy-Invading Features?"
Just install Linux.
I can't see that many people installing a Linux Distribution over MS Windows since most people have no idea how to even install MS Windows from scratch or even do a recovery. Even for those people who have a MS Windows OS most have no Idea how to backup much less do a recovery. As for dual booting again the majority of PC users have no idea and even if they had someone do it for them they would just stick to MS Windows.
Actually Linux is probably easier to install than MS Windows and as an example I can install Fedora in about 30 minutes, plus 30 minutes to customise (I do document all my customisations), then about 40 minutes to update and during the update process I can use all my installed applications. In fact because my machines are Fedora only I never bother with an upgrade to install the latest version of the OS I just install the latest version in the appropriate system file-systems without impacting any data which I want to keep.
If you are a PC gamer and your favorite games are "Games for Windows" then switching to Linux is definitely not for you although there are hundreds of millions of gamer's who play on Android which has a Linux kernel and IOS which is based on BSD Unix devices. In fact you can download some quite good games for Linux from "Steam" although I won't deny that Microsoft based gaming dominates the PC.
If you are looking at businesses most opt for the Microsoft OS and like it or not you will use the OS that is dictated for you especially if your PC is company owned. If you own your PC (normally a laptop) that you use for business then choosing or installing a Linux distribution is your decision as long as you can do your job.
But he used vague requirements so not to give enough information for an actual informed decision.
Which is the perfect situation to employ a consultant. Outcome 1: he'll ask the right questions, get accurate answers because management know the requirements, and it'll be a success. Outcome 2..N: it'll be a disaster but it won't be your fault.
Excellent answer and the bit about covering your rear is priceless.
I have consulted on issues like this and there are multiple solutions some relatively simple and others complex, but a backup solution for half a petabyte of data is not going to come cheap so obviously any professional consultant will also want to cover themselves as well.
If a project has not been raised with all input being documented, milestones set and sign-off for all steps no professional consultant would want to touch this. Sure you can jury rig a solution and it may work but if anything goes wrong then whoever is perceived to be guiding this is effectively going to be looking for a new job.
Here are some very basic questions a consultant is going to ask and don't think these can be answered in a simple sentance:
Do you have a disaster recovery plan?
What amount and type of data do you really want to backup?
Do you want daily, weekly monthly, yearly or other types of backups? What type of backups do you want them to be?
What do you want your backup window to be?
What do you want your recovery window to be?
The above is just the start of the questions and there are going to be many many more before that will require detailed answers before any recommendation is reached with regard to equipment, installation, maintenance as well as backup, storage and and recovery strategies. This takes time and everyone wants to cover their rear so sign-off for important steps (ie. milestones) are essential.
This tempts me to raise the side question about whether games today are more fun. I don't mean slicker, with infinitely better graphics and so on. I mean more FUN. What makes a 50GB game more fun than an old 200kB game?
It depends on what types of games you like to play.
Personally I like a mix of Action/Adventure and RPG's so even old NES games like Zelda (131kB) or Faxanadu (262kB) are still fun to play although they do take quite allot of time to finish. Lets not get started on SNES and Sega games which were normally of the order of a few hundred kB to a max of 5MB. You can get older style PC games which are are less than a few MB and are great fun to play.
Many people today can afford a HDTV or even a larger monitor especially in first world countries so games have increased in size and graphics quality and in some respect decreased in play time although that is subjective and dependent on the games you like. For example if you are into on-line shooters you could spend hundreds of hours playing, however the single play mode if it has one may be very short. On the other hand RPG's like Skyrim which is single player only and no on-line component except for DLC addon's can take well over a 100 hours to complete and that is assuming you are just doing the main story line and not getting sidetracked which IMHO is very easy to do.
Of course there are MMO's which may have anything from mediocre to very high quality graphics which can gobble up hundreds if thousands of hours of time and are surprisingly small (a few GB initially) in size although that does depend on the game.
If a hard drive failure means days of down time then someone is not doing their job properly. In the case of an office copy machine it is possible to have it down for days while you wait for the tech to appear but it also possible to print to alternative machines assuming there are some and if there aren't again that is a major management problem.
In the case of PC's a base OS install be it MS Windows or even Linux should take no more than an hour or two and possibly much less than an hour with the right recovery/rebuild infrastructure, of course getting back lost data can be a major problem and that is the responsibility of the PC owner.
On corporate systems the system disks are normally mirrored and data disks are usually RAID even in a SAN configuration so if a disk fails or start to fail the hardware tech usually just takes the faulty or failing disk out and replaces it with a new disk (no outage required) although it is always sound policy for the IT manager to raise a change request and get it signed off by management.
Actually if you have a hard drive crash you probably did not take notice of the warning signs.
When a drive is failing you should get plenty of warnings such are performance issues and a quick check of the drive should show that something is wrong. The problem here is most people have no idea how to check the performance of a hard drive much less be aware that there is a problem that is only going to get worse before the disk finally gives out and by then it's too late.
A few months ago I had my system disk hard drive start to fail on my laptop (it originally had 2 650GB 2.5" 5400 rpm drives) I ran some checks using the SMART tools and found that my my drive was failing which immediately prompted me to purchase a new 1TB 8200rpm HDD and install it after I had fully backed up my old disk.
Since I have a pure Linux system (Fedora 22) it was actually quicker to rebuild my new hard disk from scratch which meant installing the OS, customizing, patching and then recovering my user data. The install of the OS took about 30 minutes with customization and patching taking another 40 minutes and by that time I had a working system although it did take another 5 hours to get back my data. Since I replaced my original 5400 rpm disk with an 8200 rpm disk the performance of my laptop is so much better.
BTW. I am aware of SSD's and decided not to get one since I would need a minimum of 650GB and an SSD of that size is not cheap. Also with my new disk most applications are open withing 10 seconds compared to maybe 1 second with an SSD and it won't kill me to wait a few extra seconds. I do recommend a small SSD for just for the system disk if you have a PC with has multiple disk slots. IMHO putting personal data (that includes games) on an SSD show that you have more money then sense, still it is your money.
Basically anyone who has a PC or even a mainframe should document their customization's such as wireless info, user info, firewall (if any) info, additional software info, etc. You should also be aware of any disk configuration such as partitioning, possibly volume management and file system type. Lastly you should always Backup, Backup, Backup....:-) If you have a hard disk or even a solid state disk it is eventually going to fail. How long before it fails? Well how long is a piece of string?
I got a day one PS3 and in the instruction booklet it showed you how to swap out your hard drive for a different sized one.
While I have not purchased a PS4 yet for numerous reasons you can also change it's hard drive without voiding the warranty. So basically the 1TB PS4 is a standard PS4 with a 1TB disk and if you look at the price between a 500GB disk and a 1TB disk there is about a $10 to $20 difference and in OEM quantities you would probably be looking at a few dollars. Still when the new 1TB PS4 becomes available I think we are most likely looking at an increase of approximately $50.00. I could be wrong and it may even be possible it could be the same price as the 500GB PS4 but I doubt it. Still even if the price is about $50.00 dearer it would most likely be worth it rather then purchase a 1TB drive later and swap the 500GB one.
Yes you are right Apple do make their brand however so do other vendors. What apple and the other vendors don't control although they do have some say are the carriers and if an update is released IOS or Android then it is up to the carriers to push it out.
There are other vendors that sell Android phones and so far it is only the Samsung brand that has the issue and not the Linux kernel, so basically it is a Samsung problem.
It's bad enough that the game will be crippled by design thanks to compatibility with the underpowered "next get" train wrecks. No need to add even more ballast to waste resources.
Oh dear another golden haired gaming elite! Well if you wish to compare the "next gen" to train wrecks then I am sure over a billion people on this planet would disagree with you since most PC owners don't have anything more powerful than those next gen machines. Sure there are PC's that are more powerful but they are very much in the minority and they definitely cost allot more.
Over a 160 million combined PS3's and Xbox 360 sales and assuming only 30% are still being played then that still is allot of potential sales you are basically throwing away, still it's Bethesda we are talking about.
Well, when you're typing out Unix commands on an teletype that's 80 characters wide, creating short options first made a lot of sense.
Graphical interfaces have been around since the 1970's and on workstations or any graphical interface you can display the equivalent of a standard 80x24 tty terminal or any sized terminal (within reason of course) so that was not the reason why creating so called short options made sense. Basically Unix people preferred efficiency in typing over long winded typing. As an example why type "copy" when you can type "cp" or "ls" when you wish to list files and directories. You can even alias commands and their options if you are using them allot so there is even less typing to do.
You should realise that Powershell is basically a copy of the Bourne Shell with allot of Microsoft additions so that they can say this is our unique command line shell.
* I shudder to think of how bastardized the command options are going to be, given the PowerShell's habit of using stuff like '-omgLookAtThisMassiveOptionNamingConvention', to the point where they have to alias a frickin' option...
Linux is full of aliased options.
Can you explain the difference between:
cp -r
cp -R
cp --recursive
There are long options too, with no aliases
ls --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir
If you look at the man page of "cp" there is no difference, it really is left up to you what option you like. Personally I use "cp -rp" since I also like to preserve the information on the directories and files I am copying, although when copying to a MS Windows file-system you many have trouble with letters like ":".
When using the command line you can never go wrong with the"man" command. If you are not sure or just want to search for a pattern then use the "-k" option to search the manual entries. Of course you can use "--apropos" if you wish which does the same thing or use "-K" or "--global-apropos" which are similar but different. The most important thing is to have fun.
Billions and billions of galaxies containing billions and billions of stars... there's probably an an entire Astro Glide Nebula or something, and one made of just chocolate pudding.;-)
Of course it may be possible to find a pizza shaped world carried on the back of four elephants who in turn are standing on the back of a gigantic star travelling turtle:-) (in memory of Terry Pratchett)
Why is HP involved? What does hacking have to do with printer ink?
You do know that Hewlett Packard makes PC's and Super Computers as well printers don't you? Basically they are just running the event and it is good PR for them.
Slashdot Mirror
Gravity on Mars is only 38% of the Earth's and has no magnetic field to absorb/reflect radiation form the sun so even if you created an atmosphere it would not be anywhere as thick as what humans are use to. Living on Mars is possible but it would not be that much different than if we colonized our moon since we would still have to live in shielded shelters and wear protective gear when going outside.
That said I am not against space exploration and even colonization of space but lets build on science facts and not some SiFi pipe dream. I think the main attraction, although that is subjective of using nuclear weapons is that they make a big bang and do have a wow factor.
Err! I think you mean 8Mb/sec or Eight Mega bits per second although I somehow doubt you actually meant 8Gb/sec since very few people would have access to those speeds. The "8000 mb/s" you wrote really translates to Eight bits per second which is kind of slow, even Morse Code over 100 years ago is faster then that. This is a technical forum and not using the correct terminology or forgetting to use the "Shift" key is asking for it. :-)
You are quite right that some people are allergic to certain things such as nuts and even milk to name two. Once diagnosed that they have an allergic reaction to something or an allergy it really is up to the sufferer to to be aware of their condition and how to manage it. In the case of a very young sufferer they either don't attend a normal school or stay at home and have tutoring there although that can be a abused, hence the need for two or more medical examiners.
As for someone being allergic to WiFi either they are either lying or have some other problem, usually psychosomatic but if this type of allergy is true then they are destined for a very short life since WiFi is pretty much everywhere in most cities around the world and I can't see it being removed for one or two people.
As an aside I wonder if the child's parents have a WiFi router at home or do they have smart phones.?
Good grief it won't be long before we have litigation on the dangers of mobile phone usage and how dangerous it is to be speaking on one when you are filling you car with fuel... Oh Wait!
At least Lenovo gives you a GUI with Windows 8. On EVIL COMMAND LINE LINUX you're stuck with bad evil hard-to-use command lines. You should be thankful that Lenovo gives you this extra software as a bonus instead of forcing you to use an EVIL command line!
The troll is strong with this one or is this sarcasm.
Personally I have found dual booting is pointless since unless you really steel yourself you end up predominately using the Microsoft OS which for avid gamers this is still the best OS (debatable) to use since "Games for Windows" are designed to be run on a Microsoft OS. Of course you could use Wine but that is debatable as well.
If you require a Microsoft OS for your work the assuming the PC is belongs to your work then you have no choice although you may be able to run a Linux distribution in a virtual machine. For home use the best choice would be to run a Microsoft OS and run Linux in a virtual machine or you could do it the other way around. For me I run Linux only on my PC's and never run a Microsoft OS since I am not a PC gamer although I do like gaming and I can pretty much find, normally free applications that are at least on par with most applications that run under a Microsoft OS.
I have two HP laptops and except for changing the thermal paste on my gaming laptop I have never had any problems. I don't even get adds or annoying popups but then again I have never ran a Microsoft OS on them. My oldest laptop is over six years and still runs the latest version of Fedora (22) without any issues.
One policy I have always set is to turn off auto updates. So while I do see that updates are available I only manually update (GUI or command line although personally I prefer the command line) when it suits me. As for rebooting I only do that after a new kernel is installed and again at my convenience. Updating at least for me is only a minor thing since it does not interfere with what I am doing and I know what I actually am installing or updating.
I do use Chrome as my main browser although I also have Firefox as well as Konqueror and if I feel like it (which I don't). There are other browsers except for Microsoft IE (I am so heart broken - NOT!) that I can also install in minutes. I do run Ghostery which at the moment show's seven trackers at this site being blocked although at some sites I have visited I have seen up to thirty trackers being blocked.
Anytime you make a cross-platform app, you end up with suckage everywhere. Go native or go home.
-jcr
That is rubbish. You can develop for multiple platforms and OS's if you have good management and Q & A. Unfortunately many developers that target their applications for multiple platforms don't seem to know how to cross develop properly and that is mainly due to poor management.
Yeah except for the whole fact that almost no developers use Linux or BSD, so all the trade offs made to support those crappy development platforms will hurt the people who use it on real OS's.
Ah the troll is strong with this one.
Well considering well over a billion people on this planet actually use Android (Linux kernel) and IOS (BSD derived) and the number of apps for both platforms is well over a million (including Microsoft ones) I suppose developers have given up and gone to real OS's.
Just on interest what do you consider as a real OS and why?
1) Make sure users, especially Windows users, are well educated enough to not run things or accept things that pop up in the browser or is sent in an email.
You do realise that trying to educate most MS Windows users is like trying to drain a lake with a colander.
2) Make sure that all users have Adblockers, No-Script etc installed by default. It is more trouble initially, but it gives you a chance to stop and think, and after a while you will have trained yourself and your browser to allow you to do your work with a minimum of pain.
Well I suppose if you are the System Admin but that would be a really thankless job.
3) Always run Windows in a VM under Linux - and make regular, dated backups of the Windows disk images (the VM disk images!). If shit happens, you can quickly go back to a version that works.
Honestly lets be real here. How many MS Windows users would even know how to install a Linux distribution much less run a virtual machine with MS Windows running in it and as for making backups of the virtual images - err lets not go down that path. In fact how many people actually know how to install MS Widows from scratch even though like Linux it is very easy although IMHO Linux is much more logical.
I think the only thing you can do is shake your head and slowly back away but definitely make sure your family and possibly your friends are educated enough not to be caught out by stammers. Diplomacy, patience and a small amount of constructive education are essential here.
BTW. Please don't take this badly, what you have said is quite valid, however we are talking abut the average MS Windows user who may be quite smart in many areas but dumb as a post when it come to basic IT management and security.
You think "most people" need CAD, Adobe apps, MS Office, financial software, medical software or supply chain software?
Most people need a web browser.
Most of the people who spend the most on PCs actually do need CAD,Office etc. and they are who drive the market. And since Businesses spend a shit ton more money on PCs than your average punter, whoever owns that space will control the market.
No they don't. Most home users only need a web browser, file explorer and possibly a video player and Linux distributions have those as well.
If you need CAD then I assume you mean AutoCAD, you can get a commercial equivalent although like AutoCAD you have to pay for it. With a Linux distribution you can get some fairly sophisticated free versions such as LibreCAD which took me about 2 minutes to download and install and is now part of the LibreOffice suite of software.
As for an Office suite there is LibreOffice which is functionally equivalent to Microsoft Office. If you use Photoshop which you have to pay for there is always the GIMP which is almost as good and it is free. As to which is better, my answer is "the one you feel comfortable in using" and for me that is the GIMP.
When you say "etc" in the majority of cased you can either find a commercial equivalent which you pay for or a free one which is normally just good enough. Of coarse the old "It does not look like and function like [inset software here]", then the only thing people like me can say is that you have locked yourself into the Microsoft ecosystem and it's not my problem.
"Can You Disable Windows 10's Privacy-Invading Features?"
Just install Linux.
I can't see that many people installing a Linux Distribution over MS Windows since most people have no idea how to even install MS Windows from scratch or even do a recovery. Even for those people who have a MS Windows OS most have no Idea how to backup much less do a recovery. As for dual booting again the majority of PC users have no idea and even if they had someone do it for them they would just stick to MS Windows.
Actually Linux is probably easier to install than MS Windows and as an example I can install Fedora in about 30 minutes, plus 30 minutes to customise (I do document all my customisations), then about 40 minutes to update and during the update process I can use all my installed applications. In fact because my machines are Fedora only I never bother with an upgrade to install the latest version of the OS I just install the latest version in the appropriate system file-systems without impacting any data which I want to keep.
If you are a PC gamer and your favorite games are "Games for Windows" then switching to Linux is definitely not for you although there are hundreds of millions of gamer's who play on Android which has a Linux kernel and IOS which is based on BSD Unix devices. In fact you can download some quite good games for Linux from "Steam" although I won't deny that Microsoft based gaming dominates the PC.
If you are looking at businesses most opt for the Microsoft OS and like it or not you will use the OS that is dictated for you especially if your PC is company owned. If you own your PC (normally a laptop) that you use for business then choosing or installing a Linux distribution is your decision as long as you can do your job.
Seriously. Call ixsysyems. They specialize in this stuff and they use ZFS.
Since when is a file-system a backup and recovery solution?
Which is the perfect situation to employ a consultant. Outcome 1: he'll ask the right questions, get accurate answers because management know the requirements, and it'll be a success. Outcome 2..N: it'll be a disaster but it won't be your fault.
Excellent answer and the bit about covering your rear is priceless.
I have consulted on issues like this and there are multiple solutions some relatively simple and others complex, but a backup solution for half a petabyte of data is not going to come cheap so obviously any professional consultant will also want to cover themselves as well.
If a project has not been raised with all input being documented, milestones set and sign-off for all steps no professional consultant would want to touch this. Sure you can jury rig a solution and it may work but if anything goes wrong then whoever is perceived to be guiding this is effectively going to be looking for a new job.
Here are some very basic questions a consultant is going to ask and don't think these can be answered in a simple sentance:
The above is just the start of the questions and there are going to be many many more before that will require detailed answers before any recommendation is reached with regard to equipment, installation, maintenance as well as backup, storage and and recovery strategies. This takes time and everyone wants to cover their rear so sign-off for important steps (ie. milestones) are essential.
This tempts me to raise the side question about whether games today are more fun. I don't mean slicker, with infinitely better graphics and so on. I mean more FUN. What makes a 50GB game more fun than an old 200kB game?
It depends on what types of games you like to play.
Personally I like a mix of Action/Adventure and RPG's so even old NES games like Zelda (131kB) or Faxanadu (262kB) are still fun to play although they do take quite allot of time to finish. Lets not get started on SNES and Sega games which were normally of the order of a few hundred kB to a max of 5MB. You can get older style PC games which are are less than a few MB and are great fun to play.
Many people today can afford a HDTV or even a larger monitor especially in first world countries so games have increased in size and graphics quality and in some respect decreased in play time although that is subjective and dependent on the games you like. For example if you are into on-line shooters you could spend hundreds of hours playing, however the single play mode if it has one may be very short. On the other hand RPG's like Skyrim which is single player only and no on-line component except for DLC addon's can take well over a 100 hours to complete and that is assuming you are just doing the main story line and not getting sidetracked which IMHO is very easy to do.
Of course there are MMO's which may have anything from mediocre to very high quality graphics which can gobble up hundreds if thousands of hours of time and are surprisingly small (a few GB initially) in size although that does depend on the game.
I always backup to a second partition on the backed up drive. Backups faster than using an external.
Jaw drops, shakes head sadly ... slowly backs away.
Yes that never ceased to amaze me, backing up to a separate partition on your system hard disk so you can recover your data on failure.
If a hard drive failure means days of down time then someone is not doing their job properly. In the case of an office copy machine it is possible to have it down for days while you wait for the tech to appear but it also possible to print to alternative machines assuming there are some and if there aren't again that is a major management problem.
In the case of PC's a base OS install be it MS Windows or even Linux should take no more than an hour or two and possibly much less than an hour with the right recovery/rebuild infrastructure, of course getting back lost data can be a major problem and that is the responsibility of the PC owner.
On corporate systems the system disks are normally mirrored and data disks are usually RAID even in a SAN configuration so if a disk fails or start to fail the hardware tech usually just takes the faulty or failing disk out and replaces it with a new disk (no outage required) although it is always sound policy for the IT manager to raise a change request and get it signed off by management.
Actually if you have a hard drive crash you probably did not take notice of the warning signs.
When a drive is failing you should get plenty of warnings such are performance issues and a quick check of the drive should show that something is wrong. The problem here is most people have no idea how to check the performance of a hard drive much less be aware that there is a problem that is only going to get worse before the disk finally gives out and by then it's too late.
A few months ago I had my system disk hard drive start to fail on my laptop (it originally had 2 650GB 2.5" 5400 rpm drives) I ran some checks using the SMART tools and found that my my drive was failing which immediately prompted me to purchase a new 1TB 8200rpm HDD and install it after I had fully backed up my old disk.
Since I have a pure Linux system (Fedora 22) it was actually quicker to rebuild my new hard disk from scratch which meant installing the OS, customizing, patching and then recovering my user data. The install of the OS took about 30 minutes with customization and patching taking another 40 minutes and by that time I had a working system although it did take another 5 hours to get back my data. Since I replaced my original 5400 rpm disk with an 8200 rpm disk the performance of my laptop is so much better.
BTW. I am aware of SSD's and decided not to get one since I would need a minimum of 650GB and an SSD of that size is not cheap. Also with my new disk most applications are open withing 10 seconds compared to maybe 1 second with an SSD and it won't kill me to wait a few extra seconds. I do recommend a small SSD for just for the system disk if you have a PC with has multiple disk slots. IMHO putting personal data (that includes games) on an SSD show that you have more money then sense, still it is your money.
Basically anyone who has a PC or even a mainframe should document their customization's such as wireless info, user info, firewall (if any) info, additional software info, etc. You should also be aware of any disk configuration such as partitioning, possibly volume management and file system type. Lastly you should always Backup, Backup, Backup .... :-) If you have a hard disk or even a solid state disk it is eventually going to fail. How long before it fails? Well how long is a piece of string?
I got a day one PS3 and in the instruction booklet it showed you how to swap out your hard drive for a different sized one.
While I have not purchased a PS4 yet for numerous reasons you can also change it's hard drive without voiding the warranty. So basically the 1TB PS4 is a standard PS4 with a 1TB disk and if you look at the price between a 500GB disk and a 1TB disk there is about a $10 to $20 difference and in OEM quantities you would probably be looking at a few dollars. Still when the new 1TB PS4 becomes available I think we are most likely looking at an increase of approximately $50.00. I could be wrong and it may even be possible it could be the same price as the 500GB PS4 but I doubt it. Still even if the price is about $50.00 dearer it would most likely be worth it rather then purchase a 1TB drive later and swap the 500GB one.
Yes you are right Apple do make their brand however so do other vendors. What apple and the other vendors don't control although they do have some say are the carriers and if an update is released IOS or Android then it is up to the carriers to push it out.
There are other vendors that sell Android phones and so far it is only the Samsung brand that has the issue and not the Linux kernel, so basically it is a Samsung problem.
It's bad enough that the game will be crippled by design thanks to compatibility with the underpowered "next get" train wrecks. No need to add even more ballast to waste resources.
Oh dear another golden haired gaming elite! Well if you wish to compare the "next gen" to train wrecks then I am sure over a billion people on this planet would disagree with you since most PC owners don't have anything more powerful than those next gen machines. Sure there are PC's that are more powerful but they are very much in the minority and they definitely cost allot more.
Over a 160 million combined PS3's and Xbox 360 sales and assuming only 30% are still being played then that still is allot of potential sales you are basically throwing away, still it's Bethesda we are talking about.
Well, when you're typing out Unix commands on an teletype that's 80 characters wide, creating short options first made a lot of sense.
Graphical interfaces have been around since the 1970's and on workstations or any graphical interface you can display the equivalent of a standard 80x24 tty terminal or any sized terminal (within reason of course) so that was not the reason why creating so called short options made sense. Basically Unix people preferred efficiency in typing over long winded typing. As an example why type "copy" when you can type "cp" or "ls" when you wish to list files and directories. You can even alias commands and their options if you are using them allot so there is even less typing to do.
You should realise that Powershell is basically a copy of the Bourne Shell with allot of Microsoft additions so that they can say this is our unique command line shell.
* I shudder to think of how bastardized the command options are going to be, given the PowerShell's habit of using stuff like '-omgLookAtThisMassiveOptionNamingConvention', to the point where they have to alias a frickin' option...
Linux is full of aliased options. Can you explain the difference between:
cp -r
cp -R
cp --recursive
There are long options too, with no aliases ls --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir
If you look at the man page of "cp" there is no difference, it really is left up to you what option you like. Personally I use "cp -rp" since I also like to preserve the information on the directories and files I am copying, although when copying to a MS Windows file-system you many have trouble with letters like ":".
When using the command line you can never go wrong with the"man" command. If you are not sure or just want to search for a pattern then use the "-k" option to search the manual entries. Of course you can use "--apropos" if you wish which does the same thing or use "-K" or "--global-apropos" which are similar but different. The most important thing is to have fun.
Billions and billions of galaxies containing billions and billions of stars ... there's probably an an entire Astro Glide Nebula or something, and one made of just chocolate pudding. ;-)
Of course it may be possible to find a pizza shaped world carried on the back of four elephants who in turn are standing on the back of a gigantic star travelling turtle :-) (in memory of Terry Pratchett)
Why is HP involved? What does hacking have to do with printer ink?
You do know that Hewlett Packard makes PC's and Super Computers as well printers don't you? Basically they are just running the event and it is good PR for them.